Current Events

Rittenhouse Trial Goes to Jury

Current Events / By / November 20, 2021

Closing arguments have concluded in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse. His fate will now be decided by a jury. If there is any justice, they will move quickly to acquit Mr. Rittenhouse. The prosecution utterly failed to produce any credible evidence that Rittenhouse was not acting in self defense at any time during the shootings in Kenosha last year. And that isn’t due to incompetence or a lack of evidence. There were multiple videos of the entire incident recorded from multiple angles. They couldn’t prove Rittenhouse was not acting in self defense because it simply isn’t true. In fact, if there were less evidence the prosecution would have been able to make a more compelling case. Based on the plethora of evidence that does exists, this case should have never even been brought to trial.

But it was brought to trial. The media and the left had a pre-written narrative that explained it all. Kyle was a white supremacist (zero evidence) who opposes racial justice (zero evidence) and was angry at the protesters (contradicted by evidence) and murdered some of them at random in cold blood (contradicted by the evidence.) To the media and the left, the case is that simple. The protesters/rioters were the good guys. Anyone who opposed their destruction and mayhem was bad. Their template is straight out of the Critical Race Theory playbook. It goes like this: The white “victims” shot by Kyle were protesting for Black Lives Matter. (Or so the narrative goes. The fact they were actually just criminals who enjoy burning shit up doesn’t really matter. In the narrative, they were virtuous white allies of the BLM movement.) Kyle was not out supporting Black Lives Matter. In fact, he was impeding the BLM protestors from expressing their righteous anger (via burning cars.) Kyle was not being “anti-racist.” Therefore, his actions were racist. And racists have no right to self defense. Anyone involved in what is essentially a hate crime (according to CRT) has already committed “violence” and can not possibly be justified in defending himself. Since he is already by definition the aggressor. So the left and the media (BIRM) already know Kyle is guilty because of what side he was on. The actual facts of the case don’t even matter. To the left, they are just a distraction from the bigger picture. The prosecution of Kyle Rittenhouse is a purely political prosecution.

Unfortunately for the prosecution, there is clear video evidence that everyone Kyle Rittenhouse shot at that night was actively assaulting him. The defense has seemingly pinned their hopes on convincing the jury that Rittenhouse somehow provoked the attacks on him. There is a mountain of evidence that contradicts this fantasy. And the only evidence offered up in support was a blurry photo that was digitally “enhanced” (aka altered.) The defense also spent plenty of time impugning the character of Rittenhouse to the jury. The made him out to be a wanna-be hero. A cos-play crusader who exaggerated his own accomplishments and skills while inserting himself into a situation he wasn’t really equipped to handle. Which is completely true. But irrelevant. The fact that 17-year old Kyle Rittenhouse was ill-advised to be in the middle of a riot in the first place in no way justified the rioters attacking him. Or stripped Rittenhouse of the right to defend himself when they did. But it does make Kyle seem less sympathetic. And to some jurors, that can make all the difference.

I reviewed some of the video evidence when it first came out last year. At the time, I thought Huber and Grosskreutz were clear cases of self defense. The only one that I thought might be iffy was the first incident because Rosenbaum wasn’t armed, we couldn’t see the actual shooting, and there was some missing context. Since then, it has come out that Rosenbaum was a convicted child rapist who spent a long time in prison. Which doesn’t mean you can shoot him, but it certainly speaks to his character and potential for violence. Rosenbaum was released from a mental institution earlier that very day. Rosenbaum is seen in multiple videos being belligerent and threatening the people protecting the car dealership. We know Rosenbaum specifically threatened to kill Kyle and his buddies, on at least two separate occasions that night, if he caught any of them alone. We know he stalked Rittenhouse and tried to ambush him when Kyle was isolated from his group. We know that Kyle tried to flee from Rosenbaum rather than confront him. We know that Rosenbaum chased Kyle down the street and across a parking lot. We know that Rosenbaum was able to run faster and catch up to Kyle. With new video angles that weren’t released until the trial, we can see that Kyle only turns to face Rosenbaum when he is only a couple of feet away. Kyle continues to back-peddle to get away from Rosenbaum as they pass between the cars. We know that another man was pursuing the pair and fired a shot into the air a couple of seconds before the fatal encounter. We know from the video and eyewitness testimony that after Kyle spun around Rosenbaum screamed “Fuck you!” and lunged forward to grab Kyle’s rifle. We know the first shot hit Rosenbaum’s hand at point blank range, consistent with him trying to grab the gun. And that Kyle fired 3 more times in rapid succession as Rosenbaum continued towards him. The first 3 shots hit Rosenbaum from the front, with one shattering his pelvis. The last shot hit Rosenbaum in the back from above as he was falling forward towards Kyle. The prosecution made a big deal about the final shot to the back. A shot to the back always looks bad when you are claiming self defense. However, given the video evidence, it is perfectly understandable. The whole incident happens incredibly fast. Watch the video at full speed and see for yourself. The second or third shot shattered Rosenbaum’s pelvis and would have definitely ended any threat he was to Kyle. However, in the dark and moving fast, Kyle would have no idea what kind of damage he had done to Rosenbaum. Even at that close distance, two of the first 3 shots did only superficial damage. It is ridiculous to think Rittenhouse could know Rosenbaum was disabled and going down instead of getting low to tackle him within a fraction of a second under those circumstances. In concealed carry classes, students are taught that they are justified to keep firing as long as the attacker is still an imminent threat to them. To me, that is unquestionably what Mr. Rittenhouse did in this instance.

