Waiting For The Other Shoe

634 thoughts on “Waiting For The Other Shoe”

1. We’ve already had 40 or 50 ‘other shoes’ drop. Must be a barefoot centipede around here somewhere… 😮

   1. Not really. I know. But first shoe, really.

      1. I think the chances of the other shoe dropping go way up after Kamala takes over. Joe Biden is a familiar presence to everyone and he can be sort of personable at times, and maybe that keeps people from openly rebelling against all of this – they still have some (unreasonable) confidence. That all goes away after the 25th Amendment gets invoked.

   2. And fsr now I think of camera accessories and how they are powered…. hot-shoe. Which is NOT the same as a hot-foot… but we might be in for that.

   3. I think it’d be like a stock market crash. You get a sense that things aren’t really sustainable and you expect every bit of bad news to be the thing that starts a crash but nobody wants to be the first to leave a market that’s making everybody money and so it continues. But unease builds until eventually there’s some apparently minor issue and whoosh!, suddenly you’re up to your neck in fallen shoes.

      1. I think it’d be like a stock market crash.

         It could *easily* be a stock market crash.

         And you know who will get the blame?

         Those of us Retards who are holding GME.

      2. My husband wandered into a YouTube video suggesting a major wave of bankruptcies is already underway. The thought being a lot of businesses are on the edge and the Administration plus Democratic governors’ policies are tipping them over.

         1. Haven’t heard anything about that but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t going on.

         2. Lots of things that were already coughing up blood before the lock downs are now deceased. The Movie theaters. They really made little money on the movies, the concessions were the big money. No one in the theater no concessions, 10%-25% capacity MAYBE 10-25% concessions, maybe not as some feel a bit creeped out eating in public. Sports Venues? They were already getting clobbered by the woke nonsense as middle America said “WTF?” at the wokeness. But no tickets, no concerts no conventions that’s bad juju. Restaurants? They’re always on the hairy edge the margins are incredibly tight. Unless you are a primarily take out joint they’re toast. Malls? Online shopping was already hammering them but a few months of being totally shut down and all those little shops are in trouble. Anything that requires a large expenditure that can be held off HAS been held off by other than the least sane folks as anyone over 30 has seen things like this before. I’m not sure what has been keeping the stocks up other than irrational exuberance, and why that exists is beyond me.

            1. Indeed – there’s a pair of lovely and recently-built (Well, OK, built in the last fifteen years) multiplex theaters within a fifteen minute drive of my house – used to be that either of them were our option to see a movie … but that neither of them have been open for a year. My daughter went to see a movie with friends at a general-entertainment venue about twenty minutes away that offers a restaurant, bowling, a bar, paintball (I think), a game arcade … oh, and they have a theater attached to it all. That place has been open throughout the last year. Most malls have been tottering along, half-dead on their feet anyway. I’d agree that only inertia is keeping some institutions going.

            2. I’m not sure what has been keeping the stocks up other than irrational exuberance

               Stocks are absorbing much of the inflation. It isn’t even that irrational: “buy the dip” is often wisdom.

            3. It appears that most of the money conjured by Wizard Powell and the Fed cabal is feeding into financial instruments at the moment. How long that will last is anyone’s guess. I personally believe that SPACs are a vehicle to burn some of the Fed’s excess.

            4. Trad pub. Colleges.
               THIS is not an exhaustive list.
               The funny thing is mostly they hit the centers of woke America.

               1. If you mean “funny, ha ha”, I agree. If you mean “funny, peculiar”, not so much. This freak-out is driven in large part by the fact that leftist centers of power were not-so-gradually going broke or becoming irrelevant anyway. They’ve turned it up to 11 because that’s what people do when they see disaster loom. So, it makes perfect sense that the weakest institutions are suffering most from the usual effects of bad policy, and that those institutions are largely of the left.

                  1. but it will be even more of a disaster.

                     1. What’s happening right now reminds me of playing strategic simulation games against AI or an inexperienced player. Near the end of the game (in games with “fog of war” or other means of preventing the players from seeing each others’ pieces), the winner will often be suddenly assailed by a seemingly-overwhelming assault. But that assault is missing key supporting elements, and often has few or none of the opposing player’s best unit types–because those key units have already been eliminated. It’s simply the last throw of the dice for a defeated player.

                        All of this stuff they’re doing is not accompanied by the usual supporting campaigns. The firearms bills should have followed some sort of mass-casualty shooting. HR1 should have followed a focus on the horrific effects of COVID on poll workers in Texas and Florida. The border crisis should have been preceded by a slow-moving caravan full of women and children, instead of the mad rush of military-age men and child slaves that we’re seeing. There’s a lot of stuff missing, and it’s not clear why. Perhaps they’ve lost some of their key pieces.

                        1. This. yep. THIS.

                           1. I think sheer arrogance plays a large part in it. They are so confident that they have won already that they don’t even try to make the narrative look real

                        2. The above analysis of the “missing pieces” of the current “100 days” attack on so many familiar parts of American, Constitutional life and culture reminded me rather forcefully of this…

                           When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and the time that the tide will turn. When you’re down to nothing, God is up to something. The faithful see the invisible, believe the incredible and then receive the impossible.

                           Where liberty dwells there is my country.

                           — Benjamin Franklin (as quoted within the past few days in the comments for Uncover DC’s Dark to Light podcast)

                        3. Aaaaand now you got your spree killer with the massage parlor massacre(s).

            5. If Food Theory is correct some of the independent restaurants are making do by working as the kitchen for multiple Bigger Name franchises. Going underground…

         3. Zerohedge has predicted ten of the last two recessions, but their take on commercial real estate rings true. Now anyway. I’m seeing a lot of small businesses in Our Fair City closing up, with no eager entrepreneurs waiting to fill the gap. (Oh, there were some up to last year, but between Covidiocy and FICUS, it’s full stop.) Doesn’t help that the Oregon legiscritters are telling the progtards to hold their beer. Tax the hell out of or just plain outlaw diesel fuel/equipment, plus Moar Taxes on All The Things..

            Mini update: stitches out, now allowed 0 to 30 degrees ROM, with 0-60 in two weeks. Biggg scar. The PA handling this thinks that home-work might be sufficient to do rehab. (waggles hand) No canes, just a walker for today until I get used to flexing–it’s been 3.5 weeks locked in place.

            And now to nap.

            1. Commercial real estate will crash hard. For the same reason we’re having trouble getting handymen: everyone is home now.

               1. My former employer downsized. Not employees, just few are returning to the office to work. Went from office of 10 + servers and phone system, to an office for 3 + servers and phone system; the other 6 are working from home. They had been in the prior office for 30+ years. Bad news, or at least I see it this way. Also went from unlimited parking, to no parking. Because went from business complex with parking, to downtown complex without parking. Not that this is a business that has clients coming in to them. The whole move is a 180 reversal from a 2010 proposal to build an office building for growth, more employees, and a full training center, classroom style. All occurring because of 2020.

                  1. My med clinic is now having the admin people calling from home (test results and administrivia). Call showed up as “private number”, so it went to the machine. Wish they’d spoof the ID and use the clinic name. If the scam artists can do it, you’d think the legit people could. Sigh.

                     1. If they are running through a commercial phone system, they can quite easily, probably no one thought to set it up, though.

                        1. I sounds like the clinic is having people use their home phones, and for those with Charter Cable/Internet, there’s no way they can change the ID. One doctor’s practice comes up as the previous owner, because Charter can’t be bothered to fix it. Not a popular company for telecom service, but AFAIK, it’s the dominant one in the city.

                           VOIP might be a bridge too far for the clinic’s IP people. They got clobbered by ransomware several months ago and are still dealing with the consequences (the clinic is part of the hospital, and the damage was brutal). Asshoes.

                     2. Our clinic is part of the Peace Health web services. All our results come through this. At worst, emergency notifications come via both email and text to check the site. Exception is when I have to wait for a callback, from nurse or triage group.

                        I don’t answer numbers not showing a name or business, blocked or not (right now that means they have to be in my contact list); exception is like the one above. I let it go to voice mail. No voice mail, the number is blocked. PIA when we were selling our trailer. The seller’s ads on FB, etc., all explicitly stated “Please TEXT, before calling.” One or two even did. It was hard to break the habit of not answering unknown numbers. I despise telephone cold sales callers.

            2. Yay on update.

            3. Yea on update. Sounds like progress.

               1. Yes! Progress is good.Still have the paper tape across the incision, but those will go away with a sitz-bath or three. Feels odd to flex, though I had a similar issue with a tendon repair on a finger (WRONG knife for the job. Urk!) Will have to move so the lump won’t get stuck in a “sleeve”.

                  Expect to sleep in The Comfy Chair until the brace can come off at night. Guessing 6 more weeks.

   4. Millipede. ~:D

2. Very similar to the political scenario I’m outlining in my fiction series. Good to know my instincts are at least plausible.

3. > He has a vague idea money comes from somewhere, but not where, and it’s probably just “redistributed.”

   Why shouldn’t he think that way? Our own “elites” think that way. The Ivy League colleges teach that economics is a zero-sum game. Obviously, if someone has something, it came at the expense of someone else. And that person should be properly educated to understand what their grievances are…

   1. And that they can just take a game-token from one person and redistribute it to someone else, upon which occurrence it will stay where they put it.

      And that it’s all a zero-sum game with no increase ever in the overall size of the pie due to creation of worth through innovation or work YET SIMULTANEOUSLY they can print an infinite number of new game-tokens to pay for spending on anything they want.

      1. There are no such things as second-order consequences for them. They do what they want, and it has the effect they want, and stops.

4. “Why has no one bothered the last twenty years? ”

   Partially, because the War On Drugs meant that there was a concerted effort to track cash. Pull $10,000 in cash to get your kitchen remodeled? Fill out a form saying why. The bank already did. Or your worker spends it. Well, sooner or later he gets to explain to someone where that money came from that he spent for his own living.

   Pull it out in amounts that don’t instantly trigger the limit? That’s called “structuring”, and is a crime for you and me; when Obama did it to avoid triggering the portion of the budget rules that anything over 400 million has to have it’s own line in a spending bill no problemo.

   When all activity came through electronic transactions, there are lots fewer cracks to slip through.

   1. I work in the financial sector indirectly (not directly with money, but for a company in the financial sector). We have to take remedial anti-money-laundering training every year. Trust me, financial advisors, banks, brokers, the whole financial sector, has stringent tools in place to keep an eye for “structured” transactions and for cash transactions exceeding $10,000. They are mostly automated, and they are pretty good at sniffing out attempts to evade those laws. Any financial institution that doesn’t have them will get absolutely hammered with fines if “money laundering” takes place and they don’t flag it. Like you said, a lot of those cracks that you used to be able to slip through have been caulked over.

      1. Meh. Most of the jobs I’ve had done are WELL under 10k

      2. If money laundering takes place through unapproved channels.

         If the government gets its cut, or if politicians exploit it, things are a bit different.

         I’m always amazed how many people believe Las Vegas somehow magically went from a mafia enterprise to libertarian paradise.
         Despite one of the recent mayors openly being a defense attorney for the mob!
         Yes, the gambling commission keeps the games relatively honest (for “the odds are deliberately stacked against you” levels of honest), and ensures both the player’s and house’s “winnings” are taxed.
         Funny thing, though. It’s the money you take off the table that’s accounted for. What you put on it in the first place… Not so much.
         There may possibly be “whales” that fly in from foreign parts to risk millions on the turn of a single card. But most “high rollers” will leave with 5%-15% less than they came with, and documentation of the money being legitimate.
         Smaller players can do similar by playing the craps “come” line in many small plays to limit risk. It’s generally the best odds in the casino. But small-time crooks aren’t renowned for their impulse control, and there are so very many interesting wagers, not to mention the group’s excitement actively encouraging riskier plays… (I might have abused a low-dollar craps table to get comped drinks back in the day. If you played it right, you could have a lot of fun and get absolutely plastered for $20. I also saw friends lose a lot more than that. Repeatedly.)

         I forget who here pointed it out, but the modern art scene has all the earmarks of being a money laundering scheme.

         1. I’m pretty sure you can add publishing houses to the list of more-or-less-open money laundering schemes. Also, “foreign aid”.

         2. BTW the next mayor of LV (now btw) is the mafia lawyers wife .. 😀

         3. Blackjack and craps are the only games on the casino floor where you stand a decent chance against the house; provided you play perfect blackjack and avoid all the proposition bets in craps. In blackjack under AC or Vegas rules your odds are 49/3 to 49/7% against the house if you play perfectly Craps is also about 50/50.

            Poker on the other hand is played against other people, not the house, so as long as you have fresh players and the rake isn’t outrageous, skill wins out in the long run. Money laundering laws are a pain in the neck for high stakes poker players, because those games cost a lot of money to buy into (think of what having bankroll to play something like 150/300 mixed seven is; that by the way is a regular game on weekends at the Borgata) which means some poker players carry a lot of cash on them and are subject to being victimized by the confiscation cops who assume anyone with that kind of money is a drug dealer or other criminal and they seize the cash and make you jump through very high hurdles at great expense to get your own money back.

         4. If you have a way to track your losses, you can claim them down to zero income (not lower). The IRS gets piles of gambling receipts all the time.

         5. In other words, Las Vegas regulators see to it that the odds are what they say they are, and don’t expect to go home with money from them.
            As my brother says “Who do you think is paying for the lights and water?”

   2. Also, the other “why has no one bothered the past twenty years” is that it’s just easier to do everything electronically. I’m guilty of it. Paycheck? Direct deposit. Utility bill? Click, paid. Food? Click, ordered. Stock? Click, bought, click, sold. Taxes? Click, paid, click, refund in a month. Government payment? Direct deposit. “Money” is rapidly becoming something that isn’t real, it’s just numbers on a screen instead of gold, or even fiat paper, in your hand. And that can disconnect people from the consequences of inflation, at least for a while.

   3. Build a habit of living in cash. Pull it every payday.
      The pattern exists. They might look a thousand times over the last twenty years, and they’ll see the same thing: that Holly chick uses cash. She’s weird. The tellers will tell investigators that she always has a joke about how she shouldn’t have a debit card as long as Amazon sells books.
      If you need to build a pattern, make a lifestyle change, there’s Dave Ramsay ready to convert you and you can tell everyone how great Financial Peace is, and the Envelope Method of budgeting has Changed Your Life . . .

      Now securing cash is a different story: there’s a good reason why our ancestors thought banks were a good idea.

      1. One mouse click, and that money in the bank is no longer accessible, if not outright stolen. They don’t even need a warrant.

         1. Expect a flood of civil forfeiture seizures against Democrats’ political opponents.

            1. Indeed – there have been two stories already on Gateway Pundit and a couple of others – of people arrested for being at the Washington protests in January, whose’ bank accounts have been frozen, and their nearest and dearest are left hanging, trying to make the utility bills and mortgages.

               1. The legal process IS the punishment now.

      2. Yes, yes, yes.

         With the exception of an occasional on-line purchase when I absolutely need something that isn’t available locally, all of my purchases are made in cash. No record. My husband loves the convenience of using a card, so I buy him gift cards for the stores he likes the most which I pay for in cash. Almost as good. I do a lot of shopping for farm equipment and tools at second-hand stores and antique shops here and in other states; when I whip out the cash they rarely ask for the sales tax.

         Speaking of sales tax, Vermont has a 6% sales tax, 9% for hotels and dining. Next door in New Hampshire, there’s no sales tax (except on dining out I’ve recently noticed) so a great many Vermonters will drive a short distance to shop tax-free. In response, the Vermont Department of Taxes audits the big box stores in NH (!) located along the border (Home Depot, WalMart, etc) searching for Vermonters who have shopped there and haven’t coughed up the bucks on the ‘use tax’ line of their tax returns. Of course, that’s only possible for Vermonters who are dumb enough to use credit cards at these stores. Our tax preparer tells us that the VT Tax Dept. also randomly sends out use-tax-due notices to residents on the assumption that all Vermonters shop in NH, at least occasionally. The notices won’t be based on any actual information in the possession of the tax ghouls, but most people just write a check to avoid a hassle. All the more reason not to let them know what you’re buying. Oh, and those loyalty cards? I’ve got a few that I use occasionally and every one is registered under a different name and different, fake phone number. Been doing this for years and nobody’s caught on. Also: sometimes when you’re at the register the cashier will ask for your zip code, they say it’s for marketing purposes. I’ve memorized a couple of local zips – none actually mine – so I can recite them casually when needed; sometimes I’ll give a zip code from Ohio or somewhere else far away.

         1. i have a friend who gave the phone number of the grocery store itself a couple of times.
            They never noticed.

      3. Securing cash is difficult. Using it is even harder.

         We’ve been told no cash at the grocery store, gas station, convenience store, donut shop, mickeyds, etc. for at least 6 months. They won’t take it, or if they do, they refuse to make change. it’s a “coin shortage”. So cash will be left for stuff off the books, but cash won’t be worth much. Start cultivating people in your life that will accept barter.

         1. Wow! There are signs in some stores alluding to the shortage of change around here, but I have never once had my cash refused anywhere. That’s nasty.

            Where are you?

            1. It’s actually illegal under Federal law for them to refuse to accept cash. That is the point of the statement written on paper money “legal tender for all debts, public and private”. Any establishment that refuses to take cash is subject to federal prosecution.

               1. Federal prosecution? Pull the other one….

               2. Urban legend.

                  https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx
                  This statute means that all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless there is a State law which says otherwise. For example, a bus line may prohibit payment of fares in pennies or dollar bills. In addition, movie theaters, convenience stores and gas stations may refuse to accept large denomination currency (usually notes above $20) as a matter of policy.

                  1. But does the other guy know that?

                     With sufficient BS you can do anything. Just see the documentary series about Stalag 13!

   4. It’s why they are so anxious to eliminate hard currency entirely.

      1. And why there’s an undercurrent smell of panic in government circles regarding cryptocurrencies.

         1. Somebody pointed out that the weakness of crypto is that it depends on internet connections. Cut the power or the ‘net (the latter could be selective, depending on nastiness) and those currencies ain’t going anywhere.

   5. For you and me, the non-elites, we’re very close to the point where anything we’re not ordered to do is forbidden.

5. They’ve already stopped reporting the last relatively complete money supply statistic. No notice, just decided not to collect those data anymore. The next step,will be another “hedonic” adjustment to the Consumer Price Index, which drifts farther and farther away from reality every day.

   Ray Dalio, who runs the largest, most successful hedge fund in the world was eloquent on this topic today. It’s all over the financial press and I recommend that people read it. He talks about how the inflation will hit, why the government has to try to hide it — hint Capital controls. — and how breathtaking the tax increases will be. Some of this is talking his book, but he’s actually always been a straight shooter since he knows that no one will believe him until it happens.

   The machine is grinding to a halt and it’ll come faster than we might believe since we, as a society, are leveraged to the hilt and have no margin for error,

   1. The inflation has already hit. Right now it is mostly in food and starting to show in fuel, which are of course excluded from “core” CPI, supposedly for good theoretical reasons, but I suspect because that’s where inflation first shows up. Thus they get a twofer of gaslighting away the initial phases when people do notice and then get to own it later when it is too late to change policy to end this round.

      1. They cut it out when they introduced Inflation protected bonds. The nasty was done under Bubba Clinton. Same with hedonic adjustments that make, ceteris paribus, CPI go down when the price of beef goes up because we will shift from steak to hamburger and pork.

         The Fed has a history of this. The logic of neo-classical monetary theory requires that they lie. There used to be a great rule that every time capacity utilization hit 80% interest rates went up. presto chango, Greenspan invented massive capacity, thereby increasing the denominator and throwing off everyone’s models.

         I minimize my use of government data for that reason, every time you find something reliable they stop releasing it or change the way it’s calculated. f-ckers

         1. The FBI does that with crime statistics, too. And it takes them six months or so to “collate” the previous year’s data…

            They can also be… creative about how they classify things. “Officers died in the line of duty” includes heart attacks, strokes, car wrecks, accidental drowning… yes, they were “on duty”, but they use the inflated numbers for their “thin blue line” propaganda.

         2. Meanwhile in the real world, where the exclude “core” items make up a good regular chunk of everybody’s weekly purchases, we all know that prices are skyrocketing and the real inflation rate is taking off like a rocket. These increases don’t even include the inflation that will surge if the Dems are able to impose their national minimum wage hike. All of this, plus the tax increases, will kill the economy and create massive unemployment.

            For those who remember the Carter years, get ready for Stagflation Redux, except this time around it will be even worse.

      2. This. I have already seen it in a small way: the customary purchases I have been making for years at a local meat market – already a dollar a pound more.
         And we watch gas prices like a hawk – they’re already trending upwards again.

         1. Here’s gas prices from GasBuddy for the last 36 months for NYC, LA and Knoxville, TN (as a proxy for everywhere not in the normals-exclusion-zones – I looked around and there’s not a lot of variation between Knoxville and Austin, TX and Evansville, IN):

            https://charts.gasbuddy.com/ch.gaschart?Country=USA&Crude=f&Period=36&Areas=LosAngeles%2CKnoxville%2CNewYork&Unit=US%20%24%2FG

            Gasoline prices certainly appear to be going asymptotic…

            1. For anyone who does not want to follow the link: https://i.imgur.com/4ZrGyhM.gif

               1. WPDE.

                  

            2. You can get lots of gas prices on the FRED economic data site. I use the prices at my local Costco, which are up by at least a third.

               This all started before the lockdowns, inflationary pressure really started in about August 2019, but all this money has to go somewhere.

            3. $SPOUSE noted that gas has gone up 10 cents every time she’s gone into town, roughly once a week. Today’s refill was a bit over $3.00 a gallon.

               1. Remember Obama’s “under my plan, energy prices will necessarily skyrocket”. People are going to get some shocking electric bills this summer.

      3. Propane, the small camping style bottles, are four times what they were even months ago. 12 bottles cost around $100.

6. Fauci’s nonsense kinda makes me regret giving all the (decade+ old) fireworks to the neighbors (with kids) to use up last year. Now I might just have to go burn some money.

   And I *DID* finally get the axe. A small one, a mere 3-pounder. Still in the vehicle… better weather and maybe it’d be elsewhere. Mainly, I have a weed or two with pretensions of tree-hood that need dealing with. Though if my “methylated neighbors” see me swinging an axe around, that’s NOT apt to be a bad thing. I prefer them at a distance. The greater the distance, the better.

   1. Now there’s as good a description of our Leftrioid ‘leaders’ as I’ve ever seen: Weeds with pretensions of treedom.
      ———————————
      A good Zombie Apocalypse novel is at least as believable as anything we’ve heard out of the ‘publick health authorities’ over the last year.

      1. Take, adopt, adapt, spread as you see fit.

      2. Dawn of the Dead (the original) is far more realistic than the current nonsense the WHO/CDC spout…”when there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth” is at least logically consistent.

