Hello Galt

Posted on by accordingtohoyt
copyright Caitlin Walsh

The alternate title for this post was “Can you hear the people Snark?” But it is early (considering I’ve been up for three hours) I’m uncafeinated, and very tired. Also possibly paint-fumed. So I couldn’t resist the idea of kitty-galt. And I need a drawing of THAT asap.)

Normalcy bias is YUGE in America. It is a testament to the founders’ vision that after a century of attempts to wrench us away from a constitutional republic, after a massive, in the open election steal, people are still counting on elections to right this mess.

They’re right and wrong.

Look, I’m holding up my lighter with tears in my eyes, and whispering hopefully “Team heads on pikes.” Because I think a brief, brutal convulsion is our best hope to come back to ourselves as ourselves.

In the end we win, they lose, but the gradual road is in the end more costly. Perhaps the butcher’s bill will be hidden. You won’t see heads on pikes and bodies on overpasses. But the squid farms on Mars, the unborn babies, the uninvented conveniences, the– more costly. Because socialism kills, either fast or slow, and the longer we play footsy with it, the more lives will be lost. In that case, probably lives that don’t exist.

And frankly, though #teamheadsonpikes might not eventuate, I still see a brief and violent convulsion in our future. Understand “violent” here does not refer to the butcher’s bill. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be the Junta and their toadies, as I think there will be a few Romanian Christmas Gift events, but MOSTLY? MOSTLY there will be a lot of retirements, if we’re lucky a few prison sentences, almost for sure a lot of people taking themselves overseas for retirement (I’m hoping the Obama posse and their cronies are dumb enough to run to China. (Looks heavenward. Lord, if I’m a very good girl for the rest of my life…) our institutions will turn over so fast you’d think they were on wheels. They might retain the name but that will be the last resemblance. People will lose all faith in government (we’re mostly there) and this bizarre idea of scientific governance will be finally put to bed with a shovel. About 100 years after it should have been, but hey.

Why do I think that? Why do I expect an uprising at all? Americans are supine and taking it and reeeeeeeee.

Will someone PLEASE get me my eyes? The cats aren’t here, but the floor is covered in dust and paint chips. That can’t be good.

Two things: Normalcy bias. As I said, most people who aren’t political animals (Party like it’s 1776, yo) are still waiting for the elections to fix everything. Hell, I’ve seen people who are political animals waiting for it. And the left is lying to itself very hard and half believes their wins are legitimate. (AH!)

And: IF there is a rebellion and the news doesn’t report it, would you know about it?

Hell, the world has been in more or less open rebellion for 5 years, and our news sits on it, like it’s their favorite thumb. And most people don’t see it, except for things like Brexit, or Trump’s election. Ask them about German farmers driving their tractors to city hall and they’ll look at you like you’re nuts.

So now?

This week, between stomach flu and paint fumes, I got a text from Bill Reader: “Is labor shortage” “let’s go Brandon” for “Going Galt””?

Eh. Sort of. It’s…. complicated. Part of it is demographic. Part of it is the cash influx of running blue state refugees. If our gambit in this house works, we could probably retire. We won’t, both because we’re broken to be the type that doesn’t, and because I know what happens to fixed incomes with runaway inflation. But I bet you a lot of people around my age (Not sixty, but I can see it) are just going “F*ckit. Retired now.* And we’re that awkward generation between the boomers and the Xs also known as “before the birth rate plummeted.” Most boomers I know unless they’re like us, are already retired.

Second, a lot of women discovered through the covidiocy that they like staying home. They like their kids. A lot of men discovered the gig economy. There will be fewer payrolls, we’ll just say that. And contrary to statist dreams, no we’re not at the singularity where robots do all the work.

They need everyone working and paying taxes. EVERYONE. Even then their system doesn’t work, but it fails SLOWER.

Third, yeah, we can see it coming. They want all our money. Why should we work for them?

This is something the left doesn’t get.

The other thing they don’t get because they can’t, is that no, they don’t have the support of the majority. Or even a substantial plurality. And that this country is not one large city. It’s vast, chaotic and ornery.

They’re starting to panic at sick-outs and resistance to the stupid vax mandates. They should panic harder, because as rumor leaks, more people are going to go “F*ck you. Make me.*

And the other part is that they can’t help themselves. They. Can’t. Help. Themselves. Noisome, having survived the recall through fraud is outlawing…. private homes and the two cycle engine? Thanks, Governor Noisome. My home in CO went up 50k this MONTH. Not that Polis is much better, but I guess Californians still want to go somewhat blue? And we’re …. freer. I guess.

And they want CRT. And you’ll eat bugs and like it. And women are just like men, except when men are women and women are men. And logic is white supremacy. And they will come into your work, your hobbies, your homes.
And they expect you to pay for all of it. ALL OF IT.

People are starting to resist and talk back. And the idiots have no clue what to do about it, because they’ve been sold on “we are the future.”

(Holds up lighter. #Teamheadsonpikes!)

It’s a snowball gathering momentum.

Americans are snarky bastards. We just are. Let’s go Brandon is indicative of what’s going on. It’s both in-your-face snark, and the left can’t do anything about it. Because doing something would be admitting they know they cheated and everyone wants Biden to F*ck himself. Well, 90% of the population, anyway.

And that’s it, in a nut shell. It takes all the effort in the world for them to keep their version of reality spinning. For us? We are entropy. We are chaos. We are reality reasserting itself. With a closed checkbook and tools downed.

We are team labor shortage. We are team sickout. We are team MAKE ME!

And they can’t make us. Even now. Much less as momentum gathers.

Hello Galt!

This is the death of collectivism, socialism, central control. It’s going to be nasty. So was the stupid collection of ideas.

But there is hope on the horizon.

Grid your loins and grit your teeth.

In the end we win, they lose.

Because reality is a bitch, and reality always wins.

633 thoughts on “Hello Galt”

  1. You know, when I heard about the sudden, unexpected labor shortage, my first thought was that they had gone Galt. Certainly, bringing the engine of the world to a screeching halt as a certain appeal now. Look at Southwest Airlines.

    1. Don’t forget, part of the “labor shortage” is the bluies managed to ban labor too.

      A large part of the CA logistics truck wreck is because they banned Owner-Operators from servicing the ports, banned trucks older than 2011 servicing the ports, and require all new truck that service the port to be electric.

      CA’s not just killing the golden goose, it’s burning it alive and throwing the eggs down the well because they’re capitalist things.

      1. DeSantis is urging ships to use FL ports to unload. Won’t happen, but it’s a nice slap to the face of Gov’t of CA.

        1. Yeah. It can’t happen yet, because of the transit, but if CA ports are unreliable, shippers *will* find other ports.

          The interesting question is, can Mexico support Pacific side ports?

          1. Alaska could, we’ve numerous deepwater harbors, many even with roads running to them, by golly.

            Yep, we could, if it weren’t the Canadian bottleneck limiting land transport to the rest of the U.S.

            1. But not high-capacity container terminals. A friend of mine is a merchant marine captain who regularly runs from Seattle to Anchorage and/or Kodiak, and she only sails the “little” ships. Most shipping goes by barge.

              Also, to really use a container port you need rail, which extends from the ports of Seward, Whittier, and Anchorage inland to Fairbanks, but not across Canada (although I fail to understand why that was never added on to the Alcan corridor).

              1. Yep, yep and yep.

                Regarding rail, I’ve often thought a coastal rail from Far north Norway, ‘cross Russia, bridge the straits to Alaska run to east Canada with north south feeder rails all along the route would be economically viable.

                It’s mostly peneplain, flat, which rails like. freight and traffic, controlled ingress and egress, which national customs and tax officials like and goods transport would be well outside China’s sphere of influence , which everybody except Joe and Hunter should like.

              2. Pelomyn, that you?? Joke there is a friend from back in the WoW classic days named Lars, worked in CA (I think) and he was exceedingly knowledgeable on container traffic when it came up in convo’s back then (and now to be sure). Your comment reminded me of him. Anyway, read an article that they’ve actually been working on the project of it since 2019, And are still talking about it now. Financing boondoggle etc. https://www.alaskapublic.org/2021/07/14/boondoggle-financial-woes-may-jeopardize-proposed-alaska-canada-railroad-project/

                Having said that and living in Juneau, we have a heck of a good deep water port. 130 feet deep or more. 150k Ton Ovation of the Seas size (she was here last week) Yuge cruise ships up to 5 at a time in town. And no connection to the rest of Alaska, other than boat or plane. Yes islanded capitol city. On mainland. Still. Apparently been shot down by local politics since the 50’s from what I’ve read and been told by an archivist friend. Federal has wanted to do it for ages.

                Newsome only mandated 20BILLION dollars worth of equipment not be used in CA anymore. Great idea! Bunch of operators just said “F that” or retired or etc etc. Peter Grant had a great article/write up on it a few days ago on his blog. Dorothy might know him 😛

                1. 1. Nope, not me. I’ve just been interested in how container traffic works since I got obsessed by the possibilities of building houses out of them (not good after all), and my interest in the trade rules in Traveller way back when helped.

                  2. Yeah, Juneau as territorial capital made a little bit of sense back when most of the population was in Southeast, and when the town had a big active gold mine going. Since 1940, not so much.

                  3. Rail project financing boondoggle. Pity, that. It’ll join all the other big Alaska project financial boondoggles throughout history. Blah.

          3. Las Mochis and its port has a rail connection to the US. I doubt the port is as large as LA/Long Beach but such things can be built, probably much faster in Mexico than in CA. We really need to get key infrastructure out of CA which is actively trying to screw everything up.

            1. really need to get key infrastructure out of CA

              –
              But where? Not on the west US coast.

              Already have facilities in Portland OR, but coming across the Columbia Bar and up the Columbia River, isn’t optimum, or safe. Pretty sure it already has capacity maxed out. Ditto for facilities in the Puget Sound (not that greater Seattle is a much more sane than CA).

              Rest of CA Northern Coasts, Oregon Coast, and Washington Coast, well if any of the existing ports were reasonable, there would be capacity there already. Not 100% the reason is the ports themselves, but some of it has to be the limited road access. Then too, these coastal stretches aren’t nicknamed the Ship Graveyard of the Pacific for no reason.

              How much more capacity can the Panama Locks l handle, coming and going?

              1. Seattle has two, possibly three, container terminals sitting empty and unused due to lack of a tenant. One just closed down in 2019, one has been idle for ten years at least (the other is older with smaller cranes and probably can’t handle the really big ships). If someone were to operate those terminals and their road/rail connections, port capacity would double.

                1. Problem being, it is in *Seattle.* No sane capitalist wants to stick his moneymaking operation in Seattle, only to have it burnt to the ground/regulated out of existence/its people working there targeted (or likely some combination of all three). Despite all the jobs and taxes such an operation would bring, Seattle’s leadership is too drunk on the woke to let it happen.

                  2. I knew Seattle had to have container terminals, did not know none were working. Not surprised … Because Seattle, but … More familiar with Columbia River, and Portland. Not 100% sure what the container capacity is in Portland. Having worked them (’79 – ’81 as a Log Scaler), most familiar with the facilities in Longveiw, WA, on the Columbia, which are NOT container terminals. They load logs. Be it Weyerhauser, or the old International Paper, Log Docks.

                    1. Just to be clear, Seattle has two container terminals up and running full time, with a capacity of four ships at once (or so it appears to this amateur). So that’s what looks like 9 container cranes active, 9 inactive, and 3 small ones for smaller ships. Tacoma has 30 cranes visible on Google maps, but since I don’t drive past there all the time I don’t know which ones are active; judging by which yards have large numbers of containers in them, I would guess that maybe 10-12 of those are either unused or small-ship cranes.

                      Portland, by contrast, has one container terminal with a whopping 7 cranes. And a mostly empty yard in Google maps, so maybe not terribly busy even in good times. It looks like Portland has lots of terminals for cars, so maybe they’re more specialized to the RO-RO auto import business.

                    2. Not surprised. Columbia River is not easy to navigate. Takes TWO different river pilots, one to traverse the Columbia River Bar, and one to navigate from the mouth to the terminals in Portland. You could hear the scream of all the ship captains in ’80 when Helen threw her tantrum The mud flows did reach Longview, Kelso, and the Columbia, just didn’t overrun the river banks by the time it hit them; plugged the Columbia River channels but good, stopping all river traffic from traversing either to Portland or back to the Ocean.

        3. The entire state of Florida has less container terminal capacity than the Port of Tacoma. It’s a nice idea and good PR, but it ain’t happening.

          1. We’re already getting ships coming through the Panama Canal and unloading at Galveston instead of waiting for LA. Which is a little mind-boggling that it’s faster, but there you go.

              1. True, but Florida ports have a straight shot north to Yankeeland via the interstates, I-20 going west through south Dixie, and I-40 going through north Dixie.

                What dock capacity they have is practically straight-to-market.

                  1. Miami just means the containers have to go a few hundred extra miles by road or rail (I-75 or I-95, CSX or FEC) before getting outside Florida. Seems like a better solution than letting container ships pile up for weeks and months off the West Coast.

              2. >> “Oh, I’m not surprised. The Gulf Coast has a lot of container capacity. Just not Florida.”

                How much time and money would it take to BUILD more capacity? It sounds like there’s an opportunity for them if the current state of affairs can be expected to last long enough, and – I realize this could just be ignorance speaking – making empty space to put big metal boxes down doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that would take a lot of construction work.

        5. There’s another round of fun headed our way down the road, too. All those hundreds of thousands of shipping containers sitting on ships, piled up in ports, on train cars and in warehouse yards are still full of stuff that has not been delivered. They are NOT getting unloaded and shipped back to China to be filled with more stuff.

          So there’s going to be a container shortage on top of everything else. Interesting times, indeed.

          It’s just like the cancelled flights. Not only did those passengers not get where they were going, now the airplanes are sitting at the wrong airports so future flights are FUBAR’d too.

          1. Try getting batteries for your vehicle, at least for newer ones. Or parts for an RV. Battery fun was Fall 2020 as the supply issues were just being felt. RV parts are what my inlaws are experiencing now … and they Live in their 5th Wheel RV.

      2. One correction – the electric truck mandate isn’t live yet. It doesn’t start until 2024.

        I’m not even sure if there’s an electric long-haul truck on the market right now.

        1. Ah ok. Hadn’t realized that one wasn’t fully live yet.

          But just because there isn’t one doesn’t mean they can’t mandate it. After all, laws are magic aren’t they?

          1. Yes, and no. The fact that a law requires you to use something that doesn’t exist in order to accomplish a task *is* a justification to ignore the law, and courts have supported that view. On the other hand, courts responding to such claims in reference to California’s absurd gun control laws have in some cases refused to throw out such laws even while those same courts recognize the basic validity of the argument.

            In any case, if we did suddenly somehow get enough electric long-haul trucks in this state, the blackouts would make life interesting. For certain values of interesting.

              1. Yup.

                And it might turn out to be a good thing in the long run. I don’t think Americans – even newly imported ones – will long tolerate an environment in which the power regularly goes out for at least half the day, while the rest of the country doesn’t suffer from that problem.

        2. There’s not. The closest thing is the Tesla truck, but that’s not even available for sale yet (and most trucking companies will probably avoid it like the plague until the range is FAR better.)
          I *think* there’s one other company in the electric truck business, but all they’ve got is CG renders and a pretty business plan.

          1. It’s worth noting that even Musk, the head of Tesla, has publicly stated that the US power infrastructure isn’t ready to support an all electric fleet of big rigs.

            2. Heck, I’ve read that the infrastructure isn’t even up to supporting nothing but personal electric vehicles. You’d burn through your powerlines if entire neighborhoods added the load to charge their shiny electric toys on top of running AC, refrigerators, computers, TVs, etc.
              (Yes, I know, not “burn through” literally, but the lines would get extremely hot, sag and likely break, and maybe in a few instances, the insulation would burn as well)

              1. The point of electric vehicles and green energy in general is to provide just enough for the enlightened, sell-anointed elites. Because the elites *deserve* to have their superior status recognized, and how can that happen if private vehicles and houses with power aren’t exclusive-to-them marks of that status? The peasants can starve and freeze in the dark, using public transport, or simply being prohibited from moving out of sight of their own compost piles, like the true serfs they are.

                As for truck owner-operators, and other small-business owners, they’re *kulaks* and ought to be liquidated as a class. The elites see treating them *only* as badly as ordinary peasants as an act of mercy, because they’re creatures made of pure evil who deserve far far worse.

                1. This is the unvarnished truth. The idea that anything in the Green Nude Eel (or any other lefty environmental push) is intended to uplift the masses or create some kind of utopia for ordinary people is simply fantasy.

                  I admit that some of them are pretty good at hiding their true intentions behind a veneer of pseudo concern, but they’re greatly outnumbered by others like the Markels – both Harry and his boss lady – who exude phoniness from every pore in their bodies.

              2. Also, transportation infrastructure is quite literally *built* around gasoline/diesel. Where the pumps are. How often they get refilled. There are gas stations a looooong way from anywhere all over the continental US. Line loss is a thing. The fact that we don’t have a good handle on power *storage* is also a thing.

                And I don’t worry so much over the lines. At least not at first. The transformers, the substations under heavier load- those things are quite expensive, and a marked increase in load leads to a decrease in the working lifetime of the parts. The power infrastructure in the US isn’t uniform, either. Not Venezuela bad, but, well, PG&E… Need I say more? California is probably the worst place to go full EV in the US.

                Now if we started to get serious about nuclear power, we could do some good with that on the generation side. Still wouldn’t solve the storage issue. And the unhardened infrastructure problem worries me, too. There’s a lot that needs doing, practically speaking, before we even talk about any state or even any county going full EV, in my opinion.

                1. NO! Line loss is a myth made up by the evilgreedycapitalistscum fossil fuel power industry! Electricity flows FREELY unless the line breaks!
                  (To be honest, I’d kind of forgotten about line loss)

                  But it always seems that the greenies want the “pretty and environmentally friendly” solution FIRST, then when the problems that any semi-rational person could’ve guessed would happen with some thought happen, WELL FIX IT but don’t make anything cost more and any fix HAS to leave everything alone, NO YOU CAN’T string more wires!”

                  1. I still remember when they ‘capped’ prices for electricity generated AND used in Kalifornia. None of the geniuses that came up with that bright idea ever dreamed that electricity would be ‘sold’ out of state, then turned around and ‘imported’ without the price caps. Even after transmission losses of 15%, the ‘energy brokers’ still made huge profits.

                    ‘Energy brokers’ do not own any equipment or generate any electricity, they just buy and sell it. One of the biggest ‘energy brokers’ was — wait for it — Enron! Such an inspiring example!

                  2. Or, “Can’t you, like, bury the wires?” In a heavily urbanized setting. Yeah… There’s not much in the way of common sense with anything associated with the political greens. Second order effects are just right out, mmkay?

                    1. Heck Tranzi/SJWs cant keep track of first order issues. As for burying the wires in much of this country if you go deep enough to avoid freezing (and frost heaves) you’re skating close to the water table. as for generation issues localized small reactors could solve lots of that. But as noted they don’t want to actually solve the problem they just want to make sure they have something the Proles and party regulars don’t.

                    2. Localized small reactors is a step in the right direction. Not the left. Therefore it will nevah happen. *shakes head* One of these days it’ll come to light that the right is against suicide and murder, which explains a lot of the left’s focus on promoting illegal drug use and abortion. And yea, will the heads then explode…

            3. Any of us that have gotten the insert with the electric bill recommending running the dishwasher full and at off peak figured that out long ago.

          2. Australia has those multi-trailer truck trains.

            Use that mechanical technology, fill the first trailer with batteries, and pull a second trailer.

            Easy.

            Okay, simple but not easy, expensive as heck, and I would want to see some numbers before concluding that it would do anything for range. And, having that much battery on the road, for certain chemistries, is an invitation for problems.

            It seems like it should be pretty easy to set up a DBA that could start moving if money shows up, so I’m slightly surprised that you see only one other.

            OTOH, the liability with this approach is a little concerning if one isn’t a sociopath.

