Reality And The State

     The following is in part an extension of the thoughts in “Mimes” and in part an addendum to Dystopic’s superb essay “Good is Evil.” I hope you’ve read them both.

     The great majority of psychiatrists purvey an expensive, jargon-heavy pseudo-science for which little to no objective basis exists. The consequences of investing one’s trust in one can be severe, especially if the psychiatrist is hooked on some au courant mental-health snake-oil nostrum. However, there are a few who will tell you, unabashedly and in simple language, what you need to know to “get well”...which almost invariably amounts to: Cowboy the fuck up and face reality.

     The late M. Scott Peck was one:

     What are these tools, these techniques of suffering, these means of experiencing the pain of problems constructively, that I call discipline? They are four: delaying of gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and balancing. As will be evident, these are not complex tools whose application demands extensive training. To the contrary, they are simple tools, and almost all children are adept in their use by the age of ten. Yet presidents and kings will often forget to use them, to their own downfall. The problem lies not in the complexity of these tools but in the will to use them.

     Here’s another:

     Why, after all, is the truth said to be sacred? Why can’t we indulge the parts of ourselves and our culture that suggest we can slip the bindings of reality and use our imaginations to pretend we have more friends than we do, or that we aren’t facing mortal enemies abroad, or that our leaders need not be authentic, so long as they are entertaining, or that our companies need not prove their value, assuming they can assert it, convincingly?

     The answer is this: Human beings suffer in exact proportion to the extent that they depart from the truth. This is a structural beam of the individual and collective human mind and soul, perhaps literally encoded in our DNA, and it defines our place in the universe. Human beings need the truth as much as we need food. Jesus and Gandhi both proved it by fasting, when necessary, until certain truths became known to them and others. And, for the sake of this argument, it matters not at all to me whether you believe that this elemental need is woven into us by God or by science. It just is.

     Dr. Ablow’s last three words are the one and only key to emotional health: What is, is. Deny it at your peril.

---

     Mimes was about the deliberate destruction of the objective meanings of words in service to an overt agenda that contradicts reality. Good is Evil reviews the Orwellian use of the deliberate contradiction of verifiable realities to induce passivity and submission in one’s targets. Reality, of course, is “the point:” the point the destroyers want to obscure, and the point you must see despite all the obstacles to it. But here’s the Ace kicker: the destroyers know the truth; they simply don’t want you to know it.

     Smith who knows the truth has a tremendous advantage over Jones who doesn’t. If Smith is a man of good will, he will attempt to “clue Jones in,” so the two of them will see the same reality and can cooperate in coping with it. But if Smith is morally deficient – a destroyer – he will attempt to profit from Jones’s misconceptions.

     One of the things the destroyers know is that government – the institution that is allowed to use force against others – cannot produce anything but deprivation, destruction, and death. The bedrock political deceit is the notion that the use of force against peaceable others is justifiable – perhaps even mandatory – if it can “solve” some “problem” or achieve some “desirable end.”

     Government is not “just another word for the things we do together.” As George Washington apparently did not say, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

     The destroyers know that, too.

---

     Remus’s essay “Frankly My Dear” is one of the most popular ever to grace this site. Why? The reason is simple: It tells the truth about a subject on which our eyes have been averted from the facts to make room for pretty lies. Other Liberty’s Torch essays that have proved popular share that central virtue: truth about a subject dominated by attractive fictions.

     Dr. Ablow was more right than even he might know: People hunger for the truth. They know, in their heart of hearts, that they’ve been deceived, that the grand, ever-expanding campaign of public deception rolls on, gathering force from second to second. They suspect that they know why. But misbegotten notions about “politeness” and “political correctness” have inhibited the great majority of them from speaking out.

     Schematic: A politician lies to you. You smell it and accuse him of trying to deceive you for his own advancement. How does he respond? With manufactured outrage. Perhaps he’ll accuse you of “racism,” or “sexism,” or “lacking compassion,” or of “questioning his patriotism.” If you’re typical, the accusations will either silence you or disgust you into abandoning the field.

     Have a few truths:

• The biggest racists and sexists in America are politicians, as studies of politicians’ staffs have confirmed.
• Politicians are completely uncompassionate; they merely seek more of your money with which to buy votes, regardless of the havoc that results.
• To go into politics in this year of Our Lord 2015 is virtually a Certificate of Un-Patriotism. A true patriot would have no truck with the lying, thieving, murdering apparatus government in these United States has become. Rather, he would seek to empty the halls of power completely, perhaps as an overture to demolishing them once and for all.

     How many of us are willing to say any of that into a live microphone, perhaps at a politician’s “town hall” meeting?

---

     A final thought for this morning: Along with the many words whose meanings are being undermined or utterly destroyed, there are words and phrases whose utility is for nothing but deception. Their destructive power screams to have them excised from our political discourse. Today, one eclipses all others for cogency: public service.

     “Who is the public? What does it hold as its good?” cried Hank Rearden at his “trial” for an “illegal” sale of Rearden Metal to Ken Danagger. Do you have an answer, Gentle Reader?

     I have never held elective nor appointive office. I have never worked in government. Yet I am a public servant, and have been all my life. I produce products that are voluntarily purchased by my customers, to their material profit or non-material benefit. In all probability, this is also true of you.

     What of the individuals to whom the title “public servant” is normally applied? How do these richly compensated, perquisite-heavy barons of the “public good,” to whom nothing but more power and prestige really seems to matter, actually “serve” the public?

     I’d love to see one of them compelled to mime it.

Oops, they did it again...(a CNN "interviewer," that is)

If you want to talk about navigating interviews in hostile territory "like a champ" then look no further than Pamela Geller - especially since the Garland, Texas jihad attack. Oh, and my dear "journalists," it was NOT an attempted-attack; it WAS an attack! The sound of gunfire should have been your first clue.

But back to Geller, one of the lone female figures walking-the-walk in Lady-Liberty's footsteps...her appearance earlier this week on CNN with the disgrace-of-a-journalist, Erin Burnett. The link to the version I watched is here, on Geller's website. My graphical reaction is at the end of this (the audio of me F-bombing as I watched it the first time might have made for an "amusing" YouTube video!).

This link will take you to my site and a "cartoon search" page if you'd like to see a couple more Islam-/Liberty- related cartoons from this week I didn't get around to posting here.

I'd love to hear your feedback on my attempts to win the coveted Bosch Fawstin Wannabe Award. ;-) What works for you and what doesn't.

