Category: Uncategorized

Confirmed: Barrett took the ticket

What does it profit a woman to gain the US Supreme Court, but lose her soul?

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett sold a book advance for $2 million, according a Monday report. Barrett’s advance is the largest for a Supreme Court justice since Clarence Thomas and Sandra Day O’Connor wrote books, according to Politico. The book will discuss how judges should not bring their personal feelings and opinions into the courtroom, publishing sources told the outlet.

Big book advances are one of the most reliable guides to personal corruption that exist today, short of being put on the corporate boards of foreign corporations. As a publisher, I can attest to the extreme unlikelihood that Barret’s book will ever come close to earning out its advance, especially not without the bulk buys by her paymasters.

The complete dereliction of duty by the US Supreme Court following the November 2020 elections wasn’t surprising, but it did confirm that the last embers of the Republic that survived the establishment of Empire in 1865 had been extinguished.

UPDATE: Bill Barr and Mike Pence were also gifted book deals. Quite the collection of talented writers, it would seem:

While some veterans of Donald Trump’s administration are having a tough time selling memoirs about their time in power, others with ties to Trump who didn’t embrace his election conspiracy theories have sold book deals.

William Barr, Trump’s former attorney general who resigned two days before Christmas after disagreeing publicly with Trump’s voter fraud conspiracy theories, recently sold a book about his time at the Justice Department, according to three people familiar with the deal. This will be Barr’s first book and he started writing it within the last two months, according to one of the people.

Some Trump figures have made millions selling their books, including former Vice President Mike Pence, who Simon and Schuster bought the rights for two books for reportedly $3 to 4 million. 

We’re number 8

Not bad, considering that unlike its traffic peers, this is just a blog that doesn’t even purport to be any sort of magazine or corporate endeavor. I’m a little surprised there are more visits here than to The Unz Review, given the higher pageviews there, but Ron features deeper and more varied content, so I suppose that makes sense. Anyhow, Ron is right to observe that while the converged social media companies can take a bite out of our traffic, they can’t stop the greater part of the signal.

PublicationTotal PagesTotal VisitsTotal HoursBounce{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08}Tm/VPgs/V
The Daily Caller15,464,4007,890,000339,708612:351.96
National Review14,721,0007,010,000286,242632:272.10
Alternet7,743,9003,110,000219,428484:142.49
The Intercept7,107,9005,510,000107,139821:101.29
Reason Magazine5,553,3003,210,000100,758721:531.73
Foreign Policy5,080,9003,410,00068,200761:121.49
The Unz Review4,857,4001,490,000115,889484:403.26
Vox Day4,306,5001,650,00097,167573:322.61
LewRockwell3,870,3001,330,000112,681425:052.91
The Nation3,440,2002,060,00038,339691:071.67

The market meltdown is coming

And it’s probably going to make 2008 look like a walk in the park, if these valuations are any guide:

Hedge fund manager David Einhorn warned of dangers for retail investors that he sees in the market, and one of his main examples was a tiny New Jersey deli with a market capitalization of more than $100 million.

The Paulsboro, New Jersey-based Your Hometown Deli is the sole location for Hometown International, which has an eye-popping market value despite totaling $35,748 in sales in the last two years combined, according to securities filings.

“Someone pointed us to Hometown International (HWIN), which owns a single deli in rural New Jersey … HWIN reached a market cap of $113 million on February 8. The largest shareholder is also the CEO/CFO/Treasurer and a Director, who also happens to be the wrestling coach of the high school next door to the deli. The pastrami must be amazing,” Einhorn said in a letter to clients published Thursday.

Hometown, which appears to have begun trading in 2019, according to FactSet, has shares that trade over the counter and rarely has more than a few hundred shares change hands per day. Often, there are no trades logged in an entire trading day.

Still, the company’s market cap is just over $100 million, according to FactSet.

