Just got off the phone with Anthony Bosworth. Trying to get the FBI to understand about the exponential function of the 100 Heads Life Insurance Concept.

I congratulated Anthony on his day today, and urged him to make a complete set of notes of what was said during the five hours that DHS and FBI held him (saying he was under arrest but never Mirandizing him). They did hold onto his weapons and are further holding the prospect of other charges over his head. I was particularly interested that the FBI was particularly interested in talking to Anthony about me. Nice to know I'm living in their heads rent-free as well. (Maybe they can get with Gottlieb and split the cost.) The FBI, it seems, is particularly interested in the national armed civil disobedience movement. It really must flummox them. We don't fit any pattern they've seen recently (not since, I suppose, the Deacons for Defense and Justice) and have no institutional memory (nor, apparently, the native intelligence) to equip them to deal with people who are not criminals in the traditional sense and can't be frightened or blackmailed into becoming snitches. I received another call yesterday to say that the Fibbies are particularly concerned about the concept of the One Hundred Heads Life and Casualty Company. They are, it seems, interested in knowing which particular one hundred heads it refers to. What morons. I don't think they've figured out that it is not merely 100 heads of the tyrannical Mandarin class -- of the warmakers and decision takers -- that are at stake but of some exponential function of 100 heads. Something like the chart below:

Of course, if they don't start nuthin', won't be nuthin', as they say down in the Gate City neighborhood of Birmingham. This, too, I don't think they've figured out. Of course anybody who pays SPLC to fill their head with collectivist lies and calls it an "intelligence briefing" can't be expected to be bright enough to figure that out on their own, I guess. If they were, they wouldn't be threatening folks like Anthony, who surely is insured by the 100 Heads L&C Co. as much as I am.

New fundraising offer. 100 Heads Life Insurance Tee Shirts

Now available: 100 Heads Life Insurance Tee Shirts in red, blue, black and green. Sizes from small to XXL. The cost is the same as the hats -- $20 per plus $5 shipping for one. Add $2.50 extra shipping for multiples. You may pay by clicking on the PayPal donate button to the right or by sending your order in the form of cash, money order or check made out to Mike Vanderboegh to PO Box 926, Pinson, AL 35126. Be sure in any case to a. Specify size and color and b. send a USPS recognized correct shipping address along with your order.

The Bad Sleep Well -- "A comedy as black as a hanged man’s tongue" -- Akira Kurusawa meets Simo Häyhä in my vacation dreams.

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis.

Folks,

Now that I'm home I can be plain about where I was since Monday. My womenfolk plotted a vacation (our first in years) without my input and hijacked me to the Panama City beaches for three days more or less of decompression. It was wonderful. Both my daughters were on spring break at the same time, so it was a rare family get together. It was great.

With my diabetic hamburger feet (which although much improved over last year still are not healed), I was not able to walk on the beach (and the temperatures were such that swimming was out of the question). So, during the times that the girls were out on the sand, I watched cable.

Now cable has been absent from my house since, oh, many years anyway. We had it disconnected to preserve the girl's moral education from cultural contamination and it worked out quite well. After the conversion to digital, we elected not to spend any of our slender resources on even a box, so nowadays we have no television whatsoever, using it only to watch tapes and DVDs. It'll probably be another decade before we bother with Blu-Ray. ;-)

Anyway, being a vacation I only occasionally watched the news channels, preferring the old movies of AMC and TCM. Thus it was that I came to watch an Akira Kurusawa movie I had never before seen, The Bad Sleep Well.

Seven Samurai and Yojimbo are two of my all time favorite films and I have both in my collection on VCR. As far as the bare bones of the plot of The Bad Sleep Well, I refer you to the Wikipedia reference linked above.

A better analysis of the film can be found here by Chuck Stephens, entitled The Bad Sleep Well: The Higher Depths.

He writes, in part:

A gray flannel ghost story in which the living haunt the dead, The Bad Sleep Well (1960) remains the least appreciated of Akira Kuro-sawa’s midperiod collaborations with Toshiro Mifune—a fate for which we have only the other Kurosawa-Mifune films to blame.

Outswaggered by Yojimbo’s rambunctious ronin, who skulked into the imaginations of audiences the following year . . . (t)he Bad Sleep Well has kept to the shadows of the director’s oeuvre. A fitting place, perhaps, for a film whose bitter intent—to throw open the windows of Japanese corporate corruption and air out the stench—is staged as a series of haltingly revealed motivations, haggard resurrections, and harrowing defeats. Fitting, but hardly fair. . .

What rendered Kurosawa’s contribution to the shakai-mono so distinctive was his transformation of the lone-hero paradigm of the American western in ways that demanded of his heroes a sense of personal responsibility for the social ills of their era, even as they complicated and contradicted that demand by questioning, and finally despairing entirely of, the possibility that even the most enlightened individual crusaders might somehow triumph over the indifference of institutionalized inhumanity and corporatized moral disdain. Born of the most heroic mannerisms and impulses, Kurosawa’s cinema increasingly came to describe a world where heroes weren’t allowed, and the more one struggled toward righteousness, the farther one would inevitably fall. . .

Fueled by personal anguish, a man called Nishi (Mifune) concocts an elaborate plan to bring down a cabal of upper-echelon construction company men—led by the implacable Iwabuchi (Masayuki Mori)—with apparent ties to the inner circles of Japan’s highest government officials. Nishi’s motivation: to avenge the murder of the father he never knew, a midlevel executive driven to “suicide” to preserve his superiors’ positions. His method: infiltration by matrimony, as Nishi marries Iwabuchi’s daughter and becomes his father-in-law’s apparent right-hand man. . .

Typically Kurosawan, however, is the degree to which, beneath that opening babble of whispered insinuations and whiskey-lubricated screeds, the film’s moral core waits coiled in all-too-telling silence; and though he is mute for the first thirty minutes of the movie, it is Mifune’s stoic Nishi who will soon be shown as the poker-faced pivot around which the film’s every action and reaction will revolve. The straight man behind an ever-tightening noose of clever manipulations and manic reaction shots, in a comedy as black as a hanged man’s tongue, Nishi bides his time in silence, waiting for the moment when the movie’s mottled mirth will be written on the faces of the middlemen through whom he plans to topple Iwabuchi . . . Mifune’s vengeful Nishi redefin(es) the ronin as a shaved, showered, and freshly bespectacled samurai without severance pay, and the three corporate stooges he’ll sacrifice in the course of his plotted vengeance as ripe for redirection as any of Rashomon’s relativity-challenged and easily bamboozled bush boobs. Yet, in their dressed-for-boardroom-success finery, that ill-fated threesome come across as even greater buffoons—especially Nishimura, who gives the panicked performance of a lifetime—and Kurosawa exaggerates the trio’s hypertheatrical descent into the maelstrom with a fistful of greasepaint and a succession of -loaded locales: shadow-choked suburban lanes, demolished munitions factories, cryptlike bunkers, and a construction site that seems to have opened a direct portal to hell.

