I hear a lot about a "uni-party," or the belief that the Republican and Democrat parties are one and the same. While it's not entirely true, it's not necessarily wrong either. While there are definitely Republicans who would be more suited with a "D" next to their name, the Republican Party does have a number of people in it who actually understood their assignment.
The reason the "uni-party" label works so well is because the Republican Party might have different goals but ultimately, they think the way to achieve them is to do what Democrats do to achieve their goals, and that's to grow the government. //
If Republicans truly wanted to distance themselves from Democrats, then the solution is actually simple. They need to remember what their core purpose is. It's not to make laws, it's to unmake laws. At some point, Republicans largely lost their appetite for shrinking government and chose instead to grow it for their own purposes. //
The goal is to get power out of the federal government's hands, and not just on this subject. Any decision-making power we can take from Washington, we should. The Republican party's goal is ultimately to decentralize the power in America, not make the federal government bend to its will, which has always been a temporary thing and a losing battle in the long run. //
If Republicans truly want to stop the Democrats from exerting and abusing as much power as they do, the solution is to take that power out of their hands and give it to the people. As our government is constantly in a tug-of-war between two parties, it doesn't make sense to grow the federal government's power, which will only serve to make the abuse of power worse as time goes on.
Republicans should endeavor to shrink the power of the federal government whenever they're in office and the only laws they should write are laws that close the doors on the federal government's power for good. [forever] //
Cafeblue32 Laocoön of Troy
a day ago
Coolidge is more famous for what he didn't say and do than what he did. He was known for saying little, and his response to the recession he faced was to leave it alone and let business right its own ship, which it did in a matter of months, and led to the Roaring 20s. //
Laocoön of Troy Cafeblue32
a day ago edited
The post-WWI Republican Congress rejected the Treaty of Versailles. They passed laws removing US troops from Europe. They dismantled Wilson's endless agencies, commissions, boards, bureaus, and other administrative offices. They ended food rationing, price controls, censorship, the Gestapo-like American Protective League, and released German and other ethnic prisoners Wilson imprisoned for the duration of the war.
In my opinion the post-WWI Republican Congress was far more important. //
anon-js5k
a day ago
Recently, when Larry Elder was asked, if Trump wanted Larry Elder to be a part of his Cabinet, which department would Larry want to be the secretary for. His answer was quick and to the point. He said he would like to head the Department of Education and that his goal as Secretary would be to eliminate the department and subsequently his job as head of that department. That is what a true conservative Republican would do.
When Biden recently passed an order to make it harder to layoff or fire a government employee, Elder's response shows how to circumvent what Biden did. If the Department of Education no longer exist, firing is no longer an issue. The DoE should have never existed in the first place. By extension the national teachers would lose their clout with the federal government, both of which have too much power over local districts, including budgets and policies.
Two new reports on the US governmental response to COVID in 2020-2021 call into question the public health efficacy of some measures and make a strong case that some of the measures marketed as ways to keep us safe were counterproductive, if not outright harmful. The Hoover Institute looks at the effect COVID policies had on public education, while the Committee to Unleash Prosperity report gives an overview of all policies.
The Hoover Institute study is synopsized in New Report Details Horrifying Cost of Fauci’s Failures. Its basic theme is that COVID policies in education have yet to be felt or appreciated and will ripple through the world economy for years.
“Based on the available research on lifetime earnings associated with more skills, the average student in school during the pandemic will lose 5 to 6 percent of lifetime earnings,” they found. “Because a lower-skilled workforce leads to lower economic growth, the nation will lose some $31 trillion (in present value terms) during the twenty-first century. This aggregate economic loss is higher than the US GDP for one year and dwarfs the total economic losses from either the slowdown of the economy during the pandemic or from the 2008 recession.” //
But Florida was one of the few states, and perhaps the only large one, to make reopening schools a priority, despite the objections of teachers unions and media outlets that attempted to label the governor as “DeathSantis.”
