boxed in

Ruling elite insanity is not new. Parasites live as long as the host allows.

The Founders left us four boxes to defend our freedom. The Ballot Box. The Soap Box. The Jury Box. And the Cartridge Box.

This morning I woke up with this pleasant thought banging (hard) around in my head: Through various machinations, they have eliminated the first three of the above.

This is not news to me. It shouldn’t be news to you.

The ruling elite is comprised of psychopaths, fools and knaves. Some portion of them do ridiculous things out of ignorance. They disgust me. The other portion are devious. Them I hate. Neither will have my sympathy when our society finally breaks down.

There is a limit.

They seem hell-bent on finding it.

I am feeling it all this morning…
and so tired of it.

I still cannot figure what Hitlary was willing to do that Trump is not. The portion of the rulers that want to eliminate him has not backed off for a moment. Why not?

Trump filled the cabinet with banksters and military industrialists. He’s posturing for world war and economic breakdown. He’s lying about nearly everything. The trajectory has not changed. The end approaches in all the same directions as under the prior administrations.

It is ugly.

It is close.

Were I in decision-making positions in any number of the countries under assault by the military-industrial-banking complex, I would EMP The Great Satan NOW and get the darn thing over with. I don’t know how much longer the world as we know it will last, but am not feeling optimistic today.

Time out. I need to do some work close to home.

Meanwhile, I want to introduce you to a couple other essayists. The one in the headline link at the top of this page is new to me this morning. I tripped over it looking for the exact wording of the CARTRIDGE BOX phrase. Click on the title at the top to see what I’m talking about.

The other is a bit unusual for a blog. He, in fact, says his site is not a blog. He posts something. Leaves it up. Then posts something new INSTEAD. No archives. No history.

I check there every once in a while. What I found this morning was good … and fit my mood. I am posting it below so it won’t go away. You really ought to go see his site, though. The stuff down both sides of his webpage are worth looking over.

Yer Ol’ Woodpile Report

It wasn’t communism that brought down the Soviet Union and it isn’t socialism that’s ravaging Venezuela. Not directly. It’s corruption. It will be corruption that takes us down too. Inflation, deflation, bubble implosions, fiat currencies and central—formerly: king’s—banks, they’re all visible pustules of the underlying malady. The world’s economies and governments have all but forfeited their legitimacy. They’re being outed for what they most nearly are: criminal enterprises with a dress code, looting their lands and, at the end, each other.

A world survey would suggest the millennia-old experiment of government has been tried in all its possible forms and found wanting. Richard Fernandez at PJ Media sees a general dissolution of world order:

The narrative that Russia, a country with an economy smaller than Italy – smaller than New York State’s, will take over the world is less compelling than than the alternative thesis: the tide of chaos is rising across the planet. With the European Union weakening, the Middle East perceptibly falling apart and African and Latin America their same old selves the danger is less that some rival empire will conquer the world than that power vacuums will spread entropy all over the planet.

and,

As states fail across the world the public safety function is increasingly being filled by private security companies. When out of work Mexican drug gangsters started kidnapping, robbery and extortion crime wave that country’s middle and upper classes didn’t turn to the police. They turned to private security. “Parallel security strategy” is nice way of describing doing the police work local cops can’t do.

Lest we think this is same-o same-o doomsday talk, he references Michael Hayden, former NSA Director, quoted by the Palm Beach Daily News:

“The system that the world has relied on for self-governance for the last three-quarters of a century is pretty much at the end of its fiscal life,” Hayden said, referring to the post-World War II financial system… “We’re not just faced with fixing the problem of the current system. I’m telling you the current system is going under and cannot survive. It is a macro-tectonic issue here.”

We prefer to think of official corruption at the big end of the scale: the newly public activism of the deep state, the lawlessness of the courts, or the Clinton Foundation. We also prefer to think of it in its abstract forms: banks laundering dirty money, or bribery disguised as campaign contributions. These things are beyond fixing by you, or by anyone so far.

Imagine law enforcement enabling and profiting from crime at the scale of South American countries. Then think local. Most of us have no idea how much a highjacked truckload of pecans is worth if delivered to the right address, for example. Most of us look at a rail yard without thinking what’s in those boring freight cars. One refrigerator car may hold tons of prime beef, the next car may be full of high-end ATVs, and so on. Imagine those truck highjackings and looting of freight yards becoming a protected criminal enterprise nation wide.

