Page 53

Problem, meet solution

Posted on March 11, 2025 by Mike

Ah, the wondrous possibilities fairly well leap from the page, wildly waving their arms and demanding attention.

Watch: Drag Queens Surround the Kennedy Center in Protest of Trump’s Takeover
Hundreds of protesters — many of them clad in big wigs, makeup, and lots of leather — descended on the Kennedy Center on Saturday as part of a “Rally & March for Drag.” It was the latest in a series of protests in response to President Donald Trump’s ban on Kennedy Center drag productions, many of them aimed at LGBTQ+ youth under 18.

“This president is demonizing a marginalized community in order to control the arts in America. It’s shameful, immoral, and weak,” drag artist Tara Hoot told The Advocate before the event. “At a time when our artists and LGBTQ+ communities are under attack more than ever, we need to show up and speak up against this fascist takeover of the arts.”

Last month, President Trump ousted Joe Biden-appointed board members and named U.S. envoy Richard Grenell the organization’s chairman.

“Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on February 7. “The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation. For the Kennedy Center, THE BEST IS YET TO COME!”

How very disappointing, that I have yet to see even one daring soul suggest rounding up all the annoying, tucked-peenie protesters, sealing them up inside a cargo bay of one of Elon’s Falcon 9 rockets, and launching them directly into the Sun forthwith.

(Via Joe)

Call to violence

Posted on March 11, 2025 by Mike

I can only repeat what I said not long ago: For the Left, the step from calls for violence to acts of violence is never a big one, nor have they ever shown themselves to be at all reluctant to take it.

Political Violence Against Musk: The Left’s Playbook of Intimidation
The attacks on Elon Musk and Tesla are no accident. They are the logical, almost inevitable, consequence of the incitement coming from the highest levels of the Democratic Party, left-wing media outlets such as MSNBC and The New York Times, and billionaire activists like Alex Soros and Reid Hoffman, who fear that Musk is dismantling what they’ve spend years building. These attacks are not isolated. They are coordinated. They are deliberate. And they are meant to send a message—not just to Musk, but to anyone else who dares challenge the progressive orthodoxy.

The recent wave of violence against Tesla facilities, dealerships, and charging stations is staggering in its scope. In New York City, over 350 protesters stormed a Tesla showroom, smashing windows, attacking customers, and even assaulting police officers. In Colorado, an activist-turned-arsonist lobbed Molotov cocktails at Tesla vehicles, spray-painting “Nazi cars” on the walls. In Oregon, a self-described “transgender terrorist” opened fire on a Tesla showroom, shattering windows and riddling vehicles with bullets. And the vandalism isn’t limited to the United States—graffiti in Tasmania denounces Tesla owners as driving “swasticars.”

What fuels this madness? The answer lies in the rhetoric of those in power. Prominent Democrats have relentlessly demonized Musk, not merely as a political opponent, but as a threat to democracy itself. Representative Robert Garcia, in a heated CNN interview, declared that the fight against Musk requires “real weapons,” a statement that he later claimed was metaphorical but was nonetheless embraced by activists as a call to action. Reid Hoffman, billionaire donor and longtime Democratic operative, ominously mused that “actions have consequences” when discussing the attacks on Tesla—an implicit endorsement of political violence. Others, including Representatives Al Green, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, have accused Musk of fascism, of being the next Hitler, of plotting to round up Democrats into concentration camps. This is not political discourse; this is incitement.

Lots more to this one yet at the link, of which you definitely want to read the all. I can’t refrain from including this bit from the closing sum-up:

This is not about Tesla. This is about the future of political discourse in America. If we allow these tactics to succeed, if we permit violence and intimidation to dictate who may speak and who must be silent, then we will have ceded our democracy to the mob.

Which, of course, is precisely why the Founders, to a man, warned their posterity so strenuously and continually against democracy—after all, at the end of the day “mob rule” is what democracy actually is.

(Via BRM)

End of an era

Posted on March 10, 2025March 10, 2025 by Mike

And good riddance.

BLM Plaza in DC dismantled after 5 years as bill threatens to withhold city’s funding
Work to dismantle the Black Lives Matter Plaza street mural in Washington, DC, that was put up in 2020 following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor began on Monday.

Reconstruction at the site of the huge, yellow-painted letters close to the White House follows calls to withhold the city’s funding unless it removed the mural and renamed the location “Liberty Plaza.”

“The mural inspired millions and helped our city through a very painful period,” Bowser said.

“But now we can’t afford to be distracted by meaningless congressional interference. The devastating impacts of the federal job cuts must be our number one concern. Our focus is on economic growth, public safety, and supporting our residents affected by these cuts.”

