Yesterday I was talking to Third-Son-By-Adoption (and before I (again) get jumped by a bunch of people on facebook when this post shares, he’s not my adopted son, he’s my son-by-adoption, a science fiction thing where you claim your close friends as family members. He has parents (whom I like very much too) and claiming him as my son would impinge on their rights) late at night and I told him I haven’t been this angry since my young street-brawl days. (I wore reinforced boots for a reason.)
Between 12 and sixteen, I took a saying by some commie (which was taught to us by our lefty teachers, because really, the left never seems to understand when they ARE in power) “A flea can’t stop a train, but it can give an itch to the conductor” as my motto, and engaged in hooliganism, sabotage and general … well, I aimed to misbehave and boy, oh, boy I did.
Except for one occasion when fate thrust me in front of machine guns and my reaction might or might not have determined the reaction of the crowd, my actions were small and might never have been illegal. Or if they were — it was illegal to remove political posters, because you needed a license to put them up — it was more than flesh and blood could manage, when they plastered the city in posters maligning the Americans, that I wouldn’t find a way to tear them out. (I’d back up to the poster, and remove it behind my back, then stuff the pieces in my very large purse. Every night I’d come home and hand my mom the pieces to burn.) Mostly it was “pranks to make my classmates and teachers look stupid, because they are.” And there was street fighting.
All of this kept me from getting in real serious trouble, of the “setting people on fire” variety.
For that matter, my blog might be my safety valve.
As to why I’m more angry now than I’ve been since then, it’s rather the same thing and the same reasons.
Another friend — might have been a commenter here — the other day was classing people according to Pratchett characters and said “And you’re William DeWorde.”
I don’t think this person had any idea how close — for various reasons — that hit to the mark.
Despite being a fiction writer (fiction is consensual mutual lies, okay?) I despise seeing truth abused. There has been so much of it in my life. I’ve been told so many lies by people who were sure they were my moral betters, even while they knew they were lying to me. And those lies were so poisonous. Their lying interpretation of history and economics have filled 100 million graves at least (and as Colonel Kratman says, probably more.)
For people in power to speak power to truth, particularly when those people are leftists who are reversing victim and aggressor makes me INCANDESCENTLY angry.
I can take people lying. Of course, I can take people lying. I even understand the concept of social/polite lying and don’t get bent out of shape over it (yes, I DO want a medal. Why?)
It’s when the lies are poisonous and you reverse power and powerless and victim and attacker that I become angry. VERY VERY ANGRY.
So the memo… was not news, except for where it matched ideas that were so “crazy” they made even me uncomfortable. And yet… it was true. Yeah. So.
I’m angrier than I’ve been in decades. I don’t think I’m alone in this.
And Number Three Son By Adoption said “Remember you said revolutions occur when things are getting better? Well, things are getting better.”
He’s right you know. For the first time in years a lot of us have emotional space to be angry. At the same time the left, the side formerly in control of all the mass everything from communications to entertainment, feels their power slipping away and are getting outright stupid. Stupid people make mistakes, and not of the kind we shouldn’t interrupt them while said mistakes are being made. I.e. as we used to say in the eighties “the bear is most dangerous while wounded.”
So — beware. There’s quicksand ahead. A revolution or armed conflict is still the worst case scenario. Even we — particularly we — on the freedom side aren’t likely to like the result. But it might also be very hard to avoid.
Keep your wits about you. Beware of how your emotions cloud your judgement. Do not retreat. Do not apologize. But don’t strike the first blow.
Sursum corda. The odds are slim but there IS still a chance we get through this unscathed and emerge closer to the constitution. And you know, maybe G-d isn’t tired of looking out for fools, drunkards and the United States of America. Yet.
According To Hoyt 
May hears be lifted indeed. I just hope that the cold civil war never gets hot. I don’t know how the rest of the world would react. I just know that it wouldn’t react well. There’s some hope that things will be dialed down a notch or two and maybe, just maybe things will be fixed more than just a bandaid solution. Fingers crossed.
I think they’ll go up before they come down, but…. maybe we squeeze by.
If the rest of the world has the sense God gave a turnip, they’d adopt an attitude of ‘the couple next door is fighting, none of our beeswax’.
Yeah, but we already know the rest of the world DOESN’T have the sense G-d gave a turnip. It will become a free for all.
Given the abject failure of so many countries due to their progressive socialist policies they have to have distractions to divert the attention of their citizens. Our American kerfuffles provide something they can point at, cast blame upon, and feel superior to.
And of course for many of our own home grown globalist elites how the rest of the world perceives us is far more important that who we really are.
“Our American kerfuffles provide something they can point at, cast blame upon, and feel superior to.”
They want to be careful about that. Remember tales of USSR showings of The Grapes of Wrath and their people saying, “In America, poor people have cars? In America, poor people can move?”
If only – any honest depiction would shatter *so* many illusions
Well, a goodly portion of the rest of the world does. Just not the sort of folks who aspire to, and achieve, power in many of those places. And they’re the ones who will conscript the others to go fight.
What the rest of the world may wish to keep in mind is that civil wars are domestic disputes, and like any other domestic dispute, if someone tries to take advantage of it or even intervene, they’re apt to find both parties coming down on them, hard.
In that sense this isn’t a “domestic dispute”. A great many of our so-called “elites” think of themselves as internationalists, and having Europeans or the UN intervene on their side would be seen as validation of their positions.
There are a small number of VERY dangerous people who just want to be left the hell alone, but if you put the squeeze on them, well, people make choices and choices have consequences.
Ummm…if they did get foreigners to intervene on their side, I can pretty much guarantee that the gloves would come off on our side.
I don’t think there’d be much enthusiasm for foreign intervention in the U.S. I bet most European and Asian military leaders believe Yamamoto’s comment about “a rifle behind every blade of grass.”
Rifle, shotgun, pistol, and I suspect more than a few crew served weapons. Glorioski! We gonna need us more blades of grass for sure.
Is there a real difference between ammunition and ordinance? I was asked and all I could come up with was size. A bullet is ammunition. A bomb is ordinance.
An ordinance is a local statute. Ordnance is large but transportable armaments, usually crew-served. It can also mean military materiel of any type.
The relative deadliness of ordinance vs. ordnance varies. Much ordnance sits quietly and never claims a life. Enforcement of some ordinances can sometimes claim many lives.
Not to mention several “military” weapons are constructible in a decent machine shop: mortar, flame throwers, and more I haven’t thought about.
And no, that isn’t a lathe, why do you ask?
There will be no external intervention. Not because other countries are afraid of armed US citizens (although they ought to be), but because nobody else in the world can project power in any effective manner. Great Britain, heck they couldn’t even fight the Falklands again. France? Don’t make me laugh their one decent aircraft carrier the Charles Degaulle is docked and has been for years because its coming apart at the seams and it (and its reactor) is more of a threat to its sailors then its opponents. The rest of the EU armed forces make the French look robust. The UN? The blue helmets catch their rides and food and other deliveries from our logistics. Canada? Their standing army is only 43K and over half of that is reserves. The USMC is over 180K active members. Mexico? 76K still not even a stand up fight vs USMC, and I doubt the Mexican logistics are worth diddly. China? The PLA is huge, 2.5 million regulars, almost the same reserves but how do they get here? Swim? Link arms across the Pacific? Near home Russia and China are tough but they don’t have the navies and shipping to move stuff to the US if we oppose it.
The only thing that worries me is there were rumors of KGB weapons caches stored in in the US during the cold war. If that stuff is still there you could make some really annoying trouble by sending in Special forces (e.g. Spetsnaz or similar) in civvies and having them arm up and join the side you choose (likely the useful idiots).
But yeah this climate feels ugly. I remember my parents worried looks at the TV in 1968 as things went sour in various east cost cities. Even New Haven and Hartford were not immune let alone NYC. And at least then most of the government was pulling sort of together.
Certain actions by high ranking Mexicans can be interpreted as intent to foment civil war in the United States. Why would they do that if they didn’t plan to take advantage? If the cartels have fully suborned the official government and partnered with certain mid-eastern groups, they might be able to bring something to the field.
Haven’t heard that about Mexico. The other issue is at least the extant Mexican government knows they are kind of dependent on remittances. Last yearly number I can find was $27 Billion for 2016. total GDP looks to be 1 trillion so its like 2-3% so not as to be required as to be critical, but losing that would hurt. The cartels might be willing to help terrorists for money, but its easier just to ship in drugs and less likely to get someones notice so less than optimal (drug lords are nothing if not business men). And again standing army of 76K mostly light infatry. Like I said Marine Corps alone is 180k+ active, active army is 540K+ with 340K reserves (and 38k USMC reserve) . 10-1 odds (admittedly less than that alot of our forces are oustide CONUS). If we went Civil war would other countries raise hob all over the world (and maybe mexico muck about on the border), you bet. Actually intervene, not a paper dogs chance in hell. Doesn’t mean its good.Russia probably tries to get the old SSR’s back, China pushes MUCH harder to its south east in the china sea and threatens Japan, S Korea and maybe Australia. All kinds of feces hit the whirling blades in the Mid East. Africa remains as messed up as ever. The biggest issue is if someone (cough Iran Cough) gets pushy with nuclear weapons. At that point Israel might emulate Samson (if they’re losing) and use their stores of WMD. That has real potential to escalate far beyond the Mid East. A world without America paying attention is a very dangerous place as can be seen by what happened in the last administration. One where we can’t intervene is probably headed to hell in a handbasket in a hurry.
Unfortunately the Useful Idiots aren’t bright enough to understand this and are thinking about having someone hold their beer (pardon me wine cooler) before shouting “Watch This”.
If a Mexican says negative things about Trump, it is either a deliberate and knowing attempt to foment war in the US, or or motivated from pride hurt by negative things Trump has said about Mexico.
If Trump’s family ties to the Soviets are enough to suspect that he is suborned by Russian intelligence, then family ties to Mexico or the Mid East are grounds to suspect that one is suborned by the cartels or by Islamic terrorist organizations.
Add to the official Mexican armed forces the Cartel forces, the illegal aliens, and the unknown number of Islamic terrorists that could have been infiltrated without detection if American security services have largely been subverted. Subtract from effective American forces those that are effectively neutralized by SECRET AGENTS OF MEXICO ZOMG in the chain of command, responsible for setting RoE, or involved in legal oversight. If one uses the perspective that the ABA is controlled by a hostile foreign power, one can suppose that recent case law regarding Posse Comitatus etc is active sabotage.
They didn’t do the Falklands w/o the U.S. the first time. Some decent folks moved heaven and earth to help them
Yes President Reagan provided the British with intelligence of high quality from satellites. It is likely that in addition that intelligence from U2, SR-71 and data from subs in the vicinity and the underwater listening posts across the atlantic were provided. This was as should be for our best ally. But unless there were some serious black ops to my knowledge no US troops, seamen or airmen were involved in combat operations. That was all UK forces including some ancient V bombers (make B-52s look youthful). The UK military has suggested that they could no longer prevail due to the reduction in Naval, Air and Ground forces combined with current commitments without direct aid of some sort.
Official intervention would be extremely unlikely. Something on the order of what happened in Spain during their civil war, or what the Gulf states have been doing in Syria, on the other hand, would be extremely likely. I could see Chinese money and Russian “volunteers” going to whichever side was weaker.
Remember that UN forces don’t do very well. At much of anything.
Not true. They’re great at spreading cholera, STDs, and other wonderful bugs, and at plundering, pillaging, raping, and running sex trafficking rings.
Now be fair. It’s a known fact that when the blue helmets arrive liquor sales and whorehouse profits skyrocket. Is a pity though how fuzzy their concept of age of consent turns out to be.
Don’t tell me that they actually worry about consent, or age. You’ll ruin my already negative image of the plundering, diseased, bastards.
Now don’t go being so hard on the UN forces. In recent years they’ve done a great job at raping, pillaging, spreading disease, and turning a blind eye.
Bing, Bam, Boom. 🙂
3 replies across 3 minutes
And all three remarkably similar in content.
Well, yeah, that was the point. 🙂
Seeing the UN Peacekeeping in force on the ground in Cyprus was very much an eye opener on how piss poor they are set up. Hearing about the 1974 invasion by Turkey was even more interesting. Blue Helmets weren’t even speed bumps.
Please keep in mind that the UN forces operate under rules of engagement that make those we had under the prior administration appear reasonable. (Aside from all the negatives that others have mentioned.)
One ten round magazine carried in your shirt cargo pocket. No magazine on the rifle at all (never mind all the crap and corruption that was able to get into the breech). Only allowed to seat it on permission from higher. Even if you were taking fire…. Yeah, ROE sucked.
“Nasty Thought”.
The Civil War starts and the Military stays out of it.
Then certain countries try to “join into the fun”.
