Page 246

Pull the other one, Joe, it has a bell on it

Posted on May 13, 2022May 13, 2022 by Mike

Dang that Putin anyhow. Horrible, horrible man; why must he torment us so?

As Gas Prices Set New Records, Biden Nukes More Oil And Gas Projects
CBS News revealed the Biden administration canceled more oil and gas leases across the country this week as soaring gas prices reached new heights Wednesday.

The Department of Interior canceled plans to drill in more than 1 million acres in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, arguing “lack of industry interest,” on top of canceling a pair of leases in the Gulf of Mexico over “conflicting court rulings.”

“Until now, the White House had remained silent about the massive Alaska lease,” CBS reported Wednesday night, citing political headwinds against the president responsible for record-setting pain at the pump. According to AAA travel agency’s tracker, gas prices reached new milestone Wednesday, at a nationwide average of $4.40 a gallon of regular unleaded and $5.55 for diesel. The prior record for unleaded was set in March, at an average $4.33 per gallon regular, and diesel at $5.54. The latest inflation numbers also out Wednesday revealed all prices still rising at a rapid pace of 8.3 percent annually, exceeding expectations.

“They don’t want to get hit by Republicans in light of high gas prices,” explained an “environmental advocate” to CBS granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic related to White House discretion on the leases. “They’re getting killed on attacks based on inflation. The most visible sign of inflation is high gas prices.”

While Biden has blamed Russia’s war in Ukraine for the continued price hikes, the trends began long before President Vladimir Putin launched his February invasion, and analysts say it’s clear that Biden is making things worse by banning companies from exploring sources of U.S. energy independence.

Well, duh. He’s a Demonrat. That means he’s a moron, he hates America, Americans, and the internal combustion engine because GAAAAIIIIIAAAA!!! As with every Demonrat, exorbitant, endlessly-rising gas prices confirm he’s Doing His Part to save the planet. This gives him a delightful full-body frisson of pride in the knowledge of his innate superiority to lesser beings than Himself. What a guy!

“President Biden remains absolutely committed to not moving forward with additional drilling on public lands,” White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy pledged on MSNBC.

SSSHHHH! You’re not supposed to say that out loud, dammit!

Really, though, it’s not as if we don’t all know it well enough anyway. I mean, of COURSE he does. For Joe, for any and every shitlib currently extant, what’s not to like about unaffordable gas?

It feeds their boundless arrogance and conceit as the Supreme Beings they can’t ever stop telling everybody else they are
It inflicts grievous injury on ordinary American families who must drive to work, school, the grocery store, &c
It strangulates the American economy
It damages American oil companies, whom they hate with the intensity of a thousand suns
It increases the price of just about everything else, including those godawful McDonalds corporate earthworm-and-pink-slime doo-doo burgers which really ought to be banned, the revolting things
It reduces the hated US to beggar-nation status, forcing it to crawl on hands and knees to the Saudi oil ticks importuning them to please, please, PLEASE increase production, a sight they enjoy more than a good, hot lezbo/interracial/chubby-chaser/transgender-gangbang flick
It puts additional pressure on Americans to switch to one of their precious little electric go-karts, or so they tell themselves

So I repeat: what’s not to like here for these smarmy libtard cock-knockers? Unaffordable gas does so many things they want to see done, hurts people they love to see suffer, and makes them feel good about themselves all at once. They dwell in blissful ignorance about the godawful knock-on effects their presumptuous nitwittery will bring about; they really do seem to believe that you can run a First World industrial-age economy on nothing but batteries, wind, sunshine, and dorm-room fantasies. They’re totally unaware of what will happen when the trucks are no longer able to get to the grocery store down the street; for them, the equation of bare shelves suddenly not being restocked within a couple of days anymore simply does not compute. Hey, there’s always the Magical Froot, their personal-fave vegan restaurant, right? They’re BOUND to have something good to eat there, right?

S’cuse me, did I just hear somebody say something about trucks not being able to get to the grocery stores?

It has often been said that if you chase the global climate change ideology to its natural conclusion, we end up in communal groups sitting around a tepid campfire eating some form of sustainable algae cakes and picking parasites off each other…Prior to Joe Biden that prediction might have seemed like hyperbole. Now, not so much.

Indeed, the Green New Deal energy policy of Joe Biden creates massive downstream consequences. Unfortunately, the White House doesn’t seem to care. The high prices and scarcity of critical goods are a feature, not a flaw, as they chase their climate friendly Build Back Better agenda.

Following the continuum of intended consequence, now we have diesel fuel shortages beginning to hit the U.S. economy; and with scarcity comes higher prices of an almost astronomical scale. “The national average price of diesel is now $5.54 per gallon, which is an increase of 22 cents from last week, which was when the most recent record was set. Data shows there’s no state that’s currently seeing diesel prices below $5.12 per gallon.”

Making matters even worse is a drop in available inventory of diesel fuel which is about to become a crisis for the east coast of the U.S. Some Truck Stop operators like Love’s and Pilot are already warning their big rig customers they may not have fuel for truckers.

Never forget: the criminal cartel masquerading as a political party known as the Democrat Party WANTS THIS. They are FOR THIS, they think this is a GOOD THING. If We The People hope to save ourselves, our children, and whatever is left of our nation, then EVERY FUCKING DEMOCRAT must be forcibly removed from office without delay, by any means necessary. Going forward from there, NO DEMOCRAT can be allowed anywhere near the levers of power EVER AGAIN.

And that, friends, is IT. Full stop, end of story.

