Where Do We Go from Here?

Ain’t skeered

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

Schlichter’s title contains an unfounded assumption. But other than that, he nails it.

The D.C. establishment and their media rump-kissers went into a full-on spazz mode when President Trump continued his unbroken streak of awesomeness by appointing Ric Grenell the acting Director of National Intelligence, thereby threatening the intelligence community’s unbroken streak of failure. None of our media idiot savants – a term which is only half-accurate – thought to ponder the question of exactly how Ric’s appointment could possibly make the IC worse. Its legacy of ashes is a national embarrassment. But then, the purpose of the currently-constituted intelligence community, the foreign policy community, and every wing of our incompetent, inept, and corrupt establishment is not to serve the people of the United States. Its purpose is to serve the personal interests of the currently-constituted intelligence community, the foreign policy community, and every wing of our incompetent, inept, and corrupt establishment.

Dead on the money so far. But then:

Its denizens fear that this fearless patriot is going to burn down their whole shoddy edifice, and we can only hope they’re right.

Flick that Bic, Ric.

We can hope so, yeah. No real harm in keeping a positive attitude, right?

On the other hand, when has anybody seen any evidence of fear on their part, really? I haven’t. Anger? Yeah. Narcissism? Sure. Assumptions of superiority and entitlement? Absolutely. Vengefulness, pettiness and spite, a strong determination to fight in defense of their presumptive turf? Yep, yep, yep, and damned skippy.

So what real evidence can be cited in support of Kurt’s contention that they’re afraid, they’re very afraid? Or even that they should be? Yes, the Deep State establishment is shrieking, all right. Along with the rest of their ideological confreres on the Left, when are they not? They’ve been shrieking about absolutely everything Trump has done or attempted to do since November 2016, even before. In the case of FedGovCo specifically, however, I do NOT take the anguished caterwauling as evidence Deep State termites are actually afraid of anything. I think of it more along the lines of battlespace prep. Or psyops, maybe.

Kurt goes on from there to laud Grennel for previous accomplishments and overall attitude, and rightly so. Grennel’s appointment bodes well for several reasons. And this bodes even better:

Today, we’re hearing that Kash Patel, a National Security Council staffer and former aide to Devin Nunes, has been tapped as a senior advisor to Grenell. Patel has also been a loyal ally to the President and to Republicans. Patel wrote the famous February 2018 “Nunes memo,” a document which alleged that the FBI used the phony Steele dossier as the basis of their application to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. In his December 2019 report, Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed the accuracy of the entire document.

The importance of having two loyal and like-minded Trump allies in place at the helm of the DNI cannot be overstated.

CBS News’ Catherine Herridge reported that Grenell has been given a mandate which is to “#cleanhouse including a “top to bottom” review of DNI operations.”

This is good news indeed. It appears that President Trump is starting the clean sweep of the government agencies he hadn’t known was so crucial early on.

It’s good news right enough, and I’m glad to see it. Nonetheless, where Kurt sees a glass at least half-full here, I can’t help but also see…well, this:

Three separate stories converged to drive home the obvious truth that America has a two-tiered justice system: the Justice Department’s decision to not indict the guilty-as-sin plotter Andrew McCabe, the attempt to give Roger Stone an outrageous jail sentence, and the Army’s decision to shrug that one of its officers attempted to orchestrate the removal of his commander-in-chief.

There are a couple of simple reasons for this. The most obvious reason is that the entire federal bureaucracy is one giant Democrat machine. This cannot be repeated enough. Nearly every member of almost every single department is a Democrat.

How bad is it? Back in 2016, 95 percent of campaign contributions for the presidential race went to Her Royal Awfulness. The Justice Department overachieved, coming in at 97 percent.

Liberal scolds are always lecturing Americans on how they are racist, imperialist, misogynistic, homophobic monsters, even if they don’t know it due to implicit bias. This is nonsense. But it is curious that these same fools see no problem with implicit bias when the entire government-media-academia complex is one giant exercise in leftist groupthink.

Daniels is talking about the DoJ here, but it’s still relevant; if anything, the IC is even worse. And, as he later cautions, “Identifying the problem is far simpler than coming up with practical solutions.”

It’s as I’ve said all along: a single President is never going to be able to force the Shadow Government genie back into its bottle; no, not even Trump, not even with two terms. The nation has been lured, tugged, and/or dragged—according to which MO seemed most practical or effective at the time—consistently Leftward for nigh on a century now, with a strident, near-continuous effort beginning in the 60s. Anyone seriously thinking that all this might be corrected in a scant eight years, by just one man, isn’t really thinking. He’s dreaming.

