Referring to anyone not fond of the tranny train wreck as "right-wing crackpots . . . with cruel intent and bitter, meaningless threats" wins him a tax payer funded trip to Washington, DC to meet with the President. Joe will surely share his experiences as a million miler on the tranny train across the Francis Scott Key Bridge with CornPop and Nelson Mandela.
Oh for God's sake. These people are completely out of touch with anything close to reality. Reminds me of the meme my kids send me occasionally, the one with the cartoon dog, surrounded by flames, saying that everything's fine.
That tool is assistant to Caity Maple, who lives in what used to be one of the roughest parts of Sac, Oak Park. Sac equivalent to LA's Watts. How do these little commie-progressives live with themselves as they evily push gentrification into historically African American neighborhoods?
"Ryan proudly identifies as both queer and bisexual."
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comment: I'm guessing that since he doesn't publicly broadcast being in a polyamorous relationship with a harem of sea invertebrates in an oceanic lava tube at high tide, that he is a closeted speciesist bigot.
Thanks for finding that. I dare say his problems stem from a 'wonky RN bra' or possibly a 'awry RN knob', anagrams of his name. . These are well-known syndromes. :)
Apparently some cities in southern California are passing resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. I’m sure that gesture will help both the Middle East and their own towns.
From one JW to another, with the right cat currently on my lap, I concur! So yes, go outside and look at a tree, love your people and your God, hug your critters. And I have to add, laugh at Bray’s humor and always read the comments. Lots of hope and sanity to be found here.
My issue, having retired from Houston to live in the Smoky Mountains, is that life is near perfect. Our county votes Republican 70+% consistently & gov’t is rational. We have equines, canines, felines and trees out the wazoo. But that is not my self-perceived role: I learned at age 6 to confront bullies. Bill Buckley said it best in 1955: “[National Review] stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”
All Cats Matter! Seriously, though, my late cat was a badass who perfected the cat “F you” look, but cuddled up to my dogs once they bowed to him and let him have his preferred spot on the pet bed.
You seem to have missed the nuance of what Malone is saying here, the Democrats will suffer a massive collapse if Trump wins in 2024, and RFK needs his VP pick to help him re-enter the Democratic party and reform it in 2028.
Malone is obviously speculating wildly, and I personally doubt that RFK will ever be able to overcome the corrupt globalists that are currently pulling Team Biden's puppet strings, but your misinterpretation of Malone's article is absurd.
I wish i only had to tune out NPR and mainstream media. I live in a rural part of Florida. It’s a small town. I have heard one of our city council members go on and on about Trump being a Nazi. I’m sorry. Hitler killed millions of people. Trump hasn’t killed anybody.
In this little town there are still people wearing those crazy Covid masks. Lunacy is a far more infectious disease.
I lived in San Francisco years ago. Seattle, too. I can imagine living in those places now.
Now days, I run through my daily news sites fast in the morning, just scanning headlines. I hardly read anything anymore. (These are NOT MSM news sites!) I read all of virtually every post of every Substack writer (Substacker?) I subscribe to, or save for a rainy day. I stay in my small red town in my small red county in my fairly big mostly-red state and try never to go to the capitol city because all the sudden there are unattractive trans people at the state farmers market or Costco who are clearly just waiting for someone to say something. I'm in the South. Mostly we just say, "Bless your heart."
I coulda written that word for word...well, not as well as you did, but you express my experience on all accounts. Bless your heart, and I mean that in the nicest Southern way☺️
I read articles from here and there - Information Liberation, The American Conservative, Revolver News, Unz.com, and more. I agree with some things and not with others, and I often see fact at one website that I wish another website would have. I wish there was just one place that could hold all the relevant articles and nothing but.
Funny how COMMENT SECTIONS disappeared from all the mainstream media sites. Nowadays I only see them under articles in dissident Right sites.
Comment sections in newspapers online used to be praised as the next step in democracy. The readers would be able to contribute, finally, and "an internet consensus" would emerge. But the readers contributed facts about Black and Latino crime, so the comment sections were erased, without debate, with no one talking about it. It's weird.
That was a tell, wasn’t it? All the middle to right publications and writers asking for comments but suddenly those sections disappearing from left ones… hm…
Yes, and people today forget how those comment sections were everywhere and how praised they were initially. In U.S. media and in European media. When I bring it up, it seems I'm the only one who even noticed that something that prevalent disappeared. I feel like Winston in 1984.
You could even comment on New York Times articles. Then they started manipulating the conversation, by putting two reader comments at the top. One was "reader favorite" and the other was "editor's pick," and of course when they were pinned at the top they'd get the most likes. (And I bet the editors wrote them.) Sneaky. But apparently comments were still too risky, so they disappeared altogether.
Back then, pre-2016, you could also comment on neocon posts in Twitter, for example. Later that would get you blocked, and banned for harassment. But back then the big names were confident, and were foolish enough to answer. There was a hashtag named #NROrevolt started in the spring 2015, devoted to taking down National Review Online, which was still big back then, and when they replied they gave more exposure to their critics. After decades of writing in their ivory tower they thought their natural superiority would win any debate and rally people around them. It didn't.
By the end of 2016 they wisened up and the most popular critics of the Fake Right and of the Left were all banned from Twitter exactly one week after the election, very telling.
I got a cheap, $1/week online NYT subscription (just resubscribed for year two) to read John McWhorterr's articles, so I scan the usual headlines and rarely see any need to read their mostly diarrhea-level mental sewage. The exception being when Matt Taibbi or Shellenberger & Co. are criticizing the more absurd pro-regime propaganda and pro-censorship stuff the "left" is regurgitating.
