Almost but not quite

HAPPY JUMETEEMF!

Posted on June 19, 2023June 19, 2023 by Mike

Doc 0 unravels this specious joke of a “national holiday.“

One reason Juneteenth isn’t catching on organically with the general public is that it’s obviously a politicized partisan “holiday,” not a celebration where all Americans are invited to join hands and rejoice in a great achievement. That’s what it should be, but it isn’t.

The rest of our political culture loudly insists every day that no “victory” has been won against slavery or racism. We’re told they are the founding sins of America, for which there will never be atonement or forgiveness. We’re told “white supremacy” remains a systemic problem.

If anything, our hysterical racial grievance industry and the ruling Democrat Party say racism and white supremacy are getting WORSE. We’re all supposed to feel perpetually guilty and submissive to endless demands for reparations. So what great victory does Juneteenth celebrate?

The Democrat Party is wholly dedicated to stoking racial grievances for political and financial gain – the man in the White House is infamous for yelling “they’re gonna put y’all back in CHAINZZ” – so the new federal holiday is naturally viewed with skepticism. Context matters.

Persuading more states to commemorate Juneteenth would have been a better way to go, but as we know, the totalitarian Left has no patience for representative government. It had to be imposed top-down after the George Floyd riots – a flex of power, not persuasion.

And now look at what we’ve got: a bloodbath. Juneteenth murder sprees. The long, slow work of creating a more harmonious nation, of putting racism and grievances behind us instead of nuclear-weaponizing them, would have produced a better holiday.

Americans know the calendar is being chopped up into more identity-grievance days and months, pushed on them with corporate and government power instead of fellowship. True holidays spring from goodwill: from people seeing the best in others and offering it from themselves.

If you want to plant a new holiday and have everyone feel comfortable beneath its spreading branches, you need the fertile soil of goodwill, a sense that everyone is invited but no one is commanded. Too much of our political culture is barren of that soil right now.

“Too much”? ALL of it, I’d say; as the Left’s radicalization and hostility towards even the mildest of dissent continues to metastasize, it was inevitable, really. Read the whole thing, as per usual with the incomparable John Hayward’s stuff.

MLK Day, Jumeteemf—what next? How many holidays, celebrations, and forelock-tugging acknowledgments, how much more groveling, obsequious foot-bathing will it take, prithee tell, before American Blaques are at long last placated—their inchoate rage diminished, their hatred attenuated? Is there no point at which even “too much” will be considered enough?

Never mind, no need to answer that. I think we all know well enough by now, thenkyewveddymuch.

A real leemer

Posted on June 17, 2023June 17, 2023 by Mike

LEEMER noun (FEAR, DREAD): Fighter-pilot slang for an unspecified quantity of ice-cold piss injected directly into the heart; describes the feeling a Naval carrier aviator might experience in reaction to, for example, a ramp strike, sudden in-flight engine failure (flameout), or a cold cat shot.

House damaged, person injured after aerobatic display collision

Two aircraft from the Swiss military aerobatic display team, Patrouille Suisse, collided on Thursday with falling debris hitting a house. One person on the ground was slightly injured in the accident.

The two F-5 Tiger planes were part of a formation practicing for a yodelling festival in canton Zug, central Switzerland.

The nose cone of one aircraft broke off and hit a house in the vicinity of the town of Baar, damaging the façade of the building and slightly injuring one person with shattered glass.

The braking parachute of the other aircraft deployed in mid-air but caused no damage and was later recovered.

All the seven aircraft involved in the practice session landed safely and no pilot was injured, according to the defence ministry.

Bayou Pete has video of the incident shot from ground-level, in which the midair and the loss of the nose cone from off the aircraft flying Number Three position can be easily, if not necessarily clearly, seen (older eyes may need to squint a little). Watching his miraculous recovery from a mishap which might very well have ended in real tragedy, all’s I can say is that Number Three’s pilot is one hell of a shit-hot stick—a truly badass fighter jock and one VERY cool customer to boot. For that, I salute you, sir.

The Northrop F5 Tiger, by the by, is a twin-engined supersonic air superiority/ground attack aircraft flown by the USAF and many of our ally nations beginning in the mid-60s, with 400 of them still in service as of 2021. They saw widespread use in the USAF, USMC, and USN during the Vietnam War, until changes in Air Force doctrine had them more or less dumped for larger, heavier aircraft such as the F4, the F100, and the F105 Thud. The Navy used them after the war at its renowned Fighter Weapons School (TOPGUN), mostly as either trainers or OPFOR adversary aircraft. They’re also widely seen in movies, albeit usually mislabeled as something else entirely for some bizarre reason—as everything from Phantoms to MiGs, which I always found hilarious.

The F5 is small, light, nimble, and more durable than one might expect at first glance, given those first two qualities. Although it was a pretty good aircraft, and any military pilot worth his wings will be quite familiar with it, the F5 somehow never quite achieved the same fame as the Phantom II, the F86 Saber, or latter-day siblings like the F14 Tomcat. The Tiger is a pretty, graceful-looking little thing for sure.

F5Tiger

That one’s in USAF livery, all kitted out with a full combat load of Mavericks and Sidewinders. Impressive, no?

The cold, hard truth

Posted on June 15, 2023June 15, 2023 by Mike

Remember that 800 pound gorilla in the room I mentioned the other day in the Eyrie post? Well, in the way of all 800 pound gorillas, he’s still there, and isn’t going anywhere until he’s captured the undivided attention those pesky, implacable 800 pound gorillas always tend to seek…and, sooner or later, one way or another, get.

California Can Either Charge Its EV Fleet Or Keep The Lights On
Can California transition to a portfolio of 100% renewable energy sources and still generate enough electricity to meet the state’s future needs, including the addition of millions of electric cars on the road?

