At long, long LAST.
After making the old bat wait 10 years, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s portrait was finally unveiled Tuesday at the State Department, accompanied by glowing remarks from the present Secretary of State, Biden’s little weasel Antony Blinken.
Diogenes has the photo, and it’s a real beaut for sure. The photographer really captured Her Herness©’s true essence, I think.
2
4Well, the news of Maryland’s Integrated Ballistics Identification System database being a failure has made the rounds of the blogosphere. Kim commented on Wedneday, so did Say Uncle (with an Instalanche). Triggerfinger, Keith Devens, and No Quarters, did too. The Geek with a .45 gives a link to the actual report in a PDF file (graphic, rather than text file, though,) and Irons in the Fire commented on that.
I’ve been pretty busy, but I had a chance to read the report yesterday, and it’s an interesting expansion on the other reports I’ve read. There are two from California’s ballistic imaging feasibility study, and the original Maryland study. All of these reports reference New York’s system, but I have yet to find a study of that system specifically.
The general consensus of all of the blog pieces was a sarcastic “big freaking surprise!” which is understandable given our stated biases. The response from the gun confiscation, er, control, um, SAFETY groups was a bit more muted. JoinTogether didn’t make a peep, as far as I could tell. No press release from the Brady Campaign. Ditto for the Violence Policy Center. But one thing that struck me, as immersed in this topic as I am, was this comment at Say Uncle:
I am fairly green, could you explain why the idea would not work.
I can see their problem of the guns not being indexed, but would it would seem that that could be solved by indexing all the guns.
Several respondents made a valiant effort to explain the problems inherent in the system, but a couple of paragraphs is insufficient. Like most controversial topics, there’s a whole lot of “there” there, and no simple two- or even ten-sentence response is enough. Sometimes I forget that a lot of people don’t have the basic information I’ve accumulated over the last ten years. (Generally not, though, which is one reason my posts – like this one – tend to the Den Bestian in length.)
So here, in some detail, is a dissertation on just some of the problems with the concept of “ballistic fingerprinting” as a crime-fighting tool.
Much, much, MUCH more here (including supporting links throughout), of which you should read the all. Taken altogether, it’s as thorough and comprehensive a debunking—with pictures, yet—of the “ballistic fingerprinting” hokum as you’re ever gonna see. Now, about those “drug-sniffing dogs…“
In a nutshell, then: Everything we’ve been told for lo, these many, many years by FederalGovCo and anti-2A, anti-freedom shitlibs (BIRM) is a goddamned lie.
Ironically enough, I found this website via a cat.
WHO ARE WE?
The Birds Aren’t Real movement has been active since 1976. Once a preventative cause, our initial goal was to stop the genocide of real birds. Unfortunately this was unsuccessful, and the government has since replaced every living bird with robotic replicas. Now our movement’s prerogative is to make everyone aware of this fact.
Stop laughing, dammit, this is some serious shit here. From the FAQ section:
1. WHAT IS THIS MOVEMENT’S PURPOSE?
The Birds Aren’t Real movement exists to spread awareness that the U.S. Government genocided over 12 Billion birds from 1959-2001, and replaced these birds with surveillance drone replicas, which still watch us every day. Once a preventative cause, our initial goal was to stop the forced extinction of real birds. Unfortunately this was unsuccessful, and the government has since replaced every living bird with robotic replicas. Now our movement’s prerogative is to make everyone aware of this fact.2. WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘BIRDS AREN’T REAL’?
The term “Birds Aren’t Real” refers to biological “Birds” no longer existing on United States soil. After the government forcibly made the entire species extinct in the 20th century, all of these real birds were replaced with surveillance drones designed to look just like Birds. To simplify- Birds no longer exist in the U.S. as a biological lifeform, thus, Birds Aren’t Real!7. WHERE DID ALL THE DEAD BIRDS GO? WOULDN’T PEOPLE HAVE SEEN THEM?
Within the BAR Movement, it is common knowledge that the government killed 12 billion birds before 2001 by releasing a virus that only affected the Bird species. After the bioweapon was sprayed down from B52 bombers, the virus spread throughout all birds like wildfire, and made them all sick. The virus was designed to slowly disintegrate the birds, a form of advanced leprosy. This is why there weren’t 12 billion birds littering the ground of the nation as their robot counterparts were released into the public- they were disintegrated into dust- blown away with the wind. For every bird disintegrated by the virus, a robotic replica was put in its place.
