Tag: Government

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…

Unnecessary Deadlines

Education

I have never understood why people give themselves deadlines on activities which require no deadlines:  “I have to get my hair cut this week” or “I need to do the laundry today” and “I must finish my book before Saturday” and so on.  Other than an attempt to impose some kind of self-discipline over chronic procrastination, all this does is add a layer of stress into one’s life — all the more so because it’s both needless and self-imposed.  An ex-boss of mine put it in perspective, speaking purely of business matters and not of obvious crisis situations:  “There is no decision can’t be improved by waiting till the next day.”

Over at Insty’s place, Mark Tapscott posted a long letter from a friend who is grappling with the fact that his kids — and the kids of many of his upper-middle-class neighbors — will not be attending public school anytime soon, thanks to the teachers unions’ unnecessary obsession with the health risks of their members being exposed to the germ-laden petri dish that is the average school.  (It’s definitely worth going over there and reading it.)  Leaving aside the obvious retort that other workers (in supermarkets etc.) seem to have had few problems in this regard, I want to focus instead on one aspect of this hapless parent’s dilemma.  Here’s the part that got me thinking:

“And, for the families who either cannot leave a job or are not interested in what has been proposed by the public school systems, they are either spending tens of thousands of dollars per year on private education or are now for the first time acquainting themselves with homeschooling options. I will also add that in many cases, private schools are full and homeschooling curriculum options are sold out leaving families with no idea what they will do in a few weeks.”

Somebody needs to sit this harried man down and explain one of the most beneficial aspects of homeschooling:  there are no deadlines.  The “few weeks” he’s talking about is an artificial construct:  schools say that the new semester must begin on September 7, therefore that’s when education should begin.  Of course, that’s utter nonsense if you’re not chained to the public (or any) school system:  your kid can take up classes on September 7, or October 15 (or tomorrow, for that matter) — because given the glacial speed of public education, the kid will catch up with, and overtake, his former classmates in a matter of weeks.  (Remember that the entire middle- and high school mathematics curriculum — all five years of classroom instruction — can be learned by an average student in just over six months, when delivered at their own pace at home.)

I remember the mother of my son fretting about his slowness in getting toilet-trained, and telling her:  “I promise you that by the time he’s fifteen he’ll be using the toilet just like everybody else.”  And from an educational perspective, whether a kid starts learning in August or September is irrelevant to their future progress.

Everyone seems to want to set deadlines on education:  must complete high school by age 18, then go straight to college and finish the undergrad degree in four years, or else “they’ll be left behind” — as though that matters, when of course it doesn’t.

Unsaid in all this, of course, is that if education is truly unshackled from the education establishment, there’s nothing to stop a kid from finishing their undergrad degree by age 18, either, if the kid is smart enough and motivated enough — because just as homeschooled kids of high-school age typically finish twelfth grade earlier than their classroom-educated contemporaries, the appearance of online university-level classes (delivered either by streaming or by DVD) means that the homeschooled college student could finish their degree in two years and not the more common four.

The only thing that holds parents back from homeschooling is their own sense of inferiority — that somehow, even college-trained adults can’t teach their kids mathematics (the discipline which frightens parents the most).  Let me assure you all right now:  with the proper course materials, anyone can teach their kids anything.

And best of all, there’s no need to feel pressure to do it by any specified date — hell, you can even learn the stuff with your kids as you go along, and how bad can that be?

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.

“Sin” Taxes

Gummint, Nannies

It is a truism that as any government becomes larger and larger, its reach extends yet deeper and deeper into our private lives, and it becomes greedier and greedier for money to feed its bloated bulk, the only kind of creativity it produces is finding novel ways to tax us.

The idea, therefore, of a bloated, obscenely-large government lecturing us about the “sins” of obesity would be savagely ironic — not that any government would ever acknowledge that, being by definition bereft of a sense of humor.

So Gummint imposes a “sin” tax on us, for our own good.  Liquor and tobacco were the earliest manifestations of this theft, and as society becomes more and more prosperous, it also becomes less and less fearful of starvation — and now, of course, “obesity” is the latest “danger” we need to be protected from — and as something becomes more expensive, people will always use less and less of it, what better than to make it expensive through taxation, thus feeding government coffers while “protecting” us.

Listen, as a Fat Bastard myself, I know that fatties (I’m sorry, “heavy people”) have health issues and are sometimes exposed to deadly consequences for their obesity.

So what?

Well, of course, if someone else is paying for the consequences of your “gluttony” and overindulgence — in this case, that would be taxpayers, through a nationalized health service —  then the rationale for “sin” taxes is an easy one.

And right on cue, a fat-ass at the head of a fat-ass government is planning to shaft everybody.

‘Sin tax’ on sugary fizzy drinks could be extended to chocolates with adverts for sugary treats banned and health warnings slapped on alcohol bottles in anti-obesity plans being considered by Boris Johnson

And like Saul on the road to Damascus:

It came as Mr Johnson today launched the Government’s new anti-obesity drive., admitting he was ‘too fat’ when he was hospitalised with coronavirus.  He said that since his recovery from the deadly illness he has focused on getting fitter by going on morning runs.

Of course, this is being done because Gummint really, really cares about our health:

The Prime Minister’s comments came as Health Secretary Matt Hancock said if overweight adults were to lose five pounds in weight it could save the NHS £100 million.

Or it could not.  In fact, that’s an utterly bullshit statistic, and I would love to see how this incompetent prick came up with the number.  (Five pounds’ loss in someone who weighs, say, three hundred pounds, achieves precisely fuck all — and lest we forget, it’s the 300-lb+ category of fatties which has the highest mortality rate.)

As much as I love visiting the place, I am so glad I don’t live in Britishland.  Finally, as all arguments can be bolstered and/or improved by pitchurs, here’s something to ponder.  If being fat is so damn bad, why is this trend growing?

Anyway, I think everyone’s got the point by now.  It’s time for my morning breakfast of buttered Belgian waffles with syrup, followed by a refreshing pint or so of gin.

Someone else can live an austere life of self-denial and good health.  I’d rather enjoy mine, as David Hockney suggests.