Present Arms

 

Ignore Gropey Dopey and Kneepads the Twatwaffle, and use the day as it was intended.

Give no thought to how dark the days are now. Our turn may come, but when it does, we will join our fathers, in whose mighty company we need not be ashamed.

"He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of Hosts is with us."

Sunday Music: Love Will Keep Us Together

Toni and the Captain proving with their #1 single, in 1975, that Sedaka was back. Oh, and it didn't keep them together; they eventually parted company after 39 years of marriage. But they lasted longer than most, especially in show business. If I hear this, I'm back in 1975 again. There are worse places to be.

TrainTard Doesn't Understand America

 

ScrewYouTube burped up this piece of offal onto my "recommended" list, which is Reason #2,074 on the list of Why They Suck. But it's time for an Andy Rooney essay.

Hitherto Unnoticed Schlub loves trains? Yippee for him. Whatever.

In fact, I like trains. Sometimes. Lots of people take it farther. Build them. Ride them. Obsessively photograph them and totally geek out on them. Okay, great. Walt Disney was that guy. Which is one of the few reasons I like trains: you can get from New Orleans Square to Tomorrowland without walking through the human car wash of too many people, all blocking every square foot of real estate to watch the ninth parade of the day.

But ArmChair TrainTard thinks train transit is great everywhere.

Counterargument #1 - I don't have to share a ride with these guys:

Not that I'd mind the shooting practice, but doing it every day, both ways?? Hard pass.

Think that's a new problem? An urban problem? Think again:

Second problem TrainTard "forgot" to mention:

Nice that he was caught, but it doesn't do the woman on the tracks any good; she's paté.

Problem #3:

One dumbass anywhere on the route, and you're delayed, maybe injured. The "Sorry, boss; stupid people" excuse works once. The second time, they tell you to either get a car, or update your resumé. The third time, your stuff is in a box at the lobby security desk, and there's a new guy at your desk. Game over.

Problem #4:

"Just let government do the driving." Sh'yeah, right, when monkeys fly outta my butt. The speed of the DMV, the efficiency of the Post Office, the customer service ethic of the TSA, and the health and safety of the VA, all rolled into one. 

Problem #5:

Gold stars optional.

'Nuff said.

TrainTard yakks about how nifty trains are in Europe. Well, yes. In countries where the streets were made for horses and itty-bitty wagons one way, a thousand years ago, where the entire "downtown" is a village slightly smaller than the mall I grew up visiting in the 1960s, FFS, and where you can cross five countries in a couple of hours, without trying very hard, on a bicycle. If all the states were MAssholia, Connecticut, and Rhode island, they'd be nifty here too. But there's Tennessee, from end to end. Montana. Califrutopia from north to south. And by God Texas, from halfway here to halfway there, a full day even if you're driving at speeding ticket speeds. I've seen me do it, and it was a full day. El Paso to Texarkana, and the same thing going the other way back from Loosiana to New Mexico. Trapped on a train for that? O Hell No!

Passenger trains were nice. In 1870. Compared to pack mule trains.

They went broke for the same reasons stagecoaches and steamships did: better ways of doing things.

If Califrutopia, for one example, wanted to seriously build a fastrail line that would work, it would be one from Frisco* to San Diego, with maybe four-five in-between stops: San Jose, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and OC. And go right up the coast. Not make fifty stops in every boondoggle one stoplight cowtown in the Central Valley, to payoff every demoCommunist crony construction contractor from Chico to the Imperial Valley.

The other line would go L.A.-Vegas, non-stop, at 200+MPH, on a best-course virtual beeline across the desert, and to hell with the desert protection NIMBY horsesh*t. And it would cost twice as much to go to Vegas as to leave it, both to keep the riff-raff off, and because people coming back are already broke. It would also save time over even airline flights, because of all the security hokum you'd eliminate at both ends.

So feel free to build those lines.

But anywhere else, just in this state?

Fuggedaboudit.

Americans do understand trains.

They're slow, they stop in sh*thole neighborhoods, break down in slums, carry the worst of the lumpenproletariat at garlic-and-stinky-cheese-Frenchman-breath-and-b.o range, and you're trapped, for hours, in Hell's Waiting Room, with the lot. Hoping the engineer isn't stoned, or texting, and that no @$$hole walks or drives onto the tracks ahead, and that the tracks and trestles are where they're supposed to be since the last time they fixed them.