The calamity we now see unfolding all around us is EXACTLY the sort of thing the muttonheaded, unworkable policies favored by Democrats result in EVERY TIME THEY ARE TRIED. The historical record is rife with past examples. Reportage of current events from socialist shitholes still hanging on in every corner of the globe—Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe—reaffirm the dismal truth about life under THE VERY SAME IDEOLOGY ESPOUSED TODAY BY THE DEMOCRAT PARTY.

It’s only early innings yet, but already things are happening which are without precedent in this once-prosperous nation—circumstances and conditions all too common in a tragically large portion of the world, but quite literally unheard of here. Alas, Americans are soon to learn all about unpleasantries such as hunger, want, poverty, cold, homelessness, and the multifarious hazards associated with them—from savage, predatory street thugs, to sadistic cops, to disease, to feral animal packs, to other poverty-stricken skels—in more intimate detail than they would probaby wish.

Remember when I told you a few weeks back about the ongoing discussion between my brother and a few of his trucker buddies about what, if any, future they might have in the biz if diesel went over five bucks per gallon? Well, guess what: he said that earlier this week three of his co-workers have parked their rigs, locked ’em up, and hung a For Sale sign on ’em, intent on leaving the industry for good. The trucks are all what’s known in the biz as “glider” trucks—older models not subject to the crippling restrictions newer trucks have to run under. Gliders are the most desirable used trucks out there, and go for top buck if you can find one. My brother was lucky enough to score a nice Freightliner Classic XL—freshly-rebuilt Detroit 60 Series under the hood, ultra-clean, not a mark on it inside or out—for a relative pittance, thanks to another of his road-dog friends. Now Jeff spends a fair percentage of his time whenever he’s fueling up at the Flying J fielding endless offers to buy his glider from him on the spot. He just smirks at ’em, waves his old-school paper logbook in their faces (legal for gliders, none of the snooper-tech you have to put up with with the computer logs), and drawls “Nawwwww, I think I’m good here.”

We’re squarely in the Real, the Bad, and the Scary now, folks. Ain’t no way out of it, ain’t no way to reverse course, ain’t no way to fix it; all’s we can do now is just ride it out best we can, and hope to survive. Karl brings the double-plus-ungood tidings:

The other Gorilla in the room, fuel oil aka diesel fuel, is up 80% from last year. Until and unless that is stopped and the price comes back down, which will only happen if and when the government ceases its war on fossil fuels, there is no way for the general upward pressure on prices to be reversed. Every piece of farm equipment forward to the delivery of the food to your store runs on diesel. Every single item you buy travels at least the last part of its journey moved by diesel. I do not care how you “feel” about the issues related to the use of fossil fuels, the simple reality is that without them you have no fertilizer, no food and nothing in the store so all of the claims of virtue you issue will make you broke or even cause you to starve.

The part in Denninger’s italics and my boldface is the bell sounding our doom, because as long as the US government remains in place, unimpeded, unaltered, and in the control of Democrats, there is absolutely no hope that their lunatic, suicidal War On Fossil Fuels will end. And that, as Karl flatly states, means that there is no significant price relief in store for us, not in the foreseeable future. Whatever the reason for it—incompetence, stupidity, ideological rigidity, or as a component of the Great Reset plan—the Democrats refuse to relax their all-consuming loathing for fossil fuels even slightly. Not even to save their own lives, they won’t. They’re either too damned unimaginative and knotheaded to conceptualize the predictable end-result of their own noble cause, or they arrogantly assume themselves to be way too lofty and important to be brought down by it in the same bloody, broken pile of tribulation as all those other luckless peasants—the eggs for the collective omelet.

And so here we all are. The American people haven’t faced a situation this grim since the Great Depression, and I expect we’ll surpass the darkest days of those times before too much longer. More macabre than anything is that we’ve been brought to this desperate pass not as the result of some natural disaster, or by some ghastly accident. No, the firestorm of immiseration soon to engulf us all is intentional, the product of human creativity, planning, and coordination.

Never forget that this hellish project’s intellectual ancestry can be traced directly back to the Democrat side of the American family tree, particularly so with the specific issue discussed in this post. The berserker fanaticism driving their years-long campaign to do away prematurely with the very fossil-fuel industry which made this the wealthiest nation in human history has been such a rousing success that sane, normal Americans are left with no choice but to deal with them firmly—harshly, even. Stopping them is now a matter of self-preservation, of life and death, literally and imminently—no longer an unattractive, questionable, or melodramatic overreaction to a more or less trifling provocation. If Real Americans stay our hands for much longer, we will condemn ourselves and all that we hold dear to a most ignoble fate—a coward’s death—thereby staining ourselves with a soul-deep shame which can never be scrubbed clean or erased.

Bayou Pete has plenty more on this dark subject, none of it in the least reassuring.

3

Stupidity ain’t cheap

Posted on May 13, 2022May 13, 2022 by Mike

The current supply-chain problem is only one installment of a REALLY big bill.

These “supply chain disruptions,” as everyone is painfully aware, are doing everything from starving babies to shooting up the price of everything, as Wednesday’s 8.3 percent annual inflation number affirmed again. They are also not random, and they’re not a virus’s fault. They’re the direct and foreseeable consequence of ill-advised global lockdowns that nearly all of our nation’s political leaders refused to take into account when they and corporate media colluded to gaslight the world into accepting them.

Our historic “supply chain problems” are not the result of happenstance. They are the result of cowardly, ignorant, and just plain malevolent leadership throughout the entire Covid era.

