Not sure where I ran across this one—it’s been just sitting quietly on my desktop for days now, waiting for me to make some P-shop adjustments and then put it to good use here—and I can’t say I know who this Langan fellow might be, either. But I dunno, the part I highlighted in blue just tickled me no end.
Don’t hold back, Chris, tell us how you really feel.
4The Irish Troubles is one of six models I’ve identified that could have (loosely) an American equivalent.
Of course, I’m not talking about Catholics versus Protestants, but a sectarian conflict featuring sporadic armed political violence where the government’s primary mission is peacekeeping followed by counterterrorism.
The Irish Troubles resulted in over 50,000 casualties and 3,500 deaths over a 30-year span (1969-1998). Armed violence was widespread across Northern Ireland, but this map illustrating the deaths of civilians and British Security Forces gives us a good glimpse of where casualty-producing attacks occurred.
One of my key assumptions for this model remains that armed political volence would be geographically limited. I wouldn’t expect much from, say, central Nebraska or northern Alabama, for instance, just like many areas of Northern Ireland had very few instances of armed violence over a 30-year span. I expect most places to remain… well, pretty quiet as far as fighting is concerned. (Criminality is another matter!)
A few things… First, civilian deaths are roughly equal to deaths of all belligerents. High civilian casualties are the norm for domestic conflicts, going all the way back to at least the 1500s. As French Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1532-1592) observed, “In truth a forraine warre is nothing so dangerous a disease as a civill.”
Second, while the 1970s were by far the most violent, war-related deaths continued to stack up over the following decades. The total death toll of 3,483 works out to an average of 116 deaths per year, or roughly one death every three days. For 30 years. Low intensity conflicts, especially insurgencies and guerrilla wars, are often protracted. Nothing happening in the United States today signals that our own domestic conflict would be short lived.
Third, I’m still compiling the numbers of fighters as a percentage of the overall populace. The end result will show that a small percentage was actively engaged in the fighting at any given time. As we see in most low intensity conflicts, a small percentage actually takes part in the fighting, followed by maybe 5-15% of the total population involved in active support at some level, and everyone else is just trying to live their lives. I suspect that the American Troubles would be similar.
The real problem for most Americans will be the economic, financial, and monetary destruction that results from armed conflict. While you’d think that high unemployment would enable the mobilization of millions of military-aged males, the disruption to transportation, shipping, and production likely means that many Americans will be focused on week to week survival, as opposed to actively fighting.
The greater the operational tempo and mass of fighters, the greater logistics you need. This likely means that the number of fighters remains relatively small compared to the efforts required to support them. Again, less than 5%, maybe even less than 1%, is likely to be engaged at any time. (That’s still a lot of people.)
On that note, the United States population today is some 200 times larger than Northern Ireland was from 1969-1998. So could we see 200 times the death toll? Certainly.
Although I still maintain that there is simply no possible way to accurately predict where this is headed or how it’s all going to end up, Culper’s comparison with The Thrubbles (hey, I’m Irish all to hell and gone on my mom’s side, so I can say it that way if I want to, dammit) seems entirely apt to me, and just as likely to yield some useful indications as any. At the end of the day, though, the one and only sure thing is that it’s going to positively SUCK.
(Via WRSA)
4You folks know by now that I am resolutely immune to the bizarre ((((((JOOOOOOOOOOO!!!™)))))) obssessiveness currently fashionable in certain other quarters, for reasons I’ve already gone through here plenty enough times. Being more of a William of Occam devotee, I’ve never really had any truck with conspiracy theorizing of any flavor, which admittedly has become a much more difficult mindset to maintain the last two years. But once in a VERY great while, a conspiracy theory comes along that is so damned compelling, so brilliantly conceived, so clearly beyond argument that no sensible soul could possibly do anything other than embrace it without reservation.
This would be one of those.
San Francisco State University Prof Says Jewish Pot is Making Black Men Gay
“It is Jewish genius that has helped…to weaponize the weed.”Wesley Muhammad believes that the U.S. government and the Jews are using marijuana to make black men gay. The “Pot Plot” is a popular theory in Muhammad’s Nation of Islam cult.
At the Saviours Day Convention in Chicago, an official Nation of Islam event, Wesley Muhammad claimed that, “It is Jewish genius that has helped… to weaponize the weed so that it may effeminize the black male of America. And be clear, it is Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam that is standing in between the total demasculinization of the black man in America.”
Some years back, Wesley Muhammad’s lecture, “How to Make a Homosexual: The Scientific Assault on Black America” was canceled at a Philly black beauty expo because of its hateful content. But what wasn’t good enough for the 23rd Annual International Locks Conference, a black natural hair expo, is unfortunately all too welcome at San Francisco State University.
