Alt-American

Good show!

Posted on February 2, 2023February 2, 2023 by Mike

I know I said yesterday that the animal-rights whackjobs chaining themselves by their chicken-necks to an active conveyor belt was the feel-good story of the week, and I meant that too. But suddenly, a new contender has emerged.

Vegan activists try to stop a truck 🤦‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/ejm0WnsDsv

— Clown World ™ 🤡 (@ClownWorld_)

January 30, 2023

In the vid, after his near-thing brush with becoming sticky red goo, one of the candidates for a Darwin Golden Achievement Award whimpers, “what’s wrong with that guy?” To which I respond: nothing whatsoever, roadkill. The only wrong thing here is you and your insufferably smug compadres, not the poor working stiff just trying to earn an honest, honorable, and entirely legal living for himself and his family, a thing I strongly suspect your ilk knows little if anything about.

Then comes the anguished bleat “HE’S A LUNATIC!!” Well, somebody certainly is, yeah. But it ain’t the truck driver; he’s had just about a bellyfull of your juvenile-delinquent bullshit, and decided he just wasn’t gonna put up with another second of it. Like the rest of us saner sorts are similarly fed up, and will have to show a little “activist” initiative of our own if we ever hope to be rid of you.

Indeed. Lately, it seems as if there’s another new Lord Of The Idiots title-seeker popping up every five minutes or so.

4

Moar Substackery

Posted on February 1, 2023February 1, 2023 by Mike

Humble thanks to the handful of folks who have signed up as subscribers to my Substack thang over the last few days. I still don’t have the place looking the way I’d like for it to; near as I can tell, customization options are, shall we say, limited, so it simply ain’t possible to tweak things too very much. As an inveterate tinkerer my whole danged life, with everything from cars to motorcycles to guitars to amps to recipes to websites, you can readily imagine just how severely that chaps my baggy white ass.

It does, however, bring to mind a query: what are y’all’s thoughts on the white text against blue background I’m using there currently? I was hoping to get this Eyrie endeavor of mine to as closely resemble this h’yar websty as I could, but it seems to me that the white text might be kinda hard on older eyes. Do let me know in the comments, please; that at least is simplicity itself to adjust, and I’ll be happy to do so if needed.

There’s also the email-notification-for-subscribers feature to consider, which I haven’t bothered customizing at all yet. Then there’s the multitude of other features, most of which I don’t even know what they are yet, nor what they do.

My original idea for this Substack whoopjamboreehoo was to offer original-content posts there once things get rolling steady, to go up on Mondays and Fridays å la James Kunstler’s joint. I’m less confident about being able to pull that twice-weekly commitment off now than I was, seeing as how I am unwaveringly determined that the dire need to generate some income due to my new status as World’s Greatest One-Legged Blogger (see right sidebar) shall NOT be allowed to infringe on Ye Olde Colde Furye Blogge in any way, shape, or form. I’ve been running this hogwallow for over twenty years now, no way I’ll just let it wither on the vine now. Not on my watch, bub.

On the other hand, though, since the whole idea is to make some dough, I want to provide decent bang for the buck at the Eyrie too, y’know? The benefit would be twofold, I’m thinking, with not only the income potential but the prospect of driving more traffic from there to here and vice the versa figuring into this messy mix.

In the final analysis, the blogging thing entire is about eyeballs and interaction, not money. The free exchange of ideas is the prime motivator, which is as it should be. We on the Dissident Right are sorely beset on all sides by a monstrous, malignant politico-cultural Leviathan; not since the Revolution itself has it been more vital that, as Franklin famously said back then, we all hang together, lest we all hang separately. As the gathering riptide of chaos, dissolution, and collapse threatens to overwhelm and wash away all that we once held dear, those words of wisdom must not be forgotten.

1

In praise of Pat Buchanan

Posted on January 28, 2023January 28, 2023 by Mike

As Barry Goldwater’s ill-fated 1964 campaign’s slogan had it: In your heart, you know he’s right.

America First: A Tribute to Pat Buchanan

Last Friday, Buchanan announced he is retiring the political column he has written since the days of Barry Goldwater. It is the final end of a public political career that has spanned a half century of decline in the country Buchanan loved so much and fought so hard to save. And if Buchanan can’t boast that he actually did save the country, he at least has the satisfaction of seeing ideas that once made him an outcast from his own party rise to become the dominant worldview within it. Without Buchanan, there would be no Trump. For that matter, without Buchanan, there would be no Revolver.

Of all the people who might be deemed a forerunner of Donald Trump and his political revolution, Pat Buchanan has by far the most worthy claim.

Consider this article from 2015, published just as Trump’s presidential campaign was taking off:

Mr. Trump revels in controversy. But as he assails illegal immigration as an “invasion” and refers to Mexicans en masse as “Jose,” his critics are accusing him of taking controversy a step too far. They say Mr. Trump is speaking in code, using xenophobic images like those or anti-Semitic references to excite bigots without alienating mainstream voters.

