Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador thinks he can do no wrong. After all, U.S. federal courts are turning over sovereignty to the Mexican head of state at the same time he’s issuing ultimatums to the United States and thumbing his nose at Texas.
U.S. District Judge Rosemary Marquez, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, ruled that a lawsuit brought by the Mexican government against five Arizona-based firearm retailers can proceed. Mexico claims these firearm retailers are facilitating illegal firearm trafficking to Mexico. There’s no evidence of this. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) would have shut these businesses down if there was. Of course, gun control groups backing Mexico’s claims are crowing over the development.
That’s on top of the $10 billion lawsuit Mexico is also bringing, with the backing of U.S. gun control groups, against U.S. firearm manufacturers. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit revived that case in January after a lower court dismissed the claims.
The irony is Mexican President López Obrador is issuing a list of demands to the United States and telling a U.S. court in the State of Texas law to fight illegal immigration would impinge on Mexico’s “sovereign right” to decide who enters the country.
Mexican Shakedown
The irony is rich, if not absurd. Mexico is running roughshod on America’s sovereignty in American courts because it refuses to enforce its own gun control laws on their side of the border. At the same time, President López Obrador is shaking down not just U.S. firearm manufacturers for $10 billion, he’s demanding $20 billion in what can only be described as “patronage fees” to Latin American countries. He also wants work visas for 10 million illegal immigrants, an end to U.S. sanctions in Venezuela and a halt to the blockade of Cuba.
The arrogance is astounding but it is being backed by weak U.S. responses and kowtowing by U.S. courts to Mexico. President López Obrador is a head-of-state only because he’s working hand-in-glove with the narco-terrorist drug cartels that are the scourge of Mexico. He refuses to confront those cartels, which are facilitating illegal firearm trafficking. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency uncovered “substantial evidence” that drug cartels funneled $2 million to his campaign and that it was impossible to divorce government officials from criminal cartels.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is demanding answers from 16 federal law enforcement agencies over a secretive Project Thor, that was designed to disrupt those known networks. It was working, until the ATF pulled the plug – at the same time Mexico brought their claims against U.S. firearm manufacturers.
Weakness Invites Arrogance
The Biden administration’s response to this shakedown was anemic. Fox News reported a Biden administration official said President López Obrador “has a very ambitious agenda.” That official added that Congress would need to act to acquiesce. The response should have been an outright rejection.
President López Obrador was equally flippant to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s law to force illegal immigrants to return to Mexico or face criminal charges.
“The Texas governor acts that way because he wants to be the Republican vice presidential candidate and wants to win popularity with these measures,” said President López Obrador, according to Fox News. “He’s not going to win anything. On the contrary, he is going to lose support because there are a lot of Mexicans in Texas, a lot of migrants.”
The Mexican president’s arrogance is being placated by the Biden administration. President Joe Biden’s administration is using a “whole-of-government”approach to attack the firearm industry and Second Amendment rights. His ATF has been issuing rules that carry criminal punishments, even though that’s the responsibility of Congress. His Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) “paused” firearm exports for 90 days but that pause continues well past 150 days with no end in sight. He installed gun control lobbyists in The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention that appear to be colluding with Chicago to bring frivolous lawsuits against Glock.
Placating Cartels
All the while, there is no answer from the Biden administration why it stopped efforts to disrupt Mexican drug cartels illegally funneling guns south of the border. No answer has been offered for why this administration refuses to close the U.S-Mexico border when it is known that firearms are being illegally trafficked, human smuggling is becoming a multi-billion dollar narco-terrorist funding source, illicit drugs are flowing into the United States and U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies are telling Congress and the Biden administration that there are “blinking lights everywhere” warning that the United States is exposing itself to terror attacks. Just this week, the U.S. Border Patrol chief warned terrorists may be crossing the border, after the U.S. saw the reach of ISIS-K attacks in Moscow.
President López Obrador is scoffing at the United States. He is twisting U.S. law, trampling U.S. sovereignty and claiming the United States can’t enforce their own laws because it would offend Mexico. The Biden administration and U.S. courts are giving him the stage to do it.
