A Brilliant Spectacle

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I’m starting to get really worried.

Probably a decade ago, someone who dropped by said I was pounding the lectern and yelling “you’ve been lied to” about pretty much everything.

At the time this startled me, because the things I was questioning were rather limited and specific. Stuff like: Marxism doesn’t work; true Communism won’t work with humans; the publishing business is not a meritocracy, and neither are most of the arts. Etc.

Not things, I thought, that were a big mystery or things that anyone would dispute much, not once they looked at the facts which were either readily available or easy to infer from other easily available facts.

I assumed the person was maybe a little invested in — say — Marxism working and I’d accidentally gored his ox.

But I’m starting to get really worried.

Because I’ve been at this ten years now, and poking here and poking there, and trying to get at the sources of things.

There are things I know, in my own person or through close friends that make everything yet again more worrisome. And there are people I trust who know things and those are worrisome too.

Why worrisome? Because none of it accords with commonly accepted, public, consensus reality. And some of the “I’m sure, but can’t prove to anyone” facts are massive. Like I have reason to believe the world population is much smaller and possibly half what it’s claimed. Even here I suspect we’re inflated by 1/3 if not more. And it’s already dropping. Proof? That would be nice. The best I can tell you is that I have no reason to believe it’s accurate and a lot more reasons to disbelieve, among them that — as BGE has also noticed — that a falling and aging population is the only thing that can explain what the markets have done the last 10 years or so.

But there’s more than that. Something smells about the war in Ukraine. No, not in the sense that “the Ukranians are evil-bad.” I have no reason to believe they’re any better or worse than the little kleptocracy in that part of the world.

It is rather the war that makes no coherent sense. Particularly our role in the whole mess: like, for instance the fact Joe Biden first gave the all clear to a “small incursion” then withdrew it, then once Russia went in — something that went unpunished with Crimea under his boss — it was the worst thing ever, and we needed to do everything possible up to and including provoke Russia to a nuclear war… All the while Russia — specifically Putin — was our mediator in our (and by our, I of course, mean FJB’s) effort to hand more pallets of cash to the Iranians.

It’s almost like there’s footsie being played beneath the painted curtain that serves as backdrop to our “news.”

Also, we know the war went badly for Russia, but weren’t they supposed to have lost decisively by now. No, I don’t think they’re winning. No, I don’t think they’re stronk and powerful country. They’re just another dime a dozen kleptocracy.

But the point is, nothing about that scenario makes any wit of sense. Not as sold to use, not as Russian apologists online push

. Just… no sense whatsoever.

In fact let’s look at the last two and a half years. Oh, no. I insist.

Speaking of things that make no sense…. Lockdowns for a respiratory business made no sense. We still don’t know if the videos from China were real or amateur theater productions.

Then the vaccine. There are signs it’s bad, very bad. Probably like all mrna vaccines before it. How bad it’s impossible to tell due to massive obfuscation and governmental malfeasance. Does it sterilize people? We don’t know. Cause heart attacks? The numbers are compelling, but we don’t know. Cause strokes? There are indications, but we don’t know.

We do know that every other vaccine of that kind, vaccines that have had a lot more time for development and testing, have had so many adverse effects that they were shut down. Now, that didn’t mean half or even 1/10th of those who took them died/were injured. I have the articles around here somewhere (sigh) but can’t find them. It was if I remember correctly more like 1% of the people taking them suffered some kind of adverse effect.

Which, you know, if SARS-Cov-19 were a calamity on the scale of the Black Plague would be a completely reasonable price to pay. Instead of losing 1/3 the population of the world, we’d all line up gladly to take the vaccine, and voila, it would be like 1% of the population or so.

But it was clear, from the time of the Diamond Princess that we were facing nothing like that scale of calamity. In fact, Wuflu might be no worse than a bad flu year (Before you throw things, if we tallied bad flu years like the Wuflu, it’s about comparable. Normally we don’t attribute deaths of pneumonia to the flu even if it was there before. The recording is loosy goosy on both ends: how we tally flu and how we tallyed the Wuflu.)

And even assuming that knowledge takes a while to propagate through the bureaucracy, by the time the vaccine came out, it was obviously not needed, except PERHAPS for very old and very at risk people.

But that’s not how it was treated. Instead the government brought its thing out in the face of the world, and stomped around demanding everyone within its reach take it.