Okay, okay, sounds crazy, I know. But at this late date, can we safely assume that there’s anything this evil, deceitful government wouldn’t do, or at least try to do? Anything at all? From the aforementioned cat via which etc:
the author(s) were for a long time so assiduous about never breaking character that i had no idea if they really believed this or it was just an awesome, epic troll that had become a nice business selling hilarious merch. the dude literally drove around in a van with a radio dish on top and “wake up: birds aren’t real. they charge on power lines” written on the side.
how do you not love this guy?
How indeed. Read the rest of it—especially the part in which El Gato Malo investigates the sordid link between “Justin” Trudeau, his roundheels Starfucker mom, and Papa Fidel—and just be glad that both Bad Cats and their Fake Bird, umm, friends are with us, in every sense of the words.
Oh, and that BAR merch is indeed hilarious, just like the Cat says.
Update! Birds Aren’t Real and Bad Cattitude duly bookmarked and blogrolled. Actually, I subscribed to the Cat’s Substack page a while back, and wholeheartedly recommend it.
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.
41Faux Jaux—a/k/a Pedo Peter—gets most righteously pWnED.
Mmmkay Joe. pic.twitter.com/e5EelGEnce
— The REAL Politically Savvy (@patriot_savvy)
If the senile old crook had even the vaguest contact with actual, y’know, reality, that smack would have to smart a bit. Then again, of course, I must remind y’all of the essential truth of Mike’s Iron Law #149: No matter what the issue or context, it’s NEVER about what they’re telling you it is; ultimately, the real intention, goal, or agenda is only about more power and/or wealth for THEM, and less freedom for YOU.
In this case, a corollary: the damage, destruction, impoverishment, and general ruin wrought by shitlib policy is a feature, not a bug—by their lights, those results signify not failure, but near-total success. For the orcs of Mordor On The Potomac, their job isn’t what their subjects think it should be; certainly, their interests are not aligned with our own, but at 180-degree variance with them.
Hmmm. Looks like I have another MIL update to work on, I do believe.
41Told in a context I still don’t give three whoops in Hell about.
Everything You Need to Know About the Gripen, Sweden’s Dark Horse Jet That Could Help Ukraine
Ukraine’s antiquated air force might soon receive fighter jets from an unlikely source: Sweden.Sweden, NATO’s newest member, is looking into transferring some of its home-built Gripen fighters as part of an effort to expand the capabilities of Ukraine’s military. The lesser-known jet is one of the few built in Europe and outside NATO, and is designed to defend the country single-handedly from enemy attack.
Like I said: don’t care. UkraineUkraineUKRAAAIIIIINNNNE!!! bushwa aside, let’s talk about the Saab Gripen itself, shall we?
Named after the mythological griffin, the Gripen is the latest in a long line of Swedish designed and built fighters. As a neutral country, Sweden has traditionally avoided buying many major weapons systems from the United States, NATO, and the old Soviet bloc. This has necessitated building its own fighters, which also means opportunities to export those fighters abroad.
Gripen is a single-seat, single-engine fighter jet optimized expressly for Sweden. It has a slender profile, delta-shaped wings, and large canards just below the cockpit. The older Gripen C, which is the model most likely to go to Ukraine, uses the Volvo RM12 afterburning turbofan engine, reducing dependence on foreign suppliers.
Overall the Gripen is very similar to an American F-16C Fighting Falcon fighter. Both are 49 feet long, have the same 500-mile combat radius, same Mach 2 top speed, and same 50,000-foot service ceiling. In terms of performance, the Gripen is like an F-16 with a slightly lighter weapons load.
One major advantage for the Gripen is that it is cheap to fly. A Gripen C jet costs an average of $9,922 an hour to fly (adjusted for inflation), which is far cheaper than other western jets. The F-16C, by comparison, costs $26,927 an hour, while the F-35 costs $41,986 an hour.
While this might seem like an inconsequential number compared to a plane’s unit cost, it adds up, and over decades the cost per flight-hour can far exceed the cost of the plane itself. Over 8,000 hours of flight—the estimated life cycle of both planes—a Gripen will cost an additional $79.2 million, while the F-35 will cost a staggering $335 million. This is a major consideration for countries with smaller budgets like Ukraine.
