Our Enemies – Page 44

Just wondering

Posted on November 3, 2020November 4, 2020 by Mike

SO: any bets on which of the so-called “major” TeeWee networks will call it for Biden around, say, 8 PM or thereabouts—before some polling places are even closed, in other words—as yet another ludicrously transparent tactic aimed at suppressing Republican voter turnout? Or, perhaps, will they ALL do it?

I’ll just use this as my all-purpose election-night thread, and update accordingly as, when, and if I have more to say. Which, I may very well not; unless we get a tremendous Trumpslide, a shellacking of truly historic proportions, I figger there isn’t going to be a final verdict for weeks, if not a couple of months, even. We shall see what we shall we see.

Update the First! Okay, just a personal anecdote for y’all here; doesn’t necessarily mean anything, take it for what it’s worth, ‘kay?

Whilst driving around Belmont/Mt Holly bootlessly trying to make a buck right before sunset yesterday, I noticed a simply unheard-of volume of traffic coming west out of (c)Harlotte. Basically, there are three main arteries providing a direct route into Gaston County from MecklenTurd: I-85, Wilkinson Blvd, and Freedom Drive/Highway 27. I am no way no how kidding about this, people: as bad as traffic heading our way can often be, this was something else altogether. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve seen plenty over the years.

I happened to be on or around all three of those main arteries, and they were all nightmarish. If I had to pick a prize-winner, I’d say Hwy 27 was the champ. Only two lanes most of the way, with a solidly-packed mass of idling vehicles that stretched from Mt Holly-Huntersville Rd (which 27 dead-ends into, on the CLT side of the river just outside of Mt Holly) all the way back well into Paw Creek, a place that’s always been referred to hereabouts as Tank Town (so-called because of the huge fuel tanks at the various gas-and-oil depots located there). Not sure exactly what that stretch of road might amount to mileage-wise—call it, say, eight or ten miles, maybe? Anyways, the line was every bit of three-four times longer than it would normally be, possibly more.

Then it occurred to me: Charlotte was basically emptying out. The urban rats were fleeing their thoroughly-fouled nest for somewhere—ANYWHERE—else, most likely in dread of the predicted election-night rioting and violence to be visited upon kind, loving Biden voters by hordes of white supremacists, Nazis, Kluxers, and those gnarly and ubiquitous Right Wing Militia types. Put-upon Charlotteans, worn down already by the summer-long Black Lies Murder festitivies downtown—however mild those doings had been in comparison to other Democrat-Socialist bastions—were voting with their feet at last, heading for the hills with utmost alacrity.

Naturally, I could very well be all wet with that little guess. Probably am, at that. But I happened to be in and around Charlotte earlier today also, and I tells ya, the place was a fucking ghost town. Traffic was incredibly light everywhere I went, more so than I’ve seen in years and years of making deliveries and driving trucks all over the place. Pedestrian, scooter, and bicycle traffic was simply non-existent. The only things missing from the scene were tumbleweeds blowing by, and a spooky Ennio Morricone soundtrack for what the pros call incidental music.

So I dunno, make of all that what you will. It may well NOT have been a desperate, last-ditch attempt to avoid having some Mostly Peaceful™ violence rained down upon their heads, right enough. Could be any number of unknown explanations for the mass exodus I saw. But whatever the backstory, Charlotteans en masse were damned sure getting the hell out of Dodge yesterday. And as of late this afternoon, they hadn’t come back yet.

Update the Second! Another one of those times when I’m just gonna have to break my No Twitter vow.

You’ve fanned the flames for chaos, riots and vandalism. You’ve led the most vicious, negative and political attacks on the President.
You fed the American people a Russian collusion lie for 4 years.
Stop pretending you are now shocked. https://t.co/AnRBg2sY5y

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) November 1, 2020

They MUST be held accountable for what they’ve done. Because what they’ve done—Enemedia, the Democrat-Socialist Party, the Deep State conspirators, and the whole degenerate-Left freak show—is to wantonly destroy a proud two and a half centuries-long tradition upholding the peaceful transition of power, essentially devolving the US into a third-world nation.

Merchants and other storefronts across the country are boarding up windows in anticipation of a highly polarized Election Day, according to reports.

Reports of businesses taking action have emerged in Boston, Washington DC, St. Louis, San Francisco and other large cities.

In the Los Angeles area, the city of Beverly Hills has already declared its Rodeo Drive shopping area will be on lockdown for two days starting on Election Day. Reports from various sources say merchants on Sunset Boulevard and La Brea Avenue are also preparing their businesses in anticipation of trouble.

Kruiser notes a puzzling coinkydink:

None of those cities are known for their thriving right-wing militia communities. All are, however, familiar with Black Lives Matter and antifa “peaceful” protests.

Virtually every city named (there were more) in this article is overwhelmingly Democrat and has been run by Democrats for years. Elected Democrats spent the summer falling all over themselves to show solidarity with protests that, despite the mainstream media fable-spinning, usually turned violent. The belated, half-hearted “condemnations” that were issued months into the rioting rang hollow. The miscreants had already been emboldened by their elders.

Fascist violence is always blamed on the Right but perpetrated by the Left, to modify an old phrase.

Update the Fourth! Not to imply that the presidential race isn’t of primary importance or anything, but the Senate outcome could end up mattering every bit as much.

Democrats expect that they can win the U.S. Senate, taking the majority from Republicans. The Senate currently has 53 Republican senators and 45 Democratic senators, with two independents who caucus with Democrats. Thirty-five seats are up for grabs.

And more of those contested seats were held by Repubs than Dems: 23 being defended by the ‘Pubbies, 12 by the Demoscum, with 14 of the total “considered competitive,” according to Bloomberg anyway.

