The 2019 Quincy Adams Wagstaff Lecture

{We are late with this year's lecture, but thought it fitting for the last post of the year. - A.}



"You asked for this lecture, and you're going to get it, good and hard.
These are my principles.
If you don't like them, I have other ones."

Wherever you're reading this, you've had unmistakable evidence that things aren't going to go all rosy. Perhaps ever again. Perhaps just for a long dark winter of the soul, and/or of the entire civilization. There has been more than one Dark Age period in human history, and they will happen again. You may very well get to see this firsthand, and experience life amidst it. Howsoever long or briefly.

You've had a respite of some 37 months to get your metaphysical crap together in one bag, and use the time prudently.

If you've squandered that lead time, woe unto you.

Yes, on one hand, 1/4 of the federal judiciary is appointees of this administration. Three more judges appointed in the Ninth Circus flips it, and frees eleven western states back to common sense, and a decent shot at the rule of law. Sometimes.

That ain't nothin'.

The minions of Leftardia have shot everything they can at the current president, short of actual bullets, and achieved nothing, save cementing his popularity, and virtually putting a lock on his re-election next November, while chaining themselves to a concrete-filled floor safe and hurling themselves off a skyscraper.

That ain't nothin' either.

But it doesn't make the dollar solvent, or the economy implosion-proof.
The Leviathan that is the federal government remains untrimmed to any notable degree  (save the width of shelf space required for current US Code. Huzzah!).
And the handmaidens of jackbooted thuggery, especially at the federal level, continue unabated and unhindered in their ceaseless quest to saddle you, collar you, and put the spurs to you to fund their unbridled destruction of liberty and freedom, and you're still paying for that, and handsomely, at least if you're in the 50.4% of America that works for a living instead of voting for one.

So even with another five years of POTUS Sticking It To The Man (sometimes), January 20, 2025 is still coming as sure as the sun rising, and any time between now and then, plus a stray heartbeat, and you're looking at President Pence. Who is not the Orange Man Bad blunt instrument chosen to burn the mother down.

So at any time, things could go from mediocre to abysmal.

The far greater likelihood is that owing to desperation and lack of other options, your would-be communist overlords from the Uniparty are going to kick off the ball, to usher in their planned Final Solution, and strangle the weakening experiment that remains of the Republic, and all it represents.

If you can think, and would be free, they hate you, and they want you dead.

Speaking from behind enemy lines, some places already feel the state's tender caresses more and more, exactly as Boston was getting the most love from King George long before 1776 rolled around on the calendar.

We don't know how many things, or where, might kick things off to go really bad, but any doubt that they're almost certain to do so is disappearing like fog on a summer morning, even for the most clueless Norm the Normie.

Whether it's just you, a nuclear family, extended family, or tribe of like-minded individuals, you have a hierarchy of absolute necessities for life.

You can survive three seconds without Safety.
You can survive three minutes without Air.
You can survive three hours without Shelter.
You can survive three days without Water.
You can survive three weeks without Food.

All of the above require tools and training to obtain and maintain.
Which takes time and deliberate effort.
Costs money.
Requires fuel, power, and other resources.
Necessitates a secure homestead.

Of the above, what have you got locked down?
What needs more work just to achieve the bare minimums?
What have you forgotten, or ignored?

Having a job is nice.
The above is what it's going to take to survive to get to that job, and hopefully, continue to survive long after that job (or anything related to it) is a distant memory.

Anything less than adequate effort in every regard above makes you nothing but another coral animal in the future reef of life, rendered dead and fossilized as a supplement to what survives beyond you.

If life strikes you as a worthwhile occupation, and ye would a long and happy one, with offspring who may surpass what you've seen and done, it requires deliberate effort.

Get ready, mentally, physically, materially, and spiritually for what is nearly certainly coming, right at you, like a freight train, whether you like it or not.

And get cracking on getting ready.
We are entering one of those eras where the Universe is about to demonstrate that it doesn't usually grant second chances to the lazy, the foolish, the stupid, and the unprepared, and no excuses will be sufficient nor accepted.

Take that reality well and truly to heart.
Or else go and make your funeral arrangements, and set your affairs in order.

No one gets out of this life alive. But the fortunate, the prepared, and the diligent, may at least have some say about when, where, and how they make the transition.

Now go, and face the new decade intelligently and diligently.

Sunday Music: Time Stand Still

There are at least a dozen tracks I could pick from Rush; I chose this one today. Stone-cold perfection from the greatest power trio that ever took the stage, giving you a wall of sound at the absolute peak mastery of their art, expressing the timeless wish of mortal men to make the hourglass of life stop running, something we all feel tugging a bit more urgently as we get older, and even more urgently as another year draws to a close. When I hear this one, I only want it to play about ten or twenty times.

Two Paths

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference. - Robert Frost

John Wilder (yes, THE John Wilder) has a great post today on adversity and perseverance.
As usual, RTWT.
We'll be here when you're done.

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never – in nothing great or small, large or petty – never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense."  

– Winston Churchill

Yeah, and Sylvester Stallone was on his second trip around the studios, who had all rejected his script for Rocky multiple times, and so broke he was about to be evicted from his crappy one-bedroom apartment, before he finally found someone who’d make the movie and let him play the lead.
Which only turned out to be the Best Picture of 1976.

But, natzsofast, Guido.

The illustrations we chose can make a big difference in the story we tell.
So let's give equal time to an opposing view.

Let us also remember another guy’s story of failure.

