SCOPE

284 thoughts on “SCOPE”

1. You know exactly what is going to happen, what the flights are, etc.

   What do you do?

   Sure, you call a tip line. And maybe, just maybe you can do something. Maybe you can get just the right man. Maybe he even believes you. But the chances of that person having the authority and navigating the labyrinths of competing fiefdoms that are our secret services to stop the event are probably less than 10%.

   Even possessed of perfect knowledge, with all the details in your pocket, you probably can’t do it.

   *laughs*

   Read that, brain went: Well, I know what airports the planes left from. Time to call in some bomb threats and maybe set a few fires, I know what they were looking for to take bomb threats seriously.

   1. okay, but then you delay it. The plans were in place. You still can’t get the authorities to move.

      1. Mostly laughing because my brain, instead of recognizing the point, went into “hm, here’s ways to do SOMETHING.”

         Which I had to share because yours went in the same direction as soon as I started reading again. *big grin*

         ********

         The most likely result, barring something like 9/11 happening, is that we’d find out what Saddam shipped over the border in those trucks, the nasty way.

         1. You would definitely want to call Rick Rescorla, or visit him at his office, because he was probably the guy with the most strings to pull, and the most likelihood of believing you.

            I like the idea of a team, but why wait for the airplane? Take them out at boarding time, inject them with knockout drugs, make them deathly ill by spiking their drinks, or kill them in their little plastic chairs while sitting at the terminal. I mean, it’s not like you don’t know who the hijackers are.

            Heck, you could even get them out of the way the night before, when they were out drinking in bars and looking for women. They’re known people.

            1. Oh, that’s BRILLIANT!

               “Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t know who else to tell– I met these guys in the bar a couple of months ago, and they were saying they’re going to do this, this and this. And I started looking around, and it looks like they really are going to do it, and they’re CRAZY I mean they were talking about this being a return strike for Vienna and here’s all the open source things I’ve found-”

               Which we could come up with fairly easily because we know what was found after the fact.

               Send some stuff to those FBI and CIA guys who filed stuff that eventually got attention in the follow-up investigation.

               1. And from the ‘killing was totally necessary’-crazy part of the alignment space, if you have their personal identities, and locations, and a few months, they aren’t going to be watching their backs for the whole period.

                  You’d have to be pretty stupid or careless not be able to kill at least one of them before they wised up, killed you, or you got arrested by the cops.

                  Worst case scenario from a preventing perspective, they destroy the documents, leave the country, and the organization comes back to try again later.

                  Second worst, you get caught by the police, they never turn up evidence while checking with the dead and living people, and the thing goes ahead.

                  Much smarter ways to do it, but if one tells the cops that one has a list of people one is going to kill, one tells them that the motivation is criminal conduct, and one makes an effort to convince the cops that one can and will act, then the cops may at least put people in protective custody.

                  Of course, this a perfect knowledge situation, and real world problems are a more interesting challenge.

                  1. Didn’t they spend their last night before the op at strip clubs, reminding themselves of 72 awaiting virgins how decadent America is? I don’t know much about such places but I bet it wouldn’t be all that difficult to initiate a fight and get them tossed into jail.
                     –

            2. Oh, yes. They went to nightclubs the night before. Depending on how you control the time travel, you could poison them and jump back home.
               But okay,you know precisely who it is. Which in the present is impossible.

               1. Except of course if time travel were possible you wouldn’t be jumping back home, but rather to a world where 9/11 either did not happen, or happened at a different time in a different place.

                  1. Steins; Gate!

                  2. * RPG-er. Instant solve-that-scenario response.

                     WordPress is being unusually obnoxious on my Kindle recently.

                     1. So not unusual.

                        WPDE.

                     2. I actually had responded and gone for more coffee before I considered that you MIGHT mean Rocket Propelled Grenade or some of the other things.

                        Oh, and WordPress decided to put this in J. Totally Random spot, too. 😀

            3. Don’t need to kill them. My recollection is that some of the hijackers were wanted men, but the intelligence “wall” meant that the people who might have been looking for those men had no idea that the men were inside the US. Contact the right agencies with evidence of where the men are attending flight school, and the Feds should be able to take care of it even if they don’t know what they’re stopping.

               It shouldn’t end up like that one episode of Twilight Zone.

         2. Let me guess: RPG

            1. The family D&D game got skipped last night because everyone was playing Monster Hunter, but the look on my husband’s face when the eight year old set up an ambush for the ambush we expected, and then I set the moldy hay around the skeletons on fire, was priceless. 😀 “Oh, this does a cone of fire damage out in that direction? What did you say was on the floor, again, and do I need to kneel?”

      2. I’d have 30 days, 19 names, a way home, and a willingness to use preemptive violence and be cursed for doing so as an Islamophobe.

         I don’t need the authorities, just the ability to get to Florida.

         1. That’s true — might as well get them when they’re all together, and living in motels that are relatively easy to get into.

         2. 20 names, I think

   2. No, the way to stop them would be to buy tickets on all four flights, for your team (it will take a team, after all) and equip them with plastic or ceramic knives that will pass through airport security. Take the Flight 93 example to heart, but be prepared…

      1. Hey, if you’re the only person that’st here– do that, but on the first flight. And stick a knife in the throat of the first hijacker. Make sure you’ve got what is in the course of happening all written out, maybe mention of “so and so at the FBI has gotten warnings of this, he was ignored” because you’re probably going to die.

         1. Granted, if it’s just you alone. But if your intention was to stop 9/11, you’d have to know going in that one person couldn’t do it.

            1. Which was her point.

            2. I’m positing a time-travel limit of some sort, of course.

      2. If you have a month and know their names and addresses you can prevent them from getting on the planes, preferably by making their breathing difficult.

         1. I would like to subscribe to your time traveler newsletter.

            1. Indeed.
               Of course, the story would be a policeman trying to puzzle out the killings.

               1. John Wright actually came up with this scenario for a movie…. Which I cannot rec

                  1. Which I cannot recall. There’s a chap who is a time-travelling train-spotter for acts of terrorism like 9/11/

                     This is now the 2nd time in which I have typed, SEEN my typed words appear on the screen; have clicked “send” and lost most of the comment. Wonky.

            2. Our subscription signup will be at the Time Traveler convention at MIT in 2005. I’m going next year.

      3. And know how to land an airliner.

      4. BUT if it’s just one person? no way.
         Though that would make a great story, Doug.

      5. You don’t need knives.

         A sock full of marbles will work wonders. A butane lighter and a can or aerosol hair spray ought suffice. Hell, take the drink cart and hurl soda cans (full) at them.

         In fact, since you know what you’re looking for, a yard of thin strong wire and a couple of toothbrushes could keep them from ever leaving their seats.
         –

   3. Barring anything else, I’d go up the first tower early and set a fire, then go down a floor and do it again. Do it in an obnoxious enough fashion that the place gets evacuated before the first plane hits.

      No, that’s not ideal. Doesn’t save the folk on the planes at all. But it would maybe save a lot of people, particularly if you could get someone to freak out and pull all the fire alarms on the second tower.

      Oh, and don’t forget your hazardous substance gear. You’ll need that.

      1. Wouldn’t a fire in the transit station under there be better?

         I remember they had one, at one point, and that one of the guys who saved a LOT of people had his plan based on that.

         1. Well, renting a couple big trucks, welding the doors shut, running lots of suspicious wires and flashy bits around the cab, obviously mis-parking them in the lot under the WTC at, oh, 4 or 5 am on 9/11, and then phoning it in could keep the place evacuated through the morning – you can’t save the planes because anything that scrubs the flights would likely cause an abort and reschedule, and you probably can’t save the Pentagon (maybe a bomb threat with details on what section of what ring it’s in at 7am or so might work there), so the best you can do is clear the WTC people. Then before you jump home email a dossier with all the names and last known addresses and a timeline, with a bcc to everyone.

            1. You MIGHT be able to save the planes by having that dosser printed and in the front seat of the truck.

               1. Basically even as they boarded with box cutters, it was still a pre-9/11 world – if they’d have been caught they would have got a wrist slap, or an apology. You’d need to put SEAL teams or US Marshalls teams sitting together back at the back of coach on each plane to have any chance of stopping it once they started, and then you’d also need a pilot of some flavor to try and land it since they took out the actual pilots as soon as they got in the cockpit.

                  After they started, other than somehow scheduling a live-fire ANG exercise that morning so planes would actually be armed and in the air able to intercept and shoot the jets down, I’m not sure what else could be done.

                  1. That’s the problem, precisely.

         2. His story may be found in Unthinkable. One of my teen SRP books one year:

            I was just thinking… What if you had limited information, were sent back to 1998 and had this guy’s job?

            Betcha you’d do what he did. He’s the only one (of the folks he was responsible for) who didn’t make it. Because he went back for the other people.

            Also note: books like this are rare. Very few tell the stories of people who “got it right” in a systematic way. Most stories are hero-stories (good for a different reason) but not helpful for the Sons of Martha, who want back up plans. In triplicate. Oh, and that you can actually get people to follow. Safety third!

            1. “Safety Third” needs to be a bumper sticker.

               If only we knew someone who’d brought up the phrase and and an artistic bend.

            2. It’s in the Amazon cart.

2. I prescribe three cat pets and a room cleaning.

3. Knowing what we are personally responsible for is one of the core tenets of Al-Anon. And it is helpful.
   It’s also easier said than done.
   My (I devoutly hope I’m wrong) worry looking at this is, “They aren’t bothering to campaign because they know there won’t be an election.”) Dear Lord, I want to be wrong and at this point my lousy record as a prophet is very reassuring.
   As an aside, talking to a group of “seniors” (At 65 I’m probably the baby of the group) doing volunteer work, they weren’t impressed by either candidate last night. Which is mildly encouraging.

4. If I may offer a suggestion. Someone, much younger than I, should create a home business replicating the old jelly roll, hand cranked mimeograph machines to facilitate large production samizdat broadsheets. It has worked before against left wing tyrannnies.

   1. Hardwire the computer to the printer. You don’t need the internet to have a stand-alone word processor.

      1. And make sure you have a copier printer as well.

         Or a copier if you can afford it.

         1. Yep. Got it.

         2. …one that’s not connected to the internet. And one that doesn’t store copies of every document on an internal hard drive, for no reason the manufacturers can adequately explain. Same for printers. (the overlap between multifunction scanner/printers and “copiers” is quite large at the low end of the price range)

            1. And they stink. As in, if they allowed employees to do this we’d *easily* fund a drive to purchase it from the library for the privilege of throwing it off the roof. We’d make a profit.

         3. I’m thinking toner could get to be a problem … in several ways.

            Such as once Amazon notices you’re buying a cartridge a week.
            –

      2. THIS.
         And stock extra cartridges.

   2. I’ve long figured producing zines will help when it is time to make samizdat.

5. Nope. I don’t have nightmares.

   I cause nightmares.
   –

   1. Not worried about the freight train either; just brace and derail it..

      I have the Power,

      in my dreams.

