No Feet Sally And the Denial of Human

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

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Yesterday, on Facebook, Larry was discussing how the liberals interpret “some teachers will be allowed to carry guns if they want it” as “all teachers will have to carry guns.”  Going from that assumption, people of course make comments about how their friend the teacher is half blind and can’t shoot straight, which Larry called a “Poor Sally who was born without feet” argument.

I can see how it would apply, from having seen liberals in action for a long time.  Look, I know we’re not the side of “more laws.”  (They don’t know that.  Since this is their modus operandi, they assume it’s everyone’s.)  But in Portugal when mom was little someone passed a law that you had to wear shoes to use public transportation or in the confines of the city of Porto.  This was partly so that tourists didn’t realize how poor the country was, but it was also a public health measure.  In my day tuberculosis was endemic.  In mom’s day it was epidemic.  And there’s a charming habit of spitting on the ground/floor all over the country.  So, shoes were sensible.

Of course, showing the limits of laws to change behavior, because the country was extremely poor, I heard about this law because mom told us how they cheated it.  You wore one shoe, carried the other, and if the police told you to put the other shoe on, you said it made your foot hurt, and they couldn’t force it.  So people wore out one shoe at a time, and made it last twice as long.  (Father’s family was never poor enough for that contrivance.)

But if such a law passed here, or even if we said “you know, wearing shoes is a good idea for health reasons, so everyone should be encouraged to wear shoes” you know and I know some idiot would pipe up with “But poor Sally who was born without feet would never be able to go out.”

There is a fundamental denial of humanity in that statement and the poor Sally with no feet argument.  It assumes two things: what is not forbidden is mandatory, and if we want people to be ABLE TO carry guns (after passing all appropriate screenings) it’s the same as requiring every teacher to be armed.  And two, people are incapable of discernment and exceptions within rules.

First, this makes obvious why they want to multiply rules and regulations till ever part of your life is scripted.  They believe rules are a kind of magical spell, and if they exist everyone obeys it.

Given that idea, banning guns makes perfect sense.  I mean, if no one breaks laws or rules, just say that no one can have guns, and you’ve eliminated a major form of mass murder. Of course, then you have to outlaw explosives, and also knives and eventually butter knives.  And perhaps frozen legs of lamb.  (Never mind.)

Also, if people just do things according to law and have no discernment, of course we have to script every little thing.

Never mind that we never heard of a single case of a transsexual being banned from the bathroom of their chosen sex (unless they announce “I have a penis” while entering a woman’s bathroom) because no one actually checks the contents of your underwear.  (Trust me, one of my friends way back when looked so masculine that my husband on seeing her picture took weeks to figure out which she was (and only because her wife let it slip.)  And yet, she would go into bathrooms without anyone asking anything, and certainly without anyone checking her underwear.  In fact, the only time I know someone protested wrong sex in a bathroom was older son who looked six at 3, and who — being three — would do things like look under our stall partition to see who was on the other side.  (Not sexual but curiosity.))  BUT if people are like programmable robots, who only act according to rules and laws, then you need to specify that transsexual people will be allowed to use the bathroom of their chosen sex, or the panty police TM will rise up and stop them, right?

This is the same thing that makes taxes THE way to redistribute and doesn’t trust private charity, because if it’s not mandatory, people don’t know to do it.  It also removes several checks for worthiness, because then people will refuse everyone.

It is at the basis of the idea that the government needs to regulate EVERYTHING about business, because if it’s not mandatory people won’t do sensible things like, oh, raise the salaries of high-performing employees in order to keep them, or hire the most competent regardless of sex and skin color, because it’s a value add.

It is in fact at the basis of EVERYTHING.  And it’s a completely consistent view, except for one thing: people are neither robots nor computer programs.  They just aren’t.  No policeman is going to arrest Sally for going without shoes, when she has no feet and is therefore not walking like other people.  (Not unless he wants to harass Sally, which is why I’m against more laws.)

People don’t need laws to say “Healthcare will pay for contraceptives when they serve a clinical need other than keeping you from getting pregnant.”  Insurances were doing that for all the decades I’ve been in this country.  I know because given my screwed up system, I needed it intermittently.  Because people aren’t robots.  “Stops bleeding for a year” is not “elective use of contraceptives.”

“Looks like a woman and it’s none of my business” is most people’s default position, and no one is going to ask to check panties.  (Note this is different from “doesn’t make any effort, has a five clock shadow and is wearing a Carmen Miranda hat.”  Because in that case, yeah, people might get worried, since someone who does that might have other mental issues.)

“Doesn’t have feet, will not ask them to wear shoes” is also most people’s default position.

Because people aren’t robots.

In fact, the left has never explained how, if people are supposed to be robots, incapable of disobeying rules and laws, we still have murder, something that has been forbidden in every society in the world, from basic tribe on.

So… why do people think that humans are robots and must follow the law?

Honestly?  First, because we’ve lived so well so long, people of middle class upbringing have no experience outside their class and group.  If they are law abiding, they imagine everyone is, and that laws are inflexible.

Second because for years now our teaching of humanities has been corrupted by Marxism.  It’s all “Great movements of history” and humans as widgets within it.

It has a certain amount of truth — all of these things have.  That’s what makes them pernicious — in that people tend to have their mental image of the world and what’s possible within their time from the culture they live in.

But it is an incomplete picture.  Sure Elizabethans might think of the universe as a mechanical arrangement of spheres, and therefore that the sovereign was untouchable.  To an extent that explains how the Tudors got away with so much.  But it wasn’t UNIVERSAL and some people thought themselves quite outside the rules, which explains why it was the years of “a plot a minute.”

Because humans aren’t robots.

The very mechanics of Marxism demands that we think they are though.  (I think Marx might have been… ah… neuro-atypical.)  It’s all supposed to be vast movements of history and people will all act like the other, regardless of what they bring to the situation.  People have to be widgets, for Marxism and its promise of future utopia to work.

Hence people being divided into classes, genders, colors, all of which are supposed to act and think uniformly.

Except people aren’t robots.  And that’s where the philosophy falls apart.  And why pushing it into people’s heads as the model for everything is wrong.  And why Marxism in any form always ends up in piles of dead, whether violent or not.  (Do you want to count the dead from the many, many socialized health systems?  How about the dead because people don’t work harder than they have to, and society stagnates?  How about the dead of drugs because there’s no hope for the future?  Piles of dead I tell you.  Some in this country.)  Because it’s designed for robots.

And humans aren’t robots.

Whether the left wants to believe it or not.

 

 

 

 

 

428 thoughts on “No Feet Sally And the Denial of Human”

  1. “They believe rules are a kind of magical spell, and if they exist everyone obeys it.”

    Except, of course, they bend, break and violate the rules all the time.

      1. If you believe Robert Sawyer’s latest, then yes, liberals are real humans, the rest of us are just zombies or sociopaths.

        1. Well, I do believe that there’s something fundamentally different (neurologically?) between leftists and normal folks.

        2. Not entirely related, but, having actually had this conversation:

          “You do not consider him human, do you?”
          “I am quite willing to classify him as human. So long as it’s understood that I am most definitely not.”
          “Ouch.”

          1. Yep, I thought he was nuts to believe that “Free Will” is an illusion and people only “want to believe they have it”.

            Now, he writes a book where only a few people have “Free Will”. 😦

            2. It’s easy to see why some folks don’t believe in free will. If you aren’t constrained by any mechanical process (biologically speaking, quantum physics aside), if all action is precipitated by some impersonal force, then responsibility is an illusion too. As is blame, shame, horror, and all the rest. Joy, happiness, contentment as well. The deterministic view of the world ultimately swallows all ambition and volition and reaps a harvest of all that is life.

              Free will, on the other hand, is some d*mn scary sh*t. If your will is *not* constrained by an outside force, then the responsibility inevitably falls solely on your shoulders. No one can *make* you angry, or sad, or late for work. It’s a frightening thing, knowing that your actions have consequences, and that any reckoning from that will find you. Free will means that you will rise or fall largely by your own efforts.

              Fortunes can and will be lost by the foolish, and made by the hard working, smart, or especially ruthless. Free will on all sides mean that you *will* be judged, for good or ill, on your words, your actions, and your very appearance. It means the only check on each man’s own innate hunger for power is solely within him, his conscience or his fear of the consequences, whathaveyou. There are no bounds naturally occurring on man’s cupidity, indeed, we are born with only the most base and low of drives, want. Whatever grace and honor we own is taught and learned in the hardest of schools, the arena of all mankind.

              I would not even say we are equally disposed towards even dealing or underhandedness, if anything the attitude of “me first and devil take the hindmost” seems if anything to be more common.

              That makes the common will to charity, courtesy, and virtue here in America all the more precious for its rarity. That is the culture we should be exporting, exhorting, and encouraging all cultures to appropriate the living heck out of. If it is not by Himself’s will that the nuts remain tight, nor by his forbearance that the path remains fair and flat- absent that guiding hand, free will must own it all and each.

              1. That’s why I keep saying there is a huge percentage of population who don’t value, or emphatically don’t want, “liberty”, “freedom”, or as you just eloquently explained, “free will.”

                1. according to them, no, your background and genes etc already determine your choice in that, even

                  1. Seems very medieval to me. A caste system and who you are and your status determined by birth. Is Bob Sawyer related to indie author J T Sawyer?

              3. Why would you not want personal accountability? You don’t have the responsibility for negative stuff, but you don’t have the credit for positive stuff either. Sounds like a horrible way to live. Unless of course you’re certain that you won’t do anything good ever. And you want to dodge the blame for your actions.

          2. Being praised by the NY Times and winning a Hugo and a Nebula are sufficient indications that he’s nuts in the leftist way.

            1. I find the idea of no free will offensive. I told him on a panel that even if it were true, it would be evil, and it behooves all people of decent morality to deny it. He was upset. 😀

              2. well, a certain segment of the left believes there really isn’t, and only if we have the exact right structure of laws and rules and equality will everyone be happy.

                These people usually have taken a job in something they basically hate after a few years…. like social services.

              3. Maybe you should have just slapped him?

                “Sorry, Bob, but I didn’t slap you, the Universe did.”

                1. A kinder person would inquire if he was familiar with the manner of Samuel Johnson’s refutation of Bishop Berkeley.

                  After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley’s ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it — “I refute it thus.”
                  Boswell: Life
                  http://samueljohnson.com/refutati.html

                  And then smack him upside the head.

        4. Haven’t read any Sawyer in, oh must be 20 years or so. I thought he had a good story or two in the 90’s, even if I did find his kowtows to Canadian style progressivism tedious.
          Has he gotten worse in the intervening decades?

              1. I must admit, as someone who has met him many times, that has not been my experience. Of course, I’ve always avoided contentious topics when talking with him.

                1. Next time you see him, tell him I said he is a dumbass. Some of the philosophically retarded shit in his books, I’m ashamed to be in the same country with him. I mean, it’s not even -good- atheism. Its just stupid.

                2. I watched Sawyer and a fan I vaguely know get into long, drawn out disagreement that involving Hollywood, the people working there, and Flashforward. Beyond that, I’ve merely seem him get snippy with people who disagreed with him at panels, be they fans or other authors. Maybe he was just having a few off days, but he didn’t leave a favorable impression in my mind.

            2. I confess that various personal events of the last few weeks have had me seriously pondering the most extreme forms of Calvinism. I stopped short due to references of free will. If man has no free will, how, then, can man be judged? Yet the tension between divine will and free will has me uneasy.

              Things are no better for the secularists who scoff at such concerns yet hold to determinism. If there is no free will, how can we hold someone accountable for breaking the law? And, if there is only determinism, how can there be rehabilitation? The most extreme forms of determinism is to write them off as terminally damaged and remove them from society, lest their actions adversely program others. Are those who hold to determinism willing to go there?

              1. Kevin,

                It is essential that what is free will from our time-based point of view can be entirely known and predicted/determined from an eternal point of view.

                If you knew every word of a book, the outcome is never a surprise. When you are on chapter two, it can go anywhere. That also applies if you are reading it as it is being written. The eternal POV has read ahead, because time is meaningless. Book at a glance reader, and the end comes out as the first page turns.

                1. Which had long been my take. G_d, being outside creation, is also outside of time. Therefore, in seeing all His creation, He may well see all events from beginning to end in panorama while we, the created within the creation, go through it sequentially in slices of moment. By that view, it makes sense that what we view as predestination is the outcome of G_d allowing the created to have free will. Thus I thought and thus I’ve taught.

