Thought For The Day

 

Just saying.

In case anyone wanted to take a bite out of communism, or something.

Sunday Music: Sirius/Eye In the Sky

 

Megahit with instrumental intro seque into the band's #3 hit, off their only platinum US album. And a little too prescient a description of TPTB, as of any five minutes ago.

That Answers That

 h/t Irish

Tell me again why you think re-opening
public schools is a good idea.

Doubleplus Ungood Badthink

For John Wilder

Hold Your Horses: Crawl, Walk, Run

Great flick. But don't be Col. Pitts

Wes at NC Renegade has some thoughts. That's today's lesson topic.

Go read it. I'll be here when you come back.

At his site, I replied:

Thanks for recapping Why.
At this point:
1) Stand up to Whom?
2) With What and Who?
3) Where, When, and How?
Most people reading this couldn’t write a 5 Paragraph Order, let alone grasp one, and about 90% of them would have to google it to even know what I’m talking about.
They have, on avg., 1/2 a weapon apiece, little ammunition, no time, funds, support, friendly forces, and for 90+% of them, zero training in any meaningful way.
We didn’t invade Normandy on December 8th, 1941.
And we didn’t get here in a day, so we won’t be getting out of it in one either.
I absolutely share your frustration, but one cannot grow a crop faster by pulling on the green shoots.
Now is a time for gathering and preparing, not taking any direct action, and making the most of temporal and financial opportunity while we have it.
“Boy, I wish we’d spent less time in training, and been less prepared and supplied” said no one ever in world history, least of all those entering a battle or embarking upon an entire war.
The first thinning of the herd will be those willing to invest the time and money to get ready for the conflict. That’ll probably move the decimal point of available forces one place to the left, automagically.
One’s time should be spent in
a) being that guy
b) doing the work
c) finding other guys doing the same
d) figuring out what to do, to whom, and when to do it
Unless you’re already a former JSOC ninja with a file cabinet full of CARVER-rated objectives, and a tight-knit vetted cadre of like-minded and capable folks, with an existing support matrix, doing anything more than that is simply a recipe for a short, interesting, and ultimately futile life.
Change my mind.

I've posted links to military manuals any half-dozen times for a reason, dammit, and it isn't nostalgia.

Most of you (95%, by all polling data, though the blog stats here may skew a wee bit higher) never got any closer to a military formation than lining up outside for phys ed classes in school. And that was great in a free country but not so much for a burgeoning banana republic, with all the trimmings, which is what we are, right this minute.

So let's talk turkey:

There are three undeniable truths operating right now in America.

I. Elections are pointless, worthless, and futile.

If you didn't get that memo despite what happened in November, and again in GA in January, sorry to break it to you, but it's nevertheless gospel truth.

Anyone yakking about "We'll get 'em next time!", "Vote Harder!", or any variation on "MOAR Elections!" is an unredeemed delusional jackass suffering a psychotic break from reality. They should be placed in a room in a quiet glen, featuring soft music, soft lighting, soft food, and soft walls. They're fucking nuts. Don't waste any further breath on them until they wake up, if ever.

TINVOWOOT: There Is No Voting Our Way Out Of This. 

Learn it, Live it, Love it.

Should you still pull a lever ever again? Hell yes. Enjoy whatever simulacrum of freedom you can, and maximize the time and minimize the gradient of the decline, if such be within your power. Primary out RINOs. Use it as a weed-out for whom to ever listen to, and whom to discount, forever. And a platform to shitpost, meme, rabblerouse, and generally send raspberries at TPTB, while you can. But minimize the time, energy, and funds you spend waste on electoral activities going forward, knowing the entire process is as fake as TV News and pro wrestling.

II. We're at war, within this country, with those who hate fundamental America.

Not a debate. Not an argument. Not a fight. A W-A-R.

They want you dead. They want you rounded up and obliterated, and they want to kill your unborn babies, kidnap your living children, and poison their minds against you. In the interim, they want you unemployed, broke, dispossessed of your goods, lands, and chattels, and treated like sub-human scum, which is what they think of you, to their marrow. And they'll stop at nothing to do exactly that. When your enemy tells you his true feelings, believe it. Mein Kampf was a blueprint for the Holocaust. Das Kapital was the blueprint and excuse for the Holodomor, the Great Leap Forward, and the Killing Fields.

Scapegoats and counter-revolutionaries will not be tolerated. You are both.

If you're reading this, that means YOU, to a metaphysical certainty.

But there is a difference between being AT war, and warfare.

Your fight, at this point, is theoretical, philosophical, and moral.

III. You aren't ready to fight any other kind of actual war. Yet.

As I noted to Wes, above, I share his frustration that this is so. Some of us have been trying to edumacate folks about this for years. As you might have noticed, to date, it hasn't helped much, other than as a pressure relief valve for those of us watching the trainwreck, transfixed, aghast, and infuriated.

Which brings us to the Teachable moment, and the Action/Implementation Phase.

AIP: Get yourself ready for a war.