Plans by House Republicans to scrub the divisive BLM mural were revealed in a Post exclusive earlier this month.

Monday’s dismantling of the mural was greeted with triumph by many conservatives — and slammed by those on the left.

“The world is healing,” wrote the Libs of TikTok account on X, run by pro-Trump influencer Chaya Raichik.

“The only people celebrating the dismantling of the Black Lives Matter Plaza in DC are racist fragile white people,” wrote another.

Let’s see now: racist, check; fragile, check (if you hit me in the face with a brick, do I not bleed?); white, check. Yup, ya got me—guilty as charged, on all counts. NOW what, fuckface?

New category for this sort of thing, inspired by the awesome, blistering Minor Threat song.

Update! For more of the impossibly brilliant DC hardcore of the legendary Minor Threat, check out this complete MT discography on YewToob. All the Minor Threat classics are here: I Don’t Wanna Hear It, Filler, 12XU, Small Man Big Mouth, Bottled Violence, Screaming At A Wall, et al. There really never has been anyone quite like ‘em, I must say.

The Daily Donnybrook, and other fine things

Posted on March 10, 2025March 24, 2025 by Mike

Welcome to Ye Aulde Colde Furye Blogge’s shiny new open-comments thread, where y’all can have at it as you wish, on any topic you like. All new posts will appear below this one. There will be blood…

Mike @Substack

New Eyrie posts go up every Monday and Friday, although the time of day may (and most likely will) vary. Mike’s latest Eyrie offering is available for perusal here: Lies, damned lies, and lies about Israel.

Please do consider subscribing to The Eyrie, gang; subscribers receive email notification whenever each new post goes live. All Eyrie articles are getatable (yes, that’s really a word—trust me!) for one and all to read and enjoy totally free of charge, regardless of subscription status. However, a paid sub is required to unlock commenting privileges—an almighty incentive to kick loose and chip in if ever there was one. Thanks!

Crooks, robbers, and thieves

Posted on March 10, 2025March 10, 2025 by Mike

Yet another question that answers itself.

12 billion dollars was allocated to the Navy for submarines and not one submarine was built.

42.5 billion dollars was allocated to hook people up to high-speed Internet, and not one single person was hooked up to high-speed Internet.

7.5 billion dollars was allocated to build…

— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree)

March 8, 2025

Annnnd your obligatory “Show more…” end run.

12 billion dollars was allocated to the Navy for submarines and not one submarine was built.

42.5 billion dollars was allocated to hook people up to high-speed Internet, and not one single person was hooked up to high-speed Internet.

7.5 billion dollars was allocated to build EV charging stations. Only 37 stations were built. Thats 200 million per charging station.

Where is the rest of the money?

Three guesses, first two don’t count. More and more I’m coming to think that all US ProPols, at every level, should be required by law to wear black bandanas over their faces, like the highwaymen of old. That way we’d all know right away what we were looking at, and no mistakes need ever be made about it. The truly pressing question, being brought home to us more forcefully with every passing day, is whether ANY of these villeins ever intended to spend the taxpayers’ money on what they claimed they were going to.

Aww, don’t bother, that one kinda answers itself too, really.

How deathless is DONE

Posted on March 9, 2025March 9, 2025 by Mike

The making of a masterpiece.

“Absence of Malice” and Why Some Movies Are Timeless
When a great satire is made, one that touches on themes that are endemic and universal to the worlds of which they make fun, what happens is that reality keeps coming back around and making those movies relevant all over again. Our tragicomic withdrawal from Afghanistan echoed the futility of the daily lives of the drafted surgeons of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M*A*S*H). Our seemingly aimless and ineffective attempts to counter Putin in the Ukraine can sometimes make us believe that nothing much has changed in the halls of the Pentagon since Buck Turgidson, President Muffley and General Ripper hammed it up in Dr. Strangelove’s “War Room.” And “The Player” and “Network” so perfectly skewer Hollywood and the News Media that all these years later, they remind us that almost nothing about those industries has changed over the ensuing decades.

But it’s not only comedies and satires that can achieve this kind of cultural resonance… history rhymes, if it does not repeat, as they say, and so dramatic thrillers like “Serpico”, “All The President’s Men”, “Three Days of the Condor”, “Taxi Driver” and “Death Wish” also seem more relevant than ever, these days.

In the same vein, Sydney Pollack’s 1981 masterpiece “Absence of Malice” is one of those movies that perfectly skewers its subject, an unholy alliance between the press and the very government the press is meant to hold in check. It is so well done, that the drama is timeless. A movie that seems more prescient now, than it did when it was made.

