Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Beto gets the Bum's Rush

Beto the Burglar, perennial unsuccessful candidate for TX Governor, crashed TX Gov. Abbott's presser on the Uvalde mass murder, and got the heave-ho. Good!

"Obama General" runs the Oregon National Guard

I just watched the Governess Kate Brown Show on her Wildfire Conflagration Declaration (although she wasn't smart enough to use that proper term) on KPTV Ch 12. She mumbled through her part of the presentation, then presented various agency heads to give spiels.

I watched the Adjutant General of the Oregon National Guard, MAJ GEN Michael E. Stencel, with interest, since I am an Air Nasty Guard retiree and worked for the Adjutant Generals while I served in the Air Guard. Right off the bat, General Stencel goes political, profusely thanking (D) Senators Merkely and Wyden for getting the Oregon National Guard training money so expeditiously.

This caused me to issue a "HUH?", because other than their votes for the current NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), the Senators could have had NOTHING to do with getting that money out to Oregon in a timely fashion. That would have been the responsibility of the National Guard Bureau, and ultimately, Sec/Def Mattis, who works for TRUMP, last time I checked.

Next, this caused me to go to my study and get out the latest copy of the "Oregon Sentinel", the excellent quarterly put out for Guard folks (and whoever else cares to read it) by the Oregon National Guard Public Affairs Section. This issue is Vol. 16, No. 2, and it contains TWO articles on topic. The first, on Page 2, by General Stencel himself, is titled, "Oregon Guard uniquely suited for domestic response", in which he describes his job of leading the Guard, especially in readiness for exigiencies such as a bad fire season. He doesn't mention any Democrats in this article. The article is aimed at members and leaders of the Guard, is a very rah-rah article.

The second article, on Page 7, is titled, "Chinook helicopter unit prepares for homeland missions", and refers to the B Co, 1 BN, 168th Aviation Regiment, a CH-47D outfit operating out of Pendleton, Oregon. The article mentions that this helo unit is the first to be certified in "Bambi Bucket" water drops by the US Forest Service's Aviation branch flight-check section. This is where that NDAA money went first, the money that GEN Stencel gave credit for to Merk, our Jerk, and Wyden, New York's Third Senator, for getting these dollars to us.

Speaking of Oregon's two Senators, how did they vote on the 2018 NDAA, HJR 2810? According to this: they both voted "Nay", or no! The Bill passed the Senate 89-8, by the way.

So, GEN Stencel, do you think that maybe, just maybe, you might want to issue a clarification about your profuse thanks to the Senators who ACTUALLY voted to DENY Oregon the funding to train the National Guard for firefighting service?

If you fail to issue this clarification, General, we have no choice, sir, but to label you an Obama General, and if I know Sec/Def Mattis, Obama Generals are on his Do Not Retain list.

Trump's Mistake

Did Trump make mistakes with his Finland trip? Not until today. Today he tried to "walk-back" his negative comments about US Intelligence. That's a BAD mistake.

 

Instead of trying to kiss MSM ass, Trump should have realized that he can't EVER play their game, because the objective of that game is PRIMARILY to make him look weak and indecisive, and he DID look indecisive today.

 

How would I have played it differently? I would have made a full-frontal attack on all the lies and ommissions of the MSM, and there were doozies. None of the MSM has discussed the Browder Bribe. Only Fox, and they had to be dragged to it; only Fox has discussed the "open-mike collusion" between Obama and Medevev. Fox hasn't mentioned the Hillary "reset button" gaffes either. All those items are appropriate for POTUS to bring up as examples of how the Left doesn't understand Moscow and has never dealt effectively with Russia at all. Trump needs Reagan lessons.

 

Trump has started the process of dealing with Russia by just meeting Vladimir Putin to get to know him personally. He made the meeting notwithstanding the efforts of his Intelligence chiefs, who don't WANT his personal diplomacy involved, they want to do their smoke-and-mirrors thing, which Russia, using their tried-and-true "Maskirovka" or deception-moves, well knows how to counter.