[Trump frequently offers] direct and sometimes harsh mockery of foreigners, using his derision to cultivate support for his immigration and trade policies. “I’ll build that security fence, and we’ll close it, and we’ll say, ‘Listen Jose, you’re not coming in this time!’ ” he shouted to applause from an almost entirely white audience at a rally in Waterloo, Iowa three weeks ago.

Okay, you probably already guessed the twist: That’s not Trump at all, but a write-up of Buchanan’s presidential campaign twenty-six years ago. All that’s missing is the promise to make Mexico pay for the fence. Buchanan didn’t just share Trump’s views, but his talent for colorful language that drove the regime berserk; a quarter-century before “Crooked Hillary,” China’s Deng Xiaoping was a “chain-smoking Communist dwarf.”

Donald Trump won the presidency by appealing to the Silent Majority, but Buchanan is the one who literally coined the term working as a speechwriter for Richard Nixon. And throughout his career, Buchanan tried his best to speak for that quiet mass of beleaguered American humanity.

Put up a fence, send illegals home, America-first trade policy, an end to foreign interventionism, no more wokeness: It was all there, 20 years ahead of Trump. But tragically, the message went unheeded. Buchanan was the intellectual son of accountant, not a billionaire real estate tycoon with three decades’ experience as a TV star. Buchanan had the ideas, but Trump had the money, the star power, the meme magic. Buchanan’s 1992 campaign was the last credible primary challenge to an incumbent president, but nothing more. His 1996 campaign might have worked against a more divided field, but against an establishment firmly united around Bob Dole, Buchanan won just four states and 20% of the primary vote.

But Buchanan never deviated or retooled his message just for the sake of popularity. Instead, he willingly endured more than a decade as the Republican Party’s Cassandra.

In the end, all of Buchanan’s warnings came true: Middle America became a hollowed-out, deindustrialized area wracked with blight and drug overdoses. America’s foreign adventures wasted trillions and achieved nothing. The tidal wave of foreign immigration resulted not in rainbow-like harmony but endless struggles between different identity groups. And all of this culminated in crushing defeat for the Bush-era Republican party that embraced all of these trends. It would only return to the White House in 2016 behind a candidate who finally did what Buchanan had begged the party to do a quarter-century before: Actually reach out to middle America and seek the support of America’s Silent Majority.

“My friends, these people are our people,” Buchanan said in 1992. “They don’t read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke, but they come from the same schoolyards and the same playgrounds and towns as we come from. They share our beliefs and convictions, our hopes and our dreams. They are the conservatives of the heart. They are our people. And we need to reconnect with them. We need to let them know we know how bad they’re hurting. They don’t expect miracles of us, but they need to know we care.”

Sadly, it took twenty-four years for the GOP to field a candidate who did.

Yep—dragged kicking and screaming every step of the way, and to this day they struggle desperately to smite him, and make damned sure he stays smote for the duration. Just as any debased, corrupted system or organization always will do, to any nonconformist, visionary outlaw who dares stand athwart them and their nefarious ambitions.

6

1

Unworthy world order

Posted on January 28, 2023January 28, 2023 by Mike

If the over-optimistically misnomered “free world” is no longer anything like free, what about it could possibly be worth striving to save?

Why Preserve a ‘World Order’ Without Freedom?

It has become fashionable now for lawmakers to demand accountability for the social media site TikTok because it is finally being correctly acknowledged as both an intelligence-gathering net and propaganda fire hose for the Chinese Communist Party. The irony, though, is that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google Search provide the U.S. government with identical tools. The D.C. Deep State does not mind if Americans are spied on and psychologically manipulated by government actors; on the contrary, it seeks a total monopoly on such influence operations.

To enjoy personal liberty free from the arbitrary intrusions of government nosy-bodies, you have to get pretty far away from the shadow of State authority. Even then, because the national security surveillance structure is pervasive, an isolated campfire in a remote wood is still most likely being caught by somebody’s overhead satellite for some unknown reason. If you are unable to escape from the watchful eyes of the government’s complex monitoring system, then the inner mind becomes the last refuge for any freethinker — so long as those personal thoughts are not communicated out loud.

So freedom is chased farther and farther away from hubs of government tracking, farther and farther into the recesses of one’s mind, until it can be exercised only in the silence of one’s imagination. Make no mistake: the imposition of “silence” is intentional. Governments understand that the best way to prevent the spread of ideas that might threaten their grip on power is to prevent those ideas from ever being spoken out loud. To silence dissent is to squash opposition. To criminalize thought is to enslave the mind. That’s the “freedom” enjoyed by a prisoner, not a living, breathing citizen of any “free world.” If you have been corralled into a mental prison against your will, though, then the best question to ask is this: what would you be willing to do to escape?