The opening credits of “Malice” show us a full edition of a local Miami newspaper being written, typeset and printed. As the paper evolves into its final form, the headlines tell us that a powerful union boss has been missing for six months and is presumed dead, and that the Justice Department, the Miami PD and the DA are under trememdous pressure to solve the case.

Post credits we meet the Federal Prosecutor in charge of that case, Elliot Rosen (Bob Balaban), who has decided that a successful liquor wholesaler named Michael Gallagher, played by Paul Newman who was still one of the best looking men in the world even at age 56, must himself be involved in the disappearance in some way. Rosen doesn’t believe this because of any evidence he’s collected, he has none at all, but because Gallagher’s deceased father was affiliated with the local anti-union mob and so, therefore, his son must also be “connected”… quod erat demonstrandum.

Later, when the Miami Dade DA asks him which crime Gallagher is suspected of committing, Rosen answers “what’s the difference?”

“So you’re squeezing him?” asks the DA.

“You got somebody better?” is Rosen’s chilling response.

Unfortunately for Rosen, the US Consitution exists, and he cannot arrest Gallagher, put him in a deep dark hole, and sweat it out of him. So, he decides to put public pressure on the businessman in hopes he will break. To do this, he targets a young cub reporter named Megan Carter, played by Sally Field, as his weapon of choice. He leaks the existence of his “investigation” to Carter who writes an article that comes up just short of accusing Gallagher of the crime, an inferred accusation which Rosen knows will embarrass the man and destroy both his social standing in Miami as well as his business… eggs, meet omelette.

By now this should all be starting to sound very familiar.

Certainly it should be to attentive CF Lifers, mainly because of this clip featuring the incomparable Wilford Brimley.

I’ve run it here again and again, and watched it even more times, and it ain’t never getting old.

Peach state goin’ down

Posted on March 9, 2025 by Mike

We hardly knew ye, Jawja.

A Biological Male for ‘Miss Georgia’?
It’s bad enough that biological men want to compete in women’s sports, but now it looks like they’re aiming for women’s pageants, too. In 2023, men from Portugal and the Netherlands were contestants in the Miss Universe pageant, and in June of last year, a biological male became Miss Maryland and later competed in the Miss USA pageant. And now, it’s happening in my home state of Georgia.

Bella Bautista from Cartersville, Ga., is a biological man who is now, apparently, “Miss Buckhead” (Buckhead is a popular residential and commercial district in Atlanta) and plans to compete in the Miss Georgia pageant. When I saw this headline, my obvious issue was, of course, that here we go again with men attempting to take something away from women.

But then I visited Bautista’s Instagram page and noted that this person has a big agenda. The bio reads, “Civil Rights Activist. Collegiate Athlete. Econ. Major Using Archives To Restore Trans History.” Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that this person’s life is largely dedicated to disrupting the lives of others in favor of “trans rights.”

Gee, how very unusual of him/her/it, wouldn’t have expected it.

A bit of backstory: when I lived in ATL, Buckhead was universally known as “Fuckhead” amongst us lesser beings—a snooty rich-people nabe you could barely even drive through without getting jeered at and heckled by the locals as you passed. After dark, fuhgeddaboudit: the streets and sidewalks were asshole to elbow with inebriated, besuited yuppie-puppies staggering about, twelve-dollar beers in hand, making the nightly pub-crawl through the many exorbitantly priced watering holes dotting the area.

The one and only reason I know even that much about the place is that the photography school/college/whatevs my then-gf Kat attended was on Peachtree just beyond Fuckhead, so we had to run the gauntlet through the miserable dump twice daily on the way to school and back. At that time, we only had the one car between us: Kat’s beat-up but nonetheless valiant old Ford Fiesta, a less than ideal situation which persisted until I arranged to buy my uncle Larry’s battered old Burick for a piffling sum.

Head games

Posted on March 9, 2025March 9, 2025 by Mike

CBD undertakes a little thought experiment.

Let’s play a little game… pretend that a group of “White Supremacists” (yeah, I know, they mostly don’t exist) decided to parade across the Columbia University quad in KKK garb, then set up a “camp” where they built little gallows for mock lynchings. Oh, add in some signs about how the Emancipation Proclamation was an existential evil, and integration is genocide. And if we really want to add some spice to this, let’s have the participants harass and sometimes attack every black person they see, and trash some buildings for good measure.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it! How long do you think these protesters would last before a few hundred NYPD riot police busted their heads, fighting for the privilege with thousands of counter-protesters from all over the country? How many robe-clad-racists would survive unscathed to make it to jail? And imagine the very public trials for dozens of insane and imagined charges cooked up by foaming-at-the-mouth prosecutors salivating at the thought of throwing some 20-year-old dipshit into jail for 10 years!

