One of the many frustrations of people in outsider politics is that the people inside conventional politics, especially in the conservative wing, never respond to what is going on outside of Washington. After every election, regardless of the result, they continue doing what they were doing before the election. We saw this most clearly after 2016 where Conservative Inc rallied against Trump.
The reason for that is conservatism is not just an institution or even a collection of institutions, but rather an ecosystem that provides total care for the people who are allowed to take up a place in it. If you manage to slither inside one of the institutions, you no longer live outside of your political existence. To the contrary, your entire life is now defined by your place in the political ecosystem.
The reason for that is the enormity of institutional conservatism. What it lacks in popular support it more than makes up for in financial support. That money is used to build a network of institutions that are linked together to provide a lifestyle to the people inside them that they could never achieve in the dreaded private sector. As a result, everyone inside is deeply loyal to the system.
That is the show this week. In order to provide some perspective on the size and scale of the Conservative Industrial Complex, I go through the leading organizations and explain their size and scope. This is just a sample as the system is composed of hundreds of nodes and is well over a billion dollars in revenue, before you start looking at their purely political activities.
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This Week’s Show
Contents
- Introduction
- How Politics Works
- The Conservative Industrial
- What Do These Groups Do?
- The Conservative Ecosystem
Direct Download, The iTunes, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed
Full Show On Spreaker
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I wonder who everyone thinks is the best example of a Con Inc person. I nominate Victor Davis Hanson. This fool just came out with a book talking about how civilizations are wiped out completely and the people annihilated. Of course, this book is not designed to warn us about the most serious and impending threat(s) of our annihilation. No. It is designed to gin up a war fever and mobilize the population to fight against the foe that the GAE wants to use us as tools in its global imperial machinations and ambitions. Were it a serious book, it… Read more »
If the Con, Inc., types acknowledge reality they are out of work.
It’s not just being out of work. It’s being out of the club. Guys like Hansen, Sailer, Charles Murray, etc., are old enough that I highly doubt that they need the money. But they love being in the punditry club.
They absolutely crave the attention and approval of the ruling class. They being asked to speak, to be noticed in the media, etc. And they also seem to really find working class whites distasteful.
Well put. How sincere do you think VDH is?
How much does he know but chooses not to say out loud?
As I pointed out, I don’t think he is at all sincere. If he was worried about The West being annihilated he would focus on what I pointed out as our biggest threat. VDH exists as part of a machine to perpetuate the GAE and to gin up hysteria for its primary target that requires mobilizing Americans support against it. If he were sincere, he would call for Mayorkas’ head, and he would write a book exposing all of the many open calls for our genocide by powerful figures in politics and religion and show the demographic replacement for what… Read more »
Line: He has known for decades but refused to face reality because only icky, lower-class people are rayciss. He has documented the wholesale population replacement of his area of California, and noted the dramatic cultural differences between Whites and the mestizos and indios who replaced them. But he preferred to pretend they would ‘assimilate’ in time. Spare NO sympathy for cowards like VDH – whose grandchildren will be helots and slaves due to his craven refusal to recognize racial reality and centuries of historical patterns.
You see that attitude (whites playing as a team is low class) with many on the punditry right. Even Sailer and Murray who acknowledge racial differences find the idea of whites thinking and acting as a group to be beneath them and crass.
All these guys consider themselves a part of the intellectual class where they discuss big things with smart people of any race. Of course, they conveniently forget that smart people of other races do, in fact, feel a kinship with their race and approve of playing as a team.
Citizen: The punditry class, the conservatards, the patriotards, the magatards. Any website you choose – “Look at all the blacks and browns who love Trump!” I was sitting in the dentist’s office here in the Ozarks, and picked up “Better Homes and Gardens” to browse through. My mother used to get that magazine. Every article, ad, and illustration featured non-Whites. The featured home belonged to a pair of lesbians. AINO is drenched in the stuff, and so are all the White inhabitants, no matter what they claim as their politics. It’s considered declasse, rude, not-nice, and un-Christian to notice that… Read more »
Vichy David Handjob
Is being deformed sincere?
