Fake beef. Fake crowd noises at sports games. Fake fans. Fake news. Fake health orders that make real human interaction illegal.
At what point do people realize this is every Sci-Fi nightmare movie ever?
An0maly @LegendaryEnergy
Tweeted on February 18, 2021
[Good question.—Joe]
Many schools in the United States have ceased issuing grades that have any meaning, or they have dropped grading altogether, which means there is no way to judge progress or achievement. National test scores for evaluating possible college entry are on the way out almost everywhere as they are increasingly being condemned as “racist” in terms of how they assess learning based solely on the fact that blacks do less well on them than Asians and whites. This has all been part of an agenda that is being pushed that will search for and eliminate any taint of racism in the public space. It has also meant the destruction or removal of numerous historic monuments and an avoidance of any honest discussion of American history. San Francisco schools are, for example, notoriously spending more than $1 million to change the names of 44 schools that honor individuals who have been examined under the “racism and oppression” microscope and found wanting. They include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Paul Revere.
Philip Giraldi
February 18, 2021
The Decline of the West: American Education Surrenders to ‘Equity’
[It is easy to conclude our technological progress is being impeded by these people. There might even be sufficient evidence to support the hypothesis we are about to enter, or at least are at risk of entering, a new dark age. This could even be an existential threat to technological human society.
One of the ways I see this problem is that some people, perhaps with malice aforethought, confuse and/or conflate equality of outcome with equality of opportunity. And furthermore the “equality of opportunity” is, again perhaps with malice aforethought, confused and/or conflated with “equality under the law”.
I think at least part of the solution to this problem is to push back HARD when someone plays this confusion/conflation con game.
Just because there exists a difference in earnings and/or life expectance, and/or criminal convictions, and/or representation in some professions, etc. does not necessarily mean there was discrimination and/or racism. People of Asian decent account for only 5.9% of the U.S. population. While Black or African American people account for 13.4% of the U.S. population. Yet as of 2019 in the U.S.:
So, if someone claims racism against minorities is to blame for income inequality demand they explain how Asians, with less than half the representation in the U.S population of blacks have over twice the household income.
Furthermore demand they explain, if they claim the differences in outcomes are racist, why the differences begin to show up at the start of school rather than in graduation rates, college admittance, or starting wages.
The next point which I think needs addressing is that the whole concept of “inequality is bad” must be struck down. I’ve adequately addressed that issue before.
Put as succinctly as I know how, we must celebrate success and extraordinary achievement instead of rewarding victimhood.
One last thing. I do not claim to know the reason why people with different skin colors have different success rates in our society. I only know that it is extremely unlikely it is because of white supremacy and or racism.—Joe]
What we’ve done in the legislation is really create the set of circumstances and conditions that will facilitate the buy-back.
We are eliminating all legal use of these prohibited firearms. They can’t be legally discharged. You can’t fire them. You can’t take them hunting or to a range. They can’t sell them or transport them. They can’t bequeath them or trade them in any way. They will be required to store them in a very secure safe or vault.
I think the vast majority of people who bought these guns to use as firearms, now that there is no legal way to do that, they’ll be highly incentivized to surrender them for destruction, and then we’ll have a fair compensation program available to them.
Bill Blair
Canada Public Safety Minister
February 16, 2021
Bill Blair says new gun bill will help keep handguns off the streets without a federal ban
[It would seem to me that some incentives, and a fair compensation program, need to be given to Blair and company to respect the rights of the people.—Joe]
God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.
If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?
Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
Thomas Jefferson
November 13, 1787
Letter to William Stephens Smith
[This provides more context to the one I usually see.—Joe]
Global markets today seem irresistible to central bankers with plans for better times. Planning is the central bankers’ baleful vanity, since, for them, markets are a test tube in which to try out their interventionist theories.
Central bankers control the price of money and therefore indirectly influence every market in the world. Given this immense power, the ideal central banker would be humble, cautious, and deferential to market signals. Instead, modern central bankers are both bold and arrogant in their efforts to bend markets to their will. Top-down central planning, dictating resource allocation and industrial output based on supposedly superior knowledge of needs and wants, is an impulse that has infected political players throughout history. It is both ironic and tragic that Western central banks have embraced central planning with gusto in the early twenty-first century, not long after the Soviet Union and Communist China abandoned it in the late twentieth. The Soviet Union and Communist China engaged in extreme central planning over the world’s two largest countries and one-third of the earth’s population for more than one hundred years combined. The result was a conspicuous and dismal failure. Today’s central planners, especially the Federal Reserve, will encounter the same failure in time. The open issues are, when and at what cost to society?