The prosecutor also made a big deal about the firearm Rittenhouse used being an AR-15. This was clearly an attempt to capitalize on the propaganda campaign the left has waged against the AR-15, labeling it a weapon of war. In fact, the ADA made the argument that just having the rifle on his person was a reckless and provocative act by Rittenhouse. He also made a lot of statements that were just firearms illiterate. He claimed that the AR-15 was a “large caliber rifle.” In fact the opposite is true. The .22 caliber bullet fired by the AR-15 is one of the smallest available. He bizarrely claimed that the Glock pistol Grosskreutz pointed at his head wasn’t a threat because Rittenhouse’s AR-15 was so much more powerful. This is stupid on so many levels. Actually, at smell-each-others-breath distances, the person with the Glock probably has a slight tactical advantage. The rate of fire for the Glock is the same as an AR-15 (i.e. as fast as you can pull the trigger.) Being smaller and lighter, the Glock is arguably easier to maneuver and quicker to get on target and fire at very close range. Sure, the rifle round has more energy and will tend to cause more damage all else being equal, but at that distance either bullet is going to cause massive injuries. Getting shot with either one will ruin your day. A 9mm pistol round to the melon would almost certainly be instantaneously incapacitating and most likely fatal. To say Grosskreutz wasn’t a threat is beyond asinine. Aiming and accuracy at long distances is where the AR-15 would dominate. If they were in a fire fight separated by 30 yards, then yes, huge tactical advantage to the black rifle. At hand-shaking distance, neither one is going to miss. It was all going to come down to who could fire first. In addition to the rifle, the prosecutor also demonized the ammunition used, repeatedly emphasizing it was “full metal jacket” and implying that makes it exotic and somehow extra dangerous. All it means is that the lead core of the bullet is fully encased in copper. The main benefit is that it greatly reduces the amount of toxic lead left behind in the gun’s barrel. There is nothing sinister about full metal jacketed bullets, whatsoever. Almost every single type of plinking and target round available is full metal jacket, whether it is for rifle or a handgun. About the only widely available cartridge that could not be described as “full metal jacket” would be a hollow/soft point round for self defense/hunting. (You can only imagine how over the top the demonization of that kind of ammo would have been.) But “full metal jacket” sounds scary and exotic to the uninformed. There is even an uber-violent war movie with the same title to add to the fear-mongering. It is hard to imagine a prosecutor could be so ignorant about guns. His demagoguing was almost certainly a cynical attempt to capitalize on any anti-gun sentiments the jurors might harbor.

Based on the evidence, Rittenhouse should go home a free man tomorrow. I think he probably will. But you never know what a jury is going to do (see the O.J. Simpson case for a particularly egregious example.) The Rittenhouse prosecutors obviously knew their case sucked. Instead of making a coherent argument for Rittenhouse’s guilt, they used an everything-but-the-kitchen sink approach. Throwing every random angle they could think of against the wall in the hope that something would stick. All they need is one of their diversions to resonate with one of the jurors, and they will at least win another shot to re-litigate their case. When the facts aren’t on your side, it’s not a bad approach. In fact, it’s exactly what O.J. Simpson’s defense team did. There was no way the Dream Team could possibly explain away all of the evidence against O.J. in a plausible and logically consistent manner. But Cochran & Co. could poke holes in each piece of evidence individually, as if it existed in a vacuum. It is also worth noting that the prosecutors in the Rittenhouse case weren’t above bending the rules, either. Winning trumps justice, especially when the spotlight is on, I guess.

Lastly, you can not dismiss the tremendous pressure the jury is under to reach the “correct” verdict. They have all certainly been exposed to at least some of the left’s heated rhetoric over the last year. Even the President of the United States has openly denounced Kyle as a white supremacist. Then there is the looming threat of violence. Both to their city and to themselves. The Judge even had to warn the jurors that someone was taking video of them on a break.

Based on the facts, this case should have been laughed out of court. Hopefully it will ultimately be decided on the facts, and not on prejudice, emotion, and politics. I have my doubts.

Update

As of noon Wednesday, still no verdict from the jury. They have been deliberating for quite some time now, which is not a good sign for the defense. The longer this goes on, the more likely the result will be either a hung jury or a guilty verdict on at least some of the charges. I keep thinking back to the O.J. Simpson trial. For sure, prosecutors Marcia Clarke and Chris Darden made some mistakes during the actual trial itself. But they really lost the case before the trial even began when they essentially allowed the defense to hand-pick the jury. Their naïve belief was that the evidence they would present would be so overwhelming, that any jury would vote to convict. They foolishly thought the OJ trial would serve as an example of how the police/prosecutors and citizens of L.A. could work together and re-establish the trust that had been shattered by the Rodney King incident.

Juries are supposed to rule based on facts, evidence, and the law. Not on emotion and personal bias. But juries are made up of human beings. And humans have an uncanny knack for rationalizing away facts to reach the conclusions they prefer. In all areas of life, not just the law. The National Guard being on the scene in anticipation of more rioting if the mob doesn’t like the verdict doesn’t lend to impartial thinking, either. We shall see how this turns out. Right now it doesn’t look to good for the cause of justice.

