Refugees

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

There has been an image in my mind which I unfortunately can’t find to illustrate this (well, not free) of a line of refugees by the road side, with all their possessions in a wheelbarrow.

This might be because it seems like 80% of my friends are moving or trying to move in the next few months, usually across states. It might be because on a recent trip to Home Depot for varnish, I found that only about 3 in ten cars even have Colorado plates. And a lot of those are temporary tags.

Or it could be a deranged conviction is growing in me that if we don’t get out by mid-September, we’re not getting out. And as the list of tasks multiplies, this gets very depressing.

Perhaps it is simply that I haven’t been able to write, and am going slightly mad.

It probably helps not at all that I’ve been listening to Amity Schlaes The Forgotten Man and slowly realizing that all the crap we’re going through has the sticky fingerprints of FDR and his “brain trust” (mostly commies, to be honest) all over it.

Like, take how fucked my field is…. Well, they paid writers to write what amounted to propaganda pieces some of them supposed fiction.

In fact, other than prolonging the misery and the great depression, al the New Deal did — and did well — was propaganda to sell themselves as saviors.

Of course that gadget is broken. If Obama had had mass media and total control, we’d think of him as many still think of FDR.

This brings to mind what is creating this big movement — the so called elites who would plan our lives have no clue, by the way. They are actually trying to ignore all the moves because it confuses them — which is the fact that if you take control of even a state’s government by crooked means (Colorado, if the elections were fair, the asshats would be eager to have them examined, not try to hide them. Also, I’m sorry, there’s no way the elections are fair) you can control people’s lives with dictator-like powers and make the state unlivable, in pursuit of the little twinkling sounds in your brain, or something.

You can for instance decide that you’re resettling refugees, when you’re turning the state into a vast illegal camp; or you can decide that the expensive convention center in the capital is now a homeless shelter; or you can allow homeless to camp all over Denver after the people defeat that in the polls; or you can make it impossible to earn a living in a state; or–

The possibilities are endless.

However, when a state, a region or a country become a source of refugees, the reason is always the same “too much power in too few hands.”

When people arrogate to themselves the right to decide everything for everyone else, because they believe they know how everyone should live, the result is always refugees. There is no reprieve.

And don’t get me started on allowing a stolen election to stand, and a traitor (lending aid and comfort to a declared enemy IS the definition of treason) to destroy the country on his say so and the say so of his merry band of crazies.

And if you’re going to dispute that traitor thing, here is the list of equipment and other stuff left behind for the Taliban (not to mention tens of thousands of potential American victims and hostages):

Here is a more complete list (Forbes) of US-supplied and left behind equipment list now controlled by Taliban. Makes our efforts look almost minuscule. At least the guys we supported knew SOMEBODY here … gave a shit.

-2,000 Armored Vehicles Including Humvees and MRAP’s

-75,989 Total Vehicles: FMTV, M35, Ford Rangers, Ford F350, Ford Vans, Toyota Pickups, Armored Security Vehicles etc…

-45 UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopters

-50 MD530G Scout Attack Choppers

-ScanEagle Military Drones

-30 Military Version Cessnas

-4 C-130’s

-29 Brazilian made A-29 Super Tucano Ground Attack Aircraft

=208+ Aircraft Total!!

-At least 600,000+ Small arms M16, M249 SAWs, M24 Sniper Systems, 50 Calibers, 1,394 M203 Grenade Launchers, M134 Mini Gun, 20mm Gatling Guns and Ammunition

-61,000 M203 Rounds

-20,040 Grenades

-Howitzers

-Mortars +1,000’s of Rounds

-162,000 pieces of Encrypted Military Communications Gear

-16,000+ Night Vision Goggles

-Newest Technology Night Vision Scopes

-Thermal Scopes and Thermal Mono Googles

-10,000 2.75 inch Air to Ground Rockets

-Reconnaissance Equipment (ISR)

-Laser Aiming Units

-Explosives Ordnance C-4, Semtex, Detonators, Shaped Charges, Thermite, Incendiaries, AP/API/APIT

-2,520 Bombs

-Administration Encrypted Cell Phones and Laptops ALL operational

-Pallets with Millions of Dollars in US Currency

-Millions of Rounds of Ammunition including but not limited to 20,150,600 rounds of 7.62mm, 9,000,000 rounds of 50.caliber

Will that ammunition be walking over the wide open border to kill Americans? You betcha. Did a lot of that end up in China, to be used against us? You betcha.

What are the idiots thinking?

Nothing, except that they hate America because since the New Deal, we’ve been resisting their attempts to remake us completely. So they hate you and we must be destroyed.

There is a feeling you get before a storm. A sense of something about to break. And I’ve got a pile of things to do, so that I don’t have to run in the middle of the night, pushing a wheelbarrow.

We all have lots of things to do so we don’t all of us become refugees as the land of freedom stops existing.

Most of them consist of preparing, getting to a safe place.

And keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

And now I’m going to paint.

322 thoughts on “Refugees”

  1. I saw video of PALLETS of small packages of CASH that were also left. I couldn’t count how many, but they were all around the 3 sides of the medium size room that they showed as they were doing videos of some of the military being left.

      1. I wonder if some of the ‘missing’ ballots from last year’s election are squirreled away in there too? 😛

          1. Epstein’s body was found in the prison cell.

            Now, the bodies of those that ‘helped’ with Epstein’s ‘suicide’, on the other hand…

      2. It’s as if they were deliberately arming and financing the Taliban so that they can attack us and provide weapons to others for use in attacking us….oh wait.

    2. That was several MILLION in U.S. bank notes….left for the Tallys along with much top of the line electronic equipment, advanced aircraft, etc and ALL of that equipment will eventually find it’s way back to China and Russia for inspection and in some cases reverse engineering to be used against us….This was true treason.

      1. Of course the Biden Administration probably pulled out all the demolition and engineering experts first. Those two groups would have been the military folks tasked with destruction of equipment and facilities to deny it to the enemy. I could have been half asleep and done a better job than any of those morons in the Pentagon.

        2. Per what’s reported via Glenn Beck… it’s worse than that:

          https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/08/afghanistan-2-26-trillion-of-your-money-spent-much-squandered-on-lavish-palaces-for-corrupt-officials#comment-2368296

          ==========

          Glenn Beck is in the ME. He had several people on his program tonight…he always has a special program on Wednesday nights…speaking with him about what is happening in afghanistan.

          One thing he learned was that, contrary to the reports we have all read/heard, the afghans who were in the army stationed in different cities/villages/towns, were abandoned by their officers who had made back room deals with the taliban. Basically, the “keys” to the city were given to the taliban, who rode in to one town on motorcycles after the top guys had left, and the regular army guys had to run, were told by the officers to run, leaving their military equipment behind.

          Another thing, Beck and David Barton, along with other groups…Mighty Oaks (if I’m recalling right) is one such group…were flying planes in and getting people out. However, the countries, 3 he couldn’t name on air, were told by the U.S. state dept that they couldn’t fly these people into other countries, that they wouldn’t agree to “vouch” for them. So, when they had as many as they could take, they had to refuse to take more.

          Macedonia agreed to take some of the people Glenn and the others got on planes, but the state dept called the ambassador there and said, “No,” to that country taking some.

          He also said a couple of planes were actually loaded and in the air, and the state dept contacted them and ordered them to return to the airport in afghanistan.

          At the end, Beck had a former special ops guy who works with him on his shows, and this man was explaining that the people who were at the gates, were told by the taliban to go down this other road and there, they were told to go into a hotel. This man believes they will be hostages there. Several dozen were children.

          According to the reports they were getting while on the show, the “gates” are now closed. No one else is being allowed to go through. Even those holding up American passports. And the transport planes are being refueled, so Beck and his guest said that means they aren’t waiting for the end of the month.
          One insane thing: people on foot at the gate, waiting, were sent texts (those who are American) and the texts told them to leave the gate and come back in their cars.

          ===========

      2. It’s not like Clinton didn’t already give the communist Chinese everything back in 1995. Invited hundreds of Chinese spies, opened up the Top Secret files and gave them complete designs and documentation for our aircraft, submarines, tanks, artillery, missiles and atomic bombs.

    3. More proof that this is worse than Vietnam. When we had to leave Saigon, a small group of marines was locked in the incinerator room with all of the US Embassy’s cash. They didn’t leave the room until the cash was destroyed.

      1. You’d think that someone with a few gallons of gasoline and a lighter could have taken care of the problem… if only by setting the whole building on fire. Or send a missile through a window. Anything but just leaving it there, which had to be by backroom agreement. (WTF is an embassy doing with pallets of cash, anyway? Only thing I can think of in this era of electronic money is that it gets used for local bribes.)

        Heard somewhere that all the Stuff left behind makes the Taliban hit the top ten list of the world’s best-equipped military, and closing on top five.

        1. There is no way the way that bit, in particular, has played out wasn’t deliberate. And people should be being shot for treason over it, starting very, very high up…

          1. Would be …interesting… to learn who got cash transfers to hidden accounts. Because aside from China-said-jump, gotta figure this was a nifty way to sell arms and supplies to the Taliban without invoking the ire of a fed-up public (ooops… how’d that go for ya, Joe?), and someone got paid very well for “abandoning” all this stuff.