   2. It’s my wildland firefighting exposure (2.5 years, but some of the lessons stuck) that make me prefer the Council Axe AKA the Pulaski. Standard axe head on the ‘a’ side, while the back is a small, sharp crosswise blade like a tiny mattock. Good for clearing grassy stuff and roots, and if there’s a tree that needs the Washingtonian Solution, it would do it.

      Note to self; when I can (Ha!), get the chainsaws working and tuned. OTOH, I have both a traditional axe and Lester, the Mattock. I’ll denounce myself later.

      1. I can certainly see that. But I kinda have to have at least one double-edged axe if any, due to…well, Tradition, I suppose one might call it..

         1. YES.

         2. Ah.OTOH, the Pulaski might just be, er, useful under those circumstances. The symmetrical handle is useful.

         3. All my axes have beards … 😀

            1. BLINK

               1. What? You never seen a north-man’s axe? 😉

               2. ‘Beard’ on an axe is where the edge is wider than the axe head, in the direction of the handle. It can be extended in the opposite direction, too; I think that one is called the ‘brow’.

                  1. Come to think of it, all of my axes have bits that are wider than the polled portion of the ax head.

                     And nothing is to be made of the fact that I have two roofing hatchets, one hand axe, and three full size axes, one of which was apparently used to drive metal stakes, and the other which is still pristine, not mounted on a handle yet.

               3. What, did you assume all axes were female? Bigot. 😛

               4. If you want to see an example of both features, check out Rory Mercury’s halberd in GATE.

                  1. Found a clip. Not sure it gets a good view of her halberd, but plenty of mad laughter.

   3. >> “And I *DID* finally get the axe. A small one, a mere 3-pounder”

      That seems closer to a hatchet than an axe, honestly.

      …Or is that a dangerous thing to say to a minotaur? 😛

      1. It is small & light as they go, yes. But it is double edged and clearly meant for two-handed use and thus is not a hatchet, nor Tomahawk (which is a town in northern Wisconsin).

         1. Or a cruise missile. Kind of hard to hang one of those on your belt, though.

7. Based on books I’ve been reading (listening to, actually) recently, it sounds as if Xi is not happy with the current spate of Chinese citizens purchasing real estate in the US. The official line seems to be that it’s a form of capitol flight, and Beijing is apparently becoming increasingly concerned about that.

   1. I will not claim that EVERYTHING that worries Beijing is a Good Thing, but it’s certainly not all bad.

      1. This is like Henry Kissingers thoughts on the Iran/Iraq war “Can’t they both Lose?”. The Chinese inner party/ nomenklatura like high end city real estate. They can have all of it they want as all the Big Cities are swirling around the bowl due to 40+ years of mismanagement.

         1. And once we escape, we ain’t coming back.

8. People are not doing anything yet because they’re waiting for things to get back to “normal” after the mask madates and lockdowns are lifted. They are only looking so far ahead and no farther. Because they KNOW it’s not going to be good. They KNOW they’re screwed, but they don’t want to see it or admit it. I was talking to my cousin about our pending move and almost the first comment out of her mouth was “as much as I’d love to have you back in California, you don’t want to be here.” No, we don’t. But that tells me that she’s waking up and seeing what’s going on around her.

   We will be doing our damnedest to avoid being squished when the other shoe drops. We don’t have a house to sell, so worst case scenario, we can boogie whenever we must. We’re both keeping a wary eye on things and avoiding panic while not stopping our forward movement.

   1. We NEED to sell this before the value runs out.

      1. I hear you. You need to sell before people catch on that living in a city is not optimal. I never really wanted to own anything in Philly due to crazy city laws among other things. Looks like my reticence is paying off. Mind you, I WANT to own a house. Just not here.

         My dad was in a similar position in 2008 and managed to sell at the condo in SF at the top of the bubble. He wasn’t initially intending to sell, but then he saw where things were going and knew that between the bubble and my mom’s Alzheimer’s he wanted to not be saddled with the condo and wanted the cash.

      2. And we have a rental we’d like to fill, but… Ilhan Omar (mouthpiece for Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood, who are in thick with the CCP) has introduced the “never pay rent again” bill:

         summary:
         www DOT americanthinker DOT com/articles/2021/03/rep_omar_introduces_agenda_21.html

         the bill itself:

         Click to access OMARMN_003_xml.pdf

         1. Um…. Where are you?

            1. Near Billings, Montana. Semi-rural. Out of town, but with natural gas, and in a pinch you could walk to Walmart. (Also in a bit of a local banana belt.)

               1. ….. unfortunately I think the altitude is too high for me….

                  1. Billings is about 3,000 feet, which is 2000 feet less than Denver. It just seems like it would be higher. So maybe the altitude is okay.

                     1. Yup. But if you feel a desperate need to gasp for breath, Beartooth Pass (10,947 feet) is just an hour or so away…

                        I lived at 5200 feet for 12 years, then moved down to about 2800 feet… was enough difference that I noticed. (Then again, I notice many things that normal people don’t.)

                     2. I think WP ate the comment. So, TL’DR version: Havre, MT is a small city at 2,500 feet. Might work:

                        http://www.googlemaps.com/maps/place/Havre,+MT+59501/@48.545192,-109.6674525,12z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x53401cbe0cfc8309:0xebf50fa5ec180aa1

                        1. Havre, Montana, usually the coldest place in the lower 48 all winter, and vying for windiest. The only reason it’s still in MT and not in ND is because someone nailed it down using railroad spikes (literally). If you’re going for lower altitude, small town (calling Havre a “city” is a stretch; pop. 9000ish), and equally remote, Miles City (2,369 ft) or Glendive (2,064 ft) might be more amenable.

                           1. Hoo boy! I like windy, but “coldest winter” sounds dire.

                              I did originally point out that Havre was probably only a city by Hobbit standards. It has a museum! And dinosaur site! And public gardens. That’s citified, right? 😋 And that I was actually looking at the even lower elevation near Idaho by one of the rivers. That bit of Montana looks like “home” to me.

                           2. If there’s a museum, a dinosaur thingy, and a zoo can be had not more than an hour away, it fits my parameters.

                           3. No zoos. Closest are 4 – 6 hours away in Billings But.. In places out west the distances do not matter so much. 4h East on the highways into wilderness is a day trip. 2h west to the City is … Ugh. No. YMMV. Wildly. Billings would suit though if 3k elevation is doable.

                              And Montana State Library Association is practically unconverged. Texas cannot say as much. And two of my closest friends here at home are heading there so…

                              This is just killing me. I want to stay here so much. I’ve planned to live here since I was 13.

                           4. Sarah: one of the most productive dinosaur digs in the world is up at Glendive (it spits up complete skeletons; IIRC Museum of the Rockies’ T-Rex that’s on loan to the Smithsonian came from there), and its own little museum.

                              https://www.visitmt.com/listings/general/dinosaur-museum/glendive-dinosaur-and-fossil-museum.html
                              (there’s also an old-west museum in Glendive)

                              Billings has about a dozen small museums, but I haven’t looked into it beyond that. Zoo is small-scale but thriving (and takes volunteers). There’s an ag museum at the next burg to the east. Crow Reservation just over the hills to the south has big-deal Indian Days (at least in normal years), plus Custer Battlefield is down that way, along with the Pictograph Caves. Pompey’s Pillar (complete with Lewis and Clark graffiti) is off to the east. And that’s just what I know of, and I don’t get around much.

                              Also the same usedbook stores that have been downtown since forever.

                  2. 3200 feet. Locally, we’re prairie-to-badlands and river bottom, not mountainous.

                     What bothers you at higher altitudes is probably the reduced amount of oxygen. Also, there exists something called chronic mountain sickness (basically permanent altitude sickness due to lacking the adaptive genes). Note the specific effects on the lungs.

                     en DOT wikipedia DOT org/wiki/Chronic_mountain_sickness
                     ===
                     The most frequent symptoms of CMS are headache, dizziness, tinnitus, breathlessness, palpitations, sleep disturbance, fatigue, loss of appetite, confusion, cyanosis, and dilation of veins.[2] …

                     … raised blood pressure in the lungs (pulmonary hypertension) can develop over time…

                     Migration to low altitude is curative, though not immediate, as the body adapts to the normal oxygen level near sea-level and the haematocrit normalises. Alternatively, bloodletting (phlebotomy) can be performed to lower the haematocrit temporarily;
                     ===

                     Here’s a Handy Chart:
                     https://hypoxico.com/altitude-to-oxygen-chart/

                     1. mostly the altitude seems to spin up my autoimmune, perhaps through chronic stress.

                        1. Oxygen deprivation is a stress. Interestingly, excessive iron causes exactly the same symptom set as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (AKA autoimmune thyroid disease, which commonly also causes psoriasis — often misdiagnosed as eczema). Given that, I’m thinkin’ this is doubling up the effects when you’re under oxygen stress, as would happen at higher altitude.

                        2. Yeah, altitude is a bugger–where I am in Wyoming is too high (higher than Denver), but around Buffalo or Cody…much nicer. Though real estate in Wyoming purely suuuuucks. No state tax, though, so that’s a plus. 😀

                           Montana, yeah, long as you’re not way up in the mountains you’ll likely be lower than Denver is.

                           1. “Though real estate in Wyoming purely suuuuucks.”

                              What’s that mean?

                           2. It’s both sparse and, in most places, rather overpriced given the general lack of amenities in Wyoming. But renting is even worse–it’s wildly overpriced in a lot of places. I’m talking $800-1200/month for a disgusting wreck of an apartment (nearly always single bedroom), not including any utilities, etc (and because the heat is inevitably going to be electric, and we often have 9 month winters, your utilities can be another 200-300/month). For around here, and for what they’re wanting to charge for, it’s insane. (This is specifically places like Rawlins–where I work–and the semi-nearby towns, like Encampment–where I live–or Saratoga.) Laramie is a little better, because its a college town, and I gather Casper is a bit better as well, because it is also a college town.

                              They tend to run the prices up because what they really want is the short-term oilfield workers that come through in the summers, many of whom don’t much care if the place is a wreck (and the companies are often paying the rent). And expansion in places like I mentioned above is severely limited–Rawlins, because it’s locked in almost completely by federal lands, and Encampment/Saratoga because of the big rich-people ranches (and also the climate and altitude)

                           3. This is pure gold. Pure gold. Thank you very much.

                              I’m near Seattle, and if you could import the worst of East Berlin and plop it down into the Pacific Northwest, Seattle would be it. Violence, heroin, vagrancy, full on communism….

                              And Wyoming is a siren’s call. Till now. I had no idea the reality of real estate.

                           4. Oh, you’d still be welcome to come out to the Big Empty. 😀 I just don’t recommend renting, if you can avoid it. Buying is overpriced, but not insanely so. Just…make sure you have a thorough inspection done, heh, because I have no doubt there are more, ahem, creative do-it-yourself plumbers out there like my grandfather was. Which is why I, who bought my grandparents’ house, am still not living in it, because I haven’t yet managed to arm-twist my father into helping me replace all the plumbing, and there aren’t any reliable plumbers out here that I can even get to speak to me, let alone get a quote for a house-replumb job, sigh.

                           5. 🙂 Gonna come for a fishing visit sooner rather than later. I’ll take some extra time to look around and get a feel for at least a small piece of the state.

                              I don’t feel dissuaded at all, just more informed. So thanks again.

                     2. “bloodletting (phlebotomy) can be performed to lower the haematocrit ”

                        Wait, you mean Theodoric of York., medieval barber, was right? 🙂

                  3. Hmmm… Here you go:

                     https://www.libbymt.com/community/neighbortowns.htm#eureka. That’s 1,800 feet, and where we’re looking. But we like towns and villages not cities…

                     Billings is the biggest city at 3K feet. All the other big ones are higher. But Havre at about 10k might fit. Barely: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Havre,+MT+59501/@48.545192,-109.6674525,12z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x53401cbe0cfc8309:0xebf50fa5ec180aa1

                     It looks more like a “hobbit” than a Hoyt city…

                     1. we’re not moving to a city. There’s no point.

                        1. City is relative. Billings is Montana’s largest, at about 100k. We have two buildings over 200′ and another 7 over 100′ (the newest built in 1985). We have a Costco and a Sam’s Club and a zoo, assorted local museums, a state university branch (tuition is free if you’re 65+) and a couple smaller colleges. Two big-ass medical centers, plus the po’folks clinic. Airports here or at Bozeman go just about anywhere you want. Enough city for all practical purposes, but not enough to support endemic lunacy. GOP has total control at the State level, and that’s likely to grow.

                           Flags and fireworks at any excuse. And our local priest still holds Latin mass every week.

                     2. Havre is an old railroad town, and probably only has 9k when the local college is in session.

                        Myself, I don’t care for west of the Divide, so you can have my share of Libby. Never see the sun and too much snow. Libby is an asbestos superfund site, dunno how that affects real estate.

                        https://www.asbestos.com/news/2019/11/11/asbestos-cleanup-libby-ending/?PageSpeed=noscript

                        [Also dunno to what degree exaggerated, given the money involved.]

         2. So much for new rental housing stock ever being built…

            1. Hmm. Let’s see how the banks take that? Because that is who the renters not paying rent are going to pay. Or is there a “don’t pay mortgage” stipulation buried in this bill too? Oh! I know. Only applies to primary residence. Oh, wait … there’s more “Don’t pay property taxes” stipulation too. Take that counties!

               Okay. Some of the above is sarcasm.

               1. I thought there was a screw-the-mortgage-people clause in there too. No idea of the details, and a sane SCOTUS would toss it in 90 seconds, but we don’t have a sane SCOTUS. At the rate we’re going, the Supremes will be as relevant as pet rocks by Christmas.

            2. Less sarcastic response.

               I think I’ve seen this before. Say around mid-80’s. In PNW … wasn’t until late ’80s and early ’90s that housing picked up again. We were affected in two ways. Had a house we couldn’t give away in ’85 when we got transferred south 100+ miles. Couldn’t sell because why would someone buy a house for $65k when homes worth $300k+ in the same neighborhood were short selling for $100k or less? We rented it out until early stages building started again, sold in ’89. Then the house we bought in ’88 we almost lost because we were having difficulty getting a loan on it. We more than qualified, the house appraisal VS purchase price was good, but the house to neighborhood appraisal average was too high. Because, wait for it … all the comps were 8 to 10 years old! Once the house we bought registered, there were a backlog of pending home sells bust open.

               We were desperate. We had to be out of our rental because it had sold. No way could we luck out and get another rental – 5 cats and 1 German Shepard, with baby on the way.

               When the YKW hits the fan this time, the root cause will be the same verse different chapter as before. Just a different venue triggering the whole thing. Hey coal miners and oil line pipe fitters, go learn to code. After all it worked for the timber workers in the ’80’s and ’90’s (okay sarcasm is back … sorry).

            3. Basically a foreclosure scam to eventually put it all in gov’t hands, to make “wealth redistribution” ever so much easier.

               1. Which is why I want to be in something paid off.

                  1. Which at least provides some level of security…

                     And if you think your bank can’t unilaterally change the terms and payment, I have a bridge for you. My mortgage specifically included the terms “NO FLOOD INSURANCE”. But when FEMA reclassified everything, and what they didn’t bother classifying got labeled flood hazard by default (including a lot of mountaintops, or in my case, top of a ridge in the middle of the desert), Chase tacked on flood insurance and sucks to be you. Chase got slapped down by a lawsuit, but three years later quietly tacked it back on, and this time no one took them to court.

                     This doubled the cost of my mortgage, by adding $280,000 to the net cost of the property (initially a $101k loan) over the lifetime of the remaining loan. (And that was if you could get the “cheap” insurance. The “default” insurance was 3x that much. You could appeal, but that cost $14k up front and ZERO cases are found in the owner’s favor.)

                     Wound up walking away from that one. (Not the only reason, but a good chunk.)

                     This is also why when I chose a new bank, it was one based in my state. If I have to switch again, I’ll walk across the street to the one that’s entirely local (and still owned by its founding family, five generations later).

                  2. I’ve been debating whether or not to pull enough of my 401k to do that with my house in Plano.

         3. They fully intend to Sovietize housing and ultimately to eliminate all private property (except of course that held by the ruling nobility).

      3. Now beats in perfect condition after the market peaks.

   2. Yep, I have been rolling my eyes when people talk about everything going back to “normal.” As my pastor says in his signature line in his email, all of the “pandemic” nonsense has created a culture of fear and mental illness. How is that just going to go away? We’re not people anymore; we’re walking disease vectors.

      1. “Normal” is desperate poverty, tribalism, and war.
         I do not want to return to anywhere near normal.

         1. Normal coincides with the prophet RAH’s concept of “Bad Luck” I fear. We had a good run of 100 years or so…

   3. I know the shoe is going to flatten me. I’m at a place where I can’t get arsed to do the things I need to do to avoid it.

      What I will do is build the longest, sharpest spear and smear it with the nastiest thing I can find, for the totalitarian foot that crushed me to run itself down to get to me.

      My inspiration: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2151/stomp/ratings

9. > how can they tax people who just lost their businesses, their jobs, will soon lose the value in their urban residences, and in general have nothing to give?
   —
   Why, comrade, that’s no problem!

   Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, the Reich Labor Service, the Bevin Boys, the subbotniks… all the way back to the ‘corvee’ system of the monarchies. You have a bunch of unemployed citizens standing around, you make use of the sudden pool of free labor! Any objections are easily handled with stick and boot. Stupid serfs with uppity ‘citizen’ pretensions need to be taught a lesson from time to time anyway.

   Those “Trump labor camps” the Left was projecting? The paperwork is probably in-process now.

   1. I remain astonished we haven’t seen an “indenture” program for students to have their loans “forgiven,” in exchange for a mere five years of government service at whatever program they are best suited for.

      1. Umm…
         We do. And have had since Clinton.
         (Or Kennedy, depending on how you feel about the Peace Corps.)

         But it doesn’t help those who majored in oppression studies. (And requires bumping elbows with proles.)

         1. Not always on the elbows with proles.

            1. Knees?

               1. Depending on the degree, it doesn’t always involve rubbing elbows with proles.

      2. It exists.

      3. Already exists.
         Public service loan forgiveness
         The biggest requirement for PSLF are that you work a job that qualifies as public service – a role working for the Government at any level, Federal, State or Local, with a 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Organization, or in any other role that counts as “Public Service”.

      4. They push it really hard for law students and young lawyers — work for government (or certain non-profits) for a decade, get the balance of your loans forgiven!

         It’s a trap — wages for those jobs are low enough (for lawyer wages) relative to the loans, and the interest rates are so high, that once you’ve been working for government for a year or two, you quite literally cannot afford to leave until you’ve gotten your public service loan forgiveness. And in the interim, it’s basically a second mortgage payment that eats any raise you might earn. But a lot of young lawyers fall into the trap, especially in years like 2010 or 2011 when the firms aren’t hiring . . . .

      5. It already exists. There’s pay off for five years of federal service, teaching in a ‘high need’. (::cough:: ::cough:: yes, that was partially why I was trying to be a teacher.)

         And pay off for an approved non-profit. Three guesses???Any 501(c)(3) or non-profit that gives a ‘public service’ . Think on that.

         1. Right my elder Daughter just cashed in on that last year. She teaches in a district that has some HUGE contrasts. A few wealthy educated types from a local university mixed with hordes of kids who get both the free lunch and breakfast programs.

      6. It exists, but is not (yet) mandatory. And then there will be the (almost certainly a “progressive” person) who will argue for lifetime indenture because either A, the person indentured is privileged to have a job and a degree and should continue paying back “society” for it, or B, the person indentured has been unable to become self-sufficient and must therefore be taken care of for life.

         Keep in mind also that when the loan is discharged or forgiven, the IRS considers that to be income in the year discharged. So in addition to being hammered during the term, they get smacked down hard one more time once they finally are able to get out from under it.

         1. Yep.

            On the plus side, tax debt can be discharged in Chapter 7, unlike student loan debt. Also, provided you agree that you owe money and make good faith attempts to repay, the IRS can be one of the nicest creditors out there. You have 5 years to pay, with low interest rates (like 2.5%).

            1. The latest 1.9 trillion spending spree included a provision that exempts student loans that are forgiven by the federal government from taxation, thereby preparing the ground for their mass cancellation of student loan debt and shifting of wealth from non-college and working class to the upper-middle class/wealthy

               1. It has everything, including redundant kitchen sinks they added just so they could be included.

                  I wonder if I could find an NFA repeal somewhere in those 5000 pages. It must be there, since everything else is.

               2. And while it is a blatant violation of the 14th Amendment, no one has standing.

                  1. It would seem that NOBODY has standing to contest blatant violations of the Constitution these days. Not the People, and not the States. The Democrats are progressively eliminating every recourse against their fascism, but one.

   2. “Those `Trump labor camps` the Left was projecting? The paperwork is probably in-process now.”

      They will still be called Trump Labor Camps, because they will blame “Trump’s failure to act quickly to control the virus” as their justification for the mess they’ve gotten us into. They ain’t much at managing an economy but they’re terrific at shifting the blame.
      ~

      1. Nah – they’ll just use electronic signs, changing the names at need: AOC visiting? It’s the “AOC Job Training Facility”; FBI delivering the next busload of Capital “Riot” detainees? It’s the “James Comey Detainee Transfer Center”; Allowed “hands-across-the-aisle” Loyal Opposition Politicians coming by? It’s now the “No-Detainees-Here Logistics Transshipment Warehousing Center”.

         They already have Google notified to fuzz it all out on the overhead images, and it’s geofenced as an airport on all the consumer drones so they won’t fly close enough to see anything.

10. The level of empathy and wisdom Sarah puts on the page is such a gift. Lord, I feel like manna is raining from heaven when I read sentences like:
    “And we’re all sitting here with clenched fists, partly paralyzed by shock.”

    Show up. Even if you have to grit your teeth and hang on. Show up.

11. God Bless You Sarah for keeping me sane. Your words ring true and I’m sharing the heck out of them.

12. I had endless trouble the first couple of months learning to lunge properly in fencing practice; every single time, I would be half an inch to an inch short of where I was supposed to be. One day my coach grabbed the point of my foil, pulled on it until it was properly seated and said, “THIS is how far you should be lunging. Why do you never do it?”

    And I blurted, “I’m afraid I’ll hit you!”

    And we both paused for a moment while that registered.

    After that, I stopped having problems lunging. But my, was that a wake-up call about messages you internalize while growing up.

    1. Lunge for the back of the vest, not the front.

       Works in fencing, and other less playful endeavours.

       1. That’s what makes a proper punch, too.

    2. LOL.
       I remember those days.
       Having a good consistent lunge is half the equation. Judging distance to use it properly is the other half. And actually, lunging through your opponent is rather poor control and the sign of a newbie. You want just enough to break the circuit by depressing the button switch on the end of the foil, and that only requires 500 newtons of force. (Epees require 750 newtons to complete the circuit. And yeah, I know they’re different. It’s because you have a limited target in foil, which is covered in a conductive vest. Epee is unlimited.)

       1. I don’t recall being told to aim for the back of the vest, certes. He was very specific about how much the foil should bend when you’ve properly connected, though.