The US Military gives those countries a “Firm Keep Out Of This” (in some cases Nukes might be involved). 👿
If it becomes a shooting war I don’t see how the US military could stay out of it. If for no other reason than National Guard armories being viewed as convenient resupply points for the various non-military combatant forces.
Well, my thought is that if the US Military gets involved, it’d be a short Civil War as I doubt that the Rank and File would support the Left.
Yup. The leftists among the trigger-pullers are much thinner on the ground than they are among the perfumed princes (to use Hackworth’s term).
From some of the videos I’ve seen the proud Leftist posting about their shooting ‘skills’ they are in as much danger of their fellows as they are of the opposing force.
I don’t think you can really predict how the military would fall, on this issue. I’ve had a nasty suspicion for years that many of the “Social Experiments” they’ve been conducting on the ranks have an intent to discourage certain elements of society from enlisting, in the first damn place.
The complexion of the force, in terms of belief in the Constitution? It’s changed, a lot. And, of course, there’s the little problem that the education system has done such a crappy job of educating kids to what the Constitution actually says and does that you could probably tell them anything, and the majority of the guys in ranks would accept its Constitutionality…
I honestly don’t know how it would fall out. Twenty-thirty years ago, I’m fairly certain that had, say, the Clinton Administration given orders to start rounding up civilians and confiscating arms, most of us would have been more likely to start rounding up the officers who transmitted those orders. By the 2000s, I’m not so sure. The nature of the force had changed, due to “higher standards” of recruiting, and a shift in the recruiting base. The old-time country-boy majority was now a suburban majority with no real base in the real world–When I enlisted in ’82, you’d have guys supplementing their rations with snares and such, out in the field, and eating what they caught, strictly for the entertainment value of it all. By the late 1990s, we had guys passing out during demonstrations of how to kill small game during survival courses, and a general lack of enthusiasm for such activities. How that would reflect in the way troops would react to un-Constitutional orders? I’m unsure, to tell the truth.
Not saying today’s military is automatically worse, on this issue, just that I am not so sure we can really count on the majority not to fall in line with the folks we’re paying to lead them. Best to make sure that the civilian authorities aren’t likely to give them the un-Constitutional orders, in the first damn place…
I think the answer might depend on who gave the order. The old army might refuse to obey no matter who gave it. The new one might be more likely to obey if a Republican gave the order.
Also, side note: what would matter more would up be what the guys in charge believe the military the military would do.
Same MO as with the three-letter agencies, especially Mueller’s FBI. Not an accident that he is the Special Counsel, but it’s kind of like setting the fox to investigate the hen-house.
http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/371384-outgoing-fbi-deputy-director-andrew-mccabe-owes-us-some-answers
“McCabe joined the bureau in 1998 during the reign of its fifth director, former federal judge Louis Freeh. And when Freeh’s successor, Robert Mueller, was unceremoniously welcomed to his post a week after his swearing-in with the 9/11 attacks, the bureau’s mission focus and manner of “doing business” was to be irrevocably altered going forward.
Imbued with healthy amounts of intellectual curiosity and naked ambition, McCabe expertly read the writing on the wall. Recognizing that Mueller was bent on reconstituting an FBI HQ that Freeh had summarily dismantled, McCabe made his move.
Director Mueller had begun enticing, cajoling — hell, “bribing” with cash bonuses and incentives — the younger Gen X agent population to accept promotions to HQ supervisory desks. Senior agents, who for years had been resistant to leaving the field for HQ tours, bristled at the offered quid pro quo.
Junior agents, some with three years on the job and no significant case accomplishments to their names, were flocking in droves to D.C.
The bureau had begun to be reshaped in a massive way. As the proud criminal division ranks were shrunk, senior gumshoes took advantage of early retirement opportunities and left, taking with them decades of experience. As the counterintelligence and counterterrorism branches were built up, a shifting power structure inside the agency began to develop.
McCabe was on the leading edge of this movement. Right place, right time.”
Unless you can count on them fragging the new officer corps, don’t be to sure.
Cole’s and Anspatch’s The Galaxy is a Dumpster Fire nailed it. The service academies are a joke.
Um, yeah, we can still count on them doing just that. There are far more NCOs than officers, and they control the troops. And people keep on forgetting that the military may have people from the coastal cities, but the combat arms are full of good old boys, rednecks, and hicks.
Depend on the type of civil war. Something on the order of the last one, yes. Something on the order of Northern Ireland, no. The big difference is that the previous one was fought between governments, while a new one might be fought between factions. That makes picking sides messing.
“National Guard armories being viewed as convenient resupply points”
Only by those firing Barbie Rounds, so not much of an issue.
There’s a fair amount of 7.62 there too… Besides, in the urban environments where the bulk of the opposition is to be found, the shorter ranges make Barbie rounds fairly effective…
Personally, I view the correct weapon as an AR-15 until you get an M-4 or M-16 from gov’t (and then only if you care about bursts).
It isn’t I like the round better but the ability to join logistically with Army elements fighting on our side and the ability to scavenge off Army elements fighting on the other is important.
That’s why, contrary to Hollywood images, a lot of 80s Central American guerrillas carried surplus ARVN rifles captures by the NVA. It gave them access to the US supply chain.
I heard somewhere that some NG Armories are… empty. Anyone know?
I could see a possible situation with a multiple regions undergoing “Bloody Kansas” type conflicts as one side or the other tries to force out its political opponents. The military might stay out of such a fight so long as its bases were left unmolested.
But such a thing would have to be taking place in a lot of different regions all at the same time. In just one region, the Federal government would drop the hammer. It would have to be something that overwhelmed DC’s best efforts to keep things under control.
If it happened CORRECTLY there would be little problem.
What do we want? A return to the Constitution!
Who needs to do that? Politicians, Judges, and just because MEDIA.
Why should ANYBODY ELSE be hurt? Plan, Execute and STFU. Shoot them and ONLY them. Shoot their replacements. Until they return to the Constitution. Now the Politicians are going to try and get the Military involved but HOW? No leaders to attack. etc.
Will it be as clean as this NO F(&*^*(^ing Way. But it should be a lot less blood than a normal revolution or Civil War.
Not… really. And by that, a great many of the so-called “elites” like to think of themselves as internationalists, true, BUT…
When they run-face-first into true cultural differences, they get an extremely nasty shock that the rest of the world doesn’t work according to their cultural rules, while hating their culture. And that is like the spouse that calls in the police, believing that the officer will take “their side”, and stand by and only back them up… only to find the police don’t do that.
And that’s when the officer gets hit by both parties. doesn’t mean the spouse wises up, learns any better, or changes their behaviour, but it does lead to a lot of damage and ill feelings all the way around.
They are internationalists, and respectful of cultural differences. They kow that a five-star hotel in New York isn’t significantly different from a five-star hotel in London from a five-star hotel in Madrid from a five-star hotel in Berlin from a five-star hotel in Cairo from a five-star hotel in Istanbul from a five-star hotel in Calcutta from a five-star hotel in Beijing from a five-star hotel in …
That may be true, but the culture shock is likely to come too late to make a difference in the conflict itself. They would more likely be sitting around going, “What the hell just happened?”
“If the rest of the world has the sense God gave a turnip, they’d adopt an attitude of ‘the couple next door is fighting, none of our beeswax’.”
Through the vast sweep of history, nearly everything has happened.
Except for that.
My big concern would be “They’re busy with a civil war; let’s implement our warplans while they’re distracted.” Lots of stuff brewing, and a few countries that think they could win, this time. Think Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. It didn’t work for the Japanese, and I don’t think it would work for the Chinese, but it would be painful if it happens.
Depending on how long any such American Domestic Dispute lasts I strongly suspect that the maps would have to redrawn, re-identifying the former South China Sea as the South China Archipelago.
We have a lot of treaty obligations there; assuming some honor in the executive branch, it may not be South China for long. It would get really messy, and would probably take longer than the 4 years it took the Co-Prosperity Sphere to collapse.
I already know Canada will not have the luxury of watching from the sidelines essentially munching popcorn as it did in the last US civil war. There is a place name left over from that era, up in New Brunswick – “Skedaddle Ridge”. It’s where some draft dodgers from south of the border ended up settling. There won’t be any Skedaddle Ridge this time.
Canada as a country did not exist during the ACW we were still British colonies taking our direction from London through their agents on the ground. Don’t forget that Canada was the final stop on the Underground Railroad which did not end until the ACW was concluded. The conclusion of that war was the actual impetuous to us becoming a country.
We’re already fighting a civil war. We’re just using words instead of bullets. So far.
I just lost a friend the other day because she liked a tweet that said “Supporting Donald Trump is a mental illness.” and I objected. She just can’t understand that, no matter what I think of the guy (and whether or not I agree with her point that he’s a malicious narcissist – and she grew up with one for a mother, so she’s got reason to fear such in a president), supporting him does not imply I think he’s a good guy, only that I agree with his results.
I told her that kind of rhetoric would turn the current cold civil war into a hot one. She said that she din’t think we could survive as one society. I fear she may be right.
Meanwhile, I think it’s time to add to my ammunition stocks. I really, really don’t want to use them, but…
Yeah, I’m getting similar itches.
More than normal I mean.
We have finally blocked a long-time friend whose FB feed is unrelentingly pro-Union (although he would be offended if we pointed out that this makes him a Democrat shill for the Left, and appalled if we ever convinced him it was true) because his posts went from just laudatory of his side to actively lying about conservatives and Republicans.
One egregious case was a short paragraph about Ted Cruz that was outrageously negative, and yet every word in it was objectively true: it just left out any context, explanation, and connection with reality, which would have given it a meaning totally opposite the one projected.
Ah, like some “news” show that wasn’t and I watched once (for one particular segment) and found infuriating as I was aware of the context and it reminded me WAY too much of tuning in to old Radio Moscow.
I usually respond to such posts with, “That is, of course, a lie.” Just that, no more.
Along those lines, this lady is worth checking out…
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/Column-I-detest-Trump-but-a-redneck-fixed-my-Prius-with-zip-ties-_165095870
It’s hard for me to imagine someone who is so determined to be hateful and miserable that someone else doing a good deed for her just gives her more misery and hatred.
A redneck and his son do this lady and her daughter a kindness on their journey home from the women’s march in DC and still all she can blather about is how much she hates Trump. Momentary flash of reality caused by her road trip episode, but still no deviation from her belief that our duly elected President is evil incarnate.
What floors me is that they never seem to grasp that if Trump were half as bad as they claim to think he is, they would disappear between two days.
This is something that finally caused me to make a political post on FB. I read a rant about how the country had been taken over by Nazis and I had to post this: Nazis? There are no concentration camps for Jews, no homosexuals wearing pink triangles, Roe V Wade hasn’t been reversed. Where is this collapse you lefties predicted?
Interestingly, I got no reply to that.
Okay, I’m confused: They call Trump a Nazi, but they’re the ones upset he wants to finally move the US embassy to Jerusalem.
Your mistake is expect “sense” from the Lefties. 👿
Israeli Jews are different from German Jews. They were more effective shooting back. That means they are bad.
That aspect of the Arab attempt to obliterate Israel never ceases to amuse me, in a bitter way. Gee, you attack a country founded by people tough enough to survive the Holocaust, and you expect them to just roll over and die.
Just how stupid ARE you?
Because the Germans were evil European people. Arabs are not so they deserve to win.
But, somehow, when the Arab peole lose and lose again that isn’t a sign from Allah to knock it the f*ck off.
Oh it is not in the least confusing. They hate Nazis. They have also consistently voted for candidates who support moving the embassy to Jerusalem. It is just that we shouldn’t do anything that will incite violence, so we will have to wait until everyone agrees to have the embassy in Jerusalem before we do so.
As the Facebook meme goes, “Worst. Nazi. Ever.”
A core “feature” of post-modern thought is the ability to hold two or more contradictory ideas in one’s mind at once. Like “Trump is literally H! AND is a Zionist”.
Yeah, a few months ago I responded to a post claiming that Trump was stamping on freedom of speech and putting women back into slavery and the Middle Ages with, “Oh, come on. If that was true, you wouldn’t have been allowed to post it.” No response was forthcoming…
I have entertaining, if not fond, memories of passing a tricked-out SUV driven by an ostentatiously disaffected youth during the Bush II years. Plasted on the back was a bumpersticker saying “Is this freedom?” and all I could think was “since neither the car nor the driver have been impounded, YES.”
They are doing “oppression LARPing” without realizing if they keep it up they are inviting the real thing.
Trump was a warning not the strike. If they keep ignoring the warning they may get what they’ve been claiming all along.
Pat Buckman?
I was thinking closer to the Ministry of Love crossed with the Handmaid’s Tale, whose author is not persona non grata with feminists.
Actually, feminism turning on Atwood is one of my biggest signs of hope. The Revolution is eating its own before they overthrow anything.
New topic on PJM board: Oppression LARPing. Thanks Herb.
Does this mean you’re writing a column on it?
