I’ve never before today heard of Sarah Chamberlain, and yet she is my (a little younger) sister.
So are all of you, my comrades. From now on I’m stealing the communist word for believers in the same cause who are not willing to put down their weapons and be stomped on by the reigning leftist hierarchy. Those who will not let their heads be invaded. Those who will provide aid and comfort to others like them.
The promise of brotherhood in “comrade” was always a lie for the left, because a system based on envy and suppression is not brotherhood. Unless your idea of family is as profoundly dysfunctional as a communist’s. (Which I think is the problem.)
Also, frankly, the collectivists have no business — none — complaining we stole their term. We’re …. collectivizing it.
So, you are my brothers and sisters, even I never met you. Comrades at arms. People I’ll succor in extremity, people from whom I’ll buy preferentially. People I’ll promote preferentially, in war or — just — in normal life.
Communism unmade us that way, from within, by favoring their own, which not only allowed them to take over, but gave them the voice of authority and prestige. Which made Marxism a positional good and a mark of “intelligence” because the intelligent do better in life, right?
Well, it’s time to fight back. Now. It starts right now. Right this moment, in whatever small way you can affect. Like Sarah Chamberlain, I won’t be the one to start the rough music, though I don’t promise I won’t join in, unsuited to that work though I am.
BUT I’ve started already to do things to support the believers in freedom and, if given a chance, hamper the collectivists. I’ve started, within the limits of my life to fight back.
It is possible, friends, brothers and sisters, comrades, that we have lost the Republic. But this dream Republic of ours is unkillable. So long as we believe. And what greater purpose can there be in our lives, than to work for the cause of liberty for mankind? We might only be laying the foundations, but our grandchildren will see the flowering. Be not afraid.
And Sarah Chamberlain, if you follow this link back? Sit back. You’re not alone. You’re among comrades, and fellow believers in liberty. You need us give a holler. You want to borrow my forum, ask. There are more of us than of the rats chewing away at society. There have to be, or the last two elections wouldn’t be the way they were. And they can’t create or run anything. They’re like evil elves who can only destroy and demand respect.
Don’t give them an inch. Or a cent. Fight back however you can within the limits of possible for you at that moment.
It might take a while, but we’re going to win this. Let’s do it for your grandkids, Sarah.
Open Letter from an American Coward
Sarah Chamberlain1 day ago·9 min read
Please save, screenshot, etc., then boost.
I don’t usually ask for my content to be shared. What I am about to say though is perhaps the most important thing I will ever say in public, and in the present landscape of the internet, there is a very high probability that it is being silenced or erased even now as you read it. So, I am asking you to please, save an offline and/or archived copy of this letter RIGHT NOW.
If, once you’ve read this letter, you feel that it has any value or interest whatsoever, please, as a personal favor, send it on through whichever channels, to whichever people you feel safe doing so.
If you think what I say is absurd, please share my letter with your friends so you can all laugh at me.
If you think that what I say is evil, please share it with your friends so you can all rage at me.
If you think I deserve to be punished for what I say, please send my letter on to the “authorities” or to any person you think might hurt me for writing it. At least then, those people will have a chance to read it.
I am
an American, a New Hampshirewoman, a lover of liberty, and a happily married mother of four beautiful children. I have a wonderful life, a bright future, and could not ask for any greater blessing than those I have already received.
My enemies are
in a word, communists. Modern communists do not usually call themselves such. They do not talk about workers rising up and seizing the Means of Production.
Instead, modern communists adopt a rhetorical stance where they assume that all people and all property are ALREADY COLLECTIVIZED, then calmly discuss what WE should do:
– What WE should ALLOW people to own.
– What WE should ALLOW people to do.
– What WE should ALLOW people to say.
– How WE should ALLOW people to use their property.
– How WE should ALLOW people to conduct their businesses,
– … and WHO should be ALLOWED,
– … and WHERE.
– How WE should ALLOW people to raise their children.
– Who should be GIVEN which roles within society.
– etc.
The issue under discussion is always something sympathetic, something most decent people would like to see fixed: Intergenerational poverty, police brutality, environmental degradation, bigotry, violence.
But the solutions modern communists put forward are rarely passive, and they are never liberating. If a problem can be solved by individual action, voluntary charity, by the free market, or by the passage of time, that is never seen as good enough. In fact, nothing that fails to increase the power and control of governments or certain institutions (or to grow the people’s dependence on them) is ever regarded as a solution at all.
The people who do the work of modern communism, debating and voting on these “issues of the day” are mostly not aware of what they are doing. A majority of them are decent people who want real problems addressed. But their thinking is confined to a multiple choice question presented by prestige media and schools where only oppressive proposals are listed as options.
Even those higher up the food chain, the ones who create the policy proposals or set the bounds of debate around them are not usually conscious of the way they are manipulating the public. They are hobbled by a theory of history (care of the school system) where the past is merely a series of dragons slain by government policy, where everything is “systemic”, and where the free choices and conscientious actions of individuals have no meaningful effect.
This is how the enemy operates.
In order for modern communists to have the latitude to execute their plans, they need every citizen to be as weak and dependent as possible. They especially need the middle tiers of management, professions, and bureaucracy to be filled with minimally competent placeholders who owe their position to political and institutional favor. These sorts of people, since they are only able to achieve their present position through the system, are more pliable to coercion and less likely to see freedom in any aspect of life as promising or beneficial.
As a consequence, modern communists wage eternal war against every wholesome and sustainable aspect of life, society, and culture which gives people or communities strength and independence. They see it as desirable to destroy the natural optimum which people discover through freedom and competition and replace it with fragile, orchid-like solutions which could not thrive without government and/or institutional intervention:
– Those with demonstrable skills must be replaced by those with credentials.
– The self-employed must be reduced to the status of employees.
– Property must become regulated or burdened with tax and debt, and wherever possible, wealth must be rendered intangible as abstracted financial fictions constructed of laws.
– People must come to rely on government programs for security where they previously relied on themselves and each other.
– The traditional family and organic communities it forms, such as churches, must be invaded, defanged, and delegitimized to leave people at the mercy of authorities.
To a modern communist, “freedom” means the opportunity for individuals to choose some fundamentally maladaptive way of life and be protected from consequences, encouraged and subsidized by power.
The weaker you are, the more useful you are to those in power. Those who choose to be weak and dependent where they could be healthy and independent are collaborators.
This is what I see happening.
The American public has come to accept all the components of totalitarian states.
– We have come to accept a militarized police.
– We have come to accept ideological indoctrination in schools.
– We have come to accept mass surveillance.
– We have come to accept speech codes.
– We have come to accept the rewriting of history to serve the interests of the ruling party.
– We have come to accept the tarring of political dissidents as “terrorists”, “extremists”, and “White Supremacists.”
– We have come to accept the State telling us when and where we can meet.
– We have come to accept the State shutting down our places of worship.
– We have come to accept the idea that parents should have no special authority over their children.
– We have come to accept the manipulation of thought through the manipulation of language.
– We have come to accept the radical reordering of society by government in the name of crisis.
In the 2016 election, the full-throated manipulation by the mainstream press, academia, and the political establishment was so intense, and so obvious, that many people (myself included) who did not consider themselves “conservative” voted for Donald Trump just to poke a finger in the eye of Leviathan. So many people did so that his margin of victory exceeded the margin of cheat, and he was actually able to become president.
In the intervening years, the modern communists of both parties (though more so the Democrats) and those same media and academia mandarins have only doubled down on their commitment to subjugating the public and clamping down on our personal freedom and political prerogatives. Somehow, in losing electorally, we are to believe that their mandate for runaway collectivism and authoritarianism was strengthened.
Now, in the 2020 election, the fraud and manipulation became so glaringly obvious that, at the time of writing, at least 47% of all Americans, regardless of party loyalty, understand that the election was stolen and Joe Biden is illegitimate. Somehow though, it is still a long shot that Donald Trump, the person who has done more to expose the mendacity and incompetence of the ruling party and institutions than anyone else, will be seated as President.
Every one of those Americans who understands this must realize that this is it. This is the last moment for the American Republic, the last time we will even have a glimmer of a chance of an honest election result, and the last time any opposition to modern communism will be afforded space in the public square. And yet, neither I nor most of you are going to do anything about this situation that might risk our present status or comfort.
This is why I won’t yet act.
Unfortunately for me, the crisis has come either too late or too early. Our family has four young children, a single income, and a base of assets which could be easily lost but probably never replaced. We are maximally vulnerable to the sorts of attacks which collectivists bring against those who fight back.
Even so, if the fight were on, if the majority of Americans who this past election shows are opposed to creeping collectivism were on the march, I would risk it all to join them. No comfort, no wealth, not even life itself is as important as preserving the possibility of human freedom. The hive-society prison which is being built around us must be demolished at any cost.
But when I look around me, I see many people who are paralyzed as I am. We know that the fight for our republic is unavoidable, and that the time is now, but do not see a nucleus of resistance to which we can pledge our lives, fortunes, and sacred honors without it being tantamount to suicide. We are watching and waiting for someone else to be that nucleus.
Most people who have not committed to the cause of freedom are not conscious supporters of modern communism. Some hold out the futile hope that things will all go back to normal, others have convinced themselves that what is happening is inevitable and cannot be opposed. Both are dead wrong. As open struggle against collectivism, communism, authoritarianism, and globalism rises, both of these positions will weaken, and support for freedom will grow.
If you have the courage to act where I do not,
here is what I WILL do:
– If you speak out against them, I will listen.
– If you act against them, I will not stand in your way.
– If they portray you as uncool, cringey, old-fashioned, unintelligent, or low-class, I will not laugh at you or think less of you.
– If they call you a racist, sexist, xenophobe, homophobe, Nazi, granny killer, etc., I will not believe them, nor will I care.
– If they call you a terrorist or an extremist, I will not assume that you are in the wrong.
– When they ask me questions, I will lie, forget, or evade as I am able.
– When they tell me their version of history, I will smile and nod and know they are liars.
– If they dispossess you, I will share what I can.
– If they martyr you, my children will learn your name as that of a hero.
– If you have the courage to be shameless in opposing them, you will be honored in my house.
This is what I will remember.
1. The universities and the class of “experts” and “professionals” to whom they grant legitimacy have no constitutional role in the American Republic. No amount of schooling grants one authority over others, and no consensus among the educated should have the force of law.
2. The guarantee in the Constitution of “Freedom of the Press” is not a grant of authority to the legacy media or to professional journalists. It is, in fact, a right belonging to the people: WE have the right to publish and disseminate views and information the same as those who work for newspapers or television networks.
3. The Intelligence and Defense establishments of the US exist to secure the rights and liberties of the American people. The US has constructed a vast apparatus to deploy force, subvert or overthrow governments, and disseminate propaganda, but these activities are only legitimate when they are directed OUTWARD. When the geopolitical capabilities of the US government do not act to empower the American people and sustain our Constitution, they are just as criminal as the same actions taken by private citizens.
4. Law enforcement and defense against violence is the responsibility of each and every person. Even though we have become accustomed to having these services provided by professionals, they remain our right and our personal responsibility.
5. Education of the young is the responsibility of parents and natural communities. Even though we have become accustomed to having this service provided by professionals, it remains our right and our personal responsibility.
6. Provision of necessities such as food and shelter is the responsibility of each and every person. Even though we have become accustomed to these goods being delivered by a vast and interconnected economic machinery over which we have little control, it remains our right and our duty to provide for ourselves and those we care about.
7. Though peace, prosperity, happiness, and a long life are all wonderful conditions to experience, they are not what makes a human life worthwhile. Humans have dignity and value insofar as they are free agents struggling and striving to obtain these ends. “Treating someone as a human being” does not mean coddling them and providing for them like you would a child or a pet. It means getting out of their way and leaving them the freedom and latitude to provide for themselves.
8. Whoever relinquishes their freedom to obtain comfort or security is not acting as a human, but as an animal. Because our fates are all intertwined, such a person is betraying all of us, and does not deserve our concern or regard.
— Sarah Chamberlain
According To Hoyt 
Reblogged this on Inspiwrite – A Blog for Politics and Writing and commented:
And Sarah Hoyt linked to Sarah Chamberlain too!
No, we are not alone – and a lot of us are very, very angry, but it is cold and calculating anger.
And what will happen when some stupid action by the proggie elite triggers a reaction …
Well, interesting times, people. Interesting times.
Unfortunately, some of us are hot. This may uglify the situation.
2021 or 1861? It’s getting hard to tell the difference.
1861 we had the Mason–Dixon Line 2021 the line of demarcation isn’t quite as clear.
Which mean it’s going to be worse.
On the good side once the ones who are doing it for social approval are peeled off, I think their numbers are tiny.
Their numbers are small, or they wouldn’t have had to recycle their BLAmtifas from arrest to protest so quickly, nor would the same support vehicles have been videoed in Seattle, Portland, Chicago,and Kenosha.
The Prog idiots think that “resistance” from the right will be a minimally violent march that their police forces (who, of course, will obey the orders of the Left) can easily concentrate and destroy, as an example to the other peasants not to get “uppity” again.
NOT.
The Progs here expect a conflict like exists now in Germany, where the Progs, the government, and the police unite against free citizens, acting in their own interests, and where the citizens have no way to individually resist government actions.
They are the British Army, about to march across the fields at Chalmette to face Jackson and Lafitte behind their cotton bales in the battle of New Orleans.
Thanks to our information age, their are enough people who know who, what, and where the points of influence and inflection are, or can find them quickly, to respond effectively to the attacks which are intended, and have been called for by Prog mouthpieces.
Thanks for posting Chamberlins’ letter.
John
YES
In 2020 the US is fully intermixed – see the 2020 purple America map of Presidential vote by county linked below – so if things go kinetic here it will be very Yugoslavian.
One exercise in purely hypothetical crystal-ball-gazing would be to crossmap these colors with the location of major US military bases, major transportation corridors, and actual* centers of control and influence.
* Actual vs. Conceptual centers of influence and power – CNN HQ in Atlanta and the other three letter network HQs in NYC being pretty much a “who cares who controls the building?” if the uplink and connectivity paths leading to it are dealt with.
Noting of course that this map is to a large extent actually a map of “degree of cheat”.
Well, not that they’re right, but this is what they think properly conveys their superiority…
Kinda misses the point that proportional representation does not apply to the Senate, so (as we saw) any impeachment that is not a political stunt needs the support of the states as well as the House representatives of all those, um, [looks up newspeak] “other than documented” people who bump up the census totals in LA.
I should also note that the morphing animation of the 2016 winner counties* illustrates how the US is one megaton-scale kinetic energy release in Los Angeles County away from an unassailable Republican vote total majority for a generation or more.
SMOD where are you when we really need you?
