Viva!

Greetings, pinche norteamericanos, from the failed state to your south!

Well, Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man is rightfully concerned that this year's Maximum Leader likely winner - Comrade Obrador (and I mean Comrade in exactly the way you might suspect) - in the Clown Carnucopia Of Fail that is Mexican politics for the last two centuries, i.e. pretty much every waking minute the country has existed as its own national (or should that be notional?) entity, is promising to take up the cause of their cruelly oppressed campesino migrantes everywhere (but especially here).

“And soon, very soon — after the victory of our movement — we will defend all the migrants in the American continent and all the migrants in the world,” Obrador said, adding that immigrants “must leave their towns and find a life in the United States.”

He then declared it as “a human right we will defend.”

Unless they defend it better than they defend their northern border, that's not really much to worry about.

Pay no attention to the fact that this year, cartels have already murdered 110 (and counting) government officials, and that anything that threatens the BILLIONS of US dollars wired back home to mamacita from her family members working in Los Estados Unidos is pretty much like threatening to cut the country's jugular with an airplane propeller rotating at speed. That's just a pure coincidence.

Peter even offered some prognostication, and some advice that's good pretty much 24/7/365:

"If Mr. Obrador follows through on his threat, the Wall won't be anything like adequate.  Minefields, barbed wire, Claymore mines and robotic weapons turrets will be more like it.  There won't be any other way to stop what will be, in effect, "human wave" attacks on the US border.

If it comes to that, I'm likely to be very grateful that we have President Trump in charge, and General Mattis as his Secretary of Defense.  At least they won't hesitate to defend this nation's sovereignty.  If Clinton had won, she'd simply roll over and surrender.

Better brace yourselves, folks.  This could turn nasty.  Oh - and if you live within a couple hundred miles of the border, stock up on firearms and ammunition while you can.  You may need them."

 

It's probably not really as bad as all that.

Like looters in riots, you only have to shoot the first one in the head.

That generally takes the wind out of everyone else's sails, and they find other options, most of them centered around not getting their heads all exploded, and staying home.

And in the modern social media age, we don't even have to kill anybody; just post a picture of one such notional border crosser, with the bullet hole SFX'ed right into place, send out the tweet, and let ripples in the electronic pond do the rest.

As Calvin said to Hobbes about the monsters under the bed,
"They lie. I lie."

And if Obrador wants to be the shortest-term president in Mexico in a century, and see what Shock and Awe regime change looks like from the pointy end, he's going about it the right way.

Of course, neither the CIA nor the Marines are shy about dropping in personally to liven things up for him right at home, if necessary. There's even some history to that effect, IIRC. Something about "the halls of Montezuma", or somesuch.

So keep yapping about bringing us "the mother of all immigrant hordes", and see how that plays out for you when the jets don't even need a carrier, they can just stage out of Miramar, Davis-Monthan, and Lackland. The guys at Whiteman can pretty much get to Guatemala and back on less than half a tank.

It's also often pointed out that Mexico City and Cancun are closer to Dallas than is Washington DC.
Word to su madre: so are the 1st Armored and 1st Cav Divisions, and opposed by the entire might of the mighty Mexican Army, both brigades, they'd be eating burritos in the capitol NLT Tuesday luncheon. Wednesday if they stopped for gas and some tourist snaps along the way.

It'd never get that bad, though. We'd just sanitize a five-mile wide corridor along the border, push everybody south of it in perpetuity, sew it silly with landmines, and sit back and call in the occasional artillery mission.

I mean, it's not like we've got an entire military that's fought two desert wars for pretty much 12 of the last 18 years, and pounded multiple countries' real estate and armies into so much kindling, mainly for practice,or something. Oh wait, we've got that.

Course, we'd probably have to sort everyone here, for national security reasons, and the detainees could look forward to long hot summers in football stadiums while the background checks were processed.

Probably be a booming market for other kids from minority 'hoods to get the newly vacant jobs at Taco Bell and Mickey Ds.

Call that toss in the air, idiotas.
But really, isn't one Alamo, one San Jacinto, and one Chapultepec enough already to last everyone for a few hundred years?

But the biggest risk isn't that some blowhard idiot in the Palacio Nacional manages to egg us into squashing their pissant failed state. It's that after we do it, some jackhole do-gooder in D.C. would want to try to fix the damned thing, as if such were even possible, rather than building The Great Wall Of Trump from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of California, with or without a miles-wide buffer and a few million land mines, just to keep everyone honest.

And then we'd be saddled with an the only possible albatross capable of making Puerto Rico or Gaza look like well-run operations.

I would relent on one condition: everyone registered to vote Democrat has to move there for 20 years, to show us the glorious possibilities of socialism on a country-wide scale. Like D.C., Detroit, and Chicongo aren't proof of concept already.

I've elsewhere laid out my plans for Baja California: we keep it as a protectorate, like Hong Kong was, for, say, 200 years. The Pacific side as one long nearly 800-mile resort and vacation hotel strip that'd put Vegas and the French Riviera out of business in about a year. The Gulf Of California half as a pristine national park camping eco-preserve and whale breeding zone that'd make Greenpeace and the Sierra Club wet themselves with rapturous glee. Only native Mexicans get jobs there, anyone convicted of any crime is banished to the main country for life, and for every person employed there gainfully, Mexico remits as payment to the US one barrel of Mexican crude oil, per annum.