He’s a true “keyboard warrior.” He really wants Americans to die—to donate their bodies to military scholarship—especially the other boys who share his humble origins but couldn’t find their way to Stanford.
His other opinions are randomly generated.
VDH is one of the most odious people on the planet. He knows, but as someone pointed out below, his paycheck depends upon him not knowing.
VDH is in no need of a paycheck. He made enough to date via a long list of books that sold well and still sell today. His sinecure at the Hoover Institute is quite secure. He of course does require an audience as he’s been in that business his entire life. VDH is simply a man who is a dyed in the wool CivNat. Seems everytime we come across these people—successful conservatives who have not crossed over to the DR—we have a special ire for them. Deal with it, not them—yourself. I have read any number of VDH books and… Read more »
Lots
Watch any recent YT video.
Im not sure what his angle is.
He should know better.
Hansen is the sort who will solemnly wrap up a podcast to an audience of fellow boomers by telling them that the turn-of-the-20th-century immigrants learned English and assimilated to our Anglo culture and the new immigrants will need to do the same, then go down to his local pharmacy and say “Da me una botella de Tylenol extra fuerte, por favor.” Whether he’s sincere is almost beside the point.
It would never occur to this dinosaur that the state/country which has devolved around him might be better run by the Chinese than it is by the spiteful people now in charge.
What makes whole generations blind to the obvious? We’re not being run into the ground by the Chinese. The Chinese would at least censor our movies to get rid of the gross stuff out of them. who knows, they might let their protectorate make a patriotic movie every once in while, as a long the ending paid a nod to them.
VDH is a tragic story of what being born mid-century, having enough money for a hobby farm, and being on the speaker’s circuit will do to one’s power of observation.
His farm was the family farm, not originally set up as a hobby farm. It did become one of a sort, when CA changed and such was no longer viable. However, that, to me anyway, simply gave him more insight into such changes as they overwhelmed CA and then the nation. He, as many others, was of an academic bent rather than that of a farmer and was employed gainfully as faculty in a smallish CA university. I can sympathize as such happened to me. His entire life has been spent lecturing and writing. That he still longs to do… Read more »
Ugh, VDH is so full of his middling IQ self. A man that takes himself so seriously, stares into the camera, deep sunken eyes, jowls, dulcet tones.
He uses this ‘serious’ persona to sell himself as an intellectual, to dumb people. A King of the Grift, Conservative category.
Vile.
p.s. Love the edit feature. C.
Back before the invasion of Iraq, VDH, with his serious presentation, persuaded me to support the invasion.
Today, well after over a decade of rejecting conservatism, I still find myself naturally trusting guys like VDH. I have to remind myself of how the world really works, how wrong guys like VDH are, and that these guys must be some combination of deluded and dishonest.
I agree totally with Z-man’s description of the “Conservative Movement” as it stands: a closed, self-funding circle of insiders, mostly impervious to influence by normal conservative citizens. It’s sad how many millions of Americans are involved with this movement in one way or another, their well-intended energies spent promoting other peoples’ agendas. They cannot see it for what it is. Unfortunately there is a lack of good historical scholarship about how this situation arose. Z-man and others dangle hints but scholarly, book-length treatments are lacking. For my part I believe, but cannot prove, that the post-WWII “Conservative Movement” was largely… Read more »
I agree with almost everything you wrote, especially the post-WWII “Conservative Movement” was largely invented top-down (“astroturfed” in political slang), by anti-communist businessmen coordinating with US intelligence The Global American Empire came into existence precisely in this manner. Call it fascism, imperialism, or whatever, but this is exactly how the present system came into being. As you point out, there actually was a danger at one point that provided the basis/excuse for what happened. And for a long period, this abomination kinda/mostly benefitted the populace, even if it is now hostile to the core people. The GAE is the anthesis… Read more »
Standing athwart history yelling ‘stop’, or whatever the exact phrase is. It was admitting defeat, but to what? Progress! Opposing progress makes you a knuckle dragger, a bad guy. The idea that history has an endpoint, that it’s working in that direction, that this working out is the meaning of life, goes back a long way— a very long way. This is obviously related to the End of History. Truth be told, conservatives and liberals have the same fundamental beliefs, but are on different sides. Conservatives are the losing side. (Interestingly, conservatives have been the Christian party, while liberals have… Read more »
Imagine if the right-wing think tank organizations were a company board room:
CEO: Who’s got ideas for winning the next election?
