U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) is again taking action against (literally) weaponized bureaucracy by leading the charge in the upper chamber to ensure the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is not using tax dollars from hardworking Americans to arm its employees — and going beyond just that to disarm the taxman and move the IRS' investigation division over to the Justice Department.
According to an Open the Books report released last month, the IRS has spent more than $35 million since 2006 on firearms, ammunition, and tactical gear for its glorified and federally empowered accountant force, with some $10 million of that taxpayer-funded armament coming since just 2020.
“Inclusive Capitalism” – the globalist buzzword for fascist control over all our lives
It’s been a bloodbath for the majority of companies that go overtly woke in the new era of American consumer rebellion, and the establishment is not happy. Corporations like Disney, Anheuser-Busch and Target are plunging in profits and losing billions in market cap after pledging fealty to the trans agenda.
In particular, the public is setting out to make examples of institutions that support trans indoctrination of children. Simply put, a line in the sand has been crossed. With conservative boycotts far more effective than leftist boycotts ever were, the movement makes evident that the political left is a paper tiger and that conservatives and independents have the real majority power in the US.
So why are corporations actually willing to destroy the very brands they spent so much time and money developing all in the name of political idolatry. It seems like pure madness, but what if they know something we don’t? What if they are riding out an engineered economic crisis so that they can be rewarded later with “too woke to fail” riches?
September 1979 – my Hannibal Expedition took two elephants over the same pass Hannibal used in 218 BC across the Alps to attack Rome. There is only one pass that fits the contemporary descriptions of both Greek historian Polybius and Roman historian Livy: The Col du Clapier on what is now the French-Italian border.
Unrecognized as Hannibal’s Pass in 1979, it is still a roadless trail today crossed only on foot or mountain bike. But since our expedition, there are now signs proclaiming it La Route d’Hannibal, and even a life-size statue of an elephant at the French village of Bramans where the track over the pass begins.
The photo you see is us climbing high above Bramans (I’m the one in front with the red backpack). It took us five days to carefully guide our elephants (from an Italian circus) over Clapier and down to the Italian village of Susa. First time in 2,197 years and never repeated 41 years since.
In the Mediterranean, experienced travelers know the French Riviera from St. Tropez to Menton, and the Italian Riviera from Ventimiglia to Cinque Terre. There is one Riviera in the Med they may not know – Albania’s. The Med has many beautiful coastlines, and just about all of them have been “discovered” by jet-setters to backpackers. Not yet, however, for Albania from Saranda in the south across from Greece’s Corfu to Vlora across from the tip of Italy’s Boot Heel.
These Mongol nomads in the vast grasslands of central Mongolia milking their goats have a way of life unchanged for centuries. All of our concerns, worries and fears that plague us are totally irrelevant to them. They don’t know about them and wouldn’t care if they did.
Spending time with people such as these gives you an invaluably broader perspective of life on our planet. Our concerns, the issues that dominate our headline news, suddenly seem more parochial and far less important. An evening drinking kumiss (Mongol beer, fermented mare’s milk) in their yurts, telling stories, laughing at jokes – you realize how easy it is to relate to them through the core humanity we all have in our souls.
We’re now well over 100 Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World since we instituted this daily feature on TTP last July. So to refresh your memory of them, we’ll be sprinkling a recycle of them from now on in the series.
Our very first was Surrealistic Art in Nature, which you’ll find unsurpassed in Antelope Canyon, a slot canyon near Page, Arizona. No artist could paint something more surrealistic than what nature has created here. It’s a photographer’s fantasy land – enhanced by a Navajo Indian guide who knows all the best lighting and perspectives.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As part of his administration's top priority, President Joe Biden has vowed to eliminate all junk fees, though he clarified that his customary "10% for the Big Guy" fee will remain in place for all bribes and kickbacks.
"Listen here, folks," Biden slurred as the announcement was made, "We're going to get rid of all these junk fees! The biggest problem facing the American people every day is being gouged by hotel and resort junk fees. I'm telling these places charging junk fees — stop it!"
