Almost but not quite

Back to the future

Posted on March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 by Mike

My brother-in-Gearheaddom Phil speaks for a cause that’s always been near and dear to my heart.

It’s Time To Start Restoring Older Vehicles And Appliances

Lurch came out and said that FJB is going to be mandating changes to cars and both light and heavy trucks because Climate Bullshit.

This is on top of them already going after gas stoves and now air conditioners.

Every time the government sticks it’s collective nose into consumer goods everything turns to absolute shit.

Anybody else out there remember what a real toilet looked like before CONgress decided they used too much water?

And remember when the dirty cocksuckers banned conventional lightbulbs last year?

Basically if something has a proven track record and works, we can’t have that anymore.

Screw these assholes I say.

If you can find a decent rig from fifty odd years ago, spending half that much restoring it will get you a rig that will last for years and you will be money ahead.

Even if you have to get it from another state and have it trucked in you will be money ahead.

There won’t be a kill switch in it either.

Same goes with refrigerators and laundry machines.

There are guys out there who specialize in restoring old refrigerators and there are still plenty of outfits around that can repair old laundry equipment.

Screw these new computer controlled/ energy and water efficient pieces of shit.

They don’t work worth a damn to begin with and they have a life span measured in months, not years anyway.

Now, speaking of cars specifically, it’s true that the newer ones—though most of them cost two-three times as much as my dad paid for the house I grew up in (19k back in 1962, and it was a nice house too, in a good neighborhood)—they DO have an expected life span of around 200-300k miles before they go kerblooey. Then again, though, you didn’t need a PhD in computer science, two large rollaways full of expensive specialty tools, and a 150k diagnostic machine to work on one of the vintage beater Fords I’ve spent my entire “adult” (HA!) life running, either.

That said, owning the right kind of car can pay off in some unanticipated ways.

Two teens who carjacked a man at a gas station in Germantown, Maryland were unable to drive away because they didn’t know how to operate the car’s manual transmission, police say.

A 16-year-old from Rockville and a 17-year-old from Washington, D.C. were arrested after the carjacking on Saturday at the Sunoco gas station on Frederick Road, Montgomery County police said.

A man had just finished pumping gas and was getting into his car when he saw the two teens running toward him, police said. The teens then forced his door open, grabbed him and demanded his keys, which he handed over to them.

When the teens got into the car, they didn’t know how to operate the car’s manual transmission, police said, so they got out of the car and ran off.

Soon after, officers saw them nearby and took them into custody after a brief chase on foot, police said.

The accompanying video is sidesplitting.

No need to be thinking that this is the only such incident, either.

“Can You Even Drive A Stick, Ni*ga?!” https://t.co/uSQtelqGKy via @9GAG

— Mike Hendrix (@TommyGunMike57)

March 30, 2023

“Can you even drive a fuckin’ stick, nigga? On my MAMA, I wantin’ to shoot that nigga so bad!” Too, too funny. Clicking on the Tweet will take you over to my own barely-used Twatter account, then you’ll have to dismiss the “Sensitive content” warning to view it. Which, believe me, is worth the hassle.

Close, no cigar

Posted on March 29, 2023March 29, 2023 by Mike

Well dammit, now even the highly esteemed Mike Walsh is missing the essential point. Or so I think, at least. YMMV, as always.

Ron DeSantis has made his first unforced error in his nascent, as yet still-unannounced, campaign for the Republican presidential nomination 2024. Even worse, he showed weakness – and that, in this late-Roman Republic political climate, is an unforgiveable sin. If DeSantis is not to be bullied out of the primaries by the raging bull elephant that is Donald Trump, he needs to do better, asap.

Not just no, but oh HELL no. Wait one while I get the turntable spun up for my broken record: RON DESANTIS NEEDS TO STAY WHERE THE HELL HE’S AT.

To hell with national (notional) “elections,” to hell with running for Prez-Mo-Dent, to hell with all that. If we should’ve gleaned but one hard fact by now from observing the whole “pResident” Biden clown show of a dumpster fire of a shit-circus as it crashes and burns before the eyes of the entire world, it’s that it no longer means one damned thing who might be roosting behind the Resolute Desk and posing for press photo-ops out on the White House lawn. The people who really run the federal goobermint don’t come up for election and/or reelection, don’t pose for pictures, and above all don’t care one whit about being responsive to the Will of Duh Peepul.

If DeSantis doesn’t know this full well, then he’s nowhere near as smart as I thought he was. I note yet again that as of right now, he STILL hasn’t said a damned word about running in 2024, other than that he ain’t gonna. I hope and pray it stays that way, and that he holds to it. If he does decide to run, it will tell us all about him we’ll ever need to know. This might not bode all that well:

Note I said do. Not talk. Talk is Trump’s realm, a world in which only words, not deeds, matter and the rest is just boob bait. The Wall, unbuilt; the Swamp, undrained. The 2020 election stolen right out from underneath him, and by perfectly legal means: they said they were going to do it, they explained how they were going to do it, and they did it. All while Trump was prancing and dancing at pointless rallies. Never mind: things will be better next time, we are told.

Up until last week, action was DeSantis’s realm: taking on Disney, sacking Soros prosecutors, signing a sweeping school-choice bill, firing the board of the leftist New College in Florida and replacing it with sane conservatives not in thrall to the diktats of Wokism; the new board promptly canned its entire, useless “diversity” office. All these events were cheer(ing) moments for a GOP base long starved for victories unbesmirched by Jared, Ivanka, Jeff Sessions, or Stormy Daniels, as well as the promise of further bold, decisive steps to come.

DeSantis was also a rare voice of Republican sanity among the chorus of pro-Ukraine capons in D.C., led by Turtle McChao and Lindsey Graham when he correctly stated that the U.S. has no vital national interest in whatever happens to Vladimir Zelensky and his war-by-photo-op in the historic heart of Russia.

While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them. The Biden administration’s virtual ‘blank check’ funding of this conflict for ‘as long as it takes,’ without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges.”

And that’s where he should have stopped. But the media, the warmongering neocons, and Mitch’s minions screamed bloody murder, buffaloing DeSantis into a near-fatal error: in an interview with British professional mediocrity Piers Morgan (someone no American political figure should ever speak with) he backtracked: and by so doing, dug himself deeper and deeper into the media Pit of No Return. Behold the peril of talking (at least as quoted by Morgan):

Writing in The New York Post about the interview, Morgan quoted the Florida governor as saying: “Well, I think it’s been mischaracterised. Obviously, Russia invaded (last year) – that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 – That was wrong.” The Florida governor, who is laying the groundwork to win the Republican nomination against former president Donald Trump for the 2024 elections, faced a torrent of criticism from Republicans for his remarks.

“What I’m referring to is where the fighting is going on now which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don’t think legitimately but they had,” Mr DeSantis clarified. “There’s a lot of ethnic Russians there. So, that’s some difficult fighting and that’s what I was referring to and so it wasn’t that I thought Russia had a right to that, and so if I should have made that more clear, I could have done it, but I think the larger point is, okay, Russia is not showing the ability to take over Ukraine, to topple the government or certainly to threaten NATO.

“That’s a good thing. I just don’t think that’s a sufficient interest for us to escalate more involvement. I would not want to see American troops involved there. But the idea that I think somehow Russia was justified (in invading) – that’s nonsense,” he said. Mr DeSantis also added that he viewed the Russian president as a “war criminal” who should be held “accountable”. “I think he is a war criminal,” he was quoted as saying.