So what, you say? Well, grok ye this, brothers and sisters, and grok it fully: if the Demonrats DO flip the Senate and hold onto the House as well, be assured that impeachment proceedings will begin in the House the moment the final syllable of Trump’s oath of office is uttered. Only this go-round, the Demonrat Senate will have the votes to convict and remove him from office.

Don’t any of you kid yourselves that they wouldn’t dare to make such a raw, outrageous move, however ramshackle a pretext they’d need to cobble together to get the dirty deed done. Just…don’t, awright? Because we all know by now that as soon as they think they can, they most certainly will, and right straight to Hell with trivial considerations like ethics; probity; the faith and trust of the American people in their institutions and leaders; the stability of said institutions; whether such a nakedly obvious power play complies in even the smallest conceivable way with Constitional requirements, and etc.

And while y’all are over there trying to convince yourselves that Democrat scumwads will be restrained by the teeniest, tiniest smidgeon of shame, conscience, or basic decency from actually following through on such heinous effrontery, they’ll be busy having Trump frogmarched out of the Oval Office in irons, and working out a scheme to oust Pence in similar fashion most ricky-tick. Meanwhile, Peelousy will be in her chambers rehearsing the oath of office herself, getting all set for the Coronation. Count on it.

Update the Fifth! As of now, it seems sadly apparent that Trump did NOT get the overwhelming victory required to head off an extended vote-finding, manufacturing, and “counting” process, tainted by shenanigans aplenty and shady maneuvering both overt and covert. No, Biden’s “we’re about to go into a dark winter” doomsday prophecy, although no longer easily dismissable as an off-putting joke, is still not an inevitability just yet. But there’s no denying it: difficult as it is to get one’s head around, this thing is way too close for comfort. And unless something changes radically over the next few hours, I don’t see much chance of avoiding a grim, grey autumn.

Curioser and curioser

Posted on November 3, 2020November 3, 2020 by Mike

The fix has never been more in.

Historians of the future, pan-frying sowbugs over their campfires, will recollect in wonder and nausea the election of 2020 and the attempted controlled demolition of the USA by the Woke Rebellion and its incongruous avatar, Joe Biden, the Holy Ghost of Grift and Gaslight. All the forces of empire were arrayed in his support, as behind some sacred effigy of an obscure saint in a church processional, and yet all the voting public saw was a pitiful figure ranting at an audience of cars, an old dog barking pointlessly in a parking lot in the gathering darkness.

And then there was Trump… one word, Trump… no honorifics, as the Woke Legions spoke of the hated POTUS… Trump, who violated all their norms, threatened their perqs, and disputed their laughable identitarian shibboleths of racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia… the Golden Golem of Greatness summoning the deplorably un-Woke in their ghastly red hats from the hills and hollows by the thousands to hear him speak of “rounding the corner” and watch him do that charming dance thing to the disco tunes of his boomer youth, and the sheer high spirits of it all worked to dispel the Woke curse cast upon him by the legions of angry suburban wiccans, till we arrived at the electoral reckoning of November 3 — and then the real contest began.

Now what…? everybody is asking him, her, and theyself. Why should anyone believe the polls, given the craven corruption of all other news media branches — and polling is one of them, of course. The Biden family’s overseas “business” capers still smolder in the background, though, like a root fire in the piney woods, waiting to burst back into flame. Turns out the Chinese company the Bidens were courting as “partners” (CEFC China Energy) could not have been more obviously agents of the Chinese Communist Party’s intel apparatus. Even Hunter knew that — as his deal to build a natgas terminal in Louisiana with CEFC unraveled late in 2017.

Yeah, yeah, ho hum, how shocking. Get back to me when any of these scummy Swamp creatures, in or out of the Biden Crime Family orbit, is actually facing hard time. But there is one small item of interest here, albeit a depressing one.

Oh, here’s a strange Swamp sidelight to all this: CEFC’s main exploit during the Biden hook-up years was the purchase of a 14 percent stake in Russia’s oil-and-gas giant, Rosneft, to help China circumvent US sanctions on Russia’s oil sales. Guess who was one of the lawyers working for Rosneft: Christopher Wray, just before he became FBI director. And guess who has been sitting on Hunter Biden’s laptop since at least December of 2019. Oh, the FBI. And guess what else: the Rosneft files have since been deleted by Mr. Wray’s old law firm, King and Spalding.

Now, the question is, will this hairball of grift explode into official proceedings following the election?

The question answers itself quite handily, I’d say. Trump should’ve cleaned the DoJ rat’s nest out long, long ago. It highlights the one major letdown, the one campaign promise he failed to come anywhere near fulfilling in his first term: he has most definitely NOT “hired the best people” for his admin. Not by a long yard, he hasn’t. It’s baffling, and has already cost him dearly. Should he be re-elected it will go right on costing him too, until he rolls up his sleeves and cleans some serious house.

Don’t try to peddle that shit in Texas, y’all

Posted on October 31, 2020October 31, 2020 by Mike

Not wanted, not needed, not welcome.

As noted in previous threads, there has been an organic movement by Team Trump to show up at Biden-Harris campaign events and outnumber the Biden supporters.

This effort has an origination in Miami-Dade by Latinos for Trump confronting Kamala Harris in early October, has grown throughout and is a direct way to push-back against the false polling claims and narratives by mainstream media.

Additionally, the Biden-Harris bus has been dogged by parades of MAGA Trump supporters forming caravans of flag waving vehicles and following the route. Yesterday, Biden-Harris cancelled stops in Texas because they were outnumbered by Trump supporters, and as they departed the lone star state Team Texas provided the escort.

Despite all the recent talk about “the purpling of Texas” because of an influx of refugees from Kommiefornia, it would seem that the liberal locusts haven’t gotten the job done entirely just yet. For now, anyway, Texas remains a Real American state. Let’s all celebrate with some sweet, sweet liberal tears, shall we?