            1. Couple of problems with that. First off, you’d need to upgrade the roads and bridges (yet another shovel ready infrastructure project) to handle the additional weight of the combined vehicle. Widen all the corners on every road in the country to deal with the greater turning radius. Charging the batteries would take ages for the horsepower needed to move everything. Also, it is impossible to back up double trailers if there’s a problem. I don’t mean difficult, impossible for more than a couple feet. Cold weather, I’ve had lines freeze and break between the tractor and trailer. That would prove annoying if the power to drag the trailer out of the way is coming from said trailer.

              1. Probably would be easier for truck companies to build “truck stops” like Pony Express stations. Either change batteries or change the front part of the truck, add the trailer to the new truck, and then keep moving. If you could be fast like an Indy pit stop, that would be good. Maybe every truck gets maintenanced while it’s sitting at the pit stop also.

                Disadvantage would be lack of route flexibility. Advantage would be standardizing truck batteries.

                1. These days it’s challenging to find an open parking spot at a truck stop to take an (ahem) personal pit stop. Amongst the problems are backed up shippers and receivers making for longer wait times, which cause friction with Federally mandated breaks. If I’m caught taking a lunch break quite literally fifteen seconds late, I get a ticket with penalties roughly between having an open bottle of vodka on the passenger seat and having taking two or three shots from it. That is neither a joke nor an exaggeration. Trucking’s been broken for years now, it’s no wonder we’re short on drivers.

                  1. Oh, right, I was thinking we lived in a reasonable world, not a bizarre computerized slave world. Smh.

                    But yeah, battery pit stops would have to be a lot closer together than truck stops today. So maybe there would have to be more restrooms too.

                  2. Yeah, I kinda knew my idea was bad.

                    The part of it where I was sure I was being silly was the circuitry in between the batteries and the cable to the tractor. I don’t think there is a way to do that well without expensive specialized expertise.

                    1. Well, heck, I’m not knocking anyone’s lack of knowledge on trucking, just like any other profession you don’t know what you don’t know. Not even any real cultural knowledge fresher than B.J. and the Bear, or Smokey and the Bandit, and those are as close to accurate as most pop references.

                    2. Well, I would have thought that the bridges would not be a problem. And the curvature of the roads is the sort of thing that I would expect myself to understand, even if I am utterly nuts in that expectation.

                      I had a feeling that the handling of /two/ trailers would be an issue.

                      Though, I am a terrible driver in general, and wouldn’t be comfortable with even a single trailer.

                      Basic issue with a lot of my stuff, I am a wannabe generalist, and do not always make sure my expectations for ‘what I should know’ are anywhere near sane. 🙂

                      This is especially true after the fact, when I have spouted off about ‘all it would take’, and have realized that I was quite careless in making the statement.

                      I try to say true things, and success requires a bit of caution on my part. My expectations for ‘due diligence’ when mouthing off to people on the internet, who mostly don’t know me as anything but a rando, may be a wee bit unreasonable. XD

                    3. I do not know about other states, but Oregon triples, double trailer long truck haul, are only allowed on I-5 and I-84. I’m not 100% sure about I-84, through the windy Columbia Gorge. Given a lot of truckers like taking Hwy 58 to drive to/from CA on Hwy 97, VS drive I-5 south of Eugene, (one Pass, either way, VS a bunch of smaller passes) it matters.

                    4. Oregon triples, double trailer long truck haul

                      Oh, man, I hated those things when I lived in Portland. Trying to pass one on a wet highway with the third trailer fishtailing around — gah.

                    5. Tell me about it!

                      Worse than passing a pickup hauling an RV travel trailer that does not have the leveling and sway bars setup installed.

                    6. BTRF said “I had a feeling that the handling of /two/ trailers would be an issue.”

                      Rollovers are a problem with “trains” cracking the whip. If a standard car has a rollover factor of One, a larger passenger van is about a Four, straight truck about Eight or Nine, standard eighteen wheel tractor trailer about Fourteen. Going from memories almost thirty years old.

                      Adding another trailer gets you to about a Twenty-Four to Twenty eight. Third trailer is in the Forties.

                  3. Yep. It’s almost like there’s a guy somewhere in bowels of the bureaucracy saying to himself, “How can I make the truckers’ lives more crappy? How can I break the transportation infrastructure even worse?”

                    1. If shipping wasn’t broken, what would we need them for? Heck Butigege was completely out for the last few months *and no-one noticed until shipping failed!*

                      Or, take Fauchi (please). He has been head bureaucrat for epidemics since before GRID. Yet, this is the first time anyone has seen or cared about the guy since he completely screwed up the HIV outbreak.

                      (Mostly by doing exactly the same thing he did for the Covid outbreak too… It was just a year or so before this outbreak that my SO was watching that Netflix documentary thing on it. That man is so wedded to bagging up everyone into solitary confinement where your only human contact is a man-sized trash bag that doesn’t even talk to you.

                      Yet he is still there…)

                      You cannot be a successful bureaucrat if the subject matter you are in charge of is going well.

                    4. No, Buttigieg was brought on solely so they could say they had a gay man in the Cabinet, and Transportation is where you stick the lightweights. They figured that the supply chain problems would have worked themselves out by now, but, um, oops…

        3. There isn’t. They are mandating use of trucks that don’t exist yet, and will almost certainly not exist by 2024. An electric truck simply can’t be built at this point that has the power to haul the heavy loads that trucks need to haul.

          1. So what? Just lighten the loads!

            But that means more trucks, more trips, more delays.

            So what? Glowbull Wormening! Down with consumerism! Green Newt Eel!

            1. And for container traffic, it probably mean extensive unpacking and repacking into smaller containers.

              1. Smaller containers means more handing of them, more damage from dropped containers (ever seen a container dropped on the cab of a truck?)

                If you break product out of a larger container to smaller ones, once again more handling charges, more damaged and stolen product.

                All this passed on to the consumer, but the prices being 40% higher are because of the greedy manufacturers.

                1. Indeed. For LCL/LTL service, one of the major competitive advantages for road vs. rail transport was that road reduced the costs of handling. Shipping by road eliminated one or two sets of transloadings and drayage costs that had been associated with rail freight service for shippers and receivers. Likewise, shipping via container instead of traditional break-bulk reduced handling costs and time. Having to transload container contents would be like taking a 50-75 years step back in time in terms of efficiency, and would require more drivers – which as you point out below there are already a major shortage of.

      3. Another factor which has been vastly underestimated is the number of people, especially men, who have been killed or crippled by the clot shot…Karl Denninger keeps running numbers on this, and it’s not pretty…

    5. What if it’s really, really cold? How about then to keep warm?
      (/me ducks and raises the net to catch the various piscines’ flung at me to save for dinners)

    8. You just made me laugh out loud. I just brought my camping griddle in so I can sear some steaks on the deck, and….. I can’t get “my loins” out of my head.

  3. It certainly looks like Atlas shrugged is being realized before our eyes. I can only hope that is true.

    1. If we don’t get Atlas Shrugged soon we’re likely going to have Anthem in the years to come.

    2. I hope it isn’t true. Atlas Shrugged left out what happened in the wider world before her Objectivist utopia came to pass. Human beings being what they are, the magnitude of the suffering from her heroes collapsing civilization would have been an additional epic tome all its own, but not one Rand would write. I agree with Sarah (and John Christian Falkenburg on Hadley). A short violent convulsion would be preferred.

          1. “Keep slaving away and supporting the regime which is punishing you for doing it, because otherwise the general population [hostages] will suffer”.

            See also; why doctors and nurses are fleeing the field in droves.

            1. I get your point. It was Rand’s as well. And I agree with it. I’d just prefer a quicker route to be rid of the regime than the slow process of tearing civilization down to do it. See my reference to Hadley. A short violent shock to the body politic would be preferred. My son made an observation at dinner yesterday. He said “if we aren’t careful all our dystopias will converge on A Canticle for Leibowitz’. Not an outcome to be desired.

            2. Once upon a time, doctors felt responsible for their patients. We took care of them, and did whatever needed to be done. Then we became more and more employees, and less and less “responsible”. When the pandemic hit, the ones who most argued to not see patients were the younger ones. The older ones, some of who were asked to not come in because they were higher risk, resented it and came in if at all possible. Point of pride for me – I see my patients. Then they started laying off doctors and nurses because of the pandemic (What kind of pandemic requires LESS healthcare personnel?) Now we are being overrun again (not by Covid, but everything else) and some of the older ones who held the line are saying, not my problem anymore. People left and they aren’t coming back, and the younger ones don’t want to/can’t pick up the slack. You can’t hold patients hostage, if we don’t care anymore. We are in for a world of hurt in the healthcare system. I never thought I would leave patient care, but it’s coming.

              1. Bret Weinstein, in his interview with Dr. Malone (still up on odysee.com), observed that doctors have in the last few decades gone from being scientists (observe patient, formulate hypothesis, apply treatments, repeat) to technicians (look up symptoms on checklist, apply approved treatment, done), driven partly by the economics of the healthcare system, but mostly by Government The Great And Powerful.

                  1. A member of the Red family saw that happening while still in practice, and snarls at his/her/its doc when said doc says, “You’re perfectly healthy but the lab work looks off so [series of tests and procedures here] just in case, because the lab says . . .”

                    1. I have whined about the doctor who decided my hands and feet tingling meant I was diabetic, and was so buys pouting about the lab results suggesting the exact opposite that he didn’t notice I was very anemic?

                      My ob/gyn went pale at the results, told me to start taking iron and C, some B complex if I could keep it down, and the tingling went away.

                    2. I have an arrhythmia (PVCs), which cardiology kept checking out (including two hospital overnights). Both times the verdict was “Ma’am, you have anxiety. Here’s some Xanax.” Beta blockers helped a bit (but more so with my headaches). After the second round of testing when I was told that it was benign, and from my (ex-)GP “As you get older, you get small aches and pains. You just have to learn to ignore them.” I yelled at him that I’d been “ignoring” it for years, and I wasn’t looking for it, it would wake me up since when it kicked in I feel like I’m wearing a very too-tight turtle neck top. The naturopath took a full history, and almost wordlessly handed me a bottle of magnesium. Further reading of the literature showed that magnesium deficiency is a very common side effect of being on a proton pump inhibitor, and, funny thing, you need magnesium to keep the electricals working properly.

                      Within two weeks the arrhthymia had gone away, the one I was told that I would have to just learn to live with.

                      I have a new GP.

                      And don’t ask about thyroid or other hormone issues. I was 5’4″ when I graduated HS. I was about 5’5″ when I got my first college degree. I had my last 1/4″ growth spurt (knees were killing me, and had to get new glasses as I couldn’t read road signs) just before my 31st birthday. But, hey my labs are normal!

                      As a woman, I’ve noticed that everything is in my or my daughters’ heads and psychosomatic. Until it isn’t, and oops, how did we put up with it this long?

                      My opinion of modern medicine is … interesting … and long.

                    3. Meant to add, I ended up at 5’6.5″.
                      One of my sisters and my grandmother did the same thing, though grandma’s growth was more spectacular. She couldn’t have been over 5’2″ when she graduated college and she then grew 5 inches or so after she got married; grandpa married this petite woman who was suddenly nearly as tall as he was.

                    4. I am very upset to have learned _today_ that wanting to chew ice, or gnaw on other mostly inedible things, is a typical sign of a touch of anemia. I mean, yeah, pica, but I thought that was like… pregnant women wanting to eat clay.

                      I’m annoyed because my dentist once told me to stop chewing ice, and even said it was something a lot of people had a bad habit of doing, but didn’t mention this little wrinkle. So I guess he didn’t know, either.

                      So yeah, tell all your chewing friends.

                    5. *looks at second daughter, the one with biology more like her mom than her dad*

                      Noted. Will try to make sure she remembers her vitamins every day.

                    6. Learned today.

                      Came up under cautions to take because High Elevation and Sage Brush desert (i.e. Yellowstone). I knew lots and frequent sun screen application and hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.

                      Problem. When we were in Estes Park (Rocky Mountain NP), at 2 AM, our second night, I woke up with my heart absolutely racing. Fitbit recorded it running between 135 and 145, for a good hour plus. Even exercising I target lower than that, and never that long. I could not get it to slow down. Finally slowed down to around 110 and I was able to take a short nap. (We had the 5 – 7 AM entry pass for Bear Lake corridor. Wanted to be in line by 6 AM … parking …) At alarm time rate was back to normal resting of 65.

                      A response, from a triathlete, was I was probably dehydrated. I acknowledged they were probably correct. I had a lot of water the evening before, but it is never enough.

                    7. Seeing all this makes me wonder just how many bad medical rabbit holes I’ve been down in terms of medications and the like myself over the years…

                    8. I know what I haven’t bothered to pursue. I get tired on getting the metaphorical pat on the head.

                    10. I think we see a lot of that here because most of the women here are odds.

                      What I’m coming to realize is a large portion of normal women have far higher generalized anxiety levels than odds do.

                      My mother was an Odd, and had no issues at all going down the most complicated diagnostic tree, and could handle devastating diagnosis without freaking out.

                      I’m also with a normal woman who is the exact opposite. She has issues with generalized anxiety, and is convinced everything is cancer or HIV.

                      “Well, what if there was a needle in there?” “Did you get stuck by something?” “Well, no, not that I remember. But what if I didn’t notice it?” “How would you not notice getting a needle in your hand?”

                      If feels like classic sun discussion:
                      It is highly unlikely the sun will explode tomorrow.
                      Odd’s reaction: “Ok cool. I like having more days!”
                      Normal response: “The sun could explode tomorrow? What!?!”

                      I think there’s something fundamentally different about how odds process information, and that becomes very big when talking about medicine. The average normal person approaches it in binary absolutes. While odds deem far more able to deal with the intrinsic messiness of all of it.

                      That said, if a doctor cannot adapt to having a patient who can actually provide valid information to them, you need to find one who can.

                      Do need to figure out a better way of testing that upfront, though. Just say “I’m not crazy” isn’t going to be persuasive. First of all, because everyone thinks they are sane, and second of all, we’re odds, some I’m entirely sure that it would even be a true statement…

                    11. I suspect it’s actually the opposite– Odds have anxiety all the time, and we have coping mechanisms.

                      Most of them involve GO FIND OUT.

                      Normal folks seem to be able to just not think about it– so when stuff comes to their attention, they don’t have a baseline where you check “normal” instead of just assuming it.

                      This would also explain both why so many medically weird folks are Odd, and why the socially abusive dislike Odds so strongly. For the former, because their lives are “what obviously should be, isn’t.” For the latter, because the stuff that works on Everyone Else doesn’t work as well– when they scream at us for stepping on the wrong tile, which constantly changes, we start looking for the pattern to follow…and the only pattern is “I want to yell at that person, it’s the wrong tile.” It doesn’t have to be all that effective, it just has to be enough to be out of the norm, and then it’s the socially abusive person who is off balance/feeling threatened.

                    12. Could be either way.

                      Though of the Odds I personally know, the ones that are anxious are usually so because they are missing something normal people just get, and know that they are missing it, rather than generally anxious for the sake of being anxious.

                      And the current era of generalized anxiety may simply be social contagion infecting the herd. I do recall that social media consumption strongly correlates with emotional problems in girls, and it does seem to be heavily marketed to them, if you aren’t surgically attached to your feed, you’re not one of the real people.

                    13. On the “general anxiety” in girls– they’re trying to pin it on social media, but it’s public school style “socialization.”

                      Pecking order nonsense– or monkey socializing, may be more accurate.

                      The only way they HAVE power is by making the females scared half to death all the time, for no dang good reason. That’s why you need to poison the relationship between the sexes, because men and women provide a healthy balance for each other.

                      Hurting, vulnerable, lonely women are what they need, they’re good hunting grounds.

                    14. I strongly suspect the reason the profession dismisses a lot of womens’ medical complaints as psychogenic is that a whole hell of a lot of womens’ medical complaints ARE psychogenic. When 95% of patients present with self-induced stress reactions or just flat out neurosis, it’s probably difficult to determine that THIS one is different, there’s actually something wrong with her that can be medically treated.

                      Just as I find it hard to believe that every 20-something has PTSD over something or other, I find it hard to believe that almost all of my (white, middle-aged, liberal, relatively affluent) women acquaintances ALL have fibromyalgia. I think general social anxiety, victim syndrome, and social contagion explain a lot.

                      And I don’t think the way Odds present would be very distinguishable either. “I’ve done all this research in medical journals online and I’ve eliminated X and Y, so therefore Z seems likely, please test me for levels of A and B” doesn’t sound all that different from “I’ve been reading internet forums for ages and I think I have fibro, CFS, and Lyme Disease, so I need all the tests”.

                    15. When they completely ignore hormone issues, stress, non-standard reactions, and the idea of different people needing different amounts of vitamins– that bodies aren’t standardized for nutrition demands and women are STRONGLY prone to having issues with absorbing vitamins, especially the ones that the chant is “you can get enough by diet alone” even AFTER you demonstrate that the numbers flatly do not work even assuming perfect absorption — and they tend to order “solutions” to problems that do not map to the problem and do not respond to lack of solution, of course everything is going to look like it’s psychosomatic.

                      If the only diagnosis that one is allowed for a set of symptoms is fibromyalgia, even though the symptoms also match a combination of induced hormone imbalance, lack of B complex, long term stress, anemia and depression, then “everybody” has fibromyalgia.

                      ESPECIALLY if fibromyalgia is new and exotic enough that it will be treated with stuff that actually– gasp!– is adjusted when the first attempt doesn’t work, and looks at the symptoms.

                    1. That’s a depressing article. True in spots but limited. Realize that the age of the doctor matters. Things that came into vogue within the last 10 years are JUST turning out docs. I do think that the corporatization of medicine has been planned and well-executed. What you can make a doctor do, when he is in control of his practice, is very little, compared to what you can make him do, if he is an employee with $250000 to pay off. Do this often enough, and the younger docs don’t know anything different and are compliant.

                2. My insurance is with Kaiser and they definitely treat by reference to the algorithm not the patient.

                  1. What I think is hilarious is that they advertise their health plans in my area — and we don’t have anything that’s in their network. Targeted marketing fail, advertising fail.

                    1. Our old insurance was Regence PHO through the union retiree’s. Now we’re with Regence HMO Medicare which is only available in Eugene, Salem, Corvallis (?), and Portland Metro. Other than Urgent or Emergency, we are locked into their network, which is PeaceHealth and ?. Locally, that is pretty much it anyway. Where we travel, if we need care, it will be Urgent or Emergency. So, no downside that we could see.

                      Given where we are there aren’t any available medicare supplements that the available care providers aren’t in their network, other than dentists. Our dentist isn’t in the dental network. We’re paying the dentist because we do not want to switch. Drops our net savings down to more than $3500/year.

                3. Medicine is being burdened by one of the basic tenets of social technocracy: the risks associated with human error can be reduced to zero, by the application of a sufficient number of rules.

                  In other words, close-to-the-problem/skin-in-the-game professional judgment is assumed to be inadequate, but the rules are considered ex cathedra proclamations from our secular clerics, such as St. Fauci* and NY’s new Pope Kathy of the Vaccine Vatican.

                  *I’m predicting that there will be a day, when the name Fauci is spoken, with much the same attitude as that directed towards the name Ponzi.

                  1. And in the end, it results in thought workers who were promoted for their ability to be step followers rather than thinkers, a brittle, paper, edifice.

                    And when one thing changes, the entire system tears, because not one person in the mountain know how or even why to do anything other than what the rules told them to.

                    2. Yeah. Rules are supposed to supplement thinking, not prevent thinking. Bureaucracies tend to use rules in place of thinking.

              2. The good young doctors, who went in full of zeal seem to be in no-patient care specialties. I SAW it in the last ten years. Why? Because they saw care being curtailed, and their having to not care for the patients.
                Caveat Emptor.

              3. DrTanstaafl,

                As a frequent lurker and infrequent poster, I’m sorry this is coming out of the blue, I have wanted to PM you for a while with a question, but it took a while to work up the nerve. If Sarah’s willing and able to provide and introduction, I would like her share my email address.

                I would like to thank both of you in advance.