On oppression LARPing in general, yes. Even while they’re getting game designers fired for retweeting conservatives.
Ah, okay…I wasn’t sure if the board was “Sarah’s writing topics” or a forum.
In that case, I’m flattered.
because it’s my second job, I have a white board over the desk where I can write topic, forget till novel for the day is done.
Did you read the comments to the article? Pretty much nobody had anything but contempt for her position.
It is such comments to these rantings from the left that allow me to maintain what shreds of faith in humanity I still possess.
It’s also why I see more and more that such postings either turn off comments or don’t allow them at all.
I’ve not been able to pull them up. The comments part of the page is grayed out.
yeah she needs help.
Truer words…
She doesn’t realize that even if Mr. Trump is as bad as she imagines him to be, her problem isn’t him, it’s her blind hatred that’s destroying her happiness. And she’s going, literally, miles out of her way to feed it.
I suppose I should be happy for the country that she’s so bigoted: it undermines her effectiveness as an agent of political change. All she’s good for is rent-a-mob duty.
But … I’m not. She needs help.
Yep, she just doesn’t get it. People elected Trump President. Some of them are scum, most of them are good people. Those good people would not have elected him if they didn’t think he would get the good results they want, would not have elected him if he didn’t at least follow the spirit of the law, and would not have elected him if he was really as horrible as any of the members of the Nazi party. Their objective minds have shut down and checked out with a big VACANCY sign.
Had she any integrity she would have refused any assistance from people she considers deplorable for supporting Trump. She should also refuse the lowered taxes resulting from Trump’s tax reform.
Fortunately for her, she not only lacks all integrity she takes pride in broadcasting her lack.
and if she did, in my case, i would have answered “Then maybe you can wait for the government to come fix your bumper” and walked away.
But that’s rather the whole point: you have enough integrity to form a loyal opposition, and I could trust you as a neighbor because of it. Her? and those who share her beliefs? HOW?
Stumbled across this video; and yet, somehow ‘these places are not shitholes.’
I am boggled that she cedes power over her emotions to a man she’ll never meet.
It makes perfect sense. This way she has license to rage without any danger of being confronted by the reality.
She’s a typical Liberal Strong Woman.
That was a very interesting article. She asks this question at the end, and (as some commenters note) seems to be willfully shutting her eyes to the simple answer.
“How do we hold onto the fire fueling our resistance to the cruelty Trump unleashes, but also embrace the world with love? I wish I knew.”
How about recognizing that there isn’t any cruelty being unleashed, because it’s all in your own sensitivity to “dog whistles” and “social justice transgressions” and not to any actual damage being done to you or anyone else?
And if you were actually being hurt, physically or financially rather than just emotionally because you never learned how to process opposition, then the whole point about loving the world is doing it despite being hurt.
It’s very easy to love people who aren’t opposing you.
I’m adding a story here from back in 2007-2008 IIRC, at any rate just before or during Obama’s first campaign. A lady published a story on a blog or FB, similar in tone although not in detail.
While driving along, she spotted a van stopped on the shoulder, obviously in trouble and with kids inside. She started to pull over, then saw a bumper sticker indicating the family was Republican (wish I could remember what it was). With righteous wrath she pulled back onto the road and sped away.
As with this author, she posted her story under the mistaken impression that people would actually laud her conduct instead of chastising her for being a selfish putz.
At that time, I had nothing really negative to say about Democrats in general (many of my friends are progressives or at least semi-liberal), but I began from that time to notice how the party as a whole had become more mean-spirited and close-minded than I thought was healthy for the country.
We’re not one society. That’s the point of the current conflict. Our side wants to be left alone and believes in objective reality, their side wants to institute an atheist, communist oligarchy, free of cis-hetero white male scum.
While you’re stocking up, don’t forget the beans and bottled water.
So very many of my friends and acquaintances aren’t questioning premises*—and a lot of them, like me, are staying out of the morass entirely. It says something that there’s only really one of my friends on (anti)social media who is actually doing a lot of careful questioning, and it’s really funny that she’s still very leftist and is having a lot of her other friends say she’s become a right-wing reactionary (because she thinks the left has a lot to answer for the current state of affairs. She also changed her registration to Republican *specifically* because she’s so annoyed at the Democratic Party that she wants them to know she doesn’t have her vote.)
It’s kind of fascinating to watch, actually.
*Anyone who unquestioningly shares a political meme is going to end up on my mental list of “you’re not really thinking.” Any side, any perspective. I know how the sausage is made and I put not my trust in what I’m told.
The reverse of that is happening too. Conservatives with Trump Derangement Syndrome are aligning with the Left just because Trump is for something. WaPo’s “Conservative” blogger is a prominent case en pointe; she now sides with former Obama admin officials when they make comparisons between the president they served and the current one.
It’s not necessarily Trump Derangement Syndrome as it is preserving their interests. It just so happens any president who would clean house puts them at odds with their interests.
I would say “Republicans” instead of “Conservatives”. Because they aren’t.
“No True Scottsman”
Some objecting to Trump are actually conservative. Most* are merely Republicans. You can scoff (I have read plenty who do) at the idea of a “true Conservative”, but these people don’t hold to any conservative principles beyond “gov’t must be more efficient”. If you don’t believe in reducing the role of gov’t to the level specified in the Constitution and the rights as enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and you don’t believe in the rule of law, then I reject you calling yourself (or anyone else calling you) a conservative. There’s plenty of ground to go back and forth and tussle over, but if you don’t accept and advocate for certain minimum bedrock principles, then you’re a fake. IOW, you’re lying.
(* I’m talking the pundits and politicians here. The folks writing about how awful Trump is in the WaPo and demanding #NeverTrump and who have failed to push for – with a majority in both houses and a Republican president – exactly what they told us they would do to remove extra-constitutional laws, programs and agencies, and to advance the security of our nation, when they were a minority in some fashion.
It’s perfectly acceptable to be against Trump and be a conservative. Except in those things where he’s actually acting like a conservative, and you are not. [rhetorical ‘you’, not *you*])
/rant
The bit about the four box and the correct order? What I suspect/fear is that
…while the first box has been built around, over, under, etc. so the hijacking of traditional media no longer works…
…while the second box seems to have been at least somewhat reclaimed BY the bypassing of the traditional media…
…that somehow the use the third will be thwarted to the point that resort to the fourth no longer seems excessive.
In an ideal world, the first two would suffice. Let us hope for a proper exercising of the third.
History is full of cases where the tipping point for revolution was the increasing recognition (not just perception) that the law punished only the peasants, never the nobles.
Or the law refuses to take action when a key figure on one side of a national split is murdered by partisans of the other side … practically in public, and nothing is done to bring the murderers to justice. One of the regular contributors at Chicagoboyz and a frequent commenter at Belmont Club is a guy with the blog du nom of Subotai Bahadur – and he brought up the murder of a Spanish opposition figure; a murder which contributed to the start of the Spanish Civil war.
http://disq.us/p/1px92a4
Sayeth Subotai: “The Communists [Popular Front] had been elected to the majority in the Cortes [Parliament] and held the Premiership in the Second Republic. Jose Calvo-Sotelo was the leader of the Parliamentary Opposition. On July 11, 1936 he gave a speech in a debate that handed the Communist Premier Prieto his own ass, in several pieces, gift wrapped. The Spanish equivalent of Jane Fonda of the time, nicknamed La Passionara screamed at him in the Chambers, “You have given your last speech!”. Within a week a truckload of members of the Guardia de Asalto [the Spanish Communists’ equivalent of Storm Troopers, Guardia Civil [Spanish equivalent of Federal Police], and members of Premier Prieto’s personal bodyguard with its leader pulled up in front of his home. They kidnapped Calvo-Sotelo from in front of his family at home and murdered him. There were witnesses who identified the killers. The Popular Front government claimed to be unable to prosecute.
That would be equivalent of a truckload of AntiFa, the FBI HRT, and Hillary’s own security detail kidnapping and murdering Rep. Nunes. And the DOJ not doing anything.
And if you think about it, that is not as outrageous as we used to believe.”
Aha. I’ve noticed his comments before, they are usually interesting.
I also know Subotai from other blogs. He is always worth reading.
Yes. Whether you agree with him or not, always worth a read.
There’s another “box” that may fit in there, or help the first – the “Chans”, and this just gave them a lot to work with-
https://pastebin.com/tHJkwnE3
apparently someone hacked Anthony Weiner’s mailbox..
I hope that “someone” might accidentally forward this to some telemarketers. Coundn’t happen to a nicer bunch.
Don’t strike the first blow, definitely. But also, be very prepared to deflect the first blow and to respond appropriately.
However, as when the victim finally strikes back at the bully, be aware that the school will suspend you, not him.
Honestly, if it comes to blows of this sort, the school’s actions are meaningless as we will not be granting them any authority.
Point taken. Perhaps we have a Principal on our side for a change?
“school will suspend you not him.” Along with the interventionist, unless the interventionist shows angelic face and states “what? They Bully was picking on Victim? Victim retaliated? Hey I was just passing through (between them) tripped, & fell into/on Bully, I used my hands/arms to catch myself.” VS “Yep. Bully had it coming.” Actually happened with my kid. We found out when Victim’s family related story to us telling how kid stuck up for their child. Our kid told us exactly what he told the authorities (school officials), along with “that’s my story & I’m sticking with it”. We would have accepted the latter shorter response also, but it never came up.
* sigh * “click” c4c
Smart kid. 🙂
We think so. Other side of the coin was we did not hear of the incident from him at all. Others made sure we heard. But, in private, to us, when we asked about it, his response was “it was the right thing to do.”
Yes. And when your father picks you up from school you have to spend the rest of the school day sitting in your room because you should be in school, and you shouldn’t have gotten caught.
But he’s not mad at you.
Them’s the breaks. I’ve already considered that consequence. However, a blow struck in self defense, for maintaining freedom, even if it brings the full force of the State against you and even if it results in your death, isn’t the worst thing that could happen to you. I could sleep better for a week before being executed for such an act, than I could for 50 years realizing I was a coward that preferred to surrender to live in servitude.
“Yes, we must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” – Benjamin Franklin
Amen to this.
Been there, done that. It’s a badge of honour if you’re given the opportunity.
I have given my daughter three rules for violent encounters.
Never hit first.
Always hit back.
If you knock them out you get free ice cream.
These are what I consider “rules for life”.
Bah. Signing up for a wordpress account STILL doesn’t get me around the stinking moderation.
I HONESTLY have no clue why you’re put in moderation. It’s BIZARRE.
I couldn’t post for a good year. It was fine over at MGC. And then one day I unconsciously tried to post and it WORKED. We never did figure out what happened.
For a the longest time I couldn’t post from my mobile device. I had no trouble posting from my computer. But any post made on my iPad just vanished into the great beyond.
And then one day, they didn’t vanish.
I can’t answer posts from my travel computer. it tells me to log in, and no matter how many times I log in, it still won’t let me post.
Finally figured out that Brave or IE + WordPress = post failure. Firefox always works IFF your post isn’t too long.
Opera (mobile, Android) works for me. Vivaldi (desktop/laptop – Linux Mint) also. Haven’t tried anything else, nor do I particularly care to.
Every so often I get moderated, or just flat ignored. *shrug* WP Delenda Est, Ingve is a louse, and Posner is still a moron.
I’ve concluded that WordPress has a random glitch generator. OTOH, there’s no Captcha like some Blogger sites use. Between poor eyes (getting better!) and rotten hearing for the audible version, that sucks.
It has gotten to the point I seldom bother with blogs that use Captchas. I think some of them are coded to require half a dozen attempts before they’ll complete a transaction, whether they’re correct or not.
My main problem here, as is with most blogs, is spidery faint gray text on a screaming white background. “SIGN! SIGN ZE PAPAHS!” I can’t even see my own replies unless I highlight the box.
It’s really ban on the laptop. The desktop monitor isn’t bad, but this guy drives me crazy.
banbad!I would add “and strike with the heel of your hand, not your fist”
you hurt yourself less that way..
Elbow strikes are favourite.
But o beware my [people] when the [Odds] become polite!
With apologies to Kipling.
The one I keep getting back to is “Cleared.”
https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/cleared.html
Kipling seems to be proving that history is indeed cyclical – or that human beings never change.
Wasn’t it some iron age dude who wrote “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun”?
This repitition seems to be Comic Opera.
There are good reasons why the collegiates spurn Kipling…
There are too many people in the DoJ, State Department, FBI, FISA court system, and the rest of the alphabet swamp who have managed to hide behind a shield of anonymity and institutional affiliation: Names have been withheld to protect the guilty.
I’m all in favor of due process of law, but when that has been or is being perverted by lawyers and judges by withholding or manufacturing evidence, it’s high time for some bright disinfecting sunlight. And no, we cannot rely on CNN or MSNBC or the NYT or the Washington Post to provide it, since they are in the same business of withholding and manufacturing evidence for the court of public opinion.