Update #2

The verdict is finally in: not guilty on all counts. This is a good day for the right to defend oneself and the rule of law in general. It will be interesting to see if we ever find out why the deliberation took so long. The leftist freak-outs occurring all over the media and internet are irrational, unhinged, and totally expected. Thank God the case was decided on facts, evidence, and the law. And not by feelings, tribalism, messages that need to be sent to the militant right, social justice, equity, white supremacy, or any of the other nonsense the mob thinks should trump the constitutional rights of a fellow citizen. Heck, even this Bernie Bro gets it. He might be my new favorite lefty.

Finally, the conduct of the DA’s office was nothing short of shameful. Kenosha voters would be wise to clean house next election cycle. A year ago, I identified the mayor and governor as the real villains in this story. The evidence that has surfaced since then has only confirmed that impression. Sympathetic politicians across the nation let the left wing mob burn and loot their cities, without regard for the danger and hardship suffered by their own citizens. If the politicians had simply let the police and the national guard do their job, none of this would have ever happened.

Don’t Play the Left’s Stupid Gotcha Game

3 Comments / Biden, Current Events, Politics / By / November 12, 2021

The right-o-sphere is making hay about an awkward comment Joe Biden made during a Veteran’s Day speech.

The gotcha phrase everyone is pouncing on is “attitude of the great Negro… at the time… pitcher in the Negro Leagues”, by claiming Biden was referring to a black man as a “great negro.” Which would certainly be politically incorrect.

It seems pretty obvious, to me at least, that Biden was trying to convey that the great pitcher Satchel Paige played in the old Negro Leagues, which is just a historical fact. And because he is a dementia-riddled stuttering old dumbass, the words came sputtering out of his clueless face as a string of out-of-sequence broken sentence fragments. Which is yet more evidence that Biden is a dementia-riddled stuttering old dumbass. Not that he is a racist. Trying to turn it into something more than that is exactly the kind of cheap ploy the left uses constantly to smear the right as racist.

One of Saul Alinksy’s 12 rules for radicals was to “make the enemy live up to it’s own book of rules.” By that standard, we should absolutely make the left walk on pins and needles when it comes to race. And interpret everything they say and do through the prism of racism, while always assuming the worst. The problem with that tactic is it means you are no better than they are. It feeds into racial divisions instead of healing them. And it makes you sound as stupid and unhinged as they do.

Joe Biden is one of the most loathsome human beings on the planet. There are a myriad of legitimate, and dire, reasons to criticize and oppose him. We don’t need to invent bogus ones. Let’s be better than that.

A National Divorce Will Be Bloody

Culture Wars, Current Events, Politics / By / October 13, 2021

After thinking about it a little more, I’m convinced that an amicable national divorce is impossible. An idea that initially sounded promising was a return to Federalism. Going that route, Texas could continue to embrace rugged individualism, while California could build a progressive welfare state. And both could peaceably coexist. In theory, at least.

However, if the left was actually open to a live-and-let-live solution, we wouldn’t be in this position in the first place. I find the modern progressive agenda to be so ridiculous, that I sometimes forget large swaths of the left really do buy into it. Progressivism is now the dominant faction in the Democrat Party. And for the true believers in progressivism, nothing but our subjugation will suffice. To the left, we conservatives don’t just have different opinions and priorities. We’re not even simply mistaken in our beliefs. To them, we are evil. And, they believe, evil must be confronted and defeated. Don’t believe me? Think I’m being hyperbolic? Check out this recent article from New York magazine. By a supposed “moderate” leftist. I strongly suspect it captures the majority opinion progressives will have on a national divorce.

The author starts out by acknowledging the obvious. That our divisions are “deep, bitter, and authentic.” He then cites the recent poll which found 52% of Trump voters and 41% of Biden voters favor seceding from the union. I personally found the 41% support from Biden voters most surprising. He won. Their guy is in power. Had 20,000 or so swing-state voters went the other way and Trump was still President, I bet a whole lot more than 52% of leftists would want out right about now. But the author instead attempts to attribute all the national divorce talk entirely to the pro-Trump right (i.e. the “crazies”.)

There is, moreover, an abundant literature of neo-secessionism on the political right these days, much of it coming from intensely pro-Trump quarters ranging from Glenn Beck’s Blaze Media fiefdom to the Claremont Institute. In the latter MAGA hothouse, secession is nestled within the concept of a “National Divorce,” in which the two mutually hostile sectors of the country would each go their own way.

Whatever. Wherever the idea originated, it is pretty clear that there is significant agreement on both sides that our feud has reached an impasse. The author then proceeds to declare who the good guys are:

Much like an antebellum southern aristocrat shaking his head at the Puritan fanatics of an abolitionist movement he imagined embodying the very soul of Yankeedom, Reaboi and his confederates assume that Blue America is the psychological prisoner of Woke Progressivism, which will destroy any part of the country where it is not denied

So, supporters of Donald Trump are just like the southern aristocrats of the Confederacy who condoned slavery. Get it? The subtle arrogance and self-righteousness is so typical. The author believes that Red America thinks of progressives like him as “Puritan fanatics”, and not degenerate morons. As if the right is saying to itself, “Damn you virtuous progressives. Stop ruining our system of white male supremacy with your infernal fairness and justice!” Seriously. This is what they believe. We can’t even talk to these fuckheads anymore. We’re not even on the same planet.

He continues:

More broadly, the MAGA movement resembles the proto-Confederates in that it bears a powerful sense of loss — that in Trump it had its big chance to Make America Great Again but was robbed of victory by tyrants who will now flood the land with the votes of swarthy immigrants and destroy American enterprise with a socialist administrative state.

