Alt-American

The way forward, the way back, the past as prelude

Posted on October 21, 2023October 21, 2023 by Mike

The problem with this kind of thinking can be summed up by the parts I’ll put in boldface.

Things are going a little sideways now, wouldn’t you agree? The world is not coming to an end, exactly, but our arrangements in it are breaking up all at once, threatening to wreck everyday life for a whole lot more people than just the poor mutts on the margins. The endless insults to common decency and common sense by the vicious governing blob that runs things don’t help, either. The main question du jour: when things break really badly, will they break against that vicious blob hard enough to make it stop?

This blob — a weird cabal alien to our heritage — is composed of people with names and duties, and institutions too. They have already lost their credibility, their authority, and their legitimacy. The problem is that they haven’t lost their power to wreck our country. Exposed and disgraced as they are, they still occupy the seats of command, still twiddle the dials on the control console, still enjoy a foolish illusion of invulnerability.

I’m in favor of wholesale impeachment of these top people as the best way to go, first, to pry their hands off the levers of power, and second, use the process of impeachment to move public sentiment to a firmly anti-blob position.

See what I’m talking about? Those two statements are self-evidently contradictory. If they still occupy the seats of command—and they assuredly do—how the hell do you propose to successfully impeach them, then? Do you seriously expect a system under their control to right itself just because you have your lawyers ask their lawyers, nicely and politely, to cut out the shenanigans and skullduggery? Even if that miracle somehow does happen, who’s going to make it stick? Or, in Stalin’s famous (and possibly apocryphal) formulation, how many divisions has the Pope?

Yes, their assumption of invulnerability is in fact a foolish illusion, but not because they’re afraid of being impeached. It’s the same old story, though: the Second Amendment has no power against tyranny if Our Side has preemptively foresworn to see that’s it enforced—ie, to ever do anything with all those guns but keep them safely locked in gun safes or closets no matter what…exactly as the rabid opponents of the 2A have mandated. They did that for a reason, and so far it’s worked out quite well indeed for them.

There’s more to Kuenstler’s piece, of course, lots of it good. But in the end he’s self-stymied by some too-familiar habits of thought and emotion: the hopeless faith that, in a rigged game wherein the rules are arbitrary and favor one side over the other, appeals to the umpire might still somehow save the day. That, despite a veritable Everest of indisputable evidence to the contrary that stacks up higher each and every day, there’s still something of honesty and probity left in the crooks and grifters at the helm of the ship of (Super)state. That, in people visibly, demonstrably evil to their very marrow, there is nevertheless some good in them somewhere that might somehow be brought forth, if we can only appeal to it vehemently enough.

Would that it were so. Alas, it is not. The number of decent men in the US Congress can be counted on one’s fingers without resort to one’s toes; much as I do appreciate them, Rand Paul and Matt Gaetz will never be able to impeach anybody all by themselves. As to dismantling Foggy Bottom, fuhgeddabouddit, ain’t gonna happen without gunplay.

Not that pointing out the mal- and mis-feasance rife throughout FederalGovCo isn’t a worthwhile endeavor, mind; in fact, it’s a vital step in the whole long slog. I repeat: a process, not an event. But at some point cold, hard steel (or lead) must come into play, and all the pleas in the world for comity and gentlemanly restraint aren’t going to change that.

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Do not go gently

Posted on October 17, 2023 by Mike

Into that no-good prison.

President Donald Trump has declared that he’s “willing to go jail” as he vowed to break a federal judge’s gag order against him.

During a rally in Iowa, Trump told hundreds of supporters in suburban Des Moines that he will never be silenced.

Trump held the rally just 91 days before Iowa Republicans are due to hold the first-in-the-nation 2024 presidential caucuses.

Earlier on Monday, Obama-appointed federal District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan slapped a gag order on Trump.

The order bars the 45th president from attacking or criticizing witnesses, prosecutors, and court staff involved in his Washington, D.C. criminal case.

Wrong answer, Mr President, sir.

