A Cabal of Our Enemies

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Prove to me that we’re not being run by a cabal of our enemies. Prove it.

They seized power by force, and they’re rapidly degrading our infrastructure and our communications, and out military capabilities.

And I don’t mean they’re just crazy Marxists. I mean, sure, that’s part of the issue. Marxism is inherently a destructive philosophy, so they will destroy as a matter of fact. But this particular set goes well beyond that.

Look, dad was an aficionado of war memoirs, commander biographies, and a student of strategy. From my earliest years, when we were walking, he’d talk about things he’d been reading.

The first thing invaders do is destroy the roads of the occupied country, so the defenders can’t counterattack. So these asshats are doing this in advance.

And the thought process behind it is a miracle of leftist bizarreness:

$20 Billion to Rip Up Highways, To Reduce Climate Change and Division Caused by Road Traffic

Look, I’m sure this was suggested by China, and the dunderheads are totally buying it under their Compleate Illusions system.

Sure climate change. Climate change can justify anything. If we told them they needed to burn people alive to prevent climate change, they’d already been building the pyres.

But that’s just sort of a reflexive thing, like a Moslem saying “Insh Allah.” It’s not actually involved in their thinking as such. Or their thinking is not involved in it. whichever.

The truth is that they realized that the Covidiocy has destroyed the cities.

You see they had everything planned. They were going to force more and more of us into the city, because they were going to make running an internal combustion engine so hard. So if you had a job, you’d live in the city. Where you’re more easily controlled. And where they could make you believe bullshit like overpopulation and that — look at all the homeless — we needed more and more welfare.
Their idea of their perfect world is the 1930s version of the future. Just megalopolisis, isolated, with people completely controlled. It has the bonus of leaving pristine wilderness outside that, for the elites to build their dachas.

And part of the problem is that they never understand other people have agency and respond to circumstances.

I don’t know what they expected when they went full fashboots and — in the case of Polis, and I bet not the only one — gave homeless the right to camp in every public land, and defecate in public as well as freeing a bunch of felons.

Did they expect this would just scare people more, and they’d lock themselves in, in fear and trembling, allowing the idiots to design society.

Instead, people left. Americans are on the move. I swear half of my friends are moving from more locked to less locked, from bluer to redder. Some demographers have caught on, seeing through the smoke and mirrors, and are confused — most of them being leftist — because Americans are in the middle of a full migration. As full and as all pervading as the movement west. Or after the civil war the movement of black people North.

Some of this must have penetrated the granite-like heads of the ruling left. Or at least the planning left.

They somehow didn’t expect — possibly because they don’t really get technology. I mean, I have my moments, but I swear most democrats were disappointed when laptops started being made with no “cup holders”. They’re at that level of stupid — that a tech that hasn’t been fully implemented, giving us the ability to work from home, would be kicked into high gear from the covidiocy.

I guess they expected people who work mostly from their computers to sit at home watching panic porn on TV and not work?

More importantly, I don’t think they expected people who have to work in person to follow that migration because, well…. if you owned a restaurant that the covidiocy killed, you might, for instance, pay heed to the fact people are driving everywhere because, duh, masks on planes, and therefore build a road side diner. or perhaps find a small town that’s underserved and start anew there.

Oh…. a lot of people are changing jobs too, and the jobs are no longer binding them to big cities.

Honestly, the only way for big cities to save themselves is to become touristic centers. NYC was halfway there when the covidiocy hit. Only not fully there because lefty governance sucks at making a city safe.

If I were a lefty governor or mayor right now, I’d aim the fashboots at crime and disorder, get rid of the homeless, spruce up the place, and go all out in courting tourism. Then people would move in to cater to the tourists, and eventually other businesses would move in, because that’s where people are.

But leftists don’t think that way. Carrot and incentive is beneath them (of course.) Their idea is rather that they will force those unwashed peasants to do what they want.

So, you know, “infrastructure” leads them to rip up roads, so that people who work in the city will have to live near their jobs.

It will surprise no one Buttigieg’s is involved in this. Possibly because that man’s head is optimized for oral sex, leaving no space for a brain. And of course, because he’s a child of privilege, who doesn’t in the most fundamental way understand where his food comes from or how it gets where he can buy it.

It never occurs to them that the lack of roads means employers will stay far away from it, and that people won’t move to hells on Earth because they’ll otherwise have to end up in traffic jams. Instead people will move elsewhere, do other things. Industries will spring up in the heartland and form small clusters around them.

We’ll go more distributed, more sparsely populated, more out of their control. And the cities they completely control will become hell holes inhabited by derelicts only.

And they’ll have no clue why.

They’ll keep trying increasingly crazier ways to herd us to the 30s. But they — and their Chinese Masters — don’t get Americans at all.
To quote BGE in a different context, they’re just pushing on a string.

They can’t win. And we ain’t gonna lose.
Yeah, times are going to get rough, and we live in the stupidest timeline, somewhere between tragedy and comedy.

Some of us are going to die laughing. But not many.

Be not afraid. We got this. All we have to do to defeat them is be human beings.

446 thoughts on “A Cabal of Our Enemies”

  2. My fear is that our leftists in charge exhibit all the maturity of two year olds, so when they don’t get what they want they throw hissy fits. And since by hook, crook, and deception they do hold the reins of power those hissy fits will cause as much collateral damage as possible. Mostly in blue cities as they are most under their collective thumbs, but look at what Joe, the Hoe, and all the rest of the usual suspects have already done to damage each and every one of us. We’re all feeling the pinch at the pump and in the checkout lane, and we haven’t yet experienced the effects of their glorious new “tax the rich” chomp at what little we are allowed to take home from our paychecks.

    1. Already getting rid of the Trump’s tax cut, you know the one that only benefits the “rich”? Funny. We’re way below the democrats annual $400k rich level, under $100k FWIW. Yet this will mean, as things stand, a $3k tax bill swing … Not taxing the middle class, my tush …

      Okay don’t know exactly what the tax bill is year to year. What we do is keep withholding the same year to year. Do know how much extra we have to pay VS getting back. Pre-Trump tax cut, we paid an extra $1500, after $1500 refund.

      1. Lived in New Jersey during Florio’s term. He went in on a promise to cut waste before raising taxes. Six months after taking office he rammed through the biggest tax increase in state history (to that time), including the famous
        ” toilet paper tax.”
        One morning I heard him do a PSA explaining they had passed these taxes to insure “the rich paid their fair share,” and “help the middle class.” When I got to work I discovered that being single making 35K a year made me “rich.”
        This crap is standard.

        1. And in the next election cycle, the Republicans seized control of the state legislature and the governorship. Alas, too many were RINO’s, but even they were an improvement. Then Bush appointed the governor to head EPA, the senate president became governor, finally got public scrutiny, and the Republican hold on the state government collapsed. The swiftness with which that happened has long made me suspect the corruption had long been known to key players, but merely unvoiced until it became convenient for the Dems to exploit. It killed the plans for a state transportation museum in the process. I moved away to the Buckeye State just a few years before that collapse happened.

        2. I love to point out to our lefty family that Trump had actually raised the taxes of the rich rather than taxing to poor as the democrats do and there’s data, thus SCIENCE, that backs that up. It’s enormously fun.

          1. And it is the Democrats that are screaming that those taxes on the wealthy need to be lowered; i.e. by removing the limit that Trump obtained on State and Local Tax Deductions, which deductions benefit the wealthy in high tax states, which are uniformly run by Democrats.

            When the left refers to “fair share” what they really mean is that 100% of everything belongs to The State and it is the The State that decides who gets what. Everything else they say is BS.

  3. Yeah, I dunno.

    This fits the ‘Gu jar of idiots’ model, and has the approximate judgement and will to avoid hurting others of a senile pederast. So it matches the expected trajectory.

    I’m simply not thinking very well right now, to the point that I was actively checking here, and was also surprised to have a discussion of the ongoing risible political idiocy.

    I’ve been thinking about universities as ‘centers of evil’*, and how they might be treated as reprisal for their actions, or to prevent them from causing further harm. It doesn’t make sense to license faculty to handle explosives, hazardous materials, or controlled substances if they are at universities that send students out to commit arson.

    I’m just feeling sick today, and have very little ability to think.

    *I’m recalling a statement made by old guard Kemalist Turk of some sort.

  4. I will not say this is the stupidest timeline. It might well be the strangest – and that’s a good thing. Insanity, screwy as it might seem, is not the same as stupidity.

    “What are the chances?” (of something that just happened..)
    “One to one, evidently.”

  5. I think the Left turned the burner up too high, too fast and even the sheeple are starting to question the craziness. I think Trump made them panic and reveal the shenanigans to the normies. Once the Fauci-Flu and the faux-vax gets questioned by a critical mass, the election results are next…

    Fun times. Waiting for the system to break so we can fix it. Wish it would hurry up to limit the damage.

    1. There you go again, blithely assuming that there will be elections next year.

      Literal banana republics are laughing at last year’s ‘elections’. They’d hold a revolution over less. Not because of the fraud, but because they’d feel insulted that no attempt was made even to pretend the elections weren’t corrupt.
      ———————————
      Elections are far too important to be left up to a bunch of uncontrolled voters. The Party MUST exercise oversight and management to prevent mere voters from electing the wrong candidates!

      1. I didn’t say there would be elections. I think a few more people will question past elections when they get red-pilled by all the Chinese-Virus and faux-vax revelations. Their bubbles are starting to shatter.

        I have no faith in elections. I helped audit the result of a blue county in a red state for the last election and we found multiple avenues of fraud. It’s over the top criminal obvious stuff that a hungover junior auditor on their first day would spot. A beginning programmer with a “Learn PHP in 24 Hours” book from 1998 could design a more secure system.

        1. “That’s a feature, not a bug…”

          There’s no reason *not* to use paper. If it’s electronic, it was *intended* to be hacked. There’s no other justification for buying into the “electronic” thing.

      2. Somewhat relevant to the topic of conversation.

        I saw this yesterday, but only Anonymous Conservative has mentioned it. Straight from Jordan Peterson, or somebody with a bunch of followers who goes with that handle…

        In case the tweet gets deleted, the relevant text: “The conservatives have to sacrifice Trump and the stolen election narrative. The liberals have to sacrifice DIE and CRT. The road to peace requires its pound of flesh from both parties.”

        No idea what DIE is supposed to stand for, but has he taken up residence on Planet Naive? AC thinks Peterson went beyond stupid to evil, but I haven’t followed JP’s work that closely.

        1. JP is Canadian and relies on Canadian MSM for his information. Corrupted data giving him GIGO

          1. That’s my take as well. There were some things in his second book that i skimmed past, just because I knew “Canadian academic working on CBC data. Fast forward until content resumes.”

        2. Should be Diversity, Inclusion, Equity.

          Peterson is probably assuming that peace is possible, because he doesn’t want to think out an American Civil War.

          If we had any basis to ceasefire, and ability to trust the ceasefire, those terms might be sufficient.

          He apparently does not grok that the Democrats are a) generally communists, hence incapable of peace b) specifically fundamentally too disturbed to live in peace with others.

          He may also not realize that the Canadian government has (apparently) gone tyrannical, and has him in a comprehensive information bubble.

          He is someone who has lessons on bettering oneself individually that others listen to. Those two specialties may be the limit of his ability. Group stuff, and gathering intelligence from another culture, may well be beyond his time and ability.

          The tweet may actually be very good, for a Canadian academic. Thing to remember about folks here, what we lack in raw ability, we make up for in interest in this problem, and have collected a perhaps unusual amount of information relating to it, and minds interested in understanding it.

          1. It is impossible to make peace with those who do not recognize your right to exist.

          1. He’s also not what we would call a conservative. He’s probably closest to a New Age Liberal. Far as I can tell (having watched hundreds of hours of his lectures) he truly believes that if only there’s enough mutual understanding (follow the 12 Rules!) and everyone compromises, peace and harmony will result, and we can all come together and achieve that if only we’re willing to give up our more-intransigent beliefs. (Note the unbalanced equivalence of Trump and stolen election with DIE and CRT, as if we’d not be giving up far more than the leftists… who would just find another coercive system to apply, while we’d be fucked.)

            And far as I can tell, he still almost entirely believes what the mainstream Canadian news tells him is true. I’ve heard him repeat numerous patent falsehoods about Trump, clearly from naive belief rather than malice. He does not seem to have gained much from the long association with Dave Rubin, who has counted the same lights we do.

            Peterson clearly does NOT understand that we’ve already harmoniously compromised ourselves to the edge of the cliff, that we have nothing left to give up, and our next compromised step will be into the abyss.

            His understanding of the Canadian government’s tyranny seems to be limited to what it’s done with regard to compelled speech, against which he’s adamant. He doesn’t extrapolate from there to that we Americans may be equally adamant, for even better reasons.

            Much as I respect him, sometimes I want to smack him upside the head and tell him “Reality is that-away.” A year or two teaching at a Flyover ag college would do him a world of good.

            1. He’s also not what we would call a conservative.

              He’s seriously just “Hey, this guy has a good point, here! LIsten to this point, it’s a good point! Oh, this one, too!”

              Seriously, he doesn’t have to be pink with blue spots to be RIGHT in a specific case– nobody with sense gives a fig if he’s freakin’ a pokadot dolphin, if he says something TRUE.

              Yes, I realize the “with sense” thing is a big limiter.

              1. I don’t make time to listen to what the dolphins have to say. 🙂

              2. Well, yeah. I don’t have a problem with that, he says plenty that’s both useful and true. But there are some obvious holes in his understanding of where we’re at here to the south, pretty well laid out by that tweet.