          I got the hang of it, but admittedly I liked the weird full body multi-person scrums the second fencing club liked to arrange better. I got my first bonafide sports injury in one of those. Cracked a rib. XD

          1. I used to get a row of bruises down my arm when we practiced saber and I got the half jacket.
             I had the “don’t hit hard enough,” problem, too.

             1. Saber is scored differently – and for foil and epee both the original “enough for a side judge to see the blade bend” and modern electronic scoring distort the entire concept my fencing master had that fencing was the “remaining European Martial Art”.

                That said, both foil and epee were the evolution of “first blood” dueling on secluded garden paths reduced to a game, so conceptually you were not supposed to run the other foppish dilettante through – just a pinprick in a legal location satisfied honor.

                The various medieval and renaissance swordsmanship disciplines that have popped up in the past years are much closer to something practical while skipping the social stuff in SCA.

                1. Yup — HEMA practitioner here, with years of off-and-on sport Fencing, a couple years of Kendo, and some years off-and-on rapier in the SCA. I also did some heavy combat in the SCA, years ago.
                   Just the other day was the first time in over a year that I actually got to swing a sword at another person (thanks a lot, stupid Covid rules).
                   My local group is run by a person with a background in Martial Arts, so what we practice is closer to European Martial Arts than fencing, LARP or SCA heavy.

                2. My first coach assigned me Nadi’s “On Fencing” for homework, and the introduction where he described a real duel was hugely formative for me.

          2. ……

             How does one crack a rib fencing?

             1. “weird full body multi-person scrums ” –that’s how you crack a rib, in the simulated chaos of war, rather than the controlled manners of the salle.

                1. It was tremendous fun. The salle where I learned originally was focused on turning out competition fencers… the club I joined later was more about having fun, and was this weird collection of fencers, stage combat people, and history buffs. I miss ’em, maybe I’ll look them up once the panic’s over.

             2. As Ty Ping says, we were doing a team game, where the goal was to grab a ball off a shelf at the opposite end of the gym and the obstacle was half the club’s fencers (most of the experienced ones!) blocking it in the middle. I let the young kids go in front of me, and they all engaged the defenders as if that was a good idea… and while the defenders were occupied, ancient, creaky, sneaky me did an end run around them. The defenders noticed me when I was three quarters of the way there, and they rushed me en masse, and they were running far too fast to brake when we reached the wall. I got crushed between it and them and my plastron went straight into my ribcage. My hand was two feet away from the ball when I went down under three bodies.

                Most fun I ever had. Didn’t mind the injury. XD

    3. My one and only martial arts tournament, I lost my first place because I instinctively apologized to my opponent when I kicked her in the jaw. (Of course, she was also ten years older, a foot shorter, and probably fifty pounds lighter than me–the only reason we’d been paired off at all is we were the only two in the adult women’s division for our belt…and I was only in adult because I’d just turned 18 a few months earlier.)

       It’s still a family joke.

       However. I did learn a couple of years later when punched a skeezy guy groping my mission companion (body punch, not face) that when in the face of an ACTUAL threat I have zero problem hitting someone. So that was good to know.

       And now that I’m past forty, I’ll definitely fight even dirtiier…

       But yes, that IS an ingrained message a lot of us have to overcome, especially women. It’s not necessarily a bad thing (“Don’t hit people without good reason” isn’t a bad message), but…yeah.

13. “Senegalese Army” Do you mean the Symbionese Liberation Front? Or was that intentional to lure in a dopey question like mine?

    Lots of talk lately about our military becoming an SJW project. One truth coming from the lips of Mike Tyson is his saying that everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the face. But that’s true of both sides of the fight.

    Why isn’t anyone doing anything yet? The other side is doing a lot because they hold the organized seats of power. We haven’t organized yet. We can, by taking our stand as individuals (like chucking masks and ignoring some “rules”) and noticing we are not alone. The crowd will then grow.

    Lots of dead wood out there. People who are not leftists, but don’t look beyond Dr. Falsie and the MSM. We need to wake them up.

    1. As an aside, I miss watching Mike Tyson fight. Very violent poetry in motion, as long as you didn’t blink or you’d miss it.

       1. It was always strange to see him demolish an opponent and then hear him speak in that tiny little voice.

          1. I miss Marvelous Marvin Hagler’s (who just passed away) fights. In my view the best pound for pound boxer of his generation and one of the greatest all time…and he got utterly robbed in the Leonard fight. The first round of his fight with Hearns may be the single greatest boxing round ever.

          2. He is a pigeon fancier/breeder. It was his hobby as a kid, and he keeps them himself now, too.

    2. No. The truth is my fingers have a mind of their own. And type whatever the hell they want, regardless of what’s in my head at the time. Sigh. Thanks.

    3. Everyone I know whois dead wood won’t wake up until that whole box full of shoes drops. Oh, they know Biden is bad, but they still hang onto their cable and Disney+ and professional sports, and on and on. One of my friends is just too nice, and not willing to fight back in any form. I don’t know what will happen to her.

       1. I know people like that. I worry about them from time to time, but there’s not a lot I can do if they don’t want to listen. I think, I hope, they’ll survive, but it will probably be true hell on earth for them.

       2. Pacifism will, at best, get you a nice peaceful trip to the slave pens. At worst — tell me, have you ever heard of the Aztecs?

          It takes two to make peace. It only takes one to make war.

       3. Guest of honor at an urban BBQ.

       4. Know someone like that.

          Part of the problem is that people have been saying the country was about to collapse every hour on the hour for decades.

    4. I’m reminded of video game player versus player fights. I’m not talking about first person shooter battles where you line up the reticle on your screen and press the fire button. I’m talking about the (usually up close and personal) kind that requires you to engage in careful use of the right skills.

       Or in other words, you need to think.

       And the first thing that every player does the first few times they end up in a player versus player fight like that is freeze up.

       1. The need to think to get through missions (yes there is plenty of firepower as well) and the ability to complete many of the missions in a number of ways, as well as the “open sandbox”, is why the Grand Theft Auto series of games are so awesome.

    5. Good question. And “Patty Hearst” re-materialized in MN a while back, as I recall. It was something of a scandal in itself.. as I recall..at the time. HOWEVER.. either that’s been seriously whitewashed (no surprise), my memory is askew (possible) or this a jump/branch Universe where her fugitive status for some time… never really happened.

       I would give least credence to the last, and none at all…. save I have a few memories (unrelated) that do NOT reconcile. For example, I most certainly recall reading of a proposal, online (thus likely slashdot) to drop the rule about (not) advertising the number of transistors in a radio. Yet… nothing appears when searched for. There have been a couple other things… and, well, a fellow gets a mite suspicious, he does.

       1. I’ve got an irreconcilable memory of my own. I know that one of the videos we watched in driver ed featured Sammy Hagar’s “I Can’t Drive Fifty-five” in the segment about speed limits and speeding. Except one problem: every source I’ve ever found lists that song as being released in 1984, but I took driver ed in 1982.

          1. I can confirm it came out between 83 and 85 from memory: The VOA album came out while I was stationed in San Antonio. If it had been around in 82 I would have had it cranking during my drive from Iowa to California to my first duty station.

       2. Mandela Effect?

          1. It happens around here so much, younger son has a thing “I come from a world where–“

             1. And that makes me wonder… is he some sort of Influence and perhaps a Cause of world-switching… OR… does this go on all the time, for everyone, and he is simply more apt to notice that Something Changed?

                Or, of course, something else entirely.

                1. well…. he and I have seen the world outside the window blank out ONCE. Maybe that’s how you know the world shifted.

                   1. I recall the mentioning of that, which made me start pondering things that didn’t quite ‘add up’ and couldn’t be readily attributed to erratic recall.

                      1. I should’ve cancelled NRODT then instead of waiting until weaselboy decided to kick Milo while he was down.

                         1. I did.

          2. For a lot of other stuff, I might figure that. But that one stands out like a xenon flash to me.

       3. Aha. It was another person mixed up in the SLA/Patty Hearst mess: Kathleen Soliah.

    6. > We haven’t organized yet.
       —
       Last time, they called it the TEA Party. And both halves of the Uniparty combined resources to kill it.

14. This article is a boot-drop, and likely to spike blood pressure.

    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/the_sovereign_crime_of_industrial_scale_vote_fraud.html

    1. Sure enough, that article had me pawing at the air and reaching blindly for a hunting rifle. o_o

    2. The only solution is to identify and execute the frauders. And we already know that nobody wants to actually identify them. Too bad Mack Bolan, The Hood, or The Punisher are fictional characters.

       1. “… fictional characters.”

          But for how long, Mike? Some of us have a fictional character trapped inside, trying to get out.

          1. Only ONE?

             1. You don’t count.

                1. Yes I do. At last count I have 300 and some characters in my head. I count them fine. THough getting mroe exact would require time.

                   1. I only have about fifty, but make up for the small population with a 13,000 year timeline.

                      Not counting the ones who came before… they go back far enough that their last descendants have completely devolved.

             2. Well, the Ghost That Walks wants out. The rest of them like it in here. It’s comfy and the cappuccino is good. ~:D

    3. Added to what I just learned, I think I’ll give it a pass.

       I just listened to the news. The new bill in Congress, HR1? Gives ILLEGAL ALIENS THE ABILITY TO APPLY FOR AN FHA LOAN.

       Yep. I’m going to check, but that’s what the report said. People who have entered the country illegally can apply for a home loan–as an illegal alien–and receive FHA guarantees.

       1. Yep. And then they will leave. In the night. Leaving the house trashed.
          What can’t go on, won’t go on.

          1. “What can’t go on, won’t go on.” Thanks heavens.

             My sister works in Home Lending for Umpqua Bank. I get to hear all the details about what they’re going to do to figure this one out.

             Unfortunately, one of the things they’re doing is trying to incorporate D.I.E. without degrading the bank. Good luck with that.

    4. Whoever manipulated the stealection would seem to be guilty of treason, at least. When the government itself is a guilty party, the individuals need to be taken out somehow.
       A few people claim to have indisputable evidence that the election was stolen, yet nothing has happened. One could only surmise that the entire legal system refuses to give them any traction and they are under severe personal threats.
       Having more elections obviously stolen would be another tipping point for us, like a repeal of the 1st or 2nd amendments.

       1. “Again” already happened: See https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/the_sovereign_crime_of_industrial_scale_vote_fraud.html

          And I agree with that prediction that the con will only get bigger and will only get more obvious – gamblers who win can’t help making bigger bets.
          —
          Hey, Fed blog monitors – still proud of your job? Are you in on the con too, or is it just your boss?

          1. Yeah, the American Thinker article is what I was commenting on. I wonder if in 2022 and 2024 they’ll try to rig them all or just the more “important” ones? If TPTB don’t stop the tyranny I see a split attempt coming.

             1. There will be no election next year. People might still go through the motions of filling out ballots, but the ‘votes’ will be counted in secret, in locked rooms in the middle of the night, and the counting will go on until the ‘right’ result is obtained.

                Like Florida in 2000. When the eighth recount showed Dole a few votes ahead, the Democrats screamed “STOP COUNTING NOW!!”

                1. This.

15. Construction in China has been reputedly of remarkably poor quality in general since the Red Guards cut a swathe of destruction across older buildings during the Cultural Revolution. “Out with the old, in with the new — and hey, you don’t own any of it yourself, Comrade Citizen of the Glorious Revolution.” What happens when — not if — these pristine ghost cities start noticeably crumbling even before any of the buildings therein are tenanted? What will happen to the Chinese economy when tens of billions of dollars of buildings turn out to be worthless? Not to mention the little problem of finding tenants for surviving buildings when the population itself starts to actually fall within a few more years. Fun times ahead.

    And as an aside, many wealthy Chinese aren’t remotely idiots. They know this too in spite of happy noises from the state-controlled media, so look for ever increasing real estate purchases and other investments in the United States by cautious Chinese investors who also want thereby to secure the possibility of frantically fleeing to the U.S. when the fantasy La-La-Land Chinese economy finally meets the rotating air distributor. Hard to blame them, eh? Might even be an avenue of investment for smart Americans who can accurately forecast the best undeveloped land to buy in anticipation of this growing Chinese exodus.

    1. The ghost cities are already crumbling. A couple of American YouTube bloggers (Serpentza is the name of one of them, but I can’t remember the name of his partner) visited one of the cities, and took a look around.

       The brand new buildings were already coming apart.

       They ended the video with footage of some of the recent Chinese building facade collapses in which basically an entire side of a 10+ story building suddenly falls down.

       1. Laowhy86. See in particular the pinned video.

          https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChvithwOECK5g_19TjldMKw

       2. Unoccupied building rot fast. Those “ghost cities” never had a chance.

          And in very short order, no terror will be able to hide that deadly rot.

       3. These are at least the second generation of buildings falling down. I can remember empty 20 story buildings in China back in 2001. There were families living in I enclosed building frames lighting fires for cooking. This was Guandong city mind, not some rural backwater.

          I have an old book of Soviet matches. They’re like logs since the quota was weight not count. I lit one once and damn near blew my hand off. I keep them in a metal box.

          China is what central planning does when it has unlimited borrowed money.

          1. I have an old book of Soviet matches. They’re like logs since the quota was weight not count. I lit one once and damn near blew my hand off. I keep them in a metal box.

             Sounds like they would be very good for DIY primers.

             1. I’d sooner strike flints than 30 year old soviet matches.

       4. I know a Chinese real estate agent. She says those are called “tofu developments” because they are mostly fake. Styrofoam with stucco sprayed on it. Concrete with not much cement in it and no rebar. There’s a YouTube somewhere of a whole row of apartment buildings fallen over like dominoes. No foundations.

          The Chinese know what goes on. That’s why they don’t go in the new ghost cities. Its not safe to even stand outside one of those things, never mind live in it. Strictly an investment proxy.

          1. What’s the point of making them? Potemkin for satellite imaging?

             1. It’s an investment scam. You buy the condo on paper before it’s built, let the market heat a little bit, and then sell it again before it’s built at a tidy little profit. Rinse and repeat. All made possible by an edict from the Central Committee that “There Will Be Construction!”

                Basically they bulldoze garbage dumps and slums, kick out all the losers and put up Tofu Apartments as fast as they possibly can, while scrimping on materials as much as they can. It’s a form of musical chairs. Guy stuck holding the paper when the music stops is the loser. He now owns the utterly worthless tofu apartment.

                The Dutch Tulip Craze, but with apartments and done on purpose.

                But hey, those construction guys are working right? Big win for the Central Committee.

                1. Going through the motions, but without genuine value. Oh, that’s going to be “fun.”

                   1. Yes, which is why the Big Guys with the Big Honkin’ Money are buying up houses in Canada, the USA and Europe. There’s almost nothing worth investing in at home, everything there is bullshit.

                      They’re trying to arrange someplace safe to run, and a store of value for when they get here. Right now, rich Euros and Chinese are still buying here, a good sign. If they stop, that’ll be a bad sign.

                      1. They won’t stop here. Because they don’t recognize our danger signs.
                         The thing that boggles me is the south-of-the borders flooding in. THEY should know the signs by now.

                         1. We’re still better than where they came from. Our danger signs piled high and deep is way better than their everyday cartel and dictator and corruption.

                            Regardless, they’ll keep coming so long as we keep giving them money and resources just for being here.

                         2. There is another factor in this: not all of those people are from Chyna West Taiwan. Many are from Taiwan proper, and are running a multi generational escape plan for when the war happens.

                            1. Yeah, and that war is now a when, not an if; the CCP spun up its military to an official “war footing” a couple months back. The Pretender’s faction may want fresh wars so they can shovel tax money to their cronies, but they’re incapable of *winning* a war, and the CCP knows it.

                            2. You know, the people from Taiwan and Hong Kong do -not- mix with the Mainlanders, nor with each other.

                               You want to see some race-hatred, yeah baby, that’s the Real Thing right there. And they don’t like Gweilo either. That would be us, the ghost men. We are uncool, you know. Weird, and wrong. And we look funny.

                               The ones buying out Toronto and Vancouver used to be (20 years ago) from Hong Kong, and maybe 40 years ago there were many from Taiwan, but now it is all big Mainland money. HK and the island, the big guys got out long ago when Clinton was in office. They saw the handwriting on the wall and moved.

                            3. I know that, but if Chyna insists on saying that Taiwan doesn’t exist / is a rebellious province then I see no problem calling Chyna “West Taiwan”.

                            4. I liked the “West Taiwan” thing. It’s excellent cheek. ~:D

                            5. Picked it up from Arch Warhammer (now just Arch after SJWs used Copyright Attack).

                         3. I’m pretty sure they’re being scammed in their countries of origin too. Remember the support convoys a few years ago, with food, water, clothing, medical care, and even buses? That didn’t happen spontaneously, or by accident.

                            The chain wouldn’t start at the Fed, link through the various states, Mexico, and Panama, and just stop, hoping for some suckers to slog north.

                         4. I’ve known a lot of Chinese people over the years, fresh off the boat and 2nd, 3rd generation alike. Those people are not stupid. They see lightning and hear thunder just like the rest of us. And you know, they grasp the nuances of Western Culture too. That’s an important point, they get it. They just don’t agree with it.

                            Their culture is frickin’ 3000+ years old for a reason. It’s practical over the long term to put the family and the clan before the individual if what you want is an enduring sameness where everything is stable. Feudalism, basically. Europeans put the individual first because we value -the individual- and demand that things be fair.

                            That’s why European cultures invented the modern world and rammed it down China’s throat by pure productivity and superior technique. Individual freedom and personal ingenuity. Chinese culture hates that stuff.

                            Example of the bone deep resistance to change, if you go to rural China you will still see wooden farm wagons being made the ancient Chinese way instead of the technically superior 19th Century European way. They could do it the better way, but they don’t want to. It isn’t proper. The farmers don’t want the iron banded European-style wheel, they want the wooden wheel with the nails.

                            So I think they know our danger signals just fine. These are businessmen who swim in the shark-filled waters of Chinese Big Business. They come here for a rest and a safer place to put money where the sharks can’t get it. When they stop coming here, and when the southern border is as quiet as the northern border, that’s when to really start to worry.

                            I mean, the Chicoms are still buying stuff in France, right? France is worse off than the USA by a mile. All self-inflicted wounds too.

                            1. They don’t get the west. Not really. And neither they nor Europeans get America. Trust me on this, okay?

                            2. The Chinese do not understand us, and do not want to, in my experience.

                               Third Fleet, Navy, San Diego, up on the hill. Lots and lots of Chinese. I worked with one lady. She was lovely. She was an American citizen.

                               The Chinese set up Chinese only communities. They shop only at Chinese shops. They force their children into Chinese school on the weekends. They speak Chinese. They use Chinese realtors, doctors….. Everything.

                               I asked her one day “If the US went to war with China, which side would you fight on?”

                               She smiled. She lied. And we both knew she was lying when she said she would of course fight for America.

                            3. Their culture is frickin’ 3000+ years old for a reason.

                               mmhmm, yes, you are getting it.

                               It’s practical over the long term to put the family and the clan before the individual if what you want is an enduring sameness where everything is stable. Feudalism, basically. Europeans put the individual first because we value -the individual- and demand that things be fair.

                               *sigh*

                               So close and yet so far.

                            4. > Their culture is frickin’ 3000+ years old for a reason

                               “Subsistence dirt farmer” is pretty much the same everywhere. There’s not enough margin for cultural pretensions.

                               The Maoists did their best to eradicate every vestige of the Imperial bureaucracy, which was the “Chinese culture” the rest of the world saw. They kept some superficial bits for their skin suit to show the gwailo, but it’s the Party dancing inside it, while nowadays claiming “ancient Chinese culture” for a society that was created by bullet and jackboot within the living memory of some posters here.

    2. tHEY ALREADY ARE CRUMBLING.

    3. Or why Vancouver is fast becoming a Chinese city, with single-family bungalows selling in excess of a million dollars, as wealthy Chinese extract their money from the CCP’s clutches while they still can. (There are already HOAs where the meetings are held in Mandarin.)

       1. There are already HOAs where the meetings are held in Mandarin.

          And so they begin the slide back into what they moved to escape from…

       2. Not just Vancouver. All of BC and most of Southern Ontario is experiencing a real estate price explosion this year. Right now, today, the -average- price of a house in Burlington Ont. approaches $1 -million- dollars. Which means that anything in a reasonable neighborhood that is larger than a breadbox is going for $1.1 million and up. Nice houses are $1.5 mil, the really nice ones in the tree-lined streets start at $2 million.

          Last year, the average price was ~$850,000. Nice ones went for $900-ish. Three years ago, $750. Three years before that, $550.

          Hamilton, Kitchener/Guelph/Waterloo, same story only $100,000 cheaper.

          Part of that is Chinese money, for sure. They’ll buy -anything- and don’t care how much. Investment, right? Someplace to park the cash where ChairmanFatBoi can’t get at it. The rental market has been getting hammered the last 10 years because of all the Chinese investment houses sitting empty.

          But the other part is that inflation is coming to the Demented Dominion, and everybody knows it. Anyone with a down payment in the bank is trying to buy a house for their kids to live in. Otherwise, that kid will never, ever, ever own a house. Never. I myself did not own a house until I MOVED TO ARIZONA and bought one during the Easy Money Mortgage time of the 1990s. That got me on the ladder. Easy renovation and a flip. Kapow, instant nest egg.

          This knowledge, that the only path to true wealth is flipping houses, has made it into the general population and now a crappy row house with no yard in Toronto costs more than a bungalow with a yard and a garage in Silicon Valley.

          A country can continue to function if one city has ridiculously high prices. It can’t if ALL the cities have that. People have to live somewhere, because winter is cold.

       3. Mandarin HOAs: neighbor annoyance *and* self-criticism sessions! What a deal!

16. It might take longer than you think. There will be some “drops” – just short-lived, contained ones, at first.
    They will probably be followed by new regulations, designed to keep you from accessing cash. For your own good, you know.
    Then, a larger, longer-lasting drop. One that might wipe out perhaps 1/3 to 1/2 of your capital (investments, house, car). There will be much posturing in Washington, followed by Yet Another Comprehensive Bill – YACB, for short.
    Then, not only will things return to normal, but the stock market will absolutely BOOM!
    Along with tremendous bargains in home financing (it will be a complicated financial instrument, that allows people with bad credit and no money to Buy a Home!!!!), which will lull the rubes into jumping back in.
    That “opportunity” will be the signal for the smart money to GET OUT. Cash in EVERYTHING, buy that place in the country outright, and use any money left to stock up on provisions – food, fuel, tools, guns.