Mamma mia! As the old political saying goes, when you’re explaining, you’re losing.

Yep—a fact which one would think a man who had given Jurassic Media the back of his hand as deftly and as many times as DeSantis has would be well aware of.

Actually, the only real problem I have with what Morgan says Meatball Ron said above is the very last bit, about Putin being “held accountable.” Maybe so, maybe not, but either way that is NOT within the FUSA’s proper purview. At the risk of sounding like a rock-ribbed isolationist—a position, incidentally, that no lesser a Presidential light than one George Washington explicitly endorsed with the “no foreign entanglements” proposition from his farewell address—we have plenty enough business right here at home to attend to without futzing about overseas in other nations’.

There’s more, but as Walsh’s whole argument is built around the hopefully unfounded assumption that DeSantis will indeed run, I didn’t read it. These days, my only interest in presidential politics is poking fun at the Senile Stumblebum In Thief’s latest tumble down the Air Farce One stairs, and little if anything else.

Which, speaking of.

Shocking Biden hot-mic reveals how handlers program his every move

WATCH.

Yes, this is 100% real.pic.twitter.com/Qgsii21QBe

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson)

March 28, 2023

Yeah, Old Jaux has his palsied hands firmly on the tiller of the Ship of State, doesn’t he? Pfaugh, pish-tosh, stuff and nonsense, I say.

Can’t win for losing

Posted on March 27, 2023March 28, 2023 by Mike

So just when Jurassic Media thinks they’ve got themselves another Angry White Male School Shooter to seize upon, no sooner do they all start doing the old soft shoe on the long-anticipated grave of the 2A than what happens?

Wait for…wait for it…waaaaiiiit for it…

OOPS.

BREAKING: Audrey E. Hale, the 28-year-old woman who identifies as he/him and uses the name “Aiden,” is identified as the now-deceased suspect who shot up a Christian school in Tennessee, killing 6, including 3 children. The killings follow the state banning the medical… pic.twitter.com/Sp4RfGwcUj

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo)

March 27, 2023

Well, dammit. Back to the ol’ drawing board, shitlibs. As BCE quips, now we see how fastly they can activate the memory hole, which has gotta be getting near full-up with this sort of thing by now.

Oops oops OOOPSIE update! So…how’s that “Trans Day Of Vengeance” working out for ya, eh?

A “Trans Day of Vengeance,” for March 31-April 1

I guess Audrey Hale just got started early! Very militant! pic.twitter.com/4nvgmGckDD

— Ethan Ralph (@TheRalphRetort)

March 27, 2023

“Militant” might be understating the case just a wee mite, don’tchathink?

Same old senility update! Notional “pee-Resident” Pedo Joe SPRINGS INTO ACTION, offering comfort to a shocked and heartsick nation as only he can.

GHASTLY: Biden in Jocular Mood, Jokes About Ice Cream Before Statement on Nashville Shooting

An extraordinarily strange scene unfolded at the White House on Monday after the news broke that a woman claiming to be a man had murdered six people at Covenant School, a Christian school in Nashville. Old Joe Biden came out to address the Small Business Administration’s Women’s Business Summit, knowing that the shooting had taken place and that there were fatalities, and likewise knowing that the world was waiting and watching, expecting him to make a statement about what had happened. Instead of striking a somber note, however, asking for prayers and expressing condolences, Old Joe was positively insouciant, yukking it up with some children in the audience, kidding around about ice cream, and generally showing himself to be in splendid high spirits. Was he buoyed at the prospect of another chance to push his agenda of disarming sane and law-abiding Americans?

Biden began by announcing, to laughter from the crowd: “My name is Joe Biden. I’m Dr. Jill Biden’s husband. And I eat Jeni’s Ice Cream, chocolate chip. I came down because I heard there was chocolate chip ice cream.” In its jarring inappropriateness, this rivaled the false reports that Abraham Lincoln had asked his friend Ward Lamon to sing a ribald song while touring the battlefield at Antietam just after the battle, as they walked among the dead bodies of the fallen soldiers. But this one really happened, and Biden wasn’t finished. “By the way,” he plowed on, “I have a whole refrigerator full upstairs. You think I’m kidding, I’m not.” Oh, I’m sure you weren’t, Joe; it’s widely known that dementia patients actually can receive a short-term cognitive boost from eating ice cream.

Old Joe babbled on about the children in the crowd, and with them, for a while longer; then he abruptly changed his tone and announced: “Before I begin to speak, and the reason I spent a little time on the kids, I — I just want to speak very briefly about the school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee.” Now, wait a minute. Biden joked around about kids and ice cream because he had the Nashville shooting in mind? The cringe, as the kids say today, is off the charts.

The putative president praised the police and then got to his point: “We have to do more to stop gun violence. It’s ripping our communities apart, ripping the soul of this nation — ripping at the very soul of the nation. And we — we have to do more to protect our schools so they aren’t turned into prisons. You know, the shooter in this situation reportedly had two assault weapons and a pistol — two AK-47. So I call on Congress, again, to pass my assault weapons ban. It’s about time that we begin to make some more progress.” See? Let the administration prevent law-abiding Americans from defending themselves, or more kids will be unable to enjoy ice cream like Old Joe.

Biden said absolutely nothing, of course, about the transgender madness, or about how dangerous it could be to encourage people who are mentally ill to embrace their mental illness. He didn’t say anything about how his own policies of encouraging trans delusions could have led to this shooting. Of course he didn’t. The man’s handlers know how to keep him on message.

No word on whether the addled old kiddie-diddler managed to work in any hair-sniffing after he’d rattled off the anti-2A talking points given to him by his wardens, but you know he was thinking about it, and really, really wanted to, at any rate.

Transgenocidal update! Yeah, no.

FBI Stats On 2021 Anti-Trans Hate Crimes Don’t Support Claims Of ‘Genocide’

Gee whiz, I’m shocked. Flummoxed. Gobsmacked. Floored. Why, it’s almost as if these deranged freakazoids are over-dramatizing themselves, hysterically and dishonestly, for their own nefarious purposes. But no, that couldn’t POSSIBLY be right, could it?

Americans who claim to be transgender were the victims of 271 hate crimes in 2021, with few of the crimes being serious, undercutting claims that the community is facing “genocide,” according to FBI data released this week.

Of the 177 cases where the offender’s race was known, 81 offenders were black, about 60 were white, 20 were Hispanic, and one was Asian. Still, even that data could be misleading as FBI statistics inflate the number of “white” hate crime perpetrators by counting most Hispanics and Arabs as “white.” To a limited extent, the data can be adjusted to treat Hispanic as a race separate from black and white, which The Daily Wire did in the above numbers, but in many cases the “ethnicity” was not even recorded, forcing them to be treated as white.

Although Arab is counted as a separate category when it comes to the victim, there is no such category for perpetrators, leaving them to generally be counted as white. People of Arab descent have been behind some anti-Jewish crimes and their inclusion in statistics could change the anti-transgender breakdown as well.

The data does not support the notion widely pushed by activists and Democrats that there is a “genocide” of transgenders underway.

Well, in fairness, when has it ever? On any topic, of any kind, at all? For the matter of it, when have “activists” and/or D卐M☭CRATs ever given the merest indication of interest in what “the data” might indicate, anyway?

