Lots more NOTHING

This is what trying to make a case when you don’t have one looks like.

Retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz gave what may be the most persuasive case against impeaching President Donald Trump while in the well of the U.S. Senate on Monday evening.

Speaking as a representative of Trump’s defense team, the lifelong liberal Democrat urged senators to not “let the feelings about one man, strong as they may be, cause irreparable damage” to the fate of other presidents. “Passion and fears of the moment must not blind us,” he pleaded.

Before Dershowitz took the lectern before the Senate, there was considerable debate about an obviously strategically-timed leak of information from former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s unpublished book.

Dershowitz had an answer to the New York Times’s leak in which Bolton believed the worst about President Trump’s delay of aid to Ukraine, saying it was “inconceivable” to the founders that a quid pro quo was an impeachable offense.

As I’ve been saying right along: EVEN IF TRUMP ACTUALLY DID EVERY SINGLE LAST THING THEY COMPLAIN ABOUT, THERE’S STILL NOTHING REMOTELY CRIMINAL ABOUT ANY OF IT. The one and only thing this man is actually guilty of is trying to do what he was elected to do. “Quid pro quo” conditions on foreign aid, is it? One of the reasons his supporters voted for him is because he said he hoped to eliminate whacking great gobs of foreign aid ENTIRELY.

So riddle me this: if investigating the obvious corruption of a manifestly corrupt politician like Senile Uncle Gropey and his odiferous offspring is to be off the table just because he’s running for office yet again, to whom does that new standard apply? Is it just Gropey & Son? All Democrat-Socialist grifters and goniffs? Can we expect the same hands-off consideration for Republican office-seekers too? Is this sweet little break for all politicians, or just state level and up? Is it for presidential aspirants only?

It’s a basket of bollocks, is what it is. To wit:

When Brett Kavanaugh was nominated for a seat on the US Supreme Court, not only did the GOP have a clear majority in the Senate and, thanks to Harry “no, really, it was an exercise band not a gay escort that knocked my eye loose” Reid there was no filibuster to contend with, but Kavanaugh seemed an smart, doctrinaire, and squeaky clean conservative. Everyone expected the left to attack his opinions, but there were no skeletons here.

Then came the accusations by fabulist Christine Blasey Ford about an incident that took place in high school (she couldn’t provide an exact time or location) when she was sexually assaulted by a young Kavanaugh. Close on the heels of that allegation, a woman named Deborah Ramirez claimed Kavanaugh, while a college student, had waggled his penis in her face. Then we were treated to a soon-to-be convicted felon named Michael Avenatti producing a woman named Julie Swetnick who claimed that Kavanaugh ran a gang rape ring. A woman later identified as Judy Munro-Leighton claimed Kavanaugh raped her in a car.

All of these allegations were false. They were all easily batted down. But they served a common purpose. What should have been a pro-forma hearing of two or three days, followed by a confirmation vote turned into a month-long ordeal that involved a “supplemental” FBI investigation. And the volume of similarly themed allegations left some people wondering if there was a pony underneath that pile of horse dung, was Brett Kavanaugh a serial sexual predator in the Bill Clinton mode?

If one looks at the Trump impeachment trial, one sees the outlines of a similar pattern.

Oh, one most certainly does. And there’s a reason for that: as with Kavanaugh, as with many others going all the way back to Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork, now taken to truly stupefying extremes with Trump, these are assuredly NOT matters of “principle,” of “conscience,” of concern for “our democracy” or the Constitution. These are no more than tactics, stratagems, subterfuges—sleazy partisan black-ops mounted by conniving, twisted, soulless DC shitweasels sick on their insatiable greed for power and all that comes with it.

Slow-motion suicide update! When you got nothin’, you got…nothin’ to lose.

So what happens in the never-ending impeachment story, once the current impeachment indictment leads to an inevitable Senate vote of exoneration?

Another Stormy somewhere? A follow-up to Operation Crossfire Hurricane? Tax returns redux? Whistleblower 2.0? Another New York Times anonymous op-ed resister? Bob Woodward’s sequel? More leaked phone calls? Another impeachment hearing, and another impeachment vote? Schiff’s new version of a presidential call? One more Ivy League psychiatrist distance-diagnosing Trump as nuts? An emoluments clause do-over? More FISA warrants? A newly discovered Trump phone call to Poland, Romania, or Mexico? Lt. Colonel Vindman’s twin?

I mention these post-impeachment psychodramas because they are symptomatic of a sick Democratic patient. Yet the endless effort to destroy Trump before the election in the progressive mind has a certain logic given the current Democratic dilemma.

The Democratic Party is currently struggling with the weakest field of candidates since 1972 or 1984, well apart from the irony that a party that hectors the nation on proportional representation and disparate impact is fine with an all-white debating stage.

The Democratic platform will likely include the “Green New Deal,” a wealth tax, Medicare for All, tuition debt cancellation, higher income taxes, veritable open borders, an end to deportation and perhaps ICE as well, reparations, and a leftwing version of Obama’s failed foreign policy.

In other words, the Democratic agenda is weaker even than the unlucky candidate who will be expected to run on it.

Gee, guys, didja ever consider maybe rethinking some of those century-plus-old collectivist shibboleths of yours and trying out some new ones that might actually, y’know, work for a change?

Case: CLOSED update! No matter how empty, how weak, how just plain bad you may think the Democrat-Socialist “case” is…it’s worse.

The House managers’ argument is simple. It alleges that President Trump withheld military assistance from Ukraine in order to force that country’s new president to investigate — among other things — why and how former Vice President Biden’s son became a director of a corrupt Ukrainian energy company. A subsidiary argument is that Trump also refused to provide, for the same reason, a White House meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky.  In withholding the assistance and the meeting, the House managers argue, Trump used the power of the U.S. government for his own political purposes — a corrupt act that they claim warrants his impeachment.

The president’s lawyers, however, in their short two-hour summary of what they will say this week in more detail, fatally undermined this case. They began with the famous July 25 transcript that recorded a conversation that day between the two leaders. In the transcript, as the lawyers pointed out, neither Trump nor Zelensky made any reference to the military equipment for Ukraine that Trump was allegedly using to pressure his counterpart. (Zelensky did mention that Ukraine was “almost ready” to buy more Javelin anti-tank weapons, but they were not part of the withheld assistance.)

Even more important, there is nothing in the transcript that suggests Zelensky was aware — at least on July 25 — that anything was being withheld from Ukraine. Obviously, Trump could not be pressuring Zelensky by holding back military assistance if the latter was not aware of it. This is a fatal flaw in the House managers’ argument.

The president’s lawyers then produced strong circumstantial evidence that officials in Ukraine were not aware, until Aug. 28, that anything was being withheld. Through the rest of July and almost all of August, U.S. officials who would regularly hear from their Ukrainian counterparts heard nothing about the military assistance. But on Aug. 28, Politico published an article saying that Trump was withholding aid. This immediately set off a storm of calls from officials in Ukraine to their U.S. counterparts, showing that Ukrainian officials had been unaware that anything was being delayed. Again, if those officials had been in the dark, Trump could not have been using withheld aid to force Ukraine into investigating the Bidens.

