Civic Service 101

h/t Kenny

(JACKASSVILLE, FLA.) – A Jacksonville city inspector walked into a Cedar Hills Estate business to issue a warning citation over the display of military flags and employees said she insulted a customer who turned out to be a military veteran. 

Surveillance video captured city inspector Melinda Power getting in the face of the customer at Jaguar Power Sports on Blanding Boulevard. 

Employees told News4Jax on Monday that she was so disruptive and disrespectful to the veteran, they asked her to leave.

1) Flying flags is a First Amendment freedom of speech issue, as the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, and four layers of federal court decisions all the way to SCOTUS would inform the fuckwits in Jacksonville, and any other bunch of civic asstards capable of hiring competent legal counsel to advise them on the limits of their authority. The code section(s) cited is therefore moot, null, and void, lacking any legal authority whatsoever.

2) The Jacksonville's mayor's response has been commendable, directing city inspectors to knock that shit right off, and suspending Melinda "Power-trippin'" Power, the officious jackhole responsible for the original kerfluffle. AFAIK, they still haven't outright fired the sonofabitch, nor has she been rightfully beaten within an inch of her life as she so richly deserves, so they're still lagging somewhat in fulfilling their oaths of office, but at least they've made a proper start.

3) The store owner and patrons were still wrong, for not beating the living fuck out of her on the spot with every handy blunt instrument, and depositing her bloody and newly-toothless carcass to the curbside, as they should have done on the spot. Anything short of homicide would be simple self-defense and "definitely needed an ass-beating" in any trial where I sat on the jury, and had it moved to actual homicide, I would not return any conviction for any offense higher than "littering" for deposit of the lifeless body to the curbside, with a fine of not greater than $15.

4) Said inspector should not merely be fired, she should be hounded from the state, at the head of a rabid mob with clubs, torches, and pitchforks, and chased from that point to the nearest US border, or out to sea, and there pursued until she reach the 12-mile coastal limit deliniating international waters. Death at any point due to exhaustion, drowning, mob action, or shark attack would properly be noted on the death certificate as "natural causes", with disposal of the body to nearest swampland populated by convenient numbers of feral hogs and gators, or the handy attachment of a sufficient number of cinder blocks to expedite feeding the local crustacean population. Nature loves a balance.

5) Upon doing such service, the city fathers should have awarded a commendation for public service to the store, the customers, and any bystanders involved.

If they fire her for cause, and ban her from any other civic employment for life, they might be on the right track.

She still needs the ass-beating she's got coming, and should get one every day until she apologizes through a bloody, toothless smash-mouth, even after she's been fired.

But at least my blood pressure is up enough to face the day.

Ex Libris: Basics Of Resistance

h/t WRSA

 

Claire Wolfe ("It's too late to work within the system, and too early to shoot the bastards") and Kit Perez have a new book out.

Excerpt:

In today’s excerpt from our new book Basics of Resistance, we look into Chapter 9: Allies and Associates. By this point, we’ve talked extensively about your core group, its members, and its operations. Now we look at outsiders who may help or hinder you. We pick up after the discussion of close allies and move on to more casual contacts. NOTE: We owe this chapter to a great supporter of our project who prefers to keep a low profile.
—–
Let’s define an associate as “anyone you know who is neither a known or suspected enemy.” Obviously, that covers a pretty broad range. 

Like who, for instance? 

• The old lady down the street who watches the world go by from her living-room window.
• The guy at the local tire store.
• The kid working evenings at the 7-11.
• Your admin assistant at work.
• Mr. and Mrs. Hu at the Chinese takeout.
• The preacher at the local breakaway Christian church.
• Your cousin who works in the county supervisor’s office.
• The daytime bartender at the tavern downtown.
• The retired business executive down the street.
• The nightshift waitress at the waffle palace over by the Interstate.
• The Johnson boys over at their jackleg garage and scrap yard. 

In other words, virtually everyone you encounter during your daily round is a potential associate (or enemy), and it’s up to you to make an informed, accurate decision whether to trust each one. 

How? By getting to know them and what makes them tick. Nothing more, and nothing less. Even if you’re not a people person, you can improve your interpersonal skills using time-honored basic investigative techniques such as the
following: 

Shop local, shop small: In a Big Box world, it’s getting more difficult to find the little local place for hardware, food, car repair, or any of the other necessities of life. Do it anyway. Be prepared to pay more at the local store than the national chain. Watch your manners. Support local businesses. 

Community service: Do you support the local ambulance corps? What about the firefighters, be they volunteers or paid professionals? Can you do more? Do local emergency services have classes that would benefit you and your group? Most volunteer fire departments have non-firefighter volunteer positions open as well, and those are a great way to not only bolster your credibility in the community, but they also put you in the loop for information not generally available to outsiders. 

Police relations: Take the opportunity to discreetly participate in any community affairs events your local LEOs conduct. Don’t be a badgelicker—but don’t be a gratuitous jerk, either. Get a sense of who the officers and commanders are, not just as the guys who give out speeding tickets, but as actual human beings. What is your local police department’s capability? Weaknesses? Equipment? Personnel levels? Set aside any personal bias and figure out if any of the officers can be used as conduits for information. 

Other government officials: Ditto the advice above. You want to take every opportunity to see how people behave in normal times to better inform your organization’s decisions come hard times. You should also have a copy of and understand your county’s emergency plans; check with your county supervisor’s office on how to get one. If your county offers CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) training, sign up; if not, find a nearby county that does. 

Your neighbors: Break the modern paradigm and gradually get to know a little about your neighbors. You will be astonished what you can learn by being interested (but not too interested) in them. See the section on neighborhood barbeques and meet-and-greets. 

Local churches: Sadly, many clergies in modern-day America are closer to government and its objectives than to the Almighty, but it will still benefit you to have a sense of who’s who in your community. Most churches have large kitchens and gathering places, which will be essential community assets in a crisis. Sorting the mammon-worshippers from the truly benevolent is a task in what will ultimately be a battle for hearts and minds. Pay attention to those in the religious community who do a lot of volunteer work; what’s their motivation? If they’re worried about getting credit or need attention, they might not be the best people to work with. 

The homeless: Do you have any in your neighborhood? Do you know? Where do they camp? How many are there? Is there a way to help them help you and your organization? Be creative. If they can’t be used as assets and are merely a risk, do you have a plan for mitigating that risk? 

Medical facilities: Big or small? Is there a hospital auxiliary you or a core member can join? How many doctors? RNs? Other paraprofessionals? Are any medical personnel known personally to you or other members of the core group? Are they willing to teach you? 

Airports: Who do you know there? Runway length and other facility info? LE or military usage?  

Area-specific place/personnel of interest: Do you know anyone at local military or National Guard facilities? What kind? How well do you know them? How well can you get to know them? 

By this time, some reader is wondering what in heaven’s name should be done in all of these situations and places. 

The big-picture answer is simple: Know more this week about every person, place, and thing listed above that you find your community than you knew last week. 

Why? Because your organization has goals that you and your group are fully committed to achieving. And every person, place, and thing above can either help or hinder your group in achieving those objectives. 

By yourself, in a crisis, you’re screwed.

Boys and girls, this is exactly what Sam Culper has been trying to download into people when he talks about reconnaissance of the human terrain in your Areas of Operations and Interest.

