Be reasonable!
If you won’t do it to protect yourself, then do it to protect others, dammit.
Heh, indeed. Maybe they oughta make it mandatory or something. As Glenn quips: FOLLOW THE SCIENCE, PEOPLE!
7
1
1Category: Flotsam and/or Jetsam
Catchall for whatever doesn’t fit elsewhere
711Vaxx faxx baxx maxx reaxx
Truth, outing.
Covid vaccine maker Moderna received 300,000 reports of side effects after vaccinations over a three-month period following the launch of its shot, according to an internal report from a company that helps Moderna manage the reports.
That figure is far higher than the number of side effect reports about Moderna’s vaccine publicly available in the federal system that tracks such adverse events.
The reason for the gap is not clear. Moderna may simply still be processing the reports, though the number of reports about Moderna’s vaccine in VAERS from the first half of 2021 remained almost flat this week.
Moderna and IQVIA, the company that works with Moderna to handle the reports, did not return emails for comment.
No, I imagine they didn’t at that.
A person with access to the presentation provided screenshots of the relevant slide, which clearly explains the 300,000 side effect reports were received over “a three-month span” – not since the introduction of the vaccine in December – and differentiates between them and “medical information queries.”
The slide does not make clear what three months are covered but refers to the “global launch” of the vaccine, which essentially took place in the first quarter of 2021. Whether the slide is referring to January through March or April through June, the 300,000 figure dwarfs the number of reports in VAERS for the Moderna vaccine for either period.
A query of VAERS this morning reveals roughly 110,500 adverse events reports worldwide for Spikevax completed from January through March. All but 650 were in the United States. VAERS also includes 78,000 reports completed from April through June, including 71,400 in the United States.
Those figures overstate the number of reports Moderna has provided, because they include many reports from patients, physicians, and other health-care providers, as well as those from Moderna.
The one thing we can all be quite sure of is that any “citizen” seeking to obtain any factual truth from FederalGovCo—about anything, not just this particular shit circus—had better be strong, determined, and very, very patient. He should definitely be most vigilant about watching his six, too.
(Via WRSA)
3A fragile peace
Looking on as, all around us, the collapse accelerates.
In the distant future, as Gibbon did, some historian will stick his wrinkled finger on a calendar date and pronounce “and on this date, the United States of America fell.” If by some miracle I were to witness the event, I would not be surprised if that date was already in our past. Historians have the benefit of hindsight, but also of not living in the aquarium they spend their lives researching. Some say Rome fell in 476, as a puppet emperor was deposed and sent into retirement. Did Roman citizens know this was an ending of things? No. To them the real emperor resided in Constantinople. Since they had first drawn breath, all power resided there, in New Rome. Old Rome had been a shadow for generations, and even in Italy, rule had long been pronounced from Ravenna, itself far less important than the economically powerful East.
Justinian the Great thought himself the Emperor of the Romans and ruled over the Mediterranean shores as tightly as many of his predecessors, more than half a century after the fall. What changed, then, on that day historians marked? Symbols changed; I suppose. We see discontinuity, but there was none. We see change, but such change was gradual, the product of generations.
The point is essentially arbitrary. A finger found its way to a date on a calendar, one small event in a sequence of centuries, and thus was it pronounced: Rome has fallen.
Look out of your window and see urban gentrification, perhaps. Or peaceful suburbia. Perhaps you see farm fields, forests, or the unbroken concrete towers of the projects – those never particularly peaceful, but no worse, perhaps, than you recall in your youth. America outwardly looks like America.
On the Internet, however, it is every cyberpunk dystopian hellhole ever conceived. And worse, perhaps. The things that lie beneath on Twitter should scare anybody.
A video was posted the other day of two thieves conducting an armed robbery. One of the victims pulled out a handgun and shot one of the thieves. You could tell the affiliation of every commenter. Their cultural and moral values were so diametrically opposed that nothing could unite them. To the Leftist, this was a great tragedy, and the victim was evil for killing some presumably poor person for the crime of attempting to feed themselves and resist systemic oppression. To the Rightist, the armed robber had forfeited his life the moment he drew that weapon and attempted to steal someone else’s possessions. The shooter was to be commended for eliminating such a clearly deficient specimen.
In a way, it does not even matter which one was right, though I suspect my readers would have a strong opinion. What matters is the diametrically opposed viewpoints, the hatred and vitriol thrown back and forth between people who are theoretically of the same nation, the same cultural stew. Of course, they are not of the same milieu, not truly. We know that now. Was it always this way, and the Internet just exposed it? I do not know. Maybe.
Regardless, there is no peace beyond the wifi.
Yet the fragile peace – with its occasional flare-ups – that holds in the real world cannot hold forever. What will happen if that dam ever bursts? If all the animus, hatred, and vitriol of social media crosses into reality?
Driving down the street, look at the signs. MAGA signs never taken down. Declarations that this house or that house believes in the core tenets of Progressive Faith. Screaming matches over mask and vaccination policies. The peace in the real world stands on the edge of a knife. Everyone fears to cross the line, to admit openly what they know privately: these are not my countrymen. These are not my people. I do not like them, and they never liked me. They do not share my values, and I do not share theirs. We have nothing in common.
What happens when all pretenses are stripped away?
Someday, the historians will look back on our history, and they will find a moment – perhaps one as seemingly-insignificant as the deposition of a minor puppet ruler in Italy was to the story of Rome – and they will say “this is the day America was cleaved in two.”