Well, at least that part of the article is true. Trump supporters certainly believe they got shafted in the last election, myself included. And that the cabal in DC are tyrants. That they intend to cement their power through illegal immigration. That they will impose a socialist administrative state. And that the country is screwed because of it. How this makes us analogous to the Confederacy isn’t exactly clear. Nor is the relevance of how swarthy the illegal immigrants are (or are not.) Actually, the reasoning behind both statements is totally clear. They are just backhanded ways of calling us racists. Leftists reflexively believe that all conservatives are racist, and that all of our objections to illegal immigration are based solely on racism. At least the dumb ones do. The smarter ones know the race card is a convenient crutch that protects them from having to defend their otherwise indefensible policies.

The author then goes on to concede that some leftists, understandably tired of dealing with bigoted idiots for years on end, are ready to throw their hands up in frustration.

Now as then, some elements of the left are happy to let the reactionaries go in order to liberate themselves from the gridlock and paralysis that big national divisions operating under a limited-government constitution encourage.

And even admits that there would be some serious upsides:

Yes, I might derive great joy from the overthrow of the U.S. Senate and its filibuster and the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. I would feel much safer in a progressive nation that didn’t arm its citizens to the teeth, didn’t view other nations as “shitholes” full of subhuman orcs to be subdued, and didn’t accept calamitous climate change as just the price of doing business.

It’s kind of fascinating to see what bothers this guy the most. You’ve got the Senate, which is one of the main safeguards for federalism. Then there is the Supreme Court, enforcers of the limits on government set forth in the US Constitution. And guns, the last defense against a tyrannical government. All longstanding thorns in the progressive side, so those three certainly make sense.

The “shithole” country issue is an odd one to single out. People on the right certainly believe some countries are “shitholes”, even if that isn’t a very sensitive way to put it. There are plenty of countries in the word that are racked with war, oppression, corruption, and poverty. It stands to reason that they aren’t very nice places to live. In fact, the left is constantly telling us we need to accept anyone who crosses our southern border because the countries they are fleeing are so awful. What are they then, if not “shitholes”?

Then there is the subhuman orcs conservatives apparently want to subdue. I honestly don’t even know what he is talking about here. I guess it could be just another ham-handed insinuation that all conservatives are racist. Being unfortunate enough to be born in a “shithole” country doesn’t make you subhuman. I don’t know anybody who thinks it does. And conservatives certainly don’t want to subdue those people. Supporters of Trump tend to be isolationists, if anything. Trump was all about putting a stop to the stupid endless wars and wasting billions on nation-building. The only people we are looking to subdue are the ones trying to illegally cross our border. Not because we think they are somehow subhuman or too brown or whatever other slanderous motive the left can dream up. But because you can’t have a country with no borders and no sovereignty. The United States can’t possibly allow every person born in a less prosperous country to just waltz right in and make themselves at home and still be viable as a nation. There certainly isn’t anything humane or compassionate about the current situation at our southern border. You might even describe the conditions as sub-human. But the influx is good for the future electoral prospects of the left, and that is what really matters to the progressives. You certainly won’t see any photo-ops with AOC crying outside the over-flowing detention centers now.

And finally, we have the obligatory climate change canard. The existential crisis where the very last chance to act is always tomorrow. The crisis so dire, the politicians and media need to constantly lie and fear monger just to convince people it is actually a real thing. And of course, the “solution” to the climate “crisis” just happens to align perfectly with the political goals of the globalist left. What are the odds???Though, as far as leftist hoaxes go, I must admit global warming climate disruption climate change is brilliant. It can’t be positively disproven by pesky evidence for an entire century. So, point conceded, the vast majority of conservatives aren’t hip on voluntarily enslaving themselves because your computer models say Gaia is crying.

Despite all the positives, Kilgore points out that allowing the Red States to secede would have a dire consequence. They would actually be allowed to govern themselves in accordance with their (evil) culture and values.

But how could I happily accept the accelerated subjugation of women and people of color in a new, adjacent Red America, any more than abolitionists could accept the continuation and expansion of the slavery they hated? Would it really be safe to live near a carbon-mad country in which the denial of climate change was an article of faith? And could I ever trust that a “neighbor” whose leadership and citizens believed their policies reflected the unchanging ancient will of the Almighty would leave our fences intact?

Again, I have no idea what this shit stain is even talking about. The subjugation of women and people of color? Is that really what this turd thinks conservatives want? Apparently, treating everybody the same regardless of skin tone is the new Jim Crow. And protecting the lives of the unborn is just like the Handmaid’s Tale. Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of the science behind CO2 and global warming knows that proximity to the source is irrelevant. Even if you actually were concerned about such things. Oh, and of course the rednecks will be tempted to invade once they see how awesome the left’s socialist utopia turns out to be and they get super jealous.

However, there is a small problem for our potential leftist overlords. If the Red States did decide to secede, our friend isn’t so sure the soy-boys of the left would have the intestinal fortitude to stop them.

I don’t know if the hypothetical leaders of an America facing red-state secession would have the unshakable will of a Lincoln. And it’s not at all clear that young men and women in Blue America would be willing to take up arms in large numbers to resist secession with fire and blood.