It's what Bloghost CA means every time he makes "Meatspace" and "Local, Local, Local" a masthead quote at WRSA.

It's what the clever fellows in Special Forces, for going on 70 years, have called an Area Study (the diligent will want to refer especially to Appendices G and H in that pdf, if you haven't already done this for your local area. How big? Start with just your home county/parrish. Then do it for every adjoining county. Get cracking.)

I'm not going to come help you, and you aren't coming to help me, when times get sporty. The people and alliances you've cultivated in range of where you live will.

Or, not.

Even after the Internet goes down, Darwin Awards will still be handed out. They just won't necessarily be recorded for posterity and comedy relief.
Don't be Those Guys.

When you're ready to reach beyond bare mastery of a subject, you read widely and deeply. That's why, at last look, I have 20-30 different basic first aid texts, and 40-60 different survival manuals.

After getting the basic gist of the subject, you're always looking for two things:
* New ideas, tactics, tips, and procedures, and
* New ways of teaching the tried-and-true ideas, tactics, tips, and procedures.

Because every once in awhile, there's something new under the sun, and there's always a way to make an old subject new to a fresh audience.

If the rest of this book is of the same caliber as this excerpt, it looks to be a valuable addition to anyone's library, and it's on the way to mine.
If it helps you to crack the code of long-thought doctrine on a subject that is becoming more practical and less academic every passing day, you may wish to do likewise.

And in case you're still not sold, there are additional excerpts to peruse.

I would suggest you buy this book.
$11.69 in grid-down paperback copy, and only $0.99 through tomorrow for kindle readers.
And as a review by James Wesley ,Rawles (SurvivalBlog) suggests, you might want to consider extra copies as handout gifts to Like Minded Individuals.

Get. Read. Do. Pass To Others. Repeat.

Because as noted in the excerpt, "By yourself, in a crisis, you're screwed."

Important Safety Tip

h/t Kenny

R.I.P. R. Lee Ermey, 1944-2018

"The Gunny", R. Lee Ermey, died yesterday due to complications of pneumonia, at age 74.

Ermey was the living embodiment of every drill instructor actual Marines had, and probably the only one every never-Marine knew. After 11 years service in the Marine Corps, including service in Vietnam, and a stint as an actual drill instructor at MCRD San Diego (with the Thundering Third Recruit Training Battalion - Oohrah!), Ermey was medically discharged due to injuries received in the service, and was an American ex-pat living in the Philippines when he nabbed a bit part in Apocalypse Now. Then an indy movie came to town in 1977, looking for tech advisors and extras in a movie about Marines in Vietnam being shot there, with P.I. doubling very adequately for recently-fallen-to-communists Vietnam.

Barely five years out of the Marines at the time, Ermey was one of those hired as a tech advisor and extra, but the guy they'd cast as the lead drill instructor for the film was a Hispanic with an accent so heavy he was hard to understand easily, and Ermey was crushing his bit part in the gig, so he was hurriedly bumped up to leading character, and the other guy shunted aside.

Boys In Company C was the breakout role that brought Ermey from P.I. to Hollywood, and he never looked back. A small role in Purple Hearts solidified Ermey as the go-to guy when a picture needed a guy harder than woodpecker lips to bring the quintessential Marine sergeant to life on the screen.

And then Stanley Kubrick hired Ermey to be a tech advisor, but quickly re-thought his choice and he too decided to cast Ermey himself as exactly the guy he was looking for to be Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in the otherwise atrocious Full Metal Jacket, and the directing maestro had the great good sense to turn Ermey loose on camera, and let him ad lib whole sections of the movie's boot camp scenes, comprising the entire first half (the actual coherent part) of the film.

 

100% Ermey ad lib, beginning to end.

 

When the movie came out, Ermey had moved from movie D.I. to cultural icon, and was nominated for a Golden Globe Best Supporting Actor for the part.

He was now solid gold, and work poured in.

He had parts in over 60 movies and dozens of TV shows, playing everything from Dr. House's father on that eponymous show, to the voice of the Sarge leading the Green Army men in the Toy Story flicks, and hosting Mail Call and Lock N' Load cable TV shows as himself for History Channel. 

In between, he was a ceaseless advocate and military booster, which work induced the Commandant of the Marine Corps to authorize an official honorary promotion to Gunnery Sergeant for Ermey in 2002, the sort of the thing the Marines ordinarily simply do not do. But when you're that exceptional, you can even get meritoriously promoted after being discharged.

He continued to work regularly in movies and TV until 2012, when his public anti-Obama comments got him blackballed by Hollywood, and offerings for parts finally dried up.

If you served in the Marines, you knew a gunny like the Gunny, or had one for your D.I., and because of his work in entertainment, he will live long after the last Marine he ever served with passes on to Fiddler's Green.

And as he would have told anyone, the Corps did pretty good by him, turning a juvenile delinquent into a leader of men, and finally a cultural icon for the ages.

Forty years lived in a life formed from the mold of eleven years' active service proves the literal truth of the phrase,
"Once A Marine, Always A Marine."
It's a damned shame men like him have to die one day.

And when he gets to heaven,
To St. Peter he will tell:
"Another MARINE reporting, Sir;
I've served my time in Hell."

Your work here is done, Gunny.
Time to get the heavenly host squared away.

Semper Fi, leatherneck.

You're Doing It Wrong

 

Also, the white t-shirt is going to be a camouflage fail (but a swell aiming point).

There's one shining plus: They've got 10 more friends banded together than the average Lone Ranger. So at least they've got a squad, and a bare shot at pulling things off.









For those butthurt by the obvious reality, the following is recommended:

The 2018 Quincy Adams Wagstaff Lecture

"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."

In comments to yesterday's offering, Anonymous (presumably, the same one, but bear in mind I have no way whatsoever to tell all of them apart) took the momentary but sincere drubbing of the idea of the State of Jefferson in stride, and suggested the following:

"Now... your suggestions for turning California around? Besides waiting on the San Andreas to do it for us? Those I WOULD actually like to hear. If it's not Jefferson, then what? Giving up a single foot to these carpetbagging liberal fuckwits is not an option."

1) I have doubts that the state can be turned around, nor indeed, ought to be. But I understand the gist of the question you're meaning to ask, which is better stated as
"What do we do, if not invest in silly games and pipe dreams?"
We'll get to that, by and by.

2) The San Andreas is another pipe dream. At current velocity, the date Califrutopia slips into the sea is NEVER. For those to whom geoscience is anathema, because it requires some measure of intelligence and thought, and an acquaintance with real science, which is boring as hell compared to mediocre Hollywood melodrama and disaster-pic fiction, in a paltry 4,000,000 years, Los Angeles (parts of it, anyways) and San Jose will be suburbs of each other. San Francisco will be the tip of the 400-mile long peninsula that makes Portland a port tucked inside a protected sea, and one presumes that the Golden Gate will not quite stretch the requisite distance, at that point in time, to span from SF to Marin County. And Baja California will be the newest part of CA, most of it by then being north of the latitudinal border line, and no longer off the coast of Mexico proper. But in 4,000,000 years, everyone reading this fresh now, will be deader than canned tuna, deader than triceratops, so who gives a flaming rat's hindquarters? Neither the 1906 quake nor the 1994 one did any appreciable damage to the state, long-term, and nothing seismic that happens after this is written will, either.
Get over it, whether you live here or not.

