FIAT

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

What is the operative word in Fiat Currency?

Fiat.

The full faith and credit of the United States of America.

To an extent it was always bullsh*t that your money was safe with the government. To be fair to an extent it was always bullsh*t (apologies to Orvan) that anything was safe in the hands of the government, starting with your kids’ education and ending with…. well, everything. Because humans have a knowledge gathering problem, and the bigger the organization, the bigger the knowledge gathering problem and the bigger the knowledge gathering problem, the greater the chance of being run by gossip, innuendo and fad.

But the thing is, we now have better knowledge of what the government is up to than we did back when FDR set the value of the dollar to gold according to his lucky number.

Which means we now know we shouldn’t have faith.

Other reasons we shouldn’t have faith — or give credit — is the soft coup we watched happening before our very eyes. And while a lot of the people are still closing their eyes and going “I see nothing” I will note that when I say that we had massive fraud for years, people have stopped fighting back. And these days no one sane says “We need voting by mail/multiple voting days/no signature verification.” The left says it, but their sanity is questionable, and they are obviously interested in incentivizing and facilitating cheating. Ten years ago people still told me “But I need early voting, because I can’t take the day off. I have to make money.” And “there is really no fraud.” Now, no one does. Or no one sane. Which means that needle has moved considerably.

And the needle has moved to “We don’t trust these guys.”

Then add to that the Covidiocy, where it’s becoming more and more evident not just the US government but EVERY government in the world, to an extent, cooperated in pushing crazy bullsh*t on everyone because they could, add the confiscation of Canadian truckers funds, add the confiscation of Russian citizens’ funds.

What do you have? Well, at this point the indicator on Fiat is approaching zero.

Yes, okay, so the confiscation of Russian funds is at least technically an attempt at getting the Russians to get rid of Putin. And the Canadian fund confiscation is in response to inflammatory press reports claiming they were several kinds of “ist.”

Sure.

But you know what we didn’t do, when Iran declared war on us? Confiscate their citizens accounts. We froze them.

Same way in the past, various governments (rolls eyes in “Dude, I knew about this before it was cool”) have frozen citizens accounts, but not confiscated them.

(Okay, there’s an exception. Between that and “we will control the industry without expropriating the owners, the imposition of medical experimentation on populations without their consent, and the obsession with genetics and eugenics, the current leftist bozos have Hitler laughing in hell, in between bouts of being f*cked with a pineapple.)

And then the stock market started unraveling, in a way that at least Zero Hedge (waggles hand) thinks is catastrophic.

They give good reasons for this, but honestly, as I’ve talked about here before, I think there’s others.

Like, for instance, the fact that I suspect population is imploding in most of the world. The fact that dumbasses in possession of the levers of power made like a monkey with a stick in a China factory on the world economy for two years. Like the fact that the “big government” model was imploding long before that. (Errors accumulate in any human system. The longer it goes on, the more errors. When it possesses a self-multiplying bureaucracy, more errors accumulate.)

But the central thing here for me — I’m an information/communication person, not an economic analyst — is that the left isn’t adjusting well to “Everyone can see what we’re doing.”

So their response to plummeting fiat is to do more things that break the faith.

And then expecting us to literally put our lives, the fruit of our labor — because that’s what money is — in their hands. And then being surprised we don’t trust them.

The operative word is “Fiat”. What do you do when the trust is gone?

What do you do when the money is gone?

What do you do when everything implodes because it’s in the hands of dumbasses who can’t seem to realize we SEE them?

The sense of having to brace for a crash of all sorts is very intense. And all we can do, individually is prepare and be ready.

Add some precious metals, alcohol, baby formula, medical supplies to your planning. (I should add baby formula, if it has a long expiration date. I’ll never use it for bargaining, because I’m too soft-headed for that. BUT it might be needed by family or strangers. While babies can survive like dad on water from boiling rice, or like our own Dr. Monkey on water from boiling carrots, most of them don’t.)

And be ready.

For years we’ve said “what can’t go on won’t go on” and we’re now hitting terminal “can’t go on.”

Be ready. Stay as calm as possible. Do what you can.

UPDATE:

Go read: https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/03/courage-to-change-what-must-be-altered.html
ALL OF YOU. It’s important.

226 thoughts on “FIAT”

  1. Doing what little bit I can as a cog.

    One of yesterday’s anti-money-laundering cases was a guy who pulled $40K out of his savings account and closed it, but he was so antisocial about it the teller asked for an investigation. My report on why this wasn’t suspicious included a note that the customer did this the day after the Canadian banks froze protestor accounts, and so there might be a connection.

    And my guess is that he wasn’t the only one, because my grandboss who approved it (boss had a vacation day) didn’t make any requests to get rid of political or extraneous information in my report.

  2. Silver rounds.
    Silver ingots.
    Gold bullion.
    Goldbacks.
    Gold backed bitcoin.
    Many alternatives to fiat currency available.
    I’ve been moving bits of spare cash into all these alternatives, except bitcoin, for decades

      1. and unpopular. 7.5×53.5 or whatever they wanna call 7.5 Swiss before GP11. The powder is dear though. I use Trail Boss and it is AWOL since the early runs on such. Got some 32 gauge (was cheaper than 209 primers alone)
        Them’s the only oddballs I deal with though. 7.62×51, .45ACP (hot loaded as .45Super for carbine use), .380ACP is what I concentrate on.

        1. Brass, bullets, powder, and primers. First three can be had if you haunt all the usual sources. Not cheap or regular, but stuff is out their on occasion. Primers are a different story, cannot be had for love nor money at this time. Components have always been a matter of surplus production and mostly they are being consumed by ammo manufacturers large and small. Leftovers never manage to make it to the consumer market.

          1. For a while, I’ve only seen Small primers. At first it was only Large primers. I see 209s showing back up again. For better .45 Super loads small primer .308 cut brass or 45Super specific brass is best and I should line some of those up while small pistol are lurking about. could get dies and brass for .380 too.

        1. Depends on what’s up for exchange.

          A few surplus bricks of primers (as if I got that lucky) might be good trading material for ammo. Hell, I’d love to find a couple hundred small pistol magnum primers. Substituting small rifle (for .367 Mag in a carbine) is more adventurous than my sense of survival allows.

          1. Regardless of what the “internet Commandos” may say, the only (possible) difference between pistol and rifle primers is that most rifle primers use a thicker cup which *may* cause misfires in pistols. The sizes and mixture content (i.e., “power”) are the same. Just drop down about 5% and work up.

            1. Thanks. My reloading-fu is rusty; haven’t done so since the early ’90s.

              If it’s the cup thickness, then that reduces my worries. OTOH, I’m still trying to set off H110 in a carbine, and test loads with “std” SR primers might have issues, like squibs. My neighbor says I can use his range (formal, public ranges are a long ways away, and the informal ranges on public land are sketchy right now), so I can consider it. A cleaning rod down the barrel after each round would alleviate concerns.

