Ghost. I would like to see u do an article on how bad our schools have become and y. I say it started with lbj and his great society. His comment about keeping certain peoples on the farm has rang true
ghostsniperDecember 2, 2023, 5:01 PM
I’ll see what I can do.
ghostsniperDecember 1, 2023, 12:35 PM
The 15 Years That Destroyed America
Paul Craig Roberts
The United States Government today bears little resemblance to the government created by the Founding Fathers. Many “reforms” contributed to the transformation of an accountable government to an unaccountable one. For example, the direct election of US senators and the expansion of the franchise from male property owners adversely affected the security of private property. Others point to the effects of wars. All of these played a role in America’s destruction. However, in my opinion the transformation of American government can be explained by events in three short periods of our history.
The founders saw the US as an association of states in which central power was limited and weak. The 10th Amendment gave governing to the states. President Lincoln’s war for the tariff destroyed states’ rights and led to the supremacy of centralized federal power over the states. Today what happens in specific states can be determined by votes in other states. Lincoln’s war lasted four years, and that was time enough for Lincoln to destroy the framework devised by the Founders.
The second devastating period was 1913. That year the United States took two hard blows. One from the creation of the Federal Reserve, and one from the establishment of an income tax. The creation of the Federal Reserve took control over money from the government and gave it to the big bankers. The income tax resurrected slavery. Historians have ignored that historically the definition of a free person is a person who owns his own labor. A slave or a serf is a person whose labor is owned in whole or part by an outside party. No person subject to an income tax owns his own labor. Once a person is violated in this way, all his other protections fall away–his privacy, his security in his home and documents, his protection against arbitrary arrest, self-incrimination, indefinite detention without conviction. No American alive today has experienced the freedom known to the Founders.
The third destructive period was the depression of the 1930s. This was the work of the Federal Reserve which permitted the money supply to shrink, thereby collapsing employment, income, and prices. The Great Depression produced President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. The New Deal transferred Congress’ lawmaking power to the new progressive regulatory agencies. Today when Congress passes a law, it amounts to an authorization for regulatory agencies to write the regulations that implement the law. For example, the 1964 Civil Rights Act expressly prohibited racial quotas, but the EEOC imposed racial quotas by regulatory means.
These three periods, comprising 15 years of American history or 6 percent of our time as a country, sufficed to destroy what the Founders created. Historians are blind, because history has been written for propagandistic reasons to serve agendas. Lincoln’s war for the tariff has been turned into a moral cause of freeing black slaves, something Lincoln denied while initiating and fighting the war. The year 1913 is described as a progressive turning in the direction of financial stability and equity or fairness. The New Deal is presented as measures that tamed the instability of capitalism. When Henry Ford reportedly said “history is bunk,” he wasn’t far off.
It is unfortunate that our political heroes, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and England’s Winston Churchill come under scrutiny at the very time that the countries are under assault for their evil past. It is now when we need belief to fend off assault that our idols are shown to have feet of clay. David Irvin’s Churchill’s War destroyed the artfully created reputation of Churchill. Now David T. Beito’s The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights completes the destruction of progressive hero FDR.
Like Lincoln, Roosevelt used war to achieve his agenda–the destruction of the British Empire and its replacement with the American Empire based on the US dollar taking the British currency’s role as world reserve currency. It is a paradox that liberals have regarded as a progressive hero a president, who squashed dissent and free speech, locked up American citizens of Japanese ethnicity in concentration camps, destroying their lives and allowing their properties to be stolen, and attacked the Bill of Rights that made Americans secure under the protection of law. As Beito’s exposure of FDR makes clear, the man was a tyrant who elevated executive power by stripping power from Congress and intimidating the Supreme Court.
Beito spent a decade researching and writing his book, and the voluminous notes and index comprising more than 25 percent of the printed pages attest to his thoroughness. The book is not one man’s opinion. It is a historical record.
If America had had historians different from the gullible and insouciant liberals, we might still exist in the freedom and liberty that the Founders gave to us.
I agree on the second two, and my feelings about other greatest harms sometimes involve foreign powers, and so I’ll keep those in check. I have a feeling another great turning point has been reached, but I’m not sure where to put down the marker. The Sixties? Mass illegal immigration permitted by almost every modern president except Trump??
As far as Lincoln goes, while I’ll admit states rights are foundational and bedrock, I refuse to admit that secession is.
If I was to average the things mentioned, I’d say we’re a late stage republic and with old age comes pain. We ain’t over yet, though. The very thought or idea of American freedom is a bright light, and a city on a hill. It has taken ruinous insults, as mentioned in the article. Our own government is the most egregious and dangerous one because of the pretend authority and willful power it so easily abuses the people with. With that in mind, Covid lockdowns/mandates are high on my list of an inflection point spelling doom.
ghostsniperDecember 1, 2023, 5:28 PM
For me it’s the 1913 stuff that boils my piss.
Outright theft in your face.
Absent that, I believe a lot of the nonsense today would not exist.
The gravity and over reach of power bought with stolen money, and then leveraged out to thousands of trillions of dollars of debt is beyond breath taking, and all of the damage here and abroad that was caused by it.
Casey KlahnDecember 1, 2023, 5:34 PM
I agree 1913 was the dog’s breakfast. Not sure if the government is a better control on the economy than bankers, in theory. In actual emotions, I’d take every bank and banker today and line up the Parrot Guns at dawn and blast away at the ruinous lying bastards they are. But I’m not against banking in general.
Income tax. Can’t argue with the man’s labor is his own part.
DTDecember 1, 2023, 7:11 PM
“America” isn’t the US government. Maybe it never was but the government used to at least pretend. America will live on – the US may not have long to go. Like AT&T and GM, the name will stick around but it’ll be a whole new company under new management. Not for our generation (I presume) to worry about … or more correctly, it will be what will – the path is already set – and there’s no point crying over the spilt milk of the past. We won’t live long enough – naturally or otherwise – to participate in the Glorious New World anyway.
