Category: Informational

American Thinker: Biden’s Hateful Rhetoric Against Americans Presents Sterling Opportunity

The Democratic party has been engaging for many years now in a purge of conservatives in the media, the military, and in academia. Last week President Biden, in a surreal speech, expanded the purge to the citizenry who dare to have opposing viewpoints, especially calling out Republicans who want to make America great again claiming that they are an extremist threat to the foundations of the republic. In this article from American Thinker, the author says it is an opportunity for conservative voices.

Whenever political leaders lose all political capital due to their misgovernance and have no real issues to base their campaign on, they often resort to focusing on the symbolic — usually referring to “the soul of the nation.”

This happened before in the U.S., it happened in India, it happened in the U.K. and it happened again in the U.S.

This is most typical of the left.

Instead of being humble and conceding their mistakes, they attack voters for thinking of voting against them while overlooking the myriad catastrophes they presided over.

They often blame their opponents for what they are guilty of — bigotry, violence — and then end with the “soul” plea.

Biden delivered his “soul” speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The manner of delivery was unhinged; he frequently waved his fists aggressively.  His voice was hoarse, perhaps owing to recent bouts with COVID-19, giving the speech a scornful tone. 

Biden spoke flanked by uniformed Marines, while his backdrop was bathed in blood-red hues making it look ominously like a hellscape.


Twitter video screen grab.

His speech was a sequel to his recent addresses, where he claimed that he doesn’t respect MAGA Republicans and that MAGA philosophy is like “semi-fascism.”

Biden called for Americans to “unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy regardless of your ideology.”

But Biden added a caveat that this doesn’t apply to “MAGA forces” — i.e., all those scores of millions who voted for and intend to vote for MAGA candidates.

Biden said that “too much of what’s happening in our country today isn’t normal.”

Biden is right here, but the blame for this lies on him.

Never before have government institutions been hijacked and misused to target political opponents.

Never before has a virus been misused to impose lockdowns that infringe on the right to freedom of movement and the right to earn a living.

Never before have vaccines been mandated, causing people to be fired from their jobs or suffer from health issues.

Never before has the U.S. government demonized its own citizens, calling them domestic terrorists.

Never before has the U.S. government set up a “Disinformation Governance Board” that sits in judgment of the utterances of citizens.

Never before has the U.S. been subjected to prolonged disinformation campaigns, the Russian collusion hoax, the Ukraine call hoax, and now the insurrection hoax.

Never before has the U.S. had a president whose cognitive abilities are so impaired that he struggles to read off a teleprompter and causes citizens to wonder who is in charge.

Biden continues by claiming that the Republican Party is “dominated, driven, intimidated by Donald Trump” and his supporters, calling it “a threat to this country” because “they refuse to accept the results of a free election.”

Perhaps Biden forgot the Russian collusion hoax concocted by the Democrats that baselessly attempted to delegitimize the results of the 2016 presidential election.  It was the Democrats who refused to accept the results of a free election.

Perhaps Biden forgot that big media and Big Tech suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop scandal prior to the 2020 election.  A recent poll shows that nearly four of five Americans believe that “truthful” coverage would have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Perhaps Biden forgot about Mark Zuckerberg spending $419 million to infiltrate sacrosanct electoral infrastructure of the 2020 elections and push for mail-in voting.

Perhaps Biden forgot that 69% of voters nationwide cast their ballot non-traditionally — i.e., by mail and/or before Election Day for the 2020 election.  Mail votes are highly vulnerable to fraud.

Biden also alleged that the “MAGA forces” are aligned with white supremacists, violent extremists, and other undesirables.

Perhaps Biden forgot violent Democrat extremists threatening Supreme Court justices and vandalizing Catholic churches, pregnancy centers, and the offices of pro-life groups.  There was an assassination plot against Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Biden also accused “MAGA Republicans” of seeing a country consumed in “darkness.”

Perhaps Biden forgot that his misgovernance is the sole cause of darkness.

The open borders have caused an influx of illegal aliens, some of whom are violent criminals.  More than 4.9 million illegal migrants have crossed the southern border. 

The smuggling of illicit drugs across the border is a regular occurrence.  There were an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the United States during the 12-month period ending in April 2021, an increase of 28.5% during the same period the year before.

Inflation is at a very high 8.5 percent, causing the price of essential items to skyrocket.  The price of fuels continues to be high.

The crime wave is ravaging the nation, and Democrat judges refuse to prosecute misdemeanors such as drug possession, driving offenses, disturbing the peace, shoplifting, larceny, domestic violence, etc.

None of the Biden-backed initiatives such as the Inflation Reduction Act or the infrastructure bill or his climate initiative or pardoning student loans will reduce people’s suffering.  In fact, wasteful spending will make inflation worse. 

Biden’s “gun safety” red flag laws allow instant confiscation of guns on mere suspicion.  This endangers lives, especially considering the crime wave.

Thus, not only has Biden taken the nation into darkness, but his misgovernance will blacken the darkness even further.

Biden perfunctorily claimed that “not every Republican, not even a majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans; not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.”

If that were indeed the case, and the MAGA movement were just a small minority, why did Biden base his entire speech on an insignificant minority?

This was an attempt to distinguish between the Good Republicans (Lincoln Project, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and company) versus the Bad Republicans (Trump and the MAGA GOP).  The truth is the “Good Republicans” are useful idiots, who will instantly become bad if they dare to run against Democrats.

Most Americans disapprove of Biden; that number is likely to rise after his hateful rhetoric.

The purpose of the address was to demonize, dehumanize, and otherize Donald Trump and his supporters, which would justify any kind of persecution by government agencies.

This also creates grounds for the Democrats to reject the outcome of the midterms should the GOP, particularly the MAGA GOP, win by a landslide.  They could claim to stand against fascist forces.  The Democrats have broken every immutable norm in recent times; they already attempted to overthrow the 2016 election; they could very well do this for the midterms.

But there is a silver lining.

Despite claims that the speech would be apolitical, Biden delivered a campaign speech.  However, it wasn’t for the Democrats.  It was instead for the Republicans and Donald Trump.

Even personnel from Democrats’ mouthpieces such as CNN and the Daily Beast weren’t impressed…(continues)

Radio Contra Ep. 179 and 180 – Political Warfare and Coming Troubles

Episode 179. Mike Belcher on Conservative Political Warfare. I’m joined by Mike Belcher, candidate for New Hampshire State House, to talk political warfare for conservatives. Coming into a adulthood raised in a far Left household and himself a former Leftist Environmental activist, he describes the exact steps the Left in America is taking, how he became a Conservative and a Christian, and how to beat the Marxist ideology at its own game.

