Tearing Down an Obelisk Monument In Santa Fe

This is our country on Democrats.

 -The police showed up in force just before the monument was destroyed, then left en masse moments before. So: who ordered the police to leave? Police Chief is an appointed officer who takes orders from political leaders. Who gave the order to abandon their jobs? 

-Will anyone be surprised when a member of the onlooking crowd shoots some of the leaders of the revolution before they topple some other monument? 

This is a revolution, and no one is acting like it except the revolutionaries. 

Hello? Is anyone awake? Anyone? 

This is our country on Democrats. 

New York Times: ‘vexed’ and ‘incendiary’

“Joseph R. Biden Jr. will travel to Kenosha, Wis., on Thursday and his campaign has unveiled a new television ad condemning the rioters and looters that have vexed some American cities...” Vexed. As in “I’ll vex you with a baseball bat and a flaming bottle of gasoline!” Vexed? “...Mr. Trump...countered Mr. Biden’s moves with two new ads seeking to leverage civil unrest in incendiary fashion as a wedge to divide the Democratic coalition....” ‘In INCENDIARY fashion’? After three months of the Democrat shock troops burning down cities with encouragement and explicit support of Democratic mayors, Democratic prosecutors who turn arrestees loose without their ever seeing the inside of a cell and refusing to prosecute them, and Biden campaign committee members contributing money to bail funds so those who are briefly locked up can be released the same night so they can vex cities with some more flaming bottles of gasoline, Trump acts in INCENDIARY fashion? “ Mr. Trump is trying to prosecute those arguments and persuade voters to see threats to public safety...” Uh, ‘persuade’? As in ‘perceive vexatious firebombings encouraged by Democrats‘ as a threat? ‘...which so far have been limited to sporadic violence in some cities...” The Blitz was limited to sporadic violence in some English cities, of course. The Civil War was limited to sporadic violence in some states. The Russian pogroms against Jews were limited to sporadic violence in some places. The Lebanese Civil War was limited to sporadic violence for fifteen years. I’ll bet the the whole lot of them didn’t realize they were vexed, though. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/us/politics/biden-ads-trump.html

Political Violence

I’ve been saying for some time that 2020 will likely see the most violent Presidential campaign of our lifetimes. It’s now July, the conventions haven’t even been held, and we are already seeing mind numbing violence in major cities around the country, aided and praised by mayors, city council members and governors alike.

They allow the mob to pull down statues, not merely of Confederate generals, but an abolitionist who was killed at Antietam (Madison, Wisconsin), George Washington and Thomas Jefferson for participating in a slavery system which predated their births worldwide for thousands of years, Columbus, Cervantes (!), Lincoln, for being insufficiently race sensitive, and the targeting of police around the country.

And the mayors applaud.

However this turns out isn’t likely to be good.

Democrats and Gun Control

When, several years ago, I pointed out the then current FBI homicide by weapon type data and included a link to the FBI website so doubters could check for themselves, I was told I’d “probably vote for Hitler” and that I was just fantasizing about shooting people.

These people are not open to reasoned debate. I think they are fervently pro-state violence so long as they control the state, and they intend to do exactly that with no qualms about methods.

Hence gun bans and speech bans, including, in NY city, quarter million dollar fines for Bad Speak.

These are not people of good will with whom we disagree. They are extremely dangerous, physically dangerous, thugs on the verge of complete control of the federal government and many state governments.

The Emerging Budget Deal

For nearly forty years the Responsible Faction has told us that balancing the budget ‘this year’ would bring about the collapse of civilization. ‘But soon, yes, in a few years, we will balance it. But not now: Banks would be embarrassed, the economy would collapse. Millions would die.’

If we had ignored the Responsible Faction 35 years ago, balanced the budget, suffered the short term problems, and continued to ignore the Responsible Faction, we’d be in far better shape today.

Instead, we submitted to the Responsible Faction’s wisdom, because they spoke with great gravitas and wore expensive suits and had impressive credentials and spoke with great authority and now we have over twenty trillion dollars in federal debt which very likely will be paid off with highly inflated dollars which crush the value of our own savings into worthlessness.

Then we will find out that the experts were every one of them marching stark naked in a blizzard and no one had paid attention to the foolish children snickering and pointing and exclaiming at the naked fools in the snow.

So let the federal government run out of money, and grimly rejoice as Department after department shuts down and interest on the debt is unpaid as that would would do the best of all things: drive the federal government out of the credit markets for decades. There is no good way out of the mess we voters and non-voters alike have created for ourselves, and we are the ones who should suffer for our irresponsible voting habits and submission to the Wisdom of Experts. Better sooner than later, when the debt is forty trillion or fifty, because we were too foolish and submissive to bring down the Experts when the debt was three trillion, or when it was five trillion, or when it was ten trillion, or even fifteen.

If we continue to submit to the Wisdom of Experts with Gravitas, the eventual result may make the Terror of the French Revolution look mild, and none of us needs that.

WaPo on the emerging budget deal.