Anyways, I'll check to see if there are comments under McWhorter's or a few other random articles next time I log in.
I'm putting together a venn diagram to make sure we don't insert between the overlap area of the bungholio and the soft parts....but I'm warning you...we're gonna need more FUNDING!
I learned long ago to pay just enough attention to know what’s going on and generally don’t lose my shit over what the leftists are doing. It still happens occasionally but I generally just don’t care anymore. We’re going down the drain, it can’t be stopped, so go ahead and live your life, prepare as much as possible and learn to enjoy watching it all burn down. Because at this point it’s inevitable and the only way it’s gonna be fixed is to take the ride and hopefully come out the other side.
Chris, these people are unmoored from reality. I always admire how you take the time to view the wretched videos and read the slimy legislation so I don’t have to. And then you serve it up so deliciously.
I’m one of your subscribers that said your post kept me awake. And, sadly, that night it did. Not because of the governments are doing, but to whom and how they did it. But, that’s not my normal operating mode. I am truly living my best life. I’ve lived a life of accomplishment, am semi-retired, work because I want to, but only when I want to, and wake up every day joyful, grateful, and eager to see what I can accomplish and who I can bless and be blessed by. I’d trade my government for one the Founding Fathers envisioned, but would never trade my life for another’s.
I truly believe in the concept of “fight your foxhole.” California is not my foxhole. So I “fight” locally - the happy warrior, all the while living my best life.
Thanks for all your posts. I always read your first.
You're truly blessed. I can relate - five years ago, I asked God to put me where I needed to be, and it ended up being in South Carolina. 65 acres, a stream running through, a half-acre vegetable and flower garden. A wonderful hubby and the sweetest mother-in-law south of the Mason Dixon line. And my brother who runs the preps. I can't think of a better place to face the future, whatever it may bring.
It is. I have 55 feet of porch in the front, with a view of the garden and fields, and 35 feet of porch in the back, with a view of the woods. No next-door neighbors. Peaceful with the occasional joyful sounds of target practice.
I have a theory that the most insane & extreme political creatures are local: city councils, county councils, school boards, etc.
I live in a suburb of Tacoma which is only 250K at its max, but the mayor and city council are trying hard to be as destructive to humanity as any big city council.
The roads in Tacoma are in dire need of patching, but instead we are spending Brazilians of dollars for a SF type cable car...WTF? You can get around Tacoma in about 10 minutes on a bike.
They outlawed plastic bags.
They made affirmations about climate changes.
They are, of course, a sanctuary city circa 2017ish.
A recent headline asks if the city council should demand a ceasefire in Gaza, pretty sure Netanyahu reads the News Tribune before making tactical/strategic war decisions.
All of it. All of it is hubris. Pride. A bridge collapses isolating the 6th (?) largest port in the US--but let's continue to bring in 5K military aged men from every last shit-hole on the planet and all of our adversaries--becasue why would we worry about our infrastructure?
I'm out to go walk my dogs in our intermittent sun.
I’ll email you the link to our annual fundraiser for our animal rescue. I’m hoping to build this into a national level event, the venue as you will see as unlimited potential. It is the school from from the movie “10 things I hate about you”.
I’ve come to understand that this race is a distillation of my leadership and life philosophies.
When we, mankind, courageously confront the world/the big scary/hard things – that is both magnetic and adhesive to the human spirit.
It is worth living among the lunatics to build this event to its potential.
It has been my experience that those who are drawn to animal rescue/welfare, generally speaking--broad generalization here, are mostly people who have been abused, brutalized, and/or betrayed by people very close to them. Others are what I would refer to as 'hyper sensitive', similar to the 'bleeding heart liberal' many have snidely called the libs.
I do not fault anyone for an abundance of empathy, it often mystifies and frustrates me, but I prefer them over many of the people I've worked with over the years.
Dogs/cats provide mankind with unfiltered, uncomplicated, pure love and affection. That is medicine for the soul. Many may never find healthy love with another human, the scar tissue is too thick, the betrayal too large. Dogs and cats help keep us battered people alive and functioning.
Are they overly emotive? Possibly.
I was talking with a guy, Christian dude, about this event we produce. The guy is an athlete, ran an indoor soccer arena. He asked me a question about how I could justify spending money on animals when there are starving/sick people in Africa or somewhere.
All I could think was this guy has never had a dog.
On another substack, one specifically about Washington state, was a picture of the state's Supreme Court. 5 of the 9 were wearing masks. In March of 2024. They should be disbarred.
I want to ask our elected fools at city/county/state if that righteous indignation is what will keep them warm after they tear down all the dams and outlaw natural gas. Both have passed our legislature. It is collective suicide all in an effort to signal their misguided virtue.
The 'sanctuary city' declaration is a wonderful tell. It signals to the rest of us that the city council is inept, ignorant and worst of all, bored. I feel dismay for the perhaps 11 non-leftists still residing in Sacramento, the rest are getting what they voted for.
I live in Sac, I don't think our votes count. We voted against a downtown arena, twice, city still financed one for a billionaire, then conned a judge to throw out the vase, stating that city residents seeing the city didn't have standing. It's a rigged game out here. Most are moving into the foothills or headed east.
All you have to do is move about 5-8 miles east, there is a choice of either "purple" suburbs closer in (college educated professionals), or "red" suburbs further out (working class).
This type of bureaucratic infestation will fight, nearly to the death, to avoid loss of power and genuine reform. It will use money, deceit, slander, silence, misdirection, subterfuge, and other methods of harm, up to and including physical force, if pushed hard enough.
