Alt-American

GIVE TIL IT HURTS!

The Interviewer, interviewed

Posted on September 25, 2023 by Mike Leave a comment

That would be the ever-intrepid Tucker Carlson, who sat for an extensive chat with Urs Gehriger of Die Weltwoche, boosted by the likewise-intrepid Tyler Durden. The intro:

“Our System Is Collapsing In Real Time”: Tucker Carlson Gives Bombshell Interview
When Tucker Carlson departed the Fox News Channel in April, his enemies cheered. But if they thought the happy warrior had finally been defeated, their judgment was as dismal as their approval ratings. With an assist from Elon Musk, Carlson is reaching an even larger, global audience with his new show, “Tucker Carlson on Twitter (now known as ‘X’).”

The veteran newscaster has expanded his mission: to defeat the mainstream media’s suffocating bias and incuriosity not just about critical events at home but in capitals around the world.

When we reach him, Carlson has just returned from the United Arab Emirates where he met with its president, Mohamed bin Zayed. Carlson pronounces the sheikh “the most interesting, wisest leader I’ve ever spoken to” — a provocative assessment given that the talk show host sat across from Donald J. Trump last month. Of the Arab leader, Carlson enthuses, “I’ve never met a more humble leader, ever — and I believe humility is a prerequisite for wisdom.”

Carlson is far less kind about his colleagues in the press. “They’re all fearful people,” the 54-year-old scoffs. Instead of holding the powerful to account, “they do exactly the opposite.” Indeed, “they do their bidding.”

Looking ahead to the Presidential elections in 2024, he says: “They’re trying to put Trump in prison for the crime of running against Joe Biden…That’s what this election’s about. Are we going to allow that, or aren’t we? And I just don’t think we can.”

Bold Tyler’s, not mine. And I’ll say it again: getting unceremoniously dumped by Faux News looks more and more like the best thing that ever happened to Tucker.

Truck THIS

Posted on September 24, 2023September 24, 2023 by Mike 4 Comments

Is this post related to the one immediately below? Oh, you just bet your numb ass it is.

Truck This: Why I’m Leaving the Long-Haul Industry
I’ve been a truck driver for over 20 years. I suppose I always knew I would be, ever since that career day in the third grade when among all the kids dressed like doctors and baseball players, there I stood dressed like Jerry Reed from Smokey and the Bandit. Pop culture in the 80s painted the picture of truckers as rugged men, wild and free, burdened by nothing except their own wanderlust. That romanticized version of the American truck driver still lingers in the back of my mind, but in recent years the burden of government regulation has proven to be greater than my desire to see what’s over the next hill.

Oppressive regulation in the trucking industry has been around almost as long as the iconic chrome bulldog on the hood of Mack trucks. Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Federal Motor Carrier Act (FMCA) of 1935 during his first term. This gave the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), an agency originally formed to regulate railroads, the authority to regulate the burgeoning business of moving goods by tractor-trailer. The ICC ultimately decided which companies could haul certain goods, for whom, where, and what they could charge. The ICC even decided if new transportation companies could enter the market by requiring eager upstarts to prove their services were “needed.”

The only exemptions to these laws were in the agricultural sector. FDR and his horde of central planners did not want to cause an increase in food prices during a time when many Americans were already struggling to put food on the table. Nevermind the tacit admission that the FMCA would raise prices on all other goods. This exemption had its own unintended consequences. While independent drivers, commonly referred to as wildcatters in driver slang, were not subject to the price floors previously mentioned, they were limited to hauling only agricultural goods. This limitation caused a significant logistical dilemma for wildcatters delivering in industrialized parts of the country, and is largely responsible for the mythos of the outlaw trucker we all know today from music and film. Whether in an old country song from Red Sovine or Kurt Russell’s character in Big Trouble in Little China, such renegades are almost always hauling agricultural goods.

Thankfully, a trend towards deregulation began in the 1970s, and the cesspool of cronyism and perverse incentives created by FDR was substantially reined in with the FMCA of 1980. This is why we now see hundreds, if not not thousands of company names sprawled along the sides of 53-foot trailers. Granted, we still have the ICC, though today it is known as the Department of Transportation, and any truck driver that has had to spend 10 hours at a scale house without a shower or a hot meal over a minor infraction of hours of service rules (another specter of the FMCA of 1935) will tell you it remains quite burdensome. But things are still better than they used to be.

Unfortunately, the federal government continues its misguided attempts to control an industry regulators know little to nothing about. But today’s attempts tend to focus more on something they understand even less than trucking: technology.

Odd, innit, how so much of the intrusive, meddlesome legislation that still hobbles ordinary workaday Americans to this very day originated with über-Left/liberal FDR—scion of one clan amongst several of a de facto if not de jure American Royalty class, a class which to this day we flatter ourselves does not, indeed cannot, exist—who is still worshipped by contemporary shitlibs as if he were some kind of demi-God.

The author goes on to discuss electronic logs, the godawful Regen/DPF devices, and speed governors, soon to be inflicted on big-rig jockeys nationwide by our know-nothing DOT czar Pete “Penelope” Buttplug, before arriving at his grim but inevitable conclusion:

However well-intentioned these rules and regulations might be, it’s clear that no one is consulting with the long haul truckers about the totally foreseeable bad outcomes. The great problem with all central planning is that regulators lack local knowledge, and are not inclined to speak to the people living with the consequences of their decrees. Probably because we would tell them what idiots they are.

The last two decades I’ve spent traversing this beautiful nation have, by and large, been a wonderful experience. I have countless stories to share with other drivers over a cup of coffee at my favorite fuel stops or with my more stationary friends over a cold beer. I wouldn’t trade the things I’ve seen, the binds I’ve been in, or the successes I enjoyed, for anything. But the burden that has been laid on these old tired shoulders by bureaucrats and central planners has become more than I’m willing to bear. I’ll always yearn for the open road, but now I’ll have to satisfy that wanderlust in my pick-up truck. I’m pulling the parking brake on this Peterbilt for the last time.

Having spent well over twenty years myself as a freight-humper (ie, loading-dock ape) and -hauler, whose younger brother still slaves away in the industry*, I can understand the sentiment—although I must disagree vehemently with the risible notion that restrictive edicts that destroy livelihoods, erode liberty, and ruin lives are in any way “well-intentioned.” On the face of it, they cannot possibly be any such thing, being just one part of a well-established historical pattern that has never ended well for hoi-polloi kulaks such as truck drivers.

* When his dispatcher can even find any work for him, which has dried up almost completely thanks to the Biden Economic MIRACLE!©

To laugh, and to cry

Posted on September 21, 2023 by Mike 2 Comments

Pretty funny one, if bitterly so, from Kurt Schlichter.

America Is Becoming a Joke

Becoming, Kurt?