And it’s going to pay off, relatively speaking. A figure presented in the research shows that Florida’s economic state loss in GDP is nearly equal to Pennsylvania, despite a population that’s nearly 75% bigger than Pennsylvania. And California’s estimated losses, roughly $1.3 trillion, are more than 116% higher than Florida, much larger than the population difference. Similarly, New York’s economic losses far exceed Florida’s, despite a smaller population. //
Lesson #1: Leaders Should Calm Public Fears, Not Stoke Them //
In my view, this observation is only valid if you assume the leadership during COVID cared about mitigating the panic. Rather, it seems that Fauci, Birx, and others deliberately ratcheted up panic for reasons that one can only speculate about.
Lesson #2: Lockdowns Do Not Work to Substantially Reduce Deaths or Stop Viral Circulation //
Lesson #3: Lockdowns and Social Isolation Had Negative Consequences that Far Outweighed Benefits //
In my view, this section misses the point because it takes at face value claims that lockdowns were instituted for public health rather than societal control reasons. //
the real purpose was to socially isolate families and fragment communities.
Lesson #4: Government Should Not Pay People More Not to Work //
Lesson #5: Shutting Down Schools Was a Major Policy Mistake With Tragic Effects on Children, Especially the Poor //
Lesson #6: Masks Were of Little or No Value and Possibly Harmful //
Lesson #7: Government Should Not Suppress Dissent or Police the Boundaries of Science
...This underutilization was likely a significant contributor to non-COVID excess deaths in the United States. //
Lesson #9: Protect the Most Vulnerable //
Lesson #10: Warp Speed: Deregulate But Don’t Mandate //
Conclusion: Limit Government Emergency Powers and Earn Back Public Trust
One result of the government’s error-ridden COVID response was that the Americans have justifiably lost faith in public health institutions. Lockdowns, school closures, and mandates were catastrophic errors, pushed with remarkable fervor by public health authorities at all levels. We recommend that Congress and the states define by law “public health emergency” with strict limitations on powers conferred to the executives and time limits that require legislation to extend. Additionally, term limits should be established for all senior health agency positions. Grantmaking should be independent of policy-making and public communication, and NIH funding itself should be decentralized or block-granted to the states. Congress should require full transparency of all Food and Drug Administration (FDA), CDC, and NIH discussions with immediate posting to public forums. //
It should be definitively restated that CDC guidance is strictly advisory and the CDC does not have power to set laws or mandates. The U.S. should halt all binding agreements with the World Health Organization until satisfactory transparency and accountability is achieved. Unless and until key institutions openly acknowledge that lockdowns, school closures, and mask/vaccine mandates were catastrophic errors that will not be repeated in the future, the American people will – and should – withhold their trust.
watch this video below that details quite a few of the big lies that were told about Donald Trump by the media. No matter how you feel about Trump, the important thing to pay attention to is the readiness and willingness of corporate media to tell falsehoods about him.
The video is over five minutes long because there are a lot of examples of this happening.
https://twitter.com/Sassafrass_84/status/1774901013629059379
What you're seeing is an active attempt by our own government to lie to and manipulate us with the help of corporate media and big tech companies, all for the benefit of one political party. This is one of the most heinous attempts at subjugation in the history of this country and given the Biden administration's open attempts to establish organizations within the government that dedicate themselves to policing information, you can bet that it's only going to get worse.
The tendency toward political centralization that has characterized the western world for many centuries, first under monarchical rule and then under democratic auspices, must be reversed.
-- Hans Herman Hoppe //
The truth is any post-breakup map of America would not resemble an electoral map following state lines, nor even a redrawing of state boundaries, such that the fantastical greater Idaho or Free State of Jefferson might exist as part of a wider Confederation of Constitutional Republics, or a Breakaway Philadelphia city-State join a Union of Progressive Democracies…
No. It’d be nothing so comprehensible or easily mapped to modern politics.
A post breakup America would probably look closer to this:
If you’re a sane person and your immediate reaction is: WHAT THE HELL AM I LOOKING AT!?
….Well that’s kinda the point.
(I really do apologize for all I’m going to have to digress)
For our purposes we can broadly divide history into 2 types of period… Periods of Centralizing trends, and periods of Decentralizing trends.
Gavin
5d
Occasionally, one comes across something that just stops one in one’s track and messes up the day’s schedule. This long (I mean … long) article by Anarchonomicon fits the bill.