              Either that, or I’ll use the factory loads and wait until more appropriate components show up. (Not holding my breath, though the new primer operation/company will be a godsend if they get going soon. If.) If things go sideways, I have enough factory rounds for the carbine.

              And yeah, that was .357, not .367. The latter would be interesting though getting the round into battery would be a challenge. 🙂

              1. Everything I’ve ever seen about primers (from *actual* experts, including the manufacturers) says that’s the only real difference within a brand, but the brisance (power) of supposedly-identical primers (SR or LP, for instance) *between* brands varies widely. A search on “primers power” or similar should yield some sites with test data; I don’t remember where I got mine but it’s fairly easy to find. And FWIW, H110 can be sort of hard to ignite, like most ball powders; the Hornady manual shows Winchester WSPM (magnum) primers for *all* .357 loads; the equivalent Small Rifle primer should work fine. Again, just remember to follow the usual “drop charge 5% to start” when making substitutions from the databooks.

                And yeah, I was pretty sure the “367” was a typo; if not, chambering an 8mm Mauser in a 30-06 might yield similar results. 🙂 At any rate, caution is the watchword.

                1. Damn, there’s so many useful powders I wish I had bought before things went weird. I used 2400 when I had .44 mag arms (sold when the budget cried surrender many years ago), but never thought of it for .357.

                  I’ll be making a little card with what I have vs what would be useful, in case something shows up. On rare occasions, I’ve seen some shotshell powder–not in the gotta have list just yet, but… OTOH, primers have been a dry hole around here for months. Knowing what should work would be good–this is why I have a pound of IMR-4895 and H-4895.

                  Never had an 8mm Mauser, and I wasn’t fool enough to mix .30-’06 and 7mm Mauser.

                  1. 2400 is my “go-to” for most .357 loads, both target and “social”. I was lucky enough to have quite a few CCI 500’s and CCI 550’s on hand when the supply dried up; wish I’d stocked up with a few thousand. Powder supplies seem to be slowly recovering, and I cast for all the calibers I shoot, but primers are still “missing in action”. I have enough for now; we’ll see what the future holds. Anyway, I think we’ve probably beaten this off-topic subject to death; be safe, stay alert, and, as has been noted multiple times here, keep your clothes and weapons…etc. 😉

          2. Know what you mean. I spent around a year and a half on line and off line, trying to buy W209 shot shell primers. Finely lucked out and exchanged cash for them in an alley beside the grocery store.

      2. Used to have a bumper sticker on my car,

        “Invest in Precious Metals:
        Brass, Lead, and Cold Blued Steel”

        1. “Used to” is good; never show your hand before it’s time to cash in. My front plate (AZ; only a single license plate used) says “I’d Rather Be Fishing”, which has the double advantage of being true *and* innocuous.

    3. I’ve been somewhat hoarding silverware and silver jewelry for years. When you buy privately online or on flea markets where people sell their own stuff people tend to ask quite a bit for gold, but many sell silver at nearly the same prices you usually have to pay for costume jewelry, especially if it’s small things like earrings. And while whole sets of silverware tend to have reasonably high asking prices, the same often doesn’t hold for something like grandma’s teaspoons.

      So, I got into the habit of buying if I see something small sold cheaply. I like to wear silver, and I am fond of silver tableware, so why not. Now it’s not as valuable as gold of course, but presumably might work in private exchanges if things did go so badly that currencies lost their value.

  3. Information: like the ability to look at Ukraine and Russia, and go “Huh. That area produces 25% of the wheat in the world, *and* Russia is one of the major exporters of components for fertilizer / finished fertilizer.”

    So while the news is still trying to tell us everything is fine and all we need to do is cheer the cause of the day, Calmer Half and I are over here going “Well, food prices across the board are going to skyrocket, because lack of fertilizer means lack of grass and animal feed to grow beef, pork, and cattle. And this right before spring planting. Yep, things are rapidly going from SNAFU to FUBAR, what extra stocks do we need to lay in now, over and above anything else?”

    And information like: two years into shutting down pipelines and banning new fields, and doing everything else to destroy domestic oil production, we’re supposed to believe the chickens coming home to roost are a foreign war that’s less than a month old’s fault? Russian warship, go f*ck yourself.

    1. Yeah the food issues are sounding way to much like we’ve wandered into John Ringo’s “The Last Centurion” or a nearby parallel universe. Not good, REALLY not good, especially with the folks in charge having the inability to comprehend basic science especially physics and biology, let alone to even have a vague concept of how complex modern agriculture operates.

      1. it’ll be greedy Kulaks who aren’t planting for nefarious reasons . . . you know, like all their workers are dead and the fields are bombed out, or outside the war zone, can’t afford the fuel (just buy an electric Combine!) or fertilizer, and the truckers didn’t deliver the seed because he protested and lost his truck and CDL, or couldn’t afford the fuel or find the Fertilizer based DEF for his new mandated Diesel engine (Again the stupidity of using food items or items food needs as combustion engine fluids).
        Oh John Ringo, NO!

        2. I saw the bit where Alfred E. Neuman’s stupider brother Pete Buttigieg’s solution for the high price of gasoline is to buy and EV. Sure. There must be two dozen publicly available charging stations in Flyover Falls.

          We seem to be halfway between Ringo’s Last Centurion and Kurt Schlichter’s People’s Republic, with a smidgeon of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle.

          1. Also he was the first I heard with buying oil from Iran and Venezuela instead of Muscovy. And they’ve started on the “9,000 unused leases” B.S. deflection.
            Out of the 9,000, just how many actually have oil that can be gotten at all, let alone in a timely manner? Some are failed holes already. Hey Exxon, go drill that deep-water site that you got bupkis from!

            1. Of the 9000, *way* more than half are either proven nonproductive or exhausted. Jen’s just at it again…

                  1. Gravity still works, election was still stolen, Occasional Cortex is still a Vilain, Biden is still crazy demented, Castreau is still Gavin Newsom’s uglier brother.
                    All the same.

                  1. Based on those rare occasions when I happen to catch one of her briefings the bigger the lie she’s telling the more flustered she gets at any challenge from the press corps. I swear I’ve seen her mouth death threats at the Fox News peeps under her breath.

            2. Or as was pointed out in a conversation I heard last night, leases don’t mean anything without the permits to accompany them.

    2. It suddenly occurs to me that this is *very* bad news for China. I don’t know whether China imports directly from Ukraine. But anything that tightens up the food market is potentially catastrophic for mainland China, which is already not producing enough food to meet its needs.

      1. I’ve also hear that China had a bad winter wheat crop this year. Basically a badly timed heavy rain messed up their planting cycle, so they’re about 25% down of their production as well.

        Going to be fun times…

    3. Saw my first, “I Did That!” sticker on a gas pump yesterday. I didn’t mention it to the clerk.

        1. Heck I’ve seen them in darkest blue Massachusetts, although in some cases an attempt has been made to scrape them off. Simon Jester lives, and Mort the Wart is squirming.

          1. Two of them today, both partly scraped off, on the gas pump from which I pumped gas to refill our van after returning from our first convention of the year.