The problem is that even though it is not part of law, following orders, even illegal orders, is being accepted as authority where federal agents are concerned. I very much hope that some of the FBI agents involved in the illegal FISA are prosecuted and convicted, for that reason.
I am oddly cynical about this. Even if, hypothetically, it was revealed that the Dems, and Clintons were revealed to be part of a massive drug, slavery, child-porn and sex slave, terrorist-supplying, political fixing ring and conspiracy, I don’t think it’ll be prosecuted successfully, nor spur a revolt. How the MSM has been reporting on Trump was given particular emphasis recently in a conversation with a friend – the mere mention of Trump’s name brought out an enraged rant about his supposed racism, because Puerto Rico (which made me go ‘huh?’) – and I don’t think any amount of truth telling will work any more. Nor will a hundred thousand honestly good deeds, or a million improvements to America remove us, or Trump from ‘Nazi Deplorables.’ It’ll never be good enough in the eyes of those who condemn.
Which is why we must laugh at them and belittle them at every opportunity. Taking their insanity seriously and trying to respond to it only lends them credibility in the eyes of observers. We need to point out the fundamental idiocy of their positions and beliefs, over and over, clearly and loudly.
Of course not. Because their hands are the only fit hands to wield power.
The problem with the idea that ‘just following orders’ is no excuse is that all too often following orders is the only safe road. Ok, under ideal conditions I would hope that an honest man would disobey illegal orders…if he were single. If he’s got a couple of kids, I know damn well what he’s gonna do.
Nerumberg was a mistake. Any ‘trial’ that involved Stalin’s representatives had no claim on justice, period. If we wanted to punish certain high ranking Ratzis, we should have simply shot them out of hand.
Problem number one is the concept of shielding government workers from prosecution for breaking the law in the course of allegedly doing their jobs. I don’t hold the government responsible; I hold the corrupt scum who screwed me over responsible, his or her boss if it’s their illegal policy, and up the chain to the elected reps who passed the bad law in the first place. Suing the government is just attacking the tax payers; it’s not attacking the offenders.
This! They know where we live, but we don’t know where they live.
Maybe this is a start – https://pastebin.com/tHJkwnE3
Someone tried algore’s number and said it worked!
“Despite being a fiction writer … I despise seeing truth abused.”
Despite? I would think because. Lying is too potentially dangerous to be left to amateurs. Look at the harm done by the lies of failed novelist Ben Rhodes, used to buy Iran intercontinental missiles and nuclear warheads to place atop them.
The problem of lies is that their tellers, unless very professional, come to a) believe them themselves or b) believe everything to be lies.
I know you’re right. Fiction writers say, “Let me tell you a story that I made up.” and then tell an elaborate lie. Currently, mainstream media just tells an elaborate lie.
It’s similar. It’s an elaborate lie designed to lead you down a mental path so you will draw the conclusions they want you to draw.
There is no ‘just’ in this case. It’s a intentionally biased fiction.
99% of which are very poorly created and certainly not entertaining
But it’s not a lie if you tell them ahead of time that it’s fiction.
If Sarah published her Darkship novels as true future History as told by a time traveler who came back to warn us; now that would be a lie.
And as entertaining as I found those stories, I sincerely hope she’s not prophetic.
It’s happened before and it will happen again. California will be the first to declare independence, after a year or so of insisting on its right to ignore federal law. I mean, they’re already kind of doing that without stating it explicitly.
This time I don’t think there will be much desire from the rest of the country to keep California, though. Hawaii will probably join them if they actually do it.
It’s funny, though. They’ll be essentially rebelling against the principles of the founders and trying to create a country doomed to fail. Oh well.
I strongly doubt that all of California would go with the Calexit crowd. You might get the coastal folks to go, but the rural folks would probably just wave goodby and mutter, “good riddance.” And then quickly build walls and put shutoff valves in the water lines going to the coast…
Yeah, there’s a real effort to spkit California into two that I hope has legs (hey, it worked for West Virginia). The seceding California will almost definitely be smaller.
I think Sierra would be a better name than New California, even if it does encompass some of coastal northern California.
I’m thinking that the remaining counties should just stay “California,” and the coastal breakaways should become the People’s Republic. They can call themselves California too, if they like; Mexico has Baja California, after all.
Oh, they can rename it back to California after the folks in “Old California” are pushed into the sea.
“the coastal breakaways should become the People’s Republic. ”
You misspelled “Pimple’s.”
My proposal is “Venezuela del Norte.”
I like the name, Jefferson.
This! Of course, people in eastern Oregon and Washington would be interested in joining Jefferson. IMHO, TPTB in Oregon are looking at California as a template, not a warning. Sigh.
Unfortunately, a lot of Californian born & bred moved north; some even Republican getting away from the southern mess, but not the majority. I miss the McCall days when it was okay to have a sign on the southern border with CA. “Welcome to Oregon. Please have a good time. Spend your money. Then go Home.”
Although I must admit. If hubby had taken that to heart, then we wouldn’t have been married 40 years this year. So there you go. FWIW he’s one of the good ones.
Californians are the ones who convinced me that the anti-immigration folks had a point.
The Californians who moved east of the Cascades tend to be less crazy. Most locals give them a winter or two to see if they’ll flee screaming from the SNOW! and ICE! before saying howdy. We lasted, but both of us were born in snow country.
To be honest, not Snow or Ice, normally. Rain. There is a reason Striling’s Emberverse series refers to “the Black Months”. We get less rain (in inches) than some places, but we continuously get it from October through July, with a smattering in August & September, and with occasional Silver Thaw (ice storm) or Whats-That-White-Stuff (snow), but not often enough for us to learn how to deal with either (non-mountainous areas). Although this February, it’s beautiful, as in “what is that yellow bright thing in the sky, oh yea, winter sun”, it has been running 55 – 60’s high (normally when it is sunny this time of year it is COLD). Hubby is ecstatic, it ain’t raining, he’s golfing.
Depends on the winter. Klamath Falls runs 10 degrees colder than Medford, so any precipitation that’s east of the Cascades is more likely to be snow than rain. Our area is 10 degrees colder than K-Falls, so any ice or snow will stick We have stretches of high, shaded roads that tend not to melt, so studded snow tires are needed. FWIW, I don’t believe any part of Klamath county runs below 4000′ elevation, while Medford is around 1200′.
It’s been a drought year; I had major ice between home and Medford on one of my trips in December, but the road was dry yesterday. It’s actually been pretty warm, too. We haven’t gone below 0F all winter, though we hit +3 one morning. Contrast that to the day in 2009 or 9 when we hit -28F (most years, we’ll have a few days on -200 and one can see why transplants from California aren’t expected to last long. (The agent who sold the place to us was expecting us to leave the next spring. She was shocked when we told her no problems staying. The former owner hoped to buy the place back for cheap. No luck.)
Southern Willamette Valley, specifically Eugene. Doesn’t get above 450 feet here. You know us. SNOW = panic city. Usually the heavy ice, as infrequent as it is, is “oooh pretty”, unless you’re one who’s trees get hit hard, then not so much. We got nailed last winter. Not as bad as some, no trees came down. A LOT of very large Giant Sequoia tree limbs came down from two trees (about 5 feet deep) & up to 12 inches in diameter, 10 – 12 feet long, darn lucky no direct hits to the house. For that reason & as they came down, other reasons were obvious, the trees came out last August at the tune of 4-grand (yes we got off cheap, contractor had use for the 4 huge logs that were taken).
We had all the trees that were too close to the house taken down over the years. The tree guys around here tend to have logging experience, and if it’s just fell the tree, it’s pretty cheap. Of course, turning a 30″ trunk into something you can move is a challenge, especially with a 20 inch chain saw.
OTOH, the barn (only spot that has a wood stove) has a multi-year source of fire wood. I still have a few years worth o split and stack. On the gripping hand, it tends to last; I made a shelter from garden-greenhouse bits and keep a tarp over the split mass, and it’s good. Gives the quail a place to stay when the flock is on hand.
Won’t happen if parts of the state actually secede. The coastal areas *require* the inland parts of the state. Because without the inland parts of the state, the coastal areas don’t get any water.
Now if California were split into two states, and both states remained in the Union, then the coast could continue to rely on water from the mountains. But if the coast leaves the country and the mountains stay, then the coast (which has been caught red-handed in the past stealing water from the Colorado River) would quite literally be relying on a foreign country for its water.
“Gee, THIS valve doesn’t need to be open.”
“Say, THIS contactor doesn’t need to be closed.”
“Hey, THIS pump doesn’t need to be running.”
“And then quickly build walls and put shutoff valves in the water lines going to the coast…”
A few years ago, when Cali was virtue-signaling like a Clacks tower over Arizona’s law requiring the State police to actually enforce Federal immigration law, and announced that their employees would be forbidden to go to any meetings in AZ and the CAgubmint would boycott AZ businesses and so forth, AZ said something like, “I guess we’ll shut down the water and electricity you buy from us then.”
Cali folded for the moment, but IIRC the law was repealed anyway, because, Democrats.
IIRC, the rolling blackouts that occurred in California were due to the belief that fuel prices for their electricity generation would be stable at the then-current rate, so there wasn’t a backup plan in case they were wrong, and they didn’t have money available for either fuel or an external supply of electricity. That’s the kind of thinking by government officials that makes messes like the one we’re in now.
It also paved the way for a celebrity governor. Now why does that sound familiar?
Years before the California blackouts, the buzzword of the day was “deregulation.” Except, as is often the case, there was more regulation associated with it. The selling point was “You get to pick your power supplier!” The reality was more prosaic: “Who pays for generation and infrastructure?” The latter was particularly sticky. As you’d expect, more than a few backers didn’t think they should pay for it at all, even though they would use the existing infrastructure to deliver electricity. What many really wanted to see was the companies who had built generation and infrastructure left with no way to earn back the money they invested, since that would put them at an unequal footing with those who didn’t have those costs. These came to be known as “stranded costs,” which is a nice way of saying “left holding the bag.”
This meant utilities were reluctant to invest in generation and infrastructure because they could be left with no way to pay for them. That led to all sorts of problems nationwide.
The worst was the assumption by the bean counters that the free market would provide, without any clue as to how. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the free market, but if you’re going to rely on it, you need to have some idea how it and your business works. They had no clue that what these companies were doing was selling capacity, with the actual electricity used coming from sources closer to home. They didn’t comprehend problems with transmission. They assumed that there would always be enough electricity to go around because free market.. Surely someone would build generation.
“Someone” didn’t, because they thought you could just buy it from outside the region,and it’s way cheaper to cut a deal than to build a power plant. If you had a heat wave, you bought it from where it was nice and cool. Buying capacity elsewhere looked a lot cheaper than building it. Even before than, the theory was with load control to trim the peaks, you didn’t need all that capacity, anyway.
So it was that one morning, years before California, I had to help draw up plans for rolling blackouts. We came close to using them, too. Nor would it be the only time that summer. There just wasn’t enough capacity in our region and surrounding areas. The next year we ran big diesel generators to provide needed capacity and called it “distributed generation.” Took maybe two or three years before we had gas turbine peaking stations online. Those were some tight years.
California didn’t take notice, maybe because some here were saying, with a nervous deer-in-the-headlights look “Problem? What problem? We don’t have a problem,” even as we were addressing the “problem” they said we didn’t have. And then one day, just like with us, the chickens came home to roost. There was a lot of fallout about Enron and such, but the problem all came down to that they didn’t have enough electricity to go around, and that was due to insufficient capacity – just like what we ran into.
Popular joke in a certain Eastern European nation in the post-Wall period.
***
How many Poles does it take to change a light bulb?
None! The market will take care of it!
***
Demonstrating that at least some of them understood…
How many Poles does it take to set up an antenna?
Two (if it’s a dipole antenna).
🎏
See also watering practices in Southern California, and homeowners prosecuted for letting their lawns die in the fifth year of a drought.
There was a couple in Glendora what was getting fined $500 for letting their lawn die… and watering their lawn would have triggered a $500 fine for using too much water.
Shoot everyone who comes to collect the fine, shred finely in chipper and use to water and fertilize the lawn. Sounds like the plot of an Edgar Allen Poe story.
This “deregulation” scam actually started with Montana Power’s exit strategy, which involved a lot of golden parachutes, stock that suddenly lost all value, and spectacular rate hikes (to somewhere around 10x the former rates).
California, in the usual way of liberals espousing a cause, heard the wonders but failed to investigate the guts, and so we got “deregulation” … CA sold off all its PAID-FOR power generation plants, and rates went up … well, my average bill went from $8/mo. to $100/mo. within a year, and by then I was using 1/3rd less power!! (Base rate didn’t change much, but if you used more than a light bulb, you’d hit peak rate which was now much higher. My well guy told me of a golf course that tested their pumps for 10 minutes without waiting for the 5pm rate change, and got a surprise $15,000 bill.)