It’s not too surprising that a black “wholistic” hair expo has higher standards than the most antisemitic university in America. Or that Muhammad fits in so well at SFSU.
“It is clear that the two most powerful lobbies in America – the Jewish and the Homosexual – are hellbent on the information in this lecture, “How To Make A Homosexualm (sic)” NEVER makes it to the public’s awareness,” Muhammad complained on Facebook.
San Francisco State University has however been happy to provide Muhammad with a platform despite no shortage of ethnically Jewish and gay people on the faculty and in the administration.
Wesley Muhammad’s bio at the taxpayer-funded university notes that he is a lecturer in the Africana Studies Department of SFSU’s College of Ethnic Studies. It mentions his publications in the Final Call newspaper of the Nation of Islam hate group, and his book, “Understanding the Assault on the Black Man, Black Manhood and Black Masculinity” which contains thoughtful chapters such as “Why Saggin is Faggin” and “Birth of the Black Man (God)”.
This one scores straight A’s all across the board: for creativity; for originality; for weaving widely disparate threads into a wholly incoherent narrative fabric; for entertainment value; for sheer bugfuck lunacy, it tops every category. I must confess that I haven’t read all of it yet, mainly because I can only get another ‘graph or so deeper in before keeling over in helpless laughter and having to start all over again.
Damn pesky JOOOOOZ, getting all the brothas hung up on de weeeit ‘n’ fucking dey shit up ‘n’shit! Nomesay’n? Yup, it takes a nation of millions to hold ’em back. WE WUZ KANGS ‘N’SHIT!!!
6
3Gestapo goon squad shows up at Ocker’s door, attempts to intimidate and harrass him by waving a printout of his Fakebook page in his face, which includes a pic they threateningly allege might be legally-actionable evidence of his attendance at an “illegal protest.”
This guy right here gets it. He really does. These two officers of the corrupt law knocked on the wrong door.
A few highlights:
- First off, he’s laughing throughout this whole scene. Laughing in their faces. (Because this is all a joke.)
- “So, what are we here for? Are you here to serve me, or?…[laughter] It’s loserish, it’s like, sad. What is this? I mean, where are we going in life? We’ve got the cops coming around here to tell me that I’ve been at a protest six months ago.”
- “Why are you working for this corrupt government? What are you guys doing? Who are you serving? Are you serving us? Or are you serving the corrupt government and health officials that want no good for you? They’re not there for you.”
- “Black Lives Matter protest was 2 weeks before that! Was that illegal? You knocking on their doors? You’re not.”
- “So if I say no [I wasn’t there] you’re not going to give me the paperwork? You’re going to go home?”
- “You’re asking me if I’m at a protest six months ago. I don’t recall. I do not recall. I don’t recall, I’m sorry. I don’t recall. I don’t recall.”
Absolutely perfect. I hope these officers take something from what they’ve just heard. Probably they wont, though.
Good on ya for seeing those oinkers off proper, mate. A satisfying conclusion, right enough, but the post’s author closes on a sour note.
I’m so thankful to live in the Land of the Free!
Uh huh. One of you guys want to break the bad news to poor deluded Mr Pritchard and dry him out behind the ears, or should I do it?
5Mollie and the President In Exile square off, get it on.
What follows is adapted from three interviews of President Donald Trump for Mollie Hemingway’s latest book “Rigged: How The Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections,” out October 12.
A few weeks after Biden was inaugurated, I told Trump during a phone call that I was going to write a book about the 2020 election. He invited me to come see him.
That’s how I ended up in Florida in late February, for our first interview. The moment you land at the Palm Beach International airport, people joke about having made it to the Free State of Florida, but that’s exactly how it feels compared to D.C.
My friend Karol Markowicz, a writer who escaped Brooklyn for an area near Palm Beach just so her children could attend school during the lockdowns, describes the area as “The Hamptons, but colorful and risk-taking. Everyone is rich enough that they don’t care what anyone else thinks of them.”
For our first meeting, we sat in the 60-foot long Mar-a-Lago central room. Built by Post cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, and meticulously restored and renovated by Donald Trump, the gold-leafed ceiling towers above ornate furnishings and tapestries. A massive window overlooks the expansive lawn in front of the ocean. On the other side, the open doors lead out to the large patio where members of the private club there have dinner each night.
At a later meeting I was told that President Trump preferred a seat with its back to the ocean side, but this day he was in the seat facing the ocean. Behind him, an open door showed a room with video equipment and a large TV, playing Fox News.
Baier was interviewing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. I would later learn it was the interview in which McConnell told Baier he’d “absolutely” support Trump if he ran again. But Trump was still frustrated with McConnell and how he’d mismanaged the Trump era, calling him a “stupid f-cker.”
