That Light is NOT an Oncoming Train!

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Yes, I actually have… five? Guest posts ready to cue up. Yes, I should be writing. But I owe you this one.

 

I had some rumblings about my depressed post written on Sunday night. Look, we have plenty of reason to be depressed; crisis besetting us on all sides any one of which would be enough to do for us… In the seventies.

 

If you have a feeling that the seventies have rumbled up from their grave and are walking forward like zombies in an apocalyptic movie you might just be right.

 

–          The middle East is on fire, where an incompetent (or traitorous. Jimmy Carter was probably JUST incompetent, OTOH he did offer to negotiate with the soviets in return for help with his second election campaign. So… who knows?) president has betrayed our friends and encouraged our enemies. (And in respect to Jimmah, I must say at least he never armed and furnished with money an organization sworn to destroy us. Whatever he lusted for in his heart – power, likely – it wasn’t the destruction of the US.

–          Somehow, the reanimated ghost of the Soviet Union has been dug up to stalk the land. The president’s “flexibility” has allowed Putin to threaten all of Eastern Europe and to move to swallow them in a disturbingly familiar pattern.

–          Our press alternates between singing happy days are here again and blaming the American people for being “ungovernable” or telling us to get used to the sh*t sandwich because it’s the new normal.

–          Our Southern border is besieged by a bizarre equivalent of the Mariel boatlift, this time as Children’s Crusade. The president admits that rumors were willfully spread in South and Central America that a “new law” allowed minors to get in and become citizens. (Of course the Dream Act does. I mean, look, if you come from a not-particularly law abiding country, you won’t even see anything wrong with pretending you were brought in years ago.) He says the only way to stop it is to pass “Immigration reform” which in his book means absolute amnesty.

 

Depressed now? Don’t be.

The president is simply doing what he said he’d do (the promises he keeps aren’t the ones made full voice, before the cameras. They’re the ones you have to read between the lines for.) He wanted to be the anti-Reagan and undo everything Reagan did. (The 80s amnesty, misjudged though it was, was an attempt at controlling immigration.)

 

But here’s the reason to hope. They’re rays of light in deep darkness, but they are NOT oncoming trains.

 

–          There’s reason to think this terroristic insanity of Islam is because they can’t stand before the modern world, and their religion can’t cope with it. Historically, no culture ever kept the future at bay no matter how bellicose it got. Technology will still get through. Things will still change. It can be done for really small places like North Korea, but they dream of a world wide Caliphate, which is like dreaming of flying to the moon unassisted, but less realistic. We’ve whipped ass in the Middle East, and we’ll do it again.

Why it’s not unalloyed hope – we might very well lose cities to this and as for Israel… pray for Israel.

 

–          Russia is in bad shape. What we’re seeing now is the final lashing out of the dying bear. Yes, I too have met the trolls going around claiming that the birthrate in Russia is “resurgent”. Unless they’re reading my future history and making people in labs, bullshit. They have other issues which have only got worse since the end of the cold war: troop training and discipline; equipment failure… the list goes on. For all of Putin’s bluster and the very real harm he can inflict to the Eastern European countries, Russia is a failed state, ruled by mobs.

Why it’s not unalloyed hope – I spent the early nineties expecting this to happen, because it’s what dying empires normally do. In many ways the havoc Hitler wreaked was because Germany was mortally wounded. And Europe has grown fat and lazy, used to Americans defending it, so they have virtually no resistance to even a toothless enemy.

I think this lashing out of the bear doesn’t last long, and that, what’s more, we can pack it away any time we want to. I’m just afraid it can’t be done without blood – ours and European – and maybe a few radioactive areas. I hope I’m wrong, and there’s a very slim margin of hope.

 

–          No one believes the press like they did in the seventies. NO ONE except very old people. Yes, there is still a vast contingent of brainwashed sheeple, but most people are aware that there’s a discrepancy between reportage and event. No? Mention “Summer of recovery” in a grocery store line. Unless you’re in Manhattan, where it takes a lot of very educated/smart people to be that dumb, you’ll get bitter guffaws in response.

 

–          The Children’s Crusade… As long as we don’t pass “comprehensive amnesty” this will solve itself, or at least hold until a sane administration sends the kiddies back. Which will be expensive, but not as expensive as keeping them.

 

They were sent, many I suspect coerced, to establish a beach head to legalize their entire family. If this is not possible, and that becomes clear, the kiddies will be called back. Or we can send them back.

 

On top of which, really? What is the point of coming to a land with no jobs and fast running out of money? What can’t go on, won’t. Stand fast. Yes, we’ll end up with a few more citizens out of this –meh.

 

My humble suggestion would be they take any under ten and make them available for adoption — saving Americans millions in foreign adoption fees. But for that we’d need to dismantle our ridiculous social services methods that include adopting out ONLY by race and ethnicity and also never letting the kid be fully yours, even after adoption.

So it won’t happen, unless a lot of things change.

 

 

THE REALLY GOOD NEWS, though, is that for the first time since WWII the masks are off, and this means there is the possibility for real change.

Look, I’m not one of the ones who say “let it all burn” – I have children and an (adopted) grandson. Letting it burn will burn many of the good people; many of the good things we love about our country. Letting it burn, as the other side knows, is to invite a totalitarian regime. (Only it’s as likely to be ultra-religious/social conservative “Big Man” as communist. More, actually. But never mind.)

What do I mean by the masks are off? For the last sixty or seventy years “progressives” have infiltrated our every institution, convincing people those who hate our country are not so bad, and that we, in fact, should hate our country because we are uniquely bad an imperialist just as the Soviets/mullahs say.

I became aware of this divided mind thing when I came in. All the upper class here made the “approved” noises which were indistinguishable from the stuff socialists/communists said in Europe. But if you called them on it, they wrapped themselves in the tattered mantle of “patriotism” and made “how dare you?” noises. Things like making it uncouth to say “America, love it or leave it” are part of this mind set. (No, I don’t mean you have to approve of everything America does, but I don’t think anyone ever said you did. Protesting your leaders is acceptable, but outright hatred of everything American should d*mn well mean you leave. No? Why not?) So is “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” even while what you’re demanding is surrender in the middle of a war. And even though that changes, when they’re in power.

What we’ve had in fact, is the masquerade, from puppet masters. These people are possessed of a fanatical hatred of the only country they know well, the country that allows them to exist, but go around pretending they “love” it even as they tear it down.

The masks are off. Obama’s actions are very clearly not those of anyone who loves America, and he is a representative of the “elite” of this country. People are starting to catch on.

The only way to fight these very stupid ideas, from political correctness to multiculturalism, to anti-American fervor is to have them out in the open.

When the zombies are eating people in the dark basement, you don’t know and can’t fight. Once you know what you face, then you can fight.

The other sign of hope is that these are not the seventies. Yes, we have better technology, but more importantly, we have fifty years of exposure to leftist madness. Everyone in the seventies pretty much believed Paul Ehrlich. Now we just point and laugh. Which is why the gospel of “climate change” is not sticking at the street level. (Which makes them a little more insane about preaching it, but never mind.)

I remember when they tried to revive seventies fashions and it never really caught except among the terminally young and trendy. It’s the same thing. So many things that they used to stampede us in the seventies are no longer credible: Overpopulation; lethal pollution; end of oil; and that communism is a superior system of government.

And yet, these are ALL the other side has. The reason our president can’t be firmly said to be either a traitor or a dunce, is because he is EXQUISITELY educated in the elite ideas of the bien pensant who have taken over our schools and colleges.

Even if he wanted to change course, to somehow make the system work, he doesn’t have anything. All he has are the ideas he was taught. And the ideas he was taught, when brought out to the full light of day are bizarrely stupid and laughable.

That’s all they have. Ideas that would make a ten year old laugh, if they weren’t presented by teacher as “gospel” but as a theory of how the world works.

All they have.

And now those ideas are out in the open.

And we’re not amused. And there’s a lot more of us than there is of them.

Look, guys, there is a reason that despite massive vote fraud – trust me on this, there was – they still needed to suppressed the GOTV effort on the other side, via the IRS.

They’ve got nothing. They’re the kid trying to stop the tide with his hands.

What can’t go on, won’t go on.

Their ideas, that frothy hodge podge of self-loathing from the west after WWI and undigested Marx, have proven what they are: somewhere between lethal and plain dumb.

And now that we know that, they’re spent.

Will they try to stampede us anyway? Well, of course. I think part of the Children’s Crusade is to bring in teens to recruit to put us down if we riot. (Rolls eyes.) This is part of the problem of the left. You see, they think in stories, not in real world. In their story Fast and Furious would work, because if we sent a bunch of American guns to Mexico, then revealed the death toll, Americans would recoil and demand all guns be banned. Do you see that working? Anywhere but in a not-very-good-novel of the type the establishment pushes?

No, neither do I. But to them it made perfect sense.

It’s entirely possible that they think Central and South American teens will “terrorize” and “Win” against an armed US populace with who knows how many veterans. Because you see, the South American teens are “dispossessed” and “Proletarian” so in their story, they win. (Rolls eyes again.)

This is the quality of mind we’re up against. They’re not stupid. They’re exquisitely taught to work in a world that doesn’t exist.

Which is why it might get very unpleasant, very unpleasant indeed, but I don’t think it’s “the final crash” nor that we’re going back to the middle ages.

Look, guys, I don’t even think the cities will burn. Remember when everyone expected cities to burn after the Zimmerman verdict? Do you care to tell me WHAT and when burned?

This is not the seventies. The theories that drove people to riot before are discredited. They’re mouthed and used to get cash, but no one will fight and die for them.

They’re trying to bring about a revolution that was unlikely even in the seventies, in a world in which their theories are somewhere between dead and a laughing stock.

Crazy people can cause a great deal of trouble and destruction. But in the end they don’t win because they’re functioning in a world that exists only in their heads.

There’s more of us than there are of them. They’re barely keeping us at bay. We’re stronger, we’re smarter, we’re more adapted for survival.

I’m not going to sugar coat it and tell you that this madness won’t have a butcher’s bill. I’m not going to tell you that there isn’t an unpleasant decade or so ahead.

I’m going to tell you that in the end we win, they lose.

Now do what I’m about to do: shut up and get to work.

431 thoughts on “That Light is NOT an Oncoming Train!”

  1. During one of the past “gloom and doomed” periods (80’s?), a Canadian writer wrote an article titled IIRC “Don’t count America out”. IE he said that America wasn’t doomed and would survive the (then) current problems as strong as ever.

    As depressed as I’m getting right now (partially because of my 60th birthday), I’m not willing to “Count America Out”.

    I’ve seen those predictions of doom before and we’re still around.

        1. I once described a well-regarded book in just that way. I kept seeing hints of pony, but there was no pony by the end. (Of course, part of this was that it felt like a work of mimetic fiction (a better term for lit-fic) thinly disguised as SF, though it apparently was actually an SF novel that just followed mimetic fiction tropes.)

    3. I am from Israel.
      This reminds me of a survey I took a few days ago.
      One of the questions was:
      How do you rate our Israel status and I replied very good.
      I could hear the: DUH over the phone.
      Then I explained that all the Arabs are busy killing one another, about 70% of the European countries wish they have economy like ours, we have the biggest (I think) birthrate in the west world. Our birth rate equals the Arab birth rate and ours is in up swing while the Arab birth rate is going down. I could hear the wheels spinning on the other side. They believe the press and TV who says DOOM and do not bother to think.
      If anybody think that importing children will help them they are wrong. When these children will grow up they will want the American dream, not a bunch of out of the world theories.
      Yechiel Adar
      Israel

        1. Now that there is fighting in Iraq, and the Sunnites are winning, they have a bigger worries since they are Shiat.

          1. I was going to make a joke about them being full of shiat, but yes, I’m not worried about Israel as Israel. (Pray for yes, always, but not in that sense.) I’m worried about Israel as a tiny little country surrounded by enemies. A little country whose big friend across the sea is having a psychotic break and intermittently hitting himself on the head and siding with the enemies. :/

  2. Speaking of, did my attempt at a post make it to you by email?

    Can resend if no, and I’ll take no response as “yes, but…..” 😉

      1. Cool cool, just knew you have a lot of emails get lost and wanted to make sure you didn’t end up writing when there were folks willing to help with the free lifting!

