Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

Tyrants Who Used Children As Props

Thursday, January 17th, 2013

He’s only the latest in a long line of dishonor.

Sniping

Friday, October 19th, 2012

Raise your hand, everybody who thinks Oleg Volk is a defeatist shill for the CSGV.

OK, kids, there’s a BD release of Red Dawn, the original, on the big screen in the media room. Road House is laying on top of the player, too. Swaze double feature. Doris will be serving popcorn with Jack & Coke. Have fun!

OK, Millicent, you may bring in the cigars and cognac, please…. Thank you. You may retire for the evening.

Time for grown up talk. Mr. Volk, you have the floor.

[Mr. Volk details the problems of insurgents fighting regulars, then concludes:]

I am a great fan of rifle marksmanship. But we shouldn’t overestimate its value in warfare. Unsupported by regular troops, most snipers die quickly. Most hunters may be marksmen, but they aren’t even snipers — that skill set goes far beyond the basics of fieldcraft and marksmanship required to bring down deer.

For that reason, the reliance on armed response indicates a loss for the side forced to fight as insurgents. The kind of expedients required for a successful guerrilla campaign tend to warp all participants out of recognition as the “forces of good”. So our best bet is political proselytizing and raising the next generation to love freedom, and to respect the freedoms of others. The opium pipe dreams of the “restoration of the Republic” through another revolution are best left for those who don’t much value a connection to reality.

[bold mine]

That was sobering, yes. Another round of cognac?

This is why I will be voting for Romney. I’ve even volunteered as a poll worker.

Not because I think Romney, or any of the current crop of politicians, or any politician ever, can remotely save us.

But because we can use him to buy a little time, in order to raise “the next generation to love freedom, and to respect the freedoms of others”

I’ve heard the argument that real Americans, real libertarians, would actually vote for Obama, in order to bring the abscess to a head.

The American people are not ready for a large scale, take-back-the-government revolution. I pray they never will be, because I don’t think you can predict the outcome of such a catastrophe. And see again Volk’s dire warning: “The kind of expedients required for a successful guerrilla campaign tend to warp all participants out of recognition as the ‘forces of good’.”

We cannot arm ourselves and train ourselves sufficiently to even attempt such a thing, not this late in the game. We do not have the time or resources to do that.

All we can do is fight the usurpers one bad police raid at a time, even if we die doing it. If you don’t die on the spot, you turn yourself in and take responsibility for your actions.

Build local militias for mutual self defense. See to it that the next generation of SWAT teams and soldiers know, by their raising, what they will face if they attack their fellow citizens.

Key word there: “defense.” We will lose a revolution. The First American Revolution succeeded in part because the British were dangling at the end of a very tenuous supply chain. The Second American Revolution, aka The Civil War, War Between the States, or The War of Northern Aggression, whatever, failed, horrifically, because it was fought on our own home soil. Anybody who thinks that the American military machine wouldn’t be able to squash a similar rebellion now, quickly and overwhelmingly, is fooling themselves, because the American military is all over the place, with multiple supply lines and instant communication via multiple channels.

We cannot win a revolution. The most we can hope to do is make tyranny too expensive.

The Romney election is but the merest, thinnest sapling to grab hold of as we slide down the cliff into tyranny. But at this point, I’ll take anything I can get, and it might be just what we need to get firmer footing.

There’s a lot of talk of preference cascades these days. We’re not just seeing the one building against Obama. It’s building against the whole Democrat/progressive/socialist/statist schema. I believe the American people are waking up, getting their bearings, hearing the lies for what they are. The columns of the State are but foam stage props; the bright lights bring out the flop sweat, the popcorn of hope is stale, and the soda pop of change has gone flat.

And the stink of rotting donkey and elephant dung pervades.

Change wind arisin’. But please that it doesn’t fan the flames of revolution.

I’m too old for that.

…And now I think we’re just in time to catch Road House.

Presidential Bribery

Saturday, September 29th, 2012

You have got to be kid… you’re not. This is a real thing.