A car means you can stop when you want, where you want, in heat- or air-conditioned comfort, listening to only your music, and kids, or not, without toting your luggage three miles, dining wherever and whenever you like, stopping when you need to, making any side trip(s) that tickle your fancy, and overall, twice as fast as any train, to anywhere, once you factor in slow sections, stops, layovers, etc.

This is why we built Route 66, freeways, and the Defense Interstate Highway System: because personal choice and individual liberty, bitchez.

And we don't all want to live in postage-stamp sized Hootervilles. Some of us - most, in fact - would far rather live with this outside our front door:

Or a reasonable facsimile.

With the nearest neighbor at a distance measured in miles, and the nearest train horn at a distance measured in leagues.

Given the choice between hearing my neighbor's yappy dogs, and coyotes or wolves, and tiptoeing over Mrs. Idiot's Fluffy-made landmines, or bear scat and cougar kills, I'll take the wild version, eleven times out of ten, thankyewverymuch.

The problem isn't that America doesn't understand trains.

It's that TrainTard doesn't understand Americans.

He should enjoy his fetish, and fly his freak flag, in private. But don't try and flip your malfunction into a problem on the part of 330M other people. Narcissism and paraphilia is a bad combination.

You want to ride a train?

This is the pinnacle of that experience:

It even had dinosaurs, forty years before Jurassic Park. And not one recorded mugging or robbery aboard, since ever.

*(I'd have made it Seattle to San Diego, and added a stop in Portland, but the folks up north would have blown the passes before they'd let that happen, and looking at Portland and Seattle lately, the feeling is mutual from the southern end. Y'all are on your own, and those are your tards up yonder, not ours. They're not even acting up like Portland and Seattle in communist politburo Berzerkeley, FFS, which tells you all you need to know about that.)

Memorial Weekend

John Wilder has some thoughts on the occasion for this weekend's holiday.

We commend it to your reading.

Great essay.

Wrong tense. 

I'm afraid that was the essay for last Memorial Day weekend.

"If...then" has become "Because...when".

SCOTUS voted last January that the Constitution doesn't apply to America. It's too late to take that move back (short of ritual seppuku by at least five of the bastards, a consummation devoutly to be wished).

The Constitution is as dead as canned tuna. 

All that's left now is the smell when you open the can.

We don't have to talk about sacrifices on foreign shores with foreign names.

Pointe du Hoc is coming to your town and mine.

For some people's towns (Portland...Seattle...Minneapolis...Chicongo...etc.), it's already there.

The only question left for actual Americans is whether they're willing to Ranger up, and hit the beach.

And while I'm up, let's don't sell out those second-gen Americans quite so fast.

That'd be me.

While mom's side of the family goes back to the 1600s on this continent, with a pedigree that'd impress the bluest blue-nosed New England snob, dad's parents were both off-the-boat Ellis Island graduates: granddad from Ireland, and grandma from Germany. Around the turn of the last century. Both dead before I was born.

Dad was the first generation of his family native-born American.

That makes me a second-generation one, just as much as a tenth generation one.

There are Americans everywhere. Even now. Some of them just weren't born here.

We used to be choosey and select them out from amongst the rotten fruit of the grifters just looking to make a buck off the rest of us without working for it. (And no, paying a coyote and bussing tables is not "working for it". Ever.) They'll never be Americans if they live here for centuries. They're simply Turd World hobos from Shitholia and Trashcanistan, who never "got" America, and never will. Thieves sneak over the fence. Honest people come in the front door. And they knock first, and ask permission. And every legal immigrant knows that in their bones too. Illegals should get one second chance after deportation. Second offense should be a lifetime ban from ever legally residing here, for any reason, including tourism. Three such offenses should be life imprisonment at hard labor. And repatriation of your remains when you died, back to Shitholia or Trashcanistan.

Half of this country, including those born here who should know better, wants to destroy America, even the very idea of it.

Life imprisoned at hard labor, and repatriation of their remains to outside the territorial limit off the coast seems a fitting end for them, too. With no marker, and removal from all records, as if they never existed. Let's call it "retroactive abortion".