Snakepit KansasDecember 2, 2023, 6:22 AM
DT,
I almost agree with you. Damn the torpedoes. My legacy in the form of my two children will need to continue to fight for their freedoms as best they can. You may be right that it will be an all new world.
Casey KlahnDecember 1, 2023, 12:55 PM
The crazies are in full bitch mode on Twitter about Kissinger, late as of yesterday (died at 100).
The thing I note mostly is that every armchair screech is resurrecting the myths from the Vietnam war that whole legions of commutards and berzercliars told us at the time. Cambodia was carpet bombed. Of the very few times that the US military “carpet bombed” targets (these would be end-to-end impacting of bombs in a rectangular target zone), Cambodia was not the recipient of such. This was bullshit manic mode by the hippies whose information came straight from a little bureau in Moscow. US: bad. Communist soldiers: good.
The poor Kmere Rouge, not the victims of regular bombings. They had to be carpet bombed. This is because they hwere huddled shoulder to shoulder, and foot to foot, in rice paddys and jungles throughout Cambodia. Cambodia’s neutrality was violated by Nixon, et el, because: Nixon was a ruthless bastard who wanted more dark yellow men dead.
Please quit pulling my leg, Karl Marx. FFS. Kissinger carpet bombed Cambodia…shyeahhhh right! What Nixon and, in a completely advisory mode, the Secretary of State (not in the military chain of command, BTW) Kissinger executed was a reversal of the permissions that Cambodia had as a false neutral state. The Ho Chi Minh Trail ran in big lacy patterns through Laos and Cambodia and was the supply line that made it possible for the VC and NVA to conduct a guerrilla war in Vietnam. When Nixon and Kissinger decided to force a Paris Agreement, they amped up the war on many fronts. It did bring the North to the table and resulted in the cessation of American involvement in the war. All the little Twittter Ches even to this day are butthurt that their communist shitstream isn’t worldwide yet, and describe the history as “Kissinger widened the war because he’s an evil Jew-Nazi”. That’s a Jew-Nazi. You know, that famous political stripe of conflicted self hate known as the jew-Nazi. I read this term again and again on Twitter and almost wretched. I suppose Biden is a socialist-american; the direct opposite of the jew-nazi. Now, more than ever, we need to re-elect the socialist-american uncle Joe who is hard at work fighting nazis, and also christo-fascists. Don’t forget how the christo-fascists rioted on 1-6 at the capitol and almost brought down our government.
Can you tell my BS meter tipped over? Oh, did I forget to mention that Kissinger was racist?
ghostsniperDecember 1, 2023, 2:33 PM
I was wearing OD green when I watched on german tv the US choppers landing on the roofs.
I thought of that time 47 years later when that plane was leaving and sandbaggers were blowed off the wings at 90mph. You know, when all that weaponry that we the taxpayers are on the hook for got left behind. Doesn’t it feel grand to live in a land held hostage by the largest most evil criminal enterprise the world has ever known?
Kissinger? Who he?
AnneDecember 1, 2023, 4:39 PM
Casey: Hope you don’t believe I am one of those “screechers”! There was so much misinformation re VIETNAM!
Casey KlahnDecember 1, 2023, 5:29 PM
I certainly agreed with your assessment of McNamara the other day. You know who I disagreed with a lot on Vietnam? Our beloved and departed host, Gerard. Didn’t matter to me at all. I loved him no less. And, it gives me an opportunity to gripe, inform, and persuade about the fruitlessness of the greater psychological problem: Vietnam Syndrome. I don’t get too out of whack about some Vietnam war beliefs; it was an epic and tragic period in our lives. I do, however, wish to argue the assessments people make when they are far off target. Kissinger’s a good example. The belief that America cannot accomplish anything in low intensity wars as a default statement. We’ve fukt up plenty of them, and more and more all the time. But it’s not inevitable. Gravity, and the principles of war are inevitable.
Picture that meme where Crowder sits at a table with a “prove me wrong” sign, after some controversial statement is written. Mine says: “Kissinger and Nixon ended American involvement in Vietnam. Prove me wrong.”
Dear Anne, my friend I just think this is a great chance to revisit the Cold War and also Vietnam and think clearly. here’s another proposition about Kissinger: he kept the lid on the Cold War and helped save the world form nuclear exchange.
Ghostie, I was at Camp Murray when the Boat People arrived and were con-toned there.
AnneDecember 1, 2023, 7:18 PM
It seems to me that I may have mentioned this before, please forgive if I have. My first husband–high school sweetheart–joined the Air Force in 1960. He was trained in hydraulics and stationed in Fukuoka Japan from 1961-63. During those years he was frequently sent out to some place that was “top secret duty”. He repaired airplanes that had been damaged by guerrilla shooters, or by saboteurs. I believe the first time he was sent to Viet Nam was in 1962–could have been 1961. WAAAAAY before America could find it on the map.
ghostsniperDecember 1, 2023, 7:22 PM
Godzilla Minus One
==============
I gotta see it when it becomes available – streaming or on DVD.
Not a big G fan but this one looks diff.
Trailer 2:24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4hhZjEPq04
ghostsniperDecember 1, 2023, 7:27 PM
Reacher
======
Watched the first season, waiting for the 2nd to break loose.
Take a look at this prison bathroom scene and you’ll know what it’s like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M5wx17klH4
Time rolls on
N’ that’s as it should be
Here and gone
Seems to move so quickly
Man, we was happy
In our restless hearts
It was heaven Right here on earth
Yeah, we were laughin’
As we reached for the stars
And we had some
For what it was worth
Those were good times
Damn good times
Those were good times
Damn good times
Hey, take a look at this picture,
Can you believe that was you?
And who’s that standin’ there in the corner?
Not me!