A) It's going to be a shooting war, so you'd better have something to shoot with, and something to load into it. And you'd better get damned good with it. The good news is, even for GED-holding high school dropouts, that only takes a few hours a day for a couple-three weeks, even for Army Rangers and Marines. And a grand total of 260 rounds. Folks, that's nothing, in the grand scheme. Competence is not mastery, but start with bare competence. If you're looking for recommendations, there are plenty of good options, but the AR platform is where to start. You'll do just fine if you pick up a Smith and Wesson MP-15, which is just a civvie M4gery. YMMV, but it'll get anyone over the age of 12 off on the right foot. Pistol? Learn how to run a Glock. You can upgrade from all of this, (and I hope you do) but that's the floor.

B) Once you've scratched the itch of your inner Gear Whore with that rifle and/or pistol, get your (overwhelming majority of Americans) fat @$$ in shape. PT. 3-5 times/week. Upper body, lower body, aerobic endurance exercise, strength-building. The shorthand for that is push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and running 2-3 miles. Running. Not walking, pedalling, driving, slow jogging, or anything else. Start with less distance, and slower, sure. But get to where you can run 8-minute or less miles, for at least 3 of them. That's the standard. Two minutes of sit-ups. Max effort, and increase over time. Max push-ups and pull-ups. Lather, rinse, repeat.

C) Get healthy. Stop eating sh*t. Balanced meals, wipe out the sugar, fat, and junk food. Get your teeth fixed. Get anything else you need to taken care of. Get your booster shots for tetanus, etc. Cut back on the alcohol, and junk the nicotine habit. Spend the money you save from those vices on more important supplies. Like stored food, medical supplies, ammo, tools. You can party when you're using the skulls of your enemies for cups. Until then, self-discipline. Medical care may not be around much longer, and healthy people fight harder, and they're harder to kill. I repeat, get healthy.

D) Learn what an unconventional warrior needs to know. I don't know you, or your area, or what you're up against. You should. Then learn what you'll need to deal with that. At a minimum, you should be focusing on what the ground forces (Army, Marines) teach their basic recruits. We may have pounded that home with a 2x4 a time or twelve on this very blog. Repetition is a teaching technique. Even if you're too old/brokedick to participate, you should still have the knowledge in your brainpan. And if that's the case, learn tradecraft skills: scouting, spying, information-gathering, recording, encryption/decryption, transmission, collection, and analysis. Too scared? Focus on supporting activities: caching, sheltering, running a safe house, supply, small-scale manufacturing, finance, medical support, feeding, transportation (all means: truck/rail/waterborne/pack animal), repair, communications, construction, field engineering (anything from shovels to heavy equipment), and so on. If the Army has an occ field that you could do, you can be useful. On average, it takes 10 people to put one insurgent, supplied, fed, and equipped, into the field. And you're going to need some of that tradecraft I mentioned above to not be scooped up for aiding and abetting, and winding up dead, or in prison.

E) Find (and VET!!!) other people doing A-D, above. {Hint: Over 50% of those in the @$$clown show that was Malheur were federal CIs. If you get to where your main strategy to avoid prison is jury nullification because you were a jackass about vetting, you've screwed the pooch beyond repair, and you deserve to die in prison. Whether or not you do is up to a merciful Deity, because TPTB will have no sense of humor, and Fate is set to Zero Fucks Given when you're stupid.} Take your time. Sniff around. Check them out, overtly and covertly. Due diligence or die. No one will tell your story alongside that of Patrick Henry. You'll just be the next Timothy McVeigh. Remember, you're picking people into whose hands you're entrusting your own life, and the fate of your family. So are they.

F) As Sam Culper has said, and taught, and teaches (take his classes!) do an Area Study. Look the term up online, find an example, and then wipe out the info paragraphs and pages for the sample you select, and refill the info with the same thing for your town/city, and county at a minimum. If it's small enough, do your entire state, and push outward if neighboring states are closer to you, for example, than your own state capitol. E.g., New Mexico (and Mexico!) info is going to be a helluva lot more relevant in El Paso than info about Dallas, Houston, and/or Austin. Just saying. If you're in Rhode Island, you should be looking at all of New England. For a good guideline, stick a pin in a map where you are. Scribe a circle to the limit of a tank of gas - say, 400-500 miles - and look hardest at that. That's your "area of interest". Same pin, then a circle of the 20 miles in any direction you could walk in a day: that's your "area of concern". You should know both intimately, for all topics in your sample Area Study. This is what Sun Tzu meant when he said "know your enemy" and "know the ground".

That's already five more things than most people out there have done, and it's enough to get you started.

Provided you start getting started.

Whatever you haven't done, above, is where you are. Get busy with that, FIRST. Leviathan isn't going to wait all day before taking an interest in you.

Medical Tip: Tourniquets Work!

One of the local constabularies recently encountered Nameless Crazy Person with butcher knife in hand, agitated and in a stabby mood. Despite repeated commands, NCP refused to drop knife, and/or broke the containment bubble, whereupon officer plugged NCP. Unknown number of rounds fired, but two connected. 

One to each arm. (-25 points for lousy marksmanship at knifefighting - which is knifefight dying - distance. Bonus points for unintended humanitarian efforts.)

One nicked the right outer bicep. Literally, a flesh wound. Rub some dirt on it (or, in this case, a wad of 4x4s) and walk it off. No harm, no foul.

Other round: in the stabby knife-wielding arm, 9mm or 40SW pellet entered the upraised left arm proximal to the inner elbow, and travelled along the near-horizontal upper arm, and exited just below the left armpit (axilla for medical types).