I mean, on the one hand it’s a good thing he’s “willing to go to jail,” I suppose, since that’s exactly where he’s headed in any event. But speaking strictly for myself and no one else, I’d like to see a bit more of the “hell no, I won’t go” spirit of outraged defiance from him, a little more “come and get me if you think you can, motherfuckers.” Submissive resignation—a shrug of the shoulders and a “well, whatchagonnado” as if equality under the law still meant a goddamned thing in Amerika v2.0—just ain’t gonna cut the mustard anymore.

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Some societies could USE reshaping

Posted on October 15, 2023October 15, 2023 by Mike

Sensing on where it all might wind up.

War and the reshaping of societies
Let me emphasize at the outset that my assessment of the looming Israeli invasion of Gaza is intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive. I am not proposing what Israel should do, but what it may do as the coming days and weeks unfold, even if Israel does not actually intend it now.

Having formed a “unity government” for the war, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has stated clearly that the permanent end of Hamas as the principal war aim. That this objective requires a land invasion of Gaza is also clear. But what can it take to destroy Hamas? Netanyahu has said that killing its terrorists fighters is a specific goal, but Hamas is not merely an organization. It is also an ideology. How does Israel end with not only the present Hamas organization destroyed, but also the ideology?

America’s Civil War and World War 2 may provide a clue.

But first, what is Hamas’ ideology?

It is very simple: Kill Jews, kill Jews, kill more Jews. Specifically, Hamas (and Lebanon’s Hezbollah) has said publicly and often that it has at least the following goals:

1. The elimination of the state of Israel and establishment of a Muslim nation “from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea.” Jews must vacate this land entirely or they will be killed.

2. In the meantime, and as a tactic to attain that goal, Hamas has said before and again very recently that Jews must be killed. Last Saturday, Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif announced, “Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge.” Al-Aqsa is the name of the mosque atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Deif said that the mass killings of Israelis were a mere “first strike,” with much more yet to come.

Donald goes on to discuss the CW1 parallels as reflected in the total-war philosophy of Sherman, then hits lightly on Eisenhower before landing squarely on Roosevelt’s somewhat-belated WW2 realization:

Hence, wrote Roosevelt in a letter to Secretary of War Henry Stimson,

It is of utmost importance that every person in Germany should realize that this time Germany is a defeated nation…The fact that they are a defeated nation, collectively and individually, must be so impressed upon them that they will hesitate to start any new war.

Precisely so—then, now, and always. As I’ve said so very many times here, about both Muslim Supremacists and the American Left, so it was with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. As Sensing quips: “One notes that Japan and Germany have been well behaved since 1945.” One does at that. Thus do we arrive in the unlovely place we were always doomed to:

The End Game
At this point, both Israel and Hamas must realize that, as Gen. Douglas MacArthur said, “In war there is no substitute for victory.” Victory for Hamas can be defined very simply: it survives as an ongoing, at least minimally effective, violent anti-Israel entity as before. Hamas’ leaders know that to abandon murderous violence to establish a purely Palestinian state by political measures, rather than violence, means two things: (a) Hamas would not even be Hamas any more, so what is the point, and (b) mere politics will never accomplish that goal anyway. Hamas’ true believers would literally rather die than take that course.

As for Israel, its leadership at least knows that Hamas must be ended and no Hamas-by-another-name can be allowed. There is no answer to how long it will take to destroy Hamas or how many casualties it will cost. But neither Grant nor Sherman knew those things ahead of time, either. So Israel must proceed, though it is doing so as Otto von Bismarck reportedly said about going to war, “entering a dark room blindfolded to search for a black cat that is not even there.”

Gaza’s residents, whether they know it now or not, must decide in whose hands they literally trust their lives and the lives of their children. Hamas is quite willing to sacrifice them. But they may come to realize that while Israel will not target them, neither will Israel refrain from attacking if Hamas militarizes their refuges. An international standard called Common Article 3 governs combat between state and non-state combatants. It states that civilians’ presence at a location does not automatically make that location off limits from attack.

S’truth. In modern, post-Napoleonic warfare, “civilian” doesn’t mean quite what it once may have. In fact, during WW2’s Ruhr Valley strategic bombing campaign civilians were redefined as “military assets” themselves due to their work in Germany’s military-matériel industry—steel- and ironworks, armaments factories, synthetic-oil refining facilities, among other things—centered there.

