Rant

Before I got to high school, the term was “illegal alien”. This was the technically, legally correct term.

According to the INA, The term “alien” means any person not a citizen or national of the United States — 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(3)

The term “illegal alien” is not used, but no term is defined within the INA for illegal aliens.

Now the term “illegal alien” was used to create faux outrage, “Nobody is Illegal!” was the scream.

They then became “aliens”, then “undocumented migrants”, and then “undocumented works” and finally, “migrants”.

All of these language changes were done with purpose and evil in the hearts of the manipulators.

Who wants an “illegal alien” living with them? How worries about an undocumented migrant living with them. One sounds much more “criminal” than the other.

This worked so well, that today, and every day, I hear leftists scream about “she was just a Maryland mother, she had committed no crimes.”

She committed the crime of entering this country illegally. That is a crime.

In the Second Amendment community, we’ve seen the infringers pivot to “assault weapons” to “gun safety” to “prevent gun violence”. The words are designed to hide the actual intentions.

The Education Industry

There is a community that I’ve labeled the Education Industry. This includes teacher’s unions, school boards, school administrators, the Department of Education at all levels, and the vendors selling into these groups.

One of the worst things about the EI, is that it isn’t interested in good results, it is interested in looking like they are providing good results.

I’ve had many people within the EI tell me that it is impossible to use objective standards to “grade” teachers. Then proceeded to prove it by informing me that judging teachers by how well their students do, doesn’t work.

These same people have then told me which teachers in the school are good or bad. They know what makes a good teacher, they know what makes a bad teacher. They are not willing to turn those into written, objective, criteria.

When my children were younger, there was an incident in the classroom. I was brought in to hear about how my son had misbehaved.

“Your son hit one of his friends.”

“He hit Jimmy? I’ll have to speak with Jimmy’s parents to find out what happened and make sure they can patch it up.”

“No, it wasn’t Jimmy.”

Turns out that the “friend” that he hit was the classroom bully and had no friends.

She was my son’s “friend” because everybody in the room was a “friend.”

The research strongly suggested that students with good social interactions and with a strong support base of friends performed better.

This meant that schools that wanted to have students perform well, they needed friends.

Since you can’t force people to be friends, they just redefined all classmates as “friends”. Instant solution. Everybody has friends now. They will all do better.

Nope, of course not. This is just industrial-sized cheating.

Nothing more than the marathon runner who trotted off the starting line, ran a mile, got on the subway and then to the ending line.

They waited “long enough” then rejoined the other runners for the last mile, mile and a half.

They caught her because her time put her in world-class times.

She wasn’t “cheating” in her mind, she “didn’t want to disappoint her daughter.” So she cheated.

The EI cheats all the time.

“No Child Left Behind”. The EI turned to malicious compliance and malicious misunderstandings to create a disaster.

If you read the bill, if you read the statements made around it, you quickly realize that the goal was to make sure that no child was shorted the opportunity to succeed.

If you were a little slow, more resources would be provided, to help you reach classroom standards. It was also supposed to help the gifted children, making sure they also received extra resources.

Instead, it became BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome). No child left behind meant that schools couldn’t hold students back.

Their Learners

One of the latest pushes was “the learning mindset” where the EI would create “lifetime learners”.

I’m a learner, I’m always attempting to learn something new. I don’t always succeed, but I darn well try. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ve read about the things I attempt to learn.

People that have a learning mindset naturally do better at learning things.

We want learners in our schools. We want to encourage learners.

Knowing how important having a lifetime learning mindset is, the schools have ditched the term “student” and replaced it with “learner”.

Now everybody is a learner. It says so right on the label.

My teacher explained to me that calling them “learners” was encouraging them to have that learning mindset.

I reached over and picked up something on the table. “This is the medal of honor. It is awarded to those that do amazing, heroic acts, putting the lives of others before their own. I’m giving this to you to encourage you to do amazing, heroic acts, putting the lives of others before your own.”

I was lucky, she got it and I didn’t get slapped.

You can call it day when it’s night, you can call it good when it’s bad, that doesn’t make it so.

Situational morals at work again.

It is being reported, and I haven’t heard anybody deny it, that two or more U.S. Citizens under 10 were “deported”.

Well, they weren’t actually deported, their mother(s) were deported. Their father may or may not have been deported as well.

This is what happens when an illegal alien is detained, they are given due process to challenge the removal before an immigration judge. If that judge finds that you are in the country illegally, they will sign a removal order.

The illegal alien can appeal that to a higher immigration judge. If they agree, the removal order remains. They can then appeal outside the immigration court system, I don’t know how that works.

