Where Do We Go from Here?

Ask a stupid question

Posted on January 6, 2025 by Mike

Get an obvious answer.

Could the Feds Have Been Involved in the New Orleans Jihad Massacre?
Would they do such a thing?

Robert, Robert, Robert. You know the answer to that as well as I do, as well as everybody who’s been paying any attention at all does: OF COURSE they would. And, y’know, did, in all likelihood.

Trust in our government has lowered to the point that some people are suggesting that the New Orleans jihad massacre was aided and abetted, or even concocted, by the feds in order to stir up unrest as Trump prepares to return to the presidency, or to create a pretext for some other action. Some of those who are making suggestions of this kind, such as Candace Owens, just want to find some plausible way to blame Jews, or to claim that it’s all in the service of trying to get the U.S. involved in a war in the Middle East on behalf of Israel. Those types, including Owens herself, tend to downplay or deny outright the reality of Islamic jihad, preferring to see virtually all the workings of the wide world as the puppet show of the all-powerful and ever-unseen Zionists. Still, would the feds really get involved in a jihad plot to kill Americans? Sure.

No one really knows for sure, except the conspirators, if there are any, whether or not the feds are involved. And jihad is real, as the news out of Africa, Asia and Europe shows daily. Still, the question must be asked: would the feds really aid and abet a jihad terror attack? Have they really become that corrupt and compromised? And the answer is: yes. Of course they would, and yes, they’re that corrupt. The evidence for this fact lies in their behavior at the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest that Pamela Geller and I organized in May, 2015.

The Daily Beast wrote in August 2016 about how this undercover FBI agent encouraged the jihadis. The Beast’s Katie Zavadski wrote: “Days before an ISIS sympathizer attacked a cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, he received a text from an undercover FBI agent. ‘Tear up Texas,’ the agent messaged Elton Simpson days before he opened fire at the Draw Muhammad event, according to an affidavit (pdf) filed in federal court Thursday.”

This was not entrapment. Simpson and his partner Nadir Soofiwere determined jihadis who had scouted out other targets. Simpson, along with Soofi and another jihadi, Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, who supplied weapons to the pair and helped train them, sought information about pipe bombs and plotted to attack the Super Bowl, and planned to go to Syria to join the Islamic State (ISIS), long before anyone told him to “tear up Texas.”

But what was the FBI’s game in telling them to do that? Why didn’t they have a phalanx of agents in place, ready to stop the attack? Or did they want the attack to succeed, so that Barack Obama’s vow that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” would be vividly illustrated, and intimidate any other Americans who might be contemplating defending the freedom of speech into silence?

We twice asked the FBI for an investigation into this matter. They ignored us, of course.

One mo’ time ag’in: OF COURSE they did. Anybody surprised by that at this late date is a pluperfect five-star fucking moron.

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Ready for a REAL insurrection?

Posted on January 5, 2025January 5, 2025 by Mike

Julie Kelly certainly is.

January 6, 2025: The Real Insurrection Begins
The original Jan 6 narrative died in spectacular fashion. Monday’s proceedings represent the start of a legitimate insurrection against a corrupt, unaccountable, and failed government in Washington.

It’s a plot twist even the most creative—or diabolical—fiction writer never would have imagined.

On Monday afternoon, Vice President Kamala Harris will preside over Congressional proceedings to certify the election of Donald Trump, who defeated her in the 2024 presidential election.

The moment will represent one of many surreal moments on a date—January 6—that the Biden regime, news media, and Democratic voters consider one of the darkest times in American history. In fact, Harris herself categorizes January 6, 2021 alongside September 11, 2001 and December 7, 1941 as events she claims “remind all who have lived through them where they were…when our democracy came under assault.”

Four years ago, the ruling class in Washington attempted to commit what all evidence now points to as the premeditated murder of the MAGA movement. Powerful political and government saboteurs aligned to stoke the events of January 6, a four-hour disturbance those same saboteurs immediately branded an “insurrection.”

But it all came crashing down on November 5, 2024.

Trump won in decisive fashion as the majority of Americans sent a big middle finger tied to a wrecking ball to the halls of power in Washington. The failures of the Biden regime unquestionably contributed to Trump’s victory but so too did the relentless pursuit of the president, his family, his allies, his businesses, and his voters.

The January 6 operation backfired in a spectacular way. Instead of representing one of the darkest days in history, January 6 to millions of Americans instead embodies the corrupt, bloodthirsty, and vengeful nature of the existing government and its media bootlickers, which foreshadowed the sort of banana republic-style rule seen in Marxist hellholes not in the United States.

So Monday, January 6, 2025 signals the start of a real insurrection, which is defined as a “revolt against civil authority or an established government” not an unarmed and at points unruly demonstration inside a government building on a Wednesday afternoon.

Should Trump fulfill his boldest campaign pledges, federal agencies in the nation’s capital will never be the same. Permanent changes in now untrusted institutions such as the DOJ, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and, sadly, the Department of Defense among others promise to gut the rogue, unelected bureaucracy that really runs the show.

The Trump Insurrection already is paying dividends as employees flee agencies soon to be led by sworn foes of the Deep State. Chris Wray resigned ahead of his scheduled ten-year tenure as FBI boss.

Lots more yet at the link, all of it thoroughly gratifying reading. We can but hope that things shake out as Jules anticipates; t’is a consummation devoutly to be wished, certainly. My own skepticism and cynicism remain more or less intact, albeit not as firm as they were. Just between us chickens, I got one hand behind my back, fingers crossed. We’ll find out soon enough, I reckon.

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There’ll always be an England?

Posted on January 5, 2025January 5, 2025 by Mike

Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not.

BrokenBritain 1.

BrokenBritain 2.