Radio Contra Ep. 179 Mike Belcher on Conservative Political Warfare

Episode 180. The Coming American Troubles with Chris Weatherman. I’m joined by Chris Weatherman, author of the best selling Going Home series, to talk the coming troubles in America and the incitement of leftist political violence as a result of last night’s speech from President Biden.

Radio Contra Ep. 180 The Coming American Troubles with Chris Weatherman

ZeroHedge: Twitter, Facebook Regularly Coordinated With Biden Admin To Censor Users

Here’s another shot in the argument about whether censorship by private companies is or should be illegal/unConstitutional. It’s well accepted that the First Amendment right to free speech only applies against the government. But when the government is directing or influencing the decisions of the private company…then what? Here’s ZeroHedge, talking about how Twitter, Facebook Regularly Coordinated With Biden Admin To Censor Users.

Newly released internal emails from Facebook and Twitter show an extensive effort to coordinate with the Biden administration to censor users, according to a Thursday release of information by GOP Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana.

Throughout the emails, officials within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Health and Human Services (HHS) emailed Facebook and Twitter employees with instructions on flagging instances of alleged misinformation, and guided them with talking points to counter allegedly false narratives on the platforms. 

In one instance, a CDC official asked Facebook for monthly meetings to plan “debunking” strategies, while in another case a White House official requested the removal of an Anthony Fauci parody account.

“We have already received a number of documents that clearly prove that the federal government has an incestuous relationship with social media companies and clearly coordinate to censor freedom of speech, but we’re not done,” said Schmitt in a joint statement. ” The Department of Justice is cowering behind executive privilege and has refused to turn over communications between the highest-ranking Biden Administration officials and social media companies. That’s why, yesterday, we asked the Court to compel the Department of Justice to produce those records. We’re just getting started – stay tuned.”

More via AG Schmitt’s Thursday release:

The communications already provided by the Department of Justice to the plaintiff states show, as the joint statement points out, a vast “Censorship Enterprise” across a multitude of federal agencies. In response to Missouri and Louisiana’s interrogatories, defendants identified 45 federal officials at DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General (all of which are contained in either DHS or HHS) that communicate with social media platforms about “misinformation” and censorship. The joint statement points out, “But in those responses, Defendants did not provide information about any federal officials at other federal agencies of whom they are aware who engage in such communications with social-media platforms about misinformation and censorship, though Plaintiffs had specifically asked for this highly relevant information. Defendants’ document production, however, reveals that such officials at other federal agencies exist—for example, their emails include extensive copying of officials at the Census Bureau, and they also include communications involving the Departments of Treasury and State.”

Beyond the Department of Justice’s production, “Meta, for example, has disclosed that at least 32 federal officials—including senior officials at the FDA, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and the White House—have communicated with Meta about content moderation on its platforms, many of whom were not disclosed in response to Plaintiffs’ interrogatories to Defendants. YouTube disclosed eleven federal officials engaged in such communications, including officials at the Census Bureau and the White House, many of whom were also not disclosed by Defendants.”

 
The joint statement continues, “The discovery provided so far demonstrates that this Censorship Enterprise is extremely broad, including officials in the White House, HHS, DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General; and evidently other agencies as well, such as the Census Bureau, the FDA, the FBI, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. And it rises to the highest levels of the U.S. Government, including numerous White House officials. Defendants have objected to producing some of the most relevant and probative information in their possession.”

This “Censorship Enterprise” is proven by the Department of Justice’s productions thus far, but the full extent of federal officials’ collusion with social media companies on censorship is unknown until the Department of Justice produces further communications requested by Missouri and Louisiana.

A senior Facebook official sent an email to the Surgeon General stating, “I know our teams met today to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward.” This email chain follows the SG’s “misinformation health advisory” in July 2021: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/hhs-fb-email-1.pdf?sfvrsn=53bc4454_2

The same senior official sent a later email to HHS and noted, “Thanks again for taking the time to meet earlier today.” Then, the official continued to discuss how Facebook is taking even more steps to censor freedom of speech: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/hhs-fb-exhibit.pdf?sfvrsn=55bd83df_2

Twitter scheduled a meeting to debrief top White House officials on “vaccine misinformation.”: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/twitter-vaccine-meeting-wh.pdf?sfvrsn=6599e359_2b 

 
There are several instances where Facebook wouldn’t proceed with censoring freedom of speech on their platform until they had input, or a “debunking” from the CDC. Twitter followed the same course in at least one email.

The CDC also proposed a monthly pre-debunking meeting with Facebook to help them censor free speech (https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/cdc-fb-monthly-debunk.pdf?sfvrsn=3508a21f_2) as well as regular “Be on the Lookout” calls with major social media outlets: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/cdc-bolo-meeting.pdf?sfvrsn=9a060658_2

A White House official was even concerned about parody Fauci accounts and coordinated with FB to take them down: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/free-speech-pitch-thread-docs/fake-fauci.pdf?sfvrsn=a9d8f2bf_2

Doom and Bloom: Burns

The Altons at Doom and Bloom Medical have a couple of articles on burns. The first is on First and Second Degree Burns, while the third covers Third Degree Burns. Here’s an excerpt from the first of the articles, as always, more pictures in the original article:

A wide variety of situations, both in normal times and disaster settings, put us in proximity with high levels of heat. If we’re knocked off the grid, it won’t be unusual to cook food over a fire of our own making, something very few do on a regular basis. As such, the survival medic will often be faced with burn injuries. Having the materials and knowledge to treat burns will be absolutely necessary in times of trouble.

Burns can be caused by contact with sources other than flames, including:

•             Scalds due to contact with hot water or steam.

•             Contact with electricity associated with lightning or another source.

•             Friction burns due to contact with hard surfaces such as roads (“road rash”), carpets, or hard flooring.

•             Skin exposure to extreme cold and winds. Yes, extreme cold can cause burns.

•             Chemical spills.

•             Radiation due to contact with energy emitted by x-rays and other medical testing or treatment, “dirty bombs,” or thermonuclear explosions.

In general, the different types of burns are treated similarly, although some burns, like those caused by electricity or radiation, may cause internal damage without destroying the skin. Inhalation of superheated air may cause damage to lung tissue. Off the grid, the lack of advanced care will make these cases a challenge for the medic.

The severity of a burn injury and resulting chance of death or disability depends, in part, on the percentage of the total body surface involved, as measured by the “rule of nines.”

Assessing the percentage of body surface area burned is standard practice and helpful in modern medicine. It may, however, have less practical benefit in austere settings where transport isn’t an option. In any case, knowing the “rule of nines” may give the medic an idea of the chances of recovery for a burn victim.

Burns to the face, feet, hands, genitals, and lungs are considered the most problematic. Burns that go completely around a body part, say, an arm, cause constriction that may affect circulation. Areas with a lot of scar tissue may have limited mobility.

BURN DEGREES

Besides total surface area involved, an important factor is the amount of penetration of the burn. This is usually measured in degrees.