Lockdowns never needed to happen. Global lockdowns were never before advised or attempted for much worse pandemics, they were based on faulty models, and the Information Age doesn’t change their imprudence. The “supply chain” consequences alone, as well as many of the other horrific medical and social consequences, should be enough evidence for all rational people to conclude that we must never, ever lock down again.

It’s a good article, but CF Lifers won’t be hearing anything in it that they haven’t heard at this here hogwallow from the earliest days of the whole Vaudeville act. For example:

The reality is, it is impossible to just hit “pause” on an economy. An action like this must have millions of unforeseeable effects, and the phrase people are using to summarize some of these butterfly effects now is “supply chain issues.”

Anyone who had any familiarity with the insane complexity of making anything or any cooperative activity such as education should have logically deduced that “pausing” an entire society is entirely impossible and idiotic to even suggest. The pause will always have its own effects that make a restart at best really complicated and possibly never able to occur.

Sound familiar? It should; I was saying as much in Spring 2020, in almost the exact same words. Not to toot my own horn or anything, mind. After all, a catastrophe of this magnitude is hardly a bragging matter. Just sayin’, that’s all.

This foolish Covid “cure” of lockdowns will end up being much, much worse than the disease. And it never needed to have been foisted on Americans and the entire West in the first place.

Needed? Well, no, of course not; tyranny is never “needed.” But unless stamped out upon its initial presentation without delay, it is inevitable. And be ye not deceived: when we speak of lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine blackmail, it’s ultimately tyranny that’s under discussion, all those other things being just specific sub-categories of the larger affliction.

All it would have taken was a few more courageous leaders or a less demonic press to protect the American people from responding to a natural disaster with even bigger man-made disasters. But we don’t have either, so Americans punished themselves by suffering 10 times what was in store had we just followed common sense and ridden out the storm with more courage and honesty.

I’m still flabbergasted at the number of us who were taken in by the whole grift, lots of them people I know personally, respect, and consider friends—intelligent, aware people who I expected to react much differently, especially as the reality of what was going on became more and more apparent. Yes, the first reports from China on this mysterious new virus were indeed alarming. But when governments pounced with such fierce alacrity on this perceived opportunity to restrict their populations to a far greater extent than they’d ever in their wildest dreams imagined they might get away with before, the jig was up. At that point it seemed to me undeniable that, whatever the facts about the virus and the seriousness of the threat it represented in those first days may have been, The Virus!!!™ had been fully co-opted by government, becoming in effect a cloak to obscure its nastiest manipulations and skullduggery beneath while they got on with the real work of all governments: erecting permanent structures to celebrate, indulge, and expand their own power, greed, and self-regard.

The least we can do to help rectify and correct our shameful behavior is be honest about what we’ve done. Acknowledging that one did wrong is the first essential step towards repentance, which is the first essential step towards restoration and wholeness.

One way would be to stop blaming Covid-19 for our irrational response to it. Instead of saying Covid or “the pandemic” caused the supply chain issues, like Biden does, we can start saying that lockdowns did so. To go a step farther, we can stop calling them “supply chain” issues at all, and call them “lockdown consequences.” That is the truth.

We can all also etch in our memories who exactly was complicit in leading us into panic and devastation, and hold them accountable. That is going to require some electoral changes, starting with the man at the top and going right down through state and federal “health” agencies. No funds for them until they clean house.

Not gonna happen, sorry. What you’re proposing is the most foolish of fool’s errands, for all sorts of reasons. Why focus on personnel when the problem is actually systemic? Allowing the system to accrue power enough that it could then be used to lock down society en bloc was our mistake. Once such a system is in place, it’s only a matter of time before people temperamentally inclined to such will come along to wield that power, a universe of possible atrocity and bad behavior suddenly unfolding before them.

Remembering the “who” is pointless; there will never be a shortage of their kind in this poor world. No, the important thing is to avoid putting temptation before such people in the first place. “Electoral changes” will never suffice to turn the trick—not when the “elections” are for offices in charge of a government whose power is effectively without limit, they won’t. You can’t resolve a cockroach infestation by bringing in new cockroaches to replace the old ones. You gotta get rid of the things that attract cockroaches, no more nor less.

2

MOAR POWER PLEEZE!

Posted on May 12, 2022May 12, 2022 by Mike

They never miss even the smallest opportunity, do they?

Pelosi Pushes Democratic Bill That Would Give Biden Power To Control Gas Prices

Gee, wouldn’t you say he pretty much has it already, as evidenced by the way he caused prices to double via shutting down pipelines, yanking oil leases, forbidding drilling and exploration, etc? But then that’s Demonrats for ya—always looking for any excuse at all to expand federal power and control. The rest of the article is so badly bloated with shitlib megalomania it’s too fat to get up off the sofa and walk to the kitchen to grab Fauxcahontas Warren “one o’ them thar beers.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) blamed the continued record surge in gas prices on “exploitation” by oil companies, and touted a bill that would essentially allow the president to control prices.

During her weekly press briefing, Pelosi touted a Democrat-backed bill called the “Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act,” which would allow the president to declare an “energy emergency” giving him the ability to regulate prices by preventing fuel companies from selling their products at prices deemed to be “unconscionably excessive” and “exploiting” such an emergency.