When asked by a reporter if the reduction of fees includes waiving the "10% for the Big Guy" fee, Biden was quick to clarify. "Absolutely not," he said. "My fee will stay in effect for all illegal transactions. Weakening national security and doing favors for foreign interests comes at a price, and that includes 10% for the Big Guy. Nargonnindargit!"
Questions have arisen about whether there are more important issues facing the nation than junk fees. "I'm having trouble buying groceries for my family," said frustrated citizen Phil Brooks. "Going on a vacation or staying in a hotel isn't even an option at this point. What do I care about junk fees?"
The administration remains committed to making this the centerpiece of its platform. "The President knows all Americans are focused on junk fees," said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who is a woman of color who is also a lesbian. "He will not stop until junk fees are a thing of the past, no matter how many other horrible things happen in the country."
Trump was indicted over boxes of files again this week. The announcement came at just the right moment to tilt the media narrative away from an FBI informant notifying Congress of two $5 Million bribes paid to Joe and Hunter Biden.
The bribes were quid pro quo in exchange for firing a Ukrainian prosecutor and securing $1 Billion in foreign aid to Ukraine.
Trump supporters already knew this happened, as Trump was impeached for discrediting this truth.
The plot thickens as a deal was struck between the House of Representatives and the FBI; the FBI would deliver the bribery documentation in exchange for the House dropping contempt of Congress charges against Christopher Wray.
Ukraine launched its counteroffensive and immediately ran into a significant problem. Russia blew up the dam over which much of the counterattack would roll across. Humanitarian damage is terrible.
It seems that the world is experiencing a crisis of metaethics.
Metaethics, or the branch of philosophy concerned with the rightness of decisions, became utterly inconsistent this week. It seems that the great powers are pulling metaethics in different directions. Objectivists seek truth and reason, while Relativists descend into the schizophrenia of tribal affiliations. Semantics must decide whether truth comes from Divine Command, the desk of Vlad Putin…, or the source code contained within an A.I. system.
On Monday (6/05), several Russian TV channels and radio stations broadcast a message from what seemed like President Vladimir Putin. In the address, Putin was heard declaring martial law and ordering citizens living in the border areas near Ukraine to evacuate and seek safety deeper inside Russia. It sure looked and sounded like Putin – and it’s true that whole towns have been evacuated in the past week or so.
Yet it’s been declared an AI fake. Most Russians don’t know what to believe with many panic-stricken. The lesson to us is that AI-created video fraud spread by skilled hackers is just beginning:
There’s good news, inspiring news, heads-up watch out news, weird news – and even weirder news (yes, flying saucers are real, and I explain the physics of why). I suggest making a first pass scroll through the images to see what catches your eye, and go from there. Welcome to a full plate of Skye’s Links!
[This Monday’s Archive, “No Apology, No Future,” was originally published on April 28, 2005. 18 years ago, a prediction that Russia would disintegrate as did the Soviet Union was almost unheard of. Now it seems ubiquitous. Google Russia + collapse, +dissolution, or +decolonize will result in millions of hits. The List of active separatist movements in Russia in Wikipedia advocating secession from Moscow will astound you. Russia is accelerating into centrifugal chaos, which won’t take TTPers by surprise, as they were forewarned many years ago.]
Budapest, Hungary, October 1997. I was in Budapest speaking to a conference of international business leaders. Another speaker was a Moscow television news commentator well-known in Russia, Boris Notkin.
He informed his audience about how humiliated Russians felt, losing their Empire and the Cold War, not winning many medals in the Olympics, and having their Mir space station go belly-up. He warned of a dangerous anti-Americanism emerging among Russians, who resentfully blamed America for their problems.
A gray-haired gentleman with a Central European accent stood up and asked Boris a question:
“In addition to their feelings of humiliation and resentment, do Russians have any feelings of remorse for inflicting Communism upon so many countries? After their defeat in World War II, the Germans apologized to the world for being Nazis and for the horrible atrocities Nazism committed. After their defeat in the Cold War, will the Russians ever apologize to the world for being Communists and the equally horrible atrocities Soviet Communism committed?”