Perhaps those same historians will say of the Cold War that both the USSR and the USA fell, the former due to economics and the latter due to cultural infighting. Perhaps like the ancient fall of Sassanid Persia and the diminishing of Byzantium. Or perhaps it will be seen as something entirely different. We live in the aquarium they will someday comment on. None of us will live to know.
Regardless, there is no singular America, not anymore. Only the outward appearance still exists – and only so long as the waning pretenses of peace last in the real world. Not forever, I imagine. Perhaps not even very long.
Those “waning pretenses of peace” hold solely because Real Americans, some unknown percentage of them at any rate, still want it to. It will last not one minute past the moment when the last thread of their patience has snapped, the last tatterdemalion remnant of their natural optimism and restraint has been ripped to pieces. And then, it’s Katy bar the door: open season on shitlibs, no bag limit, no ammo restrictions. Weapons free, and happy hunting!
The really remarkable thing to me is how the Collectivists, whether from arrogance or blind stupidity, insist so mulishly on keeping the pedal firmly to the metal in spite of absolutely everything. It’s as if they’re completely unaware of Dead Man’s Curve looming closer and closer just down the road, and that they’re already going much too fast to negotiate it safely and avoid a horrific crash. Human civilization has traveled this same road many times before; its hazards are known, the roadmap accurate, specific, and crystal clear. They KNOW what comes next, what has always come next. Yet still, they persist. It’s mind-blowing, is what it is.
2
1Spark up!
You goddamned sickly, frail-ass nonsmoker feebs are Killing Grandma.
Occasionally I train courses on using self-contained breathing apparatus for fire fighting and the like, known as SCBA or simply BA in industry. The course is a lot of fun to teach, particularly as I drill my students in a way that inspires some of them to regularly ask me what I did in the military – (NOTHING. I was never in the military but maybe I should have been. But the way the world’s going there’s probably plenty of opportunities coming up.)
One of my little joys in that course is when we get to the subject of air consumption rates. For example, if you’re unfit you will use more air than the fit guy. If you’re scared you will use more air than the relaxed guy. And if you’re throwing gas cylinders over a fence to stop them from exploding in a fire then you’ll chew through a 6 litre 300bar cylinder in about nine minutes flat. Don’t ask me how I know that.
And then I ask the question of the room – is anyone here a smoker? And there is the inevitable groan and then the smokers will raise their hands, some sheepishly, but most with a look on their face that goes something along the lines of, “we get it, you’re about to tell us that we’re doomed because we smoke, blah blah blah, we don’t care anymore.”
And that’s when I drop the bomb and inform them that smokers in general have better air consumption rates because they have habituated their lungs to use less air. Talk about a room perking up! You see the sheer joy in their faces. There’s nothing like getting a room full of tough offshore workers who smoke on your side with one sentence. Well, maybe there is but I need to get out more.
Heh. Well, these days we’re one of the very last minorities that it’s considered not just okay but positively virtuous to persecute. But here’s the really fun part.
I found various parts of this interesting but none more than one of the proposed cures for the S1 spike protein.
Nicotine. Who told you the other day that smoking is cool?Ivermectin kills the virus, Statins prevent the S1 protein presenting Monocytes from attaching to your cells, and several drugs (including nicotine) can induce monocyte apoptosis. When the S1 presenting Non-Classical monocytes undergo apoptosis, the S1 protein is destroyed, and the nano clotting, inflammation, etc. go away. This is also why smokers have been shown to test positive for COVID symptoms 80% less than the general population, the nicotine effectively renders them immune to the effects of the S1 protein, and thus most of COVID’s symptoms.
Well, how about that then? Poor smokers have been maligned for over twenty years as the outright lepers of our so civilized societies. Now it turns out that smoking is not just a nice hit, not just a great brain stimulant and not just downright cool; it’s also positively brimming with health features.
Just one more positive that I can add to my BA course next time with the lads. Pretty soon those nasty medical companies will be begging us smokers to come back. Nah, she’ll be right, ya dropkicks. We don’t need ya. We’re smokers.
Bold mine, and completely delicious if you ask me. I seem to recollect having mentioned that 80 percent statistic here myself some months back, but don’t feel like looking around for it right now. No matter; it’s time for a smoke break, folks.
(Via WRSA)
1Serendipity is a thing
It’s been quite the week for serendipitous coincidences around here, seems like. First, after having brought up cousin Reggie in the post on legendary Naval aviator Capt Dale Snodgrass, I was poking around the ol’ Wayback Machine just for grins when what to my wondering eyes did appear but this:
Big fun comin’
At last it can be told: I’m posting this from Strike Fighter Central, where I am now comfortably ensconced in my palatial suite at the BOQ, Bldg 460, #B241, NAS Oceana. Tomorrow morning Cousin Reggie will formally assume command of VFA-83 – the Rampagers. Tomorrow night the band will be doing a show to celebrate Reg’s change-of-command ceremony at the O-club across the street, within easy staggering distance of my lovely rooms. Reggie will be cordially invited onstage to play some guitar with us, but only after I’m certain he’s plastered enough to be rendered incapable of showing my ass up. This is going to be soooo much fun, folks. Having a great time so far – wish you were beer.
Tomorrow: photos!
And photos there were, in the two follow-up posts* just above that one. Also happily included in the Internet Archive page are all the comments, including a lengthy riposte from none other than Regbo himself. There are a good few from Reg’s fellow fighter jocks as well, all of which were as enjoyable for me to read as they were unexpected. The photos I was especially happy to see, since somehow or other I had lost most of them during the Great Migration from my long-deceased iMac onto the one I’m using now.