I try to consider modern parallels. I grew up in and around NYC in the 70s and 80s. Parts of that city looked like Beirut during Lebanon's civil war. The economy was awful. The city was broke. Garbage was piled in the streets. Civil servants were constantly on strike. Crime was everywhere. Yet, somehow, it got turned around. The people said "enough" and elected leaders who promised and delivered change.
This current problem, somehow, seems deeper. It's certainly more widespread.
The eternal cycle. Tammany did the same to NYC, and then lost power. Everything comes and goes. Agree that this downward cycle will be much harder to break.
There's a great piece in the The Free Press from a few weeks back, about an Appalachian town bootstrapping its way back from the dual devastations of the loss of coal jobs and the opioid crisis. Leading the way? Recovered addicts. People who have looked into the abyss, saved themselves, and now want to help others.
Another version of going outside and looking at the trees, I suppose.
The bureaucratic infestation is already doing everything you fear. The only difference is the scale of it. The scale is going to be ferocious. Have no doubt.
The city council in my little suburban town declared the city "structurally insolvent" a couple weeks ago, and I sent them a detailed list of their own recent choices to show them how they could fix it. Weirdly, they didn't thank me.
The words in the link explain this story, but the most interesting line is:
“Gov. McMaster [Republican] says the state will hold off on any plans to spend the $1.8 billion until it can verify whether it was intended to be spent elsewhere.”
It’s SO telling that even a Republican’s first reaction is to consider how to blow new-found money like a child.
So Sacramento A) has declared itself a trans sanctuary, and B) is broke?
Maybe someone should calculate exactly how much that senseless, needless, virtual signaling actually cost the broke citizens of Sacramento in terms of man hours, paper, ink, electricity, etc! And just imagine what they might have accomplished if they’d devoted the same amount of time, energy and resources towards fixing a problem that actually existed!
I recently guided a client through a permit process for a large warehouse/distribution center, not for public, by the airport (SMF).
They were adjusting some levels of pallet racking (the steel one sees all the product on in a Home Depot store for example) originally installed a few years ago.
No changes to egress or life safety, just moving some levels in maybe 5% of the rack in the building.
Sac County Building department wouldn’t even look at it until an Architect surveyed and confirmed that there would still be adequate restrooms and that the slope from the employee parking lot would accommodate wheelchair access.
Not at all knocking folks in wheelchairs, but I’m in these million square foot + buildings pretty regularly and have yet to see one picking orders or loading trucks.
In their defense (and it pains me), Orlando FL forced a client to install an elevator on a rack supported structure over 20 years ago for wheelchair access.
I’m pretty sure anyone can sign up with Sac county building and view permits. The amount of money they get from them is incredible.
The kicker - one call from the developer to Sac County (or City official) and the permit went right through…
My wife had a structural engineering business in Scottsdale Arizona in 2008 when the banking industry collapsed. Construction slowed to a crawl. The city planning department, however overcame this problem by being more aggressive in red lining the plans that people sent in.
By far biggest problem is that we’ve allowed our government at every single level to get completely out of control. The government is so insidious it’s infected most companies. HR departments are just shadow government organizations, so is the legal department and don’t even start with diversity, inclusion, etc.
Now entire industries, like media and tech are just extensions of the government.
I'm a civil engineer and 2009-2011 was the worst for plan review. The plan checkers had nothing to do, so they squeezed are sets for everything. They were intentionally slow and very controlling, it was a nightmare.
I have similar experiences/projects. We do projects all over the country and the variation in permitting requirements is pretty wide. Had a customer take on a new site in Baltimore City which, unfortunately, I have some experience in. Told them that was probably the worse jurisdiction in the state they could have picked. Because of the rack design and their commodity it required in rack sprinklers. Took us eight months to get the fire department to approve the permit application. No internal standards for turnaround and the inspector is basically answerable to no one. Our customer didn’t have any other contacts in City government to try and get things moving so we were at their mercy.
I’m sure any permitting, environmental assessments, government approvals at all levels will get fast tracked or waived for the bridge and harbor clean up they are facing from yesterday’s collapse.
Hubby used to work for a big corporation years back. He often traveled to the east coast as they were building another location out there at one time. He remembers it was just the standard business practice that to get a certificate of occupancy for their project you had to give certain contracts to certain people…in this one case it was for a certain snowplow business that would be responsible for keeping them parking lot cleared. Business as usual.
Wasn’t it your stack Chris, that had the recent story of the former deputy mayor of Los Angeles just getting brought up on charges relating to this same type of thing? Money or favors changing hands between companies and city employees to get the job. Nothing to see here!
I’m guessing this is baked into the systems of almost all government offices, large medium or small. Corrupt people are attracted to work for the government. The days the founding fathers envisioned for our future was probably doomed from shortly after the establishment of our country. Eventually the rot sets in.
It costs such governments nothing to say “No” because there’s never an analysis of what might have been. The exception is AOC & Amazon, but the morons in her district keep electing her.
SacCounty LDSIR may have changed their name to SIPS decades ago, but I think they are still in Room 101, the same number as the torture room in the book 1984.
Only the connected can get anything moved through that bureaucracy.
In the mid-eighties I worked for a small defense contractor in Van Nuys, CA, about 90 employees. They had a fully permitted paint booth that they wanted to move about 50 ft across an alley from one building to another. The state required a full environmental survey and re-permitting costing about $20K. Madness. The company eventually moved to Phoenix.