First-Degree Burns

Most burns you’ll see will be due to excessive exposure to the sun. A majority of cases will be “first-degree burns.” In first-degree burns, the patient may be red as a lobster, but only the superficial layer of the skin (the “epidermis”) is injured.

A first-degree burn will appear red, warm, and dry. It will be painful to the touch, especially when large areas of skin are involved. Fortunately, major complications are rare unless other symptoms such as nausea and vomiting appear. Treatment is simply focused on relieving discomfort.

Immersion in a cool bath will be helpful; at the very least, run cool water over the injury. A cool moist cloth on the burn for 20 minutes will give some relief. So will anti-inflammatory medicines such as Ibuprofen. Aloe vera, zinc oxide, and benzocaine sprays are effective alternatives. Expect the discomfort to improve after 24 hours. Until then, avoid constrictive, tight clothing and wear light fabrics, such as cotton.

Prevention, of course, is worth a pound of cure. To avoid this type of sunburn:

•             Don’t “sunbathe” (a tan is not healthy).

•             Avoid the peak sun hours for the time of year and latitude.

•             Wear long pants and sleeves, hats, and sunglasses.

•             Spend time in the shade whenever possible.

If extended exposure to sunlight is unavoidable, be certain to use a sunblock. Apply 15 minutes prior to going outside and re-apply frequently throughout the day. Even water-resistant sunscreens should be reapplied every one to two hours. Most people fail to put enough on, so be sure to use plenty.

As an aside, sunblock and sunscreen are not the same thing. Sunblocks contain tiny particles that “block” and reflect UV light. A sunscreen contains substances that absorb UV light, thus preventing it from penetrating the skin below. Many commercial products contain both. Sunblocks and sunscreens should be an integral part of your medical storage.

The SPF (Sun Protection Factor) rating system was developed in 1962 to measure the capacity of a product to protect against UV radiation. It measures the length of exposure to the sun before you burn. A SPF (sun protection factor) of at least 15 is recommended. It takes about 20 minutes without sunscreen for your skin to start turning red. SPF 15 blocks 94 percent of the sun’s rays, SPF 30 blocks 97 percent, and SPF 45 98 percent. The higher the number, the longer it takes for the skin to burn.

Although the increase in protection may seem small, higher SPF numbers are especially beneficial to those with fair skin. They offer better protection against long-term skin damage leading to cancer.

Besides the sun, first-degree injuries will most likely be related to cooking or campfires. Using hand protection will prevent many of these burns, as will careful supervision of children near campfires and food preparation areas.

Second-Degree Burns

Second-degree burns are deeper injuries that penetrate through the superficial epidermis and partially through the deeper layer of the skin (the “dermis”). Thus, they’re often called “partial thickness burns.” While first-degree burns may cover a large percentage of surface area without becoming life-threatening (but are painful), a relatively small percentage of the body covered with significant second-degree burns may require serious medical intervention.

Unlike first-degree burns, which appear dry, second-degree burns will be moist and often have blisters with reddened bases. The area will have a tendency to weep clear or whitish fluid. Second degree burns will cause swelling as well, so it’s important to remove rings and bracelets.

To treat second degrees burns:

Remove the victim from the heat source immediately. Run cool water over the injury for 10-15 minutes (avoid ice, which will traumatize already-damaged skin). After washing and running water over the wound, pat the area dry. The next step is to apply moist skin dressings such as Xeroform, Spenco Second Skin or non-stick dressings (Telfa pads) with thin layers of products like aloe vera or Aquaphor. Be sure to replace regularly and review the progress of healing. Other actions should include:

•             Removing jewelry like rings and bracelets (swelling may cause painful constriction).

•             Elevating burned extremities.

•             Applying cool compresses.

•             Giving oral pain relief such as Ibuprofen (Advil).

•             Applying anesthetic creams such as benzocaine or lidocaine.

•             Avoidance of “peeling” burned skin, which sometimes comes off in sheets.

•             Protecting adjacent burned fingers and toes with a dry barrier in-between.

•             Encouraging hydration.

•             Using a “tenting” method to keep sheets above extensive burns.

We’re often asked whether to pop blisters associated with second-degree burns. It’s wisest to avoid the lancing of blisters, if possible, unless they’re infected and filled with pus. Some very large blisters will, however, break with the slightest pressure and may benefit from controlled drainage. If this is the case, use a sterilized needle or scalpel blade to pierce the side of the blister near the base. The roof of the blister is often retained to provide additional protection to the healing base.

It’s important to avoid the use of lard or butter on burns: They tend to keep in heat and may worsen the injury. Egg whites and toothpaste, long considered to be home remedies, may increase the risk of infection. It’s better to use sterile saline solutions to keep the burn area and (non-stick) dressing moist, especially in severe burns.

In part 2 of this series, we’ll discuss third-degree burns. Is there anything the survival medic can do if confronted with this life-threatening issue?

Pat Buchanan: Winners and Losers from the Ukraine War

Author and former senior Presidential advisor Pat Buchanan writes a column about Winners and Losers From the Ukraine War.


If Russia has been badly bled and Ukraine has suffered irretrievable losses of land and soldiers, who then are the winners? And who benefits from a continuation of this war, which will bring thousands more dead and wounded Russians and Ukrainians?

“There never was a good war or a bad peace,” wrote Ben Franklin at the end of the American Revolution.

But that depends on the war-makers and the causes for which they fight.

Six months into the war in Ukraine, launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24, when he could not get the U.S. or Kyiv to rule out admission of Ukraine to a NATO alliance aimed against Russia, who appear to be the winners and who the losers?

While Russia has made gains in the east of Ukraine, the Donbas and in the South adjacent to Crimea, captured Mariupol, and turned the Sea of Azov into a Russian lake, its losses have been massive.

The invading Russian army of February was stopped in its tracks outside Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv. That army failed to capture Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, close to the Russian border. It failed to capture Odessa, the third largest city and Ukraine’s major port on the Black Sea.

According to Western sources, Russia has suffered 75,000 to 80,000 casualties and is desperately recruiting, even in prisons, to find troops to replace the dead and wounded lost in Ukraine.

Putin wants to expand his army by an additional 137,000 troops.

The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the cruiser Moskva, has been sunk. A thousand tanks and armored personnel carriers have been destroyed.

The reputation of the Russian army as a near-invincible force in any land war in Europe has been shattered.

Politically, Russia has isolated itself from much of Europe, been hit with severe sanctions and watched as Europe and NATO unite against it.

Sweden and Finland have abandoned their historic neutrality to become the 31st and 32nd members of NATO.

Is Ukraine then the winner of this war?

After all, the war that the Ukraine of Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fought against a larger Russia for its freedom, independence and territorial integrity has won the admiration of much of the world.