            There should be records of serial numbers on that cash. Cash can be blacklisted by serial number, at least if international banks cooperate. Think it’ll happen? of course not.

            Incompetence makes a nifty smokescreen for malfeasance (the larval form of treason).

          2. It was absolutely deliberate and it was unquestionably the decision of those pulling the puppet strings on Biden to arm the Taliban so as to enhance its ability to attack us and our allies. I suspect some of that weaponry and cash is going to make its way to Hamas for use against Israel. Even more will be used to engage in direct attacks on Americans around the world and here in the USA. All of this is a feature, not a bug, for the pro-Jihadist anti-American cabal that is the Democratic Party

            1. An interesting thought (for horrifying values of interesting): Most common rifle/round in civilian hands in America? M4 pattern & 5.56. The Mexican border is wide open, allowing everything to come through. What if those small arms that are former US military are going to be used by “insurrectionists” to allow a total crackdown by TPTB?

              1. Problem is the same pattern is used by the Mexican army iirc and it is not at all uncommon for more than a few of those “weapons at border traced back to the US” to be via sales to the Mexican government. Plenty of easier ways for FNF2 than to assume worldwide transit.

                Pretty much all of this is more incompetent than conspiracy. Even the idea that the tech will be sent to Russia or China and reverse engineered. Who the heck do you think actually built and coded it. Even Air Force 1 has made in China stamped on it somewhere

        2. Well, there was an at least surface-level sensible reason for leaving all that stuff…the (ostensibly legitimate) Afghan military was supposed to be using it.

          But they folded like a cheap suit — not wanting to fight their own relatives and coreligionists without Americans there to buffer them from the consequences of being on their own in a war that was always ours but not theirs, and gee, who could ever have seen that coming? — and now the people we were supposed to believe they’d use it against own it all.

          Do you think anybody that matters will learn anything at all from this enormous misadventure in nation-building?

          1. Oh, sure, the Afghan army was sure going to keep up the good fight, I believe that… where’s my bridge??

            Lesson: Let people build their own damn nations. If they don’t want a nation, that’s on them, and none of our business.

            Gee, that was easy…

          2. all their support was the either US techs or at best US goods delivered from US assets there in Bagram Base. when the Taliban was handed the base they got all the items the AfArmy would have needed for support Basically much of the military there was left holding what was in hand and no ability to get anything else, while the Taliban had all their supplies. Sure we gave them M4s (etc) but the Administration just gave the Taliban the warehouse with the 5.56 (etc) in it.

        3. What was the embassy doing with pallets of cash? Having spent a tour in the Middle East, I have to tell you that a lot of things don’t get done without gifts, or what amounts to bribes. It is a completely different world, a different culture. It’s literally a science fiction or fantasy world in the flesh, with all the warts, smells and ugliness of low fiction. Fiction here, reality there. All separated by a mere 12 hours flight time. Small wonder that some of our more effective new SciFi/Fantasy writers come from the at background and can incorporate it into their writing.

    1. Yep. Found plenty of great pics using “French refugees 1940” but don’t know much about copyrights and am a WP newbie so didn’t want to try to repost therm here.

    2. They actually look like refugees, and not like eager young men hoping for a free ride to their next target.

  3. Everything is fine, and nothing what so ever is at all suspicious.

    Nothing can possibly go wrong.

    It is physically impossible for these supreme genius experts to ever be mistaken in anything.

    It is not at all like pissing on an electric fence and, unexpectedly, being shocked.

    Alucard from Hellsing absolutely would not have been a saner, more ethical, more responsible and more competent President than Barack Obama.

    It is impossible for their Afghanistan policy to have results that they did not foresee and desire.

    It is impossible for their domestic tyranny to have results that they did not foresee and desire.

    It is impossible for their domestic terrorism to have results that they did not foresee and desire.

    It is impossible for their criminal conspiracies to have results that they did not foresee and desire.

    It is impossible for their fraudulent claims of expert judgement to have results that they did not foresee and desire.

    1. And that pile is well past snorkel mask and into “deep sea diving suit” territory. 😉

    2. And they thought it would all slide smoothly into the power system of their dreams. The one thing they did not foresee and desire is how many people would have all the consequences land on their heads at once, making a lot of eyes pop open.

    3. I admit, I laughed at the one on Alucard.

      Then again I think the historical Vlad the Impaler would have been saner and more ethical than Obama – at least he was out to protect his own country!

      1. True story: Back in 2008, I spent some time thinking about a shortish story where things went horribly sidewise, and the resulting time travel, and wandering undead resulted in a President that was a serial numbers filed off Alucard. My recollection was that this was October, and that even then I predicted that Alucard would represent an improvement over Obama.

        There are a bunch of anime characters who are crazier and more hazardous to be around than Mr. The-Nazis-were-brought-in-to-make-me-look-better.

        Many years after the point, I learned about the “Amibition of Gihrin”/”Gihren’s Greed” series of Gundam games, and reflected that “Ambition of Hillary” would be a speaking fictionalization of current events, and that Gihren Zabi is basically how Hillary Clinton would be established if she were an anime character.

        Anyway, you have to go deep into the crazy end of anime characters to get as bad or worse than our merry band of sociopaths and narcissists.

        I’m wondering if the actual historical Oda Nobunaga would be better or worse than the current crop of lunatics.

        1. I do remember being struck by just how much the movie adaptation of Cats was a Hollywood fulfillment fantasy/cope of Hillary losing the election. They literally magicked the Hills Roy expy back after the big bad stole her.

          And then she off another cat from the tribe…

            1. I think auto-correct munged the last couple of sentences.

              “They literally magicked the Hills Roy expy back after the big bad stole her.

              And then she off another cat from the tribe…”

              Was supposed to be:
              “They literally magicked the Hillary expy back after the big bad stole her.

              And then she offed another cat (Grizabella) from the tribe.”

              The comment about the Gihren’s Greed being a good anime conversion of her life got me thinking about other, weird, movies that ended up actually being about Hillary.

              My SO wanted to go to the theater and watch a movie. The options were Rise of Skywalker or Cats. So, we watched Cats. My brain doesn’t come with an off switch.

              1. I appreciate the clarification but I’m still baffled as to why anyone would put a Hillary expy in Cats.

                1. It was during the Trump years, so Hollywood was looking for any sort of escapism they could manage. So, they made Old Deuteronomy into a Hillary cat, and made her the magical chief of the jellico cult. She gets stolen away and by wishing really hard they bring her back as the rightful chief of their world.

                  Also, their great reward of a new life on the Heaviside Layer consists of loading the rewardee into a balloon that’s let loose from the roof of the building, to float away and never be seen or heard from again.

                  It was a baffling movie in many ways.

                  1. Well, I watched the PBS version of the stageplay once and that was also bizarre. Still I can’t imagine putting Hillary in a movie you want people to go see.

                    1. Did you see their box office returns?

                      I mean, the only reason I ended up seeing it was I wanted to see someone mailing the corpse of my childhood even less 🙂

                    2. I can. She starts off with the ruby slippers before the flyover state expy evil steals them from her

                  2. Heh. It also sounds as though they attempted to give it a plot of some kind. The musical…really hasn’t got a plot. Nor did the poems they based it on. I mean, there was no villain in the stage version. There wasn’t really much of anything but “song that introduces a quirky cat and much dancing” and the whole Heavyside layer is really…vague. (And on stage, Grizabella is lifted by wire up into the sky. I finally decided that she’d died.)

        2. Definitely better under the “Demon King of the Sixth Heaven.” While Oda was a merciless warlord who exacted disproportionate vengeance when betrayed, he also tended to direct that against enemy factions, rather than the one he was leading. Also, to most accounts, his economic and governance reforms made his provinces much better for the average heimin or shokunin than was the norm at that period of the Sengoku Era.

          Biden’s more like a Saito Tatsuoki or Imagawa Ujizane.

      2. Vlad II Tepes at least would have been consistent. If you switched sides trying to hedge your bets, he went after you, no matter who you were or what your reason was. Otherwise he was pretty strict but fair. And that’s keeping in mind that only his enemies wrote accounts of his life and accomplishments.

        2. This. People can live under a tyrant so long as the tyrant is consistent.

          The constant “changed my mind, now this is Verboten” of the progressive crowd is what’s going to drive people to the brink.

            1. Cue the Ayn Rand villain quote: “Did you really think we want those laws observed? We want them to be broken.”

              Also the originally-in-Latin quote: “The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the State.”

        1. So far.

          He hasn’t dropped out of the game.

          Nixon got out and stayed out.

  4. Now you know why I escaped the metro Denver area some 7 years ago and ran east to Nebraska….Much safer in western Nebraska along with much less expensive cost of living. And it’s solid Trump country. But taxes are high so it was south from there after retiring and headed to Texas to enjoy the lack of state income tax while I still come back to Nebraska for the summers….Plus it helps that I can travel through friendly territory along the way between the two states….for however much longer that may be allowed.

