Category: Current Events

Xeroxed Ballots in Georgia. We Must Be One of Those Rich Banana Republics.

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It’s just becoming too painful to even read these things.  It’s just embarrassing admitting this is still the United States.  But you know what?  This is what went on in the cities during the late nineteenth/early twentieth century.  The only thing that has any effect is to organize and elect people who advocate for our issues.  Money and power are the only thing politicians understand.  We need to buy our own judges and buy our own legislators.  They have to be bought and paid for the same way these clowns do it.  Eventually we’ll need our own bureaucrats and our own army too.

Money and power are all they understand.

Joys of the Patriarchy – Rituals of the Summer Season – The Basement

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As the days reach their maximum length and when the mercury passes 90°F in what my old engineering boss would jokingly refer to as “white man’s units,” the dominant male, of the Italic strain at least, would shift his base of operations to the basement level.  Here he would gain a two-fold advantage.  The obvious one is a 15°F – 30°F reduction in ambient temperature as compared to the upper floors but equally as important is the freedom from female annoyance.  The lower level is the male domain.  It contains a pool table, a floor that needn’t be kept swept clean of minute amounts of honest dirt and vast storage space crammed full of valuable possessions that do not pass muster from Camera Girl for inclusion in the various bric-a-brac that she favors for décor.  Hundreds of old books, trophies of past campaigns, tools, and hobby, exercise and sports equipment of all sorts.  A veritable treasure house.

I learned this paradigm from Camera Girl’s father, the Old Fisherman of the Sea himself.  He would inhabit the basement in the summer almost exclusively and it was there that he was happiest.  He had his wine making operation, which encouraged at various times of the year quite a healthy throng of fruit flies, his fishing lure manufacturing space, his tool workshop, his own bath and shower and his favorite old padded chair.  He even had his own freezer and refrigerator to store the endless blue fish and striped bass that were the usual prizes from his frequent fishing trips.  Here he would retreat from the cares of work and family and reign unchallenged by female frippery and the demands for ever higher standards of particle free existence.  And in this environment, he lived to be ninety-five.  And if he hadn’t taken it upon himself to increase his gout medicine dosage to unheard of levels to compensate for his love of wine and beef, he probably would be alive today and well over a hundred years old.  God rest his soul.

Well, anyway in my version of the basement kingdom the lower level has direct access to the swimming pool and since the floor there is tiled there is no need to dry off after swimming.  Drip dry in flip-flops is acceptable.  If someone is exceedingly fastidious there is a bathroom and shower available here along with towels and changing area.  Also, the spare refrigerator from which hidden food items can be stored and retrieved without any note.  And the overstuffed recliner is available for periods of quiet reflection and deep thoughts.  And finally, the lower porch is equipped with a propane grill to handle any meat related cooking that may become necessary.  After all Camera Girl’s kitchen can be monstrously hot at this time of year.  It’s only decent that I pitch in and save her the discomfort of summer cooking as much as I am able.

There used to be a television on the wall but we removed it almost ten years ago.  There is so little worth watching that it never got used.  The only thing it lacks is a full kitchen sink and stove.  I say this with shame.  Because every good Italian American basement had a kitchen built in.  It was a point of pride and a practical feature.  This allowed the holidays with the extended family to be cooked and served in the basement which is always the largest room in the house.  Well, someday I’ll make the time and put the money aside to build this in.  For now, it is my secret shame.

Now the point of this essay is not to regale you with the lies about my basement.  The point is that in the hot weather (and to a lesser extent during all the other seasons of the year) a man can find peace and enjoyment hidden away from his loved ones in the dark and gritty comforts of the basement.  Here he can retreat from his wife and the demands of our hectic world.  Leave your phone and your computer off.  Get your hands dirty and drink a beer or whatever you like to drink and forget your troubles for an hour or even longer if they won’t come digging you out.  It is an amazing thing how they’ll leave you alone down there.  Possibly the castle that a man is king of is really only the dungeon.  But I’ll settle.