After the State: The Coming of Neo-Medievalism and the Great Decentralization
The article is too long to summarize, but the basic idea is that history has seen long periods of centralized political control, and much longer periods of de-centralized control. The author predicts that the inevitable collapse of modern states will lead to “Neo-Medievalism” in which small political units will proliferate.
".… What you may have noticed is there’s really just two great centralizing eras in the history of western civilization… the 300-350 years from the start of Alexander’s conquests til the final centralization of the Roman empire under the Caesars… And the 250-300 year history of modern empire: From approximately 1700-1945. …
… The total number of autonomous Greek city states, which prevailed from the Bronze age collapse to the first conquests of Alexander, and only truly ended with the final roman conquest of all of Greece, numbered over 1000. …
… In the past 3200 years we’ve had only 600-800 years of truly centralizing eras where power concentrated, or merely continued without disintegration, when power didn’t dilute… But 2400-2600 years of Decentralizing eras where polities where shrinking and the ability to exert power across distance was eternally shrinking. …
… The Roman empire ended when all of its tech advantages were adopted by the Germanic tribes its was fighting… because those Germanic tribes had been trained in them while employed as roman mercenaries. Likewise the age of imperialism ended shortly after WW2 ended, because at that point every colony had a generation of young men who’d just been trained in western fighting styles. A process that began with the Irish declaring independence after WW1 and reached a fever pitch after WW2 when even the colonial white settler states set up by the British (who you’d think would be the apex of dependence, what with minority rule) declared independence. …
… Federal Authority, legitimacy, and even Seeing Like a State style legibility and intelligibility to the central government is collapsing in real time before our eyes… and far from panicking and trying to rescue their control over the body of the American Nation… the US Federal Government is accelerating the collapse of their own power through petty bureaucratic interests and short term political considerations. …"
Optimistically, the author concludes:
“… whatever successor institutions, aristocracies, and duchies devour the modern welfare states in a orgy of map redrawing and private fortune making will probably find that there is a great deal of economic and technological low hanging fruit just lying about. …”
It really is worth reading the whole thing.
European farmers are reshaping the political landscape across the Atlantic just months before the EU’s parliamentary elections.
recently I stumbled across the fact that, indeed, there is still such a thing as government cheese. In fact, there's a whopping huge amount of it, hidden away in caves in Missouri, and what's more, according to this March 2023 article in the Science Times, the story behind government cheese is a brilliant example of how screwed up things get when the government fiddles with markets.
Missouri cheese caves are deep within the Ozark Mountains' heart under Springfield. Made of converted limestone mines, the caves are perfectly kept at 36 degrees Fahrenheit to give an ideal environment for storing stockpiles of government-owned cheese.
It all started in the 1970s when the U.S. suffered from a national dairy shortage which was made worse by 30% inflation on dairy products. In response to the economic crisis, then-President Jimmy Carter decided to spend money on the dairy industry to encourage dairy production.
The government set A [sic] new policy where a two-billion-dollar budget was allotted to subsidize dairy products over the next four years. This plan was favorable to farmers but also led them to overproduce dairy products. The farmers became motivated to produce as much dairy as they could because they knew that whatever was not sold on the market would be bought by the government. //
Most dairy products were converted to cheese because they have a longer shelf life. By the early 1980s, the government-owned more than 500 million pounds of cheese. Because of this, the next U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, had to pass a law in 1981 enacting the public distribution of government-owned cheese. //
In the years that followed, the demand for cheese declined, but the production rate remained the same as the government continued to support dairy producers. As of 2019, the collection comprises almost 1.4 billion pounds of surplus cheese in the U.S.
So, the federal government, with your tax dollars, has produced 1.4 billion pounds of cheese and has it stored in caves in Missouri. //
All the cheese is still there, presumably awaiting another Ronald Reagan, who will crack open the cheese vaults and give back to the American people the cheese that they have, after all, already paid for. The problem is, that dumping a billion-and-a-half pounds of cheese on the market will have a brutal effect on cheese prices and American dairy farmers. It's difficult to see a good way out of this mess now. Once again the federal government has tossed a bunch of taxpayer money after a problem that would have resolved itself if just left alone. Forty years later, we are still paying for it. //
I'll keep saying it until I turn blue: Markets aren't perfect, but they generally get things right if they are left alone. The problem is that the government just can't leave them alone. And this is what happens.