Mimes

     Now and then, a phenomenon will go from being uncommon and sporadic, and therefore noticeable, to being continuous and ubiquitous, and therefore invisible: the “water to a fish” effect. When the latter condition has been achieved, it ceases to be spoken of, no matter how important to the comprehension of the applicable sociopolitical climate.

     When the phenomenon involves the essential tools of consciousness – ideas and the symbols we use to represent and manipulate them – we may find ourselves, not to be too blunt about it, in seriously deep shit.

---

     “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” [From Through the Looking Glass]

     Consider all the following:

• This redefinition of “justice;”
• This redefinition of “time” by a provably incorrect prognosticator;
• This redefinition of “heroism;”
• This redefinition of “sex education;”
• This periphrasis for the victims of prenatal infanticide.

     Please read the cited pieces before continuing on.

---

     Words are our lowest-level tools of thought and communication. They serve us both in dealing with the world around us and in dealing with one another. When important words of wide application are subjected to a campaign of distortion, they cease to serve our attempts to cope with reality. Indeed, they can become tools of deception in the hands of those to whose designs reality presents important obstacles.

     The Left’s war on the stable meanings of words has been going on for some time. Their attacks have targeted so many fundamental terms that even I have lost count: “Freedom.” “Equality.” “Justice.” “Peace.” “Poverty.” “Racism.” “Discrimination.” Today’s battles are over terms still more fundamental: “Man.” “Woman.” “Sex.” “Baby.” “Time.” These might be war-enders...and judging from the examples cited above, it’s by no means clear which side will prevail.

---

     Time was, I advanced the concept that politics is about means rather than ends. I contended that we all have the same general objectives; we merely differ on the best ways to achieve them. Back then, I believed that Americans were men of good will...or at least, that Americans who are not men of good will are so vanishingly few as not to count in political terms.

     Time was.

     Men of good will cannot talk to the Left. Whenever a fundamental fact obstructs a Leftist agenda item, they insist that the words used to address that fact don’t mean what they’ve meant for centuries. This renders rational discourse impossible.

     In one sense, this effacement of the meanings of words, such that no fact or idea that impedes the Left’s programs can be expressed in a fashion comprehensible to ordinary persons using traditional standards, is a last-ditch tactic. Reality – “The facts of life,” in Margaret Thatcher’s classic phrase – has been unkind to the Left. Kipling’s “Gods of the Copybook Headings” have uniformly ruled against Leftist notions and nostrums. (There’s a particularly sharp irony in the Left’s habit of referring to themselves as “the reality-based community.”) This leaves the Left in the position of needing to deny reality: to deny evidence; to refuse normal deductive and inductive reasoning; and to denounce those who object to their “assumption of differential rectitude.”

     Political discourse has become pointless for the reasons above. What remains is combat, whether with ballots or bullets. All else awaits the renascence of clarity and integrity in communication.

---

     “'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!”

     [From Monty Python’s “dead parrot sketch.”]

     The title of this short piece arose from the question: “If words are no longer useful as tools of public discourse, what remains to us?” I thought for a while about what we could substitute for the terms whose definitions the Left has refused to accept. Mathematics? Forget it. Drawings? Not enough of us can draw. Gestures? Well, maybe...but not “sign language” such as AmesLan, for those gestures are equivalences to the words of American English, which puts us back where we started.

     No, we’ll all have to become mimes.

     The mime uses gestures to sketch out a reality we cannot see or hear. He depicts it by behaving in a fashion that implies mass and position to the unseen. We smile at his depictions, because he has deliberately denied himself the symbols with which a writer of fiction would describe the setting in which the mime is acting.

     Miming is very hard work. Ask any actor who’s studied the art. It doesn’t come easily.

     Should we fail to re-establish the traditional, public meanings of the words we use in political discussion, there can be no long-term political peace in these United States. But perhaps that would be too much to expect between men of genuinely good will and the fractious, endlessly quarrelsome Left.

Islamic "reformation."

Commenter Yann puts his finger on the contortions necessary to make Islam into something other than the greatest grab bag collection of oppressive, murderous, savage, backward doctrines the world has ever seen bar none:

Most of pacific trends in Islam, like sufism, had to interpret the Q’ran in a way so metaphoric and creative than you could be reading instead some washing machine instructions and reach the same conclussions.^[1]

He has an interesting take on why that is, namely, the relative reliability of the Koran and the Hadith on the issue of what Mohammed did or said. Since we supposedly know what he did and said, everything's locked in stone and we can all forget about anyone's "interpreting away" the inconvenient parts about enslaving and murdering infidels and engaging in subversion and treason when Muslims live in – and become citizens of – Western nations:

The big problem with Islam is that it is fixed in time. There’s no way to overrule Mohammed himself. Christianity and Judaism evolved because their sources were unreliable. And the more unreliable the sources (judaism), the more it has evolved.^[2]

Having all eight schools of Islamic jurisprudence affirm the necessity of murdering blasphemers and apostates is certainly an aid to keeping Islam mired/locked/stuck in its mode of 7th-century desert banditry.

Another commenter, Guy Macher, supplies another insight:

Christianity’s violence occurs when Christ’s teachings are not followed. Islamic violence occurs as a result of Mohamed’s teachings.^[3]

Christ never preached a literal warrior ethic but Mohammed wanted one-fifth of the war booty his rampaging troops stole.

Notes
^[1]  "Criticism of Islam Must Belong to Islam." By Baron Bodissey, Gates of Vienna, 6/5/15, in which is published the title article by Abdel-Hakim Ourghi.
^[2] Id.
^[3] Id.

Flappers: The Political Class Of Which We Do Not Speak

     My attention was turned in this direction by a brief piece at Crusader Rabbit:

     ‘Rubio, Graham Refuse to Answer Whether They Read Obamatrade Before Voting on It’

     ....Somebody tell me again what is the point of voting?

     Keith has the right of it; at least, I can’t disagree with his obvious anger. However, the headline above isn’t a major revelation of a previously closely-held secret. It’s an open matter, and has been for some time, that Congressmen and Senators never read legislation. That includes legislation they have submitted to the floor.

     They have flappers for that.