Morning Shmoe vs. The Deplorables

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Dramatis Personae: Morning Shmoe Browfurrowed (MS), Lycra Spandexy (LS)

 

MS – It’s 18 minutes and 17.023 seconds past the quarter hour here on the Morning Shmoe Show.  I’m here with my lovely bride Lycra Spandexy-Browfurrowed and we’re talking about the mouth breathing lowlifes out there on the Right who dare to claim that the 2020 election was rigged.

LS – That’s right Shmoe, you tell’em.  Let’em have it.

MS – I will dear, if you just let me finish!

LS – Sure, dear.  You go ahead I was just trying to cheer you on a little.  Okay?

MS – Okay.

LS – Okay.

MS – Woahh!.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, recently I took a call on this show from some neanderthal with the IQ of an angle worm who was trying to claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.  And when something like this happens, I become enraged.  This is the greatest country on the face of the earth with the greatest ballot counting people that have ever been.  Joe Burden was the greatest vice president under that greatest of all presidents Hatrack Barabbas back in the great days of this great republic.  And now he’s the greatest president of this great time.  His ability to wear a mask and tell other people to wear masks has made him a legend.  And when some ignoramus tries to claim that such a great man would be involved in anything as underhanded and unheard of as election fraud, well I can’t even describe how angry I become.

LS – Try Shmoe, try!  Tell us how mad you are.  Describe your righteous anger.

MS – Dear! …  Please, please, stop interrupting me.

LS – But I was just trying …

MS – I know what you were just trying to do.  But what you actually did was interrupt my train of thought.

LS – So I derailed your train of thought!  You’ve gone off track and want to get back on track.

MS  – STOP!!!   STOP!!!   STOP!!!

LS – erp.

MS – If you don’t stop interrupting me, I’m gonna walk off this set and find a younger, prettier, quieter co-host who can do what I say.  And remember what happened to the last woman I had a problem with.

LS – erp.

MS – ……    Okay, so, when these mental midgets try to make these crazy claims like COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab or that 800% ballot overcounts aren’t just obviously the typical rounding errors you expect in any election I want to tell these people to just get out.  That’s right, I want them out of my country.  Because this is my country.  Shmoe Browfurrowed is the decider here.  I’ve sacrificed everything for this country.  I’ve sunk thousands in dental implants and an indetectable hair process that allows me to speak to the good people of this country the way they should be talked to, from a position of authority and credibility.  I’ve sacrificed my original family members because, honestly, they just weren’t good enough for my future.  I owed it to this country to evolve beyond them.  And if Lycra starts babbling again, I’ll probably be evolving beyond her too.

LS – erp!

MS – But mostly I’ve sacrificed my outmoded sense of values.  I no longer trouble myself over seeming inconsistencies like “documentary evidence” or “math” or even “eye witness accounts.”   Because if any of those things contradict the truth that I receive from the network briefing that morning then I know it is either Russian propaganda or lies spread by Donald Trump.  Even if it was in yesterday’s briefing.  Make that, especially, if it was in yesterday’s briefing.  Because the rock bottom truth is that truth is always evolving.  Trying to sort it out yourself is madness.  The briefing has been prepared by experts in their fields and is always right until tomorrow’s briefing.

So, you can see, I’ve got this under control and we don’t need any phony baloney deplorables “thinking” or looking into things.  If you don’t trust the integrity of a great man like Joe Burden then you don’t belong here anymore.  Get out!  Get out!

Well, I’m glad I got that off my chest.  What do you think about that Lycra?

LS – erp.  Am I allowed to talk now?

MS – Certainly dear.  I just wanted to finish my thought without being interrupted.  That’s all.

LS – I agree with every word of it.  How brave you were standing up to those “truth” bullies with their facts and their logical consistency.  How unbrave they are.

MS – And on that note it’s four minutes and 13.0234 seconds past a quarter to the hour.  And it’s time for a commercial from Twerker, the social network that keeps things shaking.  Have you twerked yet today?