Yep, the relatively-small (only 17 feet longer than the venerable P51 Mustang) Gripen is definitely a badass jet, with the added advantage of being a real looker as well:
See what I mean? Makes the Turducken look like the sickly, overpriced boondoggle it is, far as I’m concerned.
31And I love it.
A Pride flag ban sparks accusations of betrayal in tiny Michigan city
HAMTRAMCK, Mich. — This city of 28,000 was once so Polish it was dubbed “Little Warsaw.” But in recent decades, an influx of immigrants gave Hamtramck new character. Bengali and Arabic joined English on signs at City Hall. Yemeni and Bangladeshi mosques, restaurants and shops proliferated.And last year, a Muslim who emigrated from Yemen as a teenager became mayor — the city’s first leader in nearly a century with no Polish roots — alongside what is believed to be the nation’s only all-Muslim city council.
Many residents in this tiny enclave just north of downtown Detroit saw these changes as a sign of the Hamtramck’s progressiveness. The Muslim community that had previously experienced discrimination, including voter intimidation and resistance to mosques’ public call to prayer, had finally taken its seats at the table.
Yet the ethnic, cultural and religious diversity that made Hamtramck something of a model is being put severely to the test. In June, after divisive debate, the six-member council blocked the display of Pride flags on city property — action that has angered allies and members of the LGBTQ+ community, who feel that the support they provided the immigrant groups has been reciprocated with betrayal.
“We welcomed you,” former council member Catrina Stackpoole, a retired social worker who identifies as gay, recalls telling the council this summer. “We created nonprofits to help feed, clothe, find housing. We did everything we could to make your transition here easier, and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?”
All together now: WAAAAAAHHH!!! Nota bene this next part, y’all, it’s important.
The council’s unanimous vote in the middle of Pride Month seemed intentional to Stackpoole and others, though the resolution banned not only the rainbow flag but all flags except for the U.S., state, city and POW/MIA banners. Mayor Amer Ghalib, 43, defends the action as one of neutrality, saying no group should be able to promote a political agenda on city property.
Emphasis mine, in both excerpted sections, and entirely dispositive. So to translate from the WaPo shitlib-ese hysterics, then: This “ban” affects city-government buildings only, which is no more than appropriate; individuals remain perfectly free to fly any flag they like from their homes, places of business, and personal conveyances without falling afoul of this ban-that-isn’t-really-a-ban-at-all.
Ahh, but does it get even better, you ask? Why yes. Yes, it does.
Anyone who thought the controversy might soon go away was mistaken. The tension surfaced again in early September when the mayor and council balked at marching next to the Hamtramck Queer Alliance in the Labor Day parade.
“Basically, they wanted to destroy our image in front of our supporters by making us look like we were leading the queer group with all those flags flying behind us,” Ghalib said in a statement afterward. He’d managed to arrange a ride in a white SUV at the front of the parade, several spots removed from his concern.
The Labor Day Festival committee also issued a statement last week, saying the event was organized to celebrate “the diversity that makes Hamtramck unique. We are saddened to hear that Mayor Ghalib has expressed a complaint about being in the parade in proximity to a rainbow flag or a display of LGBTQ+ pride.”
As for Hansknecht, who walked in the parade holding the alliance’s bright yellow banner — “two square miles, for all of us,” it proclaimed — the incident only reinforced what he’d believed from the start.
The flag ban, he said, “has always been about being anti-queer rather than the neutrality they claimed.”
Aw, cry me a river, cupcake. I note that you DID carry your precious banner along the entire parade route without incident of any kind. I think it safe to assume that this hyper-sensitive bint was screaming the most offensive and confrontational epithets (s)he could come up with every last step of the way, too, at every innocuous spectator that looked the least bit like one of those goddamned cis-het Normie oppressors to shim/zhir.
Ghalib, with whom I enjoyed a very cordial email exchange on this topic back in June, was perfectly correct in his clear-eyed assertion that the freaks ’n’ geeks’ sole interest in demanding he march alongside the HQA was to humiliate him—to claim a victory for themselves and then rub his face all in it. Open-mindedness and tolerance is no longer enough for these miserable wretches, oh no; you will be forced to march in their parades, bake intentionally-offensive cakes for them, give your children over to them, and enthusiastically applaud them on demand. It’s like this:
Call it The Way Of The Leftist, maybe. I must say, though, that I am thoroughly enjoying the sudden implosion of the post-9/11 alliance-of-convenience betwixt American Progtards and mainstream Moslems, whose primordial “religion” puts them squarely at odds with every tenet of the shitlib catechism. I’ve long insisted such a schism was inevitable, and I was correct all along about that, too.