CENTRAL TEXAS (KXAN) — Supporters of President Donald Trump allegedly harassed a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris bus as it traveled through Central Texas on Friday, according to Democratic activists.

Videos and photos posted on social media show a long line of vehicles flying Trump flags trailing the Biden-Harris bus as it traveled north from San Antonio on I-35. In some images, the bus appears to be boxed in by the vehicles.

In a Twitter thread, historian Eric Cervini, who said he traveled to Texas to help the Biden-Harris campaign, said the Trump supporters waited on I-35 to “ambush” the bus.

The Biden campaign told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Trump supporters put “staff, surrogates, supporters and others in harm’s way.”

“Harassed”? “Ambush”? “In harm’s way”? OOOOOOO, SCARY! Except…

As of Saturday morning, no injuries have been reported as a result of the incident.

Hmmm, I see. Get back to me when as many of yours have been beaten, stabbed, and shot dead as have ours, you sniveling pantywaists.

What he said

Posted on October 31, 2020October 31, 2020 by Mike

Can’t argue with this. I mean it literally can’t be done.

The way Trump—the way China will respond is when we gather the rest of the world that in fact [unintelligible] in… in… fr- in in in in open trade and making sure that we’re in a position that the world uh that, that we deal with WHO the right way that, in fact, that’s when things begin to change, that when China’s behavior is going to change.

Absolutely! Thanks for “clearing that up” for us there, Gropey.

“In This Election the Establishment Is Playing for Keeps”

Posted on October 30, 2020October 30, 2020 by Mike

If you unpack it, the URL for this piece directly asks: Will the presidential election bring chaos and an irredeemably torn American political fabric? But I’d put it a little differently: Because the American political fabric has already been irredeemably torn, the presidential election will almost certainly bring chaos.

The widespread use of mail-in voting in this presidential election makes it unlikely that a winner will be declared on election night unless it is Biden. The reason is that polls indicate that a majority of Democrat voters intend to vote by mail. As long as the ballots are postmarked by November 3 (election day), they are considered valid. As mail-in votes will be delivered after November 3, unless one candidate wins the in-person vote by a landslide, the outcome will not be known until days later.

If the outcome seems favorable to Trump, this gives Democrats and the media, which is uniformly against Trump, days to make propaganda that Trump is stealing the election (with Putin’s help). Rioting and looting will be encouraged in cities under Democrat control in order to create more chaos and charges against Trump. If enough confusion can be sown, an “investigation” can be demanded and/or Democrats can demand the outcome be put in the hands of the House of Representatives where the Democrats have a majority. It is entirely possible that Trump can win and be denied inauguration.

This, of course, would be more than an attack on Trump. It would be an attack on the Constitution.

There is circumstantial evidence that more than opportunism is involved and that this scenario is an orchestrated plot to prevent a second Trump term.

Gee, ya think? Please note how, even after the Mueller Report explicitly and definitively dispensed with the “Russia collusion” hoax, the Usual Suspects are still flogging away at that same expired equine. TPTB never even broke stride after that unexpected reversal, much less changed their course. Which is one of the things that makes this such a vital proposal:

If Trump Wins, There Must Be a Reckoning for the Destructive Left
It doesn’t take a fount of political wisdom to say that if Biden and the Democrats carry the Electoral College, America is lost, perhaps forever. The U.S. will become a Leninist country. Madness and ignorance will have triumphed.

If Trump and the Republicans survive on November 3, as I hope and suspect they will, certain policies will have to be enacted to ensure that the country never again approaches the brink of social, political and economic perdition as it has in recent times, most emphatically engineered by the administration of Barack Obama premised on the “radical transformation” of America. And these policies will need to be draconian. Leftist sentiment will always exist, but the institutional left will have to be extirpated root and branch.

In other words, the gloves will have to come off and the institutional power sources engaged in the destabilization of the country must be put to bed once and for all. A reckoning must come.

Oh, the gloves will have to come off all right. But the big problem for Trump, as for all Real Americans, is that he/we are facing not just one enemy here, nor even two or three of them. Since so many of those enemies are so deeply buried underneath layer upon layer of Establishment camouflage, it’s difficult to even calculate how many of them must be confronted and destroyed. The DC Swamp entire, comprised of the GOPe, the Democrat-Socialists, and the federal bureaucracy from top to bottom. The Fake News media establishment. The “education” megalith, from K-12 to university-level. The arts/entertainment/pro sports sector. Big Tech, along with most other American corporations, from Coca-Cola to Nike to Disney to Intel and beyond—all of them “woke,” all of them on the other side.

Just trying to list them all is a daunting task in itself, to say the very least. Nonetheless, despair is NOT an option for Real Americans. Likewise lethargy, dithering, or half-measures. Solway couldn’t be more right: no matter how monumental an undertaking it undeniably will be, a reckoning is essential, and long overdue too. One way or another, whether Trump wins or loses, the effort must begin no later than January 21st of the coming year.

Yes, the Establishment IS playing for keeps here. Could any among us have been so credulous, so foolish, as to think that they wouldn’t?

Update! Think I’m kidding here? They aren’t.

Many leftists have directed some deeply disturbing rhetoric at conservatives and Trump supporters in recent months, claiming President Trump’s bombast is responsible for the political polarization of today’s America. This is pure nonsense.

Sure, Trump talks about MS-13 as “animals,” Antifa as “thugs,” and Hillary Clinton as crooked enough to “be in jail.” His supporters know his presentation to be a bombastic and theatrical schtick, but he never threatens any group of voters.

By contrast, some ominous tones, even homicidal and terrorist tones, are coming from the mainstream left. Increasingly, through mainstream media and Big Tech, high-profile leftists are speaking openly about violence to be inflicted on Trump and all his supporters.

