Category: Gummint

Lockdown Blues

Good Stuff, Gummint, Nannies

Over a month ago I went to Trader Joe’s to buy a couple of things, but was told to go to the back of the (100-yard) queue because the store was only allowing a dozen or so customers at a time to go in.  The outside temperature that day was August-In-Dallas (i.e. there were lizards frying gently on the sidewalks), so I said (quite loudly) to the officious little asshole at the door:  “This is total and utter bullshit, and you guys are acting like hysterical children.  I don’t need your stupid products that much,” and walked away.

A couple of people cheered and gave me the thumbs-up — and a few even nodded and walked away themselves.  (Sometimes, it only takes one, and — this may come as a surprise to many — I’ve often been that one, in my lifetime.)

It’s bad enough when Nanny Government can’t stop telling you what to do:  stay out of here, only six people allowed to be together there, family reunions or events are banned, can’t shop here but there is okay, this work is allowed but that isn’t and so on, but don’t forget to wear your face-condom everywhere or else you’ll be fined / arrested / publicly scolded / tossed out.

When stores start fucking with people’s lives, however, it’s probably too much.  At least, it was too much for this wonderful woman, who after having been bullied by everyone in Government or a uniform for months, decided that being told to follow in-store one-way signs was a Nanny Too Far, and showed her displeasure:

Shopper becomes furious after Co-op staff in Lingfield, Surrey, ask her to observe social distancing rules and starts throwing items and knocking bottles of wine off the shelves. The video that was captured in CCTV shows the woman screaming at the shop’s workers, after being asked to use the one-way system.

And just to put this in perspective, here are a few pics of Lingfield:

   

Not exactly the kind of place where one might find agitators and troublemakers, is it?

If you follow no other link today, this would be the one.

Bravo, Madame.

The Wrong Guys

Anarchist thugs, Elections, Gummint, Marxists

There’s only one post today, because it’s really, really important.

Over the past couple of months, cities all over the U.S. have been under siege from anarchist and neo-Communist front organizations such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter, wherein said gangs of thugs have been rioting, looting, burning buildings, attacking police with Molotov cocktails and rocks, and assaulting (and even killing) people suspected of being Trump supporters or otherwise conservatives.

I don’t have to give proof of said unrest;  there are plenty of news reports documenting it on a nightly basis — except, of course, if your main source of news is the mainstream media, in which case you’ve been fed a pack of lies about the riots being “mostly peaceful” protests instead of the violent anarchy that it actually is.  Still, the truth is the truth:  the country is under attack by the Left, who proudly proclaim their hatred of America and the capitalist system which has made the nation the wealthiest on Earth, and whose citizens rank so far ahead of other nations’ peoples in terms of prosperity and freedom that it barely seems worth arguing the point.

And it’s not “spontaneous protesting” — it is organized violence.

     The first one I attended was on the University of Michigan campus. The protest was rather large, about 1,500 people. What I found interesting was that the first speaker pointed out that “allies from RevCom/ANTIFA” were present, just to provide “logistical support” including medical and security teams. The local RevCom leader got up and explained how to find the medics (Large red or green crosses) and explained that security was “circulating among the crowd” for safety. That was an ominous statement, as I’ll point out later.
I began moving through the crowd and quickly spotted several security team members, obviously watching the crowd for anyone who wasn’t clapping or cheering along. It’s important to note that these protests require 100% ideological agreement or they will approach you and become confrontational, so I made sure I was chanting along. I noticed almost immediately that despite the man who said he was the RevCom leader, a young man named Ethan, that I would later have many interactions with, was actually in charge. He is a security team leader within the ANTIFA organization.
The biggest observation from the first protest was that despite the claims that they aren’t organized, they are highly organized by a central organization. Ethan and his security/medical team have been at every protest I’ve attended in Michigan, including one at the Capitol an hour away. They use the ubiquitous BaoFeng Handi-talkie radios to communicate.

So the goon squads of Lefties — notably, the White middle-class kids of wealthy parents along with actual criminals and a mass of disaffected, impoverished Blacks, all of whom profess hatred of the police and the system — rampage through cities like New York, Chicago, Portland, Seattle and the like, causing untold damage to life and property of those unfortunates caught in their path.

It doesn’t end there.  The anarcho-Communist rabble is vowing to get still more violent should Donald Trump be reelected this November, and their sympathizers are also attempting to subvert the voting process by insisting on a dangerously-flawed mail-in ballot system, which time and time again has been shown to be corrupt, crooked and open to all kinds of abuse.  Even worse, should the mumbling geriatric Democrat Joe Biden get elected, the rioting will not stop — and may get even worse, as Biden and his Democratic cabal of people like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and other Democratic figures of power such as state governors and city mayors, Democrats all, inflame the unrest either by overt support or else by mandating police inaction in the face of the riots.