Yet, in two clashes with Russia, in 2014 and 2022, Ukraine has lost 20% of its territory in its east and south, and Kyiv is not going to retrieve these lost lands before winter comes.

But if Russia has been badly bled and Ukraine has suffered irretrievable losses of land and soldiers, who then are the winners?

And who benefits from a continuation of this war, which will bring thousands more dead and wounded Russians and Ukrainians?

America?

Is this new Cold War II with Russia, into which we appear to have plunged, in the national interest of a United States that so welcomed the peaceful end of the old Cold War three decades ago?

Of what benefit to the U.S. is the sending of troops to the Baltic republics? Are we stronger, safer, more secure, now that we have committed to fight Russia to defend the 830-mile Finnish-Russian border, something no Cold Warrior of an earlier era would have dreamt of doing?

Are we better off because all the nations of the Warsaw Pact and three republics of the old USSR are now NATO allies for whose independence we are committed to fight Russia?

Is the revival of the Sino-Soviet pact, aimed at the West in the 1950s and now aimed at NATO and our Asian allies, something we should welcome? Have not our own post-Cold War policies contributed mightily to reviving the old Cold War Russia-China alliance against us?

Where President Richard Nixon appeared to split Mao’s China from Russia, this generation of American leaders appears to have restored that hostile duopoly.

Putin was a Russian KGB agent during the Cold War. Now every member state of the former Warsaw Pact and three constituent republics of the USSR of that era are NATO allies of the United States.

This is the new Cold War. Is Putin alone responsible for igniting it?

Perhaps highest among our goals in the first Cold War with Russia was the avoidance of a hot war that could escalate to a nuclear war and destroy both nations.

Now that we are again in a hostile state of relations with Moscow as we were then, how can this be the result of a successful foreign policy?

In the first Cold War, Eastern Europe and the Baltic States were accepted as satellites of the Soviet Union. Communism had been imposed upon them all after World War II.

But that was not a cause for military conflict between us.

When we brought virtually all of Eastern Europe into NATO, we were the ones, not Putin, who made their independence of Moscow and alliance with the West a matter for which we committed ourselves to go to war.

As Russians and Ukrainians kill one another in the Donbas, and hatred of Russians for Americans grows, how is that good for the USA?

Perhaps we ought to invest as much time and energy trying to end this war as we do to defeat and humiliate Russia, which will not bring us peace.

The Captain’s Journal: National Borders and the Bible

The following post comes from The Captain’s Journal, wherein he discusses an article of the same name over on The Postmillenial Worldview.

Replace “Biden Maladministration” with Washington DC since Reagan first gave amnesty, and you’re set. The author, bless his heart*, is still living in the fog of delusion about the Republicans. He’ll learn, after decades of betrayal, they all do. That’s another topic.

“The collapsing border disaster under the Biden Maladministration is a live topic of international consequence today. Many well meaning Christians believe it is wrong to keep refugees out on a temporary basis because they believe borders are man-made constructs lacking biblical warrant. Besides the contradiction obvious in their having homes with walls and locked doors, their argument does not hold.

“Established borders are biblically warranted as we see in two clear scriptural examples. Though other arguments are available, these are quite potent.“

In building a case for national borders, Dr. Gentry starts in Genesis and then briefly discusses the Law and historical books primarily.

Any discussion of the necessity of national borders must start with a REAL definition of Nation, which comes from the word natal, meaning: of the same womb/lineage. A proper definition includes a common language, customs, and, most importantly, common religion.

Briefly, distinct religions won’t coexist. They can’t. The Bible clarifies that conversion is necessary for an immigrating person to be accepted into a nation. This is actual assimilation. It’s even true for Christians today. To be a citizen of the Kingdom of God, you must first be converted by God, accepting Christ under the power of the Holy Spirit, or you are a trespasser in the kingdom of heaven; woe to you, for except you be born again, damnable is your end indeed (Matthew 18:3, John 3:3, others).

Not mentioned in the article is the fact that the Hebrews were a religious, ethnic, and linguistically unique people. And in the few instances where they weren’t, again, adherence to the religious Law (conversion) was required. A country is simply some distinct region or a land area.

Chapters 9-11 of Genesis detail the creation of Nations. In a longer form post, we could include the post-flood covenant through to the Tower of Babel. The covenant with every living creature and the rights of men are discussed here.

The author does an excellent job of taking complicated topics and making them accessible to the average Christian, and he keeps posts to a digestible size, something most appreciate. That’s probably one reason he doesn’t tackle the abovementioned points while offering only two clear instances from Scripture.

*This is a southernism. Sometimes it’s not, but we’re using it only as tongue in cheek. We deeply respect Dr. Gentry’s work.

Out Front: The Importance of Community Building

Here is Mike Shelby/Sam Culper of Forward Observer and Grey Zone Activity taking briefly about the importance of community building. At the beginning of this clip, he’s finishing up talking about the chances of upheaval around the 2024 elections. He answers the question about community/mutual assistance groups around the two minute mark.

Wyoming Survival: Uniden BCD436HP Is Number 1

Wyoming Survival has an article up about the Uniden BCD436HP scanner. This is a scanner that we’ve recommended ourselves in our post about Suggested Radio Equipment for Community Safety. This is a pretty feature rich scanner, which can make it somewhat intimidating for users new to scanning. Luckily, it’s pretty much ready to go out of the box, and fairly user friendly to get started with basic scanning in your area. We’ll just add a note here about programming software for this scanner. Uniden has their own Sentinel software for this device, but we’ve been using BuTel’s ARC536PRO software, which seems to have more to it.

Uniden BCD436HP Scanner

Anyone who has been following me for awhile knows I’ve been testing the Uniden BCD436HP VS. The Whistler TRX-1. I’ve written multiple posts about them and how good the decode DMR, how quickly they pick up signals, and what not. Today while messing around I stumbled on a feature of the Uniden that puts in the top spot for you digital scanner and SIGINT tool.

I have been having a bunch of discussions on Instagram about the use of scanners other than listening to local LEOs. I was making multiple short videos about what they were asking. I was discussing about using 2 scanners scanning different bands searching for the Baofeng Brothers. In the video I was using the Whistler TRX-1 on UHF and the Uniden BCD436HP on VHF. To do this on the Uniden you have to use the Discovery mode. You set your limits. I set mine to 136 MHZ to 179 MHZ which is what the Baofeng UV-5R will cover. So when the Uniden captures a frequency in Discovery mode it logs it so you can go back and see what frequency it was that it got a hit. What I didn’t know was it also records the audio of that hit!! This is HUGE!!

So let’s say you are in your Listening Post and you are getting your instant coffee ready. While you are pouring the sugar the scanner picks up part of a PSK31 transmission. You spill your hot ass coffee in your lap trying to get to the scanner to at least catch the frequency it was on but you’re unable to because your crotch is burning from the hot coffee you spilt all over yourself. Yeah with the Uniden BCD436HP you don’t have to worry about that since it logged the frequency AND recorded what audio it picked up.