A: No. Next question. For that matter, neither can any other state. Turns out, there’s a reason why the human race abandoned “renewable” (read: inadequate to meet the demands of a modern industrial civilization) energy for more reliable, productive sources several centuries ago, see. UNEXPECTED!™

California is already incapable of generating enough electricity, importing 30% of its current electricity needs from other states. With respect to current generation sources, nearly 60% of California’s in-state electricity generation is produced by natural gas and nuclear power plants. Including conventional hydroelectric generation, which does not count as a renewable source for purposes of California’s policies, nearly two-thirds of the state’s current electricity comes from disfavored generation sources.

It is doubtful that California will be able to generate sufficient electricity to meet future energy needs using only the favored generation sources; and it is not even close.

Overall, total electricity generated will be 21.1% below the amount of electricity demanded — and this does not even account for the impacts from all the likely future mandates. Beyond the electric vehicle mandates evaluated above, officials are rapidly prohibiting connections for stoves, furnaces, hot water heaters, and dryers in new construction projects.

There are reasons to be exceptionally skeptical that California’s current energy policy environment is achievable. Either the policies will cause extreme energy shortages and jeopardize quality of life or the state’s political leaders will need to repeal the current suite of mandates.

“Reasons to be skeptical”? Oh, you just bet there are at that. But since, as every good “liberal” knows, electricity is something that happens when you flip a light switch—just as food is something that comes from the grocery store—there really isn’t a problem here at all. It’s just a damnable lie made up by those godawful MAGA H8RRRZZZ to oppress them, that’s all.

SHOCKER: Jane Fonda STILL a total flake, even at age 137!

Posted on May 29, 2023May 29, 2023 by Mike

Better sit down before reading this astonishing dog-bites-man story.

Jane Fonda Blames Men for Climate Change: ‘We Have to Arrest and Jail Those Men’
Hollywood star Jane Fonda made the outrageous claim Friday that climate change is being caused exclusively by men, specifically white men, adding that “those men” must be arrested and jailed.

Because of COURSE they are. I mean, who else could it possibly be?

She also blamed the “patriarchy” and “racism” for global warming.

Speaking at a career retrospective at the Cannes Film Festival in France, Jane Fonda promoted her radical climate activism efforts, saying the world has “about seven, eight years” to cut fossil fuel consumption in half.

She also said “poor people of color” as well as populations in the southern hemisphere will be hit hardest by global warming.

“It is a tragedy that we have to absolutely stop. We have to arrest and jail those men — they’re all men,” she added, according to a Deadline report.

Later, Fonda continued her anti-male climate harangue.

Yep, hittin’ on the usual shitlib suspects just as you would expect her to, no surprises whatsoever here. Stupid bint is phoning it in at this point, no doubt due to her advancing senility. There’s so little of any real interest here, I thought I’d try a thought experiment just for shits and giggles.

“It’s good for us all to realize, there would be no climate crisis if there was no ~~racism~~ Leftism. There would be no climate crisis if there was no ~~patriarchy~~ AWFLs,” she reportedly said. “A mindset that sees things in a ~~hierarchical~~ irrational, chaotic way. ~~White men~~ Liberal women and minorities are the things that matter and then everything else [is] at the bottom.”

Fixed it for ya there, Hanoi Jane. Proving once again that some of us live and learn, while others are content to just live.

Oh, think I was kidding about her age? Well, better think again.

OLDJaneFonda

YIKES! If anything, I was being too kind to the raddled old bag. We’ve come a loooonnnng way from Barbarella, baby.

YoungJaneFonda

Gotta say, I liked her a lot better back then. She was still dumb as a box of hair, mind, but at least then she knew when to just shut the fuck up and git nekkid. Which puts every stripper on Earth WELL ahead of her in terms of overall intelligence, decorum, and just plain good sense now.

How?

Posted on May 27, 2023 by Mike

It’s an excellent question, for which there is an easy-peasy, direct, one-word answer staring us right in the face.

Trial By Ordeal
I’m sure you’re asking yourself: what’s up with the company CEOs like Anheuser-Busch’s Brendan Whitworth, Target’s Brian Cornell, and North Face’s Todd Spaletto? Did they green-light the disastrous Pride Month marketing campaigns based on transgender activism that are suddenly wrecking their businesses? Or do these things just happen down the chain-of-command while the top dogs are otherwise occupied, knocking golf balls around or reviewing their stock options’ strike prices?

I’ll tell you what you’re not seeing and hearing: the red-faced shrieking in the board rooms as boycotts kill sales and directors face the wrath of the share-holders. It was one thing when Bud Light hitched trans “influencer” Dylan Mulvaney to the beer wagon in place of the traditional Clydesdale horses. After all, every state has a drinking age, though it’s pretty astounding that anyone at Anheuser-Busch thought “Ms.” Mulvaney’s cringy Instagram antics would sell beer to grown men moving appliances and fixing pot-holes.

It’s another thing, in the case of Target, to aim sexually-loaded gear to little children, for instance a line of T-shirts that proclaim “Satan Respects Pronouns” made by one Erik Carnell’s Abprellen company out of London.

Would it surprise you to learn that children well beneath the age of puberty are not inclined to think about sex at all? In a well-ordered society that recognizes children as different from adults, they don’t. And if something sexual comes to their attention, they are generally perplexed by it. Unless they’re born into an era when adults are busy erasing boundaries, guard-rails, and cultural inhibitions, in which case I must imagine that young children exposed to, say, pornography in a chaotic household find it traumatically sinister. So, why the gleeful celebration about sexualizing children now?

I’ll tell you why: because we are living in a very badly-ordered society these days, a society in which anything goes and nothing matters, which is a poor principle for civilization. It’s the same principle that has people shitting all over the sidewalks of San Francisco, looting Walgreens stores in broad daylight, pushing ineffective and unsafe vaccines (and lying about it), and arresting people for thought crimes. It’s a degenerate society. Morally bankrupt. Wicked.

You might ask, how did it get that way? The concise answer is that a broken business model for daily life and a collapsing economy have so disordered millions of minds that values are seen as having no value. The scaffold for truth, beauty, honor, dignity, courage, prudence, generosity, etc., folded some time ago, in slow-motion, so we didn’t notice.