The moral question at the heart of the film is this: do Nishi’s ends—exposing the evil that company men do—justify his means? Is his merciless exploitation of Iwabuchi’s daughter, the haplessly handicapped Yoshiko, warranted to avenge his father’s death and strike a blow against institutionalized corruption? Shatteringly, the film admits no solutions, climaxing only in Nishi’s ultimate admission of failure—“I guess I don’t hate them enough”—and in this, it remains the most bleakly modern of Kurosawa’s black-and-white shadow plays: a pulverizing vortex of midnight phone calls and offscreen murders that ultimately swallows the valorous and smothers the innocent, while forever masking the faces of the mighty and the malign. . .

These, finally, are the real meanings of The Bad Sleep Well: a wide-eyed accumulation of symbolic subversions and devastating widescreen distractions from what are perhaps the director’s darkest conclusions about the efficacy of individual heroics in the faceless modern age. Ikiru or Ikinai—to be or not to be? No, that’s not the question. What Kurosawa means to ask us—even as he asks it of himself—is, how do you topple a sleeping giant when you’re shackled to the very shadow upon which it surely will land?

I have written before of my suspicion and disdain of individual crusaders and super heroes.

Tyrannies especially cannot be undone by even a gang of "super heroes" but must be overcome by thousands upon thousands of CITIZENS fighting in common cause. Unless the political continuum is transformed by these people who fight for principle not for party, the result of elite vs. elite conflict for the rest of us is always "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

Iwabuchi's arrogant yet easily rattled henchmen, who Nishi plays each off against the others to come within an ace of bringing down the whole rotten structure, resemble nobody else so much as the hapless Harry Reid, the Botox-frozen Nancy Pelosi and the faux-tough Rahm "Dead Fish" Emanuel.

Following The Dead Sleep Well, I flipped over to FOX news, breathless with its presentation of the "Demon Pass" maneuver. I dropped off to sleep thinking of "One Hundred Heads" as applied to the corrupt tyranny of both The Bad Sleep Well and the "Slaughter solution."

And in my slumber, I ran into Simo Häyhä.

White Death: the Sniper Who Killed 700 Soviets in 100 Days

Wed, Mar 17, 2010

Ensconced in the snow, his white camouflage suit rendering him invisible to the invading Soviet soldiers he stalked, Simo Häyhä steadied himself to fire. During the 1939–1940 Winter War, in temperatures as low as –40 °C, the Finnish sniper undertook a killing spree that saw him single-handedly take the lives of at least 700 men in less than 100 days. Over 500 of these he shot using a standard, bolt-action rifle with non-telescopic sights. Is it any wonder he earned the nickname The White Death among his enemies? Meet the man who would take Rambo to the cleaners.



The sharpshooter who would later be credited with the highest number of confirmed kills in any war in history came from humble rural beginnings. Born near the present day Finnish-Russian border, Häyhä was a farmer and hunter before entering combat, though it’s no shock to learn he already had his share of marksman’s trophies. His skills sharpened by the sort of training only life can offer, this tough little outdoorsman was always going to be a handful, and when the Red Army invaded Finland three months after the outbreak of WWII, Häyhä heard the call of duty.



Little was the operative word. Häyhä stood just 5 ft 3 in (1.6 m) tall, which was one basis for his choice of weapon, an M/28 or M28/30 Soviet Mosin-Nagant rifle that suited his small frame. He also rejected a scoped rifle in favour of basic iron sights for other reasons: it meant he presented less of target as he could keep his head lower; it negated the risk of his position being exposed by sun glare in a telescopic lens; and lastly open sights were not prone to fogging up or breaking which was a concern in the snow and ice of the Winter War. Häyhä was a professional.



Of course an iron-sighted rifle also made aiming more difficult, but with 505 confirmed kills as a sniper – the other 200 he shot using a sub-machine gun – Häyhä clearly had a keen eye. Another tactic this greatest of gunmen used to conceal his own position from the enemy was to compact the snow before him so that his shot would not disturb the snow, and in true commando fashion he also kept his mouth was full of snow so that his breath did not give him away.



Despite such measures, Häyhä’s fearful reputation preceded him, and the advancing Soviets tried several strategies specifically designed to dispose of this deadly lone menace. Teams of counter-snipers and artillery units were deployed with the sole purpose of eliminating The White Death, but the snow-covered forests of Finland were his hunting grounds, not theirs.



Eventually, however, the Finnish sharpshooter’s exploits caught up with him. On March 6 1940, he was shot in the face while on the frontline by a Russian soldier. The exploding bullet went through his jaw and blew off his left cheek, with the soldiers who picked him up and brought him back to base reporting that “half his head was missing”. Yet Häyhä – said to be a quiet, affable man – was still able to survive, awakening from his coma on March 13, the day peace was declared.



The heroic stand taken by Simo Häyhä and his fellow Finns against Soviet forces that outnumbered them by as much as 100:1 is often referred to as The Miracle of Kollaa. When the war had ended, Häyhä was promoted straight from corporal to second lieutenant. He went on to become a successful moose hunter and lived to the age of 96. When he was asked about his service, he stated, “I only did what was ordered, and did it as well as I could.” Asked what the key to his success was, his short answer was, “Practice… and clear days.”

Sources:

1. Wikipedia entry.

2. Brief Background On Simo Häyhä

3. Simo Häyhä: The White Death - World's Greatest Sniper

In my sleep I wandered back and forth, fragments of past and future, fiction and history jumbling together and caroming off into gray clouds was the question: What would Simo Häyhä (or was it Nishi with a rifle?) do if he could have done it all over again? What could a hundred of him do? What indeed could a thousand do, motivated in an open source insurgency, striking again and again at the "domestic enemy" command structure until it collapsed?

Simo Häyhä took 700 Soviet heads in 100 days. My unknown Marine Corps scout-sniper promises 100 heads in an unspecified time, but a hundred heads nonetheless. Certainly he has the skills to do it.

Yet Simo Häyhä targeted Soviet pawns, and his country, although nominally retaining its independence, became a Soviet pawn itself as the Winter War gave way to World War II gave way to the Cold War. They are still not fully free of the claws of the Russian bear.

