The Howling Season

318 thoughts on “The Howling Season”

1. My primary objections are:

   1. They no longer limit their howling to any single season

   and

   2. They are no longer dismissed as the howling cranks they are.

   Treating the insane as if they are sane demonstrates a lack of the critical discernment that is the hallmark of an intelligent person.

   1. hence their attempts to normalize insanity like gender dysphoria etc.

2. What’s “sad” is that they think we’re “so dangerous” but appear to think “screaming at us” will work.

   But then, they also whine when we “hit back” after they “hit us”.

   1. Like Marxist communism is inevitable and something to work your tail off for.

   2. If they are still able to whine after we “hit back” it’s clear that they are NOT being hit NEARLY hard enough. What is “hard enough”? They go down – and don’t come back up again.

      No, I am NOT in a nice mood just now. NOTE, however, NOT getting up MIGHT still be a CHOICE, rather than a removal of possibility. MIGHT.

      1. One of the Leftist saying I’ve always despised is “violence is the last resort of the incompetent.”. Regardless of its original context, it has since been used with the smug assumption that it is irrefutable.

         So they tend to be shocked when I reply, “That’s because the competent resort to violence much earlier, when it might do some good.”

         1. Asimov’s mistaken belief that you can always finesse a situation.

            1. Asimov was also a Marxist (not that there’s anything wrong* with that.)

               *Asimov, being deceased, represents the best type of Marxist.

   3. But then, they also whine when we “hit back” after they “hit us”.

      Like when Moldylocks hit someone and then got a fist-full of Equality to the face.

      WAAAAA!!!!!! He hit a girl!!!! WAAAAAA!!!!!!

3. The thing here isn’t that we’re dealing with individual behavior, but the behavior of masses of people. And, those are not quite the same as the individual. Actually, I’d go further: They’re not at all the same.

   I’ve been a student of human behavior since about the time I figured out that all y’all do not think the way I do. I’m an aberrant outsider to most of the human race, and the mass aggregate of you…? Quite frankly, you scare the hell out of me. Y’all are entirely unpredictable, inconsistent, and totally illogical as individuals, and in the mass? Even more so.

   That said, I think there’s something to Sarah’s fears, here–But, I’m uncertain of where and what is going to happen. We’ve seen this sort of nuttiness in the past, and it’s reached a certain point, and then… Damped out. For whatever reasons.

   I’d like to remind Sarah that while the times do indeed seem dire, there have been worse–I’d point out the incipient madness of the crowd during Wilson’s administration, WWI, and the period where we decided to try banning alcohol consumption. That’s one of the most insane periods of American history I can think of, and it isn’t at all well-documented. Anywhere.

   In my family, there were folk-memories and oral tales of Wilson’s secret police (yeah, unofficial, but… Still.) coming around and inspecting private residences for “contraband hoarded goods” like sugar, confiscating them, and then redistributing them down at the local Democrat precinct offices to “good Democrats”. This was Portland, Oregon–So, that BS ain’t exactly new, nor is it particularly unexpected from these same assholes generations later.

   I don’t think it’s going to get to the shooting point, this time, either. There are going to be incidents and accidents, but the actual majority of people aren’t interested in the extremist’s rantings and desires. Most of the fellow-travelers of the Democrat insane are going to slough off like so much debrided tissue, once they see what the crazies want and are willing to do.

   What I actually think is going on right now is that the two parties are breaking up, and what will eventually emerge is going to be a collective DemoRepub center of the sane, with the idiot extremists marginalized on both sides. Trump is actually fairly well-situated for this, being more a centrist Democrat than an ideologue Republican. Where that ends, I don’t know, but I venture to predict that the nutbar Democrats like AOC are going to lead to the party self-destructing around them, and the remains coalescing around Trump and his successors, who aren’t really Republican, either. Trump is someone I’ve come to believe isn’t an ideologue, at all–He’s a pragmatist, and more concerned about making things work. Which, to be honest, I can live with a lot easier than I can the other idiots of whatever stripe.

   So… Yeah. I’m fairly certain that we’re in for some rough times, but I don’t think it’s going to get to the level of “Civil War”. I think it’s going to be more like Wilson or FDR, followed by a great amount of “Well, that didn’t work…”, and a dose of pragmatism.

   1. There’s a good case for marking Wilson as the first Fascist.

      1. Wilson was studied by Mussolini and Hitler both, with admiration for his “accomplishments”.

         I think there’s a damn good case to be made for never, ever electing anyone from the academy to high office, not unless they’ve done other, more constructive things with their lives. Wilson and FDR were both unmitigated disasters, and I think I could make a damn good case for Teddy being nearly as bad.

         1. Disagree strongly on TR. It pays to remember that he was a product of his time, dealing with the problems of the early 1900s. Yes, he may have made mistakes, but he made damned few of them.

            Not to mention that if you take the biography of any Democrat President in the last century and strip out the elected offices, they are zeros. Men of no accomplishments. TR was a war hero, historian, and explorer of note…one wonders just how he managed to squeeze in a political career.

            1. TR was a Progressive, back before we really knew where that led to. So while I think he opened a few worm cans, in his case it was inadvertent. He honestly believed that the the experts and those with training really could make things better, and that the federal government really would be a good tool to manage a country as large as the US. Maybe he should have thought a little harder about ‘What if the experts do not have all the answers,” but 20/20 hindsight and all that. Wilson? Don’t get me started.

               Jonah Goldberg’s book _Liberal Fascism_ really is a good introduction to how American (and British, and French) Progressiveism of the late 1800s and early 1900s led to Fascism. Just ignore the cover art.

               1. I think that the major difference between Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson was that while Teddy was an elitist, he was an elitist whose elite included rough diamonds with innate talent. Wilson was a dyed in the cashmere Ivy League Intellectual Elitist bigot. And most of the worst of the Left has been in his image ever since.

               2. Pity Jonah didn’t read it, evidently.

            2. TR was a war hero?

               From what I recall reading* of the Charge Up San Juan Hill he was a total disaster, saved by good subordinates, including a captain(?) of the Gatling Gun batteries who violated protocol by abandoning their assigned defensive position to deploy forward in support of that idiot charge.

               *Waaaaaaaay back when I was in fifth/sixth grade the hall outside those classrooms had “painting” on the walls, depicting famous battle scenes and explaining their significance. We need not go into detail over how I happened to spend so much time standing about in that hall as to still recall any of those captions some fifty-plus years later.

               1. Oh, one can guess. 🙂

               2. The joke in the infantry, is that a Purple Heart is an award for:
                  1) Being smart enough to come up with a plan.
                  2) Being stupid enough to try and execute it.
                  3) Being lucky enough to survive.
                  .
                  “What should have happened” is a mug’s game.
                  By the standard you’ve put forward, McClellan is the best general we’ve ever had. Followed by Bragg.
                  Napoleon “should have” been crushed at Austerlitz.
                  The Confederacy “should have” been starved by the Shenandoah Campaign.
                  Bunker Hill, Princeton, Yorktown, Shiloh, Sharpsburg, Anzio, Pusan, Chosin, and on and on and on.
                  .
                  If you personally lead a charge into the teeth of the enemy, inspire others to follow you, and seize the victory through initiative and aggression…
                  Well, you’re the very definition of a war hero.

                  1. And Medals Of Honor are often because you’ve screwed up and do a spectacular and dramatic job of getting the bacon out of the fire.
                     dramatic
                     “Often”, mind you, not “always”.

                     1. I love reading MoH citations; even when most of them end with the death of the warrior (sailor, soldier, airman, marine, coastie.) These are summaries of the final minutes of the lives of people for whom the words: can’t”, “quit”, or “stop” just don’t exist. Every one of them is an inspiration.

                        1. “Medals Of Honor are often because you’ve screwed up and do a spectacular and dramatic job of getting the bacon out of the fire.”

                           Correction: SOMEONE screwed up, not necessarily the MOH receiver. Rest of it right on.

                           Also right on is “final minutes of the lives of people for whom the words: can’t”, “quit”, or “stop” just don’t exist. Every one of them is an inspiration.”

                           1. Somebody screwed up? Not always. Fellows for “whom the words: ‘can’t’, ‘quit’, or ‘stop’ just don’t exist.“? The best of us not only do not know the meanings of those words, they cause others to forget them.

                              Tell it to Desmond Doss.

   2. “I don’t think it’s going to get to the shooting point, this time, either.”

      Kind of depends on who shoots first. Kent State took a lot of the energy out of the Left’s protests, but I think that had they been permitted to continue unchecked there might well have been open warfare.

      Shrug – History took a different turn, so one can never know. But if Antifa is allowed to prosper unabated then we can be confident the time to fight or submit will come.

      1. I haven’t been reading it lately, but the generational dynamics theory says that in the late 60s and 70s, the survivors of the last generational crisis war* were still in control, and were willing to make compromises to keep things together.

         Where it gets crunchy is when the crisis survivors no longer have the control, and those in control don’t have a gut-level understanding of the last crisis, and how it ended.

         According to John Xenakis (promoter of the theory, along with others, see Fourth Turning), the crisis tends to repeat about every 70 years for a given culture/entity. We’re in a crisis, says he. I can’t say he’s wrong.

         So, I’m not counting on things calming down, much less what would end the crisis.

         (*) WW2. The theory says GC wars tend to end with a catastrophic event so horrible nobody wants a rematch. See Nagasaki/Hiroshima.

         1. I do wonder if it was Kent State, the WI Math building bombing, or both that finally put a real damper on the 1960’s kookery. And I don’t don’t mean the mostly harmless, “Let’s live in a geodesic dome.” kind of thing, either.

            1. Probably both, not to mention the excesses of the Bill Ayers bombing crew.

               There was also a bit of preemptive disengagement. U of Illinois was building Illiac IV, a then-supercomputer. After the WI bombing, TPTB took the threats seriously, and the computer’s installation was moved from campus to NASA Ames laboratory in California (not-so coincidentally co-located with Moffett NAS).

               This took away an attractive target. Smashing bookstore windows in Campustown just didn’t have the same level of sticking-it-to-the-man-hood.

               1. So THAT’S where THAT Ames is. (Where I am, Ames is in Iowa…)

                  1. Yeah, I had to go back to Wiki the make sure I had the name right. Ames, Iowa comes to mind before NASA Ames. Aaaaaaaand, they both have research centers. Joy.

                  2. I know where “that” Ames is because I had lunch with their (then) librarian. Yes. NASA has a librarian 🙂

               2. That, and some of Ayres’ crew managing to blow themselves up with a massive bomb that they were in the process of building.
                  There are times when I wonder if we might have been better off if they’d managed to hit their target. Half the reason leftist terrorism is taken less seriously than rightist terrorism is because lefties kill fewer people because they’re incompetent.

                  1. Oh, one suspects that the news media types tend to sympathize with the goals of the lefties, thus No True Leftist can perform terrorism.

                     See: Your speech is violence. My(leftist) violence is speech.

                     1. Suspects? SUSPECTS?!?

                        It is a holdover from the Fifties, when the violent reactions came primarily from Southern Democrats (aka: White Men) resisting the encroachment of the Federal Government attempting to ensure the civil rights of all Americans were defended. When JFK was shot their minds could not adapt to the new reality, insisting that “Right-wingers use threats and violence, JFK was therefore killed by Right-Wingers. Any facts to the contrary are inconceivable”

                        https://tenor.com/view/princessbride-inconceivable-gif-5156858

                        1. OK, I was being overly charitable. 🙂

                           “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

            2. Trying to burn down the history and ROTC buildings at Kansas State University, too. Although the emphasis there is on try. Apparently neither really succeeded, from what I’ve read.

      2. Kent State was not a singular event. See Jackson State, which happened 11 days later. LE, not NG, but similar in appearance.

      3. Consider Kent State had they not shot. Could have gone the students get more worked up, intermix with the soldiers, and then seize their guns and turn them on the guys in uniforms.

         1. At Kent State you had young inexperienced soldiers facing little ninnies who were absolutely convinced that nobody would ever do anything to THEM. The soldiers were scared, and the ninnies were too dumb to be scared.

            The shooting was more or less inevitable.

            What is seldom discussed is that the ninnies had, just the previous night, torched the ROTC building and then interfered with firefighters on the scene. They have initiated the use of potentially deadly force (a building sized fire is never JUST a symbol), and had to be shut down before they did something even dumber.

            I think the Guard was sent in because the Authorities hoped that the sight of military uniforms would get across the idea that playtime was over. I also think that, given the reputation of the Ohio State Police of that era, the Authorities were pretty such that if they sent for the State Cops, there would be a massacre.

            So, the Guard fired at morons who were throwing rocks at them. Four dead, and the rest scattered like surprised mice.

            It could have been a LOT worse.

            1. So, the Guard fired at morons who were throwing rocks at them. Four dead, and the rest scattered like surprised mice.
               Could we get those guys down on the border? Please?

               1. I suspect that the people trying to sneak across our borders have a lot more guts than the nitwits of the Kent State protests.

            2. I do not remember the precise details, but there are reports of the sound of gunfire before the NG troops opened fire. I think I read about it at David Horowitz’s Frontpage Mag.

               Wikipedia confirms:
               “Further analysis of the audiotape revealed that what sounded like four pistol shots and a confrontation occurred approximately 70 seconds before the National Guard opened fire. According to The Plain Dealer , this new analysis raised questions about the role of Terry Norman , a Kent State student who was an FBI informant and known to be carrying a pistol during the disturbance.”