Commerce will contract to those served by carriers who can handle the losses and payoffs. Scarcity and prices will reflect it. Eventually nothing will move except to the most favored. Imagine today’s official robbery, “asset forfeiture”, diversified and contracted out. Corruption serves the corrupt. It impoverishes and eventually collapses whole nations. Corruption, not the politics of corruption, will be a major challenge for the survivalist.

Next.

The Z Man has identified and described the insanity that animates the Progressive mind. Here’s his closing summary:

Progressives have been in control of America since the Civil War. The great industrial wars of the early 20th century, then the long Cold War, worked to restrain some of the worst impulses that are let loose when a person or group has unchecked power. Those restraints are gone so all of the reckless tendencies of Progressives can be indulged, seemingly without consequence.

In other words, this reality denying madness we see going on with Progressives has a late phase degeneracy vibe to it. Most of this nonsense is happening in well insulated compounds like the college campus. The Progs have total control so all of their worst instincts are free to run riot. It’s not some new phase in the long civil war, but the final burst of maniacal lunacy before there is the knock on the door and reality bursts in.

Next item.

Looking for a “tell” which way the wind is blowing? It’s always the little things. Jude Terror at Bleeding Cool says Marvel now sees diversity as a losing sales strategy:

Marvel is pulling back on diversity in their titles. Marvel VP of Sales David Gabriel is blunt with his assessment of a Marvel sales slump that began last October. “What we heard was that people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there. That’s what we saw in sales. We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against.”

Here’s another “tell”. Damage control. The Guardian picked up the story and painted lipstick all over it:

Marvel executive says emphasis on diversity may have alienated readers … “they do bring in a different demographic, and I’m happy to see that money in my store”

Next.

The quote of the week comes from Patrick Buchanan:

Through the last century, Congress has steadily surrendered its powers, with feeble resistance, to presidents, the Supreme Court, the Federal Reserve, the regulatory agencies, even the bureaucracy. The long retreat goes on.

Next item

Despite being small, Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigates were extremely durable. From Wikipedia:

On July 14, 2016, USS Thach took over 12 hours to sink after being used in a live-fire, SINKEX during naval exercise RIMPAC 2016. During the exercise, the ship was directly or indirectly hit with the following ordnance: a Harpoon missile from a South Korean submarine, another Harpoon missile from the Australian frigate HMAS Ballarat, a Hellfire missile from an Australian SH-60S helicopter, another Harpoon missile and a Maverick missile from US maritime patrol aircraft, another Harpoon missile from the cruiser USS Princeton, additional Hellfire missiles from an American SH-60S Navy helicopter, a 2,000-pound Mark 84 bomb from a US Navy F/A-18 Hornet, a GBU-12 Paveway laser-guided 500-pound bomb from a US Air Force B-52 bomber, and a Mark 48 torpedo from an unnamed US Navy submarine.

You did notice, after all that pounding, she took twelve hours to sink. Incidentally, the USS Thach was named after Admiral Thatch, inventor of the “Thach Weave”.

Next

A comment from the diary of General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff. This is his entry for 31 March 1942:

It is all desperately depressing. Furthermore it is made worse by the lack of good military commanders. Half our Corps and Divisional Commanders are totally unfit for their appointments, and yet if I were to sack them I could find no better! They lack character, imagination, drive and power of leadership. The reason for this state of affairs is to be found in the losses we sustained in the last war of all our best officers, who should now be our senior commanders.

Great Britain was too small to support the enormous casualties of World War I without disastrous consequences. It needed a few generations to replenish its natural leaders and warriors, yet in one generation it was in another World War—a double tap. Perhaps this explains why Sadiq Khan, son of Pakistani parents and a practicing Moslem, is the mayor of London. The Englishmen who would have thrown him out of office were never born. The Englishmen who would have prevented his family from emigrating to England in the first place were never born. The Englishman who would have been mayor was never born.

Well gang, enough blather. Grim reality awaits. Let’s get to yer ol’ Woodpile Report.