        3. It just occurred to me: when Biden’s policies are reversed and gas prices go back down, there’s going to be a guerilla campaign to remove or cover those stickers. Possibly with stickers of a grinning Trump saying “*I* did that!”

          1. Read an interview of one station manager who stated that the only reason he was scraping those decals off the pumps was that corporate dinged him if he didn’t. Same as with graffiti. Or so he was directed to say.

    4. Lack of fertilizer doesn’t mean lack of grass. Most pasture grass is entirely on its own, and if it gets fertilized at all (which it usually doesn’t, beyond what the livestock leave behind), it’s done with a manure spreader, using what came from the ranch’s own cow yard.

      Wheat can get along without fertilizer (and did, until about 50 years ago), tho yields may be reduced in dry years. (You can substitute volcanic ash, and get spectacular crops. My uncle got 120bu/ac the year after Mt.St.Helens.)

      What the lack really hits is some oilcrops (eg canola), row crops (table veggies), cotton, and to a lesser extent, corn. Soybeans, legumes, and alfalfa can be rotated to provide nitrogen in lieu of fertilizer.

      A standard rotation hereabouts, for ground not otherwise fertilized, is one year of potatoes, two years of wheat, three years of alfalfa with the final cutting plowed in.

      Lack of fertilizer means more ground given over to livestock, because a lot of very marginal cropland that shouldn’t be under cultivation in the first place needs fertilizer and water added to produce. But it’s fine for grass and cattle and sheep (not pigs, pigs destroy pasture).

      1. This is water-dependent: around here, fertilizer and water and a good grass mix are used for making the land for cattle far more productive. So, no fertilizer means reducing the number of head that the pasturage can support.

        1. Double or better yet quadruple atmospheric CO2, and plants’ ability to withstand water stress gets WAY better.

          Yep, you can make grass more productive that way, but it’s not done with most rangeland.

    5. Once you have the basics stocked, get all the designer ice cream you want from MaligNancy’s freezer…

    7. Red China is warning that their winter wheat crop will be one of the worst ever.

  4. Is there such a thing as pathological believers? The Democrats lie and lie and LIE, their lies are found out, and when called on their lies they lie about ever telling them. And yet sheeples are still lining up to believe the next whopper. What is wrong with them?
    ———————————
    Those who do not remember the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the mistakes. Those who do remember are doomed to watch everybody else repeat them.

    1. If your life is built on those lies being true, you have to tear it out at the roots and make a new one. That is not an easy or overnight solution.

      Me, I probably need to start going around the local pawn shops and buy used jewelry, but I both have no real idea how to do it, and starting that requires emotionally accepting that our current life is dead, when it is not, just yet, and explaining to the SO that that vacation she is so wanting this summer is probably a happy fantasy that won’t be possible by then.

        1. I’ve actually got the ebook of that. I remember I ended up reading the whole thing in about an evening because my desktop at the time did not want to power back on after being turned off, and I wanted to finish the series before my computer died and I had to replace everything.

          It just takes a few weeks to get the parts and put everything together when I do a total rebuild, and at that point, I didn’t know what was causing the fail, so it was a complete build.

          3. More like 12. And none of the survivors were the same as when they landed on Marduk, *especially* Roger. BTW, there’s a “start” of a followup to “We Few”, if only Ringo and Weber would get going on it. I downloaded a textfile of it a while ago, but I can’t find where I got it.

        3. Where’s Dogzard when we really need him? He had a pragmatic outlook WRT enemies…

      2. Jewelry is really not a good investment. once upon a time, I sold fine jewelry, and the markup is between 100 and 500%. Even pawn store prices are more than the jewelry is worth.
        Ammo, now….

        1. USED wedding rings ARE a good investment. TRUST me.
          You don’t want to go to the market with gold coins or ammo. They’ll know there’s more where that came from.
          BUT if you take off your worn wedding ring, with tears in your eyes and say “Grandkids” in my case “Got to eat.” You’re fine.
          Please. Remember some of us have been there before. It’s not all about absolute value.

          1. Ah, yeah. That might be a problem for me…

            Size 13 ring….

            I’m probably one of the only people who can make a SAR K2 look normal.

            (It’s a CZ-75 pattern pistol, in 45 ACP, with a 14+1 capacity. Thing is bigger than a USP in 45.)

            1. A ring that obviously doesn’t fit you can be hand-waved as something a parent left you, and you held onto as a keepsake.

          2. On the other hand, it’s just a plain band, so if I wanted to get silly, it probably wouldn’t be that hard to do a bunch of casting a of it, and just have a stack of the things.

            That said, SO is a straight up size seven, so probably would just target ones that fit her, and leave mine at home for the pawning bit.

          3. I have been thinking about just this problem. The best solution is to get a large set of shears and cut the coin into pieces (recognizable as from a coin). Bargain with the pieces as if you got them from someone else, not clean or “new” looking. It has the advantage of getting your gold or silver down to manageable valuation and also proves that it is not counterfeit.
            Ammo as barter should be loose and of mixed caliber when you pull it from a pouch. Again, as if used in trade.

    2. “Those who fail to learn history
      are doomed to repeat it;
      those who fail to learn history correctly–
      why they are simply doomed.”

      Achem Dro’hm
      “The Illusion of Historical Fact”
      — CY 4971

      1. ” History doesn’t always repeat itself. Sometimes it screams, “WHY DON’T YOU LISTEN TO ME?” and lets fly with a club.” – button bought at Pennsic.

    3. Religious left.

      When your cult has a frequent religious ritual of pretending to believe 101 contradictory things, and your cult is your only community and only human connections, you usually sell your remaining integrity and remaining sanity slowly, instead of making a leap to a viable life.

    4. Look, when your options are to accept that you’re being lied to, and that your entire life, everything you believed, your belief that you’re a good person because you’re nice… *all of it is a lie*…

      Or you can reject those crazy people and believe the latest things that the people who affirm you are right and correct and true.

      This is why people will refuse to believe their spouse is cheating. That their kid is dealing drugs. That masks are worse than useless, and their strident enforcement is actually making them the bad people. That they would not actually be the plucky rebels; they’d be the faithful members of the Communist party, and lining up to be informers for the GRU.

      Because it’s far, far less painful than the truth.

      1. make me think of the joke i tell about a certain segment of the ‘California Browncoats’ fan organization…

        they’re not the browncoats, they’re the alliance.

    5. The Left, in the current incarnation, is a faith. It’s not quite a religion, it’s more primitive and less organized in that manner. It’s parasitic, in that it requires other belief systems to create itself in full.

      When it’s good…it’s chaotic but necessary.
      When it’s bad…it’s cancerous.

      We’re in the phase of metastatic leftism right now. I just hope it doesn’t take too much radiation and chemotherapy to deal with.

      1. “Too much radiation?” Well, that depends on how long, and hard, they keep poking the bear. Sleepy Joe is just about the last leader in the Western world capable of nuclear brinksmanship games, yet that seems to be the game the DC suits want to play.

