[thenewbittercenturion] I just had a revelation today that was both stunning and heartbreaking.
I just found out that every single person I know personally, in my small circle of friends, people I'd chat casually with, and people I worked with professionally, ALL got the poke 'n smoke. Every single one of them.
Now I'm not going to disparage anyone who got the jab because I'm still a proponent of personal choice. Take ten clot shots. Smoke some crystal meth. Get a tattoo of a miniature 'Mona Lisa' on your peen. Get ass raped by a donkey. I don't give a damn. It's your body. Do whatever the fuck you want with it.
Continued on Page 49
#2
It’s tough for libertarians to resist government excess because they don’t organize and work together very well. They may not actually fight back until they are defending their personal space and family, by which time it is probably too late.
#3
The fact is a lot of people were "nag coerced" into getting the shot, just to get along. There were so many roadblocks that were intentionally thrown in the way, and you might not even be able to work if the karens had their way.
I got lucky. My employer deemed me 'essential' (no days off for you), and at work we were spaced out so no close contact. The company arrainged for shots to be given there, and I responded "I have no desire to be a guinea pig". Then I was injured at work, and medicalled my way into retirement.
I did get Covid (or something). Felt like crap for a week, and got better. I still have no desire to be a guinea pig.
Go test it on somebody who trusts you. I certainly don't.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
03/19/2023 11:13 Comments ||
Top||
#4
On a parallel note, driving to work during the shutdown was great. There was nobody else on the road.
Stopped at a convenience store at O dark thirty one morning, there's a cop in the lot standing next to his car drinking coffee. I yelled at him "Ain't it great being essential?" and he laughed and yelled back "It keeps me out of the house, so it's all good".
Posted by: ed in texas ||
03/19/2023 11:22 Comments ||
Top||
#5
No, the reason this was pretty disheartening is because a fair chunk of these people I'm speaking of were HUGE mouthpieces when it came to defying the 'gubmint', yapping about personal liberty, and basically spitting in the fan. A lot of them were people who actually got me redpilled on how the world 'really works' many, many years back. Some were gun owners, some were so-called 'molon labe' tacticool people, but generally all just folks I thought were ahead of the curve. These are people I thought saw things the way I did - some of them actually did. I thought these people would hold out, like I did. Not submit.
Turns out, I was wrong. Turns out, in the end, they were all full of shit.
He is right. I wouldn't want to be a Canadian right now. But the lemmings in America are on the same path.
[KabulNow] In December 2022, the Taliban ...Arabic for students... caused international uproar after banning women from working as aid workers, which forced major aid agencies to suspend operations in the country in protest, just when the country needed them most.
With more than 28 million people in Afghanistan requiring aid to survive, and 6 million on the brink of famine, the UN, government officials, and NGO leaders have called on the Taliban to lift the ban and allow aid agencies to deliver aid to the people of Afghanistan as the deadly winter intensifies its grip on the country. The Taliban refused to budge. The ban, the group said, was to "protect our women’s dignity and honour." International condemnations and pressures did nothing to make the Taliban leadership change course.
Continued on Page 49
[American Thinker] Last March, the Federal Election Commission fined Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign $8,000 and the Democratic National Committee $105,000.
Their crimes were the obscuring of their funding for the infamous "Steele dossier." The Clinton campaign attempted to disguise payments to Steele as "legal services" and "legal and compliance consulting" in campaign filings.
Lawyers working for the Democrats in 2016 hired research firm Fusion GPS to ’investigate’ Trump. The firm then paid former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and his company, Orbis Business Intelligence, to conduct ’opposition research.’
The Steele dossier was replete with spurious claims and conspiracy theories. It was passed on to politicized government agencies which used it as one of the reasons to spur the Mueller probe
The probe lasted for almost two years, cost $32 million of taxpayer funds, and hung like a sword over the Trump presidency.
The vast disinformation campaign was the first step by the Democrats towards outlawing political opposition.
But nobody was punished for this.
The subsequent Durham probe has yielded nothing so far and is unlikely to in the future.
Hillary’s campaign paid Christopher Steele via her campaign for the dodgy dossier of falsehoods and then mischaracterized the expense as legal service payments.
Yet all that Hillary, her campaign, and the Democrats received was a symbolic slap on the wrist in the form of a fine.
Now about President Trump.
It is being reported that Trump could be indicted in the coming weeks.
President Trump himself has said he could face arrest this week
[Gateway] Dan Bongino didn’t hold back when discussing the upcoming arrest of Donald Trump.