Lest any of us get to feeling smug from the cozy “couldn’t happen here” cope, may I remind you that, for the last five-six decades at least, the FUSA has tended to lag no more than five to ten years behind the Mother Country in such matters. As Bracken says, this is but the force-assembly phase of a thousand-year campaign of civilizational conquest and subjugation the decadent West can’t be arsed to concern itself about nowadays, much less prevent, still less reverse.

In the course of re-skimming through some of my favorite speculative-fiction works over lo, the past year or thereabouts—Peter Hamilton in particular, although there are others—I’ve noticed a thing that amuses me greatly. Namely, the unfounded assumption that Once-Great Britain will somehow project the cultural dominance it enjoyed several hundred years ago across the spacefaring worlds of the 30th-31st-32nd Century and beyond. Offhand references to obscure London neighborhoods, linguistic tics, architectural styles, even such prosaic artifacts as steak and kidney pie, bangers & mash, and baked beans for breakfast (?!?) get tossed around liberally, betraying the quaint, vanity-inspired notion that anybody in the far-distant future will even know what those things are…or, y’know, were.

For the matter of it, many of them are barely even remembered in present-day Londonistan, let alone Proxima Centauri in 3426; already, they are no longer traditions to be cherished and preserved, but irrelevant antiquities to be discarded. Will cookies still be known far and wide as “biscuits”? Will a yobbo still be a yobbo, a wog still a wog, a Frenchman still a Frog?

More to the point: will a Moslem-overrun England be capable of engineering and developing a wormhole drive, FTL communications, colony arkships, artificial-gravity generators? Will the Abdul-Abdel-Abdullahs, Saddiqs, and Achmeds in charge of the New British Caliphate be at all interested in undertaking such ambitious, multi-generational projects?

Not bloody likely, mate.

Not to beat up too much on Hamilton and his confreres, mind. Hey, nobody gets everything right every time; foresighted as he was, even Heinlein never saw touch screens coming, and his futuristic computer gizmos printed their output on actual paper, ferchrissakes—a long, laborious process which usually took not just hours but days. Also, Heinlein’s transtellar-flight helmsmen operated their ships’ version of “warp drive” via clunky levers, knobs, and pushbuttons; his navigators (astrogators?) plotted their course not with a holographic projection or main-viewscreen star chart, but boring old No 2 pencil and paper.

No energy weapons; no personal force-fields; no magnetized grav-boots for use in micro-gee environments or EVA. No antimatter propulsion; no mass-to-energy converters; no inertial dampeners; no starships capable of atmospheric flight and/or landing. No malmetal, glassteel, or plascrete. Heinlein and his fellow visionaries came up with lots of cool stuff in their day, sure, but their vision didn’t extend quite that far.

Rule of thumb which ought to be remembered but is too often forgotten: just because even our finest minds can’t see it on the horizon doesn’t mean it ain’t coming all the same.

(Via WRSA)

2024 in review

Posted on December 31, 2024December 31, 2024 by Mike

Hell with that shitlib Dave Barry and his snarky swipes at anyone to the right of Josef Stalin, David Thompson dishes out the real deal.

The Year Reheated
In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.

The year began with a male Guardian columnist, Mr Phineas Harper, announcing his plan to heroically advance “gender equality” via the medium of self-absorption and by wearing a pleated skirt. Guardian readers were invited to believe that the sight of Mr Harper “dancing in skirts” and feeling “buoyed up” by compliments regarding his ensemble would, in ways never quite pinned down, liberate British women from their grim, downtrodden existence.

We also paid a visit to the pages of Scientific American, where assistant professor Juan P Madrid indulged his urges to police other people’s speech, while wasting the time and energy of those more obviously productive. “The language of astronomy,” we were told, “is needlessly violent,” with the word collision being singled out as particularly brutal and masculine. An astronomer carelessly referring to a planet being stripped of its ozone layer by a gamma-ray burst, would, according to Dr Madrid, be using “misogynistic language” and should therefore be subject to the sternest of hands-on-hips chiding and an official reprimand.

And we concluded a trilogy of posts on the subject of crime and punishment – and the status-chasing contortions of progressives, for whom, pretentious leniency is a kind of social jewellery with which to impress one’s peers. And according to whom, the wellbeing of habitual burglars is much more important than the wellbeing of their numerous victims, whose homes have just been violated, especially if the burglar is a “young black person.”

In February, we learned, via a Canadian socialist podcaster named Nora Loreto, that habitual car theft is a “victimless” crime, a trivial thing. Even a third conviction for thieving someone else’s car should not result in incarceration or any physical impediment, because the victims of car theft – who do not exist, apparently – “get new cars though.” “I write books and I know things,” announced Nora, who lives in Quebec, where, in the last year, the rate of car theft has practically doubled.

Other topics included an educational effort in San Francisco, in which elementary school children were expected to “disrupt whiteness,” and to have – or at least regurgitate – strong opinions on the Israeli military. Needless to say, this focus on political indoctrination and imagining “a world without police, money, or landlords,” came at the expense of more mundane subjects, with English and maths scores hitting record lows, and with less than 4% of students considered numerate. All in the name of “removing barriers to learning.”

And we pondered the weirdly woke marketing of retailer John Lewis, whose customers were doubtless inspired to shop harder and more often thanks to photographs of store employees accompanied by details of their mental health problems and niche sexual leanings. Among them, Mr Marc Geoffrey Albert Whitcombe, now known as Ruby, who was thrilled by “the chance to express my true inner self,” and who was photographed in an enormous rose-adorned wig and while clutching a cat o’ nine tails. Customers intrigued by this in-store display soon discovered Mr Whitcombe’s social media presence, which consists of hundreds of selfies in which he attempts erotic poses, complete with ladies’ lingerie and while gripping sex toys in his mouth.

As if all the above wasn’t nauseating enough already, David carries on in like emetic vein from there.