I’m not talking specifically about the Antifa and Black Lives Matter street violence we’ve seen in places like Denver and Portland, which includes outright murders of Trump supporters. I’m referring here to voices that normalize and promote open terror against any freedom-respecting person who has different views from those blessed by left-wing leaders, media, and Big Tech. Seven examples are included below.

Funny how so many of these seven examples involve flatly-stated threats of violence posted on Twitter…none of them censored, deleted, or otherwise screwed around with.

A man of (no) honor

Posted on October 29, 2020October 29, 2020 by Mike

Another self-styled “courageous hero” of the Left turns out to be a miserable, slimy little worm.

In 2018, the New York Times proudly published an anonymously written piece from a purported “senior official in the Trump administration,” knowing that this statement was a lie. “Anonymous” claimed that Trump was an idiot, but that a brave band of “senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda.” In fact, the author was Miles Taylor, a low-level functionary in DHS when he wrote the hit piece.

The anonymous article, published on Sept. 5, 2018, bore the lofty title, “I Am Part of the Resistance inside the Trump Administration: I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” As noted above, to give the piece heft, the New York Times claimed that it came from a “senior official in the Trump administration.” We now know this statement was an outright lie, for the Times admitted that the author’s “identity is known to us.”

The article was a nauseating glue of arrogant piety and self-serving condescension. On the one hand, “Anonymous” insisted that he and others like him “want the administration to succeed” and even agreed that “many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.” Nevertheless, his brave little band of saboteurs loathed Trump, and no matter how effective he was, they were going to thwart him. It was paragraph after paragraph of smug, self-righteous glop.

And a confession to having committed numerous acts of sabotage intended to hamper and undermine the Trump admin’s policies and initiatives that, were there any justice in America, would leave the cringing pantywaist wide open to indictment for sedition.

Taylor accompanied his confession with yet another pompous screed in which he explained why he’s so much better than everyone else. If I had to imagine purgatory, it would be sitting in a room listening to this guy trash other people and justify his higher morality and intelligence.

I hope you caught Taylor’s assertion that “Trump is a man without character.” Let’s talk about character. Taylor lied when CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked him if he was “Anonymous”…

Even worse than that, Taylor allowed a terrible smear to lie against Victoria Coates’s name. And while he’s acknowledged that he owes Coates an apology, none has been forthcoming.

Nor will it ever be, I’d bet. Oxygen thieves like Taylor don’t apologize for their misdeeds; the most anybody ever gets out of them is one of those too-familiar “I’m sorry if you were offended” pseudo-apologies which, true to form, satisfies no one but themselves. Contrition? Honest admission of guilt? Don’t make me laugh. Bottom line:

Miles Taylor is why the American people voted for Trump in 2016 and why, with all due disrespect for the polls and the pundits, it looks as if he’s going to win again in 2020. Americans have had it up to here and beyond with the self-righteous, dishonest, hypocritical, arrogant, self-serving professional governing class. These people are a plague on the American political body, and they need to go find an honest living in the private sector where they cause less harm.

Yeah, well, they aren’t gonna do that on their own initiative. Tragically, it becomes more apparent each and every day that Real Americans are going to have to take direct and forceful action to root them all out if the country is to survive relatively intact.

America in trouble

Posted on October 28, 2020October 28, 2020 by Mike

The Biden saga is about more than just Biden, and more than just corruption, even.

Even if Joe Biden were guilty of unethical or illegal conduct while in office; or were now in a position where he could be blackmailed as a president either because of his own misdeeds or Hunter’s…

…millions of Democrat voters would either not know because of DNC-driven media blackouts on the story; or if they did find out, would either not mind, and even kind of admire Biden for his chicanery, or else instantly dismiss the story as “right wing propaganda”—meaning that between the transformation of media outlets into propaganda organs for the Democratic Party, voter indifference/amorality, and voter gullibility, it would be as if those misdeeds had never happened.

In addition, the likely refusal of the FBI and Department of Justice to go after the Bidens—just as they have refused to go after the Clintons and a host of other clearly guilty malfeasants—would also help render the misdeeds effectively non-existent, even if they constituted the rankest bribery and a clear violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

And what this all amounts to is just one more indication, among many others too numerous to mention in this article, that the world’s greatest democracy is in far deeper trouble than even most conservatives recognize; that’s true even if Trump wins. If your press is so outrageously partisan and screwed up, that even your publicly-funded national broadcaster, NPR, can refuse with impunity to report on what must be one of the biggest political stories of the year, if not the decade, and almost all other outlets join in the obfuscation and distortion, then you don’t have anything better than Brezhnev-era Pravda. You don’t have “reporting”. You have propaganda—mythmaking—lying—in service to a partisan quest for power. And by the way…how long until Fox falls? It could be next week, next month, any time. And when it does fall…then what?

The point is: You can’t have a functioning democracy unless the citizens first care about facts, and then, have access to those facts. Even then, democracy is fragile. Even in the best circumstances, where everyone’s conscientious and the facts are known, people come to different conclusions, or get things wrong.

So…are the Bidens corrupt?

My First Answer: I’m going to go with yes, yes, and yes. I don’t think they’re All-Star Thespians. Hunter’s been running around for years selling lobbying access to his father, who has at times changed American foreign policy in response, and who has repeatedly enabled and covered for his son’s shenanigans, if he has not profited from those deals himself in the end. If that’s not corruption, nothing is.

My Deeper Answer: Yes, the bad news is they’re corrupt, but the worse news is, it doesn’t really matter anymore. Half the country either doesn’t know about the corruption, doesn’t mind, or wouldn’t mind even if they did know; a mendacious, unaccountable media is covering for the Bidens; and federal law enforcement can’t be trusted to hold the Bidens accountable anymore.

