A decorated former combat officer is coming forward with some explosive news that, if accurate, is truly historic — and it involves some disturbing politics as well.
David Charles Grusch has a very credible resume. He’s an Air Force veteran who worked in the National Reconnaissance Office and served as their representative to Congress’ Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019-2021. He also worked at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency from 2021 to July 2022 where he was the “co-lead of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) analysis and its representative to the task force, which was recently renamed the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.”
That sounds like he should have some idea of what he’s talking about when it comes to unidentified aerial phenomena.
Grusch filed a whistleblower complaint with Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) on classified information that he says proves the “recoveries of partial fragments through and up to intact vehicles have been made for decades through the present day by the U.S. government, its allies and defense contractors.”
OK. Let’s see some evidence. There isn’t any? What a surprise.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs, and Mr. Grusch has no proof. But that’s not the real stinger in this deal. Mr. Grusch describes a government-controlled conspiracy that spans generations, and would necessarily involve thousands, maybe (over time) tens of thousands, and not one person has smuggled out footage, photographs, a tissue or material sample, something that could be demonstrated to have extraterrestrial origins?
Oh, and by the way, that person would also gain international fame and fortune in blowing this world-changing event wide open?
Color me skeptical.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. Grusch has no proof. One of these cranks surfaces with claims like this every few years, and it seems each one is less credible than the ones before. Until there is some evidence, one can safely assume this is another one such.
In a September interview with the Pentagon’s news agency last fall, Iris Ferguson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and Global Resiliences said Chinese leaders have “been trying to insert themselves into the Arctic.”
“So, we’re being very mindful about their activity and in wanting to ensure that our interests are protected in the region,” Ferguson said.
China seems to be very interested in what goes on here in the Great Land, although they have nowhere near the sea-lift capacity to land troops here, and so won’t find out one thing that aren’t betting on, that being a few hundred thousand heavily armed Alaskan civilians – but they sure as hell seem to want to know what assets we have up here. That’s disconcerting as hell.
I was never big on the Carpenters, but they sure sold a lot of records back in the day. Karen Carpenter’s sad 1983 death from anorexia nervosa received a lot of publicity, and for a few years instances of anorexia, especially among teenage girls, spiked. Some call this a ‘social contagion,’ when a few highly-publicized events, usually among celebrities, lead to a spike in instances of an emotional/mental disorder.
Sound familiar?
Back to the music, though. Karen and Richard Carpenter did have a light, easy style that was relaxing and thoughtful. While I was more of a head-banger – back in these days I was much more into Led Zeppelin, Foghat, Van Halen and the like – I’ve developed more of an appreciation of gentler music as I’ve gotten older. I do kind of like their song Rainy Days and Mondays, from their 1971 album, Carpenters. Here’s the official video, which presents kind of a touching photographic tribute to Karen to go along with her rich, butter-smooth voice. Enjoy.
A few years ago, researchers estimated how fast the animals were reproducing, to project that about 98 hippos were living along the country’s Magdalena River and its tributaries in 20201. But the new study, for which a research team counted the animals in person, by drone and using other tracking methods, estimates that there are 181–215 of them residing in Colombia.
“Before, one argument against dealing with the hippos was that our information was limited and our arguments theoretical,” says ecologist Rafael Moreno, who participated in the study while at the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute in Bogotá. “But we have put that argument to bed now. This study shows that this is a real issue, and that the state must act urgently.”
I’ve never been to the area in question, but it sure seems like an ideal habitat for hippos. And it’s clear that people who live in the area are right to be concerned about Pablo Escobar’s escaped ‘cocaine hippos’ (not to be confused with Cocaine Bear) living in the area, as in Africa, hippos are known to be extremely dangerous animals. In fact, in many areas, hippos are responsible for more injuries and deaths than other megafauna, including lions and the notorious Cape buffalo.
Nature describes several mitigation efforts, including sterilization and relocation, but (speaking as a biologist myself) they only pay lip service to the most obvious technique: Culling. That means, candidly, shooting the damn hippos.