Cameras, computers, artificial intelligence — there’s just no way out! Do you know that every generation of humans confronted with new technological weapons has said the same thing?Their cannon are too powerful! Their ships are too many! It is futile to resist! Yet people do resist, and over time, they realize that it is ultimately not the technology that threatens their freedom, but rather the governments that would choose to use that technology without respect for human rights or natural liberties.

Precisely, indubitably so. Over the course of my life, I’ve heard the exact same bitching and moaning over the advent of color TV, then cable TV, then VCRs, then the Innarnuts, then cell phones, then smart phones and tablets, etc etc ad infinitum ad nauseam. No, no, and oh hell no. No grumpy comment-section Neo-Luddite screaming “we must get rid of (insert name of new tech here), we must get rid of (insert other new tech here)!” is at any real hazard of being enslaved by said new-tech devices. Not as long as they retain the intestinal fortitude to simply put the blasted thing down, they ain’t.

Bottom-line summation: it’s the government, stupid.

To create and sustain a “free world,” citizens actually have to be willing to stand up to their governments and say, “No, you cannot do that; you do not have that power; now go away.” Usually, governments (which exist purely because they assert a monopoly over the legitimate use of force) then load their cannon and surround rebellious ports with an overwhelming number of ships as a demonstration of how their “legitimate” force somehow justifies the theft of others’ freedoms. For the citizenry on the receiving end of such violence, this translates to nothing more than “might makes right.”

What they learn in the process is that government power untethered from principle is neither righteous nor worth preserving. The harsher and more unjust governments become toward their citizens, the more likely movements for freedom take hold. When scrappy underdogs prevail over unbeatable foes and “turn the world upside-down,” they do so with tremendous help from their tormentors’ hubris.

Lindsey Graham is right about this much: the world order is at stake. Freedom around the world is under attack from those governments sworn to protect it, and their betrayal imperils peace. I saw a headline recently that blared, “Rogue Hog Turns Tables, Kills Butcher.” Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the news had nothing to do with politics. Although, given that the homicidal hog had been repeatedly shocked with a stun gun and kept in a tiny enclosure on his way to becoming BBQ, his story could be a prudent allegory after all.

Freedom ain’t free; never has been, never will be. It is not a gift from some benevolent and wise government; no government in history has been willing to even pay lip service for very long, as ours no longer bothers about doing, to “preserving” and/or “defending” it as it grows ever larger and more intrusive. The priceless jewel of freedom can only be seized and then scrupulously maintained, nearly always by force of arms wielded by strong, determined lovers of individual liberty resolutely unwilling to ever take “no” for an answer.

“Violence is not the answer”? The hell you say. It’s the ONLY answer, once a certain line in the sand has been stepped over. Unfortunately for us all, in Amerika v2.0 that grim threshold was crossed long ago.

This essay is depressing as all hell, but it’s also one of the estimable JB Shurk’s very best yet, of which you’ll surely want to read the all.

4

The last American hero

Posted on January 21, 2023January 21, 2023 by Mike

Verily, a man among men.

Over the moon! Buzz Aldrin marries on his 93rd birthday: Astronaut legend ties the knot for a fourth time as he shares sweet photos with new bride Anca Faur, 63

The second man on the moon has married for a fourth time, with astronaut legend Buzz Aldrin announcing he’d wed his longtime girlfriend on his birthday.

Mr Aldrin, who turned 93 on Friday and was part of the historic first-ever moon landing mission, made the sweet announcement to his new bride, who is 30 years his junior, on his Twitter account.

‘On my 93rd birthday & the day I will also be honored by Living Legends of Aviation I am pleased to announce that my longtime love Dr. Anca Faur & I have tied the knot. We were joined in holy matrimony in a small private ceremony in Los Angeles & are as excited as eloping teenagers.’

Dr Faur, 63, currently works as the Executive Vice President of Buzz Aldrin Ventures LLC, with her LinkedIn page listing her as having worked for the company since 2019.

What a badass. There are photos, and Buzz still looks great. No word at post time on whether he gave any pesky, moonshot-denier punk-ass bitches in the vicinity that patented Aldrin right cross straight in the fucking mush. But no matter; we’ll always have the memories.

Schweeeet. WeirdDave also hips us to this gem:

I’ve heard stories that Buzz and Neil Armstrong used to tell each other really unfunny jokes about being on the moon at parties, and when they were greeted with an awkward silence they’d say “Well, I guess you had to be there”.

Heh. Yep, like I said: badass. Happy birthday to you, Buzz. May you and your lovely bride enjoy many happy years together.

7

Street justice

Posted on January 17, 2023 by Mike

Andrea Widburg on a phenomenon that, as Feral lawlessness continues to go unpunished, we’ll be seeing more and more of: vigilantism.

VIDEOS: Americans step up because the police aren’t there

Last week, a video made the rounds showing what happened to a man who entered a restaurant, waved a gun around (later shown to be fake), and demanded people’s valuables. That’s a common enough occurrence nowadays, but this one went viral when one of the customers, recognizing that a criminal pointing a gun at others poses an imminent threat to life, shot the man…again and again and again.

