Where Do We Go from Here?

Betting against Elon

Posted on October 2, 2026October 2, 2026 by Mike 2 Comments

I wouldn’t, but could be that’s just me.

AT&T CEO says Elon Musk’s SpaceX phone strategy not “viable”
Elon Musk’s plan to turn SpaceX into a major threat to the legacy telecom companies is “not a viable strategy,” AT&T CEO John Stankey tells Axios.

Why it matters: Musk and SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell recently touted their plan to turn the company’s Starlink satellite business into a global competitor to traditional phone-and-internet-service companies.

Driving the news: AT&T is betting on its strategy of deploying fiber infrastructure to boost its internet business at a time when AI is driving booming demand.

The company on Tuesday announced a $3 billion deal with Corning to provide the infrastructure, saying fiber is three times faster than satellite.

“Nothing beats it,” Stankey told Axios in an interview, adding that “satellite, at its best — if everything happens right over the next 10 years” — is “still not going to beat fiber.”

State of play: Starlink already competes with traditional telecom companies for home and business internet customers — and SpaceX is now talking about a mobile business that would put it in more direct competition with wireless carriers.

“I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers because I think our service will be better,” Shotwell said in August on SpaceX’s first earnings call after going public.

The shot across the bow caused shares to drop the next day for AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.

Could be Mr Stankey is correct, could be he ain’t. Certainly, his bluff, can-do positivity is the right stance for a CEO in his position to be taking. We’ll see how it all shakes out soon enough, I reckon.

Myself, I’m nothing like tech-savvy enough to offer a useful opinion on the matter way or another. That said, though, I think we’ve all seen enough of Mr Musk by now to know that betting against him is not usually the way you wanna be going. And that, laddie-buck, is about as far out on this particular limb as I’m willing to extend myself.

Via Insty, who kinda-sorta endorses my above reticence as follows: “PEOPLE KEEP SAYING ELON CAN’T DO THINGS, BUT THEIR TRACK RECORD IS POOR.” T’is indeed, buddy-ro. T’is indeed.

Not as Red as they think they are

Posted on October 1, 2026October 1, 2026 by Mike Leave a comment

The “capitalism” these know-nothing lunkheads claim they hate so bad…AIN’T.

Gen Z voters hate capitalism — but they’ve barely even seen it
Young voters are financially drowning — and the life raft the Democratic Socialists of America is throwing them is an anchor in disguise.

If Americans don’t see past this facade, they’ll be sinking even faster.

Consider a typical 22-year-old, fresh out of college with a business degree and a decent entry-level job in a booming city like Austin, Texas.

Rent eats a third of his paycheck, while nearly one-fifth of it goes to commuting costs.

He’s paying down tens (if not hundreds) of thousands in student loans.

Without help from Mom and Dad, a down payment on a home is decades away, as is marriage.

Little wonder that only 9% of voters under 30 have a “very positive” view of capitalism, or that nearly 60% of voters aged 18 to 24 want a Democratic Socialist to win the White House in 2028, according to a recent Heartland/Rasmussen poll.

Young voters are right that the system is failing them.

They’re wrong, though, about which system it is.

What they’ve experienced isn’t free-market capitalism at all — it’s a quasi-socialist economy that’s let government displace the market in precisely the spending categories that have become least affordable.

Turning further toward socialism means embracing the anchor that’s already weighing them down.

Just look at where their pain is already concentrated: education, housing and health care.

These are among the most regulated, subsidized and government-directed sectors of the American economy, and therefore the least like capitalism.

It’s no coincidence they’re also the least affordable.

What they’ve experienced isn’t free-market capitalism at all — it’s a quasi-socialist economy that’s let government displace the market in precisely the spending categories that have become least affordable.

Turning further toward socialism means embracing the anchor that’s already weighing them down.

Highlighting yet again the sheer diabolical genius of people like Alinski, Gramsci, Croly, Marcuse, and all the rest of the Lesser Demons.

A look ahead

Posted on September 22, 2026September 23, 2026 by Mike 3 Comments

Miguel GFZ takes a look at the ugly, trying days to come.

59% of Democrats polled directly support a military coup d’etat with an extra13% not giving a shit if it happens. That is a total of 72% of D-Assholes willing to burn the ship they are riding (and us) as long as the captain dies. They are willing to kill America both the idea and the people.

And that is enough for you to understand why so many of them are voting Socialist/Communist.

I have been thinking and mulling about this for a while now and I just did not want to openly talk about it, but I believe a very uncivil war will happen sooner than I wish, and we will end up stacking bodies in town squares everywhere because they will do the same to us if we let them.

You will be asked to stop being polite or let politeness be engraved in your tombstone as reason you are no longer breathing.

My thoughts as well. Sure, the prospect of strife, bloodshed, and (un)civil war is indeed horrific beyond comprehension. BUT…the veritable certainty that we’ll end up subjugated, imprisoned, and murdered in job lots by a Communist dictatorship run by the current crop of mentally deranged “liberal” psychos is no less scarifying. They are now openly saying this is what they want to do; as with the jihadis, we really need to take them at their word, not just shrug off their openly-avowed intentions.

What with so many putative Reich-wingers preemptively, obsequiously foreswearing any and every act of violent resistance in defense of American liberty (whatever miserable shreds and tatters are left of it that we haven’t long since given up, that is), it seems that the original valiant, indomitable spirit of our Founding Fathers has been forever lost—rather, willfully abandoned.

As for the poll results Miguel discusses above, I can’t help but be put in mind of Grant’s sharpish riposte to his ranking subordinates who were in dread of the next breakout ass-whupping they were about to get from Lee which, to them, seemed as certain as tomorrow’s sunrise:

Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what are we going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.

Probably the wisest, best pre-battle advice ever offered to any group of increasingly timorous, drubbing-conditioned field-rank officers, I’d say. In the end, Grant prevailed over one of the most able Generals of all time, as we all know, not so much because of his brilliant generalship and/or tactical acumen, but more because of his own iron will, dogged determination, and plain old guts.

Grant, Lee, Longstreet, Sherman, Jackson, and before them Washington, Nathanael Green, the wily “Swamp Fox” Francis Marion—these men are every natural-born Amercan patriot’s heritage, his proud, legitimate ancestral birthright—not the pusillanimous, cross-dressing, scrotum-licking pussies of the Repugnant Left. Hopefully, we’ll all remember, reclaim, and renew that sacred inheritance ere the end.

You may not be interested in war…

Posted on September 21, 2026 by Mike Leave a comment

But war is interested in YOU.

Eric S. Raymond
@esrtweet

The city of Narva, Estonia, sits at the Russian border, on the Narva river, opposite the zone where the Russians have declared a curfew for its inhabitants and a no-go zone for people who don’t already live there.

Narva is 87% ethnic Russian.

There are intelligence reports that Russia has been building hospital facilities near this border.

Russian border guards have been spotted shoring up the banks of the Narva River in exactly the way you would expect if you thought they were going to throw expedient military bridges across it.

Russian border guards have also removed a set of buoys in the river marking the Russian-Estonian border, sparking a formal protest from the Estonian government.

Putin has claimed the right to intravene militarily to protect “oppressed” ethnic Russians in the near abroad. The invasion and annexation of Crimea was justified on these grounds.

These are all facts. Draw your own conclusions.

A few more cold, hard facts from Stephen, including what may end up being the one that really tells the story (bold mine).

But here’s where it gets truly disturbing: “The city of Narva, Estonia, sits at the Russian border, on the Narva river, opposite the zone where the Russians have declared a curfew for its inhabitants and a no-go zone for people who don’t already live there.“

Narva is 87% ethnic Russian, a result of Russian colonization efforts in the Baltics, both during the Czarist and Soviet era. “Putin has claimed the right to intervene militarily to protect ‘oppressed’ ethnic Russians in the near abroad,” Eric posted. “The invasion and annexation of Crimea [in 2014] was justified on these grounds.”

I make zero predictions, none whatsoever, about what comes next.

It seems absolutely insane by most measures for Putin to make warlike moves like these while virtually all of Russia’s conventional combat power remains committed to his own Forever War in Ukraine.

But then I’m reminded of a quote attributed to Dwight Eisenhower: “If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.”

Maybe a real test of NATO resolve — and perhaps fracturing the alliance, if Putin can make a joke out of Article 5 — is the Russian leader’s way of enlarging the unsolvable problem of Ukraine.