Anya Bidwell, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, the organization representing Gonzalez claims the city arrested the former councilmember as retaliation for her constant criticism of the mayor and other officials.
“In America, we don’t arrest our critics," she said.
The arrest led to Gonzalez’s lawsuit against the city, which invoked qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that protects government officials from civil liability unless it is established that they violated a Constitutional right.
The Supreme Court’s eventual ruling on this case could reach far beyond Castle Hills. It could redefine the landscape of free speech and government accountability. Depending on how the court decides, it could become harder for government officials to use their positions to punish those who criticize them.
Warren, along with leftist Democrat Reps. Pramila Jayapal (WA) and Brendan F. Boyle (PA), have reintroduced the Ultra-Millionaire Tax, which would impose a wealth tax and captivity tax ("exit tax"), and would also allot $100 billion for increasing tax audits on the the wealthy.
As law professor, author, and political commentator Jonathan Turley called it in a Wednesday column, an "Eat the Rich" plan. As you might imagine, Turley isn't a fan of a wealth tax — and that's just the beginning.
The wealth tax is back. We have previously discussed the constitutional and policy concerns surrounding the push by Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) to introduce a wealth tax that would start with billionaires. It would not likely end there. //
It is worth noting that the top 1 percent’s income share rose from 22.2 percent in 2020 to 26.3 percent in 2021 and its share of federal income taxes paid rose from 42.3 percent to 45.8 percent.” The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97.7 percent federal income taxes,. The bottom 50 percent paid the only 2.3 percent.
Even more stark, in 2021, the bottom half of taxpayers earned 10.4 percent of total adjusted gross income and paid 2.3 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the top 1 percent earned 26.3 percent of total AGI and paid 45.8 percent of all federal income taxes.
Let’s not pretend this is about countering communist China or protecting Americans. It’s about using CCP tactics here at home. //
Namely, the push to “ban” TikTok is a thinly veiled scheme to force ByteDance to sell to a U.S. company. The purpose of forcing a sale should be obvious. If a U.S. firm owns TikTok, the federal censorship industrial complex can use the platform as it has used virtually every other social media company: to spy on and manipulate American citizens. //
The suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, which was banned from Twitter, Facebook, and most other social media platforms almost as soon as it was reported, was only possible because of the leverage that federal intelligence agencies had over these social media companies.
Over the past year, we’ve learned more and more about the depth and breadth of collusion between Big Tech and the federal government, which views social media companies as proxies that enable it to censor and manipulate American citizens. Anything that cuts against the deep state’s preferred narrative is labeled as “misinformation” that must be suppressed, censored, or banned. Instead of doing this directly, the intelligence community dragoons social media companies into carrying out these tasks, and the effect is the quashing of free speech online.
Make no mistake, this is the goal of the movement to “ban” TikTok. How else to explain the effort to force a TikTok sale? If the goal was really to ban TikTok (because the CCP uses it to collect data on American citizens, or because it’s harmful to its users’ mental health, or both) then Congress would have simply passed a bill that banned the app from stores and web-hosting services in the United States. It could have been a straightforward, one-page bill.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has proposed new energy efficiency standards for distribution transformers. Almost all transformers produced under the new standard would feature amorphous steel cores that are, according to the DOE, significantly more energy efficient than those made of traditional, grain-oriented electrical steel. //
Portland General Electric has two critical points in its response to the delusional DOE.
First, Mandating a complete overhaul of transformer production during a severe shortage is basically insane. //
Second, the amorphous core transformers are significantly larger, leading to a host of technical issues that would jack up energy costs even more. //
An example for size comparison is that a 25KVA pole mounted amorphous core transformer is roughly the size of a 50KVA steel core transformer. This illustrates how much larger the new amorphous core transformers would need to be.
…This triggers a host of related issues that utilities would need to address. //
There is only one Grain-Oriented Electrical Steel (GOES) core maker in the United States (Butler Works, owned by Cleveland-Cliffs). That plant says that the rule is placing its operation in jeopardy.
Indiana is making deals to sell land to a gravely adversarial threat country, and hiding its actions.