 

Vladimir himself is more than equal to the entire motley crew of US Intelligence alphabet-soup agency heads. Putin, after all, for years ran the most effective spy agency on the planet. Trump well knew that history, and knew that the only way to beat Putin at that game was to use his PERSONAL diplomacy to get inside that deception and expertise, and he just did. That drew jealous howls from the Intell Chiefs. Trump needs to counter those howls with orders: STFU or be fired. He hasn't, and instead kow-towed to the bleating of the Chiefs and the MSM, who took up those cudgels for the Intelligence community.

 

As THIS pundit sees it, Trump can still recover: his letters demanding the Intell Chiefs' resignations need to go out tomorrow morning. While his pen is warm, he can write one for USAG Sessions, whose mismanagement of FBI oversight led to this Intell Putsch to some degree.

 

Kick some ass, Mr. Trump, and the day can still be yours. Stand pat on this kow-tow you just did, and you've just put the 11/6 election in jeopardy.

The Swamp won

Time to take off the gloves of politeness.

The only proper thing to do here from a Conflict Management point of view is to take out a major Swamp-rat. Part of me says that targeted rat should be Mitch the Bitch, but another part of me says take out a major rat who has fewer pawns protecting him, so I'd target John McCain.

Police profiling is not new, the Brits did it (Sir Robert Peel) some 180 years ago. My profiling training associates criminal propensity (likelihood of doing crimes) with demonstrated personality traits. In McCain's case, the man is personally a craven coward, but one with a huge ego. In my profiling experience, that makes him a VERY likely target for the #MeToo crowd, since these personality traits are common in sex-harassers. John McCain has only one protector of note, and that's his daughter Meghan. She is LGBTQEIEIO, so when her dad is attacked, she will interpose herself like the pawn she is. When she interposes, she will start spouting the usual LGBTQEIEIO drivel about haters, etc. If I was the OIC running this attack, I would be ready for that, and would have some Hanoi Hilton survivors ready to take HER on. Once that pawn is down, John the Rook is vulnerable, because John McCain is too stupid to even think about the protective moves of Castling (yes, Chess 101, despite my Dad being a Master, I never got much farther than Novice).

Given his fragile state of health, McCain is a soft target, but except for the Majority Leader, he is the best-known RINO. I think that when the heat is REALLY brought, McCain will retire. That gives AZ-GOP the opportunity to appoint a real Conservative.

If conservatives can take out McCain, there is a good possibility that McConnell will pass the baton.

Now, for Trump. POTUS has to realize by now that his GOP "Majority" was never worth the paper it was printed on. The chances of getting ANYTHING contentious through the Senate are remote. It is time for Trump to change modes. He was correct in trying to work with the system for his first year, but now it's time to get down and dirty. If he starts swinging a serious Hammer, he can make side-deals with the Asses in the Senate from his position of power.

The first swing of the hammer should target the Clintons. He needs a real "war-time Consigliere" now, so he might have to let Sessions go, since Sessions has more allegiance to the Swamp than to POTUS. Once he is definitely set on a path to indict the Clintons (both of them) for their obvious corruption, then the Donks will come to him and try to talk him out of it. I would strike a hard bargain if I were Trump: I would demand that ALL my nominations be fast-tracked to confirmation, and when that was all done, he could think about pardoning the Clintons. I might even raise the price of that deal some and demand all the confirmations PLUS the declared "resistance" is withdrawn.

Trump has good hole cards. He has the goods on Senator Fauxcahontas, on Senator Gillibrand and a couple others, all of whom have been mentioned as possible POTUS contenders in '20. He needs to use some of his clout now. Doing that will put the Left on notice that their gaining of one seat has meant nothing to them.

The game is BASEBALL, Mr. Trump, not slow-pitch mushball as you've been playing up to now.

The whole sorry GOPe story

By my most excellent friend and USAF veteran-buddy, David "Bacon" Gulliver (FB: https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=david%20bacon%20gulliver) (Twitter: @dvgulliver), we have a stream-of-consciousness report on the perfidy of the GOPe.

R.T.W.T.