And that’s a story about the country more than about Joe Biden. He’s corrupt, but the country itself is breaking, and breaking ever more deeply. That’s the real story here, and I hope it has a happy ending.

It might, or it mightn’t. Problem is, such happy endings are always dearly bought, paid for in blood, treasure, and misery.

The Argument

Posted on October 28, 2020October 28, 2020 by Mike

Forget Huntergate. Forget the decades of unrestrained graft and corruption. Forget the sleaze, the lies, the patent incompetence. Forget the fundamental absurdity of a powerful career politican who’s spent almost five decades with his greedy snout rooting in the government trough now pledging to “fix” problems he never bothered himself about before, if we only make him president first. There’s only one argument anybody needs to make in support of the fact that Dementia Joe Biden is unfit to be president, and this is it.

Wow. Clearly, it’s not as bad as we thought it was; it’s much, much worse.

The binding chains of history

Posted on October 26, 2020October 26, 2020 by Mike

This one’s going to require a lot of excerpting, but I’m not going to tuck any of it under the fold. It needs to be up front and in easy viewing reach, in its entirety.

Seated at his kitchen table, finishing off the remains of a Saturday breakfast, Hunter Hollingsworth’s world was rocked by footsteps on his front porch and pounding at the door, punctuated by an aggressive order: “Open up or we’ll kick the door down.”

Surrounded on all sides of his house, and the driveway blocked, Hollingsworth was the target of approximately 10 federal and state wildlife officials packing pistols, shotguns and rifles. And what was Hollingsworth’s crime? Drugs, armed robbery, assault, money laundering? Not quite.

Months prior, in 2018, the Tennessee landowner removed a game camera secretly strapped to a tree on his private land by wildlife officials in order to monitor his activity without apparent sanction or probable cause. Repeat: Hollingsworth’s residence was searched by U.S. government and state officials, dressed to the nines in assault gear, seeking to regain possession of a trail camera—the precise camera they had surreptitiously placed on his private acreage after sneaking onto his property at night, loading the camera with active SD and SIM cards, and zip-tying the device roughly 10’ high up a tree—all without a warrant.

Can the government place cameras and monitoring equipment on a private citizen’s land at will, or conduct surveillance and stakeouts on private land, without probable cause or a search warrant? Indeed, according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. Welcome to Open Fields.

The vast majority of Americans assume law enforcement needs a warrant to carry out surveillance, but for roughly a century, SCOTUS has ruled that private land—is not private. Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures” expressed in the Bill of Rights only apply to an individual’s immediate dwelling area, according to SCOTUS.

However, SCOTUS’ Open Fields doctrine has been bucked in Mississippi, Montana, New York, Oregon and Vermont through protections granted by state constitutions, and for many American landowners, the more they discover about Open Fields—the more questions they have regarding the bounds of government power.

In Tennessee, Hollingsworth and Terry Rainwaters, another landowner who discovered multiple trail cameras on his property placed by the state, are taking their cases to state court, claiming violations of the Tennessee State Constitution. The Rainwaters and Hollingsworth stories contain alarming claims regarding the behavior of wildlife officials and raise a bevy of questions over Open Fields, states’ rights, and the sanctity of private property.

It shouldn’t be shocking, I know. All of us should be fully cognizant by now of the boundless reach of the State, at every level. Certainly this past summer has provided confirmation aplenty of even the wildest, most out-there conspiracy theories when it comes to the audacity and omnipotence of the almighty government. Nonetheless, somehow, I have to admit to being shocked by this one.

On bottomland squeezed in the rolling hills of northwest Tennessee’s Benton County, a short walk from the banks of the Big Sandy River, Terry Rainwaters, 53, owns 136 acres of land containing two homes, farmland and an equipment shed. Rainwaters and his son, Hunter Rainwaters, 20, live in one of the homes; a tenant occupies the other. The acreage is the physical center of Rainwaters’ life—a small place to farm, hunt and reside—with one way in, one way out, and a gate that stays locked, backed by “no trespassing” and “posted” signs.

On his way to hunt on his father’s land during the first week of December 2017, Hunter Rainwaters was driving a side-by-side through the property when he noticed an oddity positioned roughly 4’ off the ground. He popped the brakes, backed toward the object and looked in surprise at a trail camera belted to a tree.

“I didn’t see any words or stickers on it, but I knew right away it wasn’t ours,” Hunter Rainwaters recalls.

Following the hunt, he drove back onto the family property and spotted a second trail camera attached to a tree with several branches removed to allow for an unimpeded lens view. Rainwaters dialed his father’s cellphone, and described the two cameras: “I was shaken up when my son called and I knew immediately it had to be the TWRA (Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency),” Rainwaters recalls.

Deeply disturbed, Rainwaters arrived home later in the afternoon and took a look at the two cameras, mulling over whether to remove the pair. Two days later, with Rainwaters in limbo on what action to take—both cameras disappeared.

“Ask TWRA how many cameras they have on people’s private land right now watching their every move,” Rainwaters says. “I’ll bet they won’t answer that question and we all know why. No warrants, no judge, and no crime necessary, just set up surveillance and do whatever they want to.”

And guess what. Go on, just guess.

(Farm Journal asked TWRA multiple questions related to the use of trail cameras in surveilling Tennessee residents, including, but not limited to: Does TWRA have a list of past camera locations and current, active cameras? Who in TWRA is allowed to view the footage? How long are the cameras allowed to operate in place? Does TWRA recommend prosecution for a landowner for breaking or removing a camera? TWRA declined comment: “The Agency cannot comment on matters in litigation, nor can we provide comment on issues that are currently being litigated.” TWRA directed all questions to the Tennessee Attorney General’s office. However, the Tennessee AG office declined comment.)