    1. The people I knew in western Nebraska (some decades past) solved that high taxes problem by leasing out their front yard for an oil well.

  5. If Trump had done everything the Puppet has done in Afghanistan it would be Impeachment 3.0. Hell, I’m surprised they’re not rewriting the law to give themselves the right to impeach former presidents.

        2. Oh, agreed. But that’s just it: they already pulled the nonsense of impeaching a past president. :/ There is no insanity these losers won’t try.

  6. It is remarkable how quickly the anointed abandoned their peers still out there, though perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. They’re like reptiles that will devour each other given the chance, and the remainder of the people out there are icky people who do stuff like fix trucks and build buildings.

    This does feel like that first domino starting to fall. I don’t know what the next domino is, yet, but it is coming. I don’t know when, and I don’t know where, but it is coming.

      1. Point.

        It is interesting, however, the way defense contractors don’t seem to be talking about this, yet all do seem to be sending out waves of stuff about their available stress and grief counseling resources.

        1. They’re waiting for it to calm down enough to send the salesmen over to ink agreements with taliban to sell apaches and Blackhawks along with spare parts

          1. And the salesmen are going to go, after this?

            They may be willing to do just about anything for the sale, but getting to stage your own production of March to the Sea is a bit much, even for them…

          2. Sorry. That came out pricklier than I’d intended.

            Thing is, if they’re sending out grief counseling, they know they’ve got people out there who aren’t coming back, and are trying to get ahead of the reaction.

            No saleman, no matter how much they love the dollar wants to play that game.

            1. Grief and stress counseling could simply be the only remaining way to cynically make a profit, once you discard all the things that are too politically fraught for advertising to to be a wise business decision.

              OTOH, a lot of these groups are lead by people whose formative experiences were as military officers, and military officers seem to very often be very conventional thinkers.

              Realizing immediately that Biden had probably been cheated in, and that January sixth was basically proof that the Democrats had their hearts set on mass murder might be the result of an unconventional mind.

              At the very least, officer behavior pattern means that most of them are shutting up about whatever thoughts they have in public.

              I think a lot of people assumed that this would not be fundamentally changing the usual behavior of congressional funding, BAA, phase I, II, III, etc. Going suddenly to ‘these ‘tolerable conventional minds’ are actually sociopaths willing to destroy everything’ would be a huge shock. Navigating the changed situation would be stressful, and accepted that the business environment is not as expected might be a grief process.

              Anyway, I also think organization leadership of these groups may not be in consensus enough on other acts of political speech to say anything else.

              1. Ah. I was thinking more in terms of they don’t want some grief stricken employee to decide that they was the real problem.

                So far, mass events have generally been of the “fruit loop who says the moon skull calls on them to expunge the tomato heretics”

                However, this whole mess is of the sort that risks invoking the “you killed my daughter you son of a —–” reactions.

                1. Yeah, it does have that risk.

                  I think there are going to be a lot of situations where a) there is not enough information for useful conclusive analysis b) only the stupidest are still failing to realize how politically fraught speech has gotten. Expect a bunch more actions that are not outright fully explained, which we guess at by reading entrails, and which are ambiguous enough that we can read whatever we want into them.

            2. Well, and/or they know they’ve got veterans among their employees who are, to put it mildly, upset. I work at the BLM (fed not gang) and we had an email go out from the associate State Director offering help. (I found it suspicious, but that’s because I work for a gov agency, and automatically find anything they do to be suspicious, so my first thought was “Are they trying to identify potential “problems”?)

            3. Guess for those that have boots on ground as opposed to leather soled shoes it could be. I’ve just gotten extremely cynical that it’s just a pr move and mahogany row will find someone to go and make the deals. Maybe different with the smaller firms than what I’m used to.

              The twits I have to deal with just shrug their shoulders, pass blame downhill and recognize that if the doers say no, there are always other doers who are less scrupulous. Never mind that any corporate grief counseling will be used to get rid of the counseled

              1. True to a point. But when the salesmen are the ones in the mahogany offices, they’re not going to be as comfortable sticking their necks out. And in some fields you run out of do-ers real quick, or contracts.

                That said, thinking about this further, there’s no real reason the negotiate contracts or sales in-country, when you can do it somewhere prettier and safer. And there’s no reason to on-site support what you can get them to pay you to ship back state side to do.

      2. A lot of them are contractors. The question is how many are NGO employees and embassy staff? I saw at least a couple of videos of State Department employees still stranded.

  7. A NYT reporter reported that:
    “US embassy in Afghanistan today sent out a “final message” for Americans wanting to leave Kabul with government help, per source. Tells them to bring husband or wife and children under 21 only.”

    The message was recalled, but you can see where it’s going–if you didn’t get to the airport through the massive chaos, crowds, and oh yes, armed Taliban, you must not have wanted to leave.

    I guess someone at the State Department realized that was not going to go over well with the American population.

    It does, though, mesh with my advice to my children. When they started telling Americans to “shelter in place,” and not to go to the airport until called–my advice to my children was, in that situation, go to the airport. It’s like the advice to people in the twin towers on 9/11. Do not stay in your office waiting for instructions when an airplance hits the building. Evacuate.

    And be prepared for the media to try to spin the line that US citizens and allies stranded in Afghanistan by Joe Biden “chose” to stay.

    1. I’d like to say that there is no way the Dems come back from this.

      But it’s long COVID all the way down to a bottom we cannot see. And we have clowns to the left of us, jokers to the right tossing things in the hole to wake the Balrog.

      It’s weird but even though in my safe as anywhere little forest village life is going on as usual, there is STILL something in the air. The natives are restless.

      Prayers up for your move to safety and for your sanity.

      1. The point to remember is it doesn’t matter if it’s orcs or dwarfs making the ruckus, the balrog is still there and still going to come eventually. Somebody is going to have to take it on.

        1. The interesting thing to me is that many children of the wealthy and connected choose to work for NGOs abroad. Some become roving photographers, some are medical personnel, some are journalists, etc. (I know this from the schools my children attended.) This career choice seems to skew Democratic.

          That means there are many powerful Democrat supporters unable to help their children, because of Joe Biden. I guess they are hiring international security companies to get them out. It must be a madhouse in that part of the world now.

          1. I saw somewhere (either Ace’s or Insty’s) earlier today that Biden is making it more difficult for private groups to get people out. I didn’t click the link to check for details, though.

          2. Children of the connected work for NGOs because they can get the jobs, without even interviewing in many cases, while smarter, harder working people are ignored…NGOs are just another part of the Government, and perfect havens for the indolent, untalented children of the Club.

            2. I wouldn’t think that any posting in Afghanistan would be comfortable. And I don’t think the rank and file NGO workers make much at all in the way of salary.

              It is reported that Erik Prince is offering to get people out for $6,500 per head, which seems to spur liberal hate on Twitter. I had a problem with the US government charging $2,000 per head to evacuate citizens, when it was the gov’t that botched the evacuation. A private contractor, though, has to cover costs.

              1. And, searching for Psaki “Erik Prince,” it seems the White House would like people to hate Erik Prince, for charging for his services. Psaki called him “soulless.”

                Which, ah, well…I wish the Democrats wouldn’t default to trying to make Americans hate designated targets. It’s clumsy, transparent, and DUMB.

                How dumb? Well, in 5 minutes of online searching, I found out about Kidnap & Ransom policies, which are apparently a thing. If you talk about it, you lose the coverage, so companies which have arranged for it aren’t bragging about it. Employees of businesses and NGOs may well have no idea they’re covered.

                For an insurance company facing having to pay up on these policies, $6,500 per head is far preferable to paying ransom or death benefits, and far cheaper.

                So, the White House has no idea how international NGOs/business/travel works? They can’t use an internet search engine? They can’t pass up a chance to demonstrate their ignorance, because gosh, getting people to hate someone is good for them?

                It all fits very well with the interview with the author of “The Revolt of the Public,” in that the elites in this case are perpetually behind the information curve available to the public. They keep trying to set the Narrative, but it’s failing, because the points are easily refuted. Their failing is that their image of the public is that of a conveniently unsophisticated hick, rather than someone who knows more about how the real economy works than they do.

                1. Well, and after a bit of thought, I realized that $6,500 was actually fairly cheap for a GUARANTEED extraction. And I haven’t heard that he’s demanding the full sum up front? And sure, charge more if they have to go in and get you out, but…again…

                  Also, as I understand it, most of the Americans working over there are doing so as contractors, and making quite a lot of money (or, as you say, have kidnapping insurance from their employers). We’re not talking about Joe who works at McDonald’s down the street there.

                  Now, Afghanis trying to get out I would think have a bigger issue on the money front, and that really sucks. But the media always likes to portray guys like this as ONLY being in it for the dollar, and they (the media) can’t be trusted to report on acts of compassion and generosity that will likely (and already have) occurred.

                  1. $6500 is probably about right. Considering all the operating costs of the aircraft, pay for crew, waivers from multiple governments for landing and refueling rights….

