Posse Incitatus

Kathy Griffin and the death of decency

There is something deeply wrong with the modern left.  For all their talk of civility and tolerance, their fantasy lives are increasingly blood-soaked.

By now everything is aware that obscure comedienne Kathy Griffin decided it was a good idea to pose with what appeared to be Donald Trump's bloody severed head.  It was an obvious reference to the barbaric beheadings perpetrated by Muslim terrorists.

She claims it was supposed to be funny and on a certain level, it is.

The left keeps insisting that radical Islam isn't a major threat, but their go-to symbol of violence is an parody of Islamic State death porn.

The left also claims that Donald Trump is uniquely rude and offensive, so they then outdo him in rude offensiveness.

When conservatives expressed outrage at this tasteless and nauseating image, they taunted them by saying: "Who are the special snowflakes now?" - as if a reasoned discussion is in any way analogous to a murder-fantasy.

I'm barely aware of Griffin.  I don't recall seeing her in anything and so I don't have a great deal invested in her projects, but I do hope that she is rendered the most toxic woman in the country because of this, because that is the only way the left is going to learn to control its increasingly erratic and impulsive behavior.

Noted psychologist Jonathan Haider has a related piece on the witch hunts currently consuming college campuses.  In it, he offers several lessons on how faculty should act.  The first is the most important:

1) Never object to a diversity policy publicly.* It is no longer permitted. You may voice concerns in a private conversation, but if you do it in a public way, you are inviting a visit from a mob or punishment from an administrator.

That's a pretty bold statement of surrender.  Perhaps after re-reading it, Haider decided to walk it back.  So he added this:

*1. I am not really urging professors to keep quiet. I am trying to dramatize the growing authoritarianism of some campuses on which calm, reasoned questioning of the sort the Weinstein engaged in is now likely to be punished. I hope that professors will in fact model their behavior on Weinstein. But I would suggest that in the future they consider finding a few others who agree with them and are willing to co-sign the email. It will be harder for a university to punish or fire a group of professors than a single professor.

That's pretty weak tea.  Professors now indisputably know that if they speak up and utter heretical thoughts, not even tenure will save them.

I mention this because Haider felt it necessary earlier in his post to emphasize how the violence and intolerance affects both sides of the political spectrum.

But it doesn't.  The violence is coming from the left, both literally and artistically.

Stephen Colbert that it was perfectly acceptable to call the president a cocksucker on broadcast television.  When called on it, he refused to back down and his network supported him.  So why wouldn't Kathy Griffin think a mock snuff video would be similarly praised?

I begin to wonder if a certain level of exhaustion and fear is starting to take root on the left.  It was one thing when goons crashed Trump's rallies.  Now the mob is targeting otherwise impeccably liberal professors.

In addition to the immediate danger of harassment, violence and job loss, the university system itself is now threatened.  Who wants to send their kids to schools where rampaging radicals are going to constantly disrupt things?

Are employers going to look positively on the graduates of these institutions?  I can say right now I'd never hire anyone from Berkeley, the Ivies or any of the other schools where this madness is going on.

I've remarked before that armies rarely go down to defeat quietly.  Instead they usually launch a final doomed attempt to reverse their fortunes.  Maybe the rise of Trump has caused these people to attack everywhere and everything at once.

In a sense, Griffin's stupid stunt may be nothing more than the opening volley of a progressive Kaiserschlacht? 

 

Just in time for rising civil disorder - cheaper ammo!

Barack Obama will go down in history as the greatest gun salesman of all time.

Thanks to him, Americans have amassed an impressive arsenal including a dizzying array of sporting rifle variants.  The AR series was always highly adaptable, but over the last eight years we saw it truly come into its own. 

In addition, defensive pistols multiplied and filled the fruited plain.  There have never been more choices for personal or home defense.

The downside of this flowering of the American firearms industry was the prohibitive price of ammunition.  People weren't just arming up, they were stocking up.

The once cheap and ubiquitous .22LR was so scarce stores had to ration it.   Other calibers might not be available at all.

Happily, those days seem largely behind us.  Over the weekend I scouted some of the local retailers and was pleased to see that not only are the shelves filling out, ammo sales are starting to become a thing again.

The increasing bounty is not evenly distributed, however.  I noticed that 9mm is common and cheap, but .22LR and .380 auto are both high and still somewhat rare.

I suspect this is because both calibers are still in high demand by historic standards.  Back in the day, .22LR was a target, plinking and minor varmint hunting round.  Now it is bought in bulk to feed the highly popular AR-22 set.

Similarly, .380 Auto is a great self-defense round for smaller shooters (particularly women).  As more women have taken up shooting, the demand for the cartridge has also increased.