Official handwringing over “civilian casualties” might be all fine and well during times of (relative) peace, but once the two-way firing range has gone full-on hot, all bets—and gloves—are off. In guerilla warfare (ie, asymmetrical, 4G-5G, however you prefer to conceptualize it), restraint and “proportionate” responses will ultimately serve only to get even more of your civilians killed than might otherwise have been the case.

For the moment, Israel seems firmly committed to trading the kid-gloves in for a stout set of knuckledusters: razing Gaza to the ground, making the rubble bounce, and effectively depopulating the place. So be it, then; having been forced into the position of waging total war against a clearly-implacable enemy who has repeatedly, explicitly, and openly declared its intention to kill every Jew they possibly can, the Israelis must now see this thing through to the very end. Gaza may not survive; Hamas MUST not, period fucking dot. Sic semper jihadists, sayeth I.

Admittedly, this isn’t America’s fight. In truth, I seriously doubt whether—given our current sorry state of self-enfeeblement, in ways by no means restricted to military matters alone—the US could provide a whole lot of assistance anyway, to Israel or anybody else.

Send a couple carrier groups with newfangled electromagnetic catapults that won’t catapult, conned by Manwoman helmspyrsynnz who were never taught to navigate without crashing into other ships, seawalls, docks, and/or sundry land masses, their flight decks jam-packed with squadrons of combat-ineffective F35 Turduckens that are far too expensive to chance having to replace when they fall out of the sky inexplicably, or recover when the malfunctioning EM catapult lobs them gently into the sea? With a complement of overweight, out of shape lesbian Wokester-Marines in “support”?

Sure, why the hell not? Tell me the one about Goldilocks and the Three Bears next, Daddy, that one’s my favorite.

Expect any practical effect on the situation beyond humiliating self-beclownment, though? Surely you jest.

At this point, the best course of action for us is to firmly reject all pompous FederalGovCo demands that Israel be put back on its leash before any more Mooselimb terrorists get hurt; re-establish and secure the southern border; and muster the will to cleanse our own badly-broken nation of the domestic jihadist threat. A Sisyphean task to be sure, but that’s still just for openers. Sorry to bust any bubbles here, but there’s an extremely lengthy to-do list of domestic affairs needing to be settled before we can even dream of mucking about in anybody else’s.

After two decades plus of bootless circle-jerkery under the War on (Some) Terror rubric, we ought never to have wound up in such an awful fix. And yet, somehow, here we all are anyway.

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When the shoe’s finally on the other foot…

Posted on October 14, 2023 by Mike

Enjoy it to the very fullest.

Cancel Culture Finally Comes for the Left, and I Can’t Stop Laughing
As I wrote previously, all the geopolitical arguments in the world, right or wrong, do not excuse mass murder, including the massacring of children. When Hamas crossed the border and started indiscriminately killing people and taking hostages, there was no question that the gloves would have to come off. Complaints about settlements and the Al-Aqsa mosque became academic at that point.

Still, in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, some people actually came out in open support of Hamas’ atrocities, justifying them and blaming Israel for the murder of its own people. Joint letters were put out by universities and protests were held with chants glorifying Hamas “martyrs.”

Naturally, some companies decided that was a bridge too far and rescinded job offers to those who participated, and now the crying has begun.

Wait, am I supposed to feel sorry for a person who literally cheerleaded mass murder and claimed it was simply “resistance?” Is that really what the Post is suggesting with this hand-wringing article full of defenses of people espousing nazi ideology? Last I checked, the left loves cancel culture, and no single entity of the left loves it more than the university system.

Regardless, my response to this is simple: I can’t stop laughing.

This is what the left wanted. They wanted a world where people get publicly and professionally punished for the things they say. Further, they wanted the standard to be so low that people could get fired for simply speaking basic truths, such as that men can’t become women. But now, the very same left wants to pull back that standard to include supporting terrorists who shoot up music festivals.

Yeah, no. That’s not how this works.

Nor should it be. Yet it was, for way too many years. If the Woke worm is beginning to turn at long last, then hey, laugh, laugh away, I say. Shame it took a bestial mass-slaughter to make it happen, but…well, that’s the way it usually happens, historically-speaking.

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MOAR coinkydinks!

Posted on October 14, 2023 by Mike

Divemedic reports on yet another J6 outrage.