                  1. I get that a lot when I pester docs and nurses for information. Get even more weird looks when I say “I’m just torturing a character and want to get the details right. What do I need to do to him to get *this* effect? Or what effect would *this* have, in the other direction?” Real medical stuff happens in the doc’s office. Or the ER, if unlucky. Not on the internet!

                  2. Thank you for responding. It’s not a telehealth request, but one of the two things I wanted to PM about is medical related. If you won’t proceed or can’t answer from this vague description, I understand.

              4. What is the word on the ground for teaming up with others in individual private practices something like concierge medicine: my mom’s old doctor did that with some disaffected nurses to create kind of micro practice.

                  2. Yeah, there are still all sorts of rules limiting how that works. I also don’t like the idea of people paying extra to be in the practice. Incentive then becomes to make them happy no matter what, and I don’t want to do that kind of medicine.

                2. A group practice. Used to be how most rural hospitals started: “We need somewhere to send our patients! Let’s hire some nurses.”

                  1. Our group practices all got herded into bigger and bigger groups till they were taken over by the suits. The smaller “groups” or solo guys retired, or left. The laws are written so it’s really hard to be a small practice. You have to support so many services that it’s impossible. And you get paid less than the large groups.

        2. I’ve always wondered about the logic of somebody threatening to kill their only hostage.

          Also about the logic of caving in if the enemy commits a big enough atrocity.

          1. Two reasons for threatening to kill the hostage –

            First, it’s an act of desperation. The hostage-taker is dead if the hostage is ignored. So the hostage-taker might as well try to turn the hostage into a bargaining chip.

            Second, everyone knows that The West will try to save the life of the hostage. Ergo, if the hostage-taker keeps the demands reasonable, it might work.

            1. :nods:

              “I don’t want to die. If I let the hostage go, I’m going to die. So, if I’m going to die– I may as well make it really freaking hurt for you, too. And that means killing the hostage. Can we work out something that isn’t painful?”

              There’s also the issue that the “hostage logic” is often used to assume the conclusion– sometimes there isn’t a hostage, there’s just competing interests, and it’s not reasonable to expect one side to just give up what they want with no considerations.
              (Why yes, everyone who suddenly flashed to the not-funny-haha definition of “compromise” where Progs get half of what they want now for the price of maybe considering SOMETHING the opposition wants in the future, that is exactly what I was thinking of as well.)

              1. “I don’t want to die. If I let the hostage go, I’m going to die. So, if I’m going to die– I may as well make it really freaking hurt for you, too. And that means killing the hostage. Can we work out something that isn’t painful?”

                Which in a narrow set of situations is a chance to talk the situation down to something where no one has to die.

                “Kill the hostage and your death is guaranteed, surrender and there is still a path for you to survive this”.

                That of course assumes the hostage taker hasn’t gone beyond too many pales — I did say it was a narrow set — but for those tragic cases who have royally fucked up, are freaking out, but really don’t want to be where they are….. Well it does happen.

                1. Also assumes that the hostage taker has any reason to believe that merely not having a knife at the throat of the hostage would be reason enough for them to die.

                  1. Um, having difficulty parsing that sentence?

                    Sounds like “taker thinks if they don’t have an immediate threat of death to the hostage they will be killed”?

                    I know someone who has been involved with hostage negotiation (and not a social studies lunatic). A lot of domestic dispute hostage situations are exactly this sort of case where the person is just plain losing it and doesn’t think there are any options left other the horrible ones. You could almost think of it as a supercharged black dog that got violent.

                    In those cases half of the negotiator’s job is to keep a bit and bridle on the cops so their training doesn’t result in them guaranteeing that a bunch of people, including themselves end up dead.

                    1. Sounds like “taker thinks if they don’t have an immediate threat of death to the hostage they will be killed”?

                      Yes.

                      AKA, most of human history.

                      The existence of hostage negotiators requires a VERY high functioning assumption of both sides keeping their word when they don’t have anything to lose, immediately, from breaking it.

      2. You assume that their presence could have saved it. Perhaps they could only have prolonged the suffering.

  5. “Lets go Brandon!” is not just a family-friendly version for those of us who prefer not to use vulgarity, it’s also a combination of “We’re laughing at you!” and “Can’t stop the signal, Mal.”

        2. Also it is appropriate to recognize Brandon as the greatest racer of all time, who has won 80 million races.

          (I didn’t come up with this one)

  6. Yeah, I was saying to a friend last night that it looks as if Atlas is shrugging—not over socialism (more’s the pity) but over “My body, my choice.” It’s a funny thing that the people who were all for that when it was a matter of abortion have lost sight of it suddenly . . .

      1. Lord I wish Second City Cop was still open, their take on this would be EPIC.

        In the division I work for, there were two people in a recent all-hands meeting who flat out said, “I’m not getting the shot, so you’re going to have to fire me.” (We’re feddies) And that’s just the two who spoke up, I’d suspect there’s a few more which is going to leave plenty of scrambling to cover their work and (one hopes) fill their spots.

  7. Seen online:
    “Airline crews, Amtrak workers, and truck drivers can shut this economy down overnight.”

    From “A Bug’s Life:”
    “We’re a lot stronger than you say we are. And you know it, don’t you?”

    1. “Those ‘puny little ants’ outnumber us a hundred to one! And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life! It’s not about food, it’s about keeping those ants in line!”

      I think the ants are starting to figure that out…

  8. Today’s Odd Thoughts:

    Southwest Airlines just discovered the power of the sick-out…. CEO (who seems like an okay guy) said mandates weren’t his choice, but ALL airlines are “federal contractors” and therefore rock and hard place. — Plus there was an ATC sick-out (30 out, 3 worked) at a Florida airport.

    It’s been pointed out that the new intent to report-to-IRS =ALL= bank transactions over $600 certainly has nothing to do with “making the rich pay their fair share” …. note that $600 is just below the threshold of the minimum wage biweekly paycheck.

    Some insanity pushback here in Montana:
    https://montanadailygazette.com/2021/10/14/first-amendment-challenged-in-court-by-raph-graybill-crossdresser/
    See also the link to the Town Pump story on the same page. Town Pump pulled a mandate thing; truckers cancelled accounts to the tune of $3 million in lost revenue overnight.

    The least destructive fast-convulsion would be for all the normies to stage a Make-Me across the board. Yeah, I think the sooner we make a hard right turn off this downhill slope, the less damage and the better recovery, and the least chance of going SPLAT at the bottom.

    1. I’m hearing it’s actually worse than that; it requires reporting of all transactions on accounts that either have more than $600 in them, or gross inflows/outflows of more than $600 dollars.

      I kind of wonder if I want to finally start crypto mining this year. It would only be about $5 a day, and the compliance software runs about $200, and, right now, it would on top of all my other income (need to verify whether I need company approvals to set up a side business) but it would generate around 600-1000 report able transactions to the IRS this year alone. (This is why the tracking and reporting software would cost around $200.)

      2. Set up two bank accounts. Put $600 (or $601) in one. Transfer it to the other. Next day, transfer it back. Rinse, repeat….

        1. At which point you can be charged with “structuring to avoid federal reporting requirements”.

          1. The point is to have it at just *over* the reportable level, to screw with them.

            Structuring would be always doing $599

    2. Reziac Said:
      It’s been pointed out that the new intent to report-to-IRS =ALL= bank transactions over $600 certainly has nothing to do with “making the rich pay their fair share”

      The interpretations I have been seeing are not that the transaction limit is $600 but that any transaction that creates a balance above $600 makes the account valid for auditing for up to 30 days. That’s NOT looking for Money Laundering/ Tax Cheats. Hell the old $10,000 transaction limit was easy to break. I was an independent contractor for 18 months. My invoices were (supposed to be) paid Net 30 days, I regularly broke that limit with the months invoices (ESPECIALLY if there was overtime or they were late so it was more like net 45 days). Either the way you have it or the way I’ve seen it interpreted it amounts to tracking almost every transaction of ANYONE who works for a living as other than a burger flipper or barista (and even them). This is a massive violation of the 4th amendment, but by the time we get the courts to even look at it the camels nose is in the tent. Heck that’s the whole fricking caravan, not just a single camels appendage.

      2. Exactly, and not just work for a living, but passive and retirement income and every piddly thing, the better to confiscate it whenever they see fit. (California already does this; the Franchise Tax Board embezzled $1700 from my bank account that I did NOT owe, because “You have a mortgage this big, therefore you must have this much income, and we’re taking our cut.” No appeal.)

        I’m reminded of a proposed simplification of the tax code:

        How much did you earn last year?
        Give us all of it.

        1. Blink … WHAT!

          I’ve heard that proposed tax code too. Another version.

          Just send us the entire paycheck. We’ll decide how much you need.

    3. Them, let’s get rid of cash transactions and go all digital currency.
      Also them, let’s announce we’re going to monitor all digital transactions over $600.
      Unrelated news… run on banks…

      1. I was wondering about that. If it is $600 in or out, but not digital, then there are 2 payments that qualify, and technically they are digital … Our house payment and the CC payment (everything goes on the CC). Not even the rebates from the CC qualify because I’ll only deposit $580 of the rebate. Now if they are tracking money moved between our accounts … that is a different story. Some will be reported anyway, taxable. Some won’t, not taxable.

        I hope they get buried in data. This will result in Snarled data. Computers can’t help.

        1. They’re saying all banking transactions. Each CC transaction would be monitored if over $600 not just the cc payment.

          1. Interesting. We don’t have many transactions on CC over $600. Although the way inflation is running … I can’t get out of the grocery store without paying over $100 for minimum. Let’s not discuss Costco where we get the majority of our meat …

              1. Crosses eyes. Um. Then they wouldn’t have caught the last two we bought, nor the one son built. Of coarse we’ll have to do emergency dredging … Dang tippy canoe.

          2. It is unfettered blanket systematic warrantless searches because they claim that some people might be committing criminal tax fraud. Mind you, these are the same people outraged at stop and frisk of people displaying gang clothing and gang tattoos. But monitoring every single persons bank account non-stop for the express purpose of criminal tax fraud investigation is perfectly fine with them. Of course this is why they are so anxious to pack the Supreme Court.

            1. Yeah. That does seem to be the most likely explanation. Vacuum up all of everyone’s data, and look arbor when we get around to going after the person.

              Which is part of why they’re spending more time and effort prosecuting people for “parading” than they are trying to figure out who tried to bomb the DNC and RNC, despite the guy being on a cellphone when he was dropping off the bombs. It’s not about the crime: it’s about the people.

  9. Seems Southwest backed down… except maybe not.

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/southwest_ceo_backs_down_will_not_fire_employees_who_refuse_to_get_vaxxed.html

    Per the update at the end, unvaxed employees will “be placed on unpaid leave without benefits” until they either get jabbed or quit.

    I may not be able to travel to visit family at the end of the month since I’m booked on SW. On the one hand, I may not be able to visit family (and Mama Raptor may have to hire a dogsitter). On the other hand… no boomsticks in Mama Raptor’s house, and if you’ll forgive me for quoting Star Trek…

    “Humans are a wonderful, friendly people… as long as their bellies are full and their holosuite’s working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers… put their lives in jeopardy for an extended period of time… and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon.”

    Now, having said that…

    #teamheadsonpikes
    #letsgobrandon

      2. You mean the weather that only affected one airline? That weather?

        Looks to me like the clouds are getting thicker and darker.

        1. In the north west, it’s amazingly common for the very rural airport to be fogged in so badly they have to cancel flights and put everyone on busses for the less-than-half-a-puddle-jumper’s-worth of passengers.

          The amazing thing is, when you get there, nobody around the airport saw anything like fog.

          Replace “fog” with seasonably accurate weather. Including freezing rain when it’s mid-40s and hasn’t rained in a month…

          1. This is easily explicable: the fog is actually CIA memory gas to cover them moving a UFO in or out. Which is also why they don’t want aircraft flying in at the time.

            1. That was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus. Now look into this light for just one second…

          2. Well, Southwest is apparently “all the pilots decided simultaneously that they were unavailable for overtime, even though that was the leg going home.” But it was about the mandate, of course.

            1. Don’t forget “told everyone we’d fire them if they didn’t do this thing, and amazingly they started using all their paid time off before being fired and losing it.”

                1. I started tipping a fiver to the drive thru order taker/cashier when I go through. Those guys are working in hell.
                  I got a store manager working that window once, and was able to blather on about his excellent staff.

                  1. I’ve been making nice noises about store staff whenever I get the chance too. Don’t have the spare to tip ’em (they make more than I do) but I remember that time a word to the manager got an outstanding employee a well-deserved promotion…

                  2. If you have ever seen My Blue Heaven with Steve Martin, his characters philosophy of tipping is something I was doing even before the movie (basically its “I tip everyone”-and the tips are always generous).

                    1. Meanwhile, my co-workers called the cops on someone who came into the library without a mask on and wouldn’t put one on. Yes, they called the freaking cops and they were talking about it when I came in.

              3. I’m looking at losing 120 built up sick leave days if I lose my job (I never get sick, knock on wood). If I can hang onto the job til summer I can cash it out at some small percentage (I think it’s 25%). The small percentage is better than the nothing though. In the past I just banked it all because “why not?”. Now having the cash seems like a better deal.

                1. Start taking Sick Days? There has to be something legit that you’ve put off …

                  Surprised not converted to just PTO days. That is what most the local small businesses have done. Then employees can only build up so much before they don’t get more unless it is used or “burned” (requested as pay).

                  Yes. I know. If PTO then instead of $0 or 25%, they’d have to pay 100% … Sorry …

                  1. I walked from a job in a call center run by a major corporation after a year in place. (Apparently most workers in such places only last six months. Either they quit or move into management levels.) Mostly because I didn’t need the job any more, and mostly because I couldn’t stand another minute in the boiler room hellhole. I was surprised and rather pleased in the months that followed to get checks from the corporation for all the paid time off that I was due and which I had never used. I had never thought of cashing in that PTO, because I was a part-timer at best, and assumed that the books would be cleared the moment that I walked out of their job site. I did think a little better of them for that, as the checks for unused PTO were a pleasant surprise and very welcome.

                    1. I heard rumors that the call centers are H*. Mostly, not related to the callers. I applied 3 times, gee, hmmm, about every 6 months, to the local S Corp branch, major anti-virus. Never got in for an interview. Figured out I was extremely lucky to Not get an interview. What can I say, I was desperate. I’m determined to make things work when I accept a job. OTOH I’ve been known, during the interview to realize that the job, or environment is not a good fit, to the point of giving references of other programmer looking. I definitely would have kept looking for another job. Would I have lasted long enough to find another job? That I’ll never know.

                      I’ve done customer support. Lot nicer when you are third tier, last resort. At two jobs the programmers were the support. But we had no time limits, no set script. Last job, I made, at least acquaintances, if not work friends, out of some the regular callers, most who I never met.

                      Regarding PTO. Technically had jobs where sick leave was annual use it or lose it. Both times that came into play, the companies ended up paying unused sick leave, vacation, floating holidays, as 100% PTO, where otherwise they wouldn’t have had to. (One case facility closure, the other was bankruptcy proceedings. First resulted in an extra 2 months pay on top of the per year severance bonus, plus pay in place of notice. The other gave me an extra. month of pay combined with the two week severance.) My last job we just recorded the sick leave taken. There was no set limit. No one abused it, but then there were only 5 of us who this applied to. When I retired I timed the last date to ensure I took all the vacation owed, also around year-end holidays. Technically I gave almost 8 week notice (waited for bonus checks, then gave notice for end of January). Reality, less than about 9 days on site, and the last 4 were 1/2 days (4 hours to the minute). For a lot of reasons, not related to the work, or it didn’t start that way … I was Done.

                    2. One of the amusing things about the Enormous Corporate Call Center was that it was advertised they would give you a bonus for anyone you referred who was taken on. My daughter applied, about six months after I started. Well, it was a steady paycheck, innit? Amazingly, she wasn’t accepted, in spite of having basically the same qualifications that I did. We were pretty certain that they didn’t want to pay out the bonus to me.

                    3. Yes, they are H***. But I did have some memorable interactions with callers … it was a resort reservations activity. The most memorable was a dear sweet gentleman who made a reservation … and then told me that his daughter, now deceased, had suffered from ultimately fatal breast cancer. So he now felt obliged to urge women of a certain age that he talked to – to get screening.
                      Several times, I talked to clients who were cancelling a reservation, because the significant other they had made it with had died suddenly. I may have been the first person that they talked to after notifying the authorities – and I could tell that they were grieving and in shock, completely boggled as to what they should do next. Screw the time limits on our interactions – I said comforting things, and encouraged them to confide in friends and kin.
                      Other than that – I hated that job. I still give the finger to the site, when I drive past.

                    4. Had a call this morning from a boiler shop. It went like this:
                      Me: (very cheerfully) ” Good morning!”
                      Several rounds of, “Good morning!” later, I get a man’s voice saying, “Good morning. I am (American name, spoken in fairly strong non-American accent).
                      Me: “Are you with Medicare supplements?”
                      Him: “Yes, I am-”
                      Me (still very cheerfully): “Or are you extended auto warranties?”
                      Him: (Groan) “Oh, my God.”
                      And he hung up.
                      I was going to tell him he should look for a job worthy of his talents. I felt a little bad.

                    5. “Medicare Supplements”

                      The flyers and calls have stopped for me. It is hubby’s turn. I’ve been getting swamped for the last 3 months. Why so early? Because October 2021 is the first month I’m eligible for Medicare. What they don’t know is because hubby was getting medicare supplement through what is a family plan employer provided (Retiree Union), he could switch when our situation changed (I officially become qualified). So, we are done for the year. We stayed with the same insurance, just not through the Union Retiree options. ($1509 NET savings this year, almost $4100 net savings for next year).

                      BIL turns 65 in April. He is going to have sooooo much fun. Sister and BIL are in the same position hubby and I were 5 years ago. He qualifies, but she won’t for another 4.25 years. If they have a plan that covers both of them, that is probably cheaper than him on a supplement and her on an individual plan. Plus they are still insuring their youngest (college, 20 year old)

    2. Wish a walkout would help with the mandate cratering my family, but unfortunately it won’t. :/

  10. The longer it takes, the more damage the statists do to the rest of us, the worse it’s going to turn and bite them. If they understood history, they’d be either running now or trying to surrender. When it turns, it won’t be pretty and will likely go as far overboard as the statists go trying to keep us under control.

    It gets ugly fast from here.

  11. I’m team #headsonpikes. But retirements would be acceptable. Retire, or there’s your service weapon positioned tastefully on your desk. I’m thinking that was a Heinlein idea, but I don’t remember where it’s from.

    1. I suppose heads on spikes… hiowever I think Vlad the Impaler’s use of spikes might provide a bit more encouragement for folks to avoid this in the future…

        1. No? Not use spikes like that? I kind of view it as
          “And let the prisoner pent, unwillingly represent
          A source of innocent merriment, of innocent merriment”
          Although I suppose its innocent only if you’re Caligula or Nero, ah well C’est la vie.

    2. Given the age of the top leaders of them, I suspect a lot of them are simply going to age out in a very short order. We’re already seeing the rockers and movie stars from their generation starting to drop like flies.

      The thing is, they have no back bench. Their rising star is AOC, and while she’s very good at being a ‘face’ but she lost her puppetter a few years ago and got her self lashed to that boat anchor that is The Squad, so she’s in no position to be capable of running things.

      The democrat leadership has been behaving like they were some late Chinese Emperor who had already found the peaches of immortality. Except they haven’t, and when the bell tolls, then come the deluge.

      1. They don’t seem to have anyone in between very old Silents/aging Boomers and the Millennials like the Squad. The Rs seem to have more GenXers with leadership experience.

        1. Some large part of this is that the Democrat Old Ones have carefully weeded out anyone that presented a threat to their positions. Obummer went to extremes to to do that. Which is why there’s nothing in Obummer’s age bracket. Also turnover has been slightly higher in the Red zones as their holdings were once held by Blue Dog Democrats, but that species (except for perhaps Manchin) are extinct.

