Rules for Comments

As I have started going through comments I started seeing the utility in reaffirming the ground rules as to what is acceptable and what gets deleted.  Please see the following criteria.

1.  Stay on point.
2.  Don't be a jackass.  If you feel you want to attack a point, great.  If you personally attack a commenter your comment will be deleted. 
3.  Links are perfectly fine so long as it is not to misinformation sites or hate groups.  However well intentioned, if I see a "godlike productions" link it gets deleted out of hand.  I got my orders.

If I may, I would like to directly address the troll(s) to this site.  I am not now, nor have I ever been a communist.  I am not a member of a secret society but I did make it through Air Assault school.  I honestly cannot muster a single feeling as to whom will win the election. I served 14 years active duty in the Army and did a few tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I was not a Special Forces Sniper Ranger Frogman Ninja Second Class, like everyone else seems to be, but I did some cool stuff and have no regrets.  I am not aware of any babies I may have killed or people of color I oppressed.  I am now a weekend warrior/civilian/student. I have three kids and am on my second marriage.  She is probably not interested in you.  I know I am not giving you much to work with but I know you will come up with something that will doubtless crush my soul and/or put me on the path or righteousness.

I feel like there should be more but this is really it.  Simple, right?

Change of Command

 

 

As many have observed, it would be a tragedy to simply let this blog go to archive.  This blog was the first of its kind dedicated to the principles of the three percent.  Mike, my father, started this blog with the intention to give himself a platform to educate and proselytize a very simple and profound message that no one should to bend a knee. Since its inception in 2009, Sipsey Street Irregulars has given a voice to a community of the last free men and women in this country.  This community has grown larger and flown higher than anyone could have dreamed.  People discovered that they were not alone.  This is a community stewards, not leaders.  Shepherds, not wolves. Mikes presence on this blog may have diminished but his message will not.  That is my charge and the promise I make to the community that has given him so much friendship and support over the years.  The voice on this blog will not go silent.

 

 

That's me.  I am not my father but I am my fathers son.  God only made one of him.  To say the least, the man can certainly turn a phrase.  The vision and clarity he gave us, dearly purchased over lifetime of street level advocacy, will be missed.  What I do have is his unwavering commitment to keep this blog and what he built alive and to advocate the founding intent of the III Percent.  I may fail some of you along the way.  I deeply apologize if I do.  I would ask that you give me some time to grow into these very big shoes that I need to fill.  



 

 

 

Getting down toward the end.

My apologies for no posts, but I'm in the end stages. The docs give me about 4 weeks and I still have a lot to get done before I check out. I'll have more later today (I hope) about projects still in motion but right now that's all I can muster. God bless you all for the many prayers and support you have extended to me and my family.

Nice to know we had the Constitutional criminal's attention.

House Memo Claims Eric Holder ‘Intensely Followed and Managed’ Fast and Furious Obstruction

The memo.

Magpul’s Oil-Bottle Grip Insert

Magpul Industries Corp., makes an accessory for carrying an oil bottle in some of their rifle grips. The MIAD/MOE Lube Bottle Core is an internal grip core that holds an included 1/2 ounce reusable lubrication bottle. It comes standard with the MIAD GEN 1.1 Grip. The Lube Bottle Core also works with the MOE, MOE-K2, and MOE AK Grips. It retails for $14.95.

"Donald Trump Tweets Like a Latin American Strongman."

Despite these differences, Trump shares a defining, insidious trait with Latin American populists as a group: the supposed championing of democracy, even as he erodes its foundations.

See also: Donald Trump, Hillary's stalking horse --"Donald Trump is the best thing that has happened to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race."

Reports of my death are only somewhat exaggerated.

Sorry, but it will take me until tomorrow to get caught up on tee shirt business. I've been knocked for several loops these past days. My apologies.

Gun show was a modest success, but plowed me under.

Came home to a house whose furnace/air conditioning doesn't work so we'll have to have that fixed ASAP. Will be trying to arrange that today and tomorrow. Those of you who expressed an interest in getting the last of the 100 Heads Life Insurance tees at the gun show price are welcome to them at $15-- per shirt plus shipping but you must, because the quantities are finite, arrange for you order in advance. That is, send me your order (color, size, quantity) BEFORE you send me the money and I will tell you what I have and how much it will be. Obviously email is faster than snail nail to the PO Box. At present we have a good selection of sizes and colors, but that will change. We only sold one shirt at the AGCA show, so get them while you can. There won't be any more procured to fill orders at this end. Remember, tell me what you what BEFORE sending any money and I'll reserve yours and tell you how many I can ship. This will prevent any hard feelings/refunds.