The two things are probably not directly related in any significant way, but they do both expose failed thinking, failed values, and a failure to focus on basic services and effective leadership (such as reforming corrupt and dysfunctional bureaucracy).
I believe most of what we see on the surface is a distraction from what THEY don’t want us to see under the surface. P. Diddy. NBC yanks chain on Rona. Ship accidentally or purposely hits bridge which is or isn’t a coordinated attack on our critical infrastructure. Rinse and repeat daily.
Certainly get outside, enjoy Gods creation, decompress and try not to take life too seriously.
Also, do everything legally possible to not financially feed the system, prepare your family for the collapse and then positively participate in the rebuild of a functioning society.
I am realizing I can buy an RV/Trailer for cheap, park it near an airport outside of CA, (lost of farmers with large plots of rural land are offering to host for cheap, and visit it from time to time. Might be the temporary sanity-inducing cost-effective solution I am looking for. it is too hard to drive "out of" CA (to sierra N Coast red counties) for a weekend.
Chris, your writing is powerful enough to send some of off the edge from time to time. It's a complement, our insomnia. :)
Anyhow, it also makes me very very spicy-feeling.
I feel as if I'm standing knee-deep in a great flowing river of shite; everywhere I look it's shite, roaring all around me, its wind blowing the trees. Like Niagara-level shite. My meager and humble request is this: some brave men and women to do their $%^# jobs, from Main Street to the ... Congress.
I feel as if I'm wandering the Emyn Muil, to the point where I've turned off Warroom, spend little time on the news, and a lot more time outdoors. I'm in North Idaho so there's lots of opportunity--going hiking to a new spot tomorrow.
So I'll end with this: those of us who love your work are going to need to take care of our mental (and physical et al) health and focus on LONG term. This place is coming crashing down around our ears, and we're going to need as much capacity as we can muster for some time to come.
Agreed. We are post moral collapse, now waiting for all the systems to crumble. The bridge disaster in Baltimore yesterday is 1/10000th of the damage that can be done to our infrastructure/economy/sense of safety for under $10K.
I spent nearly three decades working military intelligence (not as dip-shitted as most say), thinking about enemies, vulnerabilities, and ways to exploit said vulnerabilities. When I think of 5-10 million military aged men who have illegally crossed our borders since ole shitshispants has bumbled into our White House--I can go to very dark places.
BUT--I live in a stunningly beautiful area. I run with one of my dogs daily. I'm semi-retired working from home. My wife and I both do work that is meaningful to us.
Those of us who know what time it is must take care of ourselves. We will be the only ones who are willing and capable of putting everything back together.
Read this thread from a government official:
https://twitter.com/ryanbrownCA/status/1772816088193175954
These are the stupidest people who have ever lived.
Referring to anyone not fond of the tranny train wreck as "right-wing crackpots . . . with cruel intent and bitter, meaningless threats" wins him a tax payer funded trip to Washington, DC to meet with the President. Joe will surely share his experiences as a million miler on the tranny train across the Francis Scott Key Bridge with CornPop and Nelson Mandela.
and a ride on Hillary's imaginary helicopter in Bosnia that Corn Pop is shooting at with a sniper rifle!
Oh for God's sake. These people are completely out of touch with anything close to reality. Reminds me of the meme my kids send me occasionally, the one with the cartoon dog, surrounded by flames, saying that everything's fine.
They make me yearn for the BT (burning times). They'll be the first to go. Utterly useless.
They'll do well in The Reaping.
Time I'll never get back. Good lord.
That tool is assistant to Caity Maple, who lives in what used to be one of the roughest parts of Sac, Oak Park. Sac equivalent to LA's Watts. How do these little commie-progressives live with themselves as they evily push gentrification into historically African American neighborhoods?
Not only that, they are oblivious to the fact that no one cares.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanbrownca
"Ryan proudly identifies as both queer and bisexual."
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comment: I'm guessing that since he doesn't publicly broadcast being in a polyamorous relationship with a harem of sea invertebrates in an oceanic lava tube at high tide, that he is a closeted speciesist bigot.
Thanks for finding that. I dare say his problems stem from a 'wonky RN bra' or possibly a 'awry RN knob', anagrams of his name. . These are well-known syndromes. :)
Hold my beer. https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/441/FEWO/Reports/RP12690894/feworp08/feworp08-e.pdf
Apparently some cities in southern California are passing resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. I’m sure that gesture will help both the Middle East and their own towns.
https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2024/03/19/pasadena-city-council-approves-middle-east-ceasefire-declaration/
Pasadena has spoken! Let peace descend!
Beats working, I guess.
Yet we have been unable to defeat them. What does that say about us?
Yet we have been unable to defeat them. What does that say about us?
Yet, we are enable to defeat them so far. What does that say about us?
Yet, we are enable to defeat them so far. What does that say about us?
In the end, all that matters are the people around us, the people in our hearts, the Person above us. And dogs. Always, dogs!
and cats (if they're the right cats!)
From one JW to another, with the right cat currently on my lap, I concur! So yes, go outside and look at a tree, love your people and your God, hug your critters. And I have to add, laugh at Bray’s humor and always read the comments. Lots of hope and sanity to be found here.
True that. Cats. Dogs. Trees. God. All I need now is that chocolate shake from Sonic and I'm all good.
My issue, having retired from Houston to live in the Smoky Mountains, is that life is near perfect. Our county votes Republican 70+% consistently & gov’t is rational. We have equines, canines, felines and trees out the wazoo. But that is not my self-perceived role: I learned at age 6 to confront bullies. Bill Buckley said it best in 1955: “[National Review] stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”
An ideal opportunity to acknowledge the indispensable contributions from our friend, the estimable El Gato Malo!