          1. This is exactly what Bloomberg did in NYC and the reason we ended up with the bolshevik. Hard as it may be to believe, once Anthony’s wiener had driven him from the race Warren Wilhelm, for that is his name, was a better choice than Christine Quinn. That’s why the top republicans can be such a—holes. What is the alternative?

            1. Adams will be as bad as the rest of the Democrats; while he now publicly expresses support for police and for enforcing laws, he was for years quietly a supporter of the gut the police crowed; he is also yet another anti-fossil fuel loon who somehow thinks NYC can be powered solely by wind and solar panels; he opposes CO2 emission free nuclear power along with opposing new natural gas plants.
              Important to also note that the loony left has veto-proof majority on the city council and will continue to do so no matter whether Adams or Sliwa wins.

        2. Republicans retire. Democrats don’t.

          I think most of the rhinos are in it for money and prestige. And once they’d get enough, keeping the campaigns going just becomes to much work. Easier to retire in luxury and enjoy life.

          Meanwhile, most of the people who are in it for naked power can’t retire without giving all that up, so they have to go until they drop. That faction gravitated towards the Democrat side because there simply isn’t as much power and aren’t as many openings for them on the decentralists’ side of things.

        3. The D’s kept thinning out their “new guys” as the shiny wore off and they became a threat to power. That “thin backbench” issue that was mentioned a while back.

          2. Yep, very much so. It’s one of those things they’re calling gray rhino problems now.

            If you haven’t heard it, gray rhinos are the opposite of black swans. It’s big, it’s obvious, everyone knows its there, but it’s not here yet so everyone just ignores it and hopes it doesn’t hit on their watch.

            Kind of an interesting commentary on human nature, really.

    3. It’s a Wiemar Germany idea. A bunch of officers got caught being teh ghey, and leaving a pistol on their desk was a way of giving them a quiet out for their family.

      1. It’s very old. One of the punishments for felony was confiscation of property. If you killed yourself you could preserve the family. Sulla broke this with the proscriptions and ultimately ended the republic since the price of failure became the obliteration of your family.

      1. #TeamVir For the win!!! Stphen Furst was wasted in Animal House, his acting as Vir was amazing. A shame he like many of the B5 folks are gone.

  12. My fingers crossed that the eventual convulsion that comes up is a good, sharp shock. Like the breaking of a long, unwanted fever of socialist thought and concepts.

    A lot of people are pointing out that many of the issues going on are things that people like you-and me-have warned would happen with a lot of these “feel good” laws of all sorts. And, you can feel CNN and the mainstream news networks trying their best to convince us. Every time I’ve (been forced to) listened to CNN and they’ve talked about Trump, they say three or four times “Trump loss the election, none of his challenges worked out” and variations on the theme.

    Confident people don’t scream how much things are not what we think they are.

    I can hope that it’ll just be a short season of madness and then we fix things, building up and back to something greater.

      2. No surprise there. They’ll keep blaming Trump for everything that goes wrong under Let’s Go Brandon’s watch just like they blamed Bush for everything that happened under Saint Barry The Anointed Messiah’s reign.

        1. And that his “inability to let the election go,” and suggestions that he’d tell his people not to vote next year will lead to a catastrophic Democratic victory…which he obviously wants.

  13. Second, a lot of women discovered through the covidiocy that they like staying home. They like their kids. A lot of men discovered the gig economy. There will be fewer payrolls, we’ll just say that.

    Especially when even in mask-free states, the folks showing up to work are the ones who HAVE to mask. Who HAVE to vax. Who HAVE to deal with the folks who Just Can’t Take It Anymore and, regretfully, irrationally, but very human-ly snap because the guy who gave them the bad news about being out of mozzarella sticks at Arby’s was Just The Last Straw.

    1. Special orders. Last night was all these special orders. And last weekend, the guy whose kids asked for the weird cheese pizza with the bubbly crust wanted to know if we could get him another one next weekend.

      Argh. I can’t physically do it, or it isn’t policy, or I don’t know how, or there is a big line waiting, or there is a closing time and you need to go….

      1. ::sympathy::

        I thought the IHOP lady was going to cry when our response to having to remind her we needed silverware to eat the food in front of us was “No, ma’am, THANK YOU for dealing with a Sunday rush– we tried to get food at four different places before we found this one being open, and we know everyone’s understaffed” instead of getting pissed or not tipping.

        (Ohio was ridiculous and painful, Indiana was not much better when drive through isn’t an option, but we tried to make sure the kids understood WHY this stuff was going on.)

        1. Ran into that at a popular restaurant in Este Park. We didn’t have reservations. They were understaffed, multiple reasons, late in season, it was late at night, and rely heavily on out of area staff which are generally overseas visa holders. They got us in. I never, ever, sneer, or short tip, people for something I am incapable of doing. We even normally carry cash to tip with, not putting it on the credit card, or we tip the extra 3% it’ll cost the server.

          1. Yeah, reducing tip is for someone not doing their job– not for when they’re doing four jobs as best they can.

            Speaking of leaving a cash tip– There was ONE bus boy. ONE. That guy was just short of SPRINTING between tables, which is why they didn’t have the usual rolls-of-silverware to hand out quickly. And with the whole kung flu scare, it’s not like I could do what I would usually do and slip over to the waitress area and take over waitressing for a sec. I won’t get them in trouble like that.

            1. For those wondering:
              Yes, I AM That Guy who would notice the waitress was halfway through a big order at the table across the way, walk over and snag the coffee pot to top off everyone’s coffee– and catch anybody else I passed on the way.

              Sometimes being mistaken for working pretty much anywhere is a good ability. 😀

              1. Also guilty of this. Difference is I wouldn’t be mistaken for working there (not because I said anything, just can’t get away with it).

              2. Oh, so much this! My older sister would often get up at a diner and fill coffee cups, just as casually as though she owned the place. I did this once or twice myself, if I thought I could get away with it, but I could never match her elan. Such a blessing to have people like this in the word.

              3. Why would I need to be mistaken as wait staff to do this? Not that I do it often, because certain other male members of the group beat me to it. (I am slow before there’s enough coffee onboarded.) I just smile and offer, and they can either turn me down, or hold out their cups.

                1. I think it’s a sub-culture thing, the Seattle folks get all big-eyed when mom or I do that. Thou Shalt Not Go Behind The Counter, or something. (even when it’s not really behind the counter)

                  1. Canadian here, I have never -ever- seen anyone do that. It would freak me out. ~:D

                    Thou Shalt Not Mess With The Serving Station is like holy writ here in the Demented Dominion.

                    1. That’s nice. And it also raises visions of insurance, if God forbid, there be an accident. But… if the coffee pot is in easy reach of patrons, probably everyone would boggle first and shrug afterward.

              4. I love that you do that. It feels American, and generous, and kind.
                And it almost makes me cry because these things are so important, you know?

              5. [blink]

                You can just DO that? I mean, I’ve helped waitresses load or unload the tray at MY table, but I’ve always assumed that messing with another table’s food or drink would get me in trouble.

                I’ll help people out in other ways – like if I’m in a store and I see a nearby female employee struggling to lift something I’ll stop and help her – but something about even APPEARING to tamper with people’s food just sets off a “Don’t go there” warning in my brain.

                1. Rural Oregon, California and Washington, plus Denny’s type places in the Seattle area that had free coffee refills, it just got me a “thanks, hon.”

                  If they charge for coffee refills, it’d be different, I suspect. The pots wouldn’t be out at the very end of the counter area, for example.

                  Hard to tamper with a pot of coffee.

          2. I cannot wrap my head around this, I’ve always been a good tipper, I am now an absolutely superb tipper especially when I’m dealing with people who are obviously overworked. I’m just happy they’re there. maybe it’s because I worked for a living.

          3. Considering most of my socializing has been, and still tends to be with waitresses (not just at *cough* the usual place either, I swear >_>) I never short them on tips either. I made sure to leave extra when my old haunts were limited to takeout only due to the Covidiocy as well since there wasn’t much else I could do.

        3. We watched someone having a meltdown at the waitress because he waited fifteen minutes to order. … and then walking out, leaving the waitress and male colleague in near-tears.
          When they got to us and apologized we were like, We’re sorry some people are rude and stupid. THANK you for continuing to work.

          1. FFS….

            It’s like grocery store clerks being super apologetic that the store doesn’t carry something? Why should *they* be sorry? They didn’t make the ordering decisions! And yet, who gets yelled at?

            1. It’s most likely not anyone in purchasing’s fault. Some of the stuff just isn’t available for love nor money. I’ve heard of a purchaser for pet food for a large (thousand plus) grocery store chain cannot get the cans for the private label cat food. Crazy stuff.

              1. Let me guess, the cans are stamped out in China and there’s a few dozen containers full sitting on ships off the coast.

          3. As a silver lining, as a waitress I *never* got better tips from the rest of my section as when some complete jackwagon was being awful…

            (It isn’t an excuse, but it did help improve the evening for sure…)

            1. Pre-Covid, we were surprised when the wait staff at a popular restaurant complimented our late teens for being polite. I would not have said they were unusually polite, just normal polite. The waiters rolled their eyes and said, “you have NO idea…”

              That was pre-Covid. I can only imagine it’s much worse now. I have also noticed wearing masks renders everyone more sullen. Body language is tamped down.

        4. We found several places in Indiana that we go back to. The Iron Skillet at Petro truck stops (we’ve been to one in Muncie and one in Greensburg/St Maurice. There’s the Benjamin Family Restaurant in Rockville and Mama’s Place in Angola. Good food, reasonable prices and BRILLIANT service 20%+ tip — in cash.

          1. That one near Greensburg is pretty good and reasonably priced. When my wife and I are hungry on the Cincinnati-Indianapolis stretch of I-74, we’re more likely to eat at Grandma’s Pancake House or Texas Corral in Shelbyville, or The Sherman in Batesville.

    2. We stopped in at a Mexican place that was going in just before the insanity last year started, that finally opened last weekend. Well, they were out of the beans and rice to go with the meals we ordered.
      Our response?
      OK, not a problem we’ll still take it.
      Tossed a decent tip in the jar on the counter and waited patiently for the order.
      Was quite good once we got home with it, I think I’m going to suggest the wife pick up dinner there tonight on her way home.

    3. Yes. Kroger now commands that all employees–regardless of state mandate–must wear the muzzle.

      1. In Mississippi where we’ve been, Kroger has the sign and runs the PSA over the intercom, but most people aren’t paying attention and they aren’t enforcing it.

        1. Same here in Houston, one of the “Blue” locations in Texas. They do have a “masks required” with exceptions on those who have the vaccine. I doubt they’re enforcing that since no one’s asked me for my vax card and they won’t get it either way.

          Some other places like a corner store near my apartment have the “no mask no entry” sign but I walk in without one and no one calls me on it.

          1. Locally I can’t get away with entering with a mask then taking it off. Retailers, and restaurants who are terrified of OSAH are putting up signs “Must have mask on to shop here”, “Must have mask on to until sitting at table”, … sigh.

            Cousin posted he just got his first shot. He’d been putting it off. But he works for the Oregon *Lottery Commission. He likes his job. I think he’s 50. (Not sure of ages of the older of the “little boys”, but youngest cousin, of the 3, is 46. He was born one month before their dog had their puppies. One of those puppies became my dog, my “baby”, 46 years ago, at age 7 months.)

            * To the dismay of his parents. They liked playing the Lottery. Now they can’t. They can still play at the Native Casinos, or Vegas, but none of the facilities whose machines cousin works on, no matter where in the state they are located. I still can play. But I come under that joke where the Good Lord says “Play the Lottery Already!” in response to the prayer of winning.

            1. I got the Moderna vaccine myself. Neither me nor any family members have had side effects. Nor super powers, darn it. (What do you mean the “m” in mRNA doesn’t stand for midichlorians?! Ripoff!)

              Though more seriously, I did find myself wondering if I wasn’t getting the blood clots others reported because I’ve been taking medication for some heart issues that IIRC prevents things like blood clots.
              Oh, and I’ve been taking baby aspirin for years and it came out that it can help resist COVID (so, surprise “medical experts” are poo-poo-ing it) so maybe that’s part of why I haven’t caught COVID yet either.

              Weird. Still bummed about the lack of Force sensitivity. Some people need lots and lots of Force Lightning.

              1. We’ve had the Pfizer double shot. Not getting the booster. Also think I had the stupid thing December 2019 … which just gets me a pat on the head (they don’t bother with the poo-poo-ing). It Was Not The Flu, dang it, and it Was Not Just a Cold. Not everyone has the lost of smell/taste … but, you know, that is the only true test that you’ve had it, maybe, unless they want to just pat you on the head …

                1. Oh, I’m sure you had it. Just like all my coworkers and I had it, starting somewhere in the middle of November when a lot of the Chinese students had been looking and sounding under the weather. Those of who have had every kind of annoying common respiratory disease are connoisseurs of creeping crud, and we know when it’s something new and different. The three weeks of dry cough was very distinctive, and of course there were those of us who got to experience being unable to breathe well when one’s lungs and bronchial tubes were completely clean of gunk, yay.

                  Even the CDC has now admitted that the Coof was in the US by October 2019, maybe earlier. Those who are patting your head are behind the times.

                  1. Even the CDC has now admitted that the Coof was in the US by October 2019, maybe earlier. Those who are patting your head are behind the times.

                    –
                    It has gone from “Coof not here yet” to “Coof in the US, but not in our area” or “Okay, Coof here, but you couldn’t have had it” … “*Whatever”, has become my go to response.

                    * Bonus “Whatever”, with appropriate eye roll and hand wave, is just as irritating coming from a 65 year old, as it is coming from a teen. You are welcome.

                    1. In late February 2020, when I finally went to see the doctor about the not-quite-a-flu that I couldn’t seem to shake after a couple weeks, I specifically asked, “what about this Covid thing?” and the doctor (not my regular one) said, “oh, no, that’s only old people in nursing homes.”

                      Not that there was any test he could have run, or any treatment he could have prescribed, but in hindsight the sheer blindness gets me. Less than a week later, the first US fatality happened and everyone panicked.

                    2. “Okay, Coof here, but you couldn’t have had it”

                      I’ve been planting that seed by reminding folks of That Really Nasty Not A Flu before Christmas ’19, and mentioning how my social media “this day in history” thing reminded me that we’d lost our sense of taste and I used that as a science lesson for the kids, for how scent was tied to taste.

                      The funny thing?
                      Spent a week or three later, up to when the Diamond Princess numbers showed it WASN’T horrific coughing death, worried sick about “this strange thing out of China.” Didn’t even think about that nasty whatever being kung flu for a year.

                      Has gotten a lot of folks looking at the “flu deaths” in late 2019, too, and noticing how they were high, then dropped like a rock.

                    3. Local grade school, as in across the street, had a 6 year old child die, around October 2019, of the flu. Rumor is that child had an not diagnosed heart issue. But in light of the Coof, this was never confirmed, even with staff. It was, per rumors, shaping to be a horrible flu year. Which had me thinking Flu Shot (didn’t get it, but thought about it). But then Coof hit, and, hmm, gee, not so bad of a Flu year …

              2. Force choke to the bladder, man! If that doesn’t get your point across, then escalate to the lightning.

              3. I and my co-workers all got the Moderna shots. I got it last, and had nothing worse than a very sore arm.

                All of my co-workers, on the other hand, got slammed *hard* within a few hours of getting the second shot.

              4. I got the J&J. I figured that I’d prefer and one-and-done, and that since a lack-of-clotting is my problem, anything that raises my clotting risk just brings me to “average/normal.”

                [Just kidding on the last. A little.]

            2. There is a local Chinese place my husband and I order from every so often. They are open for take-away, but have had their dining room closed for the past 18 months. (So sad, I enjoyed watching the koi pond while waiting for our table), but I digress…they have a hand made sign with an anime drawing of a person wearing a mask and the caption “By the law, must wear mask to enter.”

              It makes me sad to think that a) they believe this is a law and b) their business, while busy, has been severely curtailed. They’re the nicest of people!

        2. Dollar General has a similar mandate. And video cameras in all the stores; I’ve been in there when some remote apparatchik fired up the PA system to browbeat an employee who pulled the diaper down so she could breathe.

          1. That is a store manager with time on his hands. The Dollar Generals around here can’t even keep up on stocking.

            Although it turns out that “all public buildings in Dayton” means “all buildings where the public can go.” Great. Glad I don’t live in the City of Dayton.

            1. Oh, no. That’s not the store manager, that’s Corporate watching through the security cameras. They’re probably a thousand miles away

              1. Yep. Our cameras here in Minneapolis (and elsewhere around thew country) are (jokingly considered) monitored at corporate security office in Memphis, TN. We’;re lucky if we can get a printout of a shoplifter a week after the event.

      2. The local QFC (Kroger brand) in West Seattle has all the workers masked and signs up and PSAs over the speakers and everything, but I keep seeing the odd white guy or black woman without one*, interacting with the staff, and nobody seems to care.

        * (like, completely without one, not even a chinstrap)

      3. I shopped in Kroger at Hyde Park Plaza in Cincinnati today. I specify because a LOT of Kroger HQ execs shop there — or their wives do. They had the sign up and most of the employees were masked, but hardly anybody else was.

          2. For my local Kroger even though there’s no enforcement mask compliance is still about 30% on the low end but more frequently at 40-50% and this is 50-ish miles outside Suburban Atlanta. Pretty depressing to watch, as I’ve mentioned several times here.

            1. I’m seeing anywhere from 5% to 25% compliance by fellow shoppers at Kroger and Home Depot, the only two large chains in the area I see with “mask required” signs up.

        2. I’ve noticed more masks in the Wegman’s we go to. Masked do outnumber us free people, but nobody ever says anything. Costco has more unmasked than masked.

  14. Z-Man, who is generally worth a read (and is also now doing a Taki column), has observations about the collapse of central control and the rise of local oligarchs:
    https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=25363

    Note that one can substitute “obstreperously-right-wing state governments like we have in Montana” for “local oligarchs”.

    Also, for those no longer paying attention to the Blogger of the Unspeakable Names, he’s more or less outed himself as a CCP shill. Also, funny how none of his vaccine scare stories have any provenance.

    #teamheadsonpikes
    #letsgobrandon

    1. Is the CCP thing real, or is he hiding Russian connections. Or did he jump from the frying pan into the fire Not that it matters, but I remember when “Putin is SO great” was the thing.

      2. Putin, whatever his faults, one can legitimately admire as a patriot for his own nation. Nope, this was, and I quote, “Remember, Taiwan is a Chinese province” plus quoting The Global Times as a factual source. Not just as A source, like one might RT, but as THE source.

        I still skim there as a heads-up for news off in a certain direction, but this was a new variety of disinformation, and sent up a different redflag.

        ===

        I looked up the pedigree for Putin’s late Labrador “Koni”. Turns out her sire was also bred to the daughter of a dog exported to Russia by good friends. So Putin is my dog-in-law, well within the maximum degrees of separation. 😀

              1. I was referring to you calling Putin a ‘tug’, by which I presume you meant ‘thug’.

                I just can’t let a Typo Pun go to waste, remember? 😛

                Some of Russia’s most memorable Tsars have been thugs. They didn’t call Ivan ‘The Terrible’ for nothing!

                1. That was set in form when “terrible” still bore a relationship to “terror.”

                  (Not quite so bad as “Unready” — which actually meant “Ill-advised.”)

          3. Putin may not be a patriot, but he’s less of a menace to Russia than Biden is a menace to America.

            2. Last time Russia had a major Stirring The Pot Of Them In Charge, I took the time to look up the various other contenders. Russia has enough problems, it doesn’t need to be destabilized by the New Tsar being someone whose competence makes Kamala look good, and the best of the alternatives was Another Hillary, having swallowed the European Socialist Ideals hook line and sinker. I soon developed a terror of Putin being kicked from office. He may be the New Tsar, but the others were all either some species of crazy or return-to-communism-via-modern-socialism, and to varying degrees eager to export it.

              1. One could conclude from your description that Putin has carefully surrounded himself with more obviously crazy people, etc., and that this is not the act of a well man or a good leader.

                Okay, with human groups, leaving things improved for your presence, better than when you found them, can be very difficult.