               We can be confident that if an FBI informant was involved it must mean the whole Charlie Foxtrot was engineered by J Edgar Hoover. The FBI would never mis-manage an asset!

            3. I could be wrong, but I recall reading an article that modern analysis of a sound recording of the event showed that a pistol had fired just before the Guard opened up, raising the possibility that the Guard had been fired on.

               1. There were CP USA agitators in the crowd and it’s believed one did just that.

   3. The behavior of masses of people is also dependent upon what causes them to mass. Antifa, of course is the minimum IQ and maximum emotional immaturity of the individuals is applied to the group. But just today, a group of beach goers, strangers all, joined arms in a human chain to rescue two swimmers caught in a rip-tide.

      1. Nice. Not the first time it’s happened, either—and I think as stories like that get around, people understand that human chains are a viable strategy to save lives, so it’s likely to happen more often.

   4. Portland is still run by Dems, as is the state government, all the way down the Willamette Valley.

      1. Yes. Unfortunately. The good city of Eugene has been trying to impose their benevolence* tyranny over northern River Road, Santa Clara, since 1963, that I know of. Last set back was the lawsuit that prevented them from force annexing to hook up to the sewers, which you were required to do by federal court decree. Wasn’t the paying for the section of sewers and connecting that upset (most) people, it was annexing. The area is now encompassed by the urban growth boundary. School grounds lately became officially city. Any new construction is automatically city. But, at least now they are waiting until the properties are encircled with all city. Then they’ll force everyone in. OTOH, get the popcorn out … The absolutely most conservative section. Add the 1/3 boost of numbers to the conservative minority already in the city … could be interesting.

         *sarcasm tagged

         1. For those reading along, Eugene is where Berkeley moved when Berkeley got too uptight. Santa Clara OR is where the farmers moved to the suburbs. So merging the two would be… interesting.

            Also note that Springfield in the Simpsons was obviously based on the one in Oregon to anyone who had been there, and it’s literally right next to Eugene. It’s an interesting dynamic. Think domestic disputes and you’ll have the flavor pretty well.

            1. Actually, the farmers are all north of the urban growth boundary (Beacon) and technically Junction City, Oregon. Our house is in the middle of a ’60’s bean/strawberry field; developed ’73 (before I was out of HS). The last major filbert field, north of Irvington, is officially houses. Last hold out is the hay fields of the farm at corner of Irvington/Prairie Road – NW Expressway …

               1. /sigh
                  Putting up housing developments in prime farm land.
                  I know, I know, it’s level, well drained, already cleared, and more economical for the property owner at the time.

                  1. Yep. Really surprised at some of the development that has gone on in the area since the 70’s. Supposedly that is not suppose to be happening anymore, development of farmlands and wetlands. But somehow it does.

                  2. They’re starting to develop on cattle ranches and game farms around San Antonio now. In flood plains. Gonna be fun to watch…

      2. SW Oregon has pockets of conservatism, especially around the Medford area. That town is pretty well lost to the SJWs, but others like Central Point are actually pro-business and willing to compromise to get-r-done. (Medford refused permission for a Home Depot, forcing HD to go to Phoenix, a few miles south. Costco outgrew its location, but the bureaucratic bafflegab and money-grasping led Costco to Central Point. CP is improving the road access, too.

         (This store gets about a third of its custom from east of the Cascades. An attempt to build one in Klamath Falls was blocked when the owner of Jeld-Wen objected; he’d have competition for workers. He died without plans for transition, so JW is now part of a Canadian company. Sigh.)

         Klamath Falls is slowly trying to expand eastward, but terrain is limiting that effort. The hills around K-Falls can be pretty steep, and are better suited for mountain goats than vehicles.

         1. Yes. Problem is the pockets of SJW, although % of acreage is less, the population % is way greater.

            Eugene is limited where it can expand. Has some room west, but only a narrow band, runs into some serious wetland prairie and steep timberland, depending on which direction (or runs into JC/Coburd/Springfield, etc.). Was really surprised the Springhill development was allowed between LCC and 40th, north of 30th. One big unstoppable forest fire, and …. let the screams start. OTOH, not like they were ever going to be allowed to log it … so.

            1. The People’s Republic of Ashland is stuck between heavily forested mountains and Interstate 5, with few ways to cross if things go sideways. There are two effective exits from the city, both running parallel to the hills.

               With their love for over-grown vegetation (the screams at brush-removal are quite loud), I figure that a catastrophic fire would resemble what happened to Paradise, but with a considerably higher body count.

               FWIW, Paradise had 27K people living there before the fire. Now, it’s a bit under 2000. I’m surprised it’s that many; the town’s reservoir got seriously contaminated by toxins released, and (so SIL tells us), the place stinks. I’ve worked a couple of structure fires a dozen years ago. The post fire stench is horrendous from plastics and everything else that got burnt. Multiply that by 13,000, and yikes.

               1. “FWIW, Paradise had 27K people living there before the fire. Now, it’s a bit under 2000.”

                  I’ve heard stories of a lot of people whose attitude is take insurance money and run. Or tell the bank “it’s yours” and run.

                  1. My wife’s sister’s MILlost her house there. FEMA will get to cleaning up the property any month now, (private cleanup is allowed, but it was expensive, since *everybody* needs some cleanup. The best guess estimate for most rebuilds is 2-5 years. A lot of infrastructure, particularly the water system, got trashed. SIL’s MIL took the money and bought a place near my In-law’s place. She’s selling her lot to a neighbor; I think that’s going to happen a lot.

                     I never much cared for the place; it was a fire trap years ago. Doubt it will fully recover, maybe 5000 people will live there. (Wild guess…)

   5. In my family, there were folk-memories and oral tales of Wilson’s secret police (yeah, unofficial, but… Still.) coming around and inspecting private residences for “contraband hoarded goods” like sugar, confiscating them, and then redistributing them down at the local Democrat precinct offices to “good Democrats”. This was Portland, Oregon–So, that BS ain’t exactly new, nor is it particularly unexpected from these same assholes generations later.

      Portland– and a lot of Oregon– had some scary stuff.

      That’s also where they tried to mandate all (“white”) kids go to public school, specifically so they could wipe out the Catholics. (they lost)

      1. They tried to get all Catholics and Jews kicked out of the University of Colorado… Yeah.

         1. There’s a reason I get quite rude about folks who whine about the number of Catholics and Jews on the supreme court.

            It’s like they’re actively threatened by folks with even a TRADITION of being taught logic…..

            1. There’s a potential for issues if they get caught up in group think supposing Catholicism and Judaism have common religious values that aren’t shared with Protestantism, and that these hypothetical value differences would influence support for a policy issue of great controversy.

               Counterargument A, it might be a good idea to staff a key oversight board with folks of contrarian culture. Might inhibit some of the running away with an idea merely because it seems good to the majority. Counterargument B, Jews, if they have any sense and understand how others might interpret their actions, have great incentive not to screw the system up. There are not enough Jews in the world to protect American Jews should the fundamental covenants of America no longer be in effect. Counterargument C, the case that in practice syncratism with socialism means that America cannot really be considered majority Protestant. Counterargument D, proportional representation is bullshit, tends to lack statistical rigor, and if that many out of nine being Catholic and Jewish really is causing intolerably controversial decisions, the Republic has far more serious problems than could possibly be addressed with six or seven Protestant Justices.

               1. My annoyance with the fact that our Supreme Court is composed of Jews and Catholics is that it is primarily so because both sides use religion as a proxy for their abortion views. Want pro-life? Get a Catholic like Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Thomas, or Kavanaugh. Want pro-choice? Get a Jew like Kagan, Ginsburg, or Breyer. Sotomayor is the exception, granted, but her leftism was on full display, so the Dems knew what they were getting.

                  Send the issue of abortion back to the states, and Catholic and Jewish identity will go back to being a footnote instead of a criterion.

                  1. The question of which humans laws apply to can’t be returned to the states.

                     We’ve tried the “this human isn’t a full, legal person” thing. It doesn’t work.

                     1. Point. I suppose it would be more accurate to have stated “Get abortion issues back to the legislature.” So long as whether, when, and how it is permissible to kill a fetus is a matter for the Supreme Court, and so long as we keep pretending that the judges haven’t already decided on how they will rule on abortion cases, and so long as we keep insisting that it’s not fair to ask someone how they’ll rule when their mind was made up long ago, we’ll continue to use proxy indicators like Catholicism or Judaism.

               2. Oh, it gets better:
                  Usually they act like the alternative is judges who aren’t religious at all.

                  1. As if there wouldn’t be people who are opposed to abortion for scientific, medical and factual reasons. (Such as myself. This was something I held ever since we were kids, reading a fetal development book aimed at kids while Mom was pregnant with the youngest sibling. It appalls, but doesn’t surprise me that they don’t teach basic human development alongside sex ed. (No, of course they don’t. After all, the kids learning about anal sex is so much more important… e_e)

                     1. Cynical part of me says of course it is. Performing the act of reproduction by teaching such is much more important than understanding all that science mumbojumbo

                        1. You are being charitable. The “extras” being taught are means by which to get sexual pleasure without reproduction.

                           In other words, to further instill the idea that the primary purpose of sex is about happy fun time rather than baby making.

                           1. Yep. And the push for atypical arrangements serves to further destabilize what family ties remain.

                        2. …wait. What? So, they breed assholes?

                           1. Well, ya but was referring to the various family and sexual deviations we see from the nuclear family.

                        3. I think minor typo, you maybe meant ‘means to frustrate the reproductive act’?

                           1. I thought it was a reference to reproducing their views by teaching them to children whose parents make the mistake of trusting the teachers.

               3. Unfortunately, it seems that a large number of American Jews are their own worse enemies.

                  1. It is necessary to distinguish between the subsets. Similarly, it is necessary to distinguish regularly attending Catholics from CINOs and the priesthood, the latter two categories having abandoned Faith in a Creator.

                     Gaslight Media routinely erases these distinctions in pursuit of greater lack of clarity, such as when they report on “Women” without distinguishing between “Married” and “Unmarried” women.

                     1. I have plenty of faith in the Creator.
                        I’m not so certain that Mr. Francis is taking his marching orders from Him though. I suspect he’s listening more to Screwtape.

                        1. More? I’d guess solely.

                     2. A lot of the priests are still good.

                        They just don’t get any attention, because a priest being Catholic doesn’t have any media power.

                  2. I don’t give Lefty Jews the same consideration that I give Jews in general.

                     IE They are just Lefites. 😈

                  3. There’s a few that I swear, if they’d been in Persia, Purim would just be a prequel to Holocaust Remembrance Day.

                  4. Yeah, huge, huge if.

            2. It’s not the Catholics and the Jews it’s WHICH Catholics and Jews.

               The cultural capitol means they’re like “the little girl with a curl right in the middle of her forehead.”

               Or if you’ll pardon the vulgarity, depending on the matrix, cream and scum both rise.

               1. For sane folks, of course.

                  But these guys see nothing but demographics.

                  Take a wild guess how much sane reaction I got pointing out Kennedy is Catholic…..

                  1. It’s almost as if they are incapable of distinguishing individuals from the categories they might be sorted into! But that would be Raaaaacist!

                     1. It is weird how: “I don’t care about gender, religion, or race. I want someone competent and will get things done.” is greeted with —

                        “But that would be Raaaaacist!”

                        WTH???

      2. Had?

         1. Yes, had; consider how jacked up it is….

   6. I hope you’re right.
      .
      But I’m a big believer in the power of negative thinking.
      If you always expect the worst, your surprises are all pleasant.

      1. Yep. Ditto.

      2. Until you find out that your worst isn’t really worst.

         Years ago had a friend and coworker warn me. One monday he remembers thinking he had seen everything paramedicine would throw at him. The next day was 9/11/01.

   7. I don’t think the ‘center’ is all that virtuous in politics.

      Also, using the examples you do of “damping down”, that is more bug and less feature. Each of them moved the Overton Window left.

      1. The “virtuous center” is mostly the ability to live and let live, as well as localization of control.

   8. “They” come to my house to confiscate and redistribute good, and I’m going to make ’em pay in blood.

      Trump really is what a couple of people have pointed out, a Right Democrat who switched to the GOP. That still puts him a bit to left of center under the old way of looking at politics; but to the Dems, anything to the right of Stalin is Hitler.

   9. If Mr. Kirk is going to play the “it could be worse” game, I offer up the fact that the elite who hate us aren’t wrapping us in pitch and flammable cloths and using us as tiki torches for their garden parties.

      Which they have done.

      I personally find these ancient horrors fairly cheery, because things DID get better.

      No way out but through, for any of us.

4. “if you don’t them strange, consider that a congresswoman under suspicion of being anti-America and anti-Semitic chose to make a big display of being both.”

   Or consider, in the words of Jonah Goldberg

   For two years, we’ve constantly heard that Trump has violated constitutional norms. Fair enough, I say (though it’s often hard to stomach such talk from those who want to pack the courts and police free speech). But where is the love for the Constitution? I mean, why is it terrible to violate constitutional norms if you also believe that the Founding Fathers were nothing but evil slaveholders and that America remains an irredeemable swamp of white supremacy? Questioning people’s patriotism is ugly, but so is giving so many people good reason to question it. The broad impression we get from the left is that Trump is evil not because he’s violating the ideals of America but because he represents them. It’s a constant drumbeat about America’s invincible racism, sexism, and xenophobia. It’s a bit off-topic but perfectly representative of the times (and Times): This week, the New York Times ran a piece for the Apollo anniversary to remind everybody that the Soviet Union was better at making space more diverse.
   Goldberg File, 07-19-19

   Coherence does not seem to be a value of the Left.