The profits of the zone get split 50/50 between Mexico and the US, and it's a federal territory, administered by a federally-appointed governor, under U.S. laws. If the guy doesn't make a profit every two years, he gets canned. If he does, he and his administrative team get a piece of the take. Maybe ½-1%, or something like that. You know, like every business in the Western world since about...ever. The US half of the profits get statutorily plowed back into infrastructure for the peninsula, like housing, schools, hospitals, etc. More jobs, better lives.

Violent criminals, and any drug cartel members, get the treatment that was customary during the Mexican Revolution.

It's always important to respect local precedents.

In twenty years, the rest of Mexico would be begging us to do the same thing, followed in short order by Central America. They'd vote it in. (Even faster, at that point, if we promised to treat the Democrats like cartel members, above.)

(Back before he decided to get all political, I always figured the guy to run the Baja Plan would be...wait for it...Donald Trump. Now, well...let's just note that regarding myself and nearly 63M of my friends and neighbors, GMTA. Now, he can hire the job out, if someone can get the State Department on the case to do something worthwhile for a change.) 

And the beauty of the U.S. Constitution is that there's no copyright; anyone else is free to try it, or any modified version of it, as they please. Every dope-smuggling law-breaking migrante you turn into a hard-working capitalist Bible-clinging rifle-toting homeowner and shopkeeper is one less family we'd need to build cages for at the border.

¿Comprenden, amigos?

(And before anyone asks, Canada would be even easier - but then, they're politer, and they can spell. We simply grant the Quebecois there unlimited right of return to Detroit, St. Louis, and Nawlins, in return for which their former province goes back to unilingual, we invite the rest of the country to unite with us, and we probably put 12 new stars on our flag and gain two additional territories, at which point Europe and the rest of the world can kindly Eff Off and leave North America alone, and we'll return the favor. The average IQ and per capita economy of both nations would increase, and the demographics of three of our most famously failed cities would even out, with a commensurate return to both sanity and their traditional roots, while increasing the local atmosphere, dining opportunities, and patois more than enough to compensate for any problems. It's not like Michigan, Missouri, and Louisiana aren't used to dealing with problem children already, for some time. And it would help ensure that when things fall apart, the remnant in Formerly-great Britistan have a friendly place to land, come the day. And the courts and Congress will have so much on their plates for the next 50 years, they'll have no spare time to oppress the native peasantry hereabouts to any meaningful level. Everyone wins.)

Otherwise, we're left with the status quo, which only proves what every dweller in suburbia knows all too well:
Your next door neighbors are a punishment from the heavens to make the company of the deadbeats and nutbags in your own family look sane and preferable by comparison.

And Teachers Weep...

From elsewhere on the Internet, some of the pointed questioning of Grand Inquisitor Special Prosecutor lackluster lawyer partisan lackwit Robert Mueller by retiring Rep. Gowdy (R-SC) was the topic under consideration, which brought the following witheringly brilliant riposte from the bleachers:

"Gowdy talks a great talk, but has he put anyone in jail yet?"

Normally, I would be loathe to shine the flashlight of disapproval on one person for saying stupid things on the Internet, because I'd never get anything else done, but would that this was the sole time I've read the exact sentiment somewhere or other on the web. So it seems to be a far more widespread problem that just one random brainfart.

Rep. Gowdy can defend himself on the merits of the situation, but as to the fundamental issue under discussion, allow me to undertake a brief explanation, along that line of inquiry.

"By some unfathomable oversight, the Founders seem to have neglected to give any Executive authority to any member of the Legislative branch, which, incredible as it may seem to you in the 21st century, also includes Rep. Gowdy.
(I know, right?)

So not only has Gowdy not put anyone in jail while in Congress, but neither has any member of Congress in the recorded history of the institution, while a member of it, going back to the founding of the republic.

As your social studies teacher may very well have told you at some point in the misty ages past, "You will see this material again."

Hopefully, that clears up any confusion on this vital matter.

If, mayhap, you can ascertain the whereabouts of MIA AG Jeffie Sessions, that answer might prove far more germane to your interests, and come nearer to solving the mystery to which you allude."

There are 535 Senators and Congressmen currently serving. There have been, in the nation's history thus far, 12,244 in total. The number of people put in jail while in office by all of them combined, to date, stands at exactly 0. Zero. Nada. Niente. Nulyevoi. Bupkus.

If any part of this is in any way news to you, you have two choices:

1) return your high school diploma to the issuing institution and demand a full tuition refund.

2a) at your next decennial reunion, punch your former social studies instructor in the mouth if they neglected to cover this topic, or
2b) grovel obsequiously, and beat yourself with a bundle of stout rods about the head and shoulders, and humbly beg forgiveness for sleeping through or failing in their class.

If this applies, take appropriate action, by all means.