More than 1,000 people have been arrested and charged for supposedly trying to overthrow the government on January 6. The FBI has left no stone unturned in identifying every single person who participated that day.

What is curious about this wide ranging investigation is that five men gathered on the National Mall directly in front of the Capitol, erected a gallows, with one of them making a coffee run during its construction. To a coffee house blocks away, located directly across the street from the headquarters of the FBI. I am sure that the HQ of the FBI has security cameras on it, yet not one photo of any of these men has been circulated, and not one attempt has been made to identify any of them.

Why not? If the FBI is so fired up about identifying a grandmother whose only crime was walking into the Capitol, looking around, then leaving, why aren’t they making an effort to locate the five men who threatened to kill members of Congress with their material act?

Of course, DM knows the answer as well as you do: because, since the five men were FBI agents provocateur, either CHS’s or agents, they neither need nor WANT to—they know full well who they are, and where. The vid DM mentions can be viewed here, including footage of the mystery man the open.ink website refers to as “Mr Coffee,” along with a request:

Who is “Mr. Coffee”?
If you know, or if you have any relevant information to share, please call 314-256-1776 or email at us at proamericareport@open.ink.

As always, this Special Collection includes links to our growing database of video, audio, articles, and other relevant information.

For those wishing to support the J6 Patriots and their loved ones, visit patriotfreedomproject.com.

Link transcribed for once, because it’s important.

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Ask a hard one next time

Posted on October 13, 2023October 13, 2023 by Mike

A question from Gatito Bueno:

i am just a kitten, so please forgive me i(f) this is an obvious question to which most people know the answer and i do not but:

is this some sort of really dry sarcasm or just an astonishing lack of self-awareness?

Heh. Oh, I think we all know the answer to your question right enough, Gatito. In fact, right offhand I can think of a few others to go along with it.

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The plain and simple truth

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Mike

Gotta just love this Tweet X from Gaetz.

I know who I work for.

And it’s nobody who lives in Washington DC.

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz)

October 9, 2023

Sad, when something which ought to be entirely obvious and elementary comes off sounding quite radical.

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Just curious

Posted on October 8, 2023 by Mike

Aesop says something which raises a practical question.

Average Joe’s toleration of “public good” screw tightening has eroded down to the wear bars on that particular tire. Ain’t nobody having another helping of that, nor likely to anytime this century.

It is to laugh.

Somebody tries that anyways? Fed agent’s pelts – whole body mounts, mind you, not just the horns – would be nailed to every wall from Maine to Monterey, and snitches’ and collaborators’ heads would decorate every fencepost in sight, from sea to shining sea.

The WHOLE pelt, you say—would that include the tail and cloven hooves too, prithee tell? Asking for a friend, don’tchaknow.

Carlos Hathcock had 93 confirmed kills in a jungle war, mostly in a single tour of duty of under 13 months. Chuck Mawhinney’s official tally is recorded at 103, and another 216 probables in the same conflict. Simo Häyhä chalked up 542 Reds in only under a hundred days in the snow, maxxing out at 25 in one day. With a bolt-action rifle and iron sights!

Put in simple terms, if there’s as little as one Simo in 30,000 in the entire U.S., the entire problem is gone – forever – in the amount of time it takes to put one Marine through boot camp. (And the waiting line to sign up for that has gone pretty quiet of late.)

There’s no respawn button, they can’t shake-and-bake new orcs fast enough to overcome that problem, and even the hordes pouring across the border are going to be headed the other way the minute that happens.

Pepe LePew couldn’t clear out a town as fast as two-way gunfire hereabouts is going to solve the illegal alien problem. Least of all if some of it squirts in their direction.

And trying to disarm the populace triggers the exact scenario the feds are earnestly hoping to avoid.

I must say, t’is a consummation devoutly to be wished indeed. One strongly suspects we’ll have the opportunity to find out for sure soon enough; Lord knows caution, good judgment, humility, and simple common sense are conspicuous only by their total absence amongst our would-be masters nowadays.

Ron White famously said “You can’t fix stupid,” but that’s not entirely correct; there’s always been one sure-fire way, which has been observed in field trials to be one hundred percent effective. How convenient, then, that it also just happens to be the exact same therapy explicitly commended to their posterity by the Founding Fathers as a guaranteed palliative for tyranny.