LS – So brave Shmoe, so brave,

MS – Shut up Lycra.  Even I can’t make believe you make sense.  Just smile and hide your wrinkles.

LS – erp.

ZMan Claims Collapse of Social Trust Will Mean Societal Collapse Soon

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ZMan walks us through the institutions that have burned through their social trust and then finishes by saying that the American Empire will soon have its collapse like the Soviet Union.

I think he makes a lot of good points.  But it’s not clear to me that any systemic collapse is likely to happen anytime soon.  And the reason for that is a collapse doesn’t occur until some external event intrudes.  So, when will that happen?  Well, it could happen tomorrow or it could be a decade.  Now, I don’t think it will be a decade, in fact I could see something happening within three or four years but I wouldn’t even think of saying it’s going to happen on such and such a day.  I think a good trick would be to try to guess what the external triggering event is likely to be.  An easy guess is a financial collapse.  The result of some kind of stagflation or very high unemployment might be enough to destabilize the political situation.  But if we are talking about a societal collapse like the Soviet collapse it would be important to know what the US military would do in the case of essentially an insurrection.  And that will completely depend on who is in the military at the time.

It’s fun to imagine a scenario that will end the Left’s hold on power.  But trying to predict its occurrence against a calendar is maybe too difficult to try at this time.

 

 

Silly Season – 2021

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Definition of “Silly Season”

1: a period (such as late summer) when the mass media often focus on trivial or frivolous matters for lack of major news stories

2: a period marked by frivolous, outlandish, or illogical activity or behavior

 

It’s not late summer yet but when the mercury climbs above 90°F even the Burn-Loot-Murder crowd gets easily overheated and things slow down.  Sure, the professional gang-bangers are making their living and shooting each other off porches and through windshields but that kind of news isn’t very interesting anymore.

With school out for summer the Antifa kids might want to burn down the local police precinct but it’s Pride Month and they have to get the police to protect their freak parade so they’ll take off their black bloc paraphernalia long enough to go down to the local precinct and fill out the paperwork to allow them to float some giant-sized sex toy down main street while dressed as a wombat or whatever other fetish symbol they’ve adopted this week.

What’s a blogger to do?  How will I manufacture sufficient outrage to keep the public interested if all I have is Joe Burden surfacing every few days with another listless mumble about vaccinations or the Fourth of July or white supremacists threatening to tip over the continent or sabotage the summer’s ice cream supply.

I guess I have no choice but to actually think about what I want to write about.  “A thoughtful essay?” you may question.  “Does he do those?”  Well, not normally.  But during the silly season I have three choices.  Either go 100% to non-news topics (entertainment and general knowledge), fly completely off the handle and just rave like a lunatic or spend a little time digging into political and social subjects a little more thoughtfully and try to provide something insightful.

But the truth is insightful is hard.  And it’s hard to pump that kind of stuff out.  In fact, you can’t.  When you try to pump it out it pretty much equals the ravings of a lunatic.  So, during lulls in meaningful political news, I expect to be doing more cultural/entertainment stuff and fewer political items.  But my hope is that the political articles I do publish will be worth reading.

And don’t get too worried that my output will go down much.  There are bound to be a few outrages coming up shortly.  After all, these people are certifiably insane.  Even if they weren’t chock full of anti-psychotics there hasn’t been a moment in decades that they weren’t so removed from reality that they wouldn’t know the difference between a Fourth of July fireworks concert and the burning of the Reichstag.

With respect to meaningful political meditation, of late I’ve been thinking about how I would recognize “the real deal.”  To be more precise, how can I recognize who is truly working towards the re-establishment of the Old Republic and who is just running a grift?  After the exposure of the Bushes and the rest of the RINOs you’d think that we could point to their talking points and know who is the real deal.  After all the people who still whine about “illegal immigration is love” like Jeb Bush are obviously the controlled opposition.  But I think the grifters have gotten cagey.  Even Liz Cheney was smart enough to vote along with President Trump when it looked like he was going to be running things.  It was only after the election was handed to Biden that she showed her true colors.  So, it’s not a foregone conclusion that we know what’s lurking in the minds of men.  And that’s a separate question about how much brains and guts a fellow has.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been thinking about today.  When I work it up into something interesting, I’ll put it out there.  In the meantime, I’ll be watching that H.P. Lovecraft/Nick Cage collaboration.  The things I do for my readers!