—Mark Olivia, Courtesy of NSSF
it is really nice down there. i built conveyors and robotics near queretero. every day is 82, each night 68. never been to any of the coasts, but sea of cortez. amazing.
why don’t we just take it?
Do we really want it? You would have to replace every cop, every pol and every soldier and never allow them into a .gov job again.
Mexicans are facing the same decision we are. Freedom is going to need pols on gallows.
Cost of production for morphine in a legal environment is less than 1$ per day per consumer. The cartels (and the commie pols) are rich and powerful because it is illegal.
They are just junkies, let them go. And let freedom ring.
“Cost of production for morphine in a legal environment is less than 1$ per day per consumer.”
Morphine is so yesterday. Look what’s new :
“Carfentanil is a synthetic opioid approximately 10,000 times more potent than morphine and 100 times more potent than fentanyl.”
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edky/file/898991/dl?inline
Maybe a few pennies a dose…
The aftermath of the usual lily white suspects running the revolving doors of the criminal justice system…
https://youtube.com/shorts/e5Vk80vGEcg?feature=shared
Unfortunately, horrible U.S. leadership and foreign countries (such as Mexico) taking full advantage is not an April Fools joke.
It’s larger than that.
The term “Comintern” is a bit dated at this point, particularly in regard to centralization of the organization, but the idea and its zealous supporters live on.
Wow. They’re really turning the moderation up to 11 these days.
It’s larger than that.
The term “C-o-m-i-n=-=t-e-r-n” is a bit dated at this point, particularly in regard to centralization of the organization, but the idea and its supporters live on.
WordPress has the humor of a pre-1917 bolshevik.
El presidente seems just fine having a porus border, maybe we should sue them over the fentanyl, coke, meth and other things that are coming in to the US. If he does that maybe the cartels will be a few bucks down to buy guns to reimport into the country. That is, the ones that they’re not buying from agents of the government.
I hope the lawyers for the gun companies they are suing run discovery on the whole country’s legal system to see how corrupt they are. I would start with El Presidente down.
Also, we should be suing Mexico to take on these migrants. They should be applying for amnesty in the first country they can, which isn’t here.
It’s not those selling the drugs it’s those whom choose to do them.
Bull. This country had few if any drug laws from 1776 to 1905.
And we weren’t getting pushed around by Mexico.
possum,
Or, perhaps, it is those who insist on devoting so much of our resource to fighting an “epidemic” that is . . . insoluble. If people want to take drugs, they will take drugs. Sure, work on mental health, counseling, etc. – we should do that for everyone in need, to the extent we can. But the “War on Drugs” was an idiot idea from day one, and it hasn’t gotten any smarter as the disaster unfolded in front of our eyes.
Just like we all know that the very CONCEPT of “disarming the people” is stupidity of the purest ray serene, so is the idea of “stopping drugs”.
AIN’T. GONNA. HAPPEN. Marijuana is LITERALLY a weed – any MORON can grow it (just ask MajorMistake; I’m sure he grows his own). Poppies are stupid easy to grow. Mushrooms can be found in most US forest areas (yes, you DO have to know what to look for). LSD and meth can be synthesized by a decent freshman college chemistry student. Coca plants could (if one wanted) be grown several places in the US.
As the man said, “you can’t stop the signal”. Time we quit p*ssing away money trying to do the impossible.
Could it be a legacy of puritanism where anything that could be enjoyable has to be banned?
An abstainer is someone who yields to the temptation of denying themselves pleasure.
Southern,
Yes, “puritanism” was a stupid concept. Our particular brand of puritanism (inherent in the history of our colonization by Europe) makes it worse. My favorite definition is that a “puritan” is someone who lives in fear that someone, somewhere, is actually having fun.
On the other hand, I deny myself “pleasure”, all the time – it is the concept of relative pleasure. I’ve had my eye on a “Nighthawk” 1911 for a couple of years, now . . . and NOT buying it leaves me money for things, like, oh, I dunno . . . range ammunition???