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Kaczynski Vs Luigi Babe: a comparison

Posted on December 20, 2024December 20, 2024 by Mike

An intriguing idea, one I hadn’t ever thought of myself before. From the NYT, of all unlikely places.

The Unabomber’s Influence Is Deeper and More Dangerous Than We Know
I published a novel about the Unabomber this year, and during a book tour stop in Seattle, a high school teacher raised his hand and asked me what he could tell his students about Ted Kaczynski, because he was a hero to so many of them. The question stopped me cold, reminding me that Mr. Kaczynski’s influence is deeper and more widespread than most people realize.

The same feeling of cold unease returned this week when I read news reports that Luigi Mangione, the suspect charged in the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive, Brian Thompson, had posted a favorable review of the Unabomber’s manifesto online. The similarities didn’t end there. The meticulous planning and use of symbolism in the crime reminded me of Mr. Kaczynski, who spent years choosing his targets, designing disguises (even gluing false soles to the bottoms of his shoes) and leaving messages for investigators. The words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” written on the bullet casings found by Mr. Thompson’s body were an eerie echo of the “FC” for Freedom Club that Mr. Kaczynski carved into his bombs. The fact that Mr. Mangione allegedly made his own gun and carried a copy of his own manifesto reinforced the similarities.

There is, of course, still much we don’t know about Mr. Mangione: a full picture of who he is, and what factors shaped him and motivated him. But the teacher’s suggestion that the Unabomber was a hero to some of his students pointed to a larger truth. To many young people living in a system of extreme economic disparity, in a world they believe is on the verge of ecological collapse, the Unabomber represents a dark, growing ideological desperation. To them, his ruthlessly intellectualized turn to violence can seem justified.

At some point before much more time has passed, Our Side will have to get over its girlish squeamishness regarding this purported “ruthlessly intellectualized turn to violence” being utterly unthinkable, amoral, and completely out of bounds, I’m afraid. That’s owing to one very simple reason which ought to be obvious: if we don’t rise to the challenge and match the Leftist enemy blow for blow and then some, then we must inevitably lose to them. And as all of us should know full well by now, losing to the Left means losing absolutely everything.

You definitely want to read all of this one, it’s quite good. Never thought I’d hear myself say that about a NYT article, but there you are. Strange days indeed, sure to get stranger still as time marches ever on.

Oh yeah, almost forgot: the “Luigi Babe” reference in the post title hails from my own voluminous memory archive—just another of my ceaseless attempts to amuse myself which constitute one of the primary reasons this h’yar blog exists in the first place. Hey, even if none of y’all get a laugh out of it, I do. As is said of the Hokey Pokey, that’s what it’s all about.

See, Luigi Babe (as he insisted everyone call him) was this irritatingly ubiquitious show promoter, self-styled raconteur, and all-around hipster douchebag back in my NYC days. He was unfailingly chatty, touchy-feely, faux friendly, cloying, and utterly oblivious as to how vanishingly few, if any, of his fellow scenesters actually liked him even just a little bit.

When I was host/DJ/barman of a popular weekly rockabilly night* at what was bona fide Downtown scene-maker Deb Parker’s arguably least-successful venture, Babyland, Luigi Babe would show up every Thursday night, to everyone else’s profound chagrin.

If I’m lying, I’m flying: the minute Luigi Babe made his Grande Entrance into Babyland (or anyplace else, really)—clad in his trademark vintage gabardine suit with matching fedora and ascot, an immaculately-drawn pencil-thin moustache adorning his upper lip, flourishing his affected cigarette-holder in one hand like a scepter, carrying himself as if he were the dashing reincarnation of Clark Gable and/or Errol Flynn, the fleshly exemplar of what people mean by the word smarm—you’d see ten or twenty other regulars get up from their booths and beat feet for the exit with alacrity, often as not abandoning a table-full of overly pricy cocktails untouched in the urgency of making good their post-haste escape. Jackets, handsome cardigan sweaters, gloves, purses, you name it, who cares? These were but material objects, no more; unlike the precious time lost enduring the dread Luigi Babe’s presence, they could be replaced.

No shit, the dust cloud those fleeing bar patrons left in their wake would’ve shamed even the Roadrunner speeding away from Wile E Coyote. MEEP MEEP!

* Yclept the Chicken Shack, which moniker would go on to earn me a subtly cheeky nod from no less august a personage than the great Max Weinberg, at a Conan O’Brien show taping—yet another of those incredible stories I really gotta tell y’all sometime

Miraculous Milei

Posted on December 20, 2024December 20, 2024 by Mike

I refer any parties interested in my feelings on this development to the Kelly Bundy vid in the previous post.

Argentinian President Javier Milei To Join Trump At Presidential Inauguration
Argentinian President Javier Milei confirmed Tuesday that he plans to attend the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump in Washington this January.

The news was first reported by Bloomberg, citing an Argentine government spokesperson. A spokesperson for Milei confirmed the news, according to CBS News. Milei recently echoed Trump’s slogan and took to social media to show his support.

As preparations for the inauguration continue, Milei is slated to be the first confirmed world leader at the Jan. 20 ceremony, with others reportedly making arrangements, CBS News reported.

“Attend”? Pish-tosh! Argentina’s Miracle Man of right ought to be flown up on a specially-chartered Trump Force One flight; chauffeured out of Andrews AFB to the Inauguration venue in the most luxuriously appointed, stretchiest limo EVAR (the BEAST!!); escorted down a plush, ankle-deep red carpet by a bevy of dynamite chicks, each one lovelier than Faye Dunaway; and shown to his exclusive front row seat as not merely an honored, respected, and welcome guest of his American counterpart, but as a close personal friend and trusted partner of Trump’s as well. From all appearances I don’t think it would be overstating the case much to say the two reformist Chief Executives are birds of a feather, feisty twin brothers born of different mothers. Thus, OMB would be well advised to treat Javier Milei as such.