The United States just lost an F-35 as part of its campaign to reduce itself from the greatest superpower in human history to a pitiful punchline. Ah, the magic of leftism – only it can make a great country like America ridiculous. From an inability to find its fighters to an unwillingness to defend its borders or prosecute criminals – with the exception of conservatives framed for the crime of conservativing – our country has become the Three Stooges without the dignity.

The first question that arises from the mystery jet is not what happened – we can safely assume it was some manner of gross incompetence – but what the plane’s pronouns were. We had the spectacle of the Marine Corps high command dragging itself away from one of its drag shows to ask regular folks if they could pretty please give the jarheads a hand finding their wayward fighter. They couldn’t even spin this fiasco effectively and brag about how their not being able to detect the $100 million aircraft just goes to show how darn good our stealth tech is. No, instead it was just exactly what it sounded like. We can’t keep track of our jets. The only ones happy about it had to be the Navy, since this was a welcome respite from the mockery it earned smashing its destroyers into other boats. Our Army – with its colonels running sex kennels – used to recruit with slogans like “Be All You Can Be,” and now it would probably be better off with “We Suck Less Than That Other Service That Lost The Jet.”

Over on Capitol Hill, where the People’s House that you get sent to jail for peopling inside is located, we have the Republican Charlie Browns once again teeing up to kick the football held by the Democrat Lucys. Yeah, this time will be different! The GOP has only had the better part of a year to get ready for this debt ceiling thing and to plot out a course of action to get some concessions. But have they? Ha! Why win when you can lose?

And on the Senate side, our minority leader keeps freezing up like a Windows blue screen as everyone explains how it is perfectly normal for McConnell to stand there rebooting every time someone puts a mic in his mug. And, of course, there’s Chumley the Congressman insisting that the august institution conform to his desire to dress like a guy playing $2 blackjack hands at Circus Circus on a Monday morning.

We have a president who sounds both like English is his second language and that he’s gotten into the cooking sherry. We have a vice president who, if not for fractured cliches and bizarre cackling, would not be speaking at all. Biden takes the short stairs to get up to the short bus, which is what Air Force One now is. Hey, at least they haven’t lost it. Yet.

Heh. I especially like that “what the plane’s pronouns were” bit. He carries on in like vein from there, all of it good, juicy stuff. Best of all, he resists the urge to start up with the usual blibbering in the last two ‘graphs about how we’re gonna vote so hard we kick their sorry asses black, blue, and purple in the 2024 presidential “elections,” yo! Maybe Col Schlichter has at last outgrown all that airy-fairy horseshit.

Hamtramck Moslems are at it again

Posted on September 19, 2023September 19, 2023 by Mike Leave a comment

And I love it.

A Pride flag ban sparks accusations of betrayal in tiny Michigan city
HAMTRAMCK, Mich. — This city of 28,000 was once so Polish it was dubbed “Little Warsaw.” But in recent decades, an influx of immigrants gave Hamtramck new character. Bengali and Arabic joined English on signs at City Hall. Yemeni and Bangladeshi mosques, restaurants and shops proliferated.

And last year, a Muslim who emigrated from Yemen as a teenager became mayor — the city’s first leader in nearly a century with no Polish roots — alongside what is believed to be the nation’s only all-Muslim city council.

Many residents in this tiny enclave just north of downtown Detroit saw these changes as a sign of the Hamtramck’s progressiveness. The Muslim community that had previously experienced discrimination, including voter intimidation and resistance to mosques’ public call to prayer, had finally taken its seats at the table.

Yet the ethnic, cultural and religious diversity that made Hamtramck something of a model is being put severely to the test. In June, after divisive debate, the six-member council blocked the display of Pride flags on city property — action that has angered allies and members of the LGBTQ+ community, who feel that the support they provided the immigrant groups has been reciprocated with betrayal.

“We welcomed you,” former council member Catrina Stackpoole, a retired social worker who identifies as gay, recalls telling the council this summer. “We created nonprofits to help feed, clothe, find housing. We did everything we could to make your transition here easier, and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?”

All together now: WAAAAAAHHH!!! Nota bene this next part, y’all, it’s important.

The council’s unanimous vote in the middle of Pride Month seemed intentional to Stackpoole and others, though the resolution banned not only the rainbow flag but all flags except for the U.S., state, city and POW/MIA banners. Mayor Amer Ghalib, 43, defends the action as one of neutrality, saying no group should be able to promote a political agenda on city property.

Emphasis mine, in both excerpted sections, and entirely dispositive. So to translate from the WaPo shitlib-ese hysterics, then: This “ban” affects city-government buildings only, which is no more than appropriate; individuals remain perfectly free to fly any flag they like from their homes, places of business, and personal conveyances without falling afoul of this ban-that-isn’t-really-a-ban-at-all.

Ahh, but does it get even better, you ask? Why yes. Yes, it does.

Anyone who thought the controversy might soon go away was mistaken. The tension surfaced again in early September when the mayor and council balked at marching next to the Hamtramck Queer Alliance in the Labor Day parade.

“Basically, they wanted to destroy our image in front of our supporters by making us look like we were leading the queer group with all those flags flying behind us,” Ghalib said in a statement afterward. He’d managed to arrange a ride in a white SUV at the front of the parade, several spots removed from his concern.

The Labor Day Festival committee also issued a statement last week, saying the event was organized to celebrate “the diversity that makes Hamtramck unique. We are saddened to hear that Mayor Ghalib has expressed a complaint about being in the parade in proximity to a rainbow flag or a display of LGBTQ+ pride.”

As for Hansknecht, who walked in the parade holding the alliance’s bright yellow banner — “two square miles, for all of us,” it proclaimed — the incident only reinforced what he’d believed from the start.

The flag ban, he said, “has always been about being anti-queer rather than the neutrality they claimed.”

Aw, cry me a river, cupcake. I note that you DID carry your precious banner along the entire parade route without incident of any kind. I think it safe to assume that this hyper-sensitive bint was screaming the most offensive and confrontational epithets (s)he could come up with every last step of the way, too, at every innocuous spectator that looked the least bit like one of those goddamned cis-het Normie oppressors to shim/zhir.

Ghalib, with whom I enjoyed a very cordial email exchange on this topic back in June, was perfectly correct in his clear-eyed assertion that the freaks ’n’ geeks’ sole interest in demanding he march alongside the HQA was to humiliate him—to claim a victory for themselves and then rub his face all in it. Open-mindedness and tolerance is no longer enough for these miserable wretches, oh no; you will be forced to march in their parades, bake intentionally-offensive cakes for them, give your children over to them, and enthusiastically applaud them on demand. It’s like this:

Call it The Way Of The Leftist, maybe. I must say, though, that I am thoroughly enjoying the sudden implosion of the post-9/11 alliance-of-convenience betwixt American Progtards and mainstream Moslems, whose primordial “religion” puts them squarely at odds with every tenet of the shitlib catechism. I’ve long insisted such a schism was inevitable, and I was correct all along about that, too.

A Labor/Management proxy war a-brewing?

Posted on September 19, 2023September 19, 2023 by Mike Leave a comment

Personally, I’m just rooting for casualties.