Yes!
All Cats Matter! Seriously, though, my late cat was a badass who perfected the cat “F you” look, but cuddled up to my dogs once they bowed to him and let him have his preferred spot on the pet bed.
That perfectly describes what I have going on right now. Except a kitten a cat and two dogs.
They all love each other. But the dogs do accommodate for the kitties night-night by being a pillow.
Fair! 😊
All cats are the right cats.
Miaou-sic to my ears! By the way, they are trying to force microchips on cats in the UK.
https://baldmichael.substack.com/p/im-pussed-off-uk-government-wants
Arf!
You are such a great writer. You hold them up to the X-ray machine and we discover there is nothing inside.
Thanks!
On another note, even if the culture war is 90% chaff, it lets me read Bray articles like this one! There IS a silver lining, kids!
Meanwhile, at Malone's substack, he is putting lipstick on the pig of the Kennedy VP pick. Things are getting crazier by the hour now...
Who is "Malone"? TIA
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/
re: https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/kennedy-for-president-2028
You seem to have missed the nuance of what Malone is saying here, the Democrats will suffer a massive collapse if Trump wins in 2024, and RFK needs his VP pick to help him re-enter the Democratic party and reform it in 2028.
Malone is obviously speculating wildly, and I personally doubt that RFK will ever be able to overcome the corrupt globalists that are currently pulling Team Biden's puppet strings, but your misinterpretation of Malone's article is absurd.
I wish i only had to tune out NPR and mainstream media. I live in a rural part of Florida. It’s a small town. I have heard one of our city council members go on and on about Trump being a Nazi. I’m sorry. Hitler killed millions of people. Trump hasn’t killed anybody.
In this little town there are still people wearing those crazy Covid masks. Lunacy is a far more infectious disease.
I lived in San Francisco years ago. Seattle, too. I can imagine living in those places now.
Now days, I run through my daily news sites fast in the morning, just scanning headlines. I hardly read anything anymore. (These are NOT MSM news sites!) I read all of virtually every post of every Substack writer (Substacker?) I subscribe to, or save for a rainy day. I stay in my small red town in my small red county in my fairly big mostly-red state and try never to go to the capitol city because all the sudden there are unattractive trans people at the state farmers market or Costco who are clearly just waiting for someone to say something. I'm in the South. Mostly we just say, "Bless your heart."
I coulda written that word for word...well, not as well as you did, but you express my experience on all accounts. Bless your heart, and I mean that in the nicest Southern way☺️
After moving to Texas in 1979, it took me a while to realize that, more often than not, that phrase was not wishing me well.😂
Hahahaha that’s because we’re very polite and keep all our crazy relatives in the attic except for parties 😂
As a 5th generation Texan that hasn't been there is well over 60 years, I always respond with:
"Bliss your Ausfahrt"
I read articles from here and there - Information Liberation, The American Conservative, Revolver News, Unz.com, and more. I agree with some things and not with others, and I often see fact at one website that I wish another website would have. I wish there was just one place that could hold all the relevant articles and nothing but.
Funny how COMMENT SECTIONS disappeared from all the mainstream media sites. Nowadays I only see them under articles in dissident Right sites.
Comment sections in newspapers online used to be praised as the next step in democracy. The readers would be able to contribute, finally, and "an internet consensus" would emerge. But the readers contributed facts about Black and Latino crime, so the comment sections were erased, without debate, with no one talking about it. It's weird.
That was a tell, wasn’t it? All the middle to right publications and writers asking for comments but suddenly those sections disappearing from left ones… hm…
Yes, and people today forget how those comment sections were everywhere and how praised they were initially. In U.S. media and in European media. When I bring it up, it seems I'm the only one who even noticed that something that prevalent disappeared. I feel like Winston in 1984.
You could even comment on New York Times articles. Then they started manipulating the conversation, by putting two reader comments at the top. One was "reader favorite" and the other was "editor's pick," and of course when they were pinned at the top they'd get the most likes. (And I bet the editors wrote them.) Sneaky. But apparently comments were still too risky, so they disappeared altogether.
Back then, pre-2016, you could also comment on neocon posts in Twitter, for example. Later that would get you blocked, and banned for harassment. But back then the big names were confident, and were foolish enough to answer. There was a hashtag named #NROrevolt started in the spring 2015, devoted to taking down National Review Online, which was still big back then, and when they replied they gave more exposure to their critics. After decades of writing in their ivory tower they thought their natural superiority would win any debate and rally people around them. It didn't.
By the end of 2016 they wisened up and the most popular critics of the Fake Right and of the Left were all banned from Twitter exactly one week after the election, very telling.
I logged into NYT and the first article about French farmers' protest contributing to "right wing" politics had no comments.
I semi-randomly picked an article about Boeing, and it does have "moderated" comments.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/opinion/boeing-plane-safety.html
I got a cheap, $1/week online NYT subscription (just resubscribed for year two) to read John McWhorterr's articles, so I scan the usual headlines and rarely see any need to read their mostly diarrhea-level mental sewage. The exception being when Matt Taibbi or Shellenberger & Co. are criticizing the more absurd pro-regime propaganda and pro-censorship stuff the "left" is regurgitating.
Anyways, I'll check to see if there are comments under McWhorter's or a few other random articles next time I log in.
This NYT article has comments:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/opinion/boeing-plane-safety.html
I like how you call store shopping carts “buggys.”