Heh. That loud “ka-thump” sound you just heard was scores of genteel NeverTrumpTard “True” “Conservatives” such as David French, the pedo-enabling losers at the Lincoln Project offices, and Bill “The Pillsbury Doughboy, only completely unlikable” Krystol falling over in a dead swoon, so horrified were they by yet another coarse, rude, and of course perfectly accurate blast from the fiend who haunts their deepest, darkest nightmares.
This is a quite long piece, as you might expect from the partial chronicle of an interview spanning three sit-downs with a guy as voluble and irrepressible as Mr Preznit is. It’s also spellbinding—one of those can’t-stop-reading deals that, like a red-hot scorcher of a novel that has you staggering into work next morn all red-eyed, ragged, and zombie-like because it was just too compelling to put the thing down until you got to the last page.
Now as y’all already know, the bloom is pretty much off the Trump rose for me at this point. While I don’t by any means dislike the guy, I nonetheless find myself paying less and less attention these days to his doings and statements than once I did. That said, though, I devoured every word of this Federalist piece in one fell chomp, and enjoyed the meal too—YUUUUGELY, you might say. In addition to being a lively read throughout, Mollie interjects a few spicy tidbits of her own here and there, some of which you might not expect. For instance:
Despite his hyperbolic and imprecise rhetoric, and in our meetings it was regularly that, Trump understood the big picture problems with the 2020 election better than many of his critics. He knew that many of the changes that had been forced through states in 2020 were unconstitutional.
“The constitution of the United States says you cannot change any of your rules, regulations, or anything else, unless you go through the state legislatures,” he said, referring to Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which leaves the power to the state legislature to make the election laws. Pennsylvania had been one of the states that made major changes to election laws, arguably in violation of both the federal and state constitutions.
Trump told me a story about how Sen. Ben Sasse annoyed him right after the 2016 election by being unduly hostile at his initial meeting with the Senate GOP conference. “Terrible senator. This started right at the beginning,” he said, remembering how much time, in his view, the Nebraska senator had spent sniping in the wrong direction. “He’s actually stupid, ‘cause you know the problem with the Republicans is they don’t stick together. You don’t have Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse in the Democrat Party,” he said, while admitting Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., occasionally played a minor version of that role in his party.
A few years later, Sens. Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz asked Trump to give Sasse another chance. “I say, ‘Keep him out. Guy’s a loser.’ So they said, ‘No, no, no. He wants to make peace.’” Sasse was trying to avoid a primary challenge at the time. “He was like a little boy. He was so well behaved. He didn’t say a word. And they made a case as to why I should let him back into the fold,” Trump said.
Combined with Sasse’s change of behavior to avoid a primary, Trump went on to endorse him. As soon as he won his primary, the old Sasse returned.
Enough with the excerpting, just go read every last tasty word of this. It’s funny, it’s fascinating, it’s lurid and salty in spots—in other words, it’s Trump at his very best. Take my word for it, friends: you will DEFINITELY miss out on something very much worth your while if you shine this one on. Good, good stuff, from start to finish.
22I suddenly realize I’m gonna be getting a LOT more use out of that great Tom Cruise clip from TAPS I ran not too long ago.
Southwest Blames Cancellations On Worker Shortage, Union Denies ‘Sick-Out’ Over Vaccine Mandate
Update (1800ET): Southwest Airlines has had another terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day – as a shortage of workers combined with an air traffic control interruption to bring the total number of canceled flights to nearly 3,100 in four days.
“Crews were struggling to move and you end up in short order with aircraft and crews in the wrong spot,” said EVP Bob Jordan, adding “It’s really difficult to repair and put those things back together.”
Speculation over the actual cause of the cancellations has been rampant on social media – with some pilots refuting claims that they were staging a sickout over vaccination mandates, while COPO Mike Van de Ven told employees on Sunday night that it needs to build more of a “staffing cushion” to deal with unexpected disruptions.
The airline has set a Dec. 8 deadline for vaccinations, which the Pilots Union claim “imposes new conditions of employment” and threatens termination.
“What was a minor temporary event for other carriers devastated Southwest Airlines because our operation has become brittle and subject to massive failures under the slightest pressure,” said Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association. “Our pilots are tired and frustrated because our operation is running on empty due to a lack of support from the company.”
As we noted on Sunday, Southwest airlines canceled nearly 2,000 flights over the weekend – blaming the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and inclement weather.
Oddly, no other major airlines had the same issues, while rumors swirled that airline employees had staged coordinated walk-outs (which their unions deny).
Yeah, odd. Delightful as it already is, though, does it get even better?
OHHHHHH yes it does.