At least he isn’t completely divorced from reality. Your average young leftists are accustomed to whining and crying to get their way. They fall to pieces if someone mis-genders them. Odds are they wouldn’t hold up too well under battle. Then there are the left’s shock troops of Antifa. However, Antifa like beating up on helpless victims and cos-playing as revolutionaries. They don’t like targets that can fight back and generally prefer to be back in mom’s basement by morning so they don’t miss out on playing video games.

Finally, then the author finishes up with the main point of his article:

So I say to the would-be secessionists: Please don’t go. And if it’s somehow in my power, I won’t let you go. I have no illusions of compromises yet untried or “third ways” left unexplored. So let’s have it out right here in America as peacefully as we can manage. Perhaps if we continue to battle for control of our common country, one side or the other might win a popular mandate to exercise real power and change the facts on the ground, breaking the perpetual stalemate. If not, then let’s consider the wisdom of those who crushed the Confederacy in the belief that the misery of political conflict is better than the literal civic death of national disunion.

After many paragraphs of pure vitriol aimed at Red America, the author then states that separation is not an option. Is it just me, or does this seem like a strange position to hold? He doesn’t even pretend there is common ground to be found. Why insist on sticking with a bunch of science-denying racists? Why share a country with people you clearly can’t stand? People you actually consider to be evil? The answer is actually rather obvious from the context: to subjugate them. To bring them to heel and control them. The idea of allowing conservatism to survive in America is anathema to progressive ideologues like the author.

So what does this all mean for an amicable national divorce? In short, it ain’t happening. No way. The bottom line is that the American left feels like they are winning. The election of Donald Trump gave them quite a scare, and it had them panicked for a while. But they have regained their composure, and once again feel confident that the arc of history is on their side. The left won’t make the same mistakes they made with Trump. They have made their way through all of America’s institutions. They dominate pop culture, the media, big tech, and the education system. They have finally sowed enough self-doubt and division in our citizenry to erode our national confidence and rot this great country from within. And they have inundated key voting regions with foreign invaders who have no understanding or appreciation of our nation’s founding, history, values, traditions, and culture. All of this smells like victory to the left. So a simple divorce won’t do. They don’t hate living with us. They hate us. Period. After spending decades working to bring us down, they aren’t going to let us peacefully go our separate way now. Not when they are so close to delivering that final coup de grâce they have dreamed of for so long. Or, so they think.

Make no mistake, a progressive like Ed Kilgore wouldn’t be so gung-ho for a final decisive showdown if he thought his side might actually lose. When he talks about one side exercising real power and fundamentally transforming the country, it is blatantly clear which side he envisions vanquishing the other. “Breaking the perpetual stalemate” is his euphemism for destroying conservatism and America-as-founded forever. To Kilgore and his ilk, it is a moral imperative akin to defeating the Confederacy to end slavery.

Diversity of political perspectives is one thing the left absolutely can not tolerate. There won’t be any “coexist” bumper stickers for conservatives or Red America. They want us eradicated.

National Divorce Idea Gaining Some Traction

1 Comment / Culture Wars, Current Events, Politics / By / October 5, 2021

A while back I lamented that a national divorce might be necessary. Since then, the idea actually seems to be gaining a bit of traction. People on both the right and left have been kicking it around. Still, the level of support shown in a recent poll was a real shocker. If you believe the UVA poll, close to half the country already agrees that splitting up is a good idea. In fact, the push for a national divorce has gotten strong enough that a New York Post writer felt the need to throw cold water on it.

In solidly blue New York, Trump won 3,251,997 votes to Biden’s 5,244,886 in 2020. Trump’s 3.2 million is more than five times the number of people living in Wyoming, the reddest state in the country, and more than 16 times the votes Trump won there. Do conservatives simply surrender the whole Empire State, and those 3.2 million voters, in the divorce? How would those 3.2 million feel about that?

The columnist’s main argument against a split seems to be that it would be messy. Well, duh. Any kind of divorce is gonna be messy. Dividing up a couple and their assets is hard enough. Dividing up a country will be extremely difficult and contentious. And unlike, say, Brexit we won’t have a body of water separating us from our exes. How is the national debt divided up? Military assets? What happens to all the illegal aliens? It would be ugly. And exactly what the break up would look like is tough to say. Maybe we don’t end up as separate countries at all, but revert to an extreme form of Federalism? Who knows. But, yes, a national divorce would obviously be a colossal mess. However, the alternative the Post offers up seems to be a no go.

We’re still a very new country; we continue to grow and evolve. The solution isn’t to divide it up so we could be (briefly) better represented. It’s to persuade others to our way of thinking — and voting. And to remember the ideas that forged our national marriage in the first place.

The reason a national divorce is even being discussed is precisely because we can’t persuade others to our way of thinking. One side is explicitly repudiating the “ideas that forged our national marriage in the first place.” We have literally nothing left in common. The right believes in free speech whether they agree with it or not. The left wants censorship of misinformation and hate speech codes. The right wants a free market economy with minimal regulations. The left wants a socialist centrally planned economy where corporations are compelled to serve the common good. The right believes in the right to keep and bear arms. The left wants to confiscate all the guns. The right believes in a color-blind society where everyone is treated equal. The left wants an identity-based politics where equality of outcomes is enforced. I honestly think we are close to being the most divided we have ever been. Leading up to the Civil War, the North and the South were bitterly divided over the issue of slavery. But even back then, Americans still shared most of the same values. When the war was over, they had some common basis to rebuild. We don’t have that today. The left and right in America are fundamentally opposed on almost every single issue. In my opinion, the idea we can just talk it out is hopelessly naïve. Either we split. Or we fight it out until one side subjugates the other. Possibly with bloodshed involved.