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The whole megilla

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Mike

Big, LOOOONG excerpt coming up here, from an entirely brilliant article that essentially breaks down into two sections, de facto if not de jure. I’ll put the first part above the fold, then tuck the rest below so as to keep the main-page scrolling here from getting too obnoxious for y’all. Y’know, ‘cause I’m a giver like that, I am. A-HENH!

Against the Black Pill
Despite the leftist takeover of most American institutions, America is still saveable—if the right is willing to fight fire with fire.

It’s pretty easy to be optimistic about America’s prospects if you believe the tales that the conservative movement tells its donors. Or the Trump mythology. Or the Reagan hagiography.

More generally than not, though, those who know what time it is—that is, who realize just how much ground has been gained by the left in the past century and how corrupt the regime has become—tend to despair. As the kids say, they’ve been “blackpilled.” And it’s easy to see why.

What was once justly known as the land of the free and the home of the brave has devolved into an oligarchic, feminizing regime that is hostile to most of the defining elements of traditional American identity. The institutional high ground is controlled by a ruling class that is either sincerely woke and anti-American or that lacks the courage to stand up to the fanatics.

At best, our elites are just greedy—or neoliberal, to use the quaint contemporary term—and thus indifferent to America. At worst, they are woke believers hellbent on further accelerating Third World immigration, turning your kids transgender, and eradicating all dissent. What they almost never are, is unabashedly committed to constitutionalism, any kind of recognizably orthodox Christianity, liberty (on issues not related to drugs or sexuality), manliness, or any other of the features that once defined this republic. The best that can be said on their behalf is that they generally support economic growth and scientific innovation, although both are undermined by the woke erosion of standards and environmentalist neo-Luddism.

If you love America, you can still find a handful of dissident institutions that align with your beliefs (I am lucky enough to work at one)—but both the elite and mainstream institutions loudly signal that they despise your beliefs and your heritage. And they are becoming more and more brazen in wielding their power to punish dissenters and bestow special privileges upon allies.

The rule of law, the foundational pillar of American republicanism, is increasingly giving way to a two-tiered system of justice. The law (along with the media, of course) mostly turns a blind eye to the machinations of the Clintons and the Bidens, to Epstein’s pedophile network, to the millions of illegal immigrants flooding our southern border, to the homeless encampments overtaking our cities, to BLM and Antifa rioters, and to the petty and not-so-petty black criminals whom Soros-funded district attorneys refrain from prosecuting because of “antiracism.” While these allies of the regime do not operate with complete impunity, parts of the law simply do not apply to them.

The law, by contrast, comes down extra hard (and the media obsessively reports) on political dissidents who “trespassed” the Capitol on Jan. 6, citizens who defied the draconian COVID policies of the regime (unless they were protesting racial injustice), and, of course, the leading Republican contender for the presidency, his inner circle, and those who supported him in unapproved ways. Douglass Mackey was recently convicted of conspiring to deprive others of their right to vote because he tweeted unapproved memes. He faces up to 10 years in prison. The average prison sentence of the 70 BLM and Antifa rioters who have so far been found guilty is 27 months. In New York, two former lawyers, Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman, were sentenced to a little over a year for setting fire to an empty police car with a Molotov cocktail.

In 1994, Chronicles columnist Sam Francis coined the term “anarcho-tyranny” in the pages of this magazine to describe the now-prevalent double standard, but subsequent events have shown that his definition needs to be expanded. The tyranny—that is, the draconian enforcement of laws—applies not just to “the innocent and the law-abiding” ordinary citizen, but also to the political enemies of the regime. And the anarchy, or the nonenforcement of laws, extends beyond “serious criminals” to politically well-connected individuals and disorderly groups whose causes are blessed by the regime.

Part The First carries on from there, amounting to a pretty comprehensive rundown of all the institutions, bureaucracies, agencies, and media/entertainment edifices now controlled completely by the America Hatin’, Goosesteppin’ Left. Now, for Part the Second, which is all about how this sorry situation might be dealt with effectively.