“Next week on the floor of the House, we will have another piece of our lowering-costs-for-the-American-people legislation,” Pelosi said. “House Democrats, led by [Washington] Congresswoman [Kim] Schrier and [California] Congresswoman [Katie] Porter introduced the ‘Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act.’ While families are struggling to pay higher prices at the pump, oil and gas companies are recording record profits, with [the] seven largest oil companies announcing buybacks that could total $41 billion this year alone. Again and again, we see gas prices rise, sometimes when the cost of oil drops, oil prices drop, and price gouging needs to be stopped. This is a major exploitation of the consumer because this is a product that the consumer must have.”

“Again, the Putin [Price] Hike at the pump is a part of this,” Pelosi continued. “You would think that the oil companies would compensate for that rather than exploit the opportunity that it — so in this bill, what this bill does [is] — price gouging needs to be addressed, including new tools at the [Federal Trade Commission] to address those abuses. Our bill enables the president to issue an energy emergency declaration making it unlawful to increase gas and home energy prices in an exploitative and excessive way, which is part of the business plan of these companies.”

The bill authorizes the president to declare an “energy emergency” anywhere within the United States, and use federal powers to regulate prices to combat it. “The President may issue an energy emergency proclamation for any area within the jurisdiction of the United States” within one week of a “reasonably foreseeable emergency” for a period of up to 30 days, the bill states. These proclamations can be renewed for consecutive periods.

Hey, we can always rely on the Demonrats to solve the problems created for us by…um, the Demonrats. Wherever would we be without ’em?

1

World gone mad

Posted on May 12, 2022May 12, 2022 by Mike

As in, bugfuck nuts.

Where did this all come from, and what do we do about it? Well, as with most diabolical movements in Western Civilization today, the radical transgender project can be traced back to the Frankfurt School of neo-Marxists. Whether it’s environmentalism, globalism, open-borders policies, or just systematic anti-Americanism, it can usually be traced back to that motley crew of malcontents.

Transgenderism itself is particularly rooted in something called “queer theory,” the best analysis of which can be found in Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay’s crucial work Cynical Theories. In it, using the works of key postmodernists, we learn that: “Queer Theory is a political project [designed] to challenge what is called normativity—that some things are more common or regular to the human condition.” If it’s normal, if it’s morally sound, if it’s traditional, it must be challenged and eventually overturned.

How else can you explain the fact that a federal judge recently confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court can’t say what a woman is, despite being one. But it’s not just confusion over simple words a 2-year old could explain to you. It’s far more sinister. This judge isn’t simply confused over what an adult human female is, her strange attitude to sex extends to pedophiles and child rapists. Over the years Ketanji Brown Jackson has persistently sided with the purveyors of pedophilic pornography—so much so that she even gave a repeat offender just 12 months in jail for raping his 13-year-old niece. As far as I am concerned, this is why a decent nation has the death penalty.

So what is to be done? First, all of us must cleave to the truth. Never ever bend to the demonic cult that is endangering our children and our civilization. The facts are plain. God is on our side. So is science. Just ask MIT. A man is a man and a woman is a woman. At conception new and unique DNA is created. If that human has XX chromosomes she is a woman until the day she dies. If that chromosomal make-up should instead be XY, he is a man until the day he dies. Those are the incontrovertible facts. Nonnegotiable facts. No matter what drugs you inject yourself with, whatever surgery you mutilate yourself with, or the clothes you wear, it remains true. All we need now is courage to speak the truth. Always.

According to early 19th century thespian Edmund Kean, dying is easy; comedy is hard. But in an age when the lie is so ubiquitous it’s become standard operational procedure for politicians, bureaucrats, federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, establishment-media “journalism” outlets, transnational corporations, and far too many other walks of modern life to go into, simply speaking the truth is going to be the hardest thing of all to do, and honest men and true will become mighty scarce on the ground.

1

The Daily Donnybrook

Posted on May 12, 2022May 29, 2022 by Mike

Welcome to Ye Olde Colde Furye Blogge’s shiny new open-comments thread, where y’all can have at it as you wish, on any topic you like. Do note that the official CF comments policy remains in effect here, as enumerated in the left sidebar. All new posts will appear below this one. There will be blood…

RIP Randy Weaver

Posted on May 12, 2022May 12, 2022 by Mike

One of the very worst of innumerable “FBI run amok” stories.

Randy Weaver has passed away. Three decades ago, he was entrapped by an ATF agent. Federal agents subsequently killed his son and wife. The Justice Department denied that anyone’s rights were violated but still paid a multi-million dollar settlement for the Weaver family’s wrongful death lawsuit. Federal abuses at Ruby Ridge, the subsequent FBI coverup, and the outrageous arguments that federal lawyers made in court to protect the FBI sniper helped awaken legions of Americans to the danger of boundless federal power.

On August 22, 1992, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi killed Vicki Weaver as she stood in the door of a cabin at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, holding her baby. The FBI initially claimed that killing Mrs. Weaver was justified and then later covered up key details and claimed it was accidental. FBI chief Louis Freeh pretended his agents had done nothing seriously wrong. After an Idaho prosecutor indicted Horiuchi for manslaughter, the Clinton administration Justice Department swayed a federal court to dismiss the case based on the “supremacy clause” of the Constitution. But the Founding Fathers never intended for “federal supremacy” to nullify all of the Bill of Rights. Federal judge captured the soul of the case in a dissent that warned of the new James Bond “007 standard for the use of deadly force” against American citizens. Kozinski summarized the case: “A group of FBI agents formulated rules of engagement that permitted their colleagues to hide in the bushes and gun down men who posed no immediate threat. Such wartime rules are patently unconstitutional for a police action.”