      2. >> “The Left, in the current incarnation, is a faith. It’s not quite a religion”

        ESR and I came up with a term for this. Or rather, I came up with it and a couple of others and he picked the one he liked.

        The term is “ideomania.” It’s a portmanteau of “ideology” (religious or secular) and “mania” (as in an unhealthy obsession with something).

    6. Some of my relatives fall into that category. It makes family events very frustrating. More of my family falls in to what Larry Correia calls the nice Mormon’s aversion to contention which leads to having Romney as a Senator and Cox as our governor.

    1. I always wondered which moron marketer came up with that name. “I know, let’s call our new car line ‘fake.'” The word actually means “by decree,” but it amounts to the same thing.

      1. FIAT is an acronym, Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino so you can’t blame the marketeers too hard.

        1. I thought it was Funny Italian Attempt at Transportation [former Fiat 131 & Lancia Beta owner – put over 200k miles on each]

          1. You got a Lancia Beta to go 200K Miles? How? Beautiful car. You could watch it rust away in real time and bits, sometimes important bits, would just fall off.

  6. Yes as to baby formula – we are stashing away this, and canned baby food for Wee Jamie, the grandson. Also rice, beans, cooking oils, spices, powdered milk, canned goods – tomatoes, soup, spam, tuna, and jam.
    Also stashing away stocks of things like TP, paper towels. My own stash is of sewing thread and other sewing supplies. Seeds for the garden. Starting three more raised beds this year, and a third compost container.
    Other people with a finger in the wind are advising motor oil, and air filters, replacement parts for your car; tires, windshield wipers, and things like that.

    1. I’d suggest pre-computerized cars as well. I’m shopping for a pre-nineties, carbureted, not fuel injection, rebuilt engine for my Jeep. Something to store in a back corner of the shop, just in case.

        1. True, but many rigs on the road today would be that with just an engine change. I suspect if some folks started prepper auto garages doing such, they’d have land office businesses in many parts of the country.

      2. And sadly most US motors of that period are no longer operational as most 80’s US stuff was utter crap. Even SIMPLE injectors gave such an advantage in mileage and HP over carburetors and vacuum column control that carbeurated engines mostly disapeared in 5-6 year span.

        1. I’m thinking that a good maker project would be a 4 cyl. diesel with a 3 speed auto transmission. Both can be built without electronics and the diesel can be designed to run on mediocre fuel. Figure out how to adapt into a range of drive trains and we can use it to restore mobility if the system crashes.

        2. I just did a quick duck duck go search and found rebuilt ’89 jeep engines around $2.5k with free shipping (Didn’t check if that’s free shipping to here in Alaska.) and my local O’Reilly’s says they can have a carburetor for it here in 3 days.

          I picked ’89 BTW, because it’d take very little bang to fit to put it in my present Jeep.

          1. AK is either way more, or No Go. I just tried to buy a reman for my Nissan. In Stock at Powertrain Products Inc means 4-7 months. One of the alternatives, I looked at has a not for AK and HI folks to call for pricing and time for shipping, I noticed, and one other said Conti US only. Another will crate and give customs docs, but all shipping and whatnot is up to the buyer (might be the AK and HI Call place).

            1. Yep, shipping to Alaska’s quite screwy. Amazon, for example, won’t ship cigarette lighters, empty ones, not butane, but ones you add liquid fuel, no logic behind their decision.

                    1. Let’s see… 48 inch pipe, goes under the river at the edge of my yard, lowest point in the pipeline for well over 20-30 miles. Got a lot of barrels of sweet crude available there. 🙂

                    2. heh, can’t find a link, but a read about a guy with an old F150 he installed an experimental GM air cooled diesel into, and modified it to run on crude, though it would run on anything oil. Supposedly drove from Florida to Phoenix with $5 in his pocket and got there with $1.50.
                      He’d stop at a pumping well and ask if he could buy a bit of crude, explain the truck, and usually get filled up for free.

                    3. Quite possible though not sure there are a enough of jackass pumps lifting crude twix Florida and Phoenix to fuel up.

                      I still have a vial of the first crude to come down the pipe from the North Slope on my shelf. The viscosity is low enough that it would be easy to set up a drip feed pot burner to heat a house using Alaska crude.

                    4. he had a large tank in the bed (75-100 gallons), and it got decent mileage (fueled in West Texas knowing he could make it back there easily on the tank at 25-30 mpg). Keeping the crude hot would be an issue up yonder, though. The tank was heated and the lines were heated further (worked with straight used fry oil as well). A cold start in even a Michigan Winter would be a nightmare.

        3. I’d think you could do fuel injection without requiring heavy computerisation? I know it was a thing in WWII. The US had an injection carburator and all the German engines were fuel injected.

          The only reason Merlins still used float carbs was one of the chief eggheads at one of the Royal aircraft labs hated them and falsified reports to make fuel injection look worse than carbs.

          1. A World Of Outlaws sprintcar uses mechanical injection, and the first Corvette with injection had a mechanical type as did BMW 2002 Tii, and certain Porches. Can be a bit hard to get right. WoO has so many you can get close just by “Everyone has about this” but it is a Methanol fuel knowledge-base. The rest were considered wizardry to get right.

          2. Right there WERE fuel injection that required minimal circuitry (E.g the 1972 SAAB 99 my family had was a UK Ford 4 SAAB bought instead of making their own with Bosch injection), and definitely injection existed in aviation engines back to WWII (and a little before I think). But until they started to be computerized in the ’80’s they weren’t much more fuel efficient than carburetors although they head advantages (operating inverted being one 🙂 ) . Once you could give them an oxygen sensor and a knock sensor they could control the richness of the mixture and they could run cleanly. Also you could use lower octane fuels which with the universal switch to unleaded (which tended to lower octane ratings) was helpful

      3. marine diesels, even very new ones, often have the old manual everything being operated by the brain box, so if your ECU dies, a screw driver to jump the solenoid and a lever to stop the fuel to kill the engine are still there. Funnily enough I watched Mads on Sail Life YT channel just add remote start to his Volvo (because their controller is a known weak point, and shite) this past Sunday.

  7. Whenever I hear Fiat, I immediately think of the car company, and not in a good way. It takes a moment to shift the ol’ brain gears to the other definition, especially since chemo.

    1. I hear the FIAT Dodges like to do some fun FIAT Funnies. Like dropping valve seats out of the heads about the time the warranty dies.

      1. Then it’s Fix It Again, Tony. But, Chrysler was Company Highly Recommends You Start Learning Engine Repair so they’re not one to talk.

        1. I owned a 75 Plymouth Duster with a slant 6. The basic engine and transmission were indestructible. It did have a bunch of quirks (stories for another time) but was so easy to fix that I miss it.

          2. We had a Massey Ferguson 300 combine with a Chrysler slant 6 engine. At one time I was the only one small enough to get in the engine compartment, which sucked when it clogged up in the summer…that was a good piece of equipment.

            1. The engine compartment on the Duster was sized to take Chrysler’s 340 cu in racing engine. The slant six almost disappeared in it. I could change the starter from the top without removing anything else.