Bob was an executive, not a failure, per se. But he hadn’t really made his mark and hit the top tier.
So he spearheaded the drive to create a revolutionary new car, for one of the top auto makers in the world.
Anyone who knows cars knows it as the Edsel.
Yes, Bob was truly one of the best and brightest.

So best and bright that JFK made him Secretary of Defense, and then his failures kicked into high gear.
He thought a war in South Vietnam was not just necessary, but winnable.
He thought the F-111 would make a great airplane, for both the Air Farce and the Navy.
He made the Army buy the M-16.
And he thought drafting literal retards would be great for battlefield success.
Anyone reading this can google how those brilliant stunts turned out.

After such a lifetime of failure, you’d have thought Bob would have retired 0-for-Ever, but he was just hitting his stride.

Bob moved on to the World Bank, and came up with the genius idea to lend billions to Turd World countries like Mexico, and dozens of others, knowing they had no way to repay it, ever.

What could possibly go wrong?

There are thus three morals to this story:

1) Don’t be Bob.
2) Sometimes, your first failure is nature’s way of telling you to go home, stick a gun in your mouth, and do humanity a favor, by taking one for the team.
3) Know which thing Failure is telling you.

Because sometimes failure, like with Edison, is just teaching you 999 ways not to make a light bulb.
Other times, like with Bob, failure is telling you that your greatest service to humanity would be as a soil supplement.

As I've Pointed Out Many Times



This is your state on libtards and Turd World banana republicans.

For years, which some precision, I've noted here and elsewhere that California's problems are overwhelmingly illegal aliens by the tens of millions, and a similar onslaught from the toothless banjo-playing kinfolk for the Other 49. Now comes official statistical back-up:

(US Census Burea via CNS) Least-Educated State: 2,471,189 California Residents 25 and Older Never Completed 9th Grade; Highest Percentage in Nation

RTWT.

Take your retarded cousins back, and tell your Chamber-of-Commerce captive US senators and congressweasels to fund the entire Border Wall, and things here will reverse as rapidly as they deteriorated (i.e. about a generation).

Fail to do it, and when (not if) we collapse financially, they'll all be going home next whether you like it or not, plus bringing their maids, busboys, dishwashers, and their 14 kids with them.

Ask Virginia how that looks up close, once it happens, as FL and TX purple up nicely over the next 20 years.

Twenty five years after US immigration was thrown wide open, CA flipped from Republican forever, to a wobbler, to a Dem lock.

You lose TX and FL too, and you won't see another [R] president again, ever.
Not even a total RINO squish. That'll be the Whig Party.

Then the most right-wing candidate forever would be someone like Bernie, Nancy Alzheimers, or Evita Guevara-Castro.

Go ahead and try to vote at that.

Cheers.

This. Neither More Nor Less.

 

 

Point to ponder:

If a god exists, and he or it deigned to come to earth in human form, that alone is the true incomprehensible miracle of all of human history, and nothing else ascribed afterwards is any great leap of faith whatsoever.

That there was an actual Jesus of Nazareth is historical fact beyond arguing or dubious historical revisionism; he is better attested by primary sources than any or all of the Roman caesars.

Whether he was God incarnate is what is left for you to work out for yourself.

Regardless of one's inclination on the question, I bid one and all health, happiness, and all good things today.

Fallout: CT Blasted By Its Nominal Support Base

h/t IOTW

Once again, POTUS DJT for the hat trick.

So much for Christianity Today speaking for mainstream evangelical Christians:

(WASHINGTON) Nearly 200 evangelical leaders rebuked the religious magazine Christianity Today after its editor-in-chief, Mark Galli, called for removing President Trump from office. 

The evangelical leaders signed a letter on Sunday to Christianity Today President Timothy Dalrymple criticizing Galli for writing an editorial supporting Trump’s removal and for "offensively" dismissing the opinions of evangelicals who continue to support Trump, according to the Christian Post. 

"The editorial you published, without any meaningful and immediate regard for dissenting points of view, not only supported the entirely-partisan, legally-dubious, and politically-motivated impeachment but went even further, calling for Donald Trump not to be elected again in 2020 when he certainly survives impeachment," the letter said. 

"Your editorial offensively questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations," the letter added. "It not only targeted our President; it also targeted those of us who support him, and have supported you."

For those unaware, for evangelical leaders to come forward and open fire so quickly and comprehensively means that the only sentences they left out of that response were "...and the horse you rode in on" plus "and your mother!" 

So, another "woke" wolf-in-sheeps-clothing TDS-suffering anti-Trumptard sets himself on fire to no effect, and trashes his former employer's ragazine in the process. While hardening support for Pres. Trump, and helping set his 2020 re-election hopes in concrete.

I think POTUS is running 200-0 on opposing idiots since 2016, but I'll have to check the books.

Well-played, moronic minions of Leftardia.

When this smacks you all in the face like a prize-catch albacore next November, try not to lose too many teeth.
Losing your minds that day is already a foregone conclusion.

The best cure for that is to kill yourselves now, or move to Cuba, which amounts to the same thing.

Fundamentals, Not Magic



Drones: Still not wizard combat. Ever.