Scientists Say 10%-14% of All Giant Sequoias Killed in 2020 Wild Fires

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These forest management types say the wild fires that have been ravaging California are a dire threat to the survival of the only Giant Sequoias on the planet.  Well, maybe like everything else California does, their land management sucks too.

My own population of Giant Sequoias has increased 300% in the last few years and we haven’t lost a single tree to wildfires for as long as I’ve been around.

Perhaps they might want to plant a few in the rainforests of the Washington and Oregon.  And while they’re at it they might think about a program to establish them as widely around the world as possible.  Because the way California is going it will be a desert where even scorpions and cactus won’t be able to endure.  Is there anything Marxists can’t destroy?  Apparently not.

Figuring Out the Future

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I was reading a post on the ZMan’s site about electric cars.  His thesis is that electric cars are a policy in search of a reason.  And of course, he’s correct.  Electric cars are inferior in all aspects including energy efficiency and even “carbon footprint.”  After all, the power that charges the battery is still being generated by burning fossil fuels.  And since transmitting electricity wastes between thirty and forty percent of the energy as heat then just burning gasoline in an internal combustion engine (ICE) burns much less fuel.  But what electric cars effectively do is give direct control over transportation to the government.  Now instead of allowing car companies and fuel companies to sell their products directly to consumers, the government can regulate where and how you access the energy needed to run your vehicle.  And they can even tell when you recharge your car and eventually, they’ll be able to tell you when you can’t.  It’s pretty obvious where all this is going.  The freedom we have had to be able to get up and go wherever we want whenever we want is about to go away.  The powers that be have a plan for the future and it doesn’t include that particular freedom, at least not for most of us.

But I don’t think we should assume that is the only change that is in the works.  The global warming nonsense is the justification for a whole host of changes that are coming down the pike.  As with all things bad and dysfunctional the place to look for what will be rolled out is California.  Rolling brown outs, rolling black outs, water restrictions and the scheduled elimination of the internal combustion engine is already in place there.  Probably coming down the road will be the elimination of fossil fuels for home heating, the replacement of flush toilets with chemical systems and restrictions on the use of refrigeration and air conditioning.  After that, restrictions on the kind of produce farmers are allowed to grow will be decreed based on the amount of water and fertilizer required.

All of this sounds pretty bleak.  And it is.  We have lived in a time of such prosperity and freedom that these types of restrictions sound awful.  But they are based on a logic that can be guessed at.  Up until the twentieth century Malthusianism held that eventually population growth would outstrip the food supply and a crisis would lead to a population die off.  In addition, most people believe that the supply of fossil fuels is finite and possibly near its end.  The people who run our country are unhappy with the fracking and other enhanced petroleum recovery techniques currently going on.  They would prefer that the Middle Eastern and Russian resources were utilized instead.  And now that birth control has proven capable of reducing the birth rate below replacement levels in much of the developed world, I think they’ve formulated a plan on how to reshape society.  In a nutshell they are telling our children to drop dead.  And the strange thing is a lot of them are agreeing to the idea.

I’ve mentioned a discussion I had with a co-worker a few years back where he almost bragged to me that he had decided to forego having a family to help save the planet.  As an extenuating circumstance, I will admit that based on appearance and personality, I didn’t think his decision was the only factor that might prevent him from convincing a woman to bear his children.  But the fact that he had allowed this Gaia argument to have any weight at all in his personal reproductive decision-making process was thought provoking on my part.

