Happy Valentines

 

What a moving message from the White House! As JDV said in Munich, there's a new Sheriff in town. About dam time. In the meanwhile, I hope your day was filled with love.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

Vance On Fire

 

JD Vance was on fire today at the Munich Security Conference, delivering a withering attack on the EU and UK's ruling elite, chastising them for tyranny. The very same countries who won the Cold War have become, increasingly, facsimiles of the evil power they defeated. The threat to our common security, he said, is "from within." At length, via the Spectator:

... the threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with the United States of America.

I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.

Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defence of democracy. But when we see European courts cancelling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I say ourselves, because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team.

We must do more than talk about democratic values. We must live them. Now, within living memory of many of you in this room, the cold war positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. And consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that cancelled elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not.

And thank God they lost the cold war. They lost because they neither valued nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty, the freedom to surprise, to make mistakes, invent, to build. As it turns out, you can’t mandate innovation or creativity, just as you can’t force people what to think, what to feel, or what to believe. And we believe those things are certainly connected. And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the cold war’s winners.

If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you

I look to Brussels, where EU Commission commissars warned citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest: the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be ‘hateful content’. Or to this very country where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of ‘combating misogyny’ on the internet.

I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago, the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Quran burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder. And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant – and I’m quoting – a ‘free pass’ to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.

And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs. A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Conner, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 metres from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own. After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of his unborn son.

He and his former girlfriend had aborted years before. Now the officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new Buffer Zones Law, which criminalises silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 metres of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.

Now, I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off, crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But no. This last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe.

Free speech, I fear, is in retreat and in the interests of comedy, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation. Misinformation, like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaked from a laboratory in China. Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth.

So I come here today not just with an observation, but with an offer. And just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that.

In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town. And under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square. Now, we’re at the point, of course, that the situation has gotten so bad that this December, Romania straight up cancelled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbours. Now, as I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections. But I’d ask my European friends to have some perspective. You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage, even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.

Now, the good news is that I happen to think your democracies are substantially less brittle than many people apparently fear.

To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice

And I really do believe that allowing our citizens to speak their mind will make them stronger still. Which, of course, brings us back to Munich, where the organisers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations. Now, again, we don’t have to agree with everything or anything that people say. But when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them.

Now, to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.

 

Powerful stuff, and you can imagine the EU's beloved rainbow rulers seething in their seats. Vance continued:

I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people. Europe faces many challenges. But the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making. If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump. You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years.

Have we learned nothing that thin mandates produce unstable results? But there is so much of value that can be accomplished with the kind of democratic mandate that I think will come from being more responsive to the voices of your citizens. If you’re going to enjoy competitive economies, if you’re going to enjoy affordable energy and secure supply chains, then you need mandates to govern because you have to make difficult choices to enjoy all of these things.

And of course, we know that very well. In America, you cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail. Whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like, who gets to be a part of our shared society.

And of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration. Today, almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all time high. It’s a similar number, by the way, in the United States, also an all time high. The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone. And of course, it’s gotten much higher since.

And we know the situation. It didn’t materialise in a vacuum. It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent, and others across the world, over the span of a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday in this very city. And of course, I can’t bring it up again without thinking about the terrible victims who had a beautiful winter day in Munich ruined. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and will remain with them. But why did this happen in the first place?

It’s a terrible story, but it’s one we’ve heard way too many times in Europe, and unfortunately too many times in the United States as well. An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-20s, already known to police, rammed a car into a crowd and shatters a community. Unity. How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilisation in a new direction? No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants. 

 

Wow. He just went right out and said it. Mass migration, deliberate, conscious, demographic suicide brought on by the people who love us so much they want to replace us. If the rainbow elites were seething before, now they're really raging. Vance concluded with reference to John Paull II and God himself:

To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice. And if we refuse to listen to that voice, even our most successful fights will secure very little. As Pope John Paul II, in my view, one of the most extraordinary champions of democracy on this continent or any other, once said, ‘do not be afraid’. We shouldn’t be afraid of our people even when they express views that disagree with their leadership. Thank you all. Good luck to all of you. God bless you.

 

God bless you. A final coal heaped by a faithful Catholic Christian upon the heads of the demons in attendance.

What a speech,

LSP

Duelists

 

Look, just a typical scene at the Compound. And you'll forgive repetition. I feel life bears it, perhaps you agree, punters.

It's a busy life in the DLC motor pool, by the way.

Sabers,

LSP

Prinz Eugen

 

What can we say? Nothing if not practical.

Cheers,

LSP

STORM FRONT

 

No, not the ancient skinhead movement in what used to be Great Britain, but a literal storm in North Central Texas. Seriously, it woke me up in the middle of the night as rain lashed against the wooden frame of the Compound, while thunder rolled and lightning arced down from heaven.