We can have a robust discussion about whether this is constitutionally protected free speech (obviously not including physical violence), and that is an important discussion to be had in America. But the obvious difference between our imaginary protest and the very real and violent protests on the campus of Columbia University is that the administration of the university did nothing to protect the Jewish students from real danger, and did almost nothing to the protesters in spite of their clear and obvious violations of dozens of university rules, and state and federal law.

Where were the U.S. Marshalls escorting Jewish students to class? Where was the 101st Airborne protecting the campus?

They were nowhere to be found, because the administration of one of the oldest and most prestigious (hah!) universities in the world decided that violent Jew-hate is an acceptable expression of free speech. It is as simple as that.

And in a simpler world that would be incredibly distasteful but legal (again, not including violence). After all, free speech that is anodyne is trivial. True free speech is offensive and challenging. But the second Columbia University accepted one penny of public money, they were bound by the strictures of the various federal and state laws governing discrimination, namely Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Columbia failed to protect its Jewish students from discrimination based on their religion.

If Columbia University is institutionally anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, and anti-Israel, and I believe they are, then they have a straightforward way of being allowed to express those opinions. Stop taking government money. Easy-Peasy! But they won’t because they can’t! They suckle at the government teat to the tune of $5 billion! So they are stuck! And it is glorious!

Hm…well, could be, could be. CBD is a lot more gleeful than I am about what looks to me like a mere token response from God-Emperor Trump.

Trump cuts more than $400 million in grants to Columbia over antisemitism concerns, potentially more to come

The Trump administration announced on Friday that it will rescind more than $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University, citing concerns over rising antisemitism on campus and the school’s failure to address it.

Earlier this week, the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Education (DoED) and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced the initiation of a “comprehensive review” of more than $5 billion in federal grant money that goes to Columbia, “in light of ongoing investigations for potential violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act” related to antisemitism on campus.

I hope this hurts them. And I hope that every wealthy Jewish alum will stop giving. And I hope that no Jewish students apply to Columbia. And I hope that the massive corporate money flow to Columbia will slow to a trickle, because all of a sudden, it is appropriate for corporations to examine their funding of overtly racist programs (DEI anyone?). And yes, I am aware that some of this is a pipe-dream, but there will be incremental decreases, and that is entirely a good thing.

I repeat: could be, could be. But from where I sit, 400 mill out of over 5 BILLION ain’t gonna hurt ‘em as much as I’d like to see ‘em hurt. Baby steps, I know, baby steps; gotta walk before you can run, all that. But still.

Gat review

Posted on March 5, 2025March 5, 2025 by Mike

The Smith & Wesson Bodyguard .380, v2.0.

S&W’s Bodyguard 2.0 .380 Pistol – One Tiny Lifesaver!
The new S&W Bodyguard has earned its “2.0” status. To put it bluntly… the original 6-shot Bodyguard .380 left much to be desired. The new 2.0 version fixes what was wrong with its predecessor.

Now as it happens, I own a pre-24 (ie, v1.0) Bodyguard pocket rocket myself (this here one, with built-in Crimson Trace red-dot laser), and that “left much to be desired” remark ain’t no bull—specifically, the flimsy, way oversprung, absurdly long-throw plastic trigger, which rendered the little popgun damned near useless unless you were gonna throw it at an assailant’s head or something.

Happily though, thanks to the fine folks at Shepherd Tactical Supply, the fix for that design flaw was cheap and easy-peasy to avail myself of: an under $30 aluminum, adjustable trigger anodized in red (if I remember right, they had ‘em in plain black and silver-grey also, but once I saw the red I was hooked), which tightened everything up nicely, looks great, and made the cute li’l booger a delight to shoot.

I’d never attempted a trigger swap before, which Big Country cautioned me can be a tricky project if you don’t know what you’re doing. Was there a man dismayed? HA! Forward the Light Brigade!

In the event, the job took me no more than about twenty minutes to complete successfully with ordinary hand tools I had lying around just begging to be useful; it was a snap, no lie. Since the trigger swap, then dialing the Crimson Trace in so’s it no longer pointed up into the sky and off to the left, I’ve run a cpl-three boxes of Hornady Critical Defense through the little beastie out in the backyard—no problems, no issues, no hassles, no complaints.