                Still, the measure of the other people you develop reflects on you.

                1. No, this was the various rivals trying to replace him via whatever sort of elections they had, last time around.

                  I’d say the real problem is that this is not a well *country*, leaving little to choose from.

        4. I also still skim there, part nostalgia, part advance warning . . .

          The thing is, wherever he was born, whatever he used to be, he’s not American now (might be on paper, but not in his mindset). So he has no place he belongs, no people he can claim, and as far as I can tell, he is attracted to strong rulers, though prefers to be at a safe distance from them.

          Too bad he didn’t focus more on his fantasy writing, he wrote non-human POVs well.

          1. Agreed… have only read one of his novels, but quite enjoyed it. And yeah, there we have the man without a country.

        5. Putin is not a patriot. He ‘loves’ Russia because he is Tsar of Russia, what ever title they pin on him, it’s his flock to be fleeced, and fleece it he does.

          This is not a love of a man for his country. Nor the love of a rancher for his flock/herd. This is the love of a robber for the idiot who passes the same corner every day at the same time with payroll in cash in his pocket and no guards.

        6. Put in has been playing a very tight game with a very limited hand. One must respect him for it, even if one also knows never to trust him or turn one’s back on him.

          What worries me are the reports he may actually be having mental deterioration. I don’t recall which type it was, off of the top of my head, but I do recall it effects included paranoia. The absolute lay thing the world needs is a Bismark going paranoid in his old age.

    2. Blogger of the Unspeakable Names

      Can I get a hint here? Because I may be reading links thereto and would like to be forewarned so I can filter for bias.

      2. A little bit roundabout, look at the Sad Puppies page on Wiki[spit]pedia, then see the bit on “Rabid Puppies”.

        1. I’ve always thought rabid puppies was a put-up job. Certainly the perp likes to stir up stuff for the sake of stirring it up. I remember while it was going on and I was trying to find out what it all was about I was struck that he kept bragging about his HS athletic prowess. Funny that he should be banging on about that.

          1. It’s typical behavior for an ankle-biter beta. Very brave from behind the protection of a fence.

            1. The thing that cracks me up is the “I’m a white supremacist — and also a ‘my Indian tribe’ supremacist”. And also “I stake out a position that puts you in an untenable place, and then complain when you don’t back me up on said position you never agreed with.”

              He’s almost as smart as he thinks he is, but he keeps doing self-destructive things. Although, mind you, I sympathize with blowing things up for fun, as compared to lefties who never have fun.

              1. Although, mind you, I sympathize with blowing things up for fun, as compared to lefties who never have fun.

                I’m certainly not going to complain about any damage various factions or individuals might do to the Enemy. But sadly sometimes the enemy of your enemy is not only not your friend, but someone who will have to be put down like a rabid dog should SHTF.

                  1. Pray for them. And if SHTF people like that will probably have to be put down like rabid dogs because they *want* to be rabid dogs and all the practical alternatives are much worse.

                    4. Yeah, I’m not looking forward to the opportunists, either.

                      Which is what that is– “ah ha! A disaster! NOW I can finally make things The Way I Want!”

                    5. At such levels of disaster, everybody loses. Yes, everybody. Warlords, bandits, and thieves- them, too. Some places don’t have as far to fall- say, inner city Chicago- as the heartland. But fall they will.

                      No one sane wants the SHTF to come wherever they live. But there are many who dream of Short Victorious War, or whatever label they put on it, which really means sorting out old grudges. The mobs that burn and loot don’t think that long term. Those that dream of *shooting* said mobs don’t realize what sort of hell insurgency is (with a few notable exceptions, of course). And I’m not in favor of American citizens learning en masse the same.

                      Should extreme SHTF happen, the survivors will at *best* have to spend their time putting down warlords and bandits with extreme prejudice, if liberty has any chance of surviving. The mentality this creates is not healthy for a free society to have in large percentages. The sheepdogs and soldiers need the citizenry, too.

                      The cost of a healthy free society is constant vigilance. And tolerating those that dance upon the edges of law and good sense, so long as they stay on *this* side of the line. *shakes head*

                    6. Warlords, bandits, and thieves- them, too.

                      Yeah. That’s one of the things that folks frequently do not get– rule of law is good for EVERYONE. Even with the short term loss of opportunity via not being allowed to take your neighbor’s stuff.

                    7. As opposed to folks who say “Aha. Conditions seemingly vindicate my extreme views, which everyone called me mad for having. And people are panicked enough that they might latch on to anyone, including /me/. Yeah, I probably ought to lay off the really crazy stuff, and stick to what is fairly objectively sane. Because, as insane as the world is, the status quo probably has something worth preserving somewhere, and the risk of losing that is high if we start jumping into my scheme.”

                      Seeing problems does not automatically mean knowing how to fix problems. Nobody knows how to fix all the problems. Yes, the world has gone insane, orange is blue and blue is orange, up is down, etc. If we just pick someone’s answers, the shortfall of information definitely means that they will be wrong. Now is also a time for deliberation, for speaking those words of caution that we individually understand much more than others do.

                      And Hobbit: There is no ‘We’. Individuals have interests, maybe an individual has competing interests, and no one is automatically in a faction that another speaks for. My goals are not your goals. My victory conditions are not your victory conditions.

                    9. @Foxfier: The sort that when you break down their motivations it becomes obvious that they’re only against progs/leftists out of envy? They want what they see as the same power the progs have so they can inflict pain upon people they dislike.

                      (Which, interestingly, is the motives for the progs/leftists. They look at the atrocities of the past and it becomes obvious they are angry because they weren’t the ones committing them.)

                    10. I try to look at methods and arguments– if it’s the same stuff we’re objecting to from the Progs, just with different targets, DANGER WILL ROBINSON!

              2. For all his mockery of those he calls the secret kings, he sure doesn’t act like the “self-assured/What do you care what others think?*” he presents himself to be. I hesitate to use his own terminology (hadn’t thought he’d be doing keyword mention searchs, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Not any more), but he’s more like the burn-it-all-down misfit than the I’ll go my own way entrepreneur he claims he is.

                (One wonders if his publishing efforts are nearly as successful as he claims.)

                (*) H/T Richard Feynmann

      3. Oh, for pete’s sake: Edited by Sarah: Sure, let’s make ourselves a target when he goes web searching for mentions.
        Do you think I’m quite at leisure to deal with flying monkeys, just now?

  15. *Crosses fingers, knocks on wood.*

    I think that’s one of the most obvious bits of stupidity that ought to be brought up good and hard and often. “Do you believe in ‘my body, my choice’, or don’t you?”

    1. As so often today it’s subject/object and pronouns. MY body MY choice. Your body MY choice. My wife likes to say what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine own.

  16. I just saw Joe Rogan hammer Sanjay Gupta for more than two minutes over CNN’s lies about Ivermectin.

    On Fox, of course.

    Joe: “CNN lied, repeatedly. They knew they were lying.”
    Sanjay: (Evade, quibble, make excuses)
    Joe: “You’re the CNN medical consultant. Did you tell them not to lie?”
    Sanjay: (Finally admits) “No, they shouldn’t have said that.”

    1. I’ve watched it twice. Once on the tidy report, and one on Triggernometry RAW, where we all pointed and laughed.
      It was beautiful.

    2. Saw comments that worked out to, “Yep, the guy has been on CNN, where they lob easy questions and he never encountered a hostile interviewer. Of course he doesn’t know how to one.”

      1. I’m not sure Joe Rogan even qualifies as a hostile interviewer. There we no trick questions, no “when did you stop beating your wife?” lose lose traps, no selective editing of complex hypotheticals to invert responses.

        He just proof that what they said was not true, asked them why they said it, and did not accept a brush off for an answer.

        Would that all my opposition were like that!

  17. Watching severe cases of normalacy bias in people I know who are otherwise very awake and intelligent is the most frustrating thing. I don’t know if they’re just afraid to aknowedge what the future holds or what, but the idea that their previous comfy cozy life is going to continue on as it always was is deranged, no matter what course the future takes.

  18. Yeah.

    Probably can’t afford to spend the bandwidth agreeing in detail, and expanding on points I think deserve greater attention.

  19. There won’t be an election next year, only a sham. The results will have nothing to do with people going through the motions of casting ballots.

    Even so, vote! Vote in person, on Election Day. If they say you ‘already voted’, raise hell.
    ———————————
    My grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.

    1. If so, then it will be a Sign Unto the Multitudes that the last election wasn’t just about the Bad Orange Man.

      1. They should have figured that out from the Georgia Repeat Steal in January. What did those idiots expect to happen when they ran another election without doing anything about the overwhelming fraud?

        1. Seriously. The local GOP members were doing door-to-door GOTV and kept assuring us they’d be ready to fight another steal. Look how that turned out. It’s why I need to be out of the butt fruit state by Jan 2023 at the latest before Stacey Abrams’ coronation.

          1. The RNC was fundraising off the election fraud issue after Nov 3, raised a t bunch of money, and proceeded to sit on their thumbs. That and the “donate to Donald Trump” pleas that were directed to \ the RNC or other GOPe entities.

            The last I heard, POTUS-actual is clobbering the GOPe over the bait and switch fundraising. I *think* lawsuits are in the cards.

            Any mail that comes from the GOPe gets donated to the burn bucket immediately. (It keeps it out of the landfill, since paper recycling is nonexistent where I live.)

  22. The water is boiling and, if the pot gets jostled hard enough, the lid will blow off.
    If the mid-terms see more stealections, and the forced shot program continues to damage the independent thinkers, look out!

    1. Any places the voters manage to elect Republicans, MaligNancy will refuse to confirm their seats in the House.

      1. Force her to do that. Force her to create what would essentially be a constitutional crisis. Yes, many will go along with the rationale provided by the press. But a few people will finally have the blinders jostled loose, and join the others who have already lost them.

        The more blatantly the other side overturns the system, the more likely it is that people finally start to wake up.

    2. The water is boiling, and the usual suspects are convinced that the nasty deplorable frog is dead and stick-a-fork-in-it done. We shall see. Maybe the frog is cooked. Or maybe they will find that they have awakened Frogzilla, and filled him with a terrible resolve.

        1. I still can’t really draw, but I’m getting a bit better year on year.

          Not really intended as a reply or a critique at all – that particular phrase just triggered a memory of someone saying “I wish I could draw” to a webcomic author (forget which one) who said this in reply:

          “Don’t say that where the wish-o-matic-genie can hear you, or he’ll make you fill up a sketchbook until your hand cramps!”

  24. Have read from at least one SW pilot that they were using up sick leave pending the expectation of getting fired (not vaxed) and you just lose it. Just that, not necessarily any organized shutdown. Worked out anyway. Lot’s of them turning down overtime flying (fed up) which SW depends on and that also caused some of the flight cancellations.

    #goVlad
    #TeamHeadsOnPikes (heh, considering they all suffer from rectal cranial inclusions, 2 for 1…)
    #TeamHankBowman

    1. Mentioned it on mewe but there is no actual mandate yet, and I bet that’s why my place hasn’t said a peep about meeting deadlines and dates for having the jab. Joe spouted off, and that’s all. no EO Number, no regulation number that can go on the paperwork. SWA CEO can whine that the feds are making them, but can’t yet show a regulation. Some states have them, but Texas ain’t one, so it has to be the Fed for the airlines, and where is that reg number?
      Add that, okay, we need pilots to fly OT and we are going to fire a bunch . . .oh, they can only OT if they have FAA flight time they can fly on (same issue with truckers. they can only work X hours and operate X hours)

      1. Here ya go: includes link to Executive Order 14042.

        https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/health-safety/1116144/vaccine-mandate-guidance-issued-for-federal-contractors-and-subcontractors

        All airlines are federal contractors.

        Relevant bit is Sec 2a:

        “This clause shall specify that the contractor or subcontractor shall, for the duration of the contract, comply with all guidance for contractor or subcontractor workplace locations published by the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force (Task Force Guidance or Guidance)”

        IOW we’ll decide what workplace safety is, and you will comply. (The whole appears to be boilerplate, probably borrowed from some previous OSHA-type proclamation.)

        1. finally an EO number(wonder why the search earlier didn’t turn it up? work may have cut it short) we provide products only, and mostly through through other companies though we have the higher Federal Contract Min Wage
          also, this is New contracts, requests for extensions etc. but I know not much on the other companies under our umbrella, just that still not a peep from Corporate about this.

    3. I saw a mention that American Airlines had to cancel over 800 flights due to “employee sickness”, and that Amtrak is having a similar issue.

      FWIW, it’s been pointed out that SWA only gets 2% of its business from the Feds, and one might think they could afford to lose that business. It’s not like there’s a shortage of things that need to be shipped in the cargo holds.

      And yes, Texas now has an anti-mandate executive order, so SW might find it better to dump the mandate. (No idea what teeth are put in that EO.)

      1. when 9/11 caused massive cancellations, SWA parked all unowned craft (leased or still paying for them, getting a pause on the payments) and flew only older planes paid for in full, and filled them with cargo and USMail and it was a lot of it as no one else was flying much. I fueled flights with 5 passengers that SWA turned a profit on. Now if things go belly-up. they could well need to do such again.
        That said, there is no EO with a number, and signed by the paste-eater

      2. “it’s been pointed out that SWA only gets 2% of its business from the Feds”

        I wondered about that… it’s surely to where if you can avoid Federal entanglements — you avoid ’em. One wonders if there are other “incentives” we don’t know about. “Nice airline you got here. Be a shame if you didn’t take our contract.”

        1. Pilots licenses, aircraft inspections, assignment of flight corridors, etc…… the list of “federal entanglements” for any airline is ENDLESS.

  25. I bet you a lot of people around my age (Not sixty, but I can see it) are just going “F*ckit. Retired now.*

    –
    I’m the oldest of my siblings, just hit 65 (next Wednesday). Hubby is the youngest of his siblings at almost 70. We are ALL retired. Only three are not on SS yet, and two of them are not old enough (although one she, like her husband, will “wait” for full SS or until qualify for Medicare).

    Early retirement, before medicare qualified, comes down to insurance. For us it was the availability of insurance for retires through the union. For my siblings and their spouses it was “can we keep our income below the insurance exchange requirements” … Because the insurance exchanges are all about income. It isn’t how much you have socked away in savings regardless of type. Thus if do not have pensions, do not have to rely on IRA withdraw, then you can qualify for exchange insurance at reasonable costs, and still cover expenses, plus whatever else you want to do, because you are doing it with already taxed money! They still have taxable income because of investment income on that money, but well below exchange requirements.

    As far as being driven what you are paid to do …

    * Hubby had no problem. He golfs now (golfed before for fun, just does more of it).
    * Me. Yes hard to give up programming. However dealing with the support calls? Not a problem. I’m still finding my way.
    * Sister – paints, and is granddaughter’s teacher (so surprise, didn’t give up teaching, just teaching for pain</DEL) pay). Her husband is learning the joys of being home with young children, and he loves it. (They provide their daughter and son-in-law with daycare.) They travel.
    * Other sister has taken up gardening. Not sure what her husband does. Their youngest just entered college.

    As far as inflation? Well that is less the State is getting through the inheritance double tax (at least some of it) when son inherits.

      1. Dang IT! (At first my response was “What?”. Then …. well, Dang IT!) …

        just teaching for pain pay). Her husband is learning the joys of being home with young children, and he loves it. (They provide their daughter and son-in-law with daycare.) They travel.
        * Other sister has taken up gardening. Not sure what her husband does. Their youngest just entered college.

        Double return must act as the second closure, except blockquote … who knew?

        1. WordPress turns double newlines into a closing paragraph tag, and the HTML rules* are such that closing paragraph tags end all sorts of formatting.

          * Don’t know if that’s in the rules of the formal spec or the informal as-impemented-in-most-browsers rules, and can’t be bothered to look it up right now.

    2. I know you said something about not getting back into programming but if you change your mind, drop me a line at sheller@2misses.com. We need someone to learn my code so I’m not the only one who knows it.

  26. Saw another video from Fox News of a Portland restaurant owner complaining that the city won’t let them serve customers inside the restaurant, and they get attacked by hordes of ‘the homeless’ when eating outside. The restaurant was broken into last week, too.

    I was disappointed that nobody asked her if she voted for the Democrats destroying the city (and state).
    ———————————
    The Democrats are willing to burn America to the ground, so long as they wind up squatting on top of the ashes.

    1. The problem is if the owner were to state on live television that a vote had been cast for the Republicans, the restaurant would probably get firebombed by BLMtifa.

      2. Considering the anarchists celebrated the day after Colombus day by rioting and causing $500K worth of damage, that’s a realistic fear. With the Soros DA on the side of the rioters and the police more or less neutralized, the best long term strategy for a Portland business is to not *be* a Portland business. Of course, finding a buyer for any owned nonmovable assets will suck rocks.

        Short term strategy might entail the Rooftop Korean approach. Neutralizing TPTB is quite a three-pipe problem, at least if you want to avoid a stint in the greybar hotel with Jan 6th “special treatment”.

        Thanks God for the fact that we’re a long way away from Portland.

        1. Rooftop Koreans are targetable. I would point out that the avenues of approach too sites needing protection are known, that public garbage cans and mailboxes are a thing, and that a Tsaernev event in the middle of the riot would scare the crap out of them.

  27. c4c

    I can tell that by the time I finish reading the 81 comments already here, another 20 will have been posted and I don’t want to miss them.

  28. So…you rolled your eyes so hard, you thought they might end up facing backward? 🙂

    #teamheadsonpikes for the win.

  30. Re: military personnel refusing the mandate:

    As news stories have begun to note in the last week – with considerable alarm – hundreds of thousands of troops remain unvaccinated as the deadline for their submission to the mandate draws near. They have no choice; they simply must; they aren’t.

    American military personnel have been doing this since the colonial era, and have done it many times. It happens two ways: Sometimes the law says X, and soldiers quietly do Not X, trying to not be noticed; sometimes they just refuse, and take the threat of punishment head-on.

    ….

    If the current leaders of the American military threaten to discard the service of hundreds of thousands of servicemembers who don’t trust their leaders, we have historical examples that suggest the real possibility that those servicemembers may just shrug at the threat.

    The law is probably not on the side of military personnel who refuse mandatory COVID-19 vaccines. Good luck with that.

    https://chrisbray.substack.com/p/law-and-disorder

    (Y’all should subscribe to this guy, he writes well and makes a lot of sense.)

    1. The law is not on the side of anyone that defies the holy hand of DC.

      Or did you mean law as in those things congress used to pass

      2. Well, TL;DR: the law is against the individual soldier, but 100,000 mulish GIs are more than the Pentagon can handle.

        1. Especially when that comes down on the supervisor who has to write him up for not taking an experimental vaccine…and has probably been having the same kind of thoughts that OSHA seems to be having, re, being the fall guy.

    2. I hear tell there’s a movement afoot among career military to just resign and take the loss of benefits.

      I suppose a sane and subsequent administration could find a way to reinstate them and let them finish out their careers, and gain a shitload of goodwill in the process.

      1. That only works for the commissioned officers. Enlisted are stuck until the end of their current term of service.

        Also, I think I saw mentioned elsewhere that an officer resigning takes a certain amount of time. And the amount of time in question will take longer than the time left before the “vaccinate or else!” deadline is reached.

        My enlisted nephew’s about to get out. It’s something that he’d decided to do before the vaccine thing was passed down the line, and I have no idea whether or not he got the shots. But anyone leaving the military is automatically moved to the reserve,and the reserve can be called back up. I’m hoping things don’t get bad enough that such a thing happens to him.

    3. Our adversaries eagerly await the Democrats cashiering hundreds of thousands of troops out of the military thereby completely gutting the ability to fight those same adversaries. One wonders whether that is the entire purpose of what the Democrats are doing here.

      1. Nit: it removes the ability to *fight* them. It does not remove the ability to *kill* them.

        1. Given that both Russia and the CCP have now credibly successfully tested nuclear capable hypersonic missiles while our military and so-called intelligence agencies express surprise that they did so means that both are rapidly developing first strike nuclear capability while our military worries about what color people’s fingernails are.