I will also double down, by sharing an observation delivered to Vodkapundit himself, Steve Green, via one paratrooper SFC Thomas Teal, to him as part of attendance in the class of '87 of the Missouri Military Academy, with the distilled wisdom of a career in the military, when he suggested ever so gently to him,

"Son, don't be stupid on purpose."

Words to live by, boys and girls.

And because we care, this PSA:

Never forget America's M.I.A.s.

 

Keep Calm, and Laugh At Leftards

h/t Silicon Graybeard and WRSA 

Some folks are worried about the kerfluffle over following a decades-long federal deportation policy WRT the chirren' caught sneaking into the U.S.

In a word, don't.

Relax. The EO is rope-a-dope trolling at the Master Class level.

1) Trump issues EO.
2) Court overturns it, because it violates the consent decree agreed to by the Clinton administration.
3) Trump shrugs and says, "See? I can't break the law. So either fix it yourselves, congressional sh*tweasels, or f**k off, idiots. I don't care which. Mid-terms are coming for you @$$clowns. Go do nothing somewhere else."

And the federal courts are triple-boned on this:
either they decline to review the EO, and cede their authority to the President (not going to happen),
or they overrule their prior ruling, and cede their authority back to the executive branch (not going to happen),
or they strike down the EO, and we go right back to throwing the illegal little bastards right back in the same cages into which they've been placed non-stop since the early 1990s, by three prior presidents before Trump came into office.
(That's a win-win-win hat trick, if you're keeping score at home.)

Game over, and the problem is now back in the lap of Congress, and the liberal idiot judges (but I repeat myself) who created the mess. Where it will get fixed, just about the time Social Security and Medicare become financially solvent.

Trump's EO didn't just kick this can down the road, he kicked it off the cliff, and the Leftards in Congress are merrily chasing it full-speed.

Say, just checking: you folks get that Trump doesn't just tweet out his EOs from the smallest room after a high-fiber meal at 3AM, right?
And you get that not only are 114% of the White House staffers composed of lawyers, who review these things 19 different ways, and advise him on the likely responses, but that the president has in fact been dealing with shysters far brighter than the ones inhabiting the DC fever swamps, for about 45 years, so far?

This isn't 9D chess.
Just common sense.

I mean, suffering cats, IANAL, and *I* could spot this in about 3 seconds.
If you get worried, realize that the average sh*tweasel in Congress (either house, but the Senate is generally far dopier) has the IQ, at best, of a housecat, and that President Trump has proven, thus far, to be a Jedi Master of the laser pointer , in this analogy. It's really only that complicated.






{Oh, For those of you dropping in because this got posted to Reddit, sincere greetings and welcome.
Thanks for dropping by.

For those delicate flowers and volunteer reserve officers in the Language Police, who find the discourse hereabouts a wee bit too spicy for their diet, teddy bears, crying towels, and safe-space closets with soothing muzak are available right the hell back out the door, and they probably have some fresh panties for you to change into while you're getting a grip on yourself. If you were looking for the Longfellow poetry reading, it's down the hall and across the way in the Literature Building. I heartily advise you to grow a shell, learn to function in a cold, cruel world, untwist your diaper, and get over it. BFYTW applies in so many parts of life nowadays, doesn't it?

Oh, hang on, there's a phone call for you coming in, CallerID says it's from the Afterlife; let me put it on speakerphone for ya...

Sorry, he gets like that sometimes.
Oh, and maybe you want to give Mittens Romney a call, and ask him how well that Marquis of Queensbury policy worked out for him in 2012. If you want to teach kids in Sunday School, you go right ahead. This is neither that church, nor that pew.

Best wishes. - A.}

What Cannot Continue, Won't.

h/t Irish



(This embiggens.)

Well, just spitballin', but if nothing happens, you don't have enough ammunition or hard-minded friends for what's going to follow, inevitably, whether it's soon or later.

 

And I don't care who you are or where you are, it means a lot of people in this country are going to die, from unnatural causes. 

"When you make peaceful change impossible, you make violent change inevitable." - John F. Kennedy

So Far This Week...

1)
FBI stooge Guy Fawkes was  all-but-perp-walked out of the FBI building. No doubt to lawyer up, and/or get his state's-evidence testimony in order to align with fellow stool pigeon McCabe's for the coming wave of arrests and subsequent star chamber lynchings for their part in the ongoing coup attempts.

2)
US UN ambassador Nikki Haley, flanked by the SecState (who is happily no longer DeepState tool - in every sense of the word - Tillerson), announced that America is pulling out of the UNHRC, and on the way out the door, delivered a blisteringly sharp crotch kick to the UN in general, and the "Human Rights Council" in particular, it being populated by a rogue's gallery of the worst human rights abusing nations on the planet, by calling it nothing put a "cesspool of political bias" in a speech carried around the world. That woman can land a blow, kids.
(If Mike Pence has a cold in 2020, I can think of somebody who could be slipped on the ticket's veep spot without any problem, and she's currently our UN Ambassador. Just saying.)

