The Junta’s Abolition of the Constitution

384 thoughts on “The Junta’s Abolition of the Constitution”

1. Yikes. I’m too old to camp or remember an alternate identity…

2. The flip side of this is that when it’s overturned, they can hope to drag it far enough the opposite way that “this isn’t my house, I signed it over to my kids” will work, again.

   1. If they are planning that far ahead.

      1. Oh, No.

         I don’t think that THEY are planning that far ahead.

         Having watched Reason Magazine dip and dive in line with what is advantageous to the very well funded cartels….

         I don’t think THEY plan at all.

         I think the activists that oddly change angle to align with “good for cartels” may actually, y’know, be getting Cartel funding.

         Similar to the radical immigration groups.

         And everyone else who blew a gasket at the idea of the cartels being classed as terror groups.

         1. And everyone else who blew a gasket at the idea of the cartels being classed as terror groups.

            Depends on whether you want “terrorism” to have its original meaning, or just be “people I don’t like who aren’t a nation state (or maybe are if we feel like slapping the label on)”.

            Most of the population of this blog are “terrorists” by that definition.

            1. The cartels are definitely terror groups _as well_ as being criminal groups. And this is pretty standard for any kind of large scale organized crime (ie, that’s what the horsehead in the bed is for), except that the cartels in Mexico have basically abolished the Mexican government in many areas. So, yeah, a lot more like Mafia groups in Sicily than Mafia groups in NYC.

               1. No, that is just the blurry area of organized crime where it bleeds into warlordism.

                  Terrorism is something very different.

                  1. “Terrorism” is, and should be, a colloquial term, not a legal term. We have perfectly good, precisely defined legal words for the things that terrorists do, and perfectly good punishments for them. “Unlawful combatant”, “piracy”, “saboteur”, etc.

            2. There are actually definitions.

               And the cartels are actually nearly identical in tactics to the recognized terror groups.

               But…. AlQ doesn’t have anything like the known funding flowing in to the US and activist groups.

3. How can people think this will work? Well, most people have no blinking idea how hard life is. Just look at all the memes going around from people who don’t think they should have to work to survive. The amount of work it takes to live at current levels—or even plain low levels of regular meals, proper clothing, and decent shelter—is mind-boggling, but hidden.

   We live at levels of prosperity unimagined by kings and emperors. They got to the levels they did through other peoples’ labor, forced and in trade. So how can we live this well? We’ve automated most of the labor. Just think about what it takes to wash clothing—in modern times, we miss the mining (for electrical wires, machine components, piping), power generation (coal, gas, solar, water, electrical system installed and maintained to get the power to our house), the water (storage, filtration, piping), the machine construction (including that dreaded oil piping for plastic construction, silicon and rare metals for the circuitry), and that’s not even getting to the soap making. Washing clothing takes five to ten minutes of prep time a week instead of an entire day dedicated to it—with ironing and folding the next day.

   I think of the amount of labor it takes to live in the pioneer times and it’s staggering. But it’s invisible to anyone who hasn’t thought about it or lived a portion of it.

   1. Yeah, I was just thinking about this earlier this morning.

      Power lines.

      You can hang them in the air, or bury them in the ground. But they need maintenance, which means you need to be able to figure out where the problems are, and go fix them.

      In theory, you could have an electronic system to tell you where the first break in the line is. Right now, my understanding is that is still good to regularly have human eyes on the mechanical structure that the wires hang on.

      Maintenance has costs, requiring human effort and productivity.

      Ergo, ‘everyone has a right to electrical power’ explicitly depends on not having screwed up the economy past that point.

      1. Or angering enough people who, when you take away their electric power, are happy to play “if I can’t have electric power then you can’t have electric power.”

         1. There are an awful lot of people out here who watch those PSAs warning us to “check with the Power Co. before digging up your yard” and think about how nice it would be to tell themselves a new vegetable garden just in case their cash accounts get frozen.

            Bonus: if they cut off your power then your bills won’t be affected by rate increases to cover additional maintenance!
            ~

            1. Of course those PSA’s presuppose that the various utilities actually know where their buried lines are.

               This year I substantially enlarged my garden. Before I started digging, I dutifully put in an 811 request to have utilities marked, since I knew there was at least a phone line back there. The phone company told me there was no conflict, so I set to digging with a will.

               And then a family member came running out to tell me that he was having trouble with an online game. I took a look and realized the broadband was out on the gateway. With a sick sinking feeling, I ran out and looked — and realized that one of the “roots” was in fact a buried cable, just inches below the surface — and my shovel had cut the insulation down to bare copper.

               So I got on my cell phone and called the phone company, and they were able to send a tech the next day, so we now have a new *overhead* phone line, alongside the overhead power line. And because I did contact 811, I was covered and didn’t get charged. But it was still annoying to be without Internet, TV and landline phone overnight.

               1. Back in the mid eighties when the space shuttle launch was delayed because a data link with some company or other was cut, I was working at a company in a building right outside where the cable was cut. Somebody was digging to install some other data link and cut the old one. Of course that was all confidential, but people talk.

                  1. Sounds like an easy way to have sleeper agents sabotage communications in a not-easily-attributable way. And isn’t that a scary thought?

         2. Making it undeniably clear that you want your political opponents dead, and then ensuring they’ve got nothing left to lose, strikes me as an unwise strategy.

            1. But the smartest people in the country, my self proclaimed better, think it is brilliant.

      2. In practice, there are indeed ways to tell where your break is, within a certain range. But. You *always* put eyeballs on the break whenever possible, because it may not be just *one* break. Also, re-powering stresses the system, and can cause failure elsewhere… Even a loooong way elsewhere when you reconnect.

         The electrical system is made up of many moving parts and mechanical devices that degrade over time, and *need* maintenance. There is no escaping the need for maintenance. And it is not something you can, at this point (or any in the near future) automate. It requires deep/broad knowledge and problem solving skills. Some elements of the infrastructure can run essentially without fail (assuming regular maintenance) for decades, but result in explosive disassembly when a single factor runs far enough out of tolerance. Or oil.

         And that’s just power. Water/sewer has its own particular needs, being also a system of many moving parts and mechanical devices that need constant (not just regular) maintenance. Great honkin’ big machines and installations that require a large staff to keep in proper operation. Failure would be very bad.

         Most people alive today do not have the mindset or institutional knowledge and experience to survive without clean water and reliable power on a regular basis. I could get by without, but it would suck. No stars. Would not recommend. I also live in an area where I could, dropped naked in the wilds, get by decently well enough assuming a smidge of luck. Not everyone lives in a place like that. Or has the blessing of the life experience and skills to cope when modern society gives us the BSOD.

         Things aren’t going to get that way soon, absent war/terrorism. If it happens, it will occur after a slow decline- then all at once. Cities, especially, are particularly vulnerable. One of many reasons I don’t like ’em much.

   2. One of the little oddities while watching Chinese TV shows that are set in the *modern* era is how many of them have urban dwellers (usually students) casually mention hanging out the laundry to dry. It’s not even a big deal. It’s just one of the chores.

      1. I was amused, reading “The Dark Forest” (Part 2 of the Three Body Problem trilogy) how readily lawsuits were the default answer to any kind of problem. Sounds almost like it was set in California.

   3. I’ve thought about it enough to know I’m not competent to do it.

      And my crash course to learn might not be crash enough.

      But I am an Alfred Noyes fan.

   4. Or even watched a couple of episodes of the 1900 House, or the Pioneer House… or even just read Little House on the Prairie…

4. More concerned about the minor kids than the adult kids, myself. Adult kids get unpersoned, minor kids get tossed into foster care . . .

   1. If the parents let them, yes.

5. “… they are declaring US citizens who so much as dare talk against them as enemy collaborators and traitors.”

   One of the earliest rules children learn outside the household is, “He who said it, let it.”

   That also applies in national and international affairs.
   ~

   1. Main reason that the US educational system is actively attempting to undermine parental authority and pushing children at every opportunity to challenge and defy their families.
      Germans did it under Hitler, Russians did it for most all of the USSR era.
      Rat out your relatives and get praised and rewarded.

6. I remember how they took down the Tea Party–redefining the term “domestic terrorist” and harassing people with IRS audits, etc. It barely made the news while it was happening. My first reaction is to think they’ll keep it quiet like that again–just quietly unperson a few key players.

   But then I look at what they’ve been doing, how chaotic they’ve been, and I think they’re more likely to go for the biggest, most well-defended targets possible. I think that, as likely as not, they’re going to start by making a martyr of Donald Trump and his family. And then it really will be on.

   Oh, and one other thing–let’s call this what it is: proscription.

   1. What would Sulla do?

      1. They can raise their Sulla. We can match them with a Vlad Dracul.

         They’re like a mean little kid kicking a pit bull. Sooner or later, it will turn out badly.

         1. I wish I didn’t have the sinking suspicion we’re finding out first-hand why Vlad got his charming reputation – and went down as a hero to boot.

            1. He certainly didn’t care that it was not polite to point. 😉

               1. Raising the stakes already, eh? 😉

               2. Yep – but anybody contemplating challenging Vlad got the point.
                  ~

      2. Yes, they took down the Gracchi, and somewhere a Sulla waits for his cue.

         1. Sulla was one of the world’s cleverest dictators. He retired. And lived out his life. In his own house. Because nobody in Rome wanted to mess with him.

            But he was really, really, not the person you want running your country. And lots of people are stupider than him, but are willing to do worse things.

   2. You aren’t entirely wrong. They did that with the TEA party too, the big targets. The government didn’t kill the TEA party though.

      You know why the TEA party failed? It was full of old people who didn’t want to live by their principles. Cut off food stamps, WIC, and all the aid for single parents or people in poverty; but how fucking dare anyone suggest that social security and Medicare be cut.

      All you young people need to work your asses off to pay for our retirements! Fuck your economic struggles through the horrific regulatory state we left you! Fuck your insane student debt because we let the federal government take over student loans and demanded that everyone go to college while also completely failing to ensure that the schools and colleges were actually teaching anything! Get another job! Work 100 hours a week! How dare you complain about the programs that eat the whole of federal revenue and then some, even if every other dime of federal spending including the military was cut!

      That was why my husband and I quit our local group. That alone. We made graphs and gave an actual breakdown of how the country couldn’t afford it, and they basically told us to get fucked because they “earned” those benefits. We were not the only people under 40 to walk because of that. The government didn’t take down the TEA party. Boomers took down the TEA party.

      Meanwhile, the people who the government targeted? They made millions in donations, speaking fees, and had their careers laid out before them. They made several careers off that bullshit. It backfired epically. Since they’re idiots and will try the same thing with this shit, just watch and see how it works for them.

      1. Preach it!

         What the left has been doing and is doing is pure evil, but don’t discount how the right has screwed up.

         Yes, Milo was deplatformed and suffered because of it, but by his own confession it was his own ridiculously lavish lifestyle and carelessness with money that was responsible for at least half of his current problems (see his book, “How to be Poor.”)

         And let’s not forget how much of this current crap can be traced to the Patriot Act. And who was supporting it? Now we’ve got leftists flat-out saying the War on Terror is the blueprint for action against current dissidents.

         Remember when the right was being warned that what was started with the PA might turn round and bite them on the butt? Peppridge Farm remembers.

         1. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxims culpa.

         2. That’s a bait and switch. As much as the Patriot Act itself was.

            I defended the PA.
            I did due diligence, read the damned thing, and noted that the things people were freaking out about weren’t in the bill.
            Then about a decade later, I learned that this things just weren’t in the part of the bill we were allowed to see. There were entire “classified” sections that we were not allowed to know about.
            The conspiracy theorists were right.
            I was wrong..
            But don’t pretend that I defended secret codicils.

            1. THIS.

      2. There are plenty of people over 40 who agree.

         I know one over 50, myself.

         Yes, I paid into the system. No, I don’t expect a dime out of them.

         While I think an honest transition plan would treat people over a certain as having a valid debt, similar to the Constitution’s acknowledgment of the debts of prior governments, that age rises every year (I don’t think anyone my age can claim they didn’t know the system would be empty when we got there) and not only the means but the good will to strike a bargain to at least maintain means-tested benefits for individuals over that age is evaporating.

         1. Yeah, I always planned for absolutely not one thin dime from all that money I was forced to contribute to a worse pyramid scheme than poor old Bernie, RIP, ever ran.

