Unicorn Farts Is No Basis For a System of Government

343 thoughts on “Unicorn Farts Is No Basis For a System of Government”

1. Please remind me. Which of the original colonies in America was it that was founded on a basis of ‘from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs’? And foundered when those who actually farmed to raise crops, or went out and hunted to bring back meat, grew tired of feeding those who did neither so took themselves elsewhere?

   1. I don’t know, but there were several religious communes in Pennsylvania that started that way. The ones that survived, changed to include personal responsibility so that those who *could* work and didn’t weren’t getting to grift off those who worked.

      1. It was Massachusetts that started out — first colonists — with that. Explains a lot, no?

         1. …yes it does.

         2. I think Roanoke was socialists too.
            Mystery solved.

   2. Plymouth. It was Governer William Bradford who changed the system to a more capitalist one.

      1. Crap. THAT’S where significant other gets her damn Democratic-socialist leanings from. That, and being an RCC convert.

      2. Right Bradford changed it because just like in the early church of Acts and later it DIDN’T work. Production of food was awful because no one wanted to work the fields. Honestly most of New England is utter crap for farming, particularly down toward Plymouth/Cape Cod where the “soil” consists primarily of sand and rocks. So Gov. Bradford brought good old capitalism and private ownership back into the system and Mirable Dictu all of a sudden there was PLENTY of food.

      3. Ahh, my ancestor.

   3. Was the first year at Plymouth. Next year everyone had their own land and there was a surplus

   4. Plymouth, I believe.

      1. Re: Plymouth, there was one of those PBS reality show experiments that tried to do Pilgrims and communal living, with modern urban people who were even less prepared for hard rural work than the actual townie Pilgrims. (And of course they also didn’t have religion or anything else to help, IIRC. It was four episodes of terrible.)

2. Very well said. It hits all of the points that need to be covered.

3. Listen – strange women lying around the internet distributing gif-laden blog posts is no basis for a system of government either.

   …And yet, in your case it’s still better than socialism. Go figure.

   P.S. – That pile of skulls image doesn’t seem to link to anything, even though the text below implies it should.

   1. Sigh. Word press was troublesome yesterday. I’ll see if I can find the post again.

      1. http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left.html
         “Left Wing Bloodbaths.”

         The above worked for me. Link heavy. PDFs. Doesn’t cover *every* holocaust, mass murder, terror campaign, and brutality, but comes as close as I’ve seen in a web page.

         If you are prone to nightmares, do not read. If you’ve just eaten, same. Any on the left, left leaning, left curious, apolitical, or just plain ignorant (not a perjorative), THIS IS WHY WE ARE SO ADAMANTLY AGAINST LEFTISM. Because they would set us on the path to horrors.

         Those today who sip at the cup of blood would eventually drown us all in sanguine oceans.

         1. Working for me now too.

      2. These idjits are confusing socialism with Mommy and Daddy. M & D gave them whatever they wanted so government will too. I am not advocating violence, but there will come a point where some will need to be used. Unless these grifters etc will give up their grift without being forced to. In my opinion, highly unlikely.

         1. I know. I KNOW.

   2. Search for “strange women lying around ponds” on Bing

      Go to images.

      See how many end with “is sounding better every second”

4. “Hey, I worked hard painting that picture!”
   “And the State thanks you very much for it.”
   “But that was supposed to pay for my food, heat, and rent for the next 2 months!”
   “And the State thanks you very much for your donation.”
   “But I didn’t donate it, you took it.”
   “What? You didn’t donate it? Oh dear, that’s very bad comrade. I see. We have the solution to your food and rent problem. We are sending you to North Dakota to work for the glory of the State by mining coal. Bring your warm clothes and shovel. They’ll have to last for the next 5 year plan.”

   1. Wyoming. Wyoming has the coal. In ND it’s the oil.

      1. This is a communist govt we are talking about. They probably would be sending him to the wrong state. Especially today since the Ruling class makes the 1800 European royals look like purebreds in terms of ability

         1. Oh yes. Aacid is right.

         2. That’s why when I heard about the “I can teach anyone to farm” quote from Bloomberg it gave me the willies. And he’s supposed to be one of the “Not-so-Marxist” ones. Never mind his fascist war on big sodas and salt. If he believes that it’s the place of government to dictate such things, he wouldn’t have any problem (since he’s such a damn expert) with dictating to Farmers when, where, and what to farm. Any student of history, who hasn’t deluded themselves, has seen how that goes.

            1. I’ll see that, and raise Bloomborg two chapters from The Last Centurion about tofu-eaters trying to be farmers. Most people can be taught to farm, if they’re willing to learn. It only takes about 20 years.

               I lived on a farm for 8 years, and John Ringo vastly simplified Bandit 6’s explanations of farming. If he hadn’t, the book would have been at least four times longer.

               Bloomborg is a typical leftist — because they know something, they believe they know everything. They’ve been told, and told, that they know everything, that communism is the answer to every question. It’s a cult, but one where they kill everybody else before turning on themselves.
               ———————————
               I used to live on a farm. I know what bullshit smells like.

               1. Bloomberg’s error is an old one, as demonstrated by this rhyme:

                  Here come I, my name is Jowett.
                  All there is to know I know it.
                  I am Master of this College,
                  What I don’t know isn’t knowledge!
                  –

               2. Grew up on one. Using old methods, only about twice as long. Using modern, up to date, I’d say about six. And qualify for undergraduate level text on agronomy, if he included appropriate refrences and studies.

            2. To borrow from The Right Stuff, the issue isn’t pussy, it’s monkey!” — the issue isn’t socialism, it’s totalitarianism. You can have the latter without the former but when you have the former you are certain to eventually have the latter.
               –

            3. Why am I suddenly reminded of when Khrushchev visited a corn farm in Iowa, then decided that they should plant corn all across the Soviet Union, despite the fact that most areas of the former USSR are not suited to growing corn.

               1. That’s about the same time the Greenies were proposing we plant trees in the Dust Bowl to “re-forest” it. If it was suitable for trees, you couldn’t *stop* them from growing there… in the meantime, they were marching to “save” Death Valley by opposing those dirty internal combustion lowlives and their dune buggies and motorcycles, who were raping Mother Gaia with their knobby tires…

                  1. Don’t start me on that. I still get irked whenever someone wants to try Ted Turner’s idea of “rewilding” the Great Plains with modern versions of mammoths and saber-tooth cats. The ecosystem and water systems are too different now, even as compared to 60 years ago.

            4. Yep. Same with all of them. It’s a belief in people as widgets

      2. Ahhh Comrade, I see you have much need for more lesson. Coal is where Glorious Party says it is. You will enjoy digging for coal in ND for next 10 years, I can tell.

         1. “THERE IS NO F’N COAL IN NORTH DAKOTA!!!”

            “Dig harder, comrade.”
            ———————————
            Zathras used to being beast of burden for other people’s needs.
            Very sad life. Probably have very sad death.
            But, at least there is symmetry.

            1. “No one remembers Poor Zathras.”
               No one remembers comrade who die in gulag, either. If this country turns socialist, the only ones who can survive will be those of us who know how to live off the land. Because the supply lines to the cities are going to falter pretty darn fast.

         2. I’m laughing because crying is exhausting.

            1. If it looks like they’re winning. we must kill them all hard and fast before they can get planted in the country. Othere wise millions will die and it’ll take decades if not longer to get rid of them.

               1. yeah. But the criteria for “it looks like they’re winning” is not cut and dry.
                  But yeah, we can’t allow them to take the last best thing on Earth.

      3. And don’t forget this: Wyoming has 150 Minuteman III missiles, as does North Dakota.

         1. Sure, attack North Dakota missile silos!
            You evil capitalists just killed two million state citizens working near those places. We won’t mention that we no longer have to worry about those dissidents, or provide any more care for them. But the Premier thanks you for the extra money to expand his dacha.

      4. Socialist, central planning state doesn’t care if there is coal or not. They say go dig, you go dig until you find some, or die. That’s the point of gulags. They don’t really care if you live or die, you’re in punishment storage and if still alive, they can trot you out anytime they feel like it like a good little parade animal.

         1. Don’t forget what the Col and Mad Mike have said about Communists. Die on your feet than on your knees, Better to die destroying them than to have your children and grandchildren die as their slaves.

5. Leftists: All your things are belong to us!

   1. Steal every gov, for great social justice!

      1. You belong to them in their eyes. Destroy them before they destroy us!! TWANLOC!!

   2. Funny. It’s never *their* labor and money that they need to found and fund their socialist utopias.

      You’d think all the ardent socialists would pool their resources, built Communism, and slam the door in our deplorable faces while chanting “neener! neener!”, but that doesn’t seem to be the plan.

      1. Also weirdly NO ONE ever takes an inner tube across shark infested waters to join a socialist “paradise.”

         1. Quite a number of defectors from the U.S. to Cuba; but as you say, none of them paddled their way there in an inner tube.

            1. and a good many tried to come back. Too late.