What’s left for Senate Democrats is an attempt to get 51 votes for additional witnesses. But it’s a fool’s errand. Now circulating in the media is a story about a book by John Bolton in which he allegedly says the president directed him to hold up delivery of the assistance until Biden was investigated. The president no doubt says many things to many people that he trusts. But all these statements of intention are irrelevant if he never told the Ukrainians that the assistance was being withheld. Without such knowledge, President Zelensky was not being pressured.

There’s simply no “there” there. Bottom line: the Shampeachment farce is not about a single damned thing the lying Democrat-Socialists claim it is, and they know it full well. In reality, it’s about two elections: the one they lost in 2016, and the one they fear they can’t win in 2020. Period, full stop, end of story.

The looking glass, darkly

Steyn says Trump is the consequence of YOU.

For three years the question absorbing Swamp-dwellers has been: How did Trump get elected? According to Adam Schiff, the answer is the Russians. According to Hillary, the answer is sexism and/or Macedonian content farmers. According to the media, Trump “tapped into” a large segment of the American electorate’s ingrained sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia and other assorted bigotries. If these fine fellows were genuinely interested to know how Trump got elected, the quickest way to the answer would be for them to look in the mirror: Trump is the consequence of you. No Russians or Macedonians are required: it’s because of you – the permanent governing class. If the only alternative to Hillary is Jeb, it’s hardly a surprise that there’s a stampede to the “Neither of the Above” box. And, if the only fellow waiting over there is Donald J Trump, so be it: that’s on you.

As I put it just shy of two decades ago:

If the political culture forbids respectable politicians from raising certain topics, then the electorate will turn to unrespectable politicians.

And, when they do, it’s a conscious choice: they know what they’re doing. So, when the respectable class whines that “a real conservative walks with us” and therefore Trump can’t be a conservative because he doesn’t, they fail to grasp that that’s all the more reason to back him.

I understand that National Review has suffered somewhat since its “Against Trump” issue. That’s because, to reprise another old line of mine from four years ago, it’s always easier for the base to get itself a new elite than for the elite to get itself a new base. Given that the horrors they predicted failed to come to pass, and that the crisis of the republic these last three years has been the refusal of the permanent state to accept the result of the election, you might think, having hoist themselves on their own petard, National Review might wish to de-hoist and admit they were wrong. But, apparently, changing your mind is the ultimate no-no. 

From that first (National Review) headline “Witless Ape Rides Escalator”, much of the conservative establishment revealed its fundamental unseriousness. Most dismal of all, they failed to realize that it was they who were on the downward escalator – and still are.

Yeah, well, just wait till they see how very far down that thing actually goes. And suddenly I’m reminded of a classic AC/DC lyric from the Bon Scott days:

Come on honey gotta change your tune
Cause it’s a long way down

A DAMNED long way, bub. Ain’t no coming back from there, either. But maybe their mulish insistence on Resistance™ is an indication that they know that already. The ticket was bought, paid for, and punched a long time ago; might as well ride it on out to the bitter end.



FUD with words

Tangentially related to that last post, another example of how the Left rewrites history to suit its own nefarious purposes.

Serious problems exist with some of the narrative spun about (Martin Luther) King, in particular, and the civil rights struggle, in general. Part of the problem, of course, is that King died young, enabling others, as with the two Kennedy brothers, to fill in the rest of the story and use it to further certain political agendas. King died short of his fortieth birthday; had he lived longer, presumably he would have evolved and, possibly, become a very different man than he was when he died–we will never know. What we do know is that the Democratic Party and their “progressive” media and education machines have rewritten the history of the civil rights struggle. This was driven home to me some years ago while visiting a college campus. The students assumed King was a Democrat, and the segregationists confronting the peaceful marchers, and using fire hoses, snarling police dogs, and truncheons, and wearing white hoods were Republicans. They assume a Republican killed King–today’s college kids probably believe the Tea Party had him killed. That the exact opposite is true, shocks many. King came from a staunchly Republican family–his father, a prominent leader in his own right–openly endorsed Richard Nixon against JFK in the 1960 presidential election. The Democrats had a one-party lock on the South. The party of slave owners and secessionists, had become the party of Jim Crow, school segregation, anti-miscegenation laws, poll taxes, and on and on.

Many Americans, not to mention foreigners, do not realize not only that the Republican party was formed in opposition to slavery and that Lincoln was a Republican, but that the famous Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose rulings dismantled the legal basis for segregation and put serious limitations on the power of police, was a former Republican Governor of California. It was, furthermore, war hero and Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who sent troops to Arkansas to enforce court-ordered desegregation at Little Rock Central High School. Congressional Republicans were the main supporters of civil rights legislation; their votes ensured passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, over the opposition of a significant bloc of Democrats–let us also not forget that Congressional Democrats for years blocked Republican efforts to pass federal anti-lynching legislation. All this, of course, is history, but an important chunk of American history that is being lost, distorted, or otherwise flushed down the memory sewer–along with the fact that anti-leftist J. Edgar Hoover proved the most formidable foe of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), an organization founded and staffed by Democrats, such as long-time Democratic Senator Robert Byrd.

Before I get back to King, let me address another issue that has been badly distorted and become something of a meme among the quasi-literate left. I refer to the idea that the parties have “switched places.” This is something I have heard from some lefties who, knowing the true history of the Democratic and Republican Parties when it comes to race and civil rights, try to argue that that was then, and this is now. Since FDR or so, they argue the Democratic and the Republican Parties “switched” places on the race issue, with Republicans taking the role of protecting white privilege and keeping minorities, especially blacks, down. The truth is quite different. What happened was that the old party of slavers, segregationists, lynch mobs, and secessionists figured out that government programs and intervention were the means to deprive Republicans of a significant voter bloc. The aim was to keep black Americans dependent on the largesse of government and Democrat-run urban political machines. Anyone who doubts that should read the crude comment in which President Johnson revealed the real purpose underlying his massive social program expansion, i.e., to keep black Americans voting Democratic. The Democrats have succeeded admirably at this objective.

The truth is ALWAYS “quite different” when the Democrat-Socialists are the ones telling it. This is NOT a coinkydink, I assure you. Folding, spindling, and mutilating the very language we speak is an age-old tactic of theirs, beginning with their hijacking of the term “liberal” its very self to mean the exact opposite of the original definition. Bejamin Dierker calls it “linguistic activism,” but I prefer the more direct and concise “lying” as a descriptor, myself.

This isn’t innocent linguistic drift or slang; it is a conscious effort to reshape society. The schemes include redefining words for personal gain, using modifiers to alter the meaning of a word, replacing technical words with colloquial ones, and creating new words. Each of these is a bullying tactic, which distort effective discourse.

