Politics – The Daily Brief

Considering Media Teflon

28. January 2025 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Politics

You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane,All they will call you will be “deportees“

Oh, pity the poor establishment media folks, the woke clergy, and the professional bleeding heart progressive activists, all making woeful faces and lamenting regarding the round-up and repatriation of masses of criminal illegal immigrants. It’s as if they all honestly believe that the masses of illegals are all doe-eyed innocent widdle cheeeldren and humble suffering agricultural workers, all packed off by their cheating employers once the harvest season is finished. The bubble in which these sentiments are enshrined as gospel is being severely battered over this last week as it becomes apparent that many, many Americans of various ethnic backgrounds and incomes welcome the ICE roundups and deportations with cheers of rapturous approval. Imagine that.

See, it looks like the various prog bubble-dwellers could burnish their luxury beliefs without feeling in the least inconvenienced by the realities posed by mass quantities of illegal immigrants, especially those who compounded their illegal status by piling additional criminal behavior on top. Not just sex-trafficking, murder, rape, robbery, and drug-dealing, but identity-theft, driving without a license, insurance, or knowledge of traffic laws, and defrauding social services. Swamping working-class neighborhoods, overburdening schools and health-care facilities to the point of being untenable, depressing wages for lower-end unskilled work, bringing in diseases that hadn’t been current in the US for decades. Ordinary folk in working-class neighborhoods were catching the brunt of all this. To a lesser extent, so were those paying for auto insurance, especially in cities and states where, if you were T-boned at an intersection by a driver running a red light you could count yourself extremely fortunate if that other driver were sober, licensed and fully insured, or best two out of three.

I’d guess that the rapturous approval of the deportations this week is precisely because those being frog-marched onto the big airplane are the criminal scum of the scummiest, whose absence from these shores absolutely no one will miss, save for perhaps their addict customers, their fence for stolen goods and maybe an addled activist, and whatever NGO was paid for bringing them here in the first place. The addled activists are lamenting that practically everyone else is deeply unsympathetic to their laments, and demanding of decent folk that they collude in sheltering the illegals … as if they really were the poor widdle cheeeldren and downdrodden field workers …. Instead of being the criminal scum of the earth. Good luck with that line of reasoning. Really. Good luck, because you’ll need it.
I’d also guess from the lightning-speed at which local law enforcement, ICE, and the Boarder Patrol dropped on the various criminal scum that a lot of people in law and border enforcement had, like Koko the Lord High Executioner, their little lists of those who wouldn’t be missed. Very accurate little lists, of who, and when and where they could be most expeditiously found.
I suppose that once the stock of illegal alien criminals is drawn down, they will start on the illegal widdle cheeldren and the field workers – but by that point, perhaps they will have already self-deported.

On another aspect of the Trump administration, one week and a day in – I am also hugely amused at the Teflon aspects of J.D. Vance, as his vice president. Our establishment media has become so accustomed to Republican political operators who never bite back, or who tended to snivel like third-graders giving up their lunch money to playground bullies, that they seem quite discombobulated by J.D., who wasn’t even much a Trump fan at the first. The usual media crew can’t sanctimoniously score off him as a child of privilege, giving his hard-scrabble rust-country background. Can’t call him a raaaaacist, as he is married to a woman who is very obviously Indian. Can’t sneer at him for having studied at a no-name university, the way they sneered at Sarah Palin. All that – and he gives as good or better than he gets. There was a comment this morning on an Instapundit comment thread which pretty much sums it up: With JD, the Sunday shows are like shooting fish in a barrel. Not much of a challenge for him, but entertaining nonetheless. 🙂
Comment as you wish.

The Fire Next Time

15. January 2025 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Cry Wolf, Politics, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine...

And there will be a fire next time, and another after that. Und so wieter. Because that is how it is, the peculiar mild mediterranean climate with the gusty, hot and dry winds which usually come blasting down the mountains from the desert beyond. Winds which mostly arrive in the fall, but this time in mid-winter. My late father, the professional research biologist who gave the best nature walks ever, told us over and over how the native ecosystem was engineered by nature to burn every twenty-five to thirty years; to burn fast, clearing away and revitalizing dead grass and overgrown chaparral. We lived in near-constant awareness of the danger posed by those fires in that brush which covered the hills where my parents preferred to live – especially in the fall, when the high winds roared over the mountains, straight off the baking-hot desert. A couple of acres at the end of a dirt road was absolute heaven to Mom and Dad. Hell to them was tightly packed suburbia, elbow to elbow with the neighbors.

So we lived in the hills as soon as Mom and Dad could afford a mortgage rather than rent, kept the brush around the various houses trimmed, the garden well-watered, had a mental list of the precious and irreplaceable items to be grabbed and taken with us in case of a sudden fire evacuation. (In the end, in spite of all care and precautions taken, Mom and Dad’s retirement house in northern San Diego County burned in the 2003 fires, destroying any number of inherited family relics.)I have never forgotten the peculiar odor of smoke from a big burn hanging in the air, the odd beige-orange color of the sky, how the smoke from a distant brushfire piles up in sullen beige clouds, and the peculiar deep roaring sound of a fire well under way. One night in the week of Thanksgiving 1975, we watched the Mill fire burning downhill towards Sunland, Tujunga and La Crescenta. Through Dad’s binoculars, we saw a fire tornado sucking flying debris into itself, while a line of advancing flames stretched as far to the east and west as we could see. Fire engine sirens wailed almost constantly, near and far that night, along the streets below us.

The LAFD were able to beat out that massive fire in the Angeles National Forest within three days or so. But that was then … this is now, and half a century later. Managerial competence in governance and administration appears to have departed California, right along with that portion of a middle and working class who despair of ever getting ahead of the game. So many essential blocks have been pulled out of the jenga tower that was California, through political expediency and mismanagement. The infrastructure of lines and hydrants neglected. Reservoirs and dams were not filled with a particularly generous snow-melt and routed where it would be needed when the fires came; instead, precious water was allowed to pour unhindered into the ocean. Fire breaks and roads were not maintained, preventive burns not done, because environmental activists within and outside the state government have made it nearly impossible. Insurance companies, upon seeing the writing on the wall and knowing that catastrophic fires were inevitable, flatly declined to provide coverage to homeowners. The LAFD fired essential personnel for refusing the Covid shot, deferred equipment maintenance, appeared to prioritize celebrating gay and transgender rather than focusing on fire prevention. In the final insult, the LA FD had their budget cut by the mayor’s office. The mayor herself seems to be one of those who revels in the rewards of the office and those ceremonial honors attached but has little appetite or ability for attending to essentials of civic management.

So all those jenga blocks had been pulled out, when the fires started burning after the Santa Ana winds began to blow. It matters very little if those fires were started by any deliberate or random accident, as they always will in California. Anything and everything will spark off a fire: a discarded cigarette butt, a short in a power line or a string of Christmas lights, a steel bulldozer striking a flint rock, sunlight focusing through a piece of broken glass, a campfire not entirely extinguished, a hot catalytic converter on a car parking in long dry grass … accident or arson.
The hills will burn.
This time, they have burned out the wealthy and well-situated. (Again – like the 1961 Bel-Air fire did.) To a large degree, those in Malibu, along the coast, and in the Pacific Palisades generally appear to be people who were perfectly OK with the initial extraction of the jenga blocks which permitted their secure and privileged lives. Until the fires came over the hillside. (The Eaton fire simultaneously burned out whole neighborhoods in Altadena. This didn’t seem to get half the breathless coverage in the mainstream establish media, mostly because it’s a middle-class to working class neighborhood, with many residents who have lived there for generations, and whose small urban single-family cottages will not be as readily replaced.)

Some commenters speculate that the fires this time will lead to a conservative reawakening in California. A nice thought, but I rather doubt it. Even with the various mismanagement of things in California … it’s still very pleasant for those who have a comfortable income, have lived there all their lives and distain the thought of living anywhere else. The climate is mild year-round, compared to most other places, the range of scenery is glorious, and there still are some cultural advantages. A handful of counties back of the coastal zone and outside of the big cities are still well-managed and sane.
I think it more likely that what will happen as a result of the fires will be a west-coast Curley effect. The electorate will be shaped as the long-time mayor of Boston did, driving out those most inclined to vote against progressive policies. Those who can see the writing on the wall are leaving and will leave with all speed, and perhaps the speed will increase after this disaster. The Californians left behind probably won’t vote for Karen “The Commie” Bass, Governor Brylcreem or their ilk. It’s even more likely that they’ll pull the lever for another even worse Dem next time around and probably one even more incompetent. Whoever the next generation of California politicians and managers will be – it’s a guarantee that their progressive credentials and their chosen pronouns will be perfect. Comment as you wish.

Stick a Fork In…

11. November 2024 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant

… the national establishment corporate media, for they are done. Roasted to a turn, reduced to irrelevancy, as has been predicted by Insty and others for lo these many years. I had a sense that for decades, everyone kind of expected a sudden, catastrophic loss of credibility at every significant moment – a single spectacular event, abrupt like the sinking of the Titanic. But on and on the ship of national corporate media went, seemingly undisturbed by any such disastrous encounter with an iceberg. We kept waiting for that spectacular collapse, but it never happened, and so we started to route around. Still simmering, of course, over the willful and sneaky partisanship, the slanted coverage, and the constant overt or subtle name-calling, the constant reliance on the same-old-same-old experts from the same old same old press rolodex. We took heart in fact-checking their a**ses, but remained mildly disheartened that there was never an apology or a walk-back that mattered. About the best that we could hope for might be one of those sniveling “we’re sorry you stupid deplorable garbage people were offended” non-apology apologies. Alternate media, in the form of internet blogs – which rose and fell over two decades – Substack, Reddit, Twitter/X but more of a slow accumulation of small leaks … until everything fell apart at the final blow, and there we are.

