The Reynosa tiger has, unfortunately, been captured on our side of the Rio Grande. I thought that it had most likely been stolen by one of the cartels but I was wrong. Although it entered the river opposite the Junk Yard Bar in Granjeno it was driven west by the border walls (not hard to predict) and probably exited the border wall belt at the Bensten State Park. The cat then worked the scrub lands making a beeline for Star County where there are plenty of cattle and scores of wild Ocelots. It was trapped outside the hamlet of Los Longoria most likely by Texas Game Wardens. It will probably be returned to the Quinta La Fauna Zoo which, given Mexico’s international ranking of #3 for animal abuse is a crime against nature, but property rights, not animal rights, animates our legal system so I suspect there is little choice in the matter.
If the tiger had made it across expressway 83 he would have been home free in Star County
I have been asked by several of my former Marine Corps associates how I could support President Trump after his competency, executive skills, and temperament were called into question by the four-star Marine Corps and Army Generals who worked for him. The answer is as simple as it is infuriating, they dumped on Trump only because it was well inside the Overton Window of our failed intelligentsia and its rent-seeking nomenklatura. Those four-star conformists would have never, in a million years, done the same to Obama, Clinton, or Biden because that would jeopardize their access to the riches showered upon the upper echelons of our ruling class. It doesn’t matter that Obama’s surge with its announced end date was exactly the kind of White House incompetence that they railed against as junior field grade officers. It doesn’t matter that they despised Willy BJ when he was in the White House for his gross sexual assault on an unpaid intern. If you asked about the disparity in power between a sitting president and an unpaid intern, which is the modern definition of rape, their answer would be it’s time to move on.
The last time I saw two of those generals (Allen and Mattis) in person was in the CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, where I had been summoned to explain how The Pentagon’s Private Spy Ring worked. I worked for General Allen when he was a major and knew him well, I met General Mattis only once when on active duty and did not know him at all. The Pentagon had cut ties with us after the second New York Times front-page fake news article about the ring. So our founder, retired CIA legend Dewey Clarridge, started a password-protected website, put our intelligence there, and gave the password to selected journalists and members of the House. They saw, in real-time the cost of ignoring our intel when suicide bombers hit ISAF exactly where and when we said they would. They saw how quickly we found the kidnappers responsible for grabbing two sailors who had mistakenly driven into Wardak province and then witnessed the consequences of ignoring our offer to mediate when the surviving sailor was killed. His kidnappers panicked when ISAF flooded the province with soldiers. exactly what we predicted would happen.
In August of 2008, my cell (the Willi cell) sent this to Dewey Clarridge and told him Osama bin Ladin was living there. That’s how good we were at the intel game, making us an existential threat to the regime intelligence apparatus, who drove a stake into us via their useful idiots in the media.*
I thought that Generals Allan and Mattis would be thrilled at having an effective human intelligence operation up and running inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, but I thought wrong. Winning was not on their agenda, pleasing Obama was their priority, so the last thing they wanted was an effective HUMINT network gumming up the works as they focused on a hasty retreat mandated by a nitwit of a president. Criticism of Obama was outside the Overton Window of the movers and shakers in Washington, DC. The yellow generals would claim they were respecting the office, not the man, but that changed instantly when the Bad Orange Man was in office. Trump represented the same threat to the political class that our Eclipse Group presented to the CIA so the rules about deportment around a sitting president suddenly changed allowing the yellow generals to use their prestige to kneecap him.
Yet it turned out Donald J Trump had good instincts when exercising the office of the presidency. He called out our NATO allies for underfunding their defense while expecting us to fight for them. He made this country an energy exporter driving costs down with cheap oil and natural gas. He closed the border and instituted a stay-in-place policy that made a dent in the sexual exploration of children being trafficked across our southern border. And he salvaged the Supreme Court by installing a couple of almost conservative justices. The “chaotic, unfocused, undisciplined” Trump White House was a godsend compared to the disaster we have been living through ever since FJB waddled his corrupt ass into the Oval Office – and not a word from the four-star high-functioning conformists who were more than happy to trash Trump.
Biden and Harris intentionally abdicated their responsibility to secure our borders which is one of the basic functions of government. Now we have armed gangs from Tren de Aragua taking over buildings in Aurora and Chicago. Towns like Springfield Ohio are being colonized by thousands of feral Haitians who lack the ability or intentions of assimilation while establishing their enclaves from which they can raid the public parks for ducks and swans to eat. The incompetent city leaders of those unfortunate locals mimic their federal overlords by lying about these situations until too many social media posts pile up to ignore. The Regime media, as usual, labeled these reports as unverified rumors until evidence of their veracity became undeniable.
Fact check – there is no credible evidence (according to the legacy media) that your lying eyes are telling you the truth – Haitians eating local park waterfowl have been “debunked” despite police audio proving it’s true. There is a video of police arresting Haitian woman for eating her neighbors cat but that too is a figment of your imagination according to our gas lighting media.
The invasion of millions of illegals comes with a worsening competency crisis in every nook and cranny of the federal government. We watch in stunned silence as our tax monies are wasted, we can’t staff our military, we can’t recover stranded astronauts without the help of private contractors, we can no longer even build a temporary pier, and we are incapable of holding transparent, fair elections. The basic roles of government are being ignored leading to a deep and pervasive legitimacy crisis for the Regime. Challenging the consensus on which the Regime based it’s post World War II identity is a new line of attack on their legitimacy which explains why the Regime and their adjuncts on social media freaked out over the Tucker Carlson interview of Darryl Cooper.
The Shibboleths of the progressive left, feminism, egalitarianism, DEI, tabula rasa, and anti-white racism do not square with how things work in the world. Darryl Cooper and those who understand how reality operates are now free to fire broadsides into fake progressive media narratives without repercussions. Instead of being destroyed by the ensuing hysteria from the White House, Regime media, (and the Powerline blog), he is now the number one downloaded podcaster in every category on every podcast hosting site in the world. That would not have been the case five short years ago indicating a major shift to the right of the Overton Window.
Everyone wants to believe they would be this guy if they came of age in 1930’s Germany. Based on his work I think Daryl Cooper is the only person I know who could claim this title. The rest of us … not so much.
Alternative media podcasters should be able to argue that a morbidly obese alcoholic who worked from his bed all morning may not have been that great a man without automatically being labeled an anti-semite or holocaust denier. But being labeled by the left no longer matters. The regime media can engage in the fact-free sliming of opponents as right-wing extremists all they want but when every person not down with their agenda is labeled a “right-wing extremist,” the words have lost their meaning. This explains why the American media is no longer trusted or believed by any adult proficient at exercising their own reasoned choices.
* The full story of the Eclipse Group will be found in the new book Free Ranging Afghanistan scheduled for publication in the summer of 2025.
Yesterday an adult tiger escaped from the Quinta La Fauna zoo, which is outside of Reynosa and on the banks of the Rio Grande River. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ( OCED) ranks Mexico number three in the world for animal abuse so the poor cat may be in no condition to swim the Rio Grande River. If he does he would be heading for the quant hamlet of Ganjero home of the Junk Yard Bar.
The Junk Yard Bar could be in for an interesting weekend
Of course the tiger would have to navigate a series of border wall fences that would drive him a little west towards the Bentsen Rio Grande State Park. The Bentsen park is about to fill up with bird watchers for the bi-annual hawk migration but not to worry, the park is full of armed border patrol agents and Texas State Troopers who spend their days rounding up illegal human migrants but I’m not sure what they would do about a tiger. Shooting the poor beast would not go down well with the public on this side of the river and I don’t think local animal control officers have the ability to tranquilize an adult tiger. Time will tell if the majestic beast had the energy to cross the Rio Grande but the safe bet is he has drowned or was stolen by the cartels.
This is a stock photo from India where they would know exactly what to do with a cat this size
The picture above is from a British newspaper article about how climate change is going to wipe out the Bengal tigers but that dog doesn’t hunt anymore as a more and more of us figure out the climate change hysteria is total bullshit. How many predictions by the “experts” are going to fail to materialize before everyone figures it out?
Migrating hawks have fields full of eco crucifixes to navigate but nobody seems to care about dead raptors unless they are covered in oil
In my last post I pointed out that this years hurricane season would be “nishta” (Pashto for nothing) for the exact reason our climate “experts” predicted it would be severe. Note how there have been no more hurricanes since my bold prediction but I have to tell you – when you point out how dead ass wrong the experts are people just get pissed off. Nobody wants to hear that everything they hear on the TV is nonsense, I guess it stirs up too much cognitive dissonance but I got bad news there too. When the famous 1959 paper on cognitive dissonance by Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith was subjected to a Granularity-Related Inconsistency of Means (GRIM test) they found the numbers to be bogus. You cannot have a mean of 3.08 from 20 test subjects filling in 0- 10 scales, it’s impossible yet typical of papers that use small data sets to detect big changes. GRIM tests, and the recently developed Stat Check are the reason why NOAA will not release the raw data they use to generate climate hysteria. All the right people are getting rich off the climate scam so who needs the truth cluttering up peoples thinking?
