90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, March 28, 2022

The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1671

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

Visage à trois #144

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #318

Of Boiling and Jumping Frogs

Our rulers think they have anesthetized those portions of the population they have not simply bought off. They might find that there is quite a lot of jump left in the frog yet.

It’s said that if you toss a frog into a pot of hot water it will instantly jump out. If, however, you toss it into a pot of cold water and then very gradually increase the heat to the boiling point, the frog will linger languidly in the increasingly hot bath as it is slowly cooked alive.

Despotic politicians who also abhor the fuss of public unrest have long noted the application of this apologue to human affairs. In early March 2020, if Anthony Fauci had said that we were about to shut down the economy for two years, force people to wear paper masks, “socially distance,” and forcibly prevent people from going to church, or visiting their dying friends and relatives, there might well have been a revolt.

But that isn’t how it happened. Fauci and the health police got everything they wanted, they destroyed thousands of middle-class businesses, enriched the entitled class, and, more generally, made fools and peons of us all. But they did it slowly. “Two weeks to flatten the curve.” Remember that? Remember when, early on, Fauci said that it would be fine for young, healthy people to go on a cruise? Remember when he pooh-poohed the effectiveness of masks?

Whatever else they demonstrated, the regime’s COVID policies, and the public’s response to those policies, showed that entire populations could be herded and shorn like sheep. All you needed was a public health pretext—not a genuine emergency, mind you, just a pretext—and battalions of aspiring Gauleiters willing to enforce the rules and, bang, instant and prolonged hysteria.

Like a well masticated stick of chewing gum, COVID has lost its savor. New gambits must be devised to cow the public. “Climate change” and green energy are hardy perennials, but the economic devastation wrought by their advocates has stripped the sheen off those baubels of elite, virtue-signaling.

Economics may not be a science, exactly, but you do not have to be Milton Friedman to understand that if you shut down large swathes of your own energy industry while printing trillions of dollars in so-called “stimulus” money, the result will be sharply rising prices and runaway inflation. Which is exactly what we have, courtesy of Joe Biden and his bureaucratic minders.

Just a few weeks ago the water was still tepid. Then Vladimir Putin handed Biden a large gift. He invaded Ukraine. Suddenly, every failure could be blamed on Putin, on Russia, on someone or something other than the senile incompetents running the United States.

Gas prices at eye-watering levels? Blame it on Putin, even though it was Biden’s decision to shutter large sectors of the American energy industry that got that ball rolling.

It did not take Biden long to go from suggesting that a “minor incursion” from Russia into Ukraine would be acceptable to hopping on to the neocon chest-beating wagon. The great thing about events (“the crisis” according to every TV news story) in Ukraine is that it can be wheeled out to explain away every failure as well as prep the populace for future depredations. “The price of the sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia,” Biden eagerly acknowledged. “It’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.”

You can say that again. People were just absorbing the news about rising energy costs and inflation when they were hit with a term that, just yesterday, seemed almost quaint in the developed world: “food shortages.” One day Jen Psaki assured reporters “we’re not expecting a food shortage here at home.” Then her boss corrected her: “With regard to food shortage, yes, we did talk about food shortages, and it’s going to be real,” he said.

The Jacuzzi’s getting a little warm, isn’t it? And if our rulers can destroy the economy and make us more dependent by sanctioning Russia (which also, as Biden admitted, means sanctioning ourselves), just think what they would be able to do should they actually contrive to go to war with Russia. Expect not only greater economic hardship but also a sharp increase in social control, censorship, and intolerance.

So far, Biden has kept some distance from the warmongers in the regime media. But I wonder if his resolve is faltering. Just the other day, speaking to members of the 82nd Airborne Division in Poland, the mask seemed to slip a bit:

Visage à trois #143

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

This is the sort of thing that happens in Third World countries, right?

On Jan. 6, 2021, a protestor, 40-year-old Brady Knowlton, says that an officer at the Capitol told “You can go in, as long as you don’t break anything.” At 2:35 p.m., Knowlton did, entering through the Upper West Terrace doors. He looked around inside the building, walked through the Rotunda, lobby, and Senate chamber gallery, obeyed the officer’s injunction not to break anything, and left the building at 2:53 p.m. For that, Knowlton now faces twenty years in prison in Old Joe Biden’s vengeful banana republic.

On top of the possibility of being behind bars until 2042, Knowlton, a law student, has suffered numerous other consequences already. According to the Daily Wire, “his law degree has been withheld, his lawyers say, Airbnb has banned him and his wife, and, for reasons that remain undisclosed, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection has stripped his Global Entry access.”