I don’t know what else to say. It decodes DMR, logs the frequency, AND records the audio for you to review later. Its hard to ask for much more in a SIGINT tool

Tucker Carlson: Carjacking is sign that your civilization is falling apart

Tucker Carlson recently talked about how carjacking (also known as highway robbery in older times) is a clear sign of civilization failing as lawlessness prevents free travel.

Turns out the symptoms of societal decay are universal. They’re not unique to a specific society. You recognize them in any country at any time, now or a thousand years ago, always the same. The men become weak. The leaders get decadent. Law enforcement gets politicized. The currency gets devalued and then things begin to come apart.  

Pretty soon, it doesn’t take long, the society can no longer perform its most basic function. The reason we have societies in the first place, which is to protect the weak from the strong. That’s where you have a society. Well, in places like this, it becomes, among many other things, very hard to travel anywhere. You just can’t go where you want to go. With legitimate authority in retreat, roads are not controlled by the police. They’re controlled by armed predators and the armed predators take exactly what they want from travelers because they can.  

This is an ancient problem. It used to be called highway robbery, and for most of history, it kept people very close to home. Turns out it still exists, but now it’s called carjacking. Carjacking is the clearest possible sign that your civilization is falling apart and that’s why you find it in places like Somalia and South Africa, places where force, violence and clan loyalty have replaced law and order, places where might makes right. In the city of Johannesburg, for example, a vehicle is hijacked on average once every hour of the day. Now, once that happens, there’s really no coming back from it. Nobody’s going to build anything in the city with endemic carjacking. 

In fact, most normal people will leave as fast as they can, as they have in Johannesburg, as they are starting to do, we are sad to tell you, in the city of New Orleans, where carjacking is now a permanent feature of life. Last summer, a law student called Madison Bergeron pulled into the driveway of her home in New Orleans. As she gathered belongings in the car, a young man appeared out of nowhere, stuck a gun in her face, and demanded that she hand over everything she had, including the car. He screamed at her. Terrified, she complied, and that’s what carjacking is always like. It is an act of violence. 

People don’t want to give up their cars. They have to be terrified into doing so. That’s why the majority of victims are women, old women, young women, and that’s why the people who do it will do anything. If you will carjack, if you will steal someone’s car at gunpoint, you will also rape. You will also murder. You have no limits. You are willing to violate on the most basic level, the civil rights of another person and in this case, that was certainly true because that same perpetrator went on, after terrifying Madison Bergeron and stealing her car, to do the same to other women in the city, a lot of them.  

“There was a car blocking me in,” one victim recalled. “And next thing I turn around, there’s yelling and there’s a gun barrel in my face. The kid is yelling to get the F out of the car, get the F out of the car,’ or else he will shoot me.” In all, the carjacker would terrorize five women and steal five cars in just two days before New Orleans police finally arrested him and it’s amazing that they did because there are virtually no police left in New Orleans.  

In a city that probably needs about 2,000 cops, they’re under 500 active-duty policemen left in New Orleans. In New Orleans, they have definitely defunded the police. But in this case, the carjacker, a young teenager was ultimately caught, tried, convicted and sentenced for his crimes. Now, these crimes got a lot of attention in New Orleans. 

So, the mayor of the city, Latoya Cantrell, showed up to the sentencing, but here’s the twist in the story. Mayor Cantrell didn’t show up to support the victims, the women who’d been terrorized by this predator. No, the mayor showed up to support the carjacker and to let the entire city know that she was doing it, to let everyone know whose side she was on. Watch.  

REPORTER VOICEOVER: The mayor showed up in court as a character witness for a 14-year-old offender during sentencing. The teen robbed three women in separate incidents with a fake gun, stealing their cars and belongings. The victims told Fox 8 they were traumatized by what happened and then they felt victimized all over again when the mayor showed up in support of the young criminal. 

WOMAN VICTIM: I was in shock she wasn’t there for us. She was there for the assailant and his mother and it felt like she was supporting the crime.  

REPORTER VOICEOVER: Juvenile Judge Darensburg sentenced the juvenile to a three-year suspended sentence, meaning no jail time. 

It felt like she was supporting the crime, said the victim. Well, yes, it did, because that’s exactly what the mayor was doing. Cantrell was taking the side of the carjacker over the traumatized, law-abiding woman. Now in New Orleans, Cantrell is known by her nickname Teedy, but many people call her exactly what she is: “Latoya the destroya.” She is, in fact, a destroyer. The mayor is incompetent. Mayor is an open race hater. 

The mayor is an encourager of violence and she is destroying an already wounded city. We reached out to Mayor Cantrell’s office to ask why she is doing all of this. Why did she pressure a judge to release a convicted armed carjacker with no prison time? But of course, she didn’t reply to us. It turns out the mayor of New Orleans had a connection to this carjacker. Cantrell had enrolled this person in one of her administration’s welfare programs called “Pathways Youth Internship Program.” Using taxpayer money, the program says it provides young people who commit crimes with a reward, paid internships and a stipend.  

We contacted the Pathways program this morning. We want to know how many people enrolled in that program go on to commit violent crime within five years. We also asked how much taxpayer money they spent, but of course they didn’t answer. But we don’t need an answer. We know exactly what this is. Pathways, like most social justice scams, is not, in fact, designed to reduce crime. It’s about siding with the criminal, giving the criminals as much support as they need, even a courtroom visit from the mayor, if necessary, so they can go out and commit more crimes as soon as possible. So, why would you do something like this if you were the mayor of a city of New Orleans? Why would you force people to leave your city, the people who pay all the taxes of all colors, by the way? Why would you do that?  

Well, possibly because the people who are left tend to be the ones who vote for you. So, it is a kind of electoral strategy. It’s not just happening in New Orleans. It’s happening in a lot of places. The downside is it leads to carnage. There have already been 191 carjackings in the city of New Orleans this year alone. To all of last year, they were a total of 177. Now, most of these carjackings and this is true in a lot of other places, Washington, D.C., we think, most of these are committed by people under the age of 18…(article continues)

S2 Underground: Intro to Sigint

S2 Underground has a new video providing an introduction to signals intelligence, that is intelligence derived from electronic signals and systems, such as communications systems, radars, and weapons systems. If you’re interested in the topic, Brushbeater has a signals intelligence course, though the last one for 2022 was a week ago.

00:00 – Introduction and History

03:48 – Flight Tracking Apps

06:13 – ADS-B Receivers

07:39 – Software Defined Radios

11:01 – Scanners

15:43 – HackRF Devices

17:35 – Recap

17:58 – Your Own Communications

19:39 – Feasible and Realistic

25:25 – Have a Goal

26:24 – Shelter

29:30 – Automation

30:18 – Integration

31:27 – Closing Thoughts

Organic Prepper: The SHTF Is Happening Right Now

Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper writes about the SHTF caused by economic problems in The SHTF Is Happening Right Now.