    4. I’ve seen it suggested the vaccine mandate for the military is being used as a filter to select for troops that follow orders, no matter what.

    5. The Marine Offices that made the statement about accountability made a plea deal. I believe that he made it because if he didn’t they were going to make an example of him with like 20 years in jail.
      There IS a problem for the Military with people like HIM and the Thousands they plan to give bad conduct discharges to. You will have really pissed them off. The Military and the Government will ALSO have lost any loyalty these ex-Military ever had to them. I don’t see this as being a smart thing. Yes they get these people out of the Military and Government so that the Government can be more sure that the troops WILL follow orders BUT they have just put a lot of pissed off people back home. They give them Bad conduct discharges and I don’t believe they CAN call them back up. If you were Officers that discharged them and they were called back WOULD YOU trust them???
      Just as always the Democrats NEVER THINK things through. Short term Ideas, that give them immediate power while blowing up in their face later.

      1. Far worse for the fascists than just losing those soldiers is that they will be on the side of the angels when the hot civil war breaks out.

  31. I’ve commented here before that I’m an adherent of the Fourth Turning generational theory, and I’ve also commented before that it feels like a lot of different trends and forces and cycles are all coming to a crisis point at the same time in the near future.

    Somebody over at Instapundit mentioned “The Year of the Jackpot” and that rang a bell, so I went looking for it, and sure enough that was the Heinlein short story that I’ve been vaguely remembering all these years, that I had misattributed to the Crazy Years continuity, and that I think might be the fount of my generational/cycle-crisis thoughts and intuitions.

    When I read it the first time when I was 13, I mostly dismissed it as yet another end-of-the-world SF story, which were ten a penny at the time. When I read it this time, though, it scared the hell out of me in the run, don’t walk fear centers in the depths of my brain. It’s set in 1952, but the social breakdown, the gaslighting authorities, and just the no-reason weirdness … well, I don’t have to tell you how this resonates, now do I?

    I wonder if the dim memory of the story is why my nightmare SHTF scenario always involves fleeing on country roads during a massive downpour after a major earthquake.

    There’s a facsimile version of it here: https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine-1952-03/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater

      1. Yeah, I don’t think that story got a lot of reprints. Dark, dark, dark. Even though written in a cheery, entertaining way.

        The interesting bit is that I don’t think Heinlein was ever nicer about religion than that. Hm.

    2. Yes, a very scary story. I read it long ago and remembered the basic premise but it is chilling to read it again.

      1. Well, I know I’ve read it before, and was previously unimpressed to the extreme. Either it was edited badly in reprint, or I just didn’t have the life experience to make it scary. Probably the latter.

        1. Ok, but the facsimile version linked above wasn’t reprinted; it’s from the original appearance in Galaxy magazine 70 years ago.

          1. Well, yeah. I’m just saying that I had read the story before in a paperback, and hadn’t gotten the scare from it; but reading it in the original, via your link, had been a totally different experience.

            Also, it portrayed getting naked as a bad thing, and some religions as poor, honest, and sincere. Definitely not the usual Heinlein.

            1. And the protagonist sincerely prays.
              Of course, it ends in a way that suggests God is (at best) an uncaring practical joker.

              1. Not necessarily. We don’t know what comes after. Remember, this is the nursery. Opening the door to the outside world is not a bad thing. And we don’t know what “must” be due to the fall.

            2. I read it in a Heinlein short story anthology as well, but I’m pretty sure all the parts were there. I think it was just age and experience that made it so much scarier this time.

            3. It wasn’t my link but I’m grateful to the person who posted it because I don’t have it on my bookshelf.

            4. Hmm. Scared the bejesus out of me when I first read it – when I was around seven or eight. Of course, that was the latter half of the 1960s, and my parents watched Walter Cronkite regularly.

              On nudity – casting my mind around the various works, I cannot recall a single one where nudity was not either en famille or where it was expected – a nudist colony, or some of the French beaches. Certainly not in the middle of a busy street.

  33. I have until November 22 to decide whether to “retire” and pocket $8,000 in my 401-K company match or be terminated in a still unclear way. They still haven’t answered whether those who push it will be terminated “for cause”.

    I have been “granted” a religious accommodation if I can work out WFH with testing before visits to client with the folks who had originally offered me exactly that. Yet, I haven’t heard back from them. In any case it will be the last contract I work on for the company where I have worked for more than 17 years. I have heard from a lot of folks who quietly agree with me, but will either give in so they can continue to support their families or go quietly. I’m one of the few who speaks publicly on our company’s internal forum probably because I have the least to lose (and I have a long history of being an inconvenient employee). I have no dependents and can retire comfortably (as long as my savings and investments don’t lose too much ground with Carter-era inflation). If not, I die. So what?

    I know how many employees were unvaxxed as of the end of September, and it’s a significant percentage. I believe half that number will cave to take care of their loved ones. That’s still going to be a big number. The airlines are the precursors, but the PTB insist there’s nothing to see here. It’s weather, yeah, that’s the ticket! When things stop working on November 23, it will be “bad luck.”

    1. Isn’t the feeling great. When one can chant, quietly, “Two Weeks Notice” … Even better when you know you do not need job references. (20160131IamDone, OutofHere20160131, might have been among the last passwords utilized…)

      I wasn’t dealing with the current mess. I wonder how they are doing. Company is a governmental subcontractor, City, County, and Federal (Tribal Reservations). But all but a few are (now) working 100% from home. Only 2 employees ever interact in person with any clients (sales and onsite training) … As they grow that will probably expand. Plans were laid out for getting into more states and more reservations.

      1. I lost my wife of 41 years in May. Today is our anniversary, and I just want to punch something until my fist bleeds. I tried to work today but just had to come home. I will be better tomorrow because I know my love is now having a grand time driving through the countryside in an open Jeep with our 10 cats and her childhood dog all vying for her lap, doing all the things her health wouldn’t let her do in life. I know the Big Guy only waited this long to take her, because she had a very long list of questions, and He wasn’t ready to deal with answering her yet. Someday I will see her smile again, but I still believe that “some work of noble note may yet be done,” so I will soon recommence my original career plans after a 40-year detour.

        After my company announced its plans for the mandate, I sent an email off to my management chain up to our executive vice president. This is how it ended:

        “I had not intended to retire, and would have preferred a more ceremonious farewell, and I will play this out to the end. Circumstances may yet change. If my government intends to send me to Manzanar, I will go, but I will go following Neil Armstrong’s advice:

        ‘The single observation I would offer for your consideration is that some things are beyond your control. You can lose your health to illness or accident. You can lose your wealth to all manner of unpredictable sources. What are not easily stolen from you without your cooperation are your principles and your values. They are your most important possessions and, if carefully selected and nurtured, will well serve you and your fellow man.’

        May God have mercy on all our souls.”

        I was surprised at the number of people who thanked me.

        1. Sorry for your loss of your wife. Anniversaries are hard. You are right. She has reunited with those who will wait with her, with jaunts now and then, for you at the rainbow bridge.

          Nice message to TPTB …

      1. United’s “weather” is likely milder for now because a judge in Ft Worth is not letting them furlough with out pay anyone refusing right now, pending a ruling.

  34. This NY Post column hits on two very important things going on: the stuff going on at the local level to fight the left and the left’s aggressive effort to crush opponents who speak up; and the continuing plight of the political prisoners being held by Team HarrisBiden. As an added bonus, it highlights who Critical Race Theory’s states premises are IDENTICAL to the rancid racial hatred espoused by the Nation of Islam:

    https://nypost.com/2021/10/13/virginia-dad-vilified-for-defending-daughter-shows-rot-at-heart-of-system-devine/

    1. Funny how quick the ‘party of feminism’ is to hide and excuse rapists and child molesters. To accuse Americans of supporting ‘rape culture’ while ignoring the Middle East and Africa. You’d almost think it’s all about political posturing for each other.
      ———————————
      Candidate Joe Biden, August 2020: “We have assembled the most extensive, comprehensive and inclusive election fraud organization in history.”

      1. In in that moment of his unguarded, geriatric honesty, Joe was right. And they “won”.

  35. Oh goody. The 1730 propaganda show was lauding mucking around with the Supreme Court, perhaps putting in term limits, or court packing, or changing how the Court decides which cases to hear. At least the “legal expert” had the grace to allow as how if one side could add justices until they got the majority they wanted, so could the other side. And that changing the length of tenure would require a Constitutional amendment.

        1. Oh. Could be.

          On the other hand, it’s really starting to feel like the 1930’s around here…

          2. 1730 CDT, the national nutwork newts. [With profound apologies to all newts, salamanders, and other reptiles and amphibians]

  38. Well-put as always. Normalcy bias being a problem is something I’ve tried keeping in mind during all this insanity and how so many people around here seem resigned to things never going back to the pre-Covidiocy days (ugh. so many masks worn voluntarily in grocery stores). It’s discouraging, especially when you have a hard time keeping your spirits up to start with. Seeing the airlines get bitten by their mandates does help, though, as well as finding a few locals who are also fed up and willing to draw the line over a jab mandate. Here’s hoping it goes like you think it will since there are things I’d like to do even if it feels like I’m running out of time in more ways than one on them. And who knows, maybe the prices going up will help me get out of this crappy part of this crappy state and land somewhere better before things heat up.

    1. Reminds me, ran into another possible reason you see overwhelming mask use and I haven’t been, all the places I go– timing!

      For Reasons ended up at a store in West Virginia at an unusual time, and was wondering if they’d had one of those “this area is a hotspot” radio blitzes. Wasn’t the “vulnerable people” shopping hours, and one of the folks not masked was the guy delivering groceries, but it was startling.

      About fifteen minutes later, the after-church (early service) rush started and the lack of masks went back to normal….

      1. Maybe but I doubt it. I’ve been during weekends and during after work busy periods and still see 30% compliance on the lower end and more frequently 40-50% as I mentioned above, including a lot of kids wearing them. I’m guessing it’s a mix of resignation and the “but it’s just being courteous to/respectful of others” from weaponized niceness. A fair bit of fear, too, possibly. Either way it’s draining.

        1. Homeschooler, remember?
          (Until I tried to figure out that pattern, I forgot that was a factor, so reminder is said with a laugh.)
          I automatically select for the times that AREN’T “people just got off work” or “kids just out of school” –while because you have you’ve got the folks who pretty much have to submit, and are probably stockholming it, if they’re not flat exhausted.

          I only ran into the other group because I wasn’t at Mass since we were out of town.

          1. Maybe I’ll luck out and hit one of the stores during one of those times at some point, then. Either way I’m so tired of this and while I know the jab is a hard line for people even here I’m just over the voluntary submission to Covidiocy Theater.

    2. The Fred Meyer (Oregon Kroger) store seems to be creeping up on mask usage, though the big independent and Home Depot are steady at somewhere around 50%. (Despicable Kate Brown’s excremental orders for indoor and outdoor masking are still in effect, so those “just following orders” will go along. The worker bees are driven/threatened by OR-OSHA diktat, so they tend to be masked. Usually.)

      The good news is that mask Karens have been quiet at the stores. Haven’t been bugged by non-workers, ever, and only twice by workers at non-medical places. A Costco employee did the nose-Karen thing (guy bitched that my nostrils were uncovered. Complied until I was out of his sight.) last December, and a medium-sized chain store insisted, though that was when OR-OSHA was doing a reign of terror and that place was the perfect size pour encourager les autres intimidation.

      Medical masking is variable. One place let people be maskless in the lobby, but masked for procedures. While meeting that doctor face to face, the masks came off–made communication far easier. In another, I was nose-Karened. Dental, it’s a mess. somewhat pointless to enforce masking when the work requires no mask.

    1. #TeamPlasticBagsTapedAtTheNeck is, on the other hand, going to be bitching at everyone about hygiene and unit costs, ignoring that the costs of the final step are far from being the bottle neck, and that executions at scale are difficult to accomplish fastidiously. Even if there is a point about aircraft rides.

      I think there may be a #TeamAmerica argument that it would be appropriate to select means based on regional or state cultures. After all, not everyone has enough fire ants to bury all the offenders up to their necks.

        1. Remember, if helicopters are in short supply, defenestration works, if you can find a multi-story building that has openable windows any more…

          2. Used to be popular too. ISTR it could be used as a warning: toss the public official out of the first floor. “Defenestration of the Rhineland Palatinate” always sounds like something out of a story.

            2. Recalling that the EU definition of “first floor” maps to the USA “second floor”. Enough to get one’s attention.

          3. A sufficiently energetic toss at a window can lead to a defenestration. Happened at the John Hancock building in Chicago a long time ago. 90+ stories…

            1. That guy was an idiot. He liked to demonstrate (frequently) how strong the windows were. Little did he know that if you repeatedly throw yourself against windows, over time you can weaken them in many exciting ways.

              1. As I recall that story, the window didn’t break, it popped out of its frame.

                Well, OK, it broke when it hit the sidewalk. So did the lawyer.

              2. It’s been a lot of years*, and I don’t recall much of the circumstances. I know the 95th floor was an enclosed observation area, and the 94th a restaurant, but don’t recall which windows he went through. (Former football player, I think.)

                Deploying a couple of people to defenestrate someone that way may or may not work, OTOH, the recipient of the treatment might not survive many failed attempts at doing such.

                (*) Richard J. Daley was still mayor when I left…

        1. Carpenter ants don’t have quite the fire of red ants, but they’re damned annoying. It would be like getting nibbled to death by ducks, though. Don’t know if they show up Westside, but they are (soon to be “were” due to a redesign) a fixture in our greenhouse in Flyover County.

      3. Hey,, at least we’re not a fire hazard like #teamnecklacethebastards OR complete maniacs like #teamsaintaugustoofthehelos, okay?
        I mean, sure, it’s a bit stinky, but heads on pikes will encourager les autres, as well as provide useful anatomy and civics lessons for the kiddies.

        1. I am #TeamIHaveAnOath. I don’t want any of the discussed methodologies. But I have an oath. We’ll use whatever is to hand when the time comes.

        1. I guess gators are enough of an issue that staking that many folks out for the gators to nibble on would be Very Bad? Likewise feral hogs?

          1. You don’t stake them out. You just boat them into areas and leave them…. I honestly wonder if that’s what happened to the guy the Feds are currently looking for who may have strangled his girlfriend. Went into the swampy areas, hasn’t come out.

            1. Apparently a number of released criminals and other socially undesirable people disappeared downstream during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. No one ate ‘gator for a while, just in case.

                1. My old high school friend in Houston made similar observations and says it did a lot to shift the city from purple to blue, too. Makes that part of TX less appealing as a move option.

            2. There was a guy a year or so ago in the Daytona Beach area who tried to evade the cops by swimming across a lake.

              Didn’t end well for the gator, as I believe they killed it afterwards to retrieve the remains.

              1. Didn’t end well for the gator, as I believe they killed it afterwards to retrieve the remains.

                –
                Which is why I won’t advocate for beating and leaving in areas in Montana or Wyoming. The Grizzlies, Black Bear, Wolf, and Cougar, are endangered enough already. Our area it is only Black Bear and Cougar.

                1. For a long time, my go to quasi-deniable mass murder plan was leaving people to starve and freeze in ANWR.

                  1. All you have to do is go less than a mile off I-5, in some places, for most people. Worst case, take them up an unused Logging Road, drop them off, and leave. You can even leave them their cell phone.

                    1. Didn’t want to make it easy for others to come rescue them.

                      Also, with large numbers of people left to die, large numbers might substitute enough for skill that some would survive to make it back to civilization.

                2. I guess you’re in the no-wolf zone. We get the nasties, though some have mysteriously disappeared with the Feds trying to get a clue as to what happened.

                  1. Yes. Willamette Valley. Wolves are not in the Coast Range, yet. While they’ve transited through, aren’t any packs in the different Cascade River Basins of the: Willamette Tributaries, Middle and South Fork, the McKenzie, Umpqua North and South, or wilderness areas. We do have plenty of Black Bear, Cougar, and Coyotes. With the wild turkeys, I’m surprised, cougars have not been caught on home camcorders on our side between River Road and Hwy 99. They have been caught, on home cameras, in neighborhoods between River Road and Willamette River, less than a mile away. We haven’t even seen coyotes in our neighborhood, we are not that far from farmland. Neighborhood to the north of us, somewhat closer to the farmland, has a thriving cat colony. Which would be decimated if we had coyotes hanging around. We also have Eagles …

                    Note. When cousins kids were tiny, their grandfather might have triple S an not collared, not tagged, cougar that was prowling their sheep farm, a couple of decades ago …

                    1. TPTB decided to reintroduce wolves to Flyover counties in Oregon. Rumor has it that this is a variety of wolf that’s considerably more aggressive (and beef-loving) than those originally found in the area, but such complaints don’t seem to matter to TPTB.

                      There’s a taxpayer fund set to recompense ranchers who lose cattle to the wolves. I gather it’s as efficient as anything else from the state. (Taxpayer money to get the critters, taxpayer money to alleviate the problems caused. Sounds like the perfect progressive program.)

                      [Muses trapping several and leaving them as a gift in the offices of certain state leaders. Either that, or just let them roam in Salem. Oh! Mustn’t neglect Portland. Perhaps the Portland office for PETA?]

                    2. Did not know they reintroduced wolves in Oregon. I thought the packs in Wallowa/Blues, NE Oregon Corner, and the one in southern Cascades on Oregon/California border were tracked dispersed from the Yellowstone/Teton packs.

                      I take it the reintroduced packs in Oregon flyover country can’t be easily located by the pack of big lens cameras photographers? (Not that you can actually see wolves from where the camera packs congregate, but the wolves are in the area “somewhere”.) Yellowstone/Tetons: Big Car Jam = Bear or Wolf. Small Car Jam = All other animals types. Fall Medium Car Jam = Bull Elk.

                    3. They claimed the ones that showed up in Washington had come down from Canada, same way.

                      When folks traced back sightings, and suddenly vanishing pets including large dogs that were tied up outside, they did so by teleporting several hundred miles over the Canadian border into an area that the Forest Service had previously stated would be just PERFECT for wolves.

                    4. The reintroduction program has been around for a while (since 2018, maybe earlier), and it was supposed to be a “shy” wolf. I believe OR-7 found a mate and started a cute little family, at least in the eyes of TPTB. One rancher who lost several cattle over the wolves begs to differ. Haven’t heard of any sightings by the camera gang, at least not ones on #TeamWolf. Some of the wolves have caused major trouble, though no people have been attacked. Yet.

                      There seem to be a few packs, with some making it over the Cascades and down along the Klamath River in very Northern California, with others in the Cascades and further east. They’re protected, with compensation promised to the ranchers who lose livestock, though it’s the usual bureaucratic crap sandwich, and they’ll “occasionally” run short of funds.

                      The one that upset the Authoritahs was where somebody neglected the middle S in 3S. The body was found, but any potential witnesses were on #TeamRancher. Nobody heard nuthin’. (I gather the ex-wolf was collared; would have been a shame if the collar got dropped into deep water.)

                    5. (I gather the ex-wolf was collared; would have been a shame if the collar got dropped into deep water.)

                      One of the reasons they stopped sharing a lot of the photos is that people noticed all the adults were collared.

                      …which is what you do to Known Problem Wolves. Such as those stalking humans, or eating domestic animals.

                      Folks mentioned this odd occurrence, the migration of ONLY trouble wolves.

                      Abruptly no good, clear shots from #TeamWolf

                    6. The program started with the introduced wolves being collared. As far as I’ve heard, they weren’t going to collar any of the offspring, but some of the original group are/were quite the problem.

                      We have at least one cougar around, but it doesn’t seem to have caused any trouble. I’m pretty sure that the coyotes grossly outnumber the cattle/sheep/goats, especially with water issues depopulating the cattle inventory in our valley.

                    7. Reality check. While hunters can’t hunt with collared dogs, in Oregon, they can purchase and use wildlife collar trackers … Yes, I know Oregon doesn’t have an official wolf hunting season. Still have a cougar hunting season, this applies to cougars too. Cougars the hunter would report the taking of a tagged/collared cougar. Wolf they apply the 3S’s and lose the collar. Although read one report, Judas Wolf, where the collared wolf was left alone, and the non-collared wolves were taken; quite the scandal.