               1. Go to Jail. Go Directly To Jail. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200.

                  Funny ho w most of them who sought “refuge” there were all wanted for real crimes of violence, and not political crimes.

         2. Oh, I think there are probably A LOT of people tubing toward Cuba, it is just that our corrupt imperialist government controls the media, suppressing all reports of such refugees from the horrors of Capitalism.

            After all – what other explanation might there be?
            –

            1. Yes, comrade. Clearly Trump directs the media to whitewash capitalism in order to stop people from fleeing, even as he directs them to smear the president and the way the country is run in order to –

               Ow. Please tell me that audible snapping sound I just heard didn’t come from my brain…

               1. It was just your neck cracking from the whiplash that was generated by your head shaking in response to what you were typing.

               2. You forgot to mention that he did it retroactively.

               3. That was your intelligence snapping your sarcasm on the wrist with a rubber band….

                  1. I thought of more like a wet, twisted towel being used…

      2. There’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prevents people from forming their own voluntary commune. Many groups have done it over the years. The fact that none of them worked or lasted for any significant amount of time is a coincidence, I’m sure, due to the fact that the people who founded these were nowhere near as smart as the Millennials.

         So go ahead, socialists. Buy yourselves a big chunk of land in Ohio or someplace, and show us how it works!

         1. Buying land is capitalism!!

            In order for them to have true socialism, the land must be given to them. And not taxed.
            ———————————
            “Oh, no. You can’t-a fool me. There ain’t-a no Sanity Clause!”

            1. The usual system is for the State to take *all* the land, then “lease” back it to individuals. Because the land of the privilege of standing on it should of course belong to the State.

               Always sounded like a spin the king-owns-it-all thing to me, but they’ll write potboiler treatises full of words they made up in order to argue otherwise.

         2. Hey, no fair pinning Bernie and his fanboys on every adult under some 40.

            1. Thank you.
               Though your generation and below were ridiculously next-level indoctrinated to be socialist.
               And I say that as someone who went to school under national socialists and international socialists*. They pounded your heads with this bullshit MUCH harder than they did mine.
               *We didn’t go to school under the maoists. I can’t remember if it was 1 month or 3 or 6 they were actually in power (it was long ago) but they weren’t mentally coordinated enough to have schools function.
               Oh, we were sent out to paint revolutionary murals and stuff. But no one was taking attendance, so I stayed home and read.

            2. Yeah, I second this objection.

         3. Yep.

         4. None is a somewhat broad generalization. A few have managed to hang on for a while. Most of those were schismatic Christian sects, and thus considered themselves to be answerable to a Higher Power. Of course, plenty of Religious Communes have failed, too. But communalism CAN work, provided that the participants are volunteers who expect to WORK.

            1. This! This is what I try to convince my students. What works well in a convent or monastery does not work for a nation-state.

               1. I would argue that not all convents or monasterys. It just takes one to desire power, for the sake of power. Religion, of any kind is not 100% proof against power.

               2. Ever visited (or studied) the Amana Colonies in Iowa? Someone summed the origin up as “Christian Communists” which is accurate if you manage to divorce ‘commune-ism’ from Marx. The setup was open – you could join, you could leave, and there was trade with those outside. The setup lasted several decades (more than a century?).

                  They switched to private ownership quite literally overnight during the Great Depression… too many coming in that did not keep the(ir) faith and thus did not ‘pull their weight’. So the vote was held one night, and the next day Things Were Different.

                  1. I see other mentioned it. As usual, ox slow.

                  2. you could join, you could leave

                     See, that’s what I came up with also in my masters project as the significant difference between monastic commune-ism and soviet communism: the former was voluntary.

                     That’s the only way it can work, is if you only have people in who want to be there.

                     1. “difference between monastic commune-ism and soviet communism: the former was voluntary.”

                        Or US builds fences to keep people from swarming into the country; anyone leaving, can come back, if they want, or not, no permission needed.

                        Socialism/communist countries (Cuba, Venezuela, Russia) build fences to force people to stay in the country. Anyone leaving, without permission, if they live to do so, can never go back … well I guess they could but their survival doing so is suspect.

               3. Same with absolute democracy. In small, very small communities, sure. It can work. But towns, cities, couties? *shakes head*

                  A Republic. It has its flaws, its a pretty horrible system of government, and it puts power into the hands of a few fallible men. But it’s the best we’ve found so far.

                  1. “absolute democracy”

                     Which is why Oregon is ruled/controlled by what Salem & Portland want, to a lesser extent, joined by Eugene & Ashland. Oregon GOP legislator’s have their open airline tickets purchased. Are, again, set to scramble for out of state to deny the governor a quorum for the carbon initiative vote. Should it be referred to the voters as an initiative … we’re SOL.

                     Heck Lane County is bad enough, being controlled by Eugene. Just ask people Veneta & west, or east of Pleasant Hill, Springfield, or any whose income depends on farms/ranchs/timber. I’m in Eugene, so my voice is drowned regardless, but still …

            2. Communes stop working when they get too big for everybody to know everybody else, when it can no longer just be ‘everybody knows’ who the slackers are. That’s when they have to turn authoritarian, recruit informers and enforcers…

               Some turn authoritarian long before they have to.

               All of these would-be ‘socialists’ are authoritarians. “You vill do vhat ve tell you, because zat iss vhat iss right! You vill not qvestion!”
               ———————————
               There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

            3. However… I have never seen an example of such a community that is closed cycle self sufficient. Even a medieval life style requires supporting input from the outside world. The most obvious (for convents and monasteries, or groups like the Shakers) are novitiates to become workers.

         5. None of those communes were started by Valentine Michael Smith either, or taught the Martian language.

            1. Some of those types sometimes make me wonder if they were taught human language.

         6. If they had enough money to buy land, they wouldn’t be wanting socialism. Because then they’d having something worth owning, and they wouldn’t want those socialists to steal it… oh, wait.

            1. Nah. A lot of them lust for power.
               Bloombug, for ex.

6. AMEN and AMEN and AMEN
   Cannot agree more.

7. The Inspirationists came from Germany to Rochester, NY and then moved to Iowa and founded the Amana Colonies on a completely communal basis. They even made it last for over 80 years. Ironically they changed over to allowing private ownership and eliminating the community kitchens in 1932, when the rest of the world was hellbent for “socialism,” or variations thereof. They gave up for a number of reasons; their main factory burned down, costing them much of the communal income for one. But two more reasons local docents gave us (which didn’t necessarily make it in to the official guide) were one, the kids wanted “modern,” products like lipstick which the communal store didn’t offer….and two, the hard-working members of the group resented the ones who coasted and didn’t carry their share of the work.
   And yes, they then founded the Amana Corporation. And yes, this is where the Amana Radar Range (i.e. microwave oven) came from. Really interesting place to spend a week.

   1. Also the Oneida Community. Pelagianists who believed that this world was to be made.perfect by them. Started in the crazy year of 1848, had several branch communities open and close between then and 1854, had one branch stay open.until the tornado in 1878. The main community dissolved and turned into Oneida silverware in 1881.

      Free love for everyone, except Charles Guiteau.

      (Which showed good judgment and survival instinct, except that they also wanted him to watch the kids.)

      But it wasn’t just Guiteau. If any guy liked any woman enough to get attached, or vice versa, they made them stop having sex. There was also “scientific” breeding of kids, communal raising to prevent family bonds, and a pre-Maoist group criticism session. And of course there was a charismatic leader, kids being “introduced” to sex by older more powerful members, and soon. So not the most pleasant place to live.

      1. Yep. Some insanity keeps recurring.

         1. Idle hands and all that, especially with the youth… and the elderly who want to use the youthful idle hands… (and brains…)

   2. Lovely place to visit, great German food, woolen mills and fabrics, exquisite hardwood furniture, and the local wine makers have a special dispensation from the state. Amana wines can be up to 20% alcohol content rather than the state limit of 12%. And several shops offer free wine tastings, just don’t overdo.
      Located a bit west of Iowa City just off interstate 80. Significant other did her post grad work at University of Iowa in Iowa City so we would often visit the colonies of a weekend for a little break.

      1. I had not realized that non-fortified wines could biologically go much over 13%.

         1. I could be mistaken. It’s been over 30 years ago.
            Still, I specifically recall that Amana wine makers were given a special dispensation by the Iowa liquor board for higher percentage. Might have been 6 and 12.

   3. The Amana Colonies still have some of the best eating places you can find anywhere.

      Any time I’m in that part of Iowa (even if just passing through on I-80) I try to arrange the schedule to be there around meal time. (Don’t fall for the tourist traps right on the Interstate. Some are pretty good but don’t stack up to the ones in town).

8. Amen, amen, and amen.

   And for some reason the “reblog” button isn’t working.

   1. Because wordpress must die? Just link it. Sigh.

      1. Some people do ok with WP; Ars Technica uses a customized (tweaked?) version and they do ok. Maybe WordPress is the M60 of content management software. See, the guys in Vietnam swore by the Pig; by mid-80’s guys tended to swear at them; but by then they were mostly worn out.