Were this Florida or Alabama, say, instead of Columbia, there would be an obvious answer; declare an unlimited open season on the hippos, and spread the word that they’re good to eat. (This may even be true; I’m not familiar with anyone who has tried.) But hippos swordlike tusks are ivory, and ivory is valuable. That would be a good incentive.
Invasive species have been a problem for centuries. And it’s not always a human-caused problem, although it frequently is. And, sadly, mitigation efforts normally fail. Look at starlings in North America, rabbits in Australia, rats almost everywhere.
Hippos, being slower-breeding megafauna, may be more amenable to reduction. But I suspect the only method that will work in the end is, to put it bluntly, killing them.
Jennifer Williams will face a jury in the wrongful death lawsuit brought by Cynthia (Haynes) Randolph on behalf of her deceased daughter Mikaela Haynes, a 13-year-old embroiled in Missouri’s family court nightmare who took her own life rather than go back to the father who sexually abused her. Williams, an attorney, was assigned to Mikaela as her guardian ad litem (GAL) during the vicious court battle her family suffered trying to get away from her convicted sex-offending father, Charles Haynes. Haynes is currently serving a seven-year sentence in a Missouri prison for the forcible sodomy of Mikaela’s step-sister, Melissa.
Charles Haynes was credibly accused of that crime when Williams ignored all evidence of his abuse and placed Mikaela in the care of his 90-year-old mother, who gave Haynes full access to Mikaela. After unsuccessfully trying to alert doctors, judges, DFS, and others in authority that she was being sexually abused, Mikaela learned on Nov. 23, 2018, that her GAL, Williams, would seek Haynes’ probation on Nov. 26, 2018, which would guarantee that Haynes would not be sentenced to serve a prison term. Fearing ending up in Haynes’ custody after sentencing and being sexually abused again, Mikaela took her life. PJ Media covered that story thoroughly in several parts in the linked articles here, here, and here.
One member of my family (I won’t give details) has some experience with that guardian ad litem system as well, and it’s a shitshow in her location, too. The incentives run in all the wrong directions; it’s in the GAL’s financial interest to string family problems out longer and longer, and I’m willing to bet that more kids have simply aged out of the system than have actually seen any resolution. That’s precisely what happened in my family member’s case. Fortunately there was no physical or sexual abuse involved, just emotional abuse, but the GAL deliberately (in my well-informed opinion of the case) prolonged the issue, to keep those sweet bucks flowing.
Read Megan’s story, and read the previous ones. If this case doesn’t piss you off, you’re missing something.
Before we move on to the cube, let’s begin with the CW2 Square. The cube is best tackled in another step. Draw the square and label one axis Poorer to Richer. Label the other axis Darker to Lighter. Darker, for brevity, includes African-Americans, Hispanics and so on. Lighter refers to those of European ancestry. The two opposed meta-groups are the poorer and darker versus the richer and lighter, or whiter if you wish to be blunt. The richer/whiter have the power of their wealth, but counterbalancing that advantage is the fact that the poorer/darker have succeeded in wresting control of much of government power. This is so, even if most of their elected leaders are anything but poor or dark.
Note that these are really, really broad categories. In 1980 I may have been more optimistic that the racial angle would be far less significant than the wealth angle, but after a few decades of ever-more-strident race-baiting by the Left, I’m no longer so sanguine. But let’s move on to the cube, which is the part I really find interesting:
Now, let’s add the third dimension and shoot another axis out from the square to form the CW2 Cube. Label the third axis Urban versus Rural, or City versus Country if you prefer. This axis gives a geographical dimension to the meta-terrain, but there will be no convenient dividing line between the opposed sides as there was during the first civil war. It has frequently been observed that today’s red-blue political map is better understood at the county than at the state level. Even blue states like Illinois, California and New York are rural-red outside of their blue urban cores. Obviously, these urban cores are heavily populated but geographically small, with all that means to the electoral process today and to a possible civil war later.
So the opposing corners of the CW2 Cube can be seen as the poorer, darker cities versus the richer, whiter rural areas. Again, don’t quibble about outliers. Yes, there are a few rich, conservative African-Americans living in Wyoming, many poor white liberal Democrats in rural West Virginia, some rich conservatives in San Francisco and every other exceptional case imaginable.