                  Yet, when you get one hit after another, and your prayers not only go unanswered, but seem that the precise opposite occurs, it makes you reconsider. It would make sense if unrelieved Calvinism were correct, a feeling that G_d is telling you He doesn’t like you and to go away. That’s a similar track that the Puritans who came to the Americas thought was happening when they looked for external evidence if one was among the elect.

                  It also runs headlong into scripture, such as general calls of repentance, and when Jesus said that none who came to Him would he cast out. But at its most extreme it raises the question: If all that a man is and does is predetermined by G_d, then how can man be judged for those actions?

                  One view from within Calvinism on this is such that it fills me with revulsion. There is a danger in determining the theological by whether it appeals to us. Yet, it didn’t seem to square with parts of scripture.

                  This takes me squarely back to my former view, which seems a better fit. Yet I am uneasy as I think of the pharaoh who heart G_d hardened. And the hits keep coming.

                  1. Look again at the pharaoh whose heart was hardened. I don’t know Hebrew so I’d need to check with a Hebrew scholar to see the active/passive tense in the text, but here’s how the ESV (which is usually pretty good at being literal so that you can use it in a word-study fashion):

                    First plague: “Pharaoh’s heart was hardened” (Exodus 7:13, and again in 7:22). Neutral passive voice, no sense of who hardened it.
                    Second plague: “But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart …” (Exodus 8:15). Pharaoh hardens his own heart.
                    Third plague: “But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened” (Exodus 8:19). Neutral passive voice, no sense of who hardened it.
                    Fourth plague: “But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also” (Exodus 8:32). Pharaoh hardens his own heart.
                    Fifth plague: “But the heart of Pharaoh was hardened” (Exodus 9:7). Neutral passive voice, no sense of who hardened it.
                    Sixth plague: “But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh” (Exodus 9:12). First one that explicitly says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.
                    Seventh plague: “But when Pharaoh saw …, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart …” (Exodus 9:34). Pharaoh hardens his own heart. Then in 9:35, “So the heart of Pharaoh was hardened”. Neutral passive voice. Which implies (though not conclusively) that the other times this phrase was used, it may have been Pharaoh hardening his own heart as well.
                    Eighth, ninth, and tenth plagues: “But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart” (Exodus 10:20, 10:27, 11:10). By now it’s too late for Pharaoh to change his mind: God has decided to use him as an example, and God hardens Pharaoh’s heart. But only in the way that Pharaoh himself has chosen to do at least three times, and probably six times, before.

                    There’s a line in C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce that I think applies to Pharaoh’s situation:

                    There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it.

                    Pharaoh chose repeatedly to harden his own heart. After several repetitions of that choice, only then did God start hardening Pharaoh’s heart. Basically, God said to Pharaoh, “Okay buddy, that’s the path you’ve chosen. Now I’m going to take away your ability to choose otherwise, and you’ll suffer the consequences of the path you chose.” But God only did that after Pharaoh chose at least three times, and I think six times. God allowed Pharaoh a free choice, and Pharaoh chose to reject what God was saying. Then after repeated rejections, the choice was eventually withdrawn.

                    1. Another way I’ve heard suggested, that I rather like– God kept giving the guy the blessing of, for lack of a better word, a clue— but He didn’t force the Pharaoh to believe it. So the Pharaoh flipped back and forth between listening and not listening….then Himself stopped pulling him back. 😦

                    2. https://biblehub.com/interlinear/exodus/7-13.htm
                      https://biblehub.com/hebrew/2388.htm

                      If you look at an interlinear translation and punch through to the root word being used, it is
                      chazaq: to be or grow firm or strong, strengthen; Short Definition: strong
                      It’s used when the famine in Israel is growing stronger in the era of Joseph. It’s used when one person subdues another. The word doesn’t mean “harden” in the sense of “make less willing to bend” but in the sense of “have the strength to resist bending.”

                      I thought I’d be able to find out what tense it was, but while I can find the page with only that specific tense, it doesn’t spell out exactly what that tense *is*
                      https://biblehub.com/hebrew/vaiyechezak_2388.htm

              2. Friend of mine once said that the co-existence of free will and universal rules made him think of an extremely complicated role playing game.

                He then said that he followed his parents in paganism, as it was obvious that the game was originally designed by committee…

              3. If there is no free will we aren’t holding someone accountable but merely doing the things we are compelled to do. Even deciding if you believe in free will or not is not a choice but a pre-determined outcome.

                The evolutionary value of intelligence in such a system is what I’d like explained. If intelligence can’t lead to action different than pre-programmed deterministic instinct I’m not sure how the calorie requirement it comes with can win against systems with the same attributes (pre-programming responses without any real creativity adaptability) at a lower calorie load.

      2. I kind of wonder if the concept of “those outside (group) aren’t really people” is actually psycho– it’s not actually a normal thing to recognize universal humanity, as best we can figure looking outside of a Christian world-view.

        Needless to say, I think that it’s a good thing, since it works so much better than the various tribal options, but…..

      3. The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it.

        He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.

        ― Adam Smith

    2. Well, see, rules, like paying taxes and such, those are for the “little people” who are, of course, not themselves. Where do I go to get the magical talisman of immunity?

      * thinks a while *

      Nope. Don’t want it even if it exists. No good comes from it. And it probably shorts out in the rain…

      1. Worse. It shorts out at unpredictable times, as people have discovered when having been good little leftists all their lives, they are abruptly thrown to the wolves.

    3. Ah, but that’s THEIR rules. We are morally obligated to push them aside and, eventually, ehiminate them. Because they’re BAD rules.

      Besides. YOU’RE robots. WE’RE not. That’s why we’re supposed to be in charge.

          1. My son started (but never finished) a story in which the minotaur is a time displaced robot/AI. I might steal the idea and what he has, finish it, and publish it under both names. Called The Minotaur Does Not Bleed.

        2. Your operating system is clearly buggy. Please report to the nearest re-education center for a free upgrade.

                1. I’m a little behind on e-mail, so I replied with that one below. The song is “Threes Revision 1.1” by Duane Elms.

                1. Yes. In person and on Oathbound (a long out of print and practically unobtainable tape.) Hubby aka snelson134 is an expert on filk. As befits one of the founders of GaFilk.

              1. Windows 10?
                (~_^)
                Dad hates 10. it was mildly annoying to him on his tablet, but he just got a new computer and 10 keeps reverting his settings, forgets all kind of stuff, and loses files for him.
                If he didn’t have so much stuff that is “works on Windows only”, I’d set him up with Mint or something. He did finally drop AOL.

                  1. 2K was great, Vista was to replace 2K and XP, I suspect it was Vista.
                    it went away almost as fast as ME. I don’t think they ever got it close to right and finally stopped supporting it.
                    I had a 2Kpro box that ran 3 years without a shutoff except for power outages, and it had an UPS that would hibernate it. I still have the hard drive, and need to get it to pull off a TON of music I have on it.
                    and photos
                    and
                    and

                    2. I have a USB set up that a drive attaches to but right now it has my old laptop drive and a dongle to adapt it to the USB adapter, the box with the old drives ( I think I got 10 or more HDDs in the box. it’s very heavy) was discovered last weekend while sorting through the basement.

                    4. I loved 2000, really liked XP and had about the same feeling for 7. I have a image of 7 but my pc was an Emachine, and MS won’t activate it from a clean install . . . they demanded a disk be bought from Emachines. When that happened, I removed that drive, set it aside, and went with the smaller drive I had put Ubuntu on, with thoughts of trying to finagle a different way to get Win7 going.
                      I also had a Win7 on a laptop, but that has massive issues, it’s a Toshiba, and it runs maybe 30 minutes before it dies, locks, or randomly restarts. It even once gave an actual BSOD, and I thought they “killed the BSOD by making it default to a reboot.
                      Then the only reason I need windows at all, my Garmin GPS, died.
                      So why bother.
                      To show how bad the Toshiba is, the Garmin software would not update, and the program doesn’t connect with the Garmin when it was still alive.
                      I been running various flavors of Linux since, and been with Mint for some time now. I need to upgrade a bit though. I think I am getting some hardware issues, so I will do a reset (pull everything and plug it back on after cleaning contacts etc) and see if they go away. I’d like to be able to edit video. Nothing heavy, just edit a bit, and maybe add different sound over what’s there. But any hardware problems will give fits when rendering. I can get a newer quad core for a few hundred and get 7 pro on it then toss my Mint on and go either way again like I used to.

                  1. At work, the Texas IT guy updated all 10 and 8 PCs with 7. Only the laptops didn’t get the treatment because the company refused to let him fix those.

          1. Programmers avoid (or at least are taught to avoid) self-modifying code. But people are trying to understand self-modifying hardware. I suspect it’s gonna be a while.

            1. All this reminds me of Martin Gardner and Hexpawn. It’s a neural network made with matchboxes, colored beads (any small, colored, roundish object will do; Gardner mentioned colored popcorn), a bit of paper and glue, and colored pens. In Hexpawn, each player has three pawns on a 3×3 checkerboard. The pawns move and capture like pawns in chess.

              Hexpawn is simple enough that it’s easy possible to map out all possible moves. For each turn of play, there is one matchbox for each possible pattern, indicated by a sketch pasted on the box. Each possible move for that pattern is indicated by a different color arrow showing the move. A bead for each color is placed in the matchbox. Gardner’s example used mirror symmetry to reduce the number of matchboxes.

              You make your move, then select a matchbox that matches the board pattern. Shake the box, close your eyes, open it, and take out a bead. Make the move indicated by the color, and place the bead on the box. Then you make your move and repeat the process.

              This continues to the end of the game. If the “machine” loses, you take away the bead indicating it’s last move. Otherwise, you replace all the beads and play again. If you come to an empty box, the “machine” has no move and has “resigned.”

              This thing does “lean” to play Hexpawn quite well. It’s a bit unnerving.

              You can also set up boxes for the “machine” to move first. It just takes a different set of boxes. In theory you could play them against each other, but don’t quite remember if Gardner did that.

              1. Fred Saberhagen’s BERZERKER series started with a story where the gimmick was almost identical to what you described. He invented the berzerker to give the hero something to, um, fight.

                The berzerker was stoppable, but only if it didn’t wipe out the planet before reinforcements arrived. Or if it attacked first, and *didn’t* take him out with one shot. The berzerker had a sort of “mental jammer” that would scramble any higher thought functions. The colonists had a sort of super-monkey, able to quickly learn amazingly complex tasks purely by rote.

                The berzerker challenged him to a game rather like Gardner’s in order to determine whether all that evasion was deliberate or rote actions. He invented his version of Gardner’s “computer” to convince the berzerker he was still sapient even when the mind scrambler was on.

                I’ve had trouble gazing with wonder at AI ever since.

        4. “Three things are most perilous:
          Connectors that corrode,
          Unproven algorithms,
          And self-modifying code.”

          Threes revision 1.1 by Duane Elms.

    4. If you pass laws, then everyone will abide by them. Except violent gangsters such as MS-13 (They don’t exist). And Democratic presidential candidates (They are above the law). And undocumented immigrants (the law is unjust and should be ignored.) And other people who know full well that the law isn’t going to be enforced, because it’s too hard to get a conviction, or because there are too many offenders to charge more than a selected few, or because investigating the most frequently accused is racist, or even because the people who being paid to enforce the law can’t be bothered. Never mind all that, we need more laws.

      1. Of course. How else can you gin up the fifteen minutes hate against the subhumans that you want Lynch mobs to be sicced on.

    5. It’s amazing that the one universal commandment common to most major religions is basically “other people are humans like you are”.
      Which CS Lewis described as the “Tao”, an ur-morality common to all people.
      But being humans, we are so good at finding excuses why other people aren’t really “people”.

    6. exactly…

      They believe rules are a kind of magical spell, and if they exist everyone obeys it.

      Moreover:

      It proves they cannot think.  Why?  If laws magically made everyone obey them we would have no one breaking speed limits, running traffic lights, robbing, raping anyone or committing murder, no less mass murder. 

  2. “I mean, if no one breaks laws or rules, just say that no one can have guns …”

    Or keep it simple and just make a rule that nobody can kill another person.

    2. HA! But by their logic if they do kill you, that means you weren’t a person in the first place.

      1. That’s why I eschewed any reference to abortion.

        And no, any person who disagrees with them is not a person. Women who don’t follow the party line are not women and cannot wear pussy hats, African-Americans who dispute the party’s diktats are not African-American and so on ad infinitum.

