No, You Can’t Have “Democracy”

337 thoughts on “No, You Can’t Have “Democracy””

1. As often is the case, a well-written and passionate piece. However, the people who most desperately need to read it will reach the first sentence, suffer a mental short circuit, and start wailing that you’re an evil Bad Puppy who hates democracy.

   1. Alas, ’tis true.

2. Demos means The People, aka “a mob” and the Founders of this nation were horrified of mob rule and designed a Constitution to limit it. There is a reason one major American party is the Free Stuff Party and the other is the TANSTAAFL Party.
   –

   1. This. The original founders were horrified by mobs, having the classical examples before them, and seeing how rule by a mob led to disaster …
      I assume that those Founders who lived to take note of the cluster-fark that became the French Revolution also breathed a sigh of happy relief at having escaped that particular mode of revolution… Although Jefferson may have come tardy to that insight.

      1. “Oh, those reports can’t be serious. They believe in liberty and the rights of man!”

         Can’t imagine how that happened.

         1. Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

            Well, they got one out of three right. Shame so many people had to lose their heads over the other two.

            1. They got NONE of them right, in the end….

               1. True. Bastiat, I think it was, said that the first could not survive the third, let alone the second. That liberty would be slain by fraternity. He was right.

      2. Those Founders had, to a person, read that recent best seller by Fast Eddy Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (the first volume of it published on February 17, 1776) and taken it to heart. It was a main discussion in all the fashionable book clubs. (And it was a good book to employ as a club, too, at nearly 400 pages, hardcover!)
         –

         1. Older son cut his teeth on my copy. And my entire hard cover collection of Agatha Christie. which I still haven’t replaced.

            1. OK, I have to ask — by ‘cut his teeth’ do you mean ‘learned to read’ or literally biting the book?
               ———————————
               “You buy ’em books, and they just chew on the covers.”

               1. She means he ate them.

               2. LITERALLY biting. He was one.
                  I only found out he could read when he was three. So, I don’t think he was reading at one.
                  Though decline and fall would fit with his first reads, which were mostly Roman history.

                  1. I only found out he could read when he was three. So, I don’t think he was reading at one.

                     –
                     Or, he managed to keep you in the dark for two years…

                     1. With my kids? ANYTHING is possible.
                        They’re a little scary, actually.

               3. That’s what board books are for.

            2. oh

               you meant literally.

   2. Sadly, the two American parties are both Free Stuff Parties. One is much more open about it and more willing to spread free stuff to random people who vote for them and letting those who vote for the other party foot the bill, while the other pretends to care about TANSTAAFL while making sure they get free stuff and to hell with the people who pay for it.

      That explains why the wealthy vote Democrat anymore, especially in the Trump era. They know policy has let them be rent seekers extraordinaire. They don’t want to give that up.

      That is also why we got Trump because he made the supposed TANSTAFFL party do something for those footing the bill. Especially when you consider prices paid in other than direct cash.

      1. I don’t believe I suggested either party delivered what they claimed to offer. As we recently spent 500+ comments discussing, “Free Stuff” is worth no more than what you paid for it, and often not even that much. The others talk TANSTAAFL but there’s so little market for that they don’t actually deal in it.
         –

   3. Parts of it. Once they realized they could outsource who got the Free Stuff to the bureaucracy, they decide to belly up the gummint Free Lunch counter. Something my mom told me reminiscing about an old work colleague was that he spent 25 years as a staffer in one of the big DC committees.

      He laughed that those dumb small humming reformers all would come in with their big ideas for change, and he and his gang would put the brakes on it. They’d be gone or onto some other issue, and he and his co-workers would still be there. That was … Hmmm… Mid 1980s

   4. Aristotle considered democracy to be the dark mirror of a polity, the degraded version of the proper method of governance. Not that any of those crying for democracy have ever actually read Aristotle.

      1. If any of them have heard of Aristotle they likely thought it was a reference to Harry Stottle, passing guard for the Knicks in the Forties.
         –

3. People don’t take me seriously when I say that the reason I like the Electoral College is because I like to eat.

   Heck, I’ve seen what happens to farmers in California over water rights. Btw, there is no water law in California. There are 170 years of precedents in a tangle so complicated that a friend who worked at the DWR said that their job is to find the least illegal thing to do.

   I’ve also seen someone claiming, quite seriously, that the farmers have too much power and screw over the cities in her state. Oh-kay, then. Good luck with that.

   1. Example of how not-well CA’s lack of water rights works: Los Angeles County decided it owned all the subsurface water. So it confiscated all the private wells. There was a class action lawsuit (I still owned property at the time so I was part of the class) and LAC graciously agreed to return 3 acre-feet to each landowner (enough for household use, but nowhere close to enough to maintain any greenery, gardens, livestock, or crops). Last I heard the whole thing was up in the air and being ignored, probably for lack of a reasonable way to enforce it, short of making everyone buy and install water meters (which given the locations of most ag wells, would need wireless reporting).

      Meanwhile, this made desert property so unsalable that realtors would not take new listings.

      Yes, there is no 4th Amendment in California, why do you ask??

      1. BTW for those not aware, at the time a well in the desert would cost you around $75k. So this was not a small taking. My place had a new well when I bought it ten years before, and that well had cost the previous owner $56,000 (almost half the value of the property).

         1. Aye. We had an easy well when we were going to drop out of the shared well arrangement. Well+pumphouse+hookups $20K, of which 5K was the well digging and pump. (Pumphouse cost was materials only.) I’ve heard of people having to pay $30K just for the drilling.

            1. Yowza, The contractor I was working with in 1991 for my first home was bumming when the well broke 200′ and he had to pay by the foot for the next 153′ of it. I think total well cost was ~$1500 with almost $1000 of that the extra depth charges. There was flow at 200′ just not enough (and way heavy in iron).

      2. Given Democrats open desire for a “wealth tax” and their open embrace of outright confiscation of property, if they win in November their will be no 4th Amendment nationally; of course there will be no 1st, 2nd or 5th either.

         Crucial to remember that when they held a majority in the Senate, the entirety of the Democratic Party Senate majority voted in lockstep to effectively abolish the entirety of the Bill of Rights.

         Even though there is no way they could actually get a constitutional amendment approved to do so by honest means, if they win and pack the Supreme Court, it won’t mater, because the radical leftists that then get appointed will approve everything the Democrats do to “fundamentally transform” the USA.

         The Republicans are hypocrites, often incompetent and generally useless. The Democrats with their full fledged embrace of Critical Race Theory and its neo-Marxist identity group based communism are outright evil.

         1. Yep. The right are not very effective and mildly venal. The left are COMMUNISTS AND HATE US.
            Vote accordingly.

   2. Adjudicated water water rights based on seniority (as in Oregon) are also a lot of fun. In our area, the tribes have been granted water rights as of “Time Immemorial”, which means whenever they want to cut off water access to everybody else, all they have to do is make a “water call”. Anybody believing that this would not be abused just flunked Civics 001 (the remedial version…).

      The tribes had to be reminded that it’s not within their rights to do a water call for a well that’s the only source of residential water for an entire town. At least not without a year’s notice. (Yes, it was tried, shot down, and the town had to drill a new well further away from the river. Arggh.) Mercifully, small residential wells avoid the water rights Gordian knot. So far.

      1. That sounds like it has great potential to erupt.

         1. Yeah, the tribes* got a lot of potential power from that water ruling, and have shown that they are willing to use it regardless of appearances. Hay growing along the rivers to the Klamath Lake watershed has been shut down or greatly curtailed, and there were things like the demand that the wells for a college and the regional hospital were too close to the river (IIRC, 1 mile from the shoreline falls in the Tribal Water Rights region).

            The fact that certain growers seem to be able to avoid shutdown (ostensibly to protect a species of sucker fish) and that these growers belong to the tribe is noted. IMHO, the adjudicated water rights system is lacking something, mostly concern for civil rights. OTOH, the BLMifa crowd have done yeoman’s work at alienating Pac NW Native American people, so there’s also a sense of “we have a common enemy. Let’s hold off on the water fights for a while”. Not sure how that’s going to play out in the future.

            (*) Modoc Indian war V1.0 was partly driven by enmity between Klamath (now and then politically dominant) and the Modoc tribes. The Yahooskin were also lumped in there when some genius decreed that all three tribes be in a reservation. Didn’t go well. V1.0 started as a rebellion by the Modoc, with a band leaving the reservation, and ensuing conflict between that band and settlers by Tule Lake, in California. V2.0 seems to be driven by the Klamath. AFAIK, the Yahooskin got lumped in, but they are the smallest(?) of the three tribes, and seem to get little separate attention.

   3. There’s also the minor detail that there are Federal laws detailing who gets how much water from the Sierra Nevada snowpack, and the first law implementing those restrictions was written by a senator for the state of New Jersey.

   4. I believe it. Some “considerate,” person on my Twitter feed keeps retweeting people indignant that the Midwest has more Senators than the Far West and Northeast, with only a fraction of the population. They want NYC, LA, etc to run the country. God help us.

      1. “A few nukes over those targets will fix that overpopulation problem fast. Sure you REALLY want that?”

         1. Not needed – the cities are self—depopulating without that post-airburst smell of burned everything that my stepfather described accompanied his visit to Hiroshima right around the end of the war.

            1. The problem is that the people fleeing the cities are bringing their voting habits to the places they flee to, as if voting for the same kind of ideology, politicians and policies will have a different result from the very conditions that they fled that were created by those same ideology, politicians and policies.

               1. Yeah, possibly, but give them a break and make them prove their idiocracy bona fides first – I may be one of those economic or worse refugees at some point, and I’d appreciate an open mind wherever I wash ashore.

         2. Yes. Yes I am. Sure.

         3. No thank you as much as somedays I think instant urban renewal might have value. Although it seems like we may get the fire part if certain parties win courtesy of the local yahoos (or imported yahoos). With enough fires and people interfering you might just have to let it burn.

4. c4c

5. And that’s why our criminal justice system relies on unanimity rather than majority rule for the very important matters.

   As a History major from long ago though, I quote myself, “History is a Gordian knot that, when unraveled, provides a rope just long enough to hang yourself with.” Offered in the best Oscar Wilde tradition of saying witty things that may or may not be true, but are at least witty.

6. Even if Democracy was an absolute Good, these Brats wouldn’t like it as it would likely mean that They Would Not Get What They Want.

   IE: These Brats are likely a minority and the majority likely would want something else.

   In other words, IMO these Brats would only like Democracy when They Got What They’re Screaming For. 😈

   1. They are the majority. It’s just the sock puppets leading you to believe otherwise.

      1. Point. 😦

7. The idea of democracy as put forth by the untutored and maleducated is that democracy provides equality, that each person has to compromise for the greater good.

   Think about that for a moment. Take your time.

   Now that you have thought, does it surprise you that there is no such thing as a democracy by that definition? Because though every human life has value, and under the law we are no man greater than the rest (despite recent failures of man in the justice system, that *is* the ideal), we are most certainly not equal. Not in wit, not in strength, in comeliness, in skill, nor in will. Every democracy has stratification, has cliques, has disparity down to the smallest mote.