This photo was just sent to me of a grounded Southwest plane flying a Gadsden flag out of the cockpit. The Hero Pilots at Southwest and other Airlines deserve our support. True patriots worthy of the American Freedom Fighter tradition.
Don’t Tread On Me.
God Bless Them 🇺🇸✈️🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/tAo9pT4Q60— Benny (@bennyjohnson) October 11, 2021
Say it with me one mo’ time ag’in, chirruns: A process, not an event. And believe you me, the process is ongoing, even beginning to snowball, as these things have a tendency to do. Which makes it time, I think, to establish a brand-new category for such encouraging items: The Resistance.
3
1EXTREMELY well said.
Biden’s cognitive capacity had already been a bus crash, but now it has further deteriorated to the level of not merely a bus crash, but a bus full of circus clowns crashing into a school for blind children and even worse the clowns were doing their “Gasoline Comedy” act that day and now all the blind children are on fire and the clowns are trying to squirt water on them with their stupid lapel-flowers but the flowers are just squirting out more gasoline and the children are crying tears of fire out of their Unseeing Dead Eyes and holy shit a couple of the clowns look like they have boners and they’re chasing around the fiery blind children trying to rub up on them with these bobbling clown-boners with big red bulbs on their tips.
Within the various forms and modes of what is generally recognized as Art, a categorical distinction can be made: there is the Lowbrow side of the house, and then you have your High Art. With music, the line practically draws itself: Classical music, possibly even jazz, is Highbrow. In the Lowbrow category, we have popular music, or just pop, a term that harks all the way back to Sinatra’s late-20s success, when supercilious Highbrow music snobs sniffed disdainfully at his music and his bobbysoxer fans both.
In the creative writing field, the distinction between noble Highbrow Litt’rachure and the kind of turgid pulp-fiction droppings cranked out by scurrilous Lowbrow shit-factories like the unserious poseur Stephen King is also readily made by high-minded book critics, who only wish they could attract as many readers as the objects of their elitist scorn.
I doubt very many people think of blogging as Art of any sort. That’s fair enough, although I myself would have to at least half-heartedly quibble with it; depending on the post itself, and the author’s skills and intentions, I’d contend that blogging could legitimately be thought of as Art, if only of the Lowbrow variety. But regardless of what your own position on that might be, it is beyond argument that, with the above passage, Ace has elevated blogging to High Art indeed.
If I remember right, that memorable snippet first appeared as part of Ace’s gut-bustingly hilarious diatribe from a few years back on Kaboom! cereal, of all things. The repurposing of it as a broadside decrying the already limited and rapidly dwindling intellectual shortcomings of “***President***” Brandon boosts it even higher into the High Art firmanent.
721Medals of Honor all around, I think. Silver Stars at the very least.
Confederate Flag Raised, US and German Flags Stolen at 2nd Cavalry Regiment Headquarters
GRAFENWOEHR, Germany — Military police are investigating after a Confederate flag was found flying from a flagpole outside 2nd Cavalry Regiment headquarters Monday and removed upon discovery, Army officials said.An American flag and a German flag also were stolen from inside the headquarters building in Vilseck sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning by an unknown person, regiment spokesman Maj. John Ambelang said.
The incident at Rose Barracks, which is home to a regiment of about 4,800 soldiers, comes more than a year after the Defense Department effectively banned the Confederate flags and other symbols deemed divisive from public display on military bases.
“The regiment takes this misconduct very seriously,” Ambelang said in a statement. “Should the culprit be identified, the command will take appropriate action after considering all the facts surrounding the incident.”
I already told ya what the appropriate action ought to be. Sadly, the Maje is probably not in concurrence with my own view.
Commanders across the regiment conveyed the seriousness of the situation to soldiers at a morning formation, the statement said.
Neither the theft nor the display of the Confederate battle flag align with the Army’s values, Ambelang said.
In today’s New Weak-Ass Timorous Mincing Dick-Chopper Army, I rather suspect they don’t at that. Which, actually, is just jakesey-jooksey with me. The mere thought of contemporary “soldiers” happily discoing the night away within close proximity to my sacred Confederate Battle Flag brings the bilious gorge surging up my esophagus uncontrollably. Not that modern soldiery would dream of doing any such thing, of course; they’d more likely faint dead away at the first scarifying sight of such a hateful relic flying proudly in open defiance of everything they represent.
