When a crime report contains the following, you just know that things turned out righteously:
Initial evidence and investigative information caused detectives to suspect the deceased subject in this case was actively involved in attempted armed assaults on potential victims when he encountered an armed citizen who protected himself.
And:
HPD believes the deceased alleged assaulter was “a suspected multiple offender.”
Not anymore, he ain’t.
From La Bella d’Italia, responding to requests from France and UK to send troops to Ukraine:
“You can go — not with my soldiers.”
Could I love Giorgia Meloni any more?
For more than a century, even dating back to 1883, the civil service has grown and grown without check from the elected branch, either the presidency or the legislature . The bureaucracies have ballooned from a few to 450 or so. The bloat and absurdities have grown too. Get this: no one has ever known what to do about it. Not Coolidge, not Hoover, not Nixon, not Reagan, not Clinton, no one. No president has been able to crack this nut.
The only reforms ever to have made it through are those that make the administrative state bigger, never smaller. Countless cabinet secretaries have come and gone, always with the intention of making a change but leaving saddened, demoralized, outwitted, outgunned, and ultimately devoured. No president has seriously taken on this problem because they simply did not know how. The unions are powerful, the intimidation from the deep institutional knowledge is overwhelming, the fear of the media as been powerful, and every single president comes to power vaguely feeling threatened by the intelligence agencies. The industries that have captured every single agency were also far too powerful to unseat or control.
This combination of institutional inertia has blocked serious reform for a full century. No one has dared. No one has even had a theory or strategy about what to do about this problem. It had become so terrible that most people in politics have simply surrendered, like homeowners who know there are rats in the basement and bats in the attic but long ago gave up trying to fix the issue.
All this time, the American people have felt themselves ever more oppressed, weighed upon, taxed and regulated, spied upon, brow beaten, and otherwise overwhelmed. Voting never made any difference because the politicians no longer controlled the system. The bureaucracies ruled all.
But now we have a chance. It may be our last, because right now, in the paraphrased words of John Adams, we have men worthy of the time: a president who has a burning desire to make the changes necessary, an associate of towering intellect and inherent power who may be able to execute that change, and the subordinates who are just as willing to make those changes with the necessary authority (in the shape of presidential appointees), and others (the twenty-something hackers and geeks) who have the knowledge, skills and the tools to be able to root out the corruption and deadweight of accumulated bureaucracy and perverted, un-American policy.
Chris Muir has recovered from his lurgy and will be back in the saddle tomorrow.
This one made my heart swell with pride (but also with sorrow):
According to Kentucky State Police, troopers were dispatched to the home in Manchester around 4:30 a.m. Saturday for reports of a shooting. When troopers arrived, they found two men with gunshot wounds.
Jeffrey Allen, 51, was pronounced dead at the scene. Roger Smith, 44, was transported to an area hospital but later died.
Police said that the two men had broken into the home with the intention of stealing firearms from a safe. During the break-in, a juvenile living in the home saw the men holding firearms. Acting in self-defense, police said, the child retrieved a handgun and shot both men before escaping through a bedroom window.
Police did not give the exact age of the child who shot the alleged intruders.
Now, why is my heart filled with sorrow? Because as much as I applaud the kid’s actions, I hope like hell that this doesn’t cause him mental anguish.
Folks, it’s no fun taking a human life, even when the taking is both morally and legally justified. And as much as I post these events and make light of them, I truly do not want kids to be involved. It’s bad enough for an adult to deal with; it’s horrible for a young ‘un.
That said, at least this kid wasn’t a victim of these two asshole goblins; now that would have made me really angry.
In passing, the “Emily van der Riet” in the byline is this young lady:
She may even be a Seffrican, with that name — it’s quite a common one back in the Vaderland. As long as she isn’t a liberal…
I had a piece planned for yesterday, and ran into some thought issues which required redoing — hence its non-appearance yesterday — and it was replaced with Jan Sterling, which isn’t a bad compromise, all things considered.
It would have been, I think, an interesting piece. I was going to write about music, and lyrics, and playing around with them and not only interpreting them, but changing them into another format, writing music notation, changing orchestral pieces into something which could be played by a rock band, for instance, or a single pianist. It’s something I do often, in my head. New Wife sometimes says something to me and is annoyed when I make no sign that I’ve heard her. And when I tell her I’ve been concentrating on something and she asks what, I reply that I’d been writing out the bass guitar part for, I dunno, Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody On A Theme By Paganini perhaps, or imagining how a single keyboardist could play an entire Beethoven symphony using just two or three keyboards (piano, and couple of advanced synthesizers like those made by Nord or Roland, for example).
Then (via Insty) I read Override, and all my thoughts on music disappeared. The report had such a profound effect on me that I’ve since read it perhaps eight times (and counting), and I’ve sent the link on to a dozen friends all over the world, saying in effect, “If you want to know what’s REALLY happening here in the U.S., this is it.”
What astonishes and amazes me is the amount of preparation and planning that went into this activity, and the fact that it remained a secret for who knows how long — a year, several years, whatever — without an inkling or a leak anywhere. The proof is that when those four kids with laptops hit the Treasury system, nobody saw it coming; and I don’t think anyone, even its architects, had any idea of the outcome.
What astonishes me even more is that all those hundreds of Executive Orders signed by Trump in the past couple of weeks were, while consequential, more of a deception, a maskirovka designed to keep the Left distracted while the real business was going on in the basements of federal buildings all over D.C.
It takes a lot to knock me over and flabbergast me, but consider me knocked over and flabbergasted. And I have only one thing to say:
For the first time in many years, I can truthfully say that it’s a wonderful time to be alive here in America.
Let’s just hope we can keep it going, and change this country back into something more like what our Founding Fathers intended.
Oh, and speaking about the Founders and original principles, as if all the above were not enough, here’s another EO from POTUS:
President Donald Trump issued an executive order Friday “to assess any ongoing infringements” of the right to keep and bear arms.
The order also makes clear President Trump wants an assessment of the following, among other things:
The positions taken by the United States in any and all ongoing and potential litigation that affects or could affect the ability of Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights; Agencies’ classifications of firearms and ammunition; and The processing of applications to make, manufacture, transfer, or export firearms.
And “assessment” is one thing; action is another. But wait! There’s MOAR!
Within 30 days, Attorney General Pam Bondi is to “present a proposed plan of action to the President, through the Domestic Policy Advisor, to protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.” Thereafter AG Bondi is to finalize and implement the plan.
30 days? I think I need one of these:
…and a series of these:
Or maybe all this political turmoil and castigation of the Left is best enjoyed stone-cold sober, while I dance up and down like Flounder when the parade was ruined.
Your thoughts in Comments.