Exciting. Yet again, the climate had changed, which prompted me to venture out onto the back deck and behold the fury of our Ancient Adversary, the Weather. It was ferocious, no doubt angered by a tragic decrease in funding from USAID and the EPA. Or perhaps it was elemental rage at Tulsi becoming DNI Suprematrix? 

Possibly so. We do, says the Good Book, fight against "powers of the air." Not unlike, when you think on it, Britain during the Blitz. In related news, I feel it's important to join this club. It's called REFORM, and sits on Pall Mall in Whigish splendour. Call it, if you will, a long march through the institutions.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

What Hucksters

 

Do you not think it's better in song?

What a gang of Hucksters.

Cheers,

LSP

Plain Language - Via NFO

 

Here's some tell-it-as-it-is truth from OLD NFO, what @elonmusk is doing with DOGE, and why he’s doing it that way.

First of all, he’s fully aware that, for the past 20 years or so, a gang of thieves has replaced the US federal government, and is wearing it as a skinsuit.

But I don’t think he wants to belabor that point out loud, because a lot of people haven’t realized this yet, and it’ll sound like a loony conspiracy theory until they do.

So he decided to show them.

That’s what targeting USAID is about.

When you have to eat an elephant, the way to do it is “one bite at a time”, but there are some very specific reasons why he selected USAID as the first bite.

USAID, you see, is a slush fund.

Way back in the days when the grass was still green and the pond was still wet and the clouds were still clean, and the song of the Swomee-Swans rang out in space…

When the US federal government was a real elected government…

The houses of congress had the power of the purse. They set the federal budget.

The problem with this, from the standpoint of a thief, is @RepThomasMassie. Or someone like him. There’s one or two in every congress.

If you want to put some kickback or patronage or theft in the congressionally-approved federal budget as a line item, then he’s going to find it, as he and his staff comb through that bill.

And he’s going to get up in front of congress and the press and tell everyone about it. And then the opposition party, whichever that happens to be, is going to pile on, because they smell blood in the water, and its going to get cancelled and you’re going to be embarrassed.

You need a way to hide your expenditure of federal tax dollars.

So how do you hide a rock? In a gravel pit. How do you hide a man? In a crowd.

And how do hide a fraudulent expenditure?

In a general fund.

So here’s what you do. With the help of friendly presidential administrations, you create a bunch of agencies with names like the Federal Bureau of Saving Cute Puppies With Waggy Tails.

These are nominally part of the executive branch, handling detail work, but they are staffed by hired (and therefore not elected) bureaucrats, and they are funded in lump sums by a single line item in that budget.

Now, you don’t have a whole bunch of “$50K for a transgender opera troupe in Bangladesh” items.

You have one item, which is “$50 Billion for the Federal Bureau of Saving Cute Puppies With Waggy Tails”.

And if Thomas Massie starts asking questions, you act shocked and outraged, and demand to know why he wants cute puppies to die.

So what is all this money actually for?

Well, it’s for stealing. You give it to companies owned by you, to do silly things. You give it to companies owned by your friends, to do silly things. You give it to publishing companies, to do silly things, and then later, when you leave office, they give you a $65 million book deal for an autobiography no one’s gonna read. You give it to Wall Street firms, to do silly things, and then they regularly pay you a quarter of a million dollars to come give a twenty minute speech. You give it to literally anyone, to do silly things, and then they make a donation to your private charitable foundation. Or they put your cousin on the board of directors, for half a million dollars a year to do two hours of work a month.

See the common theme?

Doing silly things.

Because it doesn’t really matter what the tax dollars are paying for… it matters who the tax dollars are being paid to. It’s obscure, it’s circuitous, but at the end of the fiscal year, it all makes its way into someone’s pocket.

And everyone who’s part of the network gets a taste.

Now, these bureaucratic agencies are nominally under the control of the President, but in reality, they start to have a power base of their own.

This is because their money comes from Congress, so it’s not easy to turn off the tap, and the head of each agency has to be approved by the Senate, so it’s not easy to dig into each agency and fire the careerists aiding the corruption.

Couple that with Congress delegating regulatory powers to agencies, and courts deferring to their judgements, and now you have a fourth branch of the federal government, with the powers of all three, whose whole job to loot the treasury.

That’s why all these “public servants” on modest salaries are retiring as multi-millionaires with three vacation homes, a huge stock portfolio, and a private jet. Because all that baksheesh is being spread around to everyone whose cooperation is required to make the scheme continue to run.

So what happens when you elect a billionaire real estate developer, who doesn’t need to loot the treasury, and would rather have a boom economy to do real estate development in?

He wants to take the steal machine apart.

And what happens when he appoints the richest man in the history of the known universe, the single least bribeable man on the planet, to audit all the federal departments and stop the theft?