L.A. Mayor Riordan understood exactly what was happening, and refused to sell L.A.’s power plants, so at least for a time the city continued to enjoy low rates. (I don’t know what their situation is nowadays.)
Part 2 is hard to find, so here it is:
And since I’m here, part 3:
Mayor Riordan was a Republican, wasn’t he?
That explains why California has enacted laws to ensure no Republican ever again hold high office in that state.
Yep, and by all I saw, a very sensible fellow and decent guy. Got creamed in his run for Governor. Unfortunate, as if he’d won, things might have started swinging the other way.
By selling off generation, they saw themselves getting rid of a potential stranded cost. They probably unbundled transmission, too. That seems to be the way of things. I remember a trade magazine way before the California blackouts that favored the California plan as a way of addressing stranded costs, and that mag was neutral politically. It went into detail about stranded costs and selling capacity (retail wheeling) from an engineering standpoint and wasn’t political.
A bunch of us feared it would lead to a “nationalization” on the state level of transmission and distribution, treating the delivery of electricity the same as a public highway. That was back in the 90s, and, fortunately, never came about.
I don’t know what the common-sense or realworld economic points were, but what state regs required was that the state couldn’t be in competition with the market, so they “had” to sell all their facilities.
And since Edison now seems to own all the transmission corridors, yeah, that too.
Interesting.
> rolling blackouts
We had those near Sacramento when I was growing up there in the 1960s. That town is well within the Sacramento metro area now. And we had lots of “brownouts”, where the voltage just dropped until my Mom’s TV wouldn’t work and she’d get mad about it.
They no only still have blackouts and brownouts, the airheads in Sacramento keep trying to mandate electric cars…
Oh, electric cars are SUCH a lousey idea!
unless they are orbiting Mars
Any viable Calexit plan would need to include some serious investment in desalination infrastructure. But if they could think like that, the whole effort wouldn’t be necessary to start with.
Want to know what the Republic of California would look like (in a very short time)? Take a look at Venezuela.
Wouldn’t take that long to be far worse. Drop the power lines from the Hoover Damn and the bay area will be eating each other within a week.
Just stop releasing water from Hoover Dam for a week or two. That would do it.
Please tell me that I’m not the only one here who does not necessarily view that as an undesirable outcome.
Now, there are a lot of good people in California. Some of them even live in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Just because Hollywierd and Berzerkeley dominate the state’s politics doesn’t mean it’s beyond salvation.
Using B-52’s for some Dresden or Tokyo style fire-bombing raids against Hollywood and Berkeley might be in order if California does rebel.
There may be a lot of good folks in LA and SF, but Hollywierd and Berzerkeley dominating state politics pretty much does mean the current state is beyond salvation.
I don’t doubt there are good people in the Crazy Zones. But I respectfully disagree with you about the state being beyond salvation.
with you about the state *NOT* being beyond salvation, I mean! Dangit WordPress!
The LA area still has some conservative pockets. They’re vastly outnumbered by the progs, but they do exist. It wasn’t all that long ago that we had a Republican District Attorney, Steve Cooley. And he did much better than any of the other Republican candidates running for statewide office when he ran for State AG (incidentally, his opponent was one Kamela Harris).
Don’t get me wrong – Los Angeles is pretty progressive (I should know – it’s where I live). But it’s not as bad as the Bay Area.
“The LA area still has some conservative pockets”
Can the Lord find at least 5 righteous? That was the going rate for sparing Sodom back in the day, and they couldn’t make the bid.
Seems to be Kamala, not Kamela. I remember her name due to one coincidence: there is a Finnish word which is written the same way – kamala.
Means “horrible”. Or “awful”. Take your pick. 😀
Of course you could also choose between “horrid”, “dire”, “dreadful”, “abysmal” and “ghastly”. 😀
I prefer to call her Kamala Lying B***h.
wasn’t too long ago that the L.A. City Attorney was a known 2nd amendment supporter, whose law firm specialized in defending firearms charge.
Having lived in both southern (1950-70ish) and northern (1970-2014, 1978-2014 in Silicon Valley) California, I agree completely.
People’s Republic of California, you mean?
Did that one, way up the thread… 😉
heck, I called it that when i lived there. Glad i got out. Want to see my newly purchased ‘assault weapons’? I’m tempted to name one Vera.
My little .22 varmint rifle is an “assault rifle” in California. Why? Because it holds 13 bullets.
if its a tube mag, then its not.
Would it live up to that name? Vera is somewhat demanding as a name, isn’t it? 🙂
its basically the same firearm Vera was built off of…
The Romanian, East German, and Chinese ones are substantially different from one another, if you ever need any spare magazines or parts…
The Chinese Saiga-12 i have uses the standard parts and magazines. It just came with a hideous thumbhole stock because ‘sporting purposes’.
It’s a Harley. Compatible. It’s a Harley compatible. Basically, the same engineering.
Ah. I thought you were referring to one of the .22LR rifles. The purists disown the .22s, the shotguns, and the PSLs, but they’re all close enough for me…
Ah, back in the day when parts kits were cheap, Gunco and TheAKForum were thriving, and people were competing to create the most outlandish builds…
> Calexit
Didn’t work for South Carolina. Of course, I’d expect that if the People’s Republic actually did grow the cojones to try, its border states not only wouldn’t fight to bring it back into the union, they’d be stringing barbed wire and putting up guard towers to make sure it never came back…
Unfortunately Oregon wouldn’t (stupid governor). OTOH the southern most Oregon counties, that don’t vote with Salem would be silently assisting northern California counties, who’s motto likely will be “hell no, we won’t go” with said barbwire & towers, all the while looking north with angelic poses, “What? We didn’t do anything! See no barbwire on ‘our’ borders.”
You see a fair amount of State of Jefferson t-shirts in Klamath county. Haven’t noticed quite the secessionist take in Jackson county, but aside from the People’s Republic of Ashland, there could be one, just a bit quieter. Sure see a lot of closed lumber mills.
Yes. I know about east & southern counties & State of Jefferson.
I had two careers, first one was Forestry. Know all about the shuttered mills; along with the expanded collateral damages.
OTOH. I’m in Lane County, so, SOL anyway. Eugene address, but not actually in Eugene (yet, they’ve been trying for 55 years that I know of).
Any Calexit plan should include an ironclad “no taps back” policy. Let ‘em secede, provided we have law in place to prevent their ever getting water, power, or food from across the line, and providing a 90 day window for people who want to leave. After than, they can support themselves in the Donner Party manner.
no, just that we have the ability to tax all water and power going to them.
We have to make sure the military assets and bases remain American.
If Calexit is done peacefully the assets would be moved. The abandoned bases would be overrun quickly by the leftist masses, I’m sure, but a canny Fed (yeah, I know, an oxymoron) would make paying for said bases a part of the separation agreement.
From the inside looking out, the only way there would ever be anything like a CalExit is if Sacramento politicians can somehow manage to get the FedGov to fund a Social Security setup for all the departing, aging, US citizens. Since that money does not actually exist in Federal coffers, it manifestly cannot be transferred to Sacramento for “safekeeping”, so There Ain’t No Frelling Way any referendum would pass.
And since CA runs it’s government almost completely on referenda instead of, say, just thinkin’ crazy here, the legislature actually doing it’s job, that puts an end to CalExit.
On the other hand, a default by California into some form of Federal receivership and supervised recovery plan due to all the state and local pension obligations that are massively unfunded is very likely. My wip has the Feds in charge of defaulted-CA (think basically the same type of Transitional Authority structure they tried initially in Iraq) trying to get at and tax anyone even passing through the state, with the result that everyone from elsewhere tries to avoid stepping foot over the border.
That’s more likely than secession.
Hawaii, OTOH, is another story, but they would have to manage it so as to not cut off the mainland tourism income that funds the entire HI state bureacracy. Tricky, that.
One wonders if the coastals realize just *how* vulnerable they are, from a dehydration-induced megadeath perspective.
Of course they don’t. They just assume that we lesser beings must continue to provide them with whatever they want, by virtue of their obvious (to themselves) superiority.
While the SF Bay Area does import a fair amount of water from the Central Valley, which is ultimately Sierra snow runoff, note that LA sucks in water both from the Sacramento River delta and from the Colorado River, as well as other sources along the Sierras.
Wells actually do work here in the Bay Area, with local dams and winter rains used to recharge the groundwater supply. Not so in LA – everything down there is imported. The only thing wells down there produce is oil.
Actually, for the most part, they don’t think of it at all.
This may be a wake up call…. but I doubt it.
“A single flush uses 5 days of drinking water.”
Well, I don’t drink out of the toilet. And obviously y’all need to adopt low-flow toilets, since none of them in my house would hold 2 days drinking water if it were drinkable.
BWA HA HA HA, I love the fearmongering exaggeration. Even down under, a flush does not contain ‘five days of drinking water.’
I suspect it depends on the ratio of Bourbon to your water.
Lessee … assuming a standard two-liter flush, that would be ten liters of bourbon at a five-parts-in-six ratio, thus a five-day supply of drinking water would mean consuming an average of 2.4 liters daily, certainly not an unreasonable rate.
Mm…. I’m not sure that’s all that far off? Assuming the toilet water is coming from the same supply and the standard recommendation of 8×8 oz. water per day (which admittedly might should be higher in hot weather) — 2.5 gallons isn’t an inordinately high-flow toilet. I understand some older ones can use 5-8. (I feel like I was told 8 once as a kid when we were having a drought.)
I’ll grant I’m probably off, remembering how big everything is in the US, now that I think about it. The toilets here have a full flush and a half flush option, and they don’t strike me as being as big.
A little research indicates that the standard American flush (not to be confused with the American Standard flush) has, since 1982, run at 1.6 gallons (prior to that it used 5 and even seven(!) gallons per load) which converts to just over 6 liters.
According to the Mayo Clinic
So, if we were to follow that and your looking into the standard flush volume in the US, the ‘five days of water’ is still an exaggeration, and a very big one, given that the recommendation is for a temperate climate, which neither South-Cal, or Australia are. (Notably, the 8 glasses isn’t enough apparently) A quick Internet search gets this result:
Wait. That’s insane. The standard going around all over the place was for “eight cups (64oz, or 2 liters) per day”, and even that was a misrepresentation of the standard taken from an original study that included fluids in food.
*shrug* I know I can’t drink 2 l of fluids a day unless I’m sweating buckets; but my husband easily tops that and probably drinks closer to the 3.7 per day, or more, depending on the weather (and since his job has him outdoors fairly often, in Aussie heat…)
If you’re working and sweating, then the needs go up, of course, but what I was referring to was considered a baseline, and for many years, people kept pushing, “drink 8 glasses (8oz) of water a day”, when the study that advice was based on included fluids in the food as well as drink.
Now, I normally drink more than that, but I have always drank a lot and eliminated a lot, both in sweat and going to the bathroom. But my wife’s grandmother paired that with a low-sodium diet and nearly killed herself.
But my wife’s grandmother paired that with a low-sodium diet and nearly killed herself.
I understand when people medically need low sodium diets, but there really needs to be advisement for those who are on them and who also sweat a lot on that score, because… it seems like suicide to me.
I guess the ‘everyone knows’ baseline was considered achievable?
I think the Mayo one also notes that the 8 cups of water per day was considered easily remember-able and achievable; also probably workable for a fairly sedentary lifestyle or workplace. But if you’re active, outdoors and move a lot regularly, the other targets wouldn’t be hard to achieve (including fluids in food.)
No wonder Phoenix takes so much of our water.
I don’t know how big the toilets in Cape Town are — it just doesn’t strike me as wildly implausible.
Going by RES’s research and mine, it is likely debunked.
Even going by the roughly 2 liters of water per day ‘easy to remember’ meme of drinking, that only stretches it to 3 days, but going by the recommended health ones, 1-1 1/2 days at most.
To the original point of flushing though: Wouldn’t want to court disease from not flushing, which tends to be worse in the long run.
There was a useless *sshole of a neighbor to my parents’ old place who was all about living on the cheap, as it turned out. He forbade his kids to flush the toilet until … ugh stage. But as it turned out – this kind of conservation actually sabotaged the leach-field, which depended on a certain degree of water-flow.
This useless *sshole of a neighbor bought a lovely plot of land up the hill from my parents’ – landscaped, with bearing avocado, orange and lemon trees, and all kinds of exotics, a nice double-wide trailer on it, with scope to build a permanent house … and let it all go to rack and ruin. Because – save money! (We think the bought the place to sell at a profit – unfortunately, at the top of the market, then to be sabotaged by a drought and a downturn.) He was the bane of my parents’ life there. The 2003 fire burned them out – everything on the property was a wreck by then anyway.