                2. Paski is willingly and knowingly working for Joe Biden.

                  ‘Psaki’ would not know a soul if a soul kicked its demonic ass out of the corpse it is animating.

                  I’m not entirely sure that I am speaking rhetorically and hyperbolically here.

                  1. Tucker Carson has an interview up with Erik Prince. I have no idea if other news organizations have interviewed him recently.

                    Probably not, as the broadcast/entertainment media seem stuck on stupid.

      2. The Dems are going to try to brazen their way through this mess. They’re counting on the short attention span of the American public, backed by the known effects of repeatedly broadcasting the same thing over and over again at a group of people. The hope is that by this time next year, any complaints about Afghanistan will automatically cause people to denounce the complainer as a neocon who wanted to stay in the country indefinitely.

      3. What if WE are the Balrog? I don’t think they have a Gandalf to say “You shall not pass.” If there is one, I bet he’s somewhere among us, too.

    3. Also, State Department is saying gather at this here hotel, while Michael Yon is saying stay the hell away, that hotel is under Taliban control.

      Wonder how that is going to fall out….

  8. Run Sarah run.
    I’m at a mountain resort and there is mass psychosis: nearly 100% slave muzzle outdoors including toddlers and small children. Outdoors. In the mountains.

    I’ve seen this before.

      1. It affects me more than I thought.

        I find myself raging internally at the mamas who strut their muzzled tribe around like they’re something special while that little boy just caught my eye and gave that little boy wave.

        I leave the property for much of the day and that’s a good thing.

        Insane.

        2. Seeing all of that at stores, especially in a place full of people who should know better at this point, has been driving more than a few of my depressive flare-ups. The sooner people that like us who need to get out of our states can do so the better…

          1. Yeah. I can’t disagree. But I’ve decided to stay.
            I’ve prayed and prayed and everything I hear says do my work where I am.
            I’ve connected with some patriots, so I don’t feel as alone.
            The decision to stay was finally made this week, while I was out in the mountains, fishing and hiking.

            We stay. We fight.

              1. #ustoo

                I can see us moving out of Eugene (technically not even that, as while we’re in *Eugene UGB, with Eugene address, not IN Eugene), even Lane County (all the way to Benton County, or not that far). But as stated we can’t make up our mind where to go.

                * Been trying now for 58 years, that I know of. Haven’t succeeded yet.

                1. Best of luck to all three of you, then! As for me, Georgia has never felt like home for me, so to speak, and the very real possibility of it becoming a blue state through stupidity and chicanery in Atlanta and Savannah is the last straw. As to where, well, that’s the question, especially in light of some recent thoughts I’ve been having over the subject. *Sigh* It feels like way too late in my life to finally be asking myself what is it that I actually want out of it, especially when it comes to a place to live…

    2. Like usual, I went for a walk today. Actually encountered someone who saw me coming, put on a mask, and looked at me fearfully out of the corner of their eye as I passed them. Which, FWIW, is fairly unusual around here, and we have indoor mask mandates again.

  9. Run Sarah run.
    I’m at a mountain resort and there is mass psychosis: nearly 100% slave muzzle outdoors including toddlers and small children. Outdoors. In the mountains.

    I’ve seen this before.

  10. I still say blaming all of this on Derpy Joe is like getting pissed off at Charlie McCarthy for insulting you.

    A traditional stage show has one ventriloquist with several dummies.

    The Washington political stage show has half a dozen ventriloquists and only one dummy. Is it any wonder the dummy is wearing out and getting increasingly schizophrenic?

    1. Oh, the spiteful shartstain with dementia is just frosting on the cake. Even if he had his full faculties and was totally in control we’d be where we are now, possibly worse off.

      1. Worse, because then he’d REALLY be doing it on purpose. The man is morally bankrupt and always has been–it’s just that now he probably can’t insert quite as much malice as he could have with a fully functioning brain.

        On the other hand, I could argue that his handlers are injecting that malice for him…

      1. It just keeps repeating in my head “term limits, term limits, term limits”…no pelosihag, no biden, etc, they would all be long gone…being a political reptile was NEVER supposed to be a lifetime gig.

      2. Children of the connected work for NGOs because they can get the jobs, without even interviewing in many cases, while smarter, harder working people are ignored…NGOs are just another part of the Government, and perfect havens for the indolent, untalented children of the Club.

        1. oops…What I meant to say is that Biden being clueless is not necessarily bad at all…He kneecapped our coup in the Ukraine at the summit by withdrawing opposition to Nordstream 2…

        2. There’s a reason–though it’s never openly discussed–that NGOs constantly show up at a business advice blog I follow as inevitably toxic, dysfunctional workplaces…

    3. Biden has always been a stupid, rather vicious, fool. True, his handlers are the same but let’s not lose sight of the fact that, behind his superficial charm, Biden is just another psychopath.

  11. As Bob the RF implied, anyone is capable of seeing that the Afghanistan “plan” is being carried out backwards. Are these people really that stupid or is it on purpose? If this is what they wanted to do, what are their reasons?

    I’m a bit anxious about what plans they may also have about linking (at the very least) various Fed benefits to having the beer flu shot.

    Think the Aussies want some guns back.

    1. “I’m a bit anxious about what plans they may also have about linking (at the very least) various Fed benefits to having the beer flu shot.”

      Already proposed for receiving Medicare insurance payments, various grants to the states, treatment in VA hospitals, various certifications / licenses like DEA approval for prescribers, several others.

      2. Unfortunately, both my husband and myself have State School Retirements, and Social Security. All highly vulnerable to Vax Pressure.
        Hell, they are already going after active military. I feel confident that VA benefits and Military Benefits/Retirements are next.

        1. I’m afraid of that as well – I draw SS, and a military pension, too. I’ll ask at my next appointment if I can get antibody testing. I believe that I had the Commie Crud late in 2019, and if so, then getting the vaxx is superfluous.

      2. Gotta be, but I’d love to know what they are specifically trying to accomplish. Anything beyond creating more chaos, weakening the US abroad and at home, setting up a new future emergency for martial law, or tempting the Right to try a real insurrection?

        Wishful thinking would be it’s Joe’s way of begging to be taken out of office.

        1. Looks like all of the above to me. I can just see the more deluded thinking that this will be the moment where they can finally show the public once and for all that the right is every bit the monstrous (straw)boogeyman they’ve always said they are and that they’ll be on board for the final purge. This will…not go as they planned, I don’t imagine.

    3. Akshully, I do not know enough about what is happening, what is being done, or about planning or getting things done, to have an opinion about what should have been done.

      Okay, I have heard that generals and their staffs are supposed to be expert planners, and hence able to avoid massive clusterf&cks. Not being experienced in that stuff myself, I do not have a really good idea how true that is, or under what circumstances such experience is not a valid guide.

      My concerns about the wisdom and forethought are at a bit of a higher level.

      If an American government abandons a bunch of Americans, isolated from any way out, in a nation expected to be hostile, what are the possibilities?

      Biden presumably wants the Taliban stable in Afghanistan, as with the governments in Pakistan and Iran.

      One of the ways the Democrats have been propping those fragile governments up is by restraining American military from fighting against them. If there are any military Americans left over there, and if they have been abandoned to die, there is less that the Democrats can do to punish those Americans. Now, the ‘smart’ way to handle that is to try to play a game with the outside military, and the military still in side, playing off the factions against each other by holding out hope of being allowed to get folks out. However, it is not clear that Biden has a politically reliable scumbag who is competent to carry out such a policy.

      I’m not expecting to find out that folks to were abandoned have managed to flip over the whole table, but it would be a ‘downside’ that the Democrats should have anticipated, and taken steps to minimize the risk of.

      I think military people getting out with their own resources, and being angry, is more likely. Or outside military getting angry. Or Americans related to the abandoned people getting angry. I mean, it isn’t like we staff our bureaucracies with a bunch of orphans who have always lived lives of complete social isolation. It is like the decision was made by a sociopath who cares nothing for their own relatives except for the uses to which the relatives can be put.

      Fundamentally, how ever many people have been abandoned in Afghanistan, they are not little automations, and now the Federal hierarchy has much less control over them. Also fundamentally, there are hundreds of millions of Americans, they are likewise not automations, and a lot of federal influence ran on the illusion that the Democrats were not blind to the worth of human lives and particularly American lives.

      I don’t have /any/ answers. There are a lot of opinions that I do not have. I am appalled that someone could be so blind to the reasoning of their adversaries that they simply assume that this sort of thing could never be a problem for them. Okay, it makes sense in hindsight, senile pedophile model, but I am shocked because of how profoundly alien I find that thinking to be.

    4. I think it’s rather that in Typical Democrat fashion, they thought they could wave their hands and an Orderly Withdrawal would magically happen… having as usual zero idea how things actually work, let alone who keeps things running. Read somewhere the very first thing they did was stop paying the contractors who grease the wheels, and naturally the wheels came off immediately.

      I don’t think there was any planning. I think it was just China said Now, and Joe said Sure, and here we are today.

      Meanwhile, the Ho is in Singapore, blathering on about our historical solidarity with Southeast Asia.