Neither round close to anything obviously vital, except...

Round #2, during its journey through the meaty bicep area, must obviously have punctured/torn/lacerated the L brachial artery, i.e. the one what all the blood from Mr. Heart travels in to arrive in the rest of Mr. Arm.

Result: a steady blurp-blurp-blurp of bright red blood, all over the ground.

To his everlasting credit, Constable quickly applied first an Israeli Battle Dressing to the arm of the now knifeless suspect, to whom the application of lead had reduced his crazy efforts noticeably. Which IBD application slowed the blurp-blurp nary a whit.

So, reverting to academy-standard (nowadays) training, he whipped out his CAT Tourniquet, and lashed that sucker down just like in training videos, and turned off the blurp-blurp in about 6 twists of the windlass, despite the pained response from NCP.

Medics brought NCP to our world, where our trauma nurse and trauma doc were certain that applying a TQ was waaaaaay overkill, but "Bless their hearts for doing too much instead of too little". So, they untwisted that TQ, and were immediately rewarded with blurp-blurp-blurp of bright red arterial blood, again.

I twisted the TQ back on and tightened it, and we sent NCP directly to trauma surgery for vascular repair, so that he could continue to be crazy with two functioning arms.

And I told the paramedics and the PD officer responsible for the TQ that they'd saved an actual life with that thing, because NCP would have died at the scene in about two minutes if they hadn't tourniquetted off the flow of arterial blood from a "mere" arm wound. Which not only saved his life, it prevented about two trees-worth of resultant officer-involved homicide paperwork.

TL;DR:

Put the effing TQ on if the bleeding doesn't stop with pressure, and make it holy by cranking the hell out of it.

You needn't carry four TQs on your body, but you have four limbs, so if you like them, and you enjoy living, you'd be well-advised to have four TQs somewhere close by, like kit/pack/bag, etc.

Not at home in your medicine cabinet 20 miles away.

When you need one (or, God forbid, more than one) it will be Right Effing NOW, and not "in twenty minutes or so".

If you'd rather ignore that advice: Suture self.

FTR, trauma literature based on medical trauma data from Sandbox I and Sandbox II have documented applications of as long as 4 hours before removal in surgery with no residual harm of any kind to extremities as a result of the TQ application, in young, otherwise-healthy, military-aged troops. YMMV, but they are not in any way "sacrificing a limb to save a life", anytime in the last 20 years. If you're within that time span for arrival at definitive medical care, and it's medically justified, it's better to slap one on than watch your patient exsanguinate and die.

And now, refresher training for those who wish it:

"This sh*t works!" - everyone who's ever needed one.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Bloglist Update

We've followed TPopp on his YouTube Redonkulas channel for literal years. Apparently he's added a blogsite version/link.

Added.

Retired SF MSG/Team Daddy. Good Popp is informative. Bad Popp is funny as f**k. He's also right about 95% of the time about anything in his wheelhouse. And it's a biiiiig wheelhouse.

Go. Watch. Learn. Obligatory Beverage Alert: Not responsible for coffee or carbonated beverage burn to your nostrils if you disregard this warning.

And if you want to enter a timehole, go back to his earliest videos on YouTube, and work your way forward through the ones that interest you.

FYI: It doesn't update. Drop in from time to time, and see what he's added.

SCOTUS Sends...

 

¡Viva Chiquitastan!

 

You live in a full-fledged banana republic.

Your would-be overlords will brook neither examination nor discussion of that fact, and they will decide for you who you wanted elected. Your input is entirely superfluous, and the idea that you can or even should have any input at all is frankly annoying and vexatious to TPTB.

There can be but one proper answer to that, and it must needs be delivered at between 900 and 3200fps. Nothing less will suffice.

Range Cards - Re-Post

By request from DTG.  Original was posted 6/25/2018.

Entire Basic Training masterlink list and then some.

So, when we left off, you'd gotten yourself into a nice fighting position, but that's just the beginning.

Once you've dug in and improved your position somewhat, you need to begin a Range Card. It's basically a mini-map of your sector of responsibility (and sector of fire, should it come to that) with particular emphasis on obvious landmarks, dead space, and ranges from you to everything you can see.

It's your team leader's job to tell you three things when you're digging in:

1) Principle Direction Of Fire
The PDF is where you should be looking, alerting anyone else of anything notable that happens into view, and shooting at it if anything worth shooting at appears, consistent with your team's ROE (Rules Of Engagement). Your hole should be sited to cover that.

2) Your Sector Limits
How far to the left and right of your PDF you should be paying attention to, and/or shooting at, with suitable landmarks or compass bearings for both.

3) Your Final Protective Fire line
The bearing along which, if everything goes to hell, you should be shooting to put a curtain of screaming lead to prevent your team's position being overrun.

Your responsibility is to put in limit stakes (or rocks) at your end, so that you can point your weapon alongside them to the limits of your sector to either side, along with similar arrangements for your PDF and FPF, so that, even in the dark and absent NODs, you could fire a line along either and hit anything from 0-72 inches above the ground along that bearing.

Then to walk your sector, or have someone else do it, to see if there are any spots where a person could successfully hide from your fire. This is called dead space, not because they'll be dead outside it, but because you can't put any live fire into it.

