Category Archives: The world that may come to be

It couldn’t happen here, could it?

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I read. By that, I mean I read a lot. If you see me away from home, you may notice I have my tablet with me. I have a couple of thousand books on it. I finished a book last night, Joe Steel by Harry Turtledove. http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1406509652l/22544038.jpgI’m not going to give it a review. I rarely, if ever, review books. I’ve read a lot of Turtledove’s books and his favorite theme is Alternate History. I would suggest you read this one. It has some critical insights within it.

The alternate history in this book is simple…what if Joe Stalin’s parents had emigrated to the US well before Joe Stalin was born? Leon Trotsky, a darling of some current leftists, would have succeeded V. I. Lenin to lead communist Russia. Joe Stalin, who is called Joe Steel in the book, becomes a California congressmen running against FDR in 1932…and FDR and Eleanor mysteriously die in a fire in the New York Governor’s mansion.

I remember my father saying, he was an FDR democrat, that the country came to within a hair’s breadth of a revolution in 1932. Progressive propaganda blamed Wall Street for the nation’s woes. Some of that blame is valid; much was not.

The book uses that concept to show how the US could be changed into a dictatorship by an unprincipled strongman. I don’t know Turtledove’s politics but some of the tactics used by Joe Steel are eerily similar to some being used by Barak Obama.

How could the US be suborned into a dictatorship? The answer is in the book if you look: complacency, ignorance, and bigotry against the fundamental principles of this nation with a well-planned attack by democrats against free enterprise and capitalism. Take a look at our current politics and you’ll see the parallels in the book.

When FDR’s tactics were blocked by the Supreme Court, FDR attempted to pack the court with his cronies. In Joe Steel, Stalin has them charged with trumped up violations and shoots them for treason. The aims of FDR and Joe Steel were the same, only the tactics were different.

The book disturbed me. Not by its theme nor of its plot; it disturbed me because it could easily happen here. We don’t have someone knocking on our door in the middle of the night. They use battering rams instead.

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If you’re a student of military history, you may have noticed something that is no longer allowed in the US military. Not all that long ago, a soldier’s weapons were stored, not in the armory, but with him in his barracks. In the 1990’s, during Clinton’s administration, that changed and those weapons were removed, taken from the troops. If the question was asked, “Why?” no real answer was given. There is one very reasonable motivation—the military leadership feared their troops.

The disarming of the military had consequences. One direct consequence was the massacre at Ft. Hood. There have been other, less well-known incidents as well.

Ted Cruz has an answer. Allow troops to carry personal weapons on base. It won’t alleviate the fears of mutiny by the leadership. It will, however, allow troops to have the means to be able to defend themselves and their families.

Ted Cruz takes on the military, says ‘Second Amendment rights are removed’ from troops on base

Base commanders fear accidents, escalation of personal disputes

By Jacqueline Klimas – The Washington Times – Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Sen. Ted Cruz is asking lawmakers to consider allowing troops to carry personal firearms on base for protection, reviving a fight that has previously been a nonstarter with Congress after military leaders said they didn’t support the change.

While many lawmakers said Tuesday they were open to having a discussion on changing the rules in a Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing, most said that they would defer issues of base security to military leaders — who have historically been against allowing concealed carry on their posts.

Mr. Cruz formally sent a letter to Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and chairman of the committee, on Tuesday afternoon asking for a hearing on the subject, saying that current restrictions impede Second Amendment rights and weaken the safety and security of troops.

“The men and women in our military have been at war for over a decade; they understand the responsibilities that go along with carrying a firearm,” Mr. Cruz wrote in the letter. “Yet their Second Amendment rights are removed at the front gate.”

I suggest you read the entire column at the Washington Times website. It’s worth a read.

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Bullet Points

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There are a number of items in the news today. The top story is the rebellion in the GOP House ranks against John Boehner. The MSM, including FOX, poo-poos the idea that Boehner can be turned out. Other commentators, however, believe there is a significant chance to oust Boehner.

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Reps, Ted Yoho, R-Fla., Louie Gohmert, R-Texas., and House Speaker John Boehner. (Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Landov; Alan Youngblood/Ocala Starbanner/landov; Shawn-Thew/epa/landov)

Two GOP candidates have stepped forward to run against Boehner. The strongest is Louis Gohmert (R-TX). But there is a second candidate, too, Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL). Gohmert is a strong conservative track-record. I don’t know much about Yoho other than he’s running against Boehner.

