Life in a once-great nation

“The un-American Deep State and the malevolent Obama administration”

Posted on February 24, 2020February 24, 2020 by Mike

Extremely apt nomenclature and some harsh reality courtesy of John Nolte.

There is no justice in this country, only them the persecutors and we the persecuted.

Democrats and their Deep State allies can lie and leak to destroy innocent people, they can destroy evidence, they can seek to manipulate and overturn democracy, and all they get are movie deals, book contracts, speaking fees, and cable news cash.

And now there’s this…

The Democrat frontrunner for the 2020 presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders, was briefed last month that Russia is attempting to help him win the nomination.

Did you catch that?

Bernie.

Was.

Freakin’.

Briefed.

Briefed.

Bernie got a briefing, y’all — a heads up, a warning…

And you know what? That’s appropriate. That is exactly what should have happened. But…

If you’ll recall, that is not what happened to Donald Trump in 2016.

Nope, in 2016, the un-American Deep State and the malevolent Obama administration did not offer the Trump campaign a heads up, did not give them the courtesy of a briefing over potential Russian interference.

Oh, no…

Instead, the un-American Deep State and malevolent Obama administration chose to use Russian-interference-that-didn’t-end-up-interfering-in-anything as an excuse to spy on the Trump campaign using spies, to wiretap the Trump campaign using wiretaps, to commit perjury against the Trump campaign using forged warrants filled with perjury.

And then, after Trump won in an electoral vote landslide, the un-American Deep State and the malevolent Obama administration committed crime after crime (classified leaks, more perjury) to launch a coup against Trump by way of a three year drip-drip-drip investigation, even though the investigators knew the investigation was bullshit on day one.

We are second class citizens in our own country.

Sad to say, but I think most of us know that by now, or at least we should. Which makes the only pertinent question confronting us all the more unpleasant: What, if anything, are we gonna do about that? The answer:

It’s all got to come down… All of it.

Yep, ‘fraid so.

Bernie blowout!

Posted on February 23, 2020February 23, 2020 by Mike

America That Was hardest hit.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) can claim to have won the popular vote in each of the first three early states in the Democratic Party presidential primary with his victory in Nevada on Saturday night.

It is the first time a candidate for any major party’s nomination has won the popular vote in all three of the first states.

Opposition to Sanders within the Democratic Party remains strong. There are serious doubts about whether he would be able to defeat President Donald Trump in a general election. His “democratic socialism” is a fringe left-wing philosophy.

Yeah, just keep telling yourself that. I’m afraid observable reality, grim though it be, suggests otherwise. Left-wing philosophy is one hell of a lot less “fringe” than it should be, that’s for sure.

More Biden bribery

Posted on February 16, 2020February 16, 2020 by Mike

Quid Pro Joe.

U.S.—Joe Biden’s campaign is struggling to motivate younger voters, but he has a plan: offering free AOL trials to anyone who shows up to his rallies.

“Come on by, say hi to uncle Joe, and grab one of our free AOL CDs,” Biden says in an ad for his campaign tour. “You know, the great thing about AOL is that you get so many hours of internets. Only squares use Compuserve, Prodigy, or MSN. We’re keen on America Online!”

The campaign has warned that it’s first come, first served, so you’d better hurry if you want to experience the lightning-fast speeds of AOL’s 56K dial-up service.

Later, you’re all invited to hop into Uncle Gropey’s flivver for a run downtown to the apothecary for a malted! On a slightly more serious note:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but my earlier Joe Biden theory is confirmed more and more every day. Let’s start from the beginning.

1. At first Biden is reluctant to run. But in the spring of 2019 he gets wind of Trump investigating his corruption in Ukraine – and he immediately enters the race on 4/25/19. On the trail he looks old, tired, and his heart just isn’t in it. Why do it then? Because it’s about a lot more things than simply running for president.

2. If Trump isn’t stopped, the entire Biden family’s dirt will come out. At this point, the only way to avoid or at least to delay it is Biden being in the race: the news of his corruption can then be discredited as usual electioneering and Trump’s dirty tricks.

3. Biden may not be the only one who took dirty money from Ukrainian oligarchs, plus Democrats used Ukrainian politicians to dig up dirt on Trump’s team in 2016. Now their lives and careers depend on their ability to stop Trump’s investigation and to muddle the issue. They also know they can’t beat Trump in 2020, all they can do is try to impeach him in order to shut him up. They have loyal spies in the White House and wait for an opportune moment to pounce.

4. Trump’s phone call with Ukraine becomes such a moment. The Dems quickly compose a play about a concerned whistleblower and stage it in the House. They charge Trump with exactly what they themselves have done – getting help from a foreign government in order to dig up dirt on a political rival, followed by a cover-up.

5. These charges only make sense if Biden is running against Trump in a general election, which he isn’t. As a minimum, he must be a frontrunner in the primaries, and so the DNC throws him into the mix of candidates and artificially inflates his status. The entire impeachment scheme is predicated on Biden running and winning the primaries. Without him posing as Trump’s rival, the Democrats won’t be able to claim that Trump wanted to steal an election. So old Joe must make a good face and keep running even if he eventually collapses and pays with his life to save the swamp.

6. The Senate acquits Trump and the Dems switch to harassing him about Roger Stone. It no longer matters if Biden is a frontrunner, he has outlived his usefulness. The DNC pulls the plug and the sad old Joe is done, unless the Dems can use him later to cheat Bernie out of a win. His numbers are in the gutter.

7. What are the Dems covering up in Ukraine? It must be big if they staged an impeachment and risked their entire political capital over it.

One can deduce how big it is from the now-absurd lengths to which the Deep State has gone to keep it suppressed. And now that they’ve been ballsy enough to laugh in our faces openly with the McCabe dismissal, you can be assured that we’ll never find out. Rounding out the absurdity:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was a key subject of the controversy related to Trump’s dealings with his country, says he is ready to turn the page on the scandal and even compared it to a ‘soap opera.’

According to the AFP, Zelensky told the Munich Security Conference on Saturday: “After the whole impeachment soap opera, I want to go (to Washington) and start a blank page on our relations.”

According to Marcus, during his CNN interview Zelensky severely undermined key arguments by Democrats in their impeachment efforts against Trump. For instance, by stating that he looks forward to meeting soon with Trump, Zelensky throws “cold water” on the suggestion that he was being extorted or unduly pressured in his July 25 phone call with the American commander in chief.

Undermined? Hell, he trashed their entire fucking case already, when he explicitly denied he had been pressured by Trump.

But no matter. Who cares? The whole creaky, clanking shitshow will continue to stagger along regardless for a good while yet, with the Democrat-Socialists launching ever-more-desperate attempts to unseat Trump; the Vichy GOPe whimpering nonsensically that their “true conservative principles” leave them no choice but to endorse a Communist for president; various DoJ “investigations” and “inquiries” marching eternally in place, issuing occasional vague reports that euphemize criminal acts as “irregularities” but can find no cause to indict, prosecute, and imprison anyone, ever, for anything.

The clock will be run out. As Uncle Gropey, confused and angry, is gently led off the campaign trail and into managed-care oblivion, general interest in his doings will gutter out. The Greatest Show On Earth—US Election Theater, wherein the candidates’ faces and names change but the shadowy bureaucrats who really run things are forever—will continue as before, dazzling and distracting the credulous few who still believe in such fantasies. Enemedia will pivot to the next lie, the next slander, the next OUTRAGE! of the week.

And the biggest, most outrageous scandal in American history will be allowed to die its quiet little death, to be buried next to its unavenged victim—the rule of law—without ceremony or resolution.

(Via Insty)

Nature, taking its course

Posted on February 15, 2020February 16, 2020 by Mike

UNEXPECTED!™

John Alpert is an American photojournalist whose work is featured in the Netflix documentary Cuba and the Cameraman. He first went to the island nation in 1972, a little more than a decade after the Cuban Revolution. Over the next 45 years, Alpert returned to Cuba, each time taking pictures of its towns and cities and people. The images he took are a timeline that chronicle how Castro’s socialist revolution played out for the Cuban people in the years that lay ahead.