 

Remus’s notebook

 

The Hill – How North Korea could kill 90 percent of Americans … two satellites now in orbit are capable of delivering EMP

NBC News – North Korean Defector Tells Lester Holt ‘World Should Be Ready’ … “desperate” dictator is prepared to use nuclear weapons to strike the United States and its allies

Strategy Page – Naval Air: The Growing Japanese Carrier Force

Daily Caller – Trudeau Dismisses Opposition To Muslim Prayer In Public Schools … “our differences are a source of strength”

Gatestone Institute – Europe: Combating Fake News … the Swedish legal system is close to collapse

PJ Media – Calif. College Prof Who Called Trump’s Election ‘an Act of Terrorism’ Awarded ‘Faculty of the Year’ … she has seen close to a 200-student drop-off in enrollment

US Naval Institute – The Crisis in Nuclear Husbandry … a deliberate decision to hobble our nuclear forces

Aeon – Echoes of a black hole … Ripples in space-time could herald the demise of general relativity and its replacement by a quantum theory of gravity

WND – Dem lawmaker tips off illegals … raid info posted online to illegal aliens in Brockton

From Survival Blog, “every day carry” for urban unrest and violent protests

Every Day Carry for Today’s World- Part 1

Every Day Carry for Today’s World- Part 2

Every Day Carry for Today’s World- Part 3

also see this:

Modern Combat and Survival – Real-World “Civil Unrest” Survival Tips: How To Escape An Angry Mob

The Tab NC State – Students react to ‘Dear White People’ demonstration on Stafford Commons … they were not amused

All Outdoors – Boom in California Ammo Sales, Prop 63 causing increased ammo purchases … LA and San Francisco up 400% +

Taki’s Magazine – White Privilege vs. White Death … unprivileged whites have died from despair while privileged whites prattled about the curse of white privilege.

Living Prepared – #10 Cans Storing the Unused Contents for Later

Liberty’s Torch – The Nice-Guy Revolt … women are a trial of a good man’s endurance

YouTube – Girl Gets Tazed Off Of Table And Hits Head Hard On Floor At Peoria High Central … knife-wielding member of The Diversity. Video 0m 18s

Daily Galaxy – “Dark Energy Thought to Make Up 68% of the Universe, May Not Exist” –Royal Astronomical Society … questions the validity of the approximate solutions of general relativity

Phys Org – New research into light particles challenges understanding of quantum theory … when photons are created in pairs, they can emerge from a different location

City Journal – Brainwashing in Canada … the regime re-educates old thinkers in new ways

 

1930s. New York Central poster

.

Railroads jointly built “union” stations more grand than any single railroad could justify, which also saved the costs of duplicate bridges and other approach infrastructure and their maintenance. The cities were happy to avoid the congestion of multiple stations. Union stations made transfers between trains far more convenient, and in-station restaurants and other businesses were a welcome profit center.

The downside was, and there’s always a downside, Cleveland Union Terminal was a significant distance from the main lines paralleling Lake Erie. Further, steam locomotives weren’t allowed in the city so every train had to swap out for an electric locomotive when entering, then change back when leaving, which lengthened schedules considerably. The Pennsylvania Railroad took a pass for that reason and even some “member” trains bypassed the city.

The Cleveland Union Terminal opened in 1928. It’s now part of Tower City Center, with a mall, hotels and a casino. Amtrak hasn’t used the terminal since 1971—the rent was too high. See this photo for how it looks today

 

Apart together, Fred On Everything – Liberals posit the equality of groups that are not equal, attribute the inevitable differences of outcome to discrimination, and try to eradicate them through regulation, affirmative action, and punishment of those noticing the differences. This doesn’t work, assuring a pretext for indignation that is non-depletable. Liberals believe that we should all love one another, and hate those who don’t. This puts them in the morally invincible position of being against hatred. This brings us to the curious notion that diversity is a strength, which it obviously is not. Diversity is in fact the cause of most of the world’s troubles. This in turn brings us to immigration, which amounts to the importation of people so they can hate each other.

 

Skins game, Z Man – A generation or two from now, people will look back at America and wonder how racial conflict broke out after what many thought were years of social progress. After all, the good whites had atoned for all the bad things done by bad whites. In reality, those years of “progress” were just accumulating bad habits and bad decisions, disguising an underlying rot. The honkies can accept writing checks to the blacks, maybe, but the Hispanics? The Asians, of course, see no reason for cutting checks to anyone. The Hispanics are in a bind as they try to work out whether it is better to be on Team Honky or Team Black, but they are not going to cut checks to the blacks. Even the lunatics preaching this nonsense avoid diversity and multiculturalism. They like diversity and multiculturalism from a safe distance.