There was once a time when I would have been aligned with management for a variety of principled economic reasons, but with the executive suites of US auto companies now full of radical leftists who see their role as being extra-governmental agents whose role is to help install a global eco-communist order, they’ve lost me. My principles do not require me to support any party, company, or principle that will result in a loss of my liberty.

This battle between the United Auto Workers and the Big Three auto executives is effectively a proxy war between those of us who wish for a future with gas-powered cars and those who want a future with electric vehicles only. The autoworkers’ future depends on survival of gasoline vehicles powered by internal combustion engines (“ICE”).

Unfortunately, the UAW’s leadership has done terrible harm to the rank and file by continuing to aid and abet Democrats, who in turn are seeking to destroy the traditional American auto business by legislating it away with EV mandates. And remember, the ultimate goal of “the EV transition” is not to get people out of ICE vehicles, it’s to eliminate mass-market car ownership altogether. There is no future for auto workers in the world the left is trying to take us to.

But finally, there is some awakening among the UAW and its leadership that there is no place for them in the green new future of the American left.

Just a reminder – the “Inflation Reduction Act” that failed America’s union workers was really the Green New Deal, and had nothing to do with inflation.

United Auto Workers (UAW) members feel as though the Democratic Party abandoned them, a former president of the union said ahead of a potential strike.

“I think there’s a segment of the Democratic Party that sees itself as serving corporations rather than the common good.… We’ve had a lot of disappointments,” King said.

To be fair, that faction of the Democratic Party that is “serving corporations“ is actually in service to corporate agents of Klaus Schwab and the anti-humanity tyrants at the World Economic Forum.

As to the specifics of the union’s demands, a 36% pay increase over the next five years is not that outrageous, considering the double-digit inflation that shows no sign of abating, and which has eaten away at so much consumer purchasing power. (I’m talking about actual inflation, not the fabricated inflation rate published by the Department of Labor.) What amounts to 7% yearly wage hikes does not keep up with Biden’s inflation, and since the Big Three auto companies are such cheerleaders for Biden and his radical policies, the least they can do is offer their employees wages to keep up.

Buck Throckmorton goes on to rightly lambaste Ford CEO and all-in Green weenie Jim Farley for his lavish compensation:

Let’s look at Jim Farley, who as CEO of Ford is aggressively destroying the company. He’s also doing what is normal for executives aboard a sinking corporate ship – grabbing as much for himself while he still can.

Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley received nearly $21 million in total compensation in 2022…

The total compensation package that Farley, 60, earned last year included a base salary of $1.7 million, $15.1 million in stock awards, and nearly $2.8 million in bonuses. He received nearly $1.4 million worth of other compensation in the form of perks like the use of private aircraft and company vehicles.

That marked a 93% increase from 2020, when he became CEO.

This, mind, while Farley gleefully pimps useless coal-powered vehicles that are losing over 32k per unit for the company, and the near-zombified car company he’s looting sinks like a rock under the weight of its shitlib execs’ obedient folly. As Throckmorton pithily observes:

A 93% increase over two years for the CEO seems a lot more excessive than the 36% over five years being requested by the rank and file.

Farley has no moral authority to criticize his labor force for seeking wages to keep up with Bidenflation while he is looting the company and re-allocating the company’s equity from shareholders to himself.

If auto manufacturers can’t afford to pay higher wages that keep up with inflation, then they can’t afford obscene executive pay.

In this blue-on-blue battle between organized labor and globalist eco-communists, I favor the side that is currently the least threat to me, which is labor.

Pretty much, yeah. There could well be an additional long-term bonus for siding with the unions in this instance: by expressing support for them, Real Americans stand at least some chance of inspiring Big Labor to rethink a few pertinent things, like for example where exactly welding themselves to the D卐M☭CRAT Party has really gotten them.

Unleash the Kracken memes!

Posted on September 17, 2023September 17, 2023 by Mike 1 Comment

I’ve always maintained that the highly-esteemed (and usually estoned and esdrunked, to quote my old friend Pfout’s immortal line) John Wilder’s stuff is extremely tough to excerpt, since to excise anything is to fail to properly do the post justice. This would be an exception to that rule.

In July, the New York Times® ran a story titled, Is the Cure to Male Loneliness Out on the Pickleball Court? It wasn’t particularly political, and I think I can summarize it in just a few words: “If you’re a dude, have a few friends. The best friends are those that share some sort of common interest with you. Friends make you happy.” Writer Michelle Cottle strung those three sentences out into several hundred words of mainly forgettable fluff that would be obvious to anyone with an I.Q. higher than a Phoenix, Arizona winter temperature. In centigrade.

The real joy of this particular story, however, was the unleashing of memes. The picture that accompanied the article, however was, shall we say, regrettable. It’s above, showing a man (I think, it’s 2023, so who can even define a man in 2023) with massive, fat tears containing enough water to keep California going through a megadrought. I think he might be crying because he hates pickleball, or maybe because he can’t afford a shirt with sleeves.

And with that, we’re off and running. John’s captions are as funny as the memes themselves are, really. Sample:

*I, for one am always happy when I’m at Chili’s. It is the booze.*

That’s John’s caption at the very bottom, of course, and it’s a real sockdolager. Nice work, my friend.

SO: How’s that “Sanctuary Sanctimony City” bushwa working out for ya, asstards?

Posted on September 16, 2023September 16, 2023 by Mike 3 Comments

NOT. TOO. GOOD.

LA mayor ‘fearful’ that planes of illegal aliens might arrive in city that ‘welcomes immigrants’
LA boasts the label of ‘sanctuary city’ for illegal immigrants

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said she is “fearful that any day” planes filled with illegal immigrants will be flown into the city.

During an event hosted by Axios on Thursday, Bass said, “We live in a city that welcomes immigrants, and so I think we have been able to handle it, but I am fearful that any day, planes could start coming.”

She added that the transportation of immigrants from border states and Florida to “sanctuary” juristictions “is just setting the stage for the presidential election next year.”

Yeah, whereas your open-borders scheme is “just setting the stage” for the next, oh, forty or fifty of ’em.

Don’t look now, folks, but it appears that Staten Island residents are taking matters into their own hands, exactly as Texas Gov Abbott and DeSantis have done. So naturally, NYC shitlibs are weeping bitter, salty tears of OUTRAGEOUSLY OUTRAGED OUTRAGE!!© over the heartless inhumanity of being forced to put their money—and their hotels, personal safety, civic hygiene, and their city itself—where their oh-so-righteous yaps are.

NYC shelter migrants bombarded with 24/7 blaring recording telling them to leave: ‘Legal psychological warfare’
Migrants at a Staten Island shelter are being bombarded by a blaring 24/7 recording urging them to leave, claiming the site is rat- and mold-infested and that they “are being lied to by Mayor Eric Adams.”

