Flotsam and/or Jetsam

OOF!

Posted on July 26, 2021July 26, 2021 by Mike Leave a comment

I have little to no use for polls, as you folks surely know by now. They’re easily rigged to support whatever agenda the pollster wishes to pimp; they’re commonly monkeywrenched by participants who have the same contempt for them I do and respond in prankster-ish fashion; they’re mainly used not to provide honest, reliable snapshots of the public’s general mood, but as tools to leverage political clout and influence. Basically, polls are bunk, and ought to be taken with a bucket of salt, if not ignored entirely.

But I gotta admit, I just love this one.

Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney is the most unpopular Republican in the country among GOP voters, according to a new poll out this month reported by Axios.

While Donald Trump Jr. and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis led in a survey of prominent Republicans, with a 55 and 54 percent net approval rating respectively, Cheney’s ratings tanked at negative 43 percent.

Um. Well. Okay, then.

Perhaps even better, the accompanying chart shows Senate GOPe “leader” Yertle McTurtle wheezing in at an embarrassing +2. Which makes me think that this is almost certainly the most accurate poll ever taken.

Departures

Posted on July 26, 2021July 26, 2021 by Mike 3 Comments

I’m gonna have to postpone my examination of the TSM piece mentioned below, having unexpectedly run across another one at WRSA that led me to…well, first, we have this obit and remembrance for a legendary Naval aviator:

We wake to the sad news that Snort (Capt Dale Snodgrass, USN-RET, callsign “Snort”—M) died in a crash yesterday. I was honored to interview him in 2000, but it wasn’t our first encounter.

In 1985, I was there in the crowd as a teenager when he awed us all in the Tomcat at the Pratt & Whitney airshow in East Hartford. I have chills this morning thinking of the chills I had then, watching the Tomcat in formation with the other Grumman cats, and I do believe it was a missing man formation.

RIP, Snort. Thank you for taking the phone call from a young writer with no credentials, but who was thrilled beyond words to interview the legend.

I imagine so. Follows, a repost of his 2010 interview with CAPT Snodgrass, which runs below one of the most famed photos of Tomcat derring-do ever captured, which I cannot possibly resist running here.

You can practically hear those jet-jock sized Big Brass Ones all a-clank just looking at that pic. On to the interview.

If you’ve researched information on the F-14, it is pretty likely that the name Dale Snodgrass has appeared somewhere in what you’ve read. “Snort” is virtual legend in the Tomcat community, and with more than 4,800 hours in the F-14, he is the most experienced Tomcat pilot in the world. Over a 26-year career in Naval Aviation, he had moved from being the first student pilot to trap an F-14 on a carrier to commanding the US Navy’s entire fleet of Tomcats as the Commander of Fighter Wing Atlantic. Now retired, Snort is on the airshow circuit, flying a wide range of aircraft, from the F4U and P-51 to the F-86, MiG-15, and MiG-17.

The accolades for Snort’s flying are long and distinguished…twelve operational Fighter Squadron/Wing tours, including command of Fighter Squadron 33 during Desert Storm, the Navy’s “Fighter Pilot of the Year” in 1985, Grumman Aerospace’s “Topcat of the Year” for 1986, a US Navy Tomcat Flight Demonstration Pilot from 1985-1997, and numerous decorations for combat and peacetime flight.

This is all good stuff, well worth reading in full if you’re any kind of military-aviation guy at all. But then we get to the part that stopped me COLD and made my eyes bug out comically.

What was your most tense moment in the 26 years?

From a combat perspective, it was when I had a flameout over Iraq while executing a last ditch surface-to-air missile defense. I was leading a night Fighter Sweep in support of an A-6 strike on a power plant on the north side of Baghdad.

As I said, the story of Snodgrass’ close encounter with an Iraqi SAM, which caused a flameout that in turn brought on a 15k-foot altitude drop, leading to an attempted air-start of the dead engine whilst flying through the middle of a thick triple-A barrage, is all good, gripping stuff for sure. But what slammed me betwixt the orbs was the part I bolded in the last line. Because see, I happen to know a little something myself about that A-6 strike he mentioned. In order to explain it, though, we’re going to need to make a little side-trip here, to another obit from 2015.

Reggie Parks Carpenter, 51, Captain, United States Navy, died from sudden cardiac arrest in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on February 3, 2015. Captain Carpenter, from Cherryville, North Carolina, graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Communications. He was commissioned an officer in the Navy via the Aviation Officer Candidate School, and received his aviator “Wings of Gold” in 1987. Captain Carpenter, also known as “Regbo” to fellow aviators, bravely served in the defense of the United States for 29 years.

He flew tactical missions in three jet aircraft, in four operational squadrons, and over six aircraft carrier-based deployments, including one as an exchange pilot with the French Navy.

A graduate of the U.S. Naval War College with a Masters in National Security and Strategic Studies, the personal highlight of Captain Carpenter’s career was his tour as commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron EIGHTY THREE (VFA-83), an F/A-18C Hornet squadron at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, VA. His final tours of duty, which he also enjoyed immensely, were in military diplomacy. He served as Naval Attaché to France, from 2007 to 2011, and to Argentina, from 2012 to 2015.

Captain Carpenter was a highly decorated naval aviator who earned many awards and medals during his career, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. A devoted, loving husband and father, he was also a kind, passionate man with quick wit and boundless zest for life. Captain Carpenter is survived by his wife, Suzanne, and daughters, Avery and Caroline; mother, Barbara Cannon; sister, Kelly Stewart; brother-in-law, Bob Stewart; and many loving friends and colleagues from all over the world.

A funeral service will be held at 2 p.m. on Thursday, April 23, 2015, at Vienna Presbyterian Church, 124 Park St. NE, Vienna, VA. Interment with full military honors will take place at 3 p.m. on Friday, April 24, 2015, at Arlington National Cemetery.

You CF Lifers might begin to see where all this is going, I bet. For the shavetails, nuggets, and noobs, this oughta help clear things up.

The CF community suffered a serious loss yesterday, although most of you might not know about it. My “cousin”, Captain Reggie Carpenter, USN, died suddenly in Buenos Aires, where he was serving as naval attache, capping off a distinguished three-decade career as a naval aviator and diplomat.

He wasn’t really my cousin; he was actually my first cousin’s cousin, but his family and mine had been tightly intertwined for our whole lives; our fathers, uncles, and other kinfolk were all close friends from childhood, and the subsequent generations have all retained a sort of extended-family relationship ever since.

Those of you who have been around these parts a good while may remember him as “Regbo,” his flyboy call sign, or simply as “Cuz.” He did a fair bit of writing for the site back in its early years under those handles; he preferred the anonymity of them, for obvious reasons.

Y’all also might remember a post I did years ago from NAS Oceana, where the band had gone to play Reggie’s change of command party at the O-club there. He was taking over Rampager squadron, VFA 83, after having served as XO of the Sunliners. We didn’t get paid for the gig, or at least not in money; we got paid with twenty minutes apiece in the F/A-18 simulators instead. Which just made it one of the most richly remunerative shows I ever did. Hell, just hanging out at the O-club, meeting and hearing the sea stories of these “casual American heroes” as Reg called them, was payment aplenty.

He was a damned fine pilot, flying the A6 Intruder in the first sorties of the first Gulf War, then F14s, then Super Etendards off the Foch for a year as part of the officer-exchange program with the French. He graduated to the Hornet after that, and stayed in ’em for the remainder of his career. He was invited to join the Blue Angels and even toured with them awhile while he considered the offer; he eventually decided against it, and went to the War College instead. Back in his college days he got one of the highest scores ever on the Navy’s Pilot Aptitude test, and just moved on ever upwards from there.

Reg had a heart attack either on his way to or shortly after arriving at work yesterday morning in Buenos Aires (the family is still waiting for details on that); he’d just returned from an African safari with his beloved family. He was due to retire next spring; in fact, the last conversation I had with him was shortly before he left for the Africa trip. He asked if I wanted to attend his retirement party, and I assured him I did. We were talking about maybe having the band play for the festivities, in fact, and I was looking forward to seeing him again. He was 52, which is way too damned young to lose a guy like him. Hard to believe he’s gone so quick. He’ll be missed by all who knew him.