The STS trigger took the Bodyguard from feeling like a cheap, shoddy kid’s toy to something a lot more like a real pistol should be. Thanks to the trigger upgrade, what had once been a dust-covered, neglected nightstand adornment has become my EDC piece. Nowadays, I never leave home without it.

The Bodyguard kit included a bottom-shelf S&W gun rug and two (2) 6-round magazines: one with the all-important pinkie extension piece on the butt plate, and one without. Take my word for it, the pinkie-rest mag is the way to go; assuming I ever do get my hands on a spare nickel again, I really need to hit Nichols Store not far from my house (FANTASTIC gun/ammo/accessories shop, one of the very best I’ve ever been in) and see about getting another one of ‘em. Then I can toss that shorty, flat-butt PoS into the sock drawer and forget it ever even existed.

Hey, a man can dream, can’t he?

The absolute last word on “birthright citizenship”

Posted on March 5, 2025March 5, 2025 by Mike

It is NOT a thing, has never BEEN a thing, and ought never to BE a thing. Period fucking dot.

The 14th Amendment does not confer automatic citizenship
Claremont Institute scholars, including me, Ed Erler, Tom West, John Marini, and Michael Anton, President Trump’s incoming Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, have been contending for years—decades, really—that the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause does not provide automatic citizenship for everyone born on U.S. soil, no matter the circumstances. Other prominent scholars, such as the late University of Texas law Professor Lino Graglia, University of Pennsylvania Professor Rogers Smith, and Yale Law Professor Emeritus Peter Schuck, have come to the same conclusion based on their own extensive scholarly research.

Claremont scholars have made the argument in books, law review articles, congressional testimony, and legal briefs. President Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General, Edwin Meese, even joined one of those briefs, in which we argued against treating enemy combatant Yaser Esam Hamdi as a citizen merely because he had been born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while his father was working in the U.S. on a temporary work visa. Perhaps as a result of our brief in that case, the late Justice Antonin Scalia referred to Hamdi as a “presumed citizen” in his dissenting opinion.

Our argument is straightforward. The text of the 14th Amendment contains two requirements for acquiring automatic citizenship by birth: one must be born in the United States and be subject to its jurisdiction. The proper understanding of the Citizenship Clause therefore turns on what the drafters of the amendment, and those who ratified it, meant by “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Was it merely a partial, temporary jurisdiction, such as applies to anyone (except for diplomats) who are subject to our laws while they are within our borders? Or does it instead apply only to those who are subject to a more complete jurisdiction, one which manifests itself as owing allegiance to the United States and not to any foreign power?

Think of it this way. Someone from Great Britain visiting the United States is subject to our laws while here, which is to say subject to our partial or territorial jurisdiction. He must drive on the right-hand side of the road rather than the left, for example. But he does not thereby owe allegiance to the United States; he is not subject to being drafted into our army; and he cannot be prosecuted for treason (as opposed to ordinary violations of law) if he takes up arms against the United States, for he has breached no oath of allegiance.

So which understanding of “subject to the jurisdiction” did the drafters of the 14th Amendment have in mind?

Happily, we don’t need to speculate, as they were asked that very question. They unambiguously stated that it meant “complete” jurisdiction, such as existed under the law at the time, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which excluded from citizenship those born on U.S. soil who were “subject to a foreign power.”

Covers the bases pretty well, I should think, although there are still plenty more indisputable proofs perusable at the link. Which, of course, doesn’t by any means suggest that shitlibs are going to cease and desist soiling their Underoos, wailing and weeping, and waving their chubby fists around demanding that saner sorts recognize this nonexistent “right” immediately. Not anytime soon, they ain’t. It’s an approach Real Americans would do well to adopt for themselves: no discussion, no debate, no controversy is truly concluded until the Left has gotten its way.

Apropos of nothing: if you check the date on the article (1/28/25), you’ll see that this one has just about got to be the all-time record holder in the Most Consecutive Days Spent Languishing In An Open Tab Waiting For Ye Aulde Blogghoste To Finally Get Around To Posting On It™ category.

Memezapoppin’!

Posted on March 5, 2025 by Mike

Welcome to this week’s installment of our Wednesday meme feature, folks. Links to the “found via” sources will be attached to the specific MiQ’s (Memes in Question) whenever I can remember them, which likely won’t be very often. Only the first two memes will appear above the fold to save on bandwidth usage, since I assume not everybody who shows up at this here websty will want to see all of them. This intro will appear at the top of each week’s Memezapoppin’! post. Enjoy, funny-pitcher lovers.