CA Public School Punished for Having Too Many White Students … now faces layoffs and increased class size

 

Urban conflict, Small Wars Journal – Warfare in the 21st century has been notably urban in character. These conflicts are only the continuation of a trend towards the urbanization of conflict that intensified in the 20th century. Recent conflicts suggest that this trend towards urban conflict is not going away. No fighting force is ever permitted to indulge its operational preferences with impunity. Conflict in cities below the megacity threshold will still feature the key characteristics of urban conflict: creating massive casualty rates; requiring considerable resources and time; causing civilian hardship, etc. As large cities grow increasingly influential, it is reasonable to assume that we may find ourselves operating in severely restricted urban terrain. Urban fighting will be complex, intense and offer our adversaries many advantages.

 

Felling the mighty, American Thinker – No one has a right any longer to an opinion except those issuing leftist, transnational creeds. These accusations, the name calling, are some of the most powerful weapons in the globalist arsenal. Many making the accusations of xenophobia live in rarified societies and neighborhoods or in high-end and fashionable apartment buildings with security guards and doormen, immune from the consequences of Open Borders, loss of manual jobs, overseas nation-building, and the harmful effects arising from perfunctory background checks and superficial vetting.

 

1940. Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, migrant at service station

Migrant workers weren’t all big families with skinny kids in rags living in makeshift shanties. The work actually paid well enough for a wandering single man to live a pretty good life. This guy is at a service station getting his old but well-maintained car—other photos in this series show good tread on the tires—squared away before hitting the road to his next gig. One organized dude. Both doors are open for ventilation. July. Concrete. Clear sky.

More stuff you may want to think about
Synopsis with links

 

Art of War, Ancient Origins – The little manual was pocket sized, produced by Qin’s School of Sun Tzu. It did not have a name. It became known as “The Art of War” but the meaning of ping-fa 2,300 years ago was “the art of diplomacy.” The persuaders knew that the imagery was an aid to learning and understanding and the instructions largely metaphorical. If ping-fa had been in non-metaphorical, non-military language, Qin’s plans for peaceful conquest would have been visible. The book remains in the military genre even though there is really nothing military about it, and military commentary usually finds it both incomprehensible and impractical for the management of war.

 

Government obsolescence, Amerika – The libertarian boom of the 90s and 00s was doomed but also prescient. It wanted to use the law to defend against the herd taking whatever its members had accumulated; while this was doomed, it also introduced a new idea, which was that for ordinary life, government is irrelevant and in fact nothing more than a bother. People need stability not “progress.” Libertarianism by itself means nothing other than the ability to retain what one has worked for. Throughout history, this has been a failing position, because the parasites merely vote themselves a “right” to whatever you have. But, through its criticism, libertarianism introduced the idea that government is a proxy of the parasitic crowd.

 

Clinton urnanium deal, WND – Tens of millions of dollars from uranium investors flowed into the Clinton Foundation, and Bill Clinton received a $500,000 speaking fee from a Russian bank tied to the Kremlin before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped decide whether to approve the sale to the Russian government of a company that held one-fifth of America’s uranium capacity. That’s the “deal” that Donald Trump referenced in a tweet Tuesday morning in which he essentially said that if Congress really wants to find evidence of U.S. politicians colluding with the Russians, it should investigate the $145 million in donations the Clintons’ received from uranium investors before Russia’s energy agency Rostatom secured the purchase of Uranium One.

Newsbusters – CBS: ‘No Credible Source’ Backs Up Claim Clintons Got Paid for Uranium

 

U.S. manufacturing, City Journal – The conventional wisdom about the decline in American manufacturing jobs is that automation is to blame. In fact, the conventional narrative is wrong; it is based on misleading manufacturing statistics. A new, more informed counter-narrative involves knowledge of the way U.S. statistical agencies calculate manufacturing output. It shows that employment has indeed fallen in manufacturing, but it is likely that output has fallen, too. U.S. manufacturing suffers from too little technical innovation, not from too much. The equipment inside American factories is old, averaging about 10-plus years, which is virtually Jurassic.

