POLITICAL: When to clean the slate and start the next cycle anew?

Wednesday, September 17, 2025

https://survivalblog.com/2025/09/03/survivalblog-readers-editors-snippets-228/

SurvivalBlog Readers’ & Editors’ Snippets

James Wesley Rawles September 3, 2025 

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Reader R.W. in Oregon had this comment:

“Well, it took a long time but I’ve come to the conclusion that politics is like the weather. People can bitch about it but there’s not a d*mn thing they can do about it. Politics is gonna happen with or without us.

Our votes haven’t meant sh*t since before reconstruction, the “Parties” and “Machines” captured or created by bankers and industrialists made short work of that. There’s no “Right” or “Left”, it’s just “Us” vs “Them”.

Thank God for people like Smedley Butler who had the courage to call it like it is. What he said applies to the entire world, not just us. Read: “Against the Grain”. Greed and avarice breed tyranny.

The most insightful, wise and thoughtful dissection of that premise, in my opinion, is still the Federalist Papers and various books of the Bible.

Eventually, every corrupt and rotting government finally picks a war (all wars are bankers wars) or drives their economy and culture into the ditch and the people won’t take it anymore. Our job is to know when to clean the slate and start the next cycle anew.

That is the one thing we can do. And, as we are one of the last peoples on this planet to retain that one very important right, the rest of the world is looking to us to do it. 

*** end quote ***

A most interesting dictum to us all.  When is enough enough?

Do we wait for “them” to start herding us in to freight cars?  We know from history what comes after that!

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? . . .” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn 

Or do we, like “quiet quitting” and “quiet firing”, just refuse to kowtow to ever more increasing intrusive demands, diktats, and “trends”?

I think that ₿itcoin is the first step.  Instead of “saving” in “dollars”, I’m “saving” in ₿itcoins, GoldBacks, junk silver, and gold rounds.  Let them figure out how to “inflate” those.

YMMV

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IOS: IOS26 upgrade — issues list

Tuesday, September 16, 2025

IOS26 Upgrade —  Issues list

2025-Sep-15

  • Big download and long delay getting it

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NEWJERSEY: Mikie Sherrill’s voting record is bad news for the Pepuls Republik of Nu Jerzee

Tuesday, September 16, 2025

https://savejersey.com/2025/09/if-given-the-chance-sherrill-will-turn-n-j-into-a-giant-charlotte-light-rail-train/

If given the chance? Sherrill will turn N.J. into a giant Charlotte light rail train.

September 10, 2025  —  Matt Rooney 

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I don’t care what a politician says, Save Jerseyans.

Especially once they’ve developed a record? I care what they actually do, and Mikie Sherrill’s voting record in the U.S. House of Representatives gives me reason to believe she’d be a law-and-order DISASTER as New Jersey governor.

New Jersey is already struggling under the current cashless bail regime, and as the stomach-churning murder of a young immigrant woman on Charlotte’s light rail system vividly illustrates, the consequences of having a leaders who aren’t tough on criminals are inevitably fatal.

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Typical “democrat” soft on everything important!

For a veteran and pilot, I’d have expected a more realistic platform and record.

Not that the R is much better. 

Argh!

To quote from the movie “The Far Side of the World” Master and Commander Capt. Jack Aubrey: “There! I have you! You’re completely dished. … one must always choose the lesser of two weevils?”

It’s just about as significant.

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MEME: About last night’s “emmys”

Monday, September 15, 2025

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ENCOURAGING: “Forbidden” llists are counter-productive to censorship

Monday, September 15, 2025

https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/from-forbidden-to-top-sellers?r=3snn7d

From Forbidden to Top Sellers

  • If books are any indication, the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex is losing in the marketplace of ideas.

John Leake  —  Sep 09, 2025

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The dummies who tried to impose a censorship regime in the United States should have understood that their scheme wouldn’t work.

Key actors in the “censorship-industrial complex,” as Michael Shellenberger calls it, should have understood that their enterprise was doomed to fail, just as the Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books), maintained between 1560 to 1966, was doomed to fail.

Notable authors on the Index included Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel de Montaigne, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Victor Hugo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, André Gide, Nikos Kazantzakis, Emanuel Swedenborg, Baruch Spinoza, Desiderius Erasmus, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Thomas Browne, John Milton, John Locke, Nicolaus Copernicus, Niccolò Machiavelli, Galileo Galilei, Blaise Pascal, and Hugo Grotius.