11I’ve always maintained that the highly-esteemed (and usually estoned and esdrunked, to quote my old friend Pfout’s immortal line) John Wilder’s stuff is extremely tough to excerpt, since to excise anything is to fail to properly do the post justice. This would be an exception to that rule.
In July, the New York Times® ran a story titled, Is the Cure to Male Loneliness Out on the Pickleball Court? It wasn’t particularly political, and I think I can summarize it in just a few words: “If you’re a dude, have a few friends. The best friends are those that share some sort of common interest with you. Friends make you happy.” Writer Michelle Cottle strung those three sentences out into several hundred words of mainly forgettable fluff that would be obvious to anyone with an I.Q. higher than a Phoenix, Arizona winter temperature. In centigrade.
The real joy of this particular story, however, was the unleashing of memes. The picture that accompanied the article, however was, shall we say, regrettable. It’s above, showing a man (I think, it’s 2023, so who can even define a man in 2023) with massive, fat tears containing enough water to keep California going through a megadrought. I think he might be crying because he hates pickleball, or maybe because he can’t afford a shirt with sleeves.
And with that, we’re off and running. John’s captions are as funny as the memes themselves are, really. Sample:
That’s John’s caption at the very bottom, of course, and it’s a real sockdolager. Nice work, my friend.
NOT. TOO. GOOD.
LA mayor ‘fearful’ that planes of illegal aliens might arrive in city that ‘welcomes immigrants’
LA boasts the label of ‘sanctuary city’ for illegal immigrantsLos Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said she is “fearful that any day” planes filled with illegal immigrants will be flown into the city.
During an event hosted by Axios on Thursday, Bass said, “We live in a city that welcomes immigrants, and so I think we have been able to handle it, but I am fearful that any day, planes could start coming.”
She added that the transportation of immigrants from border states and Florida to “sanctuary” juristictions “is just setting the stage for the presidential election next year.”
Yeah, whereas your open-borders scheme is “just setting the stage” for the next, oh, forty or fifty of ’em.
Don’t look now, folks, but it appears that Staten Island residents are taking matters into their own hands, exactly as Texas Gov Abbott and DeSantis have done. So naturally, NYC shitlibs are weeping bitter, salty tears of OUTRAGEOUSLY OUTRAGED OUTRAGE!!© over the heartless inhumanity of being forced to put their money—and their hotels, personal safety, civic hygiene, and their city itself—where their oh-so-righteous yaps are.
NYC shelter migrants bombarded with 24/7 blaring recording telling them to leave: ‘Legal psychological warfare’
Migrants at a Staten Island shelter are being bombarded by a blaring 24/7 recording urging them to leave, claiming the site is rat- and mold-infested and that they “are being lied to by Mayor Eric Adams.”The audio recording was being blasted from a professional speaker in five languages — English, Spanish, Ukrainian, Chinese and Urdu — at an ear-splitting level of 117 decibels Monday afternoon from the property of homeowner Scott Herkert next to the controversial former St. John Villa Academy-turned-migrant shelter.
A migrant who arrived outside the shelter with her luggage Sunday, when the warning first started playing, pulled out her phone to record it and then called an Uber and fled, residents said.
More than a dozen asylum seekers were seen leaving the site — the scene of previous large protests attended by hundreds of residents — as the audio blared Sunday and Monday.
Hrm. Wonder where that particular “wretched refuse yearning to breathe free” might’ve found the pocketful of cash it would’ve taken to pay for that Uber from.
As Ed Driscoll helpfully reminds us:
The ghost of Saul Alinsky smiles: “Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. ‘You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.’”
Heh. Indeed.
42Abbott has shipped 500 busloads of illegal aliens to shitlib “Sanctuary cities”? Had no idea it was that many—good on ya, gov!
Battles are usually fought with horses, tanks or aeroplanes. Greg Abbott used buses. As of June, he shipped 500 busloads of illegal aliens to sanctuary cities. The shipments continue.
You want ’em, you got ’em.
It turns out, sanctuary cities don’t want them.
National Review reported, “The Democrat mayor of a small Massachusetts city is urging state lawmakers to reform a 40-year-old right-to-shelter law that is putting immense strain on the area as thousands of migrant families arrive.