What all this tells me is that we are no longer convenient as herd animals for our lords and masters.  They don’t need as many of us and they don’t want to pay as much for our upkeep as they used to tolerate.  What we got used to as first-world conditions are no longer seen as acceptable.  We’re going to have to live a little lower.

Of course, the alternative that we used to expect is for engineers and scientists to discover and commercialize processes that allow for Americans to improve their lifestyle not degrade it.  Energy production and personal transportation are things that have made this country wealthy and free in ways that no other country in history ever was.  Looking for ways to fuel our cars and heat and cool our homes are not insurmountable technical problems.  There are any number of existing resources that can be adapted to the present needs and even improve on the performance and efficiency of our present arrangements.  Nuclear power, will be the engine that will make it possible to produce affordable fuel after petroleum is exhausted.  It is probable that an important part of that fuel requirement will be the use of hydrogen combustion to heat our homes.  This will require the perfection of extremely fail-safe methods of storing and burning hydrogen.  But when that is achieved, we will have a fuel that produces only water as its exhaust material.  As far as the use of hydrogen as a fuel for cars, that is a trickier problem.  It may not be feasible to make a collision between hydrogen fueled cars safe.  It may be necessary for synthetic hydrocarbons to be produced at industrial scale in order to allow our cars to be fueled safely but with enough energy the existing art in chemical engineering is well able to achieve this result.

Another problem that cheap energy will solve is the shortage of potable water.  Currently reverse osmosis has been perfected such that sea water can be converted into fresh water.  But the high-pressure pumping costs used in this process are considerable.  What is needed is the output of several very large nuclear power plants located in Southern California to produce enough water for the household requirements of California.  This would then free up the water of the Colorado River to be used by the remaining southwestern states.

But what all this requires first is for us to escape from our elite masters.  They do not add anything to the equation and the sooner we stop living according to their dictates the sooner we’ll begin making a better world.  We’re not their serfs and we don’t have to disappear just to suit their tastes.  Maybe they need to disappear.  If they’re not careful they just might.

Guest Contributor – War Pig – On Women in the Military

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It would be interesting to see how women fare in the infantry in actual combat as an example of why we should not do it again. It would be expensive for the women involved but since infantry is voluntary, too bad. Women have their uses in even spec ops. Delta has a “fuzzy section”. Women can be brave and intelligent. However, physically, they are no match for men in a fight. I am 70-something and I could whip pretty much any 20-year-old woman in an all-out fight. When I was 60 I proved it to a MMA femme fighter by manhandling her when challenged as I voiced my opinion on the matter.

After, she said that; “Well, you’re a trained soldier”. “Yes” I replied; “And so are all the enemy infantry you are going to go up against. I could have killed you several times when I was mopping the floor with you. Any fit, enemy soldier will not be so considerate.”

My concern with the experiment is that the men in the mixed unit may suffer when the women prove physically unable to withstand combat. In one unit I was assigned to the Army placed women where they did not belong. The sergeant major placed them all in my section as he knew I was faithful to my wife and there would be no hanky-panky. As soon as the femmes found out they were going to be treated like any other soldier you never saw so many sick call runs. They wanted the sex-based special favors they were used to, not to work like any grunt. Pretty soon I had two, only two out of twenty, that stuck around. In the meantime, the others had tried to use sex to get favors from me. When that backfired on them, they tried false accusations of sexual harassment or battery. One flat out offered me oral sex to get out of weekend duty. All she got was 25 pushups for offering. Then my wife started getting calls from disguised female voices telling her I was sweating up the sheets with so-and-so, one time when I was sitting across the table from my wife.

Having a flock of women in a military unit is like high school all over again. Sure, there are a few, damned few who are worth their salt, but the great majority are not. Maybe that has changed since I retired. But with politics involved, I doubt it.

The ZMan Has a Post About the Upcoming SCOTUS Cases

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ZMan reviews the two rather important upcoming Supreme Court cases on abortion restrictions and gun rights that are expected to be decided this Fall.  The Mississippi case is reviewing the constitutionality of a 15 week maximum on the age of the unborn child before abortion becomes illegal.  The gun case has to do with the New York law that makes it impossible for a gun owner to transport his legal gun out side of his home.