I very much hope (and expect) that President The Donald is savvy enough, wily enough, to recognize this signal occasion for exactly what it is: a unique, not-to-be-squandered opportunity to rub Uniparty statists’ noses vigorously in both his own and Milei’s resounding triumph right from the git-go. If he does, and conducts himself accordingly, the traditional Inaugural after-party—parties, actually—will be well and truly lit, in a way and to an extent none has ever been before.

Let solidarity be the watchword here, sayeth I. May these like-minded stalwarts stand shoulder-to-shoulder in mutually-supportive defiance of the common foe. Not one (1) degree of separation ought to be allowed to intervene betwixt them going forward—not physically, not ideologically, not in practical terms.

The renewed flood of sweet, sweet shitlib tears alone would make giving Milei the full-on Royal Treatment well worth any conceivable inconvenience and/or expense.

In a struggle so desperate as the present one is shaping up to be, it simply is not possible to have too many allies. Having known so many combat-blooded warriors so well over lo, these many years and lent an attentive ear to the harrowing war-stories they had to tell, I have yet to hear a man Jack of them complain that the battlefield on which he fought was just too dang crowded with friendlies. Years ago, on one of the terribly rare occasions he’d even speak of his experiences there at all*, my Korea-vet dad (US Army, Chemical Weapons Corps) solemnly assured me that there are no atheists in foxholes; from what I can make out, there ain’t no loners to be found there, either.

* Apparently, my poor ol’ Dad saw more than enough mind-bending horror in Korea to do him; as a kid, I well remember being terrified out of my wits whenever he had one of his recurrent flashback-nightmares; one night, he vaulted from a flatfooted start on my bedroom floor straight to the top of my dresser in one go, whooping and shouting like a banshee, calling for reinforcements right the hell NOW, screaming out re-deployment orders to squad-mates I couldn’t see, pointing out advancing enemies in division strength which existed only in his memory. I’ll never forget it; it was seriously awful, like all the Korea stories he eventually divulged to me were. My mom was stunned to hear he’d told me anything whatsoever when I talked to her a few years back about it; he never once opened up to her over their whole 27-year marriage, although the nightmares pretty much said it all, I suppose

Update! Off-topic, sure, but what the hey: since I brought my Old Man up and all, here’s a portrait done in his Army days.

*Roger Gene Hendrix, b. March 3, 1934, d. March 10, 1996*

That one enjoyed pride of place on the wall of my grandma’s tiny den/family room/TV room as far back as I can remember and beyond, until one fine day years after she’d passed on my Aunt Ruth took it down unasked and gave it to li’l ol’ moi. It now enjoys pride of place on my dining-room wall, and will until I croak. His decorations—quite a few of them, actually—lived in a beat-up old cigar box of my Macanudo-chomping Uncle Murray’s nestled in the top drawer of Dad’s tall chest-of-drawers along with the cuff links, tie tacks, business cards, loose change, and sundry other male impedimenta. When our parents weren’t home to catch us at it, me and my brother Jeff used to sneak the expressly-off-limits-for-us box from its hidey-hole and look at the medals, ribbons, citations, and such all the time. No idea what they were for or what might’ve became of them, I regret to say. Maybe Jeff ended up with ‘em, I dunno. I certainly hope so, anyway.

One of my dad’s most distressing Korean War stories was of a shot-to-shit F86-D that wobbled and staggered weakly over my dad’s base-camp area at under 500 feet, steadily losing altitude and airspeed until it finally gave up the ghost of powered flight altogether and augured into the side of a large hill/small mountain and caught fire. My father and a handful of his buddies raced over to see if they could rescue the pilot before he burned to death. Alas, when they arrived at the crash scene and pried the ex-Sabre’s canopy off, all that was left of the luckless aviator was, in Dad’s words, “just a bunch of red jelly” painted liberally all over the ejector seat, instrument panel, cockpit interior, and windscreen—at which gruesome tableau he and his buddies puked prodigiously. Then they all walked slowly, silently back to base-camp together, depressed to their very socks at having failed in their ill-starred rescue mission.

After the war-conversation ice had at last been broken between us once and for all, my father recounted this tragic event two or three more times, and without exception as the unhappy ending approached his eyes would puddle up, his hands would start to tremble, his face would redden, and his throat would constrict so badly that he could barely even croak out the words, so powerful was the effect they had on him. Knowing what I know now, I pray to God above that calmly, quietly discussing these shattering experiences with his firstborn son afforded him at least some surcease, however fleeting, from the never-ending anguish the memory of them brought. In Jesus’ name, I pray it. Things like this may be buried, but they can never truly be laid to rest.

Another tale, less grim and almost funny in a bleak sort of way, regards the afternoon a supply train pulled in to the base, parked up at a siding for unloading, and caught fire. Seeing the incipient conflagration, my pop led a small crew of four or five intrepid souls into one of the loaded boxcars and began unloading the cargo as quick as could be, without any inkling of what might be in the gnarly wooden crates they were pulling from the burning boxcar and dragging clear.

As it turned out, their mad dash to save the unknown-to-them cargo was one of the acts of soldierly heroism and derring-do my Dad received a medal for: the crates were full of Willie Pete, a/k/a White Phosphorous, a highly-flammable and volatile load that, by a miracle, didn’t explode and torch every last one of them. He said that, when the Captain informed them afterwards of what they had on their hands, praising the men for their bravery Above And Beyond etc and selflessness, he almost fainted dead away on the spot: his knees got weak, his eyes lost focus, his head started spinning, and if his friends’ faces were any indication, he went white as a fresh-bleached sheet. Laughingly, he said his fellow impromptu firefighting squad all later agreed on at least one thing: if they’d known beforehand that the boxcar was stacked floor to ceiling with crates of WP, they’d all have run as fast and as far as they could away from that damned train.

