Worst science fiction novel ever written

That's what a guy said in a forum post that Google cached, although the remark was deleted by a forum moderator, one of several posts asking about my first novel Mars Shall Thunder. The mod posted links to a free text version, maybe a 1997 manuscript that was scraped more than once. It promotes readership, which is fine. Recent novels are protected by Amazon and Lulu. I was surprised that somebody wanted to read Mars, just out of the blue.

 

Worst sci-fi novel ever written? A reviewer on Audible said that Galt's Gulch was the worst Audible ever, not bad production wise, narrated by R.K. Maier — but specifically disgusted that I was contemptible. I catch a lot of flak for thinking and speaking my mind in public. It's hard to estimate how big an audience my voice reaches. It's in all my novels loud and clear. In Mars I defended the rule of law and when that doesn't work, facing a totalitarian state, revolution is often necessary. If I remember correctly, Sunni Maravillosa and Samuel Z. Jones said nice things about Mars in second draft. Sunni remarked that I was one of the few male authors who could accurately describe exclusively female experiences. Sam gushed that it was thrilling and Mars was marvelously realized. Personally, I don't know. I wrote what I could.

 

Atlas Shrugged was voted the worst novel ever in a Chicago newspaper poll. Not much doubt that Atlas was science fiction. People wrongly talk about it as a dystopian fantasy. She was ahead of her time and couldn't conceive that America would be destroyed by blacks, multiplying like rabbits, taking 1/3 of all Federal civil service jobs and 2/3 of big city police chiefs. Rand was outraged by legalized robbery — the impulse to tax and spend, taking money from productive people to promote trash. Forget about trash, white or otherwise, the evil purpose is to tear down and wreck the good. Not necessarily the rich. The innovators who love the work of discovery, devote a lifetime to invent something new. Atlas Shrugged presented a remarkable idea, that evil requires the sanction of the victim.

 

Maybe I presented something equally remarkable, that justice is armed defense of innocent liberty. Rand didn't explore the philosophy of law, left it as a blank page in her body of work. She thought ethics was the main attraction, which it is, to the extent that individually we need to pilot ourselves. Law is a much different field of inquiry, asking what constitutes an impartial, impersonal process of public order and custody of orphans, the mentally ill, and felons. Bad policy to do nothing about crime — although that's precisely what's happening, as you probably know if you pay attention to news headlines. Many stores have shut their doors, because black shoplifters can't be arrested or detained if they snatch less than $950 of luxury goods in a mall or specialty shop. Narcotics are endemic. Cops are quitting.

 

Back to the topic of being a bad writer, if I am. Many people think I am.

 

What people think or say about me is totally irrelevant to the work of writing a novel. I'm done with nonfiction. I devoted 40 years of study and wrote about justice aplenty, much of it in essays that were widely read, then several books. I know I have an annoying style when I write nonfiction, blending my personal experience with impersonal argument dressed in technical jargon.

Reminds me of Chiseltown, a satire jammed with moviemaking jargon. It still makes me smile. Bruno was a very lucky guy.

 

Honestly, I just write what I can. A novel is six months of slamming keystrokes, catching typos, waiting for the right thing to come next. Outlines are revised continually. Characters are flesh and blood people to me. I hear every breath and unspoken subconscious reaction. People have secrets that leak out.

 

25 years after Mars, I revisited space in Escape! I absolutely don't care if people despise it, which will probably happen sooner or later. It has intimate sexual content, girls who are girls, men who are men, the truth of hope and happiness and sorrow in sharp focus. It's not a question of competence. Both sexes are equally capable in Spar One, the girls slightly brighter than the men, which is normal. Women need men to be strong and confident, willing to throw themselves into danger. Space is an unforgiving environment. Men are not angels, as Madison observed. Evil must be detected and defeated.

 

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Accepting the fact

As far as I can tell, I have been exiled to Amazon.mx

 

Everything. Generally well presented with nice stuff up top, but everything in my body of work sold by Amazon is nuevo y mui grapo en Espanol todos. The ratings and reviews were included, the reviews in English, many five stars and a couple of raspberries. My work has always generated ire among a certain class of educated persons. In the old days when the internet was young and we searched Alta Vista, my writing was well received in Sweden and Finland. A paywall ebook on heterosexual success (don't ask) factored in my recruitment to Laissez Faire City, whereupon I became a minor sensation and generated a lot of ire. So it's not a new thing. Quite remarkable that so many people seemed to tolerate my unique sense of reality and found merit in my work, both fiction and nonfiction. Their encouragement kept me going several decades, especially during the last few years when I was reaching for fine literature.

 

That's silly, of course. I write outrageous adventures, not fine literature that would satisfy a BBC World Service Book Club editor. Sometimes I listen to what passes for fine literature in the eyes and ears of women delighted by a female author's description of something dull, to be applauded as gifted writing. I'm not female or dull, so I'm not gifted.

 

Be that as it may, it's disconcerting that my latest and easily best novel to date (Escape!) is not available on the main Amazon U.S. portal, center stage in the home of the brave. I'm an American novelist and a U.S. "libertarian icon" as a radio host in Fairbanks exclaimed, because he was surprised and pleased that I was still alive, several years ago. I had just completed my first story in The Case Files series, A Portrait of Valor, introducing Chris and Peachy. Reviewers said nice things about my writing ability as the series unfolded. When I finished the last book in the series, Finding Flopsie, something much different would emerge next. Partners was my first effort at writing in dramatic triangles, which succeeded nicely IMO. After Chiseltown and some satirical novelettes, suddenly the 88K literary triumph of Escape! Well, not exactly sudden, five or six months to conceive and write.

 

I'm canceled in a most peculiar way, exiled to Mexico. Not banned. (Too highly ranked as an author?) Decades of thought. Thousands of mentions across the web, including Quotes.com. It would be noticed if Google went nuclear on me. Friends might make 1st Amendment trouble on my behalf. Personally, I don't care, nor do I expect justice from Google, Kindle, Goodreads, or Wikipedia.

 

Hey, Amazon! — do I get paid in pesos now?

 

My favorite finger

The ring finger on my right hand. I've always thought it was nice. I considered why and realized that it was used to snap the fingers of my right hand, a professional snap to mark a moment in time. Standby, ready, and —*snap!* Directing the flow of pictures and sound in an editing suite is to see and hear 30 frames a second in video, 24 fps in film. It matters exactly which frame to cut and why.

 

A couple hours ago, I thought about home school. I was thrown out of high school and disliked college enough to raid it for law library access and Dean's List in philosophy, couldn't stomach any more. Every collision I had with higher ed thereafter was crummy. I lectured at a Villanova seminar, produced a video for Northern Nevada College, and installed two dozen distance learning cameras, projectors, and sound systems at UNR's vile Department of Education. I butted heads with Hospers at U.S.C. and Prof. Juhasz in Boulder, then a tenured clown from Chapman who I ordered out of my kitchen because he was sexually assaulting the cook, a married gal who was preparing lunch for houseguests. Next week was a dramatic contrast. The KGB general was a perfect gentleman, dignified and happy because Atlas Shrugged was going to be translated into Russian and the newly elected Russian president was a reformer, dedicated to capitalism. A year later it became evident that Putin and his inner circle were crony capitalists.

 

See? The benefit of homeschooling. You learn things.

 

As a teen I learned factory work, a couple gigs in a rock band, how to rip news from a teletype, how to use a variety of communications gear, how to operate a mimeograph and publish things, how to type (badly at first) and to compose artwork and text for major market rags. I learned everything involved in cinematography and sound recording. Directing and editing took decades to master, with a lot of home study, experiments, and travel. My first film projects were processed and printed at the Technicolor lab in Chicago. I rented nice Arriflex cameras, beautiful Schneider primes, a bucket crane, and a Sony sound boom. It takes time to get comfortable making filmed entertainment. At age 40, I won creative battles with TV facilities, big crews, famous people, and a Jersey Island shelf company, learning by doing it.

 

I also learned how to wrangle sheep, llamas, and chickens. I fought a forest fire. I helped a KLM stew escape Java. There's no limit to what you can learn at home, wherever home is around the world. It's hard to learn much in a small town that you never leave. Go Pirates! (my high school 's football team, bitter rivals of Cedarburg, another small town). Kids I knew as goofballs in elementary school became county commissioners and real estate salesmen, never left their familiar patch. My parents didn't go anywhere. I had to wrestle my freedom from them at age 17, eager to explore the world. I knew very little, started in urban kindergarten and took it on the chin whenever the world surprised me, which it did repeatedly as I made my way to New York, L.A., London, Sydney, Paris, and so on.