            2. Akshully, probably not.

              To the best of my knowledge, fly over ag schools are also pretty co opted by the left, and are likewise incestuous echo chambers. I’d be suspicious of relying on a private bible school having anyone together enough to red pill Peterson.

              Peterson is a Psychologist, focusing on individuals, and tending to trust in sociologists and anthropologists for aggregate behavior.

              We aren’t talking about someone with a solid grounding in military history, or an understanding of power politics. We might not even be talking about the sort of psychologist that is aware of abhorrent or deviant psychology.

              He seems to be someone used to people who are a bit unhappy and dysfunctional, but not abnormally evil. He probably does not have much of a tool kit for people who are driven to evil, or who choose it.

              I doubt he understands ‘neighboring populations who don’t get along’.

              It would probably take specific people to get him out of that comfort zone and face to face with needing different answers, instead of the sort of experience he could get at a school.

                1. A relative who once administered a college of education opined that the she thought the school psychology faculty went into psychology in an unsuccessful attempt to figure out what was wrong with themselves.

                  1. Psychiatry as well, in some cases. There were some seriously messed up profs in or associated with the Psych Dept. at Flat State U back in the day. But then given the population they depended on for their experiments . . . GIGO.

            3. JP is a drug addicted scam artist who made his rep by questioning the ridiculous “pronoun” law in Canada and telling men to clean their rooms….Controlled opposition…

              1. No. He’s not a drug addicted scam artist. But nice try.
                He’s a “nice” Canadian not obsessed with politics, who actually uses women — often — as the example of disordered lives, etc.
                I know where you got that. And it’s bullshit.
                But thank you for playing.

                1. I am seriously annoyed, because I don’t even especially LIKE Mr. (dr?) Peterson– but the insane attacks on someone doing basic “hey, adulting, do it!” type advice is just….REALLY?

                  Really? You need to fuss, and scream, and have a fit, because someone points out that cleaning your house is a good idea?

                  That you need to fix your own stuff before you fix the world?

                  That you must take care of you, before you fix everyone else?

                  REALLY:?!?!?!?

                  1. Dr.
                    The worst you can say about him is that he says OBVIOUS stuff. But the obvious is no longer obvious and some of what he said helped me, and people I know. because it was so obvious we overlooked it.
                    And I respect him as someone else who has withstood the full fire of the left (and the craziest call-themselves right.)
                    I did it without going into pain killers, but then — for now — family has been okay, and well…. Yeah. He had much harsher incoming than I did.
                    I pointed out the other day all of us who fought in SP were left maimed. I’m just now writing again, and I’m trying to pull Kate along.
                    HOW much worse was it for him?
                    And for saying completely non-political things.

                    3. “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” — Not George Orwell, but still true

                    4. People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.

                      ― Samuel Johnson

              2. JP is a drug addicted scam artist

                Nice job showing why ad hominem is the most popular fallacy?

                Under extreme pain, he recognized he had problems, and fixed them.

                I can see why that would make you burn.

                  1. Not other than; in addition to.

                    I don’t have to LIKE someone to want to maim the guys who go “oh… my target loves someone in pain… I should use this to hurt them.”

        4. We have to sacrifice the stolen election narrative? So we sacrifice truth and the Dems sacrifice the CRT lie? Perterson is a moron.

          1. I love how he assumes that the lefties would negotiate in good faith. Not a common phrase here, but “bless his heart”.

            1. This statement needs an upvote mechanic.

              Assuming the left will do anything in good faith is a mistake, and leads to negotiation when it should not.

              1. Well, there’s always the negotiation method employed by Corbin Dallas in The Fifth Element… 😀

        5. Given that much of the reason why we got Trump is due to the CRT and DIE crap, the Left getting rid of it (and doing so in a genuine manner) would get rid of most of the reason for Trump in the first place. That’s not all that there was to Trump, of course. But the problem for many is that they fail to realize that election of Trump was a reaction to the crap – like CRT and DIE – that the Left keeps trying to shove down the public’s collective throats. If the Left were to ditch it, some of those who voted for Trump would likely allow themselves to be lulled back to sleep.

      3. There will be elections. There won’t be votes or counts in the normal sense. There will be results based on “This is how they =would= have voted if only they’d gone to the polls…” by the lights of those running the elections.

        Nearly all modern totalitarian thugs have been “elected” — just not by the voters.

    2. I wish that critical mass would arrive sooner and not later. I’ve been nagged yet again about getting the vax, and family member who’s doing the nagging will not listen to any possibility that it might be less than safe and effective. That’s all fake news. I’ve been finding various ways to put it off, but eventually I’m going to run out of ways to slow-walk it without being obvious.

      I just wish I knew what sources I could actually trust. All I know is that I’m getting multiple streams of contradictory information, all of which claims to be authoritative. Yeah, some of it is so off-the-wall I can dismiss it, but some is just plausible enough that it might be true and being suppressed, like the report that the spike protein is toxic in and of itself, and using the mRNA vaccine to create it within the body will eventually kill everyone who gets it, within a few years.

      1. My poor brother went from his wife going “Yeah, visiting your parents is totally OK” to “go sit in a camp ground for two weeks” on the value of a DoD order.

        While he was literally in the air on the way home.

        And the plain only sat in an “at risk” area for two hours, to refuel, no-one let off.

        There’s a lot of folks who are… not sane.

        (Hey, many reasons I use a ‘nym.)

        There are a lot of folks who are so scared they are literally not rational– in a TV show, you’d slap them to try to make them have sense. (Note: does not work in reality.)

        1. Must slap them more. Note may result in terminal injury but that solves issue too.

      2. The latest dire warnings are just …headshakers… that rely on the average person having no grounding in biochemistry. (I cheated and majored in it, a long time ago but it still works much the same.) I’m tolerably sure some of these dire warnings are propagated specifically to scare those obstreperous rightwingers away from the vaccine, in the hope of more death or at least more paranoia that will make them easier to cut out of the herd.

        You’re exposed to the same spike protein if you get the virus. That’s the point, to provide your immune system with something to template antibodies from, WITHOUT needing to be ill from the virus itself. It will degrade in due course just like any other protein. (If that weren’t so, all the hundreds of different receptors wouldn’t =regularly= need their particular protein generated and stuffed into their particular receptor, at least if you want your metabolism to keep working. Think of it as a lock that only takes single-use, disposable keys.)

        An upside is it doesn’t really matter if the virus itself mutates (which it will, they all do), because the virus’ protein coat is quite stable, so once immunized (by vaccine or infection) your immune system will still know how to handle it for a long time to come. (SARS-1 immunity was lately found to be still good 16-17 years later, so.)

        As to the idea that it can “alter DNA” that’s just wrong. It’s a one-way metabolic pathway: DNA is the recipe for RNA which in turn provides a disposable template for making everything else (in this case, a spike protein). RNA cannot make DNA, therefore cannot alter DNA. You necessarily make plenty of mRNA of your own, too. (And eat it with pretty much everything protein.)

        However, if you fear this mRNA carrier, then you should be that much more afraid of an RNA virus. The mRNA just briefly wanders around, telling cells to “make this here protein”, annoying the immune system into doing something about it, and soon falls apart, and meanwhile the immune system treats the spike protein just like it would any other foreign protein, puts it on your internal shit list, and disposes of it. Conversely the RNA virus invades your cells, hijacks the cell’s DNA replication mechanism to reproduce itself, kills the cell, and spews forth copies of itself which in turn invade, hijack, and kill other cells. And you become “sick” in part because of all the debris that needs cleaning up. (Coughing up a lung? that gunk is largely dead cells from your lungs.)

        As to vaccine side effects, they seem to be a close parallel to the more severe virus effects, implying that the same person who reacts to the vaccine would react the same way but a lot worse to the virus itself (because the reaction is caused by your own immune system, NOT by the virus), and what’s been really looked at so far has indicated it’s indeed most likely an idiosyncratic autoimmune issue.

        The Wiki article summaries for “RNA vaccine” and “Messenger RNA” are pretty good for the layman.

        If you’re subject to autoimmune disease, then be cautious. Otherwise… well, I prefer the small risk of vaccine to the larger risk of actual disease. I’ve had my stabbings, and am none the worse for it.

        And if it were all about sterilizing folks, why was the biggest push to vaccinate people who are long past their reproductive lifespan?? and why withhold it from whites to provide more doses for leftists’ POC pets? whose ovaries did they grind up to determine that they were full of $scary???

        1. Still disappointed that the “m” doesn’t stand for midichlorians. 😉

          1. Disappointing, that is. Zap our would-be elites with Force lightning, you will not. Alas.

                1. naah, just shove em off a ledge. apparently, neither the Empire nor the Republic invented railings.

                  2. Heh. Reminds me of something I noticed in both KOTOR games: If you got Force Wave power, you could spam it against multiple opponents and they’d be too stunlocked to get a single hit on you. Even better if your Force Sensitive party members also had that power and you could do the same for them.

      3. Trust. That’s a biggie. Note that if you have had the Chinavirus, everybody but the not-vaccine advocates says that the immunity from the real thing is far better than the shot.

        I’ve seen articles stating that the vaccine adverse reaction rate for the mRNA injections is considerably higher than for conventional vaccines, but haven’t tried to delve into the official (whatever *that* means) numbers. If you want, the CDC has the latest, through here: https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html

        It’s been a long day, and I wasn’t going to mess with their search engine. Not sure I want to download the full database (233MB today), but it’s there.

        Me, I’m pretty sure that I got it, though my doc claimed that “nobody in the county had it at that time”, while I know that two people were hospitalized with Kung-Flu symptoms, but the CDC tests were not available–March 2020. I’m seeing him in a couple of days for routine gubbage. If the not-vax comes up, I’ll decline. Politely at first.

        2. Me, I’m pretty sure that I got it, though my doc claimed that “nobody in the county had it at that time”

          After being sick and 100°-feverish and exhausted for several weeks in February 2020, I finally went to my doctor. The conversation went like this:

          Dr.: “Eh, you have an unspecific virus. If you had ‘flu’ you’d feel like you’d been hit by a truck. You don’t feel that bad, so you don’t have the flu and I’m not going to bother with a test.”
          Me: “What about this Covid thing?” [remember, I live in Seattle]
          Dr.: “Don’t worry about it, that only hits old people in nursing homes.”

          Two days later on March 1, the first US fatality happened (in Seattle), and everybody went berserk and hoarded toilet paper etc.

          Of course, mere civilians could not get an antibody test until well over six months later, so I’ve never had any way to prove it one way or the other, but when I got my second vaccine shot I had zero side effects, almost as if my immune system already knew about it.

          1. Same with me. WuFlu was all through NYC in January certainly and possibly as early as November. My sons and I had COVID back in March 2020. It was inevitable since I travelled on the subway every day and my boys took public transportation too I had the mild fever, loss of taste, etc., my boys just a bad day and a little fever.

            I had a mild reaction to the first shot, none to the second. My sons, no reaction at all. My wife, who didn’t have any symptoms back in the beginning, ran 104 and we were on hospital watch after the first shot. nothing after the second. All in, the shots caused more problems than the wuflu did. All our reactions are consistent with the literature around side effects.

          2. “After being sick and 100°-feverish and exhausted for several weeks in February 2020”
            –
            Ditto. Most of December 2019. Not the flu, The-Cold-From-Hell, including the deep non-producing cough, not-quite-whooping-cough (which I’ve had as an adult, note whooping cough, after it has abated, the cough remains and cleans out lungs). After the first C19 vaccine, my shot arm ached. Bit tired, but BS all over the place and hadn’t been sleeping well, it happens. Which is to blame? Second shot, which is suppose to be the worst reaction, nothing. My typical shot reaction is a bruise, I bruise easily. A needle in the arm causes a bruise. The bruise hurts.

            Isn’t, by definition, CCPFacuiFlue defined as “The-Cold-From-Hell”?

            Conclusion. I’ve had the damn thing.

          3. I had an over-the-phone appointment soon after where they told me to call if I fell sick because they COULD test for flu.

            1. Part of the fun and games for my March 2020 hit was I felt bad enough to want a flu test. The testers were wearing nice positive-pressure headgear and bunny suits (“Chinavirus might not be here yet, but we don’t want to catch *anything*!”) and I had the usual face diaper for suspected flu patients*. As my wife put it, I failed the flu tests: came out negative for Flu A and Flu B.

              Current (for the while) doctor said last December, “Well, there’s lots of coronavirus diseases out there, and we only have a recorded COVID-19 case for April, which came from overseas travel.” I was remembering what the on-call flu-test doc (he who did my colonoscopy a couple months previous–he was familiar with patients feeling shitty, if nothing else. 🙂 ) said in the call with the test results. CDC Kung-flu tests were in short supply in Oregon, verboten for non-admitted patients, and they were having trouble getting tests for two people admitted for Wuhan-Chinavirus symptoms. All this in Mid-March.

              (*) Had to wear the face diaper a couple years previous, when I had an adverse reaction to the New! Improved! All Strains! pneumonia vax. 102F response when you’re 100 miles from home on *another* medical reason was not what I wanted. None of this has fueled my enthusiasm for new vaccines**, and especially for something on an Emergency Use Authorization. Let them finish the studies, and I’d still be reluctant, but my attitude might be a bit warmer than [several words deleted] no!

              (**) My reaction to my first flu vaccine in the late ’60s was also adverse. Refused to take another dose for 20 years or so, but now I tolerate it.