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

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

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

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

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

And now there’s this…

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

Did you catch that?

Bernie.

Was.

Freakin’.

Briefed.

Briefed.

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

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

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

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

Oh, no…

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

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

We are second class citizens in our own country.

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

It’s all got to come down… All of it.

Yep, ‘fraid so.

How the Trump admin went off the rails

Posted on February 15, 2020 by Mike

Personnel is policy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shut up, he explained

Posted on February 14, 2020February 14, 2020 by Mike

Another complaint about Trump’s Tweeting.

In a surprising rebuke Thursday, Attorney General William Barr criticized President Donald Trump’s tweets about Roger Stone’s case and other Justice Department matters.

“I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases,” Barr told ABC News’ Pierre Thomas in an interview.

Trump on Tuesday blasted federal prosecutors’ recommendation that Stone serve up to nine years in prison for a conviction that stemmed from a case that started under the special counsel.

I doubt Barr is gonna get very far with that one, although I must also say I can somewhat understand his concern. As supportive as I’ve been all along of Trump’s deft, canny use of Twitter, Barr could have a point.

In essence Bill Barr is working to emphasize there’s no undue influence, and also emphasize the appearance of no undue influence. The problem, however, is that the media will create the impression of influence even if, and despite the reality of, no Trump influence.

Nothing Bill Barr does and/or says will stop the media from falsely creating a narrative that says President Trump and Bill Barr are colluding to target their political opposition.

With that reality in mind, the answers in the ABC interview as delivered by Bill Barr only pour fire on a furnace of media intent to controversialize President Trump’s communication approach.

Barr’s intention may have been good (albeit selfish), but declaring that President Trump’s free speech and opinion as an impediment to Barr’s ability is just nonsense.

Yep, pretty much. Ultimately, though, there’s a solution to Barr’s dilemma, one which is simplicity itself:

You know what would stop Trump tweeting about the DOJ? Throw someone in fucking prison already. We can see you Deep State assholes.

— The OG Hillbilly (@LauraLMonroe33) February 14, 2020

Right out of the damned park, girlfriend!

Still a ways to go

Posted on February 13, 2020February 13, 2020 by Mike

Welcome to the party and all, I guess. But see if you can pick out the part I’m more and more tired of.

You see, I was one of those Democrats who considered anyone who voted for Trump a racist. I thought they were horrible (yes, even deplorable) and worked very hard to eliminate their voices from my spaces by unfriending or blocking people who spoke about their support of him, however minor their comments. I watched a lot of MSNBC, was convinced that everything he had done was horrible, that he hated anyone who wasn’t a straight white man, and that he had no redeeming qualities.

But when I witnessed the amount of hate coming from the left in this small, niche knitting community, I started to question everything. I started making a proactive effort to break my echo chamber by listening to voices I thought I would disagree with. I wanted to understand their perspective, believing it would confirm that they were filled with hate for anyone who wasn’t like them.

That turned out not to be the case.

It’s pretty much your standard-issue recounting of a Lefty’s shock to learn that the bubble she’s been living in was filled all along with lies and propaganda, with nary a truth or hard fact allowed entry. Then:

I started to question everything. How many stories had I been sold that weren’t true? What if my perception of the other side is wrong? How is it possible that half the country is overtly racist? Is it possible that Trump derangement syndrome is a real thing, and had I been suffering from it for the past three years?

To ask it is to answer it, each and every one. Now to the meat of the thing, such as it is.

Once we got inside, the atmosphere was jubilant. It was more like attending a rock concert than a political rally. People were genuinely enjoying themselves. Some were even dancing to music being played over the loudspeakers. It was so different than any other political event I had ever attended. Even the energy around Barack Obama in 2008 didn’t feel like this.

I had attended an event with all the Democratic contenders just two days prior in exactly the same arena, and the contrast was stark. First, Trump completely filled the arena all the way up to the top. Even with every major Democratic candidate in attendance the other night, and the campaigns giving away free tickets, the Democrats did not do that. With Trump, every single person was unified around a singular goal. With the Democrats, the audience booed over candidates they didn’t like and got into literal shouting matches with each other. With Trump, there was a genuinely optimistic view of the future. With the Democrats, it was doom and gloom. With Trump, there was a genuine feeling of pride of being an American. With the Democrats, they emphasized that the country was a racist place from top to bottom.