            But instead of standing up and stating the truth, that the .gov has been frelling lying since FDR and there’s no guarantee of getting anything, it looks like they will now be stealth-devaluing so their SSA payments won’t amount to a cup of coffee and they can pay off the crazy new debt with devalued future dollars.

            I observe the stratospheric rise of the cryptocurrencies vs. the dollar with an eye to this concept – with all the tracking on gold and such, the cryptos are currently one of the few ways to exit the fiat-currency system. And even the started-as-a-joke dogecoin crypto is going nuts. Supply and demand in action.

            —
            And .gov monitors: Note that’s what your worth-more-than-your-soul retirement contributions will be paid to you in as well.

            1. Be cautious with the cryptocurrency stuff. To the extent that the government can enforce tax law, they can simply declare non-governmental cryptocurrencies verboten. It’s “money laundering”, you know.

               1. Kind of past that: they wanted their cut more than they wanted to suppress it.

                  1. Eh, both. They are perfectly capable of pursuing contradictory goals and even thinking the same act will get them both — like taxes on tobacco to raise a lot of money AND discourage smoking.

               2. They can outlaw barter as well. (And with tax law, they pretty much have.)

                  It still happens all the time.

                  It gets a lot harder to track if it gets banned.

                  1. My understanding is that communist countries all have underground “black” markets which keep things going. So I assume there’s a certain amount of looking the other way.

                     1. Those communist black markets are not in the main internal secondary markets doing redistribution of goods produced internally, but rather external conduits that bring in goods and prop up the failed planned economic system with stuff from, in the case of the USSR and subject Warsaw Pact countries, the west.

                        The USSR and subject Warsaw Pact also benefited from western governmental support in the form of subsidized grain exports as government policy.

                        Absent a thriving external capitalists system upon which it could be parasitic, these planned economies would simply fail very much sooner and much harder.

                        1. This.

               3. You’ll see this when the governmental cryptocurrencies appear.

                  In the meantime the guy that didn’t off Epstein needs to get paid by the incriminated aristos he had video dirt on in something untraceable.

                  1. China’s launching a digital currency. Complete with the authority to turn off your money so you can’t use it, and admitting that.

         2. Every pay check for the 40 or so years I worked “Oh, look!”, SS payment, “Just paid Grandparents for the month!”, then ’86, added dad, but in ’87 lost one grandmother. ’96 added mom. All 5 paid less into the system than what they got out, mom is still drawing. Even with the minuscule amounts paid out to each individually, on it long enough, one gets paid more than ever paid into system. We never, ever, expected to be paid anything. The changes to what “full”, was expected. When, not if, they get around to reducing benefits, expected. The people it will hurt will be mom. They’ll try to say “well she gets a *pension*.” Not that much she doesn’t. As long as hubby and I are both drawing, we’ll survive. They’ll say “But you have a pension!” Sure, all of $121/month … by then it might buy a cup of coffee a few days a month. Then they’ll say “But you saved!” Well duh, idiots. (Mom’s run’s out in 10 years at her rate of required withdrawal, sure she’ll be 97 … point?) Sure Could go my maternal grandparents route ($0.10/$1 owed to creditors … sorry forgot to take notes on the lesson) … oh wait that is what THEY are doing. You know what … if I thought China would get hit with the bill, I’d cheer them on. Know that isn’t what is going to happen. Eventually yes. Because when US collapses, China will crash with the rest of the world, *faster. There won’t be anything to steal to send.

            * If we’re really lucky China will collapse first. Won’t bet on it. But can dream.

            1. What good is saving a million dollars for retirement when hyperinflation ends up costing you a million dollars for a loaf of bread?

               1. This.

               2. And they did it before.

                  The whole reason Proposition 13 ever came up in California was that the 1970s inflation cycle had resulted in paid off homes annual tax bills based on now-currency more than the retirees living in them could afford to keep paying.

                  1. Same for Oregon. Only now they are trying to modify it … without a vote …

                  2. And it’s wild to listen to people arguing against Proposition 13 even with the more recent examples of various states during the housing bubble staring them in their faces. Because “they don’t deserve it.” Oh, BS. Nobody “deserves” anything when you’re talking about fiscal policy.

                     1. The people arguing against Prop 13 are simply innumerate. The fixed property tax basis assessments only last as long as the property is not sold out of the direct family. Once it sells the property tax basis gets reassessed at market value, so property tax revenue bumps up. And this is CA – everything eventually sells. Yes there was a drop when it passed, and there’s a lag between market and tax basis, but like I said, everything eventually sells and resets.

                        The main practical negative local government impact is from the state collecting all property tax revenue and then playing games with redistributing – prior to prop 13 local counties collected the money and spent it on schools and such. Now everyone only gets what Sacramento sends back, and Sacramento makes things “fairer”.

                        1. Once it sells the property tax basis gets reassessed at market value, so property tax revenue bumps up.

                           –
                           Which the Oregon proposition managed to avoid, close, make sure wouldn’t happen. New builds are assessed at market values. If pre-built property is added to, it is reassessed. But just to sell it? Does not set to market value. I think that is one of the things that TPTB are trying to change.

                           main practical negative local government impact is from the state collecting all property tax revenue and then playing games with redistributing – prior to prop 13 local counties collected the money and spent it on schools and such. Now everyone only gets what Sacramento sends back, and Sacramento makes things “fairer”.

                           –
                           Salem does the same, based on per student in seats. One of the reasons why public schools scream so loud about alternatives. Why the alternatives want public status, like some of the online public k-12 options available. Never mind that the PTB can’t make equivalent/equal distribution work. They just can not. It has hurt some of the most vulnerable locations, plus hasn’t helped the areas the process is suppose to. Then too, districts can’t vote them extra funds to make up the lack coming out of Salem.

               3. I just wonder how long it will be before they come after private pension plans to shore up Social Security and (chronically underfunded) public pension plans, or just use them as a handy piggy bank for more social spending? So you hit retirement age and find out your own retirement accounts are stuffed full of the same worthless IOUs as Social Security?

                  1. At this point, they have to go after 401(k) funds, not pension plans. Maybe some non-public-Unions still have pensions. My husband’s is paid that way. But my payment is through an annuity fund because the company it was originally through took all the pension funds and rolled them over to employee 401(k) accounts. This meant as a former employee with vested interest in funds in the pension had options. So I was informed. Point is, the company pension is no longer there for the government to raid. I’m guessing it isn’t the only one.

                     1. During Obama’s second term Democrats floated a plan that would essentially confiscate all privately held 401ks and IRAs and turn them over to social security in the name of “equitable retirement funding”. Anyone who thinks they won’t sneak this into one of the massive “infrastructure” bills they are ramming through Congress hasn’t been paying attention.

                        Yes it’s unconstitutional as are so many of their other schemes. Thus why they are so determined to pack the Supreme Court.

                        1. Yes, I’ve never really trusted my IRA for this reason. It would be pretty straightforward to confiscate the contents of all IRAs, and replace them with 30-year government bonds paying 0.5%. For your own good, of course, because government debt is safer, you know.

                           1. They will even have the perfect excuse: “Look at how these poor mislead retail traders blew up the economy!”

                              Nevermind that every word of that is a lie.

                        2. The Portuguese government recently took half of all the retirement accounts in the country.

                  2. Or be like California planning to tax your income for up to a decade after you left the state for a better place.

         3. I’m not as old as you, but yeah. I’ll likely never see a dime.

            Love him or hate him, one good thing that Dubya did was try to come up with a fix for the impending Social Security collapse. And the Dems moved to stomp on it before Dubya had done more than deliver the most basic outline, and promise that existing seniors wouldn’t lose their social security.

            No one’s touched it since.

         4. Remember back after the 2004 election when George W. Bush tried to push through privatization of Social Security?

            Good times, good times.
            ~

            1. “Tried” with scare quotes – he floated a trial balloon and ran away as fast as he could.

               1. He made an attempt on a very politically dangerous subject. And a bipartisan effort would have been required to make it work. But the Democratic response was to nuke it from orbit using bald-faced lies that apparently many seniors were all too ready to believe.

                  I don’t think he could have done anything that would have worked.

                  1. I find it incredibly irksome, because 401Ks, for example have been around since the 70s. Mutual funds even longer than that, and index funds since about 1976. Unless you retired IN the 70s and have been living off only SS since then, there have been myriad ways to save and invest rather than relyiing solely on Social Security, which was NEVER meant to be the sole means of support for people for twenty or thirty years. Not to mention that when it was started, it was only for those who HAD paid into it, and was later expanded to include their spouses. And then never contracted again after women started entering the work force and earnign their own SS benefits.

                     Australia actually has a pretty decent “social security” superannuation pension benefit thing that I think would work. It’s basically personal accounts, rather than “pay as you go.” nonsense.

                     1. The myth of “pay as you go” misses the part where they swapped it for debt and then spent it.

                        SS is just an expense from the general budget hiding behind the mythological construct of Al’s “lockbox!”.

                        Which means it will run up against Maggie Thatcher’s “running out of other people’s money” and go boom.

                        And to quote Susan Ivanova: “No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There’s always a boom tomorrow. What? Look, somebody’s got to have some damn perspective around here! Boom. Sooner or later. BOOM!”

                     2. for those who HAD paid into it, and was later expanded to include their spouses.

                        –
                        I never mind benefits to widowed non-working spouses, or orphaned minors (not both FYI) because it was based off full earned benefits of the SS payer. Anything outside of that should be coming out of a different bucket.

                        I do have a problem with SS being a line item in the General Fund that they can borrow from with an indefinite IOU. Which they have done, repeatably.

                        One solution is to not have a cap on earnings paid into SS nor exclusion of professions, but put a cap on amount of SS earnings, regardless of amount paid in. The problem with this is it just gives TPTB more money to write unpaid indefinite IOU’s on. Thus without limitations on what they can do against SS funds, this is a non-starter.

                     3. It’s basically personal accounts, rather than “pay as you go.” nonsense.

                        –
                        Known as “privatization” but forced to use government brokerage. Gee, how’d is that working for government sponsored college funds in late ’00s? Oh. I know! It. Didn’t. We started one for our son as soon as they were available … He graduated HS ’07 … We were luckier than most. Overall we were slightly better off, because of the annual tax savings. than we’d have been putting the money into a savings account. Especially after the class action lawsuit that got us extra money out of the system. Was it worth it? Oh. Hell. No.

                        1. Anyone know how Chile’s doing? As I recall, one of Pinochet’s parting gifts to that nation was privatized Social Security. I know the Leftists were gnashing teeth over it but last I saw the people covered by their system were highly reluctant to give it up.

                           I wonder if lack of news coverage is indicative of effectiveness?
                           ~

   3. “… let’s call this what it is: proscription.”

      Careful – the Thought Police are watching.

      I may don my white gloves to ensure they can see which two fingers I am upraising.
      ~

      1. I thought you were calling a brushback pitch…

      2. The thought police have a small vocabulary, no historical context, and are not inclined to look something up.

7. This might have had a ice sculpture of a flying pig’s change in hell of working in the beforetimes. For a while.

   Dumbasses are to stupid to recognize a rage event horizon when they see one.

8. ….oh, right

   I was thinking yesterday that once the next non-promo post went up I had a question: that now closer to June-July did you see anything more concrete that could be a trigger, as our Most Venerable Overlords seem to be mostly too incompetent to even make that happen.

   But I had forgotten this EO.

9. It is a blockbuster level popular piece of doomerporn in conservative circles that “we’re too soft, we like our bread and circuses too much”.

   What never seems to occur to them is that even if they were right that only works as long as the comforts are plentiful.

   And here we have the poor deluded fools in power making it clear that they will not allow said comforts. Or allow people to protect their family.

   (btw you notice that including immediate family is straight out of the Chynese playbook? Funny that.)

   1. (btw you notice that including immediate family is straight out of the Chynese playbook? Funny that.)

      Akshully, the nine family extirpations are fairly explicitly targeting the extended family.

      In all seriousness, targeting family is the rule, with American cultures theory of treating people as individuals being a bit of an unusual mutation. People are pushing the race/dehumanization angle on slavery, but part of why it could be ended was because of that custom in other circumstances of not imprisoning people for the crimes of their ancestors.

      A lot of things smell like Biden is the PRC’s satrap over the US, but that element is not proof.