          4. In March 2020 I had something that felt like a worse-than-normal cold, but no fever or other signs of COVID infection so I thought it was my allergies flaring up worse than normal.

            OTOH, when I got the 2nd stage of the vaccine I had a mild fever and some fatigue for a couple days or so, so maybe it wasn’t COVID and my body was busy making defenses against the stuff in the vaccine.

          5. I probably had it in Jan-Feb 2020, but, given all the gunk I’m exposed to at Day Job, at the time it was just another lingering cough-blah-perhaps two days of low fever thing.

            1. Yeah, that was me and Mom, March of 2020. As it was identical to the crud I’d had in March of 2019 (and took just as long to shake, because whenever I get lung-or-sinus-related crud it morphs into bronchitis that requires steroids and heavy antibiotics to kick), I just assumed it was more of the same.

              We both now strongly suspect we might have had the ‘rona.

        3. The serious reaction rate (per documentation I’ve seen) is about 10% of that for say, measles vaccine, a very old and conventional vaccine…. even tho it’s been somewhat inflated by including crap like “fell off chair and hit head after getting shot” (apparently mistook the needle for a Glock).

          1. There have been multiple reports of doctors flatly refusing to report complications, and scolding people for talking about them.

            You can guess how scared THAT has me.

      4. >> “like the report that the spike protein is toxic in and of itself, and using the mRNA vaccine to create it within the body will eventually kill everyone who gets it, within a few years.”

        It’s a very dark thought – people I care about have taken the vaccine – but now I’m wondering how much easier it would be to fix the country if the people who willingly took the shot all just dropped dead.

        2. Given that those of us who took the shot for a given value of “willingly”…I’d prefer that not happen. :p We are not all lunatics who bought into the crazy, but for various reasons found it necessary to take the damn thing. :/

  6. Part two of the migration will start when small committees of neighbors in red areas ‘suggest’ to the local Kens and Karens that it would be best if they moved back to NY, CA, OR or (put your favorite blue location here). I think it is the only way to sort the country at this point.

    1. Won’t take that much, really.

      All it takes is going “No. Go screw yourself, you abusive bully.”

      Because most bullies are…well, bullies. They aren’t brave. They don’t have strong views. They think they have authority, so they use it.

      If you show that they don’t– they shift.

      And they can really be good neighbors, IF you are strong enough to have them.

      They get bad when you’re too weak (or lazy…some very unpleasant family stuff in there) to do anything useful.

      1. And then the bully calls up DHS and says my neighbors are “Jan 6 insurrectionists”. You really can’t live with Stasi next door.

        1. Yes, Snelson, same day that the federal employees I know who don’t do like your theory insists they must kill me.

  7. “If we told them they needed to burn people alive to prevent climate change, they’d already been building the pyres.”

    Read what they have to say about population reduction.

    Mass graves will definitely not be a bug if they win. They will be a feature all the way. The Eloi need lebensraum, don’tcha know? :/

    1. From the London anti-lockdown protests, as reported by Samizdata:

      “YOU are the carbon they want to reduce.”

    2. “You first” is my stock answer to people saying we need population reduction.

  8. Pingback: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » A Cabal of Our Enemies

  9. Prove to me that we’re not being run by a cabal of our enemies. Prove it.

    –
    Hell, I can’t even tell myself that. They loudly proclaim that they’re the enemies of everything this country stands for.

    Like I said in another post, they’re playing Jenga. Randomly yanking pieces out of our society and economy, too stupid to figure out that just because it hasn’t collapsed YET doesn’t mean it never will. Just because it has survived this long with 20 missing pieces doesn’t mean they can rip out 200 pieces.

    Now they want to tear up the roads leading to their Great Blue Enclaves? Are they in any way aware that trucks exist, and use those roads? That they are going to wind up eating each other, and not just ‘the rich’?
    ———————————
    There are forms of stupidity that businesses can’t indulge in. There are no such limitations on the stupidity of government.

      1. They’re organic veggies. That must mean they’re delivered organically!
        ———————————
        Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

      2. Not only produce, but everything else as well comes by truck. I can report from personal experience that the old dense cities are nightmares to navigate with an eighteen wheeler. This effort to undo previous road improvements will not help.

        2. I quite literally learned to drive a tractor-trailer in downtown Boston, then did deliveries in the city for years afterwards. I’ve been down in Florida for 16 years now, and still have sweating, panting, nightmares about every six months involving driving the roads. If they want to improve it, push it all into the bay.

          1. I presume you do NOT need “40 acres to turn this rig around” then – though it would certainly help. And I also suspect that the 40 sticks of dynamite would be very tempting indeed.

            1. The minimum width of firm surface to turn around is a little less than the length of the trailer. The minimum clearance between walls or fences is a bit more, as the trailer sticks out beyond the wheels in back and the tractor needs a bit of clearance to swing back around as well. Really tight maneuvering into docks and such is sometimes done by dedicated yard tractors that are much shorter than over the road tractors.

          2. We drove the Alaska Highway a few years ago. We drove from Fairbanks to Seward, with a stop outside Denali.
            The most stressful moment of the entire trip, for me, was after we got back, trying to find a parking space for a large pickup truck in downtown Charleston, SC.

      3. It will come on electric trains and trucks, and all be locally sourced and organic. Just like at those quaint Farmers’ Markets and specialty dining establishments that they order from. Or it will be delivered through Blue Apron™ or some other supplier via electric rolling drone, like the one in the pizza ad.

        I wish I were joking, but some of our self-proclaimed leaders really are that dim and ignorant of reality.

        1. So, coal powered pizza delivery then.

          The tell in all this is the absolute opposition to nuclear power, either currently operating or Gaia-forbid new, in spite of the technical developments in modular plant design and the history of accident free operation in the absence of catastrophic Kailua attack like they had a few years back in Japan.

          If they don’t embrace a lot of new nuclear, and oppose all fracking, it’s coal that will pick up the slack.

          2. Nope. If they have their way with with our society, the slack won’t be picked up. They’ve already started conditioning Karens and Kens in CA to the idea that power isn’t always on under the guise of avoiding wildfires… This is a feature, not a bug. Electric cars are another version of dope for the suckers. In fact all they will accomplish is to bring the electric grid down faster.

            1. I see people adding battery packs to their solar here due to PG&Es switch-off-at-whim shareholder-protection-at-all-cost-to-customers post-Paradise-fire policy.

              Again, if the grid stops being reliable, individual s exercise their agency to get reliable power.

              1. Indeed – after our neighborhood lost power (and water, too!) for a number of days in the Great Texas Freeze of February, 2021, a lot of my neighbors began looking seriously at generators, battery chargers, battery and solar-charged lanterns, and stocking up on propane and bottled water.
                Make the grid unreliable, and people will make their own arrangements.

                1. Nudges battery watering jug out of the way…

                  https://www.solar-electric.com/

                  I’ve worked with these people on 4 systems over 20 years now, ranging from 140W to 3.6 kW. Not necessarily my go-to choice for panels (the last project, I used Platt Electric supply), but important pieces are available here.

                2. I know that TPTB are encouraging grid-tie systems because small scale solar is sooooooo much more efficient than those nasty 1000MWe power plants*, but the hybrid solar system version is also a viable idea. I don’t use my larger one that way, but it has the capability of selling power to the grid, while keeping the batteries charged. If you lose the grid, you would still have power, rather than a fancy row of silicon lawn or roof ornaments.

                  Whether it’s a good idea for your neighbors to know that you have some uninterruptable power depends on your neighbors.

                  And yeah, if you have your own well, it’s an exceptionally good idea to have a grid-independent means of getting water. Similarly, if you have medical needs that need powered equipment.

                  (*) Did anybody see my eyes? I think they’re under the carpapult.

                  1. We can do solar with batteries, feeding back into the grid for credit … Water OTOH, we can’t. Water table is high enough, just not safe to drink, without extensive treatment.

                  2. For the woodsy property, I would prefer to run the house off an inverter attached to a battery bank attached to a solar power array, BUT with a switch so I can charge it off the grid OR off a generator. Hopefully that’s legal in rural Mason County. I do NOT want to feed solar power back into the grid, because usually that means if the grid goes down you have a big expensive roof ornament that you can’t use independently.

                    1. I think for systems that feed into the grid you can switch that part off. Or it is an option. I’d be very bummed if it isn’t … because yes, if grid is down, that is when my mini system is suppose to be available for me to use.

                  3. Hawaii, as an isolated power system, has power stability issues due to the heavy grid-tie solar installation, basically because of rooftop solar production fluctuations caused by clouds blowing by, but it looks like they are getting big thinking grid battery installations set up to try and stabilize things.

                    It also appears Hawaii is otherwise coal-fired – note sure why they would not prefer LNG:

                    https://reneweconomy.com.au/hawaii-approves-massive-battery-storage-project-to-help-end-coal-power/

          3. Ah, but they don’t want coal either and are actively reducing that. The plebes will be happy with their half hour of electricity.

            1. Problem is, you need electricity 24/7 for the idiot boxes to keep programming the drones. Only give 30 minutes of internet/MSM access per day, and people will find something else to do that the controllers won’t like.

        3. Ya know where most of those quaint urban Farmers Markets get their produce?

          Costco.

        4. The funny thing is that the guy generally acknowledged to be doing the best in the electric vehicle business, and who is also branching out into electric long-haul trucks – Elon Musk – has gone on record stating that the US doesn’t have the necessary power infrastructure to support switching all of the diesel freight trucks with electric ones. And, as he simultaneously noted, that’s before you even start looking at switching over all of the family vehicles to electric.

          1. There was a good Frank and Ernest this year, where farm kids, grown up, tutted over how Frank and Ernest (as children) didn’t know food came from farms, not stores; then Frank and Ernest, tutted about how children didn’t know that food didn’t come from trucks but stores.

          1. They used to sell little pronged covers you could push into your 110v sockets so your electricity wouldn’t leak out.

            At least, I can’t figure out any other reason for them…

            1. Then you’ve never had any two-year-old electricians in your house……. 😎

              1. Theoretically. I remember pulling them out of the sockets when I was little. The dog liked to chew on them.

            3. I’ve used them as a ‘this socket is not good to use’ when there was a gap between discovering a problem and bring able to get it fixed.

              1. So just as a general data point and not dunking on wyrdbard, but coworker and spouse got to live in one of those residence hotels for over 6 months a few years ago when an unused socket in a spare bedroom decided to start spitting sparks into the bed in front of it while they were home, setting bedding and mattress on fire and requiring the insurance company pay to fully remediate the entire house just from smoke damage.

                Had they not been home and killed the main breaker it would have been a lot worse.

                Any known socket issue is a major issue.

        3. Or the complexity of the supply chains that keep the food plentiful and cheap.

          We should force them to watch farming videos and trace back all the equipment, parts, fuels, chemicals, people, and other resources required to prep, plant, maintain and harvest.

          1. The book about all the ingredients of Twinkies — that one is actually pretty good about the complicated beauty of our system of farming and industry. The guy started out being a total jerk, and achieved some kind of enlightenment.

            That said, he then wrote more books where he was a jerk, IIRC.

            1. There’s a video of “Cuban visits Walmart for the first time,” and it’s heartbreaking. Because he’s doing fine with enjoying all the variety of foods and clothes, and just wanting that… but then he sees the selection of girls’ toys, and you can tell it is hurting him the most that his daughter and all the other Cuban kids are growing up without that kind of choice and fun.

              1. Robin Williams visiting the coffee aisle in “Moscow on the Hudson”, and literally having a mental breakdown in the store at the massive number of choices available.

          2. Better yet, give ’em a digging stick, a sack of proto-wheat, and an acre of unturned prairie… and tell ’em we expect bread on the table in the morning. 😉

    2. Indeed – the progs who think that they are in charge are pulling out the pieces in the Jenga tower right and left … and the more they pull and the faster they work at it … the sooner it may collapse. I think that in Texas we’ll be mostly OK, as long as the proggie idiocy in Austin, parts of Houston and Dallas/Ft. Worth doesn’t get totally out of hand.
      But destroying and restricting roads in blue cities is a whole ‘nother degree of idiocy.

      1. Dallas keeps talking about putting up tollbooths and levying a “congestion charge” like London. It has come up periodically since the late 1980s that I know of. They’ve signed agreements with a couple of different companies over the years, but never followed through.

        It’s some kind of memetic disease; once they get it into their heads, they can’t let go of it.

        1. “Put up tollbooths.”

          TxTollTags already have them on many of the major highways. Do they mean putting them up on the surface streets? Good luck with that. There’s nothing in Dallas itself that isn’t available in the larger suburbs like Plano.

    3. The rich and well connected will have fresh veggies delivered to their door. The plebs will drink their cockroach shake and munch their cricket salad. They better be happy with it…or else. No, no victory gardens in your yard or house!! Eat your bugs you vermin.

  10. I don’t know why getting rid of freeways hasn’t woken up more people. Damn sheeple. Our cities except for NYC and they lost most of their diners, are not made for walking to breakfast and walking to the park. If you do that in this city (Las Vegas) you’ll end up with heat exhaustion. The closest food by foot is at the end of the street which is a 1/3 of a mile away and it is a small burrito joint in a gas station. Trains? Those guys either haven’t been in the middle of the country or are just stupid. I vote for stupid.

        1. South Bend is full of woke, supposedly-Catholic people who attended Notre Dame or Saint Mary’s, but didn’t learn a darned thing either useful or religious. It also has a Democratic party machine that’s an offshoot of Chicago. So basically the local Democratic machine just elected somebody woke and good-looking, who never had to face the will of the people, to a mayoral position which was probably too much for the guy’s abilities.

