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New at TLD! A new Wright from Washington City dispatch by David T. Wright was posted
Posted September 28, 2024.
Edna St. Louis Missouri: Experimenting with humans.
As we have already explained — jeez! see below! — Ms. Missouri is TLD’s Free Markets / Free Lunches correspondent.Kamala Harris told the economic wastrels club of Pittsburgh: “I will engage in what Franklin Roosevelt called bold, persistent experimentation, because I believe we shouldn’t be constrained by ideology and instead should seek practical solutions to problems.”
In the salad days of the Soviet Union, this anecdote circulated more or less on the sly (how else, you idiots — the USS of R was a murderous totalitarian regime that lacked a sense of humor).
Child:
Daddy, why is our system called “Scientific Socialism”?
Father:
That’s because Marx taught us to approach the economy scientifically.
Child:
Then why don’t they experiment on animals first?
Spoiler Alert: Humans are cheaper and of less economic value than animals.
Kamala’s program is what she repeatedly referred to as “holistic.” Really? And does anyone know what she means by
Publius: A man, a plan, Panama.
Publius is the pen name — c’mon, man, you don’t think it’s actually some dude’s name, do you? — of a socialist friend of TLD who can’t afford to have his governmental superiors find out that he (or she or zir) may be going off the reservation. Can you take the below seriously? Certainly as seriously as anything said or written by a CNN or MSNBC “reporter.”Don’t you just love it when candidates for office trumpet as their “plans” or “programs” what are merely wish lists of what they hope to do to, or would like to see done to, the body politic? A recent egregious case in point is Indiana Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Braun. Braun’s current campaign ad has a whole slew of points that raise the question: Can the Indiana governor really do anything about food prices, gas prices, securing the southern border, stopping fentanyl trafficking, and so forth? Will he just wave a magic wand and, poof!, political evils will disappear? Perhaps he’s confused and thinks the governor has the same arbitrary powers the U.S. president has acquired. (BTW: Has any elected “leader,” Republican or Democrat, ever spoken out against these so-called emergency orders? They are only reprehensible when the other guys issue them.)
One other oddity: for some completely unevident reason, Braun’s TV ads completely fail to mention that he is a current U.S. senator.
(“A man, a plan, Panama”? A palindrome,
Melvin Ardmore passes this one along.
New York Times, September 26, 2024:
Trump’s Low-Tax, High-Tariff Strategy Could Clash with Economic RealitiesFor the Times’s critique of Kamala Harris’s “new way forward” economic “plan,” see … Hmm, well, maybe that will come soon. StayThe former president’s efforts to compel companies to remain in the United States had limited success while he was in the White House.
Posted September 27, 2024.
Edna St. Louis Missouri: Mission accomplished.
Ms. Missouri is TLD’s Free Markets/Free Lunches correspondent. If Ms. Harris keeps her word — and who could doubt that? — Ms. Missouri will gratefully have to give up this hat among her many others, since the Capitalist Utopia will have arrived.Break out the Victory Banner! Sound the Kettledrums! Fly the Mission Accomplished Flag! The mission of libertarian free-market propagandists has been achieved, at least if the New York Times’s reporting
Harris cast herself as a pro-business pragmatistHarris’s transmogrification to “capitalist” is the most startling conversion since that of Jewish leader Saul of Tarsus to Christianity in the first century A.D., but there could be more to come. Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez are scheduled to give economic speeches this week to the New Hampshire Free State Project and the Ludwig von Mises New York Economic Society meeting respectively, where they will reveal changes of heart mainly as a result of reading TLD (Sanders) and going to Ron Paul seminars and reading Mises’s Human Action (AOC).In a closely watched speech on economic policy this afternoon in Pittsburgh, Kamala Harris promised “a new way forward” for the middle class, and portrayed Donald Trump as on the side of billionaires.
During the address, Harris wove together her vows to lower costs for the middle class and help small businesses into a broader pitch for pragmatic economic leadership. “We shouldn’t be constrained by ideology, and instead should seek practical solutions to problems,” Harris told the Economic Club of Pittsburgh, as her aides handed out a roughly 80-page policy paper on her economic plans.
Her speech, in which she said “I am a capitalist,” appeared designed to push back against Trump’s efforts to label her as a radical “communist.” It was also an attempt to appeal to the kind of moderate swing voter who have told pollsters that they trust Trump more on the economy.
Harris also attacked Trump’s economic plans, which he outlined in a speech yesterday. Trump’s pitch is to cut taxes on American businesses, while imposing high tariffs on foreign competitors.
“No more of that ideology nonsense for me,” Sanders declared. “I want what works and capitalism is what works. Just ask Argentina’s Javier Milei.” Sanders is set to become national spokesperson for a new charter private school initiative founded today by his wife, former president of Burlington College, Jane O’Meara Driscoll. For her part, AOC revealed that she was not running for re-election, but will open a bunch of Stihl Chain Saw outlets across New York state. (I was going to say “a chain of Stihl Chain Saw outlets,” but that would be lousy English.)
Oh, and that story in the
Posted September 19, 2024.
Edna St. Louis Missouri: Brave New World of Journalism.
Ms. Missouri is TLD’s Media Watch Dog — please, not Cat Lady. She has a boa constrictor support animal, which airline personnel so far, once they get a face-to-face look in her carry-on luggage, seem indisposed to ask her to leave at the gate. However, she was recently thwarted in her effort to bring a couple of deceased birds along to feed Silent Cal, said airline personnel telling her that passengers were only allowed one carrion. The below explains, incidentally, why some misguided readers are increasingly given to nostalgic memories of Strakon’s erstwhile journalistic endeavors back in the day.Possible new trend toward cautious language in legacy media. Case Study: AP News, September 17, 2024.
Main headline: “Florida will launch criminal probe into apparent assassination attempt of Trump, governor says”
If we are to apply this change in the AP Style Manual, some subsequent stories need modification:
1. “Live updates: Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs indicted on sex trafficking and racketeering charges in New York” should be
“Apparently live updates: Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs apparently indicted on apparent sex trafficking and apparent racketeering charges in New York”
2. “Suspect in apparent assassination attempt on Trump was near golf course for 12 hours, records show” should be
“Apparent suspect in apparent assassination attempt on Trump was apparently near golf course for apparently 12 hours, apparent records apparently show.” (Maybe the guy was apparently trying to get in nine holes before you know what.)