Rest easy, Reg, until we meet on the other side to pick some guitar and talk fighters and politics again. Your whole family was extremely proud of you, as well they might be, and your friends were glad and grateful to know you. Much love to you and your family, brother.

That, of course, is part of the obit I wrote for Reg right here at CF, which includes a photo of him leaning nonchalantly against his own personal F/A-18 that I took at NAS-JAX during a post-gig visit we paid him there once.

So here’s the payoff: that aforementioned A-6 strike over Baghdad on opening night of Desert Storm? Well, guess who else was out there along with Snort Snodgrass? Yep, you got it: none other than one Reggie “Regbo” Carpenter, that’s who.

Reg later sent a somewhat illicit cockpit video home to his (also my) Uncle Gene from that eventful night, along with a letter detailing a harrowing misadventure when his Intruder was struck by lightning (!!!) on the way back to the carrier, knocking out every electronic gee-gaw and instrument save for the gyrocompass. After being asked by the Midway’s comm shack if he wanted to attempt a trap on the carrier deck—sans all instruments and lights, at night, in a storm, no less—Reg opted for what’s known as “the better part of valor” and diverted to the airbase at Riyadh instead, where he landed his damaged aircraft without further trouble.

And that concludes tonight’s amazing tale of serendipitous coinkydink. You really just never know what you’re going to run across out there on the Innarnuts, do ya?

Men like Reg and Snodgrass are a breed apart for sure—capable men, courageous men, dauntless men, men without an ounce of give-up in ’em. Men whose vocabulary assuredly does NOT include discouraging words like “can’t” or “impossible.” As I so often say around here, we need all of such men we can get, and will never have enough of them. RIP, CAPT Snodgrass, and farewell. You too, Reggie.

Tyranny comes to your house

Posted on July 25, 2021July 25, 2021 by Mike 16 Comments

It’s roosting on our friend Wes’s doorstep even now.

Yesterday a news headline came to my attention that will affect mine and my families lives.

Charlotte hospitals announce mandatory COVID vaccine requirement for all employees

Charlotte hospital systems Atrium Health and Novant Health will begin requiring all workers get the COVID-19 vaccinations, hospital officials confirmed Thursday.

Atirum Health will require all workers — including remote workers, physicians, medical residents, faculty, fellows, trainees, contractors, medical staff, students, temporary workers and volunteer staff — to get vaccinated or have an approved medical or religious exemption by Oct. 31.

And Novant Health will require the same for all of its employees, contractors, vendors and students by Sept. 15.

My wife is a NICU Nurse and a damn good one. She loves saving babies. She doesn’t want to take the jab and refuses to take this experimental poison.

The fight it seems has now landed at my door. Will anyone help me? Or is it just my problem since your lives aren’t affected by this decision. I’ve got many friends whose wives are nurses and I heard from many of them yesterday. “What do we do?” was the question I was asked. The first option is to try for the religious exemption. Not sure how that is going to go over though with over half of their staff trying to claim it. Hospitals already don’t have enough staff for their patients, what happens when they lose even more staff due to the refusal to take their mandated poison? The second option? Well let’s just say they hope we don’t have to go there. Honestly though, the second option for me is the first, if you know what I mean.

The time to throw down draws near. Sooner or later it’s going to affect us all. All major employers will end up mandating the poison as a condition of employment, due to pressure from TPTB. Or how about if you have to have it to collect Social Security, unemployment, or just being a government employee. I’m tired of waiting for trouble to come to my door. Sadly they are slowly but surely backing good people into a corner. Trouble is here America, and 99% of the people have no clue how bad things can and will get.

Wes is one of a handful of blogosphere colleagues and allies I regularly correspond with; I know him as a good guy and consider him a friend, although we haven’t met face to face. The predicament he now finds himself in is extremely upsetting, even moreso since he’s also literally a neighbor of mine, located no more than 15-20 miles from where I live. Troubling doesn’t even BEGIN to cover it.

And that’s only the personal side of all this. Bottom line is, there’s some seriously unsavory shit going on, and it is now or soon will be on everyone’s agenda, not just one poor ol’ blogger and his spouse. The Überstate’s (Not)Vaxx goon squads are out and about, and they’re all around us. No matter who you are, no matter where you are, they’re coming for you. As Wes said, they are slowly but surely backing good people into a corner.

By now y’all know what I always say about these malefactors: They will not stop; they will have to BE stopped. As they relentlessly, arrogantly snatch all other options away from us one after another, we will soon find ourselves left with but one last, desperate resort. I don’t have to tell you folks what that is. I don’t know what I can possibly do to assist Wes, what any of us can do. What I DO know is that the inflection point, the hour of decision, is nigh upon us all. And none of us—not Wes, not me, not you —should have to face it alone.

Spicy time cometh, and that right soon. Gird your loins, people. Be ready.

What’s REALLY around the corner?

Posted on July 24, 2021July 24, 2021 by Mike 4 Comments

William Lind’s thought-provoking guest post at MVC’s place has a look-see, finds unpleasantness.

In the 1930s, a minor British novelist started writing a new book, which was not a novel. Instead, William Gerhardie proposed a theory of history he called “God’s Fifth Column,” which was also his book’s title. His theory was that, just at the point where everyone who was anyone agreed events would go in a certain direction, they instead headed off on a wild, wholly unpredicted tangent.

Gerhardie was inspired by the events of 1914 and their catastrophic consequences, in which we are still enmeshed. Prior to Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s ill-timed trip to Sarajevo—the head of Serbian military intelligence had multiple assassins positioned there—the elite consensus was that another great European war simply was not possible. All the powers’ economies were too intertwined. International trade was essential. Everyone’s stock market would collapse, banks would fail, there would be riots in the streets. Within Europe, the labor market was international; one German soldier taken early in the war said to his British captors, “I hope this is over soon so I can get back to my job driving a cab in Liverpool.” But war came anyway, though no one wanted it, or, afterward, could explain why it had been fought. And the Christian West died in the mud of Flanders and Galicia.

If we look at our present situation through the lens of Gerhardie’s God’s Fifth Column, what do we see?

After a run-down of some of the uglier things lying in wait for us just around said corner, Lind concludes:

Unlike in 1914, the advent of God’s Fifth Column in our time may not be bad news for conservatives. The “inevitable” future anticipated by the elites is a hellish combination of an absurd ideology, cultural Marxism (currently disguised as “wokeness”) with Brave New World. As Lance Morrow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal,

The struggle to which Americans, of whatever race, should be paying attention is the one that has to do with freedom. It has to do with privacy, mind control, individual liberties—with totalitarian systems of surveillance and manipulation perfecting themselves in an alliance of big tech, big government, global corporations and artificial intelligence. Wokeness…fronts for the real problem of the 21st century: a sinister autocracy just around the corner.

What’s really around the corner is God’s Fifth Column, and it will knock both “wokeness” and Brave New World out of the park.

Let’s hope. After all, something has to. GFC theory looks likely enough to be what does the trick in my opinion, particularly in light of two prospective stumbling-blocks:

It lines up quite smoothly with my own broken-record insistence that there is absolutely no way of knowing what shape the Coming Unpleasantness™ will take, nor what will result from it
The Left, in their purblind arrogance, always, always, always leaves the Hand of the Almighty out of their considerations entirely, which has knocked the pins out from under far better and smarter people than they’ll ever be

The only sure thing is that we’ll find out soon enough.

Meme-O-Rama

Posted on July 24, 2021July 24, 2021 by Mike 1 Comment

At Bookworm’s joint. So many, many pieces of rich, buttery goodness to enjoy therein it was hard to choose one to use here as a demonstrator model. So what the hell, I swiped three.

That last one’s my favorite. The one immediately under it, referencing Cuba, was a toughie to leave out, though.

Non-event

Posted on July 22, 2021July 22, 2021 by Mike 10 Comments

And suddenly, there may be a reason to care about the fucking Olympics.