My Marine Corps scout-sniper, I am confident, will not make the attrition warfare error. He will, like Kurusawa's Nishi, go straight for the guilty parties with maneuver warfare precision -- instead of working undercover within the corrupt organization, he will begin making involuntary personnel decisions for the enemies of the Constitution from 800 meters, as Häyhä said, "on a clear day."

Had Häyhä been able to go after high-ranking Soviet functionaries -- the Queens, Rooks, Bishops and Knights on the game board -- Stalin, even mighty murdering collectivist Stalin, would have resigned the game earlier and more decisively than in 1940 and the Finns, like the Swiss, would have secured their complete independence from outside interference for generations.

Nishi, an essentially good man who falls in love with his enemy's daughter, ultimately fails because, as he confesses, "I guess I don't hate them enough." Yet, if there are merely ten Marine Corps scout-snipers like my anonymous friend or even one modern American Simo Häyhä motivated by the principles of 4th Generation Warfare, our present day would-be tyrants would quickly hide, run away or die, for there are no emotions to cloud this very real battlefield.

Kurasawa is right, the bad do sleep well. They lose no rest whatsoever over the innocents they victimize, rob or kill with their insatiable appetites for more money, more power, more control.

There is, however, more than one kind of sleep. Simo Häyhä provided the sleep of the grave to 700 Soviet pawns. Pelosi and her ilk, the self-anointed royalty of our modern American chess board, are secure in their arrogant tyranny because they think they have a whole lot of pawns in front of them, shielding them from direct accountability for their depredations of liberty and property.

My, won't they be surprised?

Mike
III

"Involuntary personnel decisions." If you are playing chess for your life and liberty, screw the pawns. Go after these guys.

No big surprise to us, but Bill Morlin of SPLC was at the Liberty for All rally. The US Marshal's Service issues threats by way of SPLC. A reminder that the One Hundred Heads Life and Casualty Company has a group policy on Liberty for All.

Bill Morlin, SPLC toady, former hack "journalist" and intimate friend of the FBI and ATF.

I knew about this ahead of time (you may recall I mentioned it here:

5. I also know that it is reported by sources that the Southern Poverty Law Center has (again, just like Elohim City in the pre-OKC bombing days) its own snitches in place in Spokane who are seeking to work their way into the ranks of the armed civil disobedience movement. They are also researching a big hit piece on the WA state activists. The timing of that "expose" will tell us much.

We received this confirmation by email after the event:

Facts not mentioned in info about the rally at U.S. Courthouse was the fact that Bill Morlin from the Southern Poverty Law Center was on scene. I know him for when he was a reporter for the Spokesman Review and talked to him on site. He went to work for them a few years ago. Just thought you would like to know.

Here is his "report": "Armed Protesters March on Federal Courthouse in Washington."

Morlin's usual M.O. is to sidle up to participants without identifying himself (or to say he is a "journalist" which of course is a lie now that he's working for SPLC) and goad them into making incendiary comments. This usually works with neoNazis and other weak-minded fools, but apparently he couldn't use that to great effect on us. Or perhaps he was just keeping his distance because he expected federal-inspired violence. He sounds positively dispirited with this observation:

It wasn’t immediately known what caused federal authorities to balk and not allow the protest in spite of the issuance of a court order on Monday by Chief U.S. District Court Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson. A public notice released Thursday by U.S. Attorney Mike Ormsby and U.S, Marshal Craig Thayer said anyone coming on the plaza or attempting to enter the courthouse with weapons or firearms would be subject to arrest for contempt of court and violating federal law.

However, it would seem from this comment at SPLC that there is a fall-back plan. One "Joel Lawler bwd1967" writes:

My friend at the USMS tells me that they have clear pictures of every swingin' Richard that entered the plaza carrying a weapon, and that arrests pursuant to 18 U.S.C ss 900 will be made in the near future on an individual basis to protect the public and the arresting officers. Sounds like a sensible plan to me.

Of course, the One Hundred Heads Life and Casualty Company has a group policy on all members of Liberty for All. So I guess anytime the United States Marshal's Service feels froggy. . .

LATER: I left a comment there which I will repeat here since i doubt it lasts long: "Mike Vanderboegh to Joel Lawler: Nice way to start a civil war courtesy of the 100 Heads Life and Casualty Company."

Defiance: The Armed Civil Disobedience Movement. "How many of us are they willing to see dead?" Speech, Alabama Firearms Freedom Conference, 21 February 2015.

You know, I was glad to hear Jan Morgan from Arkansas. My second (and last) wife Rosey is from Arkansas and she told me very quickly when I met her thirty years ago that Arkansas girls don't divorce, they commit homocide, so I'm with her 'til I die, one way or the other.
 
I am here today to brief you on the national firearm rights movement -- on where we are and where we’re headed and the news is not good.  What I am about to say is unpleasant and many of you will not like it.  I don’t like it myself.  The only thing I can tell you is that it is the unvarnished truth.  If you feel better being spoon-fed horsecrap and wishful thinking, you should have invited someone else.  Wayne LaPierre or Alan Gottlieb, maybe.  I’ll try to wrap this up as fast as I can so that we might have time at the end for your questions.  If not I'll try to hang around after the last speaker.

You may thank the Lord that you are Alabamians by birth and Southern by the grace of God.  This accident of lineage and location has shielded your liberty, your property and your lives from a predatory state government.  We have had the luxury here today of discussing how to move the cause of firearm rights forward in our state – if, that is, we can just get past the Boss Hoggs and Roscoe P. Coltranes of the Alabama Sheriff’s Association who are more concerned about preserving their petty powers and the gravy train of the permit system than they are about our God-given liberty and the constitutional oaths that they swore before the Almighty to uphold.

Count yourselves lucky.  For the last two years I have been traveling behind enemy lines to states whose citizens are not so lucky.  And “behind enemy lines” sounds like a comic exaggeration but believe me, it is not.  In such states as CT, NY, MD, CO and, most recently, WA state, the authorities have passed a series of Intolerable acts banning and registering firearms and magazines and, yes, even registering their owners – for that is what permits and background checks are really all about.  Why worry about registering firearms when you can register their owners?  After all, it’s those potential trouble makers the government is really interested in controlling – not crime and not criminals, oh, no – they are interested in controlling you – us – ALL of us – In controlling us and stripping us of our means to resist their appetites for our liberty, our property and yes, our lives.

You know, Rudy Guiliani got in trouble the other day for daring to say that he didn’t believe Barack Obama loved his country.  Now I don’t pretend to know what evils reside in the innermost being of Barack Obama.  Only God knows that.  But I will venture to defend the President on this point: I think Barack Obama loves his country – No, I really do.  The problem is that HIS country and OUR country are two DIFFERENT countries.  Oh, we share a common border and (mostly) a common language but we are divided along the lines of the answer to this eternal question – does the government serve the people, or do the people serve the government?  In Barack Obama’s country the people exist to serve the government. 