3)
And Not My Guy, Himself, President Trump, sent Senate Majority leader Bitch McConjob limping back to Capitol Hill bleeding from just below the belt and sitting about six inches lower in his swivel chair, due to about twenty pounds of his ponderous ass being suddenly missing:

“Why is this coming up now? I mean, it’s so obvious am I right? Mitch knows. The economy, jobs, North Korea, there’s so much great news they had to do the fake news. I’m not saying the pictures aren’t bad. They’re bad. Certainly not good. They make it look bad. You have to do something. You have to work together. It could be such a big, beautiful thing if you did that. The Democrats won’t help. We all know that. They think this is good for them. We’ll see about that. But doing something, working together, isn’t that why you’re here? It should be. And if you don’t do that and November doesn’t work out for you then I’m sorry but you shouldn’t be here. Go do nothing somewhere else.”

Somewhere in the halls of the White House, the ghosts of Calvin Coolidge, Harry S Truman, and Teddy Roosevelt are clapping, at the sight of a president telling the fat-@$$#d fat cats in Congress exactly where to head in.

I'm pretty sure that all turtle-faced Bitch heard ringing in his ears were the magical words "You're FIRED!"

Let me know if you're tired of winning yet.

Me, I'm going back for a heaping plate of seconds.

It doesn't matter which way the mid-terms go. They're going to be epic, either way.

A Modest Proposal

Get used to that cage, Julio.

Following their previously distributed talking points like any well-rehearsed rent-a-mob, the Usual Suspects, from The Wookette to ABCNNBCBS are all in full throat about the chirren!!!!! being >gasp!< SEPARATED FROM THEIR PARENTS AFTER APPREHENSION TRYING TO ENTER THE U.S. ILLEGALLY!  >double-clutch pearls!!<<

The Absolute Horror, or something.

These are same folks who had no problem whatsoever with ICE pointing machineguns at Elian Gonzales to rip him from his relatives here in Florida, and restore him to the blessings of growing up under communism, administered via Fidel's bootheel on his neck.

And of course, they have no problem ripping kids out of wombs by the score every hour since Roe v. Wade. (So, maybe if we just told ICE to start shooting the little bastards, or jamming screwdrivers into their ears and scrambling their brains, we could just call it "late-term abortion", and DiFi, Schumer, Pelosi, et al could go back to STFU status again.)

And they seem to have forgotten how many adult deportees turn out to be serial child molesters, and why maybe pulling young kids out of the big holding pen with those sort of folks might be a pretty frickin' good idea.

Then again, the Leftards' silence over decades' long rape culture dug in like a tick in Rottenham, or Buggerdamned, or some such pestilential village in the Empire of Pedophilia that is Britistan, seems to have induced in them laryngitis to this point, so not much surprise there.

But let's just leave it at this: if madre y padre were so damned concerned about los niños, there was a simple, humane, and dare we say it, legal solution to all their problems.
They could have just stayed their indigent, illiterate, criminal asses in Mehico, and saved us having to round them up and ship the whole clan TFO of Los Estados Unidos.

Make America Great Again: by shipping those fuckers back where they belong.
Starting with the second deportation, the method of repatriation used by ICE in all cases should be by trebuchet.

Then after they're returned to the land of their forefathers at a few hundred FPS, they'll probably still have one unshattered femur left to limp back home, and stay there.

I'm not terribly worried about a day without a Mexican; we had a hundred and fifty years without a Mexican, and it was called America.
And it would be a lot catchier title if we renamed it  Another Day Without Setting $318M Of Your Taxes On Fire, and made it a 24/7/365/forever national celebration.

Frankly, they're lucky we don't cut the crap, and simply authorize ICE to substitute land mines for the wall, until it's built. Then they could just deport everyone missing a leg as presumptively here illegally.

You'll notice there's not a lot of Norks running through minefields to get to South Korea.
And we've got a metric f**kton of the things just sitting in storage, so we might as well put them to some good use.

And while we're up, let's do one more thing: announce that henceforth, anyone ever deported for entering the US illegally will be banned for life from ever visiting the US on a visa, or ever emigrating here legally, and refused any amnesty for cause, even if it's someday offered to those already here. Caught once, banned for life. Caught here a second time: Fly Air Trebuchet home. Easy peasy.

Meanwhile, some appointed-for-life 65 IQ federal fuckwit judge has ordered all the children released from ICE detention (it's surely not all his own fault he's such a thoroughgoing jackass, he probably started out as a lawyer to begin with). The AG should ask him if he'd like fries with that. And then laugh at him.

He/she/it should also be told to go enforce his order, and then arrested for interfering with federal agents if he tries. And impeached for cause while we're waiting to see how that works out. For blatant insanity, if nothing better suggests itself to the Senate.

Since the federal judiciary has no problem ignoring Americans' rights when it suits them, let's ignore theirs, and see how they like it.

What are they going to do then, print out another DoJ IG investigation?

Because if the feds stop deporting them, the folks who live on the border are liable to simply start practicing the Three S Policy, without so much as a "by your leave..."

And won't that be special?

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Weather Report

Those of you with UHD monitors should know that the above video is the kind of thing for which you bought it.