If $18k in annual sales is worth $100 million, then I’m a multibillionaire. On paper. In Clownworld. Sadly, what passes for Clownworld’s money is observably less legitimate than Zimbabwe’s. And there are already numerous TV ads for stock-investing apps, which should send shivers down the spine of anyone even vaguely familiar with socionomic theory.

UPDATE: It appears a credit crunch is already underway. If the banks aren’t extending consumer credit, particularly to consumers with excellent credit scores, it’s usually because they are having trouble selling or servicing their own debts.

Outraged customers have hit out at Barclaycard after thousands had their credit card limits slashed – some by as much as 99 per cent.  One longstanding customer, who has never missed a payment, said his credit limit was cut from £11,000 to £300, another saw theirs drop from £11,800 to £250, and in the biggest cut seen yet a 62-year-old said his limit dived from £25,000 to £300.

Poking the Bear

As Patreon has learned, poking the big bear is never a good idea.

QUESTION: At present, there are roughly 40,000 US-NATO troops massed along the Russian border conducting military exercises while scores of Russian tanks, artillery and an estimated 85,000 Russian troops are now located about 25 miles from Ukraine’s eastern border. Both armies are on hair-trigger alert and prepared for any sudden provocation. If the Ukrainian Army invades the Russian-speaking region of Ukraine (Donbas), Moscow will likely respond.

So, will there be a conflagration in the Ukraine this spring and, if so, how will Putin respond? Will he limit the scope of his campaign to the Donbas or push onward to Kiev?

ISRAEL SHAMIR: If the Russian army crosses the Ukrainian border, it won’t stop in the Donbas. The war will be brief and the Ukraine will be split into pieces. But will it happen?

Russia’s totem animal, the Bear, is a strong and peaceful animal that is not easily aroused, but once provoked, it is unstoppable. Russian rulers have typically fit this image. They weren’t adventurous, but level-headed and prudent. Putin, who is the quintessential Russian ruler, is risk-averse. He won’t start a war he never wanted to begin with, but he will act decisively if he needs to do so. Consider 2014, after the Ukrainian coup: the lawful Ukrainian president Mr Yanukovich ran to Russia and asked Putin to help him regain power. At that time, the Ukrainian army was weak and Russia could have easily retaken the country without facing any significant resistance. But, surprisingly, Putin did not give the order to take Kiev.

Putin is unpredictable. He ordered the seizure of Crimea despite the counsel of his advisors. It was an unexpected move, and it worked like a charm. He also pummeled Georgia in 2008 after Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia. This was another surprise move that succeeded better than anyone could have imagined. If the Ukrainians try to retake Donbas, the Russian army will beat them badly and continue on to Kiev. The presence of NATO’s troops will not deter Putin.

As for the Democrats, they can push Kiev to attack, but they will end up losing the Ukraine in the process. If the point is to poison relations between Russia and Europe, they can try to do so, but if they think the Russo-Ukrainian war is going to drag on, they’re mistaken. And if they think Putin won’t defend the Donbas, they’ve made a serious miscalculation.

I think Shamir’s perspective on the neoclowns is correct. Being bigtime bluffers themselves – literally everything they do is a bluff – they can’t imagine that everyone else isn’t bluffing. So, they assume that Putin is going to either back down, or at most, defend the Donbas in the same way South Ossetia was defended.

However, Putin and the Russian people now have considerably more experience of the neoclown foreign policy and better understand what Clownworld is. This was the key phrase of the interview, in my opinion: Russians think that a big war is unavoidable, so it’s probably better to have the Ukraine under Moscow’s control before that war breaks out. The US is an enemy; that is the feeling in Russia.  

The corpocracy stacks the deck

A lot of California companies are observably paying attention to Patreon’s legal shenanigans and are attempting to avoid being caught in a similar trap of their own device. Unfortunately, instead of taking an honest and legally valid approach, many of the scions of the Silicon Valley corpocracy are attempting to stack the deck even further in their Terms of Use, as can be seen in the example of Square’s newly announced terms that mandate arbitration, but only after attempting to force the claimant to divulge anything and everything that Square can use against him.