Our country: Our choice, right?

Make that executive order #1 of a future Aesop administration.

Ratified by popular acclaim.

Because we don't select emperors in this country.

We elect temporary Chief Executives.

And we've seen what being without one of those for just over four months has gotten us. It only gets worse from here.

Loosen your packs and helmets, and don't bunch up.

We're about to hit the beach.

Ready or not, whether you wanted to or not.

Greatest War Movies Of All Time

 

The Art Of Manliness site has proposed their list of the 10 Greatest War Movies Of All Time.

We refuse to link to it, because they fucked it up. But we will post their list, in order.

And then correct them, with all the tenderness it deserves.

Their list (from their apparent top choice to the last of the ten):

The Bridge On The River Kwai

Allegedly per AoM, "may very well be the best war movie ever made".

Um, no. Maybe "The best war movie David Lean ever made in 1957".

But for even putting this one on the Top Ten list, AoM can start cranking out pushups until I get tired.

The Longest Day

Because it's got a lot of stars. So do the joint Chiefs Of Staff, but they both rate as sucky.

Continue the push-ups, bitchez.

1917

Because Sam Mendes, and one-long-take. 

Waitwaitwait. Jarhead Sam Mendes?? The guy who punked and fusterclucked the entire James Bond franchise, and Daniel Craig, with SPECTRE? The one with the least convincing movie villains since Mini-Me and Knickknack?

Switch to mountainclimbers. At doubletime pace.

Patton

Finally, a correct pick. You may rest.

The Thin Red Line

GAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!! What the actual Fuck?!?!?!?  Resume the mountain climbers. With leg weights, and a full pack. In a MOPP suit.

Apocalypse Now

Not just no, but Hell No. Put on your gas mask, and continue the mountain climbers.

Glory

Nope. But we like Denzel, and the movie, though it isn't among the ten best. So you may take off the MOPP gear and mask, and drop your pack. Bends and thrusts. Begin.

Das Boot

Another correct pick. Remove the leg weights. Rest.

The Great Escape

Two in a row! Stand at ease.

Saving Private Ryan

Good, but it still doesn't make the cut, despite the Normandy beach landing scene being among the best scenes ever filmed in motion picture history. Loses out because the rest of the movie, while ranging from good to great, is pure fairytale.

And they say "you can't fix stupid". Ha! You just needed motivation. Three right, out of ten tries. 30%. F+ grade. Get out of my sight, maggots. Go away!

___

Now for the correct list, in the correct order.

1. ZULU!

Period. Origination of the Zulu Rule for community TVs:

If ZULU! comes on, ZULU! stays on. Even if it's a 24-hour ZULU! marathon.

And introducing some new guy named Michael Caine.

2. The Great Escape

"What were you doing by the wire?"

"Well, like I told Max...I was trying to cut my way through your wire, because I want to get out."

...

"Ten days isolation, Hiltz."

"Captain Hiltz."

"Twenty days."

"Right. ... Oh, uh, you'll still be here when I get out?"

3. Patton

And it just gets better from there.

4. Lawrence Of Arabia

The actual Best War Movie David Lean Ever Made, Ever.

And probably among the Top Ten Greatest Movies Of All Time.

5. Blackhawk Down

This was when the GWOT started. We just didn't know it yet.

6. Hamburger Hill

Not bong-fueled dreams from Oliver Stone or the acid flashbacks of Stanley Kubrick.

Just the 'Nam, man.

7. Das Boot

8. Gettysburg

Bonus: Worth it just to see Ted Turner take it in the chest during Pickett's Charge.

9. Braveheart

10. A Bridge Too Far

A much better version of a Cornelius Ryan novel about WWII than The Longest Day. And with more stars too.

We could have picked another twenty not mentioned, and so could you, before having to descend to some of the execrable picks of AoM, and anyone that would pick The Thin Red Line for anything but "Screenwriter Most Deserving A Firing Squad" should be fed to wild hogs while on fire, and then have the pigs nuked from orbit. Just to be sure. Some TV shows are shot in front of a live audience. Some movie directors should be as well.

Nota bene that nothing made in the last twenty years even makes the cut.