The audio recording was being blasted from a professional speaker in five languages — English, Spanish, Ukrainian, Chinese and Urdu — at an ear-splitting level of 117 decibels Monday afternoon from the property of homeowner Scott Herkert next to the controversial former St. John Villa Academy-turned-migrant shelter.

A migrant who arrived outside the shelter with her luggage Sunday, when the warning first started playing, pulled out her phone to record it and then called an Uber and fled, residents said.

More than a dozen asylum seekers were seen leaving the site — the scene of previous large protests attended by hundreds of residents — as the audio blared Sunday and Monday.

Hrm. Wonder where that particular “wretched refuse yearning to breathe free” might’ve found the pocketful of cash it would’ve taken to pay for that Uber from.

As Ed Driscoll helpfully reminds us:

The ghost of Saul Alinsky smiles: “Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. ‘You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.’”

Heh. Indeed.

You want ’em, you got ’em

Posted on September 13, 2023September 13, 2023 by Mike

Abbott has shipped 500 busloads of illegal aliens to shitlib “Sanctuary cities”? Had no idea it was that many—good on ya, gov!

Battles are usually fought with horses, tanks or aeroplanes. Greg Abbott used buses. As of June, he shipped 500 busloads of illegal aliens to sanctuary cities. The shipments continue.

You want ’em, you got ’em.

It turns out, sanctuary cities don’t want them.

National Review reported, “The Democrat mayor of a small Massachusetts city is urging state lawmakers to reform a 40-year-old right-to-shelter law that is putting immense strain on the area as thousands of migrant families arrive.

“Woburn mayor Scott Galvin said by Friday there were about 150 families living in the city’s hotels, an arrangement he called unsustainable for his 40,000 constituents.

“Under the 1983 right-to-shelter law, Massachusetts officials are legally required to offer housing to any homeless families seeking shelter in the state. The law now covers a rising influx of migrant families, although individuals are not covered under its provisions.”

I remember when Gimme Shelter was a song by the Rolling Stones and a demand. By the way, what’s with NR calling illegal aliens “migrant families” as if MS-13 is a mom-and-pop business?

Greg Abbott did not send those illegals but he has sent illegal elsewhere. The left’s resentment is so livid that it is comical. It’s as if his name were Trump.

Don’t look now, but Governator Abbott just forced the shitlibs to put their money where their big, fat, lying yaps are, and they ain’t liking it much. I haven’t agreed with him on everything, not by a long yard I haven’t. But I couldn’t possibly agree with him more on this one. Keep ‘em howling, Governor.

OH NOES update! My heart, it bleeds for them.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that because of the huge influx of asylum seekers into the city and the lack of help from Albany and Washington, he’s been forced to ask for a 5% reduction in spending from all city departments. And if no help is forthcoming, he says he’ll have to ask for another 5% reduction in January and another 5% next March.

Adams says the migrants will cost the city up to $12 billion over the next three years. Without state and federal funds, they will “destroy New York City,” he proclaimed earlier in the week.

Frankly, it’s hard to tell if Adams is just trying to put pressure on his friend Joe Biden and his enemy Gov. Kathy Hochul, or if he’s serious about cutting billions in city services.

Gee, that’s a real head-scratcher for sure!

In a pig’s eye, it is. Myself, I think it’s easy enough to guess which it might be.

Reap what you sow update! The triumph of reality over rhetoric.

There is a huge difference between true caring and indignant self-righteousness, a fact that the mayors of many sanctuary cities are now learning. It’s one thing to climb up on your soap box and declare that immigration makes communities stronger when you have no idea what you’re talking about. The truth is that these cities never had any intention of being sanctuaries for anyone. They never dreamed that the overflow would reach them. So they smugly smirked and ridiculed the governors and mayors of border cities and states, dismissing the immigration mess and open borders as someone else’s problem.

Now their holier-than-thou attitudes have dissipated into whining. Their smugness has been replaced with poor me syndrome, as they begin to understand the full weight of the issue.

The leaders of these cities have no one to blame but themselves. They practically begged for this invasion by placing their egos ahead of their citizens. By continuing to govern in this irresponsible manner, they are only compounding an already dangerous problem.

All our “Sanctuary city” betters ever had to do was ask border towns like El Paso about it, and they could’ve saved themselves a lot of grief. But noooo, they’re MUCH too evolved, caring, and generally superior to ever stoop that low, apparently.

Resist we much!

Posted on September 12, 2023 by Mike

SO—how’s that gun-grabbing thing working out for ya there, Gov?

NOT. TOO. GOOD.

Gun owners defy New Mexico governor, rally in Old Town Albuquerque
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s attempt to put the right to bear arms on ice in Albuquerque for 30 days is off to an inauspicious start; with the first lawsuits already underway, confusion over which law enforcement agency (if any) will try to enforce her mandate, and dozens of gun owners openly defying Grisham’s order by rallying with their firearms in the city’s Old Town on Sunday.

The rally didn’t feature any arrests or citations for those openly carrying firearms, which must be disappointing to the gun-grabbing governor. In a sign that her experiment in authoritarianism is already backfiring, several participants said their attendance marked the first time they’d ever taken part in an organized protest.

Bob Hurtado had never attended a protest in his life until Sunday.

The former engineer decided to join the crowd gathered at Old Town Plaza because he felt Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s recent emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public in and around Albuquerque was targeting the wrong people.

“She’s going after the wrong people,” Hurtado said. “I pay my taxes, I’m a God-fearing American and I think we should have our Second Amendment rights. I’m here for that.”

Better be prepared to take those rights back then, and defend them vigorously by, as the D卐M☭CRATs always say, any means necessary. With this in-your-face protest, I’d say you’ve made a fine start, sir. Hopefully, it will be only the first of many.

And speaking of “many.”

New Mexico AG to Governor on Defending her Second Amendment Suspension: Drop Dead
There are now six lawsuits (and counting) challenging New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s public health order suspending Second Amendment carry rights in the Bernalillo County and the city of Albuquerque. While literally no local authorities are willing to enforce her clearly unconstitutional diktat, Grisham is still claiming that the New Mexico State Police will do her dirty work.

The State Police, however, have remained strangely silent on the matter and no one has been cited for any violations.

This afternoon, however, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez delivered the latest body-blow to the Governor’s authoritarian tendencies by announcing in a letter to Grisham that his office will not be defending her in court.

From NMPoliticalReport.com…

“Though I recognize my statutory obligation as New Mexico’s chief legal officer to defend state officials when they are sued in their official capacity, my duty to uphold and defend the constitutional rights of every citizen takes precedence,” Torrez’s letter stated. “Simply put, I do not believe that the Emergency Order will have any meaningful impact on public safety but, more importantly, I do not believe it passes constitutional muster.”

Ouch.

Taken all together, these are EXACTLY the kind of all-in, full-court-press measures which constitute the only real hope for fighting back against tyranny without resorting to swinging filthy fascist scum like Grisham from lampposts in job lots. The operative words being ALL TOGETHER; pieces-parts, patchwork steps, here and there and now and then, are never gonna suffice.