To my thinking, the real impediment to a national divorce would be the political class and the special interests they serve. The cabal entrenched in DC has got the most to lose from a national break up. They have spent decades building up their power, and won’t willingly give it up. Something truly ugly would need to happen before the political class would grudgingly get on board. Things will have to get a lot worse before a national divorce is really taken seriously. Sadly, I believe they will.

Russel Brand Gets Red-Pilled (Sort Of)

Culture Wars, Current Events, Politics / By / October 1, 2021

The right-wing blogosphere is making a big deal about a video British comedian Russel Brand recently posted:

Brand is well know for his left wing politics and activism. Brand was apparently dumbfounded when he finally realized the whole Russia Collusion narrative was a hoax cooked up by the Clinton campaign and (knowingly) spread by the DC political machine. Apparently it was previously beyond his comprehension that the saintly Democrats and their media lapdogs would engage in anything so sordid and underhanded. My first reaction is, what the hell took you so long? Is your BS-meter completely broken? The Russia Collusion hoax is one of the dumbest conspiracy theories to emerge over the last few decades… right up there with 9-11 Trutherism and the Obama Birthers. But because the garbage media played it up and devoted countless hours to analyzing it, a lot of people just assumed that surely there must be something to it. Serious journalists wouldn’t waste countless hours fluffing a hoax. Would they? But I digress.

So, mind blown, Brand goes on to question what other narratives the left might by trying to use to cynically manipulate him. He goes on to question whether hot buttons like diversity, inclusion, and climate change are just a ruse for politicians to accumulate more power. OK, so far so good. He then goes on to lament that government is beholden to powerful special interests, and doesn’t represent the will of the people. He’s almost there. He has correctly identified all of the symptoms.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely

– Lord Acton

But then Brand draws exactly the wrong conclusion. Unable to shake his collectivist mindset, the solution Brand offers up at the end is: more regulations. Where these regulators will come from, how they will be empowered to overrule the politicians, and why they will be immune to the money and power that corrupts everything else in government is left to the imagination.

So close…

Power is the root problem. Washington DC has too much of it. And they are constantly seizing more. The politicians want the power to control every facet of our lives. And why wouldn’t they? Power and influence are the commodity they sell to enrich themselves. The more of it they have, the more secure their positions become. And the more their bank accounts grow.

Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together

– Barney Frank

There is so much wrong with the Barney Frank quote above, that it would take an entire post just to unpack it. But to Russel Brand, and others with the collectivist mindset, the idea that we are all just one big happy family eager to work together to reach our shared goals is a fantasy too cherished to abandon. The idea that human nature is corruptible, and no amount of regulations will change that, is anathema to them. The fact that many Americans would just as soon use the power of government to subdue their fellow citizens as work with them is too difficult to bear. Like all the collectivists before them, they still believe that next time socialism will work. To the left, all that is needed are a few minor tweeks and the “right” people in charge, and Utopia can be just around the corner. It could never even occur to them that reducing the power of government, and empowering the individual, is the real solution.

Yet, sadly, my solution is just as much a fantasy as Brand’s at this point. The odds of the DC “elite” voluntarily giving back the power they have usurped over the last decades are pretty much less than zilch. In fact, the odds of us just keeping the freedoms we still have left are pretty grim nowadays. Seems the best we can hope for is to slow the downward spiral.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

– Thomas Jefferson

US Now Committing War Crimes in Afghanistan

Afganistan, Biden, Current Events / By / August 30, 2021

Alleged US President and feckless old fool Joe Biden has been humiliating his country with his cartoonish botching of our withdrawal from Afghanistan. The stakes were raised a few days ago when 13 US soldiers were killed along with dozens of others in a terrorist attack at the airport in Kabul. Realizing how incredibly weak and incompetent they looked, Biden and his cronies decided they needed to kill somebody in retaliation. And fast. Problem was with all our personnel running for the hills and all of our assets on the ground seized by the Taliban, we undoubtedly had next to zero intel on where to strike. Well, they found somebody to make an example of anyways. My spide-y senses were already tingling when the government described the target as a “planner” for Isis-K. Not a terrorist or leader, but a “planner.” And what the hell is ISIS-K? Conveniently, the government declined to identify exactly who it was they killed.

Then they announced on Sunday that another drone attack had prevented a “imminent attack” near the Kabul Airport. The government claimed the van was loaded with explosives intended for use in a suicide bombing.

So we are now finding out who was really in that van. And the truth is sickening. To save a little face and satisfy his ego, Joe Biden had the US military incinerate two unnamed individuals, and then a van full of 9 family members. Including multiple children. There is no convincing evidence that any actual terrorists were killed. This level of incompetence and brazen disregard for human life is intolerable. Biden needs to be impeached and removed from office immediately. (And in a just world, summarily hanged from the nearest tree.) When Biden was just another grifter making a dishonest living selling influence to our adversaries, that was bad enough. As the “President”, he was already heaping embarrassment and humiliation on the country. Now with this latest atrocity, Joe Biden has brought abject shame on to the United States of America.

The Left Won’t Let Fauci Take a Fall

Current Events, Media, Politics, Uncategorized / By / June 15, 2021

A lot of people are starting to pull out the knives for Anthony Fauci. As well they should. Hindsight is just starting to expose what a complete disaster this guy was in shaping the pandemic response. Even more troublesome is the role he played in enabling the pandemic to happen in the first place by funding the dangerous “gain of function” experiments in China.