Okay, I’m NOT shocked by that. Not in the least, I ain’t. But now we accelerate right on past merely shocked, to flat-out pissed the fuck off.

The vast majority of Americans assume law enforcement needs a warrant to carry out surveillance, but for roughly a century, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has ruled that private land—is not so private. Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures” expressed in the Bill of Rights only apply to an individual’s immediate dwelling and curtilage, according to SCOTUS. Curtilage is an arcane term loosely translated as the area directly around a home, or the yard.

In 1924, Hester v. United States set up the Open Fields framework and said the U.S. Constitution does not extend to most land: “the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ is not extended to the open fields.” Significantly, Open Fields is translated beyond its literal sense, and basically is defined as general acreage: woods, fields, farmland, barren ground, and more.

Further, in 1984, SCOTUS gave additional strength to Open Fields in Oliver v. United States: “open fields do not provide the setting for those intimate activities that the Amendment is intended to shelter from government interference or surveillance. There is no societal interest in protecting the privacy of those activities, such as the cultivation of crops, that occur in open fields.”

Disturbing, infuriating, and downright frightening as it is, you need to read all of it. Once you have, you need to do another thing. Distasteful and unpleasant as they are, you must accept and internalize a few realities:

You have ONLY whatever liberty Government deigns to allow—which liberty may be denied, wholly or in part, summarily and at Government’s whim, with neither notice nor explanation
You have NO rights
You have NO privacy
You have NO security
You own NOTHING, and “private property” is a misnomer; it is NOT private, and is under the control NOT of the putative “owner” but of the State
You are NOT in any meaningful sense a “citizen” of the US and your state of residence; you are the wholly-owned PROPERTY of those entities

One needn’t be in the least doubt as to what Thomas Jefferson would have had to say after discovering government surveillance cameras strapped onto trees around Monticello—placed there clandestinely, his permission unsought, by trespassing government spies skulking about in the night like contemptible house-burglars. But it is incumbent upon us—upon ALL of us—to ponder his inevitable response to such an affront thoroughly, and most gravely.

Jefferson and his fellow Founders would have been apoplectic, of course. But there’s no reason at all to think any of them would have been shocked. Those men had a deep and thorough understanding of exactly what government, ALL government, really is. Of how every government throughout history—no matter how well-intentioned, carefully conceived and constructed, and competently administrated—eventually devolves into corruption, despotism, and petty bureaucratic abuse. Having been schooled in the classroom of first-hand experience, they paid strictest attention to the lessons taught there.

Alas, their complacent and oblivious descendants have done no such thing. The lessons of history having been ignored, the explicit warnings of far-wiser ancestors spurned, the inattentive students wound up in precisely the straits foretold for them. Not really shocking at all, is it?

Nazis, in their own words

Posted on October 24, 2020October 24, 2020 by Mike

There’s more to the article I’m excerpting here, but I’m just gonna go with the Goebbels quotes used therein.

We are not a charitable institution but a Party of revolutionary socialists.

We are a workers’ party because we see in the coming battle between finance and labor the beginning and the end of the structure of the twentieth century. We are on the side of labor and against finance…The value of labor under socialism will be determined by its value to the state, to the whole community. Labor means creating value, not haggling over things.

The money pigs of capitalist democracy… Money has made slaves of us…Money is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood.

Odd, but contra Biden’s absurd and feeble attempt to smear Trump, all that sounds a lot more like Biden to me. In fact, the Democrat-Socialists could just insert Goebbels’ raving into the Party platform and nobody would even notice. And in case anybody is still buying the strategic Lefty switcheroo claiming Naziism is exclusively a Rightist joint and had nothing whatever to do with socialism:

Lenin is the greatest man, second only to Hitler, and that the difference between Communism and the Hitler faith is very slight.

Very slight? Except for the German nationalism, it’s undiscernable, a distinction without a difference. This next quote truly tells the tale.

We are socialists because we see the social question as a matter of necessity and justice for the very existence of a state for our people, not a question of cheap pity or insulting sentimentality. The worker has a claim to a living standard that corresponds to what he produces. We have no intention of begging for that right. Incorporating him in the state organism is not only a critical matter for him, but for the whole nation. The question is larger than the eight-hour day. It is a matter of forming a new state consciousness that includes every productive citizen. Since the political powers of the day are neither willing nor able to create such a situation, socialism must be fought for. It is a fighting slogan both inwardly and outwardly.

Gee, none of THAT stuff sounds at all familiar, now does it?

Of coyotes, and lying dogs

Posted on October 24, 2020October 24, 2020 by Mike

Biden caught with his mouth moving yet again. And we all know what that means.

On Thursday night when Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden angrily accused President Trump of a “criminal” family separation policy that had “lost track” of more than 500 migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border, he was repeating an inaccurate and misleading news report that had circulated earlier this week.

“What happened? Their kids were ripped from their arms and separated and now they cannot find over 500 sets of those parents and those kids are alone,” Biden said. “Nowhere to go, nowhere to go. It’s criminal.”

The former vice president was likely relying on a brief report from NPR about the latest development in a lawsuit between the ACLU and the Justice Department regarding the status of children who have still not been reunited with their parents after being brought across the border illegally.

The report claims that “the parents of 545 children still can’t be found,” but that’s not quite right. The NPR report omitted a statement issued by Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Chase Jennings explaining that in fact the vast majority of these parents have been found but have refused reunification with their children, which is why the children are still in DHS custody.

“In the current litigation, for example, out of the parents of 485 children whom Plaintiffs’ counsel has been able to contact, they’ve yet to identify a single family that wants their child reunited with them in their country of origin,” Jennings said.