* Which is why I like the purple America map – it shows the close counties instead of binary red-blue winners.
Just have LA put in a bid for the 2021 Cell Games.
I suppose my point is that they’re “thinking” they have all the numbers, those wannabe tyrants, to justify their doing whatever they want and all those itty-bitty low population counties shouldn’t count for anything. That darn fly-over country. They’re ready to condemn based on numbers alone. Not that that’s news to the folks that hang out here. But a good visual can help illustrate their thought process, which is why I posted it.
Me? I’m a fervent federalist, especially right now, and if I could I’d federalize/republicanize statewide elections so State Governerships and State AG or State Secretary of State have to get the rural buy-in as well. I’m not positive that’s necessary if fraud weren’t so… so… pervasive. I know sane people in the cities. But it seems somewhat logical that people who live in country vs live in the city pay attention to different issues naturally. The farmer is going to be very sensitive to nuances of land and water use that will fly right past a low-information voter in the city. The city person might be more sensitive to, IDK, noise ordinances, zoning issues, crime? Someone help me out here. I’m not a big city person. In most states, the population is mostly in the cities, right now. And to win a state election, control (by legal or illegal means) of the big city votes is sufficient to win. But then you wind up with the big city politician(s) ordaining that only low emission vehicles are permissible (makes sense to his base) and suddenly the state farmers or ranchers or loggers can’t do their jobs because their vehicles aren’t allowed on the roads and democracy “wins” again.
–
Not only city VS rural but western water VS eastern water (rights); in the west if you own the land you don’t necessarily own the water that is under it, or flows through it …
Or western Federal Lands vs eastern Federal Lands. When federal government, excluding reservations, own from 40 to 60% of the land included within the state boundaries …
–
Well … until the city residents discover the chicken, beef, apples, and other food, suddenly doesn’t show up at the grocers or their favorite take out …
hell. all the advocates of mass transportation make us western people stare.
YOU NEED A CAR IN THE WEST. And affordable gas.
But if they take away your car, you’ll have to move near transport. Then, when you are all crowded together, they get to regulate you on the grounds you make life unpleasant for each other.
You have to move to where THEY provide the transportation, you can only go where THEY allow, when THEY allow…
Last month Herr Fuhrer Nuisance banned internal-combustion engine cars in Kalifornia by executive decree. And there was much rejoicing among Leftroids.
Never mind that electric cars are about where the Model T was a hundred years ago. Never mind that we already have blackouts when the electrical supply runs short. Never mind that they’re ‘retiring’ power plants right and left. Never mind that they ‘decomissioned’ the San Onofre nuclear power plant when PG&E bungled a repair, AFTER spending five years at it. Zere Vill Be Only Electric Cars! Achtung!!
———————————
Shouldn’t “The government is delusional and full of shit” be an acceptable legal defense?
The EPA told him that was a bad idea
In the west? They can’t. Part of the reason we’re so spread out is that a lot of the hand is not arable/habitable.
This is part of the reason the west raises beef. If you have A LOT of acres, it’s the only thing you can get out of them.
“a lot of the hand is not arable/habitable.”
You say that is f any of them know what those words mean. If there is a problem with the pipes (whether incoming or outgoing) just call the super – and if it’s too much for the super to solve then management will call a plumber!
Arable! As if that were even a word! Next you’ll be going on about land having to be perkable.
~
Arable = able to be an Arab…what else could it mean?
oh, dear lord. You’re joking, right?
99.44%
pure sure that it’s a joke, in the theme of the crazies losing it over “woMAN” and such.Having followed the conversation, instead of coming to the comment first, I realized that.
Pardon me for being momentarily worried, but you know the times we’re living through.
I’ve seen folks sharing Titania whatzerface’s parody account, in dead seriousness.
Poe weeps.
You’ll figure out something. The New
SovietUSA Man is capable that way.But now the Chinese Virus has proven that so very many people do not need to live in crowded metropolitan centers to work. The exodus from metro California is not unique, and I think the various advocates of things like mass transit will be very surprised at how violently people will react to trying to force them back to the old ways of cramming into tiny crowded boxes to work sitting at tiny wall-less cubefarm desks going forward.
Precisely. Every city is pouring out.
The Left remains convinced that if they just whip the golden goose a little bit harder it will lay even more eggs.
~
This is a big part of it. The tech is going the other way. They never got their heads out of the thirties and big factories, and such….. meh.
As far as the tech leading to the dispersal of the cities, the income in our family can be remote, and is currently remote, and it’s a lot of fun having that experience. If it weren’t for the wider current events, this is a perfect setup for my family. As is, well. We’ll see what the future holds. My thoughts run along with sister Sarah’s in that we’re responsible for young kids, want desperately to secure a free future for them, but must in the present be present for our kids and care for and educate them. So, the balancing securing a future vs responsibility today, it’s real.
IF they hadn’t closed everything else, this is what we’ve been trying to get to. Both of us work from home, keep absurd hours, and then take one day off and do fun stuff. As you see, that last part is impossible now.
“I strip away the old debris
that hides a shining car.
A brilliant red Barchetta
from a better vanished time.
I fire up the willing engine,
responding with a roar.
Tires spitting gravel,
I commit my weekly crime…”
Which is a feature rather than a bug. The romanticized vision is all those people from the cities will live in villages. And never have to leave. Why should they travel when they can work remotely from the village? Carry it further and they can work remotely from the village Information Center so their homes can become centers of tranquility and, of course, their access to information can be kept within seemly bounds. And since these workers will be producing intangibles they will be completely dependent on the food shipments from other, less exalted villages. There will be no reason, no reason at all, to ever leave the village. All would be stable, predictable, unchanging. And the frightened would be “elites,” would finally be safe.
Maybe I’m totally wrong, but that idea that all this is appening so that group can be “safe,” seems plausible.
Reminds me of a Village I saw on TV, long ago…
“You are Number Six.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Number Two.”
“Who is Number One?”
“That would be telling. We want information.”
“You won’t get it!”
“By hook or by crook, Number Six, we will.”
My entire county, just west of Cleveland, doesn’t have any public transport at all, because overall, we’re a relatively poor county and just can’t afford it. Oh, I think there’s a call-ahead bus for senior citizens and handicapped.
Well, you’d just have to plan better if you are so selfish as to stay.
Amen!
Not EV either. Fueled based. Participated in a discussion on another forum where it was put forth:
That 30-minute rapid recharge was Reasonable on long drives. (Short answer … No)
That 400 to 500 miles per charge was Reasonable … for everyone, all the time … (again … No).
I like to note that, per my latest PG&E energy sourcing statement, the Tesla’s on my street are ( from memory) powered by 25% nuclear, 40% natural gas, and about 15% hydro from evil dams.
All you have to do is mount a windmill on your hood and the wind generated by your passing will constantly re-charge your battery!
Alright – I admit to being ashamed to have put that in pixels; some idiots are going to seize on it as proof of concept!
~
The simple fact is that their are not enough of the raw materials, particularly the rare earths, to build all the batteries, solar panels, and wind farms that are needed to fulfill their insane vision of using no fossil fuels and no nuclear power. That is aside from the fact that without using a single drop of petroleum for fuel, it would still need to be refined to provide the vast majority of materials and products in use in modern society. The only way to eliminate use of fossil fuels is to literally undo the entirety of the industrial age.
If Democrats get their way, coal in Christmas stockings will be considered a rare and extraordinary gift that will be considered a great blessing to receive.
–
They are trying to create “Dies the Fire” (SM Stirling) without changing laws of physics.
Loved reading the series. Do Not want to live there.
I’m a Texan and I’m damn mad about the Supreme Court refusing to hear our suit. Like Sarah I don’t know what I can do. I’m middle aged and ill. I agree with y’all and wish I could do something. Waiting is wearing on a body. You need a car outside of NYC. Gas is cheaper in Texas.
Emily, take particular care of yourself. I’ve been worried. Hugs.
Emily, there is something you can do. If you can walk, come to the Capitol on Jan. 6. President Trump asked us to be there, and he has really asked darned little in comparison to what he has given up for us. I’ll be there from in a state in the Mountain West. I can’t really afford either the time or the money, but I’ve made the reservations and I’m going. I hope I see you there!
I doubt I CAN make it, in any way shape or form, but I hope everyone who can WILL.
AND driving up with large son is not out of the question. IF I can find the money/convince him.
Here, gas jumped up ten cents per gallon the day after the “election.” It has gone up twice more since then.
I suspect there’s some speculation going on by people gambling on profits from the return of $5/gal Obamagas prices at the pump. And the usual “because we can” from the oil industry…
The way many cities are set up in the Midwest, you need a car as well, at least the way things are currently set up. Most bus lines in Cleveland head into downtown, and if you want to get across town, it will take you twice as long (at least) than if you drove. Plus one time, my eldest daughter, trying to be independent, took a couple of buses to visit her friend on the other side of town (she was of age by then.) She ended up calling me at about 10 PM, because the connecting bus she needed to get home hadn’t shown up for an hour or so. I shudder to think how bad things could have been if Mommy wasn’t there to come and get her.
When our kids were little, Mr. BTEG did an eight month consulting gig in Chicago. Since I was homeschooling our daughters, the three of us would drive in for a week’s visit sometimes, and I’d take the girls to the museums and such in Chicago proper. Mr. BTEG’s apartment was outside Cook County, for affordability, and even counting gas and wear and tear and parking, it was cheaper to drive into downtown Chicago, rather than take the rail line. The rail line was set up so it was only cost effective for the commuter who worked downtown, and so traveled in five days a week, all month.
For a single traveler rail seems practical, but when you calculate the cost of two, three, four tickets the calculation quickly changes. Plus, once you have a car the operating cost can be relatively trivial, especially if you don’t have exorbitant urban storage costs.
What the damn fools miss about Uber (to pick one) is that I can drive my car to the train station, park, take the train to Charlotte (or Raleigh) and when I arrive I’m stuck without transportation. Maybe I can walk to my destination but maybe I cannot — and maybe I have [stuff] t carry which makes the walk awkward and me a target of opportunity for the casual thief. Ride share makes the process worth considering but the city, to protect its taxi medallion racket, don’t like free market pricing. So I drive or stay home and they get squat.
~
A friend of mine from high school lives down here in silicon valley and commuted daily to the SF financial district for the past 25 years. No BART on that side, so she rode CalTrain for about 10 years, but ended up driving up and paying for a parking spot to get the flexibility and reliability that public transit just can’t deliver.
If it did not work for her, it simply cannot work at all, unless the alternative she eventually chose is prohibited, freeways raised and streets blocked to all but transit buses.
More than that… this kinda lays it out ugly:
We could sell off a chunk of that and pay off a lot of the deficit.
I’ve seen an argument, from some Federalist Society type (don’t recall who) laying out how the Constitution actually requires that (at least per his interpretation).
However, what’s lost in that discussion is that the main value of the non-park land in the western states is for mineral rights; it’s too short on water and arable land (and often short on good grazing) to use for anything else. So the question really becomes … who buys the mineral rights, and how much ecological mess will be tolerated to make that land salable. Also, since most of it is actually leased for grazing (albeit much at 20 to 100 acres per cow-calf pair, because it’s that nonproductive) where do those ranchers replace that graze from?? they can’t afford to buy nearly enough land to replace it, and no private party leases grazing land that cheap. So a side effect will be skyrocketing price of beef.
–
It isn’t illegal to prospect and stake a claim for minerals on federal land. It might be illegal to be able to prove the claim on some designated federal land (National Park, wildlife refuges, Wilderness Areas, etc.), but you can prospect for them. The environmental abatement requirements might make the claim unprofitable where it is legal to prove the claim. Just because you have a claim doesn’t mean you get to build a road into it or even a trail for horses or other pack animals. Or even use non-hand tools to extract your claim.
Yes. A lot of super environmental hazard sites are old mineral claims on western federal lands. Some they even have an entity to go after. Ask how that is going. #sarcasmtagJIC
The other side is, at least Oregon/Washington/N.California, it is deceptive how steep our mountain ranges are. They don’t go as high elevation as Colorado, Montana, Utah, or Arizona, plateaus, and passes, with their obvious steep drop offs, because the Cascades cover the drop offs with trees, big ones, usually.
You can still graze it, if you have A LOT of acres. But yeah….
Yeah, I think the government owns 90% of Nevada because nobody else wants it. Then there’s the Nevada Test Range which for SURE nobody wants! All those still-hot craters…
where do those ranchers replace that graze from?? they can’t afford to buy nearly enough land to replace it, and no private party leases grazing land that cheap.
Getting rid of property tax might help to make the idea of buying land less unfeasable.
I believe China holds the paper on that – which would explain why their Americaminions are desperate to block extraction industries from operating there before the new landlords take possession.
~
MOLON LABE.
Yeah… except Congress would probably sell it to the Chinese Communist Party instead of Americans. Much simpler to deal polity-to-polity instead of the hassle of putting up with the rabble, you know…
I still get a kick out of the no-nukes activists who cry over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who have no idea we nuked Nevada more than 900 times, close enough to cities that people used to have “Bomb parties” where they’d drink beer and watch the mushroom clouds come up.
Also, since most of it is actually leased for grazing (albeit much at 20 to 100 acres per cow-calf pair, because it’s that nonproductive) where do those ranchers replace that graze from?? they can’t afford to buy nearly enough land to replace it, and no private party leases grazing land that cheap.
Of course, one of the reasons that the land is held by the federal government and wasn’t sold to private owners was because the ranchers were getting a sweetheart deal on the leasing terms and lobbied against the sale. It’s the story of the horse and the stag:
A quarrel had arisen between the Horse and the Stag, so the Horse came to a Hunter to ask his help to take revenge on the Stag. The Hunter agreed, but said: “If you desire to conquer the Stag, you must permit me to place this piece of iron between your jaws, so that I may guide you with these reins, and allow this saddle to be placed upon your back so that I may keep steady upon you as we follow after the enemy.”
The Horse agreed to the conditions, and the Hunter soon saddled and bridled him. Then with the aid of the Hunter the Horse soon overcame the Stag, and said to the Hunter: “Now, get off, and remove those things from my mouth and back.”
“Not so fast, friend,” said the Hunter. “I have now got you under bit and spur, and prefer to keep you as you are at present.”
Plenty of people would happily buy land in what is now off-limits Federal land in California to live in that dream cabin, but that’s not an option mostly. Keeping actual National Parks as such is fine, but the trick of National Monumenting or suchlike to place lands off-limits as happened on the Sotoero administration in Utah, or prohibiting all roads in forest service lands and tearing up those already there to protect the endangered dirt mold colonies, and thus preventing anyone getting homes, is simply bad.
If the Sierra Club wants to protect all that land, let them buy it.