And if NATO resolve is not found wanting?

I’m not sure I want to know, but I’m not the one throwing the dice on the banks of the Narva River.

Disturbing, no?

UNEXPECTED!©

Posted on September 20, 2026September 20, 2026 by Mike Leave a comment

Gee, who among us saw THIS one coming?

New Crime Stats: Children of Migrants More Likely to Be Criminals Than First Generation
I have been following Danish crime stats because Denmark is one of the few countries that track crime using key demographic variables such as race, religion, country of origin, and immigration status (and their descendants).

For years now, Danish crime statistics tell us what we already can intuit from the data we do have: migrants from Muslim countries commit crimes at a vastly higher rate than native-born Europeans, and the statistics indicate that the rates aren’t even close. They are especially represented in the sexual crime statistics, but in just about every category, the differences are remarkable.

But what most people who support mass migration might be surprised to learn is this: their male descendants are even more likely to commit crimes and are often more likely to be Islamist extremists than their parents. Again, the statistics show the differences aren’t even close.

Here are the basic facts: as first-generation Muslim immigrants have aged, their propensity to commit crimes has decreased somewhat, leading to a slight decline in first-generation crime statistics. They are now only about two times more likely to commit crimes as native-born Danes, which is still pretty bad.

More worrying is that their sons are even more likely to commit crimes than they were; the rate is three times as high, or even higher in some cases, and they are also more likely to see themselves as the natural replacements for a declining population in their adopted countries.

Indisputable confirmation of the essential truth underpinning the hoary old maxim: Invite the Third World, become the Third World.

Western delusion

Posted on September 17, 2026September 17, 2026 by Mike

The New Religious War, same as the Old Religious War. Except that this time, we’ve lost.

Today, it’s easy to see just how naive and shallow Ambrose’s analysis was. The idea that there would be no more major ideological conflicts, or that Western civilization had nothing to fear from competing cultures and peoples, was positively delusional.

But it was a delusion enabled and strengthened by a fundamentally secular worldview that refused to take the claims of religion seriously — claims that precede and give coherence to political claims and ideologies. It was a delusion, in other words, enabled by an Enlightenment philosophy that looked on religion as a quaint relic of a bygone era. The religious conflicts of earlier epochs had naturally given way to the ideological contests of the 20th century, and now those contests were settled. At the dawn of the 21st century, no one could possibly take religion seriously, or think that medieval religious disputes had any relevance in the post-Cold War world that was taking shape.

Then 9/11 happened. But instead of shattering this delusion, great efforts were made to shore it up. This proved difficult (but not impossible) because the leaders of al-Qaida were obviously motivated by religious beliefs, and said so repeatedly. In his November 2002 Letter to America, Osama bin Laden explained his motivations and aims in great detail. Organized as a series of questions and answers, the letter laid out al-Qaida’s reasons for attacking on 9/11 and also stated what al-Qaida wanted from us.

“The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam,” bin Laden wrote. It’s a striking admission. The terrorists’ first priority was not for the U.S. to leave Muslim lands, or halt support for Israel, or stop propping up authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. All of those demands come after what bin Laden says is the first thing he wants for America, which is conversion to Islam: “The religion of the Unification of God … of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).”

Despite such an explicit statement from bin Laden, and others like it from jihadist Muslims around the world, almost no one in the West wanted to acknowledge this reality and its implications, because doing so would undermine the animating idea of the post-Cold War project. If sincere religious convictions could inspire Muslims in the 21st century to carry out attacks like 9/11, then it wasn’t really true that all religions are the same. And if that’s the case, then all peoples and cultures are also not the same, and neither is all labor, and suddenly the entire agenda of creating a borderless world of global free markets is called into question.

So almost immediately after 9/11 our political leaders and most major media outlets scrambled to declare that Islam had nothing to do with the attacks, that there was nothing to fear from Muslims, and that anyone who suggested otherwise was a bad American.

Less than a week after 9/11, as the rubble of the Twin Towers was still smoldering, President George W. Bush gave his now infamous “Islam is peace” speech after meeting with Muslim leaders at the Islamic Center of Washington. “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam,” he said. “That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war.” The terrorist attacks, he said, “violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. And it’s important for my fellow Americans to understand that.”

It was an absurd thing for an American president to say (as if Bush knew the first thing about the fundamental tenets of Islam), but it was especially absurd, and indeed offensive, as a response to terrorist attacks that had just killed thousands of Americans. Adding to the insult and absurdity was the fact that Bush was surrounded by Muslim leaders who condemned the attacks on narrow grounds but shared the overall religious worldview of the hijackers and their al-Qaida handlers. But in Bush’s version of the world, those people were no different than any other Americans, and in fact “love America just as much as I do.”

In saying these things, the president was simply expressing the mainstream liberal view, shared by almost all our political and media elite, who were unable to recognize the religious and civilizational nature of the conflict that had erupted. It was inconceivable to them that authentic religious beliefs could ever motivate anyone to commit an act of mass violence like 9/11. After all, religions were all supposed to be fundamentally the same. They all teach the same things, more or less, and they all lead to peace. Evil and cynical people might try to twist religion and use it to justify their crimes or a political agenda, but such people are not — and cannot be — true representatives of religion.

We heard versions of this over and over again in the years after 9/11 — and especially in the lead-up to the Iraq War. All people, we were told, yearn for liberty, hence we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq. All nations should be organized along the lines of liberal democracy, hence we should ensure that Afghan women are able to get degrees in women’s studies and Afghan girls are able to attend school. What’s more, we could import democracy to these places, and it would work because freedom and democracy are what everyone, everywhere, really wants. In his second inaugural address, President Bush stated explicitly that “it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”

Ending tyranny in the world might sound like a ridiculous thing for a White House administration to tackle, but they were serious about it. I remember a political science professor of mine from Hillsdale being dispatched to Iraq by the State Department in 2004, after we had toppled Saddam Hussein. He was part of a group of scholars the government had tasked with establishing a basis for Western-style rule of law and constitutionalism in the Koran and in Islamic tradition. That such a basis had not yet been established or discovered in the previous 1,400 years of Islam did not dissuade them. They really thought it was possible, and went to great lengths in the attempt, which of course failed.

It never occurred to them that not all religions and cultures are actually the same, and do not produce the same things. It never occurred to them that Christianity, not the act of voting, is why representative democracy created peace and stability in the West. Or that it might not be possible to establish a basis for constitutional democracy in a Muslim nation because of the nature of Islam. Or that not everyone, in fact, yearns for liberty. Some people yearn instead for justice. Some people would rather have vengeance than freedom and prosperity. If you introduce democracy to a place like Iraq, or Syria, or Gaza, the people might not vote for Western liberalism. They might vote for Hamas.

Even if these things did occur to our leadership class, as they might well have, it would have been unwelcome to bring them up at the time. And in fact almost no one said anything along these lines.

Instead, our leaders doubled down on Stephen Ambrose’s version of the world. The cultural mood of the West in the decade before 9/11 was one of breezy optimism and post-Cold War insouciance. After 9/11 this mood transformed into official policy. Not only did we think we could bring Western-style democracy to tribal Muslim peoples, we thought we could bring those peoples here and integrate them into American life.

The multicultural propaganda that had been fed to us in school throughout the 1990s took shape after 9/11, and we began importing Muslims from far-flung countries in record numbers — people from the same countries that had celebrated and danced in the streets when the towers fell. Pew Research estimates the number of Muslims in the U.S. grew from 2.4 million in 2007, the first time it performed such a tabulation, to 5.5 million today (likely a low estimate). The number of mosques has likewise increased during those years, from an estimated 1,200 to 2,800.

For the left, this was only fair. A legacy of colonialism and American meddling in the Middle East was after all to blame for the backwardness and economic depression of the Muslim world, they argued. We owed it to those countries to allow mass immigration to the West, and if Muslims in the Third World harbored resentment against America, they had good reason for it. This is now mainstream thinking among Democrats. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has repeatedly defended calls to “globalize the intifada,” for example, and has campaigned with the likes of Hasan Piker, who said that the United States “deserved 9/11.”

For the right, it took the arrival of Donald Trump even to be able to talk about these things. And even now, if you have the temerity to notice that Muslims in America fail to assimilate because they have no interest in assimilating, or that they recreate versions of their home countries and cultures here in America, or that Islam is clearly incompatible with American society, half the country will call you a racist.