          1. I’ll refrain from any other answer as any response by me would rightfully label me as a male privileged sexist dog. I really need to get a button that says that.

                1. I just watch clips on Tubes Of You, but she won America’s Got Talent a bit back, wears cat ears a lot but isn’t a cat person. Very Talented, was 13 and wrote all her own songs to win.
                  You could see the dollar signs in Simon’s eyes:

  3. Sarah, the one problem with your argument is that Liberals are EXACTLY the sons of bitchez that would make Sally stay home because she has no feet.

    Unless her dad was a Party member, of course. Then it would be “different.”

    1. No, Liberals are the sons of bitches who declare that “If Sally has no feet, the nobody can be allowed to have feet!”

      Except for party members, of course, who need feet to go house to house making sure nobody is hoarding feet.

    2. Like the Antifa-types who are all for peaceful protest and who are firmly opposed to violence unless they get to beat up the people they want to beat up. But heaven forefend that someone should lift a finger in self defense.

        1. This was pretty much an exact quote from the protest up in Berkeley (IIRC) where antifa got their backsides kicked – it was not fair that when the antifa protesters attacked, their victims fought back, and were so much better at it than the antifa fools.

          Not Fair! Not Fair!

          1. I don’t mind being an outlaw, as long as the law leaves me alone.

            Wouldn’t mind being a father-in-law. Might actually get to see some grandchildren that way.

          2. “Wouldn’t mind being a father-in-law. Might actually get to see some grandchildren that way.”

            #metoo well really #ustoo because for me it has to be mother-in-law. Darn kid.

        3. Certainly seems to be the policy in most school systems these days. Far too hard to determine the truth of a situation so policy is to punish equally the attacker and their victim if they defend themselves.
          This you see does precisely what it’s intended to accomplish, to absolve teachers and administrators from taking any responsibility or making any hard decisions.

          1. If I had a kid in such a school, I’d make sure he knew that he’d be punished equally to his attacker for defending himself, and therefore should have no compunction against going all in when fighting. If you’re gonna do the time, you might as well do the crime…

            1. Or your kid is mouthy and when they say “violence never solved anything” answers with “Tell it to the city fathers of Carthage.” And then they call his mom the history nut.
              And then they admit defeat and run screaming, and all is fine with the kid.

              1. 🙂 Tell it to the Confederates. Tell it to the Japanese Empire. Tell it to the Kaiser. Tell it to Hitler. I could go on…

                1. I often use “Ask the Carthaginians about that.” But have discovered it requires more historical knowledge than many people possess. Using The Confederates in many areas and… well… just not advised. But tell it to Hitler works.

                  1. was thinking dark thoughts today, in between lamenting suffering under poor management at work, and the song War! came on, and I thought, “What fool writes War is good for nothing while being descended from slaves?” but looking at all the lyrics, the idjit also thinks Che was a loving kinda person, so That kind of idjit.

              2. Clearly Madame Hoyt you have exposed your child to evil. To
                wit the statements of one Col. Dubois late of the MI. as told to us by (wait for it ) that fascist evil patriarchal (but I repeat myself) writer who shall not be named (but whose initials are RAH).

                Removing my tongue from my cheek (Do Rigellians have cheeks? or tongues for that matter (wiggles tongue in mouth, apparently we do) ). I would have paid good money to have been a fly on the wall when that happened, it must have been a thing of beauty…

                    2. Don’t feel bad Orvan, here I am supposed to be the third smartest creature in the first galaxy ( short Arisians, Eddorians and after Kimball Kinnison and Worsel (dirty point grubber)). I knew the elder son was Robert Anson, but had somehow not realized what initials he’d have for a monogram. I doff my hat to you and your husband Madame host. Well played…

              3. Of course violins alone never solved anything. You need the rest of the orchestra, or at least a band, to achieve good effect. Violins alone–

                Oh, violence. Nevermind. 😛

            2. When your kid finally pounds the little wretch who’s been torturing him, and the school threatens to kick him out for a week, you buy the kid a new bicycle and he rides it past the school every day of his suspension. Waving.

          2. Been there, done that, slugged the person who tried it, spent the rest off the week playing games at home.

      2. As Kurt Schlicter says (somewhat paraphrased), they’re going to be really upset when we start playing by the rules they set.

      3. All these protests seem to happen in places where the opposition is already determined to be… atrophied, at the least. They don’t start with the protests at the Ag campus where all the farmer’s kids hang out, or the local VFW. It’s out in places like Berkley where the antifa sympathizers are already in the majority by far.

        It’s easy to preen and posture, and make loud obnoxious statements about Nazis and call your opponents such things when you *know* they aren’t going to introduce your face to the asphalt multiple times (just so you get properly acquainted).

  8. Well said, Sarah. Now imagine how they feel when they tell us insistently, “You have to do X!” and we respond with a simple, “Nope, not gonna do it.”

    1. I think we passed “no” a while ago. With the election of The Orange One, we are now at DefCon Two, colloquially known as “Make me, bitchez.”

        1. One can only hope. The danger is if he stumbles and the Congress flips the media and Dems will treat it as if it’s a mandate from god to punish their enemies.

          1. That. Several ways things might go awry. Somebody finds some actual crime he has committed at some point, something with enough proof that he can be prosecuted – not impossible, everybody breaks some laws in their lifetime, and he has been a big time businessman for a long time, I’d bet he has at least skirted the laws more than a few times, and highly likely that he has broken at least a few bigger ones in his lifetime. With luck there is not enough proof left for prosecution, but

            if there is enough proof, enough witnesses to claim something and it looks at least plausible the scandal, with gleeful assistance by all MSM, might be enough to destroy him as a president.

            Then there is the fact that he deals. And lots of conservatives in your country do seem to be rather demanding when it comes to their leaders. They want purity. And he does not quite have that, or at least he doesn’t have that image. Easily disappointed voters and those who haven’t voted as a protest for a while (because no good enough candidates for them), suspicious of him from the start and still, and if enough of them get disappointed in him, or think their suspicions have been proved and then some former voters go for the not voting as a protest solution while others, both voters and not-voters, decide to vote against as a protest – no second term, republicans lose their majority and so on.

            This current situation is in some ways scary as hell.

            1. They want purity.
              Not really. Most of us simply want to stop “compromising” where compromise means “halfway to the left’s ultimate goal”.

              1. Sometimes reaching a goal requires a level of deception. Not “I will not yield an inch” but a more complicated path. Which for a while might also appear to give the other gamer what they want, or at least a part of what they want. But in the end will not.

                Part of the problem is of course that you can see what was going on only afterwards, and then only if the gamer on your side was good enough to pull it off. Other part of the problem: if you don’t let him the chance to play it to the end you will ruin the chance for a win.

                And sometimes your gamer of course just isn’t good enough, at least not this time.

            1. Yeah every time these idiots go off on a tangent about how evil Trump is all I can think of is the transitional president in Col. Kratman’s Caliphate. I think EVERYTHING that president did was legal and constitutional, but utterly immoral. These useful idiots have no idea the danger they’re courting until someone comes up with stuff like that. That kind of world is a dystopia of the worst sort and they’re begging for it.

              1. IIRC Buckman’s actions were only Constitutional in the sense that he had a tame Supreme Court.

                IE Buckman pardoned the murderers of any Judge that went against him so the Courts were too afraid of him to over-ride his actions.

                Also, Tom Kratman said that Buckman was effectively President-For-Life (after the Two Term Limit for the Presidency was removed) because of fraud in the election process.

                    4. Look, I’m not saying FDR was a “nice guy”. I’m saying that Buckman did things that FDR couldn’t dream of doing.

                    5. Not that I’m a fan of FDR, but he got the Supreme Court justices he wanted because he stayed in office so bloody long. They started retiring or dying towards the middle of his second term, and many of the decisions against the New Deal programs had been decided by only one or two votes – not all, some decisions were very lop-sided defeats for FDR’s policies. By the time World War II came around, he’d replaced enough justices to swing things to usually come his way. IIRC, the court packing plan actually fell apart for want of any senate support, after the senator pushing it on FDR’s behalf died.

                    6. The Senate had a bit of a running feud with FDR, mostly because he kept torqueing off his own party’s Senators while treating them like tools. So Truman had hearings as VP/president of the Senate, and the feud got worse. (As fictionalized in Advise and Consent.)

                      “Senate Diary” by Allan Drury gives all the lowdown in nonfiction form.

                  2. Buckman was an ordinary Democrat who went even crazier than the other Americans did when his family was killed. His characterization is so powerful precisely because he is an everyman, who is also a Democrat. Read Caliphate. Buckman is not clearly based on FDR.

                    Spokesman, Friends of Pat Buckman for President
                    And yeah, I am joke about that because I’m a Kratman fan and really liked the book. Hopefully no one will get to Trump’s family.

                2. As noted fully constitutional. As far as I can see in the constitution (and even in the judicial responses) the Presidents powers of pardon are absolute. The only way to stop them it is to impeach and convict the president (or remove him via 25th amendment). As the house was also with president Buckman neither impeachment nor 25th amendment removal was in the cards. However, stating ” Will someone not rid me of this meddlesome judge” ala Henry II in expectation that someone will goes WAY over the line in a fashion that even the most Machiavellian plotter might find morally abhorrent.

                  All in all no one EVER wants to see the U.S. unchained in that fashion. It would be a terror like none the world has ever known. Makes for good (albeit unsettling) reading but I’d rather see us go down fighting than that.

                  1. As you mentioned, the President’s power to pardon is absolute and Buckman used it in a very nasty way.

                    However, it’s been awhile since I read that book but I seem to remember that Buckman’s actions did go beyond “what is constitutional”.

                    On the other hand, both the Senate and House of Representatives “were going along” with him and the News Media (along with the Courts) were scared to death of him pardoning whoever murdered them.

                    Oh, Tom Kratman has said that he wouldn’t survive Buckman’s rise to power as he would have fought Buckman and lose.

                  2. He’d be better’n Trump to me.
                    But I must say, I am coming to the conclusion Trump just wants to sully 0bama’s legacy as much as possible, and no longer cares about his leftiod ideals he once pushed (single payer Canukistan style, ferinstence).
                    Whatever his reasons are, so far he is much better than I thought. I just hope he keeps it up.

                    1. And by constantly attacking him and insulting him, the Progressives will likely keep him away from support too much Progressive insanity. Although I am concerned about the increased deficit spending, but at least the increase in economic activity should improve the tax base.

                    3. I am not happy about the deficit spending, but …

                      1. He still isn’t approaching Obama-level deficits and

                      2. A good portion of what he is spending it on is legitimate and necessary; our military has been severely impaired by its underfunded operations and lack of consistent systems-development expenditure. That we are reputedly abandoning rail-gun R&D is a shame..

                    4. There I know he doesn’t care about the attacks. Even when a regular Clinton buddy, and receiving his awards from leftoid orgs for donations etc. he never got along with the press, and the hardcore leftoids (but I repeat meself).
                      Yeah, his deficit spending, “stimulous” and okaying pork were a concern, and some folks who claim being “true conservatives” and their “You know, I think Pork is effing great!” because Trump and his stances made me delete a news feed to a blog where I was the first ever commenter and long time friendly acquaintance.
                      Wasn’t that great of a loss, the commenters were worse than the blogger.
                      Trump could come out with Single Payer, 50% corporate tax, and full amnesty with full voting rights to all aliens, illegal or not, and the fools would tell you it was a good thing because Trump!

                1. The Democrat party having long ago purged the few remaining semi-sane members I think we can guarantee they’ll find someone 95% of the Huns and Hoydens would find at best unappealing, and more likely incompetent, insane and odious to rational thought. I can’t think of ANYONE currently who is a Democrat in national office or governorship that I’d consider even vaguely acceptable.

                  1. That’s possible but what really worries me is that Trump winning is a reaction to their garbage.

                    If they manage to take down Trump, what will be the reaction to “taking down Trump”?

                  2. Honestly, I’m wondering why they’re pushing for Biden in 2020—he would be older than Reagan leaving office. (And 2016 had three major contenders in the “senior citizen” bracket. I understand that with age comes experience, but I was seriously wondering whether someone was going to have a heart attack or stroke before the election.)

                    1. esp judging from how she can’t be bothered to have her staff actually you know, do basic checking on people’s claims….