The Weather Channel and Discovery should be throwing baskets of money at Mike Olbinski and his musician Peter Nanasi, and telling them to just do nothing else but crank out this kind of stuff year around, instead of as a side gig between weddings, and they'll buy it for station breaks, filler, and program transitions forever. He's already got an Emmy. AMPAS should have him up for short subject Oscars pretty much annually until they give him one.

He's got a Vimeo channel too, if you want it in better res.

This kind of thing is why we make cameras and soundtracks.

He's about due for putting another one out for this year. I can hardly stand the wait.

What's At Stake

It's time for Vito, Michael, and Tom Hagen to face the
music, and start doing the time. If anybody wants to go
on a fishing trip with Fredo instead, that'd be okay too.
And tell Connie the party's over.                                   

I'm a big believer in mood music. Here you go, folks; play this while you read.

(The Federalist) In 2015, President Obama told America he only learned that his secretary of state Hillary Clinton was illegally using a private email server to conduct public business after The New York Times published a story saying so. Today’s release of a Department of Justice inspector general report shows that was a lie.
“FBI analysts and Prosecutor 2 told us that former President Barack Obama was one of the 13 individuals with whom Clinton had direct contact using her clintonemail.com account,” the report says in a footnote on page 89. “Obama, like other high level government officials, used a pseudonym for his username on his official government email account.”

Yeah, so what? Obozo wasn't under oath at the press conference.

I'll tell you what: Obozo was a sworn federal official and Harvard Law School graduate who knowingly aided and abetted a federal crime by the then-Sec. of State, Felonia von Pantsuit, and this criminal conspiracy was known to the sitting Director of the FBI at the time, James Weasel Comey, as well as most of the federal agents fake-"investigating" (read whitewashing) the Clinton e-mail scandal. That's a criminal conspiracy. It was impeachable at the time, and it's federally felonious criminal conduct, which is still prosecutable under federal law, right now, for all of them. 

We have impeached sitting presidents for less than that, and sent average people doing only that much to long stretches in the federal penitentiary system.

Forget those ham-fisted birth certificate forgery frauds, and 23 fake social security numbers. Forget Fast and Furious and ten dozen other open and ignored scandals in Obama's corrupt criminal administration.

Just that little stunt means that this morning, President Trump now has three choices:

One
Find feckless incompetent MIA AG Jeffie Sessions hiding somewhere behind the draperies at the DoJ, defibrillate back him into life, fire everybody from the Obama administration in the Senior Executive Service level and above at the FBI, and at the Department of Justice, and tell Sessions to direct the US Attorney for Washington DC to indict Barack Hussein Obama, Hillary Clinton, and James Comey for that exact criminal conspiracy, and all associated crimes, along with their 50 to 200 known minions participating in that, and about 2000 other federal felonies committed in just the last two years of the criminal crime syndicate enterprise known as the Obama administration. (And the similar treasonous cartel operations of the Clinton Foundation. Oh, and seize the latter's assets under RICO. Chelsea can get a job at Starbuck's while she's looking for a good lawyer.)

Abuse of power, suborning perjury, and all the other machinations of the attempted coup pre- and post-the 2016 election, which ended their scheme so disastrously.

Hound those crocked m*****f*****s to the ends of the earth, and pin everything on them that will stick, and get them sentenced to so long in federal prison that they'll never see daylight  the rest of their natural lives, unless it's pumped into their subterranean crypts.

Fire Mueller, end his crooked clown-show fake-news witch hunt, and tell him he'd better think about lawyering up himself, as a former head of the FBI who was probably in on the Clinton scam at the time as well.

And get rid of the Constitution-shredding FISA courts, once and for all. Repeal the Patriot Act, in toto. It was a colossal mistake when it was first suggested, and it's proven to be exactly the power-grab end-run around the Constitution everyone warned about nearly twenty years ago, and every day since. We have a Patriot Act: it's called the Constitution and federal law. Let's try using that, if only for the recent novelty of the idea. (And BTW, if Kennedy retires from SCOTUS, put Andrew Napolitano on the court; when Bader Ginsburg finally strokes out, replace her with Alan Dershowitz. Mr. Chief Justice Roberts will find himself writing a lot of 7-2 and 6-3 opinions until Kooky Kagan and Satanmayor go away.)

Then suspend every agent at the FBI, purge the agency of every tainted one (or cut to the chase, and just assume that 98% of them give the other 2% a bad name, and fire them all), and put an honest and honest-to-god gun-toting thug-shooting cop in charge of the Bureau.
No political-animal police chiefs, but someone who's killed bank robbers in the line of duty, and is so clean he squeaks when he walks; nothing less.
If Congress won't sit still for that kind of appointment, disband the entire bureau, and turn over all functions to the US Marshal's office. (Move Explosives from BATFE to there as well, hand alcohol, tobacco, and firearms to the Commerce department as a non-enforcement paperwork compliance activity, and disband BATFE as well, while you're up.) Expand the Marshals commensurately, and ban for life any transfer or application of any former employee of the defunct FBI, unless they can pass a proctological background investigation of sufficient discomfort and thoroughness to guarantee Vatican sainthood and functional virginity to anyone who can survive the ordeal. To the 2% of former agents worth the trouble.