As Bracken has always said: if you think it’s time to start burying your guns, it’s actually time to start digging them up instead.

Sic semper tyrannus

Posted on September 11, 2023 by Mike

Peters’s title is so good it’s worth a link all by itself.

We Will Not Comply Our Way Out Of This
Complying with “mask” mandates only assured they’d be complied with – for years.

There is a lesson in that somewhere.

The Left figured out that passing laws is a slow, tedious and unreliable process. It is even harder to get around laws already in force – as for example the ones in New Mexico that recognize the right – as per the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and so very much the law in every state – that citizens who aren’t criminals have the lawful right to carry firearms.

How to get around those – and other inconvenient – laws?

The same way that laws prohibiting the wearing of “masks” (which in better times, only criminals wore when entering stores and could be prosecuted for doing it) and the legal right of people who aren’t by law supposed to be in prison to move freely and go about their business, as well as the constitutional right to gather together to peacefully petition the government for redress of grievances and to gather together to worship, etc. were simply waved into functional illegality by declaring an “emergency.”

That tactic is now being expanded – most recently by the Governess of New Mexico, Lujan Grisham. She has declared an “emergency” and on the basis of that decree, has suspended – presto! just like that! – the lawful right of non-criminals to carry their lawfully possessed firearms in public in Albuquerque and Bernalillo counties. She has thus waved into a state of de facto “criminality” tens of thousands of New Mexican gun owners.

And it’s not just those who have the legal right to carry a gun who are in the crosshairs – and it’s (not) just New Mexicans, either.

This is about using “emergency” powers to render “illegal” anything the Left does not like and decides to make a “crime.”

Jefferson – there is a monument to him in Washington, D.C. – said that rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. He wanted it to be the motto of the United States (it is the motto of his own state, Virginia).

Tyrants must be defied.

Whether in New Mexico or Virginia or any other place in America – which is supposed to be a country in which tyrants have no place.

The way, then, to respond to the tyrant who currently rules by decree in New Mexico is to ignore her decree – and defy her to enforce it. Upon thousands, tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of law-abiding, peaceful people who will not abide being treated as “criminals.”

Let her – let them – try to arrest everyone. It won’t work because it cannot work. The tyrants will have to back down.

Yes, it will take a few brave souls willing to risk being arrested on “charges” that have no basis in law. But those few will show it can be done – and give courage to those not quite as brave, who will follow their example and – by doing so – make it impossible to arrest everyone.

If this would only have been done three years ago with regard to “lock downs” and “mask” mandates, we would not be here, right now.

Perhaps this is how it starts, right now. It is how we put an end to it, right now.

We can only hope and pray so. Question is, does the spirit of defiance to all tyranny—to any and every meddlesome, priggish busybody, great or small, who would dare to even dream of impinging on our God-given rights and liberties—still live in American hearts, enough of them at least to turn the dismal tide at long, long last? Or has the spirit of defiance been extinguished—that most quintessentially American spirit, more so than apple pie, hot dogs, and baseball—a spirit so boisterously integral to who the American people once were, how they thought of themselves deep down in more felicitous times—after many decades of flaccid, unresistant acceptance of ever-more-naked oppression?

Very soon now, we will know. May our answer be one we can take pride in, rather than heap disgrace upon ourselves, our forefathers, and our posterity with.

Speaking strictly for myself and nobody else, I did not comply last time they tried this stupid shite; I for damned sure and certain won’t be complying this go-round, nor any other. But that’s just me—as a lifelong contrarian and naturally-obstreperous Rebel Son whose dad gleefully said of him a blue million times that he’d argue with a stop sign, I tend to be ornery like that sometimes.

Tac-Civ

Posted on September 10, 2023September 10, 2023 by Mike

Whilst sifting through the comments on the magisterial Brandon Smith piece I mentioned earlier today, I ran across a link to a site I hadn’t heard of before: Tactical Civics. The index page features what amounts to a mission statement:

Taking America back, one county at a time.

“TACTICAL CIVICS™ is We the People finally enforcing the magnificent Law that our forefathers left us. And unlike politics, TACTICAL CIVICS™ needs only half of 1% of the People to take responsibility.”

This republic of sovereign States, founded in the Name of Jesus Christ and blessed for centuries, is now under Communist occupation by D.C., Beijing, and many state palaces.

The massive fraud in the 2020 election, combined with the criminal COVID-19 hoax were the work of criminals in the Deep State, DNC, Communist county machines and governors, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, Communist China, Google, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MSNBC, CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS…destroying our economy and keeping Americans in concentration camps with no communication between us.

Hm. Sounds pretty good so far, they seem to have the right idea about things. From T-C’s welcome-aboard page:

Before you begin here, We need to be clear.

TACTICAL CIVICS™ teaches the sovereign/servant relationship stipulated in the United States Constitution. We The People are the sovereign. Those employed by We The People are the servants while completing those terms of office or publicly-funded careers.

Simply put, one cannot be the Employer and the employee simultaneously.

Consequently, TACTICAL CIVICS™ has made it policy that while completing a servant-sector term of office or career, a person is ineligible for membership in TACTICAL CIVICS™. Once having completed the servant-sector term, thereby having returned to the sovereign sector, please join us!

To retiterate, if you are currently working for any public agency, service, school, office, etc, you are ineligible to join our member organization for the reasons we explain in Chapter 1 of our book, The Great We-Set™, available HERE.

Any individual not currently a member of the servant sector is vigorously encouraged to join us in this mission.

Trolls, sleepers, and shit-stirring agents provocateur not welcome? Sounds even better. I’ma hold off on signing up until I’ve had time to learn more about these folks. I must confess to not being terribly adept at spotting FBI-bait and/or Fedpoasting; I’d advise my readers to be cautious as well, you just never know these days.

That said, though, if Tac-Civ is on the level they might well be onto something with this, particularly that “one county at a time” business. Far as I’m concerned, national politics is a lost cause at this point, good only for whatever entertainment value can be wrung out of it and no more. The real action from here on out is going to be at the local, county, and (in some cases) state level, I think.

Which, when you think about it, is probably as it should be. The Founders seemed to think so, anyway—a feature, not a bug.

Update! YOWZA! Also from Brandon’s comments section, a link to free downloads of all Tactical Civics’ book offerings, either individually or all together in one handy-dandy zip file. I’ll let y’all know if it turns out to be a goddamned Russky worm or ChiCom malware or something.

Rule of law by decree

Posted on September 10, 2023September 10, 2023 by Mike

Fascists gonna fascist.

New Mexico governor issues order suspending the right to carry firearms in public across Albuquerque
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Friday issued an emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public across Albuquerque and the surrounding county for at least 30 days in response to a spate of gun violence.

The Democratic governor said she expects legal challenges but was compelled to act because of recent shootings, including the death of an 11-year-old boy outside a minor league baseball stadium this week.