         I have no clue what would be the software equivalent of being inspected, gauged, and safety wired; but it exists. Someone at imao might know. Or you could go the Army way and upgrade.

         1. Yeah, I have that WP too elsewhere. BUT THIS ONE is hosted on WordPress site. SO I can neither customize nor stop their updates from doing funky stuff.
            OTOH its almost unhackable.

            1. I wondered about the upstream / hosting side of things.

               1. Given the trouble I get into, this one is safer.

      2. So, a brief snippet from the beginning copied and pasted and a link back here for the rest now scheduled to go up as tomorrow’s blog post.

9. Mayhap it’s because I’ve found myself in a rather grumpy mood this week, but I find myself of the opinion that Leftists should not be laughed at, but rather tossed into a pit with a hungry ratel.

   1. Sigh. Socialists depress me. Hence this.

      1. You are far better at dealing with depression than I.

         1. if I didn’t do this, I’d kill myself or write really depressing fiction. Hence this.

            1. Oh wow; I got down after a breakup in college and invented a monster that had an attack that was a symbol of hopelessness. Never used it. I had forgotten about that.

               1. Better symbolic than the real thing. When I finished writing Isabelle and the Siren, I said to anyone who would listen that I would never ever ever write another story about a depressed main character again.

            2. So, does that mean the writers of tragedies all were suffering from depression?
               I was kind of surprised to look up the subject of “Writing as a coping mechanism for patients with clinical depression” on WebMD.

               “Many mental health experts recommend journaling because it can improve your mood and manage symptoms of depression. Studies support this and suggest journaling is good for your mental health. It may also make therapy work better.”

               Seems to me it’s a small shift from journaling consistently to moving into writing by the seat of your pants.

               1. No. When depressed I write gray goo….

                  1. I’m thinking Edgar Allen Poe, or H.P. Lovecraft.
                     Not the stuff that ends well for your protagonist that I’ve read in your work so far; although I wonder if what you consider grey goo might work for horror settings?

                     1. I have always wondered — did anybody ever actually graduate from Miskatonic University? Or did they each mysteriously vanish without a trace in the middle of some macabre night or other? Did any of the professors survive to retirement?
                        ———————————
                        Erik: “It’s reassuring to find that the world is crazier than you are.”

                        1. Miskatonic University; motto: “The Truth Shall Make You Flee”

                           1. One under-rated factor for Miskatonic University is that ALL student loans are repaid … one way or another.
                              –

                  2. Yep. And gray goo never sells.

                     I have to write counter to my nature, to nurture the better part of me. Left alone, I’d be a grouchy anti-social hermit muttering about how It’s All Gone To The Dogs, and There Is No Redemption Possible.

                     Pfui. Cautious optimism is what I can do. Confidence, sure. May have too much of that. But depression makes all the good things stop. It’s highly annoying.

                     1. Grandma’s motto “While there’s life, there’s hope.”

                        1. John Carter’s motto/challenge: “I still live!”

                           1. Declaration of life as a challenge? Okay…

                           2. He generally used the “I still live” statement when faced with a seemingly hopeless situation in response to gloating by the bad guys.

                           3. Ah. Not quite what I was thinking, then.

                        2. I laughed so hard at this! This describes the local creative groups in my area to a T.

                     2. I put this way “Things are never so bad that they can’t get worse!”

                        1. “How are things?”

                           “Could be worse.”

                           “They take suggestions.”

                  3. Can you write it well enough (under a pen name) to sell to those who are no longer our countrymen, and depressing enough that they lose interest in living even one more day?

                     1. Yes. But I’d lose interest in living writing it.

               2. I recommend The Midnight Disease by Alice Weaver Flaherty

            3. Well, your fiction is amazing, so… Honestly, last summer I was reading “Guardian,” and it was amazing. A gut punch to any parent, that ended in righteous indignation and satisfaction. I actually ended up cosplaying Julie at FanX, with my own little Cuddly Bunny.
               But if writing depressed fiction isn’t your thing I get that.

               1. I can get very very litewawy. So, these posts avert it. 😉

   2. Old NFO just talked about Bloomberg’s gun control, so I have ‘common sense education control’ at the tip of my tongue.

      1. Oh Dear Lord. Don’t know what prompted this memory, but my Sixth Grade science teacher was adamant that the Titanic was discovered in 1997 by James Cameron. Because the movie was obviously a documentary.

         Even me brining in my copy of Dr. Ballard’s book wouldn’t change his mind. Though it did land me square on his sh*t list.

         “Common sense education control” indeed. I’m right there with you.

         1. FACEPALM

         2. Wtf

         3. Post WWII the greatest generation came home, bred like bunny rabbits, worked their butts off, and sent their 2.5 children off to college. Conventional wisdom was that they did a BA track to expand their intellects then could perhaps go on to an MS or even PhD in one of the icky STEM fields.
            Thing is, long about junior year many of these fine students got told that the money faucet would be turned off come graduation, so they had better figure out what they really wanted to be when they grew up. So they looked at their class records, at least the ones that stayed sober and straight enough to pass them, and discovered that with a bit of careful selection in that last year they could walk away with a teaching degree. Sweet! Get to dress nice, summers off, union job protection, and not terrible pay.
            Thing was, far too many discovered that they really hated the little brats so moved to non teaching administration positions as quickly as possible.
            In a nutshell, a few fine folks are teachers because they had a calling to a noble profession, far too many are in American schools because it was the most attractive job they could find with their crappy liberal arts degree.

         4. Elementary school teachers in particular really really really hate when kids are smarter than they are.

            (Okay fine, not all of them, but I will assert that it attracts the “type”.)

            1. If I remember this old fogey right, he hated it when ANYONE was smarter than him. Kids or adults, didn’t matter.

               1. Thing is, knowing more on a particular subject is not the same as being smarter. Only a dope would think otherwise.

                  Being better informed is not the same as being smarter, and being smarter is not the same as having wisdom.
                  –

            2. Oh, my, yes. It also seems to attract the type that likes to exercise petty authority over people too weak to fight back. And then these vermin promulgate stupid ‘zero tolerance’ rules that, for example, take asthma inhalers away from children. And when laws are passed overriding said rules, they find ways to drag their heels about complying. One day the parent of a chI’ll who needed an inhaler that was locked away is going to turn up in a school office and have a grand old spree with am machete.

               Indeed, I’m kinda astonished it hasn’t already happened.

            3. *Snickers* Or if they screw up, even a totally normal, human screw-up, and one of the kids catches it.

               My brother, in middle school, was sent to the principal’s office. Because his science teacher said that snakes are invertebrates.
               And my brother asked if he meant vertebrates.

               My mom got major points for being scathing about it and implying to the office lady that she knew full well the office lady knew the teacher was wrong–which I’m about 50% sure she did, or at least looked it up– but the policy required a parent be told if a kid was pulled out of class.

               Mom had “a talk” with that teacher and he didn’t do that again.

               1. the CORRECT thing to do is to claim that you had made the mistake on purpose, see if they would catch it.

                  It’s of course a joke, but it conveys that the teacher is in charge.

                  1. Dad would do this on purpose, in the classes he taught at the department of foreign affairs. He’d throw in “pornographic memory “ or similar, to wake students up and see who was paying attention.

         5. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker: “That’s not just plain stupid, that’s fancy stupid. That’s stupid with raisins in it.”

            1. Are you kidding? That there’s the Cinnabon of stupidity: with icing and sprinkles on top.
               –

               1. Extra-special-haute-foreign stupid has snails and fermented fish sauce. I think that’s where Marxism comes from.

                  1. No. Marxism comes from the special stupid made out of improperly cleaned puffer fish.

                     1. Makes sense.
                        Marxism just like an incompetent puffer fish monger tend to bury their mistakes.

         6. Had a High School Geometry teacher (AKA Wrestling Coach but it was the off season). We shared a liking for Alistair Maclean novels and had some nice conversations during down time.

            Then he saw me reading an SF book (IIRC it was one of Niven’s Known Space series) and wanted to know why I was “wasting my time reading that junk”. I told him that many were just as good as adventure novels as Maclean and besides, I learned science stuff.

            So he Quizzed me on thing like what the speed of light was, what does E-MC2 mean etc.

            Once I had answered all of his questions (In front of the entire class I might add) I said I had a question. He said “shoot”.

            What’s a tachyon?

            “I’m the teacher, I ask the questions!”

            We still got along fine, but he never bugged me about my SF books again.

         7. Good freaking God!

   3. Killed dead. Sliced, diced and fried. If you count the number of dead communism/socialism is the worst virus ever!

10. Thanks! I needed a good laugh, and you proved one, in at least two senses of the word good.

    Oh, BTW, the green hospital visitor chairs with the lever on the right side will lay flat if and if you pull the release tab (round, black thing) under the right arm of the chair, on the inside.

    Further, the state of North Carolina is closed, mostly, due to snow.

    1. ^if and only if

    2. hospital? What is happening?