SPOILER ALERT: it played out exactly the way it always does, in every place it’s tried. Shocking, I know.

To a young photojournalist who was idealistic and somewhat naïve at the time, socialism seemed to portend a bright future for Cuba. With its people happy and well taken care of by a paternalistic government, things were going well. But as time moved one, Cuba’s house-of-cards communist system fell apart. The free goods and services given to the Cuban people were funded not by the country’s top-down collectivist economy, but by a massive infusion of hard cash, gasoline, food, and other provisions from the Soviet Union. When the Soviets eventually pulled the plug as their own socialist economy was crumbling, the day-to-day lives of the Cuban people fell on hard times, a rude reminder of Margaret Thatcher’s observation the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.

The once vibrant island nation of Cuba is but another place where socialism added to its unbroken trail of failure. The country’s capital, Havana, was once an international tourist destination. Known as the “Jewel of the Caribbean,” Havana was a glamorous city with beautiful homes and modern vehicles. After six decades of socialism, only the communist rulers and their cronies live in upscale homes, and the country’s poorly maintained roads are traveled by junker cars built in the middle of the last century.

Easy prediction: the longer they cling to socialism, the more all of these things will worsen. In some quarters, this strange phenomenon of escalating decay, collapse, and chaos is known as “bad luck.” In others, it is sometimes referred to as “getting the government you deserve—good and hard.” Not to worry, though; it’ll be diff’runt here in the US.

I find this next bit of puffed-up, self-dramatizing sanctimony hilarious:

Among the greatest heroes of the Cuban Revolution were two foreigners whose battlefield exploits were so legendary that they became the only non-Cubans to be awarded the rank of Comandante in Castro’s army. One was an idealistic 29-year-old American named William Alexander Morgan, the other a ruthless Marxist revolutionary from Argentina named Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

Hailed by Castro for acts of valor that earned him the affectionate nickname “the Americano,” Morgan said he joined the Cuban Revolution because “the most important thing for free men to do is protect the freedom of others.”

Uh huh. And then—as also always, always, ALWAYS happens under Marxism/communism/socialism/Progressivism/WTFever—EVERYBODY’S freedom was taken away—along with their hope, their health, their wealth, their dignity, and their future. One just imagine the eager naif Morgan’s surprise at yet another thing that always happens:

A fervent anti-communist, Morgan was personally assured by Castro that communism would play no part in the future of the new Cuba. But once Castro had consolidated an iron-fisted grip on power, he revealed his true stripes.

NO! That just can’t be right. I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it.

I don’t quite grasp how any halfway intelligent person can honestly claim to be both a socialist revolutionary and a “fervent anti-communist” without suffering severe neck, spine, and brain injury from the whiplash effect of extreme cognitive dissonance. But that’s what the man says, so maybe I missed something somewhere along the line. Anyhoo, at the end of this article is a link to another worthy compendium on socialism’s inevitable failure from the same author.

How the Trump admin went off the rails

Posted on February 15, 2020 by Mike

Personnel is policy.

Unlike a George Bush (either of them), Donald Trump arrived in Washington, D.C. with no connections to the DC policy establishment. In fact, he arrived after a bruising primary and general election that left him alienated from the GOP establishment. The GOP establishment might not have called his supporters “a basket of deplorables” but they nodded their heads and chuckled when they heard it. The same establishment had gotten rich and fat off illegal immigrant labor and outsourcing American jobs to wherever. They were used to keeping the GOP base in line with promises and crumbs (George W. Bush had GOP majorities for 6 of his 8 years, how much did they accomplish in regards to slowing illegal immigration or reducing abortion?) while delivering zero. When Trump arrived in Washington he was reliant upon the very same people who had opposed his election to staff his administration.

Some hard-core NeverTrumpers were hired in an attempt to placate factions in the GOP. Some cabinet secretaries, like, for instance, James Mattis and Rex Tillerson, pressed to retain Obama appointees or bring in registered Democrats with whom they had worked into senior policy positions. The head of the White House personnel office overseeing the hiring of political appointees went to an “end of the world party” when Trump dispatched Ted Cruz in Indiana. A guerrilla war was fought against the Administration by using the security clearance process to force out many of Trump’s most loyal followers.

Streiff then links to this piece, which fleshes things out a bit further.

In past administrations, a candidate’s allegiance to the president was vetted and considered a plus, if not a must. So why is the Trump White House filling any of these spots with people who have been openly (or privately) hostile to the president?

Retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor summed up the absurdity of the situation on Fox News. “I think President Trump lost control of the whole appointment process in staffing the government shortly after the election,” he said. “He ended up appointing large numbers of people who subsequently brought in their friends, almost all of whom were opposed to Donald Trump and his agenda.”

Indeed, the appointment of never-Trumpers was aggressively championed and insisted upon by some senior Cabinet members. Some candidates were directly approved by the president himself, while others were proposed by White House political staffers as compromise picks with Cabinet secretaries. Many others slipped in because, despite their anti-Trump sentiments, they had not revealed — or were not asked about — their views in public. Some of the appointments appear to have been downright disastrous. Although many never-Trumpers hired early in the president’s term have departed, others have been elevated or reshuffled as new never-Trumpers continue to enter the administration’s ranks.

The permanent-bureaucracy insiders, in serving their own interests and safeguarding their sinecures, are keeping their eyes on the long term. Back to Strieff.

This, by the way, is not unique to Trump. Historically, party outsiders have failed or been co-opted by the system because, just like Trump, they arrive with a popular mandate but because they are outsiders, and threatening outsiders at that, the formal and informal levers of power are often out of their reach because they can’t put enough of their supporters in mid-level policy positions. When results don’t materialize, the reformer is turfed out by the voters and we all go back to the way it was.

Which, of course, is the desired outcome, the whole point. It’s the grimmest of ironies, and the neatest of tricks: the system has been so thoroughly rigged to serve the interests of its career players by thwarting any true outsider elected to clean out the rot—to “drain the swamp”—that it actually functions as a self-perpetuation mechanism, ensuring said outsider will be removed when he inevitably fails to get the job done.

Put another way, the Deep State ouroborus produces antibodies to counteract and flush away potential threats to its own continued existence and supremacy. Kinda daunting to think of FederalGovCo being so awesomely resilient, virtually immune to all but cosmetic, trifling reform or restriction. More daunting still, though, is the question of whether this systemic self-defense mechanism came into existence organically, just as a natural consequence of the gummint having metastasized far beyond its intended limits, or whether its establishment was the intentional, coordinated result of insider engineers who knew just what they were building, why they were building it, and how to build it right.

The latter scenario isn’t merely daunting but downright scary, in truth—because successfully animating such a monster would have required true genius on Dr Frankenstein’s part. A people who value Constitutionally-ordered liberty will need him to be something a good bit less than that if he’s ever to be defeated, his abominable creation laid to rest.

Two sets of laws

Posted on February 15, 2020February 15, 2020 by Mike

Or maybe just one set, actually. But it doesn’t apply to Deep State operatives, Democrat-Socialists at all levels, PantiFa goon squads, and Leftists generally—it applies only, exclusively, and most stringently to us.

Justice in Amerika is now officially a sad, unfunny joke. This is no longer arguable; it is ugly reality. And it is intolerable.

DOJ drops probe into former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe
“It is an absolute disgrace that they took two years and put my family through this experience,” McCabe said Friday.

Words fail me. I just…can’t even.

The Justice Department has decided to abandon its efforts to seek criminal charges against former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, according to a letter sent to his attorneys.

McCabe’s lawyers were told last September that he should expect to be indicted on charges stemming from inaccurate statements he made to FBI investigators about his actions around the time of the 2016 election. However, no indictment was ever returned, leading to speculation that the Washington-based grand jury probing the matter took the rare step of rejecting charges.

Or—in plainer, more honest speech, with the weasel-wording left out—lying to the FBI. Y’know, the exact same thing as poor Roger Stone, who could righteously explain a thing or two to the scumball McCabe about being persecuted, I bet.