---

     For those who have never read Gulliver’s Travels:

     At last we entered the palace, and proceeded into the chamber of presence, where I saw the king seated upon his throne, attended on each side by persons of prime quality. Before the throne, was a large table filled with globes and spheres, and mathematical instruments of all kinds. His majesty took not the least notice of us, although our entrance was not without sufficient noise, by the concourse of all persons belonging to the court. But he was then deep in a problem, and we attended at least an hour before he could solve it. There stood by him on each side a young page with flaps in their hands, and when they saw he was at leisure, one of them gently struck his mouth, and the other his right ear; at which he startled like one awaked on the sudden, and looking towards me and the company I was in, recollected the occasion of our coming, whereof he had been informed before. He spoke some words, whereupon a young man with a flap immediately came up to my side, and flapped me gently on the right ear; but I made signs, as well as I could, that I had no occasion for such an instrument; which, as I afterwards found, gave his majesty and the whole court a very mean opinion of my understanding. [Part III, Chapter II]

     Here we see the Laputan institution of the “flapper:” a servant whose function is to “flap” the ears of his master when, in the opinion of the servant, it is desirable for the master to hear what is being said. Plainly, the “servant” exercises considerable power over the “master”...a condition substantially replicated by the arrangements in the two Houses of Congress.

     Congressmen and Senators all possess large staffs. Those staffs have internal hierarchies resembling the sort you’d find in any business office. The staff members are aware of their boss’s overall political orientation, his priorities, and his positions on the issues of most importance to him. When legislation reaches the floor of his house, staffers portion it up among themselves, read it as closely as possible, decide whether the boss should speak or act on it, and note where he would be likely to take exception to it.

     Legislation is crafted in a similar fashion: the legislator gives general orders to his chief of staff, who then sets the others to work composing a bill to that end. Parkinson’s Law kicks in at this point. A staff of twenty or thirty is inherently incapable of writing a short bill. Among other things, each staffer wants the final product to have his fingerprints on it, to prove his importance to his coworkers and to the legislator. The consequence is invariably a bill that runs to dozens if not hundreds of pages, reads as if it had been assembled from a congeries of legal treatises, obsolete encyclopedias, and phone books, and contains almost as many internal contradictions and ambiguities as there are words in it.

     No, the legislator doesn’t read the bill. He has a chief of staff to assure him that the final product expresses his intentions suitably for the purpose. Really, what other function, aside from bossing the rest of the crew around, would such a head factotum serve? (Whether the chief of staff himself reads the bill is undetermined at this time.)

     That’s what you’re paying $175,000 per federal legislator per year, plus many millions in staff salaries, office expenses, travel expenses, franking privileges, and miscellaneous perquisites, to do.

---

     The power and importance of legislators’ staffs becomes even more visible when we address the pernicious mess called constituent service. No legislator is ever the first person to hear from an aggrieved constituent. Whether that “front man” deems the constituent deserving of the legislator’s “service” will determine whether he gets it, to what extent, and for what reciprocal price...and the “front man” will have opinions, preferences, and biases of his own. Few are the constituents who automatically receive the benison of a legislator’s immediate and undivided attention; it typically takes an eight or nine digit bank balance to enter that highly desirable class.

     There’s one good thing about Congressional staffs that cannot be said of the rest of the federal apparatus: they’re not protected by the civil service laws. They can be fired, or disciplined in other ways, at the discretion of their legislator...if, that is, he can be made interested in and disturbed by what they’ve been doing in his name. Yet their power, as “flappers” who can direct or withhold the attention of their employer, is undeniable. They constitute an unelected layer of government arguably more important than the legislatures themselves.

     So it comes as no surprise that two Senators, both of whom have thrown their hats into the Presidential ring, should decline to say whether they’d read the ObamaTrade bill before voting on it. It’s a poisoned inquiry; the truth would harm them politically while a lie would be far too easy to detect and disclose. The questioners know this and use the question in an attempt to weaken politicians they dislike, even though every federal legislator, if compelled to speak the truth, would answer the same way.

     This is the reality of extra-Constitutional government in the year of Our Lord 2015. Don’t care for it? Either overthrow it or find a suitable asteroid. There are no other options.

Out-of-office reply.

Hello,

This is Knightsport, from the internet. I will be out of the internet from June 2 and returning on June 11th. In my absence I suggest you pray as there can be only one Knightsport from the internet.

Thank you and God Bless,

-Knightsport

honda-tech.com.

Frankly My Dear: A Guest Post From Ol' Remus

     [The following is a Guest Post from Ol' Remus of the late and greatly missed Woodpile Report. I keep inviting Remus to become a regular Co-Conspirator here, and he keeps declining. I shall persist! -- FWP]

---

     With all the recent troubles we're again being invited to an honest and open conversation about race, or said differently, the browbeatings will be resumed. Try this for honest and open: many of us, probably most of us, are tired of your whining, your so-called grievances, your violence and crime, your insults and threats, your witless blather and pornographic demeanor—all of it. You're not quite 13% of the population yet everything has to be about you, all day, every day. With you, facts aren't facts, everything's a kozmik krisis, and abusive confrontations are your go-to.

     Here's the thing: some of us despise you, although fewer than you believe, but most of us plain don't care about you or your doings. There was a time when we did care, but you betrayed our good will and played us for fools. We laugh about it now, but we actually believed you wanted equal opportunity and mutual respect and to live in harmony—all that stuff. Ain't it a hoot? Imagine our embarrassment.

     We talk among ourselves just like you do. It's true, we have "frank and open discussions" when you're not around. Why? Partly because it's exhausting to tippy-toe around you. Partly because you think it's your celestial right to tell us what we can say. And partly because you're alarmingly aggressive or painfully dim-witted by turns. We never know which "you" will pop out of the box, or when. But mainly because you've revealed yourself as grasping opportunists without honor or principle. There's your deal-breaker. There's more.

     During the recent riots you expected us to believe heisting snack food then torching the place was "standing up for justice". When we didn't buy it, you told us the looting and arson wasn't done by the rioters after all, no, all the bad stuff was done by rioters from out of town. Apparently you think it makes a difference to us. And if we don't fall for that one, you tell us you're the real victims, you're the ones "hit hardest" because the neighborhoods you looted and burned are, um, looted and burned.

     We've never stood in your way but we don't really care if you have good neighborhoods or not. The evidence says you don't care either, unless we build and maintain them for you, what your enablers call "investments in urban communities." They don't mention the return on our past "investments". Our former neighborhoods weren't improved by your arrival. Your contempt for ordinary civility tells us no level of "investment" would make a difference. Listen up. It's simple. Just like our neighborhoods are our responsibility, so are your neighborhoods your responsibility, not ours. Your clownish leaders will tell you otherwise but they've always been your responsibility and they always will be your responsibility. Accept it or don't, you're the ones who live in them. There's more.

