Combined Arms, Take Two, turn two

Now that the second pincer of the German attack has entered the map, this is how the battlefield stood after the German Turn 2. The first turn.

The Soviet commander divided his tanks into two squadrons, sending four to deal with the Tigers from the 23rd Panzer Division shielding my assault on the village in the west (top) and three to bolster the infantry preparing to meet the company-sized assault from the east (bottom).

The Panther on the northern hill was destroyed right away; in retrospect this position was a foolish decision on my part. However, the Soviets lost the T-34 defending the approach to the village in an exchange of fire with one of the Tigers, and more crucially, a Stalin to a timely critical hit as it charged past a Panther in an attempt to get a shot at close range on the exposed side of the engaged Tiger. Despite being buttoned up and having to swivel its turret, the Panther managed to take out the heavier tank at a range of 120 meters.

However despite the assistance of the other Tiger delivering suppressive fire, the Panzergrenadiers were unable to dislodge the platoon of Soviet Guards from the building near the hills. And in the west, the T-34s and Stalins wreaked havoc on the 1st Panzer Division.

I’d set up a death star of a platoon with both medium machine guns under my best leader, a 9-2, and advanced them into the stone building at the bottom of the map, thinking to use them to suppress the Soviet infantry and permit the other two platoons to advance. A single shell from a Stalin’s 122L killed most of them and broke the survivors. That allowed the Soviets to concentrate their fire on my second-best platoon, who also broke under the pressure.

My only success was rushing one squad of engineers armed with a demolition charge into position where they would be able to claim the first of the nine buildings the Germans require for victory. Also, a pair of squads managed to make their way towards the village on the south side of the map, although it will be another two turns before they are able to reach it.

At this point, I have to admit that it doesn’t look good for the attacking Germans. I needed to break that Guards platoon to give me access to the village before the carnage in the west permits him to start falling back and reinforcing the troops he’s got there. Also, I made a serious mistake in exposing the side of one Tiger to the anti-tank gun in the village, which is quite capable of punching through the monster’s relatively light side armor. I am going to need some luck to stay in this one.

Correcting a misstep

Donald Trump obviously understood that his supporters did not like his reply to Megyn Kelly on highly-skilled immigration, which they took to be a flip-flop on the H-1B visa program. He immediately clarified his position after the debate:

March 04, 2016
Donald J. Trump Position on Visas

“Megyn Kelly asked about highly-skilled immigration. The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay. I remain totally committed to eliminating rampant, widespread H-1B abuse and ending outrageous practices such as those that occurred at Disney in Florida when Americans were forced to train their foreign replacements. I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.”

That is about as clear as it gets. Whether you support Trump or not, the fact that he might have slipped up once when under attack from three sides is not indicative of his true position on immigration. Especially when there is sleight of hand involved in the question, substituting “H1-B visas” for “highly-skilled immigration”.

Trump’s general principle on immigrant labor remains clear: he does not support importing foreign workers to lower the wages of American jobs.

11th debate, 11th hour

It’s all but over for the Republican campaigns:

Republicans gather for their eleventh debate on Thursday amid growing consternation from those in the GOP establishment that Donald Trump is unstoppable.

In the hours since Trump’s Super Tuesday romp, Republicans have intensified their push to defeat him, with GOP groups digging into their bank accounts for an air assault in Florida. Top operatives are laying groundwork for primaries on March 15, perhaps the last chance to defeat the billionaire mogul. And Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, under growing duress, are getting ready to deliver harsh attacks on the front-runner in Thursday’s primetime debate in Detroit.

The flurry of activity underscores what many concede is a central reality: The window for halting Trump may soon be closed for good.

“Trump is the presumptive nominee,” said Christian Ferry, who served as Lindsey Graham’s campaign manager. “I think anyone who cannot see that today needs to start working through the stages of grief.”

Operation Mitt was a bust today, so it should be interesting to see if an overstressed Rubiot implodes on stage. This is an open thread for live-commenting the debate, if you are so inclined.

Is Romney criticizing Trump or campaigning for him?

I don’t know about you, but I suspect Trump’s numbers are going to go up in reaction to Romney’s much-ballyhooed attack on him:

“Here’s what I know: Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud,” Romney said. “His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing members of the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat.”
 
Romney lambasted Trump on foreign policy, casting him as “very, very not-smart” in his comments about allowing ISIS to take out Syria’s leadership and for proposing the slaughter of the families of terrorists.

“Mr. Trump is directing our anger for less-than-noble purposes. He creates scapegoats in Muslims and Mexican immigrants. He calls for the use of torture. He calls for the killing of innocent children and family members of terrorists.”