From comments to yesterday's post:

"Drones and AI can and most likely will be the deciding factor in the next WW. To ignore this fact puts us in the same position Poland was in when they met the advancing Nazi tanks while on horseback. I do think it would be easy to misunderstand drones and assume that they are super expensive and super susceptible to enemy fire and that is why they will fail and be useless in battle. Yes there are some drones like that. Now imagine a cheap tiny drone that can do only one thing and that is to search out and kill a single enemy soldier. Then imagine that China or Russia sends millions of these into battle. Or a small single purpose drone that simply hunts down and explodes ships, any ship it finds. And that the drone is used all over the world on day one minute one of WW 3 while the Russian or Chinese ships are all in port. Apply that same logic to drones designed to take down aircraft or land vehicles etc. In reality the problem of accurately understanding the possibilities drones bring to battle are only limited by your imagination and if you lack imagination you will correspondingly lack understanding of the potential threat." - Anonymous commenter 

Drones can be handy things. But at best, they are but a tool, not a magic wand.
This is why the military wants people in charge who can do mathematics in their head.
Not wizards and necromancers.

Drones work well when used against a disparate and unexpecting opposition. Against soft targets. Vulnerable and unsophisticated enemies. I've written at length about how much damage you can do to civilian targets with COTS drones, and year over year, the reality of that is proving the truth of the statements.

But most of our experience, or anyone else's, with drones, is against 19th (or 6th) century opponents, with no tech to speak of, and battle tactics from no more recently than 1900.

Peer-to-peer, not so much.

A drone that kills "any ship it finds" will wipe out your own fleet too. Even in port. Russia and China are totally dependent on imports and exports, whereas the U.S. is food and energy self-sufficient, and most of our trade goes on north and south, not east and west. Well-played.

You can use drones to assist in prosecuting the battle.
If you use more brains than most defense contractors have, and if they're built for the job right.
So that's two strikes of if against you before you start.

Try to remember that the best fiction is truer than most tech news stories.

Drones are not the Jedi Clone Army, nor ever will be in 10 lifetimes.
We're currently on the fifth or sixth generation of "fire-and-forget" weapons that still really aren't.
No one trusts them enough to depend on them as such, and when they try, they fail spectacularly. And that's before we have the Skynet discussion.

If a land droid was armed well enough to venture out on its own, it'd be a tank. Which you kill with AT weapons and defenses, or another tank. All of which have been around since 1917.

Putting a virtually unarmored machine out front with an MG and sensors just makes it, the weapons system, the data link, and the operator four points of failure. Add in the ordnance, parts, and fuel logistics, and you have three more points. Attacking all of them destroys that advantage; and at that point, if you don't have 5:1 or better advantage in the conventional attack, you're going to be eaten for lunch. Not metaphorically.

Intelligence from sky drones can be thwarted, spoofed, fooled, and avoided.
Keeping the enemy blind and confused while you execute your objectives is what war has been about since Sun Tzu. Drones can complicate that, but they also complicate the intelligence analysis problem for the other side. The only thing worse than too little intelligence is too much; ask the German Army how Patton's amphibious assault at the Pas De Calais worked out for them in 1944.

Drones alone or in concert will decide nothing.
What wins battles and wars is executing the fundamentals flawlessly.
Surprise, mass, economy of force, unity of command, secure interior lines, etc.

Cut off logistics, and disrupt command and communications, and you turn your enemy into Saddam and the Iraqi Army in 1991 and 2003.

Try to rule a hostile population through dependence on military power, and you end up like the U.S. Army in 1965-1973 and 2004-2019. (The dot-mil are slow learners, but not that slow; which is why I posit they'll either switch sides, or sit an internal conflict out ab initio, and wait to see who wins. If they don't do either, they'll cease to exist in about a month, and die on the vine from a death of ten thousand cuts.)

Try to rule a hostile well-armed civilian population, and you end up like the U.S. Army at the Little Big Horn in 1876.

I don't know about you, but if I ever have to grab a rifle and leave the house to take care of business, my death song has already been sung, and I'm not so worried about getting home to a wife and kids, and I'm going to make sure they don't get to do that either.

No quarter will be asked nor given, and there will be zero POW camps (or at least, not for very long) in the coming unpleasantness. It's going to become an unaffordable luxury.

Maybe folks will even be starting by taking out their opponents' homes and everything they take for granted first, to give them something else to think about before they suit up for work that morning.

80-90% of both sides in any war don't want to be there.
What's left is who gets it done.
And our 10% outnumbers their 10% about 100:1, and outguns them 24/7/365/ever.

Drone that.



Anonymous: Take off the hat, and lay off the egg nog.

 




Bonus comedy: If you've never seen someone get his foot stuck in a running wood chipper, then reach in with both hands to try and pull himself out, then fall head first into it, read the comments to this post, below, presumably by the same original Anonymous commenter. It's like playing poker with your sister's kids, combined with clubbing baby Harp seals.

 

 

These Aren't The Droids You're Looking For

No points for guessing the life expectancy of that spiffy Honda generator in
combat once the range is hot in both directions. These things are going
to be worse in combat than Combat Barbies are, with a notably shorter
operational life expectancy. Well done, combat jedi drone masterminds.

In today's post, John Wilder (whose blog should be your regular go-to, every time he posts, just because, unless you've already found too many blogs that are smart, funny, and true, all at the same time) links to and talks about the fapulations of some folks who think Droney the Drone will be the new shizznit when it comes to warfare.

We disagree with those self-serving Military Industrial Complex self-pleasuring prognostications.

Just a wee bit.

To wit:

Those simulations have a 400% chance of selling worthless drone systems to the idiots at the Pentagon.

In combat, they’d be mostly horseshi…, er, rose fertilizer.