The mainstream, big-money, corporate national news media was so far down into the tank for Harris and Walz that they probably needed a surface crew in a boat pumping down oxygen to them, or so I gather from the election post-mortem analyses. And this time, it didn’t do the least particle of good in moving masses of voters to vote for them. Not the last-minute OMG-Trump said bad things about service members story! OMG, he’s a convicted rapist-bully-thug-crook who hates women, Jews and people of color! It didn’t work … and Kamala’s campaign team apparently couldn’t even begin to figure out why, according to some of the post-mortem laments. Spending money like it was water gushing from a fire hydrant didn’t work, all those celebrity endorsements (Which apparently were bought and paid for) didn’t work. Reporting on poll results putting her in the lead didn’t work. All the old tried and true methods which always worked before … didn’t work.

It wasn’t just that credibility of mainstream corporate news media has sunk lower than the Titanic. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz – especially Harris – came off as horribly inauthentic, fake, manufactured personalities. In none of their brief, scripted and staged appearances did they seem natural, engaging, likeable. And there was not a single thing that their campaign staffers could do to counter that plastic impression to everyone outside of committed true believers. Kamala seemed like a kind of life-sized Chatty-Kammy doll; pull the string in her back and out came a kind of scripted focus-grouped garble that almost seemed like relevant speech. Off-the-cuff, spontaneous, non-scripted? With a less-than-worshipful interviewer? Oh, heck no! In contrast, Trump and Vance came across as relatable, authentic, humorous – they could do hours of unscripted interviews with someone like Joe Rogan, Indeed, I’m halfway convinced that the Rogan podcast interviews with Trump and Vance that pushed undecided voters towards supporting them. They talked about what the audience truly wanted to know … not the same, tired, over-focused party line.

Discuss as you wish – what else do you think also pushed the voters towards Trump and Vance?

With Dread and Foreboding

23. October 2024 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Cry Wolf, Media Matters Not, My Head Hurts, Politics, Texas

So, how do I regard Election Day, looming up in two weeks? With dread and foreboding, to be absolutely frank – no matter who is declared victorious. It’s absolutely guaranteed that all flaming hell will break out in either case; either within hours/minutes, or in days/weeks.
If the Trump/Vance ticket sweeps to an unmistakable, unarguable landslide well beyond any means of the Democrat Party to fraud – the anti-Trumpists will be insane with baffled fury. The national media establishment will look like Wily Coyote after one of his Acme gadgets explodes – and the entrenched bureaucracy crusted like layers and barnacles all over the various federal government departments … they will see the end of their comfortable gravy train. Ruin, disgrace, impoverishment, possibly criminal charges. The Diety knoweth and the various conservative-sympathetic bloggers and commenters, to include many fellow Chicagoboyz essayists and frequent commenters remember very well how blatantly they played dirty pool the last time around. What would they venture this time against the Great Orange One, the avatar of their doom … Political assassination? Of him, or any of his allies? At the height of what some commenters have termed a second civil war? Like Lincoln, at the hands of an angry partisan of the losing side? Sadly. I wouldn’t put it beyond the realm of possibility. This will be bad. Very bad.

That’s uncharted waters, in modern American politics – although not unknown in South America, or Europe of the early 20th century. Americans did not routinely do things that way, and since 1865, we had rather prided ourselves on that record of relatively peaceful turnover between parties. Not that assassination of various notable American politicians hasn’t happened – but most usually at the hands of the freelance nutters. In this present overheated political atmosphere, we can be assured that an assassin would be made a hero/heroine (overtly or covertly) by the media, academic and intellectual elite. Anyone with eyes to see must know this and also acknowledge that Trump fans and voters generally would be made … very unhappy by such a turn of events. How unhappy? That’s one of those things that I dread finding out. Even if a political assassination is not in the cards – the Harris/Walz partisans and the party supporting them will take every opportunity to be obstructive, and even more vicious and nasty than ever before. Witness the current slime vented by the Atlantic Magazine, which used to be a respected publication.

The Harris/Walz combo achieving a win on November 4th, possibly through an overwhelming flood of ballot farming and fakery in various districts particularly vulnerable to such … bald, undisguised fraud, giving the win to Kamala and Elmer Fudd; this will absolutely inflame Trump voters, for all that we can do about in the immediate aftermath. We learned a hard lesson of January 6th; likely those of a mind to criticize the outcome won’t be so eager to go to Washington to protest openly and run the chance of experiencing debilitating lawfare and interminable imprisonment in a Washington DC gulag, pending trail by a biased jury and a corrupted justice system. But Trump voters will be infuriated. Deeply angry – and the cohort which engineered a victory for Kamala-walla-bang-bang and Tim the Tampon Man will not rest easy in that victory. They will be insecure, suspicious and ready to lash out at any perceived threat or defiance of Federal government authority, likely with disproportionate violence. Those states which succeeded in maintaining a sane and competent governance in accordance with the votes and desires of the majority of their residents may manage to stand against rounds of Fed-gov madness.
It will all be very interesting reading in history books, assuming that any detached and relatively non-partisan accounts will be written in future.

Two more weeks. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst, I guess. Comment as you wish – how does it all look from where you are standing?

Visible Signs

05. September 2024 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun and Games, Local, Media Matters Not, Politics, Texas

My daughter and I have done a handful of long road trips over the last few years, especially after Texas sensibly lifted the most onerous COVID restrictions. For many of these trips we preferred to take country roads; various two or four-lane routes which meandered through miles of Texas back country, hopscotching past small ranches and passing through small towns of varying degrees of prosperity. One thing we often noticed in passing was a scattering of Trump banners, many of them weathered and obviously left over from the 2020 campaign. It was a hard-fought campaign; obviously many Trump supporters out here in flyover country remained sore about the steal. Also rather obviously, residents in rural Texas aren’t worried about random retaliatory vandalism to their property or vehicles by displaying such political partisanship.

Not the case in the suburb where I live; San Antonio is supposed to trend blue – not as deep-dyed fanatically blue as Austin – but slightly blue and tempered with a strong military and veteran retiree presence, most of whom tend conservative. (And half Hispanic by census count, a good few of whom, I sense, are not really all that enamored of current Dem party values: Catholic, family-oriented, small-business-sympathetic, and absolutely hostile towards those who have jumped the queue with regards to legal citizenship.) In any case, blue or red, we’d prefer to live at peace with our neighbors, and not invite trouble by advertising political sympathies on our person, home or vehicle. The last couple of election cycles, about as overt as political display got in my neighborhood was an American flag … which I suspected from random conversations with neighbors was a covert signal of conservative sympathies, but one which wouldn’t excite retaliatory vandalism.

We’ve noticed a change in the last month, or perhaps six weeks – an absolute blossoming of Trump/Vance yard signs, bumper stickers, T-shirts and gimme baseball caps. Every few days we spot another yard sign defiantly staked out; another person in a Trump t-shirt, or a vehicle adorned with a MAGA-associated bumper sticker. This is a rather curious development, considering how very rare such demonstrations of support for Trump or other Republican presidential candidates were in previous years. There are only a pair of Harris/Walz lawn signs, in contrast – and one of them is from the previous presidential campaign with Biden marked out with strips of duct tape. I speculate that perhaps people are encouraged to come out of the political closet by the absolute awfulness of Kamala Harris as a candidate and Tim Walz, the real-life Elmer Fudd. The only thing that duo has going for them is a national media establishment so far in the tank that they must have surface crew pumping them oxygen through a long tube.

Comment as you wish – have you noted more visible Trump support in your neighborhood?

Dancing the Minnesota Walz

15. August 2024 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Military, Politics

I think the most purely risible, ‘laugh out loud and roll on the floor’ headline of the current presidential campaign must be this one: Tim Walz’s Masculinity Is Terrifying to Republicans
This unintentionally hilarious take has been committed by one Frances Wilkinson, in an opinion piece for the entity known as Bloomberg.com. I do not know anything about Frances Wilkinson, but will venture a couple of guesses here: one, that she doesn’t really know any Republicans personally; two, that she is as acute a judge of what constitutes masculinity-fearing-Republicans as Rachael Gunn (the notorious Raygun of the Australian Olympic breakdancing team) is of break-dancing technique; and three; who the heck is terrified by the masculinity of a guy who looks like a live-action movie version of Elmer Fudd anyway?

I will concede that aspects of Tim Walz’s political persona are terrifying to contemplate in a political context – but his masculinity, such as it exists, is not one of them. His determinedly progressive policies, long-time and personal close ties to China, the way that he rolled over for BLM (AKA Buy Large Mansions) and allowed local rioters to Burn Lots o’ Municipalities, and how local police went all Stasi on ordinary citizens sitting on their front porches during the Covidiocy lockdowns … all that does send a frisson of unease down my spine at the thought of him inflicted on the nation rather than a single state. Minnesota voted for him as their governor; presumably they are happy with him. If he is what the good people of the state want in a civic leader, they should keep him, and spare the rest of us from the Walz brand of Minnesota Nice.