I have to marvel at the juxtaposition of "the state will use no resources to....." and "come here for your minor's abortion - on us!"
"My son is pregnant and needs an abortion, so California is my salvation!"
Well...if only they'd put tampons up their bungholio they wouldn't need abortions!
We'll need a diagram.
I'm putting together a venn diagram to make sure we don't insert between the overlap area of the bungholio and the soft parts....but I'm warning you...we're gonna need more FUNDING!
I learned long ago to pay just enough attention to know what’s going on and generally don’t lose my shit over what the leftists are doing. It still happens occasionally but I generally just don’t care anymore. We’re going down the drain, it can’t be stopped, so go ahead and live your life, prepare as much as possible and learn to enjoy watching it all burn down. Because at this point it’s inevitable and the only way it’s gonna be fixed is to take the ride and hopefully come out the other side.
I'm going hiking, I can't work under these conditions.
: =]
Chris, these people are unmoored from reality. I always admire how you take the time to view the wretched videos and read the slimy legislation so I don’t have to. And then you serve it up so deliciously.
I’m one of your subscribers that said your post kept me awake. And, sadly, that night it did. Not because of the governments are doing, but to whom and how they did it. But, that’s not my normal operating mode. I am truly living my best life. I’ve lived a life of accomplishment, am semi-retired, work because I want to, but only when I want to, and wake up every day joyful, grateful, and eager to see what I can accomplish and who I can bless and be blessed by. I’d trade my government for one the Founding Fathers envisioned, but would never trade my life for another’s.
I truly believe in the concept of “fight your foxhole.” California is not my foxhole. So I “fight” locally - the happy warrior, all the while living my best life.
Thanks for all your posts. I always read your first.
You're truly blessed. I can relate - five years ago, I asked God to put me where I needed to be, and it ended up being in South Carolina. 65 acres, a stream running through, a half-acre vegetable and flower garden. A wonderful hubby and the sweetest mother-in-law south of the Mason Dixon line. And my brother who runs the preps. I can't think of a better place to face the future, whatever it may bring.
Sounds like paradise
It is. I have 55 feet of porch in the front, with a view of the garden and fields, and 35 feet of porch in the back, with a view of the woods. No next-door neighbors. Peaceful with the occasional joyful sounds of target practice.
Dang. Real jealous.
Cheers!
Soon I'll be too busy hoeing vegetables to give much thought to the evil running rampant in this country.
I sure wish I could hand vegetables though the USB port to you guys :) It gets pretty crazy in July.
I would love it if you could. One of the few things I dislike about Florida is the quality of vegetables.
I’ll take anything home grown. I grew some roma tomatoes last year and I sure could tell the difference between those and the store bought ones.
I hear you man. Sometimes I have to remember that if the normies never "get it" then we've done our "job".
Many are incapable unless they experience it. Many "enjoy" the experience. It is the way of mankind.
Joyless victories are still W's.
I was lamenting about kicks in the gut & junk...
I have a theory that the most insane & extreme political creatures are local: city councils, county councils, school boards, etc.
I live in a suburb of Tacoma which is only 250K at its max, but the mayor and city council are trying hard to be as destructive to humanity as any big city council.
The roads in Tacoma are in dire need of patching, but instead we are spending Brazilians of dollars for a SF type cable car...WTF? You can get around Tacoma in about 10 minutes on a bike.
They outlawed plastic bags.
They made affirmations about climate changes.
They are, of course, a sanctuary city circa 2017ish.
A recent headline asks if the city council should demand a ceasefire in Gaza, pretty sure Netanyahu reads the News Tribune before making tactical/strategic war decisions.
All of it. All of it is hubris. Pride. A bridge collapses isolating the 6th (?) largest port in the US--but let's continue to bring in 5K military aged men from every last shit-hole on the planet and all of our adversaries--becasue why would we worry about our infrastructure?
I'm out to go walk my dogs in our intermittent sun.
bsn
Your endurance in that place is awe-inspiring – like the story of Job. Either that, or you have an ankle-monitor…🤣
I’ll email you the link to our annual fundraiser for our animal rescue. I’m hoping to build this into a national level event, the venue as you will see as unlimited potential. It is the school from from the movie “10 things I hate about you”.
I’ve come to understand that this race is a distillation of my leadership and life philosophies.
When we, mankind, courageously confront the world/the big scary/hard things – that is both magnetic and adhesive to the human spirit.
It is worth living among the lunatics to build this event to its potential.
But there may have been an ankle bracelet or two…
bsn
I wish all the animal rights activists/kooks would follow the example of the guy that went to live with grizzly bears in the wilds of alaska.
Wow. Rough. I'm no kook, and will not opt to live with Grizzlies.
bsn
animal rights kooks are cultists driven by emotive-subjective narratives and confirmation biases [and pervasive intellectual and moral incoherence].
there are [coherent and] rational animal rights positions, but the anti-rationalists kooks undermine them.
It has been my experience that those who are drawn to animal rescue/welfare, generally speaking--broad generalization here, are mostly people who have been abused, brutalized, and/or betrayed by people very close to them. Others are what I would refer to as 'hyper sensitive', similar to the 'bleeding heart liberal' many have snidely called the libs.
I do not fault anyone for an abundance of empathy, it often mystifies and frustrates me, but I prefer them over many of the people I've worked with over the years.
Dogs/cats provide mankind with unfiltered, uncomplicated, pure love and affection. That is medicine for the soul. Many may never find healthy love with another human, the scar tissue is too thick, the betrayal too large. Dogs and cats help keep us battered people alive and functioning.