That is the real legacy of 9/11. It was the beginning of a religious war that we lost because we refused to recognize the religious nature of it. We were committed instead to a secular account of the world in which religion makes no real claims on its adherents and imposes no real costs on unbelievers.

What we owe the victims of 9/11, all these years later, is to be done with all that nonsense, and to see the world, finally, as it really is.

Yeah, like THAT’S ever gonna happen. Sorry, but I’m afraid we Men of the West just don’t have it in us anymore to look the harsher realities straight in the face without flinching and/or dissembling, same as we can no longer call things by their right names. Our Lords and Masters simply don’t allow that, and we’re Americans: we do as we’re told.

Ch-ch-changes

Posted on September 16, 2026September 16, 2026 by Mike

“The irony…is inescapable.” Ain’t it, though. Ain’t it just. RFKJr addresses…*checks notes*…a Republican convention?!?

Some excerpts:

“So I’m 72 years old, and for 70 years of my life, I would have bet any amount of money that I would not be addressing a Republican convention. The irony of my presence here is inescapable.”

“I attended my first Democratic convention in 1960 when I was six years old and I attended most of the conventions, the Democratic conventions, after that, and I spoke as a keynote speaker in many of them.”

“I grew up in a Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt, of my uncle John Kennedy, of my father Robert Kennedy. Ours was a party of strong principles, of clear policies, and an inspiring idealistic vision for America. My uncle ran on a platform of tax cuts, strong defense, and fighting communism. Does that sound familiar?”

“The Democrats of that era stood with labor and working people and the American middle class. Nearly every cop and firefighter was a Democrat. Our party was a champion of the Bill of Rights, and particularly for unbridled free speech.”

“My uncle and father understood the connection between free markets and functional democracy.”

Lots more at the link.

(Via Stephen)

Steyn sampler

Posted on September 13, 2026September 13, 2026 by Mike

Been rummaging through several of Steyn’s old 9/11-remembrance columns from byone years, and it hit me that a collection of sundry quips and quotes from the articles might be a very cool thing. So, without further ado, off we go!

In any war, you have to be able to prioritize:

You can’t win everything, so where would you rather win? Raqqa or Rotterdam? Kandahar or Cannes? Yet, whenever some guy goes Allahu Akbar on the streets of a western city, the telly pundits generally fall into one of two groups: The left say it’s no big deal, and the right say this is why we need more boots on the ground in Syria or Afghanistan. Yesterday President Trump said he was committed to ensuring that terrorists “never again have a safe haven to launch attacks against our country”.

By that he means “safe havens” in Afghanistan. But the reason the west’s enemies are able to pile up a continuous corpse count in Paris, Nice, Berlin, Brussels, London, Manchester, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Orlando, San Bernadino, Ottawa, Sydney, Barcelona, [Your Town Here] is because they have “safe havens” in France, Germany, Britain, Scandinavia, North America, etc. Which “safe havens” are likely to prove more consequential for the developed world in the years ahead?

Who’s winning what turf? After sixteen years of western military occupation, the Taliban control more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since the first US troops went in. On the other hand, after sixteen years of accelerating Islamic immigration, Europe has more no-go zones, more sharia courts, more refugees, more covered women, more Muslim-dominated schoolhouses, more radical mosques, more female genital mutilation, more grooming and gang rape, more Muslim Brotherhood front groups, more Muslim mayors and legislators, more Muslim-funded Middle East Studies programs at universities …and fewer churches, fewer Jews in Toulouse, fewer gays in Amsterdam, fewer unaccompanied women out after dark in German and Swedish cities, fewer historical representations of Mohammed in Continental museums, art galleries and scholarly books, fewer mixed bathing sessions at municipal swimming pools, fewer lessons on the Crusades and the Holocaust in European schools …and less and less free speech in some of the oldest democracies on earth.

In Afghanistan, we’re fighting for something not worth winning, and we’re losing. In Europe, Islam is fighting for something very much worth winning, and they’re advancing. And, according to all the official strategists in Washington and elsewhere, these two things are nothing to do with each other.

To be fair, a lot of the ever increasing restraints on free expression are self-imposed: newspapers decide that it would be “insensitive” to publish certain cartoons, publishers politely decline novels on certain themes, and in Minnesota white progressives agonize that remembering 9/11 is “Islamophobic”. Which is weird – because a space alien visiting the United States for Monday’s ceremonies would have been stunned to discover that Islam had anything to do with 9/11. As I mentioned yesterday, the President forbore to mention Islam at all: Instead, we were attacked by “horrible, horrible enemies” and “enemies like we’ve never seen before”. Well, we’ve seen a lot of them since, and they appear to have certain things in common – things that this President was once not shy about mentioning.

From SteynOnline, September 12th 2017

The NEA warms up with a little light non-judgmentalism by advising teachers not to ‘suggest any group is responsible’ for the, ah, ‘tragic events’. Just because Osama bin Laden and al-Qa’eda boasted that they did it is no reason to jump to conclusions. ‘Blaming is especially difficult in terrorist situations because someone is at fault. In this country, we still believe that all people are innocent until solid, reliable evidence from our legal authorities proves otherwise’ — which presumably means we should wait till the trial and, given that what’s left of Osama is currently doing a good impression of a few specks of Johnson’s Baby Powder, that’s likely to be a long time coming.

Instead, the NEA thinks children should ‘explore the problems inherent in assigning blame to populations or nations of people by looking at contemporary examples of ethnic conflict, discrimination, and stereotyping at home and abroad’.

And by that you mean…?

‘Internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor and the backlash against Arab Americans during the Gulf war are obvious examples.’

Not that obvious: for one thing, the ‘backlash against Arab Americans during the Gulf war’ is entirely mythical. But you get the gist: Don’t blame anyone. But, if you have to, blame America.

I don’t think the teachers’ union are ‘Hate America’ types. Very few Americans are. But, rather, they’re in thrall to something far craftier than straightforward anti-Americanism — a kind of enervating cult of tolerance in which you demonstrate your sensitivity to other cultures by being almost totally insensitive to your own. The NEA study suggestions have a bit of everything in them: your teacher might pluck out Roosevelt’s ‘Four Freedoms’; on the other hand, she might wind up at the discussion topic about whether it was irresponsible for the media to show video footage of Palestinians celebrating 11 September as this allegedly led to increased hostility toward Arabs. Real live Arab intolerance is not a problem except insofar as it risks inflaming yet more mythical American intolerance.

This stuff went away for a while last October, and some of us were foolish enough to think it might go away for good. That it didn’t has a lot to do with George W. Bush and the strategy that brought him to power. You’ll recall that he campaigned in 2000 as a ‘compassionate conservative’. On his first trip to New Hampshire, he declared, ‘I’m proud to be a compassionate conservative. And on this ground I will make my stand!’ Those of us who ventured on to the ground to stand alongside him found it pretty mushy and squelchy, but figured the bog of clichés was merely a wily tactic, a means of co-opting all the Democrats’ touchy-feely words and thereby neutralising their linguistic advantage.

You can’t say whom we’re at war with, even though, for their part, the other side is admirably straightforward. Just tune in to any Arab TV station for Friday prayers:

‘O God, destroy the Jews and their supporters. O God, destroy the Christians and their supporters and followers, shake the ground under them, instil fear in their hearts, and freeze the blood in their veins.’

That’s Sheikh Akram Abd-al-Razzaq al-Ruqayhi, some hotshot imam live from the Grand Mosque in Sanaa on 9 August on Yemeni state TV. It’s the local equivalent of ‘Thought for the Day’, and even more predictable. Here’s the same dude a week earlier:

‘O God, deal with Jews and their supporters and Christians and their supporters and lackeys,’ he prayed. ‘O God, count them one by one, kill them all, and don’t leave anyone.’

This isn’t some fringe crank sentiment, but what appears to be a standard formulation from the Middle Eastern equivalent of the Book of Common Prayer. Another state TV channel, another mosque, another imam, same script: ‘O God, deal with the occupier Jews for they are within your power,’ said Sheikh Anwar al-Badawi on 2 August live from the Umar Bin-Al-Khattab Mosque in Doha on Qatar Television. ‘O God, count them one by one, kill them, and don’t leave any one of them.’

Same sheikh a week later: ‘O God, destroy the usurper Jews and the vile Christians.’