There is also a bit of media ruction in the media about Walz’s career as a member of a national guard unit. I’ve got nothing to say about his time of service in it; not my service, not my specialty, and his time of service barely overlapped with mine. Like John Kerry’s time in the Navy, it’s only really fitting for those in service with him to pass judgment on how he performed during that time. Taking retirement so suddenly, cutting short a six-year commitment and command training school, just before deployment to a conflict, or at least, to place where conflict is likely to happen? Eyebrows raised, skeptically – but there ought to be no shame in considering the prospect, deciding that “f**k it, I’m getting too old for this game” and then gracefully training up your replacement, advising your command and comrades, and supporting them from home after they have all deployed. What does stick in the craw of military veterans is the unavoidable fact that Governor Walz bowed out of participating in deployment to a conflict zone … but since has demanded respect and consideration as if he had deployed with them as a senior NCO. If that’s the sort of masculinity that Frances Wilkinson means for conservatives to be terrified by … I’ll have a couple of shots of whatever she is drinking. (I’ll bet it’s expensive, and if so, I’d like a case. It must be the good stuff…)
Comment as you wish: terrified or amused?

Best Eaten Cold

16. July 2024 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Media Matters Not, Politics, Tea Time, That's Entertainment!, World

Revenge, as the old saying has it, is a dish best served cold. And revenge may not be the only – or the most dangerous – platter best dished up chilled. That would be the dish of anger – that ice-cold, sullen reservoir of fury in the hearts of every right-of-center, non-elite, law-abiding flyover-country middle American with Tea Partyish inclinations … a dish of anger ready to serve up in the wake of a just-barely unsuccessful political assassination attempt this last weekend.
You see, there is a considerable difference between hot fury and cold. Hot fury is impulsive, immediately violent, reactive and more often misplaced. It’s the unthinking destructive fury of the mob, lashing out indiscriminately. Cold fury, on the other hand, does not manifest itself in such spectacular fashion. Cold fury is focused, calculated, unspectacular; it takes it’s time, waiting for the optimum moment. Cold fury usually can’t be appeased, once unleashed. As I wrote some time ago, regarding the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance –
“The image of a “vigilante” most usually implies a disorganized mob; lawless, mindlessly violent, easily steered but ultimately uncontrollable. The Vigilance Committee was something much, much worse than that. They were organized, they were in earnest, they would not compromise – and they would not back down.”

Something like the campaign of the Vigilance Committee of 1856 stands as an example of cold fury in concrete action; a large component of otherwise law-abiding citizens finally pushed over the edge, pushed to the point where they had to take action: calculated, rational, pitiless action to end the threat posed to their city, their various living, and indeed, their lives.
For those of us on the non-progressive spectrum, socially and politically – we have been living with escalating crises on various fronts – social, political, cultural – for a good two decades – perhaps longer. Too many of these issues can be blamed on or excused by Democrat party policies and personalities. We’ve thoroughly ventilated and discussed those issues previously, so I won’t go into details, but everyone knows the anger and frustration level has risen to an unbearable pitch.

That hairsbreadth miss was, I think, the last straw – on top of everything else lately. The kangaroo court convicting Trump of a non-crime. The American gulag for the J-6 protesters. The sledge-hammer drumbeat of Pride month and Diversity Uber Alles from government and corporations alike. Jew-hate on elite college campuses. The establishment news enthusiastically covering for Biden’s incapacity and his family’s corruption – a coverup only ripped to shreds a few weeks ago. Media personalities and news outlets going all out for painting Trump as Hitler and suggesting openly that assassinating him would be a good thing.

My sense is that the cold fury has reached that adamantine point of no return. Perhaps I am reading straws blowing in a cold wind, but there are things happening that haven’t happened before. There are reactions; quiet, cold, and calculated. People and academics who posted social media approval of the Trump would-be assassin and wished for better aim and better luck – have lost their jobs. A progressive stalwart’s MSNBC radio talk show is cancelled for a day because hosts and guests can’t be trusted not to throw gasoline on a bonfire. Another stalwart progressive entertainer cancels the rest of a comedy band tour of Australia after a member of the troupe expressed disappointment in the would-be assassin’s aim.

Other harbingers: Jew-hating student activists aren’t getting jobs in the first place. Hollywood’s latest movies and Netflix’s ballyhooed series are bombing at the box office, and the only ones watching the latter are YouTube critics making fun of them. The Disney theme parks were reported to be almost empty over the 4th of July this year. One senses that perhaps various authorities are belatedly sensing danger and deciding that perhaps better dial it back, before going too far in outraging the normies. Straws perhaps … but is the cold fury of normal citizens finally being felt? Discuss as you wish.

The Question of When…

21. February 2024 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Home Front, Politics, The Bear

The question of when to talk to your children, when you live in a repressive dictatorship was something I remember from reading James Michener’s essay into political reporting The Bridge at Andau; an account into the Hungarian Revolt of 1956 against the Soviet Union, published the following year. There came a time when parents of school-aged children, Michener wrote, had to open up to their children, if they were anti-Soviet dissidents, religious, or simply Hungary-first patriots. It was a fine line; either live a lie in front of your children regarding your own beliefs, and at worst, see them irretrievably buy into the whole Soviet system if you left it too late, or trusting that they were sufficiently mature, to be adept at concealing such dissident beliefs in front of their schoolfellows, Communist-indoctrinated teachers – and informers among them. How old did your children need to be, before they could dissemble in front of peers, teachers and spying informants among them? It was a matter of deep concern to Hungarian parents, as Michener related. (Parenthetically, as a teenager and young adult I had never been the least bit enchanted by the golden chimera of communism in any guise. Growing up, my parents knew too many people who had fled from Communist-dominated or threatened countries and had heart-rending stories to tell of their experiences in living in and fleeing Cuba, Russia, Eastern Europe, the far East. Reading Michener’s account of the Hungarian Revolt definitely drew a line under my antipathy towards all-powerful dictatorships of the so-called proletariat.)

So the Department of Homeland Security – a governmental entity which just by it’s very name, sends nasty chills down my back – has funded a program to train teachers, ostensibly in something called ‘media literacy’ but which in practice looks more like monitoring students and their families political and religious beliefs, directing them in the preferred set of progressive doctrines and encouraging kids to inform on their peers … or their families who dissent from such doctrines. (This linked post on Legal Insurrection goes into greater and unsettling detail.) I should think that parents of school-aged children would be looking at this so-called ‘media literacy’ with considerable alarm; it has even more dangerous implications than pushing gender-confusion and outright porn for the elementary-school set. Exactly how many other school systems are participating in this program?

This is all of a piece with authoritarian dictatorships across the political spectrum; get ahold of the youth through the education system, mold them into the new man/woman/whatever, encourage them to inform on their families and peers, and reward them with praise, honors, after the example of Pavlik Morozov, the Boy Hero of the Soviets. I wonder if membership in a new organized youth group is part of Homeland Security’s long-term plans for their properly-indoctrinated school-aged cadres. Perhaps the Department’s experts are considering cute uniforms for participating student participants; something with brown shirts and black shorts, or maybe a bright red neckerchief. Discuss as you wish – and is this program being utilized in your local school district?

Close to the Edge

29. November 2023 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun With Islam, Media Matters Not, Politics, Tea Time, World

I’ve felt over the last couple of years, that there is a steep precipice in our path, up to which our current Ruling Class is staggering blindly. Not just our American path, but in the developed world generally, and in that of western Europe. Things just can’t continue as they are. There is a breaking point coming. Really, no one might accurately predict exactly what small spark will kick off the explosion or the fall from a great height, or exactly where it might occur. The precipitating powers move in the shadows, veiled by a news media which deliberately veils them anyway. Too many national and international elites are pursuing policies which benefit them, rather than the countries they are supposed to govern. Too many of the transnational ruling class, indeed, seem to be in competition to pour contempt and derision on their less-fortunate, relatively powerless fellow citizens … and that’s a situation which can’t continue indefinitely. People are too stressed, made angry by things which they can’t control. Road rage incidents, riots that flame up like a prairie fire, unprovoked beatings, mass brawls in fast food restaurants and on commercial airliners; people are snapping over the slightest provocation, a misheard word, a momentary inconvenience…

There are just too many small indicia of trouble – small things, taken individually which wouldn’t mean much. But all the big things pile up like firewood, only wanting the tinder – which I fear that the small things will provide, to our cost. Big things like the Covidiocy, locking people into their houses and out of a social life, and then the vax mandate which cost them jobs, BLM/Antifa riots and protests which wrecked downtowns across red states, and inspired city governments to turn a blind eye towards property crime and the organized looting of retail outlets. The erasure of national borders is another one of those big things, stressing on a local level, when mobs of strangers suddenly show up and are favored with shelter, food and considerations not given to local citizens, deserving or not.