Ah, the crazy things we used to do
Sure, we was acting like a couple of kids
Good to remember
You know that it is
I still feel it
Like the sun on my skin
Maybe that’s better
Cause these are good times
Damn good times
Talkin’ about good times
Damn good times
So it’s one for the money
But that don’t make the show
Count to three and I’ll be ready
To follow that road (yes I will)
I see it comin’
Yeah, and this one is outs
We got heaven right here on Earth
Ain’t nothin’ like it
When you’re reachin’ for stars
And you grab one
For what it is worth
You can tell ’em
We’ll be having good times
Damn good times
I’m talkin’ good times (yes sir)
Damn good times
ghostsniperDecember 2, 2023, 1:09 PM
LIVING CHRISTMAS TREE | DOUGLAS-FIR
================================
I buyed one of these for my wife, as a Christmas gift.
She likes to grow stuff and it seems to come natural to her.
Everything I try to grow fails and it’s pretty quick about it too.
Maybe she can plant this tree at the far end of the north yard, about 100′ from the house.
This tree will be around long after we’re both gone.
When it gets about 4′ tall maybe I’ll ziptie a little time capsule in the topmost branch.
Go for it.
I double dawg dare ya.
If doug fir isn’t to your fancy they have others.
New Idea
=======
Take all 1,200,000 people, presently parasiting off the US taxpayers, that are in prison and ship them to the US-Mexican border and let them loose into Mexico.
Afterall, isn’t that what Mexico has done to the US?
The released prisoners will be told to keep going and if they try to come back they will be shot on sight.
If you were a prisoner what would you do, get shot, or learn how to talk messican and getcha a messican blackburd and a bottle of mezcal?
“They all call her puta cause no one really knows her name.”
New Idea – Part Deux
===============
Now that all the prisons are sitting there empty, herd up ALL the federal employees and stack em up inside them formerly empty cells.
Nothing but bloney sandos and red koolade for sustenance every.dam.day til they expire.
Don’t even lock the cell doors.
Let em run loose inside that nightmare, fornicating and AIDSing each other at will.
Set up a fisheye video camera in the main ceiling and drop a big nag of krak in there everyday at noon, stream that shit continuously on a secret eastern european website.
ghostsniperDecember 2, 2023, 2:19 PM
QotD
====
“The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects – his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity.”
― Henry Hazlitt
ghostsniper, that is one of the finest summations of lazy, unproductive, spoiled brats that I have ever read. Everyone should remember that quote when the shtf and they come knocking for food. Thanks.
ghostsniperDecember 2, 2023, 2:34 PM
Putting It Together – The Forced Metadata Demand Inside the Jack Smith Court Order – They Are Showing Us the Govt Battlespace for 2024 and What We Will Face
—————————
Yesterday, we noted the warrant demand from Special Counsel Jack Smith to Twitter, that included the demand for all information on Donald Trump’s account that relates to his followers and supporters. {LINK} However, the element for this focus is the granular demand for user metadata, and the bigger picture for 2024.
Within the warrant:
The U.S. government requested and received the metadata for accounts connected to, and in alignment with, President Donald J. Trump.
That’s billions of billions of datapoints on millions of American citizens, their locations, their devices, their ip addresses and ultimately their real identities and connected activity as attributed to -and connected with- their connected social media accounts. Essentially, turning Donald J. Trump into the center of a surveillance virus.
People then say – how could the Jack Smith special counsel possibly comb through all of those users and all of that connected metadata? The answer is Artificial Intelligence; but the serious concern comes when you combine the metadata, AI organization and the previous announcements from DHS.
If you have followed my outlines on this issue [Category Here], you will note exactly where this latest Jack Smith development falls on the continuum. The 2024 election is right around the corner. Previously, I stated the artificial intelligence (AI) component to the internet surveillance system was going to launch toward the end of this year. Then DHS announced exactly that [SEE HERE].
I find it very interesting the DHS memo was issued on August 8th, but only published for the general public September 14th. July and August were when I first identified a new set of AI spider crawls underway as launched by Google. Pay very, very close attention to the two underlined words in the following paragraph:
Get a rope.
He’s beyond repair.
To politicians and war mongers like Austin wasting money on foreign nations is more important than any domestic issue we have.
You can take the boy out of the ghetto but….you can’t take the ghetto out of the boy.
Defense head calls out those who advocate isolationism and ‘an American retreat from responsibility’
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Saturday denounced those who advocate “an American retreat from responsibility” and said sustained U.S. leadership is needed to help keep the world as safe, free and prosperous as possible. He also urged Congress to end the partisan gridlock that has stalled the federal budget and war spending.
The United States must reject calls to turn away from global interests and become more isolationist, he told an audience of lawmakers, corporate and defense leaders and government officials attending a security conference. Those who “try to pull up the drawbridge,” he said, undermine the security that has led to decades of prosperity.
In his remarks at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California’s Simi Valley, Austin delivered a lengthy defense of U.S. support to Israel in its war against Hamas and to Ukraine in its struggle to battle Russia’s invasion. He said “the world will only become more dangerous if tyrants and terrorists believe that they can get away with wholesale aggression and mass slaughter.”
Austin met privately with top lawmakers on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
His message of rejecting isolationism appeared directed at conservative lawmakers who are increasingly opposed to spending on overseas wars and back former President Donald Trump’s “America First’” ideology.
“You’ll hear some people try to brand an American retreat from responsibility as bold new leadership,” Austin said. “Make no mistake: It is not bold. It is not new. And it is not leadership.”
Congress has failed to approve any new money for the wars in Ukraine and Israel and has managed to pass only a short-term budget bill, known as a continuing resolution, that runs out early next year. The Senate has been deadlocked for months over one lawmaker’s move to block hundreds of military nominations, including critical senior commanders for key regions around the world.