Then came another very pleasant and unlooked-for surprise when, in the comments to the other night’s post on Billy Beck, the dude pops up in the comments section. Flabbergasted doesn’t even begin to cover it, I assure you.
Which brings us right ’round to this.
The Trump years were a thing to behold. I’ve said many times that he’s a damned fool.
The day he came down the escalator, I knew he could win. When the nominations were cinched at him and Field Marshal Rodham, I knew that he would. I saw him as the answer to Rick Santelli’s original “tea party” rant on CNBC in 2009 (which I saw when he did it, live; I was watching CBNC that hour). She was running a strictly Old School Demshevik campaign in the first decade of real American Idiocracy and hadn’t sunk quite far enough below the level of, say, Hubert Humphrey-type hackery to really herd-up the New Lumpen.
Trump is a New York City lout. He’s a gamer, which is naturally because he grew up in that real estate “market” (if we want to call it that), along with everything that goes into it: the mob and the unions and every variety of government from City Hall to Albany to Washington. So; anyone who understands, for instance, coercive market distortions (von Mises & Hayek, ladies & gentlemen) and “the politics of pull” (Ayn Rand) can easily account for certain aspects of his ethics.
The thing is; he still has a gut-level appreciation of and love for America. Even if America isn’t really him, he’s still really American.
He went wading all that energy of his into D.C. with an attitude like he could deal with those people in dollars, as if that sort of power were the coin of that realm. He didn’t understand that it was a very different sort of power: the well-oiled and loaded .45 at the bottom of every stack of government paperwork, and everything that means.
For instance: he didn’t really understand (if he ever really even imagined) intelligence tradecraft; the applied power of the state in defense of itself.
When I first heard the term, “deep state,” I thought, “That’s pretty good. I wish I’d thought that up.” I soon saw it lensed against the left, which is arguably fair enough (e.g.; in the context of the five year-long coup attempt manifest in all the transparent commie horseshit about him and Russia). What I had mind, however, was the whole state, per se. Like; the entire administratum comprised in all the alphabureaus and their career apparat that’s virtually never subject to electoral politics, even if their appointed chiefs come & go.
Trump didn’t have the sense to take a chainsaw to that much of it, and spent a lot of his time in running fights with it. Now, he likes to fight, but that was a vicious waste of the time that America had left.
His spending was profligate (but now paling into shadow under what’s going on today).
One important thing came in his consequence: he scared the living shit out of the commies. They now have to make some really big plays to get their whole wagon back in the lane of trans-nationalist “transforming of America”. This is, for instance, why we’re seeing the whole disaster at the border: they’re importing voters. Stealing the 2020 election was an emergency maneuver. Pretty well-done, but maybe not well-enough to prevent it from going down correctly in honest history. We’ll see.
In any case, the lines that I drew back in the day are far deeper and one can watch America separating like a microscopic cell budding into halves. “The pace of this thing is picking up.”
Communist China is a monster.
I see anti-lockdown riots all over Europe which, dammit, is actually sort of encouraging.
I don’t know, man. I just hate it all.
People in my generation are unique in all of human history. I saw the peak of human culture: born in America in the 1950’s. Although he had the same outlook as me, my father didn’t see the backside — over the hill — of the American ascent. When he died in 2003, it was all still just barely coasting near the peak. The children, conversely, will never know what it was really like: what got lost.
I’ve seen the whole rise and fall; what it really could have been, and what it’s come to.
I saw some wag or other describe it as “like the fall of Rome, but with cell phones.” Nobody else will ever see anything like it.
That, of course, is but another jolt of hi-watt insight and analysis in the inimitable Billy Beck style from the aforementioned comments, to which I can come up with not a single word that would be worth adding.
* All the pics are good, but the one you really don’t want to miss features myself and Reg onstage, each of us sporting a female undergarment atop our respective head for reasons I was far too drunk then to be able to recall now. In fact, I have to wonder where the hell those thongs even came from in the first place; there were in fact a handful of female swabbies in attendance, but why they would have agreed to doff their delicates for use as decorative headgear I couldn’t say.
Man, what a night that was.
1Prison nation
The land once known far and wide as a nation of cast-offs and convicts is now back behind bars.
Australia has deployed hundreds of soldiers to Sydney to help enforce a Covid lockdown.
A Delta outbreak which began in June has produced nearly 3,000 infections and led to nine deaths.
Australian Defence Force soldiers will undergo training on the weekend before beginning unarmed patrols on Monday.
But many have questioned whether the military intervention is necessary, calling it heavy-handed.
The lockdown – in place until at least 28 August – bars people from leaving their home except for essential exercise, shopping, caregiving and other reasons.
Soldiers will join police in virus hotspots to ensure people are following the rules, which include a 10km (6.2 miles) travel limit.
State Police Minister David Elliott said it would help because a small minority of Sydneysiders thought “the rules didn’t apply to them”.
Information provided by health officials indicates the virus is mainly spreading through permitted movement.
The Australian Lawyers Alliance, a civil rights group, called the deployment a “concerning use” of the army in a liberal democracy.
Oh, is that what you think you are? Because you look like something else entirely from here. Then again, though, here in AINO (America In Name Only), we have precious little room to talk these days.
As a GFZ commenter helpfully points out: nine (count ’em, 9) deaths…in a city of five million. Yep, this is one Heap Big Scary Death Plague, all right. Speaking of GFZ, via whom etc:
Can we liberate a Western nation from tyranny in which the people would be grateful for our sacrifice?
That would be nice.
Go down under, shoot some commies, hand out some rifles to the locals, drink a beer and have a barbie.