This strikes me as more than a little akin to throwing Brer Rabbit into the briar patch. What’s he going to do next, accuse Trump of liking apple pie, marrying hot women, and wanting to keep America too American?

Mike Cernovich will no doubt note that by saying Trump “gets a free ride to the White House”, Romney has made the mistake of assuming the sale.

Meanwhile the Mexicans are campaigning for Trump too, it seems:

In a televised interview late on Wednesday, Finance Minister Luis Videgaray categorically rejected the proposal.

“Under no circumstance will Mexico pay for the wall that Mr. Trump is proposing,” he said. “Building a wall between Mexico and the United States is a terrible idea. It is an idea based on ignorance and has no foundation in the reality of North American integration.”

Yes, I’m sure that will convince many Americans not to vote for Trump. If they keep this up, Trump is going to win in a landslide after promising to nuke Mexico City and deport all of the contributors to National Review. What are they going to do next, roll out George W. Bush to attack him?

The business of convergence

The Guardian is in the process of learning the hard way that employing SJWs and marketing to them is a very good way to lose considerable sums of money:

As much as any newspaper in the world, Britain’s Guardian has been single-minded and aggressive in its belief that conversion to digital distribution and a digital identity was its future and, for that matter, the only future for any newspaper.

The costs of that conviction are now clear: The paper lost almost $120 million last year.

The Guardian has been something of an ultimate experiment in the migration from paper to digital publishing. The enterprise is supported by a trust set up in the 1930s by the Guardian’s founders, the Scott family from Manchester, wholly dedicated to the survival of the paper. While the trust envisioned providing the paper freedom from commercial pressure to let it practice unfettered journalism, the transition to digital is, in the estimation of the Guardian’s managers, the only path to journalism’s future — and a necessary cost, whatever it amounts to.  (Disclosure: I’m a former contributor to the Guardian.)

In order to underwrite the costs of this transformation, most of the trust’s income-producing investments have been liquidated in recent years in order to keep cash on hand — more than a billion dollars.

Translation: they should be tapped out and done in about 15 years.

Peeling the onion

The big banks and the US government are fighting a desperate court battle to keep hidden the way in which they collude to permit the bank executives to freely break the law without risking any criminal penalties.

The reason both the Democratic and Republican establishments are in full on panic mode about the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is a deep seated fear that the plebs have finally woken up.

Democrats rail against big corporations, while Republicans rail against big government. This scheme has been used to successfully divide and conquer the public for decades while big government and big business successfully schemed to divert all wealth and power to an ever smaller minuscule segment of the population — themselves.

It took awhile, but the people are finally starting getting it and they are royally pissed off. One of the primary mechanisms for this historic elite theft has been the creation of a two-tiered justice system in which the rich, powerful and connected are never prosecuted for their criminality. Instead, the government actively protects them by pretending corporate entities commit crimes as opposed to individuals. Of course, this is impossible, but yet it’s how the government handles white collar crime. The Orwellian named “Justice Department” casually utilizes deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs), in which companies pay a little fine and the criminals themselves walk away with not just their freedom, but ill gotten monetary gains as well.

Nowhere is this most apparent than when it comes to the big banks. The individuals who work at these criminal cartels can literally do anything they want with total impunity. One of the most egregious examples of this was the $1.9 billion settlement arranged with HSBC for laundering Mexican drug cartel money and dealing with sanctioned countries. If you or I did this we’d be sitting in a concrete box eating porridge through a straw for the rest of our lives, but when “masters of the world” at big banks do it, the parent company just pays a slap on the wrist fine and life goes on. That’s how oligarch justice works.

Although the Department of Justice and HSBC thought the money laundering case was settled ancient history, a determined chemist from Pennsylvania is throwing a wrench into their plans and it could have major implications.

One of the surprising things I learned very early after expatriating was that not only were my suspicions about the USA being one gigantic fraud all true, but that many elite Europeans knew all about it.

The anti-American contempt they express tends to be less because they look down on Americans for being overweight, monolingual, and untraveled, but because Americans are so blind to the fact that their government is the largest criminal enterprise on the planet despite having been warned of it in 1961 by President Eisenhower.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower, January 17, 1961

It’s not as if this machinery has become less influential or less pervasive in the last 50 years, although these days we wouldn’t call it the military-industrial complex, but the financial corpocracy. The EU, just so you understand, is an attempt to lay the foundation for something similar across Europe. But it’s doomed to failure, because Europe is too nationalistic, too heterogeneous, and too openly corrupt.