I will have a similar list of military surplus later this week, to be handled in the same fashion.

LATER, re: tee shirt inquiries: PLEASE INCLUDE ADDRESS TO BE SHIPPED TO AND UNDERSTAND THAT I HAVE NO TRIPLE X SIZES IN STOCK. DOUBLE X IS THE LARGEST WE HAVE. ALSO IF YOU GET BOUNCE BACKS ON THE EMAILS I CANNOT FIND ANY IN MY SPAM FOLDER SO YOU'LL HAVE TO SEND IT VIA SNAIL MAIL.

David Codrea answers my question on twisted soul trolls: "What Sort, Indeed."

A sadist/psychopath, Mike. An infiltrator/disruptor. Tellingly, someone who needs to, which means you're actually the one who has power over him. And yes, absolutely, a coward who must hide, because he knows what he is and is terrified others will see. Such a demon-haunted creature cannot be happy or loved, or even genuinely liked. Talk about pathetic.

"What Donald Trump Doesn’t Understand About ‘the Deal’"

I have spent much of the past few months trying to make sense of Trump’s policy proposals. His website lists his major priorities as, in order: health care reform, China-United States trade agreements, Veterans Affairs reform, tax reform, gun rights and immigration reform. There are no other issues addressed at length. It’s a puzzling mix. Any serious economic proposal to ‘‘make America great again’’ would surely mention education, fiscal policy, entrepreneurship and trade with the entire world, not just China — issues he makes little or no reference to. No doubt Trump’s list of priorities reflects the issues that he and his advisers perceive, probably correctly, to be red meat for Republican primary voters. But tellingly, it’s also a set of issues for which the ‘‘deal’’ — that is, Trump’s unique ability to make deals — can be presented as his crucial promise. . .

It’s easy to dismiss Trump as a loutish ignoramus who simply doesn’t understand how modern economies function. But I’ve come to see him as a canny spokesman for a different sort of economy, one that often goes by the technical name ‘‘rent seeking.’’ In economics, a ‘‘rent’’ is money you make because you control something scarce and desirable, whether it’s an oil field or a monopolistic position in a market. There is a bit of ‘‘rent’’ in nearly every transaction. When you pay rent on an apartment, some of the money is for the value the landlord has added to the property, by upgrading the kitchen, say. But much of the money your landlord makes comes from the fact that he or she controls property in a desirable location. If you think of the transactions that make people the most frustrated, they are, most likely, rent-seeking transactions in which some force is imposing a better ‘‘deal’’ for one party. Your cable service costs more and is less responsive because local monopoly allows the company to make a better ‘‘deal’’ for itself. The owner of the local pro-sports team can make a ‘‘deal’’ with the city for a new stadium, or else the team packs up and leaves town. Without real competition, one or both sides of a rent-seeking transaction lack leverage, and so decisions can be hashed out only by powerful people making deals in back rooms.

I learned a great deal about rentier economies, as they’re sometimes known, when I spent a year in Baghdad, covering the American occupation of Iraq between 2003 and 2004. I met many of Iraq’s leading businesspeople, and they always talked about ‘‘deals.’’ As one explained to me, there would be some business opportunity — building a hospital, say, or getting a license to import a new line of cars — and Saddam Hussein’s family would essentially auction off the opportunity to the handful of wealthy businesspeople whom they deemed trustworthy. Success came not from being better at building hospitals or more efficient at importing cars. It came from understanding the internal family politics of the Husseins and the power of the state bureaucracy.

As an economic journalist, when trying to explain the idea of rent-seeking, I have always used one quintessential example from the United States — a sector in which markets don’t function, in which excess profits are held by a few. That world is Manhattan real estate development. Twenty-three square miles in area, Manhattan contains roughly 854,000 housing units. But there are many more people than that who want to own property there. A Manhattan pied-à-terre has long been a globally recognized sign of wealth and status — especially in recent years, as billionaires the world over have come to see a Manhattan condo, even one rarely visited, as a vessel for laundered wealth or a hedge against political upheaval at home.