6. As the Metallica song Four Leaf Clover notes:

   “Then it comes to be
   that the soothing light
   at the end of your tunnel
   was just a freight train coming your way, yeah.”

   1. Ugh No Leaf Clover. Brainlock.

      1. Call LPL!

         If he can’t pick it no one can (well maybe Bosnian Bill can . . .)

7. Umm, if this wasn’t you and the time wasn’t now, I’d suggest visiting a professional to discuss some appropriate psychotropic; as it is, I’m wondering if I have enough ammo. Don’t have enough water in the house; a well and a generator would be nice. Then again, I do live in the sticks, surrounded mostly by relatives, so there’s that.

   1. You don’t have enough ammo. Unless there’s no where else to stash more.

      1. doesnt matter, there’s nowhere to GET ammo. not paying $400 for $200 in 5.56

         1. It’s $500. And unless your have a time machine $200 simply isn’t the market price these days.

            1. I have adequate amounts.

         2. This.
            I wish I’d picked up a few buckets at Cabela’s in December.

      2. You never have enough ammo. That’s a given. Which means you don’t have the luxury of long gun fights and spraying rounds for effect. You do want to take out the other guy with the arms and ammo and appropriate them. You also want silent weapons; knives and garottes.

         1. But forget the Westerns, what do I mean by that? Have you ever in a Western after a fight out in the sticks seen the winner (Cowboy, Indians did it) going through the losers stuff and taking all weapons, ammo and anything useful? I can’t remember any. Pistols, rifles and ammo were NOT cheap in the West. Sometimes they don’t even take the horses.

            1. The best argument I have heard for owning an AR-15, military pressure rated, not civilian, is you can more easily attach to the government supply chain, fight for or against them.

               Little known fact, Vietnam in the late 70s and early 80s sold a lot of former ARVN small arms to commies fighting guerrilla wars against US supported governments for just that reason. AK-47s might be cool, but if the government was using M-16s, you were better without the Kalashnikov because you couldn’t scavenge ammo.

               1. Oh, definitely yes. M-16 serial numbers that showed up in the hands of the guerrillas in El Salvador, for example, traced to US ARVN foreign military aid shipments.

            2. I have seen one western where the good guy scavenged all the gear, and sold it in town. Can’t remember the name of the movie though.

            3. Yes. Last of the Mohicans, the movie. Which is hilarious if you read Twain. And if you don’t, read LoTM first. It’s actually pretty good (like Speed)

         2. You also want to think about what you are going to use for heavy weapons, support weapons, and area effect weapons.

            Artillery has long been the King of the Battlefield for a reason.

            1. I’ve been thinking about this given the use of heavy fireworks by the various idiot groups: Basically even if the balloon goes up and the revolution comes and they break out their hidden AKs to supplement their noisemakers and impose social justice, one dude on a roof with binos and a set up and dialed in mortar unit on speed dial (or nowadays his app is talking to their app) means no more revolution after a couple of salvos.

               1. Unfortunately our enemies are looking to join as “volunteers” …. just like in the Spanish civil war.

                  1. Umm… do they realize that actual foreigners in such a case become the equivalent of a zombie shoot, in that nobody would feel at all guilty for killing them?

         3. Do morning stars count?

      3. And then you always can put another jerry can of gasoline somewhere.

      4. Yeah, I know—unless you’re on fire.

   2. I have a well that’s shallow enough for a hand pump, if I could find a hand pump.

      Absent that, yonder is the river and plenty of firewood (for boiling away the giardia). Or drive a sandpoint into the swampy area just down the hill. Irrigation here is gravity-fed.

      Garden can feed me and immediate relatives, come to it. I save seed. (Was surprised this morning by a bunch of untimely-sprouted onion seed. Well, I guess those are next spring’s starts…)

      Lived without everything else enough to regard ’em as pleasant conveniences, not dire necessities.

      1. Some hardware stores still sell pitcher pumps; might even be in antique-type shops as a yard decoration.

         1. Long before OSH was sold to Sears, you could get countertop type hand pumps there. I haven’t looked for one at the farm and ranch stores in town, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find one. *Some* local places have a high enough water table to be able to use one. OTOH, some people go down 400′ to get their water. We found ours at 20-25, and drilled 100 with the pump at 80.

            1. Yeah, we have 700′ dry holes up in the hills… in the desert, water was at 270 feet; bringing water up the pipe required a serious pump at the bottom of the hole (405′).

               Generally you can figure on water being at the level of the nearest open water. Here it’s at about 25′ because it flows over a slab of bedrock. Actually there are two flows — one good water (if hard) and a few feet over, terrible water. Mine is in the good flow but my neighbor sank 2 new wells that were both undrinkable, and finally went back and dug out his dad’s original hole to get decent water.

               Something with a gear to turn would work better in my spot than a pitcher pump… the well is in a cubby off the utility basement (was originally just outside the back door, before the porch was added) and there’s not much room. OTOH, it doesn’t freeze up even in the worst weather.

               My sister got enough natural pressure from her well that if it weren’t capped, it would be a geyser.

               1. There are places around here where it’s too expensive for the residents to drill a well, so some form of community water supply is used. One neighborhood near us has several places like that, and people will go to a store in $TINY_TOWN to get (buy? not sure) water. Somebody was filling a 1000 liter IBC the day I was getting propane, though 50 gallon runs are more common. Normal water users pay a fixed price per month, but I don’t know about the store.

                  We saw a few waterless places when we were house hunting in the early Aughts, and gave them a hard pass. Far better to spend a reasonable* amount of money for a well (as we did to get out of a shared-well headache situation), with the bonus that the well doesn’t run on mains power unless we want to do so.

                  (*) Decidedly not cheap. The 5K for the well and pump was dwarfed by the rest of the costs. OTOH, most of those costs should be recovered when we ever sell the place. Most buyers are (or should be) aware of the migraine potential a shared well presents.

   3. CCO,
      “as it is, I’m wondering if I have enough ammo.” The only time you have too much ammo is if you are either on fire or trying to swim a large body of water while carrying all of your ammo.

8. With friends and family in California, I worry about them.
   The same for friends who live in other metropolitan regions.
   I worry what will happen to them.
   Some have prepared. Others are just starting to.
   Some have their head in the sand.
   I’m doing what I can, in my semi-rural setting, to possibly provide a bugout site for others.
   I hope they don’t all show up at once.
   I better go double check my camping gear. We might need it.
   At least a tent is generally more comfortable than sleeping in a car. (We’re a clan of tall people.)

   1. I have kin in California now, too – although one brother lives in El Centro and his wife has family in Mexico they can go to. But my sister and her family, and my youngest brother and his … all in the LA area. Their heads are all firmly in the sand, although I think my brother-in-law is fairly sane.
      I wish he would hurry up and retire from JPL, and they would move to Texas as was the plan a few years ago. Now, I just don’t know…

      1. $SPOUSE’s brother still lives in Silly Valley and has shown no inclination to get out of Dodge. OTOH, his son used to work at a research center in the area, took a temp posting at a similar facility in one of the few stable countries in Europe, and is now making that permanent.

         The two of us last set foot in Cali in 2016 and have no intention of repeating that. We live close enough to the border that sufficiently motivated thugs could get here, but there’s a lot of ornery local cusses with firearms to make it a dubious proposition for the thugs.

         If things went sideways, there aren’t that many routes over the Cascades, witness the strategic “climate change caused” wildfires that blocked/threatened them. Checkpoints could be done…

   2. I’m in Colorado, which is California North. Worse I’m in the suburbs of Denver. Pray for us.

      1. You’ve got Mother Cabrini and the Servant of God Julia Greeley, plus probably every Catholic saint that ever passed through Denver, and a couple of Orthodox ones. You have like an entire Unseen Squadron watching over that crazy city.

      2. Done and dusted.

9. The enemy is not campaigning or even have a field staff in many states because they don’t intend to repeat their mistake of 2016 and actually let the vote count. This time they intend to make 100% sure that they will install a Marxist dictatorship and then move to make surfs or worse of those of us who are not true believers. There is no way out of this short of vast amount of blood IMO and we will all have to decide what to do after November 3rd. Otherwise, Cuba and Venezuela are instructive images of the future. History is written by the victors and the last bastion of freedom of the USA will simply be erased and cloistered monks a thousand years in the future will still be trying to sort out our history.

   1. Or, the enemy is not campaigning because they’ve backed themselves into a corner, and CAN’T. They fielded a bunch of candidates with more baggage than the Super Chief, and after eliminating the one or two that weren’t Woke enough for them, picked the least awful…and then saddled HIM with one of the worst. They overplayed their hand with the lockdowns, annoying vast numbers of voters. They overplayed their hand with their Brownshirts, and now have to deal with the fallout. They are beginning to realize that they might get caught committing vote fraud (because some is coming out, which they never expected) and have some inkling of how badly that could go; LOTS of damage, lots of local operatives on trial, shockwaves through the whole Party structure.

      Remember, the people at the top of the Democrat power structure are FAR more invested in maintaining their positions and perks than they are in Revolution. Oh, back in March they may have been confident they could pull it off, but perhaps now doubt is creeping in. They know that the Unwashed are buying guns like popcorn. They know that at LEAST half the country loathes them. And most of them are OLD. Pelosi is 80, and frankly looks it. Shrillary looks like a badly embalmed corpse. Revolution is strenuous, and the people up to it are AOC and her idiot Crew, who the power brokers don’t much like.

      And if they lose the election and DON’T go to the wall, most of them will still have safe seats, and what few get ousted will be able to run around the Woke parts of the country, charging high fees for talking about might-have-beens. And in four years they won’t have to deal with Trump, and they are so obsessed with Trump that they probably assume that whatever Republican runs in 2024 will be a pushover.

      I don’t insist on this, but I think it’s a mistake to assume the enemy is Evil Overlord level.

      Other points:

      These people are stuck with a candidate who CAN’T campaign, and Harris isn’t a draw.

      To an extent, they’ve forgotten how to campaign, too. The majority of them are in pretty safe seats, especially the leadership. They have needed a candidate who pulls them into campaigning; Bubba Clinton did, Gore did, Obama did. Biden can’t.

      We do need to be prepared for tantrums, but if they seem to be backing off, it may be because they are playing it safe.

      1. I can’t tell if the opponents are Morgoth, Gharlane of Eddore, Ming the Merciless, Auric Goldfinger, Drakhan or Dr. Doofenshmirtz. Certainly AOC and her crew have a tendency to Monologue/ Soliloquize suitable to some of the latter. Hilary seemed far more effective than the younguns. Biden feels like the various politicos Boskone puts up as fronts. Definitely this is more screwed up in a lot of ways than the late 60’s/ early 70’s mostly because the country has been fooled by this fifth column.

         1. Don’t kid yourself. The country had a fifth column in the ‘60’s. Not the idiots in the streets, mind, but the Democrats were pretty far to the Left then, and used the radicals for cover. By the end of the decade, if not before, they had the media, but there was damn little to compare it to, so it was less noticed. Also, they hadn’t had several effectively unopposed decades to get sloppy. By the time talk radio and the internet arrived, they’d forgotten what little they knew about subtlety.