 

I don't think anybody learns anything without home school and travel. I reluctantly explored an Arab capital, no interest in visiting black Africa. I had plenty of involvement with American blacks, learned a great deal from them and about them, some of it quite sad, most of it complicated. Everything happens at somebody's home, theirs, mine, yours. Whatever we learn about romance and heartache unfolds in private. Nobody learns about life in schoolrooms, sitting in chairs, bored by the obvious.

 

I visited a high school English teacher I liked, still teaching 20 years later, and volunteered to address a sophomore class, show them what a page of screenplay looked like and what a page of literary work looked like. The kids were brain dead. They glanced at the photocopies I handed out, didn't read them, and didn't hear anything I said about writing. I should have cut the lecture to six words.

 

Writing is homeschooled. Thousands of hours.

 

I'm in a peculiar mood tonight. I laid in bed and listened to the BBC program Fixing The World, which airs once a week. It was a documentary account of Boris Johnson's 2020 "Everybody In" emergency order to pick up every bum on the streets of every city in England — tens of thousands of homeless dope addicts, drunks, and lunatics — to be housed in hotel suites like Holiday Inn Express so they didn't infect anyone with Covid. Some had to be evicted for trashing the place and assaulting others. Some went into private flats rented by the government. All of them were enrolled in welfare programs that put money in new bank accounts that the bums could spend on drugs and liquor, with regular visits by England's corps of social workers, housing officers, counselors, statisticians, and BBC reporters. A third of UK population is unemployed, elderly, handicapped, mentally ill, or incompetent, hence the vast welfare "sector" piled on top of a truly astonishing NHS army of bureaucrats, crowded GP offices, and hospital waiting lists. I had to wait six months to see a clinical psychologist when I lost all hope in Scotland. A wonderful shrink, a little Scot with a giant forehead. He asked questions, listened to me, and after two sessions declared: "There's nothing wrong with you. Finish the fucking novel."

 

That was quite a long time ago. I published 30 books since then, most of them novels and novelettes. Occasionally I get royalties when someone buys one of my self-published titles. Amazon sent me 12 cents this month, a slush fund from Kindle Prime, a penny per book downloaded free. I allowed it to promote readership. There's a $4 Smashwords anthology of The Case Files. Same strategy, give away work that cost years of dedication and love. Make a note. Free or cheap doesn't work.

 

Now that I've been canceled by Amazon, exiled to their Spanish language server, I don't see the purpose of climbing another mountain. It takes six months, working 6 or 7 days a week, to write a new novel.

 

I need to do something else. Maybe close up the tin barn and go somewhere, as soon as my dog dies, which he will soon. Losing hair, can't walk straight, gnarly skin tumors that itch. I give him a lot of help and cheerful attention. As long as he eats and drinks and pees and poops, we carry on. No dog lives forever. I need to look over the horizon.

 

I could snap the ring finger and thumb of my right hand, so to speak, go somewhere and make a movie. How to do that as an old toothless pauper is unimportant. All sorts of things are possible if you go out in the world and forage. I have video editing software on my laptop. I could borrow my daughter's digital camera. The first thing to do is to conceive a story to tell in pictures and sound.

 

Good plan, provided the dog doesn't outlive me.

 

John Huston made 'The African Queen' when he was 81 and in poor health, uninsurable. I'm only 71. On the other hand, I'm not Huston, and he had an easy job vaguely directing Hepburn and Bogart and only making two minutes a day with an army of lieutenants — a cinematographer, production team, location management, power and light, mechanical effects, a miniature river boat, studio scenes, and ordinary stuff like wardrobe, makeup, housing, security, portable toilets, and catering. I had a big crew like that in 1984, shooting 'The Marionettte,' which stopped after two weeks with forty minutes in the can, because a larcenous producer didn't pay the cast and crew. Big revolt on the set of a giant theatrical stage rigged with working fountains, an enormous staircase, and 20 choreographed dancers waiting to perform.

 

I don't want to work with a heavy crew again. It would be helpful to have a camera operator who knows where the horizon is, a sound man without peacock ego problems, a script girl to spot continuity goofs, an attentive utility hand, and a driver who can serve location food and water, put up tables and folding chairs and deal with the public. A black belt Buddhist would be ideal.

 

Art director Ruud van Dijk was a genius, died too early in life. We were about the same age, and Ruud did a spectacular job on 'The Marionette' — sets, props, artwork, period rental stuff, a life-size puppet, an infinity of custom set decor and the aforementioned stage fountains. A year or two before my project started shooting, he had designed and decorated a big budget Cheech & Chong picture that was filmed in Amsterdam. Dutch sets were wonderful, but I don't want to growl at a slow 30-man crew and paper pushers in a production office again. Once was enough.

 

Big budget A-List directors are protected by producers, production managers, and associate producers, so directing is fairly serene, spend a lot of time resting until notified by a 1st assistant director that the set is rigged and lit, camera people ready to shoot, the cast in wardrobe and makeup, ready to work. I wanted to get to the A-List and couldn't finish 'The Marionette,' which blew up my career, retreated to television, starting at the bottom again, video editing, ENG camera, little shows — then directing a big crew to make 'London By Night' in landmark venues and locations, Covent Garden , Piccadilly, a night concert at Windsor with on-stage coverage of the Gipsy Kings and an interview with Stephanie Powers. A dozen more intimate interviews were staged at little tables in a swish nightclub dining room, VIPs at other tables in the background, cocktail waitress, dignified maître d in black tux. Solid work in signature style, elegant and intelligent. William Morris said it was too British. Sky said it was too American and old fashioned. French and German television distributors don't sell anything in English language. Investors complained that I had too many black people in it, an Empire Ballroom Afro style show, sound bites of black celebs starring in West End musicals, and a Motown legend who performed on a disco set.

 

Humph. BBC liked what I did with cameras and launched Ruby Wax in a late night talk show that aped my style and bungled it. Producer Magazine ran a feature story on how I deployed SMPTE time code to sync tapes from pro camcorders on quick set up tripods, an infinity of angles that I directed in post by snapping my fingers. On the set I was able to spend a lot of time with talent, after pointing to camera coverage. DP Nick Fry and his gaffers gave me natural, dimensional light in the nightclub. We rolled for eight hours, a mountain of material to make minutes. An enormous sound crew mic'd and recorded a Latin jazz big band and a lounge combo with lovely Sue Shaddock giving a stellar vocal performance that I shot with a nylon stocking stretched behind the lens at the focal plane, a soft glamour close-up. I had some of the best camera operators in London, experienced men who understood me.

 

I like talking about this crap for two reasons. I'm proud of what I achieved, homeschooled. It's crystal clear that I don't want to do the heavy lifting of a big show involving big money again. If I make a little movie, it's going to be little. Simple sets, simple lighting, simple story, small cast, small crew.

 

Meanwhile and pending other business worth pursuing, I've been monitoring airline pilots on 132.425. To hell with BBC. Lemme think. An air drama at a small regional center. A missing plane. Stock footage of air traffic controllers. Fade to a lone wolf FAA investigator who travels by car a long way to interview a tough, adamant hillbilly logger who reported a flash of light in the sky. No crash debris. The plane simply disappeared. I need a love interest. An FBI agent, young and pretty, knocks on his hotel room door. She wants him to drop the investigation, won't tell him why. They butt heads ("Go ahead and arrest me!") while Lone Wolf studies satellite data and spots a crop circle. Sounds like a movie.

 

Nonessential

Essential workers are broadcasters, butchers, bakers, grocers, cops, pilots, Congressional staff, bankers, brokers, lawyers, morticians, doctors, nurses, and postal workers. Plumbers, plasterers, welders, auto workers, and electricians are mostly drinking beer, arguing with a wife and kids, and grumbling because they're waiting for parts or paperwork. Money is tight.