The Trans Radical Activist Network (TRAN) said it is planning a “Trans Day of Vengeance” on March 31 in D.C. to “stop trans genocide,” and also fundraised for firearms training, which it said was for self-defense.

Of the 271 crimes against transgenders, the FBI data reported two slayings and two rapes. Of the remainder, 70 were incidents of “intimidation.” There were 48 aggravated assaults, 87 simple assaults, eight robberies, 14 thefts, and 37 instances of vandalism or damage.

The data comes from law enforcement divisions that report hate crime information to the FBI and includes jurisdictions covering 300 million of the 330 million Americans.It was released March 13 as a “supplement” to a less comprehensive dataset previously released. The supplemental data provides less detail, but original data shows one anti-trans killing committed by a black offender, one incident of robbery and sodomy by a black offender, and two instances or rape or sodomy by offenders whose race was unreported.

Me, I’m still trying to suss out the vitally-crucially-vital Importance! of distinguishing between “crime” and “hate crime.” What, is a “hate crime” somehow made more crime-ier than ordinary, plain-vanilla crime? Is, say, rape more unpleasant for the victim for having “hate” affixed to the charge? A mugging more intense, more brutal? Sodomy, meh, let’s not go into that for now. There has to be an important distinction lurking about in there somewhere, I just can’t seem to find the damned thing.

Auguring in

Posted on March 18, 2023March 18, 2023 by Mike

Trump underestimated the nature and scope of the evil he’s up against, severely, and now they’re finally going to get him.

Trump’s Attorney: Trump Will Surrender To Authorities If He Is Criminally Charged
Former President Donald Trump will surrender to law enforcement officials if he is indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in connection with a $130,000 hush money payment he allegedly made to porn actress Stormy Daniels, according to Trump’s attorney.

The remarks from attorney Joseph Tacopina come in response to a report from NBC News that said federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies were analyzing security assessments and making plans to prepare for the possibility that Trump will be indicted as early as next week.

Fox News reported that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office asked for a meeting with law enforcement officials to “discuss logistics for some time next week, which would mean that they are anticipating an indictment next week.”

Tacopina told the New York Daily News that if Trump is indicted, “there won’t be a standoff at Mar-a-Lago with Secret Service and the Manhattan DA’s office.”

Tacopina later told CNBC that they “will follow normal procedures if it gets to that point.”

“Normal procedures”—BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Thou fool. From Trump’s Truth Social feed, via Barry (no direct link, since I don’t have an account there and have no interest in signing up for one, so the link is to Barry’s comment—thanks, Bar!):

OUR NATION IS NOW THIRD WORLD & DYING. THE AMERICAN DREAM IS DEAD! THE RADICAL LEFT ANARCHISTS HAVE STOLLEN OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AND WITH IT, THE HEART OF OUR OUR COUNTRY. AMERICAN PATRIOTS ARE BEING ARRESTED & HELD IN CAPTIVITY LIKE ANIMALS, WHILE CRIMINALS & LEFTIST THUGS ARE ALLOWED TO ROAM THE STREETS, KILLING & BURNING WITH NO RETRIBUTION. MILLIONS ARE FLOODING THROUGH OUR OPEN BOARDERS, MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS. CRIME & INFLATION ARE DESTROYING OUR VERY WAY OF LIFE…

Page 2: NOW ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEYS OFFICE, WHICH HAS ALLOWED NEW RECORDS TO BE SET IN VIOLENT CRIME & WHOSE LEADER IS FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS, INDICATE THAT, WITH NO CRIME BEING ABLE TO BE PROVEN, & BASED ON AN OLD & FULLY DEBUNKED (BY NUMEROUS OTHER PROSECUTORS!) FAIRYTALE, THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!

Which, without violence, is simply not on the table. When Trump goes to prison, I don’t expect him to last very long before somebody Epsteins his ass. Next, Melania, Don Jr, and the rest of his family need to be continually checking six, because you can be sure they’re next in line for the exact same treatment from the Überstadt.

And then…well, we shall see what we shall see, I suppose.

The evidence is all in, a surfeit and then some of it, the case closed once and for all. This is yet another reminder that, just as I’ve said over and over: clearly, they do NOT fear us. They need to be reminded—forcefully, explicitly, and beyond all doubt or debate—that there might still be good reason for them to. Until such time, it’s only going to get worse.

Update! Another reminder, for Trump, his family, and pretty much everybody else.

‘Nuff said.

Updated update! Dave Renegade sums it up quite well.

The lines are still being drawn in terms of a civil war but only as action is concerned. The lines defined by the division sowed by the other side to weaken and take over the Republic are entrenched. Once the first shot is fired, the people who have been marginalized, have had their country, rights and Liberty stolen, and their health attacked will not stop. This is not a call to action; this is just reality. How do you feel about this illegal government and out of control justice system? This is no longer a rhetorical question.

We may not be able to stop what is coming but we surely do not have to submit to an evil tyranny.

Amen to that, brother.

Wheels within wheels within wheels update! Might this be what it’s really all about? Twitchy says it’s right on cue.

Did somebody in the Biden network decide to give Rob Reiner and the anti-Trump Resistance an early Christmas gift? Also this could indicate that Biden and the “justice” department (with help from New York libs) really want Trump to be the GOP nominee. However, the Left’s narrative has gone from “Trump committed treason by colluding with Russia to steal a U.S. election” to “OK, maybe not but he did pay some hush money to a former adult film star.”

The economy is in shambles, we’re literally being invaded on the Southern border, inflation is so high people can’t afford groceries, Americans are tired of sending billions to Ukraine when they can’t afford to buy gas so definitely it’s time to arrest Trump for something. https://t.co/cEqmUS2eG0

— The Dank Knight 🦇 (@capeandcowell)

March 18, 2023

Could be, could be. The one thing we know with absolute certainty about these filthy swine is that we can put nothing whatsoever past them. There is no trifling, petty skullduggery to which they will not stoop, no low too low for them to sink to. Anyone still kidding themselves that, “Oh, they wouldn’t DARE do this or that,” for any conceivable value of “this or that,” is hereby formally urged to just wake the fuck up already.

Wish in one hand

Posted on March 16, 2023 by Mike

Shit in the other. You know the rest of it.

Majority of Voters Want Buttigieg to Resign

A Rasmussen Reports poll released Monday found that most American voters want Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to resign after the East Palestine, Ohio disaster. Buttigieg received criticism after telling a reporter he was on ‘personal time’ when asked when he would visit East Palestine. The Biden official eventually visited East Palestine, Ohio, albeit one day after former President Donald Trump.

51 percent of registered voters answered yes when asked, “Should Buttigieg resign as a result of how the Transportation Department handled the recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio?”

The Rasmussen Reports poll data showed 68 percent of Republicans, 51 percent of Independents, and 35 percent of Democrats believe that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg should resign due to his handling of the East Palestine Ohio Train derailment.

In response to the poll, Congresswomen Lauren Boebert (R-CO) endorsed the sentiment in a tweet. “51% of Americans want Pete Buttigieg to resign from his position as Transportation Secretary. Proud to be cosponsoring a resolution calling for exactly that. Pete’s incompetence & disregard for the American people has no place in our government,” Boebert wrote.

“No place”? In OUR government? With all due respect, you must be joking, ma’am. Incompetence and disregard for We Duh Peepul is the very bones and sinew of FederalGovCo—it’s what the goobermint is, what it does. Nowadays, those things amount to a de facto job requirement, really.