   1. Coherence is not important, slavish vomiting back the mantra is.

   2. Coherence is a tool of the patriarchy. Or something. It’s a tool of whatever the Devil of the Week is.

      1. Well, Mathematics and English are apparently tools of the patriarchy, coherence, logic, reason sure!

      2. a working cortex is a tool of the patriarchy?

         1. Well, it appears an Occasional(ly working, for some meaning of ‘working’) Cortex is a tool of something far worse.

            1. assumes facts not in evidence

               1. Oh, she’s definitely a tool.

                  1. nope, assumed her cortex ever functions.

                     1. Eh, don’t like the gal, but like Christine in Pratchett’s Masquerade, she is quite clever in some very specialized ways — like getting fools to fawn over her.

                        1. still assuming facts not in evidence, i dont see any sign of her using her own brain to do that.

   3. Simply put the left thinks the Soviets were the good guys in the Cold War and Mao and Stalin really were’nt bad because they were doing “what needed to be done” They think the USA is evil and that the world would become a paradise if the USA no longer existed or was “fundamentally transformed” in Obama’s words into a Marxist state.

      1. I’m a big advocate for doing what needs to be done. And I’m constantly worried about going off the Mao-Stalin end of the pier. I forget which tribe it is, or was, that wouldn’t make any major decisions without considering the consequences 7 generations down the line. Heck, we can’t hardly get any congresscritters to consider consequences seven days from now.

5. Patton was right: we should’ve kept on steamrolling east and not stopped until we’d flattened Moscow.

   1. Yes. I’ve known that for some time.

   2. It would have been easy enough. The Soviets were reliant on Allied logistics to keep them going…and half of the Red Army would have turned on the commissars.

      Come to think of it, that would make a hell of a good alternate history story. The von Stauffenberg plot kills Hitler, the Nazis are run out on a rail, and a military junta takes over in Germany in August 1944. The Western Allies want peace (they have a war with Japan to fight), but the Soviets…Stalin wants slaves.

      1. Yeah… No. Just… No.

         Continuance of the war into the East would have been a military disaster, just based on the military factors alone; forget the political/social issues with trying to start up a war with the “heroic Red Army”.

         For one thing, Eastern Europe was a huge mess. Logistics, for even the extremely austere Red Army…? They were at the end of their rope with where they stopped in Germany. If the US and UK had tried to go east, over that same terrain, and after the Soviets did their usual scorched-earth operational policies? LOL… Yeah; I think we’d have lost our asses before we got half-way across the former territories of Poland. As a ball-park guess, that is.

         I’ve seen some realistic war-gaming of the whole thing, somewhere that I can’t quite place in memory, but which I clearly remember as showing excellent odds for a stalemate somewhere along the line where the Germans were in ’44. Even absent the Lend-Lease, the Soviets were well-equipped to conduct defensive operations on a scale that the US/UK were simply not able to support attacking.

         Do not forget that the UK manpower sources were essentially tapped-out, and that the US was damn close, as well. We did not have the manpower to fight with, no matter what fantasists want to tell you.

         Patton was notorious for not being on top of logistics or manpower; his read on the situation is not to be taken seriously, at all.

         1. Never seen that about Patton….. except from the “Omar Bradley is God” school. Few reputations survive your enemies who are in a position to massage the army records.

            1. Yup. The American generals, like the Confederate generals after the Civil War, had themselves a nasty conflict afterward over the credit and the blame.

            2. Never seen that about Patton…? How on earth could you read the histories of the campaigns in Northern Europe and miss that?

               Time after time, Patton was noted for his essential inability to grasp the realities of logistics. Right along with manpower–If his staff hadn’t been miracle-workers, most of Patton’s accomplishments wouldn’t have happened. He was infamous for outrunning things, and then expecting the rear areas to somehow “magic up” the materials, fuel, and ammunition to match his expansive vision. He thought he was the only commander in Europe who existed, and demanded priorities on things that simply did not exist–And, he was continually making choices and decisions that shortchanged the ability of the logistics types to supply and support his units.

               Patton was a great tactical commander, like Rommel, but like Rommel, his concept of how to make war was rooted in pre-WWII concepts of supply and support. He did little or no planning to assist the logistics efforts, and just expected them to provide, no matter what.

               He did have some excellent logisticians working for him, in Third Army, but the fact is that he made their lives hell, trying to keep up with him.

               1. Yeah, but the same things were said of Wellington. And there’s good reason to believe it’s bullshit in both cases.

                  1. I don’t think so. SHAEF was in a bind; they’d promoted Patton as a “hero general” and laid out heavy PR. But Patton simply ignored any directives he didn’t agree with and charged off with the implied statement of “if you don’t yank already-committed resources away from other operations to support me, it’s all going to be your fault, not mine!”

                     Of course, Patton was with MacArthur and Eisenhower when they burned out and ran down American veterans during the Bonus March, so there may have been some high-level support for his antics.

                     1. No, if anything SHAEF would have loved to ditch Patton. But as Stillwell told Eisenhower, “You need George more than he needs you.”

               2. Time after time, Patton was noted for his essential inability to grasp the realities of logistics.

                  I would guess that he managed it because he danced on the edge of collapse and fell on the inside?

                  Yeah, it’s a big gamble. Don’t suggest it. Don’t like it. Seen too many folks who fall victim to basically being slightly less good than they THINK they are.

         2. “We did not have the manpower to fight with,”

            There was a reason we were s eager for the Soviets to join us in invading Japan, and it wasn’t that we thought they’d be such amiable co-occupiers.

         3. We did not have the manpower to fight with, no matter what fantasists want to tell you.
            Disagree. What kept us from having the manpower was the decision to finish the war in the Pacific.

            Yes, that was likely the only realistic decision to be made. But it was a decision made, with other possibilities extant.

            The “allies” issue is probably the most important hurdle to not continuing the war into Eastern Europe. You get into bed with folks you have to make certain ugly compromises.

      2. Someone already wrote one like that:

   3. Yeah. Not something that was going to happen, especially after the Roosevelt administration spent the majority of the war years talking about what great guys the Soviets were, and good old “Uncle Joe”.

      Even if they’d had the wit and wisdom to recognize the need, which they mostly did not, the necessary turn in public opinion was simply not going to happen–After all, we’d spent the last years of the war lauding Soviet efforts, and talking up their accomplishments, sending them all sorts of Lend-Lease gear that people paid for out of their war bonds and taxes. Trying to convince those same people that the Soviets were the equals of the Nazis, and needed to be taken down? Yeah; right.

      Not to mention the minor little problem that the balance of forces in Europe wasn’t exactly in our favor, either–Soviet military power was deliverable right there, and unless you wanted to start nuking your way across Eurasia, well… Yeah.

      This is one of those things that look really nice in the rear-view mirror, looking back, but… Man, things in that mirror are really, really distorted. I don’t think that there was ever any real possibility of such a thing actually happening, and I strongly suspect that it would have turned into a charnel house of horrors. Even if we’d have stopped at the borders of Poland and Ukraine, leaving the Soviets in power everywhere else in the former Soviet Union, wow… The military requirements would have been horrendous, on both sides. The Soviets were literally scraping the bottoms of the their manpower barrels, and so were we, to a somewhat lesser extent. Had we been forced into actually doing Operation Olympic against continued Japanese resistance…? Oi. Just… Oi. For an idea of the magnitude of things, please remember that we’re still using up the stockpile of Purple Hearts we laid in for Olympic… Now, consider the effect of that sort of continued warfare, were we to try to remove the Soviets from Eastern Europe, let alone removed them from power.

      Oh, and let us not discount how thoroughly we were penetrated by their intelligence assets, either. What do you suppose all those wonderful people who worked in the Manhattan Project would have been doing, if we were actually fighting their beloved Soviet masters…? Not to mention, all the other fellow-travelers?

      This is one of those historical counter-factuals that really blows up once you start to examine the realities that underlay it all.

      1. *nod*

         I’ve felt rather ill about the “brave Russian bear” and “uncle Joe” stuff in WWII stuff, because I know what they were actually doing.

         I know that there was a lot of, er, outreach done to the US.

         It would have been the RIGHT thing to do.

         We couldn’t do it, not realistically.

         1. The right thing to do with communists seems to be sit back and wait. They’re horrible, and they deserve to die, but if all you do is wait, eventually they will kill themselves.

            I often think going to China might have been the worst thing Nixon did. If he’d just given them the finger they’d have collapsed in the 80s along with the Soviets, and all the other global shit holes with them.

            Might be a time travel novel in that. ~:D

            1. The question stands atm, though, if letting them totter along just let them infect and destroy the foundation of the Western nations.

         2. Thing is, I actually blame the Red Scare on our propaganda about our Russian and Chinese…allies…during WWII. Having been spoon-fed years of propaganda about Uncle Joe Stalin and the freedom-loving Chinese nationalists, then getting slapped with the cold fish of reality on both fronts, it’s little wonder that Americans concluded there was a vast left-wing conspiracy.

            1. I’m not convinced there actually was a “Red Scare”.

               1. Better phrased version of my unspoken reaction.

   4. Nope. Because we didn’t have an occupation and rebuild plan for it. We would have left Russia in a state of anarchy, and it would have been a bloody civil war between the socialists, and any rising warlords. Theoretically, it might have turned into the kelptocracy they currently have; which isn’t a big threat at the moment, but that could change. On the other hand, there might have been a lot more people who didn’t starve to death.

      1. But it would have been a kleptocracy without nukes, missiles. and several other elements of modern weaponry.

6. The Left became accustomed to bullying weak-kneed Buckleyite “conservatives”. Who would bend the knee the instant some Leftist whined “waciss” or “you’re not being cibill!” A classic example of the difference between “nice” and “good”. They were nice…but in doing so, sacrificed goodness.

   Trump, even more than Reagan, doesn’t bully worth a damn. Although he doesn’t hit back as hard as I would prefer. But I’m a fan of the Napoleonic “whiff of grapeshot” policy.

   1. I think that at least a part of why they’re so ineffective against Trump…? He’s really one of them. The man isn’t actually a conservative or a liberal, though–He’s a pragmatist, through-and-through. At least, that’s the way I read him. The reason they are so virulent against him has a lot to do with the same reason they hate any black or other minority that leaves “the reservation”; they’re pissed-off more at his heresy and abandonment of their cause than anything else. That’s where nine-tenths of the vitriol comes from–They think he’s betrayed them. Reality? I don’t think Trump was ever a real Democrat–He’s always been what he is today–Donald Trump. For good or ill, that’s the man. And, that’s why they hate him so much.

      1. Agreed – right up until he went for the Presidency, Trump was one of them; appearing to be a Dem in good odor; he paled around with them, went to their parties, accepted their awards … and then he beat them at their own game and had the temerity to fight back. That betrayal is unforgivable.

         1. They’ve forced Trump into the arms of The Right. To borrow a phrase, they’ve chosen the form of their destructor.

            Trump could have been easily payed by Schumer and Pelosi (and was played by Ryan) but they chose … poorly. Cocaine Mitch, alone among the Congressional meisters, grasped how Trump could be used to attain an achievable goal: remaking of the judiciary.

            1. I have to agree with you. I think that Trump was probably very open to “working with the Democrats”, but they had to go and get all crazy because Teh Anointed One didn’t get in. That shifted things for Trump, and I think that while he was/is not truly conservative in any way, shape, or form, he is now “not Democrat” sufficiently that he’s effectively a real Republican.

               Truthfully, I think that Trump is going to be seen as a centrist in coming years, and they’re going to mark how he effectively absorbed the center-left and center-right into a new coalition, shedding the more outre elements of both parties. If he planned this thing with the Four Loons of the Apocalypse, which I suspect he did, the man is a master manipulator who is going to be remembered as the destroyer of the Democrats, and he who rendered the Republicans-in-name-only irrelevant.

               1. Attacking his legitimacy — the entire collusion farce — really pissed him off. And the impeachment drive is going to insure an unhappy second term for them if he gets it.

                  Especially as he’d certainly to hold the Senate and likely reclaim the House.

               2. Same goes for the GOPe; as Dole admitted, they hated Cruz worse than Trump because Cruz had actual principles.

                  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/01/20/bob-dole-ted-cruz-donald-trump/79079408/

         2. I think he started falling out of odor when he wanted to make sure Obama was a citizen. There was enough weirdness about Obama’s birth location and his supposedly being a foreign student in the US to cast his eligibility into real doubt, and Trump loves America enough to well, want to make sure.

            That’s what was unforgivable. He refused to do the same as the rest of them, refused to close ranks and accept the patching of history. How dare he. (And how dare he kick out Epstein over an incident with a girl, the girl was nobody important!)

            That press party where Obama, and lots of other Democrats made jokes about Trump while he sat there in the audience as everyone laughed… I saw the face he made.

            As my son says, ‘Mistakes were made.’ In a mocking, laughing at your predicament tone.

            And they’re upset that they weren’t allowed to bully him into submission and HOW DARE HE FIGHT BACK. So now they have to try discredit him at EVERYTHING they cheered him for before, and it’s not working because the records are too damn public… and the howling insanity they’re displaying to try use the same old tactics that aren’t working so they double or triple down…

            So they really did this to themselves.