True enough, I suppose, but it still skirts that direct, one-word answer I mentioned above: Leftists, that’s how. We didn’t merely get here, we have been brought here apurpose, incrementally dragged into this sorry contretemps by the malignant, evil Left. It wasn’t unavoidable nor at all desirable; it was part of a Plan, abetted by our own torpor and refusal to admit that such a thing could ever happen in America.

Then one day we wake up, and suddenly it isn’t America at all anymore. Had they an honest bone in their bodies, the Left could as well have loudly announced, “Hey, this society isn’t gonna just wreck itself, you know!” Kunstler, of course, knows all this as well as you and I do:

There’s something definitely programmatic about the way the drag queens were rolled out into the kiddie korners the past year. It doesn’t feel organic, shall we say, but rather directed, like a sinister grand opera. And the effort to enlist and initiate schoolchildren into a psychodrama of hyperbolic sexual confusion looks absolutely orchestrated.

There’s a perfectly good and valid reason for that, Jim—because it, y’know, WAS. As I keep screaming at the proverbial brick wall, the only question before us now is what, if anything, will we do about it?

The wrong question

Posted on May 17, 2023May 17, 2023 by Mike

PJM’s Kevin Downey ax’s it.

The Warped Unreality of the Leftist Mind: How Many Lies Will These Idiots Swallow?

A: All of ‘em, as many as it takes. The REAL question, though, is: How many can they make the rest of us swallow, or at least pretend to?

There are people who can’t admit when they are wrong. Some folks are reluctant to admit they’ve been conned. But pinkos are emotionally weak toilet people who tie their political leanings to their self-esteem. They’ll swallow lie after lie, lest their political peers call them a horrible name — like, say, a “conservative.”

In other words, the Bolshies will eagerly lap up lefty lies to stay in the commie club, because it’s better than being considered a (gulp) Republican.

When asked why he was having trouble with working-class voters in the Midwest, then-president Obama said the following:

And it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

In one sentence, the great orator managed to remind threaten people that those who do not vote for him are to be considered angry, racist, xenophobic, gun-toting hillbillies. Mind control 101.

Leftists also need to feel they are better — dare I say superior — to someone, and that someone is you.

The better to see hear genocide you with, my dear.

My, isn’t this word salad DELICIOUS?

Posted on May 16, 2023May 16, 2023 by Mike

Asked nobody, ever.

‘We Sale Your Bank’: WaPo Reporter Rewrites Disastrous Fetterman Word Salad as a ‘Quote’
To protect the ever brilliant Sen. John Frankenstein — er, Fetterman (D-PA) — a Washington Post reporter rewrote an ineluctable Fetterman ramble and posted it as a quote. Apparently, journalism now means covering up government idiocy by pretending an official is actually coherent.

Fetterman was attempting to question the former CEO of the collapsed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Greg Becker. The Washington Post’s White House economics reporter Jeff Stein tweeted, “Sen. @JohnFetterman (D-Pa.) to SVB executive Greg Becker: ‘Shouldn’t you have a working requirement after we bail out your bank? Republicans seem to be more preoccupied with SNAP requirements for hungry people than protecting taxpayers that have to bail out these banks.’” The issue? That’s not really what Fetterman said. Not by a long shot.

As PJ Media’s Paula Bolyard tweeted, the actual quote from Fetterman is quite different, to put it mildly, from what Stein claimed: “Shouldn’t you have a working requirement after we sale [sic] your bank—er, with billions of your bank? Because they see me [sic] pre-preoccupied when then [sic] SNAP, uh, in the requirements for works [sic] for hungry people, but not about protecting the—the tax papers [sic] you know, that will bail no matter [sic] whatever does [sic] about a bank to crash it.”

No, I don’t know what he was trying to say, either. But apparently, Stein thought he understood so well that he could write up what he thought Fetterman meant to say and treat it as a quote.

Well, of course he did; as a fully-credentialed “liberal” “journalist,” it’s simple as do re mi: just insert the standard-issue, Mark 1-Mod 0 D卐M☭CRAT boilerplate, and Urethra! You have found it, as a certain wise, universally respected and beloved sage once put it. Is there more, you ask? Hey, this is Senator Lurch (D-Nuthatch) we’re talking about here, of course there is.

Fetterman rambled like Joe Biden in the White House during the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing, “Examining the Failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.” The man needs to be in a hospital, not in Congress. It’s a total — and painful — joke that his family and staff keep trying to force him through the motions of being a functioning senator.

”Now they [banks] have — it’s in, a guaranteed, a guaranteed way to be saved,” Fetterman fretted about the government bailout of SVB. “By no — no matter, by — by — by how, you know. So it’s, it’s, you know, isn’t it appropriate that the, these kinds of — this kind of control be more stricter?” Unsurprisingly, his question was met by silence. Then he brought out the above clincher, where he compared Republicans’ proposed employment requirement for accessing SNAP benefits to, presumably, his desire for banks like SVB to “work.” All to save that “tax papers” money.

Isn’t it comforting that our economy is in the hands of bankrupts like Becker and senators like John Fetterman?

Oh no, that’s not so at all; like most Normal Americans, you’re thinking about this all wrong. As has been more than amply demonstrated throughout the Biden “pResidency,” the people who actually DO run things in Amerika v2.0 don’t have faces we’re ever gonna see, names we’re ever gonna hear, and never have to stand for “election” or “reelection.”

UNPRECEDENTED!!! Except when it isn’t

Posted on May 15, 2023May 15, 2023 by Mike

The author’s conclusion is spot-on, incontestable, and utterly priceless.

Senator warns about 1,200 year drought, torrential rains soak Front Range
Climate anxiety is so prevalent among the younger generation who are brainwashed to think they’ll die unless the planet is rid of modern conveniences and meat products, they’re turning to substance abuse to escape depression.