Boris looked straight at the man and coldly answered, “No. Russians feel no remorse. They will not apologize.”
The embattled, confused, and doomed far-left CNN is about to lose another Chairman/CEO. According to numerous reports, after just a little over a year at the dying network, Chris Licht is out, he’s toast… Chris Licht is moving to Donesville.
Lol.
Trump broke CNN.
The walls really started closing in (if you’ll pardon the expression) on Licht after former President Trump’s CNN town hall triumph last month.
Because Trump was allowed to state his beliefs and come off as charming and in command, the Woke Nazis in the media, including at CNNLOL, freaked out. Licht tried to trip Trump up. Of course, he did. He’s a leftist.
His mistake was having a lightweight like Kaitlan “Nurse Ratched” Collins moderate. She tried her worst, Trump did his best, and the Woke Gestapo never forgives.
The real joy in all of this is that CNN is so discredited and irrelevant now that all this backstabbing and corporate maneuvering is like watching ants go to war in a jar.
People take shelter from Russian missile attack in a subway station in Kyiv
American policy conversations about Ukraine often assume that Ukraine is a problem. For some, it represents a distraction from China. Others fear Russian escalation and retaliation. Still others worry about the financial cost of supporting Ukraine’s army and propping up its war-blighted economy.
These concerns are real and have their place, but they miss the main point. Vladimir Putin’s ill-judged, ill-planned and ill-prosecuted war has ignited a national awakening in Ukraine. The country emerging from Putin’s War will be a formidable new force in Europe whose interests and outlook place it firmly in alignment with the U.S.
The Ukraine that emerges from this baptism by fire will be a formidable country with a battle-tested army, and it is going to transform the strategic landscape. It will join Poland, the Baltic republics and the Scandinavian countries in a defense-minded bloc against Russian expansion.
Further, any end to the war widely perceived as a defeat for Mr. Putin will do more than create a powerful new ally for the U.S. Here’s why.
[VDH has done it again – here are excerpts to whet your appetite!]
Like the mysterious omnipresence of transgenderism in popular culture, all of a sudden, the obsession with whites as a Satanic collective has become a national fad—a pet-rock or hula-hoop-like collective madness…
Class apparently now means nothing. Do Barack Obama’s “clingers,” Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” and Joe Biden’s “semi-fascist Ultra-MAGAs,” all share the same values as those embraced by Hunter Biden, Jane Fonda, and Adam Schiff, by virtue of some mystical bonds of whiteness?...
For the racialist careerist, the less racism there is to find, all the more essential it is to root it out somehow, somewhere. So, here arrives a new genre of manufactured hate crimes, whose logic is “even if it did not happen, it reminds us that it could have happened.”…
The dearth of actual racism also demands a new set of adjectives that serve as something like sophisticated detectors to discover otherwise invisible natural gas fumes. The adjective “systemic” means only the select can now spot racism. Like air, it is everywhere but invisible and thus requires battalions of diversity, equity, and inclusion inspectors to use their training to expose it in the common atmosphere….
Where does this all lead?
We are wasting trillions of dollars in capital, labor, and time in tribal cannibalism as our friends abroad watch in horror, and our enemies savor our decline into collective suicide—while we sink into debt, our cities turn medieval, our border disappears, our criminal justice system collapses, and our military chases its tail.
There is one fundamental question that any candidate vying for the Republican nomination for president of the United States in 2024 must answer — but that as of yet has gone largely unaddressed, at least publicly, as the field spars over significant but ultimately subordinate issues.
The question is this: How will you win the general election under the present voting system?
An inability to answer this question clearly, compellingly, and convincingly imperils Republican odds of retaking the White House, no matter how favorable their prospects might look come next November. It is incumbent on anyone who wants to earn the Republican presidential nomination to answer this question at the outset, and to operate accordingly.
Here’s a summary analysis of the daunting problems any GOP candidate faces, and a path to a possible solution.