And gently hint to CIA that anything they've done on American soil, including this failed coup, is going to result in a lot of sudden heart attacks, light airplane crashes, and hunting and fishing trip accidents, unless a few hundred to a few thousand people resign and retire to go run worm stands, taco carts, or renting bicycles in the Bahamas. Oh, and if there's so much as one tell-all book deal or magazine article, then everyone on the list gets it in the neck. And their families. Live by the Borgia family rules, die by the Borgia family rules. You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred.

If you're going to drain the swamp, then by God, you effing drain it!

Two
If Sessions can't or won't undertake that overhaul, fire him, and appoint someone, even as Acting AG, who will do all of that, like a pitbull on crack.

(And then send a quick love note to SecDef Jimmy Mattis that if he doesn't get the DoD and the last eight years' worth of cheesedick Pentagon general's and admiral's effluvia back in one bag in a big hurry, the same thing will be happening to his department next. The other Cabinet agencies will take the hint quickly after that.)

Three
Do nothing.
Raise the Chiquita Banana Republic flag over the White House, tell the peasants to eat cake, and announce to the world, whether anything is said officially or not, that the United States is now just another kakistocracy, run by corrupt thugs and incompetent buffoons for their own pleasure, who view the rule of law as a quaint old-fashioned custom, and then stand the f**k by for the bloodbath reckoning that'll be coming, every day from now until Hell freezes over.


Nota bene there's no Option Four on that list.

Which one you see in the next week, two weeks at the most, should influence your ammunition and supply purchases for the rest of the next two years. Anything after that point is the mercy of a benevolent deity, and/or the judgment of a righteous one, when - not if - it happens.

The Deep State couldn't be any more obvious about this if they took out full page ads on the front page of the NYSlimes. "Pay heed, peasants."

You all can do as you please with this information. I'll be getting in some range time.
Then it'll be time to get the boat ready for the fishing trip.

Specialization Is For Insects

h/t Tam

Forget anything?

Like waves in ponds, knowledge ripples outwards slowly.
As Tam notes on her blog:

 "People are stupid about non-shooting classes. For a long time I’ve been comfortable bagging on folks who have 200 hours in a plate carrier with a carbine and not eight hours drawing a 19 from concealment, but I need to start bagging on people with 200 hours of running a 19 from concealment and not eight hours of legal/med/retention/defensive driving/intermediate force... 

Congrats. You’re trained like Joe SOCOM in the skills you’re least likely to need..."

What's important is everything. EVERYTHING.

You don't know what's not  important, but rest assured you'll figure that out in a hurry five seconds after you realize you didn't learn it, or pay attention when you had the chance.

I had a Teamster on a movie set bitch once about the number of components of my medical kit. As a rule, I don't backtalk Teamsters (it's not a good idea), but this was a rare exception:

"Well, Sport, if you can tell me right now which parts of this medical kit I won't need today, in advance, for anyone on the crew, you just let me know and I'll trot it back to my truck and leave it behind..."

That was the last I heard about that.

Preparedness is like that. You don't know what you need, so you better bring it all, everyday.

Murphy is a m*****f***** about letting you know when you've forgotten something.

I've spent most of my life as the "What if" guy, both from a few "O Sh*t!" moments I or someone else has had, and from decades of personal predilection and professional diligence.

The time to discover your missing parachute is always before you exit the aircraft.

Some mistakes in life you only get to make once...

So you have to be a generalist, not a specialist, and think about the 57 things most people forget, unless you're trusting to fate, deity, or blind drunk luck to save your bacon when that thing you never thought about comes calling.

Trusting to the above gets you lots of good stories, scars and casts, and if you're really, really lucky, the rest of a life to tell stories about them.

If not, you get nominated for a Darwin Award.
(And I've sent in a few of those nominations for others, myself. Such talent as offing yourself through sheer stupidity should be suitably noted and rewarded.)

Thinking ahead, and doing something about it, gets you a long boring life, and the ability to laugh about the dumb@$$ people who deserve and earn Darwin Awards.

Choose wisely.

Basic training - Fighting Positions

Above is the standard basic fighting hole that every person should be digging prior to settling in for the night outside of friendly locations. The rule of thumb in the day was one M-16 wide, two helmets or bayonets long, and armpit depth of the man occupying the hole.

The team leader assigns sectors, and the hole should be sited such that anyone inside it can shoot in the indicated direction.

The point of the hole should be obvious: it reduces the amount of you that can be seen, or hit by direct (someone shooting at you) or indirect (mortars, artillery, and grenades going off nearby) fire, and it also decreases your visibility and personal signature when you aren't on watch.

It's not any more complicated than that. But the longer it's occupied, the more it should get improved.

The first improvement is doubling it up to a two-man fighting hole.

Now you get more coverage, and no one is left alone at any point. It also means that, as a rule, one of you can be eating, sleeping, etc. while the other is on watch, at some point, and if anything happens to one, the other becomes the first aid guy for him.

Consistent with the unit leader's directions, the sectors of fire can be angled to the oblique, meaning anyone shooting at you is shooting at a lump of dirt, and you're shooting at anyone approaching from their sides, which protects your guys, and leaves their guys vulnerable.