Yes-Man #1: Borrow the platform of our opponents.
CEO: Yes, I like that. We like gays and vibrant minorities too. Next?
Yes-Man #2: Concede everything but gun control and low corporate taxes.
CEO: I’d buy that for a dollar!
Yes-Man #3: Fight tomorrow’s “culture wars,” conveniently forgetting that we lost yesterday’s “culture wars” …
CEO: (sad face) You had to bring that up …
— Greg Nikolic (www.dark.sport.blog)
That’s twice in a week that Z has used the word “slither” to describe the movement of members of the Regime.
In the Garden of Eden,The Great Deceiver was also a snake, so the description is accurate.
There are more serpents in DC than there are in the snake pit
Yeah, and a lot of snakes being laid to grass too.
I don’t know about you, but I could use a new belt, perhaps a pair of boots.
@ Steve – Love it. I’m something of a boot enthusiast myself.
Q. What’s the difference between a dead politician in the middle of the road, and a dead snake in the middle of the road?
A. The snake has skidmarks in front of it.
That reminds me of something that one of my drill sgt’s in basic said. One day one of the blacks called me a honkey and after I laughed at him (the term never bothered me) another one asked where the word came from. The drill sgt said, “Because that’s the last sound people like you hear before your ass gets run over.”
whether that’s true or not, it’s as good an explanation as any.
Interesting. Seems the difference here is one of White vs Black (or whomever). There are many things that will get a White in serious physical “trouble” when interacting with Blacks, but nothing that gets Blacks in serious trouble when interacting with Whites. In that lies a reinforcement of bad behavior, which we today are paying a serous price for as a race.
And that, my friend, is why one always should “avoid the groid”.
Heritage, otherwise a typical example of the Con, Inc., grifting complex, actually is an exception to O’Sullivan’s Law (“all organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing”). The backstory to that is delicious. Heritage appointed a Bushie Deluxe and magical negress, Kay Cole James, as its president late into Trump’s term. True to form, she also was on the take from all the usual suspects, Google looming large among them. As a direct result, once ensconced as Heritage poohbah, James predictably advocated for transgenderism, open borders and threw around racism accusations. During an interview with Tucker Carlson,… Read more »
It’s a little bit surprising at just how much of a joke National Review has become. The only reason I click on any link to them anymore is to confirm my current prejudice that 99% of their content is written by 18 year olds and I’m never disabused of that notion. I suspect that the only reason that operation is still running is to attract traffic from their aged readers in an attempt to tease valid e-mails and phone numbers out of them. They pay their high school aged writing staff in Mountain Dew and Funyuns and earn money by… Read more »
Hey man, I’d produce content for pork rinds and Peach Nehi.
HAR HAR HAR!!! 😂👍 This is why I come here: the commentariat is even MOAR rotten than the blog host! (Which speaks volumes about Yours Truly too!) But dark humour aside… my questions are these: Is it possible to tear this mess down without breaking out the cartridge boxes? I live in Canada which uses a parliamentary style of govt. The same thing has to be happening here… and yet our conservatives are light years closer to the people and citizens than your Americans. They are taking the fight to the liberals on a national level; smol PP sounds more… Read more »
There’s a special place in hell for William F Cuckley Jr.
Cuckley was WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING.
The patriots of the John Birch Society were CORRECT ABOUT EVERYTHING.