10. Although they could start this quietly, it reads like they could use it to move against Trump, his family, his businesses and those who are loudly forcing or trying to force audits of state elections. It looks like you can be made a non-person and then simply disappeared. It can also last a lot longer than 5 years, IMO. Look at Castro’s Cuba or even Maduro’s venezuela. It will take awhile to drain all of the accumulated wealth from the USA. Dark thoughts.

    1. Problem with ‘longer than five years’, you may not be considering that we are not working with wealth stored purely in currency, with the losses being a fixed rate or fraction.

       When you are looking at this type of failure, you can’t simply aggregate the wealth, and convert it into currency values.

       You have a electrical generation wealth bucket. If you cannot supply the human resources to keep it going, you lose part of it. Lots of other wealth buckets are fed by the electricity bucket. Lose electricity, those others also lose value. And these sunsofs are potentially willing to directly shut down the power plants.

       The thing to keep in mind, they don’t have the bureaucracy at hand to rule us all by force, they have thrown away trust, and are broken enough in the head that they will keep pushing.

       1. Trust, confidence, etc. are flavors of bucket that feed being able to recruit people to get various wealth creation tasks done.

          Psychological things can be unmeasurable, and can be very fragile or very robust.

       2. You have hit the nail on the head. Now, the mental and physical infrastructure of my childhood was composed largely of New Deal institutions, and I did well by them. So as much as it goes against my character, I’ll be the first to admit that concerted action from a central authority, if taken in good faith, can build wealth, at least for a long while. But these people have no intention of building wealth–they are hell-bent on destroying wealth.

          I am intimately acquainted, shall we say, with most of the industries that the Administration is attempting to transform. I have spent the last (mumble, mumble) years attempting to transform some of them, myself. And, actually, I think that in some cases, it is possible. But not by centrally commanding particular technologies that are not, and probably never will be, profitable. It is quite clear to me that those mandates are simply money-laundering operations. A real attempt to technologically transform our energy infrastructure would look much more like something that Dr. Pournelle would have come up with.

          These “mandates” to eliminate petroleum-fueled vehicles by 2030 and go to a “zero-carbon” electric grid by 2035 are, thermodynamically speaking, dangerous nonsense. And they would only have to achieve 10% of their goals to so destabilize the energy markets that catastrophe would be the inevitable result.

          1. Apparently HarrisBiden issued a statement within the past day or so that in the next 100 days he wants “to re-engineer the very fundamentals of America — inequality, voting rights and government’s role in directing economic growth.”

             1. Yeah, that’s not going to go well for them.

    2. > It looks like you can be made a non-person and then simply disappeared.

       That became official under the grossly-misnamed Patriot Act. Secret arrests, secret courts, secret prisons. All perfectly legal when sprinkled with national security pixie dust.

    3. You missed Sarah’s point about food. We don’t have five years of food. (Well, some individuals may, the country and the world do not.) All the money in the world can’t buy food that doesn’t exist.

       (Y’all did see the only four pounds of beef per year thing, right? Strikes me as perhaps an excuse.)

       Cuba and Venezuela, last I checked, get food from elsewhere.

       Link of possible interest to the commentariat: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/imports-commodities/

       1. You could be right, but the food supply could be cut a lot in America before real starvation sets in. Also, food access is a major means of control. They can use food access as a major means of control.

          1. They won’t get to that point. And no, you’re still failing to get it.
             They don’t understand farming RIGHT NOW needs energy. If it goes down it goes down HARD AND FAST.

             1. As I’ve pointed out before, I know a person, one. single. individual. who could arm a reinforced company or light battalion all by himself. It would be somewhat light on crew served weapons but wouldn’t be completely lacking. I know other individuals, a lot of them in fact, who could arm at least a rather eclectic squad so that eveybody has something to shot.

                There’s also the Army training manual on improvised munitions which includes everything from homemade firearms and ammunition to booby traps using home made explosives.. It’s freely available and a lot of people, a whole lot of people, have it in both electronic and hard-copy formats. Can’t stop the signal.

                Things can get very ugly very fast is pushed too hard.

                1. Heck, all a hypothetical insurgency would need would be one successful ambush of the right convoy and the crew-served-weapons problem is solved.

                   Given the way the police and military are being treated, it might not even be more than a mime of an ambush.

                   “Six, Truck one – are these the guys?”

                   “Truck one, six, yep, that’s them. All trucks, hop out and leave them running.”

             2. And if farmers lose a year of production, there’s no way the current population will survive until the next food production season. It’s one of the big reasons why Joseph, son of Jacob, is such a big thing in the Bible. God told Pharaoh 7 years of boom harvests were coming, followed by 7 years of famine. Joseph got put in charge of production and storage. No such stupidity as “Just in time” management back then! The U.S. today? Nothing left in warehouses. No civil defense supplies. Unless you squirreled away a year’s worth of supplies that nobody else can take from you, you’re likely to be SOL.

                1. Look at the panic buying and empty shelves this last summer.
                   ~

             3. Farming needs everything to work: fuel,lube, fert, pesticides, fungicides, parts, electronics, labs, roads, trains, GPS, weather reporting, markets and whole industries of people. The dependence network that a modern farm depends on, is just as complex or more than that of a modern hospital. (Except for the Amish who still have dependencies, just not as many…)

                Go watch some videos of grain farmers getting ready for seeding/seeding/spraying/harvesting and the millions of dollars and complexities involved. Follow them through a year. And realize that the Left doesn’t understand or care.

                Georgia Guildstones indeed…

                1. I have to get up far too early to go to work, and while waiting for the local news/weather to come on I’m treated to AgDay. It seems all the news on AgDay lately is about months-long shortages of fertilizer, fungicides, pesticides and other plant health chemicals (as often as not, attributed to either domestic bad weather like the storms in Texas or supply-chain disruptions from CHY-NA), combined with the latest “green energy,” “climate change” and “sustainability” boondoggles, further combined with CHY-NA buying up all the American-produced food it can grab and skyrocketing prices in the cost of even USED farm equipment . . .

                   And combine that with supermarkets looking increasingly picked-over whenever I go shopping, or (in the case of two local supermarkets) consolidating their food displays into fewer aisles while bringing in non-food items like coolers and suchlike to fill the rest of the shelves . . .

                   And all this nonsense about cutting red meat consumption by 90% by 2030 (if you liked “one gun a month,” you’ll love “one burger a month”) . . .

                   On that last point: Miguel over at the Gun Free Zone the other day commented to the effect that when socialist governments start talking crap like that, that’s a sure sign that government-induced food shortages are coming. Miguel should know; he’s a Cubano . . .

                   1. All of the shelves for canned cat food are taken up with large packages of napkins, have been for 2 weeks.

                      The bagged premixed salad all feels like it’s been in the bags for several days already, that sort of soggy state just before it becomes smelly and inedible. Not buyin’.

                      And here in southern Kalifornia, they’ve gone full potato with Mask Mania. I went to 4 stores on the way home and got Mask-Karened in every one. Every time I announced loudly, “Masks are a lie!” before putting on my Medieval Plague Mask.

                      Have they all lost the ability to THINK?!

                   2. > skyrocketing prices in the cost of even USED farm equipment . . .

                      Companies like John Deere have also been driving that, as smaller farmers finally drew their lines in the dirt and said “Hell, no!”

                      Avoid mentioning the decades-long “right to repair” lawsuits. Just toss out the word, “geofencing.” Stand well back and watch the show.

                2. Thanks for publicizing this EO, and its’ likely utilization and consequences.
                   While it directly violates the Constitution as a Bill of Attainder, attainting the blood / family of an accused, and in violation of the right to trial/ right to due process prior to imposition of punishment, the current Supremes are unlikely to act to revoke it, much less the f….n mess that will exist if the Supremes are packed with Progs.
                   I see the flood coming, knowing that I am inadequately prepared, yet I still admire the frog choking the heron as he is being swallowed.
                   John in Indy

                3. Nonsense! All farming requires is “You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.”

                   A billionaire said that, so it is surely true.
                   ~

             4. Nah – those harvesters will run just fine on solar energy.
                
                Maybe a little biodiesel on cloudy days.
                ~

                1. Let’s try a picture that will load …
                   
                   ~

          2. I hate stuttering in print.

             1. I stutter mentally all the time. Involuntarily, of course.

          3. food access

             The problem for them is that works both ways. On which “side” of the issue are most of the people producing the food? Are they going to try a Holodomor American Style to force collecitivization? I’m sure that will go over well.

             1. Given what went over this past spring with slaughtering a squigillion livestock animals over supply chain bullshit, throwing them away, the USDA allegedly saying they would rather see people starve than relinquish an inch of their power, and everyone just shrugging their shoulders and going along with it, I wonder if our side would do anything about it before it’s far too late.

          4. Soylent Green, anyone?

             1. Rats, squirrels, chipmunks, frogs, fish you’d normally turn your nose up at. Euell Gibbons books on how to eat your lawn.

                1. There’s someone over on Another Forum who talked about eating grass (from some misguided notion that it was the natural thing to do)…

                   …permanent stomach damage; the silica content made it like eating razor blades.

                   Modern farming can’t do without fuel (it can do without other stuff, but not without sacrificing a lot of production). And storage is a problem. Ranching, tho… range cattle and sheep are pretty much on their own most of the year. and fall slaughter is not only for your winter meat, but to thin the herds to what can overwinter on your range. And those herds can be “stored” and moved long distances on the hoof, without fuel. Contrary to what the commies think, when Things Fall Apart the survivors will be eating mostly meat.

                   Occurs to me that collapsing cities would be a pretty good environment for feral pigs. (Goats, commonly enough, in the 3rd world.)

                   1. Pork, if properly stored and cooked, is MUCH more sustainable on a given acreage than goats. North Africa was the grain belt of the Roman Empire, and the Arab goat-herders turned into a desert.

                      1. Pigs are more destructive than goats (goats may pull up some roots and climb into the trees; pigs will dig up ALL the roots, knock down the trees, and leave a wallow behind). Only reason you don’t see that so much out there in the world is because pigs can’t get by on the kind of minimal graze, heat, and extreme dryness that goats can survive on; generally where there’s enough food to sustain domestic pigs is a fairly productive grazing environment to start with. And pigs can’t tolerate such a wide range of climates. And pound for pound, pigs need about twice as much feed as goats. (4% of body weight per day, vs 2% or so for goats… and hungry pigs are harder to contain than are hungry goats. Pigs that really want out will just rip out your fence. Mature boars are insanely strong.)

                         Also, milk… I don’t want to try milking a sow… (reportedly the milk is awful anyway.)

                         Wildlife biologist who lived for many years in Saudi Arabia tells of feral goats living out in the desert, where NOTHING grows and there’s NO water … apparently they get by eating newspapers that blow out of the cities, and whatever condensation comes along with.

                         As to North Africa tho… while goat herders did the landscape no good, they weren’t anywhere near thick enough to denude the entire north continent. The majority of the desertification probably happened due to the sharp cooling that followed the Roman era. When Earth cools, the Sahara grows, often radically. When Earth warms, the Sahara shrinks, sometimes all the way to being useful savannah.

                   2. Ah. So that’s how “hungry grass” works.

                      There’s an Irish horror legend, the “fear gortach” or hungry grass. It’s a patch of grass that looks like any other, but you get enspelled with unspeakable hunger if you walk on it — to the point that you’re usually found dead on the patch of grass, having tried to eat it.

                      Well, the fact was that, during the Famine, lots of people were found starved to death, with their bellies full of grass, because that was how hungry they were. I never could understand how they were dying from the grass instead of from the lack of food, and now I do.

                      1. Féar gorta is the hungry grass, fear gorta is the walker who sometimes comes from those patches, but who walks the lands in time of famine.

                         Lesson? fadas are important. 😉

                         1. fadas?
                            (Portuguese for fairies.)

                            1. Acute accent. Marks a long vowel vs a short. “Á” vs “A”, “É” vs “E”, etc..

                            2. yes. fadas used to have an accent in the first a. Might still. I’m too lazy to find the symbol.
                               WHAT does it mean, though.

                            3. Fada is the Irish for an acute accent (gravé?)

                            4. OH! Okay, I get it. 😀

                   3. Yep.

                   4. Well Reziac, I have to agree on the eating grass part. Except my lawn is chockful of edible plants like dandelion, chicory, milkweed, lambsear, fiddleheads, etc. That doesn’t include the other 18 acres of woodland and swamp. (Although I’ve been having all kinds of failures trying to get wild rice to grow.)