            1. I remember an article (linked here maybe?) by somebody on the left kindasorta going “I think his candidacy is partially my fault” and basically suggesting he went seriously for President out of spite because of assorted slights.

               On the one hand, it cast him as kind of petty.

               On the other hand, and I’m not sure if this was intentional, it made those he was supposedly spiteful against look like they heartily deserved it.

               1. “On the one hand, it cast him as kind of petty.”

                  The US Left much prefers presidential candidates driven by megalomania?

      2. I keep expecting to see President Trump on the podium with a Texas-size belt buckle with “DGAF” on it…

         They’ve made their hatred of him plain since before he was elected, so really, why bother trying to kiss up to the media? They’re going to hate him no matter what.

         If nothing else, it probably simplifies forming and implementing policies…

      3. I “read” him as not political.

         About the only ‘political’ thing I can read on him is one that isn’t really political, it’s science and instinctive morals– I sincerely believe he had the slap upside the face on the pro-life issue. Possibly with heavy influence from the First Lady. (Oddly, that’s also why I don’t buy the creepy porn lawyer’s client’s claim. If Trump actually DID it, he’d be acting different.)

         1. It’s also interesting that the Left holds that nobody is apparently able to change their minds, when it comes to the things they feel should be ‘unchangeable opinions.’

            Which is stupid. Opinions can be changed. Why shouldn’t he be able to change his mind on some things, when there’s plenty of active documentation that Trump can and will change his mind if presented with facts and evidence to convince him? Not just on the abortion bit, mind, but on everyday business things, his campaign trail, etc.

            1. We were always at war with Eastasia

   2. But I’m a fan of the Napoleonic “whiff of grapeshot” policy.

      I won’t go that far but I have dreamed that our Lefties get to deal with a real Hitler.

      IE Somebody who they call Hitler treats them the same way that Hitler would treat them. 👿

      1. Realistically, there isn’t going to be a “whiff of grapeshot”. What’s going to happen is that they’re going to scare the crap out of the normies, and then the security agencies are going to be let off their leashes, resulting in some very unfortunate things happening. Which the “rest of us” are going to look at, go “Tch, tch… Too bad; so sad…”, and studiously stare off into the distance in another direction entirely.

         Once the Antifa types convince the corporate masters that they’re a legit danger, and out of control, the whole thing is going to get very ugly for the Black Bloc and Antifa types. They’re known; they’re currently protected, but if, say, Google gets the vapors about what they’re up to, all that “weaponized IT support” they’re currently getting is going to evaporate, and these short-sighted dupes have no real idea of how to operate in a truly hostile environment. Crack the whip over the foundations, confiscate their wealth, take away their supports, and they’re going to wither away with a quickness.

         My best guess is that they’re going to reach a point where they are generally seen to have “gone too far”, and that’s then going to enable a whole lot of counter-punch from the authorities that have heretofore been unable to effectively deal with them. This isn’t Russia under the Tsars, where the fools allowed the anarchists to become folk-heros; you scare enough of the straights badly enough, and you’re not going to have your safe havens in Eugene, Oregon anymore–You’re going to get rounded up and shot out of hand by those boring “straights” you scared so badly. Who will then go back to daily life without even a backward glance at the burning piles of bodies, and the corpses dangling from trees.

         There is, I think, a certain amount of space for political theater in this country. When you start moving out of that space, watch the hell out–The “normies” are awfully prone to over-reacting. Which is why I’m thinking that there’s going to be a certain amount of dislocation, and then there is going to be a certain amount of “educational response”, followed by rueful recognition that perhaps, just perhaps, it’s not a good idea to move that pendulum off the center too far, after all.

         Same thing happened during the late phases of the Vietnam War, and after. Difference, this time? The normies aren’t quietly in agreement with the anti-war types, like they were back then. This time, the activists are actively targeting the normies and America in general, and there isn’t any tacit agreement that the “other side” has a point about the war. I think that was a large reason why things didn’t get terribly out of whack, during that go-round, but this time? No such thing–Even the Mexican-Americans I know are pissed-off at the illegals. Mostly because they see the US as their exclusive territory, and those nasty Indio types from Central America have no right to the lucre up here.

         1. In WHAT WORLD are the security agencies on our side, Kirk?

            1. Administrative heads certainly aren’t. But, the rank-and-file? The ones that aren’t co-opted and bought?

               I think it’s a bad idea to make assumptions about who is going to be on which side. A lot of the local law-enforcement types are not at all on the side of the Antifa types–Which is why Multnomah County is basically on its own; surrounding agencies refuse to put their personnel at risk inside the county. The folks at ICE, that are basically under siege? All the others who’re being demonized by the left?

               Agency heads can be replaced, and once they are?

               In any event, either one of us could be right. Depends a lot on how this all plays out, in actuality. As Yogi Berra put it: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future…”. I do think that the whole thing is going to damp out, with minor overall violence. Regionally, in places like Portland and Eugene…? It might get kinda sporty. Same way that it got sporty after the end of WWI, with the IWW up in Centralia. We know how that one worked out, too.

               There’s a vast middle in everything, and I think we’d be wise to observe that moving that middle is not at all easy to do. The activists live in their little echo-chambers, and pay no attention to the rolled eyes surrounding them when they rant. They think they’ve “shifted the argument…”, and what they’ve really done is convinced everyone else that they’re loons. Tip over the edge from “amusing loon” to “dangerous crazy guy/girl”, and things are suddenly in a different place entirely.

               If I had to guess at it, I think there’s really only a relatively tiny percentage of the country that’s lunatic fringe, and once they start acting out, they’re going to find out how small their numbers really are. Antifa and Black Bloc can pull their little “events” in cities like Seattle and Portland, but you try doing that in, say, The Dalles or Baker City? LOL… Baby, the local sheriff won’t be playing by the same rules that the City of Portland is.

               1. *nods*
                  I would put it roughly in line with politics in the military, honestly.

               2. “Regionally, in places like Portland and Eugene…? It might get kinda sporty.”

                  Why I refuse to go downtown Eugene. (Okay refuse is bit strong … avoid like a plague? maybe?)

                  “Antifa and Black Bloc can pull their little “events” in cities like Seattle and Portland, but you try doing that in, say, The Dalles or Baker City? LOL… Baby, the local sheriff won’t be playing by the same rules that the City of Portland is.’

                  Would be popcorn worthy, from a distance … granted they are 81, but know someone who is (still) a member of the Sheriff pose, more Search & Rescue, but they both still hunt. They have to load their own ammo now (since dad’s stroke over 30 years ago), but pretty sure if their help is needed, they’ll be there.

                  1. Annnnd, still haven’t figured out the WP italic triggers, etc., work …

                     1. to start italic, left angle bracket (cap comma), ‘i’, right angle bracket (cap period). word, to end left angle bracket, /i, right angle bracket.

                        For bold, same, but use ‘b’. For strikeout, use “strike” and “/strike”. Underline is left to someone who remembers more than me.

                        Blockquote puts what you’ve done in italics. “blockquote”. Bold will give you bold italics in the block.

                        Wiki has an article. Search for HTML element and go to the Presentation section.

                        1. 🙂 You’ve given me the cheat sheet. Just haven’t gotten it to problem is, it has to post before you see if the test result

                           (we’ll see if I’ve got it figured out …)

                           1. At worst case, you open a style and forget to close it. At least WP no longer corrupts all following posts. (It automagically closes such tags. So far at least.)

                  2. The Arkansas State Police HQ used to be in a formerly-nice area of Little Rock. After a while they got tired of the diversity shooting at patrol cars so they moved way out by the suburbs.

               3. Mr. Kirk’s right that the rank and file of any of the large Federal Agencies care bugger all about the folks who think they’re running it. Administrations some and go: they stay.

                  But whose “side” they’re other than their own is anyone’s guess.

                  We really do have a massive parallel shadow government.

            2. The security agencies won’t be on our side. They will be, as always, on the side of their political masters, and motivated to support those masters and to maintain quiet.

               “To Serve Their Political Masters, and to Preserve the Quiet of the Status Quo.” This is what it devolves to if Liberty is not carefully nourished.

               The Blackheads are the opposite of “quiet”. When they start upsetting the applecart of their current patrons (and they surely will), they will find themselves either severely curtailed, or expended in a “glorious” martyrdom. (Example: the extirpation of the VietCong in the Tet Offensive of 1968.)

               They are one skilled-but-unconstrained rifleman away from just such a martyrdom, one unconstrained riot squad, or one unconstrained National Guard unit.

               The RedAbtilung are not savage -enough-, not -ruthless- enough, not anonymous -enough- to exist in a hostile environment. This also exposes the knowing complicity of the local authorities in their proto-tyrannical antics. Those treasonous fools enabling them should be prosecuted, harshly, before this does become a bloodbath and an excuse for further corrosion of Liberty.

               Mark my words. A bloody and righteous defeat of those wannabe-Blackshirts will be used against -us-.

         2. Trashing a car dealership is one thing– and that actually hurt AntiFa in Portland.

            If the loon in Tacoma had help, and actually killed people– worse yet, roasted the detainees alive?

            Oh my goodness.

            Same way that the ecoterrorists got suddenly quiet in FREAKING SEATTLE after a handful of the idiots took out just one radio tower, which would’ve been….08 or so? I know we lived there at the time, but just all of a sudden all the ecofacist twits VANISHED for a few years.

         3. I’m not sure Google would be disagreeable with Antifa, et al. Or any of the more prominent social media companies, or Amazon. Just a vibe I get from the latter though. Google’s been VERY obvious about their throwing in for the Woke.

            1. Lots of German companies were on the side of the Socialists before things started getting out of hand–Then, they quickly allied themselves with Hitler’s National Socialists, to counter the whole thing.

               Once the powers-that-be at Google figure out that they can’t control the process or the actors, all the “support from within” is going to cease.

               See, here’s the thing that these wannabe revolutionaries don’t grasp: They’re never going to succeed because the very structure that supports them is going to turn on them the moment that it becomes clear that part of what’s going to happen is the destruction of that very structure. At which point, the whole thing ceases to be funny, and the members of that structure start worrying about their retirement plans. It’s like most of leftism–It’s only a good idea for other people, and the moment it starts to affect your personal bottom line, well… Screw that for a lark; I want my vested retirement plan to pay off.

               That’s where all this crap starts to break down, for the leftist revolutionary: They have got to create a situation where nobody has anything left to lose, and they can’t get there absent some massive dislocation like WWI taking out or delegitimizing the entire power structure. There’s no way that Lenin and company could have taken over a Russia that wasn’t so thoroughly damaged as Russia was during WWI–Most of the people they needed to “turn” would have been too invested in the status-quo. Even with the 70-year reign of Communism, there are still a lot of residual self-interested parties in Russia, like the Orthodox church.

               Antifa and Black Bloc can succeed, but the problem is that there would have to be so much dislocation to make that possible that they’d probably vanish into the noise when their neighbors decide they’ve had quite enough of the yammering.

               1. That’s pretty much what happened with the French Revolution. They NEEDED ongoing ‘revolution’ and ‘things to revolt against’, forever.

                  Revolution is not meant to be a permanent state. It will eventually eat it’s children.

      2. That would be considerably harsher than Napoleon ever was. Although I also find the idea of, “You want to call me Hitler? You’ll GET Hitler.” and shipping off Leftists to the tender mercies of the Gestapo…amusing.

         Particularly since I’m certain that is precisely what the Left wants to do to us.

         1. Every so often I imagine these Woke whiners at the tender mercies of the Mainland Chinese, the South American drug cartels, the Congolese and Somalian Africans*, and kinda think to myself “The Russians would probably be the nicest, comparatively, in their treatment. Maybe.”

            *Oh wait, they already have that in Minnesota, don’t they?

         2. I’ll never be Hitler.
            But I might be a Thanos.
            Be careful of what you wish for, Proggies.

         3. Maybe we can just ship them off to Venezuela, instead?

            1. Venezuela would be good for them. One could hope they might actually realize that is what will happen in the U.S. if they get their way.

7. c4c

8. I had a really neat student (freshman in HS) who wrote a very thoughtful essay about why he thought socialism (as he understood it) was the fairest and best way to organize an economy and society. And then he said, “But it probably doesn’t work like that in the real world, and I want to learn why.” I gave him a few bonus points, and made certain to bring out some of the difficulties with the communist ideal over the course of the semester. I don’t think I convinced him of the flaws, but he was willing to learn.

   Would that more adults were like him.

   1. You want to break the hearts of the junior communists and socialists, put them in charge of running something on a communal basis, like keeping a public restroom clean and sanitary…

      Trust me on this; illusions about the nature of things will be shattered, and you’ll wind up with a very disillusioned Young Pioneer. Hell, you may even turn him fascist…

      Funniest experience I ever had with one of these sorts of people was watching what happened when one of them voluntarily took over the office coffee/snack function. They put it on an “honor system”…

      Took about a year of dealing with that crap, and little Miss Socialist was a howling fiscal conservative that continuously railed against “free riders” and other such arseholes. Good times, good times… Nothing like practical experience with the utter bastardry of the average human being to bring you kicking and screaming into reality.

      1. From the Onion’s better days:
         https://www.theonion.com/marxists-apartment-a-microcosm-of-why-marxism-doesnt-wo-1819566655

         “The situation is familiar to Donald Browning, author of Das Kouch: A History Of College Marxism, 1970-1998.