John Birch >>>>>>> Cuckley
TRUTH >>>>>>> Lies
Just saw where the US is pledging Russian-owned $-backed assets for “loans” to Ukraine. This is the equivalent of rifling through little brothers pockets for spare change, and marks the end of the money pipeline spigot to Ukraine. As Zman points out, things will play out toward the end of the summer. This was the best scheme they could throw together after the House’s spiteful flag waving drama and due to election countdown. How inspirational it must be for a place like New Palestine OH to see the spiteful mutants in Congress pull out all the stops for Ukraine.
Project Ukraine won’t end with the end of the war. That money will provide an endless stream of cash for a govt in exile, color revolutions, committees, etc.
I haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but this is what Nick Fuentes has been talking about the past couple weeks (and what Z mocked him for in last week’s pod). The conservacuck operation not only did not change in response to Trump’s victory and the obvious winning playbook that emerged from it (roughly, the Sailer Strategy), they acted as the first line of defense for the regime against Trump. They did it very well, because of Trump’s lack of understanding of DC as well as his weakness for flattery (something a lot of people, like Netanyahu, also exploited, and… Read more »
When money controls politics the deepest pockets always win. It is always thus in the decadent phase
Decadent phase, good times, bad times, that truism always holds. The varying differential between tolerance to it from the plebiscite class relies on either how much they benefit or how close a blade they wield (metaphorically or not) to their betters.
It relies on decadence because decadence is the unmooring of cultural restraints to crass, selfish and perverted indulgence
Doubt it. There are always corruptible individuals. All the decadent phase does is make them a little less expensive. In no small part to they are subject to blackmail.
My own Congressman is a f–ing POS. He used to be the state GOP chairman but resigned to run for an open seat in a super-Republican gerrymander in what is otherwise a very deep Blue state. He’s a total Zio-shill and Israel/Ukraine bootlicker. His hand-picked “conservative” predecessor resigned rather than vote against gun control. Same thing with my State senator. Tells the rubes what they want to hear to continually get re-elected in his Republican gerrymander, but is 100% impotent in the statehouse, which is controlled by the radical left 2:1. Cashes in his state paychecks and pads his state… Read more »
Yep, Nick is a POS.
We have the same here in AZ. The race you want to win is in the primary, not the general. The primaries illustrate the struggle for the soul of the Rep party. Here we call these people, RINO’s. This brings out the ire in the “conservative” wing of the party. They *want* ineffectual legislators as long as they are Republicans. They claim that the Trumpists are too extreme. They are of the ilk who “vote harder” when inevitably they are disappointed by their winning candidate.
All I know is that I’m sick and tired of the Israel BS. All Israel all the time. Israel! Israel! Israel! Massie did a valuable service explaining what’s going on in his interview with Tucker. This podcast was a good follow-up.
AINO effectively has two capitals–Washington and Jerusalem. The one is official and the other is unofficial. And I ain’t foolin’.
Yes, the Borg is real. Yes, it dominates DC and rules us from the shadows. No, voting harder will never fix this. The only cure is collapse because that begets the fog of chaos and provides the necessary camouflage for remedy. They are aiming for a managed collapse in which the plebs go crazy and Jim Bob starts offing his woke neighbors. This would then justify a jackboot reaction and enable transition to a techo-tyranny. What beats this? Anonymous antibodies does. A lot of oligarchs took serious note of Prigozhin’s fate. Just sayin’.
Fascinating, thank you for this. At least those of us who are shut out of this system can keep a relatively clear conscience. Imagine going around day to day with that desperate fear of wrongthink which you described, which results in such craven behavior by these people, who are so desperate to maintain their position. The same process, in a far-left context, is at work, of course in the educational system now. I agree that it doesn’t appear that this system can be reformed somehow. I’ve wondered for a long time why the quality of leadership has been so low… Read more »
Right now, I’d cast my vote for Commodus, Caligula, Alcibiades and Yeltsin over any of the current lot.