This depends on adjoining fighting positions to cover the entire perimeter with fire in order to work. With a small group, the fire sectors (and your vulnerability) increase commensurately. But you always try to set yourself up so that you can shoot, while minimizing the chance of getting shot, if you're doing this right.

Remember, the longer you're inside it, the more you improve the hole. You'd want to add a firing step, improve water drainage, make a spot to put your ready ammunition, and add a grenade sump (a place for grenades thrown at you to fall and explode without killing you is the theory).

The next improvement is adding overhead cover, to provide additional camouflage, protection from rain and weather, and additional cover from explosives, shell fire, or fire from the air or above, depending on terrain.

It should be obvious, but if you're not going to be in one location long enough, you won't have time for building the Hilton. And if there's no natural material for overhead cover, like small trees, you won't be having any of that either, because you're not toting engineer stakes or 4"x4" lumber with you to make the supports.

Fighting holes in fixed emplacements and long-term bases should start taking on the appearance of WWI trenchworks, possibly to the point of dedicated timber or reinforced concrete emplacements and shelters. But learn the basic e-tool constructed version, as you'll be dealing with that far more often than not.

On the basic hole, you'll want to make things easier by constructing elbow holes in the spot necessary for you to be pointing in the primary direction you should be looking, and firing if attacked.

Prior to darkness falling, you'd also best find some sticks to make limit stakes and aiming stakes. As the name might imply, limit stakes are the limits of your sector of fire. (In less vegetated areas, you may necessarily have to make do with limit rocks.) Aiming stakes are aligned in your primary direction of fire, so that in the dark, you're delivering fire along a given line "to whom it may concern". 

And once you go to the trouble to construct a fighting hole, you want to camouflage it with natural vegetation cover from the surrounding area, to make it harder to see and identify. Otherwise, having an obvious position just invites all the incoming fire to your address.

The more time you have to spend, and the more attention to detail you give to your fighting hole, the better the camouflage, the more effective the protection, and the more lethal and surprising it becomes if attacked, or blundered into.

Above: Japanese fighting position, Makin Atoll 1945
Bottom: Vietcong bunker, Cu Chi, 1975
Neither one was captured during the wars during which they were used. Now you know why your fathers and grandfathers in each case hated those little bastards, and respected them.

Fighting holes save lives, and take them. You need to master their construction and improvement, and respect what they bring to the table when done right. You won't get a second chance if you get it wrong, on either offense or defense.

Basic Training - Challenge/Password

So, you've answered nature's call, well away from your team, after dark. Or you're a smaller patrol from a larger body, returning to your patrol base, or your main camp, during darkness. Or just a good teamleader, checking on your people in different spots in the middle of the night. They know someone's out there, but the question is, how do you get close enough to prove it's you without getting shot at?

That's the problem challenge and password were designed to solve, going back centuries.

When someone hears you approach, you're told to "Halt!"

(Important safety tip for those who aren't prior-service military: "Halt!" is always shorthand-speak for "I see you, and my front sight is leveled on your center-of-mass." Halt is therefore not a suggestion, any time it is heard. You may safely assume your position is even sketchier than that, depending on the darkness level, the experience level of a given group, or the tactical situation. Respond appropriately. Bullets in flight have no friends forward of the muzzle, and neither do sentries on post until the my team/not my team question has been sorted out to their satisfaction.)

Pay attention at this point, because getting it wrong will see you experiencing fire that is anything but friendly.

Having frozen absolutely in place, the next words will be some version of "Who goes there?"
The correct answer is never, "It's me!", because it's dark, and nobody can tell who "me" is.

You may not get the formal version, you may simply get the challenge. A previously agreed upon word will be spoken, and you'd better come up with the correct reply, quickly, because when this is done right, bullets coming your way are a couple of pounds of trigger squeeze from happening. (This is why you pay attention during daily briefings, and always know the challenge and password.)

The idea is to pick two words that have nothing to do with each other, so that no one can work out even by guessing that the challenge "Indiana" might be answered with "Jones".

A list of them may be generated randomly, and any team or person leaving for multiple days should have each day's challenge and response for the days they're out (ideally memorized, rather than written down).

You're looking for word pairs like "octopus" being answered with "banana", not "banana" and "split".

And to prevent someone nearby in the brush hearing the pair of words correctly, and using them against you, your original challenge at distance may be (ought to be) a number.

The way it works is that at the same time a challenge and password are announced, there is also a number selected. It should be an odd number, from 3-11 or so.

The way that works, is that if the number announced is "nine", you may hear a challenge of "two". You answer the number it takes to make nine, so having passed first grade, you say "seven". At that point, you advance until you're within a couple of steps, and the standard challenge word "octopus" is uttered in your direction very quietly, whereupon you offer "banana", and everyone relaxes a bit as you approach, until they can see you're okay.

If you're the only one, we're done. If not, you tell them, "friendly patrol of eight", and you stay close by to count and ID the other seven members.