          And now… the South Bend political machine has gotten rid of him, and made him someone else’s annoying problem. So they have a little bit of survival instinct left.

          1. I was seriously abandoned as a Catholic student.

            I stumbled around.

            I managed to either convert or “shift to not actively antagonistic” for at least a dozen folks, just by being able to answer basic questions.
            Which I learned from stumbling around. (Thank you, Jimmy Akin.)

    2. I’ve not heard much talk on the getting rid of freeways brainstorm. Like in very little talk at all. So folks may not know it’s actually being considered.

  12. I think the China model is their main referent – in post-Mao China they did the “agriculture people displace to big cities to get jobs requiring less top labor standing in poo-filled flooded fields” similar to what the US did before WWII. But the self-annointed, having not ever learned any US history since it’s all raaaacis’, think they can do the same thing and make the peasantry move into stack-a-prole towers to work as Foxconn-slaves in the US.

    Instead everyone took one look at “get back in the subways, don’t worry that all the restaurants and nightlife all is boarded up, ignore the soaring violent crime – just stay in your overpriced apartment!” and exercised their individual agency.

    It’s going the other way, in a post-industrial information worker labor diaspora, and all the supporting infrastructure will be following.

    It’s actually shaping up to be one the biggest oopsies in the inevitable arrows long history of oopsies.

    2. And a lot of people are now gardening veggies and things like that, and learning new barterable [it is too a word!] skills, so they won’t be penned into apartment towers again, worrying where their food and shelter are going to come from.

      1. If it gets to the point where a victory garden is necessary to have enough to eat… someone is going to have to guard it 24/7. Not primarily from other hungry people; from the ones who are being fed by the State, who think trashing your plot would be hilarious fun.

        2. The penultimate level of hedging is gold and gemstones. The ultimate level of hedging is soil, seed potato’s and a shotgun. You can live on potatoes, and if you contrive to find some buttermilk you’ll put on weight. The shotgun is for people who want to steal the potatoes.

          1. The problem with gold and gemstones is the government trying to repeat what FDR did, and outlawing the private ownership of them. Sure, you don’t need to hold onto them. But it becomes more difficult to use them in transactions if the person that you’re trading them to can’t legally dispose of them.

            Not a game ender by any means. But something to keep in mind.

            1. Bleh…

              Mean “don’t need to give them up”, not “don’t need to hold onto them.” Sadly, I can’t blame that one on an auto-correct screw-up.

            2. Yes! Thank you for bringing this up, because it’s one of the reasons I am not against fiat currency, as we have here. When you play games with the assets of an asset-backed currency, it becomes much closer to a fiat currency than the asset-backed beast it’s claimed to be. Go full fiat and avoid the exploitation and conflict asset-backeds entail.

            3. When one reaches the penultimate level of hedging, the government is no longer relevant. When one reaches the ultimate level, the government is only a memory.

  13. A century from now, the early 2020’s will be known as “the great unmasking”.

    The enemy (home and elsewhere) was made obvious. Their cloaking device was wrecked. And their current panic is going to explode in ’22.

  14. Here they’re doing it by putting Tolls on the roads. They’re talking about putting a toll on the US 2 Trestle, which is the only practical way in or out of where I live.

    1. Are these the automatic camera based toll roads, or they have actual people staffing booths with lever arms in them?

      The automatic camera ones depend on a good bit of voluntary compliance.

        1. The toll lanes out here use an ugly stick-it-to-your-windshield transponder. I expect the freqs and codes are already out there on the vast intertubes, with board designs and parts lists. Though I expect you could do it more deniably in software with one of the many SDR gizmos.

          1. Being government mandated transponder system they probably have a near-unbreakable security system:

            Anyone who tries to understand the specification is driven start raving mad.

      2. And even more on the populace not actively vandalizing them.

        I recall officials trying to place speed cameras in an area where most speed limit signs had multiple holes.
        It went about as you’d expect, but the sheer enthusiasm of the predictable consequences was impressive.

        1. Cameras aren’t hard to bulletproof; preventing someone with a good laser printer from generating fake temporary tags that you drive off the lot with is much harder.

          1. 180 grains @ 2,800 fps is not all that easy to protect against.
            That’s not considering paint, potential internal damage from acceleration events., power source overload events, etc.

            Say what you like about rednecks, they do love a good challenge.
            And overkill.

      3. Both automatic camera and RFID devices. If they have to use the camera because you don’t have the device, they tack on an extra $2,

      4. Actually, they don’t at all. Drive through the tollbooth, camera photos the license plate, crossref to DMV, you get the bill.

      5. Not really. Maryland is quite good at issuing bills for the “convenience fee” for not having the little box for them to scan on your windshield. Auto license plates do have an address associated with them.

    2. I can’t help seeing that as ‘putting Trolls on the roads’.

      Trolls would eat the commuters, and the Democrat elitists would be happy. Shooting the Trolls would of course be a crime.
      ———————————
      There is no shortage of people convinced they can create the perfect world. They just have to eliminate all those imperfect people who don’t fit in it.

    3. Mauser, part of why I “met” you is the lady who owned our /blob house was getting charge– back in like ’08.

      Years before that, I found out they had the e-toll system…because they billed the (Eastern WA) ranch I lived on for the (could barely move over 20 mph) vehicle for crossing a bridge. A lot.

      Neither were ever paid. Because the system is so close to spam malware it’s disgrace.

      Use, I know legit users use them.

      I am still pissed.

    1. Why? You’re at your best when you’re completely immoderate!
      ———————————
      Bring out yer dead!

  16. I keep wondering what would happen if someone asked the high priests of the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming whether it’s possible Gaia yearns for a return to the millions of years of warm, shallow seas caressing her surface and the lush, primordial jungles and forests which thrived in that warm climate. What if cutting CO2 and keeping things cools is against her plans?
    I wonder if that could start a religious war. I’m not sure I want to know.

    1. Much of the coal is indeed fossil. I don’t think ice ages were common until after the dinosaurs, and so late. Perhaps the release of all the carbon is needed to save life on earth.

      1. Ice Ages have occurred in regular epicycles as far back into the Archean Precambrian as we can see with any reliability.

        If the cycle of inundation and exposure was altered by the massive drop in CO2 that occurred in the Carboniferous, it’s at a scale too small for us to see.

        Long-term, we’re on the inundation side of the sine wave, but we’ve got an Ice Age or two in front of us. (Although they won’t be as extreme as the Nebraskan or Kansan.)

      2. 700 million years ago there was a global “snowball earth” event that was worst than the Post-Cretaceous ice ages. There may have been a few waaaaaaaaaay back when, during the Ediacarian or before it, but those also long predate coal.

        1. Cool!
          I’m *cough* decades behind in the literature, so this Sturtian glaciation is new to me.
          (And isn’t it awesome that in Geology, the wild theories are often a magnitude smaller than the evidence they lead to? I might be squeeing a bit.)

          1. And from looking that up, this is a cool (ha!) Sturtian glaciation image:

    2. Having pointed out the fact that CO2 levels were about 20% of the atmosphere for most of the planet’s existence, instead of the trace gas they are now…

      I can assure you that they do not care.
      It’s straight-up “Two Legs Bad”.

      1. Also, the simple fact is that the geological record proves beyond reasonable doubt that life thrives when the Earth is warmer; it is cold periods that result in life suffering and mass extinctions.

        Of course they really don’t care whatsover about climate. Its why on CBS, one of the alarmists can openly say that the 1.5C temperature they picked as the “tipping point” was “just a number they picked”; i.e. they simply made it up as they went along. The sole purpose of the climate hysteria is the accumulation of totalitarian power. Period. With 100 exclamation points afterwards.

    3. Heh. Bold of you to assume they actually *care* what Mother Gaia wants, as opposed to gaining power/wealth for themselves by whatever means necessary :p

      The ones who actually believe the “Mother Gaia” stuff are out on their subsistence level farms, ‘getting back to nature’ and getting threatened with divorce by their spouses for wanting to install a composting toilet.

      All others are just in it for the power and the money, baby.

    4. Mother Gaia had a perfectly good nitrogen/CO2 atmosphere until those pesky bacteria contaminated it with their waste oxygen.

  17. “If we told them they needed to burn people alive to prevent climate change, they’d already been building the pyres.”

    For the love of God, don’t give them ideas.

      1. Thirded.

        Seriously, these people would institute Moloch worship or the rituals of the Aztecs if they thought they could get away with it.

        1. *Grimaces* These are the people who read time-travel stories where Carthage was not destroyed and think that’d give us a utopia and space travel centuries ahead of where we currently are.

          And they think the Aztecs were peaceful, just slandered by Eeeeeevul Conquistadors, and there’s nothing wrong with teaching their rituals in California schools to kids whatsoever.

          1. “Don’t call up what you are not positive you can send back,” I believe was the first lesson in Summoning 101.

            2. Never summon anything bigger than your head. -from offshoot of the Evil Overlord list, something about being a cultist.

            1. That, plus no Aztec (Mexica, really) ever got within a thousand miles of Alta California. Most of the Mexican immigrants to the area aren’t from the Valley of Mexico, either, IIRC being mostly from either the impoverished north or impoverished south of the country and therefore being of mixed Spanish/Yaqui or Spanish/Zacatec or Spanish/Maya ancestry.

              So really, aren’t the California school district(s) in question just being vile evil racists against the actual local Chumash, Serrano, Costanoan, etc. peoples?

                1. There is already at least one First Amendment suit ready to launch as soon as the new curriculum does. “State promotion of a specific religion” applies to everything, not just Christianity, or so the argument will go. (The key case is Engel v. Vitale, for those wondering about the precedent.)

              2. I don’t think it’s a “getting back to our forebears” thing, so the geography doesn’t really matter. IIRC, it’s more of a “throw in a grab bag of religions in the name of diversity” bit of nonsense.

          3. Even though I’m not planning to send Daughter to any schools at the moment… this here is why I’m making a point to emphasize “this guy refused to worship the local gods/rulers” and “this guy refused to renounce God” stories. x_x

        3. There are those who snark at Planned Parenthood and similar ilk by calling them “Moloch-worshippers” (due to support for abortion).

      1. Just read Prescott’s history of Mexico last year. Given the Azteca managed to shock the Spanish (who probably shocked a lot less easily than we do)…
        I saw one source that also suggested what historians knew at the time the book was written (several decades ago at least) was the Aztec religion was intensely pessimistic, even despairing. Human sacrifice was meant to stave off the end of thr world…and eventually the world would end anyway.

        1. I literally read a historian claiming the account of Aztecs’ sacrificing 80,400 prisoners to dedicate a temple was Spanish demonization. Apparently the idea that Aztecs were proud of such things escaped her.

          1. Human sacrifice in Central America goes back to at least the Olmec. However, the Aztec seem to have the lock on largest scale of human sacrifices.

            1. Which is why all the other nations joined with Cortez against the Aztec.

              Our credentialed class really don’t know much about much do they.

            1. As well as the stylish skull display racks, full of skulls!

              Even a BBC Radio history show thought it was hilarious that all these woke folks had been dissing the ridiculous stories put out by Spanish conquistadors about all these skull racks with thousands of skulls, because of course that couldn’t be true! Until the archaeologists found a bunch of the racks, and that the conquistadors were exactly correct about how many skulls per rack, and so on.

                1. Just remember the same leftists demanding land acknowledgments and screaming about “theft of native lands” are generally the same people who are the most vocal about denying the entirety of Jewish history and the historical Jewish presence in what is now modern Israel, including Judea and Samaria, that goes back well over 2500 years and demand that these areas that are the historic Jewish homeland be completely purged of Jews.

            2. Once, on another forum, someone was asking for examples of what a human civilization that worshipped one of the Warhammer Chaos Gods might look like. I straight up used the Aztecs as the example of Khorne worshippers.

        2. It says a lot when Cortez’s response to finding out what was going on in the nearby Aztec temple was to *immediately* piss off the locals (while he was surrounded by them in their capitol city) by sending his men to seize and despoil that temple.

          1. Reading about Cortez after reading about what the Ottomans, Wallachians, Croats, and Hungarians were doing to each other, and knowing that the Spanish were aware of the warfare styles on the eastern frontier . . . If he recoiled in horror, it had to be really, really, really bad.

            1. I suspect not only because it was so horrifying it made, say, impalement look mild by comparison, it was also the fact that they were doing it to their own people. Mostly, the folks back at home were doing it to their traditional enemies, so I’d guess that fell under the category of “well, it’s war, they’re enemies, that’s how it is” whereas the Aztecs didn’t confine themselves to enemies, they did it to their own folks. And children.

              1. Err, actually the Aztecs sacrificed prisoners of war. That’s why they went to war. Except for the babies sacrificed to the rain god, those were indeed taken from their own people, probably because the requirements were determined at birth.

                One of the great mysteries is why so many prisoners cooperated in their own sacrifices. The line of victims may be historical, but there were fairly complex rites with complex parts for the victim, so drugging wouldn’t do it.

                1. Oh, I wasn’t saying they *didn’t* sacrifice prisoners of war, just that they ALSO sacrificed at least as many of their own people. 🙂

  18. “Prove to me that we’re not being run by a cabal of our enemies. Prove it.”

    Careful, Sara. Keep thinking like this & soon you’ll end up using triple parentheses…on the other hand, it comes with the benefit of a lot of great jokes.