 

I don't see how an unsocialized bum in a tin barn could be an essential worker. I rarely write more than a few pages a day if conditions are right. The prospect of launching another novel amounts to gazing at a distant mountain that might be an active volcano. I wrote a three item grocery list: coffee, potato chips, and dog treats. My dog will not tolerate a dog treat diet. He's a total pain in the ass with a loud snort of increasing emphasis when he wants something. We have an agreement. He does what I tell him to do (a limited vocabulary, but adequate) and there are dog treats, food, water, a glop of pumpkin on his food to aid digestion, and walks uphill on the gravel road that bisects my property. I have to escort him so he doesn't get run over by a FedEx truck again. They barrel along on country roads because it's uneconomic to serve rural hayseeds. Do you know why farmers and ranchers are called hayseeds? Because hay grass matters if you have animals and you get covered in splinters and seeds when you mow. Some guys mow 200 acres a day. They have to be careful about the sun, or their necks and ears and noses will turn red, ratcheting up risk of skin cancer. Are hayseeds essential workers? Nope. All the dairy farmers and beef ranchers I know are family owned small businesses with a fleet of tax attorneys, government programs, inspectors, assessors, auctioneers, and suppliers. They also have wives, children, and grandchildren to amuse. I can't do 1/100th of the labor that industrious hayseeds do 7 days a week nonstop. If they're not mowing, they're feeding and doctoring the herd, moving them from one pasture to another, raking and baling and hauling so they can feed their animals in winter. If the pond freezes over, it has to be cracked open with an axe. I've seen a young thin blonde country gal do it in rubber boots.

 

Hah! some writer. Blaringly bad form. Previous paragraph too long.

 

Do you know why this Notebook is screenwritingdoc.blogspot? Because I used to be another sort of nonessential worker, writing and doctoring feature film screenplays that, like most "spec" scripts, are never filmed. They're a calling card, like an audition for prospective work for hire. I don't know which is worse, crafting something you love, or writing terrible shit for an idiot producer. In either case it's a sort of treason to work in show business. Movies and TV product are a mirror of contemporary society and its fantasies and fears, played on purpose, to justify whatever troubles us most. I was guilty of treason when I was a working director and film editor. I wanted a fantasy. I helped others because I feared being nonessential after suffering a year at Disney, doing a vaguely technical staff job 9 to 5 in a cubicle, my directing career kaput. I didn't even bother to keep dubs of my finest work, shot in London, Sydney, San Francisco, and Amsterdam, maybe three or four hours of signature art from decades of warfare to paint the screen with actors, crews, money, girlfriends, colleagues, and evil producers. Make a note. Money moguls who smile too much are dangerous.

 

I'm beginning to think that I'm finished as a writer (again). I've been through patches like this before, poor Foedorfski, wrote everything he could imagine, nothing left to say. Then a change of season and a flurry of new fiction, culminating in a literary adventure of life and love in the distant future, a space colony to save with blue collar dedication and courage. I don't seem to have anything to say about today's world. I don't want to spin a tale of armed patriot resolve, however much tempted. There are videos and books and posts aplenty, not much doubt what I think needs to be fought for, primarily to wield individual rights because government is an illusion. I won't bore you with a technical explanation. Just take my word for it. You're free. Pilot yourself appropriately. Shun cults. You're an individual. I know how much loved ones matter. Unfortunately, they're individuals, too, never totally at ease as objects of adoration and concern. One of my wives grumbled that I needed a hobby, ships in a bottle or something, to get rid of me, claw back her cherished selfhood and think about something other than me.

 

Generally, men are nonessential workers as far as women are concerned. It's nice to have a man around the house to do chores and occasional flirtation, but that's about it. Women are Men Plus. I won't bore you with a technical explanation. If you follow the breadcrumbs from wolfdevoon.net to the Wayback Machine and cthonia.com, there's a free pdf Bookstore that links to an All Purpose Guide on flirtation, much of it in acronyms and Boy Scout substitution code to deter ladies from reading it. There are things that women should not know. Men have tactical secrets to produce successful flirtations and magical conduct of additional procedures.

 

Was it essential to write the All Purpose Guide? Possibly so. The Freeman's Constitution was definitely essential to political progress, amplified by Vimeo lectures Abbreviated Wolf DeVoon Part One and Part Two, explicating defacto anarchy and the rule of law in a free society. What else was essential in my body of work?? — Oh. The Executive Branch novelette sketched a free independent Alaska.

 

I don't know what to say about my novels. It might be essential to light a fire in one's soul. Certainly to show that circumstances are inescapable and have to be fought. Love matters. Courage matters, right wrong or purple, win or lose. Unless there's something worth fighting for, we become domesticated herd animals, binge watching Netflix poison and fake news of government delay, confusion, fantasies, factoids, and hysterical fears. I don't want to memorize the cast of characters in a mudslinging match. Politics is show business for ugly people. I didn't coin that phrase. I don't have a monopoly on truth. Maybe a couple of my epigrams were essential. Two make a fire. Justice is the armed defense of innocent liberty. Futuristic repair tech Gadant sighs, "I'm surrounded by chickens."

 

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Exiled to Amazon.mx

This is a remarkable sort of exile. Read the reviews (English).

The Constitution of Government in Galt's Gulch

Past my prime

A lot of talk about Biden's physical and mental limitations at age 79. My poor dog is equally decrepit, nearly blind, missing patches of fur on his face, tail almost bald, not long for this world. He used to run like a bullet. Has trouble walking now.

 

It puts me in mind of my own decline. Kilmeade observed that NFL coaches are in their 40s and 50s. What did I do at age 50? Oh. The constitution. At age 40? My finest work as a director. Now I have trouble breathing and sleeping. An hour of physical work is a big deal. Don't trust myself to drive a car or build anything involving a Skil saw. Public speaking? Not without a teleprompter.

 

Maybe I can conceive a new story. That's about it.

 

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Exceptionally idiotic green bullshit

Dept of Energy bureaucrats announced today that the U.S. can "modernize" its power grid with solar panels to supply 40% of demand by 2035, provided that we spend hundreds of billions to do such a thing. Think about it. China will burn coal and mine toxic minerals to make solar panels that will fail prematurely like all Chinese products do, which means we'll have to redo it twice or three times to discover that we get zero power at night and almost zero on a dull winter day or a rainy spell in spring and autumn. Note that DOE cleverly neglected to say how much demand there would be in 2035 with an enormous fleet of EVs charging day and night, assuming that we build a mountain of battery storage in every city and town and rural district, unless everybody is going to walk to school and study at home by candlelight. How many Amazon server farms and warehouses will this crap Chinese solar support? Does it include US Navy ships at sea (nope, 100% nuclear) or mechanized farming (100% diesel)?

 

Solar panels made in USA? Hahahahahahaha. In your dreams.

 

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Learning by doing

 

This was my weblog masthead in 1997 on a UK server.

 

Not much has changed. I still write about alphamutt heroes, ordinary men who have more heart than brains, but are dedicated to using their mental powers as fully as possible, because 2+2=4 and so on. Handguns buck when they fire. You have to hold on and get it sighted again as quickly as possible to fire again, because one shot is rarely enough to kill a man, if that has to happen. The only way to succeed is adequate practice on a tactical range. Draw, take cover, aim, shoot. I've been in situations that required more training than I had.

 

That's par for the course if you're an alphamutt with more heart than brains. We attempt things that overreach our competence, pending experience, the organic path of learning by doing, badly or not. With courage under fire ordinary men often triumph.

 

Every soldier is equally equipped. Heroes charge the enemy.

 

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What is to be done

I have concluded to my satisfaction that China owns Biden and the Democrat Party (see my post 'Smoke and mirrors' below). The question becomes what we can do about it. It's folly to gamble that policy will change after 2022 mid-term vote. Obama famously said he could take executive action with a telephone and a pen. Obama is still calling the shots, engineered treason in Afghanistan, handed an arsenal to the Taliban, a financial puppet of China. He sabotaged U.S. NATO command of European troops, no longer confident in U.S. leadership, G-7 leaders frozen out and bullshitted by Lunch Bucket Joe.

 

So, what is to be done about it?

 

Western Europe will have to fend for itself. They are presently discussing a EU Strike Force independent of NATO command. China is confident they can't lose. Every Apple product is made in China. Every solar panel in made in China. Their 1,200 shipyards are building a navy to challenge our Westpac fleet. Taiwan looms as a strategic crisis that Democrats will shun and dither while PLA acts with the speed and ferocity equal to Chinese-funded Taliban.

 

U.N. Security Council is dead as an institution.

 

Bon Gino is worried about the January 6th Select Committee, a nothingburger. Smears are par for the course, small arms in political weaponry. Cancel culture is much worse. Everything depends on the masculinity of our military, especially U.S. Navy and Air Force warfighting chops. I worry about Marine readiness, too many training crashes, a sinking, and destruction of a USMC flat top at anchor, after a Chinese delegation toured it and took pictures.

 

In a perfect world, NCIS and FBI would swing into high gear, clear out weak officers and the "diversity" 5th column of Islamic radicals embedded in psychology ranks. The only shrinks we need are to serve shell shocked, mutilated vets in a VA setting after the war.

 

Should we prepare for war with China? Yes.