And if you live here, get your earthquake preparations crap in one bag, like you should have done the minute you moved here or came of age here, or else resign yourself to being part of the relief problem, instead of part of the disaster solution.

3) And now, the rat killin'. What to do?

A) Benedictions

First off, if you moved here to fuck up my home, or left here because it had gotten too fucked up, a cheerful but sincere "Fuck you!"
You're the cause of the current problem.

For the latter:

You can wave your reasons for leaving like your dick, and both will be about as welcome. What you can't do is explain away your ultimate selfishness, however altruistically motivated or explained. You can get away from CA, but you'll never get away from you.
As countless residents elsewhere find out when they refer to you as "Californians", without any appreciation for the fact that in 90% of cases, they're incorrect, by any objective standard.
Even if we grant that you were a good man, forced into making the choice by terrible circumstances, human nature dictates that hordes of your less-altruistic colleagues were exactly the selfish shits we'd expect, based on all of human history, so we're still in the same place.

By leaving, you helped tilt a state that was 45/55 Republican, and as close to a paradise as we'll ever see on Earth as we know it, to one that is 65/35 Democrat, and bears more resemblance to Petrograd circa 1929 than to Paradise. We still here pay for that now, but you'll get your reward when it crashes, and your toothless banjo-playing kinfolks return home in droves, followed by their illegal alien housekeepers and waiters, and their seventeen generations of relatives, and do to your new home what you've done to mine. Take a guess how many fucks I'll have left to give you on that day.

But what's done is done, and you and I will have to move on, and deal with things as they are, not as we'd like them to be.

For the former:

Build the Great Wall Of Trump.
Then start deporting illegals, not just here, but everywhere. En masse, and in haste.
Dreamers, schemers, and every other swinging Richard.

When the boat is sinking,
First you plug the holes.
Then you bail out the boat.
Write this on your hands, lest ye forget.

Those of you who think you can walk away, because this is only a problem in Califrutopia (and Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas), go stand outside the local Home Depot in Hooterville or Peoria, and tell me why Aztlan seems to have found its way all the way to you, even as far away from the ancestral lands as New Hampster and North Dakota. Spot the Giant Logic Fail in your asinine self-absorption for fifty-plus years.

And ponder why every time they raid chicken and pork processing plants in Arkansas and Alabama, they seem to find an overwhelming plethora of folks named Jimenez, Garcia, and Sanchez? You figure maybe they're undocumented Puerto Ricans, or do national flaming @$$holes like Lindsay Grahamnesty and Marco Screwyoubio have national consequences, and for generations, just mebbe?? Those are jobs your people aren't getting, because you thought the leaks at the other end of the national boat wouldn't affect you. Look at the popular vote tally from 2016, and get back to me on where your future lies.

I won't even get into the details about how importing the Worldwide Jihad Club here is going to pay us dividends for generations, other than to note that when you bring the bizarre bazaar here, you erase all the advantages two oceans gave us in America for 230 years.

Once again, harder: you may not care about illegal immigration, but rest assured illegal immigration cares about you.



Illegal alien on left explains how they'll beat you, and his friend on the right displays his IQ. Glendale, CA, 2005

I'm not heartless though, and I don't want to break up families. If mom and dad have to be deported, interpret the 14th Amendment phrase "and subject to the jurisdiction of" correctly, recognize that "anchor babies" of non-citizens are not and never were American citizens, and deport them along with the entire clan.

And direct the US AG to arrest, prosecute, and imprison state and city officials and LEOs for violations of black-letter federal law for the "sanctuary city" nonsense. The correct terminology for that is sedition and corruption, and it should end in the land of the orange jumpsuits, once and for all.

And then, turn off the legal immigration firehose, for about a century.

Clear?
This is non-negotiable.
Demography is destiny.

B) Vote.

If you're too lazy (and about 70% of you are, most days, BTW) to show up for something as painless as voting in elections, STFU.
You're nothing but lazy stupid bastards, and if you're running your piehole while not voting, you're nothing but lazy loudmouth stupid bastards.

"Elections don't matter."
Really? Explain 2016, and the wee kerfluffle nationally, daily, and interminably ever since, to the whole class, in light of that recockulous proposition. I'll wait.

The jackholes shipping that bilge in 2016 weren't ready for a national open shooting Civil War 2.0 in 2016, and they won't be prepared when they get one down the road, like they will. They're farking morons, and if Nature is just, they'll be the soonest part of the National Gut Pile when things, near inevitably, actually do get sporty.
In the meantime, they're the kids in school who stapled their fingers to the desk, and ate the craft paste.

Now you know What Happened To Them.

C) Voting won't Fix Everything.

Maybe it won't even fix Anything. But physics and experience teaches us that hitting the wall at 10 MPH, at a shallow angle, is vastly preferable to hitting it at 90MPH, head-on.
(Bonus points if you can strap your Leftard Busybody neighbor to the bumper first.)
Ask the people on Sully's plane if they would've rather entered the Hudson going straight down at 200 knots, or like they did.
Your job is to create viable options, not instant solutions.
Starting with being alive to exercise those options, rather than a smoking hole where Civilization used to be.
The problem with electing our guys, both in Sacramento here, or Washington D.C., is the minute they get to Mordor, they forget who they are and where they came from, and they stop being our guys. Rip them a new asshole, set their feet on fire, and remind them.
Ever so gently.

The old political axiom is, "If you can't take their money, drink their whiskey, and then vote against them anyways, you have no business in politics."
The voter's maxim should be "If you can't pay attention, we'll smack you upside the head so hard your eardrum will rupture, and then you can listen to us with your good ear. And when we swing, it may not always be with an open hand. Verstehen sie?"

If you're going to take people's money, drink their whiskey, and then not do a whore's job when called upon, you have no business in politics.
And we'll fire you.

D) Agitate.

Agitate like a washing machine on rocket fuel, having grand mal seizures.
There is shooting war, and cold war.
We're primarily in the latter, and will remain so for an indeterminate time.
War, as von Clausewitz would remind the brighter of you, creates friction.
Your job, then, to thwart your enemies, known and unknown, is to throw gravel in their transmissions, sand in the bearings, and leave boulders all along the road, to make life interesting for them. And, if necessary, some IEDs. (I'm speaking figuratively and metaphorically, of course. Doing kinetic things to bad people would be illegal, and we all know you should never, never, ever do anything illegal, which is doubleplus-ungood, even if there's functionally zero chance of getting tagged for it. Right? Enough said.)

Mayhem is out there. You, too, can recruit him. Just don't put him in command.

That also means all lesser means, from snark, to handbills, to blogsposts to shitposts is fair game. If you're throwing lava at the Dominant Culture (not just preaching to the choir) somehow, to the limit of your ability, you're pulling your weight. Get to it, and keep at it.
Let them know this isn't going to go the way they think. Ever.

You punch bullies in the nose now, maybe even with brass knuckles, as a humanitarian gesture. So that you don't have to slit their throats, cut out their beating hearts, and play polo with their severed heads tomorrow.
Unless they fail to pay attention.

E) "Babe Ruth is dead. Throw strikes."