Aerial drones are great at detecting people. In a barren desert. Or above the Arctic Circle.
In triple canopy jungle, bayou swamp, or northern hardwood forest, their detection capabilities are less than that of a good bassett hound. And they’re not particularly difficult to kill, defeat, or degrade. Starting with shooting the operator.

If 40 Afghan jihadis had stormed the relatively pussified base defenses in Tonopah NV one day, and rampaged through the drone trailers, killing everyone in sight and blowing up the control trailers, drone warfare in A-stan would have ground to a screeching halt, stayed that way for months, and the Air Farce would have started a crash program to steal Army Rangers by the tens of thousands as base defense cops in 30 states of the U.S.

That’s asymmetrical warfare.

In Phase Two, the jihadis would target military dependents off-base in the community, at schools, malls, etc.

So how you gonna harden the entire country, simultaneously, everywhere, against that?

You’re not.
Game. Set. Match.

Land drones?

1) If the supporting troops are close enough to give cover fire, they’re close enough to receive cover fire.
Hint: the guy with the big control box in his hands gets the first sniper volley. Game Over.

2) Those little Fun Sized mini-tanks are cute. So, what’s their industrial fire rating against a wine bottle full of 87 octane and dish soap?
[Bonus Extra Credit Question:
How about when I drop that little Easter Egg from one of my COTS drones?
Or use a soda can full of home-made thermite, at $2@?
You gonna deploy Sopwith Camel drones for air cover??]

3) Drive one over.
I’ll have a couple of guys throw a wet quilt over its sensor mast as it passes by; now it’s blind.
[Paintballs work pretty well too. Just saying.]
Then anyone with ten seconds of .mil experience will run up on the blinded droid, and twist the ammo belt. Now the gun is out of action.
Then we lever it on its side, or shove a pipe bomb into the treads; now it’s mobility killed.
 Then we pop smoke, or otherwise hide what we’re doing from its controllers.
Finally, we pull the pins on the pintle, and carry off that MG, and the can of ammo.
Now I have a machinegun. Ho ho ho.

Then we firebomb it anyways, because we can.
And it cost me a $20 quilt, and $1 worth of unleaded. To kill your $15K tanklet, and steal a functional MG.

Which I’ll happily use on your side when the smoke clears.
Including the operators, the other tanklets, and those aerial drones.

How long before I bankrupt a division for the money I have in my wallet, right now?
And if your live troops are close enough to support it, we’ll take them out too.
If they’re not, they can watch us carry their MG back, and set it up to return fire.

Heads I win, tails you lose.


Use them here?

Okay, let’s play that game.
What’s the defensive capability of any police station you can name?
When I storm it with those same 40 guys, kill everyone there, steal everything I can use, and burn what I can’t, how many more police are you going to need to protect the station house, and every other one you have, 24/7/365?

Who’s going to defend the police when I shoot them off duty getting a burger?

Who’s going to defend their families when they get killed and kidnapped while Officer Friendly is out oppressing the peasants?
(You think their women and children will be off limits if mine aren’t? Sh’yeah, you should live so long. The peasantry will make wind chimes out of those kids’ skulls, for sport, by Week Two. Bet money on it. Tape recordings of their families’ dying screams will be broadcast by PA at the police station daily. Videos of their torture that would make an Apache blush will go viral. So when you have zero cops at work by Week Three, who’s going to stop me from doing the same thing to their masters holding the leash?)

How you gonna gas the MRAPs when folks blow up the fuel tankers?

What are your jack-booted thugs gonna eat when the train and highway bridges into town burn down and blow up, and the goods stop rolling?

What happens when the power lines to every police station and Thug Central keep getting cut, and the transformers shot up every night? You got bicycle-powered generators for those radios?

The Enemy ALWAYS Gets A Vote.

Unlike in canned simulations, 140 guys aren't going to sit obligingly like stunned bunnies and wait while your 20 guys with BATTLEBOTS! walk remorsely up on them and hose them down, while your SKYDRONES! have unanswered mastery of the air. And that same enemy isn't going to helpfully wear red coats and march in straight lines on open fields. They're going to hide, slide, and glide in the same outfits as innocent bystanders, until they blow up in your faces.

Pop Quiz: a) Which side has drones now, and
b) which side is slinking out of Iraq, Syria, and A-stan with its tail between its legs, because it simply cannot win against people who refuse to roll over and die?
Does Vietnam ring a bell? Beuller? Beuller?? Ferris Beuller...?

c) Everyone who figures rednecks, hillbillies, and sketchy neighborhood city-folk from the U.S. of 1B Guns and 2Trillion Rounds of Ammo, are going to be easier meat and bigger pushovers than illiterate fourth-grade dropout goatherders with rusted bolt-action rifles, signify by setting yourself on fire.

I'll wait, while those industrial military wannabe Sun Tzu geniusii answer those questions.

Tell us how many divisions the Nazis needed to garrison unarmed populations, and then tell us what the numbers would be against a population that bought more guns than the U.S., Russian, Chinese, and NATO armies have, combined, in just last year alone, and every year since they've kept stats?

If I’m a betting man, I like the odds in favor of Team Partisan.

And inside a month, we’ll be using Team Oppression’s drones against them.
Bigly.

If there are any of them left alive to fight.

In a fight in this country between the people (even an infinitesimally small fraction of them) and The Man, we run out of government minions to kill in about two volleys, on Monday.

Forget III-percenters.
This is going to be the Great Three Shot War.

“Why three shots?”
Because after three shots apiece, we were all out of bad guys.”