There have always been kingdoms and empires. One elite or another has almost always ruled over Man. This is nothing new and the current rulers of the USA are far from the worst that Man has ever known. But Americans don’t understand that they are ruled and therefore mistakenly believe they are free. Europeans know they are not. 

Mailvox: Surviving SJW lies

An SJWAL reader explains that he never thought an SJW attack would happen to him, until it did:

I wanted to take a moment and thank you for your articles on dealing with SJWs and their nonsense. I bought a copy of SJWs Always Lie and have gotten about halfway through it before life kicked in the door.  I had a run-in recently with the very tactics you have written about.  Last Thursday our payroll person emailed me that the HR Manager needed to speak with me.  I called him and he informed me that he had some paperwork for me.  I asked him to fax it to a third party I was working with.  He declined because it contained personal information.  He then told me he would scan it and email it to me.

No scan on Thursday. I emailed him Friday about it.  No response.  On Monday, we exchanged instant messages.  He said he would stop by my desk.  That never happened.

Tuesday came and I had had enough.  I emailed him wanting to know where the scan was and why was it taking him so long to get it.  I included my third party on that email.  Well, that shook the tree good, and I finally got a response.

“I told you that you needed to come and see me,” was the response.  Lie.

I sent him back a copy of his instant messenger exchange and reminded him that I a) needed the scan and b) he never stopped by my desk. No response. 

Finally, I had enough and looked up his boss. I sent her an email detailing all the events of the last few days. I also apologized for having to intrude on her time to intercede on my behalf. About thirty minutes later, I had a response from her saying that my scan would be arriving shortly.  Fifteen minutes later it arrived.

Lesson: keep records and use them against the other side when they stray from the straight and narrow.

That was very well done. But it’s important for the reader to understand that even if he didn’t have an enemy in HR before, he most certainly does now. So, I would recommend filing a formal complaint against the HR employee, because he will likely need it as evidence that the guy has it in for him, is known to be dishonest, and is prone to trying to cover his tracks, for when the guy sees an opportunity and decides to take a shot.

Because we can be confident that he’s going to at the earliest opportunity, as per the 2nd Law of SJW: SJWs always double down.

This is why, if you haven’t read SJWAL yet, you really should do so in the interest of career self-defense.

Fire the SJW

Parents are calling on Nintendo to fire SJW and pro-pedophile Alison Rapp:

Nintendo is facing calls to sack a feminist employee who penned a highly controversial academic essay questioning whether it was morally correct to censor child pornography.

A number of people have taken to Twitter and urged the the Japanese firm to fire Alison Rapp, who works as a product marketing specialist for Nintendo of America and has been responsible for promoting some the family-friendly firms’ most famous games.

In 2012, she published a paper discussing child pornography in Japan, which has come under international pressure to tighten its laws on the depiction of underage sex.

Rapp, who wears a ring through her nose and tweets using the language of combative modern feminism, then drew the attention of male activists, who dug out the old paper earlier this year and began discussing it in Reddit threads and publishing articles on Medium.

Now anger has boiled over onto social media, with one furious parent calling for a boycott of Nintendo to “let them know we love our children more than to support someone like Alison Rapp”.

You know, I don’t think the SF-SJW support for pedophiles is going to go over any better than Alison Rapp’s has, once the mainstream learns about it.

An enemy of the Alt Right

The Littlest Chickenhawk declares himself in the Jewish Journal. It’s a pretty good article, but perhaps revealed more than he intended.

Even the revolt against political correctness wouldn’t be enough to put Trump in position to break apart the Republican Party, however. Republicans have railed against political correctness for years — Trump isn’t anything new in that, although he’s certainly more vulgar and blunt than others. No, what truly separates Trump from the rest of the Republican crowd is that he’s a European-style nationalist.

Republicans are American exceptionalists. We believe that America is a unique place in human history, founded upon a unique philosophy of government and liberty. That’s why we’re special and why we have succeeded. In his own way, Trump believes in American exceptionalism much like Barack Obama does — as a term to describe parochial patriotism. Obama infamously remarked in 2009, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Obama meant that dismissively — American exceptionalism is just something we do because we’re American, not because we’re actually special. But Trump means it proudly. His nationalism is a reaction to Obama’s anti-nationalism. It says: “Barack Obama may think America isn’t worthy of special protection because we’re not special. Well, we’re America, damn it, even if we don’t know what makes us special.” According to Trump, we ought to operate off of the assumption that Americans deserve better lives not because they live out better principles or represent a better system, but because they’re here.