In the end, it matters not, who of these candidates receives the votes. The important thrust is that at least twenty-nine GOP Representatives—DON’T VOTE FOR BOEHNER! If Boehner loses the first vote, then the GOP can consolidate with another candidate, Gohmert I would hope, to choose another Speaker and put Boehner out on the curb.

I’ve already heard some RINOs say that a vote against Boehner is a vote for Pelosi. Not true, it’s another lie by the GOP establishment. The only way a ‘Pub can vote for Pelosi is to actually vote for her, or, to vote, “Present,” to reduce the number of votes cast. Boehner needs the majority of the votes, not just the highest number of votes. If he doesn’t get a majority, he loses.

A number of Representatives have already announced they won’t vote for Boehner. Many more have quietly let it be known they probably won’t. There are fifty new representative coming to Congress. Many of them ran on a ticket of opposing John Boehner. At first look, getting twenty-nine ‘Pubs to vote against John Boehner seemed impossible. When you look more closely, that impossibility fades.

A number of talk show hosts, Glenn Beck for one, are telling their audience to call the Capitol switchboard,1-877-762-8762, to speak to their representatives and to tell them to not vote for Boehner. The switchboard is being flooded and was shutdown once already this morning.

Go make that call!

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Sarah Palin is back in the news against. Not for something she did but for something her son did. He used the family dog as a foot-stool.

PETA is outraged. Ho-hum.

The real thing that has the left outraged is not the photo of her son stepping on the family dog (it was a big dog. PETA looked the other way when Ellen Degenerate posted one like it,) but her 2014 award of being the top American Achiever.

The left rejects achievement. It is their antithesis. Achieving, in their minds, means someone loses, therefore achievement must be limited to be ‘fair.’

American Achiever of 2014: Sarah Palin

By M. Joseph Sheppard, December 27, 2014

It would be the height of churlishness for even the most inveterate leftist to deny the import of someone who made Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” list, and then the Smithsonian Institution‘s “100 Most Significant Americans Of All Time” list.  Both affirmations were earned by former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

To then accept Governor Palin as “American Achiever of the Year 2014” would be for most, if not all on the left (and to be fair, many in the GOP) no doubt a bridge too far.  However, such partisanship should not stand in the way of a general acknowledgement of what was a remarkable year for Palin.

Palin achieved what such luminaries as President Obama did not: a place in the Smithsonian’s prestigious “Most Significant” list.  After being written off by many in the media, and especially the left, as “irrelevant” and predicted by MSNBC’s Krystal Ball as “not going to have an effect on the [2014] midterms,” Palin’s record of success of her endorsed candidates was nothing short of phenomenal. (The article continues on the American Thinker website.)

Sarah Palin is never far from conservative’s minds. She is the epitome of conservatism. Maligned and slandered by the left, she continues on, unrepentant, and speaks her mind. The left hates her with a passion because she is the standard the left hates and cannot beat.

The Many Memes of Sarah Palin

By M. Joseph Sheppard, January 5, 2015

Defining a politician’s personality, whether positively to build them up, or negatively to tear them down, is a basic rule of politics. Themes can define an image e.g. “Roosevelt’s categorization of Al Smith as “The Happy Warrior” or Democrat folklore depicting William Jennings Bryan as “the Great Commoner” are two classic positive examples. On the negative side, Mitt Romney never recovered from being defined as “Mr. 1 percent”, nor did John Kerry from being “Mr. Flip Flop.”

Once a politician is defined (fairly or unfairly doesn’t enter into the picture) as say, Rick Perry was as a forgetful ditherer, it becomes extremely difficult to shake off the perception — even though in his case it was based on a single, admittedly important, debate moment. Such is the power of media defining that an entire career as a successful governor of a major state can have that whole positive history shrouded in the fog of a slip of the tongue or a moments’ forgetfulness.

This eternal and unshakable truism seems to have one, and perhaps the only one exception to the rule, and that is Governor Palin. Once the media got over their initial shock at her 2008 convention address, the entire subsequent campaign was involved in a liberal media/blog attempt to stick a permanent, negative label on her. That a flow of constant new Palin memes continues to this day shows that for all their efforts nothing has stuck irrevocably and fatally detrimentally.