Cranky D’s utterly devastating comment over at Protein Wisdom:

So, the government is going to provide the funds to pay the fines they impose on the contractors for non-compliance with regulations written by the government.

This was attached to Darlene Click’s post of the National Journal article concerning—and honestly, I don’t know why there are not at this moment union riots all over the land—this act of bribery by the Obama administration:

The White House moved to prevent defense and other government contractors from issuing mass layoff notices in anticipation of sequestration, even going so far to say that the contracting agencies would cover any potential litigation costs or employee compensation costs that could follow.

Some defense companies—including Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems and EADS North America—have said they expect to send notices to their employees 60 days before sequestration takes effect to comply with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires companies to give advance warning to workers deemed reasonably likely to lose their jobs.

Why does King Zero want to do this? Because layoffs from sequestration, an automatic massive cut in Defense spending, would take place in January, the notices would, must go out, get this, five days before the election.

And, you know, the optics on that would not be all that positive.

As Light29ID at The Idiotarian Rottweiler points out:

If Obongo get reelected (God save our souls) he’ll just screw them anyway and they know it because there won’t be anyone or anything to stop him. He hates free market companies and he despises the military, and in particular, defense contractors.

This has got to be grossly, wildly, blatantly illegal. [update: And if it's not, there is no law; it is completely illegitimate.] It is a betrayal of the companies involved and the workers who voted for King Zero, if any. Plus, may I add, any company that falls for this deserves to go down in flames, and I am not being metaphorical here.

Onward, Through the Fog

Wednesday, May 16th, 2012

From everyone’s favorite weasel:

Passive Resistance is Futile

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012

Here’s a man standing against the socialist evil of the Nazis:
[via]
Our man is in front, second from the left with no helmet. He is a Nazi soldier who is refusing to help execute 16 Yugoslav civilians.

Shortly after this picture was taken, he took his place amongst the victims, and was executed with them.

This is a classic example of passive, non-violent resistance.

Raise your hand, everybody who thinks it was effective.

Today we are facing a creeping rise of quasi-military tyranny. The war on drugs, the war on guns, and the war on (almost non-existent American patriot) terrorists, have created an increasingly arrogant police force. They have not yet fallen to the point of the Nazi army, willing to shoot civilians in rows like this, but they are willing to beat, shock, spray, and of course imprison those who resist in any way, even with words, even by merely taking pictures.

Of course, the form of “resistance” they most object to is any encroachment on their monopoly of force. Carrying and especially using any form of firearm by the unbadged is anathema to many.

How do we stop this?

Is it enough to vote Republican? How about simply withdrawing from society, stockpiling food and ammo in the name of disaster preparedness?

Is it enough to do what this man did, to passively resist violence hoping to shock the nation?

Or should we follow Solzhenitsyn’s advice, and make sure that when they come for us, we make it fatal for as many of them as we can?

The problem with the passive soldier in the photo is that we are only now, far too late, finding out what he did.

Every day people right now are finding themselves caught up in the state’s satanic mills.

Nobody hears about them because, like the German press in Nazi days, our press is on the wrong side. They are covering for a socialist government bent on tyranny.

Go ahead, campaign against Obama. Put clever bumper stickers on your car, Stay Puft Man versus Moving Torb signs in your yard, snarky teeshirts on your back. Hell, vote for Romney, or even the Libertarian candidate, whoever he is.

No, really, do that. Og explains why you should be active in the political scene, in a post that inspires me. If we don’t do at least this, the picture up there is inevitable.

Sure, you can go further. Hand out flyers on jury nullification in front of the courthouse. Give joints to the officers rolling out at the start of their shifts.

Attend Tea Party rallies.

No one will care. Reporters will not notice.

Or go the next step: Defend yourself against an mugger with darker skin than your own. Open carry without a license.

You will disappear.Oh, your arrest will show up on the police blotter page of your local paper. There might be a local newscast suggesting that you will be evaluated by a police psychologist. You’ll be allowed your phone call, if you survive your arrest, as is likely.