       1. Except for ten days at the end of January to February, my mom has been in the hospital all year for pneumonia.

          1. Yikes!

             Sending prayers.

             1. Thank you very much.

                1. And hugs. Prayers and hugs.

          2. Oh. No. I’m sorry.

             1. Thanks. She’s getting better, but still on some oxygen.

                1. That is rough. And she must be super-bored as well as feeling cruddy and exhausted. (Not to mention your feelings.)

          3. Prayers. Hospital food has gotten better over the last few decades (I’ve had occasion to sample it often enough), but there’s no fixing some things. Y’all take care, you and yours. Bring ample book supply.

          4. Best wishes for a full and speedy recovery for her

    3. And yes, here in Colorado we’re ALSO enjoying 2020 and froze to death.

       1. I heard December was cold too. My first cousin’s step-daughter married a soldier, and they’re at Ft. Carson. (or Collins?)

          1. A Soldier would be stationed at Fort Carson. It’s in Colorado Springs.

             1. Hoah.

       2. Oregon has been dry, but not tremendously cold. OTOH, I’m really not looking forward to fire season. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

          Off to see the eye doctor. They plan to put fluorescein dye in me once again. Chrome yellow pee for the day. Whee.

          1. Dry Oregon? Wow.

             1. Eastern Oregon is pretty dry. The Olympic Mountain range squeezes out most of the water.

                1. CASCADES, not Olympics! My mind…now where did I leave it…

                   1. It’s probably with mine. They skipped out to Hawaii and are sipping drinks with umbrellas on the beach.

                      1. How does an umbrella sip a drink?

                         1. shut up, wretch. I knew the order was a mess. I am not well.

                         2. The flamingos know, but refuse to tell.

                         3. Capillary action and evapotranspiration?

                         4. With its tip.

                            1. That would make sense, especially if umbrellas are good tippers (as opposed to simply being good tipplers).

                         5. How does an umbrella sip a drink? What are you talking about?!?

                            It’s clear that they are using umbrellas to sip the drinks. You know, instead of straws. Probably because straws have been banned in Hawaii….

                      2. I let my mind wander, and it never came back….

                      3. You think mine is there, too? If you find it, tell it to come back! I need to impress employers for a while before they forget I exist!

                         1. As long as they don’t forget to pay you, it sounds like a pretty good deal.

          2. Update: Retinas OK, no flourescein testing (computer upgrade at the practice got borked), next appointment in August. Yippie! No appointment near the election close to the People’s Republic of Ashland.

          3. Misstyped my handle–dilated pupils and typing aren’t friends.

             Update: Retinas OK, no flourescein testing (computer upgrade at the practice got borked), next appointment in August. Yippie! No appointment near the election close to the People’s Republic of Ashland.

             The part of Oregon east of the Cascades ranges from dry to desert. We’re historically dry, but it looks like another drought year. Urk.

             1. Huzzah and commiserations. We got the rain you are missing. Floods and mudslides. I don’t know if FedEx ships rain in the quantity you’d need, but we’d be glad to be rid of it for a bit.

             2. Oregon in general. We’re way down for the year’s moisture over here in I-5 territory. Good thing Shasta Lake (dam), & other locations in N. California, got more than their fair share last year, because this year it isn’t looking good.

                1. Is Portland dry?

                   1. Drought dot gov says no. NW corner, coastal region, and the NE are OK. The rest is either in “moderate drought” or “abnormally dry”. Here’s the map:

                      https://www.drought.gov/drought/states/oregon

                   2. Haven’t been paying attention. Do know further north has been hit by storms that barely hit southern Willamette Valley. OTOH we drove to Portland during Christmas break & while it was raining up north, down south we were getting pounded. Mom generally complains when her drive between Eugene & Hockinson (bit NE of Vancouver WA) is not nice & dry (youngest grandson in SR year HS plays football & basketball); she hasn’t been complaining the last few weeks …

                      Over all the rain gauges are showing short, but the snow pack is looking decent in the Cascades.

                      California overall snow fall is looking dismal for all that Yosemite Valley has gotten snow this year; it doesn’t always. Could change. Still solid two or 3 months of snow possible.

                      I’m sure it’ll start raining in March & I’ll be thoroughly sick of it by July. I mean a dry Spring Break is a myth. It does happen, but not the way to bet.

       3. It was kind of interesting that the second the groundhog predicted an early spring, we got dumped on.

          Of course, maybe it is a good sign. Maybe if we’re getting lots of snow in February, there will be less in April…

       4. And here in central Texas it’s been quite mild – to the point that I need to mow the grass for the third time this year.

          1. Up here on the Texas tundra we’re below average temps and sort-of-dry-ish. The first tumbleweed of the year attacked me in the parking lot today.

             1. Your elevation is too high Tex!

             2. Been rather wet over here in Arizona, so no tumbleweed attacks yet. But I know there are going to be some giant ones later on.

                (Tumbleweeds: the vermin that laughs at a Glock, and is too fast for a machete…)

          2. North, non tundra, Texas is cold. We’ve used so much firewood that we’ve had to order more.It makes me wonder if I’ve moved South. When I hear what the temps are in CO and NE, I realize that I’m just in a coldish part of the South. Thank the Lord we haven’t had any snow or ice. Just cold, dry and sunny. Cold and cloudy is guaranteed to make you depressed.

    4. “Further, the state of North Carolina is closed, mostly, due to snow.”

       A Friday snow, even if only an inch or two, is always grounds for NC shutting things down and awaiting the thaw, sure to arrive no later than Sunday.
       –

       1. Other side of the mountains, it’s “Less than eighteen inches? School’s open. More than twenty four? Two hour delay.”

          1. It was a bit jarring finding the closure criteria was different in MN than in (central) WI.
             In WI, it was generally by amount to snow.
             In MN the amount of snow could be small, but the key factor is wind.
             “Wind?”
             “All that air slides down the Rockies, and there’s nothing to slow it down..”

             1. s/to/of/

             2. In eastern Nebraska, it was windchill. If the wind chill was -20 F or colder, no school, because of kids walking to school or standing outside waiting for the bus. Oh, and 6″-8″ of overnight snow (streets not plowed fast enough for buses to get out.)

          2. Go to school via malemute or husky pulled sled? Faster would be the all-american snowmobile. Biathalon training during PE? (Skiing and shooting(maybe sniping)) I prefer the heat island that is DFW.

       2. but it largely missed Richmond, which was weird.

          1. Too much hot air for it to snow.

       3. Do you really want to deal with an entire road system FILLED with drivers with no experience driving on snow? That’s among my sister’s unfondest memories of Washington DC, how they could not drive on snow.

          1. When I lived in the DC area it was my observation that DC got serious snow JUST rarely enough that the politicians never bought serious snow removal equipment. Every few years there would be a snowstorm heavy enough to really paralyze the city, and a lot of people would demand to know why there wasn’t the means to deal with it…but by the next election most people would have forgotten.

             1. The federal government, paralyzed by snow…sounds good to me!
                ———————————
                Be thankful we don’t get all the government we pay for.

             2. I have often wondered why a 1/2″ of snow in the South would be considered so disastrous, until I realized that if cold weather was rare, you wouldn’t have the equipment — whether it be coats or snow removal stuff — to deal with it.

11. Been avoiding a certain pair of youtube channels because Sparty just posted his “Why the National Socialist were not REALLY Socialists” B.S. again followed by a speculative “What if the Fascists lost in the Spanish Civil War?”
    None of the failures are “Real™” Socialist/Communist?Marxist/Leftist because the Socialists/Marxist leftoid fools want us to try “One More Time! This time it’ll work, fersure!” and if they are not “Real™” they can’t be used as proof they are wrong, and it won’t effing work.
    I include Fascism in the left because it was made by Marxists who realized it would never work like Marx envisioned and tried to figure out how to get something that did work, tossing out the parts of Marx they knew were not going to work, but kept far too much to actually work. Instead of promises of equality leading to a defacto dictatorship, using social programs and forceful suppression of opposition to try to ensure their power, they leaped straight into dictatorship, and used forceful suppression of opposition, and social programs in an attempt to ensure their power.

    1. Thing is, the Nazis weren’t socialists.

       Mostly because they decided to co-opt the factory owners instead of killing them or running them out.

       Otherwise, still doing central planning and all that rot.

       1. Meh. Just different methods to control production. Look, the factory owners COULDN’T say no. So we can debate ownership.

          1. They decided to own the people rather than own the factories directly. If they had owned them directly, they would have had to run them. Being lazy, they had their slaves do it for them.

             1. There is another problem if they take OWNERSHIP, they are then RESPONSIBLE!!! If they control the owners, then the OWNERS are RESPONSIBLE, that is MUCH better for the NAZIS. Gives them someone to blame if things don’t go right, and they NEVER go right.

                1. I wonder if the Ontario Canada government learned that trick from them. That is exactly how they avoid responsibility for the crappy hospitals that they are the only legal customer for.