Davidson delves further into some harsh border realities that the gormless ignoramii who assumed Trump believes that illegal-alien kids are being strapped to the backs of actual coyotes and riding them across the border are blissfully unaware of, which is all fine and well. But the bottom line is bluntly laid down in the article’s headline: “If You Don’t Know That ‘Coyotes’ Are Human Smugglers, Shut Up About The Border.” That could be said of so very many other topics these arrogant nitwits presume to lecture their intellectual betters about, though.

Bad cop, no donut

Posted on October 24, 2020October 24, 2020 by Mike

Remember last night when I said as a general thing, I don’t have any problem with cops?

There are exceptions to that general rule. This would certainly be one of them.

A video showing a police officer arguing with a group of Orthodox Jews in a New York town has drawn angry reactions from people online, who see it as evidence of persecution and harassment of the US Jewish community.

The confrontation apparently happened in Monsey, a place in Rockland County famous as a major center of Orthodox Judaism in the US. It shows a police officer standing on the doorstep of a house, engaged in a heated argument with a group of people, one of whom apparently owns the property.

The officer says his patrol was responding to a complaint about cars parked in front of the house and noticed that a gathering of more than 10 people was underway inside, which he called “an issue.”

Perhaps so. It wouldn’t be in America, but this obviously is not that place. Not even close, it ain’t.

The owner, who is dressed as an Orthodox Jew, disagrees that “a few friends” calmly coming together is an issue requiring police intervention. Both parties speak angrily, suggesting that the dispute has been going on for some time without progress. It was not immediately clear how the situation was resolved.

The argument apparently stems from Covid-19 social distancing rules that are in place in the county. A gathering of over 10 people would not be allowed in a public space – even a park – in the town of Ramapo, to which Monsey belongs.

Orthodox Jews in the US, as well as in other parts of the world, have been notably resistant to lockdowns designed to slow the spread of infection. They say the rules are incompatible with their religious practices.

Oh, it’s a lot bigger than that; the Fauxvid clampdown edicts are incompatible with the most fundamental values and ideals of the former US—every last one of them. Actually, they’re not just incompatible with those values; they are a direct violation of them. Which of right ought to be considered wholly unacceptable—the stuff of uprisings and overthrows, of pitchforks, torches, and state and local would-be despots swinging by their necks from trees and lampposts in every place these unlawful edicts, enforced by Gestapo/Stasi tactics, are imposed.

Sadly, if there’s one thing we all should have learned by now, it’s that if you don’t immediately rise up and shut such goddamned outrages down, you’ll be getting more of them until such time as you do. You either nip the insidious weed of tyranny in the bud with a quickness, or you watch it grow until the garden of liberty has been taken over and strangled to death by it. Sorry and all, but there simply is no middle ground here.

Now why don’t all you fascist-fellating panic ninnies out there just go ahead and tell me the fairy tale claiming this arrant horseshit is aaallll about a virus (because BE SAAAFE!!!) again. That one’s my favorite.

Mask on, mask (never) off

Posted on October 22, 2020October 22, 2020 by Mike

You weren’t really fool enough to think they were ever going to take the jack-boot off of our necks, were you?

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said on Wednesday that the state will extend Phase 3 of the coronavirus reopening plan for three more weeks.

The state moved into Phase 3 on Oct. 2. Phase 3 allowed bars, amusement parks and movie theaters to reopen, but with limits on capacity and rules about social distancing and face coverings.

And in three weeks, there’ll be another extension. Count on it, people. But hey, at least I was wrong when I predicted that Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas would be suffering the same ignoble fate as Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and etc, wasn’t I?

Ummm. Kinda.

Halloween is not canceled, but the NC Department of Health and Human Services has recommended that people take precautions such as not sending kids out door-to-door to solicit candy.

The state also notes that having kids reach into a bowl for candy is a high-risk activity that should be discouraged. Large indoor Halloween or costume parties are also a bad idea.

Okay, I guess “recommended” is at least somewhat better than “forbidden.” In Amerika v2.0, we gotta take whatever scraps and crumbs our benevolent masters deign to throw us, it seems.

Free advice, from me to you: if you own a small business in a Democommie shitrapy like NC, particularly in the bar/restaurant/entertainment industry, and it hasn’t collapsed around your and your employees’ ears already: permanently shut that thing the fuck down IMMEDIATELY. I do not mean next month. I do not mean next week. I do not mean tomorrow. I mean friggin’ yesterday. Close the doors, bar the windows, and never look back.

If you can somehow conjure up a gullible, wet-behind-the-ears nimrod to buy the business off you, then sell it for whatever the mark is willing to give you. Don’t negotiate, don’t haggle, just take the sucker’s cash and run. Better to bite that bullet and take your financial lumps now, before things get even worse, which they almost certainly will. Then quickly move away to one of the handful of relatively free states that still remain, while that’s something you’re still permitted to do without being penalized for it. Take some small comfort in having denied Kount Koopula the opportunity to bleed you for any more of your hard-earned in taxes, fees, licenses, and the like, and be glad you escaped without further damage.

A brand new day, a brand new way

Posted on October 22, 2020October 22, 2020 by Mike

Y’know, you wonder sometimes why Trump continues to give any of these asswipes the time of day. And then he shows you.

Trump Releases Raw Video of ’60 Minutes’ Interview and It’s Everything You Thought It Would Be

Oh, it’s that, and much, much more.

Trump’s reasoning for the move has been that the media doesn’t represent him honestly, and he wanted to make sure the people could see the full footage and make their own judgments.

Watching back the video, it is obvious they made the right choice. Stahl came in loaded for bear and set up the interview by asking the President if he was “ready for some tough questions.” Trump responded with a shrug.

Trump:Just be fair
LS: But last time I remember you saying ‘bring it on. Bring it on’
Trump: No I’m not looking for that. I’m looking for fairness. That’s all.
LS:You’re going to get fairness. But you’re ok with tough questions?
Trump: You don’t ask Biden tough questions.