Now you can say “They knew it would kill people. Population reduction.” I could buy that. For one, we know what enormous racists the left are, and this idea that they were giving the vaccines to minorities first makes complete sense then.

Except they made every government employee they could take it. And every medical person, and a lot of people who would be essential to them, after the population reduction.

Closing the schools for the year? Two years? The mask insanity?

None of it makes any sense for a grand master plan. No, hear me out. Not a bit of it. It makes no sense to combat the virus (As I figured out in Setp 2020 traveling across the country, if the measures implemented made any sense, they were so inconsistently applied that some countries would have 90% dead, while others would have 1%. And yet mortality was pretty consistent across the country. And don’t get me started on the fact that Europeans only needed to distance 3′. I mean, did someone look at that and say “Well, Americans don’t get that close unless they’re married to each other or related, or trying to get something going on. So, they won’t feel it unless we double it.”

I mean there is some sense behind the idea that they did all this, and ran completely insane JUST to steal the election. How else to let Biden campaign from his basement and make it sound plausible that he’d won? How else to take the economy down? (And it didn’t fall as fast as they’d planned.)

But why involve the rest of the world? Or are they so utterly blinkered they didn’t realize the rest of the world would get involved, and can less afford it?

And why the vaccines?

I mean, I can see this as an attempt to suppress rebellion the world over, but it makes no coherent sense. Not as a grand master plan; not as much of anything.

The problem, of course, is one of information. Not only do we not have the information we need to evaluate the truth of things, but it’s entirely possible that no one does. So TPTB are making flailing and uncoordinated, makes no sense in the world responses and set pieces for our edification, only sometimes they too believe part of their set pieces.

And what happens is mass insanity. And what people believe is something else again.

The thing is, I came into a world, and grew up in one, in which there was a reality consensus, and accepted sources of information, and if you were even mildly informed, you knew where to look to know if things were true or not.

Except of course, that I took part in some “world-importance events” (mostly on the periphery) where I knew that all available sources either lied or were completely, insanely wrong in their interpretation, so that what they reported had no resemblance whatsoever to the truth. Not even a little bit.

But I could sweep that under the rug and think that in most events, the sources were mostly correct. Or at least in events without a clear political nature. Or in events in the US.

For a while I convinced myself.

Then came the internet and the ability to get first hand viewpoints, which, like mine, in no way accord with the “consensus.”

And the more I poke into history the more that consensus — FRD saved the nation from the Great Depression! — crumble at the touch.

It’s like…. there was this grand play, going back at least to the beginning of the 20th century and likely before, and it made perfect sense and was in all the books, and everyone agreed.

But the more thought put on it, the more sources found of people at or close to those events, the more the whole thing — realistic, logical, well thought out, with psychological and economic reasons and antecedents — melts like spun sugar in water.

Which makes it very hard to figure out one’s actions, or to anticipate what might happen next. The whole history of civilization is turned into a postmodern play, full of wind and fury but making no coherent sense.

I’m starting to get the uneasy feeling that no one has ever made sense of history, and even what we think are well established events were misunderstandings, or didn’t happen the way we think, or happened for a whole different reason.

And on the tail of that, there is the sense that…

I know that I exist. I know what happened to me.

But lying here, all alone in the dark, I wonder who else exists and doesn’t, and what really happened to each of them.

What is truth? Well, truth is that which doesn’t go away when you stop thinking about it.

And I have a feeling we’re about to find out the incontrovertible truth.

Hold on to your seats, fasten your seat belts.

I have a feeling this one is going to sting.

663 thoughts on “A Brilliant Spectacle”

  1. I doubt population is half what’s reported but wouldn’t be surprised if it were 10% lower. That would be roughly 2 United States or 1 EU if you wanted units. No one has any idea what the population of India and China is never mind Africa

    I’m pretty sure that the US population is not terribly different from what’s reported since it’s consistent with other reports I’ve been accumulating around births. They would have to have been lying about things they didn’t need to lie about 50 years ago to falsify that. Europe is similar. I gathered birth data from old paper statistical abstracts. I’m comfortable +- with the estimates certainly with the shape of the population distribution curves

    Key thing is that if the population implosion is in the data the only question is how bad it will be. The Japanese central bank now owns almost all of Japan’s 10 year bonds as part of their fight against the deflation caused by population collapse. These bonds essentially don’t trade. The bond market is the most important economic thing in the planet and it’s broken. This is scary sh-t.