Olympic Madness: Women’s Beach Handball Team Fined for Not Showing Enough Booty

“Madness”? Waitwaitwait a minute—is this guy saying he thinks showing more booty is a BAD thing?

Is it just me, or did the Olympics, once upon a time, actually have some credibility? Didn’t the Olympics used to be a gathering place for champions? A moment where nations shined and personal bests were achieved? The first stop on your way to a Wheaties box? I could swear it was not that long ago.

Credibility? From everything I’ve read over the years—which isn’t actually all that much, since I never did give a tinker’s damn about any fucking Olympics—and from what I saw living in Atlanta during the Olympics there back whenever the hell that was, the fucking Olympics have pretty much always been all about the corruption and graft, on the behind-the-scenes business end at least. Throw in whacking great gobs of gooey-eyed nonsense about “promoting international understanding and cooperation” and other such rot and it shouldn’t be too tough to understand my iron determination to avoid the whole emetic shebang.

That being said, can someone pinpoint for me exactly when the Olympics went from being something we all could believe in to the godforsaken sideshow it and the events that surround it are today? Can someone tell me why we should give more than 60 seconds of our time to whatever beleaguered media event is scheduled for Tokyo?

Not really, no. But I’m probably not the guy you wanna be asking.

The Norwegian Women’s Beach Handball team (and btw, what the hell is beach handball and when did it become an Olympic sport? What’s next, shuffleboard?) was fined $1,700 for choosing to wear shorts instead of bikini bottoms during competition. The team noted that the shorts were easier to play in, and I am reliably informed by an actual woman and not a “menstruating person” that during a woman’s period, bikini bottoms can be problematic at best, and disastrous at worst.

A measly 1700 clams? Hell, I doubt that will be anything like enough to get the Norwegian lassies back into the bikinis again, blast it. Although I will concede the point about the menstruation issue, if somewhat grudgingly.

Although the sanction was played down, the message is clear, whether the league officials approve it or not: People are expected to tune in to the Olympics to see scantily clad women, not athletes. Apparently, there is money to be made by blurring the line between sports fan and hormone-stricken teen. Or dirty old man.

NOW you’re singing my tune, buddy.

On the flip side, track and field Paralympian Olivia Breen was told at the English Championship that her shorts were too short.

Unpossible. Ain’t no such thing. Except on a fat broad, of course.

And as if that were not enough, another Paralympian, Becca Meyers, has withdrawn from the Tokyo games. Meyers is a swimmer and is blind and deaf. She was told she could not bring her caregiver with her. Did I mention that her caregiver is her mother? Never mind Becca Meyers’ needs or her dignity. Let’s get that blind and deaf girl in front of the cameras.

Okay, I will agree that does seem a pretty shitty thing to do. Pointless, petty, and self-defeating also, just a bonehead move all around. One wonders just what the hell those people were even thinking with that one.

So, the Norwegians are sanctioned for not showing enough skin—because, you know, sex and ratings and stuff. The Paralympians are sanctioned for being people and not merely disabled and checking the right box for the IOC, sponsors, and broadcasters. They have no value as athletes or as people. Once again, human beings are made into products.

So, for the sake of the Norwegian Women’s Beach Handball team, Olivia Breen, and Becca Meyers, when the Tokyo games begin, I would tell the IOC and whatever idiot legacy media outlet has the temerity to broadcast the games to go to hell. Go directly to hell.

Oh, I assure you I will be. The last few fucking Olympics came and went with me being completely unaware they were even going on at all, a streak I intend to extend by ignoring them again this year, or whenever it is these fucking Olympics are scheduled to take place. Not having to pretend I give a lumpy fart about the Games is a big ol’ win as far as I’m concerned.

That makes two of us

Posted on July 21, 2021July 21, 2021 by Mike 21 Comments

I’m with him.

The trouble with researching anything having to do with Covid-19 is that from the very beginning, the numbers have been falsified. When a person died in a motorcycle accident, who also had asymptomatic Covid, determined by a test that was being improperly used, i.e., at greater than 25 cycles, above that it is wildly inaccurate it, (the PCR test for Covid was usually run at 35-45 cycles) was listed as a Covid death. This was done to create fear and panic, drive lockdowns and mask mandates, all to the benefit of the government, it was a test of the people. As early as May 2020 Colorado had to reduce the number of Covid deaths by 25%. Coincidentally, Alameda County, in California, had to reduce their number of deaths by the same 25%. I doubt that the numbers were inflated by the same rate as a matter of coincidence.

No one knows exactly how many people died of Covid across the nation, so comparing those deaths with the deaths of those taking the injection is impossible. The interest of the state and the medical community pushing the injection leads one to believe that the numbers of those adversely affected by the injection would be similarly corrupted downward as the Covid deaths were pushed upward. But using what we have available from the CDC and VAERS reporting system, of the roughly 500,000 people who have so far had adverse reactions to the injection, 1.7% of them resulted in death. To keep the message clear, 1.7% does not reflect the percentage of people dying from the shot, just 1.7% of the people who suffered adverse reactions to it.

If 161,000,000 Americans have received the injection and there have been 11,000 deaths as a result that’s not that far off as a percentage of those who supposedly died of Covid where they were otherwise healthy with no comorbidities. That was enough to shut down the entire Western world, but a similar 99.993% survivability of the injection is regarded as “safe and effective.”

Either .003% deaths caused by a virus is nothing to worry about or .003% deaths caused by the injection is enough to stop the program in its tracks. It cannot logically be both.

Some of you greybeards among CF Lifers may remember the swine-flu panic of ’76; certain echoes from that clown-car act resound pretty powerfully today.

Swine flu ‘debacle’ of 1976 is recalled
Warren D. Ward, 48, was in high school when the swine flu threat of 1976 swept the U.S. The Whittier man remembers the episode vividly because a relative died in the 1918 flu pandemic, and the 1976 illness was feared to be a direct descendant of the deadly virus.

“The government wanted everyone to get vaccinated,” Ward said. “But the epidemic never really broke out. It was a threat that never materialized.”

What did materialize were cases of a rare side effect thought to be linked to the shot. The unexpected development cut short the vaccination effort — an unprecedented national campaign — after 10 weeks.

The episode triggered an enduring public backlash against flu vaccination, embarrassed the federal government and cost the director of the U.S. Center for Disease Control, now known as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, his job.

The pandemic fears of the time and the resulting vaccine controversy may be fueling some of the public’s — and media’s — anxiety about the current outbreak, said health officials who recalled the previous event.

Do note that the “current outbreak”rferenced above is NOT the Fauxvid scam. It’s actually the swine-flu rerun from 2009 they’re talking about.

Starting to sounding familiar at all yet? If not, just cool your jets, people, we ain’t anywheres NEAR done.

Ward said his family discussed the vaccine in 1976 and decided not to get it. If a vaccine is ordered for this latest threat, he said, “I’m not getting it. I felt back then like it was a bunch of baloney.”

The swine flu brush of 1976 — some call it a debacle — holds crucial lessons for the government and health officials who must decide how to react to the new swine flu threat in the days and weeks ahead.

For starters, officials must keep the public informed. They must admit what they know and don’t know. They must have a plan ready should the health threat become dangerous. And they must reassure everyone that there is no need to worry in the meantime.

Okay, that’s a departure from the past year and a half’s shitshow: instead of trying to “reassure everyone that there is no need to worry,” today’s goobermint “health” and Enemedia apparatchiki have gone well out of their way to sow as much panic as they could.

Officials should be prepared for plenty of second-guessing, especially for any decisions regarding vaccination, which was at the core of the 1976 controversy, said Dr. David J. Sencer, the CDC director who led the government’s response to the threat and was later fired.

Fired, eh? Gee, if only somebody had pulled then-President Trump aside in January of 2017 and quietly re-introduced him to that word. Herr “Doktor” Fauci would have long since been frogmarched to the exit—him, and a whole bunch of others along with him— and we’d all be much better off for it.

“There were good things and bad things about it,” said Sencer, who is retired and lives in the Atlanta area. “People have to make science the priority. They have to rely on science rather than politics.”