My Dad said his primary duty as a Chemical Corps PFC was running a flamethrower, still in widespread use during the Korean conflict. According to him, shooting his flamethrower was a heck of a lot of fun, he really liked it…until the not-so-frabjous day arrived when he had to torch live enemy soldiers for reals, which for him kinda took all the joy out of the whole backpack-napalm-squirter business. He found turning actual living, breathing people into charcoal briquets, soot, and drifting flakes of foul-smelling ash, regardless of enemy-combatant status, not nearly as diverting and/or satisfying as incinerating kitchen trash pits, practice range targets, termite mounds, bald Jeep tires, and assorted piles of useless junk had been. As those years-later frightmares would attest, he never got over the soul-searing horror of it.

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Dysfunction, all the way down

Posted on December 19, 2024December 19, 2024 by Mike

I don’t usually write about these events, but in this latest case I will make an exception by way of making a broader point.

The 15-year-old girl who killed two people and wounded six others when she opened fire at her Wisconsin Christian school had been in therapy over her troubled home life with her parents — who repeatedly divorced and remarried, court records show.

Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after the deadly mass shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison on Monday, was at times yanked between her parents’ homes every two or three days when they were separated, according to records obtained by the Washington Post.

Her mother and father, Mellissa and Jeff Rupnow, first married in 2011, two years after they had Natalie, who had recently started using the first name Samantha.

They divorced in 2014 and shared custody of Natalie, who they agreed would live primarily with her mother.

The couple then remarried three years later in 2017 — just to get divorced for a second time another three years after that, in 2020.

This time, they more evenly split custody of their daughter, with Natalie spending two days with her father, then two days with her mother, followed by three days with her father again in a schedule that would alternate weekly, the DC paper reported.

They married for a third time shortly thereafter — but by April 2021 were splitting up again.

A judge granted the divorce a month later but noted that “parties [were] admonished concerning remarriage,” according to court documents.

In July 2022, a mediator ruled that the couple would again share custody of Natalie but she would live primarily with her father.

By that time, Natalie, just 12 years old, was going to therapy sessions that were meant to help determine which parent she would spend her weeks with, according to court records.

There’s more awfulness yet, all of it as dysfunctional as dysfunctional gets, but the above ought to make for a good enough start. With an upbringing as unstable as that, and as common as such familial instability has come to be nowadays, the real wonder is that more of these poor waifs aren’t picking up a piece and going all “I Don’t Like Mondays” on the rest of the world. The closer is about as stinging a wry jab as I think I’ve ever seen.

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Requiem for a twatwaffle

Posted on December 12, 2024December 12, 2024 by Mike

The esteemed Robert Spencer offers a few graveside remarks.

Bye Bye Wray
Having completed the destruction of the FBI, the Bureau Director leaves the stage.

Christopher Wray might not be the worst director in the history of the FBI. After all, there was James Comey, and before him Robert Mueller. Wray, however, who finally resigned on Wednesday, completed the work that Mueller and Comey began: he oversaw the total politicization of the FBI, and its transformation from a respected law enforcement agency into an American Gestapo, a tool of partisan politics that the Biden-Harris regime wielded like a club against its political enemies, real and imagined. Christopher Wray will not be missed. The question that he leaves in his wake is whether the damage he has done can be undone, and the FBI restored, or if the whole agency should simply be shut down.

While Christopher Wray was director of the FBI, agents of his crooked agency stormed Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and scrutinized Melania Trump’s clothes closet for classified information. This was the first time in American history that a sitting president had weaponized the FBI against a political opponent, and Wray uttered not a public word about how the Federal Bureau of Investigation was becoming the Democrat Bureau of Lawfare and Harassment.

Trump wasn’t the only victim, either. The Biden-Harris regime sicced Wray’s feds on angry parents protesting at school board meetings, worked with Twitter and other social media giants to silence and deplatform people with opposing views, and even sent spies into Catholic churches.

This is the legacy of Christopher Wray. And while all that was happening, Wray repeatedly insisted that “insurrectionists” and the “white supremacists” constituted the greatest terror threat the nation faces today. Not Islamic jihadists. Certainly not criminals crossing the open border and roaming free inside the United States. Wray’s ridiculous claims about “white supremacist terrorists,” as well as the agency’s focus on Jan. 6 “insurrectionists,” were a thinly veiled attempt to criminalize and destroy all political opposition to the Biden regime in the U.S.

Can Donald Trump undo what Christopher Wray and his predecessors have done? It will be extraordinarily difficult. Trump has appointed Kash Patel to succeed Wray, and that’s a decisive step in the right direction. Back in August, Patel was asked what he would do if he did become the director of the FBI, and his answer was pure gold.

“One of my biggest personal recommendations,” Patel said, “is you shut down the FBI headquarters building and open it up the next day as the Museum of the Deep State, and you send those 7000 agents in the headquarters building down range to chase down rapists, to chase down murderers, to chase down drug traffickers and let the cops be cops on the streets across America. You keep a small contingent in Washington, D.C. That’s step one.”

Now Kash Patel has a chance to clean one of the filthiest of Augean Stables in Washington. All patriotic Americans should hope and pray that he succeeds. But virtually every agent who is in the FBI now will be resisting everything he does, and trying to prevent him from succeeding. For years now, patriotic agents have been forced into early retirement or given up in disgust. They’ve been replaced by partisan hacks who are happy to be tools of this ersatz American Stasi.

Read the rest, it’s truly good albeit deeply depressing stuff. Via Ace, Spencer’s words regarding resistance among the FBI rank and file are looking quite prophetic.

Christopher Wray Is Preparing to Sabotage Trump and Patel
If you assumed Christopher Wray’s resignation meant a quiet exit, think again. Reports suggest Wray is actively promoting loyalists within the bureau, embedding establishment figures even deeper into the FBI. The move appears to be a calculated effort to sabotage Kash Patel’s expected plans to overhaul the agency and implement meaningful reforms at the nation’s top law enforcement institution.