Hmm. Perhaps we need to call in Bletchley Park. Must be some sort of code. As a matter of fact, you don’t even need to go to the Middle East to catch the death-to-Jews-and-Christians routine. I stayed in the heart of Paris a couple of months back, at the Plaza Athénée, and the eight Arab TV channels available in my room had more than enough foaming imams to go round.

~from The Spectator, August 24th 2002

Exactly a quarter-century ago, I was pottering about the kitchen when the newsman broke into the morning show to say that there were reports that a ‘plane had flown into the World Trade Center. I assumed it was an unfortunate mishap by a Piper Cub from Long Island or some such, switched off the radio and went about my business. So I did not hear that a second ‘plane had hit until twenty minutes later when two of my editors called from London and Toronto to demand instant-reaction columns to events of which I was not aware. I switched on the television to find the familiar New York skyline full of smoke.

I had been expecting delivery of a sofa that morning, and half-an-hour or so later it duly arrived. So I muted the TV and turned to face the chaps to discuss where to set it. When I turned back to the screen a minute or two later, the skyline was no longer there. For a moment, I was too befuddled to comprehend what had happened – and the scale of what America’s enemies had accomplished.

This is my ancient column from that day, composed in the hours that followed, when very little was known. There are passages I would write differently today, and some I would not write at all, but I thought we would re-publish it as is, with the original (Spectator) illustration and headline. It was and is “a war for civilisation”, but in ways I did not fully grasp until six months later, standing across the street from a Viennese maternity shop.

So here we are, a generation later, when no jihadist needs to fly planes into western skyscrapers – because, in New York as in London as in other western capitals, we have handed Islam the keys to those skyscrapers. In the excerpts from the flight manifests that appeared over the next few days, I was struck by the name of Christine Hanson of Groton, Massachusetts, a two-year-old girl sitting between her parents on a doomed flight. She was last heard crying in the background during her father’s telephone call to her grandparents to report that the stewardess had been stabbed. Christine would be approaching thirty now – and I cannot but feel that the intervening years have dishonoured her memory:

~You can understand why they’re jumping up and down in the streets of the Middle East, jubilant in their victory. They have struck a mighty blow against the Great Satan, mightier than even the producers of far-fetched action thrillers could conceive. They have driven a gaping wound into the heart of his military headquarters. They have ruptured the most famous skyline in the world, the glittering monument to his decadence. They have killed and maimed thousands of his subjects, live on TV. For one day they reduced the hated Bush to a pitiful presidential vagrant, bounced further and further from his White House to ever more remote military airports, from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska by a security staff which obviously understands less about the power of symbolism than America’s enemies do.

There was a grim symmetry in the way this act of war interrupted the President at a grade-school photo-op. The federal government has no constitutional responsibility for education: it is a state affair, delegated mostly to tiny municipal school boards. But one of Bill Clinton’s forlorn legacies is that the head of state and the commander-in-chief of the most powerful nation on earth must now fill his day with trivial initiatives designed to soothe the piffling discontents of soccer moms and other preferred demographics of the most pampered generation in history: programs to connect elementary schools to the Internet, prescription drug benefits for seniors. government ‘lock-boxes’ for any big-ticket entitlement the focus groups decide they can’t live without, and a thousand and one other woeful trivialities.

And so the President was reminded of his most awesome responsibility at a time when he was discharging his most footling. The first charge of any government is the defence of its borders — and, without that, it makes no difference how great your prescription drug plan is. In that sense, Tuesday marked the end of the ten-year-long weekend off that the world’s only superpower has enjoyed since Colin Powell advised against marching on Baghdad. The post-Cold War interlude is over, an era of follies — OJ, Monica — and fatuities, a few of which Tuesday’s horror stories cruelly underlined: employees in wheelchairs, whom Bob Dole’s Americans with Disabilities Act and the various lobby groups insist can do anything able-bodied people can, found themselves trapped on the 80th floor, unable to get downstairs, unable even to do as others did and hurl themselves from the windows rather than be burned alive.

The first named victim I was aware of was Barbara Olson, the wife of the solicitor-general, whom I sat next to at dinner a few weeks ago…She’d postponed her trip to California by a day so she could wish her husband a happy birthday on Tuesday morning, and so found herself on American Airlines flight 11. She had time to call her husband Ted to tell him her plane was being hijacked and that she had been hustled to the back of the cabin with the other passengers and flight crew. By then, the solicitor-general knew that two planes had deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center. He told Barbara what was happening — that she wasn’t in the hands of some jerk who wants his pals sprung from jail and a jet to Cuba but cooler customers with bigger plans. A few seconds later her flight ripped through one side of the Pentagon.

I’m sure that Ted Olson, in the course of the day, saw some of those TV pictures of taxi-drivers, merchants and schoolchildren in Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine passing out candy to celebrate the death of his wife and thousands of others. This is not terrorism — five guys in ski-masks plotting in a basement. This is war, waged in the shadows but openly cheered by millions and millions of people and more covertly supported by their governments, including the smooth, bespoke emissaries of the thug states in Durban last week.

The funniest moment in the early coverage came when some portentous anchor solemnly reported that ‘the United Nations building had not been hit’. Well, there’s a surprise! Why would the guys who took out the World Trade Center and the Pentagon want to target the UN? The UN is dominated by their apologists, and in some cases the friends of the friends of the fellows who did this (to put it at its most discreet). All last week the plenipotentiaries of the West were in Durban holed up with the brutes and treating them as equals, negotiating over how many anti-Zionist insults they could live with and over how abject the West’s apology for past sins should be. Tuesday’s sobering coda to Durban let us know that those folks on the other side are really admirably straightforward; they mean what they say, and we should take them at their word.

This is, as the German government put it, an attack on ‘the civilised world’, and it’s time to speak up in its defence. Those Western nations who spent last week in Durban finessing and nuancing evil should understand now that what is at stake is whether the world’s future will belong to liberal democracy and the rule of law, or to darker forces. And after Tuesday America is entitled to ask its allies not for finely crafted UN resolutions but a more basic question: whose side are you on?

~from The National Post and The Spectator, September 12th/13th 2002

Out of the aftermath, clarity

Posted on September 12, 2026September 12, 2026 by Mike

Lee Smith brings us a seriously gripping account of the frightening progress Pisslam has made apres 9/11, the one I mentioned at the end of the previous post.

Twenty-five years later, the legacy of 9/11 is that there was no 9/11.

Commemorations this week hold that the deadliest attack on the U.S. mainland forever changed the way we live. And that’s true if we mean that for the past 25 years Americans have lived in a collective fugue state from which there seems no exit.

The issue isn’t that nearly a third of the country was born after the attacks or that foreign intelligence services push 9/11 lies into our social media ecosystem. The conspiracy theorists are more shrill a quarter of a century on precisely because our memories of the day, and our reactions to it, have been redirected and erased.

There was never any kind of cover-up; there were no “dancing Israelis” who secretly directed Arab terrorists into the Twin Towers to get American boys to die in the Middle East on behalf of Israel; and there was no controlled demolition of the towers as part of a false flag operation to drive an angry nation to war in the Middle East.

Rather, it was more like the opposite: Elites across the political spectrum blunted the rage of a wounded nation determined to avenge its dead.

By the time of the attacks, New York had been in the crosshairs of Muslim terrorists for decades. The city is the world capital of finance, media, advertising, publishing, and culture, from painting to theater. And much of its success was thanks to the waves of Jewish immigrants that started arriving in the middle of the 19th century. With the United States’ victory in World War II, the human capital that the city had accumulated and augmented for a century turned New York into human history’s new center of gravity.

The serial efforts to bring the city to its knees would require making Western civilization doubt its strength, virtue, and purpose. And how we remember the attacks is proof that these efforts worked.

The whitewash of Sep. 11 was conducted in full view of the public and started almost immediately after the attacks, while aid workers at the World Trade Center were still sorting through the rubble and ashes.

Six days after the Twin Towers collapsed, then President George W. Bush visited the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., where Muslim leaders joined him onstage. Days earlier, the press attacked him when he described the U.S. government’s planned military response as a “crusade.” So he was eager to show he meant no offense to Muslim sensibilities still smarting nearly a millennium after the conclusion of the last Christian campaign for Jerusalem.

“The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam,” said Bush. “That’s not what Islam is all about,” he continued. And even more remarkably, “Islam is peace.”