“The amount of water used by your toilet can easily be reduced with good maintenance and simple water saving initiatives. Older toilet cisterns with a syphon-flushing system hold between 9 litres and 12 litres of water. Modern toilet cisterns hold about 6 litres of water.”
http://capetowngreenmap.co.za/go-green/save-water-toilets
This would seem to reliably establish that the “five days worth of drinking water” claim is a load of crap unless you accept that the older cisterns remain the predominant system.
Which, they frankly wouldn’t be.
I hope you will not be annoyed, but I’m not totally convinced by the debunking. 😀
The 64 oz. is indeed not always enough; on the other hand, the 92-124 oz suggested by the Mayo Clinic explicitly also includes food and other beverages. The 240 oz of straight-up water apparently suggested by 2-1-1 Arizona sounds mind-boggling, but I can believe it’s a good idea in a hot and dry climate, and perhaps people in such climates follow the recommendations better than I’m used to.
And certainly even the oldest, highest-volume toilets seem unlikely to use over 9 gallons per flush.
On the other hand, my own admittedly cursory research suggests that rather than going straight to a 1.6 gallon flush in the US in the 1980s, we dropped from 5-7 gallons to more commonly 3.5 gallons for new toilets at that time, and ~1.6 or even 1.3 gallons later. (Tangentially, some plumbing designed for the older toilets does not work so well as one might hope with less water per flush. Alas.)
If many of the toilets in Cape Town are older ones, then I could readily believe that at least some of them are 3.5 gallons or even higher. Moreover, at least according to Wikipedia, the climate of Cape Town is surprisingly similar to that here — lower average summer highs and similar humidity — so I would not be surprised if they’re using the half-gallon recommendation for drinking water.
Admittedly, I would also not be surprised if they’re blindly copying water-conservation estimates from thirty-odd years ago in another country.
But, yeah, you do need to flush.
Admittedly, I would also not be surprised if they’re blindly copying water-conservation estimates from thirty-odd years ago in another country.
Very likely. And nah, I’m not annoyed. I figured that a much older set of things were used to set up the scare number.
The 240 oz of straight-up water apparently suggested by 2-1-1 Arizona sounds mind-boggling, but I can believe it’s a good idea in a hot and dry climate, and perhaps people in such climates follow the recommendations better than I’m used to.
I know that one of the things you have to keep up in hotter climates isn’t just fluid intake, but salt intake, but guess what people have started severely reducing to outright elimination because of studies done in temperate Western climates? It took my mom a near death experience about two years ago during the severe heat waves that were killing people her age to ensure she has a couple of cans of Pringles in the house, bottles of Gatorade, to remember adding some salt to her food, and to not avoid all sugars. And because tap water isn’t always safe to drink, guess what else became an issue? She’s feeling better now that she followed my advice, but it was a fight to get her to, because doctors’ one-size fits all recommendations. But really, how can they not, because dieticians are stupid expensive over there…
From some of the other exchanges on the subject, I am beginning to feel like the only one who doesn’t think it’s weird to have toilets from the 1980s or earlier. 😀 Although not in new construction….
On the salt thing: worse yet, recommendations developed in temperate Western climates largely for affluent people living and working in air-conditioned environments rather than doing manual labor or walking long distances in the heat. I rather suspect a lot of people who actually do benefit from decreasing salt developed their tastes when they needed a lot more of it, and then became more sedentary/stayed indoors more/got air conditioning. In contrast, I know somebody in Florida who I think has air conditioning but still has to salt her drinks….
I think – not sure on this – there was a point in time where toilets in Australia got replaced by newer, more efficient ones, and there may have been a subsidy for it to be done. The supposed water saving showers though, aren’t very good because you end up taking longer and using more water just to get clean.
I more or less asked my mom if she was going to have the whole house sealed and air conditioning put in, and to basically not leave when it’s hot (No, couldn’t afford it); it was pretty much eat salt or die.
I do some things that make me look very weird when the temp here is in the upper 20s (because it’ll feel like 30+ c) ESPECIALLY if it’s 35-40+ or will absolutely refuse to go out, because even air conditioning in a car has problems keeping that cool (my eyes feel like they’re boiling at 35, and that’s where I’ll also start getting heatstroked.) Things like wrap a wet tea towel on my head, dripping, umbrella, etc. It’s less about acclimatizing than it is about surviving a hike through cement hell because my small size means I’ll overheat faster than the taller folks, and have more problems shedding the heat. Folks who’ve seen me think it’s actually ‘bloody brilliant’ – but are unlikely to copy it because they’ll look silly. And yes, for those outings I’ll have salty potato chips with me.
There was a scene in Little House of the Prairie where the girls bring Pa a ginger water drink while he’s out working in the heat (old fashioned version of Gatorade). The recipe notes it has salt, and IIRC the jar they carried was probably at least a gallon or two; and he felt much better after drinking some, and presumably drank more later on.
Tangential example today for ‘it isn’t just hydration you have to watch out for’: Walked to a place nearby, about 15 minutes to 20 minutes, for an errand. 30’s; had water, umbrella, then walked back with a cold drink from a nearby petrol station (Yay for Slurpee ripoffs) and I’m still having problems with bringing my core body temperature back down, even though I was staying hydrated.
I suspect this would be the trigger for a shooting war. Watch Palmdale, California very, very closely. It’s a Payerville – lots of high-pay/high-tax aerospace jobs. Legally part of Los Angeles County, culturally on the other side of the world from LA. If California were to secede, and Northern CA, the Central Valley, and the Mojave were to counter-secede, the odds are high that the Coastals would fight to keep Palmdale. They’re taking too much money out of there.
They would probably keep Palmdale, but the jobs associated with aerospace would probably leave. You can only take money out of a place if there’s money there to begin with. You’d probably see a bunch of new housing construction out near Edwards, which the coastals definitely would not get to keep.
I know all these places!!
without the US military paying the bills, Palmdale’s business isnt going to last anyway.
That eagle may have already flown. A couple decades back Lockheed wanted to expand their facility, and Palmdale said — sure! just give us this $26,000 fee, and we’ll discuss it.
This went over like a lead balloon, and the new facility went to (IIRC) Georgia instead.
[Former Lancaster resident here myself. Loved the AV, did not love the direction CA was going.]
When we were looking at relocating, the fees to build a house near Bend struck it off the list. IIRC, it was around $12K for a single house, and that was just to get permission to build.
I’ve built permitted projects in Klamath county, and doubt that I’ve gone north of $1500 for the lot of them, including a garage, a couple of outbuildings (with power and heat), and major improvements to the barn.
Time to go get the eye buffed and polished. Wish me luck!
Luck! And God go with you!
My in-laws built a home on the Little Descutes River (sp) in early ’70’s (FWIW one border property is the La Pine State Park), that could not be built today; it’s too close to the river by state (federal?) statue. To the point where the people who own it today purchased the lot on one side of them, because it did not have a home & can not be built on. They also want the lot across the (spur) road from them. It too does not have a home. Ironically that lot also was owned by in-laws, I think their oldest daugher’s heirs have it now. It already has septic & water on the lot & is far enough away from the river to not have a build problem, but doubt the girls will ever do anything with it. They should sell, but whatever. Occasionally, every few years, we drive by (rarely stop), the last 3 dogs they had are buried on the property, no markers anymore, but we know.
Made it through OK. Pain is per expectations–medium bad. (faster please on the Vicodin), so it’ll be Zombie Pete for the day.
And now, to bed.
Sleep well!
“And then quickly build walls and put shutoff valves in the water lines going to the coast…”
There’s a scenario that I won’t go into involving how very… vulnerable the California Water Project is. I really don’t want to give people ideas.
Hmmmm, like Al Qaeda and other such friendly people in loose fitting clothing?
I was thinking domestic eco-terrorists, but yeah, anyone.
That’s why I fudged things in the story I did for J. L. Curtis’s Calexit anthology. As Tom Clancy put it in _Sum of All Fears_, the bad guys already know where to find that data, but my conscience prefers that I not give anyone more hints.
And the Hayward Fault could cut loose and leave a lot of people with much larger problems than someone holding a valve on the Colorado River hostage.
J. C., not J. L. I’ve been grading too many papers today.
That is apparently why G. Gordon Liddys’ article for Penthouse in the mid-1980s has gone down the memory hole, The article was commissioned after some idiot talking head said that a terrorist attack in the US was impossible. Liddy limited himself to 200 people, civilian weapons, and publicly available info only, and detailed how such a group could wreck the US, or at least 50+% of it.
After 9-11, I was very worried that it took the Govt 3+ days to cover some of the MAJOR vulnerabilities noted in the article.
The (shorter and much less detailed) Omni article is still around, but even G. Gordons’ own publications list doesn’t show the Penthouse article.
JPDev
Yes there are several bottlenecks where a dedicated team could destroy a lot of infrastructure with a small expenditure of resources. (Remembers one spot in Cali where….)
Couple dump trucks full of fill rocks and one of the numerous places the aqueduct passes under a bridge…
Of course, should the fruits and nuts break away, and should we cut off their power and water, they would immediately start blaming America for the failure of their little perfect state (ala Cuba and Venezuela).
To which we would shrug our shoulders and smile just a bit…
Re: Calexit (in whole or in part) – This is the same crowd that thinks they’ll just be able to join Canada, too, more often than not. Um, NO. Screw them.
No, you misunderstand. Coastal Calexit is just a canny misdirection on the part of normal America. We’d let them go, let them fail miserably and watch the leftist die-off, then extend our good graces and accept them as a US protectorate while we reestablish a sane society there.
Interesting observation. Just how much of Hollywood consists of Canadian origin actors? And how many of them are dyed in the wool progressives?
Most of the Hollywood production these days happens up in Vancouver. Just sayin’.
not as much as some people think…
C4c
“I can take people lying. Of course, I can take people lying”
I can handle their lies, I expect their lies, I expect lies from them. But I very much dislike bad lies, lies which convey an attitude of “I not only don’t have to tell you the truth, I don’t even have to tell you a credible lie.”
“If you’re going to lie to me, you lie to me with respect. … Don’t you ever lie to me like I’m Montel Williams. I am not Montel Williams. I am not Montel Williams.”
I remember that scene. From the pilot of “Homicide: Life on the Street,” one of the few movies or TV series where I agreed with the critics about awesomeness despite the poor viewership. Ironically, given the topic of Sarah’s post, Richard Belzer is so far left its not even funny.
One of my favorites, back when I was working nights.
Yup. They insult us by not even bothering to pretend their lies are true, anymore.
“I say it. You believe it. That how it has to work.”
But… that’s not how it DOES work.
Well of course. When the narrative conflicts with reality they always double down on the narrative.
Yah. It’s like the politicians who will give opposite opinions from those they held two years ago. They don’t even care about being consistent. Their position is safe; their funding is secure, the press is on their side. Who’s going to change their vote just because their elected representatives can’t tell the difference between a moral compass and a weather vane?
What has surprised and annoyed me is even without passage of any remotely significant time, politicians/candidates say one thing to one audience, and another thing to another audience… as if the conflicting statements would never be detected. This, in a world of nigh-instant communications and where ever more people have recording equipment of some sort. Behavior that one would have expected the telegraph to have taken care of ages ago. Sheesh.
That, too.
It’s long been my belief that this phenomenon is the natural outgrowth of having most of our politicians come from the lawyer class.
You see, to a lawyer words are merely tools to manipulate the feelings of their audience, whether that be jury or the general public.
So, when words are simply a means to an end, and the end justifies the means, an effective lie will always win out over an unpleasant truth.
Honestly, I sometimes wonder if the mindset that words create reality (true enough in the courtroom) being applied to the real world is why so many laws are at odds with reality.
If words created Reality, I (along most everyone else here) would be building a much better Reality with my (our) words.
I know there must be some honest lawyers out there. It’s statistically impossible to have 100% corrupt, self-serving, humanoid-monsters practicing law in this country.
Yes….statistically. In real life, however…
Aesop had his wisdom, about foxes and henhouses…
I’m of the opinion that if you want to make a career arguing the law and administering it, you ought not be involved in actually making the law… Too much opportunity for petty graft and “fixing things” to ensure your future employment, and those of your guild.
I think that if you want to work as a lawyer, and be a judge, you should be like a monastic caste, without vote, and only an advisory role in making laws. It should be an either/or proposition–Practice law, no vote, no political office outside of judgeships, which could still be electable. At the same time, I think that there ought to be a “sane man” somewhere in the appeals process, where a layperson has a role in saying whether something was just or not.
The layperson is supposedly, the function of the jury (think nullification)
I’m starting to see a bit more jury nullification. The Bundy trial in Portland had the jury saying BS to the prosecution. Hmm.