Continue reading “Memezapoppin’!“ →

Hats off to our classy, beautiful, politically astute First Lady

Posted on March 4, 2025March 4, 2025 by Mike

I suppose as I type this Trump must be smack dab in the middle of tonight’s big speech to Congress, which is of little or no real import far as I’m concerned. This story, on the other hand, struck just the right note with me.

The First Lady’s Guest List for Tonight Is Fascinating
When Donald Trump takes the stage to deliver his speech to a joint session of Congress tonight, his wife, Melania, will be in the audience, and she’ll have several unique guests with her. But they’re not celebrities or dignitaries. They’re everyday Americans “from all different walks of life” whose lives have been impacted by “disaster wrought by the previous administration.”

Some of the First Lady’s guests have been victims of crimes committed by people who are in the United States illegally, like Allyson and Lauren Phillips of Woodstock, Ga. You might know them better as the mother and sister of Laken Riley, the young nursing student who was brutally murdered on the University of Georgia campus by a Venezuelan gang member who was not only in the U.S. illegally but had also committed many previous crimes.

Mrs. Trump will also have Alexis Nungaray of Houston, Texas, at the speech. Nungaray’s 12-year-old daughter, Jocelyn, was murdered by two men whom the Biden administration caught at the border and released into the U.S. just weeks before they committed the heinous crime. U.S. Border Patrol agent Roberto Ortiz will be in attendance as well. While serving in Texas, he’s been shot at many times by dangerous cartel members.

Remember Corey Comperatore, the firefighter who was shot and killed when a gunman tried to assassinate Trump at a rally last July? His widow, Helen, and their daughters, Allyson and Kaylee, will join the first lady on Tuesday night.

Former Russian hostage Marc Fogel and his 95-year-old mother, Malphine of Butler, Pa., will be there, too. The history teacher was sentenced to 14 years in a Russian prison for attempting to visit the country with medical marijuana. In February, after making a promise to Malphine, Trump secured his release and even invited Marc to the White House upon returning to the U.S.

A couple of the First Lady’s guests have been the victims of abhorrent gender issues. January Littlejohn of Tallahassee, Fla., is the mother of a young girl whose “middle school socially transitioned” her “to a different sexual identity without January and her husband’s knowledge or permission.” Littlejohn is now a parents’ rights advocate.

Payton McNabb of Murphy, N.C., a young female volleyball player who had to step away from the sport “when a biological man playing on the opposing women’s team spiked the volleyball at Payton’s face, leaving her with a traumatic brain injury,” will be there. McNabb is now a member of the Independent Women’s Forum and an advocate for girls’ sports.

Lots more victims of the misbegotten, illegitimate, and wholly criminal Biden junta listed at the link. I’m happy to see them all receive the recognition they so richly deserve from an actual President and his caring, compassionate wife. Speeches? We don’ need no steenking speeches—not when the guest list says everything anybody needs to know, and says it so very well.

Update! The one and only thing that might actually get me interested in Trump’s big speech.

Via WRSA.

Another great one gone

Posted on March 1, 2025March 1, 2025 by Mike

Two this time, actually. First up, iconic New York Dolls frontman David Johansen.

Legendary New York Dolls rocker David Johansen has died at age 75.

His stepdaughter Leah Hennessey confirmed the sad news, saying the punk icon had passed away Friday at his home on Staten Island.

The New York native revealed just last month that he was suffering from stage four cancer, a brain tumor and a broken back.

Over the past few years, Johansen had been unable to perform due to his ailments.

Johansen began singing with the Vagabond Missionaries, a local band on Staten Island, in the 1960s. A decade later he joined the New York Dolls and their self-titled debut album was released in 1973.

The controversial record cover featured the five male band members clad in wigs, make-up and high heels.

Their music — described as “dirty, sleazy and loud” — in combination with their cross-dressing offended many and their debut album was deemed a commercial flop, failing to crack the Top 100 album sales charts.

Their follow-up record, 1974’s “Too Much Too Soon” performed even more poorly, only reaching 167 on the sales charts.

By 1976, the band went their separate ways and Johansen became a solo performer.

Those old enough to remember will know that the Dolls always punched well above their weight, their influence on other bands far outstripping their meager sales numbers and anemic chart performance eventually. Those not quite old enough to remember probably know Johansen better for his semi-comic lounge singer persona, Buster Poindexter. Fare thee well, David Johansen, and well done.

Ahh, good to see one of my own personal guitar heroes from way on back yonder, Johnny Thunders, again.

Next up, we say goodbye to gifted character actor Gene Hackman, whose death smells fishier with every passing day, seems like.