Are they overly emotive? Possibly.
I was talking with a guy, Christian dude, about this event we produce. The guy is an athlete, ran an indoor soccer arena. He asked me a question about how I could justify spending money on animals when there are starving/sick people in Africa or somewhere.
All I could think was this guy has never had a dog.
bsn
Hopefully he has a more supportive spouse than that Job guy 😂
The international community knows that all knowledge regarding foreign relations originates from the Puget Sound.
On another substack, one specifically about Washington state, was a picture of the state's Supreme Court. 5 of the 9 were wearing masks. In March of 2024. They should be disbarred.
I want to ask our elected fools at city/county/state if that righteous indignation is what will keep them warm after they tear down all the dams and outlaw natural gas. Both have passed our legislature. It is collective suicide all in an effort to signal their misguided virtue.
bsn
Are you sure you don’t live in Los Angeles?
Rest easy; they're breathing in their own filth.
And FEAR
The 'sanctuary city' declaration is a wonderful tell. It signals to the rest of us that the city council is inept, ignorant and worst of all, bored. I feel dismay for the perhaps 11 non-leftists still residing in Sacramento, the rest are getting what they voted for.
Exactly. "I hope our city council can fix this serious prob-- oh."
I live in Sac, I don't think our votes count. We voted against a downtown arena, twice, city still financed one for a billionaire, then conned a judge to throw out the vase, stating that city residents seeing the city didn't have standing. It's a rigged game out here. Most are moving into the foothills or headed east.
All you have to do is move about 5-8 miles east, there is a choice of either "purple" suburbs closer in (college educated professionals), or "red" suburbs further out (working class).
"The Leader is good. The Leader is great. Surrender our will. As of this date."
This type of bureaucratic infestation will fight, nearly to the death, to avoid loss of power and genuine reform. It will use money, deceit, slander, silence, misdirection, subterfuge, and other methods of harm, up to and including physical force, if pushed hard enough.
I try to consider modern parallels. I grew up in and around NYC in the 70s and 80s. Parts of that city looked like Beirut during Lebanon's civil war. The economy was awful. The city was broke. Garbage was piled in the streets. Civil servants were constantly on strike. Crime was everywhere. Yet, somehow, it got turned around. The people said "enough" and elected leaders who promised and delivered change.
This current problem, somehow, seems deeper. It's certainly more widespread.
At some point, people have to say "enough."
The eternal cycle. Tammany did the same to NYC, and then lost power. Everything comes and goes. Agree that this downward cycle will be much harder to break.
There's a great piece in the The Free Press from a few weeks back, about an Appalachian town bootstrapping its way back from the dual devastations of the loss of coal jobs and the opioid crisis. Leading the way? Recovered addicts. People who have looked into the abyss, saved themselves, and now want to help others.
Another version of going outside and looking at the trees, I suppose.
The bureaucratic infestation is already doing everything you fear. The only difference is the scale of it. The scale is going to be ferocious. Have no doubt.
Financial advice for both governments and people: If you are out of money, EVERY DOLLAR SPENT MATTERS.
The city council in my little suburban town declared the city "structurally insolvent" a couple weeks ago, and I sent them a detailed list of their own recent choices to show them how they could fix it. Weirdly, they didn't thank me.
"We're spending way too much money."
"Don't you mean....we're not GETTING enough money?"
"Right, right."
WE NEED MORE FUNDING!
I swear if I hear that again from my libtard friends there won't be a mountain tall enough to SCREAM from!
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/south-carolina-found-state-bank-account-1-8-billion-but-they-have-no-idea-what-its-for
The words in the link explain this story, but the most interesting line is:
“Gov. McMaster [Republican] says the state will hold off on any plans to spend the $1.8 billion until it can verify whether it was intended to be spent elsewhere.”
It’s SO telling that even a Republican’s first reaction is to consider how to blow new-found money like a child.
Ingrates. You're a precious resource.
So Sacramento A) has declared itself a trans sanctuary, and B) is broke?
Maybe someone should calculate exactly how much that senseless, needless, virtual signaling actually cost the broke citizens of Sacramento in terms of man hours, paper, ink, electricity, etc! And just imagine what they might have accomplished if they’d devoted the same amount of time, energy and resources towards fixing a problem that actually existed!
What a wasted City, what a wasted State!
Indeed.
I recently guided a client through a permit process for a large warehouse/distribution center, not for public, by the airport (SMF).
They were adjusting some levels of pallet racking (the steel one sees all the product on in a Home Depot store for example) originally installed a few years ago.
No changes to egress or life safety, just moving some levels in maybe 5% of the rack in the building.
Sac County Building department wouldn’t even look at it until an Architect surveyed and confirmed that there would still be adequate restrooms and that the slope from the employee parking lot would accommodate wheelchair access.
Not at all knocking folks in wheelchairs, but I’m in these million square foot + buildings pretty regularly and have yet to see one picking orders or loading trucks.
In their defense (and it pains me), Orlando FL forced a client to install an elevator on a rack supported structure over 20 years ago for wheelchair access.
I’m pretty sure anyone can sign up with Sac county building and view permits. The amount of money they get from them is incredible.
The kicker - one call from the developer to Sac County (or City official) and the permit went right through…
The nonsense is well baked in.
My wife had a structural engineering business in Scottsdale Arizona in 2008 when the banking industry collapsed. Construction slowed to a crawl. The city planning department, however overcame this problem by being more aggressive in red lining the plans that people sent in.