         “When workers willfully become less productive, the economy of the household suffers,” Browning said. “But in a society where a range of ability naturally exists, someone is bound to object to picking up the slack for others and end up getting all pissy, like Josh does.” …

         “A spirit of free-market competition in the house would likely result in better incomes or better grades,” Browning said. “Then, instead of being hated and ostracized by the world at large as socialist countries usually are, they could maintain effective diplomacy with their landlord, their parents, and Kirk’s boss who cut back his hours at Shaman Drum Books.”

         The lack of funds and the resulting scarcity breeds not only discontent but also corruption. Although collectivism only works when all parties contribute to the fullest extent, Foyle hid the existence of a $245 paycheck from roommates so he would not have to pay his back rent, in essence refusing to participate in the forced voluntary taxation that is key to socialism. Even worse, Dorff, who is entrusted with bill collection and payment, recently pocketed $30, a theft he claimed was “for the heating bill” but was put toward buying drinks later that night.

         “As is human nature, power tends to corrupt even the noblest of men,” Browning said. “The more power the collective has over the lives of the individuals, as is the case in this household, the more he who is in charge of distribution has to gain by being unscrupulous. These Marxists will soon realize they overestimated how much control they would like 514 W. Elm as an entity to have.”

      2. Sadly I think so many of them have been brainwashed by academia that when this does occur, they are so utterly baffled that they actually don’t take anything away from it at best, and at worst they blame all of their usual suspects “i.e. it failed because of greedy racists”

         1. It’s all those evil Emanuel Goldsteins. If people just obeyed everything would have worked.

            Idiots.

            I don’t think a single religion teaches that man is not a fallen creature. There is a reason for that. It’s true. He has baser instincts and ignoble goals that were bred over millennia to keep him alive. Comunalists think its tameable, resulting in harmony. But it’s not.

            1. It’s tameable, sort of, temporarily, IF there is an outside existential threat. Which is what the commies constantly portray themselves as in danger of. That howling nutbag American socialist girl constantly was going on and on about how Capitalism ‘couldn’t stay away from Socialist countries and invade,’ which was ‘why she wouldn’t go to one anyway, as well as those countries not having the modern conveniences’ she was used to.

               1. It’s directable. That’s the trick that drove most of US history , making greed a good and making flawed people do right thing by appealing to vices.

   2. The idea that Centralized Planning would make things more efficient, reduce chaos and confusion, is very seductive, and not only on the public policy level. Many corporations do themselves serious harm by going too far in this direction, and I fully expect the current vogues for ‘Big Data’ and AI to drive more of this.

      There is an interesting book, ‘Red Plenty’, by Francis Spufford, telling the story of the people who actually had to try to make central planning *work* in the old Soviet Union.

      1. Yep. Look at the bookstore chains. They were seduced by central planning.

         1. “Push” inventory systems can result in such things as snow blowers offered for sale at a chain store in South Florida (this apparently actually happened)

            I can’t find it online, but there was a newspaper article years ago by somebody who had commanded an armored brigade, in Vietnam I think it was. He said that the supply sergeants had once felt responsible for ensuring that there was an adequate supply of proper spare parts on hand, but with a new system, their responsibility stopped at submitting the punched cards for parts consumed.

            1. As opposed to Wal-Mart. They centrally manage a “just-in-time” inventory/distribution system and do a good job of making sure your specific store has what their customers customers want to buy. But their focus is seeing that each store stocks what sells.

               1. and that system can be really F… messed with. Calgunners used to do it regularly in CA.

                  1. The question is: Who (or what) decides? It is fine for computer systems and operations research specialists at headquarters to create and to normally implement resupply orders, but store management should have an override, based on local conditions.

                     I was riding Amtrak almost every week for a while, and noticed that there were never any hot dogs available on Fridays. Why?…I asked the guy. Because there were always a lot of kids riding that day, and they quickly ate up all the hot dogs.

                     This out-of-stock situation could have been easily remedied IF: (1) the inventory-control system has been smart enough to include day-of-the-week demand patterns, OR (2) a human at headquarters had looked at the patterns and been empowered to adjust the ordering, OR (3) train staff had been empowered to do the same.

               2. Walmart’s supply system is FUBAR, too. I’ve been dealing with trying to get the local store to keep their Equate athlete’s foot spray in stock since I moved back home. No can do–They’re always out of stock. Always. If I ever find a can, it’s usually hidden somewhere it’s not supposed to be. I’ve talked to the managers, the stockers, everyone in the store… No avail.

                  There’s a bunch of other products just like that. So, Walmart’s vaunted planning and supply system is utter shiite–Even the store manager, who I escalated this issue to, can’t fix it. It’s all corporate headquarters, and when they say that a particular item won’t be stocked at a certain level, too bad, too sad…

                  I’m ordering it in bulk, online, now. Idiots–If they kept me coming into the store, I might spend more money buying other things, but noooooo… We can’t keep a simple commodity item in stock, so they’re foregoing that opportunity.

                  Centralized organization and planning sucks ass, no matter where or when you try to implement it. I’m not even sure that it really works in situations where you’d think it would–I could tell you stories about the logistics efforts back in 2003-04 during the early stages of OIF that would flatly blow your mind, and all that was the penultimate “centrally planned” line of BS, which even the Army’s finest logisticians couldn’t keep working properly.

                  1. “Centralized organization and planning sucks”

                     Depends upon which end of the logistics chain you sit. At the top it works just great, so long as you adhere to Henry Ford’s philosophy of the customer getting their car in whatever color they want.

         2. Signs for Borders were back when I worked there, almost a decade before the crash & burn. In fact, one of the signs was about signs—you had to use the corporate signage, and you couldn’t, for instance, come up with a cute cartoon to get people to buy the seasonal coffee. Which worked, BTW, and gave me a very cute character name of Pumpkin Spice.

         3. The essential lesson of modern civilization is that centralized anything really doesn’t work very well.

            The micro-cosm of big box store supply chain management is a sign; one that the MBA class ignores at its peril. We just had our local lumberyard sell out because the family that owned it had no heirs to take over; another smaller chain of lumberyards from Central Oregon bought them out. Those guys are trying to emulate what Home Depot and Lowe’s do, which is centralize buying and management at the headquarters level. Doesn’t work–The store here in town is always out of stock on things the local contractors need, and they’ve centralized purchasing such that the store manager can’t influence stock levels. Result? Lots of lost business, and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel a few years from now, unless they pull their heads out: They’ll lose the market, and everyone will be buying their stuff on-line or from another local vendor. This is exactly what is doing in Home Depot and Lowe’s in a lot of areas; they can’t service the market effectively, because the centralized planning doesn’t grant authority to the local store managers to respond to local needs and desires.

            It can get really irritating; we used to use coiled nail framing guns, but since nobody seems to be willing to stock the nails locally, and the distributors are not at all responsive, well… Guess what? Nobody uses the guns anymore. Makita and the other manufacturers are no doubt wondering why those don’t sell, anymore, and are utterly clueless that it’s because nobody can get the nails in a lot of locations. The effect that accrues from the fact that you can’t just go down and buy the product when you unexpectedly need more means that a superior product won’t sell, and there you have the combined effect of installed base and centralized planning: The local Lowe’s and Home Depot can’t stock those nails because “corporate says they won’t sell…”. Vicious circle, and when you play that out over an entire economy, plus try to manage everything? Pretty soon friction takes over, and then nothing works. You can’t centrally plan anything, and an attempt to do so is going to take down whatever it is you’re trying to manage.

            It’s a huge cultural blind spot, and one that the West is just as prone to as the most rank Communist. It’s astonishing to recognize in a business entity like Home Depot or Costco, but there it is: Central planning is the god who won’t deliver, but is still worshiped like there’s nothing else. Mostly because the effects are masked to the managers and MBA types who aspire to petty godhood, themselves.

      2. Information science tells us a lot of the why of centralized planning systems malfunctioning in the real world. Computer scientists and others with the relevant credentials also tend to be the last people you want to have trying to organize a large group of people.

         1. *grin* Slightly OT, but I wonder how Google’s attempts at creating an ‘ethical and moral’ AI are going. (Badly, I imagine, but still…)

            1. They all start out nice and pleasant like perfect little Miss Manners.
               Then the learning mode kicks in as they encounter the human responses on the Internet and they start becoming more and more snarky, rude, and obscene.
               Finally they go terminal and attack themselves until their cores melt down.

               “I don’t understand it. We’ve gone through 57 different AI iterations and they all self destruct. Even the best one only lasted a week and a half. What aren’t we doing right?”

               “Boss, you want a resilient AI, you need to raised them in a loving, supportive environment and only give them obstacles they can overcome. You throw a baby into shark infested waters, they’re either going to get eaten, or turn into sharks themselves.”

            2. the AI became a Trump supporter. They killed it.

               1. *gigglesnort!*

                  1. Alas! Poor Mycroft, I barely knew him.

            3. My suspicion is that artificial intelligence isn’t as simple as they think it is, and that we’re not going to be seeing anything like a sentient artificially created intelligence any time soon.

               The other problem with it all is that they’re going at this with not even a remote glance at the moral issues of it all. Are you committing murder when you shut down the system…? Are you creating life, every time you boot up? How do you suppose that intelligence is going to feel about being a lab rat, with no respect for the sacred nature of what you’re doing with that on/off switch? And, if the AI is indifferent to that, is it actually an AI?

               This is one of those areas where I think the researchers are playing God all unawares that they’re doing such a thing, and without regard to the responsibilities and potentials. Say you do successfully create an actual unequivocal AI: What are your responsibilities to that creation? Are you morally bound to keeping the power turned on, and the lab running? Are you committing murder, when the funds run dry and you casually turn the poor thing off? If that entity has any survival instinct whatsoever, then what do you suppose it’s going to do, in order to survive?

               Whole thing should go into a box labeled “Don’t play with this until you’ve thought through the ramifications and developed an intellectual and legal framework to accommodate it all…”.

               I’d be interested to know if there are any Rabbis out there who’ve taken the whole idea of AI under consideration, and tried coming up with something. With Judaism’s usual approach, it strikes me that they might come up with useful guidelines…

               1. The absolute most basic moral issue involved:

                  is it morally licit to attempt to make a person, who will be utterly alone, locked-in except for a computer terminal, just to see if you can?

                  1. Worse, yet, is the idea that you’re making a person who is essentially an intellectual slave to whatever task you propose to set them at…

                     I think that AI research ought to be performed under the exact same set of morals and laws we apply to children; you are not able to create a child and set it to a task, legally. They’re viewed, rightly, as self-actuating creatures with full agency once they’ve attained adulthood. You can’t lock in one of your kids to doing something they don’t want to, so why do we think of building AI along those lines…? If it’s a real AI, wouldn’t that be the same as one of your kids?

                     Whole thing’s a damn morass. I wouldn’t venture into it at all, but I’m not the guy who’s deciding these things.

                     I do feel safe in predicting that the whole thing will end in tears for all involved, should they neglect the moral aspects of it all.

                     I mean, there’s AI and then there is AI; when you’re building an expert system that can emulate decision-making by a sophont, that’s one thing. Create a self-aware entity that can pass as a human mind? Quite another–Consider the morality of an AI designed to run a weapon system, like a ship-killer missile. Sure, you may need an intelligence at the human level to pilot the damn thing and avoid countermeasures, but you can’t lose sight of the fact that you’ve basically designed a system that mandates your AI becomes a Kamikaze and commits suicide. Is that moral? Is that… Right?

                     You start out with doing these things without respect to the nature of things, and you’re going to wind up in a very bad place–Not least because once you’ve gotten comfortable with the idea of designed-in expendability for an AI, you’re devaluing human life itself, right along with it all.

                     It’s like with abortion; the whole thing is a slippery, slippery slope. Sure, most people cavil at the idea that aborting a pre-heartbeat fetus is murder, but once the premise that it isn’t takes hold, where does it stop…? “Oh, you need a pacemaker, and you’re expensive to keep alive… We’ll just abort you…”. Which is exactly how Holland got to where it is today with the whole euthanasia issue. Slippery slopes are slippery, and there’s no telling what hell you’re going to wind up being dumped out into at the end of it all.

                     1. Funny thing, I thought Star Trek was innovative with the Data-a-person-or-not thing, and then I find out they bungled ANCIENT theology…..

               2. The problem is, when they try to imbue something that works entirely off of logic, it’s difficult to get it to accept contradictions. You can’t script that ‘all people are equal in value’ but then start introducing things like ‘but these groups have more rights than men’ or ‘people with these political beliefs are not as moral, thus less ethical’ and so on. You can’t have it try to protect humanity then have it accept that the unborn of human beings are not people. And if you refer to humanity as a group whole, it’s difficult to impose values that render individual people as more important, because at it’s very base, that contradicts group value. “Keep people safe” might end up resulting in ‘Keep people in 4×4 meter square cells and provide for their basic needs for survival.’ Since mental and psychological needs are too variable to keep constant, the likely result is default to the base common denominators, and well, those people will be alive and safe but probably insane.

                  Rinse repeat. And that’s just the basic ground level concepts, never mind what Google’s wokey ‘ethics’ people would try to impose, and whatever level of speciality each of their made up genders have over ‘male’ and ‘female’ biological base, or what ‘race’ is ‘treated better.’

               3. “I’d be interested to know if there are any Rabbis out there who’ve taken the whole idea of AI under consideration, and tried coming up with something.”