Which makes it kind of strange to see that the big media outlets and mainstream Democrat politicians are still treating this incompetent turd like some kind of rock star. What gives? In short, they have to. Antony Fauci is the epitome of what the leftwing vision of governance looks like. He is a quote-unquote scientist. He is widely acknowledged as a leading expert in his field. And he is a career bureaucrat and perennial fixture in Washington DC who made his fortune as a “public servant.” Anthony Fauci is a technocrat of the highest order and pedigree. He is exactly the kind of guy the left wants to empower to socially re-engineer society and dictate to the masses how they must live. They want guys like Fauci mandating the size of house you are allowed to live in, the kind of car you can drive, and the types of food you can eat. They claim their authoritarian vision for America is absolutely required by “the science” to attain equity and sustainability. And if you just go along and peacefully give up your freedoms, the central planners will engineer a Utopian haven on Earth where we can all live happily ever after. Or so they promise.

Which is why Anthony Fauci must not be allowed to be deemed a failure. Not just to protect one of their fellow bureaucrats or even a political party. The left must defend Fauci because he is emblematic of their core ideology. For the left to turn on him now would require them to completely discredit their entire worldview. So the miserable failure that is Anthony Fauci will continue to be lauded as a hero by the left.

The Real Reason the Media Denied the Truth About the Origins of Covid

Coronavirus, Current Events, Media, Politics / By / June 1, 2021

It’s becoming increasingly clear that COVID-19 was not created by nature as we’ve been told for over a year. The evidence that it was created in a Chinese bio-lab and then escaped (or intentionally released) into the public is becoming overwhelming. China flat out lied about it from the beginning. And sniveling crap-weasel Anthony Fauci almost certainly was aware of this from the get-go.

Frankly, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the whole wet market story was a bunch of BS. The fact a new and extra-deadly coronavirus just happened to naturally “evolve” a stone’s throw away from one of the only laboratories in the world artificially creating new deadlier coronavirus variants was one hell of a coincidence, to put it mildly. And people within the US government already knew that the 1st victims of COVID-19 weren’t wet market bat-eaters, but family members of the Wuhan bio-lab staff. Of course, the fact that Fauci and his merry band of idiots was funding this ridiculously dangerous research in a country notorious for half-assed safety measures ensured they weren’t going to be very eager to make the obvious connection.

Yet plenty of people did make the connection. Senator Tom Cotton was one of the 1st, and he was attacked mercilessly by the leftstream media while being denounced as a dangerous kook. Rand Paul, Tucker Carlson, and others connected the dots, too. It wasn’t all that hard.

President Donald Trump also strongly hinted it might have come from the Wuhan lab, and of course the media immediately pounced on him for spreading “debunked” conspiracy theories. (Hint: remember this the next time the garbage media describe something as “debunked.”) But was it really debunked? Did the media even bother to look into it? The answer is a resounding no. They took Fauci’s denial the virus could be man-made (sprinkled with enough caveat weasel-words to leave himself an out later on) as gospel. No further digging required.

And now the media is left looking really incompetent. They are kinda/sorta implying the reason they didn’t believe the plain facts in front of their face was because it was Donald Trump espousing them, and Trump (they say) lies about everything. But is that really the reason the media once again failed us so badly? I don’t think so.

Our garbage media loves narratives. In fact, they love narratives almost as much as they hate Donald Trump. And they knew the narrative they wanted to spin from the very beginning of the pandemic. Even as early as last February, the talking-head douche bags on the cable channels were giddily predicting the COVID pandemic would be “Trump’s Katrina.” And they were hell bent on making that narrative stick. However, there is only room for one villain in any narrative. And the US media had already decided it had to be Trump. The last thing they wanted was the public to find out China created a deadly super-virus in a lab, unleashed it on the world, and didn’t tell anyone about it. They knew they couldn’t tell that story and still paint Trump as the bad guy. And getting Trump out of office was the most important thing in the world to them. Even more important than telling the public the truth about a virus that has wreaked so much havoc on our country and caused so much death, suffering, and misery. So they buried the story and called Trump a racist for even pointing out that the virus came from China.

At this point I can’t even verbalize my level of contempt for the US media. This is one of the biggest catastrophes of our lifetimes. Understanding the root cause is one of the most important factors in preventing it from happening again. The government is involved up to it’s eyeballs…. they have a huge incentive to lie and obfuscate. This is a time when we desperately need independent journalists to put in the work, do the investigating, and ask the hard questions. But we don’t have an independent media in this country anymore. We don’t have anyone speaking truth to power. All we have is the propaganda arm of one of the major political parties. Half the so-called “journalists” today are former fucking political operatives. Journalism is good and truly dead in this country. Actual journalists don’t even exist anymore. All we have are partisan political hacks spinning “narratives.” They can all rot.

Still think it was worth it, asshole??? The left wants to give arrogant technocrats like Fauci even more control over your life.

Critical Race Theory Rebuked Decisively in Texas Town

Critical Race Theory, Culture Wars, Current Events, Politics / By / May 4, 2021

With all the bad news lately, even a little bit of sanity is a welcome change. Residents of Southlake, Texas voted overwhelmingly against pushing Critical Race Theory in their schools. Critical race theory is the toxic pile of divisive garbage the left has latched on to as a way to tear down the American system so they can replace it with a European-style nanny state run by an army of leftist technocrats. The poisonous effect it has had on American society has been a recurring theme on this blog (see, for example, here, here, here, and here among others.)