            I was born in ‘61, and by the time I stared to be politically aware, it was broadly assumed that much of the Left’s agenda was unstoppable. Oh, there were wild men like Buckley out there, but ‘everybody’ knew it was just a matter of time.

            BOY, did Reagan blindside ‘everybody’.

            What we are seeing is not a rising tide, but a receding one.

            1. THIS.

               1. Yep – the craziness now is basically an echo of the 1980 “that damned cowboy is going to start a NUCLEAR WAR and kill us all – doesn’t he know we have to be NICE to the Soviets?”

                  Dig down and one of the real underlying problems they have with DJT is he’s been mean to the Chinese, who have been shoveling out all that money to H’wood and academe and the Obama campaign.

            2. Cspschofield I am of the same vintage as you. Admittedly there has been a 5th column in the US for a long time, clearly going back into WWII and shortly thereafter likely far back into the 20’s with the Wobblies and similar. My sense was that it was not getting so much main stream support in the open in my youth. Cronkite, Huntley, and Brinkley might have rooted for the Puerto Rican nationalists or Weather underground attacks. But when they bombed somewhere or such like the news folks showed outrage (feigned or otherwise). Now the newsies are doing everything short of handing the Antifa/BLM folks molotov cocktails. Behavior that would have been beyond the pale in the 60’s/70’s for most of the public is now ignored or even celebrated by the press.

               1. Consider that in the early 60’s the major networks’ news divisions were sponsoring tunnels under the Berlin Wall to get out people who could tell America what it was really like behind the Iron Curtain. It was only the direct requests from JFK that kept the interviews from being broadcasts – he didn’t want the population taking too hard a line with respect to the Commies.

         2. We had a friend of the family who had the right to use the name “Gharlane of Eddore” from E.E. Smith himself online (admittedly, there wasn’t “online” when he got permission, but he held onto that pseudonym for decades and was eventually known on Usenet by it.)

            Which makes reading that comment very strange from my perspective.

            1. Neat!

            2. I do remember Gharlane from the Usenet days, I had forgotten that he actually had the right to use the name.

               1. I would imagine he’d have great fun with Larry Correia, if he were still alive.

         3. I find AOC more resembles The Incredibles‘ Syndrome.

            And when I’m old and I’ve had my fun, I’ll sell my inventions so that everyone can be superheroes. *Everyone* can be super! And when everyone’s super…

            [laughs maniacally]

            …*no one* will be.

            Mr. Incredible: No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again. Sometimes I just want it to stay saved! You know, for a little bit? I feel like the maid; I just cleaned up this mess! Can we keep it clean for… for ten minutes!
            –

            1. Hmmm Syndrome at least had some skills. Zero Point energy, his crazy robots, a fair number of devoted minions. AOC really has only the latter, and they have a tendency to scatter like cockroaches when you turn on the light near them. All that makes me wonder if there really IS someone somewhere driving this like a puppet master. It feels a bit too conspiracy theory to be real and yet its pretty clear folks like AOC aren’t driving this as planning ahead more than 2-4 hours seems beyond her ilks abilities. Of course it could also be the political equivalent of autonomous flocking behavior like a school of bait fish or a flock of starlings.

               1. I forget the name of AOC’s prior campaign manager, nor just why he had to leave (I vaguely remember more than a whiff of malfeasance) but there was sufficient change to indicate she was dancing to his tune.
                  –

                  1. I had meant a puppet master at a more global level for the Tranzi/SJW movement. However, it does not surprise me that AOC was parroting someone else’s ideas. She certainly seems to be rather short on any ideas of her own. And that that person participated in some manner of malfeasance? I shall have to borrow our gracious hostess’s shocked face if she and Mssr. Renault are not in need of it at present.

      2. None of which explains the polls and how they’re making sure to show a huge Biden lead.

         1. Well, for one thing, the polling organizations aren’t necessarily in the inner circle. For another, if they lose to Trump when Grandpa Grope ‘should’ have won, they can rake it in writing ‘what went wrong’ books…at least for as long as their pet publishers hold out.

            1. they’ll hold out for no more than a year. The shut down hit them in the shorts, just as it did most left controlled fields.

               1. Something to look forward to, then.

            2. Polls are worth very little, and it’s important to remember this both when the results are against us and when they favor us. A huge fraction refuse to even answer polls, and many who do answer will lie and troll for amusement. That’s how you get those results showing some shockingly large percentage of Americans believe that Winston Churchill was a fictional character or that the US Civil War was fought in the 1930s as a result of the election of President Ben Franklin.

               1. The rule of “ask a stupid question” is strong.

               2. Polls are highly valuable tools – for campaigns, who either keep the results private or only release results selectively. Public polls are tools for the purpose of shaping the narrative and the electorate (by affecting motivation and turnout of the candidate’s bases.)
                  –

         2. See your column in MGC and think of the polls as rainbow pigs. (NOT bubblegum pigs, rainbow!) They’ve lied so much they believe their own tales.

            Remember how 538 gave Hildabeast a 98% chance of winning on election day, 2016?

   2. REMEMBER Trump has a plan. He’s as aware of this as we are, and I’m SURE he has a plan. He always does. (And if you told me that in 16, I’d think you were nuts.)
      So abide in patience.
      If it comes to us, it will come to us.

      1. I think we’re seeing it. At least the edges. The investigation of Obama’s pustulent minions is coming to a head. We’re seeing strong evidence of vote fraud shenanigans emerge. Trump is barn storming, in sharp contrast to Biden. I don’t THINK Trump can have arranged to get nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three Times in quick succession, but he laid the groundwork, and any observant Jews are likely to take notice.

         And he has put the Democrats on notice that if they won’t get the riots and crime waves under some sort of control, he will at least put them in the position of having to defend NOT doing so.

         I’m not totally confident, but I do think a lot of the Democrats’ strategies are going sour on them, and I don’t think that’s an accident.

         1. Thing is, my official intellectual position is skepticism of genius master plans. The people who can pull them off are much rarer than the people who think they can. And people who can do it reliably, rarer than unreliably.

            We have an alternative explanation to master planning and execution.

            A lot of the evidence could be evil marring evil.

            Other hand, I’m paranoid enough to be wondering if David Xanatos could have been inspired by Donald Trump. Pretty sure that is crazy and stress on my part.

            1. Come to think of it, Xanatos did date a lot of beautiful women with European accents. And he built things. And Trump used to have darker hair.

            2. OK, first he doesn’t have to out-think Auric Goldfinger, he has to outthink Slow Gropey Joe Biden (hah!), his grasping wife, Round Heels Kamala, and their associated minions from the Harris Administration Transition Team, who all are certain that when in a room with each other they are the smartest person in the room. Pride Goeth and all that.

               Second, there’s the press – look at the current “He’s signing a blank piece of paper! Gotcha!! We win!!!” for the result of several generations of college kids who dropped out of engineering because there was math, then dropped out of business school because there was arithmetic, and then dropped out of political science because there was logic, so ended up in J-school, feeding into careers in the mainstream media, and then ultimately teaching in J-school. They are loud, but they are really dumb, and the on-screen talent is not selected because they are the smartest of that depressed intelligence group – they are not unattractive, can stare into a round piece of glass and say what goes into their earpiece, and don’t mind saying obviously untrue things as long as the camera doesn’t make them obvious liars (eg. doing a standup in waders in the only local deepish puddle to report on impassible flooding while locals walk by the inches deep water in the street in the background).

               No doubt it’s not over, but the public polls are moving, and the way the pols are acting the private polls are a lot worse for Gropey Joe, and things are not all dark.

               Keep working, and do not despair.

               1. 1 – Out-thinking Joe isn’t a problem; the problem is out-thinking Joe. Because Joe’s thought processes are now so slow Trump risks dizziness from thinking rings around him. Trump devises fourteen counter-strategies before Joe finished formulating a single strategy, thus Trump risks being so sharp he ends up cutting himself.

                  2 – That was no blank sheet of paper; it quite clearly reads,

                  By my order and for the good of the state, the bearer has done what has been done.”

                  One should be careful what one writes … and to whom one gives it. Bear those rules in mind.
                  –

                  1. I’d more expect Slow Joe to say something like “Come on, Man! Will no one rid me of this troublesome Hunter? Shut up, you pony lying soldier bastard, laugh! Where’s my oatmeal?!” so it should be remembered that Hunter Biden did not kill himself.

         2. Saw a billboard this morning: TRUMP = LAW & ORDER

            just as predicted.

         3. “any observant Jews are likely to take notice.”

            Unhappily, most American Jews are not observant, they’re Progressive. The shul is lucky to see them Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur.

            Some of the behaviour by rabbis following Ginsburg’s passing was stomach-turning near transgression of the Second Commandment.
            –

10. And because I feel responsible, I’ve been turning, like a lion in a cage, trying to find a way out, trying to figure out how to save the Republic.

    It honestly didn’t occur to me until this morning that my responsibility is MUCH smaller than that. I can save my piece of the republic and fight for freedom in my domain. And that’s ALL I can do. That’s all any of us can do.

    That’s the way you fight; you do your job and rely on everyone else to do theirs. Stand fast and cover your sector; that’s your job. DO IT!

    1. Captain Klegghorn from The Mighty Ducks: “Nobody takes over the world from my precinct!“

11. I’m still of the opinion that it’s going to be mini-collapses across the US (more of antiFA and BLM thuggery, in other words) and that because of how much they had to dumb down the populace to install the NPC programming, the violence will tend to be Dim-on-Dim, getting especially bad in Dim-majority areas.

    Given that marxism is inevitably mass murder, it seems like the best outcome, even if people who aren’t Dim live close enough to feel threatened. While saner places essentially route around the damage and wait for it to burn out.

    Does it make me an asshole, to – from my position of minimal influence and authorty – essentially shrug my shoulders and opine that the best thing that can happen is for the murderous thugs to mostly kill each other? Especially since bystanders get targeted from time to time? Maybe. Just as much as I’m an asshole when I point out that the Department of Education admitted that schools molest kids over a hundred times as much as priests, per capita, and that public education is therefore not just child abuse due to Prussian/Wilsonian dumbing down. but also outright child sacrifice of the unlucky ones. (Because it’s _never_ the teachers’ fault, and they’ll tell you so themselves. They’re only following orders.)

    So I’m an asshole, I guess.

    But I didn’t make the Dim bork Bork, giving public proof that the Dim politicians decided to stop upholding their side of political civility.

    I didn’t make the legacy news media cover for Clinton on Juanita Broderick and Monica Lewinsky, giving public proof that the news and the feminists will gaslight for rapists as long as they’re important Dims.

    I didn’t make the rank and file Dims froth at the mouth over Bush, giving us public proof 20 years ago that they were eagerly embracing hatred and bigotry.

    I didn’t resurrect the Nazi salute (albeit with the closed fist of murderous marxism), crowding around women at 20-1 odds and screaming at them for not going heil BLMler along with the crowd.

    But I’m definitely an asshole for saying that anyone who lives close to a concentration of Dims has built their lives on a foundation of sand, when they had clear warnings that the typhoon was coming.