The question of whether politics overtook science in 1976 has been the fodder of books, articles and discussions for 33 years.

Whoooa NELLIE. Not repeating, perhaps, but rhyming all to hell and gone. And now we come to the part (bold mine) that’s really gonna ring your bell.

At the CDC, Sencer solicited the opinions of infectious disease specialists nationwide and, in March, called on President Ford and Congress to begin a mass inoculation.

The $137-million program began in early October, but within days reports emerged that the vaccine appeared to increase the risk for Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological condition that causes temporary paralysis but can be fatal.

Waiting in long lines at schools and clinics, more than 40 million Americans — almost 25% of the population — received the swine flu vaccine before the program was halted in December after 10 weeks.

More than 500 people are thought to have developed Guillain-Barre syndrome after receiving the vaccine; 25 died. No one completely understands the causes of Guillain-Barre, but the condition can develop after a bout with infection or following surgery or vaccination. The federal government paid millions in damages to people or their families.

Got that, folks? In 1976, 25 deaths were all it took to bring a vaccine program to a screeching, smoking halt. But that was then, and this is…not. Today, with untold thousands of deaths caused by the untested, unproven, and extremely shady chemical cocktail which they claim is a “vaccine” but which does none of the things actual vaccines are by definition supposed to do, our FederalGovCo “health” bureaucracy prefers to continue imperiously pressuring rightly-skeptical Americans into taking the NotVaxx; censoring all discussion of the various issues involved; and blacklisting those of us who have absolutely no intention of surrendering to the dubious-at-best mass propaganda campaign and submit to the Jab.

This is what is some call “progress.” Back to TL for the closer.

These globalists feel above the rest of humanity. They have no compassion or interest in letting the rest of us alone. We are a bother and a nuisance. They don’t see the rest of us as human beings, we are just the masses that eat too much, drive too much and destroy everything with our multitude. In their minds, if they could get robots to serve them food, laugh at jokes and fill the jet with fuel, etc., they could get rid of 90% of humanity and wouldn’t it be so cool to ski Aspen with just friends and family?

Keep in mind they have tried to reduce the population with wars and internal conflict, constantly finding ways to divide us. They’ve done it by destroying the nuclear family. They’ve done it by trying to pit white against black, black against Asian, Hispanic against black. They’ve done it with the influx of drugs, the increase in sexual slavery and abortion. Wherever there’s a chance to increase war or reduce population, they’ve facilitated it in any way they could. If a world war won’t do it without destroying everything they want to keep, perhaps a world-wide poisoning would be better.

Trust us, sayeth the goobermint? Not on your life, sez I.

I think it’s easier to eliminate those with such a mindset than to wipe out ninety percent of humanity to accommodate it. But that’s just me.

Not just you, buddy. And at the risk of pointing out something entirely obvious here, allow me to say that—purely as a practical matter—it would be a lot easier to eliminate THEM instead. There are far fewer of ’em, for one thing, which spares our precious Gaia from the serious harm having to dig a bunch of mass graves or burn all those greasy corpses would cause. Plus, in ethical terms it’s no more than what the rotten bastards deserve.

Whistling past the graveyard

Posted on July 21, 2021July 21, 2021 by Mike Leave a comment

Wherein I must take issue with something ZMan says, which I’ll put in bold.

One of the underappreciated qualities of liberal democracy is its ability to grow and develop its own opposition. In the Cold War this was not obvious as communism in the form of the Soviet Empire filled the role. Domestically, the inner party had the outer party as a fixed partner. Democrats controlled domestic policy, with some mild opposition from the Republicans. On the other hand, the Republicans controlled foreign policy with some mild dissent from the Democrats.

This partnership collapsed when the Soviet Union collapsed. A year after the voters overwhelmingly approved the appointment of former C.I.A. man George H. W. Bush as the successor to Ronald Reagan, the logic of having spooks run the country no longer made much sense. The system quickly pivoted to Saddam Hussein as a temporary fill in for the evil empire, but he was a poor replacement. In the next election the Cold War generation was replaced with the Woodstock generation.

The Clinton years were really just an interregnum. The system needed to learn how to create new enemies. We got the beginnings of the great Islamic enemy and an effort to recreate the holocaust in the Balkans. It was not until the son of the former C.I.A. man that we got the threat of international Islam as the new enemy. Fear of men on flying carpets carried the system into the Obama years. Toward the end of his second term, the search for a new enemy had started.

The crusade against the Mohammedans was the first full attempt to recreate that old magic and provide the regime with legitimacy and authority. It is why 9/11 became a solemn holiday celebrated by both sides of the regime. Even though the left-liberals opposed the right-liberals in the prosecution of the crusade, they completely accepted the origin of it and the centrality of it. Note that the last anniversary of 9/11 came and went without much ceremony. It no longer matters.

Actually, umm, no. Not just no—HELL NO.

After thousands of dead and dozens of serious terrorist acts in the US alone since 9/11; tens of thousands of jihadist attacks around the world in what you might call the modern era, ongoing since the 1970s; and the ceaseless campaign of conquest and domination Muslims have waged since their twisted pseudo-religion’s inception in the 7th Century AD, the notion of any unwarranted “crusade” against Muzzrats contrived for purposes of subterfuge by the goobermint is laughably absurd. Nobody, but nobody, needs to make up a goddamned thing about the threat posed to Western Civ by jihadis; they’ve made that abundantly clear all by themselves, thanksveddymuch.

Not that the goobermint WOULDN’T do such a thing, mind. It’s just that in this particular case, they don’t have to. Steyn offers just one example that proves the point.

Kurt Westergaard and I were successive winners of the Danish Free Press Society’s Sappho Award. I was very flattered to find myself in his company, but couldn’t honestly say I deserved to be. Kurt was one of the bravest men of our time – not because he was inclined to bravery, but simply because, when it was required, he met the challenge and never backed down.

Sixteen years ago Flemming Rose of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten decided to conduct a thought experiment in public after an author casually revealed that he couldn’t find any Danish artist willing to illustrate his book about “the Prophet Mohammed” (as the BBC now routinely styles him). So Flemming called twelve cartoonists and invited them to depict the late Prophet. Kurt Westergaard’s cartoon was the memorable one, and the one you recall as the years roll by. It was a pithy visual jest: Mohammed’s turban as a bomb with a lit fuse. See picture at top right.

“I attempted to show that terrorists get their spiritual ammunition from parts of Islam, and with this spiritual ammunition, and with dynamite and other explosives, they kill people,” Kurt told my old newspaper The National Post a few years back. “I showed this in a cartoon and what happened? They want to kill me, so I think I was right.”

Like most of the men and women I have shared a stage with in Europe this century, he was an old Sixties radical sufficiently principled to think the same kind of jokes he’d applied to church, monarchy, parliament and every other societal institution should also be applied to Islam. He never wanted to be a “free speech hero”, but gamely bore the burthen once it had been dropped on him. He certainly never wanted to be world-famous, albeit more so in Mogadishu than Manhattan and Lahore than Los Angeles. It cost him a comfortable retirement, weakened his health, and an ever more craven culture denied him the consolations of monetary exploitation. When I expressed sympathy, he laughed and said he’d do the same cartoon all over again even knowing what he was in for.

The blood lust began with a trio of imams on the make shopping the twelve cartoons (plus three cruder fakes) round the Muslim world, and leaving it to the usual Islamonutters to take it from there: In nothing flat, over two hundred people were dead – which meant that CNN & Co were obliged to cover the story. They did so by modifying Westergaard’s cartoon, with Mohammed’s face pixilated, as if he’d entered the witness protection programme. If only. In reality, it was that dwindling band of people who believe in free speech – and, indeed, free speech itself – that found itself in the witness protection programme.

And so it went on. On the fifth anniversary of the cartoons, I was being interviewed in Copenhagen by Flemming Rose and his colleagues when we were alerted that a one-legged Chechen had accidentally self-detonated in his hotel room en route to blow them up. Whenever I tell this story, the phrase “one-legged Chechen” always gets a laugh, although it is in fact no laughing matter hopping across an hotel room with a homemade bomb. But these guys are always a laughingstock, aren’t they? Until, as at Charlie Hebdo, they finally pull it off.