Daryl Cooper is the king of long form history podcasts
But I tire of the climate change hoax and want to move on to a guy who has the eye of the tiger and is currently under siege by the conservative media for expressing wrong think and that would be Daryl Cooper. Daryl is the king of long form history podcasts and was on Tucker Carlson last week talking about all sorts of things to include Winston Churchill and World War II. As a general rule I find morbidly obese middle age men who drink booze all day every day, lounge around in their pajamas most of the day, become enraged when disturbed while playing with toy soldiers, and have a propensity for designing and wearing silly military uniforms to be less than trustworthy. But I always gave Winston Churchill a pass on that because everybody else did, he’s a hero to many despite being weird as shit. Daryl isn’t giving Winston a pass and articulated several reason why and that has enraged my fellow conservatives causing me to start feuding with the Powerline bloggers and that is not a good place to be.
Powerline is written by razor sharp lawyers who I normally venerate except for 2016 when they developed a slight case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, but they recovered and there was no harm done. And it’s not just them, Victor Davis Hansen weighed in without listening to the podcast as have several “media professionals” like Dominic Green at the Washington Examiner. According to Dominic
“Cooper blew it by admitting that he’d prepared for his interminable podcast series on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by reading six books and then recited a medley of baseless suppositions, false generalizations, and open “secrets” about the origins of World War II”.
That bit of hatchet work is the exact opposite of what Daryl Cooper said which was:
“…well you know it’s funny actually because when I first started it I didn’t really know what went into making a podcast like that…so I started working on it after I’d read maybe like 6 books because the series only goes up to 1948. When I started to approach the end of that episode this is months and months and months later by now I’ve read 20 books or 30 books about that pre 1948 era. I started going over what I created for that first episode, and it was so embarrassingly terrible …. I got to the point I counted them all up one time … but I read over 80 whole books parts of another 100 at least and about 12-13 hundred academic papers and journals. I read everything I could find”.
This is why I insist the media is the enemy of the people. They are lazy, partisan, and for some reason they have declared jihad on Tucker Carlson. Which has forced me to jihad with the Powerline writers who haven’t been as glaringly incompetent as ole Dominic but they obviously have not done any research into Daryl Cooper which should embarrass them.
I think questioning to role and motivations of Winston Churchill is an interesting topic given his alcoholism, obesity and weird habits. But if you want to get an idea why Daryl Cooper has his sights on Churchill listen to his podcast #19 The Anti Humans about the treatment of the Romanians by Stalin after World War II. I dare you to try and listen to the whole thing because it is as dark and nasty and upsetting as anything I’ve ever heard in my life. And no, I did not, and could not, listen to the whole thing because it was that upsetting. Churchill gave us Uncle Joe Stalin as an equal partner and that murderous son of a bitch is exceeded Hitler (but not Mao) in his willingness to butcher millions in order to stay in power. Maybe Winston should be held to account for that, maybe not, but it is for historians like Cooper to ferret out using the kind of drive that saw him read hundreds of books just to make a decent podcast. Plus he has the balls to question conventional wisdom and that is a rare find in these days of conformity and COVID masks.
Watching the politico- media complex attempts at gaslighting their consumers about Kamala is no longer amusing. She appears, according to polling, to be gaining traction with American voters. Polling on a presidential election requires a significant degree of trust in pollsters to be taken seriously, but we know better than to trust the media which is unquestionably the enemy of the people. I’m sticking with my earlier prediction that Trump will win in a fraud proof landslide.
The delusional belief in Kamal competency should haven been crushed by her selection of Tampon Tim as her vice president. His despicable use of stolen valor to promote his political career is nauseating, and in direct contrast to Senator J.D. Vance who has more in common with the average voter in the heavily Hispanic Rio Grande Valley than any politician on the national stage in my lifetime. That’s why the Trump Train rolls through the former democratic stronghold of McAllen every Saturday growing is size every week as the election nears. The other advantage of living in an area with virtually no racial diversity is local governance. If Venezuelan gangs were taking over apartment building and terrorizing residents we would be told by career politicians that the gangs were a figment of our imagination. Unlike Colorado our political class is forced to deal with reality, otherwise their tenures will be short, bitter and probably end in getting shot in the face.
On a slightly related not the politico- media complex is also taking a beating on the climate change front from yet another underperforming hurricane season. NOAA predicted above normal 2024 hurricane season for the exact reason there will be (yet again) lower than average hurricane activity.
To date we have had 5 named storms, 3 hurricanes, and 0 major hurricanes and we are half way through peak hurricane season (August and September)
The reason NOAA and other climate change “experts” say the hurricanes will be more frequent and severe, is warm ocean water temperatures. Warm ocean temperatures decrease the temperature difference between the poles and equator and thus decreasing the ability of storms to move energy north to south. The climate “experts”cannot admit this least they lose their lucrative government or academic sinecures. Telling the truth about the climate means they can no longer shake down big business and might be held accountable for the migrant bird killing solar arrays or whale killing (according the green peace) wind farms.
PresidentTrump visiting a Virginia Vietnamese restaurant without kicking everyone out and replacing them with paid actors like Titmouse Tim and Kamala have done at every business they visit.
Any doubt that the whales are being decimated by wind farms can be assuaged by goggle who will feed you article after article from media “experts” explaining that the whales are dying for “complex reasons” that they are certain have nothing to do with the incessant undersea noise turbines generate. The media is truly the enemy of the people (and the whales) but this summer they’ll be losing millions because they can’t demand premium dollars for commercials without the massive “manmade climate change” hurricanes to cover with 24/7 “breaking news” hype.
1979 was the first year satellite microwave data for global temperatures were available. Those temperature readings still have to be massaged to get them anywhere close to the climate modeling from our so called experts.
Broaden the time line and you can see the current climate change scam in its full glory. As hard as the left tries it cannot (yet) go back and re-write history.
I recently read The Unprotected Class: How Anti White Racism is Tearing America Apart and found it compelling but not reflective of my experience. In 1958 I was born into an America that overwhelmingly white, but I was raised on military bases which were totally integrated and never realized the country was so white (not that I thought about that as a child). I now live in the Rio Grande Valley which is overwhelmingly Hispanic and if I have lived here 100 years ago at my age I would have survived four separate attempts ( the runaway scrape, the Cortinas War, the Salineño War, and the San Diego plan of 1915) to ethnically cleanse South Texas of all white people. Relationships between the White and Hispanic populations were strained in the RGV which happens when one population tries to ethnically cleanse the other.
Today Whites comprise less than 10% in the Rio Grande Valley of the population the rest is Hispanic (who were white people when I was a child but now aren’t for reasons). Yet the Rio Grande Valley feels like the America of my youth, church attendance is high, religious holidays a big deal, racial strife and animosity virtually unknown. There is exactly one Harris/Tampon Tim yard sign in McAllen (thousands of Trump yard signs dot the region) and the small minority of Harris/Tampon Tim voters are easily recognizable in public by their COVID masks.
This was the first and only Black Lives Matter protest in McAllen, Texas. The protesters were a handful of young, unattractive white girls and as soon as they started “protesting” a local man jumped out of his truck, got his chain saw going and commenced to threaten the protestors with nasty comments about the blacks and how little he cared for skinny unattractive white girls. Most of his ranting was in Spanish except he translated the N-word into English which of course resulted in his arrest.
I’m compelled to point out (again) that the 20 million or so illegal migrants who have flooded into the country present no problems here, in fact federal dollars continue to pour into the valley to fight the onslaught. But we don’t have any problems with illegals because the people who control the border (Mexican drug cartels) don’t want them here. The Cartels invest here, send their children to school here, and routinely vacation here. They are not hard to spot -just look for any high end, late model truck or car with Tamaulipas or Nuevo León license plates and you’ve found one. If 20 illegals tried to take over a school bus full of kids, like they did yesterday in Jamul, California, those dumb bastards would be dead in a day, probably hanging from the bridge into Reynosa. But in California they face no repercussions because as ruthless as the cartels are they have nothing on sociopaths like Gavin Newsom when it comes to abusing American citizens.
So what happens when the polls shut down on election night in the midst of a Trump landslide and dawn reveals that somehow millions of Harris ballots turned up and she’s declared the winner? You know what’s going to happen; nothing. Just like the last time, and this time we already know any protest about a stolen election in Washington DC will be treated in the exact opposite manner as leftists rioting. And riot they will after The Bad Orange Man kicks Cackling Kamala’s ass in this election despite endemic democratic voter fraud. Trump needs a fraud proof landslide and he is well on his way to getting one.
The United States has never been weaker, or more vulnerable in my lifetime. The President is clearly incapacitated, yet he refuses to step down, our DEI centric military lacks the manpower, weapons, or leadership to be a credible deterrent. I enlisted in the navy in 1978, during the days of the low morale, high drug use, “hollow force”. Back then we had (literally) twice the number of ships, tanks, artillery pieces, amphibious vehicles, and infantry battalions but the units were undermanned and poorly led. Marine officers carried loaded sidearms while on duty and had every expectation of needing them.
Ole Doc Lynch pulling liberty on Saint Patricks Day, 1984, in Haifa, Israel. Brawling in shady bars was an expectation back then but the Israelis were so damn nice to us that I don’t think anyone got into a ruckus. Hard men aren’t necessarily violent, just violent when necessary.
In the late 1970’s the military fell on hard times when full of hard men who, when they had their sailors at sea, or their Marines out in the field, established good order and discipline the old fashioned way; with their fists. I did it myself because it was only one way to get your peers to stop blasting music after 2300 in the Bethesda Naval Hospital enlisted barracks. The modern military may still have a few hard men, but they would never receive tacit support or encouragement from their chain of command to use traditional old school discipline to establish and maintain good order and discipline.
