Cal Calvin Coolidge on Independence Day
=======================================
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful.
It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.
But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter.
If all men are created equal, that is final.
If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final.
If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.
No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.
If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.
Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress.
They are reactionary.
Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
ghostsniperJuly 5, 2024, 10:09 AM
Everybody’s asking, “Who’s running the country?”
==================================
Nobody.
And everybody.
Everybody that it in the employ of the US gov’t.
It’s been this way for a long time.
Probably 50 years or more.
But only since the revelation of the human shaped house plant in the oval office has it come to anyone “outside the beltways” attention.
Nobody in the employ of the us gov’t is ever required to do anything in exchange for their pay, nor are they responsible for anything they do, good or bad.
Everybody has known forever that once you get that lucrative gov’t job you are set for life. Well, 20 years, then you get that lucrative pension til the end.
Observe any gov’t employee. All they do is fluff papers and attend meetings. If they want to. I wouldn’t be surprised if most gov’t employees don’t even show up for work. Why would anyone care?
Look at the top position, the oval office. WTF does the occupant even do? He does whatever a handful of other people tell him to do. Sign this, talk to these people, get up on that stump, sign some more papers, talk more hollow shit, blah, blah, blah. Figurehead.
The “process” is already in place and all the timed cogs rotate just as they’re supposed to, whether anyone is paying attention of not. Budget? There is no such thing, obviously. Everybody spends more than they have and they’ll spend even more next time around. Nobody GAF!
So when you hear someone say, “Since Biden is a complete retard, who is running the country?”, ask them, “What do you mean by “running” the country?” They won’t be able to answer your question, cept maybe some silly nonsense about red buttons. When that happens just crack em across the yap and go grab a brew….
DTJuly 5, 2024, 3:36 PM
My guess is the fine ladies down at DMV
John A. FlemingJuly 5, 2024, 11:58 AM
Hah! Running the country. I do not believe that is in the President’s , any President, official job jar. The job can be summarized quickly as:
1. Take care the laws be faithfully executed, i.e. supervise the non-military government actions.
2. Commander-in-chief of the military, i.e. supervise the by-law-authorized military activities.
3. Negotiate with foreign countries, i.e. try to have good relations with all countries that want them.
4. Sign or veto Congressional bills, i.e. negotiate with Congress over what he will/will not sign.
5. Work with the Congress and Courts to guarantee to each State a republican government, and repel invasions, and protect from domestic violence.
6. Miscellaneous stuff.
Seems like the Fraudulent has failed on five of six counts.
None of those six items involve “running the country”. The Federal government is not “the country”. We the People invent the future. I know, the Feds are trying hard to put themselves in charge of absolutely everything, we all must drive EVs and no gas ranges and 15-minute cities and 7×24 surveillance and social credit scores and environmental footprint. Hopefully this Chevron thing will be a good brushback pitch. If they don’t get the clue from that, we may have to throw a beanball.
There’s an academic Cass Sunstein who with Richard Thaler wrote an influential book called “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness“. It advocates “libertarian paternalism”, where the smart people in government and academia try to nudge the rest of us into doing what they think is best.
There’s a fatal flaw in that idea. Well duh, anything called “libertarian paternalism” is fatally flawed from the outset and on purpose, it’s a dagger with a pretty sheath. Once started, where/when does it stop? Once the government is given or takes the power to “nudge” people on anything at all, the bureaucracies will never stop, their nudges become mandates because the nudges did not have the desired effect fast enough, and the mandates become ever more extreme, pervasive and punitive. It’s the same as with all tyrannies: not being sufficiently dedicated to the Cause and carrying out its mandates will get you knifed in the back from someone who is. Noble purists at the start (the “Old Bolsheviks”) are replaced by “men of action” who can “get things done”.
“Nudging” only stops when the people rebel. Damn, all these “experts” and “elites” with the bestest of intentions, so noble and pure they are, are driving us straight to hell. And they are ok with that, they think in their arrogance that this time it will work.
azlibertarianJuly 5, 2024, 3:14 PM
My God. They have really lost every one of their senses.