     Your air conditioned, smart phone equipped, EBT-financed "poverty" doesn't wash to begin with, yet you'd have us believe poverty causes crime. There's no payday for assault and rape and random killing. Police say 20% of your criminal violence is related to dope-dealing, okay, business disputes of a sort, but it says the rest of it is largely pro bono. We also notice you have a working knowledge of jury nullification and take pride in not "snitching", typical gang behavior.

     We say "what you think, you do. What you do, you are." We know what you think—we hear it every waking minute. We know what you do. How could we not know what you are? Just so it gets said, crime causes poverty. It drives away productive people, their businesses and the opportunities you said you wanted. More bad news: you're free to accuse them of anything you wish but they're not coming back.

     Schools haven't been educating our kids for a long time. They're too busy conjuring up new ways to teach yours, in fact, we're beginning to think yours are the only ones who matter. There's always some new scheme claiming dazzling success which, in the end, amounts to handing out the answers with the tests, or taking the annoying hard stuff out of the coursework, or entering unearned grades by hand. Whatever they're doing they're doing it wrong. Your kids are telling us, in every way they know how, they have neither the interest nor the inclination for academics. Perhaps we should listen. If what they want is "out" it's worth considering and probably worth encouraging.

     You tell us the schools have "failed to meet their needs." And what are their needs, pray tell? Higher standards and tougher tests? Stricter rules and a dress code? Or some alternate universe where credit is earned for putting teachers in the ER, or for a string of abortions before the tenth grade? If you'd tell us what their needs are we'd at least know what needs we're failing to meet. Until then we'll mark it down for what it is, another lame excuse. They're supposed to be schools, not day care or orphanages or theme parks.

     You pester us with the "civil rights movement" of fifty years ago as though it happened last week, with tedious 1960s footage and cloying voice-overs, in an endless loop, like Groundhog Day, decade after decade. It's understandable, you haven't met any real resistance since those days. Breaking news: none of it matters any more, it all devolved into just another swindle, an extortion racket, "pay up or we'll make a stink—and the bad optics are on you".

     Schools now teach something called White Privilege, which claims no overt act is necessary for us to be racist, in fact, absence of such acts is said to be direct evidence. It's the "original sin" concept in a different wrapper, meaning our putative racism is bone deep and can't be discharged by good works. Even so, they say we must atone in perpetuity for being white. They suggest we devote our lives in selfless service to you. No. Sorry. Whatever white privilege there may be, it isn't enough. In fact, being subjected to White Privilege prattle is worth a couple of privileges.

     Speaking of privilege, 60% of your college grads—and 20% of all of you—are employed by government. The intent is to create an artificial middle class of course, hence the trivial positions with imaginative titles and weighty salaries. In the lower reaches it's the quota hires, typically unqualified. It's a great offer. You pretend you're doing something useful and we pretend to believe you. The rest of your grads are largely diversity directors, window dressing, teachers of dubious "studies" and improbable "histories", and similar warehousing schemes for the otherwise unemployable. It's as good as it's ever going to get, except for those on the skinny end of the bell curve—for whom we have genuine, i.e., earned respect. You'd be a fool to leave it on the table, for as long as it lasts.

     So here's the deal. If you want to know what we really think of you, the answer is we don't, unless you're making yourself unavoidable or we're cleaning up your latest mess. We can safely rely on you to make astonishingly irresponsible choices and blame us for the consequences. And you'll demand we make good on them for you. We won't take a chance on your sincerity ever again. Take it somewhere else, you have no credibility left with us. You're a net liability, predictable to the point of surety. So we attend to our own lives and our own problems. It's as it should be. We recommend it. As for you, frankly my dear, we don't give a damn.

Quickies: What Homosex Hath Wrought

     Quite a number of my Gentle Readers will find the following development astonishing:

     HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) – This month, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on the issue of same-sex marriage. It should settle a lot of questions once and for all. At least, that’s the idea.

     In Alabama, resistance to same-sex marriage continues. We saw a weekend of rallies in favor of traditional marriage. Beyond that, we have legislation making its way through the house right now that could get rid of the entire institution of marriage as we know it in Alabama.

     Right now, if you want to get married you go to the courthouse and the probate judge gives you a marriage license.

     Attorney Jake Watson explains, “[SB377] does away with that and requires parties to enter into a contract and file it at the courthouse, as I understand it.”

     Mind you, this isn’t a new idea, but the renascence of an old one – one that was “in force” for some six millennia before the Omnipotent State got involved with marriage. The state governments involved themselves in marriage via licensure for the overt reason of combating the spread of venereal diseases. There were at least two covert reasons as well: to enforce age-of-consent laws and to prevent miscegenation. Subsequent developments at the federal level, such as the heritability of Social Security benefits by the surviving spouse, have compounded the matter.

     In point of fact, there was never a good reason to politicize marriage through licensure. It was merely one more State tentacle thrust into a working social institution. The consequences have included the various contretemps over divorce, alimony, property settlements, child custody, polygamy, unacceptable degrees of consanguinity, age-of-consent laws, the legality or illegality of adultery and what constitutes proof thereof, the applicability of foreign marriages and divorces, and most recently and luridly, homosexual activists’ vicious, relentless drive for the legal recognition of “same-sex marriage.”

     This latest foofaurauw is what’s caused Alabama to consider seriously extracting itself from the whole mess...except that the requirement that a marital contract be filed at the courthouse retains a foot in the door the state might come to regret.

     The institution of marriage was safest and soundest when you were deemed married if your neighbors and your priest / minister / rabbi said so. This is just one more demonstration that there is no room for politics in private decision making or private arrangements. Events in Alabama present a hopeful sign that the cornerstone of every stable and prosperous society might yet be saved by the rueful “we were wrong” declarations of a sufficient number of state legislators.

Quickies: And Therefore?

     “And therefore?” is one of my favorite skull-crushers. He who presents a chain of evidence and logic to you, a vector clearly pointed at a preferred conclusion, and then waits in silence for your reaction, is often awaiting something specific from you: that you draw a particular inference from his representations and act on it. Yet he refrains from stating that implication overtly, which you might think would be a harmless “assistance” to those a bit slower on the uptake than is he. Why?

     There are two common reasons. The first is that should you succeed in reaching his implication on your own, you’re more likely to invest in it emotionally than if he were to present it to you fully formed. People are like that: we trust the products of our own minds more than those of others. The second one is of greater import: he may have presented an incomplete or slanted case to you, and is hoping that you’ll act before you can discover what he’s omitted or distorted. In the aftermath he’ll have some justification for self-exculpation: “It’s not my fault that you weren’t diligent enough.”