“Our competitors don’t have to operate under continuing resolutions. And doing so erodes both our security and our ability to compete,” Austin said. He opened his speech with a plea to the lawmakers in the crowd to pass both the budget and the supplemental funding for the wars.
Administration officials have warned that money for Ukraine is running out and may only last through the end of this year. The Pentagon has about $5 billion worth of equipment it can send from it’s own stockpiles and has been eating away at that almost weekly. Money to replace military weapons and equipment taken from Pentagon stocks to send to Ukraine is rapidly dwindling, and totals about $1 billion.
Austin, who was in Ukraine’s capital less than two weeks ago, has repeatedly pressed the important of helping Ukraine battle Russia’s invasion, as part of a broader campaign to prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from threatening other countries in Europe.
Austin also noted that as much as $50 billion of that supplemental budget request for the wars would through American defense companies, helping to create or support tens of thousands of jobs in 30 states.
While he did not mention it in his address, Austin has often criticized Congress for its failure to confirm more than 400 military officers nominated for promotions or other jobs.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has blocked the nominations and objected when other senators have tried to get some through. On just two occasions has the Senate managed to votes to confirm a total of six high ranking leaders.
Almost 400 military nominations are in limbo, and the number is growing. Frustrated Republicans have tried unsuccessfully for almost nine months to quietly persuade Tuberville to drop the holds, and negotiations are continuing. Senior military officials have warned repeatedly that the situation threatens readiness and national security.
In other comments, Austin underscored the administration’s repeated insistence that Israel do more to protect civilians as it restarts its air assault against Hamas after a seven-day cease-fire to secure the release of prisoners.
Israeli fighter jets began hitting targets in the Gaza Strip minutes after the weeklong truce expired on Friday, and Israel dropped leaflets over parts of southern Gaza urging people to leave their homes, signaling it was preparing to widen its offensive.
About 100 hostages were freed as part of the truce, but about 140 remain held by Hamas and others in Gaza.
While any country has a duty to respond to an attack like the Oct. 7 assault by Hamas on Israel, Austin said the lesson is that “you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians.” Austin said that if civilians are driven into the arms of the enemy by violence, it becomes a strategic defeat.
If we continue to have institutions like the war college and the military academies, they will inevitably teach future leaders the methodology of containing/preventing civilian deaths while battling an enemy in an urban environment, which is what we’re witnessing in Gaza now. It will be textbook.
My deepest desire is that someday Gen. Austin will be regarded as next to Benedict Arnold as a turncoat. The reason is he’s done innumerable things to ruin the military.
(free-associating and not going in any order here) Ukraine where? It didn’t take much to take Ukraine off the front page news, and a country like ours that got bored traveling in person to the moon is now bored by a major European war. We wanted maybe swashbuckle maneuvers and lightning strokes, but instead we get yard by yard plodding and all the news is more laden with propaganda than with facts. IOW, 5G Warfare outpaces every other concern.
The poor Ukes – with friends like NATO, who needs enemies? They lack manpower and NATO, by design, ain’t gonna give it to them. 2 years ago, I told you Russia could lose the war, but if they get a draw it’ll be one n which Russia takes half. (looking over my glasses at you).
Russia’s been kicked hard in the nads, and has lost the respect of the world. The damage they’ve been handed to their oil economy, their economy, and their military will be distant memories soon enough, but anyone going forward who likes Russia’s chances in a European war is a fool. They proved that they have no infantry, no tank forces, no air power, and although their artillery gave as good as it got, they still operate their artillery a century behind the times. If they keep Crimea and Donbass, it’s a pyrrhic victory, just like Finland in 1940.
If, and I pray it happens, Trump goes back into office, he needs to not fire Gen. Austin, but he needs to take Austin’s saber, cut each brass button and shoulder board from his uniform, break his saber, and walk him out the front gate with the tocsin: “no more shall the name of Lloyd Austin be mentioned in this city”.
Going forward what we need to do is reinforce NATO, who are the big winners in the Russo-Ukraine War. In Israel, the thing that’s been called Palestine will cease to exist as an entity. The shitfuckery that the Hams and Hezbos have been serving up will dwindle to next to nothing, and they’ll need some other tactic to hate on Israel with.
ghostsniperDecember 3, 2023, 8:00 AM
Speaking of war college.
In the early 60’s I went to Cub Scout meetings at the Carlisle War College.
Old, dark buildings.
Cornered a mouse one time, it bit my finger.
I was 9 yo.
Had to get 14 rabies shots right in the belly – 1 a day for 14 days in a row.
Casey KlahnDecember 3, 2023, 9:40 AM
What was his rank? The mouse…
Casey KlahnDecember 3, 2023, 7:36 AM
Disinformation/misinformation.
In my day, we called that “the news”. It was never right or correct, but after awhile you learned how to sort it.
What the Left really means now by disinformation is all the news that doesn’t forward their narrative. That, my friends, is pure communism.
ghostsniperDecember 3, 2023, 8:07 AM
We weren’t bombarded with news back then, like today.
Local news came on the TV at 6pm and national/world news at 6:30pm.
There was the newspaper once a day and of course the news was always one day late.
And the radio did news spots on the hour unless something important happened (Kennedy Assassination type stuff) where they broke into whatever was on. Oh yeah, in the 60’s it was AM only.
So yeah, in my lifetime “news” went from being barely accessible to be barely unavoidable.
The whole country would probably be better off with about 98% LESS “news”.
ghostsniperDecember 3, 2023, 2:33 PM
If it’s true, why do you suppose it is?
Just asking.
Frankly, I’m past being tired of all the whining no matter from whom.
Do you remember several days ago I posted a link about a project by the School of Agriculture at MSU? The project sets fem/nazis out to rural communities to teach them to love the strangers who they are bringing into those isolated communities.
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
“You talkin’ to me?”
looks around
“Well you must be talkin’ to me, I’m the only one here.”