   Every “democracy” is a mutation of something like Strong Man, Tribe, and Feudalism combined. Strong Man, the root of oligarchy and the Ur of mankind’s political organization, because there will always be that one man or woman who can sway the vote to his own ends through means fair and most foul. Tribe, because tribal politics will infect the democracy at the very moment of its birth, because humans gotta human. You cannot escape the tribe. You can mitigate its effects. And feudalism, because democracies always evolve caste systems very, very quickly.

   A democracy that somehow held to its ideological roots would be paralyzed into inaction in any crisis situation. Which happens with depressing regularity. “Democracies” in practice have no interest in individuals that do not hold power. Corruption seems to be most at home in democracies (except theocracies, because when you have the backing of gods you can literally do no wrong).

   The founders had the benefit of excellent education and some pretty brutal examples of how government can go bad. They happened upon a near perfect opportunity. And even then, they tried to work within the system before it became painfully obvious the system would never offer them the opportunity for proper redress.

   The well armed sheep has continually contested the vote for over two centuries now, with some wins, many losses. In our lifetimes the would-be tyrants have always sought power over us. There is nothing I can see that will ever change that, as human nature has not changed. Happily, though, they have failed. Complete dominion continually eludes them. And these past four years, oh, how they’ve raged over that fact. *chuckle*

   Here’s to four more in this grand Republic.

   1. Hear, hear!!!

8. Nomination time:
   https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/21730951-november-2020—-manga

9. I have one message to all the leftists who want Democracy.

   It is rule by the majority and the majority is white. You, after decades of trying, have created a significant and growing faction of the white population who can be encouraged to vote as white people. Your efforts are creating more all the time.

   If you get what you want, the result within a decade will be white nationalism. I will bet you my paycheck to yours on that one.

   That is one reason I don’t want Democracy, because it encourages exactly that kind of factionalism. But you seem to think race-conscious voting is a great idea. I guess you don’t realize how much of American is white.

   1. Hence mass immigration from pkaces not currently Experiencing Whiteness, usually cheered for by minority groups that would normally get the sharp end good and hard by these groups*.

      They believe they can swamp the country before any kind of races consciousness takes hold in the people who are identified as White. The great project to get Irish and Swedes and Poles and Germans and Ukrainians and Russians to not hate each other to the death here worked too well. (In hind sight. It used to be fantastic) You won’t catch, say people who immigrated from India, Japan and Korea making that mistake, even if they play up “Asians as all BIPOC together” to manipulate the baizuo.

      *Which generates ill will toward them which feeds paranoia, which doubles down on … and round and round we go.

      1. The problem is east Asians who retain their culture tend to put an emphasis on academic achievement. Other proposed BIPOC groups do not and the result is leftists having to claim discrimination against Asians is in the name of fighting white supremacy. And the East Asians are not buying it.

         Those groups are much more likely to play a third “race” in the US, voting for the side that gives them what they want. The Alt-Right will happily institution test based systems that help East Asians that pretty much eliminate Blacks and Hispanics from higher ed, at least at first.

         The census projects 404 million Americans by 2060. Of that 179 million to be “white alone” and 298 million to be “white alone and combination” (ie, whites and those who identify as Hispanic and white). If 21% of those combinations identify as white more than Hispanic (and if we have pure Democracy with whites voting as a power block there is incentive to do so), the we have majoritarian rule by whites if race voting prevails.

         If Asians are peeled off of BIPOC by the college admissions issue that is a potential 33 million more votes.

         If the census groups “White Hispanic” and “Asian Alone” break ranks and support white oriented race voters at an average rate of 15%, the former as an effort to “be white” and the later to “get a fair shot at college”, that is an operating majority.

         Which is more likely: tiger moms and roof Koreans voting with whites against black populations allied with Hispanics or all the BIPOC voting to screw the whites?

         That is before discussing Hispanic dislike of Blacks in the US. Having lived in El Paso I learned about that. The most common racial violence was between those two groups.

         The simple fact is Federalism in voting for the Senate and the President encourages people to identify more with people of other races across town than people of the same race across the continent. Every step of nationalization breaks that incentive. Eliminating the Electoral college might be the death blow.

         A wise choice if you’re worried that the people of California, Texas, and New York are losers due to that would be to break them into several states, probably 5 for CA and TX and 2 or 3 for NY.

         Another would be implementing Nebraska and Maine type awarding of 1 elector per Congressional district then two by state wide vote.

         Both of those require thinking instead of emotional and chanting.

         1. For those wondering how a “by Congressional district” + 2 per state win would have worked in 2016, it would be Trump 282 and Hillary 259.

            That is much more winnable by Dems, and the system is an easier sell than the popular vote one. I don’t have a good reason to reject it.

            A third method the Dems have tried is increasing the size of the House. In a winner take all system, a larger House probably breaks the electoral college to the Dems.

            1. The prosed “Wyoming Rule” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Rule) would add a little over 100 members the House. in 2010 the House would be 547.

               If it was in place 2016 would have been: Trump 371 to Clinton 279.

               That is interesting because a more representative system, insuring near parity in Congressional district size adds more seats (65) to Red states than Blue States (47).

            2. I wouldn’t assume that Trump 282; in California he probably gets more because of all the Republicans there who stayed home, figuring in that state there was no point turning out.

               Also, in a “by Congressional district” race Trump probably runs a different campaign. One which possibly works better, possibly works worse.
               –

               1. Yes, it is Trump 282

                  1. I apparently was not clear: I believe that the Trump 282 conclusion is the result of static analysis and, just as the “Hillary won the popular vote” argument, is premised on the idea that Trump would not have altered his campaign strategy had different rules been in effect.

                     So yes, post-election analysis may find Trump would have won 282 electoral votes had the distribution been made according to different rules — but it us erroneous to assume Trump’s strategy would have been no different had the rules been other than what they were.
                     –

                     1. I thought I said it was based on nothing changing.

                        1. You might have, and I could have easily missed it — but it strikes me as unlikely that nothing would change.

                           Static analysis is even worse in predicting economic effects of various policies, as Arthur Laffer and his disciples so clearly demonstrated. I acknowledge getting a touch snippy about its use.
                           –

                           1. I don’t disagree, but do you even have a dynamic model for these changes?

                              I’m trying to do a back of the envelope analysis for a comment on a blog, not a scholarly paper. Static analysis gives you a ballpark on something like this. The value of significant changes in campaign strictures are quite possibly a wash as:

                              1. Only 3% of Congressional Districts went for a presidential candidate not of the party of their House member elected the same year.
                              2. 20% of the states have only 1 or 2 House districts. By district campaigning has low value there unless you have a main like situation where it is 1 urban district and the rest of the state in 1 rural one.
                              3. Another 20% have 5 or 6 House districts and only 1 or 2 media markets. While there is some value to by district campaigning there, it is probably not significant.
                              4. The big changes are likely to be in turnout in non-swing large states: Texas, NY, CA. Given current gerrymandering this could either be a wash or work against the party in power, but not significantly.

                              An additional note on #2: we have data on this working in Maine. The next most likely state to split in a similar urban/rural way to be worth attacking is New Hampshire. The Trump campaign would probably have been able to double up on resources in Maine 2 and upstate New Hampshire.

                              Would I swear that a 2016 with all states voting by district come out exactly like it did in 2020? No, but if we could run the experiment and let the campaigns work on that basis I wouldn’t put it off more that -10/+20, which isn’t a bad margin for static analysis.

                              As for why I put a larger up than down:

                              1. Hillary’s campaign didn’t seem to understand the rules as in the last two weeks they assumed an EC win and focused on popular vote. I suspect they’d make the same mistake based on district voting and assuming they’d pick up the 6 “Senate” EC votes in MI, WI, and PA. Trump might have let those go, focusing on House seats in the Upper Midwest.

                              2. With NY and CA being safe blue, there is much more room for the GOP to pick up by district voting. The one big solid red state where turnout might get Dem votes is Texas. The opportunities are more for the GOP.

                     2. Also, by district awaring a la Maine and Nebraska might have changed campaigning some, but I doubt much.

                        What it might change is turnout in solid states where the other side has depressed gotv.

            3. Because the states control the district lines, and it’s also legal to amend state constitutions to change back how Senators and Congressmembers are voted in. So no, it’s not a good replacement for an electoral college. The whole point of the electors is that they are not one of the other branches. They stand apart.

               1. Also, congressional districts are currently allotted by population, so the big cities and big states would _still_ get more electoral votes. A lot more. Stinks again.

               2. Seems to have worked fine in NE and MA for decades.

         2. There are already some on the Left who claim that Asians are “white”. It’s possible that within a couple of generations, we’ll see East Asians “assimilated” in much the same fashion that earlier European ethnic groups were.

            1. Yet the demand majority rule thinking that will overturn “white power”.

               1. The (imo justified) reasoning is that the whites that actually matter, the ruling class and bureaucrats expect to be leading the mob, same as now. And that there is a large enough component that is self hating. If it gets to point where it is obvious and whites in power actually are benefited at expense of others, maybe. But we are already taking about segregation, wealth transfer, and so on and much of plurality all in for it.

               2. If you pay attention to the statements they actually made, the way they intend to insure that they have a majority of those they consider to be members of “oppressed” groups is to simply lower the population of “oppressor” groups; through gulags, concentration camps and gas chambers. When they refer to cancelling entire groups of people, they mean cancel in the full lethal life ending meaning of the term.

                  1. Or they can simply oppress more people, as they are doing now.

                  2. Yes, but they have to last long enough to do so. I’m not sure they can yet.

                     1. They can’t. Though Herb, be of good cheer. It might not do US any good, but they are so thoroughly incompetent that every year they have less ability to last that long.

            2. Indians that are functional and aren’t doing horrifically anti-American things are already treated as “white.”
               There have been a few honor killings and some mafia style junk; contras with the treatment of Bobby Jindal and … dang it, the Republican lady whose parents are both immigrants, that the Left was hollering at for speaking on racism. Pretty, maybe middle aged.

               (I was going to clarify which flavor of Indian, then realized it covers both so whatever.)

               1. There’s an Indian gentleman (who lives IN India) that posts on Baen’s Bar in the Politics Conference.

                  He see Trump as a Good For America Person and routinely points out the idiocy of American-Born Leftish Idiots. 😀

                  1. *lefty hat* Clearly he’s invalid because he’s been brain washed by those far-right-wing British people who were in India.
                     If he were authentic, he’d agree with the lefties.

                     1. LOL 😆

                        Good Point.

                     2. You jest, but this is a near word for word quote from the young lady interviewed who was on the beating-them-up-for-free-speech-and-much-justice!!! side at the recent SF rally, talking about the black people who were on the being-beaten-up pro-Trump side – see about 1:23 in this video:

                        1. It’s pretty dang close to what *I* have been told, about being female, by male progs.

                           1. It’s what I get about being female, immigrant or Latin.
                              Note that they call the Portuguese Jewish SC justice (I’m blanking on his name) the first Latin SC Justice, and that… well, dad’s mom’s surname, which is my second name if spelled with a z is UNQUESTIONABLY Latin. I guess culture is all about s vs. z (Also our state department says Portuguese are Latin. But never mind.)
                              What do I know. I’m a white Mormon male. By FIAT.

                           2. But a White Mormon Male with a Great Rack. That’s unquestionably unique.

               2. Nicky Haley

                  Though based solely on the pictures I’ve seen of her, I’d never have guessed that’s where her parents were from.

                  1. Yes! Thank you, I am the terrible at names. And titles. And frequently terminology….

                     My race-fu is weak, too, but looking at photographs of her with her parents, it seems the color-filter thing is going strong as well– she’s got at least three different hair colors in these pictures, from a dark pine brown to salt and pepper to black-brown.
                     https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/everything-you-need-to-know-about-nikki-haley-and-why-president-donald-trump-appointed-her-as-ambassador.html/

               3. Or the Nodding Lady from Trump’s town-hall inquisition. Turns out she’s Dominican, owns a small business, and has found Trump’s economic policies beneficial.

                  I didn’t watch the ‘town hall’, just saw clips on Fox News of Savannah Guthrie berating Trump. They said it went on for more than 20 minutes. If I was Trump, I would have stopped her long before that.

                  “Why am I here?”

                  “Huh?”

                  “If all you want to do is listen to yourself yammer, there is no reason for me to be here.”

                  [More protests from Guthrie]

                  “You’re wasting my time, but worse, you’re wasting the audience’s time. They didn’t come here, or turn on their TVs, to hear you yammer. They’re here for me. I’m running for President, and they need information to help them decide whether or not to vote for me. They’re not getting any from you. So, you can ask your questions, but then you have to SHUT UP and listen to the answers!”

               4. Nicky Haley.

                  1. Thank you!

                  2. Not to be persnickety, but in the interests of accuracy, it is Nikki Haley. Remember it: she’s likely to be a presidential candidate in the next election or two.
                     –

                     1. supposing opposition is allowed….

         3. Democrats are currently nattering that Washington, DC should be a state. IMHO they’re not going far enough. They should take the whole Washington metropolitan area (including the suburbs in Maryland and Virginia) and grant it statehood. Furthermore, they should take the NYC metropolitan area (including parts of NJ) and grant it statehood. Ditto for the Chicago metropolitan area, and for any other single metropolis that dominates the rest of its state. (This doesn’t apply to LA, SF, Houston, Dallas, etc.)

            The obvious effect is that the metro areas get their own senators. But look closer: the actual effect is that they keep the senators they already had, and the non-metro parts of each state get their own new senators (and electoral votes). Wonder how many Democrats would be dumb enough to go for statehood for those big cities?

            1. We could try to convince them.

               Also, SF.

            2. Was a huge part of benefit to having both population and land area counted in representation. The needs of cities and rural are different. Not always at odds, but they have different priorities to meet. Having both with a seat at table means more equitable than one side getting 90% of what it wants and in so doing causing harm to other side

         4. Yep – and the “color of my skin makes me disadvantaged” now is running directly into “that Indian guy driving the Land Rover is darker than you, dude – he just didn’t worry about ‘acting white’ so he succeeded in staying in school and got a job in tech.”

            OK, actually he came here to go to school from a country where overwhelming centuries of tradition tells him his caste is only good for picking up excrement – but he got out of that by getting that degree and finding a slave-labor H1b job here, sticking it out, and now works for whoever he wants. And yes, he does own his condo and that Land Rover.

            Also see Round Heels Kamala’s parents: not empirically oppressed in spite of their skin tint.

            1. No, it’s his great-great-grandfather’s having been a slave that’s the problem. Never mind that Holocaust survivors were slaves under a more horrible system and have white privilege. Never mind that the Chinese currently enslaved in China would have honorary white privilege if they made it to America. We’re tough. They aren’t.

            2. Mike, that’s been going on since 1998. Right after I joined my Big Tech employer, the assistant manager for the local office was hauled down to the AL legislature and quizzed about our “minority hiring” to determine if we could bid on State of AL projects.

               He started listing our non-white employees and was cut off by our local Al Sharpton wannabe, Alvin Holmes, who said “Indians aren’t minorities; how many black and Hispanic employees?”

               1. determine if we could bid on State of AL projects.

                  –
                  Last company I worked for was the preferred Public Works Cost Accounting Software for CA, WA, and NW Native Reservations, the boss was working on SW region too. After the company was sold to the Canadian firm, every employee had to under go finger printing and background checks.

                  While I was still working (stats are easy – 10 employees, counting the boss)

                  Number of “‘qualified” minorities working for the original company? 0%

                  Does over age 65 count, heck over 55, given age discrimination targeting? 30%, 50% respectively

                  Gender, Female (genetic, to-be-clear)? 10%

                  Now? Stats still easy. Employee math goes 10 – 1 (me) + 6 (new) – 3 (70+ retired, finally) – 4 (new employees). Percentage in all categories above: 0%

                  Government contracts, where number of minority employees are an issue, is going to be a problem, given they are part of a bigger international *conglomeration. Don’t know it the minority stats apply to the individual company under those umbrellas or maybe it helps the company stats because they are under the umbrella because other similar companies have the stats they need.

                  * Private corporation who buys long term small software firms with large entrenched software when software originator passes away or retires, and perceived next generation does not take offer to buy firm, or there isn’t one.

         5. There are also a number of Latin-Americans who’ve seen “Democracy” up close and rifle-butt-to-the-head personal who are disinclined to vote the way their “betters” advise.
            –

      2. I have read that the black urban community believes it’s much larger than it actually is, because they don’t get out of the city and only see the people in their immediate neighborhoods

         1. They do. And so do whites in major urban areas. I’ve heard the phrase “half of America.”
            Uh….. no.

            1. Yeah, if your group is 13.2%, the one thing you definitely don’t want is “pure democracy.”

               1. Hmmmm … you probably don’t want to put your “inalienable rights” up to a democratic vote, either.
                  –

            2. That’s probably in part because of the “majority minority” junk– I’ve noticed the only group that is consistently part of “minority” is African-Americans, but they’re more than willing to include “latinos” if that makes the number bigger. (Yes, all flavors, even though when they want to make a different point they’ll use non-white Latino.)

         2. You occasionally hear stories about young blacks that finally get out of the urban areas that they’ve spent their entire lives in and visit one of the less ethnically diverse parts of the country. Shock usually ensues, followed by (in at least some cases) a belief that the locals somehow did away with their black residents at some point in the past.

         3. Yep. Watched black guys get in the military and get posted and wonder “where are they hiding all the black people”. Several immediately assume the Klan is forcing them all to hide.

            In Connecticut and Rhode Island the Klan is strong enough to keep blacks indoors in their minds.

   2. I would say the Electoral College is working better than anybody could have hoped. The Presidency has flipped between political parties seven times in the last 60 years. 28 years of Democrats, 32 years of Republicans, as close to a 50/50 split as can be with elections every 4 years. You wouldn’t get that from a ‘broken, obsolete’ system.

      The only reason anybody would want to ‘abolish the electoral college’ is because it’s TOO fair to suit them.

      If they did get their ‘ideal warm-body direct democracy’ it would soon result in open war between the big Democrat cities, where most of the minorities live, and the rest of the country, which is over 90% white. Which is also where most of the guns are, and all of the food. City boys stealing food from the farmers; that would not end well.

      Of course, their ‘leaders’ could always confiscate the farms, and send those city boys (and girls) out to work on them…

      Hey, they’re copying the racial grievance tribunals from South Africa, why not the Killing Fields from Cambodia?
      ———————————
      Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do remember history are doomed to watch everybody else repeat it.

      1. Note, I do not want to remove the EC.

         I am in favor of the Wyoming rule. Retroactive applications back to 1940 show it wouldn’t de facto change the presidential elections, but it might have had an effect, just not an obvious one.

         I’m also in favor of breaking up high population states. I’d be interested to see the effects of a combination of the Wyoming plan with the breaking up of any state with over a fixed number of House members, somewhere around 20, over 3 censuses.

10. “like two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner”
    (but all those minority/equal rights lawsuits would make you think they knew that but perhaps the past tense is appropriate?)

    They didn’t have to all share one TV* and vote on what to watch? They didn’t vote on what game to play with their sister and her best friend? Sure, if you’re outside, tag or hide and go seek work, but it’s never army and if you’re inside it’s paper dolls and Id rather do homework.

    * True, long time since I had to share, but I find I should share else I’m holed up in my room.

11. Also;

    You tantrum throwing children can’t have ‘Renewable Energy’ because there is no such thing. Solar panels and wind turbines have a life of about ten years. Then they become horrible disposal problems, AND have to be replaced with rare and high-tech materials, many of which are in short supply. A damn sight shorter supply than oil. That’s beside the problem of just how much of the earth they would need to cover, disrupting the ecosystem. Hint; kilowatt for kilowatt wind and solar run about fifty times the footprint of ‘conventional’ power generation. And also beside the intermittency problem. Hint: batteries ain’t going to cut it, and even if they did they ALSO have short lives and present horrible disposal problems.

    You can’t transition to ‘organic farming’ unless you are willing to see mass starvation. Probably starting with you city-dwelling morons.

    You can’t have the Revolution so many of the dimmer among you seem to thirst for, because the people you despise so much have most of the guns, and know what to do with them. Get outside the cities that protect you from effective retaliation, and you will DIE. Because in a sane part of the country, throwing Molotov cocktails or shooting professional grade fireworks at somebody is called ‘assault with a deadly weapon’ , which means they are legally allowed to shoot you dead. And shining a laser at somebody’s eyes to blind them is called ‘grievous bodily harm’, and that lets them shoot you, too. Your riots have been taking place in carefully protected playpens. You’ve been fighting opponents with one hand tied behind their backs, and wearing hobbles. Boil out into ‘deplorable shape land and the crows will feast on you.

    You’ve been USED, by a cynical political elite that is fighting for its existence. One which, if you hand them the power you appear to want to, will not hesitate to liquidate you as obvious troublemakers and threats to The State.

    You’re lucky that Trump is nowhere near as bad as you have been told, because if he were every single one of you would be in a labor camp, of hanging from a piano wire noose. But you are unlucky, in that the Elite that is using you absolutely IS as bad as they say Trump is. And when they no longer have a use for you, if they can get away with it, you will disappear between two days

    *spit*

    1. But you are unlucky, in that the Elite that is using you absolutely IS as bad as they say Trump is. And when they no longer have a use for you, if they can get away with it, you will disappear between two days

       Already I have seen multiple Democrats call for “truth and reconciliation” commissions. The very people who complained Trump wanted to put his political opponents in jail are openly announcing their intent to do so.

       Do you think you Bernie Bros will get a pass on that? How about those unhappy about Kamala?

       1. Seriously, I don’t understand the idiots who say Trump is shredding the constitution. Sure, he could have. He could have sent troops to pacify the riots.
          BUT he chose to respect state rights.
          And note when I ask people why they say that, at BEST I get incoherent rambling amounting to Orangemanbad.

          1. He has NY bluster, mostly. But they think that anyone not of their ilk even allowed in government is unconstitutional since the living constitution says they are the ones they’ve been waiting for

             1. My wife was born in Brooklyn. She defines President Trump as “a typical Queens construction foreman — with money.”

          2. I think THEY think that things like ‘Republican Presidents are supposed to turn up at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner to be mocked, like good little lapdogs” are actually part of the Constitution.

       2. The thing is, if you are free and able to publicly call for a Truth And Reconciliation Commission before, you are empirically not eligible for one afterwards.

    2. THIS.
       For the record, you should wind up younger son on the “renewable energy” and watch him go. He resembles Donald Duck in a snit.

       1. I see a guest posting here sometime in the near future. I’ll even chip in for sheeting over the computer and keyboard, a’la a Gallagher show.

          1. I’ve asked him to, but he keeps running to thirty pages, and that’s a little too long…..

             1. Series? Ebooklet?

                1. Agreed. Break it down into digestible chunks with links to what you’ve done and what you’re doing.

             2. How many times can you copy paste the laws of thermodynamics

                1. Well, he also has things about how these things are built…. and a lot of swear words.

                   1. Although he needs to get tighter. Managers can’t read that long

                      1. Managers don’t read. They communicate in a strange dialect called ‘Powerpoint’.

                         1. Or an executive summary of one paragraph of no more than five sentences.

                2. Well, if one goes into tedious detail, it can easily be developed at that length…

                   Of course, the sorts who really need the clue by four can say ‘temperature’ all day without becoming confused, but will completely forget the word when you try to give them the “Cat is spelled C A T” level explanation.

                   That and malice are the reasons why I switched to formulations like “so we should kill all the foreigners?” and “what would you do if scientists said we had to kill the Spanish speakers to keep the earth from making the sun explode?”

                   No subtle philosophical argument will make sense to them, hammers are appropriate. Even if mine are still not to the point and concrete enough.

                3. “You can’t win, you can’t get even, and you can’t get out of the game.”

             3. So it’s a weekly series.

       2. Trying to tell “I F’ing Love Science” twits about Carnot engines and laws of thermodynamics is an experience in frustration. I know when I tried, I’d get told to just shut up, and then they’d immediately change the subject to something about sex. (Yeah, talk about lowered expectations…)

          1. No, hon. They change subject to sex, because they think that will scare you. I swear I’m not making this up.

             1. ohhh.. LOL. I guess they misread my disgust, because I was thinking, “Wow can you get more ‘animal brain’ during a conversation?”

                1. Nah, they’ve tried this on me, which considering I grew up with a passel of “ersatz’ brothers ten years older than I and latin…. is kind of weird.
                   You have to remember they have this image of us from the media, and can’t figure out it’s NOT accurate.

                   1. it really prangs them when the hit someone with actual kinks, and isn’t afraid to talk about them, too.

                      1. Meh. trying to shock me, given my friends is actually hilarious. I mean some of my friends write porn for a living….

                         1. shock the squares only ever works in movies and in their heads. Shocking the “shockers” is usually far easier, as silly stuff sets them off.

                      2. *laughs* Oh dear heavens, I’ve broken so many brains because I DON’T have a kink which you must hear all about I’ll talk about– but I’m interested enough to pay attention to the doesn’t-need-pixilation details, because it is interesting to find out how folks’ minds work and it’s not like I’ll find out otherwise.

                         Apparently, I’m supposed to fall over in a dead faint at the idea of BDSM, even the nearly vanilla end of it, like fuzzy cuffs, and knowing stuff exists like the “how to take care of your (…dom? I can’t remember the word, sorry!)” classes that one of our folks here teaches is just Right Out.

                         I honestly do try not to scandalize those folks too much– so I don’t bring up that I think learning about what interests folks speaks to their spiritual hungers.

                         1. BDSM Hon? I’m Latin and over 50. I’m supposed to start crying when you mention gay people exist.
                            OR go off in a faint at college students having alcohol.
                            THEY ARE SUCH IDIOTS.

                            1. Related:
                               

                            2. Right? I’ve started answering with “Oh, my stars and garters!”

                            3. And our troops smoke, swear and pursue objects of their affection for the satisfaction of sexual desires?!!! OH, THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

                            4. Oh! Oh! Lead me to my Fainting Couch…

                            5. Blink blink.

                               Explain that last one to me.

                            6. Dude.

                               I have had to explain that yes, I drink beer.

                               I am Catholic.

                               We literally have entire organizations that went on a nothing-but-beer diet for Lent.

                               But “Wow, Fox, you drink BEER?”
                               And they don’t calm down when I blink and say I prefer a jack-and-coke. (Well, I prefer cheaper than Jack, honestly, but “R&R with diet pepsi, two shots to the can, prefer an iced mug to ice, thanks” is probably not helpful.)

                               I am not sure how either my theology or political philosophy is supposed to mean I t-total….

                            7. I didn’t know someone could be that sheltered.

                               I mean one of well known miracles was water to wine.

                            8. These are the same guys shocked that the people with a bucket-load of kids have sex.

                               Although I am still proud of counter-shocking the uncle that tried the “you know, they found out what causes that” when we were expecting the Duchess.
                               (I was expecting something like that, so I was able to smile and say “Yes, we’re quite good at it, but we don’t give lessons, sorry.”)

                            9. LOL 😆

                            10. LOL

                            11. SERIOUSLY my well-educated friends think Catholics are EXACTLY the same as the more fundamentalist Baptists. No difference.

                            12. …do you pat them on the head and tell them thats cute?

                            13. No. I become incoherently annoyed, because it insults both religions. And then they tell me I’m a fanatic.

                            14. Well…are they wrong?

                            15. Well, she can be fanatical in her hatred of idiots (and so can I). 😉

                            16. Yes.

                            17. I have literally seen someone post a joke turning on the “fact” that Catholic priests don’t drink alcohol.

                            18. LOL 😆

                                I on the other hand saw a joke that revolved around the fact that Catholic Priests were allowed to drink but weren’t allowed women.

                                IE: The Priest got whiskey on his clothing and a woman offered him perfume to hide the whiskey smell. He replied that he was allowed the whisky. 😉

                            19. …my head hurts.

                                Sorry, seen drunk nuns. Family hits all the Irish stereotypes except no priest (what the pastor saw in me that caused multiple suggestions ill never know). Especially alcohol

                            20. There’s a mindset among too many Liberals that if you’re Religious (especially Conservative Religious) then you’re against drinking, sex and smoking.

                                Never mind that some Conservative Religious People do drink and do smoke.

                                Of course, once we’re married, of course we have sex. 😆

                            21. And dancing 😀

                            22. Point. 😀

                            23. I still want to know how anybody thinks older women will be shocked by *anything* rather than doing the shocking.

                            24. Same folks who were shocked and amazed at the idea that a faithful Catholic priest would know what sin is?

                                The ones that are amazed that people with a dozen kids have sex?

                            25. Yeah. I grew up hearing things you wouldn’t believe from the village women. Mostly by hiding and being very quiet.

                            26. There was a memoir of rural life in Italy by Eric Newby – a chapter where he wrote about the grape-picking season, and how when they all broke for lunch and a rest, the local people would begin exchanging gossip and rude stories, and it was the older women who had the rudest and most startlingly explicit stories…

                            27. I have literally seen someone post a joke turning on the “fact” that Catholic priests don’t drink alcohol.

                                –
                                Ummm… Communion wine, anybody?

                            28. *big grin* Well, that is transubstantiated, so not REALLY wine, anymore, just has the form of wine….

                            29. Heck, there are stories about Lutheran ministers getting a bit tiddly on having to drink the leftover communion wine. Because once it has been consecrated … can’t be put back in the bottle. Must be consumed.

                            30. Sometimes, “Fox, you drink BEER?” means, “But I’ve never seen you drunk out of your skull, and you don’t talk every Monday about how many jello shots you drank before you passed out….”

                                They don’t realize that you can drink, and stop when you’ve had enough, and be normal.

                            31. *big grin* Well, that is transubstantiated, so not REALLY wine, anymore, just has the form of wine….

                                That only makes it creepier, really. I know the ceremonial amount is tiny and not apt to be of any issue for non-alcoholics, but the idea of becoming drunk on blood…

                            32. Re: getting drunk on consecrated wine– from memory, that’s an old styled heresy, it should make you feel creeped out. (Old style because it takes a minor knowledge of theology. Stuff like “sex on the altar” doesn’t really require knowledge to understand why that’s ew.)

                                On a practical level, even an alcoholic would only be in trouble by situational temptation, same as a sex-addict can be triggered by a nun in full habit — if you’ve got a HUGE event, you might have, oh, eight goblets with two or less ounces of wine in the bottom, which is then mixed with water. The priest usually consumes what is left (can’t really keep the Blood like you can the Body) but even if for some reason nothing was used, AND there wasn’t anybody helping on the altar, that’s about one serving of wine. For something that big you’ll usually have multiple priests, but I’m going far end of the extreme, here. 😀

                                And lest folks with that vulnerability think I’m making light of it– yes, temptation is a HUGE thing, and it’s even the go-to example for why someone would not want to receive both species in communion. Avoiding temptation to sin is an important job.

                         2. Re: all denominations are the same, I still remember when I pointed out to people exactly how many different churches were in the Wasilla, Alaska phone book, because they figured there were only one or two churches that Sarah Palin could attend. Similar with Lima, Ohio, as a factcheck for Glee. (And btw, there is a synagogue in Lima now, Temple Beth Israel-Shaare Zedek. But there were always several synagogues in Dayton, and that’s not even a long drive.)

                            I think part of this is the removal of religious settlement patterns from history textbooks. People in cities just have no idea.

             2. Doesn’t surprise me. There was a photoshop a while back that had Michelle Malkin’s head on a fit woman wearing a bikini. It was passed around as the real thing (though the more observant noted that the height kind of gave the whole thing away immediately), and was apparently intended to be something that would scandalize Malkin’s readers… because she was *gasp* wearing a two-piece bathing suit!

                1. <rolls eyes.
                   In my youth I went topless. it was normal in that beach.
                   REALLY hard to shock. Also my fans would go "well, fine, she's a llibertarian. whatev."

                   1. Yeah, but you’re one of those…

                      *whispers*

                      Europeans! You know what *those* people are like!

                      1. LOL

                      2. Its worse. She’s Portuguese. They’re like Europe’s peasantry. Do silly things like fishing rather than be proper and be serfs to their God given rulers.

                         /sarc. Although grew up where second language was Portuguese, in town still with fishing boats, and still want sweetbread (bread, not meat) for Easter breakfast

                   2. One of the things Conservatives do that most infuriates them is failing to live according to the stereotypes we’ve been assigned. As it cannot possibly be that their stereotypes are wrong it can only be that we’re intentionally trying to make them look foolish.

                      As is they need our help.
                      –

                      1. In the stuff being discussed, it’s more that conservatives recognize that there is diversity of thoughts, opinions, and mores, and the fact that you disagree with someone -violently, perhaps – in one area doesn’t mean that you can’t respect their work in another.

                      2. Stereotyping and role-assignment are not just what they do – it’s all they do.

                         Group assignment and roleplay are the basis of their entire worldview, and without those their world would fall apart.

       3. How is he on Climate Stasis: the idea that the earth’s climate now is the only climate we can have or that will support life, and that human beings have the power to keep it that way?

          1. Well, it’s not his main specialty, so it doesn’t get him AS upset.

          2. Headdeskheaddeskheaddesk. Humans adapt. Cost significantly less than getting rid of fossil fuels in West

             1. Yes, but Humans Are The Problem! They’d be happier if we couldn’t adapt and went extinct. Their conceit is that the REST of the planet can’t adapt.

                Despite the fact that life has successfully adapted to far more extreme climates than anything in their Global Warming Computer Models — all of which have somehow failed to predict ANYTHING that has actually happened over the last 25 years. At least a dozen of their Doomsday Prophecies have passed without incident. Their only response is to blame reality for failing to match their predictions.

                Hell, that’s their only response to everything. Pretend the world is what they wish it to be, and when something hits them over the head in a way they can’t ignore, blame the universe for failing to conform to their delusions.
                ———————————
                Dark Willow: “Bored now.”

             2. Also, warmer is better, colder is worse, and you are not smart enough to understand the negative feedback loops we have not found yet that enabled the Earth to maintain metastable climate within measurable time spans.

          3. Earth is a Goldilocks planet.

             1. That was my(mental) response, which if you define “climate” broadly enough works for the first half– it’s the second half that’s the issue!

       4. In very specific situations, I see the value of solar electric. And no, it’s not to sell to Entrenched Power Conglomerate at retail so that the rest of the customers are paying off the system the dear children got installed [spit, 2300 profane words deleted], but as battery-using backup.

          Yes, it’s expensive backup power, but if the Greentards get their way, the grid will be wonkier than ever, and I really like the idea of a well that can deliver water as needed, not to mention refrigeration and things I consider essential. I do like to breathe properly at night. Selfish of me, no?

          Unless the technology to make solar cells got a lot stranger, there shouldn’t be much in the way of exotic elements required to build them [Silicon of course, Boron, Phosphorus and/or Arsenic, plus Aluminum] (OTOH, the Bogawful system Our Betters demanded be installed use motors to steer the panels, and the thousands of motors in a big array like that *are* going to need exotic elements.

          Home wind power looked attractive to me, until I did 30 minutes of research into it. No, no freakin’ way. Such foolishness hasn’t yet hit Flyover County, Oregon. We prefer to watch our eagles, not mince them.

          Not volunteering to do a guest post. My semiconductor background is long behind me, and I’d prefer to keep it that way. I know just enough power engineering to get me into trouble and then get back out. 🙂

       5. Hmm, WordPress ate my comment. In case it shows up, here’s the TL;DR.

          Solar doesn’t use much in exotic material, *unless* there’s a fancy motor system moving the panels, like the ones our county got stuck with (had to remove the dams, eh?)

          It’s viable backup power, though hideously expensive, but if consumables get short, as in if things get sporty, there could be long lasting backup power.

          Wind power, no way. Exotic material, kills too many birds, and is horribly unreliable. We have Big Solar around here, but no Big Wind. Thanks, Lord.

          1. Water. At least in the PNW.

             1. And to make certain (politically connected) people happy, dams are being removed. Tribes downstream on the Klamath River were blaming the hydropower dams near K-Falls for salmon problems (ignoring dams on the Trinity, conveniently controlled by the California Dems), sued, and Pac Power (owned by Berkshire Hathaway/Warren Buffett) decided that they wouldn’t try to fight it, and they could charge us to pay for dam removal. Fish ladders? Nope. Too much bother. Dam removal? Yeah, fun!

                IIRC, the Klamath River dams are good for about 100MWe worth of power. Not huge, but nice. We now have about 36MWe worth of motor-controlled solar panels to “replace” the dams when they are finally removed. Said dams are about 100 years old, and reasonably reliable. Wish I could say the same about the motor drives. I pass by one of the arrays on the way into town, and it’s interesting to see which bank failed, and how long it takes to fix it. And these are the banks nearest the road. Lots of good pasture land went to that project. Spit.

             2. Water based power means dams. Dams destroy canyons and fish and … and … and … and … orangemanbad …

                /sarcasm off

                1. Heh.

                2. You gotta admit, that orange tan really is hideous. Last week there was an obvious mask outline around the eyes. What would he look like without it, that he thinks is WORSE?

                   1. Maybe *he* is one the “lizard-people” and the spectrum of good-evil has them at the wrong end?

                      1. He’s used to it, and the way he looks with it.
                         My mom is 85. She still dyes her hair. She dyes it darker and darker, as her skin gets paler. It’s now looking like a wig. She doesn’t see it. She sees it as making herself look as she always looked to herself.

          2. There are places where the wind blows *all the time*. But politics puts windmills where they’re convenient, not where the wind is.

             Here in Arkansas the flags and wind socks hang limp. And then the tornados take them away, and sometimes the poles too.

             1. Has everybody seen that video of a big windmill getting blown to pieces in a high wind? I wouldn’t want to be within a mile of that thing.

                I was on a job at a nuclear power station in Illinois, back around 2007 or so. There were about a dozen of those windmills a couple of miles from the power plant, and most of them were stopped. Something about a lot more breakdowns than expected, budget problems, and not being able to keep up with maintenance.

                So even if they’re in the right place, the economics still don’t work out. Most of those places with reliable wind are WAAAAAAAY out in the boonies, on top of mountains, and nearly inaccessible, especially in bad weather — which is exactly when you’re going to need to send some poor bastard out to fix the damn things.
                ———————————
                A Democrat’s worst nightmare: somebody, somewhere, has a nickel they haven’t taxed.

                1. The big wind mills have throttling mechanisms to keep them from going too fast– otherwise the tips can start breaking the sound barrier.

                   The video might be either before they ptu those in…or when the throttle wasn’t enough to prevent damage.

                   At one point my College Libertarian cousin was really big on some kind of a vertical wind turbine thing because it bypassed a lot of those issues, I haven’t seen anything on it lately thought….

                   1. A lot of farmers/ranchers love them wind turbines. I mean they get paid rent to have them on their land be it wheat, corn, or livestock. Regardless if the wind is blowing or not, blades turning or not.

                      1. and everyone else has to pay for it even if there is no power getting to them.
                         Some though are finding the things a plague that keeps them awake at night, and give nasty surprises like Ice flying off, rotting smells from the birds killed and the fact they disturb the wind patterns in unnatural ways.

                         1. I’ve heard that the blades when turning aren’t particularly quiet either.

                            Everything listed is true.

                            At least livestock fields, generally not many living close. But …

                            1. things tend to be more stacked together in the UK and there have been issues there about the constant thrum, and icing (and shedding the ice!), and whatnot.

                   2. vertical egg-beater style ones supposedly kill less birds and are smaller to begin with. Good for home/biz use, but not for a large generation for general use by the public (wind over all is horrid for that). Jay Leno satiates his carbon indulgences by using several of them atop his Hanger/garage, btw.

                      1. Dirty Jobs did a wind farm episode. The good news is that a lof of repairs can be done from inside the windmill….

                         1. The Texas guys talk of bottoms full of rattle snakes.

                      2. As I recall, Cali SR 152 over the Pacheco pass had an egg-beater type wind turbine near San Luis Reservoir. I don’t believe it was in service for long.

                         In the north bay, there was a huuuuuge turbine (conventional, IIRC 2 blades) north of the freeway (I-80), vaguely near Vallejo. I think it was another experimental one; the last I recall seeing it, the tower was present, but the active portions were missing. This would have been around 2003 or before.

                         I looked into wind power when I was doing backup solar systems. For residential, it’s a hell of a lot of finicky hardware to get a few hundred watts, or if you want kilowatts, you need a high tower and a bigger system than can be found at the usual suspects. If a solar system goes down, a properly designed one is pretty much failsafe. Too many things can cause catastrophic failures in wind systems, and these are things that are moderately likely to fail. No thanks.

                         1. solar is hammered for only working half the time, but most places the wind tends to die down at night as well. Niether is ideal but on a small scale Solar works decently, and wind can be used for some additions. but yeah, maintaining it can be a chore. Thorium pebble beds please!

                2. Here’s a strong argument for nuclear power:

                   in which I talk about the density of uranium pic.twitter.com/42downmuMx

                   — isabelle 🪐 (@isaboemeke) September 6, 2020

                   If you don’t agree it can only be because you hate Latinas .
                   –

             2. Uh, there are many windmills here in the Plains where the wind is almost constant.
                I kinda want to fly over them with binocs and see if there are bird bodies near them. I rather suspect there are not. But seeing or not seeing would knowing rather than suspecting.

                “When does the wind stop?”
                “HOT Summer afternoons, usually.”

                Joke: “One day the wind stopped and everyone fell down.”

                1. Joke: “One day the wind stopped and everyone fell down.”

                   –
                   One place one does NOT see the windmill farms is Oregon coast. Despite the pretty much constant wind. Have seen it calm(er) in Autumn & Spring, maybe a rare summer day. Coast – Storms come from the coast so if stormy in the Valley, windy on the coast. Hot in the valley windy on the coast. Deal is if it isn’t stormy, the wind doesn’t penetrate very far. Can be OMG where are the jackets on the beach, jetty’s, & dunes, but hot in Florence, Newport, Reedsport, etc., any city on the coast that is close, but not right on the water, even in the parts right on the bay in the cities can be far enough inland to be buffered somewhat by coastal winds (not all the coastal cities). I mean Windy Cove, just south of Reedsport, has that name for a reason.

                   That is the problem with the Oregon coast winds. They’d have to put the wind mills right on the dunes of the beaches or above the basalt cliffs that Hwy 101 runs along north of Florence and other locations.

                   OTOH, scenic destination or not, the Columbia Gorge, once I-84 gets out of the timbered corridor east of Multnomah Falls, wind mill farms are numerous.

                   1. Ah, a place for effective, efficient thermocouples…

       6. Ask him what the effect of taking enough energy to be significant to the energy budget out of the environment via solar would be. If he has even an inkling of an answer, I’d really love to hear it.

          1. That effect will be completely insignificant. You would have to cover a truly a significant part of the earth’s surface with PV panels, at least 20% or better to have that effect. There is a truly staggering amount of energy reaching the planet from the sun which all the “renewable” fanatics like to point out, but even if the cheap PV panels could hit 20% efficiency, there would still be a lot of waste heat to keep things warm. The kicker is that nothing could grow under those panels, so on that 20% of land area, no CO2 absorbing plants would be available.

             1. Right – far better to deploy them in orbit where they won’t kill plants, initially beam the power down in microwaves, and eventually put the factories up there.

                1. What do the microwaves do?

                   1. When they hit an array of antennas tuned to the same frequency, they can be turned back into electricity with a fair degree of efficiency. Look up ‘powersats’.

                      No, they won’t be roasting birds in flight, and nobody can take over the satellite and turn it into a Death Ray. It’s not a giant microwave oven; the energy density is less than a millionth of that, about 1/6 the energy of sunlight. If you stood in the center of the beam, you would be exposed to a few watts of radio waves, and absorb less than a watt. You probably wouldn’t notice.

                   2. You generate a low power beam of microwaves aimed at a rectenna farm on the surface and it gets turned back into power and fed into the terrestrial grid.

                      Easy way to get the power from up there where solar is easy and ubiquitous to down here where the current need is located.

                      See: https://space.nss.org/space-power-by-harry-stine/

             2. The thing is, as I understand it, the to supplant conventional generation (setting intermittency issues aside) you would have to cover vast swaths of land. Maybe it wouldn’t have a noticeable effect, but it bothers me.

                I keep getting your answer, but it still seems to me that subtracting many megawatts of energy from a dynamic system MUST have some effect. And we all know the ‘renewable energy’ twerps aren’t going to look for it, and will fight tooth and nail to protect their stupid dream if one emerges.

       7. If he weren’t busier than [RIDICULOUS IMAGERY GOES HERE], I’d suggest a guest post.

          1. Well, once he’s done helping me refloor the house he’ll have SOME free time. Not a ton, but some.

       8. Well, he*is* an engineer. We tend to be…. testy about such things

       9. He can’t hold a candle to me on “renewable” energy tirades, but only because I have been tilting at that windmill for 40 years (since I was his age)….

          1. I’d love to get you both at one table, and let you go 😉

             1. It might be fun as we talk over each other…….

    3. Any notions of “clean power” that don’t involve a pocket nuclear reactor in every neighborhood are automatic nonsense.

       1. The Democrats had abundant clean, sustainable power prior to 1865.
          –

12. This.

13. Reading this, one of the best things I think could happen to the “don’t do anything until there’s a CURE” crowd, would be for the “non-essential” essential workers to sit back and say, “you’re right, we’ll stay out of your city / area until there’s a cure, so you don’t have to worry about us bringing in the COVID.”

    Then watch how fast large portions of the cities / affluent suburbs go Mad Max when the trucks stop bringing in stock for grocery stores (which won’t have anyone working in them, see later,) the gas stations run out of gas (no trucks,) no Starbuck’s drive-through lattes (see again, no trucks bringing in stock,) and so on…

    Which brings us to, who’d be there to STOCK the stores? I recall thinking when (Pelosi, I’m pretty sure) was pushing for a “Essential Workers Relief Bill” that included police, fire, EMTs, Drs, nurses, probably utility workers. BUT. But, it didn’t cover OTHER people that were being expected to keep working, like grocery store staff…
    But, you know, they’re not “essential-essential…”

    I’m not a fan of the man, I think he should just stay the h*ll off Twitter, but I really do hope Trump wins, only because if Biden wins, I think our hostess isn’t too far off on how grim things will get (especially if the Ds’ also get a solid majority in the Senate.) (I also know it’s FAR to much to hope that Jorgensen were to win.)

    1. Everyone who says Trump should stay off Twitter needs to answer how he would get around the MSM to talk to the people at large without it.

       Hell, because the press can’t stop talking about his Twitter, he even gets the press to spread his message by using it.

       “He should get off Twitter” turns into another variation on “That’s not who we are” with all the attendant surrender it entails.

       1. THIS. This. This. This.

       2. Put up a White House web forum and stand up an insance of Gab or Mastodon. The White House operating budget would cover it easily.

          1. The Gab people have said they don’t have enough server capacity to deal with GEOTUS dropping Twitter for Gab. At least not now. They do not buy server time (because they were kicked off too many hosting sites), but actual hardware. OTOH, my understanding is that if you provide the servers, you can run a compatible instance of Gab that will work with the rest.

             Give it a while, then it could happen.

             1. This would indicate that not only do Trump ‘s tweets bypass the MSM, they also put a seriously straining load on Twitter. WIN-WIN!

       3. I’ll be honest, my opinion on the Twitter thing had shaped up early in the Presidency, and I’ve not really thought about just WHAT it’s been letting him do (as you point out, go around the MSM that has a distressing tendency to take out-of-context quotes and blast them at 11…)

          1. I’d been wanting a president troll for 10-15 years. Then I get him, and he isn’t trolling the way I wanted.

       4. For me, its not as much the twitter (although some spats are counterproductive imo) but that they are often somewhat stream of consciousness. One thing that people don’t get is that Trump thinks out loud. Its where the sterilizing and such quotes came from. People don’t get that and it starts another half truth

       5. Twitter agrees that Trump should stay off but have only recently figured a way to impose it.
          –

          1. Maybe it’s time to change the name of the company to “Twittischer Beobachter”

       6. He FIGHTS! And not like the collegial Pubs who try Marquess of Queensbury rules deep in the alley.

    2. Trump NEEDS twitter. Like Reagan needed to take his case directly to the American people.
       That’s what he does. And how he laser-pointers the crazies.
       Unless miss my guess, Herb just made the comment I’m typing. It floated by.

       1. Trump is very good at personal publicity. And, he know exactly what kind of whores the “mainstream media” is, after living in New York most of his life.

          (I.e. slightly above crack whores, but if you pay them the right way they’ll slit their own baby’s throat for a laugh.)

          So, Twitter is very useful for him. Worse case, it keeps his name out in the news. Middle case, the news tries to refute and shows that their Emperor has no clothes. Best case? Trump gets the word out and his enemies are having to catch up with him. Which is what makes it so important to him-and scares the E!Republicans because they’re afraid of what will happen in two months to four years-Trump leaving and now they have to deal with the abusive spouse (i.e. the Media and the E!Democratic Party) again.

    3. “when the trucks stop bringing in stock for grocery stores”

       Which several of them are about to get anyway because truckers are saying they won’t deliver to areas that “defund the police”. No one wants to be the next Reginald Denny…. or the next George Zimmerman after they squash 50 or so by driving through.

14. I think part of the problem may be both that bigger authority areas take more power– so there’s more to abuse, you have to monkey-muscle to get through the don’t knows– and part is that some people really, really want to be respected as an authority, even if they know absolutely freaking nothing about a subject. The more centralized the power, the more likely the louder-is-righter with enough charisma to beat out contenders is to take power– and folks listen to who they THINK knows wat they’re talking about.

    Yes, this does sound a lot like my “there are a lot of people who hate social media because the text insists on saying what they wrote and not what they MEANT” theory.

15. Unrelated, prayer request:

    Rush announced that his lung cancer started growing again. They’re going to keep fighting, he’s going to stay on the air. He didn’t expect to make it to October when he first told everyone, so already a small miracle…but I’m asking for more.

    1. Sent. He and his family have had some rough times. May they all be blessed.

    2. Oh, no.

    3. I am so glad Trump gave him the Medal of Freedom when he did.
       Prayers sent.

       1. Yeah, and I can understand he’s tired and G-d might want him back.
          BUT we still need him!

    4. I hope he at least gets to see Trump’s win. This is as much Rush’s win as anyone else’s.

16. “Pure” democracy is an beautiful ideal, in many ways. And, like many beautiful ideals, you start to see problems the closer you look at it. It’s a popularity contest-and very few people want to go against the Cool Kids, even if you think they’re full of Barbara Streisand. Peer pressure and peer group approval and disapproval bothers and affects a lot of people. Even people like us Odds.

    (And, I get pissed off when people call the US a “democracy.” We’re a constitutional republic, and the Founding Fathers were terrified of mob politics. Even some of the most “populist” members of the Constitutional Convention didn’t want any “warm body” democratic government-they were classically educated and knew, as much as anyone, what killed the Roman Republic. That’s why we have an Electoral College and so many power systems broken up the way they were.)

    The Democratic Party loves mass movements, because they think that they’ll be the guys in front, beating the big drum, rather than the unwashed masses. Or, perhaps more accurately, they won’t be the first or second or third people lined up in front of the ditch before they’re shot.

    1. they’re full of Barbara Streisand.

       ♉ I like that phrasing! ♉

       1. Join the club … it’s a keeper!

       2. I know, it makes for such a lovely expression that you can watch people get it and smile along with you… 😀

    2. I went through 11-1/2 years of public school, and I don’t remember them ever using the word “republic” in any lesson material. We got “democracy” hammered in regularly, though.

       1. Republic was only in the Pledge… when they still did that.

17. I see you are recovering from your case of Doomer.

    The blackpill answer is that we can give them Democracy good and hard, in the back of the neck, at the bottom of a hole that they’ve been obliged to dig.

    Which is a remedy that may yet prove entirely unnecessary.

    1. Why does every one want to do retail executions.

       Make them dig the graves then stand in them, they just douse them with napalm and light.

       There is probably a reason Jordan Peterson’s insistence we have to face the ability to do evil inside us to be able to hold it at bay when social conditions fail to do so, such as under Mao or Pol Pot.

       1. In all seriousness, I’ve investigated larger scale techniques of killing.

          The issue, it has already been solved, better than we will likely ever need.

          Blokhin could kill two hundred people a day with pistols.

          The techniques of mass murder can be applied much faster than can be used for legitimate executions.

          Lawful execution is constrained by the need to a) be sure of the identities of the executed b) be sure of the deaths c) have witnesses to the deaths.

          Even the most expedient courts martial by the carried out by the unorganized militia could not produce sentences under the anglo-american common law tradition fast enough to saturate the existing techniques.

          There is still room for legitimate research and study. There is an endless variety of possible techniques, but the anti capital punishment lawfare/etc efforts are slowly working at court accepted methods. So a combination of engineering and legal research could keep ahead of that effort.

          1. Remember, at this point I’m considering we are headed for an environment where legitimate, ie done in accordance with judicial procedure, executions are the exceptions, not the norm.

             Civil wars are exercises in changing cultural attitudes about governance by force. A major method employed in civil wars is “political cleansing”, the removal of the undesired political group from all national territory. Exile, especially self-exile, is fine, but killing is quicker and inspires change in weak adherents to the undesired political group.

             More and more of the left is making clear they both want to resolve political differences that way and are willing to do it. We need to be ready to either leave, switch sides, die, or do it to them.

             We need to be mentally prepared and sufficiently skilled.

             Oh, and civil wars are also great for settling scores, and mass killing to settle scores is never legally legitimate so use the most effective methods there as well.

             There is a reason I warn EVERYONE, left or right, black or white, sane or insane that you do not want civil war. This is what it means and victory will go to those who understand it, learned the methods, and mentally prepared to do them.

             1. I thought I took that into consideration. What I wrote was pared down to depend mainly upon “necessity of a winning coalition” and “not driving necessary people away from alliance”.

                What faction is going to be less offensive when they kill a murdering communist terrorist niece or nephew? One that can show that the deceased had a known identity, tied to murderous communist terrorism, or one that swept up and killed everyone between the ages of 10 and 30?

                It is the same problem as with targeting a high tempo series of lone wolf attacks. Information collection has a delay, a cost, and an error.

                There’s only so much information you can collect in advance of a boog, without permitting the opposition an excuse to arrest you before the boog for planning to commit crimes.

                Sure, the current situation makes killing tens of thousands of prisoners, or hundreds of thousands, look potentially sensible. There are a lot of prisoners, and the information about them is already collected. Might be fairly safe. At the same time, there are a lot of prisons, and you can’t count on getting access to the prisoners all at once. The prisoners still held are only a potential future threat, at that. It is a slow situation, and potentially answerable with a bull dozer, automatic trenching equipment, and a fair number of shooters.

                When you start talking about released prisoners, or not yet formally convicted terrorists, the identity problem is a lot more hazardous. First, the opposition may be hacking criminal records, and able to insert the identities of people who would otherwise be friendly to you. Secondly, when your organization is discovering the criminal acts, the identities of the criminals, and deciding what to do, there is much more to figure out in terms of reliable process. Especially if your organization is trying to wage a counter guerilla war.

                My feeling is that the ‘stripped down to the essentials’ procedure that may be necessary for a ‘winning coalition’ is going to be the bottleneck, and that there will be little to gain from applying industrial engineering to the execution process itself. ‘Electric bleachers’ was a good line, but there is not a real world demand for developing the technology.

                1. Once the balloon goes up people who only join coalitions that engage in niceties are volunteering to be easily eliminated cannon fodder at best.

                   And I’m not talking about applying industrial camp type technology, but rapid elimination of captured prisoners in the field and reprisals against populations supporting the opposition.

                   People think it’s a revelation that “The US committed war crimes in WW2” as though it makes us no different than the Nazis.

                   The reality is war crimes are committed by every army in every war. If you aren’t prepared to do that on some occasions AND refuse to ally with people to do, you might as well surrender now. Like all other violence in warfare the goal isn’t to stop it, but to use it as a tool.

                   1. Oh, no, the Leftoids will demand a nice, polite war! With no atrocities (against them) or reprisals (against them) and certainly no micro-aggessions!

                      1. They start a cw they can talk to my manager after the fighting.

          2. There is no need for new technology. The guillotine was invented 230 years ago.

             1. Still single serve.

                Filling pits with people you burn or machine gun is the level of tech needed. The problem isn’t tech, but the stomach to do it and realize it is a part of every war, especially every civil war.

                Grammarly evaluation: tone is happy…wtf Grammarly.

                1. Okay, it seems we’ve been arguing past each other.

                   I’ve been counting machine gunning people into trenches as ‘an established technique that can scale to fit most (likely) actual needs’.

                   You seem to be counting it among the category that I’ve been understanding as ‘needing new techniques to meet higher capacity future demands’.

                   So this may entirely be me having my head up my rear. Apologies for the lack of care, etc.

                   1. I suspect I was not reading you close enough to realized we overlapped in methods, just different talks about what is missing. I’m as much at fault at not clarifying before arguing.

                      Thank you for working through it with me.

18. Hey, anyone need a pick me up? (y’all know who you are)

    Peterson is back

    1. I watched that earlier. It had a display of what I consider his core virtue, humility, where he acknowledges he is unsure he has the strength of character his daughter and her husband displayed in supporting him.

       Nearly every rule in 12 Rules emphasizes humility. When you read Maps of Meaning and his discusses what he plans were when he first went to college, study poly-sci to go to law school and become a socialist legislator, and how those came apart you realize the universe slapped him hard with the “you know nothing” carp and it took.

    2. Peterson is back

       *smiles*

       Good.

       1. As expected the trolls are on the prowl.

          Because getting utterly mindfucked by benzos is exactly like shooting up heroin.

          1. Their mind-leaders have been doing the same garbage with “opioid deaths*,” why not keep pretending?

             * heroin and smuggled elephant tranqs get trotted out as oxy numbers. You want to get a DEA guy on a burn-it-with-fire rant, that’s the subject.

19. Oh, and one more thing; you can’t have our guns. We won’t give them up because we don’t trust you. And before you trot out the trite old argument about “What good will small arms do against tanks?”, consider this: the ‘deplorable’ population is MUCH better armed than the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, who pretty much had a few hundred handguns and an old kabob skewer. And no place to retreat to.

    1. And that’s not counting added effects…

       “THIS contactor is closed. It really doesn’t need to be.”
       There goes $BigTown’s lights.
       “THIS valve is open. It really doesn’t need to be.”
       There goes $BigTown’s water/gas/whatever.
       Only two examples. Ox slow.

       1. “This valve is open. It really doesn’t need to be.”
          There goes $BigTown’s sewers backing up.

          Not to mention — the water treatment plants have huge tanks of pure chlorine (and ammonia, in Kalifornia) with little to no security.

          Those left-wing idiots don’t have a clue how complex and fragile is the infrastructure that makes living in a big city possible. They couldn’t list half of the little details their lives depend on, and they want to dispossess the people who do understand. Not a one of them could actually DO any of those jobs competently. If they could, they wouldn’t be left-wing idiots.

          Why, yes, I have read ‘The Weapon’ by Michael Z. Williamson.
          ———————————
          John Sheridan: “If more of our so-called leaders would walk the same streets as the people who voted them in, live in the same buildings, eat the same food instead of hiding behind glass and steel and bodyguards, maybe we’d get better leadership and a little more concern for the future.”

          1. I am in a SMALL town (approximate population of 10K) and there are *multiple* lifting stations in the sewer system. Cut power and they cease working. A short blackout is no big deal, but several days? And the local power plant 1) runs on the gas supply 2) is a “peaking” plant — when the externally supplied power isn’t enough, THEN it gets fired up. That’s a SMALL town. Imagine all the lifting stations somewhere larger.

       2. This valve is open and it really shouldn’t be, but hey, you deal with the natural gas explosive hazard.

          1. I recall, years ago, reading of a fellow who was on his way out of downtown $BigCity and noticed activity and a ‘geyser’… but something was off. Nothing was coming back down. Uh oh. No big news of a big KA-BOOM, so it was dealt with, but he decided right then that being ELSEWHERE was an even better idea than he first thought.

             1. Engineering Disasters on the Science Channel (before they replaced all the shows with Bigfoot hunts):

                Huge explosion in New York, 40-foot crater in the street, roaring noise, huge column of grayish-white gas filling two blocks, people running about in panic screaming about a terrorist bomb…

                A steam pipe blew out. How many of those left-wing diaper babies even know there are steam pipes under the streets of New York, or WHY they are there? How many of them know what ELSE is down there that makes their comfortable little lives possible? How many have ever given the matter a second’s thought?

                Why should they worry about it? The comfy city life they have always known is the Natural Order Of The World! They never had to do anything to maintain it, after all. It just happens.
                ———————————
                Some folks can be taught. Others can learn by example. The rest have to piss on the electric fence for themselves.

                1. It’s older than both of us combined, but I’m always fascinated by the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Thankfully only 21 deaths (if you believe Wiki), but a 25-foot high wave of heavy syrup is not easy to wrap your head around.

    2. I love how they always assume that the they will be controlling the tanks…

       The International Lord of Hate, of course, answers that trope much better than my humble self ever could:

       https://monsterhunternation.com/2018/11/19/the-2nd-amendment-is-obsolete-says-congressman-who-wants-to-nuke-omaha/

       1. My favorite think is nearly every leftie you says you AR-15 won’t help against a tank will tell you the same US which will steamroll US citizens with just small arms who are often veterans will also tell you we need to get out of $COUNTRY because the army can’t win a war against guerrillas.

          I guess the AK-47 is just that much better than the AR-15.

          1. I guess the AK-47 is just that much better than the AR-15.

             *spit*

             1. Did I need to add a /sarc tag?

             2. I have some of each. I vastly prefer the ergonomics of Mikhail Timofeyovich’s rifle to that of Eugene’s.

                1. I have yet to fire an AK, so all opinions here are provisional….

                   But “AK”, and “ergonomics”? Really?

                   The AR has three problems with its ergos. All three are easily fixable:

                   * there are many different models of ambidextrous charging handles

                   * uncountable models of ambidextrous selectors

                   * now that the relevant patent has expired ambidextrous magazine releases are cheap

                   Not really including the bolt hold, but that isn’t a hard fix either if someone must have it.

                   1. I encountered some near a freeway rest stop in New Mexico. They went “WHOP-WHOP-WHOP” loud enough to be annoying, a hundred yards away. I imagine the cows in the fields with them were deaf after a while.

          2. The AK-47 has two virtues, and two only. It is cheap to make, and hard to break. As Andries Rhoodie put it in ‘Guns Of The South’ — “You have to be more than stupid to screw up an AK-47. You have to be a complete idiot, and even then you have to work at it.”

             So even incompetent communists can build them, and they can survive whatever a gang of unwashed illiterate terrorists can do to them.
             ———————————
             They kill a lot of people, overthrow their corrupt rulers and replace them with a new batch of corrupt rulers. Viva la revolution! Yesterday’s oppressed become tomorrow’s oppressors.

             1. Portuguese Maoists managed to break them….

                1. They must’ve worked very hard. 😀

                2. Whenever one is designing something idiot-proof, one must always keep in mind that somewhere out there someone is designing a better idiot.

                   1. “Every time you think you’ve made something foolproof, some damned fool comes along and proves you wrong!”

             2. So the leftist in the CW they want will be using them.

             3. Countries like Bangladesh and Ethiopia managed to make or buy factories and make their own AKs. Darra tribemen make them one at a time with hand tools. But there is a country that has failed; India, which has nuclear weapons and space capability, finally gave up on their INSAS AK variant and bought a bunch of working rifles from Russia. Complete lack of quality control and corrupt oversight that not even direct Parliamentary intervention could do anything about finally broke their budget.

          3. No, there are ROEs against other nations. Against deplorables anything goes

    3. The people who ask “What good will small arms do against tanks?” are the type who attribute guns with some totemic power. So obviously a tank has a bigger gun, so it must trump a rifle. They understand nothing about logistics, and how much effort it takes to put that tank in the field. Logistics which would be vulnerable to those small arms they are so eager to dismiss.

       1. So much this.

          They also automatically PRESUME the armed forces will just mindlessly obey orders to roll armor into downtown {Smallville, USA} and open fire on the residents. Or that the local PD will open up on the residents (residents who they may know or live next door to.)

          My totally unresearched WAG, if the loonies took the government and tried this, is that while the Generals would, by-and-large, “Yes SIR” to the orders, once you get down to the actual working men and women of the military, mass desertions would only be the start. I’d even bet a significant number of said deserters would take their weaponry with them.

          “Yes, Lt Dan, we were ordered to move this M1A2 off over yonder, with a full load out.”
          “Lt Dan, where’d those men go?”
          “Well, Sir, they said they had orders to go over there.”
          “Not from me, they didn’t! And where the h*ll is the support unit for these tanks? Where is everyone?!?”

          1. A lot of the generals saying “yes, sir” would then head to take up arms against the guy giving the order– not sure how many would be doing it because they believe it is right, and how many would do it because they know they’re up for a friendly fire accident if they go along with such an order.

             1. Even after Obama?

                1. Would Obama be smart enough to know which generals “believed as he did” or which generals were just giving lip-service?

                   Personally, I doubt it.

                   And of course, as Foxfier implied the generals may not be stupid enough to believe that the lower command officers and the rank-and-file folks would go along with Illegal Orders. Especially when the Illegal Orders mean firing on American Civilians.

                   1. I know one of the guys they framed to get rid of– took him from fluffy pro-life Democrat to definitely not fluffy betrayed Democrat of the old sort.
                      *looks at Trump* Imagine if Trump had a brother with W’s philosophy about being personally wronged, and you’re not far off…..

                   2. Given how one becomes one, the rule is there are only political Admirals and Generals. But those folks also were once junior officers under the tutelage of senior noncoms, and most learned one of the most basic rules of command: Never given an order you know will be disobeyed.

                      “Yes sir”, hang up, followed by losing the message form, misplacing your staff’s phone number and forgetting your password until you figure out what the hell you are going to do from someplace safe was actually used by some PLA generals when ordered to rouse your division and hie thee to stomp these kids in Tiananmen Square. It didn’t help them in the end, as they were executed afterward in spite of their “transport difficulties”. But if the execution-is-explicitly-in-the-rulebook PLA had that happen, you can be darn sure the US Army will have similar unexpected delays, unscheduled maintenance, and communications foulups in a similar situation.

                      1. See also the incident during Barbarossa where Hitler transmitted an order for the Army to assist the Einsatzgruppen in rounding up Jews and other undesireables, and Guderian and Manstein(?) acknowledged receiving the order and flatly refused to transmit it to their subordinates in Army Group South.

                2. Yes.

                   Thankfully, not only did they fixate on the higher level officers, but they didn’t account for most of the younger guys– my age, plus or minus five– having grown up with the “yeah, whatever” roll-with-the-BS ability. So picking only college guys will really not work.

                   They did put in a bunch of line-our-own-pockets types, though.

          2. How are those tanks going to run without fuel from the red states that the tanks are being used to oppress?

             And if it really gets out of control, the red states generally have the air bases with nukes and the nuclear missile silos.

          3. Remember a few years back when Governor Cuomao pushed through the legislature a bill so draconian, si ill-conceived that its ban on “large-capacity” magazines ended up making most NY City police officers’ guns illegal? Remember how nearly to a county the state sheriffs said, “Err, sorry, Andy, but we ain’t enforcing that [crap]”?

             If you do you’ve a better memory than the Progtards do.
             –

       2. The thing that gets ME about the tank meme is that, by and large, tyrannies are not run from tanks. Tanks are uncomfortable, and tyrants like their comfort. Tanks have scant room for paperwork. I’m told there’s no place in a tank for a mistress. Tanks are good for breaking up mass protests, bit the enforcement of the Will of the State is usually done by nasty little men in trenchcoats. And the Gestapo, the GRU, and the Stasi got away with their reins of terror largely because the people they were after were unarmed.

          1. Actually, tanks suck in cities, and any tank commander who wades into a mob without accompanying infantry and doing street clearing with machine-gun fire will likely find that enough Molotov cocktails will eventually starve your prime mover in spite of all the NBC stuff.

             And if it devolves into combat, tanks still suck in urban settings – see the pro-oriented writeup about the first battle of Grozny around New Years Day 1995 from a Command and General Staff College Masters thesis paper, start at pg 44 or so, at:

             Click to access jenkinson.pdf

             Applicably to protests, note entire armored columns were stopped for days in the approach to Grozny by protestors.

             1. I disagree – the US has proven the effectiveness of tanks in counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Vietnam War.
                –

                1. Yeah, tanks — with air, infantry and artillery support. Near the coasts, with naval bombardment support. AFTER we had taken out any effective resistance, and facing a few hundred fanatics in small-scale engagements.

                   Against tens of millions spread over 3 1/2 million square miles? Not so much. Millions of those folks spend two weeks sneaking around in the woods to shoot one or two small elusive critters…for fun.

                   Fighting that war would be the Army’s worst nightmare’s worst nightmare.
                   ———————————
                   There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

                2. Armor in support of infantry – yes.

                   Send Abrams into city streets to scare away protesters, not so much.

                   You absolutely have to have infantry, you really want artillery, and air is really, really nice to have, especially helos and UAVs, or else all those rooftops will have gallons of Molotov cocktails lined up to throw into your air intakes, and even if the latest fire suppression stuff works great and saves the crew, a mobility kill is a still a kill.

                   Note everything here is pretty much “we had to level the city to save it” territory.

                   Frankly as long as nobody is shooting, riot-trained horse cops are really effective at crowd control. Most police mounted units are parade teams these days, though, and I’m certain the Burn-Loot-Murder and Fa groups have thought of evil crap to do to the horses.

                   1. Given how Americans tend to romanticize horses, the consequences of being seen as deliberately hurting them could be… dire.

    4. Kill the guys driving the tanks when they come out to piss.

    5. “You want to eliminate the Second Amendment?

       Then we get to eliminate an Amendment too. So, what’s it to be then, eh?”

       1. Tell them the 8th and watch them worry!

          1. They would have no problem ditching the 8th Amendment because in their warped version of justice, excessive bail, fines and punishments are fine as long as the “right” people are the ones being subjected to it/

             1. Which is the income tax one?

          2. Tell them in return we get to eliminate penumbras and emanations and stick to the actual words and watch them freak.

             12
             In NAACP v. State of Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 462, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 1172, we protected the ‘freedom to associate and privacy in one’s associations,’ noting that freedom of association was a peripheral First Amendment right. Disclosure of membership lists of a constitutionally valid association, we held, was invalid ‘as entailing the likelihood of a substantial restraint upon the exercise by petitioner’s members of their right to freedom of association.’ Ibid. In other words, the First Amendment has a penumbra where privacy is protected from governmental intrusion. In like context, we have protected forms of ‘association’ that are not political in the customary sense but pertain to the social, legal, and economic benefit of the members. NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 430—431, 83 S.Ct. 328, 336—337. In Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners, 353 U.S. 232, 77 S.Ct. 752, 1 L.Ed.2d 796, we held it not permissible to bar a lawyer from practice, because he had once been a member of the Communist Party. The man’s ‘association with that Party’ was not shown to be ‘anything more than a political faith in a political party’ (id., at 244, 77 S.Ct. at 759) and was not action of a kind proving bad moral character. Id., at 245—246, 77 S.Ct. at 759—760.

             13
             Those cases involved more than the ‘right of assembly’—a right that extends to all irrespective of their race or idealogy. De Jonge v. State of Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 57 S.Ct. 255, 81 L.Ed. 278. The right of ‘association,’ like the right of belief (West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 63 S.Ct. 1178), is more than the right to attend a meeting; it includes the right to express one’s attitudes or philosophies by membership in a group or by affiliation with it or by other lawful means. Association in that context is a form of expression of opinion; and while it is not expressly included in the First Amendment its existence is necessary in making the express guarantees fully meaningful.

             14
             The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. See Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 516—522, 81 S.Ct. 1752, 6 L.Ed.2d 989 (dissenting opinion). Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers ‘in any house’ in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the ‘right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.’ The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: ‘The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.’

             https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/381/479

             Not that I think Griswold was decided incorrectly – government should be prohibited from sticking its nose into anyone’s personal business – but there had to be a way based on the actual words. Emanations resulting in penumbras is a stack of spinning penumbra emanating turtles all the way down that can be twisted to “find” anything.

             1. It occurs to me a simple 4th amendment finding saying “there’s no legal way the government could know what these people did, so there’s no legal way they can be punished” should have worked. No penumbras, no emanations, no glowing rainbow unicorns.

             2. Also note how the “free association” stuff cited above (specifically in Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners) is in direct and violent conflict with our moral superiors’ call for “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions” to punish all holding opposing political views.

             3. You smarter than ox. Much smarter.

             4. “In NAACP v. State of Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 462, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 1172, we protected the ‘freedom to associate and privacy in one’s associations,’ noting that freedom of association was a peripheral First Amendment right. Disclosure of membership lists of a constitutionally valid association, we held, was invalid ‘as entailing the likelihood of a substantial restraint upon the exercise by petitioner’s members of their right to freedom of association.’”

                And promptly upheld campaign finance laws that make political donations adding your name to a hit list.

       2. “‘Cruel AND unusua’l right? So we make it STANDARD rather than unusual, see.”

          What, me evil?

    6. The US government has several thousand tanks. Private citizens have hundreds of millions of small arms. The tanks can’t be everywhere. The small arms can.

    7. And if DiBlasio and Cuomo keep it up, we might get to see a re-enactment in NYC…. except that Americans aren’t Poles, and the Doofus Duo might find that reinforcements show up “from every Middlesex village and farm”.

20. Every time this discussion comes up, I have a little ditty from Black Sabbath running around my head…

    If you listen to fools, the mob rules

    1. Aside from the architecture, that looks just like what’s going on in Portland!

    2. Here is a neat live version:

21. Many moons ago, Joseph Schumpeter wrote that “democracy does not mean and cannot mean that the people actually rule in obvious sense of he terms ‘people’ and ‘rule.’ Democracy means only that he people have the opportunity of accepting or refusing the men who are to rule them.”

    So the question is always what the process is to select the men who will rule over us.

22. Oh, and they can have it. It’ll last about six years tops and be replaced with what they wish Trump was.

    Maybe they know this and want it. It’s might be the oppression analog to chastity fetishes.

23. I think having an oppression fetish is the only way to explain Shaun King types.

    pic.twitter.com/Ik5nvuXG0D

    — George Alexopoulos (@GPrime85) October 12, 2020

    1. Dang, that should have been a reply to herbn

    2. False flag white nationalist, for one.

       Another explanation, he is simply a lying scumbag, and pretending to be black is a viable grift.

       Look at the brief twitter scandal some years back about his embezzlement/mismanagement of funds for evidence of the latter.

24. “Because we’re not about to let you destroy it.”

    I’m no longer sure that the above is true anymore.
    I guess we will find out … sometime in January of ’21.

    1. OPTIMIST.

       1. Not optimistic at all, but they have to do SOMETHING by 1/21/21,
          Maybe they’ll put Alexander Haig in as temporary POTUS … even dead, he’d be better than Pelosi!!

25. First thought: Remember how well pure democracy worked for the OWS [Occupy Wall Street] folks? The ones who went from leader to exiled in less than 24 hours? Plus the ones who came down with diseases not generally observed in modern medicine (scabies, for starters)? That was about as pure a democracy as we’re seen in action for a while.

    1. Whoa… the OWS clown managed to get scabies?
       Oh, wait, I got it confused with scrapie.
       Well, sheep and sheep…

    2. I knew that happened to the hippies, but did it actually happen to the OWS folks?

       1. Mayor Bloomberg finally decided to wipe Zuccotti Park clean after learning about a rancid outbreak of scabies, lice and lung ailments among protesters — and most importantly because his reputation was taking a beating, insiders told The Post.

          https://nypost.com/2011/11/16/inside-story-of-why-mike-finally-had-to-act/

26. “Can’t have democracy” in two words: Syracuse and Rome.
    The Athenians lost the Peloponesian War, in large part, because based on a popular vote incited by a demagogue, they sent an army to attack the Greek colony of Syracuse in Sicily instead of fighting the Spartans at home.
    Second, our founders modeled us on the Roman Republic. The Romans took that form of government after they overthrew the Etruscan kings. And their model was Sparta [two kings, a council of elders, a system of checks and balances], rather than Athens and its democratic mob rule.

27. A more succinct, though cynical summary of your piece is that the Founders created the Constitution to keep the dumb masses (pronounced dumbasses) from too easily voting away their liberties.

    If only you had ended with “constitutional republic” instead of “democratic republic.” Words mean things and we on the right too often find ourselves accepting and adopting the lexicon of the left; e.g. “capitalism” for economic liberty, etc.

    1. Noted.
       But the republic is enshrined in the constitution. I meant democratic only in sense we VOTE.

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