    Yep, the return of the gods of the copybook headings means I’m an asshole.

    -Albert

    1. When a teacher says they were only following orders, you should tell them that it sounds better in the original German.

       1. Oh, they don’t say it like that. But anyone who teaches Common Core has demonstrated that they’re willing to go along to get along, and who cares that they did their part in crippling the mathematical skills of an entire generation of children thereby? They were doing what they were told, after all, like good little Wilsonian-Prussian educrats.

          To name _one_ example.

          -Albert

    2. Does it make me an asshole, to – from my position of minimal influence and authorty – essentially shrug my shoulders and opine that the best thing that can happen is for the murderous thugs to mostly kill each other?

       My only question about the burning of Portland, Seattle, Chicago, etc is “why should I care?”

       My only demand is my federal taxes not be used to pay to rebuild it. Given Trump refused a disaster area for Minneapolis so far, it just might be headed off.

       1. The only answer to “why should I care” is if one has to go through such a hellhole to get to the proper destination. Alternative routes are your friend. (The Dalles is 83 miles from Portland if you need to go to/from Washington.)

    3. You are only a dewberry if you refuse to light any candles, and only curse their darkness.

       Build up , build over, build around (and tell better stories!)

12. The CCP just released a school textbook on religious ethics and law.

    They retell the story of Jesus telling the elders, “Let him who has no sin, cast the first stone.”

    And when the elders go away, Jesus picks up a stone, says, “I’m a sinner, too, but the law is dead if it must be administered by sinless men,” and kills the woman.

    And the moral of the story is that Jesus had to respect “the law of his time.”

    Even in Communist China with concentration camps, that one is getting some pushback.

    1. BLINK.

       1. I know, right?

          What’s the most offensive part? The blasphemy? The love for execution? The conformity to the state? The parody of law and order? Or the bloodless twisting of mercy into destruction?

          And it’s not like China didn’t have traditional stories of wise magistrates catching criminals and loosing the unfortunate who needed mercy, often on very tricky sets of reasoning. So it’s very very deliberate nastiness.

          1. Forgot the link to the story: “Chinese Catholics angry over book claiming Jesus killed sinner”.

             1. Another link, with more explanation of the CCP ideology behind it: “CCP Rewriting the Gospel”.

                Bitter Winter also notes more persecution of Christians, new Muslim groups getting persecuted, and the new removal of traditional dress from people who live in Hainan, as well as some super creepy surveillance of individuals.

                1. Bitter Winter is an excellent (and very brave) site.

    2. Chicom delenda est.

    3. And I thought Islamic biblical fanfic was cringe.

       -Albert

    4. Well we know whose side they’ve chosen. As if there were ever any doubt.

       1. ……

          Whaaaat?!

    5. Great Gutenberg’s Scarlet Underwear! My husband has been telling me that the pinkos were going to write Bible 2.0 and ram it down our throats. But he always claimed it would be Google.

       Go CCP? 🤔

    6. Another thought: If the CCP is not monolithic, how would we know which of these… Dewberries … is on team “I love China but I hate these monsters?”

       Any non-USAians want to tell us how they figure this out for our team?

13. I live in Philly. I’m worried. I was hoping we’d be out of here by now and in a state with a bit more sane government. I’m not sure if that will happen now. We don’t have guns, but we’re working on that, ammo shortage notwithstanding. Brace yourselves.

    Having said that, I agree with altimatewriting that the higher probability is more BLM/Antifa madness rather than complete collapse…of course, again…I live in Philly.

    What can I do? Like you, Sarah, I can write/scream/talk. I can fling my PhD in people’s faces when necessary in that arena. I will talk until I’m blue in the face (metaphorically, not politically). And then talk some more.

    1. It my start out as more localized strife, but with the Democrats and their allies increasingly using force to suppress dissent and aiding their Antifa/BLM paramilitary arm it will get worse and worse. And that does not even take into account the potential such strife creates for our adversaries abroad, such as the CCP, to directly intervene, especially if they don’t fear retaliatory strikes. As I noted before, it doesn’t even take a direct nuclear strike on a city; I high level EMP burst by China or Iran and it turns into Mad Max very quickly.

       1. “I high level EMP burst by China or Iran and it turns into Mad Max very quickly.”

          Yes, for China or Iran. A high-altitude EMP would hurt the US, but it would also be a nuclear attack on the US, which would demand immediate and complete annihilation of the attacking country.

          Most of the doomsday scenarios about EMPs come from unrealistic extrapolations from Starfish Prime, assuming the worst-case failure in every possible instance, and neglecting the idea of recovery to “good enough.”

          1. and assumptions about how far a high level EMP will cascade, often

    2. Problem with Philly is the new Black Panthers trying to keep people from the polls.

       1. Trump talked about that last night. “Bad things happen in Philly.”

    3. If you can’t get guns… make spears (the #1 weapon of pre-industrial armies). Anything with enough length that you can put a point on will work. Sticks, conduit, PVC pipe, whatever. Lots of spears. Cuz it doesn’t matter how the hole gets into the animal you need to stop, so long as they don’t get close enough to put a hole in you first, and most of them won’t be armed all that well either.

       1. Hit the martial arts stores. They have lots of nasty pointy things.

    4. I can’t leave for 2 years. Cannot. Just culling things so move is not a nightmare (a costly one) will take that long.

       1. Just let those of us Huns in your selected bug-out area know when the time approaches and we’ll make sure the headlights are illuminating the unimproved landing strip.

       2. Trying to cull things for our own move, so I get that.

          I’m hoping in 2 years we’ll be well enough off to help! 🙂

    5. Be ready to be a rooftop Korean. Be ready to be the z-poc survivor.

       Be ready to be tried by twelve rather than carried by six, because as long as the police only arrest our side, those are the choices when people throw their heil BLMlers and send violent felons to kill you.

       -Albert

    6. Ah, Philly. The birth of America, and possibly her downfall. I love Philly, but I wouldn’t stay there. The Philadelphia Black Panthers were busy in 2016 and it looks like they will be active again this year. Vote absentee, unless you can REALLY fight.

       1. We are voting absentee…in part because we still hope to be gone from here by election day.

    7. FWIW, a quick scan at Sportsman’s Warehouse (at least one store in PA) shows that 12 ga shotguns are still in stock. Locally, bird rounds are reasonably plentiful. Buckshot or slugs might not be available, but a duckload in the stomach is going to cause problems for the thugs.

       (OTOH, smaller gauges than 12 are rare, both in firearms and ammo.)

       1. Thanks for the info.

       2. no, just no. birdshot to the gut still isnt very likely to penetrate much. it will make a bloody mess, but it will NOT stop an opponent.

          1. OK, I was going by what’s I thought was going to be available. I just looked at my local store in Flyover County, and 00 Buck is available. (Prices ranging from $3 to $18(!) for a 5 pack) *If* birdshot is all that can be had, I’d go with the heaviest pellets possible (lead, preferably) and figure that the first or second shot would need to be at the head.

             1. Hmm, multiple strongly held opinions. I don’t want to get Fluffy’s attention, so just a few thoughts:

                The optimal load depends on circumstances. If the likely SHTF use is indoor, smaller shot should be good. If 25 yard shots are in the picture, you might have to do some patterning tests to see what the shotgun is happy with. (Find a friendly range, put up a big sheet of paper and see what the pellet distribution looks like.)

                What’s appropriate will vary a lot. If you know experienced shooters, get some opinions, especially if said people can help train. IMHO, larger holes are better, but misses don’t help. If you can’t get good results from something, try something else.

                If you are looking at long ranges, see if a rifle is possible. I missed out on the AR-15s because reasons, so my medium range firearm will be a non-scoped .357 Winchester lever action. (It’s what I already had. Deal.) I have other options for long distances, though I really need to make time to get to an appropriate range. (The official range is 60 miles away; I’m leery of Rattlesnake Meadow for some reason. 🙂 )

          2. 12 Ga. small shot at close range is DEVASTATING! I prefer #4 shot, but #6 will do. At 10 yards, an ounce of #4 shot will blow a grapefruit-sized hole in your enemy 8″ deep. Shoot a pumpkin and see.

             If your enemy is more than 15 yards away, why are you using a shotgun? Unless you’re packing slugs.

             I despise #00 buckshot. I have routinely seen all 9 pellets miss silhouette targets at 25 yards. I have seen those same pellets shoot straight through 2×4’s at 50 yards. They are more dangerous to bystanders than to the enemy. That is not what you want. It is wasteful of both ammunition and bystanders. 😛

             1. Another reason for using something smaller than #00 like #4 is that you get a much heavier weight of shot load in the same volume. They pack denser.

14. This is the trouble. I’m trying to be resigned since regardless what happens in December the push will continue.

    1. The enemy gets a vote.

       …

       Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to accept a skateboard to the head.

       1. And incoming fire has the right of way, legally justified or not.

          I think a lot of rioters don’t know that. A few have learned the hard way.

15. For what it’s worth, at least here, they are campaigning like crazy– getting stuff from Texas, Washington and Iowa.

    It’s just… stupid. The ads are lame, and obvious, and rather tone-deaf.

    Like, even the relatives that usually broadcast the stuff proud and loud were at best muted in pushing it.

    People are going nuts, but they’re going nuts in their own directions– it’s getting hard to whip up a mob when people can just not show up, and when the stupid policies are biting them.

    ….it’s basically taht their stupid power games have run out of safe targets.

    1. I’m getting a lot of campaign junk mail. I think maybe this one guy is trying to pretend he’s not a Democrat? He’s playing up having been in the Army Reserves and how when he swore to defend the US against all enemies foreign and domestic, he never expected to find the worst threats in DC.

       (I’m afraid my first thought was, “What rock was he under?”)

       1. Greenfield or Greenfields or Greenwood or whatever her name is, is trying REALLY hard to avoid that she’s a Democrat.

          Even her signs have the blue so dark it looks black; up until I looked her up, I thought she was running as the Green Party candidate.

          *********

          Oh dear heavens, the Army Reserves? Seriously?
          I have known Army Reservists whose experience I would consider a major plus. They’re the ones who’d go with something like “it’s depressing to see DC turning into as much of a mess as the Army command. We’ve got great people, and this time, I can fix it.”

          Somebody who thinks the way the Army, especially the reserves, is run is a good thing for Government? Oh, dear heavens!

          (I know we have Army guys here: I give you guys the same kind of extra respect I do the Canadian or UK military guys. Not only do you manage good stuff, but it’s more impressive because of the anti-support you get.)

          1. I got a personal call because the public me looks like the Other Team (for a variety of reasons based on local laws) from a real person on “please vote Democrat” . I can speak ComIntern as well as Mrs. Hoyt, if needed, so I did my best to set the cat among the pigeons. So yes. They are worried.

    2. Lots of campaigning here in Montana too (they really REALLY want to unseat Steve Daines, who has been a reliable Trump supporter, and they really REALLY don’t want Deck-’em-again-Greg for governor). Same old but with a bit more nasty on top.