Most people agree that the initial shots were righteous, but there’s debate about the last shot when it appeared that the threat the robber presented had been neutralized. However, we really don’t know whether the robber was still a threat. After all, we’ve all seen videos of bad guys absorbing round after round and still killing or wounding people. (E.g., here.) The law allows citizens to keep defending themselves as long as necessary.

Two more videos of citizens taking action have emerged. One is wonderfully amusing because it shows Guitar Center employees in Phoenix unceremoniously throwing out a would-be thief…

The second video shows people corralling a would-be purse snatcher. When he makes a break for freedom, a woman who had a gun trained on him shoots him in the back as he flees. Under the classic American standard, unless she can colorably claim that he still posed an imminent threat as he fled, she’s in trouble.

The vid:

Don’t steal purses in Texas pic.twitter.com/avf1j6RlZM

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec)

January 15, 2023

Another example of what I call a Righteous Shoot™, to my way of thinking. But hey, maybe that’s just me. In practical terms, though, it really isn’t going to matter.

Regardless of the shot’s righteousness, this is another example of what happens when citizens feel they’re on their own. In Houston and El Paso, crime in Texas has run rampant, and the authorities are doing nothing to protect law-abiding citizens. So, again, citizens will protect themselves.

As they should, and in fact must. There is no innate moral obligation that requires decent, law-abiding people to docilely put up with being preyed upon indefinitely. That obligation is instead part of an unwritten, informal charter we used to call the social contract. And when the authorities once entrusted with its enforcement tacitly renege, it can be revoked. And it will be. Gonna be pretty tough on the Dindus, I’m afraid, but here as always the FAFO rules apply. When Normals realize that legal justice is no longer available to them, then street justice will be all they have left.

2

Threatens the tyrant

Posted on January 17, 2023January 17, 2023 by Mike

The usual blather from a gun-grabbing blowhard.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has blasted the more than six dozen sheriff’s offices across the state for vowing to defy a new gun control law.

“This is political grandstanding at its worst. The assault weapons ban is the law of Illinois,” the governor’s office told Fox News on Monday. “The General Assembly passed the bill and the Governor signed it into law to protect children in schools, worshippers at church, and families at parades from the fear of sudden mass murder.”

The state Senate passed the Protect Illinois Communities Act last week, which bans assault weapons 2A-protected semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity standard-capacity magazines from being sold or manufactured in the state.

Edited by me, for purposes of veracity.

At least 74 sheriff’s offices have publicly stated their opposition to the law, calling it unconstitutional.

80 at last count, out of a possible hundred and two counties in Illinois. Which adds up to an overwhelming majority in anybody’s book. Gee, Gov Prickzter, think maybe the problem here might not lie with these stalwart sheriffs, who are standing up straight and tall in resistance to mendacious authority, but with this soggy sop you’re tossing to the fear-stricken and factually-challenged in your sorry state?

“Part of my duties that I accepted upon being sworn into office was to protect the rights provided to all of us, in the Constitution,” Edwards County Sheriff Darby Boewe said on Facebook. “One of those rights enumerated is the right of the people to KEEP and BEAR ARMS provided under the 2nd Amendment. The right to keep and bear arms for defense of life, liberty and property is regarded as an inalienable right by the people.”

The Illinois Sheriff’s Association stated last week that they have opposed the bill since its inception.

“We, as a representative of chief law enforcement officials throughout Illinois, are very concerned and disturbed by the ongoing and escalating violence throughout our State and Country,” they said. “We are always supportive of new tools, techniques and laws that assist us in preventing and holding accountable those that wage efforts of harm and violence on others. However, this new law does not do that.”

As statistics and studies have confirmed, over and again.

Pritzker’s office continues to maintain that law enforcement in the state doesn’t have the right to “pick and choose which laws they support.”

Perhaps so, and then again perhaps not. What they DO have is a clear and specific duty to refuse to enforce patently unlawful and contra-Constitutional edicts such as this one, you multi-chinned fascist slob. These good men and true are upholding their oaths of office; you’re violating yours. If this nation is to survive qua nation for very much longer, it will require a whole lot fewer of YOU and a whole lot more of THEM to see to it that it does.

Next time grubby, greasy Gov Prickzter is consoling himself with a few dozen fully-loaded triple-decker fatburgers in the privacy of the Governor’s Mansion, I hope he chokes to death on ’em.

7

Theater of government

Posted on January 16, 2023January 16, 2023 by Mike

Protecting the bureacRats is an old, old tradition in Mordor On The Potomac, going all the way back to Andrew Jackson’s day.