 

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Smoke and mirrors

 

The Tragedy of Treason Thinly Obscured

a journal of events and news reports

August 23—31, 2021

 

Why does anyone think Biden is in charge of anything? He can't speak without reading. Press questions are submitted in advance, and Joe's answers are on the teleprompter. He reads a reporter's name, no off-topic follow up questions allowed. Three softballs. It's obvious that the press corps is covering for him, won't show us Biden shuffling or tripping or walking the wrong way, rescued by aides.

 

The jig will be up when Joe meets G-7 leaders. Biden's handlers are busy stage managing a group photo and drafting a joint communiqué, something about refugees, pain, and Western aid for Afghanistan. No mention of ransom paid for Taliban "cooperation" in evacuating U.S. citizens. No mention of blindsiding and ignoring G-7 allies. Best kept secret in the world will leak. Biden is incompetent, testy, confused.

 

There's a timeline for resignation, days after catastrophe in Kabul. I think it's important to reflect that nothing happens by mistake at this level of play. It was Obama's blueprint to throw Joe out in disgrace and install Kamala, a loyal pawn to complete his fundamental transformation of America. Obama knew the price and didn't care that tens of thousands would be killed, women beaten, girls enslaved.

 

6 p.m. — Mark Levin is worried about Afghan Jews, like there are any.

 

11 p.m. — death watch — My dog was bitten by a copperhead, which I discovered coiled in his spot on the porch and killed it with a shovel, too late. The dog involuntarily evacuated his poop and soft stuff that emptied his bowel, hallmark of a dying mammal, man or beast. I can't see the puncture. Mentally gone, a zombie dog. With encouragement, he lapped a large bowl of water nearly dry.

 

Midnight — the G-7 summit was a Zoom call, probably looked like the Brady Bunch. Chatter indicates a lot of pressure on Biden for U.S. troops to stay at Kabul airport indefinitely to evacuate more refugees. Taliban statement said that August 31 (one week from today) is a hard deadline for "the occupiers" to scram. It will take several days to fly out thousands of troops. Too many people, including me, fear an attack on the airport or a C-17 downed by RPG or gunfire or a Stinger that Taliban captured. My dog is walking around like a zombie, jumped in my laundry basket, jumped out, lapped another bowl of water, fell asleep on his side on the floor. Too early to be optimistic.

 

I'm such a sap, watching my sleeping dog breathe, shallow undulations of his diaphragm under a clump of fur. All of a sudden I thought of the doe I freed from a cattle panel, her left back foot stuck at an angle that imprisoned her, heavy adult body slumped in a pile on the ground, unable to escape. A huge panic when I came to look at the situation. "It's alright," I assured her. "Just relax." It was hopeless, needed a hacksaw to cut heavy 9 gauge fencing, which took a while to fetch, then saw, bend — and suddenly she was free, limped and bolted awkwardly, not badly injured, no broken bones. I'm a sap, worried about an old dog and the 82nd Airborne dug in at Kabul Airport, sitting ducks, surrounded by hordes of barbarians who are eager to attack them with captured U.S. tanks and artillery. I question whether they are capable of operating anything complicated, but they certainly know how to fire automatic rifles and mortars. It put me in mind of the 60's war movie Zulu, a small outpost attacked by thousands of savages.

 

Tuesday, August 24, after four hours of sleep

 

Anything can happen next. If we attack, they'll start beheading our civilians. If we retreat, our civilians will be hostages, paraded on TV and beheaded. The Brits are crazy. They've been running armed sorties to rescue diplomatic staff, European civilians, and journalists who had no hope of reaching the airport. If we stiff our valiant allies and bug out, they've never go anywhere with us ever again. The 82nd Airborne has its own honor at stake. There might be a mutiny disguised as a perimeter skirmish that escalates, fighting Taliban like an enemy formation, which they are. Afghan civilians caught in the crossfire will be killed and wounded by the hundreds. Translators will be caught and slaughtered in distant provinces. C-17s will be wrecked. There is no good outcome, because Biden abandoned Baghram AFB and ordered everyone into a box canyon, surrounded by the enemy, forbidden to maneuver tactically. Offloading a pallet of Benjamins to bribe Taliban officials is not going to remain secret. There will be chatter, like Bud McFarlane and Ollie North busted for offloading Israeli SAMs at a Tehran airport to buy hostages.

 

My dog's throat blew up like a balloon. I'll try hydrocortisone. News from New South Wales, cops shot all the dogs up for adoption at a shelter, to prevent shelter workers and adopters from leaving home in total Covid lockdown. I adopted Tooie in 2010. Great little dog who needs a lot of care, older now. I was graced with the best of New South Wales, wonderful memories from 40 years ago, a working director, absolutely spectacular sexy chicks everywhere, able crews, wonderful tracks on a Neve mixing desk.

 

Same thing with San Francisco, a truly splendid era of innocence 50 years ago, still extremely friendly and happy a decade later, shooting goofball comedy all over town, building sets and props. A great city destroyed by Democrats and Silicon Valley barons. Homeless camps. Narcotics. Crime. Lockdown.

 

An exasperated Dan Bon Gino: "I hate stupid people! That's who's running the country today, a cabal of stupid people!"

 

Princeton history professor on NPR — "Don't worry about it. Biden made a political calculation that nobody cares about Afghanistan. It's not like Vietnam was. We have a short attention span, probably won't affect the 2022 mid-term elections, even if leaving Kabul is a little messy."

 

Hannity: "Our people are stranded behind enemy lines. We could have taken or blown up our military equipment, instead of letting the terrorists get them. We abandoned a strategic air base. What part of this was smart? None of it. What part of it could have been prevented? All of it."

 

News flashes: U.S. troops and embassy people boarding aircraft to bug out. No more Afghan citizens allowed to enter Kabul airport. Taliban turning people away, forbidden to escape Kabul. The House of Representatives has approved a $3.5 trillion "social infrastructure" bill that will be rammed through the Senate on reconciliation. The Select Committee On Jan. 6th wants to subpoena telephone records of Republican lawmakers, fishing for insurrection conspirators they can smear on flimsy evidence.

 

K.T. McFarland: "China is a more formidable opponent than the Soviet Union was. Susan Rice is running the whole Afghanistan operation, including military deployment and evacuation. Joe Biden's presidency is finished. He will never be reelected. Kamala will be the standard bearer."

 

BIDEN: (reads a chewing gum speech reiterating nice sounding gunk). White House reporters shout at him. No questions taken. Exit Joe. NPR explains that Biden is working with allies, on alert for terrorist attacks. With some unstated means in the future, he will attempt to evacuate more Afghan "allies" and thousands of U.S. citizens who are sheltering in place, fearful of Taliban patrols going house to house searching for them. CBS thinks Biden has contingency plans. Equally newsworthy (?) Charlie Watts died, hailed as a jazz drummer (?) with an accidentally honest NPR side comment. He wasn't Bonham.

 

Republic of Afghanistan Political Counselor at the D.C. embassy is distraught. He doesn't want to go back to Kabul. He threw away all of his neckties. Don't ask me. That's what he said, like it meant something.

 

Wednesday, August 25th

 

Two Congressmen, a Republican and a Democrat, both Middle East war vets, made a clandestine trip to Kabul Airport, told reporters there is no way everyone can bug out by the end of the month, unless they abandon the heavy equipment and weapons flown in by the 82nd Airborne.

 

I have a new novel tumbling in my brain. Difficult stuff made worse by Josh Rogan on Kilmeade. He glibly recited the old saw defining insanity as doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. Thanks a bunch. Invalidated my entire literary career.

 

Another voice on Kilmeade, an academic: "If we wanted to do anything worse, what else could we have done? Surrender? — and let the Taliban decide what would happen to us?" Growing demand for war to rescue stranded U.S. citizens and tens of thousands of Afghan interpreters and their families. European aid agencies unable to function under Taliban. Hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing overland. Greece is building fences to keep them out of Europe. Still no electricity in Kabul. Taliban doesn't have engineering or scientific staff, attempting to woo former Republic of Afghanistan government workers to come back and do their jobs pushing paper, as if magic paper will turn on the lights. Expect Chinese engineers to arrive in due course. They'll need power to exploit lithium and precious metal resources.

 

White House meme, success! — the largest airlift in U.S. history! — which is hooey. Air Force routinely transports hundreds of thousands of soldiers and millions of tons of cargo all over the world. Did you think pilots and mechanics were just hanging around, drinking coffee, nothing to do?

 

Mark Davis sitting in for Dennis Prager urges us to talk to God in this terrible time of social and military disaster. Okay, memo to God. Please visit venereal disease on the Salem prostitutes and lightning strikes and earthquake to eliminate Langley, the N.S.C., and White House teleprompters. Thank you.