“Woburn mayor Scott Galvin said by Friday there were about 150 families living in the city’s hotels, an arrangement he called unsustainable for his 40,000 constituents.
“Under the 1983 right-to-shelter law, Massachusetts officials are legally required to offer housing to any homeless families seeking shelter in the state. The law now covers a rising influx of migrant families, although individuals are not covered under its provisions.”
I remember when Gimme Shelter was a song by the Rolling Stones and a demand. By the way, what’s with NR calling illegal aliens “migrant families” as if MS-13 is a mom-and-pop business?
Greg Abbott did not send those illegals but he has sent illegal elsewhere. The left’s resentment is so livid that it is comical. It’s as if his name were Trump.
Don’t look now, but Governator Abbott just forced the shitlibs to put their money where their big, fat, lying yaps are, and they ain’t liking it much. I haven’t agreed with him on everything, not by a long yard I haven’t. But I couldn’t possibly agree with him more on this one. Keep ‘em howling, Governor.
OH NOES update! My heart, it bleeds for them.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that because of the huge influx of asylum seekers into the city and the lack of help from Albany and Washington, he’s been forced to ask for a 5% reduction in spending from all city departments. And if no help is forthcoming, he says he’ll have to ask for another 5% reduction in January and another 5% next March.
Adams says the migrants will cost the city up to $12 billion over the next three years. Without state and federal funds, they will “destroy New York City,” he proclaimed earlier in the week.
Frankly, it’s hard to tell if Adams is just trying to put pressure on his friend Joe Biden and his enemy Gov. Kathy Hochul, or if he’s serious about cutting billions in city services.
Gee, that’s a real head-scratcher for sure!
In a pig’s eye, it is. Myself, I think it’s easy enough to guess which it might be.
Reap what you sow update! The triumph of reality over rhetoric.
There is a huge difference between true caring and indignant self-righteousness, a fact that the mayors of many sanctuary cities are now learning. It’s one thing to climb up on your soap box and declare that immigration makes communities stronger when you have no idea what you’re talking about. The truth is that these cities never had any intention of being sanctuaries for anyone. They never dreamed that the overflow would reach them. So they smugly smirked and ridiculed the governors and mayors of border cities and states, dismissing the immigration mess and open borders as someone else’s problem.
Now their holier-than-thou attitudes have dissipated into whining. Their smugness has been replaced with poor me syndrome, as they begin to understand the full weight of the issue.
The leaders of these cities have no one to blame but themselves. They practically begged for this invasion by placing their egos ahead of their citizens. By continuing to govern in this irresponsible manner, they are only compounding an already dangerous problem.
All our “Sanctuary city” betters ever had to do was ask border towns like El Paso about it, and they could’ve saved themselves a lot of grief. But noooo, they’re MUCH too evolved, caring, and generally superior to ever stoop that low, apparently.
1SO—how’s that gun-grabbing thing working out for ya there, Gov?
NOT. TOO. GOOD.
Gun owners defy New Mexico governor, rally in Old Town Albuquerque
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s attempt to put the right to bear arms on ice in Albuquerque for 30 days is off to an inauspicious start; with the first lawsuits already underway, confusion over which law enforcement agency (if any) will try to enforce her mandate, and dozens of gun owners openly defying Grisham’s order by rallying with their firearms in the city’s Old Town on Sunday.The rally didn’t feature any arrests or citations for those openly carrying firearms, which must be disappointing to the gun-grabbing governor. In a sign that her experiment in authoritarianism is already backfiring, several participants said their attendance marked the first time they’d ever taken part in an organized protest.
Bob Hurtado had never attended a protest in his life until Sunday.
The former engineer decided to join the crowd gathered at Old Town Plaza because he felt Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s recent emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public in and around Albuquerque was targeting the wrong people.
“She’s going after the wrong people,” Hurtado said. “I pay my taxes, I’m a God-fearing American and I think we should have our Second Amendment rights. I’m here for that.”
Better be prepared to take those rights back then, and defend them vigorously by, as the D卐M☭CRATs always say, any means necessary. With this in-your-face protest, I’d say you’ve made a fine start, sir. Hopefully, it will be only the first of many.
And speaking of “many.”
New Mexico AG to Governor on Defending her Second Amendment Suspension: Drop Dead
There are now six lawsuits (and counting) challenging New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s public health order suspending Second Amendment carry rights in the Bernalillo County and the city of Albuquerque. While literally no local authorities are willing to enforce her clearly unconstitutional diktat, Grisham is still claiming that the New Mexico State Police will do her dirty work.The State Police, however, have remained strangely silent on the matter and no one has been cited for any violations.