  19. Our modern civilization is supported by trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure which has been incrementally developed and optimized over the last hundred and fifty years. It takes a special kind of idiot to believe all of that can just be ripped out and replaced with something completely different by government decree and have anything still work.

  20. Maybe I’m an optimist, but I think it might be closer to this:

    Bootygig: Roads are racist.

    Normal Person: Well, that’s not the dumbest thing you’ve said.

    PB: We should tear up the roads.

    NP: That’s stupid. No.

    PB: See, there’s an example of systemic racism.

    1. My number two son pointed out that all the Biden bots have done so far is talk. Student debt forgiveness seems to be off the table for example. They’re so inept. Maybe we should take heart in their incompetence as they make the libertarian point for us.

      2. The Biden bots said whatever they needed to, in order to get Biden elected* The fact that they are now reneging on said “promises” should not in the least be surprising.

      3. I suspect that has more to do with who is getting paid by service of the debt.

        Most of the students who wanted debt forgiveness are going to vote left regardless, and if you screw over the banks, you’ve just made an enemy.

        That and, as I recall, aren’t most student debts now owned by the federal government?

  21. It’s all so sad. Communist China would collapse given a few good shoves, but now they have their guy in the White House and so they’ll be able to kill more people than they otherwise would. I still think they’ll collapse, the demographics are clear, but it’ll be a longer, bloodier process.

    1. I was very interested today to see an allegedly-reputable headline (NYT, I think?) proclaiming that That Particular Government is now allowing three-child families.

      1. *at six*

        Can we nuke the bastards?

        Like, target the grandparent aged bastards now going “K, you aren’t going to be likely killed with a forced abortion, now you need to make three kids”?

      2. Doesn’t matter. When the government in Beijing got rid of the One Child policy, there was an immediate baby bump… which then disappeared the following year as everyone who wanted a second child now had it. Most of the population at large has become so used to just one child that they don’t want a second child anymore. Increasing the number of kids that parents can have even more will have only a minimal effect on the population. In order to get the population to increase even further, Beijing is going to need to find a good way to change how the population at large thinks. And that’s probably going to require a massive propaganda push of some sort, or subsidization.

    2. Heh. Just saw a headline today along the lines of “China mandating people have three or more kids isn’t working out like they want it to.” Why? Because the people are going “Um…we can’t afford to feed that many kids…”

      1. They left it too long. China’s prime working age population (25-54) will decline, best case, by 20% through 2040. Further, they have a huge shortage of women so who, precisely, is going to bear these children?

        We are looking at the biggest demographic decline since the Black Death The only country in the world with anything resembling healthy demographics is the United States.

        1. And I’m left wondering how much of the “healthy” demographics in the US is due to immigration.

          2. Likely both. I’m seeing a lot of inter-marriage, and generally they’re the ones who have kids soonest, and in the most numbers.

          1. Israel looks like a developing country, they have a lot of very young. On the other hand, the population of Israel is just about the population of NYC not counting the suburbs.

            Some countries are in better shape than others. Argentina is OK whilst Brazil is fairly ugly. Most of Europe has an age pyramid I call the arrowhead with a clear baby boom and then nothing. China’s is all over the place but the demo collapse is clear. South Korea is scary too.

            1. What I saw in Poland included a lot of school-aged kids running around. I don’t know if that’s true of the whole country or not.

              1. According to the numbers, and with all disclaimers about the accuracy of the numbers, not so much, not as bad as the more western countries but a very clear baby boom that’s not being replaced. The thing with age pyramids is that you can follow the losses from the war and their echos are clear. Russia’s pyramid looks like a lightning bolt.

                It could be that the Poles let their children out to run around, unlike many of my neighbors who make their one child wear a helmet to play soccer.

                1. Israel is about the size of New Jersey, so imagine 4000 rockets shot at New Jersey in a period of 11 days. That is what Hamas just did, to the cheers of much of the Democratic Party.

            2. In 2010 in Romania, I was part of a two-week class at the American-Romanian University. Thy took us to the EU office in Bucharest, where we met with an official (he may have been a commissioner; had the impression he was high-ranked).
              In the middle of a a fairly bland group chat, he suddenly said that if Europe didn’t start growing, “We will become a museum.” It came out of nowhere, and it struck me that he’d had a sudden, bleak attack of honesty.

          1. They do push not having kids too young. They push college. Then when you get out of college must go to work in your field or lose what you paid for on education. Then when ready, mid to late 20’s or even 30’s, gee, it is difficult to get pregnant, provided everything else is in place.

            I mean, people, especially other women, were shocked, absolutely shocked, I came up visibly pregnant, months from graduation, when everyone at the same place is scrambling with finding employment immediately on graduation. Here I am figuring on at minimum a 6 month leave instead. (I’d have taken more than 6 months, or forever, if financial life hadn’t rared it’s ugly head, again; hubby/dad got laid off. Again.) My response? “Only took 10 years!”

            Only reason it took 4 weeks after my one and only resume application went out was because an ice storm hit the I-5 corridor and Oregon coast. No one was going anywhere for an interview, let alone the people who needed to drive for the first interview to meet with me, or me. Then on interview day, in Gardiner on the Oregon Coast, hubby and baby went too. They stayed in vehicle. When interview was done, changed out of interview cloths, and we took baby to his first beach day, Oregon style (i.e. bundled, Oregon coasts are NOT warm). Sat him on beach sand, and stopped him from eating it.

          2. Remember that part of this is years worth of “undercounted,” non-existent women not having babies, and assuming that illegals are here forever. So the woman that has three children, claiming to be a 16 year old each time (thus not recorded, thus three different women…for the stats) who then goes home with the mad they made is going to have a huge impact on the stats.

            Yeah, we do have a HUGE problem with bigots who can’t stand replacement-or-higher families, and emotional abuse of folks who have kids, especially if they are women in a marriage.

            Doesn’t mean the TFR estimate is accurate.

      2. China took away people’s propane furnaces, mandated that everybody use natural gas, and then had ridiculously expensive heaters that nobody could afford to buy, and had such high natural gas prices that nobody could use them with gas. So a lot of people are just living in unheated “modern” apartments and houses.

      3. There’s a large chunk of “it’s harder to fake not having a child than sterility.”

  23. This reminds me of a Funky Winkerbean cartoon from the distant past: teacher takes a load of city kids out to a farm and explains: “Here is where they grow green beans. When ripe, they are harvested, sent to a factory to be canned, and then sent to grocery stores.” beat. Kid tells the teacher: “Wow, you have a vivid imagination.” Those kids now run the nation.

    I’ve had trouble getting basic garden fertilizers at the local Home Despot. Too much demand and too little supply, I’m guessing. I know just enough about growing food to understand that there’s no way I can feed us from a 1/6th acre suburban lot, short of tearing everything down and building two-story greenhouses. Which are hard to defend, and requite tons of water I’m at the mercy of the public utilities to supply. So… I really wish places where 20 farmable acres and a house are available for 25% of what a nice suburban California home goes for were not also blessed with a subtropical climate in the middle of Tornado Alley.

    1. What agricultural zone are you in? Drop me an e-mail and I can talk wild/unexpected stuff with you, if it’s a climate I’m remotely familiar with. Trufox at the Mail of Protons.

    2. HFY-esque…

      Yes, they call the their planet ‘earth’ and that’s a name for… dirt. This is not that the planet is unimportant. It’s recognition that dirt is of absolute importance. How many mouths do farmless worlds feed?

  24. As a friend determined 55 years ago: someone’s dad made everything. It’s dads all the way up the chain. It’s the web of civilization.

    2. *generations of moms stand to the side, being Not Amused, while the dads try to explain that the comment is meant to include the group outcome*

      Look, man, at a time with all these nonsense girl vs boy junk, declaring something to be “dads” really doesn’t help.

      Dads and moms, BECAUSE they are functional adults who can form a productive membership, made stuff.

      To start with, children.

      But also ideas.

      The dads were usually the public face, because they can take a punch to the face and punch back.

      Moms fought the more subtle attacks, like “you didn’t make that.”

      My husband is 100% in charge of the house.
      In no small part because he’s smart enough to realize an army without a supply train is DEAD.

  25. Oh golly Sarah, you perhaps are paranoid, but that doesn’t mean they ain’t out to get us.

    OK, you’re, if at all, only a wee bit paranoid compared to me. I’m not selling it, I’m not necessarily buying it, but in thee wee hours of the night sometimes I can’t help but wonder about the fall of, not America, but of all civilization as we know it.

    Global warming? How dare you question a mentally ill teenager reading from a script! Her word is the word worldwide! Eat bugs, cow flatulence, 4th greatest contributor to global warming and destruction!

    America’s homeless? EU’s already got cradle to grave bubble wrap protection, homeless without permit is forbidden. No worries though, they can, and do, import tens of, nay hundreds of thousands from mid-eastern sand lots.

    Nations pledging to outlaw internal combustion vehicles by the mid 2030s. Nations, world wide civilized nations! Tune in, plug in or don’t go out!

    The bad China Cold vaccine, not a vaccine but a DNA modifier. If some lab nerd found an anti-fertility code, a snip, a minuscule strip, a dot of ribonucleic acid that shuts down ovaries and (With noble intentions, we must reduce population to save the planet!) stuck it in the MRNA called the save humanity vaccine, could anyone isolate and/or identify it, even if they were inclined to do so? I suspect not, not even nine months from now if maternity wards become strangely empty.

    For decades I really couldn’t buy conspiracy theories, 2 folks OK but 3, one’s gonna blab it to the world. I have to allow however, today if one of the three blabs, the media, the fact checkers, the right thinkers will explain to us 24/7 that it’s all balderdash and all’s right with the world spin, -and the majority, the vast majority, will swallow the spin hook line and sinker.

    Cabal? Illuminati, Bohemian Grove, Jewish bankers, IBEW, Masons, Bilderberg Group, Club of Rome, China, Russia, small potatoes or imaginary.

    Consider instead all billionaires secretly mind chipped by the Lord of the Mountain, hidden and unknown, safe and protected in his fortress monastery deep in the wilds of Portugal, commanding that covert brotherhood of fearless, completely insane masters of law makers, graft takers and lawyers!

    You paranoid Sarah? Here, hold my beer.

      2. Jimmy Akin did a really good two-parter on the Georgia Guidestones. The guy meant well, and he paid well. So overall, the local stonecutters were happy to have had an interesting job.

    3. On the one hand, multi-generational, international, interlocking conspiracies, hidden agendas, and secret manipulations of the media, the educational system, and entire governments.

      On the other hand, Lizard People.

      I, for one, welcome our new scaly overlords. What’s the likelihood of them being worse than the idiots we have now?

      1. David Icke named me a reptilian when I wouldn’t let him cut in front of me in a pub on the Isle of Wight back in the early oughties, and he’s the expert so it must be true. I can say with confidence that I, your lizard overlord, am a much better class of idiot than the idiots we have now.

    4. Remember ALL the people in the State Department that had to know for YEARS about Hillary’s emails. This HAD TO include Security Officers. And NOTHING!!!
      Remember ALL the people in the IRS that HAD TO know about the targeting of the TEA Party and said NOTHING!!!
      Remember ALL the low level FBI agents that NEVER said a word!

    5. “I have to allow however, today if one of the three blabs, the media, the fact checkers, the right thinkers will explain to us 24/7 that it’s all balderdash and all’s right with the world spin,”

      This is what happened when Ben Rhodes flat out publicly stated that the press is a pack of easily led, gullible, fools.

      Of course, since he was saying that about the press, the press had a need to try and repudiate the statement, or otherwise explain it away. But it should have provoked at least a *little* navel-gazing. Sadly, it doesn’t appear to have done so.

    6. Can’t help wondering about all the millions of bison killed by dastardly hunters. By liberal logic, they did us a favor…

      “It only takes one, you know, in the right position.” He laughed softly. “People talk about conspiracies, but why bother with bringing other people into a conspiracy when you can just influence a million people in the right direction? One percent of them will do precisely what you expect. Then it’s just a matter of being ready to use the supposed coincidence.”

      1. >> “It only takes one, you know, in the right position.”

        What is that from?

      2. I mean…from what little I’ve picked up from nigh-on ten years of working at the BLM (the fed one, not the terrorist one, heh) regarding grazing management…those bison were waaaaay overpopulated, and almost definitely stressing the ecosystem–and there weren’t enough Indians to keep their numbers down. (Not to mention those are the kinds of critters that hunting with bows and arrows is definitely a risky business. While not as pissy as moose, there’s a damn good reason Yellowstone has felt it necessary to put up signs everywhere that say things like “Do not attempt to pet the fluffy cows.” Hell, DOMESTIC cows are freaking dangerous…)

        1. “there’s a damn good reason Yellowstone has felt it necessary to put up signs everywhere that say things like “Do not attempt to pet the fluffy cows.” ”

          I’ve never understood why they don’t want to keep the theory of evolution working….

          Why, yes, I AM a misanthrope. What tipped you off? 😎

          1. Because of the existence of the largely-scum-sucking breed known as “litigation lawyers” I imagine…If they put the signs up, then (in theory) no one can say it’s THEIR fault when some idiot STILL attempts to pet the fluffy (grumpy) cows.

            Not that that stops people, but it is a step in ensuring they’ll lose the inevitable lawsuit… :p

            1. Heck people don’t get the point Yellowstone is a freaking Wilderness. You should overhear the complaints from lack of cell coverage (or read about it in Yellowstone FB group, not that group members let these type get away with it … FB is good for somethings .. I block ads).