Prosecutors had been cagey since that time about the status of the investigation into McCabe, who has been a frequent subject of public attacks from President Donald Trump. In theory, they could have presented the case to another grand jury, but on Friday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington informed McCabe’s attorneys that it was giving up its quest to charge the FBI veteran.

“We write to inform you that, after careful consideration, the Government has decided not to pursue criminal charges against your client, Andrew G. McCabe,” prosecutors J.P. Cooney and Molly Gaston wrote on behalf of the new U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Tim Shea. “Based on the totality of the circumstances and all of the information known to the Government at this time, we consider the matter closed.”

And with that, it’s now officially over and done. The only conclusion to be reached by any sentient being is that not ONE of the treacherous swine who actually, literally plotted to overthrow a duly-elected, legitimate President by nefarious and illegal means will ever face a reckoning for their crimes. None will face justice. None will suffer consequences. None will be duly punished. Comey. Clapper. Brennan. Stroozzzkkk. Page. None of them. Not a single one.

For TREASON. For SEDITION. For corruption so blatant, so arrogant, so patently wrong that even now, as cynical as I have become from observing this mind-warping shitshow, I still am shocked by it.

Not so much as a slap on the wrist. Not even a good scolding. Nothing. For any of them. Mark my words.

If I was Trump, I would resign immediately and flee this blighted, contemptible trainwreck of a country as fast as I possibly could, for anywhere at all, never to return or even once look back. The torment and persecution he and his family have endured for three long years—REAL torment, REAL persecution, something a lying asswipe like McCabe knows nothing whatsoever about, his self-serving whining to the contrary notwithstanding—were for absolutely nothing. His efforts and achievements are as pearls tossed before swine: Herculean labors undertaken on behalf of benighted fools wholly unworthy of them.

Game over, people. Gangster government won, America That Was lost. That’s a wrap.

Oh, and speaking of horsefaced cum-dumpster Lisa Page: expect to have lots more enraging victory laps like this one shoved down our throats in the days ahead, as longtime Deep State op Bill Barr allows the perps, one-by-one, to slip through his fat fingers.

Cheers, Andy. pic.twitter.com/9xy3hBEzqc

— Lisa Page (@NatSecLisa) February 14, 2020

“I am done being quiet.” Cute, very fucking cute. But why the hell not? She’s guilty as hell, free as a bird, and untouchable. Page and the rest of her cabal give not one damp fart what the dimwitted flyover rubes think or say about anything whatsoever. They don’t have to; they’re in charge, are going to remain in charge, and you oafish knuckleheads will just sit back and take whatever the DC Elite think you deserve to have dished out to you, foot the bill for it, then happily moo for more of the same. They know it now, having just received confirmation from the highest Swamp/DoJ authorities that they can do whatever they please with total impunity.

Sickening, that’s what. This country is finished, and it damned well ought to be.

No harm, no foul update! No matter how cynical you may be, you ain’t near cynical enough.

The Army will not launch an investigation into a decorated officer who was a key witness during the impeachment inquiry into President Trump and then removed from his White House National Security Council (NSC) position, officials said Friday.

Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said Lt. Col. Alex Vindman will begin a stint at a military college later this year, but he will be moved to a short-term assignment in the meantime. McCarthy did not provide any details on the new assignment.

“Colonel Vindman was scheduled to come back to the Army. He was detailed to the National Security Council in about the May-June timeframe,” McCarthy said during an appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. “We brought him back, he’s got basically a bridging assignment for a couple [of] months…and then will be heading on to a senior service college this summer, and there’s no investigations of him.”

Because of course there aren’t. Deep State rats look out for their nestmates, don’tchaknow. His “fired” twin brother was himself shuffled into another cushy sinecure at the Army General Counsel’s Office, so that he can continue the vital work of keeping “democracy” safe from The People’s unwelcome input or influence.

Funny how all of our “victories” seem to be short-lived, quickly and quietly magicked into defeat by further sly, behind-the-scenes jiggery-pokery by TPTB, innit?

But hey, I’m happy that the heroic Doughboy twins landed on their feet after only a couple of days out in the cold, I really am. As long as dangerous malefactors like Manafort, Stone, and Flynn each pay their debt to society with a good, long stretch in lockdown for their heinous “crimes,” we can all rest assured that “justice” has been served. Right?

*SPIT*

Pissed off update! Lou Dobbs lays into ’em.

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs went off Thursday on Attorney General William Barr following Barr’s criticism of President Donald Trump for his tweets.

“I guess I am so disappointed in Bill Barr, I have to say this. You know, it’s a damn shame when he doesn’t get what this president has gone through, and what the American people have gone through, and what his charge is as attorney general,” Dobbs said.

“Where the hell is the report? Where the hell are the indictments? Where the hell are the charges against the politically corrupt Deep State within the Justice Department, the FBI, and why in the hell aren’t we hearing apologies from someone in that rancid, corrupt, department about what they permitted?” he asked.

He also said, “To hear this attorney general complain about this president, who’s fighting every one of those damn people to do the right thing and get this country straightened out. And it’s his mission to do so, not to carp about his boss.”

“And by the way, I don’t want to hear any crap about an independent Justice Department. This Justice Department, as does everyone, works for the president. It is part of the executive branch.”

Bang! Zoom! Couldn’t have said it better myself. Good on ya, Lou.

Can’t anybody here play this game?

Posted on February 4, 2020February 4, 2020 by Mike

Bernie gets the shit end again.

Clearly, the nominee won’t be decided tonight. What is at stake is bragging rights, the appearance of momentum, and a chance to prove which candidate can connect with grassroots voters. All of these are a Big Deal going into New Hampshire, and especially the expensive delegate-rich states that actually will pick the winner.

Unless the DNC puts its thumb on the scale to deny a Sanders candidacy.

With that offhand remark, Stephen Green’s early Drunkblogging looks eerily prescient. The Liberty Daily headline says it all:

Same People Who Want to Run Every Aspect of Our Lives: Amid “Quality Control” Issues, Democrat Iowa Results Inexplicably Delayed Due To Caucus App Crash

The link is to Zero Hedge, where Tyler reports:

The results are notably delayed
Iowa’s State Democratic Party, seemingly terrified of blowback if something untoward occurs (note that they canceled the Des Moines poll due to irregularities), initially said it is doing “quality control” on results “out of an abundance of caution.”

Then they slowly started to admit there were real issues with a brand new app that had been created especially to ease transmission and transparency of the results.

One precinct chair in Polk County told Bloomberg News he still has not been able to report his results because the phone app was not working and he has been on hold with an alternative hotline for more than 30 minutes.

No biggie, gang, I’m SURE it’s just an honest mistake. Or maybe RUSSIAN BOTS. No doubt the “winner” will be announced just as soon as the Party nomenklatura gets things rigged to their satisfaction, in favor of the candidate they’ve selected for you. Back to Stephen:

Forget what I’ve been saying for months now about the primary schedule from now through South Carolina.

It’s all been torn up, blown up, reduced to its component molecules. And then the molecules were put through centrifuges, made into a nuclear warhead, which was then detonated over everyone’s campaign plans.

Before tonight, it was a fight.

Now it’s war.

Read on for lots more don’t-miss snarky bemusement over how it is that the very Party always so piously screeching about “American democracy” seems utterly incapable of actually making their end of things work.

Transparency, Integrity, Competence update! Clown car crash.

The FOX News crew started LAUGHING OUT LOUD after they broke these news on the continuing disaster.

Bret Baier: Story County, Precinct 101. Guy says, “I’ve been on hold for over an hour to report the results. We have six delegates. I’ve been on hold on the phone to call in the results for over an hour…

Martha MacCallum: Here’s another one… How about this one from Polk County. Precinct chairs are being advised to take pictures of the results and then text them over to the Polk County executive director. Who is then driving them to the headquarters according to a Democratic operative. (Laughter)

You really can’t make this up!

Happily, with the Democrat-Socialist Party you don’t have to. All you have to do is sit back, point, and laugh till your ribs part from their moorings.

They STILL don’t get it

Posted on February 2, 2020February 2, 2020 by Mike

And given how painful and costly the admission will be for them, they probably never will.