          2. And Trump perfectly willing to kill troublesome Russians, despite the Left’s claims that he’s Putin stooge. Hundreds of Russian “mercenaries” learned that the hard way last week, courtesy of the US military. Defending a Kurd-held oil refinery if understand correctly. Where’s the Left screaming “No Blood For Oil?” Wait, that would detract from the “Trump is Putin’s Stooge” narrative, wouldn’t it. What was I thinking?

            1. I’d say it didn’t have to be Russians. It could have been Assad’s boys. Or Iranians. Or Norks. Heck, it could have been little old ladies from the bridge club. If you assault our people, be prepared with a lot of body bags. You will need them.

                  1. The speculation I’ve been seeing online (from those not too distracted by guns and Trump “scandals”) has been as to whether this was a monumental screw up with Russian military failing to coordinate with their “mercenaries” or whether the Russian military wanted a disposable, deniable unit for a reconnaissance in force to test America’s mettle and the new rules of engagement.

                    1. Embrace the power of “both/and.”

                      Some of the Russian military guys are very competent, but they are the ones most likely to dislike the non-proud tradition of using “mercenaries” and “volunteers” to attack other countries.

                      Since the “volunteers” usually show a lot of signs of coordination, they may have attracted the micromanagement type of Russian military leaders.

                    2. I’m going with door #2 – they played this game in the Ukraine, and that’s not the first time.

                    4. CNN has admitted to seeing the contract where the supposed owners of the Russian Mercenary Company gets 25% of the income from any recovered oil/gas fields.

                      Also at the time of the attack most of the Kurdish forces were up north defending against the Turks so evidently they thought the oil field wasn’t really defended.

                      So there is also the option of greed “quick grab the oil field while it’s abandoned and make us all rich!”

                      That means

            2. And it wasn’t directly Trump that authorized the strike. Unlike some doofuses (doofi?) that thought they knew better than career officers and micromanaged from the Oval office Trump has wisely ( man it hurts to say that) left those decisions to CentCom and theater commanders. They saw an attack and they dealt with it. Mr. Ringo’s play by play is just a thing of beauty (BRRRRT I say no more …). Basically they were teaching the “mercenaries” that if you mess with a bull you’re likely to get the horns (apologies to Orvan, no offense meant). The previous administration found force abhorrent (Back to Mr Dubois quote) and felt violence never solved anything. Add 200+ mercenaries to the shades of those who would disagree with that sentiment.

              2. “Unlike some doofuses (doofi?) that thought they knew better than career officers and micromanaged from the Oval office …”

                Their management makes perfect sense if you start from their initial premises that career military officers are a) bloodthirsty baby-killers b) ignorant uneducated troglodytes who didn’t study and couldn’t get into college c) war-mongers who cannot wait to see bombs going BOOM n spite of the fallout …

                They are probably besides themselves with fear over Trump having paced so many generals so high up in his administration.

            1. I know right!

              I still remember election night. West coast here, so didn’t have to wait until wee hours of AM for results. My comment “Holy c$ap, he won!” Dances in living room. “How many publications have to reprint!!!” The looks at NBC, CBS, & ABC were priceless! Let’s be clear first my response was the similar when Obama, Cinton #1, & Carter, each won, just no explanation mark or dancing (like “Oh C* …”.

      3. Despite the camel’s protests, they keeping add more straw to the load. When that last, little, insignificant straw is just too much… I have my doubts this particular camel will simply collapse.

        1. Yeah, but sometimes it isn’t a camel, and it’s not always helpless.

          We will fight / for bovine freedom
          And hold / our large heads high
          We will run free / with the buffalo / or die
          Cows with guns

    1. Like the advent of thumbhole stocks for so-called ‘assault weapons’ during the ‘ban’ – “You’re getting around our restrictions.” “No, moron, we’re complying with your restrictions. Same-same the ‘bullet button’ for CA-compliant sporting rifles.

      1. Or, for a more recent example, Mossberg’s fourteen-inch barreled 12- and 20-gauge Shockwave “firearms,” which fall outside federal restrictions on barrel length because they’re just long enough to qualify as a “firearm” instead of a short-barreled shotgun. So no tax stamp required by the letter of federal law (NFA ’34), at least in the free states. Not a fan of pistol-grip shotguns, but I wouldn’t mind having one just for the “makes liberals cry” factor.

        1. Ooh, 20 gauge would Shockwave would make an awesome “truck/trunk gun”, just not sure of legality having it loaded. In Florida I can have a loaded pistol (evil AR-15 with a 9 inch barrel) in the car but not a long gun. What’s the rules in other states?

            1. those don’t count as long guns either. they are in a weird place that makes me hesitant about them , and the BATFE can make an ‘administrative ruling’ at any time that turns them into NFA firearms. I already have something like that with my AR pistol…

              1. You also have a few states with some quirky definitions of “handgun.” Mine has a barrel length limit; a couple have weight limits.

                  1. Arkansas 5-73-301:(4) “Handgun” means any firearm, other than a fully automatic firearm, with a barrel length of less than 12 inches (12″) that is designed, made, or adapted to be fired with one (1) hand

                    If you have a CHCL, you can’t carry, say, a 14″ Contender or a 16″ Buntline. But if you don’t have a CHCL, you can carry anything that’s not prohibited by Federal law. You don’t even have to conceal it. But we’re talking law, not sense…

      3. Nonono. Complying means getting down, offering them up your only means of defense and tugging your forelock to acknowledge their godhood

        1. Bwahaha! They really believe that we would bow to those parlor pinks who’ve never been in a physical fight in their lives, and faint at the sight of a gun?

          1. So far they’ve drawn a lot more blood than any on the opposing side. And they seem very able to drive you from society.

        1. Their stacks overflowed long ago. Now they’re just spewing junk from memory where they ran off the stack. Witness Representative Pelosi.

            1. You may be correct Other Sean. Alternately the CPU is failing badly. Something is wrong but that district will send on anyone with a D after their name.

  11. I saw someone on tumblr point out that at Hogwarts all the teachers and all the students are armed. 😀 It made me giggle considering how obnoxiously political J.K. Rowling has been and how often I’ve seen Trump=Voldemort comparisons.

  12. They believe humanity is perfectible. Just a matter of getting the right rulers and right method of eugenics.

    And so far they have done a good job shaping the field. No one knows the extent of these myriad govt failure. No one knows that the enemies they have identified for their fifteen minutes hate have done more for actual firearm safety than any control law. They merely have sufficient mass and noise to control the narrative and destroy their enemies.

    GQ apparently had a piece recently on Russel Brand. Because he didn’t support the pantsuit he was effectively blacklisted. And the judicial system kept his payments to ex at same level. Great way to destroy a man.

    Today if you even seem to twitch out of the box people want you in they feel justified in not shunning or live and let live but destroying you. The mob has been given its target.

    The sole outcome of this tragedy will be disassociation of companies with any firearms supporters. And if silicon valley doesn’t identify them as terrorists and shut down accounts and blacklist them from services I will be surprised.

    And yet they will continue. Again and again and again.

    1. And more, they believe that they are examples of those perfect humans, or at least are approaching such perfection. But as has been noted above, us normal folks are rapidly reaching the point where we refuse to accept anything they say without checking first, and possibly without even considering it at all.

      1. Ah, but they mean well. And of course that excuses any mistakes they might make. At least to them.

        The frequently amusing part nowadays is that now hell of a lot of time it does not excuse those mistakes – when said mistakes raise any doubts as to whether the person might not be quite as fully liberal as they should be – in the eyes of their fellow liberals. They now seem to quite eagerly attack people who thought they were among friends because liberal too. 😀

        1. I agree, watching them eat their own is wonderful. Schadenfreude is not something to be disparaged! As for being well-meaning, we’ve all recognized for a long time that results don’t matter to them, only their (in their minds) good intentions.

    2. Okay, I’ll support their eugenics program. I get to be the one to choose who breeds with whom though. Otherwise, the deal’s off. And they have a bad track record of breaking deals all the time.

    4. “The sole outcome of this tragedy will be disassociation of companies with any firearms supporters. And if silicon valley doesn’t identify them as terrorists and shut down accounts and blacklist them from services I will be surprised.”

      Voila. Or violins. Whatever.
      http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/businesses-cut-nra-ties-as-
      pressure-campaign-mounts.html
      “Companies like Hertz don’t have that much power, of course, and this week’s measures are aimed only at the NRA, which, with its increasingly unhinged platform, is doing much to isolate itself from the mainstream. Still, it’s another sign that American public opinion on guns may be shifting, and that the usual corporate impulse to avoid riling up firearm enthusiasts may be fading.”

      http://www.bookwormroom.com/2018/02/23/check-what-business-thinks/
      “Last year, I introduced What Business Thinks, a database I created that has information about over 5,000 businesses and their stances on various hot topic issues, everything from pure politics, to guns, to LGBT stuff, to climate change, and more. With the Left escalating its insane attacks against the NRA, I’ve spent the morning updating the app with companies that are refusing to do business with the NRA (First National Bank of Omaha) or that are cutting out benefits once extended to NRA members (Hertz and Enterprise). It therefore think it’s time for people to bookmark the website on their computers or smart phones so that they can make sure they’re doing business with companies that don’t hate them and everything they stand for.”

  13. And this is the problem with their worldview. Sarah says “robots”, and that’s the same as saying they’re “perfectable” or yes, “programmable”. Or “widgets”.

    But, remember that not all of the oppressive number of rules is because they actually want to program us for good. Some of it is for control – because the more rules, the more likely you are to have broken some number of them, which means they have a reason to accost/harass/arrest you. (Which is where Phantom’s comment comes in.)

  14. Time and again we see that this is precisely what progressive lefties do.
    There is no good argument against taking teacher and staff volunteers, giving them lethal force training, assigning them some sort of special deputy status, then allowing them to be armed on school property. Might just stop a shooting in progress, but is much more likely to prevent one entirely as the twisted sort who would commit such atrocities are drawn to soft targets.
    So the left as always creates a strawman superficially similar to the situation they have no counter to. So what we really want, they will tell us, is for all teachers to be armed to the teeth, and that means blood in the streets. Which is by the way one of the anti gun left’s favorite terms. Every time a state enacts concealed carry or relaxes some gun control law blood will most certainly run torrents through the streets of our fair city!!! Except it never does, but that doesn’t stop them from making the same tired predictions again and again.

    1. Remember, they consider themselves the ne plus ultra of humanity and they know that if they had access to guns they couldn’t be trusted not to shoot anyone they find distasteful, so they’re quite sure that all us (normal) lesser beings would be even worse, going around shooting people just for the experience…it’s classic projection, which explains a very great deal of leftist thought.

      1. Which is why any teachers who object to firearms training and carry-by-teachers should be prohibited from having a weapon on campus… they obviously don’t trust themselves to behave sensibly; who are we to argue??

        1. Oh I fully agree. The last thing I would want is one of those weepy folks getting a hold of a weapon. They might hurt someone! And they might require us normal folks to put them down, which would engender more paperwork than I care for.

      2. “they know that if they had access to guns they couldn’t be trusted not to shoot anyone they find distasteful, ”
        You will recall that this is analogous to why so many strains of Islam-in-practice require women to be “modestly covered” (modest to the extreme!): because the men can’t be trusted not to rape any female whose face and body they can see.
        And evidence from Europe is that they are totally correct.

    2. Strange, but I haven’t seen any blood in the streets in Vermont. Guess that argument isn’t any good after all.

      1. That’s the thing, it was never any good, but the hard corps anti gun left keep on using it anyway.

    3. And the only place where blood does run in the streets are the cities with draconian anti-gun laws!

        1. I have (older) family there, and any anticipated funeral plans do not involve setting foot in the city. 25 years since I last did that, and I plan to keep that streak going.

    4. “So the left as always creates a strawman …”

      That’s because they want teachers and children to die.

      1. Because the death of others is such a small price to pay in order to support a narrative they believe will ultimately result in the glorious socialist revolution.

      2. “That’s because they want teachers and children to die.”

        Which makes what they scream at the NRA and anyone else who opposes them yet another example of projection.

        It’s that shrill screaming of “MURDERER!” “YOU WANT KIDS KILLED!” to lead me to believe it the part I quoted is not unfair to say about progs. At all.

        1. *sigh* “…that leads me to believe the part I quoted is not unfair to say about progs. At all.”