          2. Natural selection — making the world a better place, one idiot at a time.

          3. There are places that have to put up signs warning that the mountain will be dark after the sun goes down.

            1. Both Yellowstone and Tetons have two posted speeds. One for daytime. The other, slower, for night time. Trust me the latter is too fast. We were headed “home” (campsite) along the Yellowstone river one night, when the oncoming vehicle started flashing it’s brights at us (wrong thing to do, F.YI, all it did was blind the driver, hubby). As he is swearing at the idiot, I told him to “Stop the truck. It is an animal in the road”, he was already slowing down, because oncoming car and river on the right, but not stopping. His response was “You don’t know that.” Me. “No. But it makes sense.” FYI he did stop. Just then a big bison came into the headlights. People, we could see the head and hump of the bison higher than the hood of our old 4×4 ’80 heavy duty Chevy Pickup (note, not short off the ground). I’ve seen the damage an elk, deer, or bear, can do to a vehicle; not personal experience. I do not want to see what a bison or moose will do. Worse, our 14 month child was sitting between us (in car seat) during the above incident.

              1. People get killed running into moose all the time. The hood knocks the legs out so the one ton body can crush the entire cab.

                1. The Wildlife Refuge near Fort Sill, OK is what I’m reminded of.

                  You drove about 10 mph on moonless nights because those buffalo used the road just like we did. You could hear them before you saw their eyes glow a little. F’ers were BIG.

                  1. Funny how the wildlife take advantage of those wide paths we’ve provided them to move around between valleys. I mean they even take advantage of bridges to cross swift rivers with their calves, cubs, kittens, etc. The geyser basin walkways also have to be not only engineered for people, but engineered for bison too.

                    1. One of my favorite Dad stories was the one where he described two does coming upon a snowfield. They sat down and rode their behinds down the slope, steering with their front feet and leaning into the curves.

              2. Had a black angus bull (roughly the same size as a healthy age buffallo) that got hit by one of those little pickups– hit it right to just roll straight over the vehicle.

                Result looked like if you took a toy and slapped your hand flat down on it.

                1. Yes. Very familiar with open range, and collision results with cattle. Not pretty.

                  Our old pickup wasn’t particularly little, or light, and old enough that “crumple zones”, weren’t designed in. It was single cab. Still glad never found out how it would have held up against a Yellowstone Bison. OTOH I’d rather had been in that old pickup than our most recent two, 2006 Tacoma, 2010 Silverado, with their composite body construction, in a theoretical collision with said bison. (We loved the Tacoma, but it’s tow rating (8k) was just barely above the loaded capacity of our 2008 trailer, even with tow level and sway bars. The Silverado, same 1500 rating, OTOH, tow rating (10k) capacity was well over the loaded capacity of the same trailer; also outfitted with same safety equipment. There is a difference between can it tow and should it tow, a particular item. It matters. What is scary, if one is paying attention, and knows, one can tell who is loaded to, or above, tow rig capacity.)

  26. I hope that all who lurk, contribute, or otherwise live in this precious free thinking space are regular readers of the wattsupwiththat.com website. For those who have never heard of it, it is the #1 science website, by acclimation. If you want to know the climate change/damage/horror/destruction (pick one) idiocy of the moment and the clear, concise rebuttals to same, become a regular reader. Willis Eschenbach writes clear cogent articles extending our knowledge of the marvelous stability of our climate over 100s of millions of years. Note that the real temperature of the planet is properly measured from 0 Kelvin, not 0 degrees Celsius. Using the correct base reference, the temperature has varied less than +/- 3% over that period.

    W.E.’s latest contribution @ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/30/geocarbsulf/
    contains the following lines:
    “So I got to thinking about their paper. The first thing that made my urban legend detector start ringing was a statement in the Abstract above that you might have gone right past, viz:

    We show that weaker chemical weathering relative to the a priori model configuration via reduced weatherable land area yields better agreement with temperature records during the Cretaceous.

    Translated from Scientese into English, one possible meaning of this is:

    We adjusted the climate model’s tunable parameters so the output agrees better with our theory that CO2 controls the climate.

    Not an auspicious start …”

    I leave it to the readers to enjoy his delicious dismemberment of another “robust” climate fantasy paper. We are way better off than you might think!

    1. For a much more accessible presentation of climate data, see Tony Heller’s videos on the Tube of You. Had a good one today showing how the data is being massaged in new and different ways to make new and scarier bogus graphs.

    3. I may have to start following.

      Before, I could safely judge that where my business was concerned, climate science was junk, and did not need any further investigation by me.

      Well, I’ve found some climate science adjacent stuff that I think I have an actual need to look into.

    1. (And boy did it take me a long time to parse that sentence the first time I read it)

  28. Anyone remember when Admiral Heinlein was begging for Americans to leave the cities because they were prime targets for nuc strikes? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Dang, which book of shorts? Someone help me. Attention Patriots…about the time he and Ginny went full fledged political campaigning for a while. Loving the irony of the left fulfilling the Admiral’s vision. (Yes I know he’s not a real admiral in this pant leg)

    1. I know he wrote a short story – think the name was, “On the Slopes of Vesuvius,”- where the protagonist was being yold this by a bartender. The story ended with them seeing a nuclear strike on the nearest city.

    2. I think in The Door into Summer (might have been Worlds of RAH, though) he referred to the “one-second slum clearance solution” with respect to warfare. I’m sure he’s wrong–it’d take several seconds, and maybe a couple of days with a sufficiently large miss.

  29. Here in California, home of the “car diet”, they have already expanded the war on roads to a war on parking. They attempt to sharply limit how much parking new residential and commercial construction can provide. The theory is that once people have to carry groceries for a couple of blocks to get home they will enthusiastically support expansion of public transportation.

    1. Like they won’t have to carry the groceries home from the bus stop….. Morons.

        1. As someone who does have to use public transportation to carry groceries, they can kiss my butt. It’s not fun, and it’s wasteful. Even if you have one of those carts, you just can’t buy as many groceries as you really should, so you have to go to the grocery more often.

          1. “I don’t understand, don’t you just go down to the bodega on the corner?” — our immensely urban-yet-provincial Overclass

          2. Keeps ridership up, keeps the lines at the stores long, looks like all win from up in the ivory tower.

            “They” don’t use public transit. If you’re anyone who counts, your time is so valuable a limo takes you back and forth to work and meetings so you can “work” while commuting.

    2. I have seen people cheering the removal of parking requirements for city buildings.

    3. That appears to be a major point of blue-on-blue contention, at least here in Seattle:

      B1: “We need more high density housing!”
      B2: “But you need to include parking.”
      B1: “People shouldn’t need cars in high density housing!”
      B2: “Also, the Greedy Developers™ don’t want to have to build parking because it cuts into their profits.”
      B1: “They suck! We need more parking in our high density housing!”

      And on and on; I’ve seen this in multiple Seattle Times comment threads, FB posts, etc.

      Also, the yay!s for dedicated bike lanes are quickly followed by the boo!s for congested downtown traffic, and nobody ever seems to connect the two…

      1. “Apartment $2000/month, Parking $200/month per car.”

        OR

        “Apartment $2400/month. Parking Free 2 cars.”

        Ummmmmm ….

        Already happening in Portland, Oregon. I’m sure happening other places too.

      2. Some years ago Little Rock closed some downtown streets to make a “pedestrian mall.” Unfortunately they didn’t consider that their “pedestrian mall” was a long way from any residential areas, so you needed a car to *get* there… but there was very little parking anywhere near their “mall”, and it was all metered parallel parking.

        In 110F Arkansas summers or below-freezing winters, people didn’t care to walk half a mile or so from a parking place to one of the random assortment of barely-existing businesses in the “mall”, and after a few years most of the ones depending on physical customer presence had gone out of business.

        Last time I drove through, years after they gave up the idea and re-opened the streets, storefronts were still mostly empty. It’s the 21st Century now; only yuppies are going to drive, pay to park far from their destination, sweat or freeze to hike in through the gauntlet of beggars, muggers, and crazies, when they can just sit at home and get what they want with a few mouse clicks.

        Granted, the mall was a “shopping experience.” But like gout or boils, not an experience anyone particularly wanted…

        1. “Some years ago Little Rock closed some downtown streets to make a “pedestrian mall.” Unfortunately they didn’t consider that their “pedestrian mall” was a long way from any residential areas, so you needed a car to *get* there… but there was very little parking anywhere near their “mall”, and it was all metered parallel parking.”
          –
          Eugene. One was/is expected to Bike or take county bus downtown, rather than drive. Is because while the failed downtown pedestrian mall streets have been reopened, what parking was added, is still metered, limited time. There are parking structures and parking lots, too. But the parking lots are by paid permit only, with maybe a few spots dedicated to one business or building. Any business downtown is expect to pay for employee’s county annual bus pass, some do, some don’t.

          I can not tell you which businesses are downtown. We. Don’t. Go. Downtown. Ever. I understand my last employer, who downsized their space (most employees are not going back into the office to work, again, ever), is now downtown, without any parking. Not visiting in person anytime soon.

          1. K, upfront, I don’t like bikes. I think they’re silly, and are used as an excuse to attack non-elite-signal activities.

            That said– Iowa does it RIGHT for bikes.

            There are bike ROADS all over the place– they have little to no interaction with real roads, there are usually eateries/pubs where they do hit real roads (with lots of parking), they are supposed to yield when they do hit roads AND THE COPS WILL ENFORCE IT, and the bike-roads are NICE big and as best I can tell well maintained things.

            When there is a big bike ride, the cops will set up warnings like they would for a parade, and ride herd on the bikers as much as for the drivers.

            Which means the guys who just want to freakin’ go for a fun bike ride aren’t on the road with the trucks, tractors and normal vehicles, and the guys trying to go to work aren’t being judged because of the virtue signaling moron who currently being ticketed for running a red light on his Virtue Mobile.

            1. Anchorage put in a system of off-grade bike trails in the early ’70s (and has continued to expand the system since). They were invaluable for getting around town when I was a kid/teenager.

              Seattle, on the other hand, has lots of “sharrows” and naturally has a pretty high rate of injuries.

            2. We have dedicated bike paths and bridges too. Mostly along both sides of the Willamette, and the one off W 11th to Fernridge (not sure how far out it goes). Otherwise, bike lanes as part of roads. The latter people, where available, ride on sidewalks, often the wrong way. Bikes are rarely held to standards, not anymore. Try being a vehicle, who has stopped legally, then pulls out, to check beyond blind corner, crossing into the crosswalk, but not into the bike lane or lane you are turning right on. You can see no pedestrians or runners approaching for the crosswalk. But you cannot see that biker zooming in the wrong way. No one has hit me. But I’ve gotten sworn at multiple times. Legally they are wrong. They won’t get cited for it. Who knows how’d it go at liability trial (I really don’t want to know). We have a front camera that would at least prove not hitting the biker (note, camera is there for scenic drives, just isn’t removed between trips).

              1. My learn to drive years were Washington and Oregon, so I ABSOLUTELY understand what you are talking about.

                Exactly why I am so gobsmacked at the “hey maybe 5% of the bike stuff is with cars.”

              2. I have had folks run into me, when I am fully stopped at a light, and scream insults.

                Because being on a bike means I don’t exist.

                1. Because being on a bike means I don’t exist.
                  –
                  I get where this is coming from. Not what I meant. I (at least) am very aware of bicyclists who share the road. When I pass a bicyclist riding in the bike path or on the sidewalk, and I’m turning right, I plan accordingly, waiting for them to pass me on the right, before making the turn (note this includes bicyclists not following the traffic flow as they are required to).

                  What I’m talking about is an intersection, that when you are stopped, at the legal stopping point, you can not see sideways traffic, or approaching bicyclists. Plan is to turn right, because it is legal on a red after stopping, so after checking to see if the sidewalk is clear, you pull out into the crosswalk far enough to see what is coming in the right lane and right bicycle lane (which should be coming from your left). Where you are stopped, at least you can also check for bicyclists coming the wrong direction in the bike lane, from your right, without impeding the bicyclist. BUT when they are speeding down the SIDEWALK, illegally (not that this matters in Eugene anyway), and against traffic (also illegal, technically, see prior Eugene comment), it is impossible to see them until you’ve pulled out, and the bicyclist is impeded.

                  But, dang it. I have to SEE the bicyclist to ensure their safety. Note this includes bicyclists who wear dark clothing and don’t have any kind of *lighting system or reflectors on them or their bikes! Bicyclists who aren’t visible …

                  * Heck, I put a light on my Dog when I have to walk her on sidewalks in the dark.

                  2. I have literally never seen someone ignore a cyclists who was doing everything right— I have HEARD of it, I have just never seen it, in cyclists heavy areas.

                    I’ve seen folks do dumb stuff to motorcyclists more than cyclists, and been around them less.

                    1. Bicyclists Urban Myth?

                      I too have never seen anyone deliberately cut off a visible bicycle. But the local bicyclist sure b**** about it online and in letters to the editor (I presume they still do, we don’t take the local, or any newspaper, anymore).

                      In Oregon, by law, Bicyclists (and pedestrians) have the right of way, no matter what, no matter where, no matter why. OTOH cases where someone say (extreme) crossing the freeway, gets hit, other than “OMG, OMG” of the distraught unlucky driver, no repercussions, legal or civil.

                    2. I have heard cyclists complain about it where it boiled down to “I was going to go that way, you should get out of the way”…..

                      (They drive cars the same way. 😀 )

                    3. There are circumstances in which a sailboat technically has right-of-way over an 80,000 ton freighter. Which can’t turn, or stop, before running over the sailboat. Tonnage and physics don’t obey the laws of men.