Before Palin’s convention address there was some flailing about by a confused media and a number of memes were tried out. “Palin’s a bad parent neglecting her children, especially the special needs one, for a campaign”. That such nonsense has never been used against a man, and the anger of many women at such a ridiculous concept put paid to that quickly. Next was “Palin’s a hypocrite because her daughter is pregnant” which quickly died after Palin describe her family as “having the same ups and downs as all families” which, rightly received an understanding and warm reception. There was even a despicable campaign from the likes of Daily Kos and the even wilder “progressive” fringes, which suggested Trig might not even be Sarah’s child.

After the Gibson interview the left crowed “Palin doesn’t even know what the Bush doctrine is”. As it turned out neither did 90% of the population either — it being unlikely that if the question was put to those crowing they could have answered it, so that quickly died the death. What did have legs, and is only 6 years later fading from the arsenal of even the lowest information voters, was the “I can see Russia from my house” statement. This line, of course, was not even spoken by Palin but had a life of its own, which is a sad reflection on some segments of the population.

No matter the lies, no matter the numerous slanders, no matter the accusations, Sarah Palin continues on, a stalwart pillar of American Conservatism.

Twenty-Fifteen is starting off with a bang!

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They’re scared

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The political future of democrats continues to slide. In Missouri, State Treasurer, Clint Zweiful, has announced he won’t run again for any office. Zweiful is term limited as Treasurer.

[Zweiful] told The Associated Press he considered running for U.S. Senate or lieutenant governor in 2016. But he said he opted against a campaign partly because he wants to continue to be involved with the activities of his two teenage daughters. — KY3 TV.

Staying home with the family is the usual political cop-out when a politico thinks he is toast.

But Zweiful isn’t the only democrat running scared. McCaskill is too. How to I know? I observe her actions before and after the last election.

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Senator Claire McCaskill, D-MO

Before the election, an election that did not include McCaskill running for re-election, she was the dems fair-haired girl. Her prospects were good. She was rumored to be in the fast-lane as Missouri’s next democrat candidate for Governor or Eric Holder’s replacement as AG.

Then came the 2014 mid-terms elections. McCaskill did a 180º turn. The democrats were out. McCaskill started talking like a ‘Pub. She was against Harry Reid for Minority Leader, she was for passage of the Keystone XL pipeline. There were rumors, unsubstantiated so far, that she’d flip parties (gag!).

No, with the temperament growing in Missouri, McCaskill knows she’s toast when her term is up. Her plans for running for Missouri Governor dissipated with her criticism of Reid and other high-level dems in Washington. Her statements didn’t go well with the democrat establishment within the state. Those facts leave McCaskill with few options.

One democrat finally has gotten over his panic.  Mark Begich has tossed in the towel and has conceded his run for Alaska Senator to ‘Pub Dan Sullivan.

Alex DeMarban, November 17, 2014

After holding on to dwindling hope for days, Sen. Mark Begich on Monday conceded he had lost his U.S. Senate race to Republican Dan Sullivan.

With the concession coming nearly two weeks after the Nov. 4 general election and with few votes left to count, the statement was largely a formality.

The Associated Press called the race nearly a week ago. Soon after, Sullivan attended orientation meetings in D.C. to prepare to take office and voted for Republican leaders in the new Senate majority that takes power in January.

The democrat who is running most scared is Mary Landrieu. She’s so scared she’ll lose next month to ‘Pub Bill Cassidy, that she’s suddenly embraced the Keystone XL Pipeline. Landrieu hopes voters will forget that she was the Chairman of the Senate Energy Committee and did nothing about the Keystone project…until she failed to win reelection.

The ‘Pub controlled House has aided her flip-flop by passing, again, a bill to allow the project. Landrieu has latched onto the Keystone pipeline as a last desperate attempt to gain some supporters. I doubt it will work. The last poll I saw, a week after the mid-term, had Landrieu down 16 points behind Cassidy and abandoned by her party.

The ‘Pubs won. Now they need to decide what to do with their success. Whatever it may be, we can be assured that Mitch McConnell will screw it up.