It didn’t get much better from there.

The hell you say; I think it gets LOTS better from there. A couple-three more good ‘uns over at RS, all of which you should read. Ace also has plenty of delicious examples of our no quarter, no holds barred POTUS giving shitlib propagandaist Stahl the full brass-knuckles-to-the-mouth treatment, including:

STAHL: Can you characterize your supporters?

TRUMP: Yeah, I think I can: people who love our country.

And:

This exchange between Trump and Lesley Stahl is insane. She repeatedly insists the Biden laptops can’t be verified, so reporters shouldn’t talk about it.

Trump asks her why it can’t be verified.

Her answer: Because it can’t be verified.

Oh, izzat so, bitch?

My name is Tony Bobulinski.

The facts set forth below are true and accurate; they are not any form of domestic or foreign disinformation. Any suggestion to the contrary is false and offensive.

I am the recipient of the email published seven days ago by the New York Post which showed a copy to Hunter Biden and Rob Walker. That email is genuine.

This afternoon I received a request from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs and the Senate Committee on Finance requesting all documents relating to my business affairs with the Biden family as well as various foreign entities and individuals. I have extensive relevant records and communications and I intend to produce those items to both Committees in the immediate future.

That’s verification aplenty, without even tossing the FBI, the DoJ, and the DNI into the “verified” pot as well. Clearly, when the liar Stahl says “it can’t be verified,” what she really means is it WON’T be verified—not by her, not by CBS News, by any and every other Praetorian Media outlet. And that’s because the “news business” Gorgon isn’t actually in the business of reporting the news at all, and hasn’t been for a very long time.

The historic popularity and profitability of Tucker’s show raises a simple, yet important question: why have none of the major networks, including Fox, attempted to copy his success?

Wouldn’t the fabled “marketplace of ideas” dictate a certain convergence toward the topics and styles that draw the biggest audiences?

Perhaps the ad boycotts aimed at Tucker have scared off would-be copycats. But this simply raises the question of why companies would leave money on the table by refusing to advertise on television’s most popular cable news show. Something is off here, and it suggests that the media industry does not work according to a simple profit motive.

What if the true goal of a media conglomerate is not to produce a reliable and entertaining news service tailored to its audience, but rather to influence that audience on behalf of third parties? What if the purpose of a media company is not to be profitable for its own sake, but influential for the sake of others?

Business models aren’t always what they present themselves to be. Movie theaters make money not from ticket sales, but from concession stands. Airlines likewise need to sell tickets, but they make more profit from frequent flier rewards programs. Supermarkets are increasingly big data collectors for insurance companies.

This does not mean that profit is irrelevant to a media company. In Tucker’s case, his stratospheric ratings are a great tool of leverage, and without profit, a company must continually court new investors. But the point remains that for a serious media enterprise, profit is always secondary to influence.

Just as a social media company’s true product is its user data, the true product of a major media company is the flow of narratives that shape the perception of reality. Wielding influence over the public mind will always be more valuable than any profit that could be generated by optimizing the news to suit public tastes.

Major media companies are not about profits, but influence — there is no “marketplace of ideas” that functions in the way people might imagine. And this applies to any industry that has a profound effect on the narratives and beliefs that shape the public’s perception of reality, including movies and video games.

In our increasingly corrupt society, every institution is a scam, and there is often a vast disconnect between the generally understood purpose of an institution and its actual purpose.

Indeed. If that sorta reminds of you of the NeverTrumpTard GOPe too, well, it damned well ought to. But as I’ve said so many times already: the greatest service Trump has done, will do, or could EVER do for this country has been to rip the mask off these underhanded s’faccim and expose them for what they really are, in a way that none but the willfully obtuse, the witless, or the nefarious can deny any longer.

Spite is also great, and would suffice

Posted on October 20, 2020October 20, 2020 by Mike

This, times eleventy billion kajillion.

A young woman explained everything about this election in less than one minute.
If you can’t stand Trump here is our reply:

If you are liberal and can’t stand Trump and can’t possibly fathom why anyone would vote for him, let me fill you in. We can’t stand you. You’ve done everything in your power by trying to destroy this country by tearing down our police, our borders, our history, systematically destroying our schools and brainwashing our kids into thinking socialism is the answer to everything. Demonizing religion and faith and glorifying abortion, violence and thug culture. And calling us racists…

We are voting for Trump because of you!

Joe says that really “says it all,” and it does in a way, anyway. Then again, it kinda doesn’t; I could add plenty of valid reasons for supporting Trump that have little at all to do with the Vile Left without breaking a sweat. Still, there’s no gainsaying that a tremendous aspect of Trump’s appeal is that he amounts to a huge FUCK YOU not just to the Left ancien regime, but to the Swamp entire. He represents Real Americans in a simple, direct fashion that traditional political animals have no regard for or interest in: more than just a spokeperson for ordinary Americans, he is the raised middle finger they’ve longed to wave right in their smarmy faces for so long now. Forget the mouse in the old posters and t-shirts you geezers may remember from back in the 70s; for Real Americans, TRUMP is “the last great act of defiance,” in the flesh.

ZMan has another rationale that works just fine for me too.

I’m voting for Trump for the same reason I voted for him the last time, spite. No candidate in my life time has made the ruling class so crazy with anger. Not even Nixon elicited this type of hatred. Maybe him winning leads to mass suicides. Fingers crossed.

T’is a consummation devoutly to be wished. But knowing how happy it would make us will probably be enough to dissuade the Left from any such beneficence, alas. No matter, though. If all we get out of it is more shrieking hissy-fits from barren bambinas like the anti-babes featured in the post below, what the heck, I’ll take it.

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