If any of that is within hand grenade-throwing range (25m or so), you'll want to find ways to put something there to make it less attractive to occupy, whether that something is just noisy (to alert you), or actually painful or hazardous (to penalize attempts to occupy it without you shooting at it). Ideally, both, and in such a way that it's not obvious that whatever is put there has been deliberately placed, but rather appears natural to casual observation. Jumbled piles of sharp rocks and old brush, with jagged points and edges, are better for this than obvious human-constructed spikes, and accomplish roughly the same effect.

But mainly, you want to visually identify obvious landmarks and your sector lines, and range the distance from you to them, out to the limit of your own weapon's effectiveness or the limit of your vision, so that you know at what range any target(s) at those landmarks are at, or what ranges they're between, to use all that rifle marksmanship you learned, and deliver accurate fire on them if necessary.

Assuming your rifle is BZO'ed, everything from 0-300m will be hit on a man-sized target with the same sight setting for you, so your primary concern is the 300-600m range, where correct range settings are more important to hit accurately.

You can pace it off, or have your battle buddy do that while walking the area looking for dead space, but a modern expedient that's probably easier and more accurate would be a simple laser rangefinder available from dozens of websites, hunting suppliers, etc. If someone has a dedicated rifle for marksmanship beyond 500m, get a rangefinder that will accommodate all such possibilities.

Otherwise, one that'll handle 600m or less will suffice for 7.62mm and 5.56mm modern battle rifles at all probable ranges.

In heavier cover, 100m may be all the distance you've got, but ideally, you're somewhere inside the edge of that heavy cover, looking out at open ground. Second choice, everything's open, but your position is camouflaged and has sufficient cover.

In any event, once your hole is basically prepared, learn the ground outwards from where you are, unless you want your fighting hole to become your burial hole.

Sunday Music: American Pie

 

After I posted this in conjunction with news of Rush Limbaugh's death last Monday, I couldn't believe I hadn't already put it up for Sunday Music. It's like seeing Zulu on TV: if you hear this on the radio, you have to listen to the entirety until it's over. It's one of a very small number of the quinetessential American modern ballads, and it deserves to go up now. Partly because Rush's departure isn't a quick loss, and even more so because this song is so American, being able to sing along with this entire eight and a half minutes of musical iconography should be part of the mandatory US citizenship exam.

Sing it with me one more time.

1, 2, 3...

 Phil over at Busted Nuckles reposted a cartoon.

It needed two more panels, so I helped out on it.

Gun buybacks.

So easy a caveman could do it.

Sorry, But Just...No

 

To set up this Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance triple play, WRSA linked to an American Partisan article posted by NC Scout, the gist of which was a link to an SF article on prolonged casualty care, and the "guerrilla hospital".

Presumably in the context of people thinking of some sort of grid-down problem, long- or short-term, anywhere in a spectrum from between post-Katrina ugliness all the way to full flaming Zombpocalypse, including in the intermediate range, moderate to severe civil unrest/guerrilla warfare in CONUS.

Probably 95% or more of casual readers who follow that will be thinking, "Yessirree, we're gonna need us one of them there go-rilla hospitals!"

Sorry, kids, you won't be having any of that.

The article in the OP was concerned with actual SF medics, with access to modern drugs, satellite communications, air drops, a logistical tail that reaches any point on the globe, given enough time, and ultimately the entire US military's medical behemoth for back-up, sooner or later.

You. Won't. Have. Any. Of. That.

You might could handle a clinic, or convalescent hospital, by which I mean a place to get well or die. That you could manage to pull off, from 1 bed and up, and I've suggested a bare bones framework on how you might think about doing that. But it will not be anything like what you know as a hospital, from any time since 1960 or so, and it won't be even as modest as the "guerrilla hospital" Col. Farr is talking about in the linked article.

Here's what you won't need, and what you won't have, hence what you won't be doing to save anyone's life.

You won't have anesthesia. You won't have analgesia, except moonshine or weed, in all likelihood. So without those two things, you won't have surgery of any type other than "Civil War v1.0"-type. Complete with bone saws, sepsis, and spurting arteries after amputations.

You won't have cardiac code drugs. Nor supplemental oxygen in metric f**ktons. (A re-purposed O2 concentrator running up to 6 lpm? Maybe. Putting people on ventilators at 15-100 lpm? NFW. Not happening.) So you don't need protected airways, defibrillators, ventilators (large nor portable version), nor any other such nonsense. Forget CPR. Waste of time and energy.

Thus any cessation of heartbeat or respiration will go by what medical professionals quaintly refer to as "Death".

You're unlikely to have the ability to transfuse blood products, let alone type and screen donors and recipients.

You might cobble together enough antibiotic doses to save a couple/three folks from serious wounds, if they aren't liable to bleed to death first. But when those are gone, your only antibiotics will be mold on bread, which isn't the same thing as penicillin. 

So what are you going to need? In the immortal words of one famous Special Forces operator:

No, really.

Plan on one body bag per person, double that for random others, and hope you haven't sold it short. And learn how to safely dispose of bodies without contaminating yourself or your water supply.

Calvin Coolidge Jr., son of the sitting president, played tennis with his older brother John on the White House tennis court without socks in 1924, got a blister, which became septic, and he died within a week. No antibiotics. Just like you won't have.

Should you gather medical supplies, and get CPR and medical training?