                      1. You can eat that wild greenery, but it has little nutritional value — some micronutrients but not enough calories to live on, and I wonder what the bitter ones (alkaloid-bearing) are doing to the kidneys over time. Would be a lot like surviving on cabbage, only more work.

                         There exists dryland rice that does not require inundation; maybe have better luck with that??

                         1. I’m not going to go fully pithecanthropine. I’m not fond of roasted wood grubs.

                            1. Roasted? Who says you get to roast ’em?

                2. I brought home, to Alaska, some deep fried bamboo worms from Thailand. They don’t travel well.

                   1. In my experience carry-out, with one* exception, does not fare well for distances of over 250 miles.

                      *Italian hoagies, laden with ham, Genoa salami, capicola, provolone, lettuce, sliced onion, hot cherry peppers …
                      ~

                      1. A few weeks back I did have a pizza delivered from Wasilla, Alaska to my house in North Pole, some 345 miles.

                         It wasn’t bad but it was cold when it got here so I didn’t tip the delivery little old lady.

             2. The Leftroids believe Soylent Green had a happy ending.

                1. They believe 1984 had a happy ending as well.

             3. Of course, there’s always ‘Have A Little Priest’ from Sweeny Todd. 😛

             4. I’m so old I can remember when Liberals criticized Republicans for insensitivity over the costs of food.

                Remember Rep. Patsy Schroeder taking the House floor to complain, emotionally and incredulously, that “this is what it’s come to! …Rush Limbaugh actually said he’s going to buy his mother a can opener so she can have dog food. Wow!”
                ~

          5. They don’t have a here to there plan of how to implement food access control.

             Their usual assumptions about exerting power are breaking down under their efforts in the current circumstances.

             Even looking purely at food, or at energy, or at currency, they do not understand it well enough to avoid breaking it while trying to change it according to their purpose.

             Fully central command based food distribution works poorly. Essentially, if they are trying to manage it to break even, there is sure to be a shortage. The black market can ease some of the hardship from that, make it more survivable, but does so at the cost of central control.

             Looking briefly at the Russian population/geography, or thinking through what I understand of Chinese, current US has some differences that may be important.

             What are the military logistics for holding the farmland and the populations in cities? I see a lot of stuff distributed across the US.

             Basically, the transport network makes things interesting. If you have an area cut off to starve, and gasoline is still available, an assassin or team can travel from the starving area to whatever power center commands it. If you do not have gasoline readily available, then both agriculture and logistics are deeply screwed.

             There are lots of little questions to solve in making a permanent tyranny viable here. You need people to solve them that aren’t blind. And there is a basic question of how far the regime can trust people who are not blind. They need people who can see, that aren’t so ethical that they see how things are going and put a stop to it, and aren’t so ambitious that they try to take power for themselves. How many people are there that fit these criteria?

             1. “Fully central command based food distribution works poorly. ”

                It only works at all with a sufficiency of men with guns. That might be a problem here in Flyover Country; the guns would be pointing the wrong direction.

                1. the guns would be pointing the wrong right direction.

                   Had to fix that.

                   1. Ah, yes; matter of having the correct perspective. 😀

                2. Unless of course they start using fighter jets against the populate, the way California apparently prepared to do in Spring of 2020.

                   1. Say what?? This I did not hear about.

                      Then again, they’ve only got a few jets and a few missiles… and they need unobstructed runways… and fuel deliveries… and a lack of incendiaries around the tanks… and an air base with more than one real route in and out.

                      1. Consider how many people on a military base are Civil Service or civilian employees. In many technical areas, over a quarter of them. Not all of them are Woke.

                      2. Here is a story from the pro-Democratic Party LA TImes which of course tries to highlight potential use over “George Floyd protests” and de-emphasizes potential use against anti-lockdown demonstrations and in connection with the November 2020 elections.

                         https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-23/california-national-guard-fighter-jet-election-coronavirus-protests

                3. Doesn’t even work with that. The issues are fundamental to the very concept of a centrally planned economy. It’s simply impossible for an individual, or managibly sized group of people, can possibly have the information necessary to manage even a single, simple product (I use 16d nails in the example I give) for an entire economy:

                   https://thewriterinblack.com/2020/03/02/the-nail/

                   1. Also
                      https://fee.org/articles/i-pencil/

                      1. The i-pencil thing is the flip side, showing how through free enterprise and the price system people from all over the world end up cooperating without even meaning to, all so they can bring products to market so that you and I can buy them.

       2. Someone on Twitter was trying to walk that back, claiming it was from a “study,” that predated Biden’s election and claiming it had nothing to do with him. Problem is, there’s a lot of stuff that predates the election that people in power (or who think they are) believe is wonderful, so that argument is moot.

       3. Don’t forget a lot of countries depend on imported American food to some degree. Failure of American agriculture would not be a local thing.

          1. ALMOST all of the world.
             Right now China is vacuuming up our food and making our prices go higher. When the wheels come off…..

    4. We support them Jay. It won’t. It can’t. And Americans won’t tolerate that kind of cut in lifestyle, that suddenly.

       1. I hope your are right and the Deep State doesn’t unleash their brownshirts and the Woke military on any concentrations of opposition. I really want you to be right, however.

          1. No. If they do, it just ends faster.

          2. What brownshirts?

             “No more free Wacos” has been a line for a while. And it has been put to the test.

             1. I mean Antifa and BLM which are officially peaceful organizations no mater what they do.

                2. Notice the way they carefully stay in cities where the police have been repurposed as their bodyguards.

                   Notice how nothing is faster than how protesters calling for defunding the police turn to calling for the police when they face even the possibility of danger.

          3. It’s an open question how big the militant wing of either Antifa or BLM really is. It’s one thing to see them burning the same city centers night after night. It’s another to consider that a lot of those individuals basically enjoy “catch and release” protection from the local authorities. If the authorities actually made an effort to stop the two groups, then attrition might solve the problem of them real fast.

             1. Antifa has the ability to run 1.5 cities worth of riots at a time. And that only with the tacit approval of the people running those cities.

             2. My paranoid side keeps wondering if these catch and release types are camouflage for much more deadly teams who are being held in reserve. I wouldn’t count on these folks.

                1. There are undoubtedly a few of those. But the flip side is that they can’t be risked in the way the zombies can.

                   We know for a fact that there are people in-between the two: not 1337 oper8trs, but not zombies. We saw the deployed in Kenosha.

                   1. And they had a raging [feces]-fit when ONE person fought back.
                      Now, if it became a *movement*…

                2. What has floated around suggests that the bulk of the “activists” on any given night are local cannon fodder, recruited on a night by night basis (largely just by spreading the word to show up at a particular location dressed in black) with the promise of excitement. On Inauguration Day in 2017, a bunch of these types caused all sorts of mayhem in Washington DC. And a funny thing happened.

                   Trump pushed to have them arrested. And iirc over 200 of them were. And the fodder got *really* scared.

                   And then political nonsense happened, and every last one of them got released without any charges being filed.

                   The fodder are expecting to show up, break some stuff for fun, and stick it to the man. And then they’ll go home. Make it clear that if they do that, they’ll spend the next few years behind bars, and all of a sudden they get *real* freaked out. Arrest the cannon fodder, put them on trial, and sentence them to prison, and all of a sudden those nightly recruit numbers will go way down real quick as the people who would otherwise show up start to consider whether it’s worth their while. You’ll still get some, but a lot of them will think better of it.

                   And then once that happens, Antifa and BLM either have to change their tactics, or have the more useful, non-fodder members, step up to fill in the ranks. If they do the former, then law enforcement will need to adapt. But at least there won’t be nightly sieges of police stations. And if they do the latter, then arrests will start to actually hurt the organizations.

                   1. Forget arrest.

                      Use more direct education. It’ll last longer.

                      1. The goal – at least at first – is to *scare* potential recruits. Ironically, prison sentences are more likely to do that than the possibility of injury and/or death. Injury and/or death creates a desire for revenge in friends, and possibly martyrs. Arrest – as we already saw in 2017 in Washington DC – creates kids who then start telling their friends about how scared they are because they might actually go to prison. Make the arrests have teeth (which has largely not been the case so far), and you’ll get many of the cannon-fodder to have second thoughts when they see that announcement of a 10pm “rally” at the nearby police precinct office.

                         Once you get the more timid ones to stay away from the rallies, you’ll be dealing with the more hard-core members. And at that point, a shift in tactics will likely become necessary.

                         1. “Injury and/or death creates a desire for revenge in friends, and possibly martyrs.”

                            But it also generates fear. It then becomes a question of which impulse is more powerful. For most people, the fear will be more powerful. That’s why we have been losing the culture war and the Left has been winning it: we are more afraid of the consequences of fighting and losing than they are. So they fight to win … while we don’t fight at all.

                            1. Again, arresting the fodder seemed to do a pretty good job of scaring them. And we know that it scares them because a lot of them were publicly freaking out when they had to spend time in jail back in 2017.

                               Or in other words, arresting inspires fear without creating martyrs.

                               Also, Antifa is plenty afraid of consequences. That’s why you see nightly protests in Portland… but not in conservative cities. They know that they’ll go to prison if the local DA isn’t sympathetic.

                            2. Which is why there are so many Soros-owned DA’s around the country.

                         2. Remember that while the martyrs are better remembered, the Church had many who apostatized under persecution. (It was, in fact, a grave discussion, whether apostates could ever be re-admitted.)

                            1. Since saying they couldn’t be would have required excommunicating St Peter….. three times over….

                            2. hmmm — they did think that it (and certain other sins) could be forgiven by baptism, just not after baptism. (Which is why some sects put off baptism for a long time, even sometimes to the death bed.)

                               Perhaps they reasoned that Pentecost was the point at which Peter had to remain steadfast or be damned.

                            3. If I remember right, that was pretty much one side, and the other was that Judas betraying Christ was a better analog to those who betrayed the Church.

                            4. I add that’s speculation on my part. If someone wrote about him in this context, it didn’t come down to us.

                               Bear mind also that this was an era when not only the interpretation of Scripture but the canon was disputed.

                            5. Yeah, but I can also see being afraid of trusting them with secrets ever again.

                            6. Not to forget that some sects could have excommunicated Peter. There were a lot of weird sects.

                3. We do know they have an experienced assassination team complete with support staff that includes recon elements, fake medics to verify the kill (and finish it if needed), fake witnesses, moles inside the police to make sure the patsy isn’t taken alive and who knows what else they need to succeed in such operations. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fas5VNeYOg

                   1. Here is some observant analysis of it

             3. And are bused from place to place.

             4. Antifa and BLM don’t need to be all that large; they just need to suffice to spin up the local inner-city ferals.

                Remember, loot, pillage, THEN burn!

11. > We live at levels of prosperity unimagined by kings and emperors. They got to the levels they did through other peoples’ labor, forced and in trade. So how can we live this well?
    —
    You can’t be proper kangz without serfs and forced labor. If everyone is prosperous… then how can you demonstrate your obvious superiority over the proletariat?

    Remember, it’s not what they have, it’s how much more they have than you do. Doesn’t matter if it’s a business jet or a slightly-less-squalid hut.

    They live in a zero-sum world. The more you have, the less they have. And they not only want it all, they want to keep you from making any more, because that will lessen what they have again.

    1. I forgot to mention that they don’t understand the concept of industrialization as a force multiplier. But then again, folk who don’t understand that the town blacksmith got much respect because of the profession—but was likely to die young from “black lung”—also tend to be those who romanticize “the simple life.” Pfeh. I love to camp, but I’m camping with a century plus of technology behind it.

       1. Or complex societies.

          1. If we get started listing things Progressives don’t understand we’re going to end up sounding like Bill

             “Thirty-six percent of Millennials think it might be a good idea to try Communism. But much of the world did try Communism. I know Millennials think that doesn’t count because they weren’t alive when it happened. But it did happen. And there are people around who remember it. Pining for Communism is like pining for Betamax or MySpace. So when you say, ‘You’re old, you don’t get it,’ get what? Abolish the police and the border patrol and capitalism and cancel Lincoln? No, I get it. Problem isn’t that I don’t get what you’re saying, or that I’m old. The problem is that your ideas are stupid.”

             Maher.
             ~

       2. Foster Farms wants to grow out 3.5million chickens/year nearby. That will be 4 local job’s.

    2. Mein Gott. This mentality. It would take pages to describe how sickeningly evil it is. These individuals need to be repeatedly horsewhipped. Or used to enrich a cornfield.