In our country, the government exists to serve the people – mostly by staying out of our way and leaving us the heck alone.  This is how the Founders intended it.  It is why they gave us a constitutional republic of limited powers securing the rule of law -- NOT the rule of man -- NOT the rule of A man -- no matter how many of his fellow citizens consider him a demi-god and blindly vote his tyranny into power.

We are two countries, ladies and gentlemen, and the sooner you recognize that fact the clearer everything else becomes.  Barack Obama loves his country.  We love our country.  The only question is which vision – which country – which answer to that existential question is to prevail?

Do the people serve the government or does the government serve the people?  What do you think?

And if we are honest enough to admit that we inhabit two different countries with two mutually exclusive world views, then let us be honest enough to call the people on the other side by their proper description in language that the Founders would understand–-- indeed, in their own words that they left us with so long ago.

When someone declares his appetite for your liberty and your property at the threat of naked government force against your very life – and takes steps to make that happen -- in contradiction to the Constitution and the rule of law which the Founders crafted -- then such people should be called what they plainly are – DOMESTIC ENEMIES OF THE CONSTITUTION.   Let us be that honest, at least, for there is no other way to accurately describe them.

The people who pass these laws hateful to God-given, natural and inalienable rights know EXACTLY what they are about.  They know what they want regardless of whatever soft lie of the moment they wrap their naked ambition in -- no matter what velvet glove they cover the iron fist of predatory government with --  What they want is power.  Power over you and power over me.  Power to tell the rest of us what to do, how to act and even what to think.

But standing in their way, as the Founders intended, is US -- the armed citizenry of the Republic of the United States.  And so they have to set out disarm us -- to strip us of our weapons if they can, but in any case to persuade us that resistance is futile.  For if we swallow that lie we will have lost the battle before it begins and the weapons we own mean nothing without the will to use them.  So the first battleground of this war between the collectivists and ourselves is between our own ears – where lies attack the truth and fears can immobilize principle.

“We have the power,” they say.  “We won an election, so we have the power.  Do what we say, or else.”  To which I would reply, “Or else what?”  For the truth is that the rule of law protects THEM from US far more than it protects US from THEM and they should try to remember that when democracy turns to tyranny, the ARMED CITIZENRY STILL GETS TO VOTE!

They are learning this enduring truth -- these domestic enemies of the Constitution -- in states such as CT.  They are being taught this lesson by a determined minority of their own citizens who have declared that will NOT comply with unconstitutional laws.  They will not comply no matter what promise of state violence threatens them for their non-compliance.

How do I know this?  Because these same people from CT & MA, NY, CO and WA state invited ME into their homes.  They take me in, letting me spend the night, KNOWING that they will all be moved up on the list they're already on -- or that they will be placed on another list --  They do it KNOWING it may cost them everything AND THEY DO IT ANYWAY.

THEY WILL NOT COMPLY.   And you know what?  The proto-tyrants who issued their diktats don’t know whether to defecate or go blind.  A good example of this is CT and after numerous trips up north behind those particular “enemy lines,” I am still amazed at these new practitioners of the art of armed civil disobedience.  They are few, they are brave, they are magnificent in their defiance.  Who knew that Yankees still had it in ‘em?  But they do.  The Founders would be proud.

You may recall that right after Sandy Hook, the state legislature up there passed a law mandating the registration of all semi-automatic rifles and even their magazines – and we’re talking hundreds of thousands of rifles and literally millions of magazines.  The penalty for non-compliance was a Class D felony.  And what happened?

Two years ago this April, in the aftermath of that law, I spoke at a huge rally on the steps of their state capitol and told those assembled that if the state wanted to make them criminals that they should embrace that fact and try to be the best, most successful criminals they could be.  I urged them to “Defy, resist, evade and smuggle” in resistance to that law.  As evidence of my seriousness of purpose, I announced to the crowd that I myself had smuggled in thirty-round AR-15 magazines in defiance of the ban.  I dared the authorities to arrest me.   Of course surrounded as I was by thousands of armed CT citizens, that probably wasn’t the smartest thing they could have done, so they didn’t.

But I had the luxury of flouting their law and then coming home to the great free state of Alabama.  My audience didn’t.  They were stuck behind enemy lines.  And what happened?
 The deadline for registration came and went and it was estimated that there was an EIGHTY-FIVE PERCENT NON-COMPLIANCE RATE!  EIGHTY- FIVE PERCENT.  Perhaps as many as a hundred thousand CT firearm owners – perhaps more – simply refused to comply. 

They said, like Leonidas at Thermoplyae and the Texans at Gonzales, “Come and take them.”

The state government blustered, made threats of gun raids and then did, exactly, nothing.  Of course part of their calculation may have been that yours truly published a list of the legislators who had voted for this Intolerable Act on my blog --- along with their home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.  And you know what?  They didn’t react well to that.  No, not one little bit.  It seems -- and it’s a funny thing -- – but it seems that people who like to put people on lists don’t like to BE on lists themselves.  Go figure.  Of course they did open a criminal investigation on me for that and for my continuing smuggling activities in defiance of their law.  However, late last year I went back to CT to attend a gun show and, frankly, to give them the chance to arrest me.  And you know what happened?  Exactly nothing.  I’m probably going back there this coming April, marking the two years since the beginning of the armed civil disobedience movement in CT.  So they will have another chance to arrest me.

But here’s the thing.  Since the enactment of the law, the state government has been looking at one hundred thousand of its citizens over rifle barrels -- those of the state police and those of their previously law-abiding citizens -- and beyond empty promises to the firearm confiscation lobby and occasional growling, the “authorities” have not dared to enforce their diktat.

Has that stopped their appetite for their fellow citizens’ liberty and property?  Oh, hell no.  Here is a portion of the final report of the Sandy Hook Commission.  It just came out last week.  And what do they further demand?   Why, the registration of ALL firearms, the banning of all so-called “assault weapons” and their magazines, the state screening of all firearm owners, and here’s my personal favorite on Page 59: “require that any shell casing for ammunition sold or possessed in CT have a serial number laser etched on it for tracing purposes.”  I kid you not.

But of course, this begs the question: “If your state government is afraid to enforce the hateful laws you already have on the books, what is the point of passing more onerous laws?”  The firearm owners of CT have already nullified these laws by armed civil disobedience.  Is it the intention of this state commission to actually enforce even more onerous and unconstitutional laws to provoke a civil war?  How many of our lives, and those of our families and other innocents, is it worth to these collectivists to enforce their appetites upon us?  A thousand?  A hundred thousand?  A million?  Six million?  Ten?  How many of us are they willing to see dead?