He ripped into liberals celebrating it — and said "the Police State is here."
He also pointed out "this is the kind of story we are used to reading out of North Korea but it is here in the United States right now."
VIDEO (partial transcript below)
From the video above:
"Dan Bongino: The Police State is here guys. That’s inarguable, to the libs listening, you know you can plant a big wet one on my rump because I really have no desire to hear you right now as you’re celebrating again the collapse of the constitutional republic. The police state’s here. You know it is not as though Donald Trump’s sons were caught on tape talking to their dad about elicit business deals or anything with foreign communist parties and nuclear power and enemies of the United States. Shuttling millions of dollars to the Trump family oh that’s right, that’s right, that’s the Biden family. Sorry guys I forgot as a commentator I should really be up on the news. But the police state and this abomination is here right now, this is 3rd world BS. That’s exactly what this is. This is the kind of story we are used to reading out of North Korea but it is here in the United States right now."
Fox News reported Friday night that final preparations were being made for Trump’s arrest.
#1
Our Republic is lost. Trump was the last honestly elected president. The government has weaponized the law enforcement and the regulatory agencies to go after all that are not part of the accepted ruling class and to go after all that question their authority. How this happened over time is beyond me but they figured it out. I have always loved my country, spent my entire adult life in its defense. Like a stage 4 cancer patient, there is no hope of survival for our republic, not in how we knew it, the only hope is that the end will not bet too painful. At least the Pollet bureau and Pravda were honest about the press belonging to the government, or at the very least the leadership have married into each other like some feudal peace plan. We missed it, now the only real question is if we will survive this, because, as the Dems say, the constitution is just an old piece of paper. As it is truly a document that does not fit or guide our nation run by power grabbing criminal any more...
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/19/2023 11:08 Comments ||
Top||
[FrontPage] Americans can’t afford food, but leftist and Chinese companies get bailed out.
by Daniel Greenfield
Silicon Valley Bank spent billions on green energy, millions on Black Lives Matter and other leftist causes, until it finally ran out of ‘other people’s money’.
That’s when the Biden administration decided to bail out its depositors.
At a dinner hosted by Peter Orszag, Obama’s former budget director, Wally Adeyemo, Obama’s Nigerian assistant treasury secretary and Biden’s deputy treasury secretary, chatted with Blair Effron, an influential Biden donor, serving on Biden’s Intelligence Advisory Board, who had been hired as an advisor by SVB to deal with its financial crisis. The outcome was inevitable.
“Because of the actions that our regulators have already taken, every American should feel confident that their deposits will be there if and when they need them,” Biden lied.
The deposits of ordinary Americans were already protected up to $250,000.
But unlike banks that serve ordinary customers, the vast majority of SVB’s clients held over $250,000 and were not protected by FDIC insurance. Rather than risk its political donors and allies having to take a 10% loss on their funds, the Biden administration illegally bailed them out while unilaterally transforming FDIC insurance into a protection plan for its political allies.
The Biden bailout was not there to protect Americans, but leftist and even Chinese interests.
SVB was the embodiment of Environmental, Social, and Governance or ESG investing which prioritizes leftist politics over profitability. The Biden administration recently announced that it would allow 401(k) pension plans to be put into ESG instead of reliable investments potentially endangering the retirements of tens of millions of Americans which might also get ‘SVB’d.’
While SVB focused on “climate change” and “diversity”, it ignored rising interest rates. The woke bank was too busy with its politics to deal with the math. SVB had no risk officer for 8 crucial months, but its risk officer for Europe, Africa and the Middle East focused on sharing her “experiences as a lesbian of color” and “moderating SVB’s EMEA Pride townhall.”
CEO Greg Becker led quarterly diversity, equity and inclusion town halls instead of figuring out that startups squeezed by rising interest rates would need money that the bank didn’t have.
Silicon Valley Bank directed over $73 million to Black Lives Matter and other causes. It put millions into, among others, the Accion Opportunity Fund which describes its mission as advancing “racial, gender and economic justice”. It focused on “building a culture of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” and advancing the “transition to a low-carbon world.”
SVB’s mission was to force 100% of its employees to participate in DEI indoctrination.
Newsweek named SVB one of “America’s Most Responsible Companies”: not because the woke bank managed its money well, but because it had the right politics.
Now one of “America’s Most Responsible Companies” is responsible for economic devastation.
SVB mastered wokeness, but failed economics 101. And that was by design. Its real business was politics. By financing leftist causes, SVB had become politically too big to fail. While its own finances are wrecked, the Biden administration quickly stepped in to protect its woke depositors.