We live in soft times, more disconnected from nature than ever before, with a military full of soft men/women/undecided who are uninterested in and unfamiliar with interpersonal violence. The current military is incapable of repeating the miraculous transformation into a highly competent, well funded, and drug free force, that occurred during President Regan’s military revitalization in the early 80’s. Public confidence in the military, extraordinarily high since the mid 1980’s is trending back down to where it was after Vietnam. Confidence in all the institutions that matter, the press, congress, the legal system, academia, “The scienceTM”, and Medicine are at historic lows. It’s so bad regional law enforcement agencies will no longer share information with an FBI they do not trust.
Proving the FBI has IFF (identify friend or foe) issues two FBI agents paid a visit to a friend of mine yesterday who is the hardest Marine Corps infantry officer I ever knew. Asad Khan was a legend in the Marine Corps known for an impressive work ethic, exacting standards, and tactical savvy. I was huge fan and when suddenly bumped up to the 1/8 operations officer while still a young captain then Major Khan graciously gave me a copy of the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) saving me untold of hours of tedious staff work. He wasn’t a dick about it either despite knowing that I knew he would never take another battalion’s SOP knowing he could write a better one.
That’s as close to a smile as you’ll get from Asad when he’s wearing the uniform. Not that he smiles much on his podcast now that I think about it. . . .
Asad led the first Marines into Afghanistan landing in Bagram where they boarded rented buses to drive to Kabul and re-claim the American embassy. On the way there they ran into a one tank roadblock in a wadi crossing with a sign demanding payment to pass. LtCol Khan, a fluent Pashto speaker, walked over to the tank, knocked on the crew hatch and asked the lone occupant inside what he needed, the old man said shoes. Khan gave him chow and water and told him to wait there until he returned with shoes and in the meantime to put the main gun in neutral position and let the Americans coming behind him pass unmolested. The old man agreed and was inside the tank days later with Asad returned with shoes, clothes, a coat and some money. Khan was both hard and smart – I don’t think any other Marine officer of our generation could have navigated that situation so well back in 2001.
I ran into Asad several times in Afghanistan, in fact I met his son in Kabul when he showed up with then Colonel (now retired LtGen) Dave Furness who was working in the congressional liaison office at the time. Asad hosts the Sentinel podcast on Youtube and you should listen to a few episodes to get a feel for what the FBI considers “anti-American” these days. You can listen to him describe the FBI visit here and when you’re done you tell me if you’d like to see Asad investigated by the Feds or moving into the house next door.
Some pictures are truly worth a thousand words
We are watching the government/media/academia axis of evil employs brute digital force to whitewash the disastrous incompetence of the Biden regime and it’s new leader Kamala Harris in real time. Already the allegedly non partisan GovTrack has deleted her ranking as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. Axios spent years calling Kamala the Border Czar now insist that they never said that and she was never really the border czar. Amazon has suddenly banned an unflattering book on Kamala as the media’s Soviet style airbrushing of the most unpopular Vice President in history continues.
The Orange and Velvet revolutions foisted on various countries by the U.S. Department of State targeted regime legitimacy through incremental non-violent means to generate a preference cascade leading to regime collapse. It is useful to remember this when reviewing the mountain of disinformation, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories we have had to endure since Donald J Trump announced his candidacy in June of 2015. A trendy acronym from the recent pass explains the ramifications of gaslighting American citizens: POSIWID: The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does. If the ends pursued by the Regime are functionally identical to the ends of warfare, then the Regime is waging war. Ask LtCol Asad Khan USMC (Ret) about it, I’m sure he has an interesting take.
The purpose of regime media propoganda is to demoralize to opposition
Years ago progressive America declared war on biology with their refusal to accept the reality that gender is not a social construct and men and women are not interchangeable. Biology in this context is a synonym for nature and it’s Mother Nature who determined woman would never be as physically capable as men because they are designed and built differently . The difference between the sexes emotionally was just demonstrated during the FBI/Secret Service congressional hearings. US Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle took such a beating that she resigned the next day, but she lost her job not because she’s a woman, but as a woman she never had to learn how to fight at the apex predator level. Showing poor tactical awareness she allowed herself to be ambushed at the Republican convention when she arrogantly strode the floor, assuming she had the juice to do so unmolested. When confronted by her ridiculous prior statements concerning roof slopes she was clearly embarrassed. When attacked by both sides of the isle she was unable to mask her emotions.
Mother Nature is tough on the small, the weak, the stupid, and the defenseless.
FBI Director Christopher Wray strode into the capitol and not only obfuscated shamelessly he smirkingly added this poison pill to his testimony:
“I think with respect to former President Trump there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, hit his ear.”
Utter rubbish concocted out of thin air that was walked back the next day but it wasn’t meant to be taken literally. That was Wray sending congress a two word message, first word starts with F and the second is You. He was telling congress they didn’t intimidate him and he would counterattack anyone who crossed him. That kind of naked bureaucratic power can only be wielded effectively by men who fought their way to the top of a meritocratic system. Women reach the top of federal agencies by other methods, not by consistently outperforming their male peers every step of the way for decades on end.
Regardless of who is in charge of our massive federal bureaucracies they are not going to allow the Trump/Vance ticket to gain landslide sized momentum unmolested. Their bizarre attempts to stop him have already surpassed the surreal, but have only made him stronger. The next four months are at the very least going to be weird, but I’m afraid the progressive establishment will reach for the last tool they have; political violence. Our country is leaderless, the people adrift in uncharted waters with DEI hires at the helm and FBI agents at the door; this can’t possibly end well.
All my life I assumed that one of the safest places in the world would be anywhere near an American President. I remember being mere feet away from President Regan once and felt totally intimidated by his secret service detail because of their size and demeanor. I’ve attended high speed shooting schools with FBI, DEA and Secret Service agents and always thought them to be great Americans. But time, experience, and the reality of last weekends gross incompetence has changed that. I left the FBI firearms instructor course with 2 cases of .45 cal golden saber rounds and level 3 body armor. Normally once bought I stay bought so when discussing the FBI on All Marine Radio years ago I was the only pro FBI voice. I’m no longer bought, I’ve unfriended the FBI and every other three letter agency.
I was given the armor because I was heading to the intermountain west on recruiting duty and the agents thought it best I carry body armor (and lots of guns) in the trunk of my government vehicle. That would have got me a court martial if caught but I appreciated the concern even though I figured (correctly) the people out west didn’t have any problems with the Marine Corps.
Here’s a picture of president Regan’s USSS detail in action in Augusta Georgia, I remember them being much larger and meaner looking in person.
What are we to make of the attempted assassination of President Trump? It’s hard to say because of the lack of trust Americans have in their institutions. Is there anyone in this country who believes the FBI will complete a competent, transparent, investigation and then share its finding with the American people? No, we expect the FBI to lie and cover up inconvenient facts that counter Government/Media Disinformation industry. The FBI claims that antifa is just an ideology while (according to the head of the FBI) “the largest “chunk” of the FBI’s investigations involve white supremacist groups.
President Trump reacts to getting shot in the face. This is why he will win in a landslide, courage in contagious.
Congressional cowards react to the January 6th incursion and this is why America despises its congress. Cowardice is also contagious, unseemly and un fucking American.
What kind of white supremacists’ groups? The AGGAVE (other) groups I wrote about in my last post which is to say Trump Supporters. How the hell does an organization handle a real domestic terrorist when it had calibrated itself to see the victim (President Trump) and his supporters’ as domestic terrorists? It’s impossible to say or even imagine yet here we are.
It is also impossible to imagine how a gunman could low crawl on a roof to gain line of sight of the President from just 150 meters away. Or why President Trump’s secret service detail was stacked with obese women with poor gun handling skills who were too short to shield Trump which is their primary function. Actually the performance of the Secret Service last Saturday is easy to explain using Jerry Pournell’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy, which states:
“In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.”
Add to that the results of the Federal Government”s obsession with DEI which mandates when meritocracy and diversity come into direct conflict, diversity must take priority. The results are a steady erosion of institutional competency, causing America’s complex systems to fail with increasing regularity. The Secret Service performance on Saturday just another manifestation of the competence crisis collapsing yet another complex system. Why else would the head of the secret service make hiring women her priority when they are totally incapable of doing the job? And in case you thought the head of the USSS a remotely intelligent person her justification for ignoring a snipers perch just 130 meters away was the roof was slopped and therefore ‘dangerous‘. You cannot make this stuff up; American liberal elites are bat shit crazy.
Poor gun handling results from a training regime that failed to imprint muscle memory. Holstering a weapon under stress is simple for shooters who took their training seriously and continued to practice at home. There are thousands of Americans today who have extensive gunfighting experience and will recognize gross incompetence when they see it. Why is this woman even doing a job that calls for large aggressive men? I remember watching President Regan arrive in Bethesda when I was a corpsman and his secret service detail scared the shit out of me being all huge dudes with serious attitudes.