Well, Musk knows he’s going to face fierce opposition. So he needs to get unstoppable political momentum and public support behind him, fast.

So he had to hit the ground running, before the Federal Bureau of Saving Cute Puppies With Waggy Tails could rally its behind-the-scenes power to get in his way.

Go to the center of power, follow the money, cut off the money. Work around the clock.

But he also knew that DOGE would be talked about, intensely, in its first few days and weeks, and these would set the tone for the rest of the 4 year term.

If it gained public support fast, any sort of defense or the status quo would be seen as evidence of corruption.

So he had to gain goodwill fast, and discredit the opposition. Coming off the election momentum of a hugely popular incoming president is great, but it’s not enough to carry support for a full four-year audit of the entire federal budget. He needed a target that would generate goodwill right away.

Some federal departments, like the IRS, and the ATF, are very unpopular….

… but there’s a better choice.

USAID.

Why?

Because USAID is a special, maximally unaccountable, small-projects slush fund.

He knew that when his team wrenched the lid off it, all they had to do was publicize what they found… and force democrats to defend it.

The sheer ridiculousness of some of these small projects would frame the public discussion exactly as it needed to be framed.

Now the debate has become, not a difference of opinion on how much oversight agency spending should undergo, or whether Musk was the one to do so, but a difference of opinion on whether taxpayers should foot the bill for a $1.5 million effort aimed at “empowering women to adapt to climate change in northern Kenya.”

Try defending that.

Just try.

But they have to.

Why?

Because this isn’t just about turning the money faucet off. It’s about people going to jail.

These people fussing about how Elon Musk has access to your social security number through OPM — as if OPM hadn’t leaked these same numbers to criminals years ago — they aren’t trying to defend the slush fund.

The slush fund is gone. They know that. They are trying to generate enough counter momentum to avoid going to federal prison.

(Now think about what that deal with @nayibbukele was really about, and who was intended to see that. )

But here’s the thing. It’s too early for DOGE to talk about indictments.

Oh, the evidence is being gathered. Behind closed doors, names are going on lists.

But the verbal public support needs to be there. Because we are looking at possibly a huge number of arrests. Not just high-ranking careerists and appointed officials, but elected Reps and Senators.

Unless this idea is overwhelmingly popular, it would look like a power grab, and no one would pay attention for long enough to realize, hey, these people really are guilty.

That part needs to come from us. Every time someone in office, or a federal job, defends this stuff, or calls DOGE a coup… we need to call for investigations.

Suggest they are involved. (Because they probably are.)

Recommend they find a nice tropical island with no extradition treaty. (And pray they do, because when the first one breaks and runs, it’s really over.)

Target them. Personally. Make them so busy defending themselves that they have no energy left to defend the steal machine.

Meme them until they cry. Then make memes about them crying.

And be sure to remind everyone that politico had no revenue. It was just a propaganda puppet run with stolen money.

Your stolen money.

At some point no one will hear them scream because they'll all be locked up, please. What a gang of grifting frauds and self-serving mountebanks, all at your expense. Are you happy with that, punters?

Cheers,

LSP 

Busted

 

Low level Dem operative Tania Fernandes Anderson's been busted by, of all people, the FBI for handing bags of cash to family members in a toilet, or something like that.

BREAKING: @BOSCityCouncil member Tania Fernandes Anderson (D) was just arrested by the FBI for operating an alleged kickback scheme netting her thousands in stolen taxpayer dollars.

She faces 5 federal counts of wire fraud and one federal count of theft concerning programs… https://t.co/vaIZA0F2ab pic.twitter.com/YbkckrmOyE

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 6, 2024

 

Democrats, you'll note, are enraged by the current attempt to do so. You'll also note Republicans are almost totally silent. Surely the Uniparty's a figment of deluded minds.

Space is Deep,

LSP

You Evil Demon

 

There's serious evil abroad in the world, and America's once highest paid civil servant, Anthony Fauci, was right in the midst of one aspect of it, demon-level experiments in the name of science. Or would that be satanism.

ARREST FAUCI NOW. RIGHT NOW.

“Implanting aborted baby parts…into lab animals? Have you heard of that sort of research…?”

“90% of experiments used Human Fetal tissue and put them in animals that were funded by Fauci's NIAID…”
pic.twitter.com/8xFbxvd5rz

— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) February 11, 2025

Implanting aborted fetal tissue/organs into animals. Pause for a moment and reflect, what level of utter wickedness is this? And where did this latter day Mengele's cohort get the requisite body parts? From our universities, evidently, which were totally not funded by USAID. You may recall, dear readers, that Harvard is Satan's Vatican. From the Churches? Crickets.

That in mind, out demons out,

LSP

This And That

 

A gang of young priests came to visit today and we went out for lunch at El Taco Jalisco. I tell you, their food's pretty damned good, I enjoyed cheese enchiladas, unadventurously. Tasty as you like. Talisco over, we fell back to the safety of the Compound for beer and cigars. Well, the kids enjoyed cigars, I held back in favor of Marlboro Light shorts.