3. “Elon Musk has often inflamed politically tense moments, raising worries for the U.S. election” should be
“Apparently Elon Musk has apparently often inflamed apparently politically tense moments, apparently raising apparent worries for the U.S. election”
4. “Hezbollah members among hundreds wounded after pagers explode in Lebanon and Syria, officials say” should read
“Apparent Hezbollah members apparently among apparently hundreds apparently wounded after apparent pagers apparently
explode in apparently Lebanon and apparently Syria, apparent officials apparently say.” [Hats off to Ms. Missouri for not submitting an item about “explosive breaking news.” — NS]
5. Well, you get the idea. Now if only we can get journalists to modify the
Edward Morrison Morley: Momala’s flip-flopping reaches a new low ... or does it?
Mr. Morley, let’s face it, is TLD’s go-to-guy for pretty much everything, with a certified accuracy rate ofPlenty of Republican politicos are steaming under the collar — N.B.: how many of you out there can remember when “ring around the collar” was the most pressing issue of the day for your average white-collar worker? — over their elusive and so far futile pursuit of the actual ideas and policies of the Democrat presidential candidate. Witness the following:99.6 percent, so why fool around with the half-baked opinions of Fox News or CNN or the Roanoke (Ind.) Times-Ledger-Herald-Express-Independent Loafer-Daily News of Most of the World-Patriotic Guardian and Courier-Post-Dispatch-Star-Gazette?)
1. She says: “I am opposed to fracking and would support banning it completely.” “I would favor the death penalty for fracking if I believed in penalties for anything.” (Extra words added for emphasis or to “tell a story” as
2. Quoth the Lady: “I’ve just come up with a cool idea on my own which I call the ‘Opportunity Economy’ in which people will be motivated to innovate, work hard, be entrepreneurial, accept bundles of cash to buy houses, groceries, and cars, will get free college education with complete debt forgiveness, be given mucho dinero to have kids, have a guaranteed job when they finish elementary school / high school / GED / college / graduate school (sorry, offer does not include trade or vocational schools), and contribute scads of voluntary time to public service projects in what I am calling The Opportunity Economy Service Corps. Participation is voluntary although it will be mandatory for those not public-spirited enough to volunteer. I got some of these ideas from reading an up-and-coming economist named Karl Marx who wrote a book I think on capital letters (Das Kapital). Just think where we would be if the government hadn’t mandated capital letters or Venn diagrams. This should not be confused with some weird colonialist economic system that doesn’t care about the average film star’s basic needs. Anyway, I am going to do away with taxes on tips despite what right-wing extremists claim.”
3. More of Same: “Gun Buy-Backs? I have always opposed compulsory gun buy-backs after I was for them. Those gun freaks just want to alarm you. (And don’t talk to my side-kick Timmy. He’s been opposed to this even before he became commandant of the Minnesota National Guard.) And, hey, we both own guns (which you might want to take into consideration before you mouth off to us the next time). I spend at least four hours a day at the gun range, which is why I don’t have time for interviews or press conferences, and who watches those anyway.”
BUT (you knew this was coming, didn't you?). How about overlooked flip-flops by Republicans? How about Liz Cheney who supported Republican presidential candidates, but now doesn’t. And how about our Exhibit #One: President Richard Milhous Nixon? (BONUS QUESTION: where did the Milhous come from? See answer below.)
1. Nixon was a Quaker, which meant abstinence from alcohol, dancing, swearing, and violence. Just a heartbeat away from being an Old Order Amish. Yet the Nixon tapes (ask yourself, would an Amish guy have a cassette recorder? I think not.) revealed that RMN was pretty close to the top if not at the top among the potty-mouthed, he was no mean D.C. boozer, though he did keep us all guessing about dancing (Pro? Con? Both? What about Line Dancing? Dirty Dancing? How large are the dancing lobbies anyway?). Of course we know that as president Nixon advocated bombing various and sundry locations back into the Stone Age, which pretty much does away with the no-violence thing.
2. As for drug abstinence, Nixon said at a 1971 press conference: “America’s public enemy number one is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.” But according to the current issue of Reason magazine, Nixon privately had his doubts. “Let me say, I know nothing about marijuana,” Nixon opines in March 1973. “I know that it’s not particularly dangerous; I know most of the kids are for legalizing it. But on the other hand, it’s the wrong signal at this time.” Elsewhere, Nixon commented: “The penalties are ridiculous,” and “Actually I’m for, I am for modification of penalties in many areas, but I don’t talk about it anymore, exactly.”
Conclusions? Far be it from ol’ EMM to pontificate on which flip beats the flop (as is the wont of the equally ol’ Strakon). So, you be the judge! In case of duplicate winners, the earliest postmark
Posted September 16, 2024.
By Alferd Packer, as told to Edward Morrison Morley: What’s for dinner? or, What ever happened to “Where’s the beef?”
Edward Morrison Morley is TLD’s Food Correspondent. He pulled out all the stops to make contact with Alferd Packer, a noted foodie who was honored by having the cafeteria at the University of Colorado in Boulder named after him. Cafeteria motto: “Have a friend for lunch.”The recent presidential infomercial encounter between Orange Man (on the right, figuratively; photo unavailable) and Momala (definitely on the left; photo available but not printed by popular demand) has elevated in the public eye questions of what kinds of animal protein can be ingested without inviting widespread opprobrium. We ran into the noted edibles expert Alferd Packer, who was distressed that — despite his pioneering efforts — the battle lines seem to have been drawn between members of the American elite (“Just Say No to Eating Anything Other Than Cows — especially Wagyu beef — Chickens, Fish, and Pigs”) and the white-supremacist colonialist unwashed underclass, the Deplorables who will apparently eat anything including goldfish, whooping cranes, guppies, armadillos, reticulated pythons, koala bears (with or without eucalyptus leaves), and bald eagles.