One consequence of this failed assassination is a subtle shift in the Overton Window of public discourse. Jack Black and his partner Kyle Gass (Tenacious D) have cancelled their tour and may be deported from Australia after Gass said “don’t miss Trump next time” on stage in Sydney over the weekend. Both John Deere and Microsoft have eliminated their DEI departments. The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart is a best selling book with the author making regular appearances on various podcasts without facing violent protests, personal assaults or 24/7 liberal media harassment. And in the utterly amazing department a democratic senator has been convicted on federal corruption and bribery charges in New Jersey of all places. Senator Menendez has escaped accountability for his blatant lawlessness for years but now he’s suddenly convicted just as the lawfare cases against President Trump collapse. Weird that.
As the Trump Train picks up momentum it is hard to anticipate how the permanent Washington bureaucracy and their handmaidens in the press will react. And things just got worse for our democratic/media/academic axis of evil; President Trump just picked a former Marine Corps Corporal as his running mate. It’s time to make America Great Again, if we can keep our candidate alive until election day, maybe then our federal institutions will be gutted of deadwood and once again exist to serve, not gas light, the people.
South Texas has been under a heat dome that is now moving out of the way as hurricane Beryl bears down us. In anticipation of heavy weather the sharks started attacking beach goers yesterday biting four people in under two hours of coastal mayhem. The weather may or may not be affecting the local shark population who normally hang out in coastal waters without biting people. As I write the Trump Train is rolling through formally deep blue McAllen, Texas and the 2024 South Padre Island Tumptilla is gathering off Port Isabel but they may a few boats light due to a sudden interest in shark fishing. There is no detectable organic support for Joe Biden anywhere in Texas or any other state judging from media reporting.
This lady was bit in the thigh which resulted in a beach rescue with immediate first aid to control the bleeding applied by fellow beachgoers. It is always good to see normal people filling the breach during an emergency.
The progressive left cannot ignore the spectacle of our severely impaired President any longer nor can they handle the fact that their obvious propaganda and spiteful lawfare has made President Trump’s election inevitable. I’m guessing the academic/media disinformation duopoly will now start hammering away with man made climate change alarmism because they suspect President Trump is not a true believer. They also believe us normies learned nothing from SARS CoV-2 computer modeling because they learned nothing from that debacle. Climate models and COVID models share the distinction of being dead ass wrong because viruses and the earth’s climate are too complex to be modeled . Look below at the magic of scaling the NASA GISS data set to temperatures humans can detect to understand the depth of the climate deception.
But we have bigger problems here in tropical Texas, Hurricane Beryl is heading straight for us allowing the cable news stations to start explaining why hurricanes are now worse due to ‘Climate change™. ‘ Then we’ll get all sorts of expert opinion about why the storm missed because hurricanes have an annoying habit of not doing what the “experts” think they will do. And to add to our misery we have tar balls washing up on the beach at South Padre Island forcing beach strollers to watch their step in between scanning the waves for sharks.
Aggressive sharks aren’t the only problem on South Padre Island; Tar Balls are washing ashore!
The tar balls come from rents in the ocean floor that leak oil and have always infested our beaches. The Karankawas, a coastal indigenous tribe known for cannibalism and large physiques, used tar balls to seal baskets and make weapons. The Karankawas disappeared from history in 1858 when Mexican rancher Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, a.k.a the Red Robber of the Rio Grande crossed the river to wiped the last of the tribe out. The Karankawa had unfortunately backed Mexico during the Texan/Mexican War so the Texans rounded them up and shipped them to Tamaulipas so they could live with their buddies. But the Mexicans claimed they were marauders who plundered the countryside so they chased them to our side of the border before sending the Red Robber over to finish them off.
The one tribe the Spanish could never conquer were the Apache who were ejected from their ancestral tribal lands by the Comanches just before Anglo settlers arrived on the scene. These important historical facts, like the natural occurrence of tar balls, are almost unknown in today’s America where all past wrongs are always attributed to Anglo Americans.
A Trump Supporter counterprotesting among the astro turfed (most came in buses with professional signage) democrat crowd when President Trump came to McAllen to inspect the border in 2019. There was no evident organic support for FJB in 2020 and there is even less now but you see Trump flags everywhere when you drive the interstates.
Speaking of Anglo Americans did you know some of the ‘intelligence experts’ behind the Muh Russia and Hunter Biden laptop hoaxes have been hired Homeland Security to form an “Experts Group” for combating “misinformation” on the internet? In order to accommodate the misinformation experts the FBI expanded their “anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists” (AGAAVE) classification to include political and/or social agendas creating the AGAAVE (other) category. Indicators of being in the AGAAVE Other category are prior military service, actively attending religious services, or being in any way connected to the Trump MAGA movement. That covers about half the electorate but what does it mean?
I’m not sure, we can assume some of the weekly Trump Trains and Tumptilla’s include undercover federal agents and/or paid informants. But the Feds don’t need to be physically present to surveil potential domestic terrorists because they can hoover up everything in your phone, social media, and home computers with the new and improved PULSE Tactical Information Warfare Platform. The Pulse system was recently purchased by defense contractorTwo Six Technologies from the developers, IST Research, who emerged out of a secret DARPA project housed at the Taj.
The PULSE platform made its unclassified debut on 60 Minutes in 2015 with an interview of one of Taj vets who was marketing a system to monitor the “dark web” to catch human traffickers. That’s a ridiculous idea now, human traffickers are trafficking women and children across our southern border daily and nobody seems too upset about it. But when you’re selling concepts to the government 60 minutes is a good place to start.
Dr Dave Warner, Baba Ken Kraushaar and I on the night they arrived at the Taj in Jalalabad in early November, 2007. Dr. Dave and Ken are the original Synergy Strike Force team who would combine the Defense Intelligence Agencies Afghanistan Atmospherics program with DARPAs More Eyes program to create the forerunner of the PULSE platform running it out of the Taj
Dr Dave out and about with his Afghan crew in Dur Baba district near the Khyber Pass
Two Six Technologies, then acquired the counter-disinformation company Thresher Ventures, for its main product the Media Manipulation Monitor (M3) which is based on the principle that advanced censorship regimes designed to control the flow of information convey a great deal about their governments and leaders. So does the flow of information for Trump Trains and Trumpilla’s which may explain the AGGAVE (other) category. When the government comes after you using lawfare the process is the punishment and not many Americans will be able to stand fast in the face of government intimidation.
Which brings us full circle back climate change because our Homeland Security ‘experts”are using their toys to wargame (in collaboration with social media companies) how to handle the droughts and power outages that will be caused by climate change. Those games involve censoring alternative views, manipulating the news, and (of course) lockdowns because the chaos of a changing climate is inevitable – unless we follow the example of Finland and Sweden and go back to nuclear power. But an energy independent America is not part of the big government progressive establishments playbook, only the bad Orange Man and the AGGAVE (others) think its a great idea.
I don’t think the elites media manipulation playbook will work for much longer but if you think they are going to re-think their determination to thwart the half of the electorate now deemed deplorables you have not been paying attention. The Biden regime will not go quietly into the night after an electoral landslide sends Trump back to DC. There is serious trouble brewing out their in the land of the free and one can only hope the will of the people is respected in this election and FJB sent back home wherever that is.
The New York Times Introduces Agitprop as History just in time for Memorial Day
Last week New York Times foreign correspondent Matthieu Aikins released a two part series that examined the career of Afghan Lieutenant General Abdul Raziq. The Times spent over a year tracking down hundreds of Afghans who had family members “disappeared under Raziq, the police chief responsible for security across Kandahar Province”. Aikins interviewed only one of the eighteen four star generals who commanded in Afghanistan, Marine General John R. Allen who commanded from 2011 – 2013 and claimed; “it was a mistake to “keep a really bad criminal because he was helpful in fighting worse criminals”.
General Abdul Raziq
I corresponded with Mattieu Aikins when he arrived in Afghanistan in 09, and I respect and admire his work because he is one of the few Americans who knew the country better than I do. I worked for John Allen when he oversaw the infantry officer course, so I know him well, and respect him immensely. As the three star deputy commandeer of CENTCOM General Allen played a pivotal role in sheltering me from fallout from a New York Times series of hit pieces on the Eclipse Group. I am not happy to find myself harshly criticizing men I honestly admire but these two articles: How the U.S. Backed Kidnapping, Torture and Murder in Afghanistan and Who was Abdul Raziq? are so ridiculously wrong that I am mystified. Nobody who cares about honest reporting believes the New York Times but what was it trying to accomplish with articles pinning our many and manifest failures in Afghanistan on the back of one man?
Kandahar district 3 in 2024 photograph from Bryan Denton of the NYT
Kandahar’s district 3 in 2009
The articles claim Raziq was behind the disappearances of thousands of Afghans in and around Kandahar while he was the police chief, and before that when he headed the Border Police in Spin Boldak on the border with Pakistan. There is only one sentence aboutTaliban war crimes: “The Taliban committed countless atrocities of their own against civilians, including suicide attacks, assassinations and kidnappings for ransom.” which directly contradicts this earlier sentence “What is clear, however, is who was responsible: Only the American-backed government consistently engaged in forced disappearances in Kandahar, former officials, combatants, and families of the victims said”.
Let’s start with the obvious; people routinely disappeared in Taliban IED and VBIED attacks. Afghans do not the ability to forensically identify every charred lump of meat found inside the blast radius of a large explosive attack and accurate reports of who was near the explosion from eye witnesses are always unreliable. Not every kidnapping victim of the Taliban was released, especially if the ransom was unpaid, everybody knows this. But that’s not the point, both Matthieu Aikins and General Allen (but not you unless you’re a former Intel weenie) know about other organizations like the Destagiri Group, who were guilty of ‘disappearing’ people and they were mostly government-connected Noorzai. Raziq was from the Achakzai tribe; the Noorzai and Achakzai are the Hatfields and McCoys of Kandahar and have been fighting for generations.