Now, Trump is always going to present the best case he can. And yes, he lies. This is provable.

Oh, izzat so? Name one, then. Name just fucking ONE. No, I do NOT mean some spurious morsel of twipe you’ve been spoonfed, either taken out of context or manufactured from whole cloth by CNN or some other pack of balls-out bullshit artists. I mean one genuine, bona-fide, shame-the-devil lie. Go ahead, I’ll wait. But not for long.

No matter how deep or complete the conversion, they always, always, always say this. Hell, the NeverTrumpTard pseudo “Right” never seems to STOP saying it. But as “provable” as the claim is supposed to be, I have yet to see even ONE of the people so blandly making it offer any of that “proof” to back it up.

Note that my annoyance in no way equates to declaring that Trump never lies, or never has lied. Exaggeration and hyperbole? Stipulated. These are both an integral part of his personality and, I believe, tactics Trump deliberately employs when he thinks them useful. Still, though, even they aren’t LIES.

Now, this woman seems one hell of a lot more broad-minded, thoughtful, and reasonable than the overwhelming majority of her fellow Lefty lemmings, so hats off to her for that much at least. Maybe if she continues along the path of this first exploratory step, she’ll find her eyes opened further—her vision becoming clearer, her intellectual horizons broader. Eventually, perhaps she’ll recognize that ALL the bushwa she’s uncritically swallowed all these years for the deceitful manipulation it really is. Such is to be hoped, anyway. I will not speculate on how likely I think it might be.

Via Glenn, who says: “I love that it was the PC meanness of SJW types in the knitting community — yes — that opened her eyes.” Heh. Indeed.

Night of the long knives

Posted on February 12, 2020February 12, 2020 by Mike

Quoth Hoft: “It’s payback time.” It damned sure is. And will be for a long, long time to come, too.

Earlier today four Mueller attorneys resigned from the Roger Stone case. This was after the DOJ lashed out at the Mueller investigators for its abusive sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone.

All four prosecutors signed Roger Stone’s sentencing memo seeking an excessive prison term of 7 to 9 years and all four are now off the case.

During his conversation with Lou Dobbs Devin Nunes teases corruption of Deep State will be revealed in the coming weeks.

Rep. Devin Nunes: Let me tell you something else…The lawyers who stepped down today the prosecutors who suggested 7 to 9 for Roger Stone. We believe that this is not going to be the only example. We believe there is other examples of things they did during the Mueller investigation that I think you and your listeners and the American people will be very interested to learn in the coming weeks. As we start to unpeel the onion of what the Mueller team was really doing. Because I would say this, when Mueller was appointed we have to ask ourselves, he walks in the door the first day and he said, “OK, show me all the evidence you got on the Russians?” They’re like, “Bob, sorry we don’t have any Russians here. We don’t have any evidence.” So what the hell did they do for two years? They set up an obstruction of justice trap. And they went after a whole lot of people who have now got sentenced. Some already served their time. And I think all of this has to be called into question now.

I’ve heaped praise on Nunes here several times before, which he richly deserves. He’s been a real bulldog right along; his work on the Mueller farce, Schittpeachment, et al was nothing less than stellar. So if he says more fecal matter is about to impact the rotary impeller for reals…well, let’s just say I’d be more inclined to take his word for it than damned near anybody else’s. He’s solid, he’s fearless, he’s honest. If anybody can be trusted to haul the Deep State/Ogabe/Clinton sleaze and corruption out into the full light of day by the scruff of its filthy neck, it’s Devin Nunes.

The biggest question of them all

Posted on February 10, 2020February 10, 2020 by Mike

Boy, talk about questions the Democrat-Socialists don’t want to see asked.

At what point is it fair to say that a political faction presents a threat to the country?

Wherever that point may lie, I think we can safely say that we’re well past it now. Heck, they’ve been all but openly telling us for a goodish while now; it’s probably about time Americans start taking them at their word, and responding accordingly.

This question loomed over impeachment week, which saw the country struggling to digest a disorienting series of dramatic contrasts. First we had the Democrats’ demoralizing meltdown in Iowa, followed by Trump’s optimistic but sometimes staid State of the Union Tuesday night and his subsequent victory over impeachment. All of that was followed by the president’s formless, angry victory speech against his enemies on Thursday.