Sure, some of the Australian Leftists will be all pissy, but given what I’ve seen of the Sydney riots, the rest of the country would embrace us like the Belgians did after Market Garden.
Let ’em get all the “pissy” they want to; just gun ’em down in job lots and get on with your day, as is the proper way to deal with all Leftists, everywhere. It ain’t as if Down Under shitlibs have many options when it comes to shooting back, y’know.
1“Drive them fast to their tomb”
Vanderleun waxes poetic, concluding on a Dickensian note.
Their infernal machine, the massmind, lops and trims the green upstarts, the single emerald sprouts, the high stalk topped with the blue cornflower; lops it all down to the level of their dull brown massmind. Down there in the dull damp, down among the dead men, their massmind festers and they love to inhale the musk of its dank decay.
Their minds are the godless grave of words muttered by Mao, harangues by Hitler that were gargled by Goebbels, and limned by Lenin from which no life or liberty can ever hope for escape and resurrection.
Their secular “green” religion has its bad rap but no hymns.
Their fantasy of a “fairer world” will become their grandchildren’s small and shrunken lives on a nightmare planet where all men, finally equalized, will live like dung beetles on the desolate rubble of what once was.
They call themselves “progressives” and flatter themselves that their thoughts and actions are “revolutionary” when they are as reactionary as any lynch mob that can be reanimated from history.
They chain themselves deep in the pit of Let’s Pretend and celebrate their servitude by bending heaven and earth to get you down in the hole that they’re in.
They believe that the individual should become one with the massmind and that the massmind should worship its apotheosis — that single living demon who best reflects their ossified visions on which the anointing oil has long since dried to a brown crust of thought.
They are the monarchists of the masses. They seek a state in which the head that wears the crown may change but where the crown itself grows forever larger.
Damned well put, Gerard.
2What he said
Wes calls it “the best thing I’ve seen today.” Seconded, heartily.
We clear on this now, VaxxNazis? CRYSTAl clear?
11
8Evergreen
In an email exchange with Ironbear earlier I mentioned the incomparable onetime blogger Billy Beck, who I used to correspond regularly with back in the day. We were like those “brothers from different mothers” i’ th’ adage: both of us working guitar-slingers, military aviation buffs, and RightwingNaziDeathbeast Hitlerbloggers with a penchant for expressing ourselves in a totally unrestrained and, shall we say, plainspoken fashion.
I somehow lost touch with Billy some years back, and find myself wondering now about where he might be and what he might be getting up to out there. Though some of the more staid blogosphere denizens in those days regarded him (and me, let’s face it) as way too offbeat, obnoxious, and extreme for civilized company (if not actually crazier than a shithouse rat), as it turns out, what Billy in fact was was a fucking prophet. It’s positively uncanny how many of the things he was sounding the alarm about years ago have come to pass, no matter how seemingly outlandish or outside the odds the prediction might have seemed at the time.
Unfortunately, his blog archives were long ago cast into the outer darkness and are now unavailable anywhere, near as I can make out. Despite this grievous loss, I’m sure almost all CF Lifers will be familiar with his best-known apophthegm: “All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war.” Bizarrely, and to Billy’s horror and disgust, that one was later hijacked for nefarious purposes by none other than a certain William J “Bill” Clinton:
Since inception, the line “All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war” has been listed on or near the mastheads of a number of politically-oriented websites, among them Sipsey Street Irregulars and Western Rifle Shooters Association, as well as a popular signature phrase in the posts of Usenet newsgroup participants at the time. (The quote was later cited in HL Goodall’s 2010 book, Counter-Narrative: How Progressive Academics Can Challenge Extremism and Promote Social Justice.)
Clinton’s mangle, in a speech to the Center for American Progress, April 6, 2010:
“…One of these guys the other day said that all politics is just a prelude to the ultimate and inevitable civil war. You know, I’m a southerner. I know what happened. We were still paying for that 100 years later when I was a kid growing up, in ways large and small. It doesn’t take many people to take something like that seriously. So I don’t want the whole story of this retrospective just to be about this, and trying to turn everything into politics….”
Naturally, Billy returned fire at The Creep with a characteristically eloquent, thunderous, yet laid-back salvo that was pure 180-proof Billy Beck™:
Beck’s response:
“Here is my conjecture: the ex-president either briefly eyeballed that blog himself, or accepted a memo from one of his flunkies which included the line that I wrote.
I have made up my mind that I would be no more interested in hearing his apology than I am offended by his presumption. It is simply a matter of note that The Lying Bastard of The Ozark Long March knows nothing of which he speaks, amid his insinuations that I advocate violence in this poor country’s current straits.
Here is a word for that despicable person: I am “a Southerner”, too, you strutting ignoramus. I was born in Little Rock, and my mother graduated Central High School six years before Eisenhower finally saw fit to roll out the National Guard. Don’t even try to hand me your threadbare sanctimony about “paying” for the Civil War. For many reasons which I will not attempt to relate to you, I am quite beyond your ex cathedra pose in the matter. You have nothing to say to me. Sit down and shut your insipid mouth.”—Billy Beck, April 21, 2010
Oof. I mean, just…OOF. Also: OUCH.
In casting about trying to locate other traces of his former online presence, I did manage to run across a few more good ‘uns, the first from another sorely-missed Dearly Departed colleague:
Billy Beck nails the auto industry “bailout”
“Things will start to get better when the last indignant buggy-whip maker is strangled with the entrails of the last commissar.”