Manhattan real estate development is about as far as it is possible to get, within the United States, from that Econ 101 notion of mutually beneficial transactions. This is not a marketplace characterized by competition and dynamism; instead, Manhattan real estate looks an awful lot more like a Middle Eastern rentier economy. . .

But this descent into a rentier economy would only accelerate with a mentality like Trump’s in the White House. The native-born population of the United States is aging rapidly; without immigrants the nation would quickly face a disastrous level of debt. Middle-class workers may be struggling now in a changing economy, but a clampdown on global trade would only make that worse. Any health care reform that revolved around the president’s ability to ‘‘deal’’ would inherently be one more prone to corruption. In a rentier state, every ambitious person knows that the way to become rich and powerful is to grab the sources of wealth and hold onto them, by force if necessary. It’s no accident that, around the world, rentier states tend to be run by unelected dictators — the ultimate dealmakers in chief.

Exit Hillary, enter Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, hand in hand, (And Trump's chances dwindle exponentially.)

FBI chief James Comey and his investigators are increasingly certain that presidential nominee Hillary Clinton violated laws in handling classified government information through her private email server, career agents say. Some expect him to push for charges, but he faces a formidable obstacle: the political types in the Obama White House who view a Clinton presidency as a third Obama term. With that, agents have been spreading the word, largely through associates in the private sector, that their boss is getting stonewalled, despite uncovering compelling evidence that Clinton broke the law.

Kurt Schlichter: "Astonishingly, the Establishment Losers Have Learned Nothing."

"Even morons don’t slap their paws on a hot stove twice, but then the GOP Establishment would have to work pretty hard to rise to the level of “morons.” Exhibit A in the case against the cloistered, sheltered Ruling Class is the latest column from mainstream media conservative catamite David Brooks. I’d link to it, but I don’t want to send traffic to the hateful New York Times. Just Google 'David Brooks smug clueless jerk' and it should pop right up."

Brooks opposes Trump for all the wrong reasons. He thinks Trump is low class, which Trump is, but that’s where his analysis really ends. Trump, and his followers, are uncool – and even worse, they refuse to acknowledge the natural right of Brooks and his ilk to command them.

Substantively, except for Trump’s recent conversion to actually enforcing immigration laws (which offends both Brooks’ finely tuned sense of decorum and his desire to underpay his housekeeper), Trump and Brooks often seem agree on a lot – until Trump changes his mind and starts believing something else. Both are really centrists pretending to be conservatives. Both are terrible Republicans. And both are New York bubble dwellers.

But while Trump knows his market – people who aren’t New York bubble dwellers – it is only in this column that Brooks admits he does not actually know anyone who Trump appeals to. For that, he sort of apologizes and promises that in the future he will try harder to do better to comprehend the residents of the country he presumes to write about. So good of him. Hey Brooks, all is forgiven … you crease-fetishizing, sycophantic snob. How condescending. “Oh, I really should have understood the actual people who make up the conservative base better. Duly noted. Now all kneel before me!”

Understand that he’s no fan of Ted Cruz either, mostly because Ted Cruz is so uncouth that he actually presumes to fight the progressive elite that gently pats Brooks on his noggin and invites him to all the best parties, secure in the knowledge that on command he will obediently denounce, disavow and repudiate the same Republicans he is supposed to be representing.

So, Trump gets about 40% of the primary vote and Cruz about 30% and, while I did go to a public school, I still think that adds up to at least 70% of the GOP electorate voting for one or another candidate whose platform is essentially a middle finger to the people like Brooks who ran the party for the last 30 years.

We need to be clear on who the people supporting Trump are. I’m a Trump opponent, though I will vote for him against that evil harpy Hillary Clinton in the general because her combination of unhinged malice and bottomless stupidity will lead her to create a climate that invites lasting damage to the Union, including but not limited to actual violence. But many who agree with me about Trump’s perfidy are seeing what they would like to see rather than what truly is when it comes to the people who support him. SunTzu was very clear – you need to understand your opponent as he is, not as you wish him to be, to defeat him. So let’s understand who Trump’s voters are.

They are not leftists. There is this notion that Trump himself is a leftist because some of his positions are or have been (as if there is a difference with Trump) liberal. He’s not a leftist; leftists are socialists and hate America and Americans. Trump is many things, often all at once, but he’s not that. And neither are his supporters. To try and dismiss him as a leftist like Clinton or Sanders is counterproductive.