What the bow tie–wearing myopics of the swamp can’t or refuse to see is that President Trump’s support comes, at its source, from growing animal spirits in America convinced that the federal government is a major problem. The country elected Mr. Trump, in part, because he promised to be a giant club willing to bash the D.C. hull repeatedly until it sinks into the Potomac River basin. You can’t fight a war if you don’t even understand the positions of the players or the stakes involved, and the D.C. denizens prove every day that they have no idea what’s going on in the minds of those living between the coasts.

We have watched the federal government grow and transform into something we hate and fear. There were no constitutional conventions or amendments for these changes; rather, the federal courts took it upon themselves to reinterpret the Constitution with the silent consent of Congress and successive presidents until they had effectively co-opted power originally guaranteed to the individual states or the American people themselves. Giant administrative agencies now tower over our lives, even if they reside in D.C. They conjure power for themselves out of thin air, but their application of power is very real. They choose whom to tax, what land to seize, whose gods must be respected, and whose faith must be destroyed. Administrative agencies force American citizens to bend to the wills of faceless swamp things, and nobody in D.C. sees this as the direct assault on Madisonian republicanism that it is. Vesting all the awesome powers of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches in the unmitigated wisdom of twenty-seven-year-old cubicle kings is tyranny, and that is what we have.

Lies have always accompanied the struggle for human power, but the federal government today trades in the currency of deceit with such gusto that it should offend any free people. It is hysterically ironic to hear Deep State acolytes attempt to separate President Trump from his voters by accusing him of being untruthful. We’ve watched President Obama sabotage the peaceful transition of power, John Brennan and James Comey conspire with the FISA Court to frame President Trump as a Russian spy, news personalities routinely spread the lie that President Trump is racist, and Democratic moles and fake whistleblowers falsely accuse President Trump of crimes actually committed by President Obama and Vice President Biden. Hearsay and innuendo against President Trump are the only news of the day. For those living between the coasts, the federal government and the legacy media vomit forth such unrelenting and inscrutably mad deceptions upon the American people that any exaggeration from the president seems nostalgically folksy in a Huck Finn type of way by comparison. And like Finn, if the president occasionally fibs, at least we know he is a hero with a good heart who works on our behalf. The D.C. coup-plotters and power-grabbers, in contrast, sacrificed their souls long ago in service to the cretinous golem into which they’ve breathed life.

So when President Trump’s enemies seek to manipulate us into acquiescing and consenting to his removal from office, their strategy is all backwards. The Left long ago learned to use our virtue against us by appealing to our moral leanings and our sense of shame. They cry out at us: “Look at this man. He betrays all of the customs and traditions of the American government. He lies to us and threatens us and dares to question the absolute truth of the press. He is uncouth and ill mannered and actively seeks to find our pressure points and pour salt in our wounds. He is no true Republican. He is no true conservative. He countermands everything we’ve stood for, everything we’ve worked for, everything we’ve promised to the rest of the world. He finds nothing sacred in what we do.” Nothing could make us happier. The more they protest and accuse him of terrible things, the more we see him as a great and dangerous club with which to pound the Deep State and post-constitutional order into the ground.

Nailed it—clean, tight, and absolutely flat.

Everything not forbidden is mandatory

Posted on January 29, 2020January 29, 2020 by Mike

Okay, I couldn’t keep myself from laughing out loud at this one.

Here is a story that shows progressive policies to be not only destructive, but also depressingly stupid. New York State recently passed a law requiring citizens to obtain a permit if they wish to gaze at the stars in public parks. No, really. You read that right. In New York, you must pay for a license to look at the freaking stars.

The Free Thought Project first reported on the story, explaining that “If citizens of the state wish to look up at the sky and view the stars at one of New York’s public parks, they will first have to obtain a ‘Stargazing permit.’” The site pointed out that pollution in the sky makes it more difficult for New Yorkers in “highly populated areas” to see the sky at night, so they travel to remote areas, many of which are located in state parks.

The state is charging residents $35 to become a fully-licensed stargazer allowed to view the stars between January and December of the year. If you are not lucky enough to be a New York resident and you are just visiting, you will have to fork over $60 for the privilege of admiring your favorite constellation in the night sky.

“Lucky”? For certain values of the word lucky, I suppose. The more ironic ones.

The other problem is that there does not seem to be any real rationale behind the policy. Stargazing isn’t exactly known to be a dangerous pastime. Moreover, it does not cause any discernible inconvenience for anyone else. So why would they enact such a measure? The answer is simple: It is nothing more than a brazen money grab designed to separate New York residents from more of their hard-earned cash.

In other words, New York’s government is needlessly restricting the liberty of its citizens to make a quick buck. The same folks who claim capitalists are evil are willing to use cynical political means to amass funds. Of course, requiring silly permits for activities that do not warrant them is the progressives’ bread and butter. It’s become an ingenious way for local and state governments run by far leftists to raise money while asserting their dominance over the populace.

That last is the one that really matters. Granted, the Left does love itself some money-grabbin’. But even their blatant thievery is in service to an all-encompassing desire to control absolutely everything. Which, in turn, makes it necessary to constantly remind the serfs of just who is in charge around here, lest they begin to get…ideas about certain things.

Know what, though? I can’t really find it in me to get too exercised about this. Such demeaning, grubby nonsense is precisely the sort of thing one must expect from absolute Democrat-Socialist rule, which liberal New Yorkers have endorsed with their votes a bazillion times over, for decades. So now let those “lucky” New Yorkers enjoy the inevitable, predictable fruits of their own stubborn idiocy. Let them crawl on their knees to their masters to beg official permission to raise their heads and look up, ferchrissakes. Let them waste their hard-earned money to purchase this extravagantly generous boon from the Noble Ones upon whom they themselves foolishly bestowed such excessive power.

Maybe someday they’ll learn.

Fix: IN

Posted on January 29, 2020January 29, 2020 by Mike

Indulge me for a little worst-case-scenario doomsaying.

Attorney to the President, Jay Sekulow, explained that the legal team isn’t content to offer a rebuttal to Democrats impeachment arguments, they plan on attacking them.

Sekulow made the comments during an appearance on ‘Fox and Friends First,’ where he accused the resistance party of selectively editing witness testimony to fit their argument that the President should be impeached and removed from office.

“Adam Schiff, who is the House management leader, has had a problem with the truth since he’s been holding these hearings in the House of Representatives, all the way back to the Mueller report,” Sekulow told viewers. “So, we will not, in a sense, it’s not a rebuttal.”

Instead, he added, “what we are going to do is attack.”

A good thing too, because from what I’m seeing the last couple of days, you’re going to need to. The Senate GOPe leadership ain’t gonna bother to. Their declared intention to keep the process scrupulously on Constitutional track seems to be slowly slipping off the rails.

Senator Schumer and McConnell have agreed to alternating back-and-forth questions from Republicans and Democrats over the course of two days totaling a maximum of sixteen hours. The alternative would have been 8 hours of questioning by Democrats followed by 8 hours of republican questions. Obviously, and curiously, McConnell and Schumer see a benefit to alternating back-and-forth over the two days.

Additionally, according to several media reports, McConnell took a ‘whip of the Senate’ regarding witness testimony and does not currently have enough republican votes to block the pre-planned House Managers’ unconstitutional scheme to call witnesses.

The appropriate constitutional position for the Senate to take would be that the House investigates; the House calls witnesses within their investigation; the House assembles articles of impeachment; and the Senate is the trier of fact from those articles.

Ergo if a witness was not included in the article assembly, that would be a defect of the House articles; incurable in the Senate…How and why any senator would agree to establish this precedent is beyond my comprehension.

You may need to hone your cynicism a bit then, Sundance. Because I assure you it ain’t beyond mine. Anyways.

In the current quasi-constitutional House process, the Democrats refused to allow Republicans to call witnesses during their investigative phase. As a result the articles as assembled are completely one-sided and partisan. There are no republican witnesses in the evidence underpinning the article assembly. This was obviously done by design.