              1. Whereas when replacing the battery on my PT Cruiser, I had to remove 25% of the contents (by volume) of the engine compartment before I could access the battery.

                1. yeah. The Chevy Monza put a 305 V8 into what was essentially a Chevy Vega. You had to drop the engine to replace the back spark plugs since you couldn’t get at them any other way. Stupidest damn thing I ever saw. I think you got all of 90 BHP for all that.

                  1. My sister had a ’79 Honda hatchback. By the time she sold it in its dotage, it gallooed down the road… cuz to replace the front shocks, you had to pull the engine.

                  2. a hole saw allowed access so only removing the front wheel was needed.
                    I knw a guy with a flipping 455 Buick in a Vega Talk about toight.

                    4. an early proponent of “Do what you can in a stock body shell” and “make it drivable everywhere”
                      Ease of Maintenance was rather lower on the list

                    5. Yeah… I drove a Taurus SHO for a while a bit like that. Couldn’t get to half the spark plugs without pulling the entire head. Great engine. Sucked to maintain.

                      I’ve seen V8’s in old box bodied Ford Escorts and crazier things back in the days when mods were more common. These days, there’s a much smaller community of people modifying stock cars. Not sure whether the learning curve with computerization got too steep in addition to mechanical know how, or people stopped being as interested.

                    6. some ways it is easier. instead of carbs and reading plugs, it’s open the laptop and read the ECU and fiddle with the numbers a bit. Still lego, just different bricks. ECU and harness or adapter for $1500 and call Tuning Fork. It gets tricky when you gotta fool the State, and make it look stockish and pass their yearly proctological exam.

          3. I learned on a Dodge Dart, same car. I loved that engine. What I liked best is that you opened the hood and it was all right there. Easy to reach, easy to fix.

            1. Plymouth Valiant. That engine may have been the best thing Chrysler ever made.

          4. My first car was a metallic puke pea-soup green ’75 valiant with the 225 slant six and a Three on the Tree manual. Still miss the beast.

          1. There’s also Found On Road Dead, or First On Race Day, depending on your druthers.

            And resurrectable in an afternoon after sitting in the bushes for 30 years.

            2. oh, and for domestics I tend towards Ford, myself, Followed by GMs with Buick V6, once they killed the 3800 I discount.
              Considering a Ranger Splash nearby as cheap transpo while working on my Nissan. I’m not all that overly fond of the Nissan, but it was cheap, the K24 bottom end is a stone ax, and my 98 has only seen 5 real winters, so it is very very rust free for 190,000 miles, and I lanolin/oil/wax undercoat it often, and it’s due for a recoat this year.

              1. 351 Windsor is as reliable as they come, so long as you keep oil in it and do your 60k right. My old 84 still starts when the key is turned and scoots down the road with that same old 351 rumble-tick. At least the one I’ve been driving for a while now has been.

              2. I tried a commercial lanolin mix on a shovel (trying to keep ice from sticking) and lordy did it suck water, to where the shovel rusted overnight. Since then occurred to me to spray it with WD40’s grey can silicon mix, and that works much better and doesn’t make rust.

                1. Was it Fluid Film? I have a can of the spray I got last fall and find it not as good as the gallon I based my mix on, but it didn’t draw moisture for me, but I didn’t use it on a shovel, but the snowblower didn’t get any rustier, though it also didn’t anti-stick there very well, either.
                  For the undercoat, iirc I used the gallon of FF, half gallon of boiled linseed oil, quart of peanut oil, and quart or so of mineral spirits, mixed and sprayed into everywhere underside and into the doors and tailgate. I did have dripping out of the tail gate, but it was the last thing done and i think it was less mixed by then. everywhere else it dried into a thick wax-like coating.

                  1. “Starbrite Ultimate Lubricating Fluid”. (Wasn’t very good at the lube part either.)

                    I have now bothered to look up the chemical properties of lanolin, and I see the problem: it attracts and absorbs water, up to double its own dry weight. This is dandy if you want hair to retain moisture. Not so dandy for preventing rust. Its use in skin cream is to prevent water loss, not to keep water out.

                    I’ve seen very old auto parts that had been japanned, and even after probably a hundred years of exposure, still looked like new. Japanning is basically boild linseed oil, turpentine, and powdered asphaltum, baked to a glassy finish. However, there exists a cold recipe:

                    https://www.inthewoodshop.com/ToolRestorations/ColdCureJapanning.html

                    After reading this, I’m unconvinced the asphaltum is necessary.

                    1. For that “no paint, industrial” look the “makers” use BLO on a heated surface. iirc the asphaltum in Japaning is for the color, mainly

  8. The biggest problem is that US fiat is a “reserve” currency, which allows us to pay for imports with funny money…But countries don’t need a reserve that can be deactivated at the US government’s whim…So that will end sooner rather than later, and trillion dollar deficits will go out the window as interest rates soar (or the Fed decides to go full Zimbabwe)…

    1. The biggest problem with US money is that very little of it is actually “created” here. The second biggest problem with US money is that there simply isn’t enough of it. That’s what being a reserve currency means. It’s Triffin’s Dilema.

      What we have now are problems with supply. I know that sounds like yesterday’s news but that’s the way it is. Money is not created by central banks, or governments, it’s created by commercial banks lending into the international credit system, which has been a mess since 2008 and frozen completely since 2020. There’s a reason the FRB has to run the huge repo business it’s running now, There’s a shortage of collateral, a sneaking fear of insolvency, and a shortage of creditworthy, willing borrowers.

    2. The US government can’t “deactivate” US dollars held in a foreign bank. They can freeze or seize dollars held in a US bank, and they can apply pressure to a foreign bank to freeze an account, but they can’t unilaterally make those dollars worthless. One of the defining characteristics of money is frangibility, meaning that there’s no difference between a dollar held in a bank in Singapore and one held in a bank in San Francisco.

      And of course those who say the dollar’s days as the reserve currency never mention what will replace it. The Euro and Yen are stuck in the same inflationary ideation as the dollar, but don’t have as large an economy. The Yuan has all of those problems combined with the trustworthiness of a socialist paradise.

      1. I think you meant “fungibility”, not “frangibility”. The dollar is definitely frangible too, though; the Obiden regime is trying to find its breaking point.

  9. They believe everything they’re telling the rest of us, and they’re hearing from the remaining true believers that it’s all good. So, they are genuinely incapable of hearing any other statements. It simply does not compute.

    Life is going to get more difficult in the coming months. Hopefully this interregnum won’t last years, but I’m preparing as if it will. $SPOUSE and I have discussed pulling cash from retirement accounts. Not sure that we will, but it’s an option that’s on the table. I’m expecting things to go full Irish democracy/banking (i.e. money in the mattress).

  10. Sarah, good post. Just one quibble. “Fiat,” as I understand it, doesn’t come from the root for “faith” but from “made” or ordered forth. As in “Fiat lux,” let there be light. But your reasoning works either way. Who trusts the government to make something, especially something new and never seen before?