It starts with misusing words or defining them based on circumstance rather than objective meaning. The entire purpose of defined language is to hold constant meaning so others can understand. Situational use starts to condition how people feel about words, building up a new connotation.

The classic example is the word “liberal,” which the far-left co-opted. It was adopted because of its positive connotation, and used as a cover for imposing greater leftist control under the guise of liberty. In reality, there is nothing liberal about failing to protect life, burdening individuals with regulations and taxes, or forcing individuals to provide services to others. This is no accidental misnomer, but strategic messaging to influence people. Who doesn’t want to support a policy that is “progressive,” “pro-choice,” or “affordable”?

When they use a word it means just what they choose it to mean, neither more nor less—but the meaning is always subject to change without notice. The question is, which is to be master—that’s all.

Steyn unloads on Shampeachment

Why don’tcha just come out and tell us what you really think, Mark?

The left, being not terribly imaginative, always accuse you of what they’re doing themselves. So, in this case, President Trump is charged with interfering with the 2020 election by men who have been interfering with the 2016 and 2020 elections for over three-and-a-half years now. Which is why we have the preposterous spectacle of four Democrat presidential candidates preparing to vote to remove from office the guy they’re running against.

This is a joke. I gave up on it when, on the eve of the trial, the laughably named “Government Accountability Office” released its supposedly entirely separate conclusion that Trump had acted “illegally”. Aside from the fact that that “finding” is flat out wrong, I wonder whether the permanent bureaucracy ever thinks, “Gee, maybe we should be a little more subtle about putting our Deep State thumbs on the scale.”

But no. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? To whom is the “Accountability Office” accountable? Apparently nobody – just as with James Comey’s FBI and Rod Rosenstein’s DoJ and Lois Lerner’s IRS and all the rest. If bureaucrats want to get political, they should do what politicians do and run for office. But why bother if, simply by being a “career public servant”, you have a license to obstruct mere elected transients and their “policies”? The permanent state is one reason we have so many permanent problems.

Man, when Steyn is on, he is flat-out ON, ain’t he? Meanwhile, rising star Elise Stefanik has got herself a notion:

Representative Elise Stefanik is a member of President Trump’s defense team. In this interview the issue of the deficient articles is raised surrounding witnesses.

House witnesses who gave testimony when the articles were framed could be considered appropriate, if needed, when debating those articles in the Senate. However, witnesses not called by the House; and therefore not used in the assembly of the articles being debated in the Senate; are not valid for consideration.

It is not the responsibility of the Senate, nor is it constitutionally valid, for the Senate to attempt to rehabilitate improperly constructed articles simply because the House refused to assemble with due diligence. Any evidence, including witnesses, that falls outside the originating assembly of the two House articles should be considered null and void.

Limbaugh has a notion himself:

I really think the Republicans ought to bring Schiff in here and put him front and center and I think they ought to call him. I think they ought to make everything the Democrats are doing related to Adam Schiff. This guy needs to upheld front and center as the energy, the face behind this entire thing, because he’ll fold. Folks, he hasn’t said much that is the truth since this began.

I really think it’s critical to expose Adam Schiff in this, I think. If we’re gonna start calling witnesses (we’ll talk about that), get Schiff up there first. Everything revolves around Schiff. You are looking at human slime. I don’t like saying that. You’re just looking at a bad guy, folks. You’re looking at a really bad, poisoned guy. The guy is so partisan that he has just abandoned all pretense of decency — and he cannot tell the truth about any of this.

He’s just openly lying about things, and it’s the poison of this hatred that he’s got for Trump. Adam Schiff is typical of this radical left mentality that has taken over the Democrat Party. It is unreasonable, it is indecent, it has no boundaries of propriety. So I think the guy needs to be exposed. I think he needs to be brought front and center. He’s the guy with ties to the whistleblower, Ciaramella — who we now know has been working on this for two weeks after Trump was inaugurated.

Maybe forcing Schiff to testify under oath could explain the origins of this entire fiasco.

I’m all for it. Put the oleaginous, wormy little fuck under oath and grill his ass until those bug-eyes plop out of the sockets into his lap, and his toddler-size collar begins to constrict that pencil-neck so tightly he strangles. Sweat him old school, like a cheap dimestore hood in an LAPD hotseat circa 1947 or so. Make him squirm, wriggle, and writhe so painfully even I begin to feel pity for him. Senate Republicans could begin taking the air out of this overinflated, treacherous little blowhard by interrogating him on this:

Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) may have been an anonymous source for the Washington Post as it reported allegations that have led to the impeachment of President Donald Trump.

Schiff may have outed himself during his opening arguments in the Senate trial of the president on Wednesday, as he cited an opinion article written by the Post editorial board — an odd reference in a presentation of factual evidence.

Notably, the Sep. 5 editorial closely tracked the accusations that were contained in the so-called “whistleblower” complaint, whose claims were not yet known to the public at the time.

The Post editorial helped create an atmosphere of suspicion and anticipation that led to the complaint’s release and the impeachment itself. And on Wednesday, the Post editorial conveniently provided a “fact” — a “reliably told” story — that Schiff could cite in his case for Trump’s removal.

But Schiff did not explain why he would treat an opinion article as “fact.” Editorials are not typically reliable sources of original reporting.

The most logical explanation is that Schiff considered the article “factual” because he himself was the source.

Having been caught in an ever-widening death-spiral of lie after lie after lie this early in the festivities, Schiff-for-brains and his Klown Kar Koup co-conspirators haven’t thought this through very well, it would seem. The stiffest possible price must be exacted from them, pour encourager les autres, lest the filthy swine take another run at their perfidy someday.

What did the Ogabe junta know, and when did they know it?

Dirty as they come.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham reported Wednesday evening that she obtained a chain of State Department emails stemming from a standard request for comment from New York Times journalist Ken Vogel, whose reporting helped generate scrutiny of Hunter Biden’s ties to Ukrainian gas company Burisma.

On May 1, 2019, Vogel contacted State Department official Kate Schilling about a story he was working on regarding an Obama administration meeting in January 2016 with Ukrainian prosecutors and mentioned the name of the CIA analyst believed to be the whistleblower whose complaint sparked impeachment proceedings that led to two articles of impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Ingraham did not state the name of the alleged whistleblower — Fox News hosts are banned from doing so until the identity is confirmed — and blacked out the name when showing excerpts of documents. However, she likely was referring to Eric Ciaramella, who some Republicans and conservative media figures believe is the whistleblower.

In the email, Vogel wrote, “We are going to report that [State Department official] Elizabeth Zentos attended a meeting at the White House on 1/19/2016 with Ukrainian prosecutors and embassy officials as well as … [redacted] from the NSC … the subjects discussed included efforts within the United State government to support prosecutions, in Ukraine and the United Kingdom, of Burisma Holdings, … and concerns that Hunter Biden’s position with the company could complicate such efforts.”