These mothers had that due process, there were removal orders issued against them.

Those mothers then had to make a very difficult decision, leave the children who were born in the US here in the US or take them with them.

In one case, the child had a serious medical condition.

In these cases, the mothers opted to take their children with them. Those children remain U.S. Citizens, they can return to the United States at any time. Hopefully, they haven’t become MS13 or TDA members before they do return.

This is what Trump wanted, according to the dog whistle people. He wants to deport people he doesn’t like. He wants to deport U.S. Citizens who he declares are enemies of the state. This is proof.

In other news, an illegal alien mother was deported, choosing to leave her US Citizen children behind. Isn’t it horrible how Trump is choosing to seperate families?

You and I have morals. We have a moral compass. Everybody has morals.

As Allyson likes to say, “My morals haven’t changed.” She is the same person today as she was last year. Morals are consistent.

According to Denise Prager, “Thou shalt not murder.” This was mis-translated to “Thou shalt not kill” much later.

I have no problems with “Thou shalt not murder” being a part of my moral code. “Thou shalt not kill” is not a part of my moral code.

I eat meat, this means that an animal was killed by me or for me. I have no issues looking evil in the face and deciding that my life is worth more than his life.

I do not believe I would ever commit murder.

“Thou shalt not steal” is another one. For me, this has turned out to be situational. Have I taken things that do not belong to me? Yes. That’s stealing.

Did I have good cause to do so? At the time I thought I did.

Regardless, not stealing is part of my moral code. I strive to maintain my moral code. Not for the love of God above or the fear of hell below, it is because I believe my moral code is the right thing to do.

I was taught my moral code by my parents and the environment which I grew up in.

When I was at University, we used to play poker. One of the players was very lucky. Not good play, but too many good cards. So I learned how to manipulate cards. Yes, he was cheating. I caught him out. Once I did, the game was played more fairly.

But that ability to manipulate cards fascinated me. I did a lot of practice and was ok at it. Not good. I knew enough to be a little dangerous.

At one of the local bars, I was playing with a deck of cards, it was a bar where you could request many sorts of games, such as Acey-Deucey.

The waitress was interested, so I bet her, cut for high card. If you cut high, I’ll pay double, if I cut high, I get the drink for free.

Four rounds and I won each round. With the ace of spades if I needed high and the 2 of diamonds if I needed to go low. That deck was cold

This was cheating. It was stealing. It was and is against my morals. When I left, I left a tip to cover the cost of my drinks plus another 50%. She didn’t get the double she was hoping for, but she didn’t lose money either.

Note, at the time the standard tip on a $2 drink was $0.25. She got $12 for my 4 drinks, not the $9 if she had not played.

This is morals in action.

The left has a set of morals that appears to be very situational.

J6 is a riot, an insurrection, an armed coup attempt. People running around burning cities is a protest.

They approve of the people doing the burning; thus the situation says that it is a moral protest. They disapprove of the right gathering to protest, that means it is an evil insurrection.

Judge Dugan is an example of that. Their moral compass has spun because they approve of what she did. Because they approved of what she did, the arrest warrant was “fake”, all she did was misdirect the agents, people exit through that door all the time.

Their moral compass shifts depending on “who”. Their moral compass shifts depending on the “intentions” of the person acting.

So what is this giant proof of “fascism”?

There was an illegal alien in this judge’s court. There was a detainer issued for the illegal alien. There was an ICE agent there to detain the illegal alien.

When the judge heard this, she told the illegal alien to hide in the jury room. When the ICE agent asked where the illegal alien was, the judge indicated that he had left via an alternative door.

The illegal alien then made a run for it but was captured by ICE.

After an investigation, an arrest warrant was issued and the FBI arrested this judge for obstructing an ICE arrest.

I’ve not looked further than Kash’s statement and the NPCs screaming. The more they scream, the more I know they are on the wrong side of the issue. I have no proof that there was an arrest warrant issued. If the FBI did not have an arrest warrant, then this arrest was illegal (IANAL). Since I have trust in Kash Patel, I will assume with confidence that they did have that warrant.

To get an arrest warrant, the FBI must submit evidence establishing probable cause to a federal magistrate or federal district court judge. This is how it is done.

Judges are not above the law. If she had made a legal ruling, there are different paths, instead she stepped outside of her authority as a judge, outside of her position to obstruct the arrest of an illegal alien.

The Fort is getting ready for the 2025 season. Allyson is up there for the woman’s weekend. She is incredibly excited.

Why?