 

https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=23982

 

The ZMan is of the opinion that the Supreme Court will fold to left-wing pressure in both cases.  He thinks the threat of packing the court is sufficient to get the Roberts court to cringe in fear and do as they’re told by their masters.  He’s probably right.  Roberts is a coward and a fool.  He’s already proved that.

But the real question is the one that is implied by the assumed result of the decisions.  Will Mississippi or some other state that has put restrictions on abortion tell the federal government no?  It would be crossing the Rubicon.  Once a state tells the federal government, “No,” a lot of things could happen up to and including the feds arresting legislators and governors.

Will it happen?  Right now I’m not sure.  I don’t know enough about the men who run these states.  Are they ready for the eventuality?  Have they come up with another intermediate action that will provide a similar result?

Of course it’s easy for me to talk about important people throwing down against the most powerful human organization on the face of the earth as if it were just two men fighting over who gets a parking spot for his car.  Messing with Washington is very consequential.  The last time anyone tried was during the Civil Rights era and Washington came out on top.  Serious individuals would only cross the line if they had a very strong idea about how they could win that fight.

But we’ll all learn something important this Fall.  First off we’ll find out how cowardly and traitorous the Supreme Court really is when it crawls on its belly.  Next we’ll find out if any state has the strength to tell the feds to screw.  That’s something worth knowing.

The Sorting Process

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Nowadays you hear the term binary thrown around more and more.  Famously the sexual deviants and even those who pretend to be sexual deviants for the sake of being trendy declare that their sexuality isn’t binary, meaning neither male nor female.  Apparently, they not only believe in more than two sexes but they think there are infinite gradations of sexes.  And being deviants or idiots or both they spend a lot of time talking about their pronouns and other insanity associated with all this non-binary choice.

But there is a binary phenomenon going on right now and that is the choice we all will have to make in the future.  The choice is to resist the “great reset” or go along with it.  And it is an active choice.  If you do nothing then you get sorted into the group ruled by the progressive elements.  They are on a moving conveyor belt heading into the machine that will grind up all of that protoplasm and spit out the pod people from the back of the machine.  The only choice you have is whether or not to jump off the conveyor and join up with the others rejecting that fate and try to build a different future.

In fact, it will be a series of binary choices because the Left doesn’t take no for an answer.  At every turn there will be another choice where if you do nothing you will be assimilated.  Every facet of life has been weaponized and every facet has a passive default that puts you back on the conveyor belt.

The upside of all this sorting is that anyone who doesn’t end up in the machine has consciously made the decision to resist.  It’s a foregone conclusion that you want to be outside of the collective, outside of the hive.  And of course, there will be some who resist for a good long time and then give up.  Despair and exhaustion will take their tolls.

And even after all this, it will be necessary for the survivors to put together their own organization or fail to organize.  That isn’t a binary operation at least not in the long term because men are naturally contrary and difficult to come to perfect agreement.  Eventually factions will arise.

But in the short term the resistance will form one organization simply because we’ll have to.  The strongest will become the leader and everyone else will find a spot to line up in the hierarchy.  But until an organization is finally assembled, we each have to spend our time avoiding the fate of the cattle who daily advance on the conveyor belt to their fate.  Each day we have to look for choices that we can make to avoid the worst of the poison that the Left throws at us and our children.  And we have to search for political leaders who can represent us and say no to all the madness that the Left has cooked up for us.  Critical Race Theory, slavery reparations, institutionalized voter fraud, sexual mutilation of children, grade school propaganda about race and sex, anti-white discrimination, anti-Christian discrimination, anti-male discrimination and more.

So, this is the sorting process that is going on.  You’re going to have to expend a lot of energy to resist the momentum of the system but as the sorting process continues, you’ll more and more find yourself surrounded by other people who have had to make the same choices you have.  And eventually those will be the only people you’ll find left in the world you will have chosen.