 

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What’s good for the goose…

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I see that another government agency is building a private army, arming them, putting them in the universal government black uniform and buying body armor. Which agency? It’s not just an agency, it’s an entire governmental department, the Department of Agriculture. According to another website, the USDA soliciting bids for .40S&W submachine guns.

That begs the question that, so far, no governmental department nor agency has answered—why? What justification drives this solicitation? As before, that question remains unanswered.

A May 7th solicitation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeks “the commercial acquisition of submachine guns [in] .40 Cal. S&W.”

According to the solicitation, the Dept. of Agriculture wants the guns to have an “ambidextrous safety, semiautomatic or 2 round [bursts] trigger group, Tritium night sights front and rear, rails for attachment of flashlight (front under fore group) and scope (top rear), stock collapsible or folding,” and a “30 rd. capacity” magazine.

They also want the submachine guns to have a “sling,” be “lightweight,” and have an “oversized trigger guard for gloved operation.” 

The solicitation directs “all responsible and/or interested sources…[to] submit their company name, point of contact, and telephone.” Companies that submit information in a “timely” fashion “shall be considered by the agency for contact to determine weapon suitability.”

What use does the USDA have for these? Arming Meat Inspectors? Then add the body armor, what is the need? Is there an armed militia of Angus cattle who are arming themselves for protection from slaughter-houses?

Agriculture Department puts in request to buy body armor

By Cheryl K. Chumley, The Washington Times, Friday, May 16, 2014

Swat team personnel gather for a briefing before entering the the former Roth’s grocery store to investigate an armed robbery at School House Square in Keizer, Ore., on Tuesday, March 18, 2014. A Brinks employee was robbed at gunpoint when he was servicing an ATM machine, said Keizer Police Deputy Chief Jeff Kuhns. (AP Photo/Statesman-Journal, Timothy J. Gonzalez)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has put in an acquisition request to buy body armor — specifically, “ballistic vests, compliant with NIJ 0101.06 for Level IIIA Ballistic Resistance of body armor,” the solicitation stated.

The request was put in writing and posted on May 7 — just a few days before the same agency sought “the commercial acquisition of submachine guns” equipped for 3-round magazines, Breitbart reported.

The May 7 solicitation reads: “The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General, [seeks] Body Armor [that’s] gender specific, lightweight, [containing] plate/pad (hard or soft) and concealable carrier. [Also a] tactical vest, undergarment (white), identification patches, accessories (6 pouches), body armor carry bag and professional measurements,” Breitbart reported.

The solicitation also reads that “all responsible and/or interested sources may submit their company name, point of contact and telephone number,” the media outlet reported. And “timely” respondents “shall be considered by the agency for contact,” Breitbart said.

Add it to the list of federal agencies making requests for guns and ammunition in recent months.

The same article mentions the purchase of ammunition by the US Postal Service. The USPS, unlike the USDA, has long had an investigative component, Postal Inspectors. They are federally commissioned officers and has racked up a record of arrests for mail fraud. The USDA has neither the history nor the need for armaments like the Postal Service.

I read somewhere that the number of NFA purchases by citizens (to the uninformed, NFA purchases include full-auto weapons, suppressors, and short firearms, a legacy from Prohibition and the Gangster Era,) has increased dramatically. In line with that is the purchase of body armor by citizens as well, in some areas, more body armor is bought by locals than their law enforcement agencies.

These purchases of body armor has raised concerns for some municipalities and they’ve passed ordinances banning the purchase of body armor by law-abiding citizens. According to one website that sells body armor, they will not ship their products to Connecticut nor to New York for buyers who are not military or law enforcement organizations.

One of the purposes of the 2nd Amendment was to allow citizens to be armed—on par with government. Citizens who are armed—and protected, equally with the government are better prepared to resist governmental tyranny.

The bottom line? Buy body armor for yourself while you can. It’ll be another motivation to maintain your weight…and girth. Body armor is useless if it doesn’t fit. Prices for body armor is less than a new AR.

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Yawners…

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As expected, and as I noted in yesterday’s post, Ben Sasse won his primary race for Senate in Nebraska and Shelly Moore Capito won her primary for Senate in West Virginia. Both are expected to win in the general elections in the Fall.