Maybe Ms Boebert has her heart in the right place with this toothless, ineffectual resolution, I couldn’t say. Maybe not. But if she sincerely expects it to amount to anything more than the usual DC smoke-and-mirrors dumbshow, much ado about nothing whatsoever, then she’s delusional, and is about to be extremely disappointed with the results she gets: zip, zero, nada, a big fat stinking zero.

Now SWEEPING the nation!

Posted on March 15, 2023March 15, 2023 by Mike

The greatest television show ever created. Well, excepting Firefly, of course.

In the new doc “Anatomy of a Hoax” The Jussie Smollett faked story:

The Osundairo Brother detail what really was Jussie’s plan and why.

They also say they still feel ‘betrayed’ by his hate crime lies
🔗: https://t.co/2W96GU0Zux pic.twitter.com/ezGeA8xXix

— Glock Topickz (@Glock_Topickz)

March 14, 2023

As Ace notes, “Apparently the Osundairo brothers are amusing hosts and naturals on camera.” They are indeed—quite personable, glib, and just damned funny as all hell, as the above vid amply demonstrates. Mo’ bettah:

Brothers in Jussie Smollett hoax break silence, say actor wanted to be ‘poster child for activism’
Abimbola “Bola” and Olabinjo “Ola” Osundairo speak to media for the first time in ‘Jussie Smollett: Anatomy of a Hoax,’ streaming now on Fox Nation

Early in the morning hours of a polar vortex in January 2019, FOX’s “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett claimed two White supremacist Trump supporters attacked him near his Chicago apartment in a racially-motivated hate crime that would soon incite outrage from activists and the media.

It’s the “hate crime” that dominated headlines, but facts proved none of it was true.

In December 2021, the now-40-year-old actor and singer was convicted of five felony counts of disorderly conduct. One year ago, he was sentenced in March 2022 to 150 days in county jail.

Forgive me for saying so, but ol’ Juisseh (hey, that’s the way I’ve always pronounced it, just ’cause I think it’s funnier that way, no other reason) being both black and a rump-ranger, I have a hard time picturing jail as any kind of real hardship for him. A deee-luxe vacation, a rest-cure, more like.

Yes, I know, I know, I’m a homophobic racist bigoted racist H8RRRR.

I DENOUNCE MYSELF…!!!

I DID mention the Osundairos are quite personable and funny, right? Why yes, I believe I did at that.

“You know Eddie Johnson [former Chicago Police Superintendent] said he could tell in the footage that you guys are Black, right?” an off-camera interviewer asked the brothers.

“Really?” Ola asked. “I feel like he’s just saying that… we were in character the whole time.”

“So you think you guys are believable White supremacists?” the interviewer pressed.

“One hundred percent! Look at me,” Bola laughed. Chicago Police released images of the incident shortly after it took place, but Johnson said the initially released image of two silhouettes walking shoulder-to-shoulder down the snowy Chicago street was not the best image they had at the time.

Watch the vid, read it all. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

Update! In comments, Aesop says: “Chapelle dealt with the whole incident better in 3½ minutes than the entire woketarded media did in 3½ months, and distilled that @$$hole’s entire career down to a single punchline.” And he’s right about that.

Many thanks for that gem of a find, Aesop.

Auto-escalation

Posted on March 14, 2023March 14, 2023 by Mike

Fear not, America: with “Gunner” Joe Bribem on the job, we’re in the best possible hands. If his steady, sure-handed “leadership” can’t see us all safely through this wartime crisis, then no one can.

BREAKING: Russia Goes Kinetic With U.S. in Skies Over the Black Sea, and the USAF Response Is Unbelievable

The conflict between the U.S. and Russia has just gone kinetic. At least, that is what the first reports are saying out of the U.S. government. But the response is emblematic of how woke the U.S. military has gotten.

Initial reports said that the Russians had “intercepted” a U.S. Reaper drone over the Black Sea. Now, the latest report has it that Russia “collided” with a Reaper drone over the Black Sea. Expect that story to change, as first reports are always wrong.

Here’s what we are being told at this moment, however. CBS News was first out of the gate with news that, indeed, the drone — which can be armed to the hilt — had suffered a “collision” with the Russian military jet.

A Russian Su-27 fighter jet collided with an American MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday, the U.S. military’s European Command said. U.S. forces brought down the drone in international waters, European Command said, and the White House called the Russian plane’s intercept of the unmanned aircraft “reckless.”

“Our MQ-9 aircraft was conducting routine operations in international airspace when it was intercepted and hit by a Russian aircraft, resulting in a crash and complete loss of the MQ-9,” U.S. Air Force General James Hecker, commander of U.S. Air Forces Europe and Air Forces Africa, said in a statement.

The response from the Pentagon’s Hecker went thusly: “This unsafe and unprofessional act by the Russians nearly caused both aircraft to crash.” But wait, it got worse.

Global News reported on the Pentagon’s press release about the incident.

In a press release, the U.S. Air Force said that at 2 a.m. Eastern (7 a.m. local time) a Russian Su-27 aircraft struck the propeller of the U.S.’s MQ-9 aircraft, which conducts intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. It was accompanied by a second Su-27 that wasn’t involved in the collision but that U.S. officials said was also involved in “unsafe” conduct.

“Several times before the collision, the Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner,” the U.S. release said (emphasis added).

If, in fact, things are getting directly kinetic between the U.S. and Russia over the heightened tensions over the Ukraine war, environmental degradation, though important, is the least of our problems.

Gee, I certainly do hope the madman Putin won’t decide to lob a small-to-medium yield nuke right dead-center onto Mordor On The Potomac, atomizing every last sewer-crawling bureaucrat, government “expert,” cretinous career politican, predatory melanin-enhanced gangbanger, and meddlesome FederalGovCo oxygen-thief therein. Why, that would be just awful. Whatever would we do without all those fine, underpaid, hard-working public servants to watch over and protect us?

Please, Mr Putin, sir, don’t throw us into dat br’ar patch, sir. PLEASE don’t.

As I said, though, not to worry; “Gunner” Joe has the situation well in hand, even if it should come to nooklear com-bat toe to toe with the Russkies. He settled their hash but good once, he can do it again.

MajKongsLastRide

No redress, no recourse

Posted on March 14, 2023March 14, 2023 by Mike

In Amerika v2.0, we are well past the point of no return. Which leaves us with only the one question left to be answered.

In the movie The Untouchables, written by David Mamet and directed by Brian De Palma, a streetwise Irish cop named Malone tries to educate a starry-eyed fed named Eliot Ness in the ways of Chicago justice when up against an implacable, deadly opponent like Al Capone. The scene has become justly famous for this line: ““He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. THAT’S the Chicago way! And that’s how you get Capone.”

But for our purposes here, what even more important is the exchange between Sean Connery and Kevin Costner that immediately precedes it:

Ness: I want to get Capone! I don’t know how to get him.

Malone: [talking privately in a church] You said you wanted to know how to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? You see what I’m saying, what are you prepared to do?

Ness: Everything within the law.

Malone: And *then* what are you prepared to do? If you open the ball on these people Mr. Ness you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they won’t give up the fight, until one of you is dead.

Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? In a battle between good and evil, with the law having gone over to the side of evil—as it had in the gangland Chicago of the 1920s and ’30s—what are the good guys prepared to do? With the country-as-founded now being shot out from underneath us on a near-daily basis, how do concerned citizens fight back?