Rejecting “puritanism” isn’t quite the same as indulging unthinking hedonism. “If it feels good, do it” wasn’t even a very smart meme back in the 70s.
To what end?
Weak men bring hard times. We are living this in real time. Buckle up, it’s going to get way worse.
Slander, libel, concocted accusations are en vogue…unchecked finger pointing marxist
democRats have branched out from POTUS DJT to all others not fitting the democRat useful idiot mold.
Our Leadership is the strongest it’s ever been. We are lucky that we Americans have The Greatest President America Has or Ever Will Have, Joseph Robinett Bi’diem.
If we would have had a guy, say like Trump, America would be all fcked up by now.
Long Live the Democracy
Ling long Joe Bi’diem.
And with Biden’s constant kowtowing to Xi Jinping, he may get the role of Xi’s personal concubine.
Southern,
As long as it includes ice cream and pudding, Senile Joe is down for it.
Obrador, Maduro and their comrades and bosses are fully out of the closet.
Is there anyone in America that has not figured out what Pelosi, Biden and The Commie Company have been up to down at the border?
Destabilize the country to the point where people will beg for Chinese style authoritarian oppression?
Declare war against Mexico for the purpose of securing a 5 mile wide buffer zone.
And something that makes the former inter-German border or the Berlin wall look positively welcoming.
Its coming, the question is whose side will the U.S. government defend.
I believe I already know the answer to that question.
To Build Back Better you’ve got to tear it down first.
JRB in 2024,,,right.
“…there is no answer from the Biden administration why it stopped…”
Since I’m apparently one of the few who reads Leftist literature…
The answer is the “quiet part” that Rahm Emmanuel said out loud during the Obama Administration. Never let a crisis go to waste [especially if you created it for the purpose of taking advantage of the outcome].
The first thing to understand here is that the ultimate goal of these actions is a panopticon police state. The issue with creating a society wide panopticon, instead of just a physical building, is that the justifications have to be multifaceted. So, what some refer to as a “polycrisis” is required. A series of overlapping crises that justify each piece of the security state being erected.
Historically, the problem with that is that Americans are socially conditioned against this much better than our brethren elsewhere in the Anglosphere or the rest of the West. The reasons for this are myriad and don’t much matter at this point. The point is that we’re more resistant to it and we’re also the most heavily armed civilian nation on Earth. The combination poses a problem for, well, let’s be real here: modern Bolshies.
From a Leftist (or any other dictatorial) strategy point of view this is problematic for several reasons on the national and international level. One is the hard power and reach of the US itself, often exemplified by US .mil lift capacity. Another is that our main export that undergirds our empire is actually soft power in the form of culture. For all the nonsense from people like Pepe Escobar and his friends, the points of view expressed by people like AMLO, Lula, Ramaphosa et al are not actually that popular with the masses of people across the “Global South” as evidenced by the fact that even today they all want to be here, not where they are.
Now, domestically enforced hard power can alter that exported soft power and do so quickly. But there’s those damn guns and the fact that enforcement agents may not have limits to the actions they’ll engage in, they do have limits to the risks they’ll take.
Historically speaking it’s a proven fact that Patrolman Low IQ is generally willing to do what he’s told mostly without limit unless it poses a serious risk to him and his. Something he considers a risk is the idea of getting parts of his children and a brutal snuff flick starring his beloved offspring delivered by DHL. This is the kind of thing that makes him think that there are certain orders that, if followed, are about as appealing as a long, slow ménage à trois with a rope and an exposed rafter. Then there’s that whole rifle behind every blade of grass bit too.
Even an idiot can see that going too far too fast cuts his/her life expectancy down to nothing pretty damn fast.
This has historically posed problems elsewhere as well, a full history lesson of which is not the point here, but you can look at how the Cheka or Gestapo were built for a general idea of a system that’s been copied and improved upon all over the world. The resulting strategy to get around this issue is to create a situation where the public actually WANTS a police state even if they don’t realize what they’re asking for. Terrorism, drug ODs, massive numbers of MAPS, cartels, gun violence, street shitters and [but wait, there’s] more… it’s a grab bag of garbage meant to scare the population into giving up their rights and begging for SOMETHING to be done about these issues.