Continue reading “The whole megilla” →

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It’s morning Red Dawn in America

Posted on October 7, 2023October 7, 2023 by Mike

Probably the most important Twitter X thread you’re ever gonna see.

I know it’s long but read this entire thread, I think it’s the most important warning I’ve ever written. Where we’re at isn’t a game. We’re at the edge of the cliff and it’s our last chance to save America. Share this thread if you agree, tag lawmakers and discuss in replies!

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck)

October 6, 2023

Understand what time it is in America:

• Trump is being prosecuted by Biden’s regime + multiple state level Democrats

• Every agency in government has been weaponized to investigate @elonmusk because he’s trying to level the playing field online to empower citizens

•…

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck)

October 6, 2023

At the direct request of no less august a personage than the highly esteemed and estimable Elon Musk his own self, Starbuck also posted a recorded version which, being more the written-wordly type myself, I didn’t listen to. But as always, YMMV; whether by ear or by Mark 1-Mod 0 eyeball, be sure to hit “Show more” and take in the whole thing. It really does say it all—and I DO mean all.

Via WRSA and Bracken, with sincere thanks to both for calling my attention to it.

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So how’s that Speaker Kevin McCarthy thing working out for ya, anyway?

Posted on October 3, 2023October 3, 2023 by Mike

Oh, just about exactly like a lot of us predicted it would. Thankfully, though, Matt Gaetz just won a small victory—not just for himself, but for us all.

Kevin McCarthy ousted as House speaker, thrusting Congress into chaos

Well good, I’m glad to see it. As much chaos as CongressCreatchters (appropriated from the great Ernest T Bass, look it up) have wreaked on America That Was, they deserve to share in the experience.

Kevin McCarthy made the wrong kind of history Tuesday — becoming the first speaker of the House of Representatives to be ousted by a floor vote driven by members of his own party.

Eight Republicans — Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Eli Crane of Arizona, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Bob Good of Virginia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and Matt Rosendale of Montana — banded together with a united Democrat conference to declare the office of speaker vacant by a vote of 216-210, removing McCarthy (R-Calif.) from power and plunging the chamber into uncertainty as it faces a grinding process to pick his replacement.

McCarthy, who made no comment to reporters as he left the House chamber following the vote, was booted from his job three days shy of the nine-month anniversary of his election as speaker on the 15th ballot this past January.

Now, lawmakers face a rerun of that marathon process, with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) considered the favorites to put themselves forward for the job — assuming McCarthy doesn’t want to try again.

Having proved out as just the kind of treacherous two-headed serpent we knew him to be, I can’t really see McCarthy trying again, and if he does I can’t see him regaining the position. But perhaps that’s naive of me; a few dirty, quiet deals, a little back-room conspiracizing, and some assiduous scratching of the right backs and hey presto! We’re saddled with Speaker McCarthy again.

Gaetz had dangled the prospect of a revolt against McCarthy almost from the moment the Californian took the gavel.

The 41-year-old finally went ahead with the motion to vacate Monday night, after a weekend of stewing over the now-former speaker’s decision to call up a stopgap spending bill to avoid a partial government shutdown — and rely on Democratic votes to get the measure through

“I’m confident I’ll hold on,” McCarthy told reporters Tuesday morning, but his political demise became a matter of time when a motion to block Gaetz’s effort failed 218-208. Reps. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), Cory Mills (R-Fla.) and Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) voted against the motion to table, but to keep McCarthy in place.

With only 426 House members casting votes, however, McCarthy needed 214 supporters to keep his speakership.

“We need a speaker who will fight for something, anything besides staying or becoming speaker,” declared (Virginia Rep Bob) Good, who assailed McCarthy for both the debt limit deal he reached with the Biden administration earlier this year and the maneuvering to avoid a shutdown.

“We need a speaker — ideally somebody who doesn’t want to be speaker and hasn’t pursued that at all costs for his entire adult life — who will meet the moment, and do everything possible to fight for the country.”

Boy, did you ever say a mouthful there, sir. Bold mine, and quite heartening. Always nice to see a DC denizen who seems to really get it, y’know? As I said, it’s but one small victory, and certainly won’t solve everything for us. But in times like these, you takes your victories where you finds em, be they large or small. Those small victories should properly be thought of as stepping stones to more significant wins. Stack up a big enough pile of those, and you’re on your way to more serious and impactful wins—that’s taking the long view, one of the primary reasons the Left has been consistently our asses for so damned long.