So did the judge:
https://4thst8.wordpress.com/2018/01/10/why-the-bundy-charges-were-dismissed-and-what-next/
I like the idea, but the Supreme Court should have exactly one attorney on it…the Chief Justice. Mostly because SCOTUS has original jurisdiction over cases between States, you need an experienced trial judge to run the courtroom. The Associate Justices should NOT be lawyers…precisely because an attorney is trained to manipulate the law for the benefit of his client. OK for a lawyer, terrible for a judge.
Where would I get Associate Justices? Go 70 miles SE of Washington to Naval Air Station Patuxent River and get some retired flight test professionals. Hard-nosed, precisionist, and accustomed to very precise wording of test plans…mostly because those test plans are regarded as binding contracts.
That they prefer not to sign in blood.
Suggestion: Split lawyers and judges into separate career tracks. Lawyers go on as before: join law firms and work their way up. Judges start out on low-level panels, or perhaps clerking, and move up to solo. Judges used from the get-go to the idea that laws mean what they say without going through the corrupting phase where laws mean whatever they can be twisted to mean.
“lawyer words are merely tools to manipulate the feelings of their audience, ”
Go back up to that Kipling poem…
Just like the imams, you mean? The difference is the imams at least tell their “insider” version in a different language, usually. (And, then deny that what they said in Arabic is an accurate translation of what they said to their English-speaking audience. Coz wez dumb yano.)
The chocolate ration has been increased. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
Orwell would be trying to claw his way out of the grave if he knew that 1984 was seeing widespread use as an instruction manual.
You mean like this?
https://pjmedia.com/blog/liveblogevent/tuesdays-hot-mic-43/entry-223410/
Perzackly. I’ve seen similar before/after with several others.
B. Obama and N. Pelosi come to mind.
I don’t mind politicians who give opposite opinions from those they held two years ago as long as they have valid justification for changing their position. Like, they found out the facts of the matter instead of guessing.
Hmmmmm … what’s the over under on how many senators would recognize a fact on the ground if it bit them on the butt? I’m guessing five out of a hundred, but I am widely known to be a cock-eyed optimist.
Those damned jumping facts!!!!11111!!!!
I don’t think it is so much a matter of senators not recognizing facts, as their weighting of them, that is the problem. They may recognize policy A is worse for the country than policy B, but they may weight that as less important than the fact that supporting policy A is more likely to get them reelected.
What? Don’t principles change based on which party is in power? Does that count as valid justification for changing their position?
Calvinball or (leftist) Politics.
^DING!^
Except Calvin was actually philosophically more mature than most leftists. And smarter, too.
Two years? try two weeks.
Do you remember when releasing The Memo would lead to Exposure of Secret Intelligence Methods, Damage to National Security, Feline-Canine Cohabitation, and divers other calamities? Because now we are told, by politicians and press (“… and Brutus is an honorable man”), that the memo is Of No Import Whatsoever—and the pravda changed so fast it gave me whiplash.
To quote Dilbert:
“I demand a plausible lie!”
Don’t strike the first blow, but make certain you strike the last.
c4c
Contrary to the notion that those who remember the 60s did not live through them, I lived through the 60s and I do remember.
There may be some violence. There will be those who have the sense to retreat into academia and do their nasty work of rewriting the meaning of the Constitution in the eyes of future generations from there. (Professor William Ayres anyone?)
The question is — will those who believe in the Constitution and liberty do the hard work to take back the education of the young?
This is the only way we avoid a hot civil war. We take back the education of our posterity from those who would destroy it. Then, possibly, we can change the course of our beloved country.
It’s already happening, to an extent. A lot of people are homeschooling or homeschooling after school. Faith in the schools is waning.
As the Instapundit would say: Faster, please!
^^ This ^^ Home schooling after school (or rather evenings). We got “caught” at this by kid’s HS. Hubby had been transferred to middle-of-no-wheresville, 500 miles from home, about 2 months after the company I had worked for filed bankruptcy, did not want to move kid. So we asked for 2nd copies of texts so dad could help with homework every night. School caught on when one essay contradicted the text book. What can I say, kid read it, we read it, we discussed it with kid, made kid do the research on discussions & text book, kid wrote his essay (mom read it, dad proofed it). Teacher came back & stated kid got help. Our response was “isn’t that our job? Not like we did the work, that was the kid.” FWIW he did get an A, but that wasn’t the point.
Yeah. Pretty sure public education isn’t salvageable. New teachers aren’t allowed to think for themselves, and are ruled by the school boards. Those inclined to getting on those boards are not the kind of people who should ever be trusted with power, and too many of those people who are trustable in those positions have too much traumatic brain injury from beating their noggins against the progs.
Will have to mention that to a couple of friends who ended up running against each other for school board. Both did it because they were concerned about education, and neither is a professional educator.
I’d consider “professional educator” to be an absolute vote-against for a school board election.
It’s those “professionals” who created that festering mess to start with… we don’t need to help them.
I’ll see your William Ayres and raise you an Angela Davis.
Ayers is a professor of education. He has specialized in childhood education: instruction, educational reform and curriculum. In this capacity he probably has a far greater effect on our future than Davis, who has taught Philosophy, Ethnic Studies, History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies, and her latest degree is Humane Letters in Healing and Social Justice.
Not to debate which is worse:
Both of them unrepentant 60’s radicals who went “legitimate” and into education in order to preach subversion to students instead of risking jail (or death) as open revolutionaries.
Without hearing her lectures, seeing her course syllabus, or reading her assigned texts, I don’t *know* what she and her colleagues have been teaching, but I’ll take a guess.
“Philosophy” as in Leninist sophistry and doublethink. “Ethic studies” as in BLM. “Feminist Studies” as in “Smash the Patriarchy”. “History of Consciousness” as in history and methods of revolutionary activism. “Healing and Social Justice” as in, Social Justice Warriors.
What want to know is who thought it was good idea to let these and their likes into the academic system?
History of Consciousness
WTF?!? So… since the first sentient being? Or “Yep, we’ve known man was had sleep and wake cycles since… well, the first sentient being. Class dismissed.”
*SMDH*
Ayres. I wonder how many people have him on their List?
For starters, every grad student dreaming of a tenured position. (It used to be a joke at Flat State U that the events in _Inspector Morse_ led to more tenure-track positions opening up at Oxford than founding a new college would have.)
I think the ’60s repeat was when Obama was in office. I think we’ve moved on to the early ’70s now, with Trump as the Nixon stand-in.
Who was one of the persons to host and support Obama in his early years of politics? William Ayers.
There is a very dangerous mental divide out there. There are those who scream shrilly all sorts of threats and promises, and do nothing. Then there are those who say little or nothing, are ignored if they don’t yell and get excited, yet watch impassively and remember. When they decide to DO it’s well past talking to them. Then the screamers will be asking… Was it something we said? Why didn’t you tell us how upset you were? There isn’t much rope laying around our modern world, boiled or otherwise. But you’d be amazed how you can improvise with an extension cord.
The term you’re thinking of is, “the silent majority.”
Terrorists and criminals target easy, soft, undefended innocents who don’t shoot back and can’t run. Schools, churches, shopping malls, entertainment venues, etc. True revolutionary guerrillas target the government, and those who run it or support it. Court houses, recruiting centers, defense contractors, politicians, judges, government war houses, bases, planes, ships, some infrastructure, police stations, but NOT fire stations, hospitals, or emergency medical services.
Technically, Timothy McVeigh was not a terrorist because he targeted a federal government building. The pre-school was collateral damage. He was a radical revolutionary. But that didn’t fit the story the government wanted to portray. Nidal Hasan also wasn’t a terrorist, because he targeted military troops about to deploy. Traitor, hell yes. But he was really a military asset turned by the enemy and used against us as an act of war.
Side note: McVeigh’s targeting a government building that had a preschool in it was a purblind stupid move.
Addendum: never mind the moral issues, which were legion.
Which was one of the elements that made the “John Doe #2 was Iraqi” theory more plausible. Saddam would have loved it and McVeigh wouldn’t care.
The theory I found most interesting was the one my EOD friend and a couple of his OKC bomb squad/cop buddies came up with: False flag BATF operation that McVeigh/Nichols figured out was a false flag at the last minute, and then took the bomb not to the site where the BATF was waiting to arrest them, but to the BATF offices in OKC instead. It was a last-minute thing, no scouting, so McVeigh did not know about the day-care center (who the hell puts one of those in a Federal Building, anyway…?). The total destruction of the building was unplanned, but happened because of the secondary explosion from whatever the hell was in the BATF evidence rooms.
Things that make me go “Hmmm… Maybe…” about that theory are that there was “something going on” in OKC that morning that had cops, Army EOD, and the fire department on alert, but that they were expecting it somewhere else, not at the Federal Building. The other thing is that, just like with Waco, there was legislative activity in Congress right at that time which was pertinent to the future of the BATF, and it would have been a major feather in their cap to have “prevented a terrorist act” at that juncture. The BATF is notorious for doing things timed to get themselves into the public eye, and it’s likely not accidental that they were central to both Ruby Ridge, Waco, and OKC.
Aside from that, there were a bunch of other things that lined up which made that whole thing make more sense than the official story line. I don’t know what the hell happened, that morning, or was going on, but when you have sober, seasoned professionals who’ve worked in that world for decades going “WTF?” over the official storyline, and who nod along saying “Yeah, makes sense to me…” with what you would hope would be nutso conspiracy theories? You kind of start wondering. And, I don’t trust anything at all that came out of any Federal agency during either the Clinton or the Obama administrations. Hell, I only half-trust what I hear coming out of them during Republican ones…
It really is super-weird and disturbing to reflect on all the holes in the officially distributed outline of that event, and realize that the conspiracy theory types may not be entirely nuts.
I mean, who the hell would believe that the guy behind the UNABOMBER thing would turn out to be a prodigy (started at 16) Harvard graduate who’d been subjected to bizarre psychological experiments which were supposedly part of MK ULTRA… Enough of the coincidentally weird starts to show up in corroborated real-world evidence, and you really start to wonder whether all of the conspiracy theorists are actually as crazy as the rest of think they are.
McVeigh wasn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. And it’s questionable about whether or not he knew about the daycare center in the building. Some say yes, and others no. As for his justification for the attack, revenge for Waco and Ruby Ridge, that’s not a clear goal of compelling the government to reform. He just doesn’t fit the mold for a regular terrorist, nor does he fit the label of a mass murderer.
As I recall, there were credible reports of McVeigh and his partner being affiliated with some militia-type group that was supposed to be a front for Islamic terrorists. Not a story the government wanted spread, and not from the most credible sources, either (IIRC, WND was hot on this) but not utterly incredible, either.
McVeigh wrote a column in some newspaper defending Saddam Hussein when 43 invaded Iraq. IIRC.
I think you’re mixing up McVeigh with his partner, Terry Nichols. At the time of Desert Storm, McVeigh was a 11M in a Bradley unit over in the Gulf. I’ve never heard of him doing that, and his disaffection with the US dates to Ruby Ridge and Waco.
Nichols was the one with ties to Abu Sayaf through his Filipina wife, and who spent time in the Moslem parts of the Philippines. Given the relative sophistication of the bomb, I’ve always found that “coincidence” rather… Interesting.
I’m pretty sure that there is a bunch of significant information about that bombing, which was never made public. Past that? No idea, but there is enough meat there that I’m pretty sure we were lied to about a great deal of significant issues with regards to that whole event.
It is possible that I confused McVeigh and Nichols. Note 43. It was in the paper during that administration. IE, 2001-2008, and IIRC 2001-2004.
Searching for an electronic citation, a) I find that McVeigh was executed prior to 9/11, so if it was McVeigh, it was a rerun. Which I may vaguely recall at the time. b) I find out that Terry Nichols has been sending a lot of letters, and similar claims to the ones RES mentions turn up by some place called accuracy in media.
I think it is within the realm of possibility that OKC was a false flag operation by BATF that went really, really wrong. A guy I worked with years ago was Army EOD at Tinker AFB that morning, and they had been alerted to go support law enforcement that day. Nobody knew for what, specifically, but they were spun up and waiting for the call-out when they heard the blast.
Make of that what you will.
Are you suggesting the Federal Government, which gave us the Gold King Mine Spill …
… was capable of other eff-ups?
Inconceivable.
We need a special bracnh of government, possibly based upon the Inspector General Corps, dedicated to monitoring, investigating, prosecuting governmental
Charlie Foxtrotsmalfeasance and abuse of power, with authority to fire malefactors, strip their pensions and put them in … mmmm …. a restitution camp where they can learn such useful skills as license plate manufacture.Part of the current mess is that the Obama administration was limiting the investigative tools available to the IG’s (e.g. limiting IG access to government data on government employees), and the Obama DoJ ignored or was slow to respond to referrals from the IG’s.
Which is why the IG Corps needs to be autonomous, empowered to treat the bureaucracy the way the IRS treats the taxpayer.
I wonder if they were alerted because the BATFE had partial knowledge of something beforehand, or if they really knew what was going to happen already? The first I find plausible, the second sounds too much like a paranoid conspiracy theory.