Bush’s words had no demonstrable effect on Muslim masses across the world, giddily celebrating bin Laden’s raid. But with the president’s maudlin apologia for a crude belief system that inspired the murders and elevated the causes for which the son of Saudi elites had killed Americans, he unveiled the sentimental underpinnings of the approach that in the post-9/11 period has had disastrous consequences for the country.

Critics of the Global War on Terror argue that the administration’s failure to define a real enemy—rather than a term so abstract that world bodies can safely pretend not to know what distinguishes it from lawful dissent—showed the United States had no coherent strategy to keep Americans safe. But that’s not true: The GWOT had an internal logic. The argument was that we could protect Americans at home and U.S. interests abroad only by first securing the political rights of Muslims in the Middle East.

That’s why U.S. forces righteously focused their fire on those groups and regimes, like Saddam Hussein’s, who seemed to be the obstacle to the democratic aspirations of Muslim citizens. Once these people were free to exercise their civil rights and use their votes to improve their societies, the theory went, young Muslim men would no longer feel compelled to channel their frustrations into terrorism that kills Americans and U.S. allies.

In other words, the GWOT was a U.S. government initiative deploying enormous human, military, and other material resources to shape current-day reality after a fantasy crafted by progressive Middle East academics, Muslim apologists, and idealistic neoconservatives working inside the administration, along with spokesmen for the states and terror groups aiming their guns at Americans.

Agreeing on little else, together these ideological cohorts promoted an ideological fantasy: a culturally rich and politically sophisticated Middle East, like the convivencia of medieval Andalusia, where majority-Muslim polities lived in peaceful and tolerant coexistence with their Christian and Jewish neighbors. America’s post-9/11 mission was the war to restore “moderate Islam”—something that had never existed in the first place.

Washington became the global caliphate of moderate Islam, passing out billions of dollars to virtually anyone who flashed their credentials, as journalists, political activists, and even religious authorities swindled credulous policymakers with the promise that, since they had the ear of the Arab street, they would gladly help turn Muslim opinion in favor of America. It was a massive confidence scheme, gilded more lavishly than any before it and any of those likely to follow. Any Muslim who’d enjoyed even a brief flirtation with “extremism” and then saw the light became an instant Beltway celebrity, invited to lecture at the Pentagon or State Department and testify on Capitol Hill.

The problem was obvious to anyone who visited a D.C. think tank during the period: With so many moderate Muslims giving lectures, writing pamphlets, and doing media appearances, who was left in the region itself to steer Islam in a more moderate direction?

Obviously, no one.

From that heady ascent, Smith moves on along to the name ‘em/shame ’em section of this very lengthy but truly remarkable article. For instink:

The essential question made plain by the Rushdie affair was, What were the stewards of Western civilization prepared to do to protect it? Obviously, artists could be silenced by threats of violence—anyone can. But would the men and women elected to govern the societies that created the novel protect them against societies that played no role in the making of the modern world and were rather intent to destroy the spiritual and political principles, such as freedom of speech, undergirding them?

The answer was soon forthcoming.

A month after (Don DeLillo’s treatise on terrorism and Jurassic media) Mao II was published, Ettore Capriolo, the Italian translator of Rushdie’s book, survived an attempt on his life by a knife-wielding assassin; a week later, Rushdie’s Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi was stabbed to death. And then, in 1993, the Norwegian publisher of The Satanic Verses, William Nygaard, was shot three times but survived.

Capriolo’s assailant escaped; Igarashi’s murder remains unsolved; and Norwegian investigators later identified suspects in the Nygaard case, including an Iranian former diplomat and a Lebanese man, but there wasn’t enough evidence for an indictment.

Maybe Khomeini’s agents were lucky to escape three times or, more likely, Tokyo, Rome, and Oslo wanted to avoid the even bigger problems that were likely to ensue had they caught and convicted the assassins. In any case, the Hezbollah-linked attempt on Rushdie’s life in 2022 that left him blind in one eye answered the question once and for all: What were the nations of the West prepared to do to defend it? Nothing.

The global nightmare sparked by the Rushdie affair could have been avoided, said Omar Abdel-Rahman in 1989, “if we had punished Naguib Mahfouz for what he wrote in ‘Children of Gebelaawi,’ then Salman Rushdie never would have dared to write that book.”

Five years later, Mahfouz was stabbed in the neck on a Cairo street by an assailant who said he was inspired to kill the Nobel Prize winner because of Abdel-Rahman’s decree. And it was Abdel-Rahman’s rulings on the permissibility of killing infidels and apostates that made him the leading Islamist religious authority in all Egypt, the so-called spiritual leader of the terror group Gamaa Islamiya.

He also projected power far beyond the Nile. So, when Abdel-Rahman came to America in 1990, he meant to reap what Khomeini had sown.

Egyptian authorities had arrested Abdel-Rahman in 1981 for his part in the assassination of Anwar Sadat for signing a peace accord with Israel. In jail, he met Osama bin Laden’s future lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri, then a senior leader of Islamic Jihad, the terror group that partnered with Abdel-Rahman’s gang to kill Sadat. Abdel-Rahman was acquitted by Egyptian courts twice, but the State Department still put him on the terror watch list. Nonetheless, he was granted a visa in 1990 by consular officials at the U.S. embassy in Khartoum. “They didn’t follow the procedures,” said a State Department spokesperson at the time, who called it a “mistake.”

Wrong, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said back then: “The visa he got was not issued by mistake. It is because of the services he did.” According to Sadat’s successor, “The sheik has been a CIA agent since his days in Afghanistan.” There’s circumstantial evidence to support Mubarak’s claim.

What surprised U.S. officials most about 9/11 was that Muslims around the world so overwhelmingly supported it. Even after Khomeini had permanently altered the nature of international affairs by calling on the global ummah to kill Rushdie, Washington was still shocked to see footage of Muslims—most famously Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and refugee camps in Lebanon—ghoulishly celebrating the butchering of the main source of their income, Americans.

In that light, there was some logic to Bush’s freedom agenda—after all, you couldn’t wage war against more than a billion Muslims, especially when, as the Rushdie affair had shown, some of them among you were likely to make war on you. The problem was that even as the project to democratize the region faltered, the president and his aides pressed on.

The crucial test came with the 2006 Palestinian elections. Officials and outside experts warned that Hamas was certain to win big, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ignored them. Hamas swept the polls and soon went to war against Mahmoud Abbas’ U.S.-backed Fatah faction, leaving Hamas in charge of Gaza and Fatah ruling the West Bank. The important point is that given a choice, the Palestinians chose the more radical faction, the terrorists.

Just as they always have, and always will. Onwards.

Even as the freedom agenda crashed, the Bush administration admitted millions of Muslim and Arab immigrants to further advance the soft power component of the GWOT. To wit: America was making war against terrorists and bad regimes, not Muslims. The Republican White House was no more racist against Muslims than it was against Blacks, and as Secretary Rice had made clear, Muslims were in the same position Blacks were during Jim Crow, so to prove Americans were not racist, Muslims were invited to make their homes here.

In fact, what Rice and her boss had done was change the lens through which we Americans understand ourselves. In falsifying our collective history by likening it to something to which it bears no likeness, they changed the standard by which we measure the health of our society. America wasn’t healing itself by importing large portions of at least half a dozen shattered and despotic Middle Eastern societies. Rather, we were putting ourselves, our peace and prosperity, in danger.

The countries from which these immigrants came—Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, the West Bank, Gaza—were torn by civil wars and Islamist insurgencies. Having failed to remake these broken societies in our image, U.S. officials now opened the borders to people shaped by conflicts fought over ideas promoted in some of the worst places on earth.

Bush hardly deserves all the blame for presiding over the post-9/11 influx of Muslim immigrants. Muslim immigration continued under the presidencies of Obama and Biden, and in important categories—including refugee admissions during Obama’s final presidential year—the numbers rose substantially. President Donald Trump sought to stem the tide in his first term with the ban against nationals from several Muslim-majority nations, but he lost repeatedly in court. Singling out Muslim nations was racist, of course.

Even parts of Trump’s own administration opposed him. If we can’t give Iraqis U.S. visas, complained Secretary of Defense James Mattis, how can I convince Iraqi officials to let us stay in their country to kill terrorists?

Here Mattis was on to something, except in reverse. Mass immigration from the Muslim world conflicted with what Bush officials referred to as the fly-trap theory. “Our men and women in uniform are fighting terrorists in Iraq,” said Bush, “so we do not have to face them here at home.”

