October 19, 2026
Free enterprise creates wealth. By contrast, socialism extracts wealth, destroying the institutions that created the wealth. It is extremely unhelpful in our battle against socialism, however, that an ascendant business class of financial raiders, who argue that they are free market capitalists, are doing the same thing as socialists – extracting wealth and leaving in their wake the ruins of the institutions that created the wealth.
There was an excellent essay a few days ago from Annang Mittal at the Daily Wire addressing this problem. He discussed how the plunderers who capture private sector wealth, without doing any wealth creation of their own, have “done more to discredit free enterprise than Bernie Sanders ever has.” That piece is linked below, along with a few pull quotes. This is another of those horseshoe issues, where the extremes of both left and right nearly meet. The Private Equity Bros and the Bernie Bros both look at the wealth of a business and dream of extracting it for their own enrichment. I’d also add that it is not just private equity that is raiding the capital of businesses. Much of corporate America’s executive class has embraced an ethos in which headcount is slashed, product quality is diminished, and customers are subject to deceptive revenue-mining practices. This may produce a short-term spike in profit and stock price, but it also results in long-term degradation to the revenue flow and equity of the business, as disaffected customers never return. When the dust settles, the net result is that capital has simply been extracted from the corporation, with much of it flowing into the pockets of those executives who enacted those short-sighted actions. There are many “capitalists” who feel that any criticism of private sector wealth extractors is a criticism of the free market itself. It’s not. We defenders of free markets have an obligation to condemn those who give it a bad name so as to lessen the appeal of socialism. If a private equity firm looks at a company like Toys R Us or Joann Fabrics and decides to extract its wealth in a manner that leads to the company’s bankruptcy, why shouldn’t Bernie’s acolytes decide that they too should get in on the action? Don’t forget, just as private wealth extraction can occur under the umbrella of capitalism, socialism can be voted in under the umbrella of democracy. If we’re supposed to accept the legitimacy of equity raiders because we’re pro-capitalism, then shouldn’t we also accept socialism as being legitimate too because we’re pro-democracy? The answer is “No.” We should reject all destructive wealth extractors, be they on the left or the right. Both deserve disapprobation. Here is the link to the Daily Wire article I referenced. I encourage you to read the whole thing: “What Happened When Capitalism’s Worst Salesmen Tried Selling the American Dream; Private equity and rent-seeking discredited the free market” [Anang Mittal – Daily Wire – 10/13/2026]That is why so many in the heartland voted for populism, and why a growing number of young Americans have turned to socialism. Americans have stopped believing either party’s promises of economic renewal. Rent-seeking, getting rich by capturing wealth but not creating it, has done more to discredit free enterprise than Bernie Sanders ever has. Generations watched plants move overseas, communities disappear, and watched financiers strip what remained. When people hear “the free market,” they hear “the fix is in.” Private equity did not stay in manufacturing either. It soon entered healthcare, retail, and food service, jobs that seemed safe because they couldn’t be shipped overseas.Mr. Nittal also discusses the pattern of unloading debt via bankruptcy and offloading to taxpayers the pension burdens of now-failed companies after all sources of cash have been extracted. Nothing says “free market” quite like pawning off a plundered company’s pension obligations to the federal government:
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Frederic Remington
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As I have mentioned many times, some fundamentalist Muslims were allies of the Nazis and even fought on their side during World War II. The Grand Mufti, mentor of the father of modern jihad and inventor of the “Palestinian people” Yasser Arafat, was Hitler’s ally. The swastika and the Palestinian flag are directly connected and stand for the same evil reality: destruction of Judeo-Christian civilization, most especially the Jews. The Nazis killed Jews in France, and the fundamentalist Muslims of today have the same ideology.And as I and others, most notably experts like Robert Spencer, Pam Geller, Melanie Phillips and others with their eyes fully open who are unafraid to write and speak the truth, there is no such thing as "fundamentalist" Islam, there is only Islam as it is preached and as it is practiced, or at the barest of minimums as it is believed and as the active participants are cheered on by the non-active non-participating believers. And we won't see Bogey kissing Ingrid Bergman goodbye at the train station either, because it optimistically implies a happy reunion one day., and I fear that that is not in the cards. And a Hollywood ending from the Hollywood of today would have Islam triumphant!