 

By my calculation, Centcom needs 18 fully fueled C-17 flights to evacuate our troops from Kabul Airport, assuming that they abandon their helicopters, which would require a bunch of C-5 flights. Bad idea to overload runway and tarmac ops, so expect rearguard USMC bug-out to take a week or more. Oops.

 

Thursday, August 26 — two bombings and a firefight, hundreds dead and injured.

 

1 p.m. update from the White House: There will be no update. New Israeli prime minister sent home, first high level summit with Biden to discuss Iranian nuclear threat cancelled. No press statement from the Pentagon or State Department. News and video sent from Kabul via social media. Downing Street announced that Brits will stay indefinitely to extract UK citizens.

 

2 p.m. bulletin — 12 U.S. Marines dead at the airport gate.

 

I washed the zombie dog. Swelling was down. No brain, no energy, no resistance, metaphor for millions of Democrats, homebound, masked, waiting for another Federal handout, tweeting idiotic equity claims and climate change lies, cursing Trump, smiling at their vacant children, offering them a snack.

 

Centcom briefing: We're worried about attacks on our aircraft.

 

Leon Panetta on NPR — "It's a very tragic day, the President's worst nightmare. I think they're going to increase security." Two days ago, Biden threatened to retaliate forcefully if Taliban allowed Isis to attack our forces or disrupt operations at Kabul airport. Biden to read a teleprompter in an hour or two. Let's see if Biden orders military action — of course not! — he has the phony smile and creepy manner of an alcoholic Fuller Brush salesman. Chug a beer if he feels the pain of Marine families or eulogizes his dead son, an Army lawyer who never saw action. Take a shot of whiskey if he wants all troops out pronto.

 

New York will swear in a black man as their new Lt. Governor.

 

BIDEN: I've been in constant contact with military commanders. Dead Marines were heroes. My son was a hero. I understand the pain of families of heroes, lives given in service of America. We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay. Isis K were released from prisons [by the Taliban]. We must complete this mission. Let us have a moment of silence. Thank you. May God bless you. We just have to remain steadfast, after our troops have been withdrawn. I was told to call on Kelly from NBC. We are going to evacuate everyone. Trevor of Reuters. No evidence of Taliban involvement in today's attacks. Amir, Associated Press. Our military concluded we should bug out by August 31. After we bug out, Taliban will help us evacuate more Americans and Afghans. Military men told me that Kabul was the right airport to use. To the best of my knowledge, Taliban have been letting Americans travel to Kabul airport. All my problems are Trump's fault. He made them promise not to attack us.

 

NPR's White House correspondent is a black female with an inner city Ebonics accent, clumsily recites Democrat talking points: "I-I-I was fascinated by how much flak he's been receiving. He said Taliban has interests that line up with ours, even though the Taliban are bad guys... Yeah, he put the blame on Isis. Biden promised that whatever military commanders need, he will provide it before they pull out before August 31st. There could be more attacks. The government has heard from more Americans there, and they're trying to get them out." — a true believer birdbrain with a White House press pass.

 

An angry Mark Levin: "What kind of military takes its own air power away? Then we give them a list of all the Americans, because we don't have enough forces to go in and get them! What's the common purpose? We surrender and they win? We have no intelligence [CIA pulled out a month ago]. We gave them our airbase and all our equipment, and we pulled the rug out from under the Afghan Army!"

 

Total airhead Dana Lash: "Everyone is going to be evacuated by Friday. Isis doesn't like it that Taliban gets money from China. They're all parts of the same dog. As far as I'm concerned, get our people out and turn it to glass. One and done." Commercial sponsor Bank of America promises to invest directly in black communities, a black female announcer says solemnly.

 

All Things Considered — NATO tweeted condemnation of the suicide bombings in Kabul. No one seems to question Biden's promise to hunt down the attackers and take revenge on Isis bombers and gunmen who are already dead. [An old CIA hand on Morning Edition will later explain that Isis K is a Pakistani splinter group, numbering hundreds, perhaps a thousand based in northwest Afghanistan, responsible for previous suicide bombings in Kabul. Very low tech. Poor, stupid, led by an emir. They hate Taliban, who they regard as insufficiently radical and overly materialistic.]

 

ABC News — The lockup where Jeffrey Epstein died is being closed temporarily. This is newsworthy why? Are they repairing his cellblock camera? [Update: Rats, mice, cockroaches in every cell.]

 

Sarcastic little Ben Shapiro: "All we know is that the Taliban didn't do their jobs screening people" [at airport approach checkpoints]. "New explosions at the airport are weapons and ammo being destroyed, definite evidence that we're leaving," Shapiro concludes, and he skewers every public statement that Biden has made, 100% wrong, every word, from April all the way through August. "Incredibly, we gave the Taliban a kill list, everyone who wanted to get out. A full scale disaster."

 

Trump: "A child would have understood, you get the people out first. We look weak on the world stage, being led by fools who don't know what they're doing."

 

Chris Krok, WBAP: "Tell me how we're going to find a terror cell in a city of 4 million, with a government we don't control, and no U.S. troops left in the country. It's going to get worse. Much worse."

 

Jesse Kelly, former Marine — "It's not like in the movies. You can imagine a leg or an arm blown off, but not a face obliterated, a jaw blown off. You feel it. You smell it... If you're a member of the media, you have a responsibility. ['I was instructed to call on Kelly from NBC first.'] What?! Who told you to call on her first? Are you feeling alright, sir?... His son died of cancer. What does that have to do with anything?  It was critical to hold on to Baghram. We could have brought our people there, completely secure, no giant crowd of Afghans trying to get in. It's impossible to secure the Kabul airport."

 

-------------------------------------

 

I don't want to document any more of this. It will end with stranded U.S. citizens paraded as hostages, maybe a C-17 shot down. Biden will have a stroke, Kamala sworn in. It all goes downhill from there.

 

--------------------------------------

 

Saturday, August 28

 

Drone strike on a car, allegedly carrying an Isis planner. This suggests there are one or more drones operating in Kabul or over the horizon somewhere and DoD has geostationary satellite intelligence, probably over much of the whole country. If true, it's complete bullshit that DoD was taken by surprise at the speed of Taliban advance and couldn't do anything about it. At the time, you'll recall, we were fully operational at Baghram, had helicopter gunships and two secure runways to bring in Warthogs or whatever else was needed. The Chinooks didn't appear by magic in Kabul, probably based at Baghram. Why Baghram and its close air support war fighting assets were handed to the Taliban is a dark national security mystery. It had to be ordered by the White House, not something that Centcom decided. The Afghan pilots flew to Uzbekistan, had midair collisions, rather than engage the enemy. Why?

 

Worse. Baghram bottled at least 1000 vicious Taliban and Isis monsters held in a prison facility. Why let them join the battle? I don't believe anyone had confidence in Afghan guards and Afghan officers. It was widely reported that U.S. troops stationed at Baghram bugged out In the middle of the night by Chinook and C-17 without notice. It had to be a direct order from the Joint Chiefs. Why?

 

Top brass and White House liars claimed that they couldn't defend Baghram, Kabul Airport, and the Kabul embassy simultaneously, which is transparent horseshit. They abandoned an embassy full of communication gear. They abandoned a Black Hawk fleet full of avionics, FLIR and targeting systems. They abandoned two other airfields, tanks, MRAPs, artillery, ammo, and Javelin missiles. Why?

 

Only one explanation makes sense. China owns Biden and the Democrat Party.

 

Half a million military grade weapons are being smuggled into Mexico every year, has nothing to do with U.S. gun dealers. They don't sell machine guns. Drug cartels are being armed by Langley. Why?

 

Fentanyl was shipped from China to Mexico, until it became widely reported. Now China ships chemical precursors to be cooked in Mexican labs. Biden opened the border and cut Border Patrol funding. An old man with impaired cognitive ability didn't do any of this. He reads whatever he sees on teleprompter, calls on reporters because someone told him to, reads talking points from note cards in public.

 

Democrats are going to nationalize mail-in ballots, kill Senate rules, and make D.C. a 51st state. Such a naked power grab presupposes a servile news media to silence opposition. They flooded the press with lies about President Trump, suborned the FBI and CIA, faked more ballots than registered voters, and made it impossible to audit what happened in Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Atlanta. Democrat judges imposed gay marriage nationally and killed federalism (state laws) stone dead.