And having castrated the police over what is now years with basically no pushback and used other coercive methods to remove the officers trying to stick it out until sanity returned, the makeup of police and their departmental culture has been shifted drastically in favor of those who will follow whatever orders they’re given. Because such people were intransigent about their positions their numbers had to be reduced to a small and demonstrable minority.
It doesn’t work everywhere, but then it never has. Those places it doesn’t work are pockets of resistance to be dealt with later (Sorry, Florida).
You can see this effort at work in the fiasco with Daniel Penny in NYC if you care to actually look.
It’s all about changing the “corporate culture” of the target organization. The general set of tactics are the same regardless of the target (company, public department, nation, whatever). I’ve covered the basics of the psychology of this effort extensively in the past and I won’t rehash it here.
And, as I’ve also pointed out before, the actions often intentionally stray into the absurd (No one would do that!) because this games the pattern recognition system in people’s brains. They will reject things that are simply too incongruous with their previously established patterns. This makes gaslighting and denial pretty easy at the statistical level.
But I sorta suggested earlier that this is bigger than the US, otherwise why care about the US’s soft power projection?
The way you can tell that this is supranational is pretty simple. The UN is known to be funding the NGOs that are *cough* encouraging and assisting *cough* the people flooding this country. Nations along the pathway here, often with supposedly good relations with the US, are doing nothing to assist in stopping this. That’s because they’re bought off with UN (much of it US) currency and they know that the Biden Regime wants this on some level. There’s no point in offering actual assistance until the political landscape of the US Federal Government changes, that’s all downside risk.
Overall, you can find this game, or aspects of it, being played everywhere once you know what the game looks like. For example: this is what making Easter 2024 a “Trans Day” and then gaslighting that they didn’t do such a thing as if they didn’t have a calendar years/months in advance is about. At base, that’s just trolling that goes hard in the paint. It’s designed to produce a backlash and hopefully crisis for which the *solution* is a national security crackdown on people who happen to have very heavy statistical overlap with the Regime’s political adversaries. How fucking convenient. But if it fails? Well, it’s another straw on the camel’s back. Heads they win, tails you lose.
There are some other variants of this game, at root they’re the same, but they come with different flavors. If one were to consider how regional banks are doing at this point, for example. The legacy media doesn’t much talk about the issues CRE problems are creating but the data is available via the Fed. And the truth is, that’s a disaster that could be headed off at the pass by attacking the tap root of the problem(s) driving it. Really, it’s not that hard of a nut to crack. Instead it’s being papered over by a few facilities within the Federal Reserve and Treasury for the purpose of allowing that molehill to become a mountain because if they solved it now there’s no acute monetary crisis to be taken advantage of.
The longer version of that fiscal festivity is what they’re doing in the background with regards to Social Security and Medicare, which combined are at least $70 trillion in the hole to 2035. What an amazing threat that creates to the largest voting block in history, eh? And it’s been well known this would happen, and when, since 1990. Why wasn’t it addressed?
Well, wolves don’t scare a moose off a cliff by fixing the moose’s problems in advance, do they?
You can find versions and iterations of this game everywhere and at every level. The anaconda already has a couple coils around you. It might be time to wake the fuck up and do something about that. Or, Conservatives can do what the Left expects: Mostly ignore the problem, fail to do anything of substance and whine about “rules and decency” before declaring that they’re busy and have to go to work.
Holyfckinsht, Stryh9. That’s heavy. WOW!,👍.
✌
“See paw, know lion” is a game that works both ways, if you bother to learn what the lion looks like. Once you see it, you can’t un-see it.
And at that point it’s very easy to detect the game being played regardless of the variations they put on it. It’s also shockingly easy to defeat, which is what annoys me about Conservatives.
You can call the façade whatever you like, but it is the world pulled over your eyes. Everyone currently alive is a victim of the attempt at this, and it mostly works because it’s a statistical game, as I’ve written about at length before.