The alert reader will notice that these two groups leave a large excluded middle. According to Packer, this ignores a third group, of course, which would be individuals who are from other cultures, countries, genetic groups, ethnicities, indigenous peoples, nationalities, races, and random marginalized tribes and populi who get a pass on the “What’s for Dinner?” question because they are the fountainhead of diversity, which exempts them from any of the other stuff (unless they support Orange Man, in which case they aren’t really Hispanic, black, Inuit, and so forth).
Surprisingly, Packer pointed out, the consumption of pets (el gato casserole), service animals (Shepherd pie), and support animals (fried kangaroo cakes) seems to be frowned on, on emotional grounds, even by usually rational libertarians. Others seem leery of eating rabbits, snails, and rattlesnakes (which allegedly taste like chicken, in which case, why not just eat chicken?). So far the discussions don’t seem to have raised the question of whether Giant Pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), baby harp seals (check out this video of nude seals), elephants, and vultures (AKA Roanoke Surprise) are viable foodstuffs or not. And what about termites, ants, and spiders (mighty tasty when fried or toasted), or the entire phylum of viruses (no known recipes but a great opportunity for some fast-food restaurateur:
The question might be moot shortly, Packer said, if Momala and her / him / they / their / ze / zir / etc. support animal Coach Timmy the Corgi get drubbed in the upcoming electoral fray. Otherwise, hunker down, because PETA will take over the FDA, the Department of Agriculture, and the Food Is What We Say It Is Department, even though Momala denies having ever said anything favorable about PETA in the past. Better see what those survivalist food people have on offer (with each order, you get a free
Posted July 9, 2024.
Nicholas Strakon: God Emperor of Doom. At Future of Freedom, Jacob Hornberger has a few nicely pointed things to say about Joe Biden’s recent declaration to George Stephanopoulos that “I’m running the world.” Hornberger observes:
Running the world? Sounds pretty delusional to me. But apparently not to the mainstream press or Biden’s statist critics. To them, the notion that a president “runs the world” is as normal as the notion that the president “runs the economy.”Yes, sad to say, that’s all true. But before hearing Biden make his world-imperial claim I was already steamed by something else along the same lines — as expressed by many of Biden’s critics whose posts I read on Twitter. Namely, that the president is supposed to “run the country.”
Please forgive me for shouting, but NO, HE’S NOT, DAMN IT!
Once again I find myself in the peculiar position, as an anarchist, of reminding people of that old
“Run the country.” What a disastrous, totalitarian premise to be infected with. Especially disastrous since something like it has actually come to pass and gets worse every year. But even “strong,” mentally unimpaired presidents share the running of the country with the mandarins they’ve been convinced to appoint and also, of course, with the bureaucrats — all of them serving the reptilian vampires of the ruling class.
Modine Herbey comments: The mental infection begins when people start conflating the country of America and the governmental apparatus called the UnitedStates. Ω
Posted April 27, 2024.
Nicholas Strakon: I haven’t been following the Democrats’ lawfare campaign against Donald Trump all that closely, so this question is real, not just rhetorical:
Is Trump being prosecuted (or sued) for anything that would be a crime (or a tort) in a free society?
A stipulation, pesky but necessary: I understand that presidents and their power would not exist in such a
Nicholas Strakon: I'm not a fan of any national flag, but still! Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House who has recently revealed himself to be one of the worst people in the world, criticized members — all of them Democrats, it seems — who waved Ukrainian flags on the House floor after the big sickening vote on
I just want to say simply what I think most people around the country understand and agree. We should only wave one flag on the House floor. And I think we know which flag that is.I think I know. If it’s not the Ukrainian flag, it’s got to be the Israeli flag, right?
My idea of what “America first” would mean no doubt differs from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s idea, but I have to admit that I saw the ghost of Patrick Henry a-glimmering when I came across this declaration by Greene:
America last. America last. That’s all this is. America last, every singleday. Ω
Posted April 16, 2024.
Edna St. Louis Missouri: New York Times reports digital subscribers out the wazoo!
Ms. Missouri is TLD’s media correspondent whose typical means of corresponding is to throw things over the transom at TLD Inter-Galactic HQ, disregarding the fact that there are no transoms at TLD Inter-Galactic HQ. From time to time, we’ve found a few items in the TLD Inter-Galactic HQ recycling bins. Ha! Caught you there: do you really think TLD has recycling bins? We just throw waste over the transom.The New York Times on-line subscription numbers have soared this year, demonstrating the appeal of the legacy media if it/they/ze adapts to the new media. Yahoo Finance reported: “Impressive Subscriber Growth: The New York Times Company concluded the fourth quarter of 2023 with roughly
What they forgot to mention is that you can get the NYT’s normally $325-a-year sub for $50, or about $4 a month. Maybe this demonstrates the power of markets in one sense and/or an attempt by the NYT to gull advertisers and politicians with inflated subscriber numbers.
Modine Herbey comments: My first impulse was to say that if these subscriber numbers are accurate, it’s very bad news. But then I reflected that reading the Times may be something like an intelligence operation for quite a few subscribers — maybe a growing number of subscribers. That is, they may just want to keep up with what their enemies arePosted March 13, 2024.saying. Ω
Edward Morrison Morley: Introducing the Aurus Senat.
Mr. Morley is blah, blah, blah, blah. He really is someone who needs no introduction, and if he had one, it would probably be fictitious anyway. Caveat emptor, which translates as “My lawyers have more money than yours.” Eat my grits.It turns out that the peerless leader of North Korea,
The Aurus looks like a 1940s Soviet ripoff of an old Packard — oh, wait, according to Wikipedia, it is “retro-styled” to the 1940s
Wikipedia tells us that the car is a FHEV (Full Hybrid Electric Vehicle) with a Porsche twin-turbo V8; and a second, electric motor and a 9-speed automatic. The latter two are local products. Good luck there. The basic car is
For comparison purposes, the 2024 Cadillac Escalade V-ESV is
For further information on acquiring an Aurus Senat, contact your nearest Bob’s Bazerko Car Shoppe for the Suave Tryant. We give trading stamps and Amazon book
Posted January 12, 2024.