This afternoon, however, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez delivered the latest body-blow to the Governor’s authoritarian tendencies by announcing in a letter to Grisham that his office will not be defending her in court.
From NMPoliticalReport.com…
“Though I recognize my statutory obligation as New Mexico’s chief legal officer to defend state officials when they are sued in their official capacity, my duty to uphold and defend the constitutional rights of every citizen takes precedence,” Torrez’s letter stated. “Simply put, I do not believe that the Emergency Order will have any meaningful impact on public safety but, more importantly, I do not believe it passes constitutional muster.”
Ouch.
Taken all together, these are EXACTLY the kind of all-in, full-court-press measures which constitute the only real hope for fighting back against tyranny without resorting to swinging filthy fascist scum like Grisham from lampposts in job lots. The operative words being ALL TOGETHER; pieces-parts, patchwork steps, here and there and now and then, are never gonna suffice.
As Bracken has always said: if you think it’s time to start burying your guns, it’s actually time to start digging them up instead.
2Peters’s title is so good it’s worth a link all by itself.
We Will Not Comply Our Way Out Of This
Complying with “mask” mandates only assured they’d be complied with – for years.There is a lesson in that somewhere.
The Left figured out that passing laws is a slow, tedious and unreliable process. It is even harder to get around laws already in force – as for example the ones in New Mexico that recognize the right – as per the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and so very much the law in every state – that citizens who aren’t criminals have the lawful right to carry firearms.
How to get around those – and other inconvenient – laws?
The same way that laws prohibiting the wearing of “masks” (which in better times, only criminals wore when entering stores and could be prosecuted for doing it) and the legal right of people who aren’t by law supposed to be in prison to move freely and go about their business, as well as the constitutional right to gather together to peacefully petition the government for redress of grievances and to gather together to worship, etc. were simply waved into functional illegality by declaring an “emergency.”
That tactic is now being expanded – most recently by the Governess of New Mexico, Lujan Grisham. She has declared an “emergency” and on the basis of that decree, has suspended – presto! just like that! – the lawful right of non-criminals to carry their lawfully possessed firearms in public in Albuquerque and Bernalillo counties. She has thus waved into a state of de facto “criminality” tens of thousands of New Mexican gun owners.
And it’s not just those who have the legal right to carry a gun who are in the crosshairs – and it’s (not) just New Mexicans, either.
This is about using “emergency” powers to render “illegal” anything the Left does not like and decides to make a “crime.”
Jefferson – there is a monument to him in Washington, D.C. – said that rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. He wanted it to be the motto of the United States (it is the motto of his own state, Virginia).
Tyrants must be defied.
Whether in New Mexico or Virginia or any other place in America – which is supposed to be a country in which tyrants have no place.
The way, then, to respond to the tyrant who currently rules by decree in New Mexico is to ignore her decree – and defy her to enforce it. Upon thousands, tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of law-abiding, peaceful people who will not abide being treated as “criminals.”
Let her – let them – try to arrest everyone. It won’t work because it cannot work. The tyrants will have to back down.
Yes, it will take a few brave souls willing to risk being arrested on “charges” that have no basis in law. But those few will show it can be done – and give courage to those not quite as brave, who will follow their example and – by doing so – make it impossible to arrest everyone.
If this would only have been done three years ago with regard to “lock downs” and “mask” mandates, we would not be here, right now.
Perhaps this is how it starts, right now. It is how we put an end to it, right now.
We can only hope and pray so. Question is, does the spirit of defiance to all tyranny—to any and every meddlesome, priggish busybody, great or small, who would dare to even dream of impinging on our God-given rights and liberties—still live in American hearts, enough of them at least to turn the dismal tide at long, long last? Or has the spirit of defiance been extinguished—that most quintessentially American spirit, more so than apple pie, hot dogs, and baseball—a spirit so boisterously integral to who the American people once were, how they thought of themselves deep down in more felicitous times—after many decades of flaccid, unresistant acceptance of ever-more-naked oppression?
Very soon now, we will know. May our answer be one we can take pride in, rather than heap disgrace upon ourselves, our forefathers, and our posterity with.