Read this—”Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition” from something called the Electoral Integrity Project and weep…

“Integrity,” heh. It is to laugh. And also, weep. “Electoral Integrity” is the very LAST thing these shitweasels really want, or for the matter of it would ever even tolerate.

Some of their thoughts:

The concept of “election night,” is no longer accurate and indeed is dangerous. We face a period of contestation stretching from the first day a ballot is cast in mid-September until January 20. The winner may not, and we assess likely will not, be known on “election night” as officials count mail-in ballots. This period of uncertainty provides opportunities for an unscrupulous candidate to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the process and to set up an unprecedented assault on the outcome. Campaigns, parties, the press and the public must be educated to adjust expectations starting immediately.

A determined campaign has opportunity to contest the election into January 2021. We anticipate lawsuits, divergent media narratives, attempts to stop the counting of ballots, and protests drawing people from both sides. President Trump, the incumbent, will very likely use the executive branch to aid his campaign strategy, including through the Department of Justice. We assess that there is a chance the president will attempt to convince legislatures and/or governors to take actions – including illegal actions – to defy the popular vote.

“Dangerous” it is for sure. One instant solution is to restore Election Night to its one-day, one-vote place in the proper scheme of things. And note for the record that “an unscrupulous candidate” describes Mrs. Clinton’s churlish and criminal response to her loss in 2016 far better than it does Trump’s. As for defying the popular vote, so what? That vote means nothing until the Left finally passes its National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and thus eliminates the Electoral College by unconstitutional means.

Some of their solutions:

Plan for a contested election. If there is a crisis, events will unfold quickly, and sleep-deprived leaders will be asked to make consequential decisions quickly. Thinking through options now will help to ensure better decisions. Approach this as a political battle, not just a legal battle. In the event of electoral contestation, sustained political mobilization will likely be crucial for ensuring transition integrity. Dedicated staff and resources need to be in place at least through the end of January.

Address the two biggest threats head on: lies about “voter fraud” and escalating violence. Voting fraud is virtually non-existent, but Trump lies about it to create a narrative designed to politically mobilize his base and to create the basis for contesting the results should he lose. The potential for violent conflict is high, particularly since Trump encourages his supporters to take up arms.

Except that politically mobilized Trump supporters didn’t take up arms on Jan. 6, and as for “violence,” the patsy protesters had nothing on the Antifa and Black Lives Matters thugs during the Summer of Floyd of blessed but rapidly fading memory, his work on earth here now done.

And that, as it turned out, was perhaps their biggest mistake. As did Trump himself, they badly underestimated not only the fanatical zeal of their Swamp-dwelling adversaries, but also just how deeply, thoroughly rotten the whole system itself had by then become. It turned out to be their undoing, and who really even knows how many of them are even now languishing in the Amerikan Gulag as a result of that incalculably-costly “misunderestimation.”

Yet most of us continue to believe in America; like the movie version of Eliot Ness, we’ve sworn to do “everything within the law” to try and right the ship of state before, like all previous democracies, it sinks beneath the waves of historical reality. As I often say about the imported “critical theory” Left, they never stop, they never sleep, they never quit. They won’t give up the fight until one of us is dead.

So then what are you prepared to do?

Not near enough, apparently. Or not yet, at any rate. But we shall see about all that soon enough, I reckon.

Handsome is as handsome does

Posted on March 11, 2023March 11, 2023 by Mike

Naomi Wolfe offers a handsome apology, in full and humble acknowledgement of allowing herself to be played for a stupe.

Dear Conservatives, I Apologize
My “Team” was Taken in By Full-Spectrum Propaganda

The proximate cause of this letter of apology is the airing, two nights ago, of excerpts from tens of thousands of hours of security camera footage from the United States Capitol taken on Jan 6, 2021. The footage was released by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson [https://www.axios.com/2023/03/08/mccarthy-defends-jan-6-footage-tucker-carlson-fox-news].

While “fact-checkers” state that it is “misinformation” to claim that Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was in charge of Capitol Police on that day [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/27/fact-check-nancy-pelosi-isnt-in-charge-capitol-police/8082088002/], the fact is that the USCP is under the oversight of Congress, according to — the United States Capitol Police: [https://www.uscp.gov/the-department/oversight].

This would be the same Congress that convened the January 6 Committee subsequently, and that used millions of dollars in taxpayer money to turn that horrible day, and that tragic event, into a message point that would be used to tar a former President as a would-be terrorist, and to smear all Republicans, by association, as “insurrectionists,” or as insurrectionists’ sympathizers and fellow-travelers.

Let’s be clear and upfront about something here: it was indeed horrible and tragic, but not at all for the risibly-dishonest reasons many diehard Swamp critters still lamely assert. FACT: four patriotic, blameless Americans were wantonly murdered by the authorities, many others beaten and otherwise physically abused, for the “crime” of daring to exercise their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble to seek redress of perfectly and patently legitimate grievances. Horrible, tragic? You betcher. Alas for us all, it’s a lot more than just those two things alone.

There is no way for anyone thoughtful, even if he or she is a lifelong Democrat, not to notice that Sen Chuck Schumer did not say to the world that the footage that Mr Carlson aired was not real. Rather, he warned that it was “shameful” for Fox to allow us to see it. The Guardian characterized Mr Carlson’s and Fox News’ sin, weirdly, as “Over-Use” of Jan 6 footage. Isn’t the press supposed to want full transparency for all public interest events? [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2023/mar/07/biden-medicare-taxes-desantis-trump-2024-live-updates] How can you “over-use” real footage of events of national relevance?

Sen Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Senate minority leader, did not say the video on Fox News was fake or doctored. He said, rather, that it was “a mistake” to depart from the views of the events held by the chief of the Capitol Police. This is a statement from McConnell about orthodoxy — not a statement about a specific truth or untruth. [https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5060662/senator-mcconnell-calls-tucker-carlsons-depiction-january-6-attack-mistake]

I don’t agree with Mr Carlson’s interpretation of the videos as depicting “mostly peaceful chaos.”[https://thehill.com/homenews/media/3887103-tucker-carlson-shows-the-first-of-his-jan-6-footage-calls-it-mostly-peaceful-chaos/] I do think it is a mistake to downplay how serious it is when a legislative institution suffers a security breach of any kind, however that came to be.

But you don’t have to agree with Mr Carlson’s interpretation of the videos, to believe, as I do, that he engaged in valuable journalism simply by airing the footage that was given to him.

And remember, by law that footage belongs to us — it is a public record, and all public records literally belong to the American people. “In a democracy, records belong to the people,” explains the National Archives. [https://www.archives.gov/publications/general-info-leaflets/1-about-archives.html]

You don’t have to agree with Carlson’s interpretation of the videos, to notice the latest hypocrisy by the Left. My acquaintance and personal hero Daniel Ellsberg was rightly lionized by the Left for having illegally leaked the Pentagon Papers. The New York Times was rightly applauded for having run this leaked material in 1971. [https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1435/daniel-ellsberg].

I do not see how Mr Carlson’s airing of video material of national significance that the current government would prefer to keep hidden, or Fox News’ support for its disclosure to the public, is any different from that famous case of disclosure of inside information of public importance.

You don’t have to agree with Mr Carlson’s interpretation of the videos, to conclude that the Democrats in leadership, for their own part, have cherry-picked, hyped, spun, and in some ways appear to have lied about, aspects of January 6, turning a tragedy for the nation into a politicized talking point aimed at discrediting half of our electorate.