Here’s the cube (click to embiggen):
Now look at how that falls out. Wealth, sure, color, sure, but also – and I think that now, in 2023, the bigger divide – is urban/rural. Too many in the big cities have started viewing us crazy rednecks who own lots of guns and live out in the woods as a threat, and too many of us crazy rednecks are increasingly distrustful of the big cities and their denizens – not to mention resentful when they wag their fingers at us and try to tell us how to live. Mr. Bracken continues:
Most of us live in the mushy, mongrel middle, far from the tips of the two opposite corners. But the centers of gravity of Civil War Two shall be as I have described: the relatively richer, whiter and more rural against the poorer, darker and urban. One can also propose many more axes of conflict than can fit on a cube, such as the religious versus the non-believers, socialists versus capitalists, statists versus individualists and so on. However, after you reflect upon the CW2 Cube, I think you will find that most of these extra axes can be overlaid parallel to one of the three already posited.
Bear in mind that this was written in 2010. Almost every aggravating factor that Mr. Bracken describes has gotten worse, not better, since then. The corners of the cubes have mostly drawn farther away from each other. The people in those segments are increasingly polarized against each other.
We always say “it can’t happen here.” I’m still thinking a hot civil war unlikely, although I’m thinking the odds of such a thing are increasing. But people in Bosnia in the Nineties thought the same thing:
After the fact, a common sentiment heard from urbane, secular Bosnians living in the Olympic City of Sarajevo expressed complete disbelief that a brutal, bloody civil war could have come to their modern European city and tear their lives apart.
But it did.
A parting suggestion to students of modern civil war is to read “Seasons in Hell: Understanding Bosnia’s War” by the British journalist Ed Vulliamy. It’s currently collecting dust at your local public library, waiting only to be read.
Forewarned is forearmed.
It is indeed.
Mrs. Animal and I are indeed fortunate to have our rural home in the great Alaskan Susitna Valley. We know all our neighbors well. Almost all of them are hunters. Almost all of them are armed. We’re far enough away from any major city – even Anchorage – that the “troubles” won’t impinge us directly. But they will hit us indirectly, as we are dependent on the Forty-Eight for so many things, from manufactured goods to fresh fruit. Not to mention that our children and grandchildren are all down there, although not in major cities.
A second civil war would be catastrophic. It would be fought not on distant fields, not by massive armies maneuvering against each other in open country. It will be fought in the streets, in the towns, amongst us in ways no other war has touched us since the Revolution, and if similar conflicts are any indication – see not only Bosnia but also the Spanish Civil War – it will result in hatreds that will last generations. A second civil war would be the end of the United States as we know it, and it’s unlikely anything that arises out of the ashes will have any respect for individual rights and liberties.
I’d like to say the more we know, the better able we are to avoid all this. Problem is, too many folks either don’t want to know – or don’t care. As Yeats said:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
I’d rather not see that happen here. But I am aware of the possibility that my druthers may not be taken into account.
Over a series of tweets in late April, Ambassador Emanuel shared photos of himself and the American Embassy staff heading out—in full rainbow regalia, the new red, white, and blue—to join the Tokyo Rainbow Pride Parade. The usual celebration of civilizational collapse? All in a day’s work for our man in Tokyo.
But it was this tweet that started the firestorm: “Now is the time, now is the moment for Japan to be all that Japan can be. You could feel the energy in the air at @Tokyo_R_Pride. Today was a parade with purpose.”
Many in Japan were appalled. Not just at the sentiment, of course, or at the tone-deafness of a man who speaks zero Japanese inserting himself into a national debate he knows nothing about. After all, we know that liberal Americans consider themselves culturally superior to the Japanese. That was the entire premise behind dismantling the Japanese constitution and imposing a new one. Never mind that Japan has been a democratic country since the 19th century.
The linked article goes on from there in documenting the many ways Emanual is making a horse’s ass of himself. But then, that’s something Rahm Emanual has lots of experience doing.