A recent incident which caught my attention and hinted to me that we are very close to the disastrous edge was the unprovoked knife attack at a school in Dublin – an attack which severely injured a woman and three children. (Link goes to Neo Neocon, and an interesting and informative discussion in the comment thread.)Initially, the local police were coy about describing the assailant, although he was captured almost at once. In the US, we have learned what to assume – with a high degree of accuracy – when a Person of No Description is apprehended after committing violence. Apparently, the Irish have learned that lesson as well. Having been fed to the back teeth with assorted petty and major crimes committed by an alien element – third-world migrants forced upon their communities by a governing class who appeared to be much more interested in currying favor with their international ruling class elsewhere in Europe, the locals chose to make their unhappiness in a language which the ruling class can’t ignore.
“… Some in Ireland believe too many people have arrived, too quickly, and that we need a ‘mature debate’ about it. But whenever they say something, they’re branded bigots and scum.”
Firey riots appear to be an acceptable means of protesting when it comes to an urban underclass, but only of the aggrieved are the right sort, dontchaknow. In any case, the national stereotype is of the Irish generally being truculent and ready to fight on any ground; after all, they fought being colonized by the British for a good few centuries; who would have expected them to lie down and be colonized by anyone else.

The observation in the above-linked article does ring very true to me; the ruling class willfully closing their ears to the voices of the ruled class by branding them bigots and scum. And deplorable, racists, stupid … Our own ruling elite did the same with the Tea Party. As courteous, reasonable, responsible and thoughtful a body of citizens as ever was in the United States political life, and for all that, called names and abused by the media, entertainment and political class.
Discuss as you will, while we still can.

Foreign and Domestic

15. September 2023 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun With Islam, Media Matters Not, Military, Politics, Rant, Veteran's Affairs

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic… From the Oath of Enlistment

It honestly kind of slipped my mind at first, that Monday morning was the anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attack on the United States. It’s been 22 years since that horrible day. I had other stuff – purely personal concerns on my mind.
For one, every single thing that I had to say about 9-11, I said, wrote and posted ages ago … and why re-run, one more time? There’s just nothing more to say, any more than there would be anything more to say about the shock of Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 – one more tedious rerun of a recollection of where I was, what I was doing. It’s been a lifetime, in a way – and for high-school and college graduates this year, it’s been all their lifetimes.
The other thing – a more recent tragic anniversary which looms closer in time is the disastrous and humiliating withdrawal from Kabul, Afghanistan, and the Abbey Gate suicide bombing there which killed more than a hundred civilians and thirteen American service personnel. Those deaths meant so little to President Biden that he kept looking at his watch during the ceremony at Andrews AFB when their coffins were unloaded. Those thirteen were the merely last American military lives frittered away in almost two decades of seemingly endless and pointless deployments to Afghanistan, culminated in a departure so botched that I’m still shocked that only a single commissioned officer resigned in protest. Sec Def Austin and General “Thoroughly Modern Milley apparently feel no shame over bungling their responsibility to the nation so horribly.

And this – a demoralized, gutted military – isn’t something that happened at the hands of foreign enemies. Our so-called leadership of the so-called elite gives every indication of hating at least half the American citizenry; it’s as if there is a secret contest on for who can come up with a notion to make our lives even more miserable, by banning gas stoves, gas-powered gardening tools and automobiles, limit air conditioning, efficient toilets, appliances and heaters, and living in detached suburban houses with a generous garden attached. Those same political and social elites appear to cheer on a new race war, all this with the full and enthusiastic cooperation of academia and the national news and entertainment media … those who have taken some time away from cheering on the sexualization of elementary-school-aged children.

Those of us paying attention suspect, with considerable reason for it, that our political leadership (mostly on the Donk side, but a few of the Heffalump persuasion when campaigning for reelection) have been bought and paid for by international and/or corporate interests – to the detriment of the interests of voters and American industries alike. Our national borders seem to have been erased in the interests of importing a more compliant population … and political opposition to all of this and the above has been criminalized. We even have our own gulag and collection of political prisoners. In the meantime, the national news-reporting media have degenerated into a partisan collection of bootlickers, toeing the party line and exclaiming rapturously over how much the love-love-love the luscious taste of authoritarian boot-polish.

The horror of 9-11, and what enemies foreign did to us, more than two decades ago? That was bad enough … but not nearly as damaging as what our ruling elite have done to us since.
Discuss as you wish, and while we still can.

Worse and Worse

24. August 2023 · 2 comments · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, History, Politics

The trickle of news regarding the Maui wildfires which incinerated an entire town and likely over a thousand of its residents just gets worse and even more distressing with every tidbit reluctantly disgorged by the local authorities. 1,100 are still listed as missing. After a week, it is most likely that they are dead. Many of the missing are presumed to be children, as local schools were closed because of high winds and power outages – and children at home alone because their parents were at work. Others might be senior citizens trapped in a local retirement home, unable to move without assistance, and visiting tourists unfamiliar with the area, whom no one has thought to report missing as yet. That so many are still unaccounted for – especially the children — that is an aspect that is difficult to contemplate. No wonder that local authorities are reluctant to admit the degree of carnage.

The very same national news media who pounded on the failures after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans over and over and over again, with the precision of trip-hammers are relatively silent, since there is not a Republican anywhere in sight to be assigned blame, credibly or otherwise. This brings to mind Iowahawk’s much-quoted quip about covering a story … with a pillow, until it stops moving.

Will the story of the Maui wildfire stop moving soon? It certainly seems to have dropped off the headlines of the major media; although bloggers like Neo are still posting about it, and inviting comments from a handful of people with direct personal knowledge. The whole thing is a farrago of civic fail, from not clearing away flammable brush, to a fire department apparently not equipped with tanker or brush trucks to fight off-road conflagrations, not having access to water to quash the fire after it started, to delayed and/or no warning to residents and holidaymakers, and finally blocking the few exit roads from Lahaina. Perhaps there was a good a good reason for this, because of downed live electric lines – but it doesn’t speak very well of local emergency services, bottling up people in town, leaving most with no choice but to jump into the turbulent ocean or burn alive in their cars or homes. Some reports compare the Lahaina fire to that which destroyed the hill town of Paradise, California, but it seems to me more like the conflagrations of the Hinckley and Peshtigo fires of the 19th century, which burned out whole districts and towns, to the tune of hundreds of deaths – in the case of Peshtigo, thousands. The only people who emerge with any credit from the disaster are that handful who disregarded official orders, drove around the barricades, removing themselves and families from the danger area, or who found a safe refuge and went back over and over again to help others. There are, apparently, a great many good citizens doing their quiet best to assist their friends and neighbors on Maui – unlike Oprah Winfrey, without a camera crew in tow, or like the FEMA operatives, holing up at a luxury beachside resort as the first order of business.

The bald truth about what happened in this disaster will come trickling out, bit by bit, I expect – as survivors talk to each other and to their friends, as much as the national establishment media and the political powers that be try to keep the pillow pressed down. Discuss as you wish.

Will There Ever Be An Apology For Covid Overreaction>

27. July 2023 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Health and Wellness, Military, Politics, Stupidity, World

In the light of this story, and this one as well, I am more than ever glad that my daughter and I said “no” to the Covid shot and follow-on boosters. Of course, I know that any new vaccine or drug can have a small number of unfortunate side effects – but honestly, aren’t well-informed adults allowed these days to calculate the risks and make their own decision? Apparently not for many employees, who were ordered to get the Covid vaccine or be fired … and are now facing health problems that make Covid itself look like pretty small potatoes.
My daughter and I were extremely reluctant to get the vaccination – mostly because we had read enough to be skeptical, neither of us was in a position where we could have been forced to do so as a requirement of continued employment. As it turned out, both of us caught Covid anyway. So did Wee Jamie at the age of four months or so. He had a mild temperature and the sniffles for two days, and that was that.
As of this writing, 2020 Covid is done. I wrote earlier this year: The dreadful creeping suspicion among the general public – or those who have been paying attention to the world around us, tallying up our own observations and personal experiences – is that the Covid vax may possibly be damaging in the long run or the short run to those whom it was administered, whether voluntarily or under threat. And if it is damaging … will that ever be fully acknowledged, or publicly regretted and apologized for?

I’m afraid the answer to that one is – no. Those responsible for inflicting incalculable damage likely are incapable of ever owning up to what they have done. They will never publicly regret the damage that their actions or non-actions did to general mental well-being of a large swath of the public, or the irrecoverable damage to school students left to their own devices for almost two years because public schools stayed closed. They will never acknowledge the economic damage to small businesses in lock-down-crazed states and municipalities… and most especially we will never hear any regret over the damage to health caused by a rush to administer an experimental vaccination. There will be no apology to those who were forced to vaccinate or else forfeit employment. And why? Because the authorities, bureaucrats, politicians and media who insisted on all this view themselves as good people, good people who simply don’t do awful things … you know, like wreck the health of strangers, kill their elderly parents in hospital, isolate them in their homes, ruin their business, shred their mental health and wreck the education of their children. Nice people, well-intentioned people simply don’t do evil things like that … and they are nice people, with the best intentions in the world … so they simply didn’t do any of those things. Expressing sincere regret and apologies would mean admitting that they aren’t nice people, with the best intentions in the world. So, they never will own up to the incalculable damage. They simply can’t. and still maintain their self-image as nice people.
Discuss as you wish. While we still can.

