An Old Favorite

What with one thing and another, I haven’t been keeping up with the adventures of Othias and Mae’s C&Rsenal, so when I stumbled on this one talking about an old friend, I opened the video toot sweet, and you should too.

Let it be known — as I’ve said several times before — that I have always loved the Commie SKS, and Othias is definitely on my side on this one.

I know, I know:  the thing has been (unfairly) overshadowed by its successor, the AK-47.

And yes, the SKS holds only 10 rounds in its semi-concealed mag compared to 20-30 in the AK’s banana-like appendage.  Don’t care.  Also, the AK can be modified as above (albeit with some difficulty), while the SKS cannot (not even ULTiMAK makes the proper rail mounts).  Don’t care about that either.

The fact is that the SKS is actually a better design, and is way more comfortable to shoot than the AK.  I have owned both, fired literally thousands of rounds through each, and on this I will accept no argument.

Of course, I don’t own either of them ever since that tragic accident on the Brazos River all those years ago;  but lemme tell you, watching Mae and Othias shoot and fondle the SKS respectively made me itch in all the wrong places.

Dumping The Heritage

Here’s a rather bad-tempered article (kinda like the ones I sometimes write) about letting go of the past:

Events over the past months have exposed a very stark divide between the globalist, collectivist, “woke” authorities of Europe and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) patriot movement here in the United States. To be frank, it is almost as if the snide, effete elitists who control the nations of the European continent want to rub our noses in their horror show.

Let’s be frank. Europe would be a total basket case without American taxpayers, American troops, and American subservience to their ever more bizarre “culture.” Since Woodrow Wilson first fell for the globalist-line that somehow “the better people” could build a world government free of popular input, the citizens of the United States have been played as fools. Churchill’s constant pushing and cajoling led to the so-called “special relationship” that has come to mean Uncle Sucker picks up the tab, does the dirty work and then allows others to make decisions.

All of this was made clear when a recent article by Giovanna De Maio and Célia Belin in the publication, Foreign Affairs, appeared entitled Europe’s America Problem. To set the record straight, the magazine is owned and operated by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). CFR has been the leading voice for globalist ambitions since its founding in 1921. It is the voice of the very people the MAGA movement has identified as those working to destroy American sovereignty and submerge us into a swamp.

Europe as advanced by the globalists at CRF, NATO, the Atlantic Council and the European Union (EU) is unalterably opposed to the core principles of the United States.  Even a cursory review shows them to outright enemies of liberty.

And then Wilson catalogues the list of atrocities:  (non-)freedom of speech;  extra-national prosecution of those daring to exercise such;  preventing the U.S. from supporting its own economic interests, yea even though that might affect those of other nations (gasp!);   preventing the U.S. from ignoring the utter fraud of “climate change” and its baleful bastard child Net Zero, and so on.  (Of their position on right of citizens to keep and bear arms, of course, we will not speak.)

Wilson asks the question, quite reasonably, that if the Euros are doing all this despite being essentially a welfare state propped up by U.S. taxpayers’ dollars, why should the U.S. play ball?

I think the answer is going to manifest itself, certainly over the next few years and maybe even longer as the next U.S. Administration and Congress take a long hard look at a cost : benefit analysis of our relationship with the Mother Country, so to speak.  And I don’t think the Euros are going to like the results of that analysis, and the actions that follow.

There was a time when the U.S. might have been prepared to bail the Euros out of the crap they got themselves in — two world wars and a cold one being good examples thereof — but that doesn’t mean the commitment is eternal:  not much is, in the realm of global politics.

And if the Euros seem intent as they are to drag us down with them, it would be foolish to go along with them because of such anachronisms like a “Special Relationship” or even historical ties.  I think that by now we have amply paid back our debt to France for the 1776 business, for one thing, and we sure as shit owe nothing to the Germans and other assorted malcontents.

I do expect, however, that we might well continue to do good business with countries such as Poland and Hungary, because they seem to be as skeptical as we are about the intentions of the EU.  Others might follow suit, of course, but not as long as they subscribe to the internationalist bullshit coming out of the WCC, UN, EU and similar institutions.

Yes, our fabled patience, forbearance and tolerance is wearing thin right now, and the Euros would do well not to make things worse with empty threats.

Nice Dream, Not Gonna Happen

There are dreams that are achievable, unrealistic dreams that can be achieved but where the odds are hugely stacked against you, and then there are those dreams that are just… dreams without any chance of achievement.