    1. Sound words. I’ve been thinking on and off about doing just that — converting a bundle of cash into a low-cost place in the countryside somewhere of a business-friendly, firearms-friendly state, away from the cities. It’s all about the timing, though. Moving right now isn’t feasible. One might hope for a grace period of a couple of years before the bovine excrement truly hits, etc. -_-

       1. You know, a further thought occurs. There’s strength in numbers. In anticipation of financial catastrophe, might be that a fair number of sensible people from across the country who voted for and still support Donald J. Trump get together to find a contiguous stretch of rural land in a firearms-friendly, business-friendly, reliably Republican state in which to assemble a loose neighborhood of like-minded people. Might even look into formal status as an incorporated township if there are enough folks involved to support that. It’s not a new idea. Could be just the ticket for the right group and the right area with access to high-speed broadband and other necessary amenities for living in the 21st Century and staying in touch with the world economy whilst avoiding the worst effects of a financial collapse.

          Hmmm.

          1. Won’t happen.
             Sorry.Enclaves don’t work. People have different priorities. Americans don’t work like htat.

             1. One of the reasons using the military against the country can’t work is because you can’t drop a bomb on *a* house (yes I know about the knife missles, no it doesn’t change things enough).

                Enclaves without heavy weapons and point defense are gigantic “KILL ME” ads.

             2. Wouldn’t be enclaves. Would be clumps of entire states. Like, pretty much all of ranch and dryland farming country. Starting with the ones going “Oh yeah??” toward the Pretender’s edicts.

          2. You are referencing something similar to what was attempted as “The Free State Project”. Basically, congregate and convert.

             Damnfool Libertarians couldn’t agree on where to set it up, so fractured their minimal numbers and never achieved sufficient mass. The concept of Libertarians attempting a Collective effort was kinda humorous to watch. ” No -you- independently follow -my- lead!”

             Humans….

             1. No, I was thinking of something ideologically looser. More like a mutual investment effort with a neighborhood thrown into the mix. The goal ain’t remotely perfection, only something considerably better than unplanned, last-minute chaos. “If you build it, they will come.” (And yes, I know that’s a misquote of the original line from the movie.)

                1. You’re basically describing most any small town here in east Tennessee.

             2. They generally settled on New Hampshire. But they took too long getting here. And those who did, and who ran for office, found out real quick that natives don’t like newbie folks of the right or left messing with stuff. General rule of thumb is 5 years in town, first two or three just watching and attending meetings. Start volunteering for committees at 3 to 4 years. Year 5, now you can put your name on the ballot. And still expect to lose the first time or two. Next door neighbor is a free stater. She tried running for NH House the year she got here; and got clobbered. Discouraged her so bad she never tried again.

          3. Remember to vet those like minded folks if possible. Especially if one of them is really gung-ho and has ideas which are more or less illegal.

             1. IOW the FBI Plant

                1. Half the people at the Malheur occupation.

          4. The American Redoubt people are talking that; IIRC Idaho, Eastern OR/WA, WY and Montana. The AMRRON radio group is affiliated, though current observation says the former is either doomed or Utopia (Hi Gene!), while the latter seems like it is working. More realistic goals for the radio people. Have heard some good things about AmRRON, while the Redoubt gives me red flags.

       2. low-cost place in the countryside

          Around here (S central OR), those dried up as Covidiocy hit California, and it’s tighter now. We’re thankful for a bunch of new, good neighbors, because finding a country place closer to town (with less than half the acreage we have–5 would be ideal) just ain’t happening. Though our place is probably spiking in price, too.

          The NH observations apply, too.

          1. We are in the same boat for moving outward, building, and selling our existing home. Sure, house is worth, say $435k, anything we build will cost $435k with the land, utilities, even having a well dug. Mortgage would be equivalence, and (at this time anyway) interest rates lower, but our property taxes would balloon on a new place. Still would consider it if we could agree on where locally and how much land (no more than 1/2 acre). Not that we’ve looked very hard but location is our downfall so far.

             1. We have more land than both of us can properly care for (and a distinct shortage of people we could pay to do some of the work), but the sheer isolation makes the place attractive in a SHTF scenario. And, there’s little reason to doubt that the Feces will hit the Fedders.

                I’m not well suited for sniper duty (and if somebody thinks that’s not under consideration in flyoverland, think again), but there are technical things I can do, and if push comes to shove, I suppose I could dredge to find salvageable items after the myriad tragic boating accidents.

                1. I don’t necessarily want to be off grid, but wouldn’t mind a well, septic, and solar power, with propane options. Hubby won’t go with a property having to deal with a well. I get it. My experience with a well is grandma/grandpa’s, different uncles, and great-uncle’s properties. The wells had no problems, had good water, excellent pressure, lots of water. Locations were in Western Oregon (Pleasant Hill, Drain/Yoncolla foothills). HIS experience is his parents place between Sunriver and La Pine, next to the Big Pine State Park off Hwy 97. Seems like almost every trip over he and his brother were there helping his dad solve one problem or another regarding that well, mostly cleaning the sandy volcanic soil out of filters. Their father wasn’t a slouch at solving problems either. Didn’t stop until parents sold and moved into Bend (medical reasons). Then more recently a friend who has a place outside of Monroe lost their water, they and their neighbors suddenly had dry wells. Also burned out their pump. Had to drill deeper well with no guaranty of outcome (did hit water, but …).

                   1. The shared well we started with originally handled a small company town, simple upkeep other than a) basic maintenance and b) a complete upgrade of the pumphouse. (Oh yeah, pump was replaced before we move there; it was probably 30 years old.)

                      We did that pumphouse upgrade at one time’ new siding, roof, and at the same time I redid the electrics. The work was split between two of us, with the third party paying cash. We had suspicions that the other working party charged the third for *my* work, but didn’t want to go there. Made the decision to do our own well and pump 10 years later much easier.

                      We looked at a 10 acre parcel closer to town, but it’s in an area where the wells run 400′ deep and water hits at 200. (Ag area, with lots of pivot irrigation. They can raise hell.) Our current well is 100′ with first water at 25′ (being near a river can make for accessible aquifers), and so far, we’ve had no problems. My tendency to overbuild things just might contribute to longevity. There are a couple of community wells in the county, but they can have problems. I’ll stick with a good well.

                      1. FIL tended to overbuild too. He worked on rockets in San Diego (know the name, have no clue on how to spell). The overbuilding is kind of a joke with his sons … who are also perfectionists, and overbuild. Pump house was definitely over engineered, Better quality pump than neighbors. But not much he could do about the professionally dug well nor the volcanic soil issues. The house sits right on the Little Deschutes River, bordering the La Pine State Park. The house could not be built now by state and county regulations. Three of the four property boundaries are the cinder road access, La Pine State Park, and Deschutes River. (Do not ask me orientation because all I know is take park road like into campground, turn right before crossing river, wind back into the woods, take a left, cross the river, right at the “big bend”, and it is 4th lot on left from there.)

                         Ironically the other wells listed … all but two were original homestead wells. Hand dug, caped and pumps added, around 100 years after originally put into use. The other one would have been built around mid-1930’s or 1940’s. Do not remember the pump houses on the others. One of the last ones the house was so not over engineered, although it does/did (place is sold now) act as a (child scary) root cellar … 🙂

    2. That is entirely believable. I’m hanging on tight to the sides of the boat!

    3. I don’t think so. Gut is saying the music plays in June. First slow, but increasing.

       1. No offense meant, Mrs. Hoyt, but I’m hoping very much that you’re totally off base about the accelerated timing. A remnant of American exceptionalism and all that. -_-

          1. I HOPE it’s longer. Note I’m still stuck behind the lines. But I get these “feelings” and they’re rarely wrong.

             1. Your always welcome down in the SW corner or our fair state if the balloon goes up. The lines are loose for the next cance.

             2. Wrong or right, getting your act together too soon is far better than too late.

                1. An act together is better than an act spread out in pieces on the workbench waiting for that one new part.

             3. Heck, I’m surprised Trump that isn’t already a political prisoner or “suicide”.
                Although I’m pretty sure he would have been if he hadn’t kept his head down for the better part of two months.
                (Or had released the letter agencies’ dirty laundry.)

             4. In Texas, too – we haven’t all lost our minds here.

                1. Speaking of which, I’m reading “Daughter of Texas” and enjoying it very much (about halfway through, in the middle of the Runaway Scrape). I’m very impressed with the research you must have done to get the details right. I’m intending to give it to my girls since they’re both studying Texas history this year, and I was wondering to what extent the “real” characters are actually real–meaning, did you read their letters and such, to get a sense of their personalities?

                   1. Hi, Neil, and thanks for the compliment – I did tuck into an awful lot of research for Daughter of Texas, but the only “real” character that I did a deep-dive into reading their letters was Sam Houston, and maybe a bit of Mirabeau Lamar. I got a sense of what certain other historic figures were like from reading a variety of other materials; reminiscences by contemporaries, memoirs and the like, or a couple of specialist historians – William C. Davis for Three Roads to the Alamo. There is also a local Gonzales historian, Victoria Frenzel who produced a book about the Gonzales men who went to the Alamo, and it was helpful in giving me a notion of what they might have been like in life.

                      1. Thanks! I’ll have to look for the Frenzel book.

             5. I’m hoping your completely wrong and this turns out no worse than the Carter administration. Which was bad enough, but at least we all lived through it.

                Except for you whippersnapper Millennials. Damn kids! Get off my lawn! 😡

                1. I do *not* want to think of the Carter years as “the good old days.” Or even “the not so bad old days.”

                2. It’s already worse than Carter. by miles.

                   1. OBummer beat Carter by miles; Xiden is going for light years.

                      1. Partially it’s that this is the China Joe Muppet Show – all coherent thought is from the writers room, and nobody compos mentis is actually in charge enough to say “No, THAT is a really bad idea, so we’re not doing that.”

                         The Lightbringer was convinced he was the smartest person in every room, so even given his questionable judgement and abhorrent “ethics”, he could impose restraint.

                         Not so Joe.

                         1. The FICUS is no more in charge than a three-year-old with a steering wheel on his child seat. Biden is told what to say, and what to sign, and knows nothing more.

             6. Hope so too. I need time to get in shape and to do some projects that might just make us safer.

       2. We know they are going to overreach in their grab for absolute power and we know that they will do it sooner rather than later. Democrats who vigorously defended the filibuster when they were in the minority are now denouncing it as racist; when they get rid of it, which will be by June, they will be doing so with the intent to never, ever, be out of power ever again.

          They will ram through HR1, gun bans, restrictions on religion and speech and will impose identity group based taxes as well as outright wealth confiscation. Outlets like Breitbart, The Federalist and Instapundit will be silenced, the people running the sites de-banked and essentially barred from working, and “relocated” (for their own protection).

          They will fully nationalize healthcare and will administer it based not on medical need but rather identity group membership. Additionally, those who speak out against leftist tyranny or indeed express anything other than perfectly politically correct thought will be declared ineligible for health care. Parents who express disagreement will have their children taken away from them by the government. Neighborhoods that speak out will find the Democratic Party paramilitary looting and burning their homes and businesses. National media will post pictures of thought criminals with denouncements and with declarations that such people must be shunned. Additionally, all such people will be forced to have a bar code/identity code tattood on their skin and a microchip tracker embedded. The only thing missing will be the yellow Stars of David on the clothing.

          When people fight back, as is to be expected against such tyranny, the utterly corrupted military will be used to suppress such dissent, and they will do aerial bombing of areas that are populated by those who resist them. While they might nuke us, as Eric Swalwell has promoted, they would use things like Daisy Cutters and napalm on places that are centers of those who challenge tyranny.

          1. Doing so can only be accomplished by being the trigger finger that does not think it will be as dead as the brain it fires a bullet through.

          2. Well, it depends on how well vetted those particular military members are. In many cases it’s more likely to be FBI, CIA, DHS, or some black office of the same.

             Thing is, it won’t take much for Americans to realize what’s finally happening and for a resistance to form. It’s been amply demonstrated that a poor, 3rd world rural nation of goat herders can outwit the best soldiers in the world, provided they don’t mind taking losses to do it. Americans are far more capable of that.

             But we do require a push. (Funny, didn’t Nick Fury say that in The Avengers?)

             1. Yeah, I read something recently (maybe Col. Kurt) observing that the current generation of Generals and Admirals has managed to avoid defeating the Taliban for twenty years, when they had all the advantages and backing and resources of the world hegemon.

                Twenty.
                Years.

                What makes anyone think they would do any better when they go send volunteer troops to raid their second cousin’s house or drop bombs on their uncle’s next door neighbor?

                1. The military is actively engaged in outright identity group based Marxist CRT indoctrination:

                   https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/03/understanding-the-militarys-attack-on-tucker-carlson.php

                   I warned of this when Obama first started his “fundamental transformation” as soon as he took office in January 2009 and the effort to turn the military into an internal enforcer of radical leftist ideology and as a partisan instrument of the Democratic Party. Even during Trump’s presidency, the leftists that Obama had installed in the military kept pushing it. They have accelerated it since the Communazis took full control of the Federal government in January.

          3. Did you watch the NPC congressman gather up some uniforms, walk them to Marjorie Taylor Douglas’ office, as an intimidation tactic?

             Pure evil. In the hall of Congress.

             Story here: https://www.defensenews.com/news/pentagon-congress/2021/03/16/guard-officials-say-troops-march-on-republican-congresswomans-office-wasnt-a-political-statement/

             1. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Sorry.

             2. The militarization of DC by Pelosi and the Democrats was never intended for security against protestors, rather it is intended for use against Republican members of Congress in order to intimidate them and to ultimately “deal” with them, so that Democrats can enact their fundamental transformation unimpeded. The events of January 6, 2021 are just a pretext and if that hadn’t occured, they would have come up with something else.

             3. Via Insty open thread:

                

                Powerline had a similar piece. Apparently the “extremism” training is a purely partisan exercise that declares that anyone who disagrees with Democrats is an enemy of the state and thus a legitimate target of the armed forces.

                1. Horrified, and unsurprised.

                   If that “buddy” gets caught texting he’ll be cashiered.

          4. “Democrats who vigorously defended the filibuster when they were in the minority are now denouncing it as racist; when they get rid of it, which will be by June”

             Me thinks you were optimistic with thinking they’d wait until June…
             Dick Durbin (D-IL) has gone from saying “abolishing the measure “would be the end of the Senate”” to saying it has “…a death grip on American democracy.”

             Apparently Biden has come out in favor of at least changes, supposedly for now “rules changes” to the filibuster, such as the Senator filibustering actually has to get off their butt, stand, and presumably speak the entire time…

             I give the filibuster until the end of April before the Ds’ find some way to either render it completely toothless (“Sure, you go ahead and stand there and speak for as long as you like, we’ve changed the rules so if WE don’t think you said something relevant to the bill, your filibuster is ended. You just said “THE” we don’t feel that’s relevant, VOTE!”) or outright remove it. I’ve seen some things that even without the filibuster, there’s ways to at least slow down legislation, one hopes McConnel and the rest have the balls to do them…

             1. McConnell is talking the talk (he said the Senate would become scorched earth if the filibuster is abolished), but that is rather different than him walking the walk if it comes to that.

    4. They figured out how to rig the market back during Billy Jeff’s administration, which is why when the market would start imitating a falling rock there would suddenly be a lot of buying on margin, leveraging small purchases into (apparently) large market swings. And much of the money financing that would be funneled from the Federal Reserve (often by “requesting” investment firms take action.)
       ~

    5. Economic tsunami… do NOT go out to gather the readily available fish. Seek high ground FAST instead.

       That about it?

17. Speaking from the not-really-suburbs of a small rust-belt-type city in a state with *very* generous welfare offerings… I’d say the cash economy is alive and well in at least some places, and not just for drugs and food stamps. Generally not hitting 10K, no, and also not being spent on things that would trigger a mismatched lifestyle alert. But definitely operational.

18. “So they’ll try to make us obey. The year that was not only got us in shock over how far they’ll go to abuse us — and as more people wake up to the fact this was all a bullshit not particularly bad flu virus, the more anger builds — but it also got them addicted to the high of abusing us. And that means they need to keep amping it.”

    Yes, indeed, but it may become even worse than discussed here so far. They both hate this country and are in the process of dehumanizing white, christian, conservative opponents. When they feel the time is right, they may just start mass consfications, and mass arrests to put us in work camps or worse. They believe they can own us and compel anything. They also want the US to be utterly destroyed and are importing untold thousands across the Southern border who are Covid positive and then spreading them into the interior. These will augment their brown shirts who are alwaeady loose and will be given free reign to hunt us down. The next number of years are going to become very hard and all solutions also very hard. Chaos in one of their goals.

    1. You’re overestimating their power and competency. They might manage that in some uber-woke enclaves, but we’re the majority, remember? and not by a little bit.

    2. I wouldn’t be too scared of the covid positive ones. It’s a severe cold. The left believes it’s death, because they drink their own ink.

       1. I think the third world diseases that aren’t screened for are a greater threat-TB, Typhoid, etc.

          1. This is absolutely true. Plus things we literally have no names for.

          2. And when those diseases break out in the third-world slums in big Democrat cities, it will be blamed on ‘racism’ and ‘xenophobia’.

             1. Send all of them to Seattle. We’ll addict them to heroin and save them with narcan every day.

             2. It already has and they already did; see the 2019 California disease outbreaks

          3. TB is horrendous. I suspect my family history would have been different if there’d been a good cure for it in the 50s.

             The number of people who simply do not grasp germ theory boggles my mind.

       2. Truthfully, I’ve had worse colds. It can be ugly, but it wasn’t with me and I’m nearly 65.

          Remember back last March when we were wondering where all the deceased street-bums were? Here we are a year later, Third Wave already, with the dreaded England and South Africa versions of the totally-not-a-Chinese-virus and I notice a distinct paucity of deceased street-bums in any of the big street-bum cities.

          In other CoronaChan news, Andrew Cuomo skated on killing all those old people in nursing homes but #MeToo is going to mow him down. I’ll take it.

          1. Yep.

             1. And the claimed fatality rate is vastly overstated because all the people who had the pain in the neck pesky cold in late fall 2019 into February 2020 very likely had the CCP Virus and went uncounted because it was before it was on the radar of those doing the counting.,

                1. Also, this:

                   https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2021/03/16/coronavirus-COVID19-asymptomatic-undiagnosed-cases-study/9541615914561/

       3. Not enough COVID here, and even the progressives are starting to get suspicious. So, South American COVID! Mutant strains! Definitely need “electronic passports” then…

          1. It still won’t work.

          2. Except, it seems, not mutant enough. Indications are at least the Pfizer vaccine also works against the variants. Perhaps not as well, but still “well enough” as such things go.

          3. I don’t know, Sarah. I’ve seen people I’ve known for decades in meatspace, not stupid by most measures, practically in tears because they couldn’t get their turn with the needle fast enough.

             They’re absolutely convinced they’re going to DIE, foaming at the mouth and bleeding at the eyeballs, if they don’t get the “vaccine.” And then they realize *afterward* that, essentially, nothing has changed for them; they still have to play the Diaper Game, they still have to “social distance”, the economy is still stalled, and now they need regular “booster” shots, which aren’t actually available yet, but their stress level is rising again as they worry about getting the next shot in time…

19. This is where we miss Rush Limbaugh, who had the ability to cut through the fog and analyse the news in a way that could motivate people. Even people who didn’t listen to him heard his breakdowns of events. He’d done it for so long and done it so easily that we took his function for granted.
    ~

    1. I made the mistake of going to bed in 2008 and waking to the “victory” of the Kenyan Marxist. I went into shock to such an extent I got pale, and a coworker asked if I was OK. “Nope.”

       Rush at 9 AM was what got me through that day. I didn’t do a lick of work, just listened to him. And he made me feel everything would be survivable; not good, but survivable.

20. Democrats will attribute all of the disastrous natural consequences of their policies and ideology to 1) bad luck, and 2) “reactionary enemies of the state”, i.e. anyone who fails to clap sufficiently loudly and long enough for them. We are already seeing them categorically denounce everyone who voted for Trump, all Republicans (even the RINOs) and even independents who are not leftists as being “enemies of the state” whose sole motivation is the nefarious effort to maintain “white supremacy and privilege”.

    The rhetoric the Democrats are trading in has ALWAYS led to gulags, concentration camps and mass graves. In this case, don’t be surprised if in the name of “sustainability” they go the Soylent Green route.

    1. I’m seriously doubtful they can pull it off. These are city provincials and maleducated at that. Will they try? OF COURSE.

       1. The apparatchiks that stole the “kulaks” food during the Holodomor were largely urban intellectuals and students with guns. We need to remember Solzhenitsyn on Russia’s shame and make sure we take one with us if the time comes.

          Funny how autocorrect doesn’t recognize Holodomor. ha ha ha.

          1. Yes. But Americans aren’t Kulaks. And you know the set up was UTTERLY different, right?

             1. Indeed, we need to have a big war first, then Lenin has to take the trolley and take over when the liberals fail, and then the killing starts.

                I’m afraid that an awful lot of Americans will go along with it, perhaps enough to have it happen. I remember a historian of the Holocaust pointing out that it wasn’t that most Germans actively participated, it’s that they just didn’t care.

                Then again, it might be like the last years of the western empire with a middle class hollowed out by massive inflation and exhorbitant taxation thinking that the barbarians couldn’t be much worse.

                Sorry for the gloom, but I’ve been peering into the abyss.

                1. Well, buck up. It’s not that bad. We still have plenty of vinegar and spit left.

       2. And the Critical Race Theory nonsense, kangaroo courts and all the stuff going on for years in college campuses due to a small radical leftist activist minority was NEVER going to become the norm in broader society…….

          1. <rolls eyes.
             IT"S NOT the norm in broader society.It's insanity pushing in and red pilling people.
             Even in Occupied Colorado.

             1. Mao’s Red Guard and the Bolsheviks were a minority as well. Its not just numbers, its power that has been amassed that can be used to create fear and to make people try to simply not be next. Yes, it doesn’t last, but millions die while it does.

                Our individuality in a sense makes it more likely we will fight back but harder to do as a group-it’s like trying to herd cats against to fight a determined foe. While the left does eat its own, just like the Orcs on the Morgul Road, they will drop everything to kill the Hobbits if they see them.

                A lot of people will meekly go along simply hoping by doing so they are not next. They don’t need to have numbers if they have enough sheep. And I am not saying they win in the end, but there is a good possibility we all lose.

                1. sigh.
                   Yes,the ENFORCERS are always a minority. But the people wanting it enforced WEREN’T.
                   Here, the people wanting it enforced are a minority.
                   Again, the right lens to view this is someone trying to build the USSR in the late 80s.

                2. Did the Kulaks spend decades gathering every weapon they weapon they could get their hands on, and psyching themselves up to the idea that it was their duty to blow the heads off of secret police?

                   Then stop trying to force the comparison.

                   1. Dammit Ian, you’re making sense!

                      1. That is never a good thing.

                   2. Akshully, I have a counterargument that only relies on only /two/ gross misunderstandings.

                      I have thin, almost womanish, wrists due to a lack of ever having any sort of good physical condition. Therefore, one could argue that the Russian peasants were ‘more heavily armed’ through a combination of willful ignorance and deliberate stupidity.

                      The second mendacious claim would be using the Russian willingness to tolerate brutal treatment, and the American bleeding heart to argue that the Russians were mentally stronger.