      1. You just give the orders, and the Little People scramble to make it so.

        Obviously the failure of the withdrawal is the fault of Trump and his supporters trying to backstab the legitimate government.

        [sigh] and yes, there are people dumb enough to fall for that one.

  12. Now, just think of those 20,040 Grenades, smuggled into the U.S., with Islamic fundamentalists handing them to their children to plant as booby traps in their various schools across the nation. You know, pull the pin, use tape to hold the spoon down, stick it in locker such that when the locker is opened, the tape gets ripped off. Or a school assembly and a couple of girls sneak a few in under their dresses and toss them around the auditorium when the lights are dimmed. Of course adults could do the same thing in movie theaters, except the theaters are still pretty empty; but you get the idea.

    What really pisses me off is Biden giving away millions of rounds of ammo to the Taliban, when it’s costing Americans 75 cents to over a dollar per round for 5.56. No, that alone is grand theft from all the tax payers.

    1. Almost everything they’re doing is grand theft from the tax payers. That is because tax payers are not the constituency they’re pandering to.

      If they left that much .308 and .50 BMG, they must have left 100 million rounds of 5.56 x 45. Or more.

    2. $2.65/rnd cheapest price for BMG by the by. That was a few pennies worth they left to them out of malice. Has to be malice. Anyone that stupid would likely be removed from the gene pool long ago.
      But hey, They decided after giving Putin his pipeline Billion$, they’ll take a few ni¢kels and ban Rus made weapons and ammo from US importation for a year, over the poisoning of that Diplo back back years ago (yeah, right. totally believable)

        1. Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice. But this is probably malice. Nobody could screw up *this* badly by accident.

          1. I know from talking to officers that make plans in the mid-90s that they always have plans on how to evacuate an area. So yea– they could have picked up any plan and done it better.

        2. Unfortunately the Constitution allows many things which we wish it didn’t.

          ….but there is a lot of dead wood to get rid of before fixing that.

                1. Oh, we have ammunition manufacturers…. but they can’t get the raw materials easiy, due to environmental regs, or permission to build more plants, or….

        3. Oh gosh, I’m so glad that all my Russian(and Chinese) ammo was lost when that last hurricane(or the next one) flooded the place… heh, heh, heh.

      3. If it wasn’t for the fact that they were destroying a country and placing our people at risk; I could envision this as a plot by the Biden Administration to flood the market with cheap American weapons to drive down the Russian and Chinese weapon industries, and increase dependence on American produced arms.

        2. if ours weren’t so damned maintenance intensive and relying on someone with half a brain to run, it could have that effect
          I predict once they get some time down the road they will be back to AK derivatives in short order in place of the M4s and SAWs they have just acquired. The rest will be popping up from time to time to make us look bad.

    3. If he cedes to taliban its just given to a different govt like Canada or Australia. That ammo reaching those people that fancy themselves US Citizens rather than appropriately subjects of the USSA would be arming those that both politicians and generals in charge of this fiasco recognize as a mortal enemy.

    4. No, that alone is grand theft from all the tax payers.

      I think the idea is to shame anyone saying Taxation is Theft by showing that they ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

    1. Oddly the same number that Cuomo consigned to their deaths with his retirement home dictate.
      Must be some target level of harm the left shoot for in their destruction of America.

  14. All the other stuff is just stuff—the Russians and the Chinese have it (albeit that’s a lot of ammo!) but encryption gear!!! and working laptops!!!! (And pallets of cash will buy you a lot of friends in low places; yikes.) Those are small items you can put in you pocket (the encryption gear I’ve seen anyway) and everybody knows the size of a laptop (with the data still on it!)

    And how many times has an entire post (stateside) been locked down because someone misplaced one weapon (or NVG or encryption device)?! And Charlie McCarthy’s uncle just gave away thousands!

    1. BUT, accounting for equipment isn’t the President’s job; it’s not even a general’s job (except, maybe, pallets of cash). It’s a battalion level (a lt. colonel’s) job. Battalion is going to require the companies’ to account for their stuff, and the company commanders are going to require their officers and non-commissioned officers to account for it—who are going to make PFC Snuffy go find it if it’s missing.

      OTOH, I did hear or read that there was a 2020 plan for a proper withdrawal and that got thrown away because it was all bad-orange-man stuff. Either way, it makes no sense; which seems to sum up the entire debacle from closing Bagram first to not going out into Kabal to get people (and get into street fights with a truck load of civilians—who would get shot, beheaded, or tortured to death if someone didn’t go get them?)

      Someone pointed out that the plan should have waited until the end of “fighting season;” i.e., until after the snow closes off the countryside.

      1. I mean, even if inventory is a “lower rank” job…it’s the higher ranks–all the way up to the CIC, ie, FICUS–to ensure that it is done correctly. ESPECIALLY in a war zone. That most of our general class is too busy playing woke politics is telling.

        1. It is SOP to destroy equipment that the enemy might get their hands on. It was done in Iraqi Freedom, It was done in Desert Storm when an Abrams (already outdated by then) got stuck in a dune and could not be extracted by our troops. So they threw in satchel charges to destroy all the electronics and other sensitive equipment before the burned out shell was left to rust away in the desert sun. So in order for all that equipment to get left behind like that, means that someone passed along an order to deliberately ignore SOP.

          The question in my mind is who that order came from and why. This wasn’t an accident. My sister was a mil-wife, my oldest brother was army counter intel. I worked ten years for a mil contractor building armored personnel carriers. I know all about the forms that gotta be filled out, in triplicate. I know all about serial numbers that gotta be checked and re-checked. This is not an oversight or a mistake. This was deliberate.

          1. I think it’s simple: China said drop everything and leave, NOW. Joe said Sure, I can do that. Plan? Who needs plans??

      3. I’ve heard the same – it is so against SOP to leave valuable gear for the enemy.
        Digression: in my own career field, working as a broadcaster, there was one element of the broadcast gear that was under standing orders to be destroyed if the base and the radio operations facility was ever to be overrun. It was an essential element – a relatively fragile metal and glass unit. Next to the cabinet which housed it, there was always a small sledge hammer hung from the wall. It was specifically to be used to destroy that element, to prevent a hostile power to take over the station and broadcast capacity.
        (Sorry, at this late date can’t recall what it was, exactly – only that it was vital to operate a broadcast radio signal, and we all knew where it was, and that we would have to use the sledge hammer to destroy it, if it ever became necessary.)

        1. This. Encryption gear, communication gear, this stuff is always supposed to be destroyed if it cannot be removed to a secure location.

        2. Broadcast-grade thermionic valves are expensive and not always easy to get replacements for. At one time, after US production essentially ceased, there was an embarrassing situation where radio and TV stations were importing them when they could find them. Then there was a shortage of the ones used by civilian radars, like at airports, and the only timely source that could be found was in… the USSR. I’m sure they made the most they could of that, propaganda-wise.

          1. One more reason to get communications equipment in your hands – NOT cell phones, which can be taken out with a simple switch – GMRS (expanded FRS walky-talkies, greater range, more channels), and amateur radio. Both the handheld radios (for local/short distances) and HF (long-distance communications.
            http://arrl.org
            Don’t wait. Get the equipment, and the training, ASAP. You can buy GMRS without having the license, although it is technically a violation of FCC rules to transmit without a license. So what?

  15. Sarah, if you think the dead hand of FDR and his myrmidons weighs heavily on our necks today, the real author of the yoke is LBJ and his henchmen, including Walter Reuther and company. Schlaes’ book The Forgotten Man is good, but far, far, far more important, and scarier, is her more recent The Great Society. I lived through its creation, thought it was bad policy and dangerous at the time, but I had no idea – and as far as I knew almost no one not involved in doing it to America had any idea – of the role played by Reuther and his socialist unions. Your next listen should be The Great Society. I wish Schlaes was more of an historian – that is did more analysis – than a chronicler, but she is a damned good researcher and a fine, fine chronicler.

    1. It goes back to the progressives and Woodrow Wilson. Wilson had a thing for Bismarck and the German Social welfare state. Everything since has been a continuation of that initial treason.

        1. His stupidity is legion. He was a bigot and naive fool, and those were his better qualities. He’s the tragedy to Biden’s farce.

          For flavor, I recommend the chapters on him in von Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s Leftism Revisited, especially the footnotes. As is quite common with Austrian writers of that vintage (Popper, Hayek, etc,) the footnotes are more fun than the book, which is savagely funny while being scrupulously accurate.

    2. This, plus Sarah’s comment on “caring” governors turning formerly habitable and useful spaces into homeless camps, reminds me of a friend who works behind enemy lines in the public health department of a county that’s home to the capital of a very “progressive” state. (Re: the friend, she’s generally conservative and competent, so I have no idea how she stays employed and mostly sane in that hive of progtards; I do know that she’s stressed beyond belief.)

      Homelessness over there is big business. It’s not any kind of accident that homeless addicts pile up in the progressive utopias.

      They want MORE of it, not less. The more “displaced persons” a government agency or NGO “serves,” the more money they get — and round and round it goes, as they build their budgets and bureaucratic fiefdoms on an ever-expanding foundation of addiction, mental illness, squalor, and suffering.