To the end of his life, al-Qa’eda and its affiliates had a combined eight-figure bounty on Kurt Westergaard’s head. His death, a day after his eighty-sixth birthday, prompted a few Scandinavian chums to assure me that he’d had the last laugh – that now no jihadist would ever collect those multi-millions.

Maybe. But the excitable Mohammedans aren’t really the issue; the unexcitable west is. On the home front we are remorselessly trading core liberties for a supposed quiet life and congratulating ourselves for doing so. The most lauded cartoonist in America, Garry Trudeau, took it upon himself – in prepared remarks delivered on stage – to blame the dead of Charlie Hebdo for getting themselves murdered. Trudeau’s rationale is that in mocking Islam these cartoonists are “punching down” at a disadvantaged minority – as opposed to doing what Trudeau has been doing for half-a-century and having the guts to “punch up” by attacking the, er, GOP. Only in the crapped out monodailies of the dying American media could this talentless twerp become wealthy and important.

For my own part, I would have liked Kurt Westergaard to have outlived the far inferior draughtsman Trudeau. In my initial reaction to the Motoon crisis, I channeled Nelson Eddy:

The minute there were multimillion-dollar bounties on those cartoonists’ heads, The Times of London and Le Monde and The Washington Post and all the rest should have said ‘This Thursday we’re all publishing all the cartoons. If you want to put bounties on all our heads, you better have a great credit line at the Bank of Jihad. If you want to kill us, you’ll have to kill us all. You can kill ten who are stout-hearted men but you’ll have to kill ten thousand more. We’re standing shoulder to shoulder, and bolder and bolder.’

But they didn’t do that. And as the years passed, in the leading cities of the west, even the rote pro forma defenses of free speech grew fainter and faded away. Kurt Westergaard bore a decade-and-a-half of continuous murder threats – coupled with indifference and condescension from Trudeau and other pampered eminences of his own profession – with good humor, steely determination, and no doubts about the justice of his cause. We need more like him. Rest in peace.

Seconded, most heartily. As Steyn said, we need more like him—as many as we can possibly get. If you truly think we’ve all been misled into unjustly considering Mooselimbs a deadly, and deadly-serious, enemy, you got some more thinking to do, I’m afraid.

Oldie but goodie

Posted on July 21, 2021July 21, 2021 by Mike 7 Comments

Aesop reruns an old post of his from 2018, a remembrance of the first moon landing on its anniversary, and it’s an inspiring read.

Fifty-two years ago today, and just a few hours from now, is the exact anniversary of when 50,000 steely-eyed missile men, crew-cutted geeks with pocket protectors, test pilots, fighter pilots, and hundreds of metric tons of raw testosterone kicked the rest of the world’s ass right to the bottom of the heap, going back to the dawn of time, from the moment that Eagle landed, to when this guy’s foot stepped off the LEM ladder.

Neil Armstrong, ace X-15 test pilot, and mission commander of Apollo XI, became the first man from earth to ever set foot on the Moon, and if and until we ever get people to Mars, he put every explorer in history, and even every guy to follow, below him on what Tom Wolfe correctly called “the top of the pyramid.”

He was there because he and his sidekick, lunar module pilot, and outside-the-box revolutionary thinker Buzz Aldrin had managed to land the lunar module manually, off course, and with mere seconds remaining for landing before a crash-tastrophe, because you don’t fly 250,000 miles to puss out at the last 12 seconds, just for such piddling concerns as running out of fuel.

As I said, a fine read, well worth a look in. But the real reason I brought it up was so I could rerun something my own self, something near and dear to my coal-black heart: the absolutely immortal vid of eternal badass Aldrin poking one of those stupid-ass moon-landing deniers right in the snoot.

Heh. Fatass gets all up in the grill of a bona fide American hero and defames him as “a coward and a liar,” Fatass gets what he has coming to him without further ado. It’s beautiful, that’s what.

I mean, the nerve of that honking, sebacious tub of goo. If Aldrin had shot the bastard down and left him for dead on the sidewalk, I’da stood up and cheered till my throat was sore. As it is, that footage ain’t NEVER getting old as far as I’m concerned, not if I live to be a hunnert and fitty. What’s captured therein is, basically, everything that’s wrong with America today juxtaposed with everything that was once right about it. They just don’t make ’em like Buzz Aldrin anymore, folks, which is precisely why we are where we now are.

Fly Fall from the friendly skies!

Posted on July 21, 2021 by Mike 7 Comments

Man, I sure am getting a lot of mileage lately from that old ad slogan, ain’t I?

It seems like a really bad idea, yet it’s one United Airlines reportedly just bought into – probably for many millions of dollars (the actual sum hasn’t been disclosed). It will “invest” in the development – italics to emphasize the nonexistence at present – of the ES-19, an electric aircraft that exists on the drawing board only. This hypothetical aircraft is being developed by a Swedish company with the cloying name, Heart Aerospace – which summons images of kumba-ya’ing around the campfire in a collective hug.

But will it fly?

Not with me in it, it won’t. Not ever, not one single time.

It is claimed that the ES-19 will have a range of about 250 miles – which is just barely enough to make the short hop from DC Dulles to a regional airport such as Roanoke, in SW Virginia. With very little margin to spare. What happens if the plane needs to circle, as because of traffic or weather?

Maybe it would be a good idea to equip this one with parachutes rather than flotation devices.

People who know airplanes raise other pertinent questions, such as the drain on the electric airplane’s batteries during taxiing from the terminal to the runway, which as anyone who flies commercially knows sometimes takes half an hour or more. All the while, the heat or AC must be running, in addition to the lights and all the plane’s electrical systems. Does the advertised 250 mile range factor these considerations in?

The FAA nominally requires redundancies and margins-of-error for commercial aircraft especially. It is why, for instance, commercial aircraft that fly over the ocean must be able to remain in the air if one or more engines cut out.

What if the batteries cut out?

Which – it bears repeating – it is more likely to because an electric airplane will necessarily be heavier than a jet-powered airplane because of the massive weight of the batteries that will be necessary to drive electric props sufficiently powerful to get it in the air. But the weight of all those batteries will necessarily reduce the amount of time it can remain in the air.

If it smells of unicorn farts, your nose is working.

Astute commenter Baxter raises a glaringly obvious potential-failure-point issue that leaves one totally mystified as to what the everlasting fuck the Supergenii™ skull-sweating over this fever-dream could possibly be thinking—besides MUH GAIA!!!, that is.

Other things to think about: Batteries suck when it gets cold. Forget an electric car in the winter when it’s 20 degrees F. Planes need to fly high where there is less air friction. Think about a plane (summer or winter, doesn’t matter) at 35,000 feet where it’s 65 degrees below zero F. Plane batteries will obviously need to be heated. Where does that heat come from? The batteries, limiting range even more so.

Obviously, as with the Goobermint-decreed transition from ICE cars to useless, unreliable, and unsafe coal-powered ones, the hidden agenda here is to eventually eliminate flying altogether. Except for the Kommissars, natch. They’ll still carry on as before, just without having to sully themselves with any unpleasant physical proximity to us beastly, smelly serfs in the airport cocktail lounge anymore. The vlasti won’t be replacing their in-flight steak or burger with the new bug-beef they’re foisting off on us proles either, you betcher.

Breaking down the breakdown

Posted on July 20, 2021 by Mike 2 Comments

As I’ve said in a different but very much related context: a process, not an event.

How Breakdown Cascades Into Collapse
Maintaining the illusion of confidence, permanence and stability serves the interests of those benefiting from the bubbles and those who prefer the safety of the herd, even as the herd thunders toward the precipice.

The misconception that collapse is an all or nothing phenomenon is common: Either the system rights itself with a bit of money-printing and rah-rah or it collapses into post-industrial ruin and gangs are battling over the last stash of canned beans.