    China is collapsing. Korea is a mess. Southern Europe is giving China a run for its money. Brazil has some of the worst demographics on the planet. What’s left, Africa. Snort. India. Maybe. Though their demographics aren’t all that hot either.

    I’m pretty sure the central banks are going to continue to try to prevent deflation. I’m also pretty sure they’ll fail. The destination is clear. The path much less so and you have to survive the path to get to the destination

    Buckle up

    2. BGE, I’m not sure you’re right. Look, they’ve gone up 10% just the last 20 years, while we’ve been falling. It’s at least 30% smaller and falling. I don’t think we EVER reached six billion.

      1. A Billion here, a billion there, and soon you’re talking real money as Everett Dirksen once said. What’s a billion between friends.

        I’m pretty sure about the error rates in the developed world since I’ve done a lot of cross checking to sources other than the official ones. — it’s my business to know and Orvan’s point about the moon landing applies — the rest of the world is, alas, economically irrelevant.

        The key thing is that none of this really matters to the outcome. We’re looking at decline and the only question is how much. The UN data say as much if reality is worse then so might be the decline

        There is a bull case which I might make at some point. It always pays to make both the bull and bear case before you decide.

          1. If one were really interested, one could count houses using satellite data and Google Maps. I guess it would take pay to make anyone that interested, outside the US.

            2. Houses are a lousy proxy for population.

              Picking up a kid’s friend age 16, last kid at home, nice 2yo houses, four bedrooms average, walking distance from one of the Rich Kid Elementaries, subdivision, “So are y’all planning on a lot of tricker or treaters?”
              Kid: “Nah, there’s only one other family with kids besides mine, and they only have two.”

              Forty-ish good-sized houses, with yards. 3 residents under eighteen. From the house sizes, basketball hoops, and play equipment, you’d think they’d all have kids. Apparently they all have grandkids and are set up for visits.

        2. I’ll throw up a SWAG (Scientific Wild-Ass Guess, as if wild asses went agound sharing their guesses) and say that outside the US and a few sort-of-accountable countries (Britain and Commonwealth, EU (mostly), India (maybe), Japan), the numbers are inflated by ten to thirty-five percent.

          1. Not even inflated just…made up. Do you think they do a house to house (or hut to hut) census count in Rwanda?

            And I’m not sure how much I trust the US figures given that there’s a political incentive in the form of representation in the House and Electoral College to overcount to the maximum extent possible.

      2. Well, about 3.2 million people are recorded as dying in the US currently, and life expectancy has fallen to something like 78…That would imply a US population of very roughly 240 million…I have wondered about that myself..The census bureau admits to overcounting blue States, but not enough for this discrepancy…

    3. In Heinlein’s Expanded Universe collection (IIRC on the location) one of his reprinted essays was about his visit to the Soviet Unition. He and his wife, using different but somewhat related methods, came to similar conclusions that the population of Moscow was far, far lower than the official figures. Later, he asked a military off icer of his acquaintance for an estimate and that officer using yet a third method (roads and train lines into Moscow and what the logistics can support in this case) and came up with, again, a similar number far lower than the official figure.

      When I mentioned this in other discussions people would cite the CIA World Factbook back at me. However, it turns out the CIA World Factbook was wildly, as in more than an order of magnitude, off on the Soviet economy so I see no reason to believe it’s any more accurate in terms of population figures.

      1. “CIA World Factbook”

        An agency that depends for its funding on other nations being a threat would lie about how strong those nations are?

        Well, paint me red and call me a barn… who’d ‘a’ thunk?

        1. Doesn’t even have to be a lie, defined as “information known to be incorrect/untrue, transmitted with intent to deceive.” Could just be “worst case scenario” and/or bad analysis. Garbage in, garbage out. Circular reasoning is BIG in intelligence, unfortunately.

      2. I got to use the CIA World Factbook website in high school!

        From memory, the numbers they give are what the state it’s about reports.

        Which is useful information, but doesn’t make it TRUE information.

    4. India has the problem of sex-selective births. I’ve seen some sources up the number of male:females as bad as 150:100 in some states in India, more common is 110:100 or 120:100. A few places it’s 100:100. The government of India banned prenatal ultrasound for a while because of that. “3000 Rupees for an abortion or 60,000 Rupees for a dowry” was the phrase. That’s not a great way to increase population.