Trump, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and other allies claim Joe Biden improperly used his role as vice president to pressure Ukraine to fire Shokin, who was widely seen as corrupt, in 2016 to protect his son from an investigation into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company at which Hunter Biden held a $50,000-per-month position on the board. But the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and other allies had the same objective, and Joe Biden was repeating U.S. policy that had been set out by Washington’s ambassador to Kyiv in the preceding months and was briefed by White House staff just ahead of the trip.

Joe Biden has dubbed the allegations as “false, debunked conspiracy theories” about him…

Why, of course they are, Gropey. Bizarrely, Honest Joe issued a more vehement and formal denial to his libmedia pals, urging them to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain:

Former vice president Joe Biden’s extraordinary campaign memo this week imploring U.S. news media to reject the allegations surrounding his son Hunter’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company makes several bold declarations.

The memo by Biden campaign aides Kate Bedingfield and Tony Blinken specifically warned reporters covering the impeachment trial they would be acting as “enablers of misinformation” if they repeated allegations that the former vice president forced the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor, who was investigating Burisma Holdings, where Hunter Biden worked as a highly compensated board member.

Biden’s memo argues there is no evidence that the former vice president’s or Hunter Biden’s conduct raised any concern, and that Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin’s investigation was “dormant” when the vice president forced the prosecutor to be fired in Ukraine.

The memo calls the allegation a “conspiracy theory”  (and, in full disclosure, blames my reporting for the allegations surfacing last year.)

Uh huh. Which would no doubt be why you so obnoxiously bragged about it later, I guess.

It is irrefutable, and not a conspiracy theory, that Joe Biden bragged in this 2018 speech to a foreign policy group that he threatened in March 2016 to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Kiev if then-Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko didn’t immediately fire Shokin.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden told the 2018 audience in recounting what he told Poroshenko.

“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event.

Yet more actual facts follow, every last word of which entirely damns Senile Uncle Gropey as precisely what he is and always has been: a wholly corrupt, dishonest, manipulative, and singularly incompetent political hack. Nick Arama poses the pertinent questions, saving the most important one for last:

Did someone squash it so as not to hurt Biden? Was this whole Ukraine call scam/whistleblower game cooked up to prevent all this from coming out because Trump had raised the issue of the case being possibly improperly shut down? And is it really not just to protect Biden but to protect the Obama administration in general from yet another scandal?

Oh, I think we can all guess the answers easily enough, thanks. The burning query at this point is simplicity itself: what, if anything, will be done about this?

Update! Hey, did somebody mention fake “whistleblower” and conniving Deep State grubworm Eric Ciaramella earlier?

Make no mistake. Although Democrats have tried mightily to convince America that their (fourth) impeachment effort developed spontaneously out of the patriotism of a career civil servant, the truth is, anti-Trump operatives in the president’s own NSC were already plotting to remove the president from office two weeks into his term. All they needed was a pretext to get the ball rolling. The Ukraine phone call in July 2019 provided the pretext they and their Democratic allies in the House had been waiting for.

As a former White House official told Sperry: “They had a political vendetta against him from Day One.”

I originally thought to include the meat ‘n’ potatoes of the Ciaramella revelation in the excerpt, but decided just to go with Heine’s closer instead. You’ll want to read all of it, though; it’s a veritable Who’s Who of Ogabe stay-behind saboteurs seeded throughout the FedGovCo permanent bureacracy, from shadow-government skulker Ciaramella to REMF doughboy Vindman, every last one of whom ought of right to be rockin’ orange for their acts of treason and sedition before too much more time passes.

Hirono speaks

Hilarity ensues.

On Tuesday, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) told quite the whopper by claiming Republicans have been spreading a “weird conspiracy theory” that Democrats wanted to impeach Donald Trump since he was inaugurated.

“What I found astounding was they’re still saying that we were out to get the president from day one, some sort of a weird conspiracy theory that I have to say, even [Supreme Court Justice Brett] Kavanaugh brought up,” Hirono said on MSNBC.

For Mazie Hirono to claim Democrats haven’t been out to get Trump from the earliest days of his presidency is just bizarre, especially given the evidence.

Margolis lays out only the tip of the evidentiary iceberg; contra the idiot Horino, said evidence is plentiful, and utterly indisputable—except by lying and/or moronic Democrat-Socialist hacks trying to score a few cheap political points with an end-run around the truth, natch.

They hate us! They really, really hate us!

That’s okay, we hate them right back.

A significant new book by Andrew Marantz, a staff writer at the New Yorker, has reinvigorated the gatekeepers’ efforts to censor the internet. Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation is an account of our ongoing democratic revolution, a historical moment that brings into relief two realizations for Marantz: (1) conservative influencers are now able to out-compete legacy media outlets, and (2) it was this that lead to the election of Donald J. Trump. “[T]hey helped propel their man to the presidency,” he writes.

For Marantz, these two realizations justify all-out censorship of the internet. But his extremism comes as little surprise when you recognize that, from start to finish, Marantz’s argument is grounded in his contempt for the intellectual and moral capacities of ordinary Americans.

At one point in the book, Marantz recalls an encounter with a friend who saw little problem with politically compromising clickbait: “Look, we happen to live in a free country. People can click on terrible links if that’s how they want to spend their time.”

“I made counterarguments,” Marantz writes. “Those terrible links influence what people think, how people behave, who people vote for.” He means, of course, that we can’t trust citizens to choose their own sources of information. So it’s not enough for Marantz to lay the blame for Trumpism on an intellectual deficit; he also blames the “techno-utopians” who fed their terrible information consumption habits.

According to Marantz, a techno-utopian believes that the American people are wise and moral enough to make those distinctions for themselves. They can thus be trusted with an open internet. They have faith that truth and virtue will eventually win out in the open marketplace of ideas. They think that “getting rid of informational gatekeepers” is a victory for democracy. Recall that Reddit’s motto was once “freedom from the press.” Techno-Utopians want to use technology to “democratize [and] give the power to the people.” They might even believe that “the freedom to share opinions online was akin to a human right.” Note the implicit assumption here: that the popularity of some political content is some indication of its moral or intellectual value.

Marantz’s book is a frontal attack on all these beliefs.

Of course it is. He’s a weedy, wormy little twerp whose bloated ego isn’t strong enough to tote the load of his crushing inadequacy. His bilious contempt for the bovine lackwits who refuse to duly acknowledge his self-proclaimed superiority is based mainly on pure envy, as is so often the case. The whole mess of soggy neurosis drives him to reject the very idea of human freedom itself, along with the existence of any “rights” a godlike being such as himself is bound to respect. The stupid, blundering sheep must be herded, for their own good; who better than an enlightened über-shepherd like himself to lead them along the proper path?