The Sulla / Pinochet ticket would get my vote.
That goes without saying. Hell, I used to have a cat named Sulla.
Right.. but only if they promised to really get serious this time around.
…or Justin Trudeau..
Well, let us not get too ridiculous.
You’ve had your President Alcibiades already. He’s married to Locusta the cackling cankle witch.
You’ll probably cop Elagabalus soon the way things are going. What’s not to like? 😀
East Palestine needs a Holocaust Museum.
The first one who comes to mind is Eric Ericsson from Red State, but he’s really a wanna-be. I remember the 2nd year of barry’s first term and there was all furor over another proposed amnesty. I was perusing the boards at Red State on this subject and a user there posted a link to a series of graphs and tables showing how if we removed the illegals from our country, everything from violent crime, to the overcrowding of the schools, to the bankrupting of the social safety net would drop dramatically. Ericsson responded by saying, “We don’t need your… Read more »
Ha! I thought I was the only one who called him Barry.
Olll Barry Santos.
Barry Obummer
Cliff Asness is an odd character. He’s one of the founders of AQR, which is a monster mutual fund company. I believe that AQR was a general hedge fund before transitioning to retail. Anyway, Asness is your classic NYC Jew. He proclaims to be more or less a libertarian but is also a (quiet) Zionist. So, yeah, open borders and individualism for thee and nationalism for me. He also, of course, hated Trump. Why? Who knows. It’s why he loves Goldberg so much. Like his fellow NYC money changer Ackman, Asness was shocked, shocked to discover after Oct. 7 that… Read more »
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” — Upton Sinclair
The money tied up in these operations is obscene. They provide nothing of value to the health of the republic or its polity.
Exactly. And the reason is that they are buying government interference which provides nothing of value to the health of the republic or its polity.
You can complain about the money if you like, but there are always back channels and black markets. Or you can complain about the government itself producing “bads”. It’s not unintended consequences — they know what the outcomes will be.
The “cock” brothers – love it. As far as the CIC – conservative industrial complex/libshit industrial complex – I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit – it’s the only way to be sure. There is absolutely no way to reform the system. While I do support the NRA, it’s just basic. The column in their mag where they have short stories of joe/jane normie defending him/herself, home or others from intruders/attackers never identify the perps other than “a man, two men etc.”, when we all know it’s jigs. Come on assholes, just tell it like it… Read more »
The “cock” brothers
Yeah, but he wouldn’t say “cuck” during the podcast because it was too crude. I think he substituted the word fink.
The NRA stories that you cite are almost entirely stories taken from MSM, albeit conservative and small town media. Therefore, the wording will be tempered to reflect those prohibitions wrt race of perp. It is *not* necessarily censorship by NRA, nor can the NRA “add” such details and still claim to quote the source accurately.
Z seems to be using the verb “slither” a lot lately…
“Slink” is a good one too and can be used along with “slither”. You slither up and then slink away…
Slither, slink, slime, slop, slattern–something about those SL words seems particularly germane to the postmodern age.
“Am I chopped liver?”–Slut.
It’s like how so many words beginning with “st-” signify non-movement: stick, stuck, stop, stand, still, stall, stagnant, etc.
Words beginning with SP indicating convulsive movement: spurt, spew, spray, spasm, spit, etc. Etymology is an interesting thing.
Somewhat related, the Conservative Industrial Complex only works in a stable system. Introduce chaos and it starts to break down. Trump in 2016 was the first sign of the breakdown, as he was driven by mostly young White male gamers outraged that their games were gayified and diversified by the Kathleen Kennedy rule. As the core voters and mass donors, their money and mobilization easily outpaced the mercenary donor system the way Napoleon’s mass levies of national armies outpaced the aristocratic regimes of mercenaries. While Trump is the only one to successfully defy the Conservative Industrial Complex, others will follow… Read more »
From today’s / yesterday’s Zerohedge article, there is a link to a US Army War College Article discussing the Ukraine War and essentially, what a fight with Russia and/or China would look like: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3240&context=parameters “The Russia-Ukraine War is exposing significant vulnerabilities in the Army’s strategic personnel depth and ability to withstand and replace casualties.11 Army theater medical planners may anticipate a sustained rate of roughly 3,600 casualties per day, ranging from those killed in action to those wounded in action or suffering disease or other non-battle injuries.12 With a 25 percent predicted replacement rate, the personnel system will require 800… Read more »
The Regime is going to have to do a powerful sell job if they expect 3,600 war casualties per day won’t cause a revolution here.