              1. Working on it, but I wouldn’t connect it to my pseudonym anyways. Just what I’d need, a college kid interested in cooking doing a name search and deciding they’d rather go hungry than use a cookbook by a BadThink.

                2. As long as enough other people buy your book, I can’t see how a college SJW type going hungry counts as a bad thing.

                  Can we maybe upgrade that to “SJW stubbornly starves to death rather than buy food in capitalist markets?”

                  1. I see it as outreach– besides the fact that I don’t like to see folks hungry, being able to feed yourself is a step to independence.

                    I’m still horrified at how many folks can’t do basic household upkeep.

                    1. You’re a kinder, gentler person than I am. I’ll work with anyone who wants help and is willing to ask (not demand) it.

                      But I also believe that anyone who chooses to remain willfully ignorant deserves anything bad that happens as the consequence of his actions.
                      For extreme & obnoxious cases, I’ll even enjoy their self-inflicted suffering.

                    2. I have a hard time not having sympathy for those who have been lied to their whole lives– I had my family. They got abandoned and/or lied to.

                    3. My great-grandmother didn’t like to have anyone in her kitchen. As a consequence, when the Spanish Influenza hit, her youngest, my grandmother, knew only how to cook oatmeal.

                      Good thing she knew that. She was the only ambulatory family member.

              2. Or broke.
                Actually paying for guest posts is on the slate, but it will only happen AFTER I sell this house and reduce my expenses. But yeah. At least the raiding party should get paid.

                1. Rattle the tip jar on Raiding Party days, and the Raider who wrote that post gets half of the take on that day. Just my suggestion, worth what you paid for it.

                    1. That’s what I keep thinking: blog post as a form of teaser trailer. New visitor thinks, “Hmm, this person’s post was good enough that it kept me from noticing annoying cow-irker/neighbor with the leaf blower. Their book might be worth a look.”

  3. …against an armed US populace with who knows how many veterans.

    This is a fact too rarely considered, I believe.

    I’m not going to sugar coat it and tell you that this madness won’t have a butcher’s bill. I’m not going to tell you that there isn’t an unpleasant decade or so ahead.

    I’m going to tell you that in the end we win, they lose.

    This is the core of what drags me down and lifts me up. Another lost decade…

    But we win in the end, and this I do believe.

    1. Did you think the constant push from the current administration for further restrictions on firearms ownership was pure happenstance? Or that the effort to disenfranchise returning troops with claims that they’re all too damaged to own weapons was for their own good?
      I have observed every gun control push since 1968, and every one served to restrict the availability of firearms to the honest citizen while doing nothing to prevent their misuse by criminals or the violently crazy mass shooters. The left did learn with the debacle of the 1994 assault weapon ban that pushing too hard just gets them pushed back, so they have reverted to emotion, dancing in the blood of victims when a tragedy occurs, and slipping restrictions into law at state and local levels in dead of night when sensible folks aren’t paying attention.
      And they are still loosing, as more and more often folks are asking the right questions. Such as “this new gun control law you’re pushing after the last shooting tragedy, how exactly would it prevent something similar from happening again?” And the answer invariably, if you get an honest answer, is “it wouldn’t.”

      1. No, I’m fully aware of the administration’s shenanigans and their active pursuit (abetted by various entertainment outlets, usually oblivious) to discredit veterans in multiple ways. I’m pretty firmly under the illusion I’m not an idiot (though your first paragraph indicates doubt on your part).

        Aware and angry.

        Doesn’t change the fact that I think the average Joe Citizen has no awareness of the number of veterans around him, nor any idea of what that means. And I’m not talking about just knowing which end the bang comes from. (There are an awful lot of skill-sets in the military requiring no proficiency with firearms.)

        Actually, one of the venues where I find this fact too rarely considered is gun control debates, and the oft repeated canard that “no one could stand up to the U.S. military…”

        Perhaps we could look around for the credulous fellow you were addressing? Maybe he ducked around back?

        1. The left simultaneously believes that third-world peasants with no education and more interst in killing each other can fight off the directed might of the US military AND that the US population could NOT.

                    1. Aha. That explains it. Free lunch. Unless you count the cleaning costs. Fish are slimy, and getting that slime off your clothes and hair is probably not pleasant.

                      Some people have weird tastes.

          2. About those leftists who have opinions about the military capabilities of third-world peasants… they also refuse to understand that the leadership is often well educated, wealthy, and immersed in a militant culture and *well* able to understand and devise intelligent strategy facilitating the global nature of modern life and communication. The comforting myth of the plucky little insurgent living in his quaint little village watching his charming goats is wrong *both* directions. One situation and they managed to be wrong *twice*.

            1. In one of M. Lackey’s 500 Kingdoms the “untrained peasants defeat army” trope becomes a running joke. The professional soldier organizing the invasion has to get people to fake incompetence long enough to trick the magic into “thinking” they really are untrained peasants and working with them.

          3. I’m no military scholar, but from what I’ve read/seen about the ‘peasants'(Vietnamese) beating the mighty US Military is that it wasn’t a lack of military capability so much as it was a lack of political will. Imposing incredibly stupid ROE just prolongs the engagement and suffering if you win, and gives the enemy more chances to get their propaganda out so the politicians can dick around with the ROE even more until you end up pulling out of an ‘unwinable war’.

            The fact that most current and former military members don’t subscribe to the progs ideology is heartening for the rest of us. The fact that so many progs are so vociferous makes me think that it’s going to take some violent confrontations before things get better.

              1. I’m mostly resigned to the inevitability of some form of butcher’s bill, and I’m mostly focused on ensuring the right people end up in the right columns when it comes due.

                Because there are societal costs to pay once the first bill is out of the way.

        2. That paragraph was purely rhetorical on my part. I know full well from your previous posts that you are extremely aware of our current situation. If you took it personally, I do apologize as that was never my intent.

          1. No issues, I had a long night and am a bit tetchy. No need to apologize, but the gesture much appreciated and gratefully accepted.

            I should probably go eat some ground cow and chill.

        3. “Actually, one of the venues where I find this fact too rarely considered is gun control debates, and the oft repeated canard that “no one could stand up to the U.S. military…” ”

          The trouble a lot of them have is that they think it’s some lockstep monolith. Tell the Army to surround, subjugate and disarm St. Louis or Denver, and pretty much everyone from a new E-1 on up is going to go “Hey, that AIN’T in my job description.” And the UCMJ will back them up – because it’s a blatantly illegal order.

          After all – where does the military get its people from? People who believe this country is worth defending.

          As in ‘protecting’ – not ‘subjugating’.

          Then you’ve got the folks on the other side who think that the UN will send in an army to do the job the US military won’t. (Snicker.) Yeah, that’ll work. It’s a lot easier to have a recognizable enemy come to you, and there’s a LOT of veterans who know how to shoot quite well, thank you… and will be on their home turf.

          I don’t think I’d give the UN any sort of odds on the outcome of that sort of conflict.

          1. And where is the UN going to get an army?

            Besides the US, IIRC “peacekeeping” forces mostly come from third-rate countries.

            1. Besides the US, IIRC “peacekeeping” forces mostly come from third-rate countries.

              They’re not coming to take our guns. They’re coming to give us theirs.

              They may not know that, but that’s how it would play out.

              1. Cleaning the blood off the guns will be a gruesome task, might be one of those jobs that Americans don’t want to do.

                1. I’ll do it! $5 each. Meet me at the local self-spray car wash, and I’ll use their Engine Cleaner low-pressure spray along with a spray-can of Break-Free.

                  That’ll get ’em clean enough for most purposes.

            2. Given the tendency for UN operations not run by the US to get involved in all kinds of unsavory activities, I think it would go even worse than folks think. You think the inner cities are unruly now? Wait until word gets out that those [expletive] [racial epithet]s are kidnapping and raping local women/cutting in on the drug trade/trashing churches/roughing up people under the gangs’ protection. I expect you’d see homeboys and good ol’ boys teaming up to throw out the [string of expletives] real quick.
              On a geekier note, I’m put in mind of the climactic battle from the film version of The Rocketeer: “I may be a crook, but I’m still an American.”

              1. There was a “team up” of the WWII version of Batman with Captain America against Red Skull and Joker. Joker finally turned on Red Skull and used that line. [Smile]

              2. During WW-II even Cosa Nostra in NYC worked with Naval Intelligence and the FBI to prevent sabotage and espionage up and down the east coast. This was set up after the Feb. 1942 burning of the liner SS Normandie that was being converted into a troopship in NY harbor. Sabotage was suspected though I don’t recall if anything was ever proven.

              1. The real question is how many of them would defect.

                A large number of the Hessians in the Revolutionary War never made it back to Germany. Most of those survived the war.

                1. One’s still around. Calls himself Franks. [Very Big Evil Grin]

                    4. Apropos nothing, but being me:
                      And Not To Yield

                      Sarah A. Hoyt

                      War for me began ten years after our Usaian revolution had freed Olympus seacity; ten years after I’d been made a colonel and head of our propaganda machine.
                      It is not war to pilot a desk. It’s not war to think up clever hollo-casts. It is not war to wait, to hope, to search the casualty lists every night, to pray to a God I wasn’t sure of believing in that his name wouldn’t be among the dead and missing.
                      Though we were both believers in the long forbidden Usaian religion, he was the believer, and I believed in him. And though both of us had been instrumental in the revolution that set the Seacity on the path of restoring the ancient principles of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the truth was that Nat – Nathaniel Green Remy – fought. I stayed home and planned and waited.
                      Home had become a small part of what had been my ancestral house.
                      My name is Lucius Dante Maximillian Keeva. I was born and raised as heir to Olympus. Or not quite. It turned out the intolerable rule of the man whom I must call father had other dimensions, other implications. Some of which had led me to solitary confinement for fourteen years and to the raw edge of what I must for lack of a better word call sanity.
                      Nat – and his family – had hauled me back to life and humanity, and if the price I must pay was surrendering power and position I never wanted and helping them install their government based on the principles of the long vanished United States of America, I could do that.
                      Two rooms in the house and the use of an office were all that would have been truly mine, anyway, had I ascended to rule as the Good Man of Olympus.

                    5. Yep, but Baen published an electronic ARC of it some time ago and I purchased it. [Smile]

              2. I don’t think they’d last long going up against *me*. (And by “me” I mean… even if all they faced was 50 year old American moms.)

                1. Women who are willing and able and have the head space assumption that they are in control enough to defend themselves would be kind of a change, wouldn’t it? Moms all over fight for their babies– we fully expect to win that fight.

                  2. Excessive headspace is dangerous, in extreme cases it can lead to violent explosions resulting in injury and death.

          2. The traditional armed forces may not fire on fellow Americans but what about all the armed bureaucracies? We already know the FBI and BATF will kill. Now every agency has armed agents and I doubt they’re any less willing if they think they can get away with it. Anyway, all they need to do is write a few more “regulations” and get a judge to sign off that you’re a criminal and send the whole legal system after you.

            1. It’s all going to be a mixed bag. Some will fire and others won’t. Those that won’t will lose their jobs and soon join our side. The ones that do, well, facial recognition and big data are a two edged sword and the tech people outraged at this will likely be highly motivated.

            2. I don’t think they’ll hang with the ‘everyone’s a lawbreaker’ meme. FBI and BATF have killed, but the circumstances have to be pretty twisted, and again they’re not lockstep monoliths.

              Plus, those armed agents are part of the general population. Joe BATF won’t be going home after a day spent slaughtering in St. Louis and get social approval. They see themselves as ‘good guys’ – and it won’t take much to flip the switch to the point where they see themselves as the bad guys and decide they’re in the wrong.

              Then again, I’m an optimist. (shrug) It takes a lot to turn Americans against Americans.

              1. Let’s see:
                Randy Weaver was entrapped by the federal government. He showed up to his court date to find it had been changed without informing him, and that he’d been found guilty in absentia. Next thing you know, his son is getting shot in the back, and his wife is getting shot in the face (while holding his baby daughter). The snipers had been given specific instructions to shoot the wife at the earliest opportunity.
                In Waco, a whackado cult was happily minding their own business, awaiting the apocalypse. I yet to see any information that they committed any crime or harmed anyone. Then the federal government made a paramilitary raid against them. And after that was repulsed, they burned nearly everyone in the compound alive.