If the culprit of this Hate Crime had run up the LGBTQRXP39BRRMSSST&%$#@ Rainbow Flag of Free Love And Harmony instead, though—why, just think of the dot-mil dance party they’d throw in celebration of the glorious event. All the exemplary You-Ess Sojers now bringing down physical-fitness standards across all service branches would be there for sure, such as:
These are but a few examples of the New Model Army types being actively sought and sworn in as “improvements” on the unevolved, anachronistic Warrior-Class throwbacks our Betters wish to retire, then write out of the history books. Which, hey, fine by me. When things do go fully pear-shaped at last, I’d much rather face the delicate, mentally-unstable Gender Befuddled, assorted neurotic freaks, and whining, whey-faced boy-men attached to Stop SHOUTING At Me Company, First Pansy Battalion, 35th Perfectly Painted Toenails Brigade than have to go up against the hard-handed, experienced dogfaces they’re shoving out.
(Via Divemedic)
65
1I cannot count the ways.
DeSantis Pledges to Stand Up Against DOJ Efforts to ‘Silence’ Parents at School Board Meetings
“Attorney General Garland is weaponizing the DOJ by using the FBI to pursue concerned parents and silence them through intimidation,” DeSantis tweeted. “Florida will defend the free speech rights of its citizens and will not allow federal agents to squelch dissent.”DeSantis’s office later released a statement pointing out that harassment is already a crime in Florida, and that state law enforcement is “perfectly capable of responding to crimes in Florida, and we have never heard the FBI suggest otherwise.”
“However, disagreement is not harassment,” the statement continued. “Protest is not terrorism, unless it involves rioting, looting, and assault, like some of the left-wing protests of summer 2020. Again, all of those actions are crimes in Florida and will be prosecuted, regardless of political context.”
Garland directed the FBI to address “threats” against school board members and other school employees on Monday after a letter to the White House from the National School Boards Association alleged that parents voicing frustration over school policies and curriculum at board meetings “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
Spoken like a true “moderate” there, Merrick. Hey hey, I have an idea: let’s make this dimestore-dictator a Supreme Court Justice!
All praise once again for America’s Governor, a dauntless man ever ready to stick a thumb into Leviathan’s eye whenever it needs doing—which, nowadays, is pretty much constantly. Would that we had many more like him. Oh, and my heartfelt prayers for your lovely wife in her battle with cancer, Gov. May God grant that she beat this, and enjoy the warm, loving embrace of her family in health and happiness for many years to come.
5Not just immune to it but surrounded by it, immersed in it.
Sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing:
~If you go to a small-town school-board meeting to protest an already crap and globally embarrassing eduction system devolving into toxic anti-white, anti-American propaganda, you are liable to investigation by a dirty, stinking, rotten, corrupt federal “justice” system and its specially appointed “task force”;
~If you are an acclaimed glass-ceiling shatterer, the first “openly bisexual” and “openly non-theist” female senator in the history of the republic, you cannot enter a bathroom stall without being stalked, yelled at and filmed by a law-breaking alien who shouldn’t even be in your country, never mind your toilet;
~If you have contracted Covid-19, survived, and are now possessed of antibodies that provide an immunity all the science (and the chaps at Pfizer) shows to be more effective and longer lasting than the vaccine, you will nevertheless be fired from your job at the local hospital;
~If you’re thinking of buying a Chinese-made refrigerator or dining table, that transaction will now be reported to the United States Government;
I could go on: there are so many trees, but not a lot of agreement on the precise nature of the forest. The biggest-selling book with American conservatives right now argues that the answer to all of the above is “constitutionalism”. On the other hand, the radio host Jesse Kelly says:
We’re not a serious country and we’re not a country that will be around much longer.
I incline to the latter view myself. At this point, conservative complaceniks tend to trot out Adam Smith: “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” But not this much – not Covid lockdowns and open borders, Afghan “translators” and Haitian “refugees”, Big Tech and Big Trans, BLM and CRT, ID for the IHOP but not for the voting booth, China as America’s manufacturer and America’s loan shark…
Is the United States Constitution going to save you from the above? No, the Constitution enabled it – or, to put it at its mildest, failed to prevent it. James Kirkpatrick:
‘Constitutionalism’ is flawed because legalism can’t restrain power. Power shapes law. If ‘constitutionalism’ worked, we wouldn’t be here, especially when it comes to immigration. If the ‘rule of law’ meant anything, we wouldn’t have millions of illegals. Adherence to largely symbolic ornaments doesn’t prevent a country from being utterly remade.