  40. Sorry for this rant but I need to get this off my chest.

    Here is the thing. If HQY and Ivermectin didn’t work the easiest and quickest way to stop people from using them is to tell people “Go ahead and use it, it doesn’t work but they are proven to be absolutely safe. They have been given out for many decades with billions of doses with no problems. They are also CHEAP. So go ahead and use them. They will fail and this nonsense will stop.” When they don’t work, everybody stops talking about them.
    BUT the FDA, MEDIA, Big Tech, etc. have been doing everything they can to keep people from using them. Keeping Doctors from prescribing them. Keeping anybody from talking about them. They have been doing this for over a year. Think about that for a few minutes.
    WHY would they be doing that??? Let people use them and when they fail the whole thing goes away quickly. Instead they are frantic to stop people from using them.
    Also there were NO treatments for COVID-19, NONE!!!
    There is ONLY one reason that makes any sense at all. That is that they did and do WORK. If they work then there is a treatment and all the lock downs and everything else goes away. If there are treatments then a vaccine is less important. NO ONE would put up with lock downs if there were treatments.

    The ONLY thing that makes any sense at all, is they LIED and for POLICIAL REASONS. They let many Hundreds of THOUSANDS DIE to help the Democrat Party.

    HQY and Ivermectin are absolutely SAFE and very CHEAP. There is NO Medical Reason not to let people use it. There are ONLY POLITICAL REASONS to stop people from using them.

    THEY LIED AND 100,000s DIED. That is NOT execrated, it is REAL.

    I really wish there was another explanation. It is hard to believe that even Democrats would allow 100s of 1000s of people to DIE just for Political Reasons. I have to except that they did just that. If EVER people come to understand this and believe this, the RAGE will be uncontainable. The Democrats will not be able to say they were mistaken or they didn’t know. The intentionally STOPPED people from using absolutely SAFE CHEAP drugs for NO MEDICAL REASON. Their reason was POLITICAL ONLY.

    PLEASE give me another explanation. PLEASE!

    Thank you for your patience.

    1. Cash reasons – any therapeutic means no emergency vaccine authorization. Consider the Pfizer/Moderna/J&J cash flows

      1. I’m skeptical of the “pharma money” theory for disparaging and prohibiting early-treatment methods. Throwing a sop to the crony pharma companies was at most a minor consideration. The big issue is keeping the crisis from going to waste, which means pumping up the numbers of deaths and hospitalizations, and insisting that OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY by mask wearing, lock downs, social distancing etc. are the ONLY things that will do any good.

        Also, it’s been noted that HCQ was put forward as a realistic treatment with realistic drawbacks, rather than as a wonder panacea. “Yes, you do have to be careful to avoid overdosing. Yes, it really needs to be combined with antibiotic and zinc to work well. No, it’s unlikely to do any good if you wait until the patient is at death’s door…”

        The opponents ran scientific studies to confirm that yes indeed, HCQ doesn’t do any good you give it by itself, if you overdose the patient, or if you wait until the patient is at death’s door. Then the usual media suspects loudly announced “Scientifically Proven! HCQ is a quack treatment that does not work!”

        1. Simple answer for HCQ – Trump mentioned it, so it must not work, even if they have to massively manipulate the studies to show it

    2. Thing is, the political explanations are, when examined clearly and closely, pretty grossly stupid choices.

      Q. What kind of blind do you have to be to think pulling this stuff looks like a good idea?
      A. The type of blind that comes from spending all of your time around either particularly insane academics, or sycophantic staff who are paid for by your federal government job.

      When we speculate from the assumption of that level of absurdly crazy idiocy, we can form additional hypotheses.

      Forex, being innumerate, being scientifically illiterate, and having formative experience with the polio/smallpox vaccine enough to be overconfident in vaccines, and to think that they are the only answer.

      Look, if this thing wasn’t useless from first principles, due to the pathogen mutating like the common cold, the fame the polio/smallpox vaccine people got would be reason to try to push vaccination for hope of some of that fame rubbing off. Not good reason, but many people do do things for bad reasons.

      The common cold was a pretty significant regular cost in illness, so an actual cheap way to prevent or cure it for everyone would be a big deal. And, look at the media depictions of medical innovation in particular, and science/engineering in fiction in general. A lot of the Civ games have the Cure for Cancer as a wonder, IIRC. So there are a bunch of people who are not very sciencey, who have pop culture level understandings at best, and think things really are that simple. This is exacerbated by the fact of many of the ones here are long term members of the legislature, and warped because of how much time bureaucrats have spent blowing smoke up their a$$es to get funding.

      The thing most people have mentioned as a problem about Biden’s F-15 and nukes comment is the violation of the obligations of his nominal position, and the moral outrage of it. But, it is also an issue that he has been involved in so many funding decisions, and clearly has no real understanding of what he has funded, and what its limits are. Okay, yes, some of that is down to Biden being stupid. But, he has almost certainly had hundreds of briefings by military officers. That they didn’t get through to him anyway points to a level of bias in the people briefing congress on programs.

      So, yes, these people really could be that stupid.

      However, the hearsay that congress has themselves been treated with the two drugs, if true, would definitely confirm malice.

      And, these are people who have played along with the murder of 50 million Americans. It is plausible that this was informed and maliciousness enough that they are quite willing to do so also for adult Americans.

      I personally suspect that the malice model is correct.

      Panic can do a lot. Stupidity can do a lot.

      The flavor of crazy feels a lot like malice to me. If malice did not exist, there would be a great many ways to realize that things are not desireable, and to de escalate. Of course, this may be a similar feeling to some that have led me to unusual conclusions, so people should be very cautious about trusting it unless they understand exactly the reasons why they think I am incorrect.

      1. Major point, Does Biden (Democrats) win if treatments for COVID-19 exist and are SAFE and CHEAP? The Democrats did it for POWER. They murdered people 100s or 1000s of PEOPLE to get Biden in and get POWER to Democrats.

    3. Well, yeah, of course. Everything about this ‘pandemic’ has been political. OK, maybe not everything. I’ll allow that it’s been up to 2% medical, and only 98% political. I won’t give them any more credit than that, though.

      Fauxi predicted ‘a surprise pandemic’ during Trump’s term of office — back in January 2017. How did the Lying Lawn Gnome know that 2 1/2 years in advance?

      Fauxi paid the communist Chinese to modify a bat corona virus to infect humans. It got loose no later than September 2019. They spent 4 months colluding to cover up the outbreak, while the commies deliberately shipped thousands of disease carriers all over the world. Then they spent a year and a half colluding to cover up the fact that it originated in the Wuhan virology lab.

      All of Fauxi’s actions since February 2020 have been the least sensible medically, and the most damaging socially and economically.
      ———————————
      A good Zombie Apocalypse novel is at least as believable as anything we’ve heard out of the ‘Publick Health Authoriteez’ over the last year and a half.

      1. There are reports that the ChiComs dramatically upped their purchases of PCR DNA test kits a lot back in July 2019. I’m beginning to think it got out/was released some time in May or June 2019.

        1. The uptick in cars in the Wuhan hospital parking lots started in September, iirc, so I’m leery of a date that puts it into the wild earlier than August.

          1. Hadn’t heard about this, but here:
            https://www.timesofisrael.com/satellite-images-of-chinese-hospital-parking-suggests-outbreak-began-in-august/

            The yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study, led by Boston Children’s Hospital chief innovation officer John Brownstein, found a significantly higher number of cars in parking lots at five Wuhan hospitals in the late summer and fall of 2019 compared to a year earlier.

            Researchers said they saw “a steep increase in volume starting in August 2019 and culminating with a peak in December 2019,” far earlier than the prevailing assessment that the outbreak began in late November.

            The paper added that the findings from the satellite images also “coincided with” an increase in queries on Chinese internet search engines for “certain symptoms that would later be determined as closely associated with the novel coronavirus.”

              1. August, which was the corrected month that Foxfier identified, would be consistent with it infecting people in July. It takes a week for symptoms to show, and you need to give it a couple of weeks to start spreading enough that there’s a noticeable uptick in people feeling sick from it. That would be consistent with it escaping in July. And July is the date of the increase in purchases.

                So a possible theory is that it got loose in July, and the government was aware of it almost immediately. Not knowing exactly what they were dealing with, and/or how serious it would be, the government decided that the best course of action would be to pretend that nothing had happened in hopes that no one would notice (and no bad PR would accrue), but also start purchasing some key supplies in case that proved optimistic. That would have the government purchasing the extra tests in July as you indicated.

                1. When did the commies start buying up masks and gloves? When did they start sealing people into apartments? When did the huge plume of anomalous pollution consistent with large-scale midnight cremations start emanating from the Wuhan area?

                  The communist Chinese believed this would be much worse than it proved to be, because it was much worse in China. They believed they could kill off hundreds of millions to billions of those damned gwai-lo that didn’t bow down to the Middle Kingdom, and were disappointed when it only got a few old folks. Proper nutrition and health care showed that the actual mortality rate was less than 1%.

                  1. The panicked reaction happened later than the dates that we’re discussing.

                    In any case, there are two perfectly plausible explanations for why the government reacted the way that it did. The first is that the Beijing wasn’t sure *what* had gotten loose, but was concerned that it might be something serious. So now that they were finally reacting to it, they went into full-on panic and overreaction mode.

                    The second possible explanation is the one that our hostess has advanced – i.e. that Beijing was trying to spook the West into overreacting. i.e. if Beijing acted like it was much more serious than it actually was, then the West would panic and overreact.

                    1. As Our Hostess has noted, the Chinese videos of people dropping dead in the streets never seemed to show up in other countries (though I wouldn’t exclude such a thing happening with the wonderful new not-Vax and the adverse responses noted).

                      I’m not excluding the possibility that the virus “escaped”, and that the people of Wuhan were either unwilling beta testers or collateral damage. This could also apply into the second scenario. Let it out, then foment panic.

    4. But they will work.

      Just as sugar pills will work.

      Reversion to mean cures a lot of illnesses regardless of what you do — often despite what you do.

      They do not go in for fancy, expensive double-blind experiments because it’s easy to figure out what works and what doesn’t. (That goes for the vaccine, too. Destroying the control group should raise every suspicion you’ve got.)

    5. Because that’s how Little Tin Gods of the Left ALWAYS function, because they think like retarded middle-schoolers. There’s no nuance or flexibility or willingness to examine grey areas; there are only binary decisions. Hence it’s not a perfect surefire cure, it’s obviously no good and must be forbidden so they don’t have to think about it.

      Doesn’t need evil or even ordinary bureaucratic planning; only needs a critical immaturity of mind.

    6. They’re now trying to do it to ASPIRIN, because apparently it helps with the dread covid. No, seriously. ASPIRIN combats the dread plague. So they’re trying to make it prescription only.

          1. Yes, that is very dangerous in all its forms, solid, liquid, and gas. It’s also a major component of acid rain!

          2. It should definitely be restricted, and prescription-only, to prevent overdoses. Why, a woman died after drinking two gallons of the stuff in an hour!

            1. Babylon Bee should write an expose on how the Biden Administration has banned this dangerous substance, dihydrogen monooxide, listing everything we’ve listed. I’m sure the Bee can come up with more.

              /sarcasm off

              I might shake the rest of the country out of their wokeness …

  41. Sarah, this part of your post really concerns me: ‘because I know what happens to fixed incomes with runaway inflation’.

    Please, please tell me that you have some form of inflation hedge strategy in place?

    I’m in Australia and every time I have some spare cash, I’m converting it into Bitcoin right now. I’m debt free and working two jobs – my own business as a web developer and a part time IT job at a call centre. Essentially I can live on my part time job (might even get some savings out of that), but whenever I finish a web project and get an invoice paid – straight into Bitcoin.

    You might think “Look at the price of Bitcoin – I’ve come too late to that party” or “I’m too old to invest in Bitcoin – that’s a young person’s game” or “It’s just gambling, isn’t it?” – but if you are thinking those things, you are wrong on every count.

    Let me deal with each of those objections in turn.

    Would I be happier if I bought Bitcoin when it was worth 1 AUD each? Yes, but now that it is worth 70,000 AUD each, I’m still happy to buy it because within 10 years it will be worth 1,000,000 AUD each.

    I’m 51, so you’re a little bit older than me, but not so old that having real hard currency in 10 years won’t matter to you and yours. Again, would it have been better if we were in our 30s rather than our 50s when this started? Undoubtedly, but we can only deal with the situation God has put us in.

    Lastly, is it gambling? No, it actually is the future of money. When the SHTF (brought about by the continuous printing of fiat money and subsequent hyper-inflation), Bitcoin will become the currency of exchange that the USD once was. Gold and precious metals won’t (although I’d still invest a little bit in those as well), it will be Bitcoin.

    Just because I know you’ve got nothing on right now, listen or watch this episode of the Lex Fridman show on Youtube where he interviews Robert Breedlove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrehEWYj16s It goes for four hours, but to my mind is the best investment of four hours I have ever made. Would it surprise you that the corporate media and our elites are actively gaslighting the common man about the risks of Bitcoin in an effort to dissuade people from buying it right now? I have a Bachelor of Business in Banking & Finance and a Master of Technology in web development & advanced databases, so let me state here that everything Breedlove explained in this interview rang absolutely true to me.

    Buy Bitcoin and hodl it – you won’t regret it.

    1. Bitcoin is a soap bubble. No, it’s less than a soap bubble; it has no physical existence at all.

      Bitcoin’s only value is how much you believe somebody will pay for it at some time in the future. If you are wrong, there is no recourse. You will be left holding some very expensive nothing.

      The goal of Bitcoin investment is to be the second to last sucker to cash out.

      1. There are arguments one could reasonably use against BTC and have stick.

        This economic horsecrap:

        Bitcoin’s only value is how much you believe somebody will pay for it at some time in the future.

        ….is not among them.

        Hint: saying “bitcoin is money!” is not a very effective argument against it.

    2. Bitcoin may be an investment, but it is NOT a hedge. Any of the cryptocurrencies can go to zero valuation, since their “value” is essentially faith based.

      Heck, any value of anything is variable due to circumstances, but I’m thinking if thing do go far south, a roll of copper tubing to make a still will be worth more than bitcoin that a shaky blockchain network cannot transfer.

  42. I don’t give investment advice and I’m probably going to upset the Bitcoin gods but mine Bitcoin if you have access to free power otherwise remember that the Stable-coins, which is how you convert them to actual existing currency are backed by Chinese junk commercial paper so converting Bitcoin to something you can actually spend might be difficult. It isn’t liquid. It isn’t a hedge . It isn’t a store of value and you can’t make jewelry out of it. So the intrinsic value is zero. Oh yes. Capital gains are taxed. Just sayin. On the other hand they’re about to start SEC regulated funds “investing” in it. What could go wrong?

  43. I just read that one of the political prisoners being kept in solitary confinement for 8 months for trespassing on the Capitol Building lawn on January 6 2021, has died in prison.

    Such is justice under the Democrats.

    2. You mean was murdered while being held in solitary confinement as a political prisoner. Fixed it.

  44. So were you aware of the protests in Europe? Apparently in all Italy you have to show vax status or lose your job, and the Trieste dockworkers have gone on strike and there are demonstrations in all the major cities.

    (Yes, it’s Twatter, I know)

    Also, same domain but /aginnt — scroll down and see hundreds of Boeing workers in Everett, WA protesting.

    Same but /jasonrantz — thousands of WA government workers to be fired on Monday, Seattle police and fire departments to be down by hundreds, ferry routes cancelled, bus routes cancelled, etc., etc., etc.

    I’m going to head down to Costco tomorrow and stock up even more than I already am. This could get dire.

  45. About Biden’s creepy schtick of whispering at the microphone: It always makes me think of The Central Scrutinizer.

    “This is…The Central Scrutinizer. It is my responsibility to enforce all the laws that haven’t been passed yet. It is also my responsibility to alert each and every one of you to the potential consequences of various ordinary everyday activities you might be performing which could eventually lead to…THE DEATH PENALTY…or affect your parents’ credit rating. Our criminal institutions are full of little creeps like you who do wrong things…and many of them were driven to these crimes by a horrible force called MUSIC.”

    “Our studies have shown that this horrible force is so dangerous to society at large that laws are being drawn up at this very moment to stop it forever. Cruel and unusual punishments are being carefully described in tiny paragraphs so they won’t conflict with the Constitution — which, itself, is being modified in order to accommodate…THE FUTURE.”

    — Joe’s Garage, Frank Zappa, 1979.

      1. Ah, those poor folks at the Babylon Bee. Scrambling desperately to find something so stupid and crazy the Democrats won’t up and do it next week.

        1. I’m waiting for the headline of “Babylon Bee Drops Satire Beeline, Declares Itself a Psychic Byline. After 24 months of weekly accurately predicting the headlines of the future at least a week in advance.” Or “Babylon Bee Drops Satire Beeline, Declares Itself the Published Itinerary of the Biden Administration.”

          It has to be frustrating for the Babylon Bee writers …

        2. They are so remarkably close sometimes I wonder if they have a gadget that lets them send messages back in time. OTOH, it could be that Zhou or his handlers are reading the Bee for inspiration.

      2. I got a great laugh out of NINTH CIRCUIT COURT OVERTURNS DEATH OF RUTH BADER GINSBURG, REINSTATES HER TO SUPREME COURT

    3. Hmmmm . . . RBG had info incriminating the Clinton Crime Family, and now she’s dead. Coincidence?

    1. I don’t know which raised my blood pressure more: the original tweet, or the twits who were explaining how much better things in the USSR were, and how the government was actually giving food to people for free, not running short so that people had to stand in line to try to buy food.

      1. Nor any mention that the bread the Soviets were handing out was made using grain sent to them by capitalist America because the Soviets were incapable of growing enough grain themselves, notwithstanding the vast farmable land they had.

        1. It’s amazing what happens to farms when you send the successful farmers to Siberia… No one wants to be a successful farmer anymore…

    2. What the ever loving fudge? I repeat, what the actual, non-simulated EFF? Not a parody account? Not an incredibly poor joke by someone with even poorer social skills than me?

      And this is the Soviet Union that killed all their kulaks, and later on had bread shortages (actually everything shortages, but food’s kind of an immediate thing)? The one that Solzhenitsyn wrote about and got a Nobel prize for writing about? The same Soviet Union that suffered famine (bad enough that it was publicly known. Let that sink in for a bit) regularly at least every ten years from 1891 to 1947 (at least, officially)? That Soviet Union?

      The… monumental depth of ignorance in that tweet is enough to make one weep. And I say that because the other option running through my head is *much* more violent.

      1. I’m a little boggled by the gas-lighting, myself.

        Seriously, this?

        It’s funny how ignorant Americans never ask folks from the Soviet Union what they thought about breadlines. In my experience, there’s a lot of nostalgia for the sense of community they fostered. The bread shortages themselves were nbd

        First sentence:
        Oh F yes, we did. And moreover, generally didn’t HAVE to, because the folks who managed to escape alive? TALKED ABOUT IT.
        For heaven’s sake, one of THEIR BIG GUYS thought that our grocery stores were a put-up job because there couldn’t POSSIBLY BE that kind of bounty just hanging out, waiting for people to show up and pay a reasonable price for it.
        Second sentence:
        Try some experience outside of your own skull, a-hole.
        Third sentence:
        Spoken like someone who zero concept of going without. Someone who thinks of ‘bread shortage’ in terms of “Oh, I’m keto, anyways”.

        I gotta wonder if he’s delusional, lying, or REALLY that ignorant.

        1. A family from Russia moved to McKinleyville, CA (essentially tar-paper shacks and poor folks who mostly worked in the timber industry before our commies shut it down). The local paper had a reporter with them as they went through the local, kinda skimpy-stocked Safeway grocery. The woman was amazed going up and down the aisles until she saw the meat and dairy section where she broke int tears and needed to be helped to sit down on the floor. She had never seen so much in one place before. And there was no mad rush to get it before it was gone. She couldn’t believe it.