What does that mean today? Estimates show that there are now approximately 5.5 million Muslims in the United States, with an estimated 2 million to 2.5 million migrating to the United States since 9/11. According to a recent poll, 44% of Muslims in America favor Hamas. Does this mean Americans will be fighting terrorists at home?

Yes. The next mass terror attack is probably going to look like Oct. 7, and New York is a likely venue for it.

T’is beyond debate, I’d say. Any sensible sort up there that hasn’t fled the Big Rotten Apple already ought to be giving it some serious thought right about now.

The piece goes on from there; quite long, yes. But even so, you really don’t want to miss one word of it, I solemnly assure you with hand over heart.

Commies: who they are, what they do

Posted on September 12, 2026September 12, 2026 by Mike

The skinny, the real deal, the straight dope.

Older Conservatives have no idea that this is what every single Right-wing Millennial and Zoomer experience when they interact with anyone of a similar age to them on the Left.

We don’t see Leftists as union members, college professors, or Hollywood directors. We see them in the… https://t.co/QBnkJlJZkM pic.twitter.com/ojEpd2Pmme

— Christian Heiens 🏛 (@ChristianHeiens)

January 6, 2026

Via Glenn, who quips: “LEFTISM IS AN IDEOLOGY DESIGNED TO LET BAD PEOPLE AND LOSERS FEEL BETTER ABOUT THEMSELVES.” What can one say to that but, “Heh. Indeed.”

Update! Almost forgot to give y’all The Rest Of The Story, my new moniker for what was formerly referred to ‘round these h’yar parts as the “’Show more…’ workaround.” To wit:

We don’t see Leftists as union members, college professors, or Hollywood directors. We see them in the same way Mystery Grove described them.

They hate us. They want the worst for us. They have broadcast their intentions to hurt us for years, and there is no universe where we will ever allow these people to inflict their sadistic fantasies upon us without a fight.

True, dat. The US of A really should’ve had legislative suppression measures (at LEAST) against the Red Menace in place long, long ago. The fact that we didn’t accounts, in large measure, for why we find ourselves in the sad, sorry fix we’re in now.

SIDE NOTE: Working now on an extended post excerpting Lee Smith’s brilliant, deep-dive account detailing the modern-day success of the jihadist hordes, which have for all intents and purposes effectively defeated Western Civ utterly, after lo, these many centuries, mainly via adopting 2 (two) central tactics, namely A) never, ever losing aight of the primary goal; and B) by maintaining an infinite, inexhaustable reserve of calm, coolly confident patience.

Be on the lookout for it, gang; it ain’t gonna be an enjoyable read thanks to the depressing subject matter, but I promise it’s gonna be a good ‘un just the same.

Happy 9/11 Day!

Posted on September 11, 2026 by Mike

My usual sarcastic title, for a post that’s in no wise unserious.

Never Forget 9/11
I was sitting in my home office not far from the Pentagon when it happened. The TV behind me had the sound lowered, but I suddenly became aware of a major development. I reached for the remote and cranked up the audio.

A plane had struck one of the twin towers in New York. TV anchors initially speculated it must have been a small plane that had run off course, but a much larger plane struck the building, and then a second one hit the other tower. It quickly became clear America was under attack. I saw smoke rising from the Pentagon and went up on the roof to get a better look. My son, who was a firefighter, later told me he pulled bodies out of the wreckage. He still doesn’t like to talk about it, likely because of the horrible experience.

Later, United Flight 93 crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, because of the bravery of Todd Beamer, who led other passengers and crew in a revolt that stopped the hijackers from possibly hitting the White House or Capitol Building.

I wrote six columns in a row and many others following that modern day of infamy. Here are some excerpts that ring true 25 years later.

Follows, a sometimes-bloodcurdling reminiscence of that awful day, from a skilled writer who experience the waking nightmare in person, as it happened. In one specific instance, his sense of the likely near-future dovetails neatly with my own.

On the day of the terrorist attacks, I wrote: “It brings into clear focus the state of war that has existed for some time between America and those who oppose our values and way of life.” I called for the expulsion of people and organizations with ties to radical terrorist groups. Unfortunately, that did not happen, and the threat from within remains and appears to be growing. There are still unanswered questions about how those attacks were allowed to happen.

It didn’t take long before the “blame America first” crowd was heard from. They are still around, as we see in the current election cycle. The Mufti of Jerusalem had recently called on Allah to destroy America, which he said “is controlled by Zionist Jews.” Nothing has changed, and antisemitism has gotten worse.

And so it has indeed, unfortunately for saner sorts. Go read the whole thing anyhow, don’t let my harrumph-harrumping put you off any. That bit above, about what he aptly terms the “‘blame American first’ crowd” I find especially poignant; it’s the very reason why, when I originally got down to registering a domain for my newfound blog-home, I chose the one I did. Cold Fury felt like the obvious choice to me for a name. Seeing the pictures of liberal New Yorkers in the aftermath of 9/11—shocked, scared shitless, waiting anxiously for the inevitable next blow to fall on them, deeply dismayed, and entirely discombobulated—suddenly flying the stars ‘n’ stripes from the open (NYC in early Sept can be downright glorious weatherwise, as the Mohammedan Day Of Infamy had been) street-facing windows of their cramped apartments.

Lower est Sida shitlibs, too, seemed to be atypically unperturbed by the USAF/National Guard F15s and 16s overhead, flying CAP after the open barn door had been closed too late; only a few days ago, the sight of jet fighters circling overhead would have stirred them to bluster angrily against “Fascist intimidation”, “military thugs in their precious little Flying Death Machines,” and/or some other such brattish gasbaggery, along the way condemning the uncnsconable waste of expensive fossil fuel, needlessly polluting that good, clean NYC air with their toxic emissions. CONTRAILS, JUST LOOK! CONTRAAAIIIILS!!!

But NOOOOO; instead, they were gassing endlessly on about their newfound love for our/their country and all its works, with Jurassic Media helpfully bloviating, in their habitual forelock-tugging lockstep with Official Authority, about a New Era of American unity, patriotism, real Progress, and amicable brotherhood—I knew perfectly well, as every RightWingNaziDeathBeast© should have, that it was all arrant bollocks, insubstantial, featherweight puffery that would blow away again on the first light breeze.

Yeppers, it was clear to me that it would be no time at all before the Shitheel Left’s visceral, intractable loathing for America, Americans, American ideals and morals, and basically just any and everything you can think of even marginally associated with America would be oozing back to the surface again right away, as pus from an infected wound will do.

And boy oh boy, did I ever call THAT one right! Can’t really remember any exact dates off the top of my head, but it was no more than about three-four days (there was dust and filth, composed mostly of crushed sheetrock, ashes of bruned-up office supplies, curtains, and miscellaneous furnshings, as well as of course several thousand cremated bodies) coating Downtown: cars, streets, sidewalks, awnings, tree limbs, everything. A choking, foul-smelling smoke was still wafing up off the rubble piles; the smell was inescapable, my old among others of my NYC peeps complained about it continually) when I first saw a report on Teewee about some Village bitchtard female, late 30s-early 40s, not too bad-looking for her age, lifestyle, and ideology, really. who had taped up a homemade sign in her front window saying that, basically, America had it coming. In the accompanying interview with this slattern, she said the same an∂ even worse, musing moronically about why those poor, mistreated Arabs, having been run over, abused, and heartlessly exploited by us for so long, .hadn’t done something like this long ago.

And that’s when I knew what I had been fretting about was already becoming ugly reality: the shitlib Left entire would soon be joining this spoiled-rotten dullard in her shallow, feckless denunciation of the very system to which she owed her misspent existence. That’s when I first felt that strong, icy, steely gust of Cold Fury blasting through my body and my brain at Gale force 46.

Blame America for these unwarranted, ruinous assaults against it? SRSLY?!? Of course, according to these Sooperdoopergenii, the TRUE cause of 9/11 was long, untold years of American imperialism and expansionism, unearned wealth and ill-gotten prosperity, American cruelty, rapaciousness, and soulless exploitation of poorer and weaker nations, you see.

As if the complex history of 250 years of international relations and interaction between national governmental entities could be boiled down to a forlorn, trite, 3rd-grade-level analogy featuring a schoolyard bully ruthlessly beating up on younger, smaller, weaker kids and shaking them down for their lunch money. Leftwits will always identify most strongly with the helplessness of those weaker kids, casting in the “bully” role those savage, knuckledragging Others who aren’t quite so close as they to being living, breathing incarnations of Darwin’s idea of a soon-to-be extinct species from his Unfit class.