Sources within the bureau said Mr. Wray has begun promoting employees among the senior executive service, those who serve within the bureau’s leadership. These sources described this as an effort to burrow establishment figures deeper within the FBI.

Sources said a plan is being formulated to delay the new FBI director’s entry into the agency for three to four months.

Given the FBI’s tense history with Mr. Trump since the 2016 presidential campaign, such a strategy is risky.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen efforts to “Trump-proof” federal agencies. In fact, reports from August revealed that the Biden-Harris administration had utilized a little-known hiring mechanism to strategically place personnel in key divisions of the Department of Justice ahead of the 2024 election. The apparent goal was to shield the department from any future attempts at reform under a potential Trump administration.

Anybody at all surprised by these revoltin’ developments…shouldn’t be. Wray was just about the worst of a whole slew of bad Trump picks the first time out. To his credit, he seems to have learned from those mistakes, thank goodness.

1

Of first shots…and LAST ones

Posted on December 11, 2024December 11, 2024 by Mike

As I’ve said here so very many times before, it’s time and way past time that Real Americans started shooting back.

The ‘Tolerant’ Left Sure Does Like Assassinations
A manifesto recovered from the alleged shooter of UnitedHeathCare CEO Brian Thompson says that “These parasites had it coming” and “I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done.”

This is music to the ears of many on the left, who cheered when they learned that Thompson had been gunned down and are treating the shooter as some sort of folk hero.

“Social media users have sometimes outright gloated at the killing,” is how The Hill put it, describing it as an expression of “populist rage” and then spending the rest of the article trying to obliquely pin the blame on Donald Trump.

The Atlantic dismissed the “mockery and disdain” of the cold-blooded murder as an “expression of widespread fury at a broken system.”

Former Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz reposted an article about how Blue Cross Blue Shield will no longer cover anesthesia for the full length of some surgeries, adding, “And people wonder why we want these executives dead.”

“Saturday Night Live” joked that “it really says something about America that a guy was murdered in cold blood and the two main reactions were, ‘Yeah, well health care stinks!’ And also, ‘Girl, that shooter hot.’ “

If this reminds you of anything it should. Because the same cast of miscreants cheered the would-be assassin of Donald Trump as well.

In fact, the only problem they could find was that the shooter’s aim was off.

S’truth. A great old Tolkien quote springs immediately to mind yet again.

“It needs but one foe to breed a war, not two, Master Warden,” answered Éowyn. “And those who have not swords can still die upon them.”

Wise words indeed from the White Lady of Rohan, that wild shield-maiden of the North—a warning, a reminder, and a bit of highly useful advice, all in one poignant, unforgettable statement.

In case y’all hadn’t noticed as of yet, the long-dreaded Civil War v2.0 started a goodish while back. It’s just that so far, only one side seems at all interested in actually prosecuting the damned thing. Another good ‘un from LOTR:

You won’t rescue Lotho, or the Shire, just by being shocked and sad, my dear Frodo.

Indeed not, I’m afraid.

1

Daniel Penny followup

Posted on December 9, 2024December 9, 2024 by Mike

Really, the whole contretemps comes down to just one thing.

Daniel Penny and the Attempted Murder of Courage: The Dangerous Precedent of Prosecuting Heroes
Though the Daniel Penny trial is deadlocked with the judge urging jurors to continue deliberating, should they reach a decision, the verdict may ultimately be on something far bigger than the actions of one Marine on a New York City subway. It could be about what kind of country we want to be—a nation of men and women willing to step up in the face of danger, or a nation of cowards who film chaos on their phones and do nothing to stop it.

Penny, a Marine veteran, was riding the subway when Jordan Neely—a man with a long history of mental health issues and violent outbursts—began threatening passengers. Witnesses described Neely’s behavior as erratic and frightening. Penny acted decisively, restraining him in a chokehold to prevent what he and others clearly believed was a potential attack. Tragically, Neely died.

What followed wasn’t a nuanced look at a tragic situation, but an immediate rush to blame Penny, in part or in whole, because Penny is white and Neely was black. Neely also had a history of mental illness…and violence. His death was tragic, but the threat he posed to passengers on the F train that day was real. Despite that, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg wasted no time charging Penny with second-degree manslaughter. Bragg, known for his soft-on-crime policies, seemed determined to make an example of Penny—a man who, unlike the violent criminals Bragg often releases with a slap on the wrist, tried to protect people. How dare he?!? That’s Bragg’s providence.

Make no mistake, the prosecution of Penny sends a chilling message to all Americans: if you step up to stop violence, you might become the next defendant. At the very least it tells us that in Bragg’s New York, the safest course of action is to do nothing. Let the chaos unfold, keep your hands to yourself and pray the police arrive before anyone gets seriously hurt (and in Bragg’s New York as well as other cities with liberal district attorneys, even the police may wind up getting charged.) Better yet, pull out your phone and get it all on video. At least you won’t end up behind bars. Dead or seriously wounded maybe, but not behind bars.

The irony is almost unbearable. In a time when violent crime is rising and public safety feels more fragile than ever, Penny’s actions represented exactly the kind of courage we need. He saw people in danger and acted, not out of malice but out of a sense of duty to protect those around him. He didn’t wake up that morning or board that subway training thinking, “I want to hurt or kill somebody today.” His sense of duty—the willingness to defend others even at personal risk—is at the core of what makes a society function. Without it, we’re just bystanders to our own demise.

And let’s not kid ourselves about what happens next if this precedent sticks. Imagine the next subway, the next mall, the next street corner where someone decides to lash out. Will anyone step in? Or will they hesitate, thinking about the potential criminal charges that might await them? Alvin Bragg might not care, he’s sitting safely in his ivory tower, far from the danger spawned by his choices, but the rest of us will be living with the consequences of his decisions for a long time.