Another thing to be clear and upfront about, and to bear closely in mind: Wolf—like Tulsi Gabbard—remains a “liberal” at heart, which can come as no big surprise in light of her chequered past as an “advisor” to both Bill “The Creep” Clinton and Albert “Arnold The Pig” Algore when they, respectively, were running for president. That said, although still not by any means what you’d call red-pilled, she’s at least moving in the right direction for now. And for that, as I’ve argued several times about Gabbard as well, she should be applauded and encouraged, not condemned…at least until True Patriots begin the process of, shall we say, servicing targets, anyway.

The Passion of Big Burly Mike

Posted on March 10, 2023 by Mike

Can you spot the bear-trap the writer of this piece blithely waving away the scarifying possibility of Moochelle running for Prexy in ’24 gets snagged in?

Michelle Obama Is Not Coming to Save the Democrats

I love a good conspiracy theory. Aliens, ancient builders, Bigfoot—I will absolutely click on that headline and read the latest conspiracy, no matter how fanciful or ludicrous. Everyone has a harmless personal foible, right? And in the times we live in now, shadowy government conspiracies and UFOs are no longer just for “The X Files.”

My favorite new conspiracy theory goes like this: the Democrats know they are in big trouble for 2024. They have this addled, dementia-riddled, diaper-wearing octogenarian and his dreadful wife occupying the White House, and he’s become an embarrassment. These days he makes three to four hair-curling, cringey gaffes per week, falls up the stairs to Air Force One every time he tries to trot up them to project American strength and vigor, and has been credibly accused of passing gas in front of the Queen Consort of England. But Democrats can’t abandon him before the primaries because, well, Kamala. So Biden will announce he is running again but will withdraw sometime around the Democratic National Convention so as to clear the presidential field for…

Michelle Obama.

The stench of desperation is hilarious, isn’t it? That’s how bad the field of Democratic presidential prospects is. Democrats must be pretty frantic for someone to have conjured up and floated this rumor. A recent poll indicated 72 percent of Americans don’t want Biden to run again in 2024. Biden will be 82 shortly after the 2024 election. Is this Michelle Obama rumor supposed to give Democrats hope? To keep them from abandoning Biden because just wait, Michelle is waiting in the wings to save their party from Bad Orange Man, or even worse, Ron DeSantis?

Please. I’ll believe aliens taught Bigfoot how to make crop circles in Peru before I buy this one. Michelle Obama hates politics, hates voters, and hates Washington D.C., and not necessarily in that order.

I don’t believe it for a millisecond. Michelle Obama is living her best life right now, the life she has always wanted and felt that she deserved (if her husband hadn’t been a community organizer obsessed with politics who didn’t make any money and forced her to support the family). She’s completely free of the restraint of politics. Now she can say whatever she wants about people she used to have to pretend to like. Polls name her consistently as the most admired woman in America. You think she’s giving any of that up to schmooze and take photos with donors, or hit the campaign trail in Iowa, or spend the night in one-star hotels in Pennsylvania? Not likely.

Maybe so, maybe not. But all the well-known trappings of fame, wealth, and power aside, it would be best not to leave out of our calculations the overwhelming allure of the one enticement that might prove powerful enough to turn even Burly Mike’s big ugly head, creating a 180 degree shift in whatever passes for “thinking” therein, expressible thusly: First Black Female President In US History.

Telltale timeline

Posted on March 9, 2023 by Mike

Commenter regitiger over at Sundance’s hang gets down to the real nitty-gritty.

I think most (not all, but a large number ) of people are totally missing what happened…and why this happened on jan 6.

I am going to try my best to outline the events that day…blast past the commonly held assumptions and get right down to the core corruption.

I will present this as a series of questions and answers.

q1: how do you prevent congress from delaying the certification of state electoral votes?

a: it requires a crisis. A crisis that creates an “emergency”…An “emergency” that invokes special house rules.

facts: remember, carefully…focus please…remember…just moments..literally 3 minutes before two representatives issued a vote for motions to suspend the certification the House members were “informed” by capitol police and other “agents” that a protest was about to breach the chambers. It was at this time that key people: pence, pelosi, schumer, mcconnell can be seen being walked out and escorted from the chamber. This effectively halted the Entire Chamber Process.

q2: why was it necessary to halt the chamber process

a2: the crisis was created to eliminate the motion challenges to halt the certification and to begin voting to look into voting irregularities and fraud.

facts: the two motions were completely legal and constitutional under at least two constitutionally recognized procedures…procedures that would REQUIRE the house to pause the certification and then vote to determine whether the motions of suspend could move forward.

q3: what was so important to refuse this motion and the subsequent votes to suspend the electoral certification

a3: it was important to remove that process entirely and continue the fraud and certify the fraud with no detractors on record. This effectively gives no standing for a scotus ruling appeal! understand this. If those two motions, even just one had successfully been voted EVEN IF THE MOTIONS were DENIED IN VOTE, this gives those who presented them with STANDING FOR A CONSTITUTIONAL LEGAL ARGUMENT BEFORE SCOTUS. Understand this.

q4: could this have been done some other way other than creating a crisis/protest?

a4: unlikely…In order to prevent those two motions, requires that speaker of the house, minority leaders, and the president of the congress (vice president of the united states: pence), to NOT BE PRESENT IN THE CHAMBERS. Once the capitol police and other “law enforcements agents” informed the speaker and these three other individuals, pelosi UNILATERALLY UNDER EMERGENCY RULES, suspended the business of the congress. This protest was necessary ..the crisis was created..because there is no other way to suspend the business of certification UNILATERALLY. By creating a crisis…invokes emergency procedures. No other circumstances other than war or mass simultaneous explosive diaahrea can create such unilateral speaker delivered suspension of the certification.

q5: Why did the motions, once that the speaker RECONVENED congress, move forward back again to the floor for votes? Why were members dissallowed to even consider putting forward ANY motions to the floor in when the chamber business was reopened?

a5: the speaker initiated the NEW sessions under special emergency rules. These rules abandon and make it clear that the ONLY purpose of the new session was to EXPEDITE the certification and dismiss all prior regular session procedural rules. This is why those two motions to table votes to consider a debate and pause to the certifications of state vote electors never happened later that evening when the house business was reconvened!

q6: Other than new rules, emergency rules, what other peculiar things occurred when the speaker reconvened?

a6: members were allowed to “vote” in proxy…remotely…not being present…(you can use your imagination about what conditions were placed on ALL members during this time to prevent anyone from “getting out of line”. Also clearly, it was at THIS NEW SESSION that VP Pence, President of Congress, would also have no ability to even consider pausing the electoral certification…because there was no motions of disagreements on the matter. So in a technical legal claim, he is correct that he had no constitutional authority to address any issues of fraud or doubts about electoral irregularities. But this completely dismisses the FACT that congress created rules in this crisis/emergency that never allowed them to be floored!

understand what happened in jan 6…don’t get hung up on viking impostors, stolen pelosi computers, podium heists, and complicit capitol police.

understand the process and what happened and what WAS NOT ALLOWED TO HAPPEN.

this was a coup….it was a very organized and carefully planned coup. VP Pence without a doubt as well as most members of the house were quite aware of how the certification was going to be MANAGED.

it would require new rules to prevent the debate clause from occurring!

new rules that ONLY AN EMERGENCY CRISIS COULD CREATE!

so they created an emergency.