Every last brain cell is gone. They’ve actually said this out loud.
From the article….. “…Advocates of “Plan C” said the solution to Trump’s surging campaign and Electoral College advantage is a simple one: replace Vice President Kamala Harris with former President Barack Obama.
‘A Biden-Obama ticket would have a much better chance of beating Trump,’ said legal scholar John Banzhaf, a professor at George Washington University Law School….”
So. A “legal scholar” says that Obama should run for VP. Barack Hussein Obama. This guy, should run for VP and that guy happens to look very much like this guy. A George Washington University legal scholar said that.
Now, the scholar will school us soon by telling us that the 22nd Amendment only limits the number of times that a person may be elected to the Presidency, and that should Slow Joe leave office for any reason, the 22nd would not prevent a VP Barack Hussein Obama from another term as President. And maybe he’s right. Technically.
The text of the 22nd, from Wiki….
“Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
Section 2. This Article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission to the states by the Congress.”
Apparently, they’ve gone through every possible solution to their problems, found nothing but a series of bad, worse, and horrible solutions, and have reached into fiction. They’re hoping that we won’t notice that they’re betraying the spirit of the 22nd and will accept an imperial President.
ghostsniperJuly 6, 2024, 1:10 PM
Ya know, this kinda shit is just going to keep going on and on and on.
I’m not talking about the political stuff.
I’m talking about the constant ankle biting by the parasites, from all angles, all the time.
“The erosion of a system”.
Grinding it down inch by inch, molecule by molecule, constantly nibbling around the edges.
As long as it’s profitable, or beneficial, to do so.
So, how to turn profit and benefit into cost and penalty?
IOW, instead of being goaded by parasites, deter parasites with obstacles.
“….Her first book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, grew out of a paper she wrote while attending law school; it helped create the doctrine of ‘responsibility to protect.’ The book won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize in 2003. Power’s book framed genocide as a problem that the United States was involved in as an onlooker rather than a perpetrator or enabler. She has been a longtime advocate of the use of armed force by the United States in response to genocide abroad….“
ghostsniperJuly 5, 2024, 6:00 PM
Short rope…long drag.
ghostsniperJuly 5, 2024, 6:09 PM
There are only 2 steaks
================
Porterhouse and Ribeye
Both are about 1″ thick and weigh about 24 ounces and cooked over fire.
Everything else out there is dog squeeze.
Snakepit KansasJuly 8, 2024, 3:36 AM
My Dad used to say “Once you pay off the mortgage, everything is Cadillacs and steaks”. He was quite fond of a bone in rib eye.
ghostsniperJuly 5, 2024, 7:13 PM
Shell Game
========
Don’t play it.
You’ll ALWAYS lose, here’s why.
Time after time I sit and I wait for your call
I know I’m a fool but what can I say
Whatever the price I’ll pay for you, Madame Blue
Once long ago, a word from your lips and the world turned around
But somehow you’ve changed, you’re so far away
I long for the past and dream of the days with you, Madame Blue
Suite Madame Blue, gaze in your looking glass
You’re not a child anymore
Suite Madame Blue, the future is all but past
Dressed in your jewels, you made your own rules
You conquered the world and more …………..heaven’s door
Red white and blue, gaze in your looking glass
You’re not a child anymore
Red, white, and blue, the future is all but past
So lift up your heart, make a new start
And lead us away from here
ghostsniperJuly 7, 2024, 1:39 PM
In life, we are always dancing on the edge of a volcano. The dance may last longer than it did in times gone by, what with the great increase of life expectancy; nevertheless what John Donne wrote in 1624 remains true:
We study health, and we deliberate on our meats, and drink, and air, and exercises, and we hew and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a long and a regular work; but in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity; nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroys us in an instant.
How often have I heard those seized by a mortal illness protest that they did nothing to deserve it, that they ate organic food, drank two liters of fluid a day, never smoked, drank alcohol in moderation, were vegetarian, went to bed early, walked 10,000 steps a day, and so forth! And this is the reward for all their effort! What an ungrateful world we live in!