Political rhetoric may be overheating, but gun sales are falling and ammo stocks are starting to build up.  For all the talk of impending violence, it isn't showing in the marketplace. 

That means it's a great time to replenish one's supply and enjoy an extended target session. 

 

A better Memorial Day in 2017

A year ago I was in a very somber mood.  The US was clearly in retreat and our losses in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere seemed to have been in vain.

I won't say that the tide has turned, but at least the decline has halted.

Still, I've reached the point where I can no longer stomach politicians giving speeches over the bones of our honored dead.  Our political class is completely feckless and utterly incompetent.  When they introduce wounded veterans or the families of the fallen, it isn't because they know these people, it's because their staff has selected someone who they feel will look good for the camera and match the desired demographic.

None of them know what it is like to hear the shocking news that a friend or loved one has died overseas.  As I noted yesterday, our "principled leaders" never once consider the consequences of their policies and never change course.  The numbers they care about are their polling, not the casualty count.

In 2005 an old friend of mine was killed in Iraq and since then, the Posse has become an unofficial memorial to the memory of Capt. Sean Grimes.  Sean was a healer, and he was killed while helping the Iraqi people. 

In the dozen years that have followed, I'm no longer confident that Iraq will turn out well.  I'm also angry that our leaders had so many delusions about how we could save Arab culture from itself.   Mosul may have been liberated from ISIS, but the Iraqis are already planning the next round of internal fighting and ethnic cleansing. 

It is impossible to look at the ordered tombstones of our fallen warriors and not feel a profound sense of awe mingled with sorrow.  The only consolation is that their sacrifice was not in vain. 

I can only hope that our new leadership may help bring that about.  Then maybe the families those who fell in our current conflicts will also feel that their sacrifice had meaning.

The power of unpredictability

On Friday the US Navy conducted its first Freedom of Navigation Operation in the South China Sea since Trump was inaugurated.  Establishment critics have been whining about this for a while and naturally want to claim credit for convincing Trump to do their bidding.

To people bound by conventional thinking, Trump's actions seem erratic, illogical, arbitrary and therefore dangerous.  Otherwise serious observers accuse him of mental illness and wonder aloud if he should be removed from office.

These people may think they're being clever, but they are in fact broadcasting their own limited intellect and failure to grasp complex strategy.  Anyone with even limited analytical capability should be able to see the method to Trump's seeming madness:  unpredictability.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams pointed this out more than a year ago.  Trump's experience in business taught him the value of constantly adjusting his actions to a fluid environment.  In many ways, business deals are a duel of wits, and Trump's method of shifting his offers, expanding and revoking them seemingly at random tends to confuse and demoralize his adversaries.

Eventually, they are reduced to accepting whatever he puts out there simply to solve the problem.

On the campaign trail, Trump followed a similar method, testing various positions publicly and gauging their reaction.  Those that tested well, he kept and expanded while those that tested poorly were dropped.

The Quislings of the Never Trump movement tried to argue that Trump was unprincipled and therefore couldn't be trusted.   From their myopic perspective, this was likely true.

For establishment politicians, certain policies are articles of faith to be blindly followed no matter how much harm they do to the country and its people.

Conservatism, Inc. loves the "principle" of free trade.  It must be always and everywhere expanded, no matter how much economic damage it does to the nation.  The manufacturing base has been hollowed out, millions of jobs eliminated and communities may well be suffering, but such sacrifices must be made in the name of principle.

Open borders is another principle.  It's so important that (as I pointed out yesterday), some cities are actually weakening their laws against domestic violence in order to prevent deportations.

To put it another way, the political establishment values the abstract over the actual.  Trump does the reverse.

Consider the abject failures of both the Bush and Obama regimes in foreign policy.  Both were the result of pedantic and mindless consistency.  Having determined a course of action, they pressed ahead with it regardless of the losses sustained.

Like Great War generals, they reacted to bloody setbacks with renewed determination, doubling down on failure.  For them, admitting a mistake was worse than anything.

Trump may not admit mistakes, but he does change course.  Thus his approach to China has been nuanced and fluid.  The result is that the Chinese are - for the first time in decades - at a loss for what to do.

The same goes in Europe.  Trump's reading NATO the riot act was long overdue.  Far from endangering the alliance, it was likely the only way to save it. 

Democrats may have found a sudden love for NATO, but how many of them are willing to risk a nuclear exchange to protect Latvia's eastern frontier?  If Germany can't be bothered to keep even its much-diminished military operational, why should the US step in to do it for them?

