Showing posts with label Vanderboegh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vanderboegh. Show all posts

Sunday, March 24, 2024

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

 

Mike Vanderboegh, may his soul be at rest, often remarked that the Roman Empire fell, among other reasons, because they could not satisfactorily answer one critical question: (in Latin) Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?;  (in English) Who will guard the guards?  If the American Empire falls, it will be for the same reason.  It may, in fact, be true that every empire falls in the same way.

We are watching the installation of an undeniable two-tier justice system eerily reminiscent of countries we justifiably sneer at as "banana republics":  if you are allied with the right people, you will be punished lightly or not at all for any transgressions;  if you are allied with the wrong people, no sin is too slight to warrant draconian punishment even, or especially, if there was no identifiable 'sin' at all.  The latest example, only one of dozens or hundreds, is the imposition of a monumental fine for engaging in typical, normal business practices.  I refer, of course, to the $454 million fine (including interest) levied against Donald Trump for fraudulent business dealings — for which the State was unable to identify a single person who claimed to have been defrauded.

That fine is the largest fine imposed on an individual in all of recorded history.  Yes, corporations have been fined greater amounts, but they are corporations, often with assets that dwarf even the Trump organization, and certainly larger by orders of magnitude than anything Donald Trump ever claimed.  As a result, Trump is unable to find a bonding company that will issue a bond for it, and New York State law is that one may not appeal a verdict without posting a bond for the full amount of the judgement.  Trump will be forced to pay the judgement in cash and hope to have the fine reduced on appeal.

Anyone who hasn't already said to themselves "Wow, that sure doesn't sound like 'justice' is probably named Letitia James or Arthur Engoron.  NYS Governor Kathy Hochul has already made a public service announcement in which she assured all the movers-and-shakers doing business in New York that they have nothing to worry about unless they're named 'Trump'.

In fact, it appears Trump has acquired the proper amount of cash and is preparing to pay the fine preparatory to an appeal.  The outcome of that appeal is in doubt because it's the New York State Court of Appeals, after which the next stop is the New York State Supreme Court before a final appeal can be made to the United States Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Kevin O'Leary and several other investment brokers have all halted — full stop — all investment into anything in the state.  Unless a more rational court puts a stop to this embarrassment, Judge Arthur Engoron and NYS AG Letitia James have just strangled their employer.

 

Sunday, April 11, 2021

A Small Difference of Opinion

 

I have come to understand — somewhat reluctantly — that Mike Vanderboegh was more right than he could imagine when he opined that Americans are now two distinct people occupying the same territory.  The implications of this are ominous.  They almost guarantee that the United States will eventually — maybe soon — disunite, probably via a civil war, perhaps via a shooting civil war.

It has been obvious for some time, certainly since Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton, that Democrats as a class are unprincipled and mendacious, with minds closed to any idea that does not fit the narrative set by the demagogues by whom they are pleased to be ruled, and violently opposed to all who question their accepted dogma.  In this sense, they are largely indistinguishable from Muslims who are perfectly accepting of the notion that the only good unbeliever is a headless unbeliever.  The rise of "cancel culture" (that oddly seems to affect only conservatives) provides adequate proof.

The things they believe can only be believed by turning a blind eye to uncomfortable facts, while simultaneously declining to fact-check their own sources.  For instance, we have the glaring example of Adam Schiff who, almost weekly for the entirety of the Trump presidency, proclaimed that he had "seen clear and convincing evidence" that Trump and his team colluded with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.  Of course, Robert Mueller at the head of two dozen highly-paid and Democratically-aligned A-list attorneys couldn't find anything prosecutable despite spending two years and 30 million dollars.  When asked directly whether he, Mueller, had inquired into the Clinton campaign's documented connection to the Steele dossier, Mueller demurred because "that was not within my purview".  That is, in lawyer-speak, an admission that Mueller was charged with finding wrongdoing by Trump and his team to the exclusion of everyone else.  As a consequence, the $30 million resulted in a few minor 1001's and very little else.  The persecution of General Michael Flynn never rose to the level that any Democrat would have been bothered by the complete absence of due process because, you see, Flynn was a Republican and thus unworthy of fair treatment.