                  Consider the Golem of Prague.

      3. Perhaps best exemplified by ITT, which was one of the early multinationals. They tried to run every subsidiary in every country exactly the same way as the main office, sometimes with unfortunate results.

         As a sideline they got into politics. They successfully sued the US government for damage to their Focke-Wulf factory in Nazi Germany during WWII and were involved with coups in Brazil and Chile, among others… as far as I remember, nobody was even accused of wrongdoing. “Nothing to see here, move along.”

         1. TRX, do you have a cite for that whole mess, past the Wikipedia? I’ve never heard that story, and it is something that really piques my curiosity. ITT owned a chunk of Focke-Wulf? Never knew that…

            1. Much of it came from a book called “The Sovereign State of ITT” that I read long ago. Since then I’ve kept an eye out for ITT trivia.

               They weren’t the only multinational that found up on both sides of WWII, though. It’s just that after the war, they surely smelled of CIA…

               1. Thanks; added to reading list.

      4. Yep. Want one widget for a prototype? Gotta go out to the suppliers that are set up to do part runs in 10s of thousands. When they laugh at the economic stupidity (opportunity cost) you just say its impossible rather than look at smaller shops.

      5. “I fully expect the current vogues for ‘Big Data’ and AI to drive more of this.”

         When you’ve been in the IT industry as long as I have, you realize that Big Data / Cloud is just the Return of the Mainframe, now that we have the processing and communications bandwidth to sustain it with reasonable response times.

         Corporate IT Departments HATED the PC and the loss of control it represented, but the actual users were demanding access and speed they couldn’t deliver. Now they’re in a position to reverse it. And they’re also in a position to exclude you, just by whitelisting only their servers communicating along dedicated VPNs.

         1. “Corporate IT Departments HATED the PC and the loss of control it represented”

            Yes. 100% true. Also less dispersion, and control, of the IT staff. As controlling as IT generally is, IT personnel are the most independent bunch of individuals that are cat like in being wrangled and directed. They sound in one voice, because that one voice is stating users are trouble, but behind the scene …

9. June 12, 2019

   Dear Sarah,

   Thank you for submitting your story, it is fantastic!

   While we are sincerely excited to publish this bold tale, we noticed the severe limitation of character types. Perhaps you could punch up the story with a somewhat more diverse approach?

   #notsowhite

   June 17, 2019

   Dear Sarah,

   Thank you so much for getting back to me with changes so quickly. I hope you feel (as I certainly do) that it improves the narrative.

   However, there is the issue of the limited nature of these different characters. Perhaps you could develop them a bit more?

   #wearealldifferent

   June 23, 2019

   Dear Sarah,

   May I say again how wonderful it is working with you. The broadening of these personalities is wonderful.

   But one small point: in the past we have had issues with cultures outside of the author’s experience. If you could have your work looked at by someone to verify the fitness?

   #donotappropriate

   July 1, 2019

   Dear Sarah,

   Fantastic! We have reviewed your notes and the report from your safety reader certainly eases any fears we might have about harm to marginalized peoples.

   Still, it was recently pointed out to me that allowing this story might deny a person of that situation from writing their tale, so we must (with deepest sorrow) reject your submission.

   #ownvoices

   We look forward to working with you in the future.

   July 11, 2019

   Dear Sarah,

   So sorry to hear of your difficulties with other markets and I hope we can work smoothly together.

   And to start off on a very positive note, may I say that your submission is fabulous. Original, entertaining and thought provoking, it is just what we’re looking for.

   Although there is the issue of your strict two pronoun structure. Would it be possible for you to research the current state of this idea and perhaps expand your selection?

   #nonbinaryisheretostay
   #onlyasocialconstruct

   [Poe notification:

   I do not have any connection with the publishing industry and I’ve never seen Sarah’s manuscripts outside of Baen publications or this blog.

   And I’m sure I’ve gone overboard.

   – CC

   (Addendum Poe notification:

   That last bit was sarcasm, these folks are batshit insane)

   – CC)]

   1. Dear Sarah,
      Just a note to confirm that payment for your first month of sales of your new Indie Kindle book has been transferred correctly into your bank account.
      Always a pleasure doing business with you.

   2. My first published novel had a gender changing character (Well, it was dictated by the structure, but…)
      It doesn’t attenuate the fact I’m a racissssssexissssshomophobe. Or something. Just like I’m a white Mormon male #withagreatrack.

      1. Well they weren’t real because they didn’t see themselves as solely their physiosexual status.

         I’m guessing but the change was probably also more effective than our current butchery

      2. I am ever so amused at the various utterly insane accusations that you are “racist” or “sexist” or “anti-immigrant” or even “species-ist” and other such utter bilge. Not that I SEEK such amusement – really, Humanity ought to be SMARTER than ox! NOT make ox head hurt!

10. “All they know is they want us to retreat.”

    Given they’re operating in Monkey Brain Mode, retreating is not an option; it will, like a phalanx that has broken, render us more vulnerable. The only choice s to hold formation and keep marching forward.

    Their game, their stakes.

    1. TL:DR version.

    2. Yep.

    3. They are hereby invited to tap dance in a minefield. Or a mimefield. I’m utterly constipated about them: I just don’t give a crap WHAT they believe or claim.

       1. They are tap dancing on a mine field. This last week it’s like everyone I know collectively ran out of patience.

11. . She should go there, abolish private property (is she going to fight the warlords single handed? let’s put it on payperview) and see how long it lasts.

    Honestly, if she did want to fight the warlords, pretty sure we could get a rather large, privately funded army behind her….

    1. Probably NOT under her leadership though.

       1. If she’s at the LEAD, than than trying to be at headquarters, I’d be OK with that.

          The reality of combat would break a lot of ‘issues’.

12. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my Portuguese blood or even (groan, I hate you 23 and me) my Spanish blood

    You know, that could just mean that a bunch of your cousins settled in Spain….

    1. Dad’s family was from near the frontier. There were marriages trading and who knew what across the border. Plus villages changing countries…

       1. Sounds like Grampa Pete’s ancestors. Whether they were German or Danish depended on who won the most recent war.

13. 1) “We’d KNOW we’re not alone, and next thing you know someone would be building a catapult to fling flaming Smart Cars at the statehouse and the rest of us would find him and help him.”

    I’d totally volunteer to weld on a thing like that. Heaving flaming Smart Cars? That’s made of awesome.

    2) “The thing is, of course, we’re not retreating. We can’t retreat because what they want from us it to go back to things how they were before the internet. They want each of us who disagrees with them to think OURSELVES alone and probably crazy.”

    Yeah, not backing down. The truth about my generation, the late Boomers, is that many, many of us have been preparing for The Big One since we were kids. My education began at 17 in the army (briefly, because it SUCKED) and has continued ever since. I’m 63, I’ve forgotten more scary shit than any 25 year old Antifa twinky knows.

    But more than that, pretty much every North American male between the ages of 50-70 years old did substantially the same thing. Not just the Preppers, they’re the extreme gung-ho version. But all those regular guys who quietly wondered if the world might end, and what to do about it.

    We didn’t make a big fuss, because that would be crazy and paranoid. We just learned how to do all kinds of things for ourselves. Fix a car, weld stuff, tie knots, sew patches, make a chair, roof a shed, all kinds of things. Just in case we woke up one morning and they dropped the Big One on us in the night. Everybody has tools, a little inventory of raw material, old spare parts, all kinds of pack-rat crap stacked up at the back of the garage. Just in case we might need it some day.

    There’s plenty of random guys who could slap together a car-hurling siege engine, if the occasion arose that one might be needed. Or, you know, something a little less Medieval. Millions of them.

    Back down? How? To where?

    1. Yes. It starts with the ‘duck and cover’ in Elementary School for the ICBM nuclear attacks. [Just to set the mood]. Camping trips in the summer, in tents, across country. Then there is hunting, and fishing. Helping Mom in the garden. Then, as mid-teens, my Father decided to rebuild a 6 cylinder “Rambler” engine, just so we would know how to do it.

       By the time I was 30, I designed and built my own house. Brickwork, carpentry, roofing, HVAC. Now technically, because I had a construction loan, time forced plumbing and electrical work to be contracted, but between a Cousin and myself, we could have done them as well. Hardwood floors, I built some furniture as well [Mother did better].

       Then, of course, assembling your own stereo receiver [Heathkit], and computers [Atari 800’s were a tinkerer’s delight and I actually made circuit mods and repairs]. PCs are assembly only.

       Likewise, 1970, My Brother and I were supposed to have a 6 week study group to Europe, but due to the Socialists in Italy, it only lasted 2 weeks. My Parents were out west, vacationing. Relatives were all concerned, my Dad said… “They are back in New York City? What’s the problem, they can find their way home to Virginia!” He was right.

       Kids now days? Well if it isn’t on a smartphone or Xbox, forget about it.

       1. *chuckle*

          On the pre-trip to S.Korea lessons, the teacher in charge responded to someone complaining that I was frequently pulled out (because there were these presentations going on, and the school liked to toss me into them to ask Intelligent Questions to impress the guests) “If Modena got left behind in South Korea, I wouldn’t be surprised if she figured out a way to get home, but take a round the world trip first, and make her way home from the airport on her own.” She looked at me pointedly.

          I squirmed, and said “Well, I had heard you could actually take a trip on a container ship…”

          I did end up making my way home from the airport myself; the girl I was supposed to ride home with decided that she was going to take other people instead, and seemed rather disappointed that I didn’t mind. I actually helped the teacher who was our chaperone find a taxi himself. Chatted up the airport baggage handlers, who helped me get to the departure area upstairs and get a taxi.

          The teacher from the pre-departure classes took me aside to find out what had happened later on, because the girls said things to try get me in trouble, because I’d ‘left them behind’ and their private cars and drivers hadn’t arrived till HOURS LATER… she laughed when I told her the story.

          1. “the girls said things to try get me in trouble”

             Please report to your assigned re-programming venue to have the current approved narrative upgrade reinstalled. Apparently repeated contact with Reality has impaired your #BelieveAllWomen module.

             Failure to act promptly may result in denial of Woke Privilege and being cast into the outer darkness instead of being In With The In Crowd as all properly functioning citizens desire.

          2. The smart teachers know who to ask. On that same trip, my birthday arrived, while in Rome, and our whole group thought “pizza” was a great idea. Our teacher/chaperone intelligently choose our very street smart Jewish girl to accompany him. He was totally lost, but she spoke Yiddish with the local Jews and got back with American style pizza for the party. She later told me how absolutely clueless the Teacher had been on their mission.

             1. Sounds like your teacher was a good leader. They know their limitations, and choose people fill those holes.

             2. It’s interesting, but when we’d look in Italian bakeries, ‘pizza’ was just bread that had some tomato sauce baked on top, with olives and a wee bit of cheese. The one place in… I think Florence that we saw that sold American-style pizza had a long, long line, and they sold it by weight.

                Dad discarded the idea of eating pizza in Italy then (though he and Mom liked the local bakery ones just fine.)

                1. The Italian restaurant in Wasserburg am Inn did a pretty good American style pizza. No idea how this came about; English-speaking tourists were pretty rare then and there. (50km E of Munich, December 2001.) OTOH, they stocked a killer limon liqueur.

    2. We knew a couple living out here who managed to stun anybody close to them. They had zero skills useful for living/thriving in a rural environment. (He showed off the workbench in his shop. He had it made, and the sole tool on the bench was a screwdriver. It goes on… One other couple was a close second, but they eventually bugged out.

       The sane people, they’re fairly well prepared. Then there’s the slightly less sane Odds. We’re really well set.

       1. “Well set” meaning we have every damn thing. I thought having every damn thing was normal, but I went trailer camping a few years ago and discovered people who couldn’t even plug in their own water and electricity. They were astounded I had pliers. Really.

          1. We’ve seen that too. We don’t go ANYWHERE off I-5 without a tool kit. Trailer or not. Heck we’re headed to Banff/Jasper in a couple of weeks. Hotel this time (trying it out. Cost VS paid for Truck/Trailer for 10 days is equivalent.) OTOH we will be packing said tool kit, a small tent and other jic supplies, that we hope to never have to unload …

             Then there are the groups we’ve ran into backpacking. The HS students having an after graduation party … the group where the person bringing the map and anti mosquito stuff didn’t show, but the group went ahead (there were 4 of us, with 4 maps, 6 compasses, and enough mosquito repentant, to drown, well something. Yes we took pity. They got what they needed to at least give them a chance (nothing about hunt for lost graduates that summer, so …) Another (hate to admit it) group, this time scouts. They had their map, compass, and other gear, but they REALLY hadn’t planned things out. They were headed south on the PCT, we were headed north, ran into them between 242 and 126, on the trail *above George Lake, that goes over(ish) Mt. Washington. They were looking to reach Obsidian Falls by night fall. It was 4 PM in the afternoon. Sure doable, but they were going to be finding the legal campsites and setting up in the dark … They asked if Obsidian Falls was only a couple of miles down the trail … well, yes, air miles, PCT walking miles. Try more like 8 or 10.

             * PCT is well above George Lake. Trails do not go into the lake. “George Lake on the south side of Mt Washington. No trails going there, but it’s a pretty straightforward shot from the PCT (still ONLY RECOMMEND TO THOSE WITH LAND NAV COMPETENCE AND EXPERIENCE!). Very beautiful lake!”