Lujan Grisham said state police would be responsible for enforcing what amount to civil violations. Albuquerque police Chief Harold Medina said he won’t enforce it, and Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said he’s uneasy about it because it raises too many questions about constitutional rights.

The firearms suspension, classified as an emergency public health order, applies to open and concealed carry in most public places, from city sidewalks to urban recreational parks. The restriction is tied to a threshold for violent crime rates currently only met by the metropolitan Albuquerque. Police and licensed security guards are exempt from the temporary ban.

Bold mine, both times. The second instance underscores the essential point made three years ago by Buck Throckmorton which served as the inspiration and springboard for my Friday Eyrie post: that Real Americans will be paying for the disastrously supine response to FauxVid tyranny indefinitely, in ways both many and varied. As for the first instance, CBD has that one covered.

Well, that’s nice, but it doesn’t mean a damned thing. The state has its own thugs who will gleefully do the bidding of LandesFuhrer Lujan Grisham.

Only if the Albuquerque police and the county sheriff’s deputies stop the state police from enforcing this vile and obvious insult to our natural, God-given rights will their statements mean anything. Otherwise they are part of the problem.

Yes, if they act there will be a legal confrontation…something that is sorely missing in America today. Donald Trump should have told Fulton County Georgia DA Fani Willis to pound sand, and that if she wants him she can come and arrest him. Governor Abbot should have told U.S. District Court Judge David A. Ezra that he can enforce his edict himself, but that Texas will continue to defend its border.

Playing by the rules has gotten us to where we are today, with a compliant “opposition” party willing to get along so they can continue to pad their bank accounts while America slide farther into the abyss of totalitarianism. The left is superb at manipulating the law to their own ends, and it is far past the time when rational Americans begin to push back against the insanity of a two-tiered justice system.

Civil Disobedience? Absolutely.

Damned skippy. Civil disobedience, at the very least.

It has been argued in several places, notably around these parts by CF Lifer Barry, that DeSantis should have had the Mar A Lago-raiding FBI/Stasi goon squads stopped in their jackbooted-thug tracks before they ever arrived at the Trump casa, a sentiment with which I concur. Although, given Trump’s tiresome personal attacks against DeSantis and his entire family, I can kinda-sorta see why he might be content to sit back and let The Donald stew in his own juices also. But that only dodges the central issue here, which isn’t just the main thing, it’s the ONLY thing now.

There seems to be general acknowledgment that trouble is coming, a sentiment with which I do NOT concur, quite; trouble is in fact here, all around us, and has been since the spring of 2020. We’re up to our clavicles in it, the only question being which way we’re going to jump this time out. I won’t say it’s our last chance to get it right; I don’t feel as if there’s any real need to, frankly. Just say no, or just say bye-bye to individual liberty.

Update! Brandon Smith knows what time it is.

In terms of direct conspiracy and tyranny, the solution is usually war and the elimination of the cabal behind the agenda. That requires talking about the problem and inspiring people to organize for the fight.

But what happens when you finally have the numbers to do something? I would partially agree that the conservatives, libertarians, independents and moderates that make up what I call the “Liberty Movement” tend to talk a lot more about the problems, to the point that solutions become lost in the fervor of discussion.

After nearly 20 years writing for the movement I have noticed a consistent pattern – When I publish an article identifying a concerted attack on the US economy, for example, the audience numbers run high. When I write an article about methods for preventing collapse, such as independent barter markets and localized production, the traffic is cut in half. The truth is, real solutions are not sexy, they are scary.

People can become addicted to watching the system break down and I realize it’s hard to look away from a train wreck. But when it comes time to doing something about the mess and make some hard decisions a lot of people run away. This has to change.

It is with this issue in mind that I am launching a series of articles focusing ONLY on solutions. These are not silver bullet solutions; they will not save people from struggle or hardship. They will not end the globalist empire with a single calculated social shift or technological innovation. Such solutions do not exist and anyone who claims otherwise is either ignorant or a fraud trying to lure you into complacency. The real solutions require hard work, sacrifice, courage, tenacity and above all, risk.

If a solution to tyranny and collapse doesn’t scare you at least a little, then it’s probably not a legitimate solution.

And, if there is one solution that has been demonized more than any other in our modern era, it’s the citizen militia. It’s hard to think of a greater taboo, a more sneered at and disdained concept than the militia, and that’s on both sides of the political aisle. Many leftists hate the militia because they fear it; many Republicans hate the militia because they think it makes them look “extreme.” Sorry sunshine patriots, but if there was ever a time for extreme measures, it is now.

Annnnnd Woot! There it is. He goes on in like vein from there, and although it might not be pretty or comfortable, it’s also bang on the money. I urge everyone to read it to the very last.

Updated update! More from Brandon, in reply to a commenter bringing up Sun Tzu’s dictum: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

You are misinterpreting Sun Tzu – He meant that great strength would be required to DETER the enemy from ever attacking in the first place. Strength is not shown through public engagement; public engagement is how you eventually build strength. The Covid mandates were defeated for one reason and one reason only – Millions of Americans with arms refused to comply, and the elites realized to continue would mean war. But, they never should have felt safe enough to try. With organized militias, there would have been NO covid mandates to defeat. This is what Sun Tzu meant. There is no digital silver bullet solution; this conflict will require rebellion and great sacrifice. There is no other way.

Alas for us all, there is not. If there’s anyone, anywhere, who has been more consistently correct than Brandon Smith about the current sorry state of affairs and how it might most effectively be addressed, I’m sure I don’t know who it would be.

Update to the updated update! Divemedic has questions. Good ones.

Police are used to victimizing unarmed people. That’s why they call SWAT when there is the least chance of facing armed opponents. I want to remind you of this incident, point out that the cops in New Mexico will chase anyone who runs from them instead of allowing themselves to be searched for firearms, and then ask again:

What could a four man fire support element do if they were in an overwatch position 100 yards or so away and this was a planned ambush? How hard would it be to lure police into a kill box and then overwhelm them with large amounts of fire before disengaging and disappearing before the cops can organize an effective counter ambush?

Despite the foolish fantasy cherished by all too many amongst what Brandon calls the “Liberty Movement” that cops and soldiers can reasonably be expected to “switch sides” en masse in a situation like this—which cuts across the grain of the “must get home safe to my family” mantra adopted by 5-0 in recent years as if it were an inviolable Prime Directive—we’re probably going to find out the answers to DM’s questions before too very much longer.

Missive from the Valley of the Shadow

Posted on September 4, 2023September 4, 2023 by Mike

When it comes to writing about politics, Mark Steyn reminds us he’s still the baddest mutha in the Valley.

So no, I haven’t been reading a lot of Trump indictment analysis by Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Turley, Alan Dershowitz… They’re all great legal minds, but how naïve do you have to be still to think that America has anything recognizable as a “justice” system? I have the advantage of Andy et al in that I’m a Canadian who has been in a mere civil lawsuit in the District of Columbia that is now entering its twelfth year. When you turn the calendar on Year Twelve, you know it’s a racket – and all that’s happened over the last decade or so is that the racket’s gotten more shameless and cocksure.