– Billy Beck, 8 December 2008
Tasty stuff, no? And then there’s this, which is so dead-on descriptive of where we find ourselves today as to make the hair on the back of one’s neck stand straight up and salute:
I keep saying it: the basic conflict in American politics is individualism vs. collectivism in all its pretense forms and manifestation. I keep saying it because no arrangements of coalition electoral politics will address this fundamental schism: as the necessary economic implications become real, so-called ‘democracy’ becomes impotent to manage coalition demands, all while the force of ‘law’ becomes more arbitrary at coalition demand.
I’ve been saying it for at least fifteen years: “The pace of this thing is picking up.”
I hate to keep saying it, because I know it’s no fun to hear it and it just wears my narrow white ass out to keep-ass saying it, but the real problem under all this is fucking enormous.
I really don’t think it can be fixed before it really goes the way of the pear. We’re really in it. In our lifetimes.
Billy Beck, Two-Four – What Really Happened
A decade and more ago, Billy was an adept enough visionary to pierce the fog and discern the Big Issues clearly, when the rest of us silly kids still went around acting as if elections mattered.
Time was, stuff like the above sounded genuinely over the top and excessive to most people even on this side of the Great Divide. Now those placid days grow ever harder to recall, while the steady march of history goes about guaranteeing that Billy Beck’s wisdom and insight won’t be forgotten. As I said to ‘Bear: Poor Chicken Little is always laughed at as a nut and a hysteric by more sensible people. And then, one day, the sky comes crashing down on everybody.
Billy, wherever you are: my deepest respect and fondest regards to you, my friend. Hope you’re well.
13Requiem
The only video Ashli Babbitt’s mom has seen of her daughter on January 6 is a clip of her walking from Donald Trump’s speech to Capitol Hill. “That brings me peace,” Micki Witthoeft, Ashli’s mom, told me by phone on Wednesday. “She was in her zone, so happy, having a great day.”
“Until that son-of-a-bitch shot her.”
Nearly seven months after a United States Capitol Police officer shot Ashli Babbitt in the Capitol building on January 6, the government and subservient corporate news media still refuse to confirm the name of the federal officer who killed her. (Investigative journalist Paul Sperry recently reported the shooter likely is USCP Lt. Michael Byrd.) The Justice Department closed its investigation into her shooting in April and announced the unnamed officer would not face criminal charges.
Three USCP officers participated in an overdramatic public hearing before the January 6 select committee on Tuesday, often referring to protesters as “terrorists,” “insurrectionists,” and “traitors,” though not a single person arrested in the aftermath has been charged with terrorism, insurrection, or treason. They repeatedly claimed they thought they would be killed by the protesters. USCP officer Harry Dunn asked for a moment of silence in honor of Officer Brian Sicknick to once again promote the falsehood that he was killed in the line of duty.
But there was no moment of silence for Babbitt, an Air Force veteran and Air National Guardsman with eight deployments overseas, including to Iraq and Afghanistan, who actually was killed on January 6. There were no tears and table-pounding from crisis-actor cops or emotionally-fragile lawmakers mourning her premature death. Babbitt was just 35.
In fact, no one bothered to mention her name.
Witthoeft, 57, described her oldest child as “determined and strong willed.” A “tomboy” of sorts, Ashli always was up for adventure. While in high school, Ashli decided she wanted to join the military; Witthoeft said she signed a notarized document to allow Ashli to enroll in the Air Force at the age of 17. “September 11 strengthened her conviction to serve,” Witthoeft said.
Ashli graduated from El Capitan High School in Lakeside, California in 2003 and entered the U.S. Air Force. On her 21st birthday, Ashli sustained serious injuries in an explosion at Camp Bucca detention facility in Iraq and was airlifted to a hospital in Germany.
Ashli’s adventurous spirit, Witthoeft explained, is what motivated her daughter to travel alone from California to Washington, D.C. so she could listen to Donald Trump’s speech on January 6. “She was an avid Trump supporter, she knew that’s where she had to be,” Witthoeft said. “She went to all the [Trump] rallies if there was one nearby. She was the political one at our house.” At the time, Ashli and her husband, Aaron, were operating a pool cleaning company in southern California.
Video shows Babbitt with several other people, including police officers, outside the Speaker’s Lobby on the afternoon of January 6. Babbitt is seen yelling at officers stationed in front of a set of double doors, one with a broken window. USCP officers stepped aside a few moments later; people started to smash the glass of the locked doors. Babbitt then attempted to climb through one of the windows.
That’s when the officer, wearing gloves, lifted his firearm and shot her in the neck. She died almost immediately.
Witthoeft remembers getting the call from her daughter-in-law at work. “We knew from the news reports that someone had been shot and killed at the Capitol. So when she called to say Ashli was shot, I just knew. I could tell in her voice. We hoped there was time to pack a bag and get to D.C., but there wasn’t.”
Witthoeft said “red tape” and the military-style lockdown in the capital caused a long delay in getting Babbitt’s body back home. In February, Babbitt was cremated and her remains scattered into the Pacific Ocean near her favorite dog park.
Three days later, after sleeping on her belongings awaiting her return, Babbitt’s beloved German Shepherd died.
And if you don’t find all this heartbreaking, well, you’re nobody I ever want to be in the same room with.
Umm, actually, I take that back.
A few weeks after Ashli was killed, Witthoeft said she finally took her head off her pillow and started making calls. A staffer for Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) office at first hung up on her, insisting he didn’t know who Ashli Babbitt was. Witthoeft called again; the same staffer answered. She asked to speak with her senator for two minutes. “Ma’am, I am sorry for your unfortunate situation but if your daughter hadn’t stormed the Capitol, she wouldn’t have been shot,” Witthoeft said the staffer told her. “Dianne Feinstein will never have two minutes for you.”