Though the FBI insisted its agents had behaved impeccably, the feds paid a $3 million wrongful death settlement to the Weaver family. A top FBI official was sent to prison for destroying key evidence in the case.

The FBI has become more powerful and more dangerous since Ruby Ridge.

It damned sure has at that, which is an abomination before God.

I’ve told the story here of meeting and hanging out with Weaver at the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot one year. He was friendly and personable enough, although it would be stretching things a good bit to say he was gregarious. In the middle of an enraptured group of shooters who considered him to be something of a martyr/hero combination and were hanging on his every word, Weaver seemed to know he was among friends at KCR. But he remained slightly guarded nonetheless.

I was struck by how easy it was to see the anguish in the poor man’s eyes over having federal thugs murder his entire family right before his very eyes, for no good reason at all. Weaver’s pain was etched deeply in him like a burning brand, a wound still as fresh and raw as if his personal nightmare at the hands of an irredeemably evil government had taken place only the day before, rather than several years.

Rest now, Randy. No flesh and blood man could see the things you’ve seen and walk away with soul and spirit unscarred. May the pain and horror be far removed from you, now and forevermore.

2

Don’t look now

Posted on May 12, 2022May 12, 2022 by Mike

Looks like somebody didn’t get the “Saddam had NO WMDs” memo.

Gulf War Syndrome mystery SOLVED: US scientists blame the condition on SARIN gas released into the air when Iraq’s chemical weapons cache was bombed

Quarter of veterans who served in Gulf War suffering unexplained symptoms

Scientists left flummoxed by the cause fatigue, memory problems and body pain

But now US study has found the usually fatal nerve gas sarin is to blame

UNPOSSIBLE, I SAY!!! I have been assured by All The Best People that Saddam had no WMDs, never did have them, and had no interest whatsoever in acquiring any. The whole thing was just a lie dreamed up by Chimperor Shrub II to provide an excuse for launching his Forever War against an entirely blameless nation for the sole reason that the damned drunken fool believed that Saddam was plotting to assassinate Daddy Shrub. All those truckloads of WMDs that were seen filing into Syria for safekeeping just before Operation Desert Shrub opened had no WMDs in them, either.

In fact, there’s NO SUCH THING AS WMDs, period. Even if there were, Moslem shitrapies in the Middle East would be the last place you’d be likely to find them, Pisslam being the Religion Of Peace™ and all that. Hey, did you know that the word “Islam” actually means “Peace” when translated into English? Because it does. I bet you didn’t know that at all, did ya, H8R? Well, you do now.

2

“The Insurgency Lesson of Michael Collins”

Posted on May 12, 2022May 12, 2022 by Mike

Turns out, he has much to teach us.

In 1916, while the Irish rebels were led to a near certain death after having been defeated during the Easter Rebellion, Michael Collins decided he would fight the world’s most powerful empire differently, if he ever got the chance. Michael Collins got that chance in 1918, and he fought differently. In fact, modern successful insurgencies are largely modeled on Collins’ strategic concept.

Collins recognized that the oppressive powers that had their boots on the necks of the Irish people enjoyed power over the economy, information (news papers at the time), police, military, and the courts. No one was going to fight the British and win using British strategies. The only way to win was to fight differently.

For the preceding six-plus decades, the Irish Republican Brotherhood built a parallel state within Ireland. This was necessary for two reasons: (1) if independence was achieved, an Irish managerial class and network needed to step in and manage Ireland; (2) in order for independence to be achieved, Irish rebels needed competent intelligence resources. Collins recognized the value of both and used them successfully. But how did Collins win Irish independence when sixteen prior attempts failed? The targeting of bureaucrats.

The Irish Flying Columns disrupted British rule in the countryside, but they never really landed a true killer blow. What they did achieve, however, was that each successful attack (A) shook confidence in British capacity among Irish locals and (B) invested the locals in asymmetric attrition warfare. Melting back into the farms was critical to Irish successes outside of Dublin. Meanwhile, simultaneously, Collins and his Squad (or Twelve Apostles) of hitmen targeted mid-level bureaucrats for assassination.

Collins, a former bureaucrat himself, understood that senior leaders in British bureaucracy were fairly useless political appointees – not unlike the United States today. Targeting them was useless. The middle managers were the true strength of the British Empire – collecting taxes, disseminating intelligence, feeding news sources, etc, etc. By killing them, Collins was eliminating functional British Rule.

More importantly, not only did each lost beaureaucrat take critical business continuity knowledge to the grave, junior bureaucrats feared promotion. Why accept the role of Deputy X, even with higher pay and prestige, if Deputy X keeps getting killed? This began to destroy British capacity in Ireland.

The insurgency lesson of Collins, therefore, was not to simply attack the teeth of the oppressor, but to dismantle the ability of the teeth to strike – by selectively targeting individual bureaucrats for elimination.

This is a pluperfect primer on how insurgents might remove the tyrant’s boot from off their necks, to which I have nothing to add.

(Via WRSA)

2

Dennis Hopper, American icon

Posted on May 11, 2022May 11, 2022 by Mike

Just so’s you know, I freely admit that I’m running this as an excuse to repost this most awesome Nicholson/Hopper duet from Easy Rider at the end.

I’ve always loved Dennis Hopper and found him to be a kindred spirit. He embodies American consciousness without a shred of sentimentality. We see in him a mixture of rebelliousness, sorrow, loss, and even grace. But more than anything, we see American restlessness. Although he is most known for his films, both as a director and actor, Hopper’s talent was also visible in his photography. After his career had a bit of a downturn in the 1960s, Hopper’s then-wife, Brooke Hayward, gave him a Nikon camera for his 25th birthday.