This is a process, not an event, as I’m so fond of saying. Kudos to Matt Gaetz for outlasting and outmaneuvering the shifty, scheming Vichy GOPe shitweasels, and slam-dunking this one on them in the end. Many happy returns, Rep Gaetz. Bravo, and encore.

Update! Multifarious backup for my “treacherous two-headed serpent” slam against FORMER (a-HENH!) Speaker McCarthy.

Eight Republican representatives, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), on Tuesday successfully carried a motion to vacate, meaning Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is no longer speaker of the House. Several of the representatives have spoken out to explain why they ousted McCarthy.

There was a running theme in the comments criticizing McCarthy, who cut deals on spending with Democrats despite the fact that America cannot afford continued high spending, for his financial irresponsibility.

Gaetz posted multiple videos of himself on X (Twitter), including a fiery denunciation of the corruption of our government. “I’ll make this argument at any desk in this building. I’ll make it on every street corner in this country, that Washington must change,” he said.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) tweeted his opinion before the vote happened. “Speaker McCarthy has failed to demonstrate himself as an effective leader who will change the status quo,” he said. “He has gone against many of the promises he made in January and can no longer be trusted at the helm.” Biggs also posted a clip of himself on Steve Bannon’s “War Room,” highlighting McCarthy’s uninspiring record.

Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) posted after the vote that he wants to ensure “We the People” aren’t “steamrolled by the status quo.”

More at the link. I’ll leave you with Catherine Salgado’s summation:

Finally, I’d like to add my own personal opinion. “Infighting is bad for the GOP,” we are told, but spineless politicians who consistently cave to the Democrats are helping destroy our nation. The U.S. debt is “unsustainable,” according to experts, and yet McCarthy even reportedly made a deal with Joe Biden for Ukraine funding we can’t afford! We need people in charge who work for American citizens, not people who assist our disastrous careen toward national bankruptcy and collapse. Republicans lose partly because we have a defeatist mentality; we assume we’re going to lose before we even start fighting, and we choose to act based on how we think Democrats will respond. That’s unacceptable. Thank God the Founders didn’t think the same way. The Democrats sure as heck don’t, which is probably how they took over all our institutions and normalized ideologies that a few decades ago were considered blatant insanity.

I must beg to differ, Cath: Republicans “lose” mainly because that’s their assigned role in this elaborate kabuki production currently misnomered as *gag choke puke spit* “democracy.” Although your point about the debilitating plague of “defeatist” malaise afflicting the hoodwinked Republican Party rank and file is certainly well-taken. The sad fact is that, for far too many years now, conservatives have been content to play defense only, when every winning coach would tell you that the time-tested path to victory is offense.

In military terms, although it’s eminently possible to forestall defeat via a tenacious, determined defense of a position or region, wars aren’t usually won that way. In warfare, the initiative is everything; forever responding to enemy actions is folly, a sure-fire recipe for defeat. Forcing the enemy to respond to you—bringing him to battle on ground of your choosing, not his; forcing his soldiers to cower in hastily-dug foxholes and improvised entrenchments under an aggressive artillery barrage; neutering his own artillery with counterbattery fire; leaving his aircraft aflame in their revetments, the pilots and ground crews fleeing for their lives to the shelters, instead of taking to the air to attack your planes and airfields—is always the way to go, if you can manage it.

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Wisdom of the ages

Posted on October 1, 2023October 1, 2023 by Mike

Listening just now to one of the best OTR shows, Gunsmoke, Doc Adams was opining to Marshall Dillon:

ADAMS: Y’know, Matthew, in Europe they don’t allow people to just walk around with guns like this…

DILLON: Yeah, but Doc, this ain’t Europe, we’re in Dodge City.

ADAMS: That’s true, I guess. At least here, we can still drink.

Heh. Turns out, some truths really ARE eternal.

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The Interviewer, interviewed

Posted on September 25, 2023 by Mike

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Truck THIS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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To laugh, and to cry

Posted on September 21, 2023 by Mike

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

America Is Becoming a Joke

Becoming, Kurt?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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