But mostly your brave resistance will go unnoticed. It will be as wasted as this soldier’s was. He could have gone down killing the agents of oppression and tyranny.

What are we supposed to do instead? I am lost here. I honestly don’t know the answer. I suspect that a civil war is inevitable, and I’m too old for that, far too unprepared. The damage it would do…I quail at the thought.

But what are we supposed to do?

[update to link to Og's post. And I'll add this: the liberal/progressive/socialist left wants us to despair, wants us to put ourselves out of the action either by disengaging or getting thrown into jail. They control the media, and acts of open defiance will not be reported.

[And what I'm coming around to is, Make noise. Vote. Don't sit down and shut up. Don't take the fight to the cops. Defend yourself, if need be. But no more than that. No first use of violence, remember? But maybe, just maybe, it's time to think about what you do when first violence has been offered. Crackheaded or jackbooted, thugs is thugs. Your home is your castle. Stand your ground.]

Rush, You Idiot

Saturday, April 28th, 2012

Rush Limbaugh is invoking the evil, statist DMCA to block this compilation video from The Daily Kos:

Deal is, Kos posted this video on Youtube. Limbaugh invoked the DMCA to have Youtube take it down. Youtube complied.

Kos immediately reposted at Vimeo.

Kos quite rightly says:

This isn’t 1823, no matter how much Limbaugh might wish it so. He gets the video pulled from one place, it’ll simply pop up somewhere else. If he really wants it offline, he’s going to have to meet us in court. And even that won’t do the trick.

That darn First Amendment will get in his way.

Rush, as often as I agree with many of your sentiments on this matter, swinging the DMCA hammer makes you an idiot. What were you thinking?

No, I’m not being ironic. No, I’m not making fun of Kos. No, I’m not parodying anybody’s manner of speaking.

You are an idiot for doing this. Plain and simple.

Stop embarrassing yourself, and those of us who agree with you.

Breaking the Narrative

Sunday, April 15th, 2012

Lawdog gives us an excellent example of how badly the politically correct narrative of the traditional media is breaking down.

Robert Heinlein is often quoted as saying, “An armed society is a polite society.”

In my experience nowhere has this been as apparent as this convention. Everyone, from the NRA Media staff to 99% of the vendors to the people wandering the aisles, has been as courteous and accomodating as they can be.

Well, for the most part. Several bloggers — friends both old and new — have taken over a table in the corner of the Media Room as base camp for our perambulations throughout the convention, and as I sit here, I can look over to the long table occupied by traditional media … and the disdain of not only the traditional media, but the traditonal gun media, for us lowly, plebian bloggers is palpable.

LD goes on to give a couple of examples of how exhibitors changed, very much for the better, when they learned that LD’s “Media” pass meant “blogger”.

I would love to see video of pro-gun media, I mean bloggers, attempting to interview the moribund media.

In Which I Lose Patience With Billy Beck

Friday, March 9th, 2012

Not, of course, that he cares, or even should. Still:

Beck, we’re not identifying with Andrew Breitbart because “he thought we could vote our way out of this.”

We’re identifying with him because he took the fight to the enemy: a watchdog media that guards Those Who Would Rule against rabble like us.

Breitbart showed, over and over again, that Those Who Would Rule, and their watchdogs, are not worthy of our trust. And this, I’d contend, is for many a necessary step to learning to trust ourselves.

I wish I were as knowledgeable as Billy Beck. I wish I were as focused as he, as committed, as strong. He, more than anyone else, schooled me to value principle over policy. He finally opened my eyes to the idea of voting as choosing your next overseer, rather than your leader; that is, of voting as submission to slavery.

He is an outstanding exemplar of Free Man.

(I am compelled to say, in these days of worshiping the magnetic calf of irony, that I am utterly sincere in saying all this. I mean it. I owe a great deal of what I know and who I am to Beck.)

Going by his writings, however, he is a terrible evangelist. Liberty comes so naturally to him that he cannot really understand what it means to discover it. He makes the same mistake that any fiercely committed radical makes, in that he holds those of us less perfect than he in contempt.