Since Second Amendment issues are always high on my priority list, most discussions zero in on that pretty quickly.  "I'm not trying to take your guns!" she loudly proclaims.  Well, no, you aren't, but the people you voted for are.  That's where anything resembling "a discussion" usually ends.  No Democrat wants to have to fight that battle under any conditions that might lead them to have to change their mind.  The facts are not on their side, so they argue emotion.  As soon as one party forces the debate back onto a factual base, they execute a strategic withdrawal.

Big Tech and Big Media have together conspired to make a Trump re-election unlikely if not out-and-out impossible.  The treatment of Hunter Biden is illustrative.  Hunter sent his laptop in for repair and then apparently forgot about it.  When the laptop repairman exercised a workman's lien and began peering deep into the innards of the device, he discovered evidence of potentially criminal activity on Hunter's part.  He made a safety back-up copy of the laptop's contents before turning it over to the FBI which (presumably) is still looking into it.  When The New York Post ran a front-page article based on that "safety copy", FaceBook and Twitter shut down NYPost access to their platforms.  No Democrat raised an eyebrow.  The existence of evidence that Hunter Biden may have engaged in criminal activity remained (and remains) unknown to the bulk of the American people.  Had Hunter been linked to anything Republican, he would now be in federal prison awaiting trial.

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic provides a wealth of confirming data for the overarching premise.  Mario Cuomo, the Democratic governor of New York, issued an order early in the course of the pandemic that forced NY nursing homes to re-admit Covid-positive patients back among their untested populations.  That this resulted in the deaths of a number of elderly patients that might otherwise have survived the experience is undisputed.  Trump (a Republican) dispatched a Navy hospital ship to NY harbor to help the (Democratic) mayor isolate Covid patients.  When the ship was finally recalled to regular duty some weeks later, they had handled exactly ZERO patients.  It just wouldn't do for any Democrat to place themselves into a position from which they would have to give credit to a Republican for doing something good, even if citizens have to die to prevent it.  Despite this, the governor won an Emmy for his daily press briefings!

Despite widespread lockdowns that crushed their economies, NY, NJ, CT, and CA have experienced high case rates, high hospitalization rates, and high death rates from the virus.  States that rejected hard lockdowns, FL and TX prime among them, have recorded lower rates for hospitalizations and deaths.  Even so, those "free states" are routinely panned in Big Media as being hotbeds of infection.  Only among so-called right-wing media is there speculation that lockdowns might not have been as effective as we were promised.  NY, with very high death rates, even insisted that travelers from "hotbed states" like FL quarantine for two weeks on arrival.  Recently, CBS' "60 Minutes" so blatantly misquoted Florida Governor Ron DeSantis regarding his response to Covid-19 that the (Democratic) mayor of Palm Beach County felt obligated to go public in defense of his (Republican) governor.

In short, Democrats believe many things that are provably false and disbelieve many things that are provably true, and insist that everyone who doesn't believe as they do is a traitor, a terrorist, an insurrectionist, a conspiracy-theorist, or some combination of those.  Given their propensity to destroy the economy and their compatriots' wealth in the process, the only real traitors seem to be the ones with a "D" next to their names.

 

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Out Of Our Shackles

 

If the day should ever come (may Heaven avert it!) when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other,...  the bands of political associations will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies;  and far better will it be for the people of the disunited states to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint.
-- John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams was not alone in voicing such secessionist sentiments, either.  Alexis deTocqueville also thought it a good idea along with Sec'y of State Timothy Pickering (F-MA) and President James Buchanan (F-PA).

Some will protest that the issue of 'secession' was settled long ago.  That's not true.  What was settled in 1865 was the question of whether an agricultural economy without an industrial economy in partnership can hold its own against such a partnership.  The answer was that it could not.  The Confederacy decided to 'go it alone' and the Union objected to being left without a ready source of cotton, rice, and okra.  The Union got its way, thanks to their industrialized economy.  Might makes right.

Big government supporters then and now were and are very much against the idea of government growing smaller as by the departure of states, but lately the worm appears to be turning.  Upset over the election of a President they wouldn't have chosen (and, in fact, didn't), California has been making secessionist noises recently.  It's a fact that California's economy absolutely dwarfs the economy of the Confederacy, so they certainly could survive (at least in the short run) without being a part of the current union, and it is very unlikely that this President would react as negatively to their departure as did Abraham Lincoln.  In fact, it's probably true that a large portion of the electorate left behind would actually cheer the new nation onward.