Sasse will replace retiring Senator Mike Johanns (R). Capito will replace Jay Rockefeller (D) adding one more Senate seat to the ‘Pubs.

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Tales of Gloom and Despair! That is what one pundit is prophesying for the dems in the elections this year. Michael Barone, writing in the Investor’s Business Daily, mulls the future for the democrats.

Demographic Trends Aren’t Necessarily In Favor Of Democrats

By MICHAEL BARON, Posted 05/13/2014 06:24 PM ET

Michael Barone

Michael Barone

Demography is destiny, we are often told, and rightly — up to a point. The American electorate is made up of multiple identifiable segments, defined in various ways, by race and ethnicity, by age cohort, by region and religiosity (or lack thereof), by economic status and interest.

Over time, some segments become larger and some smaller. Some prove to be politically crucial, given the politics of the time. Others become irrelevant, losing cohesion and identity.

From the results of the 2008 presidential election, many pundits prophesied a bleak future for the Republican Party, and not implausibly.

The exit poll showed that President Obama carried by overwhelming margins two demographic segments that were bound to become a larger share of the electorate over time.

He carried Hispanics 67% to 31%, despite Republican opponent John McCain’s support of comprehensive immigration reform. Obama carried voters under 30 — the so-called Millennial Generation — by 66% to 32%.

But over time, Democrats’ hold on these groups has weakened. In Gallup polls, Obama’s job approval among Hispanics declined from 75% in 2012 to 52% in 2013 and among Millennials from 61% in 2012 to 46% in 2013.

The recent Harvard Institute of Politics poll of Millennials showed Democrats with a big party-identification edge among those over 25, but ahead of Republicans by only 41% to 38% among those 18 to 20.

The older Millennials came of political age during the late George W. Bush years and were transfixed by the glamor of candidate Obama in 2008. The younger Millennials are coming of political age in the middle Obama years and are plainly less enchanted and open to the other party.

There are other rifts in what some saw as the emerging eternal Democratic majority. National Journal analyst Ronald Brownstein often contrasts whites and nonwhites, but nonwhites are not a single homogeneous group.

Hispanics tend to vote more like whites than blacks, with high-income Hispanics trending Republican.

When California Democrats tried to use their legislative supermajorities to put on a ballot proposition repealing the state’s ban on racial discrimination in state college and university admissions, Asian-American legislators withdrew their support.

They got hundreds of calls from parents concerned about their kids’ chances to get into Berkeley and UCLA.

Campus-based Asian activists maintained solidarity with their fellow “people of color.” Asian parents with their families’ futures at stake saw things differently.

Union members were long a key Democratic constituency. But there are increasing splits between public sector and private sector unions.

In New Jersey, Democrats with private sector union backgrounds have backed GOP Gov. Chris Christie’s fiscal reforms. In Nevada, the state AFL-CIO is opposing the teacher unions’ drive for more than doubling the business tax to pay for education spending.

On the national level, Laborers International Union president Terry O’Sullivan has spoken out bitterly against the Obama administration’s refusals to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

The column continues at the IDB website. It explores the splits in unions over the Keystone pipeline versus, “billionaire Tom Steyer’s pledge to spend $100 million against the pipeline.”

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Hundreds trapped underground after explosion, fire at Turkish coal mine

OFFICIALS SAY ‘hopes are diminishing’ Wednesday as rescuers struggle to reach more than 200 miners trapped underground after an explosion and fire at a coal mine in western Turkey kills at least 205 workers during a shift change.

This headline strikes close to home. I grew up in coal country. My Father was a coal miner as were our neighbors around us. Dad was in two mine explosions when he was much younger. After the second, he changed jobs to work above ground where he operated a loader filling railroad cars with coal.

Mine explosions used to be fairly common. It was one area the UMWA worked with mine owners to improve safety. No one, not the miners, the union, nor the mine owners, wanted explosions. Not only did it kill people, it disrupted production and repairs were costly. More than one mine was closed, never to reopen, after an explosion.

I had a personal experience with one large mine explosion. I still remember the event to this day.

Night of the Big Bump!