The impulse toward central planning often springs from the perceived need to solve a problem with a top-down solution. For Russian Communists in 1917, it was the problem of the czar and a feudal society. For Chinese Communists in 1949, it was local corruption and foreign imperialism. For the central planners at central banks today, the problem is deflation and low nominal growth. The problems are real, but the top-down solutions are illusory, the product of hubris and false ideologies.
James Rickards
2014
The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System
[See also Book Review: ‘The Death of Money’ by James Rickards which concludes with:
Rickards book is packed with cutting edge analysis and rational perspectives on pretty much every topic the world citizen has to know about. As of this moment, there is no other book offering explanations and solutions to the most pressing problems the world is facing, making “The Death of Money” an absolute must read.
I’m only about 25% into the book and find it fascinating. I found the market intelligence and financial war sections particularly interesting. Rickards and others worked with the CIA to design and implement a system which could have predicted the 9/11 attack a few days before it happened based on the shorting of airline stocks by people in the social networks of the hijackers. It also has other uses related to insider trading.
“An absolute must read”? I probably wouldn’t go that far, at least not based on what I have read so far. But it’s highly recommended.—Joe]
Data companies are starting to sell “extremists scores” to help companies avoid doing business to Trump supporters. What is your score?
Andrew Torba @a
Posted on Gab February 11, 2021
[Exercise of a specific enumerated right is evidence of being an “extremist”?
“Extremist”? With those type of numbers…
I don’t think that word means what they claim it means. Or, probably more accurately, someone is doing some really heavy duty projection.
As I have pointed out before, historically, the political left progressively tightens the purity tests and eventually eats their own. It is an almost inevitable consequence of their psychology.
This is particularly relevant to current events. For example. Gina Carano was fired by Disney for an “anti-Semitic” post on social media. One of my sources says this was the post:
This is, at least partially, confirmed by Variety and the WSJ.
Variety and the WSJ quote a Lucasfilm spokesperson as saying:
… her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
I see absolutely nothing to indicate she did anything even approaching what she is accused of doing. And, as one person in a private post on Facebook said:
Them firing her kinda proves her point.
We live in interesting times.
Prepare accordingly.—Joe]
Always love when the facilitators of Rapists & Hate Crime abusers expose themselves when demanding women, minorities, & LGBTQ+ be forced defenseless.
sacrebleu14 / SA Hinchcliffe @sacrebleu141
Tweeted on February 7, 2021
[This was in response to:
Martin Hussey @HusseyMartin
For a start in-depth background checks including mental health, raising the age limit for ownership of any firearm. Ban all assault weapons. Making it law that all firearms are stored in a secure place. Better still ban all firearms.
It is the obvious goal of the political left to make people helpless. That puts the politicians in a position to provide “protection” to those they decide are deserving. And, probably more importantly, to enable the punishment of those who would challenge their authority.—Joe]
Free men don’t obey unjust laws, they prepare for the tyrants who try to enforce them.
UR a Smart Ass, Carl @cleflore23
Tweeted on February 8, 2021
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Conservatives and moderates MUST start to physically separate from the political left. We must remove ourselves from the blood sucking parasites that have attached themselves to us. This allows us to remain free to think and speak as we like, and it takes all power away from leftists to hurt us by disrupting our means of making a living.
Secession is a more extreme measure, but it WILL become necessary if leftists refuse to accept that we are no longer participating in their games of fear and subterfuge. Leftists are collectivist by nature, and collectivists see people as property. Walking away is not an option in their minds. So, though we might successfully separate, this would only be the beginning of the battle.
The important thing is to first make sure that conservatives KNOW that there are places they can go where their civil rights are valued and defended. If conservatives feel completely isolated and alone, many will give up, go dark and pray they are not discovered. This is unacceptable.