Said to every pitcher afraid of getting too close to the plate.
Not getting my drift?
The Marquis of Queensbury is dead too.
There are no fair fights. There are only fights you win, and fights you lose.
If any fight is fair, you've massively fucked up.
A fight for the culture of a society, and the soul of a nation, is no-holds-barred.
It should be as fair as clubbing harp seals.

In a children's game of Tag, any touch is sufficient. And that's appropriate.
But like the Vegas gambler who reminds the Newb that the dealer isn't "playing" cards, she's working, in Adult Tag, it's okay to throw an elbow into a throat, or tag hard enough to break a bone or leave contusions. And stand over them afterwards, "and then, Kick them in the balls!", as Captains Sykes and Fairbairn reminded every class of British SOE commandos being trained to fight Nazis.

If you think this is just a game, you've dreadfully misjudged the stakes of the contest.
And if you haven't "gone too far", you haven't gone far enough.
I don't want to just beat the other side, I want to dance in the pooling blood as it drains from the lifeless corpse of their nihilistic cause.

"If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin' hard enough.
If you get caught cheatin', you're trying too hard." - every Special Forces instructor to every trainee since Aaron Bank, if not Robert Rogers

F) If you lose a battle, walk it off. Then get back in there.

We will lose battles.
We may lose all the battles before things turn around.
They may never turn around.
So The Eff What?

"Every day we're not fighting is another day to sharpen our tomahawks." - DanMorgan

If you get back up, you haven't lost. And you're tougher. And you've bought another day to get ready when things go from rhetorical to kinetic.
Like. They. Will.
Based purely on 6,000 years of recorded human history.

G) Bridge Out

Califrutopia, like most of the country, is headed for a fiscal cliff.
Chicongo just started laying off actual workers, to use the money to pay the exorbitant recockulous pensions of retired state workers.
That means they can't pay actual cops and firemen, because they're too busy funding the retired ones.
This induces productive citizens, and businesses, to flee a city and state that can't catch the crooks, nor put out the fires.
Which accelerates the financial collapse of such agencies and jurisdictions even faster.
(Don't get smart-ass; 50:1 your state or city is in the same boat, to a greater or lesser degree. Pay attention to this.)
California is in the same boat.
And when they get to the IOU stage for retirees, the ones who moved to your low-tax retirement haven will now be on your welfare dole.

But either way, cities and states will go bankrupt, even if they briefly try confiscatory tax policies.

(Refresher lesson: what two things started the Revolutionary War?
a) Taxes
b) Weapons seizures
c) Both of the above
Now, tell me which of those are a problem in CA. Or Chicongo. Ad infinitum.)

What cannot continue, won't.
They can end the welfare state, including ridiculous state pensions and EBT card largesse, or they can totally collapse. There is no third option.

So, point to ponder:
What happens when retirees, including cops and firemen, aren't getting pensions, they can't pay for the current ones to catch crooks and put out fires, and they stop paying protection money to the Diversity here, or anywhere, because they simply cannot come up with it?

Here's my guess. I've only seen it firsthand twice in my lifetime, right in Los Angeles.

So, you're going to do - and should do - What, exactly, about that?

H) Local, local, local

"Infantry Rule One: if you are not attacking nor defending, you're improving your position.
Dig, wire, mine, resupply, and train. Lather, rinse, repeat." - military axiom since before Caeser's legions, and probably back to the bone-wielding hominids at the monolith at the dawn of prehistory

There's going to be a rumble. Whether you're in it, or just want to be left the Eff alone, your needs are identical (cf. Switzerland).

You need the "B"s:
Bases.
Bangsticks.
Bullets.
Beans.
Band-aids.
Blades.
Bullion.
Battalions:
Bunches of ball-breaking bastards to batter and bash the bunch of bumbling buffoons on your borders.
That would be a Band of Brothers.

In short, everything you've read or heard about survival necessities, for adventures (Louis L'Amour's definition for which is basically some damnfool accident best left untried, unless one has no other choice) both great and small, from a house fire to a world war, and everything in between.

You need friends, weapons, tools, and the normal supplies of any civilization large or small, to stave off the State of Nature, and the resultant unadorned lifestyle in it best described by Hobbes as

"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".

 

If you aim, therefore, to enjoy something less stark and more user-friendly, you'd best be about making all preparation for securing that possibility NOW, while you have the possibility, time, and resources, in some abundance.

That means not just getting "The Stuff", but also getting the training and experience in using The Stuff, long before your life literally depends on your proficiency. Or lack of it, in a Darwin Award-winning way. This is why we teach kids to swim in pools, and not in floods and hurricanes.

If you don't have The Knowledge, you damned sure better start bum-rushing the doors to take training from people who can impart it to you. (Note they won't give it to you; you'll get what you pay for, and you'll earn every lesson to learn every lesson. "Nothing is free" has several meanings. Think about it.) For those who need it, there's a list of (seven currently)those kind of folks at the top of the right column beside the blog.

 

That's "my plan".

 

It's got one helluva lot better chance than anything else, it's likelier to play out this way than anything else, and it's a metric fuckton more fun, more principled, and more righteous than anything else, unless, contrary to all likelihood, the fuckwits in charge blow themselves up, and the bus swerves to one side bare feet short of plunging into the abyss.

 

I will accept Divine Intervention instead of Calamity, if that outcome is fortuitously to appear.

But while I both pray for miracles, and rely on them, they aren't part of the formula for how I suspect things will actually play out. There is always room at the dinner table for the unexpected steak and lobster feast, but I still feed the chickens and weed the garden.

And that only works if you raised the chickens, and planted the garden, in the first place.

Perhaps I Wasn't Clear Enough...

Trust me, I don't write anything to troll for easy blog-fodder.
And it's not like I haven't addressed this sort of nonsense in the past.

But when someone can't help running headlong right into the wall beside the front door, well...

So, here comes Anonymous to reveal to me the Big Secret Plan to Fix Things:

"Aesop, there's nothing in the U.S. Constitution that disallows separation of states into separate states IN the United States - hence the Second Wheeling Convention. The State of Jefferson movement is actually quite legal, very much active, gaining steam, and has cases ALREADY winding through the courts. If successful, it creates a 51st state. It is NOT secession from the Federal Government, but from Sacramento.

It sounds like a pipedream - until it isn't. Take a gander around this site, it's legitimate: http://soj51.org/

Congressman LaMalfa backs the movement:

https://youtu.be/8TLeHVk7HzU

Congressman Tom McClintock supports the State of Jefferson:

https://youtu.be/SeW6fRxwrkA (He'll address your constitutional concerns in that video)

We're quite serious up here, and again, our movement is gaining, not losing steam."

 - Anonymous

Right. The Constitution is NO OBSTACLE whatsoever to the people in Norcal eating the State Of Jefferson Magical Brownies. It was just my imagination, running away with me.

Oh wait, maybe there is something or other in there, down in the weeds...

"If you were public-schooled, I understand why this paragraph may be news to you:

New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress. - Article IV, Section 3, U.S. Constitution

If you think you can get 50%+1 of the votes in any session of the Congress, let alone even the CA and/or OR legislatures to give Jefferson and the GOP two more senators just for the asking, and steal a dozen or so red districts for the Congress, while putting 15 or so of CA's 55 electoral votes in the GOP meat locker in perpetuity for every presidential election until forever, for the delusional nonsense that is "Jefferson", I also have a bridge for sale to you, cheap.