Edna St. Louis Missouri: Real, not fake, news at last from the NYT.
Ms. Missouri is TLD’s expert correspondent on pretty much everything. Don’t expect the NYT to issue a bulletin on that.On January 9, 2024, the New York Times on line issued a bulletin, to wit: “Breaking news: Sinead O’Connor died of natural causes, coroner says.”
So this is breaking news because ...? Because, dear readers, contemporary entertainers younger than 65 usually don’t die of natural causes (even discounting for the new trend of calling drug-overdose deaths as being “of natural causes,” which makes some sense since one might naturally expect to die if he overdosed, accidentally or not). The more-or-less belatedly late O’Connor was 56. (I don’t know the preferred pronoun here since the white supremacist NYT neglected to inform us on that crucial matter. Public apology expected shortly. I suspect that it might be “zur,” but stay tuned.)
Meanwhile the rest of us can continue to live of natural
Nicholas Strakon: Caitlin Johnstone knocks another one out of the park:
“Westerners Have an Absolutely Psychotic View of Airstrikes.”When did this morally demented habit of mind become fully established among the populace? Why, during the “Good” War, of course. Ω
Nicholas Strakon: This is one of Jeff Tucker’s best essays on the Covidian nightmare and its aftermath, say I:
“A Nation of Non-Compliers” Ron Paul Institute, reprinted from the Brownstone Institute, January 9, 2024. Ω
Posted October 6, 2023.
This item was shared with us by a representative of a certain three-letter organization. — Ed.From the New York Times, October 5, 2023:
“Wisconsin: A man armed with a handgun was taken into custody after asking to see the governor. He posted bail and returned hours later with a rifle.”
Update sure to follow: “Released on his own recognizance as a poor person who couldn’t afford further bail, the man was seen headed once more for the Wisconsin statehouse with two portable nuclear devices, an Iranian “Damn the Great American Satan to Hell” drone,
Posted September 26, 2023.
Edward Morrison Morley: Does this really need any comment?
Mr. Morley is TLD’s Viewing with Alarm Correspondent.According to the New York Times on
“Science: A new model suggests that in
Where is Bidenomics when we
Modine Herbey offers a comment, needed or not: If this item needed a subhead, the NYT could have borrowed from the inspired work of Joe Sobran: “Women, Minorities To Be Hardest Hit.”
Posted August 24, 2023.
Edward Morrison Morley: One darn coincidence after another, or “Who will rid me of this troublesome mercenary?” (actual fabricated quote from
Mr. Morley is TLD’s Odd Coincidences Correspondent. Oddly enough, he filed this item from somewhere in Siberia.“Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin presumed dead after Russia plane crash,” the BBC reported on
Prigozhin’s lackey Grey Zone channel claimed that the plane was shot down by Russian air defenses, but given the lack of success these have had
In an unrelated development, Siberian-born General Sergei Surovikin, the head of Russian Aerospace Forces, is back in the news, sort of. Surovikin gained notoriety for his brutality in Chechnya, ordering three Chechens killed for every Russian soldier killed. The Chechens retaliated by trying several times to kill him: he was concussed and hospitalized after one of the bomb blasts. In Syria he won the nickname “General Armageddon” — he liked to bomb civilian targets. That led to his being placed in charge of the Russian invasion of Ukraine between October 2022 and January 2023 after humiliating early failures, but when the war stagnated he was bumped downward before being kicked upstairs as chief of the Russian Air Force early this year.
Surovikin apparently made a few tactical mistakes when his pal Prigozhin staged his mutiny in June. Following that aborted event, Surovikin in an odd video publicly urged Prigozhin to give up. He appeared under duress and was breathing hard in the video. Surovikin hasn’t been seen in public or video since: officials said he was merely resting (though whether with his boots on or not is unclear). So, on the very same day that Prigozhin bought the farm, Surovikin reportedly was sacked, though the defence ministry said Surovikin had merely been transferred to a “new job” and was “now on a short vacation.”
Coincidentally, Surovikin’s predecessor as commander in chief of the Ukrainian fiasco,
I am happy to report that Zhidkov’s predecessor, Aleksandr Vladimirovich Dvornikov — commander of the Russian forces in Syria and known as “the Butcher of Syria” during the Russian military intervention there — who took command in Ukraine from April to May 2022 seems to be hale and hearty ... as far as we know. The chain of unusual events stops with him, because between the start of the invasion and April 2022, there was no invasion chief (which may explain why the Russkis were so successful early on).
Our last “pinch me if this ain’t no coincidence” moment involves TLD’s old punching bag, Andrew Cuomo. Seems there might have been a few other hands behind the scenes working for Handy Randy Andy other than his brother Chris, who, as you remember, got sacked by CNN for his co-curricular journalism. The New York Times,
The story goes on: “... [M]enacing posts began cropping up on Twitter last September just hours after a former aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York sued him over sexual harassment claims. The tweets attacked the aide, Charlotte Bennett, in starkly personal terms. ‘Your life will be dissected like a frog in a HS science class,’ read one of the most threatening, which also featured a photo of Ms. Bennett dancing at a bar in lingerie.” Some fun, but nothing that wasn’t in the playbook of Bill and Hilary Clinton.
Madeline Cuomo, at first apparently just one of the gang of mostly older women who came together to defend their beloved Andrew even before the matter spilled out into public view, apparently took over the group, intimating that she was speaking on her brother’s behalf:
“Good Morning. Just spoke and he thinks a distraction could be helpful today,” Ms. Cuomo wrote in the private texts reviewed by The New York Times. She suggested posting “photos of Charlotte in her sex kitten straddle.... No respectable woman would EVER pose like that,” Ms. Cuomo added. She went on: “Bimbo photos. Really despicable. Unsophisticated girls.”.... Far from an isolated episode, the unvarnished exchange is part of a trove of more than 4,000 text messages, emails and voice memos between leaders of the group and Ms. Cuomo shared with The Times this summer. Together, they provide unusual insight into how far members of one of America’s most storied political families were willing to go to rehabilitate a fallen Democratic scion and humiliate those they believed had wronged him. Made up almost entirely of women inspired by Mr. Cuomo’s handling of the Covid pandemic, We Decide New York rapidly joined forces in spring 2021 to defend an increasingly isolated governor as traditional allies abandoned him. The group swarmed his critics on social media, sold Cuomo swag and pushed for due process.There is more to this tawdry tale, but your reporter is feeling a little too nauseated to go on.