Republicans Are Failing Unless They Are Disrupting, Discrediting, And Destroying The Bureaucracy
For well over a century, we’ve all been told the progressives’ folk tale about the Jacksonian revolution: that he didn’t really get rid of any of the bureaucracy, but what he did do was he brought in a rabble, and created the spoils system. In this telling, the nation is essentially held captive by the crooks, by the cronies, until the heroes arrive: when the progressives ransom democracy for the passage of this little statute called the Pendleton Act.

The Pendleton Act (and all of its progeny that follow up through Jimmy Carter’s 1978 civil service reform), had essentially one goal, which was to insulate the civil bureaucracy from political accountability — to “protect” civil servants. Now, I think in fairness we would all agree that Jackson’s idea did fail. He had a novel concept: what he called a rotation in office, essentially term limits for civil bureaucrats.

We’ve never really come back to that concept. We want to terminate the actual democratically accountable leaders of the nation and leave the permanent Mandarin class (which some folks in this room belong to here in Washington) as an occupying army. The idea was good, and Jackson would say, “I don’t want the civil bureaucracy to remain a species of property for these people.”

But even by the numbers, Jackson only took out about 10 percent of the then-existent civil service, which by even the modest standards of 19th-century America, 10 percent was insufficiently small.

Priority No. 1: Take Out the Bureaucracy
The last thing I’ll just say really quick is for those of you who actually advise members of Congress or senators. There was a recent celebration at the institution which is still called publicly the University of California at Berkeley (which is not really much of a university anymore). Professors Lee Raiford and Ula Taylor gave a presentation on Berkeley’s purchase of a whole tranche of documents from J. Edgar Hoover’s tenure as director of the FBI. The documents are largely focused on the counterintelligence program, which was known as “cointelpro.”

The presentation from the professors in why Berkeley was interested in this tranche of documents was that it supposedly was confirmation of the systemic racism of the FBI from its inception through the duration of Director Hoover’s tenure. For my purposes, I think what’s fascinating is how they highlighted this line from an internal memo that Hoover authored to field agents where he said, “The obligation you have is to disrupt, discredit, and destroy the Black Panther movement.”

The advice I would give any of you who are advising members of Congress when you go to stage what are otherwise meaningless Kabuki-theater hearings [is this]. When you want to exercise oversight by asking the bureaucracy to provide the information that will then allow you to exercise your oversight authorities — unpack that one: The very people you’re supposed to be controlling are the ones you’re dependent upon for information — when all that’s happening, the mantra that you should have in mind is: We are failing unless we are disrupting, discrediting, and destroying these people.

Precisely, indubitably so. Unless and until that happens, it’s all just posturing, preening, and pissing into the wind.

2

A Republic, if you can keep it

Posted on January 16, 2023January 16, 2023 by Mike

It’s beginning to be quite dispiriting, the way so many of these stories seem to be coming out of Texas nowadays.

Kyle Rittenhouse Fires Back at ‘Woke Crowd’ after Snub: ‘Disappointing to See That Places Continue to Censor Me’

Constitutional rights advocate Kyle Rittenhouse has fired back after his event was canceled because his “values” conflict with those of the “woke crowd.”

A brewery in Texas canceled an event featuring Rittenhouse because the venue claimed the event doesn’t reflect its values.

Southern Star Brewing Company in Conroe, Texas, canceled the “Rally Against Censorship” featuring Rittenhouse on January 26.

The brewery said: “Southern star brewery is an apolitical organization.

“But we feel that this event doesn’t reflect our own values and we could not in good faith continue to rent our space for the event on 1/26.

“We don’t do rallies, we make beer for people who like beer.”

Uh huh. So, “apolitical,” then…except when you aren’t.

Rittenhouse fired back: “It’s really disappointing to see that places continue to censor me and not allow my voice and many other voices to be heard because they bend to the woke crowd.

Rittenhouse had another big, fat grenade to lob at the brewery Wokesters, who after all had booked the damned event in the first place, belying their anguished wails of being “apolitical.” And lob it he did, bless his stout young heart.

"If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed."
Benjamin Franklin

— Kyle Rittenhouse (@ThisIsKyleR) January 14, 2023

You keep right on a-rockin’, Kyle. Here’s hoping he sues the rotten bastards right into penury for breach of contract without adequate notice, and winds up owning their precious little brewery outright—lock, stock, and, ummm, barrels.

Screw Woke, and all who sail in her.

Update! Since I usually don’t proofread my posts until after they’re up live and in color on the page—not necessarily slackness on my part, everything just looks different to me on the actual site than it does in the WP editor—it wasn’t until just now that I noticed that part of this one had somehow been automagickally expurgated in transit from hither to yon by WP.

It was only a paragraph, but I still thought it important enough for losing it to bother me a little. Luckily, the missing part was retrievable from an earlier saved draft, so I went a-digging and got it back. Here t’is, in blockquote format so as to distinguish it from the rest of this update.