IT. AIN'T. NEVER. GONNA. HAPPEN. EVER. EVER. EVER.
(I hope that wasn't too subtle for you.)

If it were that easy, NFY State and Massholia would vote to split into 300 states the next day, so they could swear in the 600 new US senators they'd get. But that won't happen either, and for the same reasons.

If any or all of this is news to you, and/or you still think you have a snowball's chance in hell of this ever taking place here in reality, you're really not tall enough for the Internet." - Aesop

 

Maybe we can find something more in your price range...

 

 

I was straining to come up with that one, because I had to dig deeeep in my copy of the Constitution, all the way to middle of the right hand column, halfway down the page, on (!)
Page One.  Just like everything else, before the Amendments were added.

And who can be expected to read that far down into the picayune details, right?
In hindsight, I confess my error: there is no way to underestimate the grasp on reality of any given person or movement.

"None of that's new to me Aesop, and I've been using the internet since it was ARPANet, thanks. You? It makes great reading when you assume everyone's less intelligent than you, but I assure you, you're not the only intelligent and well-read person on the planet (though it may understandably feel that way sometimes).

Just like when people were calling me an idiot and using the slippery slope fallacy when I was telling them in the 90's that their heavy taxation of cigarettes would lead, inevitably, to the taxation of sugar, fats, etc., I will now screenshot your reply to me, and if the internet and your blog are still around in 20 years, I'll come back to you on this. I like the word "Never". Fills me with even more resolve, and oh my, how things change in 20 years." - Anonymous

Important safety tip: it's probably best not to introduce yourself as intelligent after hurtling off a cliff while chasing a roadrunner.

Yes, I went there. And I kick puppies too.

 

"Got it.

You know what the requirements are, which have been met exactly 0 times in 230 years, and yet you still think getting past that wee hurdle is anywhere within the realm of reality.

You're dealing with a Congress, right now, that can't manage to repeal ObozoCare, but you think you have a shot at getting a new state made which not only makes you happy, but simultaneously robs CA and the DNC of 10-15 electoral votes minimum, and in perpetuity, and you figure that'll pass a D-supermajority CA legislature, just for starters, because somehow they'll feel generous enough to let you go and wave goodbye to electoral votes that they'll own long after you're dead and buried, as things stand, without lifting a finger.

The (D) legislator who voted for that wouldn't be primaried out by Democrats, they'd smother him with a pillow the same day. If he made it to the parking lot without being defenestrated.

And then, to top it off, 49 other states will sit still to see, in fact to enact in both houses of Congress, TSFKAC (The State Formerly Known As California) suddenly getting four senators instead of two, because a bunch of moonbats drinking bongwater wish it hard enough!

Yes, of course, that'll just happen, because cross-eyed McClintock thinks so too.

I've seen this exact plan before, but I have to tell you, it was much funnier when John Cleese, Eric Idle, and Graham Chapman did it. And no one mistook it for a serious plan.

So, in short, the whole effort is just pure delusional gainsaying against reality.

Well-played.

Buy Powerball tickets; the odds are better, and it's cheaper than the roll of tinfoil for the hats.

And there's no Easter Bunny.
Just thought you should get it all in one go." - Aesop

So, perhaps in yesterday's post, this wasn't simple enough:

The time for asinine schemes is long past. There's far too much serious work to do for serious people.

For the Silly People, let me introduce you to your Special Imaginary Friend:
The State Of Jefferson.
Or, as the chaperone on the Short Bus knows him: Jeff

Now, perhaps that all was too harsh. Just a bit. But if someone wishes to be taken seriously, a suggestion would be not to bring me the most whackdoodle scheme floating around out there outside of 3AM get-rich-quick infomercials, and leave it on my doorstep like my cat with half a dead mouse.
 
Unless you're the sort who would go to a Don Rickles show just to sit in the front row.
No serious harm was intended, but time passes, and this sort of egregious silliness is exactly the same sort of timewasting twaddle as the original fucktard essay on the Federalist. It's too late in the game to be screwing around with this sort of happy horsesh*t.
 
B'Byeeeee!

Pick One

"We could just give them 30 states, and everything will work out amicably..."

Jaw-jack all you want. The time for asinine schemes is long past. Anyone out there who thinks half a loaf is better than none, and that the imaginary deal would be worth the paper it's printed on, isn't worth what I leave behind on the paperwork in the Thinking Room after eating an epic burrito.

There's far too much serious work to do for serious people.

We should all get about it.

Britistan Makes The Onion Cry

When the British TWAT (Taking Weapons Away from Toddlers) teams are trying to disarm the entire nation of anything pointy and sharp, it's impossible to parody them.

The Onion's London office has to be on suicide watch, assuming shoelaces are still legal there.

There was a time when this was a screamingly ridiculous parody:

Now it's a Scotland Yard training film.

But, while they have the opportunity, before the PC ban-hammer descends, a few last lively Brits are throwing the only sharp objects allowed to them: tweets for the TWATs on Twitter:
Link.

"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."

Mission accomplished, mischievous deities.

Hard time for rocks and pointy sticks can be the only step left before the entire island is conquered by an old man with a slingshot.

I hope he's French.

They could use a victory, and a fresh royal line would be good for even more laughs.

Travel Kit/Problem Solving

h/t Total Survivalist

Ryan gets it about as near to perfect as it's possible to get.
RTWT.

And, as both he and Commander Zero have noted, a wad of cash and a credit card with a high limit solve most regional disaster problems too.
(Hurricane? Brushfires? Earthquake? Will you take plastic, or cash, for that hotel room a county or two away? Bigger disaster? How much for enough gas to GTFO of Dodge to another state? Let Visa and Mr. Greenback solve that problem.)
And it also works for ordinary travel. Like when the 60-IQ @$$holes at one bank cleverly decide that when you travelled, you stole your own card, which was why you bought the tickets in your own name and used your own PIN number with it, and they put a lock on it, and it's midnight Friday ten states away when you find out, and no one answers their Customer Disservice Line until Monday morning. But everyone takes crisp new $100 bills, and the card from your other bank account (which you got for just this sort of jackassery), from sea to shining sea. Ask me how I know.

My 2¢:

But he left out the towel from Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy!

Seriously, those are the absolute Minimalist Five that will solve almost every problem.

A variation on the backpacker's Ten Essentials is also a good idea.

A water bottle with a base-nested metal drinking cup solves several problems at once: water supply, canteen, drinking cup, cooking pot.
So does including water purification tabs or iodine crystals (Polar-Pur) in that first aid kit.
You should always have a power bar or granola bar handy, and probably something like jerky too, and a packet of cup-a-soup, plus tea/coffee/sugar/cocoa.
I've gotten through marathon flights halfway around the world and cross-country bus journeys on a bag of banana chips, and a bag of peanut M&Ms.
A flop hat/wool beanie combo and emergency rain poncho take up little space.
Neither do a sleep mask and ear plugs.
Sunglasses, sunscreen, bug juice, and lip balm will stop a lot of misery in 24 time zones.
And I've never heard of anyone getting stopped for carrying a map (get a large-scale one on waterproof plasticized vinyl rather than paper, if possible -- if not, put Stormproof on a paper map)of where they're going, and a compass. Most all of that fits in jacket, shirt, and pants pockets, if you wear cargo pants, or else into a chest- or fanny-pack go-bag.