However, watch this space for other improbable coincidences. And now back to the American primary
Posted August 22, 2023.
Edward Morrison Morley: Russian spacecraft ceases to exist.
Mr. Morley is TLD’s Space Exploration Correspondent responsible for covering events “where no man [sic] has gone before.”According to Russia’s news agency TASS (ha, ha, but not as laughable as it used to be now that it is being given fierce competition in the fake news department by former U.S. newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post), Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, reported that “The Luna-25 spacecraft switched to an off-design orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the moon” on
Nevertheless, Vlad “The Impaler” Putin could claim success since Russia’s last space mission, something called the “Fobos-Grunt Mission to Mars” (you could look it up) more or less, sorta, possibly, left a lot of room for improvement, even ignoring a later claim by Putin that the Mars in question was the Pennsylvania candy factory. Fobos-Grunt was unable to even exit the Earth’s orbit and smashed into the Pacific in 2012.
Undeterred by subsequent attempts to smash Russian space craft into Kiev, Odessa, Mariupol, Bakhmut, etc. — kind of practice runs for Mars no doubt — Roscosmos has scheduled Mars-Grunt for 2026. Reserve your seats now, though future off-design orbits are still likely. (But isn’t that more fun than drowning in a capitalist
Posted July 20, 2023.
Modine Herbey (as told to Edward Morrison Morley): Breaking news! Coke in the White House. Flunky tells all.
Mx. Herbey is Acting Deputy Assistant for Waste Management Affairs, West Wing Office at the White House. Mr. Morley is TLD’s crack reporter who helped Mx. Herbey to blowThe really true truth about Coke in the White House was revealed yesterday in an exclusive interview that Mx. Modine Herby, Acting Deputy Assistant for Waste Management Affairs, West Wing Office at the White House, granted to Edward Morrison Morley, TLD’s Foibles and Other Stuff Correspondent.a lidthe lid off the White House Coke scandal. Mr. Morley is currently on Orange Man’s list for press secretaries in 2023. The text has been lightly edited to modify Mx. Herbey’s unusual New Yorker syntax.
“Gosh, I couldn’t believe it,” Mx. Herby said. “I mean, bin workin’ here since the LBJ regime (What a vile dude that guy was. Nothin’ like that
“Anyways, I comes into the Oval Orifice (as the staff likes to call it, ha, ha), last week and there on the President’s desk was Coke all over the place. Probably that slob Hunter, I sez to myself, who I’ve told a dozen times, ‘Empty them cans before you throw them around and splash Coke all over,’ but no, here was a dozen or more partly empty cans of Coke, Coke Classic, New Coke, Old Coke (the kind that actually had that other kind of coke in it), Diet Coke, Coke Zero, and all them other fancy names for what’s just colored fizzy water with sugar or not. ‘Great,’ I sez to myself, ‘That moron Hunter has broken into the White House Wine cellar’s collection of vintage Coke-a-Coler dating back to the
“Boy, I reads that bum the riot act when he comes slithering in around
“So it turns out it was the Prez hisself, ole Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., that made this Gawd-awful dumpster mayhem. Turns out his connection, some guy name o’ Corn Pop, was unaccountably detained at the Texas border, and the Big Guy was so desperate he scarfs up rare Coke from said White House collection, tryna get a buzz.
“Well, he winds up callin’ Dr. Biden, as the missus prefers to be called, but she ain’t no good ’cause she ain’t a real doctor like someone with a Ph.D. in history but just one o’ them edication doctors who ain’t worth a cup of spit. Fortunately, she had a bunch o’ uppers and downers an’ dexies to tide him over until his afternoon ‘shot,’ know what I mean?
“So anyway, that’s the whole story about this here Coke in the White House thing that’s got everybody’s knickers in a bunch. Not even Putin involved. An’ not even an allusion to the person what’s got to clean up the mess and go on eBay to try an’ replace the gaps in that darn White House Coke collection.”
And with that, Mx. Herby, obviously annoyed at how the mainstream media have tried to cover up their crucial role in the whole Coke affair, flounced off before I could ask them about the implication of all this for the soon-to-be-announced presidential candidacy of Hunter (the Horse) Biden, who seems to have amassed one heck of a campaign fund, apparently from selling his paintings for undisclosed (until the IRS gets on this one in a decade or so) amounts of money, and perhaps a foreign potentate or two who want him on their executive boards. I, your intrepid reporter, am already on this gig and you will be hearing the results soon. (By the way, if you don’t hear from me soon, ask Strakon to give you the key to a certain locker in Grand Central
Posted June 30, 2023.
Edward Morrison Morley: Free lunch, free education, free electric cars: Where will it all end ...
Mr. Morley is no longer a student and is therefore unable to have his vote purchased by student loan forgiveness, but he is amenable to the idea that writers should be subsidized by annual free vacations to one or another of President Biden’s many homes, especially the one with the vintage Corvette in its garage. — Ed.According to the New York Times on
No imperial presidency here, heh, heh. And the president needs to deliver — as Santa would at the Winter Festival formerly known as Christmas — on his “promise.”)
A Morley Bright Ideas Suggestion: How about having various foreign oligarchs pick up the tab? Biden wants us to do the job, but I’m sure if he appointed Hunter Biden as Special Assistant to the President for Richly Rewarding People Who Don’t Do Anything, the $40 or so billion tab would be taken care of in no
Posted April 19, 2023.
Nicholas Strakon: Yes, I do subject myself to (free) mailings from Garrison Keillor, and I sometimes even read them.
Oppressed as we all are these days by the screaming, crazy-evil Woke, I sometimes forget how infuriating the old mind-meld liberals we grew up with could be.