12. > Spouses and adult children of individuals found guilty by accusation under this EO are punished, too.

    That fails at the First (right of association) and Fifth Amendments (guilt must be personal), but given the Supreme Court has shat on its oaths and ruled from the bench, they’ll either rubber-stamp approval or just decline to hear any cases that might make it up to them.

    1. You also need to get before the court for them to hear it. Since this blocks the ability to get legal representation, how would one even get it there in the first place?

       1. pro se litigation. You are your lawyer.

          1. Talked with some people more about this, and thinking this has serious constitutional issues, and it may be possible to get restraining orders against its enforcement.

             Thing is, I’m thinking we want to get organized so if the proscription is levied on someone, we have a team ready to ram it back down their throats. Don’t wait until after assets are frozen.

             Sara, you work with Glenn Reynolds at Instapundent. I recall he is a lawyer by trade, and has connections to William A Jacobson at Legal Insurrection. Thinking those might be the first two people to get ahold of about setting up a legal defense network.

             Will probably also need some sort of thing to take care of people who’ve gotten proscribed while the legal side works its way through. We cannot depend on the wheels of justice to turn on their own. Time to build some cranks.

             And yes, I can get very cranky without my morning coffee…

             1. Remember according to Democrats Jihadists in Gitmo are entitled to legal counsel but American citizens who disagree with the Democrats don’t.

                1. Yep. Well, we need to take that and shove it back down their throats sideways when they try it.

                2. So, I will need certain clothing and books, and brush up on some Arabic. Particularly the Shahada.
                   And not shave for a while.

                3. That because the inmates at Gitmo and the Progressive Democrats largely agree on everything except the means to their goal.
                   ~

             2. It sounds like their version of the Enabling Act, but it’s full of Constitutional krazykake.

                On the one hand, every person involved has a law degree, and they should know it’s an unenforceable mess. On the other hand, they’re all so isolated from the Real World(tm) they may have the idea they can sign it and it will be so.

                1. Their ability to enforce it depends entirely upon the banks and gov’t agencies willingness to enforce it.

                   Do we really think the wanks aren’t going to jump at the chance to seize people’s money under a veneer of lawfulness?

                2. They tend to think laws are ….. laws of nature. ALSO they all live in big dense cities. They don’t get anything else.

    2. That already happened under Clinton with Travelgate. When they couldn’t easily get to Billy Dale, they went after his wife and kids. I’m sorry, God. I just don’t have it in me to forgive Hillary Rodham Clinton yet.

       1. Or going after Flynn’s son.

       2. “I just don’t have it in me to forgive Hillary Rodham Clinton yet.”

          I will forgiver when she’s in the ground, but only if they hire a really good dance band for the graveside ceremony.
          ~

          1. They’ll have to install a urinal on the tombstone. 😛

    3. Family won’t have standing, even though they suffer.

       Expect to see “we can release funds if you testify so we can jail them” offers.

       1. The alleged US Justice system is failing even the low bar of the parable of the Unjust Judge.

          I suppose it is easier when you can tell your plaintiffs to piss off and likely never see them again. Or when things have Just Worked for so long that no one even remembers a time when Courts were anything but a centralized state run system.

          1. Look at the attacks on law firms who had partners, such as Cleta Mitchell, or associates that represented Trump. Look at the attacks on the Medical Examiner who testified in Officer Chauvin’s defense.

             They perfected these tactics back in the days of the Klan and they’re pulling the old playbook out again.
             ~

          2. Oliver Wendell Holmes reportedly said he ran a court of law, not a court of justice.

             Despite their use of the word, “justice” isn’t part of the justice system.

       2. They will use use civil forfeiture procedures so that it will be the person whose stuff is seized who has to prove their innocence (civil forfeiture is an abomination that is utterly unconstitutional and every judge who has found it to be legal has the Constitution’s blood on their hands).

          1. In civil asset forfeiture, the owners don’t want to admit they own it, because the “forfeited” stuff can be proven to be inherently illegal– stolen goods, smuggled goods, money from crime.

             Someone who wants to claim it has to show that the property is innocent, so to speak.

             Which would be really freaking easy in most of the cases that activists love to point to– if they were telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Rather than it generally being a case of “they were caught red handed, and signed a paper saying that it wasn’t their car in order to avoid being charged.”

             Here’s the specific section, if you’re interested.

             https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/981

             See also, the people in jail for “non-violent drug charges” who, when you look at the actual case, plea-bargained down from incredibly violent crimes.

             1. I’m sure the law (using the term loosely here) designed with the express purpose of destroying anyone who doesn’t bend the knee will be executed with only the most honest and unimpeachable motives.

                1. 1) EO isn’t a law.
                   2) Even if it became a law, it violates the constitution in multiple ways, possibly even including corruption of blood.
                   3) Even if it became a law, and the constitution was legally amended to make it legal (which might take amending logic while they’re at it, pretty sure the Authority on that one wouldn’t go along with changes to His stuff), that does nothing to change the facts about an entirely different law.

                   The BLM and AntiFa stuff didn’t come out of nowhere. The “lie but make it sort of close to reality” and “lie, but keep enough bits that it has a flavor of truth” tactic has been big and growing for my entire life.

                   Probably much longer, Chesterton does have that line about a half-truth being in the service of some vice, and Goebbels was barely a teen when Chesterton wrote it!

                   1. See my comment on the actual wording of the oath Feddies take. Oaths are specific.

                      Did the word “lawful” ever appear before orders in that oath? I thought it did, but maybe that was never the case. If not, of course, it will allow violation of the Constitution at FICUS’ orders.

                      Your “friends” will follow orders.

                      1. I am much more worried about you deciding that I need to be killed off for failure to follow whatever you’ve latched on to this month.

                         Unlike the people I know who work for various levels of government, you do have a history of calling for pre-determined trials followed immediately by execution in cases where you have not even bothered to spend a few minutes looking around for information, much less done due diligence.

                         You also have a rather relaxed relationship with the difference between objective facts and your personal conclusions.

                         1. you do have a history of calling for pre-determined trials followed immediately by execution in cases where you have not even bothered to spend a few minutes looking around for information, much less done due diligence.

                            I think I can make a coherent argument in favor of this:

                            1. Government power is so dangerous that you cannot afford to let it go unchecked, period.

                            2. Corruption breeds corruption.

                            3. It is possible to hold back corruption, but only if everyone is incentivized to do so from every angle.

                            4. “It is better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent to suffer” can never be more than a guideline, otherwise you could never run any legal system.

                            5. There are lots of ways to rack up an impressive bodycount, but only governments can reach the truly exceptional levels of industrial slaughter.

                            The purpose of that kind of government extermination wouldn’t be about precisely determining guilt, but to salt the earth with cobalt-60. To make it clear for the future that corruption will not be tolerated whatsoever. And that if you work for the government, are innocent, and do nothing about the corruption, the second clause was a lie. The intended result of that would be to make honest people either deal with the corruption, or get out, removing the “what if we hit innocents?” problem from the next fumigation.

                            1. How does that work for a woman whose son died after she didn’t fill a prescription for Theraflu.

                               A trivial amount of looking for primary sources, rather than taking the word of those people screaming “antivaxx,” would have revealed that the boy had a history of health issues, and had literally come home after spending the entire day in the ER with his younger brother.

                               Most likely, based on the last year or so of evidence, the boy died of a cytokine storm.

                               Also based on the last year of full on hysteria and people feeling entitled to directly harm others based on how closely they follow a doctor’s advice, that is exactly why I object.

                            2. You’ve mentioned this case numerous times, I’ve never heard of it.

                               And I didn’t necessarily say I agreed with it; I was steelmanning the position.

                            3. I’ve directly linked the comment, repeatedly, when SNelson accuses me of making it up.

                               Here it is again.

                               https://accordingtohoyt.com/2020/02/07/still-here/#comment-651884

                            4. And here’s the refutation:

                               “Doctor proscribed Theraflu(not sure) for the whole family. But naturally she didn’t fill the proscription because she was one of those anti-vaxers. ”

                               https://accordingtohoyt.com/2020/02/07/still-here/#comment-651574

                               Despite what Fox wants to claim, negligent homicide is a crime, and when you ignore medical advice an it harms others, you can lose the negligent.

                               Also note that I at least called for a trial. CAF, despite Fox’s claims, doesn’t require one.

                            5. Since I linked the rest of the information, people are aware that theraflu isn’t a vaccine, the kid was at the hospital all day in the ER, with his brother, and deaths of this type are explicitly not understood well.

                               But hey, I can see how you’dbe uncomfortable with calling for a dictatorship by doctors a mere…what, two months before you got exactly that, but it landed on you, not someone else?

                            6. It’s a hobbyhorse she saddles periodically to go after me. I knocked it down once but it’s like kudzu.

                            7. It’s amazing.

                               You take a pot shot at people where literally the only thing you know about them is that they violate your theory of how the world should be, declare that they are my friends and will kill me, and are shocked that I point out I have very good reason to doubt the quality of your judgement when it comes to killing people who do not go along with your uninformed judgement.

                            8. As I said then, it works the same way as any other potential negligent homicide. Failure to take reasonable action to look after those you are responsible for is considered a potential crime.

                            9. Thank you, Dr. Fasci.

                         2. “Oh kettle, thou art black.”
                            “Unlike the people I know who work for various levels of government, you do have a history of calling for pre-determined trials followed immediately by execution in cases where you have not even bothered to spend a few minutes looking around for information, much less done due diligence.”

                            Refuted that lie once already.

                            1. You cannot refute that which I directly linked.

                            2. But I can refute it by providing the background you left out to lie by omission.

                            3. Impressive projection, for someone who tried to insist the entire thing was my a lie, and my imagination.

                               Which is when I started linking it.

                               Notably, you never did admit that you had once again falsely accused me of lying, and instead accused me of being obsessive.

                               Your false claim that a direct link to the entire conversation is a lie of omission is a poor counter to how poorly your notion that the advice of doctors should be legally binding has aged over the following year.

                               That you could not even be bothered to find out that theraflu is not a vaccine, and would not have saved the boy, and that his brother who actually had fever-related convulsions had been sent home because, per the ER, they are not dangerous– that you couldn’t even be bothered to respond rationally, but instead decided to try to personally attack me because my failure to agree with your theory that not following a doctor’s advice to use a treatment where the only claimed effect is a shorter recovery time was murder by neglect, I cannot be pro-life. Even when given the more accurate information, your response was to destroy that which conflicted with what you had already decided, rather than dealing with it.

                            4. https://accordingtohoyt.com/2020/02/07/still-here/#comment-651884

                               snelson134 says:February 9, 2020 at 9:18 am
                               That woman should be charged with pre-meditated murder. Convicted. Executed.

                               Foxfier says:February 9, 2020 at 11:36 am
                               Poked around to find the story– they’d actually just come back from the ER when the four year old collapsed. The kids had high fevers for a week, and one of the others had already had “feveral seizures” which the hospital said was normal. (????)

                               Used “natural” treatments to try to break the fevers, yeah, but also went to the hospital– which suggests there’s some tail-covering involved.

                      2. My Oath of Enlistment did state, ” . . . will obey the lawful orders of those appointed above me . . .” O’ course, the Guard was at the time still smarting from incidents such as Kent State; not sure what the Oath reads today.

                         1. THIS.

                         2. It does not matter what the oath says today – the principle of “lawful orders” is implicit in the oath, and has been thus acknowledged ever since the “I vas just following orders” defense was defenestrated at Nuremburg.
                            ~

                            1. That’s certainly how it SHOULD work…. but if you watch what the Left believes and acts on, “I vas only folloving orders” features prominently. That’s why the military purge / fealty to CRT / etc. is so central to their thinking.

                            2. Someone actually said this here during the Obama lockdowns of parks and such.
                               “We closed the parks because we had orders” and then freaked out when we told her “It didn’t work in Nuremberg, chick.”

                         3. And that word lawful makes ALL the difference. Leave it out, and you’re swearing to obey the ruler, whatever his will is at the moment; with it, even the ruler has something ruling him other than whim.

                            That difference is why one of the first things Hitler did is alter the armed forces oath of Germany so the military was swearing a personal fealty to him.

                            1. Correction: it makes MOST of the difference.

                               There hardly exists a horror that hasn’t been enshrined into law somewhere, somewhen.