According to the charges filed against him in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Knowlton “did unlawfully and knowingly enter and remain in a restricted building and grounds.” He also “did knowingly, and with intent to impede and disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business and official functions, engage in disorderly and disruptive conduct in and within such proximity to, a restricted building and grounds, that is, any posted, cordoned-off, and otherwise restricted area within the United States Capitol and its grounds, where the Vice President and Vice President-elect were temporarily visiting.” He “willfully and knowingly engaged in disorderly and disruptive conduct within the United States Capitol Grounds. He “willfully and knowingly entered and remained in the gallery of either House of Congress, without authorization to do so.”

If Knowlton’s contention that a police officer said he could go in is true, it vitiates all these charges, and Knowlton’s claim is certainly corroborated by photographic and video evidence of cops at the Capitol opening gates, holding the doors open for protestors, and reports that police even posed for selfies with protestors. Also, when the FBI raided Knowlton’s home, they found no evidence whatsoever “concerning the breach and unlawful entry” of the Capitol, or “of any conspiracy, planning, or preparation,” or “maps or diagrams” of the Capitol, or of any “materials, devices, or tools” that Knowlton might have planned to use to get inside.

So why is the government pursuing Knowlton with such ferocity? The answer to that is clear: he is being set up to be a fall guy, to validate the Left’s hysterical and counterfactual claims about Jan. 6 by being made to play the role of the “insurrectionist” who was determined to destroy “our democracy” and install Trump as a dictator.

Imagine a country that imprisons peaceful protestors on false charges of participating in an attempt to overthrow the government, as part of efforts to discredit and ultimately criminalize all opposition to the ruling party’s agenda. People who entered a public building when police held the door open for them are being held in solitary confinement and given draconian punishments far out of proportion to what they actually did. This is the sort of thing that happens in Third World countries, right? This is the sort of thing tinpot dictators do in...

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #317

‘Clean up on isle 46’: White House scrambles after Biden says ‘butcher’ Putin ‘cannot remain in power’

Joe Biden continued issuing comments in Poland that went unapproved by his White House handlers, this time leaving the public relations team walking back a statement that “butcher” Russian President Vladimir Putin can’t simply un-hear.

Biden capped off his visit to Poland with an address in front of the Royal Castle in Warsaw meant to reaffirm the United States commitment to protecting the NATO alliance and any NATO territory that may come under threat by Russia should they escalate beyond their invasion of Ukraine. His most controversial remarks came at the end after addressing the Russian people directly.

“A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never erase the people’s love for liberty. Brutality will never grind down the will to be free. Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, for free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness,” Biden stated. “We will have a different future, a brighter future rooted in democracy and principle, hope and light, of decency and dignity, of freedom and possibilities.”

Then, before closing off his speech, Biden remarked, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

“The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” a White House official told Fox News Digital after the speech as they quickly did damage control. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

Former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, and author of “Putin’s Playbook: Russia’s Secret Plan to Defeat America,” Rebekah Koffler agreed that Putin “heard loud and clear a call for regime change.”

Koffler added that Putin has been suspicious of Washington efforts toward forcing regime change in his nation for sometime. She expressed the possibility of a “color revolution” meant to orchestrate an uprising by the people to oust their president.

This is not so far-fetched when Biden’s direct address to Russian citizens is considered. He stated, “This is not who you are. This is not the future you deserve for your families and your children. I’m telling you the truth. This war is not worthy of you, the Russian people. Putin can and must end this war. The American people will stand with you and the brave citizens of Ukraine who want peace.”

While the Biden administration’s policy is to avoid escalating tensions in the region, Biden has done little to make that stance clear. In the hours leading up to his speech in Warsaw the president had called Putin a “butcher” when speaking with Ukrainian refugees.

Perhaps worse than that, when visiting American troops stationed in Poland Biden foreshadowed what they would see when, not if, they went into Ukraine, “You’re going to see when you’re there, you’re going to see women, young people standing in the middle, in the front of a damn tank saying ‘I’m not leaving. I’m holding my ground.'”

This too forced a spokesperson to explain, “The president has been clear we are not sending US troops to Ukraine and there is no change in that position.”

On the suggested call to oust Putin, Koffler told Fox News Digital, “I would be interested in knowing whether that was in his TelePrompTer or not, because people who create his speeches have a responsibility for...