Pre-Filing Requirement to Attempt to Resolve Disputes. Before an arbitration is commenced, you or Square agree to attempt to avoid the costs of formal dispute resolution by giving each other a full and fair opportunity to address and resolve a Dispute informally. Both parties recognize that this is an important requirement, and that breach of this requirement would be a material breach of the Terms. To provide this opportunity, before commencing any arbitration or suit, each party agrees to send to the other party a written Notice (“Notice”). Any Notice to Square should be sent by mail to Square, Inc., Attn: Arbitration Provision, PO Box 427069, San Francisco, CA 94142. Any Notice sent to you will be sent to the address on file for your account. The Notice must: (i) include your name and account number; (ii) provide detailed information sufficient to evaluate the merits of the claiming party’s individualized claim and for the other party to determine if an amicable resolution is possible; and (iii) set forth the specific relief sought, including whatever amount of money is demanded and the means by which the demanding party calculated the claimed damages. Both parties agree that they will attempt to resolve a dispute through an informal negotiation within sixty (60) days from the date the Notice is sent. After that sixty (60) day period and not before, either party may commence arbitration. Each party agrees that state courts in the City and County of San Francisco, California, or federal court for the Northern District of California, referenced below, may enter injunctive relief to enforce the pre-filing requirements of this paragraph, including an injunction to stay an arbitration that has been commenced in violation of this paragraph.

The purpose of this is to attempt to build an “extortion” case out of nothing to provide an excuse for playing the victim and establishing a false narrative. The correct thing to do is to tell the company absolutely nothing and to make no settlement demands, because anything you say can and will be folded, spindled, mutilated, and then used against you in front of an arbitrator who is sympathetic to the corporation. Just file the arbitration and do the absolute minimum required by the contract. Notice in particular that Square actually gives themselves the right to go to court in order to stop you from going to mandated arbitration. I doubt this requirement holds up in court.

Scope of Arbitration. If we are not able to resolve the Dispute by informal negotiation or, as provided below, in a small claims court, all Disputes will be resolved finally and exclusively by binding individual arbitration with a single arbitrator (the “Arbitrator”) administered by the American Arbitration Association (https://www.adr.org) according to this Section and the Commercial Arbitration Rules for that forum, except you and Square will have the right to file early or summary dispositive motions and to request that the AAA’s Expedited Procedures apply regardless of the claim amount. Except as set forth above, the Arbitrator shall be responsible for determining all threshold arbitrability issues, including issues relating to whether the General Terms and/or Additional Terms (or any aspect thereof) are enforceable, unconscionable or illusory and any defense to arbitration, including waiver, delay, laches, or estoppel.

This is flat-out illegal and will not even hold up in arbitration, let alone court. Square is shamelessly attempting to force the consumer to agree to the Commercial rules, instead of the Consumer rules that provide the consumer with some level of protection in order to level the playing field. This is completely illegal, as it directly violates both black-letter and California case law, but the vast majority of consumers won’t know that.

Fortunately, the attempts of the corporations to work their way around the consumer protection laws won’t work at all. The California legislature is very much aware of their shenanigans, as it is already in the process of passing laws to tighten up the terminology and eliminate the ambiguities in the existing laws to which companies like Patreon and Square are appealing in order to attempt to avoid being held accountable to their own contracts.

It’s clear that some Silicon Valley executives are beginning to correctly perceive the legal positions of their organizations vis-a-vis their customers as an existential threat. But it is absolutely idiotic for them to turn to the very same inept lawyers who created the existential threat in the first place in the hopes of somehow escaping it.

Let them go

The love of money is the root of all evil. 70 years of success isn’t enough to prevent Europe’s biggest soccer teams from falling into the clutches of the bankers:

 A group made up of the biggest soccer clubs in Spain, England and Italy has agreed to join a breakaway league that has the potential to change the landscape of world soccer, according to The New York Times. 