I am in rural France, where I confess to being in a state of cognitive dissonance. Today, for example, I took my car to the garage for its two-yearly checkup, and everything was just the same as it has always been (by always I mean, of course, as I have known it). I bought some bread and groceries, and likewise nothing had changed (except the prices). No Martian visitor, having paid a visit last year, would have noticed anything different this year. Even in Paris, the center of the world, I failed to detect any tension in the air, certainly not when I went to my favorite restaurant. And yet…
“The underlying problem is that, in many Western countries, deep reform is necessary and impossible at the same time.”
The seeming solidity of the everyday world contrasts with the evident fragility of the political world. No wonder we who go about our business in a normal fashion despise and detest the political class who yet might smash everything up and cause us untold misery and distress. Why can’t they just leave us alone, with all our minor pleasures in life and still bearable dissatisfactions? Why must they threaten to bring the whole edifice crashing down, like some evil prophet in an imperfect temple?
The problem is that things cannot go on as they go on now, at least according to economic projections. The present situation is untenable from more than one point of view. But countries like Britain and France are caught in an insoluble dilemma bequeathed them by politicians and policies of the past.
President Mitterand, for example, lowered the retirement age in France to 60, back in 1983. This was a time bomb that has still to be properly defused. The problem is that once a so-called right has been given, it cannot be abrogated without a great deal of bitterness or even conflict, irrespective of the reigning circumstances (French life expectancy has risen by nine years since the age of retirement was lowered). The right to retire at the age of 60 became the same as the right to a fair trial, and he who tried to meddle with it was seen as a villain or, worse, the heartless lackey of a sinister conspiracy. Somehow the fact that the lengthened retirement pensions would have to be paid for—assuming them not to be based on a return on capital invested—somehow never penetrated the popular psyche as much as the fact that part of the population was being deprived of its “rights” when the pension age was raised. It still rankles; but it was, by strange coincidence, the 19th-century French economist Frédéric Bastiat who pointed out the difference between what is seen and unseen as the consequence of any policy, the latter often being more important than the former. You can control rents, for example, which is good for those who already have a property to rent, but at the cost of reducing the supply of rented property, in the process creating a caste of the privileged who enjoy rent at a controlled price.
The underlying problem is that, in many Western countries, deep reform is necessary and impossible at the same time. It is necessary economically but impossible politically. We all know what to do, said the former head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker; it’s just that we don’t know how to get elected afterward.
The recent vote in France, for example, was in essence a vote to extend the welfare state even further. The Rassemblement National, with 33.5 percent of the vote, is often described as being of the far right, but its economic policies are of the left, and were it not for its attitude to immigration it could easily join with the left-wing Front Populaire, with 29.5 percent of the vote. In a sense, the two groups even see eye to eye on immigrants: The RN wants to be hard on them because they are criminals, while the FP wants to be nice to them in order to reduce their criminality. But criminals in their opinion they are.
I confess that I see no easy route away from the impasse of many Western societies. If you make people dependent on you, it is difficult to withdraw your support all of a sudden, however necessary it might be to do so. If you try, publicity will be given at once to cases of hardship, many of which may be genuine enough, and there will be an outcry. Moreover, an alliance between the needy and the sentimental can often secure a majority of votes. Finally, in the matter of fending for ourselves, we have eliminated the difference between can’t and won’t.
Politics is the art of the possible and not of the ideal. The French philosopher Raymond Aron said that an election is a competition between the detestable and the preferable, but we seem en route to making all parties and all leaders equally detestable, though in slightly different ways. I recall the answer of the Peruvian peasant who, when asked why he had voted for Fujimori, said, “Because I don’t know anything about him.” But our cynicism won’t help us when the volcano on whose edge we are dancing erupts.
NEWS FLASH: A GIRL IS A GIRL!