And the armed citizens of CT -- who are yet free and intend to remain so -- live with this question every day, wondering what the answer will be.  Every day they go home, they have to wonder if their home has been invaded, their property confiscated while they were away.  Every night they go to sleep, they have to wonder if tonight is the night that the state will send armed men -- paid by their own tax dollars -- to work the tyrant’s will upon them and their innocent families.  So, like I said, consider yourselves lucky to be living in Alabama.  These questions need not trouble your sleep, but they should.  They should because what happens in CT, or in any other state now “behind enemy lines,” will not STAY in CT.  It will, in a short time, come here, to visit you.

For if the state of CT should decide to go to war with its own citizens, then the “authorities” will find out quickly what was like for Custer at Little Big Horn.  And they will have but one alternative: to call  upon the federal government to send its militarized police and indeed, the military itself, to come help them attack their own people.  And then?

This is not entirely unexplored territory.  Back in the 90s when I was in Constitutional militia movement, the FBI in the aftermath of the OKC bombing and with the Freemen standoff happening in Montana, became extremely solicitous of the intentions of those of us who had sworn there would be no more free Wacos.  In the middle of this, the FBI Special agent in Charge of the Albuquerque NM field office met with a good friend of mine, Bob Wright of Lea County NM.  Bob was a militia leader of national reputation and commanded the 1st Brigade, New Mexico Militia.  After some preliminary fencing, the SAC got down to the question he needed to know the answer to:  “Bob, if this Montana thing turns out badly like Waco, would you really take your unit up there to fight us?”

Now, we had no love for the Freemen.  In our eyes they were petty criminals who had victimized their neighbors.  But we also determined -- we had sworn to ourselves and to our God -- that the federal government would enjoy no more free Wacos.  We viewed the Freemen as proper subjects of state police enforcement and for us the FBI poised to carry out another Waco was intolerable.  So when the FBI SAC asked Bob if he would take his unit to Montana if things “went south,” Bob looked him in the eye and said, “Why would I want to do that?  There’s plenty of you Federal sonsabitches around here.”

Now this was an aspect to the situation that the FBI man had apparently not previously considered, and witnesses report that his eyes grew wide and his jaw dropped a bit.  In the end, we didn’t have to find out.  Just like at the Bundy Ranch this past April we didn’t have to find out, although that was much more of a close run thing.  But the Bundy situation bore all the hallmarks of Waco --– federal militarized police abuse, the demonization and isolation of the intended target -- and that is why it got the response from an aroused armed citizenry that it did.  Those of us who went out to Bunkerville NV didn’t necessarily believe that Bundy was right.  But we knew that whatever his conflict with the federal government, it didn’t excuse another Waco.  That we got another Freemen result and not a Waco result, however, was, as I know from being there, mere chance.  For we are, as I said, two countries.  And that question has yet to be answered.  But just like Bundy Ranch, a shooting war in CT, or Co, or NY, or Washington state, would not be a local affair.  It would start a bloody civil war in the entire nation and that civil war would, in short order, come to visit us all here.

These are not pleasant thoughts.  They are the reality that has been growing in this country for some time, although it has hardly been reported by the so-called “mainstream media.”  But then the Fast and Furious scandal, which I had the humbling duty and honor to break the story with the help of my friends back in December 2010 was largely ignored by the media as well.  That didn’t mean it wasn’t the truth.

And the truth is that civil war is possible precisely because the possibility of such a conflict is not being reported -- precisely because people -- especially people on the other side -- do not think it is possible because, well, this is America in the 21st Century and things like that can’t happen anymore, can they?  I assure you that they can.  To believe otherwise is to whistle past the graveyard of our own history.  I am currently reading a remarkable book, An Empire on the edge: How Britain Came to Fight America by the English historian Nick Bunker.  Bunker points out that while Lexington and Concord came as a surprise to many, there were a small number of both American colonists and Britons who foresaw the possibility and would not shrink from it.  Nathaniel Greene, later one of Washington’s best generals, wrote as early as July 1774: “Soon very soon expect to hear the thirsty earth drinking in the blood of American sons.  This was a full nine months before Captain Parker’s demonstration of armed civil disobedience on Lexington Green led to the “shot heard ‘round the world.”  Commenting on Nathaniel Greene’s prediction, Bunker writes:


In the eighteenth century, treason could take many forms, with the sword or with the pen.  Long before . . . general (Gates) arrived in Boston, and even with the war a year away, we find young patriots in America already committing lines to paper that might have sent them to the gallows if any british spy had read them.

You know, I am reliably informed that Eric Holder’s Justice Department has had a sedition investigation going on me since before I broke the Fast and Furious scandal story.  The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has called me an “insurrectionist” and the Southern Poverty Law Center -- a misnamed and misbegotten bunch of liars for money if there ever was one -- has long had me on their list of dangerous folks.  I have even been the subject of an 18 and a half minute rant by Rachel Madcow on MSNBC and Bill Clinton, that paragon of moral virtue, has denounced the Three Percent movement that I founded in a speech on national television.  Well, as my friend Kurt Hofmann, says, “It is better to be despised by the despicable than admired by the admirable.”

But the fact of the matter is that this cold war I describe between the federal government and its citizens has been going on for 20 years now, and I am proud to say that I have been on the enemies lists of the last THREE White Houses, irrespective of party.  I am at least an equal opportunity gadfly.  But despite the name calling by the other side, I am not seeking an “insurrection” nor soliciting civil war but I am trying to prevent one.  The men and women behind enemy lines who, now that every other means of defending their essential liberties have failed, and have turned to armed civil disobedience are trying to prevent one as well.  Only by convincing the other side of the seriousness of our purpose and the credibility of our deterrence will we avoid one.

Again, these are dark and bloody thoughts but they are not new for some of us.  Back in January 2009, I had been working on the David Olofson case and other ATF scandals when one day, in my post office box, I received an anonymous envelope.  It was postmarked from somewhere in Oklahoma. It said this in handwritten block letters:

“Sir,

I have read you on the internet and believe in what your doing. One day the ATF will come to count coup on you & take your head. I promise to take One hundred heads for yours.

Cheyenne 0317/8541”

There was a small, delicate ink drawing on the bottom of the sheet, showing what appeared to be a coup stick crossed with a tomahawk and over-arched with eagle feathers. 0317/8541, for the uninitiated, are the current and former MOS numbers for a Marine Scout/Sniper. 