It’s worth noting that the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous decision in Penny’s trial—at least not yet, and maybe the won’t. That’s no surprise. The case was never black and white, and it shouldn’t have been brought to court in the first place. Prosecuting Penny wasn’t about justice—it was about politics. It was about sending a message that the powers-that-be are more interested in virtue-signaling than protecting their citizens.

But here’s the real question: What kind of country do we want to live in? Do we want to raise our kids in a world where good men like Daniel Penny are punished for doing the right thing, or do we want to stand behind them? Do we want to reward courage or cultivate a culture of fear? Part of that answer arrived during last month’s elections where a majoirty of Americans voted “enough” on the weakness of our country under the wan leadership of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democrats and decided they wanted a strong leader, the type who can take a bullet and stand back up undaunted.

Annnnnd BINGO! THAT’S what this whole thing is really all about when all’s said and done. In selecting for cowardice, you reinforce the better-not-get-involved, just-stay-out-of-it mindset rife not just in NYC, but right across non-rural Amerika v2.0 entire. Step in to help someone in need? Not on your life, pal, I could get sued. Interpose your own frail, easily-maimed physical person between a violent assailant and a weaker assailee? Whaddya, fookin’ nuts or sumpin’?

Yes, there are exceptions, of course. We hear about ‘em regularly: whenever some passerby chases off a would-be mugger; a woman turns the tables on her would-be rapist; or a jewelry dealer, convenience store manager, or pawn-shop proprietor pulls a firearm from under the counter and burns down a thief. But that’s exactly why we hear about them: they are EXCEPTIONS, just doing what exceptions do: proving the rule.

1

There they go again

Posted on December 4, 2024December 4, 2024 by Mike

The Borking of Pete Hegseth.

PR Primer for Pete Hegseth: How to Salvage His Imperiled Nomination
It’s like being attacked by a swarm of angry bees: You try to swat them away, but there are just too many. Soon, you’re overwhelmed.

That’s what the drip-drip-drip of anonymously sourced attack stories feels like when you’re in the middle of a media maelstrom. And right now, ex-Fox News personality Pete Hegseth is being savaged in the press. His nomination for Secretary of Defense is teetering in the balance.

Hegseth’s current PR trajectory is unfavorable. Today, the Wall Street Journal claimed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been tapped as his replacement.

If Hegseth is forced to withdraw (or is John Tower’d by the Senate), it will dramatically change the narrative of the incoming Trump administration, costing them significant political capital. Instead of being a larger-than-life, Churchillian leader riding into D.C. on a white horse, Trump and his nominees will be portrayed as “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight” — a hodgepodge band of rogues, deviants, and miscreants who shouldn’t be trusted.

It’ll be Omarosa, Part II.

Sooner or later, Trump will have to hoist the ol’ Hawaiian Good Luck Sign in the Left’s general direction and stick by his “embattled”—by “anonymous sources,” note ye well; always with the “anonymous sources”—nominees, if he seriously hopes to get anything at all done in the way of draining the foetid Swamp.

It’s like a child who takes to his heels and runs away from a charging dog: you just don’t do it, not unless you want to get your ass bit but good. The one and only time shitlibs ought to see our heels is when we’re kicking their fucking teeth out—in which felicitous circs they’ll not only get to see them, but to taste them as well.

The estimable Salena Zito notes something else of critical importance.

This is very true. You cannot manufacture that kind of deep loyalty: Pete has clearly earned it https://t.co/tb0gCmxaSv

— ZitoSalena (@ZitoSalena)

December 4, 2024

Why, it’s almost enough to make one think that the Left might be *gasp!* lying again. But no, that can’t possibly be right. Can it…? Via Glenn, who also has a resounding testimonial to Hegseth’s all-round good character from the man’s mother, no less.

Update! How’s that “get Hegseth” campaign workin’ out for ya, Proggy? Not too good, it would seem.

‘Zero’ Senate GOPers privately oppose Pete Hegseth for defense pick as he vows to ‘never back down’ amid misconduct claims: sources
“Zero” Senate Republicans are privately opposing Pete Hegseth’s confirmation, sources told The Post on Wednesday, as the defense secretary-designee was making the rounds on Capitol Hill and defiantly proclaiming he will “never back down” in the face of widespread allegations of past misconduct.

“There are zero ‘nos’ right now,” one GOP source familiar with the matter said, ripping smears against the former Army combat infantryman in the press as “BS.”

At least six Republicans, however, have expressed some reservations about President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee, NBC News reported Tuesday, as claims of binge drinking, sexual impropriety and financial mismanagement during his tenure as leader of a veterans advocacy group pile up.

Those six wait-and-see RINO fainthearts are pretty much who you’d expect, to the surprise of precisely no one whatsoever.

Updated update! Oh HELL yeah!

THAT’s how you do it, folks.

1

Who. They. ARE

Posted on November 30, 2024 by Mike

What. They. DO.

Tech Billionaire Tells Joe Rogan the Govt. Plan ‘to Control AI’ is Why He Left WH Meeting, Endorsed Trump
“They [Biden officials] said don’t even start startups – there’s just no way that they can succeed – there’s no way that we’re going to permit that to happen.”

Perhaps one of the most welcome surprises of the 2024 election cycle was the large number of Democrats and/or progressives who threw their support behind President-elect Donald Trump. The cumulative damage to the U.S. after four years of progressive rule, the deceitful way it had been implemented, and the speed with which it occurred, left even some lifelong Democrats disaffected. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen was among this group.

During a Tuesday interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Andreessen described the moment he decided to leave the Democratic Party. In the spring, he had participated in a series of White House meetings about the future of AI. Over the course of their discussions, Biden officials fleshed out “their plan to control AI through government regulatory capture.” Horrified by the administration’s intentions, Andreesen walked out and endorsed Trump.