    2. ‘Fiat’ also means ‘decree’ as in ‘The government has decreed that this is money’. As I always say:

      Governments can only print money; they can’t make it worth anything. They can make it worth nothing.

      1. Government-issued money is always good for at least one thing – paying your taxes and fees. So there is always at least one entity that *must* accept it.

        1. In Rome, there came a time when the government wouldn’t even accept its own debased coinage…

          1. Late 90’s/early ‘ 00s, Serbian vendors wouldn’t accept Serbian dinars. They took other European currencies, preferably deutschmarks, then euros when those came out.

            1. Soviet Union in the late 80s / early 90s. You were forced to convert some number of foreign currency to rubles at the official exchange rate. Then you had to find something to spend them on which was hard because the vendors wanted your US$, Deutschmarks etc. About the only place that would accept them was the kiosk that sold cigarettes so I bought about a dozen packs

    4. It is a weird verb. Facere in Latin means to do or to make, but there’s a subsidiary passive verb, fieri, that means to become, to happen, to appear.

      Fiat is a third person subjunctive, and it can refer to either the active or passive verb. It should happen. One could do it. May it appear. One might make it. Let it be done according to thy word.

      So yes, it implies having faith in that shoulda coulda woulda actually taking place, or the ability to command something to go from nonexistent possibility into reality.

    5. Fiat comes from latin facio , facere (I make, to make) it is the passive subjunctive 3rd person (He, she, it) form, it is made (probably have that wrong in english). Facere is an irregular verb which it looks so darned weird. And no I didn’t remember that 🙂 . I remembered fiat and facere were related but had to look up the actual form and tense. Most common usage I’m familiar with is from the Vulgate (e.g. Fiat Lux, Let There be light) and the Latin Lord’s prayer (Fiat Voluntas tua, let thy will be done), how it is read as an imperative beats me, and why it is fiat government or fiat money also seems like a reach.

      1. Latin subjunctive as a command, or a definite assent, is a politeness thing. It is called the “hortatory subjunctive” or the “jussive subjunctive.”

        2. The hortatory subjunctive rings a bell. I remember my buddy and I who took Latin together and were Star Trek fans (The original series, the movies and TNG were several years in the future at that point) wondering if a Horta would use the hortatory subjunctive… other than the joke though that’s all I remember 40+ years is a LONG time.

        3. Ah! So that’s where “would you please…” comes from. I’ve managed to remove “I would recommend” from my speech. It irritated me when I was actually recommending something, but it does seem more polite.

          I may have known that at one point, but high school Latin was a _long_ time ago.

  11. Most of us haven’t experienced how bad this is going to get.
    The hardest/biggest thing for me is staying optimistic while I’m trying to make new inroads in my future life: soap business, new job, friends, new church, all that.
    I see the injustice, and the coming storm, and it’s hard to stay optimistic.
    But I am, in a grim sort of way.
    What other choice is there?

    3. Soap business? Do tell?
      Says the person who buys soap from farmer’s markets and ren faires – places I can check it won’t set off my asthma before bringing in the house or putting to skin.

      1. I’m allergic to coconut of all things. It’s in literally everything that foams. I had the nuns at the local convent make some lard/lye soap for me, they’re cloistered and they sell soap to keep themselves. Later I found Grandma’s old fashioned or I can buy at historical reenactment shops. The nuns would make it for me but I’m a market of one and it wouldn’t work for them.

        1. I seem to be sensitive but not allergic, at least not externally. But going to the movies lost a lot of its luster when I realized it was the coconut oil on the popcorn that stuck me in the bathroom for an hour after I got home, every time.

          I should look at the ingredients on my shampoo, though.

          1. I’m not allergic to coconut, but I absolutely HATE the way that it smells.
            Back when I was in Korea for a year, a group of us got together and we would send in a mass order to The Body Shop (This was when all their stuff was most excellent and we all loved it, and because it was such a large order we got free shipping – maybe a discount too, can’t recall) and I got some shampoo which reeked so strongly of coconut that I couldn’t stand to use it. The smell of it on my hair about made me want to retch. I gave it to one of the other women.

          2. I can save you a step. It does. The key words are Sodium Laurel Sulfate or anything Laurel or anything palmate, or basically anything ate. Everything that foams, as opposed to lathers. Unless it’s been introduced in the last few years, every shampoo sold in America, every bar of normal soap, every conditioner. Every. Bloody. Thing. That. Foams. Has coconut in it.

            1. I haven’t used shampoo since the mid-1980s. Ran out, didn’t feel like going to town for one thing, observed that wool is hair, what do we wash wool with? Laundry detergent. Used that on my head, and was so thrilled that I never went back to shampoo. (All-temperature Cheer liquid if I can get it, otherwise Tide. Only difference is Cheer has enzymes.)

              Or if you have fine/dry hair… Mane and Tail, shampoo and conditioner for horses.

              Straight rainwater works well too. Cornstarch for dry shampoo.

          1. I have a friend who is allergic to aloe (as are her kids.) Finding soap is a challenge.

            Oh, she’s also very allergic to cannabis. As in “walk by someone who smoked a blunt, vision starts shutting down” allergic.

      2. My wife buys soap and stuff from the nuns. They’re the Dominican Nuns at Out Lady of the Rosary in Summit, NJ. If you sew, they do seam rippers too or a rosary if you’re that way inclined.

        1. The Dominicans at Summit are excellent! Their lip balm was the only kind that didn’t make Mom’s lips crack. (Which is, you know, counterproductive in a lip balm…)

          2. Huh. I occasionally make rosaries. (For one thing, I like a textural or shape difference between the decades and the other beads, because you should be able to *feel* where you are.) I’ll keep that in mind.

            1. Something that would be useful would be a different bead for the end of the first decade, the second, etc. So when I’m interrupted, I know where to go back.

  12. MonsterHunterNation is down. Larry knows, and had Jack Wilder post on Facebook that it’s being worked on. It sounds like a non-nefarious event.

      1. Blofeld and his boyz already had their little Cyber Attack war gaming “simulation” ; I expect internet whackings to continue until morale improves.

      2. ATH was down for me, for about a half hour today.

        But I’m supposed to be tormenting readers today, so I was never here. *Evil Author Laugh*

      3. Seems to be up again.

        Discord tech support blames it in a defect Google Cloud component that was doing load management.

        1. Monsterhunternation is still toes up. My ISP was a roller coaster this morning as they were trying to deal with the email server/shiny new package change they got stuck with. (Not to mention several thousand pissed off customers running 4 days without email. Not good for businesses or anybody expecting critical email.)

          I had a tab for downforeveryoneorjustme dot com with the ISP’s URL in my cut/paste buffer most of the morning. Arggh.

    2. I’ve been having trouble with MHN all morning. Larry just put up a post about tonight’s Utah caucus meetings and then it all went away. 503 errors on every attempt. How sure are they that it’s not nefarious?

      1. Because Jack Wilder, who acts as Larry’s mouthpiece on Facebook (since Larry has been banned again), was saying soothing things about it, and not so much as hinting at the usual fun bits like DDOS attacks. Further complicating matters is that the site’s dev apparently died several months ago.