Should we object to a CalExit?  I think it is becoming more apparent with each passing day that, as Mike Vanderboegh once observed, the United States is now one country occupied by two distinct people.  That wouldn't be a problem if both of those two distinct peoples were tolerant of each other, but that's not the case.  In fact, it's blindingly obvious that one faction considers the other to be sub-human and unworthy of any consideration.  This group, the intolerant, accost members of the other group at restaurants and disturb their peaceful enjoyment of a meal they haven't prepared themselves.  They do not simply boycott the 'others', they actively thwart the others' enjoyment of rights they themselves insist upon.  Rights for me but not for thee.  When those 'others' are invited by their supporters to speak on college campuses, for instance, they often find themselves blockaded and unable to even enter the venue.  When they do actually gain entrance and try to speak, they are often hooted and heckled by the 'intolerants' in the audience who — it must be said — are not present to hear the speaker but rather to prevent the speaker from being heard — by anyone.  Surprisingly, the intolerants are not receiving the same treatment from those 'others' who, by and large, tolerate the intolerants.

In case it isn't obvious, the intolerants are without notable exception so-called 'progressive leftists', and their targets are, also without notable exception, so-called conservatives.  The left isn't prepared to extend even the basics of common courtesy to a group they see as 'the enemy'.  In other words, we are at war.  We just haven't started shooting each other yet.  If and when the shooting starts, progressive leftists are going to be unpleasantly surprised to discover that conservatives are better armed and are all too willing to shoot back.

One would have to be an absolute moron to think that a peaceful secession would not be better than that.  Maybe it's time for us to seriously consider secession as a solution to the unrest we see every night on the 6:00 o'clock news.

 

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Bad News from Alabama

 

Mike Vanderboegh who runs Sipsey Street Irregulars announced on his blog today that his cancer is back with a vengeance.  His doctor told him '6 months'.

For the 'patriot movement', this counts as Very Bad News.  Mike has been the voice and the pamphleteer of that movement, sometimes called 'the 3% movement', for a dozen years or more.  We can now see the day, sadly not too far in the future, when that voice will be stilled and his pen stop writing.

Mean-spirited trolls who publicly wished for his death will soon have what they want.  The rest of us merely wish that his doctor will turn out to be an incompetent pessimist.


Update: Mike passed away August 10, 2016.

 

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Revolt of the Nutmeggers

 

For those of you who do not follow Mike Vanderboegh's Sipsey Street Irregulars blog, there are big doings in Connecticut, the Constitution State.

Last April, in response to the prior December's horrendous shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, the Connecticut legislature passed a knee-jerk law requiring all "assault weapons" and "high capacity magazines" to be registered with the state by the start of 2014.  (I put "assault weapons" and "high capacity magazines" in quotes to emphasize that these are phoney-baloney made up terms used merely to demonize equipment in wide and lawful use by very many upstanding citizens throughout the country.)

When passed, those in the know in CT estimated upwards of 370,000 assault weapons and as many as four million (4,000,000) magazines were then in the hands of an unknown number of Nutmeggers.  Well, the deadline for registering all that nasty equipment has passed and fewer than 50,000 rifles and fewer than 40,000 magazines have been registered.  That is, <15% of the guns and <1% of the magazines.  Yes, ONE percent.

It gets worse.  Pro-gun organizations in CT as well as elsewhere have bluntly stated their resolve to touch off another revolution if the state tries to confiscate any of the unregistered firearms.  Given the realities on the ground, the Connecticut State Police have the upper hand only for the first one or two such confiscations, after which an all-out war is not outside the envelope of possibility.  CT legislators have had their home addresses posted online and reacted by demanding personal state-paid security details to forestall assassination attempts.

Connecticut Carry, one such organization promoting concealed- and open-carry for CT, issued a press release giving the legislature until May 7th to repeal the intolerable act saying "shit or get off the pot" (yes, that is a quote from the presser) meaning "repeal or enforce, take your pick".

Stay tuned.  This could get interesting.