Also, you can carry scissors: just make them the blunt ones, in the also-carried tiny pocket sewing kit, with a couple of needles, a card of assorted thread, and a few buttons.

And check destination and carrier regs, but you can usually even carry a Swiss Army Champion most places, if you grind off the 2 actual knife blades, which still gets you the other 15 handy tools.
And you should have already replaced the laces on your footwear with paracord. (Yes, even your dress shoes. If necessary, get the smaller gauge cords, which are still stronger, handier, and last longer than the OEM laces.)

Also, one SF secret out of the bag is their mini-survival kit sandwiched between their uniform's US flag and the Velcro attaching layer. You can fit some worthwhile things in a Velcro-backed patch on your gear that isn't a US flag (For a less terrorist-target choice, try a patch of the destination country instead - as long as it isn't Israel), and that won't set off any metal detectors. And you should.

For the dedicated, a decompression needle will fit inside the case of a gutted Epi-pen. (Ask me how I know.) Due diligence, but as both are medical gear, not weapons, you might want to give it a shot.
Viator cave.

An assortment of zip ties can turn that rain poncho into a shelter, umbrella, or what-have-you, and solve other problems as well. Or putting tamper-proof closures on your luggage zippers while your out of the hotel.
Obviously, a big pair of the #175 pounders gets you non-metallic handcuffs, or a bombproof gear lashing. Like clipping something important to a car. Or a liferaft. Or closing the handle on a broken piece of luggage.
Two small ones and a bit of a stick will make an ad hoc toggle closure for clothes, bags, etc.
Let your mind wander for 200 other uses.

And you can add one or more of the small o-ring sealed metal screw top pill bottles to your key chain without anyone taking much notice, to carry personal meds, and the usual tylenol/ibuprofen/immodium/benadryl/dramamine sorts of things that should go with you everywhere. I've had as many as four hooked on with my everyday keys, and no one, from airports to courthouses, ever checks them.
Ditto for the 1½" $5 housekey knife blade on the same ring. Coast to coast, dozens of security checkpoints, never even noticed.

A bigger key ring pill bottle will hold USD $8.25 in new quarters, which is also about $100 if they're "junk" 90% silver, and over $11,000 worth if you stuffed it with 1/4oz gold eagles instead.

(It also works as something to give you a healthier closed-fist punch, while not getting you felony levels of brass knuckles trouble. Just saying.)

They'll also hold matches; fishing hooks, weights and line; or Vaseline-impregnated cotton balls, and you can get multiple colors that make them look like zipper pulls on carry-ons and such.
If I could get someone to make one only about 1/4" taller, you could get 10-20 US-sized currency bills in one. As it is, if I fold the bills a bit, I can still get 5 bills into one without much trouble.

Jellied alcohol hand sanitizer does that (which is a must for airline trips - passenger jets are mega-nasty, and seldom cleaned properly), and it's also a wonderful emergency fire starter.

But for just five things, he pretty well nailed it.

The secret to a happy life is comfortable shoes.

When Is It Time To Shoot The Bastards?

"Waaaaaaiiiit for it...."

From Comments to yesterday's piece:

Well Mr. Aesop, that's quite the rebuttal.

Been reading your blog for a bit and usually I enjoy and generally agree with your posts/positions. Definitely supported your posts regarding the nurse in Utah that was assaulted by jackboots a while back. And even when we disagree, you typically provide some data backing your position.

You as always are a talented and creative wordsmith and this post is no exception. But I am surprised at the vitriol spewing forth in this post? As entertaining as the post is, you usually provide some pretty solid support/evidence for your position. Unfortunately in this case I am not seeing it.

You begin by impugning the character and state heritage of the writer of the post in the Federalist. Again, it's entertaining at times, but attacking the writer and not the issue/position is very much a prog rules for radicals approach.

I would agree with your position regarding the map ( although it's very similar to the one from Schlichter's book ) , but numerous folks who posted comments on his article presented alternate maps for discussion. In reality, should this occur, I seriously doubt things would break along current state lines. I would also argue your point about "real" country borders not changing. The rumblings in Scotland and Catalonia may or may not cause border shifts in Britain and Spain, but the possibility now exists and is closer to reality than ever before.

The Clinton Archipelago & Trumpland maps are cool representations of the last presidential election, but they are also geographical presentations of the election results and not of the actual voter head counts or bodies. The fact is, Clinton won the popular vote, so thank God for the founder's electoral college solution. The concerning issue being that the numbers are moving quickly past the 50% mark and are not in our favor.

Where you and I are in total agreement is the fact that the prog leaders running this country into the ground absolutely know that they can't let us leave, because we're the productive ones. So as you state, it would lead to an actual "hot Civil War 2". Which for those paying attention is why they are coming hard for our weapons (reference Venezuela for a present day example of a disarmed starving serfdom).

So my question for you is what is your solution?

I am not going to list all the challenges facing this country, you are painfully aware of them. The problem is that the trend is not moving in the right direction and the "powers-that-be" and their lemming minion hordes are growing in size and power.

The Federalist writer, probably likes hot/cold running water, electricity and grocery stores stocked with food. I would agree that those are things that make life more enjoyable. Now look at Venezuela, Syria, Yugoslavia, anywhere else where there's been a civil war. It's not a pleasant picture.

So while I agree with you that it's a very long shot that FUSA would ever peaceably split-up, the concept does have merit.

Look Aesop, I am truly not trying to f*ck with you. I am on your side and I was hoping for some answers buried inside of your rant. I mean you are behind enemy lines in Calistan, do you even have an AR? (don't answer that!) You state towards the end of your post that you love this country and you're not giving it up without spilling blood.

Fair enough and patriotic. But to paraphrase Claire Wolfe - "when is it time to start shooting"?

1) I clearly identified the ad hominem as blatantly such.
When someone is that much of a sonofabitch, it's merited, even if outside the bounds of logical disputation.
As a devotee of Messrs. Sykes and Fairbairn, one should remember that every move in every class on H2H they taught to SOE operatives was concluded with the witheringly correct coup de grace: "And then kick them in the balls!"

2) Let's be clear: I impugned the lack of character and state heritage of the carpetbagging ignoramus in question.
Anyone can be wrong. But to be deliberately stupid, and lie, while carpetbagging, usually requires a former FLOTUS with Parkinsons, and delusions of grandeur.

3) There isn't going to be any "amicable divorce". The phrase is an oxymoron equal to "military intelligence", "government help", and "jumbo shrimp".

4) The actual voter counts and bodies are meaningless. So is the popular vote. That's why we aren't a democracy. Democracy is merely mob rule, with a patent of legitimacy.

5) The numbers can move to 90% against us, but short of 270 electoral votes, it's meaningless. You wanna worry, worry about what happens when Califrutopia's Liberal Paradise suffers financial collapse, and the other 47 contiguous states get all their toothless, banjo-playing communist kinfolk back, en masse.
They aren't Californians now, and they won't be when they move back home, but you'll be dealing with the demographic catastrophe wherever you are when they purple up twenty more states, followed by the inevitable illegal alien hordes.

6) The lemmings are growing in size. They're growing their presumed political power. What they fail to realize is that it's the illusion of power, like a double yellow line on the road, or a red light at an intersection. Those only work as long as everyone follows them. One drunk driver and it all goes to hell in screeching brakes and carnage.
And the Democommunists have been driving drunk for 60 years and more. They're about to get pulled over. One way or another.