       But mobs, that we don’t have, as yet. And probably won’t, because they’d run into a wall of Good Ol’ Boys.

       1. Oh, I forgot to mention something– not sure how much Joni has been doing to support Trump, but she stood there week after week with the media absolutely going bug-nuts crazy at her, demanding house arrest, or at least a mask requirement– and she refused.

          You know what I haven’t heard any campaign ads attacking her for? That side of the COVID response. (It’s all whining about not getting more pay outs, or “sacrificing Iowa farmers” because she didn’t try to force more ethanol requirements while they were having trouble getting the ethanol to the fuel makers.)

          1. So far, we’ve spent time in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Arkansas and now Mississippi. (Plus transit time in Kentucky and Illinois). Satellite TV so have seen very few local ads.
             Wisconsin- not many signs for anyone, but we were way out in the country. We were briefly in the Madison area and they’re leftist judging from local talk radio. We got out just before they started pulling down statues. Still, no Biden signs, maybe one bumper sticker.
             Michigan, some Trump signs. Also a few signs stating, “My Governor Is An Idiot.” No Biden signage.
             Southwestern Indiana – Trump signs. No Biden.
             Northern Indiana- Trump signs, Trump flags, Trump truck flags, billboards. Two Biden signs, in the same neighborhood, both pit out by, “Barnstormers for Biden,” not the DNC. (Looking at their website, “Barnstormers,” looks like either a PAC, or mercenaries. I’m betting mercenaries).
             Arkansas – Trump signs, no Biden signs, not even in a majority black neighborhood.
             Mississippi- we’re outside a college town and frankly, it’s weird. Two Biden signs, no Trump signs (so far). Almost no signs at all. But this is a place where they just allowed the restaurants to reopen dine-in and many of them haven’t. Where there are flashing signs in the town square saying. “Wear your masks, indoors and out!” I gather this is city ordinance atop state regs and the overall effect is creepy. Not to mention that I went to a regional chain for lunch and the black staff had the dining area segregated. Really. As in, “whites on this side, blacks on that side.” Very disconcerting.
             I plan to broaden my territory end of the week, so we’ll see if I can get a feel for non-university town then.

             1. I just drove across Pennsylvania. My favorite was a billboard (repeated frequently) that said “Don’t blame me, I voted for Wagner” with a picture of Wolfe and his Health Secretary.

             2. I’m in a very blue area of Florida and I don’t see ANY signs except for local races. Four years ago blue signs were everywhere.

       2. I don’t see ads for political candidates here in California. I *do* see ads for ballot propisitions, though. Proposition 16 (repeals Prop 209, which banned *any* discrimination based on race by a government organization) is being advertised as a “women’s rights” thing.

    3. I’ve seen a few Biden ads, but they stopped a few weeks back. No Trujillo ads (House seat) or whoever’s running against John Cornyn. No R ads either, really. On the gripping hand, I don’t watch nutwork TV aside from the local news, so I’m probably missing some things.

       1. I listen to TuneIn, and I<3Radio, and stuff like Des Moines' The Bus</i– just realized I'm actually hearing more political ads than during the primary, even if I limit it to the stuff that isn't talk radio.

       2. I haven’t seen much either way. Of course I’m in Massachusetts and Biden would be an idiot (but I repeat myself) to spend here and no republican has take Massachusetts since Reagan in 84 and I think Trumps chances here are slightly less than those of a paper dog in Hades. Allegedly New Hampshire is in play and that is some of the same media, but I think New Hampshire is WAY down on anyone’s list and its only 4 Electoral Votes.

       3. About every third ad on the hollow conveyance of female sheep lately seems to be a Biden screed . . .

          1. 1) that’s brilliant
             2) My kids watch music videos. I had to explain to the eldest what “abortion” is, because apparently watching five zillion repetitions of Christian rock (HER CHOICE!!!!!) and a bunch of geeky parodies translates as “pro-abort” to their algorithms. That, and Microsoft Teams.

             1. It’s not the parodies. The Daughter Product watches them and theological streams for background noise.

                1. I set most of my accounts for the Des Moines Airport for geographic location (if I’m going to get the weather for it anyways…..) so it might be the Iowa.

          2. Weird. I get lots of Trump ads, but so far have only seen ONE Biden ad (unskippable, of course). Then again, I sub to a lot of pro-Trump channels.

       4. I see Biden and Trump ads on YouTube; we’re a battleground state.

       5. In NC we’re getting plenty of Biden ads — which I find almost as credible as those male enhancement ads on late night. There’s a lot of “I’ll unite the country” and “I’ll restore the economy” talk but damned little about how he’ll do it other than waving a magic wand.

          They’re running a lot of attack ads on Tillis, too. I don’t even give a damn if they’re true and he is a crook — he’ll vote against Chuck Schumer as Senate Majority Leader and that’s all I ask. I look at Schumer and the probable Democrat committee chairs and and they’re a waking nightmare.
          –

16. Yeah, ‘limits of what one can be responsible for’ is a place I’ve been for some years. ‘the whole country’ is too big for a single person, and an easy way to go nuts, set oneself up for failure, or condemn someone for imperfection. At best, a small part of a country. You do what you can do for your own little corner of the word, and pray and hope for the rest.

    Now, actually accepting that emotionally, and living it, much harder.

    Pirate Radio isn’t necessarily something that any electrical engineer can help with. You’d probably get more use from a ham radio fan without a degree than a degreed guy who was only trained in digital design, and has no clue about the electromagnetic aspects of antenna design.

    1. Dunno about broadcast side, but just about anything metal works on the receiving side. Back in the ancient analog days, my TV antenna consisted of 100 feet of barbed wire strung around the metal roof of a large shed, connected to the house by some surplus telephone wire. It worked surprisingly well (tho did seem to require all three elements). My shortwave antenna was simpler, just a big aluminum stick (couple lengths of conduit worth).

       1. And if you touch the antenna, you become part of it. Sometimes you just have to be close.

    2. +1

    3. I know something about pirate radio. Ask me, sometime, about “The Voice of Central Indiana”

       1. Did you know the guy behind “Anime Radio Network”?

          Also, did you build your own transmitter. I know there was a very popular unit with free plans floating around circa 1995, but for the life of me I cannot find them.

          1. ❤ ARN.

             1. Is he still around? I remember when he was just low powere FM out of Danbury arguing if it wasn’t strong enough out of state to make selling ads possible it wasn’t interstate commerce and thus not anything the feds could touch.

                That was circa 2002.

                1. TuneIn radio, in the last few years.

                2. This is what we usually listen to instead:
                   https://tunein.com/radio/Yggdrasil-Radio-s120196/

                   1. Thanks. I’ll tune in.

          2. No, I don’t know the guy behind “Anime Radio Network” unless he’s somebody that I actually know and that’s not what I know about him. That seems unlikely.

             I have built several transmitters, but I’ve never actually done any pirate radio. I know something about the subject, though, because I’ve been messing around with radio since I was 15 and worked in broadcast engineering when I was in college studying airplane stuff.

             The “Voice of Central Indiana” was my friend Chuck’s idea. He was also into messing around with radios and got the idea that he wanted to start a pirate radio station. This must have been 1982 or thereabouts. It’s important to understand that we were in Hyatts Ohio at the time of the discussion and it was proposed to be so named in an attempt to throw off the FCC.

             A radio transmitter is, broadly speaking, a fairly simple device. If you’re only interested in producing modest amounts of power, say up to 20 watts or so, and for frequencies up to low VHF, it’s easily within reach of your typical hobbyist even if they have only crude tools. For higher power levels or higher frequencies, it doesn’t get all that much more difficult, but it can get pretty expensive.

17. In the end, reality wins. Whether we win along with is is an open question.

    As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
    I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
    Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
    And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

    1. Apparently “If you don’t work you die.” is the current one. Like the lunatic intellectual who said that looting shows we don’t have to pay for things.

18. Did someone say Pirate radio?

    A simple Raspberry Pi FM station: https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/26/20981630/raspberry-pi-pirate-radio-fm-station-35-dollars-diy

19. A broad non-tech how to: https://radio.xtreamlab.net/pirate-fm.html

    I’m still trying to find the plans all the FM pirates were using in the 90s. Once I’ll do, I’ll put up the link (you’d think I’d saved them somewhere, but no).

    1. Good. The last I knew this sh– stuff was in the seventies.

       1. Nah. The 90s was arguably the golden age of US pirate radio. It resulted in low power license rules:

          https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/lpfm

          1. When COVID-theater was getting spun up, and drive-in church services were occasionally allowed by The Thugs That Be, the ‘zon had a few models of low power FM transmitters. I currently see one rated at 15W output; with a decent antenna and some height, you could get a few miles. If you have a convenient hill, perhaps quite a few miles.

             There’s a boatload of 0.5 and 1W transmitters intended for parking lot transmissions.

             1. Many years ago, the minimum power you could use for an FM broadcast station in the USA was, um, I think it was 3,000 watts, but it may have been 5,000. It was in the thousands, anyway. Transmitters of less than some miniscule amount (I remember 150mW) could be used without a license as a “part 15” device, but unless you wanted to cover just your house, those were pretty useless. I’m not sure what the legal status of that 15W transmitter is.

                Now, some of you might be saying “hey, wait a minute! I remember some 20W stations, what about those?” and you would be right. There was an exception in the rules for “educational” stations which were allowed much lower amounts of power. Each state had its own definition of “educational,” and where I lived, I knew of three, which were stations owned by Otterbein College, Ohio Wesleyan University, and the Columbus (Ohio) Board of Education. I don’t have a clue what kind of equipment they were running, except I know that the exciters at the station I used to work at put out about 18W all by themselves, and I just sort of concluded that they were using a bare exciter driving some sort of antenna.

                As far as how 15 watts can go, the farthest I’ve ever gotten a 10W FM signal was about 400km, but that was direct unobstructed line of sight, and there was a sensitive receiver and a decent antenna on the other end.

                1. Back in my active Ham days I once picked up Sao Tome & Principe from McMinnville, OR voice on 10 M with a homebrew dipole. The QRL card for that is among the many things I lost in the recent fire. }:-(

                   Propagation was *very* good at that time . . .

                   1. Uh, 25 watts.

                      1. I think it was the 2017 ARRL 10M contest, held in January where I got several ZL contacts (New Zealand, for those not in the know) with my attic dipole. I was running 150 watts, but the propagation has been marginal for years. and was marginal then.

                         10 meters is normally thought of as “summertime” and “daytime” band but this was, of course, in the winter here, and it was well after sunset. In fact, I had shut down around sunset figuring that there wasn’t any point in continuing to try, but a couple of hours later I decided to turn the radio back on and see if I could hear anything, and guess what!

                         Those were my first ZL contacts ever even though I’ve been licensed since 1980.

                   2. Flirted with (legal) CB radio in the ’60s, and the “Texas Mobile” operator running a (highly illegal) kilowatt linear amplifier was notorious. Considering we were in Illinois, propagation was decent, if he really was in Texas.