Enemies of the People

15. June 2023 · 1 comment · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Media Matters Not, Politics

This snippet of a story popped up in a mild way on several different news sites and feeds, including that of the Great Grey Whore, the New York Times, which I presume was anguished over the prospect of a member of the reporting fraternity, one Sophie Alexander of Sky News being driven out of a popular Miami restaurant where Trump had stopped by, presumably to spend a few minutes with supportive fans. The reporter/producer apparently carried on the tradition of shouting rude questions at political figures they don’t like on occasions that are not press conferences and formal interviews, in the usually vain hope of getting some kind or answer, and if not, noting snottily that ‘So-and-so declined to reply.’ Ms Alexander was heckled, verbally abused, and all but physically thrown out of the restaurant by Trump fans. Frankly, the only likely surprise about this matter is that Ms. Alexander appears to be indignant and a bit surprised at her treatment.

When I searched for links on this particular story, a whole raft of other incidents came up, going back some years but most of them in the last half-decade – of various news reporters and TV personalities increasingly being heckled, harassed and personally insulted by members of the public in various public places. And no, I can’t really say I’m surprised at all, regarding this particular occurrence, or all the others. I’m pretty certain that most media people do exist in a kind of protective bubble, isolated by the peculiar demands of their jobs. Do many of them even associate regularly with someone who works at a physical job for a living, has dirt under their fingernails, drives a pickup truck, swings a hammer, a wrench or a shovel, lives and works in flyover country? Such media luminaries might have to talk briefly with such, as part of their work requirements – but increasingly I have the feeling that such interchanges are brief. Only one national print reporter that I can think of appears to have any real feeling, or knowledge of ordinary lives – Salena Zito, who accurately predicted the successful election of Donald Trump.

Too many of the rest are the inheritors of privilege, educated at expensive universities, baldly contemptuous of everyone outside their sphere and too lazy to even try to break out of it. To me, the epitome of that kind of media personality is Anderson Cooper, the first to scornfully refer to Tea Partiers as ‘tea-baggers’ – this on national television. Practically every other national outlet, print and broadcast alike followed that lead in sneering … and the scorn and distain has only gotten more intense since then. The overwhelming majority of national news and entertainment media despise ordinary, conservative-leaning Americans. They used to hide it better, though, even before the national media became the American equivalent of Pravda, the public relations arm of the Democrat Party, the attentive stenographers of the ruling class.

Normally polite and courteous citizens can only be pushed so far, before returning insult for insult. The recent exchange in the Miami restaurant with Sophie Alexander indicates that ordinary American have begun despising the media nobility right back, and just as passionately.
Discuss as you wish.

DARVO

20. April 2023 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Home Front, Local, Media Matters Not, Politics

It’s an acronym; what it means is “Deny-Accuse-Reverse-Victim-Offender” – and describes a common response of the accused party to charges of domestic abuse, along the lines of “I never laid a hand on her/him-But she/he is crazy/violent! – It’s her/his fault for making me so darned angry – I’m the innocent person here!”
This is indeed what we are seeing now with regard to the Nashville Covenant school murders, murders committed by a deranged and angry transgender, although one might be forgiven for thinking ‘deranged’ and ‘transgender’ to be a duplication of terms. Alas, that was just the worst of recent violent or near-violent incidents involving transgenders and transgender activists, who seem to be exploring new horizons in a quest to be the most deranged, unreasonable, demanding and generally bat-crap crazy in what might seem to be a contest among activists lately. (Is there a substantial cash prize on offer, for whoever can generate the most outrageous headlines? Inquiring minds really want to know.) Shrieking at and terrorizing collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines for objecting to biological males competing against females in athletic contests, threatening a school in Colorado with the same treatment as the Covenant School – fortunately, that threat was neutralized, at least with that school and that potential mass-murderer.

The white hot-fury of transgender anger on display of late is extremely disconcerting. I will concede that there were and are transgender citizens who went into the process after careful consideration, appeared to live or have lived relatively contented lives, who wanted nothing more than to vanish into an ordinary existence, and to have called no great attention to themselves since transitioning. But they were always a minute number, and up until the last couple of years, seemed to relish the obscurity that their new physical form brought them. They didn’t call attention to it, howling like banshees every couple of hours and over every conceivable issue. Or invading a state legislature, with bullhorns and shouted threats. Or ganging up either physically or online on everyone perceived as breathing mild dissentions or criticism of the whole Tranzi crusade.

The curious thing is once one is alerted to the DARVO concept, one begins seeing it everywhere in the headlines of late; in the matter of crime committed by urban youths of color, everything from attacks on passing strangers, gang shootouts with a certain careless attitude regarding the fate of innocent bystanders, and mass lootings of commercial enterprises. No, no – the fault is that of that amorphous concept; structural racism, institutional whiteness or whatever they want to call it in the public release to the press, after the blood has finished soaking into the ground. We didn’t do anything but respond to the viciousness of white/MAGA/conservative/Red State animus – it’s their fault for pushing us, we’re the innocent victims here!

Comment as you wish. And add further examples of DARVO in action, especially in the establishment news media.

I will note for the record that I spent all of last weekend participating in a <a href=”http://”>local folk-life celebration in a medium-sized city in Hill Country Texas – an event blissfully free of anything resembling contemporary wokeism. Small children, tame animals both farm-domestic and pet, patriotic flags, ethnic German folkways, and country music, a lot of demonstrations of ancient black-powder weaponry, and complete law-abidingness among the participants and guests. It was all so very reassuringly normal. Life goes on in the Shire, as it always has done, day to day.

Running Slap Up Against Reality

24. March 2023 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Media Matters Not, Politics

This week, I noted several different blogs and bloggers commenting on Jazz Jennings, the reality TV star and poster-child for juvenile transition to the sex they (or their parents) think they want to be, rather than what their genitalia dictates. That the kid doesn’t appear to be the least bit happy in female skin is something that was predicted by anyone paying the slightest bit of attention. It doesn’t need Ray Charles to have seen that coming. A number of other, less-well-known transitioners have come out into the open, publicly regretting how they were hustled into making decisions as teens wrestling with various issues which have permanently damaged their bodies, their reproductive functions and their general mental well-being. Well, the young, unwary and easily duped (or their parents) falling for a fad does have that result, although usually fads aren’t quite so permanently damaging as the trans mania has proved to be. I would cautiously hope that this one is on the deflationary spiral, although I am afraid that whatever appears to replace it in shallow public awareness might prove to be even worse.

On another strain of public madness, I see that a major purveyor of Whiteness Madness, Robin “White Fragility” Diangelo is advising black people to stay away from whites for their own safety, just as Scott Adams has suggested that white people do the same with regards to blacks on similar grounds of safety. (It’s perfectly plain to me that high-status white race warriors like Ms Diangelo are compensating for their own upper-class privilege by dumping on lower status whites.) Ms Diangelo’s suggestion strikes me as being particularly rich, since I suspect that a fair number of white working-class people who have figured in the news lately would prefer such distancing for their own safety and well-being. (Links to particular recent stories here, here, here, here and to a book detailing even more incidents, here.)

As an aside, it’s axiomatic these days whenever one sees a story on mainstream media or on blogs and aggregation sites that there has been a mass looting of a retail establishment, an organized smash and grab robbery of a higher-end retail outlet, a mass brawl in a fast-food outlet or in an entertainment venue/amusement park/pop music concert – as I wrote last year in this post if there are no pictures of the perpetrators initially … everyone knows. And when there are pictures almost immediately, everyone thinks, ‘About what I figured…’ The points that I raised, and that came out in the discussion thread which followed, made for an interesting exchange. Several of us made the point that in the end, the problems of the inner-city black demographic can really only be fixed by themselves. The best that the rest of us can do is to quietly avoid the inner city black demographic – a softer kind of self-segregation, which people like Diangelo would have helped bring about. Where will race relations be in another six months of this? Discuss as you wish.

The Calculated Infliction of Misery

11. March 2023 · 1 comment · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun and Games, Home Front, Politics, Stupidity, Technology

The sudden recent fatwa declared by the great and good in the Biden Administration against the less-expensive gas ranges was … really rather curious – and for what purpose? Cooking (and heating) with gas is (or was) relatively cheap, energy-efficient, beloved of cooks for generations. It has the advantage that if you have an older stove, you can still cook with gas in a power outage. I lived for six years in Spain, where both the stove and the flash hot water heater were powered by propane bottles, and a power outage (which occurred regularly) was only a relatively mild inconvenience. I could cook a hot meal, and we could take hot showers. An all-electric home, such as the one I live in now is miserable, to the point of being unlivable, without consistent electric power, as my neighbors and I were swiftly reminded during the Great Texas Snowmagedden, two years ago. And from this story, linked on Instapundit, one can’t help wondering if the geniuses in Biden’s government are demonstrating trying again, with the so-called safety benefits of locking hot-water heater thermostats at 110-120. The ostensible reason given for these two quasi-campaigns is a tender concern for the ‘health and safety’ of the general public and the best of intentions, but the way to hell is paved with good intentions.