It’s no wonder, when we have the likes of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet warning his Twitter followers of an impending 1,200-year drought across the West.

Upon further investigation with informed scientist Dr. Google, it turns out we’re not facing a 1,200-year drought, as clearly signaled by the torrential rains sweeping the Front Range.

As The Guardian explains, weather climate has actually been around for centuries, but the last drought of this magnitude in Colorado and the southwest was the year 800 A.D.

Tim Kohler, an archaeologist and professor at Washington State University, says the current megadrought is different from prehistoric dry periods. “This one seems to be more severe than any of the previous droughts and just as long,” he says. “But the really bad news is all the previous megadroughts took place without the influence of increasing greenhouse gases. Now we are playing a new ballgame and scientists don’t know what to expect.”

In other words, the current drought that scientists say is the cause of climate change, is just like the drought we had 1,200 years ago before climate change. Only this is more serious, because we don’t know what to expect, because of climate change.

TA-DAAAH! A real masterpiece of pretzel-contorted Leftard “logic,” wouldn’t you say? Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™: is there ANYTHING it can’t do? Apparently not, no. In light of where I ran across this one, what can one possibly say but: Heh. Indeed.

(Via VP Stephen Green)

Just. Don’t. DO it

Posted on May 11, 2023 by Mike

Reason #8,741 why you never, ever, EVER try to rob a gun store.

How do gun shops prevent a person from simply walking in, asking to look at a gun and some bullets, then holding up the store owner with the weapon?
You know, this is funny. I was actually in a gun store when something almost exactly like this happened.

It was a fairly large store, with the owner and 4 other sales clerks behind the counters. I was with a friend who was there to pick up a shotgun he’d ordered. A guy walks in and asks to see a Colt .45 Model 1911. The clerk opens the glass, retrieves the pistol, and performs the necessary check, then lays the gun on the counter for the man. He picks it up, looks it over and says “Perfect…I like it.”

He then reaches into his pocket, pulls out a loaded magazine, and inserts it into the gun, then slides a round into the chamber – all pretty darned smooth and quick. He then points it at the clerk and says, “I’ll take it.”

The clerk just shrugged, and nodded past the guy. He backs off a bit, and then looks around the store. Every other clerk was armed, and had pistols pointed at the guy. Every customer had been ushered quickly behind counters or racks out of the way, without any fuss or noise. When the guy looked back at the clerk, he now had HIS pistol out and pointed at the guy. My friend and I were both trying not to laugh at this point.

The owner then starts walking towards the guy, with his hands up. He’s explaining to the guy how badly this is likely to go for him, and points out that he is seriously out-gunned, and he is definitely NOT leaving the store with that firearm. He speaks calmly, gently…and slowly reached out and took the gun from the guy without resistance at all. He then politely asked him to get on the floor, and told one of the clerks to call the police.

Found out later the store owner was a veteran, and the other sales people were either veterans or retired cops. All in all, I was never worried, scared…no, I was amused. And so were the cops, when they showed up (greeting the owner by name as they came in), wondering who’d try to rob a gun store.

I still wonder about that myself, some 30 years later, to be honest.

A gott-damned idiot, that’s who, and nobody whatsoever else. Period fucking DOT, as Ringo always says.

Get ready for “Dark Carlson”

Posted on May 3, 2023 by Mike

I am not no way no how down with the 9/11 conspiracy theories; actually, I consider them absurd to the point of being laughable. Not that it would be at all out of character for our gone-rogue, patently evil and illegitimate central government to commit such a heinous atrocity against its own subjects if it suited them to do so; assuredly, it isn’t. No, it’s that, having seen those crackpot theories convincingly debunked by various different and distinct parties, they seem to me to be in direct conflict with Occam’s Razor, for one thing.

For another, out of the cast of literally thousands who would have had to be involved in pulling such a thing off—including some who had spouses and/or children die that gruesome day—not even one of them has come forward to make themselves filthy rich by putting together a tell-all book exposing said conspiracy? SRSLY? Not ONE?!?

Yeah, no. Ain’t buying it, not a bit of it. Peddle it someplace else, there’s no market for it here.

That being so, I find it singularly displeasing that Tucker Carlson seems to hold a contrary opinion on the (non-)issue.

Tucker Carlson has fully left the neoliberal reservation. He is now broaching the sacred cows he presumably was prevented from touching as a Fox News host.

In a podcast from March, he mused about whether Building 7 imploded on itself due to uncontrolled structure fires or whether there might be some other plausible explanation.

“If you say, like, ‘What actually happened with building 7? Like that is weird, right? It doesn’t—like, what is that?’… If you were to say something like that on television, they’d flip out. They would flip out. So you’d, like, lose your job over that.

It’s an attack on my country. Can I ask? I don’t really understand. Do buildings actually collapse? No, they—maybe they do. I don’t know. But, like, why can’t I ask questions about that?”

Not exactly the most ringing of endorsements, but still. Congrats, Tucker, on having joined the august ranks of thoughtful, celebrity-supergenius luminaries such as Rosie “Fire doesn’t melt steel” O’Donnell, Martin Sheen, and Mark Ruffalo. Sheesh. But there might be something of a heartening aspect to this otherwise revoltin’ development, I suppose.

Due to mainstream media framing, one might be forgiven for writing off such skepticism of the 9/11 story the government told as “fringe.” In fact, according to a 2016 poll, “54.3 [of American respondents] percent agree or strongly agree” that the government is concealing what it knows about the 9/11 attacks—an even higher share of respondents who believed the government lied about the JFK assassination or aliens.

Here’s my prediction, not limited to 9/11 conspiracy theories but Carlson’s rhetoric more broadly: wherever he lands next, perhaps on his own platform, Carlson is going to make the Fox News version of himself look milquetoast in comparison.

At Fox, he was hamstrung by all of the respectability norms designed to safeguard the official narrative related to any given topic: the ongoing Russia proxy war, climate change, et al.