QED

Sunday Music: The Wexford Carol

Absolute utter brilliance, displayed in one-take magic.
We wish all good blessings of the season to you and yours.
Merry Christmas.

Red Herring

h/t Weasel Zippers

That's it, man. Keep playing with that grenade until it goes off in your face.

Christianity Today: Shut The Hell Up, You Jackasses

In a half-assed, half-witted, and thoroughly embarrassing display of pulling its pants down and spanking its own asscheeks, formerly influential and currently so-woke-it's-gone-full-retard evangelical birdcage liner Christianity Today announced from its editorial page (if you can't get there, it's because it's so busy with hate mail the site has crashed) that President Trump should be impeached and removed from office. And shot itself in the ass with both barrels.

As the 347th guy to yell "I am Spartacus!" on this topic, they've stepped on the wedding tackle in so many ways it's difficult to count them.

Yet try we must.

Firstly, only someone suffering from tertiary Trump Derangement Syndrome (which is differentiated from tertiary syphilis only by what body part was inserted in what orifice; with TDS, it's one's head up one's own ass) would make such a pronouncement in public. Generally, with people in such a state, one makes pleasant noises and avoids startling them, until the appropriate men can throw a net over them and take the victim(s) to a place with soft music, soft food, and soft walls.

Secondly, had they the wits God gave Balaam's ass, they'd have noticed that all the hoopla produced by the much-ballyhooed impeachment circus produced not one single finding of objective fact in support of impeachment, nor articulated as many as one single articulable federal crime of any sort identifiable in U.S. Code, which goes by the clever title the law of the United States Of America, both of which salient facts are rather germane to whether impeachment was justified or even barely supportable. It is neither.

Thirdly, the chickenshit editor, Mark Galli, who ejected this screed from his nether regions has had months since the Mueller clown show, and weeks since the Schiff Show, during which he could have made his recockulous opinions known. But, as he's retiring at the end of the month, he chose to wait until it was too late to fire his ass, and play Ding Dong Ditch with this Flaming Bag Of Doggie Poo left on the White House steps, at the last possible minute. Bravely done, Mssr. White Feather. One hasn't seen a yellow stripe up the back that wide since Broward County Deputy Sheriff Scot Petersen was seen hiding outside a school and wetting himself while children were being shot. Great company you're in there.

Fourthly, one is reminded of nothing so much as the sage directive of General Frank Savage to the chaplain of the 918th Bomb Group:

"Your business is sin and salvation, and from here on out you will confine yourself to that theater of operations, CLEAR??"

What CT knows of presidential politics could be handily written inside a thimble with a grease pencil, with room to spare. They should, in the immortal words of Will Rodgers, "not pass on a good opportunity to shut up." But like Ron White, they have the right to remain silent...but not the ability. And now both the editor idiot-in chief and the magazine itself have their hindquarters flapping in the breeze instead.

Fifthly, if whoever runs their lashup could put such a pigeon-brained feather-head in charge of the operation, what kind of total sh*theads have they hired for the rest of the whole clownshow? Billy Graham founded the magazine, and on religious topics, it started out as a voice for religious mainstream conservatism. Now, by bare electoral math, their outgoing head jackass has absolutely alienated at least 50% (and probably more like 90%) of the subscriber base, and the only reason every Christian organization won't cancel their subscriptions tomorrow is because a goodly number of them are as bereft of reason and common sense as Editor Featherhead. Ask Dicks, Jillette, Chick-Fil-a, and the NRA how such biblically epic levels of tone-deafness play with your constituency. Then come back in six months and tell us how it's working out for you morons. If you're still in business.

Sixthly, if you're going to pull this sort of political crap, change your name.
You're clearly not an evangelical Christian magazine, let alone mainstream. Cut to the chase: join the National Council of Churches, convert, and worship the god-emperor, Pope Vladimir Fidel Mao the First, and kiss his ring to usher in the era of Marx and Lenin as god, instead of God playing his traditional role. I leave the last word on this point to Hugh Hewitt, in the earlier-linked WaPo editorial riposte:

"By injecting Christianity into that debate, Galli inevitably suggests (especially to the left, for whom it is convenient) that people of the Christian faith are, in fact, obliged to condemn Trump and support his impeachment. This is risible. It is irresponsible."

Finally, given the personal history of your founder (of your religion, not your fishwrap rag), CT of all people should be a little more sensitive and less inclined to railroad a man dragged in front of a kangaroo court on a dearth of evidence, and then throw him to the most vengeful and unhinged whims of his opposition, despite the fact that exactly like Pilate, "We find no fault with this man."

President Trump has violated no laws and committed no crimes, which alone should be reason for taking any stance but the asinine one adopted.
But I guess the allure of worldly approbation, and the shininess of thirty pieces of silver, outweighed all available impetus to common sense.

Let us know how that works out for you when the revulsion becomes pretty much universal, and the people whose favor you thought to curry turn on you because they hate all religion but the State itself.

In the meantime, in closing, we'd just like to offer you a few appropriate verses of scripture from the Gospels, and ask that you take them to heart. Better still, take them to neck. Yes, really.
God will forgive you. C'est son métier.

Matthew 27:5             Luke 10:37          John 13:27

Seasoned Greetings

When asked for a comment, the North Pole Spokeself replied, "BFYTW".
We hope Nancy and the Clowncar Posse get a shitload of presents.

Suture Self

Sow the wind; reap the whirlwind.

Some kids - the ones who ate the paste and ran with the scissors - only learn by shoving the silverware all the way into the electrical socket.