Gene Hackman and wife were dead for ‘several days,’ maybe weeks before their bodies were discovered: sheriff
Legendary actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, were likely dead for several days — possibly even “a couple of weeks” — by the time they were found in their home by a maintenance worker, the sheriff of Santa Fe County, New Mexico, revealed.

Hackman, 95, and his wife, 65, were found in separate rooms of their multimillion-dollar home on Wednesday along with one of their dogs.

Arakawa, who was discovered surrounded by prescription pills, had “obvious signs of death, body decomposition, bloating in her face and mummification in both hands and feet” when she was found on the floor of a bathroom near the home’s entry, police wrote in an affidavit.

Hackman was located near a pair of sunglasses in what deputies believe was the home’s mudroom.

Arakawa, who was discovered surrounded by prescription pills, had “obvious signs of death, body decomposition, bloating in her face and mummification in both hands and feet” when she was found on the floor of a bathroom near the home’s entry, police wrote in an affidavit.

Hackman was located near a pair of sunglasses in what deputies believe was the home’s mudroom.

Curiouser and curiouser. Hackman, of course, was one of those rare talents—along with Michael Caine and, say, Peter Sellers—who were just so damned good at submersing themselves so totally in whatever role they were playing that, quite often, you’d be halfway through the dang movie before realizing who it was up there on the screen this whole time. Another thing about those guys: no matter how crappy the film, you could always bear watching the whole thing, just because they were in it. Just one of Hackman’s many, many stellar performances.

Truckers’ wisdom

Posted on February 28, 2025March 1, 2025 by Mike

Found this over at Bayou Peter’s joint, and it’s mighty intriguing.

Hopefully that’s not too small for older eyes to be able to read; if so, there’s a bigger version at BRM you might try. For his part, Peter modestly admits:

I don’t regularly drive on ice and snow (thank you, Texas weather!), but from my (very) limited exposure to it, I know I don’t do well under those driving conditions. I’d never considered the hazards of commercial vehicles, particularly 18-wheeler truck/trailer combinations, when their drivers have the same problem. Now that drivers can come in from Mexico (where snow isn’t exactly commonplace, to put it mildly) and drive all the way to the US/Canadian border or even further north, I can see that would make for…interesting times on the highway.

“Interesting” in the apocryphal Chinese curse sense, he means.

In my own case, me and several friends of mine took advantage of a snow-day school cancellation when we were teenagers to get out on our high school’s expansive, snow-and-ice-coated parking lot to spin donuts, lock up the brakes and slide, and just generally act like idjits all afternoon, intentionally teaching ourselves how to drive on the slippery stuff. Ever since then, I’ve had no problems driving on anything but actual black ice, which nobody can really drive on anyway, not even experienced, highly-skilled Hollywood stunt drivers.

Update! It occurs to me that some of y’all might be interested to hear more about the truck driver’s trials and tribulations on snow and/or ice, from the perspective of someone who’s been there and done that. When it comes to operating a standard-sized sleeper tractor/53’ trailer rig on snow and ice, it all boils down to one simple word: DON’T. Not if you can possibly avoid it, at any rate. No matter how skilled you are, how well-trained, how experienced, nothing good can ever come of it.

Regardless of how slow, attentive, and careful you are behind the wheel, maintaining control on the slick stuff is a matter not of ability but of sheer, unadulterated luck. That’s it, that really is all there is to it. Tap them gingerly, stomp them (NEVER a good idea, actually), gently press and release over and over again, I never could find a way to keep the brakes from locking up in snowy/icy road conditions. Whereupon the trailer would begin to slooooowly jackknife, and there was not one damned thing you could do to keep it straight and following behind the tractor where it’s supposed to be. Fully loaded or empty, didn’t matter: the trailer had a mind of its own, and did not respond to any of my increasingly-desperate inputs from the cab. I had always figured having some weight behind me would be helpful in such straits, but nope.

There is/was no horror quite as paralyzing as having almost the entire side of my trailer appear in the side-view mirror, freewheeling along willy-nilly without a care in the world. One time, creeping down the mountain-top from Hendersonville pulling a just-unloaded trailer, I looked on in helpless terror as my empty trailer hove into view in the right-side mirror, sweeping majestically around as if it intended to scrub the poor little old man in a mid-sized car I was passing right off the highway and into the deep valley below. Steering and counter-steering like a madman, mildly stab-braking trying to get my rogue trailer back into proper alignment, nothing I tried seemed to have any real effect.