 

CDC attempted to bankrupt landlords. Congressional Democrats will finish the job, backed by Federal Reserve bond purchases of $2 trillion a year and zero interest rates, devaluing the U.S. dollar and killing private investment. The Green New Deal will enrich Democrats, choke energy production. They have a stranglehold on education. Commercial real estate is in free fall, people fleeing New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, San Francisco and Los Angeles, homelessness, crime, narcotics addiction endemic.

 

NPR: "The office as we know it is dead." Stay home, work in pajamas.

 

Manufacturing is dead. Every hammer and nail is made in China.

 

----------------------------------

 

Fox reports drone strike launched from U.A.E., a long way over the horizon. 800 U.S. troops already flown out. Big "voting rights" demonstrations in Washington, Houston, Atlanta. Helpful hurricane to push Kabul off the front page. New Orleans black female mayor gets face time on TV, Kamala's staff planning a photo op and sound bite during clean up, to pledge lavish cash for climate change victims. Last time New Orleans had a hurricane, their police force collapsed, three black cops caught looting, chaos and crime at the Superdome. You couldn't pay me enough to visit New Orleans — ever!

 

F/A-18s launched from Persian Gulf to patrol over Kabul. Probably a fleet of refueling KC-135s nearby. I don't think this is being controlled from an ATC tent on the tarmac. Which means there's an airborne command and control AWACS up there somewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a CIA gunship over the horizon. So that's the plan, huh? Air superiority to cover the bug-out. Kill anything that moves anywhere near the airport perimeter. Taliban retreated a quarter mile from the fence, probably got a heads-up to evacuate the kill zone. This will not deter Isis from creeping up in camo after nightfall.

 

Bad juju. You can't patrol a perimeter in fighter jets. If they're flying full flaps, they'll waste 40% over the target refueling in mid-air. Air crews can't work indefinitely. Meanwhile, with half a carrier wing circling Kabul, rotating out every 10 hours, who's minding the store in the Strait of Hormuz? A lot of traffic to coordinate, multiple air corridors and aircraft. I assume that scheduled civilian passenger planes have been diverted or grounded. (Aeroflot? PIA?) Taliban and their Isis suicide proxies might have Paki SAMs. One thing is for damn sure, there's no firefighting equipment if there's a crash. We like to think that our military is 100% competent and 100% inter-service coordinated by remote control in Arlington. Nobody is that good, all the time, in asymmetrical warfare against lunatic commandos at night.

 

Why do I think about such things? I'm a novelist, hiding out in Flyover Country. But the truth is, we're all directly involved. The only B-2 nuke base is a couple hundred miles away. I hear them occasionally with their F-117 stealth fighter escorts. That makes my tin barn a strategic target in global war with China. No doubt in my mind that China is running Pakistan's invasion of Afghanistan, with Russia's okay. Biden isn't strong enough to order serious war, but there are geopolitical tripwires in the region, Israel and India.

 

Iran needs Russia, China, and India, but Iran might be tempted to act independently. Trump droned one of their national leaders, a top military commander, remember? NATO ally Turkey offered to recognize the Taliban, send technical people. However they closed their border, don't want Afghan refugees.

 

I won't be able to work on a new novel until this is resolved to a stable conclusion, if it can be. Nor am I going to write about any of this shit. I'm not Tom Clancy.

 

My dog is still 100% stupid. Happy to sit in the shade, enjoy a gentle breeze. That's probably what Joe is doing, stupidly trusting his generals to execute a simple order, put everyone on planes and bug out.

 

Very scanty news on a Saturday. Old time 40s music, bluegrass, Art Bell reruns, and idiotic blues. I should bring the dog in and try to sleep, until it's time for BBC World Service, starts at 1 a.m. local time, which is 7 a.m. GMT, mid morning in Arabia. Tomorrow is a historic pivot. Bin Ladin was Saudi. 15 of the 19 Trade Center commandos were Saudi. Crown Prince MBS knows that America is in freefall, lost Kabul, gave up Baghram, split 50/50 at home by factions who despise each other. If Iran strikes first, MBS will hit back and probably recognize and support the Emirate of Afghanistan, fellow Sunni Wahabbi fundamentalists on the other flank of hostile apostate Tehran, close to testing an intermediate range fission bomb. God knows what the IDF think. Palestine doesn't matter. Old Grifter Joe is asleep at the wheel.

 

Sunday, August 29

 

Whew! Thank goodness, I was fretting myself to pieces for no reason. I don't mind being wrong. Ha ha ha. Egg on my face. Worrying like an old woman.

 

About 700,000 Afghans migrated on foot to Iran in a previous panic, over two decades ago. They stayed a few years and trickled back to their Afghan villages, all 700,000 returning. This year, they're fleeing to Pakistan, to settle in refugee camps governed by vaguely moderate Taliban tribesmen on both sides of the border. Pashtun is the lingua franca. I feel sorry for Afghans, the tens of millions of simple souls, a hundred thousand students and bureaucrats, some thousands of gifted doctors and diplomats. There is a brain drain occurring, planeloads of clever people headed for England, America, Canada — a happy ending of sorts, a tiny, highly visible minority who have to prove repeatedly that they're not dangerous. A couple hundred Afghans flown by the Americans were on various No Fly lists. Some Isis commandos might have slipped through. They're trained to blend in, express grateful thanks, quiet servants of Allah on a mission given to them by the Holy Prophet and jihadi stealth doctrine.

 

Sorry. A couple thousand UK and US citizens relocated to Syria and joined Isis when it was Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a substantial terror involving 5 or 6 million people. They had captured U.S. equipment that the Iraq Army surrendered without much of a fight. Ended abruptly by Trump. It's hard to estimate the number of Afghans in a rump Isis K. They control a chunk of northeast Afghanistan. I assume they have ISI supplies. Thousands of terrorists were sprung from prisons, some of them Isis commandos. Maybe they have more in the mountains. Maybe 500 dispatched to Kabul Airport accompanied by field commanders and mullahs to do rituals with Taliban imams. Maybe an AI terror fire alarm rang at NSA, monitoring Afghan cell calls, triggering a White House threat warning that cleared a kill zone around the airport and ordered U.S. citizens and Afghans near the airport to scram and don't come back.

 

Ho hum. Conservative talkers and Republican figures gravely discuss Biden's manifest stupidity. "He can talk forever, but you get the impression that he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer." [Brit Hume]

 

Christian evangelicals celebrate, separating sheep from goats. Don't ask me. That's what a pastor said, urging fellow believers in Salvation to speak out, condemn godless, satanic Democrats. Humph. Bible thumpers are outnumbered by libertarians and conservatives. Democrats own the public square in big city markets, ignore talk radio. If talkers get too uppity, they're canceled by Big Tech. Public figures are blocked from college campuses by antifa thugs. Nobody crosses BLM, Oprah, or NBA superstars.

 

Biden is a useful idiot. Michelle is driving the death wagon. Democrats are securely loyal, fueled by raw emotion, most of it anger, lashing out to punish normal people, price no object. Their technocrats can't do much except to gulp when an alarm bell goes off. The Deep State prevails, led by careerists. Generals will deal with Kabul. State and DHS will handle the refugees. FEMA will commission new Afghan gulags in liberal Republican counties to be burdened with language classes and social welfare inclusion. Any babies born there will be anchor citizens, guaranteeing a permanent right of chain migration, pleading tearfully for extended family helplessly trapped in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, Michelle doesn't care. She has other priorities. Trump is a rapidly gaining threat. D.C. statehood is an urgent matter, before they lose the House next year, which seems probable. Independents are shocked at Joe's senility and piss poor blundering in Afghanistan. There are 40 million veterans, thousands disabled by fighting the Taliban. Hundreds of thousands of Marines and Special Forces were deployed there — seriously mad after being betrayed twice, insane Obama rules of engagement and snap Biden surrender. They know that Trump would have fought back the Taliban onslaught, got all civilians and sensitive weapons out without surrendering Baghram or Kabul or consular operations. He might have enforced a Doha deal. Won't happen now. Zero bargaining power, every strength thrown away by spineless 3-stars, playing patty cake to get fatter pensions and millions to sit on a defense contractor board after retirement.

 

Life on life's terms, old chum. Biden shredded the white Anglo world order. Oh, look. A hurricane. The black female mayor yells remain calm! Ed Asner died. People say he was good as Lew Grant. Schedule a booster shot eight months after the first two Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Remember to wear a mask to protect the morons who don't want to be vaccinated. It might be necessary to put them in reeducation camps and force vaccinate as a public health measure. Australia is doing it with children, taking them away from thousands of unlawful anti-lockdown protestors who were clubbed and jailed by police.