Canadian Army moving through Kandahar summer of 2009
Off the top of my head I could think of dozens of documentaries depicting Afghan security forces in other provinces kidnapping civilians and holding them in horrendous conditions. This one, This is What Winning Looks Like from Vice media shows a patrol of Marines at an Afghan National Police checkpoint holding illegal prisoners training the Afghans on how to use toilet paper (I’m not making this up) while the head cop threatens to shoot the Marines is they try to free his prisoners. The Times contends “The culture of lawlessness and impunity he (Raziq) created flew in the face of endless promises by American presidents, generals and ambassadors to uphold human rights and build a better Afghanistan. And it helps explain why the United States lost the war ‘. But Raziq did not create that culture, it was organic to Afghanistan, it was the war lord culture that we solidified with Special Forces teams in 2001.
Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad with some tier 1 dudes in 2005 – I’m guessing from the hair these are Dev Group SEALs
The Times is correct that the more Afghans were exposed to the incompetent, bribe demanding, thugs from the Karzai government the more they hated America for inflicting that loser on them. This had nothing to do with Raziq and everything to do with President Karzai and American Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad the man responsible for inflicting Karzai on the Afghans as well as saddling them with the Single Non-Transferable Vote (SNTV) electoral system that guarantees corruption and fragmented political parties. It was Mattieu Aikins who broke the story about Khalizad’s behind-the-scene machinations for the SNTV system and it was he who explained its significance. So why is he now focused on Raziq? I have a theory.
If Afghanistan had produced 20 more Afghan patriots like Abdul Raziq Achakzai there would be no Taliban today. He was the most effective counter insurgent fighter since Ahmad Shah Massoud. General Allen might have thought him a criminal but he, with a little help from his American friends, locked down Kandahar during Obama’s troop surge and that saved an unknown but significant number of American lives. For that reason alone he deserves a little respect especially from our senior military leaders but instead they sully his name in the name of their peculiar interpretation of honor.
American Army convoy heading towards Spin Boldak
There was a time when America produced military leaders who understood the purpose of war was to win. Winning requires the total defeat of your enemy which requires killing enough of them that you break their will to fight. You know when your effective at this when you are sitting in the heartland of your enemy, safe and sound, while every province around you explodes in violence as the Taliban sortie out to meet the American invaders. Raziq accomplished that at a time when most Afghans hated the government in Kabul and the Americans who were propping it up. That was a remarkable achievement.
Abdul Raziq was obviously an accomplished killer and that made some of our senior generals uncomfortable. Our military commanders believe that the process they use to nominate and prosecute targets immunizes them against repercussions when they target and kill innocent women and children. Here’s a footnote from the upcoming best seller Free Ranging Afghanistan that highlights the downside of drone warfare.
“The first targeted assassination in Afghanistan by ISAF was on 31 October 2003 using a B-1 bomber and AC 130 gunship to attack a cluster of buildings on the side of the Waygil valley in Kunar province known as Aranas. The CIA was certain the compounds contained Taliban leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, but it was the home of a wealthy clan headed by Zabiullah Rabbani. The number of women and children killed in this attack is unknown. The last targeted assassination was the drone strike in Kabul during the cut and run NEO that killed an NGO worker and his family. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Miley swore it was a “righteous strike” that killed an ISIS suicide bomber adding that the military had followed the same iron tight process they always used when targeting bad Afghans. That might be the only true statement made by that obese incompetent during our chaotic abandonment of Afghanistan”.
For the record nobody ever accused Abdul Raziq of killing women or children. We killed plenty as did the Taliban, but Raziq used dirt naps as a tool while successfully exercising armed governance over a hostile population in the midst of a Civil War. There is a logic to the violence in Civil Wars; indiscriminate violence, like collateral damage from drone strikes, is counterproductive, but targeted violence against individuals can be very productive as Raziq proved in Kandahar. Mattieu Aikins does an excellent job explaining exactly how that worked in Panjai district in his second article and it was there I found the article linked above on the logic of violence. Aikins is a phenomenally good foreign correspondent who always has great links in his articles so why he’s declared a jihad on Raziq is a mystery.
Memorial Day is the perfect day to reflect on the cost of our 20 year long beef with Afghanistan. There would be dozens if not hundreds more soldiers interned in our national cemeteries had it not been for the effectiveness of one ( some would say ruthless, others motivated) Afghan in his fight against the Taliban. He deserves our thanks, not a New York Times hit piece.
I started the Apocalypse Not series with this post on March 18, 2020 because I suspected the COVID 19 pandemic was total bullshit. The lack of bodies was the clue. If the disease had the IFR (infection fatality rate) that our “experts” said it had then our number one problem would have been the disposal of bodies, just like every other pandemic in history. Instead the homeless populations on the west coast were thriving while the main stream media focused on horror stories concocted byTony Fauci and Deborah Birx. My reward for alerting people to the COVID fraud was to loose friends, members of my family, and a book agent (I have yet to find another). I then doubled down and went on writing to point out the measures instituted to mitigate this non threat were in fact the threat. That resulted in the loss of more friends and family but I got to be this guy for a few months.
I’m re-posting the first post in preparation for revisiting the issue and the lessons learned from the disastrously incompetent reaction to the COVID 19 virus. My guess at the end of this post that there would be hell to pay when the public discovered they were duped has not happened yet but inshallah some day somebody will be held to account.
There is something about the current Wuhan virus response that is not adding up. The first case appeared in America on 17th of January, we then stopped direct flights from China on the 31st of January. From the time this pathogen surfaced in China last November until the end of January, there were daily flights from the Wuhan area to Seattle, LA, San Francisco, New York and Toledo, Ohio. This flu strain is unusually virulent and if that is true (which is not in doubt), by the time it surfaced in America it had already spread across the land.
Farr’s Law, named for British epidemiologist William Farr in 1840, states that epidemics, develop and recede according to a bell-shaped curve. This happens with or without human intervention. Farr’s Law undoubtedly is in play for the Wuhan virus.
Last Christmas my wife and several neighbors had a horrible flu bug that mimicked the Wuhan virus symptoms exactly. She was miserable and did not respond to a Z-pack or a course of Levaquin our family doctor prescribed. The bug she had was no joke, and when she mentioned my theory that the Wuhan had already washed through the population last Christmas her friends saw it immediately. She started hearing other stories about the Christmas bug that ravaged the Rio Grande Valley for a good four weeks. The stories all matched up to the symptoms for Wuhan virus.
The President’s early attempts to calm the situation were ridiculed as was his suspension of air travel to China. Then the narrative changed on a dime and the cancelations started with the Ivy League Universities cancelling their basketball seasons. Once they did that every other major sports league (with the exception of the UFC) did the same.
The Ivy League’s role in starting the current chain reaction of closing public venues is not a coincidence. The experts managing this crisis had just attended a Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, World Economic Forum and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored Virtual Exercise Called Event 201 described as:
“a 3.5-hour pandemic tabletop exercise that simulated a series of dramatic, scenario-based facilitated discussions, confronting difficult, true-to-life dilemmas associated with response to a hypothetical, but scientifically plausible, pandemic”.
The pathogen used for the exercise was a COVID virus with properties similar to COVID-19. The exercise predicted that the virus would overwhelm the medical systems in North America resulting in catastrophic loss of life. Tabletop exercises like Event 201 happen all the time, the fact that this one was played out a month before COVID-19 surfaced in Wuhan China is not that significant. What is significant is how different the current crisis is playing out compared to the one our experts war-gamed.
There were a seven recommendations made following the exercise (they can be found here). Every recommendation focused on the need for international cooperation with the free flow of information and people across national borders which is consistent with the ethos and vision of globalists like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other major donors, like Open Philanthropy .
But our response to the Wuhan virus has been the exact opposite of the “viruses know no borders” narrative of Event 201. Instead we (and the rest of the world) have closed the borders, rebuffed international offers of help and turned to the private sector to fight the virus ourselves.
The Centers for Disease Control was not up to the task of testing for or tracking the Wuhan virus and they were rapidly sidelined by the President. This was the exact opposite of Event 201 in which the CDC and every other similar international organization performed flawlessly. The ‘experts” may have been surprised the CDC failed so spectacularly but this is expected from those of us who know and understand government bureaucracies.
When the CDC failed the President went straight to the private sector, suspended regulations inhibiting the development and production of test kits and protective wear, and solved the testing problem rapidly. He then held a press conference with these Titans of industry and did a good job of calming frayed nerves. After his poor start briefing the nation last Wednesday night watching him get back into the grove was gratifying.
This is not playing out as the experts who ran Event 201 thought. Then, in another move a blatant dishonesty, on the same day that China launches an IO campaign to deflect criticism from them our legacy media decides the Wuhan virus is now to be called COVID-19. Any mention of the word Wuhan was now racist and news anchors were getting apoplectic about this new muh racism.