The South Carolina Department of Education made headlines last week for introducing the most stringent ban on tranny/LGBT “literature” in the entire U.S. For the moment, if parents in S.C. want to warp their kids, they’ll have to do it themselves, because S.C. school libraries will no longer carry such classics as Charlie and the Fudge Factory (turns out Willy Wonka’s “contest” was not one you want to win), Tom Saw-ya (the rapscallion opens a penis removal business in his treehouse), Little Lord Flauntleroid (the young gentleman’s very proud of his anal fissures), and of course Win-He-the-Poo (don’t ask…it’s about fecal fetishism).
South Carolina’s ironfisted approach to removing sexually explicit books from school libraries has got the gays all fired up, and frankly a little turned on because of the word “fisted.” James Taylor’s even agreed to record a protest version of his song “Carolina in My Mind”:
I’m gone to Carolina in my mind,
Gonna keep my ’gina, teacher told me it’s just fine.
Adam gonna be Eve,
Fella hiding his balls in a pant sleeve,
Yes, we’re going to Carolina in our mind.
To offset that terrible loss for deviants, the press had to highlight at least one tranny-positive story last week. And journalists found that story in the exploits of Nikki Hiltz, a “transgender” runner who qualified for the U.S. Olympic team.
“Trans runner Nikki Hiltz qualifies for Paris Olympics after placing first at US trials” bellowed the headlines. The only small wrinkle is, Hiltz is a biological woman competing against biological women. That she thinks she’s a man is fine; nobody has a problem with Olympic runners thinking weird things, like that time when sprinters Agnes Tirop and Damaris Mutua thought, “Hey, we can be successful, independent women in Kenya without being raped and murdered!”
Or when Tori Bowie was like, “I can totally give birth at home alone! Hospitals and doctors are for wusses.”
So really, the headlines for the Hiltz piece should’ve read “woman wins women’s event.”
But that’s a little too linear for today’s journalists, who, in their quest to normalize abnormality, long ago traded “who what when where and why” for “WTF WTF WTF WTF and HOLY CRAP WTF.”
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
Wow man, the colours!
Cal Calvin Coolidge on Independence Day
=======================================
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful.
It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.
But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter.
If all men are created equal, that is final.
If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final.
If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.
No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.
If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.
Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress.
They are reactionary.
Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
Everybody’s asking, “Who’s running the country?”
==================================
Nobody.
And everybody.
Everybody that it in the employ of the US gov’t.
It’s been this way for a long time.
Probably 50 years or more.
But only since the revelation of the human shaped house plant in the oval office has it come to anyone “outside the beltways” attention.
Nobody in the employ of the us gov’t is ever required to do anything in exchange for their pay, nor are they responsible for anything they do, good or bad.
Everybody has known forever that once you get that lucrative gov’t job you are set for life. Well, 20 years, then you get that lucrative pension til the end.
Observe any gov’t employee. All they do is fluff papers and attend meetings. If they want to. I wouldn’t be surprised if most gov’t employees don’t even show up for work. Why would anyone care?
Look at the top position, the oval office. WTF does the occupant even do? He does whatever a handful of other people tell him to do. Sign this, talk to these people, get up on that stump, sign some more papers, talk more hollow shit, blah, blah, blah. Figurehead.
The “process” is already in place and all the timed cogs rotate just as they’re supposed to, whether anyone is paying attention of not. Budget? There is no such thing, obviously. Everybody spends more than they have and they’ll spend even more next time around. Nobody GAF!
So when you hear someone say, “Since Biden is a complete retard, who is running the country?”, ask them, “What do you mean by “running” the country?” They won’t be able to answer your question, cept maybe some silly nonsense about red buttons. When that happens just crack em across the yap and go grab a brew….
My guess is the fine ladies down at DMV
Hah! Running the country. I do not believe that is in the President’s , any President, official job jar. The job can be summarized quickly as:
1. Take care the laws be faithfully executed, i.e. supervise the non-military government actions.
2. Commander-in-chief of the military, i.e. supervise the by-law-authorized military activities.
3. Negotiate with foreign countries, i.e. try to have good relations with all countries that want them.
4. Sign or veto Congressional bills, i.e. negotiate with Congress over what he will/will not sign.
5. Work with the Congress and Courts to guarantee to each State a republican government, and repel invasions, and protect from domestic violence.