We’ve posted articles before on this website about the slow-burning SHTF that we’re witnessing here and here. Years ago, in 2016, I wrote about the economic crisis like this:

The bottom line is, income will remain the same, decrease, or even disappear entirely for many of us. Meanwhile, the price of darn near everything will go up. Expect to pay more for things like keeping your utilities on, feeding and clothing your family, and keeping a roof over your heads.

Aside from that, those dollars you are carefully saving? They are only providing you with the illusion of security. The economic collapse will hit nearly everyone, and they’ll feel like they did something wrong with their finances. It will be hard to see that the flaw is not with their money management but the management of the country itself.

I wish I’d been wrong.

Here are some of the situations people are finding themselves in right now. Do any of them look familiar? Do all of them look like your current experiences? Be aware that if it hasn’t happened to you yet, that doesn’t mean it won’t. Don’t be smug because we all know that pride comes before a fall. Be humble and know that while different decisions could have been made, this economic disaster is creeping across nearly all socioeconomic groups, and it may only be a matter of time before it happens to you, too.

Wages are staying the same, and it isn’t easy to find work.

A lot of folks think that jobs are easy to find right now. They cite the signs that are up everywhere, announcing that businesses are hiring. As the mom of someone in her early 20s who is out there looking for a second job to increase her household income, I can tell you that just because there’s a sign out doesn’t mean the business is actually hiring.

A lot of places are required by their corporate headquarters to put these signs out to make it look like they’re thriving, but they aren’t actually hiring. Go in with a resume, and you’ll soon find out this is true. Obviously, it’s not the case with all businesses posting such signs, but it’s very much the situation in urban North Carolina right now.

Places that hire minimum wage workers are operating with skeleton crews, leaving too few frazzled employees to handle long lines and unhappy patrons. Have you been someplace like Walmart or Target lately? At least at our local stores, there’s generally one register with a human operating, and quite often, the line winds down the front aisle with dozens of customers.

Wages haven’t matched the increase of inflation. If you’re still making what you made a year or two or three years ago, you’re able to pay for far less with it. This leads me to the next situation.

Inflation means you are paying more for essentials like food, utilities, gasoline, and rent.

Our esteemed leader, President Biden, managed to read the teleprompter and tell us that inflation is all in our heads and doesn’t actually exist. He claimed proudly that in July, inflation was at 0%.

Speaking from the White House, Biden said:

“I want to say a word about news that came out today relative to the economy. Actually, I just want to say a number: zero.” He continued, “Today we received news that our economy had zero percent inflation in the month of July.” (source)

While that is the official statistic for July, it doesn’t reveal the true economic suffering. Over the past year, the official numbers for inflation are at 8.5%. And in the real world, we know that there’s actually more to the picture than the statistics show.

People are skipping a lot of things that they used to be able to pay for with ease due to the high prices. For example, a friend pointed out to me that on her last trip to the grocery store, a jar of mayonnaise was $5 on sale. A pot roast that used to be around 12 bucks is now more than $20.

A gallon of milk that was $3.04 in 2019 is now $3.55 (if you’re lucky.) At my local Publix, a gallon of generic milk is actually $4.41 as of the writing of this article. If you’re still making the same thing you were in 2019, things like that certainly belie the 8.5% bandied about.

And don’t even get me started on the high price of gasoline. My Jeep now takes almost $100 to fill up, whereas it took $60 just a year ago. Rent is out of control. The official numbers for the year are .5%, but around the country, people are reporting increases of anywhere from 25% to a whopping 70%. (See this article from the AP and this one from ABC.) Electricity costs are also skyrocketing. In Pennsylvania, the Public Utilities Commission reports increases of as much as 19%.

How on earth are you supposed to pay for food, gas, accommodations, and power on the same pay you got a few years ago, especially if things were tight then? People are getting evicted, getting their power shut off, and losing vehicles to repossession because they are unable to make ends meet.

Credit cards are maxed.

Speaking of being unable to make ends meet, Americans’ credit card debt has leaped from 846 billion to $887 billion between the first and second quarter of this year. In August, that number was reported to be $930 billion.

You may be saying, “Just don’t use your credit cards.” And that’s easy to say when you can pay your bills, purchase fuel to get back and forth to work, and have a paid-off mortgage.

But if you are a person who was living paycheck to paycheck before all this, what choice do you have? You can’t get to work without gas for your vehicle. You have to pay your rent. You need to keep your power on. If you’ve got an empty credit card sitting there, you’re probably going to use it for gas and food while you use your paycheck to cover rent and utilities.

And then, there will come a time, particularly if prices keep going up, that you can’t even make your minimum payment. There’s simply not enough income to meet the necessary output. So the first thing you’ll stop paying is your credit card bill as you struggle to keep a roof over your head and food in your refrigerator. And on and on it goes until you feel like you’ve completely made a disaster of your finances.

But was that disaster really one of your own making? If you’re in a lease, in a car loan agreement, and have this bizarre urge to…you know…eat food? The whole situation spiraled out of control before you knew it.

And then it gets worse.

Fees are piling up.

As I wrote in America’s Poverty Trap: How A Small Financial Setback Can Spiral Into an Inescapable Disaster:

If you bounce a payment by so much as a penny, then you are hit with a charge from your bank and, most times, a charge from the business that was taking the payment from your account. Most banks charge anywhere from $25-$38.50 when you have non-sufficient funds for a payment. Businesses charge in the same range, so that means that if one payment goes awry, you can lose $50-$77 in the blink of an eye.

Banks love NSF and overdraft fees. Why? Because in 2017, Americans paid $34 billion in fees for not having enough money to cover a payment.

But that’s not all. Some folks are paying literally 17,000% in overdraft fees annually.

Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released a report that raises concerns about the impact of opting into overdraft services for debit card and ATM transactions. The study found that the majority of debit card overdraft fees are incurred on transactions of $24 or less and that the majority of overdrafts are repaid within three days. Put in lending terms, if a consumer borrowed $24 for three days and paid the median overdraft fee of $34, such a loan would carry a 17,000 percent annual percentage rate (APR).

“Today’s report shows that consumers who opt into overdraft coverage put themselves at serious risk when they use their debit card,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “Despite recent regulatory and industry changes, overdrafts continue to impose heavy costs on consumers who have low account balances and no cushion for error. Overdraft fees should not be ‘gotchas’ when people use their debit cards.” (source)

And then there are the other late fees.