    5. First they came for the students, but we armed the teachers and no little attention starved weak willed p*ssy wants his epitaph to be “and the janitor cussed as he cleaned up the little crapstain’s brain,” so they didn’t go there.
      Then the theaters started giving discounts if you showed your concealed carry license when you bought the tickets, and no little cockroach in human giuse wants his blurb in the newspaper to be “got rubbed out before he even got to the show,” so they didn’t go there either.
      Then national reciprocity finally got some legs, and they didn’t know where to go, because absolutely *anyone* could be armed now, most anywhere (and those few places were under armed guard with high security regardless), and folks were astounded as the crime rates began to drop, even in D.C. and Chicago…

      1. Not to mention the churches that forbade members from packing during services suddenly started experiencing a dramatic drop in attendance.

        1. I heard in a panicked sounding CBS radio report, Texas, finally changed their CCW laws to allow carry in church. Yes, it was not allowed for some stupid hangover reason. You’d think they’d learned better after the Luby’s incident. There was an attempt at a church shooting some years back at one in CO, and a lady guard for the church stopped it cold.
          After Sandy Hook, Texas allowed teachers to carry at school, so why was church carry left off?

          1. The prohibition against church carry in my state was repealed, but that did nothing of note, since most “name brand” churches are part of national organizations which are anti-gun and prohibit firearms to their congregations.

            A local friend of mine was upset enough he quit the church he was a member of for close to twenty years, found no compatible church that respected his civil rights, and finally wound up not going to church at all. And it’s a fairly common story on some of the forums I hang out on.

            No, the reason church attendance is dropping isn’t necessarily because Americans are rejecting religion, it’s because their churches are turning them out. (and that’s not even going into the new theology, which has swung so far out of line many people can no longer reconcile the scripture with what they’re hearing from the pulpit)

            1. oi, yeah
              bit hard to be very religious and an Anglican or whatnot these days. Also why so many Nondenominational crop up, though some of them are going leftoid bent as well.
              “Hey, let’s insult our core supporters, to garner accolades from people who will never join us no matter what we do!” “Capitol idea, Norbert. That just might work!”

            2. Oh, and when Texas passed its stupid open carry law, a sign proclaiming “We’re skeered of guns, don’t be comin’ in here with one” showed up on the doors of the local DQ, their custom dropped right off, and even the local cops stopped going in (hey, it had no law enforcement exclusion on it), they “fell off” not long after, but everyone was down the street at Wattaburger and Chicken Express.
              Leaning on my bike, waiting for my order, I saw one family walk up to the door, see the sign, and walk over to Sonic next door while leaving their car parked at DQ. None were visibly armed, but I guess their point was well made.

              1. By “its stupid open carry law” I assume you mean section 30.07 of the Texas Penal Code. Which part of it do you consider stupid? The part where stores are allowed to post signs forbidding open carry, which the person then has to respect? Or some other part of it?

            3. Y’all should check out the various varieties of Eastern Orthodox churches. We are Russian Orthodox, and I think you’d be very pleasantly surprised at the conservative theological doctrine you find there.

            4. There is a mistaken belief that in order to appear attractive to new converts, one must comply with the world. That’s a big no-no. Besides which, why are they trying to conform to a world system that has no use for Christians?

              This is a big failing in the Scallywag Baptist Convention. In trying to win converts, they are trying to appeal to the world. The two are not the same. If the infamous tweet this week by that Teen Vogue writer didn’t clue them in, nothing will (and it probably didn’t).

              Meanwhile, they are ignoring existing members. It’s become such that I don’t count on seeing Baptists in times of distress, whether it’s members or preachers. That is a huge factor in people drifting away from SBC churches.

              The other is teaching the precepts of men in place of those of G_d, and no I don’t mean doctrinal issues. You won’t find it in confessions of faith. You will hear it from the pulpit. It’s gotten so that I call one minister “Caiaphas,” and I used to respect him.

              Put the two together, and the whole thing feels phony. Gone is a vibrancy I remember. And that’s why people say “what’s the point?”

            2. The closest we’ve come to a Nehemiah Scudder situation was when the 9th Circuit ruled the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional. The reaction among more than a few nominally religious was to link patriotism with religion. And the hairs stood up on my neck, because that is a most dangerous combination.

              1. All things with power are dangerous.

                Frankly, if your religion doesn’t touch politics, it’s a rather odd philosophy to form your life around, isn’t it?

                1. It doesn’t worship the US – yet. That was what was so scary. At one point, to be a good Roman you had to worship the state gods. Some of the backlash against the 9th Circuit ruling was within a hair of that.

                  We do not want to go there as a country. We really don’t

                  1. Folks have been claiming that any religious person who doesn’t act like the US is ancient Rome is doing such as long as I’ve been alive; I’ll worry about it when I actually see it from religious folks, rather than the Left.

                    Idolatry isn’t new, but we’ve already got people who place government in the spot of religion. They’re called “progressives.”

                    1. That said, one should wonder what one is willing to do in order for their ‘religion’ to ‘progress’. If their religion is Progressivism, what sacrifices and penances are they willing to give?

                      As of the most recent shooting? I’m starting to wonder. And I don’t like where my thoughts are going.

      2. When I was very young, I once asked my mother why we never went to any of the other banks in town (I had heard that they had better candy…)

        She nodded towards the older gentleman sitting in one of the lobby chairs. He was a fixture there – he came in to socialize and tell stories to people; this was long before the advent of the ATM, and cash was the normal way to pay for everyday expenses, so a large part of the town showed up there at one time or another. She then told me that the S & L up the street had been robbed twice in the last year. The other bank, a couple blocks away had been robbed three times. Our bank – hadn’t been robbed since before I was born.

        I really didn’t understand right away. After we were outside, she asked me if I had noticed that the gentleman always had a pistol just like my Dad’s (Colt .45). Told me that it was always fully loaded, too.

        Just one of those little lessons you learn as a youngster (or used to, anyway).

  15. Of course, then you have to outlaw explosives, and also knives and eventually butter knives. And perhaps frozen legs of lamb.

    Or fire. The top two casualty-producers in school attacks are explosives and fire.

    Gotta outlaw fire. It’s for the children.

      1. And gas stoves. I hate cooking on electric stoves. I read something a while back about electric cars and the grid. I was very surprised to find out that a large number of people heat with electricity. Who does that? It’s crazy expensive compared to natural gas.

          1. If it’s a manufactured home (pretty common in rural areas), electric is almost impossible to avoid. Rates aren’t too exorbitant here, but it’s a Really Good Idea for another backup means, preferably something that doesn’t need mains power.

            The small city has natural gas, and one town got one after a new pipeline was built nearby, but no sane entity would try to outfit our rural area with natural gas. OTOH, lots of propane.

            1. I was always amazed at how widespread Natgas is up here (we got it well outside of town in the 70’s) as well as in Louisiana (some places out on the bayou got it) and yet in Texas even parts of DFW might not have it.

                1. Alvarado had it in town, and parts of Burleson had it. B’son had odd subdividing where some of the services were not brought in for whatever reason. You’d get no cable or gas, but city water, or all (water, gas, fiber line phone/tv/net) were provided by contracted services. Although, getting the lines deep enough in a lot of places is probably the deciding factor. Hard to get down far enough when you need to slot the bedrock. Not that big an issue in B’son and Alvarado, but Aledo, or whatnot? I knew a guy with 24″ of soil in his yard only because they brought it all in. They jack-hammered his pool into the ground.

                  1. My soil is a mess; the hollows tend to have 5+ feet of pumice, while below that is a thick layer of shale. Trenching in shale is tough, but barely do-able with a large backhoe; the pumice is easy, with just enough clay to keep the thing from collapsing. The ridges have a thin layer of soil over shale; footings work easiest with a jackhammer, though I’m usually stuck with hand tools.

                    I’m lucky; no lava flows where I have to dig. I get some rocks, ranging from 2″ obsidian balls to the occasional 7-8ths buried boulder. The bowling ball sized ones can be a pain. Excavation on a lava flow needs dynamite.

                    2. Yeah! Fortunately, I don’t have that. Some areas of the county use geothermal heat, though the mineral content makes for some interesting challenges.

          2. Depends. If a central heating/AC unit, not that much. If distributed electric baseboard heating with window or split unit AC- a lot.

          3. $10,000 – 12 years ago. Converted from ceiling electric heat (supplemented with wood insert) to gas furnace, installed in attic, forced air through the floor. Cost included furnace & installation of all ducts. Actual amount saved was about $100/month so net zero cost was 8 years 4 months. Savings would have been faster if we actually hadn’t been using wood stove for heat (couldn’t turn ceiling heat 100% off, plus there were the areas wood heat didn’t quite reach).

            No, can not add the cost of wood to heating costs because we had free easy sources of good firewood. Wood Insert had already paid itself off with the savings already saved from ceiling heat. It was the problem that the free access, or access at all, was going away, plus we finally got access to gas lines, that was the deciding factors in the conversion.

            1. We have trees on the land, so I’ve never needed to get a permit to get wood in the National Forest. Still, between getting the logs cut to stove lengths and splitting the rounds, it cost $50 a cord when non-oxygenated gas cost around $4.00 a gallon. It should be about 20% cheaper now.

              I have a wood stove in the barn/shop. (Only place for wood heat) An oil (kerosene) stove is set to keep things from freezing, but if I want to work in there in the winter, I start the wood stove in the morning and do something else for a couple of hours. That stove is far more efficient than the old one, but it can’t put out as much heat as the old beast. Worse, all our wood is pine, so not much heat content.

              The house is set for electric forced air. Not super powerful; it was -3F this morning, and it took 4 hours to get from 62F to 68F. (Worst I’ve seen it all winter, but it was uniformly cold last night; most times we’ll only lose temperature just before dawn.) Still, there’s no safe way to change to gas forced air. We have a propane stove that’s set for 30,000 BTU for backup and assist.

                1. Oof! The weekly ad paper (what’s left of it) has Lodgepole Pine, split and delivered for $180 a cord. We don’t get hardwood; oak likes a lower elevation than we have, so it’s pine, juniper, pellets, or pay a whole lot. I cleared several large juniper trees from the land; they’ll catch fire easier than the Ponderosa pine that’s the other climax species here. (The Lodgepole was largely logged out in the easy areas, but there are some stands of it that were skipped when it was being logged for box shook.)

                    1. Oh yeah, shipping from southern Oregon to Texas would be spendy. 🙂 Hardwood firewood is pretty much non-existent in our county; Oak grows on the west side, but when I researched it (years ago), Douglas Fir was popular for firewood over there. If I could even get Oak, I think I’d pay the same price you are seeing. That stuff is heavy.

                      The nicest firewood I ever had was when I had to take a rotten Walnut tree down; it was too far gone for woodworking, but it sure smelled good when it burned.

                    3. Yeah, around here, once you get east of US395 (Lakeview, near the California/Nevada line), you run out of forest in favor of scrub and high desert.

                      Yeah, transport costs are a major factor in firewood pricing, whether you cut it yourself or buy it. You burn what you have, even though Those Better Than Us think poorly of burning softwoods.

                    4. Can usually get juniper for the cost of “I will come and get it out of your way,” if you can network.

                      But it’s not very tree-like trees, the dang sage brush can get taller!

                    5. Depends on the juniper. The local stuff grows 50’+ tall, with a 30″ trunk. We’re pretty much at the dividing line for the trees; south of us is full of juniper, while north it’s ponderosa. One of the main routes to the city entails going by big stands of juniper; a well-aimed lightning strike could clear a few hills. The more wary homeowners keep those trees well away from the house.

                      (It’s fun when the berries get over-ripe and start fermenting. We get a fair number of drunken birds in late fall.)

                      Juniper also likes to get punky in the middle of the trunk. One of our neighbors built their house with a juniper as a specimen. It might clear the house when it breaks. A friend lost a car when a juniper split.

                    6. I meant over in the high desert area– until I was 13, our Christmas trees were always juniper that we “paid” for that way, and they really are rather nice fence posts.

                      They also drink water like crazy– dad took a creek that was “there’s a little water, a few weeks in the summer” and went nuts cutting back the juniper from it, only about two pickup lengths out, for a mile or two. Not even all the way back up to the foothills, although it did make it easier for other folks who were doing the “if you want free firewood, cut here” deal* to also.

                      It now has a few weeks when there isn’t water……

                      * Technically, you cut up trees someone else took down. There’s just a “deal” that you chop down as many as you take, so it can dry enough to use…..

                    7. One local guy has a business for juniper products (fence rails, posts and whatnot). He gets most of his wood for the cost of getting it. The few lumber operations left around here consider it a weed species.

                    8. My Dad used to make some really nice furniture out of juniper. Last year I bought a baulk of it from a lumber mill to make some rifle stocks from. The local variety is bright red with yellow and orange stripes; they call it “cedar” here, but it’s juniper.