They are not just impoverished victims bitter because they can’t make Buicks anymore. There’s this meme that they are all dirt poor Appalachian oxy addicts, and that’s just silly. (Side Note: Kevin Williamson of National Review has gotten grief for his unflinching reporting on white poverty; I don’t agree with all his conclusions, but his gripping work is some of the best reporting out there and demonstrates that the underclass’s problems are related to a poisonous culture rather than to factors like race that liberals exploit.)

While there is a huge economic displacement component to Trump’s appeal, most of his followers are the “work hard and play by the rules” people who get disrespected by the elite (when people like Brooks bother to notice them at all) but who do much of the work building and defending this country. Note the prominence of American flags, veterans’ issues, and promises not to squander more lives on elitist-contrived Middle Eastern crusades at Trump rallies. And then there is the talk of prioritizing America’s interests – do not underestimate the appeal to Americans of a politician willing to take America’s side.

Trump fans are not all racists and xenophobes. A lot of conservatives have used the same kind of leftist slanders to tar these people that helped alienate them in the first place, hence the way Trump’s rejection of political correctness is always cited as a yuge part of his appeal. Sure, some of the people who glommed onto his campaign are freaks, but anyone who has ever been around any campaign knows that they all attract a few weirdos who won’t ever shut up. And while the media will never, ever interview the La Raza creeps with the Mexican flags and the unironic signs reading “U.S. Out of North America” at Sanders rallies, they’ll swarm all over the IQ-challenged self-proclaimed “Nordic activist” drawn to a Trump rally.

True, Trump’s followers refuse to follow the rules of the PC kabuki dance that coastal elitists instinctively adhere to when discussing issues of race, sex, or Islam. That doesn’t make them terrible – it just makes them honest. Sure, the coastal types who carefully refer to illegal aliens as “undocumented workers” may frown when some guy from Phoenix calls these criminals what they are – you think the kind of citizen who supports Trump would get a pass if he broke the law? – but it’s the elitists who are the liars. It’s the elitists using PC to cover up the truth about the economic disruption and crime illegals cause, not the Trump voters. The elitists need to change, not the Trump fans.

But, of course, change is the one thing Brooks never even considers. Sure, he now acknowledges the need to socialize with people outside of Manhattan, by which he no doubt means flying to Iowa next time and awkwardly picking at a plate of French toast in some diner adjacent to a couple farmers in John Deere caps, silently wondering if the butter was locally sourced and counting the minutes until his flight back to La Guardia. But Brooks displays no intention whatsoever of altering any of his views based upon what he claims to have learned. Illegal immigration? Nope, he’s still at “Shut up racists.” Guns? Nope, he’s still at “Let me determine what few weapons you hicks should be glad I allow you to keep.” Obama? Nope, he’s still at “We can’t possibly actually oppose him – look at those creases!”

See Brooks, you and your buddies haven’t really learned anything because you haven’t shown any inclination to change anything. Deep down – actually, not that deep down – you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. You think your own base is stupid and easily led, and you’re just mad because they are too smart to let you and your ilk lead them anymore.

See you at the show again today.

Tables to the left of show in E row. Deal of the day, 100 Heads tee shirts @ $15.00. Lots of MOLLE and ALICE gear still available.

See you at the AGCA show this weekend,

Prices for surplus will be VERY competitive.

Black robed rapist.

Utah woman sues prosecutor — now a federal judge — alleging he sexually abused her in 1981

Surplus Ammunition: How It Gets From There (Ukraine) To Here (Canada).

Not exactly "Lord of War."

What you've got to ask is what sort of cravenly person wastes invective on me?

Comments from below:

At 5:17 AM, brave "Anonymous" said...

"About the only thing anyone wants with your "papers" it to recycle it as ass wipe you arrogant little prick.

At 7:31 AM another brave anonymous (perhaps the same one) wrote:

"How ridiculously self important. You do understand that you are just a blogger? An unimportant little man, to be forgotten. No one wants your "library" because they don't want to hire labor staff to throw it in a dumpster. You have wasted both your life and your death on self worship and stubborn pride. You are thing to pity and then forget, not study and remember."

I will be setting up at the Alabama Gun Collectors Show this weekend.

Drop by for some dynamite sales on military surplus.

In my search for a repository for my library, I stopped by the Berman Museum yesterday.

A magnificent collection in Anniston.

The Obama conspiracy against the Constitution that keeps on killing.

Fast & Furious guns tracked to police killings, 'El Chapo' hideout, ATF confirms