There's going to be a price to that education, and it's going to leave a mark.
Stupid always does.

Call Their Bluff, Yertle

Now, the slapdash half-assed and fullashit shampeachment will not be forwarded to the Senate, and the House has adjourned until next year.

Some folks are worried this could slide out from under us.

I'm not.

If they stage a successful coup, it will simply be time to shoot the bastards, and no more fucking around wondering about when it's time. (Claire Wolfe, call your office...)

At that point, it ain't about Trump, it's about not tolerating living in a banana republic dictatorship.
Open season, no bag limit, screw the regs.

Say "when".

They want to play for blood, they're going to find a lot of folks who'll be their Huckleberry.
Let's see if they really want to open that ball.

But it all becomes moot if Senate Majority Leader Yertle McTurtle simply states,

"Since the House refuses to send forward any notification of impeachment in a timely manner, we hereby consider the entire baseless process null and void, and serve notice that we consider the matter closed to further consideration. If the Speaker is so uncertain the House's action passes the basic fairness test, and meets normal standards of jurisprudence, we consider that no impeachment has been duly enacted by that body. If the House decides to do this all over again, from scratch, and this time they can find a shred of evidence for any of their charges that actually exist in U.S. Code, and an actual bona fide crime, and allows confrontation of witnesses and cross examination by the minority as well as the majority, and observes other basic and fundamental rules of American jurisprudence, the Senate may be inclined to take notice of an actual bill of impeachment that passes the standard set forth in the United States Constitution at that time, should the House return to the rule of law; but in an election year, we're liable to be awfully busy. All in favor, say 'Aye'. Motion passes. Senate adjourned."

If he did that, and called Nancy Alzheimers' bluff,
1) he'd win the argument
2) the Leftards' heads would explode
3) The House would shift right by 50 seats
4) rank and file Democrats would march on their leadership and set them on fire, alive
5) right after Pres. Trump carried 45 states next November
6) popcorn stocks would go through the roof

Bring it.

This Is What Happens When Your Party Has No Sane Nor Adult Supervision

 

 

Here's to hoping the endless coup attempt retires Nancy Alzheimer's as Speaker for good, come November. Nice to know they couldn't see any other way out of the electoral pickle they got themselves in - like, y'know, running a candidate that had actual voter appeal and a brain, not to mention a personal body count under 100 - when they rejected the election results, and announced this plan within hours of realizing Shrillary was toast in 2016.

 

The trail of broken careers in the wake of those who've gone head-on with POTUS since 2017 bodes poorly for the whole Dumbocrat clowncar.

 

The trial in the Senate should also be good for 10-20 indictments once it all rolls out.

Epstein didn't kill himself.

 

And when Leftards lose their mind next November - like they will - you'd all best be ready for Spicy Time.

Not in a metaphorical way, either.

Light Posting

A Good Start

h/t Daily Timewaster

As C.W. noted in this post, it should be solid green, but it's not a bad start.
There's a seed of rebellion in NYFS, and IL looks like it's about to get Virginiated too.

This is a Green New Deal I can get behind.
Delegitimize the opposition coast to coast, and then watch them fume and splutter in impotent rage.

Hey, Leftards, all those illegal alien "sanctuary cities" aren't looking like such a bright idea any more, are they?
Sauce for the goose, bitchez.

No Quarter

Two real choices, Jackboots:
1) Change sides.
2) Stand down, and refuse to obey unlawful orders.

Any other options?
3) Expect early activation of your Servicemen's Group Life Insurance benefit plan.
4) Become a posthumous supply point for domestic partisans.

And bear well in mind that the "Just following orders" Defense lost any cachet or effectiveness it had right around 1946, in Nuremburg.
The sentence for war crimes in failed subjugation attempts usually begins and ends with rump trials up against a wall, and the finer points of law tend to get lost in the gunsmoke.

Are the summer soldiers of the Notional Guard and the wannabee sturmtruppen of the state police really willing to establish VA as the first banana republic north of the Rio Grande, and put the rest of their lives on the line for people who can't figure out how many genders there are?

Call that toss in the air, geniusii.

Achievment Unlocked: Prank Package Demigod

A year ago, the dude created the original glitter bomb package.
Went on Kimmel for April Fool's. Twice.
Now he's spent a year improving Glitter Bomb, and has launched  v2.0.

We bow in sincere admiration. Enjoy.

The Truth Hurts

Especially if you freeze it with some lug nuts inside a heavy sock before you wield it.

Sunday Music: Hoedown

We've introduced Copland, one of the small pantheon of great American composers, before. Today we choose the most famous episode of his from "Rodeo", Episode #4: "Hoedown". Whatever part of Americana wasn't identified in last week's Rhapsody In Blue from Gershwin probably shares no small amount of identity with this piece. If I ever get the time, I have a video to cut to this piece, just to do it, but in the meantime, supply your own mental cinematography, and enjoy symphonic Western music.

Say WHAT?

"Let's drop our rifles here, go back home, and write a nice letter politely
asking the British military governor of Massachusetts to pretty please
stop treating us like serfs." - said not one single swinging Richard
one cold April morning.

This comment on yesterday's post, and my reply, are too germane and vital to relegate to ten grafs below the comment bar.


The comment:

"My two cents: 

1 Don't shoot or in any way attack LEO or National guard troops; it is a sure fire way to turn people away from your cause. Refuse to obey unconstitutional laws but don't refuse to obey the police, your fight is in court not with the police. 