Achievable dreams would include that cherry/unfired WWII-era 1911, the restored & modernized E-type Jag, etc.  They are out there, you just haven’t found one yet or else you don’t have the moolah on hand to buy it when you do.

Unrealistic dreams… well, there’s that night in bed with Salma Hayek, winning Powerball, finding that cherry/unfired WWII-era 1911 for only $500… you get my drift.

And then there is that category of dreams where there’s no chance in hell of success.  And here’s where I’m going to get into trouble, but oh well:

Space travel and extraterrestrial planet colonization.

What bollocks.  Given the vast distances between planets, even-vaster distances between habitable (by us) planets, it requires not only advanced science of a degree unimaginable — which may be possible — but most of all it requires a bending of the laws of physics (e.g. the time/space continuum, the frailty and short shelf life of the human body, etc.), which is not so easy.

So while it’s all very nice to ooh and aah over Elon Musk’s latest wizardry, at some point realization is going to set in and we’re going to discover that it’s just an impossible dream.

Nice song, great lyrics, but that’s no way to go through life.

Let’s face it:  we’re stuck here on good old Planet Earth, and that’s the beginning and end of it.  We’ll just have to deal with it, and come to terms with the fact that in a few million years’ time, this planet will become uninhabitable (swallowed by the Sun, our own red star in the making) and all life as we know it will cease.

(I don’t want to hear about Mars — when our sun becomes a red dwarf, it too will be swallowed into the eternal fire / black hole whatever.)

And then, to quote Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister of Great Britain (1902 – 1905):

“Imperishable monuments and immortal deeds, death itself and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been. The energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest.”

He may have got the dimming of the sun wrong — it’s more likely the opposite — but the final outcome will be the same.

At least it’s in the very distant future, so there’s that.

Out Of Control

Here’s one that will make your nose bleed and your trigger-actuating digit twitch:

One of the more egregious abuses of power is the U.S. Department of Justice’s abuse of its power to harass citizens and companies through frivolous or dramatically expanded charges if that company/person pushes back against their legal threats.

An example of this is an October 21, 2024 lawsuit that the Biden administration brought against Rocket Mortgage because they followed the law.

That’s right, you read it correctly, Rocket Mortgage is having to spend millions of dollars in legal fees to defend itself against charges around actions they legally have no control over.

The DOJ lawsuit stems from a claim that a home was unfairly appraised and somehow that was Rocket Mortgages’ fault.

At this point, people who know anything at all about the business will be going “Huh?  What about Dodds-Frank?”  and rightfully so.  Why?

It is important to note that while a mortgage company may contract with the appraiser, the law requires that the appraisal be completely independent of the mortgage company. In other words, it is illegal for the mortgage company to put their thumb on the scale in the determination of the value of a house under consideration for financing. In fact, to ensure appraisal independence is maintained, mortgage lenders contract through third-party appraisal management companies and have no authority over the independent appraisers.

Yet:

Yet, somehow, the Justice Department chose to splash Rocket Mortgage’s corporate name as the lead in their October 21, 2024 press release announcing a suit for racial discrimination in a clear attempt to grab headlines at the expense of the online mortgage innovator.  Rocket Mortgage has received numerous customer service satisfaction awards from J.D. Power, and the decision by DOJ to very publicly seek to do harm to this company through their news release headline is a demonstration of the soft power to destroy which an out of control Justice Department possesses.

Even worse:

In an Orwellian twist, the Biden DOJ is seeking to harm a company’s reputation using the argument that they should have broken that law by putting pressure on the appraiser to come up with the right number in direct violation of the law.

In true socialist fashion, only the intentions are important.  All that other inconvenient stuff — you know, existing law, the Constitution, actual right vs. wrong [stop sniggering] — none of that matters as long as DEI (All Hail DEI!!) is satisfied.

And if you dare to resist, say hello to lawyers’ fees, millions and millions of dollars’ worth.

The New DoJ — Trump’s — needs to end this shit, and have the charges dismissed, with Rocket’s costs reimbursed, said costs to be partially clawed back from the retirement accounts of all the individuals who initiated, authorized and executed this travesty.

And lest you think that it’s only a corporation involved here, and who cares about them?  let me remind you of a certain individual named Randy Weaver, who refused to break the law at the behest of a federal agency (on this occasion, during the Dark Time Of Clinton).  Things didn’t go well for him, did they?

The principle is precisely the same.

And if you think this one is bad, wait till you see the next post.