My DC rubbish is a First Amendment case, so you can imagine how impressed I am, eleven years on, by my so-called rights under that Amendment. Trump’s is also a First Amendment case, and perhaps a more consequential one – because there won’t be a First Amendment if a politician can be charged with conspiracy for disputing the results of American elections, which objectively are among the crappest in the world, by comparison with Norway, Bostwana and most other functioning or even semi-functioning polities.

“More shameless and cocksure”? Perish the thought, Mark! Why, everyone knows they’re afraid of us, literally pissing themselves with terror at us! Right? RIGHT?

In a pig’s eye. Which is all the more reason not to take their shit, but to spit defiantly in their fucking faces at any and every opportunity, lest they turn out to have been perfectly correct in their assessment of whether or not they ought to fear us…because we ourselves proved them to be.

Indeed, if you think the central issue is not Ukraine or the next variant but the suffocating corruption in which the most powerful agencies in the land behave ever more openly as organs of a one-party state, you’re sticking with Trump because the permanent state’s weekly indictments of him are the most outrageous embodiment of the problem.

These are not normal times: in the years ahead, ever greater corruption – political, judicial, bureaucratic, technological – will be necessary to constrain the people’s choices to the shriveled offerings of the Uniparty. So, if you reckon it’s bad now, wait till next time. GOP primary voters seem to get that at least. The real GOP “suicide mission” (to use John Hinderaker’s phrase) is pretending that any of what’s happening right now is part and parcel of politics in a long-settled society of self-governing citizens.

Whatever their “suicidal” inclinations, the base seems to get that – and they’re disinclined to be told by their betters to pretend otherwise.

From his lips to God’s etc, and may it ever be thus.

Tons more rich, buttery goodness in between the excerpted passages—TONS—every last word of it vital, must-read material, as has always been Steyn’s wont. Thankfully, despite his recent health issues, Mark is still with us, for the nonce. Alas, though, as is true of all of us, someday he won’t be. No matter when it might come, that blackest of days will be upon us far too soon. For Mark Steyn’s is a truly irreplaceable voice, and the righteous cause of human liberty will suffer a staggering blow thereupon.

The kids are all right

Posted on August 30, 2023August 30, 2023 by Mike

This kid is, at least.

A twelve-year-old named Jaiden is the new face of liberty in America after refusing to remove his Gadsden flag patch from his backpack when school officials ordered him to. His mother secretly recorded her meeting with school officials in Colorado Springs who told her that Jaiden isn’t allowed to wear the symbol of the American Revolution because it has “its origins in slavery.” This ridiculous and false assertion was made by a sour-faced woman, the school’s director, who glared at Jaiden as she admonished his mother.

“The reason we do not want the flag displayed is due to its origins with slavery and the slave trade,” she said while gesticulating wildly as if her hand movements would hide the absurd drivel coming out of her mouth. Jaiden’s mother responded, “The Gadsden flag?” and the administrator responded affirmatively, vigorously nodding and repeating, “the ‘don’t tread on me.’”

This ridiculously uneducated educator continued to tell Jaiden and his mother that he would be allowed to take his things out of his bag and go to class but not to take the bag with him due to the district’s desire that other students would not be exposed to America’s Revolutionary War flag (that a bunch of college-educated morons think is a white supremacy flag).

Even after being told that the Gadsden flag has nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with the American Revolution, the administrator kept wildly waving her arms and repeating, “I’m just here to enforce the district policy.” A review of the district policy did not find any mention of a ban on patches of any kind. Nor does it mention the Gadsden flag. What the policy does say is that teeshirts depicting violence or alcohol or drugs are not allowed.

And then there were…developments. For my money, I think the kid’s face as he listens to this finger-wagging shitlib “administrator” (ought to become universally recognized as the expletive it so truly is) babbling on in total ignorance of real American history is totally, totally priceless:

JaidenFace

And then there’s this Tweet X whatthefuckever, which underscores just how thoroughly young Jaiden understands precisely who and what he’s up against, and that his (and our, and America’s) Enemies understand nothing whatsoever:

This is Jaiden, the 12 y/o Patriot who refused to remove the Gadsden flag from his backpack

School officials said it was “distracting” and “offensive” to other students

After being asked to leave school for refusing to comply, he took this picture near the car of a school… pic.twitter.com/0VXHGhsbgr

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino)

August 29, 2023

And then there were…further developments.

BREAKING: Colorado school who kicked a kid out of class for having a Gadsden flag patch on his backpack has decided to allow him to keep wearing the patch to school! pic.twitter.com/vEUDpnFgJs

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok)

August 30, 2023

GOOD on ya, Jaiden. Never yield a single inch to them, not one, not ever. Unsolicited advice from an admittedly Old Dude: NEVER give in to them, NEVER bend the knee, NEVER stop hurling liberty in their very teeth, until they’re screaming in pure agony from it. Because as you already know, to give an inch is to lose it all. I whipped up a little something in honor of your courage and old-school patriotism, although it might be considered a tad salty for tender young ears and/or eyes.

GadsdanJaiden

That’s all anybody needs to say to the rotten bastards. Anything more wordy or elaborate than that just wastes your time, and annoys the (fascist) pig.

Update! Don’t know how it is that I didn’t think to include this before, considering what I titled this dang post.

Townsend’s Rick is hardly what you’d call unexpected, but man, dig that crazy Mosrite bass Entwistle’s thumping on.

Historical Musical digression update! Guitar geeks will find this backgrounder on Townsend’s Rickenbacker from the above link intriguing. I sure did.

His first purchase of a Rickenbacker was likely a Rose, Morris Co., LTD, 1998 model (ie, model number, not year—M) in early 1964, either directly from Rose Morris or from Jim Marshall’s music shop in Uxbridge Road, Hanwell, West London. This 1998 was fitted — either when purchased or later by Pete — with a Gibson ES-175 “zig-zag” tailpiece. His second was a 360/12 “Export,” from Jim Marshall’s, for £169, both of which are likely pictured below in the 1964-era High Numbers photos.

Chris Downing (guitarist, The Macabre), in Eyewitness The Who regarding The High Numbers appearance at the Railway Hotel, Harrow & Wealdstone, in July 1964:

This was the first time I actually saw them. Pete had the 360 Rickenbacker then, which cost £169 out of Jim Marshall’s shop. It was one of the first five that came into the UK, and I had one of them as well. He liked it because it had a very mod look, and it was great for playing chords. That big power-chord sound he got wasn’t just his amps, it was partly that he used really thick strings.