7) The solution, exactly as Chairman Mao suggested, will proceed from the barrel of a gun.
Scroll down and read the linked article at Sam Culper's FOMag.
Things are not going to "come along quietly", for a host of reasons.
For reference, the NRA is twice the size of just our current military. The number of gun owners is ten times the size of the largest army we ever fielded, which won world wars against three nations on three continents in 4 1/2 years.
And all those pretty toys and shiny bases depend for every waking moment on the sufferance and goodwill of the people who surround them 24/7/365, for everything from gasoline to power for the lights to food for the chow hall.
At the end of the day, their chance against a contrary populace would be that of the convict against the noose; they would die kicking at air, wishing they'd made other life choices were they to turn on the nation's populace, and no small number would shoot the leaders who tried. You can get away with a Bonus Army/Manzanar/Kent State/Waco incident about once every quarter century; after that, the folks will shoot you coming out of the latrine, proactively, and you're done.
The .mil knows this in their marrow. The Progtards are going to find out that if push comes to shove, they'll be the ones on the menu.

8) Everyone likes hot/cold running water, electricity and grocery stores stocked with food. Wanting and having are two entirely different things.
What can't continue, won't.
The Welfare State is about out of time, money, altitude, and airspeed. Let alone the good wishes of the populace.
The cockroach class will survive as a remnant, and the rest, as in all times, will find that those who can, do, and thrive, and the useless teat-suckers get slaughtered with the rest of the pigs.

9) If you have to ask "when?", it isn't time.
The point is not to worry about "when". It's to understand that it's going to be "when", and not "if", and to be ready, on the day.
The folks interested in retreating behind another imaginary line may not be interested in another civil war, when it comes, but a civil war will certainly be interested in them.

One is reminded of nothing so apropos as poor Wilmer McLean. Like the OP's protagonist, he was a former military man, who in Wilmer's case owned a house in the Virginia countryside in 1861.
It was near Manassas, and during the first Battle of Bull Run, was P.T. Beauregard's HQ, and struck by cannon fire. After Second Manassas took place in the front yard, Mclean had had quite enough of Civil War, and moved himself and his pregnant wife to a quieter place. Near the courthouse, at Appomattox. Where the final surrender of Lee to Grant was literally signed in his living room.

Mr. Kelly had better hope his real estate agent has a better sense of location, location, location.

Five Reasons

Culper has re-worked his FOMag site, coupled with diligent daily posting and podcasting, and it's better than ever.

Notably today, this post.
Go. Read. Learn.
RTWT.

Chickens Gonna Chickenshit

People who live in Texas shouldn't confuse this for the state flag.

One good rant deserves another.

Mine is in response to the chickenshit screed in The Federalist by one Jesse Kelly, suggesting that there can - and should be - a relatively amicable and peaceful divorce, "before things get serious", among the several states.

This is his suggested partition:

My short reply is a phrase that starts with "Shove that", and concludes with "sideways, with a rusty chainsaw." I'll let everyone at home fill in the words I left out.

Now we can move on to the more detailed response. 
Let's get the ad hominems out of the way, just for sport, then move on to the sheer logical stupidity of the basic proposition.
Jesse's bio after the piece describes him as a "Marine combat veteran."
So one must wonder where he learned to surrender so gutlessly, with the effortless grace of the French Army in 1940, or neglected the Marine Corps holy writ in the Book of Armaments, the verses summed up by the phrase "Retreat, Hell!"
But being charitable, perhaps Mr. Kelly was actually in the air wing, or a REMF pogue.
Or simply has a yellow stripe along his spine a foot wide.
Or his parents never married.
One can only speculate.

His bio also describes him as a "former congressional candidate in Arizona", who "currently resides in the Houston area with his wife and two sons." So, paraphrasing the incomparable Mr. Laughton in Witness For The Prosecution, "Were you a carpetbagger then in Arizona, or are you one now in Texas, or are you simply a chronic and habitual carpetbagger?"

Houston, AFAIK, is one of the parts most of Texas apologizes to everyone else for (despite some residents thereabouts being absolutely splendid Americans), second only to Austin itself in that respect. And as Mr. All-Hat-and-No-Cattle Kelly apparently is not a native Texan, and likely not even a native of Arizona either, one can only assume that his attitude is exactly the sort of surrender-first/run-for-the-hills mentality one expects from exactly the sort of non-native carpetbagging nest-foulers that despoiled my home state of California, before fleeing to sunnier climes, to besoil them in similar fashion. Having ruined where they were, they can't help decamping at the slightest disappointment to greener pastures.
 
I defer to the words of my soulmates, Mr. Paine and Mr. Adams, in best summing up the sort of...person (I couldn't quite find it in me to say "man"...sorry, just can't strain the language that far) who so readily accommodates things by raising the white flag and taking to his heels, both rhetorically and, given the choice, in actuality:

"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;" - Thos. Paine

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”  - Samuel Adams

These are hardly the bona fides to present in support of such a thesis, but exactly the sort one would be expected to have, to come to such a conclusion.


So much for the character of the plaintiff, Your Honor. Now we proceed to the facts of the matter.


Shock of shocks, Mr. Transplant Not-A-Texan makes sure to draw himself and his current domicile into the center of his Federalist Fantasyland.

New Mexico and Colorado might take some wee issue with those pretend-boundaries. So will Atlanta, Miami, St. Louis, New Orleans, Austin, and most of Phoenix. Wilmington, Charlotte, and Nashville will be rather grumpy too. Will Kelly just draw them into little tribal reservations, or just flee again, to an ever shrinking world, and relinquish more and more of Federalist Fantasyland to the burgeoning blue hordes?

After you've cut and run once, how many more lines will you draw before you find the gumption to step up and do something besides beat feet?

And what about half of California, Eastern Oregon and Washington state, all of Montana, Idaho, the Dakotas, Kentucky, West Virginia, most of Illinois that isn't Chicongo, half of Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, the vast middle of Penntucky, upstate New York, New Hampshire, etc.? How will they feel about Kelly cheerfully relegating them to being a permanent minority bitch for the fucktard Leftist minions to whom he'd cast them? Which is why this sounds like nothing more complicated than "Let's you and him fight."

This is a guy who sounds like he'd have been happy to be on the RMS Titanic, but only if left in charge of throwing people out of the lifeboats.

He's also utterly clueless about how Texas and Florida are purpling up nicely under the same onslaught of illegal immigrant hordes that have flipped CA from (R) to (D) in my lifetime. How will he feel when some jackass jasper in Omaha decides next year to give his Texas homestead back to Mexico, lock, stock, and barrel, and leave him on the wrong side of that divide?

Good luck with that plan when the last chopper leaves the roof, you myopic fucktard.

Sorry, chopper's full. Try the next country, halfwit!

Then he tries to drag in history, in an utterly historically ignorant attempt to tell lie us that "borders move all the time".

Really?
Tell me how the map of Britain looks now, vs. in 1600.
Oops. Exactly the same.
How about Spain?
Same story.
Portugal?
Same.
France?
Same.
Switzerland?
Same.
Japan?
Same.
You know what changes?