    3. Looks like Cloudflair went pop for a while, and I think MHN is on one of the subdivisions of it. Discord is back up, but MHN not yet, last I looked.

      1. FFN is on cloudflare/cloudflair, and is up, I just checked.

        MHN is something called cloud front.

        2. Cloudfront is Amazon’s version of the same thing that Cloudflare does. Basically it’s a huge proxy service. If it really is down that is going imapct a lot of thins. However when I check the error is one that suggests that Larry’s host behind Cloudfront is the issue, so I assume something when bad on the MHN wordpress server

      2. Cloudfront.

        Monsterhunternation is hosted on AWS. Cloudfront, which is a more or less copy/clone of Cloudflare is returning an error 504 (Gateway Timeout). Assuming Amazon is returning an accurate error code, this means an upstream server did not respond within the timeout period.

        I haven’t received any alerts specific to AWS and it looks like Google’s cloud service is having problems too.

        Welcome to the Cloud…

    4. So is Liberty Island Magazine, although it’s been down for over a week now. I’ve been told their tech guy is working on it, but so far no success.

      I had four stories up there, and I’m considering republishing them on KDP, just to have them somewhere else. Although “Lunar Christmas” really needs some serious work first, but “The Angry Astronaut Affair,” “The Day the War Struck Home” and “Rockin’ the USA” could go up with a little polishing.

    1. Ye Giant Grading Place (electronic grade book) was c-r-a-w-l-i-n-g this afternoon. Even for IT. So I figured something was hiccupping somewhere.

  15. Ethnic Imperialism
    April 26, 2014 5:56 PM MST
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    I wrote this years back… Sarah, if you can use this anywhere, feel free.

    The Grumpy Libertarian is not known for being shy about pointing out the evils of stereotyping. So with that in mind, read and understand that historical facts can be presented without prejudice by those who are objective. I’m going to lay out some realities and parallels that may seem to encourage stereotyping; not my intention. They may seem, too, to be deliberately pc in places. Again, not my intention, because offending often involves waking people up to what is real and what is happening.
    In Ukraine, the already accomplished Russian subversion and seizure of the Crimea and the ongoing unsettling of and probable near-future invasion of eastern Ukraine have been aided by historical maneuvers and trends. We are just seeing the culmination of those.
    In the Crimean Peninsula, Stalin deported, imprisoned, or outright killed millions of the Tatars who had lived there. He deliberately moved in ethnic Russa, Russians, to change the demographics of the region.
    Later, through other Russian “administrations,” but still under the overall Soviet empire, that demographic shift was furthered by the huge naval base, Sevastopol, and the dependents and stay-behinds of the Russian naval and support personnel attached to it. The continuing ethnic change-over of the Crimea was encouraged by Russian-dominated governmental policy, and it is now obvious that the “empire of the proletariat” was actually an empire of Russian imperialism, disguised as unity.
    Donetsk, in the east of Ukraine, is a center of coal and steel production, a sprawling urban concentration of facilities and skilled workers. Its ethnic shift was accomplished largely by soviet labor imports, and was facilitated by the area being on Russia’s border.
    Russia’s oligarchy continued, even after the Soviet Union’s collapse, to have vast political and economic influence throughout Ukraine. The thieving, now-deposed and Russian-sheltered president, Yanukovych, laments his mistake of asking his Russian masters for troops to fend off a well-deserved ouster. But he did call for them, they did move in, and the Crimea is almost certainly a permanent Russian possession now. Putin saw a move to Western Europe, had the means (and obviously a lot of intelligence in place) to gut Ukraine of its Black Sea port, of its steel and coal infrastructures, and he did and is doing so. The Ukrainian mainland province just north of the Crimea is an important source of fresh water for Crimean use. It too has a sizable Russian-speaking population, and my grumpy guess is it too will be absorbed into Putin’s resurging empire.
    Because those places and what is happening in them are in popular view, it may be useful to point out that similar preludes to takeover are going on elsewhere in the world. Historically, they have occurred frequently.
    China seized upon Tibet, and lost no time in flooding the place with ethnic Han Chinese, to wrest away any possibility of the original population successfully freeing themselves. The Chi-Coms did the same thing in Mongolia. Neither of those places have any real prospect of freedom, ever again. Like Russia, where the apparatchiks of the former empire and their allies have become the new oligarchy, China’s communist party has become its new ruling class, controlling a quasi-capitalism that is always majority-owned by the party. (Read The Party.) Like Russia, there is a historical reality of mass slaughters, of ruthless enslavements, of disregard for human life and living. (Read No tears for Mao.) And like Russia, the long view is of resurgence of empire. Look at the South China Sea. Look at Taiwan.
    Britain imported crown-loyal Protestants to ethnically modify Ireland. While the British Empire shed a river of blood on its own, it hadn’t the long term ruthlessness to maintain rule over all of Ireland or India. And as they have retreated to a pc nanny state culture, they are in the process of losing Scotland. Empires do recede . . . sometimes. But Ireland suffers from that piece of tyrannical manipulation still.
    The Middle Eastern countries that could have absorbed displaced Palestinians in the fifties instead froze them into “refugee camps” that exist today. This is an ethnic time bomb, as the contained population of those camps continues to grow, as their perceived grievances are cultivated. (Read Patai’s The Arab Mind.) Israel confronts the reality that their neighbors are using ethnic flood tactics in a delayed maneuver. Millions of Palestinians are a burden on world charity and a looming time bomb for Israel.
    Some ethnic (and cultural) shifts accompany empery. Others follow it. Some occur from economic reasons. Ireland provided many an immigrant to the United States fleeing sheer poverty at home. The same from Italy. Ellis Island saw millions pass through. Those legally emigrating populations absorbed, integrated, became American.
    Now, there is another wave of immigration, driven by poverty in their almost-failed-state home countries. It is largely Mexican, but with significant numbers of people from desperate economies south of Mexico. I make no moral judgment of the folk who make up that wave; the vast majority of them are simply trying to better their lives and those of their families. Many of them almost literally went through hell to get here. (Read The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea.) I know there are still illegal immigrants coming from Ireland, from Italy, from China . . . but in this article I am discussing the majority consideration.
    Because they are largely illegal immigrants, the majority of participants in this movement have made no commitment to our country, and the sheer danger of total breakdown of our educational and medical infrastructure is growing. They are mostly from economically poor demographics, have little education, lack language skills, and harbor ailments unaddressed or inadequately addressed in their homes. Because of religious conditioning or simple ignorance, they are reproducing differentially. (Which is making up a horrid facet of the situation, “anchor babies” and the differing citizenship statuses of family members.) Now I know that this list of disabilities was true of Irish and Italian immigrants too, but hand tools and manual labor are no longer at the core of our economy.
    We had a similar situation during Reagan’s governorship. He made the error of granting amnesty, based on length of residence, yielding to a merciful impulse to let families stay together, to let people who had established residence and employment stay and become Americans. That error resulted in decades during which the legal and forgery industries flourished, fueled by the flood of newcomers trying to get in after the doors legally shut. It revealed that amnesty actively promulgates vastly increased illegal immigration. Hope of a further amnesty has been a major fuel for unsanctioned ingress ever since.
    So we have several problems, with the looming populations of worldwide poverties and repressions creating a pressure of potential immigrants that is literally in the hundreds of millions. If we perform another amnesty, we get this huge group of people, already here, on the road to citizenship, but we open floodgates to the world. As long as we have tax-funded social supports in place and as long as poor humans want to come here, this pressure and potential for collapse will exist.
    And now to my most serious points: California alone has at least twelve million illegals in residence. That is about as many of our low-end employment pool as are unemployed. Those illegals are fleeing true poverty and often are exploited for wages and conditions that American workers, with access to labor law enforcement, will not endure. Because they are illegal, they are subject to criminal exploitation as well, by the cartels and by the Latino gangs who run a prison/street subculture that is murderous, to put it mildly. They come from places where the police are enemies, and so there is damned little cooperation with, trust of, or reaching out to, law enforcement. As long as they are illegal, that will not change. If they are made legal as in Reagan’s amnesty, then we may as well write off any hope for our infrastructure, because it will inevitably be overwhelmed.
    I see the creeping legalization of drivers’ licenses for illegals, of access to schools for their kids, of “refuge” cities, as being like the drunk who can’t go a day without booze. It is easy to yield to the merciful impulse. It is deadly to do so. Already there are immense tracts in California that have been ethnically and culturally changed. So what? I grew up hearing Spanish as often as English, learned to speak it myself, my Dad’s first wife was a Dominguez, I’ve a half-Latino brother. I cook my beans with chili peppers. The Mexican government has enough problems just now with cartels and rebellious populations and police corruption. It is unlikely to stage a takeover of Southern California a la Putin and the Crimea.
    That said, there is a wide movement, racist (La Raza means The Race) and Mexican-nationalist (The Aztlan movement and others) brewing in the socialist element of the Chicano population which has been here for a long time. For them, that pool of illegal residents is cannon fodder. And Mexico is a corrupt oligarchy that could change fast.
    Additionally, in our state the most powerful political players are the public unions, the Democratic Party they support, and they are all salivating at the prospect of a fast citizenship track for illegals, as they figure to get most of them. Socialism appeals best to the poor and uneducated. With fast track encitizening (yes, I just invented that word) we will never free ourselves from Brown, from the Yees and Calderons who infest our government.
    What do I think we should do? Well, we can’t literally shove all the illegals we can catch back over our southern border as fast as we can catch them. We haven’t the uniformed personnel, the transport, a lot of them would be aliens in Mexico too, and some have kids or brothers and sisters who are legal American citizens. Many kids have been in our schools their entire lives, and except for their legal status, are already Americans in all but name.
    We can strengthen border surveillance and illegal interdiction. Yes, that includes some more fencing. We can make getting caught infiltrating painfully miserable and unprofitable, with chain gang time. With DNA sampling, fingerprinting, etc. repeat offenses can cost years of unpaid work. We can make it not only illegal to hire illegals, but economically and legally dangerous to do so. That would contribute to voluntary relocation in many cases. We can offer humane and dignified transport to illegals who come forward seeking help to get home. We can establish a negative flow, as it were. And we can deport more vigorously those we do catch in any level of criminal activity. Of course all of that has been suggested elsewhere. We. Need. To. Do. It. All.
    When we have those measures in place, we can do something like offering slow citizenship tracks to long-established, otherwise law-abiding illegals. But only then. And probably there should be some seasonal labor access. I worked with the Braceros when I was a teenager, in the orchards, and that arrangement was just fine for everyone until Cesar Chavez and his desire to control all Ca. Ag labor and enact a closed shop. I blame him for a lot of the current problem, and grumpily want to point out that he was a Brown supporter, and they were mutually enabling. I am old enough to remember Chavez using tax funds to build microwave towers at his union halls instead of the clinics the funds were intended for, and Brown and he trading campaigners. I still cannot understand why both men escaped jail.
    California needs to wake up.