The voters have come together in record-breaking numbers to restore unity. By a landslide vote, they don’t want racially divisive critical race theory taught to their children or forced on their teachers. Voters agreed with my positive vision of our community and its future.

Hannah Smith, newly elected school board member in Texas

Of course, NBC news could barely hide their disgust at this story. After all, how could any decent person oppose “a proposal to combat racial and cultural intolerance in schools”? And what, exactly, is wrong with supporting “new diversity and inclusion training requirements”? Progressives just want to make “children feel safe and welcome”, according to NBC. And they use a bunch of other flowery euphemisms for CRT throughout the article. Of course, critical race theory isn’t really about any of those things. Critical Race Theory exists to sow division, resentment, and anger at the “system.” Like all critical theories, it’s main goal is to weaken and eventually collapse that which it is critical of. Namely, America as founded. Thank god the good people of Texas weren’t buying the horseshit the progressives and NBC were selling.

The left is notorious for taking words for things that are good, and coopting them to describe things that are actually the exact opposite. “Liberal” used to mean you supported economic freedom, civil liberties, and the enlightenment. Until the left got a hold of the word. “Tolerance” used to mean live-and-let-live, an essential trait any large and diverse country needs to hold together. Now it means conform to the Woke! worldview, or else.

By controlling the language, Big Brother controls the way that the people think. With a limited vocabulary, the people are limited in how much they can think, as well as, what they think about.

George Orwell, 1984

And so it is with Critical Race Theory. The left knows it would be dead in the water if they admitted what it was really all about. So they rebrand it as “diversity and inclusion” or “racial sensitivity.” Critical Race Theory must be vigorously resisted and exposed as the racist garbage it really is.

Shocker! Crony Capitalist Comes Out in Favor of Corporate Taxes

Biden, Current Events, Politics / By / April 12, 2021
Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos
Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos recently came out in favor of jacking up the corporate tax rate. Some leftwing pundits are acting like this is some kind of magnanimous gesture. “See!”, they say. “Even Jeff Bezos, owner of one of the largest corporations on the planet sees the need for higher corporate taxes. Bezos understands that sacrificing a little of his own personal wealth will make the world a better place for us all! Why can’t you greedy right wingers be more like Bezos???”

Of course, anyone who pays close attention realizes that isn’t how the system works at all. Higher corporate taxes won’t hurt the huge mega-corporations like Amazon. Amazon has an army of accountants, lawyers, and lobbyists to make sure they won’t get dinged by the IRS. So who will get slammed by higher corporate taxes? Amazon’s competitors, naturally. The one’s that can’t afford to hire a full time Harvard-educated staff to work on tax avoidance. Higher corporate taxes make it extremely difficult for small to medium-sized companies to compete with well-connected crony capitalist monoliths like Amazon. Far from noble sacrifice, what Jeff Bezos is advocating for is solidification of his own monopoly. And all he will be expected to give in return is some campaign donations to the “right” candidates and to use his company to promote WOKE! causes.

America’s creep toward socialism is manifesting itself as a weird blurring of the lines between politics and business. Mega-corporations like this sleazy symbiotic relationship because it increases profits and shields them from competition. The politicians like it because it is a massive source of funding and they can use corporate America to push their agendas. Regular Americans are the one’s who get screwed. Nobody elected Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, or Mark Zuckerberg to anything. The fact they have so much power to bend society to their whims is an extremely disturbing development.

Before Trump, America had the highest corporate tax rate of any major economy. By far. And it was a job killer. Another feature of the mega-corporations is they have global footprints. It is quite easy for them to switch operations to lower cost countries when it suits them. They still make their billions regardless. If they have to lay off American workers to do it, then so be it. Barak Obama famously mocked Trump for saying he would bring back manufacturing to the United States. To a progressive ideologue like Obama, those jobs were gone for good. And though he is too politically savvy to ever admit it out loud, Obama didn’t want those jobs back anyways. It was good for the emerging countries to have those lower-skilled jobs. And America had plenty of wealth already, anyways. Redistributive change shouldn’t stop at the border. At least according to the progressives.

“What magic wand does he have?”, Obama taunted. Turns out Trump didn’t need a magic wand. All he needed to do was remove the onerous tax rate, cut down on the mountain of unnecessary regulations, and negotiate new trade deals that let American companies compete on an even playing field. That didn’t take a genius to figure out. And Obama isn’t an idiot. Fact is, he knew how to bring manufacturing back all along. What Obama really meant was, those jobs were never coming back without sacrificing his progressive political agenda. A compromise he would never even consider making.

Now we have Obama’s dim-witted sock puppet, Joe Biden, back in the White House. And he is giving every indication that he intends to return to the failed policies of the past. Joe has already indicated he wants to jack the corporate tax rate back up, and he recently said that there was “no evidence” that high corporate taxes kill jobs. Unlike Obama, Joe Biden actually is a drooling idiot. So he may well believe what he is saying. Not that he would care if he understood the harm he was causing to working class families. With the progressive propaganda department (i.e. MSM) running cover, he knows he will never take the blame.

The Biden effect is already starting to show like in a recent decision by Ford to move operations to Mexico. Sleazy Joe, or more likely the puppet master’s pulling his strings, are working overtime to make his promise of a “long, dark winter” come true for American workers.