6. Miscellaneous stuff.
Seems like the Fraudulent has failed on five of six counts.
None of those six items involve “running the country”. The Federal government is not “the country”. We the People invent the future. I know, the Feds are trying hard to put themselves in charge of absolutely everything, we all must drive EVs and no gas ranges and 15-minute cities and 7×24 surveillance and social credit scores and environmental footprint. Hopefully this Chevron thing will be a good brushback pitch. If they don’t get the clue from that, we may have to throw a beanball.
There’s an academic Cass Sunstein who with Richard Thaler wrote an influential book called “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness“. It advocates “libertarian paternalism”, where the smart people in government and academia try to nudge the rest of us into doing what they think is best.
There’s a fatal flaw in that idea. Well duh, anything called “libertarian paternalism” is fatally flawed from the outset and on purpose, it’s a dagger with a pretty sheath. Once started, where/when does it stop? Once the government is given or takes the power to “nudge” people on anything at all, the bureaucracies will never stop, their nudges become mandates because the nudges did not have the desired effect fast enough, and the mandates become ever more extreme, pervasive and punitive. It’s the same as with all tyrannies: not being sufficiently dedicated to the Cause and carrying out its mandates will get you knifed in the back from someone who is. Noble purists at the start (the “Old Bolsheviks”) are replaced by “men of action” who can “get things done”.
“Nudging” only stops when the people rebel. Damn, all these “experts” and “elites” with the bestest of intentions, so noble and pure they are, are driving us straight to hell. And they are ok with that, they think in their arrogance that this time it will work.
My God. They have really lost every one of their senses.
Washington Examiner: Biden-Obama is ‘Plan C’ ticket.
Every last brain cell is gone. They’ve actually said this out loud.
From the article…..
“…Advocates of “Plan C” said the solution to Trump’s surging campaign and Electoral College advantage is a simple one: replace Vice President Kamala Harris with former President Barack Obama.
‘A Biden-Obama ticket would have a much better chance of beating Trump,’ said legal scholar John Banzhaf, a professor at George Washington University Law School….”
So. A “legal scholar” says that Obama should run for VP. Barack Hussein Obama. This guy, should run for VP and that guy happens to look very much like this guy. A George Washington University legal scholar said that.
Now, the scholar will school us soon by telling us that the 22nd Amendment only limits the number of times that a person may be elected to the Presidency, and that should Slow Joe leave office for any reason, the 22nd would not prevent a VP Barack Hussein Obama from another term as President. And maybe he’s right. Technically.
The text of the 22nd, from Wiki….
“Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
Section 2. This Article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission to the states by the Congress.”
Apparently, they’ve gone through every possible solution to their problems, found nothing but a series of bad, worse, and horrible solutions, and have reached into fiction. They’re hoping that we won’t notice that they’re betraying the spirit of the 22nd and will accept an imperial President.
Ya know, this kinda shit is just going to keep going on and on and on.
I’m not talking about the political stuff.
I’m talking about the constant ankle biting by the parasites, from all angles, all the time.
“The erosion of a system”.
Grinding it down inch by inch, molecule by molecule, constantly nibbling around the edges.
As long as it’s profitable, or beneficial, to do so.
So, how to turn profit and benefit into cost and penalty?
IOW, instead of being goaded by parasites, deter parasites with obstacles.
Cass Sunstein is married to Samantha Power.
Most here are really gonna love her….
“….Her first book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, grew out of a paper she wrote while attending law school; it helped create the doctrine of ‘responsibility to protect.’ The book won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize in 2003. Power’s book framed genocide as a problem that the United States was involved in as an onlooker rather than a perpetrator or enabler. She has been a longtime advocate of the use of armed force by the United States in response to genocide abroad….“
Short rope…long drag.