One hundred heads. I sat in the car, reading and rereading this piece of paper, touched and frankly shaken by its simple sincerity. I had no doubt the man meant what he said. It is a token of the power of the written word to evoke such a response.  I also had no doubt that a Marine scout/sniper had the skills to take a hundred heads if, God forbid, this should come to guns. I shared this with a friend at the time and he had only this blunt comment: "A hundred heads properly targeted could finish this thing." Indeed.

Now I did with this what I always do, I wrote about it on my blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars, and it became somewhat of a dark running joke, albeit a deadly serious one and it picked up a life of its own.  One reader embraced the idea and crafted a teeshirt reading “100 Heads Life and Casualty Company,” with a little mound of skulls in the center.  And then, stranger still, I would go places, speeches, rallies, gunshows, even the NRA convention, and people would come up to me, shake my hand and say, “One hundred heads, sir,” and then walk away.  It wasn’t a discussion they were seeking, it was a declaration of intent.  It wasn’t approval they were looking for, it was just, well, a valediction.  For the honoree this is quite a two-edged sword for the action promised, you may recall, is predicated upon his own – MY own – demise.  Yet it is somehow strangely comforting that my life has been insured these past six years by the entirely voluntary and absolutely free of charge One Hundred Heads Life and Casualty Company.  Who knows, maybe it is one reason I’m still alive.  We have since, by popular demand, begun selling “One Hundred Heads Life Insurance” ball caps in order to raise money for the armed civil disobedience campaign.  Some of them are on sale over at my table here, along with these "Fight Tyranny, Shoot Back" hats -- IF you are looking for headgear that comes with a free personal FBI file at no extra charge.  But I offer this story -- which like all the best stories has the advantage of being true -- as evidence that some of us, like Nathaniel Greene and his contemporaries of the Founders’ generation, have been thinking about this sort of thing for a while.  If a civil war breaks out in CT, or in Washington state, tomorrow, we at least will not be surprised.  Horrified, saddened, like everyone else.  But not surprised.

I mention Washington state because that is where the latest front of armed civil disobedience has been opened.  Back in November, you may recall, Michael Bloomberg and some other millionaires bought themselves a mandatory background check law by referendum, called I-594.  Now, the so-called mainstream gun rights organizations had only themselves to blame for this fiasco because they couldn't restrain their petty jealousies and refused to work together lest the other group get the credit for the win -- and I’m talking here about the NRA and Alan Gottlieb’s bunch.   The only thing was, they lost.  Immediately there sprung up an “I Will Not Comply” organization that held a rally on the 13th of December to not only protest the new law, but to break it, and dare the state authorities to do anything about it.  They were initially granted then denied a permit.  They said, “fine, we don’ need no steenking permits.  We’re still going to have our rally.”   “Well arrest you,” the state police threatened.  They told the state police, “hey, do what you gotta do.  We’ll do what we gotta do.  Your move.”

I was honored to be invited to speak in front of a group that I estimated at 2,000 folks (the WSP said it was more like 1800, but that still made it one of the largest firearm rights demonstrations ever held in the state).  We gathered, armed, we broke the law and . . . nothing happened.  We were even congratulated by the state police for the professional manner with which we carried out the protest.  Last month, I went back to Olympia to help with another armed civil disobedience action after the state legislature banned firearms from the galleries.  Again they threatened to arrest us.  Again we said, “Fine, do what you gotta do.”  And what did they do?  They locked the gallery doors on us.  In a word, they wimped out.  So we trooped, about a hundred of us who gathered on a day of awful weather, through the state house, served our list of grievances by taping them to the gallery and governor’s office doors and then marched over to the governor’s mansion where we startled a gate guard by presenting the same petition and then, having knelt in prayer, adjourned.

Now in the process of all this law-breaking, the Washington activists presented me with this.  All firearms being female, meet Mrs. Bloomberg.  I call her Charlotte when nobody’s listening.  She is named for Michael Bloomberg’s mother.  It seemed only fitting that if I was breaking Bloomberg’s law that I give at least a tip of the boonie hat to the nanny state fascist who motivated me to do so.  It is my intention to tote Charlotte around to every other armed civil disobedience event and speaking engagement that I attend from now on.  And the next one in Washington state ought to be a doozy.

You see, the armed civil disobedience resisters out there are hosting an arms expo late in June -- a background check free gun show --– and they are again daring the authorities to do anything about it.  I’ll be there, toting Mrs. Bloomberg, and daring right along with them. 

Armed civil disobedience has a long, honorable history in America.  From Captain Parker to the Battle of Athens TN in 1946 to the Deacons for Defense and Justice during the civil rights movement to the Bundy Ranch standoff, Americans have been opposing government-sanctioned violence by putting their own bodies on the line with determination in their hearts and firearms in their hands.

This is no surprise to black Americans who, like Condoleeza Rice’s father stood armed guard over Martin Luther King while that advocate of Gandhian non-violence slept, made safe from Klan violence and Sheriff Bull Connor’s Klan-member deputies by their .38 revolvers and .45 automatics.  Throughout our history Americans have been a practical people and when the regular means of sustaining our rights and our liberties have failed, we have always turned to our own resources.

Is it dangerous?  You bet.  Is it desirable?  No way.  But it is sometimes required.  You live in a free state.  But there are people in this country who do not.  There are people who, thanks to the domestic enemies of the Constitution in their states, now live behind enemy lines.  You may disagree with them.  You may condemn them.  They may make you nervous.  They may make the authorities nervous.  Heck, they make me nervous.  But they are meant to.  As Jefferson observed, where the people fear the government there is tyranny.  Where the government fears the people, there is liberty.

But remember, whatever you think of them, these armed civil disobedience activists, you sleep safe at night, safe from the arbitrary exercise of government violence.  They do not.  But however you react to them, they are there, they are not going away, and the conflict that their oppressive state governments force on them will likely come to your door anyway -- if it happens, accidentally or intentionally, it will come to all of our doors.  This is the new reality, the new paradigm.  This is the state of our two countries, the one that Barack Obama loves and the one that we love.  And they will tell you, they will say to anyone including Barack Obama if he asks, that if you don’t like it you’d better ease up out of their faces, get your hands out of their pockets, off their property and liberty as the Founders intended  before something goes wrong.  “Be careful what you wish for,” they will quote the old Chinese adage, “because you may get it.”

As for me, I am honored to stand beside them, these brave men and women behind enemy lines.  I am honored and I am humbled but I will stand with them until God, according to his own plan, calls me home.

Thank you.

And remember folks -- Fight tyranny, shoot back.

Hat update.