Speaking strictly for myself and nobody else, I did not comply last time they tried this stupid shite; I for damned sure and certain won’t be complying this go-round, nor any other. But that’s just me—as a lifelong contrarian and naturally-obstreperous Rebel Son whose dad gleefully said of him a blue million times that he’d argue with a stop sign, I tend to be ornery like that sometimes.
6Via KT, this little slice of sarcastic slapback is too funny.
Some kids know they want a tattoo as young as 2-3 years old. Early signs include using markers to draw on their arms, repeatedly reaching for a pen placed in front of them, and making the sounds “t-ah,” and/or “t-ouh.”
Be an inclusive adult. Tell them about people with tattoos.… pic.twitter.com/ccMJ6QSNLQ
— Chanel Pfahl 🇨🇦 (@ChanLPfa)
Heh. But hey, as a Person of Color myself (ALL the colors, not just the shitlib-sanctified blacque or brown), I support this. Why not? After all, it won’t be much longer before FederalGovCo will be requiring every child be tattooed at birth anyway. Y’know, with the Mark.
2Badass (adjective)
bad·ass ˈbad-ˌas
1 chiefly US, informal + sometimes offensive: ready to cause or get into trouble : MEAN
pretending to be a badass gunslinger
—L. L. King
2 chiefly US, informal + sometimes offensive: of formidable strength or skill
such a badass guitar player
—N’Gai Croal
It’s number two we’re concerned with this evening. To wit:
@absolutegeniux #viralvideo #trending #tiktokviralvideos #viral #tiktokviral #trendingvideo #tiktokviralvideo ♬ Big Truck Driver – Mystikal
Trucker of the year? To say the very least, yeah. I’ll have much more to say about this vid later; right now, consider it just an experiment to see whether or how well embedding vids will work with this new theme. I have worries about that. Back in a bit…
Update! Cool, the embed works great for me, dunno about you folks. Now to put y’all squarejohn cage-jockeys some serious big-rig knowledge about just what it is you’re seeing up there.
First off, that’s a 53-foot reefer trailer being pulled and/or pushed by what appears to be a conventional sleeper-cab, probably an older Peterbilt. The refrigerator unit can be identified by those black rectangles on the top-front of the trailer all too near the back of the tractor’s cab.
I say all too near because my old boss Donald had a reefer I had to pull fairly regularly, and I bashed the shit out of the thing in ATL one fine morn trying to back into a dock space not nearly as tight as the one in the video. Pinched the side of the reefer unit but good with the rear-cab of the old International Pro Sleeper I usually drove, one of two trucks Donald was running back then, necessitating a pricey repair job.
In fact, if I remember right, Donald just ended up ditching the one I smushed after getting a cpl-three outrageous quotes for the repair job; he bought a used reefer unit from some other small-trucking-company dude he knew, then had his mechanic install that one instead of shelling out for a brand-new one. He’d never warned me about watching the angle carefully when backing a reefer, an oversight he came to regret toot sweet. They stick out a fairish bit, after all.
Now, on the back-ins: those of you who have worked in or near a warehouse with truck-loading docks might have noticed how truck drivers always, always, ALWAYS pull up just past the slot they intend to park in with the dock on the left side of the rig. Then, when the tail of your trailer is almost but not quite even with the truck you’ll end up tucked in next to, you flare the cab and position the trailer by cranking the wheel first right for a few feet, then hard left before you start your back.
As sci-fi legend John Ringo said of farming in his book The Last Centurion: trucking is planning.
See, you always set yourself up to back to your left so’s you can easily look down the side of your trailer as you ease in, thereby enabling yourself to avoid climbing into the lap of the poor slob next to you. The only way you can see to your right is in the mirrors, which won’t tell you anywhere near as much as leaning out the driver’s side window and looking with your own Mark-1 Mod-0 eyeballs will.
Gotta constantly be checking the right-side mirrors too, natch. But the real issues are more likely to arise on the other side, the inside of your pivoting arc. Better to put that arc where you have the best view of it. Which is on the left. Just once in a blue moon, you might find yourself out in the boondocks at a one-hole dock where you HAVE to back to the right side—probably some cotton-mill warehouse that was built in the 30s, when 53’ trailers and sleeper cabs weren’t a thing yet. When that’s the case, one of the dock apes will usually come out to watch your right side and guide you on in without bending anything expensive.
Whenever I was being sent to one of those old tumbledown places, Donald would put me in the yellow Freightshaker cab-over he usually drove himself. I purely hated driving that thing, but the fact is you can stuff a flat-front into places a conventional can only dream about maneuvering into.