And they’re still at it today; all you have to do is take a casual gander, if you can stomach it, at the candidates running for Congress in places like Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and of course California and New York.Says all you’ll ever need to know about who actually remembers what around here.

Christ on a crutch, dude, New York Fucking City—ie, the place where GROUND ZERO is and always will be sitting, for an ever-dwindling few of us anyway—has gone and gotten itself a jihad-loving, fellow-terrorist-appointing, Jew-hating Commie MAYOR now, Gawd help us.

Cold Fury? Yeah, I should think so, pal. Sorry, not sorry. Don’t anyone get too het up when my bitterness over shitlib irreverence for 9/11, America, and all they represent gets expressed in a post or sarcastic post title here. I’m venting my spleen, taking out my frustration with the gormless, self-serving forgetfulness of those who dare to make ugly cracks about how we “deserved” 9/11, laugh at our ever-present grief for those poor, blameless sods who were murdered—wantonly slaughtered by Moslem animals that terrible morning, as if they were no more than livestock—and the dismal tide of rank sewage of every imaginable variety, all puked forth from the same old shitlib mouths.

Oh, how well I remember the year I posted an image of an upside-down American flag as the 9/11 masthead image—MAN, did I get some hate-email for that one! Knowing that an upside-down flag has been recognized as a distress signal by mariners since about, ohh, forever, the notion that this country was definitely in distress and needed help immediately was just the thing for 9/11, or so I thought.

Au contraire, mon frere! Contraire to the friggin MAX, I tells y’uns. Many of you felt I was being flippant, (mis)appropriating Old Glory without showing the respect, the deference and seriousness I should’ve, and did you fine folks ever let me know about it. I’ve received my fair share hate-emails over the years, buI can’t recall ever receiving so many of them in such a short time, no seeing this much passion, pain, and just plain old acrimony being expounded over some stupid something I did or said on this silly little ol’ blog.

Trust me, people, you will NOT be seeing any more upside-down US flags around these parts again. Not unless I’m writing the post from a seat on the deck of a foundering ketch, you won’t. And that, my friends, is a one-hunnert-an-ten percent Cold Fury Guar-on-TEE. As Ringo always says: Period fucking DOT.

STANDARD IRRITATING DIGRESSION: Nowadays, running across the words “cold fury” in some novel or other I’m reading always brings a smile to my craggy, withered old face. Makes me want to write to the author and insist that the “C” and “F” therein should always be in upper-case, according to the universally-acknowledged standards of modern English-language grammar. I have actually sat down and composed such a missive a time or two, always with as much good humor and lightness of heart as this half-mad old dog can scrape up. Never have actually hit “Send,” I do confess. Not yet, at any rate.

Anyhoo: if the Left’s vomitous, abominable tsunami of provocation, credible threats of violence, grievous bodilfy harm, and outright murder, and just general abuse both rhetorical and physical—intolerable speech and acts which are not just ongoing but actually getting worse and worse, all to date unanswered by those who are pleased to think of themselves as “better men” than the ones presently kicking their asses up between their shoulder blades, all the while sermonizing. to their like-minded confreres in favor of an impassive, mild, restrained, supine response, if in fact a response absolutely MUST be made—doesn’t make you mad enough to want to disassemble The Enemies, Domestic™ with your bare fucking hands (special tools neither needed nor desired)—then I can think of nothing whatsoever to say to you. It’s enough to make any half-decent sort literally sick to his/her/its pyloric sphincter. To my way of thinking, Cold Fury© is the only rational response to it that doesn’t of necessity introduce edged, projectile, explosive, eletroshock, nor bludgeon-type weapons into the imbroglio.

Not YET, at any rate.

After 9/11/01, Business As Usual ought to’ve been over and done with, gone for good, never to be missed or lamented. A good many of the more-Pollyanna-ishly hopeful among us seriously imagined that the terrorist attacks and the All Americans Togther feel-good chorus in their aftermath woud bring about the dawning of a New Era, wasting many column inches/pixels heralding the coming of a more forthright, honest, brave, and clear-eyed Golden Age.

Alas, it was no such thing, as a fair few of us already knew. The Old Folly was only sleeping, not dead, and almost immediately the Ghastly Left’s ragtag assemblage of spirit-thingies wholly dedicated to blanket opposition against tangible, visible reality; basic human decency; humility; common sense; traditional values; freedom; and righteousness arose from their dank, lonely, foul-smelling crypts one by one until all were present and accounted for. The demonic spectral entities had been recalled to Earth, out of the most noxiously-reeking precincts of Gehenna itself, by the Leftard leadership-coven incantating away in their private Las Vegas Shabbat Suie—a ghostly army assembled, organized, and ready to once again set upon the sensible, upright, clean-living Americans their dimbulb Leftist masters hate so very desperately after a brief interlude off pretending to be all about unity, patriotism, and the American way after seeing a huge majority of NormalAmericans all fired up to bark back and wreak roper vengeance upon their longtime tormenters of the Traitor Left.

Plus, Dolly died, and that grievous loss didn’t brighten anybody’s mood much, I shouldn’t think.

Okay, okay, I admit I mighta got a little bit fanciful there, took the imagining-and-supposing and psycho-delicized ideation just a leetle too far, as now and again I can be prone to do. On the other hand, though, you all know as well as i do that if those Hateful Leftists WERE capable of summoning an army of Hell’s Own SpecWar fiends. ghouls, and monsters to wage all-out war against us Just Leave Us Alone, PLEASE™ Real Americans, they wouldn’t waste a minute thinking it over, they’d just do it, as a certain shambolic, once-beloved, successful, and financially solvent sneaker company used to say back before they destroyed themselves via going full-on Wokester.

Forgotten

Posted on September 9, 2026 by Mike

Remember “never to forget, never to forgive”? Nah, me neither.

The jumpers started at 8:46.

Networks had the tape. They hid Americans choosing the air over the fire.

Then they spent 25 years treating the word Islam like a crime. The footage was “too graphic.” The truth was forbidden.

This day is stamped in my heart forever… pic.twitter.com/90UcqXVv2I

— Amy Mek (@AmyMek) September 9, 2026

I have several friends who were close by the WTC that black morning, and they said the sickening “thump” the bodies of the jumpers made when they hit the pavement, over and over and over again, like some kind of hellish rain, was something they will never really get over. I do not doubt them, nor should you.

Uprising

Posted on September 6, 2026September 6, 2026 by Mike

Is a Great English Awakening at long last at hand? Has The Power finally stepped over a Big Red Line, done and said things that are too objectionable, too flagrantly obnoxious, even monstrous, to be borne without vociferous, active protest? Can these protests amount to anything worthwhile, or are we seeing just another case of way too little, way too late? Bootneck Major has a look-see.

The Dover Protest: Observations

This being my neck of the woods, I thought I’d take a trip down to see what all the fuss is about.

In fact, I can’t get anywhere near the seafront because of the extensive road closures, so I’m having to rely largely on the imagery available online.

Several things stand out.

Firstly, the tactics.

Whatever the adequacy of the police intelligence beforehand, the protest itself appears to involve considerable planning. The logistics, coordination and timing look extremely well organised.

Then there is the demeanour of the protesters. Almost silent. Non-violent. Disciplined.

Their clothing is coordinated and remarkably uniform. I use the term “uniform” deliberately.

The near-universal face covering also frustrates identification and subsequent intelligence gathering. Whether that is its principal purpose or not, it is certainly the effect.

Most strikingly, there is a conspicuous absence of the nationalist imagery normally associated with protests of this kind. Few, if any, English flags. Instead, there is a preponderance of Christian symbolism.

This creates the impression of something framed less as a conventional “far-right” demonstration and more as a cultural and spiritual show of strength.

Hmmm, interesting indeed, I think. That said, and without wishing to rain on any parades here, I do nonetheless retain serious doubt as to whether what needs to be done can ever possibly BE done without resort to what we’ll call the Kelly Bundy Option: swift and blinding violence.

Can any of us really be so deluded as to imagine that these greedy, grubby baglappers might actually step down from their cozy, too-lucrative sinecures just because of some nonviolent street protests, however widespread they may be? It is to laugh.