In the future, he won’t have those institutional constraints, and the corporate media and government censors like AOC who attempted to silence him by getting him taken off the air at Fox, and then celebrated on social media after they claimed their scalp, may live to regret the monster they have unleashed on American political discourse.

Call it the Dark Carlson effect.

Heh. Dark Carlson? I love it. Well, okay then, let ‘er rip, Tucker. After all, pobody’s nerfect, right?

God created man; Sam Colt made them equal

Posted on April 25, 2023April 25, 2023 by Mike

Should you buy a gun? OF COURSE you should, dumbass.

Progressives Convinced Us to Get a Gun
It’s hypocritical to urge Americans to disarm while also failing to protect them from surging crime rates.

Hypocritical? Nah, not quite. It’s EVIL, is what it is.

When I was growing up on the South Side of Chicago in the late 1950s, almost every boy had one treasured possession: a holster with two six-shooters. It was the essential toy for playing Cowboys and Indians, the most popular game in town. Regrettably at the time, my brother and I didn’t get in on the fun. Our father wouldn’t allow it.

He had his reasons: In depriving us of the revolvers, he often would cite his experience during World War II. Our father served in the French army

Ah, it all begins to make sense now.

and, as a member of an artillery regiment, fought the Nazis when they marched into Belgium. During that service, a rifle shot grazed the back of his neck and came close to taking his life. He made it clear that, having been wounded and seen the horrors wrought by firearms, he didn’t believe anyone should think of such weapons as playthings.

No sensible adult does, fool. As for kids disporting themselves at Cowboys and Injuns out in the backyard—Jeez O Pete, man!

Onwards.

Though as a child I sometimes resented not fitting in with my friends, I grew to accept that firearms were terrible devices that didn’t belong in our lives. As an adult, for many years I supported banning guns among civilians, even contemplating the merits of repealing the Second Amendment.

As the twig is bent…

But some months ago my thinking changed again. Today, my wife has a gun that she keeps in our home. She has the necessary permits from the authorities and has trained extensively in using the gun safely. Growing up, I never imagined I would have a firearm at home. But I am reassured to have one, even if I’ve never held it myself.

Our decision to acquire a gun is due to the recent release of the man who bludgeoned my wife’s younger sister to death several decades ago. My wife fears that the murderer, released from prison during the Covid-19 pandemic by New York state’s board of parole, poses a potential threat to us.

But our decision also is due to society’s current dysfunction. Crime is surging in our city—Washington—and around the country. Vagrants wander the streets, police are reluctant to tackle criminals, and courts seem unwilling to impose serious sentences on those who break the law. Given these circumstances, owning a gun seems to be one of the few ways to feel even a semblance of personal safety. There is an irony that policies progressives espouse, such as gun control, have prompted us to have a gun in our home.

Progressives nationwide have attacked police and law enforcement, alleging that our legal system is systemically racist and oppressive. They have caused recidivist criminals to haunt our streets and commit more crimes—and have refused to deal with homelessness in spite of the mental illness and drug addictions that so often afflict our cities’ most vulnerable. Numerous efforts to reduce the use of drugs have been rebuffed in the name, of course, of racism.

This approach has unleashed a crime wave and diminished our sense of safety on the streets. It is, therefore, unsurprising to see ever more law-abiding people seeking to arm themselves. As a result, there will be more guns out there, including in the hands of people who should never be near them.

To limit guns in America, much as my father wished, policy makers should focus on the underlying problems that are generating a spike in crime.

As always with leg-wetting hoplophobes, this sort of “thinking” is completely out of whack. “Limiting guns in America” is NOT a goal worth pursuing, based as it is entirely on ignorance, fear, and personal cowardice. In addition, it not only directly conflicts with the plainly-worded 2A, it also contravenes the values of individual self-determination, liberty, and personal responsibility upon which the Republic itself was originally Founded.

So how is it, then, that tremulous, antigun feebs dare to presume that, rather than scorning them for their pathetic neuroses, free Americans instead must bow to them and indulge their irrational phobias?

Sure, there should be more effort made towards reining in the crime currently rampaging and ruining US cities. At the same time, acknowledgment of a certain hard, immutable fact of life on this here planet must be made: Crime will never be eradicated completely. This is what we call part of the human condition; it will always be with us. Same-same for tyranny, which is the actual reason our Founding Fathers saw fit to feature the Second so prominently in the Constitution.

Those truths being self-evident, there can be but one reasonable way to look at the persistent shitlib obssession with doing away with the one truly effective means of resistance against crime and tyranny both: it is not merely wrong, not merely stupid, but actively, literally evil. Anything less is nothing but a comforting deceit we tell ourselves, as a balm for our collective lethargy in confronting it as it ought to be confronted.

All that said, I’m happy for this guy that they finally got a gun. But that’s only the start of it. Now, with a gun in the home, he needs to do himself a big, fat favor and emulate his obviously-intelligent wife: get to the local range; train with it; practice with it; get schooled on how to break it down and clean it (inquire about that at either the range or the local gun shop; you’ll find yourself astonished at the number of friendly, more experienced shooters who will be just pleased as punch to help you out). Learn as much about how y’all’s new firearm functions and the proper care and maintenance of it as you possibly can. It’s all part and parcel of the responsible-gun-owner experience, any one of which items you neglect at your own peril.

Education, see, is one of those “forever” kind of things; it never really ends, which is only meet and just.

(Via Insty)

Get me rewrite!

Posted on April 19, 2023April 19, 2023 by Mike

A hilarious story of cultural re-appropriation.

Egyptians complain over Netflix depiction of Cleopatra as black

A Netflix docudrama series that depicts Queen Cleopatra VII as a black African has sparked controversy in Egypt.

A lawyer has filed a complaint that accuses African Queens: Queen Cleopatra of violating media laws and aiming to “erase the Egyptian identity”.

A top archaeologist insisted Cleopatra was “light-skinned, not black”.

But the producer said “her heritage is highly debated” and the actress playing her told critics: “If you don’t like the casting, don’t watch the show.”