Yep, I take it back. I’d give anything to have about five minutes alone in the same room with that arrogant, cruel piece of shit. Just five minutes, that’s all.
My God. Your tax dollars at work, people. Compare, contrast:
Donald Trump called Witthoeft on July 1. He spoke very warmly about Ashli and talked about the political prisoners held without bond in a D.C. jail for months awaiting trial or plea offers. The people who went to Washington on January 6, Witthoeft said, were “true patriots doing what [the president] told them to do. They believed this was a stolen election.”
Which is nothing more than the plain, self-evident truth. That Trump made time to speak with Ashli’s mom speaks well of him, I must say. Meanwhile, Feinstein’s filthwad staffer is by no means the only one I’d happily give my left testicle for some quality alone-time with.
Her family’s grief has been compounded by the media’s grotesque portrayal of their loved one as a “QAnon conspiracy theorist,” or worse, a traitor who got what she deserved. And such vile comments aren’t coming only from Democrats or leftist nutjobs such as Keith Olbermann. This week, Senator Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told a caller on a Fargo radio station that Babbitt was a “criminal” and the public is not entitled to know the identity of the federal officer who killed her. “[W]hat would be the purpose of releasing that officer’s name?” Cramer fumed at the caller’s demand to release his name. “What do you need to know the officer’s name for?”
The first-term Republican senator said he is “grateful” for the officer who shot Babbitt.
Representative Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) defended the shooting in a C-SPAN interview this week. Recalling his interaction with the officer after Babbitt was killed, Mullin said, “I gave him a hug and I said, ‘sir, you did what you had to do.’” Mullin never mentioned Babbitt’s name.
Okay, if you aren’t absolutely trembling with rage at this point, might want to have someone near at hand check you for a pulse. Because you almost certainly don’t have one. In fact, it should be throbbing quite visibly in the veins running below and beside your tightly-clenched teeth, dangerously close to bursting them wide open at this gut-wrenching story.
“It’s infuriating,” Witthoeft told me. “She was there exercising her First Amendment rights. This country was founded on brave men and women and I feel like that’s what our patriots were doing,” Witthoeft also said she sings the National Anthem every night at 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time in solidarity with the January 6 detainees held in a D.C. jail, who sing the song every night at 9:00 p.m. in the East. “We’re fighting for justice for all of them.”
Witthoeft, however, is comforted by the outpouring of love and support from so many Americans “lifting up Ashli’s name.” She hopes it results in a “betterment of America.”
A nice thought, generous almost to a fault. Alas, there’s only one way for that to happen now, I’m afraid. And “nice” won’t have anything to do with it.
And her message to those who smear her late daughter’s name? “You only have awful things to say? Well, my daughter fought for your right to say them.”
“You’re welcome.”
No. No, non, nein, nyet, nie. The one and only thing those wretched abominations—the heartless, soulless flatworms just mentioned, along with the USCP thugs, Pelosi, Feinstein herself, and all the rest of Mordor On The Potomac’s repulsive panoply of orcs, trolls, and werewolves—are “welcome” to as far as I’m concerned is excruciating pain and a protracted, agonizing death while screaming. Afterwards, a fitting “memorial” commemorating lives squandered in single-minded pursuit of self-indulgence, ill-gotten riches, and power: a prominent place adorning trees and/or lampposts for them along the Capitol Mall, their mouldering corpses left to swing gently in the breeze until the buzzards have eaten their fill. Those things they’re “welcome” to, and nothing whatsoever more.
Call it their just deserts, say. I repeat: if, after reading this, you are NOT suffused with blinding, inchoate, choking rage, there is DEFINITELY something badly wrong with you.
1The most interesting man in the WORLD!!
Handlers drag Stutterin’ Jaux out into public view, hilarity ensues. Not that THAT could possibly come as any kind of surprise by now.
White House Struggles To Explain Biden’s Claim About Driving 18-Wheelers
Oh, they’re actually going to bother trying to “explain” this lapse into his typical state of mental confusion, are they? Assuming they do, and I don’t why they would really, I’m betting on the old “it was a joke” standby. That well-worn chestnut always seems to take in the rubes.
The White House is struggling to explain President Joe Biden’s claim that he has driven an 18-wheeler truck, Fox News reported.
“I used to drive an 18-wheeler, man,” Biden said on Wednesday. “I got to.” The president claimed he had driven the massive trucks before while visiting a Mack Truck facility in Pennsylvania, according to Fox News.
The White House didn’t respond to an immediate question from the Daily Caller News Foundation about evidence towards this claim.
Of course they didn’t. I mean, what could they possibly say?
Also left unexplained by White House goons was Jaux Corpsicle’s claim that, during the earliest days of his long and storied trucking career driving for Precion Tool Company in his home town of Memphis, he spent a lot of his off hours at Sun Studios with the legendary Sam Phillips—the man who produced the recording of “My Happiness” that Biden did as a birthday gift for his mother Gladys, which launched his career as one of the world’s most iconic rock and roll singers.
After the men in the long white lab jackets “escorting” Biden at the Mack plant tried desperately to steer their befuddled charge back on track mentally, the ***”””President”””*** launched into a rambling reminiscence of the very first days of his ***”””Presidency”””*** back in 1776, when he personally and singlehandedly penned both the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution in less than half a day.