William Lloyd Garrison

Gotta love a patriotic guy who would get up on the banner-bedecked stage with flags flying proudly and burn a copy of the US Constitution at a 4th of July rally. He had his reasons.

I’m not sure of the relationship but I think his wife was my great-great-great-grandmother’s first cousin. Something along those lines. Anyway, it isn’t my fault.

His name was William Lloyd Garrison, and he published a rabble-rousing abolitionist newspaper called The Liberator. At one point some Democrats in Boston lassoed him and dragged him through the streets on the way to tar and featherdom on Boston Common, but the sheriff came to the rescue by arresting Garrison and locking in the pokey. So Democrats’ behavior has improved, if only slightly, since then. They’re working on it tho.

“On July 4, 1854, he publicly burned a copy of the Constitution, condemning it as "a Covenant with Death, an Agreement with Hell," referring to the compromise that had written slavery into the Constitution.”

Now that’s a rabble rouser for you. We could use more Republicans like William Lloyd Garrison. The Democrats took sledge hammers to his printing press, and still he soldiered on. Burned the Constitution at a 4th of July rally. Just imagine.

More here.

How To Win A War: Kill Enough People

David P. Goldman in the Asia Times:

In all, one-quarter of military age Southern manhood died in the field, by far the greatest sacrifice ever offered up by a modern nation in war. General W T Sherman, the scourge of the South, explained why this would occur in advance. There existed 300,000 fanatics in the South who knew nothing but hunting, drinking, gambling and dueling, a class who benefited from slavery and would rather die than work for a living. To end the war, Sherman stated on numerous occasions these 300,000 had to be killed. Evidently Sherman was right. For all the wasteful slaughter of the last 18 months of the war, Southern commander Lee barely could persuade his men to surrender in April 1865. The Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, called for guerilla war to continue, and Lee's staff wanted to keep fighting. Lee barely avoided a drawn-out irregular war.

If Goldman is right, we have a great deal more killing to do in the Middle East.

Wars do not end when they are won, but when those who want to fight to the death find their wish has been granted. Sherman's 300,000 fanatics could not face the mediocre circumstances of a South without slaves and were willing to die for their way of life.

Three million Palestinians packed into a narrow strip of land one day may accept the modest fate of a small and impecunious people, but their young people do not seem ready to do so. We do not know how many ever will. The killing will continue for some time before we find out.

From the Islamist perspective, the war for a New Caliphate will continue until the fanatic infidels are all dead, and the rest have submitted.

Is America Over?

Could well be, all but the whimpering.

I think one of the foundation stones of the Republic was removed when the 17th Amendment ended the state legislatures power to select US Senators to represent the state governments. Almost ignored today, it was a foundational change in the power structure, and highly unlikely to be reversed.

"Civilian in a Civil War Zone, Part Two"

Last year some of my reminiscences about living in the mountains east of Beirut during the beginning of their civil war in 1975 were published by M.D. Creekmore on his Survivalist blog. Now he has been kind enough to publish excerpts from the journal I kept at the time.

If interested, you can access it here.

Lebanon: A Civilian In A Civil War Zone

A few weeks ago The Survivalist Blog published a story of mine about my experiences in the village of Jouar El Haouz, Lebanon, during the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975.

The readers are interested in preparing for various emergency situations, including relatively short term ones like hurricanes and earthquakes, but also for far longer term collapses such as might be triggered by a major EMP attack, or a catastrophe akin to a sudden fall of the Roman Empire. I wrote with my primary audience in mind, of course.

The comments received were quite gratifying, finally amounting to 82, including my own responses. It won second place for the best article for two months, and the prize money has now been converted into an extra bag of cat food and an extra bucket of kitty litter with which to care for Sweetie and Calvin in the event of a hurricane.

If you are interested, you can read it here.

If you are interested in preparing for routine problems, the Red Cross has information. This is the page for hurricane prep.

I think the site used to be easier to navigate, certainly easier to find a list of recommended supplies. It is now far too complex for my liking. What is so difficult with having a nice big prominent icon for "Disaster Supplies"? For some unfathomable reason, at least to me, they now have a very brief list of supplies which one should have on hand before a hurricane, under a label called "Respond During". Why would anyone think to look for a prep list under what one should do DURING a hurricane?

They have a supplies calculator here, but so far as I can see no mention that one might want some way of actually cooking one's food supplies.

Here is their list for a family home kit. Still no cook stove; flashlights, but no lanterns.

FEMA has a better site but they don't seem to think a camp stove or a lantern are worth considering, either.

USS Milwaukee (1864-1865)

I didn't know it, but there was a double turret monitor during the Civil War named for the city of Milwaukee. According to the Naval Historical Center:

(I)n 1864, she went to Mobile Bay, Alabama, where she spent the rest of her service career bombarding Confederate positions, clearing mines and supporting operations to isolate and capture the city of Mobile. On 28 March 1865, while engaged in an attack on Spanish Fort on the Blakely River, Alabama, USS Milwaukee struck a "torpedo" (as mines were then called) and sank. Her wreck was raised and scrapped in 1868.