"McCain loses. Romney loses. GOPe cabal leader schemes to win FL and OH at all costs. iJEB! and Kasich. Fill primary with as many GOPe losers as possible to split up the vote so iJEB! wins by default. Enter Trump. Assign sacrificial lambs to take out Trump without dirtying iJEB! or Kasich. Trump slaughters lambs. Get serious as voting approaches. Commission Fusion GPS to create smear campaign. Fund via a minor website, through a PAC, managed by a former Romney Campaign manager, to avoid a tie in to iJEB! or Kasich. Oh, and Ted Cruz is looking scary, try to frame him at the same time. Trump and Cruz are actually winning. Panic. Accept the reality that iJEB! is toxic, suddenly try to prop up Rubio to make the FL and OH ticket with Kasich. Shift big dollar funding to Rubio as iJEB! drops out. Have the PAC start running sleazy ads that attack Trump and appear to support Cruz to turn them against each other. Do it in Utah, where the GOP is strongest, to avoid worrying about turning off voters. It backfires as Trump remains strong and Cruz gains new ground. Now Kasich appears stronger than Rubio - shift gears to nominate Kasich and he can run with Rubio instead of the other way around. Prop up Kasich and take out Cruz by conning Cruz into an alliance where Cruz gives up on states he might have won so Kasich can win the swing states. In the narrowed field, Trump suddenly dominates and starts winning solid majorities everywhere. Plan to hijack convention. But now you are in so deep, if Trump wins, you are all in danger of going down. Strike a bargain with Hillary as your fallback in case Trump really is the nominee. Turn over Fusion GPS to Hillary and the DNC while launching a last-ditch #NEVERTRUMP movement. Despite all your combined efforts, including colluding with both the democrats and the media, Trump is still dangerously close to winning. Believing Trump can only win via a narrow Electoral College victory, turn to one state that could reject him and throw it back to Hillary: Utah, where you already poisoned Trump. Recruit an independent candidate with no chance of winning, but who could maybe spoil that one state. He's someone connected to the CIA and the deep state. Prop him up with a "respected" "conservative" media titan, who happens to be the father-in-law of the editor of the paper that funded your project. Meanwhile, one of your flunky relatives tells you about an interview he did with Trump a decade ago where Trump talked pretty raunchy. Find the tape and orchestrate a last minute smear campaign. Despite all your efforts, Trump is elected - and now too many people have their hands dirty and there is no way to clean this mess up. Send your cleanest looking GOPe elder in to beg for a job, from which he can orchestrate the cover up. Problem: one of your flunkies, known for being a rogue maverick, takes things too personally - so goes behind your back and delivers dirt to the Clinton-loyal FBI. Now Trump is sworn in, and your democrat deep state counterparts are muddying up the waters while you are trying to stay submerged. Time to go nuclear - bring in special counsel to go after Trump on fake charges while he directs the clean up from inside the DOJ. But it's too late. Too much dirt is already out and Trump's allies are already putting pieces together. Direct Fusion GPS to throw Hillary and the DNC under the bus. But they won't go down alone - so they reveal the original Republican connection. Now you need a patsy. That website that you used originally is no big loss. The editor is only an in-law to your main media man, after all... and that's where we are right now..."

There is is: you know what to do. (1) send no more $$$ to GOPe, (2) Re-register Not aligned Voter, (3) Get LOUD against the Deep State and the GOPe, however you can, (4) Maintain your firearms in Condition One, (5) Pay attention to POTUS Trump, no other political scalawag.

Transgender dysphoria in the US military.

Dysphoria definition from the dictionary.

Part of the deliberate effort to suppress American Nationalism during the Obama years was the neutering of the US military as a moral AND a power-projection institution. I am a military veteran (a retiree, actually), and my military service harks from the days when the military would never have even considered putting transgender people into it's uniforms. To show readers what current military WORKING leaders think, here is an NCO acquaintance of mine. 

The issue is straightforward (pun intended). The mission of the military involves killing people, following orders to kill people, and making plans to kill people and destroy property. The military USED to correctly believe that such a stark departure from the usual pre-enlistment up-bringing of it's members meant that it had to reject most psychological abnormalities it found during pre-enlistment testing. It's obvious: when the military is going to make kill-on-command the prominent concept of it's training, psychological barriers to that training such as gender dysphoria can't get in the way. Those are fatal flaws in the enlistment selection process, and up until Obama became Commander-In-Chief, those fatal flaws kept people who suffered from gender dysphoria out of the military. Under Obama, those afflicted people were ENCOURAGED to enlist, and now the US military has over 15,000 of them serving in Active and Reserve components. That's 1 percent of the 1.5 million serving actively, with another .8 million or so in the Reserves. That math shows that the gender-dysphorics constitute only two-thirds of one percent of the total force, so no big deal, right?