    5. The US census estimates that they average about 5% undercount of the “african american” population.

      Pretty much every census.

      And that’s in spite of the estimated undercount corrections….

      We’re pretty dang well run, mostly by being more of a network than a top-down ‘run’ place– it would be shocking if the average country was only twice as inaccurate.

      1. This. I mean… We’re downright autistic about it. Now in the developed world the overcount might be 20%. The rest of the world (and I include Portugal-level nations) it’s Katie bar the door.

  2. It all makes sense if you accept the backdrop that there is , and has been for a long time, a cabal of Scum ( not “elites” ,their word not mine ) bankers with untold wealth accumulated hourly, daily, monthly over centuries, that use that wealth to control all mass media, many/most politicians globally, education curricala, etc. The WEF is the newest face of these scum, but it goes back thru the bilderberg group, trilateral commission, freemasons, Bohemian grove, etc. There publicly stated goals are mass depopulation, complete control over every aspect of the remaining slaves lives, thru digital money, food control, energy control, etc.
    Their masks are completely off, we see them for what they are, awaiting the normies/sheeple of the world to also wake up and buy a clue, Vanna.
    Of course, a lot of cognitive dissonance makes this a task, but perhaps famine and freezing will prompt them along.

    1. You forgot The Queen, The Vatican, The Gettys, The Rothschilds, and Colonel Sanders before he went tits up. Oh, I hated the Colonel with is wee beady eyes, and that smug look on his face. “Oh, you’re gonna buy my chicken! Ohhhhh!”

    2. That’s why they are “Masters” in my book and I talk some how the slavery that was fought against in the Civil War has just been transformed over time by them into a modern version: slaves to income tax, bankers, buying things, and e-chips implanted in those who are willing to accept the “Number of the Beast”. In my way, I tried to expose them for what they are, parasites on humanity’s back. They don’t care a flying EFF about us and want us GONE! (Unless they can find some new breeding stock for their plans).

      1. Oh, my comment about “elite breeding stock” brings back to mind the old farcical James Bond parody, “Casino Royale” movie (1967) that starred David Niven as “James Bond” and Woody Allen (real-life pervert and nutjob) as the evil short guy who just wanted to kill all tall men with a genetic disease that also makes all women beautiful. LOL, but not far off from the COVID scamdemic.

        What a great cast….Peter Sellers and even Ursula Andress. Classic! Even herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass for the theme song! Also, the killing off humanity to leave left only the “Beautiful people” was the theme in the James Bond movie “Moon Raker” Roger Moore and Tanya Roberts in that one. Best James Bond ever was Connery!

    3. No. It doesn’t make any sense. Because the premise that your theory demands is at the top of the heap of ideas which don’t work, haven’t worked, and never will work.

          2. On the heels of the Omnicron/Mark I COVID combination news came the gain-of-function experimentation with a nastier variety of Monkeypox. Is somebody trying for a real-life version of the Andromeda Strain?

                  1. Seriously. I haven’t seen this kind of crazy spammy nonsense outside of some of ILOH’s old Faceplant threads!

                2. That quote isn’t from Orwell, it’s from a 2014 play adaptation of 1984.

                  So, who has Oceania has always been at war with now?

                  1. I’m reminded of what Abe Lincoln said about not trusting what you see on the internet. [Very Very Big Crazy Grin]

        2. President Richard Nixon was strongly behind the Bioweapons treaty and getting rid of the darned things. When you’re dealing with something too unethical for Richard Millhouse Nixon you are likely NOT the good guys.

          1. Terrible example: Nixon was no more crooked than anyone else. He just had the honesty to try and protect his people instead of cutting them loose.

            1. Was he as much of a crook as the media portrayed him? No. Was he an honest straight shooter, umm no look at the Checkers speech and the things leading up to it. He was a masterful politician, he got stuff done in the world of diplomacy and was happy to use force to get the Viet Cong back to the table (a feature that got squandered by Congress). He was willing to let stuff go on to feed his paranoia when he was going to crush Mccarthy so badly it wasn’t funny. A good politician indeed. Ethical? His quaker ancestors tumbled so fast the turf above them got airborne.

            2. I have a vague recollection that it was under Nixon that one of the agencies conducted an experiment with a harmless bio-agent on a US city (San Francisco, iirc) in order to trace the agent… only to have something go awry during the test. That might have influenced his attitude toward bio-weapons.