Upon being queried by reporters about whether and when the Great Man might sit down to write his memoirs, Biden suddenly turned beet-red with rage at the imaginary slight. “COME ON, MAN!! I did that years and years ago,” the ***”””President”””*** angrily exploded, swinging his withered arms frantically around his head as if he’d been suddenly beset by a swarm of blowflies. “The title of it was, I think, My Personal Best umpty-tumpty-tiddly something or other, can’t remember. But over time, my book became better known as simply the New Testament. Sold a hell of a lot of copies, too, once I gave that Gutenberg feller a few pointers and we got that printing press of his working right again, I tell ya what.”
The White House press corpse fell to its knees at these startling revelations, every voice raised in hosannahs of praise and humble gratitude for what must surely be the greatest leader ever to bestride this poor planet, hailing him as the mighty colossus—verily, the King of Kings—he so truly is.
1Report
So the Commiecrat’s Jan 6th investigatory commission charade convened today and established itself forthwith as precisely the partisan shitshow all sane people anticipated, with “witness” after “witness” reduced to copious fake weeping for the cameras over the most hideous insurrectionary assault against the “citadel” of “our sacred democracy” in all of history.
Curiously, the name of the ONE SINGLE PERSON who died as a result of wanton violence that day was NOT uttered, not even once, by anyone present.
That is all.
3Meme-O-Rama redux
An amusing roundup of Fauxvid-skeptic memes rat-cheer.
Go on, check ’em all out. You know you want to.
1OOF!
I have little to no use for polls, as you folks surely know by now. They’re easily rigged to support whatever agenda the pollster wishes to pimp; they’re commonly monkeywrenched by participants who have the same contempt for them I do and respond in prankster-ish fashion; they’re mainly used not to provide honest, reliable snapshots of the public’s general mood, but as tools to leverage political clout and influence. Basically, polls are bunk, and ought to be taken with a bucket of salt, if not ignored entirely.
But I gotta admit, I just love this one.
Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney is the most unpopular Republican in the country among GOP voters, according to a new poll out this month reported by Axios.
While Donald Trump Jr. and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis led in a survey of prominent Republicans, with a 55 and 54 percent net approval rating respectively, Cheney’s ratings tanked at negative 43 percent.
Um. Well. Okay, then.
Perhaps even better, the accompanying chart shows Senate GOPe “leader” Yertle McTurtle wheezing in at an embarrassing +2. Which makes me think that this is almost certainly the most accurate poll ever taken.
2Departures
I’m gonna have to postpone my examination of the TSM piece mentioned below, having unexpectedly run across another one at WRSA that led me to…well, first, we have this obit and remembrance for a legendary Naval aviator:
We wake to the sad news that Snort (Capt Dale Snodgrass, USN-RET, callsign “Snort”—M) died in a crash yesterday. I was honored to interview him in 2000, but it wasn’t our first encounter.
In 1985, I was there in the crowd as a teenager when he awed us all in the Tomcat at the Pratt & Whitney airshow in East Hartford. I have chills this morning thinking of the chills I had then, watching the Tomcat in formation with the other Grumman cats, and I do believe it was a missing man formation.
RIP, Snort. Thank you for taking the phone call from a young writer with no credentials, but who was thrilled beyond words to interview the legend.
I imagine so. Follows, a repost of his 2010 interview with CAPT Snodgrass, which runs below one of the most famed photos of Tomcat derring-do ever captured, which I cannot possibly resist running here.
You can practically hear those jet-jock sized Big Brass Ones all a-clank just looking at that pic. On to the interview.
If you’ve researched information on the F-14, it is pretty likely that the name Dale Snodgrass has appeared somewhere in what you’ve read. “Snort” is virtual legend in the Tomcat community, and with more than 4,800 hours in the F-14, he is the most experienced Tomcat pilot in the world. Over a 26-year career in Naval Aviation, he had moved from being the first student pilot to trap an F-14 on a carrier to commanding the US Navy’s entire fleet of Tomcats as the Commander of Fighter Wing Atlantic. Now retired, Snort is on the airshow circuit, flying a wide range of aircraft, from the F4U and P-51 to the F-86, MiG-15, and MiG-17.
The accolades for Snort’s flying are long and distinguished…twelve operational Fighter Squadron/Wing tours, including command of Fighter Squadron 33 during Desert Storm, the Navy’s “Fighter Pilot of the Year” in 1985, Grumman Aerospace’s “Topcat of the Year” for 1986, a US Navy Tomcat Flight Demonstration Pilot from 1985-1997, and numerous decorations for combat and peacetime flight.
This is all good stuff, well worth reading in full if you’re any kind of military-aviation guy at all. But then we get to the part that stopped me COLD and made my eyes bug out comically.
What was your most tense moment in the 26 years?
From a combat perspective, it was when I had a flameout over Iraq while executing a last ditch surface-to-air missile defense. I was leading a night Fighter Sweep in support of an A-6 strike on a power plant on the north side of Baghdad.
As I said, the story of Snodgrass’ close encounter with an Iraqi SAM, which caused a flameout that in turn brought on a 15k-foot altitude drop, leading to an attempted air-start of the dead engine whilst flying through the middle of a thick triple-A barrage, is all good, gripping stuff for sure. But what slammed me betwixt the orbs was the part I bolded in the last line. Because see, I happen to know a little something myself about that A-6 strike he mentioned. In order to explain it, though, we’re going to need to make a little side-trip here, to another obit from 2015.
Reggie Parks Carpenter, 51, Captain, United States Navy, died from sudden cardiac arrest in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on February 3, 2015. Captain Carpenter, from Cherryville, North Carolina, graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Communications. He was commissioned an officer in the Navy via the Aviation Officer Candidate School, and received his aviator “Wings of Gold” in 1987. Captain Carpenter, also known as “Regbo” to fellow aviators, bravely served in the defense of the United States for 29 years.