Hopper’s photography oeuvre covers only the years 1961-1967, which is short chronologically speaking, but the creations that came out of restlessness transcend time. Hopper himself didn’t want to have anything to do with the pictures and put them away in a vault. “I was trying to forget…,” he said, “the photographs represented failure to me. A painful parting from [daughter] Marin and Brooke, my art collection, the house that I lived in and the life that I had known for those eight years.” Still, the photographs continue to live as artifacts of America’s past, separated from Hopper, the man, but bound to Hopper, the artist. His own view of their existence and status as photographs is almost irrelevant because of our gaze into the world he has recorded.

Hopper’s photographs, particularly in this collection, In Dreams, are a window into the soul of America during the 1960s. We see street scenes of Los Angeles: people frozen in time, sitting, standing up, looking into the distance of their own lives, or just staring at the passing dog. We see a close up of hands writing; jazz musicians in a smokey club; streets in rearview mirrors offering both a reality and an illusion of our strange world; George Segal and Sandy Dennis in 1965, a year before the release of Mike Nichols’ adaptation of Edward Albee’s 1962 play, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” standing among the broken nude statues, embodying innocence not unlike their characters, Nick and Honey, in Nichols’ film.

We see Brooke Hayward in a grocery store, pushing a cart somewhat sadly, lost in her secret thoughts; a couple in a kissing booth; a girl in a rearview mirror driving to God knows where (a job? Seeing a friend? Or is she running away?); a cocktail party where a kiss between a man and woman appears seemingly from nowhere (Are they strangers? Friends? Lovers?).

We see the filming of Henry Hathaway’s 1965 western, “The Sons of Katie Elder.” Hopper does not discriminate and sees everyone as a human being, not in their respective societal or film roles. Hathaway and John Wayne are in the middle of a scene with Wayne pointing at something out of frame. There is a calmness, steadiness, and stability, but also the bubbling of creativity. I am drawn to these images precisely because they point to a time and a place when even the possibility of steadiness and masculinity was present in the culture. Things are getting done and life keeps moving forward.

In the collection, there are even self-portraits, in which we see Hopper’s need to be seen, a rebellious streak, and over the top self-importance. But there is also a certain sensitivity that only comes from someone who has the soul of an artist. They are the most dreamy of all. Is this how Hopper saw himself at the time? He is hovering like a ghost of America past and present.

On one occasion, Hopper’s daughter Marin, reflected: “My father, Dennis Hopper, believed that being on the road in search of something was very American. You had to keep moving forward no matter what. Ride into town, gunfight at high noon, then off into the sunset.” Hopper represented—and even in his death, represents—not simply the one American dream, whatever it may have been or whatever shred of it is present now. Rather, he represents American dreams—lives lived on the photographic paper, on the celluloid, and in the American desert of desires.

Okay, I take it back; the article is good enough to serve as its own justification, no excuses required for running it. Same-same with the vid, actually.

Update! So the whole Hopper trip got me to rooting around here and there, which eventually landed me on this incredible site covering all things Easy Rider. Captain America and Billy’s route to Mardi Gras is mapped out, literally; the entire movie is posted; there are then-and-now pics of some of the locations where scenes from the movie were shot, among other way-cool stuff. No foolin’, gang, this is one hella-awesome website for any Easy Rider fan.

2

American Gestapo

Posted on May 11, 2022May 11, 2022 by Mike

Expat makes a quite apt comparison.

Over at ZeroHedge, they have a story about how the FBI went complete retard and shit theyselves when Trump mentioned that the Obamamessiah has the Trump Tower bugged. Link HERE They go into long and full detail as to the rot that apparently permeates what is, by all real definition a Domestic Terrorist Cabal with DotGov sanction. I.E. a IRL Gestapo.

We’ve got a serious fucking problem here

I mean when you look back throughout the history of the FBI, I dunno about you, but I see a murderous quasi-police/military DotGov sanctioned group of ‘enforcers’ without any sort of decency. The fucking Italian Mafia has more honor and decency…and that’s fucked up in it’s own right Aye? It’s well known that during Prohibition, the Fibbies used to spike booze with toxins that kil’t a whole load of people who only wanted a buzz. They, since their very beginning/establishment, have robbed, framed, murdered, hell slaughtered entire groups as the Bully Boy Branch of the FedDotGov. One small case in point, “Ma” Barker, the supposed head of the “Barker Gang”.

She was gunned down by the FBI in 1935 in Ocklawaha, Florida. Wifey is always up my butt about wanting to go and see the famous, or should it be infamous location. Maybe one of these days. The house itself was moved, I do know that. It’s around there somewhere, and there’s still bullet holes inside from the shootout. Thing of it is, Ma Barker had -no- actual criminal record. No fingerprints, no arrests, no nuthin’. This didn’t stop her from being kil’t. In fact when the question came up regarding the possible legal ramifications of a possible bad shoot, the well known J Edgar Cocksucker was the one who made up from whole cloth that she was “the most vicious, dangerous, and resourceful criminal brain of the last decade.” IRL, almost everyone who actually knew her said she knew her boys were criminals, and helped them hide, but as far as being the ‘mastermind’? Notsomucho. Apparently she couldn’t plan breakfast, nevermind a bank job

Hell, even now there’s new scrutiny about the OK City Bombing. That the Fibbies may have had a LOT more to do with the placing of the “Boom” that McVeigh got waxed for. In fact people now are even questioning about why did they move so fast in giving the needle to Timmah? That fat Crippled Fucking Jihadi Major who shot up the Hood is -still- sitting on Death Row? I personally have had a looooong time problem with the supposed “only two dudes” and I’ve mentioned that before…time/weight/amount of AMFO…anyways

Never mind Ruby Ridge, Waco, ‘Whitey’ Bulger, the execution of Filberto Ojeda Rios (a Puerto Rican nationalist)…I mean the list goes on and on and on. And the coverups? Oh Holy Fucking Hells the Coverups that we know of!!! Hillary’s Server, the current CYA on the Trump Dossier, the Horseshit “Russiagate” Bullshit, the continued lying and mendacity of this group?