Rather than censoring and banning ideas, it’s always better to discuss and debate them. 

*** end quote ***

I remember in Catholic High Skrule each week, the Diocesan newspaper (I forget the name) would print the Forbidden Books and Forbidden Movies lists.  And the good Christian Brothers would make a point of reminding us that these would damage our souls.  Little did they realize it was, just like Adam and Eve, tempting us.  I know everyone tried to read or see these “evil demons”.  Most of us succeeded.  Word quickly spread which were worth the effort and which weren’t.  Laugh!

I don’t think it made a difference.  

If I was the Principal I would have put the summer required reading list as “Prohibited” and it would have gotten read.

Sigh!  Those were the “easy days”.

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ETC: Links I thought were interesting

Sunday, September 14, 2025

Ten Years Post “Cheating” – EPautos – Libertarian Car Talk

More On Charlie Kirk, The Qatar Strike and the Russia’s Netcentric Military Doctrine

A Common Trait Among Mentally Disturbed Women: Deviant-ated Septum

Writing Articles For SurvivalBlog, by Richard T.. The intention of this letter is to motivate readers of the blog to submit articles.

Some Catholic Schools Adding Armed Response After Annunciation Shooting – Bearing Arms

We betrayed Russians in 1945. We’re doing it again in 2025. :: Jeff Jacoby

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MEME:Teach the criminal to fear the victim by LtCol Jeff Cooper

Sunday, September 14, 2025

Jeff Cooper Meme

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GUNS: Lessons from the Charlie Kirk assassination

Sunday, September 14, 2025
 
2025-Sep-12 1206
 
Update: “Investigators say the suspect left palm prints on the roof and a shoe imprint as he fled— a grave mistake.”
 
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MEME: In reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk

Saturday, September 13, 2025

The True Story Of 300's Battle Of Thermopylae

Paratattein (παρατάττειν) “Form the line!” — attributed to Leonidas to prepare his men for battle at 

<< in reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk >>

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INSPIRATIONAL: Some times you can use your image to your advantage and do good for the world

Saturday, September 13, 2025

{tip of the old tin foil hat to <Stephen E. Phelps Jr.> for sharing!}

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1A3MmpKyce/

True Stories

Dolly Parton once walked into a boardroom full of men in rhinestones and heels — and walked out owning her own masters. The executives thought she was a naïve country girl who’d sign anything. Instead, she quietly bought back her publishing rights, a move so rare at the time that even industry sharks didn’t see it coming. Decades later, when Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” sold 20 million copies, the checks went to Dolly. She didn’t just write the song — she owned it.

That’s the paradox of Dolly. She leaned into the dumb-blonde jokes, the wigs, the over-the-top curves — and used them as camouflage. People underestimated her, and she liked it that way. Behind the glitter was one of the shrewdest business operators in music. She built Dollywood in rural Tennessee, turning her home into a tourist empire. She funneled money into children’s literacy programs, giving away more than 200 million books. And she did it all while letting the world laugh at her “backwoods Barbie” image.

The kicker? She admitted the caricature was intentional. “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap,” she quipped. The hair, the nails, the laugh — they were her armor, her Trojan horse. She could sparkle her way past prejudice and still walk out with the contract that made her untouchable.

Even Elvis tried to own her. When Colonel Tom Parker demanded half the rights to “I Will Always Love You” for Presley to record it, Dolly said no — sobbing in her car, heartbroken, but unyielding. It may be the single most profitable “no” in music history.

Dolly Parton’s story isn’t about a country diva in sequins. It’s about a woman who weaponized underestimation, sold the world a joke it wanted to hear, and laughed all the way to the bank — while handing out books to children on the side.

# – # – # – # – # 

Way back when, in the 70s, some of my friends were playing a game.  I think it was called “Facts in Five”?  One of the challenges was to name the smartest person you knew of.  My wife assured everyone that she had my answer cold. “Einstein”!  Nope, I had written down “Dolly Parton”.  She went nuts and the entire group.  I explained that she was the shrewdest business lady and the most charitable. I knew of Dollywood and her book donations. 

This story reminded me of that game and added some details about Ms. Parton IDK. 

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