I have become convinced in the last few months that the real intent isn’t ‘health and safety’ at all – but the systematic immiseration of everyone but the comfortably ruling class elite. Oh, they didn’t really care much at all and haven’t for the last couple of decades, about the convenience and conditions for the ordinary citizens, except save when they were rolled out by their handlers to make a few remarks to housebroken establishment press representatives, especially at election time when they had to be seen to throw a bone or two in the direction of the electorate, or make the correct sympathetic noises after a natural disaster. It was necessary that they be seen to care … care deeply, just make a shallow pretense of deeply caring. They don’t care, and perhaps have never really cared, beyond making the proper noises in the established media – the credentialed elite in their glass-walled corner offices in the bicoastal ruling class enclaves, and their lushly-paneled and carpeted Congressional office.

But the brutal fact is … they don’t. They don’t give a couple of satisfactory bowel movements about the ordinary electorate, the regular, law-abiding middle and working class out in Flyover Country, the class that pays their modest taxes, runs the business that keep all afloat, volunteer for the military and everything else – and I believe the goal for the elite ruling class now has gone beyond indifference into active malice. They wish to see us impoverished, dirty, miserable, cold and starving, because that makes such obedient servants, of course. A powerless peasant class doesn’t make so many demands on their rulers – and that’s the point at which we may have arrived – not when election results can be called up and organized to give the satisfactory (to the ruling class) result. What need have they of voters then, when the results can be automatically jiggered to give the correct result?

They hate us, mostly because we don’t obediently fall in line, like medieval serfs, tugging our forelocks and saying, “Yes, Sir, Yes, My Lady, whatever you wish, My Lord.” It’s really kind of sad, that the ruling class of a nation should hate the ordinary population so. The Victorians were brutal in their class snobbery – but they didn’t at least hate the ordinary citizens and cheer for their continued immiseration and disenfranchisement.

Comment as you wish, and while we still can.

Terf War

25. January 2023 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games, Good God, Media Matters Not, Politics

It’s truly become amazing to me, how very vicious the trans war is getting to be; so far, it’s only words, but only words is how unspeakable atrocities begin. And all this is over what is a vanishingly small minority, but which happens to be “the fashionable hot new thing to shock the normies with” among overexposed celebrities, activist academics, and the desperate-seeking-relevancy activists battening onto a cause to give purpose to otherwise empty lives. It’s a trend amplified a hundred times by such advocacy, and then another hundred by the leviathan of social medial; a leviathan before which established corporations and businesses tremble. Candidly, one might have expected titans of commerce (like Target and the Disney company) possessing sufficient market knowledge to stay away from advocating causes which might – just might – piss off a large portion of their customer base. And one might be wrong. Never underestimate the mad urge to be a dedicated follower of fashion, I guess.

But it does seem that old-line feminists are rebelling against the activist goad, or at least, some of them are, when it comes to allowing so-called trans-women (who still have all their essential male parts, including beards and DNA) into what formerly were biological-women-only spaces. Spaces like bathrooms, locker rooms, clothing-optional spas, hospital wards, battered woman shelters, and prisons. And of course there is resistance from biological women, since it seems that a fair number of trans-women aren’t anything of the sort; they’re just perverts and predators looking for a well-stocked hunting ground. To the surprise of practically no one, the Wii spa tranny eventually turned out to be a registered sex offender, getting his jollies by flapping his wang-wang at women and girls. The Canadian Yaniv character – allegedly an overweight lesbian – turned out to be an abusive freak addicted to lawfare against women beauticians offering depilation services of truly female private parts. The high school-boy-in-a-dress, sheltered by the local woke-as-heck Virginia school board as some kind of sacred cause, turned out to be a rapist. And the Brits have come to the appalled realization that yes, so-called trans-women transferred to women’s prisons are rapists and abusers relishing their happy hunting ground. Another aspect of so-called patriarchy which the old-line feminists didn’t anticipate – that those in authority would value the supposed mental comfort of a male LARPing as a woman, rather than the actual physical safety and peace of mind of real women.

Time was, when male to female transexuals (and probably the reverse as well) seemed to wish for nothing more than to quietly blend into the background, to live as the sex that they were convinced they were, without fuss and fanfare. The current trans activists trend vastly more confrontational – to the point of ugliness. Why has the matter of transsexuals suddenly blown up to such an extent lately? A matter of fashion? A huge desire to shock the normies? Or bored activists looking for new frontiers? Discuss as you wish.

Casting the Oracle Stones

07. November 2022 · 2 comments · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Media Matters Not, Politics, World

So the voters go to the polls tomorrow – well, those who haven’t done early voting or mailed in their ballot – and possibly by Wednesday, we will know the results from those places which have it together in tallying up the ballots. (It might take days and weeks longer, for results from places that don’t have all their ducks neatly lined up). I see two possible outcomes, both grounds for considerable foreboding.

Number one: Organized, systematic, blatant ballot fraud on the part of Democrat party operatives in precincts and cities most particularly open to it; fraud that is so naked, open and in-your-face that it can’t be hidden, disguised or explained away – fraud which allows the Democrats to claim an overwhelming victory, aided and abetted by a tame national media.

That, of course, will outrage Republicans and moderates, possibly to the point of not accepting the claimed Democrat victory. A victory won through masses of manufactured, fraudulent ballots reduces this country to the condition of a banana republic, and arbitrary rule by a party elite singularly uninterested in anything but perpetuating their own power and control. I do believe that most trending red states who have put steps in place to prevent massive voting fraud will see state and local elections that are honestly and openly won; citizens will be able to accept the results there. It’s the federal government that will most likely lose any credibility with at least half, and maybe more of the citizenry.

Number two: the Republican red wave is so overwhelming as to knock any Democrat attempts to gain by vote fraud. In which case, the existing federal powers-that-be will be … extremely unhappy, to put it mildly. The national media establishment will be screaming bloody murder, of course; even more loudly and insultingly than they are already. Perhaps the Democrat establishment and the Biden administration (or whoever is pulling Biden’s strings) will attempt to declare election invalid, cancel and throw the whole election overboard and/or refused to seat those newly-elected to federal office – or worse. The media and the Democrat establishment are already setting the stage for declaring a Republican victory “problematic.”

Some further predictions:
No matter how the election results shake out, the national news media will go off-the-chart barking at the moon insane.

Elon Musk will be having more fun reorganizing Twitter than most normal human beings are allowed to have.

It will not be strictly necessary for Democrat Party authority figures to order the official organs to inflict violence upon those they perceive as inimical to the Ruling Party – all that they need to is exclaim, in the manner of Henry II, “Will no one rid me of that troublesome priest!?” – and the deranged, unbalanced and violently-inclined will take it as permission.

Jay Manifold has also done a post looking at aspects of this weeks’ election and possible outcomes and aftermath. I am operating at a more intuitive level, but my conclusions align with his. The next few weeks and months will be ugly, and the various parties who take politics and power very seriously will react … and very likely with violence. Mike K’s very cogent comment on my last post, regarding the demonization of conservative opinion and those who hold such, and the “Nazi” slur so freely thrown about, also deserves consideration.
Buckle in – it’s going to be a very bumpy ride.

Rebellious

18. August 2022 · 1 comment · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General Nonsense, Media Matters Not, Politics, That's Entertainment!

Americans – both those born on this soil and those who weren’t but who got here as fast as they could – are natural rebels, stiff-necked, stubborn, and not inclined to bow the knee and truckle to those who think they are our betters. Oh, it might not seem so in these dolorous times; too many of our fellows seem just too ready to be passive, landless serfs with an appetite for crumbs and approving notice from the wanna-be-nobility’s table, and too damned many outright want to be the nobles, or their willing henchmen/women/whatever. But a preponderance of us are not that ready to be pushed into servitude to the State – witness the drubbing at the pools that the voters of Wyoming gave to the presumed princess-heir of the landed house of Cheney yesterday. Losing an election by a 40% margin is not just the voters saying ‘no, thanks’, it’s the voters escorting the candidate to the city limits, brandishing buckets of tar and bales of feathers while snarling, ‘…and don’t come back!’
Ah well – I have long disapproved of political dynasties – the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Murkowskis, the Gores and their similar and lesser-known political ilk. The only political dynasty that was ever any good for America as republic and in the long term was that of John Adams, and that was back in the day when we all were pretty adamant that there would be no patents of nobility issued, tither formally or otherwise in this blessed experiment in citizen governance. For myself, I hated the choice I had between two scions of political dynasties in the 2000 election. What – a choice between two sons of political privilege? I think I held my nose and voted blindly, and can’t remember who for, not that it made much of a difference then or now. Although one of the two has retreated to a relatively quiet life in Texas, and the other has chosen to humiliate himself on the international stage as one of those campaigners for radical actions to oppose climate change, traveling hither and yon at great expense on energy-spewing jets.

It’s nice that the voters in Wyoming can emphatically kick to the curb a notorious carpet-bagger pol (whose speaking resemblance to Miss Piggy ought to be noted.) and whose personal portfolio has increased to an incredible degree during her tenure. Alas, cut short due to the obstinacy and stupidity of the voters – but never mind, she will no doubt flit off to some other profitable perch among the minor nobility. They do tend to take care of their own, after all.
In the meantime, we can make fun of them. It can be vicious, enjoyable fun – passing around disrespectful memes, satires, jokes and cartoons about our ruling class, pointing out their many hypocrisies, their double standards and public pratfalls. Laughter and derision are potent weapons, as Saul Alinsky pointed out in his Rule #5; “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.” Think of Sabo’s painting of Joe Biden in a mask and nothing else, and a hotpants and garter-clad Kamala Harris. Consider that picture of Sec Def Austin, double-masked and outdoors, inspecting the troops – all he needs is a flowing cloak and Darth Vader’s music. We can laugh and poke fun, while the media handmaids of our Ruling Class fume and stomp their feet while insisting that it’s not funny …
Well, it is. And we are a rebellious people. Ridicule is our weapon. Along with ruthless efficiency, determination and fanatical devotion to … oh, blast. I’ll come in again. Comment as you wish.