Once you abolish the principle of equality before the law, any law – from the Constitution down – is irrelevant. Almost all the examples above are about the replacement of a land of laws with a land of men: antifa are privileged above “insurrectionists” for the purposes of mostly peaceful protests; the vaccinated are privileged above the naturally immune for the purposes of dining in a New York restaurant; illegal aliens are privileged above US citizens for the purposes of the paperwork necessary to enter the country; subscribers to the official narrative are privileged above contrarians for the purposes of access to the monopoly social-media platforms…
If you are willing (as is this country’s constitutional court) to torture language into making constitutional the lack of equality before the law for the purposes of university admission, why would the abandonment of principle not spread?
s I said (okay, last time, I promise) to my friends at the IPA Down Under just last year, in civilized countries arguments about liberty tend to be fairly abstract and thus a minority interest. At the time I ran afoul of the Canadian “Human Rights” Commissions, a well-meaning ally wanted to organize a mass protest on Parliament Hill: We gently dissuaded him on the grounds that you could have put all the likely attendees into a 1984 Honda Civic and still had room for a couple of child seats – because the average citizen’s reaction to my particular predicament was “Well, I have no desire to be rude about imams. So this has nothing to do with me and my life.”
Yet, for the last year and a half, arguments about liberty have not been abstract; they’re about every aspect of normal existence: the right to get a haircut, the right to eat a cheeseburger, the right to go to church, the right to have Gran’ma over for Thanksgiving, the right to spend 623 bucks without having to report it to the government, the right to object to both the brainwashing and all-day masking of your child, the right not to be shoved into the path of an oncoming train at Times Square because a crazy black woman has picked up the idea from even crazier white wokesters that you and your fellow strap-hangers are the very acme of white privilege…
“Land of the free and the home of the brave”? Both are conspicuous by their absence.
An uncharacteristically sprawling Steynpost, this one is, covering all the bases to make a larger point—a bleak but forthright one. Believe it or not, as lengthy as my above excerpt is there’s still plenty of the piece left over, of which you ought to read the all.
21Da Nuge, as is his wont, cuts right to the chase.
Ted Nugent unloads on the vaxxed. pic.twitter.com/Iy8riBzST9
— Way of the World (@wayotworld) October 5, 2021
Know what I’ve always loved most about the Motor City Madman? His politesse—the careful, exquisitely nuanced way in which he expresses himself.
Via Wes Renegade, who also posts another Nugent interview wherein Ted pungently and correctly describes FederalGovCo as “the most evil force on earth.” Calls for a little Embedophenia, I do believe.
Love him or hate him, I see no possible way to deny that Ted Nugent is as True American Original as True American Originals come.
41So we have with us here at the dear ol’ websty a feller with whom I’ve been enjoying a most enlightening and scintillating email correspondence recently. Said feller happens to be the inventor and purveyor of what looks to be a very clever whetstone, see; after noting the shameful confession I made here to my total lack of any sharpening skills or experience—a confession made all the more shameful by the fact that I have never once walked out my front door without at least two (2) edged weapons of some type or other on my person, and often more than two, since the frabjous and life-altering day when my dad took me to the long-gone Boy Scout Supply store on Westinghouse Blvd in CLT to buy me my very first pocketknife at, oh, about age 12, I think—he got in touch to inquire if I’d be interested in receiving one of his whetstones, gratis.
Included in that inaugural email was a link to his business website, a to-the-point, minimalist affair whose central feature is a video laying out the stone’s functionality, as well as some instruction on how it’s properly used. All this I took a good look at before getting back to him; frankly, I was happy about his generous offer, while also being a little intimidated by the long odds against my being competent to actually master the skill after lo, these many years. Even so, though, what sort of pathetic jackass would I be if I let a little intimidation cut me off from a new experience? The prospect was so contrary to the manner in which I’ve conducted myself over the course of my entire damned existence that the novelty of it stung me, and not in a pleasant way. So naturally I said sure, bring it on.
The email confab continued on from there, broadening in scope as these things will, until this very evening the topic of the incomparable James Brown was introduced with a query as to whether I was a fan. As any person of musical intelligent and erudition must, I responded with an enthusiastic two-thumbs-up endorsement of the incomparable Godfather of Soul, then meandered from there to Eddie Murphy’s impeccable Brown impersonation on SNL during the brief period when it almost watchable. And that’s when it hit me like a thunderbolt what tonight’s musical embed simply HAD to be.
So for those of you CF Lifers who are kindly disposed to Brown and Murphy, hey, no need to thank me for this video bounty. Thank malachi31619. I’ll open with Eddie because, no matter how good they were, nobody ever followed James Brown in the days of his greatest glory without getting their ass stomped into a sticky red paste. As the last vid confirms, even in his latterly days the Godfather was still no slouch. He was a tough act to follow all the way to the final walkoff.
Expect a review of the whetstone after I’ve spent some time with it, whether I conquer it or it conquers me.
2Tonight’s Tune Damage embed is another beloved classic from my misspent youth.