                    4. I made some folks laugh when I loudly informed my daughter “K, we’re in the walkway, that means we have right of way. Right of way doesn’t do any good if you’re dead, so pay attention to the cars.”

                    6. I thought a dude in a pickup was going to take out a dude on a unicycle. Unicycle couldn’t wait for the WALK light so he crossed when the left-turn arrow was still green. (Unicycle was one of those where you are strapped in, sort of like a snowboard.) Mass + right-of-way = unicycle’s not going to win.

            3. My opinion is that bike riders are adults riding a child’s toy, wrapping their nethers in spandex, and expecting me to respect their virtue.

              🙂 No.

              It sounds like Iowa gets it right, though. West Germany had an easy rule that everyone was a user of the road, including wagons and bikes. Everyone understood the rules, and it seemed to work well. None of this silly riding in a ditch and pretending it’s OK.

          2. We almost never go downtown, either – there was a parking lot within walking distance of Alamo Plaza which was almost always nearly empty on weekends, as it was on Dolorosa St. near to the federal courthouse. Parking there used to be free – but it’s been made into a paid lot, now. The parking structure at the Rivercenter Mall used to be fairly reasonable… but between insanely expensive parking, horrible traffic and the chances of being harrassed by a deranged homeless person …
            I miss eating at Shilo’s Deli, though. Good food, and an old established place.

            1. The free parking lots on the back side of the Alaska Junction in West Seattle (local shopping/restaurant hub) changed to pay lots sometime during Covid.

              Even during the pandemic they were full, but now even when the restaurants are all back to indoor dining, they’re almost totally empty. I wonder what the Junction business owners think about that.

  30. I don’t know how it is in other cities, but the Seattle Times has lately been running a lot of articles and opinion pieces “debunking” the “myth” that the cities are shrinking, because Seattle’s population has actually been increasing.

    I won’t pay for their content other than the free email blasts, so I haven’t been able to evaluate whether they’re spinning or lying, or maybe even telling the truth — maybe the tech jobs draw has been just enough to do slightly better than breakeven.

    There certainly is a tone of “don’t look at that man behind the curtain,” though.

    1. According to the census, Seattle has been growing fairly steadily at about 0.8% per year.

        1. Quite possibly, the big blue cities all seem to have had disproportionate population gains in the most recent census and the initial print for (e.g.,) Seattle is much higher (twice as high) than the annual estimates. I used the annual estimates.

          In any case, the last census was a miracle in that all the big blue cities reversed decades long demographic declines. Some of this is from the age cohorts structure, really it is, most of this is due to the adjustments the census bureau made because of WuFlu. Where it gets interesting is that blue states lost population while the big blue cities gained.

          NY, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, and Michigan lost seats. That’s the good news, the bad news is that Oregon and Colorado gained but so did Florida, Texas, and North Carolina.

          it could have been better but it does change the electoral college count and potentially the balance in the house. Look for all the clowns who were going on and on about the senate being non-democratic to suddenly wake up to how wonderful equal representation is.

          Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool – you bet that Tommy sees.

          1. So the blue cities lie about their population, because they need the per-head payments for the welfare and homeless industries.

            Meanwhile the rest of the blue state doesn’t have that consideration, so made a more or less honest count, which overwhelmed the cities’ inflated counts.

            “…there ought to be an explanation for it. Having none at hand, I am free to make one up.”
            — Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell

            1. The cities didn’t have to lie, the Census Bureau used WuFlu procedures to find the “missing”people they knew were there even though they hadn’t been counted. Then they added a few million people in for sh-ts and giggles. It’s all public information, they don’t bother to lie about it.

          2. “Quite possibly, the big blue cities all seem to have had disproportionate population gains in the most recent census”

            Got to justify those illegal votes somehow.

    2. Seattle is the perfect place for BLM, since they have very few black lives to worry about and BLM is just a bunch of rich bottoms where the humiliation is the kink anyway. It’s very white, very Asian, very well credentialed, and very rich. I don’t have to tell you what housing prices are like, I was stunned to find that they’re higher than NYC.

      1. Indeed. To the best of my knowledge, exactly zero of the riots took place in traditionally black neighborhoods; they were entirely in downtown (where nobody lives), or in adjacent Capitol Hill, populated almost entirely by white tech douchebros and bohemian activist types. (All of whom are well-off enough to afford rent on a central Seattle apartment, I’ll point out.)

        If the city council manages to drive out Amazon, it will be interesting to see if that starts a preference cascade against actually living in Seattle.

    4. I can’t state on Seattle proper. But the doctors who owned the ranch I grew up on kicked everybody off (yes, shades of Scotland, there) and have it up for sale.
      Am begging my parents to leave Eastern WA.

  31. > work from home

    That’s eventually going to come back to bite them. Why pay Los Angeles wages when you can pay Hooterville wages? Why even go through the hassle of hiring an American when you can just buy remote work over the wire from a broker in Calcutta or Johannesburg, billed as “labor units”, and you don’t even know (or care) how many people are on the other end, as long as the job gets done?

    The race to the bottom is going to get afterburners.

    1. It will put selection pressure on managers to distinguish between employees who produce and employees who don’t. The managers who are unable to learn what should be one of the central skills of their job will race to the bottom.

      1. One thing, the traditional butt-kissing advancement path in the workplace has probably taken a hit…

        1. I’d been thinking that. It also cuts down on the number of personal assistants, which is a very large job category for the lefties.

    2. No on that later. They tried hiring foreigner in early oughta. Turns out it’s more expensive because of quality. Even customer service is slowly migrating back

      1. Five years ago or so, I did a dog and pony show for some upper execs of the project we had just finished. While waiting around to start, I overheard the big exec talking to his junior about their project to hire developers in India, and how they gave up because they couldn’t find enough who were competent.

        Yeah, ’cause all the competent ones are already here, I said to myself.

        1. infosys sends all its new hires to a special school because the entire Indian education system is corrupt. The only possible exception is the IIT. I’ve worked with some very, very competent graduates of that institution over the years.

      2. I did the math on this about twenty years ago. despite lower “factor costs,” the loss in productivity, quality, and the additional management required, makes overseas outsourcing as expensive as keeping it at home. Essentially what you do is replace cheap labor with expensive managers. the only possible exception is very low value added manufacturing where it’s best to 3rd party outsource.

        The argument for outsourcing tech jobs is similar. Labor costs equalize since the labor will go to where the returns are highest. Bombay is every bit as expensive for a middle class person to live in than NY is, rather more so since they have a Communist government who won’t allow new construction, so labor costs for skilled labor are no lower there than here.

        The benefit is short term at best but the managers who do the initial outsourcing tend to be rewarded very handsomely, which is why they do it since they’re managers not owners and don’t care about the long term.

        1. Then they discover they can’t shut the overseas services down short of two or three year severance payouts (I wish). The only way PSC, Inc., got out of their European pieces was bankruptcy. Essentially courts pieced it out to the group there. That was with DataLogic (European) buying the core companies that PSC had left (Spectra Physics flatbed grocery scanners, and Percon handheld scanners and data collectors, and the embedded engineers from the development divisions). Not an embedded engineer, so got cut.

      3. From my perspective, some is migrating back; more is getting out of China into India or even Eastern Europe.

    3. What do you think they’ve been doing in IT Support for ages now? Call in with a problem, and I can all but guarantee that you’re talking to someone in India, even if they claim to be “Ed from Nebraska” (and depending on the support, they WILL tell you that, even if just listening to them for two seconds tips you off to the fact that they’re from the sub-continent).

  32. I will mention 1) that wild grasses *frequently* have edible seeds (you can get a ton off of plantain, lamb’s quarters, and crabgrass if you’re desperate and 2) hand-turned flour grinders run about 30 bucks on Amazon. And 1b) I am reasonably well-versed in wild edibles if you’re antsy. And 1c) my lamb’s quarter guide is apparently pretty amusing even if you DON’T need it. 🙂

    Random Ew, What’s That On the Fan knowledge is all I can offer, but I do offer it.

    1. The problem comes if you have allergies to various grains – wild grasses can set you off if you have wheat allergies, test carefully.

      Lamb’s quarters, though, is an amaranth relative and absolutely delicious cooked green. It also indicates spots with good garden soil!

      1. Not being allergic, I hadn’t thought of that, so thanks!

        We have wild lamb’s quarters in the back yard and I love them. Mostly I dry the leaves and sneak them into casserole and soup, because my husband won’t try to eat around it if it looks like oregano. 😀

        2. Don’t overdo the green parts of lamb’s quarters — high in oxalic acid, to be considered if you’re prone to kidney stones. (Also not so good for growing bones.)

          Per this Handy Chart,
          https://oxalate.org/
          Lambsquarter 100 g 30000 mg
          Compare to
          Spinach 100g ~700 mg

          I bought a little bit of Joseph Lofthouse’s desert-adapted wheat under the theory that it might be useful to start some feral grains with a bit better calorie-to-effort ratio than wild grains. Tho there’s one wild grain I’ve been on the lookout for … botanist friend from long ago said he thought it might be a dryland rice. Just haven’t seen it in a long time.

  33. Also, anything by David the Good (seriously, that’s his name on Amazon) but especially this one:

    And it’s hilarious to boot. (“If you are reading this in the flaming ruins of your neighbor’s house while fending off zombies with your free hand, here’s what you need to know…”)

  34. “I swear most democrats were disappointed when laptops started being made with no “cup holders”.”
    –
    One of my favorite hardware stories (joke?) from archives of hardware support.

    🙂

    1. I WISH it was only a story…….. had personal experience with a nimrod in my office. Arrrgh!!!

      “Pointy haired boss”…..

      1. Oh. I believe it.

        Read a script of at least one incident. Went word for word. I was with the online tech going “What the H E, you know what, is the caller talking about?” When it got to the “little slide that pops in and out”, I fell off my chair laughing. I’ll say this much. When faced with hardware problems after that my imagination was improved. Not that it helps. At that I wasn’t dealing with public support. Only for our division.

        I deal with hardware at home. I was really, really, glad to get out of hardware issues, and only deal with writing software, and software support that I was writing. Did miss the support department between me and clients, somewhat.

        1. Dan’s secretary in his first job, used to throw diskettes away when they were full. This was the mid eighties, when diskettes were expensive….

          1. >> “Dan’s secretary in his first job, used to throw diskettes away when they were full.”

            [blink]

            Wow. A pointy-haired secretary, huh? How long did that go on before some explained to her that you’re supposed to erase and reuse them?

  35. On the topic of cities becoming for tourists, human nature won’t let that happen.

    I’ve seen it on the small scale, with Boise. In the late 70s-early 80s, the city was dying. Most of the mayoral candidates were content to whistle past the graveyard, but one forced the issue, and the voters rewarded him with the office.
    He followed your proposed plan. He advertised “Come visit YOUR Capital City!” One of his major things was to fix the sidewalks, and he did this by selling bricks. For a mere $10, you could get your family’s name on a brick, to be part of the sidewalks in historic Boise, your capital city! It was a great success. Naturally, everyone wanted to come find their brick, so the downtown merchants got lots of foot traffic. And with all your people coming, the mayor was in a perfect position to pitch access to customers to retail developers.
    He turned the city around in just a couple of years.
    And then was overwhelmingly tossed out of office in the next election.
    Pandering to the hinterland plebes is anathema to a sense of urban superiority.
    The very first thing his successor did? Tear up the sidewalks to get rid of all the $(;)ing bricks. (I don’t recall if it was an explicit or implicit campaign promise, but it was darned sure kept!)

  36. The “Great Reset” stuff about how you’ll own nothing and like it makes me think some of these people read Asimov’s The Caves of Steel and thought it sounded like a great idea. A future society in which people are assigned jobs and given rations of food, clothing, etc according to their status, where everyone dines in communal facilities, where apartments don’t have individual bathrooms unless one is very high-status (obviously he wrote that before reaching the age when a man is subject to sudden intense urges to go), etc.

    1. “Baley paused before the large double door on which there glowed in large letters PERSONAL… MEN. In smaller letters were written SUBSECTIONS 1A-1E. In still smaller letters, just above the key slit, it stated: “In case of loss of key, communicate at once with 27-101-51.”

      A man inched past them, inserted an aluminum sliver into the key slit, and walked in. He closed the door behind him, making no attempt to hold it open for Baley. Had he done so, Baley would have been seriously offended. By strong custom men disregarded one another’s presence entirely either within or just outside the Personals. Baley remembered one of the more interesting marital confidences to have been Jessie’s telling him that the situation was quite different at Women’s Personals.

      She was always saying, “I met Josephine Greely at Personal and she said…”

      It was one of the penalties of civic advancement that when the Baleys were granted permission for the activation of the small washbowl in their bedroom, Jessie’s social life suffered.”
      —-
      All the apartments had sinks, but having them activated was a special privilege.

      And all the bathrooms were *assigned*, and locked, so you couldn’t use any other.

      The cafeterias required an “ID tag”; punched at each meal since food was rationed, and your tag was only good at your assigned feeding station.

      Baley’s superiors had to make special arrangements for food and bathroom privileges when they sent him out of town.

      Way too many people think Asimov’s horrific dystopia is something they’d like to see… other people living in.