And I've lost track of how many defeatist, anti-hero, anti-American, anti-everything-that's-honorable incomprehensible piles of shit pretending to be "epic" films just make me want to infiltrate a sound stage and choke the living shit out of some asshole twentysomething never-served wannabe film producers and directors, and pin their still-beating hearts to a wall with a rusty bayonet.

At least once a year I find myself having to remind myself not to do it, no matter how needful it is, and how deserved it remains.

Bonus: Stars from the above Top Ten flicks who actually served under arms, in combat (not just "did military service"):

Michael Caine

Jack Hawkins

James Garner

Richard Attenborough

Charles Bronson

Donald Pleasence

Alec Guinness

Anthony Quayle

Claude Rains

Denholm Elliot

Dirk Bogarde

And Another Thing

 

Lying With Graphs 101. Or, as DemoCommunist
 fabulists would say, "False, but accurate".

Yesterday's graphic, useful as it was to open the discussion, is lying even worse still. No, really.

Because the financial idjit that made the graphic totally forgot that while $1 buys 1 Hershey bar now, in 1913, $26.14 would have bought 1,307 Hershey bars.  Not 30, as described in the graphic. The bars were 2¢ apiece back then. Whoops.

Double bonus: The price of a cup of coffee in 1913? Also 2¢.

So, empirically, you could have also bought 1,307 cups of coffee with your $26.14.

Or 50 of either with a 1913 dollar. Or 25 of each.

IOW, in real commodity-based pricing, your dollar is worth exactly 50 times less now than in 1913. That would be...2¢. Color me shocked. Gold, chocolate, coffee: all confirm the data. BTW, another data point: average wages in manufacturing in 1914 were 22¢/hr, or about $11/wk. That would be $11/hr or $2200/wk now, based on purchasing power. After taxes. If you're not clearing that now after taxes, IOW making the price of between 1/2 and 1 ounce of gold/week, you've lost ground over your grandfather and great-grandfather. The average weekly wages, per the .Gov , are around $900/week or so in manufacturing. Pre-tax. So it's not your imagination that you're losing ground, no matter what you do. You are. Figure that $900/wk is taxed at 20%, bringing it down to $700ish, versus $1100 that should be earned with dollar-parity. Your real wages, IOW, have slipped nearly 40% because of just inflation in the last century. You're making less actual money, and everything is costing more inflated dollars to buy. And it doesn't last as well. See if this rings a bell:

You don't need to watch it all. You're living it every day.

$26.14 is now supposedly worth $1. But $1 is worth 2¢. To have the same $26.14 as you had in your pocket in 1913, you'd need $1307 in dollars right now. Or $2407.69 in gold. That's 5000% cumulative inflation over a tad more than a century. It's about 4% annually, every year, forever, compounded. And bear in mind, the government pays no taxes on inflated dollars. You do. Put another way, your dollar bill from 1913, when it was gold-backed, should now measure 18 inches high and nearly 4 feet long, because that's now much it's been inflated. That's a beach towel. If you wanted to know how much it's shrunken in value, it should measure 1/10" tall by not quite 1/4" long. That's this small, depending on your monitor:

$1 today. Actual value size.

QED

The graph is also glaringly wrong in yet another way: From the creation of the US Federal Reserve, in December of 1913, until FDR took us off the gold standard in June of 1933, the value of that $26.14 did not decline and go every which way: $26.14 in dollars was worth the exact same amount the entire twenty years' time, and the cash was redeemable in gold at any bank. That's the whole point of gold-backed currency. So the first twenty years of that graph should be a flat horizontal line.

The gyrations inaccurately portrayed above are the only other way you get price increases: scarcity. In this case, due to a World War, followed by a boom of too much money chasing too little goods and services. That's not inflation, it's simply Supply and Demand doing what they do. You could look it up. The dollar didn't become worth less until it was de-coupled from gold. Now, it's worth so much less, it's worthless, in real terms. 

From 1837 to 1933, the US economy, with a gold standard, featured regular boom-and-bust cycles. It always recovered, because the dollar was sound. We stopped having boom-and-bust. We had a Great Depression, worsened by socialism until finally, it took a World War and scarcity, coupled with 160% employment, to reverse out of it.