Brandon Smith
January 20, 2021
Biden’s Presidency Will Be A Catalyst For Secession – And Perhaps Civil War
[See also my previous QOTD from this same article with particular attention to the “scapegoat Olympics” comment.—Joe]
Lee’s bill so far has no cosponsors, and it is unlikely to make much progress. But it reflects a broader mindset in the Democratic Party, which used to at least pay lip service to the Second Amendment but lately talks and acts as if it does not exist.
Jacob Sullum
February 5, 2021
This Draconian Bill Would Turn Millions of Peaceful Gun Owners Into Felons
[I see lots of chatter about this bill. I think it is best to save that energy for something else. President Biden has his own plans which have a much better chance of success than those of Representative Lee.
Give money to SAF and others who are engaged in the court battles protecting our rights. Contact your representatives and let them know how important respect of the Constitutional limits on government are to you, your community, your state, and the nation.
Other potentially useful activities might be to document your boating accidents, camouflaging your gun safe, and establishing relationships with people you meet at the range. Be creative and do what you are comfortable doing to prepare for and resist laws such as Lee’s if it does get passed sometime in the future.—Joe]
Religion is very comforting to people because it offers complete guidance about every aspect of one’s life from what to eat, whom to have sex with, to which exact minute to light a candle. Today, religion has been replaced by “loving omnipotent” governments that offer the same.
Gad Saad @GadSaad
Tweeted on February 3, 2021
[I see the wisdom in this assessment.
More importantly, I see the terrifying consequences of this development.
What I desire to see is a large majority of the people able to think for themselves, arrive at good decisions, execute on those decisions, and take responsibility for their actions.
I fear my desires are beyond the capacity of our current population and certainly beyond their current programming.—Joe]
Via a tweet from Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras we have the work of gkchesterbelloc:
Forty-two derringers, three hundred forty-seven revolvers, and one thousand ninety-three pistols make the list. One thousand four hundred eighty-two total handguns are now de-certified by State of California and can no longer be bought or sold.
California should be “decertified”. It has been a long time since they have been fit to claim membership in a country which began with these words:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
A lawyer who represented the Trump campaign in a legal challenge to the Pennsylvania election results was forced out of his post last week as a law professor at Chapman University in California for representing President Donald Trump as a client.
Matthew Vadum
January 17, 2021
Trump Lawyer Ousted as Law School Professor
[The lawyer says:
Eastman accused members of the university’s board of trustees of publishing “false, defamatory statements about me without even the courtesy of contacting me beforehand to discuss.”
“Had they bothered to discuss the matter with me, they could have learned that every statement I have made is backed up with documentary and/or expert evidence, and solidly grounded in law,” Eastman wrote.
There appear to be large numbers of people of the opinion that expressing verifiable facts in support of a political enemy, let alone someone guilty of a crime, is sufficient justification to make them ineligible to earn a livelihood.
Assuming Eastman is being truthful, the facts are irrelevant to these people.
That’s some really scary stuff.
I’m so old that I remember when the ACLU went to court to defend the free speech rights of literal Nazis. And now it appears the Nazis now have the upper hand and are not going to allow the free speech of others.
Another observation I have about the article is based upon this:
Chapman University President Daniele Struppa promptly denounced Eastman for engaging in constitutionally protected free speech. Struppa accused Eastman in a Jan. 8 statement of playing “a role in the tragic events in Washington, D.C., that jeopardized our democracy.”
“Eastman’s actions are in direct opposition to the values and beliefs of our institution. He has now put Chapman in the position of being publicly disparaged for the actions of a single faculty member, and for what many call my failure to punish and fire him,” Struppa wrote.
This is a way of thinking that is alien to me. As long as Eastman did not claim to be representing Chapman University I can’t imagine whatever he said or did reflecting upon the University. He was acting as an individual and represents himself. But those who demanded and/or implemented his dismissal apparently don’t recognize the existence of the individual separate from their organization.
Hence, it would appear, by implementation of their own rules at a larger scale the people of the United States could decide they do not represent the U.S. and be morally justified in expelling them from the country.—Joe]
We are going to have to figure out the OAN and Newsmax problem. These companies have freedom of speech, but I’m not sure we need Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and such bringing them into tens of millions of homes.
Alex Stamos
January 17, 2021
[Of course they consider free speech a problem. Their ideas can’t compete in a free marketplace of ideas.—Joe]
Truth is attested to by actions as well as words. Wearing a mask, Mr. Biden has told us, is essential to saving lives. But on inauguration night, there he was, celebrating, maskless. His press secretary, in a searing moment of truthfulness, told us it was fine because he had “bigger issues” to worry about.