20. If I was transported back in time, I think the first thing I would do (first in importance, anyway) would be to call in a bomb threat on the World Trade Center. Maybe say I’d overheard some Islamic Radicals warning each-other that it would be a good idea to be elsewhere on 9/11. No details, but there was a previous attempt on the Towers, so it might get them evacuated. Maybe not too far in advance, though.

    If the Towers were empty, and everything else went off as before, that would be wonderful, compared to what happened.

    *shrug*

    I’m stymied by not having the names of the terrorists committed to memory. I’m DREADFUL with names. And I’m assuming I wouldn’t know I was going back in time before it happened.

21. My current issue, along with insomnia, is my usual nightmares. My usual nightmares these days is the “no matter what I do, I fail” ones. When the nightmares start showing up in person, you’ve got a problem.

    Right now? The election and what happens afterwards. No matter what I do, I can’t do anything about it. The corruption is too deep, and the E!Democrats have doubled-down on this election to an unreasonable point. No matter what happens, even in an ideal “Trump wins so hard that any vote fraud would be like mooning the Pope during his Easter address” election, we’re going to have a major outbreak of rioting in the cities. The cities can’t stop it because the people in charge need the money that the people organizing the riots provide.

    My parents are waiting for the day when Trump loses and gets lead out of office. Preferably in a perp walk to be sent to prison. I’ve gotten into argument with my parents about illegal immigration-Mom views it from a moral perspective that “nobody is illegal,” and Dad doesn’t want to argue about it.

    My hope is that the silent majority slaps down all of these idiots and we don’t go “damn, it’s stupid to let these people have anything,” but “why the f(YAY!)k did we let these idiots get control of anything“? I don’t want a civil war, nobody wants to be a part of it that is sane.

    Going to school, hopefully to get a better job. I don’t want to work any crazy jobs right now, or anything seasonal, or such.

    I keep having Dalton’s line from Roadhouse-“It’s going to get worse before it gets better”-running through my head.

    But, be not afraid. As long as we don’t lose, our enemies can’t win.

    1. rioting we can live with. It’s STILL not open civil war.

       1. What is the line between the two, especially when the government protects the rioters and jails those who defend themselves and their property?

          1. It isn’t Civil War until the rioters are encouraged to take their idiocy to places where the Democrats can’t shield them from the consequences.

          2. if it’s local governments it’s just dems doing what they do. Look at St. louis, Chicago, etc. Oh, and Detroit. they always foul their nest.
             BUT if the feds abet it? that’s the boog.

       2. Open civil war…I suspect that it will be over more quickly than we’d expect, but it would be longer than we feared.

22. For quite a while my attitude has been first and foremost, do the best I can for me and mine and hope others are doing the same. Yes, of course, I care about you, and you, and you, and I’ll do what I can to lend you and hand or some help if you need it, but I’m going to take care of me and mine first. As noted, I hope your doing the same, if not, you probably won’t be there to lend me a hand if I need it. Enlightened self interest.

    The communication thingy is something I’ve been thinking about. There are a lot of mesh nets based on peer to/through peer linkages that are viable. For me, up here on top of the world, perhaps not a great solution as peers are spread too thin. Data transmission over power lines has been explored and tested. Meteor burst communications (MBC) sending data when aerial ionization is right to reflect it back to an earth station is interesting. Ham radio operators have been exploring this.

    Just in case, along with food, protective/defensive devices, medical supplies, etc., I think it’s important to stock up on hard copy information, Many things well beyond one’s control can disrupt or destroy transmitted or stored electronic data. On the other hand it takes little effort to protect an old fashioned book from fire, mildew, etc.

    & again, make sure you have a plan D.

    1. FidoNet ran for many years as when-we-can via telephone line. Old-fashioned dialup BBSs didn’t need much.

23. There are other ways to resist.
    I just got my copy of Live Not By Lies by Rod Dreher, I’m about 1/3 thru and it’s great!
    Sarah, I suspect you are very familiar with what he describes in the book.

24. It honestly didn’t occur to me until this morning that my responsibility is MUCH smaller than that. I can save my piece of the republic and fight for freedom in my domain. And that’s ALL I can do. That’s all any of us can do.

    It was called the “I Fought, We Won” battle.

    But even though all hope was lost, even though the few survivors were isolated from each other by insurmountable obstacles, everyone kept fighting. They would not allow Chaos to consume them, nor would they give in to its temptations. Every race and every culture had heroes step forward to lead them against their omnipresent enemy, and in this they were unified. Though no one realised it, all of Glorantha fought as one.

    This is the battle of I Fought, We Won.

25. c4c

26. I have come to realize that I am a contrarian, as in, I am never (ever) in agreement with any group.

    So, as to mail-in voting, I do think that the strategy was planned to do massive vote fraud by mail. I think the allegation that Trump insulted WWI dead was intended to be the explanation for military absentee votes to be anti-Trump. But…well, some judges have already refused to allow them to play games with postmarks and signatures. And, the biggest, perhaps, is that they HAVE NEVER ASKED THEIR YOUNG ADULTS, BY THE WAY, HAVE YOU EVER MAILED A LETTER? Because many young adults have never had to, given the internet.

    In Massachusetts, a percentage of mail-in ballots for the primary were rejected, something along the lines of 2% of the early/absentee votes cast. It was about 1% of all the votes cast in the primary. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/nearly-18000-ballots-rejected-massachusetts-primary-election

    If you assume that the Republicans are more likely to vote in person, and the Democrats more likely to mail in their votes, given the push to mail-in voting, that means the Democrats may suddenly see more of their votes disqualified for mistakes and incompetence. In close elections, to lose 2% of your votes can make a huge difference. I want to observe that I’ve volunteered at the polls before, and have found poll workers in our town to possess sterling characters and a fine attention to detail.

27. Spousal unit informed me this afternoon that I have had night terrors the last 10 nights in a row. Which is…not good.

    They haven’t been that bad since the months after 9/11, when I was dealing with the additional stress of being pregnant with the eldest. Not sure how much is post-election fears and all the legal oppression being heaped upon us in the name of WuFlu and how much is new job (six weeks in and I still don’t have anything to *do*, which suits my personality very poorly while keeping me from having time for much else, but *does* allow for plenty of brooding).

    Hard to keep focused on keeping my little corner of the world as free as I can, when I don’t feel like I have any control over even the less vital bits of my corner.

    I keep reminding myself that this will pass and the black dog will eventually move on to someone else’s door, but right now I really don’t know whether to scream, laugh, or cry.

    1. Try all three, see which one works? 😛

       KIDDING!

       1. Two out of three ain’t bad (I *loathe* crying)

28. As to 9/11, well, again, a contrarian, but…it is possible that trying to stop it leads to a worse outcome. I have had the feeling since the 2016 election that we’re on an alternate timeline. My current theory is that in the other timeline, Hillary won, and something truly catastrophic happened.

    I feel that we have the privilege of experiencing a time of transition, from one era to another. I have discovered that in times of extreme anxiety, I become more optimistic. I apologize if that’s annoying.

    1. The great paradox is that predestination and free will are both 100% true. God seems to have designed a universe where His perfect plan requires us imperfect people. The book of Judges proves my case. I give you Sampson as the best known example, but each of those chosen by God have flaws. This is why I am certain that Trump shows that God has a sense of humor. Yet at the heart of this is that to be free to come, you must be free to go. So when God gave Israel a king, He warned them what would happen. Yet God is/was/will be involved, and loves us imperfect people.

       We have a choice, (or at least the left has a choice) to stop this. So this may be the swamp we must slog through to get to the other side. If Trump does not win in 2016, we are already far down the road to Venezuela, with 7 votes on the supreme court to allow anything the left wants. Just remember, on “good” friday, the devil thought he had won, but Easter was just around the corner. We are still in 1858, with bloody Kansas a warning, if we will listen. The problem is that the left can’t stop. The most important question: Is there an exit? Or did we miss the last exit to avoid civil war.

       Civil war terrifies me. If it truly comes, at least 2 billion die in the world. I will die.

       If we are not around to feed the world, famine hits hard. With us distracted, much of the world “takes advantage”, to go after their local enemy. China tries to take Taiwan, only to discover they had secret nukes, and multiple Chinese cities die, seems a likely example. Civilization is not the natural state of man.

       1. Based on the Bible, if you are chosen , like Chosen One chosen, by God, it means you suck. Major Fail. God even says why: “You Dewbs won’t believe it was Me unless the person/people I use could not possibly be worthy.”

          Good news: No matter how unworthy you are, God has used worse to achieve great good. Have faith, and carry on.

          1. The problem for us is that God invites us to join His Plan. That requires learning to listen. This is a real problem for men.

             You know it is God you hear when your response is: “I don’t have $500 to fly to Nashville”, and the exact amount you said you didn’t have shows up, after you stepped out in faith. (Image of Peter in boat), “I’ve told you what to do. Now get out of the boat.”

             He asks: “Do you trust Me?” He doesn’t calm the storm, He sends us into the storm. He doesn’t promise easy. This is the message for today.

             1. No. He doesn’t promise easy.
                I have an unexplained-ish bruise on left buttock. (Yes, it’s on topic. Hold on.) Ish because it was probably Havey jumping on me. He weighs seventeen pounds and is very enthusiastic. I also have one on my belly, in the shape of a cat paw.
                So.
                Dan saw it, while I was drying myself after shower and said “what happened”
                I saw it in the mirror and said “Probably G-d’s pointy boots.”

                1. 😀 I know that feeling a little too well. “Yes, yes, Sir, I know that sometimes a kick in the @$$ is the first step in the right direction, but could You please be a little more gentle next time? What do You mean that was gentle?”

                   1. Then there is that most ignored instruction. “Rejoice when you suffer for Me.” No one prays for that, or we distort it into thinking that we are called to suffer, like Martin Luther who practiced whipping himself in order to suffer.
                      We seem to be offered the chance to practice unmerited suffering. How will we do?

                      Who do we ask about returning 2020 as a defective year. At least no major city has been hit by a great earthquake this year. So there is something to be thankful for.

                      One interesting note about 2020, all our major problems stem not from natural disasters, but human causes. The virus probably created by China, and likely allowed to escape. We do know they have lied, and nothing they say can be trusted, which has made this much worse than it needed to be.
                      The riots of the last months are based on lies about the police, and the left’s thugs.
                      The Kalifornia fires made much worse by lack of controlled burns, and cleaning up undergrowth.
                      So 2020 isn’t defective, it is just the fault of the left?

             2. Good message. We did a Sunday School play on that this summer.

    2. No. I sometimes do that too.

29. “I lived through this crap before”

    Refugees from tyranny agree: Authoritarian threat in America now is from the left
    Left-wing hysterics with major media platforms have for years been shrieking that President Trump is about to install a fascist dictatorship any minute. Meanwhile, unheard immigrants from the Soviet bloc warn that totalitarian tyranny is actually emerging from the left — and Americans are too naive to see it coming.

    Sounds crazy, right? I thought so when I first heard it from an elderly woman who spent six years as a political prisoner under Czechoslovakia’s Marxist regime. But the more I talked to people like her, the more I came to see them as canaries in a coal mine. Their message is the same: What’s happening in America today reminds me of life under Communism.