As events across the land started to close. Governors and DC mandarins ran to the TV cameras to announce the draconian measures they were going to take. These pronouncements have to moldy scent of Virtue Signalling. The men and women making these decisions have themselves, no skin in the game. Regardless of how long this lasts or how bad it gets the people running Ivy League institutions, the federal legislatures, state governors and the media infotainment complex insiders – all of them will weather the storm just fine. In fact, most of them will make millions off low interest rates while buying blue chip stock at a significant markdown.
You and your family? Not so much.
“I don’t claim to know what’s motivating the media, but, my God, their reporting is absolutely reprehensible. They should be ashamed of themselves. They are creating a panic that is far worse than the viral outbreak. The bottom line, everybody, is to listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci of the CDC [Centers of Disease Control and Prevention]. Do what he tells you, and go about your business.… Stop listening to journalists! They don’t know what they are talking about!” Dr. Drew Pinsky commenting on the media yesterday (17 March 2020)
An anonymous source quoted in The Spectator points out the only salient (and obvious) fact now which is: “We know the numerator (the number of deaths), but we don’t know the denominator, which is the number of people who have been infected by COVID-19. And without the denominator, we have no way of estimating either the spread or the fatality rate of COVID-19.”
That bothers me and it should bother you too, but at the moment there is nothing to be done except hunker down, avoid panic shopping, and wait to see what happens. How long Americans will tolerate these measures will be interesting to see.
There is no reason to think that this time the experts warnings about a catastrophic event are correct. They have a perfect record of being wrong with every prediction in the past because their models are incapable of predicting complex events reliably.
When the people discover that once again, they were manipulated by a partisan press, compromised academic shills, and virtue signalling politicians there is going to be hell to pay. When the dust settles maybe we will de-couple science from politics and even dismantle the narrative driving legacy media.
It is time to keep your head down, and your powder dry. Courage and cowardice are contagions and few of our elected leaders seem to operate with an abundance of courage. Their default is finger pointing, name calling, and blame shifting. The rest of us should refrain from that behavior and focus on helping, not panicking our neighbors. When this emergency passes we may be able to hold incompetents to account but for now all we can do is what we do best; refuse to panic.
This morning I saw an X from Tucker Carlson about an interview with my good friend Michael Yon. The first sentence stated “America is being invaded and destroyed with the help of our leaders”. That sounded ominous and with Michael being a friend I went to the Tucker website to watch the interview. Only I couldn’t because I’m not a member so I coughed up nine bucks to watch the Yon interview. It occurred to me that what Michael is warning against – an invasion of mostly Hispanic foreigners that will change our towns and communities forever, already happened in the Rio Grande Valley where I settled almost ten years back. Thus a boots on the ground report from the tropical portion of the southern border with Mexico where the whites comprise around 5% of the population.
The Rio Grande Valley
The Rio Grande Valley (RGV) borders Mexico and consists of Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr, and Willacy counties. The official statistics claim the valley is over 91% Hispanic which isn’t accurate because that count includes thousands of Winter Texans who only reside here from October through May. Our population distribution represents the future according to the great replacement theory. I don’t believe anyone outside the media, academia, or dysfunctional federal agencies believe this ridiculous theory and I offer as proof this NPR article which claims it has gone mainstream with the Whites whites. Over 25% of the 1.3 million Hispanic Texans in the RGV are immigrants, but not the kind of immigrants found in NPR programing because many of these immigrants, like the majority of Hispanic voters in the RGV, are Trump supporters.
Your typical Trump RGV supporter turning out to welcome the President to McAllen back in 2019.
President Trump won the RGV in 2020 election and his popularity with Hispanic voters continues to increase with each passing month of FJB incompetence at the border. But nobody who lives here categorizes people by bureaucratically created terms like “Hispanic” for many practical reasons. Take the young man in the photograph above, he looks Hispanic but he’s not, he’s Native American, and doesn’t speak Spanish. Most of the second and third generation Hispanic kids in the RGV also don’t speak Spanish, but there are plenty of Gringo’s around the valley who are fluent Spanish speakers. Add the inconvenient fact that humans (regardless of racial classification) segregate by class in America, not race, and you’ll understand why every strata of the social hierarchy here is dominated by Hispanics. And the degree to which one is or is not Hispanic has nothing to do with skin color; it’s determined by fluency with the Spanish language.
My buddy Cody Elmore is so white that after six months in the Helmand Province he looked like he spent the winter in Minnesota. But Cody is the son of diplomats who went to school in Europe and speaks perfect Castilian Spanish so when out and about in RGV he’s so Hispanic that real Hispanic’s buy him drinks when they hear him speak Spanish. Competency with upper caste European Spanish is admired in Tex Mex social circles.
What’s it like living in the future America where the whites are a distinct minority? It’s fantastic, like living in the America of my childhood but with rare tropical bird species, and Ocelots. This is due to the high level of civic trust found in communities that share the same values, beliefs, and culture. Granted the culture here is more Mex than Tex, but who cares when you live in a town with dozens of large parks that fill on Easter Sunday with extended families picnicking, their kids hunting for colorful cascarones (painted eggshells full of confetti) while the adults fire up the pit and grill stuff. Easter celebrations extend through the entire day as the kids’ band together and have cascarones wars while the adults relax in the only portion of America considered tropical.
Unfortunately, adult relaxation in the RGV invariably involves drinking cerveza’s which contributes to the region’s designation (by WalletHub.com) as the fattest city in the nation. I think the local tortillas contribute more because they come doubled up and deep fried in with queso cheese in-between them making local taco’s addictive as crack. But beer drinking is endemic to local culture so watching families arrive at a Quinceañera, the women dressed in fantastically elaborate ball gowns, the men in coat and tie each dragging a cooler of full of beer is totally normal. There is no Bowling Alone style collapse inside the local communities here because Hispanic people are serious about their religion and their extended families, even the ones with sneaky Gringo’s in the family tree. There are no Roof Dogs in the Rio Grande Valley despite their prevalence in Mexico, because America ain’t Mexico, and the RGV is populated by Americans.
Roof dogs are no bueno .
What kind of Americans you ask? The RGV is to Texas what the Helmand province was to Afghanistan; it’s Marineistan – full of Marines and Marine Corps history. Weslaco native Corporal Harlan Block, one of the six Marines to raise the flag on Iwo Jima is buried at the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen. Marine Corps Sergeant Alfredo Gonzalez, a native Edinburg won the Medal of Honor at Hue City during the Vietnam war. There are murals of Marines who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan painted on the underground electrical junction boxes around Edinburg and I’ve heard there is more of them in Brownsville. The Valley is home to one of the best historians who ever lived; T. R. Fehrenbach who was an Army officer, but his best selling book, This Kind of War, was about the awesomeness of the United States Marine Corps in Korean War. The Army get’s no love in the Valley for some reason and I have no idea why.
There are more of these tributes to dead Marines in the RGV than there should be from the 20 year long war against terror. Why are there only tributes to Marines? Because the RGV is Marinestan
A picture of Sgt. Gonzales’s mother accepting his Medal of Honor from the South Texas Museum in Edinburg, Texas. I am almost certain the last Marine on the left is GySgt John Canley who also won the Medal of Honor during the battle of Hue.
The Tucker Carlson interview with Michael Yon focused on the international NGO’s who facilitate the massive migrant movements through Central America into the United States. The lead agency organizing and paying for this illegal migration is the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) who have a posh office in Panama inside former Southern Command headquarters building in Fort Clayton. From Clayton IOM coordinates with the federal government contractors like Catholic Relief Charities and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) to care, feed and move migrants to and through the US border. These contractors self-identify as NGO’s but any organization funded by the government that moves thousands of people across the border and then disperses them throughout the United States every month needs military-contractor grade accounting departments and former Feds in upper management. That is how the game is played.
In October of 1981 sculptor Dr. Felix W. de Weldon donated this full sized working model of the Iwo Jima Monument to the Marine Military Academy. Prior to that it was disassembled and stored in his garage in Newport, R.I. where my friends and I would try to get a glimpse of it because the garage was close to a main road and accessible to sneaky teenagers.
Did you know Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas is a Jewish immigrant from Cuba? His parents fled Havana after the revolution and that background made him perfect for the board of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) prior to his government appointment. Michael Yon uncovered the HIAS connection when he noted that the HIAS Panama offices were next to the IOM HQ building in the Darien Gap. Which might explain why Mayorkas flew into the Darien Gap back in 2022 to meet with both the IOM and HIAS about funding improvements of what Yon describes as “the China Camp”. A camp with superior accommodations where Chinese migrants are housed but segregated from the other migrants. Why is our Secretary of Homeland Security funding illegal migration? Why is he dumping millions of no-bid federal contracting dollars on a “NGO” he once managed? What is the end game here?
Who know’s? But I know the southern border, which is supposed to be under the control of our Homeland Security Department, is instead controlled by narcotraficantes. The reason narcotraficantes control the entire southern border is they own the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador who prefers to be called AMLO because he just a humble public servant who, despite the conspicuous accumulation of massive personal wealth, is a man of the people.
The Riverside Dreamer still does a booming business hauling tourists for one or two hours tours of the Rio Grande River. The operator told me she has been giving boat tours for 20 years and never had a problem.