                            2. *grimace* Which is why “Lawful” is often avoided, and why so many folks harp on constitutional or similar.

                               See also, the stupid D&D bad-DM thing of “Ha, you are in an evil kingdom, the law is evil! So the Lawful Good paladin must do evil!”
                               :Paladin who passed basic philosophy: “Uh, no.”

                            3. Not to mention that the rule of law can not merely mean that the laws are followed, but that the whims of men in power do not rule, as Hayek sagely observed.

                               When the Court let the bureaucrats decide what ambiguous laws meant, they killed the rule of law. (Should have gone by the rule with contracts: ambiguities get construed against the person who wrote it. In this case, the government.)

                            4. SNelson, this just occurred to me: How long do you think it will be before they change the oaths to remove the “lawful” part?

                               I’ll bet it’s coming up, sooner rather than later, but that may just be cynicism and rage talking. I don’t have any evidence.

                            5. Based on the original oath texts posted in this thread, they already have, and I seem to recall the change coming in the Obama administration. I could be wrong about that.

                            6. I’ll check and let you know what I find. The comment section is so full of useful content I may have missed it.

                            7. >> “How long do you think it will be before they change the oaths to remove the “lawful” part?”

                               I’m wondering how long before they try to remove the part about the constitution.

                            8. For real. I’m going to investigate.

                            9. Turns out it’s in the US Code.

                               https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/502

                               Enlistment Oath.—
                               Each person enlisting in an armed force shall take the following oath:
                               “I, __________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

                               The 2006 change is:
                               Amendments
                               2006—Pub. L. 109–364 designated existing provisions as subsec. (a), inserted heading, struck out concluding provisions which read as follows: “This oath may be taken before any commissioned officer of any armed force.”, and added subsec. (b). 1989—Pub. L. 101–189 struck out “or affirmation” after “This oath”. 1962—Pub. L. 87–751 substituted “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same” for “bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America; that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies whomsoever” and inserted “So help me God” in the oath, and “or affirmation” in text.

                            10. All I can do is sigh.

                            11. It would seem the key phrase in the first version is (highlighted in bold & italic):

                                Enlistment Oath.—
                                Each person enlisting in an armed force shall take the following oath:
                                “I, __________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

                                This, of course, presumes knowledge of the “regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

                                As discussed elsewhere, the Nuremburg Tribunals pretty much established that only lawful orders are intended in the oath, whether or not that provision is explicitly stated.

                                Whether such discrimination is practicable in a kinetic environment is a whole different matter.
                                ~

                            12. Kind of like the “lawful orders” thing in the UCMJ– you’re going to get screwed either way, but obeying unlawful orders will screw you worse.

                                As any D&D player knows, ‘lawful’ and ‘we passed a law so you have to do it’ are not the same thing.

                            13. The oath I took:

                                I, David L. Burkhead, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

                                It doesn’t say “unlawful orders” but that is wrapped up in the “according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice” And training, both Basic and ongoing, went a lot into what made a lawful vs. unlawful order. That said, to refuse an order, even an unlawful order, is pretty much to tank your career so not a measure to be taken lightly. And you’d better be sure.

                            14. Same oath except for the name.

                                And that’s good advice. I refused to obey what I considered an unlawful order once–something about refusing to blow off a billion rounds of 5.56 because it looked like we hadn’t used enough to train well. Which we hadn’t. My First Sergeant was chill, I think it was maybe 1980, so nothing other than the CO’s bad opinion of me weighed me down. I earned a commissioning via ROTC scholarship after that, but with my attitude, getting out at CPT/O-3 really made sense.

                   2. That is why I said “using the term loosely here”.

                      1. Dude, dollar whores are looking at that use and saying it’s too loose.

                         1. Ok, here: thing-enforced-by-government-power-regardless-of-legitimacy.

                            As we have seen on broad display over the last year something not being law is precious little consolation when having the skin ground off your face by the boot.

                            1. So you’re using the word in a meaning that would make humpty dumpty blush, which at best assumes your conclusion, and it still doesn’t address the arguments I made.

                               AKA, dead end.

                            2. No, the use of the word “law” was the least important part of my post. Change it to “dictat” in your head and none of the meaning has changed.

                               Why you hyperfocused on that despite it being clearly marked as “don’t hyperfocus on this” I have no idea.

                               And if you *are* going to do that I expect you to adhere to the same level of autism for every other government decree….

                            3. Because if that word means nothing– as you are stating– then the content of the comment is reduced to “people might do bad stuff!”

                               Because that’s not a human constant or anything.

                            4. Do you even remember what the subject was?

                               Someone pointed out that civil asset forfeiture would be used to attack the ungood. You turned that into a defense of CAF.

                               The entirety of my post was pointing out that you are dealing with a situation where the officers of the state are working explicitly to destroy people. aka: it doesn’t matter if CAF is pure as the driven snow. It would be like saying “oh no! police have guns to defend themselves and others” when the subject is someone setting up a deathsquad.

                            5. Do you even remember what the subject was?

                               I frequently wonder that when you go into these rambles.

                               No, I did not “turn it into a defense of CAF.”

                               I pointed out that the factual characterization was incorrect.

                               And provided evidence for the statement.

                               Either the factual statement mattered, or it did not need to be included; just as either the now routine characterization of BLM’s chosen martyrs as kind, gentle, innocent souls either matters, or it would not be included.

                               I am very much aware of how corrosive the “oh, don’t get hung up on that, it doesn’t matter” stuff is– because if it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t be included. So it obviously matters for some reason, and if that reason is not in support of the original statement….well….

                   3. THIS.

13. Pingback: The Junta’s Abolition of the Constitution – Professor Ornery Dragon

14. Welcome to the age of samizdat:

    https://www.herbertnowell.com/2021/04/26/v-is-for-vital-information/

    1. So we need manual typewriters with multiple use cloth typewriters?
       Does the FBI still have its warehouse of every typewriter ever made?

    2. Gelatin and carbon paper . . . (You can even eat the evidence, well, part of it, anyway.)

15. (c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

    This is boilerplate that is added to just about every executive order for as long as I’ve been paying attention to them—at least for the last four years. I’ve always assumed it meant that you can’t sue the United States to enforce the executive order. That is, this is what we’re going to do, but if we don’t do it, you can’t sue us for not doing it. I could be wrong about this, but it was on most if not all of Trump’s EOs too.

    I’d be more worried (re this boilerplate, not re the order itself) if the Biden administration started removing this boilerplate, as it would mean that they want to get sued and lose to set precedent for enforcing their ridiculous EOs.

    1. If you go to the Trump White House archive of presidential actions, it is on all of the executive orders on the front page. It’s also on the one proclamation, and one of the two memoranda. The one item it isn’t on is “Memorandum on Deferred Enforced Departure for Certain Venezuelans”.

    2. What if the cause of action arises out of other law?

       1. Do you mean, could this text trigger another law? Given the complexity of the legal system, who knows? But it would presumably trigger on just about every EO from at least the past four years, as they have all (or mostly all) included this text.

          1. Like the tax laws, once it gets complex enough, the law becomes whatever you can negotiate.

16. This is a nuke level bomb drop. I’m genuinely not sure how we continue if we get hit by this thing. We own most of our hard assets outright, but without gas and electricity, and the ability to pay local taxes, it’s all subject to seizure.

    Sofa surfing with relatives is an iffy proposition, since its my parent’s generation that’s likely to have the bomb dropped on them first.

    Definitely need to get that portable water filter though, and a cigarette lighter hotplate.

17. With your permission I will copy this over to my blog since “reblog” doesn’t seem to work here.

    1. of course.

       1. I didn’t figure there’d be a problem, but it’s always nice to ask.

          1. You probably already know this, Black, but it’s really helpful and encouraging to find Sarah’s good work on other blogs and places.

       2. I sent this to the Lotus Eaters tip form. Being in the UK they have a shield most of us don’t have.

          1. Er, by “this” I mean the EO, not this particular blog post.

    2. Huh. Just out of giggles I thought I’d try “reblog” again. This time it actually worked.

18. Hum, I just posted a picture of a Russian Rocket (Раке́та) on MeWe, guess that moves me a notch higher up the list.

    Actually it’s a hydrofoil on the Lena River in the Russian Far East, a Raketa, type of hydrofoil produced in the Soviet Union, but I’m sure CIA’s, FBI’s, ABC’s, DEF’s web watchers will pick out the words, rocket and Russian and decide I must be a person of interest perhaps to be non-personed.

    1. Hydrofoils, bah!

       You’re talking about the country that built the ekranoplans; vehicles so demented you expect to see the Union Jack flying from a pennant somewhere.

       “Let’s combine all the worst features of a ship, a seaplane, and a jumbo jet!”

19. And we can add “The Gulag Archipelago” as something else they’re taking as a “How-to”.

    1. Yes, and that author makes the point that a large part of how that nightmare was allowed to happen was the naivety of the people and how they were easily led (tricked) before they could bring themselves to react. Sounds awfully like the sheeple of today in the West.

20. Reblogged this on The Writer in Black and commented:

    If this doesn’t scare the pants off you, it should.

21. Wow, good thing you guys voted out the fascists! /sarc

22. Reading the actual order, I’d argue that China Joe and his entire family fall under this EO given family “dealings” with Russia.

    Under the EO specifics, all she needs to do is get the AG and SecTreas to agree, and Kamala’s Your Uncle!

    1. Except Commie-la was in it to the hair roots as well PROBABLY why she was picked.

       1. Oh, certainly they would not have picked old Roundheels Dot-not-Black unless they had enough on her to dissuade her from using the PILLOW in the RESIDENCE in the game of White House Clue.

    2. I’m pretty sure I’ve read that Harris is mentioned – by name – on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

       She’s a part of the same corruption that the Biden family is involved in, and they’ve paid her off in the past.

       1. Yep.

23. I’m engaging old skills of analysis because I think what Sarah’s said here and has been saying is true and real, beyond anything we’ve ever seen in America.

    I can become so cynical that allies go unrecognized sometimes–today I risked a comment to a fellow sidewalk walker. It was received very well, and for two minutes we connected over the desperate tyranny that is WA state, and the Republic. It helped me feel stronger, and like I just need to stand up and do my thing with courage.

    1. Maybe that was your doppelganger last Tuesday when I swore at my car: “I am so sick of these stupid masks.”

       A woman in her 30s spoke up: “So am I dear!” and we had a nice convo. It *does* help.

    2. Go Kathy! Don’t hide your light. You probably made the other person feel better just knowing you’re out there.

       1. I’m feeling inordinately happy at your comment and the memory of his smiling “I appreciate you” will last a long time.

          1. Woot! Kathy Leicester, a one woman anti-mask army!

24. “And there’s nothing you can do, and anyone who helps you faces a similar fate.”

    au contraire

    “Remember. remember the 5th of November.”
    or
    SIc Semper Tyrannis!

    1. We have already seen how these lists work in practice*, randomly hitting people because their name is somewhat similar to someone else’s. And then they made it infectious.

       So like wokeism innocence of the alleged crime is no defense. Collateral damage will be hitting people left and right. Can anyone say “free recruitment”?

       * Will the National Security Conservatives please stand up and acknowledge how they cheered on this shitstorm?

       1. Yeah, I made a number of mistakes.

       2. Yep. Up thread. Look for “mea culpa”.

25. A company gains SAN points:

    https://world.hey.com/jason/changes-at-basecamp-7f32afc5?s=09

    1. I appreciate that.

26. On property seizure, they likely anticipate giving a lot of nice suburban housing to their thugs minions shock troops followers, possibly to reside in, possibly to sell off at a profit (because when you got it for nothing all received in the sale is profit.)
    ~

    1. Shame if it burned down.

       1. Something something Wyatt Oil….

    2. That thought has occurred to me too. These millions of new Democrat voters need places to live and the Left could justify taking large old Conservative’s houses and reallocating them in the name of equity and social justice progress. Britain has been trying out how to this too with programs to motivate owners of big old houses to pay penalties or move on so the housing can be made available to their emigrees.

       1. “Say, Jasper, how do you start a black mold going?”

    3. Have you noticed that the Democrats who are pushing banning single family housing and forcing people to be packed into small apartments in massive buildings generally live in large mansions on multi-acre lots, with high fencing and armed security, and that they themselves get to keep their palaces under their proposals. Feudal barons indeed.

       1. They do this in every communist country. It really won’t work here. Too much land, too spread out, too many guns.

          1. too many hopefully an adequate supply of guns. And ammo.