Out of All Patience

25. July 2022 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Media Matters Not, Politics, Working In A Salt Mine...

I read the various news and commentary about the regular police force; five full-time officers and a chief strong, and a couple of other city employees resigning in a body from their jobs in Kenly, North Carolina, in protest over the hostile work atmosphere generated through a new city manager hire. Details on this are all obscure about the personalities and specific incidences of workplace hostility involved. One can sort of fill in the empty spaces, just applying what can be deduced from the personal details and past employment record of the city manager involved, and suppositions regarding the civic employees who have resigned. That and reading the comments appended to the news stories about this interesting happening from those who seem to be familiar. All the parties involved seem to be tight-lipped about what set the whole thing off. The town council was supposed to have held a closed-door meeting on Friday to resolve the situation, but there has not been anything new in the news media that I can find.

I did not grow up in a small town like Kenly, but in a suburb on the distant outskirts of Los Angeles, a suburb so remote from the urban core when I grew up there, that it might just as well have been a small town. There was only one high school – a largish one, as semi-urban/suburban consolidated high schools go – but otherwise a semi-isolated, tight, and cohesive community, a community only cracked, dispersed and amalgamated to the larger urban core when the 210 Highway went through, making the place an easy commute to the larger city. I have since made a study of small towns, doing books about them, visiting such towns regularly, participating in regular celebrations (mostly book-oriented), absorbing local history, gaining a sense of places where everyone knows each other, or is related, even at one or two removes. Look – these places are tightly-woven with personal and familial ties. Screw around with them at your peril, as all those folk tales about the country folk and the city slicker will attest.

Even late-comers to the place must make an effort to blend in, create their own positive connections, take a key part in binding the community together, and not make themselves obnoxious. What happened in Kenly, inspiring the full-time police officers and chief, and two other city employees to tender resignations is … most unusual. The new city manager does seem to have been the one chiefly responsible for inspiring the resignations. Frankly, it takes a true gift for offense to inspire such hostility within a bare month. From the little that has made it into the various news reports, she was let go from her previous civic employment, sued for the unfairness of it all, which was denied, and then spent two years as the self-described CEO of her boutique consulting firm, which I suspect is resume-speak for being unemployed; a woman of color, you see. From the previous job descriptions and college degrees, one might suspect a committed diversity social justice warrior.

I should emphasize that I don’t know this for sure, but the speed with which she alienated city employees gives one the sense that she was, and not tactful or diplomatic about it. Kenly is roughly two-thirds white, Asian, Native American, mixed race or Latino, the remaining one third black, as of the 2000 Census, although that may be subject to change in the last twenty years. So – at a blue-sky guess here, a professional city-administering bureaucrat of color, swanned into a small town, tried to throw the racial card down … and long-term employees and citizens looked at her, and what she demanded of them, and decided that the only way to win was not to play.
Honestly, I’d guess that at this point, employees of various cities, corporations and colleges who are not of the favored ethnic or sexual demographic are looking at the racial game as played by the DEI/BLM/Whiteness-is-a-Crime-Against-Humanity-Eleventy!! as a game they don’t want to play. Just look at the declining recruitment and retention figures for the military. Not everyone annoyed by the diversity woke can afford to quit so publicly. Likely that more of the dissenters are quietly resigning, retiring or updating their resumes.
Comment as you wish. Especially if you have first-hand or second-hand insight into the Kenly situation.

Cloward Pivening

15. June 2022 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, On The Border, Politics

Once upon a time in the mad 60’s a pair of mad lefty (but I repeat myself) socialist sociologists refined a strategy for bringing about the blessed socialist utopia by overloading and bankrupting the welfare system. This, they confidently hoped, would crash the capitalist system and bring about the longed-for socialist utopia. Essentially, they drafted the poor and unprivileged into an army demanding services which the state ultimately could not provide; somehow, this would crash the system and bring about radical social reform. The whole thing sounds rather like the Underpants Gnomes theory of economics or the cartoon showing a pair of white-coated scientists examining a complicated mathematical sequence on a chalkboard with a notation in the middle of it which says, “And here a miracle happens.”

Somehow the miracle would happen! One can be forgiven for suspecting that progressives in our federal government are having a serious go at Cloward-Pivening the entire nation by deliberately overloading and crashing every existing support system, from energy production to transportation networks, law enforcement and the courts. Deliberate plot, or merely the result of towering incompetence at every level in the federal bureaucracy? While sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from active malice, I’m coming down more and more on the side of active and deliberate malice in all sectors.

The powers that be in the Biden administration actively want gas to be at $10 a gallon, just like Europe, where in the space of a half an hour drive you can be in another country or two (or three). Sky-rocketing inflation and gas prices at the pump have their own part to play in this farrago of fail. They want the grocery store shelves empty and the economy crushed. They want ordinary citizens to freeze or swelter in the dark (depending on the season), thinking this will force adoption of sustainable energy sources, which are anything but reliable. They want to see our urban centers burn, while local law enforcement stands around with their finger in their ear, for fear of being victimized by headline hunting racial agitators or backstabbed by a district attorney who will let the miscreants out with a pat on the back and a kiss on the cheek almost the minute they were arrested.

The results of our elections are sometimes questionable, our national news media can’t be relied on for a true accounting of events, and it is perfectly obvious that the administration of justice is decidedly biased, when participants at a rowdy protest in the nation’s capital eighteen months ago are still locked up awaiting trial, whole those who were caught red-handed burning, looting and otherwise wrecking property in other cities were let go without much of a penalty. They want to see small independent businesses go bankrupt and have us purely dependent for goods and services on a handful of big corporations – because it is easier to control half a dozen national corporations, than half a million small business. They want Western forests to burn, and California orchards and farm country to wither up for lack of water – not the wineries though, because they are super important to someone like Nancy Pelosi. They prefer that homeless drug addicts make our cities dangerous and feces-paved places. They prefer to welcome a tidal wave of unscreened illegal immigrants. They want to see our profitable industries outsourced to places like China. They want to see our elementary schools teaching nothing students to hate each other based on the color of their skin, with a side order of sexual deviancy. They want higher education to forego teaching the classics of Western literature, or history, or anything else which might clue students into the responsibilities of citizenship, and what an experimental and daring form of government that a democratic republic was as first conceived two hundred years ago. (They seem to want, in fact, a kind of modern feudalism, with powerless and obedient serfs, ruled by a handful of nobles connected by marriage and kinship bonds. It’s Cloward-Pivening, all the way down. It’s happening because they want it to happen this way.

They want the collapse, so they can be left, squatting on, and ruling over a pile of ashes. They don’t care, they really don’t care, preferring to rule in Hell than be a citizen in heaven.
Comments, suggestions, observations?

Erasing Women

07. April 2022 · Comments Off · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Domestic, Politics, Rant

Well, it’s really kind of sad – that erasing biological XX-chromosome no-kidding 100 percent female women seems the ultimate endpoint of early 21st century popular prog-thought, as mad and illogical as that might seem as an ambition, or rather an idée fixe. The ancient jape of a fox hunt described as ‘the unspeakable in hot pursuit of the inedible’ comes to mind, only this is the deranged in pursuit of the unachievable. As little as I think of the long-time and loud professional Feminists-with-a-capital-F (or LT&LPF(F) as I call them), and their tendency to view all men as potential rapist and abusers, I would have expected them to be assiduous in protesting for the actual physical safety of biological women in women-only spaces like restrooms, locker rooms, battered woman shelters, hospital wards and prisons. Alas, they would seem to have fixated on the availability of reproductive health or as the rest of us call it, abortion, as the great fight for the LT&LPF(F); the hill upon which they wish to see fetal humans die. I mean; what the hell, LT&LPF(F) – you look away from the physical safety of real, no-kidding vulnerable women … and focus on the rights, ways and means of killing fetal humans. Good job, sisters. (Not.)

I previously would have assumed that the LT&LPF(F) would have looked askance at biological male athletes declaring themselves to identify as female … and walking away with first or second place in track, swim and wrestling meets. That pretense strikes me a particularly egregious; honestly, while I am not a biologist as my mother and father were, my memory of childhood roughhousing with my brother and his friends is quite vivid. The last time when I could hold my own in a physical contest with any of them was at the age of twelve or thirteen, just before puberty hit all of us. That certain born-male athletes have hit on the scheme of claiming to be a woman in order to score wins is a scam. It’s low, dishonest and a cheat. I’m amazed that such can look at themselves in a mirror, without shame and embarrassment at going so low for a win and a medal.