If one of the payments that went awry in your overdraft avalanche happens to be a utility bill, things get even worse for a person who is struggling. Particularly if you aren’t able to cover the bill in sufficient time to keep your utilities from getting shut off. How much you’ll be charged varies by company, but if they really feel like you’ll have trouble paying in the future, they stick it to you, making it nearly impossible to get your power or heat turned back on. Here are some examples

  • PG&E: “To restore service, you must pay the full amount due. You may also be required to pay a deposit twice your average monthly bill to re-establish credit.”
  • Coast Electric: $35-50 fee to reconnect service, $6.50 late fee, $35 NSF fee, and potentially even a $35 collection fee
  • Talgov: $28.50 each for gas, water, and electric

They can be charged late fees by all sorts of businesses. Now they’re really in trouble.

How in the world can you bail yourself out when every payment you make to catch up comes with an extra $12 “convenience fee,” a reconnect fee, and a late fee, along with an overdraft fee from the bank itself? It just takes one overdraft to unleash financial quicksand from which there’s no escape.

The SHTF is NOW.

How on earth are people in this situation going to survive?

That’s a great question with no easy or socially acceptable answers. There isn’t anything you can do about decisions you made in the past. You can’t undo the lease you signed on a place that skyrocketed in price, and then you couldn’t afford to move. If you’ve already used your credit card to buy groceries until you maxed it out, what’s done is done. You can’t change the price of gas, groceries, and utilities.

In retrospect, it may seem like you made a host of terrible decisions. But when you made them, the situation wasn’t like it is now. Your bills hadn’t skyrocketed. You hadn’t lost your job or had your hours cut. Beating yourself up for those decisions will not help you survive this.

If you feel isolated and completely at fault, of course, you do. That’s part of the insidious racket. Those responsible for this disaster don’t want to be held accountable for just how bad things have gotten for so many. So like an abusive spouse, they make you feel alone, like everything is terrible only because of your personal mistakes or stupidity.

You cannot see yourself as a victim of the economy – that mentality doesn’t help anyone. But you should quite clearly know that you are not alone and some of these things were out of your hands. This is what a financial collapse looks like in many cases. Millions of people suffering from humiliation when they can’t pay their bills, embarrassed, bruised, and feeling isolated.

You can’t control the economy, but you can adapt, even now, when things seem beyond repair.

What can you do if you’re in the midst of your own personal financial collapse?

The situation may not be completely “fixable” if you are one of the millions of people struggling financially. You may emerge with your credit razed, your self-respect beaten and bruised, and a brand new ulcer from worrying about it all. But please remember that people have faced extreme financial hardship many times in the past, and while they may not have come out unscathed, they did come out.

Some of these tips may help.

Talk to your creditors.

If you owe money that you cannot pay to credit card companies, call them. They won’t be able to waive it completely, but many companies will close your credit account, thus halting any additional fees and interest, and set you up with a payment plan. It won’t do your personal credit rating any favors, but then again, neither will defaulting, and that’s where you’re headed. Here’s more advice on contacting your creditors.

Cut your expenses radically.

Making radical changes to your monthly expenses may help you get through this difficult time and pay off your debt. Getting a roommate, cutting down to just one car for the family, and other strategies could be enough to get you through it. Check out this article.

Learn new ways to feed your family.

Check out our new product, a PDF of more than 500 pages that will provide you with strategies to feed your family, no matter what your situation is like. It’s currently listed as a “name your price” item, so you can pay very little to get this valuable book if money is tight. How to Feed Your Family No Matter What is a guide to producing, acquiring, preserving, and preparing food when it isn’t as easy as just going to the store to get more.

You may have to walk away.

If things are really bad, the advice above may not be enough to save you financially. There comes a time at which you simply cannot pay your bills. You may have to default, get evicted or foreclosed on, hand back your vehicle, and start over again. You can’t make money come from thin air. If you’ve done everything possible and you still can’t catch up, then read this article.

Find gratitude.

This may sound ridiculous when you are in the midst of losing everything, but finding a way to be grateful for some blessing will help you dramatically. Here’s a look at radical gratitude, a practice that has personally helped me beyond belief in improving my attitude, which in turn helps me to be more creative and more determined to overcome my difficulties.

Only people who have experienced true hardship can understand.

Sometimes it seems like nobody gets it when you find yourself in utter financial destitution. Others seem to think it’s your fault, and they often make this very obvious. Those people clearly haven’t had the same experiences. If they had, they would have more empathy.

We’re in a situation right now in our country – and actually the western world – where more and more people are finding out just what it’s like to hit financial rock bottom. It’s a horrible feeling, but it will not last forever. Please keep putting one foot in front of the other. Be willing to accept a hand up. One day you may be able to help another person going through this.

And if things are still looking good in your world, please be kind. Not everyone who is struggling “deserves” it. Remember that, except for grace, it could be your family who is struggling right now. If you can, help someone without strings. You cannot attach yourself to the outcome of what happens with the assistance you have given. Just know that you have done a good and kind thing, and let go of your attachment to it.

Has the economic SHTF hit your household?

Have you been affected by the increase in prices or other economic struggles? Are you on the verge of losing the lifestyle you have worked for to the economic collapse? Do you have advice for others facing the same problems? Share your stories and thoughts in the comments section. And please, be kind.

Kunstler: Crazyland

Author James Howard Kunstler writes about our current collapse in Crazyland.

In a confab of friends on a warm evening this weekend, someone asked: Do you think what’s going on is due to incompetence or malevolence? The USA is certainly skidding into a great and traumatic re-set featuring a much lower standard of living for most citizens amidst a junkyard of broken institutions. But so are all the other nations of Western Civ. If it’s not being managed by malign forces, such as der Schwabenklaus and his WEF myrmidons, then it sure looks like some sort of controlled demolition. The big question hanging over the 2022 election, then, is: Must America commit suicide?

What provoked the mental illness of the Left? What turned the Democratic Party into the Party of Chaos? It seemed pretty sane in 1996 when President Bill Clinton declared — to much surprise — in his State of the Union address that “the era of big government is over.” Of course, few understood back then how cravenly corrupt the Clintons were, even especially as Hillary launched her own political career once Bill’s turn was over. Few, I daresay, thought at the time that Hillary would come to eclipse Bill in influence — though not so few suspected that the first lady operated as the demented megalomaniac she has proved to be.

Gawd knows what went on in that Shakespearean marriage… but the Democratic Party in the post-2000 Hillary years discovered that its very existence required the government to get ever-bigger because the American economy — the real, on-the-ground economy outside Wall Street’s financialization hall of mirrors — was withering away with the off-shoring of industry and something was needed to replace it. And, by the way, let’s stipulate that the Republican Party mostly abetted all that, even despite transient rumblings from its Tea Party renegades.