It saddens me no end to have to say it, but all the organization, discipline, dedication, and careful planning in the world ain’t ever gonna alter the one inescapable truth: No, it ain’t ever gonna happen. I could easily be all wet about this, and desperately hope that I will be proven so ere the end. Alas, I don’t expect to be. Back over to BM for some closing thoughts.

We should be careful about claiming to know precisely who is organising it, or what every participant believes. But we should be equally careful not to dismiss what is plainly being communicated.

These men are angry. Really, deeply angry. They appear disciplined, organised and intent on demonstrating both their frustration and their strength.

Whatever one thinks of them, that is the significant point. This does not look spontaneous, chaotic or unserious.

It looks deliberate.

And it would be foolish not to ask what comes next.

I’ll put a solid “yes” to that sentiment, and keep on wishing the best for these hardy, put-upon Brits. Godspeed to you, dear Cousins; may your efforts to reclaim your nation from treacherous, brazen ProPols in league with your demonic enemies be crowned with success. May said success enable you to return England to the English people who are its rightful stewards.

Be assured, there is a large like-minded cohort over here across the Pond who—having observed your ever more tragic plight with anguish, horror, and a choking, mushrooming fury—have been heartened by this recent protests against this patent bullshitm, confirming your flat, unequivocal rejection of the unfeeling, inhumane, self-serving skullduggery of your criminally perfidious Lords and Masters. We will be watching your progress closely, and with great interest.

By their fruits votes shall ye know them

Posted on September 6, 2026September 6, 2026 by Mike

Thus it now is, thus it ever shall be.

192 House Dems refuse to disavow socialism in telling vote ahead of midterms: ‘Insidious movement’
Almost every House Democrat on Tuesday voted against a congressional resolution disavowing socialism and calling for the enactment of President Trump’s election security bill.

The non-binding resolution, introduced by Rep. Jeff Crank (R-Colo.), asked lawmakers to condemn and denounce “socialism in all its forms,” including the increasingly influential Democratic Socialists of America movement, and oppose the implementation of socialist policies in the US.

The resolution passed in a 220-192 vote, with 192 Democrats opposing the measure.

Eight Democrats voted with all Republicans in support of the resolution: Reps. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Darren Soto (D-Fla.), Jared Golden (D-Maine),
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), Don Davis (D-NC) and Gabe Vasquez (D-NM).

Two Democrats voted present: Reps. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) and Maggie Goodlander (D-NH).

“The DSA candidate platform stands in direct contrast to our republic,” Crank charged ahead of the vote. “Getting rid of the United States Senate, open borders, defunding the police, allowing non-citizens to vote in federal elections — those aren’t consistent with our Constitution.

“DSA is an insidious movement within the Democratic Party.”

Let’s not kid ourselves, Rep Crank; this is but a sign o’ the times, no more, no less. The D卐M☭CRATs are and have for many years been far more socialist than not.

The fact that no more than eight (8) of these foul fiends could bring themselves to openly stake out a position flatly denouncing a totalitarian/authoritarian ideology which—in addition to the misery, human suffering, and staggering number of deaths it has directly inflicted—stands in diametric opposition to and contradiction of the Founding principles upon which this once-great nation still (nominally, shakily) stands. The self-serving cowardice seen here says everything we’ll ever need to know about the contemptible shitweasels.

Forget about actually opposing socialism/Marxism/Communism/whatevs. Forget about taking effective action to reverse socialism’s slo-mo creep through American government, institutions, and culture. Forgot about the gormless, puling invertebrates troubling themselves to take a stand for their own country, its people, and its future, if any. Forget about the fact that socialism has filed every time, in every place and circumstance, in which it has tried. Forget about all that; these D卐M☭CRAT dastards couldn’t even muster the cojones to make the non-binding token gesture that a “Yea” vote would’ve amounted to.

My God, even their dishonesty is fundamentally dishonest, it would seem.

So sure, let them crawl, let them creep; let them writhe and dissemble all they like trying to mumble, grumble, mutter, and moan their way out of the spot they’ve put themselves in. Whatever barrage of duplicity and/or misrepresentation they attempt to cloak themselves with, the factual reality of who and what they are speaks for itself, period fucking DOT. Trust the treacherous, venomous serpents at your own grave peril, and don’t be acting all surprised when you get yourself bitten, either.

“Insidious,” you said? Sorry, Charlie, “insidious” don’t even BEGIN to cover this.

You say you want a revolution…

Posted on September 5, 2026September 5, 2026 by Mike

Well, you know.

Insurrection for Real
“The Democrat agenda is to legalize crime and criminalize the middle class.”—Stephen Miller

Not to put too fine a point on it: but whenever a lawfare ninja of the Democratic Party utters the phrase “our democracy,” you must know that they are completely full of shit. For sure, they do not mean anything remotely related to an American commonweal, as understood by people of sound mind and good faith. What they mean by “our democracy” is the state as a racketeering operation run for the sole benefit of their party members, along with the ruthless power to annihilate their opponents and critics.

The war-cry “our democracy” only signifies how degenerate they have become. Though they yearn to win control of Congress in these midterm elections by any means necessary, the party’s actual prospects are not so great, having nominated a pack of obvious morons and reprobates such as Abdul el-Sayed (MI), James Talarico (TX), Angie Nixon (FL), Troy Jackson (ME), and Peggy Flanagan (MN) for the US Senate.

Now, it appears that President Donald Trump is determined to clean up our fraud-ridden election process this year, one way or another. Hopes are nearly dead for Congress passing a comprehensive election reform law, the SAVE Act, so he has looked to other measures. One is a procedure for the US Postal Service to match and track mail-in ballots to real persons with actual addresses listed on state voter rolls. The matter is still working through courts. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has pledged to send about 1000 election monitors to polling places around the country as “observers,” which could obviate arrant shenanigans like the broken toilet ploy in Fulton County, GA, 2020.

All that is a prelude to a disturbing roll-out of events that anyone paying attention can see coming this fall. The Democratic Party has massive resources not just to stall and obstruct pre-election reform, but to mount a vicious resistance after the fact if it doesn’t produce their desired result. They could go as far as to repudiate the election, refuse to accept its results. If the president does issue that NatSec EO prior to the election, blue state officials could refuse to hold elections under new rules. Thirty states have already refused to comply with DOJ demands to submit their official voter rolls for evaluation. Some of the aforementioned activist NGOs have promised post-election street actions (demonstrations that could easily turn into riots).

In the face of that, you can foresee the necessity of the president having to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1878 (10 U.S.C. §§ 251–255). The act provides an exception to the Posse Commitatus Act, also 1878, which forbids the use of the US military to act as police inside the USA. Under the Insurrection Act, the president can federalize states’ national guard units to enforce federal law or protect constitutional rights when ordinary civilian means are not enough.

The Act has been used before in our history about thirty times by fifteen presidents, including the Great Railway Strike of 1877 (Pres. Hayes); the Pullman Strike of 1894 (Pres. Cleveland); the Little Rock School Desegregation resistance of 1957 (Pres. Eisenhower sent in the 82nd Airborne). Pres. Lyndon Johnson invoked it three times: the Selma to Montgomery March of 1965; the Detroit riots of 1967; and the riots that followed the Assassination of Martin Luther King, 1968. Pres. George H. W. Bush used it in 1994 to quell the Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles.

If Mr. Trump invokes the Insurrection Act around any violence or organized election rebellion this year, he will invite the Democrats to label him an autocrat, a tyrant, a wannabe king, as they have been taunting him and goading him with for years. Let’s suppose that will be enough to inflame the party’s activists. I think you can see how this lays the groundwork for something that looks like a new civil war. The repudiation of election results by blue states would be enough.

If they’re gonna smear him anyway, regardless of what he does or does not—and they ARE going to, and we all know it—then who gives a flying fig what they may say? Let ’em whine, let ’em bitch, let ’em cavil and threaten and bluster to their hearts’ content, and just go ahead and do the things that need doing and leave them to their bubbling, frothy misery.

Then, if in response they start in with yet another round of their patented violent fascist rioting, looting, and burning, then shoot their scraggly, seditious asses and leave ’em lay to bleed out in the street, in job lots. As great American Curtis LeMay knew: if you kill enough of them they stop fighting.

As I’ve said lo, these many times: if they really think they want another Civil War, then they should be given one…good and hard, until the very thought of such a horrific eventuality makes them retch their nuts up.

Kunstler goes on from there to close things out with a casual, breezy “Of course, it will be the end of the Democratic Party.” As if that were a bad thing, somehow.

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