Doing something that fast for the benefit of the people isn't something Congress is known for.
That means something fishy is going on.
Sure enough, a poison pill was found, and leave it to Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie to find it. As he pointed out on Tuesday, the TikTok ban is actually a "trojan horse" that would effectively give the executive branch power to ban pretty much anything on the internet he doesn't like.
The so-called TikTok ban is a trojan horse. The President will be given the power to ban WEB SITES, not just Apps. The person breaking the new law is deemed to be the U.S. (or offshore) INTERNET HOSTING SERVICE or App Store, not the “foreign adversary.”
Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie
·
The so-called TikTok ban is a trojan horse.
The President will be given the power to ban WEB SITES, not just Apps.
The person breaking the new law is deemed to be the U.S. (or offshore) INTERNET HOSTING SERVICE or App Store, not the “foreign adversary.”
https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20240311/HR%207521%20Updated.pdf
8:17 AM · Mar 12, 2024
In other words, this bill would give the government, namely the executive branch, broad powers of censorship over the internet. Websites like Telegram and VPN programs would take a hit for starters. What's also worrisome is that "foreign adversary" is not a clearly defined idea, which means this could be something left up to the opinion of the President.
It should be noted that Massie also posted a follow-up tweet pointing out who is completely untouchable in this bill. See if you can't figure out who it is just by the language.
Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie
·
Replying to @RepThomasMassie
If you think this isn’t a Trojan horse and will only apply to TikTok and foreign-adversary social media companies, then contemplate why someone thought it was important to get a very specific exclusion for their internet based business written into the bill:
9:19 AM · Mar 12, 2024
[Amazon.com] //
Rand Paul @RandPaul
·
🧵‼️ The lengths some in Congress will go to for more authority and control over Americans’ freedom of speech never ceases to amaze me. The TikTok bill recently advanced by the House would endanger the 1st amendment and empower the federal govt to ban social media platforms…
3:45 PM · Mar 9, 2024 //
Wade Miller
@WadeMiller_USMC
·
Follow
Here @MSNBC helpfully makes it clear their disdain for Christians in America.
She says that if you believe that your rights come from God, you aren’t a Christian, you are a Christian nationalist.
Somehow they seem to not mention that our own founding documents make this… Show more
1:08 PM · Feb 23, 2024 //
According to the Founding Fathers, our rights came from God.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Per The Rights of the Colonists:
These [rights] may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the great Law Giver and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament.
Lastly, per John Quincy Adams:
[T]he Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth. …[and] laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.
They float the term "Christian nationalist" to scare the public from those who believe their Lord and Savior is Jesus Christ, and that, yes, our rights do come from God. The majority, if not the overwhelming majority of Christians believe that, whether they identify as nationalists or not. //
If Christianity ever becomes the minority in America, you will never hear about the religion from left-wing networks again because they will have achieved their goal.
There are several lessons that the federal government can learn from the experience with fiscal rules in the states. First, a strong federalist system is required to restore fiscal sanity. This requires devolution of federal programs to state and local governments. The experience with welfare reform reveals that state and local governments can deliver these services more efficiently than the federal government.
Devolution must be accompanied by greater fiscal autonomy, shifting tax and expenditure powers from the federal government to state and local governments. Fiscal autonomy for state and local governments would restore the strong federalist system envisioned in the Constitution. //
Recent research discovered that more than the required number of states called for such a convention of states in 1979, yet Congress failed to act. Legislation introduced in Congress this year (H.C.R. 24) would require Congress to fulfill its obligation under Article V of the Constitution to certify and count state resolutions and call the convention.
Non-profit organizations are now working with state legislators in an appeal to the Supreme Court for a Declaratory Judgement that would require Congress to record and count the applications. State legislators and citizens must now step up and demand that Congress set the time and place for such a convention as required under Article V. That may be our only recourse to restore dynamically growing credence capital and fiscal sanity.
The time for action is now.
they were released on their own recognizance, which means police have nothing to arrest them on, on the assumption – which they have to operate on – that they’ll be back for their [March 4] court date.”