                2. ^^^THIS^^^

                   All forms of government and economics can be described on a continuum of who has the responsibility and who has the authority. It’s only a different mix going from pure libertarianism (absolute personal responsibility and authority) to pure communism (absolute collective responsibility and authority). Both extremes impossible in the long run, of course, for anything with human genetics. They can be briefly successful, but soon degenerate.

                   (Pure anarchy, best described as “no responsibility, no authority” is not a system of government or economics. Also impossible in the long run, and degenerates much, much sooner.)

                   1. and degenerates much, much sooner

                      Pretty much the instant that two of the weaker folks being attacked figure out that if they team up, they can beat the bigger guy and keep their own stuff.

             2. Yep.

          2. Exactly. Even if they didn’t legally take ownership, the Nazis controlled the means of production. That, and their official name was the “National Socialist German Workers Party”. Anybody wants to call themselves socialists, I’ll believe them and treat them accordingly.

       2. I get that from socialists who then defend 0bama bailing out GM and telling them what to do etc. It is socialism but hey, we’ll keep the elites happy and in charge as many are also the industrialists. They weren’t full nutter butter socialists, but the socialists of the world loved them, until they expanded their direction, or were bad for public image.

       3. A Socialist is a Communist is a Fascist is a Nazi. The minor details as to whose back gets scratched and whose gets scourged may change, but the dismal results are too similar to differentiate.

          1. Au contraire ma frère, the difference between a socialist and a communist is that the socialist hasn’t figured out how to get a gun – yet.

       4. Question: “What’s the difference between nationalizing a business and just ordering the owners to do what you want?”

          Answer: “None”.

          IE It’s still socialism.

       5. The thing is, Socialist, Communist, Fascist, Progressive…these are all brand names for the same “We know best, so we’re going to tell all you rubes how to live” bull dung. No matter what Theory is used to justify it, it’s always about putting the Right People in control. And, somehow, again and again, the Right People turn out to be a bunch of violent sadistic perverts. Stalin, Beria, Himmler, The Despicable Austrian, Mao, Pol Pot, Che.

          Or the current crop inn Washington.

    2. The problem with all of the attempts at communism, socialism, et. al. isn’t that they didn’t implement them correctly; it’s in assuming that socialism can work in the long term the first place.

       1. prezactly

       2. To my mind, that’s still getting bogged down in theory. The problem with Communism is the same as the problem with the Divine Right of Kings; no matter how good the theory is, in practice it almost always ends up being run by a concatenation of swine. Could Socialism work. In theory, sure! WILL it work? thew track record indicates, hell no!

          1. I think I’ve figured out why they Believe in socialism:

             1. Socialism works for ants and termites
             2. They’re smarter than ants or termites
             3. Therefore, they can make socialism work better!
             ———————————
             Under Capitalism, man exploits man.
             Under Communism, it’s the other way around.

    3. As far as I can tell, Fascists were Marxists who recognized after WWI that the “workers of the world” didn’t exist. British workers were still British, French workers will still French, German workers were still German. When they looked at each other, they didn’t see, “Fellow members of the Proletariate,” they saw the enemy. The Fascist recognized that if you were going to set up a socialist paradise, you were going to have to deal with that fact. They didn’t, however, recognize that everything else that Marx said was just as much bunk as the “international proletariate” was.

       1. Yeah, Benito just tossed what he thought would never work and went with much of the rest. Whether they were enemy or not depended on whether they were with you or not.

       2. ***got home from work, added more***
          Granted, Benny tossed A LOT of Marx out, but there was still too much of it hanging about.
          So if one is doing the silly straight line left-right spectrum, Full on Marxist Commie to the furthest left, yeah, sure, Nazi’s were to the right of that, with Fascist right of there, but neither is to the right of American Classic Liberalism/Limited Gov’t Conservatism/libertarianism like the Marxists and fellow useful idiots rant and rave about. Like the fool (NYT iirc) reporter showing up at a Neo-Nazi get together and learning their favorite issues are much the same, just racist biased to the “whites” favor. Nazis want government run heathcare, just not “wasting” it on lesser peoples. The leftoids hate being reminded they thought Nazis were where it’s at in the 30’s. They were less so on Fascists because they were up front on Marx being wrong, and skipped all they kept of him that because he was considered wrong stuff was not mentioned as his ideas, or were conclusions from others like minded.

    4. The difference between International Socialism and National Socialism is that you’ll never hear a NAZI say “but REAL National Socialism has never been tried”

       Well that and Stalin had a better mustache and the Nazi’s had better tailors.

12. Tidbit: Most firefighters and most fire departments in the US are volunteers (see https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-tools/Emergency-Responders/US-fire-department-profile).

    1. The only real fig leaf is that the reason that public, paid departments (Any department should be professional. I carry the same fire certs & medical license that are required to work for any paid department in the state per state requirements and went to class with a number of full time personnel) started initially was some bad behavior back when it was done by individual fire insurance companies. Some cases of arson and issues with overaggressive responses poisoned well, so to speak.

       Sadly you have the same today but with public unions added on (Especially when they have captured the govt and you get the guys pulling more hours in overtime than there are in a year because of contract provisions while the city cannot afford new ones because of the benefits costs). It poisons the wells for the smaller guys, too. Cities and citizens worry they are being taken advantage of because of these while the actual line guys who are not the hogs get shafted.

       1. Oregon effectively banned non-tax supported fire brigades because of one company. They were subscription-only, and refused to work a fire for a non-subscriber. Loss of house and outragey response.
          TPTB couldn’t resist it as a useful crisis.

          As a result, the non-tax supported brigade I’d been with lost out and disbanded, and the nearby and small tax supported department had to pick up the large but thinly populated area. Because of local politics, nobody in the larger area was willing to get annexed into the tax district. It didn’t even make it on the ballot.

          (In summer time, I have a 200 gallon fire trailer ready for use. Haven’t needed it for anything larger than our small slash/pine cone/pine needle piles, but it’s good enough for a start.)

          1. It’s idiotic. Options basically fall to either force subscription (E.G. tax them), allow them to place leins against property if action taken without service agreement, or other free rider aspects. But failing to pay a fire subscription means you lose your house because you rolled the dice and lost. Failure to pay the property tax that covers the fire district, school, etc is the same gamble wrt services but you get arrested and property taken even if a few thousand for a couple hundred thousand dollar property

          2. I seem to recall that incident. And agreeing with the fire department company to just let it burn. And laughing at the home owner for being penny-wise and pound foolish. Thing is, I doubt many people would object to having an emergency clause where you can opt-in by immediately transferring the funds that you would have paid from the beginning to the present. The problem being that people rarely would keep that much in liquid funds for immediate transfer, and in many cases would try to default with bankruptcy to avoid paying for it. In which case I would again say, “Have fun trying to put it out with your garden hose.”

             1. The brigade I was with got the collateral damage. We’d been independent, with a large, sparsely populated area, situated next to a small tax-supported (barely, minimum tax) district. Complicating matters, we’d just forcibly retired the chief of the brigade; he’d been good, but was getting sloppy, where sloppy leads to casualties.

                The new chief tried, but at that point the Oregon decision came down; convert to tax, annex to the small district, or punt. The consequences of my role meant that my future in that brigade had to be cut off, along with the new chief. There was bad blood; very close relationship between the old chief and some scary people in the other district. By our exiting, it was up to the district. We wished them luck.

                They opted for an annexation attempt. However, reports of questionable-to-illegal behavior on the parties involved meant that the annexation didn’t even get to a ballot. I kept my mouth shut, which probably improved my life expectancy. The former new chief got a job as an OR parks ranger, then moved to New Jersey.

                So now, the tiny district has a couple hundred square miles to look after, with those funded by donations. It’s been over 12 years; haven’t gotten attacked or spoken to. One loudmouth guy was trying to trash me, but got shut down by the county’s training people. Loudmouth eventually left town because of his own activities. Not sure if he’s alive; his enemies were nastier than mine, and there were unpaid debts involved.

                I haven’t had to call for fire services. Not sure what would happen.

                1. One of the things that drives me nuts about the assumption that “public will be better than private”, though, is the assumption that private individuals will always seek out their best interest, even if it meant acting dishonestly (and dishonesty never seems to be punished by lost trust, because hey, why not?) while public individuals always act via altruism, even if there’s a strong temptation to get lazy or to reward cronies (and are never shielded by things like qualified immunity, because hey, why should we hold public officials accountable?).

             2. Gack. moderation again. Sigh.

                1. I’ve unmoderated you. 😀

                   1. Thanks!

13. The first of the currency cats encapsulates, IMAO, the thinking & capabilities of “Green” Parties (such as NZ’s Greens who, thanks to MMP, are both a part of our governing coalition, & have a disproportionate amount of power, that is still less than the “partner” who brought even less to the table) who claim to believe that to achieve an “Ecologically Friendly Government” one must first go Socialist/Communist…

    I mean, that isn’t just “reinterpreting” the meaning of words & evidence, that’s holding up the evidence of what Socialist & Communist regimes have done to the environment &… I actually don’t know what mental gymnastics they’re doing, but they’re pretty darned “Mental” (it wasn’t Detroit who inflicted the Trabant on the world, it wasn’t Germany who dammed the Yangtze, it’s not Japan who’re trying to blow open that still-technically-underground Nuclear test site in North Korea [though if they could find a way not to be in the fallout zone they might send Rocket Man a few incentives to continue]).