The GAE military, if directly engaged, would take such casualties for only a day or two before abandoning the field
You had better update your gun laws knowledge concerning Vermont. Vermont is being overran by wokes from NYC, Mass. & NJ. Their gun laws are changing accordingly.
Vermont has a carryover reputation from days long since passed wrt restrictive gun law in the US. Once an oddball, now a “me too”. Constitution carry is now common among Red States. If Vermont becomes restrictive, it’s the people’s fault for not being wary.
Conservative Inc. will be a lot different in 30 years. Think of Conservative, Inc. in 1990. It was the last gasp of the stuffy Reaganite-Libertarian, common-sense, WASPy, anti-Soviet, big-business-barbecue-and-football Conservatism, with a tinge of benign racism, which had dominated since the 1960s. Prior to 1960, most Conservatives (Democrat and Republican) were self-made, God-fearin’, hell-bent on beating Communism and gub’mint programs, and segregatin’ the races. By 2020 Conservative Inc. was a mere echo, a last gasp, of the immoral crony Conservatism that started with the W. Bush years. It had become the bloated, irrelevant husk of a political bloc that didn’t… Read more »
Yeah, the Second Coming of Jack Kemp ain’t happening. Along with waiting out statutes of limitations, that is why the Mitch McConnell types hang on long after their dementia diagnoses have been confirmed twice. Of course, all of this pretends like politics still matter and the United States will be around in its present form in another ten or even five years.
You didn’t mention the Hoover Institute. Those guys were the original Con. Inc. back before it was cool. You could roll all the “conservative” organizations you mentioned into one group and those people would fit comfortably within the Hoover Institute.
I don’t think Con. Inc. has ever been remotely cool, although Jonah Goldberg used to try very hard to make is so. Con. Inc. used to be the cleancut nerds with the horned-rim glasses, the pocket protectors, and the slide rules, who had all their factual ducks in a row, won a couple of battles (2nd Amendment, Cold War), but lost terribly everywhere else. Now they’re a wad of geriatric, delusional, feather-pated boobs who deploy their heavy wads in support of a treasonous political class. As such, they’re worthy only of the very profoundest contempt.
One positive step would be to disperse the bureaucrats. Move Interior to the west, say, Denver or another city. They would be closer to their assets, meaning all that Federal land, and closer to the constituents who benefit from or more likely suffer from their acts. Next, move other departments, or abolish them. The favorite for the latter is Education. They don’t educate. Student performance is declining. They suck up resources and suck up to the proggie notions that accelerate the decline. Return their functions to the states. Some departments could be more responsive and accountable with some broad policy… Read more »
Useful suggestions for another time. We are way beyond fixing this now.
Preach it, David. This is how everything has to be viewed.
Yes, so many basic conservatives still seem to be obsessed with term limits for some odd reason.
Well, those deck chairs could stand rearranging…
Couldn’t agree more. What we need now is useless suggestions.
Not ragging on you, David. Useful suggestions without a plausible means of accomplishing them are never needed. Other than in brainstorming sessions, possibly, where someone else can come up with plausible means.
We wait for it to collapse and find out what comes next. We aren’t voting our way out of a social collapse.