The operative phrases here are “Constitutional rights advocate Kyle Rittenhouse”; “Rally Against Censorship”; and “this event doesn’t reflect our own values.” Which, I’m perfectly sure it doesn’t. After all, shitlibs are steadfastly, unequivocally opposed to the US Constitution and the rights enumerated therein, and are all FOR censorship. Freedom of speech and individual liberty both being anathema to such as they, the “apolitical” Wokester brewery’s sudden attack of “conscience” should therefore come as a surprise to precisely nobody.

Apologies for the screwup, folks.

6

NAILED it, and I do mean ALL of it

Posted on January 15, 2023January 15, 2023 by Mike

Our good friend Chris Muir has really outdone himself with today’s strip, I think.

True as true can be, right down the line. Well done indeed, Chris.

5

1

Plan of action

Posted on January 13, 2023January 13, 2023 by Mike

Secure in its supreme arrogance and behind its walls, fences, and armed Palace guards, the Power doesn’t realize this—or just doesn’t care, perhaps—but it’s a long-established truism of guerrilla warfare that guile and relentless determination can, and quite often does, trump sheer weight of numbers.

Shock the system
Just one example of how the government could lose a civil conflict

I keep reading comments from arrogant progressives who delight in the assault on gun rights led by their elected and appointed allies in the recent weeks since a madman gunned down innocent children in a school in Newtown, CT.

They seem to think they can impose any indignity and infringment they want without repercussion, because the President of the United States is one of them, he’s the leader of the nation’s military, and he can therefore win any battle against America’s freedom fighters who might rise up to restore their constitutional rights currently under assault.

They don’t understand asymmetrical warfare in the slightest, much less how it would be waged here. Let me give you just one small example of how lone wolves or small teams can strike well beyond their size against a near defenseless leviathan.

After the Dot Com bubble burst in the early 2000s, I took a job in upstate New York for a subcontractor of Central Hudson Gas and Electric. I was part of a crew sent out to map electrical transmission line power poles and towers via GPS, check the tower footings for integrity, check the best routes for access, etc.

It meant I rode quads (ATVs) through mountains, swamps, forests, neighborhoods and farms all over southern New York, in winter’s icy chill and blowing snow, and in summer’s melting heat. It was exhausting work, often in beautiful scenery.

We probably averaged 20 miles of line a day, and that over the course of the contract I easily rode a thousand miles. I can tell you stories of flipping quads, sinking quads, going down a mountain without brakes, almost hitting deer at top speed, and parking on the remains of an electrocuted bear, but that isn’t really what I remember most about the job.

No, what I remember most about the job were the days we spent up near the Rondout Reservoir. What I remember in specific was discovering how powerless the government was to protect key utilities.

In a post-9/11 New York, where terrorism was foremost on the minds of many, you simply didn’t mess around near New York City’s water supply, and Roundout was part of that equation.

The thought that we could be viewed as a threat as we rode the hills around the reservoir for several days never crossed our minds, because we were focused on our jobs minding the electrical transmission lines, not the waters flowing nearby.

It wasn’t until late on the second day, where we parked right beside the dam’s offices, that law enforcement caught up to us. Apparently we’d been the on again, off again suspects in a low intensity chase for two days, with the law enforcement agency that was in charge of providing security for the reservoir (NYDNR, maybe?) trying to chase us down, without any luck. They didn’t catch us until we parked the truck beside their HQ on the afternoon of the second day and began unloading our gear right under their windows.

That it took them 14 hours of time “on the run” in the area (30 hours total time) to “catch” us was a little unsettling. Then I started thinking about the much more fragile structures we were working beside routinely.

You see, we’d ridden up to edge of the Danskammer and Roseton power generating stations, and a dozen or more unattended substations during the course of this contract, without being challenged at all.

Substations like the one above could be accessed not just from surface roads, but from access trails under the power lines by people with UTVs, ATVs, and motorcycles.

Just like the residential transformers in your neighborhood, the transformers in substations are cooled with a form of mineral oil. If someone decides to blast a transformer at its base as prepper Bryan Smith did, and the oil drains out, then the transformer either burns out catastrophically, or if the utility is lucky, a software routine notices the problem and shuts the substation (or at least the affected portion) down. The power must then be rerouted through the remaining grid until that transformer can be replaced and any other resulting damage can be repaired.

That’s from a 2013 piece by the late, great Bob Owens, which reads today like prophecy. As we’ve seen lately, not just in upstate NY but all across the nation, little if anything has changed since then.

5

Ignore illegal orders

Posted on January 13, 2023 by Mike

In Illinois, of all places.

Some Illinois Sheriffs Say Departments Will Not Comply With Assault Weapon Registration Requirements

As potential legal fights percolate over Illinois’ new assault weapons ban, law enforcement officials in several counties have said that their departments will not enforce provisions of the bill that require existing weapons to be registered with the State Police.

Their arguments center around their stance that the bill, which makes it illegal for Illinois residents to purchase, transfer or manufacture assault weapons and extended magazines, violates the Second Amendment.