True, he does not then go on and attempt to impose by force a social order contrary to human nature.

He just refuses to grant any hint of grace to those who are in fact trying to keep the whole shebang from being bulldozed by the socialist glacier, but are in any way less perfect than he.

He’ll put up a good fight, mind; he’ll likely be one of the last of the free.

But he is a dead end. And his intolerance of those less perfect than he is exactly what turned the French revolution into a virulent plague, and what makes socialism a malignant cancer. (Again, not that he himself would man the guillotine, not at all. Only that any movement using him as a model would turn that way, the bulk of humans being so much more fallible than he.)

We don’t just need perfect, incorruptible exemplars, Beck. We need leaders, we need fighters, we need loud and messy and self-contradictory and self-aggrandizing.

Breitbart is all of that. More, Breitbart knew how to inspire, in a way that Beck does not.

I am not Breitbart, no. But I wish I was, and I strive to be.

Window Wars

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

Among many others, Patterico posts this video of Bill Maher on Rachel Maddow, advocating Occupy Wall Street protests throwing bricks through Rupert Murdoch’s apartment window in order to see Fox News be “more gentle” towards the OWS people. This in response to Maddow’s wondering “if a sense of dangerousness is what gives them power.”

Maddow specifically raises the specter of the Tea Party as a potentially violent mob; I’ve been to a Tea Party rally, and seen coverage, often hostile, of many more, and never once saw anything like the kind of ugliness and incitement that people sympathetic to the OWS point to with some glee.

This reminded me of a media firestorm that arose surrounding one of the very few calls for, not violence, but vandalism, by people who own guns and know how to use them. I posted this comparison in comments at Patterico:

Does anyone remember the socialist/progressive response to Mike Vanderbeogh’s “The Window War” at Sipsey Street Irregulars?

This story advocated breaking windows of both Republican and Democrat party office windows, with stones inscribed with the Second Amendment. The first window was at the local Republican office.

Anyone remember the banshee howls from the socialist progressives in response?

Note the differences:

  • Attacking party office windows, not private homes.
  • Attacked both parties.
  • Specific, consistent message.
  • Said message a passage from the Constitution.
  • First strike at leaders of own party.
  • Directed at “leaders” attempting to abrogate a right (bear arms), not citizens exercising a right (free press).
  • Proposed to short circuit, not to initiate, more violence.
  • A demand to be left alone, not to be taken care of.
  • Promulgated by someone seen as being on the fringe, not a major media figure. (Mike has since become a leader in exposing the Gunwalker scandal, a gross betrayal of the Constitution by those sworn to uphold it that deserves literal tar and feathers, if not ropes and trees.)

And yet Maher gets laughter and cheers from those who booed and castigated Vanderbeogh.

“Gunwalker Guns Not ‘Allowed’”

Friday, September 9th, 2011

So says Lyle at The View From North Central Idaho.

If you believe the BATFE merely “allowed” criminals to buy the guns, you have to believe that there were regular, on-going attempts, by Mexican gangsters, to make huge purchases at U.S. gun stores, that these huge purchases were being regularly denied, and that the Mexican gangsters simply kept trying, failing, trying, failing, and then one day, all of a sudden, the gigantic sales start being approved, one and another and another, simply because our local dufi started pushing the green button instead of the red button. And nothing else.

Sorry; I can’t believe it. I say those purchases were engineered. Someone had to be in contact with known criminals, asking them, or ordering them, to come here and make those purchases and take delivery down south. Can we please stop using “allowed” or “let” when talking about this? It defies logic.

It certainly does. The Gunwalker scandal grows, and grows, and grows.

The adamant refusal of the press to examine it, to take it seriously, is a scandal in and of itself, quite possibly the more damaging one. It is clear, unequivocal evidence of deliberate complicity.

If other news channels continue to ignore it after Fox’s discovery of a third Fast and Furious gun hidden, covered up, at the scene of Brian Terry’s murder, I say that makes them culpable as well.