                To the best of my knowledge, none of the “public servants” involved were ever punished.

                “Pretty twisted”, yes.
                But only on the government’s side.

                1. While those are both really nasty situations from rather evil people (I gag every time folks tell me how Clinton “wasn’t that bad”– Janet Reno!), Weaver didn’t show up to his trial about making and selling sawed off shotguns; that’s the only charge he was found guilty of, because of the evidence of attempted entrapment to make him an informant on the Aryan Nations.

                  What’s the source for the shoot orders claim?

                2. Thing is – people remember. And I’m pretty sure that neither Weaver or Waco are seen by most of the rank and file as ‘Wins For Our Side’. They get called out to put down a ‘problem’, they’re going to be a bit more resistant, and the people are going to be a lot more reluctant to ‘help’ than they were.

                  Take a look at the Bundy Ranch incident – the jackasses who did that figured all they needed to do was wave some paper and they could cow the local cretins. It didn’t work as planned – and regardless of your opinion on whether Bundy was in the right or not, what occurred was a LOT of the locals (and not so locals) going to help defend him from what they saw as a violation of due process.

                  I don’t think there’s going to be another Weaver or Waco – and they’ll think twice about attempting a Bundy.

            3. Another consideration is that a substantial amount of law enforcement, FBI, BATF and LEO’s come from a military background.

              Sure you will have your traditional “tools” but honestly i think any of those organizations who issue a Top down “kill all the revolutionaries” orders against us citizens is going to suffer an appalling amount of People calling in sick, quitting or actively dragging the agency down as much as possible.

              Even more so should they come into direct conflict with portions of the US military.

              1. This happened with the Bundy Ranch– apparently a decent number of people were explaining to their superiors how prosecution for illegal orders works….

          3. “…where does the military get its people from? People who believe this country is worth defending.“??? You ask a question, you get an answer:

            You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.
            Secretary of State John Effing Kerry

        4. “Actually, one of the venues where I find this fact too rarely considered is gun control debates, and the oft repeated canard that “no one could stand up to the U.S. military…””

          So regulars of Larry Corriea’s site may remember an individual named slipperysnake who made that very argument. On a whim i busted out a 1300 word reply using some very basic statistics obtained from 30 mins of google-fu. So basically 10 times the amount of research my opponent had apparently done.

          If you want, head over to http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/22/foudre-de-guerre/#comment-60805
          For the whole beast. I don’t mind criticisms to the math, and like I said it was only 30 mins of research, but I do spell out all my logic and assumptions if your interested. To be honest i never mind a good spirited debate 🙂

          Short version:
          Even with 100% control of law enforcement agencies that are armed and trained(unlikely) and complete control of the military(laughably unlikely) the odds would still be unjust US gobberment: 1 million. Armed, angry citizens willing to fight: 48 million. And in my math I gave the gubberment every single advantage i reasonably could.

          Simple math, kill ratio of 48 to 1 in the gubberments favor. In Iraq, using Iraq’s own numbers, the best we managed was about 20 to 1.

          Start tossing numbers like that and it begins to rapidly dismantle the “No way the average us citizen can win against the us military” argument.

          As for the good spirited debate part, apparently slippery actually tried to retort that it wasn’t a numbers game and then got himself banned before i could point out that all armed conflict is a numbers game(if you consider strategy, terrain, gear, etc, etc, as force multipliers), minus politics

          Oh well. 🙂

          1. I read that at the time, loved it. I was hoping sillysnake would take a stab at refutation.

            Alas…

          2. Organization, supply and in-fighting would be a problem for the Patriots, so it would be one of those “another victory like this and we won’t need defeat” things, but there’s no way the State would win.

            The only reason small scale gov’t force works is because there’s justification– Neo-Nazi ties and a history of illegal weapon charges, EOTW/suicide cults, taking underage girls across state lines for “marriages” to men older than their fathers, etc.

            You can assume that someone willing to wipe out a bunch of normal citizens are willing to make stuff up, but…. There’s a maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssive difference between that and “this entire city is a target. Including the McDonalds.”

            Realistically, the leaders on the gov’t side would probably be shot by their own military guards, possibly with Secret Service help.

  4. Meanwhile, Sec of State John Kerry is tweeting about protecting the oceans. Because the State Department is for environmentalism, right? I mean, it’s not like Ukraine and Iraq are burning, or anything, so they need something to do.

    Welcome to the post-reality administration.

      2. Ah, ‘Mission Creep’. Gotta love it! Gaia, Gaia uber alles!

        I can just see the next tweet. “We’re going Soylent Green with recycled veterans!”

      3. Not too surprising. This is the same agency that spend IIRC $20 million on a “green” solar project to save about $700,000 per year on utilities costs.

        1. Well, good. It’s what I ALWAYS said Obama was, including hints of sexual weirdness in his upbringing.
          It’s good to be right, even if only you and I remember, eh, Iulius?

          1. There are some very real similarities between Caligula and Obama … hmmm, better check out something….

            1. That seems an unfair comparison. Caligula appointed his horse to the Senate; the people of Nevada elected Harry Reid, California elected Babs Boxer and the citizens of the sovereign state of New York elected Schmuck Chumer.

              Mary Landrieu was elected by the former citizens of Louisiana.

              None of these match more than half of Caligula’s appointment.

                1. Talk to the Caddy Master — I have all my teeing up fees billed to my account. That way I only have the one bill to settle at month’s end.

          2. Little Boots is in fact the literal translation of Caligula. It was the nickname his father’s legions gave him when he was small, and he kept to remind them. Didn’t work in the end.

          4. Roman legions wore a sandal / boot hybrid called “caligae”. Legend is that Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was nicknamed Caligula for how he liked to strut around the legion camp of his father’s legion dressed in a small version of the uniform.

      2. One of the Persians, and then King Knut (who was making a point to his overly-fawning courtiers about the power of a king). Maybe a Roman emperor too, but I’m a bit land-locked at the moment in terms of my readily-accessible references. Someone ask Undead Gaius Iulius.

          1. I typed during the time delay. Either that or Gaius Iulius read my mind. (In which case he’s going to be mighty disappointed at the lack of content.)

                    2. 🙂

                      Njah, would have to be something else. Finnish courts are slow and very forgiving. As long as the criminal didn’t embezzle money from the government.

                  2. No, it has to be tinfoil. Aluminum amplifies the mind-control rays. That’s why the Illuminati set up ALCOA.

  5. I think I wouldn’t be so depressed if there hadn’t been so many other things happening to me and my family. I guess if you are good at holding on in bad times that your have a great grip on things during the good times. I can hope.

    1. I can sympathize. My husband’s job ends in 3 weeks. He’s retired military, has been one of those evil defense department contractors since then. Doing stuff he can’t tell me about or he’d have to kill me.

      It’s scary. It’s depressing. We are going to have to reach into our retirement savings to make it. But I do think Americans are resilient. Look to our grandparents and great grandparents who made it through the depression.

  6. Thank you for this. I agree we will come out the other end stronger and better than ever. The American idea has permeated the earth, why else would so many desperately desire to come here and participate?

    There are two thoughts at least that keep me up late at night:
    I think you are correct in your assessment of the Russians, what’s left of the former Soviet Union. The recent olympics was a snapshot of the deterioration of their infrastructure. The scary thing is, that infrastructure is replete with nuclear weapons, everything from suitcase covert bombs to the big thermonuclear boomers. And I’d bet even money they cannot now account for every last one, and as their society continues to crumble it will only get worse. Sometime between right now and the next two years I fully expect a nuke to be used in anger somewhere in the world. I think the Middle East is the likely candidate, but nowhere is completely safe. Living in a US costal city or major interior transportation hub would give me fits right now.
    The other thing is, I’ve seen how the vile progs operate, the petty vindictiveness they always revert to when they realize their grandiose schemes have crashed and burned around their ears. I expect the libs to take a drubbing come November in spite of massive cheating. That leaves a whole bunch of lame ducks in power for most of three months, and a US president even lamer duck for two full years. One who’s already demonstrated that he has zero respect for separation of powers, and will flout congress at every turn to advance his agenda of making this country more European in nature. I can see the very real possibility of sometime in the next two years an American president being impeached and removed from office for cause. Many feel that it’s already overdue, and I won’t disagree, but based on the twin historical events surrounding Nixon and Clinton it won’t be a pretty process.
    We are living in that Chinese proverb about interesting times, and it is and shall for the foreseeable future be one of great troubles as well as vast opportunities. Just remember it’s all about the journey, and nobody gets out of here alive.

    1. Re: the Russian nukes, and ISIS nabbing some helicopters, and so on. The big thing that will bite the bad guys eventually is maintenance. Nukes need to be maintained to work. A Blackhawk helicopter is a bucket of bolts flying in close formation, and even when you have an experienced ground crew doing maintenance and with full access to spare parts and fresh hydraulic fluid they can still crash. Not saying you couldn’t have a dirty nuke event, but it might not be the one the bad guys *planned*.

      Anybody else notice the sharp uptick in “jihadi work accident” explosions? Either Acme Bomb Supply is cutting corners again (or getting supplied out of Langley) or IED school never got around to the safety lecture. And you can see why they might skip that part…

      1. Oh yeah. I’d hate to be the guy in charge of their Workmans’ Comp paperwork. “Oh, shi’ite, Abdullah, not again. No, the claim for the house and two sheep goes to your umbrella and liability policy. We just handle on-the-job injury claims, remember. And your premiums are going to go up again, Ramadan or not.”

        3. Given the way most of the Islamic countries work, the claimant will be told “inshallah” and the paper shuffler will redirect the benefits to his clan.

      2. It’s pretty unlikely any 20-year old nukes that haven’t been well maintained will go off properly. Implosion devices are pretty complicated things, and you need implosion (Or one improbably big Little-Boy cannon type device) to get a proper high-yield device. Might get a fizzle or a bit of a bang, but it most likely won’t be an earth-shattering kaboom.

        1. They are terrorists. A “fizzle” of a Real Nuclear Device ™ is almost as good as a non-fizzle.

          1. Point…

            But it’s still not an ‘earth-shattering kaboom’. And if they’re looking to take out a city, it’ll be a fail if they just make a mess of a few square blocks.

          2. Given the half-life of tritium, there will be little or no fusion happening. Not to say fission is something you want to stand next to, but it is a whole different magnitude.

            1. Plutonium and U235 don’t have the longest shelf lives either. Plus, the smaller the bomb, the faster it goes from “wmd” to “expensive paperweight” on the shelf.

              1. They both have laf-lives in the megayears, unlike tritium. Near as makes no difference there’s been no change to the fission portion of the physics package.

            2. Guys, there’s a clue in the word “Terrorist’ that you seem to be missing.

              The bomb doesn’t *have* to work to turn most folks bowels to liquid. Nukes are scarier than a very scary thing to most people, and in most people’s mind there’s only a small gap between a “broken” nuke and a “fixed” one that will shortly break itself and everything around it.

      3. I’d argue that any helicopter is a failure or three from becoming freeform kinetic performance art. Something related to Maxim 11.

      4. Rantburg, IIRC, refers to these as red-wire-green-wire accidents, and at least one of the regulars usually makes a comment to the effect that they love happy endings…
        Some decades ago, there was a scheme by the CIA, IIRC during the Reagan administration, back when they could really keep secrets and do effective field work – to slip subtly defective computer chips into an illicit shipment of same going to Russia. The chips were installed in devices which controlled some important bits of infrastructure – power plants and dams, I think – and when those control systems went t*ts up in the most spectacular manner imaginable and the power plants and dams were wrecked comprehensively … the CIA looked studiously at the ceiling with an innocent expression.
        Some of the other Huns who spent more time in secret squirrel ops may remember more details.

        1. Sounds like the ancestor of Stuxnet. Which apparently still has the Iranians giving their centrifuges and other equipment sideways looks.

        2. They were flow controllers, and the Ruskies put ’em in an oil pipeline. BIG explosion. Apparently when it detonated a *different* silo of spooks thought it was a nuke test. The chip designer guy had to basically say to them “I can’t tell you anything, but it wasn’t a nuke.” Story came out much later. It was a pretty elegant hack, actually. You could test the chips and they would be fine. It was only in sustained use that they went squirrely. And as an added benefit, the Russians didn’t dare trust any of the other chips they stole 😉

    2. The mad ducks scare me too, but looking at what’s happening in SFWA, where likewise the world is collapsing around their ears, I’m sort of hoping they’re just going to throw endless brat-fits and not organize enough to do anything. (Or not want to be dangling from street lamps.)
      Let us hope. Brats we can deal with. It’s fun to make fun of.