Wrong.

When it's considered that large amounts of administrative time has to be dedicated to supporting these dysphorics, new rules for handling them, etc, plus their impact on the forces FAR outweigh their total numbers. By intent, the military is a homogeneous group activity. The simple reason for that is that it's far less complex to control a homogeneous force than a force with disparate mental states. In fact, homogeneity is an absolute MUST-HAVE concept for the military. Maybe disparate mental states give the society at large a better chance at mental health, maybe not, but the military has no time for such debates when the bullets are flying, hopefully our bullets toward the enemies we want to kill.

Now comes a Service Commander, the Commandant of the United States Coast Guard, telling the world that he intends to ignore his Commander-In-Chief's directive that the US military services will not use gender-dysphorics any longer. Good-bye, Admiral, have a nice retirement. I hope that this starts an Exodus of all the "Obama Generals" (and Admirals) from the services. A better, stronger US military will result.

A different Threat, plus your responses

The events unfolding in San Bernardino show us a different threat. Not an unknown threat, just a different one.

We have been used to seeing various formats of homicidal/suicidal Jihad here: 9-11, the various Jihadi gun attacks since then, etc. All these attacks had one common characteristic: the Muslims involved were all determined to kill members of the Western Civilization, but pretty much stuck to methods which left their shock troops dead with the event. One-way attacks. Don't "pass go", Get your 72 raisins immediately.

With San Berdoo, we have just seen an attack in which the Jihadis had trained and prepared to strike with force and effect, but moved on quickly to, presumably, strike again later. Far from the normal homicide/suicide attack, this is more like revolutionary attack. This resembles what we used to refer to as a "partisan" attack. Similar to the tactics of the French or Yugoslavian partisans who attacked the Nazis during WW2. What we just saw could have been very successful for the Jihadis, and the only reason it wasn't, was better training and discipline/communication on the part of the police authorities.

My purpose here is not to figure out how to defeat this different flavor of Jihad, but to prepare the average citizen to survive it. Methods of defeat for the Muslim Jihad will have to wait for a National Command Authority determined to defeat Islamic Jihad itself, and we don't have such leadership now, we have the opposite. We have political and command leadership determined to NOT face down islamic Jihad instead of the other way around. The effect for John Q. Citizen is that he will probably have to face the shock troops of Jihad alone, possibly with the help of local police.

A personal note: I am trained in various aspects of public safety, and as events unfolded and were reported yesterday in San Berdnardino, I evaluated the events as if they were the result of criminal gang activity, since, to me, the events more resembled the activity of, say, Mexican drug cartels or the criminal gang MS-13 (both very active in San Bernardino), and both are orgs not unwilling to create mass murder to get their point across. I was wrong in that analysis, mostly because I applied the usual standard of homicide/suicide Jihad, then rejected it, and this event did not fit that model.

So, how to prepare?