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Miner’s Memorial, Benton, Illinois

On December 21, 1951 at 7:40PM, an explosion occurred at the Orient #2 coal mine in West Frankfort, IL. The explosion occurred at a depth of approximately 500 feet and about 2 1/2 miles from the shaft head—almost directly under our farm.

Read more here…

 

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The chickeeeens have come hoooome…

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Those of us who are conservative in our politics and outlook in life knew this was coming. Obama and the democrat leadership in Washington is, and has always been, a joke. We knew the world thought so. Now, Putin has rubbed our faces in the mess of that lack of leadership in Washington. Others around the world are taking advantage of that joke.

We are seeing the consequences of the democrat and liberal rape of our nation. We are astonishingly in debt. We have massive unemployment. Our borders are open to our enemies and criminals and our military has been eviscerated and is worn out. The military is being lead by political generals, useless and unable to lead and they are creating more dissension in the ranks. Just ten years ago we were the most powerful and recognized leader in the world. All that is gone. We’re now the mockery of the world and Putin has proved it.

Mockery greets Obama’s new sanctions against Russian officials after Crimea action

By Ben Wolfgang – The Washington Times, Monday, March 17, 2014

President Obama on Monday slapped Russia with the kinds of economic sanctions not seen since the Cold War, but the administration’s supposed hard line was met with mockery and a “collective shrug” in Moscow, Kiev and Washington.

One day after Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, the White House and its partners in the European Union responded by targeting high-ranking officials in Moscow along with pro-Russian figures responsible for the unrest in Ukraine.

The move adds even more tension to a dramatic standoff between Russia and the West, but early signs suggest the latest round of sanctions will have little impact on Russian President Vladimir Putin as he moves toward annexation of Crimea and, some fear, an all-out invasion of Ukraine.

Even some of those directly affected by the U.S. and European sanctions laughed them off and openly mocked Mr. Obama.

“Comrade Obama, what should those who have neither accounts nor property abroad do? Have you not thought about it?” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said in a message on Twitter. He is one of the seven Russian officials directly targeted by the president in an executive order signed Monday morning. “I think the decree of the President of the United States was written by some joker.”

The sanctions specifically target officials close to Mr. Putin, though neither the Russian president nor Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was among those named.

…

In Kiev, where a new government is trying to fend off Mr. Putin and prevent the loss of Crimea, reactions to the latest round of sanctions were lukewarm at best.

“The first reaction here … is sort of a collective shrug,” said Chris Miller, editor of the Kyiv Post who briefed reporters during a conference call hosted by the Wilson Center.

Mr. Miller said the sentiment is “these sanctions are too soft, too late. They don’t target those high up enough, closer to Putin.”

…

The prime minister of Crimea also blasted the U.S. president, tweeting a digitally altered picture of Mr. Obama in a Russian military uniform.

“Interestingly, after the success of the company in returning Crimea, Barack is getting the rank of colonel?” tweeted Sergey Aksyonov.

Despite all of that criticism, the White House is sticking by its strategy and arguing that the sanctions will have a dramatic impact.

Look at that last paragraph. No one, not in Crimea, nor Russia, nor here, believes these sanctions on…how many, a dozen of Putin’s flunkies, will work. What else has Obama done? He sent a flight of F-16s to Poland. Yawn.

Ukraine, after the breakup of the old Soviet Union, was a nuclear power. The West, the EU, NATO and the US guaranteed their security if they destroyed their nukes. The Ukraine did so.

Now they have been invaded and territory seized by a resurgent Russia eager to rebuild the old Soviet Empire. What has the West done? Nothing. If it weren’t so credible, I’d say we’re reliving Neville Chamberlain returning home after giving Czechoslovakia to Hitler prior to World War II.

“Peace in our time,” Chamberlain said. Yeah, for a few months and no one was prepared to stop Hitler before the world was engulfed in war.

How Neville Chamberlain’s words haunt the Crimean crisis

Updated: March 15, 2014 18:29:00

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, right, and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in London to discuss the crisis in Ukraine. Brendan Smialowski / Reuters / March 14, 2014

Sect’y of State John Kerry with Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov

Decades of Soviet domination may have left this southern corner of Ukraine looking a bit beaten up around the edges, but my overriding feeling was that this was a place that was waking from a long, deep sleep.