Adele James made the comment in a Twitter post featuring screengrabs of abusive comments that included racist slurs.

Cleopatra was born in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in 69 BC and became the last queen of a Greek-speaking dynasty founded by Alexander the Great’s Macedonian general Ptolemy.

She succeeded her father Ptolemy XII in 51 BC and ruled until her death in 30 BC. Afterwards, Egypt fell under Roman domination.

Macedonians being, y’know, Greeks, and Greeks being, y’know, decidedly not black. But hey, nig-nogs gotta nig-nog, amIright?

Jada Pinkett Smith, the American actress who was executive producer and narrator, was meanwhile quoted as saying: “We don’t often get to see or hear stories about black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them!”

Fuckin’ Jada Pinkett Smith. Groan. I mighta known. Poor old Will badly needs to get that saucy ho’ of his under some kind of control; she’s causing chaos and doing damage everywhere she goes.

But when the trailer was released last week many Egyptians condemned the depiction of Cleopatra.

Zahi Hawass, a prominent Egyptologist and former antiquities minister, told the al-Masry al-Youm newspaper: “This is completely fake. Cleopatra was Greek, meaning that she was light-skinned, not black.”

Mr Hawass said the only rulers of Egypt known to have been black were the Kushite kings of the 25th Dynasty (747-656 BC).

“Netflix is trying to provoke confusion by spreading false and deceptive facts that the origin of the Egyptian civilisation is black,” he added and called on Egyptians to take a stand against the streaming giant.

Okay, turnabout being fair play, then, I very much look forward to another upcoming release.

Ace says fans are calling it “the role Ryan Gosling was BORN to play,” and not even knowing who the hell Ryan Gosling might be, I surely can’t dispute that. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the same about whoever that melanin-challenged chick is that’s playing Moo’ch’elle in the trailer, also.

As for Will Smith, I’ll never forgive the punk-ass bitch for ruining Wild Wild West forever by hijacking Robert Conrad’s classic Jim West character, no good reason for the usurpation ever offered. I lovedlovedLOVED that show as a kid, and never missed a rerun for years afterward as an, um, alleged “adult.” So as far as I’m concerned, he and Pinkett Smith purely deserve each other, and may they have joy of their choice.

Update! Unrelated, yes, but it all put me in mind of another fine old Robert Conrad vehicle: namely, the mighty F4U Corsair.

Heh. What a great show that was. If Jada Pinkett Smith, or anybody else for that matter, ever decides to redo Pappy Boyington as a Nee-grow PoC (actually, COL Boyington was part Sioux Injun, but still), I’ma have a real problem with it.

The impossible dream

Posted on April 16, 2023April 16, 2023 by Mike

If you can get past all the fantasy, melodramatic cheerleading, and wishful thinking, this isn’t such a bad article.

Nolte: Trump Edges into National Lead Against Biden Post-Indictment
Former President Donald Trump enjoys a national lead against His Fraudulency Joe Biden in a potential 2024 rematch.

In 2020, Biden (allegedly) beat Trump by 4.5 points nationally. Polling at the time, according to the RealClearPolitics (RCP) national average, suggested Trump would lose by 7.2 points. In other words, Trump out-performed the polling.

Also of note is that not once during the 2020 election did the average of RCP national polls show Trump with a lead. Throughout the campaign, the closest Trump came to Biden was a four-point deficit.

Today, the RealClearPolitics poll of national polls shows Trump with an outright lead of 1.7 points. It bears repeating that this never happened once in 2020. Even left-wing pollsters show Trump doing well. The Marquette poll shows a tie. Quinnipiac only has Biden up two points. Rasmussen, one of the only pollsters that show Biden with a respectable approval rating, has Trump up by seven.

Uh HUH. Up 1.7—well within the margin of error; tied; down by two; and up by seven—still well within what Limbaugh famously dubbed the all-important “margin of fraud.” Yeah, this one’s a lead-pipe cinch for Trump, no doubt about it.

Moreover, and this should be a wake-up call to the obnoxious and insufferable types in the #OnlyDeSantis camp, Trump polls as well against Biden as the Florida governor. In a hypothetical 2024 presidential race, DeSantis enjoys an average lead against His Fraudulency of 1.6 points, compared to Trump’s 1.7.

Wow, so it’s a real blowout, then!

Now, we know that polls are the bunk; anyone who ever took even a single entry-level statistics class in college (which I did, actually) knows that they can easily be jiggered, “interpreted,” and just generally fucked with to produce any result desired. As a snapshot of political opinion at the current moment, while not entirely bereft of any value whatsoever, they should always be taken with not just a grain but a veritable ziggurat of salt.

My above semi-tongue-in-cheek objections aside, this next is the part of Nolte’s piece I really wanted to put up here; the painful yet funny Biden slam therein is note-perfect.

I like both DeSantis and Trump, but the numbers are the numbers. Granted, DeSantis has not yet announced he’s running, and that could scramble to board considerably, but it could scramble it either way. The Florida governor’s interview with Piers Morgan was not impressive. He will have to come across a lot stronger and with more stature if he’s going to defeat Trump.

As far as why Trump is polling better against than Biden now as opposed to 2020, the reasons should be obvious. Biden is an unpopular incumbent who can no longer hide in his basement. Biden is president now, and his every appearance is a reminder of how dumb, frail, and dishonest he is.

What’s more, he’s doing a terrible job: energy prices, inflation, open border, war fever in Ukraine, mutilating children to appease his transvestite base…

Which will make it all the more painful, then, when he once again gets more “votes” than any other presidential candidate in history, cruising on to win another “landslide” “election” next year. Assuming the demented old crook lives that long—no mean assumption, that, as is more in evidence every day.

I’ve always liked John Nolte’s work, and have excerpted him plenty over the years. But after reading this one, my initial gut-reaction was that Trump Derangement Syndrome might cut in more than just the one direction.

Another non-apology apology

Posted on April 14, 2023April 14, 2023 by Mike

This time from Anheuser-Busch. Spencer’s title is worth a look all by itself.