Even in the eclectic, anything-goes era when it was released, Edwin Starr’s version of “War” managed to not sound quite like anything else on the radio at the time, a genuine standout. Mark-1, Mod-0 antiwar-shitlib sentiment lyrically, of course, but I never was bothered by that; Edwin Starr’s powerful, rock ’em-sock ’em, old-school-R&B vocal performance simply flattens all other considerations. Plus, this is Soul Train we’re talking about here, man—the real-deal original, the likes of which have never been equalled and will never be seen again. Taken altogether, there just ain’t no gainsaying this vid far as I’m concerned. The raw data:
Motown hitmakers Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong wrote this song. Starr began his career recording for Ric-Tic Records, a Detroit label that was a rival to Motown. In 1968, Motown bought Ric-Tic, which gave Starr access to their writers and producers.
This is a protest song about the Vietnam War, although it makes a broader statement of the need for harmony in our everyday lives.
“War” was one of the first Motown songs to make a political statement. The label had always been focused on making hit songs, but around this time Motown artists like The Temptations and Marvin Gaye started releasing songs with social commentary, many of which were written by Whitfield.
The Temptations were the first to record this; it was included on their 1970 album Psychedelic Shack. Motown had no intention of releasing it as a single, but many in the protest movement, especially college students, made it clear that the song would be a big hit if it was. Motown head Berry Gordy had other plans for The Temptations and didn’t want them associated with such a controversial song, so he had Starr record it and his version was released as a single. Starr didn’t have as big a fan base to offend.
This song has a very distinct tambourine part, played by percussionist Jack Ashford. He was one of the Motown Funk Brothers who played on the track; bass player Bob Babbitt and guitarist Dennis Coffey were also part of it.
Coffey came up with the psychedelic guitar sound Norman Whitfield used on “Cloud Nine” by The Temptations, which marked a musical shift for the label. In a Songfacts interview with Coffey, he said: “Norman wanted to change the sound of Motown, and I was the guy that helped him do it. He wanted to get into that protest and social consciousness stuff, so I did that fuzz tone thing up high on ‘War.'”
Starr added the interjections “good God y’all” and “absolutely nothing,” which became some of the most famous ad-libs in music history.
Starr won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Male Vocal for this song.
Starr died of a heart attack in 2003. He was 61.
Starr’s rendition was released in ’70, rocketing straight up to Number One and holding firm there for about a month. I was 10 years old myself and well remember what a monster hit “War” was; it was absolutely all over AM radio that summer, which in those glorious days was exactly where any artist and record label needed a new release to be if it was to ever have a hope of amounting to anything. As you might expect, I got the .45 from my uncle’s drugstore just as soon as I could get my hands on it. Wish I still had it, too; God only knows what it would be worth on eBay now.
5
2I’ve been casting about for days now trying to find a way to excerpt this wide-ranging, lengthy, and thoughtful tour de force from Sido and still do it justice. Best I could come up with was just to dive right in and get to swimming.
This post is something I started working on prior to the 2020 election which seems like a eternity ago, back when the outcome of that “election” was still theoretically in doubt. As we approached the “election” I could see the handwriting was on the wall and that Trump was going to “lose”, one way or the other. Gone would be even the pretense of a two-party system and I still believe that. The Afghanistan debacle, raging inflation, executive overreach, all of that stuff that is getting /ourguys/ into a frenzy right now? It will be forgotten by the 2022 election. My prediction right now is for some modest gains for the Dems in the House and likely a seat or two flipping in the Senate. The GOP has 20 Senate seats to protect in 2022 and the Dems only have 14. If the Left does grab enough to make a more solid majority, you can kiss the filibuster goodbye and that will mean the overreach and expansion we are seeing now will be recalled as the days of small government.
With Trump gone, flawed and generally useless as he was, there is basically no one at the national or even state level who will represent heritage Americans. Perhaps we will receive the occasional platitudes but real representation? Not anymore. What passes for “conservative” politics in the future will be people like Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio and Richard Grennell. A far cry from the days of Goldwater and Buchanan. What will that look like and what will that mean for people like me and other White working and middle class Americans, the people who still make up the backbone of America but who are also resisting the push toward a new, comprehensive globalism? Already we are seeing the Republican establishment declaring that what is needed is more pandering to minorities, especially mestizos, once again leaving White voters taken for granted. We have no home and we have no friends.
What this means simply is that we will be political dissidents, opposed by and oppressed by the ruling class and without representation or even a voice on the national political stage. That might suck for a while but it isn’t all bad as there is a long and honorable tradition of political dissent throughout human history.
The thing that really brought me up short was the realization that yes, the aforementioned Haley, Rubio, et al are indeed a quite far cry from Goldwater and Buchanan—a much farther cry than Goldwater and Buchanan were from Washington, Jefferson, Adams, et al. One doesn’t have to expend a whole lot of what Heinlein liked to call “skull sweat” to see that this, in contrast to the usual order of things, is a distinction with one HELL of a difference.