Hell YES! It ain't the Zombpocalypse yet, and that stuff and the know-how is always handy to have. And you should absolutely do as much as you possibly can, or can prepare for.

But get a better grip on what you will and won't be able to do. (And, no, that doesn't include shooting the wounded.)

When Ebola got here the first time, I lost track of how many people I tried to tell "You aren't going to "treat" this. You're either going to isolate, or die from it if you don't."

"But I can't abandon my family members! I'd HAFTA try!"

Said every one of 50,000 dead family members in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone that same year who tried that. Suture self.

Now, with a year of weak-ass COVID under your belts, many of you who contracted it infected by other family members, you can see what a year on your own is like, to a very small degree, and that's with a virus with, at worst, a 3% fatality rate. (Like we told you.)

Look up casualties in WWI and/or the Civil War, for either side, and get back to me.

That's the level of medical care you'd be looking at providing/accessing in any serious "problem", over the long run.

So expect similar death rates when you revert to medical expertise last seen from 1860-1940.

Some few of you maybe might have a doctor, P.A., etc. handy.

D'ya know what you call a cardiologist or internal medicine specialist without a hospital around him, 98% of the time?

Steve. 

Because that's what you've got with no labs, no pharmacies, no imaging, and minimal facilities.

Don't believe me; ask them yourself, and see how fast they laugh at the idea of modern health care without anything that differentiates it from 19th century medicine, other than a bit more insight into certain things.

Then go back and read ,Rawles' HTSTEOTWAWKI, and find the part where he mentions the great "Die Off".

Now you can imagine why it's so.

Absolutely prepare as much as you can for anything and everything that concerns you.

But FFS, have some realistic expectations of what you can and cannot do with your two hands, and whatever bag of goodies you cobble together for bad times. Reality is going to be harsh enough in any bad situation without the double sting of shock because you thought it was going to be a picnic.

UPDATE (3/6/21): Grenadier1 disagrees at WRSA radio.

My reply to that is in Comments.

No Words

Sorry If This Is News To Anyone

 

Fourth Amendment Check

 

First Amendment Check? Meet Fourth Amendment Check.

Two black-masked and Antifa-hoodied @$$holes outside a nearby post office, filming everyone coming and going, physically stopping people from entering with no authority and saying "Temperature check!", while photographing and video and audio recording them without prior consent as they entered. Including moi. And then instigating and provoking the people telling them to knock it off, pushing for a fight.

Um, no, @$$holes.

"9-1-1? Yes, two people performing unlawful detentions, trespassing on federal property and loitering with intent, harassing customers coming and going and creating a disturbance, stalking, recording people without their consent, and filming without a permit. There's two of them, so that would be a felony criminal conspiracy to do all of the same. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that's about seven misdemeanors and two felonies, as we speak..."

Two minutes later, two of the city's finest show up, and five minutes after that, both of the offenders leave in handcuffs. Game Over? Oh no. Games are just beginning.

Now they can do their First Amendment Check from inside the county jail, and once the particulars go online, I can also file a civil action. I haven't decided how butthurt I am, but lawyers' fees and whatever the going rate of punishment tax would seem to be in order.

Hopefully, after they pawn their cameras, they'll still have enough money for rent, if they ever get out of jail before trial. If not, hopefully they have friends who'll send the soap-on-a-rope, or they may make some new shower friends in the lock-up.

You want to film non-national defense public buildings, or record police officers' public actions? That's 1st Amendment protected, so ROWYBS. I'd have sent you bail money if you'd been arrested for doing that.

But you have no right to film everyone about their private business, record their likeness and voice for monetized Youtube bux without their signed consent, harass and stalk them for calling you out on it, nor loiter and trespass on federal property to perform all of the above.

In an open carry state, they might have had that conversation at gunpoint while waiting for their black-and-white taxi service. As it is, they're both lucky no one had pepper spray and an itch to make a point.

And next, the postal inspectors can refer them to the US Attorney for federal charges.

Learn all of the relevant laws, or pay the price for fucking around and finding out, you stupid bastards.

Don't drop the soap.

Sunday Music: Addicted To Love

Topic 2d anniversary!

One of the most iconic, imitated, and referenced music videos of all time, and a helluva song by maestro Robert Palmer.

As to the title indictment: guilty as charged.

Happy St. Valentine's Day.

TDS: Still A Thing

 

Whadya gonna try next, Leftard Lunatics; taking away his  birthday?

Putting him on double-secret probation??

Having already set the Constitution on fire by impeaching a private citizen, they may as well hold endless impeachments, until they get it right. Weekly, daily, maybe twenty times a day. Whatever it takes, right you communist Fucktards? 

Those assclowns couldn't hit a barn by shooting at it if they were inside it.

Common Cornhole Math

 

Plus ça change...

High Tech Low Tech

Nearby neighbors moved in 1st of last month. Within days, parking (which was a bitch before) became a nightmare. On numerous occasions, I'd make an errand run for an hour or less, and come back to find someone else parked in my designated space, enough times that it pissed me off.

New neighbors, meanwhile, had exchanged their white front light for a green one. And added a buzz-in entrance, barred windows, a door grille, and multiple security surveillance cameras outside. Totally non-descript, right?

Waiting for whomever was stealing my space to leave so I could park for the night and go in, I observed a steady stream of walk-up and drive up customers to what was obviously, in about 5 minutes, an unlicensed pot shop.