    1. “How can you say the AGW Consensus is a scam?!”
       Because when it was “The Coming Ice Age™” all their solutions were exactly the same. “More Socialism/Communism!” Besides, socialism and communism are horrible for the environment.

       “How can you say that? That’s not true!!!”

       Tell the Aral Sea fishermen or any resident of Chernobyl.

       1. Precisely.

       2. Nurse in my office is from Ukraine, and has to get a radiation check every year. Never noticed if she glows in the dark or not. And her two daughters both look and behave like normal pre-teen girls. IOW their Mom frequently comes into work complaining about tearing her hair out and threatening to give them to someone to foster. Heh. I told her to let me know if she needed to bring her over to my place and I’d have the perfect set up for her. Small room, tiny closet, cot-sized futon on floor to sleep on. List of chores longer than both of her arms. You know, the whole frontier-Cinderella set up. Too bad we don’t have chickens to harvest eggs, pigs to slop, and cows to milk; but pigs and cows might be a bit much for a city-slicker type kid who doesn’t know how to take care of herself around large farm animals.

          1. and cows can do damage just by being cows, and we won’t get into ornery pigs ***shudder***

             1. Ooohhhh yeah.

                When I described my first gout attack to my Dr, I said it felt like a cow had stomped on the top of my foot. Ask me how I know.

                Pigs are good for body disposal….so I am told.

                1. They are, but you can still ID a person’s DNA from the pig’s feces.

14. “People who want a government based on unicorn farts deserve to be impacted by dragon farts”.

    From the Notebook of a Book Loving Dragon. 😉

    1. Too bad Andre the Giant passed away. I read that his flatulence was EPIC.

15. Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a proletariat out of this hat!
    Again?
    This time for sure!

    1. and every time they get a new hat, it is actually the same old hat

16. That particular “everything government does is socialism” meme is ridiculously annoying. Mostly because it kind of got started in the “every government program that doesn’t benefit me is socialism” crowd, and then the actual socialists grabbed it.

    Fortunately, the Brandolini principle does not apply to said meme. Just, as our hostess has pointed out, ask if ancient Egypt was socialist.

    1. Once upon a time, I realized that I could argue that the purpose of government is for the end of military organizations. Very fun argument.

17. If having public schools and fire departments is socialism, then we already have socialism. So the socialists should just stop worrying and be happy; we’ve achieved their desired goal, right? Why do we need to change anything?

    1. RIGHT? RIGHT?

    2. The argument is not Government vs No Government, the argument is what limits will be maintained on governments, and how.

       Socialists, Democratic and otherwise, tend to lean toward the “and how” part of the question.
       –

       1. I don’t think I follow that second paragraph. Can you make your point more explicitly?

          1. H. L. Mencken: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
             –

             1. *chuckle*

                Nothing worth doing is easy. But some people seem to think just because it’s hard, nigh impossible, the end must be *awesome.* Thus people who by all rights *ought* to be intelligent adults possing a modicum of common sense… supporting free healthcare for all.

                Y’know, I think I just realized something. Free sh- er, stuff is slavery. Free college? Free health care? Ye blobs and little onions, slavery is knocking at the door again. Could someone please tell it to go away?

             2. I’ve actually been thinking of a different Mencken quotation: “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”

                But then I live, for the present, in California.

                1. California, where if Governor Gavin “Giveaway” Newsom has his way doctors will soon be able to write prescriptions for housing to be covered by MediCal.

                   Co-pays, deductibles and where to find this housing in a state already suffering severe housing shortages is yet to be determined.
                   –

                2. Weirdly, I’ve been thinking of the same….

                3. It’s gonna happen if the violent Bernie Bros keep pushing, and it will be swift and ugly when it does.

18. The money one is particularly hilarious, given that one of the things Marx wanted to do was abolish money.

    In general, though, this kind of “Motte and Bailey” socialism reminds me a lot of Obama’s “everyone loves government” talk: as though, because you like the fact that there is a road at the end of your driveway, you’re morally obligated to support grant money for research on the lesbian subtext in Don Quixote or a national federal registry of pronouns or whatever latest billion dollars that congress wants to spend…

    1. What’s worse, if you don’t want to fund research for lesbian subtext in Don Quixote, the first thing socialists will cut are fire, police, and roads.

       It’s as if they like to hold us hostage to force us to do what they want!

       (And, ironically, it opens up the mind the the possibility that maybe private fire, police, and roads aren’t all that bad of an idea after all…)

19. Remember! Never try to get everything out of your jump jets! See https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/look-up-in-the-sky-its-a-bird-its-a-plane-no-its-jetman/.

20. Most of the people who call for Equality really desire no such thing. Consider, for example: Many people in “progressive” leadership positions are graduates of the Harvard Law School. Do these people really want to see a society in which the career, status, and income prospects for an HLS grad are no better than those for a graduate of a lesser-known, lower-status (but still very good) law school? C’mon.

    Quite a few “progressive” leaders are members of prominent families. Would Teddy Kennedy have liked to see an environment in which he and certain other members of his family would have had to answer for their actions in the criminal courts in the same way that ordinary individuals would, without benefit from connections, media influence, and expensive lawyers?

    The prevalence of “progressivism” among tenured professors is quite high. How many of these professors would be eager to agree to employment conditions in which their job security and employee benefits were no better than those enjoyed by average Americans? How many of them would take a salary cut in order to provide higher incomes for the poorly-paid adjunct professors at their universities? How many would like to see PhD requirements eliminated so that a wider pool of talented and knowledgeable individuals can participate in university teaching?

    There are a lot of “progressives” among the graduates of Ivy League universities. How many of them would be in favor of legally eliminating alumni preferences and the influence of “contributions” and have their children considered for admission–or not–on the same basis as everyone else’s kids? Yet an alumni preference is an intergenerational asset in the same way that a small businessman’s store or factory is.

    The reality is that “progressivism” is not in any way about equality, it is rather about shifting the distribution of power and wealth in a way that benefits those with certain kinds of educational credentials and certain kinds of connections. And remember, power and connections are always transmutable into wealth.

    Think of it as class struggle, but on a horizontal rather than a vertical basis.

    1. The prevalence of “progressivism” among tenured professors is quite high. How many of these professors would be eager to agree to employment conditions in which their job security and employee benefits were no better than those enjoyed by average Americans? How many of them would take a salary cut in order to provide higher incomes for the poorly-paid adjunct professors at their universities?

       Or that grant money would be distributed equally among all PhDs (or heck, anyone who calls himself a scientist) who wanted to work in a given field? Generally, most of them complain that the grant process is not biased enough in their favor.

       The Passive Voice had an interesting article today on the hellish life that is a university adjunct. The universities are one of the places with the biggest gaps between the haves and have-nots.

       1. I make more teaching part-time at Day Job than I would teaching at a university as an adjunct, or even as an assistant professor. I’m not complaining! But it does suggest that something’s rotten in the state of college education.

          1. The operational overhead of most colleges is low. And when you notice how staggeringly *much* money some of those colleges get, you start wondering what they’re doing with all that money.

             After MIT’s finances came up during the Epstein thing, they seemrf absurdly against any kind of accounting for donations. And though since they’re a corp and take both Federal and state money, their books should be open to public scrutiny, but in practice, apparently not.

             I’m still smelling “money laundering.”

             1. Possibly. But also look at how many staff there are compared to faculty. Especially in new areas like Diversity and the like.

                1. Yeah, but staffing is a simple line item, unquestioned unless there’s some egregiously huge salary disparity.

             2. Maybe their *required* overhead would be low, but there *actual* overhead is very high…layers of administrators, high salaries for the top ones, a mansion for the President, fancy dorms and recreation facilities for the students, etc etc. Actual expenditures on education represent a decreasing % of the total budget.

                Increasingly, universities are basically entertainment and indoctrination centers, operating as subsidiaries of hedge funds in the case of high-end private institutions.