Here’s Keillor commenting on a cheerful scene of frolickers in Central Park. (I have ventured to highlight a couple passages with bold-face.)
How many of these walkers and runners believe that the Illuminati use vaccines to cause autism, that the government is withholding the cure for cancer as a favor to Big Pharm, that a federal research facility in Alaska is engaged in mind control, that Bigfoot is drinking the blood of small children in Roswell, New Mexico, and that the shots came from the grassy knoll and not the School Book Depository?I’ve noted before the establishment-liberal technique of conflating Flat Earthism and matters of vital public debate. We all saw a resurgence of that during the Covidian frenzy.Not many, I would guess. The constant social interactions of urban life tend to erode the sharper edges of lunacy....
By the way, if you choose to expose yourself to the whole thing, good luck getting past Keillor’s opening: “It was good to see clips of Joe Biden being welcomed by big happy crowds in Ireland, grinning, shaking hands, posing for pictures, kissing babies, quoting Irish poets, busy being beloved by all who waited to
Modine Herbey comments: “The constant social interactions of urban life tend to erode the sharper edges of lunacy”? Boy, there’s a counterintuitive observation if ever there was one. You might even call it lunatic.Henry Gallagher Fields detects some irony: Haven’t the majority of Kennedy-assassination revisionists always been ... old-time liberals?
Nicholas Strakon: Caitlin Johnstone, one of my favorite “righteous leftists,” has been on fire lately — even more incandescently than usual, I mean. Please read: “Free Those Who Expose Government Misdeeds, Jail Those Who Try To Conceal Them” (April 19, 2023). She writes:
It’s just so crazy how it’s taken as a given that governments keep these secrets for good and noble reasons which must be protected with as much force as necessary, when we know for a fact that this is false and have known it for generations. As Julian Assange once said, “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.”I urge you to read Johnstone’s
Some of Johnstone’s commentary may resonate with readers of Ronn Neff’s “Polite Totalitarianism,” the most important of TLD’s foundational
Posted April 7, 2023.
Nicholas Strakon: Amid the frenzy over Donald Trump’s indictment, I have to ask: Is he charged with anything that would be a crime in a free
Nicholas Strakon: Ann Coulter offers an interesting and — say I — plausible take on the Left’s indictment of Trump, in her April 6 piece at Taki’s: “You’re Being Played, Republicans!” Ω
Edward Morrison Morley: The Rev. Dr. Greta must be outraged. (Assuming she knows what a “homer” is.)
“Going, going, gone: Study says climate change juicing homers,” by Seth Borenstein, AP, April 7, 2023.Lead: “Climate change is making major league sluggers into even hotter hitters, sending an extra 50 or so home runs a year over the fences, a new study
Posted March 23, 2023.
Nicholas Strakon: Doctor ecclesiæ!
“University of Helsinki to bestow honorary degree to Greta Thunberg” (The College Fix, March 21, 2023).What degree? Why, naturally, a doctorate in ... theology! This would be very pointed satire if it were satire, but it’s for real. Reality just keeps getting more and more risible here in Clown World ... No, make that Evil Clown World. Kyrie eleison! Ω
Posted February 28, 2023.
Edward Morrison Morley: National Geographic soft on ChiComs or just soft in the head? You be the judge!
Mr. Morley, TLD’s cultural correspondent [Ed.: Wait. I thought Edna St. Louis Missouri was ... Oh, never mind.], has taken time off from his busy schedule of mining bit coins to enlighten himself by reading Nat Geo on line. Apparently this was to no avail. — Ed.Here’s the Nat Geo clickbait:
“What’s with the big secret? China uncovered an 800-year-old shipwreck, but for decades, the authoritative government kept the exciting undersea discovery from its people — and the world. Nat Geo looks into the ‘why’ in this story.”
Why, indeed. The “hook” is that Nat Geo seems to be reproving the ChiComs for keeping secrets. Surprise! Wow! However, readers who hope the story will finally confirm that the ChiComs are using slave labor to do dirty archaeological work among other things, or, worse, that the good ship Nanhai Nr. 1 was a Uighur pirate ship that terrorized the high seas before coming to its timely demise, will be sadly disappointed.
Alas, the “secret” turns out to be that the ChiComs are meticulous scientists (cf. Wuhan Lab) who “took 20 years just to develop an excavation plan that preserved this priceless time capsule.” Obviously a model for enlightened scientists everywhere and a timely rebuke to capitalist archaeologists who are in it for a quick buck. The piece concludes, “To many Chinese people, the Nanhai Nr. 1 reflects both the glories of China’s mercantile past as well as its ambitious projects for the future,” such as the “Belt and Road Initiative, a massive China-funded scheme launched in 2013 to invest in infrastructure in dozens of countries [in] a conscious updating of both the Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road.” (In contrast to capitalist or neo-capitalist countries that just exploit these countries and steal their resources.)
No word on how we capitalist swine and our exploited masses should respond or think, but one would guess that cowering in shame at our multi-millennial systemically deplorable past would be a good start, followed by buying their profusely illustrated archaeological manuals (ChiCom or Nat Geo, you pick ’em), while offering to pay reparations to the ChiComs and pretty much every country in the world.
Some readers will be slightly puzzled by the fact that Nat Geo doesn’t think the ChiComs are a brutal Communist regime, or a rapacious totalitarian dictatorship, but are merely an “authoritative government.” They might suppose this to be a typo for “authoritarian,” but they would be wrong.
You see, “authoritative,” according to the authoritative American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, means the following:
1. Having or arising from authority; official.So it’s clearly not a typo, my dear fascist pig readers. That pretty accurately describes how the highly reliable Nat Geo (and probably the demonstrably official American Heritage) think about the acknowledgedly excellent ChiComs and their authoritative leader-for-life.
2. Of acknowledged accuracy or excellence; highly reliable.
3. Demonstrating authority; commanding.
Next Week: TLD will carry Mr. Morley’s partially live interview with George Orwell conducted while he (Orwell not Morley) spins in his
Posted January 23, 2023.