On the proximity to the ruled/subjects/administrative-zone suggestion it is problematic. Denver is Africanizing rapidly. It has taken the same path as California in embracing an accelerated Great Replacement. The bureaucrats would not be close to Americans, but to the aliens they have imported. Why would they live near the favella? The second problem is that a large number of them open every meeting with a, “land acknowledgement”, which abrogates the American Nation’s claims on Our land. It is 20 years too late for this suggestion – probably 40. The DIE reform is non-viable because it uses the same failed assumption… Read more »
“Dashboard”? Forgive me, I’m a little light on the lingo.
Sort of a business term, but used in many areas – like a car dashboard, it is a one pager that has information on various indicators of interest. You have probably seen them if you have used a health care facility and they set you up on line with something like “mychart” showing your last visit, maybe what your last vitals were, etc. Also some workout apps will have one with various info on your last workout or progress to goals. Concept is to give you a quick snapshot of things that are of interest.
Ok, thank you.
In the event we get our Red Caesar, I would applaud moving the national capital to Topeka, say. Or even Kodiak. Indonesia is moving its capital from Jakarta to some jungle town on Borneo…if they can do it, we can.
But sadly we’re at a place where Indonesia is more competent (or at least freer) than the USA.
Point Barrow. Let them see exactly what they are protecting by opposing North Slope and ANWR oil production.
‘Bout the time the heating oil runs out, they’ll start seeing the light.
Jakarta’s a steamy shit hole that is sinking into the ocean, so I don’t really blame them. Although Borneo’s probably not much better. The Burmese were smarter when they built their new capital during the first decade of the 21st century. They put in a location that made it capable of flexing state muscle in disparate regions while simultaneously making it impregnable to an uprising. The schemers that run our country would never consent to moving the capital unless it was to an already existing cultural hotbed. Remember when Amazon held an civic extortion lottery for its HQ2 project? Oh… Read more »
Yep. ‘Member when Boeing did its HQ sweepstakes, and they picked…Chicago. Years later Elon came calling for Tesla to move, and it was (apparently) between Tulsa and Austin. You can confidently guess which city he picked.
Yangon is a decrepit cesspool, literally the open sewers reek of the national fish sauce and you can fall in because protestors dislodged the cement covers. The government has abandoned it. If by “new capital” you mean Mandalay then, yes, things are looking good up there last time visited (five years or less). The military junta is incredibly stupid though in its treatment of majority of the population. The way it assigns electricity to villages, for example. Like the US, Myanmar, or as the natives prefer overwhelmingly “Burma,” is controlled to a great degree by the City of London folks.
Jakarta is a steamy shit hole but the dirty secret is that it can be a *fun* steamy shit hole. In small doses. Just saying. Definitely not when it floods in rainy season though.
I figure that they’re moving the capital to Kalimantan to be closer to the oil / gas money spigot. That being said, the idea of having Borneo head-hunters rioting in the new capital instead of your usual garden variety Jakarta anti-Chinese pogrom is intriguing.
Headhunter Lives Matter
Never going to happen. DC has become a gay disco, maybe the gayest city on earth outside of Tel Aviv (the fact that the government’s prime mission is to promote sodomy across the entire earth is not a coincidence). They’re not moving to a bunch of dusty towns in the middle of the country, and they’re definitely not going to let themselves be put out of work.
I don’t think outsiders understand just how pervasive faggotry is in the Imperial Capital, and what the implications of that demographic reality.
You know, I’ve never even been to DC. And based upon the travelogue I’m getting around here, I’m not exceedingly tempted to. The last thing I need to see is packs of boons and fruity heauxmeaux.
We live on the Eastern Seaboard. My husband got a remote job in a company based in DC. Our collective decision was that DC was the last place on earth we’d move to. He would find another job in closer to home. He had to visit enough for work to confirm the decision. There is more to DC people wise. There’s also a bunch of low income foreigners, all trying to make money in the servant trade. There’s a bunch of political hipsters, who like food and running marathons, mostly of native stock but plenty of foreigners too. They do… Read more »
The fruit stands known as US Embassies fly the alphabet flag for a reason.
If by dispersion you mean we give the lot of them five seconds advance running notice before we open up with the machine guns then I can see your point.