Dang it, I hit “post” prematurely by mistake, before I’d finished. I’ll tuck the grand finale into another update after I go grab myself something to drink here.
Bringing it all home update! So yeah, anyhoo…
One of the first things I noticed when in Europe is how you just don’t ever see any sleeper cabs and 53’ trailer rigs like you do here, where they’re ubiquitous on any and every highway you care to name. I asked a Euro-trucker about that once, and he explained that it was mainly because truck drivers there aren’t expected to cover anything like the area they do here in the States; as he pointed out, Europe is small enough that your average trucker can pick up in one country, drive across another, drop the load in a third, and still sleep in his own bed that same night. Kinda obvious, really, but I had just never thought about it before.
Okay, there’s more trucking lore I could give ya, but I’ll just stop myself there and be done with it for now. Got some other things I wanna fool around with here, possibly including the “Submit comment” button issue. Someday I gotta tell youse guys the story of the time I had to spend several days in a low-country SC nowhere, waiting to pick up a load of watermelons. It was an experience, for sure, one I learned a few needful things from.
Another thing update! Almost forgot, but one tell is how many times the driver has to pull forward and straighten up before continuing with his back. The fewer times he has to pull forward, the more skilled the driver, and the less fun the dock apes will poke at him when he brings his paperwork inside. Our TOTY candidate up there needed to do so just once. He DOES commit another glaring, disqualifying error before he hits the rubber dock bumpers, though—a bonehead maneuver I made myself several times when I was just starting out that really spoils the whole thing, and is a real pain in the ass to rectify. I’ll let y’all try to guess what it was.
When it comes to writing about politics, Mark Steyn reminds us he’s still the baddest mutha in the Valley.
So no, I haven’t been reading a lot of Trump indictment analysis by Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Turley, Alan Dershowitz… They’re all great legal minds, but how naïve do you have to be still to think that America has anything recognizable as a “justice” system? I have the advantage of Andy et al in that I’m a Canadian who has been in a mere civil lawsuit in the District of Columbia that is now entering its twelfth year. When you turn the calendar on Year Twelve, you know it’s a racket – and all that’s happened over the last decade or so is that the racket’s gotten more shameless and cocksure.
My DC rubbish is a First Amendment case, so you can imagine how impressed I am, eleven years on, by my so-called rights under that Amendment. Trump’s is also a First Amendment case, and perhaps a more consequential one – because there won’t be a First Amendment if a politician can be charged with conspiracy for disputing the results of American elections, which objectively are among the crappest in the world, by comparison with Norway, Bostwana and most other functioning or even semi-functioning polities.
“More shameless and cocksure”? Perish the thought, Mark! Why, everyone knows they’re afraid of us, literally pissing themselves with terror at us! Right? RIGHT?
In a pig’s eye. Which is all the more reason not to take their shit, but to spit defiantly in their fucking faces at any and every opportunity, lest they turn out to have been perfectly correct in their assessment of whether or not they ought to fear us…because we ourselves proved them to be.
Indeed, if you think the central issue is not Ukraine or the next variant but the suffocating corruption in which the most powerful agencies in the land behave ever more openly as organs of a one-party state, you’re sticking with Trump because the permanent state’s weekly indictments of him are the most outrageous embodiment of the problem.
These are not normal times: in the years ahead, ever greater corruption – political, judicial, bureaucratic, technological – will be necessary to constrain the people’s choices to the shriveled offerings of the Uniparty. So, if you reckon it’s bad now, wait till next time. GOP primary voters seem to get that at least. The real GOP “suicide mission” (to use John Hinderaker’s phrase) is pretending that any of what’s happening right now is part and parcel of politics in a long-settled society of self-governing citizens.
Whatever their “suicidal” inclinations, the base seems to get that – and they’re disinclined to be told by their betters to pretend otherwise.
From his lips to God’s etc, and may it ever be thus.
Tons more rich, buttery goodness in between the excerpted passages—TONS—every last word of it vital, must-read material, as has always been Steyn’s wont. Thankfully, despite his recent health issues, Mark is still with us, for the nonce. Alas, though, as is true of all of us, someday he won’t be. No matter when it might come, that blackest of days will be upon us far too soon. For Mark Steyn’s is a truly irreplaceable voice, and the righteous cause of human liberty will suffer a staggering blow thereupon.
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