    It’s hard for Americans to see it, in part because our idea of totalitarianism comes from Orwell’s “1984” and Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago.” But Stalinism 2.0 is not what the old dissidents predict. They point out that the left in power is achieving totalitarian goals — not simply obedience, but the internalization of left-wing ideology by much softer means.

    Who needs the gulag when you can compel obedience by threatening someone’s job or destroy her reputation on social media? Why bother with the secret police when the masses already hand over ­detailed personal information to Google and other woke capitalist behemoths via smartphones and laptops?

    The coming soft totalitarianism may well unify the government, major corporations, the media and leading institutions of civil society, which will collaborate to suppress dissent and coerce conformity. The United States could one day have its own version of China’s high-tech social credit system. Those who resisted Soviet Communism urge us to prepare now for resistance, while we still can.

    The shocking truth is, we Americans are living in a pre-totalitarian situation. In 1951, Hannah Arendt published her landmark study “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” in which she studied the conditions that led both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany to embrace totalitarianism. It makes for sobering reading in our present circumstances. Among the signs: …
    –

30. Ammo stacking…

    Folks, most likely you are not “firefight” people, you are “shoot and scoot” people. Hit and run, escape evade egress. Or if you are on offense, same.

    That means you solve gun problems with what is loaded. That is one 20 round box of ammo for a pistol and two for a “modern sporting rifle”. You might want one more mag/reload to get home.

    That’s it. Quality over quantity.

    Practice with an airsoft or BB gun until you solve the supply issue. It works. They are also quiet/discreet fun. A hallway or basement can be used.

    So don’t sweat “short supply” too much. Work on practical balance of supply, not replacing the couch and box-spring with ammo crates.

    If you came late to the “gun” game, and lack and are distressed, blackpowder arms are a useful option. Not ideal, but the arms of the mid 19th century are quite effective. The modern substitute powders for BP arms are quite safe. Even real BP is safer to store than gasoline. BP guns are something to explore if needed. Plenty of online info. They are also a hoot to shoot.

    Don’t think “constrained”. Think “challenge accepted” and “learning opportunity”.

    And no epic moonshot project ever fails to break down into little individual tasks, some of which are perfectly you-sized. So just tend to the dust bunnies in your corner of life, keep on keeping on, and don’t sweat stuff elsewhere.

    We win. They lose.

    1. There’s a very long thread on DIY primer reloading on the castboolits forum. Most of the compositions are corrosive, hygroscopic, or both, but they’re DIY’able and go bang. And one of the nutters on the old gunco forum loaded several hundred rounds of 7.62×39 with black powder and ran them through his Avtomat Kalashnikova. They were smoky and left the gun filthy, but it ran without a burp.

       Note: it’s easier to reload Berdan primers than Boxer primers. Don’t throw away your foreign Berdan brass.

       1. Well, yeah. That thing is designed to operate filthy.

    2. Airsoft is that similar?

       Interesting. There’s an Airsoft place that went in at my local mall a little over a year ago. I never bothered to visit them because i figured, “It’s all fake anyway.” If it’s actually similar enough to a real weapon, then it might be worth trying out.

       Of course, first the interior of the mall would need to reopen (currently you can only visit the shops with an exterior entrance). And the Airsoft place would still need to be in business when that happened. Who knows what the chances of that being true are.

       1. airport is a type of BB gun that shoots a 6mm plastic sphere as a projectile. Intent is lower risk/harm than traditional metal BBs.

          Some are toy-ish. Some are high-fidelity replicas of real weapons.

          Some folks shoot targets with them. Some play wargames and shoot each other.

          The ammo is cheap.

          1. “Airsoft”

             Auto-corrupt uber alles

          2. Some are low-powered enough to shoot at a paper target inside. Others will occasionally embed the pellet in your drywall. If you want to use them for simulation (below… or above), you really want goggles at a minimum, and preferably the full paintball face shield thing.

       2. Read this: https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2019/08/26/can-japanese-airsoft-skills-translate-to-shooting-firearms/

          Airsoft isn’t as good as force-on-force with simunitions, but if used that was it can be a fantastic training tool.

          WP delenda est attempt 4

31. I’ve spent most of the last month in an anxiety attack. Some of that’s work-related, they’re pushing me well out of my comfort zone, but most of it is the election. I didn’t watch the debate last night, but I did watch the drunkblog, and this morning I woke up feeling much better. It wasn’t the undeniable babbling train-wreck that I was hoping for, but it does seem like Trump came away a bit better from it.

    1. Last six months. LAST SIX MONTHS.

       1. I was pretty confident through most of the summer, but I woke up one morning absolutely convinced that they were going to be able to fraud their way into victory. This morning I, for some reason, was far less certain of that.

          1. I’ve been sure of it since the shut down. As well as totally angry/PTSDed and baffled over the lockdown over stupid shit.

             1. (on the off chance this is unknown) Respectfully, if anxious please lower your news intake, especially video format news. It is carefully crafted to induce anxiety, so you keep tuning in for more.

                Note how even weather news is so rigged. “it might rain” is now “Climate Disaster!! 11!!!”.

                Limit. Ration. Filter. And then read or watch something fun or funny.

                Probably known to most. But occasionally someone says ” hey! I miss it not! And my mood improved!”

                1. I don’t watch the news, period. i read trusted blogs.

                2. I got a “severe weather alert” in my email the other day, from the previously=worked-on Air Force base. It said there might be rain (a bunch, but not flash-flood levels) and some thunderstorms (not severe t-storms, just … t-storms).

                   “It’s going to rain and maybe thunder” got a “severe weather alert”. *SMFH*

                   1. *previously-worked-on
                      Oy!

    2. Trump did a fantastic job repeatedly knocking Biden off script. And Biden couldn’t handle being off script.

       As Razorfist said: This is the difference between being given the questions, and actually being able to think on your feet.

       1. I thought it was a mess on both sides. Trump seemed to have a problem with abandoning a thought mid-sentence before he’d made the actual point, and rushing off to a new thought as if it had distracted him. Biden was, well, Biden. He was thin-skinned as always, and repeated the same frequently discredited talking points that he’s been spouting for some time now. The more you know, the more it became blatantly obvious that his only goal was to simultaneously blame Trump for not doing enough to stop various problems while simultaneously blaming him for the issues that arose from the attempts to combat those problems. It was sort of like a homeowner blaming the fire department for not arriving soon enough to put out the fire, and simultaneously blaming them for drenching his house in water.

       2. Yeah, but NBC has a Scientific poll out saying that 53% of Americans think Biden won while only 29% think that Trump won. I guess the other 18% think that Wallace won.

          And you know it’s Scientific because they don’t include any of the crosstab data. After all, a key component of Science is keeping your data a secret as possible lest somebody point out how much bovine excrement you are full of. We all know how easy it is to poll a representative sample of the American electorate these days, getting that in around 36 hours is child’s play.

32. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the Dem cities, but i rather expect whether Trump wins or loses, the riots go BIG and Trump should tell the governors and mayors that that’s THEIR problem to deal with, and no federal money will be given out. Talk to your governors about your National Guard units.

33. I’m fortunate to live in a rural area. Most of the signs i see are for Trump. There are two big signs for Biden-Harris, but I think they’re both on one family’s farm.

    1. I’m hopeful that Indianapolis will come through relatively unscathed. Back in May and June when there was rioting, both the mayor and the governor stepped on it hard. There was a curfew, and IMPD were arresting rioters and stuffing them into paddy wagons to take to the lockup. And the governor made it pretty clear that if the IMPD couldn’t get it back under control, the Indiana National Guard was available to put a stop to it. After that, there were some genuinely peaceable marches on the governor’s mansion, mostly led by local religious leaders, but everything was quiet.

       OTOH, it’s possible that Indy may be slated to get swarmed by troublemakers to the point even the ING is overwhelmed. We can only hope that if that’s the case, they’ll discover they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, and it bites back.

       1. Los Angeles is at a potential tipping point right now. The incumbent DA – Jackie Lacey – is a Dem. But she’s not sponsored by Soros. The DA candidate in this election that is sponsored by Soros is a carpetbagger from San Francisco, and has the backing of the local Democratic Party apparatus. Things could get much worse in a hurry if the transplant wins.

          1. Just remember, DA’s are just as vulnerable to a rain of lead as anybody else.

34. Off topic in re: this blog post but relevant to our common concern:

    An entertaining course in why Marxists can appreciate the evils of the “oppressors” and “elites” while failing utterly in anything except creating more of them. Usually worse. No obvious triggers for any but the entrenched cultists. And did I mention truly fully?

    https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/

    1. * truly fun.

35. CCO,
    “as it is, I’m wondering if I have enough ammo.” The only time you have too much ammo is if you are either on fire or trying to swim a large body of water while carrying all of your ammo.

36. You don’t need a bandit radio station; get a ham radio license and be legal to talk to the world. I’m WB5JWI and I’ve talked to folks on every continent except Antarctica. Get and learn to use a really top notch medical kit. Find a good survivalist site for ideas. I actually wrote for Survival Cache for a while (exp. https://survivalcache.com/survival-psychology-aftermath-self-defense-shooting/ ). Learn how to safely handle as many firearms as you can. If you find a gun somewhere you really should know how to handle it safely.
    There are a ton of other ideas out there for the looking.

    1. Hey! You live kinda near me!

    2. KD0ZYZ*. And no, that’s not my actual address in the current on-line records thanks to the fire. Will notify FCC when settled in long-term new place. Also, no gear ATM, same.

       * Why I won’t get Ham vanity plate – signpost to potential thieves: ‘Lots of valuable electronics here!’ Though not the way I do it. 😀

37. Here’s praying. Hard.

38. At least we can always pray for each other.

39. any observant Jews are likely to take notice.

    From your mouth to God’s ears. I know there’s a bunch of the free-thinking Right who consider Mr. Trump a slavish sellout to the neo-cons because of his weasel* of a son-in-law. But Jewish paranoia is a real thing. (And with reason! Embrace the healing power of “and”) There’s a good chance President wheeler-dealer has been doubling down to convince American Jewry that he’s safe for them. Which means when the Jewish grabblers go to their fellow tribesmen to gin up fear-for-profit (ADL anyone?) the Sons and Daughters of Abraham and Sarah will quietly check “trump” even if they vote straight Democrat down ticket.

    I’ve been innocently reminding every lefty and quasi lefty I know that… “He might be racist* but at least he cares about the Jews. Every President, left or right – even Reagan – promised to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. Trump is the only one who delivered! He could’ve welched like everyone else – and gotten away with it – but he didn’t.

    *Based on rumor and social media. Yes. I know. If this were not the internets there’s an interesting discussion to be had on what Jared or Ivanka offer their dad.

40. Oh! Before I forget. Soothing bedtime reading, get your mind off the effluvia of A.D. 2020 (even though I suspect a lot bit bit is old news for you. heck, some of this is dinnertime stories from mom for me) . Yer loaf of bread, historically-speaking: https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/

    Good fun.