      1. Though our congressional brats strongly resemble infants with loaded weapons. I am looking forward to breathing a sigh of relief comes January 21, 2015, and a good night’s sleep on January 21, 2017. Or depending on the outcome of events having to choose between seppuku and sitting quietly while the country burns.

        1. You have a third choice between seppuku and sitting quietly: try to make sure that as much of the pain as possible falls on those who created it.

          Let’s just hope it doesn’t end up like the Spanish Civil War or worse, if it comes to that extreme.

          1. Yes, but when you say things like that in public you get a visit from men in dark suits who have their humor glands excised.

              1. “I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can’t stand it any longer. It’s the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I’ve somehow been infected by it. Repulsive, isn’t it!?”
                -Dunno, this fits my reaction to more than a few help desk jobs I’ve had.

                  1. I don’t have access to Youtube from work, so I can’t provide it.

                    Besides, I’d probably play that scene over and over and my coworkers might overhear it.
                    😮

                  1. No, Agent Smith from the interrogation scene near the end of the first Matrix movie.

                    Reid wouldn’t be as articulate. There was no menion of the Koch Brothers anywhere in that rant, after all…

  7. I do hope, as we come out of this mess, that we can develop an educational system that shows people HOW to think. I know they all won’t, but if they at least know the process, there’s hope.

    And we seriously need some active shibboleths to early detect the transnational progressives that corrupt the very ground they slither over. A good start after this is if heads actually roll I’m not a particularly violent person, but when you see a rattle snake in your yard, you don’t just move your kids to another corner – you chop the damned head off.

    1. Or you take it over to the dump to eat rats. ‘S what we did an an airport where I worked. Lot cheaper than shooting the rats when they invaded the airport.

    2. Expose them to formal logic at an early age. My son’s school did that in 6th Grade – and he’s never looked at a commercial the same way since.

      1. I’d like to incorporate this into my kids’ learning, but I’m not sure where to start since my own formal education didn’t explicitly include logic until college.

        1. Thou Shalt Not Commit Logical Fallacies is not a bad thing to have on hand. The other thing is learning the difference between a premise (which much be agreed upon before debating) and a conclusion (which can be argued towards during the debate. A LOT of people make the mistake of confusing a conclusion for a premise—they argue from something that hasn’t been adequately proven.

        2. I vote for teaching of content. The wooliest and most useless courses at college trumpeted with–teaching how to learn. Teach the content that was taught at the turn of the 20th century.

        4. Let me dig into my old philosophy textbooks and see what I have lying around. Also, remind me in a couple of weeks, as the shipment of stuff from my parents will be here, and most of those are in that.

        5. I would start by looking at my kid and ask them “Yes, i know you think Carl is a stupid poo poo head, but prove it to me. Make me understand why he is. And please, use facts.”

          I figure if i keep using the same question just modified for the circumstance it will help my kids learn critical thinking.

          Of course i aint got kids yet, so no guarantees as to effectiveness. 🙂

          1. That’ll be surprisingly effective. Just the fact you’re asking your kid to THINK before going all emo will get them used to the idea that they’ve GOT to think instead of letting their emotions rule.

          2. That may work pretty well. I’m already introducing them to things like standards of evidence: they have certain tasks they’re required to do, and they only get credit if they have visible evidence (I can see that the bed is made/floor is picked up/latest intrepid hero has been fed to the pit snakes) or an adult who witnessed the act (e.g. that they read the book assigned/summoned the proper eldritch horror).

            1. Yes, adult supervision is essential when summoning eldritch horrors.

              Otherwise — we get Hello Cthulu…

              *shudder*

              1. Dear Lord, PLEASE — there are things the mind of man is not meant to encompass, and kawaii at that level is amongst them.

              2. My wife actually gave me a big, cuddly plush Cthulu for Christmas a few years ago. It now lives in my kids’ ball pit in our erstwhile home office, and they play with it all the time. She still doesn’t really understand what it is, or why I laughed out loud when I first saw the thing, nor do they.

                Obviously, our children are doomed.

                1. Two things:

                  Big, plush Cthulus make me laugh. As do hand-knitted Cthulus. I don’t know why.

                  Um…have you looked at your WordPress avatar?

                    3. I’m sorry — was that meant to be “Coarse ewe” or “Course yew”? I can’t figure whether you’re advocating knitting or archery.

                    6. Figured.

                      Though I did spend a minute wondering if I was missing some subtle connection between ‘sun’ and ‘Cthulu’ and maybe ‘xmas.’

                      Then I decide if I was missing such, that’d just make you the cooler mom.

                    9. For that to work a body has to have two brain cells to rub together. You’re sending the boy out into the world half-witted.

                    13. Where’d you get a brain cell? I need two! (so I can rub ’em together)

                      “I know you have a brain cell…” ‘Tis wonderful.

                    17. Yeah, I went {search engine}ing and I’ve been scrolling their catalog. Cool stuff.

                      Thanks for the link, though, always appreciated!

      2. Let me make a special plea to expose children to thinking mathematically in a real world setting. Math & Logic are very close brothers!

        Start children counting things at a young age. Teach them that numbers are their friends. Work up from there. If our children can learn math and mathematical reasoning and apply it to the real world, they will have gone a long ways to see through the lies of the progressives.

        Just having a good idea of the difference between a thousand, a million, and a billion or the difference between 1%, 0.01%, and 0.0001% will set our children ahead of *80% of the populace.

        *Fake statistic: made up on the spot.

        1. Also, get them playing with blocks, the earlier the better, and talk to them using the language of spatial relationships. I’ve read convincing research suggesting that mathematical reasoning develops more from a child’s understanding of how objects can be arranged than from their knowledge of the symbols in the number system.

    3. I do hope, as we come out of this mess, that we can develop an educational system that shows people HOW to think. I know they all won’t, but if they at least know the process, there’s hope.

      I doubt this will happen as part of the institutional education(1). However, video games do have a large problem solving component. The Internet really does expose people to conflicting primary sources in a way that textbooks rarely do.

      I think the next generation will do fine.

      (1) And I say this is an involved parent who goes to his kids’ school to teach things like critical thinking.

      1. The Internet really does expose people to conflicting primary sources in a way that textbooks rarely do.

        IF they aren’t sucked into one of those always-link-inside-the-group sites.

        Man, is my family addicted to that junk on facebook. They’ll tell a near total lie and link to three sources– two of which are sister sites, one of which is the same site, and sometimes all of them are by the same name as the “article” you’re reading!

        1. I expect a rule of ours will be supervised research. Anytime you’re online, an adult (trusted and vetted by Mom/Dad/Avo/etc.) must be there with you. They’ll be doing “research,” but really getting critical thinking lessons. Eat a lot of time? I expect so, but aren’t kids an investment in the future, anyway?

            1. Oh, yes. Also, a recent essay by Chuck Gannon via his FB where he said (paraphrasing) that he’s a centenarian, or perhaps centenary-ist. That is, in matters of policy, he tries to think of what any particular change will lead to in a hundred years. Worth proposing to wee creatures, at least as a thought experiment.

      2. One worry is that the internet doesn’t stay as open as it is now. The internet has IMO helped many people to see past the the masks as our gracious hostess noted. The Democrats really do not like Matt Drudge, et, al. Many governments around the world are looking at, actively trying to, or (e.g. China) actually controlling the content available. Sure, hackers work around censorship but most folks are not hackers.

        Keeping the internet open for free speech must be one of the things to work for.

        1. They’ll try. But a lot of the economic value of the Internet requires you to allow people to post information without censorship. You can go North Korea, but that requires accepting a North Korea level economy, which doesn’t provide nearly enough surplus for taxation.

          Also, hackers can provide tools for download for others to use.

          Remember Wikileaks? All the president’s horses and all the president’s men couldn’t make those cables a secret again. Censorship without going North Korea is a difficult problem.

  8. And I’m still rooting for a United American States, comprising Texas as well as a few other rational entities.

    1. “…comprising Texas as well as a few rational entities.”

      There, fixed it for you.

        2. Frank Dobie (of blessed memory) once said that “a Texan is a man out on a limb.” To which a later wag added, “and there’s a whole bunch of people with saws.”

        3. You haven’t tried to read my state’s constitution, have you?

          Trust me, that cures any Texan of delusions that our state is rational. Not to mention that it’s a very effective sleep aid.

  9. Letting it burn, as the other side knows, is to invite a totalitarian regime. (Only it’s as likely to be ultra-religious/social conservative “Big Man” as communist. More, actually. But never mind.)

    And this is why I really don’t want to see a “Second American Revolution”. The first was very much an aberration historically. Generally speaking armed rebellions do not have a good track record of leaving free societies in their wake.

    That does not mean that there never comes a time to take that chance and fight, just that the bar to do so is rightfully very high indeed.

    For similar reasons I am not enamored of the idea of a Constitutional Convention. Whose going to select the delegates? Same people that vote people into Washington now? There are just so many ways that can go horribly, horribly wrong.

    an armed US populace with who knows how many veterans

    About 20 million veterans. That’s more than ten times as many as there are active duty military in all services combined.

    In a “what Founding Father are you” quiz/game I got Patrick Henry. so, basically the rabble rousing firebrand?

    I can work with that. 😉

        1. The result of John Jay reminds me that I need to find some good books to brush up on my revolutionary era history: I honestly don’t remember anything about him.

              1. Adams is my favorite president. George Washington was our Cincinnatus in not running for a third term. But Adams was a sitting president who lost an election—and stepped down to serve as Jefferson’s V.P.

                  1. John Adams. The Founders were a rare collection indeed. A new revolution would have to be very lucky and blessed to have a fraction of such men.

            2. Huh, I got Adams as well. Somewhere poor John Adams is pointing at Jefferson and saying, “You rigged that quiz.”

            1. No light beer or filtered cigarettes. If we are to misbehave, let us do it well.

            2. I think there is a Sam Adams Light Beer, but since I don’t drink piss, I wouldn’t know.

          2. Rising from extremely humble origins, Hamilton was probably the most intelligent of the Founders, one of his generation’s true geniuses. As Washington’s chief aide-de-camp he was instrumental in winning the Revolution, he wrote the majority of the Federalist Papers arguing in support of the Constitution and as first Secretary of the Treasury he brokered the deal that resolved outstanding Revolutionary debt and established the banking system that fostered our growth.

            Then his eldest son died in a duel and Hamilton was never quite the same man.

            In short, you could do far worse. I recommend Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton.

        7. There once was a quiz like that that told you what classic SF writer you were. One choice was Pournelle.

          It told Pournelle he was Heinlein.

          1. The same. Maybe I should read a bit about him. The description does not exactly fit, for one thing I’m a lousy public speaker. If I get pissed enough (but not actually angry, that’s when I either leave or start breaking things) I can occasionally manage sarcastic remarks when somebody I find stupid is speaking, but that’s about it. 🙂

            1. Patrick Henry was one of the leading anti-Federalists (who where far more right than the Powers That Be dare give them credit for). And a hell of a horseman.

              1. The Federalists claimed that if you put in a Bill of Rights to protect rights in things over which the Constitution granted no power would serve as an indication that barring such a “right” the government could regulate it.

                The Federalists were right.

                The Anti-Federalists believed that barring a Bill of Rights, the government would soon be regulating away and infringing on those rights.

                The Anti-Federalists were right.

                Why, yes. As it happens, I do believe in the no win scenario.

                There is no final solution. There is no magic form of government that will ensure the rights and freedom of the people forever and ever amen. The fight is never over. Any “solution” is temporary and short term. Would-be tyrants and people who prefer a comfortable (more or less) tyranny with at least to the illusion of security to the risks and discomfort of freedom immediately begin to eat away at it.

                Or, put another way, assuming to escape the dark of the tunnel, avoid the oncoming train and emerge into the sunlight, what you find waiting is . . . another tunnel.

                That’s what all that “eternal vigilance” stuff means.