 

Pat Benatar. Sunday sermons. The RV show. Baseball. CBS headlines. The regular NFL season starts next week. Plenty of hoopla to cover up whatever happens in Kabul. Joe will be somber, read an emotional script to honor the fallen, express his personal grief. Cash will flow to climate change victims. Her Royal Highness Elizabeth II Queen of England is going to address the Glasgow IPCC conference, ask all nations except China and India and Africa and Indonesia to cut their consumption of energy and eat less. It's allegedly unfair that Americans are getting booster shots while Africans don't have enough doses for their overworked doctors and nurses who are quitting and going to England to make more money.

 

If I had internet service, I could find out what's happening in real time, instead of waiting an entire day to hear a Bill Cunningham rant and, later, BBC World Service, assuming that the translator doesn't crap out. We had a good loud thunderstorm for an hour or so, plenty of energy to scramble a local repeater that no one maintains. The main NPR transmitter is too distant for my Bearcat and antenna. I put a lot of effort into the antenna, 100 feet of coax to a high gain array on a 20 foot tower, the sheriff, fire district, weather, and FM loud and clear, all the classic rock, trivia, sports, and country music I can stomach.

 

I was spoiled, I suppose. I worked at ITN and saw all the raw news feeds during the Gulf War, stuff that was never broadcast, straight from the battlefield. Live video is streaming from Afghanistan, received in London and New York, not being shown on TV. They'll give you a few seconds of carefully sanitized raw video when it happens, but after that it's gone. Here comes the hurricane. Forget about Kabul.

 

Last year I visited a neighbor to watch an NFL game. I was flabbergasted at the commercials, wall to wall smiling black people in middle class hijinks and happy endings. Flashy digital compositing. Thank God, I quit AAAA advertising in 1973, did a few direct mail and local TV projects to survive, finally gave it up for good in 1995, no more prostitution, only fell off the wagon once, did a few months of editing and design for a trade publisher. All behind me now in a writer's temple. Great satisfaction in being independent, crafting my own stories, chatting with friends by email, smiling at neighbors I respect, and arguing with an old blind dog. Hold still. I have to trim that. Good boy. Here's a treat and some fresh water.

 

I know it's odd that I combine comments on global security with personal anecdotes. That's the truth of my life, isolated and waiting for new information to arrive, mesmerized by an exceptional implosion in world history. Being alone isn't unusual. It's a precondition for development of a story idea, impossible to discern an idea in company with another, unless one has a writing partner. I wrote in partnership with Tommy decades ago, with Theresa awkwardly a couple times, and with very odd people in corporate communications and marketing. Maybe I should advertise for a writing partner on my next project. I'd gladly work with my pen pal in France, but I don't want to do that. She's quite innocent. I don't dare ask the Secret Squirrel, unless I can conceive a way for us to proceed, a goal worth reaching, something she would actively consider. I don't know her schedule or whether she's nearing retirement. I like her fiction, regard her as a real talent. I'm more visual, have an abrupt style. Blending us would be a hit, if we had an idea that both of us felt excitement and commitment to attack with teamwork. See? It was interesting and worthwhile (for me anyway) to dilate about personal stuff. Gives me something to do while I wait for breaking news from Kabul and the Gulf. You think $4 a gallon is outrageous? Hah.

 

Don't get me started about oil markets. War is about oil, always.

 

8 p.m. — attacker near airport killed, an IED bomber, civilian casualties.

 

Over 100 shot in Chicago last week. Not widely reported.

 

Dumbshit Ben Ferguson is worried about San Diego high school students and two teachers trapped in Afghanistan. Played a Fox News clip: tunnel blown up, roads closed to create a kill zone. Ferguson rants incredulously about Biden incompetence. Mitch McConnell clip: "Biggest disaster in history." He wants to stop the bug-out, keep Kabul airport open, get our stranded people out. Very helpful, Mitch. Are you in favor of fighting Isis and Taliban street by street across Kabul? Casualties and KIA by the planeload.

 

"I think we're blued, screwed and barbequed." [Bill Cunningham, alarmed at possibility of Kamala taking office with 25th Amendment, prays Joe can survive another 41 months.] That's what it's come to, rock ribbed Catholic conservatives begging God to help a frail, failing Fuller Brush salesman. Cunningham says a million blacks have fled Chicago, Cleveland, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati, moved to Texas and Florida. Just what we needed, majority black Houston, majority black Dallas. Remember what I said about oil? Every U.S. major, every big independent, giant foreign players like BP, Statoil, and Shell, and hundreds of smaller producers are based in those two cities. They're fleeing to new campuses in the suburbs.

 

Tragic side note. Baghram was the size of a city, occupied by U.S. forces since 2001, had a base hospital for surgical care and big planes to rush gravely wounded to Germany. Nothing but a first aid field tent at HKIA, staffed by Navy corpsmen. Must have been hell dealing with 18 wounded in suicide bombing.

 

11:00 p.m. — five rockets fired over Kabul toward the airport, intercepted by a Patriot battery (!) with shrapnel falling on civilians. 24 hours remaining to extract 5000 troops and some of their equipment. Combined operations commander and carrier based air cover is Navy. 82nd Airborne is Army. AWACS and airlift are Air Force. Devil Dog front line riflemen lost 30 Marines mangled and KIA.

 

Chevy Volt fleet, all 70,000 of them, recalled for battery fire risk.

 

40 million working age unemployed blacks in South Africa. Real hell looms if their welfare money is cut off by bloated, bumbling, bankrupt black communist government. Joberg was looted in recent riots, the reason for which escapes me at the moment. Oh, a Covid lockdown, alcohol sales prohibited.

 

1 million people without power in Louisiana, all of New Orleans. High voltage grid towers fell into the Mississippi, which flowed backwards in storm surge. Multiple weeks, maybe a month to repair.

 

Monday, August 30

 

IAEA reports North Korea restarted a reactor to produce plutonium. It had been shut down almost two years while Kim negotiated with President Trump.

 

Gold up. What a surprise.

 

Secretary of State Blinken bullshitting about holding Taliban to pledge safe passage for thousands of Afghans to board future commercial flights, will seek a U.N. Security Council resolution. Horse laugh in Kabul presidential palace. Taliban already decreed no Afghan citizen will be allowed to go anywhere. China and Russia will soften whatever the defeated occupier says he wants.

 

Alex Jones pitching storable food. Salem network plugging gold.

 

Red Eye Radio [trucker talk] — Leon Panetta predicts Americans will have to reinvade Afghanistan. Eric Harley worries about Democrats choking domestic oil and gas production, making a new deal with Iran. Gary McNamara upset about surrender in Afghanistan. Biden was wrong. We're still at war.

 

BBC panel on Covid vaccine. I don't want to listen to this. World wants 11 billion doses, waive patent rights, no booster shots until poor countries get a first dose. More Covid variants expected. A new wave of infection every 100 days. Venture capitalists in Boston using AI to guess probable new variants. At some point the virus will evolve into unfit Disneyland particles, unable to infect. Eight months after a double dose, no antibodies, but there is long term "immunological memory." Not clear if boosters are needed, unless it's a new variant vaccine. We'll never eliminate Covid, because pets and livestock will re-infect us. Other novel viruses will emerge, PLA working on it as we speak.

 

3 a.m. Central, 10 a.m. GMT — getting tired, and the doltish BBC is going to play patty cake this hour with carbon labels on consumer products, to shame and eliminate plastic packaging. Paris to eliminate half of parking places and drop speed limit to 16 kph (10 mph) to discourage automobile use. Worse congestion will inspire Parisian parking punch-ups and daredevil motorbike road rage.

 

Gallup poll, 60% of Americans think economy is getting worse.

 

9 a.m. — The first report is usually wrong, journalists say. Drone strike yesterday hit a civilian home in Kabul, killed women and children, no IED bomber near the airport. Anti-missile system that shot down five or six rockets fired over Kabul toward the airport was not a Patriot battery, but a radar-directed Gatling gun that fired explosive bullets. Civilians say rockets were fired from a vehicle. A captured U.S. vehicle? Old captured Soviet vehicle? Toyota pickup? Isis claimed responsibility. I doubt that Isis has anyone capable of targeting something several miles away. Sixth rocket fell elsewhere, no threat to airport. Makes me wonder if they were bought surplus at a souk. Anything is possible in region.

 

I have to do things with my dog. His eyes are always glued shut in the morning, and he needs a walk on the gravel road to poop, which I have to supervise so he doesn't get run over by FedEx again. Once was enough, a broken leg a couple years ago. Always kept on the chain now, so he can't lay in the road.