                1. Settlements on sexual harassment claims….

21. Something being done by the government does not make it socialism.

    Government – interface mechanism between all states and outside states as well as interstate mediator
    Military – See Government but with more shooty and pointy things to interface with other international actors
    Air Travel – R&D Used to support interstate travel (Airports and such) and deconfliction of airspace by ATC and such. Europe has privatized a bunch although it has its own issues (For better or worse the US system makes airports and air travel less expensive because it is seen as a public good and taxed differently than elsewhere). The US has historically fostered private noncommercial aviation to a much higher degree than elsewhere both by making commercial aviation pay more for services and use of tax dollars to support, but that is supporting freedom of travel and movement.
    Driving – State issue unless you mean driving on interstates or the gas money that is hoovered up by DC and then dangled back to states to lead them around like good little poodles. Interstates are both commerce need and military. Does not need to be federal as pay to access roads are a thing but general highway stuff is a very defendable govt function. Stuff like bike paths should not be included.
    Water – State and local issue other than interstate mediation. Oh, and water rights and such have been dealt with for centuries and wells are a thing.
    Pubic skrools – Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone. (Stop diddling them too. The priests and scoutmasters are shocked at your proclivities) Sry, been dealing with too many stupids over the whole BSA cluster where people are saying they need to be government based rather than independent and generally religiousish.
    Bank bailouts – Came about because of govt diddling. But the insurance and such that is actually necessary could be done by industry.
    Border Patrol – Law enforcement does not come from socialism. And I’m sure if we were in the pure ungoverned environment that is being proposed here the 3 S’s would be used for border enforcement.
    TV, Radio, Cell – FCC Deconfliction. Public commons type problem that is solved by any form of govt. No difference than if King Donald I issues letters of marque or Commissar Sandernista gives it to bureaucrats to hand out to his supporters.
    Police – See Border Patrol
    Fire – Public Commons but also performed privately.
    EMS – Started privately, still heavily private. Govt licensing could be replaced with hospital based without real damage. Curriculum and certification almost all private.
    Libraries – You mean hobo computer centers? Not only is there internet but most public libraries started from private donations that the cities then took credit for (Hey! It is socialist!)
    Parks – Cities and states but a huge chunk of the stuff out west that is a tinderbox is like that because it is a status symbol for uncaring activists and bureaucrats who may go there once a year.
    Money – Uh…Go onto any “far right” board and say that the Fed Reserve is a govt entity.
    Corporate subsidies – You mean like Solyandra being given money to do the bidding of the government? Or Airbus’ launch aid? Or do you mean tax breaks for manufacture, investing, and such that should be designed to foster risk/reward. Because taxing someone at 20% instead of 40% isn’t a subsidy

    Federal disaster relief – See military for the actually useful portion of this. Most of rest should be treated as large scale insurance but it is really treated as political capital too often. Vote with me and your snow day will be a disaster declaration so you don’t have to pay as much but vote against me and your entire state being on fire, having started on federal land that you have no control over and it’s all on you.
    Internet – The boom started after the general networking was opened to public. R&D for military communications like DARPANet go under military.
    Patents – *Looks to china, India, Canadia* DS don’t follow them anyway. Part of the reason that medications are expensive here is that other countries take patented meds and tell the manufacturer that they will either sell under true price point including R&D, profit, etc or they will ignore the patent and make a generic and not pay for it anyway.
    Safe Food – It’s not the government that certifies safe electrical components. Food could be same way. And FDA been doing bang-up job anyway, especially since much food comes from outside anyway. Also, I have unregulated beef in my freezer that I will eat before I would eat any beef inspected by DS like China (Granted, I knew the cow it came from).

    1. Thanks. But you’re being way too rational. They just waaaaant it.

       1. Send em to the stables and tell em to find the pony.

          1. Augean?

             1. Any

       2. I wouldn’t mind giving it to them (“good and hard” as Mencken advised) if they didn’t insist on the rest of us coming down the khazi, too.

          1. yep.

22. Or do you think charity is socialism?

    Going off of the comments on Catholic Answer’s Instagram where they pointed out you can’t be a Catholic socialist, but you can be a Catholic capitalist– yes, they do.

    1. For those curious:

       View this post on Instagram

       It's a question we get a lot when we discuss why Catholics can't be socialists: "Well, can a Catholic be a capitalist?" Read what Church teaching says at the link in our bio. #Capitalism #Socialism #Catholic #CatholicAnswers #TrentHorn

       A post shared by Catholic Answers (@catholicanswers) on Feb 19, 2020 at 4:25pm PST

       Not sure if they’ve done any cleaning up, some of it was either trolling or folks so nuts they’re doing detraction on themselves.

    2. They think that socialism is charity.

       Actually, I’d revise that. They think that socialism is welfare and that welfare is charity. There’s no sense, though, where something involuntary can be charity.

       Take the example of a “gleaning” program. Teenagers, usually, might be recruited to help glean from the normal waste of an industrial harvest. The one program that I’d heard of did peaches. They’d take the damaged peaches and trim them and, geez, I think they canned them. Heavy on the need for real humans to do the work but not worth paying anyone but they still save a lot of the waste and donate the food.

       It’s charity because it’s voluntary.

       Imagine the same scenario where it’s involuntary? What would that be called?

       1. “Public school?”

          Some of those “mandatory volunteering” programs I’ve heard of sound a lot like “unpaid labor pool” to me.

       2. “Imagine the same scenario where it’s involuntary? What would that be called?”

          Slavery is the traditional term.

    3. *blink*

       That they felt they *had* to tell people. *shakes head*

       That makes my head hurt.

       1. I’m horrified they had to, too, but that’s now….what, six intrinsic evils that are mandatory for the Dems, and there’s still very public Catholics (even theoretically observant ones!) who are insisting that prudential actions that are licit for Catholics to support which the Dems push balance it out?

          I wouldn’t be surprised to see folks declaring Catholics are required to vote Dem. IT’s insane, but we are human…..

          1. The Republicans are pretty much responsible for the Catholic adherence to the Democrats; thanks to their strong anti Irish, Italian, and Polish immigrant policies of the late 19th Century.

             Which is ironic given that the Democrat’s original paramilitary arm has always been very anti-Catholic. I guess Team Blue has always been good at PR.

             1. The unions, and then the environmental folks, removed all my Irish relatives from the Dem party about half a century plus back, now.

                I think it’s got more to do with, well, the same reason that the Catechism has to point out that you can’t be a Socialist and a Catholic; it’s an atheist heresy of Catholicism, with the State as God.

             2. Bush won the white Catholic vote. When they were running Kerry, a Catholic. I think that adherence is one with the snows of yester year.

                1. Dang, that’s kinda impressive, especially since they include even cultural catholics in the count. (Same trick as with non-practicing Jews, for those who aren’t familiar.)

                2. Was Kerry a “real Catholic” or just a “Catholic In Name Only”?

                   I remember how he was running around talking to Catholic audience about a certain issue where he was trying to say he agreed with the Church on that issue while his party had a different view than the Church. 😉

                   1. That was indeed one of the factors. . . .

                3. The “Catholic Vote” is obfuscated by commingling the devout and the CINO votes.

                   Same way, the Jewish and Orthodox Jews don’t vote in the same way, Protestants need to be broken out into PINO and regular church attendees, and the “Women’s Vote” wants dis-aggregation into Single and Married columns.

                   Much polling of voters is performed to obscure rather than enlighten.
                   –

23. I award Sarah 12,000 gold stars for this post!

    1. And .00021 stold gars?

24. I have not been here, those are not my paw prints in the marmalade and I’ve three witnesses who can attest I was elsewhere at any hour you name.

    This is not a comment for comments.
    –

    1. Marmalade? I hate the stuff. Here, have all of it.
       BUT whose pawprints are on the butter?
       Any elephants here?

       1. No, elephants hide in the peanut butter jar. Or the bowl full of jellybeans, but only if they paint their toenails first.

       2. You hate marmalade?

          
          You’ve probably just never had the good stuff.
          –

          1. I think the problem is that the marmalade hates Sarah.

             1. no. Well, that too. But if I were going to kill myself it would be with this stuff which — I can’t emphasize this enough — HAS NO ORANGE PEELS IN IT. Or oranges. Stupid Englishmen guessing at recipes.

                https://www.portuguesefood.com/products/Marmelada.html

          2. Yet another food that makes a deal about being gluten free, that has no possible use for gluten in the first place.

             *sigh*

             1. Thickener or to keep stuff from sticking.

                Both important for folks with allergies, not so much for folks who are just a little sensitive.

                My mom asked the butcher why their ribs had it, he pointed out they put them on all of them because some of the ribs with sauce had them, and folks were assuming they did SOMETHING or they would’ve put it on all of them gluten-free ones.

       3. I love sweet (American) marmalade. My husband loves bitter (British) marmalade. We both love capitalism, which allows us the choice of having both.

          We do not love our current weights, so we don’t have it very often… But it’s a wonderful treat, on toasted sourdough bread. And thanks to capitalism, we can have that!

          Socialism is no marmalade at all, and after bribing the second cousin to the delivery man’s wife for the information on where he’s going today, waiting in bread line for four hours hoping you get some before the store runs out.

          1. [shopkeeper to Soviet citizen]

             “This is the store that has no meat. Across the street is the store that has no bread.”

             The shop that had no cheese was in Manchester, I think…

             1. Asked about the preserved fruit marketplace the Sanders 2020 campaign has denounced it as wasteful and excessively complicated, confusing consumers with an embarrassment of choices. A Sanders presidency would regulate the market to resolve this problem, allowing only two preserved fruit products: grape jelly and strawberry jam.