Edna St. Louis Missouri: Good news ... and bad news.
Ms. Missouri is TLD’s Cultural Correspondent. Her last international posting was to an undisclosed location. — Ed.Claims have proliferated that Harry Windsor’s memoir was the best-selling book of all time in the United States in its first week. The good news is that this is untrue (i.e., false, a lie, an inoperable statement, etc.). According to the Wall Street Journal on
Edward Morrison Morley: Pinocchio Award nominees.
Mr. Morley is TLD’s Economics Correspondent. He is currently on a long-term leave of absence, but insists that this does not mean he is actually deceased. Time will tell. — Ed.Gov. Gavin Newsom, D(unce) California, recently claimed that “95% of Texans pay higher taxes than Californians.” The impertinent Sacramento Bee on
Newsom still has a ways to go to actually complete with Sleepy Joe Biden as dissimulator in chief, but once JB shuffles off this mortal coil, he could be a serious contender (Newsom, not Biden) in being economical with the truth. Joey is such a teller of tales that the Washington Post’s “fact-checker” stopped “fact-checking” after the first 100 days of the Biden monarchy, while it relentlessly pursued Orange Man throughout his full term. And, mirabile dictu, CNN recently published “Fact check: A look at Biden’s first year in false claims”
Posted December 28, 2022.
Edward Morrison Morley: Death, oh Death, where is thy stink?
Mr. Morley is, or was until his recent reported demise, TLD’s Death Correspondent. — Ed.“Is Death Even Real?
A mind-blowing scientific discovery could change what it means to die.”
That is the question raised in the
Short answer: Ask civilians in Ukraine, Nigeria, China, Yemen, and Chicago.
BTW, since when did Popular Mechanics become a health sciences rag instead of telling us about the latest muscle cars, how you could build a scale model of the Eiffel Tower out of tooth picks, and how to heat your home with the latest perpetual-motion machine or tooth-pick scale models? (Hint: how about when gas-guzzling muscle cars were placed on the planetary naughty list?) Ω
Posted December 13, 2022.
Anonymous sources and the New York Times
as told by an anonymous source to Edward Morrison Morley.
Mr. Morley is TLD’s Anonymous Sources Correspondent and vouches for the anonymous source cited below because said source has never failed to provide scandalous information in the past and, other than certain financial incentives, has no other motivation for telling Mr. Morley stuff that he could have made up himself. — Ed.Here is what the New York Times uses to evaluate use of anonymous sources, according to my exclusive anonymous source. [Editor’s note: Actually, we later discovered that the quoted material below was published by the Times as a sidebar to a story on the trade of Brittney Griner (basketball player and role model for LGBTQI+@let’smakeadeal**<™ and other intersectional people everywhere except in Russia) for Viktor Bout (Russian arms dealer who according to our anonymous source is nicknamed “Merchant of Death”). However, the source obviously knows the information and seems like a good guy/gal, so we are running this S&t as is.]
Here is the NYT policy: “What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.”
My anonymous source raises the following questions for you to stop and think about:
1. “Do the sources know the information?” And how would they know that? And if they did, why resort to an anonymous source?
2. “What’s their motivation for telling us?” Right. As if anybody could determine that.
3. “Have they proved reliable in the past?” If he/she/it/them/etc is really anonymous, how can they tell?
4. “Can we corroborate the information?” Again, if they can corroborate the information, why not use the corroboration source rather than the anonymous one? Unless the corroboration is also anonymous?
5. “Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. — a “last resort,” presumably, to losing a scoop of some sort, being able to smear some opponent or holder of views the Times doesn’t like, or would stand in the way of “all the news that’s fit to print.”
Bravo NYT. You’re a credit to Third World “journalism.”
Posted December 2, 2022.
Edward Morrison Morley: “The most pro-union president you’ve ever seen” acts to squelch rail unions.
Mr. Morley is TLD’s Foolish Consistency correspondent. He is currently reporting from an undisclosed location. — Ed.Congress just passed a bill forcing railroad unions (AKA the good guys) and Big Railroad (AKA the bad guys) to accept a proposal by the Biden administration that Big Railroad and most of the rail unions had accepted. Not surprisingly, Big Railroad (now AKA the reasonable good guys) was backed by the Wall Street Journal, which deemed the prexy’s proposals reasonable and essential to the future prosperity and welfare of the people. None of the print media took the trouble of pointing out that Sleepy Joe was just passing the buck in a situation/pending crisis caused by his regime’s incompetence.
More surprising was self-proclaimed “most pro-union president” ever Joseph Robinette Biden’s siding against the unions (now AKA the unreasonable bad guys jeopardizing the nation’s already tottering economy). Quoth he in a statement after the vote: “I know that many in Congress shared my reluctance to override the union ratification procedures. But in this case, the consequences of a shutdown were just too great for working families all across the country.”
No word on whether this metric (rejecting proposals with horrible consequences for working families) will be followed in the future or applied retroactively to the first two years of the Brave New World of Bidenism. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez was unavailable for
Posted November 28, 2022.
David T. Wright: Forgiveness? Really?
The COVID panic seems to be mostly over. Sure, here in the seat of the Empire I still see anxious-looking people wearing masks in public places, sometimes even outdoors. But most people are going about their daily lives, it seems, pretty much as they did before the great catastrophe.
Of course, that’s ignoring the catastrophic damage wrought by our rulers during two long years of lockdowns, threats, mask mandates, destruction of small businesses, reckless monetary inflation, forced inoculations (often causing injuries and even death), and official lies about treatment options such as ivermectin (also causing deaths).
Perhaps worst of all was an all-out campaign of demonizing and canceling anybody who dared to dissent from the COVID official orthodoxy. Prominent, highly respected physicians and researchers such as Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, Paul Marik, and Pierre Kory were mercilessly attacked and deplatformed for daring to disagree publicly with the official line that the mRNA “vaccine” was the only way of dealing with the virus. (As one wag pointed out, the declaration by the Regime that the “vaccine” is safe and effective is not a lie. It’s two lies.) State medical boards revoked physicians’ licenses for daring to use or advocate the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID — treatments that numerous physicians claim work quite well. Hospitals suspended and fired doctors for the same reason.