      “The Caves of Steel”, original publication in ‘Galaxy’: https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v07_01_Galaxy_Oct_1953

  37. I remember those who died in the service of our country. It didn’t matter if the battle was just or not; they still went and died for us. It didn’t matter if they thought it was for patriotism, when politicians got us in for wealth and power; they still went and died for us.
    Thousands died to free our country from a tyrannical King and his un-caring Parliament; yet the Woke of today revile them and tear down the statues of their leaders.
    Hundreds of thousands died to free people from slavery, while others died for states rights; yet the Woke of today revile them both and tear down the statutes of those who led them with honor.
    More than a million died to keep us free from genocide and the horrors of fascism; yet today those who scream loudest against fascism are the ones engaged most in it.
    Thousands more died to keep us free from Communism and all it’s despicable derivatives; yet BLM and the youth of today work to turn us into the very thing they died to prevent.
    Alas Babylon!
    Alas America!
    For it looks to me that all those will have died in vain. And we who lived have failed to hold what they so dearly bought.

  38. Prove to me that we’re not being run by a cabal of our enemies. Prove it.

    Well, that’s been noted about the Church since like triple digits, so… good company?

  39. From the WUWT article:

    “President Biden’s infrastructure plan includes $20 billion to pour landfill into major access roads to cities, to eliminate racist community divides, reduce CO2 emissions, and revitalise inner cities by ensuring people who work in cities are incentivised to live near their workplaces.”

    Since it fails to link to the original article… (I’ve become reluctant to accept unsourced rumors, no matter how likely) I think this is it:

    There are links to the budget and legislation. However the idea is not new; it’s already been done in some cities… that were already decaying. The only difference is that in the future, cities expect the costs to be paid by the federal budget.

    The result of these “walking neighborhoods” is invariably increased congestion around the periphery, and in recent years, a new population that resides in tents and shopping carts. But they sure funnel a lot of money to big-project contractors.

      1. McNamara had some good ideas.

        (Actually, I don’t know that. I would have an easier time pointing to a good idea of Hitler’s.)

        1. McNamara had no good ideas. From body counts, weapon counts, and destroyed villages through the F111 and the IMF to his self indulgent crying about it all afterword, he was disaster all around. He is one of the most useless “statesmen” ever. He is almost, almost as bad as John Forbes Kerry, but then Kerry is giving Woodrow Wilson a run for his money.

          1. Maybe he had ideas about statistics that were sound, but applied badly because he didn’t understand where they were not valid?

          2. Wrong: he had one good idea, mostly one that he was ordered to adopt due to ongoing politicking in the army: The replacement of the failed battle rifle concept with the assault rifle.

            The Armory syndicate was the one organization in the US military structure that competed directly with McNamara for incompetence and self-assuredness.

            1. Springfield Armory was founded in 1777, shut down in 1968. The Armory had few fans of the Armalite rifle.

              Wikipedia: “In 1968, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announced the closure of the Springfield Armory.”

              The entire story gets complicated; tied up with different groups in the Army trying to implement entirely different small arms programs, resulting in the morphing of the M1 Garand into the M-14, sabotaging the British EM-2 program, the USAF adopting the M-16 outside of normal channels, and more lobbying, politicking, backstabbing, and grandstanding than you can shake a bayonet at.

              1. mmhmm

                The stunt the Armories pulled got them shut down (ironic given the goal was to keep the army dependent on them).

                It *should* have resulted in firing squads. Deliberate sabotage of the armed forces in war time? That there is called treason.

          3. I was in the military some years after MacNamara departed his DOD office, but served with many older NCOs who had been in service during his tenure … and OMG, they practically spat with contempt whenever they spoke of him. (Many such had been Vietnam or Vietnam-era vets.) His arrogance was written about in a wonderful book about the military, written in the late 1980s: Arthur Hadley’s “The Straw Giant.”
            On the up-side, the current DOD chief might very well be giving MacNamara a good run for the title of “Worst SecDef Ever.”

            1. Sort of like, um, certain recent attempts by national leaders to prove that neither James Buchanan nor Jimmy Carter were the worst POTUS thus far.

  40. I don’t know for sure if there’s some secret cabal trying to control the world but our leaders are doing their damnedest to behave like they are one.

    1. I once mentioned to someone that the strongest evidence *against* such a cabal was the poor state of world affairs.

      His reply was, “You’re assuming they value peace and prosperity.”

      It’s those hidden assumptings that get me every time…

  41. The problem comes if you have allergies to various grains – wild grasses can set you off if you have wheat allergies, test carefully.

    Lamb’s quarters, though, is an amaranth relative and absolutely delicious cooked green. It also indicates spots with good garden soil!

  42. I’m hoping that we’re seeing some of the snap-back from the stupid happening.

    And, we might see this whole COVID mess as the high water mark for a lot of things. Quite a few states are passing tighter voting control laws. The lock-down is probably going to put Gavin Newsom out on his ass in California. Population shifts are happening that will de-fund and take things away from the big cities. The “old” news media has taken the sort of hit to their reputation that they won’t recover from any time soon. Hell, CNN might actually have to report the news if they lose the contracts with the airports.

    It’s not going to be pretty for a while. But, make do with what you can.

    1. Some of the TX Dems marched out of the state house last night to prevent a vote on a bill to reduce ballot fraud. Gov. Abbot said, “OK, you don’t work, you don’t get paid. Now you talk.” I don’t know if I should be amused or exasperated at all sides. I remember the mess in 2009 when a bunch of (D) skeedaddled to Oklahoma in order to deny the legislature a quorum and thus prevent redistricting. It didn’t work then.

      2. “Is it too much to ask for both?”

        Seriously. Both is a good answer. Amused because “you want to act like spoiled children, you can not get any allowance.” Exasperated that it requires treating legislators like small children to get them to do anything.

      3. The Dems tried to do that to the Senate Judiciary Committee shortly after Trump took office. IIRC, the response from the Republican head of the Committee at the time (Hatch, iirc), was to announce, “Well, I guess we’re going to do away with the rule requiring a quorum to hold a Committee vote on a nominee.”

      2. She’s called for street violence if they do. She’s got those I’m a crazy b-ch eyes that wise fathers warn their sons about. Sometimes I wonder what drugs she’s doing.

  43. I’ve been thinking about this. About five years ago when I briefly lived in New Orleans I was at a meeting where some locals were discussing improving an area highway and there was an outside guy there making the case to not do it.

    As background, I used to be a small city newspaper reporter and dealt with a lot of political operatives (up to the local Congressional level, but never of national significance). The man discouraging the project was exactly like the PR people on that level – very smooth talking, the tone of his voice was modulated-and-reassuring, non-confrontational, and he could present things that sounded emotionally good, but made little sense after you thought about them.

    He argued that once they increased the size of the roads in and around NOLA that logistics firms would reroute their trucking traffic to take advantage of it and the roads would almost immediately become just as clogged and in disrepair. When the locals asked what they could do, he painted a picture of transitioning into an economy where everything was produced within 100 miles – that way there could be small farmers (like in the old days) and fishermen and craftspeople supplying everyone in the city.

    His vision never happened, but I don’t believe they improved the highways either. That’s just a local example of somewhere in Louisiana, but if a national organization made a concerted effort to head off these projects throughout the country, but on a local level, they could do the damage Sarah is talking about.

    1. When the locals asked what they could do, he painted a picture of transitioning into an economy where everything was produced within 100 miles

      I’ve run into this type of argument when arguing with leftists: “If only we changed absolutely everything, then my utopian solution would be possible.” I think the last time I used the “if men were angels no government would be necessary” line of counterargument, and the person was very disappointed that I was so cynical.

      [rolleyes]

      1. Okay, an answer to that is “Well, thinking as an idealist, people only ever disagree with me because they willingly choose evil. Since my opposition is purely motivated by evil, they cannot be reasoned with, and killing them is the only sane option. Are you certain you want to deal with me reasoning as an idealist? Or is cynicism appropriate after all?”

        There are some tricks to looking at people that may creep them out, really helps with the delivery of this sort of patter. 😛

    2. “…he painted a picture of transitioning into an economy where everything was produced within 100 miles,”

      So, y’all’s gonna be burnin’ rushlights, wearin’ muskrat skins, and eatin’ rice, catfish, and collard greens?

  44. Unrelated and cross-posted.

    In the past two weeks I have play-tested going maskless in two Deep Coronadoom states. Even when the signs said “Masks Required” (By whom? Who made you Emperor?) and staff and customers were masked…No pushback.

    Including pleasant, smiling (me) convos with the masked. Be the change, folks. We have a window here before the fall panic. Go for it!

  45. “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Jesus Christ, as recorded in the Gospel of John 16:33

    1. These Socialistidiots never do figure out that you can’t fiat behavior of those beyond your lawful reach. And does this not violate the Commerce clause?

  48. For some reason, the premise behind this posting, of allowing / making the roads horrible to drive people to move into the cities, had me thinking of Mega-City One…

    One monstrous city-state with howling wilderness outside the walls. THAT is the sort of thing I’d expect to come from the libs / Dems attempts to force everyone into cities…

    And, well, while I never read the comics Mega-City One came from, I kind of suspect it’d end up looking like what was shown in Dredd… (NOT the Stallone version, although it was also rather dystopian)

    1. I believe you are thinking about Logan’s Run. That is the Democrats dream.

      1. They don’t seem to be aware that it was part of a trilogy…

        BTW the requests to fls-na.amazon.com are timing out and preventing Post Comment from going through.

      2. They *want* Logan’s Run (which, frankly, was rather dystopian as well, just not as outright violent as Mega-City One,) they’re going to end up with Dredd…

    2. TBH, the Stallone version pretty accurately showed the inside and outside as it was shown in the comics.

      1. I thought about that after I posted, and you’re right, either movie would be a relatively good example of what the Dems desire to stuff everyone into cities would end up looking like…

        The rich and powerful in shiny, clean, large apartments, the rest of the people living in warzones with so little chance to get out that it’s asymptotically approaching zero.

        Heck, Soylent Green would even be close to what they’d get…

  50. Amazon Internet-of-Things warning:

    https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/amazon-devices-will-soon-automatically-share-your-internet-with-neighbors/

    [What this does is let every passing Amazon-thing have access to YOUR internet, and once that’s done, a clever attacker could gain access to ALL your connected devices. It’s basically an open wifi hotspot that does not require any sort of login. On your dime.]

    Slashdot summary:

    If you use Alexa, Echo, or any other Amazon device, you have just over a week to opt out of an experiment that leaves your personal privacy and security hanging in the balance. From a report:

    On June 8, the merchant, Web host, and entertainment behemoth will automatically enroll the devices in Amazon Sidewalk. The new wireless mesh service will share a small slice of your Internet bandwidth with nearby neighbors who don’t have connectivity and help you to their bandwidth when you don’t have a connection.

    By default, Amazon devices including Alexa, Echo, Ring, security cams, outdoor lights, motion sensors, and Tile trackers will enroll in the system. And since only a tiny fraction of people take the time to change default settings, that means millions of people will be co-opted into the program whether they know anything about it or not. The Amazon webpage linked above says Sidewalk “is currently only available in the US.” […] Amazon has published a white paper detailing the technical underpinnings and service terms that it says will protect the privacy and security of this bold undertaking. To be fair, the paper is fairly comprehensive, and so far no one has pointed out specific flaws that undermine the encryption or other safeguards being put in place. But there are enough theoretical risks to give users pause.

    1. 1) Do not have any of these devices.
      2) Do not allow any sharing of any laptops or TV’s on network. Each laptop does not share content ever … if file sharing is required, we use the sneaker network.
      3) Guess they could discover the shared printer (why?).
      4) Even WiFi is only allowed if permission is given.
      5) Xfinity/Comcast. There are two internet connections beyond the Wifi, one is public, which can be turned off, but doesn’t stay off. It has a different internet address signature (supposedly) than the household one so if used for nefarious purpose, suppose to know that it was through public outside access, but IDK. I just keep turning it off.

      2. Sounds like, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” doesn’t it?

    3. Don’t forget that also shares it all with the communist Chinese.
      ———————————
      Does the Left drive those idiots barking mad, or were they drawn to the Left because they were already batshit crazy?

    4. Well. This certainly makes the likelihood of me getting a Kindle Fire drop to practically non-existent now. Ugh. I already decided, when my ancient ipad finally dies (not likely, as it’s still going strong–except for the fact that almost none of the apps I bought will now work, because the ipad OS is too old, which pisses me off) to not go with Apple again. I had thought a fire, even if I have to re-buy things, but…nope. Guess I’ll have to hope that Samsung hasn’t gone too far to the Dark Side. On the other hand, I haven’t had a lot of use for a tablet in recent years…

      1. With the Kindle Fires I *have* (can’t speak for new ones), Alexa must be specifically activated if you want to use it with that device.

        So they tell us. i would not necessarily say that a person would be wrong to be paranoid about that. (shrug)

      2. The full list of devices that can act as Sidewalk bridges is Ring Floodlight Cam (2019), Ring Spotlight Cam Wired (2019), Ring Spotlight Cam Mount (2019), Echo (3rd gen and newer), Echo Dot (3rd gen and newer), Echo Dot for Kids (3rd gen and newer), Echo Dot with Clock (3rd gen and newer), Echo Plus (all generations), Echo Show (all models and generations), Echo Spot, Echo Studio, Echo Input, and Echo Flex.

        It’s the AmazonDevice(tm), not Amazon devices.

        ….not that it makes me snarl any less than I have since half the big cable internet guys wanted to have folks “volintarily” join in, although the least obnoxious had it be an “opt in to internet sharing, you can use other folks’ hotspots and they can use yours!” type setup.

    5. I don’t see anyone who actually paid for an Amazon spy device and voluntarily gave it their network password would be concerned about it.

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