This miserable worm is nothing less than the living embodiment of Progressivist ideology and attitudes, on both the micro- and macro-levels. The obnoxiousness; the shameless, completely unjustifiable arrogance; the narcissism; the grandiose self-dramatization; the unshakable belief in the neccessity of a wiser, more capable “elite” class to supervise and manage the affairs of a hapless sub-order dependent on their guidance—this is a pretty good summary of the original mission statement of early-20th-Century Progressivism. Latter-day Progressivists have trimmed these roots only slightly by dropping their progenitors’ open embrace of eugenics as a means of culling the undesirables from the flock, deciding it might be best for all concerned if nobody brings that embarrassing little chapter up anymore, thanks.

The title of Marantz’s book is where the sad irony really lives and breathes. It isn’t any “hijacking of the American conversation” that so frustrates and enrages him; it’s having the ignorant serfs speaking up without permission he finds so damned galling. Unapproved views are now being freely expressed, rather than all and sundry listening in enraptured silence to his exalted pontification, as he so much prefers. Oh, there’s a conversation going on all right, but he’s not invited. Nothing has been “hijacked,” but a few things have been left behind. People like Marantz have nothing new to say, nothing to contribute but more of the same-old same-old. Is it any wonder that fewer and fewer of us seem interested in hearing their tired, century-old lecture recited all over again, only louder and more spitefully this time?

Richmond AAR

First, I must admit to being entirely too pessimistic right along when it came to the likely outcome of this thing. Credit is due to the VCDL, who if nothing else managed to demonstrate to ordinary Virginians who may not feel as strongly as VCDL’ers do about the 2A that the real threat of violence does NOT come from law-abiding gun owners. They showed themselves to be calm, rational, reasonable Americans who are willing to expose themselves to great hazard to exercise their Constitutional rights, both First and Second, peaceably.

No, it is not in the least likely that any meaningful number of minds were changed by the protest. It’s a lead-pipe cinch that no Democrat-Socialist politicians will rethink a damned thing; they’ll be back again, and again, and again, until gun owners either knuckle under or a not-insignificant percentage of them are swinging from lampposts, or at least given a ride on a rail sporting a new tar and feather suit.

But was it worth doing anyway? I dunno; my feelings on that are a bit mixed. Looked at from a purely pragmatic angle, the protest made little or no real difference. The Democrat-Socialist gun-grabber legislation remains in play, wending its way through the Virginia legislature regardless, with more and even worse in the pipeline. A pre-Lobby Day post from Cam Edwards examines the details:

As we get closer to Virginia’s Lobby Day on Monday, I’m seeing more and more hyberbolic posts on social media about how Virginia is now under the thumb of a tyrant, misinformation about non-existent bills being signed into law, and other attempts to gain attention or stoke people’s fear and anger.

To say this isn’t helpful is an understatement. We’re currently just a few weeks into Virginia’s legislative session, and the fact is, not one bad bill has become a bad law. Nothing’s been signed by the governor yet. In fact, nothing has even gotten to his desk at the moment. We’ve had three gun control bills pass out of the Senate, but the House hasn’t even had a single committee hearing on any gun control legislation. In fact, Virginia gun owners are actually having an impact on the debate in the legislature, thanks to the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement that’s swept across the state and has led to tens of thousands of engaged citizens contacting their lawmakers to oppose Ralph Northam’s gun control agenda.

I don’t believe that Northam has the authority to institute his gun ban in Capitol Square, but unfortunately the Virginia State Supreme Court didn’t reach the merits of the case brought by VCDL and GOA. Instead, the court ruled that the groups didn’t file the necessary paperwork with the Court, and refused the petition, leaving open the question of whether or not the governor has overstepped his constitutional authority.

As for Northam’s gun control legislation, here’s where things actually stand right now…

Clearly the civic engagement of gun owners in Virginia is helping to mitigate some of the worst of these bills. We are having a positive impact on some pieces of legislation, and the Democrats are far from unified in what their gun control bills should look like. It’s one thing to cut a campaign ad promising “common sense gun safety measures.” It’s another thing entirely to actually write a piece of legislation that isn’t a total mess.

Gun owners in the state of Virginia need to keep contacting their lawmakers to politely but firmly urge them to reject Northam’s gun control agenda. Now is a time for civic engagement, not civil war. Even if the worst of these bills become horrible laws, they can and will be challenged in court. Virginia gun owners need to play the long game right now. We are making a difference at the state legislature, but that will likely change if there is any violence during Monday’s Lobby Day.

Thankfully, there wasn’t any. In another post, Edwards highlights a real jawdropper:

The Second Amendment Sanctuary movement is alive and well, even in the state of New Jersey, where Cape May County freeholders unanimously approved a resolution this week declaring the county a “sanctuary” for gun owners. As NJ.com reports, the move comes just a couple of weeks ahead of a campaign rally for President Donald Trump.

NJ.com goes on to say that “nearly half of Virginia’s counties” have declared themselves Second Amendment Sanctuaries, but according to the Virginia Citizens Defense League the current tally is 91 of Virginia’s 95 counties, along with 45 cities and towns in the state.

For now Cape May is the only county in the state to adopt such a resolution, but as the website notes, two towns in the northern part of the state adopted similar language in late 2019. Other counties and townships may soon follow.

New JERSEY? Wow. I didn’t see THAT coming. Like, ever. Who knows, maybe some few NJ fence-sitters might find the example set in Richmond this week reassuring, and inspire a gradual, step-by-step migration over to the right side of the issue.

As I said, I’m conflicted about all this. Herschel’s view is probably closest to my own at the moment:

Don’t get me wrong. I sincerely appreciate the folks who could make it today. I had initially intended to go despite my belief that it was a perfect opportunity for a false flag event. I changed my mind when I found out about the cages. I reconsidered when I saw that the rally was big enough to accommodate armed folks outside the cages, but I had to work today. I think it would have been nice to be there with like minded folks.

But this isn’t the end. It’s only the beginning.

Now the real battle begins. It’s going to be vitally important in the very near future for Virginians to know where their county Sheriff stands, or where there city police stands, and to know where their neighbors stand. The real work will be taking local county commissioners and Sheriffs out for coffee, fisking their true intentions, personal training, organizing a militia, and making sure that communities stand together when the time comes to defy the laws.

Defiance of the laws means no state agent arrests citizens for ownership of MSRs or standard capacity magazines. It means counties are sincere, clear-headed and intentional in their opposition to unconstitutional laws, and it means that they know the cost and are willing to bear it.

This will have to be done by Virginians, while everyone else tends to life back in their own communities and presses forward with the same sorts of plans. It was always going to be this way. A rally was never going to stop the controllers.

But what it does do is prepare the ground. When the state is surprised that there is armed opposition to enforcement of the gun laws, your community can honestly say, “We warned you and you didn’t listen. The warnings are finished, and froggy time has begun. Lie in the bed you made.”

Public protest is undeniably part of the blood, bone, and sinew of this nation, going all the way back to the Boston Tea Party. In more recent history, mass protest didn’t end the Vietnam War, abortion, or the war/occupation/whatever it is in Iraq and Afghanistan. Protests, marches, and rallies didn’t resolve racial discord or mend relations between the (two! TWO!) sexes. Nor have they had any discernable impact on climate change, famine in Africa, poverty in Detroit, or murder in Chicago.