As a result a one-sided, Democrat only, witness group is structured in the articles. Now the same Democrats are demanding additional witnesses beyond those they called in the House. The witnesses they are demanding are from the executive branch; and blocking the executive from access to the judiciary explains why the Democrat plan has presented this end-run around the constitution. This was not a flaw in the article assembly, it was a feature.

So here’s how things might now be shaping up: Senate GOPers acquiesce to the House Democrat-Socialists’ imperious and patently un-Constitutional witness demands…and then the leadership refuses to allow any of their own, probably justifying the chicanery to the general public as a matter of “principle” and high-mindedness. Highly devious maneuvering, yes, audacious in its brazen affrontery. But thus will the Deep State ultimately be preserved, the bone-deep corruption of the US government entire swept back under its rug. And on my darkest days, I fear that that outweighs any other consideration for these shitweasels, by far.

I suppose I ought to find this reassuring, but somehow I just…don’t.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday said Trump’s defense team “made a damning indictment of what Hunter and Joe Biden allowed to happen” in Ukraine, with Burisma, and he believes GOP senators will likely vote to call in the Bidens, Eric Ciaramella and other witnesses.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday said Trump’s defense team “made a damning indictment of what Hunter and Joe Biden allowed to happen” in Ukraine, with Burisma, and he believes GOP senators will likely vote to call in the Bidens, Eric Ciaramella and other witnesses.

Fine and well, then, and given how hard it is nowadays to determine whether it’s Lindsey V1.0, 1.5, or 2.0 hear talking at any given moment, I’ll believe it when I see it. Worse, the razor-thin Republican Senate majority means that they can’t afford to lose a single vote—and we can guess easily enough where four of them might be found. Nonetheless, Sen Hawley remains optimistic:

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) drafted motions to subpoena impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff, ICIG Michael Atkinson, Eric Ciaramella, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden to testify.

“If the Senate calls witnesses, I will ask for votes on all these next week,” Hawley said.

I hope you do, Josh; we’ll see if you get ’em. More details on La Familia Biden’s end-to-end, multigenerational corruption are provided in this Politico hack-job; the bit of hilarity I most enjoyed therein has to be this:

There’s no evidence Biden used his position as vice president to benefit his son’s work with Burisma.

BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHASTOPITPLEASEOHPLEASESTOPYOU’REKILLINGME

Revoltingly, the Biden corruption ‘n’ crime chromosome wasn’t limited to just poor, inept old whore-hopper Hunter’s DNA, either. It appears to be a dominant family trait.

With less than one week before the Iowa caucuses, the establishment media is zeroing in on former Vice President Joe Biden and the culture of corruption that has permeated his immediate family for decades.

On Tuesday, Politico published an in-depth exposé on the financial ties between the former vice president’s younger brother, James, and a high-powered Washington, D.C., lobbyist. According to Politico, James and his wife purchased an acre of land in the U.S. Virgin Islands for $150,000 in May 2005. A year later, James resold a third of that acre to Scott Green, a national security lobbyist who previously served as a Senate staffer for Joe Biden. Green paid $150,000 for the land, even though the tax assessed value was only $38,000.

“In effect, James and [his wife] had gotten their money back while keeping most of the land—recouping their investment in just 12 months,” the outlet reported.

Any money that Green may have lost through the deal was offset when Joe Biden became vice president. In 2010, as Politico notes, Green and members of the lobbying firm he founded, the Lafayette Group, were frequent visitors at the Obama-Biden White House.

Remember, y’all: not a SMIDGEON of corruption in the Obama junta. Not the tiniest little SMIDGE. If you don’t believe it, just ask one of those piffling crooks.

The article goes on to present a whole slew of, umm, problematic wheelings and dealings involving Uncle Gropey and his chip-off-the-old-block brood. Influence peddling, bribery, extortion,lucrative no-show jobs, you name it; the only thing the Biden clan seems not to have had their grubby fingers into is actual contract murder. But Uncle Gropey is close enough to HILLARY!™, so who knows about even that.

One thing we know for sure by now: if he did refrain, it sure wasn’t due to any ethics-based reluctance or distaste for it—the man has no discernible ethics at all, Obviously, his precious little apples did NOT fall far from the rotten family tree themselves.

History, repeating itself

Posted on January 29, 2020January 29, 2020 by Mike

Who they are, what they do.

How the current impeachment “trial” turns out is anybody’s guess but hardly the only unknown in theongoing coup against President Trump. As many believe, if nobody in the FBI or DOJ winds up doing prison time, the Deep State wins and future presidents will face similar coup attempts. Some clues on what might or might not happen to FBI bosses emerged Sunday in “Government on Trial,” a Fox News documentary on the FBI siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992.

That operation targeted the family of Randy Weaver, whom the establishment media relentlessly smeared as a “white separatist” and “white supremacist” with possible links to the Aryan Nations. As the FBI knew, Weaver was not a member of the group, and as Weaver testified to the Senate in 1995, “I don’t hate people because of being a different race. I don’t hate anybody. I believe there are good and bad in every race, and I have always taught that.”

On the other hand, Weaver could be accurately described as a biblical survivalist. He moved his family from Iowa to northern Idaho to prepare for bad times and the possible breakdown of society. Such survivalism had been on the rise since the latter days of the Carter administration, when the end did seem to be at hand.

Like many in rural Idaho, Weaver and his family were fully armed. On the other hand, they lived peacefully and perpetrated no attacks against neighbors. The ATF tried to entrap Weaver on a gun charge and an exchange of fire claimed the lives of a U.S. Marshall and Weaver’s 14-year-old son, Samuel. That brought in the FBI, which deployed 400 heavily armed agents, helicopters, armored personnel carriers, and trained snipers all against a single family.

The FBI’s rules of engagement allowed agents to shoot on sight. The agency believed that Randy’s wife Vicki was the “brains of the outfit” and FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shot the unarmed woman in the head as she held her infant daughter. Snipers are trained to “acquire” their targets, so not likely the killing was accidental.

Weaver and his friend Kevin Harris were also wounded, and Harris was near death when the siege ended. In the ensuing trial, Randy Weaver was acquitted on everything but failing to appear in court, and his original tangle with the ATF was ruled as entrapment. The family received a settlement of more than $3 million but questions remained.

As the Fox documentary showed, it remains unknown to this day which FBI boss ordered the shoot-on-sight rules, and the mystery could be part of a cover-up. Michael Kahoe of the FBI’s violent crime division destroyed a key report on Ruby Ridge to prevent the U.S. attorney from turning it over to Weaver’s attorneys. Kahoe would up serving 18 months in prison, for actions in a case that rendered three people dead.

The campaign against candidate Trump, and the coup attempt against President Trump, has yet to claim any lives, but it has certainly ruined a few. As the Federalist reveals, James Comey and Andrew McCabe signed off on FISA warrants that were false, which is a federal crime. These were part of more than a dozen cases in which the FBI violated FISA laws.

FBI lawyer Kevin Klinesmith altered a key document on Carter Page and the phones of FBI players Strzok and Page were wiped clean of incriminating texts. U.S. attorney John Durham is running a criminal investigation, but so far no FBI or DOJ player has been officially charged, tried and sent to prison. A low-level fall guy the style of Kahoe would hardly match the magnitude of the crimes and essentially authorize future coup attempts by the deep state. That’s the lesson of Ruby Ridge.

Billingsley goes on to weave Waco, the Nation Of Islam, and the Black Panthers into a larger tapestry of corruption and extremely dubious, politically-motivated FBI/Senate/DoJ investigations. The FBI’s blatant stab at criminal interference in the 2016 election and the subsequent all-thumbs attempt to frame Trump shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody the least bit familiar with their coal-black history.

FUBAR

Posted on January 29, 2020January 29, 2020 by Mike

Codevilla reveals that the illusion of America’s supreme military might is just that: an illusion.

News that the wargames which the RAND corporation runs for the U.S. government show U.S. forces getting “its ass handed to it” by Russia and China have elicited disbelief: “how could this possibly be?” The short answer is that the U.S. armed forces are utterly corrupt: the very definition of parade ground forces, superbly equipped, fabulously paid (to look good)—but utterly incapable of winning the wars that our even more corrupt national security establishment defines for them. Corrupt, and un-serious.