                      Juniper has lots of little knots that have to be dealt with, and it’s not a particularly strong wood, but for a well-bedded small caliber it should do.

                    1. The last time we were in California was a day trip to Lava Beds National Monument. $SPOUSE has a brother and nephew in the SF Bay area, but neither of us want to set foot in that state again. It’s not just the financial cost; the coastals are determined to squash the inland area.

                      Oregon is cheap for some things, like local firewood, because of A: availability and B: lots of former loggers who need some money. (The greenies think that lumber companies are the embodiment of eeeeevil, to the point where they’ll tie up salvage logging after a big fire. The big fire near Brookings was partly fueled by dead trees blocked from salvage logging after a 2002 fire. Sigh.) Energy costs are so-so and rising, while liquid fuels tend to be high; our governor seems to think that because her last name is Brown, she should channel Moonbeam.

                      (One worry of mine: if CalExit happens, I could see Oregon trying to do the same, while trying to drag the eastern counties down the same rabbit hole.)

                    3. Unfortunately. Not even all the coastal counties. Just those with the big cities populations, which unfortunately is most the population. Being in Lane County, I’m SOL without moving regardless. WA state is in the same situation. So I vote as irritating as CA is, please no CALEXIT. Would rather invite Mexico to become a state. At least cleaning up those problems would leave the rest of us alone for awhile (maybe, or one could hope).

                    4. Re Texas: I’d be tempted, but $SPOUSE has a hard time with heat. If things go sideways, we’ll work towards the state of Jefferson. If that fails, I’m guessing Idaho. I’m 65 and really would like to not relocate.

                      I have loose ties there: My mother was born in Dallas (Grandpa Pete was a journeyman carpenter at that time, with an emphasis on “journey”), and a cousin was born near Laredo when my uncle was training in T-33s (later to become a navigator on KC-135s)

                  3. Pete, what we get is oak. Hickory, mesquite, and pecan is about $265 for a half face cord. If you want pricy, they’ll provide pinon for $475 per half face cord.

                2. $125 not dried or $175 dried per 1/2 chord is what I’ve seen advertised. But anything over the cost to go get it is “too high”, when you are used to going a mile & loading it for free.

                  Only reason we know what wood is going for is because we researched getting a bin (normally slotted for burn silo) for $300. Got 5 1/2 chords out of it. If Boy Scout troop does this & sells the wood they could have netted $1000 over a few weekends of work. Sounds good right? Not when Christmas Tree pickup nets them $8000 – $12,000 for a few weekends of cold wet work (amount varies & we’ve heard has dropped due to other groups catching on).

                  To head off what a scout troop does with that kind of money. Troop keeps 1/2 of net proceeds to pay for shared equipment, like tents, etc., contributes to high adventure fund, & pays for scouts Buckskin training camp. Scouts share is based off of hours worked (hey, $8 – $11 hourly tax free pay for 12 year-old!!! nothing to sneeze at). Scouts can use their accounts for Scouting activities including dues, gas fund, equipment, summer camp, & high adventure activities. Our son, after his first year, self funded all his scouting with fund raiser money, including 6 years of dues & gas funds, 6 years of summer camp, 4 troop extra high country backpack week long trips, 2 national jamboree trips, & one high adventure trip for both him & his dad; not bad.

              2. Local mill reject pile, until one of them put in an electrical generator that burns bio-fuel, now those piles go into that. Better clean up & less liability. Just not worth it to go national forest/BLM permit route, eat up the cost savings in transportation, if the wood was even available (since it is limited to slash piles & federal land logging = what logging? N/A on private/corporate lands unless you work for them). As far as splitting wood. That’s called “son” once he hit 12 or 13.

                I’ve got a great video of him “hlping” at about 30 months. Dad & Grandpa were splitting wood using an old power splitter for both us and my folks. He was helping stack the wood in the back of the pickup for grandpa. Steps: 1) Pick up one of split pieces, 2) put on box behind pickup, 3) climb on step, 4) put wood from step on floor of pickup, 5) crawl into back of pickup, 5) put wood in row in pickup. He didn’t get the row very high or very packed; was redone during his nap), but he ‘hlpped’.

                That power splitter? It’s 40+ years old. Purchased by my in-laws mid-70’s, now we have it, used by my folks & others who splitting wood is problematic anymore. Still works.

                1. The former owner of my place left his splitting wedges behind. Ponderosa and juniper don’t have a nice grain (Lodgepole does, making it popular for firewood), so the 25 ton splitter comes in handy.

                  1. LOL. You think I’m talking about NOW? No. Not. Down to our last 2 chord or so, all split; that’s down from about 15 chords built up & replenished constantly over the last 40 years (moving was so much fun). Last move 29 years ago, that was my young cousins sole job, youngest was 14. Load the truck with wood, Uncle drove it, they unloaded & stacked. Took them 2 days.
                    This year’s burning should have almost cleared it out. Just haven’t started a fire. Hubby wants to keep some for camping, but a lot of places we go frown on that. We haven’t gotten wood now for at least 7 years.

                    1. gotcha. Hubby’s family have a farm in S. AR near El Dorado. It is in fact now a tree farm because it isn’t farmed anymore. It’s a vacation home.

                  2. I have a bunch of rounds that are waiting patiently to be split, and we have some trees near the fence that should come down. I have about 15 cords in a shelter; in a normal winter, I’ll go through 1-2 cords a year. Less this year; not getting much shop time with the eye procedures. (One to go, I think.) We’re not set up for wood heat in the house.

                    If it’s bigger than 18″ or if it’s remotely tricky, I’ve learned to let the pros do the work; those trees by the fence qualify in both criteria. Once it’s down, I can get them into lengths that can be moved with a trailer or fork-lift tines on the tractor; that beast has been one of the best investments we made up here.

                    For splitting, I set up stuff to minimize carrying. Rounds go into a trailer, loaded by hand, or if too heavy, with help from the tractor/loader. The splitter is set next to the fire wood stack, so I can fill a wheelbarrow with split pieces, then turn around and stack. It takes a while to set things up, but I can split a bunch of wood once it is.

                    1. “If it’s bigger than 18″ or if it’s remotely tricky, I’ve learned to let the pros do the work;”

                      LOL. Hubby when in college worked for a district USFS fire crew. He was one of the ones who cut down danger trees. When it came to our front yard Giant Sequoias, it was: “No. Not a chance, no way.” (& those were the polite phrases.) They were only “45 years old”.

                      FYI, I got 3 quotes out of 10, from local professional Tree companies that fall residential trees. The 7 who declined “Thanks, but no Thanks”. Two 10′ by 10′ at ground level stumps, each. 6′ DBH at height 6′. 36″ at 42′ + another 24′ to tops (as in 6 tops between the 2 trees). Limbs that came down, averaged size at the trees were between 1 & 2 feet, & heavy. All average for Giant Sequoias. Oh yea, & one very pissed off squirrel (well the one who stayed & rode the top down, have video, yes it survived).

                      No. Did not keep wood for Firewood. I still have about 2 yards of chips trying to get rid of just from the stump. Neighbors have been helping.

                    2. We run the opposite extreme in growth rate. In ’04 I had one of the locals cutting down a few trees, and I tackled a 9-12″ sucker off a bigger tree. I got curious and counted the rings. 70 years. (It was shaded by the bigger tree, but Zone 1 means the trees are going to take a while.)

                      There’s an oddball pine in one of our meadows that someone planted in the ’90s. I’ve seen signs of growth, but not much. It has decent light, but shale is 6″ down. Tough little guy.

                      Our big pines run 36″ at waist height. I like to take 4′ lengths to the round-tuit area before breaking them up to stove lengths, but the bottom sections can weigh more then 600 pounds. That’s the limit on my tractor’s loader. I’ve found a few alternative plans, with dragging the pieces last in preference.

                      We had a woodpecker family who were nesting in the garden’s juniper gatepost stump. I’d see a little redhead popping up when I’d go to water. The family cleared out when the little guy learned to fly. Pretty sure he’s been around a few years, going after bugs in the stumps.

                    3. We did count the rings on the Giant Sequoias . The reason it’s known the age is a developer planted Giant Sequoias & Redwoods, in new developments, all over Eugene & Springfield in the 1970’s. Now that they’ve gotten huge, most are coming down because they are close to houses = foundation problems. Ours hadn’t hit that yet, but between yearly “don’t park there if you don’t want dimples in your car” (cones are small but hard baseball solid) & 2016/2017 ice storms, where 2′ branches came down narrowly missing the house, we were done. Giant Sequoias & Redwoods grow here very well when planted, but well outside their natural range & seeds don’t propagate naturally.

                    4. Oh yeah, breaking up the big pieces is fun. 36″ trunk, 20″ chainsaw. I like to do the stumps at close to ground level, and that takes some planning. (I won’t have the pros do the stumps after one caught a nail on his 48″ saw. My chains are a lot cheaper, and have only lost 1 to a nail.) The downside to residential mills; people will attach most anything to a tree. I have one wrapped in fence, and have had some cables or wires in high branches..One of the problem trees has a vertical 2 x 12, about 10′ long attached to the trunk.

                    5. “Oh yeah, breaking up the big pieces is fun. 36″ trunk, 20″ chainsaw.”

                      It was interesting watching the contractor take the last 6′ of stump down to ground level 10′ diameter. I think they had to take it out in 10 or 12 chunks, both because of saw vs size, but weight they could maneuver with the equipment on hand. We actually got a good discount because the contractor took 4 – 17′ logs out of the two trees, plus took as many large chunks out of the bottom 6′ as he could. Logs were to be milled for trellises for him, his log truck self loader, miller, and the smaller pieces he was offering to a carver.

                      Have a friend who had had to have some old oak trees removed for safety reasons. I think he has about 25 chord of wood stacked around his 3 acres. Stories he has told about breaking up the stump chunks, as he calls them, have been epic.

                    6. Back about a decade ago we had an ‘almost tornado’ come through the Chicago suburbs one day during the workday. There was cloud rotation and it took the tops of all the trees about 40feet up but since it didn’t touch the ground it wasn’t officially a tornado… Damage path was about a half mile wide and 15 miles long iirc.

                      At the time my Non Profit had a big triple trunk umm maple I think it was about 40 feet high and base diameter of about 4 feet each, about 10feet from the front of the building. Looked like it was a common rootball but all three trunks came out of ground on their own just within inches of each other. Really pretty tree(s) until that storm.

                      The storm knocked one trunk all the way over and the other 2 were leaning… Luckily all away from the building or we would have need new offices for a few folks! All the professional tree companies were going crazy in the residential areas getting trees off houses and driveways so our Facilities Dept took them down the rest of the way pulling with a truck and chain. Got the tops cut off and out of the street asap and pondered what to do with it all…

                      A bunch of us employees asked if we could have it for firewood so they cut it to lengths and we pooled $ to rent a hydraulic splitter for a day. Set it up for vertical splitting so we didn’t have to lift the bigger rounds (rolled them around and pushed over at the splitter,) We worked in teams of 4 middle aged office types for much of a day, rotating in and out, but got that green wood split down into manageable chunks to take home and let season before fully splitting.

                      Most of us just used it for ‘pretty fireplace fires’ in the winter so were set for the season. The one guy that actually heated with wood helped folks in his neighborhood in the evenings that week and the next few weekends and didn’t need to buy firewood for I think 3 or 4 years. Though his wife said the extra stacks taking up the back yard were a bit of a eyesore 🙂

                    7. “All the professional tree companies were going crazy in the residential areas getting trees off houses and driveways”

                      Our local contractors were busy with tree work from that major ice storm … ummm, I think they are still busy with work from it. Why 7 of the 10 residential companies said, thanks, but no thanks, to even bid on our trees. No way were we taking them down. All 10 said we didn’t “have to take them down”. But once the contractors crew was actually up in the trees, the crew said “yea, they did”; we agreed. Residual damage couldn’t be seen. Trunks weren’t going anywhere, but when you have 2′ to 3′ diameter limbs & tops ready to come down. Yep that’s a hazard, even if it couldn’t be seen.

          4. Yep. I would love to have gas – but there’s really no room for a propane tank, even if I did retrofit. Nearest gas line is also about a half mile away, so this neighborhood won’t have service any decade soon.

            Of course, here it’s A/C that kills you financially, at least once the monsoons come in and the swamp cooler becomes useless.