But in evaluating the usefulness (if any) of the Richmond event and other such protests, surely the passage I boldfaced above is worth taking into consideration too. If the only worthwhile result of events like Monday’s Lobby Day march is to provide a little reinforcement and inspiration to our like-minded fellows—a confidence-builder, a morale-booster, however slight—well, that ain’t nothing. A little encouragement in the right place, at the right time, can lead to great things. Even a presumably trivial nudge can act on the right sort of person as a tonic of unimaginable strength.

But, to invert Herschel’s statement: this is indeed only the beginning. It cannot, MUST not, be the end. If the good feeling generated amongst gun owners by Richmond inspires them to sit back, rest on their laurels, and let their guard down, then all may well be lost. Because the only thing we know for certain is that the Left will never, ever stop.

Down to the nut-cuttin’

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.



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.

DOG BITES MAN!!!

Ho hum.

Media and the Left Trying to Turn Law Abiding Gun Owners into Frothing, Racist, White Supremacists

Ummm…and? Seriously, dude, you find this shocking?

Northam and other gun rights opponents think that having 100,000 people rallying for gun rights — with many of them armed — will lead to violence. Northam declared a “state of emergency” — as if the very presence of several thousand armed citizens is a threat.

Gov Coonman hopes it will lead to violence; he intends for it to lead to violence, if only he can rig things the right way. After which he will very loudly and passionately denounce all private ownership of firearms; demand that “something must be done to stop the bloodshed!”; hold a jam-packed Enemedia press conference where he will falsely declare that he is in no way anti-2A, that he is himself a “life-long hunter”; then call for yet more “reasonable, common-sense” gun-grabbing measures in response to the “emergency” he and his Commie co-conspirators manufactured.

In the end, this is the Republicans’ own fault. In November, 2018, more Democrats in Virginia showed up to vote than Republicans. This resulted in a sweep for the Democrats, taking control of both houses of the legislature and the governorship.

And now Virginians have a governor who declares a “state of emergency” when citizens show up at a peaceful rally legally armed and lawmakers look to harass, annoy, and violate the rights of its citizens.

They look to end those rights, to rescind them forever, actually.

And to add insult to injury, those same politicians seek to lump law-abiding, responsible gun owners in with white supremacists.

Again with the surprise and horror? Tell me, Rick, when have they NOT done exactly that—and more, and worse—over the past forty years or so? Don’t kid yourself that it’s only “law-abiding, responsible gun owners” they’re abusing via that and similar canards, either. It’s every last American who isn’t fully on board with living under their tyrannical sway—who does not embrace their collectivist fanaticism, their lunatic policies, their ever-metastasizing Superstate, their intolerance for dissent, and so many other things.

Grok: If they can successfully paint even as milquetoast, mild-mannered a squish as Mittens Romneycare as some kind of extremist, Right-wing monster—and they could, they did—why on earth would you think they’d draw the line at “law-abiding, responsible gun owners”?

Oh, and while we’re at it, allow me to reiterate: IT’S A TRAP.

A Virginia state senator has sounded a warning bell three days before a massive rally is set to coalesce in the commonwealth’s capital.

Conservative Sen. Amanda Chase of District 11 took to Facebook on Friday with a warning for every patriot who plans to attend the pro-Second Amendment rally Monday in Richmond.

Her warning came the same week that Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam issued an executive order temporarily banning firearms in the Capitol Square.

“Sadly, I am posting this, knowing that the Governor of Virginia has declared a State of Emergency in our state,” Chase wrote. “I want you to be aware of how we are being set up.”

More via Hoft:

If anyone steps out of line, all it takes is one person, it may even be a government plant….if that plant does anything to disrupt the rally, you could/will be arrested as a domestic terrorist.

The Governor, using the media has already set the stage for this to happen.

He has already laid the groundwork to make the entire movement look like insurrection.

It will be used to put the rest of the nation on notice of what will happen to you, if you resist.

More still from Sundance, who makes a point I’m not entirely comfortable with:

Just as the national media did with the “far-right” -vs- “Antifa” for the Charlottesville example, there is a much larger national narrative overlay being deployed.

Also as noted in 2017, getting President Trump involved in the controversy is a way to keep the story on a national scale and politicize the crisis. This is a presidential election year, and Democrats are attempting to converge a multitude of social issues for maximum electoral benefit.

President Trump is being drawn into the engineering.

Something is going to take place.

What that ‘something’ might be is yet unknown.

However, whatever it is, President Trump is unfortunately now attached to it.

Now, Sundance is probably right about an Alinsky-style strategy being worked here. Furthermore, he’s almost certainly correct in his “national narrative” suspicion, and that Trump has been “drawn into” it.

Consider, though: why, exactly, is Trump’s involvement in one of the most important, Constitutionally-relevant conflicts in our history to be considered a BAD thing? Should a President recuse himself to sit on the sidelines when a war against our most fundamental rights is being waged by nefarious, conniving Enemies, Domestic who seek nothing less than to upend the very foundations of this nation? Would it not rather be more laudable for a President to vigorously defend those foundations, those rights, and let the “election-year” political chips fall where they may?

Must we always and forever yield up the right to defend ourselves against Leftist depredation, while they’re perfectly free to make war on us, our liberty, and our beliefs without the slightest restraint? Must we always and forever be resigned to defeat and subjugation? Must we always and forever cling to the delusion that the only way to win is by refusing to fight back?

I dunno, I’m beginning to wonder if the most optimal result from this whole contretemps might be achieved only if the VCDL people just opened fire immediately upon their arrival at the Capitol, and didn’t stop blasting away until every last dimestore dictator in the vicinity had assumed ambient temperature for good.

It’s a trap!

The problem here can be inferred from the headline: “Tyranny at the Door in Virginia.” Sorry, but tyranny came right in the door, raided the fridge, sat itself on the couch, and made itself right at home already.

It began when Ralph “Blackface” Northam became the governor of Virginia in 2017, then advanced another step when the Democratic Party took control of the Virginia General Assembly last year. In part, these events transpired because of the efforts by Michael Bloomberg and George Soros to put Virginia in their crosshairs by dumping millions of dollars into state and local elections.

And when the collaborationist GOPe failed to even bother running candidates in multiple races across Virginia, lest we forget.

Earlier this week, the state senate judiciary committee, voting along straight party lines, passed bills that would require background checks on all private transfers of firearms, let owners keep their banned firearms only if they register with the Virginia State Police, and ban suppressors and any magazines over 10 rounds. The committee also passed red-flag legislation.

The good news is that Virginians are not taking the Democrats’ efforts lying down. Across the state, the grassroots have come alive. To date, 124 counties, cities, and localities have declared themselves sanctuaries for the Second Amendment (consider there are 95 counties and 41 independent cities total in the entire state). These jurisdictions have made it clear they will refuse to enforce any anti-Second Amendment legislation coming from Richmond.

