The Post-Partisan Emporium

In early 2020, when American liberals  wailed in unison  that the First Amendment’s guarantee of the right of free assembly was a prescription for national suicide – and  not one significant American civil rights organization  protested – I should have known where we were headed. Still, almost 3three years later, I am dumbfounded by how rapidly a nation that once boasted of its attachment to “liberty” has succumbed to the priorities of totalitarianism.  Thought policing on social media , once a dystopian fantasy, is now taken for granted. So is the  massive electronic surveillance system  that was hawked to Americans (and others around the world) as a “health” measure, but which actually gives Big Brother a convenient way to monitor people’s whereabouts and which has already been turned against political dissidents in Israel, India and elsewhere. Health care workers – once the  heroes of the fear propaganda  that rationalized  illegal mass quarantines  in 2020 – have now been  forced f

“The Russians have decided there is no way to negotiate an end to this. No one will negotiate in good faith; therefore we must crush the enemy. And that’s what’s coming.” —  Colonel Douglas MacGregor  (9:35 minute) “Strictly speaking, we haven’t started anything yet.” — Vladimir Putin The war in Ukraine is not going to end in a negotiated settlement. The Russians have already made it clear that they don’t trust the United States, so they’re not going to waste their time in a pointless gabfest. What the Russians are going to do is pursue the only option that is available to them: They are going to obliterate the Ukrainian Army, reduce a large part of the country to rubble, and force the political leadership to comply with their security demands. It’s a bloody and wasteful course of action, but there’s really no other option. Putin is not going to allow NATO to place its hostile army and missile sites on Russia’s border. He’s going to defend his country as best as he can by proactively e

The New Year brings both optimism and hope.  A chance to start fresh.  To turn over a new leaf. The sentiment is welcome.  The outcome, however, can be a grave disappointment. If you recall, 2022 was supposed to be a year of redemption and prosperity.  After the ugly coronavirus fiasco, the economy was finally reopening.  The general belief was that the resurgence of economic activity was going to bring a new boom and a new cycle of prosperity. But then something unexpected happened.  On the first day of market trading, January 3, 2022, the S&P 500 hit a closing peak of 4,796.  Yesterday, just over a year later, the S&P 500 closed at 3,808.  Down over 20 percent. Over this duration, the yield on the 10-Year Treasury note spiked from 1.66 percent to 3.70 percent.  In other words, Uncle Sam’s borrowing costs have more than doubled. At the same time, transitory inflation proved to be enduring.  And gross domestic product (GDP) went negative for the first two quarters of 2022. What

The bougiecrats descend into mass psychosis Toby Rogers This ritual that the bougiecrats* do is completely wild. They: Get really excited about a new & novel pharmaceutical product that skipped even the most basic safety testing; Inject it in the parking lot of a stadium, in their car, in a converted RV, or in a flimsy curtained-off “booth” at the pharmacy; Get so sick (pain, cramps, bleeding) that they cannot return to work for days; Wait a month; Get injected with the thing again; Get even sicker. Go to the doctor or hospital for help. The doctors scratch their heads, mutter a few words, and send them home; Tell everyone else to follow their sterling example; Watch celebrities, newscasters, athletes, friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors be maimed and killed by the thing; Inject the thing again; Get even sicker; Catch Covid anyway; Blame the people who did not get the thing; Chant the mantra over and over, “It would have been worse, but for the thing.” Plaster the mantra all