So that was big fun. In other news, a friend called in from Alberta, a once prosperous Canadian province which used to be part of the British Empire and's now something far less important. She was upset because her boss is a literal witch who's casting spells against her, because she's a Catholic.

"Darling, your boss is a literal witch?"

"Yes. She has a store, selling witch stuff."

"So she's hexing you, right?"

"Yes, she is, casting spells every morning and putting demon salt around my desk."

"Sonofabitch. You've heard the phrase, 'karmic lashback'? This magic's like a boomerang, Satan discards its toys. Hang in there, protected by the powerful intercession of the Virgin, St. Benedict and all the saints."

In related news, 47 continues to take a buzz saw to the Deep State and all the usual suspects are howling.

Your Pal,

LSP

Benedict of Nursia

 

Have you heard of St. Benedict of Nursia? He was born in 480 AD and belonged to an illustrious Roman family who could trace their descent to the 4th century BC, the gens Anicia. A family which could boast of victorious generals, one was awarded a triumph in 184 BC, Consuls, Praetorian Prefects and, of course, senatorial status.

They were, it's claimed, the first senatorial family to convert to Christianity and went on to produce several short term emperors in the 5th century AD as well as popes, not least Gregory the Great. All this and more, imagine, if you can, their immense wealth, but back to Benedict.

The future saint went to Rome for his education and lived in one of the family's houses, perhaps on the Caelian Hill, where he would've received a classical education which, at that point, was very classical; rhetoric, grammar, philosophy, geometry(?) and all of that, no small thing. But, around the year 500 AD, during the reign of Theodoric, Benedict grew disgusted at the life of a wealthy Roman noble in the eternal city and moved from the metropolis to the country, to Enfide, some 40 miles distant.

Why did he do this? Because life in the big city contrasted, sharply, from his deeply held faith. Bear in mind, Rome at that point numbered around 300-400,000 people, and aristocratic bad behaviour was probably much as it ever has been and perhaps ever will be. Bear in mind, too, that this was the final period of Rome's classical grandeur before the Justinian reconquest of Italy ravaged the city in the following century.

Regardless, Benedict moves to the country to escape the wickedness of big city life. He leaves with his old nurse, whom he retains as a servant but, on performing a minor miracle, with all its subsequent notoriety, leaves Enfide and walks to nearby Subiaco (Sublaquem) where he sets up in a cave and becomes a hermit, practicing extreme asceticism. He goes on to found Western monasticism, but here's the thing.

The site of Benedict's cave was on the grounds of one of Nero's country villas, a vast arrangement of houses, baths and artificial lakes. This, curiously, had fallen into ruin by the 5th century and Benedict was, evidently, free to live there, devoting himself to holiness of life. Consider, all you pundits of late antiquity, the irony. Benedict forsook all worldy goods and ambition, and he was heir to plenty, to devote himself to the life in Christ. And he did so on the grounds of, I say again, one of NERO's villas.

This, to me, is remarkable and evidence of divine logic. From Subiaco, Benedict founds the great monastery of Monte Casino, and his famous Rule becomes the standard of Western monasticism in subsequent ages. 

If you read Benedict's Rule several times over, and you should, the character of the saint begins to be revealed. Benedict is urbane, vastly civilized, and at the same time immensely practical, he's all about the right ordering of communities of Christian men in pursuit of holiness. There is, too, no mistaking a man to whom command is written into his DNA.

Crux sacra sit mihi lux, non draco sit mihi dux.

Vade Retro Satana,

LSP

Get Off My Ship

 

Maybe this sheer, risible, traitorous trans idiocy is about to end, please. Like really, they say this idiotic buffoonery increases "force lethality"? Try not to throw up in your mouth. Then there's mechanics, engines, and the F 150.

Keen-eyed readers, all five of you, might recall some redneck mechs dropped a new engine in my 2018(!) Fiddy, but there it is. You might also be pleased to know that the new 5.0 V8's running like a champ, not unlike 47's onslaught against the Deep State and its utterly corrupt apparatchiks in our hallowed, sacrosanct, beloved corridors of power. 

USAID yesterday, FEMA today, maybe Medicare, Medicaid, and the mighty Pentagon itself tomorrow. Surely, my dear friends, there's no inefficiency, waste, skulduggery, fraud or malfeasance in the latter.

Perhaps you've been waiting for this day. In the meanwhile, deranged Dems are playing whack-a-mole, and a young Sergeant's visiting from Fort Hood and playing some kind of video game, in which imaginary warriors kill imaginary enemies on the internet. This seems to involve lots of shouting; in fairness, Sgt. LSP is actually a soldier. So there is that.

Mind How You Go,

LSP