Neither scenario considers the fragility and resilience of the socio-economic system as a whole. It is both far more fragile than the believers in the permanence of the waste is growth model grasp and more resilient than the complete collapse prognosticators grasp.

The recent relatively mild logjams in global supply chains of essentials are mere glimpses of precariously fragile delivery-supply systems. These can be understood as bottlenecks that only insiders see, or as unstable nodes through which all the economy’s connections run. Put another way, the economy’s as a network appears decentralized and robust, but this illusion vanishes when we consider how the entire economy rests on a few unstable nodes.

One such node is the delivery of gasoline and fuels. It’s such an efficient and reliable system that 99.9% of us take it for granted: there will always be plenty of gasoline at every station, the tanks of jet fuel will always be topped off, and so on.

The 0.1% know that this system, once disrupted, would knock over dominoes all through the economy.

Hyper-efficiency and hyper-globalization has reduced the number of producers of essentials to the point that disruptions cannot be overcome with redundant sources. We see this everywhere in the global economy: a handful of plants and companies (sometimes a single source of essential components) process or manufacture essential components in much larger systems.

This is how you end up with thousands of newly manufactured vehicles parked in lots awaiting one critical part that is in short supply.

We’ve seen this movie before; we already know how it ends, or we should. Yet somehow, a great many of us seem unable—or unwilling, perhaps—to learn.

Voluntary enslavement

Posted on July 18, 2021July 18, 2021 by Mike 18 Comments

To adjust and update an old expression: Nobody can ~~take advantage of~~ oppress you without your permission.

For those keeping score, this has not been America since Randy Weaver’s Ruby Ridge home was invaded by the FBI and/or U.S. Marshals in 1992, killing his wife Vickie and son Sam. For which, the U.S. Government, i.e., the U.S. taxpayer, paid $3.1 million dollars in damages. The settlement signaled that government agents were liable for the unwarranted deaths, but no one was held responsible.

These events (Ruby Ridge and Waco—M) are not “when” the U.S. Government went off the rails, but it’s when they decided they were beyond reproach by the American people. These events signaled to them that they could do whatever their perverted minds dreamed up if it were associated with some minor crime better dealt with individually, privately and less confrontationally. But that wouldn’t send the message they wanted, which is that they are in control of the people, not the other way around.

Having been successful in defaming and indeed murdering many, many more over the years, their lack of accountability has only emboldened them to greater depths until they have completely lost a sense of humanity. The people are merely cattle to be controlled and occasionally murdered for the sake of optics. It bothers them no more than stepping on a cockroach or two to scatter the rest. Thousands of people died as a direct result of the orders of Governor Andrew Cuomo and he has suffered no penalties, even written books to honor his brilliance.

We are not free; we are not endowed with rights by our Creator. We are wards of the state; property and when defective (free) we are subject to the penalty of death. That is their message to us. They are right. They do have the power. They do have the absolution of the state for their evil. One person, a free person, does not stand a chance against the weight of arms we have put in their hands. They can come and slaughter us all, one by one, or burn our house down in the middle of the night, blocking the doors, shooting through the windows as human beings try to save their lives (they’ve done it before). They can launch a drone strike. They can deny us employment. They can deny us food. They can deny us water. They can inject us with some infectious disease or poison. But they cannot do it alone.

Like all agents of the state, they act with the authority of the people. While they might respond only to presidents, governors, mayors, county commissions as being in the chain of command, all of those positions require at least the assumed authority of the people. Even in the darkest days of communism in Russia, it was with the acquiescence of the people that they acted. It was the blind-eye of society that allowed it. No group of individuals has the power of the people unless the people acquiesce in some manner to their power.

The only real question to be asked of the people is when is enough, enough?

That seems to be the question on pretty much everyone’s mind these days, the question we’re all on tenterhooks waiting to see answered. If history is any guide, and I have to believe that it is, that answer will come from an entirely unlooked-for place, at a hideously unpropitious moment, and will be a far cry from anything any of us have predicted or expected. Analyzing, debating, and thoughtful consideration are all fine things—maybe even necessary things, crucial things. But in the end, all of them will be blown away on the wind like the smoke they truly are. We can only ready ourselves as best we can…and then wait.

No, we won’t be getting those flying cars either

Posted on July 18, 2021July 18, 2021 by Mike 5 Comments

The future ain’t nearly as bright as it used to be.

When I was born in 1971, we were just two years removed from the first manned moon landing. There would be a total of six manned landings, all by Americans, from July of 1969 to a a few weeks before my first birthday. I was born at the peak of the age of space exploration. As a kid I remember watching the shuttle launches and I recall pretty vividly the Challenger disaster in 1986 while I was at school. Growing up we watched Star Trek on TV and saw Star Wars, E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind in the theater. It seemed to us that we were on the cusp of exploring space, a new age of discovery where humankind would escape the bonds of earth, conquer the stars and perhaps even make contact with aliens! The future was bright.

As a child in the 1970s and 80s, 2020 seemed like a long way into the distant future and while we couldn’t predict what that would bring, it was assumed it would bring a progressively better society and that space exploration and great technological achievement would make life immeasurably better. Colonies on the moon and even Mars were just assumed to be the natural near-future next steps.

Instead we get billionaire vanity projects.

Space is no longer the final frontier, at least not for the bulk of humanity. It will become the playground for the ultra-wealthy. According to Space.com, seats on Branson’s Virgin Galactic will run around $250,000 each. There are lots of people who can afford that but the vast majority of humanity will not. As chaos descends on the world, can we be far from seeing space colonies where the wealthy can flee from the devastation? The proles will be ordered to drive tiny electric cars to “save the environment” while the ultra-rich blast off on huge rockets to take selfies in space, just like we will be told to eat the bugs to reduce our climate footprint while the rich eat steak.

That starry eyed kid I used to be in the 1970s is facing the ugly reality of life in the 2020s. It isn’t a bright future for humanity but a slow war of attrition that a small cabal of elites are winning.

I don’t dream about space travel anymore, I just dream of a future where my family will be left alone. Even something that simple seems as fantastical as exploring the stars.

The Once-Great Nation status inflicted on us by the revanchist Left is not all it’s cracked up to be, not by a long yard. The ironic thing is that once we’re all fully and firmly settled in and resigned to a third-world lifestyle, they’re the ones who are going to be most miserable living it. Pretty much everything that makes Proggie’s preferred big-city, citizen-of-the-world living arrangement so appealing to him—high-tech personal electronic gadgetry; reliable and affordable household electricity, powering advanced appliances and conveniences; ubiquitous Internet access points, most of them free of charge; ethnic restaurants; a fulsome glut of entertainment/nightlife choices; trucked-in fresh fruit and vegetables, &c—will assuredly NOT be available in the dismal Neolithic-era civilization they so shrilly advocate.

As always, Leftist useful idiots blithely assume that they’ll be exempt from the privation and disaster created by their ideological and political preferences—that their delusional self-definition as the Good, Smart, and Moral Ones forever immunizes them against the consequences of their own unworkable stupidity. Our only consolation is that, as they find themselves blindfolded and marched over to be put against the wall and shot down like dogs—UNEXPECTEDLY!!!™—the looks of shock and disbelief on their once-hopeful faces are always priceless. Happens every time.

Fly the friendly freaky skies

Posted on July 17, 2021July 17, 2021 by Mike 3 Comments

Al in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.

Source at @JetBlue just sent this to me. Male flight attendants with stubble in dresses.

It’s real and it’s out of control.

Apparently passengers are pissed off, and between this and the BLM nonsense at JFK, pilots are ready for a job action. pic.twitter.com/U3zOeFH4OK

— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) July 15, 2021

The story:

The “Woke” and Transgender movements are helping to destroy the country and it just might help to damage Jet Blue.

The airline now allegedly allows male flight attendants to dress up as women.

Jet Blue Airlines, which did announce that they were going to reinvent what it’s like to fly ‘coach,’ appears to have caved to suspected pressure that presumed gay or transgender men have asked to dress like female flight attendants.

Ironically, one of their slogans is ‘Inspiring Humanity.’