He flew tactical missions in three jet aircraft, in four operational squadrons, and over six aircraft carrier-based deployments, including one as an exchange pilot with the French Navy.
A graduate of the U.S. Naval War College with a Masters in National Security and Strategic Studies, the personal highlight of Captain Carpenter’s career was his tour as commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron EIGHTY THREE (VFA-83), an F/A-18C Hornet squadron at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, VA. His final tours of duty, which he also enjoyed immensely, were in military diplomacy. He served as Naval Attaché to France, from 2007 to 2011, and to Argentina, from 2012 to 2015.
Captain Carpenter was a highly decorated naval aviator who earned many awards and medals during his career, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. A devoted, loving husband and father, he was also a kind, passionate man with quick wit and boundless zest for life. Captain Carpenter is survived by his wife, Suzanne, and daughters, Avery and Caroline; mother, Barbara Cannon; sister, Kelly Stewart; brother-in-law, Bob Stewart; and many loving friends and colleagues from all over the world.
A funeral service will be held at 2 p.m. on Thursday, April 23, 2015, at Vienna Presbyterian Church, 124 Park St. NE, Vienna, VA. Interment with full military honors will take place at 3 p.m. on Friday, April 24, 2015, at Arlington National Cemetery.
You CF Lifers might begin to see where all this is going, I bet. For the shavetails, nuggets, and noobs, this oughta help clear things up.
The CF community suffered a serious loss yesterday, although most of you might not know about it. My “cousin”, Captain Reggie Carpenter, USN, died suddenly in Buenos Aires, where he was serving as naval attache, capping off a distinguished three-decade career as a naval aviator and diplomat.
He wasn’t really my cousin; he was actually my first cousin’s cousin, but his family and mine had been tightly intertwined for our whole lives; our fathers, uncles, and other kinfolk were all close friends from childhood, and the subsequent generations have all retained a sort of extended-family relationship ever since.
Those of you who have been around these parts a good while may remember him as “Regbo,” his flyboy call sign, or simply as “Cuz.” He did a fair bit of writing for the site back in its early years under those handles; he preferred the anonymity of them, for obvious reasons.
Y’all also might remember a post I did years ago from NAS Oceana, where the band had gone to play Reggie’s change of command party at the O-club there. He was taking over Rampager squadron, VFA 83, after having served as XO of the Sunliners. We didn’t get paid for the gig, or at least not in money; we got paid with twenty minutes apiece in the F/A-18 simulators instead. Which just made it one of the most richly remunerative shows I ever did. Hell, just hanging out at the O-club, meeting and hearing the sea stories of these “casual American heroes” as Reg called them, was payment aplenty.
He was a damned fine pilot, flying the A6 Intruder in the first sorties of the first Gulf War, then F14s, then Super Etendards off the Foch for a year as part of the officer-exchange program with the French. He graduated to the Hornet after that, and stayed in ’em for the remainder of his career. He was invited to join the Blue Angels and even toured with them awhile while he considered the offer; he eventually decided against it, and went to the War College instead. Back in his college days he got one of the highest scores ever on the Navy’s Pilot Aptitude test, and just moved on ever upwards from there.
Reg had a heart attack either on his way to or shortly after arriving at work yesterday morning in Buenos Aires (the family is still waiting for details on that); he’d just returned from an African safari with his beloved family. He was due to retire next spring; in fact, the last conversation I had with him was shortly before he left for the Africa trip. He asked if I wanted to attend his retirement party, and I assured him I did. We were talking about maybe having the band play for the festivities, in fact, and I was looking forward to seeing him again. He was 52, which is way too damned young to lose a guy like him. Hard to believe he’s gone so quick. He’ll be missed by all who knew him.
Rest easy, Reg, until we meet on the other side to pick some guitar and talk fighters and politics again. Your whole family was extremely proud of you, as well they might be, and your friends were glad and grateful to know you. Much love to you and your family, brother.
That, of course, is part of the obit I wrote for Reg right here at CF, which includes a photo of him leaning nonchalantly against his own personal F/A-18 that I took at NAS-JAX during a post-gig visit we paid him there once.
So here’s the payoff: that aforementioned A-6 strike over Baghdad on opening night of Desert Storm? Well, guess who else was out there along with Snort Snodgrass? Yep, you got it: none other than one Reggie “Regbo” Carpenter, that’s who.
Reg later sent a somewhat illicit cockpit video home to his (also my) Uncle Gene from that eventful night, along with a letter detailing a harrowing misadventure when his Intruder was struck by lightning (!!!) on the way back to the carrier, knocking out every electronic gee-gaw and instrument save for the gyrocompass. After being asked by the Midway’s comm shack if he wanted to attempt a trap on the carrier deck—sans all instruments and lights, at night, in a storm, no less—Reg opted for what’s known as “the better part of valor” and diverted to the airbase at Riyadh instead, where he landed his damaged aircraft without further trouble.
And that concludes tonight’s amazing tale of serendipitous coinkydink. You really just never know what you’re going to run across out there on the Innarnuts, do ya?
Men like Reg and Snodgrass are a breed apart for sure—capable men, courageous men, dauntless men, men without an ounce of give-up in ’em. Men whose vocabulary assuredly does NOT include discouraging words like “can’t” or “impossible.” As I so often say around here, we need all of such men we can get, and will never have enough of them. RIP, CAPT Snodgrass, and farewell. You too, Reggie.
3Comments policy
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