                   3. Oh no, Americans are buying guns so they can meekly turn them in when the Almighty State demands it. Really. 😉

                      (Sad thing is, some folks on Twitter seem to think exactly that. Oh and that any rebellion will just require a few drone strikes and the peasants will fall in line. Or something like that.)

                      1. Have these people never heard of clay pigeons? Or actual live duck hunters (from my understanding those are a lot harder to hit)? Drones will be a new kind of target but I’m sure some of the skills will transfer.

                         1. The problem with “the skills transfer” is that you’re thinking of the cute little “drones” you can buy at the hobby store. An actual military drone such as the Predator is a beast that weighs over 1100 lbs and has a ceiling of about 25,000 ft. https://www.military-history.org/feature/predator-drone-specifications.htm

                            However, the weakness isn’t the drone itself. It’s the operating crew and logistics support. Normally overseas it’s operated from a secure location “behind the lines” with that stuff safely out of reach of the targeted groups. That wouldn’t be the case for domestic use.

                            This is one of the reasons why an actual insurrection and counter-insurgency in the US would be an ugly beast indeed. The folk involved in making those drone strikes, right down to the folk supplying fuel, can’t remain in secure bunkers all the time. And even if they do, their supplies almost by definition have to go through “hostile” regions and therefore vulnerable.

                            1. Plus, the folks involved in that logistical support might be…less than fully committed to The Cause. “Oops, somebody forgot to hook up a wire on that Hellfire missile, so it just dropped off the wing when they tried to fire it.” “The fuel truck driver got lost and wound up at the wrong airbase.” “They can’t finish overhauling the drone engine because not enough spare parts.”

                               And the more the Fearless Leaders scream and threaten, the worse it gets.

                            2. Funny thing about an all-volunteer military that draws from all walks of life, the person “pulling the trigger” may not have family or friends in the “target area” but someone they serve with very likely does. How willing is he going to be to tell a messmate “your grandmother was just collateral damage”?

                               Some will, of course. In any group the size of the US military, there will always be some psychos. But I don’t think they can weed out enough “extremists” to make it safe to do so, not quick enough to matter, not without gutting the service to a small fraction of what it is. Concentrate their willing psychos into a few special units, maybe, but what happens when word gets out to the troops who still care about their oath? I can see things getting ugly indeed.

                            3. They’ll start killing each other. There are ways to do so without getting caught, too.

                            4. Hostile territories that, if they successfully purge the military of bad-think, have more people who know everything about how those drones operate that isn’t in the manual, and may have been “radicalized” in part by screaming to the heavens to try to get security issues fixed.

                            5. The flipside of that is that a tinkerer can turn cutedrones into absolute *hell* for green zones.

                               Geofencing only works if it uses commercial firmware. Jamming only works if it is on remote control. All methods of stopping them take resources from other needs.

                            6. Not only can they not remain in secure bunkers all the time, but their families and loved ones also cannot.

                               Yes, that is horrid. Yes, that is a direct ticket to hell.

                               That’s the cost of civil war. I see one group in the US either convinced such costs don’t exist or won’t be paid by them so they happily push us forward.

                            7. Yes, that is horrid.

                               It’s also the implacable logic of revolution that turns existential and one of the reasons that I have always argued so vehemently against armed insurrection except as a truly last resort, where the consequences of not fighting are worse than where that leads. It’s what John Ringo called a “GoTH” plan. Not “Goth on Ice” goth but Go To Hell plan, the plan for when everything goes to hell, the “they died with their boots on” plan, the “honor guard to Valhalla” plan.

                            8. There is always a soft target. If nothing else, the guard furthest out on the perimeter.

                            9. There are bigger military drones, and there are smaller military drones.

                               One of the fundamental problems is that military hardware does not appear fully developed, like Athena from the brow of Zeus, and that the people doing so are not exactly a bunch of 100% politically reliable sociopaths, fully isolated from the rest of society. Problem number one of the true fact pattern, making sure that the hardware and software operates while ensuring that the folks doing so are politically reliable.

                               Fundamental problem number two, same core fact, the development work is not complete. There are all sorts of vulnerabilities that have not been closed properly yet. The necessary expertise to close those is hardly only in the hands of university communists who were born yesterday.

                               Fundamental problem number three, same core fact, a free people is necessary for creative tech development, and when freshly enslaved with their own technology, people ‘you’ do not like may be very well placed to develop countermeasures. Of course, beyond that the tech isn’t all developed or maintained in the depths of a federal bunker in the middle of nowhere, talking about the specific weaknesses tends to compromise sources and methods.

                               But the thing is, air frames are very difficult to keep in the air at all. Only the fact that aviation is small and insular, and hence reputation is very important, (and that the successful types there have a long term responsible mindset) is keeping the escalation from showing up yet. People are angry, but not yet angry enough that there is no cost that they will not pay.

                               Biden’s visas are invalid, so at some point international flights become a legitimate target, and there are far too many problems with engine maintenance without active sabotage.

                               A proper shoot and shoot anti-aircraft system could kill a commercial flight just by taking out the engines at the right point, and you wouldn’t need much threat in potential to stop the commercial carriers.

                               Plus the electronic warfare options. Plus knowing who the commercial pilots are, reaching them with propaganda, or if that doesn’t work more obnoxious measures.

                               Congress by and large is into political power, and mind games. They are not enough interested in anything else to have an institutional understanding that is very good. They see drones being praised when used against foreigners, and don’t see the work involved, or understand how much the managers are manipulating things to look like they are doing a better job.

                               So, they are not into these systems enough to understand how truly limited they are, or that they are not the perfect tool for every job. A hobbyist who likes military sci fi may eventually gain a better understanding than congress, even stipulating that the hobbyist still trusts the press releases from the program offices far too much.

                               Instead of a President, we have a Gu jar of competing academics with no understanding of the real world. Whether Jill Baidou, Winnie, Kam Harris, Soros, or some congressmoron is giving the order, they personally are blind and have no grasp of sound grand strategy or strategy. Sure, they may be able to find an officer who will deploy the tech, and even one who understands the proper use of it, but pretty much any career officer will fail to understand the technical capabilities civilians have available, unless they are also a tech hobbyist. A serving officer who understands the use of a technology, how the technology was developed, and is a hobbyist who follows civilian technical capabilities, probably has a specialized and expensive skillset. They probably are not in direct command over an operational unit. Anyone who has the other skills, and is a good enough commander that you would assign them to an operational unit is possibly smart enough to want to avoid the potential career impact of being tied to a war crime or a crime against humanity.

                               And there are a lot of areas of relevant tech. There are relatively few experts in all the tech areas, whose also can pull together an understanding of the implications. Forecasting that well enough to have a reliable intelligence assessment of the ‘politically reliable or kill’ experts is probably difficult enough that we should expect it to fail no matter what.

       3. Street gangs in cities are very good at this stuff, so if they co-opt those as a paramilitary force, they can cause a lot of damage and death. Just saying that the possibility should not be discounted just because the left has so many incompetents and idiots. Prepare as if they are competent so that one will be adequately prepared.

          1. Yes. A lot of cities are vulnerable.
             But the cities are not the country.

             1. I suggest you take a look at the gang violence in southern New Jersey in mostly rural counties like Cumberland and Salem. Even the small cities have gangs and the violence is occurring all over what is basically farmland.

                1. The South Africa model? Freicorps sent out from the urban and near urban enclaves to rape, loot and pillage? And since there same enclaves control all the legal proceedings, even a successful resistance gets a hard fine or some other form of extended kegal harassment, while the NGO-underwritten Oppressed People get arrested, their bail paid, and skate with no-one trying to track them down?

                   That’ll happen. Deep rural, particularly where bus lines do not go in places where the apparatchiks don’t yet have a solid apparatus, could be safe.

                   1. <rolls eyes.
                      Seriously? In America? Where every suburb bristles with guns? And no, South Africa was not like that.
                      Also in South Africa they had semi-competent people to do violence.
                      our gangs aint' that. And I think they're counting on the cartels.
                      Rolls eyes again.

                      1. Maybe in Colorado they do, but in the People’s Republic of New Jersey, legal private ownership of guns is so restricted it is effectively banned.

                      2. Huh. I really thought S.A. and Chile and other Marxist takeover countries did send out unofficially official truckloads of criminals to raid suburbs. I’ll have to go find out more. Thanks.

                         I think you may be mistaken about the Anti-fa gangs. Not the poor Dewberries that set up the CHAZ, but the ones setting fires and raiding out of Portland into the surrounding areas. Only the rains stopped them and some of the towns that organized opposition and road blocks diverted the raiders to the towns that didn’t.

                         The “Anti-fa” freicorps chose not to push it before the rains came, and the Oregonians have learned that your local sheriff might have your back, but the city D.A.s will send you through legal process hell. And the freicorps walked. So…

                         I had not even considered the cartels. I had not thought the NGO paste-eating pols were foolish enough to use *them* as catspaws. Silly hobbit.

                         1. Nah. They only gambol where the police and the locals allow them to. They keep saying they’re going to the suburbs, but they don’t.
                            SA and Chile did. The gangs faced unarmed civilians. And look, seriously? The number of vets among our civilians is very high. VERY FEW are on the left.
                            And all of them are better trained than the gangsters OR the cartels.

                            1. Thanks. That’s cool to know.

                            2. The vets preponderance is a known thing among antefa – those few vets who joined their side looked around and attempted to set up firearms training, but the word is the antefodder think guns are icky, so trained-to-even-minimal-levels antefa are pretty sparse on the ground.

                               Note however they also trained in small unit tactics, so the armed ones attempt to be attached to where the action is expected.

                      3. Flip side, we know many of the Antifa “protesters” move in groups by chartered bus, have radio communication, and at least some training in identifying police and media in the scrum. And BLM is a sizeable corporate entity now, worth around half a billion dollars, with city, state, and Federal support.

                         Yeah, there are lots of idiot college kids and Karens among the foot soldiers, but their leadership is lavishly financed by “private” money and officially protected by the government. If “they”, whoever they might be, decide $HOOTERVILLE needs to be admonished by some mostly peaceful protesting, then it will happen.

                         1. They are no match for veterans.

                         2. Sounds very Soviet in organization: relatively well-trained and equipped officers leading hoards of expendables. Will the latter remained volunteered to attack the suburbs is the question.

                         3. Or, even setting aside veterans, armed people defending their homes and families. Add that PLUS veterans, and it won’t be pretty.

                2. sure. And I buy that. But rounding up people is far harder in open country.

                   1. Especially given how MUCH there is of open country. Folks who live in the more densely populated areas, even of the US, have NO IDEA how much nothing there is out in the middle bits. You wanna invade the Wyoming state capitol, for example? Okay, easy enough, it’s actually quite close to Fort Collins, which is quite close to Loveland, which is quite close to Denver.

                      But once you get out side of Cheyenne? The next nearest town of any size (Laramie) is 45 minutes–and that’s driving at 70-80mph–away. And only in decent weather. After that…HOURS of driving. You lose your mode of transportation? Heh. Good luck walking anywhere. That’s something else to remember: a huge chunk of the Rocky Mountain West is, in fact, a high desert. So not much water outside of snow in the wintertime. And you do NOT want to be out in the open, without shelter, in the wintertime. No food, no water, no shelter for as much as a hundred miles at a go. I drive sixty miles every day just to get to WORK. And that’s considered quite normal, here.

                      And given that the more usual pests out here are animals that are measured in hundreds or thousands of pounds in weight, you’d better believe just about everybody is armed. Usually with something that could bring down, say, a moose. (The bears aren’t very big, after all. Not here, anyway.) And…well, it’s not like the wolves stayed in Yellowstone like the soft-hearted lefties were SURE they would…

                      There were a handful of the Black Lives Matter protests in my state last summer. They remained…very, very polite. The only place they got a little noisy (shouting) was in Laramie–which aside from Jackson Hole is the one democrat stronghold in the state (because the university is there). But they still remained very polite indeed. Nobody minded the protesting, so long as it remained…polite.

                      1. This might be a time to refer back, with bells on, to some of last summer’s thread. I recall mentioning that Black Lives Matter trying to protest at a reservation would not exactly have the indians quivering in fear for their lives.

                3. If you look at most of it, you’ll notice that they are based in the cities with the “farmland” places chosen as good hiding spots– even the “local meth lab” is basically a satellite office– and most of their violence is against other street gangs.

                   Getting them to work together is… very unlikely.

    2. They believe Soylent Green had a happy ending.

    3. Not completely accurate, but this reads somewhat like the Cambodian killing fields where they simply decided to eliminate what they thought as a troublesome segment of society.

       1. Sigh. And again, it’s not taking in account the size and variety of America. Bet it works in NYC. Elsewhere, not so much.
          As for our armed forces, those who enlist are not bernie bros. Yes,the left is trying to cull. Thier success is mixed.

          1. Most of the NYC people you’re speaking of have gone back home to their estates, what’s left are the poor and working class, who are really no different from the poor and working class anywhere else in the country. We NYCer have been absorbing your garbage for years.

             1. The reason I said it might work in NYC is because people are concentrated and easy to get at. In the rest of the country, this is harder.
                Also, hell no. Not my garbage 😉

          2. And every one they “cull” is another trained veteran out here in the civilian world. Many of them have first-hand experience with actual insurgencies/insurrections and know what works and what doesn’t.

             That’s something they really don’t think of, and that they really have no “answer” for. They can’t exile/imprison those “culled”, not in sufficient numbers anyway, without touching off something they won’t b able to stop. And they’re no longer willing to play the really long game required to permit natural attrition to reduce the opposition–that would require several more generations at least and they’re far too impatient for that.

             That’s even if they could continue the “long game.” They’re not the ones getting impatient. It’s the rest of the country that’s getting restive. Every new restriction, every new move in that “long game” moves us that much closer to a “preference cascade.” And they’re starting to bump up against the limits there–just look at the non-compliance on things like the SAFE act, the “bump stock” ban, et al. A lot of people aren’t yet ready to go public with their resistance (too afraid of being “Nathaniel Bacon” rather than “Captain Parker”) and so they still publicly comply with things like masking et al. But quietly, where they retain “plausible deniability”, they’re simply not complying with a lot of things.

             The left isn’t impatient. They’re desperate. While I don’t know what would necessarily trip that “preference cascade”, neither do they. And the more astute among them know it. And so they try to cram through as much as they can, as fast as they can in the hope that they’re positioned to win when the cascade does trip.

             So hang onto your hats folks, fasten your seat belts, and keep hands and feet inside the vehicle because it is going to be a bumpy ride.

             1. And every one they “cull” is another trained veteran out here in the civilian world. Many of them have first-hand experience with actual insurgencies/insurrections and know what works and what doesn’t.

                They can’t see this for the same reason they can’t understand the average person resisting the government.

                1. I have pointed out to every veteran I know, that the oath they swore upon enlistment is now invalid, as the polity they swore allegiance to no longer exists.

                   1. I’ll give a veteran “nope” to that idea.

                      My allegiance, my sworn oath, is to America. She is under occupation; she is not yet destroyed.

                      My oath stands despite circumstances.

                      And yes, this is from the heart, so you can argue from your head all you want. I’ll save you the effort. This isn’t a head-oath. It’s a heart oath, and an oath of love.

                      1. Amen. I took the oath, to become a citizen, and I’m not expatriate.
                         I’m however very angry

                         1. Yep. I’m furious enough to scare my therapist, who doesn’t scare easily.

                      2. My oath is to the Constitution, not to those who happen to be in power at the moment. Yes, I swore to obey the orders of the President and the “officers appointed over me” but that was “according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice”. Since I am no longer subject to military regulations and the UCMJ, that part of the oath is void. One can also argue that since, in the end, both the UCMJ and military regulations are subordinate to the Supreme Law of the Land, that any current or future changes to regulations or the UCMJ that would require someone who still is under them to violate the Constitution would likewise be null and void.

                         Military commanders, all the way up to the Commander in Chief do not have the power (in the sense of legitimate authority) to order troops to violate the Constitution even if they have the “power” (in the sense of force majeure) to do so.

                         1. THIS x 1,000.

          3. They don’t have the vast majority of the mid-grade officers and NCOs, nor the majority of the enlisted. It’s an even lower percentage of the combat arms. They can try to purge, but the ones they have are not the competent leaders, the ones they need.

             1. No, we are doomy doomed doomed.

                The folks doing a victory lap over ‘new opportunities’ in this regime are totally supreme political infighters, technologists, and warriors, and not a bunch of losers desperate for someone willing to promote them.

                There is no way for us to do anything but lose, in the worst possible way and degree.

                PS I’m up past my bedtime, and am really silly.

                1. I’m losing patience is what I’m doing. Possibly for the same reason.
                   Seriously?

                   1. I’m not Sirius, and don’t call me Shirley.

                      I’ve been a little paralyzed lately, and by late last night I was releasing small amounts of stress with really stupid jokes.

                2. I’m gonna sing the Doom Song now!
                   (…awake and I’m always this silly!)

          4. They are successful enough that I consider any unproven active duty member when the balloon goes up as a probably enemy combatant. I don’t like it, but the risk is too high not to.

21. I do not think Winnie-the-Xi thinks he’ll be Emperor of some world state or of the US, at least not for long.

    One of the reasons communism fails, and one of the reasons that communists claim that wasn’t true communism, is to various degrees all communist nations still are part of that nation’s history. This is something fascists have been more honest about.

    So, Xi is acting in Chinese history. I think Xi knows they are at or about to hit an period between dynasties. Arguably China hit one a century ago. What happened a little over a century ago? Western powers carved up China in their spheres as the Qing dynasty collapsed.

    I think Xi’s primary goal is to ensure there are no powers outside of China that could colonize the edges of China, must less the interior. Any period of World Emperor he gets out of it is a bonus.

    That doesn’t change what we need to do much, but it does explain why they are willing to do things destructive to China to achieve this end. If you think China is entering a period between major dynasties and will resume an upswing by 2100 without outside powers intervening then you might choose to cut down external powers so that 2100 date isn’t delayed like you think it was coming out of the Qing.

    1. One of the reasons communism fails, and one of the reasons that communists claim that wasn’t true communism, is to various degrees all communist nations still are part of that nation’s history. This is something fascists have been more honest about.

       The Fascists have always been somewhat more honest in their lying, as strange as that sentence sounds.

       1. Maybe they don’t lie to themselves as much is the way to see it. A Fascist presents himself as the apotheosis of a nation’s history or, more accurately, as bringing that about. A Communist claims he is coming to fulfill the history of mankind.

          Both are lying, but it is easier to fake the former than the latter.

          1. Fascism never, ever claimed to be a world historical law, provable by math (which Marx never did) and clearly evident in History (which Marx got wrong, too). It was always based on “We’ll be just as great as our ancestors [ancient Rome, the legendary Aryans, Spain of the 1500s] but with better tech and a higher standard of living.”

             1. Not entirely true. Hitler developed a weird obsession with what he saw as some sort of divinely granted destiny for the German people. It was his belief that said destiny would be achieved through his actions.

                1. Junior, your spelling of your name is getting worse.
                   And yes, you’re right. Hitler had an entire bizarre eschatology. In that as in so much else, he was the first of the wokies, who are just as crazy.

                   1. Hitler did, Mussolini not so much, and Mussolini and his fascism were in place quite some time before the Nazi rise to power.

                   2. Yeah, the curse of posting from a smart phone. Sometimes I catch the fat finger goof. Sometimes I don’t. On the positive side, it’s been a while since I last misspelled my e-mail address.

                   3. Good point. I know better. My bad. I just spent two+ weeks working on the idea that Fascism/fascist =/= Nazism, and forgot about that quirk. In my defense, I’m tired from wrapping up a grading period, Saturday’s weather, and visiting friends for a few days.

                      1. Hitler’s non-racial obsessions aren’t really talked about. Pretty much all of the focus is on the racial theories. It’s easy to forget that there were other bits and bobs of insanity tumbling around in his skull.

                         Probably in part because it makes it easier to ignore how much of his non-racial stuff is part of our everyday life…

                         1. Or how many of his crazy (non-racial) ideas are currently held by the Proper People of today. 😈

                            1. Vegetarianism. Gun control…. um……

                            2. His racist ideas are held by a lot of the so-called proper people. They certainly have the same hatred of Jews and believe in people’s worth being determined by which racial/identity group they belong to.

                         2. Hollow Earth. Alternate history.
                            I mean, there is some world in which he just wrote science fiction of the pulp kind.

                            1. I read a story about a time traveler sent back to kill Hitler. He met 8-year old Adolph, and his mother, found him no more bratty than most 8-year-olds, and decided to modify the parameters of his mission.

                               He paid for little Adolph to attend art school.

                            2. Spinrad’s Iron Dream?

                            3. Heh. I came up with that one myself.

                               There were some other times, too – a word and a few marks to his foreman when he was a construction worker, more customers buying his paintings when he was supporting himself as a commercial artist, removing the radical political tracts from the day room while he was recuperating from being gassed…

                         3. It’s part of the eternal circular reasoning of “the Nazis were right-wing!”. Well, how do you know? Because ethnic nationalism is a right-wing idea! Well, how do you know? Because the Nazis were right-wing, and they were ethnic nationalists!

                            And on and on and on. Never mind their actual policies. Never mind the weird paganistic obsessions of the higher officials.

                            1. And of course no examination is made of the actual policies that the Nazis implemented and were on their agenda aside from the “death to Jews” part. Such examination shows that the Nazis were unequivocally socialists. Indeed the modern “greens” policies owe a lot to some of the Nazi ideas regarding deifying the environment.

             2. We’ll be just as great as our ancestors [ancient Rome, the legendary Aryans, Spain of the 1500s] but with better tech and a higher standard of living.

                Were this so, and if they had been Christian fascists, it could’ve worked. And not just because And Then A Miracle Occurred ( because a benevolent Deity loves his stubbornly short bus chilluns), but because that kind of hierarchy, and positive identity: all pulling together, really seems to speak to people.

                Though “Hark back to our ancient glories! Make America great again” is not actually fascism. Or even particularly foolish. It’s all the other stuff for which the above sentiment provides cover that is the problem.

                “So how exactly is veganism and Dear Leader’s personal control of the garment industry going to rebuild the Glory That Was Us?”

                “Underpants!”

22. Off topic but just some thoughts going through my head upon reading shoe dropping:
    The whole world is now a banana republic, act accordingly.
    Outlaw/limit ammo? Why yes you can make usable black gunpowder out of just piss and sugar. The piss has to be modified, of course, but a simple procedure.
    Any bolt action gun can be a matchlock muzzle loader, drill a tiny hole though the top of the receiver with a dimple to hold powder.
    Dried foods store well, most foods can be dried.
    Why yes, you can shoot a baseball 300 feet up with less than an ounce of black powder in an HDPE mortar.
    & last but not least, no matter what they’re telling you, I just went outside and checked, and by golly, the sky is still up there!

    1. The mortar isn’t the hard part…it’s the shell.

       Liquid landmines are easily made for paintball. Modifying for other liquids is left as an exercise for the reader.