 

1939. Rice Minnesota Main Street

 

Rice is a town of 1,275 in central Minnesota, part of the St. Cloud metropolitan area. Population in 1939 was about 320. Rice is named for developer George T. Rice.

Notice the Ben Franklin store on the right. The chain was founded in 1927 and, at its height, had 2,5000 stores. It was sold in 1959, went through the usual near-death experiences and changes of ownership, and presently has about 200 craft stores and 125 classic “variety” stores.

Even more stuff you may want to think about
Synopsis with links

 

Tale of Two Killings, City Journal – The murders of Caughman and Vetrano, occurring six weeks apart, were random killings perpetrated by strangers of a different race from their victims. In each case, the confessed killers offered up racist motives to the police, and those confessions are the only evidence of the killers’ intentions. In one case, the admission of racial animus was reported and quickly forgotten; in the other, racist motives have elevated the slaying beyond a hate crime to the realm of domestic terrorism, with a demand for action at the highest levels of the federal government.

 

Woman problems, Traditional Right – Once again, the armed services are engulfed in a “scandal” involving female service members. Any military that does not have an aggressively male culture will not fight. It will come apart at the first touch of real war. Secretary Mattis surely understands that armed services must have a male culture if they are to fight. Is he merely going to sit back and let the cultural Marxists launch their latest assault on our servicemen? If we want to have women in our armed services–which is overall a mistake, beyond limited, non-deployable clerical and medical roles–we have a model for doing so, the way we did it in World War II. It is only in a world gone mad that our armed services welcome gays while sending men who dare show an attraction to the women around them on their way to the gulag.

 

Proof, Found and Almost Lost, Quanta – As he was brushing his teeth on the morning of July 17, 2014, Thomas Royen, a little-known retired German statistician, suddenly lit upon the proof of a famous conjecture at the intersection of geometry, probability theory and statistics that had eluded top experts for decades. Some mathematicians, after years of toiling in vain, had come to suspect the inequality was actually false. In the end, though, Royen’s proof was short and simple, filling just a few pages and using only classic techniques. Any graduate student in statistics could follow the arguments, experts say. No one is quite sure how, in the 21st century, news of Royen’s proof managed to travel so slowly.

 

Boycott Hollywood, Return of Kings – While American peons are dishing out their hard-earned cash for the privilege of sitting in front of a flickering screen for couple of hours, Hollywood entertainers and producers are using that money to buy their next yacht, private island, and $18 million dress. The people who you are financing are somewhere between prostitutes and politicians in terms of moral rectitude. Sex scandals, Scientology, Satanism, and drug abuses among the entertainers are already well known, but there are also widespread rumours of the casting couch, and rampant pedophilia. And while they say nothing about the bankrupt morality of their fellow actors, they barely hide their contempt for white men, traditional values, and Christianity.

 

Scientism tyranny, Front Page Magazine – As a political movement now over a century old, progressivism was founded on the belief that new knowledge of human nature and behavior required a revision of the American political order. This faith in “science” was embraced by progressive president Woodrow Wilson, who wanted to discard the Constitution’s popular self-rule filtered through divided government and checks and balances, and replace it with administrative bureaus staffed by the “hundreds who are wise” who would guide and control the thousands who are “selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn, or foolish.” The ancients called this “tyranny,” a consequence of human nature’s lust for power and domination that frightened the founders and explains the structure of the Constitution.

 

1941. The RAF’s Martin Maryland

 

Um … the Martin what? Maryland. The Brits gave it that name. It was the runner up to Douglas’s A-20 Havoc . With no US contract but with the tooling in hand, it went into limited production—total of 450 built—for export to France and England. Martin wasn’t shut out of big time war contracts though, they went on to produce the legendary B-26 Marauder in large numbers.

The photo is of the RAF 39 Squadron in North Africa, the first British outfit to operate the Maryland. Vitals for the Maryland ain’t too shabby for a 1939-1940 light bomber design: 248 mph cruise speed, 1,300 mile range, and a 2,000 lb bomb load. It toted six .303 machine guns, of which four were in the wings for strafing, which made the Maryland thisclose to defenseless.