             Robin: “What use is an unloaded gun?” — from Wizard

             1. Too many for their plans, hon. Not for us.

27. For when it hits the fan, you might want to start budgeting for the purchase of some “gift cards” every month. That will provide you some liquidity without resort to bank services. Take careful note of possible expiration dates, of course.

    It sucks in a time of inflation, of course, which may be one reason they are advancing inflationary policies (or they could simply be economically stupid).

    BTW – they may be using the Covidscare to limit/eliminate use of cash. We went to a movie last weekend (Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train for those interested; very enjoyable) and along with requirements to be masked (in a dark, socially distanced theatre who’s going to know if you slip it off?) was an advisory notice that the concessions stand would not, in this time of Covidnoia, accept cash. Having worked a theatre’s concessions back when doing math in your head was still a common skill I am not surprised theatres are happy to have an excuse to abandon cash, a medium in which expenditures are more keenly felt than credit cards, phone apps or other media where there’s no actual counting out of the cost.
    ~

    1. In some states (including California), gift cards are not allowed to expire—they are considered a pre-paid cash item. Mind you, if the place goes out of business, you’re out of luck.

       1. I have a $20 credit at outpost.com that dates to around 20 years ago. Every so often I get an email reminding me about it… too bad they never have anything I want that’s not $20 cheaper somewhere more convenient.

28. I suspect the Junta is jumping the gun here – there are multiple GOP state Attorney’s-General (such as Kentucky’s Daniel Cameron) standing eager to advance their careers defend their citizens’ civil rights against Federal encroachment.

    They ca simply add this into their already underway suit against the Junta for executive over-reach in banning fracking, pipelines and other acts.

    Attorney General Cameron Joins 10-State Lawsuit Against President Biden’s Social Cost of Carbon Executive Order
    FRANKFORT, Ky. (April 22, 2021) – Attorney General Daniel Cameron today joined a coalition of 10 state attorneys general in suing to prevent the Biden Administration from carrying out an act of executive overreach through the implementation of his “social cost of carbon” Executive Order. The coalition argues that the Executive Order will kill thousands of jobs throughout the country and impose more regulatory burdens and harm on the American people.

    “President Biden’s ‘social cost of carbon’ Executive Order targets industries like coal and manufacturing, which are essential to Kentucky’s economy and future economic growth,” said Attorney General Cameron. “These industries create job opportunities for hard-working Kentuckians and provide tax revenue and growth opportunities. We will not stand by while this administration pushes climate policies that are out of step with the needs of our communities.”

    [SNIP]

    This executive overreach touches nearly every part of American life: the generators powering our homes, the dishwashers cleaning our tableware, the lawnmowers cutting our grass, the firewood keeping us warm, the livestock and produce feeding our families, and every breath we exhale. Through this Executive Order, the Biden Administration is not only arbitrarily and improperly taxing American productivity and everyday life in the community, but it is also creating a scheme that can justify virtually any decision.

    The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. Attorney General Cameron joined the Louisiana-led lawsuit alongside attorneys general from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
    ~

    1. One more soldier in the fight to keep ’em tied up until we can try to take back Congress…

29. I suppose I’ll mention Kurt Schlichter’s “People’s Republic” books.

    As he writes, “So, as you can see, my Kelly Turnbull conservative action novels are coming true, and you need to check them out before the sixth book drops in the coming weeks. Catch up with People’s Republic and my four other novels about what happens when America splits into red and blue countries, Indian Country, Wildfire, Collapse and Crisis.”

    The ones I’ve read so far look like a parody, just like Jerry Pournelle’s should-have-been-parody of public school education in “Higher Education”.

    1. I was just thinking this past weekend that I hate/i> living in a Kurt Schlichter novel. Doesn’t matter which.

30. I found this part of the EO interesting:

    “interference in a United States or other foreign government election”

    Remember when opining that an election might have been rigged was considered treasonous? Was that only (checks calendar) . . . two months ago?

    1. Yeah, and they’re trying to do that vote audit in AZ right now, with possibly another state or two to follow. Is this coincidental timing?

    2. Shucks, I remember when the senior senator from Chappaquiddick got caught begging Brezhnev (or was it Gromyko? They were dropping like flies in Reagan’s first term) to help him elect Mondale.
       ~

       1. I don’t remember Gromyko as General Secretary. Andropov was the main one, and Chernenko (very briefly) replaced him after he died. Gorbachev was next.

31. Sarah, I never saw any links to this EO.

    1. I put it in instapundit when it dropped 11 days ago.

32. OK, I just read the EO again:

    SecState in consultation with SecTreas and AG, or SecTreas in consultation with SecState and AG, can determine that anything anyone ever did is on the EO laundry list – like, say, if TOTALLY ANONYMOUS DUDE accepted 10% as his traditional cut of the $3.5 million that was transferred by the widow of the former mayor of Moscow, a city which, for any of the remedial geography students in any three-letter-agency reading this, is in RUSSIA, to his son, METHHEAD SISTERINLAWBANGER MCSTRIPPERIMPREGNATOR, qualifies as “transnational corruption” for the benefit of, directly or indirectly, the Government of the Russian Federation under EO section (a)(ii)(D), then the order would freeze and seize TOTALLY ANONYMOUS DUDE family assets and property within the US, and prohibit anyone from selling anything to or paying TOTALLY ANONYMOUS DUDE, his spouse or any of his adult offspring, under penalty of law.

    It looks like any hypothetical BROTHER OF TOTALLY ANONYMOUS DUDE would not be directly subject unless he also received a cut, either directly from his nephew or indirectly through TOTALLY ANONYMOUS DUDE.
    …

    I’m mainly not clear on why a Bill of Attainder is specifically unconstitutional, but done via EO this is okeydoke – for those unfamiliar, here’s the US Congress annotated Constitution page on Bills of Attainder from https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C3-1/ALDE_00001088/:

    Article I, Section 9, Clause 3:

    No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

    “Bills of attainder . . . are such special acts of the legislature, as inflict capital punishments upon persons supposed to be guilty of high offences, such as treason and felony, without any conviction in the ordinary course of judicial proceedings. If an act inflicts a milder degree of punishment than death, it is called a bill of pains and penalties. . . . In such cases, the legislature assumes judicial magistracy, pronouncing upon the guilt of the party without any of the common forms and guards of trial, and satisfying itself with proofs, when such proofs are within its reach, whether they are conformable to the rules of evidence, or not. In short, in all such cases, the legislature exercises the highest power of sovereignty, and what may be properly deemed an irresponsible despotic discretion, being governed solely by what it deems political necessity or expediency, and too often under the influence of unreasonable fears, or unfounded suspicions.” The phrase “bill of attainder”, as used in this clause and in clause 1 of § 10, applies to bills of pains and penalties as well as to the traditional bills of attainder.

    (main quote from 3 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States 1338 (1833))
    |
    The whole EO looks to me to be similarly skipping the entire annoying legal thingee, but it’s not a law passed by Congrefs, so I’m sure it totally fine.

    1. “The whole EO looks to me to be similarly skipping the entire annoying legal thingee, but it’s not a law passed by Congrefs, so I’m sure it totally fine.”

       Which is why they didn’t just use the Patriot Act to do the same thing. It allows all kinds of shenanigan’s, but it IS a law passed by Congress, and they couldn’t threaten your whole family the way this does.

    2. As I read it, it’s also an ex post facto law. If a U.S. person has *ever* been an officer of a Russian company that is *now* found to have engaged in “transnational corruption”, they can be proscribed. It doesn’t matter what the legal status of the company was at the time the U.S. person was involved, they get the ban hammer.

33. OK found it.
    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/04/15/executive-order-on-blocking-property-with-respect-to-specified-harmful-foreign-activities-of-the-government-of-the-russian-federation/

    1. It’s linked in the top of the post.

34. Sorry, my browser didn’t tint it differently. Bad Firefox, smack, smack.

    1. INDEED!

35. Pingback: 13 hour day | Dio's Workshop

36. Off-topic, but relevant.
    Watching TV, saw ads by some sort of lobbying group. The ads were cartoons. They portrayed groups of humans/anthropomorphic animals and aliens, all wearing masks or face shields. One showed an “island,” of these people, rejoicing as a ship carrying vaccine apprears…and sails past them to a floating dock and an obviously meant-to-be-rich couple. The theme of the ads was that everyone should be getting the vaccine (and that poor/”diverse” communities are being unfairly slighted).
    What gets me is I wasn’t watching children’s programming. We’re not adversaries, we’re children to be coaxed and cajoled -or, presumably, punished.
    I keep thinking we have one group of “children,” playing “grown-up,” which is why they have no clue what they’re doing. And we have the tiny group of “real” (and evil) grown-ups,” manipulating them.

    1. They’re not grown-ups either; they’re even-more-dysfunctional children.

    2. No one is getting the vaccines, to the point they’re getting pissed.
       Sorry, the risk is not worth it.

       1. to the point they’re getting pissed.

          If there was ever any doubt that not getting the vaccine was a good idea this would seal it.

          1. Pretty much, yes.

    3. Those weird animated commercials are from One, Bono’s 501(c)(3) that says it “educates the public and raises awareness of the crisis of extreme poverty around the globe and the progress being made against it through life-saving programs”. They are where the donations from (RED) products go.

       Their vax thing is:

       Share Surplus COVID-19 Vaccines With Countries in Need

       Wealthy countries have secured enough COVID-19 vaccine doses to vaccinate their entire populations almost three times over, leaving many poorer countries struggling to vaccinate even their most vulnerable people.

       Sign our petition telling governments to urgently share their surplus doses with the countries being left behind. Because if the vaccine isn’t everywhere, this pandemic isn’t going anywhere.

       ,
       So basically, the evil rich countries are HOGGING THE VAX (which they made) instead of shipping it off to the kleptocracies of places like Africa so the oligarchs there can sell those doses on the global black market.

       You go, Bono.

37. I put up some commentary on my LiveJournal, with several paragraphs of lit-crit of an alternate history novel to hopefully make it look innocuous, especially in a social media post (since I have family who aren’t on board, and I don’t want to make their decisions for them).

    I’m a Slavist (undergrad degree in Russian Language and Literature), and I’ve written a fair amount of lit-crit about stories of a dictatorship in the US, so it’s possible I’m already one someone’s list somewhere. On the other hand, it’s possible that I’m simply too small-potatoes for them to bother with at this point. But I can’t just stand by and do nothing while the Constitution is reduced to irrelevant window-dressing in the manner of the titular villain of the novel I used as cover for my post.

    1. For a moment I mis-read that as “(underground degree…)” and had the thought that an *underground* decree would be more significant.

       FWIW: I am NOT trying to predict a/the future!

       1. Typos and misreads/mishears can make wonderful writing prompts. I’m still trying to figure out where “mail-order bridge” goes, but I have a feeling it’s going to make an interesting story.

          1. Well, getting it delivered is going to be a bear.

             Although I don’t think you could get it delivered BY bears. 😛

             (I’m still chuckling about the ‘bear and wine ban’ from a few days ago)

          2. Look up the London Bridge that was sold to a real estate developer in…Arizona, I think? The bridge needed replaced and the city sold it to a man who had it disassembled, the bricks numbered, then reassembled in America.

             1. Yeah, it’s in Lake Havasu. But, it’s not THE London Bridge (which is Tower Bridge, which is still there). This was just a bridge that happened to be within city limits of London and happened to cross the Thames.

          3. For those with military engineering background: https://www.baileybridge.com/

             1. My father helped carry around a Bailey Bridge in WWII in France.

                1. There is a very good historical account and recent release that I read in ARC, from another regular at the Ace of Spades Sunday morning book thread. It was very good, very thorough, and mention of Bailey bridges was made…

    2. so it’s possible I’m already one someone’s list somewhere.

       Being on a list is passe now that everyone gets to be on them. It’s about being of the right sort of list.

       1. If I had a card for every list I’m likely on, I could play pinochle.

    3. I’ve read multiple reports lately detailing various government efforts, from internal organizations to deniable contractors, building databases from social media posts. The California state government group that was databasing social media posts they didn’t like and “asking” the social media platforms to remove them is one example.

       I would be frankly astonished if the NSA data harvesting stuff that Snowden exposed does not do this automatically, but NSA is pretty jealous about giving access to their stuff, so the universally harvested and extensively cross referenced comms intercept database would likely not be available to the political people in states or even the federal level, which is why you get stuff like the frelling USPS reportedly doing the same thing.