But uncoupled from gold, the economy never really recovered. We just inflated our way out of it. Like a bus slipping over a cliff, inch by inch, with Uncle Sugar shoveling dirt under it and into it, to tip the center of gravity, to try and slow the slippage. You need more dirt, the further towards the abyss you slip. Eventually, you need so much dirt you're trying to shovel the entire former contents of the Grand Canyon into the back seats, just to balance the load. Ain't nobody got time for that. And you run out of room. Then it looks like this, times 8 billion.

That's how you get to 100 trillion dollar banknotes. Because a $50 today (not a $20) is a $1 from 1913. And we're headed for it being $100 bill, soon. Long before you get to $100 trillion, the paper and ink are worth more intrinsically than their actual face value. Hence the toilet paper and kindling stage. And the whole thing leaves that Wile E. Coyote dust puff at the bottom. Starring you, and everyone you know, to Six Degrees Of Bacon. [Hint: That's everyone.]

And the only two reasons - conjoined at the hip - for taking sound currency off a gold or silver standard - is to increase the cash supply, and steal from people either holding or accepting debt instruments - dollar bills, in this example - with inflation, and by paying for real goods with more and more inflated dollars, which inevitably becomes a death spiral. When a non-gold-backed "dollar" is now worth less than 2¢, you've about reached the maximal ability of that Ponzi scheme, and the whistle is about to be blown, with gravity kicking in rapidly at that point. FTR, 40% of all the US dollars that have ever existed have been created - mainly digitally - in the last few years. I say yet again, 

BRACE FOR IMPACT.

Because the first time the US economy hiccups, the whole house of cards comes all the way down. Look what one sector eating it did to us in 1999 or 2008. Now imagine that with everything, simultaneously.

 A Vegas casino is required to have a dollar in cash in the vault for every dollar of chips in play. The USGov has no such requirement. So imagine a casino where they just keep paying you out with chips, and then everyone tries to redeem them. But the till is empty. Hilarity ensues. People get trampled. People get shot in the face. Expect both, on a societal scale.

Graphs like the above is what happens when they don't even teach history to people who make such graphs.

Mafz Iz Hard. History + Mafz is apparently Chinese Calculus to some people.

But I just explained monetary policy and most of basic economics to you, not to mention a summary of a lot of world history since 1000 B.C., in two posts. You're welcome.

Bonus: GMTA twice.

It's Worse Than You Thought

 h/t Sal the Agorist

This embiggens.

This graph is actually a bit dishonest, i.e. far too rosy*, because it compares the dollar of 1913 (when it was worth something) to the dollar now (which is worth @$$gas). 

So let's get real. By measuring it against Reality, i.e. something you can't inflate by printing it out of thin air. That would be Gold.

Because in 1913, a dollar in greenbacks was worth exactly a dollars' worth in gold. Whereas today, it's worth a dollar's worth of...well...Nothing. Exactly that much Nothing, in fact. To the penny.

In 1913, $26.14 would buy more than an entire ounce of gold (it was US$20.67/oz then, as it was every single day from 1837-1933). So about 1.265 ounces of gold.

On Jan. 1, 2021, gold was going for about US$1770/oz.

So in real terms, your dollar is now worth  1770/20.67. Or 85.6x less. That's 1.16779¢. Not a dollar and 16 cents. One point one six seven seven nine cents. (Common Core grads, that would be less than two cents, m'kay?)

This is less than the raw value of the paper and ink to print it.

In short, it's simply finely engraved toilet paper. Or kindling.

(Pro Tip: At some inevitable point, the entire world will decide to notice this. Don't get trampled when they rush for the exits. Like they will. It isn't pretty. Hilarity ensues. Then, usually, world war. Broke and hungry people get understandably grumpy. Some of them seek to redeem the paper they've been holding for more tangible assets. Like land and resources. Pisser if you happen to live there, huh?)

Whereas $26.14 in gold from 1913 was worth US$2238.40, as of Jan. 1st.

And unlike that 1913 dollar, an ounce of gold will still buy the exact amount of goods and services in 2021 as it would in 1913. Or 1837. Or 30 A.D. Etc.