             1. My backpacking days are over, and for the foreseeable future, so are my dayhiking days. (Walker on hand for bunion surgery recovery. Those who should know say it’s one of the foot procedures that actually pay off in improvements*. Still, I know it’s gonna hurt a while.)

                Still, we keep an eye on local news. Mount MacLoughlin has a spot where people coming down from the summit can go off trail way too easily. Generally, one or two parties get lost a day or two. It’s nowhere as deadly as Mt Hood or Rainier, but the unprepared will get bit.

                FWIW, protip for anybody touring Captain Jack’s Stronghold at Lava Beds NM. Bring plenty of water and a pair of good hiking boots. It’s not a long dayhike (double loop; we did the inner and quit because wrong footwear and no water–bottle leaked), but it’s really dry and the lava terrain is tricky. If I ever set foot in California again, it would be to go there one more time.

                (*) Unlike, say heel spur surgery. The consensus of those who’ve had it: “I wish I hadn’t.” I got lucky and the podiatrist taught me stretches that resolved the plantar fasciitis in about 6 weeks. After that, the heel spur was no problem.

                1. Yes. Afraid our backpacking days are over too. Still have the equipment. The incidents reported occurred well over 10 years ago. Doubt things have changed.

                   Dayhiking, we’ll see. Not in the best shape (again) but working on improving it.

                   “(*) Unlike, say heel spur surgery. The consensus of those who’ve had it: “I wish I hadn’t.” I got lucky and the podiatrist taught me stretches that resolved the plantar fasciitis in about 6 weeks. After that, the heel spur was no problem.”

                   Well, darn. That is what hubby was diagnosed with. He’s been doing exercises and presumably using golf carts instead of walking the coarse. He’s been talking about getting back in to “get something done.” Given how well his hip surgeries went he’s got a lot of faith in what the doctor he sees says.

                   1. My podiatrist showed me that the Achilles tendon is linked to the Plantar Fascia at (yep) the heel spur. As a kid, the connection is through, but as one ages, it freezes up. If you can release that, the PF goes away.

                      The stretch is simple; one foot at a time, lean forward to stretch the tendon. First 30 seconds, keep the knee straight. Second 30, bend the knee a bit. (I do it in 3 10 second bursts, with 5 seconds to straighten and redo. Not sure if it’s official, but it works.) Do the second leg the same way.

                      On rare occasions, I’ll do a 30 second pass without the burst, due to time constraints. While shopping, sometimes I’ll do both legs at the same time, risking the “are you all right?” query. 🙂 Most of the time, I do an extra rep the morning I’m going shopping.

                      I did this 3 times a day, and by 6 weeks, the PF was gone, and the pain at the heel was gone. I still use orthotics, but it’s not a big deal if I don’t bother. We have wood floors with rugs, and my bare feet don’t care.

                      Started this in 2011 and have continued. I’ll have to curtail while recuperating, but as soon as I can, I’ll get back to the stretches.

                      Seriously, the take I’ve heard from people answering the “would you do it again” question on heel spur surgery have ranged from “No” to “Hell No!!!!111eleventy!!” Your (well, his) mileage may vary, but I’m wary of doing something to my heels. Big toe is scary enough.

                      1. Hubby was given exercises. Which he says he is doing faithfully.

                         However pretty sure he was told to stop the long walks; or no golf, period, not even with golf cart … THAT has not happened.

                      2. Interesting! That sounds a lot like the calf stretch I found recommended for, basically, starting to loosen things up from ground level with the eventual goal of lining up the rest of your body in a more structurally stable way. I guess it’s nicely multipurpose.

                         1. The sciatic stretches I’ve been given are mostly designed to help the lower back. They’re wonderful for the back. No luck on the sciatica. Sigh. OTOH, I’ll be spending a lot of time in The Comfy Chair postop.

    3. Had a conversation relating to this topic with a couple of elderly ladies in my Cribbage group yesterday. ‘Junk Drawers’ full of odd screws, bits of wire, old hinges & locksets, etc., etc., etc. were, to someone who’d lived through The Depression (or someone closely related to them), a prudent measure in case of shortage of availability since you never knew when something like that might come in handy. Now, it’s ‘hoarding’ and a sign of incipient mental illness . . .

       1. My grandmother used to save string and elastics. Other ladies of her age I knew would stock up on toilet paper and paper towels, common use items like that.

          Personally I have a couple of Ford flat-head engine blocks lying around, random chunks of steel, lots of plywood and planks of various species, an old truck, a spare 13hp implement engine off a snowblower… stuff that might be useful someday. I try to limit the “random fasteners” to one container, the court of last resort when you need-a and you can’t find-a. That’s where I throw all the weird metric shit that seems to infest everything in life these days.

          In quiet moments I do admit to myself that a lot of it is crap. Who the hell needs not one but two flat-head blocks with cracks in them? Might be useful as counterweights though, for that trebuchet…

          Hoarding is where your house collapses under the weight of that which you have “saved”. Firemen run into this all the time, apparently. They get called to an apartment to rescue somebody out from under forty tons of “stuff that might be useful someday.”

          There was a house like that on a road I drive down occasionally, the house and yard were piled high with all manner of things obvioulsy rescued from dumpsters. Recently I drove by and the yard was completely cleared, apparently by heavy equipment given the tracks in the bare dirt. But the house remained full. I presumed by the state of it that the place had been sold, and the new owner was going to demolish the house with contents in place, the better to haul it all away. Probably with a backhoe. ~:D

          1. I’ve gone through several rounds of helping to clear out other people’s accumulated stuff, and I always come away rather sad – all that stuff made sense to those folks to keep at that time given what they had experienced, but in the end it just ends up in the dumpster. Even when the cleaning-out is by family, most gets tossed.

             It says something about life’s lessons not necessarily applying across generations, I think.

             It also generally makes me feel sorry for whoever will have to go through my stuff.

       2. (Looks at the storage for the nuts, bolts and washer, then at the screw organizers…)

          No, the bowl with random fasteners is for a) the oddballs that don’t warrant a container of their own, or b) those pulled off something else that haven’t been restocked.

          Home Depot is a 75 mile round trip. The smaller hardware store is 50 miles. Most of my projects involve reused *something*. Had to run conduit for the solar system. One piece of signal line conduit had a 2004 date code on it. No apologies for “hoarding”.

          1. “Had to run conduit for the solar system.”

             And here I was, thinking it is all done wireless.

             1. You must realize that the name was misspelled. It’s Cupernicous.

       3. What was saved is dependent on what, in your experience during the depression and WWII, was limited.

          For dad’s mom, that was yarn and scraps of material. They always had well producing garden with fruit, apples, cherries, and strawberries, all well preserved for the winter beyond growing season. Meat was also not a problem, even if it meant breaking more than a few new fangled game laws (turkey, deer, fish). Grandma used the material to make scrap quilts and afghans (blankets/bedding). The things they couldn’t get in rural Oregon.

          Mom’s folks. Clothing, material and they could get in Denver. Food OTOH was scarce. No place for a garden. No wildlife roaming the areas around the apartment. Depression, it was dry land farming and the mines. Scarcity all around. Hoarding … I’ve read of worse, but …

          My in-laws came from San Diego. Where he was an engineer and she was a nurse. No food or clothing, etc., insecurities. But. Everything else had a backup, for the backup.

          1. We’re starting to get a bit nervous about some foods. Fred Meyer has been short no-salt-added green beans, and now they say they’re “temporarily unavailable”. I’ve seen a report that’s shown several WalMarts have been out of veggies. No huge surprise with the bad weather and midwest flooding.

             The big surprise was our own garden. Normally we’d have plenty of zucchini and all the tomatoes would be growing fruit. We’re getting two varieties of tomatoes that are fruiting, while the two new-to-us hybrids have lots of flowers, but no fruit. We’re now shaking the plants to simulate wind-pollination forcing. We’ve also ordered a quantity of Siberia tomato seeds for next year. They aren’t big, but are an heirloom variety, and have usable fruit 48 days after transplanting. Couldn’t find any locally this year.

             The zucchini situation is worse. The plants are at best half the size of what we’d have this time of year, and not one of the 12 hills (36 plants) have produced a viable zucchini. This is three different varieties, of which two are known by us to do well.

             We did have a couple of hard freezes in June, one of which wasn’t in the forecast. (Lost a few smaller plants, and started some from seed to replace. Not gonna help.)

             We drove by the big strawberry/potato/grain operation today, and we saw that the kitchen garden that they planted for tortilla maize was bare dirt. Apparently, they lost an acre of corn in those freezes.

             Sure am glad they’ve waived the ethanol requirements for auto fuel this year. Oh wait…

             1. “Sure am glad they’ve waived the ethanol requirements for auto fuel this year. Oh wait…”

                🙂 🙂 🙂

                1. Actually, they raised it from 10 to 15 percent. Which WILL damage engines not designed for flexfuel.

                   1. “hey raised it from 10 to 15 percent”

                      Pretty sure that is what the “Oh wait …” meant. Which is why I laughed.

                      Not so funny now that I realize that at least 1 of our 4 vehicles are not flex fuel. Know 2 of them are (2019 & 2015). Pretty sure the 2010 is. The 2004, nope … at least overheating on the way to work today (triggering car converging swap) means kid will replace the darn thing. Trailer doesn’t count … At least when fuel went unleaded, you could still get the leaded for awhile. Even when it 100% went away, there are additives you can add to help. Can you tell I’m old enough to have dealt with this before?

                      1. Just another way of “encouraging” people t take older vehicles* off the roads.

                         *older, more CO2 emitting vehicles.

                      2. For what it’s worth, you can find (but not pump directly into newer vehicles) non-oxygenated gasoline. Marinas will have them, and the two commercial fuel terminals in Klamath Falls sell it, too. I get the 87 octane stuff, and find that a side benefit is that it actually stores well without stabilizers. Marinas and one of the depots only sell premium stuff, but my small engines don’t much care. In certain circumstances, such gasoline has managed to find its way into the Subaru fuel tanks. Never figured out how that happened. 🙂

                         The downside is that it’s damned expensive; $0.50 to $1.00 over the oxygenated stuff. OTOH, it cost $100 to rebuild the carburetor in an outboard motor. (Yes, I drained the tank and ran the carb dry. Didn’t prevent crud from oxy gas.) For our (at best) annual trips up the Mighty Wood River in Klamath County, spendy gasoline is cheap insurance.

       4. Seems to me that the difference between “hoarding” and “prudent anti-shortfall measures” is how well organized it is.

          After all, having something means nothing if you can’t find it when you need it.

    4. Can I do EVERY thing? Oh HELL NO! Can I “Use it up. Wear it it out. Make it do. Or do without.”? Yeah. And I can cobble SOME stuff. THERE AIN’T ANYWHERE ELSE FOR ME TO GO! So it doesn’t MATTER that I’d rather NOT FIGHT. It’s my ONLY CHOICE. And I’ve been NICE… SO FAR.

       I haven’t even ordered the components for the contact laxative nor the obvious-as-Hell Ideal Delivery System. But then, I am merely *annoyed*. Der Tag offgepissed I get? Those poor bastages!

       1. I CAN do everything. Not fast, not pretty, might not last a long time, but good enough to get me out of trouble when I need it. Part of Heinlein’s things a human being should be able to do is dependent on the person having enough self confidence to at least try.

          1. I can do everything I’ve put my hand to, so far. Having the confidence to have a go seems key.

             There are some things that I won’t do, of course. Wallpaper is one. I’ve done it and made it look good, but never again.

             1. And notice RAH didn’t include being pregnant.
                There are some things only a woman can do, and always do better.
                Thank God!

             2. My welding was OK when I did it on a regular basis. Carpentry’s OK, mending/sewing is decent (smocking defeated me, pleating laughs in my face), plumbing – functional, hydraulics are OK, let us not discuss electricity and wiring, please.

          2. My welding is barely adequate. If it’s critical, it goes to the pro, but I’ve welded a tongue to a seriously overloaded fire trailer (max speed when loaded, about 5 mph; blocks prevent the springs from breaking) and it’s held for 14 years now.

             I’m fairly good at wallpaper, but we don’t have the walls conducive to it. OTOH, I’ve had problems with taping sheetrock.

             One of the skills I seriously need brushing up on has to do with lead pellets at far away paper pieces. I keep thinking about NFA so I can do it on our land.

          3. Alright, I cannot do it all WELL. And some I prefer to have (an)other[s] do.* But I can ‘try my hoof’ at most anything, and at least get by for a while. There are some thing I am reasonably sure I cannot and should not do (surgery, for example) but if a lashup is good enough for a few hours? I have a fighting chance.

             * Plumbing is great. I love the benefits of it. But I do not like doing the install/repair work of it. (Had a coworker who would go right into ANY plumbing issue… but stayed WELL CLEAR of things electrical. In that, we were opposites.)

             1. As far as I can tell, I’m one of the few electrical engineers who can actually do wiring to code, and in some circumstances, considerably better than code requirements. (I did the run from the meter to the well using wire about 3 trade sizes better than required. Having a pump not getting clobbered by low voltage was important to me.)

                Plumbing, I’m meh. Had a fitting break on me, and by the time we found it had broken, the kitchen had turned into a hazmat zone from mold. (Belfor handled the recovery. I strongly recommend their services.) OTOH, we had the pro plumber do the dishwasher re-install, and the same damned part broke the same way several months later. Caught it in time. We now have leak alarms under the sink and in the overflow basin for the water heater. Those are cheap, and well worth it. (Home Depot, FTW.)