       1. T’ain’t no shell used in the black powder mortar I noted. A wee bit less than an ounce of powder, anything the size & weight of a baseball can go straight up 300 feet.

          Yep paintball etc., & I think you and I are just illustrating truths that are in plain sight but that many don’t realize.

          For example, it’s hard to explain to most folks that the advantage of a firearm is it extends your reach, if you get within arm’s reach of a villain with a club, 2 feet of 3/4 inch rebar, or a length of lead pipe, you’ve lost that advantage.

    2. Outlaw/limit ammo? Why yes you can make usable black gunpowder out of just piss and sugar. The piss has to be modified, of course, but a simple procedure.
       Any bolt action gun can be a matchlock muzzle loader, drill a tiny hole though the top of the receiver with a dimple to hold powder.

       Also the 10,438,235,438,267,098,640,985,630,198,543 rounds already stockpiles in homes across America.

       1. I will simply note that the Army improvised munitions handbook remains available for free download at multiple sites. Sufficient effort might be able to get it scrubbed. After all “You can’t stop the signal.”

          (And I bet Whedon, given his own politics hates the use being made of that line. And I’m perfectly okay with that. 😉 )

          1. Anything else useful you’d recommend downloading lest it get scrubbed later?

          2. Whedon’s attention is elsewhere as he’s been outed as a creepazoid “Joss is never allowed to be alone with the 15 year old actress” as well as a petty tyrant and bully on set, and as such he’s got cancellitis

          3. It’s Whedon’s own fault that he supports the real life equivalent of the purple bellies.

23. The Hammer, not the Shoe… (according the great astrophysicist Brian May.)

    Keep an eye on the military, which is fast becoming even more politicized and more targeted towards the internal issues. I don’t think they will side with team red at this rate, the officer corp and senior non-coms are either corrupted or sucking the teat till they can double dip.

    As a veteran that has been asked by parents which branch of service their kids should join, I’ve always answered, “None” for the last 15 or so years. Then explained that their child will has a great opportunity of either being sent overseas in a war of profit for the corrupt elite or winning the sweepstakes by facing off against US citizens here at home.

    (The trades and STEM are better bets than the military at this time.)

    Everyone on the right is waiting for the next Waco or Ruby Ridge. And the left is waiting on the next school shooting or worse, planning to create something out of thin air, so they keep poking the fate-bear.

    1. Man, they’re sure trying hard with that shooter in Georgia. Even as the sheriff’s dept is trying to say “No, look, he’s already admitted it’s his sex addiction” the media screams ever louder “White! Male! From the South! Must be a Trump supporter! Hates Asians bc Covid!”

       1. They are ignoring the fact that “bath houses” in large cities are mostly Korean staffed or owned. It’s something that almost all LE know, especially those in Democratic cities. Perp probably was a repeat customer or got rejected.

          (Hang out with a vice cop sometime, it’s an education.)

       2. Given the lines that the media has been giving about a supposed uptick in “white supremacist” attacks on Asians lately…

          1. Funny how all the ones I’ve seen videos of are black…

             1. How dare you confuse people with… um… very *pronounced* tans… with African-Americans! That’s just the sort of white thinking that contributes to the racist whitest privilege that is so deeply embedded in racist white American society!

24. Your observations about how important it is to learn to fight rather that succumb to shock, and your own experience of same, put me in mind of the wise observation of the immortal (sort of) Kinky Friedman, who said that a happy childhood is the worst preparation for real life.

    “Oh, yeah, and those kidnappers that shock the victim with unthinkable attacks? For that to work, you have to have a compliant victim, full control of the victim, and the ability to end him/her before he/she ends you.” Anyone interested in this as a premise for fiction is invited to seek out Shannon Kirk’s 2015 novel Method 15/33. It was published when the entire book industry was desperate to nail the next Gone Girl, and dark thrillers with unreliable female narrators were all the rage, but this one was bracingly original, if almost as dark as a coal mine. I don’t want to chance any spoilers. Just saying.

25. I had a dream. And in that dream I was assaulted leaving work by two guys, one of whom pulled a gun on me. And while trying to break into the office, the one with the gun turned his back on me and I attacked and disarmed him. I then turned the gun on the other guy, aimed center of mass, and pulled the trigger. Then I held the other guy with the gun as..weird stuff happened (hey, it was a dream) and then he pulled another gun and I asked him if he was going to try me or just go ahead and hand that gun over too. (He chose the latter.)

    And through it all the one thing, the only thing I worried about was that I was going to be late getting home to get my daughter to her doctor’s appointment.

    Make of that what you will.

    1. What I make of that is the deduction that I want to be on YOUR side when the hard rain that’s a-gonna fall, falls. So there.

       1. I will also note that in a zombie apocalypse, I load the rifle for my daughter. Oh, I keep the shotgun and handguns for any close-in threats, but she runs the rifle.

26. “But how long till you can buy ‘x amount’ cash, no questions at farms? Heck, I bet you anything you already can, we’re just not in that sort of area.”

    U-Pick at the local farm went up to 40¢/lb, 100lb minimum last year, because too many people were using the lower price to just “have a picnic outside.” Note that is still a fabulous price, and anything that keeps them in business is fine by me. (I saw some women picking purslane out of the ditches. They were literally paying to pick edible weeds from this farm!)

    1. I drove from southern Mississippi to central Illinois (by way of Clarksville, TN), and then back (straight) a couple of weeks ago, returning south the day of the big storm. The thing that really threw my Midwestern self, driving back down, was that there didn’t appear to be ANY farms in Mississippi as I drove the length of it. I’m sure there are some somewhere, but not anywhere near the highway, that I could see. It really weirded me out.

27. I’ll just leave a link to the first one to avoid WordPress limbo. A reasonable (no idea if it is “correct”) explanation of what’s going on with real estate in China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5SE47Xjx2Q (the link should be clickable).

    As for shoe’s dropping, I hope it holds off to around the end of summer, which is about as soon as I can put the house on the market (I was aiming for spring, but we’re almost there and the fix-up isn’t).

    1. Yeah. Same.

    2. I probably can’t get clear until the end of the year. The arrangements I need are complicated. I think the area I’m in is purple enough that I have time, but I’m keeping a weather eye.

    3. The garden isn’t going to happen, even if I get mobile, so we’re rationing dried tomatoes and have to pass on the zucchini for the Gospel Mission. Absolute best is a few tomato plants in pots, and we’re not counting on those.

       (Greens in the sunroom is A Bad Idea because of medication. Sigh.)

    4. The video mentions people moving to the cities, but there’s an additional part of that very much worth noting (and that he doesn’t mention).

       Those people moving to the cities in China are all moving to the *biggest* cities. The government (both in Beijing, and the cities that they’re moving to; the cities are responsible for taking care of them, after all) would prefer that the migrants coming from the rural areas move to the smaller cities. But the migrants aren’t, despite the best efforts of all levels of the government to convince them otherwise. They’re only moving to the biggest cities, such as Shanghai, and similar places.

28. “It’s not that. It’s that they don’t think at all. They want to be accepted with the ‘best’ people …”

    The operative principle here is that of Conventional Wisdom — stuff you can spout over the dinner table without fear of being challenged. Things “everybody” knows and which (unlike crackpot theories) do not require evidentiary support.

    Things like:
    O – The American Civil War was fought over slavery.
    O – America lost the Vietnam War.
    O – Reagan created the homeless problem.
    O – The Soviet Union’s collapse was the work of Mikhail Gorbachev.
    O – Michael Brown was saying “Hands up, don’t shoot” and no threat to the officer.
    O – Officer Brian Sicknick was bludgeoned to death by MAGA rioters

    These are statements that constitute “checked” facts, statements which are unlikely to be challenged – and if challenged the burden is on the one challenging.

    “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”
    ― Mark Twain

    Sam’l Clemens was a newspaperman and knew how the sausage was made.
    ~

    1. Just a reminder (concerning RES’s first statement), Sarah Does Not Want “Discussions” on the American Civil War Here (or as I call it, the Slave-Owner’s Revolt).

       1. Wasn’t that the Democrats’ temper tantrum over losing the 1860 election? 😛

          1. That’s one way to see it. 😆

    2. And today’s especially evil variant: If *I* don the surgical mask I keep *you* from getting the deadly-dreaded-badbadbad ‘Rona.

       This way, my nonconformity is a direct threat to all their hold dear. (And they don’t understand the lunacy of that belief–they do what they’re told without thought.)

       Just got back from the shores of Puget Sound. Virtually every person wearing at least one face diaper. Bikers. Runners. Wee children. Alone, together…. Fully diapered. It’s like living with zombies.

       1. Actually, with a black hood, red gloves, and a means of execution, you can prevent them from ever again experiencing infection by a rhinovirus or coronavirus.

          1. My vivid imagination and angry heart imagine something like that at least once a day. Bloody, blown up remnants are common.

       2. I saw a sign at a Trader Joe in Nashville a few months ago: “My mask protects you! Your mask protects me!”
          As I’ve said before, mask propaganda for upper-middle and upper-class people cajoles and coaxes them, while propaganda for the middle and lower middle class gives orders.
          I’m seeing more, “we’re telling you to do this because the government is telling us we have to,” signs even in higher class areas, which I take as a good sign.

          1. Yes, mask mandates have been attributed to Kate Brown (D-espicable, OR) in flyover counties for months. The last I heard, she extended the “state of emergency” until May 2 because reasons. I think even the libs are getting pissed, especially with the teachers refusing to come in to work and the ongoing efforts to destroy private schools, and now even homeschooling.

             If the national progtards want a big false flag, destroying the Capitol in Salem would be likely.

             1. Do not know if the signs are still there, but when this all started, got pictures from two different people from the Redmond/Bend area. Pictures had signs on the tables in eateries that had to be taken out of circulation. Most just put on “Not in use signs.” The signs sent in the pictures had a picture of Brown with “Reserved by Governor Brown”

          2. Dang! I don’t care to wear T-shirt billboards, but that signage tempts me to wear a T-shirt with the motto: “My handgun protects you! Your handgun protects me!”

             I don’t care to go Karen on anybody not carrying, but …
             ~

29. “After all they made lots of money in various ways that have nothing to do with learning history, so why should they bother.”

    “History is bunk”― Henry Ford
    Although if you search the phrase you will mostly find it is a half-truth, a misrepresentation of what Ford was actually saying. I will pause to permit donning of shocked faces.
    ~

30. “These people are very very stupid, bordering on mentally slow, and they will make sure everyone knows, soon enough. Why, they’re proud of it.”

    The “relief” checks hadn’t begun going out and already they were boasting:

    The White House says Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package is the most ‘progressive piece of legislation in history.’ Top progressives agree.
    03/08/21
    President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package is on track to become the first major legislation of his administration. He’s touting it as a progressive achievement – and many progressives are on board with the sentiment.

    White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday described the massive bill aimed at tackling the coronavirus pandemic’s economic fallout as “the most progressive piece of legislation in history.”

    Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont and a leading champion for many of the progressive policies included in the bill, expressed a similar viewpoint over the weekend. He called the stimulus “the most significant piece of legislation to benefit working people in the modern history of this country” upon its passage in the Senate on Saturday.

    Progressives, too, are taking credit for the bill. Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called the stimulus a “truly progressive and bold package that delivers on its promise to put money directly in people’s pockets.”

    “We take the win,” Jayapal told Politico’s Sarah Ferris on Capitol Hill on Monday. “We believe it’s our work that made it as progressive as it is.”
    [END EXCERPT]
    ~

31. Democrats want to give big media and big tech antitrust exemptions precisely so they can act as an arm of the Democratic Party in silencing anyone who challenges leftist orthodoxy:

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/03/16/house-judiciary-gop-questions-americans-can-trust-big-media-antitrust-immunity/

    1. Shrug. They ALREADY do. Arguably it’s better if they unmask.

    2. It’s all a toxix mass of fascist oligarchy. I’m sure the Tech Lords have a seat at the Politburo Table.

       1. They won’t. I mean, they will, before the system turns on them.
          I don’t know if it’s the greed for power or the sheer stupidity that annoys me most.

32. Teachers are now actively working against you: https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-teachers-target-parents-critical-race-theory-hacking

    1. Again they were 20 years ago, when kids were in school. NOW the masks are off. That’s arguably an improvement.

       1. I continue to be amazed at the people who should know better yet think this stuff *just* happened.

          IT WAS OBVIOUS THIRTY YEARS AGO.

          1. I saw the start of it in 1969… when they changed they way they taught reading. Plus the school programmed reading manuals were already showing socialist concepts then. This was in SLC, UT

             1. Is that where “sight words” came from? I’d heard rumors of that mess (having no kids) and got it full in the face today. I was on a zoom chat and a woman had her five year old daughter’s sight words matrix on the wall behind her. I asked her about it.

                Being me, I was amazed and said so. I learned to read phonetically, and learned vocabulary because we had everything in the house, from Heinlein to Leon Uris to everybody else.

                I was told there are words that can’t be sounded out, so… sight words.

                I can’t get my head around it. I can’t see how you’d use that to learn to read. I really don’t.

                1. YES… it was the idea that you could see a word and eventually after seeing it enough, you would be able to read it. It ruined an entire generation.

                   1. What time frame are we talking about?

                      I can read just fine but have a hard time spelling.

                      I also have a problem “sounding out words” in order to figure out the spelling.

                      Mind you, I might have problems spelling but generally speaking I can tell that a word isn’t spelled correctly. 😀

                      (Graduated from High School in 1972).

                      1. This was happening about 1967-1970s in Utah. I can’t tell you when it happened in other States.

                      2. Same exact boat. Graduated ’74. It drives hubby nuts. FYI, he graduated ’70.

                         It is an acquired skill … really it is.

                         FYI. There is a specific word that describes this ability or rather the inability to pronounce correctly spelled written words. But dang if I can remember what it is. (As usual if someone were to type it, I’d be, “yep, that is it.”)

                      3. Seattle suburbs–SUBURBS–1965’ish was when I was in kindergarten. Graduated HS 1978.

                         I’d never heard of the memorize words thing until… I was well into late adulthood. I ignored it because I figured it was crazy, and nobody screws with the education system. Right?

                   2. And it’s utter bullshit. Their defense btw is that phonics don’t teach you the MEANING of the word.
                      WTF? what are dictionaries for?

                      1. Whhhhaat? If you break things up in syllables, you sometimes can see the roots, which convey meaning of an unknown word. That and context helped me figure out words I didn’t know.

                         1. Yep.
                            Because when I was six dad said “I’m not a walking dicitonary. Figure it out.” 😀

                            1. Whenever I asked my mom something she didn’t know, she’d send me to the encyclopedia.

                            2. Dad was that way but he was more “let’s look it up”. 😀

                            3. “Look it up in the Funk and Wagnals.” Which we actually had.

                            4. In our house it was The World Book Encyclopedia and Book of Facts (a mid-60’s edition). I read that thing, along with the “Childcraft” books that were part of the set, for fun.

                            5. I want you for my neighbor.

                               I used to read the encyclopedia for fun. Still do, if I have one around.

                         2. A Caribou coffee kiosk has a daily trivia question for a few cents off of an order if answered correctly. I tend to give it a go even if not ordering anything. For most pop culture stuff (“Who starred in…”) I just bail. But more than a few times I’ve worked out the answer from the word(s) (not wording of) the question. I don’t know Latin.. but apparently I picked up just enough here and there to work out a fair amount of things. The manager of the kiosk has informed me that this is NOT normal.

                            Then… there are the times I simply did not know but still had fun with it.
                            Trivia Question: What is the name for a group of owls?
                            “I don’t know, but would it be hoot? And I suppose you’ll be hearing that all day.”
                            “No, I won’t. You’re the only one who’d say something like that.”
                            “That’s… kinda disappointing.”

                            Next day, I did ask. Yup. So I ain’t normal. (As if that was any surprise…)

                            And, the real answer, I was informed (and now certainly remember) was “a parliament.”

                            1. You either didn’t read the entire Narnia series or did so long enough ago to have forgotten bits, otherwise you’d have known that.
                               Also, a parliament made up entirely of owls would likely be smarter than what we are currently living with here, sigh.

                            2. Rachel: Nope, never read the whole series. Read – and re-read – the first book. Might have read the second, no longer recall. Not sure what happened. I’d kept looking forward to getting The Horse and His Boy even if only for the title. Not sure what happened, just never got there.

                      2. YES– also there was sound spelling– so these kids never learned how to read or how to spell. to-two-too ya’ll

                   3. Ach, that’s what I thought. My horror came through loud and clear, too.

                2. Thankfully– I had the last teacher who was retired after my year– who taught phonics. I was able to read on a fifth grade level out of first grade.

                   1. We’ll see how the textbook I picked works out, but since I’m the teacher, I get to dictate that we’re learning to read with phonics. Intensive systematic phonics. 😀 I figure it may start more slowly, but will avoid future frustration.

                      1. Absolutely– I think the reason I showed so much intelligence and had such high scores when I went to school (until 7th grade)– was because I could read anything after first grade.

                         I managed to take college extension courses and then go through an accelerated electronics course with the Navy— because I could read and remember.

                   2. Both kids went few years to a private Christian school which used phonics. They had to be able to read to get into first grade. This schools is big supporter and publisher of home school textbooks.

                      I agree with Sarah about the timing. The feel on the ground is very very ‘tight’. People very fed up.

                      1. Phonics are the only way to learn imho. The only problem I had trying to teach one of my brothers to read is that he was a full on dyslexic. I didn’t know it (we were home schooling at the time and I got to do the phonics… long story) Anyway, it turns out that he also great memory. Someone reads something to him one time and he remembers it forever. It is what got him through adulthood and also he became an officer in the merchant marines that why– with oral exams.

                         1. I really need an editor. My fingers are not typing the right letters. lol Haven’t had my first cup of coffee this morning.

                         2. “… he became an officer in the merchant marines that why– with oral exams.”

                            Funny – that’s how Kamala Harris became vice-president.
                            ~

                            1. lol not Kamala’s orals

                   3. Praise God I was raised at a time when Mrs. Love had those big, beautiful colored charts in the northwest corner of the room.

                      I might have known how to read when I got to first grade, a little bit, but it was off to the races after I learned how to figure out words for myself. Pure joy.

                      1. My Mom had bought into the narrative that the school needed to teach us how to read. How wrong that was… I wanted to learn by the time I was three. I would sit on a chair and puzzle out words… feeling like I was missing something–

                      2. I had an older brother (two years older). A dyslexic older brother, whom my mother spent time at home tutoring after he learned stuff in school. I hadn’t started school yet, so I listened and learned. And ended up skipping kindergarten. He got held back in 1st grade, so we ended up in the same year at school. I went into the gifted program in fifth grade and remained there until we graduated high school. He continued to have difficulty, including discipline problems.

                         1. Can I ask what your relationship with your brother looks like now? It’s definitely NUNYA (“nunya business”), so do feel free to decline to answer if you like. All good.

                         2. It’s surely none of my business, but can I ask what your relationship with your brother looks like? That could be a big Cain and Abel situation.

                            1. Well, he was killed in a car accident the year after we graduated, so the question is kind of moot. That was twenty-two years ago, though. And I left the area (joined the Navy) the following year, so who knows what might have happened.

                            2. Thank you for the answer. I’m sorry it ended that way.

                3. My sister were not so fortunate.

                4. Also known as “It’s too hard to memorize 26 letters, so just memorize 26,000 words instead.” Yet Another brainstorm from Jimmy Carter’s Department Of Education. Why, it’s exactly what they’d do if they were TRYING to raise two generations of illiterates…oh wait…

                   Now they’re importing illiterates from other countries.

                   What the Democrats want is an underclass. Not so much to exploit, as just to rule over as their ‘betters’.

                   1. Again, Ignorance is Strength is a guiding principle for the Dems, as are the other credos of Ingsoc. They have even added a fourth-Conformity is Diversity.

                   2. Years ago I came across a quote to the effect that “The State wants everybody to know how to read well enough to read government diktats, but to dislike it sufficiently they read nothing else.”

                      I think it was in regard to Stalin but it obviously applies to many other governments.
                      ~

                      1. Rebel: Read

                   3. Exactly. But this was happening before Carter.

                   4. Department of Education Eradication.

                5. > sight words

                   To the students afflicted by the system, they’re ideographs.

                6. The “sight word” thing is a case of cargo-culting and Reynold’s law. Good readers do mostly read by recognizing entire (common) words. “So we’ll teach everyone to read the way good readers do, then everyone will be a good reader!”

                   Only good readers have a whole toolbox of reading methods, including phonics-type tools, that they deploy as necessary. (That toolbox is also why I take “Phonics is the One True Method” boosters with a grain of salt. As a sprout I’d encounter cases of “I know this word; it is an old friend of mine. Making me sound it out as if I had never seen it before is just silly.”)

                   1. Aye. Phonics is very good general tool, but it can down badly and not just from English having…. historical… spelling, but some words are adopted (stolen) and ‘epy-toam’ isn’t right but ‘eh-pit-a-mee’ is as one example. And then there are those other Greek (derived) things where the final E is long itself, not silently making the previous vowel long. And the insanity of French pronunciations…

                   2. You start with phonics. That is a really good foundation. The sight word thing happens as you get faster as a reader. The first grade class I was in– we finished most of the phonics within the first three months and the rest of the school year was memorizing words, reading out loud, reading in groups. Word lists was also part of this teacher’s strategy including putting words on things. She used a whole toolbox of learning… BUT she started with phonics. Plus even the slowest in the class was able to read Dick and Jane books by the end of the year. Not everyone was as successful as I was… I also started slow.

                      Part of the homework was that we had to take home word lists and read them to our parents. Parents were also part of the learning. So how many first graders had homework? Anyway I am very grateful to this teacher and still remember her name. Miss Sargent.

                      1. This is ABSOLUTELY right, and applies to other modes of communication also. As an amateur radio operator, Morse code for CW immediately springs to mind. Learning this audio (rather than visual) mode, one first learns the letters by sound (groups of dits and dahs). Beginning code learners typically write down letters as they hear them. The military trains (well, USED to train) code readers with a typewriter or keyboard; they hit the key as soon as they hear the letter. They don’t know what they are copying (they don’t need to know, and that’s fine, in the system). But there is a ceiling on how fast one can copy that way: how fast one can write letters or type. More seasoned operators hear AND recognize entire words, which they write down. Even more seasoned operators follow an entire conversation in their head without HAVING to write anything down; they have progressed to recognizing words at the audio equivalent of a glance, and they even recognize entire phrases or common sentences. They might write down notes of pertinent details for later (call sign, etc). So learning to read print has a counterpart in learning to copy code in that recognizing an entire word is an indicator of a level of skill, and is indeed required to attain said level of skill.

                         1. yes…

                         2. I was “super dit” at Fort Devens while I was learning morse code. I typed what I heard, and if it was too fast you just hit the period repeatedly and the system would slow down.

                            I got busted and sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma to be target acquisition specialist, but for awhile there I was cooking with gas.