noting: I understand why many people have great interest in debunking the j6 event…I get that. I think it is important to dissect and examine the events of that day.

but please…step back and understand WHY these things happened…examine the chain of events in congress…why those two motions that would have at least paused the certification THAT WOULD GIVE VP PENCE THE CONSTITUTIONALLY RECOGNIZED POWER TO MOVE TO SUSPEND THE ELECTORAL CERTIFICATION AND THEN EXAMINE THE IRREGULARITIES AND CLAIMS OF FRAUD!

at the very center of this coup stands Pence…the same individual who also spoiled President Trump’s first opportunities in the earlies hours of his Presidency just 4 years prior, when he created and facilitated the removal of LTGEN Flynn. I will not spend much time on this thread explaining why LTGEN Flynn was so important to President Trump and why the IC was so afraid he would have advisory power to the President. That I will leave for another day, another time. But understand this clearly: MIKE PENCE WAS AND IS WORKING FOR THE MOST CORRUPT CRIMINAL TREASONOUS PEOPLE IN GOVERNMENT.

protip: if you really want to get a true understanding of this matter videos of protesters walking in the capitol is not going to address them. Actual video and time line records of events and the specific actions taken by the speaker just moments before TWO MAJOR ELECTORAL ALTERING MOTIONS WERE ABOUT TO BE FLOORED. This crisis was developed just in time with a precise coordination to prevent those two motions to be entered into the chamber record. The two motions do not exist. The emergency powers established in the new session made sure they never could be entered. The emergency powers could never happen without a crisis…

I tried to find a way to just run an excerpt instead of lifting the thing wholesale, but couldn’t without disrupting and diluting it too badly for it to make any kind of sense. Seeing as how I think Tucker’s J6 expose amounts to one of the most important acts of True Journalism that’s occurred in my lifetime, I offer no apology for making that call. This needs, nay demands, the widest exposure we can possibly give it; as a blogger of twenty-plus years’ standing, I am pleased and proud to make whatever little contribution I can to this effort.

Yes, it really is, as I said yesterday, a Big Fuckin’ Deal.

Dr (The) Science gets told

Posted on March 4, 2023March 4, 2023 by Mike

GOD, how I love this.

I met this fun lady at CPAC today. Her name is Melissa Rein Lively. Tonight she met Fauci in Washington DC and took this incredible picture with him.

Everyone is jealous that they didn’t get to do it! 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/1Hf0LxDwpY

— Ada Lluch 🇪🇸 (@ada_lluch)

March 4, 2023

More at GP.

Last night Arizona activist Melissa Lively and filmmaker Eric Strause were dining in Washington DC when Dr. Tony Fauci entered the restaurant with two bodyguards. It is not clear at this point if these were government-funded bodyguards but they reportedly did have badges.

Melissa posed for a photo with Dr. Fauci and gave him some much-needed feedback. She flipped him the bird.

On Saturday The Gateway Pundit contacted Eric and Melissa. Eric told us they were at the restaurant when Dr. Fauci walked in. No doubt, Fauci was expecting a standing ovation, instead he received the much-deserved feedback. According to Eric, Fauci’s bodyguards told him this was not the place for showing their objection to Fauci’s policies. Eric told the bodyguard, “I was not able to attend my father’s funeral because of this man!” Eric told security, “My father could not take Ivermectin because of this guy!”

Three years after the start of the pandemic we now see that the COVID-19 virus was made in a Wuhan lab funded by Dr. Fauci. Then he bribed scientists to not rat him out.

Today we also understand that Fauci’s policies ruined the economy, ruined business owners, ruined child development, destroyed our personal liberties, and ruined millions of lives.

It’s about time Fauci got a little feedback.

To say the absolute least, yeah; if you ask me, it’s about time the poisonous little homunculus got a damned sight more than just a little momentary discomfort in a public place. He of right ought to be looking at a long stretch in Marion or Joliet, and in a better, more just world he would be. Personally, I prefer he be either drawn and quartered or hung by the neck until dead, dead, DEAD for his heinous crimes. But what the hell, noncorporeal humiliation isn’t a bad first step down the winding, interminable road to justice—particularly since it’s all we’re ever going to get from TPTB, and we all know it is.

Until such time, at any rate, as We The People take matters into our own hands and begin dealing out some true justice at long, long last, not just to Fraudci but to all of his fellow Deep State malefactors as well. Meanwhile, the Hawaiian Good Luck Sign is just going to have to suffice.

State of (perpetual un)readiness

Posted on March 2, 2023March 2, 2023 by Mike

PopMech takes a look at yet another disastrous multi-billion-dollar boondoggle from the once-mighty US military—a bigger one, probably, than even the F35 Turducken.

How the World’s Greatest Aircraft Carrier Became a $13 Billion Fiasco

Can the military save the USS Gerald R. Ford?

Wrong question. The real question is: should it?

The late 20th century was a time of supreme American confidence and rapid innovation. The Cold War was drawing to a close, the digital age was around the corner, and the Pentagon saw an opportunity to capitalize on peacetime and begin preparing for future conflict. With few diplomatic or military distractions, the United States ushered in a revolution in military technology.

Out of that boom period came ambitions for a new class of aircraft carrier headlined by the transformational USS Gerald R. Ford, a ship featuring an expanded flight deck, a boosted power plant, and support for almost two dozen emergent technologies. Expectations were high. The Ford’s nuclear reactor and propulsion system would triple the electrical power of the preceding Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. Its state-of-the-art weapons elevators would move 20,000 pounds of munitions at speeds of 150 feet per minute compared with the Nimitz‘s speed of 100 feet per minute. Its new launch-and-recovery system would be able to handle 270 planes in a single day. From bow to stern, the ship’s innovations—designed to save time, costs, and crew—would revolutionize the way the U.S. military built and used carriers. The Ford would be a symbol of American superiority, one that would project power to American adversaries for five decades of dependable service.

Well, they got the “transformational” bit right, anyway; the Ford definitely IS that. It’s just that it’s part of a decidedly wrong-way transformation: from a capable, powerful military—along with fighters that can’t fight; tanks that can’t tank; rifles more prone to jamming than a pimply, teenaged Stevie Vai wannabe at Sam Ash on a Saturday afternoon; and battalions of mincing, simpering dick-choppers who only signed up so they could get their bulbous naughty parts lopped off by an Army surgeon for free—into a hapless, bumbling, incompetent one.

“There was this thinking of, ‘We are so far ahead of everyone else that we can afford to take a strategic pause and take risks on our acquisition and try new and untested technology,’” says Eric Wertheim, a defense analyst and expert with the U.S. Naval Institute, of the nation’s mindset after the Cold War. “And there was this feeling that the rest of the world is at least 20 years behind us.”

But after two decades of development and delays, the audacity that conceived the Ford seemed to usher its doom. Expected to save the military $4 billion during its life span, the Ford has actually cost billions more than initial estimates. First expected to deploy in 2018, it has been projected to deploy as far out as 2024. When the ship reached the Navy after construction, it was already two years behind schedule, with work outstanding on thousands of items. In 2015, Sen. John McCain, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Navy aviator, called packing all that tech onto the Ford “the original sin” that damaged the program.

Even the Navy’s top officer acknowledged the problems that have plagued the carrier. “We had 23 new technologies on [the USS Gerald R. Ford] which, quite frankly, increased the risk of delivery on time and cost right from the get-go,” said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday at a virtual talk before the Navy League’s 2021 Sea Air Space exposition. “And I think industry’s in full agreement with this: We really shouldn’t introduce more than maybe one or two new technologies on any complex platform like that, in order to keep risk at a manageable level.”