France is seeing its worst riots in decades — violence clearly aimed not simply at the ruling party, but at France itself — and the left-liberal establishment is still trying to blame a few bad apples. That’s true not just of President Emmanuel Macron, but of global media that claim it’s mainly about student grievances over budget cuts — at least one BBC article actually used the phrase “mostly peaceful protests.” This is nonsense: The street mobs haven’t been just (or even mostly) kids for weeks now, and the vandalism began in the first days; it was last month that “protesters” set a teacher on fire. Foreign flags (Morocco, Algeria, “Palestine") Came out at the start; the crowds are mostly blacks and Arabs — overwhelmingly from Muslim immigrant communities, in other words. And the political statements are obvious: Burning down historic town halls; smashing a statue of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic. . . Liberty isn’t leading these people, but a hatred for Western civilization itself. Leaders of that civilization who still insist on denial will either find themselves as former leaders, or “leading” a former civilization.Macron demonstrated leadership by leading his concubine to Belgium to attend a Celine Dion concert. If that doesn't prove to you that civilization will go on, you're blind! Well, unless something truly drastic happens in France, meaning the liberal (pun intended) use of lethal force against the rioters followed on by the mass deportation of Muslims, the unassimilable and then the proscription of Islam in France — in other words a paradigm shift in the past 70 or more years of the trajectory of French culture — then it will be lights out in France followed on by most of Europe soon thereafter . And as the lamps go out all over Europe, I fear we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.... Well, besides the intertwined double helix of Islam and Democrat/Leftism, the common thread of the lust for absolute power will never be sated until those who seek our enslavement and destruction are ruthlessly, mercilessly and utterly stopped. Here's the latest example to underscore my assertion and fervent hope.
. . .it didn’t take long for Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who served under John Brennan, to show her true colors. The Michigan senator told students at the University of Chicago last week how she plans to use the power that will come to Democrats if they win Senate control in the midterms next month. She wants to unleash a barrage of political investigations on Trump officials in order to frighten young people away from taking jobs in the administration. “The people around Donald Trump . . . have no immunity the way the president does . . . So you go after the people who do his bidding,” she told the audience during a live podcast recording Tuesday. “I want to look at these signature cases and not just focus on the president, but on the people who enabled him,” she continued. “I want young people coming out of school to say, ‘Should I go work for the Trump administration? Like that sounds fun. I might get an opportunity.’ “I want them to be like, ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that.’ “I want that deterrence message.” Slotkin pretends she is a stickler for “defending democracy.” But this is how the Bolshevik left who control today’s Democrat Party play the game, even as they cloak themselves in conservative disguises, as intelligence professionals, soldiers, astronauts or doctors.Emphasis mine because listen Strychnine-Tits, it was we the people of WE THE PEOPLE who eagerly and enthusiastically voted for President Trump three times who enable him! And as we know, SLUTkin and her ilk have been persecuting us ever since then by unleashing the FBI an DoJ against us via wiretapping and phony lawfare to destroy anyone who even so much as bought a MAGA hat or contributed even a buck to his political campaign. And so, Miranda Devine's description of them as the Bolshevik Left is dead on the money. Decent people will not be deterred and at some point the crimes against their "precious DEMOCRACY™ will include the death penalty offense of raising of an eyebrow in objection to their latest assault on America as founded, which will lead to us to a gulag or winding up like Ashli Babbitt, Roseanne Boyland or Charlie Kirk. As the disposition of both Nidal Hasan or Bro-Fo Omar remain up in the air, although Hasan will face a firing squad, but its telecast is still in question. That said, I can tell you who and what deserves besides him deserves that fate, which I'm sure you can guess from the gravamen of my discourse because unless we do what France and Europe need to do sooner rather than later, then it will be lights out for America. have a good day.
Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:16 AM | Comments (324) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Top Story
- A district court judge in Utah has blocked that state's law requiring magical ponies age restrictions for all websites that somehow stops precisely at the state border. (EFF)
The law covered not only sites operating within the state - which falls under Scalia's "dumb but constitutional" - but sites anywhere in the world accessible from Utah.