Sexual dimorphism, as Daddy lectured us on nature walks, is a real thing: as it applies to humans, males of our own human species tend to be taller, heavier, and better muscled, and clustered at the extremes of the Bell curve as far as intelligence goes. Females tend to be smaller, lighter, with a higher percentage of body fat, cluster at the middle of the intelligence Bell curve, and be a little better at fine muscle skills. That, and we can have babies; growing them within our own bodies for nine months and nurturing them for many months afterwards, whereas males can really only get them started, which takes a matter of energetic minutes at the most basic level.
We all of us, male and female alike, have our own skills and strengths – and honestly, I have always appreciated those strengths, as well as liking men, generally. (Men are cool, they focus on the immediate, they fix things, build things, and fight for what they value, all qualities which I have always found terribly attractive.) So why now are progressives wedded to the notion of deleting biological women? Is it just the latest and most attractive trend among progressives? Or do they really-o-truly-o hate and envy the female, as some of the early radical professional feminists (who hated men, unreservedly) used to claim.
Discuss as you wish.

Aristos a la Lanterne!

17. March 2022 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, History, Media Matters Not, Politics, Working In A Salt Mine...

When the rage of downtrodden French peasants, living-on-the-edge city dwellers and frustrated bourgeoise towards the ruling nobles and royalty final exploded into a kind of civic wildfire, there was no appeasing their collective anger. A handful of wary and fleet-footed aristocrats, or those who had made a good living out of serving the royals and the nobility fled from France in all directions. The slow and unwary made a humiliating appointment with Madame Guillotine before a contemptuous and jeering crowd, if they had not already run afoul of a mob with pikes and knives, and ropes at the foot of civic lampposts. (The fury of the French Revolution flamed so furiously that it that eventually it burned a good few leading revolutionaries themselves. As the Royalist pamphleteer Jacques Mallet Du Pan remarked pithily, “Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.) For a long time, my sympathies as regards parties in the French Revolution tended to be with those who fell out with it, sympathies formed by popular literature and music: The Scarlett Pimpernel, A Tale of Two Cities, Dialogues of the Carmelites, and other tales which basically tut-tutted the madness which overcame all reason and discretion, and championed those who had the brunt of it fall on them, either justly or not. How fortunate that our own very dear revolution had been able to escape such conflagrations: Loyalists in the colonies might have suffered being tarred and feathered and ridden out of town or having to leave in an undignified rush when Yankee Doodle went to town and made their independence stick. But the jailhouse regrets of those who called up and inflamed that conflagration, even inadvertently is not my concern here.

It is, rather, the arrogant, condescending incompetence, and corruption of our current ruling class, and the hardships they have and continue to blithely inflict on us all – Covid, inflation, civic disorder, energy shortages, unequal application of law when it comes to public protests, the ruination of our domestic industries, our currency, and a possible war. Our political ruling class and their allies in mass media and academia have all played a part in bringing about all these disasters, while blandly denying blame and responsibility. Clueless arrogance is mingled with single-minded conviction of their own competence and absolute determination to double down on failure, failures which have already ruined lives, businesses, and industries alike, and promise to ruin more. These ruinations have left the ruling class serenely unaffected, and even wealthier than ever, and prone to issuing condescending suggestions to us all that if we can’t afford gas, maybe we ought to buy an electric car. It’s infuriating; but to this point, we feel only a cold, sullen fury. To carry on with the wildfire simile – it’s as if the wood is not only dry, but soaked with gasoline, and these fools are only lacking the book of lighted matches. What will that metaphorical lighted match be, that sends ordinary citizens howling ‘Aristos a la Lanterne!’? Most likely something that affects our children; the insistence of schools in pushing CRT brainwashing and inappropriate sex education to children who are barely aware of sex as it has already has parents lighting up local school boards and teacher’s unions. Discuss as you wish, and have insight into what will send us into the streets singing Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira, or quietly sabotaging the ruling class.

The Odessa Steps

20. February 2022 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games, Media Matters Not, Politics

The early Soviet propaganda movie, The Battleship Potemkin culminates in a prolonged and shocking sequence of local citizens – men, women and children – gunned down by remorseless Czarist soldiers on Odessa’s famed harbor-to-town staircase. The sequence remains a shocker. (And is still studied in film schools, apparently, for being ground-breaking effective and technologically ahead of the time.) Historically, there was never such a massacre on the Steps, but the sequence served as a kind of cinematic shorthand for State brutality aimed at essentially harmless, unarmed, unthreatening civilians in a public place; civilians who were seen to be defying the authority of the State. And so the armed minions of the State acted – because even the mildest defiance of Authority on the part of ordinary workers and their families is a stab at the heart of those Authorities. They cannot brook defiance, and so out come the armed police, just as they have this week in the streets of Ottawa with regard to the truckers protesting vaccine mandates. All the forces of the law, with the cheerful approval of the Canadian established media, the intellectual and ruling class – it’s really rather breathtaking; this concentrated venom and enthusiasm for breaking heads and bones all aimed at the workers participating in a civil and well-organized street protest. (It would seem that as far as the RCMP are concerned, Dudley Do-Right and Constable Benton Fraser both have left the building – so much for Canadian ‘polite.’)
What will happen now that the ordinary working stiffs of Canada have been so casually abused by their native ruling class; threatened with having bank accounts frozen, their means of earning a living confiscated, themselves arrested, while their pets and children given over to the tender care of animal shelters and the child “protection” authorities? How far will this protest go now, bouncing down the Odessa Steps like a runaway baby carriage? It could be that Canadians, with the ethos of being polite, courteous, and truthful, may be truly shocked, shocked to the point of open rebellion over being consistently lied about and bullied by their ruling elite. In America, our own flyover country residents are perfectly accustomed to being abused as stupid, red-necked rubes by our own elite class. It’s what we have come to expect of NPR, the political ruling class, the New York/Hollywood cultural axis and the inside-the-Beltway-Washington DC denizens; what we have come to expect of them anyway. It may be a new and shocking development to ordinary, working-class Canadians, this contempt for the working class, though. Comment as you wish.

The Proper Framing of the Narrative

12. February 2022 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games, Politics, Tea Time

I am watching matters develop with regards to the trucker strike, with appreciative interest, seeing that is really another variant of a grass-roots spontaneous civic spontaneity, much like the Tea Party was, some years ago. The Canadian trucker protest has that in common with the Tea Party protesters – but the difference might be that the independent trucker community is a smaller, a more cohesive and even more media-savvy and self-disciplined party. The various Tea Party protests were more general, cut across class lines (at least the urban-focused one that I was involved in was, no matter what the establishment national media might insist) and focused more upon voting in various political races then upcoming, and protesting the general monetary incompetence of the Obama Administration. More »

People Farming

27. January 2022 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, My Head Hurts, Politics, Rant, sarcasm

It was a comment on this blog which struck me immediately upon reading it. The subsequent discussion in the comment thread was how antisocial behavior on the part of massive numbers of homeless people setting up massive, festering camps in the downtown areas of certain cities was making those cities less and less inviting for ordinary people. In the final analysis, no one really wants to come to work in a place where they have to step around feces on the sidewalk, dodge the aggressive panhandler outside a downtown restaurant, or run from the homicidal crazy looking to shove someone off the subway platform in front of an oncoming train. Downtown retailers can’t keep on in business long when the merchandise walks out the door, assisted by undocumented shoppers; so, eventually the normals – that is, those of us with jobs, property, and a liking for clean, non-threatening surroundings – decamp the urban jungle for something a little less edgy, usually taking our dollars, investments, responsible civic behavior, and tax base with us.
Why on earth do certain cities – San Francisco and Los Angeles being the two which spring to mind almost at once – allow this to continue? What benefit does it give to see gracious, scenic, and culturally-attractive cities descend into a condition which repels longtime residents and new visitors alike? What’s in it for the civic managers of such urban centers … and as it was pointed out, there’s money in it.<!–more–>

There’s money in it, administering programs which succor the homeless … which, if the homeless were ever successfully homed … would mean an end to that mission and money stream. So the civic powers that be have a vested interest in keeping those programs going, and even expanding them to minister to ever-increasing numbers of homeless. Which makes the powers-that-be feel all noble, responsive, responsible and unselfish-like … but which one commenter on the linked thread pointed out … for all intents and purposes they are <em>farming people for a money crop</em>.

And that was where I had that blinding flash of the obvious insight … yes, indeed; they are farming people for the money crop. Civic powers in certain locations are tending a segment of their population most assiduously, for the money crop to be harvested from them. Once possessed of this frame, I began to wonder what other collection of bodies are being farmed for the profitable money crop to be harvested by the controlling powers. Public schools came to my mind almost at once: students in a public school setting are the crop, and oh, they must be a profitable crop indeed for the teacher union farmers who make a gesture of teaching, but which are essentially farming students. What are the various impulses towards a national and universal health-care scheme, but another people-farming project on the part of various powers that be? Discuss as you wish.

Alternative Structure

08. December 2021 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Geekery, Politics

I did note this story on Axios, which was discussed scathingly and at length on Ace of Spades; that the Lefty Progs have belatedly realized that, yes indeedy, us social and political conservatives are building our alternate establishments, in media, money-management, retail, and everywhere else. Welcome to the party, pal… It goes without saying that the Lefty Progs disapprove, most indignantly. I noted the split a little more than a year ago, in this post.

We’re already at the split. We read different books, watch different movies and television shows – those of us who still watch movies and television – follow different celebrities, earn a living in different ways, educate our children differently. We honor different things, different heroes and heroines, have wildly different aspirations and hopes for the future. We are already split. More »

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