              1. Kind of? Suburbia density – right here. But the area is bounded by Davis-Monthan AFB on the west (and a relatively small reclamation yard, now defunct, but probably not developable due to environmental hazards), and the famous plane “graveyard” to the south (right across the street from me, in fact). Also, a big chunk to the east is taken up by the community college, and then beyond that is a landfill.

                I suspect that the main reason there’s no gas lines into here is that the initial development was done when this corner of Tucson was way out in the boonies (~late 1960s, early 1970s), and lines were just not cost effective to put in afterwards.

                Doesn’t bother me that much. This was one of the first parts of town, outside of the University of Arizona area, to get high speed internet, about a year after we moved – this branch of the CC was originally the “high tech” concentration (so I hear – it certainly is not now).

        2. Depends on your location. An electric heat pump air conditioner unit is quite cost effective down to about 40 degrees Farenheit. Below that it must be augmented with heat strips which does get pricy. In the South AC is more important than heat about nine months out of the year.

          1. Where you are: 1) South where cold is not a problem. 2) Public Utilities are cheap & available (WA maybe others). 3) Rural residential area & natural gas lines N/A. Sisters home meets latter 2. They have propane for propane stove, grill, & I think to heat the pool. But everything else is electric. When they have to fill the propane tank it costs $1200 – $1500 at once. That is on top of their monthly electric/water utility bills.

            1. Here in Arkansas, we’ve had probably a week of single-digit night temperatures since January 1, another week of teens, and a lot of twenties.

              It only takes one of those to freeze your pipes, and that gets expensive.

              1. Heat is energy. Cold is the absence of energy.
                Therefore cold is a void that pulls energy towards it.
                Ipso facto cold weather sucks.

        3. This has changed during my career. At one time, electric was a low percentage. Natural gas and propane wasn’t always a fancy furnace; most of the time it was a space heater. We had a whole-house vented space heater with a blower. When my parents’ central unit went out during the last cold snap, we found it still worked.

          To get an idea of how much it’s changed, when I started working at the utility, we were a summer peaking system. That is, we hit our peak usage in the summer. Now we’re winter peaking, and we’re in the South.

          When I started at the utility, trailers had only gas heat or AC central units with gas heat. This gets into the story of the guy who hooked up his trailer with a tobacco barn regulator, and it blew him out the door when he lit the heater (yep, you-light-it pilot lights). Then they went to electric. Problem was, they went to strip heat electric. So it is that it’s not uncommon for a trailer to run up a $600 monthly electric bill in the winter. When I looked into a double-wide, I planned to get my own unit, a heat pump, because resistance heat is the most expensive heating you can get.

          1. We changed the kitchen range to propane a half-dozen years ago, and depending on how much we use the propane “woodstove”, we’ll refill once or twice a year. Maybe about $400-500 annually.

            The rest of the house is electric; resistance heat for the forced air, no A/C (there’s a week or two each year when it would be nice, but we’ve learned how to manage heat in the house.) Swamp coolers are popular around here, but both of us have problems with mold. Not gonna try.

            January is usually our worst month for heating; this year it was just under $300, while last year it was at $450. (Highest month; it was cold, lots of clouds, and the billing cycle was longer than normal due to bad roads.)

            In the summertime, we drop to $110 a month. Electric rates went up a lot when we were excluded from the Bonneville hydro, and if the damnbusters get their way, it’ll go up again. OTOH, we actually have enough sun to warrant PV installations, and there’s a tolerable sized one just built nearby. $SPOUSE says it’s supposed to handle 2500 homes. (2.5MWe, if I’m guessing right.)

              1. The only time I was in Dallas (1967), it was 95F. OTOH, I grew up in the Midwest, so I know heat and humidity. Here, we get one or the other, but not at the same time. Swamp coolers work well here, but I’ll run a fan first thing in the morning in summer to exhaust the hot air; usually works OK.

                $SPOUSE figures she couldn’t breathe in Houston. She was a cold weather kid; where 70F was considered OK for swimming. Brrr!

                1. I grew up in NYC which is a collection of offshore islands. I know about humidity. You haven’t been here when it’s been over 100 for a week or two. It was that way in 2006 when I moved to the metroplex from Montgomery, AL.

                2. “OTOH, I grew up in the Midwest, so I know heat and humidity. Here, we get one or the other, but not at the same time.”

                  PNW, I-5 corridor, N of Cottage Grove. Know about humidity, but rarely combined with heat. We call it rain & it is usually Cold (capital C intended). Heat, it can get 100+ but rarely for days on end. 90+ is hot for us & a dry heat. We have had A/C in room above garage since we bought the house. But just bought a roving floor unit for downstairs last year after 28+ years (getting older + heat), no real changes to weather patterns, in fact its technically been cooler overall. Humidity possible in summer but to be fair its more “oohhh 65 outside & feels like 75”. Been east coast late July & early August, what we get is NOT “humidity”! Florida once in March. First time I ever heard “Heat Index”, my response was “what?”. Until those trips east, never knew you could breath “water”.

        4. On electric heating for homes, one thing I’ve discovered is that housing developments in less-populous, especially ones that are largely vacation/second homes, often lack natural gas. This is especially true if they’re in mountainous ares. Just by perusing house listings online I found that the developments in scenic but less-populated parts of the Appalachians and the Rockies are particularly likely to be lack natural gas lines and rely upon electric heating. The Pocono developments in particular seem prone to this. Maybe due to the cost of running the natural gas lines through rocky ground, and that electric heat doesn’t need to be running full-bore through the winter in vacation homes?

          1. Don’t know. But natural gas lines are a thing of the towns around here, and anyone else that uses gas uses propane. We’re talking about great big tanks. Ours was bigger than most, because in the summer we had it hauled to the tobacco barn, so it did double duty.

            I do know about a long haul trucker up North who cut back his timer thermostat and returned to find his fuel oil used up. Some timers do not get along with some automated meter reading systems. And yes, the utility ate the cost of replacing his fuel oil.

          2. Our house is a regular house with a foundation and sewer lines and electricity etc. It is in no way mobile.

        5. I have had gas heat and electric heat. I prefer gas, it actually warmer.

          Most of my life we’ve had electric stoves. When I moved out on my own the apartment had a gas stove. It took some getting use to, like the broiler was in a different place, and I had to learn not to leave things one the stove top, but I liked how it cooked.

          Wish our current home had gas.

      2. That’s not that crazy. The PETAphiles and the Vegifanatics hate BBQs because most of the time they’re cooking MEAT.

      3. I said (elsewhere) that the day they rescind the Second Amendment would be the first day of hunting season for me.

        Come after my pulled pork or spareribs, though, and it’s time to consider WMD.

      1. No Pointed Sticks? What about Tigers? and 16 Ton weights. Proper defense against Tigers is raspberries (per Monty Python’s Flying Circus) although a Burmese tiger trap baited with a tuna sandwich might work better.

  16. “And perhaps frozen legs of lamb. (Never mind.)” I saw that on The Alfred Hitchcock Show.
    ““Doesn’t have feet, will not ask them to wear shoes” is also most people’s default position.
    Because people aren’t robots.” And because most of us are way more intelligent than lefties can comprehend.

    1. See, that’s it. They consider themselves the ultimate at everything, and just can’t comprehend that they aren’t the smartest, or most moral, or not better at every aspect of life than us normal folks, people their religion tells them they are.

      1. You MUST wear shoes! Otherwise our Muslim Brotherhood will turn into uncontrolled rabid rapists because they saw a woman’s foot!

        1. But since I’m not a woman, the sight of my foot wouldn’t turn them into said rapists, right? Still, I’ll be happy to wear some steel-toed boots on the off chance that one of said rapists appeared nearby. A swift kick where it’s most warranted should solve the problem nicely…

            1. I’m pretty sure I get to decide what I identify as, be it man, woman, flowerpot, or whatever…

              1. As they get to decide what you cannot identify as — e.g., not an authentic [identity] — it stands to reason your identity can be assigned without regard to your opinion.

          2. No, you must wear shoes too! Our weaker Brothers would turn to homosexual sin at the sight of your shapely, sexy man’s foot. Even your Issa said, “Lead us not into temptation!”

        1. “Hubris” is “arrogance that offends the gods or God”.

          They Are The Gods! 😈

    2. Is that only in that show, or was it based on some novel or short story? I could swear I have also read something where the murder weapon was a frozen leg of lamb, somewhere.

      1. IIRC, I read that in a magazine (or maybe a book) before I saw it on TV. Can’t recall what magazine it was in. From Wiki”:
        Lamb to the Slaughter
        “Lamb to the Slaughter” is a short story by Roald Dahl. It was initially rejected, along with four other stories, by The New Yorker, but was ultimately published in Harper’s Magazine in September 1953. It was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and starred Barbara Bel Geddes and Harold J.More at Wikipedia
        Episode no.:Season 3, Episode 28
        Directed by:Alfred Hitchcock
        Written by:Roald Dahl

        1. Thanks. I have probably then read some collection of his short stories with that in it. Translated to Finnish, and maybe a library loan. I used to use the local library a lot once upon a time (now I tend to buy so much as cheap ebooks that I just don’t have the time to also read library books, I’m so much behind with my tbr pile all the time now that it keeps getting bigger).

  18. Tangent comment.

    I’m just finishing up this video (it appears the creator is an academic in psychology) and given our hostess’s discussion of narrative and politics and the recent discussion of oppression LARPing (which the creator also touches on in a different way) I thought it would be of interest to Huns with a spare hour:

  19. re: the liberals interpret “some teachers will be allowed to carry guns if they want it” as “all teachers will have to carry guns.”

    This is one of the points in an interview where, if it were Jordan Peterson, he’d say: No. That’s not what I said”. And there would then be a 5 minute diversion while the interviewer/interrogator tried to make him admit that that really WAS what he said.

    1. If even radical signs can be interpreted as guns, then a good many math teachers are already well armed (Not all, given that is extracting square roots by hand is too much work, not to mention racist and some kind of offense against mother nature…)
      Or perhaps I should have been suspended every time I scratched out a sentence, scribbled over it, put a solid outline around it, and then drew an extended butt, a trigger and trigger guard, hammer, and sights on it…. Clearly, I’m a threat to civilization. Should I turn myself in to the FBI?

        1. This is the problem with all of these suggestions on policies to improve safety: no matter how sensible in the abstract, they’re going to be implemented by education majors, the people who really WOULD expel Sally No-Feet for coming to school without shoes.

  21. Sniff. One of these days we’ll be able to replace all of you with robots! They’re so much more brilliant and less demanding than you useless eaters! And they’ll be better at everything than you, and you’ll have nothing left to offer us. But we’ll be benevolent and grant you a modest basic living that you’ll have no idea how to gain for yourself in this new economy where we’ve replaced all of your worthless skills. At least those of you with a place in the future.

    (In the meantime, we’ll just ignore how all of our wealth comes from foreign investments in countries with slave labor. We’re *transitioning* @#$%it!)
    /crazyleftistvoice

    1. (In case it isn’t clear via text on the internet, I’m parodying a particular strain of crazy that’s been irking me of late. Let’s blame all our economic ruin on automation! Wheee. Anyway, how is my leftist impression.)

        1. I’ve had a little luck countering the folks scared by that when I point out that it was a really big fear “way back when my family was still back in the UK,” when they started mechanization.

          Explain that even just a century ago, we had– what, 90% of the population working to grow basic agricultural stuff? Now we’re down below like 10%. But we’re not 70ish percent jobless, because people came up with different jobs, and folks who couldn’t have done the old job at all can use the tools to do it, with a fraction of the manpower.

          1. “I’ve had a little luck countering the folks scared by that when I point out that it was a really big fear “way back when my family was still back in the UK,” when they started mechanization.”

            It is interesting to read some of the things written about automation and jobs over the past couple of centuries. I have a series of posts on the history of automation (focusing on information technologies rather than power equipment) and contemporary commentary. Especially interesting is Peter Gaskell’s 1836 book ‘Artisans and Machinery’, which I reviewed here:

            https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/56406.html

            2. That was a good read– I did know about the acid thing, I think it was mentioned in either Christie or Sayer’s mysteries as an old sort of attack (as opposed to the eternal random nasty letters or the far-off but “current” bomb throwing). Stuck in my mind because of the various eastern areas that are still having issues with it.

              *****

              The guy definitely had a rosy, idealized view of the past!

          2. I know where a lot of those people went. Look at the percentage of people now employed by the various municipal, county, and state governments now vs. then.