If you haven't yet received your hat order, here's why:

I sent out all the hats I had on hand -- 40 -- and those of you lucky enough to be on that list got them before Christmas. I am waiting to take delivery (promised for today) on the balance. Much to my frustration, the embroiderer had a machine break down and put off her delivery until after Christmas. All remaining orders should be out of here and on the way by Wednesday. Sorry for the delay. There will be hats of both types -- "100 Heads Life Insurance" & "Fight Tyranny, Shoot Back" -- still available after that, in black and dark brown.

Casting Call for New Sipsey and III% T-Shirts

After a ton of interest to resume the 100 Heads Insurance Co. T-Shirt sales and after the past couple of days worth of hobnobbing with my fellow conspirators, we have decided to kick this thing off again.  But instead of my untalented butt making the designs up, we decided it would be better to pool from among the community and see what we can come up with.  From what I have seen, the amount of talent in this commu ity is staggering and I know we have a ton of folks just sitting on designs.

Rules for submission:

The designs can be a simple text or graphics.  No real rules as to the content, other then that they have to be either original work or open source materiel.  Also, please keep it relatively PG13 clean.  Submit your design in a pdf or ppt format to sipseystreetirregularstshirt@gmail.com by September 2nd, 2016.

Gifts and Prizes

So what is in it for you other than the prestige and a lifetime's worth of III% street cred?  Well, I have had a couple of training vouchers and some loot to give out to the winners.  More will information will follow as to whom and how much.

Just a note though on what happens to the money:

I have not, nor will I ever, personally see a dime for anything generated from Sipsey Street Irregulars.  I don't do ad space and I like it that way.  I think you do too.  The link to Mike's paypal account will remain up in perpetuity, and all donations go directly to his widow.   The proceeds of the shirts will go to fund Patriot causes like smuggling magazines, funding Patriot events, etc.

Please keep in mind that submitting the designs or text, just like any other design contest, you will forfeit all claims of intellectual property.  The only people who will benefit from this will be other patriots.

Also, if you know of any small patriot run business that wouod do these shirts in batches, please let us know.  I would so much rather support the little guy than a Cafe Press.

News of the T Shirt Front

I am super excited to announce I had a long talk with a great patriot over at Grunt Style, and soon we will have a custom Sipsey Street/III% design that you can purchase through their website.  We will hash out the details for the design, and I will let you know what comes of it.

A little about Grunt Style; it is a Veteran owned and operated small business that designs and manufactures exclusively in the USA.  I can personally attest to the quality of their products, (they  back up their work with an unlimited lifetime guarantee), and fully endorse this company as they have endorsed many Patriot causes and groups in the past.  Quite simply, it would be impossible to find a better outfit to make this happen.

In the future, we will still re-produce the original batch of the 100 Heads shirts as well as incorporate some of the incredible ideas that have been submitted.  I am still working out the bugs on finding a good source for that.

Click here for the link to Grunt Style.

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.

Entries in the "100 Heads" Logo Contest

These are all courtesy of Alvie D. Zane. Feel free to chime in or add you own. For new readers unfamiliar with the concept, go here.

Mike
III

The arsonists of the BLM (Burning Liberty Malevolently). Today I visited Sugar Pine Mine, met the owners and the Oath Keepers running security.

From left to right: Sugar Pine Mine co-owner Rick Barclay; some old fart who wandered in; Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes, Sugar Pine Mine co-owner George Backes. BLM, kindly note the 100 Heads Life Insurance Company hat on the head of Mr. Barclay, their newest customer.

I am exhausted, sitting in Winnemucca NV in a cell phone black hole with five more hours to go tomorrow before we get to SLC. There is some kind of confluence of conventions in this casino town and we got the last room at the inn -- a stinking hole of a smoker's room. Today I met with the co-owners of the Sugar Pine Mine which is under attack by the cabin burners of the BLM and many of the Oath Keepers security detail who are there to secure the site from attack by the federal government. I will have my own report tomorrow, hopefully, but in the meantime, please check out this letter from the local Oath Keeper's leader to Congressman DeFazio:

May 28, 2015

The Honorable Peter DeFazio, House Representative

U.S. House of Representatives

2134 Rayburn Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

RE: The Sugar Pine Mine and the Bureau of Land Management

Dear Congressman DeFazio:

As you may be aware, the Oath Keepers of Josephine County, Oregon were contacted in April of this year regarding recent confrontations instigated by the Federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) against the owners of the Sugar Pine Mine in Josephine County located in your congressional district.

Upon receiving their inquiry, I met with the property owners and have been presented with evidence of alarming and unwarranted actions that have been taken by representatives of the BLM without substantiated legal justification and in clear violation of the owners’ constitutional rights under the law.

The BLM threatened to assume ownership (unlawful search and seizure) of the property on April 25 without due process as guaranteed by our U.S. Constitution in addition to threats of destruction of

equipment and related assets. Over the past several weeks, the Oath Keepers have been securing the

property from unlawful invasion and the threatened destruction of their equipment until a resolution is achieved. The landowners are currently awaiting the provision of requested legal documents, their review by legal representation, as well as an appropriate meeting and/or hearing to vet the issues associated with their property ownership and mining rights which date back to the mid-1800s.

Throughout this process, BLM representatives have been largely unresponsive and hostile, using intimidation, harassment and threats to coerce your constituents into surrendering their property apart

from lawful justification. Such bullying tactics by government staff are an affront to the rights that every citizen of this country has been guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution – the founding document that many federal, state and county employees and officeholders haven taken an oath to uphold.

Although the Sugar Pine miners were only recently granted a temporary stay with assurances that the

BLM will defer action until legal issues are resolved, this action is insufficient to allay concerns

associated with the abuse of power and multiple, serious allegations of BLM officials’ overreach.

Furthermore, while the stay delays BLM action, it does nothing to facilitate the ability of the miners to work their claim.

 

Additionally, as a result of the Sugar Pine Mine situation, numerous landowners and mine owners have come forward with serious allegations of harassment and the unlawful confiscation and willful destruction of property by the BLM here in Oregon as well as in other states. We have been provided with compelling evidence that various staff members within the BLM have represented the Bureau in an unlawful, threatening, self-serving and destructive manner.

Therefore, regardless of the ultimate outcome of the Sugar Pine mine case, I respectfully request your active engagement in pursuing an internal investigation to expose and correct any and all symptoms of a tyrannical government culture. These include allegations of harassment, coercion, the unlawful confiscation of property, the destruction of property, and violations of the American Antiquities Act by various staff members and officials within the BLM on a broad scale.

These allegations should be investigated internally and results presented publicly. Furthermore, in the event that these allegations are substantiated, such unprofessional conduct should be expected to result in the discipline, suspension and/or termination of the staff identified.