What the hell, why the fuck not. Although I do have to wonder if, given the guy in the pic’s overall lumberjack-ish appearance, he really is a mentally-derailed Gender Negotiable type intent on inflicting his degeneracy on Jet Blue and all who sail in her, or instead just some poor male model desperate enough for work to hire himself out to JB and publicly beclown himself in such spectacular fashion.

I have a good friend who used to hang around the H-D shop a lot back in the Aulden Thymes, fella we all used to call Franky Load In The Pants for reasons I shan’t specify right now (trust me, it’s hilarious), who flies 7-7-7’s for Jet Blue nowadays. I’ll have to inquire next time I see him what his thoughts are on this. I can readily imagine, knowing him as I do, but seeing him express himself on this issue is bound to be a real scream.

Then again, maybe I should just leave well enough alone. Frankie has always been known as quite the practical joker, see. He once got suspended when he was flying twin-turboprop puddlejumpers for USAir some years back, for strategically placing several of those plastic fast-food packs of Texas Pete under a toilet seat in the Ladies’ of the USAir office, arranging them in such a way that they’d burst and squirt all over the victim’s legs when sat upon…or so he thought. To Frank’s horror, a burly bull-dagger av-mech went in to take a whiz (standing up, I’m sure) whilst he was standing in the office jawboning with a few fellow USAir employees, all of them just loitering around waiting to see what would end up happening.

What ended up happening: Miz Muscledyke plopped her big, granite-muscled ass heavily down and immediately got herself an agonizing Texas Pete snootch-bath. She was extremely irate about this, because good lord who wouldn’t be. Having one’s delicate naughty parts unexpectedly doused with fire-liquid would sorely tax anybody’s sense of humor, a trait with which angry flatrockers aren’t noted for being overmuch blessed in the first place.

Frank later said the second he heard said man-hater’s throaty, enraged bellows offering perfectly credible vows of swift and deadly vengeance, he ran out the door and away as if he had a no-shit T- Rex on his heels, which in a sense he damned sure did. The offended ladyman knew quite well who was responsible for the painful hot-sauce douche; all the evidence anybody who knew him would ever have needed to identify the culprit was the presence nearby of Frank and a crew of several others standing around, smirking and sniggering each time some poor dame walked even somewhat close to the little goils’ room.

The victim reported Frank’s ass to Higher with a quickness, and said ass very nearly got canned over it. Instead, the airline let him off with a month at leisure sans pay and a black mark on his Permanent Record, to the surprise of one and all. Not long after the Texas Pete incident—plus an unfortunately timed followup episode involving a belly cargo-door that Frank neglected to properly secure, which resulted in a barrage of suitcases and loose freight all over the end of the runway and neighboring warehouse roofs once the aircraft was wheels-up and climbing to cruise altitude—it was up, up, and away to Jet Blue for Pranky Franky, where near as I can determine he seems to have refrained from further actionable mischief. So far.

So yeah, as a preventive measure to assist him in staying out of trouble with his current employers and colleagues, I believe I’ll just keep my trap shut about this revoltin’ development. If Frankie Load has any opinions on it, he can share them with me on his own hook, without any prompting from me. I’m no troublemaker, nosirree.

Update! I should probably point out, in Frank’s defense, that he is actually a very talented and conscientious pilot, having been in the cockpit of one type of aircraft or another ever since he was but a young chap. Frank’s dad was a pilot also, and started teaching his son early on. Frank himself owns a Cessna 172 and has for years, spending a tremendous amount of time slipping the surly bonds both professionally and recreationally. I’ve never flown with him myself, but Goose has and says he’s a very skilled pilot, against all the expectations one might reasonably form from the above tale. My brother, a licensed, multiengine and IFR-rated flight instructor and a natural talent himself, also commends Frank as being one of those people who has that natural gift for it that distinguishes the true pilot from the run-of-the-mill hackabouts who will most likely end up dead someday because they ran out of gas. Frank’s just a goof, that’s all.

All the news that’s fit to print

Posted on July 16, 2021July 16, 2021 by Mike 1 Comment

Nitzakhon has helpfully put together a virtual one-stop clearinghouse for info on Fauxvid, the “vaccines,” and all other related topics over at the Torch. Nice work, buddy.

Secession Nation

Posted on July 16, 2021July 16, 2021 by Mike Leave a comment

The South will rise again?

Two in three Republicans in the South support SECEDING from the US while almost half of Democrats out West say the same, survey finds
A whopping two-thirds of Republicans in the South favor seceding from the United States while nearly half of Democrats in the Pacific region and almost 40 percent in the Northeast say the same, according to a new survey.

Support for secession is also considerable among independents in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions, where 43 percent say they would favor breaking away and forming their own country.

Half of independents in the South also favor secession while 43 percent of Republicans in the Rocky Mountain states share the same view.

The survey, which was conducted by Bright Line Watch, polled 2,750 respondents. The figures were published in the June 2021 edition of the Bright Line Watch Survey Wave 15 Dataset.

Overall, support for secession was highest in the South, where 44 percent said they favored breaking away from the Union.

Interesting. But then, how surprising can it really be that the descendants of the folks who already tried once to divorce themselves from what they recognized as a contra-Constitutional government might turn out to be sympathetic to the idea still, now that federal tyranny has finally blossomed fully?

It’s hardly just the South that’s fed up and wants out of an ever-more intrusive Union though, if this article is correct. Here’s the truly telling part:

In the Northeast, about one in three (34 percent) favored secession. Nearly the same percentage of respondents – 32 percent – in the Mountain region favored secession.

Thirty percent of those surveyed from the Heartland also backed the idea, while 39 percent of those in the Pacific states said they, too, supported it.

The survey from June found that there was an increase across the board in the number of Americans who supported the idea of secession.

In January, just after President Joe Biden was sworn in, Bright Line Watch conducted a similar survey asking the same question.

It found that fewer Americans in each of the five designated regions supported secession.

In the Northeast, 32 percent of voters said they supported seceding from the US. In the South, it was just 33 percent – with half of Republicans backing the idea.

In the Heartland, less than one in four supported seceding while 28 percent of those in the Mountain region said the same.
In the Pacific, just one in three Americans backed the idea of secession.

Well well well well WELL. Wonder what might’ve brought about this change in attitude among so many of us?

Whatever the case may be, perhaps Charlie Daniels (PBUH) had a touch of clairvoyance back in the 70s. Admittedly, he was talking strictly about music, but still.

Build a better mousetrap, and the world will be…ejected from your porch

Posted on July 16, 2021July 16, 2021 by Mike 2 Comments

I want one.

U.S.—An American manufacturer has been overwhelmed with preorders for its brand new “ejection porch,” which is specially designed to detect when Biden’s vaccine evangelists are at your door so it can launch them into the stratosphere.

“Excuse me, sir, do you have a few minutes to talk about our lord and savior Dr. Fau– AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” said one door-to-door vaccine auditor after the advanced technology in the porch detected his whiny and annoying government vaccine-evangelist voice and launched him into the sky, above the clouds, and out of sight.

For anyone who can’t afford an advanced and costly porch upgrade, the company is selling handy signs to hang on your porch to tell them to get lost.

In a first for the Babylon Bee, that last line appears NOT to be satire:

NOT SATIRE: Keep Biden’s minions away from your house with this Vaccine Door Sign. Get your actual, very real, not satirical, Vaccine Door Sign. There is limited stock, click here to get yours now!

Here’s the sign:

i want one of those too. Although probably I’ll just make my own and print it at home. IMHO, some MUCH stronger wording is called for here.

Behold, the Useful Idiot

Posted on July 16, 2021July 16, 2021 by Mike 3 Comments

In all his dimbulb glory.