                    2. It’s not so one sided as all that: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants; it is it’s natural manure.”

                      Patriots fighting back against tyranny, or tyrants bloodily suppressing patriots. Either way you end up with the blood of both.

                    3. The Tyrants also use the blood of everybody else, though. I suppose that’s what makes them so hard to root out.

                    4. The Tyrants also use the blood of everybody else, though.

                      When you decide to go gardening, you may be surprised by which tree you’re actually watering.

                    5. Indeed. It’s disturbing to realize how atypical 1776 was. 1789, 1917, etc., are the norm, and we can’t expect to be so lucky again.

                2. Patrick Henry, as well. Hrm.

                  Some two hundred twenty seven years later, he was proven right, you know. Apparently the office of the president *can* be corrupted into a pseudo-monarchy.

                  Also, the overweening power of the political class. The Anti-Federalists had a point there, as well.

                  I’ve not the power of voice and pen that he had. *chuckle* But one could do worse.

        11. I got curious…. and got… Alexander Hamilton….

          Not sure how to feel about that…..

  10. Although I think he richly deserves it, I would not want to see Obama removed from office. First, in order for that to happen, the Republicans would have to pick up every single open Senate seat to get the 65 votes to convict. And that assumes that it would be a straight party line vote. Second, there would be a real potential for backlash. Finally, we would get Joe Biden. Rather, I would rather see a veto proof Congress dismantle as much damage done as possible and get some real tax and entitlement reform going. All while Obama is seen as the political castrati of the White House…

    2. Rather, I would rather see a veto proof Congress dismantle as much damage done as possible and get some real tax and entitlement reform going. All while Obama is seen as the political castrati of the White House…

      The problem is that he has thus far shown himself unwilling to be bound by the laws Congress passes, and has taken to using executive orders—often illegitimately—enforced by a sympathetic and compliant bureaucratic corps. So you would need not only a veto-proof Congress, but one with the determination to go to political war with the entire Executive branch, war to the knife and knife to the hilt.

      1. Which is exactly why I said one of my fears is that a Republican conservative win this year could bode a very dirty two years of nasty battle between congress and the president. Just look at der leader’s petty resentment and snarky comments with just the House against him. How much more resentment and back room tactics should he find he has the entirety of congress opposed to his grand and glorious schemes.
        If he gets too sporty with “recess” appointments and executive orders it could very well come down to congress having no option other than impeachment simply to rein him in.

      2. using executive orders—often illegitimately—enforced by a sympathetic and compliant bureaucratic corps.

        How sympathetic and compliant would they be after a conservative congress removes their job protections, and they know how easily they can be fired at 2017? Or when “following an execute order in contravention of congress” becomes a crime?

        It would be bad long term to castrate the presidency. But that would be less bad than castrating congress.

        1. The issue is finding enough legislators willing to do that. They would be pilloried in the prog media; heck, the steps they would have to take might get them scowled at by (center-right) Fox news. Like I said, political war to the knife, knife to the hilt, just what you’re describing. Also, I’m not convinced that castrating the presidency would be a bad thing. We’ve had generations of an over-powerful presidency; I’m willing to experiment with the opposite.

      3. Assuming (and there is some indication that this is the case) the judiciary comes out for the legislature and grants the standing to sue when their laws are not being implemented then I could see the executive being pruned severely. The combination of having to lawyer up while your budget is being cut could make life very interesting for out of order executive agencies

    3. At this point “President Joe Biden” doesn’t scare me one bit.

      That said, absent the “live boy/dead grrrl” it would be MUCH better for the Republicans to stand for something loud and clear rather than just being little bitches.

        1. And YES for actually standing for something that is not just DC power games and graft.

  11. RE: Jimmy Carter’s lack of “evul”.

    Jimmy Boy was not incompetent. He was, in my opinion, bought and paid for by the Saudis. Disbelieve me? Allow me to connect some dots for you, many of which are sadly forgotten.

    First off, examine what, precisely, happened surrounding the fall of the Shah of Iran. Issue one, and probably the biggest factor behind it, was that he scared the ever-loving crap out of the Saudis. Issue two, he was a solid ally of the United States, to the extent that the French were unable to effectively crack the Iranian arms market. So, the Saudis and French both had an interest in making something bad happen to Iran.

    Which they did. Jimmy Carter had a whole bunch of money suddenly show up in his campaign, early on. Sourcing for this money? A lot of it was funneled through BCCI, with Bert Lance as the probable bag man. Given the way BCCI was later used to funnel money around for various terrorist causes, it’s pretty likely that the fingerprints on that cash were originally Saudi. So, a significant part of Jimmy Boy’s campaign finance likely came via the Saudi government.

    Now, what happened as soon as Carter got into office? Hmmm? Did we suddenly discover that Iran was abusing human rights, much to our dismay and surprise? Why, yes, yes we did.

    So, we started pressuring the Iranians to “ease up” on the fundamentalists. Or, we’d cut them off. Which they did–And, as history will tell you, the moment things usually go south for any regime is not at the height of their repression, but when they try to ease off those repressive acts.

    Then, came the French. Now, France (via the good offices of one Jacques Chirac, who was France’s number one arms/nuclear technology salesman) wanted in one the Iranian market. They’d been sheltering the Imam Khomeini since he was thrown out, and controlling what contact he had with his confederates in Iran. Supposedly, that control vanished, and the French went so far as to use French diplomatic immunity to enable him to talk to his confederates, and pass on orders. Supposedly, the quid-pro-quo was to be his opening of the Iranian arms market to the French, because the number-one problem the French had with the Shah was his total loyalty to the US in terms of what weapons he spent his oil money on. You’ll remember that the French did an awful lot to castigate the human rights record of the Shah, which is a rather rich irony, considering who else they were enabling at the same time.

    So, the Shah fell, and a stalwart American ally was converted into a rather major problem. The Saudis probably wish they’d have left things the hell alone, given what happened afterwards, and the French never really managed to turn Iran into a major arms market. Instead, the Soviets were lured/driven into Afghanistan, and the follow-on conditions in the Middle East became what they are. Had the Shah been left in power, the enormity of the Iran-Iraq war would probably never have happened, and the odds are quite good that we’d be looking at a totally different situation. All because Jimmy Boy decided to play the “Great Moralizer”.

    Also, do be noting where most of the money for the Carter Presidential Library came from, and what good ol’ Jimmy has been up to. If that prick isn’t in the pay of the Saudis and other interests, he’s got a damn good basis to bill them for services rendered…

    Never blame stupidity for what can be laid at the door of corruption.

    In my opinion, Carter, and all the issues his “incompetence” created, were bought and paid for–In the finest traditions of the Democratic Party. Don’t get me started on the Clintons and the whole fiasco surrounding the deals with Loral, the Chinese, and the Indonesians. The Republicans may indeed be the “Stupid Party”, but at least they don’t have a solid record of selling out our national interests for money, the way the Democrats do. Clinton should have been impeached for what went on surrounding the Loral deal, but the jackasses in Congress lacked the balls to go after them for it–Mostly, because some of their favorite “money interests” were also parties to the deal.

    1. I’d like to see some evidence behind some of the funding allegations, something with more veracity than Glenn Beck or WND would publish. Something at least at the NY Times level of “truth”.

      1. Alan Dershowitz and the Federation of American Scientists good enough for you?

        http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/16ga.htm

        http://www.factsandlogic.org/outstanding_dershowitz2.html

        Those are the first two “reliable” sources I came up with on a search. This stuff isn’t news, if you know where to look at it. I knew an Iranian who got out of Iran just ahead of the Revolutionary Guards, and who’d been in the employ of the CIA as an informant over there. When I first heard this guy ranting as a teenager, I thought he was nuts. Then, when I researched it, a whole lot of very interesting things came up, like the convenient sweetheart loan that saved the Carter family business, which was backstopped by the people behind BCCI. I’ve heard this same story, multiple times, from people who worked in Iran before the revolution, and who were in a position to know things about what was going on behind the scenes. One of them was a former Colonel in the Iranian Air Force who’d been working in procurement, which was how he knew about the French influence on what happened.

        Hell, even if you just rely on the open-source conventional history of the whole thing, there’s more than enough to connect the dots. Watch how the Iranians went from “good guys” in the media to “demonic human-rights abusers” in just a few short years. That didn’t just happen by accident, either. SAVAK may have been a nasty organization, but they killed fewer Iranians in their entire history than the Revolutionary Guards and the mullahs managed in just the first year they were in power.

        1. I wasn’t doubting you–it sounded right. But “Sounds right” and “I can throw this in the face of a twit” require two different levels of proof.

          Reading hte links now.

  12. It’s impossible to fully control the US due to three factors: 1) It’s simply too big. larger than the EU. That means very long supply lines which are very vulnerable to attack. 2) The terrain is too rough. You’re talking about thousands of cities, not to mention numerous mountain ranges, swamps, forests, etc. We can’t find methheads cooking up the back roads. Do you really think we’ll easily find and armed group that wants to stay hidden? Not to mention that thanks to number one, there are plenty of ways to disrupt lines of communication. Heck, a well armed platoon could shut down most of the traffic through the mountains between Denver and Grand Junction. 3) There’s too much knowledge available. Despite what many people like to say, we are one of the most educated people in the world. Not necessarily credentialed, but educated. That knowledge would be quickly exploited. Think pressure plate IEDs are bad? Wait until the undergrad engineering students at the local college decide to take a crack at it with the full machine shop one of them has in his garage and a couple trips to Radio Shack. Any civil war would see homemade weapons within the first year that would make the Iraqi insurgency look like playground bullies.

    The Russians may be weakening, but they can still do a lot of damage. So can the Chinese. My only hope is that those two end up fighting each other before us.

    I said the other day that my fear is we’re staring at 1610 or so and the US is the Holy Roman Empire. Any upheaval won’t be short or limited, it will be long and bloody. We’ll see the nation break apart into regions fighting one another across long front lines, with foreign weapons and troops pouring in.

    Immigration will always be an issue because it always has been. Personally, I’m all for giving them guns and military training and sending them back across the border to overthrow the Mexican government.

    1. My wife has been saying for years that we need to invade Mexico and make it the 51st state…

      1. Mexico could be five or six good sized states. It would be a bottomless money pit. Think having to bring everything to US standards set by law and corruption that makes New Jersey seem like a study in rigid ethics.

      2. I’ve thought the same thing. We would be better off annexing northern Mexico and placing it under a military governor for the next twenty years while we sort things out. After that they can vote on whether to remain a territory or become a full state.

        1. Never happen, though. We’d have to have a reason to go in that would satisfy the Jacksonian majority. Something like being the conduit for a nuclear attack on US soil. Or an invasion, or something more than flooding us with more-or-less non-violent illegals. And then we’d have to become – more or less, again – the imperialist monsters we’ve never been (recently, please disregard US history in toto, and arguments for and against, por favor) in order to subjugate it, and then to hold it. I don’t see it happening, despite what we – and they, don’t forget – would get out of the deal.

          Now, me, I’d like to steamroll south and retake the Canal. Because profit. And drastically narrow the border.

          1. We have a great reason to go in. By the numbers the pro-illegal side uses there are millions of Latin Americans who risked death and poverty to come to America. Because of that risk each immigrant here represents dozens who never started or turned back. So Latin America is full of people who want to be Americans. Seems like a good enough reason for me.

            Latin America isn’t a massive money pit. There are resources and opportunities aplenty. The biggest problem is that – thanks to a couple of centuries worth of history of default and/or nationalizing industries – they don’t have access to capital. Put them under US law and money will pour in from the north, making everyone involved richer.

            1. Many Latin Americans want to be part of the US. But are they anywhere near the majority? Do we have the stomach to deal with the insurgency?

              1. Here’s the thing — for good or ill, when we’re done with this mess, if we come out the other end all right, we’ll have the stomach to deal with ANYTHING.

                1. What if we end up making the Romans look like wimps?

                  I don’t have a plot for that, but it sounds like a fun idea.

                  1. What if we end up making the Romans look like wimps?

                    If this goes on, and we get pushed to the breaking point, well, let’s just say that history will remember a certain Mongol as “Timur the Gentle” by comparison.