Thing is…most of it is land that isn’t good for much of anything but oil and gas development, and grazing. (I work for the Bureau of Land Management in Wyoming–and the commentary on the difficulties of reclamation on oil and gas sites because the soils are utter crap out here is enlightening.) And as mentioned above, why would ranchers want to pay property tax when paying for a grazing lease is much, MUCH cheaper? Same for oil and gas. The companies, I think, don’t have to pay nearly so much of their royalties to the government as they would to a private landowner, even if they have to jump through more hoops on the NEPA front. (ie, supposed environmental responsibility)
And as I explained to one poor young man last winter who had bought what he thought was cheap acreage (it was a land scam) and had called me up to ask questions about rights-of-way and so on…there is a whole lot of NOTHING out there. That dream cabin? Sure. If you don’t mind having probably no water (you might get lucky with a well, but probably not–most of this state is a high desert). No electricity. You might get cell phone reception (that’s a lot better than it was even six years ago, but there’s still large chunks of “nope, nothin'”), but only if you go with the local provider (who aren’t bad, withal…yet). Emergency services aren’t likely to be able to get to you. And you won’t be able to get in or out–because most of the roads are unimproved two tracks out there, and you don’t have the hundreds of thousands of dollars required to construct an improved one–for up to 9 months out of the year, because of snow.
The young man–who was from big city Tuscon–was quite bewildered at this. “But…but they said there are easement agreements for power and water with the landowners out there!” (it was in the “checkerboard”, ie, where the railroad passed through and so the sections alternate between private and federal with the occasional state land thrown in). I had to explain that all that meant was that the private landowners agreed that, should anyone want to run a powerline or a waterline out there and it crossed their land, they wouldn’t object. But there aren’t any actual waterlines or powerlines (other than some big transmission lines, in a few places) out there. And the cost to put them in–and you could do power, but good luck with water–is so prohibitive that the whole reason the landowners were so amenable to the idea is that they KNEW that 99% of people could not ever afford to put them in, and so the odds of it ever actually coming up were extremely low.
Young man from Tuscon: “But…I thought it was a desert! You really mean that there’s snow out there from October to May or June?!” I had to explain that the desert HE lived in was very different to this one. Most of our moisture in a year comes from snow. And yes, it is not unusual for there to be snow on the ground from as early as September all the way into late May. One year, not that long ago, there was still snow in some sheltered areas in AUGUST. (And that same year the last blizzard was in late June.)
There is a REASON so much of the West is empty. And sure, maybe the feds holding the land isn’t ideal, but the thing is…it’s because it’s the land no one else in their right mind would want. You can’t grow anything on it. There’s little to no water. The weather purely suuuuucks. Where I live, it’s a rather nicer area (weather still sucks, especially the wind) and almost all the land around where I live is private land. Because it’s pretty, and there’s water and trees and good grazing. This holds true anywhere the ‘nice’ land is in Wyoming. Most of that is private. Everything else, all the crappy stuff, largely isn’t.
–
Might have mentioned we go to the western NP areas, a lot. We’ve also backpacked in Cascades, a lot. We participated in Boy Scouts as leaders when our son was participating. Notice to other scout parents “Please note which months Oregon mountainous trails (not just the high peaks) can be snowed on – Any Month that has at least 28 days …” Scout comes home from August Cascade summer camp at Melakwa “We got Snowed ON!” This is just Oregon. Yosemite high country is higher elevation, saw the first snow storm of the season first week of August. Luckily snow didn’t stick around long, it is not fun as it is taking the trailer down of the pass with an 8% down grade without there being Ice, Snow, & Wind. Wyoming and Montana (Yellowstone) have seen snow storms in July and August, let alone September. Other than scenery the land grows rocks really well, sometimes trees and brush. Even the natives didn’t live there. Traveled through, hunted, fished, but didn’t live there.
Flip side. A lot of the land open for Homesteading their biggest issue is water. Wells are expensive. They can spend $100k for a dry hole going down deep. Never finding water on the property.
As already mentioned the grazing rights issued are based on Cow/calf Acres. They aren’t kidding. Some areas it is 10 acres or more per Cow/Calf pair. It is that unproductive.
“why would ranchers want to pay property tax when paying for a grazing lease is much, MUCH cheaper?”
I doubt property taxes are very high — such taxes are typically set at property’s basis (last purchase price) and, especially in rural parts, tend to be lower than the state’s average. (According to SmartAsset “The state’s average effective property tax rate is 0.61%, ninth lowest in the country.”) But the thing is, a lease is temporary — it expires and your obligation is limited. Property is much harder to get dispose of, and while you could walk away there tend to be impediments to that.
Property ownership often entails a duty to do at least some form of maintenance, which also amounts to time and money. Leases are not merely cheaper, easy to get out of, and free of onerous responsibility, they are also easily determinable expenses, deductible from revenues without noxious depreciation ad/or amortization calculations.
~
–
Usually there is different designations. With rural Farm, Ranch, Timber, being way down on per acre per $ value taxable. Even less if the property can be proven to not have water. If there is anything that can be harvest, then there is a cost on the harvest. Even then it is expensive. I mean if you are paying .61% per value, you are still paying big bucks for land per year that may not payout that much. Then you are responsible for fire suppression costs when fire starts on your land, just for instance.
Different situation, plus Oregon. Mom & dad were given at marriage 1 acre above grandma and grandpa’s house. Very steep. They paid $500, the taxes for years. Finally convinced them to sell it when hubby & I casually cruised it for them. Mostly scrub timber. Cost more for them to harvest it. They sold it for $12k. Now 40+ years later, it has been logged, and homes are going up, above the property. Had they not sold, but continue to pay the taxes on it … do the math … they’d have netted $0 or negative on the sale of the property. Undeveloped property in that area goes for $25k/acre, for less steep property. Plus water has to be available. Mom mentioned that the people who harvested the timber got something … Yes, they harvested more than that acre. Our point was it didn’t pay for Mom & Dad to harvest that acre. The cost of harvest for them was more than the timber was worth.
Same thing happens with open range. The overall cost of the land is too costly to be responsible for it under ownership.
Back when the environmentalists allowed it, grazing and lumber sales were a major source of income off the public lands.
I grew up taking cattle to the “school allotment” that had been paying for most of the school’s expenses for generations.
…the gal my folks refer to as “the song bird b***ch” effectively voided the grazing lease via harassment and falsification of evidence of over-grazing (the one six inch spot where grass is less than two foot tall is what got measured), plus cutting the fences so people “violated” their lease.
I mean, knowing how that crap works, I don’t doubt it. It’s generally considered that our area (SE Wyoming) was badly overgrazed during the first half-to-three-quarters of the 20th century. Mostly by sheep, supposedly–though I’m also equally sure that a.) blaming it on the sheep was one of the last blows in the big sheepherder/cattle rancher war that went on for most of a century (the cattlemen finally winning it), and b.) it still depends on what one means by “overgrazing” and that’s when my common sense goes “Hmmmm.”
Because I look at allllll those wistful history-book descriptions of the “millions and millions of bison” and go…”And explain to me how THEY didn’t magically overgraze the land…?”
So yeah. I’m more inclined to lean towards “Environmentalists are full of crap” (not that I don’t think we shouldn’t be responsible stewards of the land, BUT…those wannabe tyrants are full of crap) than anything else.
The bugaboo in the last 20 years has been the damn sage grouse. And lemme tell you–even most of us gov workers who have to pay lip service to the sage grouse crap are NOT fond of it (barring some of the wildlife folks, who trend hard into the ‘crazy environmentalist’ types even here). For one thing, the REAL nasty predation on the birds comes from crows and ravens…which no one is allowed to shoot or poison because of the Migratory Bird Act. Even though they are, technically, an invasive species. Even though there’s too damn many of them. (And I like crows and ravens, but. They are a-holes of the first order.) NOT, say, oil and gas development. But of course in crazy-environmentalist world, it *has* to be all the humans’ fault.
The other problem is that sage grouse are some of the dumbest animals ever to walk this planet, and it’s frankly a miracle they haven’t managed to go extinct yet, given how apparently-delicate their mating cycle is…I’m pretty sure they only reason they HAVEN’T gone extinct is because humans are doing crazy things to protect them. (Even as one is actually still allowed to hunt and eat them. Which I’m cool with, but go figure…)
Oooh! This one I know!
The damage from sheep vs bison/cows depends on the grass and the dirt. I’ll shorten this to “area.”
In some areas, sheep really will rip the grass out by the roots– thus over-grazing by default. (Deer can do the same, ask your local farmers for information. 😀 )
Cows and bison, on the other hand, do damage by actually doing damage– feet making big pits in the ground, for example.
If you’ve got a situation where the roots won’t come out when the sheep/deer do their style grazing, you get less damage than from cows; if it’s in a place where they do that head-down-up-down-lift wiggle and the roots come out, then sheep/deer do more.
That’s why there’s real demand for sheep or goats to graze lawns, and not cows– a lawn is almost always nicely established with a good root network, so the inch deep divots from hooves are the damage.
The herds of bison were probably an unstable situation caused by the apex predator being severely reduced by disease and the ecology not having restablized.
Also humans burning the grass-lands to steer the bison herds for hunting, which prevented trees from being established–
but even if it was a fluke, the important bit is that there were a ton of buffalo, for years on end. Contrast with videos of the middle east where even the trees have been killed by goats get up and eating the leaves. (Not a normal level of over-grazing, but it’s a visual most people are familiar with.)
Being known to browse real estate listings in various places (lovely spouse calls it my hobby) and knowing some folks who rent or own property at the edges of allowed habitation, many times I’ve seen “Property backs to Forest Service land! No neighbors in that direction forever!” and heard the same first hand.
I figure if someone wants to pay to put in a road through to that hill yonder and build their dream log cabin, let them buy the land and easements and knock themselves out. The forest land would likely be as well or better maintained by a property owner on-site than by any overburdened bureaucrat no matter how conscientious and engaged, and the money could go to help pay for aircraft carriers and jets. Zoning restrictions could preserve very wide spacing so it still works as forest land from the wildlife’s standpoint, and the rural counties’ tax bases would increase.
But no, humans bad, no people living on this side of the line.
–
Um. People have. Please note the following:
Paradise, CA
Talent, OR
Phoenix, OR
Detroit, OR
Blue Rive, OR
Vida, OR
Not to mention the homes between Sunriver and La Pine, where a fire broke out, but didn’t take any homes.
And homes outside their jurisdictions.
Those are the ones I know of.
What HAVE you been smoking? The money would go to pay for more bureaucracy and enforcement of petty rules to keep the subjects in line. Not one may disobey!
Reziac! more warning. I thought that was an electoral map, and my heart about stopped.
Yes. I have seen them deriding the idea that Republicans are anything but a minority.
city people honest to f*ck believe in overpopulation and that homelessness is a matter of poverty, etc.
That really helps explain the science fiction novel where they had a population density limit on the planet. IIRC, it was a bunch of earth colonies fighting for freedom against the control of Mother Earth.
Oh, yeah, city dwellers also believe in global warming. Mostly because it’s the “smart” thing to believe. But also because they really think the world is one vast city.
City dwellers believe the earth is flat; they just call it by other names.
Wish I could recall the title and author.
Are you thinking of the “Circuit” series by Melinda Snodgrass? Circuit Breaker is the only title I remember. It concerned Martian colonists resisting control by earth. The entire Environmental Impact Statement they submitted on their plan to terraform mars was, “No environment, no impact.” The feds did not like that.
No, that wasn’t it. Thanks though.
Yeah, it’s crazy. Every time we drive cross-country and see the vast expanses of land, I remark on how crazy the over-population thing is. Do you remember the panic — was it in the 80s? — where diapers in landfills were going to fill up all the available land? It gives to laugh. All of their manufactured panics follow a similar pattern. And my 20ish sons wonder why we’re so cynical about the covidiocy…
Yep.
A lot of this is also Europe-driven. They’re nto as crowded as they think they are, but they honestly assume we’re MORE crowded than they are. It’s weird.
They watch American television and movies, which mostly take place in large cities. Or they’re like the British SF author who was an expert on America, because he’d been to conventions in New York, DC, Chicago, LA, and Seattle, and had actually rented a car in LA once… Pretty much the same viewpoint of an urban American; they only see the anthills, not where Americans are.
There was a guy who arrived in my area from England having gotten his notions from Dallas and Dynasty. Within days of his arrival he was recruited to wrangle livestock at the local fair. (He adapted quickly and entered bread and spaghetti sauce.)
I’m always surprised how much of Germany is relatively sparsely populated. The Odenwald, for example. Poland has lots of large open areas, mostly farm and forest, but still, it reminds me of the American Midwest (eastern NE, western IA, parts of IL).
yes, driving across Germany was the closest to driving across America, though still more heavily populated.
SOUTHERN Europe OTOH is insane.
The world must be overpopulated. They can’t walk down a street without fighting a crowd.
This calls to mind the inline conversation Beloved Spouse relayed, something like twenty-plus years ago, when Beloved had described the experience of driving through the Oklahoma panhandle, with its “miles and miles of miles ad miles” only to have some sweet young thang in Southern California pipe up that it was probably just awaiting development as a shopping mall.
Because if there’s one thing those Okies, and the folks in North Texas, NE New Mexico, SW Kansas and Southern Colorado are crying out for, it is boutique shopping at Victoria’s Secret, RadioShack, The Limited, The Sharper Image, and Sam Goody.
~
Well, I mean, there WAS a big ol’ outlet mall once upon a time (Stroud, I think? I grew up in NE OK, but it’s been a loooong time). Then it got flattened by a tornado in the early 00s, and I don’t think they rebuilt it…
There is “Factory” Outlet Mall in El Reno (OK) – but I have no idea how it is doing, considering the covidiocy.
I find it amusing that a city dweller would be provincial like that, considering that I associate the origin of provincial with the rural to city newcomer…
I’m constantly amazed at how… blinkered and parochial city dwellers are. Even my own sister – who knows our hometown better than that – cautioned me to keep an eye out for the package she sent, lest it be stolen off my doorstep.
Well, first, a thief would have to find my door step….
Yeah, it’s not Silicon Valley, but there are certainly places where anyone following the Brown Truck of Happiness so as to identify where packages were dropped off would stand out enough to generate a string of calls to the local Sherrif’s department.
Heh. And if you did it where I live, it meant you weren’t paying enough attention for wildlife, and likely would end up hitting a deer (or an elk, or an antelope) and/or in a ditch because you forgot it was snowing and slid off the road…And also would get visited by a deputy, because following the UPS guy would really, REALLY be obvious…
It wouldn’t take a SMOD to finish LA.
From an old LA Times article, without continuous resupply, (doncha just love just-in-time supply chains) the city has about 30 hours food and 14 hours of water.
Loss of electricity would probably shorten those times.
Consider also fuel supplies. If an exodus began from LA, and the roads out were open, only the first few hours of runners would get away, as they would drain the gas stations on their way out.
Anybody behind them, so sorry.
And LA is behind mountains, so only 5 interstate highways, 4 rail lines, 3 pumped aqueducts, and a lot of imported electricity.
Plenty of points of failure there.
John
For some more detail on how that would play out, read The Last Centurion by John Ringo. Read it for a lot of other reasons, too.
Leftroids will never read it. Their empty heads would explode.
In a time of suckage…
———————————
“No, the WORST part was… Damn, there were so MANY worst parts.”
“A city the size of Ethshar mostly ran by itself. Lady Sarai thought of it as a spinning top, and the government’s job was to keep it balanced – a touch
here, a touch there.”
— Lawrence Watt-Evans, “The Spell of the Black Dagger”, about the practical aspects of keeping a city running
Or a quote that probably goes back to the Bronze Age: “Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets.”
And considerably less blue once you refine it by precinct, and adjust for those counties where we know there’s lots of cheating. (Frex, Gallatin and Missoula Counties here in Montana, and the old Union machine in Butte. The other blue spots are Indian reservations; as an Ojibwe friend puts it, “those are the dumb Indians.”)
Yes – cheating and then using those corrupted results to “prove” your success is the epitome of drinking your own ink.
Sorta like attending a college in the state where your husband’s the senior senator and believing anything short of complete illiteracy would stop your “earning” a Ed.D. from the home of the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration.
~
My progressive ex-wife grew up just off the Ojibwe reservation in Deer River, Minnesota. She was always going on about how the Indians were “trapped in poverty” etc. etc. I silently wondered why they didn’t just move to somewhere that jobs exist.
The ones that leave the crab-bucket are no longer “real” Indians.
Going off of how my cousins that don’t mire themselves there are.
(The last of those who refused to leave died a few years back. Younger than me. Drunk driving. The can-register Tribe members I know who aren’t on the reservation don’t drink much at all, which makes family reunions– that side of the family is very weak to alcohol from the Scottish side, as well– very “interesting.” I gave up on figuring out who was not drinking, Not Drinking, being a designated driver, took a drink then dumped it and refilled with something that isn’t alcohol because they don’t have a problem…. and probably stuff I missed….)
>> “The ones that leave the crab-bucket are no longer “real” Indians.”
I know what the “crab-bucket mentality” is, but is there a similar term that means the opposite? As in, the mindset of someone who wants everyone to rise as high as their efforts can take them?
–
“A rising tide floats all boats”
“The cream rises to the top”
*does not have a good answer, goes with impulse*
American?
Hmm… “American mindset” or “American-in-spirit” kinda works. I still feel like there might be a punchier answer out there, though.
Part of the problem is that the crab-bucket is, like communism gone obvious, a nasty and obvious expression of a very human failing from the perspective of Christianity.
So there isn’t much of a demand for a specific word that means “doesn’t have a sense of entitlement to the labor of others.”
…..
Actually, they’re pretty much the same, aren’t they? Just Communism is a formalized crab-bucket.
New York City is important because it has a valuable harbor. It’s why the city was built there in the first place. That has less importance if you’re dealing with an internal struggle. And the city is almost certainly nowhere near as important as some of its residents believe it to be. But easy links to the outside world should never be discounted.
One thing to consider with a map such as this that I think folks tend to forget is: The voting was rigged. therefore many of the “purple” areas reflect inflated vote counts to secure the victory. That should mean that the map would be much redder if “reality” were reflected.
That said the line of demarcation is fuzzier, but those areas where it is very clear are very readily isolated. University towns etc. I pray it does not come to pass, but the cause of human liberty MUST proceed, the real flourishing of humanity depunds upon it. I fear that those who seek the power are completely blind to the terrible consequences of their striding into the glorious future!
They are, as younger son was telling me this morning “Profoundly maleducated.” and were told for years that Reagan was the bad guy and without him, communism would have solved all of humanity’s problems.
(Poor husband came downstairs, convinced we were arguing violently, to find we were both indeed very angry, but not at each other, and were sharing violent and vociferous agreement.)
“without [Reagan], communism would have solved all of humanity’s problems.”
That is a true statement, for certain values of “solved.”
Dead men have no problems.
~
Right?
There were not any clear geographical lines in 1776. And the shooting started over an attempt to confiscate guns…
Biden wants to take guns. And Harris laughs when told her plans are unconstitutional.
That laugh is a tell. You know you are on target when you get it.
It feels more like 1984 to me.
They are using a number of the how-to guides misfiled as dystopias.
I’ll remind you Hunger Games was written by a member of the communist party. (which is why it got the golden ride to the top.)
How was the Hunger Games supposed to promote communism? I read it.. Under the stupid interior, wishy-washy, meh dialogue it would seem to be more an indictment of central planning. The world building… I don’t know where it came from. RPG games? It was too simple to approximate a world, and I didn’t like the story which gave me no reason to forgive the poor world building. Was it supposed to be the people at the top? Every communist country has its decadent elites. Seems like the luxurious top is a human constant, not limited to any culture, and the only cultures without it are all dirt poor. I’m sorry, forgot my newspeak,”Living in communion with Mother Earth” I’ll be “at one with the land” when I die. In the meantime, I’ve got other ideas! (Gardens are good. I like gardens. Gardens are not at one with the land as one is intentionally causing a different ecosystem than would naturally be there to grow. Farms are good too. Now, there’s ways to work with the available ecosystem, and ways to work against it [like trying to grow citrus in the north, or caneberries in the south] but dang it, just leaving it alone doesn’t cut it when the goal is lots of food for lots of people. All that to say, I don’t mind the dirt part nearly as much as the poor and hungry part.)
It was supposed to be an indictment of capitalism, according to the author, in an interview. It’s kind of….. bizarre.
::blinks:: I never fail to be astonished at how lefties look at Communism (actual communism) and declare “That’s capitalism!” It’s like…a truly astonishing level of blinkered-ness.
I always thought of Hunger Games as the kind of world that you get stranded on in Traveller because your ship malfunctioned and you have to fight your way to a spaceport in order to get/steal a ship to get off the planet.
Ah, now THAT could be fun 😀
Makes a great series — just ask John Ringo!
A lefty friend was recently arguing that free markets != capitalism, and used the Marxist definition of capitalism to make his point. It’s that horrible indoctrination they get in college. He knew “capitalism bad” and intuitively knew that free markets were good, so ….
GRRRRR.
Nobody who believes in free markets should accept the use of the term “capitalism”. That’s the communist framing. The right does that *all* the time — accept the left’s terms and framing — and then wonder why we’re losing the PR war…
I’ve got a hand-written rant about this I need to transfer–it’s the whole “state capitalism” thing. I *thought* from usage it just meant “socialism that didn’t work out how I wanted it to”… but in order to justify it, I found looking into it, they created a whole set of sub-definitions, where “capitalist” means “for selfish purposes” and “socialist” means “for the greater good.”
So, you know, who knows what they say when they actually want to discuss where ownership rests or anything crazy like that. I guess it just doesn’t come up much.
To me, ‘capitalism’ means the right to own your money, and whatever you buy with it. Since most of us earn money through labor, it means the right to own the products of your own labor.
What is it called, again, when you don’t have that right?
———————————
How can Leftroids create a better world when everything they do makes this one worse?
You know, the truly interesting thing about Free-Market Capitalism” is that the real thing has never been tried.
~
And probably never will be, humans being what they are. As soon as you have any system of laws, humans will try and frame the laws and their enforcement so that they get more bananas than any other monkey.
Of course!
State capitalism is fascism, and what they’re working on is a weird hybrid of that and communism.
It came from her flicking between a glamorous “reality” show and a very violent show on TV until they blurred together. Everything else came from that.
Lefties don’t understand the SOS messages sent to them by their Muses.
It whispered “Did you talk to the writer about this?”
“I showed the writer dreams and visions of our world. But I don’t think it’s working. She thinks this is a good place to live.”
It sighed. It longed for a day with colors. A day where It could do whatever It wanted to. It was stuck in this nightmarish reality that the writer was daily making more constricted. More scripted.
THIS.
Oh my.
Try looking at it from inside a world-view where school and day care is normal, and you can’t get a “real” job because actually working is degrading (can’t provide a good or material service– like “cook food” or “clean floor” or “fix wall.”) so you have to get the emotional support jobs which select for the employer being at least emotionally abusive/actually degrading, because the service you’re providing is making them look good.
It’s still stupid, but you can kind of see the emotional shape of the argument.
The first season of the teevee show Colony had the existing elite made eliter when they conspired with the aliens to A) drop down giant walls for some reason all across LA (and other cities) overnight and start patrolling them with laser-armed drones, B) start disappearing people to “the factory” while rounding up human artwork (?) which roundups allowed C) the eliter to get yet eliterest by betraying wrong-thinking elites and plundering their stuff when they get rounded up and taken away, and threatening anyone from the lower classes who is attractive enough with being sent to “the factory” unless they take household servant jobs with sex servicing responsibilities working for the elite.
It premiered in 2016 during the campaign, so heavy-handedness of aliens “building the wall” with no apparent justification and how horrible it was that regular people were prevented from going wherever they wanted (the MC’s son gets trapped in another walled area when Dad did not go pick him up as scheduled.) Family Separation! Borders Bad! Dad Bad! Of course all the upper crust is eeeevil and in on the conspiracy because Capitalism Bad! Elite Bad! Eat The Rich!
Bright spots of interesting plotting marred by that incredible heavy-handedness required to sell the thing to network TV in 2016.
> emotional support jobs
You know, now that I look back on things… FOXFIER: ONE INTERNET
1776
I brushed off the blog that I created, I think, just to login here. 12 years ago! I’ve been wondering how long I’ve been lurking… so at least that long, though I also tried a couple of pseudonyms here and there, so it’s not dispositive. Anyway, since social media has been captured by the enemy, I figure at least we can go back to the individual blogs and those connections. Though I imagine I should be ready to get thrown out… Should probably buy a domain name and find a backup place.
well, join the fight coz. 😉
I haven’t yet faced any sort of synchronized shunning action, so I can’t provide information on how likely these companies are to knuckle under, but they seem to be neutral providers right now. $$$ for servers.
I host my sites using namecheap.com as a domain name registrar, and Linode.com as the hosting provider. Linode is something like $15/month and namecheap is inexpensive.
Moved my blog from blogspot.com to bluehost, and finally to these Linode servers. I have an independent instance of the wordpress PhP software (so unless they decide to use some sort of backdoor to attack independent users, something that in a sane world would qualify as illegal hacking, I should be free from direct takedowns.)
As to serving most PhP web software, the key pieces are
1. The domain name server (records and publishes a DNS record that gets shared among the DNS servers on the internet. When someone types in blablalba.com into their web browser, the browser queries the DNS records on the DNS server that its system is set up to trust, and gets back the record info which tells it the IP address (internet phone number) of the computer it is supposed to dial for the website.
2. The server – this is a computer that listens for incoming calls from the internet and then serves up a page.
2a. The server software (usually apache2 or nginx) – listens for incoming connections, goes into your site directories, calls up the php scripts or html pages, and sends something back to the requestor.
2b. The database software – php web software stores any sort of persistent state in a relational database of some sort, usually managed by MySQL, MariaDB (I actually like it better for esoteric reasons lately), and the like (there are others). The database is a file managed by the database software. Your blog posts or forum posts would notionally be stored in database records.
2c. The PHP software. (WordPress, PhP bulletin board forums (remember those?), Wikis, etc are all widely available as big balls of php scripts. These scripts take input from the web (relayed by the server software), do I/O on the database, and eventually create an HTML page to serve back to the client. PHP runs on the server, things like javascript run on the client.
(All the orientation I can cram into the time I can spare right now.)
I program in Perl and Python, and php has enough overlap that I can handle it. Speaking of programming — is somebody making a list of people to work on the fiction publishing software?
Frog also notices how many Epstein associates are getting arrested these days……
I read her when it was liked yesterday. Setup to follow her. Don’t know if it’ll go through as I used the gmail setup … but you know, tried.
It strikes me that calling them communists, while pentantically accurate is, like most pendantry, rather boring.
I propose we call them “little tin gods”. It’s much more fun, and just as accurate.
Ohhhhh, WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more fun!
Face diaper wearing what China is?
Call them Fascists. It’s the term they hate most (in my opinion, based on their behavior, even more than Nazi). It’s also the one that suits them best. They are, for the most part, little twigs, of no real strength on their own, banding together to make themselves stronger.
Fashocommies.
Communazis, as their brand of commufacism is very much identity group based, and includes a rabid hatred of Jews. They seek to achieve communist goals using a fascist economic structure, and those goals including making members of certain groups overlords over other identity groups, that is when they are not looking to simply “get rid of” the members of the unfavored groups. The term Communazi is a perfect description of their ideology.
Heinlein called them Red Fascists.
Liberal Fascists. Use that term and people will immediately understand what you mean.
Not sure it matters whether you call ’em Fascists, Communists or Globalists: They’re all socialists, and socialists are tyrants. Chuck ’em all out of the helicopter and let Saint Augusto sort ’em out.
Because I really, really don’t want to live the frickin’ Hunger Games, thank you very much. And that’s **exactly** what this Great Reset crap boils down to.
If the left gets it’s way, it’s going to more like a reenactment of the Holodomar and 1930s-early 1940s Germany.
“little tin gods”? Awkward and does them over much honor. I suggest “gods in tin” or, for convenience, “gits.”
~
“Street light ornaments.”
She is braver than she realizes.
By telling us why she isn’t actively resisting, she has told any malicious reader exactly how to punish her for her temerity.
So my younger Sister Sarah, some may (& we all know some will) but I don’t fault that even younger Sister Sarah’s position, they also serve who leave a cellar door open to provide a swamp fox a hidey hole.
I’m ready to do that!
“The promise of brotherhood in `comrade` was always a lie for the left,”
Not a lie – just membership in a highly dysfunctional family.
~
Abusive, too. What family demands to control what you use your money for, when you go to work, where you work, who your friends are, and what you are allowed to say? What family threatens you and tells you the rest of the world is out to get you, that you are never safe from them unless *they* protect you? What family demands all this, and changes their minds sometimes on a minute-by-minute basis on what is sacred and what is profane, preventing any stability?
These ideas, these politics are neither safe nor sane. Is it any wonder that the old guard crony Republicans sound like battered wives sometimes? Is it any wonder why those who escape that relationship often go charging to the right once they realize just how long they’ve been lied to and manipulated, and how easily they see those manipulations now that they have escaped?
One way or another, we’re in for hard times, people. This may only be the beginning.
> What family…
*The* Family. The Mob.
Conform. Or else.
Or the kind of family in which the paterfamilias requires a significant portion of the earnings of every family member …
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EkY6N3gXsAMWRvb?format=jpg
~
As G-d is my witness, I thought that URL would fly!
Maybe this version …
~
Yeah, I’m still curious about that. No matter how l33t their accountants are, that ought to show up in an audit like a flaming dumpster.
Though given the level of partisanship shown by the IRS, it’s possible it’s obvious, but they’ve chosen not to see it.
And the IRS agent who queued up an audit of a sitting Senator or the Veep would get zero traction without an actual dead body clutching Biden bank receipts along with the first draft of “Dr.” Bidens “paper”, and after President Trump won, anything that would go against the IRS Democratic Caucus would equally be quashed forthwith.
I can only ponder that the reason the FBI is investigating Hunter Crackhead McStripperImpregnator is they eventually came upon exactly that level of evidence while looking into something else – oh, say, l’affaire Epstein maybe?
Maybe they want the kind of hold on Bidet that old Edgar J. had on the powerful in his day. You don’t need to be on the throne if you can be behind it.
I come from a family exactly like that. It’s taken me years to get as far from them as I can – still working on severing last ties. Which is why the current state of politics enrages me.
Sometimes the only way to bury the bad memories is under new ones. They still try to claw their way out, like zombies, but enough good makes a difference, like shotguns against zombies. *grin*
Politically, that is why I believe we need more Trump, not less.
Sorry, I still can’t see Trump as anything but a Limousine Liberal playing the caricature of a conservative; look at his 2nd Amendment record – e.g. supporting Red Flag laws and the bump-stock ban – if you don’t believe me. He was supposed to lose in 2016, but his ego and events got ahead of Hillary’s plans. He is, at best, marginally better than the Team Blue alternatives.
And I know small manufacturers who were screwed over by Trump’s tariffs on steel. Raising the price on foreign steel doesn’t magically make lost smelting capacity magically reappear, and the regulations (and unions) which made American steel non-competitive are still in place.
I didn’t vote for Trump because I thought he was perfect – FAR from it.
I voted because the alternative was worse – BOTH times.
He surprised me by being more moderate than I thought he would be. But, he dumped regs, put the stop to some of the most outrageous theft/fraud/horseshit. No, he didn’t build that wall. But, he did reduce the number of illegals flooding the country. And, he made some changes that opened up the 3-letter agencies to investigation.
I don’t need a Great Man in Power.
I need a president who will release the controls that keep Truly Great People from doing all that Americans can do.
And Trump is not a limosine liberal. He’s a guy from Queens.
On the steel, what do you suggest he should do? Continue exporting our capacity to a potential enemy?
He HAS rolled back a million regulations. And you know what? if it hurts hard enough, someone will find a way to sideline the unions.
BUT — and this is very important — it has to be done.
As for guns…. that’s ALL he did, in the middle of a massive anti-gun campaign. No, I wasn’t happy, but it could have been MUCH worse and probably will be.
Trump’s Trump-side grandma was a woman named Elizabeth Christ. She was the girl who lived across the street from the Trump who emigrated from Germany to America, and when he made enough money to come back, he married her and whisked her away. She got horribly homesick, so Trump made enough money to come back with her and the baby. And then the German authorities were going to throw him in jail for draft evasion for moving to America, so they moved back to America and didn’t come back… and then Mr. Trump died of the Spanish flu in 1918.
Elizabeth Trump took over her husband’s real estate business and ran it, as Elizabeth Trump and Son, until she was old enough to retire and have her son (Donald’s dad) take over.
And then, she still went around to all the Trump-owned laundromats and collected quarters from all the machines, until almost the day they put her six feet under.
“No, he didn’t build that wall.”
Not for lack of trying, only for lack of giving in to the Left their amnesties.
~
THIS.
And an awful lot of what was described as replacement was replacing 6 foot fence with 30 foot wall.,
He did actually build the wall– when blocked from doing it in obvious ways, then by “repairing” a two-wire fence that was usually broken down and turning it into solid barriers that the cartels have to break down to cross— or get gates “accidentally” left open, like in El Paso.
My homeschool group down there kind of faded out since I’ve been gone a year, but last I knew they were having a huge influx of really nasty guys because the city of El Paso enables folks going through the wall, and the non-city-controlled wall was actually fixed into being a *wall*.
Working on it. Geh. So tired.
Me too.
*Offers hugs*
I expect nearly all here are familiar with Stephen Vincent Benét’s story, “The Devil and Daniel Webster” although I suspect few have seen the film based on it (although, if given the opportunity, you ought see it.)
Selling Our Souls: Lessons From ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster’
America sports a pantheon of folk heroes, picturesque inventions of the imagination or real-life celebrities made mythical by time and the exaggerations of yarn spinners.
As children, most of us heard stories of the lumberjack Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe, of Johnny Appleseed planting orchards on the frontier, and of the “steel driving man” John Henry and his contest with a steam drill. Davy Crockett “kilt him a bear when he was only 3,” wolves raised the cowboy Pecos Bill, and Casey Jones died as an engineer in a train accident saving his passengers “with a hand on a whistle and a hand on a brake.” Mollie Pitcher was the nickname given to a woman who fought in the Revolutionary War and carried water to thirsty soldiers, and the Wild West’s Calamity Jane had many tales told about her, some of which she created herself. From “Big Bad John” to Brer Rabbit, Americans have delighted in their folk heroes.
Many of these characters reflect the values and customs of America that differed from those of their European cousins at the time: a tendency to braggadocio, a willingness to singlehandedly tackle impossible tasks, and a belief in personal liberty that ran as deep as Lake Superior.
Which brings us to Stephen Vincent Benét’s short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster.”
[SNIP]
Webster agrees to take up Stone’s cause, accompanies him to his home, and shares a jug of liquor with him while they await the stranger. On the stranger’s arrival, Webster insists on a jury trial, and Scratch, as the stranger calls himself, provides a judge and jury from hell, comprising infamous Americans of that time and earlier: murderers, brigands, and thieves. Webster seems on the verge of losing his case until he begins “talking about the things that made a country, and a man a man.”
Walter Butler, the head juror and the loyalist who had spread “fire and horror through the Mohawk Valley in the times of the Revolution,” then rises and announces that the jury has found for Jabez Stone. Webster defeats Scratch so badly that “whenever the devil comes near Marshfield, even now, he gives it a wide berth.”
So what can we readers take away from this folk tale?
Patriotism
As in much of his poetry, Benét in “The Devil and Daniel Webster” injects an old-fashioned love of country into his story. When the devil demands Stone’s soul, Webster answers in a voice of thunder: “Mr. Stone is an American citizen, and no American citizen may be forced into the services of a foreign prince. We fought England for that in twelve and we’ll fight all hell for it again!”
Later, in addressing the infamous jurors, “he talked of the early days of America and the men who had made those days. It wasn’t a spread-eagle speech, but he made you see it. He admitted all the wrong that had ever been done. But he showed how, out of the wrong and the right, the suffering and the starvations, something new had come. And everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors.”
“The Devil and Daniel Webster” reprimands America in several places for those wrongs—it condemns slavery in particular—but it also reminds us that our history is filled with attempts to right those abuses.
[SNIP]
A Final Lesson
The real Daniel Webster once spoke these words: “I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing.”
Benét’s Jabez Stone is an ordinary man struggling to make a living and provide for his wife and children. Millions of Americans today find themselves in the same boat.
When Scratch appears to Stone and promises him wealth and success beyond his wildest dreams, we might think of some today who make such promises. The devil to whom we sell our souls needn’t come out of hell; he may just as well come out of Washington, D.C., offering us such gifts as canceled student loan debts, Medicare for all, more welfare benefits, and other handouts in exchange for our rights and liberties. All we have to do, as Jabez Stone did, is to put our blood signature on the contract, and we’ll be taken care of.
In other words, we will become children.
Fortunately, many Americans understand that such dependence is not the American Way, that it is instead a bargain with the devil and leads to slavery. These are the people—a few politicians, our neighbors, the mechanic with grease under his fingernails, a wife and mother I know—who like Benét’s Daniel Webster would say, “By the thirteen original colonies, I’d go to the Pit itself to save the Union!” By that proclamation, Webster means he would march into hell itself to preserve our nation and its Constitution.
These are the people who stand for liberty, and we must stand with them.
[Emphasis Added]
~
Please write this in a post of your own – if you don’t have a blog, send a message to me, and I’ll share mine. This is gold.
lfox368806-at-yahoo
Heck, I’ll put it in mine.
It is from the Epoch times; all I contributed was an introductory paragraph.
But I’ve seen the movie multiple times (Bernard Herrman’s score got his only Oscar.)
An additional scene, worth watching …
… one sadly eliminated from many prints.
~
– When they ask me questions, I will lie, forget, or evade as I am able.
– When they tell me their version of history, I will smile and nod and know they are liars.
“Swear allegiance to the flag
Whatever flag they offer
Never hint at what you really feel
Teach the children quietly
For some day sons and daughters
Will rise up and fight while we stood still”
Silent Running
For some reason this song keeps coming up in my thinking these days
Silent Running has been a recurring theme for me for 8 years or so.
I love that song. Also Call to Arms:
Bring my spear, invested with my youth
Bring the children near, they must now be told the truth
Old and young and those of foreign tongue
Are you ready to fight?
Briefly, hastily:
see https://media.allauthor.com/images/quotes/img/dietrich-bonhoeffer-quote-action-springs-not-from-thought.jpg
When my children were young I often thought this. Someone with children isn’t free because they cannot afford to risk themselves when they have others who are dependent on them.
But now my children are grown.
It really helps. My children are grown now too. I work in tech, so I’m usually deep undercover, but I remind myself that I could retire if I needed too. I’m going to try to be more open, because I don’t want to contribute to preference falsification…
“Preference falsification.” So that’s what that’s called. 🙂
I’ve been talking about it for a long time. Talking about science fiction conventions and the notion that everyone in an audience is obviously far left, that conservatives just aren’t creative, that they don’t even really exist in that space, and about how we helped to create that by being quiet or polite in company.
Yep. That’s what it’s called. If you wanted to get published, you needed to play along. But those were the bad old days.
Homeplanet press is me. I have no notion how I ended up on that account.
-Synova
WOW. How many names do I need to remember for you? 😀
It’s just my website for the books that aren’t published because I don’t finish them. 😛
I only have two names. So far. 😉
YOU NEED TO FINISH THEM. You and I, the buddy system. LET’s FINISH.
–
It is somewhat freeing to be able to mutter “Two week notice. I don’t need references.” Try it. It’ll get you through really bad days when you can pull the trigger but aren’t ready to. I should know.
I am a long time lurker, not even close to being a writer but do enjoy reading this blog. I am ready and willing to help the cause. I am willing to to do whatever this old body can do, reload, care for the injured, do laundry(hopefully not) repair stuff, whatever. I would even go so far as to use my home as a respite
This ceased being a blog mainly for writers sometime around 2010. Sometimes it worries me, but it became what it needed to be.
Wait! There are writers here?!
ALLEGEDLY.
I resemble that statement.
OK, I laughed out loud at that exchange. grin.
>> “Wait! There are writers here?!”
I require proof. [crosses arms]
pffffff.
You got to have faith!
Skeptic. ma’am Gods, faeries and writers who hang out at According to Hoyt are not things I take on blind faith.
There was supposed to be a period after the “ma’am.” Not sure what happened to it, but apparently punctuation IS a thing I’ll take on blind faith. 😛
The cousins and I will let you have your blind faith – an eye for I and an eye for Them, tapping toes and malarkey will be your gift. 😉
[blink]
Um, what? Is that an Irish saying or something?
A warning, as it were. If you don’t believe in me and my cousins – we might be forced to believe in you. I’m also from Clare – nothing good is ever said about those of Us from Clare….
–
Not even close to being a lurker. I mean some here even know where I live 🙂
But also not writer, or at least not a writer of books, fiction or otherwise. (Programming counts as writing, even retired ones.)
Same here; programmer, filksongs, not narrative.
I’m a knitter, seamstress, wannabe writer. Perhaps I could become a Madame Defarge for the good guys….
As Terry Pratchett said, real sin begins with thinking of people as things.
Always remember that if they call a group of people something, they are “othering” them, making them things. The simplest resistance is to not think as they tell you to, and realize that every person is an individual. Admittedly, some can be individuals with a really awful viewpoint about individuality, but they’re still people, not things.
My greatest fear is what might be done, or might NEED be done to defeat the cheat.
More than once, I’ve seen the Insurrection Act brought up.
I truly worry that a good man (!) may decide “We have to destroy the Republic in order to save it.”
This experiment of, by and for the people might never be fully relit if quenched.
The quenching already happened; this year just made it obvious.
It is already quenched. It is up to all of us to hold it in our hearts until we can relight it.
Yeah but he’s like, really rude, so I’m going to vote for Biden.
Biden is really rude, too. Just watch what happens when somebody disagrees.
Pretty classic in cognitive decline folks – he’s never had a long fuse, but whatever self-restraint China Joe once had is long gone.
Yep — it is a defense mechanism, a way of changing the subject to hide incapacity.
~
Also changes in the brain make the whole emotional control thing a lot harder – those neurons are included in what has died off, so there less left to exert emotional control.
It is really sad they propped up such a sick old man for this.
They deserve. They disagree, not with Biden, but with the Narrative.
Exactly! It’s all a matter of to whom one is rude. Trump was rude to Very Self-important People! Biden is rude to Deplorable People.
I recall hearing that Trump was a great tipper and always connected with working people – bricklayers, concrete pourers, greenskeepers, doormen! Not salarymen but the kind of people who carry their own bags, who have to show up, in all kinds of conditions, to get their pay!
You know: Losers.
~
I hear rumours that Trump is even rude to people with college degrees and courteous to people without them!
~
So am I. OFTEN.
Apparently he used to run around with hundred dollar bills, and give them out to anyone he found doing a good job on one of his properties or businesses. He also asked people on the bottom tier to give their honest opinions, and used that as important info.
It might be interesting to dig down to see whether he ever brought in McKinsey & Company for consulting … and if so, did he ever use them again?
~
“We have to destroy the Republic in order to save it.”
Yep – a homegrown General Francisco Franco riding at the head of a US Armored Division as he makes a Thunder Run into Downtown DC to “save” the “Republic”.
What’s the Dr. Strange quote? “I looked forward in time. I saw 14,000,605 futures.”
I fear many of those feature those Abrams and Bradleys pushing across the beltway and into the capital.
“Yep – a homegrown General Francisco Franco riding …”
OTOH, a home-grown General Pinochet might be an acceptable risk, especially if he privatizes Social Security like Chile’s did.
It isn’t as if this nation hasn’t got plenty of folk whose disappearance wouldn’t improve the national atmosphere like a scooper in a kitty litter box.
~
It took nearly 1800 years, but the Roman Republic became the inspiration for the American Republic. Maybe we’re on the cusp of a new dark age, but you can’t kill an idea and eventually the American Republic will stand as the inspiration for a new Republic, which enshrines the fundamental rights of man. Maybe here on Earth, maybe on Mars or Titan, maybe out in the galaxy somewhere.
Very similar to how I’ve been feeling ever since the election. That the time will soon come that we have to take direct action — but to act too soon would be catastrophic, and to wait too late will be a different kind of disaster, and will we recognize the signal of “now is the time” when we see it.
Thus my feeling of being in suspension, and that terrible feeling of can we just get it over and done with? Not eagerness, like I’ve seen in a few places, but wanting to make the pain quick instead of a long and drawn out misery.
a) Wanting to get the pain over fast, even if costly, is an American cultural trait.
b) Sensing for these really weird potential conflicts might be an advantage for people of the American culture.
c) Democrat decision makers appear really isolated from the mainstream of American culture, and possibly foreign. This may prove a crippling weakness.
I suspect that if we merely exercise patience, time will reveal itself as it ought to. Yes, there’s the potential to wait too long. But I suspect that we’ll have a clear and obvious flashpoint (or possibly even multiple flashpoints) in the not too distant future as the Left ends up cracking down too hard on a protest by black white supremacists or some similar event.
Hon. They’ve already locked us in our houses and made us wear a face diaper of submission.
…… flashpoint over a protest? Nah, bra.
I was contemplating the MSM criticism of Trump’s “failure to mask” and realized that they’d have attacked him for wearing one, pointing out it was ineffective and proved he wasn’t taking safety seriously, trying to sell the public a placebo instead of taking real measures.
NEVER make the mistake of thinking the Left is criticizing in good faith. They didn’t after the Iraq invasion, they aren’t now with the WuFlu, and they never will.
~
OK, this highlights one of the things I do not get:
President Trump caught the bug. President Trump got over the bug. President Trump thus cannot give it or get it. WTF is a mask for on President Trump?
Same for the First Lady. Same for Senator Paul. Same for anyone else who got over it. WTF?
Per the Johns Hopkins dashboard as of Dec 19th, there have been 17,495,296 confirmed cases in the US.
Note that serology surveys back in June when the confirmed by test number was 2.2m came up with 5% to 8% of the population positive for antibodies across the US, or 17m to 26m, on the order of 10x the positive-by-test result have antibodies for the bug.
As of Dec 19th, the Johns Hopkins dashboard says we’ve had 313,588 deaths, so subtracting deaths from positives there are a minimum of 17,181,708 people in the US who have tested positive and did not die, presumably recovering – save the 114k folks currently hospitalized, and some number currently ill at home, so let’s round down to 16m.
Given the seroprevalence surveys multiple of positive tests to people with antibodies, there could be on the order of 10x that or 160m people in the US with antibodies.
So anything from 4.8% to 48% of the US population, or close enough to 1 in 20 to 1 in 2, have caught the bug, got over the bug, and can neither get the bug or give the bug to someone else.
So what are masks on those people for again?
Why are we not doing seroprevalence testing and issuing get-out-of-mask wristbands or somesuch, so people with no risk and no danger to others can go about their lives? Why waste scarce immunization doses on people who already have antibodies – why not immunize only people who need it?
I don’t get it.
Because you’re thinking in terms of measures that would be effective at limiting the spread of a disease, and preventing a very few people from dying of this particular variant of the common cold. That is not the purpose of any of these mask-and-lockup decrees. Our so-called leaders are doing this to us because they can, and they see it as permanent. Corona virus is just an excuse. There will always be another cold, another flu, another excuse to subject us to their petty power. This will never end, until WE end it.
End them, surely. In a constitutional way, of course.
That would be nice. But it’s looking less possible every day.
The constitutional way? Yeah. The other…. these things always take longer than we expect.
They’re already wiping their asses with the Constitution, and they haven’t even stacked the Supreme Court yet. If Georgia goes down, there will BE no legal recourses.
Unfortunately, yes.
A small portion of those who’ve recovered don’t have antibodies, and one was found to be re-infected, without symptoms. No idea how many replications they used to GET that positive result, so he may not have been able to infect anybody.
But.
Now masks are totems.
Considering how bad the tests are and how many replications they’re doing, I suspect the ones who don’t have antibodies never had it, and the one who was “reinfected” just tested on the fragments of his infection.
That’s right. Immunity doesn’t mean complete freedom from the virus, just that your immune system destroys them before they can get into your cells and replicate. With the tests they’re using, a few bits of destroyed virus will produce a positive result.
They’re determined to keep us under their thumbs until the last corona virus dies of old age.
I’ve seen papers on two “reinfections”:
The first one with lots of data was a guy who had it in China, recovered, then traveled to Spain and on return tested positive though asymptomatic. They know it was a “reinfection” because it had slightly different RNA than the first one he had, but he was asymptomatic and as far as they could tell was not infective to others – basically the slightly different C19 virus got into him and started replicating but his immune system was in the process of killing it off. That guy isolated but stayed asymptomatic.
The second was kind of a drive-by mention in a paper on another topic, and they were not clear on much of anything.
I’ve also seen press accounts (Hahahahaha! Sorry.) There was Some Dude in Argentina that was touted as the first reinfection in South America. There was Some Dude in SoCal that tested positive again (see above re test replication iterations). And so on.
If there’s no sustained immunity from being infected and recovering, then any vaccine is useless, and we just have to send the old folks over the top and take the casualties.
If there’s such a thing as immunity, then getting better is just as efficacious as getting the vax.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll get the vax as soon as I can, and my elderly Mom will get it well before me, but this whole ‘skipping past the immunity acquired the old fashioned way’ thing is just pure crap.
A while back I read an article indicating that anti-bodies don’t stick around for more than a couple of months, but the body creates T-Cells that can produce the needed antibodies if the virus shows up again. That might allow for a reinfection (since the anti-bodies disappear) while at the same time allowing for a faster than normal response to a reinfection (since the T-Cells recognize the reinfection, and start producing anti-bodies much more quickly) – assuming that nothing has gone wrong with your immune system in the meantime. Supposedly, the researchers who identified the needed T-Cells also noted that a good chunk of the blood samples that they were working with that pre-dated 2020 already had the needed T-Cells, indicating that at least one of the “common cold” viruses had been somewhat similar.
That was noted in a lot of the “no antibodies” stuff– the people who didn’t get antibodies, and didn’t get sick, tended to have a very strong t-cell response. Assumed from prior corona virus exposure.
Basically, their system was working well enough they never NEEDED to make antibodies.
Regarding T-cell and prior different bug immunity: The 4.8 to 48% results from my analysis above represent a minimum from direct immunity as a result of infection by this bug. The immune response from other prior similar-enough bugs is an absolute proven fact, and those numbers would get stacked on top of the 4.8% floor or 48% very rough estimate.
My point is the mask thing makes sense in hospitals where the immune systems of patients fighting infection A can’t handle getting exposed to another virus or bacteria that a given hospital worker is shedding.
But out in the world, neither the infection numbers nor the empirical efficacy appear to be correlated with mask use or lockdowns – see CA on the Carnegie Mellon Delphi maps at https://delphi.cmu.edu/covidcast/?sensor=fb-survey-smoothed_wearing_mask&level=state&date=20201201&signalType=value&encoding=color&mode=overview®ion=06085 where mask use statewide the first week of December was 95%, mobility tracking shows the lockdowns with most people staying home (away from home 6+ hrs at less than 5%, from 3 to 6 hrs less than 7%), yet we have our current spike up to 6% of the pop being admitted to hospitals for C19.
Almost like masks and lockdowns don’t work.
To be clear, that last stat is Santa Clara County has 5.94% of all hospital admissions currently related to C19, which is up.
Trying to enforce that might cause such a flashpoint.
In any case, for the time being, protests are still allowed, and judges seem inclined to back the protestors in those instances when the local governments try and force the protestors to go home.
Jim Eastham- not a writer, don’t have cool symbol to left, retired industry lawyer. Just wanted say today’s situation is beyond dire. T National Socialists (another accurate term) have stolen the election, and soon I fear the Senate. Censorship and false news are all pervasive. THIS CANNOT STAND!! Back with much later if welcome.
Point of order, sir. Whatever they say this is international socialism. They’re doing this to the entire world. Look at the fake Brexit, etc.
You view the Constitution as a fixed set of rules. People like Fauci don’t. In their world, rules flex to fit the Narrative, and even then, what rules apply to whom are based on power and connections, not something that applies to everyone.
That’s why usually get angry if they finally get caught doing something wrong, and seldom show remorse. Because in their world, they haven’t *done* anything wrong; “right and wrong” are based on blat, not fixed law.
Do not forget The Bill Of No Rights.
Leftroids are attempting to replace our Constitutionally guaranteed Rights with those non-rights — but only for their anointed victim groups.
Living in ‘poverty’ in a prosperous society is far more comfortable and secure than their vision of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’.
———————————
Does the Left drive those idiots barking mad, or were they drawn to the Left because they were already batshit crazy?
I agree. I’ve been poor in the US. It was better than being middle class in Portugal. (Well, save for when we managed to ACTUALLY go hungry for a year. But that took….. a series of bizarre events.)
People who are free can escape poverty. People who are not free will inevitably be reduced to a state of poverty.
There was a report I saw quite a while back that compared incomes in the US with those in Europe. In all but one or two US states, incomes were greater than in even the most well-to-do countries in Europe. And in the one or two states where that wasn’t the case, the standard of living was still higher than in Europe.
Sadly, I can’t remember where I saw the report.
Breaking this in two to hopefully avoid the filter:
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/us-gdp-per-capita-by-state-vs-european-countries-and-japan-korea-mexico-and-china-and-some-lessons-for-the-donald/
most European countries (including Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Belgium) if they joined the US, would rank among the poorest one-third of US states on a per-capita GDP basis, and the UK, France, Japan and New Zealand would all rank among America’s very poorest states, below No. 47 West Virginia, and not too far above No. 50 Mississippi. Countries like Italy, S. Korea, Spain, Portugal and Greece would each rank below Mississippi as the poorest states in the country.
Well, caught in the filter, but for whenever they get pushed through:
https://mises.org/wire/these-us-states-have-higher-incomes-nearly-every-european-country
That’s why they hate us so much. We do everything ‘wrong’ and are more successful than their ‘ideal societies’. They still can’t figure out why the Soviet Union imploded after they did everything Right!
Something to keep in mind from thedonald:
Never forget that our enemy is not all-powerful, no matter how much they may act like it.
newsmax too????
After the 14th they started calling Biden by his fake title.
<Rolls eyes. He'll NEVER be that. Ever.
If I ever call him that it will be in a piece in which I refer to myself as the Queen of the Known World.
I know the only way he “won” was cheating on a massive scale, with someone (names will come out) hitting the panic button at 4am to kick him over the top when he was still clearly losing after all the cheats, but my objection to the whole “The Dogs Of The President-Elect” thing was actually purely pedantic – nobody is “-Elect” until the Electors meet and vote, so they were just making shit up beore then.
China Joe’s cheating gained him enough Electors, so I’ll give NewsMax that one.
They decided to call Biden “president elect”. I don’t watch them so I don’t know if that’s all or if it’s enoough to abandon them.
also OANN has prettier reporters anyway…
For general news I like NTD (sister op to the Epoch Times). Quietly pro-Trump, unabashedly pro-America, and never miss a chance to ever-so-gently piss on the CCP’s shoes. (Eg. COVID is invariably referred to as “the CCP virus”.)
–
And, because they have to believe they are ‘the bestest and brightest’ they can’t accept that anybody else gained their positions by demonstrating ability and responsibility. They are incompetent, therefore no one can be competent.
Which explains much of why they are so ready to bow down to the blithering incompetents that are running our country right now. There are a few exceptions, but far too many people are unable to see them as exceptions, or understand why they are exceptions.
———————————
Most days, I suspect that we could get a better government by picking 535 people at random. On bad days, I’m certain we’d get a better government by picking 535 people at random from lunatic asylums.
I particularly felt this paragraph. SO MUCH of the publishing industry including the “darlings.”
That sounds like my Powerball Election System… if nothing else, it would be a *representative* government…
Reading this reminded me of a dialogue from a few days ago … good advice from a member of the Instapundit regular commentariat, Boyd. This isn’t just about politics – preparing to go down the road Sarah & Sarah are mapping here gets personal if we are going to survive the trip.
I’ll be honest. I don’t think we have TIME for that. I think events will hit us HARD within two years.
What you’re saying doesn’t hurt, particularly after or if it’s prolonged.
BUT I’m going to add a first step: Get safe. We’re in dying and occupied Denver, we’re unable to move for a year, but we’re starting to prepare.
In the same vein? Get safe. Friends who might be on the other side? Make sure they don’t know where you are. Make sure you have somewhere to run to. And for some of the people reading this and FAR more personal: Make sure you’re safe from your family.
I wish I were joking, but when things go really ugly, true believers turn in their families.
Each action you can take, to lessen your obligation and/or dependence on both public institutions and private organizations, and/or maintain flexibility in employment and location, removes a handle that the Powers that Be can tightly grab to jerk you around.
The panic-demic illustrates this … even when local law enforcement refuses, the Powers that Be use businesses to enforce their mask-querades and social-ditziness upon us, using their various business licensing as handles to compel their (and our) compliance.
Trusting in family and friends who both value your life and liberty, and have minimized their own set of handles, is another story entirely. We need such interdependence.
They don’t even have to be True Believers in the particular branch of insanity in play to do this. They just need to believe in a principle that makes your “crime” of not jumping when the state says boo! far worse than said boo!-speaking.
You’re not joking. I wish you were too.
I’ll add one on get safe: Make sure no one knows what you have. Preps of all sorts are your business and no one else’s. No photos of your stacks of TP posted on Zuckerbook to brag. Stay low profile. Keep your lips zipped.
Something peculiar today:
http://blog.jim.com/uncategorized/this-blog-is-going-down/
This guy is harsh, but in my observation rarely wrong. Paranoid? I dunno.
Very paranoid. Also, I’m going to assume he never experienced a leftist take over (I don’t feel like reading the rest of the posts) can’t picture it over a nation this size, and doesn’t know how fucking incompetent the left is.
No, seriously. IF they take over, and are unopposed, I expect this blog (daily hits between 4 and 10 k individual (it exploded about three months ago, for some reason)) to stay up and unmolested for at least a year. And it will be two years or never before they go after my fiction.
I also think their chances of going after EVERYONE ever in a nation this size, with this population? Close to zero.
They’re not that efficient, and we’re too decentralized.
So, yeah. POWERFULLY and insanely paranoid.
There are somewhere between 74 and 80 million peope who voted for Trump. Plus their families and other people who didn’t vote for one reason or another. A bunch will squish out but if any percentage of them are resisting there will be way too many targets. Also they probably do have to keep the useful idiots (like most of my relatives) in the dark, so certain actions are probably off the table.
I BET you it’s closer to 100 million. No, I’m not crazy cakes. The Chavez software seemed to be CONVERTING votes.
That is just one of its many, many ‘features’.
Maybe some comedian can come up with a Ronco-style sales pitch for the Don’t-minion vote stealing machines? “It switches! It doubles! It accepts secret piles of totally valid ballots at 3 AM when counting is officially shut down! The servers in Germany can be directed to return the ‘right’ result no matter what those unruly voters have done! Act now, and we’ll include two extra backdoor passcodes at no extra cost!”
The Leftroids are still bleating ‘there was no election fraud’. There’s a raft of articles calling Ron Johnson delusional for pointing it out, and for calling out Peters (Demented — MI) on spreading the ‘Russian disinformation’ lie. I saw the video clip, and cheered. He should have finished with “Where is your decency? Where is your SHAME?”
And even if one were to take the vote total numbers as not faked (Hah!) that means the China JHoe ticket only got 38% of the registered voters – so ONE HUNDRED THIRTY THREE MILLION FOUR HUNDRED SIXTY FIVE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED FIFTY registered voters did not vote for China JHoe.
133,465,150 registered voters can’t be wrong.
But it’s more than that. Even the best organized totalitarian regimes can’t get the granularity they need. They count on hitting one dissident in ten and the others shutting up.
A) I don’t think that happens in the US, not now.
B) Here it will be more one in 100, and every time they hit one, more pop up.
But then this guy has apparently very weird ideas (from looking at comments) about men and women, and what’s causing the problems between us and the population crash.
And the reason I object to his bizarre vision that “we need to have” (basically sharia law) “because a society that doesn’t control the sexual apetites of women dissolves”
Is that he has not fucking clue what women WANT. He’s making the same assumption as the left, that women want to have lots of sex, all the time.
The truth is, most women want the RELATIONSHIP, which is a completely different mechanic, and are being pushed by the culture to “all sex all the time.”
You don’t need sharia. You need permission for women to say no. And to be women.
So, that guy has some VERY BASIC issues with his perception of reality.
My guess is he he took the lefty version and turned it on its head. But the opposite of a wholesale lie is STILL a lie.
You don’t need sharia. You need permission for women to say no. And to be women.
We had that once, when Christian cultural assumptions an American cultural assumptions were congruent.
And the feminists stole that from us.
And you’re not wrong. But the solution is not to go crazy in yet another way, and one that has created human misery for hundreds of years.
“The truth is, most women want the RELATIONSHIP”
Even after (checks fingers) SEVENTY or more years of being told otherwise, that relationships with men never work?
You write as if millions of years of evolution cannot be overwritten in a fortnight.
Besides, plenty of women want meaningless, mechanical sex without relationships — I saw this movie in which a bevy of gorgeous women absolutely DEVOURED this pizza delivery guy, s you know it must be true.
~
“I object to pornography because it gives people completely unrealistic expectations of how long it will take their pizzas to be delivered.”
Ew. I mean, come on. Cannibalism? Yikes/
Dude…. it’s Jim. He used to stink up Armed and Dangerous on a regular basis. He really is a racist and sexist, proving that there is still something to those words other than “You are not One with The Party”.
The flip-side is that he would often say Damned Facts that have been kicked out of polite company. Which is why you shouldn’t kick facts out of polite company…
When have you ever seen a polite fact? 😛
Facts don’t ask permission, and they never apologize. Facts remain true no matter how many people wish they weren’t, or how inconvenient some find them. Which is why so many prefer convenient lies.
———————————
“I have never known the truth or Delenn to speak only when it is appropriate.”
It’s part of the sea-saw effect.
First, you had folks being polite, in as much as they would not wish to be seen as saying something in order to cause someone distress.
This was then yanked on by people using “hypocrisy” and “liar” for when they’d claim something was “just being honest” even if it was obvious they wanted to hurt someone.
This was responded to by having “polite conversation” where saying anything controversial is bad, because the jerks cannot be fully removed unless they really can’t control themselves.
*************
There’s a reason so many people agree with the observation about those who pride themselves on being brutally honest generally being more brutal than honest.
Truth isn’t opposed to charity—and someone who really supports the truth is going to want to try to reach those who a more direct phrasing would turn away.
The problem is identifying who is just not hearing what you’re saying, and who hears you just fine but rejects it.
I identify as brutal, but I’m not sure I’m effective at it.
There’s a failure mode where I get so mad at falsehoods that I want to hurt people, I look for hurtful things to say, and they wind up being false enough that I should not be saying them.
Real truth is necessary to deal liars a real defeat. Tactical falsehoods do not last.
‘What are right mores to deal with the current mixture of believers’ is an interesting question.
You tend to come across as outraged, not brutal.
Does anyone know what happened to Armed and Dangerous? esr dropped out of sight in September.
Screw up on ibiblio’s end (most likely incompetence, not malice), then forgotten about because he has been busy with various projects.
>> “Screw up on ibiblio’s end”
I was planning to ask you about ESR’s absence myself. I know he doesn’t post that often, but leaving the blog screwed up for this long and not being able to find anything recent on him in a search was making me fear something had happened to him. Does he really care THAT little about the blog?
What’s he been doing that tied him up so completely all this time?
I’ve been reading him a bit over four years. He was the first I saw predicting (several months before the deed) that if the Dems manage to steal this election, in due course Trump is likely to be arrested and Epsteined. And now what do we hear as the top loudmouth-Dem fantasy? Yep.
For most of us, yeah, overly paranoid, if only because as you say they’re dumb and we’re decentralized… and we control all the resources. (Myself, I’m safe from anything short of a poorly aimed nuke.) But for those living inside leftist strongholds, who might have once expressed wrongthink? maybe not so far off target.
BTW friend in Edmonton tells me they’re now enforcing a $1000 fine for visiting your own elderly parents.
Reziac,
A LOT OF US WERE PREDICTING IT. A blind man could see it. I was predicting it TWO years ago.
People just kept telling me I was insane.
Remember, if they can do it to Trump, they can do it to anyone, and they fully intend to.
The Dems have been trying to find an excuse to arrest Trump since he won the Republican primary. Remember that Obama was spying on Trump’s campaign even before the general election. Two years later, Congressman Nadler was overheard having a VERY vocal conversation on his phone while using public transit about essentially finding excuses to impeach Trump. The fact that the swamp (and not just the Dems; this includes Republicans like Ryan) has been looking for any excuse that it can find to punish Trump for beating Hillary is no secret, and hasn’t been ever since he beat Hillary.
Which reminds me, even with all of the current mess, there’s still one good thing that’s come out of it.
Hillary Clinton will NEVER be President of the United States!
It’s a leftist fantasy interrupt. That’s why even legal journals are all publishing deep legal analysis stories titled “Can President Trump Really Pardon Himself?”
Pardon himself for what?
For being Orange Man Bad, obviously. Or President while Republican. Or trying to end all the endless wars. Or making middle east peace. Or the miracle of the less-than-a-year Chinese Virus vaccines under Operation Warp Speed.
The double jeopardy principle means he can’t be tried again for talking to Ukraine, not a crime in the first place, as they gave it their best shot and he was acquitted (btw said impeachment lunacy distracting everyone from the looming Chinese Virus threat).
And he pardoned Flynn, in a quid pro quo in return for…nothing. Oh, he fired Comey, who since firing has proven he very much needed to be fired since he was an active part of an organized conspiracy to overturn a legal election, also known as a coup d’état. Besides all those people in the Executive branch serve at the pleasure of the President, which means he can fire them all at whim with no reason whatsoever.
You cannot be pardoned for crimes not committed. That is why I think President Trump should issue a pardon to China Joe and make him go to court to prove he didn’t commit the crimes of being an unregistered foreign agent and selling access to his official capacity in Federal office to foreigners in return for money paid to his family. He should pardon Comey too, and make him go to court. And all the rat bastard criminals which a China Joe DOJ will never go after. Tar them with the brush of a Presidential Pardon.
Col. Kurt made a similar point this week, though he wants all the Trump Admin officials to get a blanket pardon as well. I’m OK with that.
Pardon Them All.
“The double jeopardy principle means he can’t be tried again for talking to Ukraine, not a crime in the first place, as they gave it their best shot and he was acquitted (btw said impeachment lunacy distracting everyone from the looming Chinese Virus threat).”
Yeah, New York passed a law specifically saying that unlike previously, a federal pardon didn’t mean you couldn’t be charged using all the same “evidence” at the state level.
The thing is, someone’s going to be the lucky scapegoat.
Sure, but Mary, honestly? First, MUCH bigger fish. Anyone who served with Trump, even the traitors in his administration are at higher risk (and serves them right.)
Then people like Tucker Carlson and such.
Hell, you know, their own side will get hit first on imaginary crimes, because they want to get rid of the “soft” ones.
People me like or him?
WAAAYYYY down the list.
Also, there will probably be lots of fratricidal stuff going on, as well. One of the best ways to ensure that people stick with the radical left is to remove anyone on the left who sounds slight more sane (for example, Tulsi Gabbard). Someone who’d never vote for a Republican, but who is disturbed about the direction that the country is taking, might be willing to follow a more sane-sounding Democrat. Making such individuals disappear is a logical way for the radicals to avoid potential threats in the future.
A counter-balancing factor.
We have already seen BLM victims wail about their signs.
Tulsi may be safe; she has no spine, as she’s twice demonstrated when asked a hard question … she instantly retreated into the party line. (Liked her a lot better before I saw those interviews.) That’s the leading feature of Democrats… when threatened by the big boss, they fall in line immediately, and clap ever harder.
Gabbard’s almost as big of a lefty as the other candidates. But she seems to be a *bit* more sensible in most of her public statements. I wouldn’t trust her with power. But she seems to have a greater degree of awareness of what the public will accept.
And she wrecked Harris’s chance of winning the nomination this year.
For all the good that did us.
Gabbard seems to be positioning herself as “the person who is reasonable and blameless for all this stuff,” as well as doing a little payback. If everybody else in the higher-up Democrat ranks gets arrested, she’ll be well-placed to become a leader of whomever is left.
I was really expecting Michael Bloomberg to some swanning back in at the last moment to snap up the nomination. At least he wasn’t bitshit crazy like every other Democratic contender. But the DNC went with The Crazy; they used a senile old pol long past his sell-by date, as a front man to calm the Democrat voters who were wondering “WTD, dude!?”, stuck the craziest of the contenders to him as VP, and announced they’ll put most of the rest of the crazies in high positions.
Biden never seems to talk about any long term plans; perhaps part of the deal is that he’s supposed to resign for “health reasons” or something.
I mean, he as much as said to a journalist recently that if he and Kamala have a “moral disagreement” he’ll do what he intended to do if he and Obama ever had one: “develop a health condition and resign”
Which made me go WTF. Even setting aside the “Okay, so you’re saying you have NO SPINE AT ALL (not that this is a shock to anyone with even a minimally functioning intellect), but…WTF?!?!”
“if he and Kamala have a `moral disagreement` he’ll do …”
In order for that to go into effect wouldn’t at least one of them have to develop morals? Or at least, a moral?
I foresee little risk of that occurring.
~
G’Kar: “You’ve picked a terrible moment in your social evolution to develop principles. Perhaps you can start with something simpler. The moral equivalent of the opposable thumb, for instance.”
Ah, I do love G’kar. So much. Especially after HE developed his morals, heh. (But still remained a rogue at heart. That actor was so perfect in that role.)
That would depend on how much the leadership maintains control over their people.
The random scum would be happy going after him. Leadership is probably happy letting him keep his thirty pieces.
As my husband pointed out, the left always hits the turncoats TO their side first. They figure they can’t trust them.
Yep – that Lincoln project guy would do well to invest in knife-proof underclothing for those Dem cocktail parties he’ll be going to now…
As the French and Russian revolutions proved, nothing so orderly as a list.
Speaking of lucky scapegoats, I expect that the various actual investigations (i.e. not just Congressional Hearings) will actually be allowed to move forward under the well known and proven legal principle of “The New York Times Will Shield Us – We’re Dems” (quashing all of the election investigations would be very, very obvious, and derail the agenda of whatever the heck China Joe is being muppeted into saying this week), and as they get close to proving things, suddenly we’ll see a rash of Epsteining among election workers, state employees, and line programmers at Dominion, all, of course, to be blamed on Chinese Virus Fatigue.
And I’m starting to think the Hunter Crackhead McStripperImpregnator will Epstein as well. The question is will that push China Joe into further decline so obvious that even his muppetmasters have to abandon him.
blog.jim,com now comes up:
Looks like he had to move…
I keep expecting Himself to take a hand at some point. In the meantime, I’ve taken to carrying a copy of John 14:27 with me for comfort.
In due course. No man knows the hour.
“But when these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is near.”
OTOH, when I look at this as the end times, I consider how the worst may have hit in China, but hasn’t hit here yet. . . .
Advent is great for this. We talk not only about Christ’s first coming, but His second. It’s good to think on the eternal when the temporal gets too ugly. Not that it’s easy to do.
I don’t know if he will, or if we will for a while have to do what my grandmother called “eat the bread the devil kneaded.”
It might — gulp — in the end be up to us.
“I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
Then He acts through His instruments.
As I was telling my honest car repair guy today: “Just remember God’s Perfect Plan, requires us imperfect people”. This is one of the great paradoxes of the universe. (the car repair guy is honest. He is a treasure.)
Just remember Han Solo: “Bring ’em on; I prefer a straight fight to all this sneaking around!”
It can be done. It will be done. America is a dream, and people will fight for it. With luck – just enough.
Just remember: When Peter is walking on water poorly, Jesus does not calm the storm, until they are back in the boat.
To clarify, I believe Himself could take a hand without it being the end times.
What Sarah said — both of them.
I commented elsewhere on “why kamikaze pilots wore helmets” (regulations!), and went off exploring the history of the hachimaki headbands, which go waaay back. They carry a lot of baggage in Japanese culture.
Yeah. “All your culture are belong to U.S.”
I ordered some yellow cloth and paint a few minutes ago. My craft-fu is poor, but I’ll soon have a snek hachimaki. I suspect most of the Gadsden flags carried by Revolutionary War infantry and ships were hand-painted, and some of their creators were no better at it than I am… And it was the first American flag, after all.
I’m seeing more Gadsden and Goliad flags around here. FWIW.