In a way, Trump’s State of the Union was “fake.” Most of those addresses are forgettable by design, but this time convention was taken to the limit. Trump’s address was solemn, uplifting, and occasionally boring. The theme, a “Great American Comeback,” powerfully evoked a yearning for national renewal, as Trump predicted, “the best is yet to come.”

But the elephant in the room, of necessity, was left out of the speech: the gravest threat to the State of our Union is internal.

…Trump was not there (the victory speech—M) for a speech or a news conference, he said, but to celebrate. But what he had to say was terribly sad. President Trump has spent the majority of his first term fighting a war of succession. To the ruling class, Trump’s election was a catastrophe like no other in American history because it placed a man who they had not vetted in the halls of power. They responded by taking the country on a deranged, three-year detour through Eastern Europe.

First it was a maundering Russian fever dream that held its target audience, the corporate leftist media, in rapt attention for the better part of two years, then a Ukranian soap opera that was somehow even more esoteric and insane. It was a joke from start to finish, but also it wasn’t. It did profound harm to the nation. Nothing like it has ever happened in American history.

Trump spoke about America the way that all presidents customarily spoke about it before America was taken over by people who obviously despise it.

In a normal country where the people’s priorities are paramount, his remarks would have been received with unanimous enthusiasm. But Democrats crabbed. Pelosi glowered the whole time, then petulantly ripped Trump’s speech in two at the finish. The media denounced Trump’s “partisan” tone, but what they clearly found most bothersome were his patriotic themes. The president gave a full-throated defense of America with zero apologies. Democrats proved how much they love America by hissing.

What they call dictatorship is a democratically elected president appearing, at least momentarily, to get the upper hand over a managerial elite. To them, it’s as if endless night has settled over the land. In this deep darkness, the only Republican they find palatable is Mitt Romney, because he does exactly what they tell him to do. This was never about the Constitution or Ukraine or military aid or Russia or what Trump said on a phone call or even Trump.

It was about power.

DINGDINGDINGDINGDING!! We have a winner!

The neat-o twist here is that the moment any faction demonstrates such maniacal lust for untrammeled power is also the moment the people must resolve to go to any lengths to ensure they never get it.

This one is a real scorcher, folks, a flat, no-bull statement of a stripe that’s somewhat unusual at American Greatness. Yes, it’s really nothing you guys haven’t seen plenty of already from Ye Olde Blogghoste here. Yes, AG hosts firebrands like Julie Kelly right alongside more sober and staid analysts like VDH and Codevilla. No, I would NOT call AG milquetoast, or timid, or even reserved, not at all. Still, to see a piece as explicit, maybe even radical, as this over at AG comes as a bit of a surprise, at least to me. An encouraging one, of course; the Democrat-Socialist threat to America’s future won’t ever be nullified via pulled punches and Queensberry rules. It will have to be widely acknowledged under its rightful name before we can hope to overcome it.

From his (our) lips to Republican ears

Posted on February 9, 2020February 9, 2020 by Mike

Daniel Bobinski re-emphasizes a crucial point.

To every Republican Senator, Congressman, and Congresswoman,

The State of the Union address has been delivered. The impeachment trial in the Senate is over. Trump has been acquitted, and the Democrats have egg on their face. Not only from Trump’s acquittal, but also from the Iowa Caucus fiasco. As of this writing, there are 268 days until the 2020 election. It’s time for Republicans to shine, but will you?

Some say Republicans don’t fight for their platform because they’re afraid Leftists will call them names. Well, it should be obvious by now that the Left slaps vicious ad hominem labels on conservatives without cause, plus they make up stories about events that never took place. They even send out their talking points to their partners in the legacy media so everyone uses the same labels and makes the same accusations.

No matter what conservatives do, Leftists attack like starving alligators. Republicans must realize that this is going to happen no matter what – and press forward anyway.

My question for Republicans on Capitol Hill is, “Can you maintain the momentum?” Earlier today I saw a screen shot of a post-SOTU fundraising email sent from Nancy Pelosi, saying, “We can’t let up.”

To all Republicans in the Senate and the House I say the same thing: You can’t let up.

Dan takes on off from there, delving a lot deeper into the topic than I did in last night’s post. You’ll definitely want to read all of it.

(Via Larwyn)

Californication

Posted on February 9, 2020February 9, 2020 by Mike

Lie down with Democrats, get up with flees.