                    1. Nah, he’ll still be “the Lame”, but it won’t be a reference to a gimpy leg.

              2. We don’t have to deal with the insurgency. One of the reasons Mexico, for example, is so adamantly against a rational immigration policy is because the establishment there is desperately afraid of what would happen if the lower classes didn’t have a northern neighbor to flee to. All we’d need to do it overturn the current status quo, and the natives will take care of any nascent insurgency.

            2. “””
              So Latin America is full of people who want to be Americans.
              “””

              They want the benefits of being Americans, but they don’t want to be what we would consider “American”. They mostly have socialist world views.

              1. They want to be Americans, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they understand what that entails. That’s why we need to have a couple of decades of acclimatization before they’re fully admitted as states.

      3. No – you train the illegals and send them back and tell them to make Mexico (and points south) a country lie ours.

    2. Immigration will always be an issue because it always has been. Personally, I’m all for giving them guns and military training and sending them back across the border to overthrow the Mexican government.

      There’s some indication that the militia resistance to the cartels is sparked by immigrants (illegal or no) returning home and taking some American lessons with them. I do not have the cite on hand. *hangs head*

      Mayhaps small villages in cartel territory would make fine training grounds for SF A teams?

      1. Well, the US Army has traditionally conducted operations in Mexico before major conflicts. It’s kind of like training wheels for young officers.

        1. The special joy of an SF deployment comes when, with minimal U.S. personnel, the native population is encouraged to solve the problem themselves. With the training and equipment to make it stick. And leadership, as needed.

          There’s a lot of folks stuck in cartel controlled areas, and their patience is wearing thin.

          But…sovereignty and such.

    3. “Heck, a well armed platoon could shut down most of the traffic through the mountains between Denver and Grand Junction.”

      Funny way to write “One man with an RPG”.

      1. You need more than one man. 30-40 folks, operating in teams of 5-6 could shut down multiple routes at once and keep operations going for an indefinite period of time.

        1. Looking at it on Bing maps, it looks a little better than the passes between North and South Washington… but not by much.

          One guy, a 4-wheeler he knows how to use, and enough physical strength to push rocks down slopes and down cut trees.

          In a couple of places, shift the rivers/streams I can see coming out of other valleys over so they run on the road– it’ll eat the road away horrifyingly fast.

          If there are chain retaining walls, then it gets easier….

        2. With 30 sociopaths with bad attitudes and sufficient training I could shut this entire country down.

          A couple RPGs would shut 70 for a good while, especially if you drove the route a few times and picked just the right spot. Then hit a tanker truck at that spot.

          That causes traffic to back up. A couple more RPGs into the backup and walk away.

          That’s going to put a HUGE hitch in things.

          Rinse, lather, repeat on other routes.

          1. In the absence of additional forces to interdict secondary routes, and yet more forces to harass responders, no.

            Your 30 man force could significantly impact scheduling, cost large sums of money, impact many, many lives, yes. Shut down the country?

            Timing, logistics and opposition are against you.

            1. Some engineer/Army ROTC types I knew figured how to do this on the cadet lounge whiteboard on 9/12/2001, though it was more of a ‘what anyone with any intelligence would do with four airplanes’ exercise than a ‘shut down the country’ exercise–that was just the result that would have occurred. Their ideas involved airplanes, dams, and seasonal water flow quantities, and I’m pretty sure they were solid on the math. I should’ve copied it down: it would’ve been great use for an apocalypse novel some day if I ever want to write one.

              1. Oh, I’m not saying there are no methods for nationwide devastation and disruption. There are, and they shouldn’t be discussed in public.

                I’m just saying the proposal to use a limited number of personnel to disrupt key roadways with the target of ‘shutting down the country’ has some massive obstacles, and overcoming them without additional forces is unlikely, at best.

                There are many (frighteningly many) table-top scenarios that could introduce disruption to key mechanisms of our nation. The costs in money and lives could rapidly become staggering. The time to full restoration can be days, weeks, months… Years is hard to reach. (Though regional disruption is much easier. L.A. could easily be rendered uninhabitable for an extended period.)

                But they’re based on restoration to current norm, and do not (cannot) effectively account for non-centralized work-arounds and localized solutions.

                Just a for-instance, significant damage to roadways can be done with relatively minimal skill and common resources. Restoration to current norm (standards, limits, engineering, etc.) is not an overnight process. Fixing damage so that traffic may flow through the route without regard to NHTSA/DOT/EPA/ABC standards can happen overnight. Re-routing to existing but sub-optimal roadways is even faster.

                We are vulnerable, we will always be vulnerable. The blows can always come, and the damage can be shocking and painful. But I’ve spent enough time looking at what dirt-poor people with little/no education in subsistence-level (or below) economies can accomplish, usually with multiply redundant systems, to see the U.S. ‘shut down’ by short-term sabotage.

                1. L.A. could easily be rendered uninhabitable for an extended period.

                  Didn’t that happen years ago?

                  , Fixing damage so that traffic may flow through the route without regard to NHTSA/DOT/EPA/ABC standards can happen overnight.

                  I may or may not have talked quietly to some folks who knew folks who took delivery trucks over to Seattle last time the main, legal highways were flooded and it was shut off from everything for a week.

                  There are a LOT of old logging roads that are still perfectly good, except for the big ditches that the Forest Service dug in the entry when Clinton was in office.

                  Some of those ditches may be only on paper, now. Not like the folks who are paid to go check them each year can be bothered to actually do it.

                  1. “I know a guy…”

                    Many things can be overcome when enough people know enough other people.

                2. Oh, I’m not saying there are no methods for nationwide devastation and disruption. There are, and they shouldn’t be discussed in public.

                  This. Currently, we are lucky that the terrorists aren’t very smart. If we give them ideas, then we’re not being very smart ourselves, are we?

                  I CAN shut down the country with 500 people, and it could easily be done with not terribly high-dollar financing, but you won’t see a description out there on any website I have ever visited.

                  1. *nod*

                    A hold-over from 9/11 is that people ARE watching for things like, say, a guy with a 4-wheeler that’s unusually close to the rock net with a pair of bolt cutters.

                    However, those do overlap very heavily with the folks who would be DOING IT if the gov’t suddenly became Stupid Evil, so….

                    2. There’s a lot of names, but it’s the thing put up to avoid landslides.

                      You know those metal mesh/net fences used in junk yards? Imagine that big enough to cover a large rock face that has a lot of rocks sliding down.

                      There’s usually a few points you can cut that would get them down…but folks who live in the area would probably cut YOU down, first.

                    3. There’s usually a few points you can cut that would get them down…but folks who live in the area would probably cut YOU down, first.”

                      I live in a rather vertical area. Rock nets only became common around here in the last ten years or so. Still have signs for “danger! fallen rocks!” around, too. Still several blasting zones, too.

                      Bolt cutter and four wheeler? I think we can usually fix a minor rock slide in a matter of hours (no masses greater than ten tons or so individually, less than a few hundred tons total scree), being that these places are often close to coal mining routes. Can’t speak for what would happen to said mischief-maker, though. Those types don’t tend to stick around long for some reason.

              2. Even if they didn’t use classified information, some of that is sensitive– same way I don’t mention what video game it is that has an accurate layout of a currently in service military ship, even though my husband used it in a practice “terror attack” design at one point.

              3. Actually, I-70 is VERY vulnerable. Blow up five bridges (no large charges needed), especially elevated portions in Glenwood Canyon, the tunnels/bridges just east of Idaho Springs (or the bridges IN Idaho Springs, but those would be harder — too open), and a couple of other places (the I-70 Eisenhower tunnel, for instance), and traffic across the mountains either east or west becomes very difficult. I can set explosives in eight places in Colorado Springs and totally cripple this city. Give me enough explosives, and I can make the city totally uninhabitable. What’s hilarious is that I have that capability because of my Air Force training!

      2. One man with an RPG is subject to interdiction.

        A well armed platoon is more likely to be interdicting.

    4. Wait until the undergrad engineering students at the local college decide to take a crack at it with the full machine shop one of them has in his garage and a couple trips to Radio Shack.

      And then they hook up with the old farmer down the road who has been fixing his 1954 John Deer or the ’40s International since his grandfather dragged him out to the shop.

      For fun, throw in ranch kids who grew up hitting jack rabbits, in the dark, from the back of a moving pickup on a rough field.

      And they’re yelling at their cousin who is right next to you.

  13. The interesting part will be when the welfare benefits get cut. I want to be out of the ghetto before that happens – someone will probably lynch my pale while arse just on general principles.

  14. The current Children’s Crusade at our border is our Intifada. Didn’t work with the Israelis and won’t work with us. It is aimed at making us recoil in horror from being the bad guys. Guess what? A half-man 15 year old throwing stones at me would get shot just as easily as a 25 year old. Stones will kill you.
    The potential I see with the failure to keep control of weapons and looking weak in the middle east is that one of these groups may be emboldened to make a REAL attack on the US. Not a couple billion dollars and 3,000 dead but a whole city. I don’t think they can imagine what would happen. Afghanistan has never been defeated and kept suppressed since Alexander the Great, but I can envision an Afghanistan depopulated of every village and the few goat herders left afraid to show themselves to the sky because death arrives to anything that moves.
    We aren’t that far from boiling over in the southwest US. If all these thousands of teens who won’t have any job but theft or prostitution cause as much trouble as I think it is possible people will finally be driven to shoot/shovel and shut up. Especially the farmers tired of their fences destroyed and cattle killed or lost loose.
    The vets are trained – but there are a surprising number of people like me who never were a soldier or a cop – but I can hit an orange sized target out to 300 meters first round even on a windy day. My sweet little wife who had never shot a gun before I took her to try can skip going to the range for three years and then knock down a line of juice cans at 100 meters like she shot yesterday. She informs me it is like riding a bike and she isn’t going to forget. Me – I’m merely human – I have to practice.

    1. Practice every chance you get, but stock up on ammo as much as possible, because that practice is going to use up a lot of it.

      But that’s good.

      I’m very proficient with an AR-15. But I’m also good with all of our old bolt-action rifles. (My husband collects )

      I’m thinking you don’t want to be close enough to a bad guy to be proficient with a handgun, depending on how the layout is.

      1. Handguns are useful for the good and sufficient reason that you can keep them with you and readily accessible during your normal everyday activities. That’s mostly why the police carry them. If you know you’re heading into trouble you carry a rifle or shotgun, depending on the situation and terrain.
        All that said, you really don’t need to be proficient with a handgun, for some values of “proficient.” You just need enough familiarity with them to operate them safely and know which end to aim in the general direction of a threat.

      2. Old Mosin-Nagants are cheap – you can find arsenal-refurbished ones for well under $200. Yeah, they’re bolt action and an old design – but they’ll put a hole where you aim it at a pretty good range.

        And 7.62x54r is cheap in surplus tins. Beats a ‘Barbie gun 😉 ‘ in penetrating power, if not in speed of shooting.

        1. You can buy a modern bolt action, the Savage Axis, in either .223, .308 or other calibers for a MSRP of ~360 bucks. There is no reason to get an antique that uses unusual ammunition.

          I realize that not everyone has money to burn, but there are some things you just don’t cheap out on.

          And as for the “Barbie Gun”. Tell you what, I’ll give you a 20 second head start and then commence shooting. Wanna play?

          1. Just using Ringo’s term for it. 😉 No offense meant or implied.

            And as far as ‘unusual’ ammo goes – local store’s got 440 round tins of it for about $120. Bringing the total cost to under $300.

            Way I look at it, if you can fire one of those accurately over a reasonable distance, you can get something that costs a lot more when the previous owner doesn’t have a need for it any more.

              1. No FFL, so that kind of limits my options, I can have a local gun shop do the transfer, but that in itself will drive the price up. And the local price is about $160, so…

                    3. Sorry, the most common Finnish variation of Mosin-Nagant. There were other names too. Users thought sights resembled the ears of the dog, I think.

                      And I used to think that the older men were talking about their dogs when I heard them use that name when I was very young, except sometimes the contexts were kind of weird for dogs. 🙂

              3. uhm… sure you can, when they have it in stock. Hence why I have some Winchester 54R brass.

            2. The two most common rifle calibers (in terms of rounds per $time_unit sold) are .223 and .308. If you’re planning on bad times you plan for this.

              The Mosin-Nagant’s were fine rifles in the late 1800s, and yes, they’ll still get the job done, but modern rifles with modern metallurgy, modern triggers, set up for modern scope mounts and with modern polymer stocks are *so* much better that you’re doing yourself a GRAVE disservice by looking at something made on another continent before almost anyone around today was born.

              If you’re counting on it to save your life or your civilization you don’t have to spend a fortune, but you need to NOT be a cheap charley.

              And yeah, I’ve been hearing “Poodle shooter” for a long time, it’s not Ringo’s term, It’s Col Cooper’s term.

      3. I figure that 90 minutes last Saturday cost me ~150 bucks (200 rounds of .308 plus range fees) and a bruised shoulder (The PTR-91 is not a gentle weapon, especially benchresting. OTOH, it ran like a Toyota).

    2. It’s the idiots playing the “knockout game” that worry me. Pick on someone carrying or accompanied by people carrying, and we have a situation custom made for the grievance industry.

      1. Oh, didn’t you hear about that?

        The NYC cops were looking for a guy they suspected of “hunting” young “minority males.”

        He was suspected of walking down dark alleys or in bad neighborhoods, then shooting the bastards when they tried to assault him.

        At least two of the thugs were “victimized” that way, with a possibility of six last I heard.

          1. “Knock-out game,” specifically.

            Racially motivated assault with intent. (If you’re beaten unconscious, it’s likely you’ll die if you don’t get medical help.)

                1. Been a long time since I saw it, but as far as I remember the character did something like that at least a few times – lure muggers etc by pretending to be an easy victim, then kill. There is a whole series of those movies, but I have seen only the first.

                  1. Sadly, I think it’s possible that the “suspect” was actually several different victims who simply weren’t the easy targets that the thugs expected.

                    2. Especially since they used a gun, and if by some miracle it was legal it would still be taken away during the investigation and may not be returned.

                      And they’d put your name all over the place.

                      Great survival strategy.

              2. I see it was done in the early 70s and is very highly rated; that suggests that even when things were rather notoriously sucky, the “fine, then WE’LL fix it” impulse was strong.

                1. It was a very popular movie series in its time. And there were several cheaper b-movie versions of the same theme made during that decade.

        2. Non-descript man, average height, average build, likely dressed as a tourist, answers to the name of “Jack”?

        3. I have to suspect that the NYC cops aren’t looking all that hard. In fact, might just be one of their own off duty or retired.

    3. Perhaps more important than directly martial skills is the strength of local institutions and communities. In places like the South and the Mountain West – heck, even the rural parts of New England – people will pull together to take care of each other. I have an… interesting relationship with some of my neighbors here in Utah, but if I needed a hand building or fixing something urgently, I could have twenty guys on my property in a matter of hours, half of them or more from the local LDS congregation. If that crew needed feeding, the women (and some of the men) in every community I’ve ever been in would bury them in food. Civil society has taken a beating, but it’s still there, and it’s alien to the vile progs. They don’t understand that people can pull together to do amazing things without some apparatchik telling them what to do.

      2. There’s even hope near Seattle.

        There was that big, nasty mud slide.

        Everybody found alive was found because of the very much officially discouraged volunteers who did a full on “whatever” to requests that they stop looking for their neighbors.

        Some came from the opposite side of Seattle to help….

      3. This is why I mentioned Last Centurion yesterday: it’s the random free associators who always pull together that prove you can’t keep US down.

        1. And ironically enough, why if things get bad enough, we bounce back with a *vengeance.*

          Many random free associators only know their own group. Family, church, and so on. The bigger the disaster, the farther people will come. And there are always those that *have* to do something.

          This is why the pendulum pushers need to be wary. Push us hard enough, cause enough havoc trying to engineer a crisis they can take advantage of, and these far-flung groups will become aware of each other. I believe many “Tea Party” like groups sprout up like this, too.

          We’re Americans. We can endure rather a lot, despite the whining and carping over micro-concerns we see in the media. When it comes to pass that we cannot live our lives, raise our kids, do the work that is in front of us, and pursue happiness in our own weird way (without messing in anyone else’s business), when we can’t do all these things without excessive meddling by the state, then there may be a kind of standing resistance.

          Not violent revolution, we’re Americans, we don’t do that sort of thing without a damned good reason. But a quiet understanding among the adults in the room, a “this is what works, forget what they’re trying to shove down our throats” attitude, that could happen.

          It’s not without its flaws. What the current situation is doing to the rule of law, I am not pleased to see. What new traditions may be forming, I wonder at. That’s another thought to explore later: what traditions are forming that will impact the next generation (fifty years or so)? Laws can be altered, interpreted, changed. Traditions take root, they don’t always go away easily.

          1. What Instapundit calls ‘Irish democracy’ – a sullen, stubborn, unspoken non-compliance with the wishes and dictates of the State.
            Works for me.

      4. Yeah, I actually feel pretty safe here in Provo. And if not the church, I’ve got loads extended family in Utah.

        1. If things really, REALLY got bad, I’d probably have to go back to Louisiana. Not because I like it, but because I, too, have extended (cubed) family there, and you can grow just about anything in the state. Besides, outside the large towns or cities, land is usually inexpensive.

      5. Heck much the same applies in San Diego county. As witness the recent fires. People check on neighbors and co-workers to make sure they were OK. Firefighters from afar got their meals paid for. People chipped in to board evacuated horses, pets and the like. People offered other people spare rooms, sofas …

        Now the logistics that went behind getting the firefighters all over the state down there was something else. As was the extreme skill said firefighters displaying in preventing actual property damage. But a lot of self-organization helped with the evacuation to let them get on with fighting the fire and I’m fairly sure negihbors have helped for those relatively few families who ended up being burned out.

    4. My sweet little wife who had never shot a gun before I took her to try can skip going to the range for three years and then knock down a line of juice cans at 100 meters like she shot yesterday.

      Guess it’s a girl thing?

      The whole time I was in the Navy, the only time I shot was to qualify for the 9mm for watch. Never had a problem, although I’m not the “six shots, one hole” type. First time I ever shot my new revolver I was horrified at the spread… from right over the heart of the target, to just below the ribs on the opposite side about equally far from center.

        1. I’d never heard of that term before, but my dad held the target up to his chest and said “…I think it would stop him.”

          2. More seriously, I’d have to watch you shoot but it sounds like you were losing the front sight with a slight flinch as the sequence progressed. Or the revolver grips are a touch too small for you and the revolver was shifting in your hands. Either can make a progression down and left.

            1. Learning a new weapon, mostly– I can’t remember which one was first, but I was aiming at the dead center and alternated on either side in my missing, although I did get closer to the middle each time. Probably right on the flinching, though. I’m twitchy.

              I see no reason to aim for the heart on purpose! (Especially not since I use “home defense rounds” for real stuff– they’re made not to go through walls. That means they don’t hold up when they go through people…..)

                1. A round to the brainpan almost certainly WILL stop an attacker. But it’s a small target when your adrenaline cuts out fine motor skills in the interest of survival. Center mass is a MUCH larger target, and a few rounds through that have a good chance of causing loss of hydraulic pressure, resulting in your attacker not attacking anymore.

                    1. Also, stressed people tend to shoot high. “Center mass” is located just a bit above the pelvis…

                    2. When people are talking about shooting, they usually mean the “center mass” of the torso– like those targets. “Middle of big blob there” rather than “point where weight is balanced.”

                    3. The important thing is to get people trained to go “that’s the biggest part of my attacker I can see. I will aim for dead center of that thing.”

                      Bigger target, less likely to miss.

      2. I believe I have seen it claimed that women are blessed with better hand-eye coordination that we might shoot dead any men who think to use their superior size and strength illicitly against us….

        My mother has shot a rifle once. Perfectly centered bullseye. I’ve only shot handguns (took the course while I was in CT, never got around to the license, sadly, would have to start over now anyway and really should). I’m afraid the results were unremarkable though.

        1. I believe Arizona has an out of state CCL, which may or may not cover your state and which takes either honorable military service or online training courses that regularly come up on “Groupon” to qualify for.

        2. PK, I’d love to believe that, but even with my improved glasses, you are still very safe standing in front of me if I’m trying to use a long gun. Pistol’s much better, and I haven’t tried shotgun since [four digit year that starts with 1].

  15. As much as I may worry about the future, I at least take comfort that God seems to show a special fondness for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.

  16. Re Iraq, the instigators are clearly ISIS/Al Qaida, but the meat of the fighting is the same team we ended up converting and winning with when we were there, the Sunni tribes. Since we left, the Shia government, dominated by the mullahs across the border in Iran, has royally screwed over the Sunni, and they finally got fed up and made a call to the AQ people they had been supporting fighting over the other border in Syria, who were now underemployed, with “Hey, Ahmed, since your available, we’ve got some work for you over here…”

    The Iraqi government has called in frigging Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps experts to help them in the current fighting, for gosh sakes, and the newsies I was watching were all chortling at how any US airstrikes the Lightbringer authorized would be called in by Iranian IRGC troops directing fighting on the ground – Har Har on those dumb Americans!

    The best teevee I’ve seen on this was last night on the BBC world news feed, where a clearly so-far-left-he-should-fall-over BBC correspondent asked the Kurdish semiautonomous region’s PM if they were going to pitch the Pesh Merga into the fight to help save the bacon (so to speak) of the Bagdad government, and the very well spoken Kurd said, in effect, “Oh, Hell No!”

    I see his point – in a fight between Iran and Al Qaida, perhaps we should pop popcorn and watch.

    1. If the Pesh Merga show up in Baghdad…

      Well, saving the government is probably not on the itinerary.

      There’s some hard dudes in that outfit.

      1. Well, fifty years of to-the-knife with the Turks, the Iranians, the Iraqis, the Syrians, even the Russians…well, pretty much everyone even remotely in the neighborhood will generate some hard dudes indeed.

  17. Depressed? I thought you were reading my mind, writing my thoughts. Truth is truth and it isn’t depressed to write what is happening and what is likely to happen. I loved that post and I spread it far and wide to my 60+ email list and to at least 9 groups on Facebook. Thanks for writing it, no apologies accepted.

      1. I know all is not lost, I am a depression baby, came out of really, really poor OKies. All my sibs and I have done well, all have been through many ups and downs. But it is definitely not the country I wanted for my great grandchildren who are already in it. Despair and seeing what is reality are two different things.

  18. I will, I promise, go back and read the rest of the comments when I’m not so tired. Meanwhile I wanted to comment on “and as for Israel… pray for Israel.”

    I sometimes wonder how much thought the camel-pesterers have given to the probable consequences of cornering a nation descended from those Jews who were tough enough to survive the death
    -camps. At some point the Israelis are going to (to use Mencken’s wonderful phrase) hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.

    2. Last week’s kidnapping of Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali might just have accomplished that. If the three boys are (Heaven forbid) not recovered safely, or if those responsible for their abduction turn out to have been released as a “good-will gesture” or in exchange for other hostages—expect serious talk of hangings. (And one of the boys is a U.S. citizen, which is not being completely ignored by the Kerry State Department.)

      1. Yes, I know. I echoed the article about it on FB. This time, unlike with the Toure douche lip-flapping, no anti-semites came out of the woodwork. Which is good, because in the frame of mind I’m in — GRRRRR>

    3. Most Israelis aren’t descended from Holocaust survivors, but Jews who either lived in the Middle East (Arab Jews, as they were called prior to 1948) or East European Jews who moved to what was called then Palestine prior to the holocaust.

      It would take a lot to get Jews to actually target civilians in large numbers. Yes, it happened in 1948 – but that was a pretty desperate population so soon after the holocaust, and even then the IDF allowed most Palestinians to escape.

      To add to the difficulty, the Israeli elites know that they and their families would be welcome abroad if worse came to worse, but only if Israel doesn’t first become a pariah nation by upsetting what Tom Kratman calls “international community of the very caring and sensitive”.

      1. It doesn’t necessarily mean indiscriminately targeting civilians: If Israel decided one day to loosen their targeting guidelines and drop splodey things on the public leadership of the various Palestinian groups, so as to induce some pain closer to those giving the orders, I don’t think there would be any more condemnation than occurs when Israel does anything other than lie supine.