41. I grok what you said. I see the same train coming and have a hard time with so few responses to your essential point. That’s disturbing.

    But that’s also human, isn’t it? There were still 400,000 Jews in Germany on 1 September 1939. They didn’t see the train coming either, and that train was even more in sight after Kristallnacht than the train coming for us. Few see it. As Simon and Garfunkel aptly put it in “The Boxer”:

    “All lies and jests
    Still a man hears what he wants to hear
    And disregards the rest”

    Let’s hope for another miracle on 3 November.

    1. I’m hoping so hard that it jurts

       1. Peace be with you. You’ll be hearing more from me. Please note, I managed to spell my own email address wrong in my original post in case that matters.

          1. nah.
             I’m also praying so hard that it hurts.
             I’ve told atheist friends to pray. I don’t care what they think about it. PRAY.

             1. Yes!

42. HatTip: Charles C. W. Cooke at National Review gangblog, The Corner:

    The Truth About Today’s Anarchists
    “Insurrectionary anarchists” have been protesting for racial justice all summer. Some Black leaders wish they would go home.
    On the last Sunday in May, Jeremy Lee Quinn, a furloughed photographer in Santa Monica, Calif., was snapping photos of suburban moms kneeling at a Black Lives Matter protest when a friend alerted him to a more dramatic subject: looting at a shoe store about a mile away.

    He arrived to find young people pouring out of the store, shoeboxes under their arms. But there was something odd about the scene. A group of men, dressed entirely in black, milled around nearby, like supervisors. One wore a creepy rubber Halloween mask.

    The next day, Mr. Quinn took pictures of another store being looted. Again, he noticed something strange. A white man, clad in black, had broken the window with a crowbar, but walked away without taking a thing.

    Mr. Quinn began studying footage of looting from around the country and saw the same black outfits and, in some cases, the same masks. He decided to go to a protest dressed like that himself, to figure out what was really going on. He expected to find white supremacists who wanted to help re-elect President Trump by stoking fear of Black people. What he discovered instead were true believers in “insurrectionary anarchism.”

    [SNIP]

    Mr. Quinn discovered a thorny truth about the mayhem that unfolded in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man in Minneapolis. It wasn’t mayhem at all.

    While talking heads on television routinely described it as a spontaneous eruption of anger at racial injustice, it was strategically planned, facilitated and advertised on social media by anarchists who believed that their actions advanced the cause of racial justice. In some cities, they were a fringe element, quickly expelled by peaceful organizers. But in Washington, Portland and Seattle they have attracted a “cultlike energy,” Mr. Quinn told me.

    Don’t take just Mr. Quinn’s word for it. Take the word of the anarchists themselves, who lay out the strategy in Crimethinc, an anarchist publication …

    [SNIP]

    If that is not enough to convince you that there’s a method to the madness, check out the new report by Rutgers researchers that documents the “systematic, online mobilization of violence that was planned, coordinated (in real time) and celebrated by explicitly violent anarcho-socialist networks that rode on the coattails of peaceful protest,” according to its co-author Pamela Paresky. She said some anarchist social media accounts had grown 300-fold since May, to hundreds of thousands of followers.

    “The ability to continue to spread and to eventually bring more violence, including a violent insurgency, relies on the ability to hide in plain sight — to be confused with legitimate protests, and for media and the public to minimize the threat,” Dr. Paresky told me.

    [SNIP]

    They are experts at unraveling an old order but considerably less skilled at building a new one. That’s why, even after more than 100 days of protest in Portland, activists do not agree on a set of common policy goals.

    Even some anarchists admit as much.

    “We are not sure if the socialist, communist, democratic or even anarchist utopia is possible,” a voice on “The Ex-Worker” podcast intones. “Rather, some insurrectionary anarchists believe that the meaning of being an anarchist lies in the struggle itself and what that struggle reveals.”

    In other words, it’s not really about George Floyd or Black lives, but insurrection for insurrection’s sake.
    [END EXCERPT]
    –

43. There is no trustworthy common media. Our ability to travel the world is severely compromised. We are falling back on word-of-mouth to try to separate truth from fiction.

    It’s also a big country.

    I believe a few urban areas are being manipulated to give an impression of a much larger number of violent leftist riots than actually occur. You’ll notice many of the DAs in the worst-hit areas are not holding rioters in jail, as they could in normal times. I had the impression that the PA $1 Million bail for rioters made things calm down radically. (not to make a pun.)

    If you live near, or in, those unfortunate jurisdictions, it is close by, threatening to family & friends, and an everyday reality. If you don’t live near them, the national media is not telling you about them. So contacts with family members and friends helps fill-in-the-blanks, especially for people who don’t use the internet to search for local reports.

    Many people are doing the rational thing by leaving the cities. (I’ll break this into two posts.)

44. It reminds me of the stories of the Roman cities which vanished almost overnight, whether because the inhabitants died, or because they decided to leave. Maybe this is all a madness that hits cities sooner or later, in which they just, disappear. Maybe the story of the Tower of Babel in the bible, and the story of Lot’s wife, carries a message for us today.

    I can’t explain why the groups associated with the cities want to burn it all down. I am glad that the suburbs are well armed. I’ve noticed a number of stories of antifa rioters trying to march in the suburbs, only to be met by well-armed militias. The attacks on the idea of law enforcement is calculated.

    This looks to me to be someone or some groups trying to create civil disorder, rather than actual, organic, civil disorder. Unfortunately for them, we aren’t a nation of cities, unlike Europe. Also unfortunately for them, news sources have dissolved.

45. To be clear, I was merely citing a specific example in support of the suspicion; it does not necessarily follow that there was nobody pulling the strings on her puppet master. Nor does it mean there is no “Campaign School” providing “training” for campaign managers — funded by parties unknown, whether Soros or CCP.

    BTW, I searchengined AOC Campaign Chair to refresh my recollection and found an interesting array of stories:

    AOC top adviser Corbin Trent exits campaign
    Mar 3, 2020A top adviser to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has abruptly left her campaign, The Post has learned. The freshman lawmaker’s campaign spokesman, Corbin Trent, revealed his surprise departure …

    SOLVED: The Mystery of AOC’s Rise to Power | The Black Sphere
    The brains behind the operation is AOC’s campaign manager / Chief of Staff, Saikat Shakrabarti. He’s a Harvard grad, former organizer of the Bernie Sanders campaign. Liberals call him smart. Conservatives call him a crook. Along with coaching AOC on every issue, he also did a little creative financing during the election.

    The ‘tech millionaire’ behind the socialist: Chief of ..
    The New York Post describes Chakrabarti as a “tech millionaire” with homes in New York’s uber-trendy West Village (although it appears that is a rental), and in Maryland.

    Details of Ocasio-Cortez’s Ties To George Soros Revealed
    Incumbent Joseph Crowley — whose footprint in the Democratic establishment led to speculation that he would succeed Nancy Pelosi as Democratic leader of the House — greatly outspent Ocasio-Cortez. However, her strong online presence — thanks to the coverage of the Soros-linked digital media — she was able to gain traction and defeat Crowley in the primary June 26.

    But here’s the one I had in mind:
    Feds probing AOC’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti after sudden resignation
    The feds are looking into possible campaign finance misdeeds by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff and lead rainmaker, who suddenly resigned Friday, federal sources told The Post.

    The inquiry centers on two political action committees founded by Saikat Chakrabarti, the top aide who quit along with Ocasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent, the sources said. Trent left to join the congresswoman’s 2020 re-election campaign.

    The brash Chakrabarti, who masterminded Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign and steered her proposed Green New Deal, had caused uproar in the halls of Congress with a series of combative tweets that contributed to a rift between his rookie boss and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

    “People were not happy that he used his Twitter account to comment about members and the bills that he and his boss oppose,” a senior House Democratic staffer said. “There was a series of colliding and cascading grievances.”

    The two PACs being probed, Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, were both set up by Chakrabarti to support progressive candidates across the country.

    But they funneled more than $1 million in political donations into two private companies that Chakrabarti also incorporated and controlled, according to Federal Election Commission filings and a complaint filed in March with the regulatory agency.

    [SNIP]

    Federal authorities are looking at new salary rules imposed by Ocasio-Cortez when she took office earlier this year, and whether they were put in place to let Chakrabarti dodge public financial disclosure rules, according to sources.

    Although Ocasio-Cortez raised the salaries of junior staffers in her office to just over $52,000 a year, Chakrabarti took a massive pay cut. The Harvard graduate and tech millionaire agreed to an annual salary of $80,000 — far less than the $146,830 average pay for his position.

    Because his salary was less than $126,000, congressional rules exempted the chief of staff from having to disclose his outside income.

    [SNIP]

    In June and July, Chakrabarti accused Pelosi of being a weak leader and said that moderate Democrats were racists, “hell-bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s.”

    “Pelosi claims we can’t focus on impeachment because it’s a distraction from kitchen table issues,” he posted July 6. “What is this legislative mastermind doing?”

    Four days later, Pelosi reprimanded Ocasio-Cortez and her “Squad” of young progressives during a closed-door meeting, demanding they stop airing their grievances in public.

    “So, again, you got a complaint? You come and talk to me about it,” Pelosi admonished, according to Politico.

    But the next week, President Trump kicked up the controversy again with a series of Dem-needling tweets. That led to a July 26 clear-the-air meeting between Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez, one week before Chakrabarti’s departure to join a nonprofit think tank, New Consensus.
    [END EXCERPT]
    –

46. I’m in Larimer County. This is the answer I got when I enquired about an absentee ballot. I wanted to see if they would also send me a mail in ballot.

    .Hi Susan,

    It depends on what you mean by absentee ballot as this phrasing does not always share the same definitions with everyone.
    All active voters will be sent a mail ballot the week of October 12th.
    If you are overseas and truly need a different way to access a ballot, please let us know that.

    Best Regards,

    Richard Stecker

    1. GRRRRR.

    2. Y’all might want to write back, inquiring after the precise definition of “active voters.”

       After all, Chicago some municipalities have numerous voters whose only activity seems to be voting.
       –

47. OK, 9/11 prevention scenario….

    First, assuming only one person, you need to jump back far enough with details of the hijackers and their flight schools. Then it’s a simple* matter to eliminate them. This very likely scrubs the operation altogether. (But doesn’t stop any similar future attacks. It maybe doesn’t even garner a proper lookout for an identical future event.)
    (* For certain values of ‘simple’.)

    Or, knowing you might not stop all of them, you plan on being on one of the planes. Armed. With enough to share. (Remember airline security was not as anal a thing pre-TSA.) Simply being able to stand up and shoot the bast*rds when they start the mess ends that particular hi-jacking.

    The goodness about that second idea is it might actually stop the stupidity of turning the airports into target-rich environments and banning water bottles and Gerber jars. Flight 93, but successful because you’re not having to use bare hands. (And, yes, I might very well pick that flight because I know there are people on it who will fight.)

48. but hey who wants to die with a messy bed?
    Oh heck, yes, I want to! That’s how I want to go – messing up the bed!

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