Ghost. I would like to see u do an article on how bad our schools have become and y. I say it started with lbj and his great society. His comment about keeping certain peoples on the farm has rang true
I’ll see what I can do.
The 15 Years That Destroyed America
Paul Craig Roberts
The United States Government today bears little resemblance to the government created by the Founding Fathers. Many “reforms” contributed to the transformation of an accountable government to an unaccountable one. For example, the direct election of US senators and the expansion of the franchise from male property owners adversely affected the security of private property. Others point to the effects of wars. All of these played a role in America’s destruction. However, in my opinion the transformation of American government can be explained by events in three short periods of our history.
The founders saw the US as an association of states in which central power was limited and weak. The 10th Amendment gave governing to the states. President Lincoln’s war for the tariff destroyed states’ rights and led to the supremacy of centralized federal power over the states. Today what happens in specific states can be determined by votes in other states. Lincoln’s war lasted four years, and that was time enough for Lincoln to destroy the framework devised by the Founders.
The second devastating period was 1913. That year the United States took two hard blows. One from the creation of the Federal Reserve, and one from the establishment of an income tax. The creation of the Federal Reserve took control over money from the government and gave it to the big bankers. The income tax resurrected slavery. Historians have ignored that historically the definition of a free person is a person who owns his own labor. A slave or a serf is a person whose labor is owned in whole or part by an outside party. No person subject to an income tax owns his own labor. Once a person is violated in this way, all his other protections fall away–his privacy, his security in his home and documents, his protection against arbitrary arrest, self-incrimination, indefinite detention without conviction. No American alive today has experienced the freedom known to the Founders.
The third destructive period was the depression of the 1930s. This was the work of the Federal Reserve which permitted the money supply to shrink, thereby collapsing employment, income, and prices. The Great Depression produced President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. The New Deal transferred Congress’ lawmaking power to the new progressive regulatory agencies. Today when Congress passes a law, it amounts to an authorization for regulatory agencies to write the regulations that implement the law. For example, the 1964 Civil Rights Act expressly prohibited racial quotas, but the EEOC imposed racial quotas by regulatory means.
These three periods, comprising 15 years of American history or 6 percent of our time as a country, sufficed to destroy what the Founders created. Historians are blind, because history has been written for propagandistic reasons to serve agendas. Lincoln’s war for the tariff has been turned into a moral cause of freeing black slaves, something Lincoln denied while initiating and fighting the war. The year 1913 is described as a progressive turning in the direction of financial stability and equity or fairness. The New Deal is presented as measures that tamed the instability of capitalism. When Henry Ford reportedly said “history is bunk,” he wasn’t far off.
It is unfortunate that our political heroes, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and England’s Winston Churchill come under scrutiny at the very time that the countries are under assault for their evil past. It is now when we need belief to fend off assault that our idols are shown to have feet of clay. David Irvin’s Churchill’s War destroyed the artfully created reputation of Churchill. Now David T. Beito’s The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights completes the destruction of progressive hero FDR.
Like Lincoln, Roosevelt used war to achieve his agenda–the destruction of the British Empire and its replacement with the American Empire based on the US dollar taking the British currency’s role as world reserve currency. It is a paradox that liberals have regarded as a progressive hero a president, who squashed dissent and free speech, locked up American citizens of Japanese ethnicity in concentration camps, destroying their lives and allowing their properties to be stolen, and attacked the Bill of Rights that made Americans secure under the protection of law. As Beito’s exposure of FDR makes clear, the man was a tyrant who elevated executive power by stripping power from Congress and intimidating the Supreme Court.
Beito spent a decade researching and writing his book, and the voluminous notes and index comprising more than 25 percent of the printed pages attest to his thoroughness. The book is not one man’s opinion. It is a historical record.
If America had had historians different from the gullible and insouciant liberals, we might still exist in the freedom and liberty that the Founders gave to us.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/11/29/the-15-years-that-destroyed-america/
I agree on the second two, and my feelings about other greatest harms sometimes involve foreign powers, and so I’ll keep those in check. I have a feeling another great turning point has been reached, but I’m not sure where to put down the marker. The Sixties? Mass illegal immigration permitted by almost every modern president except Trump??
As far as Lincoln goes, while I’ll admit states rights are foundational and bedrock, I refuse to admit that secession is.
If I was to average the things mentioned, I’d say we’re a late stage republic and with old age comes pain. We ain’t over yet, though. The very thought or idea of American freedom is a bright light, and a city on a hill. It has taken ruinous insults, as mentioned in the article. Our own government is the most egregious and dangerous one because of the pretend authority and willful power it so easily abuses the people with. With that in mind, Covid lockdowns/mandates are high on my list of an inflection point spelling doom.
For me it’s the 1913 stuff that boils my piss.
Outright theft in your face.
Absent that, I believe a lot of the nonsense today would not exist.
The gravity and over reach of power bought with stolen money, and then leveraged out to thousands of trillions of dollars of debt is beyond breath taking, and all of the damage here and abroad that was caused by it.
I agree 1913 was the dog’s breakfast. Not sure if the government is a better control on the economy than bankers, in theory. In actual emotions, I’d take every bank and banker today and line up the Parrot Guns at dawn and blast away at the ruinous lying bastards they are. But I’m not against banking in general.
Income tax. Can’t argue with the man’s labor is his own part.
“America” isn’t the US government. Maybe it never was but the government used to at least pretend. America will live on – the US may not have long to go. Like AT&T and GM, the name will stick around but it’ll be a whole new company under new management. Not for our generation (I presume) to worry about … or more correctly, it will be what will – the path is already set – and there’s no point crying over the spilt milk of the past. We won’t live long enough – naturally or otherwise – to participate in the Glorious New World anyway.
DT,
I almost agree with you. Damn the torpedoes. My legacy in the form of my two children will need to continue to fight for their freedoms as best they can. You may be right that it will be an all new world.