This is not an abstract question, by the way.  The US military is in terrible shape.  Eight years of neglect by the Obama administration have left it a hollow shell:  Only one Army brigade is operationally ready and two-thirds of Marine aviation is inoperable.  Our warships are falling apart through deferred maintenance and the Air Force is critically short of pilots.

Thus Trump's decision to delay FONOPs served an operational purpose as well:  it gave the Navy time to make needed repairs and rest its exhausted crews. 

Here we may be seeing the hand of SecDef Mattis, who knows about these issues first-hand.   Mattis knows that the ideal plan accomplishes many things at once.  Strategic ambiguity with China over the South China Sea served a diplomatic purpose, but also an operational one as well. 

Some might say I'm reading too much into things, but there is no denying Trump's strategic acumen.  The fake allegations of Russian involvement in the election are a desperate attempt to obscure the strategic brilliance of Trump's political victory.

Only a few months into his presidency, he's done much the same.  It is a welcome change after eight years of predictable defeat.

 

The harsh light of day

One of the reasons why the advent of the Trumpening has caused so many people to become unhinged is that it has swept aside many of the pleasant fictions that made life bearable.

For example, it has long been possible to imagine that Planned Parenthood actually was about birth control and reproductive health.  That's what they said, it's what politicians insisted when the organization drew government money, and so arguments for its wholesale defunding were limited to the fringe elements of the Right to Life movement.

We know know differently.  What's telling is that the leftist legal establishment - which once championed hidden cameras and investigative reporting - is now trying to imprison people for it.

Then there are the turncoat conservatives hiding under the Never Trump label.  This nasty screed could have been written by a John Kerry campaign flack in 2004, but in fact it's one of those "rock-ribbed conservatives" who accidentally left out the call for a "global test" before the US can act.

Back then of course, the stock phrase was:  "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion."  Funny how the same conservatives who mocked France and Germany now consider them essential.

By now I suppose my readers are getting a little tired of my riff on the lie that is contemporary feminism (I even created a category for  it), but the non-punishment of rioting students at Middlebury College is a good example of how "violence against women" is totally okay as long as it serves the cause.

Speaking of violence against women, how about those immigration activists?  If there was any doubt that they simply want to flood the nation with anyone they can find, check out Denver's bold experiment in sanctuary cities.  The Public Service Announcement almost writes itself:

Are you in the country illegally?  Do you regularly beat your wife or girlfriend?

No problem.  Denver's changed the law so you no longer have to fear getting deported in response to your patriarchal crimes against women.

You can now give the uppity bitch as many black eyes as you want to keep her in line.

The best part of course is that it applies to everyone in Denver.  So even white guys who smack their little lady around if she gives too much sass benefit as well.

Tell me again about how Mitt Romney has binders full of women.

The grand finale for our shocking dose of truth this week is the revelation that our intelligence agencies routinely break the law.  Oh, and they also leak intel from the British to friendly reporters and cause international incidents.

Again, I'm absolutely not surprised that the Democrats did this or that their alleged civil libertarians and hack supporters in the press consider it no big deal.  The revelation is that the GOP Inc. blowhards have been pretty much cool with this for a long time.  They lecture the rest of us on civility and standards of decency while the CIA openly tries to create coup.  Noted jerk Bill Kristol is fine with this, of course.

The takeaway for most right-thinking folks is that the values and courtesies, the laws and customs we've believed to be true simply don't apply anymore.

The left regularly uses political violence, so why should anyone be surprised when a GOP House candidate decides to take a swing at an obnoxious reporter?  Moreover, why should anyone be surprised when he wins his election?

One of the goons who attacked Trump supporters at Berkeley was finally charged - but only because internet sleuths did the job the cops wouldn't.

History shows us that meekly submitting to violence only begets more of it.  Passive resistance can only work with the oppressor has some sort of moral code or conscience that can be disturbed.  The Civil Rights movement worked because Southerners had a sense of shame.  The modern left simply doesn't.  They've spent decades training themselves to be shameless.  Cries of "Have you no decency?" are just birds chirping to these people.

The GOP Inc. also stands revealed not as their fearless opponents but their Quisling collaborators.  They aren't really interested in stopping the left, they merely want the crumbs from the table.

The long dream of civility is over.  In the harsh light of day we are seeing the new, hostile landscape.  It isn't pretty, but that's what we have.

Feminism is powerless against actual violence

Our latest encounter with Islamic savagery has illustrated a great many failures in the West, but is any of them as obvious and total as that of feminism?

A number of feminist commentators have attempted to blame the attack on "misogyny," but how, exactly would feminism solve this problem?  Knitting circles?  Cleaning auras?  Perhaps a bunch of witches will place a hex on ISIS.  Yes, I'm sure that will work.