1. Arm up. The protected citizen will be armed at all times, with handgun(s) within hands' reach at home and away, and a long gun close by as well. You will have to figure out how to conform to "safe storage" laws to accomplish this in your home and in your car (presumably, your "away" long gun stays in the car). At home, I have quick-reaction pistol safes (plural), and the long gun goes back in the big safe when kids are present, so I comply. In the car, I carry on my person as I am permitted to do, and my long gun is a Kel-tec folding rifle with internal lock, carried in a locking gun case, kept in the locked trunk of the vehicle.That complies with local law as well (it would NOT comply in CA or several Eastern states though).
2. Train up. At this point, if you have not already done so, join a local gun club or commercial firearms practice facility. Your preference should be one which has practice facilities for handgun (any caliber), rifle (any caliber) and shotgun. With the exceptions of no 50BMG and no full-auto, my club fits these requirements. You will need to allot sufficient funds for ammo, and/or begin to reload your chosen calibers. You will need to allot sufficient time to practice, probably a minimum of once per month in the training phase, and four times per year with all defense firearms as a maintenance-of-training effort.
3. Smarten up. Apply some common sense as to your selection of events to attend, particularly if you will be responsible for others' safety. Large outdoor events are Jihad targets of opportunity, as are crowded shopping malls. Organized athletic events in arenas and stadia are probably safer to some degree, but the Jihadis wouold love to target one for the kill ratio that they could achieve. Consider applying a sliding scale of risk to your life and it's chosen events. Yeah, that's a bummer, but we are at war, dude! You are probably safest at home, relatively safe out and about in your vehicle, safe enough doing shopping that is NOT done in large, crowded venues at peak predictable times. You are less safe in any public crowd, on mass transportation, at any outdoor event which has been heavily advertised as to attendance prospects. The training and/or dedication of your local policing authority is a factor in your relative safety also. Evaluate it.
4. Vote up. National elections are close at hand. Regardless of your political affiliation, you need to vote for your own safety. Safety is personal, and politicians and political parties which refuse to recognize your personal safety as their Job #1 should NOT get your vote. This is not about flavors of morality, this is about survival. See my note on National Command Authority, above.

Again, we are at war. The war has been brought to these shores by Islam, and it's not going to get "wished away", even though this seems to be the primary "combat strategy" of the current political Administration. YOU are responsible for your OWN safety, so make safety happen for you, NOW!

A final word. Religion. Your personal religious creed should give you the mental strength to survive the mental rigors of mortal combat. It is NOT required for that purpose, but if you hold to a creed, it will pay you to increase your attention to it in these anxious times. Your creed is your business under our Constitution. Your survival is a natural AND Constitutional Right under our system. You MUST consider anyone who attacks you for your creed or attacks your Right to survival as your enemy. Islam is attacking/denying both.

The Tan RINO resigns

...and the door WILL hit him in the ass, but not soon enough to keep him from caving the House in to Obama on the Planned Parenthood de-funding vote. He was going to be unable to resist a vote on his speakership, which he would have lost.

Christie FUBAR, again!

The 2A-stomping, Mafia-acting Governor of New Jersey, our favorite large bully, has done another stomping of the Constitution.

This hasn't made the MSM yet, and probably won't, considering said media are in bed with the homosexual lobby, but you can read it in World Net Daily, right here.

You have to RTWT, because this Christie turd is in the next-to-last paragraph.

To sum up, Chris Christie has now stomped on the First AND Second Amendments, his staff has adopted Mafia tactics to help their Godfather get re-elected, and the Godfather/Governor has yet to account for billions in Federal hurricane relief funds (not spent, not returned to the Treasury, and the moolah doesn't show on the Joisey books).

Is there ANYONE outside of NJ, who dares to call themselves an American, who would vote for this lump of a rumpkin?

I'll answer that: a lot of Democrats would. Maybe the real reason the Hildebeestie won't declare for POTUS is that the (D)onkeys are going to draft Christie...

C'mon, Rush...

According to this Newsmax article, Rush Limbaugh has hammered the MSM for sensationalizing the cold wave to further the aims of the Anthropogenic Global Warming Agenda fraudsters.

I have to call out Rush on this one. I have listened to maybe ten MSM TV reports on the cold wave, as they have been Story #1 for 4 days now, and not ONE of them mentioned ANY connection to any AGW bulltwaddle.

Yes, the previously-unheard term "Polar Vortex" was used, but the term was explained with the graphic Rush mentioned. That graphic is a standard scientific depiction of an upper-air low pressure area, which have been called (correctly) by the term "vortex" in the past. All the explanations of the displacement of the Arctic Low, or Polar Vortex, have been accurate.

If Rush had been premptive, he would have been correct, but he presented something as fact which didn't happen, the AGW connection to the new use of weather terminology, and I have seen none of that connection.

Technology changes, and so the language changes to present that new technology. That is normal and proper. The fight against the AGW fraud is trending in the favor of real science, and this trend is good news. Phony political hype against the trend of scientific correctness is not useful, no matter who slings that feces into the news-fan.