 

I don't care what happens or fails to happen or how many voices argue about everything later. The crisis is before us in a matter of hours. I hope they have tactical air cover.

 

Fox reports that U.S. military wanted to operate from Baghram, contrary to the story spun by amateur Jake Sullivan, the fake National Security Adviser who used to be a campaign aide to Hillary Clinton. By surrendering Baghram AFB, we lost all possibility of CIA-led human intel in the future. Without Baghram we can't evacuate stranded U.S. citizens and Afghans marked for death because they worked for us.

 

Like everyone else at the moment, I'm stunned by Biden's idiocy.

 

Zero hour approaches. When it's over, I have to whack overgrown weeds, detach intellectually. But in lifelong involvement with hard news and the unfolding truth of history, I have to witness it.

 

White House bullshitting about economic pressure in the future. Billions for hostages. That's all they think about, spend money, sky's the limit in modern monetary theory. Bad time to visit a big city. The police are demoralized, not enough recruits to form a class, experienced cops retiring. It's happening among U.S. military field officers, colonels resigning their commissions, some of them publicly.

 

Washington Post says Taliban offered Biden option to keep Kabul.

 

Prager is playing with shit, moaning about dead Marines.

 

Dan Bon Gino: "I don't see how we can continue as a nation."

 

Fox News leads with hurricane damage, cell service down, cop radios kaput. U.S. citizens want to escape Kabul, some hundreds stranded behind fierce Taliban infantry surrounding the airport. McDonalds shut dining rooms. Europeans want to ban U.S. airline passengers to limit spread of delta variant. State Dept tells stranded citizens to stay away, shelter in place indefinitely, keep in touch unless cell phone service is shut off by Taliban or falls apart for lack of competent technical support.

 

Democrats circling the wagons, won't investigate what Biden decided or whether top military advisers wanted to keep Baghram and stay until all citizens and SIV applicants were evacuated. Unpredictable if the press is going to roll over on this matter. They'll have to report Republican calls for oversight.

 

Dan Bon Gino: "The man must resign."

 

Blinken thinks that we'll have a role in reopening HKIA for commercial flights after military bug out, maybe work with Qatar and neutral Europeans (Switzerland? Norway?) and Taliban. I don't think that there's anything to discuss with Taliban except to haggle over hostage ransoms.

 

NPR Here And Now — correspondent walked down Bourbon Street, plenty of damage, no electricity, most people evacuated the city. Worse wreckage and flooding in Jefferson Parish, rescue operations in progress. Hours old headlines from Kabul. Warns listeners that next segment will be upsetting. Drone set a house on fire, small children killed in explosion, targeting an NGO aid worker's car. Fighter jets in tactical deployment over airport. NPR sad about kids being killed. Controller in Colorado: "Oops."

 

Lake Tahoe is being evacuated, forest fire closing in. For the record, Smokey The Bear never said "Only you can prevent wildfires," a Newspeak rewrite. Smokey always said "Only you can prevent forest fires." I know Stateline pretty well, worked at Caesar's Tahoe and Horizon Hotel, rigged The Beach Boys, Brooks & Dunn, David Copperfield, and a Paul Verhoeven movie. Billions at stake if fire reaches the casinos.

 

Fox News bulletin, airport attacked by manpad or RPGs, no damage.

 

Hannity says Biden is incoherent. "Anything you need, just holler. I'm here with, uh ... We need to be prepared ... Mayor Cantrell, are you on? ... no, I guess she's not able to connect." When Biden stood at Dover AFB to salute dead Marines, he was caught looking at his wristwatch while another casket was unloaded. It's idiotic to think Taliban is going to release hostages. Biden said he wasn't supposed to take any questions at FEMA photo op, told a reporter he wouldn't answer any questions about Afghanistan. "Spectacularly stupid," Hannity growls. "Where was Blinken when Kabul fell? — in the Hamptons. Where was Biden? — on vacation. Where was Jen Psocki? — on vacation."

 

Sebastian Gorka playing patty cake with Jenna Ellis, humiliating RINOs.

 

Washington Post — pregnant widow of dead Marine disappointed in meeting Biden, who talked about his son Beau, a JAG officer who never saw action and died years later from brain cancer. Makes one wonder if it's a hereditary trait? Hunter is brain damaged, a crack addict and payola bag man.

 

AP — Taliban is hunting down singers, killing them. Music is forbidden.

 

USA Radio News — Dept of Education investigating no-mask orders in red states to assess if unmasked students discriminate against special education students who are frail and vulnerable to infection. I saw one of those kids in Golden. He was incapable of speech, all twisted up with MS, had a full time teacher of his own. She wheeled him into a classroom of normal kids, sat next to him and fussed with his hands and windpipe angrily. The kid's classroom experience was hell.

 

Fox News — Universal opened a theme park and two hotels in Beijing.

 

Congressman Jim Banks, an Afghan War vet: "Every time they talk about remaining citizens to rescue, they give us a different number. No one knows how many there are. Biden is the only president in U.S. history to leave American citizens trapped behind enemy lines."

 

One more night to survive Custer's Last Stand with constant air traffic overhead and on the runway. At some point, they'll burn helicopters, detonate ammo, cut communication, make mistakes under fire, haul their wounded and dead to the last C-17, a dice roll on take-off. The few, the proud.

 

Worried mother of an Afghan War veteran son who is crying and outraged. She says to Hannity: "I'm a mom, experienced enough to know that it's not just Biden's incompetence. There's something really big going on." It sailed over Hannity's head, consoled her about son's distress and hoped that he gets help. Mom was right. There is something big going on. China owns Biden and the Democrat Party. Too bad NSA is a Democrat plantation. There's been traffic between Chinese diplomats and Jake Sullivan, the designated fall guy. Obama hung Susan Rice out to dry again, like he did with Benghazi, a reliable foot soldier who can recite Executive Privilege and refuse to testify, no different than Colin Powell publicly lying about WMD in Iraq. Black people are exempt from investigations. It would be racist.

 

4 p.m. Fox alert — final military flight loaded with soldiers took off?

 

Shortfall of 90,000 HGV drivers in Britain. McDonalds out of milk shakes.

 

CBS — America's longest war is over. Last plane left Afghanistan. "The last C-17 lifted off," Pentagon spokesman confirms. Celebratory gunfire in Kabul.

 

Huh. Air cover worked. It's over.

 

Whacked half of the front weeds and grass, stopped for a rest, a sandwich, and a cup of coffee. I want to do the other half before I quit, make it easier to see copperheads at night when they hunt .

 

6 p.m. — NPR says U.S. troops are destroying equipment at the airport. What?! Every news outlet is celebrating successful bug out. Who's doing demolition? Special ops? Marines covering them? Do we still have F/A-18 tactical combat patrols? Why no news coverage? Why are there people on the ground? If we have fighter aircraft over the target, just have them bomb the Chinooks, blow up the ammo.

 

Something screwy about this. Do I have to wait for BBC for news?

 

7 p.m. — It's over. All troops have left. [Fox]

 

10:40 p.m. Chris Krok quoted an unnamed U.S. general , bragged that his men blew up 17 Humvees at the airport before they bugged out. Probably 82nd Airborne equipment that they rolled off a C-5 two weeks ago. Little details paint a picture. I want to know who blew up the Chinooks.

 

11:30 p.m. CBS — another tease: "A few Americans are still there" [at the Kabul Airport] and it did not refer to American civilians wandering around purposelessly.

 

August 31, midnight

 

BBC reports video of Taliban fighters walking in Kabul Airport, taking possession, found Chinooks in a hangar. Something is definitely screwy. Maybe they unplugged avionics and communications, burned them in a dumpster topped with aluminum shavings and thermite.

 

1:10 a.m. — okay, I'm convinced that the last U.S. Marine and a commanding officer boarded the last plane. Taliban press conference on the tarmac. It's over. Now comes the brutal abuse, death by torture, women and girls terrorized into 8th century slavery, female education and dental care abolished.

 

Mark my words. China owns Biden and the Democrat Party. Biden was told to evacuate Baghram and abandon $65 billion in combat helicopters, armored vehicles, weapons and ammo. That's treason. He won't be indicted or impeached, but the mental pressure is mounting. He will lash out unpredictably, pop a blood vessel in his brain again. Kamala will take over as "acting president," accepting the job as entertainment art, an actress performing a script. Politics is show business for ugly people.

 

Nothing to see here, citizen. Move along. Put on a mask.

 

September 1 — Taliban victory parade in Humvees and MRAPs.

2,200 Afghan hospitals and clinics closed, female staff gone.

 

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