The great truth is that feminism exists solely through the consent and effort of the oft-reviled "patriarchy."  Without the fundamental decency of men brought up in Western civilization, the lot of women in Europe and America would be exactly the same as that of the domestic slaves kept from Morocco to the Pacific Rim.

There are no "safe spaces" for feminists in the Muslim world.  Wearing one of those pussy hats would be met with a beating and/or incarceration.   "Slut walks" would almost immediately give way to honor killings.

Feminism can only exist in a rarefied prosperity of the decadent West.

A violent cult like ISIS that takes sex slaves isn't going to be deterred in the slightest by "trigger warnings" - unless they are immediately followed by triggers pulled by overwhelmingly male combat troops.

The CBO Healthcare Red Herring

The gullible mainstream media is going ballistic over a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report that the American Health Care Act (AHCA), passed by the U.S. House a few weeks ago, would result in 23 million more people being uninsured in the next 10 years.  The Democrats are gleefully piling on, bashing Republican efforts to clean up the Obamacare mess.

But it's really just another red herring and political football. Voters capable of critical thinking and having knowledge of the CBO's frequently inaccurate projections know Chicken Little pessimism when they see it. Just as it does with proposed income tax reform plans, the CBO assessed the effects of AHCA based on a static model. In other words, failing to take into account changes in consumer behavior based on new incentives and disincentives.

Additionally, CBO was wildly inaccurate seven years ago when it projected how Obamacare would do, forecasting that health care exchanges would be functioning well, enrollment would be much higher than it proved to be, Medicaid enrollment would be lower than what's transpired, and overall costs would not soar as they have.

It's also worth noting that CBO's definition of "coverage" is a one-size-fits-all, Washington, DC-based plan the 1970s Soviets would be proud of. That's NOT what AHCA is aiming toward. The whole idea of health care reform is to allow individuals more choice to tailor plans to their needs and budgets rather than have Uncle Sam ramrod mandatory policies down our throat.

Furthermore, as I and others have pointed out, simply having coverage isn't necessarily a good thing if premiums are sky-high and continue to rise, and deductibles are so large that a policy seldom can be used. I addressed this in my March 18 post, "The Sophistry Runneth Over."

It is disheartening to hear the large amount of left-wing propaganda spouted on the networks and in the left-wing newspapers. But sometimes I can simply console myself with the truth: In most cases, the corrupt media is simply preaching to the choir; giving red meat to those who never, ever would support anything Donald Trump or the Republicans did, even if they had irrefutable proof that they themselves would benefit.

There are enough Americans who see through the B.S. so that the most unlikely of candidates, Donald Trump, actually got elected president nearly 7 months ago. Let's hope the "silent majority" speaks up and demands that health care reform returning choice to consumers does prevail prior to 2018, when the GOP risks losing the House. If the Democrats return to power in the House and health care hasn't been corrected, things will only get worse.

Responding Forcefully to Islamofascism

In the wake of Monday's atrocity in Manchester, England, I can't tell you how pleased I am that President Donald Trump is speaking out forcefully against hideous terrorism perpetrated by Islamic extremists. Gone are ex-President Obama's ridiculous, politically correct efforts to avoid uttering "Islamic" and "terrorism" in one breath.

Also a thing of the past: Our president acting nonchalant and emotionless about Islamofascists committing barbaric acts, robotically and indifferently mouthing a languid statement of disapproval. Remember Obama's pathetic presence next to angry and resolute French President Nicolas Sarkozy following the November 2015 Paris attacks?

No, President Trump displays his outrage -- greater anger than he'll ever show toward his political enemies. Obama, it seems, only got his dander up when he was fulminating against the Tea Party, Republicans and conservatives, but the acrimony was nowhere to be seen following a Koran-inspired terror attack.

The Trump administration also will not resort to Orwellian, mealy-mouthed BS like "Overseas Contingency Operations" to describe efforts to confront Islamofascist terrorism head on. This is simply because Trump lives in the real world, not a pie-in-the-sky dream world inhabited by elitists of the "international community" and full-of-themselves academicians.

As for what Trump will do militarily or covertly through intelligence agencies and subterfuge, that remains to be seen. But rest assured, it will be something real and substantive. And he won't bow down (literally, to Arab despots, or figuratively, to the likes of CAIR and ACLU). So far on his overseas trip, Trump has strongly denounced radical Islamic terrorism, and even seems to have persuaded the Saudis and other Gulf states to get on board -- in words, policy and deeds, including by banning the financing of terrorists, even by private citizens.