One might think, therefore, that our Law Enforcement Establishment would consider these groups to be dangerous.  Silly rabbit;  the real danger, according to the Department of Homeland Security, is… rightwing militia groups?

White supremacists will remain the most “persistent and lethal threat” in the United States through 2021, according to Department of Homeland Security draft documents.
The most recent draft report predicts an “elevated threat environment at least through” early next year, concluding that some U.S.-based violent extremists have capitalized on increased social and political tensions in 2020.
Although foreign terrorist organizations will continue to call for attacks on the U.S., the report says, they “probably will remain constrained in their ability to direct such plots over the next year.”

Ah yes:  all those Sons Of Conservatives, White Brethren Under Christ and the worst of them all, Confederate Rebel Yellers are just waiting to inflict murder and mayhem upon this land.

Once again I am reminded of the scene from Heller’s Catch-22, where Aarfy has just thrown a prostitute to her death out of his hotel room window, but when the military police arrive, they don’t arrest Aarfy for murder, but they do arrest Yossarian for being AWOL.

Seriously?  White supremacists are the real danger?  Who are these guys?

Needless to say, as Insty puts it:  “Of course, there’s no action so vile that you can’t find an academic to defend it.”  Or give it credence and respectability, like this collection of Useful Idiots:

What might a new administration do to more effectively target white supremacist violence?

And then read the revolting details in the link.

If you are tempted to laugh at this, don’t be.  What’s happening here is very simple:  the DHS is pre-positioning law enforcement to act against anyone who dares to start resisting Leftist violence, by labeling them all as “white supremacists” ahead of time.  So if a community group stands around with AR-15s trying to prevent a mob from burning their neighborhood down, and when attacked by the mob, start shooting to defend themselves, they (and not the mob) will be plastered with the “white supremacist” label and be subject to all the weight of the law as a fulfillment of the DHS report.  Federal law enforcement, in other words, will do nothing against the Pantifa/BLM Brigades, but they will come down on… us.

And yeah, I say “us” because a huge number of people like me (such as among my Loyal Readers) strongly oppose the thug tactics of the Left — but just be aware that by physically opposing the Left, by simply voicing opposition, or even saying nothing (“silence is violence”, remember?), we will be stamped as racists, both by the Left and, it appears, by our government.

How nice.  And then there’s this:

Our training up to know has been CCW as related to violent crime inflicted upon us or our loved ones.  We never trained for organized mobs with legal  (upfront or tacit) government support.

His advice:  “have a long gun as minimum and a bunch of loaded magazines or easy to reach buck and slugs. Use cover and engage from a distance.”

And don’t try to be a Lone Ranger.  Kyle Rittenhouse’s experience has shown that’s just not gonna work.  Go ahead and check these guys out — just remember that Big Tech (and therefore Big Gummint) may be looking over your shoulder.  Best do it with your friends and neighbors offline, I think.

I think I’ll go and clean my AK-47 and sniper hunting rifles, and then call up a friend or two in the area.

Traffic Anacondas

Drive Time, Gummint

Here’s one guaranteed to make all my Murkin Readers chortle:

Pop-up cycle lanes set up as part a £225million plan to get Britain moving again are lying empty while traffic is squeezing onto narrowed streets, bringing the capital to a halt, it can be revealed.
MailOnline visited some of the key cycle lanes across the country at the height of the rush hour to gauge how busy they are, only to find them chronically under-used with cyclists criticising them as well as motorists.
Our research in London, where Transport for London is leading its own £33million scheme, shows that on the Euston Road, just 7 cyclists used the designated lane over a 15-minute period.  Meanwhile 420 cars fought their way through traffic.  In Park Lane, Mayfair, just 21 cyclists used the lane as 400 cars battled past.

Nonsense like this basically stems from the dreaded Car Hatred Disease, which engenders the opposite feeling from motorists.  The Englishman, as I recall, thinks that shooting cyclists from one’s car should not only not be prosecuted, but rewarded.  Mr. Free Market’s opinion should not be made public, but suffice it to say that there is plenty of gore involved.

We have nice wide roads Over Here in north Texas, so the “two-wheeled Taliban”, as the Brits call them, are not much more than a mild nuisance — other than committing the visual offense of wearing those faggy Lycra outfits and pisspot helmets.  It is, however, one more reason to enjoy winter here, because our usually icy roads make cycling deadly.  (“Make it compulsory, then,” grumbles Mr. FM.)

Of course, because BritPM Scruffy Johnson is a rider, all these crappy devices (“pop-up” cycle lanes?) are given a lot more government attention and support than they deserve.