      1. You betcha. Back in the 1960s when Chicago started building high-rise Welfare housing, they wound up having to advertise over multiple states, and in some cases offer free transportation, to get them filled up.

        “There’s a lot of profit to be made in poverty.”

              2. *waves from the BOTTOM of the Left Coast, surrounded by Navy and Marines.* They hold back some of the stupid.

    1. Operation Underground Railroad is helping them with that. THAT is an awesome bunch. (And as per their goals, they are specifically looking to get kids, and if I recall right it doesn’t matter if the kids are Christian or not, out.)

  17. On a complete tangent, am I the only one who hates the “blood and treasure” slogan?

    It’s not some pirate’s golden hoard we’re punting around here; it is just money, and trying to puff it up like it’s the same thing a bleeding out has irritated me the entire time the talking balloons have been using it.

    And in this, I. Do. Not. Care. about the money. The gov’t is already melting the presses for their own pet stupids. They can just print more until those pallets of cash are worth a plain coffee at Starbucks for all I care, if that’s what it takes to actually get people out. They’re going to do it anyways, so why not get something worth it? It’s not like anyone has a stamping machine that can pop out a few thousand replacement people fully formed and ready to whatever.

    I’m so tired of these hollow men and their quippy little slogans.

    1. I agree. I first heard that phrase from Obama. I can’t explain why, but I really dislike it. It seems like a dismissal of what was lost, or something. Not sure, but I also dislike it. It seems to miss the point, or to boil it down in a very dismissive sort of way.

      1. The same way people were commodified into “human resources” several decades ago, and for the same reason. “Personnel” or “troops and equipment” entail the idea that we’re people, not abstracted widgets to be managed as the progs desire.

        1. Yes. And the Bllod/Treasure construction seems to both treat the value of the equipment as a desireable children’s toy, and at the same time equating it’s value to the lives maimed and lost.

          It is an extra special brand of conery…

  19. As it turns out (and as I mentioned the other day), I’m also listening to ‘The Forgotten Man’. The Senate just rejected Roosevelt’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court. The Dems in our own Senate would never do so today.

    Also, Alcoholics Anonymous just published it’s book. I didn’t realize that organization had started during the Great Depression.

  20. One “good” thing that ought to come from all of this is the realization by many that the Taliban may be the uniparty’s opponent, but we the people are their enemy.

  21. While quite concerned regarding you guys in the lower forty eight, I’m rather glad I’m up here on top of the world right now.

    I’ve dropped and bucked about four cords of wood this summer (Not bad for an 82 year old eh?), have about half if it split and stacked (the rest will be done before freezeup.) so no worries, if, when it’s fifty below, the heating oil stops flowing, or the power grid grinds down, the wood stove will be glowing.

    I expect, no matter what, we’ll be able to sit tight, but I’ve exit routes and destinations in mind just in case.

    Be careful, be watchful, be thoughtful guys, it’s a swamp down there and as Ol’ Remus (RIP) said, avoid crowds.

  22. San Jose, CA passed a law yesterday banning me from any city-owned facility that has a crowd of 50 or more (because I won’t take their vax). Nearby San Francisco says I can’t go into any of their restaurants because of this.

    The San Jose mayor said he was “following the science”. Even though the county is over 80% vaxxed, the city leaders said big events attract people from other parts of the state and country and that those people put locals “in jeopardy”.

    The SF Mayor was even creepier after acknowledging the businesses don’t have to actually verify a vaccine card that someone shows them: “We just want people to get into the habit of showing proof.”

    They are trying to get us to view residents from “other” parts of the state or country as people who will harm us, plus they want everyone to get used to showing papers for something as simple as going to a restaurant. It’s all very ominous.

    1. I have exactly 4 months to go here in the People’s Republic of New York (formerly the Grand Duchy of Cuomo) before we escape to Florida … and even down there, the mostly older members of our new congregation are still in the habit of getting their news from the eneMedia, and are in such terror of the Delta Variant (for which they seem to read “the Andromeda Strain”!) that there’s now a vaccination requirement to enter the building. As the weremate has had massive reactions to flu vaccine in the past, we’re working on getting doctors’ notes so that exceptions can be made. The synagogue will accept that not everyone is the same, even if the Feds will not.
      But my big worry is that things might fall apart within the next 16 weeks and trap us here — same as our hostess fears. The hope is that any serious impact of feces on the fan will begin in New York City itself and not engulf my small and comparatively well-managed city before the winter solstice. And once we get out … well, on my last visit to our new home, I began my first shooting lessons. So there.

      1. Come on down! There are covidians in all states, but DeSantis has been handling things well here so far. To the lefties, he’s the worst thing since Trump.

        1. Thank you! I’ve visited twice since buying the new property, and it feels like home already. Plus, it’ll be great to share the best governor in these United States with you!

        2. Florida sounds like a great place, but I’m afraid your climate would literally kill me. A proper climate has ice and polar bears. 😛

        3. Not 100% sold on FL myself but I am interested and it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for me geographically (from North GA). It seems different enough from GA culturally to be appealing, too (my tope of Odd just doesn’t work in the various Southern cultures, especially Southern Church). Just not sure about increased heat and humidity, hurricanes, and if DeSantis is going to leave a lasting legacy that pulls the state further red. And finances/finding a home from a practical standpoint too.

          1. Despite Kurt’s Indian Country assuming that the Midwest will largely go Blue, I suspect that – outside of the major cities – a hell of a lot of Red USAians will suddenly surfact.
            The on-the-fence types will need to have the facts on the ground explained to them. Fortunately, the further you go out, the fewer of them there are.

            1. Right, the coastal blue snobs sneer at the Midwest as being Flyover Country for a reason and I can’t imagine the blue types having many friends outside places like Denver and Chicago either. Fox and her husband have definitely made a compelling case for Iowa on that note, just still feeling out my options and getting an idea of the finances and logistics of it all.

          2. GA is actually more like the Deep South. Florida not so much unless you get into the north central area. But even there(here) it’s generally live and let live.
            In point of fact, at one time a large number of successful writers were at home in FL.

      3. I’m always looking for an excuse to hit the range, I’m in western Central FL and would be willing to drive a couple hours to meet up and play with loud toys. Roughly where are you going to be?

        1. Myself I’m in the Ocala area, and am working with a friend to set up a small range on her three acres…. 10, 50, and 100 yard if we can stretch it that

    2. I am so glad that I fled the People’s Democratic Republic of Kalifornistan. I still have a brother behind the lines in San Jose, though. Good luck out there.

    3. If they’re vaccinated, how the hell do YOU put THEM in jeopardy?

      That’s like saying here’s a boat full of people, most wore life jackets, some didn’t, but the people with life jackets will drown because of the people who didn’t wear one. Even tho the boat is in no particular danger of sinking.

      [headdesk]

      1. The rants I see vary between, “Why are you so SELFISH?” and, “I hate you because you filthy unvaccinated person will give Covid to my (vaccinated) grandmother and if she dies it will be your fault for being so SELFISH!”

        Yep. If you don’t do what they want it’s because you are selfish.

        1. I literally saw a guy arguing that when people eat together, you all have to eat the same thing, and trying to eat something else is a power ploy.

          Yup, it’s not the guy trying to control what EVERYONE eats who’s indulging in a power ploy.

          1. I can actually see that as an argument… when it’s a provided meal, family dinner type. (That’s the popularity of “food sensitivities” that vanish at random.) Even then, most families have expectation-room for something like “I don’t want to be a bother, but would it be OK if I skipped [this part], I’ll bring [substitute item]?

            Depending on family, there’s “take a token amount, hide it in your napkin” stuff, too.

            For eating out? About the only way it’d work would be if someone brought in food from another eatery. (Which yes, I have seen. No, it wasn’t an allergy, or even a CLAIMED allergy.)

            Taking a special situation and over-applying it, loudly demanding that people Recognize This Truth?

            Sounds like a power play, yep. 😀

          2. People must be reduced to widgets, all exactly the same. Liking different foods is RRRAAACISSST!! Or something.

    4. Soon enough, the humorless minions with the mirror shades and jackboots will be blocking off streets and sidewalks to check people’s papers. And the city will be pushing their impanted transponder system, “just like your car’s toll transponder!” that will make things *so* much easier for everyone…

    1. Not if Democrats get their way. They don’t even need HR1 to be able to fix elections so that they are guaranteed control of the House. HR4 will do that and fix state legislative races as will. Via The Federalist:

      https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/26/house-democrats-pass-bill-to-steal-elections-the-old-fashioned-way/?&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_federalist_daily_briefing_2021_08_26&utm_term=2021-08-26

      If this is enacted there will never be another free and fair election in the USA and the Democrats will have seized power and made themselves the US equivalent of the CCP, and will rule as tyrannically as the CCP does. Keep in mind that they have already declared that people who disagree with them on such things as policy to deal with the CCP Virus or anything related to Critical Race Theory are domestic terrorists. They mean to eliminate political opposition in the fullest sense of the word, meaning they intend to eliminate their political opponents.