No BATF agents were in the office, that morning. The blast damage and the memories my friend the EOD tech has of hearing the blast in person indicate that it was a two-stage event. The BATF had a well known bad-habit of storing energetic materials in their evidence lockers. Army EOD was following SOP and gathering evidence for law enforcement during their post-blast operations when what they had gathered was taken by BATF, and they were hustled off the site by BATF agents. None of what they gathered was seen at trial, and it included a lot of stuff that should have been used by the prosecution. The OKC BATF office often produced “live” evidence at trials, yet maintained no separate explosives evidence storage facilities in the OKC area.
That’s just a partial list of the issues he had with the whole OKC bombing. He was convinced that there was a lot more to what happened than made it into public view. I agree with him because I’ve heard corroborating things for what he told me from other independent sources.
When being the Most Speshulest Snowflake stops being beneficial, then you’ll see less of this virtue signaling nonsense. When loudly announcing that one is a “genderqueer trans-racial porg triggered by some exclusivity activity”, and doesn’t get an immediate round of apologies- but pointing and laughing, then you will get less of it.
Right now, a preference cascade against giving people preference because of whatever boo-hoo-hoo is approaching critical mass. The effort needed to generate general outrage is hitting the point of diminishing returns.
The academic bubble driving much of this nonsense is right about to pop.
The media amplifying much of this whining is becoming less relevant.
They’re long past that point for many of us. And the number of “us” is rapidly increasing. They don’t realize because they only talk to/associate with/notice each other, not normal Americans.
They’re also starting to turn on and out virtue signal each other.
After all, the intent of virtue signaling is not really about the whatever one is voicing concern for- it’s to bring attention to oneself for being Oh So Woke… and we can’t have someone else being more Woke.
Perhaps we need to subtly float the idea that woke SJWs are very juicy and tasty…the problem might be self-correcting…
Nasty, bitter, and likely poisonous. Judging by what comes out of their mouths, anyway.
Yes, yes, we all know that. But we need to convince them that they’re juicy and tasty, and that those horrible deplorables aren’t fit to feast on them, only other “woke” are sensitive enough to properly enjoy the experience…
“And no one could figure out why some bio-Verne breakthrough created the Godzilla plague, and the monsters that attacked Chicago and New York City.”
Heh. Sounds like Marion Harmon’s mysterious villain came up with something that LIKES the taste of SJWs.
Well, the Godzilla plague really “liked” Japan.
So how many SJWs are in Japan? 😈
A lot less than in the U.S. However, what there are, appear to be concentrated in Tokyo and other large Japanese cities.
If you read the books, they were created by an ecoloon SJW…..
True, but we don’t want to eat them.
We want the other SJWs to eat them. 😈
BTW, does the title of this post translate into Latin as “Cave Terra?”
“Cave terram.” Earth/ground is an object that takes the accusative. Same thing with “Cave canem.”
Thanks. I only have “tag Latin.”
I think patronizing kindness might work. The poor, mixed-up Leftist isn’t evil, he just needs professional mental health care. From someone who isn’t deranged himself. The Left is trying to normalize insanity…we need to denormalize it. The failure to point out the insanity of the Left is unhealthy.
Now, this may get some Leftist nutter to go violent. Be prepared. I’ll be honest, I thought the summer of 2017 would be marked by rioting, and was surprised it wasn’t.
We need to popularize designer straitjackets for them. Maybe make it very hipster to wear them ironically…
Do you think there’ll be a return of mental institutions? As in, proper ones. People who really do need institutionalizing.
I was thinking about this the other day. I wonder if them not placing people in mental institutions is one of the causes of the rise of the Progressives. A significant number actually being clinically insane would explain so very much about their views.
I wonder if them not placing people in mental institutions is one of the causes of the rise of the Progressives. A significant number actually being clinically insane would explain so very much about their views.
Was the closing of such institutions not a Progressive initiative? I seem to remember that.
Yup. Look up Thomas Szasz. His ideas (and their acceptance by the leftists in control) are the direct cause of the explosion of mentally-ill homeless people on the streets of many US cities.
And, I’m open to the idea that those ideas had an ulterior motive on their parts… Just like the way they attacked the police and courts, back in the same period. Create chaos, and then benefit from the public clamor to “do something…”.
You look at the “coincidental” way that so many of these pet projects of the progressives worked out in real life, and you really start to wonder about whether or not it was all coordinated, and part of a greater plan…
But, that’s crazy talk. Isn’t it?
It IS. On their part.
Y’all familiar with Yuri Bezmenov?? If not, you should be. His talks should be required watching.
Keep in mind that this is exactly what the Left is trying to do to the rest of us.
2018 long hot summer of Leftist desperation.
s/BAMN/BANG/g
I think he’s right… to a point. Things are getting better in that the masks have come off and the silent majority seems to be recognizing their “masters and betters” for exactly what they are, and have begun calling them on it. And that the various factions on the left seem to have begun eating themselves.
But I still think that we’ve a long, long way to go. And I confess that I am very frightened by what might happen along the way, and what we will probably have to do in order to get this country back to where it needs to be.
Like what if the great blue bastion of California splits into two states?
Or someone mucks with elections in Texas and gets caught. TX now has mail-in ballots *spits hairball in an Austin-ward direction* You know what’s coming next.
Y’all need to stop that right now.
Argh.
There have been prosecutions for that already within the last two weeks.
We’ve had that in Oregon. I’m not sure when it started, but mail-in was the rule when we moved in in 2003.
Since our local mail is a bit iffy (we had some sketchy characters working at the substation), $SPOUSE and I drop our ballets off at the county clerk’s office. (We also use a mail drop in the city; well worth the hassle, especially since they’ll accept shipments from the usual outfits.)
Yes. Been voting by mail for awhile in Oregon. Overall it increases voter participation, especially national voting, as most of us have voted days before election gets called based on eastern side results. Guaranteed paper trail; no chad problem (fill in the dots). We too use the County drop boxes VS mailing it. For us just as convenient & doesn’t cost stamps. Also, have reason to know they check signatures against name printed on privacy envelope. Both son & hubby have horrible signatures that are inconsistent & don’t match the one on their voter’s registration. They get called in to verify their signatures.
voting by mail, just means the elderly, the mentally incompetent, etc vote the way their caretakers with.
It SHOULD be illegal, because it’s unconstitutional. Vote secrecy is gone.
You don’t sign the ballot. You sign an external envelope. That is verified before it is opened; it is also checked against a “already voted” list (to prevent “didn’t get my ballot” & double voting ploy). Inside the ballet (can be, voter option) is in another “secrecy” envelope. Ballot is pulled from interior envelope by someone else (or is suppose to be). They took the already in place, vetted, absentee voter process and implemented as standard for everyone automatically. So, if illegal, then absentee voter process nationally, including military, is illegal. No, don’t think so. The only thing that is not secret, is whether you “showed up to vote or not”; that has not changed.
” just means the elderly, the mentally incompetent, etc vote the way their caretakers with.” May have a point here, but even with booth voting, it was legal to have “care taker” assistance if you needed it, or again, use already vetted absentee voter. Care taker’s can’t sign envelope for caree’s; unless care taker originally signed caree’s voter registration & that is a whole different level of fraud.
I KNOW THAT, but it’s not hard to make people sign the outside, particularly people under your care.
I remember that exact discussion when this all came about. Not an expert on the resulting solution. Do know that essentially that was “not a reason to deny this option to everyone else.”
Not something just implemented by the State. It was voted on. One of the few initiatives that was universally popular across the state.
Hey, not like it was a pain for us to get to voting booth, it was essentially across the street, as voting areas were by default the local grade school and had been since I tagged along with mom before I was old enough to be left at home in charge of my younger siblings while mom went & voted.
a vote in a family is not secret, d. Mothers, fathers, or for that matter daughters, cn stand over you as you vote, and what are you going to do about it?
Yep. You will not be able to vote any different from how the bully in the family tells you to.
Besides that, how about other people voting in your name? All they have to do is send in their ballot first, and yours is nullified. Ask Sarah how many times, when she was a poll watcher, people were told that they had already voted absentee? And that invalidates the in-person vote, when it should be the other way around.
What am I going to do about it?
Speak. Very. Quietly. The. Preference. For. Being. Unobserved.
Snarl the growl of impending doom.
Care taker’s can’t sign envelope for caree’s; unless care taker originally signed caree’s voter registration & that is a whole different level of fraud.
If you think that they would be checking signatures, or especially if you think people counting votes is actually qualified to validate signatures, you’re not considering the magnitude of the issue. There’s no way that’s going to happen.
Signatures maybe they only catch the obvious ones. All I know is kid & hubby have to verify theirs every time. How did they verify signatures before at voting booths? Didn’t have to show id, but did have to sign voter rolls.
As far as family bullies? Extended family yes. But never have asked how they voted, & don’t tell how I did. Immediate family? Does asking “did you vote?” count?
Depends. If Jefferson splits off from California (and possibly Oregon too) then that’ll just be honky-dory. If it goes like the latest proposal I saw, where it’s a three-way split with San Diego in one state, LA in the second, and San Fran in the third, that would be EXTREMELY bad because Cali would have SIX senators instead of two.
“Honky”-dory???? RAAAAAACIST!!!!!111111!!!!
Or, is that some kind of small boat with a horn attached?
Probably. A bit like the surrey with the fringe on top.
Beep Beep
Beep Beep
How do I get this boat out of second gear?!?
Off topic, but I recommend this post:
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2018/02/spacex-landing-two-falcon-heavy-boosters-side-by-side-gorgeous.html
…for the comments.
The landing was absolutely beautiful…and the comments, sadly funny.
I never thought I would get to see an actual Galaxy Cover landing, and to have two Rocket Ships touch down together really made my day.
As someone (I think at PJMedia) stated about the landing: “As God and Robert A Heinlein intended.”
🙂
“J.. C. Salomon • 5 hours ago
♫ And rockets proudly land upon their tailfins,
♫ As God and Robert Heinlein meant them to.
(http://steve.savitzky.net/S… )
Is a comment here,( and you MUST click on that steve.savitzky link):
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2018/02/spacex-landing-two-falcon-heavy-boosters-side-by-side-gorgeous.html#disqus_thread
As Steve points out in the page I linked to, his line is a poetic adaptation of Arlan Andrews’s description of the DC-X et al.: they “… take off and land vertically, the way God and Robert Heinlein intended.”, which GWB quoted directly.
“Tearing up posters”
“Mockery”
“Setting people on fire”
Should we all be thankful you stayed towards the near side of your quiver?
Why set people on fire when you can put itching powder on toilet seats?
That’s just plain diabolical, and wayyy sexist.
Ah ha! The evil plan wasn’t to use itching powder; rather, only use native, naturally occurring biologicals to stymie any efforts to trace the perpetrators. Impregnate a pair of leather gloves with poison ivy sap. Visit the mall. Run gloved hands on all the hand rails and all the flush nobs and toilet seats in the bathrooms.
yes. I never said I was good. I’m not. BUT I control myself. I watch myself ALL THE TIME.
Has anyone ever seen President Charles Logan and Representative Schiff together? Compare and contrast:
and…
http://www.trbimg.com/img-5536c0d3/turbine/la-pn-schiff-senate-20150421?w=1400
Archbishop Chaput has been doing a lot of defense of orthodox doctrine and practice lately, but he also found time (in a big speech to a men’s conference) to quote Erasmus’ 22 rules for being a Christian knight.
I didn’t even know Erasmus had such things… but being from the Early Modern period, they are highly relevant to today’s world. (And not just for men, either.)
Huh. Got a comment in moderation. Thought I would avoid that by putting the two links in separate comments. Or maybe it’s because the pic seems to be from a WP site?
Nothing to see here, keep moving along, it’s all a distraction from the Trump-Russia investigation.
FBI informant says Russians wired money in hopes of influencing Hillary Clinton in Uranium One ploy: Report
An FBI informant connected to the “Uranium One” scandal said that Russian nuclear executives sent money to the United States in hopes it would influence the Obama administration and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to a report Wednesday.
In written testimony obtained by the Hill, the informant, Douglas Campbell, told Congress that Russian nuclear officials told him that Moscow hired American lobbying firm APCO Worldwide with a $3 million annual lobbying fee in hopes of influencing Clinton to “reset” U.S.-Russia relations while supporting former President Bill Clinton’s charity efforts.
“The contract called for four payments of $750,000 over twelve months,” Campbell explained. “APCO was expected to give assistance free of charge to the Clinton Global Initiative as part of their effort to create a favorable environment to ensure the Obama administration made affirmative decisions on everything from Uranium One to the U.S.-Russia Civilian Nuclear Cooperation agreement.”
When asked for comment, a spokesperson for APCO said that their work with the Clinton Foundation and Russia are not connected in any way and their work with Russia did not involve Uranium One.