So here we are, nearly three years later, shell-shocked, impoverished, suffering from runaway price rises, our savings decimated, many of us with our futures ruined, many having friends or family members dead either from the virus or the standard hospital treatment for COVID. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical companies are billions of dollars richer, as are Amazon and the big tech companies. The ruling class and its hangers-on are sitting pretty. And nobody responsible for the damage — including the lying little weasel Fauci — has been held to account. But now that the panic has run its course, the truth about how we’ve been lied to, manipulated, and harmed by our rulers is, perhaps, beginning to sink in with some of us.
So it’s interesting that the Atlantic, a prestigious and reliable organ of the Ministry of Truth, recently published an article titled “Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty,” by Emily Oster. Yes indeed. Let’s just forget about the horrific damage visited on us by our betters, and “focus on the future.”
After its publication on
Generally, as a Christian, I’m in favor of forgiveness. But would we be forgiving repentant sinners, or sincere people who made mistakes and acknowledge the errors of their ways? Or would we be allowing arrogant, contemptuous rulers to continue destroying us? After all, they don’t seem at all repentant, and they’re certainly not very forgiving themselves. Nearly two years after the “insurrection” of
Then there’s their outrageous behavior in the recent election. When I was young, the votes all got counted in a few hours. Now we’re supposed to wait for days. The Zombie Emperor pompously informed us that it would take a long time to count the ballots, and in closely contested states controlled by Democrats, that’s exactly what happened. Just as in the previous election, dragging out the count miraculously seemed to swing elections away from Republicans to Democrats. It looks to me as if they know they’re not fooling many people, and they just don’t care. And they’re such sore winners; they don’t seem to be ready to forgive at all.
They’re not even backing off on condemning so-called anti-vaxxers for resisting a “vaccine” that has been shown to neither protect from the virus nor prevent its transmission. Here’s a screed condemning the state of Florida for discouraging vaccination of young people owing to the threat of heart damage. And here’s an article acknowledging that such a threat exists — from the very same organization.
And don’t get me started about Ukraine. The Russians have apparently decided that grinding up the Ukrainian military slowly in hopes of negotiations isn’t going to work. So they’re preparing to finish the job once and for all and eliminate Ukraine as a NATO-allied threat. But Minitrue continues to insist that Russia is on the brink of defeat. After Russia made a tactical retreat from Kherson, the U.S. propaganda organs practically wet themselves with joy. In fact, the Empire is losing not only the Ukrainian conflict, but its position as the world hegemon. And our rulers seem to be determined a) to keep the American public from discovering the truth, b) to continue confronting not only Russia but China as well, risking nuclear war, and c) to isolate America as the rest of the world gets fed up and takes a different path, accelerating our economic decline.
Speaking of Ukraine, the FTX financial scandal, in which a nest of rich, entitled sexual degenerates ran a crypto-currency Ponzi scheme, apparently involved a scheme using “aid” to that benighted country to launder money stolen from customers, much of it stolen from private investors. The laundered funds were then used to finance U.S. political campaigns. The fact that FTX was based on a pyramid was clear back in July, but nobody important seemed to be interested. You can bet that our Ministries of Truth and Love will make sure that we’re never even given the chance to forgive that outrage.
And let’s not forget the continuing tidal wave of foreigners bestowed on us by our benevolent rulers, despite the overwhelming opposition of the people who already live here. Nothing we say or do, no matter who is voted into office, stems the flow, completing our ruin as a civilization. If you stick your head out in opposition, the people in charge will do their best to destroy you. No forgiveness there.
It just goes on and on. It seems to me that forgiveness isn’t the point here. The question really is: how do we defend ourselves against our rapacious, evil rulers and their smug, vicious allies in Minitrue and academia? I have to admit I’m
Notice. In September 2021 when I announced the death of Ronn Neff — TLD’s co-founder and my close friend for half a century — I noted that the future of our website was uncertain. That was largely because of questions involving the ownership of the Thornwalker domain (which Ronn created) and how it was to be sustained after his death.
I am happy to say that a friend of The Last Ditch has donated some of his cyberspace as a home for the Thornwalker domain, including TLD, and that he and another friend have completed the daunting technical task of moving the domain to that new home.
I am not just happy, of course, but also most grateful to those two generous stalwarts.
The TLD site will never again be as active with respect to new writings as it was in its heyday. As editor and publisher, I continue in semi-retirement. But the intellectual legacy of Ronn Neff and our other writers, smart and courageous, will continue to have a place on the Net for the foreseeable future.
Tom McPherren
(“Nicholas Strakon”) Ω
TLD is a forum of opinion, edited by hard-core market anarchists, that does not flinch from any of the most pressing issues of our time. We are especially interested in questions of culture and ethnicity, our Polite Totalitarian ruling class, and the homicidal humanitarianism of the U.S. Empire.Our writers include anarcho-pessimists, Old Believers in the West, unreconstructed Confederates, neo-Objectivists, and other enemies of the permanent regime. We are conscientiously indifferent to considerations of thoughtcrime. Thus, from individualist and Euro-American perspectives, we confront the end of civilization — and do our level best to name its destroyers.
TLD was founded as a print newsletter in 1994 by Nicholas Strakon and Ronald N. Neff (1949–2021). We discontinued the print version in 1998. (More about who we are.)
— Nicholas Strakon, editor-in-chief
General e-mail to The Ditch: Nstrakon@hotmail.com.
“If this government cared about ideas, it would crack down on The Last Ditch. It could be called The Joy of Thinking.”
“Whoever said ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty’ didn’t realize it, but he was thinking of The Last Ditch.”
— Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance
Permanently recommended readings
"What Is Austrian Economics?" (Mises Institute)
"I, Pencil," by Leonard E. Read (Liberty Fund;
scroll down for text)
"The Epistemological Basis of Anarchism,"
by Roy A. Childs, Jr. (TLD)
"Polite totalitarianism," by Ronald N. Neff (TLD)
Published by Thornwalker at thornwalker.com