That admission, in its own way, was a clarifying one, capturing as it did the real meaning of our new era of truth and unity: the truth is that our unity will be achieved by your doing what we tell you to do.
Gerard Baker
January 25, 2021
America, It’s Time for ‘Unity’—or Else
[Via email from Paul K.—Joe]
They believe they have contained the spark with their fraudulent election victory; installation of an empty senile vassal as their conduit for the great reset; having their media mouthpieces propagate the falsity of a right wing white supremacist insurrection at the Capital; crushing dissent by censoring the truth through totalitarian social media conglomerates; proceeding with an impeachment farce based on Trump telling his supporters to peacefully protest the fraudulent election outcome; and threatening to destroy the lives of all vocal Trump supporters.
I am highly doubtful they have contained the spark. I believe there are smoldering embers just waiting to be stirred into a conflagration which will engulf the entire world in a fiery purging of the existing social order, which has exhausted itself and needs to be cleansed.
Jim Quinn
January 25, 2021
FOURTH TURNING DETONATION
[That is a plausible assessment.
So when and how will this conflagration happen?
I’m not seeing it happen unless there is a major trigger like hyperinflation or door-to-door gun confiscation, that sort of thing.—Joe]
Rooted in America’s ugly history of white supremacy, indigenous dispossession and anti-blackness, multiracial whiteness is an ideology invested in the unequal distribution of land, wealth, power and privilege — a form of hierarchy in which the standing of one section of the population is premised on the debasement of others. Multiracial whiteness reflects an understanding of whiteness as a political color and not simply a racial identity — a discriminatory worldview in which feelings of freedom and belonging are produced through the persecution and dehumanization of others.
…
In the post-Trump era, the challenge will be to prevail over the extremism of Trump’s White majority while trying to prevent the politics of whiteness from becoming an increasingly multiracial affair.
Cristina Beltrán
January 15, 2021
To understand Trump’s support, we must think in terms of multiracial Whiteness
[See also what Ed Driscoll has to say about this.
Just as it was in the USSR there is an ever changing, ever increasing, level of purity required by the political left. Their creativity has no limits. The absurdity is applauded, not scorned, because it allows them to continue their programs of hate and destruction. The exercise of power intoxicates them and they will say and do whatever they must to feed and justify their addiction.
This is our future.
If gender doesn’t depend upon biology then what makes you think whiteness depends on skin color?
Try to keep up comrade. Be thankful that today it is just being doxed and deplatformed. Soon, if you don’t understand these things as they have been revealed, you will be spending time in a reeducation center having things such as this explained to you in much simpler terms.—Joe]
Via Oleg (of course):
And now we have widespread repression of the speech of political opponents and the President of the United States openly claiming he can and will defeat the nations oldest and largest civil rights organization.
One of Biden’s first Executive Orders should be to prohibit the airing of FoxNews, Newsmax or OANN in any federally owned property or any military unit or installation, and to remove it from any cable plans that are offered in government owned business or housing complexes.
Pam Keith, Esq. @PamKeithFL
Tweeted on January 19, 2021
[This is not some random deranged person. From her Twitter profile:
DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE FL 18th Cong. District, former US Navy JAG, litigator & expert on workplace law. BC Law School Grad.
This is a lawyer and Democrat nominee for congress openly advocating that the U.S. government suppress opposing political opinion.—Joe]
Southern states are not Red States. They are suppressed states. Which means the only way we are going to heal is through the actual liberation of southern states, the actual liberation of the poor, the actual liberation of working people, from economic, social, and racial oppression.
That’s the only way.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
January 13, 2021
[It appears she mistakes (giving her the benefit of doubt as to being stupid rather than evil) seeing people is a state of relative freedom as having that freedom forced upon them rather than having the comfort of a nanny state. And hence, they need to be liberated from that freedom.
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four was supposed to be a warning about an impending dystopia instead of an instruction manual:
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
I would like to suggest AOC work on liberating her own New York City from such things as the oppressive laws against gun ownership, the size of soft drinks, rent control, and the terrible tax rates.
But that won’t happen. What we view as “features” she sees as “bugs”. There is no common ground between such people.—Joe]