     So I like to compel such a speaker to “complete the journey” with a casual “And therefore?” It has a good record for forcing hidden motives out into the light. Also, the sputtering it produces can often be quite amusing.

     Which brings us to this piece cited at Doug Ross’s place. It’s quite compact, so please read it to the end. It’s as pointed as any prosecutor’s case for the deliberate anticipatory obstruction of justice could be. The facts it asserts are all well verified. Nor can I differ honestly with its “intermediate implications,” such as the one it invites us to reach in step 6:

     And what definition of "personal" did Clinton employ? Did it include emails with foreign actors regarding donations to the Clinton Foundation? Were those purged as "personal"?

     However, when we get to the end, we’re left hanging. What should follow from the above? What would the unnamed author like us to do? Indeed, what is possible under current legal and political circumstances?

     Is it even imaginable that the Obama Administration's Justice Department would pursue a case against Hillary Rodham Clinton? The Democrat Party’s sole hope of continuing its hold on the White House for another four years?

     The case the unnamed author presents has been in public view for many months. There’ve been Congressional inquiries into them, and threats of Congressional subpoenas to Clinton and anyone else plausibly involved in the actions described. Nothing has happened. The passage of time has allowed the steam to leak out of the affair, such that there’s little public sentiment with which to propel further investigation or action. The Obamunists’ tactic of “running out the clock” with delays and deflections has worked once again. Scant surprise in that; it worked for Eric Holder, too.

     And therefore?

Globalists damage.

Russian Insider republished an intriguing article from New Eastern Outlook^[1] on the real reason for Secretary of State John Kerry's May 12, 2015 visit to Sochi. Recommended read.

The Russian Insider comments^[2] are interesting. Commenter Dennis Meredith made this point:

Since 2001, and probably before, everything on the US economics front has been designed and implemented to destroy the US economy. When I say everything I do mean everything and should you disagree please point out where I am wrong.

Commenter Stenka Razinova replied:

You asked for it. So I will oblige.

* * * *

Nothing has been designed.

[The b]asic principle of [the] capitalistic system is the natural law that capital moves freely to the location that offers greatest profit. This is a good law and it did bring great progress to capitalistic countries. But for a nation this law is profitable only if the capital moves within a boundary of the nation.

With the progression of communications and particularly with establishment of the internet, the capital has internationalized, And Government of US did not put any restriction on internationalization of the capital. (Except maybe restrictions that were contrary to defense of US.)

(As for example Germany and some other countries did put some restrictions.)

Basically it comes to this: In US; capital rules over US government, and not opposite like it should be.

This single axiom did destroy the US economy, and that means destroyed the US. And the movement caused by internationalists caused irreparable harm to US that cannot be undone.

Commenter Arcanek replies with the clarification:

The system isn't capitalist by any stretch. Cronyism and banksterism is more appropriate.

Leftists dislike this clarification intensely as it interferes with the line that "capitalism" is the cause of all Western ills after Christianity, patriarchy and structural (i.e., invisible) racism. What we have, of course, is what Arcanek says. As Garet Garrett would say a revolution "within the form" has transformed capitalism into the joke "free market" economy that we have today.^[3]

Mr. Meredith makes the point that crony capitalism has done immense damage by itself. I don't believe the damage was intentional as he alleges although I've elsewhere been happy to point out that American courts sometime observe that people do intend the natural consequences of their acts. Globalism is the follow on transformation where American big business became at least indifferent to the fate of the home country. That indifference was as destructive as active malevolence.

As for Obama and the Cloward-Piven lunatics, I have no doubt of the purposefulness and malice behind their actions, even if Bill O'Reilly scorns the idea of Obama's anti-American animus (and policies consistent therewith).

One final point. China's actions seem aggressive and someone suggested elsewhere that the Chinese military may be calling the shots now more so than in the past. Hmmm. Either way, China seems more aggressive as I say, though exactly why our many military bases around the world can't be seen as "aggressive" to some isn't clear to me.

As far as Russia is concerned, I have no idea at all why we're trying to paint them as Public Enemy No. 1. Getting everyone to boycott their WWII victory celebrations took on the look of a major diplomatic initiative. But all it did was make us look petty.

Could we please get off this train before someone gets hurt?

Notes
^[1] "Washington Blows Itself Up With Its Own Bomb." By F. William Engdahl. New Eastern Outlook, 5/24/15.
^[2] "Washington Hoisted by Its Own Petard: The Real Reason Kerry Was in Sochi." By F. William Engdahl. Russia Insider, 6/2/15.
^[3] Garrett didn't have crony capitalism in mind but observed that FDR had accomplished a red, white, and blue-colored revolution whereby a pillar of American freedom – a small, constrained federal government – was replaced with one that was unlimited, unstoppable, and just as destructive as if it had been imposed from the outside:

"The Revolution Was" first appeared in 1938, the burden of which was to show that the New Deal transformed American society to such an extent that it was foolhardy to listen to American politicians and their warnings of dangers from the outside. "There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road," he wrote. "But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom."

"Who Is Garet Garrett?" By Jeffrey A. Tucker, Mises Daily, 10/25/07.

Naughty Words Part 3: “Security”

     Senator Rand Paul has drawn quite a lot of flak for his firm stance against the bulk collection of phone call metadata. Some of that flak has come from persons who really ought to know better:

     During debate over renewing the Patriot Act:

     People here in town think I'm making a huge mistake. Some of them, I think, secretly want there to be an attack on the United States so they can blame it on me.

     Takeaways: 1) It's all about Rand, 2) There can be no legitimate disagreements over the pros and cons of the Patriot Act, and 3) If you do disagree with him on this, you're probably a bloodthirsty, spiteful f*ck.

     And in a similar vein:

     Rand Paul is not just criticizing his named enemies in the Senate, then. He's criticizing the millions of GOP voters whose instincts tend to be more conventional and interventionist than his own.

     Mind you, it’s quite all right to disagree with Senator Paul on this or any other issue. But why tar him as self-absorbed, interested solely in his prospects for the presidency? It should be clear by now that he has essentially no shot at gaining the GOP nomination; all the big guns of the Republican establishment have aligned against him. Therefore, we must seek elsewhere for the reason.

     Fortunately for my aching fingers, we don’t have far to seek.