The SVB bailout was an announcement that the Biden administration would stand behind woke financial institutions and instruments, socializing the pain by spreading it to more stable financial systems, no matter how irresponsibly they put funds at risk in the pursuit of their politics. Read the rest at the link
[Washington Examiner] Twitter CEO Elon Musk predicted Saturday morning that if the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicts former President Donald Trump, he will win "in a landslide" in the 2024 presidential election.
"If this happens, Trump will be re-elected in a landslide victory," Musk said in a tweet Saturday.
#2
This is what happens when Rob Reiner is your strategic think tank.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/19/2023 13:42 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Is Elon going to interdict the voting machines in LA, Phoenix, Denver, Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and New York City? Otherwise the fix is in against any Trunk, period.
#4
The indictment certainly will make him unbeatable in the primaries. Biden has created a lot of catastrophes through his first two years. None of those are likely to improve over his final two years although the border flow of people could slow as smaller Central American countries empty out completely.
There were some special voting situations that were in place for Covid that will not be in place in 2024. There is as is as strong a case to be made for a landslide as there was a case in 2022. The issue that I have with Musk’s prediction is that I don’t think he has quantified the effect of McDaniels, McConnell and the rest of the McEstablishment GOP working to elect Democrats. The Dems cheating is assumed by everyone but turnout of 200% of registered voters in Dem cities won’t be allowed by the general public.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/19/2023 18:27 Comments ||
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[NYPOST] What would it take to get back to excellence and competence as the only criteria for employment? Never happen. The dull and the incompetent would screech too loudly and the professional followers would hop on board for the ride over the cliff. Was it the law-abiding who demanded we defund the police?
Perhaps it would require the bridges to start falling down. They're only built to last for so long. Back when I worked for the gubmint, maintenance was always the first thing that got... cut uhhh... pushed to the outyears.
Though I suspect that if they did, then certain people would claim they’d only fallen because of "structural racism." Endemic structural racism.
Still, this week we had a good reminder of just how over-tolerant we have been of this insane, anti-excellence agenda. Because although the bridges haven’t yet started to collapse, the banks have. Wasn't there a bridge that went not all that far back? In Wisconson or one of the flyover states nobody ever goes to but Publicans.
And one reason is that the banks in question prioritized equity over excellence. Well, obviously you can't hire for competence. That would be unfair to the stupid and the ham-handed and politicians' relatives. And donors.
The DIE agenda constitutes an absolute obsession with exact representation (or preferably overrepresentation) of women at senior positions, including board positions in American companies. This obsession with female representation is only an issue with high-status jobs, of course. Board seats, Hollywood star pay and so on. Empirical results don't count. I saw a remake of David Copperfield a year or so ago. Everybody was a different race: The guy who played David Copperfield with from India. Agnes' father appeared to be Chinese. Agnes was black. Dora was white, since she was a 'tard. So also was Steerforth, since he was a cad.
There is no movement that I am aware of that is pushing for equal female representation among road-layers in America. Funny that. It's probably been at least thirty years since a woman couldn't get a job wearing vest and holding a flag. I don't recall any driving steam rollers and riding shovels. Surely it should be a 50-50 split?
But for at least 15 years, diversity has been everything. But... but... Surely diversity is our strength?
After the last financial crisis, in 2008, the then-head of the International Monetary Fund came up with a cutesy line. Wait for it...
If Lehmann Brothers had been Lehmann Sisters, Christine Lagarde used to claim, then perhaps the global financial crisis might not have happened. Further proof that diversity makes you stupid.
Well, that is a lot of balls, as the New York Post showed this week with the tale of Jay Ersapah. Ersapah is a woman Which should qualify her right there...
and held the role of head of risk management at SVB. From her name and her looks, she's non-white. That makes her doubly, maybe even triple qualified. Plus, she calls herself a queer person of color.
But if Ersapah spent any time trying to manage risks, I don’t know how she did it because her more full-time job seemed to be to promote woke nonsense inside SVB. Ahah. Applying what she learned on collitch.
For instance, as The Post revealed, Ersapah spearheaded such initiatives as a month-long Pride campaign, a blog emphasizing mental health awareness for LGBTQ+ youth and was co-chair of the SVB European LGBTQIA+ Employee Resource Group. Somehow being a flaming heterosexual, I never had need of a Pride Month and never will...