2. If you did choose to take someone's life, a politician or other anti-American activist, which I would advise against, do not use a gun. The opposition would use the fact that you used a gun against you. Don't forget they are painting you as rabid killers who are armed. 

3, The fight is political, form groups to bring your cause to the public and fight this at the ballot box. Win the hearts and minds of your fellow citizens. 

4. Tell your people, your followers and supporters that you are a law abiding supporter of the constitution and anyone who breaks the law does not represent you and your beliefs.   

-Anonymous 

Dear Anonymous,

You clearly haven't put two seconds' considered thought into this.

I have one deadly serious question for you:

At what point do you draw the line, and stop cucking?

The Colonial Militia opened fire in 1775 when TPTB came for their guns, and their leaders.
Maybe I'm sentimental about the principal, but that sounds like a pretty good historical precedent to me.

You want to try fighting that battle after you're disarmed, before the same courts that refused to throw such prima facie unconstitutional laws out, for decades, and you may as well just drive yourself down to the railroad yard and self-load onto a boxcar now.

If not your guns, then over what?
If not right then, when?
If you won't fight when you're armed, how will you do it when you're disarmed?

"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." - Thomas Paine

 “If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”  - Sam Adams

It's as if you couldn't wait to run out and say "Any suggestion that someone might actually stand up for their rights in any meaningful way was unintentional" and "Hey, we don't want to, you know, piss off TPTB or make things hard for their dutiful minions, right?"

In short, I cannot see any point of agreement with one word you wrote.
You're twenty years and more behind the times.

For you, the catch-up is going to be a cast-iron bitch.

In the meantime, when the penny drops, and you realize the people "who break the law and do not represent you" are the very government and its organs you won't lift a finger to oppose, will your head explode? Or will you just sit there in stunned shock while smoke exits your ears?

Or in your theory of government, do unjust laws enforced by unjust thugs for unjust ends nonetheless constitute a binding power over you until serendipity and happy accident grant you a magical do-over, and restore your surrendered weapon(s) to you?

8,518,000 Virginians were kind of wondering, just for openers.

 

And, based on the tenor of the original commentor, Anonymous responds:

 

My two cents:

I think the difference between your position and mine is I want to win and you want to posture.

"Do not fight the LEOs and national guard" What could [possibly be wrong with that idea??? If the politicians are the ones you want to take out then take them out. A guillotine perhaps or draw and quarter them. I don't recommend that kind of violence but if you must, then direct it at the actual enemy of our constitutional republic and not on the working class.

"The fight is political" It absolutely is. Serious violence will only work against you in the political fight making you look like Dylan Roof.

"Tell your people, your followers and supporters that you are a law abiding supporter of the constitution". Absolutely!!! Make no mistake, over zealous supporters or carpet baggers planted into your movement by the opposition will doom your agenda.


Your choice is simple: To work hard and be effective in getting back our 2nd amendment gun rights or be loud mouthed posers intent on out macho-ing the other loud mouth posers and in the process doom your movement.

No. You don't want to win. You want to virtue-signal, but without putting anything at risk, least of all the hide so precious to no one but you.

You won't win by supplicating from a position of servitude.
You have nothing - NOTHING - you'd fight for.
War is the continuation of politics, by other means.

Politics without war is the United Nations. Name for the class all the victories they've won.
Show your work.

Abide by the constitution all you want.
So tell us, smart guy, when you have your Constitution, but the other side ignores it, and won't play by those rules, what you'll win...?

Here's a hint or two:

 

 

This Ain't Gonna Work Out Like You Thought, Pt. II

Two germane points to those a continent closer to this than we are:

I) Incoming fire always has the right of way.

II) After the first one, the rest are free.

This Ain't Gonna Work Out Like You Thought



They weren't "Californians" when they landed here, nor when they left here.
They won't magically become such when they get to where you are either.
But you're welcome to all you want.

"You all can go to Hell; I'm going to Texas!" - Rep. David Crockett

According to an article by Tyler Durden linked at RLGore's Straight Line Logic, Crockett's sentiment is shared by a growing number of companies seeking refuge from Califrutopia's confiscatory taxation. Which, make no mistake, is as bad as you've heard. You should RTWT, at either place. But as we've pointed out WRT Durden's prognostications before, what he covers is rarely as important as what he unknowingly overlooks. So stealing a line from the late great Paul Harvey, let's tell you The Rest Of The Story you won't get in the OP either place, in a fitting cautionary tale for Friday the 13th.

One quote in it has 70,000 "Californians" (the vast majority of whom are not, and never were, but we'll leave that point momentarily); the awkward paragraph's next quote has 12,900 (15% of 86,000), unless it was aiming at stating that ex-Californians were 15% of all new Texas arrivals, a number shrouded in vagueness.

So Point One, the minor one, would be to figure out WTF number we're aiming at, if you're seeking some precision beyond vague statements that "a lotta people are going to Texas from Califrutopia", which conveys close to zero actual and useable information.

Point Two, the far greater one, is that most of the people leaving CA are geographical gypsies, and have been their entire adult lives. Having no investment in where they came from they plundered and moved on to greener pastures, exactly as they'll do at their next point of alighting.
That prospect, far more than where they landed and plundered last, should scare hell out of anyone in Texas.

They weren't native Californians, people who carved an oasis out of a desert, built the ships and planes of WWII, entertained the world with world-class stories and music, or feed the world annually from their surplus. And, incidentally, voted solid Republican for most of a century, since the territory was founded as a state.

Texans aren't getting them for neighbors.