McHenry County Sheriff Robb Tadelman was one of numerous law enforcement officials throughout the state who shared messages on social media in the aftermath of the bill’s passage.

“Neither myself nor my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the state, nor will we be arresting or housing law abiding individuals that have been charged solely with non-compliance with this act,” he said.

Many of those law enforcement officials shared identical messages, including Kankakee County Sheriff Mike Downey, Sheriff Jack Harlan in Boone County and Winnebago County Sheriff Gary Caruana.

In a statement, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office called the messages “political grandstanding at its worst,” and said that sheriffs and departments that refuse to enforce the ban are “in violation of their oath of office.”

Au contraire, you rat-bastard prick; YOU are. Heartfelt kudos to these fine fellows; clearly, they understand their oath of office, the US Constitution, and their solemn and sacred duty to uphold it a damned sight better than their shitlib Goobernor ever will, or could.

(Via Divemedic)

2

“Insurrection” psychosis

Posted on January 12, 2023January 12, 2023 by Mike

In the deathless words of the great Gen Tony McAuliffe, in a quite different context: NUTS.

The Shameful Exploitation of Brian Sicknick’s Death
Unfortunately, few seem interested in honoring who Sicknick was or allowing him to rest in peace. Shame on them all.

Joe Biden held a solemn ceremony at the White House to commemorate January 6 and present more presidential awards to some of the day’s “heroes”—recipients just happened to include several individuals who participated in the January 6 select committee’s televised performances. It was the first time Biden bestowed the Presidential Citizens’ Medal, an honor reserved for those “who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country,” Biden said.

The ceremony in reality served as an opportunity for Biden to again perpetuate one of the biggest lies about January 6: that numerous police officers, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, died as a result of the Capitol protest.

As a military officer read a brief summary of Sicknick’s military and law enforcement career, Biden held hands with Sicknick’s mother, Gladys, in attendance with Sicknick’s father to receive a posthumous award on behalf of their son.

“He lost his life protecting our elected representatives, upholding the will of the American people, and defending our Constitution,” a military aide said from the podium in the East Room on Friday. “For his service and his ultimate sacrifice, we the people honor U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick.”

But that isn’t what happened. Sicknick suffered two strokes caused by a blood clot near his brain stem; the D.C. coroner concluded Sicknick died of natural causes on January 7, 2021 at the age of 42. Rather than allow his family the chance to grieve with dignity and in privacy, the media immediately seized on his untimely passing to portray Trump supporters as cop killers.

Less than 24 hours after Sicknick died, the New York Times published an anonymously sourced account claiming Sicknick had been bludgeoned to death by protesters using a fire extinguisher. The paper retracted the story a month later but the damage was done; the notion that Sicknick died at the hands of Trump supporters became an animating feature of “insurrection” folklore, repeated to this day by the news media and federal judges handling January 6 criminal cases.

For example, during a court hearing last year, D.C. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan berated a January 6 defendant for contributing to Sicknick’s death. “We had officers who died because of this,” Sullivan scolded Dustin Thompson before sentencing him to 36 months in prison for his role in the protest.

Actually, no, you fucking did NOT, you shameless liar.

The sideshow, according to a former fellow officer and longtime friend, does not properly reflect Sicknick’s legacy.

“He was the type of guy you would drop everything for to help if he needed,” Travis Page, who texted Brian the day of the protest, told me over the weekend. “He was very independent, very professional, very honest, very much did not like being the center of attention. He was hardworking, and he was a better man than me. And I don’t praise too many people in that way. He would absolutely hate being used in the political arena like people are doing.”

Page said Sicknick’s death is being used by both sides to score points. “I know it’s cliché, but when he was laid to rest he sincerely would want that to be the end of talking about him. Lawsuits, half hearted ceremonies, political tug of war, it’s not what he would have wanted,” he said.

It’s disgusting; the whole damnable J6 shitshow entire is a blot on Amerika v2.0’s escutcheon which won’t soon be lived down. Meanwhile, in other news, Ashli Babbitt, murdered in cold blood by a trigger-happy, cowardly Capitol Gestapo pusnuts, is still dead. Next time they descend on Mordor On The Potomac en masse, Real Americans will hopefully provide a firm reminder of that to those desperately in need of one.

3

Dear Vichy GOPe swine

Posted on January 10, 2023January 10, 2023 by Mike

It’s not us. It’s YOU.

In what may be the most misleading narrative not originating with a leftist source about House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s recent trials National Review Editor-in-Chief Rich Lowry argues the Republicans’ “Fight Reveals the Party of Self-Loathing.” Although this diatribe may please some of Lowry’s sponsors, it bears no connection to what went on in the House last week.