            1. While amusing, the number of folks in food and hospitality, a wide range of data stuff, even “just” the artistic options, shop-keeping so it’s not just “When the owner’a family is awake and in”….

            2. Or employed by private business in complying with all the regulations these employees put out. All technology is a replacement for human labor. The rising global population has finally intersected the amount of labor requirement reduction gained by it, and government can’t keep cooking the statistics and hiring the unhireable to keep up any more. Oh well, the massive civil strife will cut the population back down to actual requirements.

    2. The Expanse SF series (the books) has a future Earth where everybody has a basic income—and you only really get one shot at being employed, because if you screw that up, nobody’s ever going to hire you for one of the few jobs ever again. It’s a plot point in one of the books where someone is found to be working against his employer’s interests, and he’s horrified to realize that he’s going to be fired.

      1. That seems pretty unbelievable — there will always be idiot nephews and lame-brain sons-in-law needing sinecures, as well as wives of aides needed for laundering payoffs-in-the-form-of-salaries.

  22. Tangent;

    I just realized that I await, with sour confidence, the day some brave kid tackles a would-be school shooter….and is promptly expelled for fighting.

    1. One can only pray that he be inundated with full rides to private schools. One of the few positives here was the action of the service academy. Sadly a minority and disturbingly concerning that I was not certain they would even give them a letter of recommendation.

        1. Iirc west point posthumously accepted and graduated Wang, the JROTC student that died. Apparently some part if their hierarchy is looking for folks other than outspoken communists to be able to brag about

  23. Free will, as mentioned before, apparently really is scary to many. They want to know the future. Hence, astrologers are still in business. Most royalty courts in Europe at one time had astrologers on staff, but eventually it was discarded by royals as nonsense. Although in 1993 William Weld appointed the first ever, and to date, the only official state astrologer in American history. An episode that will hopefully never be repeated.

    I’ve met a few people over the years who don’t believe in free will. No point in engaging them or trying to convince them otherwise. To do so is to feed into their delusion.

    There’s a saying, I forget who to attribute it to, that anyone who doesn’t believe in God will believe in anything. Methinks the same is true of determinists. Those that don’t believe in free will will believe anything.

    1. “Those that don’t believe in free will will believe anything.”
      https://www.chesterton.org/ceases-to-worship/

      “Finally, Dr. Pasquale Accardo of New York tracked the quote back to its earliest known appearance thus far, in the 1937 study of Chesterton by Emile Cammaerts, The Laughing Prophet, in this form:

      The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.

      Attempts to track the epigram in Chesterton’s own writings can only be described as incomplete at best. For example, an Illinoisian, John Peterson, claimed that the quote was actually an amalgamation of three passages:…”

  24. How about the dead without drugs because socialized health care can’t pay for medical research?

    1. True. Or you have to wait so long for your surgery that you die first. Don’t forget the MRSA and C. Diff. you’ll pick up in the hospital.

      Don’t forget the growing use of euthanasia in Scandinavia.

  25. “No feet Sally”… I was at the CMP National Rifle Matches a few years ago. There is a group called M1’s for Vets who help combat disabled veterans participate in the matches. One of the strings of fire is sitting from a standing start position. A line official emphatically told a young man he “must stand” to which the young vet replied “dude I’ve got no effing legs.” The line official walked away.

  26. I’ve been bumping into a worrying number of younger folk who (at least least claim) to not believe in free will, and say that their every choice is predetermined by past experiences and brain chemicals. I don’t think they really mean it or else we’d see a spike in the young liberal suicide rate, but still. Maybe some of them do think that they’re just meat robots. It’s got to be a depressing way to go through life.

  27. “people are neither robots nor computer programs”…a bureaucracy can give a pretty good imitation of a computer program, and a badly-designed one at that, as with the police in Sweden giving parking tickets to cars that had been burned out in a riot, and Minnesota school officials who refused to let students get into cars when they had to leave the school (because of a fire alarm) in freezing weather.

    See Attack of the Robot Bureaucrats:

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/42083.html

    1. This in particular seems to me to speak to the situation of the Broward deputies who waited outside the building instead of confronting the shooter, when viewed in the context of the well-established “don’t discipline criminal behavior here” position of the schools:

      https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/42083.html
      Attack of the Robot Bureaucrats
      Posted by David Foster on March 9th, 2014

      “And, of course, the human components of those bureaucracies–the individual bureaucrats–can usually feel confident that as long as they follow the rules, they will be personally protected from adverse consequences–no matter how much harm is perpetrated by the bureaucracy’s operations.”

      Did the deputies fall into the sci-fi AI “paralysis trap” –where the now-dominant (after Columbine) LEO command to “confront shooters asap” conflicted with the local “ignore crime” command?

      1. “Did the deputies fall into the sci-fi AI “paralysis trap” –where the now-dominant (after Columbine) LEO command to “confront shooters asap” conflicted with the local “ignore crime” command?”

        It seems likely that, if the bureaucratic commands conflicted with one another, then the wired-in Self-Preservation directive would take control, in a way that it wouldn’t had the outcome of the bureaucratic command network been unambiguous.

        1. And it has been reinforced as the deputies at worst will get paid leave during investigation. Meanwhile all of their enemies have been demagogued and battered.

      2. Note:
        the post-Columbine order is to not wait for specialists.

        There is a push, among those who do specialized training for active shooter situations, to inform officers about what it means to go in as an individual person, so they can make an informed decision.
        (approximate 60% chance of exchanging gunfire, 30% chance of being shot, although the sample size is kind of small and the “shooters kill themselves when met with resistance” is disproportionately from those who aren’t in law enforcement uniforms)

        I’ve seen a lot of folks taking “don’t wait for SWAT” as “run in the door as soon as you get there.”

        Incidentally, there’s now a sort of timeline for the shooting:
        Wednesday, Feb. 14
        2:06 p.m.

        Cruz was picked up by an Uber, before he was dropped off at the high school at 2:19 p.m., a Wednesday timeline from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office showed.

        2:21 p.m.

        Cruz went into Building 12’s east stairwell with a rifle in a case, according to the timeline. He goes “through all three floors, shooting several students and faculty inside the classrooms and hallways of the building.”

        2:28 p.m.

        Cruz got out and ran in the direction of tennis courts before going south, according to the sheriff’s office. At 2:29 p.m., it said he crossed a field and ran west with other people.

        2:35 p.m.

        Students reportedly were texting about a shooter at the school.

        http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/02/24/florida-school-shooting-timeline.html

        If we assume the deputy reached the correct building in the same amount of time it took Cruz to reach the building, that would be 2:23; if the other reports of the first 911 call being 2:23 are more accurate for this estimate (say, Cruz was videoed going in at 2:21, then took a minute to go up the stairs, pull the alarm and find someone he wanted to shoot, then another minute for someone to go “that was shots,” “shit, BACK IN THE CLASS,” and then grab their phone and dial then actually be coherent on the phone), it would be no earlier than 2:25.

        Cop assigned to school is there for 4 minutes before going in; that makes it 2:27-29.

        Which means Cruz would be gone in the flood of students before there were enough cops to cover even the minimum number of stairs. (If he went up the east stairwell, then there must be at least one other. If there was a map of the school from the inside, I haven’t found it.)

        1. Five minutes is about average for an “Active shooter,” too; better than 33% of the time, they suicide before police can do more than arrive– in 10% of the studied cases, they suicides after engaging police. (That includes getting cornered.)

          Click to access active-shooter-study-2000-2013-1.pdf

          Active shooter: basically anytime someone calls 911 because “there’s a guy with a gun, shooting people!”

          Vs “we found three dead.”

    2. You know, something that’s been weighing on my mind is that I’ve *never* worked in a large organization with a bureaucracy that actually functioned. It bothers me because our civilization depends on certain things functioning, but this sort of mindless mechanism is like a cancer that eats away at functional organizations until they are just hollow shells blindly going through the motions of what made them work when actual thinking human beings built them. Zombie firms, zombie institutions.

      (recent example #1 redacted due to the nature of my work. Good to rant into my text editor though.)

      I discovered when I worked for another place that their ballyhooed “backup system” for everyone’s data didn’t actually back up anything but certain microsoft office documents stored in certain places. When one of my coworker’s laptops was going bad, IT took it and blithely wiped the hard drive. What? They were just going to restore it from the cloud backup – no problem! Except my coworker is an engineer, and he has to use all sorts of software in all sorts of places in all sorts of ways, other than microsoft office saved in “my documents”. 15 years of CAD drawings wiped out. Chemical files wiped out. IT didn’t care.

      Bureaucracies are evil. They aren’t a necessary evil, they are cancer. They don’t function and they don’t care. They are the replacement of intelligent human judgement (responsibility and authority – they are inseparable!) with something as blindly stupid as a cascading avalanche. Never trust a bureaucracy of timecard punching automata to actually work. Our nation is going to be extremely surprised as more and more things we’ve taken for granted, once the creation of intelligent men who were given some measure of trust and resources and authority, just collapse into blind stupid failure. Our military, our large companies, our roads and bridges, our power-systems and plumbing, aircraft, etc. And after each disaster, you’re going to see some cow-stupid bureaucrat blinking at the camera and complaining about being questioned because he did his part. He blindly executed some pages in a binder. His job is done, and the rest is your problem.

      1. A CEO of my acquaintance referred to the need to ‘play Whack-a-Mole’ to prevent outbreaks of bureaucratic behavior.

        Organizations…including large organizations….are necessary to get most big things done, and can function reasonably well given management attention to (1) organization design and (2) incentive structures, as well as to the kinds of people hired and retained.

        It is important not to tolerate inaction based on narrow definitions of job responsibilities. The case of Admiral John Byng, who was shot for failure to act rather than for wrong action, may be carrying things a little too far, but successful organizations must have some of this spirit.

        1. There are some excellent portraits of bureaucratic behavior in the superb French TV series ‘A Small Village,’ which is set during the German Occupation…

          Police Inspector Marchetti he is eager to collaborate with the occupiers in the name of maintaining order and preventing chaos.

          Deputy Prefect Servier is motivated by careerism and a desire to ensure that everything is done in proper legal form. His career is everything to him; at one point he tells another character ‘This is the only job I know how to do.’

          The local Communist leader, Edmond, has completely outsourced his mind and heart to the Party. After the war, when a former comrade who has been in Siberia tells the truth about life in the Soviet Union, Edmond doesn’t want to hear it.

          I reviewed the series here:

          https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/56806.html

    3. I remember the story about the Minnesota girl in her swim suit. Forget if her mother had done that to her–if the US army had made captured terrorists stand out in the cold, nearly naked and sopping wet, it would have been an international scandal and rightfully so. Yet I’m willing to bet that not a single teacher or administrator at that school suffered any consequences for what under any other circumstances would be considered an act of torture.

      1. That’s what I first noticed about it a while back. It takes me a number of listens before I can process the lyrics well enough to start extracting meaning.

  29. The problem with making rules for every little thing is that no one can forsee the consequences of literal application. Who would have guessed that:
    Laws against killing birds would mean that very old stuffed birds would be confiscated (no paperwork on them) and that a child picking up a feather is breaking the law.
    Laws against the ivory trade would mean that old pianos and antiques with ivory in them would be confiscated.
    People running a small business could be sued into oblivion by people taking advantage of the ADA to make a buck.
    NYC anti-gun laws would be used against travelers legally shipping a gun who had a flight diverted through a NY airport.

    Of course I am joking: people warned about these consequences at the time but were over-ruled by do-gooders.

  30. When I was bartending back in the 1970s, we used the then-standard rule about men in men’s rooms and women in the ladies’ as a way of getting the pervs to not hide out in the female lav and accost them.
    If a complaint was made about pervy behavior, we just made a police report about a man in the ladies. That, alone, got that guy a trip to the police station, at which time (pre-computerized), they checked that guy’s record – often coming up with priors.
    Much easier than waiting until they’d actually attacked a woman.
    Years ago, James Neff wrote a book about the man known as the West Park Rapist (the location in Cleveland where the majority of the crimes were committed). In it, he pointed out that the perp, Ronnie Shelton, a slight man, had been stopped or picked up as a “Peeping Tom”.
    Neff wrote about this, and the change into looking at those “harmless” activities as “pre-rape” casing the scene. Up to that point, the police had brushed off those activities as minor irritations, not scouting out the surroundings before breaking in to rape – which, he did, at least 100 time.

    1. Ditto trespass, minor vandalism, and general “do things that make people uncomfortable to see what the reaction is.”

      No reaction= good hunting grounds.

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