So far, 12 teams have reportedly endorsed or signed up for the super league, including Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético Madrid from Spain; Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham from England; and Juventus, A.C. Milan and Inter from Italy. 

The report suggested that each permanent member of the proposed breakaway league, which would begin in 2022, has been promised €350 million ($425 million) with JPMorgan Chase & Co. in discussions to help finance the league….

Under the proposals reviewed at the time, the super league, which would play its matches in the middle of the week, sought to secure 16 top soccer franchises as permanent members and to add four qualifiers from domestic competitions. The clubs would be split into two groups of 10, with the top four teams in each group qualifying for the knockout stages, culminating in a final that would take place on a weekend.

The event would, according to the documents, generate hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue for the participating teams, which are already the richest clubs in the sport. (An alternative version of the plan proposed 15 permanent members and five qualification spots.) The group had entered into discussions with JPMorgan Chase & Co. to raise financing for the project, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The firm has so far declined to comment.

UEFA found a powerful ally in opposition to the plans in FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. FIFA warned that any player who took part in such an unsanctioned league would be banned from appearing in the World Cup. The statement came after UEFAs president, Aleksander Ceferin, demanded support from his FIFA counterpart, Gianni Infantino, amid mounting speculation that the breakaway would have FIFA’s backing.

European soccer leaders huddled on the telephone and in video conferences over the weekend to forge a counterattack. However, finding a solution to the potential loss of the biggest brands in soccer is not an easy task. The Premier League, for example, would lose much of its sheen — and almost certainly a lot of the commercial appeal that has turned it into the richest league in soccer — should it move to banish its top six teams.

My prediction is that severing the big teams from their domestic leagues is going to backfire, as the combination of foreign players and foreign competition, combined with the extreme convergence that will be imposed upon the new league, will cause them to be replaced by new domestic favorites.

I’m a longtime Arsenal and AC Milan supporter, but I can’t even imagine having any interest in this super league. It’s basically going to be like an All-Star game all season long. UEFA and FIFA are among the most corrupt organizations on the planet, but at least they have a genuine and substantial commitment to supporting the sport at all levels. This new league doesn’t, won’t, and can’t, it’s about nothing but TV money. Which is why kicking out every organization and player involved is the right response.

UEFA were strong in response, announcing that every club and player that takes part in the Super League will be banned from all competitions at both European and  international level – and extends to international level and competitions including the European Championship…. The new league represents the American takeover of elite European football, which will become a closed shop run by its founder members. It is bankrolled by US banking giant JP Morgan and is the brainchild of Real Madrid president Florentino Perez and the American owners of three leading English clubs. 

In addition to being proof that too much money ruins everything, it will be an interesting test of nationalism vs financial capitalism. I won’t be surprised if the top six English teams that leave for it eventually become less popular than the teams that stay in the Premier League. 

Mailvox: no, I really don’t

 A reminder: please do not EVER ask me for sources. I will not provide them and I will delete your comment requesting them. I am not interested in providing sources on demand, and I do not care in the slightest if you decide to ignore what I say because I will not provide sources to you on demand.

I’ve been doing this since 2003. And one thing I have observed over the years not one single person who didn’t believe the facts I cited and demanded sources in order to confirm that I was relaying the information correctly has ever subsequently changed his position as a result of being provided with an accurate source that states precisely what I said it did. 

Furthermore, the instinctive demand for sources is a strong, though not reliable, indicator of gamma. Yes, there is occasionally the rare individual who actually intends to examine the source in order to do his own analysis, but such individuals are usually inclined to simply resort to a search engine rather than ask someone else for a hyperlink to a readily available URL or PDF file.

I don’t provide sources for the same reason I don’t provide explanations anymore: providing either is merely viewed as an invitation to argue over the source or the explanation. Since I’m not interested in doing that, I’m shutting down the whole process before it starts. This is a blog, not a science journal, what I write are opinions, hypotheses, and logical conclusions, not scientific papers, and I am under no obligation to undergo any peer review process here.