“The chances of that happening when four people get on a bus with false names and head for the city that literally you can cross the street into the Mexican border is probably unlikely,” he added. //
This is what "criminal justice reform" and defund the police have brought us – get-out-of-jail-free cards for criminals in cities like the Big Apple, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The phrase, “do the crime, serve the time” seems like a distant memory. Now it’s more like, “do the deed, get quickly freed.” //
Weminuche45
21 minutes ago
anarcho-tyranny:
The law is powerless to help you, but it can still harm you.
In simple terms, anarcho-tyranny is when the state stops upholding its end of the social contract and uses its monopoly on violence for its own ends.
Apropos of nothing, I'm thinking "The Russians, the British, the Australians and the Chinese…" sounds like the beginning of one of these "…walked into a bar" jokes.
(I must have it on my brain. Half an hour ago, i watched a video on the "Sumerian dog walks into a bar…" world's-oldest-joke meme. I didn't even know it was a thing, an honest-to-God 4,000 year old joke written in cuneiform, on a clay tablet. And nobody understands the punchline. Archaeological mystery).
Imagine my disappointment 🙂
In compensation for that, Here's a paranoid thought (of my own devising), for the enjoyment of budding conspiracy theorists…
The idea that the moon landing was faked, did not originate with some guy fond of tinfoil headgear.
Stay with me…
Instead, the US Government has a secret Conspiracy Theory Facilitation Program… tasked with devising the most floridly paranoid and deliberately wackdoodle "theories" possible, and then setting them free… (which are almost guaranteed to flourish, in the wild, among the nut-jobs roaming the streets of America).
These wacky ideas are planted and nurtured to create a default public perception, a conditioned herd-reflex, so that when the shadowy powers really DO need to "conspire" for nefarious purposes (maybe blow up some buildings to create a useful massive shift in public opinion, idk) …it's just that much easier to discredit the troublesome skeptic who happened to notice some really glaring loose ends …
But when he tries to tell a fellow citizen, they think "crazy dude living under a freeway overpass"
Skeptic is quite aware of this, and clams up.
Hmmm…
We used to shut away our mentally ill fellow citizens in asylums, keeping these tortured souls hidden from view. And medicating them with drugs to reduce the intensity and craziness of their hallucinations.
But then we had a top-down policy shift, taking away their thorazine, shutting down their treatment facilities, and casting the frightened inmates out into the streets. Supposedly because this is more humane and dignified. It also happens to be cheaper. They now live under freeway overpasses. And they panhandle. They are in our faces at stoplights and outside store entrances.
This doesn't make sense, unless… unless…
OMG
That's why the skeptic clammed up. I didn't actually call him a nut-job, but I looked at him like he was like a homeless crazydude and excused myself to supposedly refresh my drink. I acted like he had an infectious disease…
It's almost like i was conditioned to react that way…
And they've taken 1984 off of the recommended reading list for highschool students. Orwell who?
Nahhh….
[DISCLAIMER: The above is just sarcasm or humor or an exercise in creative writing. I promise, swear and affirm that I one-hundred-percent disavow all of the crazy Un-American thoughts therein. Keep this bag away from small children, it is not a toy. This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer or other reproductive harm. The government is always our friend. I pledge allegiance to the flag! Groupthink is my Co-pilot]
Apropos of nothing, I'm thinking "The Russians, the British, the Australians and the Chinese…" sounds like the beginning of one of these "…walked into a bar" jokes.
(I must have it on my brain. Half an hour ago, i watched a video on the "Sumerian dog walks into a bar…" world's-oldest-joke meme. I didn't even know it was a thing, an honest-to-God 4,000 year old joke written in cuneiform, on a clay tablet. And nobody understands the punchline. Archaeological mystery).
Imagine my disappointment 🙂
In compensation for that, Here's a paranoid thought (of my own devising), for the enjoyment of budding conspiracy theorists…
The idea that the moon landing was faked, did not originate with some guy fond of tinfoil headgear.
Stay with me…
Instead, the US Government has a secret Conspiracy Theory Facilitation Program… tasked with devising the most floridly paranoid and deliberately wackdoodle "theories" possible, and then setting them free… (which are almost guaranteed to flourish, in the wild, among the nut-jobs roaming the streets of America).