Anheuser-Busch Issues Statement on Bud Light Brouhaha That Will Satisfy No One (Just Like Their Beer)

Heh. Mind, as somebody who never could stand beer, I have no dog in that particular fight.

It has been nearly two weeks now since Bud Light decided to shove transgender madness down our throats by featuring fake woman Dylan Mulvaney in its advertising, and only on Friday did Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth emerge from his bunker and offer a statement to try to tamp down the controversy. But in this hour of crisis for his company, which has lost $6 billion and counting in market value since Mulvaney became the Queen of Bud Light, Whitworth tried to satisfy everyone, and will only end up satisfying no one at all.

Most of Whitworth’s statement was just blather. “As the CEO of a company founded in America’s heartland more than 165 years ago,” he began, “I am responsible for ensuring every consumer feels proud of the beer we brew.” Now wait a minute, Whitworth. You may be proud of the beer you brew, although that would be a stretch given that it’s Budweiser, but you expect those who buy the beer to be proud of it, too? I’ve drunk a beer or two in my time, although I’ve generally avoided Bud, and I’ve never said or heard anyone else say, “I sure am proud of this beer.” Why would anyone feel proud of the beer he’s drinking? Does Brendan Whitworth feel a similar pride in the food he eats? Does he exclaim at lunch, “I am so darn proud of this ham sandwich!”?

This is a peculiarly twenty-first century form of blather. We’re supposed to be proud of everything now, even perversions and mental illnesses. And since Whitworth is writing to, among others, people who loudly proclaim how proud they are that Dylan Mulvaney is pretending to be a woman, his choice of words is unlikely to have been reflexive or accidental. He seems to be trying to sidle up to the gay pride folks without actually mentioning them straight out.

Whitworth informs us that he spent “time serving this country” and reminds us of “the importance of accountability,” even as he is in the process of evading accountability. “As CEO of Anheuser-Busch, I am focused on building and protecting our remarkable history and heritage. I care deeply about this country, this company, our brands and our partners. I spend much of my time traveling across America, listening to and learning from our customers, distributors and others.” Okay. So what about Dylan Mulvaney?

“Moving forward,” says the proud Brendan, “I will continue to work tirelessly to bring great beers to consumers across our nation.” Terrific. But…what about Dylan Mulvaney?

That was it. Brendan Whitworth went back into his bunker without saying a thing about why everyone was paying attention to his statement in the first place.

He’s right; I read the whole sorry statement earlier, and nowhere will you find any mention whatsoever of the very thing that sparked this whole controversy in the first damned place. Which is understandable, of course, when viewed from the position of an A-B exec. After all, the goal here is to get pissed-off Bud Light drinkers to STOP talking about it, not to spur on further discussion.

C’mon, everyone, let’s just move on, can’t we? It never happened, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and it was three other guys who did it! LOOK, OVER THERE, A SQUIRREL!

Bud Light is in a similar position to the one Harley-Davidson was some years back: an aging customer base, falling profits, dwindling interest among younger people in their products. I remembering reading an interview with some H-D exec or other discussing these very issues back when the Motor Company was down and very nearly out, and how it might possibly be resuscitated.

And shortly after I saw that article, behold! Harley’s big break with the tradition that originally made them, the V-Rod, was introduced. A truly radical departure from H-D’s legendary cruiser/touring bikes, with a brand-new Porsche-designed engine and groundbreaking (for Harley) cosmetics that dispensed with the classic Harley styling—fatbob tanks; casual, laid-back seating position; wide bars; low to the ground; lots of eye-grabbing chrome—the V Rod was actually quite a success, at least in the overseas market.

Car & Driver said Harley-Davidson’s branding was “culturally rather than technologically driven; so imagine our surprise at seeing the company’s newest ride, the V-Rod, complete with a liquid-cooled DOHC four-valve V-twin developed in partnership with Porsche Engineering.” They added, “we think the V-Rod is a serious threat to its own stablemates as well as to cruisers from other manufacturers. It’s that good”.

Motorcycle Cruiser wrote “The V-Rod was intended to bring in more than the usual suspects, and it did. It became the company’s best-selling bike in other countries. In America, V-Rod buyers often came from other brands, attracted by its modern engine, excellent performance and not-the-usual-cruiser style”.

Gee, coinkydink? I think NOT.

What Harley managed to achieve with its market-base-extending new offering, A-B now hopes to pull off with its tranny-sicko ad campaign: lure in some new customers, and keep them. Just one problem with that, though.

Pro-sanity activist Matt Walsh remarked, “Anheuser Busch has finally released a statement, and it’s just as clumsy and stupid as the marketing stunt that got them into this mess in the first place.” He added, “The statement won’t satisfy their conservative customers because there is no apology or acknowledgment of wrong. And it won’t satisfy the Left because it doesn’t affirm transgenderism and admits at least (without using the word) that the trans issue ‘divides people.’” And most importantly, Walsh said, “the boycott is still on.”

Brendan Whitworth has thus accomplished nothing. And of course, he had extremely little room to maneuver. He couldn’t possibly disavow Dylan Mulvaney without enraging the Left and opening up his company to new boycotts, as well as to the possibility of violence against innocent Bud distributors and stores selling the product. But he couldn’t affirm that the Mulvaney campaign was a great idea without further alienating the patriots who are already making the company feel the heat in their declining market value. So he tried to balance between two barstools and fell off both.

Aww, too bad. My heart just bleeds for them, really it does. Red, that would be, not rainbow-hued.

After being saved by a timely goobermint tarriff increase in 83, the Harley Davidson Motor Company was able to make itself competitive on market ground which had shifted under its very feet, thanks in no part to the Big Four cabal of Jap-bike makers’ diabolically-cunning strategy to destroy the American motorcycle industry by flooding the market with cheap, lightweight, durable, low-maintenance bikes—a move that actually saw a large portion of their own US dealership franchises driven out of business, having been forced to sell their wares at suicidal, below-cost prices due to the low skullduggery of the rice-burner manufacturers.