There are only 2 steaks
================
Porterhouse and Ribeye
Both are about 1″ thick and weigh about 24 ounces and cooked over fire.
Everything else out there is dog squeeze.
My Dad used to say “Once you pay off the mortgage, everything is Cadillacs and steaks”. He was quite fond of a bone in rib eye.
Shell Game
========
Don’t play it.
You’ll ALWAYS lose, here’s why.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GumWeVdcof4
Favorite Trump story:
https://x.com/VigilantFox/status/1808179617397719127
A real wake up call for all…….https://humanevents.com/2024/07/05/naomi-wolf-stand-up-for-steve-bannon-lest-it-be-you-next?cfp
Suite Madame Blue
==============
Yes, it’s patriotic, from a soldiers view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihzdJ5ngMF8
Time after time I sit and I wait for your call
I know I’m a fool but what can I say
Whatever the price I’ll pay for you, Madame Blue
Once long ago, a word from your lips and the world turned around
But somehow you’ve changed, you’re so far away
I long for the past and dream of the days with you, Madame Blue
Suite Madame Blue, gaze in your looking glass
You’re not a child anymore
Suite Madame Blue, the future is all but past
Dressed in your jewels, you made your own rules
You conquered the world and more …………..heaven’s door
America….America…America..America..
America….America…America..America..
America….America…America..America..
Red white and blue, gaze in your looking glass
You’re not a child anymore
Red, white, and blue, the future is all but past
So lift up your heart, make a new start
And lead us away from here
In life, we are always dancing on the edge of a volcano. The dance may last longer than it did in times gone by, what with the great increase of life expectancy; nevertheless what John Donne wrote in 1624 remains true:
We study health, and we deliberate on our meats, and drink, and air, and exercises, and we hew and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a long and a regular work; but in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity; nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroys us in an instant.
How often have I heard those seized by a mortal illness protest that they did nothing to deserve it, that they ate organic food, drank two liters of fluid a day, never smoked, drank alcohol in moderation, were vegetarian, went to bed early, walked 10,000 steps a day, and so forth! And this is the reward for all their effort! What an ungrateful world we live in!
I am in rural France, where I confess to being in a state of cognitive dissonance. Today, for example, I took my car to the garage for its two-yearly checkup, and everything was just the same as it has always been (by always I mean, of course, as I have known it). I bought some bread and groceries, and likewise nothing had changed (except the prices). No Martian visitor, having paid a visit last year, would have noticed anything different this year. Even in Paris, the center of the world, I failed to detect any tension in the air, certainly not when I went to my favorite restaurant. And yet…
“The underlying problem is that, in many Western countries, deep reform is necessary and impossible at the same time.”
The seeming solidity of the everyday world contrasts with the evident fragility of the political world. No wonder we who go about our business in a normal fashion despise and detest the political class who yet might smash everything up and cause us untold misery and distress. Why can’t they just leave us alone, with all our minor pleasures in life and still bearable dissatisfactions? Why must they threaten to bring the whole edifice crashing down, like some evil prophet in an imperfect temple?
The problem is that things cannot go on as they go on now, at least according to economic projections. The present situation is untenable from more than one point of view. But countries like Britain and France are caught in an insoluble dilemma bequeathed them by politicians and policies of the past.
President Mitterand, for example, lowered the retirement age in France to 60, back in 1983. This was a time bomb that has still to be properly defused. The problem is that once a so-called right has been given, it cannot be abrogated without a great deal of bitterness or even conflict, irrespective of the reigning circumstances (French life expectancy has risen by nine years since the age of retirement was lowered). The right to retire at the age of 60 became the same as the right to a fair trial, and he who tried to meddle with it was seen as a villain or, worse, the heartless lackey of a sinister conspiracy. Somehow the fact that the lengthened retirement pensions would have to be paid for—assuming them not to be based on a return on capital invested—somehow never penetrated the popular psyche as much as the fact that part of the population was being deprived of its “rights” when the pension age was raised. It still rankles; but it was, by strange coincidence, the 19th-century French economist Frédéric Bastiat who pointed out the difference between what is seen and unseen as the consequence of any policy, the latter often being more important than the former. You can control rents, for example, which is good for those who already have a property to rent, but at the cost of reducing the supply of rented property, in the process creating a caste of the privileged who enjoy rent at a controlled price.