It's actually worse still: because gold has moved up sharply since Pretend Emperor Gropey Dopey Ist was installed on the throne, and spent money...exactly like every DemoCommunist since FDR. Gold is at $1903.86/oz as I type this, so your 1913 $26.14 would now be worth US$2407.69.

That's the difference between $26.14 in cash in your pocket for 108 years, and an ounce of gold in your pocket for 108 years: a $2406.69 increase. For every ounce held.

Let's put it another way.

Someone who was a millionaire in 1913, and held it in gold, is now worth US$92,107,402.03.

The same millionaire, who held it in US issued greenbacks, is now worth US$16,779.

A wee bit of difference in outcomes, if I do say so myself.

Which guy would you prefer to be? Duh.

That's inflation, and fiatbux, (which is chicken and egg) in one page. 

We've been printing dollars (including imaginary digital 1s and 0s) in the US for the last 12 years, three shifts/day, 24/7/365.

So that disparity between fiatbux dollars and actual money (gold) is only going to go all Weimarian/Zimbabwean/Venezuelan faster and faster, from here on out.

What's about to be in your wallet.

Keep a cash reserve on hand, sure. It will solve a lot of short term problems, until the cash bubble pops. But mentally, write it off.

And for larger holdings than your 1-6 month cash reserve, GTFO of dollars, or any form of printed cash, and get your hands on things like gold and silver in your actual physical possession.

You're not "investing" in either of those. Metals speculation is for suckers.

You're protecting your assets from melting down and blowing away in the wind.

Save your dollars, though. Soon, you'll be using them to light the woodstove, or wipe your bum.

*(Afterward comments moved to its very own post tomorrow. It ate too much, and kept growing.)

BTW: GMTA. RTWT

Aim Small, Miss Small

Nota bene: At no point did this guy vote his way out of his problems.

Neither will you.

You can take that information to heart, and profit by this example.

But whether you do or not, your moment is coming. You can follow Marquess of Queensbury Rules, and be the guy roped to the back of the wagon.

Or you can learn how to aim small, miss small, and solve that guy's problem.

What's coming is going to be a bloodbath. That means you're going to get bloody. All other options have been and are being circumscribed. Slow learners will discover that to their peril, and far too late. If you are a slow learner, you may be left with only the option of resolving to taste bad, once you see them release the lions. Don't be That Guy. It only ends well for the lions.

What's coming always comes down to the same things:

Personnel.

Military Intelligence.

Training and Operations.

Logistics.

Communications.

True for the three insurgents in the video.

True for the 101st Airborne at Bastogne.

True for you, and whatever little band of merry men amongst whom you may find yourself.

Pay attention if you want a similar 21-0 tally when you play.

Zero F**ks Will Be Given.

If you're not ready, whose fault is that?

Now? Then? Always??

Best wrap your head around the idea that something awful is coming, and prepare yourself and yours accordingly.

Learn to thrive on Awful, and deal out Misery.

Ignore the delusional, on your side and their side.

Anybody talking seriously about "We're gonna get 'em in the 20XX elections..." is, by definition, delusional. Sorry, but that reality cannot be avoided. They are nothing but white noise at this point, and a hindrance to clear thinking and action. If not captured assets and active disinformation. Either way, tune them out. They're nothing but a time-suck.

Get ready for what's coming.

Like your life depends on it.

Because it does.

Period.

"Lord, make me fast and accurate." 

Amen.

Sunday Music: Night Moves

 

The title track from his ninth album, becoming a #4 hit that put Bob Seger on the map as a national artist.

Oh...the wonder.

Papiere, Bitte

 

We hear some overzealous jackholes may be requiring proof of one getting vaxxed with an experimental set of vaccines with some pretty firm negatives running against them, for a non-zero number of people, just to be treated like first-class citizens in public again.

No sale, bucko. To quote no less an authority than Toni Basil,

"you think you've got the right, but I think you've got it wrong...".

We're not anti-vaxxers hereabouts, in any way whatsoever, as any number of left-handed backhands over the years to "Dr." Jenny McCarthy's egregious insanity would attest.

That doesn't apply for something wherein you are a lab rat beta-tester for Big Pharma, which has been immunized from lawsuits, with no recourse left you in case of adverse reactions, up to and including death.

F**k that, up the @$$, sideways, with a rusty running chainsaw.