What had left the tech billionaire so spooked? Andreessen explained:

The AI thing was very alarming. We had meetings this spring that were the most alarming meetings I’ve ever been in. Where they were taking us through their plans, and it was – basically just full government – full government control – like this sort of thing, there will be a small number of large companies that will be completely regulated and controlled by the government, they told us. They said don’t even start startups – there’s just no way that they can succeed – there’s no way that we’re going to permit that to happen.

Rogan gasped.

Andreessen continued, “They said that this is already over. It’s going to be two or three companies and we’re just gonna control them and that’s that. Like this is already finished.”

“When you leave a meeting like that, what do you do?” Rogan asked.

Andreessen smiled and said, “You go endorse Donald Trump!”

Apparently the Left doesn’t think it necessary to even TRY to hide it anymore—not from you, not from me, not from anybody: they’re fascists, plain and simple. Up front, out loud, and damned proud. Thus does true inner nature make itself known, as is its wont.

1

DoGE-ball

Posted on November 23, 2024November 24, 2024 by Mike

I could just as easily have appended this one to the previous post as an update; they are, after all, very much related. In the end, though, I felt it merits its own, separate place out here on the main stem.

DOGE this
an aristocracy fails in the matrix

watching the same people who cheer led for the creation of millions of regulations via unaccountable rubber stamp and executive fiat act like the removal of same is the end of functional governance is instructive.

i suspect they may even be sincere.

they experience a return to rights and freedom as loss and chaos.

it’s how you can tell they are an entrenched aristocracy of permanent state. it’s also how you can tell that you’re over the target.

pity the poor “federal worker” that most oppressed of americans…

apparently once you’re used to wielding dictatorial control, losing it feels like tyranny. one literally mistakes the freedom of others for the oppression of elites by unjust wreckers and the rollback of that which one rolled out without accountability or just or even legal right seems like some vastly unfair deprival of prerogative.

“how dare you delimit our right to rule!” decries the bureaucratic class and the professors and pundits who cling remora-like to them seeking power, privilege, and prestige. it’s sort of startling in the perfection of the honesty of its overt inversion.

this is, of course, precisely what our framers intended:

government by the consent of the governed not by the vast, unchecked fiat of unelected technocracy.

the monstrous sprawl of these executive agencies and their relentless and pervasive intrusion into all aspects of lives and livelihoods is not just incompatible to their vision, it stands anathema to it.

Don’t it, though; don’t it just.

it seems to me that the interesting part here is that i fully agree with brian about being an end to business as usual. we just disagree about the desirability of such an undertaking.

and so, i put it to you as we frame the key question that seems to define this divide:

“is the federal government as we know it something to defend or something to disassemble?”

because that’s really where the line is going to be drawn in the contention to come.

and for perhaps the first time since the 1930’s, the game is one that can be won because the slanted gameboard has been overturned.

Hey, hey, hey, sounds like another addition to Mike’s Iron Laws: Anything that’s extremely bad for them is extremely good for US.

1

From MAGA to MEGA

Posted on November 23, 2024November 23, 2024 by Mike

The Jeddak of Jeddaks gets positively jiggy with it.

Trump’s agenda is not compatible with American decline. Trump wants America to thrive. He wants America to be strong.

Just as a weak country must weaken its allies, a strong country can afford to strengthen them.

This would be a complete break with decades of implicit US foreign policy.

Trump has said repeatedly that he wants Europe to pull its weight in NATO, meeting the 2% GDP threshold that all member states are theoretically expected to fulfill, but which almost none of them actually do. Being a businessman, he frames this in financial terms: why should America pick up the tab for Europe’s defence? Which is certainly an urgent matter, given the disastrous state of America’s national debt. But this has inevitable geopolitical consequences. A remilitarized Europe that can actually defend itself is a Europe that is no longer at the mercy of the American military.

Making Europe Great Again isn’t solely a matter of investing more in European militaries. Such an agenda reaches into everything. Arabs and Africans need to be remigrated, in vast numbers. The rainbow parades need to stop: a continent of prancing sodomites is not a continent that can defend itself. And, of course, the economy must be revived: the overly intrusive regulatory fetters must be peeled off and set on fire, in order to make it possible for Europeans to once again exercise that famous, world-shaking creativity. People talk about “American ingenuity”, and Americans are ingenious, but this is only because Americans are a subspecies of European.

Extending MAGA to MEGA is not a matter of charity. The interconnectivity of the world makes MEGA essential to MAGA, and vice versa. The vampire strategy of ruling by weakening the imperial dependencies a little faster than they weaken the imperial core just results in the whole system getting weaker, which is a problem when your opponents are pursuing the opposite strategy domestically.

MEGA is also domestically important. The people running Europe are loyalists of the US deep state. As one example, the EU has been used as a way for the American deep state to try and do an end run around the US Constitution and reintroduce internet censorship, particularly on X, via the back door: the Eurocrats and their tame courts are quite happy to help them with this. There’s also a symbiotic relationship between Eurocrats and their left-wing American counterpart in the deep state: leftist policies are implemented in European political laboratories, which are subsidized by the American economy; their ‘successes’ are then cited as reason to bring these same policies home to America. If Trump is serious about dismantling his enemies at home, he also needs to crush their allies abroad.

This absolutely magisterial piece is a long ‘un indeed, of which you will most definitely want to read the all, folks.

1

Star Trek: 765874 – Unification

Posted on November 21, 2024November 21, 2024 by Mike

If you’re any kind of Star Trek fan at all, you’re gonna find this one…AWESOME.

A bit under eight minutes of unalloyed beauty, wonder, and joy, that’s what. Involving as it does the Genesis planet of fame and legend, I have to wonder what this might set the stage for, Trek-wise.

(Via Ed Driscoll)

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