Empires that crater into the ground.
And former colonies whose borders were drawn by fuckwits half a world away with no respect for ethnic, linguistic, and sociological polities. (Look that word up, Kelly, it's in the dictionary. A Dictionary is a book that defines words. A book is a bundle of pages full of words. If I have to keep breaking this down for you beyond that, you're not tall enough for the Internet.)

That is why there's a Czech Republic, and Slovakia, where Czechoslovakia used to be.
It's why the Balkans are the definition of balkanization. (Another word for those epically ignorant of geo-political history to become conversant in, especially if they're going to take a hand at nation-building as if the earth were their sandbox.) It's why Iraq was, is, and always will be a basket case. It's why Africa is every bit as tribal now as it was in 1000 A.D., or 10,000 B.C.

What also makes a difference, is knowing enough history to know that countries that coalesced into nation-states (look that phrase up too, genius) earlier, like Spain, France, and England, were forces to be reckoned with, whereas later ones which didn't pull themselves together until much later (Germany, Austro-Hungaria, Italy, etc.) have a spottier record at pretty much everything, except losing world wars.

You want to see how this country stacks up, in reality, rather than Kelly's Federalist Fantasyland?

 

Doubleplusungood bummer for Kelly and his sophomoric twaddle:
He's probably in the top map, not the bottom one. Some decent hunks of his current state certainly are.
(Embrace the Suck, buddy. Guess you and the family get to live in Bantu Land, huh?)

I guess all of the bottom against all of the top strikes you as a "hopeless battle", huh Snowflake?

(BTW, that's mainly counties; in reality at the voting precinct level, the areas on the top map are even smaller than that represented there. Hugely so, in many cases.)

And about that whining about "losing the cultural war"?

"If you believe in God and limited government, here are the entities that now proclaim their hatred of you in full view of the public: The Democratic Party, media, Hollywood, the public education system, and now even corporate America. The GOP may have the House, Senate, and presidency, but we have completely lost the culture war."

Allow me, Mr. Kelly, to summarize your position into a picture worth a thousand words:

By the way, if you're going to drag God into this, ponder the significance of Malachi 2:16, and maybe huddle up with a pastor or a decent Bible commentary when you hit the part that says

"For I hate divorce,” says the Lord, the God of Israel..."

Get back to us on that. I'll wait. Then let's see who it is hating God in full view of the public.

Meantime, give a holler when you actually win a seat as one of the 545 Deciders. Or write a TV show. Or write a bestseller. Or make a mainstream movie. Or teach a college or high school course. Or run a corporation. Or do something, anything, in the Cultural War for which you and 98% of the so-called Right have been MIA for 60-100 years, besides notice the spackle in your diaper is uncomfortable, and start to cry about it on the Internet.

Which means, to be frank, that you have a lot more in common with these @$$holes

than you do with these guys:

But hey, you can't be all bad, and I don't want anyone to think there's no redeeming value in you as a person, or even the piece you wrote. After all, you once upon a time made it through MCRD, just like me; and I didn't see any typos in your piece. So you're already two points ahead of 95% of the internet, right there.

But you're nowhere close to being ready to suggest these kind of "solutions", especially with all the tears and snot running down your chin.
There's another Marine combat veteran who'd like a word with you:

So maybe start by running down the white flag, and re-thinking your basic premise. Then learn some basic world and national history, and then think with your head instead of your feet. Then come back at this thing sounding more like a "Marine combat veteran" and a by-God Texan, and less like some hipster in skinny jeans with a pink Mohawk and a nose ring at the Starbuck's across from UT-Austin, or on Melrose Boulevard in West Hollywood.

This country ain't perfect. Far from it. And with that, it's still only about a metric fuckton better than the second-best country to live in on the planet, as anyone who's seen any amount of the rest of the world can attest.

Don't believe me.
Do what Bill Whittle suggested in Rafts. Go down to Key West, and tell me something:

Well, ask yourself what it would take to give up your home, your country, your family and all your friends. Ask yourself how desperate you would have to be to sneak out in the night, and strap your family – your grandmother and infant son – to a collection of inner tubes lashed together and set out in the dark surf across 90 miles of shark-infested water in the dead of night, hoping against hope to make landfall. We can all agree, I think, that that kind of desperation could only be driven by a fairly passionate first-person opinion of such things. Surely this goes beyond what you or I would do to win a map argument at Starbucks. 

So. Go up on deck, get out the telescope, and answer one simple question for me and for yourself: 

Which way are the rafts headed?

Go down to the Rio Grande and tell me which way people are crossing. Go to any international airport and see whether Americans are fleeing, or foreigners are arriving by the shitload. (Yes, a lot of that is exactly the problem, but bear well in mind that it's also true that there are a lot of real Americans out there who just didn't happen to be born here. Here are three:
1
2
3
And those are the easy ones, without even looking very hard.)

And if you got your little jellyfish-spined wet dream, what makes you think the people in Soyland wouldn't push right into your borders and take over more, and more, and more, and more of your cake , like they do, so that in two, five, ten, or twenty years, you'd be right back where you are now, with less resources, friends, and likelihood of ultimate success? That never occurred to you, did it?? Brilliant, right there. Effing wizard.

The Founders deliberately made it hard to even try what you think could be accomplished "peacefully, bloodlessly", by making it as difficult as possible. It was just their way of making concessions to the fact that all government could go bad, and that all human beings will try to do stupid stuff, short of requiring a sign be placed on the yet-unbuilt Capitol:

But just because that actual sign isn't there, doesn't mean people like you shouldn't act like it was posted there anyways.

Because the biggest problem I have with your suggestion, besides the sheer stupidity of it, and the actual hot Civil War 2.0 with the included rivers of blood and stacks of corpses which would ensue in 0.2 seconds if you even attempted, let alone achieved, what you say you want to do, is this:

It's worse than merely sophomoric fuckwittery:
it's utterly and simply un-American.

Like the kind of un-American that should have had you standing tall and sweating under lights in front of a congressional Star Chamber interrogation on national TV.

Or better yet, as in fiction, had your passport torn up in front of your face, and had you condemned for life to live on a ship perpetually at sea, and never able to call anyplace your homeland, until you died.

We're talking Benedict Arnold levels of un-American.

Because when it gets right down to it, I love this country very deeply. Obviously, one helluva lot more than you ever have. So much so, that even with the fucktards bent on destroying it, and working their asses off their every waking moment to turn it into the kind of Turd-World Shithole it would inevitably become, like every other dictatorship and communist attempt in recorded history, I'm not willing to give up one single square foot of ground in these fifty states to those sonsofbitches without shedding blood, and I'll be damned if more of it isn't theirs than mine.

(You want to cut Puerto Rico and Guam loose on some future July 4th, we can talk; but I want to keep the Virgin Islands right where they are - after a good cleaning. Everything else on the flag stays right where it is. Period.)

Too many people fought, bled, and died to put every one of those stars on that flag.
Every one of them a better man than you, manifestly.

If keeping them there strikes you as too hard, trot your weak ass down to the nearest international airport terminal, and buy yourself a one-way ticket on Crybaby Airlines for Some Fucking Where Else.

If you want a country, strap a stout 2x4 to your back, take your balls out of their jar, and get busy fighting for it.

Otherwise, fuck off smartly, and STFU.
You're just a dose of crabs on the body politic, and your pathetic mewling is about as welcome as a crying baby at the movies.

Consider this target serviced.