---

     The following comes from Daniel Yergin’s Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State:

     In the autumn of 1945, civilian and military heads of the different services trooped up to Capitol Hill to testify before the Senate committee on the question of the unification of the military services. Whereas in an earlier round of such hearings, in spring 1944, “national security” barely came up at all; in these 1945 hearings, a year and a half later, the policy makers constantly invoked the idea as a starting point. “Our national security can only be assured on a very broad and comprehensive front,” argued the most forceful advocate of the concept, Navy Secretary James Forrestal. “I am using the word ‘security’ here consistently and continuously rather than ‘defense.’” “I like your words ‘national security,’” Senator Edwin Johnson told him.

     That was the origin of the pernicious phrase national security, which has come to dominate every discussion of military posture, of information classification and handling, of the gathering of intelligence, and of federal surveillance of the American homeland. Pick an arbitrary member of Congress, invade his bedroom at two AM, and dump a bucket of ice water on him, and he’ll come awake sputtering “National security!” But I have a question: What does it mean?

     It doesn’t appear to mean:

• Protection of Americans’ rights;
• Enforcement of America’s borders or immigration laws;
• Rational provisioning and employment of our armed forces.

     If you can define it, please help me out, because the only coherent meaning I can assign to it is:

That which can justify any violation of Constitutional constraints and any abridgement, infringement, or suspension of individuals’ rights.

     Think about it.

---

     Senator Paul has called into question the use of national security as a password to extra-Constitutional power. The federal government is nowhere granted the power to do what the NSA’s metadata-collection program is doing. It’s neither necessary nor proper to the defense of the United States. Indeed, it’s openly acknowledged that the program has yielded no actionable intelligence. Its masters cannot point to even one terrorist plot that metadata-collection has foiled...and they’re open about it.

     Even leaving Constitutional considerations aside, the metadata-collection program is very difficult to defend. It has yielded nothing of consequence to anti-terrorism efforts. When combined with facilities such as EZ-Pass and cell phones’ GPS facilities, it equips the federal government with the means to determine, within about a quarter mile, exactly where any cell-phone-owning American is at any time. When combined with other data available from the Internet, it provides Washington’s busybodies with an extensive dossier on every last individual within our borders: who and where you are, what you’ve been doing with your money, and how you go about your day.

     Who and what are being secured? Whose interests are being protected in this fashion? Is it not transparently obvious that this program is of far more value to the political establishment than to any private citizen? Is it not equally obvious that it would be invaluable in ferreting out pockets of resistance to unConstitutional federal activity and squashing them before they can become numerous or well organized? And is it not mind-shatteringly obvious that this invasion of our privacy could only have been justified by the claim that it’s “essential to national security” -- ?

     Of course, obvious does mean overlooked.

---

     Don’t imagine for an instant that it’s only Republicans who constantly plead “national security” to justify the invasion of Americans’ rights. The Democrats do it, too. Indeed, as Daniel Yergin points out in Shattered Peace, it was the Democrats who started it: the Truman Administration, which rationalized its actions as politically necessary to fend off the GOP. “National security” is immensely useful to all elements of the political establishment, for not only does it justify all sorts of unConstitutional federal activity; it also functions as a shield against disclosures that would topple many a political edifice and end many a political career.

     The redaction of documents released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, which robs the Act of the greater part of its value as a watchtower against federal corruption and overreach, is justified entirely by “national security.” Try to imagine how such excisions could be justified on any other basis. I can’t.

     Just how secure are you feeling right now, Gentle Reader?

---

     In a rather different context, Robert A. Heinlein wrote:

     I no longer gave a damn about three-car garages and swimming pools, nor any other status symbol or "security." There was no security in this world and only damn fools and mice thought there could be.
     Somewhere back in the jungle I had shucked off all ambition of that sort. I had been shot at too many times and had lost interest in supermarkets and exurban subdivisions and tonight is the PTA supper don’t forget dear you promised.

     The entire notion of “security” is a phantasm, a shiny bit of colored glass used to lure us away from that which is possible and attainable, and toward that which is not, has never been, and never can be. This is true at any level of organization, from individuals to nation-states. Indeed, the Earth itself is irremediably insecure, as earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, meteorites, near-encounters with asteroids, and the occasional solar flare should demonstrate to anyone’s satisfaction.

     There is risk in everything. There are defenses against some sorts of risks, but no defense is “secure” in any sense that holds water. Human life is an ongoing game of rock / paper / scissors. So also is the bizarre perversion of social organization we call government – but no member of the political class, high, middle, or low, has ever dared to admit it. That is, until Rand Paul, United States Senator from the state of Kentucky, dared to challenge the concept in open Senate session, at least by implication.

     No, Senator Paul will not be the GOP nominee for president, nor should he be. But it would bring a smile to this old face if a larger fraction of the Republicans on Capitol Hill were to admit what’s become so glaringly obvious since 2001:

• That we are not “secure;”
• That we cannot be made “secure,” even at the cost of all freedom;
• That only the Leviathan on the Potomac has any interest in imagining otherwise.

     Remember you read it here first.

Have we gone mad?

Source: Walid Shoebat.

The biggest enemies are in our own minds.

Here's a 13-minute speech by Jonathan Bowden on "The European grammar of self-Intolerance." It's an outstanding explanation of why resistance by Western whites to their dispossession never blossoms into anger or effective resistance.

In short, Western whites have come to believe that it is "immoral to identify with your own group and its past."^[1]

Audio of the full event see the notes on the YouTube page at "Published on . . . ."

Jonathan Bowden's bio here.

Notes
^[1] "Expanding Overton."

H/t: Counter-Currents Publishing.

Patriot Act reauthorization.

A thought that occurs to me listening to intelligence officials on the reauthorization of the Patriot Act is that the only word these modern day government officials seem to be able to pull out of their kit bag on this is "tools." "Tools" for this, "tools" for that, and "tools" for some other thing. Well, [a pox on] your tools.

Some commenters like to talk about "exigent circumstances" (Fox's Kimberly Guilfoyle) and "patterns" but it's all garbage. No one has pointed out how any of these records have led to actionable intelligence.

Cost-benefit analysis? I'll take "cost" for $200, Alex.

Eric Bolling on FoxNews' "The Five" today stood his ground on the 4th Amendment which seems not to contain the words "tools" or "patterns," and if "exigent circumstances" arise let the Supreme Court address that new wrinkle in the context of collecting phone records. Rand Paul bravely focuses on freedom.