From the Founding era of the late 1700s straight through to the heyday of Barry Goldwater in the late 1960s—and to a certain extent even up to the apogee of Buchanan’s career as a conservative office-seeker, a span of well over two centuries—there was still a readily identifiable philosophical thread connecting the generations.
But then, somehow, over the course of only two decades (in Buchanan’s case, a couple more than that in Goldwater’s, more or less), the pace of conservative (de)evolution kicked into high gear and slammed the pedal to the floor: self-styled “conservative” leadership underwent a bizarre transmogrification which created a new generation of pseudoconservatives which was wholly unrecognizable to those that had preceded it—alien creatures that not only the Founders but also Goldwater and Buchanan would find intellectually repugnant, nothing but a pale, shambolic imposture of its once-proud line.
That says a hell of a lot, not a word of it flattering to our present-day Lions of Constitutional Conservatism (a-HENH!)™. At any rate, be sure to read all of Arthur’s magnum opus; whichever name we dispossessed and disgusted Americans decide to adopt for ourselves, I think you’ll find the piece well worth your while.
1A modest proposal from Brandon that I think we’ll all like.
We Will Not Comply: Red States Should Offer Sanctuary To Businesses, Military And Medical Personnel
The Biden Administration and its corporate partners are now implementing a blitzkrieg against the American citizenry. Biden’s vaccine executive orders are creating a culture of “paper’s please” fascism among larger businesses and Big Box retailers. He has recently announced that part of the mandates will include fines against businesses that refuse to enforce proof of vaccination on their employees. These fines will range from $70,000 to $700,000, which could destroy a medium sized company if they actually had to pay.Medical personnel, primarily in leftist blue states, are now being fired from their positions because they have refused to comply with the vax. This is leaving massive gaps in medical response in places like New York. The unelected governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, claims she has the right to give herself dictatorial powers through executive order, and that these powers include deploying National Guard troops to take over medical duties. If you are familiar with the sordid history of VA hospitals, then you know that you do not want around 90% of military doctors operating on you in any capacity.
Keep in mind that none of these mandates are actual “laws”. None of them have been voted on by a legislature or the American people. They are color of law violations of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be defied at every opportunity.
Furthermore, I have to ask that pesky but logical question once again – If the vaccines actually work as governments claim, then how are unvaccinated people any threat to vaccinated people? Why would they need “protection” from us? (The reality is that the covid vax does not work so there is no reason to take it) But let’s get back to Biden’s criminal trespasses; the list is growing by the day…
Let’s talk about Biden’s latest efforts to punish US troops that refuse the vaccines with dishonorable discharge. I’m not sure if Biden knows that a dishonorable discharge generally requires a trial by court martial in the military, or maybe this is what he actually wants for every single person that will not take the vax. In any case, the goal here is to terrify military members into submission and into accepting illegal orders. And yes, demanding that a soldier act as a lab rat for an experimental vaccine with no long term data to prove its safety is an illegal order.
It’s hard to say yet what the real stats are, but recent polling suggests that at least 30% of the US military plans to refuse the vaccinations, including many members of special operations units.
All of this over a virus with a tiny median death rate of 0.26%? Just to force people to take a vaccine that has been proven completely ineffective in countries like Israel where vaccination rates are high? When over 60% of people hospitalized with covid are fully vaccinated, then what is the point of the vaccines? It makes no sense unless the purpose was always tyranny and not public safety. So, where does this leave us?
There are larger scale solutions to this problem, there are peaceful short term solutions, and there are more violent long term solutions. I will be discussing the violent options in my next article, but for now I think the best path forward is for red states and maybe even red counties is to offer safe haven or “asylum” to people who are under attack from these mandates.
It is indeed a short one, of which you will want to read the all. There are all kinds of reasons why this audacious idea is a good one, not least among ’em how artery-popping, purple-faced livid its implementation would render Branch Covidians across the entire nation. Throw in a few others, including but not limited to:
…and we have ourselves a pluperfect no-brainer here. If there’s a downside here, I sure ain’t finding it.
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"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
—Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution
Claire's Cabal—The Freedom Forums
"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
—Daniel Webster
“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill.”
—Charles Bukowski
“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
—Ezra Pound
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
—Frank Zappa
“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
—John Adams
"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
—Bertrand de Jouvenel
"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
—GK Chesterton
"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
—Donald Sensing
"The only way to live free is to live unobserved."
—Etienne de la Boiete
"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
—Skeptic
"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
—David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar
"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
—John Adams
"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
—Frederick Douglass
"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
—Joseph Goebbels
“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
—Ronald Reagan
"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
—NC Reed, from Parno's Peril
"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in."
—Bill Whittle
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