The vaxx is more dangerous than guns

The reported number of US deaths from the Covid vaccine in Q1 2021 is 1,524. The average number of US gun-related murders reported per quarter is 3,679.

However, only 82.5 million people have been fully vaccinated for Covid, or 25.3 percent of the US population. Even if we ignore the fact that the vaccine deaths are almost certainly underreported, this means your chances of dying from being vaccinated for Covid are 63.7 percent greater than your chance of being shot dead, and 44 times greater than your chance of being shot dead by a police officer.

Perhaps that will help put things in perspective. If the government actually cared about lives, they would devote more effort to vaccine control than they do to gun control.

Hell has a new demon

Some deaths should not be mourned. Some deaths should be celebrated, because they are just and fitting:

Spanish language media reported last Sunday that radical pro-abortion supporter Maria de Valle Gonzalez Lopez died during what she labeled her “dream” abortion operation. She was 23 years old and was the leader of the Radical Youth in the La Paz municipality in the province of Mendoza. Her death has sparked a fierce debate about abortion in Argentina and led for calls for women to know that the procedure can sometimes carry serious risks.
On April 11, the woman underwent a legal abortion procedure in a local hospital. The operation turned out to be fatal for her. This fact came as a shock to the public as this was the first recorded death following the approval of the country’s controversial pro-abortion bill passed on December 30, 2020, which legalized abortion in some cases. Previously, abortion was illegal in the predominately Catholic country.
Dr. Luis Durand, an Argentinian surgeon, told ACI Prensa journalists that “while some believe that the death of the young woman could’ve occurred due to some misconduct, in reality abortion is not a medical practice. Just a few months ago, it was a crime under Argentinian law. In the case of abortion, the death of the child is always brutal. It is burned through injecting substances into the uterus, or it is removed through dismemberment, or it is subjected to extreme uterus spasms which asphyxiate it.”
Durand added that an infection or sepsis may appear in women who take the drug Misoprostol when doctors fail to complete extract the child and his or her remains linger in the woman’s uterus.
“This is why it is false premise to believe that such a procedure is truly safe,” he said.

Don’t ever forget that God hates the wicked with a passion and calls us to do the same. And this dead young woman was among the most wicked of her generation. The ramifications of her evil will resonate for at least a generation, and probably more. Her beautifully ironic death shouldn’t lead for calls for women to know more about the negative effects of murdering their own children, it should lead for calls to restore the infanticide ban.

Let those who love the Lord hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked.

– Psalm 97:10

An adverse effect

Milo relates a recent adverse reaction to the not-vaxx yesterday:

My roommate just called me. He was at Kroger buying food. Said they had a place set up where people were offering the vaccine. My roommate watched a man get the jab and sit down, 3 minutes later the man says he can’t breathe and falls over. They gave him CPR until the paramedics arrived but the man was already dead. He’s fucking dead! Less than an hour ago, he was probably buying cookies for his children.

His wife was with him. She watched him die, as she screamed for someone to help.

The lesson: don’t permit people to inject things in your body that are provided by lunatics who want to depopulate the Earth. Here is another eyewitness account of people collapsing within minutes of getting the Moderna mutative.

Tuesday morning between 8-10am I went to Spring Texas. I dropped someone off to get a shot and got stuck in the line. I couldn’t leave because of where I was so ended up going through the process with him.

Right at the end they make you wait for 15 minutes before driving off. 5 minutes later, two cars down my left driver started shaking. We didn’t know what happened but I heard them yell and you can hear it to in the video “he’s having a seizure”

The  guy in the red car is like myself just confused at what’s happening. Little did he know 2 minutes later boom he goes down even harder. Now my friend is panicking.

The damning thing is the way the administration system is set up with an enforced 15-minute post-injection waiting period and CPR-trained medics on hand. This proves those administering the mutatives know there is a not-insignificant chance of very serious adverse effects that don’t involve developing superpowers.