I know that secretly — or perhaps not so secretly — the Greens would banish all cars if they could, and force us all to ride around on two wheels.  This is one of the reasons why, when the Beer & Treason Crowd gathers at its secret meetings, mass execution of Greens is generally ranked after the same treatment for anarchists and Communists, but just ahead of record company executives.  Or maybe it was vegans, I don’t remember.

I do know that in Britain, cyclists are generally hated more than badgers, and they squirt poisonous gas into the ground to deal with them.  Come to think of it, that sounds remarkably similar to one of Mr. FM’s suggestions…

Killing Golden Geese

Anarchist thugs, BaconLettuceMayo, Business, Gummint, Marxists

The late and great Margaret Thatcher had it right (as usual) when she said of Communists that sooner or later, they run out of other people’s money.  What’s happening in many of the neo-socialist hellholes like New York lately is that the “other” (i.e. wealthy) people aren’t necessarily running out of money, they’re running out of patience with the filthy nest their government has created, and are running away.

It’s snapshot simple. The wealthy and the companies they work for pay most of the taxes. The poor consume most of the taxes through social programs. COVID is driving the wealthy and their offices out of the city. No one will be left to pay for the poor, who are stuck here, and the city will collapse in the transition.

Of course, that would be bad enough, because even if the wealthy folks came back to their Upper East- or West Side domiciles once the Chinkvirus had subsided, NYFC could continue to fleece them in the manner to which everyone has become accustomed.  But if their toney little brownstone houses and chi-chi apartment buildings are surrounded by homeless, aggressive beggars and rioting assholes of the BLM / Pantifa persuasion, the millionaires and billionaires will say (and are saying) “The hell with this shit” and leave for more hospitable climes — and their companies will go along with them.

I have another post bubbling under about the death of the traditional office-work model, but that can wait for another time.

What’s really interesting, from a socio-political perspective, is how quickly this has happened.  It might have happened at some point or another anyway, as the Blue Model metropolises collapsed under the weight of their underfunded pension plans and failing social services and infrastructure — but the Chinkvirus has been the Catalyst Supreme for our little domestic Lenins and Maos.  What’s even more interesting is that, being economic illiterates, our socialist pols have looked to Europe, their favorite model, and said, “But France isn’t collapsing!”

Oh yes, it is.  The difference is that rich Frogs can’t exactly load up U-Hauls and move to — where?  Germany?  Belgium?  Britain?  It’s the same situation in those countries.  There are no prosperous and successful business-friendly, low tax states in Europe like Texas, Florida or Utah — they’re all soft socialist states;  and the Chinkvirus is having the same effect on their economies and traditional business models as it is in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

So even in the best of times (booming Trump economy, no virus, no BLM / Pantifa riots), Illinois, California and New York — to name but three — would be sucking wind soon enough, and the writing has been on their walls for some time.  But in the current environment?  They’re screwed.

My only concern, as I’ve often said before, is that these fleeing rats don’t come to our happy little ships and infest them with their shitty ideas and political morality.

Open Season

Gummint, Two-Minute Hate

It’s not often that I read a long article that starts off with me getting angry (remember, my general mood is best described as “irritable” at the best of times) and having my anger grow to nigh-ungovernable rage.  But this article managed to get me there quite effortlessly.  Here’s a taste:

On his way to hunt on his father’s land during the first week of December 2017, Hunter Rainwaters was driving a side-by-side through the property when he noticed an oddity positioned roughly 4’ off the ground. He popped the brakes, backed toward the object and looked in surprise at a trail camera belted to a tree.
“I didn’t see any words or stickers on it, but I knew right away it wasn’t ours,” Hunter Rainwaters recalls.
Following the hunt, he drove back onto the family property and spotted a second trail camera attached to a tree with several branches removed to allow for an unimpeded lens view. Rainwaters dialed his father’s cellphone, and described the two cameras: “I was shaken up when my son called and I knew immediately it had to be the TWRA (Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency),” Rainwaters recalls.
Deeply disturbed, Rainwaters arrived home later in the afternoon and took a look at the two cameras, mulling over whether to remove the pair. Two days later, with Rainwaters in limbo on what action to take — both cameras disappeared.
…
“The cameras were collecting pictures of us hunting, driving and just our lives,” he adds. “One of the cameras was even recording footage up to the back of my tenant’s house.”

That’s bad enough.  But it gets worse. (And I’ve added emphasis.)

Can the government place cameras and monitoring equipment on a private citizen’s land at will, or conduct surveillance and stakeouts on private land, without probable cause or a search warrant? Indeed, according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. Welcome to Open Fields.
The vast majority of Americans assume law enforcement needs a warrant to carry out surveillance, but for roughly a century, SCOTUS has ruled that private land — is not private. Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures” expressed in the Bill of Rights only apply to an individual’s immediate dwelling area, according to SCOTUS.