                      2. Uncovering the Logic of English by Denise Eide has as a premise that 98% of English can be phonetically decoded if one learns 70 some phonograms and 40 some rules for combining them. Not just the single and double letter combinations, but three and four also. We’ll see over the next year if the textbook delivers!

                         1. That would be interesting if true… Let us know

                            1. Yes, I’m curious to know the outcome as well.

                         2. Dearest creature in creation,
                            Study English pronunciation.
                            I will teach you in my verse
                            Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
                            I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
                            Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
                            Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
                            So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

                            Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
                            Dies and diet, lord and word,
                            Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
                            (Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
                            Now I surely will not plague you
                            With such words as plaque and ague.
                            But be careful how you speak:
                            Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
                            Cloven, oven, how and low,
                            Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

                            Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
                            Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
                            Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
                            Exiles, similes, and reviles;
                            Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
                            Solar, mica, war and far;
                            One, anemone, Balmoral,
                            Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
                            Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
                            Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

                            Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
                            Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
                            Blood and flood are not like food,
                            Nor is mould like should and would.
                            Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
                            Toward, to forward, to reward.
                            And your pronunciation’s OK
                            When you correctly say croquet,
                            Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
                            Friend and fiend, alive and live.

                            Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
                            And enamour rhyme with hammer.
                            River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
                            Doll and roll and some and home.
                            Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
                            Neither does devour with clangour.
                            Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
                            Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
                            Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
                            And then singer, ginger, linger,
                            Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
                            Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

                            Query does not rhyme with very,
                            Nor does fury sound like bury.
                            Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
                            Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
                            Though the differences seem little,
                            We say actual but victual.
                            Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
                            Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
                            Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
                            Dull, bull, and George ate late.
                            Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
                            Science, conscience, scientific.

                            Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
                            Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
                            We say hallowed, but allowed,
                            People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
                            Mark the differences, moreover,
                            Between mover, cover, clover;
                            Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
                            Chalice, but police and lice;
                            Camel, constable, unstable,
                            Principle, disciple, label.

                            Petal, panel, and canal,
                            Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
                            Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
                            Senator, spectator, mayor.
                            Tour, but our and succour, four.
                            Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
                            Sea, idea, Korea, area,
                            Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
                            Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
                            Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

                            Compare alien with Italian,
                            Dandelion and battalion.
                            Sally with ally, yea, ye,
                            Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
                            Say aver, but ever, fever,
                            Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
                            Heron, granary, canary.
                            Crevice and device and aerie.

                            Face, but preface, not efface.
                            Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
                            Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
                            Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
                            Ear, but earn and wear and tear
                            Do not rhyme with here but ere.
                            Seven is right, but so is even,
                            Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
                            Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
                            Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

                            Pronunciation — think of Psyche!
                            Is a paling stout and spikey?
                            Won’t it make you lose your wits,
                            Writing groats and saying grits?
                            It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
                            Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
                            Islington and Isle of Wight,
                            Housewife, verdict and indict.

                            Finally, which rhymes with enough —
                            Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
                            Hiccough has the sound of cup.
                            My advice is to give up!!!

                            1. But “wind” as in moving air, or what one does to power spring-driven clockwork?

                            2. Then there are the things that make one tense, such as “I read your book.”

                               And those you must be a native to know, such as the pronunciations of Cairo, Illinois, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, or Worcester, Massachusetts.
                               ~

                            3. The Chaos!

                               One of the many torture instruments I have for my children– the older ones are supposed to memorize and recite one paragraph a week.

                               It’s also used for copy practice.

                            4. I read about how to read a red reed. 😛

                   3. . As a sprout I’d encounter cases of “I know this word; it is an old friend of mine. Making me sound it out as if I had never seen it before is just silly.

                      Can be– I’ve had to explain to our kids that I’m having them do basically that, do work when they already know the answer, as a way to prepare the tools they’ll need for words they don’t already know.

                      It’s a delicate balance between making sure they’re ready, and not burning up all the kid’s tolerance. It’s not something that can easily be done in a large class setting!

                      1. I admire a parent that pays attention and does things as well as they can.

                         It’s reassuring. And the kids often turn out pretty well, and are fun to be around.

                7. There are charts of “sight words” that are the ones you need to memorize, because they don’t follow phonics.

                   My kids know them as “cheater words” exactly because of all the really silly stuff that shares the name.

                   Things like “des moe-in-es” being “dih moyn.”

                   It’s a useful tool.

                   Making kids memorize, say, “tool” as a sight word, rather than know “tuh oow ulh” and mangle it a bit until it fits the word-they-know-by-sound, is removing a useful tool.

                   1. Good to know the reality of how it works. Thanks.

                      1. Given how many homeschoolers and plan to homeschool-ers we have in here, it was a good chance to warn folks for something else to look at when they’re getting supplies.

                         1. Yes. Shared wisdom is gold. Tuck it away for when it’s needed.

                   2. Would it make sense to introduce other language phonetics instead of just sight words? Quite a lot of English words that don’t follow the rules do follow the rules of their native language. e.g. “How would we sound this out in English?” “Des mow-in-es.” “How would would sound this out in French? Remember, don’t pronounce a consonant that ends a word.” “Deh mow-in.” “Say it together.” “Deh moyn.”

                      I’ve been having a conversation elsewhere about pronouncing board games, and “Cinque Terra” came up. English phonics would suggest “Sink tare-ruh.” My brain interpreted it as French, and so I thought it was “Sahnk tare.” But it’s Italian, so it’s “Cheen-qua tare-reh.”

                      When you known that in Greek, “ps” is “s,” “y” is “i,” “ch” is “k,” and a trailing “e” is its own syllable “ee”, psyche sounds just like it is spelled.

                      1. Going off of how hard it is to get the idea of ‘sh’ not being ‘sss huh’, it would not. Too many systems at once are worse than no system at all. (See the mess from “common core” where they take the perfectly sensible idea of teaching multiple methods to reach the answer for each problem– but then don’t make sure the kids are secure in one method before handing them the next.)

                         English also has the problem that while some of the cheater words do follow their source language…but some don’t.

                         For bonus, we’ve got relatives near two rivers that share a French name.
                         For one, the name is said almost as it would be in French; in the other, it’s a French word said as if it were spelled in English.

                         And, as you point out, the words aren’t marked for where they came from. You can figure it out if you know how it’s said, but that’s just another memorization.
                         My brain went with Spanish, so more like “Sin-quay Terra.”

                         The older ones have noticed the German-I-think words with “ight” like “light” or “weight” are said funny, but in a systemic way.

                8. I can’t do phonetics…but that’s because I taught myself to read at 3–and was on a high school senior level in kindergarten on the reading front so I didn’t pay attention to the other kids getting taught to read, heh.

                   But…I was a weirdo. And have spent the rest of my life mispronouncing stuff because phonetics mean nothing to me. And now they’re DELIBERATELY doing that to kids?!?!

             2. oops I said 1969… It was 1966-67

                1. Phonics was used at least into the mid-late 1970’s at least in central WI. Then, I don’t know if it was a matter of not having all the fanciest newest things, or Old School (no pun intended this time) teachers who knew better than to change from what worked.

                   1. The old school teachers were retired from what I saw and the schools in SLC Utah were filled with the new-fangled learning teachers who were ready to prove that these theories of how children learned were right. They were wrong.

    2. Used to live in Loudoun County in VA. Left in 2001 and it was a beautiful, conservative suburb quickly being turned into a liberal “utopia”. But many teachers have been lefties for quite a while now. It’s just that their arsenal is getting more outlandish.

33. “America is not like that. Sure, the America that the Turtle Boys of Xi know is. ”

    Well there are certain sections of New York America, Major Winnie, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.
    ~

34. This is the reason that I think everyone, but especially girls should get some martial arts training. Even if you aren’t going to be great at it, at least you picture what to do in the event of an attack. Don’t freeze and hit them however you can and here are the targets where it will do the most damage.

    1. Agree– because learning how to hit and where was good for me…

       1. I need to do this. Which discipline seems best, in general? Krav Maga appeals to me.

          (Know what’s funny as heck? Autocorrect took the second word and capitalized it. MAGA. Giggle. BOOYAH!)

          1. lol — if I was going back for training I would go for Brazillian ju-jitsu… Nowadays it would have to be Tai Chi or something much lighter.

             Do what appeals to you 🙂

             1. It’s between Jiu Jitsu and Krav Maga. I just have to learn to deal with the bruises. Someone looks at me hard and it bruises. 🙂

                1. Oh yea– I had bruises all over my arms and legs when I was doing it. More B vitamins? might help.

                   1. Vitamin C is useful for bruises.

                2. I have recently discovered arnica gel. It has been doing wonders on my bruised knee (skating injury).

                   1. Thanks. I’m committed to learning the skills and am vain enough to want to heal quickly. 🙂

          2. Krav is a martial art that drops the art part. 😀

             There’s really two to three levels of Krav. The basics they teach to civilians for self defense, the advance stuff including certain joint locks/techniques they teach to police/military, and the really nasty stuff that gets excluded from most schools due to liability. (Heard some interesting tales from a IDF/SF instructor.)

             If you are in decent shape, a good school will teach situation awareness, escapes, striking and ground work (aka Jujitsu type ground work). Some schools also offer fitness programs so you can get in better shape for the actual Krav classes. I sweated more in one hour of Krav instruction than I did in two hours of hard cardio in the outside summer sun.

             When I took classes, they were half self defense seekers and half martial artist types. So the skill level varied. Some observations: You don’t want to go to the ground, especially with multiple attackers. Almost all but the very tip-top women could be easily over-powered by a semi-skilled, larger male. (So fight dirty, early…) And the strikers with no ground skills were easy overpowered when on the ground with someone of modest wrestling knowledge. (I went 10-0 on rounds with a blue belt that really couldn’t handle my strength/style, but went 2-8 with someone with better technique and some power.)

             1. “Almost all but the very tip-top women could be easily over-powered by a semi-skilled, larger male. ”
                I got into an argument with my very-woke sister once over this. She had a friend who was taking kick-boxing for fitness lessons, which thus made her capable of defending herself. I disagreed, pointing out that if the friend had never actually been hit with intent, then she was play acting. If you’ve never actually been hurt while doing the martial art, then you do not know what you will do when somebody who doesn’t care about your feelings rips into you. You are more likely to freeze up. (Even a hard rapier hit to my mask (hard enough to drive my mask into my nose and cause a nose-bleed) caused me to freeze up for a second, though I had been rapier fencing for a few years, because I had never been hit like that before.)
                My sister did not like this, because “woman are powerful and stuff!”

                1. Agreed. Coughing because you were choked, or hearing the popping of your shoulder as your arm …. bends … or not breathing because some 300 lb 6’6″ dude is sitting on you really wakes you up.

                2. The point is not to win the fight, just surprise them enough to get away. I have no delusions that I’m going to win a fight against a large male. I don’t do grappling arts because if I’m on the ground grappling, I’m already toast. No way to hold my own in size or upper body strength. More importantly is the mind set. At least you have faced a bigger opponent and the goal is not to need to fight yourself

                   1. This!!!!!

                   2. This. Most of the time what saved my life was running like the dickens. Which is why I’m trying to get in shape again. I used to be a marathoner….

                      1. I hide and ambush if I have to– I was always better at long distance running (steady pace) than sprinting. — In fact never had the spring to sprint.

                      2. The reason I used to hide and ambush is that I was always the smallest kid in all of my classes until I hit 14. Then I went to 5 foot 8. I was always five foot until then. ;D Big surprise!!!!

                3. I participated in a full-contact boffer larp from about age six until 18 or so on a regular basis, semi-regular after that (Navy) until about 24 or so. I played rugby in college. I have taken more than a few hits, and been smacked pretty good. This girl still knows to stay out of reach as much as possible, to not try to trade hits with an assailant, and to cause whatever pain is necessary so that I can get away.

                   I do not pretend that my history of roughhousing, or the weightlifting I do (or have done; it’s gone by the wayside as aging and injuries have accumulated) makes me any more capable than it does. I am a generally average-sized woman, which makes me smaller than most men.

                4. Theodore Dalrymple was once telling a teenager that her violent boyfriend could do her serious injury because he was stronger, and she insisted that was sexist.

                   1. Somebody should inform those idjits that Mother Nature is not remotely a feminist.

                      1. That’s a sexist thing to say.

                         1. May be, but women wound up with the short end of a lot of sticks. Pretending they didn’t is delusional, not ‘progressive’.

                            Technology has done more to improve women’s lives than all the self-aggrandizing ‘feminists’ in history. It’s improved all our lives, but women more than men.

          3. At the moment, I am probably going to be seeking out BJJ, due to a Sheepdog Response class I just took last week. Good good good class. Both Brazilian JiuJitsum and firearms.

             Now I know enough to get into even more trouble!

          4. The best one for you is the one you keep at. Try several, find which one(s) you want to return to when your tired old muscles are all stiff and achy. One good thing about fencing is most of its moves work with a cane, too. Tai Chi is a good one for us aging folk as it stresses joints less while helping maintain flexibility and balance. Krav Maga helps develop situational awareness – the best fight is the one you avoid, because when you punch somebody you are also hitting yourself on the fist.

             Check out local instructors, ask about philosophy and learn what styles are likely to best suit you.

             Rephrasing my opening remark: the worst martial art is the one you don’t practice.
             ~

          5. The best discipline is the one with the teacher you connect with. I went through multiple martial arts, and the art itself never mattered if the teacher wasn’t any good. So unless you live in a major metropolitan area with dozens of choices, go to each place, observe the classes, get a feel for the teacher and their method, and go with the one where you have a good feeling about the teacher/class vibe.

             I desperately wanted to learn aikido but both the aikido teachers in my area are passive-aggressive bullies. The tae kwon do teacher, who was teaching an aggressive art I thought I’d hate, turned out to be one of the most serene, most patient teachers. I learned far more from him.

          6. I liked taekwondo, because of its focus on kicking (and given the proportional strength of a woman’s legs vs her arms). And it seems well suited to taller folks (which I am).

             But DrTanstaafl makes an excellent point: any kind of martial arts will help you overcome the freezing. I may have earned the teasing of my sensei for apologizing to my tournament opponent when I kicked her in the face–but I sure as hell didn’t freeze. And a few years later, confronted on two different occasions with (thankfully minor) physical threats, I responded appropriately. (And didn’t apologize, either.)

             And it will also get you in the mindset of at learning to, even idly and casually, assess basic situations and think about “What would I do if here?”

             However, avoid silly young men teaching things like “And this is how you do a really cool disarm of someone holding a gun!” (That was a college taekwondo class. Me and the only other person in the class with prior experience–she was a blackbelt, even–were giving each other eyerolls in the back of the class. My actual sensei in high school’s words on it were “If they have a gun RUN. If they have a knife RUN (and if you have to fight back against a knife, you WILL get cut.” Mind you, that’s not to say one shouldn’t fight back…but Mr. Rada mostly taught kids, and was of the opinion that running was a good idea for any kid if they could do it. I thought he had a good point.)

             1. Thanks so much. I really appreciate the insight.

                I’ll stress a lot less knowing that I’ll learn to act properly regardless of discipline.

       2. You know what else is good for you? Knowing how to take a hit and keep on fighting.
          ~

          1. True as well….

          2. And learning how to avoid being hit. 😀

35. c4c

    Need to go use the shock value for a *good* character who is doing it on accident. 😀

36. When I finally hit back, its as if I am in a surreal painting– as my body does things I have no remembrance of doing. It’s as if my body has a knowledge that isn’t shared with my mind. At it happens in microseconds.

    As for dreaming– I’ve been dreaming that I am in my apartment, but it is moving down the road. I can see the landscape change as I look out the window. (apartment on wheels? 😀 ) Anyway… there has been some themes like this for the last week. One time I wondered if I was in an RV (during that shadow time between sleep and wakefulness– then I remembered that I needed enough room for dialysis solution.)

    1. Ah. well, when you berserk, it all goes fuzzy. Or at least it does for me.

       1. Yea– it does.. I’ve wondered sometimes if it is heritage knowledge or something else 😀 possession??? lol

          1. Something like, “Shut off all non-essential analysis. Fallback to survival mode. Full power to removing any threats.”

             1. Yep

             2. A had a discussion with ESR a while back on how “no-mind” – his name for the trance-like state marital arts experts can go into when they fight – works. This might be relevant: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8456#comment-2287495

                Also, ESR is getting his blog in working order again! My attempts to leave a comment failed, but at least he’s working on it. The new theme is kind of ugly, though, so I hope he changes back when he has everything else fixed.

                1. >> “marital arts experts”

                   That should have been “MARTIAL arts experts.” If ever there was a typo to launch a thousand jokes…

                   1. In the days of the big C-band home satellite dishes, the satellite TV guide Orbit listed movies/shows by category in one section. And I don’t know if it was an in-joke, an error, or something else, but they did seem to always karate, etc. under ‘marital arts’ which…er… yeah.

                2. MARTIAL arts. Marital arts are something else.

                   1. Yeah, I noted that myself a minute later.

                      But in my defense, both seem to involve the occasional berserk rage you can’t clearly recall afterwards.

                   2. That Venn diagram has been known to overlap. 😎

       2. I just read a book about”flow”which is exactly what you describe. And that state can be induced by danger. Sounds about right. The Rise of Superman. By Steve Kotler.

          1. I’ve felt flow when I am writing.

             1. You might enjoy the book then. It talks about how to get into the stage.

37. I want to say something, but I have nothing sensible to say.

    Has never stopped me before, but…

38. HEY– Allen West Republican Chairman from Texas is on Tim Pool. Very good.

39. I want to draw attention to a Youtube comment. Yes, a Youtube comment. This video about a Kerbal Space Program rocket design using the Realism Overhaul mod got some interesting comments, one of which I want to highlight because it’s a terrific example of how to respond to leftists.

    First, some context. The comment thread started innocently enough, with a commenter named HALL9000ish saying “40 engines. Finally putting the N-1 to shame.” Another commenter named RealityIsTheNow replied “The N1 was put to shame when it kept blowing up.” This got a reply from someone named Eric Anderson who said “Oh my god people who know history of rocketry!!! I love both of y’all.”

    Then the first negative reply happened. Someone named Robert Willis responded to RealityIsTheNow with a negative comment. All of Robert Willis’s comments have been deleted (the thread was five years ago), so we can only guess what they contained, but based on what RealityIsTheNow replied it apparently started out arguing technical details but quickly descended into standard anti-American liberal boilerplate. What I want to draw your attention to is the four replies that RealityIsTheNow made to Robert Willis, especially the third and fourth replies. They’re a perfect example of how to deal with leftists: calmly and rationally pointing out the hatred underlying their attitudes.

    First reply, discussing only the subject at hand:

    +Robert Willis No, it wasn’t a sound design. It was fundamentally flawed. For various reasons, they couldn’t develop a really large chambered engine, and so had to cluster an obscene number of smaller ones together. These engines also relied on what was at the time the new tech of staged combustion. So, we had a situation where there were 30 new tech engines in the first stage alone, ( 6 times more than the Saturn V, for example, and thus at least 6 times the points of failure incorporated into the design)…plus they had a spectacularly complex system of fuel and oxidizer manifolds between these engines and the tanks (which were spherical and thus an inefficient design) and two additional stages to the overall vehicle, thus adding all those additional layers of complexity. Plus, they had to control this thing during its ascent by dynamically throttling these engines…which is crazy complex…and the Soviets lacked the advanced computer and electronics tech the Americans had access to in order to pull it off. Basically, Korelev, though a genius, was getting waaay ahead of himself when he first penned this thing. Could have been ego, I guess, believing himself capable of solving the problems with such an outrageously over-complicated design. We’ll never know if they finally ever actually got it figured out, because there was never a successful launch. I’m work in design, and I can tell you, half a century later, that even by todays standards, such an insanely complex system was always going to be doomed to simple statistics.

    Second reply, still discussing the subject at hand:

    +Robert Willis The upper stages were nowhere near as problematic as the first stage. And there is nothing at all wrong with kerosene fuel. They didn’t need to play with hydrogen. Would’ve actually been even more problematic in terms of manifold design. They didn’t go with small engines, and orders of magnitude more complexity/points of failure because they wanted to…its because they simply hadn’t cracked the problem of combustion instability in very large chambered designs. They tried, and tried hard. It took the Americans years as well to finally get it nailed down…but they managed and the reliable F-1 was born. Its important to remember that before they figured out how to damp those harmonics early F-1 engines were popping off like firecrackers, clear back to the late 1950’s. Basically, you get crazy pressure oscillations across the injector plates when the combustion chambers are that large. You literally wind up with supersonic pressure waves tearing the engine to peices. THIS is why the Soviets gave up and went with large numbers of smaller engines. They never quite figured it out. And that is apparent in even their more modern designs…they tend to avoid very large combustion chambers. Like in the RD-180, one of their better engines…they split it into two combustion chambers. Works really well in that design, but it reminds us of the early days. And yes, I’ve read of the aerospike plans…which is another design problem. Just arrogant in that level of ambition with such new tech. Complexity breeds unreliability. And space launchers MUST be reliable.

    Third reply, where apparently Robert Willis has entered leftist name-calling mode:

    +Robert Willis I didn’t say they wanted to use hydrogen in the first stage. What are you talking about? The rest of your post is basically you realizing that you are out of your depth. Its the only reason I can think of for you to suddenly become emotional and caps happy. I honestly can’t see how it has anything to do with anything I posted. Just assumption and preconception on your part. All that “we are better than them” stuff you mention. What in the actual hell are you even talking about? And, in point of fact, if it was actually true that they preferred a large number of lesser engines, then that speaks to the very point I’ve been making about poor engineering choices. Its simply poor design to go that route, and there is no logical reason beyond lack of options to make that mistake. It simply makes no sense to do something so catastrophically stupid if you’ve got alternatives. And the Soviets were desperate, due to political conditions and technological limitations. We know this is a bad design for a very simple, very obvious reason: In four attempts, not one of these things so much as made it to orbit. One of them popped off in one of the largest non-nuclear detonations in history. Another was lost due to debris in the O2 intake causing cascading failures through their tightly spaced engines. And the others were shredded by pogo oscillations that could have been avoided by proper combustion stability that is achieved through, you guessed it, simpler propulsion and combustion chamber self-self damping. These oscillations were less problematic with the larger combustion chambers on the F1 engines for example because they had been dialed in to the point where they could actively self damp even artificially introduced instabilities. Where the Saturn V famously experienced pogo is because of the structural arrangement of the engines themselves, with the inboard being somewhat unsupported, allowing deflection and thus compression of the fuel lines, which lead to increasing fuel pressures. But that was the extent of it, due to the simplicity of the design. Try that with 30 engines and a truly idiotically complex system to feed them…and witness what happened. It was hugely fragile, this crazy manifold design. Probably the biggest flaw in the entire vehicle. Bottom line: They tried over and over again to simply get one of these things into space…to say nothing of the moon. And failed every time. It was a bad design. Wildly complicated, and thus, inherently unreliable. All all because they didn’t develop larger engines that would have solved all of these problems for them. Everyone apologizing for the N1 have a litany of excuses and “should haves”…but in the end we realize that its been far better to simply walk away from a losing idea. You say they didn’t even try to solve these problems…but I actually think they were a lot smarter than that. I think they just hit a roadblock and stuck to familiar tech. And those NK-33 engines really were fantastic. Oxygen preburners for the pumps is still a key design characteristic of the modern RD-191. Personally, I wish the Russians had developed a proper large chambered engine. Would have made launchers a lot more interesting the last half century.