Weed is legal now in Califrutopia (which has worked out about as you'd expect) to the point that the shops are severely restricted, due to the potential actual number of hundreds of armed rip robberies in broad daylight. Thus the shops are proximity restricted, zoned, and require a very healthy investment in minimal upgrades before a business license is granted. One problem hereabouts is we're too close to a local grade school to get a permit. This assumes stoners follow the law.

Shocker!: people who were breaking the pot laws for 100 years show no inclination to put up with licensing and taxation, let alone zoning compliance. Who knew crooks will be crooks?

I don't mind people doing their drugs of choice, legally, at home, right up until they start stealing parking, and the 9 out of 10 stoners who would be blazing up right in front of my place, or theirs, before, during or after, including the tenants themselves, nightly when they shut down for the day. The daily increased likelihood of armed robberies didn't fill me with happy thoughts either.

Instead of making a stink with the landlord, or the zoning code enforcement assholes (I hate them as much as anything), nor wishing to have the local cops bothered to SWAT this particular tsetse fly with a tac squad and MRAP,  all of which just brings down unneeded heat on everyone not causing problems as well as the ones who were, I decided to get creative, but short of sending them a molotov cocktail to drink.

I have a couple of wi-fi hotspots.

So I renamed one "unlicensed pot shop", and the other one "DEA Task Force 17". As they're wi-fi, the names are visible to everyone for a block in any direction, including all the commercial tenants in the same strip as the new neighbors.

For a bigger bonus, a handyman outfit in the same strip uses about 4-6 standard cargo vans and panel trucks, plus a Sprinter van. They are all unmarked.

Hilarity ensued.

I caught one of the weed shop knuckleheads one day trying to use his phone to get a better locus for the wi-fi signal. So I put them both on a timer, and they switch over every 15 minutes when they're in use.

Apparently my efforts had the desired effect.

Lo and behold, end of the month last month, small army of stoner buddies show up, and start rapidly unassing their digs, and hurriedly loading up everything into rental vans for parts unknown.

After they left, I walked by, and sure enough, all their hardware enhancements were gone, and they left a note on their old door that customers seeking their drive-up pot should call or text a new number for updates on their new location.

I "borrowed" it, photocopied it, but changed the contact number to the county sheriff's bureau narcotic division, then helpfully reposted it on the door of their vacated premises.

It was gone a week later, so I left a new note, on home-brew created DEA and LE joint task force letterhead, asking anyone with any information on the former tenants to please call Special Agent Friendly or Det. Sgt. Knuckledragger at any of several government numbers or websites.

Haven't had any trouble parking since.

Still thinking about what the new hotspot names will be.

Leading contenders are "Biden's Pillow" and "Veep Kneepads".

Senate Suspends Reality

 

(MORDOR ON THE POTOMAC - Aesociated Press) In a landmark decision, the Senate today voted 94-0 (with 6 voting "present") that the laws of gravity and physics no longer apply to the Congress, and suspended gravity indefinitely. Explaining that "laws we don't agree with no longer apply to us", Sen. ChuckU Schumer explained to adoring mobs of sycophantic presstards giving him the obligatory daily tonguebath that henceforth "only what we say is real, is real".

He further promised in future weeks that the Senate will soon overrule time, space, tidal activity, and anything else his featherheaded colleagues find inconvenient to their grand schemes of re-inventing America as the communist paradise that Lenin had in mind when he founded the U.S.S.A. on May Day 1917. "It's a natural evolution of our actual authority", he explained expansively. "We've ignored both the previous foolish Constitutional limitations on our power written by our fatally flawed slave-owning misogynist oppressors, and the fiscal realities laid down by captalist pig opportunists for so long, this new policy was not only bound to happen eventually, it's also the right thing for us to do. So we did it. 2+2= Whateverthehell we say it is, and don't you peons forget it! Hail Satan!"

From somewhere deep up Sen. Schumer's asscheeks, Senate Minority leader Bitch McConjob was heard to mutter, "The Senate GOPe Republicans concur completely. Thhhhhhhhppppppt! Am I doing this okay, Chuckie? Truck Fump! Hail Satan!"

In unrelated news, DHS jackbooted thugs pounced on some racist white supremacist 8-year-old cisgendered domestic terrorist bastard, as he shouted "How come they're all naked?" from the bottom of the Capitol steps. Sources report that after a good old-fashioned ass-whipping, and their trademark boots stamping on his face, forever, plus another 10-20 years of re-education in the mandatory public gulags, following sentencing his former parents to lifelong prison terms filling in the trench planned for the Keystone pipeline, they hope the misguided little monster will be allowed to rejoin society, once he is properly re-educated, after state-mandated gender-reassignment surgery, lobotomy, and chemical castration. Unnamed sources from within xer office reported that Congressweasel Evita Chavez-Castro muttered "The little sh*t had it coming. Hail Satan!", but we were unable to confirm this before press time.

As rampaging mobs continued their fifth straight night of flame-lit redistribution of the income of oppressive kulaks wrongfully extorted from the working class in the nation's capitol, under the supervision of the Notional Guardsmen deployed there for the past six months, a spokeshole for the Senate leadership promised "What To Wear" wardrobe guidelines will soon be forthcoming for those Americans selected for glorious all-expense paid trips to the re-education gulags, with the first trains departing no later than a week from Wednesday.