On the other hand...

It's a big internet. If someone(s) were to take the above example of a mostly accurate but thoroughly spurious vaxx card (which we may or may not possess, to flash at any officious @$$hole who prods us for it, and which card, nota bene, is every bit as legitimate as voter registrations and ballot counting in Detroit, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Atlanta, Madison, and Las Vegas), and they put their own "information" in the blocks above, well, we wouldn't encourage that, and it might get you into trouble. But we'd have no way to stop them, would we...?

So please, don't do anything bad. 'kay?

Bitte schön.

Just saying.

(BTW, I think I've just hit upon my next telephone listing, if I ever get a published number again.)

Ingenuity + Boredom = Entertainment

 

You might have heard of this guy, a former CalTech/NASA engineer, when he invented a Glitter Bomb for punishing porch pirates.

Or when he improved it.

Or, when he really improved the improvement.

Those alone are sheer genius. Wile E. Coyote this guy is not.

But then he decided, between Christmas anti-porch piracy patrols, to entertain himself the rest of the year by thwarting his neighborhood tree rats, and their predations on his backyard bird feeder. With his Backyard Squirrel Maze.

But WAIT! There's MOAR!

Behold, Backyard Squirrel Maze 2.0.

Absolute glorious silliness, coupled with world-class engineering. And in its first day up, 6M views on YouTube. These five videos, combined, are at over 250M views, so I think he's onto something.

Go. Watch. Enjoy.

For a mental break, it's 19 minutes well-spent.

You Must Remember This

 

Weather Report

h/t Peter 

 

From Bayou Renaissance Man today:

"Recognize the signs of the times, and be prepared.  I see no peaceful way out of this, and no way in which a democratic solution may be found."

 RTWT.

The time for reasonable people, seeking peaceful solutions, is past. Anyone still preaching that line of nonsense now is either captured and propagandizing for Enemedia, or in delusional denial. Either way, abandon them. You can't save people who won't realize they're in a burning building, and don't want to get out of it.

Nota bene: The people waiting for a Fort Sumter moment forget, to their peril, that history echoes and rhymes, but it does not repeat.

Your first real notice may not be Fort Sumter; it may be Antietam or Gettysburg.

The current era is more akin to the Phony War from fall and winter of 1939, through early spring of 1940.

When weather conditions are right, it will be springtime for Hitler again, and you'll be facing blitzkrieg conditions.

Prepare yourselves accordingly.

The takeaway lesson?

OddJob Wins The Internet For The Day

 h/t Odd Job

That, Right There

 h/t Wes

Period.

Sunday Music: Runnin' On Empty

 

There are any number of other songs of his I like better than this one, though it's definitely a rock classic, and yes, JB is a 70s hippie anti-nuke Leftard weenie, but he's cut some damn fine songs over the years. This one is for all you folks on the Hurricane Coast feeling the pinch right now every time you try to fill up the tank.

War, Shortages, Inflation

 

What Are Ya Gonna Do, Shave My Head And Send Me To 'Nam?

 

Always

 

Dear Baby Duck

 

In response to yesterday's meme, and one of our comments, we received this little gem:

The Peace and Quiet of the smoking graveyard.

It's EASY to destroy stuff. Low IQ Antifa and Burn Loot murder has PROVEN that point well enough.

It's easy to destroy a country when you are Overseas and your family's is safe at home. I've done enough of that during my time in Uncle Sam's Army.

It's different when it's YOUR Smoking ruin of a home with your family strewed about beaten raped and dying while YOU were away going to work, going to church, going shopping for supplies.

A single crazy with a bottle of gasoline and your home with all your preps are smoking ruin eh?

THAT'S Rwanda X Bosnia in Real Life(tm).

And some dumbasses seem to be cheering for it? No offence but if the shoe fit's its on you.

First earthy duty is defending your family. Second in my heart is how to protect those folks I think deserve protecting.

Don't think that Clown World Morale Patch will stop me from popping a cap on you if your a danger to those I choose to protect.

As Ole Ben Franklin said "A Republic IF you can keep it", we failed.

As that Beatle Song Revolution goes, "We all want to SEE the plan".

If there is anything to do besides beat our chests about how bad ass we are blah, blah, blah let me know.