              1. More than that.
                Search phrase: Edgewood Arsenal human experiments

                Note that this is only the publicly available information.
                There is almost certainly much more still hidden behind classification (or conveniently lost).

                1. The specific one I was thinking of actually happened in 1950. So I was off by quite a bit. The navy used an off-shore minesweeper to spray a bacteria called Serratia Marcescens into the air in San Francisco. The bacteria in question is red, and thus would show up easily when researchers looked for it. The bacteria was believed to be harmless, and the plan was to use it to identify how a biological weapon might spread in the event of a terrorist attack.

                  Unfortunately, it turns out that it wasn’t as harmless as was believed. The number of urinary tract infections shot up dramatically in San Francisco, and one patient who was recovering from prostate surgery even died.

        3. Now THAT is exactly what I’ve been saying ever since I heard the term, “gain of function”.

          BU labs should be thermited into a glowing white hole. And the relevant personnel dropped on the French Antarctic Lands in their underwear.

          1. THIS. I am an advocate for an advocate for a world-wide treaty on the research of Genetically altered viruses. Genie’s come out of the bottle to easy and will never be put back in.

              1. Give us just one example of ANY global treaty that has been followed when it was to someone’s advantage to break it.

                Seriously?

                1. Yeah, know that. But you have to start somewhere. And at least a treaty gives you a legal reason for acting against the violators. Kind of like having a Declaration of Independence listing the justifications for rebellion and posting it before you act.

                2. Such a ban can only be attempted, but I see NO one in the World Elite is advocating for this…. Where’s Greta Thunberg when you really need her! (LOL) A treaty is better than doing nothing and letting “well-funded scientists with no morals research until they kill us all”.

                  Hey, that Nuclear Test Ban treaty was complied with pretty well? You don’t have to explode a Nuke above ground to test it. Evil to use anywhere and even evil to use to end World War 2 with less loss of life than invasion of Japan. Evil to test above ground and release radioactive fallout. Not so evil instead to test below ground (unless it’s in a mine under the San Andreas Fault under Silicon Valley like that James Bond movie View to a Kill.) Wait, it’s NOT evil to test under California since it would solve a lot of problems. LOL AS MORAL COMPASS EXPLODES FROM GEOMAGNETIC INTERFERENCE.

                    1. And they’re about to chuck her overboard for saying that nuclear power is preferable to freezing to death.

                  2. Nuclear weapons are hard and very obvious.

                    By your own words gene-mod virii are “too easy”. If a dangerous object to easy to make then any solution to the problems it causes has to start with the premise that it will always be present and it’s creation cannot be stopped.

                    Anything else is drug fueled delusion written into law. And it will have corresponding results.

                3. Yes.

                  And as already noted below, one of the best ways to look at this idea is as Gun Control gone international: “When having bio-weapons makes you a Rogue Nation, only Rogue Nations will have bio-weapons.”

                  Overgeneralizing madly, in a field I’ve never looked at all too closely: it seems very much like the only times this approach works is when everybody already basically wants to get rid of the whatever-it-is, but also wants some monitoring / political cover so it’s not a pure giveway, like the above-mentioned Nixon-era treaty; or, it’s not a free choice but an imposed one, see e.g. Germany post World War I.

                  Remember, bio-weapons have always been as easy to assemble and deploy as smallpox-ed blankets (North America) or plague-ridden corpses (Middle East on European invaders then on to the European heartland itself). Not exactly Oak Ridge or Manhattan Project stuff…

                  And don’t even mention that shiny new thing called CRISPR, please.

              1. Hopefully you read my clarifying comment. My brain is faster than my fingers typing. That’s why my book manuscript had so many typos to begin with…

            3. Such ‘research’ was already against U.S. law.

              Which is why Fauxi had to get a Chinese bio-weapons lab to do it, and tried to cover the funding trail by laundering the money through a third party.

                    1. Thrown into an active volcano?
                      Um. Never mind. No need to make Pele or whichever local volcano irritated.

                      Fed to the tigers?
                      Um. No again. Don’t want to poison tigers, or lions, or bears, or sharks.

                      Sigh.

                    6. Pele likes cute guys, surfing, dancing, and grassboarding downhill sleds. She wants good competition but hates to lose, and she gets jealous easily of her boyfriends.

                      So yeah, I do not think she wants Fauci.

                  4. Yep, this. