The Perilous Passage

535 thoughts on “The Perilous Passage”

1. Sarah asks the musical question: “Because my question is: how do you target?”

   Cue Gilbert and Sullivan!
   “I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list,
   And they’ll none of them be missed,
   And they’ll none of them be missed!”

   1. sure, we all do. BUT that’s on your own. Have you ever tried aiming a mob?

      1. Yes – I have aimed a mob. And it worked very well for the first 20 minutes, then it drifted off in another direction slightly. We were trying to divert and distract a group originally aimed at us – it worked. Grew to over 1000 on a college campus. Helicopter, police, the entire show. Eventually we stepped in and misdirected it again later in its life – surprisingly easy to do as the mob was _stupid_! Subsequently they ran out of energy and the authorities stepped in to shut id down completely. It was surprisingly easy by not getting into the forefront of the group, maintaining perspective, and getting out of dodge when the time came. (We only stepped in twice over a three hour event. At the start and when they started to make noises about a more serious crime.) All this was in the late 70’s.
         Look for ‘controllers’ off to the side watching but not directly involved. Someone is likely to be steering.

         1. Sounds like there is a story there

      2. I’m a phantom. I hide in dark corners and sneak up on things. Because I’m old, a bit lame in the legs, and I’ve seen this shit before. Mobs are not my tool of choice.

         Phantom’s First Rule of Mobs is don’t be in one. If you see one, get the hell out of Dodge. Let them burn the house down, you can get a new house.

         If there’s mobs running around town killing people like they are in Johannesburg right now, you are not going to win that. Your choices are 1) run away bravely or 2) die. Live to fight another day is a much better plan.

         Always remember the five Ps: Previous Preparation Prevents Piss-poor Performance. That means keep a list and check it twice, so you know who’s naughty or nice, well ahead of time.

         Which leads us to Phantom’s Second Rule of Mobs: Don’t be a target. When Antifa is in town, don’t be wearing your MAGA hat. Don’t be That Guy the Lefty mob is slavering to take down, like Milo Yiannopoulos. Be the guy with the black coat that has the American flag lining. That way no matter which side of the line you get stuck on, you can turn your coat, blend in and slink away.

         Old age and treachery beats youth and exuberance every time.

         1. “When Antifa is in town, don’t be wearing your MAGA hat.”
            Unless you are prepared for the consequences. And the best way to do that is follow the good advice from The Art of War. Of course most of Sun Tsu’s advice is very situational, so you’d better know what’s going on before showing up with your little red hat.

            1. Yes indeed. Wear your MAGA hat if you have friends on the roof with good scopes. Other than that, maybe not.

               I heard a story that the US Army used to drive down the main road in Iraq towns with a bullhorn, announcing that the ISIS rebels were girlie-men with small dicks. Invariably some genius would rush out into the road screaming that he did not have a small dick.

               Sun Tsu is not to be ignored. ~:D

               1. By the way, wearing your little red hat at this time is a very good way to find out some of the people you’ll need to target when and if TSHTF. They’re the ones triggered by it. But you do have to remember, that they’re also just the cannon fodder; they are not the proggy leaders. Lopping off the tail of the gila monster just gets his attention, and doesn’t do anything to keep his teeth off your foot.

                  1. Right? Personally I like to watch -other- people wear the hat and take note of who yells at them. Much, much sneakier.

                  2. Though some will be too cowardly to carry through.

                  3. they’ll also be the ones screaming “why are there no alattes??? why isn’t starbucks open???”

                     ijs.

                     1. They’re the ones who can be taken out of commission by disabling the WiFi, so don’t waste ammo on those.

               2. Golly wonkers, Mistuh Phantoom! I now have this short film in my noggin: A dying old vet dons his MAGA hat to go taunt the Antifa and when he’s got them all gathered ’round working up their nerve he doffs his coat to reveal an explosive vest full of ball bearing, and just before triggering it he shouts, “THIS is how you deal with Fascists, maggots!”

                  1. I’ve felt for years that the kick-off point will be some disgruntled lonely old dude with nothing else to lose, will finally break and show people how death comes quickly. Which will lead to other old men choosing to follow in his footsteps.

                     Then it gets frisky, really frisky.

                     The abuse hurled on that lady in Canada by Antifa, perfect example of the type of tipping point that I imagine. Except replace that old lady with an old grumpy guy who is at his end.

                     1. Especially given how leftards are all eager to push someone with political views to the right of Chairman Mao out of society as a whole. With harassing non-lefties in public, getting social media accounts closed, getting people fired from their jobs, getting any crowdfunding accounts terminated, and all the rest, ultimately someone is going to get to the point of “You know what? Sodomize them all with a rusty chainsaw dipped in Dave’s Insanity Sauce.”

                        And then the leftards will be all Steve Urkel (“Did I do that?!”) in public while pushing to go even further because it obviously works and feeds into the “dangerous right wingers” (with their exceedingly broad definition of “right wing”) message.

                        1. “To the right of Mao” is pretty much how they measure things now; but the baizuo fail to see that even their insanity is not tolerated by the Chinese…

                           1. As opposed to Florence King’s self-description: “My personal views are somewhat to the right of Attila the Hun and my name is mud at Ms. Magazine.”

                              I have occasionally stolen that.

                           2. I always rather liked Florence King. An independent spirit and a killer with the bon mot…

                           3. I’ve used that on occasion too, with the variation of ‘somewhat to the right of Ghengis Khan.’

                           4. That wouldn’t be hard. In the American sense, Ghengis Khan was a statist!

                           5. *naughty grin* I knew that, if vaguely. Takes people aback when I say it because what they usually envision are the piles of skulls and sweeping conquests…

                              *looks sideways at the Stalin era*

                  2. Nope. Not with a suicide vest. More like in Gran Torino.

            2. Of course most of Sun Tsu’s advice is very situational,

               In death ground, fight.

               1. “In death ground, fight.”

                  Yes, but he does spend the whole rest of the book telling us “don’t be in the death ground, you dorks! Make the OTHER GUY be in the death ground!”*

                  I think that’s the part we should be working on. If you’re fighting, you done f-ed up.

                  *From the Phantom Edition of the Art of War, in case you don’t remember that quote. ~:D

                  1. Yup to Paraphrase Gen Patton “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his own Ideology. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his Ideology.”

                  2. He also advised:
                     “To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape” and “Show him there is a road to safety, and so create in his mind the idea that there is an alternative to death. Then strike.”

                     “This does not mean the enemy is to be allowed to escape. The object, as Tu Mu puts it, is ” to make him believe that there is a road to safety, and thus prevent his fighting with the courage of despair.”.

                     Extracted from various search engine results.

                     1. Then ambush and eliminate as they flee to ‘safety.’

      3. If the list is well targeted and gets serviced quickly enough, it might head off the mob formation.

         Might.

         1. Mob formation is already arranged. You know those food-stamp credit cards? Government shuts them off, instant mob. Turns them on again, another instant mob.

            1. There is a difference between a mob that riots in place and one which is effectively pointed. The idea is to kill the potential pointers, fast.

               1. Precisely.

            2. Dear Lord. Not the Food Stamp Cards thing again. Seriously. Google EBT cards. This is a peculiar bit of crazy.

               1. while i agree with you that yes, the EBT cards aren’t going to just stop coming-

                  the EBT system itself could be a target. likely , on purpose. mind you, you’d have to do it at state level, but they really only need to do it in a couple states to achieve their desired result.

                  caution says to not say more.

      4. In the end, the objective has to be avoiding the creation of the mob. If it means wading through targeted pools of blood, yet avoids the creation of oceans of random blood, then it is the moral course.

         If the first mob is disrupted/destroyed (image of someone pulling a Tsaernev on a major Antifa action) then maybe -MAYBE- it scares them enough that they back off of direct action long enough for tempers to cool and the general momentum of gutting the gatekeepers / peer-to-peer communication / exposure of their unguarded comments / etc to keep pulling more and more people out of their camp and reduce them to below the level of what a now weakened media can amplify.

         I consider this a highly optimistic outcome.

         In the end, given my family history and the fact that leftists *love* targeting us, it may come down to “Mein Gott! Di Juden gewehr haubn!” as a more likely case.

         1. > gatekeepers / peer-to-peer communication

            That’s an important consideration. There’s not going to *be* any internet shortly after it gets real. The Fed (specifically, the NSA) can isolate the US from the rest of the internet and segment the rest of it up regionally. They can even program the NAPs to only pass packets from approved sources – would you like the only web site available in the country to be MSNBC? They can do that. And nowadays both the wired and cellular phone systems are part of the internet, so you’re not going to call Aunt Agnes in Toledo to see what’s going on there unless they allow it.

            The other thing is, despite decades of warning, a lot of the country has only *one* fiber connecting it to a NAP; accidentally cut or burnt fibers take down whole cities *monthly*. And that’s by accident. And despite the promises to harden the internet backbone hardware, most of it only nominally protected. If some bad actors wanted to chop entire chunks of the country out of the USA’s data flow, it’s not that hard to do. Cutting a fiber, a repair crew can fix within hours. Take out one of the backbone routers… that’s custom-made hardware with a lead time of months. And, of course, everything in between those extremes is vulnerable.

            1. Again – the idea is to deliver enough of a shock that the violence backs off a bit to let the current trends continue to do their work. The NSA et al acting like that would mean things had already gone to hell.

            2. yeah a lot of the redundancy is not redundant. it is just like the power ‘grid’ at this point

            3. Due to mergers and acquisitions, even some places that theoretically have physically redundant connections have been known to end up with those redundant connections being two fibers on the same bundle. (If it is merely redundant and not physically redundant sometimes end up being different frequencies on the same fiber. Even if you actually managed real physical redundancy when the circuit was originally ordered that may change over the years as carrier networks are merged and/or upgraded. (There were days before I retired when I marveled that the Internet worked at all.)

         2. image of someone pulling a Tsaernev on a major Antifa action

            I seem to remember someone round these parts saying he was theoretically figuring out how to build a mrl (something like a Katusa system) out of stuff from Home Depot and Walmart.

            Wonder if that was the genesis of their interest.

            1. Uh…it’s pretty easy. A few hours of web searching, simple hand tools, and a few hundred bucks would do.

               Solid fuel rocket motors are so simple, some of them are edible.

               1. I know. Learning to make them is how this all got started.

                  In theory, at least.

            2. Some angle iron, or even wood framing, and some tubing from Home Depot or Lowes. The question is, do you want rockets, or just exploding cannon projectiles? I don’t recall the Palestinians using Katusa-type systems (home made or imported) in their attacks on Israel; just single launch unguided rockets, and then they scurry as fast as they can before the Israelis demolish the block they launched from.

               1. Disposable, one shoot, and light.

                  Do some math, get it close to right, set it up the night before, and disperse Antifa as needed.

               2. Oh, and I was thinking tubing both for the rockets and the launchers.

               3. Ideally, you want something that sets off their own Molotov cocktails.

                  1. Fire arrows might do that.

            3. The Palestinians make their “rockets” out of irrigation pipe, and I’m going to take a wild guess and say black powder for the propellant and the explosive. Unless they have something better. I hear nitrous oxide and tire rubber works.

               You could probably make something unpleasant enough with ABS plastic and an air compressor, or maybe steam. One shot steam rocket? Easy.

               1. OOOOOhhhhhh. I live this…or just have the part of the motor that would drive the parachute deployment to boil water to break the pointy end into shrapnel.

                  1. Thermite, water bottle… I should stop now.

               2. Any kind of pipe, air compressor set to just below the maximum rated psi of the pipe, load the pip up with whatever projectiles you choose, and you’ve got a pretty good anti-mob weapon. I’m pretty sure my friend launches potatoes close to a quarter mile with 40 PSI and 5 foot of pipe. Imagine 10 to 20 foot of pipe, 200 psi, and a load of ball bearings….

                  Would be easy to transport in a pickup bed. Load 6 pipes across, fire in sequence, then accelerate rapidly out of there.

                  Make sure you have a good backstop when you perform the experiment. max operating pressure of 3″ schedule 80 PVC is about 200 psi. But it’s burst rating is over 1000 PSI. Going smaller gets you higher pressures, but lower payloads. A quick gander at reasonably priced gas powered compressors readily available show a max pressure of 175.

                  1. Halloween theme!

                     Trebuchet, pumpkins. Hard to keep rioting when its raining pumpkins.

                     1. add potato cannon, golf ball guns, and tennis ball mortars for added fun (I have seen gasoline soaked tennis balls fired quite some distance. bit harder to make as I ain’t seen any ball cans made of metal like they used to be).
                        get really nasty and break out the bowling ball mortars.

                  2. Hmmm. You know, a Katusa-style potato launcher would be impressive as a largely non-lethal crowd suppression weapon. And unlike rubber bullets, totally bio-degradable.

                     1. Hmmmm … an air compressor, launch tube, potato hopper and a mechanism to operate a shutter-device for loading a single potato, locking the shutter until the pressure launches the projectile and releases the shutter to feed in the next projectile.

                        Or just modify one of these with a longer feed tube. What you inject into the tennis balls is your own d— business.

                        1. Or golly, a length of hose, compressed air and a bag of marbles; all it requires is a wheel mechanism to feed the marbles into the air stream …

                  3. I forget what show it was a decade or so ago, but some company mounted a claymore on the back of an armored limo as an anti-personnel/vehicle weapon. When they tested it, it worked like a jiffy, but it also blew out all the bullet-proof windows on the back of the limo.

               3. Nitrous Oxide and tire rubber put a private pilots into space, giving them “Commercial Astronaut” wings.
                  The first is a highschool dropout who has trouble reading (dyslexic).

               4. Somehow I don’t think cub scout water bottle rockets will cut it.

                  1. As crowd dispensers. Aimed correctly. Those water bottle rockets get people to MOVE when they go wildly off trajectory. Bonus, unlike scouting events & gathered people, these crowds, one doesn’t care. But true. If actually looking for damage. Probably not.

                     1. Nothing says you have to use water. Bleach in one, ammonia in another, using two separate launchers, but aimed at the same areas….

                        Likely all kinds of nasty 2 chemical combinations you could come up with.

                        Diesel fuel. And gasoline. Other liquid flammables.

                        Or something incredibly foul smelling.

                        So far, they’re lucky we haven’t decided to strike back at their violence.

         3. How many people are required to operate one of the U.S. Army’s truck mounted rocket batterys? 1? I just have a very bad feeling that one of our deep state intelligence types dedicated to progressivism could “borrow” one, use it against a large protest, and then manufacture the blame against the conservative Right.

      5. The Book “Unintended Consequences” had the right idea.
         No mobs, just individuals. Decide, Plan, Execute, STFU, repeat as needed.
         Politicians, Bureaucrats, Judges, maybe Media. Why would we target the Military, or the Police?? Unless of course they were targeting US. Too many Police and Military are going to be on the side of the Constitution.
         Now, will this work? I hope so. Targeting people because they might be Progressives, not a good idea. Just gives the Media more to use against us. This way doesn’t give the Progressives a target, a group, they can demonize. If the shooting starts, it is the way I lean. I hope that we can avoid it, I’m to old for that shit.

      6. Yeah, and those kids given their head will become an enforcing mob of Gretas.

         See that sneer photo of her at the UN? Yep.

         1. Greta is an angry enough child that she would pull the trigger.

            1. The impression I got of Greta was that she was the type that some groups look for to use for placing bombs. A kid who is angry and might fall for the line “so you want to fight back, right?”

      7. Aiming a mob? Cute girls.

         No, I’m serious.

         Anti-war protests try to bring cute women for the same reason bars have ladies’ night. When the crew of my boat toured Pompeii, a cute co-ed who wanted to practice her English to be our chaperone.

         As you pointed out, this kind of violence is mostly the young and mostly young me. (I admit, if we have to have it I’ll have some fun because I love it as much as I did at 23…the main difference is I have some measure of wisdom to know not to do it). So, how do you get young men doing what you want when their hormones are up?

         Young women…cute ones if you can.

         1. And when they get recoil from their direct action, resulting in casualties? Great agitprop. Even if were not killed by us subhuman filth

   2. First, don’t target individual people, except extreme cases for symbolic reasons. (Like a penalty for a traitor to the cause, or to strike fear into an effective opposition commander.)
      Target the infrastructure and supply lines. More effective, fewer vendettas, and much safer for the guerrillas.

2. Amen (concerning poor target selection). 😦

3. It looks like they are determined to push it past the tip point. If you start arresting the opposition it’s fight or flight time.
   https://freebeacon.com/politics/tlaib-democrats-looking-into-how-to-arrest-trump-officials/

   1. sure. IF they manage to pull it off. They’ve been doing it at the low-level harassment for a long time. Hell, they did it to Bush.
      IF they start doing it large scale and to people on the street? That’s the time to fight.
      Right now, Mackey, is the time to publicize and mock. Yes, mock. Mockery hurts them more than anything else we can do.

      1. Besides, all those Washingtonians get paid whether they are in lockup or not.
         They can’t legally sequester them, or silence them, so if they’re locked up, they have plenty of time to talks with lawyers and plan ways to make the proggies look like idiots.

      2. What do you mean “if they manage”? They’ll just send Marshall of the Supreme Court.

         Rick Marshall.

         He’s the night janitor.

         He works out.

   2. Tlaib seems to have missed the civics class where they taught that the authority to arrest lies with law enforcement and they work for the Executive Branch of the government.

      1. Haven’t read the article, but if they are thinking of having local/state police arresting them, it could be possible.

         Of course, that opens another can of worms. 😈

      2. Well, they keep making up fake charges and getting people arrested. Ask Scooter Libby. It’s been going for forever.
         And the only civics Tlaib knows is Sharia.

      3. Never mind.

         The idiots are wanting Congress to arrest them.

         On the other hand, who “commands” the DC police?

         1. What jails does Congress maintain?

            This strikes me as a conservative win-win. We will know our own by how they “comply” with the Demokkkrats and we will know our targets-to-be by which Americans are not repulsed by such tactics.

            1. Iirc there is a cell in the capital. Same noises came from Republican grass regarding (with)Holder

      4. Tlaib probably does even more to rouse sympathy and support for our side than anyone. She is more repellent and less attractive than AOC and the Gaslight Media’s inability to avert their spotlight from her creates more opponents of her side every day.

         She’s no more a threat to us that was Tokyo Rose.

         1. Do what our current mad-dog Demokkkrats won’t: learn the lesson of McCarthy. They will over-reach, especially when burdened with idiots like Tlaib who cannot resist revealing the iron claw within the velvet glove.

            If you do not trust your fellow citizens to grasp this then you should acknowledge the battle for preserving American Liberty is already lost.

      5. I would say the past three years should LEOs, at least federal LEOs, work for the left or, more honestly, for themselves.

         If they agree with the President they’ll play along. If not they have historically ignored him, but now figure they’re Praetorian Guards and can pick an emperor president of their liking.

         That, more than anything, has made the violence inevitable in some way. After the supposed end to the Troubles there were plenty of stories of how the IRA and their Protestant counterparts were just as much criminal gangs and protection rackets as political militias. Knowing LE is compromised is going to lead to some form of local association taking care of things. I’m hoping it stops at the FBI (which said “Hold my beer” when all those news stories about how corrupt the ATF were ran apparently) and doesn’t get to state troopers or major city police.

4. The baby-eater is apparently a troll. Doesn’t let the people who just agree with her off the hook, though.

   1. Eating Babies, Eating Children….I’m not sure if the goals is to portray those in panic mode as ridiculous or be ridiculous to create more panic.

      Those who believe *want to believe* in part because the need to point a finger and “other-ize” (insert group). https://mobile.twitter.com/Burke4Senate/status/1179965951036596225

      1. No eating babies. No eating children.
         Bad people?
         EAT TOES!

         1. Yes.

         2. He’s gonna get very big or very fat

            1. Or have really bad indigestion from eating all those unpalatable SJW types. Can his kind even HAVE indigestion?

               And yes Monster Hunter Guardian recently came to the top of the reading pile and so far it’s awesome.

   2. whether a troll or and aimed nut (someone prompting a loon to go do this is plausible to me), note AOC et all never said “We ain’t going to be eating babies”, just “Hey, we got a bit more time than you said”

      1. This is perhaps the ONE time I’d let AOC get a pass. That statement (not AOC’s) is something of a WTF aka System Reset or Unmaskable Interrupt on the brain. I can believe, this once, that there was a stunned “uh, let me get past this” reaction that was non-ideal, but could have been Much Worse.

         That said, indeed. As I understand it, even in Situations Most Dire where the choice is starvation or cannibalism, one doesn’t eat the young. One feeds them, somehow. And that said this is NOT one of those situations.

         1. Not giving Occasional Cortex an inch. That’s when you wave at the back of the room and say “security, please!” Because there are some people you just don’t want on your side. Unless cannibalism is part of your plan, anyway.

            1. At that INSTANT, a pass. After time for proper thought? NO PASS.

         2. The correct response after getting over the “let me get past this” is still not anywhere in sight.
            not shockingly.
            Not the brightest group thereabouts

         3. Just popped over to Insty and it was the folk over at LaRouchePAC claiming responsibility for trolling.

            1. Yeah, but AOC’s response was all on her.

               You’d think her bartending career would have equipped her with a better “Oh no you don’t” response, but obviously not.

               1. appears she was as successful as bartender as she is with grasping reality and climate science

         4. If you’re a viable civilization, yes. Otherwise…

            http://heretical.com/cannibal/australi.html

            [Too lazy to go find it again, but I’ve read from some of the original anthro sources… sadly, this isn’t a troll.]

      2. The LaRouchePAC are claiming credit for a troll. Somebody had a screenshot of their web page article, but there’s too much craziness to go do a deep dive. However, their twit:

         LaRouchePAC trolls AOC, AOC doesn't rule out eating babies. #EatTheBabies https://t.co/bD9ThZVcGO

         — Lyndon LaRouche PAC (@larouchepac) October 4, 2019

         1. Oy moderation for one link? WPDE!

            twitter dot com/larouchepac/status/1179936962817544192

      3. The first link I posted went into moderation. A further writeup on Zerohedge has more details: (if I obfuscated it sufficiently…)

         www dot zerohedge dot com/political/woman-aoc-town-hall-insists-we-must-eat-babies-stop-climate-change

         Given a choice, I’ll go with Mister Trashbags

         EAT TOES!

   3. Embrace the power of “and”.

      Remember, much of the troll community just enjoys watching thing burn. 4Chan turned the ‘ok’ gesture into a firing offense and even news stories about the firing acknowledge the source while claiming it is a hate symbol. Next up the is peace sign, btw, as they are claiming it stands for “two genders”.

      At this point I’m not betting against them. Not after the success of “ok”, the Swedish government repeating their “drinking milk is white supremacy” bit, the furor over “it’s okay to be white” and “Islam is right about women” signs, and the incredible weaponized autism of get Shia LeBouf’s “He Will Not Divide Us” flag (if you don’t know that story, look it up…it is the ultimate crowd sourcing story).

      They want to spin up the left to create more panic that is also showing itself as ridiculous just for the lulz.

      1. I’m thinking of posting a few of those “Islam is right about women” signs myself. Let’s get the discussion going – we here all know where the truth on that one leads.

         1. I have thought of it.

         2. I’ll admit to considering it.

      2. Heh. That flag’s seen some better days, wherever they’re hidingdisplaying it right now . . .

   4. Sort of confirmed, if you believe the claimants at any rate …

      Outburst at Ocasio-Cortez town hall was political group’s doing, it admits
      The Lyndon LaRouche PAC, a group that supports President Trump, admitted Friday that it was behind a bizarre demonstration in which a woman told Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., she should push for people to “eat” babies in order to save the planet from climate change.

      “It was us,” the group tweeted. “Malthusianism isn’t new, Jonathan Swift knew that. Sometimes, only satire works,” referring to English demographer Thomas Malthus and the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift.

      The group linked to one of its press releases which claimed that the United Nations would cost millions of lives and create poverty by pursuing its plans for emissions reductions. …

5. I’ve just been reading a science fiction novel in which a group of insane leftists destroy industrial civilization overnight, leading not to civil war but to mass deaths.

   Fortunately, I don’t think our system will permit of similarly efficient political action. More likely there’ll be one freedom-and-economy destroying dictat, then after some months another, and so on until the frog realizes it is boiling and throws them all out.

   A girl can hope.

   1. The frog has realized it’s boiling. All over the world. Hence Trump, Brexit, etc.
      Almost the only way we lose for sure is if we give them a “bad thing” to hang around the necks of the opposition.

      1. Also Le Pen, Orbán, the Austria Freedom Party, Alternative for Germany and a variety of other “nationalist, populist” parties generally commingled in a Media desperate to minimize them. Wikipedia quotes According to Thomas Klau of the European Council on Foreign Relations “as antisemitism was a unifying factor for far-right parties in the 1910s, 20s and 30s, Islamophobia has become the unifying factor in the early decades of the 21st century.”

         Of course, the Jews in the early Twentieth Century were desperately trying to assimilate* within their European neighbors while the Islamists are demanding their new neighbors assimilate to them — but lying about jews is the same as telling the truth about militant Islam so Islamophobia so STFU.

         *Realization of the fact that Jews could never become fully welcome among Europeans was the impetus behind Theodore Herzl’s call for Zionism: establishment of a Jewish nation where his people could seek haven from antisemitic persecution.

   2. One major problem if we go into a civil war here.
      We have lots of enemies who will step into the power vacuum.

6. > being a foreign born, has an accent, uses big words, makes classical references, lives from writing, dabbles in art… hell, has a degree in languages and literature? I’d target me.
   —
   The word is “apostate.” At least, that’s how they’d see it, because you’re not allowed to think outside your box(es).

   They’d target you first.

   1. You’re missing the right would target me too. Because I’m “untrustworthy.”

      1. Not necessarily. Often then strongest, most dedicated supporters, are those who have converted. They may keep an eye on you, but they’re unlikely to target you.

         1. You’re not thinking like a mob. You’re thinking like someone who follows politics and reads blogs.
            There are already people allegedly on the right who have targeted me repeatedly for no reason other than “born abroad.”

            1. It seems like in the past few years a loudly nativist faction of the right has arisen, asserting that anybody not born in America to American citizens is not a “real” American. I can sympathize with some who argue that the current interpretation of the 14th amendment is a bit off, but they’re going far, far beyond that argument. They’re causing enough internecine strife on the conservative side I sometimes wonder if they’re a false flag op, but there’ve been enough nativist movements in America’s history I think they might be authentic.

               1. I don’t think they are. At least not the heads. For one the things they demand (no foreign born ancestors for three generations) are straight up impossible.

                  1. Some of it may simply be another front on the war against Trump. I too partook in seriously arguing that the foreign wives thing was a concern given the possibilities of Soviet intelligence. I can’t recall how seriously I argued that the Scots mother was a problem. How fresh Fred or his ancestors were off the boat doesn’t bother me. The Drumpf talking point? If I applied that to the freaking left, how many Senators and Representatives would they have remaining?

                     The Right the left imagines would have responded to such messaging by turning on Trump.

                     And the current right wing civil dispute over Trump is attractive grounds for sowing confusion and conflict. Though, the right seems to be mostly consolidating behind Trump, with most of the hold outs being folks whose mouths wrote some checks.

                     1. Remember Kerry and his “nudge nudge, wink wink” insertion of Cheney’s lesbian daughter into a speech?

                        When I was in California 20 years ago the teacher’s union (iirc) took out advertisement about how vouchers would be used by Wiccans to teach their children witchcraft because Christians were pushing for vouchers and charter schools.

                        There was a lot of “scary Mormon” rhetoric with Romney.

                        And recently, I’m sure that everyone remembers the sly insistence that we all look at naked Melania pictures.

                        Because if encouraging hatred and fear can be used to their benefit, they got no problem with that.

                        1. Saw it recently with that cop wrong house shoot. Victims brother asked the court to be lenient and forgave her. Judge, after sentencing, gave her a bible and told her to read it. That she had a purpose and to find it. Had a bunch of friends supporting the ffr/atheist supremacy foundation lawsuit. Sorry, but prisons are the muslim brotherhood’s primary recruiting ground, and nothing stated could be harmful to others. May have been unprofessional but far from something evil.

                           And yes, if she had handed a Koran or Jewish book of worship with same language I’d be thinking the same

                  2. You may be right. I don’t have any evidence one way or another, and could readily believe they could be false flaggers, foreign trolls, home-grown nativists, or some combination.

                  3. One of the louder three-generation types is He Who Will Not Be Named. As I’m double-pariah (boomer baby, plus Grandpa Pete was Danish), it’s eyerolling time.

                  4. Not impossible–I should know, I would qualify–but very, very difficult.

                     1. People did not like it when I pointed out all the presidents and Founding Fathers who did not count under their rules. Twits.

                     2. I go back to before 1776 in North America with all branches of paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather. My paternal grandfather’s parents were born in England, my maternal grandmother’s parents in Ireland.

                        My great-grandparents left England and Ireland in the late 1800’s for the same reason that my earlier ancestors did- to have a better life here. Difference is – they came here to be Americans, the other’s were British settlers. I don’t recall any longing for the “old country” expressed by my grandparents.

                     3. Sure. Husband barely qualifies (FOURTH generation, otoh…) But it’s a minuscule percentage of the population. What I meant by impossible was eliminating people till only those remain. Also judging by husband’s family a large percentage of those are PROGRESSIVE.

                        1. My parents mentioned their grandparents a time or two, but other than the states they probably came from, I have no clue, not even names. I doubt any of them had birth certificates; my Dad didn’t, having been born on a rural farm in Georgia in the 1920s. It wouldn’t have been *that* unusual when he was in the Strategic Air Command in the 1950s, but I imagine it made getting his security clearance interesting.

                           1. Not sure about mom’s side. Ones we can trace back go back to before the start of activities in 1776. Dad’s side too … except for one Great-Grandpa, who sneaked in from Scotland, via Canada, late 1800’s. Either branch of the family I can get documents for “Daughters of the Revolution” scholarships which requires copies of birth records, and marriages, down the line. I don’t have the records as “Sons of the revolution” scholarships only require back to son’s great-great-grandparents (my side, not a problem. Hubbies side … oops, information is lacking beyond his grandparents); even then you just need accurate dates, not document proof. Don’t have the papers, but know who does, so should we ever have a granddaughter, can get the copies, add to it, and hand it down.

                  5. Hmmph Madam I will take you and yours over any Native Born idiot any time. That three generations things has a nasty ring to it. Vaguely like the Nuremburg laws. As for their being a false flag op I think we’re back to Hanlon’s Razor. Idiocy and need to be relevant shape their views more than malice. Or at least the one I can think of…

                     1. I don’t actually have a problem with telling an American, whether born here or elsewhere.

                        An immigrant explained it in song.

                        Described in a 2012 NY Times review:
                        Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill’s proto-Tea Party song, “How Can You Tell an American?,” from the 1938 musical satire “Knickerbocker Holiday” (the salient American trait, declares this anti-Roosevelt song, is a fanatical resistance to authority)

                        “How Can You Tell An American” by Maxwell Anderson

                        How can you tell an American?
                        Has he any distinguishing flavor?
                        Would you spot him on an elephant in Turkistan,
                        Or floating on a raft, fifty miles at sea,
                        As you know a single leaf from the Sassafras tree,
                        By its characteristic savor?

                        It isn’t that he’s short or tall,
                        It isn’t that he’s round or flat,
                        It isn’t that he’s civilised or aboriginal,
                        Nor the head-size of his hat.
                        No, it’s just that he hates and eternally despises
                        The policeman on his beat and the judge at his assizes,
                        The sheriff with his warrants
                        And the bureaucratic crew
                        For the sole and simple reason
                        That they tell him what to do,
                        And he insists on eating,
                        He insists on drinking,
                        He insists on reading,
                        He insists on thinking
                        Free of governmental snooping
                        Or a governmental plan,
                        And that’s an American!

                        Found in a comment posted at AtH in 2012 by some peculiar wallaby. Some day I will set myself to transcribing the full lyrics, I should live so long.

               2. A) There are serious concerns about the political impact of money from the PRC B) The leftist talking points alleging Putin’s Russia helped Trump doesn’t have zero impact on the level of xenophobia that will seem credible within the right. C) I think there are minor aspects of foreign policy where Sarah’s foreign background influences her in the wrong direction. Keep in mind that my theory and preferences for foreign policy is fringe and ‘xenocidal if /necessary/’.

               3. I think they are the expected consequence of the Left’s mealy-mouthed behavior regarding illegal al immigration. People goddamn KNOW that illegal immigrants are illegal immigrants, not ‘undocumented’ not ‘unexpected guests’, not whatever the euphemism-du-jure is. And because they insist on pointing out that an illegal immigrant is, pretty much by definition, a criminal, the Left goes nuclear and calls them White Supremacists. After a while, this normalizes White Supremacy. People who would otherwise have avoided it as if it were a plague pit begin saying to themselves, “Well, the Left is batshit crazy, maybe their opponents aren’t so bad after all.”. And maybe they don’t go full-bore Klansman, but they start adopting a Nativist position simply because they have developed an instinctive reaction to the Left’s worship of the foreign.

                  1. Hung for a sheep, same as a lamb.

                     1. Exactly – if you’re gonna be condemned anyway – may as well commit the crime.

                  2. Yes, I feel the same way. But it is still a small minority of the right.

               4. Wonder if that’s largely a regional phenomenon? Then again, the KKK, neo-Nazis, Aryan Nation, and other white supremacy groups are usually lumped as “to the right”, and most of them are flaming xenophobes. I haven’t encountered the antipathy to naturalized conservatives here in New England that Sarah apparently has run afoul of.

                  1. Can you tell the difference from the antipathy to conservatives in general up there? I don’t say I escaped from New England lightly

                  2. Mike are you in far northern New Hampshire or Vermont? Cause for certain I’m quietly passing as moderate left down in the environs of Boston. Even at my previous employment (Raytheon) which has a high ex Military content one was careful not to stick out to far. The engineers and line workers were fairly conservative, but the management types tended to have drunk the kool aid. And everybody was fond of big spending because that’s 90%+ of Raytheons business. At my current firm I’m definitely in the closet. Heck my being an evangelical is weird enough for them (that I will not deny as that Mt 10:33 makes it clear that is a bad strategy, No Taqiya for us thank you). I think conservatives Naturalized or otherwise are about as welcome in most of New England as a porcupine in a condom factory. Only where old crusty New Englanders remain is a more traditional “Liberal” viewpoint still prevalent instead of the tranzi/SJW/5th column communist that is the standard viewpoint.

                     1. NH. And interestingly enough, I identified one of my coworkers this week by triggering her with just wearing my red MAGA hat. Instant attack mode, no, “why are you wearing a hat in the office” to start with.

                        1. NH in particular Southern and Coastal (what there is of coastal) NH has been being invaded by Massachusetts residents (Colloquially Massholes) for 40+ years. When I first worked there in Nashua in 1983 even Southern NH outside Nashua and Manchester was seriously Conservative. By the time I left a little over 20 years later Southern NH was basically Massachusetts sans sales tax and with higher property taxes. Since the early 2000’s same day registration and a very cavalier attitude to voter verification has meant the whole state has gone wobbly whipping back and forth from Republican to Democrat every 2 years or so. There were rumors of folks being bused into Durham (which has UNH) to pretend to be college residents for same day registration. Basically almost as bad as mail in voting for vote fraud.

                           1. That’s one of the reasons I like that the Free Staters keep trickling in. Although there are a number of them that veer into the anarchist spectrum; most tend to be limited government and fairly conservative.

                  3. The KKK types and few Neo-Nazis I knew were rather hard left, just also racist wastes of oxygen. A few could be rather xenophobic, but some were fine with Asian and “white” foreigners. Three KKK types I knew only ever voted Republican once in their lives, and that was for David Duke as gov.

            2. A couple months ago I tried to explain the assimilation differences between the US and other countries on /r/The_Donald. Some idiot rolled in and insisted that we are a blood & soil country.

               Yeah… too many idiots. Too many people who invert whatever the left says and treats it as gospel. Too many people who have decided that anyone more than 5 years younger than them deserves whatever happens to them….

               1. There are also a lot of trolls not from the US on blogs.

               2. If it’s “blood and soil” how well did that work out for one of their favorites (by claim of Noble Savage and Oppression and suchlike), the “native Americans” who long had their blood on this land’s soil? Oh, is that one of those things nobody is supposed to notice and bring up? Too bad.

               3. They invert the “Left’s” lies because deep down they saw what the “Left” has wrought over the past few decades, gave up and decided to embrace it for their own ends. Including the “Left’s” habit of projection.

                  Which explains their favorite insult for those on the “Right” who don’t join their bandwagon. (I must admit I miss Twitter’s eyeroll and facepalm emotes right now.)

               4. The problem is that we are not necessarily a blood and soil country now (I could hear arguments regarding founding given slavery and asians), but we cannot be a proposition nation if we don’t teach and somehow enforce the proposition. And right now I don’t see how we can or even try outside of djt and ICE

            3. You were born female but you’ve earned the right to be called a broad.

         2. No, she is correct.

            Beyond my personal nuttiness, I went back to esr’s blog this week. Wasn’t something whose emotional cost was really affordable, because I binge read too many political comments. There was one gentleman who was confronting the one I believe to be Orvan’s $Housemate on the grounds that they identified as conservative, but their statement of values did not explicitly include anything that they were deliberately conserving. Okay, maybe they are also as liberal on social issues as Sarah is. Thing is, if you unpack the context of the statement of values, there were important American values it was taking for granted and conserving. The gentleman did not see that. Yes, conservatism conserves, but the practice is ultimately important, not the theory.

            The theory of conservatism is not put together by the best minds working with the best minds from the best data, available in the finest graduate level textbooks. There are places, like ATH or A&D where high end conservative theory is discussed, but the vast majority is either not the highest of quality or is contaminated by moderation. Left can by classified by theoretical correctness. Trying to ID right that way is a recipe for ambiguity. We have angry young turks, maybe thirties to fifties, looking for a winning coalition that is ideologically aggressive.

            Yes, things look dicey. Yes, the status quo involves a lot of conservatives on their backfoot because of leftists who don’t think cultural norms, mores, are important. But there are still people who identify as left and pursue leftwing goals who are in some way forces for conservative as long as they are alive and not completely broken. Beyond that are people like Sarah, who have been forces for the right and for preservation of valuable parts of the status quo, who fight, even if not obviously, who do not fit the narrow conceptions of fighting for the right that a youngster might have.

            1. That particular usage irks me. I am not conserving anything in the sense that, say, I am conserving energy for a fight I know is coming. I AM, however PREserving the principles and values that have built this country.

               Values are not quantitative. They cannot be conserved. And yes I know it’s pedantic, but clarity of communication is important to understanding. Which clearly the gentleman (I presume) of whom you spoke did not understand.

               1. Yes, but calling yourself a Preservative would put you in a bit of a jam.

                  1. I’m more of a consarnitive.

                  2. Or make them all rubbery. 😀

            2. Your belief is correct. Yes, by amazing coincidence, $HOUSEMATE is indeed the “Tron Guy” and I got to witness that bit of internet ‘fame’ from the Reality (as opposed to the Media Presented, and Internet Presumed) side. It was quite confirming of how belief/reporting/entertainment presentation* and Reality are wildly divergent.

               * Jimmy Kimmel tried to play him, but he simply “was himself” at all times and played it perfectly straight, no matter the attempts to rile/negatively exploit – which is how he wound up going back so many times (I turned down the offer to be in the studio audience – ox might be crazy, ox IS slow. That NOT mean ox damn fool).

               One of the most amusing things was that he NEVER sought a spot or such on this or that. Any appearance of any sort, Just Happened. There would often be someone (say, on FARK) going “Aren’t his 15 minutes up?”… and it seemed I saw that comment right before the next phone call asking if he’d be willing to make some appearance.

               Eventually the Powers That Be (network execs) wanted a different direction/audience for Jimmy’s show and things got retooled. The agent (Jimmy suggest one…) said (roughly), “You have a choice. You can resume a ‘normal life’ and have memories, or you can move to Hollywood and push like this is the only thing in the world.” He chose what passes for normality – and likely everyone is better off for it, especially him.

               Another (sadly) amusing thing is watching those who TRY to become a “phenomenon” – it doesn’t work that way. It’s random, or close enough that trying just makes one appear desperate – at best. If it happens, enjoy it while it lasts, then let go.

               1. Do what you enjoy doing. If that brings you fame, that’s either the icing on the cake, or the itching powder in your underwear.

            3. I once had a coworker who asked how I could be so conservative about some things and so liberal about others. I explained that each party had only HALF an idea or half a message. One said “Stay out of my bedroom” and one said “Stay out of my wallet.” And what I want is for the lot to stay out of both and leave me the [PHOTON] alone.

               1. You are a member of the “Get Off My Lawn” Party.

                  We have a militant wing, the “GET THE F- OFF MY F-ING LAWN!!!” alliance. They are gaining membership every day. ~:D

               2. The Left no longer wants the government to stay out of bedrooms.

                  1. They seem to follow the path from:

                     Make [behavior] legal
                     Make [behavior] acceptable
                     Make people be affirmatively enthusiastic about [behavior]
                     Make [behavior] mandatory.

                     1. As Mr Hope joked long ago
                        “I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve made homosexuality legal. I thought I’d get out before they make it compulsory.”
                        Good comics have an innate feel for how society operates.

                  2. Probably the only way they can get anyone in bed with them. 😉

                  3. “Get out of my bedroom”
                     Moves to leave
                     “Wallet stays’

                     Admittedly this is dated. Today they’d force you to join in

               3. The important thing is you refuse to be cowed by either side.

         3. Sarah’s different in obvious ways. An example would be every word that comes out of her mouth (not written on the page). Mobs fixate on that.

            Unfortunately, if things do go violent, there will likely be nominally anti-statist mobs that fixate on anyone who appears to be some sort of minority not for “white supremacy” reasons, but because of stereotyping who’s on “the other side”.

      2. The Buckley Right, the NeverTrump Right, the Vox Day Right, the New Right, or…?

         You’re safe from the Moonbat Right (me, and a handful of fellow-travelers)

         1. I prefer the Heavy Metal Right, The “Vodka and Beer” Right (waves at Stephen Green), and the “I’ve got stuff to do like build a mid-70s terminal from an old magazine I found online so simmer down and behave” Right.

            The last is certainly the most American form of the Right with the middle coming in a close second. It is in refusing to simmer down anymore that the American Left is slitting its throat. Sarah is right that they can’t win in the end…the most they can do is burn it all down.

            1. The concern is that the loudmouths don’t realize that those they seek to destroy both may not be so willing, and that there there is a significant subset of them for whom that quintessential Taken line is an understatement.

               Was thinking about it yesterday regarding a convo with someone saying that all the cancelled deserved it. In about one minute I had 3 ways to create a mass casualty incident against their compatriots. And I’m just a dilettante. I’m not sure what president will gain the role of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon but I think we passed it before my grandparents were born.

            2. I am a proud member of the “… And The Horse You Rode In On” Right. … hmmm – that would be the ATHYRIO Right?

               1. Not a member of ATHYRIO. I like horses thank you very much. Would never wish harm on them. Now “… go slink back into the slime pit you crawled out of …” or GSBITSPYCOW, … OTOH. Or “Take a long leap off Grand Canyon rim” – TLLOCCR. DD (drop dead) works too. Well it doesn’t “work” work. But for some reason they take that as a threat.

                  1. Apparently, someone recently took that thought to heart.

                     https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7518461/Rescue-personnel-search-body-man-28-jumped-death-Grand-Canyon.html

               2. The Middle Fingers Hoisted right, right here.

                  1. Tsk tsk. Brandishing middle fingers together is clearly a capitalist racist hate crime. 25 years and a $250,000 fine, or you can “volunteer” to undergo reconditioning at their lovely underground center somewhere in Chicago.
                     Man, I have GOT to stop rereading 1984.

                     1. 1984? Try some of Jack Chalker’s stuff. He could spin “plausible but horrific dystopia” pretty good… enough that I finally quit reading his stuff.

      3. Keep your maga hats handy.

7. Then you have the twerps who are A. Convinced that anyone who isn’t all in on the GOP platform is actually a leftist and B. Believe that leftists should be removed from consideration from political office. Or voting.

   Yes, I have met these people. They exist.

   1. They’re the same as the deplatforming idgets on the left, just in the opposite direction. Neither group is willing to consider that it is the deplatforming and denial of speech that is wrong, not the content of it; nor will they understand that permitting people to speak is not endorsing their views.

   2. Yes, they do exist. They are the natural and expected consequence of behavior the Left has indulged for several decades. It’s just that, unlike the Left until very recently, if you accuse them of wanting to imprison anyone who disagrees with them, they don’t looked shocked and say, “Who? Me!?!”

   3. The GOP’s “platform” document is on their web site. It’s a 66-page PDF under the signatures of three people I never heard of, and it’s well worth looking at, though I suspect reading it in detail would cause mild brain damage.

      It has a lot of rah-rah bits that get the old circulatory fluids pumping:

      –snip–
      Many good civil servants work at the IRS, but
      the agency itself is toxic. Its leadership employs
      known tax delinquents, rehires workers previously
      fired for misconduct, spends user fees without con-
      gressional oversight, and awards bonuses for cus-
      tomer service that would put any private company
      out of business. Worst of all, the IRS has become
      an ideological attack dog for the worst elements of
      today’s Democratic Party. It systematically targets
      conservative, pro-life, and libertarian organizations,
      harassing them with repeated audits and denying
      their tax exempt status. Its commissioner has lied to
      Congress, hidden evidence, and stonewalled inves-
      tigations. He should be impeached by the House of
      Representatives and convicted by the Senate.
      –/snip–

      Yay! I could go along with that. Unfortunately, their only enumerated fix seems to be changing campaign regulations for how nonprofits can donate to campaigns.

      “Seems legit…”

      The only other part of their fix is:

      –snip–
      We also support making the federal tax
      code so simple and easy to understand that the IRS
      becomes obsolete and can be abolished.
      –/snip–

      Sparkleponies!

      The 16th Amendment lets Congress collect income taxes, and they’re *never* going to give that up. Since almost all of the workload of the IRS (which has 75,000 employees) is related to income taxes, that particular organ of the state is unlikely to wither away as we march to the shining Libertarian future…

      1. There are roughly 15 million millionaires in the U.S. and 620 something billionaires. There’s also about 27 million small businesses in the U.S., and 279 thousand larger businesses. If the IRS stopped auditing Ma and Pa Kettle’s personal income taxes on income less than, say, $100K per year, they could probably do away with at least half of those 75,000 bottom feeders.

         1. It was never about the money. It was blatantly about the power. The controversy and opposition from when it was being proposed was pretty explicit.

         2. Auditing Ma and Pa Kettle isn’t about them.

            It’s about putting the fear of the government into them and everyone who knows them.

            Most audits are harassment and intimidation against the general population, pure and simple.

            1. Especially since ma and pa had never been audited until they donated the limit to anyone but the approved party

               1. Amazing how that always happens that way. Kind of like starting a Tea Party org vs. an Obama org.

                  1. Of course

            2. iirc it was at Insty I read it, but someone at the IRS basically said “We audit the lower brackets more because it is easier and takes less of our time, because they can’t afford the big lawyers” in testimony recently

               1. That was the “helpful” interpretation.

                  Much further down the article, you find out that the thing they were calling an audit was a letter asking for documentation to show you qualified for the EITC.

                  Which is exactly how you catch most of the really nasty fraud where they paid in zero and got a check out, and at bare minimum it makes it so they can’t do it again next year if they round-file that request. (Which destroys the value of a stolen identity.)

               2. (I mostly read through because I was curious what the hell the “working poor” had to do with audits, since just a few days ago one of the commenters was talking about how the middle class was completely separate from the working class, using the description I’ve always heard applied to the working poor for “working class.”)

                  1. They don’t expect the working poor* to be educated and be able to do math. After all they can’t (well the one we got anyway). Had to go to our congresscitter for interference. Took in a stack of computer paper just short of 6″. Got it reassigned. Ended up with a $1k Refund. That was a reversal of about $20k in underpayment and penalties. All over a 3 year difference in depreciating our ex-home, now rental (at the time). Official rule is “reasonable”. An “unwritten” rule of thumb is live in the house X years deduct that from the mortgage years. So, by their rules 30 – 5 is 25; not 22. Okay. Our counter argument was – so 15 – 5, could have depreciated it over 10 years instead. Or if we’d lived in the house 20 years (you get the math). Trying to find out what “reasonable” meant. Response – OH. No. That is “unreasonable”. Plus, the underpayment, without fines and penalties was calculated wrong (do not argue with a mathematician for all that it was not his working profession; nor with a computer spreadsheet, even if it was an old Apple IIe). **Solution. Sell the house. Go into reassigned, offer, “Okay. Will pay the difference over the 4 years. Will not pay penalties or fines. Oh. Sold house. So that will change the calculations for this year in our favor. Or you can leave as is. Oh yea. Here is stuff we forgot over the last 4 years but weren’t going to bother with.”

                     * Back then we were working poor … not so much now.

                     ** Oh, yea. Take in with you a 6 week old infant. Hey he was sleeping in his stroller. Seems the governmental types want infants, toddlers, and small children, out as soon as possible. Works for Judges and traffic court too (not me). Sister and her three oldest, one infant, one toddler, one pre-K. She was barely on time, so should have been at the end of the line. One look and the bailiff said “you’re first, judge doesn’t like kids in courtroom”. Sister plead guilty, but … Oldest had unbuckled to get something the toddler had dropped, in spite of being told not to. Cop got her as she was pulling over. Gave her a ticket for unbuckled child, which is why she was pulling over. Judge dropped ticket.

                     1. Smart judge.

                        Oh, the IRS can screw up by the numbers– I just reject the idea that people getting other folks’ money should not have so much as a letter saying “hey, got support for this?” when something is hinky, when we KNOW that is exactly where most of the illegal alien fraud is happening.

                        ********
                        Link goes to the one Insty linked, and they’ve got an internal link to their own support, which when I read it again it raises more flags for biased writing:
                        https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-easier-and-cheaper-to-audit-the-poor

                        One, they’re comparing folks claiming a specific credit and every other group is by income.
                        Two, their own article is that the folks claiming EITC are at “about” the same rate as the 1%, but bang the drum that they’re audited more than the rich.

                        They also try to spin that 15% of the audit letters can’t even be delivered as if this is a sign the poor are horribly abused– is this ringing any bells in folks’ head for the voter registration fraud situations?
                        65% of the EITC information requests get zero response at all.
                        They have a big scary chart comparing how much the audits for the specific groups have dropped, too. I remember when they started that cost cutting– their amazing process was to target audits by what was likely to find fraud. As opposed to wasting everybody’s time.

                        *grumble* Class warfare junk bugs me.

               3. Related:
                  https://www.tampabay.com/news/business/2019/10/02/his-lexus-seized-tampa-man-who-wrongfully-got-a-980000-tax-refund-take-a-bus-to-court/

                  Blanchett, 29, politely answered “yes, sir” and “yes, your honor”’ as Magistrate Judge Anthony E. Porcelli made sure he understood the consequences of a guilty plea. Then prosecutor Rachelle Bedke read aloud the specifics of his crime:

                  In early 2017, Blanchett electronically filed his 2016 tax return claiming $18,497 in wage income; $47,357 in deductions; and an income tax withholding credit of $1 million. He attached a W-2 from a Tampa nursing home that included “fictitious” information about his wages and the amount of taxes withhheld. Based on those figures, Blanchett claimed a $1 million refund and asked that $20,000 be applied to his 2017 estimated tax.

                  In April 2017, the IRS mailed Blanchett the $980,000 refund check, which he deposited into a SunTrust account. The bank reported the transaction to the IRS, closed Blanchett’s account and put the check in its vault pending IRS verification.

                  In April 2018, Blanchett electronically filed his 2017 tax return claiming $16,790 in wages and an income tax withholding credit of $7,115. Based on the figures on three fictitious W-2 forms, he said he was due a refund of $26,477.

                  In May 2018 — a year after the IRS issued the $980,000 refund — SunTrust sent Blanchett the check it had been holding. He exchanged it for a regular check that he put in an account at Grow Financial Credit Union, saying the funds came from an inheritance he received from his father’s estate. He bought the 2016 Lexus for $51,617.

                  In August 2018, a federal magistrate in Tampa authorized IRS agents to seize the Lexus and the money still in the account. A month later, Blanchett showed up at the IRS office in Tampa for an appointment he had made with its taxpayer Assistance Center. At that time, the center alerted IRS investigators that he was the subject of a criminal investigation regarding the $980,000 refund.

                  Last December, investigators personally served Blanchett with a letter advising him that he was suspected of filing false returns, money laundering and related offenses. Yet in February, he electronically filed his 2018 return showing $980,000 in wage income and a tax withholding credit of $800,000. He claimed he was due a refund of $465,734.

                  “In fact, the defendant had not received proceeds from an inheritance,” Bedke read. “Moreover, the defendant did not make enough wages to have any income tax withheld, and the amount of tax withheld reported on his tax returns were false. In short, the defendant knew he was not entitled to a tax refund for the tax years 2016, 2017 or 2018.”

                  No evidence was presented to show that Blanchett received any refund except the $980,000. As part of his plea agreement, he will make $59,768 in restitution to the IRS plus pay all taxes, interest and penalties owed for the three tax years. Judge James Moody will sentence him at a date to be determined; prosecutors have recommended a lesser penalty than 10 years because of his cooperation and acceptance of responsibility.

                  Blanchett, released on a signature bond, rode the bus home, then went to the library at Hillsborough Community College’s Ybor City campus, where he is taking a broadcast course. He said he also has a commercial driver’s license, works as landscaper and freelance DJ, and is training to become a licensed tattoo artist.

                  Despite his guilty plea, Blanchett said in an email to a reporter that he didn’t intend to defraud the IRS.

                  “I felt like I earned the funds due to various jobs,” he said. “THE MISTAKE WAS ON THEIR PART NOT MINE.”

                  His mother, Maxine, calls Blanchett a “good boy,’’ but regrets that he succumbed to the temptation to spend part of the refund check.

            3. Try making large donations to a church and/or christian related charities (particularly ones that are NOT liberal approved). That earned us a “letter of concern” back in 2011 for the 2010 tax year as they felt our charitable donations were excessive and they requested records.I proceeded to bury them with the receipts from the various charities as well as copies of the canceled checks. 4 Months later the IRS said yes our deductions were fine. This was also the time period when they were harassing conservative political groups. I had acquaintances whose parents were proud to have been on Nixon’s Enemies List. I feel like I got on Obumbles Enimies List. If I did it’s a badge of honor.

         3. There’s also about 27 million small businesses in the U.S., and 279 thousand larger businesses. If the IRS stopped auditing Ma and Pa Kettle’s personal income taxes on income less than, say, $100K per year, they could probably do away with at least half of those 75,000 bottom feeders.

            As it happens, Insty recently had a big to-do about how they do more audits on the “working poor” than the really rich.

            When you dig in far enough, you find out that they’re counting sending letters to guys who pay nothing and get a check from the IRS, saying “hey, send us this document to prove you qualified,” as an “audit.”

            Actual looking-at-all-your-documents audits are much, much more expensive, and most of those folks can do something else for better pay and less hassle. (high turnover)

   4. And look at the reaction of the larger right wing / conservative community to them.

      Now compare the reaction that leftists have for those on their side who believe the same about conservatives.

   5. I am something very similar. I believe that anyone currently registered as a Democrat should lose their voting privileges for life. Also, anyone receiving more from the Government than they pay in income tax should not be able to vote (conflict of interest). Yes, that includes Government employees.

      1. and i completely and totally disagree with the second point because your proposition could easily be used to disenfranchise every disabled vet in the country- they’d literally have to write in an exemption for vets and find a way to keep dems from removing that exemption. It would also have the same effect on any retired military that are actually retired…

         1. Every Vetern. A lot of people on SS. Regardless, of what the program is, we paid into SS on every dime we each earned. Never got a “tax holiday”.

            Yes. Would be a bit upset to loose my franchise.

            1. retired railroad workers. Retired ATC. etcetc.

               1. Yes. My mom is technically a double dipper. She gets state Pers and SS. Her combined income is less than either state or federal income payment level. (She is NOT one of the ones pulling huge amounts from state Pers. When your pay is minimum wage, you won’t be.) Now … She has officially withdrawn every penny that she contributed, as well as her employer for her employment time; both Pers and SS … That is what happens when you are healthy and approaching 84 (November). Her parents both lived into their mid-90’s, as did their siblings. Mom is in better health than grandma and grandpa were at this age.

         2. Given how often the argument becomes that ANYBODY working for the government should be disenfranchised, I get the idea that is a cost they are more than willing to pay.

8. Gah. I’m going to have to wait until tonight before I reply comprehensively. Just too big a can of worms to zip off a short comment on the fly.

   1. Funny how the huns seem to travel on one wavelength sometimes. *chuckle*

      1. When there’s a carrier wave…

         1. I think we’re reaching the Outer Limits.

            1. Imagine if you will…

               Yes,I know but I like old school better. Even used in a story

         2. “You can’t stop the signal!”

            1. That’s the problem we’ve identified. At some point, the government CAN stop the signal by shutting down the network in any region. And the cell towers. Not many people have ham radios or citizen band radios (except the truckers) so as alternative communications, we’re not very prepared any more. SO how long can the feds keep the net down? Probably a day before anyone realizes what they’re doing. And several days before the people start screaming bloody murder.

               1. Credit cards like VISA and Mastercard will stop working. Most of the issuing banks’ servers are in Manhattan. Places like Auto Zone or Chief Auto Parts will stop working; all their POS terminals connect to central servers; Auto Zone’s are in Memphis. Pizza Hut, KFC, and all related fast food will stop; every cash register is connected to the main servers in Atlanta. Every business that depends on “cloud” anything – and the Fed is shoveling everything possible there – will stop cold. Every business that requires connection to the internet will stop… where are your hospital’s patient records, its prescription system, its radiology servers located? Pharmacies won’t be able to log precriptions with the DEA. The laptops and tablets in the police cars will be useless. Ttate employees will be unable to surf PornHub while on the clock. And the public won’t be able to get their Facebook, Twitter, or Netflix.

                  A ton of stuff is utterly dependent on the internet, including a lot of stuff that doesn’t have to be, and stuff that it was utterly nuts to hook up, like, say, power stations, refineries, lock and dam control systems…

                  1. I thought infrastructure was on its own parallel system?

                     1. You’re so *cute* when you look like that…

9. What worries me isn’t the American revolution, the ACW, or the like. It’s the French revolution. It’s the Balkans. It is the bloody Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo conflicts.

   It is Maoist China.

   Human beings have had a long, long time to get good at this sort of conflict. There is a body of history that amounts to training manuals for those who seek to fill those lakes with blood. Take seriously, I beg you, your opponents. Because it won’t be the looney professor you meet on the street when, Himself forbid, conflict happens to visit your neighborhood. Take seriously the things they are willing to fight for. What would it take for a religious zealot to question his faith? What would it take for us, those of us who believe to question ours? I ask because I believe there is an element of that to this.

   I’ll have to organize my thoughts on this a bit more. I believe there is indeed hope yet.

   1. I’m serious about preparing, watching your back. DO NOT initiate violence.
      Things not taken in account include: if we go up, the rest of the world MIGHT go up like a Roman candle. And I’m very afraid what emerges is more statist than what we have.
      In fact, betting on our rebelling its the left’s ultimate hope, I think.
      If we don’t start the rumba, they might. If they do they’ll probably lose for same reasons we’d lose, minus media amplification.
      And if it doesn’t start, well… we’ve been going the other way for a while now. The culture IS starting to turn. It just takes time. Look at how panicked they are. A side that’s winning isn’t that panicked.

      1. My thought is Venezuela. Not a civil war, but daily violence. Food is still being grown, but not getting to places outside a couple of hours’ drive. One putative President, elected according to the Constitution, who says he’s the legitimate head of government. Another who says his removal as President was illegitimate, and who still has outside (foreign) approval. Neither has the ability to really put down the other, neither willing to back down. And people caught in the middle.

         Something kind of like what happened to the Republic of Siddarmark, in Weber’s Safehold books. A very scary, and infuriating, series of books.

         1. I don’t think it will get to that, because Venezuelans have no guns. Also as you probably know the culture is COMPLETELY different.

            1. Definitely. Plus, the country had already been run into the ground by its leaders. And it doesn’t have the coastal/urban vs interior/rural divides.

               But the general breakdown of legitimacy in terms of national government, and the attacks by gangs and mobs of opportunity, sure. Perhaps more like Detroit. I definitely see certain other cities–NY, LA, SF, Chicago going the way of Detroit. Others, perhaps not. St. Louis, too. Minneapolis.

               I don’t think it’ll have as much of an impact outside the big cities, though. Just an overall decline in societal trust, and much less social and physical mobility. You won’t see the “Midwest girl moves to New York to make her mark” kind of stuff anymore. Even if the Midwest girl identified more with NY folks, she’d be afraid of outing herself as one of “them”.

         2. Venezuela: roughly 30 million left; half white, half mestizo, with a smattering of others; 26 regional languages; 71% Catholic, 17% Protestant. Not exactly a recipe for a unified country. And interestingly enough, the two big pollical blocs are a socialist one, and a communist one. That doesn’t set them up for a capitalist-private ownership system like we mostly have here in the U.S. I haven’t the foggiest idea how it would play out if every Venezuelan had an M-16 and 10,000 rounds of ammunition each.

            1. I’m not thinking Venezuela because of any resemblance or lack thereof. Just that I think it would be a lot of “stand by to stand by” among people not actually involved in sporadic gang fights and such. No real resolution on who is the legitimate government one should work for/against [This is partially based on immediate post-election shenanigans I foresee.]

               It’s kind of like living in a family where domestic violence occurs. You know that some things will lead to violence very time. But the rest of the time, you don’t know what it is that will set it off, so you walk on eggshells and make your plans, and when the next big bombastic fight that you think will finally be the end of it dissipates into nothing, you’re left waiting for the next one that you think will resolve everything for good. And that one last big fight never comes. For years. You just stop expecting a resolution, and just brace for the next explosion.

            2. > M-16

               They’d have to get them as gifts from a friendly power; it’s unlikely they could build them on their own.

               Venezuela is the only nation that has failed to be able to manufacture the AK-47, even after they bought the Galil factory from Israel. Even Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Sudan have factories making them.

               It’s the usual story of incompetence and corruption, writ so large that even their military industry is barely functional.

               1. Whoa… when some can beat SHOVELS into AK’s? And they can’t manage it with the proper tooling? Ouch!

                  1. One wonders if they could produce a Sten gun, or if they’s be limited to zip guns.

                  2. Venezuela may have had an education system 20 years in advance of the U.S. public education system. In other words, they can flush a toilet, but don’t understand how one operates.

                  3. I’m sure Venezuelan workers can operate simple machinery just as well as Ethiopians and Nigerians. The problem was that they never *got* those machines; somewhere between the Israelis crating up a complete operational factory and getting it set up on Venezuelan soil, both the money and the hardware went missing.

                     India’s AK project used to be the exemplar of how to screw things up – they were so poorly made Indian troops wouldn’t carry them unless they had to, and they finally gave up and bought real ones from Russia. But at least they were able to make *something*…

                     1. Indian rifles used to be fairly decent. The Ishapore Armory Lee Enfield is not a -fabulous- example of the type, but workmanlike enough to serve. Only Lee Enfield #1 Mark III to be issued in 7.62 NATO. Its a bit odd, but it works nicely. My guess, somebody got paid off to do it right.

                        The big problem in India is graft and corruption. Anything to do with government is 95% side deals and back-scratching. If they ever had to straight-up get something done, they’d be screwed.

      2. I agree wholeheartedly that we need to prepare and be aware of what is happening around us- and eschew kicking off a bloody civil war (or even a bloody scuffle. Things can snowball at an alarming rate). I know what that means for me. But like others around here, I limit what things I say in open forum for good reasons.

         Most of us of the Odd tribe tend to have longer fuses than normal anyway. A very good thing in this case, despite it all. Our self control *will* be tested. There are things that make the chains on our anger tremble. We can’t let them slip.

         Even if we just hang on long enough, it will take work. Effort, as you’ve been reminding us for some time now. *grin* That is what gives me hope more than anything. Because Himself works in mysterious ways, but often he works through imperfect but willing human hands.

         If we can work our way out of it, we will. There will be challenges and threats along the way that we can’t even see just now. My worries tend to go for the worst case scenario, because I’m a pessimist at heart, optimist only by grim determination. The pessimism acknowledges there are statists on the “Right” as well. The optimist says we’ve beat them before and can do it again.

         1. We’re not going to be the ones deciding when it’s going to happen.

            The Left has been looking for their Horst Wessel for years; eventually, they’ll arrange an “incident” where they get the victim the victim their media can use to set it off.

            They *want* conflict. They think their police, military, and Guard units will slap any opposition down with trivial effort, and besides, “the government has nukes.”

            They’ll be claiming the moral high ground, no matter how it actually starts; their Narrative will fix any annoying facts that don’t agree.

            And they’re not seeing any personal risk, or even inconvenience, arising from their actions. Because they’ve always gotten away with breaking the law and killing people before, why should this time be any different?

            1. Also they believe that the Right is full of hot air. That the Right is all talk and no fight. The Right has never fought them, therefore the Right never will.

               1. Every time they DO get smacked down, it gets redefined out of the system– just like the mass shootings stopped by someone with their concealed carry.

                  1. Well it’s not a mass shooting since the shooter was stopped before they could shoot a bunch of people. That “doesn’t count” in prog nerve clusters. Since, of course, they *need* piles of bodies to point and screech at, I find myself thinking they’re actually *more* pissed when someone stops a mass shooting before it gets really bloody.

                     Perhaps uncharitable of me, but lately I find myself not really caring about that.

            2. “The Left has been looking for their Horst Wessel for years; eventually, they’ll arrange an “incident” where they get the victim”

               As they’ve been unable to manufacture one yet, what makes anyone think they’ll succeed when their power is waning? They keep trying — Trayvon, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” and even those high school kids from Covington KY — and they keep getting shot down.

               How many times can they cry wolf?

               1. Precisely.

               2. They control most of the media and too many of the police and court systems; should they decide not to pick a Designated Victim at random, they’re perfectly capable of making one up.

                  A little video editing, some fake reports, a ton of media spin, and of course nobody would be able to examine any evidence because it would be part of an “investigation still in progress.”

                  It would be trivially easy. Probably the reason they haven’t done it is the people who would give the orders have only a fleeting grip on technology.

                  “It’s as heavy as ten boxes…”

                  1. they been trying and trying, but it is much like terrorists. . . we been lucky they tend towards terminally stupid.
                     Also, everything now-a-days tends to be filmed at several angles at the same time. That’s what got them with the Covington Kids. iirc the exonerating video was from someone from their side of the protests, not even a supporter/sympathizer of the kids, posting their “Ha! We showed these brats!” video too.

         2. I’m already “a person of interest” to the deep state. Fall out from the Fast and Furious incident proved that to me. Add the proven institutional corruption in the FBI. It also is why I have no problem believing the IRS was politically weaponized against conservative groups.

      3. > And I’m very afraid what emerges is more statist than what we have.
         —
         And one side of the conflict – or at least those initiating it – would view that as a desirable end all in itself.

         1. Probably not the specific result they end up with, though. They’ll probably busily emulate the Reign of Terror… and then be surprised when Napoleon shows up.

            1. For a while Sargon was regularly saying “and then for no reason at all, people voted for Hitler”.

               1. Pretty much…there is a reason I say an American Franco will be the “best” possible outcome.

                  1. I think we might hope for a Pinochet, but that would be a long shot.

                     N.B.: No sniper reference intended.

                     1. No, I got you. Given how the left treated Pinochet after he voluntarily gave up power, any would be Pinochet will become a Franco…leave office feet first.

      4. And I’m very afraid what emerges is more statist than what we have.

         Less free, yes.

         More statist, in the modern leftist sense? Not so sure.

         I hate the phrase “the right side of history” and although the more libertarian don’t use it they do have a bit of assumption that freedom is the right side of history. Even Rush Limbaugh talks about, or used to, the yearning of the human soul to be free.

         I’m still not sure sure. I think license is much more what people want than liberty.

         It could be, and please note this is not me hoping but mere musing and maybe fearing a bit, that we are about to see history revert to its mean. And its mean isn’t freedom and liberty or, for that matter, grand statists running the minutia of life. It is strong men of various names in a variety of variations of feudal structures running protection rackets from the honest to the corrupt.

         I can see the US imploding, the world exploding, and 2100 looking like Western Europe circa 600 with the Germanic tribes replaced by Muslims and Africans with a rump Byzantium here and there.

         The big difference with history will be that happens everywhere “at the same time” (on a historical time scale, meaning the same century, not the same year or necessarily decade).

         1. From my studies I am persuaded that “the right side of history” is atop the steamroller.

         2. oh, once we tank, everyone else does. When we tank, several countries won’t be able to feed themselves….

      5. I wouldn’t say might. The US is currently holding up much of the world economy via its consumerism. Crash that and the entire structure disappears

   2. One of the (many) reasons to dread open conflict is that there will be monsters on your side.

      There are always monsters on your side.

      I would rather not have to be the guy forced to kill his squadmates because they decided that it really doesn’t matter if they rape the other side. Especially since its hard to protect your family when your allies turn on you in retaliation.

      But not doing it would be even worse…

      1. I know. And in war, you tend to become more like your foe. *shakes head* If we keep our heads despite it all, we have a *chance* to begin the long process of setting the apple cart aright. Best we do so with clean hands.

      2. ^Ding. This.

         If we’re lucky, most of our monsters will get whacked the first time they try start in on the rape, pillage, and burn before making sure the area is secure. Of course, that’ll mean the opposition will get a whole bunch of firearms, ammunition, body armor, and propaganda, but being rid of that bunch might be worth it.

         1. and propaganda

            Don’t underestimate the propaganda value of “if one of our people goes barbarian we drag them out in the street and execute them on the spot”. Especially if the other side lets their barbarians roam free.

            Of course to make it work you have to back up your claims. Bonus if you can provide the bodycam footage.

            1. Only if you can publicize it.

            2. I don’t underestimate the value of that, actually. Demonstrating that you’re willing to put down your own rabid dog is always a good thing.
               But if the opposition gets to your monsters before you do, you don’t get that propaganda value.

         2. If we’re lucky our monsters will only be the rape, pillage, and burn type.

            1. Fear the fury of a good man who decides to cross that line?

               1. Yep.

                  I know what I can imagine and I’ve learned there are people who think cuddling your just aborted fetus is cool, so I fear what can crawl out of someone’s mind if pushed to the limit.

                  1. It’s not as much that as the fact that a percentage of those are happy that they could do the act vs relieved or sorrowful.

                  2. And here I thought they’d hit rock bottom with the “pan-fried afterbirth” routine…

                  3. I am going to disagree a bit with you here – It might be psychologically healthy to have a chance to hold on to an aborted fetus and mourn. Especially if you did the abortion because your doctor convinced your that an abortion is in your best interest.

                     My sister have a friend who aborted her baby on medical advice – and is now damaged by the fact that she could not hold her dead baby and mourn and bury the baby properly.

                     Humans – it is never quite as simple as ideology is.

                     1. That’s a solid 0.1% of abortions.
                        Though perhaps another 0.1% is people convinced by their doctors they must do this. I experienced this, and I’m glad I didn’t take their advice. Mentally retarded (according to doctor) son will finish graduate studies next year.

      3. Depressing when evildoers gives monsters a bad name…

      4. This is the *only* reason to hope that the ground-based combat arms of the US military get involved in the conflict (there are several excellent reasons to hope that the actual military does absolutely nothing other than secure their dependents and make it clear that they would brook no foreign interference, on pain of nuking).

         There has never been a group who, en masse, has been closer to freaking D&D 1st Edition paladins. Single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints, but damned if they don’t seem to try hard at it. Imagine their reaction to nominal allies who pull this kind of crap, with the decision on how to react being at the ground level, not at the State Dept level.

         I don’t think that would end well for the rapists.

         1. “make it clear that they would brook no foreign interference, on pain of nuking”

            “Sorry, all our troops are occupied at the moment, but if you insist we can deliver a cruise missile. For the truly insistent we have a special deal on MIRVed ICBMs.”

            1. For submarine launched, press 1
               For ICBM launched, press 2
               For naval bombardment, press 3

               For all other “ we mess you up” options, please stay on the line and an infantry brigade will be with you shortly.

               1. “Warthog go ‘BRRRRRTT!'”

         2. My Polish lady friends in Panama were absolutely flabbergasted at how *polite* the young American paratroopers in Ciudad Panama were Immediately post-Just Cause party.

10. Yes, the main stream media would have us believe that people are taking a particular sixteen year old seriously. True, she has been put on display in front of ‘prestigious’ organizations for all the world to see her heartfelt meltdown. If we let them the MSM and the people who are using her will take full advantage of it — they have done such in the past. Think the pictures such as that of the naked napalmed girl and the woman crying at Kent State which were used to sway the public’s opinion about Vietnam.

    The traditional opinion makers are loosing their control of the media. The airing of the young lady and her complaints has not proven as effective as they hoped. While I am not so sure it is for the best, it appears that most of the younger people are just not that interested in the news, even from the news/comedy/entertainment shows that were touted as the next wave.

    This trend is why we continue to see a move to de-legitimize any news sources the opinion makers do not control. Also why there is so much pressure to ban challenges to their preferred spin (legislation proposed to make it illegal to question anthropogenic global climate change and hate speech bans anyone?) under the excuse that those challenges are too dangerous or hateful to allow.

    This has to be fought, each generation is faced with some kind of battle because maintaining freedom is never easy. But I will not let such people put me in a panic and make my life a misery — I refuse to give them that kind of power over me.

    1. I dunno, even the Left seems to be more irritated than awestruck by Scolding Greta. I get the idea her handlers expected people marching in the streets in her support, the enviroNazis elevating her to their Imperious Leader, and promises from converged industry to follow her environmental leadership.

       Mostly, what she got were politicians saying (in effect) “that’s nice, now go away.”

       1. “Mostly, what she got were politicians saying (in effect) “that’s nice, now go away.””

          Which is probably the most mature reaction politically. That way they’re not railroaded into anything, and they’re not marked down as attacking some poor little child.

       2. I’m seeing “Scoldilocks” as a nickname for her more and more, along with memes showing her upper-middle class live contrasted with dire poverty, and “you wrecked my childhood” captions.

          No, I think she’s had her 15 minutes of fame.

          1. Scoldy Longstockings?

             1. 1+

       3. I’ve also seen people complain she’s too white.

          1. Of course she is. She’s condemning billions of the superior brown people, for centuries under the devil white man’s heel, to poverty and stagnation.

             1. So basically standard leftist. 😛

                Seriously, that’s ultimately what the climate-focused leftards are advocating, preventing “third world” countries from industrializing to try to pull themselves out of misery while tearing down “first world” countries for being too successful.

                Scratch a leftist, and they’ll bleed racism.

                1. Yep. They want to redirect first world money to these countries as a fig leaf, but the only way to return to a 1800s energy economy requires 1800s population and expectations

                   1. I found some of my old (though not as old as the original) Traveller:TNE sourcebooks. Found something called a “Technologically Elevated Dictator” which is some tyrant on a planet that’s suffered a loss of it’s previous tech level who has access to leftover devices (usually weapons) of that tech level to maintain control over the populace, usually by “testing” them on peasants and such. Though it may include simply having a bodyguard unit with, say, gauss rifles or FGMPs and battle dress while everyone else has black-powder weapons or maybe even bows or similar.

                      Something like that would be required to keep humanity down and under the prog’s thumb.

          2. hard to be anything but white when a native scandinavian
             Lucky she isn’t transparent or “Pale Blue” as Billy Connolly said.

       4. The left is mostly irritated because she has proved to be an ineffective tool for their cause.

    2. he woman crying at Kent State

       You mean the place where Robert O’Rouke just gave a speech justifying his desire to gun grab by claiming only the government can be trusted with guns.

       1. If that doesn’t generate a few attack ads for any office R. Francis is running for, the opponent ain’t trying. I’m pretty sure it will be R.F.O’Rourke, private citizen from now on. Time to find an honest job, Bobby!

       2. What I wonder about is if the Clown Posse is just a distraction, and they pull some previously-out-of-sight “moderate” out of the shadows to run.

          There have been several occasions where a crew of highly-promoted candidates attended a Party caucus, and the nomination went to someone entirely out of left field.

          And they’ll still be part of The Crazy, just ordered to STFU until after the election.

          1. There are still a chance that Mrs. Clinton will run. Rumor has it she’s preparing a smear job against Fauxcahontas.

             1. In a saner time I would say that there is no way that there would be a third Hillary attempt at this time. Even in this one I still doubt it.

             2. Everything I’ve seen has her running once the current pack slit their own throats (or keel over from medical problems, or their senility becomes too obvious.)

                1. “Everything I’ve seen has her running once the current pack slit their own throats (or keel over from medical problems, or their senility becomes too obvious.)”

                   Any day now? (Uh, too soon?)

                   1. The guess I read was when Sanders realizes that campaigning is not compatible with heart-attack recovery, she’d enter the race. Of course, with Bernie, I think he’s more obstinate than smart…

                      “Death is Mother Nature’s way to tell you to slow down.”–former boss

                      OTOH, just because you’re running for office, doesn’t mean you can’t get indicted. That’s not a small club there.

                2. In her mind she’ll be the best man for the job until the day she dies, but I am not sure “running” is what she’ll be able to do.

                   1. Look, I’m not saying Hillary and Gollum are the same person, but I’ve heard her muttering about “My pwecious” and can’t help but notice the two of them are never seen in the same room.

                3. So that her habit of cutting her own throat and appearance of medical problems won’t be such an issue anymore?

          2. Hillary is about to jump back in.

          3. Doofus Hairsniffer *is* the out of sight moderate….

    3. “This trend is why we continue to see a move to de-legitimize any news sources the opinion makers do not control.”

       Well, they have succeeded in de-legitimizing every news sources the opinion makers do control.

11. “It is PARTICULARLY foolish when the media still holds a giant megaphone, for those people who are too busy and don’t care about politics”

    This is a point I am having trouble on some conservative blogs getting through to people. The “average” American who has a light, general interest in staying broadly informed is still doing so through the MSM. They read the local paper, watch the nightly news, and listen to the little news bits on the radio on the commute, just like they’ve done for years. Even those who don’t fully trust the MSM are still often using it as their main news sources. And a lot of conservatives I run into online in some venues want to just dismiss them as fools, or else simply shrug the problem off and say better conservative use of social media will solve the problem.

    I have some sympathy with the latter position – just look at what President Trump has done with Twitter – but it isn’t a panacea, and the most popular platforms are under control of the Left. And some portion of the population says “but how can you trust what some blogger writes” even as scandals regarding lies and fabrications erupt in the MSM.

    Simply starting a new traditional media source doesn’t seem to be the answer. The case of FOX News – which aside from a few talk hosts is almost as left as the rest of the MSM – shows that. The left and the rest of the media just ignore or denounce it, and so many in the masses that still sort of trust the MSM ignore it.

    I’m not sure what to do about this particular stumbling block.

    1. don’t worry. What we have is enough they can’t do what they did in the past and demonize us all. Enough people are smelling a rat, even in Europe that the worm is turning. The left media doesn’t have the power it once had. Mostly people are just tuning out. Look at the numbers of times they’ve tried. BUT we can’t give them “atrocities” to film. If we do we’re just guaranteeing loss.

       1. They have a whole industry inclined to protect them should atrocity occur. We, on the other hand, would turn on the atrocity makers and bring them to trial.

       2. Well, one good thing is, pointing and sneering “conspiracy theorist” isn’t letting them “win” arguments by default any more… they’ve pwned themselves good and hard on that one.

       3. “First, we’ll kill at the cameramen”….hmmm, doesn’t quite have that ring to it.

       4. they’re all imagining they are Woodward and Co and are going to break the story that will undo president trump, hence why they are pouncing on every little red dot they see darting across the room… however, they are like a not-particularly-bright cat and are ignoring the person across teh room with the laser pointer….

          1. “however, they are like a not-particularly-bright cat and are ignoring the person across the room with the laser pointer….”

             I can just see President Trump pointing the red dot exactly where he wants them pouncing, and tripping all over themselves, as they scramble to do so.

             1. Power Line’s Week in Pictures has you covered:

                

                1. Priceless!!!! 🙂 LOL

                2. Although picture would be better if kitty had Shiff’s or Pelosi’s face morphed on it. AOC’s or one of the squad of 4?

          2. Hence, the memos.

    2. I have come to view the Traditional Media with the same dubiousness as those check-out lane tabloids declaring RFK, Jr. has found his Dad’s Real killer or that Camilla has thrown a tantrum at being told she won’t be Queen.

       With the minor distinction that I don’t think those tabloids expect to be believed.

       1. Enquirer did break the Edward’s story. More trust than. nyt

          1. you can tell by how they write the headlines on how serious they are being. The more it would fit on WWN next to BatBoy, the less trustworthy it is . . . the Edwards stuff looked right off the NYPost.

             1. I always liked the Weekly World News.

       2. Could be like Men in Black, where the tabloids actually have more accurate information than the MSM. 😀

       3. The tabloids broke the Johnathan Edwards story … and ended his run for the Democratic nomination. The MSM had been offered the story and choose to suppress it. Of course, that story seemed to be made for the tabloids.

12. If I can ever get off my rear and finish it, I’ve got a book about this coming out at the end of next April called Schism. Let’s just say that the story is…not pleasant.

13. > Killing vast numbers of innocent — not just a few, as the revolution admittedly did — is not a way to anyone’s heart.
    —
    The inner-city areas are going to burn. We *know* this; we’ve seen the crisis actors and Facebook and Twitter and the mass media testing out their triggers already.

    All that property and all those deaths will be a diversion, drowning out other news, justifying martial law and general repression.

    Whatever happens, there are millions of Americans who are going to suffer because they live in the wrong neighborhoods.

    1. Among the many, many reasons I call the Race Hustlers like Sharpton, “Black Quislings”.

    2. There already are. Residents of NY City Public Housing are terrorized by hoodlums running rampant and de Blase’s policies are keeping the police impotent.

       Anti-cop policies implemented in the Bronx bring danger to cops
       [SNIP]
       [T]he progressive anti-law enforcement policies of Mayor Bill de Blasio and the state Legislature are taking their toll.

       Criminals have been empowered to disrespect police and resist arrest as a matter of course, with inevitable fatal consequences.

       [SNIP]

       The tragedy of Officer Mulkeen’s death at the Edenwald Houses just compounds the Pantaleo effect, and makes life in the largest public housing complex in the Bronx more difficult for the people who live and work there.

       In the last year alone, the Edenwald Houses has seen shootings skyrocket, up from a reported 10 to 15 shootings in the precinct covering the complex.

       That’s why Mulkeen was on patrol in Edenwald in the early hours of Sunday, trying to control the shootings and gang feuds that make life a misery for law-abiding residents, especially the elderly, the mentally handicapped and the children under age 6 who live in almost 300 households there.

       “It’s a two-man stop: Don’t go alone,” says Eddie, 49, a painter for the New York City Housing Authority who has worked in the Bronx for three years and sees firsthand the impact of the city’s war on cops.

       [SNIP]

       “Edenwald is real bad now. A lot of guys won’t take overtime there because after dark it’s like the OK Corral.”

       As the shootings increase, makeshift shrines with candles for victims spring up around the projects, always accompanied by anti-cop graffiti. “F–k the police” is a favorite, even though it’s a lack of policing that leads to the deaths.

       It’s a hostile environment for any cop to walk into and Eddie figures if he gets into trouble while he works, 911 won’t be much help.

       “I’m painting the stairs and I know If I need help, I’m done … There’s different rules and a different rule of law here.”

       The entrance-door locks on the buildings are always broken, so strangers are free to stroll through corridors and stairwells that stink of urine from being used as ­toilets.

       “Elderly people are prisoners in there. You can tell [the danger spots] because there’s no one on the park benches.”

       Increasingly, at night when he’s working overtime, he hears shooting.

       [SNIP]

       He feels sorry for good people trapped in the descending chaos.

       “I’ll go into some apartments that are like a palace. You could eat off the floor. It’s horrible for them. It’s horrible for us to ­witness.”

       Protective cages have had to be built around the time clocks where NYCHA tradespeople report for duty to keep them safe from objects and garbage that rain down from windows above.

       When Eddie clocks in mornings, sometimes the cages are surrounded by dirty diapers and feminine-hygiene products tossed from surrounding apartments.

       Construction awnings are de facto garbage dumps for residents too lazy to walk 100 yards from their front doors to chutes on every floor. Or maybe they’re too scared to venture outside.

       [SNIP]

       When there are no more cops like Mulkeen willing to risk their lives to maintain law and order, where does that leave the voiceless poor held hostage to the violent gangbangers who rule the roost?

       The poor are the real victims ignored by the virtue signalers of the progressive criminal justice movement who are too busy emptying out prisons and emasculating police to notice the disaster they are fueling.

14. Even if you and yours survive a civil war, you won’t be unharmed by it. Things won’t go away.

    If I’d known then what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have married my husband. Not without years of therapy, at a minimum. Shoving that stuff into the closet doesn’t work: it just comes oozing out through the cracks in the doors.

    1. And those who’ve never been exposed to violence, and their own capacity for same… Don’t know what they are capable of. Some find out, and revel in it for a time. Others are revolted by what they learn. And still others find that they have a taste for it. All of these things come as a shock to those who have lived peaceful lives, by and large.

       It is one thing going into a fight knowing these things and having to do it because you have no choice but to defend you and yours. It is still another to initiate it, all unknowing that your actions have been orchestrated from afar.

       1. Dan, my husband was a child. To the rebels, he was just a tool to use to try to exert pressure on my father-in-law. To my father-in-law, it was a trial of his faith, and no matter what was threatened, he wouldn’t give in.

          That the rebels never carried out their threats can be seen as a miracle. But what it did to my husband’s psyche . . .

15. As far as I’m concerned, much of Kindle Unlimited’s fiction about the apocalypse represent Americans considering the concept of civil war.

    Have you noticed that the people threatening uprisings (as in, “don’t do (socialist policy du jour that would kill the economy) and there will be blood in the streets!”…are the sort of people, physically, who couldn’t organize anything more physically demanding than a petition? Due to age and general lack of pragmatism?

    There have been attempts to scare the population into compliance. I regard the whole Occupy Wall Street action as an attempt to frighten normal middle-class people. But it didn’t work, in part because it’s hard to respect any movement that can’t figure out waste removal or latrines. (Probably due to a signal lack of actual Boy Scouts in their ranks.) Making lots of noise and chaos in urban environments doesn’t inspire anyone to see the backers as people to follow.

    And isn’t it interesting that blue cities are encouraging the chaos of homeless camps within their borders? Telling the middle class they have no right to a reasonable existence?

    Someone is trying to rerun 1930s Berlin, with the clashes between left and right in the streets leading to societal breakdown. However, it’s not working, because (in my opinion) Americans don’t see themselves as city dwellers. Heavens, even middle class city dwellers often grew up outside the city, and can retreat there if need be. Tell me that there are riots in the city, and I will start talking about under-funded police budgets, and/or politicians encouraging disorder for political ends. I do NOT start looking for Bernie Sanders to rescue me.

    Violent political clashes featuring anarchists seem to be gaining traction in Greece, though. From “greekreporter” : A group of about 30 anarchists launched an attack with Molotov cocktails against the Zografou police station in Athens at around 2:40 am on Saturday.

    According to the Hellenic Police, the perpetrators came out of the nearby university campus and hurled about 20 firebombs at the station, without causing any injuries or damage.

    1. “the sort of people, physically, who couldn’t organize anything more physically demanding than a petition? Due to age and general lack of pragmatism?”

       Like the climate protesters in London the other day who had the bright idea of using a fire hose to spray fake ‘blood’ on a government building… only to lose control of the hose and end up rather hilariously spraying themselves while running around in a panic. (Turns out there’s a reason other than evil patriarchy that most actual firefighters are physically strong and competent men.)

       To add to the amusement, apparently they also forgot to keep the vehicle’s tax and insurance up to date, so will be in some trouble for that, as well as making a horrible mess and looking like fools.

       1. Much as I hate to defend these dumbasses, the hose looks like it failed at join. We’re trained to regain control but it’s not necessarily strength. Especially since if dumbass had a modicum of sense he could brace the hose and make effortless to control.

          1. Although I’ll bet they overpressured and didn’t shut down hose when failed.

             1. Just from watching the video, it looks like they didn’t shut it down. After the people on top of the truck drop it, two more try to catch it and aim it at the building, and neither one can hold on as it whips around. However, the ground looked slick with the red water, so that was not in their favor. They finally shut the pump off (with a nice belch of black smoke.)

                1. I don’t know about anybody else here, but I’m not betting much on the upper body strength of Brit Europhiles. Or, at any rate, not on the males.

                2. Ya. I saw the hose whipping around. Sounds like they did actually throttle down but it looks more like a hose failure than just dropping it. But it’s not that hard to get it under control in reality. But fixed position exterior hose use isn’t hard

    2. Proper response to violent anarchists is to mow them down. An anarchist, by definition, has nothing of value to say. They are barbarians incapable of civilized actions. And in the case of these people in Greece, they’re not even capable of effective violence.

       Dredging through my memory, even though Professor La Paz from RAH’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress claimed to be an anarchist, he had an ethical and moral framework for dealing with others. Rather than being a “true” anarchist, he was really a minimalist.

       1. He was a Practical Anarchist, a very different thing than an Anarchist.

          1. I thought he called it Rational Anarchist and, as I’ve gotten older, 90% of it seemed like common sense: there is no state, only men in the state so you can’t make anyone but the individual responsible for actions.

             1. RATIONAL Anarchist, for sure.

    3. > even middle class city dwellers often grew up outside the city, and can retreat there if need be
       —
       That’s because they can move somewhere else and drive in to work or access whatever’s not available in the urban core.

       Which is just one reason the Left hates cars and loves mass transit.

       When the only option is mass transit, the people who are dependent on it are stuck, no matter how many stops it has.

       1. Especially if can strangle telecommute

       2. Here in Houston I’ve been hearing ads about how wonderful mass transit is and how they want to get people to give up their cars. Hm… nope.

          (Yes, current mayor is a Dem. Shocker.)

          1. There’s Federal, and sometimes state, money available for mass transit programs. That’s why the pols are always for it, even in places where it makes no sense. Any time money moves, pieces calve off like little icebergs, into their waiting hands. Doesn’t have to be direct theft; there’s always opportunity in knowing where the construction is going to be.

             Look at the People’s Republic of California and their super-train for a good example. And now that it’s canceled, they can’t understand why El Presidente wants them to return all that money…

16. Sign a compact never to initiate violence? Moi??? Nonsense!

    That is simply an open invitation for others to initiate it, as counter-productive as a pact to no first use of nuclear weapons.

    I am peaceful, but will not stand idly by, politely protesting, while wrongs are perpetrated. Sure – some rob yu with a six-gun but some rob you with a fountain pen.

    Hell yes I will initiate violence; I will go Hulkasaurous. But I would rather not, so don’t push. Do not presume to make yourself a god and it will not be necessary for me to take you down.

    1. The formulation includes the understanding that those wrongs were an initiation of force that you are now responding to.

       Whether this is sophistry or an important philosophical distinction is left as an exercise for the reader. But no matter which side you pick the problem remains: when to bring violence to the table is one of the harder Big Questions.

       1. When to bring violence to the table is an easy question. Violence is the snarling three-headed pit-bull sitting at my feet.

          The question is whether I have to let loose the beast. I’d rather not, he’s difficult to put back on his leash and eating too much tofu gives him gas. I prefer to speak softly and with reason, but do not make the mistake of assuming that it is other than preference.

          1. Dramatic illustration of principle:

             I said I never had much use for it.

    2. And the other side of this is the reality-overwriting goalpost-shift and language-hijacking that defines actual violence by the left as just speech, but any speech by the right as violence, such that in appropriately woke jurisdictions physical violence in response to certain classes of speech is self defense, which will lead inevitably to the doctrine of preemptive self-defense against potential future icky speech.

       Paste a Greta-sneering-at-the-UN photo over the top of that and you get an idea of what I’m thinking.

       The other side blithely opening that can of worms with no slightest concept of how said worms could also come in their direction is my greatest concern.

    3. I am to LAZY to initiate violence. Like many things I will only do it if I HAVE TO.

    4. A guy pulling a knife, or a gun, out is initiating violence, even if he’s not sticking or shooting you with it yet.

17. Remember Oklahoma City. That particular act, no matter if it was a couple of terrorists or the Federal Government, delayed the second amendment movement for years. It also shut down an effort to declare the 16th amendment not properly ratified.

    1. ehh, that was never gonna happen anyway.

18. A little off topic. Jumping in because the image caught my eye. Looking at it closely I realized that I recognize the location. Downtown Toronto at Church/Front/Wellington intersection looking west. Rather appropriate in a sense as Toronto is a leftist hell hole in my opinion and rife with potential mobs. As well we are facing our current election in a few weeks that will determine how much freedom those of us that care about it will either keep or lose.
    Alas, there will be no “civil war” here, as most of us have been trained to be quiet and polite. Unlike our forefathers.

    1. Being Canadian, I suspect (if it comes) that it will be a very ‘civil’ war . . .

19. “I spend about 1 hour of the weekly phone call with mom explaining … ”

    Heh. I cannot count the amount of time spent explaining to Philadelphia In-laws that even though we live in the South and attend a “dissident” Presbyterian church there is no handling of snakes and do not (my side of the family excepted) hate Jews. I am not sure we’ve convinced them of anything except the fruitlessness of further discussion of the matter.

    The fact that they’ve visited and gaped in awe at the size of our local grocery stores and the wealth of variety of the selection — a range of choice they only match by schlepping to Reading Terminal Market — does not seem to fit into their jigsaw puzzle’s picture of Life Down Heah.

    And the whole thing of strangers smiling and greeting one another on the sidewalks just baffles them.

    1. I get the same stuff from friends in the north. I hate to tell them, I saw as much, if not more open racism up north than I see down here in Florida. They usually counter that with “But Florida isn’t the REAL south”.

       1. Their “real” South is in the backlot sets of Hollywood.

          Heck, we might go *weeks* between lynchings and cross-burnings, and people hardly ever play banjos in the swamps.

          Not like Philadelphia or NYC, which have no racism and negligible crime rates.

       2. *grin* I am in the real South. And I have more in common with Southerners of any race than Yankees, pasty or tanned. Yup. Folks who don’t live cheek by jowl with blacks and whites stuck together tend to be a might more… opinionated on the subject of “race.”

          The race I’m for us human. Subdividing within that is plum foolishness.

       3. There have been a few racism calculations I have seen where ground zero was. Boston.

       4. about every year, “The Most Racist City In America” awards go to the Boston area

          1. Weren’t the last of the great mid-century anti-busing riots held in Boston “Rules for thee but not for we” Mass?

             1. Phase 1 of busing was instituted in Boston in the fall of 1974, and the result was NOT pretty.

                Meanwhile, in the 1970s Joe Biden led an attempt in the Senate to end court ordered busing, just about the time it appeared that the courts were about to do so in Delaware.

       5. My definition of “real south” -> do Alligators or Crocodiles live, thrive, and breed, in the wild (not zoo or wildlife park)? (not saying they can be found everywhere, just possible). Plus, most the year, OMG do you breath water with your air? If you have the latter without the former, it is not US South.

          For all that the PNW is wet. Even in our rainiest season, we don’t breath in the stuff with our air; wind might force in vapor on the coast, but not breath it in.

          1. For me, definition of ‘real South’ is: go into any handful of local restaurants, and if grits are on the breakfast menu you in all of them are there.

          2. I am moving to extreme southern Mississippi next year, and since the place where I will be working is apparently a rocket test area, has a significant offset from towns. Which means plenty of land area for gators to wander. Of course, it’s also right next to Louisiana and the bayou and such.

    2. Tell them to schlep their sorry arses onto the Paoli-Thorndale line and visit a Wegmans.

    3. Actual Polish joke (or so I hear):

       Q: Who smiles at strangers for no reason?
       A: Only idiots and Americans.

       As far as the rest, isn’t it interesting how many stereotype-free, broad-minded Northerners (and others) find nothing odd or amiss with concluding that anyone with a Southern (esp. Deep South) accent, or even worse a “mountain” accent, is obviously idiotic / ignorant / prejudiced etc. (Ain’t “projection” just grand?)

       1. And then there’s me. I’m broken. Despite having married a yankee (well, see, I also prefer redheads and he’s dark haired. Eh. But he’s him…) guys with Southern accents make me melt. More than once I’ve asked someone at a con to talk again. They always look puzzled. 😀

       2. Didn’t you cut that a little short? The version with which I’m familiar has a third line: But I repeat myself.

       3. You’ve reminded me of an article from long ago, when they were having trouble launching Euro-Disney in France. While they were able to train staff in “The American Way” they discovered that many European visitors were more than slightly creeped out by a village with so many idiots, especially the ones operating power machinery like the rides.

       4. Q: Who smiles at strangers for no reason?
          A: Only idiots and Americans.

          But Americans have a reason to smile. We’re not Europeans. That’s all the reason we need, right there.

          1. 

             1. For those wanting to make memes:
                https://imgflip.com/
                and right click, open in a new tab on the meme page.

          2. Until about 15-20 years ago, you could spot Americans in the wild in Europe because we walked with our heads up, looking around, instead of eyes to the ground.

             Either we’re more confident, or we never learned to beware of cobblestone streets and sidewalks. 😛

20. Does it seem like we’re getting caught up in a Guns Of August replay? (sigh That would have been pithier 7 weeks ago.)

    The left continues to politicize seemingly every aspect of life. Meanwhile, both the left and the right seem to be willing to treat every hill as one to die on.

    I’ve actively tried to be left alone most of my adult life. But when healthcare and tuition and borders are free for everyone, then everyone pays a price. And these are just the latest iterations of the left’s “were doing this for you” power grab.

    So it feels like we’re getting caught up in this swirling eddy which is carrying us faster and deeper towards an inevitable drain. To *me* it seems like the left won’t listen to reason, so the best advice we’re gonna get is, “Be prepared.” But I’d bet that many on the left figure *we’re* the ones being unreasonable.

    Gotta agree with Sarah on this one. Being anywhere near that drain is not a good place to be.

21. What scares me about politics today is how similar it is to what my wife describes to me when she was growing up. It starts with crazy-sounding politicians and ends with their friends killing people because they know no one will stop them. And the choice of victims is pretty much random.

    1. And the choice of victims is pretty much random.

       And naturally this happens right at the point where you most desperately want precision in only the most guilty being targeted.

       yay

       1. In her accounts, the victim was the most convenient one for the guy who wanted to kill someone at that moment.

          1. Yeah, that fits.

22. Have you forgotten how many of you post under assumed names, because you’re successfully passing in professions controlled by the left?

    Plus, at least two of us have openly admitted to ongoing or prior alternative sexuality (me and someone who admitted to going to swinger clubs). That’s assuming no one is gay (no one jumps out, but I’m sure one or two are and have talked about it).

    Several other immigrants and a couple of ex-pats (so they would be traitors in some POV) so that would be a problem.

    Like it or not, between both the radicals of the right and the left if it gets really ugly (as I put it the other day Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius) anyone Jewish will be suspect.

    I’m expecting violence. I’m expecting it more than our lovely hostess. I’m all but convinced it cannot be avoid. I thought Trump’s mere election would slap some sense into people who it apparently just slapped more silly into.

    By electing Trump we may have made it inevitable, but if that’s the case it already was because it shows they had passed the point of no return: any resistance to their direction would be met with violence.

    The thing is, it won’t be armies, at least not for a good long while if ever (at which point, just find your favorite Franco as that is the “best” outcome). It’ll be a swirling mosh pit of dozens of overlapping groups lashing out at any perceived out group. And yes, I choose mosh pit deliverably for a form of chaotic violence that once you are in it you often HAVE NO CONTROL WHERE YOU ARE GOING. The momentum and the violence and the push back and the posturing (yes, there is posturing in pits and there is plenty in the warm culture war already) often will lift you off your feet and put you somewhere random.

    That’s if you’re lucky enough to be put down instead of fall. And if you fall, well, this will be more 80s slam dancing than modern moshing. In today’s pit you pick people up. In the 80s you picked up your known friends and kicked everyone else when they were done or, at best, just didn’t care if you stepped on them.

    Be ready for violence, but also be ready for no one being sure which side you are on except those closest to you. And don’t expect non-friends to pick you up. Expect to join a gang, or a rough equivalent, or pay one for protection.

    1. “but also be ready for no one being sure which side you are on”
       I thought everyone would be EASY to recognize. One side in RED Hats and the Other all in Black with masks.

       1. nope, I’m likely to be in black, at maximum distance, with optics on.

    2. I’ll put it this way. My handle is pretty damn universal (see an aacid and 99% chance its me). I’ve pulled out of panels at cons because of the vitriol and hatred and am well within a highly left wing fandom. I walk around under expectation there are enemies about

       1. At this point, the left has made me happy I never seriously committed to any fandom. They have even ruined sex cons (including leading to two being cancelled this year).

          1. Herb, our EXPECTATIONS aren’t different. I just have a “feeling” it won’t come to that. It’s not rational. But my “feelings” of this kind are often right. Attribute it to Celtic blood, or to the computer between my ears mostly operating at a level that my conscious doesn’t get. Whichever. But that is my only hope, just now. Because it’s not REASONED I don’t trust it. And yet.

             1. Might be because your fear is broken?

                1. No. i still fear for the kids

                   1. You seem to react differently than a lot of folks.

                      And suddenly Chesterton’s line about how it’s dangerous to worry a woman, she might actually do something about it, comes to mind…..

          2. I’ve identified as tangential for a while. Still friends with a bunch in it but too many witch hunts supported by staff

    3. Like it or not, between both the radicals of the right and the left if it gets really ugly (as I put it the other day Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius) anyone Jewish will be suspect.

       Hell, the maroons are already trying to add Catholics to the list!

       Seriously, did they SLEEP through that movie last century?

       (incidentally, quote is very fitting because it’s made up; wasn’t recorded until quite a bit later– though decades, not centuries– was counter to the other and earlier records, but fit the story it was in. And now I’m mentally classing it as “I can see Russia from my house!” )

23. Trump is causing them to expose themselves, and to expose themselves in ways even the media can’t cover up.

    I don’t mind it when it is AOC or even Kamala Harris exposing themselves, but I fear Bernie, Nancy, or (smod, no,) Hillary does.

    I mean, I’m experimental and open to new things, but please, not that 🙂

    1. All the brain bleach in the world ain’t gonna get those images out of my head. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and vomit.

       1. And my work here is done.

          1. Harris and hill with bernboi?

             1. Eh….given some nights at the club I’ll just quote Roy Batty.

                1. attack ships on fire off the shoulder of orion?

                   1. Yep.

    2. There’s not enough brain bleach in all the warehouses to clean up after some of those possibilities.

       1. You’re welcome.

    3. Kamala may have been worth a peek back when she was showing it to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown in return for her start to her political career, but nowadays, nope.

       1. Actually, the idea of Trump making Dems expose themselves has me thinking about voting in the Dem primary.

          The question is what Dem is most likely to get Sarah Palin and Dana Loesch to expose themselves…and maybe Dave Rubin while we’re at it.

    4. *blinks*

       I hate you so much right now.

       1. Why, thank you 🙂

    5. You’re a bad man. Think shame on yourself. 😛

    6. So… phrasing?

       1. We’re no longer doing phrasing!

          1. Unless you ban me, we will always be doing phrasing. 🙂

24. One of the things that was useful for me in getting some perspective on the American War of Independence was the biography of Samuel Adams I had on Audible. It was the first place that I’d seen that the first rumblings of discontent with British rule over the colonies dated back about a century before the AWoI actually kicked off.

    One thing, however, I don’t have any patience with is the “let’s you and him fight” aspect of some “civil war now” folks. They’ll do things like post memes of some Founding Father (I’ve seen both Washington and Jefferson used for that purpose) with text along the lines of “Me and my homies would be stacking bodies by now.” They criticize folk for not rising in rebellion and yet they, themselves, aren’t rising in rebellion never considering that whatever excuses they are using not to rise apply equally well to everyone else.

    In my case it’s recognition that armed revolt is a really, really, really last case, very nearly a GoTH plan (and neither Germanic tribe nor modern subculture), and is extremely unlikely to leave the nation freer than when it started. The track record of revolutions and civil wars on that score is really bad. So only when there’s absolutely no other choice before abject tyranny. And even I’m not sure what the specific trigger might be.

    1. Yeah, I’m thinking the best possible case is probably Singapore-writ-large with caning for elevator spitting and absolutely no tolerance for anything nonconformist, but basically don’t-cause-trouble-and-we-leave-you-alone.

       Lots of less-best cases trailing down from that.

    2. Given a choice between being a dead hero, and a live coward, I’d prefer to not have to make the choice. There’s a difference between talking about revolution, planning for revolution, instigating revolution, and actually revolting. Theoretically, the first two are protected under the U.S. Constitution, the last two are not. To borrow some words from Black, I “really, really, really” do not like being on the wrong side of a firearm barrel; and I have been there a couple of times. (Hint: Pay attention to where the lines are on the pavement of an air force base, and don’t accidentally cross any.) Actually being shot at usually just pisses me off; even (or especially) if it’s just some moron who shouldn’t have a hunting license shooting at noises.

       1. “Theoretically, the first two are protected under the U.S. Constitution, the last two are not”
          No the Last 2 are established by the Declaration. They are NOT Legal but then when you have to use them LEGAL doesn’t mean much anyway.

          1. Law and Order is not a terminal good, but a means to an end.

             Means that destroy their ends are not to be slavishly followed just because they supposed to be means to an end you like.

          2. The last two are not legal UNLESS you win. Then they become ex post facto legal.

             Part of the legality question will be- is it legal for the militia- citizens- to shoot to break up mobs since the government won’t? Mob violence will come from the left and those who blindly follow them. Also if we get a mass failure of the EBT system on the first of any particular month.

             My local Walmart is no longer 24/7. The midnight cashier at my local Wegman’s is not particularly fond of his new after midnight customers, especially on the first few days of the month.

             1. In every condition when the police are instructed to fall back; it is 100% legal for the citizens involved to use whatever amount of force is necessary to restore order and safety. There apparently have been a couple of incidents in the past few years where that is exactly what the police did. I think it’s also a sign of just how close we are to the tipping point.

             2. Part of the legality question will be- is it legal for the militia- citizens- to shoot to break up mobs since the government won’t?

                Self defense and defense of others is legal, although enforcement means are kinda iffy.

                Most states that I’ve heard of it being tested, not only is it legal but it’s actually easier to get a pass on than being attacked by just one guy….

          3. Correct. The Declaration of Independence also set a very good precedent of enumerating just what the reasons for the revolt are. If you don’t have a similar number and severity of reasons, you probably shouldn’t consider revolting. If you have far more; then you have a serious need, and ample justification, to do so.

       2. If your only (or best option) is being a dead hero, be sure to take an honor guard with you.

       3. “Pay attention to where the lines are on the pavement of an air force base, and don’t accidentally cross any.”

          Indeed. One of my co-workers at Howard AFB in Panama had a very – interesting – morning the time he decided to take a ‘shortcut’ past the AC-130s parked not far from our hangar.

    3. I suspect the trigger for the next one will be the same as the trigger for the first one: When the gub’mint tries to seize citizens’ guns on a mass scale. As noted, probably won’t het a mass uprising so mucha as a *bunch* of Solzhenitskinesque ambushes of raiding parties (unless the banners ‘enlist’ the antifascist mobs. And if you don’t think a modern state can get areas that are ungovernable, see the French and Swedish so-called no-go zones.

       1. well, i have the feeling in that even that AntiFa is going to find out that mobs only work when normal people, law enforcement, or the military aren’t allowed to use deadly force

       2. I would point out that the no go zones are not so much ungovernable per se, as they are areas where the government declines to use the occasionally necessary iron fist.

25. Forgot to click the clicky thing. 😉

26. “Those of you who read Ringo know what he’s said about when the engine of world economy seizes and stops.”

    Which book?

    1. I’m guessing ‘The Last Centurion’.

27. I’d argue that California is already in a state of insurrection. It’s not hot *yet*, fortunately. And it will likely remain that way for the time being, since pulling the trigger without a very clear and inequivocable reason will cause opinion problems with the rest of the country for the side that did so. But California has made it clear that it rejects the Federal Government’s authority in certain areas

    Of course, this has prompted the Federal Government to be a bit more insistent about its authority in other areas. For instance, apparently California had been gettng a pass on some environmental issues every year from the EPA. The state had submitted plans to fix hose issues, but the EPA knew that the plan wouldn’t pass muster. So every year it put off reviewing the plan. But now, the EPA has suddenly decided, “No more! Fix the plan, or suffer the penalties!”

    In short, we’re watching a power struggle play out between California and DC. Hopefully it stays cold.

    1. No you are seeing a power play between Trump and Democrats. But the Democrats don’t recognize Trump as the legitimate President so they will ignore him. What is surprising is that Trump found anyone in the EPA willing to go with it.

       1. And I would argue that if the government of California does not view Trump as legitimate, and takes active steps to ignore his constitutionally-mandated duties (such as “sanctuary cities”), then yes, California is in a state of insurrection.

    2. California, appropriately, is in a state of pre-insurrection. There are ample numbers of people enduring what they would rather not and hoping to outlast the abuses, but like a dry woodland with uncleared scrub, a lightning bolt hitting the wrong place could start a conflagration that will burn out of control.

       1. California… is like Saudi in a lot of ways. It wouldn’t take much explosive to kill several million people.

28. I note with concern what’s gone on during this hemisphere’s overnight over in Hong Kong.

    And all they have is freaking umbrellas.

    The mindset of the left obviously cannot remotely comprehend being on the other side of that scale of popular unrest here, and they have not one tiny clue what that would look like with our level of firearms ownership.

    1. Michael Yon’s Facebook account has a picture of a plaster sculpture I would call “the anonymous protester.” It moves me the way art is supposed to. I hope there is a path to peace in Hong Kong. And that the artists are not known to authorities.

       (searches online images) ok, if you search for “Lady Liberty Hong Kong” you’ll find the sculpture. It was reportedly crowdfunded through an online forum.

       1. you know the Hong Kong protesters? They’re not Americans, but sure as anything they are USAians…

          1. I’ve seen suggestions that we trade the progs here for the protesters in Hong Kong, though I suspect China would get screwed in that deal.

             1. I suspect the management and staff of Facebook, Alphabet Inc. and Twitter would merge right in with no murmur of complaint.

                1. Veritable army of Winston Smiths, that lot.

             2. Um, so, what’s wrong? I don’t really see a problem there, Patrick. *evil kitty grin*

             3. So would the progs. Do we care?

                1. About the progs? No. Though I almost feel sorry for China’s regime. Almost.

29. Everything on the thread said by me, and others, not withstanding, the story you posted at Instapundit about the abortionist allowing for cuddling of aborted fetuses had me thinking in the shower that killing them all and let G-d sort them out wasn’t the worst option imaginable.

    I though my inner places could be dark and evil. Then I read that.

    Yeah, I’m so not dark I need to give up my eyeliner and Bauhaus records.

    1. here, have something to make it better:

30. c4c

31. The left’s reaction to Trump reminds of the passage “a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed” in the book of Luke.

    1. That has occurred to me too. (Sorry Word press has been roundfiling everything)
       Minor objection: why the sacrilegious nom de blog?

32. The Progressives’ strategy explained:

    He’s desperate! Do what he say, do what he say!

    1. Progressive Leader’s usual line about themselves and their minions was cut off:
       “Oh, Baby. You are so talented… and they are so dumb…”

       😀

33. I don’t believe that any election unrest is likely to come to where we live, (a conservative rural county in Oregon) but I’m starting to do some planning for future trips to the left side of the state.

    I recall the first rule in surviving a riot is not to be in one. The locations I need to go are fixed, but timing could be flexible, and routes to the destinations have some options.

    If the doctor uses the interval I have now, I’d need to be there about 10 days before the election. A bit close for comfort, so I’ll see if it could be done in August or September, or perhaps December. November strikes me as suboptimal.

    Shopping excursions will have more flexibility. We normally get enough for a 3-4 month interval between Costco runs, and can pick the day we go. ‘Sides, a Subaru Forester (popular on both sides of the Cascades) is as nondescript a vehicle as you can get. Never liked bumper stickers…

    1. With that vote by mail thing, you people are screwed. Do ANY Republicans win any offices??? The Dims might let a few win at first to make it look good but you should be past that now.

       1. Yeah, it’s pretty grim at the state level, but not entirely lost. Enough R senators to deny a quorum, which is what killed one draconian Gorebull Warmening measure.

          We had a Republican secretary of state, who died in office. He was a good one, investigating corruption. Despicable Kate Brown appointed a RINO (very much In Name Only) who proceeded to cancel the investigations. I’m reasonably sure Kate was one of the targets…

          FWIW, Sec State is the successor to the governor. Kate was SecState until the previous governor was run out of office for corruption (favoritism for his girlfriend).

          There’s a movement to try to recall Kate. Petitions are due at or about Oct 17th. (Two petitions, but the state GOP was circulating both around here.)

          1. Not a sign of either petition here in the Valley. Suppose to be in Springfield, but darn if I can find a location.

             1. At least one of them has an online source to print out forms. Try searching on “Kate Brown recall”, or go to the state GOP website. You can send one in with one or more signatures, from what I saw.

       2. Yep, that’s Colorado for you.

    2. Unlikely to come to where I live either. We have no clue where the kids will be. But we’re stocking up on food and water and such. And it will curtail our trips to more central parts of Denver. (Like most cities out west, Denver is SPRAWLING and has almost forgotten, hidden neighborhoods.)

    3. Well ONE minor downside. Subaru’s are popular with the “in” crowd in Oregon. Almost cliche. (Almost ended up with one …. looked really hard at the Outback … went with the Santa Fe instead).

       1. Without the “I’m with Chuthlu” bumper sticker, folks will figure it’s just another Oregonian. (Crater Lake license plates, so Southern Oregonian, mostly.) Guest parking at the hotel I stay in usually has a few white Foresters every day. At the stores in K-Falls, we have to be sure we walk up to the correct one.

          Actually, between Toyota and Honda “cute utes” it’s hard to tell them apart at a glance. We looked at the Outback, but the pure-electrical emergency brake was a red flag. (Anybody who thinks automotive electric parts don’t fail has never seen the wrong side of the Takata airbag recall. Or the GM instrument cluster fiasco. Or the Subaru brake pressure switch recall.) In addition, there’s not a lot of headroom in an Outback.

          1. “Anybody who thinks automotive electric parts don’t fail has never seen the wrong side of the Takata airbag recall. Or the GM instrument cluster fiasco. Or the Subaru brake pressure switch recall.”

             You’re worrying over nothing! I am advised that the Outback’s electrical emergency brake was designed, built and installed by Lucas Industries plc.

          2. plenty of headroom in mine and i’m 6 ft 1.5 in. I’ve been over some nasty bumps (usually RR tracks at speed) where i did indeed lift up out of my seat and I have not hit my head yet *knocks on wood*

          3. > pure-electrical emergency brake

             Huh. Several US states, and various countries, require “mechanical” actuation of the emergency/parking brake; not even hydraulics will do.

             It’s a recurring problem in the street rod/replica world.

             Of course, those roof-mounted taillights on some vans and SUVs are above the lawful maximum height in my state, and the police don’t seem to enforce that…

       2. I had a 1999 Forester. It was a good car. Alas, the local dealership went semi potato and left me stranded by the side of the Interstate on a Sunday afternoon because their repair people wouldn’t take my complaint seriously. Then they didn’t really feel like selling me a new one. I now drive a pick-up.

          1. The Subaru dealership was originally the Chevy/Honda/Subaru dealership, though they lost the Chevy franchise thanks to Obama and company. The dealership split, then was sold to a small group, but the cadre of service people has been quite stable. There have been rumors about a pickup based on the Ascent, but when the Chevy came up with one too many problems, I went with a Ridgeline.

             We still have no GM dealerships in town, and I’m not fond of the dealership group that handles* Ford, Toyota and Dodge, so the choice was to go out of the area or look at the Honda. I’m glad I went with it, though none of our vehicles get a huge amount of miles.

             (*) Nissan, Chevy and GMC are over 100 miles away.

       3. i have an outback

    4. The funny thing is that I worry for the rest of the country but I am convince I will be fine. Maybe because I’m in Utah county.

34. Reblogged this on Food for Thought and commented:
    Wow. Powerfully stated.

35. “What I’m saying is that the violence will have bloody nothing to do with anyone’s concept of a civil war. Because of how emulsified the population is…

    On our side, you see people saying we should have a jolly civil war, or some kind of uprising.”

    ****

    This, yes ma’am yes ma’am! And three bags full, too.

    First, ask why we have not, in two and a quarter ah, *eventful* centuries since the establishment (i.e. ratification) of our Constitution, ever had *even one* Constitutional Convention?

    Among other reasons (e.g. the Founders’ amazing insight, standing corrected by optional factory ‘extras’ like the Bill of Rights), *everyone* had the lesson of the Constitution itself otherwise. The outcome of a Convention to modify and improve, *not* replace, the Articles of Confederation.

    “No, we *don’t* want to roll those dice (again), no telling *what* might happen if we do…” nobody ever (IIRC) said in quite so many words; but awfully many pretty much thought, and said, and did.

    Now, consider the risks (as in massive unpredictability) of anything remotely like outright uprising or war.

    Second, note the experience of states like North Carolina (admitedly a picked example) in our actual, historical Civil War Between The States — the vast difference between that romanticized *abstract* view of war *before* the experience, and the starkly vicious *reality* of the war itself. There were plenty of people, just a year or two into it, wishing they could go back, if it were only possible. (NC felt the Confederate draft far more than others because of its loopholes for the well off, e.g., the planation set; imagine your village without the miller, or the blacksmith, or both or worse… *then* go look at those “gone off to war” and “never came back” statistics.)

    And fortunately for *everyone*, people like Sherman and Johnston at the Bennett Place surrender (more people than Appomattox Court House and no acute military necessity) found and flipped an *off switch* to the war that many people worried might not even exist. (Those trying to impose a New Reconstruction right now have little idea how much they’re “tickling the dragon’s tail” on that or how bad it could go if they succeed. Oh, wait, maybe they do and that’s their plan.)

    Outside of a few places like Missouri (which IIRC had representatives in the rump-USA and CSA legislature *both*), or Bleeding Kansas (it was), or even (to a lesser extent) east Tenn. / west NC where going a dozen miles in the wrong direction could get you / your family dead, it *was* mostly what my 5th-grade teacher insisted on us calling it — a War Between the States, not a true Civil War. The Red Blue War, if it happens, will *not* likely be so nice or orderly.

    But third, think (directly and carefully) about the underlying goals and situation. We (taken to be the pro-Constitutionalist, pro-representative-democratic-republic crowd) really *do not need* or even *want* (except as a last-ditch, Plan C or Plan F or Plan Q fallback) *anything* of the sort.

    We are *NOT* the ones trying to “create fundamental change in [read ‘to’ or ‘against’] America” at all — *those* are the other guys. As “conservatives” we want to “conserve” our American way of life and its political and cultural underpinnings — we mostly just want to go back to the way things worked, back when they worked, *not* mount any kind of revolution.

    No multi-unconstitutional Red Flag laws (thanks for the warning label). No impossible Green New Deal plan to turn off half(?) our electricity supply but double or triple(?) demand though e-cars (sounds like Venezuela, one more way). No insane “social engineering” that would work as well as, oh, a bridge made out of soap. No upcoming White House Office of White Supremacy (Cory-B) or “I’m coming for your guns!” executive-action operation (Beto-O).

    Today’s America, despite large (and arguably spreading) areas of massive dysfunction, and/or plain “WTF?-ing-F!?!” waste, *still* basically works, once you route around the damage as best you can and keep sweeping up the ongoing breakage. “All” (hah!), all we have to do is defend what we have or put it back in order. And that is *so* much easier than the aim of the other side, which is to mutate America into something alien (hard) or make their socialist utopia work (still starkly impossible).

    (Listen to Trump’s UN speech, 30-40 minutes of good, applied sense that the news media apparently missed even while broacasting it, and then what the Leader of the House upstaged it with mere hours later. Who’s the grownup in this room? Who’s doing The Work of America here? Not difficult, that.

    Then, note how this latest stuff is almost certainly a straight-up abuse of the whistleblower mechanism itself, *and* a hearsay “accusation” based largely on re-quoting Mainstream Media stories as an ‘insider’ whistle-blowing ‘tip.’)

    And we have the amazing good luck that the Other Side has, for reasons not at all obvious and perhaps never known, decided to go Full Monty Nuttycrat all of a sudden, thirteen months before the election (not 1-2 weeks, as in Hillary Better Do ((This Leftiness)) Fast, or Else We’ll Spank Her Hard). When it’s quite possible to write “Vote Republican or Freeze in the Dark” more than a year out, and credibly, you know the stakes are high but the odds are… not all that bad.

    Clearly we, the Defenders of Freedom (by sheer default, *us*, and not just the Huns, Hoydens, and hangers-on) need a Defense in Depth. A Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, and so on all the way down to *having* to do what we would not do by choice but *only* by necessity and a lack of better choices.

    (Contrast so much of the Other Side, so floridly “drunk with talk, liars and believers” as Robinson Jeffers** once put it.)

    If we’re *not* lucky we might just have to upstage The Greatest Generation (or else bad)… but forewarned can be forearmed, and I mean in all sorts of ways. Up to and including voting late on Election Day, then Getting the H*ll Out of Dodge (i.e, Blueville) to await, ah, developments from a prepared position that evening.

    Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes… then (only then), Fire and Fury.

    ** in “the Stars Go Over the Lonely Ocean” in Jerry Pournelle’s “The Survival of Freedom”

    1. Let me put it this way. If we have a revolution, and I have to risk my life and sacred honor (what little of it I have left); I am damn well not putting down my guns until after we’ve reestablished a Constitution at least as good as the current one. And this time around, the Bill of Rights will be written into the damn thing, and not just tacked on afterwards.

       1. The bill of rights may have been a mistake. The Constitution does not give the Feds the power to do anything banned by the first 10 amendments however having those amendments let politicians behave as if anything that they did not forbid was allowed.

          1. Nah – the Bill of Rights is no mistake. Letting politicians and justices (BIRM) get away with altering them on the fly, willy-nilly is the mistake.

             The kind of people who contort the Commerce Clause all out of true would do as much to any other attempt to limit governmental power. You might reasonably argue the Bill of Rights has proven so ineffective as to approach uselessness but its absence wouldn’t have restrained those clowns. After all, they’re the kind of people who will debate for hours over what the meaning of “is” is.

          2. That was one of Hamilton’s arguments in The Federalist Papers. (I’m pretty sure it was Hamilton anyway). But his own actions later as Secretary of Treasury made it pretty clear that he was arguing in bad faith.

             The Federalists (in the guise of Hamilton) argued that a Bill of Rights would imply that the government has powers that it does not, leading to it grabbing more power than it should have. The Federalists were right.

             The Anti-Federalists argued that without a Bill of Rights the government would not recognize rights leading to it grabbing more power than it should have. The Anti-Federalists were right.

             Why yes, as a matter of fact, I do believe in the no-win scenario.

36. “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.” Arnaud Amalric. Hey, if you can’t trust a Papal Legate, who CAN you trust?”

37. “I heard them planing and talking, and I know their idea of the world and of the opposition.”

    So has President Trump. He ran a business, survived, and thrived, in the biggest leftest enclave (one of?) in the US. Biggest surprise I had was when he came in on the Republican ticket. Independent, sure. Going against Hillary and Barney on the democratic preliminaries, sure. Republican, uh, no. Is he a true, red, right wing, republican? No. But he is sure right of the kooks currently going after his job and the “hope the squirrels don’t find them nuts” supposedly running, and the subgroup face of the, democratic party.

    President Trump is for Country and the God of green. Least those that think the god of green isn’t morally acceptable. Remember, he has a legacy, both monetarily, environmental, and *morally, to leave to his many descendants, that doesn’t disappear in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th generation.

    * How many would admit to being sons & daughters of say Benedict Arnold, or Hitler, or ???

    1. Lee Harvey Oswald had two daughters. They turned out okay.

       1. Didn’t say children wouldn’t turn out okay. Said admit they have a particular ancestor. Children of might just play it down. Further down the line, guessing not so much.

38. At some point one of my colleagues was keeping track of incidents of left-wing political violence since 2016, and was up to 20. Unfortunately I don’t remember where the list was.

    You know… I bet we could crowd-source this….

    1. There was a lot of left-wing political violence *prior* to 2016…it seems to have escalated following 9/11. I did a roundup of a sample of such incidents in 2016, here: The United States of Weimar?

       https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/52961.html

       1. It might have more to do with the Right being unwilling to do the stupid “oh, gosh, I was victimized by The Right Sort Of People, I won’t report” BS.

          That does tend to make for empowered attackers.

          Say, like Clinton.

          1. I think the Leftist violence and intimidation has definitely escalated since Trump. My point is that the base level of such activity had *already* reached quite high levels.

             1. Yes, but in such isolated areas (socially, rather than geographically) that it’s still a hot-house flower.

       2. On a related note, John C. Wright posted a list of suspicious deaths surrounding the Clintons. Suicide by shooting oneself in the back of the head is possible, according to the ME in at least one case. Who’d a thunk it?

          http://www.scifiwright.com/2019/10/50-deaths/

    2. Some listed …

       Why we keep falling for hate-crime hoaxes
       By Andy Ngo
       [SNIP]
       Left-wing activists and the mainstream media refuse to learn lessons about hate-crime hoaxes. Sensational claims deserve additional scrutiny. Was Allen or her family asked why no known students had come forward to corroborate her claims? She said it happened during recess — around dozens of other students presumably.

       The accused boys were also never sought for comment. On the contrary, the NAACP demanded “immediate disciplinary action” against the minor suspects.

       It’s hard to blame the public and media consumers for their naive credulity. The real problem is that highly publicized fake hate crimes like this one usually receive little public coverage after it is revealed that the original accusation was a hoax.

       Then, too, few Americans are aware that in just the past few years, several children have been caught fabricating hate-crime allegations.

       In January 2017, police in Gambrills, Maryland, identified a “14-year-old black female” as the suspect responsible for sending out a violent racist threat against her high school using a Twitter account pretending to be part of the Ku Klux Klan.

       The following month, students at Plano West Senior High in Texas discovered their school vandalized with racist, anti-black graffiti all over its buildings and school vans. After several months, police arrested and charged Alexandria Monet Butler and Elizabeth Joy Police, two black female minors, for the incident. They were caught on camera vandalizing the school.

       [SNIP]

       The Boy Who Cried Wolf is as old as time immemorial, to be sure. What’s different today is the mind-boggling credulity of mainstream media and politicians, who jump to ideological conclusions and dial the outrage to 11 before the facts have played out.

       It’s no surprise that children lie, but when they are rewarded by an all-too-willing media and audience, we should expect more incidents like what happened in Virginia. The final result: Americans are bound to become ever more cynical and skeptical of hate-crime allegations — even when they’re true.

       1. > What’s different today is the mind-boggling credulity of mainstream media and politicians,
          —
          Not credulity. It’s in-your-face support for the Narrative, no matter how obviously false it is.

    3. Start here: https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2018/07/05/rap-sheet-acts-of-media-approved-violence-and-harassment-against-trump-supporters/

       Notice that’s only 2015 through July 2018.

39. Because my question is: how do you target?

    Based off of my experience?

    No better than the left.

    The only saving grace is that the damage is usually highly limited– either by area (reducing authority to the lowest effective level, AKA subsidiarity) or by more level heads stepping in (balance of powers).

    More often, it’s suicide via duck-noises, or things just fade away.

40. On the sillier side… y’all here know how I’m Catholic?

    Like, geek out over obscure jokes in languages I don’t speak because they both make the Bible so obviously human and also enrich the meaning?

    Apparently I come across as a rather fluffy headed (no memory for names or numbers) Baptists to the local Baptists….

41. From about a century back, from a guy who was very much not an American, but some guy known as the patron saint of paradox probably has our number pretty well:

    One of the questions on the paper was, ‘Are you an anarchist?’ To which a detached philosopher would naturally feel inclined to answer, ‘What the devil has that to do with you? Are you an atheist?’ along with some playful efforts to cross-examine the official about what constitutes an ἁρχη [Greek: archê]. Then there was the question, ‘Are you in favour of subverting the government of the United States by force?’ Against this I should write, ‘I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour and not the beginning.’ The inquisitor, in his more than morbid curiosity, had then written down, ‘Are you a polygamist?’ The answer to this is, ‘No such luck’ or ‘Not such a fool,’ according to our experience of the other sex. But perhaps a better answer would be that given to W. T. Stead when he circulated the rhetorical question, ‘Shall I slay my brother Boer?’—the answer that ran, ‘Never interfere in family matters.’ But among many things that amused me almost to the point of treating the form thus disrespectfully, the most amusing was the thought of the ruthless outlaw who should feel compelled to treat it respectfully. I like to think of the foreign desperado, seeking to slip into America with official papers under official protection, and sitting down to write with a beautiful gravity, ‘I am an anarchist. I hate you all and wish to destroy you.’ Or, ‘I intend to subvert by force the government of the United States as soon as possible, sticking the long sheath-knife in my left trouser-pocket into Mr. Harding at the earliest opportunity.’ Or again, ‘Yes, I am a[Pg 5] polygamist all right, and my forty-seven wives are accompanying me on the voyage disguised as secretaries.’ There seems to be a certain simplicity of mind about these answers; and it is reassuring to know that anarchists and polygamists are so pure and good that the police have only to ask them questions and they are certain to tell no lies.

    Now that is a model of the sort of foreign practice, founded on foreign problems, at which a man’s first impulse is naturally to laugh. Nor have I any intention of apologising for my laughter. A man is perfectly entitled to laugh at a thing because he happens to find it incomprehensible. What he has no right to do is to laugh at it as incomprehensible, and then criticise it as if he comprehended it. The very fact of its unfamiliarity and mystery ought to set him thinking about the deeper causes that make people so different from himself, and that without merely assuming that they must be inferior to himself.

    Superficially this is rather a queer business. It would be easy enough to suggest that in this America has introduced a quite abnormal spirit of inquisition; an interference with liberty unknown among all the ancient despotisms and aristocracies. About that there will be something to be said later; but superficially it is true that this degree of officialism is comparatively unique. In a journey which I took only the year before I had occasion to have my papers passed by governments which many worthy people in the West would vaguely identify with corsairs and assassins; I have stood on the other side of Jordan, in the land ruled by a rude Arab chief, where the police looked so like brigands that one wondered what the brigands looked like. But they did not ask me whether[Pg 6] I had come to subvert the power of the Shereef; and they did not exhibit the faintest curiosity about my personal views on the ethical basis of civil authority. These ministers of ancient Moslem despotism did not care about whether I was an anarchist; and naturally would not have minded if I had been a polygamist. The Arab chief was probably a polygamist himself. These slaves of Asiatic autocracy were content, in the old liberal fashion, to judge me by my actions; they did not inquire into my thoughts. They held their power as limited to the limitation of practice; they did not forbid me to hold a theory. It would be easy to argue here that Western democracy persecutes where even Eastern despotism tolerates or emancipates. It would be easy to develop the fancy that, as compared with the sultans of Turkey or Egypt, the American Constitution is a thing like the Spanish Inquisition.

    Only the traveller who stops at that point is totally wrong; and the traveller only too often does stop at that point. He has found something to make him laugh, and he will not suffer it to make him think. And the remedy is not to unsay what he has said, not even, so to speak, to unlaugh what he has laughed, not to deny that there is something unique and curious about this American inquisition into our abstract opinions, but rather to continue the train of thought, and follow the admirable advice of Mr. H. G. Wells, who said, ‘It is not much good thinking of a thing unless you think it out.’ It is not to deny that American officialism is rather peculiar on this point, but to inquire what it really is which makes America peculiar, or which is peculiar to America. In short, it is to get some ultimate idea of what America is;[Pg 7] and the answer to that question will reveal something much deeper and grander and more worthy of our intelligent interest.

    It may have seemed something less than a compliment to compare the American Constitution to the Spanish Inquisition. But oddly enough, it does involve a truth; and still more oddly perhaps, it does involve a compliment. The American Constitution does resemble the Spanish Inquisition in this: that it is founded on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.

    Now a creed is at once the broadest and the narrowest thing in the world. In its nature it is as broad as its scheme for a brotherhood of all men. In its nature it is limited by its definition of the nature of all men. This was true of the Christian Church, which was truly said to exclude neither Jew nor Greek, but which did definitely substitute something else for Jewish religion[Pg 8] or Greek philosophy. It was truly said to be a net drawing in of all kinds; but a net of a certain pattern, the pattern of Peter the Fisherman. And this is true even of the most disastrous distortions or degradations of that creed; and true among others of the Spanish Inquisition. It may have been narrow touching theology, it could not confess to being narrow about nationality or ethnology. The Spanish Inquisition might be admittedly Inquisitorial; but the Spanish Inquisition could not be merely Spanish. Such a Spaniard, even when he was narrower than his own creed, had to be broader than his own empire. He might burn a philosopher because he was heterodox; but he must accept a barbarian because he was orthodox. And we see, even in modern times, that the same Church which is blamed for making sages heretics is also blamed for making savages priests. Now in a much vaguer and more evolutionary fashion, there is something of the same idea at the back of the great American experiment; the experiment of a democracy of diverse races which has been compared to a melting-pot. But even that metaphor implies that the pot itself is of a certain shape and a certain substance; a pretty solid substance. The melting-pot must not melt. The original shape was traced on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy; and it will remain in that shape until it becomes shapeless. America invites all men to become citizens; but it implies the dogma that there is such a thing as citizenship. Only, so far as its primary ideal is concerned, its exclusiveness is religious because it is not racial. The missionary can condemn a cannibal, precisely because he cannot condemn a Sandwich Islander. And in something of the same spirit the American[Pg 9] may exclude a polygamist, precisely because he cannot exclude a Turk.
    http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27250/27250-h/27250-h.htm

    1. I love GKC’s charitable view of America and his pinpointing of how foreigners became Americans in the US while they would stay foreigners for generations in other places.

       1. Unfortunately, we’re doing all too good a job of making foreigners out of Americans.

42. Yes, but…

    WE HAVE TO EAT THE BABIES!!!

43. Regarding riotous behaviour:

    Mark Granovetter, following Schelling, proposed the threshold model (Granovetter & Soong, 1983, 1986, 1988), which assumes that individuals’ behavior depends on the number of other individuals already engaging in that behavior (both Schelling and Granovetter classify their term of “threshold” as behavioral threshold.). He used the threshold model to explain the riot, residential segregation, and the spiral of silence. In the spirit of Granovetter’s threshold model, the “threshold” is “the number or proportion of others who must make one decision before a given actor does so”. It is necessary to emphasize the determinants of threshold. Different individuals have different thresholds. Individuals’ thresholds may be influenced by many factors: social economic status, education, age, personality, etc. Further, Granovetter relates “threshold” with utility one gets from participating in collective behavior or not, using the utility function, each individual will calculate his or her cost and benefit from undertaking an action. And situation may change the cost and benefit of the behavior, so threshold is situation-specific. The distribution of the thresholds determines the outcome of the aggregate behavior (for example, public opinion).
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_model#Collective_behavior

    It would be interesting to see how this breaks out along political, cultural, behavioural factions. As I understand it, a person with a Low Threshold would be one who tends to follow his (her / whatever) own inner voice; a large number of others engaging in behaviour (or eschewing it) does not affect their individual actions. My guess is that Odds are Low Threshold individuals while those who wait for a crowd to “approve” a behaviour (e.g., decide on a fashion, like wearing two watches on one wrist) would be deemed High Threshold individuals.

    High Threshold people tend to perceive Low Threshold persons as arrogant, uncompromising and unwilling to adhere to social norms. High Threshold individuals are less likely to persist in a pattern of behaviour (e.g., reading SF/F) if their peer group ridicules that.

    Antifa seems a likely High Threshold faction, based on their dressing for anonymity and tendency to engage in collective action. Learning to identify people’s threshold levels might prove useful in identifying whom we must watch and upon whom we can rely. One application of the theory seems to be explanation of the increase in mass shooters: as more people do it it becomes more acceptable to a certain type of person.

44. A question we MUST answer, and all too soon. Assume eight years of Donald Trump. Assume that lots of Deep State actors are exposed, indicted, and being tried. Assume all the best plausible outcomes. What comes next? Who follows Trump? Trump may be our Scipio Africans, our savior general. But who follows Trump?

    1. Too bad we can’t just draft preferred candidates into a term of office.

       Federal Marshals: “Tom Kratman?”

       Kratman: [cautiously] “Who wants to know?”

       Marshals: “Federal Service. I’m afraid you’ll have to come with us.”

       Kratman: “Noooooo!”

       1. Larry C.? He was an accountant in his previous life.

          Allen West?

          I’d vote for Niki Haley just to watch the “But but, she’s woman of color, but she’s not a progressive, but—!” show.

          1. From what little I’ve seen and heard of Mike Pence, I’d support him until proven otherwise.

             1. The guys who never show up in Insty’s comments except to give advice for the Right to slit their throats like the Left all hate him, so that’s in his favor.

             2. I like Pence, but I think it is difficult for a vice-president to follow his president, especially one so polarizing as Trump. Can’t really go by recent history, can we? George H. W. Bush was Reagan’s successor in name only, and Tricky Dick carried more baggage than merely being Ike’s designated replacement.

                The key — and this is why we have to wait — is picking somebody who can consolidate the gains while calming down the polity. Mitch Daniels might be a good selection — non-threatening, university president, former governor, director of OMB and member of the NSC. He’d be seventy-five then, but that isn’t the problem it might have been before Biden, Bernie and Warren. I don’t see him as a fighter but by the end of a second Trump term America will probably want some calmness.

                There are probably at least a half-dozen others possible, but it is too far off to be visible (although I am sure there are already several building toward that 2024 goal.)

                1. After all that’s gone down, it’s safe to say we’ll never have a President Romney. And I thank God for that…

    2. No, we do not need to answer the question of “After the Donald, whim?”

       The answer will be clearer when the time arrives. Nobody in 2011 would have imagined the answer to the 2016 challenge was Trump, and nobody now can anticipate the landscape we will face in 2023.

       I could endorse Bobby Jindal’s record of achievement and reform (and his being the first Asian-American president would fluster Lefties all to Hell) or Ted Cruz may yet develop charisma or heck, now that Lindsey Graham’s testicles have finally dropped and his voice changed, in five years he may be of presidential timbre. The speculations about his sexual orientation are just spicy sauce.

       Or there may be others as yet not visible. It’s tough to make predictions, as Yogi Berra observed, especially about the future.

45. “I don’t think you’ll keep your republic.”

    We lost it under FDR. Many just don’t realize it, yet. Nearly 100% of what FDR did, much of which still stands today, was unconstitutional, and overtly so. FDR campaigned AGAINST the constitution. And won. Four times. Now over 90% of Americans reject labor, healthcare, educational, and retirement liberty, you know, some of the most important liberties we have and the most fundamental.

    “He’s not the president I wanted, but he might have been the president we needed.”

    That’s exactly why we’re going to lose. Too many republicans aren’t willing to support the type of person that we need to support to protect what remains of the republic. That’s why we’re losing. That’s why taxes grow higher. That’s why government gets bigger. That’s why we have ever less liberty. Because people like you don’t want to support the icky type person needed to win. You’re like the person who wants to jail marines for pissing the dead bodies of our enemies. Just what exactly did you think the type of man who would stack bodies for us be? The ONLY type of man would be a cast iron son of a bitch who would piss on the bodies of our dead enemies that he just killed.

    There are too few “men” who are men. Few are actually willing to get dirty, get hurt, much less get bloodied, because they want to be thought of as effete, even if that means being a eunuch. And basically no woman supports actual men. Until they are around actual men, then they experience severe cognitive dissonance as their minds pretend they should hate the man who makes them so wet they could drown a puppy in their pants.

    1. Yes, yes, we get it, you’re a stone-cold killer who is willing to do what needs to be done.
       I would recommend that you look up Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, but I think the resultant cognitive dissonance would cause your tiny little brain to explode.

       1. I was debating if I should critique the style– seriously, on THIS group someone tries the “you aren’t doing what I think you are, you’re a girly-man and or queer as a three dollar bill!” thing?– but couldn’t be bothered.

          Your response is better.

          1. /sigh

             “what I think you should” or “what I think you are supposed to,” pick one.

    2. Also, side note? If we do have ACW 2.0, this guy is going to be one of the ones who’s going to either A. get himself and others killed because he didn’t secure the area before starting in on the prisoners or B. is going to impede the war effort by doing Einsatzgruppen stuff instead of going after people who are actually a threat.

       1. Whatever you have to tell yourself to pretend your eagerness to lick the boot of the enemy is somehow safe.

          1. Y’know, I thought ’60s was being a little harsh before.

             Now?

             Pretty clear that your threat targeting system is borked.

             1. No, his targeting system is working fine. It’s his target priorities that are out of whack. He intends to have a grand old time acting out his weird twisted fantasies come the revolution, and we might get in his way.

             2. Yep. And apparently we’re eager to lick boots.
                He’s fucking insane. I’m tracking his IP right now. He could also be paid. In which case his bosses are bad at hiring.

                1. Or, he’s like Zangief from that so bad it’s good Street Fighter movie. 😀

                   1. I LOVE that movie!

                   2. Loved Zangief

                2. Well, they’d be a bunch of 3rd or 4th gen socialists, so that goes without saying.

          2. Went there kinda quickly, didn’t you Ken? I’ve seen better constructed arguments from second-graders.

             I guess I can understand your apparent aversion to boot-licking; from the available evidence you prefer to lick a couple feet higher.

          3. Yes, Kenny, we all get that not being a big talker on the Internet means you’re a pusillanimous weakling, and that not wanting slaves means you want to be one, and that not wanting to conquer means you want to be conquered.
             You’re simply further confirming my suspicions that you’d be nowhere near the frontline in any kind of war.

             1. He’s our equivalent of Geck45

    3. “Too many republicans aren’t willing to support the type of person that we need”

       I don’t suppose you have anybody soecific in mind?

       1. LOL

       2. “Too many republicans aren’t willing to support the type of person that we need”

          I don’t suppose you have anybody specific in mind?

          Sigh. I need to get a new keyboard, one on which all the keys retain visible letters.

          Better yet, one which types what I meant to type and not the keys I actually strike. Or maybe WP could add a #$@%! preview / edit mode?

       3. Sarah. She just ADMITTED she doesn’t support Trump, even though we need him. She’s too busy pretending she’s too refined to be so gruff as to actually go head to head with the killers on the left who do in fact hate us and want to kill us and have tried on a number of occasions. What kind of buffoon doesn’t support the people they need? Sarah. Sarah is that kind of buffoon.

          Republicans deserve all the humiliation democrats dole out because of that wishy washiness. Laughably, you’ll all pretend theirs refinement and dignity in the surrender and humiliation you receive. You’ll convince yourself it’s uncouth to fight back. That’s why the republic is already lost. Because of people like you who hate those who fight for the principles you pretend you support.

          But that support is only a pose, a stance, to signal your virtue to the right people. You would never actually stand by at the ready to physically protect those principles. You might get your dinner jacket dirty.

          1. So, your sky is green with purple pokadots?

             1. Apparently. Or you know, he reads in Engrish.

                1. Nah, Engrish is generally pretty straight forward, just poorly phrased. *straightens Ninja Team 7 shirt*

          2. I don’t suppose you noticed that your response does not answer the question asked?

             It also completely misrepresents Sarah’s stance on the issues of Trump’s presidency and adherence to the Constitution’s principles.. You seem more concerned with attacking those who you feel are inadequately defending the Constitution rather than those actively destroying its principles.

             NOT a very good look for somebody claiming to advocate a return to Constitutional order.

          3. How’s the food in the psych ward?

          4. So, tough guy, what do you have in your quiver besides insulting the right and “let you and him fight?”
             Also you’re supposedly posting from Spain, which I don’t buy for a moment.
             Is your real name Kenotski or should we write that in Mandarin?

             1. Maybe he works for the DNC?

                1. I think 90% of the agents provocateurs do. Having a real “right winger kills people because right winger” (instead of all that in the end are leftists) is their hail mary pass right now.

          5. Also, I don’t support Trump? Creative reading. Don’t they teach English in Chinese schools these days?

             1. You don’t worship Trump, so the voices in his tiny overheated head tell him that means you don’t support Trump.

                Though his subsequent bleatings indicate he’s either a provocateur as you mentioned, or he’s one of those “alt-right” bleaters who think being hyper-aggressive and screeching at those who don’t march to his tune will cover up the fact that he surrendered to the progs long ago and thinks embracing their tactics/strategy and filing the serial numbers off is a novel approach.

                1. Why not both?

                   1. Both would imply an intellect and competency far in excess of anything he’s thus far demonstrated.

    4. Yawn. Another “let’s you and him fight.”

       People who say we should be rising in rebellion never seem to explain why their excuse for not rising in rebellion doesn’t apply equally well to everyone else.

    5. *yawn*

       So… who are you trying to convince, exactly? We “losers” or… yourself?

       1. He’s been here before. He’s an agent provocateur. A bad one. So more like an agent derpeteur.

46. Mike — PRECISELY. In Civil War 1, the fear that Britain or France would step in on the side of the Confederacy was a major strategic concern. If Civil War 2 goes hot, there is just about zero chance China won’t take advantage of the situation. I think there’s very little appreciation to the extent to which China has already penetrated the U.S. (People keep talking about Russia, but China is MUCH more deeply embedded, with agents in government, industry, academia). At the very least, there would be dirty tricks, well-funded propaganda, arms supplies, and funding by China to prolong the conflict, and very little doubt about which side they’d be supporting (not us!). Second, by the time the conflict was over, we wouldn’t have any unconquered allies left in the Pacific and Africa would be a Chinese colony.

    Civil War 2 going hot is *such* an obvious advantage to China, and Chinese involvement on behalf of one side of the cold Civil War is so obvious, that it is credible to consider whether China is already doing all they can to *make* Civil War 2 go hot.

    1. Civil War 2 going hot is *such* an obvious advantage to China, and Chinese involvement on behalf of one side of the cold Civil War is so obvious, that it is credible to consider whether China is already doing all they can to *make* Civil War 2 go hot.

       Up to this point, I was going to respond something like “WOULD be?”

       They’re nasty.

       I’m very glad Trump is pissing them off.

       I hope he’s able to piss them off enough to save Hong Kong. (Well, let Hong Kong save itself.)

    2. I’ve been watching the Chinese presence unfold in Canadian politics and defense, and you just know it has to be as bad here, just less overt (for now).

       1. As a conservative, there is a difficult question. Refugee or intel asset of a hostile foreign power.

          The fundamental consensus of American cultures, which a conservative seeks to preserve, limits how paranoid one should behave towards lawful immigrants who are actual refugees.

          Yet, systems might be of critical importance in the possible future conflict with a certain foreign power. The military can only procure systems that people are able to make.

          You’ve heard my conviction that Silicon Valley has been compromised, and can not be trusted to deliver the Computer Science side of the systems picture.

          How do we square the circle of the values problem? What, specifically, can we do for our more technical problems?

          Partisanship is not the only reason I bet on American distributed problem solving over anything organized by the sort of governments that rule our adversaries.

          1. One Christmas, Elf’s friends invited us to stay with them while he was activated to let the active duty/had been overseas folks to do Christmas leave.

             They also had a Chinese exchange student. Nice kid, although wow the culture shock….

             Elf and I bit our tongues bloody, because the gal was very, very angry she couldn’t bring the girl in to see her workplace.

             On the flight line.

             Inside of the secured area….

             If I spoke to the hosts again today, I’d point out that the air force policy very possibly saved the girl’s life, or at least made it so she didn’t have to betray anybody. At the time? “Shut up, be nice to the girl, remember that her parents HAVE GOT to be Party members and their very lives depend on her not having anything that anybody might want.”

    3. Yep.

    4. The more likely scenario is China offers to hold American coats while we fight, rifles the pockets for technology and secrets and uses our preoccupation with internal squabbles to “develop” its assets in Africa and the South China Sea. (I don’t think I would want to be Hong Kong nor Taiwan during America’s Era of Distraction.)

       The PRC would pretty much be able to present world domination as a fait accompli when (if) the United States again notices the world. Our best case scenario would be playing 1960s Britain to their version of 60s America, selling pop culture that meets their tastes.

47. Re.: “And perhaps G-d still protects fools, drunkards and the United States of America.”
    Perhaps. Let’s hope.

48. Many Miltons (Office Space, the movie) have probably already thought out and decided what they are going to do when the stress of living with the left becomes too high. It won’t be totally irrational, either. For some, it may be some type of “fair” exchange for death or a life in prison. These are the people the government really have to worry about.

49. Day-uum! Trump has gotten AOC to denounce anti-Semitism? Or is it just “targeted” anti-Semitism she opposes, as opposed to the un-aimed area effect anti-Semitism her squad-mates and her party generally employ?

    AOC suggests Trump is using ‘deliberate, atrocious, targeted’ anti-Semitism to fight impeachment
    New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted early Saturday that President Trump has been using anti-Semitic language to attack House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff in the face of an impeachment inquiry.

    “Understand that Trump is engaged in deliberate, atrocious, targeted antisemitism towards Chairman Schiff,” she said on Saturday morning. “Then ask yourself why no one cares to denounce it – esp when his accusation of it towards others drove full news cycles earlier this year.”

    Ocasio-Cortez linked her tweet to an article from the Intercept that casts several past comments and actions made by Trump and his family members as “anti-Semitic.” The author, Mehdi Hasan, specifically cited a Trump tweet from the end of September that said, “Can you imagine if these Do Nothing Democrat Savages, people like Nadler, Schiff, AOC Plus 3, and many more, had a Republican Party who would have done to Obama what the Do Nothings are doing to me. Oh well, maybe next time!”

    “More than 200 House Democrats have signed onto an impeachment inquiry and yet the president chose to target only three of them by name, two of whom are Jewish: Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler, chairs of the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees,” Hasan wrote. “The third target was — surprise! — a woman of color, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez … How is such rhetoric not racist?”

    Hasan also suggested that Trump and his administration were operating from a Neo-Nazi “style guide” for the website “The Daily Stormer,” which suggests, “Always blame the Jews for everything.” Additionally, he noted …

    1. Because Mehdi Hasan does not sound like the sort of name typically associated with defense of the Jews (maybe it was Mehdi Hasanberg before he changed it?) I thought Huns might be interested in the results of a few moments of judicious search engineering:

       Mehdi Hasan is an award-winning British journalist, broadcaster, author and political commentator. He is the presenter of both UpFront (filmed in Washington DC) and Head to Head (filmed at the Oxford Union).

       Mehdi is a senior contributor at the The Intercept (TI), and host of TI’s Deconstructed podcast.

       He has been named one of the 100 ‘most influential’ Britons on Twitter, and was included in the annual global list of ‘The 500 Most Influential Muslims’ in the world (‘The Muslim 500’).
       https://www.aljazeera.com/profile/mehdi-hasan.html

    2. Of course, the fact that Nadler and Schiff are the heads of their committees, and therefore more visible targets, has never registered with Hasan.

       1. I think it’s more a case that he hopes the low information voters don’t register that point.

          1. Never attribute to ignorance that which can be explained by a low opinion of voters.

             Whenever I feel inclined to Tsk-Tsk over their contempt for the electorate but then I stop and recall the electorate votes Progressives into office, so their disdain has rational basis.

50. “I wouldn’t advise anyone to be near a marginal neighborhood at or the week after the next elections.”

    My two cents: I wouldn’t advise anyone to be in a particularly good neighborhood, either. Lots of the agitators, from the Occupy Wall Street to Antifa, appeal to a hatred of adults and the envy of the successful. There are also a lot of knuckleheads with they-can’t-stop-all-of-us mentality combined with the usual feeling of righteous invulnerability. I wouldn’t want to live in a house close to a gated community, nor be a lowly white-collar worker leaving work at a well-known company.

    One of my relatives is in the process of leaving the greater DC area. She moved into VA to get away from high costs and high risks of crime. Now in her sleepy neighborhood, there are shootings in broad daylight and car chases involving Beemers and Benz because those neighborhoods are the ones that can afford a drug habit and have jackable cars. Those are the first places the “marginalized” will hit because they can’t get at the real bigwigs.

    1. The “marginalized” don’t go really far. So “marginal neighborhoods.” Sorry, we know where they hit. Mostly their own neighborhoods with slight spillover.

       1. I guess I don’t see Antifa or the other agitators as marginalized people. Nice clothes, cellphones, enough money and leisure to make protesting their hobby…. I can’t picture them going into the neighborhoods where they wouldn’t want to live. The rioters who burned Brush Street in Detroit, they ain’t.

          1. er… those are not the marginalized people I was talking about. Note this was in answer to someone going on about food stamps. That has ZERO to do with antifa.

          2. Things kick off, the rich kids cosplaying streetfighters won’t be a factor for longer than it takes to have a single incident where a bunch get seriously hurt or killed.

             1. Someone brought a gun to a Beto rally at Kent State. Beto said they didn’t need it. . . .

                I saw a long thread online about how the kids at Kent State had been murdered by the government.

                Talk about right conclusion, wrong argument.

51. The targets will self-select. When the mob of Molotov Cocktail-carrying black clad masked rioters show up, that’s where the ‘attention’ gets directed. Granted that only addresses the cannon fodder, but enough instances of that may serve to *dis*courger les autres. If some ‘innocent’ revolution cosplay kids get caught in the mixup, well, they should have known better.

    As to the ‘don’t be in stupid places’ theme regarding avoiding mob violence, I am conflicted about attending the Trump rally here in Minneapolis next week. Apparently one of the members of our prayer group got hold of some tickets, and since we have been ‘lifting him up’ in our weekly sessions the consensus is it would be good to go see him in person. OTOH, the antifascists are organizing an ‘America is Canceled’-themed protest . . .

    1. I don’t think that’s dangerous yet/really.
       Now, say the Mexican restaurant we love in Saudi Aurora…

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