British authorities have arrested several extremists related to Monday's attack, and the nation has beefed up patrols by soldiers and police in key areas such as the parliament building. But like France, Great Britain has no one but itself to blame for opening up the floodgates to non-assimilating Muslims for many, many years. Both nations are infested with trouble, and sadly, will continue to pay a heavy price going forward for misguided immigration policies.

Not a day goes by that I don't feel eternally grateful that Hillary Rodham Clinton lost on Nov. 8, because her immigration plans would have wreaked similar havoc on our nation. Widespread immigration of non-assimilating Muslims from Syria and other Middle Eastern and African nations, in conjunction with the hard-left jurists Hillary would have appointed to the Supreme Court, would have been a definite kill-shot for America.

We don't know how Britain, or France, which has been especially decimated by Islamic terrorism in the past 2 1/2 years, will react going forward. But it is encouraging to note that France, despite its wimpy, pacifist reputation, has shown sparks of resolve in the past when its interests were severely threatened. Remember the bombing of the Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior in 1985, when the vessel attempted to interfere with French nuclear weapons testing? And do you recall how angry Sarkozy was during the joint news conference with Obama following the Paris attacks? Obama standing next to him was like a tree stump next to a roaring lion. And remember how French authorities imposed strict curfews and conducted thousands of warrantless home and business searches in the months after the Paris attacks? Whatever it takes.

When security is severely threatened, even those who fancy themselves dreamy pacifists and high-minded internationalists often wake up and do what's necessary. Now, with a U.S. president who actually has a spine, the rest of the world may finally get serious about stamping out the Islamofascist vermin. Let us hope so.

 

 

 

And then they came for the children

As I write, the UK is at its highest level of alert and the Ministry of Defense is deploying troops throughout the country.

Is it too little, too late?

France has been in a similar state for more than a year but nevertheless chose to elect an inexperienced cipher thoroughly committed to the multicultural globalist agenda.  Will the UK be any different?

On the one hand, the UK has enough residual national pride that its people rose up against the establishment to demand Brexit.  At the same time, it remains painfully subservient to political correctness.  Prime Minister Theresa May's statement condemned a tactic, not the enemy.  That's no way to win a war.

The British know how to defeat a terror campaign - they did it before against the Provisional IRA.  On the other hand, back then they could clearly identify the foe.  It wasn't as though the Thatcher government allowed Provo fundraising at Catholic churches throughout the realm and tolerated priests offering absolution for those who died attacking the government.

In fact, even to draw that parallel is to strain credulity, and yet here we are.  Muslim extremists wage ever-more-savage warfare against the West and a substantial amount of voters demand we let more of these people in.  Not only that, they proclaim that the real danger is an imagined backlash against innocent Muslims.

The current situation seems stable, but it isn't.  At some point the critical mass will be reached, and society will lurch in one direction or another.

In France, it seems to have chosen defeat and accommodation.  The defiant will emigrate, and the rest will submit. 

Elsewhere, the result is still in doubt.  One can't help but wonder what would happen if a similar bombing were to hit the children of the entitled elite.  Would their nonchalance about immigration fade?  If a knife-wielding maniac screaming "Allahu Ackbar!" struck down a liberal politician, would the chattering classes still insist it was a false flag operation?

We'll likely find out soon enough.

 

Trump the trailblazer

For a guy who supposedly lives for the limelight, Donald Trump has an amazing propensity to downplay things.

His first foreign trip has already been historic:  His was the first aircraft to fly directly from Saudi Arabia to Israel.

The normal practice is for a stopover in Egypt or Jordan - anything to prevent direct contact between the kingdom and the "Zionist entity."

And yet Trump made the direct flight.

He also did it without fanfare.

If Barack Obama or one of the Clintons did this, you could be sure that fact sheets would have gone out as soon as the wheels were up.  Indeed, they might have hyped the event, generating hastags and pushing memes all over the Internet.

Of course a speech upon landing that mentioned the event would be mandatory, and Dem-controlled hacks at MSNBC and CNN would dutifully run scrolling updates chronicling the "historic flight."

And yet Trump let the Associated Press figure out that there was a story on their own.

He is not an ordinary politician, and people who think that stampeding the beltway sycophants will move him are only deluding themselves.  I said it before, but the Dems' constant chirping about "Russian puppets" is going to bite them in the ass in a big way.

No one outside the fever swamps buys it and all it is doing is destroying their tenuous credibility.  Like their bold new strategy of cursing like sailors and making rude hand gestures at public events, all it does is make Trump look mature and sober next to their unhinged craziness.

Keep it up and he'll cruise to re-election in a landslide.