Question now is, in a world in which beer-drinkers have long since moved on to pricey boutique-beer, in the main brewed and sold locally, will there ever again be a significant market for the watery, limp pisswater cranked out by companies like A-B? Beer having (d)evolved from being something of a lowbrow preference to snobbish poofery? We shall see, we shall see.

Update! Further thoughts from Bill, who, like myself, is highly dubious of the notion that boycotts and the like ever accomplish much of anything.

An idea whose time came, and went, long ago

Posted on April 6, 2023April 7, 2023 by Mike

Everybody who thinks there’s the proverbial snowball’s chance that this will ever happen, please raise your hands.

Great Idea! Trump Calls for Defunding the FBI and DOJ
Donald Trump said it in an all-caps message on Truth Social Wednesday morning: “REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS SHOULD DEFUND THE DOJ AND FBI UNTIL THEY COME TO THEIR SENSES. THE DEMOCRATS HAVE TOTALLY WEAPONIZED LAW ENFORCEMENT IN OUR COUNTRY AND ARE VICIOUSLY USING THIS ABUSE OF POWER TO INTERFERE WITH OUR ALREADY UNDER SIEGE ELECTIONS!” The usual suspects are enraged, but really, where was Trump wrong? Do American taxpayers really need to subsidize agencies that have become the enforcement arm of the authoritarian Left?

Uh HUH. “Until they come to their senses,” is it? And just when, pray tell, do you expect THAT to happen, exactly?

As y’all know, I’ve been advocating loud and long for dismantling the FBI root, branch, and bough for years now. Defunding that particular Swamp pit would be a fine start along that road, so good on Trump for suggesting it. But the sad fact is, it ain’t at all likely to happen, even if he does somehow find a way to get “elected” in 2024…which, if anything, is less likely still. There’s only one way defunding the FBI ever will, and that of necessity will have to involve a fair bit of gunplay, I’m afraid. Tyrants hardly ever just docilely agree to cede their power to those they stole it from without it.

Update! I meant to include more of what Spencer had to say in the above-cited piece, then hit “Send to blog” prematurely. Pardonnez-moi for that blunder; here’s the rest.

Why should patriotic Americans continue to be forced to fund agencies that are weaponized to harass and persecute them? The FBI and DOJ have been energetic purveyors of the Jan. 6 “insurrection” hoax, making the lives of numerous Americans miserable for the crime of being in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. They have opened terrorism investigations against parents for the crime of being angry over their children being subjected to critical race theory in primary school. They have harassed and terrorized pro-life activists. They have manufactured “white supremacist terrorists” so as to justify the Biden regime’s ridiculous and oft-repeated claims about what constitutes the largest terror threat the nation faces today.

If we had a savvy, aggressive opposition in America today, its leaders would be challenging the Leftist establishment to defend the idea that the Justice Department and the FBI were still worthy of Americans’ trust. They would be demanding that Merrick Garland and Christopher Wray demonstrate that they had any interest at all in administering fair and impartial justice rather than simply serving as the muscle for the Democrat Party and its allies. They would be doing everything they could to cut funding for these agencies to the bone and publishing plans for top-to-bottom reform that would eliminate the corrupt and politicized regime apparatchiks that currently infest these agencies.

Instead, however, we’re getting chuckling at Donald Trump’s supposed idiocy and flagrant misrepresentations of what he actually said. This could pose an even more serious threat to freedom in the long run than the politicized legal persecution of Trump. If the reform of these corrupt agencies, which is obviously most urgently needed, can be so airily waved away, what chance do patriots stand? Trump is right: the FBI and DOJ as they are currently constituted should indeed be defunded.

They should, yes, but they won’t. Like I said above, only one way that happens, and it’s neither pretty nor pleasant.

Updated update! Via WRSA, unreconstructed Southron Padraig Martin says we should stop searching for heroes. He ain’t wrong about that.

One of the reasons so many people love Trump is that he became an accidental hero to an angry electorate. Trump, unlike every other tired politician in 2015/6, did not balance his words, consult with polling data, or regurgitate tired old conservative talking points. He came across as a genuine, albeit flawed man. When his Administration failed on so many levels – especially in 2020 – much of it was understandably the result of bad administration selections. Trump was placed in a position to hire all of the Bush rejects to field his White House. But much of that goes back on Trump, himself. After all, the buck stops with the boss, which is why so many others are disappointed in him – especially as it pertains to his inaction in 2020 regarding both the extraordinarily violent leftwing rioting around these United States and the Fauci-driven Covidian totalitarianism. It is my opinion that Trump was a well-intentioned man who did not know (and likely still does not know) the mechanisms of Washington power. Obama, a purely evil character, was a master at manipulating the levers of power to get his way for eight years, but even Obama had the benefit of two Bush Administrations and eight years of Clinton to lay the groundwork for his globalist vision. Trump lacked the insider knowledge and the support to get things done.

What Trump proves is that Americans who genuinely care about the future of their country desperately want a hero. They hoped Trump was that hero. To many, he always will be a hero. But neither Trump nor anyone else in elected office will ever be a hero. They are just ordinary men within a system that is too great to destroy from within. It cannot be turned around because it feeds on itself. The only way the current system fails is through consuming itself to the point of collapse. A single hero will not make that happen – although Putin seems to be the closest to succeeding.

It is at about this time that Christians will say, “Jesus is my hero!” Whereas I agree with them – Jesus is my hero, too – God selects men to be heroes for His people. Jesus can be the guide, protection, and salvation for that individual, but we know things are so bad right now that we need support on earth ASAP. The fact is, no singular individual will fill that role.

It is time to stop looking for heroes and become one yourself. Heroism requires taking a stand. It requires courage and bravery. It requires moral clarity. Most people on earth lack those qualities. But enough people taking a defiant stand can force change.

You’re gonna want to read the rest of it for sure.

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