Meanwhile, naval advances by U.S. adversaries have added urgency to the Ford’s troubleshooting. The ship’s critics point to its expanding budget and timetable as evidence that the U.S. military should reconsider developing massive nuclear carriers as a foundational element of its naval program. Military advisor Norman Polmar points out that America’s most recent conflicts in the Middle East didn’t even use the Nimitz class to full capacity. “Look what we did in Iraq,” he says. “We launched [just] 20 or 30 strikes a day from a carrier that has 70 airplanes.” And Rep. Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, has questioned whether the Ford’s price tag justifies its utility. During a 2021 Brookings Institution discussion, Smith asked if there are other ways “to get unmanned systems closer to the fight that don’t cost $12 billion.”

All part and parcel of the truism that generals and admirals are always preparing to fight the last war, in this case WW2. Out of the myriad mistakes, flaws, and failures of the Ford, this one remains the most jaw-dropping to me.

One standout feature of the Ford—albeit a troublesome one—is its state-of-the-art Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG). Prior to Ford, American carriers used a hydraulic arresting system to slow and stop landing aircraft, but the AAG uses an electric engine and a water twister to accommodate a broader range of aircraft—including unmanned aerial vehicles. Engineering and manufacturing of the AAG began in 2005, with 2009 the targeted end date. But a 2016 Pentagon Inspector General report noted that developmental testing for the AAG would continue through 2018; the system still hadn’t proved capable or safe enough to test on the Ford. Between 2009 and 2012, the AAG’s power conditioning system failed across multiple tests, and both its inverter system and cable shock absorber required redesigns. The setbacks ballooned the AAG’s development cost from $143 million to more than $1 billion, according to a report from Sen. McCain’s office.

(Now-retired Navy captain Talbot) Manvel says he resisted AAG on the Ford as early as 1998, wanting to push it onto the subsequent ships in the class after its design had matured. He had his way until Rumsfeld stepped in with his transformational vision. “This was transformation run amok,” Manvel says.

That it surely was, sir. Which, once the temptation of it is yielded to, is what usually tends to happen.

It all makes for a depressing read for anyone who grew up believing that the American war machine was nigh-invincible, without Earthly peer or parallel amongst its adversary nation-states. That’s simply no longer the case, if it ever really was. Which, given certain harsh realities of life on this here planet, it almost certainly wasn’t.

Democracy, yes?

Posted on March 1, 2023 by Mike

“Democracy,” NO.

The Façade of Democracy
Democracy today means nothing more than fulfillment of the Left’s agenda and their consolidation of power. Neither Ukraine nor America are democracies.
It appears that the definition of “democracy” is rather fluid. In fact, it doesn’t really mean democracy at all. Rather, it is an authoritarian and undemocratic term used by self-interested politicians to defend and promote their own desired outcomes. Last time I checked, violent coup d’état wasn’t emblematic of “democracy.”

The Democratic Party and even many RINOs assign the same undemocratic meaning to their use of the term “democracy” in the United States.

The United States supported the 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine, which has been called a “Revolution of Dignity.” But American protesters on January 6, 2021, who were overwhelmingly peaceful—the only murder was committed by a Capitol police officer, who shot an unarmed female protestor named Ashli Babbitt—were called “insurrectionists.”

In contrast, cries of voter fraud in the Ukrainian elections of 2004 were met with serious concern by the U.S government. The mass protests were encouraged and supported and the overturning of the Ukrainian election results heralded as a win for “democracy.”

Cries of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election were summarily denounced and dismissed. The United States rushed to declare the 2004 election results in Ukraine illegitimate. The United States rushed to declare the U.S. presidential election in 2020 the most free and fair in our history.

Is America even a democracy?

Of course not; it was never supposed to be, as everyone here will know full well. The Founders, hallowed be their names, hated and feared democracy as nothing more than “mob rule,” and as time has proven beyond all debate, they were perfectly correct to shun it as they did. It amounts to yet another confirmation of their unimpeachable wisdom, which we have ignored to our own profound detriment.

Just as Democrats had no regard for our own election results in 2016, they had no regard for the election results in Ukraine, when they successfully ousted Yanukovych.

The lifeblood of a democracy is free speech and the general diffusion of knowledge, which ensures the voter is informed. Yet the Democratic Party and the FBI colluded with social media companies to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop scandal during the 2020 election and falsely dismissed it as “Russian disinformation.” Was this democratic?

The Democrats continue to pursue their witch hunt against former President Trump in hopes of ultimately preventing him from running for re-election. This effort too is justified with claims of “defending” or “protecting” democracy.

Democracy is a façade in America and when the term is thrown around by Democrats its new meaning is tyranny.

Democracy today means nothing more than fulfillment of the Left’s agenda and their consolidation of power. Neither Ukraine nor America are democracies. Democracy is tantamount to destruction and both Ukraine and America are being destroyed. Democracy is under attack; in the name of protecting democracy, of course.

If Democrats succeed in protecting democracy in America, we won’t have any democracy at all.

Well, DUH. For tyrants such as they, that’s a feature, not a bug. For us as well, really, just not in quite the same way or for the same reasons.

Who owns what

Posted on February 24, 2023February 24, 2023 by Mike

Ace steps in it, big-time.

Mike Lindell says he will sue Kevin McCarthy for sharing the January 6th video only with Tucker Carlson. He wants a peek too.

My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell says he plans to sue Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for providing Fox News host Tucker Carlson with exclusive access to footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Lindell told Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast on Thursday that his streaming platform Lindell-TV plans to sue McCarthy, claiming the Speaker violated the First Amendment’s freedom of the press provision and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

The Trump ally said Lindell-TV is “injured by not having access” to the tapes and that the Speaker’s decision represented discrimination.

You know, there is some slight danger that the video could reveal something like camera placements which could, possibly, “compromise security.” It’s laughable to think that a professional journalist like Tucker Carlson wouldn’t be sensitive to that and redact frames that would expose that. Which makes the leftwing scaremongering about it — the claims that Tucker Carlson is going to, and they did claim this, actively assist “terrorists” to breach the Capitol “again” — completely risible.

But the possibility does exist. So you I can understand McCarthy wanting to restrict the release to someone who he can count on to avoid releasing anything that might be a security problem, and not just to anyone and everyone.

I can also understand McCarthy doing what every politician does: Delivering a friendly news outlet an exclusive scoop.

So what is Mike Lindell doing?

Doesn’t matter much what he might think he’s doing; “security,” my baggy white ass. “Camera placement,” forsooth? You MUST be joking. They’re on every damned street corner, hung from buildings, traffic signals, billboards, lampposts, and over dead-end alleyways not just throughout Mordor On The Potomac but in every half-assed urban hellscape across the blighted plain by now.

Bottom-line fact: those cameras were bought, installed, and maintained at whose expense again, now? Oh, that’s right: the taxpayers, that’s whose. Therefore, those cameras and anything captured by them of right ought to be the rightful property of said taxpayers, and Swamp Critter Kevin owes them a full and unrestricted public release of ALL the footage they paid for—full stop, end of fucking story.

Don’t anyone be holding their breath waiting for any such thing, of course; it ain’t gonna happen. There’s much too much ugly J6 evidence incriminating the Deep State there, and we all damned well know it.

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