Look, an ambassador is there to be his country’s representative, and to deal with issues between the two nations; in this case, the United States and Japan. Especially in this case, he is not there to engage in moral preening over that nation’s internal affairs. Japan is a fully modern nation, a functioning democracy and our best ally in the Pacific save perhaps Australia, and we have no business lecturing them on internal matters.
Should we expect Japan, an old culture with long-established traditions, to automatically hew to what we feel should be the right way to do things? No. Much as I love visiting Japan – I’ve done a lot of work there, spent months at a time in the Land of the Rising Sun, and I love the food, the people, the culture and how beautiful the country is in general – I could never live there. I’m culturally a red-state American, and I will live out my life in a place that reflects my values. And I would not presume to lecture my Japanese friends on their nation’s values, even though I disagree with some of them.
It’s well past time Rahm Emanual learned a new skill that would serve him well: Knowing when to keep his damn mouth shut.
Children can go to California to have their bodies irrevocably altered by surgery and be pumped full of drugs that could cause health issues in the immediate and distant future that could ruin their lives. Crime is rampant and the streets are full of homeless encampments, needles, and human waste. The term “Golden State” could soon refer to the fact that everyone there has contracted hepatitis. BUT the kids will be safe because they can’t get a bag of Skittles.
Read Lincoln Brown’s take on this stupidity here. ‘Nuff said.
This will be interesting to watch. Full disclosure: I’m on Team DeSantis, but if Trump gets the nomination, I’ll vote for him. The alternative is unthinkable.
Back in the day – and still today, in fact – one of the most powerful male singers was the Welsh master Tom Jones. He projected his voice like few today can, and he also combined style and class with talent.
One of his best-known tunes is actually a cover of Paul Anka’s 1970 tune She’s a Lady, but Jones, in 1971, recorded what would be far and away the most popular take on this song. Here, then, is that tune. Oh, and as a bonus, take a look at Tom Jones on the Ed Sullivan show in 1968, with his signature song It’s Not Unusual. Enjoy!
Not sure how this works when it’s technically the beginning of the work week, but I work as the need hits me and don’t always pay attention to weekends. Anyway: Thanks as always to Pirate’s Cove, The Daley Gator, The Other McCain, Flappr and Bacon Time for the Rule Five links!
The deal, which was finalized Saturday night, would raise the debt limit through the end of 2024 in exchange for a cap on annual discretionary spending for two years and raising it by 1% in 2025. A series of cuts demanded by Republicans were also part of the deal. The White House had long opposed including spending cuts as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling, describing such cuts as “devastating.”
“We still have a lot of work to do,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said. “But I believe this is an agreement in principle that’s worthy of the American people. It has historic reductions in spending, consequential reforms that will lift people out of poverty into the workforce, and reins in government overreach. There are no new taxes, no new government programs.”
Sorry, Mr. Speaker, but you just can’t polish that turd enough to make us think it’s ice cream. Here are some things we don’t see in this “deal”:
Actual spending cuts, as opposed to reductions in the rate of increase.
Holding anyone accountable for this mess before the next election.
Eliminating the 87,000 new IRS agents.
And much more. It’s a fucking joke. The debt limit has long since been meaningless, as it just keeps getting raised and raised. We’re still mortgaging our grandchildren’s future. $31 trillion in debt will probably surpass $35 trillion by the next election.
These people are utterly out of control. Sadly, the founders of the Republic put in place a system intended for educated, thoughtful, well-informed people, and too many Americans today are none of those things.
And those people vote.
Granted this is just another boulder in the fiscal avalanche that is going to hit us, sooner or later. What can’t continue won’t continue, and this situation can’t continue. And the longer we wait to finally fix it – by which I mean, swing a big, broad axe at the Imperial government – the worse the crash will be.
I wish I could be more optimistic. I’m normally a pretty optimistic guy. But this crap, with Speaker McCarthy going on about how he pwned the libs when he basically just gave away the farm, is just too much.
Oh, look, another “alien visitors” whistle-blower. RedState scribe Nick Arama has the details:
Oh, and by the way, that person would also gain international fame and fortune in blowing this world-changing event wide open?