The crazies are in full bitch mode on Twitter about Kissinger, late as of yesterday (died at 100).
The thing I note mostly is that every armchair screech is resurrecting the myths from the Vietnam war that whole legions of commutards and berzercliars told us at the time. Cambodia was carpet bombed. Of the very few times that the US military “carpet bombed” targets (these would be end-to-end impacting of bombs in a rectangular target zone), Cambodia was not the recipient of such. This was bullshit manic mode by the hippies whose information came straight from a little bureau in Moscow. US: bad. Communist soldiers: good.
The poor Kmere Rouge, not the victims of regular bombings. They had to be carpet bombed. This is because they hwere huddled shoulder to shoulder, and foot to foot, in rice paddys and jungles throughout Cambodia. Cambodia’s neutrality was violated by Nixon, et el, because: Nixon was a ruthless bastard who wanted more dark yellow men dead.
Please quit pulling my leg, Karl Marx. FFS. Kissinger carpet bombed Cambodia…shyeahhhh right! What Nixon and, in a completely advisory mode, the Secretary of State (not in the military chain of command, BTW) Kissinger executed was a reversal of the permissions that Cambodia had as a false neutral state. The Ho Chi Minh Trail ran in big lacy patterns through Laos and Cambodia and was the supply line that made it possible for the VC and NVA to conduct a guerrilla war in Vietnam. When Nixon and Kissinger decided to force a Paris Agreement, they amped up the war on many fronts. It did bring the North to the table and resulted in the cessation of American involvement in the war. All the little Twittter Ches even to this day are butthurt that their communist shitstream isn’t worldwide yet, and describe the history as “Kissinger widened the war because he’s an evil Jew-Nazi”. That’s a Jew-Nazi. You know, that famous political stripe of conflicted self hate known as the jew-Nazi. I read this term again and again on Twitter and almost wretched. I suppose Biden is a socialist-american; the direct opposite of the jew-nazi. Now, more than ever, we need to re-elect the socialist-american uncle Joe who is hard at work fighting nazis, and also christo-fascists. Don’t forget how the christo-fascists rioted on 1-6 at the capitol and almost brought down our government.
Can you tell my BS meter tipped over? Oh, did I forget to mention that Kissinger was racist?
I was wearing OD green when I watched on german tv the US choppers landing on the roofs.
I thought of that time 47 years later when that plane was leaving and sandbaggers were blowed off the wings at 90mph. You know, when all that weaponry that we the taxpayers are on the hook for got left behind. Doesn’t it feel grand to live in a land held hostage by the largest most evil criminal enterprise the world has ever known?
Kissinger? Who he?
Casey: Hope you don’t believe I am one of those “screechers”! There was so much misinformation re VIETNAM!
I certainly agreed with your assessment of McNamara the other day. You know who I disagreed with a lot on Vietnam? Our beloved and departed host, Gerard. Didn’t matter to me at all. I loved him no less. And, it gives me an opportunity to gripe, inform, and persuade about the fruitlessness of the greater psychological problem: Vietnam Syndrome. I don’t get too out of whack about some Vietnam war beliefs; it was an epic and tragic period in our lives. I do, however, wish to argue the assessments people make when they are far off target. Kissinger’s a good example. The belief that America cannot accomplish anything in low intensity wars as a default statement. We’ve fukt up plenty of them, and more and more all the time. But it’s not inevitable. Gravity, and the principles of war are inevitable.
Picture that meme where Crowder sits at a table with a “prove me wrong” sign, after some controversial statement is written. Mine says: “Kissinger and Nixon ended American involvement in Vietnam. Prove me wrong.”
Dear Anne, my friend I just think this is a great chance to revisit the Cold War and also Vietnam and think clearly. here’s another proposition about Kissinger: he kept the lid on the Cold War and helped save the world form nuclear exchange.
Ghostie, I was at Camp Murray when the Boat People arrived and were con-toned there.
It seems to me that I may have mentioned this before, please forgive if I have. My first husband–high school sweetheart–joined the Air Force in 1960. He was trained in hydraulics and stationed in Fukuoka Japan from 1961-63. During those years he was frequently sent out to some place that was “top secret duty”. He repaired airplanes that had been damaged by guerrilla shooters, or by saboteurs. I believe the first time he was sent to Viet Nam was in 1962–could have been 1961. WAAAAAY before America could find it on the map.
Godzilla Minus One
==============
I gotta see it when it becomes available – streaming or on DVD.
Not a big G fan but this one looks diff.
Trailer 2:24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4hhZjEPq04
Reacher
======
Watched the first season, waiting for the 2nd to break loose.
Take a look at this prison bathroom scene and you’ll know what it’s like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M5wx17klH4
The cell scene will get your attention too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q16g_jjCzYk
And just like that, everyone forgot about Maui.
Funny that, no?
Gerard’s used to be my daily go-to site for sanity along with Jerry Pournelle. Ah, well. Thanks for keeping it alive.
Damn Good
=========
Go have a listen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxhA5GGP7xY
Time rolls on
N’ that’s as it should be
Here and gone
Seems to move so quickly
Man, we was happy
In our restless hearts
It was heaven Right here on earth
Yeah, we were laughin’
As we reached for the stars
And we had some
For what it was worth
Those were good times
Damn good times
Those were good times
Damn good times
Hey, take a look at this picture,
Can you believe that was you?
And who’s that standin’ there in the corner?
Not me!