The port of Sebastopol had an air of wistfulness that only places with a rich and brutal history can manage, while a visit to the defunct subterranean Russian submarine base in nearby Balaclava bay was made even more attractive by the low cost of admission and the fact that the only other visitors to the attraction were a couple from Slough.

Similarly memorable were afternoons spent at the Tsar’s Livadia Palace on the shores of the Black Sea, and Checkov’s dacha, a beautiful sunlit villa high in the hills above Yalta, in which he wrote his incomparable play The Cherry Orchard. Crimea, clearly, was the next great European tourist destination. I could only bless my luck that I’d got in before it was all sanitised for the package holiday industry that would inevitably follow with Ukraine’s sublimation into European politics and culture.

But that was then. With dizzying speed the region has been occupied, liberated or annexed (according to your view) by Russian troops and, with the EU and America still fumbling for a response, the Crimean government has called a referendum, due to be conducted today, to ask its inhabitants whether it should rejoin the Russian Federation.

Most tellingly, the wording of the ballot paper offers no choice for preserving the current status quo. There are only two questions on it: do you wish to join the Russian Federation now, or choose to become independent?

From the Kremlin’s point of view, the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Kiev last month was nothing less than a western-inspired plot, one that has left the millions of Russian-speaking inhabitants in Crimea and eastern Ukraine isolated and vulnerable. To those on the other side of the political divide, Russia’s occupation is a barefaced land grab.

What is undeniable is that Vladimir Putin’s bold strategy has wrong-footed the West. His opponents are threatening to impose sanctions, but who would they really hurt? With the world’s economies so inextricably entwined, there’s scarcely a country in Europe whose own balance of payments wouldn’t be disrupted by a trade embargo. And yet the only other option, military intervention to prop up the teetering Ukrainian government, is unthinkable.

In London on Friday John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, held last-ditch talks in an attempt to diffuse the situation before today’s deadline. But with the referendum so close at hand, the talks were never likely to prosper. Six hours spent in private consultation brought no major breakthrough. After the collapse of the talks Mr Kerry warned Russia of “very serious steps” if it annexes Crimea.

Strong words of course, and yet it all seems too little, too late. Indeed, a full two days before the ballot, the Russian flag was already flying above the entrance to the Crimean Parliament in the provincial capital, Simferopol, while street signs were being methodically altered from the Ukrainian language into Russian. Somebody somewhere already knows the outcome.

And with civil unrest already igniting in cities such as Donetsk, and Russian troops conducting military manoeuvres on Ukraine’s eastern border, the fear is that annexing Crimea may well prove the curtain raiser to a far more turbulent future for central Europe. The prospect of this beautiful and doleful country being torn apart once more by forces beyond its control is too dreadful to contemplate; yet it now seems a genuine possibility.

When Nazi Germany annexed the area of German-speaking Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland in spring 1938, the response from the now discredited British prime minister Neville Chamberlain summed up the parochial view of many to events in central Europe at the time. He described the incident as “a quarrel in a faraway country between people of which we know nothing”. Modern politicians would do well to learn from Mr Chamberlain’s folly.

As so many have said, history is cyclical. When we don’t study history, examine the parallels to current events, examine the consequences of history in those parallels, we repeat the errors and mistakes of the past. I believe, we are about to repeat one of those errors. This time, instead of Britain being the one in peril, it will be us.

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Overheard at the barbershop

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A blogger friend frequently leads his posts with, “Heard in the ‘bolance…” I’m emulating him today about a discussion I had with my barber last week.

My barber is the current owner, of a string of owners, of the barbershop where I’ve been getting my hair cut for a long time, several decades, since I got out of the Air Force. My barber started as just another hair-cutter. She saved her money and when the last owner retired, she bought the shop. In the time I’ve known her, she’s raised a family and now has grandchildren.

I’m not sure how we approached the subject. Somewhere in our conversation she said she and twenty of her ‘girlfriends’ were taking CCW training the following day. She made the statement, “Getting one while she could.”

It was a strange statement, I thought. There is no movement in Missouri to abolish concealed carry. Nation-wide, the trend is just the opposite. Even Illinois, the last holdout, now has concealed carry. The first 5,000 certificates were mailed out this week.