  24. Pingback: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Refugees

  25. If thousands of Americans and thousands of others are left behind in Afghanistan in the hands of a homicidal death cult and the US press refuses to cover it, are they hostages? Asking for a friend.

    In other news, the WuFlu death toll in NY was increased by 12M — only 6-8M more to go before we find out how many people killer Cuomo killed. Since the press refused to cover that too, they can’t have been dead dead, they were just politically inconveniently dead. We have Schrodinger’s Journalists except you don’t have to open the box.

    2. 12K?

      Because as New York state’s population is only 19M, I too would panic if Covid had killed more than 12M people.

      1. Latin my dear boy, if boy you are, Latin. None of your Greek. Mille, hence millennium etc., Million is MM or a thousand thousand.

          1. Sorry, the substitution of K for M, while it has accelerated since computers became popular, goes back to the French Revolutionary units. I loath and despise the metric system and use it only when absolutely necessary.

            2. I also hold the metric systems in contempt, but I have a special unfondness for the lusers who type ‘2k21’ to represent ‘2021’.

      2. I would worry if it killed 12M people, but not if it merely killed 12M New Yorkers.

          1. Nah, some of us just grew up in Jersey and remember going into NYC in the 70’s and early 80’s. (shudder) Things had improved quite a bit by the late 90’s, but the last time I visited (2019) it felt like it was halfway back to being the crime-ridden, trash-strewn mess I remembered from childhood. Mind you, I actually like much of upstate NY and the people I’ve encountered there, but NYC is a hole.

            1. As I said, provincials.

              I grew up in NYC during the 70’s and 80’s. it was just home, I don’t really remember any of the crime and such affecting me, it just was. Can’t blame us for the mess the city became under DiBlassio since it was all the hipster POS from the provinces and the associated property speculators who put him in. We working class ethnics are all long gone.

              I live in NJ now, which is the worst of all worlds, you get the a—holery without any of the amenities, I retire in 4 years and then I’m gone and my huge property tax burden is gone too.

  26. Pingback: Mis-connected | Dio's Workshop

  27. It probably helps not at all that I’ve been listening to Amity Schlaes The Forgotten Man and slowly realizing that all the crap we’re going through has the sticky fingerprints of FDR and his “brain trust” (mostly commies, to be honest) all over it.

    I don’t know if it will HELP or not, but reading Chesterton it was kind of freaky how often he could’ve been talking about current events– and he’d be a hundred and forty something, now!

    1. Communist regimes mid collapse take irrational actions. Some of the things they do have no information content when rationally analyzed.

      Could be a bunch of causes.

      These people are not operating on a sound model of the reality of the consequences of their actions.

    2. I think it’s more that they’re frantically trying to spin the idea that the protestors were dangerous. The leak of the FBI report hurt this argument. And the capitol cop is one of the people who has the most to lose if the public doesn’t believe that the protestors were dangerous. The politicians have already white-washed the shooting via their internal “probe”, and it clearly hasn’t been enough. So they’re going to drag a cop out (no guarantee at this point that it’s the one that’s been noted as the likely shooter) for an interview in which he talks about how horrible things have been for him since January 6, how much of a threat Ashlee Babbit could potentially have been, and how those mean conservatives keep sending him death threats.

      1. And it looks like I was correct. Newsmax is reporting that seven Capitol Police Officers are filing a lawsuit against Trump and others, blaming them for what happened on 1/6.

        This is all about trying to keep control of perceptions.

    3. Nah. Just rubbing faces in that they run a death squad that can murder you, your family or anyone they want and there will be no repercussions or reprieves

  29. They want to change the topic.

    Don’t let them.

    Note that it’s very hard to figure out how many Americans are stuck in Afghanistan. If the White House knew, they would present the numbers. I suspect they paid no attention to the Americans in Kabul, before Biden’s f up.

    It’s hard to find up to date video from Kabul airport in quick searches. I wonder if news from the area is being throttled?

    It is alleged that US forces forced international journalists onto a flight to Doha: https://dailynewsbrief.com/2021/08/25/us-military-allegedly-forces-international-journalists-onto-doha-bound-plane-in-afghanistan/

    “Under threat from military police, the US military forces us and ten other international journalists to take planes to Doha. Although we had a safe way out of the airport towards the city,” tweeted Deputy Editor-in-Chief of BILD Paul Ronzheimer.

    There is no further information on who was forced aboard the plane with Ronzheimer while the US has not yet released a statement on the allegations/

    1. “Note that it’s very hard to figure out how many Americans are stuck in Afghanistan. If the White House knew, they would present the numbers.”

      I disagree. I don’t think they would. If the numbers are vague, then on August 31, the White House can declare “Mission accomplished! Sure, we weren’t able to get *everyone*! But we got 99% of the Americans still inside the country that wanted to leave!” The fact that a significant number of Americans are still stuck in the country will be largely immaterial because no one will know for certain how many are inside the country. If there were official numbers, then people could compare that official tally with the number of Americans who actually flew out (which is a number that the White House is also being cagey about).

      1. I see your point, but I don’t think they can pull that off. It’s very hard to claim success when US local restaurant owners can report on their relatives’ plight in Afghanistan, such as: https://www.wcvb.com/article/brighton-massachusetts-restaurant-owner-brother-witnessed-aftermath-of-kabul-bombing/37409045

        There group including school children from California, visiting family. Not only is this period “fighting season,” it’s also US school vacation season. Lots of immigrant families go back to see relatives overseas during summer vacation. I would not be at all surprised to find that there are quite a few green-card holders and naturalized citizens either trying to get out of Afghanistan or worrying about family members in Afghanistan.

        It would be impossible to make people not talk about their family’s challenges. Maybe it’s an artifact of having such an old president, born before easy air travel and the internet.

        1. I worked an IT project for the Marines (about 4 years worth), and now I’m looking at the casualty lists and seeing people I worked with on Pendleton.

  31. The complete and total abandonment of civilians in Afghanistan – along with the piles of military gear – it’s hard to get my head around the criminal idiocy of it all. No evacuation plan put into place, a relatively secure and defensible air base just abandoned in the dead of night … and no officers on scene, or immediately responsible left any orders at all? Not to pull out the valuable gear, or at least destroy it? This is either crashing incompetency or malice on the part of the Biden administration, and I honestly can’t decide which is worse.

    1. It’s worse than that, Celia. Destroying valuable gear is SOP (standard operating procedure). There is no need to order it done, as it is the default action in this situation. Someone in authority ordered them NOT TO destroy the gear and to leave it there.

      1. My understanding is that all that stuff had been “transferred” to the ANA, so it was no longer technically ours to destroy. Personally, I think we should have destroyed it anyway; what, the ANA was going to complain?

    2. I figure it’s two parts stupidity, one part wanting to help their friends and allies the Taliban (the Left is surprisingly simpatico with Islam), and one part wanting to inflict a humiliating defeat on Deplorable America. Their big miscalculation was in underestimating how much of the blame would stick to the Biden regime and to the Deep State of America, rather than to Deplorable America in general and the Bad Orange Man in particular.

  32. Topic-adjacent, but these essays were linked over at Neo and I thought they could stand to be linked here as well:

    From last week:

    https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/we-are-no-longer-a-serious-people

    Our current elites, whether in media or politics, squint at the strange peoples and languages of whatever international conflict and only see who or what they can map to their internal gallery of heroes and villains: Who’s the PoC? Who’s the Nazi?
    </blockquote

    And from September 2020, a former global media analyst at CIA:

    https http://www.thepullrequest dot com/p/the-prophet-of-the-revolt

    The public, which swims comfortably in the digital sea, knows far more than elites trapped in obsolete structures. The public knows when the elites fail to deliver their promised “solutions,” when they tell falsehoods or misspeak, when they are caught in sexual escapades, and when they indulge in astonishing levels of smugness and hypocrisy. The public is disenchanted in the elites and their institutions, much in the way science disenchanted the world of fairies and goblins. The natural reaction is cynicism. The elites aren’t seen as fallible humans doing their best, but as corrupt and arrogant jerks.

      1. Well she knows she can always depend on the low information voters and MSM to never draw that distinction.

  34. (Reposted with better multiple-link obfuscation to avoid moderation)

    Topic-adjacent, but these essays were linked over at Neo and I thought they could stand to be linked here as well:

    From last week:

    https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/we-are-no-longer-a-serious-people

    Our current elites, whether in media or politics, squint at the strange peoples and languages of whatever international conflict and only see who or what they can map to their internal gallery of heroes and villains: Who’s the PoC? Who’s the Nazi?

    And from September 2020, a former global media analyst at CIA:

    www dot thepullrequest dot com/p/the-prophet-of-the-revolt

    The public, which swims comfortably in the digital sea, knows far more than elites trapped in obsolete structures. The public knows when the elites fail to deliver their promised “solutions,” when they tell falsehoods or misspeak, when they are caught in sexual escapades, and when they indulge in astonishing levels of smugness and hypocrisy. The public is disenchanted in the elites and their institutions, much in the way science disenchanted the world of fairies and goblins. The natural reaction is cynicism. The elites aren’t seen as fallible humans doing their best, but as corrupt and arrogant jerks.