Beset by high housing costs, crippling taxes, astronomical gas prices, wildfires, and rolling blackouts, Californians are heading for the exits. That’s sparking anxiety in places where these Golden State migrants are relocating. A mayoral candidate in Boise, Idaho, recently suggested building a wall to keep out Californians, who account for 60 percent of domestic migration into the growing state. The election of increasingly progressive candidates in Colorado sparked talk there of the “Californication” of the Centennial State.

Early last year, the Dallas News described the “California-ing” of North Texas, citing a study showing that 8,300 Californians move to the area yearly. Texas governor Greg Abbott launched a petition titled “Don’t California My Texas.”

Much of this anxiety revolves around fears that the migrants will transform the politics and culture of the places that they’re moving to—bringing an appetite for big, intrusive government. But a new survey suggests that, while plenty of people are looking to leave California, many are fleeing the state’s high costs and politics and may not be interested in voting for the same things in their new homes. The poll, by the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, found that 52 percent of California residents are considering migrating. As these polls go, that’s exceptionally high, putting California in the same category as some other states with very unhappy residents. A recent poll in New Jersey, for instance, found that about 44 percent of its people are looking to depart, while 50 percent of Connecticut residents indicated a desire to leave the state in a 2014 Gallup poll, the highest figure among any state at that time.

The article goes on to suggest that common assumptions about who’s doing the fleeing from collapsing Red territories might be off, although the evidence I see around here says otherwise.

(Via Linda Fox)

History, repeating itself

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

Who they are, what they do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FUBAR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are no easy solutions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exile for a reason

Posted on January 26, 2020January 26, 2020 by Mike

Telling the inconvenient truths.

Michele Antaki—a former UN interpreter, journalist, and translator—has written and sent me the following exclusive summary of a recent speech given in French by Ernest Tigori, an Ivorian intellectual and political activist, exiled in France, and winner of the 2017 Nelson Mandela Prize for Literature. In his new book “L’Afrique à désintoxiquer” (“Detoxifying Africa”), he explains why it is crucial to lead Europe out of repentance for its alleged crimes in Africa, and lead Africa out of infantilization. He presented it to great acclaim at a recent patriotic forum in Paris. Antaki’s write-up begins:

Since the 1990s, Tigori has vigorously denounced the political class ruining his country, and the general lack of prospects compelling Africans to leave their countries in droves, in search of a better future.

Regarding Europe, Tigori warns that uncontrolled migration from the South to the North shore of the Mediterranean may destabilize it beyond repair and that ethnic wars could well be looming on the horizon.

“It saddens me”, he says,” to see the white man beating his breast over and over, too emasculated to put up any resistance to people who’ve come to threaten him on his own doorstep”. He believes that a toxic mix of guilt, “human rightsism”, political naivety and crass ignorance of History have a debilitating effect on Europeans’ capacity to fight the invasion.

He accuses the corrupt African leaders of destroying the lives of hundreds of millions of human beings in all impunity, but is equally critical of the ideologues who are paving the way for them. They should stop blaming it all – slavery, the slave trade, colonialism, neocolonialism and racism – on a forever repentant Europe, who now has to carry the burden of this mass immigration to atone for its supposed sins against Africa.

Tigori explains how the History of black Africa from the 15th to the 20th centuries has intentionally been falsified in the 1940s by Stalinist strategists and their Communist followers, whose covert aim it was to tarnish the image of Western European nations, in order to drive them out of their colonial possessions and take their place. Up until now, that is 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the lies have stuck.

The myth the author debunks is twofold. No, Europe is not responsible for the practice of slavery in black Africa, nor is it guilty of colonial crimes. And, no, Africans did not allow themselves to be enslaved or colonized as “poor hapless victims”.

He goes on to explain how the myth of Europe’s debt towards Africa is perpetuated by certain powers that have a stake in keeping it alive. This myth, born out of Cold War Soviet anti-Western propaganda, is now serving another variety of the same agenda.

I have nothing to add except: read every word of it.

(Via WRSA)

Richmond AAR

Posted on January 21, 2020January 21, 2020 by Mike

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.

The US Space Force is NOT a joke?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So there. Onwards.

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

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

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

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

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

Down to the nut-cuttin’

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

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

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

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

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

If we lose, we lose all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update! Sorry, but this is just pathetic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Michael Coudrey (@MichaelCoudrey) January 19, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The text from DeWeese’s Fakebook post:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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