Ah, the crazy things we used to do
Sure, we was acting like a couple of kids
Good to remember
You know that it is
I still feel it
Like the sun on my skin
Maybe that’s better
Cause these are good times
Damn good times
Talkin’ about good times
Damn good times
So it’s one for the money
But that don’t make the show
Count to three and I’ll be ready
To follow that road (yes I will)
I see it comin’
Yeah, and this one is outs
We got heaven right here on Earth
Ain’t nothin’ like it
When you’re reachin’ for stars
And you grab one
For what it is worth
You can tell ’em
We’ll be having good times
Damn good times
I’m talkin’ good times (yes sir)
Damn good times
LIVING CHRISTMAS TREE | DOUGLAS-FIR
================================
I buyed one of these for my wife, as a Christmas gift.
She likes to grow stuff and it seems to come natural to her.
Everything I try to grow fails and it’s pretty quick about it too.
Maybe she can plant this tree at the far end of the north yard, about 100′ from the house.
This tree will be around long after we’re both gone.
When it gets about 4′ tall maybe I’ll ziptie a little time capsule in the topmost branch.
Go for it.
I double dawg dare ya.
If doug fir isn’t to your fancy they have others.
https://sequoiatrees.com/collections/firs/products/living-christmas-tree-douglas-fir
New Idea
=======
Take all 1,200,000 people, presently parasiting off the US taxpayers, that are in prison and ship them to the US-Mexican border and let them loose into Mexico.
Afterall, isn’t that what Mexico has done to the US?
The released prisoners will be told to keep going and if they try to come back they will be shot on sight.
If you were a prisoner what would you do, get shot, or learn how to talk messican and getcha a messican blackburd and a bottle of mezcal?
“They all call her puta cause no one really knows her name.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKXRwEkOfi0
New Idea – Part Deux
===============
Now that all the prisons are sitting there empty, herd up ALL the federal employees and stack em up inside them formerly empty cells.
Nothing but bloney sandos and red koolade for sustenance every.dam.day til they expire.
Don’t even lock the cell doors.
Let em run loose inside that nightmare, fornicating and AIDSing each other at will.
Set up a fisheye video camera in the main ceiling and drop a big nag of krak in there everyday at noon, stream that shit continuously on a secret eastern european website.
QotD
====
“The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects – his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity.”
― Henry Hazlitt
ghostsniper, that is one of the finest summations of lazy, unproductive, spoiled brats that I have ever read. Everyone should remember that quote when the shtf and they come knocking for food. Thanks.
Putting It Together – The Forced Metadata Demand Inside the Jack Smith Court Order – They Are Showing Us the Govt Battlespace for 2024 and What We Will Face
—————————
Yesterday, we noted the warrant demand from Special Counsel Jack Smith to Twitter, that included the demand for all information on Donald Trump’s account that relates to his followers and supporters. {LINK} However, the element for this focus is the granular demand for user metadata, and the bigger picture for 2024.
Within the warrant:
The U.S. government requested and received the metadata for accounts connected to, and in alignment with, President Donald J. Trump.
That’s billions of billions of datapoints on millions of American citizens, their locations, their devices, their ip addresses and ultimately their real identities and connected activity as attributed to -and connected with- their connected social media accounts. Essentially, turning Donald J. Trump into the center of a surveillance virus.
People then say – how could the Jack Smith special counsel possibly comb through all of those users and all of that connected metadata? The answer is Artificial Intelligence; but the serious concern comes when you combine the metadata, AI organization and the previous announcements from DHS.
If you have followed my outlines on this issue [Category Here], you will note exactly where this latest Jack Smith development falls on the continuum. The 2024 election is right around the corner. Previously, I stated the artificial intelligence (AI) component to the internet surveillance system was going to launch toward the end of this year. Then DHS announced exactly that [SEE HERE].
I find it very interesting the DHS memo was issued on August 8th, but only published for the general public September 14th. July and August were when I first identified a new set of AI spider crawls underway as launched by Google. Pay very, very close attention to the two underlined words in the following paragraph:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/11/30/putting-it-together-the-forced-metadata-demand-inside-the-jack-smith-court-order-they-are-showing-us-the-govt-battlespace-for-2024-and-what-we-will-face/
Get a rope.
He’s beyond repair.
To politicians and war mongers like Austin wasting money on foreign nations is more important than any domestic issue we have.
You can take the boy out of the ghetto but….you can’t take the ghetto out of the boy.
Defense head calls out those who advocate isolationism and ‘an American retreat from responsibility’
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Saturday denounced those who advocate “an American retreat from responsibility” and said sustained U.S. leadership is needed to help keep the world as safe, free and prosperous as possible. He also urged Congress to end the partisan gridlock that has stalled the federal budget and war spending.
The United States must reject calls to turn away from global interests and become more isolationist, he told an audience of lawmakers, corporate and defense leaders and government officials attending a security conference. Those who “try to pull up the drawbridge,” he said, undermine the security that has led to decades of prosperity.
In his remarks at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California’s Simi Valley, Austin delivered a lengthy defense of U.S. support to Israel in its war against Hamas and to Ukraine in its struggle to battle Russia’s invasion. He said “the world will only become more dangerous if tyrants and terrorists believe that they can get away with wholesale aggression and mass slaughter.”
Austin met privately with top lawmakers on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.
His message of rejecting isolationism appeared directed at conservative lawmakers who are increasingly opposed to spending on overseas wars and back former President Donald Trump’s “America First’” ideology.
“You’ll hear some people try to brand an American retreat from responsibility as bold new leadership,” Austin said. “Make no mistake: It is not bold. It is not new. And it is not leadership.”
Congress has failed to approve any new money for the wars in Ukraine and Israel and has managed to pass only a short-term budget bill, known as a continuing resolution, that runs out early next year. The Senate has been deadlocked for months over one lawmaker’s move to block hundreds of military nominations, including critical senior commanders for key regions around the world.
“Our competitors don’t have to operate under continuing resolutions. And doing so erodes both our security and our ability to compete,” Austin said. He opened his speech with a plea to the lawmakers in the crowd to pass both the budget and the supplemental funding for the wars.