Last fall a ProPublica investigative reporter named Tim Golden published a long detailed story about the DEA’s effort to hold Senior AMLO accountable for taking millions of dollars from the Sinaloa drug cartel in 2010 in return for the names and addresses of his own State Police. But in 2010 Obama was in office and Obama made decisions based on what was best for Obama not for the citizens of the United States or Mexico. Holding Mexican officials responsible for their many and manifest crimes was not part of the Obama hagiography so the millions spent by the DEA investigation went right down the sewer next to the Marine Corps excellent study on the dreadful consequences of putting females in the infantry.
The RGV, known as Tropical Texas, is home to several exotic tropical bird species and home to the last remaining Ocelots in America. Photo from NatGeo.
The New York Times published a long form piece based in part on Tim Golden’s work which caused Senior AMLO so much consternation he doxxed the NYT reporter by giving out her name and cell phone number at a press conference. Mexico is the worlds leader in many unsavory categories including murdered journalists so one would suspect the New York Times and FJB’s administration would protest this blatant intimidate of an American reporter, but they have said nothing. Instead AMLO has demanded 20 BillionDollars from FJB to open talks about the border he does not control.
It’s not just people sneaking into the RGV from Mexico but Ocelots too. Last week one was killed by a car up in Jim Hogg county which was bad, but the DNA test showed the cat to be Mexican which was good. The RGV Ocelot population will need many more Mexican Ocelots sneaking across the border to bring much needed genetic diversity to their American cousins. Photo from San Antonio.com
Mexican drug cartels are not a benign presence in the RGV given their history of corrupting local law enforcement. Every county in the RGV has had sheriff’s arrested for taking narcotraficantes money. The sad case of Hidalgo County Sheriff Guadalupe “Lupe” Treviño from ten years back is typical. He was arrested and convicted for money laundering which is a growth industry with Mexican Cartels. What is amazing isn’t the number of local law enforcement officers arrested for being in bed with traffickers, it’s number who aren’t being arrested given the ridiculous amounts of money involved in narco bribes. The avergage Rio Grande Valley police officer appears to be honest, conscientious, and professional. They tend to be fluent Spanish speakers who can instantly recognize Venezuelans, Colombians, Guatemalans, etc. . . and give them the extra scrutiny they deserve without worrying about profiling beefs from federal prosecutors.
Great Kiskadee’s are one of a many tropical birds found exclusively in the Rio Grande Valley (and points south). Birding is big business in the valley. Photo from my backyard where this male Kissadee chases off all Kissadee competitors while terrorizing the House Sparrows.
Yet the corrupting influence of the enormous hordes of cash money Cartels deploy cannot be ignored. It is inconceivable that they have not penetrated local law enforcement agencies with the millions of dollars they have to spend. There is too much money involved for corruption not to impact local governments which makes eliminating the power and influence of Mexican drug cartels a time sensitive issue that is being ignored by the FJB administration. Federal politicians can ignore the spreading cancer of narcotraficante war lordism corrupting Texas border communities but we can’t which is why Donald Trump is going to win here in a landslide.
We rarely see the illegals who are processed daily and then dropped off at the McAllen bus station by the Border Patrol. The Catholic Relief Charities has a building across from the bus station where they feed, and house the migrants before sending them on their way with free bus tickets, or airline tickets out of state. In fact, the invasion of illegal immigrants benefits the RGV economically due to the resulting deployment of troops, flight crews and federal agencies, keeping our hotels occupied and restaurants full of well paid feds on per diem who tip well.
The migrants don’t stay here because the Cartels don’t want them here trashing the place up because they invest and vacation here. I see well dressed, fit, friendly Mexican men driving late model sports cars with Tamaulipas license plates all the time in McAllen. It is impossible for a non cartel connected Mexican to own and drive a late model European sports car on the highways of Tamaulipas and not get it stolen by one of the cartels. Everybody knows that is the reality of contemporary Mexico but we’re not rude about it down here because everybody is armed and an armed society is a polite society. Yet I yearn for the day when I see Mexicans driving late model cars with Tamaulipas plates in McAllen and not immediately suspect them to be well dressed, violent narco thugs.
This 35 year old Friendship Fountain between McAllen and our Mexican sister cities Irapuato and Guanajato is falling apart – the perfect metaphor for the condition of our southern border with Mexico.
Nothing good can come from allowing Mexican cartels to control the flow of both illicit drugs and illegal migrants across our border. And nothing good can come from allowing millions of people with limited English or practical skills to flood the country where they have no agency and easily trapped in situations that are worse than slavery.
Any American who actually understands the concept of human rights would demand the immediate closure of our border to cripple the massive human trafficking operation corrupting our communities with mountains of cash. The laws of unintended consequences are brutal reminders to the anointed that reality still rules on planet earth. Nobody wants a prosperous, functional and safe Mexico more than Texans, but that will not happen unless America forces some hard choices on the criminal political class ruling Mexico. When the President of the United States starts treating AMLO like FJB treats Israeli President Netanyahu, we’ll know the border crisis is about to end.
The FRI Guide to Dangerous Places: Delaram District, Afghanistan
During the summer of 2011 a unique opportunity presented itself to Abdul Karim Brahui, the governor of Afghanistan’s Nimroz Province, during a meeting with the new Marine Corps RCT commander in Delaram II, Colonel Eric Smith, USMC. Colonel Smith had replaced my good friend Paul Kennedy and although I knew Eric, Paul had given me a warning (in infantry officer code) about dropping in on him saying “he still irons his skivvies Timmy, don’t waste your time with him”.
Colonel Smith had come to Zaranj to complain to the provincial governor about the Khash Rod district governor who was an ineffective crook. Governor Brahui had nothing to do with the appointment of district governors, Karzai’s government appointed them but recognizing opportunity Governor Brahui turned to one of his trusted aids, Engineer Khodaidad and told him to accompany the Colonel back to Delaram and then move to assume the duties of the district governor. Col Smith, being new to the game, didn’t think twice about accepting the governors kind offer. He forgot or didn’t know those appointments were made in Kabul. The Colonels apparent complicity in this unusual arrangement stayed Karzai’s hand thus preventing Khodaidad’s immediate removal by the heavy handed Kabul Government.
Coming in for a morning meeting in Zaranj
My provincial manager in Nimroz was an Afghan national from Kabul named Bashir. Well educated Kabuli’s able to speak and write English fluently are normally connected to powerful people in the government making their utility in remote, sparsely populated areas of Afghanistan about zero. The tribes on the fringes of the Dasht-e Margo (desert of death) were more likely to shoot Kabul elites than cooperate with them. Bashir was well educated, a fluent English speaker who was from Kabul but not connected to anyone in the Kabul government. He was, without question the most honest, competent Afghan I knew, and I knew more than a few good men in Afghanistan. He and Governor Brahui became good friends over the years Bashir and his family lived in Zaranj.
When Governor Brahui told Engineer Khodaidad to go to Delaram, Bashir turned to his assistant provincial manager, Boris, and told him to accompany Engineer Khodaidad to Delaram II. Engineer Khodaidad left with Col Smith with just the clothes on his back but Boris, a Russian Jew who was raised in New York City and a former Army Signal Intelligence operator, had the presence of mind to get his overnight bag and a change of clothes before departing for Delaram II. Boris had learned about working the Nimroz Province from the FRI blog and had contacted me asking if he could work out of Zaranj. He had an intense interest in Central Asian history and was all about supervising projects among the ruins of the Ghurid Sultanate. He turned out to be a hard worker, fluent Dari speaker, and the best field supervisor I ever had.
Bashir is to my left amd Governor Brahui to my right in this picture from on of our project openings
Engineer Khodaidad spoke fluent Russian having received his engineer training in a Russian school in Mazar-i-Sharif in the 1960’s. Like Governor Brahui he was a respected former Nimroz Front Mujahidin leader who had fought out of the Kang District during the Soviet War. Boris and Engineer Khodaidad became instant friends which was fortunate because Boris had to go to the Delaram II base exchange to by Engineer Khodaidad the various sundries and the bedding he would need to live out of the DAC. That would have normally caused embarrassed resentment from an Afghan leader who had limited dealing with Americans, but Boris and the Engineer has remarkably similar opinions about politicians and senior military officers, so it was no problem.
Boris got Engineer Khodaidad a ride to the DAC and helped him move in and I sent him some mini split air conditioners from our stash in Lashkar Gah to make the office and living spaces tolerable. I then called to the country manager in Jalalabad to see if he could shake loose some additional funding to start repairing the streets and drainage ditches in Delaram which turned out to be easy because USAID had developed a sudden interest in seeing projects started there. We turned up a couple million started to pave the streets of Delaram while also rehabilitating the bazar in the old Taliban designated district administrative center of Ghurghuri which was not too far from Delaram.
Boris sporting an M3A1 grease gun in one of the abandoned walled forts
There was a small Marine Corps Civil Affairs attachment co-located with Engineer Khodaidad at the District Administrative Center and they took over getting him established in his new home. I don’t remember who owned those Marines by they were living like the grunts down south with no fresh food, no showers, and no A/C (until we hooked them up). At least one of them ( the team Gunny) had already been shot once while patrolling the area but that didn’t stop them from continuing to patrol. The DAC detachment also had a Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel from the Afghan Hands program assigned to it, but he had little to do except tease me because I couldn’t speak Pashto. He was a good man in a hard spot, but his assignment said all you needed to know about the Afghan Hands Program (it was a loser track for officers) which sucked because I saw serious talent in the Hands program every time I ran into one. There was also an American SF team located in Ghurghuri but I never saw them and have no idea what they were up to or why they were there.