This isn't just cool-guy stuff, enemy have infiltrated friendly patrols on dark nights in the jungle or forest, in the real world.
(This is also why you do head counts at halts. I've been out and fallen in along a trail among a group of border crossers at oh-dark-thirty, who had no idea they had picked up several additional members in the dark, until we threw the lights on at their next halt; and war stories abound of NCOs on patrol in places like Vietnam who suddenly had larger patrols than they'd started with, mid-way through.) Things can understandably get messy if you don't notice things like that.

So the number may need to get repeated with each and every approaching member, then the challenge and password when they're up very close.

The reason you picked an odd number is so that the number answered is always a different number than the one challenged. If the number were ten, and the challenge were "five", someone ignorant of your language could mimic "five" in reply, and get it right by blind luck. So odd numbers always.

You may chose to pick and use numbers (or be in the position of someone else doing it) in another language. So you'd better be able to count in whatever the language agreed upon is. It may be advantageous not to let the group in the dark know who you are, whether you're using Spanish in the southwest desert, or using French in the Canadian border woods or bayou swamps, instead of English numbers in either event.

There may also be challenge/password pairs for your home group, and a different one just for your team's use, and different numbers for both. A good idea is to change both daily, at an agreed upon time (probably during the daytime - say, at noon, or 9AM - so no one leaves under one set of passwords/numbers at 6PM, and comes back to a new set after midnight. Imagine if someone's watch were off a bit, and the ensuing mischief that could cause.)

You may also issue codes for duress, which lets a sentry know that you're giving the answers with a gun to your head or a knife to your own throat, or that of someone else in your party. You may also assign an "everything's okay" word as well. Work this out before the day, including if you're going to use it at all.

Working at a gun store, if anyone heard the word "hamburger" spoken aloud by counter staff or the cashiers, a number of guns carried there were going to be coming out momentarily by way of greeting. There's little worse to greet someone trying to stick up the place than eight guys all pointing guns at you. Whatever the decision, and the word, decide on the response to such a code in either case. The person who knows what's going on should be hitting the deck just in time to let the party crashers catch the incoming lead.

That's what challenge/password and number codes are for: to keep your guys alive, and recognize bad guys trying to get in your position when it's too dark to see them. They don't need to know whether or not you can see them in the dark with NODs. They just need to know they're in the crosshairs when you can hear them, and they can hear your challenge.

Responses should be instant, because at night, when people are pointing guns, delay increases stress, and the consequent likelihood of someone getting lit up.

Basic Training - Sanitation

Reference (referred to you back in May):
FM 21-10 Field Hygiene and Sanitation June 2000

Yes, we really are going to cover How To Sh*t In The Woods.

Get it right, and life is happy.
Get it wrong, and you may get a visit from Mssrs. Dysentery and Hepatitis.
They are not your friends., and if you give them to your team mates, they won't be your friends either.

Option 1:
The Cathole

Step 1:

a) Downhill from your position
b) Downstream from your water supply point
c) 200' away from that or ideally any water source, or your campsite, minimum

Step 2:

For the uninitiated, the stick replaces toilet paper when you don't have that, or the three seashells if you're from San Angeles in the dystopian future.

If you don't have an e-tool (WTF?), or you were going lightweight, these things are the bomb, for about $10 @ WallyMart, etc.:

Option 2:
The Slit Trench
For larger units and/or a longer stay in a lay-up or patrol base.

Bury as you go. The cans over the toilet paper are to keep it dry in rainy environments or on misty nights and dewy mornings.
And if you're using MREs, everyone whose BTDT knows you always save the TP bundles, and put them in a ziplok. They may be all you get for some time, and beggars can't be choosers. Otherwise, find a really good stick, without bark or splinters.

Option 3:

Pack it in, pack it out. You'll want plastic, with no holes in the bags.
This is the option selected by elite reconnaissance units, going back years.
If you don't leave it in the field, there's nothing for anyone to find later on.
You can also elect to deposit all the bags at one central location later on, away from your area of interest, buried and concealed well, and far off your line of march.
And you do what you like, but if it's going in my pack, I'm double knotting it, and double-bagging it.

And wash your hands afterwards!

The way to break the fecal-oral disease vector is to clean up after yourself, scrupulously.

And although it's grey water and not black, you should do the same with anything including water or residue left over after washing eating or cooking utensils, brushing teeth, shaving, etc. Dig a sump hole, far from water supplies, and bury it. Getting discovered because someone saw your sudsy crud floating by downstream will be painful, was stupid, and is easily prevented.

And BTW, baby wipes and disinfecting hand sanitizer are your friend.

Community Security Categories - Red Yellow Green Blue

Another 24K nugget from Forward Observer, updated.

Go. Learn. Do.

I promise you, TPTB have lists, whether they tell you about it or not.
You need them too. 

Colored stick-on dots, $9 on Amazon.

Neighborhood satellite maps, free, printed from Google Earth.

Duralar map overlay, $31 for 12-foot roll, enough to do 6 full overlays of a 24"x36" map sheet, or 48 letter or legal sheets of paper.

Wet-erase pen assortment for overlay marking, $10.

For townsfolk, start with your street, then your block. Then the 8 contiguous blocks.
For the rural types, start with all the bordering neighbors, then an hour's walk up the roads in any direction.

You will see this material again, folks.