    1. Thanks for a great read. I’m going to have to come back to that website.

      Because if you can’t see the chains tell me what use is a key
      It’s cash, blood and oil, in the age of the refugee
      They’re trying to buy our minds, we ain’t selling
      Bang, bang, bang, hear they’re nailing down the coffins

      “In other words, the elites had abandoned the idea of serving the public before the arrival of the digital tsunami.”

      To the left I see the rats and to the right I see the snakes
      In my ear they’re whispering sweet sermons of cruel hate
      So do you buy the fear, or do you buy the lies
      Tell me, what will set us free
      Do we kneel before the crooked few
      Or do we bite the fucking hand that feeds?

      “At the present time, we are in the first stages of a gigantic transformation from the industrial mode of information and communication to something that doesn’t even have a name yet. It’s an extinction event for the narratives.”

      1. we are in the first stages of a gigantic transformation

        It’s interesting how so many wildly divergent sources are all saying things that sound like the Fourth Turning.

        1. Yes, it is. I’ve seen a lot of talk about the Fourth Turning model, but I hesitate to put much credence in it. (Should maybe read more about it firsthand instead of secondhand.) Regardless of whether Fourth Turnings are a thing or not, we do seem to be in something that looks a lot like one.

  35. I don’t know how much is hatred and how much is complete indifference. I think it is mostly the latter.

    What matters at the higher levels is your promotion, or influence, or budget wrt your competing agencies. One set of deep state politicos has egg on their faces, and another will be on the ascendent now. That’s what matters to them. The trapped Americans and allies are just game pieces.

    Think Charles Townshend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Townshend_(British_Army_officer)#Siege_of_Kut-al-Amara_1916

  36. Grim stuff, but I can;t argue with any of it. The kitties and I hope you make it out in time and I hope I can get moving soon, too. As late as it’s getting and as far behind as I am, though, not sure if that’s going to happen and there’s no doubt I’d be fertilizer if the balloon goes up tomorrow. Here’s hoping we all make it through this somehow…

  37. Forgive me the American Civil War reference, but in that conflict, Union General Nathaniel Banks was dubbed “Commissary” by the Confederates, for (twice!) surrendering to Confederate forces without destroying his supplies. He was known as a political general and was (far) better at navigating the Washington military establishment than he was in the field. Somebody, perhaps multiple somebodies in today’s DoD is the 21st century equivalent; it probably won’t become clear just who for a while yet.

    Clearly the Administration and White House Press corps are trying their best to pretend nothing bad happened, to spin their way out of this, and manage the optics, and they aren’t even doing that well. I am ashamed of my nation’s government.

    1. The Union had a number of generals like that. The best known was probably General Butler, who was suddenly (and not at all by coincidence) removed from his position just *after* the 1864 election.

      1. That would be because units were raised by each state, and the officers were appointed by the Governor like any other patronage job. Unfortunately, for every Adelbert Ames and Joshua Chamberlin (1st and 2nd commanders of the 20th Maine), you got non-entities like Banks. Now, with Senate confirmation required, political generals are becoming the norm again. And modern warfare provides insufficient opportunities for pruning the deadwood by combat.

    2. One of their articles of faith is that if they can just find the right lies, and repeat them convincingly enough, they can make the world what they wish it to be, instead of what it is. When they fail, it’s because they didn’t come up with good enough lies.

  39. Don’t know how true it is, but the two congressmen who visited Afghanistan are said to have done so with local military awareness, and without notification being passed up the chain of command. Allegedly, this is a bit unusual.

      1. I’m willing to believe the core facts, but think the Red State guy could have gotten conned on the supplemental facts, or that he could be pulling a fast one with his analysis.

  41. It doesn’t seem THAT bad in western Colorado. Sure the statewide laws are a bit annoying to deal with so I’ve been looking at what Wyoming might be like, but it doesn’t seem to be as pressing as it might be on the eastern slope.

      1. Only warning I’ll give for the non MD son is that the imbeciles who think single point of failure flight controls are a great idea are looking very hard at forever masking and mandates. And I’ll be surprised if a mandate doesn’t get hung onto federal contracts just because they can.

        Also, he should learn to read, write, and speak hindi so can train his replacements

        1. Just look at Australia and New Zealand. First they took the guns, then they imposed martial law over the common fucking cold. It’s what they want for all of us.

  42. Psalm 91, English Standard Version

    He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
    will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
    I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,
    my God, in whom I trust.”

    For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
    and from the deadly pestilence.
    He will cover you with his pinions,
    and under his wings you will find refuge;
    his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
    You will not fear the terror of the night,
    nor the arrow that flies by day,
    nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
    nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.

    A thousand may fall at your side,
    ten thousand at your right hand,
    but it will not come near you.
    You will only look with your eyes
    and see the recompense of the wicked.

    Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place—
    the Most High, who is my refuge—
    no evil shall be allowed to befall you,
    no plague come near your tent.

    For he will command his angels concerning you
    to guard you in all your ways.
    On their hands they will bear you up,
    lest you strike your foot against a stone.
    You will tread on the lion and the adder;
    the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.

    “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him;
    I will protect him, because he knows my name.
    When he calls to me, I will answer him;
    I will be with him in trouble;
    I will rescue him and honor him.
    With long life I will satisfy him
    and show him my salvation.”

  43. What are the idiots thinking?

    –
    Thinking is a manifestation of Whiteness and Oppression! There will be no Thinking!

          1. Starts at about 28 min in…”We have a moment of silence before we begin ” [harvesting organs]
            Yeah. Enlightening.

            1. I love Father Mitch because he’s a geek.

              But in that one, I respect him because he was so sold about it. He clearly understood stuff that I was only getting hints of, and just… let it play out, standing like a monument to truth.

              Thought the lady was going to break down crying.

      2. Other day, I found myself reexamining the Christian case against bombing abortion clinics, and the Christian case against simply killing all the druggies.

        I was revisiting the utilitarian argument of ‘sure, these are humans, but aggregate benefit of no longer having them influencing others’. No new results, but ATM I am wondering if my thinking was simply off kilter.

        OTOH, ‘we should abide by the normal legal process in following Christ’s instruction to oppose murder’ is a bit weaker because of the stupid bureaucrats at several law schools making it seem plausible that there is an organized conspiracy to defraud our arguments from consideration.

        Gripping hand, if I can’t be less flippant then “saying Bushyhead isn’t our role model here is racist against Cherokee culture”, I’m probably just not talking with the appropriate level seriousness.

        1. I’m thinking my thinking was off kilter then, to even pursue the line of thought.

  46. Suicide bombing at the Kabul airport kills 12 Americans, Biden celebrates Women’s Equality Day.

    Does the Puppet even know what’s going on? Does anyone? Who’s in charge?

    1. Seriously – the Merry Minuet was one of my senior Girl Scout Troop’s campfire songs… but then, we were all children of the 50s and 60s. I think we had fatalism baked into us from an early age.

  49. What is so bad about Colorado? I would think it’s better than so many places. Sure lots of liberals but can’t you relocate within the state? (unless that’s what you’re doing).

    I’m here in PA and although things aren’t the greatest with a Democrat Gov, we do have a Republican legislature and it’s trying to get some things straightened out. (like we took away the Gov.’s right to just keep declaring emergencies and no oversight and no way to stop. That’s fixed now) And they’re working on the election details to stop the stealing and obfuscation esp. in the Dem held cities.

    We’re too close to other idiot places too but I defy anyone to point to any state where there aren’t a bunch of liberal idiots partly in charge or just next door making things worse. Can’t even go to Canada now as they’ve gone nuts and are 2nd now to Australia in ridiculousness.

    Our gun laws are good and the Sheriffs are mostly Republican. Taxes are fairly low and prices aren’t too high yet. Living ain’t easy but it can think of worse places. So what’s so bad about Colorado?

    1. In the state, you’re still under control of people who use the power of the law to violate the law. They *really like* state wide mandates.

      Same problem as Washington and Oregon.

      1. California is just about to become France when AB455, which was a infrastructure bill, but got gutted and is now VXPassport bill. Which means the Witch in Salem is about to do the same by fiat.

    2. We’re too close to other idiot places too but I defy anyone to point to any state where there aren’t a bunch of liberal idiots partly in charge or just next door making things worse.

      ::waves cheerful from Iowa::

      Banned mask mandates, and passed a law against suing for catching Kung Flu so long as the target was following state guidelines– which have remained sensible, including carveouts for individuals who cannot follow the general practice, and had neither authority to demand evidence nor an abusable enforcement mechanism.

      2. Counterargument: He’s properly set up the criteria to be so broad that anything could count.

        Utah and Oklahoma seem to have had the least cheating in favor of Obama in the general elections. Utah has Provo, and Oklahoma has Norman.

    3. You obviously haven’t been paying attention to Polis’ Executive orders, or his belief that his executive orders are “law.”
      “We are a nation of laws, and my EOs are law.”
      No, thank you. I’ve lived under self identified communists with unlimited power before.

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