The underlying problem is that, in many Western countries, deep reform is necessary and impossible at the same time. It is necessary economically but impossible politically. We all know what to do, said the former head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker; it’s just that we don’t know how to get elected afterward.
The recent vote in France, for example, was in essence a vote to extend the welfare state even further. The Rassemblement National, with 33.5 percent of the vote, is often described as being of the far right, but its economic policies are of the left, and were it not for its attitude to immigration it could easily join with the left-wing Front Populaire, with 29.5 percent of the vote. In a sense, the two groups even see eye to eye on immigrants: The RN wants to be hard on them because they are criminals, while the FP wants to be nice to them in order to reduce their criminality. But criminals in their opinion they are.
I confess that I see no easy route away from the impasse of many Western societies. If you make people dependent on you, it is difficult to withdraw your support all of a sudden, however necessary it might be to do so. If you try, publicity will be given at once to cases of hardship, many of which may be genuine enough, and there will be an outcry. Moreover, an alliance between the needy and the sentimental can often secure a majority of votes. Finally, in the matter of fending for ourselves, we have eliminated the difference between can’t and won’t.
Politics is the art of the possible and not of the ideal. The French philosopher Raymond Aron said that an election is a competition between the detestable and the preferable, but we seem en route to making all parties and all leaders equally detestable, though in slightly different ways. I recall the answer of the Peruvian peasant who, when asked why he had voted for Fujimori, said, “Because I don’t know anything about him.” But our cynicism won’t help us when the volcano on whose edge we are dancing erupts.
https://www.takimag.com/article/a-political-impasse/
NEWS FLASH: A GIRL IS A GIRL!
The South Carolina Department of Education made headlines last week for introducing the most stringent ban on tranny/LGBT “literature” in the entire U.S. For the moment, if parents in S.C. want to warp their kids, they’ll have to do it themselves, because S.C. school libraries will no longer carry such classics as Charlie and the Fudge Factory (turns out Willy Wonka’s “contest” was not one you want to win), Tom Saw-ya (the rapscallion opens a penis removal business in his treehouse), Little Lord Flauntleroid (the young gentleman’s very proud of his anal fissures), and of course Win-He-the-Poo (don’t ask…it’s about fecal fetishism).
South Carolina’s ironfisted approach to removing sexually explicit books from school libraries has got the gays all fired up, and frankly a little turned on because of the word “fisted.” James Taylor’s even agreed to record a protest version of his song “Carolina in My Mind”:
I’m gone to Carolina in my mind,
Gonna keep my ’gina, teacher told me it’s just fine.
Adam gonna be Eve,
Fella hiding his balls in a pant sleeve,
Yes, we’re going to Carolina in our mind.
To offset that terrible loss for deviants, the press had to highlight at least one tranny-positive story last week. And journalists found that story in the exploits of Nikki Hiltz, a “transgender” runner who qualified for the U.S. Olympic team.
“Trans runner Nikki Hiltz qualifies for Paris Olympics after placing first at US trials” bellowed the headlines. The only small wrinkle is, Hiltz is a biological woman competing against biological women. That she thinks she’s a man is fine; nobody has a problem with Olympic runners thinking weird things, like that time when sprinters Agnes Tirop and Damaris Mutua thought, “Hey, we can be successful, independent women in Kenya without being raped and murdered!”
Or when Tori Bowie was like, “I can totally give birth at home alone! Hospitals and doctors are for wusses.”
So really, the headlines for the Hiltz piece should’ve read “woman wins women’s event.”
But that’s a little too linear for today’s journalists, who, in their quest to normalize abnormality, long ago traded “who what when where and why” for “WTF WTF WTF WTF and HOLY CRAP WTF.”
https://www.takimag.com/article/the-week-that-perished-301/