Just look at all the Christians who hate Nietzsche and say he wanted to kill God. Tell me you’ve never read his stuff without saying you’ve never read it.
It’s a neat trick to convince people that the warning label is the danger. And it’s shockingly common because it works so, so well on generation after generation of uneducated people.
Which, by the by, is how they’ll optimize the coming SS/Medicare crisis. Panic and ignorance. I could go on for a page about the known stats on this, but all that happens is that a certain generation of people will lose their shit. Why? See the paragraph on absurdity above.
Also note: “Because such people were intransigent about their positions…” refers to the cops that were forced out via mandates and such. The incongruency in the paragraph is my weaksauce editing.
“no answer”? BS “narco-terrorist drug cartels”= CHINA
Pablo Escobar wasn’t backed by the Chicoms.
He was backed by US intelligence until he wasn’t.
There is a much larger game afoot than “mUh ChInA!” and you can tell that this is the case since the entire WoD goes back to Nixon, when China was a backwater without the capacity to do any of what they do today.
You can see how it works if you bother to examine the incentive systems running domestically in the US for the players within the WoD.
Hint: You don’t solve problems in politics. If you do, you can’t use them again later. Simply apply the TSA model to everything “cartel adjacent” and you’ll figure out pretty quick that no one has an incentive to do anything useful.
They have a lot of incentives to use bullshit metrics of “success” as a mechanism to garner more funding for themselves though.
“…the makeup of
police[fill in the blank] and their departmental culture has been shifted drastically in favor of those who will follow whatever orders they’re given.”2021-2022 vax loyalty purge says hello.
“Or, Conservatives can do what the Left expects: Mostly ignore the problem…”
…Like moving to a state where the heavy lifting has been done for them by others instead of helping to fight battles that could actually be won. That way they can complain about losing in peace.
“Why wasn’t it addressed?”
Printing money to pay themselves and their associates, while devaluing the working man’s assets, makes it much easier to stay in power.
“Like moving to a state where the heavy lifting has been done for them…”
This mostly applies to normies, not the politically aware.
“Printing money to pay themselves and their associates…”
I wish this were just to take advantage of the Cantillon Effect but it’s not. What’s actually going on is exactly why I got the fuck out of political work.
IRL, the plan is to strip mine the largest retiring population in history (Sorry Boomers, that’s you) of the one thing of true value, real estate, after bleeding them dry to force a fire sale.
===
A brief-ish explanation (with a personal story because people love those!):
Q:What is “work” in the general social sense of the term?
A: Specialized knowledge or skill monetized over time.
Q:What is “specialized knowledge”?
A:Things you know that others don’t which can be used to your economic advantage by attaching a price to the delta between your knowledge and theirs.
Q:So, “specialized knowledge” is a set of data obtained by a person who then uses it to better their own economic circumstances over time?
A: Yes, but let’s note that such a thing can be weaponized by those who are of loose moral character. We typically call that “fraud”.
Q: We can monetize lies?
A: Yes, but the slicker move is to monetize the ignorance of others. Fool’s and their money, as it were. (Alinsky’s Rules #3 and #11.)
***
I’ll remove the math and demographics from this with an analogy:
In a nutshell, imagine for a moment that I can tell you five years in advance when and where a major hurricane will hit and predict with fair accuracy what the damage will be. As time goes on the predictions on damage VALUE get tighter and tighter too.
Also, imagine that this information is a secret. (Or an open secret that the media specifically avoids reporting on so as not to spook the sheep.)
There are, essentially, two major responses to this:
1. What I imagine a morally upstanding gent such as yourself, Dude, would do: Prepare for the disaster by buying materials on the cheap to help people with the recovery.
But there is another option.
2. If you have a bit more devious mind you might just set up a plan to acquire a rational amount of resources based on the projected damage at normal prices and then sell those to the disaster area at a massive markup. You’ve got years to plan this out, billions can be made. Just from one storm.