They're getting the detritus from everywhere from Pigknuckle to NYFC, the second- and third-raters who couldn't survive in the corrupt scumopolii of the East and Midwest, the ne'er-do-wells whose parents stuck it out in the dustbowl or Appalachia or the deep South until long after all the good jobs were gone, and then only moved to Californy after the welfare hammock there made the trip worthwhile, have now sucked it dry, and have chosen a new clueless rube to rob and loot before the husk here collapses from its own weight.

One might be forgiven for having thought Texas would have learned its lesson in Houston after Katrina, but there's always one bozo who has to grab the hot stove two times to catch on.

Tag, Texas; you're it.

You'll be getting the illegal aliens too shiftless to work here, the ones not quite bright enough to climb the cartel hierarchy, the white trash and Diversity Beans who've timed out their welfare benefits, and the proud younger diplomates from the 49th-ranking educational system in the country.

The ones who voted in Gov. Gray Davis, who bankrupted the state by buying its own power back from Enron at 4 times the market price, then became the first CA governor to get recalled in 100 years; the ones who thought Moonbeam Brown hadn't done enough damage to CA in his first two horrible terms back in the '80s, and gave him two more, those who voted for Clinton and Obozo and Shrillary, and then gave us Gabbin' Nuisance as a follow-up to Moonbeam, now finally termed out in his dottage, all while saddling the entire country with Barbara Boxer, the stupidest senator in the country for pretty much her entire term of service, gun-grabbing Sen. Fineswine, and Speaker Nancy Alzheimers, not once, but now twice, because the first time didn't screw the country up hard enough.
Sen. Kamala Klowncar Kneepads, beside this rogue's gallery, is just a latter-day asterisk.

You're getting their voters. To him who has ears to hear, let him listen.

Look real hard at where Davis, and Pelosi, and Boxer are from (Google it, I triple dog-dare you); that's who voted for them here, too, and that's who's moving to Texas, by demographic inevitability. And hey, Texicans, check out your southern counties, and note how your entire state is purpling up nicely, and due to flip (D) forever inside of 20 years, and then tell yourselves you'll be different, and "it can't happen here".

Don't believe me; ask around in Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona. They think they got inundated with "Californians", but mathematics is a rare gift, and they never had the wit to figure out that if all their problem came from here, this state would be as barren  and de-populated as North Dakota or Alaska, even if we threw in half of Mexico here illegally for free.
It simply isn't possible, and never was; those states were inundated not by "Californians", but by people who couldn't ruin Califrutopia fast enough, and just kept moving. We were just the last place they despoiled before moving along. License plates aren't birth certificates, a fact they learned too little, and too slow, if they even know now.

Now it's Texas' turn.

I forward Texas my sincere best wishes dealing with that locust storm, but no matter how I say it, it still comes over as the English translation of a Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." You're going to do just that; no doubt. And you're going to get what your governors have been recruiting for, good and hard. Based purely on a lifetime's eyewitness observation, let me assure you it will not be anything like what you'd hoped for.

Oh, and you other folks? Substitute the name of your state patch for Texas, as necessary.
Lather, rinse, repeat.

The next uprising will not be North vs. South.
It will not be Coast vs. Hinterland.
It will not be City vs. Country.
It will not be Everywhere Else vs. Califrutopian Hordes.

It's going to be street to street, and house to house.
Wrap your heads around that, and stop bullsh*tting yourselves.
The biggest threat to your existence for the next 40 years is not coming from Califrutopia, NYFC, or the District of Mordor.
It's coming from within 5 miles of your front door, right effing NOW.
And it always was.

We Told You So Dept.

SiG has a post (RTWT) wherein the CATO Institute has noticed that opioid abuse isn't Rx meds, but rather exclusively street ODs on heroin and fentanyl (CATO is still rather clueless, it's not fentanyl, it's carfentanil that's responsible, the home-cooked-only synthetic version with toxicity on a par with nerve gas).

We told you this here long since. (So did SiG, BTW.)
And told you.
And told you.

I don't know everything, but what I do know is generally correct to about 9 decimal places.

The solution is simple, and two-fold:
Ban Narcan for 5 years.
Build. The. Wall.

Bonus: it requires neither doubling down, nor outright surrendering in the War Mutually Beneficial Slapfight On (Some) Drugs, With Collateral Damage.
Libertarian drug-lovers, rejoice.

Within a year, you'll be able to count opiate OD deaths on your thumbs in most states, annually. Because after addicts die the first time, recidivism drops off precipitously!
Mirabile dictu!

They'll be a brief spike in indigent funeral costs with no Narcan, but that will be more than offset in savings from lack of welfare and disability payments to junkies, and reduction in needle exchange and urban needle discard clean-up efforts. Due to Darwinian selection weeding them out in wholesale batches again.

And under The Enemy gets A Vote:
When the cartels decide that to preserve market share, they have to get kids hooked early, (which they'll do in a heartbeat, just like ever) can we finally, FFS, agree to execute street-level dealer m*****f*****s for their first offense, same day as sentencing, from here on out?

That's all I ask.

I'll even donate one day a month at the state prison to put in IVs for lethal injections if necessary, to help this along.
More forward-thinking states can just switch back to hanging, gassing, shooting, and electrocution, as previously practiced. Guillotine would even be acceptable.

LA and FL trying to televise them being fed alive to gators and hogs, while hilarious and a madly profitable endeavor, will probably not survive the obligatory court challenge, but the cable revenues would probably subsidize all prison costs for the first year.