Administration officials have warned that money for Ukraine is running out and may only last through the end of this year. The Pentagon has about $5 billion worth of equipment it can send from it’s own stockpiles and has been eating away at that almost weekly. Money to replace military weapons and equipment taken from Pentagon stocks to send to Ukraine is rapidly dwindling, and totals about $1 billion.
Austin, who was in Ukraine’s capital less than two weeks ago, has repeatedly pressed the important of helping Ukraine battle Russia’s invasion, as part of a broader campaign to prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from threatening other countries in Europe.
Austin also noted that as much as $50 billion of that supplemental budget request for the wars would through American defense companies, helping to create or support tens of thousands of jobs in 30 states.
While he did not mention it in his address, Austin has often criticized Congress for its failure to confirm more than 400 military officers nominated for promotions or other jobs.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has blocked the nominations and objected when other senators have tried to get some through. On just two occasions has the Senate managed to votes to confirm a total of six high ranking leaders.
Almost 400 military nominations are in limbo, and the number is growing. Frustrated Republicans have tried unsuccessfully for almost nine months to quietly persuade Tuberville to drop the holds, and negotiations are continuing. Senior military officials have warned repeatedly that the situation threatens readiness and national security.
In other comments, Austin underscored the administration’s repeated insistence that Israel do more to protect civilians as it restarts its air assault against Hamas after a seven-day cease-fire to secure the release of prisoners.
Israeli fighter jets began hitting targets in the Gaza Strip minutes after the weeklong truce expired on Friday, and Israel dropped leaflets over parts of southern Gaza urging people to leave their homes, signaling it was preparing to widen its offensive.
About 100 hostages were freed as part of the truce, but about 140 remain held by Hamas and others in Gaza.
While any country has a duty to respond to an attack like the Oct. 7 assault by Hamas on Israel, Austin said the lesson is that “you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians.” Austin said that if civilians are driven into the arms of the enemy by violence, it becomes a strategic defeat.
https://news.yahoo.com/defense-head-calls-those-advocate-205203819.html
If we continue to have institutions like the war college and the military academies, they will inevitably teach future leaders the methodology of containing/preventing civilian deaths while battling an enemy in an urban environment, which is what we’re witnessing in Gaza now. It will be textbook.
My deepest desire is that someday Gen. Austin will be regarded as next to Benedict Arnold as a turncoat. The reason is he’s done innumerable things to ruin the military.
(free-associating and not going in any order here) Ukraine where? It didn’t take much to take Ukraine off the front page news, and a country like ours that got bored traveling in person to the moon is now bored by a major European war. We wanted maybe swashbuckle maneuvers and lightning strokes, but instead we get yard by yard plodding and all the news is more laden with propaganda than with facts. IOW, 5G Warfare outpaces every other concern.
The poor Ukes – with friends like NATO, who needs enemies? They lack manpower and NATO, by design, ain’t gonna give it to them. 2 years ago, I told you Russia could lose the war, but if they get a draw it’ll be one n which Russia takes half. (looking over my glasses at you).
Russia’s been kicked hard in the nads, and has lost the respect of the world. The damage they’ve been handed to their oil economy, their economy, and their military will be distant memories soon enough, but anyone going forward who likes Russia’s chances in a European war is a fool. They proved that they have no infantry, no tank forces, no air power, and although their artillery gave as good as it got, they still operate their artillery a century behind the times. If they keep Crimea and Donbass, it’s a pyrrhic victory, just like Finland in 1940.
If, and I pray it happens, Trump goes back into office, he needs to not fire Gen. Austin, but he needs to take Austin’s saber, cut each brass button and shoulder board from his uniform, break his saber, and walk him out the front gate with the tocsin: “no more shall the name of Lloyd Austin be mentioned in this city”.
Going forward what we need to do is reinforce NATO, who are the big winners in the Russo-Ukraine War. In Israel, the thing that’s been called Palestine will cease to exist as an entity. The shitfuckery that the Hams and Hezbos have been serving up will dwindle to next to nothing, and they’ll need some other tactic to hate on Israel with.
Speaking of war college.
In the early 60’s I went to Cub Scout meetings at the Carlisle War College.
Old, dark buildings.
Cornered a mouse one time, it bit my finger.
I was 9 yo.
Had to get 14 rabies shots right in the belly – 1 a day for 14 days in a row.
What was his rank? The mouse…
Disinformation/misinformation.
In my day, we called that “the news”. It was never right or correct, but after awhile you learned how to sort it.
What the Left really means now by disinformation is all the news that doesn’t forward their narrative. That, my friends, is pure communism.
We weren’t bombarded with news back then, like today.
Local news came on the TV at 6pm and national/world news at 6:30pm.
There was the newspaper once a day and of course the news was always one day late.
And the radio did news spots on the hour unless something important happened (Kennedy Assassination type stuff) where they broke into whatever was on. Oh yeah, in the 60’s it was AM only.
So yeah, in my lifetime “news” went from being barely accessible to be barely unavoidable.
The whole country would probably be better off with about 98% LESS “news”.
If it’s true, why do you suppose it is?
Just asking.
Frankly, I’m past being tired of all the whining no matter from whom.
https://gab.com/WayoftheWorld/posts/111516273035252655
Do you remember several days ago I posted a link about a project by the School of Agriculture at MSU? The project sets fem/nazis out to rural communities to teach them to love the strangers who they are bringing into those isolated communities.
We now have another project this time from the smaller humanities college–U of Montana. This one is so liberal it makes Hilary look conservative! They now have a new “all volunteer” project on campus. Read it and weep:
https://www.montanarightnow.com/missoula/um-security-operations-center-to-assist-students-with-cybersecurity/article_d1dc8e9e-92b5-11ee-814c-1b3e51236247.html#tncms-source=block-behavioral
It looks innocent enough doesn’t it? Here is what is really going on. Eager students are being trained to spy on conservative voters in Montana. Plain and simple.