I think the Gadsden will become our symbol.
Also, note I don’t put this in the main post, but pass it around: Have a candle on your window. Keep that light on. (It can be electric, natch.) In the dark times help others have hope. It’s an homage to Solidarity and encouragement to our comrades all over the world. Light a candle for Liberty!
No doubt of that. The vast (and slightly ‘tarded) creativity of the intertubez has been unleashed upon the task of making endless variants of the concept.
*twitching*
Polish Solidarity. One of the hammers that brought the commies down. I do understand the twitch, but that’s what I was referring to.
reeee
I’m pretty partial to the Sons of Liberty flag.
Today, on a freeway overpass I saw the American Flag with the Gasden snake and motto stenciled over the red & white stripes. This in deep blue California – driving from Santa Clara to Monterey.
I’m not sure any place is deep blue anymore. I think some just fraud harder.
judging by the pro-mask/lockdown comments on Nextdoor there’re quite a few people who truly believe. sigh… I limit my interactions in such discussions to three fact-filled, reference filled entries and stop. Just not worth it.
Honestly? Nextdoor is a hive of inanity. Husband kind of looks at it. I dont’ even have an account.
I signed up to mine at the beginning of the virus idiocy to see where the local Karens were. I was not a little relieved to learn that nobody here actually uses it…
Nextdoor App.
Local one, even tho Eugene, has been relatively sane. Maybe because it supposedly is the “Santa Clara” subdivision, mostly. We do have some Karen’s poking in, but they have been getting down voted, blocked, or told off. The Virus was a minor point they got hammered on before stopping. Letting felines roam outside house or catico got some nailed, mostly in response to lost, or found, cats, or cats found not-living. Those comments have stopped cold too.
Now they are more supportive of personal choice. Essentially the Karen community got told “When the LAW legally disallows roaming cats, then you can (B*) whine, until then STFU. Also, FYI harm to a roaming feline is a legal offense. You can harass off your property. You can’t harm or relocate.” I, and others, might have hinted our cats have GPS tracking on them. (Ours, not yet, but if I do, it’ll because I’m dang tired of replacing collars. Right now he’s just losing them in the house. But soon he’ll be losing them outside. We’re starting taking them out in kitty harnesses.) We don’t have the problem with wildlife, other than turkeys. Although given this year … 2020 isn’t done yet.
I’m sympathetic. Love to keep the cats in the house, or at least limited to our property. I only get 1/3 of the vote in this household. Cats don’t get a vote, technically.
The Ragefull One speaks:
How bad is it that I’m way angrier than someone who glories in the handle “rageaholic”?
Seems reasonable to me.
He’s young, possibly single, may have the spiritual gifts to do something, and may be preparing, instead of only being able to spend energies on stewing. When it doesn’t feel like I can do anything I just get angrier and angrier.
It helps me to remember that God must’ve had a reason for giving me this personality and these biases in mental process. If He didn’t give me the strengths to do a good job at what I can see needs doing right away, He must have had some purpose in mind. And I can see how some of my strengths can be applied to some of the longer term needs. But it is hugely, hugely frustrating.
He has a girlfriend; she shows up in streams from time to time.
Something that has been coming to my mind is that the reason we are what we are is not for us. It’s for other people. Why do I have a variety of heart conditions that prevented me from serving my country? Possibly because my children needed me to be who I am now, for something they will be in the future.
>> “How bad is it that I’m way angrier than someone who glories in the handle “rageaholic”?c”
That actually came up in a stream of his a while back. Terren Gell (Razor’s occasional partner/sidekick) came up with the name when they were getting started and brainstorming for names. Razor didn’t actually care for it much as I recall, but it sort of stuck anyway.
Yeah, I know, that’s not really the point, but “rageaholic” wasn’t Razor’s idea.
Nick Rekieta of Rekieta Law has some pretty strong words about the Supremes:
A politician doesn’t feel safe? Isn’t that the point?
From now on I’m stealing the communist word for believers in the same cause…
Sounds like a good idea, especially given we’ve already stolen the Hard Left’s former Red as our signature color (with some contrivance from others).
And if any “disambiguation” is ever required, let’s make it: comrades in freedom.
Maybe it’s just me, but I really like the sound of that. As well as the “candle in the window” symbolism, and signal. (Come to think of it, perhaps the old Solidarity flag might be useful as an alternate to the Gadsden, because most elements of the Doofus Left will have no clue what that one means… or got done, or against what.)
Christmas lights, all year round.
https://www.gettysburgflag.com/flags-banners/solidarity-flag
Of course, husband is from New England: https://www.gettysburgflag.com/media/catalog/product/cache/2/small_image/460×368/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/6/4/64_1.jpg
Thinking our friends from TX should be flying this one:
https://www.gettysburgflag.com/flags-banners/alamo-1824-flag
We prefer this one….
https://www.gettysburgflag.com/flags-banners/come-take-it-flag
The interesting thing about the Alamo 1834 flag – supposing that one such did fly over the Alamo – was that it wasn’t an American flag at all. It was a Mexican flag, and the “1824” refers to the Mexican Constitution of 1824, and which was very heavily based on the American Constitution. It was the banner of the Mexican “Federalist” faction, which favored a loose confederation of more or less independent Mexican states. They were opposed by the “Centralist” faction, which preferred a strong central, top-down government from Mexico city, and none of this new-fangled local independence. The Mexican dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna came to power as a Federalist, changed his coat to the Centralist side, and abrogated the 1824 Constitution … whereupon half the Mexican states promptly rebelled – and Coahuila-Tejas was one of them, since so many of the settlers there were originally American (and with a good leavening of Tejano Federalists as well.) Santa Anna and his army came to Texas to put down the last of those rebelling Mexican states. The 1824 banner might very well have been flown by the rebellious Federalists at the Alamo. It was the last gasp of a Mexican civil war, in which American settlers in Texas had a very strong interest.
As for me, I prefer the Gonzalez “Come and Take It” banner.
Me? I like this one: https://www.gettysburgflag.com/flags-banners/huntington-liberty-flag-3×5
On a lighter note, one of my friends got me this flag for Christmas (scroll past the sponsored items at the top).
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=trump+flag+tank&ref=nb_sb_noss
I’m pondering a Pine Tree Flag.
Oh, great. Rabbit hole. Bu we know for a fact the second Daniel Hoyt (the first was born in England 100 years before the revolution) fought under this flag: http://www.1uptravel.com/flag/images/u/us-ct%5E2r.gif
BTW the third Daniel Hoyt fought in the civil war.
No, I have NO clue what Dan’s parents were thinking when they decided on the name. NONE.
I’m fond of “nakama” or “dachiko”, then again I am a weeaboo.
Yeah, but a lot of younger Americans understand the word “nakama.”
Maybe our apparent weakness stems from the fact that we’re NOT collectivists. We don’t agree on everything, we don’t all point in the same direction, and we don’t enforce the conformity of an anthill. We say many different things, and wrangle over them.
This leads our conformity-obsessed enemies to dismiss us as hopelessly divided. They cast out anybody with so much as one impure thought, so they can’t understand how we can cooperate without being a cooperative. How we can disagree on most things, but agree on a few central ideas. Most importantly, we can agree on the importance of disagreeing!
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At my house, the ‘things that go bump in the night’ are cats.
It continues to be Afraid: (politico)
https://archive.vn/XUOPh
They’re lucky if that’s all they call for. I’m calling for decorated lampposts. (so pretty for Christmas.)
Note that the Georgia county is refusing to turn over data for the audit. GRRRRR
So is Maricopa County. /sarc Gee, I can’t imagine what they’re so nervous about . . . /sarc off
Come to think of it, I’m going to re-iterate that It’s Afraid.
Because in the last few days on thedonald we have had a sharp uptick in the number of people talking about how memeing and putting pressure on the legislatures isn’t enough; that something more drastic is needed RIGHT NOW.
Some of those are the people who are demoralized. But that doesn’t explain all the brand new accounts coming in to ask if us fellow drumph supporters think he has failed and we need to start shooting.
Glowies. Glowies everywhere!
To be fair, some of them could be as angry a I am….
Ah, like this you mean!
Started the battle yesterday. Ordered a set of Rush Revere books and children’s DVDs from Heritage Foundation for the local grade school. The teacher is happy they are coming.
c4c
Always forgetting to hit the damned box…
Hey, everyone. The holiday rush is dying down for me so I finally have time to start reading/posting comments again.
How has everyone been? Anyone win 2020 bingo yet? None of you killed anybody in a read-off to the death, did you?
Oh, and I hear from the left that some orange madman is planning to make himself Supreme Galactic Overlord for life or something. How’s that working out so far?
>> “and yet she is my (a little younger) sister… So are all of you”
Um…
[checks beard]
[checks genetalia]
…I have questions, “sis.”
If you have not learned by now that there is no correlation between “gender” and “genitalia” there’s no hope for you. Off to the deplorable basket you go!
~
Ha! We were there already!
Don’t you mean *HERE* already? What is AtH if not a magnet for the weirder deplorables out there?
Sibling, in this case, bub.
That, I’ll take. 🙂
…Though I’m sufficiently younger than you that “nephew” or something might be more appropriate. But either way I guess it beats “weirdo who keeps hanging around for some reason.”
Off Topic (for the subject but not for the article title).
The Good News is “we are not alone in the Universe”.
The Bad News is “they are Klingons” (the original nasty ones). 😈
Eh, I kinda like the space russian mongols!
Roddenberry “toned down” them even in the Original Series. 😉
May the spirit of St. Augusto lift them above the waters….. Briefly.
The memesmiths are busy today
Amen!! Resist whenever possible. Fight when needed. Win.
Here’s an example of the quality of inspiringly competent leadership we have here in Silicon Valley: This was released yesterday from the Mayor of San Jose, Sam Liccardo, over NextDoor:
Stop the Spread, Lets Do It! If everyone does their part to #StoptheSpread of COVID-19, we will help lower ICU capacity, ensure health care workers can go to work safely, and protect our most vulnerable neighbors. Be smart, stay healthy, and wear a mask! Check out this musical PSA by Bay Area companies — [followed by a goofy video]
Yep, if we just stay locked up and wear masks we can help lower ICU capacity. Wait, what?
That’s what the national news said. “California ICUs at 0% capacity today . . . ” It took three more breathless sentences to find out what they meant was “100% capacity, 0 capacity remaining.”
And journalists wonder why no one pays attention to their pronouncements anymore?
On the CA state hospital stats dashboard page (go here and scroll down to “Impact on hospitals and ICUs”) one will note the currently reported number of ICU beds available as of December 20th is 1,353.
Which number, for Sarah’s readers in Rio Linda or J-school grads, is not zero.
Journalism is really one of the last career paths for the terminally innumerate.
Ooh, I bet I know how that works!
They’ve been using the “Seasonally Adjusted Available beds” — and this is flu season.
With no flu.
Nearly the same number of flu tests, but a fraction of the positives.
I also wonder how many people would have stayed home on the couch with a blanket and maybe some chicken soup if it were the same symptoms of flu, but expedite themselves on down to the hospital given the ongoing three-letter-media panic, getting admitted to a Med Surg bed because they are in fact just sick enough.
I would hope hospitals are cycling those folks through pretty quickly, which is why the numbers are actually pretty steady.
But it manifests as the flu, and the triggering “shortness of breath” symptom is also associated with anxiety…
My own premise is that I should stay away from any hospital as much as possible since that’s where all the sick people are.
also, that’s normal this time of year. Also, they had the severest and longest lockdowns. So, if they’re at capacity? Lockdowns don’t work.
Even my parents are buying into “We’re running out of hospital space because of COVID, and the people who aren’t following orders are hurting the rest of us.”
But, in all fairness and charity, we would not be seeing any news about public health problems if people had simply obeyed my public health order to euthanize Democrat activists when I first issued it.
Okay, Bob, I’m sorry. You too were right, I was wrong. (Words I never thought I’d type.)
2020: Making bitterly sarcastic obnoxious trolling look like reasonable policy discussion since 1/1/2020.
XD
I know, right?
Sigh. Mine too.
Lockdowns work just fine. They keep the proles in line, and scared, and dependent on the government. They destroy small businesses and the middle class, while feeding the self-importance of pompous politicians and making the elitists richer. They make celebrities of bureaucratic nonentities like former doctor Fauci. They give the mass media something to fill up screen time and spread panic amongst their captive audience…
What? You meant they don’t keep people from catching the common cold? Well, that’s obvious.
———————————
“The Science Is Settled!!” we are told, again and again — but then ‘The Science!’ changes every week, and somehow it’s always exactly what the politicians need it to be.
Not just Fauci – they elevate and reinforce the stature and egos of all those local Public Health Officers who previously dealt with STD outbreaks in long-suffered anonymity. Now they have taken their rightful place as Public Figures With Power.
Why would they do anything to end that spotlight?
Well, you could ask the ones in places like CA who were smart enough to realize that defiant businesses might start serving as bait and resigned.
lower ICU …. what?
International Communist Units.
Right?
We wish.
Or higher, you know. Helicopters… 😉
“Helicopter Rides Half Off!”
intensive Care unit – the place where a patient gets the most monitoring of their condition, by Nurses who are trained a little better than the average floor nurse. The problem is not machines, the problem is not enough ICU nurses. (or at least not enough extra to give them a cushion for a terrible event like a mass shooting)
<rolls eyes. Not true. We do have an "expandable" circle.
And again, what I'm hearing from EVERYWHERE is that ICU is remarkably empty for flu season when it usually runs at capacity. One of the doctors who comments here has agreed.
I thought you were looking for a definition of an ICU.
That Gov. Nuisance has created a lockdown in search of a crisis is beyond question.
I think I have heard that hospitals in Los Angeles were routinely run at 90% capacity
in 2018, even during flu season.
by “expandable circle” , are you referring to the ability for hospitals to transfer patients to other hospitals, when they don’t have enough room?
That would be a triage problem, and not one the hospital administer can “game” to get more state funding.
we agree that the “problem” is created rather than actual.
Right – and the LAST thing we need is what my mayor’s social media intern actually posted: “If everyone does their part to #StoptheSpread of COVID-19, we will help lower ICU capacity,…”
I believe that, in the hospital’s interest of keeping as few empty beds around as possible, and having the empty ones be as low-overhead as possible, they re-designate some beds as ‘ICU’ or ‘normal’ as needed.
If the bed is empty anyway, why carry it on the books as an expensive ‘ICU’ bed?
Is that what Sarah means by ‘expandable’ circle?
———————————
Mollari: “Perhaps it was something I said?”
G’Kar: “Perhaps it is everything you say.”
Yep. That.
But there are also regional emergency centers.And unlike Italy we fly people to a less filled up hospital ALL THE TIME.