Specifically: U.S. forces fail in the wargames, and would fare worse in real life, because they would be sent to fight the Chinese for control of the Western Pacific, and Russia for control of areas west of the Niemen river, as well as north of Crimea. The Chinese and Russians, respectively, would enjoy advantages in these areas. U.S. forces, configured as they are because of inter- and intra-Service corporate priorities, because of military-industrial collusion, and above all because of the national security establishment’s self-regarding prejudices and proclivities, are not based, sized, or equipped seriously to contest those advantages. Above all, they lack realistic plans for doing so. In sum, U.S. forces would lose these wars because of classic mismatches between ends and means. All entirely foreseeable. I repeat: Corruption.

The wargames dealt only with operational/tactical factors on the conventional level in the theaters of operation. But China and Russia are nuclear powers whose missiles can deliver nuclear warheads to the U.S. Neither has been shy about pointing out that they might force the U.S. to choose between its objective in their back yard and the loss of one or more American cities. Moreover, longstanding U.S. policy, most recently reaffirmed in 2019, is not to have any equipment that can defend against Russian or Chinese missiles. If, perchance, Chinese or Russian forces should have difficulty disposing of U.S. challenges, raising the nuclear specter would surely force the U.S. side to reconsider why we engaged in war in others’ back yards without the capacity to protect ourselves at home. Since nuclear weapons are fully integrated into Russia’s ground forces, this rude awakening would likely come in the course of ordinary operations. On the Chinese side, we might well see the annihilation of Guam. But, one might respond, “U.S. nuclear missile forces are so superior to China’s!” Sure. Superior for what? What good would killing a couple of million Chinese do?

What forces against what, where, to do what, is the nub of the military matter. The Chinese and Russians, respectively, have good strategic, operational, and tactical answers. The U.S. side does not.

Skeptical, are ya? Insist on some proof, do ya? Okay, here ya go:

The Ford class has become a major crisis. In February 2018 the navy confirmed that it had major problems with the design and construction of its new EMALS (Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System) catapult installed in its latest aircraft carrier; the USS Ford (CVN 78) and the three other Ford-class carriers under construction. During sea trials, the Ford used EMALS heavily, as would be the case in combat and training operations and found EMALS less reliable than the older steam catapult. EMALS was also more labor intensive to operate and put more stress on launched aircraft than expected. Worse, due to a basic design flaw, if one EMALS catapult becomes inoperable, the other three catapults could not be used in the meantime as was the case with steam catapults. This meant that the older practice of taking one or more steam catapults offline for maintenance or repairs while at sea was not practical. The navy admitted that in combat if one or more catapults were rendered unusable they remained that way until it was possible to shut down all four catapults for repairs. During the initial at-sea tests the EMALS failed once every 75 aircraft launches. The standard for steam catapults is one failure every 4,166 launches. The landing and recovery system also had reliability problems, failing once every 76 landings, which is far below the standard of one failure per 16,500 landings. In effect, these problems with launching and recovering aircraft make the Fords much less effective than the older Truman (and other Nimitz class CVNs). The navy has long had a growing problem with developing new ships and technology and the Ford is the worst example to date. With no assurance as to when and to what extent the launch and recovery systems would be fixed (and be at least as effective as the older steam catapults) the navy was overruled and told to keep the Truman.

The navy also asked for another delay in performing mandated shock tests for the Ford, in which controlled explosions were set off near the hull that generated at least 66 percent of the amount of force the ship was designed to handle. This would reveal what equipment was not sufficiently built or installed to handle shock and make changes as well as confirming that the hull can handle the stress overall. The navy wants to wait until the second Ford-class carrier enters service in 2024 because, it admits, it is unsure how badly shock tests would damage new systems and design features. Meanwhile, there are some other major shortcomings with the Fords, including electronics (the radars), some of the elevators and a few other mechanical systems. But none of these are as serious as the malfunctioning catapults. Progress is being made in improving the reliability of the new launch and recovery system but such progress has been very slow and there is no convincing plan to achieve parity with steam catapult systems any time soon.

Some of the problems with EMALS were of the sort that could be fixed while the new ship was in service. That included tweaking EMALS operation to generate less stress on aircraft and modifying the design of EMALS and reorganizing how sailors use the system to attain the smaller number of personnel required for catapult operations. But the fatal flaws involved reliability. An EMALS catapult was supposed to have a breakdown every 4,100 launches but even after some initial fixes, in heavy use, EMALS actually failed every 400 launches. By the end of 2017, the Navy concluded that an EMALS equipped carrier had only a seven percent chance of successfully completing a typical four-day “surge” (multiple catapult launches for a major combat operation) and only a 70 percent chance of completing a one-day surge operation. That was mainly because when one EMALS catapult went down all four were inoperable. In effect, the Ford-class carriers are much less capable of performing in combat than their predecessors. The navy hopes they can come up with some kind of, as yet unknown, modifications to EMALS to fix all these problems. In the meantime, the new Ford carrier is much less useful than older ones that use steam catapults.

There are no easy solutions.

Of course not, nor cheap ones either. There never are.

But the Ford Class CVNs are hardly the only depressing example of decay into second- or even third-rate-power status. There are also the USN sailors who can’t enter an international harbor without crashing into other ships, navigators who can’t navigate, and so on. The Air Farce has pilots who have done almost all of their “flight” training in simulators only, limited to a flight-hours standard officially deemed “not ready for combat” in the 80s and 90s. We rely on a fleet of combat aircraft already in an advanced state of decrepitude, kept aloft with spare parts robbed from Jet-On-A-Stick museum pieces that were retired long ago.

Let’s just sidle on around the smoking ruins of that ground-bound pig, the F35, shall we? With several countries backing away from earlier commitments to buy the faltering, ruinously expensive albatross, the less said about it, the better.

Of course, when the populace lacks the will to prosecute its wars to a victorious conclusion whatever the cost, neglect and decay of its armed forces is inevitable. In turn, the American polity has ample reason for such skittishness; having been led into many costly, pointless conflicts across the globe in which victory was neither defined nor sought, reluctance to blindly support still more endless nation-building boondoggles begins to look like no more than simple good sense. The US military isn’t to blame for that situation; to the contrary, it’s another victim of it.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: this country shouldn’t even DREAM of engaging in any war without clearly-defined objectives and a solid, realistic battle plan at least reasonably capable of achieving them. Should those conditions be met and politically agreed upon, overwhelming force should be deployed in pursuit of those objectives, without the hindrance of absurd, politically-correct ROEs that put US interests hindmost. Enemy complaints about “atrocities” and “war crimes” should be measured against a standard that assumes they’re propaganda until proved credible. Should the America-hating liberal media establishment decide to be complicit in such manipulation by the enemy, the consequences for them ought to be immediate and severe.

FOBBITS, staff, S1, S2, S3, and all the rest of the REMFs should be made fully mindful that their role is exclusively and entirely to support, not to interfere, hinder, or second-guess. JAG lawyers particularly should be informed in no uncertain terms that targeting, patrolling, and all other tactical decisions will NOT be passed across their desks for approval first, or at all. Their involvement in heat-of-the-moment combat decision-making must be ended, with the men at the pointy end in unquestioned charge; the days of these prissy, pious rear-area scolds looking over the shoulders of front-line grunts is by God over. If such as they really want a combat role, let them man up and carry a rifle.

When it comes to fixing our military, those are the problems that have to be corrected first. If they aren’t, no amount of fiddling and fussing with the tech, the weaponry, and the other gear will avail us a blessed thing in the end.

The US Space Force is NOT a joke?

Posted on January 20, 2020January 20, 2020 by Mike

Saying it doesn’t make it so, I’m afraid.

Last month, not long before boarding a plane to Mar-a-Lago for Christmas, President Donald Trump signed legislation that created the newest military branch in the United States in more than 70 years: the Space Force.