The 1998 was pictured in the infamous “Maximum R&B” Marquee Club poster. This guitar was the first (of many) to turn to smithereens, when its neck snapped off against the ceiling of the Railway Hotel, Harrow and Wealdstone, in September 1964 (according to Eyewitness The Who, 8 September):

“I started to knock the guitar about a lot, hitting it on the amps to get banging noises and things like that and it had started to crack. It banged against the ceiling and smashed hole in the plaster and the guitar head actually poked through the ceiling plaster. When I brought it out the top of the neck was left behind. I couldn’t believe what had happened. There were a couple of people from art school I knew at the front of the stage and they were laughing their heads off. One of them was literally rolling about on the floor laughing and his girlfriend was kind of looking at me smirking, you know, going ‘flash cunt and all that’. So I just got really angry and got what was left of the guitar and smashed it to smithereens. About a month earlier I’d managed to scrape together enough for a 12-string Rickenbacker, which I only used on two or three numbers. It was lying at the side of the stage so I just picked it up, plugged it in and gave them a sort of look and carried on playing, as if I’d meant to do it.

“The next day I was miserable about having lost my guitar. Roger said, ‘You shouldn’t have smashed it up, I could have got it repaired for you.’ Anyway, I’d obliterated it.”

Pete claims he smashed only about eight Rickenbackers total. He would repair destroyed ones for further stage use and eventually, began using another, more solid-bodied guitar that could withstand the smash-up routine and be repairable.

That would be the Telecasters he’s most well-known for favoring, with brief flirtations with a Les Paul or three along the way. The “Jim Marshall’s shop” mentioned, of course, would be the same London music shop where the famed Marshall amplifier was born. In particular, the 100-watt Super Lead Pro, created by Marshall at the specific behest of one Pete “Pete” Townsend, ironically enough.

You can drop a Tele off a building and it won’t so much as go out of tune. Or, say, drive into a ditch in Pennsylvania at 70+ mph and roll the band van over on top of it, same result, as the BPs did back in ’96.

The van’s roof ended up tent-poled over and around the upright headstock of my poor Tele, which was in a soft bag, so I feared the worst. But LO, when we got out of the ER and went over to the salvage yard to retrieve whatever salvageable gear—precious little of it, as you might well imagine—might be left in our newly-purchased van (bought it on a Tuesday, totaled it early Sunday morn on the way home from NYC), the only discernible damage to said Tele was one (1) tuning-machine knob broken off. The sturdy little beastie was, yep, you guessed it, still in tune. I replaced the tuning machine and kept on a-rocking that Tele for many years afterward.

The guitar ended up in the possession of my dear departed friend Chris Pfouts, who hung it proudly on his living room wall. When he died in Indianapolis, I got a call from a friend of his there who asked if I wanted to come out and get it back. I told him nah, just keep it, which I assume he did. Hopefully, somebody out there is still playing it, using it as God intended it to be.

In a nutshell

Posted on August 29, 2023August 29, 2023 by Mike

Those who want civil war are about to get their wish.

At long last, wake up and notice the moment. Hear the argument.

Anti-Trump legal scholars have been arguing that the third clause of the 14th Amendment, a post-Civil War measure barring Confederates from holding public office after participating in an insurrection, can be used against Donald Trump. Attaching a broken boxcar to the back of this moving train, an Aug. 25 essay at Politico casually compares the case for 14th Amendment disqualification from the presidency to the disqualification of southern congressmen during the Civil War.

You may have already spotted a problem in that last sentence because the story Joshua Zeitz writes about Trump and the 14th Amendment has nothing to do with the 14th Amendment: It’s a story about the refusal of the House of Representatives to take notice of southern congressman in 1864, well before the Reconstruction amendments were ratified. With that in mind, go read it.

The subtext speaks louder than the text. Notice the framing; notice the language that colors the argument. Here’s how Zeitz describes the context for the 14th Amendment: “They had vanquished the Confederacy and compelled Southern states to remain in the Union.”

So what should we do about Donald Trump? Well, there’s this great moment in history in which a grim-faced dictator maintained tight control for the purpose of implementing radically punitive policies over conquered territories to dominate people who were not entitled to govern themselves.

That’s the discussion we’re having. The people Angelo Codevilla called the American ruling class, the hegemonic academic-political-media hive people, are now casually discussing Trump and Trump voters as a conquered people who have to be dominated and kept out of the system of self-government. Because Trump is a dangerous authoritarian, you see.

We are not engaged in anything resembling political debate.

I find NYU professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a hilariously obtuse expert on authoritarianism, an especially helpful source for parsing the eliminationist radicalism of the moment because she has the quality of mind that allows her to slop her givens all over the page without ever thinking about them at all. What should we do about Trump? Well, “lots of other heads of state have been prosecuted, convicted, sentenced to jail or house arrest,” so we just need to be more like the countries that imprison their political leaders. In fact, “Trump arrest=democracy in action.” What should we think of the presidential candidacy of Vivek Ramaswamy? It’s authoritarian for him to be allowed a platform because it’s “designed to get more poisonous extremist ideas into the mainstream and further degrade democratic politics.” Allowing Republicans to speak is an extremist assault on democracy; arresting them is “democracy in action.” And again, that’s where we are.

Indeed it is. I think renowned military strategist Bugs Bunny put it best:

So let them have it, then—good and hard.

From the horse’s ass mouth update! Think I’m kidding? Think THEY’RE kidding? Best think again. The reliably execrable John Heinz-Kerry, for one, most certainly is not.

The corporate state is intent, apparently, on ramping up its propaganda against so-called “climate deniers,” presumably to set the rhetorical groundwork for more extreme legal and social action against them in the future. So it dispatched something called its “climate envoy,” John Kerry, to Scotland with that aim.

Continuing with what is essentially Kerry’s declaration of war on “climate change” deniers (emphasis added):

And while they refuse to accept the facts behind increasingly obvious damages, which the First Minister listed, they lash out at the truth-tellers instead, and label indisputable evidence as hysteria. They compound the already difficult challenge of the climate crisis, by promising to do more of exactly what created this crisis in the first place. So now, humanity is inexorably threatened by humanity itself, by those seducing people into buying into a completely fictitious, alternative reality, where we don’t need to act and we don’t even need to care.

Let’s take the phrase “inexorably threatened” and parse it a bit. Per Merriam-Webster, “inexorable” means “not to be persuaded, moved, or stopped.” What he’s saying — the reason his handlers chose that descriptor — is that there is no longer any need to try to persuade the public of their climate change scam because the “deniers” are individuals who cannot be reasoned with. On a societal level, what does one do with an existential threat that cannot be reasoned with because words are meaningless to it? One goes to war with it.

Humanity, for the record, is, in fact, inexorably threatened by humanity itself in a very real and meaningful sense, but the threat is posed not by “climate change” deniers but by technocrats like John Kerry (assuming he is actually human and not a demonic entity wearing a skinsuit).

An assumption not in evidence if ever there was one. In certain quarters, what Heinz-Kerry is doing here is sometimes referred to as battlespace preparation. Any of you who might be keeping “a little list,” IYKWIMAITYD, needs to be sure that his name features prominently thereon.

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