That sets the table for an interesting tale because when Boris and Engineer Khodaidad showed up the security situation in Delaram wasn’t good but not that bad in the big scheme of things. But not a week after they showed up the Karzai administration struck by appointing a new district police chief named Asif, a Pashtun of the Helalzai subtribe of the Nurzai tribe. The Helalzai fought on the Soviet side of the war and Asif’s father, acting as the Soviet district security chief back then had executed 28 civilians in the Delaram Bazar for supporting the Nimroz Front Mujaheddin.
Commander Asif and Engineer Khodaidad were mortal enemies and he, the local tribal leaders, and the Afghan Hands LtCol told anybody who would listen that Asif’s appointment was a terrible idea, but that didn’t matter because there was nothing any American could do about it. When Asif showed up a significant proportion of the local police force immediately quit, partially motivated by his appointment and partially by the fact that they had not received their pay in months. Asif immediately brought several of his own trusted men onto the Delaram police payroll.
This was the interesting dynamic from the Afghan perspective because when Col Smith returned from his meeting in Zaranj with Engineer Khodaidad and installed him as the new district governor it was assumed he was under the protection of the Colonel who would support him both morally and materially as he consolidated his position. They expected Col Smith would derail the appointment of Commander Asif after they explained who he was and why his appointment would degrade the district’s security.
But Eric Smith had no intention of doing that, his focus was on the Northern Helmand Province where his maneuver battalions were still having major problems in Sangin, Musa Qala, and the Kajaki Dam. He didn’t give a damn about Delaram, neither did Paul Kennedy when he was there, nor would have I had I been in their shoes. But Paul knew how provincial and district governors were appointed and wouldn’t have short circuited that process – that was an unforced error. The appointment of Commander Asif was uncontested by the Colonel Smith because he had no say in the matter. Even worse Smith was forced to ignore the obvious reason for the decline in district security while acting like the new district police chief was a legit player in the regional security hierarchy.
The shit hit the fan days after Asif took over when a small convoy of Afghan security contractors were ambushed by the Taliban approximately 40 km west of Delaram. These were fuel tanker escorts as I recall, and they tended to roll with lots of guns and a ton of ready ammunition. In the ensuing 90-minute firefight, the contractors drove the Taliban from the field and captured a vehicle containing 12 IEDs. The contractors then called the Afghan Highway Police, the Afghan National Police, the Afghan National Army, and the Marines looking for somebody who would take custody of the Taliban IED’s. Nobody came out to help them and nobody wanted the IED’s except for the Taliban who returned in force to recapture their vehicle and IED’s. The contractors retreated to Delaram DAC with three of the IED’s and reported to the incident to Engineer Khodaidad.
These are the three large IED’s with pressure plates captured by the contractors
Within days carloads of armed men started to show up at our project sites to threaten our workers which was not unusual and Boris, who had the advantage of being tall, fit, disagreeable and a Dari speaker, had no problem running them off. Then IEDs began to detonate in the town several times a week, at first they targeted Asif’s Afghan National Police (ANP) checkpoints, then a few targeted our project site. The escalation continued with two of our Delaram project day laborers were kidnapped and decapitated by the local Taliban when they went to their home village (Tut) for the weekend.
The IED fiasco and sudden eruption of IED blasts brought the RCT-8 commander to the DAC with an entourage including his Sergeant Major, for a security shura. Boris blended in with the Afghans at the meeting and was able to observe from the back of the room. He said the District Governor was not mollified by being patronized by Col Smith with a pat on the back, and the promise “you and I will go out there with pistols and shoot the Taliban”.
Boris thought Engineer Khodaidad had seen a fair number of Americans in uniform making extravagant promises and talking tough, then failing to deliver before they redeployed back home. The Governor walked out of the security shura frustrated at the inability of the participants to agree on any concrete plan of action for security incidents like the IED capture. He later told Boris: “why should I even be here, if none of you listen to me?”. It was time to face a decision I never wanted to make and that was to cancel a project without finishing it, something none of my colleagues and I had done over the years of working contested districts, so I flew into Delaram to talk with the district governor.
This is what high grade home made explosive (HME) looks like
Delaram had grown considerably since my first visit as had the staffs of the Regimental Combat Teams. The RCT 8 CO now had a State Department Contractor assigned to him who was in some way responsible for aid in Nimroz Province. The State guy was a retired Army Colonel who seemed nice enough, but I was unable to figure out his role in the “hold and build” phase of the Marine Corps Southwestern campaign. He didn’t have any funds to spend, he was not part of the approval process for my projects, and he couldn’t leave the Delaram base, so it was hard to see what role he played in the big scheme of things. He picked me up when I flew in making it a point to ask that I not go directly to the Marine CO with information that should have gone through him. I told him that would not be problem without explaining why and asked if I could use his vehicle to drive out to the DAC.
The vehicle in question, a beat-up old Toyota SUV with bad brakes and no working A/C, did not belong to him. He and a few other contractors rented it (for $1000 a month!) to get around the base and it wasn’t allowed off base according to the rental contract. You could have gone down the ring road to Herat and purchased a vehicle in similar shape for less than a thousand U.S. dollars, but I don’t remember mentioning that to him.
The IED’s still had the blasting cap inside attached which amazed me – imagine bouncing around the pitted dirt roads of Afghanistan with 5 gallons of HME with a blasting cap embedded in it.
I met Boris on the Delaram FOB where the State Department liaison had found some racks for us in transient berthing area. The next morning, we walked to the gate where they screened local workers entering the base, exchanging our ball caps and sunglasses for shalwar kameez tunic’s and pakols and walked off the base to the district administrative center. The gate guards were contractors, not Marines and they were not sure we were allowed to just walk off base. I told them to check with my good friend Colonel Smith if they didn’t believe we could leave. Thankfully that did the trick because I think Eric might have really detained me for being armed, or the bogus Synergy Strike Force CAC card identifying me as DB Cooper CAC card (it even scanned in the DFACS!) , or using an expired SWAMP pass to bullshit my way off base, the number of infractions he could have gotten shitty with me about were alarming when I think about it.
Laying out the main drag of the Delaram Bazaar
The walk was about three miles as I remember, and we witnessed a group of boys cut and then steal an electrical transmission cable that connected an ANP checkpoint with an ANA base across the road. The kids were quick too, laughing hysterically from the back of motorcycles as the ANP troops boiled out of their checkpoint in hot pursuit. Being an ANP officer in Delaram while commander Asif was in charge sucked. When we arrived at the DAC Engineer Khodaidad was meeting with a local farmer discussing a vexing problem in Dari because the Engineer wouldn’t speak Pashto.
We had arrived hot and sweating profusely because it was a good 110 outside but were being ignored so Boris started interpreting for me.
“He’s asking the Engineer to send the Marines to run off the Taliban near his farm because they are raping his livestock at night. Engineer K just told him the big Foriengee (foreigner) understands Dari so maybe they should discuss this another time”
The farmer then turned to us and asked could we tell the Marines the Taliban are at his farm every night molesting his sheep and they can come and kill them no problem and he’d give them a sheep for their trouble too. Boris translated that for me before saying simply “No”.
There are hundreds of these old walled forts scattered throughout the desert in Nimroz province
Boris then asked Engineer Khodaidad for guidance in Russian and I said to the farmer “Ma dorost dari yad nadaraom” (I can’t speak dari well) but I said it perfectly which made him look at me with narrowing eyes before asking why there were Russians in the DAC. He then launched into a long story about how everything has gone to hell since the Marines showed up and built a forward operating base because Marines attract livestock raping Taliban and now there is an old Baloch Muj commander running the district but he doesn’t have his Muj army with him just two Russians and a handful of Marines which wasn’t enough fighters … the farmer had the pacing and timing of a stand-up comedian and in no time we were laughing so hard it was silly . After the farmer left Engineer Khodaidad told us he wanted the projects to continue but would understand if we pulled out. We stayed and finished the projects without additional losses.
Most of the old forts are eroding back into the desert, the amount of interesting archeological history being lost to history is a crime.
Engineer Khodaidad and Commander Asif did not survive their appointments to the Kashrud district government. Asif was smoke checked after a few months in command which immediately brought the incident rates down and allowed us to finish our projects. Engineer Khodaidad was killed in a targeted assassination outside his home village a year after his appointment to district governor. The Engineer was a brave man who personally found and ran off a two man hit team sent to kill Boris, but he didn’t tell us about it, he told Governor Brahui who then called Bashir and told him to bring Boris back to Zaranj immediately.
I decided to go get Boris with our Baluch interpreter Zabi and drive him back to Zaranj because he had bitching about not being able to free range the province with me. We took all day to make the drive to Zaranj stopping to examine some of the old walled cities in the desert that were being used by the Taliban to move in and out of the Helmand. We found melon rinds, goat scat and fire pits in them which we assumed came from the Taliban because the Desert of Death in no place to herd goats.
Boris and Zabi during our walled city day trip
Boris the Russian Jew is now Boris the Israeli Kibbutz farmer He and his growing family live the spartan life in the Negav Desert. Zabi and Bashir are now both American citizens and doing well. Governor Brahui returned to his home in Char Burjak district which had experienced an economic revival after we repaired the irrigation system. I have no idea how he is getting along with the Taliban government but suspect he’s reached accommodations with them because what else can he do?