The new Space Force instead exists inside the Department of the Air Force, in an arrangement similar to that of the Marine Corps and the Navy, which both operate under the Department of the Navy. There will be no secretary of space: As space-ops chief, (General Jay) Raymond now holds the organization’s highest position. The law also stipulates that the Space Force must be built from existing personnel in the Air Force, and does not have the authority to hire new people. The Space Force has simply absorbed the Air Force unit that focuses on space operations, the Air Force Space Command, which was established in 1982. Its members will remain Air Force officers, but those with space-related roles will become Space Force officers in the next year and a half.

Uh oh— with the Space Force under USAF purview instead of being a Space Navy, pretty much the entire output of every SF/space opera writer since Heinlein just went kaput. I bet David Weber, for one, just about had himself a mild stroke when he heard the news.

The prospect of a Space Force has been hazy since Trump first mentioned it, mostly because the proposal seemed to be a passing thought. “I was saying it the other day—’cause we’re doing a tremendous amount of work in space—I said, ‘Maybe we need a new force. We’ll call it the Space Force,’” Trump said back in 2018, to an audience of marines. “And I was not really serious. And then I said, ‘What a great idea. Maybe we’ll have to do that.’”

Your biggest official mistake so far, Mr Preznit sir, maybe even an unforgivable one. Why the obvious and totally spectacular name—Star Fleet, dammit!—didn’t occur to you is beyond my ken. Star Fleet already has the uniforms, rank structure, mission profile, and a cool logo ready to go.

On the other hand, though, maybe Trump prefers to wait for the United Federation of Planets to come into existence for that, perhaps as a matter of good taste. But such deference isn’t necessary according to the Star Trek canon itself, for cryin’ out loud:

Starfleet predates the Federation, having originally been an Earth organization, as shown by the television series Star Trek: Enterprise.

So there. Onwards.

The immediate future of the Space Force involves a lot of paperwork and a dash of symbolism, rather than new uniforms and fight songs. Raymond will join the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military officials who advise the president directly, and the service must come up with and submit an organization plan to Congress in February.

While the Space Force is now official, a slight disconnect in reality remains.

I’d say so, yeah, only a goodish bit more than merely “slight.” How could it be otherwise, when the sad shell of the once-great NASA now lacks the hardware and wherewithal to boost humans into high Earth orbit anymore, and American astronauts are reduced to begging a lift to the ISS from the Russians, Indians, Chinese, Ethiopians, or whatever other third-rater out there might have a working rocket handy?

Jeez, even the Air Farce’s mainstay atmospheric platforms are creaky, leaky, and geriatric at fifty to seventy years young, while our supposedly latest and greatest design is looking like more of an albatross (or an apteryx) than an eagle. And just how do we regain our national mojo as doughty explorers of the Final Frontier when we’ve become such trembling ninnies about safety and risk-avoidance that we wet ourselves in fright at the thought of letting our kids play outside?

Maybe the creation of a Space Force with no readily usable spacefaring vehicles at hand could turn out to be a boost for nascent private outfits like SpaceX, and a lift to the spirits for those of us cake-eating civilians who still care about these things. But I can’t help but feel it’s a mildly embarrassing bit of hubris as well. Who knows, maybe we’ll live up to it someday. If we don’t, it’s a dead cert that somebody else will.

Down to the nut-cuttin’

Posted on January 19, 2020January 20, 2020 by Mike

Another post that could have been appended to the last one as updates, but there’s just too much out there not to break out a new one instead. First up, David’s cynicism and despair pretty precisely mirror my own.

I had hoped to never write a post like this. It appears that federal agencies are “scouring” the Internet to prevent attacks in Richmond, VA tomorrow. The real question is how did we get here?

I will not dance around the issue of whether or not we are in a Civil War. The only question to be answered is when it will go hot. There are many triggers in place besides Richmond. Most people do not know that if Abraham Lincoln had not won the 1860 election (with less than 40% of the popular vote), the North had planned to secede. The nation had devolved to a point where there could be no reconciliation: Henry Clay’s great compromise had failed. And yet history is about to repeat itself. No matter who wins the 2020 election, the country will lose as it did in 1860. In fact, too much of the country is already lost: look at the Democrat controlled cities and states to see the dystopian future that they have planned for the entire nation.

And that is the optimistic time line. So here we are on the precipice of a hot civil war courtesy of the Communist Democrat Party and the media financed by George Soros. I pray that evil is defeated, justice is meted out fairly and that the consequences of insurrection for power are not soon forgotten. The two-tiered justice system and all of its conspirators must be held accountable and given the maximum penalty they deserve for their crimes.

If we lose, we lose all.

Don’t look now, Dave, but when we’ve reached the stage where Americans dare not peaceably petition the government for redress of grievances—thereby forfeiting their former 1A rights along with the 2A ones—because of the risk of being murdered in a slaughter-pen dreamed up and constructed by one of our own state governments, for the purpose of weaponizing those false-flag deaths for later use against the surviving victims as propaganda, the only rational conclusion is that we already DID. Elsewhere, JC Dodge makes a few depressing points on the day before the former Republic dies the final death:

Cages are for animals, detainees, and convicted felons, not Citizens. Herding Citizens into a big cage while they exercise one inherent and enumerated Right, while advocating for another inherent AND ENUMERATED Right (that has been temporarily taken away), is the act of a tyrant. Anyone who says it is not, is an apologist for the tyrant, a “closet” tyrant themselves or an imbecile.

When it comes to the Richmond Rally on January 20th, don’t be a domesticated, herd animal. They generally end up on the “dinner table” in one form or another.

Be a “Thinking” MAN, not a “following” SLAVE. Make decisions based on common sense and you own good judgement/gut feeling. I’d advise to not go with the musings of some social media “Tacticool” wannabees or YouTube “Tabletop Experts” who want to finally get the opportunity to “Get it on!”, or think they will be in the “Command Structure” of the resistance, based on their YT presence. As I said in this post, both are lacking in any expertise, background and common sense.

He’s right. While I wish it were still remotely possible to influence the decisions made by our rulers on how we are to be ruled, or at least intimidate them into doing the right thing and governing according to the will of the people (often the only recourse when dealing with megalomaniacal professional politicians), the sad fact is that it isn’t. Honestly, if I were in Virginia there’s no way on earth I would be caught dead within 250 miles of Richmond tomorrow—at least. Because of, y’know, the likelihood of being caught dead there for reals, in accordance with Gov Coonman and his fellow fascists’ plans for exactly that.

Both via WRSA. Lots, lots more over there, and more coming here too.

Update! Sorry, but this is just pathetic.

Dismissing rhetoric from Democrats that armed Second Amendment supporters are threatening to stir up a Monday rally at the Virginia Capitol, activists ordered to disarm to get close to the protest site are asking armed friends and family to “watch over us.”

Under rules set in place by Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam and endorsed by state courts, guns will be banned inside a large fenced-in area around the Capitol, even for those with carry permits.

“If you can commit to being one of our needed 10,000 unarmed members inside the fence, please help us by asking several of your family and friends to be your designated armed escort to the gates and to stand outside the fenced area to watch over us,” said an alert from the Virginia Citizens Defense League.

“Stand with us, legally armed if you so choose, just outside the fence and watch over your brothers and sisters inside the fence,” said the group. Tens of thousands of pro- and anti-gun protesters are expected for the Monday morning event.

So let’s recap, shall we? A chain-link kill house—one entrance, three exits covering only two sides of the square, all of them closely co-located rather than at opposite ends, which unpropitious layout is very damned suggestive of certain nefarious probabilities—those exits very likely surrounded by a horde of violent Leftist thugs waiting to attack the fleeing sheep, overseen by ranks of cops obeying stand-down orders…just like in C-ville. So explain one thing to me, guys: why the fucking FUCK would you EVER willingly agree to be herded into such a kill house in the first fucking place?

Think I’m being too paranoid when I say that Coonman & Co have big plans for those foolish enough to march right through the slaughterhouse gate, baah-ing and bleating the whole time for their friends to protect them from harm? Might wanna take a hint from Coonman’s own lies before leaping headlong to that conclusion:

Northam and other gun-control politicians have been suggesting that far right pro-gun groups plan to disrupt the event. The state has said it wants to prevent “another Charlottesville,” where white supremacists clashed with counterprotesters over Civil War monuments.