We are indebted to these two men. It's about freedom. It's about the 4th Amendment. Government will forever talk about some grave threat but it's never how they represent it. "It's an emergency" or "This won't hurt a bit" are justifications for tyranny.

Extremely exigent circumstance.

Government has no credibility on this. It has always cried "emergency" of some kind but the reality is that government is the threat. The accretion of laws and regulations – and of treasonous federal court decisions – has destroyed liberty in the country. Fire (or refuse to hire) an incompetent minority -- or one who wants to wear a tent to your salesroom -- from (or for) your business and you can kiss that business goodbye.

The Constitution is a joke.^[1]

If government wants to cry "emergency" let it seal the borders, expel illegal immigrants, stop importing Muslims, and require Muslims already here, on pain of immediate deportation, to declare the Koran a work of distilled evil and to abjure their jihadi "faith."

But, no. What we'll hear about is "tools."

The only reason we're even having this debate is because of the absurd, deadly presence of Muslims in our country. A problem completely unaddressed by "nation of immigrants"/"diversity is our strength" morons.

Notes
^[1] Rights protected by the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment still receive effective protection in the courts, with much hair splitting and soul searching on the Second. The First will undoubtedly erode before the claims of "hate speech," the demands of advocates of the destruction of Christian America, and the cries of those in need of cake at homosexual weddings. Article I, Sect. 8 of the Constitution long went the way of the dodo bird and the Roman Empire, the representatives of the unholy, monstrous, usurping Federal Government now attempting to beguile us with talk of "tools."

Sooo not nice.

But sooo high on my list in the cut the crap department. 1,400 years of Muslim bullshit is enough.

The only solution for the Muslim threat is to kill every last one of them: their families, their friends, their neighbors; to lay waste to their crop lands and salt their wells, to destroy their buildings such that no two stones lay atop one another. The justification, if one is needed, is that the Muslims are Evil.

The old ways are best.

Is it written somewhere that we can't go back? That we're helpless to avoid that suicide by niceness, the progressive wet dream that our leftist and moron fellow citizens yearn for so ardently?

Treason class immigration priority.

Source: Comment at American Digest.

H/t: Remus.

Quickies: From The “Mother Nature Is A Bitch” Files

     Just now, with so much waterborne destruction visiting the Houston / Galveston region, it’s well to remember that this isn’t unprecedented:

     The Hurricane of 1900 made landfall on September 8, 1900, in Galveston, Texas, in the United States.[1] It had estimated winds of 145 miles per hour (233 km/h) at landfall, making it a Category 4 storm on the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale. It was the deadliest hurricane in US history, and the second costliest hurricane in U.S. history based on the dollar's 2005 value (to compare costs with those of Hurricane Katrina and others).

     The hurricane caused great loss of life with the death of between 6,000 and 12,000 people;[2] the number most cited in official reports is 8,000, giving the storm the third-highest number of deaths or injuries of any Atlantic hurricane, after the Great Hurricane of 1780 and 1998's Hurricane Mitch. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States. The second-deadliest storm to strike the United States, the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, caused more than 2,500 deaths, and the deadliest storm of recent times, Hurricane Katrina, claimed the lives of approximately 1,800 people.

     The hurricane occurred before the practice of assigning official code names to tropical storms was instituted, and thus it is commonly referred to under a variety of descriptive names. Typical names for the storm include the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the Great Galveston Hurricane, and, especially in older documents, the Galveston Flood. It is often referred to by Galveston locals as the Great Storm or the 1900 Storm.

     By comparison to the 1900 Galveston flood, Katrina was a mere pretender. Such storms are beyond our power to prevent, nor can we buttress ourselves invulnerably against them. They should remind us that Man, for all his accomplishments, is still smaller than natural forces...and that those forces will sometimes speak in a voice Man cannot gainsay.

Quickies: “Rights” And “Free”

     Those of us with three functioning brain cells foresaw this the moment the talk about “regulating the Internet” started:

     It didn’t take long for the government thieves to concoct their first plan to steal from the average American to give to the poor, lazy, and illegals, using the finest of Marxist excuses. It’s a need – a right – for those who allegedly can’t pay for it themselves. No one minds giving to the poor but that is not what this is.

     FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, an Obama minion, plans to increase the taxes on Americans.

     Broadband will be subsidized by working class Americans for those who aren’t working. The plan includes sweeping changes and declares broadband as an essential right we must pay for....

     The Internet is now a right. In a socialist nation, everything becomes a right.

     Sigh. If only Americans understood the difference between defensive and assertive rights...or the difference between “freedom from” and “freedom to.” Three generations ago, most Americans still did. But it would seem that our government-run indoctrination centers schools have done their job too thoroughly for the common citizen to waste his time over mere ideas.

The futility of the civil rights experiment.

In 2010, the national NAACP had issued a demand that the Tea Party expel all “racists” from within its ranks.^[1]

What such an expulsion might do to the membership of the Congressional Black Caucus is anybody's guess but we'll leave that for a later time.

Be that as it may, it seems to be too much to ask the NAACP to apply the same standard and disassociate itself from the Reverend Curtis Everette Gatewood, for whom the monicker of "buffoon" is too kind.

[After 9/11, President Gatewood] pledged the support of his [Durham, N.C.] NAACP chapter to the African People’s Socialist Party/Uhuru Movement, a black separatist organization that seeks to foment a violent revolution to create an independent black nation on U.S. soil. . . .

* * * *

. . . One of Gatewood and the Uhurus’ invited speakers [at a 2009 D.C. demonstration] was Pam Africa, president of Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal and formerly a member of the MOVE black power cult. At the demonstration, to thundering applause, Africa repeatedly called Obama a “nigger motherfucker” and “head nigger,” inciting the crowd that he has to be “taken down.” Another participant, Larry Hales, dedicated his speech to the Muslim gunman who, only two days earlier, had cold-bloodedly murdered thirteen people at Fort Hood. . . .^[2]

Slightly off topic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared with Gatewood at a May 13 [2015] Rally for Racial and Environmental Justice in Raleigh, N.C.^[3] To my way of thinking this raises "questions" about Mr. Kennedy's judgment. Appearing with a black separatist seems not to trouble him or earn him any kind of obloquy from our lickspittle press toads.

However, when Sen. Trent Lott had some kind things to say about Sen. Strom Thurmond a while back every last earthly and imagined sin of Thurmond (primarily the Spanish Inquisition and lynching) was ascribed to Lott instantly, but Kennedy's appearing with this joke of a black rabble rouser appears not to have caused a ripple on any leftist pond.