This meme has been floating around here and there the last several days, and all the versions I’ve seen have the Dread “N” Word bowdlerized. Such excessive delicacy has always mystified and annoyed the hell out of me. As y’all HAVE to know by now, delicacy and flinching away from the proper spelling-out of certain terms via asterisk—f**k, n***er, s**t, and so on, to include C**k for Cuck, which isn’t even a cuss word at all, strictly speaking—to me represents a failure of nerve, if not just outright dishonesty and cowardice. Really, now: can there be an adult so innocent that he doesn’t know what lurks underneath those supposedly kinder, gentler asterisks? So ignorant that he’s incapable of deciphering the code? So fragile that the mere sight of a bit of some undressed Anglo-Saxonisms might do him actual, quantifiable injury?

None of that silliness, not for me. I decided long ago that such-like daintiness would be verboten at CF, and I mean to stick to that. It ain’t exactly polite, I admit, but then neither am I. I’m a nice enough fella, mind; certainly, my vocabulary is broad enough to enable me to function competently in a wide variety of social milieus. But in the end, as a trucker, a biker, a Harley mechanic, a rock and roller, and a New York bartender, I’ve lived a roughneck’s life, and I talk that way, and ain’t gonna apologize for it. So I figured I’d just make my own uncensored version, and let the chips fall accordingly. Anyone who gets his boxers in a bunch over it is cordially invited to go soak his head.

SHOCKER: “American” Communists refuse to denounce Communism, won’t help anti-Communist protesters!!!

Posted on July 15, 2021July 16, 2021 by Mike 2 Comments

Somebody should tell Cuban protesters that the US flag they’re waving no longer stands for what they think it does.

On Sunday, thousands of Cubans chanted “Freedom!” “Enough!” and “We want liberty!” as they marched on Havana’s Malecon promenade. “People in Cuba are protesting 62 years of socialism, lies, tyranny & misery,” tweeted Sen. Marco Rubio, “not ‘expressing concern about rising COVID-19 cases/deaths.’ Why is it so hard for @Potus & the people in his administration to say that?”

Sen. Rubio was referencing a statement by Julie Chung, acting assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs. As Chung explained, “Peaceful protests are growing in #Cuba as the Cuban people exercise their right to peaceful assembly to express concern about rising COVID cases/deaths & medicine shortages.” The protesting Cubans, yearning to breathe free, might wonder what Chung is talking about.

As Nestor Almendros documented in Improper Conduct, Fidel Castro banished homosexuals to forced labor camps. As Orlando Jimenez-Leal showed in 8-A, Castro held a show-trial for General Arnaldo Ochoa and fellow officers, all executed. Fidel Castro called American jazz the “music of the enemy” and jailed trumpeter Arturo Sandoval for listening to the Voice of America. Saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera defected in 1981 but it was ten years before the Castro regime would allow his family to join him.

The Voice of America report on the Sunday protest did not use the word “Communist” or “dictatorship” in regard to the Cuban regime. “President” Diaz-Canel, who blamed the protest on a “Cuban-American mafia,” is not described as a dictator or Communist, a word that does not appear in the report. Julie Chung and national security advisor Jake Sullivan invoked “universal rights” but indulged no criticism of the Communist dictatorship. This now seems to be the pattern at the Voice of America (VOA).

During the 2020 primaries, Bernie Sanders said Fidel Castro “totally transformed the society.” No word about mass executions, the rationing of food, political prisoners, and more than half a century of Stalinist repression. For the Rip Van Winkle communist and his leftist “squad,” Cuba is the Buena Vista Socialist Club, the sort of arrangement they want to see in America.

The addled Joe Biden is only a figurehead, and the Sanders faction is now prevailing. That’s why it’s hard for anyone in the administration to say anything about Cuba’s 62 years of socialism, lies, tyranny and misery.

Well, naturally. Why on earth would we expect Amerika v2.0’s homegrown Commies to denounce Communism in Cuba, or for that matter anyplace else? They’re all playing for the same team—yesterday, today, and forever. God bless Cuba’s brave freedom fighters, but God help ’em if they’re relying on the FUSA to step in and lend a hand in their struggle against tyranny. There’s no help coming from here.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez (R) recently wrote:

“The Cuban regime’s military police are shooting unarmed Cuban protestors fighting for freedom. 60 years of communism, cruelty, & oppression cannot last any longer! We are imploring the USA to take action as we peacefully demonstrate on the streets of Miami.”

And the protests by the Cuban Americans in Miami were indeed peaceful, if exuberant, frenzied and excited and jubilant, as many spoke in Miami and Tampa and all across Florida. One protestor, eighty-two-year-old Hermin Soler, who fought against Castro and spent ten years as a political prisoner in Cuba, suggested that the Cubans were finally emerging from the “dream of the revolution” as they fight the realities of the communist regime, and he asked Miami’s people to encourage the Cuban people in their uprising, by letting them know that they are not alone in their struggle.

We hear calls for U.S. intervention alongside calls for U.S. restraint in the matter, and virtually no call for anything from the Democratic Party socialists and communists, such as Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). And although a great argument could be made for invading Cuba and freeing its people, since America is actually responsible for its creation as a sovereign nation in 1908, it’s an inescapable matter that the freedom loving people of this nation, including two million Cuban Americans, who might seek an intervention, would be asking Joe Biden, the man who would be dictator of the U.S., to carry out so important a mission. The last thing Cuba needs today is Joe Biden’s communist advocacy involved in any of their affairs, since his involvement would most certainly help Cuba’s dictator, “President” Miguel Diaz-Canel and do great harm to the cause of freedom and liberty for the poverty-stricken ordinary Cubans in the streets.

I suppose the question of the day is: Are there any Americans today who would put their lives on the line to see the Cuban people live free once more? Many expatriates have built nice, comfortable free lives here in America, complete with homes, families and businesses. How many are willing to drop what they are doing and rush to aid the people of Cuba, many who are their own relatives left behind?

Unfortunately, given the political environment of the day in America and war fatigue and too many lost lives over twenty years of war in the Middle East, it appears that the Cuban people are on their own, waving the American flag or not. Unless, of course, people of good faith and a love for freedom rush to their aid however best they can, just as we saw many foreign nations, like France, Spain and the Netherlands, and foreigners such as Jean Lafitte, a buccaneer, aid America to win Her freedom from the British in 1776. The Cuban people’s freedom will be won or lost by them alone, but they will surely lose without outside support willing to smuggle guns and ammunition and food goods and other necessities to their resistance movement, and if anyone is so inclined, they should get to it while the iron is hot.

In the face of all their adversities, we should all pray that the Good Lord helps them find the freedom and liberty they long to experience and deserve. Pray that Cuba’s children will one day live free. It’s been a long time coming.

I repeat: God bless ’em; I wish them the best, and I hope they succeed. But just as Team Liberty is here in the FUSA, the Cuban freedom fighters are pretty much on their own. Real Americans might be inclined to support them right enough, but we have enough on our plates right here at home to deal with.

Update! Ran across this meme someplace or other recently, liked it, and downloaded it in the absolute certainty that a use for it here would easily be found.

Publick Notice

Posted on July 15, 2021July 15, 2021 by Mike Leave a comment

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’ve spent a right smart chunk of time the last few nights doing a little sprucing-up around this dump, most notably some pretty extensive jiggery-pokey in Ye Olde Blogrolle section. As a result there’s a whole slew of new links therein, to some excellent sites, in pretty much every Blogrolle category. I hope y’all will check these folks out as and when, and that you enjoy ’em. What with the disappointingly flaccid quiescence—in the face of truly monumental developments and escalations—on the part of more than a few of my Old Reliables, I’ve been on something of a quest to find some fresh blood to inject into my personal daily-checks list, so the New Breed types I didn’t have in my Brave bookmarks already have been added there too.

It’s remarkable how very far some of us longtime bloggers out there have shown themselves willing to bend so as to avoid serious analysis, even any mention in some cases, of certain pressing issues. As I said, that’s disappointing. I’ll neither name names nor speculate on motives now, but everyone here will no doubt have their own suspicions regarding that. As times continue to become ever more difficult and dangerous, what we might call the Crucible Effect—the separation of sheep from goats, wheat from chaff, friend from foe, as it were—will no doubt intensify. As we continue this forced-march through the Valley of the Shadow, we’re all going to be learning a lot, I think. And not just about our enemies, either.

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