And unfortunately, this ain’t a case of “Well a few bad…” Nope. Gonna cut you off right fucking there badgekisser. Every. Single. One of those corrupt fucks who’s still there is the enemy. Anyone who’s willing to keep taking the “King’s Groat” is as guilty as allll these dirty double dealing shitheads.

The FBI was the brainchild and plaything of its longtime head, J Edgar Hoover—a wholly corrupt and monstrous piece of human debris—and will forever bear his ugly stamp. Such a lawless, rogue outfit has no place in any properly-governed nation of liberty-loving, self-respecting individuals, who would never tolerate the continued existence of such an extravagantly criminal agency among them for very long. That we do tolerate it says nothing whatsoever flattering about US, sad to say.

3

Monstrous trains

Posted on May 11, 2022May 11, 2022 by Mike

An aspect of the supply chain collapse most of us haven’t given a lot of thought to, if any.

Imagine a train 16,400 feet in length weighing 17,500 tons: That is three miles, 560 feet and 35 million pounds. One train. And it is hauling hazmat, tanks of say, chlorine gas, or anhydrous ammonia. Just one tank car alone weighs 131 tons, that is 262,000 pounds. To give an example from history, 262,000 pounds of chlorine gas is approximately two-thirds of what the German army used during the trench warfare of all of WWI. One tank car alone.

“And then we pick up more enroute! My conductor is three miles away while I reverse this train into an active rail yard! Crossings don’t matter, and communities? Are you kidding? No sane country would move materials like this. These trains exceed the coupler and drawbar limits of the very cars themselves. The risks the Class I carriers are taking is a race to disaster. It is absolutely dreadful and grotesque.

Another Precision Scheduled Railroading factor in supply chain failure: Even when the majority of these PSR trains make it, without dramatic ends, they rarely get across the road during a crew members hours of service (HOS) time limit, which is 12 hours. Several factors:

“The rail infrastructure, in particular rail yards and sidings, were designed and built during the great Industrial Age. They did a lot of things right: they overbuilt bridges, for one. But it is not a failure of imagination that they could not foresee, from a sane perspective, that someday the bosses would want to normalize 15,000-foot trains.

“Yards and sidings do not accommodate this scale. It is a clash of function and design. So, imagine this: A 15,800-foot train with distributed power locomotives placed in the middle and at the rear of a train, comes to work a station with 4,500-foot tracks and needs to pick up and set out cars in the middle and rear of the train. This will not be lickety-split.

Plenty more at the link, all of it both fascinating and terrifying at once. Bayou Pete follows up:

All I can say is, my hat’s off to anyone who takes on a job like that. The stress must be beyond most people’s imagination. Also, if something goes badly wrong and the train is involved in a major derailment or collision, the crew’s safety is probably anything but guaranteed. The inertia built up by such weights, at such speeds, makes it impossible to slow down or stop in any meaningfully short distance. The crew are going to have to jump for their lives (at speeds almost guaranteed to cause serious injury or death) or ride it all the way to impact, in the desperate hope they won’t be smeared all over the wreckage like strawberry jam. That’s not much of a choice.

When I think of the long, long trains of tank cars and chemical cars that I see rumbling through our little town every single day, and realize that even one of those cars carries enough potentially lethal cargo to kill every person within city limits in a matter of minutes…it puts a whole new perspective on rail safety.

Don’t it, though. Don’t it just. Over the years I’ve known a cpl-three guys who worked as train engineers, brakemen, even one out in Arizona who was a conductor, if I remember right, for Amtrak. My cousin Steve, who has had a huge fascination with trains his whole life and is locally famous for his incredible collection of HO-scale model railroad builds, used to say to me: “I really wanted to work for the railroad, until I found out the job would involve having to go out and decouple those big steel boxcars during a lightning storm. That’s when I lost all interest in it.” As it happens, that’s also when I realized how happy I was that I’d never had any interest in it to start with.

Another idea whose time has surely come

Posted on May 11, 2022May 11, 2022 by Mike

Retroactive abortion.

My guess: we’re nearing the end of America’s Christian patience for being snookered, gaslit, lied-to, bamboozled, and mind-fucked, especially as our nation gets gang-raped by the Party of Chaos. Perhaps the solution is to go a little further down the Roe v Wade path and make abortion fully retroactive, a new and innovative way to “cancel” lives whose obnoxious presence in the world is a menace to the human project. Declare the likes of AlMay and NiJank retroactively “unborn,” erasing their privilege to appointed office. The wire coat-hanger probably will not avail in this procedure.

Oh, that’s all right, a decently-zeroed .308 caliber rifle damned sure will.