Back to the main point: It's a puzzle, it is. If anyone can tweeze out of Mr. Cole's article below any evidence that the efforts of whites to work out a modus vivendi with our resident Africans is working, let me know. Personally, I'm not seeing it. No. I am not. As Old Rebel at Rebellion notes about all of this, "in the DC Empire, the NAACP is mainstream." Baltimore and Ferguson are just instances of morons, savages, and Soros rent-a-thugs having a little fun. The NAACP, however, is the Holy Grail of black moral and political thinking.

Notes
^[1] "The NAACP’s Monster Under the Bed." By David Cole, Taki’s Magazine, 5/26/15.
^[2] Id. Is "patriot" adequate to describe the excellence of Larry Hales?
^[3] Id.

H/t: Rebellion.

Harbingers Of Things to Come?

     Given Barack Hussein Obama’s propensity for ignoring the Constitution, I’ve occasionally wondered whether we can be certain that he’ll leave office peacefully on January 20, 2017. Inasmuch as it’s now established beyond even the shadow of a doubt that Obama was mentored by Communist pedophile Frank Marshall Davis, we have good reason to believe that he has no attachment of any sort to either the Constitution or other American norms.

     The esteemed CM Blake posted the following at his site just yesterday:

     Now, when such a man, having risen to the pinnacle of executive power while succeeding for several years in concealing his hatred for America and its Constitutional basis, learns that an obscure video has surfaced that “blows his cover,” he might just get...panicky. Especially when there’s a rising sentiment of resistance to his tyrannies:

     There is no need for a leader unless there is an army to lead. On this 9/11/2013 there is no leader, but the army is there – and building. The Two Million Biker ride came about in protest of the Million Muslim march, but make no mistake, it is much more than that. It is one “clan” making it crystal clear, on behalf of we, the people, that we are ready to take on any and all bent on destroying this country.

     Which makes it uncomfortably plausible that the lurid “official” story of the “biker war” in Waco, Texas might be a wee bit off-center:

     It turns out that the ATF claimed they had an anonymous tip that the dreaded Black Widow biker gang—you remember those scoundrels from the Clint Eastwood movie Every Which Way but Loose—was going to arrive looking for trouble. It’s too bad Clyde wasn’t around to throw those guys in the used French fry oil tank. The ATF was there with their Federal guidance to make sure that justice was swift and absolute.

     No shots were fired by anyone inside the restaurant. No shots were fired by anyone at the police. When bikers decided to leave the restaurant and enter the parking lot, the police began shooting full-auto equipped M-16’s into the crowd. Patrons began diving under tables and screaming for their lives. Little waitresses dropped their trays and ran with terror in their eyes behind the chef’s counter. A twice decorated Viet Nam War veteran was shot in the head and neck, although he was a highly respected pacifist, was unarmed and not involved in any of the scuffle inside the Twin Peaks establishment. Eight more US citizens were gunned down in cold blood. More than 500 rounds were fired by police, hitting cars, buildings, and injuring other innocent bystanders who happened to look like bikers. Two shots took seven of the nine people assassinated in the parking lot; one in the neck and one in the head fired by expert police marksmen.

     Within an hour, the police press statement belched lies about “criminal biker gangs,” dealing drugs and other things that never happened; not once in the 18 years bikers have been meeting peacefully at the Waco Twin Peaks restaurant. The police spokesman first mentioned hundreds of weapons confiscated, including chains that connected wallets to belt loops. Then they changed it to dozens. Then, the facts showed there were fewer than ten, and one was still holstered by a licensed concealed carry American, who had undergone an extensive background check and was found to be spotless. His bond was placed at an unreasonable $1 million. Of the 170 bikers arrested for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, less than a third had any criminal record. Three of them had drafted a new piece of legislation about biker safety, and have since been awarded by the City Counsel for safety awareness. Of course, they couldn’t be there to accept the award, because they were in jail.

     To this moment, no waitresses, cooks, or patrons have been interviewed by the press. Witness intimidation is in full force making sure no one says anything about what really happened. All surveillance video has been classified and is currently being edited by law enforcement professionals to make sure no officers are charged with murder. This was clearly a premeditated, Federal assault designed to kill first, and arrest the survivors.

     I have no corroboration for the above. However, the author, Brooks Agnew, posted it under his real name and is apparently willing to stand behind it.

     LadyRaven’s conclusions, while still notional, are chilling:

     Remembering the first Million Bike Ride On DC, the reception nationwide was extremely positive. The message was beautifully clear to the government– don’t be messing with our country!

     The ride is scheduled again for this September 11th. Jade Helm 15 exercises will be full blown by that time.

     Tarnish the biker reputation now. Slap the individual biker with fear of death or million dollar bails and we might be expected to see a very low turnout and a public less trusting of the 9/11 Army....

     The number one fact that sets me on this thinking is that of the nine dead we know how seven of them died. Four had head wounds, another wound in the neck. That is some mighty fancy shooting there. So I am just saying folks, just saying.

     Don’t ask “Am I paranoid for suspecting that this might be so?” Ask rather, “Am I paranoid enough?”

---

     There have been many stories about the steady militarization of local police forces, with reports of consequent police behavior that more resembled an army of occupation than traditional American law enforcement. My Esteemed Co-Conspirator Colonel Bunny feels these incidents have been blown out of proportion – that the overwhelming majority of local police remain trustworthy servants of the public peace. He might well be correct. It’s really not an arguable point, as the evidence for either proposition is lacking. But incidents of mass violence in which law enforcement – local, state, or federal (e.g., ATF, FBI) – is conspicuously involved must be publicized, and the possibility that those incidents were premeditated must always be kept in mind.

     Given that American bikers are visibly willing to stand forward in defense of freedom, and that they’ve succeeded on more than one occasion at massing many thousands in one place for that purpose, they constitute a powerful potential source of resistance to any oppressive force. Consider this example, a blatant, defiant response to Muslim terrorism. Then consider this recent report of a reaction against it, and ask yourself on which side the “authorities” are more likely to range themselves.

     "I Will Stand With the Muslims Should the Political Winds Shift In An Ugly Direction." (source)

     Keep your powder dry, Gentle Readers. It’s looking ever more likely that you’ll need it quite soon.

Stars Fill Night Sky With Fluid Beautiful Milky Way Time Lapse and Music

Utoobasaurus

H/t: Stephen Hsu.