Forgive me at this juncture for repeating my oft-stated theory of history: Things happen because they seem like a good idea at the time. Off-shoring seemed like a good idea at the time. Fob off all those filthy, polluting factories onto other countries, and pay the natives three bucks a day to make all the stuff we needed. Plus, pay for the stuff with US treasuries (IOUs). What a racket! But then every activity in America was turning into a racket — which is to say, making money dishonestly — until it became the immersive economic milieu of the land. Even the two most noble endeavors in our society, education and medicine, disgraced themselves with shameless moneygrubbing.

Something weird happened starting in 2004 when one Barack Obama came onstage at the Democratic convention that nominated the haircut-in-search-of-a-brain called John Kerry. The new star lit up the joint posing as a Great Uniter. And four years later he made a fool of Hillary, cutting her off at the pass from seizing her supposedly ineluctable turn — and supreme glass-ceiling-breaking triumph — as president. Where’d he come from? This pavement-pounding community organizer with the 1000-watt smile?

In retrospect, Barack Obama appears to have been manufactured out of some misty Marxist cabal of the subterranean Far Left that infested a sub-basement of the Democratic Party. He came on-board in 2009, just as all that skeezy financialization blew up the banks and launched the era of government rescue operations that heaped previously unimaginable quantities of debt on the USA’s already unmanageable burden. Republican George Bush II got the blame for all that and Mr. Obama proceeded to make it a lot worse.

Barack Obama served as liberalism’s bowling trophy, the capstone of the great civil rights crusade: a black president, proof of America’s moral uprightness. He managed to do next to nothing to change the conditions that had wrecked black America — namely, the paternalistic policies that shattered families — but he put up a good front while the country teetered economically. And notice that his DOJ, under Attorney General Eric Holder, managed to avoid prosecuting anyone but mortgage vampire Anthony Mozilo for all the banking crimes of the day. Meanwhile, President Obama took care of Hillary by anointing her Secretary of State, from which perch she grifted tens of millions of dollars into the coffers of the janky Clinton Foundation. Smooth moves there. In the end, Mr. Obama remained an enigma, passing the baton to Her Inevitableness in 2016 — which she commenced to blow utterly in overestimating her own political charm — she had none — and underestimating the appeal of her opponent, the Golden Golem of Greatness, Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump’s astonishing victory apparently disordered Hillary’s mind. She was reportedly too drunk late that election night to even appear at the podium to make the excruciating concession speech. But her Russian Collusion operation ginned up months earlier had already set in motion a great vengeance machine which partisans in the DOJ, FBI, CIA, and State Department ran with through the whole of Mr. Trump’s term in the White House, climaxing in the orchestrated election frauds of 2020, which installed Barack Obama’s empty vessel of a stand-in “Joe Biden” as president.

The amalgamated pathologies of Barack Obama’s reign — which includes the birth of Wokery, the Jacobin-Marxist crusade to trash culture and economy — and Hillary Clinton’s psychotic thirst for revenge has transformed the Democrats into the Party of Chaos, presiding over the suicide of America, and Western Civ with it. Which, of course, prompts the question: Who exactly is running Barack Obama? I don’t pretend to know at this point. Many people I know are sure it is an international banking claque. The part that doesn’t add up is the supposed banking claque’s utter lack of political charm. Nobody in Western Civ is for them, in the sense that they offer any salvation program from either the disorders of Woke culture or the disorders of crumbling economic globalism.

Mysteries abound now, and they are disconcerting to an extreme. How did the polite and rational society called Canada fall under the punishing sway of Justin Trudeau?  Ditto the Apparently insane Australia and New Zealand? Ditto the Europeans, who followed America’s absurd campaign to make Ukraine a war zone, and who now face a winter with no fuel for industry or home heating — and possible a descent into new medievalism. Perhaps the Covid bamboozle did that, just drove them over the edge. (And they will soon learn what a deadly con that was, especially the “vaccine” feature.)

Personally, I think we under-appreciate the tendings of history per se, and that tending these days is the set of circumstances adding up to a Long Emergency, a.k.a. the Fourth Turning, a.k.a, Mr. J.M. Greer’s Long Descent. In plain English, we’re exiting the techno-industrial fiesta of the past 200-odd years and entering the uncharted territory of what-comes-next, and that is driving the immense anxiety of the age. Our business model for everything is broken, mostly because the fossil fuel situation has become so uncertain, and it is driving us nuts. Understand that and you will have enough mental equipment operating correctly to stay sane.

Suicide is hardly the only option. Resist those who want to drag you into it. We are going to carry on one way or another. We’re going to make it through this bottleneck. Let the insane bury the insane. Keep your eyes peeled, keep your hearts open, and keep your powder dry.

WA Policy Center: Effects of Emergency-ordered School Closures on Children

The Washington Policy Center has released on study titled The effect of emergency-ordered school closings, learning loss and mask mandates on children. Here are the key findings:

1. The governor’s decision to close public schools for nearly two years in response to COVID-19 significantly affected Washington’s 1.1 million public school students.

2. Research shows many students suffered long-term learning loss and psychological and emotional harm, resulting in limited future opportunities in life.

3. State test scores show public schools failed to adequately educate 70 percent of students in math and 52 percent of students in English.

4. Low-income students were most severely affected, with 8,700 fewer such students applying for state-funded college scholarships.

5. Some public schools have dropped standard grading and are automatically passing all students, regardless of the true level of learning they have received.

6. High school students suffered academic, mental and social harms due to enforced isolation from normal community, athletic and school-related activities.

7. Public health findings show the negative educational and social effects of shut-down orders were greater for this very low-risk group than the limited risk of exposure to COVID-19.

8. The 1.1 million students who attend public schools are being automatically promoted to the next grade. 

Introduction

Governor Inslee responded to the national COVID health crisis by closing the public schools in Washington state to in-person instruction from March 2020 to September 2021, and allowing them to re-open sporadically the fall of 2021. Governor Inslee also mandated the use of masks and other face covering, and implemented social distancing rules in daycares and schools from March 2020 to March of 2022.

As a result of these three policies – school closures, masks mandates and social distancing, the 1.1 million students attending Washington’s public schools had their education disrupted for nearly two years.

The stated reason for imposing these policies was to slow or stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Recent studies have raised questions about whether or to what extent these extreme measures provided a public health benefit. There is no question, however, that these policies had a severe impact on children. This study reviews the human outcomes of school closures, mask mandates and social distancing and the impact they had on the social and learning losses experienced by children in Washington state…

Click here to read the entire study.

Radio Contra Ep. 177 The Mar-a-Lago Raid and DC Desperation

Here is NC Scout’s Radio Contra episode 177 – The Mar-a-Lago Raid and DC Desperation

I dive into the FBI’s raid on Mar a Lago last week and exactly how this ends any question of weaponized federal agencies against DC’s political enemies. Now that the jig is up, what will they do next? They may have already telegraphed their intent.

Radio Contra Ep. 177 – The Mar-a-Lago Raid and DC Desperation