And there you have it. Coonman has laid the propaganda groundwork carefully; it was the state that created the false Charlottesville narrative that eventually carried the day in the first place. Now the Charlottesville lie has become a handy propaganda club for Leftists like Coonman to wield upside the vacant skulls of their gullible opponents in all sorts of contexts…and wield it they most certainly will. With the repeated mischaracterization of law-abiding gun owners as dangerous “white supremacists” alone, Coonman & Co have given their game away.

And now this blatanly dishonest tyrant wants to lead you people into a fenced, gated “Gun Free Zone” ostensibly to prevent you from committing Charlottesville-style “violence” against the politicians guilty of revoking your Constitutional rights, or their official AntiFa enforcers. Once corraled, you will be surrounded by a jeering, hate-maddened mob whose penchant for violent assault is already well-established. All this will be overseen by armed cops whose loyalties and orders are uncertain at best. In order to prevent pictures or video which could contradict the official narrative, the airspace around Richmond has been declared a no-fly zone, to include civilian drones.

Virginia’s government officials; bused-in AntiFa wrecking crews, further emboldened by official sanction; the Democrat-Socialist Party, both state and national; the libmedia apparatus entire—TV, radio, print, cable; ALL of this, with Virginia LEO’s coming in as at best unknown, is stacked up against you. So I say again: WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU PEOPLE AGREE TO COOPERATE WITH THIS CHARADE?

Oh, and lest anybody out there think the Virginia State Police might refuse to enforce Gov Coonman’s blatantly unlawful orders in obediance to their own oaths: might wanna think again.

VA State Police drive over 100 miles to intimidate law abiding citizens ahead of Lobby Day, a planned rally in support of the 2nd amendment in Virginia. pic.twitter.com/kokx3w9isB

— Michael Coudrey (@MichaelCoudrey) January 19, 2020

Sorry, but I have to say it again: the only chance of liberty-minded Virginians plucking any worthwhile result out of this stinking pile is to walk in with guns ablaze right from jump, taking out every goddamned politician they can get into range. Otherwise, you’re all just pulling your puds. Right or wrong, you can’t polish a turd. And a fat, squishy, reeking turd is exactly what you’ve been handed here.

That’s telling ’em update! More on the Virginia man mentioned in the above Tweet. His response to being set upon by the Va State Po-po is just filled with rich buttery goodness, as is the backstory to all this.

A YouTube video shows George Wagner, a disabled Navy veteran and son of a state police captain, being interrogated by Virginia state police officers for taking photos at the Virginia State Capitol.

Wagner is told that a “credible tip” reached the state police desk about Wagner possibly engaging in “pre-operational planing” at the Capitol.

“I’m sure you’re well aware of all the events occurring on Monday,” an officer who gave his name as Adam Culpa tells Wagner.

“Correct, I am a citizen of the United States and I understand that we have an unconstitutional Second Amendment a**hole governor, who is taking away our rights,” Wagner replies.

Wagner is told there is “video footage” of him at the Capitol walking around, “checking into structures,” and “knocking on pillars, most likely to check densities.”

The other officer tells Wagner that police at the state house saw him engaging in the aforementioned “pre-operational planning.”

“What they saw was an intelligent American who is situationally aware of the piss-poor job y’all will do with my security,” Wagner says. “You are disarming me, you are putting me behind a gate, and still, as a free man, I’m gonna come here and stand.”

“We’re trying to understand if you intend to do harm,” the unnamed officer on the left says.

“I don’t intend to do anything, and you might want to tell [State Police Superintendent] Colonel Settle, that the reason I knew what I was doing is [because] my father was Captain Bill Wagner, W.R. Wagner, Virginia State Police. So I’m very aware. I was raised aware.”

Good as all that is, Wagner wasn’t done yet, ordering one cop off his property, then blasting away when the other lamely resorts to the Mark-1 Mod-0 rationalization that he’s “just doing his job”: “The son of a bitches that loaded the Jews into the gas chambers were just doing their job, too.” May God watch over this brave man tomorrow, come what may.

Oh, and on the slight chance that anybody was somehow deceived by the sudden tossing of AntiFa scum into the boiling cauldron as fellow 2A supporters: Don’t be a dumbass, fool.

A Virginia Antifa chapter has released a hit list of several conservative figures and journalists who will make an appearance at the 2nd Amendment rally in Richmond, Virginia, on Monday.

The chapter, called Antifa Seven Hills, created a list of what they call “known fascists and sympathizers,” which includes conservatives affiliated with Infowars like Owen Shroyer, journalists Mike Adams and Jacob Engels, veteran Joe Biggs, and even Trump insider Roger Stone.

Additionally, American Policy Center president Tom DeWeese reported that Antifa is planning to disguise themselves as Trump supporters so they can commit violence to portray all conservatives at the even as violent extremists.

The text from DeWeese’s Fakebook post:

I’m in Richmond and have just received information from a very reliable source concerning Monday’s rally against the legislature’s gun grabs. Antifa have rented seven buses to bring in their thugs to cause trouble. The report says they will be wearing MAGA hats and wearing NRA garb. They will pretend to be pro gun people. Meanwhile others posing as democrats holding anti gun signs will stand on the side. The Antifa thugs, pretending to be pro gun , will attack the sign holders. Making it look like the pro gun people have started violence. This is the plan. If you are attending the rally be aware. Be very careful.

Any bets on whether Coonman himself suggested this to ’em? But there’s an even bigger problem with DeWeese’s advice, and it’s this: “Be aware”? Be “very careful”? How, and for what? Will any amount of “awareness” avail you when your skull is being caved in by a platoon of pipe-swinging AntiFa goons, all of whom will be allowed to walk away without so much as a disapproving scowl from the authorities? How “careful” can one be while locked into a fenced free-fire zone whose only way out is through a gauntlet of officially-licensed enforcers with weapons-free approval granted by the State? What will turning the other cheek be likely to earn anybody from the proven-violent AntiFa hoodlums?

CAN violence be avoided tomorrow? Worse, and more depressing: SHOULD it be? It’s crystal-clear that this struggle will never be resolved without bloodshed; has the time come to settle it, if only temporarily?

Whatever tomorrow brings, I salute Wagner’s defiant determination; his bravery, his patriotism, his honor are simply not open to question from the likes of me. But a losing hand has been fobbed off on him by a dirty-dealing state government just the same, and I don’t see any good way for him to play the thing out.

Road trip update! The Spectator’s George Parry says he’s going in.

So, what have we got here? Thanks to the Democrat-controlled legislature’s arrogant determination to jam gun control down the gagging throats of rebellious law-abiding Virginians, the Democrat governor is claiming that there is probable cause to believe that on Monday the peasants may well re-enact Bastille Day by storming the Capitol as well as engage in violence, rioting, and armed insurrection. Hopefully, in addition to the governor’s dire predictions, there will also be trembling, sweating Democrat legislators hiding under their desks wondering how in the hell they got themselves into this mess and praying to Gaia that these howling crazies don’t one day lay siege to their homes and district offices.

Frankly, this is an irresistible prospect. That is why your correspondent will be standing tall in Richmond’s Capitol Square Monday morning to record for posterity what promises to be one of this century’s Mother of All Political Wake Up Calls behind only Donald Trump’s election victory and Brexit.

Virginia’s state seal depicts a slain dictator over the motto “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” which translates to “Thus Always to Tyrants.” But an appropriate variation of this sanguinary motto for Monday’s rally could appropriately be “Semperque Insulsi Superborum” or, in English, “Thus Always to Arrogant Morons.”

So, stand by and watch this space. My post on Monday’s festivities should be fun.

George doesn’t specify whether he’ll be entering the infamous Coonman’s Cage or not, but best of luck to him regardless.

Rights? What rights?

Posted on January 18, 2020January 18, 2020 by Mike

Yeah, yeah, keep on telling yourself how “free” you are, whydon’tcha.

A grim reminder about those Second Amendment Constitutional “rights”: they don’t exist. They haven’t in decades. Because any “right” that requires a permit or license to be exercised is by definition NOT a right at all—it’s a privilege.

(Image swiped from WRSA)

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