       The issue now is a common one in database design: They have so many databases in so many places with so many goofball underthunk schemas, and distributed across so many competing siloed sources of authority, that any one org only has what they have individually, not the aggregate of all the databases together.

       Any news of an effort to “improve data interoperability” and “break down data silos” or similar is a concern. When you see public bragging about that, basically what they went on and on about after 9/11 in the IC side, watch out – that effort to correlate and connect internal and foreign comms intercepts to make them queryable is what the Soetero administration “unmasking” was actually querying.

38. Vote time:
    https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/219470-what-classic-sf-book-shall-we-read-in-may

39. Here’s kinda how I’ve started feelin’ lately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIxBmyRQlwQ

40. What do you believe the Diamond Princess numbers are? It appears that 3711 people were on board, counting passengers and crew. Of those, 712 (19%) were infected. And of those 712, 14 (2%) died. All the dead had been passengers, and they were apparently at least 60 years old. Are those numbers what you rely on? What is it about them that makes you believe the early (say, within the period from January through May 2020) reactions were idiotic? If the later reactions were idiotic in your opinion, at what point did they become so?

    1. Much older than that. The ones who died.
       BECAUSE THE CRUISE SHIPS ARE PRACTICALLY FLOATING PLAGUE VESSELS FILLED WITH THE MOST VULNERABLE.
       When they became idiotic? The lock down. Masks. “we’re all going to die.”
       Oh, please.

       1. Right. If there were 3,711 on board and 14 died, that’s 0.377% of the ship died WITH covid. Not exactly a runaway nightmare. So glad we adjusted for only 2 weeks to flatten the curve.
          Had frustrating conversation with relatives recently. They admitted the government is not trustworthy, but also believe all the covid “facts” and numbers, and that the stealection only had minor fraud. But yet I’m the one off the deep end and need to start thinking right. Right.

          1. 0.377 IN THE WORST POSSIBLE CONDITIONS. A norovirus might have killed 25% of that ship.
             This is ridiculous.

          2. I read an interesting article the other day. Essentially, the author noted if you had a plague with 20% fatalities, you could roll out a “vaccine” that did nothing whatsoever, claim that it was 80% effective, and take credit for all the “saved lives.”

             1. Yeah, I had an impulse earlier to write about this.

                tl; dr, fucking lying experts.

                If the experts are strictly truthful, you can take their estimates to the bank.

                But once you consider that they are human beings, they may not be strictly truthful.

                When you have evidence of experts being systemically dishonest, that adds a great deal of noise to trustworthiness of estimates.

                In combination with force, it changes the appropriate response to claims to “No. Fuck you.”

             2. Yep – since the CCP bug is so benign in the general population, especially the working age population, at this point in the disease progression curve dosing with sterile water and opening up would probably still see statistics for hospitalizations and deaths decline.

                If all the numbers are honest, as soon as the >65 population gets past 1/2 and closes in on 2/3 vaccinated, an honest government would declare victory and open back up.

                Why 2/3? From WebMD (https://www.webmd.com/lung/what-is-herd-immunity#1):

                When does a community reach herd immunity? It depends on the reproduction number, or R0. The R0 tells you the average number of people that a single person with the virus can infect if those people aren’t already immune. The higher the R0, the more people need to be resistant to reach herd immunity.

                Researchers think that the R0 for COVID-19 is between 2 and 3. This means that one person can infect two to three other people. It also means 50% to 67% of the population would need to be resistant before herd immunity kicks in and the infection rates start to go down.

                1. I can’t help thinking that the pandemic would have been much better handled under Hillary. (As in, they would have done very little about it.)
                   Casualties would have been about the same, and we would have had herd immunity long ago.

                   1. Hillary would have used it to institute an outright dictatorship, ruling by decree the same way the Newsome, Whitmer, Cuomo, Murphy, et. als., did.

                      1. There’s this too.

                      2. Yep – The Dowager Empress would have implemented Federal level mandatory Fauci diktat and nationwide karenwaffe mobilization, and with no Operation Warp Speed vaccines, so nothing for another two years.

                         Feel free to go look closer into that timeline, but I won’t. [Shudder].

                   2. yes. but we’d have Hillary…..

             3. I read a book in which the scientists realize that they could give everyone water, claim it was a treatment that reduced your chances to one in — several thousand? Or lower? I forget — and get everyone to stop acting so paranoid of catching the disease.

                You notice they wanted the people to stop acting paranoid.

                1. Our ‘leaders’ are paranoid, getting even more paranoid, and they want everybody else to be paranoid along with them.
                   ———————————
                   I used to think I was paranoid.
                   I thought people were out to get me.l
                   Now I know the truth — they are out to get me.
                   I feel so much better.

                   1. THIS.

    2. Why the phrasing about “believing” what the numbers are?

       We do have access to at least some of them:
       As of 20 February, 619 cases have been confirmed (16.7 % of the population on board), including 82 crew and 537 passengers. A total 3011 respiratory specimens were tested, and 621 were positive (20.6%), including double tests. Persons aboard between 70 and 89 were the most affected (Table 1). Among confirmed COVID-19 cases with recorded symptom onset (n=197), there were 34 (17.3 %) with onset dates before 6 February, which was the first full day of quarantine, and 163 (82.7%) with onset dates on or after the 6th (Figure 1). Among these 197 cases, 163 occurred during the quarantine period (48 crew, 115 passengers), with 52–92 among passengers in cabins without a previously confirmed case (Table 2). Of these, 3–7 occurred after the median quarantine day (day 7). The proportion of COVID-19 cases confirmed among passengers increased with cabin occupancy (Figure 2). A total 318 (51%) of all confirmed cases were asymptomatic when the respiratory specimen was collected (10 crew and 308 passengers).
       https://www.niid.go.jp/niid/en/2019-ncov-e/9417-covid-dp-fe-02.html

       The lady from Hong Kong was sixty, the rest were over 70.

       There’s more links, and a chart at the bottom showing a few people became infected during quarantine with a known infected person in their cruise cabin. … which is what jumped out at me then, I believe you can go back to the posts from the time and check.

       Looking at the numbers now, it’s possible that the relatively low rate of transmission is because the bug had done the rounds several times already, so folks had relatively fresh immunity.

       1. Heck, it could have been the way they push the booze on cruises.

          I saw commentary along these lines poohpoohed early on, but I have yet to see anything actually looking at alcohol consumption as a prophylactic: The CCPbug gets in via mucus membranes in nose and mouth, so swilling gin and tonic, while simultaneously getting someone to tell you good jokes so you blow some out through your nose, would seem like it could be a valid way to reduce the viral load there.

          And based on the last (one and only) cruise I was on, getting regular access to alcohol is not an issue.

          Hey, couldn’t hurt. Better safe than sorry.

          Actually, regular alcohol consumption being a preventative could explain the absence of much spread over the past 14 months in the homeless population.

          1. And why every case in my husband’s office (lots of vets, nobody on the Pledge that I know) who tested positive had more than “obnoxious” level symptoms, even though some are otherwise solidly the folks supposed to be in a bad way.

          2. Didn’t Trump catch holy hell over an off hand suggestion of internal application of disinfectants? Is not grain alcohol a disinfectant? So perhaps The Donald was not so crazy after all?
             ~

             1. Yeah, he was intentionally massively misquoted, but yeah.

                I’d always heard the rule as “If it’s crazy and it works it isn’t crazy”.

                Of course there’s also Maxim 43:

                43. If it’s stupid and it works, it’s still stupid and you’re lucky.

                1. Yes, somehow asking if there were any way to have internal disinfectant, turned into him telling us to drink bleach. Guess they never heard of brainstorming.

41. Very well said. No it’s not paranoia.
    I’ll try to muddle through.

42. It’s Afraid.

    https://www.vox.com/2021/4/26/22364154/supreme-court-guns-second-amendment-new-york-state-rifle-corlett-shootings-kavanaugh-barrett

    And before anyone is tempted to be excessively cynical, first that is justified, but remember one important detail:

    No gun has ever made a mean tweet.

43. They have already been making the list of people they intend to persecute using the Executive Order, they even told us via Twitter on many occasions that they were doing so, and the list makers include Democratic Party officials as well as their media and tech arms.

44. Remember Trumpland vs the Clinton Archipelago? It’s been updated to 2020, with comparison maps:

    https://vividmaps.com/us-election-2020/

    1. now do without fraud. CO is mostly fraud.

45. And another reason to run away screaming from Colorado:

    https://www.city-journal.org/colorado-senate-bill-62-would-handcuff-cops

    Yeah, that’ll go well. “Hang on, officer, you can give me the bloody ticket after I get done tossing the place. I’ll be next door doing the same again.”

    1. Along those lines, this made me laugh really hard yesterday. It’s perfect: https://youtu.be/8tRCBBO8Ss0

    2. That is amazing. The citizen really is on their own. Don’t bother calling the police and, also, why should the police even respond to calls or even seeing the crime in progress?

       1. why should the police even respond to calls or even seeing the crime in progress?

          Well *someone* has to enforce the helplessness. If people aren’t reliably punished for it they might get the idea that they are responsible for their own defense.

          1. Ouwee! And perversely logical in our upside down bizarro world.

    3. If you understand that Critical Race Theory ideology not only justifies but advocates such crime, as being “redistributive justice”, all of these policies Democrats seek to impose all make sense.

46. Here is something to brighten up anyone’s day:

    Antifa takes on the frying pan man pic.twitter.com/GA0Z9i1jmj

    — RealBFolks✪ (@RealBFolks) April 23, 2021

    1. I liked the BONG BONG but only two? There were a whole lot more of those Antefa pukes that needed to get the BONG.

       Maybe get a number of anti-Antefa folks with different sized frying pans and try to play a tune?

       1. He needed someone with another pan to watch his back.

       2. Now I ponder the 1812 Overture played thus.

47. I think I’ve said this before. If you have a blog, take it offshore to a host that ignores US subpoenas. Pay in cryptocurrencies if possible. Register the domain privately. Use Protonmail with a pseudonym. Use a VPN and maybe TOR. As far as possible, break all connections between your online persona and your IRL identity. And as Sarah and the Prophet Heinlein advise, keep your weapons and clothes where you can find them in the dark.

    1. We have something ready to go (probably) go live if this goes down. But it might take a while.
       I have Protonmail.

       1. So have I, in case of emergencies.
          My host for my book and personal blogs is Texas-based, so I think, based on how stiff-necked Texas can be, I’ll be safe for the nonce.

48. Pingback: Daily Broadside | Biden's Executive Order More Powerful Than the Constitution | Dave Olsson

49. Looks neat, but the terrorist got right back up. It would have been so much better if his face had been as flat as the skillet and he stayed down.

50. c4c

51. That which I have was earned legally, morally and ethically. Any attempt to take it from me by such nefarious means would be terribly stupid and result in lots of grief for the taker.

    I will divulge no details, just know that statement is incontrovertible fact.

52. I look at all this, from the north side of the border with dismay.
    One day, soon, there will be a ‘singularity’ and the ‘masters of the universe will experience a ‘preference cascade’ which will be completely unbelievable for them to comprehend. (Can you spell Ceaușescu? (I had to look it up!)).
    Seriously, if the FBI attempted to arrest DJT and Kristi Noem at Mt. Rushmore on July 4th, how likely is it that those agents would be able to complete ‘that mission’? I doubt that even a SWAT squad could do it, and they might not even get close the targets before there were “other” fireworks.

    There are 220 + 50 Congresscritters who are basically not worth the powder to blow them away, as they do not authorise nor control anything. And there are some dozen or so who might deserve something: Brennan, Comey, Crapper, Wray, McCabe, etc.. But realistically, there are 94 (96?) US Deputy Attorneys who will have blood on their hands and well above their elbows if they are involved in implementing this. Plus presumably about the same number of FBI Special Agents in Charge. Plus of course their staffs. All of whom are probably also on a list: a government telephone directory. And whose residences can be ascertained thereafter. Zilllow, anyone? And do not forget the ATF. And it is a not unlikely possibility that there are a useful number of Veterans who have been diagnosed with a terminal prognosis, who might consider that a near suicidal mission would be a fitting cap to their training. Just saying…
    And there are free pdf downloads of Unintended Consequences on the ‘net, for the student to review on his own time.

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