The response of Northam and Attorney General Mark “I’m also into blackface” Herring is to insist that any laws passed regarding gun control will be enforced. Really? By whom? The sheriffs? Not likely. County police? Probably not. State troopers and the national guard? Not likely, either.

Besides, do you really think many Virginians are just going to hand over their guns? The only thing they will be handing over is rounds fired in the direction of anyone seeking to confiscate their rifles and pistols.

Well, maybe. But then again, maybe not.

As far as I can tell, the VCDL is trying very hard to tread lightly and responsibly with their upcoming rally, going way out of their way to emphasize that they’re a mainstream group of law-abiding citizens intent only on peaceably assembling to petition their government for redress of grievances, as is their good right, on a day specifically provided in Virginia each year for that very purpose.

Unfortunately, the more I see of this, the greater the likelihood of a bloody disaster intentionally created by the very malefactors responsible for this confrontation in the first place seems. The sorry fact is that the time for peaceful protest is far, far behind us. The war to preserve the US Constitution, the rights enumerated therein, and for liberty itself was lost many decades ago. The America of our Founders is no more.

The Virginia Democrat-Socialists certainly seem to think so, anyway; they’re marching boldly on without the slightest apparent concern over the possibility of igniting a powderkeg underneath their own worthless asses. They seem quite confident that ultimately, Virginia 2A supporters will sit complacently back and let their rights be stripped from them just like they have so many times before, not just in Va but all across the nation. They’re placing all their chips on this bet.

Honestly, I’m not at all sure I’d be willing to bet against them.

As I’ve said so many times: the most important thing the Left learned from their ill-fated stab at Prohibition was the proper way to boil a frog. Ever since, they’ve been devouring American liberty not in huge gulps, but in bite-size morsels—slowly, patiently, one piece at a time. Whatever a massive public protest in Va may or may not have achieved in the distant past, it will accomplish nothing now. Virginia gun-grabbers see the end-game, the culmination of all their fondest dreams of unchecked rule, within their grasp at last. No mere public show of opposition is going to dissuade them now.

And that really is too bad. One likes to imagine that, as American citizens, our rulers might be responsive to the wishes of those they rule, mindful not to flex their muscle too assertively, too aggressively. But as they get elected and re-elected over and over again, perpetrating the most stunningly brazen acts of corruption and abuse of power imaginable with near-total impunity, they’ve lost all fear of the voters’ wrath. Hell, the very existence of a professional, career-politician class itself—in direct contravention of the most dire warnings of the Founders—is but one of a long list of unsavory developments that have emboldened them.

No sane, decent person wants to have to shoot a neighbor, a cop, a friend or relative to safeguard his own freedom. Ironically, though, it would seem that an altogether human abhorrence for violence is the very thing ensuring that someday, those decent folks will be forced to hoist the black flag and start slitting throats. Many Virginians will probably get busy burying guns in the backyard in response to the passage of these abominable laws. But as Bracken says: if you think it’s time to start burying your guns, it’s actually time to start digging them up. Aesop submits:

If this is a war, fight it like a war. Holding a parade on your enemy’s quarterdeck isn’t going to get you anything you want, but it’ll get you a lot of what you don’t want. Oh, and in about 97 ways, you’re not ready for a war yet. So maybe start working on that first.

And if it’s not quite a war yet, you’ve damned sure got better things to do than grabbing your crotch and waving your shortcomings in the enemy’s face. So maybe start working on doing operations-other-than-war a helluva lot better too.

Which leaves no time for childish tantrums. Stop playing in the street, pull your heads out of your asses, and start doing serious things in a serious way, like this was serious business, and not a grade school food fight.

The tree of liberty may indeed be due for another good watering; I dunno, it’s not for me to say. But we all better be very damned sure about that first.

Update! The shitshow just got shittier.

I guess we now know why Virginia Governor Ralph Northam outlawed all weapons at a pro-gun rally organized by the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL), the state’s best known pro-Second Amendment group. Antifa’s showing up.

Vice News and other media outlets breathlessly reported Friday that Antifa and the right-leaning Second Amendment supporters have much in common and so will stand shoulder-to-shoulder on Monday to battle against the state.

“I think it’s been pretty important for us to focus on the fact that gun control in America has a legacy of racist enforcement,” said Antifa Seven Hills spokesperson James (who asked that his name be withheld to avoid getting doxxed online). “Like taking guns away from black people, because black people were perceived as a threat to property and the sanctity of the state.

This is our fight as much as anyone else’s,” James, who identifies as an anarchist, added. “It’s our state, and we are left largely out of the debate. The presence of an armed left is not discussed, it’s not understood.”

Ohhhh yeah, THIS is gonna end well.

Tooth and claw, hammer and tongs

This. This right here.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Monday said if his fellow Republicans allow Democrats to have the witnesses they demand in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, he will demand Hunter Biden testify.

Paul tweeted:

“My colleagues can’t have it both ways. Calling for some, while blocking others. If we are going to give a platform to witnesses the Dems demand, I look forward to forcing votes to call Hunter Biden and many more!”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who also opposes witnesses in the trial, has warned against them for just such a tit-for-tat reasoning.

McConnell told Fox News Radio in December that a calling of witness by Democrats coud lead Republicans to want Hunter Biden and even the whistleblower who’s identity has never been officially revealed.

And that would be just AWFUL, wouldn’t it? Such a destructive “tit for tat” risks unearthing all sorts of worms the Deep State would much prefer to keep covered. Why, the American knave-class might even get above their station to the extreme of insisting on justice being visited on all sorts of high ‘n’ mighty, untouchable types! The whole phony “of the people, by the people, for the people” charade might collapse! IT’S UNTHINKABLE!!

Other Republicans, such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Utah’s Mitt Romney, have been more open to possibly allowing witnesses. Democrats needs only four Republicans to cross over and vote with them to get their wish. CBS News reported Monday they likely have found four Republicans to join them.

They’ll likely get more Republicrat/Uniparty turncoats than that, I’d bet, with plenty of those willing to vote for conviction, too. Well, let ’em sow that dangerous wind. Just so long as they don’t mind reaping the whirlwind, too.

Predictable as the sunrise

In an otherwise good piece, Roger Kimball whiffs bigly on one important thing:

The disaster of Flight 752 took place in the context of the liquidation of the terrorist mass-murderer Qasem Soleimani last week by the United States on the order of President Donald Trump. But that courageous and far-seeing act itself took place in the context of Iran’s decades-long assault on American and, more broadly, on Western institutions that promote a culture of tolerance and religious freedom.

The fact that many U.S. news outlets and Democratic politicians instantly coalesced around Soleimani as a “revered” military leader tells us what great inroads Stockholm Syndrome has made among American elites. 