At such shindigs, Ersapah would talk about what it was like to be "a queer person of color and a first-generation immigrant from a working-class background." Being colorless myself, and only the offspring of a second generation immigrant on my mother's side, the fact that I regard all this as nonsense is disallowed. I was obviously born with a silver spoon in my mouth. My Dad bought it at the company store when he got off shift at the mines.
By the standards of our day, Ersapah is an absolute winner. Empiricism aside, mind you.
A winner of the intersectional grievance studies search for the most oppressed person. One night around midnight, the union thugs came by and shot up our house. We had a big old round oak table and my mother grabbed me and hid us behind it. My Dad hid next to the window (not a good idea, given the walls' lack of armor plate) and returned fire out the open window. Sure glad we had all that privilege to protect us. Now, I don't remember that story, but I can recall it because I heard them tell it so many times. I can see the flame erupting from my Dad's pistol because my mother described so thoroughly and often. On a digression from the same stoopid subject, you don't see a lot of lady coal miners, do you? It might not even be 50-50 in the boardrooms, the sexist bastards.
The ethic of our day dictates that such a person not only has a right to any and every position, but that their very being there will bring untold (and unspecified) benefits to the company. That's why the coal companies have so many woman in their boardrooms.
Well, what a shame that the one thing Ersapah can’t identify as is "competent." Oh, sure she's competent at... something or other.
If she were competent, she might have been better at what should have been her main role — which was to manage risk. There are multiple approaches to risk management. She just made her own up.
Something which she and the bank as a whole were clearly inept at. The problem is that it's not just one bank in one location. They're all connected in one way or another.
Not least because SVB was lending long and borrowing short — an unbelievably elementary error that banks have been studiously avoiding since the savings and loans crisis of the 1980s. Well, if you throw away the rule books and start without any preconceived prejudices, that's the pathway to success, ain't it? I recall hearing a series of managers (in a single afternoon!) saying things like that as they were throwing the Peter Drucker approach to management out the window. But look at the things that obsessed the top brass at SVB and you can see that their eyes were on other balls. Never heard of Management by Objectives (the Next Big Thing after Peter Drucker) unless the managing they were doing was toward other objectives than banking.
Among the failed bank’s board, only one member had a career in investment banking. An organization will keep chugging along despite incompetence or even malevolence at the top if it's big enough. Think Obama-Biden through Biden-Whatsername. Eventually it will fail.
The other board members were mega-donors to the Clintons and other top Democrats. My surprisemeter's busted again.
One was even an improv performer. Tell us he wasn't a mime. No, dammit! Don't mime your answer!
By modern standards the board did everything right. It had the right Democratic politics — clearly loathing half of the country. It even donated a staggering $73 million to Black Lives Matter groups. They have excellent taste in real estate.
And this wasn’t just some expensive tokenistic thing. No! Reeeeeeeally?
The bank’s own promotional materials stated that "SVB is committed to creating a more diverse, equitable, inclusive and accessible environment within SVB, within the innovation ecosystem, and in our communities. So how'd that work out for ya?... Never mind.
"At the heart of this commitment is our effort to foster a more inclusive culture and increase racial, ethnic and gender representation." Why?
The bank boasted that it wanted to use its resources to "break down systemic barriers." Yup. Gonna chuck that old Peter Drucker crap and start fresh.
All very nice, and clearly all pretty disastrous. But they'd all been to college, hadn't they? Even the mime!
Last time the global economy almost crashed was in part because of banks making loans to people on the basis — among other things — of their race. The U.S. economy is closely connected to most of the other economies in the world. An itchy bottom in Washington requires Preparation H in Europe, maybe surgery in Kazakhstan.
But a responsible bank should not issue a loan solely because of someone’s race, sex or sexuality. Just goes to show what a racist-sexist homophone this writer is. There's no better guarantee of financial stability than the color of a person's skin or the way he/she/it wears a dress.
It should look simply and solely at whether the person can repay the loan — whether it is for a mortgage or a business. Now, I'm sure there are lots of good reasons the bank got stiffed.
Make a priority of anything else, and you are not "managing risk." Who sez so?
You are creating it. "But in college they told us..."
"Shuddup."
"And stop calling her a silly bitch. You'll get us sued!"
Posted by: Fred ||
03/19/2023 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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Top|| File under:
#1
it would require the bridges to start falling down
Long — you’ll want a comfortable chair, dear Reader, a cup of coffee (or your preferred equivalent), and a plate of snacks. If you know more about interrogation that I, you may have opinions on the conclusions of FBI interrogator George Piro (Lebanese-American Christian), not to mention CNN interviewer Peter Bergen. A taste:
[ShafaqNews] Two decades ago, on March 19, 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the US invasion of Iraq. Bush and senior administration officials had repeatedly told Americans that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was armed to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction and that he was in league with al Qaeda.