Meanwhile, the old guy was completely unaware of the life-and-death drama unfolding all around him. Somehow, some way, the trailer DID straighten back out again without making contact with the other vehicle, and I continued on down the mountain switchbacks bathed in a flop-sweat as the huge flakes kept falling thickly, intensely grateful for the miraculous sparing of that poor oblivious geezer’s life…THIS time. A bona fide miracle with which I had nothing whatsoever to do, one way or the other.

I still have nightmares about that little misadventure. Which is just jake with me, honestly; coulda been a hell of a lot worse, I know that.

Deep dive into some dirty water

Posted on February 28, 2025 by Mike

EXCELLENT run-down of the DOGE dustup, what it all means, the history behind it, how Real Americans should perceive and interpret it, and more, from Jeffrey A Tucker. It’s a Tweet/X/whatever, and a pretty long ‘un too, so rather than do an embed of the original post I’ll just fast forward to the inevitable “Show more…” workaround.

I’m concerned that many people do not understand the historical and institutional context in which the DOGE labor reforms are unfolding. They look at this as if these are some random, chaotic, arbitrary, strange, and even cruel measures to impose on a devoted civil service.

The reality is very different, and I’m not even sure that Elon entirely understands this. For more than a century, even dating back to 1883, the civil service has grown and grown without check from the elected branch, either the presidency or the legislature . The bureaucracies have ballooned from a few to 450 or so. The bloat and absurdities have grown too.

Get this: no one has ever known what to do about it. Not Coolidge, not Hoover, not Nixon, not Reagan, not Clinton, no one. No president has been able to crack this nut. The only reforms ever to have made it through are those that make the administrative state bigger, never smaller.

Countless cabinet secretaries have come and gone, always with the intention of making a change but leaving saddened, demoralized, outwitted, outgunned, and ultimately devoured.

No president has seriously taken on this problem because they simply did not know how. The unions are powerful, the intimidation from the deep institutional knowledge is overwhelming, the fear of the media as been powerful, and every single president comes to power vaguely feeling threatened by the intelligence agencies. The industries that have captured every single agency were also far too powerful to unseat or control.

This combination of institutional inertia has blocked serious reform for a full century. No one has dared. No one has even had a theory or strategy about what to do about this problem. It had become so terrible that most people in politics have simply surrendered, like homeowners who know there are rats in the basement and bats in the attic but long ago gave up trying to fix the issue.

All this time, the American people have felt themselves ever more oppressed, weighed upon, taxed and regulated, spied upon, brow beaten, and otherwise overwhelmed. Voting never made any difference because the politicians no longer controlled the system. The bureaucracies ruled all.

The Biden years underscored the point. We didn’t even need a conscious and present executive. We only needed a figurehead to pretend to be president, just like the Soviet premiers in the old days. The institutions ran everything and the people controlled nothing.

How to deal with this? Trump alone figured it out in his last term: he simply took charge of the agencies in a limited way. There were screams of horror and plots galore. They performed a long stream of clever schemes to destroy him and show him who is boss, which is not the democratically elected president but the forces behind the scenes.

The job of the president, goes the message from all the insiders, is to PRETEND to be in charge but not actually do anything meaningful. Shut up, mug up, obey, and disturb nothing, let the administrative state do its thing without oversight or disruption, and then you will get your honorary library and bestselling autobiography and go down in history as great.

Trump refused the deal and look what happened.

Four years have gone by and Trump is back again, this time with a determination to slay this beast, one that he knows all-to-well. The efforts of DOGE and MAHA and MAGA are epic in scope, breaking a century of pathetic acquiescence toward the deep, middle, and shallow states, at last using moral courage to confront the problem head on, come what may.

They are profoundly aware that they MUST act fast and with some degree of ferocity, even recklessness, else we will default back to the status quo of leaders who pretend to be in charge while the embedded system runs things behind the scenes.

It has been this way for TOO LONG. The voters this time have demanded change, and mustered the faith to believe that change is possible. This is precisely what DOGE is attempting, to make good on a promise, a promise that for once the voters actually believed was credible.

They simply must succeed. There might never be another chance. The way of failure is the path everyone knows the US was on, toward economic stagnation, political scolerosis, and eventual irrelevance in the unfolding of the next stage of social evolution.

As comprehensive, clear-cut, and just dead-on-point good as we’re ever gonna see, I believe. I started to do a little boldfacing here and there (I especially dug that “voters…have demanded change, and mustered the faith to believe that change is possible” bit), but then it hit me that there’s just way too much rich, buttery goodness here to easily be able to find a stopping point once I got started. Some things are just better left alone; they stand well enough on their own, thanks.

1

Mike @Substack

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