    Fourth and final reply, once RealityIsTheNow has realized that Robert Willis is throwing a full-fledged leftist tantrum and not listening to rational argument:

    +Robert Willis If you, realizing that you lack the technical depth of knowledge to discuss this topic, are going to instead attempt to deflect using small minded bigotry and hatred on nationalist grounds, then I really don’t see any reason to continue. I just don’t care enough to try to explain this at length to anti-American nationalist bigots who simply won’t listen. I certainly said nothing at all, anywhere in my post that could have led you to your hate-based conclusions. You got there on your own through preconception and assumption. I get it: You hate me because of what set of imaginary lines I happened to be born within. So, you are cleary irrational and a nationalist. Again and again hateful language appears in your posts…but not even once in mine. If you want to continue this discussion free from such childish hatefulness, let me know. If not, we both save some keystrokes. The N1 wasn’t a flawed design because it was Russian. It wasn’t flawed because of funding. It was flawed because of over complexity and design compromises. It failed spectacularly, repeatedly. The end. If you are a believer that people are more or less intelligent based on their nationality, well….I don’t think there is any help for you.

    Well done, RealityIsTheNow. That’s exactly how you should respond to people trying to put words in your mouth. By pointing out the underlying bigotry behind their assumptions, and dismissing them.

    1. P.S. I tried to archive the comment thread over at https://archive.is/R5Vcd but that site doesn’t click on the “Show More replies” links in comment threads, so only the first reply from RealityIsTheNow is visible on the archived version. Oh well.

       1. There’s always some people issues even with the simplest technical discussions. There’s forums/subjects I don’t comment on anymore because the large number of butt-hurt amateur radio folks that neither understand filters or grounding. And don’t take kindly to the mention of even basic math in a technical hobby… (You’re gatekeeping! I can’t pass a easy test where all the question pools are public. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!)

          To them I want to say: Radio systems are math/physics systems. You can go far without a calculator, but understanding the basics really helps.

          1. For a while I used a multi-band trap vertical, to good effect, that I got “for the hauling away.” My ‘secret’? Actually digging in the ground radials such a thing needs to work right.

             1. My to-be-installed multi-band vertical insists that it doesn’t need radials. I think it will be located so that radials will be on level ground… IIRC, I don’t need thick wire, and 16 ga bare should work fine.

                Summertime, that soil should be rather dry.

                1. I used what was readily available then. Picked up a package of Radio Shack TV antenna rotater control cable, cut the length(s) I desired, then split the lengths apart.

                   1. Sounds like a plan. Time to review radials.

                      1. Try it sans radials first. Just in case some magic is going on. It’s not unheard of and and radials to that might be counterproductive.

                         1. Point. Also, the radials giving a lower radiation angle might not be a feature in a valley.

          2. But that attitude gets in the way of suing the FCC to overturn the white supremacist restrictions on high power spark gap transmitters.

             I want to run a network of quarter gigawatt morse code numbers station transmitters in America’s most dense cell phone markets.

             (Yeah, I’m not at all sure that would work for jamming, or be realizable.)

             1. From my understanding, that was actually pretty close to the attitude of some when damped wave transmission was…er.. forcibly abandoned.

          3. Or as my daughter said the other day “Physics doesn’t care about your feelings”

             1. That it still friendlier than Economics, who seems to take a perverse glee in crushing people’s feel good ideas in the most horrible ways she can think of.

             2. Heh. Or your skin color, your gender, or sexual preference or…anything else, really. Which is why when the people who claim to be “of the party of Science!!!11!” open their mouths I cringe. They wouldn’t know actual science if it kicked them in the teeth.

                Correction: they don’t know actual science, even as it continues kicking them in the teeth, repeatedly…

    2. But RealityIsTheNow is invalid; that level of complexity can be handled by sprinkling machine learning fairy dust all over it.

40. Sarah, do your readers a favor and tell them to get their butts to a boxing or martial arts training place where they can learn to defend and take offense if needed. This “VR” stuff is just stupid.

    1. Blink. Sure. Of course it is. unless you’re in a lockdown state and those are closed.
       Stupid but BETTER THAN NOTHING.

    2. closed or require a mask, which some of us can’t take for various reasons.

       1. The clerk at the doctor’s office told me to put the mask over my nose (haven’t used the shield lately because of logistics). Kept it that way until I was out of her sight. (30 seconds max) The medical people didn’t object.

    3. The evidence of repeated testing shows that intensely visualizing what you will do, in this situation, is better than training when it comes to dealing with disaster. Holds for animal, human and natural disaster threats. Been trying to explain it away since those stupid Zombie Invasion practice things kept turning up good responses for active shooter events. Failed, repeatedly.

       That’s why you’re supposed to train your mind to respond to specific road conditions without having to think about it–I can’t even remember if I am supposed to turn into a skid or not, I just know how to do it.

       The theory is that the differences is interior– when you go “this happens, and then I will do this”, you are training your mind that YOU do it.

       When you are in a class, anything besides a really good one-on-one, your mental framework is “I do what the Recognized Authority says.” It also “teaches” you that the price of failure is low– punches don’t hurt, and you don’t have to hit that hard, and you don’t want to do your level best to kill That Thing That Just Jumped Out At You. That last one, especially, is actively dangerous in a class– and dangerous to lack, in a real danger situation.

41. I went to the cardiologist yesterday. They have quit taking people’s temperatures. It must have happened this week because last week everywhere I went the medical offices wanted temps and have you been near Covid questions.

    1. Still getting them in Oregon. Ran the gamut at the orthopedic place, though when I went to the clinic to get an INR/ProTime finger stick (yay, no more blood draws!), it was pretty pro-forma. “All noes, right?” sayeth the clerk. “Correct” sayeth I.

       1. Hubby had to go in for initial consult on second carpal tunnel (other hand) visit and set up appointment. For reasons, I went and waited in the vehicle. I had to finally go in to use their restrooms, he had been in the building for 90 minutes. They are still asking and taking temps. Also, locally, businesses must have gatekeepers making sure people are complying with mask mandates, or else OSHA will swoop down and crush them.

          Aside. Hubby will have his first shot this Sunday, second shot well before procedure, including the two weeks after, yet he still has to have a Covid test 3 to 5 days before procedure … sigh.

          I’m not been scheduled, yet. On notification list, but honestly, I’ll wait. I’m still convinced I’ve had and survived it already; can’t prove it however.

          1. I’ve had Dose One of Pfizer and a sore arm for a day or so, but I also did a nontrivial amount of physical work that night. Dose Two is a couple weeks away yet. Ma and friend had Moderna and NO effect on dose one, general blah tiredness on dose two. In a couple weeks, they’ll be considered fully immunized and will resume normal life asuch as Never (vote) Evers allows.

          2. The vets are still doing exams without owners (staff for cats), reportedly at the behest of TPTB in Salem. This was waived for end-of-life scenarios. SIL says her Golden Retriever (in NV) would go on strike if separated from Mom or Dad.

             1. Aware of both scenarios with veterinarians. With a dog, and 3 cats, 2 of which are 10 month old kittens; their last visit would have been drop and pickup under normal conditions (spay/neuter). Plus we’ve lost 1 cat last May. Back then the vet offices didn’t have special dispensation to allow owners in for end-of-life situations. Our clinic veterinarians, and staff, said a few unprofessional words, ending with “Heck. Yes. You can all be with him.” I think the blow back was what had TPTB issue the dispensation ruling.

                Our vet is very good about writing up notes and emailing them to you after the visit. Calling and talking to you during the visit, too. But something is always missed over the phone that wouldn’t be in person. The write-up helps.

                1. Before we move, we need to take the two feline delinquents for ALL THE SHOTS.

42. 1. Rhinovirus is just as deadly as any coronavirus.
    2. RINOvirus has a danger of becoming endemic if drastic measures are not taken.
    3. To halt the spread of RINOvirus, carriers such as Romney, etc. should be permanently isolated.

43. From the chatter it sounds like Citadel didn’t contribute enough to the DNC.

44. Re: the recent shooting

    Akshully, this means we should be executing the sexually promiscuous because of their mental instability.

45. For consideration:

    “Darwin Award” is such an insensitive and offensive term.

    You should use “Green Hero” instead.

46. The Democrats’ bogus Russia collusion narrative, which they still insist on pushing even though it is demonstrably false, is going to end up causing an outright war with Russia:

    https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2021/03/17/russia-recalls-ambassador-to-united-states-for-consultations/

    1. It occurs to me that certain individuals pulling the strings in the Biden administration might want a war with Russia. After all, there’s been a strong desire to invade Syria since the days of the Obama administration (when he kept trying to stir up the drumbeats of war against Assad). And Russia is currently all but guaranteeing the safety of the Assad regime. In order to carry out the regime-change in Syria that so many seem to want, something needs to first be done about the Russian presence inside the country. And since the Russian military isn’t very good, it’s likely occurred to at least some that a direct confrontation with Russia would be a walk in the park, and a good way to put the autocrat in Moscow in his supposed place prior to the real goal of moving on Damascus.

       1. Honestly? China wants us to fight Russia. That’s their wet dream.
          I don’t think Putin is THAT stupid.

          1. Putin’s canny enough to know that he doesn’t stand a chance against the US in a real war, and it would humiliate the heck out of Russia on the global stage (which would spell the end of him). But I can see him being agitated into standing up to the US just a little too long in a tense situation, against a US administration that’s pushier and more reckless than it ought to be, and ending up in an accidental shooting war as a result.

             Someone in the Biden administration quietly attempting to maneuver for such a thing would probably assume that it wouldn’t end well for Putin, and thus feel that nothing bad could come of it.

             1. And they say republican’s want wars….

                1. More Democrats than Republicans started wars in the 20th century, by 5 to 1.

                   1. I dunno – are you counting Desert Storm as a war? Didn’t seem like one, any more than Granada or Panama. More like a walk in the park than a war.

                      There is the Great War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the War in Vietnam, the War on Poverty and the Cold War (I’m willing to write off Kosovo as equivalent to DS, G & P) – and all of those were initiated under Democrat administrations (they argue that Eisenhower got us into Vietnam, but it was a easily extractable presence until the Democrats assassinated the South Vietnamese president. Most nations assassinate their foe’s leaders; leave it to the Dems to take out an ally’s.)
                      ~

             2. The great danger is that Putin or another foreign leader believes that our nuclear deterrent isn’t a deterrent; i.e. that we will be unwilling or unable (either due to Biden’s infirmity and chain of command issues in launching a response; or the belief that our nuclear weapons have aged to the point of no longer being functional-our nuclear weapons are getting VERY old) to respond. The minute an adversary believes that, even if they are at a disadvantage in conventional warfare (and I think the difference between us and the Russians and us and the CCP has narrowed quite a bit), the risk of being attacked by our adversaries increases greatly; indeed it creates a significant risk of being hit with a nuclear first strike. The CCP is engaging in biological warfare, is use of nukes against a nation they don’t believe will respond in kind really that farfetched?

47. c4c

48. I’m late to this party but isn’t this all predicated on cash remaining a going concern? Perhaps it’s part of that whole urban v rural culture divide, but it seems like cash is increasingly uncommon and unwanted in the cities. Many stores are reluctant to deal with cash, some reportedly outright refuse it. Obviously if you’re shopping online you need a digital means of paying, but for anything else – like anonymously buying your groceries, why would you want a store card and a bank card so your time, place, and purchases can be tracked? And this isn’t even factoring in government moving to a theft by taxation model.

    What if the urban elite decide to abolish cash though, what then? How are folk who rely on anonymous cash to trade? Is this one of those split the country issues, or might there be a way around it? Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution states that Congress alone has the power to coin money, regulate the value thereof and do various other things. What if states printed legal tender specific to their own state, or a wider union of states, but did not coin/stamp money – leaving (metal) coins to the federal government as per the Constitution. This would almost certainly result in a SCOTUS challenge by the Democrat urban elite who wish to abolish cash, but so long as the court isn’t packed might it be legal? And if the court is packed and government controlled by the Left, well then you’ve bigger issues than currency surely?

    1. Given the SCOTUS recent rulings/behavior, I’m not sure it matters if it’s packed or not: they’ve proved themselves to be largely spineless, regardless of the supposed qualifications that got them there.

49. Even before all this, I always wanted to learn Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense method that virtually everyone can learn. It relies on traditional martial arts moves, but it also incorporates using what you can grab immediately, a rock, a metal rod, a stick, keys, etc. When I worked in the city, I was sometimes accosted by the homeless. I was never attacked, but it taught me situational awareness big time.

    1. Yeah, for sure. Krav Maga appeals to me because it feels messy and real.

    2. Situational awareness in and of itself can make a HUGE difference–and however out of shape/out of training I might be these days, I did NOT lose that. (For one thing, it’s necessary to survive driving in a region where deer/elk/moose lose anything resembling brains when it comes to roads and vehicles, heh.)

50. Even before all this, I always wanted to learn Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense method that virtually everyone can learn. It relies on traditional martial arts moves, but it also incorporates using what you can grab immediately, a rock, a metal rod, a stick, keys, etc. When I worked in the city, I was sometimes accosted by the homeless. I was never attacked, but it taught me situational awareness big time.

51. Biden again today referred to as Harris as “President Harris”. The article is wrong in describing it as a “mistake”. He is in fact telling the truth as to the actual way the executive branch is being run.

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/03/18/joe-biden-mistakenly-refers-to-vp-kamala-as-president-harris/

    It is very clear that in the dim recesses of his infirm mind that Biden realizes that he is a figurehead and that Harris is acting as President in all but name

    1. Everyone is looking at the potential for the boog kicking off when the left goes after everyone else, with justification easy to find in the current propaganda streams. But I wonder if first boogage will be something different. I just read “There is No Biden Administration” by Daniel Greenfield (linked from Ace):

       https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/there-no-biden-administration-daniel-greenfield/

       The basic premise aligns with an observation I made here in the comments the other day: The China Joe Muppet Show is being directed and controlled by a committee of second-level radical left apparatchiks in what I termed the “writers room”, those appointees one level below the “moderates” being presented for Senate confirmation. The writers room wields all the actual power using the permanent bureaucracy, but it’s all a committee, with nobody actually in charge – it is clearly obvious that the masked greenscreen FICUS is not in charge of anything at all, and the current schizo chaotic activities illustrate that none of the next-level Cabinet appointees nor Frau Doktor Biden are directing things, just pushing and yanking to influence one way or another what is being executed by the people in the committee of radical tier-threes.

       Greenfield calls it “an ongoing Netroots conference on government property” observing that the only deep common priority shared across that group is to “stalemate” any 25th amendment challenge by Dot-not-Black and her sister.

       Right now they may all present as happy-second-triumvirate, but it’s a committee of ideologues among a nest of power-hungry vipers.

       It is only a matter of time until what Greenfield terms their “house of cards” collapses.

       And there are tens of thousands of troops stationed behind those fences and razor wire in DC, with flag officers clearly willing to jump into politics with both feet (see le’affaire Tucker Carlson). And even if those guard units don’t have ammo issued right now, that’s just a bit of logistics, something the US military is actually still fairly good at.

       If that radical appointee writers room has a serious bit of a falling out, generating a few phone calls to a few friendly generals, the outside world could see boog kinetics kick off inside those fences.

       And it would not stay contained inside.

       1. You say writer’s room, I say Gu jar.

          The Gu jar, or in Japanese Kodoku, is magical idea involving trapping poisonous creatures in a container. The theory is that they devour each other, and create a single surviving super creature with all the poison powers combined. Insects, centipedes, toads, and snakes are thought of as poisonous creatures.

          Theory of operation for the function we can guess of the observed reality is different. Obviously, staffed by a bunch of blind idiot poisonous creatures. There is no single leader; if someone on the Dem side had overwhelming strength as an infighter and a politician they would have taken the nomination, and perhaps won outright. Instead of a single leader, they have a bunch of ambitious weaklings.

          First, the actual Dem leadership thinks that they can win the thing now, forever. So they have a consensus on pushing toxic extreme leftwing policies, and seizing power. They apparently haven’t staffed with the disciplined, the careful planners, the people of strategic vision. It looks like impulsive, excitable, narrow minds. Very high risk that actions will be taken which can and may backfire spectacularly.

          Second, policy patterns will be set partly by palace infighting. Which means inconsistent, possibly pseudorandom or random policy patterns.

          Part of the essence of what is in place may be a fuzzer. Which is going to keep operating until a) power is consolidated b) regime is removed from power c) a fatal defect in the strategic position is brought into effect.

          Questions have been raised about whether there is a way to statistically know when a fuzzer has discovered x% of the bugs in a code. I think a good statistical model would need distributions for i) how the structure of the code makes bugs likely ii) how likely the workforce is to create bugs iii) how the fuzzer works. I think the workforce distribution might prove profoundly intractable. If I’m not wrong about the Azathothian Gu jar fuzzer, and if I’m not wrong about properties of fuzzer, when the boog starts is statistical, not deterministic, and we can’t have the information to evaluate the statistical side.

          Counterargument, I do not understand stochastics. I definitely do not understand the conditions under which a situation can no longer even be considered statistical.

          1. I think we’re actually seeing divergent negative stability. The no-leader group in power is not gladiatorial games like they had under Barry, where they fought it out in the blood soaked sands of the conference room arenas and he declared who won. Instead it’s basically a vicious back alley knife fight, and unless a fatal wound is delivered there’s no winner, just shifting advantage. This is which is why Psaki looks so lost and helpless when she has to go beyond the canned Q&A that each faction of the knife fighters have worked out in advance with their pet “reporters” – she really, really can’t talk about decisions because there are not any – it’s all either some consensus vote or just the last faction standing that day.

             And with nobody to be the final decider, at some point a faction that really really wants to win, which has already lined up a flag officer or three on their “team,” will lose that days knife fight on a core topic, and after the meeting breaks up they will send an innocuous looking text message…

             My main point is intraParty grievance settling is more likely to kick off actual fighting than persecution of the other side.

             1. I thought you were probably right about that, I just rabbit trailed rather badly off of my side topic.

                Comes to mind that what is most likely may depend on exactly how stupid the officers in question are. If really stupid, they may get caught and stopped before they can start pulling it off. If really smart, they may manage plausible deniability for not doing anything. Of course, neither of those is necessarily going to result in the situation being fixed.

                Right now, I’m definitely not together enough to even guess at the odds. Not even if I had good information, which I certainly do not. So, yeah, I haven’t anything to say that adds to your insight.

                1. Reports from China were that during the Tiananmen Square protests, when the Party decided they ordered the military to move to Beijing and attack those kids to break it up, more than one General in charge of units within a reasonable distance (all major military units are stationed relatively far from Beijing) either didn’t answer the phone, or they accepted their orders and then didn’t move any troops, citing transport difficulties and such.

                   After the dust settled a fair number of Generals were executed.

                   If you look at major US Army basing locations on the east coast, you will see that none are in close proximity to DC – the st Battalion, 3d US Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) is actually based in DC, but it has been oddly absent from any mention in coverage of the DC “protection” “mission”. Given their proximity to the halls of power, I’m betting the selection process for the 1/3 Inf CO and NCOIC includes a pretty rigorously vetting for the absence of any political ambitions or entanglements.

                   Pulling in and retaining tens of thousands of NG troops in DC under command of national guard officers who are not necessarily as rigorously vetted for the absence of political ambitions is a data point of major concern.

             2. No. This is true when they are the majority of the population. They’re not here.
                Nowhere close.
                Their mad tearing at each other won’t start till they know they’re falling.
                And it’s not an alley knife fight, for heaven’s sake. It’s a freshman argument, with someone throwing a tepid latte in someone else’s face in the commons.
                The knife fighters are old and demented. Like Pelosi.

    2. Harris, for not invoking the 25th, should be impeach for abuse of a helpless and dependant person.

       1. Yeah, well, he’s totes vigorously all there, so no need for that – at least he knows to get back up and which way to go when he does:

          https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1372937277282869254/pu/pl/utoxtm7UeTovngT5.m3u8

52. Does Das Left figure they can (and must) tighten the screws ever more and increase the pressure… as, historically, things tend blow when the pressure is eased? And does that ‘relaxation means boom’ apply universally, or is there some Something Else and *here* the increasing pressure will trigger… something?

    1. Probably no consensus between on a single policy. Obviously, a lot of them realize they have the tiger by the tail, and are escalating.

       Quality of minds is the sort that jams pressure relief valves closed, and thinks that means that nothing will escape.

       One way cracks can develop is with cyclic loading. Text books will tell you that cycles of L to 0, or L to -L, will fail much faster than a constant loading of magnitude L.

       The fuzzer effect of the “writer’s room” basically translates to non-constant loading.

       Maybe the problem happens when a specific load increases, maybe when a specific load decreases, or maybe the fatigue cracking will hit the critical level at a point when the loads are constant.

       We don’t understand the real structure, and we are basically ignoring inspection and maintenance. So something like the Air Force’s Damage and Damage Tolerance could not tell us /where/ the worst problem area will be, much less which mode of failure we need to address next.

       1. There’s a lot of attention being directed at the left-right interface and the remaining connections holding that together, and simultaneously no attention at all is being directed at the internal interfaces between the various left factions in the ruling leaderless coalition committee, so I’d predict that un-identified fractures there are much more likely than at the left-right interface.

          And given the current left’s embrace of violence to gain advantage, I expect such fractures to lead to kinetics.

          1. See: Cuomo.

       2. The coviodiocy was amping beyond the scale. they know they’re pucked. They don’t know how to escape the fall and the retribution.

          1. >> “They don’t know how to escape the fall and the retribution.”

             That’s easy – abandon their positions of power and flee to countries that have no mutual extradition treaty with us NOW, before the shooting starts.

             Not that they will, of course.

             1. Well, right now that’s China and Russia and none of them like the climate 😉

    2. >> “And does that ‘relaxation means boom’ apply universally, or is there some Something Else and *here* the increasing pressure will trigger… something?”

       This one, I think. I don’t know enough world history to say what trigger armed rebellions in general, but our forefathers went kinetic at Lexington and Concord. That was where the British tried to tighten the screws hard by disarming them. And on the flip side, we did NOT go kinetic when Trump eased taxes and regulations.

       It could just come down to Americans having a different mindset than the rest of the world. We might just have different triggers than most of humanity.

53. I’m not surprised that so many Leftists believe that money comes from somewhere, as much as they want, if the people making it weren’t so greedy as to want to enjoy the fruits of their labors.
    I am convinced that my sisters in law believe that money comes from a money-printing machine every business receives at creation, which is kept in the basement.

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