These claims resulted in most Americans believing that Saddam was involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks.
People believe lots of things, especially with the aid of the mainstream media. Here at Rantburg we concluded that While Saddam Hussein had included Al Qaeda cadres in Iraq’s terrorism training school at Salman Pak, he intended to use them against the world rather than joining them in their jihad to establish a Sunni caliphate.
A year after 9/11, two-thirds of Americans said that the Iraqi leader had helped the terrorists, according to Pew Research Center polling, even though there was not a shred of convincing evidence for this. Nor did he have the WMD alleged by US officials.
#1
I always thought Hussein was more afraid of what Iran would do if they knew he didn’t have WMD than what the US would do if they believed he did. He seems to have guessed wrong.
[NPASyria] Each year in February, hundreds of Syrians risk their lives in the vast Syrian Desert, which is rich in high-quality truffles. The late winter season is largely seen as an opportunity to earn a good income, due to the high prices paid for the desert delicacy, despite the threats of landmines and Islamic State
The IRGC assigned some truffle hunters, accompanied by six of its members, to guard the area. Liwa Fatemiyoun attacked the workers and killed them in retribution, and attributed the killings to ISIS.
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) presence.
Syria’s desert truffles are sold at high prices. At the start of the season, a kilogram will go for $40, later dropping to $10, at its lowest.
Continued on Page 49
[NPASyria] Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... (HTS, formerly al-Nusra ...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ... Front) announced a full retreat from Afrin, in northern Aleppo, after it took control of a number of towns in mid-October 2022 and forced out the Ottoman Turkish-backed Third Legion of the Syrian National Army (SNA). However,
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
03/19/2023 00:00 ||
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[NPASyria] Despite allegations to the contrary, Syria’s Kurds were active participants in anti-government protests when they broke out on March 6, 2011, in the southern city of Daraa. Only 19 days later, Qamishli held its first protest in solidarity, organized by members of the ’Kurdish Revolutionary Youth’.Twelve years later, Kurdish forces, the opposition, and the government are stuck in a three-way enmity. How did it happen?
Qamishli, the largest Kurdish-majority city in Syria, held a prominent role in early 2011, as protests spread across the country. Located, as it is, in the far east of the country, protests, which tended to form in the immediate aftermath of Moslem Friday prayers, were the first to make it onto the airwaves. Anti-government media shared videos of the events in Qamishli, inciting Moslem protestors further west just as they would leave the mosque. Kurdish-majority cities, as well as Kurdish neighborhoods in Damascus and Aleppo, regularly saw demonstrations of 10-15.000 people. On Oct. 8, 2011, around 100.000 residents of Qamishli erupted into the streets.
The government in Damascus attempted to buy off the Kurdish minority, offering never-before-seen cultural rights and citizenship to tens of thousands. Despite this, protests in Kurdish-majority cities continued under banners such as "We call for freedom, not just nationality." Throughout most of 2011, the Kurds’ anti-government credentials were unquestionable.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
03/19/2023 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Gateway] Dan Bongino didn’t hold back when discussing the upcoming arrest of Donald Trump.
[NYPOST] What would it take to get back to excellence and competence as the only criteria for employment?
Empirical results don't count. I saw a remake of David Copperfield a year or so ago. Everybody was a different race: The guy who played David Copperfield with from India. Agnes' father appeared to be Chinese. Agnes was black. Dora was white, since she was a 'tard. So also was Steerforth, since he was a cad.
From her name and her looks, she's non-white. That makes her doubly, maybe even triple qualified. Plus, she calls herself 
and hid us behind it. My Dad hid next to the window (not a good idea, given the walls' lack of armor plate) and returned fire out the open window. Sure glad we had all that privilege to protect us. Now, I don't remember that story, but I can recall it because I heard them tell it so many times. I can see the flame erupting from my Dad's pistol because my mother described so thoroughly and often. On a digression from the same stoopid subject, you don't see a lot of lady coal miners, do you? It might not even be 50-50 in the boardrooms, the sexist bastards.
But look at the things that obsessed the top brass at SVB and you can see that their eyes were on other balls.
Well, obviously you can't hire for competence. That would be unfair to the stupid and the ham-handed and politicians' relatives. And donors.
...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