By far biggest problem is that we’ve allowed our government at every single level to get completely out of control. The government is so insidious it’s infected most companies. HR departments are just shadow government organizations, so is the legal department and don’t even start with diversity, inclusion, etc.
Now entire industries, like media and tech are just extensions of the government.
I'm a civil engineer and 2009-2011 was the worst for plan review. The plan checkers had nothing to do, so they squeezed are sets for everything. They were intentionally slow and very controlling, it was a nightmare.
Spot on.
That's because all this nonsense is both downstream and upstream from politics, simultaneously.
And they fund each other.
I have similar experiences/projects. We do projects all over the country and the variation in permitting requirements is pretty wide. Had a customer take on a new site in Baltimore City which, unfortunately, I have some experience in. Told them that was probably the worse jurisdiction in the state they could have picked. Because of the rack design and their commodity it required in rack sprinklers. Took us eight months to get the fire department to approve the permit application. No internal standards for turnaround and the inspector is basically answerable to no one. Our customer didn’t have any other contacts in City government to try and get things moving so we were at their mercy.
I’m sure any permitting, environmental assessments, government approvals at all levels will get fast tracked or waived for the bridge and harbor clean up they are facing from yesterday’s collapse.
Hubby used to work for a big corporation years back. He often traveled to the east coast as they were building another location out there at one time. He remembers it was just the standard business practice that to get a certificate of occupancy for their project you had to give certain contracts to certain people…in this one case it was for a certain snowplow business that would be responsible for keeping them parking lot cleared. Business as usual.
Wasn’t it your stack Chris, that had the recent story of the former deputy mayor of Los Angeles just getting brought up on charges relating to this same type of thing? Money or favors changing hands between companies and city employees to get the job. Nothing to see here!
I’m guessing this is baked into the systems of almost all government offices, large medium or small. Corrupt people are attracted to work for the government. The days the founding fathers envisioned for our future was probably doomed from shortly after the establishment of our country. Eventually the rot sets in.
Without a doubt…
I’ll be taking note of that AHJ. I’ve done them in Aberdeen, Jessup, and whomever it is that has their office by RFK stadium; they weren’t awful.
Run away from any high pile rack permitting in Ontario, CA!
It costs such governments nothing to say “No” because there’s never an analysis of what might have been. The exception is AOC & Amazon, but the morons in her district keep electing her.
SacCounty LDSIR may have changed their name to SIPS decades ago, but I think they are still in Room 101, the same number as the torture room in the book 1984.
Only the connected can get anything moved through that bureaucracy.
In the mid-eighties I worked for a small defense contractor in Van Nuys, CA, about 90 employees. They had a fully permitted paint booth that they wanted to move about 50 ft across an alley from one building to another. The state required a full environmental survey and re-permitting costing about $20K. Madness. The company eventually moved to Phoenix.
Yeah they like to run off the little guy or the up and comer.
We are morally broke. The idiots here legalized pot dispensaries on ever corner to mellow out the dissent.
The two things are probably not directly related in any significant way, but they do both expose failed thinking, failed values, and a failure to focus on basic services and effective leadership (such as reforming corrupt and dysfunctional bureaucracy).
I believe most of what we see on the surface is a distraction from what THEY don’t want us to see under the surface. P. Diddy. NBC yanks chain on Rona. Ship accidentally or purposely hits bridge which is or isn’t a coordinated attack on our critical infrastructure. Rinse and repeat daily.
Certainly get outside, enjoy Gods creation, decompress and try not to take life too seriously.
Also, do everything legally possible to not financially feed the system, prepare your family for the collapse and then positively participate in the rebuild of a functioning society.
I am realizing I can buy an RV/Trailer for cheap, park it near an airport outside of CA, (lost of farmers with large plots of rural land are offering to host for cheap, and visit it from time to time. Might be the temporary sanity-inducing cost-effective solution I am looking for. it is too hard to drive "out of" CA (to sierra N Coast red counties) for a weekend.
Chris, your writing is powerful enough to send some of off the edge from time to time. It's a complement, our insomnia. :)
Anyhow, it also makes me very very spicy-feeling.
I feel as if I'm standing knee-deep in a great flowing river of shite; everywhere I look it's shite, roaring all around me, its wind blowing the trees. Like Niagara-level shite. My meager and humble request is this: some brave men and women to do their $%^# jobs, from Main Street to the ... Congress.
I feel as if I'm wandering the Emyn Muil, to the point where I've turned off Warroom, spend little time on the news, and a lot more time outdoors. I'm in North Idaho so there's lots of opportunity--going hiking to a new spot tomorrow.
So I'll end with this: those of us who love your work are going to need to take care of our mental (and physical et al) health and focus on LONG term. This place is coming crashing down around our ears, and we're going to need as much capacity as we can muster for some time to come.
She's worth fighting for, so onward!
Agreed. We are post moral collapse, now waiting for all the systems to crumble. The bridge disaster in Baltimore yesterday is 1/10000th of the damage that can be done to our infrastructure/economy/sense of safety for under $10K.
I spent nearly three decades working military intelligence (not as dip-shitted as most say), thinking about enemies, vulnerabilities, and ways to exploit said vulnerabilities. When I think of 5-10 million military aged men who have illegally crossed our borders since ole shitshispants has bumbled into our White House--I can go to very dark places.
BUT--I live in a stunningly beautiful area. I run with one of my dogs daily. I'm semi-retired working from home. My wife and I both do work that is meaningful to us.
Those of us who know what time it is must take care of ourselves. We will be the only ones who are willing and capable of putting everything back together.
bsn