We can destroy infrastructure and kill 90% PLUS of our population, or we can fight a civil war and *Still* destroy our Infrastructure and lose 90% of our population.

The Marxist Monster is an Electronic Control Freak and KNOWS we will not pull the plug on our families survival. OR if we DO they have taxpayer paid for bolt holes to arise after the screaming and flames die down. THEY are Sociopaths'.

I see a series of EMP strikes a KINDNESS of 21+ days of struggling to survive VS years of seeing people wearing gasoline soaked flaming tires like Rwanda.

Praying for wisdom

I see your point, because I'd never once considered any of that in literal decades of thinking, until you made it clear.

You mean there could be, y'know, like...actual CONSEQUENCES?!?!?

Leviathan might not like being opposed?!?!? We might get in trouble???

Well, holy shitballs!!! 

" ' Oh! We're afraid to go with you Blutto! We might get in trouble!' 

Well just kiss my ass from now on!"

But...wait. Now I can understand the wisdom of sitting on our hands and losing everything we have and everything we hold dear, because the most important thing on the planet is you, your family, your spouse, your kids, your home, your property.

FUCK those other 330,000,000 people, amirite?

(I cannot imagine how "we" ever lost a republic with that attitude prevalent.)

So, by all accounts, let's not make any fuss, because there might be a cost involved.

And, of course, we've never made any of those points far more fervently and eloquently, not any hundred times, but thank a merciful heaven someone else has dropped in to enlighten all of us.

We should all just quietly self-load onto the boxcars in an orderly manner, and pray to impotent deities to save us, because we're too afraid to use the backbones and our own biceps to save ourselves, because those weren't given to us for exactly that purpose.

That strongly worded protest? I was just kidding. Can I go home now?

Bravo, sir. Well played.

Let us know how that one works out for you.

And do have mercy on us poor dumb bastards, by letting us know just how far up our legs and ass we should cheerfully and blissfully let the crocodile snack, before we might have your gracious permission to maybe, possibly, perhaps, begin to commence to cogitate about thinking whether or not maybe firmer measures than a strongly worded letter to the editor (never to see the light of day) might be in order.

No offence [sic] but if the shoe fit's [sic] its [sic] on you.

Look, I'm sorry. Maybe you've been asleep for 100 years or something. Maybe you fell in a cave, and hit your head, and just got out after a year lost in the labyrinth. Maybe you've been in a medical coma for a decade. I don't know.

But just to catch you up on current events: The Germans bombed Pearl Harbor last November.

An entire presidential election was stolen in plain sight, with everyone watching, and it's so obvious even Stevie Wonder could see it from orbit in space. And then they doubled down, and tried to turn a panty raid into a revolution. And then doubled down again.

The Fourth Amendment's been in tatters for all of this century, and before. They've set the First Amendment on fire for the last six months and counting. Now they're coming after the Second Amendment, and the Third Amendment is the step after that. Let me know when the penny drops for you.

That's besides generational enemies worldwide sharpening their carving knives looking at the carcass of a once-great nation, the wholesale deliberate hamstringing and then gutting of the greatest military on the planet, and the imminent collapse of the entire world economy, starting, Gentle Reader, with your own little ricebowl, and your little patch of paradise on earth.

People have been yakking lately about the totally symbolic fart-in-a-hurricane letter from a bunch of impotent pensioned-off old-fart petty generals and admirals. You might have heard something.

It's all nothing but ass gas from people eating soft food and wearing Depends. 

The letter they should have read was from Zombie Admiral Stark, piped in from 1941 via the Twilight Zone:

So maybe, stop acting like a Baby Duck, and realize that the time for pusillanimous appeasement and pants-wetting caution went up in flames waaaaaaaaaay back, and either pitch in or fall in to commence training to reverse that, or else just resolve to taste bad when they feed you to the lions.

Because for those willing to put it on the line, despite all the bad things that will precede it, the day pictured below always comes for Communism, as surely as sunrise after a long night:

No one's asking for your permission to get there.

Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.

Grownups are talking here, and you're not contributing anything but gravel in the transmission.

Get right. Or get left.

 

 

Truth du jour

 h/t WRSA

Keep pushing, Progtards. See how that works out for ya.