Sites were required to either block VPNs (and were forbidden from mentioning the existence of VPNs) or track the precise address of every single IP address in the world of which there are now 2128 which is rather a lot.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (83) | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 18, 2026
Sunset on the ranch in Corsicana last night
Howdy Hordelings! Travel day for me today - returning from Corsicana where a good time was had by all! Open thread with none of the typical content. Just some random photos from the festivities this weekend. Those of you who were there can reminisce. Those who weren't can get some idea of what you missed.
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[Because I am otherwise engaged, I have dipped into the archives and come up with my 13-year-old comments about martinis, and because I am nothing if not a creature of habit, they haven't changed much!]
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There is a default assumption among the vast majority of the media, both the mass-market variety and the supposedly high-minded elites who comment on everything, no matter their expertise.
Ukraine GOOD! Russia BAD! That sums it up nicely. And they are half correct! What they seem to miss is that Ukraine is a kleptocratic cesspool of corruption, and their only saving grace is that they were attacked by Putin's Russia, and not by Poland or Belarus, which would have elicited a giant yawn in western capitals. And they also miss the provocation from the West that probably began with Bush senior, when Russia was still the Soviet Union. They were promised that NATO had no plans to expand east, so the buffer between western Europe and mother Russia that the Soviet Union had created wasn't necessary.Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (202) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading (now with 3x the recommended daily allowance of pumpkin spice). Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...
So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, finish off the bag of pre-Halloween candy, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?
Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (261) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Top Story
- Nvidia totally isn't cancelling Nvidia's RTX 5090 says Nvidia, as 5090 prices climb into the ionosphere. (Notebook Check)
Trust us, guys. When have we ever lied to you? I mean, since last time?
- Grab an RTX 5090 for just $5300 as part of this complete breakfast gaming PC. (Tom's Hardware)
Act now - this might be your last chance now that Nvidia has cancelled the RTX 5090.
- Protect your irreplaceable $8500 RTX 5090 by modifying it with four standard 8-pin PCI power connectors so it doesn't spontaneously combust. (Tom's Hardware)
You know, I don't think anyone else believes Nvidia either.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (216) | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 17, 2026
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The year of our Lord, 1981, saw no less than three major werewolf films: The disappointing Wolfen, based on the very good Whitley Streiber book; the John Landis classic, An American Werewolf in London; and the low-budget Avco Embassy feature, The Howling. Based on the book by Gary Brandner, but not really. (I read Brandner's book decades after seeing the movie and thought: "Well, this isn't great.")
Having three werewolf movies of three different budgetary levels is informative, I think: Wolfen, starring a hot-on-a-comeback Albert Finney and Gregory Hines cost $17M and made $10M. American made $30M domestically on a $6M budget. Howling made $17M on about $1.7M budget. The two cheaper movies are so much more fun, it's not even close.
"OK, now you sing 'Scaramouche, Scaramouch, can you do the Fandango?'!"
Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:27 PM | Comments (212) | Trackbacks (Suck)
Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. For this week, the Wheel of Hobbies (TM) is feeling random and decided on a hobby scrapple theme for this Hobby Thread.
[Top photo: Location unknown, but gold star for clever use of a dump truck for home landscaping design]Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:30 PM | Comments (87) | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Good morning boys and girls and everything in between. Before we enter the Prayer Revival just a few housekeeping matters to go over. (Rulz for those of you in the Greater Corsicana Metroplex) 1) This is an open thread. Feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate. Praying isn't a bad idea either.
2) Be kind. Be nice. Or ........
3) No running with sharp objects, scissors included.(H/T Hrothgar)
4) Have a great weekend!
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Top Story
- CoreWeave, an AI company involved in... Nobody really knows what they do, it would seem... Is blaming the implosion of the planned IPO by Australian competitor Firmus (the names keep getting worse) for the fact that it is $50 billion in debt with a bond yield of 16%. (AFR) (archive site)
I think you're getting out over your oars there, CoreWeave.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM | Comments (228) | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 16, 2026
Hey y'all! Welcome to Friday night. Let's remember the wise words of the Hogfather:
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