These wacky ideas are planted and nurtured to create a default public perception, a conditioned herd-reflex, so that when the shadowy powers really DO need to "conspire" for nefarious purposes (maybe blow up some buildings to create a useful massive shift in public opinion, idk) …it's just that much easier to discredit the troublesome skeptic who happened to notice some really glaring loose ends …
But when he tries to tell a fellow citizen, they think "crazy dude living under a freeway overpass"
Skeptic is quite aware of this, and clams up.
Hmmm…
We used to shut away our mentally ill fellow citizens in asylums, keeping these tortured souls hidden from view. And medicating them with drugs to reduce the intensity and craziness of their hallucinations.
But then we had a top-down policy shift, taking away their thorazine, shutting down their treatment facilities, and casting the frightened inmates out into the streets. Supposedly because this is more humane and dignified. It also happens to be cheaper. They now live under freeway overpasses. And they panhandle. They are in our faces at stoplights and outside store entrances.
This doesn't make sense, unless… unless…
OMG
That's why the skeptic clammed up. I didn't actually call him a nut-job, but I looked at him like he was like a homeless crazydude and excused myself to supposedly refresh my drink. I acted like he had an infectious disease…
It's almost like i was conditioned to react that way…
And they've taken 1984 off of the recommended reading list for highschool students. Orwell who?
Nahhh….
[DISCLAIMER: The above is just sarcasm or humor or an exercise in creative writing. I promise, swear and affirm that I one-hundred-percent disavow all of the crazy Un-American thoughts therein. Keep this bag away from small children, it is not a toy. This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer or other reproductive harm. The government is always our friend. I pledge allegiance to the flag! Groupthink is my Co-pilot]
Nayib Bukele @nayibbukele
·
We are HONORED to receive your attacks, just days before OUR election.
I would be very worried if we had your support.
Thank you 🙏🏼
Rep. Ilhan Omar @Ilhan
I led Members of Congress in sending a letter to @SecBlinken urging action on threats to democracy in El Salvador.
The State Dept must review its relationship with El Salvador and defend democratic values. The Salvadoran people deserve free and fair elections without fear of…
12:49 PM · Jan 31, 2024 //
Not only was Omar humiliated by Bukele, but X's Community Notes feature also stepped in to set the record straight.
"El Salvador’s democratically elected president Nayib Bukele won the 2019 election with a 54% majority," the community note read. "Under his leadership El Salvdor’s murder rate has fallen 93% and he currently has a 91% approval rating amongst El Salvadorian citizens."
Despite Bukele's popularity and incredibly successful efforts in turning one of Latin America's most dangerous countries into one of its safest, Omar and her Democratic colleagues had the nerve to go after Bukele's effective, albeit uncompromising, style of leadership. //
Maximus Decimus Cassius GeoMcGeo
an hour ago
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. ~ Taylor Caldwell
Our enemies are not foreign, they are domestic
The US military is almost entirely dependent upon China and Russia for a metal used in many military applications, such as explosives and armor-piercing bullets. The metal is antimony, and China currently owns 53 percent of the world's supply. However, it processes over 80 percent of antimony ore through contracts with other producers. The US's last source of antimony, the Stibnite mine in Idaho, ceased operations in 1997.
It isn't just the military that relies on antimony, though it does appear insane to import the key element in manufacturing modern military munitions from your most likely adversary; the private sector is also heavily reliant on the metal.
This issue has hit the front burner of Capitol Hill. The House Armed Services Committee is investigating the status of the Defense National Stockpile, which is charged with maintaining a strategic reserve of rare minerals. Our stockpile and the infrastructure to operate it will largely cease to exist by 2025 unless urgent action is taken.
Crap like this simply validates the idea that we are ruled by fools and buffoons. Congress has nearly sold off the stockpile of to, according to Defense News, " over the past several decades to fund other programs."
The stockpile was valued at nearly $42 billion in today’s dollars at its peak during the beginning of the Cold War in 1952. That value has plummeted to $888 million as of last year following decades of congressionally authorized sell-offs to private sector customers. Lawmakers anticipate the stockpile will become insolvent by FY25.
“A lot of what happened is Congress just getting greedy and finding politically convenient ways to fund programs that they weren’t willing to raise revenue for,” said [Massachusetts Democrat Seth] Moulton.