Flags will remain at half-staff through Friday to honor the regrettable but untimely death by pillow suffocation of former President Biden, President Kneepads' office confirmed today. A spokeshole from the newly redecorated Red House said that "The FBI has pinned the crime on culprit Mike Lindell, and following the seizure of all his My Pillow assets under the RICO laws, his show trial will conclude in about fifteen more minutes, followed by a fine public hanging in Lafayette Park tomorrow. Bring the kids! Hail Satan!"

Who Knew?

 

"But if anyone did something, they'd just send a maintenance tech or branch flunky to clean it out, and they'd be back up in a couple of hours..."

Really? Riddle me this:

Would said branch flunkie or maintenance tech gain access to the ATM innards they would supposedly clean with a key, inserted into a lock?

Does Homeless Depot not also sell squirt tubes of epoxy and cyanoacrylate Krazy Glue...?

Asking for a friend.

I further remind all and sundry of the experiment in policing where the authorities in Rome attempted to curb Italian drivers' casual acquaintance with traffic laws by installing hundreds of traffic nannycams all over the city.

And within 3 days, God bless 'em all, the good Italian citizens stole or disabled every single camera.

High tech problems frequently have low tech solutions.

Just saying.

#singlepointoffailure

Milking Knowledge From the .Mil's Cow

 

In response to "What? Which? Where? How" sorts of questions in response to Saturday's post, a little guidance from the Information Desk is hereby dispensed.

Why Buy A Cow When Milk Is Free?

Other than the relatively few classified (which I can't tell you about, unless I kill you afterwards...Oh yeah, right, smartypants. Like what? That'd be things like SERE/POW detailed training instructions on things like escape, resistance to interrogation, etc.; anything whatsoever to do with nuclear weapons and other WMDs, such as any specifications, types, deployment plans, allocation lists, compatible platforms/delivery systems, or even the list of units on the distribution list for same; cryptographic equipment, tank armor details, radar system specs, known weapon system weak points, and any number of other sensitive items and tidbits. Which, even if Ivan or Wang has a copy of already, is still not something we want falling into Pedro or Hadji's grubby little fingers.) manuals, the vast majority are public information, and available from the US Government Printing Office (with a check and a request). However, their prices are rarely competitive, esp. when a plethora of sites distribute them as e-manuals for the unbeatable price of $0.

So, Rule 1: Get your field manuals for free. Period.

Anyone charging anything over bare materials cost and/or handling is ripping you off, and you're the sucker. The exceptions are

a) anything you have found to be unobtanium (provided its classification status doesn't make you a spy liable to prosecution for mere possession), or

b) anything you find that beats the cost of bandwidth plus printing yourself.

I.e., if someone's selling a manual you want for $2, and printing it out yourself would cost you $5, plus the value of your monthly bandwidth prorated for how many megs/gigs you downloaded, then by all means, scoop it up.

IF:

It's in good shape.

It's legible.

It's complete.

I've been burned by reprints done in some Hong Kong whorehouse where all the meticulous 1960s-era line drawings were reproduced on a refurbed drug store copier with 20 years' accumulation of puke and schmutz on the glass liner, and they look like blobs of indecipherable black ink. Those are fit only for fireplace kindling, or outhouse back-up reserve stock of paper products. Caveat emptor.

Rule 2: Latest does not always equal greatest.

E.g.: I will bet you dollars to donuts that Ranger Training Manuals from before Big Green went all gender-diversity friendly asinine and stupid, and put booster steps in front of the log wall on the o-course, will be a bit more useful than will manuals produced more recently or in the near future, to be useable by all 57 genders in the upcoming Fabulous-Friendly Queer Eye For The Gender-Fluid Rainbow Rump Ranger: Pink Barbie Edition. Just saying.

For another example, I have multiple generations and iterations of FM 5-20, Field Fortifications. I can assure you that the post-nuclear-era Vietnam War version does not cover artillery-proof dugouts, trenches, and bunkers nearly as well as the pre-WWII version does, from before nukes, but after the experience of 4 years of trench warfare all across Europe. In VN, we did not dig shelters nearly as deep, nor bunkers as sturdy, as we had prior to 1945. Our enemy shelled the shit out our bases regularly, while employing tunnel systems to shelter, rest, hide, and regroup. So, how did those plans work out for the two sides, respectively?

This is why you might not want only the most recent edition(s) of any given manual, nor series of them.

Conversely, Rule 3: Latest and greatest can often be a great place to start.

How so? The copy of ST 31-91B Special Forces Medical Handbook most frequently found at gun shows, surplus shops, etc. is great - if you want a 60-year-old medically obsolete piece of shit that belongs in a museum. (At least, unless your only knowledge of wound care is rubbing dog poo on it and sacrificing a chicken.)  Or if you have a table with one leg an inch shorter than the others, and need to level the table. If you want to know the best way to render medical care now, the 2020-era Special Operations Forces Medical Handbook is what you want.

Sure, get both, but only if you download the dinosaur version for free, and only keep it as reference, in case you wonder about how they used to do something when JFK was the president, and neither Motrin nor CT scans had been invented yet.

Rule 4: Download EVERYTHING!!!!!!!