Meanwhile, several Supreme Court justices are under siege in direct contravention of 18 U.S. Code § 115 — influencing, impeding, or retaliating against a federal official by threatening or injuring a family member. The authorities are permitting angry mobs to moil freely outside the Justices’ houses, while many January Sixth “insurrectionists” rot in the DC jail into a second-year on misdemeanor charges that the authorities refuse to adjudicate — meaning that there is no authority in Washington, DC, only a nameless, lawless simulacrum of it as conceived, say, in the spirit of Franz Kafka.

Hope abides that the November elections might set up a correction to much of this madness. The release on Saturday of Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary 2000 Mules does not provide a whole lot of encouragement about that. The Party of Chaos still has its apparatus of ballot fraud in place all over the country and nobody seems to know what to do about it (though the remedy is pretty simple and straightforward: in-person voting with voter ID).

Please permit me to commend the aforementioned .308 caliber rifle to your attention as a most excellent alternative.

The evidence of drop-box video and smart-phone tracking of the 2020 ballot-stuffers in several states is right there and nobody in American life appears to be equipped to do something about it. The necessary equipment consists of two plum-sized glands generally assigned at birth to persons of the male persuasion. Perhaps, along with refrigerator condensers, the supply line for that is broken.

But first, of course, before the scheduled midterm elections there are roughly six months of nice weather to get through, meaning conditions that are favorable for action in the street, starring the shock troops of Progressive Wokery. Depending on where you live, maybe that’s another reason to feel those old heebie-jeebies creeping in on little spiders’ feet.

Speak for yourself, Bill. What I’m sensing is more of a steadily-increasing disinclination among Real Americans to just sit passively back and put up with such arrant nonsense this go-round, watching helplessly as American cities burn and the police sit on their hands and do nothing. I’m thinking this might possibly be where that good ol’ standby, the .308 caliber rifle, might just be brought into play. We have no effective way to predict when the point will be reached, but sooner or later enough becomes enough, all patience has been exhausted, and sleeping giants will be awakened and rise up in wrath.

1

BREAKING: DeSantis right again!!!

Posted on May 11, 2022May 11, 2022 by Mike

No news there, really; he almost always is.

Ron DeSantis: Requiring Permits for Concealed Carry is ‘Subcontracting Your Rights’
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is warning that requiring a permit for concealed carry subcontracts out constitutional rights to the whims of the person approving permit applications.

News4Jax noted that DeSantis described the concealed permitting process on Tuesday as a “licensing scheme” run by people who can take away your license if they so choose. The Governor made clear he wants to replace the permitting system with a constitutional carry framework.

Precisely so. As I always say: any time you must apply to the government for official permission and a license to exercise something you’ve deceived yourself into thinking of as a “right,” what you actually have is by definition not a right, but a privilege.

Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried is the individual who oversees concealed permitting in Florida. She is also a Democrat candidate for governor in the state. Fried responded to DeSantis by calling the push for constitutional carry “absurd political pandering from the governor of a state that has experienced some of the worst mass shootings in our country’s history.”

DeSantis also spoke about concealed permitting over the weekend, alluding to “the official in charge of these permits” but not calling out Fried by name.

The NRA quoted DeSantis saying “the official in charge of these permits doesn’t support Second Amendment rights.”

Right again, Ron, and it’s high time somebody found the intestinal fortitude to point it out, obvious as it is to some of us. The truth is, NO Demonrat supports the private ownership of firearms, contra whatever brazen lies they feel they must puke up during “election” season. Reflexive opposition to what the plainspoken, easily-understood language of the 2A says is a core prerequisite for acceptance as a Democrat Party candidate for elective office, any breach of which is grounds for immediate and summary expulsion.

2

Another refugee

Posted on May 11, 2022May 11, 2022 by Mike

Codrea takes the Big Leap away from GoogSpot and over to a hosting service where, presumably, he won’t be fucked with. Congrats, Larry, and good on ya. Bookmarks and Blogrolle duly updated anon.

Government internet: now a Thing!

Posted on May 9, 2022May 9, 2022 by Mike

Oh goodie gumdrops, looks like we just found ourselves a brand new Constitutional right!

High-speed internet is not a luxury. It’s a necessity.

But today, too many families simply can’t afford it.

That’s why in November, when we passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we created something called the Affordable Connectivity Program. Here’s how it works.

— President Biden (@POTUS) May 9, 2022

The Obamanet, like its predecessor Obamacare, will be more efficient, lots cheaper (FREE!!!), more reliable, much faster, and WAY more entertaining, educational, and just plain FUN!!! Sundance assures us ALL IS WELL.

There is nothing nefarious about the U.S. surveillance state wanting to make surveillance more efficient. Nothing nefarious at all.

Do not be discouraged by those extremist voices outlining the benefits to government that are provided by a wider, more inclusive, national broadband internet system; that connects to a more efficient 5G internet system; that permits you to experience a new world of telecommunications benefits tailored to your individual needs.

The new network of all things interconnected will make life far more convenient, perhaps allowing you to eliminate the worry of finding gasoline in rural areas when it becomes scarce. Our new national networks will help ease your mind as the internet proximity services work seamlessly with your portable transponder unit (cell phone) to facilitate your needs.

The convenience of finding stuff you need; intersecting with voting and data-connections with your social media network; helping the government track you; all of it. The opportunities are endless my friends. Smiles, everyone, smiles.

You’d think they would be saying thank you. Man, I just can’t wait to get my hands on my new 56k/600 baud modem from dear old Uncle Sam! It’s FREE, you know!

2

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