Because this will be the first event she has gone to in years when she isn’t presenting/teaching. Her goal? To learn how to make a pie crust.

Like many events, there is an unload time. You are allowed to drive on site to unload your gear, and then you are to get your vehicle off site as soon as you can.

It felt like coming home. We stopped to talk to boss lady, then drove around to the Fort to unload. Bill saw us drive up and waved us inside.

It felt good to be recognized, to be welcomed.

There was “man bonding”, Bill was on his way to fix something, he had a crowbar in hand and made a pretend swing at the windshield. It felt welcoming. As I said, a coming home.

Allyson and I got out of the truck. She started unloading for her stay, I went to help Bill.

We worked as a team. I got to drive the idiot stick for a bit. We were able to move a large, heavy, ramp out of the way, clear up the damage a woodchuck had done, and get an aluminum ramp in place for the weekend.

It was good. It made me happy. The Fort is a home away from home.

The one thing that struck me as humorous was that we were going to use some 2x4s. They needed to be cut to size. Bill was in the jointery first. When I got there, I was expecting him to be using one of the handsaws.

Nope, he had a circular saw, making quick work of the task.

NPCs get new talking points

In the past 20 years of watching congress critters make huge amounts of money with some of the luckiest stock moves, it is refreshing to have some of them talking about limiting insider trading.

And all the normal NPCs are all yapping about wanting to pass a bill to stop themselves from trading individual stocks.

The bill, as pitched by the NPCs, is unlikely to actually accomplish anything, still it makes me smile to see them doing this because they are virtue signaling.

Just a short follow up. In one day the portfolio I am following recovered about 530%.

That is to say, the reported loss over the last 6 days has gone from 3.58% yesterday to 0.19% today.

Just stay the course and things will get better.

If you are invested in the market, don’t panic. As CBMTTek pointed out, February 2024 the S&P 500 was doing just fine, at the same level. The media wasn’t screaming about the economy tanking.

He’s correct. The amount of panic the media projects is tempered by which party is in control.

A 0.001% drop in the market when Trump does something is cause to panic, which causes the sheep to sell, causing the market to drop. A 1.000% drop in the market when a Dem is in office creates a cricket like ambiance. And saying anything makes you a conspiracy theorist.

Trump has put multiple tariffs into place. These tariffs cause changes in supply chains and in the costs to produce certain goods.

Every product produced requires raw goods, tooling, work space, and skills to create.

Consider a simple BLT. The raw goods are bacon, bacon, bacon, lettuce, tomato, bread, mayo. Having all of those raw goods does not a BLT make.

You have to have the correct tooling. The tooling here is a way of cooking the bacon, such as a grill top, cutting tomatoes, cutting bread, spreading the mayo.

Once the sandwich is produced, it has to be packaged for delivery. That requires still more raw goods.

When you sell that sandwich, you include the cost of the raw materials that go into it, you include the cost of the packaging, you include the cost of the tools, the building you used, and you include the cost of labor. You then need to include the cost the government imposes on you.

The cost of your raw goods includes the price you pay for the goods, the cost the government imposes on those goods, such as tariffs and VAT, and the cost of transporting the raw goods to your location.

Once you have all those costs, you add profit to come up with the price you will charge your customers.

Now, let’s change the product, instead of creating a sandwich, you are creating a gear. Your raw goods are iron and pattern making materials. You will use your tools to convert pattern making materials into patterns. You will then use those patterns to cast gear blanks. You will then turn those gear blanks into finished gears by applying different tools.

You have converted raw materials, with knowledge, skill and labor, into a finished product, a gear.

That gear is sold at a price which is profitable to you. That gear is likely a raw material for some other business.

Tariffs add to the cost of anything imported into a country that imposes imports. Imports are decided on the origin country or the country of manufacture.

Consider a car that is manufactured in Detroit. If that car includes raw materials that are imported from other countries, those materials that have tariffs applied will cost more.

There are no “complexities” to this. The “PANIC!” people want you to think there are, that’s not true. Every business keeps track of the cost of raw materials. If they don’t know the costs, they can’t set prices. It doesn’t matter if Ford, Canada produces the part or Ford, Flynt creates the part. There is a cost that is paid to have that part in the Ford, Detroit plant to put into a new car.

In a well-functioning business, they are always looking at the cost of raw materials. The cost of raw materials includes the cost of taxes (tariffs) and transportation.

It also includes the cost of bad materials. If you are paying a $1.00 for a widget and there is a 10% failure rate, that means you are paying $1.10 for each working part. If somebody else has the same widget with a cost (price + extra costs) of $1.05 and a failure rate of 0.1% that means they are only scrapping 1 in 1000 widgets.