Electrons are damned near free. A Cruzer thumb drive the size of a stack of 3-4 nickels can hold 256 Gigs. That's room for every military manual ever invented, and your porn stash, plus all the Harry Potter movies, the entire Muppet Show collection, and all the Looney Tunes, all in HiDef, With room to spare. For less than $31.

Rule 5: Dead tree PRINTED copies are immune to EMP degradation.

If you like it, you should have put 3 rings on it, after you printed it out. If you haven't printed it out, you don't own it. You're just holding a digital copy until you smash/erase/lose that copy.

You want to become an information warlord, for yourself, your tribe, or The Future?

1) Get either unlimited, or A Metric F**kton, of bandwidth.

2) Download everything you can get your mitts on.

3) Figure out how much space it takes, and then duplicate 10, 20, 50, 100, eleventy gajillion library copies on some thumb drives or DVDs, to give away to like-minded folks.

4) Print hard copies on archival paper, for your own library usage.

5) Get Adobe Acrobat, so you can create pdfs yourself.

6) Get a scanner, so that if you find an unobtanium manual that's not a violation of national security to possess, you can scan it in its entirety, and pass it along for free to everyone else.

Rule 6: Learn How Military Manuals Work.

As big and dumb as the giant Green/Blue Weenie of Militardation is, there is a method to their madness, and you can learn it. You don't know what you want, or should get, or should look for next? No problem.

Say you get a copy of Survival (anyone's edition, any service, and numbering system - hint: there are now multiple numbering systems for military manuals. Because Pentagon.) Every military manual contains a listing of References. I.e., other manuals with more to say on the topic in general, or some specific aspect. Telling you that a compass is a great thing is a good point in Survival. But way better when you find out there's a whole other manual on just Map Reading and Land Navigation. And another one on Desert Operations. And another on Cold Weather Operations. And another one on Jungle Operations. Each of which refer to Road Marches. And Field Hygiene And Sanitation. And to the M-16AWhateverversion rifle. Individual Tactics and Patrolling will point you to Fire Team and Squad Tactics, The Rifle Platoon, the Rifle Company, and Battalion Operations. Now you've gone from running one person (you) to running 500 people.

Like a YouTube or other internet wormhole, you can follow an idea or topic to the farthest related reaches of the known universe, through any manual's References.

Do it.

Where do I find all this stuff?

About 100 places on the internet, with a couple of mouseclicks.

Personal recommendations:

Global Security

Go wild.

Archive.org.

Like going to a great old used book store, where the price on everything in the store is $0.

Survival Ebooks

500 free manuals.

Military Field Manuals

468 free manuals.

Federation of American Scientists

The little communist Anti-American bastards put the manuals online, to embarrass the military.

Whatever, commie pigs.

Same manuals, same low price: free.

There are dozens more, but those will keep you busy for quite a good while.

Nota bene for these and any other sites: scan your downloads, beware of malware, and if anything trips your virus scanner, blow it up without opening, just like EOD does.

I'm not responsible if you bring Trojan horse VD into your hard drive, so apply due diligence.

But with a modicum of cyber-savvy and caution, you can amass a library of invaluable information on an enormous range of topics, for nothing, or close to it.

Knowledge is power.

I've just given you the keys to the nuclear plant.

Make good use of what you find, and loot until you can't do it anymore, or you've got it all.

Then, be a dandelion: reproduce what you've got, and scatter it in all directions.

Sunday Music: FM

 

Steely Dan's title theme to the movie charted Top 40 for about two months in 1978, but it's the kind of background music you could leave on repeat all night long. I know, because I wore out at least one 45 (Millenials: google it) doing just that.

To Whom It May Concern...

 

Defensive Training Group blog is back on its feet, at least for the time being.

And it should be something you've already done, but you should be making copies of anything on the intarwebz you think may be useful, as it may not be a forever thing.

E.g., any 200 or so US military manuals free for the asking, other than bandwidth.

The savvy will also put them on thumb drives, then hie thenceward to a copy shop and make hard copies.

The really savvy have already done so, and are now putting the whole library on thumb drives to hand out to others who may find them useful. And fear nothing about copyrights; you paid for them with your tax dollars, and they're yours and everyones', by right and by law. People charging more than the cost of printing and shipping are simply living on the margin best described by P.T. Barnum, relating to "one born every minute".

If you haven't done any of this, it's a good time to get busy.

A Prophet For Our Times

 

Who knew the '80s were giving us all the test answers for life?

BFYTW

 They never learn.

"President Trump's speech, which wasn't even finished when the false flag operatives started breaking windows on Capitol Hill, clearly incited those BLM and Antifa-tards to conduct their pre-planned for weeks attack on the capitol, and he must be impeached because it's crazy talk to suggest that Gropey Joe's blatantly fraudulent election was anything other than honest and totally above-board." - Rep. Adam Fartsniffer

Jesus Christ, dude, if you want Biden to buttfuck you that badly, just wear a short skirt, no panties, put on some slutty lipstick, and shake your ass in his face.

Where in Hell is Scalia's pillow when you need it to show up??

My Enthusiasm Knows No Bounds

 

Please, you overreaching communist sonsofbitches.

Go ahead and pass that bill, congressweasels. Let's find out if you get tired of counting my bullets before I get tired of helping you count them. I like my odds.