This sort of nationalism resembles far more the right-wing parties of Europe than the historical Republican Party. The Republican Party has stood for embrace of anyone who will embrace American values; extreme European right-wing parties tend to embrace people out of ethnic allegiance rather than ideological allegiance. Trump uncomfortably straddles that divide. His talk about limiting immigration has little to do with embrace of American values and much more to do with “protecting” Americans from foreigners — even highly educated foreigners willing to work in the United States without taking benefits from the tax system. It’s one thing to object to an influx of people who disagree with basic constitutional values. But Trump doesn’t care about basic constitutional values. He simply opposes people coming in who aren’t us. There’s a reason so many of his supporters occupy the #altright portion of the Internet, which traffics in anti-Semitism and racism.

It’s not an accident that Ben Shapiro sounded like an SJW when he said that racists should be hunted down and their careers destroyed. Shapiro is no friend to the right. He’s as cuckservative and anti-right as anyone at National Review. He’s not stupid, and he’s not on our side. At the end of the day, he’ll line up with the globalists in the bifactional ruling party and against the American nationalists.

I never thought much about his columns at WorldNetDaily back when we were both writing for them; my readership there was literally ten times his own. But they were harmless, little more than parroting whatever the received wisdom of the conservative movement happened to be at the time. If they weren’t the best columns there, they weren’t the worst either. I was mildly amused when they were picked up by Creators Syndicate for syndication.

Since then, Shapiro has observably raised his game. He’s not bad, either in print or on television. But he isn’t genuinely of the right at all. He’s actually part of the Fake Right, the Neoconservatives, the self-appointed heirs to William F. Buckley, who have appointed themselves Republican “opinion leaders” in order to keep the respectable right from departing too far from what they deem to be acceptable. If he is correct, and the Republican Party is dying, he’s not going to join the American nationalist successor party.

An ally does not attack you. An ally praises your good points and remains silent in public about what he perceives as your defects. An ally always looks to benefit you rather than harm you. An ally comes to your defense even when he believes you are wrong. An ally takes shots for you that he knows he can withstand more readily than you.

And that is how we know that Ben Shapiro, for all his legitimate merits, is neither a friend nor an ally of the Alt Right.

A Churchian sermon on politics

A Churchian cuckservative, appropriately named Peter Wehner, preaches a sermon against Donald Trump in the New York Times:

Among the most inexplicable developments in this bizarre political year is that Donald Trump is the candidate of choice of many evangelical Christians.

Mr. Trump won a plurality of evangelical votes in each of the last three Republican contests, in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. He won the glowing endorsement of Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, who has called him “one of the greatest visionaries of our time.” Last week, Pat Robertson, the founder and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, told Mr. Trump during an interview, “You inspire us all.”

If this embrace strikes you as discordant, it should. This visionary and inspiring man humiliated his first wife by conducting a very public affair, chronically bullies and demeans people, and says he has never asked God for forgiveness. His name is emblazoned on a casino that features a strip club; he has discussed anal sex on the air with Howard Stern and, after complimenting his daughter Ivanka’s figure, pointed out that if she “weren’t my daughter, perhaps I would be dating her.” He once supported partial-birth abortion and to this day praises Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. He is a narcissist appealing to people whose faith declares that pride goes before a fall.

Mr. Trump’s character is antithetical to many of the qualities evangelicals should prize in a political leader: integrity, compassion and reasoned convictions, wisdom and prudence, trustworthiness, a commitment to the moral good…. At its core, Christianity teaches that everyone, no matter at what
station or in what season in life, has inherent dignity and worth.
“Follow justice and justice alone,” Deuteronomy says, “so that you may
live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.” The attitude
of Thrasymachus is foreign to biblical Christianity. So is Trumpism. In
embracing it, evangelical Christians are doing incalculable damage to
their witness.

There are few Churchian phrases I hold in more contempt than “damage to their witness”. It’s passive-aggressive manipulative nonsense. In combination with their actions, use of the phrase shows what forked-tongued liars the Churchians are. The Churchian “witness” is pure poison. They preen and posture and virtue-signal and criticize and condemn, driving genuine believers from the pews while simultaneously welcoming women and sexual deviants and atheists to the pulpits.

Any decent, honest, self-respecting man would rather pledge his life to Satan, Cthulhu, or the Nameless Spirit of the Abyss than live life the way these mealy-mouthed, nominal Christians do. They don’t follow Jesus Christ and worship God, they follow public opinion and worship at the altar of social approval.

The punchline: Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, served in the last three Republican administrations.

I don’t know if Jesus would vote for Donald Trump or not, but I know that he wouldn’t constantly lie like the Churchians do. And frankly, I think he’d drive an awful lot of Churchian sermonizers out of the Church with bullwhips, just as he drove the moneylenders out of the Temple.