Simply expand this idea to liberating the [intentionally kept] ignorant from their property on a scale approaching 70 million people and you have what an inflation undercount (a twofer politically) does to the largest retirement population ever in history who, incidentally, also have the most real assets and are the ones most likely to conflate net worth with liquidity.
Simply look at the business model of a company like AH4R in terms of property acquisition and then ask yourself why the majors in finance brag about building enormous war chests to buy distressed houses over the coming years and you’ll see where this is going.
If you want confirmation, spend some time digging around on the Fed’s website FRED and cross referencing that data with the SSA and OMB.
When they say “You’ll own nothing and be happy” (that is, you’ll rent it from someone) they’re not actually kidding or, honestly, bluffing that much. You might have wondered where all these rental properties are meant to come from.
The same place that Bolshies always get stuff. From other people.
I’ve been trying to point this out for years, mostly to no avail. That’s how I know JWM collects, or used to collect, junk silver. Because even back then in, like 2015, he cottoned on to at least part of this game and it was discussed in this very comment section.
Oh, yeah, I went back and deleted the personal story. Made things longer than I liked.
Paid for house. No debt and silver and paper money stashed. Guns, grains and other supplies stashed.
Debt will crush you.
Yup.
I tend to look at debt as a grenade with the pin pulled. It’s not inherently bad in-and-of itself but it is dangerous if mishandled.
Like the grenade, it’s best to have some idea of what you’re doing before you find yourself holding it.
This morning at ~ 3 AM we were awakened by the dogs barking and growling. Two of the dogs, Posey and Sammy, were down stairs. Bosco and Olive were in our bedroom, staring at the door to the hallway in their alert pre-attack poses growling. Wife and I are up, wife grabs an AR I grab the 9mm.
Then suddenly Bosco and Olive run out of the room. And there is a lot of low guttural growling going on down stairs, this type of growling from them usually indicates pre-defense/attack warning. This also means the dogs are encountering something close and are closing in.
So, now, after listening for a bit we move cautiously down stairs. We didn’t have any intrusion alarms go off, can’t see anything on the security cams except on the internal cams we see the dogs all grouped together facing a corner of my wife’s hobby room where there are a couple of chairs and a work bench setup.
So we are now downstairs at the hobby room. Can’t see anyone/anything yet but the dogs definitely sense/see something in that area. The dogs now alert to our presence do what they were trained to do, wait for us to either give them a command to attack or to attack on their own if we are being attacked. We call the dogs off but they are watching.
Something moves, and we look down under the work bench and see a raccoon. Have no idea how it got in. Near as we can figure it probably sneaked in yesterday evening when my wife had the door open to that room that goes to garage which was also open, as she was doing some clean up in her hobby room and was using that path to take some things out to the trash.
The dogs hate raccoons, been a lot of them around lately. We close the door to the rest of the house, open the hobby room door to the garage and the garage door and chase the raccoon out. We watch it scamper away and follow it out.
Now standing outside the garage on the outside of the house we watch the raccoon scampering along the side of the house – and the internal perimeter lights come on, not the ones next to the house that were already on because of our presence – and this is significant because those perimeter lights sensors should not have detected anything because the raccoon and us were not in their detection zones. This is when we see two guys take off from behind the pile of brush from the tree I took down last Thursday and had not yet gotten rid of. Call the cops and report it.
Defense by raccoon.
You got an early warning ‘coon. We got Strych9. Now I’m really worried. No wonder people self medicate. Where’s that Bible?
Lol
Don’t be afraid. Get active. Get debt free.
Strych may not be entirely right. Or wrong. He’s another resource. Don’t rely on just one.
I am certainly not entirely right.
Complex systems, by their nature, are unpredictable because they contain positive and negative feedback loops that you find by *stepping on them*.
And a complex system is what you will get when you combine a system that uses “buffers” to try to maintain a steady state (society) with a combination of problems and emergent systems that try to correct those problems positioned against steady state and emergent systems that try to take take advantage of those problems.
But the current trajectory is unmistakable. It’s basic arithmetic and openly available business proposals and their datasets.