Heller and McDonald ended any idea that the 2nd Amendment applied only to militias, or the National Guard, according to rabid liberals. The May-issue vs. Shall-issue controversy received a probable fatal blow this week when the 9th Circus, uhh, the 9th US Appellate Court, declared ‘May Issue’, in light of Heller and McDonald, was a denial of 2nd Amendment rights. The first case was against the San Diego Sheriff. That decision was echoed in a second case against another Sheriff.

Because of these court actions, I was surprised to hear my barber be so pessimistic about concealed carry and ownership of firearms in general. She, like all too many, is not a follower of 2nd Amendment news. In fact, she’s not a follower of the news in any form. She acquires bits and snips of information, frequently invalid information, from the internet and friends.

What she is, however, is a fair barometer of state of mind of American citizens at large. And that barometer foretells a storm season. I hadn’t told her that I was carrying concealed. There had been, until that time, no need. The conversation proceeded about how she planned to stash a pistol in her barbershop. She mentioned velcroing a holster to the back of her barber chair. I suggested that a pistol hidden in the shop would defeat its purpose if she was not at that spot when a need occurred. What would she do, I asked, if she needed that pistol and she was not at her chair but on a smoke break in the rear of the shop or sitting, reading during a slack period several feet away from her hidden pistol? I suggested she carry on her person instead. Her barber smock provided perfect concealment of a pistol in or outside of her waistband.

The entire conversation was an indication that normal, run-of-the-mill citizens are fearful, worried, not about crime so much as deeply concerned about the course of government. When I mentioned the confiscation threats being issued by the Connecticut and New York state governments, it was completely new to her. She was surprised, dismayed, and…enraged!

As I said, she was not a follower of the news. She was a typical representation of the vast majority of citizens living their lives, mindful of the growing governmental interference, who simply want to live life as they have been. But everyday, in some way, that vision of life is being changed, and not, in their view, for the better.

You see satirical articles, such as the one below, every day, it seems. This article used to be an inside joke—inside to those who are 2nd Amendment supporters. But it is new to some like my barber. To them, it isn’t satire aimed at over-reaching government; it is a strong possibility that is not fantasy nor satire.

The police panic in Boston last year following the Boston Marathon bombing is still fresh in people’s mind. (If you have a Facebook account, you can see a gallery of photos of illegal police actions.) The scenes of police invading homes without warrants could happen anywhere government becomes oppressive.

72 People Killed Resisting Gun Confiscation in Massachussetts!

Posted by Staff on March 09, 2014

Boston – National Guard units seeking to confiscate a cache of recently banned assault weapons were ambushed by elements of a Para-military extremist faction. Military and law enforcement sources estimate that 72 were killed and more than 200 injured before government forces were compelled to withdraw.

 

Speaking after the clash, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage declared that the extremist faction, which was made up of local citizens, has links to the radical right-wing tax protest movement.

Gage blamed the extremists for recent incidents of vandalism directed against internal revenue offices. The governor, who described the group’s organizers as “criminals,” issued an executive order authorizing the summary arrest of any individual who has interfered with the government’s efforts to secure law and order.

The military raid on the extremist arsenal followed wide-spread refusal by the local citizenry to turn over recently outlawed assault weapons.

Gage issued a ban on military-style assault weapons and ammunition earlier in the week. This decision followed a meeting in early this month between government and military leaders at which the governor authorized the forcible confiscation of illegal arms.

One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed out that “none of these people would have been killed had the extremists obeyed the law and turned over their weapons voluntarily.”

Government troops initially succeeded in confiscating a large supply of outlawed weapons and ammunition. However, troops attempting to seize arms and ammunition in Lexington met with resistance from heavily-armed extremists who had been tipped off regarding the government’s plans.

Of course, the article is satire, an updated version of the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. To people like my barber, it brings a troubling possibility home. New York and Connecticut have already threatened their citizens that police break in their homes and seize so-called ‘assault’ weapons and ‘large-capacity’ magazines. Shotguns, too, in the case of New York. To a growing number of Americans, that threat is no longer a fantasy and certainly not satire.

While she finished my haircut, we had a nice conversation on the merits of auto-loading pistols versus revolvers. I think she will begin with a revolver…at first. Like all so many things, once you’ve bought your first firearm, you just can’t stop at one.

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