        1. Well, excluding what is brought forth from The Lightbringer, who simply hates that he cannot state he hates Israel.

    4. . . . And I suspect the Israelis will not pay much heed to Billary’s declaration today that the heads of the PA are “technocrats and professionals” (as compared to the less civilized gents of Hamas). I was not aware that t-e-c-h-n-o-c-r-a-t was an alternative spelling of “terrorist.”

      1. I’m trying to figure out when “technocrat” became a good thing. It’s a “progressive” thing, isn’t it?

        But, then, I remember when Doctor Who fought against a league of scientists who wanted to take over the world and rule it “according to scientific principles”…

      2. From The Times of Israel: “Doctors in Israel performed surgery on Amina Abbas, the wife of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, at a private clinic near Tel Aviv over the weekend, as tensions between Israel and the PA mounted over the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers by Palestinian terrorists.”

        A significant number of Syrians have found refuge in Israel preferrable to anywhere else in the area.

    5. It is accepted in certain circles that the Israelis have perhaps as many as 100 tactical nukes in their arsenal. It would take massive provocation for them to employ that solution, but when faced with an enemy that publicly states over and over again that they intend to wipe you and your family off the face of the earth, you can’t exactly expect that such weapons to be completely off the table.
      Never again is the slogan of the JDL for very good reason.

    6. Iran is banking on the “Western world” to keep Israel from going Genghis Kahn on the Arab world, but the first nuke launched at Tel Aviv will be the end of the Arabs. The “Jericho” missile has a 1500-mile range carrying a 250KT nuke weapon. The often-talked-about (outside of Israel) “Masada” missile can reach Islamabad from the Mediterranean coast. Nobody outside of the Israeli Defense Forces knows its true range. I was never able to learn whether it carried a single warhead, or was MIRVed. I also don’t know how many of what type of missile Israel has in its arsenal, but the “Iron Dome” missile defense system indicates that Israelis would not be sloppy in building such a force. Israel would have no qualms with launching a retaliatory attack.

      Personally, the one thing the United States could do that would ensure a lasting Middle East peace would be to fly a dozen B-52 and B-1 bombers over the Gaza Strip, dropping 1000-lb bombs, followed up by “don’t make us come over here again.” It won’t happen, but it would work.

  19. “What can’t go on, won’t” nicely sums up the current situation. As you pointed out, the Leftist worldview is informed by a mélange of long since discredited 19th century ideologies.

    Maintaining their fantasy world requires them to continually attack and attempt to pull down traditional understandings of the world that arise from everyday human experience.

    The reason they will lose is because humans are inherently tradition-building creatures (note how reliably groups of “nonconformists” form their own rigid customs).

    Combating traditions based on real-world experience with theoretical make-believe takes a tremendous expenditure of resources and effort. As you said, the Left made gains only after decades of concerted effort. Now their human capital and propaganda are nearly exhausted.

    The only way that an ideology like theirs could have overcome intrinsic human tradition-building would’ve been to turn humans into something else. Many Leftist thinkers seemed to realize this, hence their championing of “progressivism”–the belief that human nature is malleable. That is the central tenet of their anti-philosophy which has now been tested and proven false.

    Tangentially, Sarah, it’s a shame that you can’t run for president.

    1. The need for humanity to be malleable is why the Soviets had Lysenkoism as their official policy for so long, despite the damage it was obviously doing to their biological science knowledge.

    2. Tangentially, Sarah, it’s a shame that you can’t run for president.
      What do you mean? I have a Certificate of Airport Birth for Sara right here in my laser printer Officially Stating she was born in the Diamond Head Terminal of Honolulu International Airport, before she and her parents immediately boarded a return flight to Portugal.

      That works, right?

    3. There are two ladies in TX ready to swear I was a home birth, recorded on their family Bible, before I was stolen away, possibly by Portuguese Gipsies. I can pick either of them 😉

  20. I have to disagree with the thought about Russia. With the Middle East spiraling out of control, they have Europe over a barrel.
    That can cover a multitude of weaknesses, at least over the short term.

    And yes, pray for Israel.

    1. Well, if Israel can bring their new natural gas fields on-line quickly enough…

      It’ll just give Europe another reason to hate them, but it’ll give both of them a chance to break the Russian stranglehold.

  21. If (when?) the fecal matter really does hit the rotary object the thing to recall is that the US is in fact self sufficient in pretty much everything. Most other countries are not.

    Russia should be but may not be organized enough to actualy be. China probably is except for thngs like oil, iron ore and tasty food – it is IIRC self suffiicent in basic cereals. The middle east is definitely not. For the most part if shipping gets dangerous the middle east will starve to death.

    1. There is some evidence that the Brotherhood was booted in Egypt because the population was getting hungry. I wonder what is the food situation in Syria and Iraq.

  22. Pick the single most significant item out of this story:


    Time Warner boss denies CNN’s liberal bias
    By Blake Seitz | June 17, 2014 | 9:31 am
    A conservative lawyer drew applause Friday when he questioned Time Warner Chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes about CNN’s liberal bias at the company’s annual shareholder meeting.

    The questioner, Justin Danhof, is general counsel for the conservative National Center for Public Policy Research. He attended the Los Angeles meeting to represent David Ridenour, the center’s vice president and a Time Warner shareholder.

    Time Warner’s shareholder meeting is not the first corporate party Danhof has crashed. He has also posed tough questions to CEOs of Walgreens, Starbucks and Monsanto on behalf of the center.

    Danhof listed examples of CNN’s bias, such as CNN President Jeff Zucker’s decision not to cover the unfolding Benghazi scandal while increasing coverage of climate change.
    Sign Up for the Politics Today newsletter!

    “If a terrorist attack that kills four Americans, followed by a coordinated cover-up by the White House, no longer constitute news, then CNN should remove the middle ‘N’ from its name,” Danhof said.

    Danhof cited CNN’s promotion of David Chalian to political director as a further example of bias. Chalian was caught on tape at the 2012 Republican National Convention saying the GOP is “happy to have a party with black people drowning” in Hurricane Isaac, a major storm which coincided with the convention. Yahoo News fired Chalian for the comment.

    After airing CNN’s dirty laundry (the full transcript is available here) Danhof asked Bewkes whether he would admit CNN’s liberal bias. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “roughly half the audience burst into applause” after Danhof posed the question.

    Bewkes demurred. “I hear your views, I understand them, I’m not admitting what you ask,” he said, though he added that Danhof’s criticism was “a very constructive thing.”

    After the meeting, Danhof expressed disbelief at Bewkes’ response. “Mr. Bewkes is either blindly unaware or callously indifferent to what is going on at CNN,” Danhof said. “And the network’s poor ratings bear this out.”

    CNN’s ratings are mired in third place behind Fox News and MSNBC, according to viewership data from the first quarter of 2014. The network’s one bright spot was the three-week period coinciding with its wall-to-wall coverage of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

  23. Those children coming in from South America are coming from countries where they have much more responsibility at a younger age, and so grow up much faster. Therefore I would lower the adoption age to six (yes, this was one of my first thoughts on what to do with these kids also) ship all those between six and twelve back. Because they are old enough to have anti-American ideas imprinted in their heads, and old enough to do something about it, yes a fair percentage of them could be converted with effort, but why do we want to put that much effort (that could be used more effectively on our own youth) into converting somebody who is already a criminal and here illegally? Then all those over twelve should depending on my mood and how merciful I am feeling today, either be shipped back, or lined up against a wall and shot. They are functionally adults in their own society, responsible for themselves and their own decisions, and we should treat them so.

    1. “… all those over twelve should depending on my mood and how merciful I am feeling today, either be shipped back, or lined up against a wall and shot.”

      Shipping them back seems impractical, shooting them seems extreme (plus, disposing of the remains tedious, time-consuming and fraught with bio-waste problems.)

      Surely there must be countries where such people could be sold as slaves manual laborers?

    2. In support of Bearcat’s point, look up “Mexican gang child hitmen.”

      Do not have something in your stomach, or plan on eating afterwards.

      Apparently, the gangs take pointers from those quasi-Islamic terror groups that “recruit” tiny boys.

  24. Yes, the left will loose because reality cares nothing about their feelings, and their battle has always been with the real world, not with conservatives, but the damage that have done and will still do is unimaginable. You suggest that a bunch immigrant teens can’t stand against armed Americans with a cause – you are right. But how many die in bloody battles proving that point? How many cities with their super-majority populations of leftist tyrants have their infrastructure sabotaged as part of this war – no power. No water. No sewer? America is ALSO a dying empire. It has been dying for over a century – ever since Wilson, and FDR. Ever since Johnson. Ever since the Fed. Those in power will do the most insane and ridiculous things to remain in more just one more day – sell our natural resources to foreign powers, destroy the environment, and so forth, and they will. The “Let it burn” crown (and I om one of them) are merely saying ( and you seem to be agreeing) there isn’t a political solution. They weren’t scared of the Tea Party because of the votes – which they already had rigged ( 108%) . They may have been scared such organizations would let people know they weren’t alone and/or would become organs of civil disobedience and violent resistance. However, that presupposes thought on their part – its more likely they just used their power to persecute those organizations and people because they hated them and they could. And yes a violent war and collapse runs the risk of getting something worse – but violent resistance or quiet acquiescence are the only two choices before you now. They can’t control the country while its still armed, and the country won’t peacefully give up its arms. The calculus here isn’t hard. The US Dollar is on its way out, and will not longer be the reserve inside of 10 years – prices will rise, inflation (in the form of dollars currently held overseas) .will rise as those foreigners head for exits and buy real things from the only country that still accepts dollars – and the Federal Government becomes ineffective and powerless without a means to actually pay its thugs and enforcers ( who are now cheaper and willing to be bribed- welcome to the 3rd world) If they want control after that they have to disarm us. No they can’t win without using WMD on their own citizens, but they are essentially children with guns screaming they want candy- and they might well destroy the candy factory in an attempt to get one more day’s supply. You can’t Save it. You can’t stop it. Let it Burn and be ready for the day the fire goes out.

    1. Hogwash.

      Can’t save it? Can’t stop it? Hope is useless? Sit back and let the fires roll on?

      Nuts.

      Never. NEVER. And the crazy thing is, I’m smiling when I say that.

      This is a very different kind of struggle from the ones you’re citing. It’s a very different kind of struggle, I would say, than Our Progressive So-Called Masters expect. And that is why, in the end, we win, they lose.

      Is the currency on its way out? Probably, yes. Will America change? Sure. No seed survives long past its planting. It has to die for the plant to grow.

      That will suck. I’m not saying we’re in for a (well-deserved and a long time coming) season of suckitude. But I don’t believe we get through it by holing up and checking out. I think we get through it by reaching out now. By building up the kinds of little associations that we used to have. By being better people and building under.

      Yes, there’ll be pain. But we come out of this better than we were going in.

      > >

        1. Suckitude is not a reason to say “Let it burn” nor is suckitude something Americans haven’t previously dealt handled. There was an abundance of suckitude at Valley Forge, there was serious suckitude when the Brits burned our brand-new capital in 1812. There was suckitude in abundance in the War Between the States and afterward amongst the individuals, families and cavalry troops who settled the West.

          When Germany re-militarized the Rhineland and annexed Austria, the Sudetenland and Danzig — when Imperial Nippon ravaged China — there were plenty of voices calling to “Let it burn!”

          Maybe those voices were right. America had no interests in those realms and no reason to shed a drop of American blood in their defense. Maybe we were wrong to not say “Let it burn.”

          N.B., for the interpretive impaired this comment has employed a rhetorical technique often termed ironic inversion. It has been most famously employed by Willy Shakespeare in Marc Antony’s funeral oration (“for they are honorable men …”) and by Richard M. Nixon (“I am not a crook.”)

      3. More, it is only by fighting in their defense that we can preserve what the values we cherish. If we “let it burn” those values will be perceived as flawed and abandoned when in fact they have been abandoned undefended by our elites — elites who are ever too quick to turn their coats and bend their knees to tyrants.*

        Better we should take heed of the lesson of Thermopylae, of the Alamo, of General McAuliffe at Bastogne, of Thorton Mellon:

        In the animal world those who adhere to a philosophy of “let it burn” in hopes of feeding of the scraps are jackals and hyenas.

        *I shan’t bother searching out lists of praise by our “artists and intellectuals” for the tyrants of the Third Reich, the Soviets, Castro, Chavez, Saddam … there are too many and the listing too depressing.

Comments are closed.