          I hate communism. And I have, at best, contempt for those who push it. Those ungrateful sods need t be given their own “Five Year Plan” on a collective farm in North Korea, Venezuela, or Zimbabwe. And then reapply for citizenship before we let them reenter the USA.

          1. I am trying to not even THINK about the, what, two or three different folks that either comment here or are associated with the Indy/Human Wave blob that I know of who…well, they definitely have more recent experience, and if they read that it may result in homicide.

            Justifiable homicide, note, but not sure they’ve got the money for bail, y’know?

            1. Ohhh yeah. Just Monalisa F’s comments would be enough to, well, make a thermonuclear detonation onto those tweeting twits look quiet and gentle.

              1. I don’t even want to think what Nicki Kenyon would say. I would probably be taking notes re her wording, mind you

            1. I am a believer in redemption, so I would allow a *contrite* and earnest person to re-enter society… Provided they could prove in word and deed that they understood the full depth of their error. And were willing to testify to the truth of said error any time and place such things were repeated in their presence.

              Much as a part of me seethes in rage and wants nothing more than to subject them to the wrath of the survivors of their foolish idea, they aren’t the ones in power enforcing it. Yet. Many a foolish young person has been raised on hatred for American ideals, taught not to think but to feel, not to question but to obey, and not to earn but to accept thievery both of their own actions and on their own behalf. I cannot blame them too much for repeating the lies that they’ve little chance of discovering on their own. I pity them.

              There are those whose cowardice demands they submit to any strength and who accept any burden rather than risk freedom. There always will be such. But for those with next to no chance to do or think else… Well, Lady Liberty wields a torch. Not a catch-pole. You can walk, sail, work, and earn your way to freedom. You cannot be forced into it as long as there are men in the world that want obedient serfs.

              1. I would look upon them as the equivalent of alcoholics. There is no such thing as a ‘cure’ or ‘recovery’; some alcoholics have just managed not to drink for X days. One drink, and they’re back in the bottle.

                The commieholics will be surrounded by temptations. How many would resist, and for how long?

                1. Eh. There’s a bit of difference, but in general similar. The commieholic gets dopamine hits from likes and the social approbation one accrues by damning anything anti-woke. Or even just not woke enough. There are also significant economic reasons to be woke in certain industries where all the bosses are woke.

                  Leaving the herd means saying goodbye to friends, family, coworkers, your job, perhaps even your spouse, children and parents. The woke cannot comprehend tolerance that isn’t “tolerance:” the woke version. This means those that *do* leave the plantation are motivated, driven, and often harbor *significant* feelings of betrayal done by those that were close to them. That hard shift tends to make them very, very anti woke. Think just escaped Communist Cuba, or Russia, two steps ahead of internal security goons kind of anti-woke.

                  Wokism is seriously toxic. Even growing up with the media, schools, and most of the big businesses drowning in wokism, you don’t get the full effect of being *in* the woke, then having the mob- the *entire* mob- turn on you. That sort of defining moment changes a person. You have to have some sort of inner strength to withstand that. One iota less, and they’ll drag you back into the suffocating mass.

                  To a person that has gone through that, it isn’t temptation that they are surrounded by. It is hostile targets. I don’t know many who have passively escaped the woke- if indeed there are any.

                2. I actually learned a lot about communists from a blogger who was a former communist.

                  Would use examples of communist newspaper articles, etc., talk about how they thought, what it had felt like inside.

                  Eventually, he quit blogging because as informative as it was for us, it was still an example of communism eating up a whole bunch of his life, and he wanted a life that didn’t have communism in it.

          3. Gum department store (really a mall), MOSCOW, USSR 1981 the ONLY meat market in the place ONLY had some maybe OK Sausage. Absolutely NOTHING else. GUM billed as the largest department store in the WORLD, in the Capital of the USSR in 1981.
            I was THERE, I bought 1kg of sausage. Had to stand in 3 lines.

            And there are IDIOTS trying to tell people USSR could feed itself???

          4. They did have ‘special’ stores where high-ranking Party members could get more and better food, and stuff imported from other countries.

            1. And as Gorbachev (?) pointed out on his visit to the US, they got beaten by random KMart, hands down

              Sent from Workspace ONE Boxer

        2. Reminds me of my own thoughts regarding the older style of MMORPG play, where players would set up an xp camp, pull mobs to the camp, and grind experience to level up by pulling mobs to the camp site where they could be efficiently killed by the party.

          On the one hand, you got a lot of socialization. In between mob kills, players would chat about this, that, and the other, while waiting for the next mob to the pulled to the camp. They were good for that reason, and you got to know some of the other people playing the game that you would otherwise never have spoken to.

          On the other hand… well, it’s worth noting that no modern game follows that system anymore. Players would rather follow the current “quest to earn experience” method that allows staying mobile and doesn’t require a group.

    3. All such are welcome to move to North Korea, Venezuela or China. And not let the door hit ’em in the ass.

      2. First off, those particular songs are still under EU copyright, so it is dumb to use them. Second, as I am sure you know, those are banned songs in the UK, because they are associated with IRA terrorism. (There was a JAG episode where the producers were tricked into quoting stuff detrimental to syndication in the EU, without consulting an international law guy; and things got very salty in the fandom.)

        I wouldn’t dirty my tongue with some of those things, because I am of Scots-Irish heritage as well as Irish. As with most Irish-Americans (outside certain enclaves).

        I do not intend to kill or blow up certain fractions of myself, much less crossfire myself. Historical rebel songs are welcome, but it is creepy (at least in the US) to go farther than that.

        1. Bah, nesting. “Soldier’s Song” and “Nation Once Again” is what I’m talking about. “Nation Once Again” got JAG in trouble, because they thought it was just a public domain poem, which they used for context. (“Yeah, about that….”)

  51. Hopefully, all of this just ends up in the people who did all this to us heading off to live in exile in Costa Rica or New Zealand or wherever it is people suffering from acute Dunning-Kruger go. But I’m still rereading Niven’s and Pournelle’s “Lucifer’s Hammer” nonetheless. Also buying more ammo. 😉

      1. Wait – it was English?

        Just spotted today’s post: congrats on getting it done, though I’m sorry it had to happen

      2. Considering how keyboards work, if you’d managed to type that in UNrecognizable letters I’d have told you to skip tech support and go straight for an exorcist.

        1. I have Greek Keyboard installed on this computer, for lessons. (Though I haven’t had time to practice in so long I don’t think I know the letters anymore.)

  54. The essay linked on Instapundit, about Wang Huning?

    That is a really important essay. Take a look at it. Another cunning jerkface, who suddenly took a dislike to the US for bizarre reasons. But then, so did that Muslim Brotherhood jerkface, who was offended by the decadence of a square dance.

    And since we currently have corrupt stupid criminals in power, he is a problem.

    1. Mind you, he thought America’s problem is that we have individuals as well as families and that individuals rip apart the social fabric. And then he got in bed with leaders who are trying to kill off China’s family structure, in the name of population control, and aren’t replacing it with anything at all.

      So this Wang Huning is an idiot too. A genius idiot. The kind that destroys the things he loves by his own actions.

      1. All really large scale disasters have a “theorist” at their center. This article makes an awful lot of things make sense.

      2. The current CCP leadership is belatedly trying to get the family back. But the article lists some problems that are being encountered. One is a problem that’s common even here in the US – i.e. those who prefer the DINK (Dual Income No Kids) lifestyle instead of spending their money on kids. But another issue that’s mentioned is the high cost of real estate in China. You might want to get married and have kids… but if you can’t afford your own place to stay, that’s not going to happen. And, according to the article, this is a problem for at least some of the young adults currently in China.

        Living in LA County, I can appreciate that problem.

      1. Yeah, that isn’t “smarter and more serious than ours”, it is a different flavor of silly stupidity.

        Okay, he saw real things in the United States, and his upbringing in the CCP gave him some perspective on communist bullshit in the US that most of us didn’t have.

        But, he hadn’t enough time in the US for more than surface level grokking, or getting past the wider communist mindscrew of his upbringing.

        So, confident in his conclusions, but not necessarily correct in his conclusions.

        Wang’s background has details that could support a narrative of precocious genius and innovative scholarship. It could also support a narrative of an intellectually focused youth, that left one fragile and prone to suddenly changing one’s mind with a fanatic zeal.

        Looking at the history of great discoveries, you do at times see very young people doing brilliant things that the field has to catch up to. But, this is partly survivorship bias, there are a lot of young people who get themselves into mental trouble that they never get out of, etc. Broader history shows that Academia has many cranks and mediocrities.

        Okay, the academics that our political masters see fit to adorn their policies with are mostly cranks and mediocrities. For all that some very smart people in engineering and the hard sciences are very trusting of results from the humanities, the people that fraud in the humanities is laundered through are blind idiot lunatics. And we can obviously see so, because we can see their results in English, and estimate the quality of mind. It is just that there is a residual trust in university credentials, so it is still advantageous for the politicians to pretend that the university lunatics are more than just a propaganda proxy.

        Wang may simply be a monomaniac, who chanced on an obsession that is very broadly useful in high level PRC power politics. He has a theory, ‘US bad, PRC authoritarianism good’, that doesn’t make him any enemies in PRC senior officialdom. And, he has a track record of university credentials, may have paid few ‘dues’ into the institution (easing leaving), and the conviction of a theory obsessive who sees the world through the lens of theory. So, he is extremely convenient, without being good enough at in fighting to be a threat to any tyrant. Chinese internal legitimating narratives, which are not entirely under the control of the central government, do come with the archetype of the academic attached to the government who knows how to make things really work. So, at this point, he may purely be a propaganda tool.

        Lot of academics out of the PRC have reputations for lack of creativity, because of the way totalitarianism can squash out initiative. There are some very smart people who have learned creativity, but there are also people who have appallingly poor judgement. So: How good was Wang, really? Did he perhaps peak early, and switch to this for lack of anything else to do? Has he had any new ideas recently? That whole thing of being isolated from foreign thinkers makes his current ability a bit hard to be sure of.

        After all, officially, the crazed stupid moderately able folks preaching Marxism by rote from American universities are intelligent, creative, high performers who are so much more impressive than prior generations.

        Reynolds is faculty, so him having a friend who doesn’t intuit all of this isn’t entirely surprising.

        1. Good analysis, Bob. He also seems to have had some very cunning/connected parents, because he managed to get through the Cultural Revolution without ever having to leave school. A foreign language-oriented literature school.

          I mean, it sounds like, “My character is a medieval Scot, and also he’s a Silk Road trader who went to Tibet.” I mean, it could theoretically happen, but it wouldn’t happen much.

          1. Argh.

            I had ID’d political connections or skills as one of the possible explanations for that ‘young and allegedly very able’ profile, then forgot to write it out.

            Of course, it was afterwards that I asked myself “okay, what hagiography would communists make up about a favored pet intellectual, and what information do we have that is independent of them?”

            REally, most of my points are a) it doesn’t matter how smart someone is, if they are simply incorrect, and not interested in finding out and addressing it. Smart-crazy and smart-evil are not really that praiseworthy or useful. b) Seriously, our psychopaths may be as good as their psychopaths. c) Our elite have had plenty of time to ID the narratives they want pushed, and it is actually kinda of efficient for them to be relying on the level of talent and ability that they are using. d) Would things actually be better if, say, Kristi Noem were being advised by, say, a credentialed lunatic who thinks Canada should be destroyed? Or if Biden was being advised by a hypothetical genius who still can’t understand the futility of trying to communicate complex ideas to Joe?

            A technocratic totalitarian regime has a technocrat telling them that totalitarianism is good. Even if the technocrat really is as good as PR, a genius within his field, a polymath, etc., that does not mean that he has infinite levels of every possible skill. Fundamentally, he cannot have the experience to base advice on for every question, so some of the advice would not have any reason why it really ought to be correct.

            I am sure that there are some very smart, very capable crazy Americans who are wildly overconfident. It isn’t clear to me that such people are anything special, or that putting one in the retinue of a leader would be of any real value. In fact, when I think about getting use out of someone who is insane, and extremely intelligent, I tend to expect that it is mainly in cases where they can work in a specialized field, where they can apply themselves to it consistently, and where other smart people can check their work.

            To the extent that being a generalist is even possible, it is very very difficult. Anyone really smart, who is trying to function as a generalist, can only be trusted to the extent that they are at least quasi-sane, looking for their own mistakes, willing to admit when they are wrong, and able to change course. Because crazy people, or evil people, who are also very smart, can hide a lot of their mistakes and ignorance from most oversight.

            Leaders can be extremely smart in certain ways, but rarely are the high level ones the type and degree of mind that could regulate a really tippy top mind that does not regulate itself.

        2. I’ve noticed that “smarter” tends to mean “I like that flavor of stupidity more.”

          Actually smarter is a lot of hard work and compromise that isn’t very satisfying, it’s just FUNCTIONING.

    4. Read the article earlier today.

      A thought that crossed my mind while reading it was that part of what he didn’t like was the self-proclaimed elites screwing over the country to enrich themselves, and he somehow got the idea that they were linked to western liberalism.

      But one of the shorthand methods that people acquainted with history use to describe them is to compare them with the entrenched corrupt Chinese mandarins.

  55. Pingback: The Morning Report (sans JJ Sefton) | The Radio Patriot

  56. BTW, it’s easy to get misunderstood:

    Midnight Ulster Ride
    The Black Velvet Band

    On a goodwill trip to Ulster just to show we’d no bad feelings
    But a couple of Yanks on holiday in a hired car a-wheeling,
    Crossed the river Foyle at Lifford, waved at British armored vans,
    Gonna spend the evening pleasantly with a music of Strabane

    In the glare of a hundred streetlights though, the pubs were dark and mute
    No place to eat, no music sweet from the fiddle or the flute,
    So we headed for Dungannon in the blowin’ Ulster rains,
    But we lost our way near Castlederg in Tyrone’s varicose veins.

    And somewhere near the Meenbog Hill we stopped to navigate
    When a man came out and he had to shout and he saw our license plate,
    “I’ll tell you boys,” says he. “You’re suspect both I fear,
    You’re a bloody long whack from the tourist track. And we don’t like strangers here!”

    “So what do you want ya bomber boys? Where do you think you’re going?
    Turn about, go back, take a left at the bridge, turn right at the ogham stone
    Ten miles to Kesh on the Ederney road-we got troubles of our own-
    Take the A47 at Lough Erne Shores, get the hell out of Magh-Tyrone!”

    Not a light from the Gunnery Hill nor the Castle of Dromore,
    We drove through darkened Drumskinny, and silent Seskinore
    Got stopped at a British checkpoint on this raggley-tangled snare,
    And the Sergeant leaned into the car with an angry, menacing glare.

    “So what do you want ya bomber boys? Where do you think you’re going?
    Turn about, go back, take a left at the bridge, turn right at the ogham stone
    Ten miles to Kesh on the Ederney road-we got troubles of our own-
    Take the A47 at Lough Erne Shores, get the hell out of Magh-Tyrone!”

    Well, we tried to take this kind advice-such a night to be a tourist!
    But instead of Lough Erne’s welcome shores, we found the Killiter Forest.
    It was then we drew bad company, a 20-car parade
    For stormed by score of Loyalists, shook down in the gloomy glade

    “So what do you want ya bomber boys? Where do you think you’re going?
    Turn about, go back, take a left at the bridge, turn right at the ogham stone
    Ten miles to Kesh on the Ederney road-we got troubles of our own-
    Take the A47 at Lough Erne Shores, get the hell out of Magh-Tyrone!”

    On the road again and closer then; but the gas was almost gone,
    Rode across the border in the hired Ford, didn’t stop ’til BallyShannon
    So welcome was Belleek me boys, that it wasn’t for the Chinas,
    No room, no grub, but at Sweeney’s Pub we cured the wet night dryness.

    “So what do you want ya bomber boys? Where do you think you’re going?
    Turn about, go back, take a left at the bridge, turn right at the ogham stone
    Ten miles to Kesh on the Ederney road-we got troubles of our own-
    Take the A47 at Lough Erne Shores, get the hell out of Magh-Tyrone!”

    So listen up you touring Yanks who want a midnight Ulster ride:
    Find a B&B in Donegal and spend your nights inside.
    Get a Letterkenny Pizza, couple pints of Smithick’s Ale,
    Tour Mulroy Bay and Highglenfey but stay on the tourist trail.

    “So what do you want ya bomber boys? Where do you think you’re going?
    Turn about, go back, take a left at the bridge, turn right at the ogham stone
    Ten miles to Kesh on the Ederney road-we got troubles of our own-
    Take the A47 at Lough Erne Shores, get the hell out of Magh-Tyrone!
    Take the A47 at Lough Erne Shores, get the hell out of Magh-Tyrone!”

  57. I’m not saying we need to murder those with different opinions. I’m saying we need to have many, many songs that express the emotions of loving America — and eventually restoring her.

    1. I understand that is what you meant (and a good song for the point!), but cultural sensitivity and good directions are indeed survival skills, just as much as if you drive the wrong roads into Detroit.

      One of my college professors had turned his office into an IRA shrine, got himself banned from the BBC, and probably helped get me on some terrorist watchlist because I am always searched on airlines. I don’t have much sense of humor about it.

  58. Miss Sarah, I highly recommend that you look for Mattias Desmet and his interview with Dan Astin-Gregory on how “mass formation” works: how totalitarian regimes get the people behind them. It’s fascinating. Desmet (psychologist and statistician) was baffled and stunned by the idiocies, illogic, and hateful ugliness that his “liberal” educated friends in Belgium and throughout Europe were accepting, not only blindly, but with fury against anyone who questioned their new cult. You can find him (for now) on yoo toob, but they’re sure to remove it soon.

    Slide toward the end to hear how he thinks it will end, and how this world totalitarian government they’re in the process of constructing differs from a traditional dictatorship: both in pyschology and in its denouement.

    1. That is bullshit. I don’t care HOW he thinks it will work. He’s read too many novels.
      First, the era of mass communication that is centralized is PAST. Second if the US falls, the rest of the world can’t afford COMMUNICATION.
      Third, the rest of the world is not as law abiding as he might think.
      Fourth HERE in the face of hte most concerted propaganda and disinformation, people hunched their shoulders and voted for Trump in record numbers. So many they had to fraud Bai Den in in the full glare of light.
      Fifth, other countries have done or attempted the same.
      Sixth world government was ALWAYS insanity of people who think that “the world” is their little class of hypereducated friends. The world doesn’t give a f*ck.
      Sixth. it’s not only a novel, it’s a bad novel.
      Look, I’m not saying it will be easy, but their time is past. Their contortions are not because they’re winning.
      Be not afraid. And read (and listen to) better fiction, that at least admits to being ficiton.

    2. SERIOUSLY Mass Information started dying around the time of the blue dress. Now? Bah. This is why they hanker for a return to “unity” by which they mean their loudspeaker is the only thing heard.

      1. Umm… Sarah? She said “mass formation”not “mass information”. My read of it is as an entirely different concept

        2. Here’s the four “variables” that the guy’s theory is based on:

          A large population of socially isolated people

          A large population that lacks sense making (critical thinking)

          A large population for free floating anxiety

          A large population with psychological discontent

          While they’re all somewhat defensible– since in looks like the guy rephrased the theory of what makes folks vulnerable to cults, they would be– exploiting them *does* require that people be isolated from anything but the mass information source.

    3. From what I can find written on his theory, he’s got a big blind spot– the “liberal educated friends” were vulnerable to this new cult because they were already in a cult.

      That’s what made them vulnerable.

      Look at this list, considering things like “political correctness” have been going on for the last 20+ years, as a mainstream activity, and opposing the “just being nice” current norm gets you not just removed from your social circles but sometimes your job and may get you killed. And you’re not allowed to recognize the literal threat to your life, because that’s racist/hateful/whatever the most handy hammer is.

      A large population of socially isolated people
      A large population that lacks sense making (critical thinking)
      A large population for free floating anxiety
      A large population with psychological discontent

      No wonder they’ve been pouring out active hate on those who don’t conform sufficiently– including public death-wishes on political opposition– for all of my adult life.

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