                It is the Sanders campaign’s hope and expectation that this will simplify the issue f determining what preserved fruit is out of stock.
                –

                1. I hope that’s satire but I suspect that it’s real. 😦

       4. No, the aardvark reports that a mammoth came by. It was lost. Fluffy gave it directions.

25. “All of us can just share everything, becoming a 300 million strong self-abnegating commune, where — unlike Bernie in the commune he once belonged to — everyone pulls their weight. VOLUNTARILY.”

    See now, normally everyone pulls their weight voluntarily because they can look forward to being paid for it.

    1. Yep. But you know… that’s not what they want.
       As some twat waffle defending socialism in a thread not so long ago put it “People will work out of civic duty.
       Sure they will sonny. And these are my middle fingers.

       1. And these are my middle fingers.

          –
          Which is about all the socialist/communist/statist/fascist weenies deserve, but there are so damn many of ’em! If you don’t wear them out, you will wind up with the world’s strongest middle fingers.
          ———————————
          Dark Willow: “Bored now.”

       2. Just curious what sort of job that particular individual has…

       3. “People will work out of civic duty!”

          Oh wait, you’re serious! Let me laugh even harder!

       4. Heck, many people oft won’t work when PAID to.

       5. “People will work out of civic duty.”

          Damned right they will, if they know what’s good for them.

          
          Picture of people enjoying a break while working out of civic duty.
          –

       6. People who’ve never had a civics class, never volunteered their life to defend people they will never meet, are unable to articulate civilization from barbarism, serve none other than their own base whims and haven’t the faintest idea how gobsmackingly unique and amazing America is have no business using the words “civic duty.”

          “People will work out of civic duty” sounds quite shockingly like it would devolve into the gulag, the secret police, and a half million child sized shoes to meet the Party’s quota, and rather quick at that.

          1. *I* never had a civics class. There wasn’t even one offered at the high school I went to.

             I did get to take pre-Soviet Russian history for “American History” credit, though most people assume I’m pulling their leg.

             The educrats were doing their best to show their inevitable Soviet conquerors that they were of-the-body. Apparently they weren’t aware of Lenin’s opinion of teachers and intelligentsia, or how the USSR had enthusiastically continued his policies in the SSRs and Eastern Europe…

       7. Yep, and when you tell them that, I suspect the response would be, “Well, they OUGHT to! We’ll make them!” And there we go down the rabbit hole, or more likely, the garderobe.

       8. I would say that if there is one thing the Marxist Experiment has proven beyond any shadow of doubt, every single place it has ever been tried from Communist China to the Hutterite colonies, it is that people will not work out of civic duty. People will work for money, or food, or out of fear, but duty to the State will not get them out of bed in the morning.

          In God we trust. All others pay cash.

26. Me to Socialists;

    “Look; you had a whole CENTURY to try it in. One hundred Years. In one hundred years, trying it in all manner of cultures and conditions, you couldn’t make it work even ONCE! And in the proccess, more than a hundred million people were murdered by ostensibly Socialist States. You are flat out OUT of ‘Benefit of the Doubt’. Your way was TRIED. It DON’T WORK! We’re going to do something that has a better chance of working.

    1. “…a better chance of working? What’s that??”

       Damn near anything else!

       1. Hell, human sacrifice to the Rain Gods has a better track record!

          1. As long as not on the Aztec “industrial disassembly” model, it killed fewer people.

             1. And, since it rained sometimes, it could be said to have worked sometimes.

          2. Aren’t they doing that now with abortion? (If we follow the that it is ‘better for the planet to not have kids’ nonsense.)

27. Interesting timing. Early next month at Day Job is the Bolshevik Revolution.

    1. The students know that I am not a fan of involuntary communism, but I do try to give credit where credit (or blame) is due.

28. Perhaps that idea of adding strychnine or such to pot isn’t so far off the mark after all…

    1. They tried adding e-oil for vaping but that didn’t work (fast enough).

    2. They’re adding all kinds of fatal shit to illegal pot these days and it isn’t even making a ripple in the gene pool.

       Remember the guy who set himself on fire at the White House? Illegal pot substitute. F-ed him up so bad he literally did not feel fire. People take that stuff ALL THE TIME, its so common we don’t even hear about it anymore.

       1. Ain’t humans amazing?

29. Without reading the article, I approve of TC’s helo GIF.

30. I don’t normally post just to say, “Yay.” But,

    YAY! Splenid, Sarah!

31. I really need to put together my post on My Basic Theory of Government, but a quick bit is that a major problem of any government is freeloaders. And then, because people have different ideas of who is freeloading, I bring up group projects.

    Because freeloading isn’t about money, freeloading is getting credit for things you haven’t done.

    Communism/socialism makes freeloading an incentive. And when there’s an incentive, most people will follow it, and then you need people to make things work, and that is the definition of a power vacuum.

    Socialism leads to tyranny because it leaves a power hole, and the people who like to fill power holes don’t tend to be altruists!

    1. “Socialism leads to tyranny because it leaves a power hole, and the people who like to fill power holes don’t tend to be altruists!” Francis Spufford made this point in his book Red Plenty, which is about economic planning in the Soviet Union.

       “By the end of the 1920s, however, the Party was in a position to enforce ideological conformity…the new technological intellectuals were willing to be told, were willing to believe, that the task of speaking truth to power was now redundant, because truth was in power.”

       But there is a problem with the kingship of philsophers. “Wisdom was to be set where it could be ruthless. Once such a system existed, though, the qualities required to rise in it had much more to do with ruthlessness than with wisdom…(Lenin’s original Bolsheviks) were many of them highly educated people, literate in multiple European languages, learned in the scholastic traditions of Marxism; and they preserved these attributes even as they murdered and lied and tortured and terrorized. They were social scientists who thought principle required them to behave like gangsters. But their successors…were not the most selfless people in Soviet society, or the most principled, or the most scrupulous. They were the most ambitious, the most domineering, the most manipulative…Gradually their loyalty to the ideas became more and more instrumental, more and more a matter of what the ideas would let them grip in their two hands.”

       https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/60918.html

32. c4c

33. Another EPIC giffing. I particularly liked the platypus, a duck built to government specs. ~:D

34. c4c

35. Democratic socialism puts ‘I voted’ stickers on all the skulls.

    1. ‘I voted for this’ stickers on all the leftist skulls.

36. My naps are artistic too! I really enjoy the gif posts because I like gifs.

37. I see I am late to the Party.

    Here is an article I found over at Ace Of Spades.

    Apparently, Marxist is not Magic in Pony land. Strange bedfellows indeed.

    https://thefederalist.com/2015/04/08/my-little-pony-to-children-marxism-is-not-magic/

38. Oh, also: Moo. }:o)

39. Ain’t humans amazing?

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43. One of the things that strikes me about “Communism” is that if you look at stated goals, and then compare the USSR, Cuba, China, or any other Communist State, to the United States, you will find that the United States is far more “Communist” than anything a “Communist” has ever put out. I have thus declared myself a “Free Market Communist” and insist that “From each, according to his ability, to each, according to his need” is a fantastic personal motto, but a horrendous, evil, and barbaric government policy.

    One of the ironies of claiming that Intellectual Property is “socialism”, is that I’m inclined to agree — and I’m inclined to agree in no small part because I have seen what tyrannies copyright contracts have enabled (with the publishers and music studios the tyrants), and what fiefdoms were created via patent law. Indeed, the Wright Brothers set back American aviation so badly before WWI that the United States had to buy out their patent, and practically nullify the patent system for aviation, in order for us to catch up to Europe’s military.

    So, yes, you’re welcome to claim IP as socialism, if you really want to. I, personally, won’t argue with that. I would merely ask why you want to expand those horrors to all the rest of us.

    But I would also reserve the right to laugh you to scorn, for being ok with attempting to establish a property right in something that some libertarians (such as myself) would make the case that cannot exist!

    (This is why I’m not bothered, in theory, by China’s buying up all our IP rights in multiple fields. We can, in principle, just ignore those claims; in practice, though, American are rather law-abiding, and it would take an emergency for Americans to do this.)

44. As I’m reading Rothbard’s explanation about why socialism is necessarily immoral, I can’t help but have the thought that too many people believe that we have rights because we live in a Capitalist society. But they have cause and effect reversed: we have a Capitalist society because we have rights.

    We can argue about whether or not we actually need government, and how much we need it, but the incredible insight of the Declaration of Independence is that we, as individuals, need to be respected as individuals, and if we aren’t, we have the duty to reject our current government, and replace it with one that will. The incredible insight of the Constitution is that no matter what, Government needs to be restricted, and be forced to respect us as individuals — even the worst among us.

    When you preserve the right to free speech, to arms, to a trial by jury with a lawyer, to property, and so forth, you preserve the right for individuals to make their own choices. What arises from this, Marx calls disparagingly “Capitalism”, but this is an inadequate name, for even people without capital have power. What we have, instead, is Individualism, and all our prosperity flows from the fact that we are free, more or less, to pursue our own interests, and the interests of others, as we see fit.

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