Had the government agency mounted their little snoopies on utility poles on the public road off the property, I would have just shrugged.  But to come onto the land without a warrant or permission?

Somewhere, Feliks Dzerzhinsky is chuckling his ass off.

Me, had I discovered this shit on my land and ascertained that there was no label that it was government property, I think I would have moved well back out of range of the camera and performed a little long-range shooting exercise.

“After all, Yeronner, I actually thought it was poachers, scanning my land to see if there was any game for them to hunt illegally.  I never for a moment thought that this skullduggery could be the work of the Gummint!“

(My other thought was to plant a Claymore mine at the base of the tree, but no doubt someone’s going to have a problem with this. )

Apart from my beef with the bastard government agency, my equally-enraged beef is with the fucking shysters on the Supreme Court.

Just as I don’t need some asshole judge to “explain” the meaning of the Second Amendment to me, I don’t need these turds to “explain” the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to me, either.

Private property is just that:  private.  And the sole function of government — any government — is to protect that right and ensure that it isn’t transgressed, by anyone.  Looking at the Fourth, I can see the problem:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

So, in the exquisite nature of lawyers to parse the law literally and look for loopholes, the word “houses” is taken to mean just the area enclosed by walls, and thus government agents can pretty much run roughshod over one’s outdoor property (just as the TWRA did in the above story), as often and for any reason they deem fit.

Izzat so?

Listen:  everybody knows that the nature of government — of all governments — is eventually to oppress otherwise law-abiding citizens.  The only way this can be preempted is to force the would-be oppressors to convince a judge that what they want to do has a clear and compelling justification.  If the judge is just going to sign whatever they put in front of him and pat them on the head as they go on their way… what’s the fucking point of having a judge in the first place?

I’ve said this many, many times on this blog before:  whenever you get a situation where an individual starts whacking government officials and agents, the vast majority of the time it’s because the government is messing with his property in some way or another.  So do not be surprised when landowners start taking potshots at these bastards.

And if I were sitting on a jury to judge a homicide charge against the landowner under these circumstances, I would die before voting for a conviction.

I’ve slotted this post into the “Two Minute Hate” category at the top;  let me tell you, the hatred is going to last a lot longer than that.

Why Not?

Crime, Gummint, Law and Order, The Gun Thing

As police presence and power decreases (forced by, lest we forget, Democrat-controlled local governments), it seems only natural that people are saying, “Well, we did deputize the enforcement of laws and peacekeeping functions to government — but if they are unable or unwilling to perform those functions, we’re just gonna take that power back into our own hands.”

Hence:

Violent Crime Explosion Forces Minneapolis Residents to Form Militias

Breitbart’s John Nolte, by the way, doesn’t think this is a Good Thing, and he gives a number of sound reasons why.  I, however, am not interested in ivory-tower discussions — I prefer to remain rooted in reality — so I think that even if Nolte is correct, it doesn’t matter.  The reality facing these people betrayed by their government is real, and it’s dangerous.  So I say:  go on, buy guns, learn how to use them, and do whatever you have to do to protect yourselves from the raving mob.  Right now, the BLM/Pantifas are actively behaving in ways that makes me think they’re looking for martyrs, and if a bunch of citizen militias help them achieve that goal, so much the better.  (I would love to see a situation where a militia group drops the hammer on some scumbag looters / rioters, and when the cops put in a belated appearance to try and arrest the shooters, the militia sticks to their guns, so to speak, and tells the cops to go pound sand.  Let government try to maintain its “monopoly on force” in the face of an armed and angry citizenry trying to protect themselves and each other.)  As the Z-man sourly puts it:

“Gun sales are booming, but the people buying the guns imagine themselves defending their life and property within a system of laws. What happens when they realize there is no system of laws?”

Interesting, but behind the curve.   More intriguing is what happens when the cops realize there is no longer a system of laws.  And Z-man talks about that too:

Social collapse comes when the majority stops accepting the legitimacy of the system and the authority of those in charge of it. The one result of the street rioters and their corporate and political sponsors is they may get what they want. The majority may stop accepting the legitimacy of the system. That silent minority may lose all faith in the system and the people running it. That would be us one step from the edge, when all respect for authority collapses and takes society with it.

That would be this scenario:

Yeah, I know:  it sounds like I’m promoting anarchy, doesn’t it?  Tell me that what’s going on right now in Portland, Seattle and Chicago isn’t already anarchy.  Only what it really is, as Z-man points out, is government-enabled (and even -supported) anarchy.  If the Left is so keen on anarchy, let’s give them the full flavor.

But just for the record, I’m damn glad that it’s Black people (and women) buying more guns.  Self-defense is a universal right, after all.