In this case, it is actually cheaper to buy the “more expensive” widget.

Included in the cost calculations are longer-term issues. If the ball bearings you purchase are not properly heat treated, and you assemble them into a high-precision roller bearing which then fails in a million dollar engine, there is a heck of a lot more costs involved.

We know that people will change their purchasing habits when the cost of needed goods goes up. We saw this when Americans switched from steak to ground beef as their primary meat. Look at the CPI for food, you’ll see that in the past it had steak on it, today it has ground beef.

Because the cost of goods goes up, people will look for better prices. If that search leads to a local business, so much the better.

Unfortunately, local business might not be set up to cope with a large influx of new business. This leads to shortages.

In a market-driven economy, this leads to people consumers offering more or producers charging more. This is called a “signal”.

Because this signal exists, asking for more of that product, producers will attempt to create more product. This could be as simple as turning on an extra machine or as complex as standing up an entirely new production plant.

When this is going on, “the market” will respond. The market responds by buying or selling ownership in different companies. If a company that used to clear $2,000,000 per year is now projected to clear $4,000,000 per year is likely to attract buyers. A company that is seeing their income drop is likely to attract sellers.

This causes market fluctuations.

Over the course of yesterday, the portfolio that I follow was up as much as 1% yet closed down 0.82% Since Trump announced the tariffs, the portfolio has lost 3.53%

On $100,000 that’s a $3,530 loss.

And it is meaningless. That portfolio will go up again.

The people who are screaming the loudest are the people with millions in the stock market. If that are looking at a $10,000,000 portfolio, a 3.53% drop is $353,000 “loss”. That is more than a 1/4 million dollars in just a few days.

But it only becomes a loss if they sell now. If they hold on to those securities and the price recovers or goes up, then they will “make money”. But again, that is only true if they actually sell the security to realize the profits they made.

There is no reason to panic. The sky is not falling. If anything, this might be a good time to look at putting money into the market. The trick is to buy when near the bottom of the sell-off.

The only reason I know this, is I did some research this last week. I am NOT the person you want to take financial advise from.

Immigration law in the United States is garbage. For many years, we did accept immigrants. Americans to be.

We were the melting pot. You came to the United States, proud of your original country, or hating it, then you work to become an American.

The stories of parents demanding that their children only speak English, to become even more American.

If you want to see a group of very proud people, just watch a group of immigrants become citizens. They work hard for that privilege.

But the Democrats had to ruin it. First, JFK signed the Community Mental Health Act. This is the act that closed mental institutions.

Yes, there were things wrong with mental health institutions. On the other hand, there are so many mentally ill people living on the streets.

But Teddy did worse. He pushed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. This law abolished the discriminatory national origins quotas that favored immigrants from Northern and Western Europe.

In other words, he made a person from a third world shithole in Africa just as eligible as an Engineer from Germany. In addition, it pushed family-based immigrant visas.

The fallout from this could be anticipated, and was. Since immigration law favors family connections over what is best for the United States, family connections became much more valuable.

Before the Immigration and Nationality Act, if a couple wanted to come to the United States, both applied for visas and both worked towards becoming Citizens. Both were vetted and the needs of the United States were taken into account.

Afterward, we saw the concept of anchor immigrants. These were people who were admitted to the United States. Once established, they then sponsored other members of their family for visas.

Having a single immigrant become a citizen often leads to their spouse, their children, their parents all being granted visas. If any of those became citizens, they could sponsor even more relatives.

As more and more people applied to become citizens, the wait times started to go up. But there was a shortcut.

There are two methods of creating a family-connection. By birth, or by marriage.

Under current law, marrying a US Citizen will get you a visa, a green card, and a good start towards citizenship.

It became so common that laws were put in place to stop “sham-marriages”.

A sham-marriage is a marriage that exists only for the purpose of becoming a citizen.

How common are these sham-marriage? Common enough, that I knew of a woman who was taken advantage of by a middle eastern man.

But what are the odds of knowing two such women?

Yeah, it turns out that I know another woman that was taken in by a Muslim, once he had his citizenship, he divorced her, tried to take her kid, failed at taking the kids but was now an American Citizen.

Please leave a comment if you know anybody who was taken advantage of or who participated in a sham-marriage. I’m curious.

This is an interesting and challenging case, for me.

This is a Constitutional challenge to Mahmoud being detained and then deported. His claim is that this is a violation of his First and Fifth Amendment protected rights. Because it is a violation of his rights, the court should grant him relief.