  16. Speaking of trust in government, the administration is paying consultants from one of the Big 4 to work on yet another “Restoring Trust in Government” campaign.

    I’m just waiting for the “Don’t Hurt Me, I was only Following Orders” followup…

    2. If they executed the FBI, ATF, and DoJ, peacefully eliminated another 75% of the federal government, the senior Congressional leadership of both parties resigned, and Biden*, Harris, and their cabinet all went, too, it would be a good first step to restoring my trust.

      1. Eliminate individual income tax and close the IRS. Abolish the Department Of Education after $2 TRILLION and 40 years of failure. Sack 90% of the medical bureaucrats as a first step, then go through and fire most of the rest.
        ———————————
        If a business tries something and it doesn’t work, they either stop doing it or they will go broke. If the government tries something that doesn’t work, they just keep shoveling our money into it forever.

    1. /head bump of sympathy

      You tried, you fought the good fight, and you showed people that there are options (and the need to weigh things carefully).

    3. Few words of advice to anyone else seeking public office.

      (1) If it’s a multi-seat election for the same position (in my case, 2 seats on the select board), advise your supporters to ONLY vote for you, and not to use their second (or more) votes for any others running for those seats. Every vote for your opponents is one more in favor of them over you. A LOT of voters think they’re being “fair” or “balancing” one party against the other. Disabuse them of that fallacy immediately.

      (2) I had people ask me which opposing candidates I could work with. The correct answer is, ‘it’s impossible for you to work with either one until after you are elected.’ If you split your vote between me and others, then you just cancelled your vote for me.

      (3) Republicans as a group have a tendency to compromise. Democrats as a group tend to unite against us with zero compromise. That’s a recipe for extinction for conservatives. We need to 110% sure of our positions, and never compromise again.

      Note: I don’t recall any of those observations in RAH’s, “Take Back Your Government” book.

      1. Here’s another one.

        If an opponent, or anyone else hostile to you and your campaign posts a falsehood; do NOT let it stand. Show or point to the proof they are mistaken. If they admit the mistake, be gracious in accepting their apology. If instead they double down, then up your game and call them publicly what they really are: liars and libellants. (You can add sloppy and incompetent if you like, because anyone who leaves themselves that exposed publicly really are sloppy and incompetent.) If they already hold a public office of some kind, express your extreme disappointment in their behavior as unbecoming of someone holding that position of authority. If they STILL continue after that, simply state that you told them the truth, since they’re not interested in it, then they’re not interested in worthwhile conversation, and that you have nothing more to say to them. And then stop.

        You could pursue a libel case against them. For a local election, the cost-benefit ratio stinks, so you probably shouldn’t bother.

  20. Right now, all I can do is finish school, get my degree, keep working my job, save money, and when I’m assigned the shopping tasks to buy +1 of whatever I can, especially staples.

    And, no matter how much it hurts, make sure my gas tank is always 3/4ths full.

  21. I go back and forth between a deep sense of peace and being in God’s hands and my brain slamming the panic button like a toddler with a phone.

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