We have compiled a list of various BLM staff who have been identified as among those who have violated standards of conduct as well as a variety of federal statutes, rules, regulations and/or protocol.

We have also received credible testimonies from other mine owners whose properties have been unlawfully confiscated and/or destroyed by the BLM. Documentation to support these allegations is available upon request.

On behalf of the Oath Keepers of Josephine County, I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

JOSEPH RICE, Coordinator

Oath Keepers of Josephine County

 

JR:me/cb

cc: Ms. Sally Jewell, Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior

Mr. Neil Kornze, Director, Bureau of Land Management

The Honorable Jeff Merkley, U.S. Senator

The Honorable Ron Wyden, U.S. Senator

Members of the House Natural Resources Committee

Members of the Senate Natural Resources Committee

 

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.

John has a long mustache. Safe as a bug in a rug in Buckeye land.

Stand down, my dear 100 Heads friends, I am still alive. I will be having a belated T'giving dinner with my mother tomorrow and will be free to do a meet-n-greet either Friday evening or Saturday morn. Email me if you want to get together. Am using a borrowed computer and will try to do some posting by about mid-morning tomorrow. Hope y'all had a blessed Thanksgiving. Do not forget Who it is we give thanks to.

Note to the 100 Heads Life and Casualty Company: Not quite behind enemy lines yet. . .

Left late, rough traffic. Made it as far as just short of Winchester VA on I-81. Will be in Hartford area by noon tomorrow, Lord willing. Still looking for a venue to have dinner-meet-n-greet Friday night in Hartford area. Any suggestions? Send via email.

A note to the 100 Heads Life and Casualty Company.

Am safe on the ground in Colorado Springs, although I had another interesting occurrence with my computer this time. More tomorrow but right now I'm beat.

By popular demand, another hat available for purchase.

Like the previous fund raising hat offer, these will be $20 each, with $5 shipping and handling for the first hat and $2.50 per hat thereafter on multiple orders. As neither will be ready for shipment until this coming week, if you wish to have a previous order for one of the "Fight Tyranny" hats changed to "100 Heads," drop me an email.

Where the 100 Heads Life and Casualty Company works on its actuarial skills.

This intense training course makes US Marine scout snipers the deadliest shots on earth.

A Homework Assignment

As I am sure many of you know, the email and home addresses of many Democratic party staffers have been leaked.  This presents us with a wonderful opportunity to speak directly with men and women behind the men and women that represent you on Capitol Hill.  These are the gatekeepers of the Representatives and the same people that write the legislation to cut away at the very rights that were passed down through centuries,  They pick the winners or losers of a debate.  These are the deaf ears that your cries for "not one more inch" have fallen.  What will you tell them now?

What will you tell them?

I suggest educating them on the errors of legislatively backing a people up to a wall.  You can tell them that you will not be disenfranchised anymore.  Let them know of the ruinous foreign and domestic policies have only created unending poverty and conflict.  Let them know what their illegal immigration policies have cost you or about the elections they have stolen.  You can send them a copy of the III% Catechism and Valediction to let them know who you are.  There will be no Fort Sumter's on our part but there will be a genuine refusal to obey unjust laws.  You can send them your latest range card or target score cards.  You can let them know that their small tyrannies will be answered.

If nothing else.. let them know that the 100 Heads Life Insurance Company sends its regards.

Click on this link to see who you can tell.

Once more about hats.

With the exception of five readers located in Georgetown PA, Fountain & Pine CO, Woodlands & Lubbock TX, everyone should have their hats no later than tomorrow. If you do not, then please drop me an email. The exceptions were for those whose shipping addresses somehow got separated from their orders, but they are all in the boxes now and ready to ship when I get the scratch to do so. I apologize again for the various delays, most of which I can ascribe to never having done business with the embroiderer before and thus making plans (and worse, announcements) based on promises not kept.

A number of you have asked for an explanation of why, once I had hats in hand, it still took a few days to get them in the mail. You see, I procured the hats on a volume deal, but had to pay for them all up front. Then I had to arrange for the embroidery (half up front and half upon delivery). What that meant was that I had a lot of up-front costs that had to be paid out, which I did, but it beggared me. Then, once I had them in hand, I had to pay for the shipping. Of course, y'all had sent in your money by various routes so I had that to work with, but it was barely sufficient to accomplish the task. And of course there was no way of knowing how many I would need, so I guessed, allowing for enough to take me through the first quarter of the year. In the end, now I have about 200 hats left of both types (Fight Tyranny & 100 Heads) and both colors (black and dark brown) so I figure that that ought to do it. The problem is that after the up-front expenses and shipping I am only now "cracking the nut." The sales of the hats from here on out will be what I use to operate the various campaigns on.

However, at the moment, for those aforementioned folks in PA, CO and TX, I'm still short the money to ship them and will do so no later than next Wednesday when I get my pennies from the empire. (Or, if I get one more order in the PO Box, I can ship them with the money enclosed in it.) This is all very boring and mundane, albeit frustrating, stuff, but you asked for an explanation and that is it.

Updates

I have been trying my best to answer mail requests and comments but I am still woefully behind.  I owe it to each person that supports the 3% movement and contacts me through this blog, the email addresses, or now through Facebook, a timely and considerate response.  Due to the overlap in information requests I would like to address a few recurring questions.

Question 1: How is Mike doing?
Still ornery as ever. As good as to be expected.  "Fair to middlin', partly cloudy" as he would say. He has been spending most of his time tying up loose ends such as finalizing a will, tinkering with Absolved, meeting with old friends, and generally still being a thorn in the side of the enemies of liberty.  There is still much to do and I think that has been keeping him going.

Question 2: T-Shirt Sales
Regretfully, t-shirt sales will have to be put on hold for the foreseeable future.  I would like to start exploring a Cafe Press or other online t-shirt company where fans can get SSI logo merchandise,but that will be well into the future.  There still exists a quantity of original 100 heads shirts but I cannot say for certain what colors and sizes remain.  I deeply apologize that I cannot give you a concrete answer as to when the remainder will be made available.  Though I am not personally aware of any remaining orders, if you have paid money for the shirts and not received any, please send me the date and amount you sent as well as any pertinent shipping and contact information.  You can reach me at sipseystreetirregulars@gmail.com.

Question 3: Absolved
This being the 300 million dollar question on everyones lips.  With a bit of luck, the Old Man will live to see this book become a reality.  I assure you he wants nothing more than to be able to make good on his promise to put a copy of the book personally in your hands.  If he cannot, that will fall on the family.  As the final work of Mike Vanderboegh, I vow to you that I will make this a reality.  It will go out first on Kindle and then on paperback.  Absolved will not be an unfulfilled dream.