Mahmoud is an Arab that claims to be a Palestinian. He entered the United States in December 2022 on a student visa to study for a Master’s degree at Columbia University in New York. He completed that degree in December 2024 and is going to graduate in May 2025. He married in November 2024 and got a green card.

He was granted a green card because he was married to a US citizen. He is still an alien, just not illegal. He has not overstayed his visa, nor is he required to leave when his visa expires.

His lawyer describes his actions in this way:

This describes his actions as speech. Regardless of how reprehensible that speech might be, it is still protected. The First Amendment protects reprehensible speech, not just the words we want to hear. It is easy to believe in “free speech” if the only allowed speech is that which we agree with.

This case is seeking the following relief:

1. Assume jurisdiction over this matter
2. Declare that the state violated Mahmoud’s First amendment and Fifth Amendment protected rights
3. To keep Mahmoud in New York
4. Release Mahmoud
5. Pay Mahmoud’s legal fees

Item 3 is mooted because Mahmoud was out of New York before the case was filed. In a later filing they requested that he be returned to New York.

So we look at the Constitutional challenge. One of the things to note is that not all the Constitution applies to everyone. Some apply to Citizens and some apply to “the people”. The rights limited to citizens are called out by the term “citizen”. The rest of the time the founders use the terms “the people”, “person”, and “the accused.”

The Supreme Court has issued many opinions that restrict “The People” to those with a strong connection to the community politic.

With these in mind, it seems clear that Mahmoud is a member of the people. His rights are protected by most of the Constitution.

Is he challenging a federal law prohibiting the free exercise of or abridgment of his speech? Not directly.

Instead, he challenges the law as applied to him, His claim is that he can’t speak while detained and that the threat of detention has a chilling effect on his ability to speak freely.

The state has not justified his detention in court documents — yet. Instead, they are fighting the most relevant parts first. Bluntly, I don’t care if this asshole is deported or rotting in a jail cell. He’s not out there intimidating the people of the United States.

What the state did was they revoked his visa and his green card.

When can a green card be revoked?

What this means is that the state need only prove that Mahmoud was part of or assisting a terrorist group. Hamas is a designated terrorist group.

Conclusion

The left loves to talk about hate speech. They love it because it allows them to justify their violence. Hate speech is always in the eye of the offended.

“Violent” speech is violence, according to the left.

Violence can be countered with violence.

Therefore, you saying something that they disagree with is hate speech, which in turn is violence, which means they can punch you.

In the other direction, any real, physical violence they engage in is “just protests” and is “speech” protected by the Constitution.

They are going to lose this one. I’ve seen to many good filings from this administration to believe they aren’t going to win. Maybe not at the district level with all the rogue inferior judges, but they will win higher up.

I’m going through some personal stuff right now, and it’s been rough. Some of the responses I’ve gotten to my last few posts have left me feeling raw and frustrated, and unsure of what to do and say going forward. After some long talks with Chris and others, I’m writing this to try and get some general thoughts out that I hope will help you guys and me.

First and foremost, if something is labeled “From Behind Enemy Lines,” then I am doing just that – talking about the Left, FROM the Left. That is what I’ve been asked to do, when I’m posting under that banner. I’ve been asked to give a Left perspective, or at least a “more Left” perspective, so that you guys can learn and to be sure that Vine isn’t an “echo chamber.” I am going to be more obvious in it, adding FBEL at the top of posts that are “representative Left” or “explaining Left” so that they stand out.

So my last post was about the memes I’d seen floating around, and in particular, about the Trump 2028 one. From where I’m standing, there are three groups of people. First, we have the far Left. They’re going to do what they’re going to do, and nothing you or I say is going to change it. I ignore them. Second is the group of “normal Left” or what I tend to call “thinking Left.” These are people who have chosen willfully to be Left of center, but are self-consistent, thinking, and reasoning. I might not LIKE their reasoning, and I may think it’s false in the grand scheme of things or missing important points, but they’ve shown me that they give actual thought and consideration to their position. I have many friends in this group.

The third group consists of people like me. We were a little Left of Center, if you asked us. People on the Right just lumped us in with “The Left,” and the Left considered us oddities and “too far Right for comfort” but generally tolerated us. We are no longer “a little Left of Center.” We are deep state Right, at this point, because the Left has shifted so far Left that we’re not even close anymore. Some, like myself, have chosen to take the couple of steps Right to join the rest of you under the Conservative tent, albeit in our own little corner while we acclimate. Others are dithering out there on the sandbar, wondering where the hell the tide went and why it’s so fucking cold these days.

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