Sorry, Rog, it does no such thing. What it actually tells us is just how low those treasonous blackguards are willing to stoop to attach themselves to true, real-world evil if they think they might somehow grub some cheap political points from it; how reflexively they will always side with America’s enemies, no matter what; how deeply, deeply desperate they are to somehow hold onto power and position by attacking Trump; and how there can be no more fitting, just, or accurate a condemnation of them than to simply name them as traitors, the unabashed enemies of this country.

Last week, Donald Trump eliminated one of Iran’s most potent emissaries of death and destruction. All the beautiful people huddled together and wailed that Trump had just “destabilized” the Middle East (had it been stable beforehand?), that his “unilateral” action was illegal, counterproductive, immature, that, ultimately, he may have started World War III.

That was then. Now it looks as though he may have sparked the great unraveling of theocratic totalitarian control in Iran. And this just in: the Iranians apparently have just arrested the British ambassador. Arrested. In civilized countries, if there is an issue with a diplomat, one expels him. In civilized countries. But this is the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Someday, the world will stand back and applaud Trump for his canny and farseeing statesmanship. I do not assert that that recognition is coming any time soon. But come it will.

Most likely, yeah. But not from the Treasoncrats and Enemedia—not unless and until they can use Trump as a weapon for dishonestly smearing some future candidate as the new Second Coming Of Literally Hitler, they won’t.

Update! Schlichter calls ’em out.

You spent the last three years babbling like idiots about “traitors” and “treachery.” Well, head docs call that “projection.” You are siding with the enemy in a war against the United States. And yeah, Iran has been at war with the United States for 40 years, ever since your peanut-farming, half-wit fellow Dem handed over the keys to the country to a bunch of Seventh Century Pennywises. The least you could do is show a little respect to the people trying to clean up your party’s mess.

Your party’s latest triumph is blaming Donald Trump because these drooling morons shot down a passenger airliner the night they launched missiles at our American soldiers. What the hell is wrong with you? Are you sick? Are you stupid? Are you huffing that funny powder you found in Hunter Biden’s medicine cabinet? What would ever have possessed you to start making excuses for people trying to kill Americans?

It’s nothing new for them. After all, it was, what, like two days after 9/11 before they all started preachifying in their oh-so-superior way that we had that coming too? They can’t help themselves; it’s who they are, it’s what they do. They’ve been this way for far too long already, and couldn’t stop now if they tried. Go ahead and ask the scorpion not to sting the frog while you’re at it, you’ll end up with the same result.

What price?

Less talk, more action. Sir.

FBI Director Chris Wray announced that the FBI’s response to the agency’s FISA Abuse and the criminal spying on the Trump campaign will result in extra training.

He sent out out a training video.

And no one will be disciplined for the criminal acts.

This is unacceptable!

President Trump called out Wray and asked him if any of the “dirty cops” are going to pay the price for the fraud they committed.

TRUMP: “FBI Director apologizes for FISA Errors (of which there were far to many to be a coincidence!).” @FoxNews Chris, what about all of the lives that were ruined because of the so-called “errors?” Are these “dirty cops” going to pay a big price for the fraud they committed?

Ummm…sorry to bring it up and all, but YOU HIRED HIM. That means that you can also, y’know, FIRE HIS ASS. So why the bleedin’ hell haven’t you already? More, and worse:

But it’s not just Wray’s fecklessness in the aftermath of the Horowitz report that merits his ouster. The chief has tried to cover up and excuse the scandal since he took the reins of the agency in August 2017. 

Wray strenuously objected to the release of the February 2018 memo prepared by then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, which detailed how Comey’s FBI used the bogus Steele dossier as evidence in its application to the court and then withheld disclosing Steele’s Democratic funders.

Wray appealed to then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, conflicted because he signed the final renewal on Page’s FISA application, to do whatever he could to stop Nunes from making his memo public. Rosenstein and Wray met with Trump’s chief of staff to warn that the memo’s release could “set a dangerous precedent.”

Wray refused to fire the disgraced Andrew McCabe—the acting FBI chief who served in between Comey and Wray—despite mounting evidence of McCabe’s misconduct. (Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe just hours before he could retire with full benefits.) Wray also has stonewalled requests for communications from McCabe.

During his Senate testimony in May, Wray rejected Attorney General William Barr’s assertion that the FBI spied on the Trump campaign. “That’s not the term I would use,” Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Lots of people have different colloquial phrases. I believe the FBI is engaged in investigative activity and part of investigative activity includes surveillance activity of different shapes and sizes.” Wray confirmed that a “number” of surveillance warrants were obtained on the Trump campaign.

So, spying.

Wray bristles at the term “deep state.” He has repeatedly rejected that label to describe his employees, telling ABC News shortly after the release of the Horowitz report that its an “affront” to the 37,000 men and women of the FBI to claim they are part of the “deep state.” Not exactly a reassuring response; Wray clearly does not recognize the severity of the problem before him.

Not quite there yet, Jules, you stopped well short of the mark. Wray doesn’t recognize any “severity” at all, because he doesn’t think there IS a problem. And that is why, as you say, he is NOT the man to “reform” the FBI, which cannot BE reformed anyway. Being just another power-drunk, conniving, treacherous Deep State weasel marching in a long parade of reprobate FBI heads, Wray likes it just the way it is.

“One long continuum of exactly the same behavior”

There is no reforming corruption this deep; the rot goes clear to the bone, part of their DNA from the very beginning.

In June 2018, in response to an IG investigation, while denying the FBI had any political bias, FBI Director Christopher Wray promised anti-bias training for all agents. In response to the “challenges” identified by the report, the FBI “appreciates the opportunity” to provide more “support” to our employees.

In December 2019, in response to another IG investigation, while denying FBI agents would intentionally act illegally, FBI Director Christopher Wray notified the FISA court a Senior FBI investigative lawyer named Kevin Clinesmith intentionally falsified evidence on a FISA application.

In response to the FBI notification, late December 2019 the FISA court demanded to know what corrective actions the FBI was going to take; and what other applications FBI Lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, was involved in.

In response today FBI Director Christopher Wray promises more training.

Throughout 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and through today, across both administrations, the corrupt group within the FBI in DC were/are protecting themselves. The FBI redacted the Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages. The FBI removed Page and Strzok texts and emails. The FBI hid texts and emails from Lisa Page to Andrew McCabe. The FBI kept documents from congress. The FBI has leaked false information to media to cover their tracks; and yes the Trump FBI have participated.

The corrupt FBI under James Comey, Andrew McCabe and James Baker is being protected and facilitated by the corrupt FBI under Christopher Wray, David Bowditch (San Bernadino infamy) and Dana Boente.

It’s one long continuum of exactly the same behavior.

Of course it is. The FBI is a mirror-image of the Mafia they claim to abhor: both shadowy brotherhoods regard the law as an inconvenience at worst; both go to great lengths to keep their dirty doings hidden from scrutiny; and both put looking out for their own near the top of their list of priorities—not as a matter of morality and decence, but of self-interest.

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