More realistically, a reversal of Citizens United v Federal Election Commission decision would take most of the huge donors out of the election cycle.
This will never happen, of course.
This money sloshing around podcast today reminded me of that Segal movie “Under Siege” where crazy navy officer played by Gary Busey when asked what he would do with $100 million dollars answered:
“I’m going to buy the Presidency!”
Laughable today, because that would only buy a Senate seat, at most.
I doubt reversal would do that. So long as government has deliverables, someone will find a way to buy those deliverables.
The empire can’t do it. Putting their people amongst the rabble would make them easy targets when the time comes.
I would guess a big share of Z-man’s listeners work inside the system described.
Came to this post a bit late after a busy weekend. Just want to say that in addition to the Z-Man’s great job in describing the Elephant, the quality and quantity of epic rants in the comments this time is off the charts. Warms the cockles of me heart, it does!
And short of the smell of napalm in the morning, there’s nothing better than good folks dumping on VDH. I mean it.
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If the right-wing think tank was a corporation board room, it would go something like this:
CEO: We’re here to win an election. Who has an idea on how to do that?
Yes-Man #1: Imitate the platform of our opponents?
CEO: Excellent idea! Mark that down, Jones.
Yes-Man #2: Cave on everything except gun control and low corporate taxes?
CEO: I’ll buy that for a dollar!
Yes-Man #3: Fight tomorrow’s “culture wars,” conveniently forgetting that we lost yesterday’s “cultural wars.”
CEO: (sad face) You had to bring that up…
— Greg Nikolic (www.dark.sport.blog)
The problem with the legacy right wing is that it is constantly on the defensive. If you want to lose a battle, fight with “on the defensive” on the brain. The notions of the right are couched against the leading contender, the liberal Left, because reaction, not proaction, is the preferred mode of being. Consider abortion rights. The right managed a major victory with the help of its allies on the Supreme Court, and it is prepared to squander this victory to make nice with the liberals. You can see it in their faces. The liberal slate of politics is… Read more »
I know there are many in the party who feel this way, but there is a larger group of people – myself included – who don’t give a shit about abortion if it means that we’re going to lose elections with bigger, more important issues at stake. I have friends who are staunchly Catholic and even they feel this way. This attitude of “Well, yes the left swept the elections and sodomy is now the law of the land. True your once nice, quiet neighborhood has been flooded with brown, biological garbage from various third world shit holes and that… Read more »
My abortion views have changed significantly. While I still find it ghoulish, horrid, and a grave sin, I advocate that my enemies abort all their children, such that my posterity can more easily inherit the Earth.
it is good for such ghoulish people, those who will murder their own children, to minimize their contribution to the gene pool.
Agreed
Does anyone really want the kind of person that would kill their own child to reproduce?
Abortion as we’ve known it has changed. Most all abortion—estimates as high as 80%—is now done through medication, i.e., “morning after pill”-type applications. Nor is such confined to “morning after” time line if I read correctly. You can chemically abort quite a long time after conception. Recently, the SCOTUS has overturned prohibition of mail order abortion/contraception pills (IIRC), hence allowing de facto abortion in all States once again. All this is fine with me as well as I’ve come to believe that the principle here is when does the State award “personhood” to the fetus, not “life” as at time… Read more »
“The right managed a major victory … and it is prepared to squander this victory to make nice with the liberals.”
It’s worse than you suppose. The GOP Congress is paid by its donors to lose: to give the voters a false sense of choice, to support open borders and Israel, and to dissipate any white advocacy.
The legacy right wing exists to lose. That is its main purpose. Even if you go back to that famous line from Buckley about “standing athwart history, yelling Stop” implies that progressive liberalism is the default and inevitable, and it is the conservative job to manage it. Their job is to make the case for why progressive liberalism is, in fact, a good thing, and it is time for you troglodytes to get on board with it. You saw this recently with the “conservative case for Juneteenth” that all of the sudden came out after the liberals said that this… Read more »