The fact that the GOP revealed disunity does not in any way prove that “it is a party that to some significant extent loathes itself.” There is no reason to assume this even if “the GOP lacks any coherent center of authority” and even if the “Democrats look like a well-oiled machine.” There is no basis for saying “self-loathing” led to the “Revolt of the 20.” Nor was this noisy disunity something that the obsessive NeverTrumper editor could plausibly pin on Donald Trump, who unequivocally supported McCarthy in his bid for the speakership. Lowry wishes us to believe that Trump’s “counter-establishment” and the “midterm debacle” that he supposedly caused, segued into this further sign of self-loathing disunity.

Despite the defiance of those conservatives who bolted from the party regulars, Lowry finds a bright spot in the GOP. There is after all the stalwart, principled figure of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), “who is the closest thing there is to the ballast of an establishment.” Unfortunately, this wise moderate can’t prevail. He is “hated by the MAGA base,” which may be Trump’s continued revenge on the GOP elders who reject his demagoguery. If I read Lowry properly, a saner Republican Party would turn thankfully to McConnell, not The Donald, and this fount of mature wisdom would warn them against their “act of defiance unburdened by a substantive agenda or a different candidate.”

What may have been driving the holdouts, beside their perception that McCarthy is not particularly conservative, are recent unsettling events. Let’s start with the omnibus bill, passed in December, which provides very little for border protection and lots of inflated money for green energy and woke indoctrination. This bill contained 4,155 densely typed pages, and Congress was required to vote on the text, before any human being could possibly have read it through. Why did McConnell cosponsor this highly partisan Democratic bill? Why did he and nine congressional Republicans tie the hands of the incoming Republican majority in budgetary matters until next fall? And why was McConnell recently on a tour with Joe Biden talking up a bloated infrastructure bill that was passed with the votes of other Republican defectors? McConnell couldn’t stop telling Biden about his intention of “working together” throughout that one-sided lovefest.

If we wish to talk about “self-loathing,” it would be more appropriate to address the obvious contempt in which McConnell, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and other “moderate” Republican politicians hold their conservative base. Unlike our political elites, this base has no interest in being invited to fashionable cocktail parties and doesn’t give a rip about what the Washington Post says about their insensitivity. These populist voters think very differently from Rich and Mitch.

Indeed they do. In the immortal words of the almighty Rudyard Kipling, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. Which is exactly how it should be.

2

Success story

Posted on January 9, 2023 by Mike

Doing the jobs Repugnicants just won’t do.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is taking another victory lap, highlighting all his’ Free State of Florida” 2022 accomplishments (wins), including his hurricane response, protecting parental rights, investing in teachers and higher education, and combatting the “woke society” he has been pushing back against since first taking office in 2019.

Here is Gov. DeSantis complete outline of his “Free State of Florida” wins:

It is indeed a long, long list, reinforcing my fervent hope that he won’t waste any time and energy running for Prexy in ’24. He’s gotten way more worthwhile things accomplished as Governor than he’ll ever be allowed to while besieged in the Oval Orifice. Such as this, which didn’t make the list.

Gov. DeSantis taps Christopher Rufo, 5 others to transform New College of Florida into ‘classical college’

The DeSantis administration wants to model New College on Hillsdale College.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has appointed conservative activist Christopher Rufo and five others to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees in his continuing move to eliminate “political ideology” from public higher education.

With the six new members of the school’s Board of Trustees, the DeSantis administration plans to weed out concepts like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and critical race theory (CRT). The move comes amid low student enrollment at the New College of Florida and as DeSantis ramps up his second term.

In a statement Friday, DeSantis Communications Director Taryn Fenskesaid New College has been “completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning.”

“Starting today, the ship is turning around,” DeSantis Press Secretary Bryan Griffin continued. “New College of Florida, under the Governor’s new appointees, will be refocused on its founding mission of providing a world-class quality education with an exceptional focus on the classics.”

Rufo, along with several of his fellow appointees, has been a driving force in the movement against CRT.

“I’m proud to announce that Gov. Ron DeSantis has appointed me to the Board of Trustees of the New College of Florida,” Rufo tweeted. “My ambition is to help the new board majority transform New College into a classical liberal arts institution. We are recapturing higher education.”

Others appointed Friday are Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein, Claremont-McKenna College professor Charles Kesler, attorney Debra Jenks and Inspiration Academy Co-Founder Jason “Eddie” Speir.

Rounding out the list is Matthew Spalding, dean of Hillsdale College D.C. campus’ Graduate School of Government. Hillsdale College is a private conservative liberal arts college that the DeSantis administration is referencing as its model for transforming New College.

You go, Gov.

1

CF Search

Login, RSS, &c

CF Archives

Categories

2A/Mostly Guns

Big Dogs

Essayists

Mil

Nuttin’ But News

Odds Bodkins

Overseas/Non-US

Portals

Pure Bloggery

REAL Journalism

Substack Scalawags

The Funny Pages

Comments policy

CF Glossary

Subscribe to CF!

Shameless begging

Correspondence

Allied territory

Notable Quotes

RSS feed

.