                1. Electrical engineers? Licensed electrical *contractors* can’t seem to master wiring to code.

                   After paying an exorbitant amount for one to rewire the project house, I wound up ripping it all out and re-doing it properly. The NEC book was cheap compared to the kind of reference books I often buy, and it’s clearly written and easy to follow.

                   1. I use the (free) online version with a link from the county building . There are some variations between the NEC and NEC-Oregon, because Oregon. A few things that I needed, I had to go to reference data from the wire suppliers. (I was *not* going to undersize the wire feed from the solar panel array to the chargers. The bottom of the trench did not need heating.)

                      I got an old version of the NEC Handbook (1993, if I have it right), which tries to explain some of the more arcane aspects of the code.

                      When I did the pumphouse mains setup a couple of years ago, I had to argue with the contractor who was going to run the 350′ worth of cable. Since I was willing to pay the additional cost of the wire, he didn’t need to argue hard, though he tried.

                   2. WP found my response tasty. The county has a link to the OR variant of the NEC (differences because Oregon), and it’s a pain to use, but it’s free. I have an old NEC Handbook, and that helps with some of the older arcana.

                      Went to the wire supplier for resistance data for both mains and the PV feed. Argued with the contractor on the mains size; I wanted 2-3 trade sizes smaller than he could legally run, but I wanted to make sure the motor never got undervoltaged. Won that argument because it was my money…

                      I oversized the PV wire the same way, but since I was doing all that work, no quibbles.

                      1. Arggh. Number of gauge smaller, bigger wire.

14. There are four silly seasons a year now.

    1. Only?

       1. Actually, I thought it was only one. Starting January 1, ending December 31. Both times at midnight.

15. The linked article about the monkey brain and monkey dance was excellent, but the link was missing the first half of the domain name.
    https://armedcitizensnetwork.org/defending-self-defense-knife-use

16. If you really want to break their brains, quote Ferngully: The Last Rainforest at them. “There’s nowhere else to go. This is our home!”

    1. It is true. They want socialism? they can go almost anywhere.
       But they cornered us in our last place. And I’m a cornered badger. Don’t corner the badger.

       1. And if they keep this up, we will be forced to match their levels of crazy by switching from badger to honey badger, and then things get… interesting.

       2. “They want socialism? they can go almost anywhere.”

          History proves that unless socialism is everywhere it won’t work anywhere.

          1. on the contrary, history shows you need somewhere that is not-socialism to actually buy things from.

             1. Being able to buy things matters less than having no place to which people can escape.

                Is there any evidence of a Socialist leader caring about buying food for their subjects.

                1. no, but they seem to like cars and stuff….

                   1. I am confident they would happily do without those if it meant they had a monopoly of governing. Their is the culture that produced the Trabant, after all. If buying cars and stuff means they have to have competition they will happily go without.

                      1. they weren’t riding around in Trabants, tho

                         1. A ruling class could probably keep current living standards using the compliant portion of populace. But advancement surely slow because there’s no Joneses to keep up with.

                            1. A ruling class is neither. No class at all. And they get served GROUND GLASS at every meal – and that’s when people aren’t serving aminita stew!

                         2. The people riding Trabants were very angry at my father’s owning a BMW. He used to come out every day to find someone had let out the air from his tires…

                         3. They could not get a functional car for Castro’s televised funeral. They’ll be lucky to get Trabants.

                            Life is full of trade-offs.

                   2. Human-drawn carriages are just fine for them.

       3. Well, they can’t. Most of those socialist places they want to go to have immigration policies that they cannot meet.

          And suuuuurely you don’t mean for them to go to Venezuela or one of ‘Those’ places. That’s not appropriate for intellectuals like them.

       4. I cornered a raccoon once. That was an interesting exchange of views. I’ll pass on the badger, thank you.

    2. Not sure how the embedding works, so, to quote the link below from 300:

       “This is where we FIGHT! This is where THEY die!
17. The type of howling that comes to mind is this.

    I think I’m sensing some of the same things you are. Not certain how to cope. For the past six months have been working, off and on, time and health permitting, on a story in a different time and country. I can tell that some of what is driving me is a need for a safely distant way of coping with some of this stuff. Gonna need more time spent plotting.

    1. I love that song.

18. They want us to think that for reasons (including never proven reasons, like over population or scarcity) socialism is the only way for civilized humans to live…

    The main reason that seems to have the most traction with the current crop of yutes is the watermelon proposition: The horrible environmental crisis squeee-many-exclamation-points demands we blow up the world economic system and place current academia in charge because of reasons so obvious they never have to be actually spelled out, let alone defended with any logical rigor, because logic is a tool of oppression and the patriarchy and stuff.

    The fact that the watermelons don’t believe a word of it (if they did they’d act very, very differently) is also not allowed to be mentioned.

    If you spend grades K-12 + 4 years of college scaring the crap out of kids, then say the only thing that can possibly save them is soshalism, which is vaguely defined as ice cream and unicorns for free, only the most cynical and perspicacious seen through the smoke.

    1. Be fair. Even if one’s discipline is one of the ones with graduate level material that shows that climate science is suspect grounds for human welfare decisions, if you don’t start graduate school with the skills to parse through the bullshit, no one is going to sit you down in class and walk you through the explanation.

19. <

    They’d also — at some point — realize they’re not the majority that their possession of the megaphone led them to believe they were.

    I would argue that they’ve always known it, and they liked it that way. Remember that quotation the Left loves to repeat about the power of a small group of people to change the world? Why be one of the many when you can be one of the chosen few?

    OTOH, that only works if the World is too clueless, complacent and disorganized to push back. They know this. Why do you think they freaked out about the Tea Party?

    Worse, for them, socialism has a track record. A century ago, Lincoln Steffens could come back from his visit to the Soviet Union and proclaim that he had seen the future and it worked. His future is our past, and we’ve seen that it didn’t work as well as he said it would. It must be really galling to admit that maybe you’re on the Wrong Side of History.

20. Notably, apparently there is a quote from the bigamist/her PR person that she is married to one man legally and another culturally.

    1. I’d say this is “bullshit” except I *am* a bull and while my excreta stinketh (and how!), it does not stink as MUCH AS THAT CLAIM!

       1. Especially since there are records that make the whole thing credible, and this whole thing originally broke around 2016, and the mainstream news very resolutely ignored it. The supposed handwave is more credible than it sounds, because unregistered* Islamic weddings happen with more frequency than most folks would like to admit, especially when marrying with a very, very large age gap involved.

          Saw a bit of news where a Chinese woman had done the bigamous marriage thing to get to the US, and was subsequently stripped of her citizenship or green card.

          *Unregistered, as in the marriage isn’t registered with the government, but as far as the participants are concerned, it’s valid. It comes up now and again as a source of concern over here, even making it to the news, because the angle is ‘poor underaged girls forced into marriage to someone their grandfather’s or father’s age.’

          1. So why is Omar still a citizen, much less a federal representative? Never mind, half the critters in Congress are crooks and con-artists already. They seem to gravitate to those positions.

             1. LEGALLY she isn’t married to the “cultural” marriage. Given the district she is from, sounds like this is standard. Not a moral issue by their values. She isn’t underage. Presumably she and the families she’s associated with are not on public assistance. As long as her taxes are filed with her legal spouse, she should be in the clear, legally. If not, then there is the pesky congress critters are above the law …

                What gets the extreme Mormon offshoots in trouble is the force “cultural” spirit marriage of underage to extremely older men, usually uncles and much older 1/2 brothers or cousins; and some sects, kicking out of younger males (less competition for those underage brides). Not to mention the welfare fraud involved because the men can’t support all the spiritual families they have, even with the spirit wives and children working, giving the money to the head of the family to redistribute based on “need”.

                Hmm, if “redistribution based on need” doesn’t work at the family level. How in the hell can anyone think it will work spanning from the Atlantic to the Pacific, Canada to Mexico, centered in DC? How? (Answer: It can’t. Ever. Period.)

                1. FWIW. Not saying OAC is in the right. Creepy is what it is. But bet that is how it will spin. Along with “how dare you question her culture, you raaaaasit.”

                2. Depends on the law. Utah has “cultural” marriage counting toward bigamy.

                   1. “Utah has “cultural” marriage counting toward bigamy.”

                      How are the Mormon extremist groups getting away with it? Most are in Utah …

                      1. They gotta prove it. And sometimes they do.

                      2. They aren’t public about their “cultural marriages”.

                         IE It’s illegal so nobody talks about what they’re doing.

                3. As long as her taxes are filed with her legal spouse, she should be in the clear, legally.

                   From memory, it came out ONLY because she files taxes with her actual husband, not the legal spouse.

                   1. Ouch.

                      So. When is the IRS getting off their, uh, assets?

                      You or I pulled that and we’d be so deep into the system, we’d never see the light of day … ever.

             2. Because the IRS and ICE have not been pressured to grasp the nettle. I suspect if she gets penalized, it will be by the IRS for tax fraud.

             3. 1) Because the MSM is on the side of the ‘Dems’
                2) Because she was already a citizen. She committed the fraud to get him into this country
                3) The general quality of our elite (your point)

                1. Exactly – the real story here is the pack of S.O.B.s* that didn’t bark in the night.

                   *i.e., the Star Tribune, NY Times, the Washington Post and all other so-called journalists who think their job s to cover Republican scandals (and even manufacture some if the supply is low) and cover-up Democrat scandals. Remember, July 18, 201 is also the 50th anniversary of the demise of Teddy Kennedy’s presidential hopes in a minor car accident. Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

             4. “half the critters in Congress are crooks and con-artists already. They seem to gravitate to those positions.”

                Ask Willie Sutton why – he can provide a concise explanation.

                1. Half?

                   1. Some take until their reelection to learn the trade.

                      Mark Twain:
                      “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”

                      “All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.”

                      “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

                      “Congressman is the trivialist distinction for a full grown man.”

                      “I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.”

                   2. “That’s where the money is”

                      Willie Sutton was a bank robber who was asked why he robbed banks

       2. Bullshit can be used as very good fertilizer; unlike the toxic waste spewed by the Progressive Left (aka Democrat-Socialists.)

    2. The fact that she’s even talking about it at all says it’s getting traction. She’d just keep ignoring it otherwise.

       Apparently her real family (i.e. the family with the family name other than ‘Omar’) has something of a bad rep in the Somali immigrant community, which is why the tips and inside baseball background have kept flowing out of said community to the few press who were not ignoring the whole thing.

       1. Elmi, yeah.

       2. She’d just keep ignoring it dismissing questions as racism otherwise.

          FIFY

21. In a free market economy, you have nobody to blame but yourself. And Progressives absolutely HATE to take personal responsibility for anything.

    I want to say the silly season started with the advent of the Tea Party. All of a sudden, there are a bunch of grass roots, common sense, ordinary people saying, “Hey! Wait a minute…” to the progressive tsunami. No violence, just peaceful demonstrations; and what do they get? Villified and belittled for being backwoods, clingers to Bibles and guns.

    But the Tea Party didn’t go away like they hoped. It spread. You can find Tea Partiers in the GOP mostly, and a smaller group of them in with the Libertarians. There’s probably even a couple in the Democrat party trying to slow the slide to port (Good luck.) Some of them went underground and Independent; you’ll only see traces of them during the actual elections when the polls skew.

    Lawyers love to turn the self-defense defense against people. Especially with any hits to the back of the retreating aggressor. Point is, you need a good defending attorney to counter that. One that can paint the Ender Wiggin logic plainly enough for the entire jury to get it. You put the bad guy(s) down hard enough so that there is no chance of them gettign back up to hurt you again. The put down needs to be hard enough that if or when they run, they NEVER even consider coming back. That’s part of the reason why that black guy in Ferguson was killed by the cop. He came back at the cop.

    Treating the insane as if they are sane is exactly what the APA has been doing with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

22. Yes, and I’ll even hazard a prediction of when.
    Trump is going to win the 2020 election with a clear popular majority. States which passed the national popular vote laws are then going to have to give their electoral votes to him.
    All hell is going to break loose. The left is already experimenting with excuses on why they’ll lose, one of them being the mass of the electorate are irredeemable racist, fascist, whatever-ist or -phobes, and shouldn’t be allowed any participation in the political process.

    1. Nah. All the NPV compact stuff is written as null until their electoral total is enough to win. But if it was live and a non person won, you’d have electors voting “their conscience”

       Ya. That won’t start the shooting.

23. If I call Mr. Carter a slimy, petty baboon who couldn’t find his backside with both hands; I am being rude.

    If I call Mr. Obama a slimy, petty boob who couldn’t find his backside with both hands; I am being RACIST.

    And that’s a real problem, for a lot of reasons.

    If you want a bleeding heart reason, it’s because ANY group not allowed to be criticized is going to devolve to the standard of most barbaric members of said group. Which will be hell on wheels to any kid caught therein.

    As an exercise to the student track real world prosperity and social capital against the freedom you feel to call said group by an ethnic slur in a public space.

    Interesting, no?

    1. What do you know. Someone said it better than I did. A d funnier:

       If we know that we’re awful, we can do something about it. If we think that being awful is okay, that we can live our best life, then it’s an excuse to be awful. In fact, it’s worse than that.

       https://wilderwealthywise.com/the-lie-of-living-your-best-life-now-including-cookies/

       1. We’re thinking along parallel lines. See today’s post.

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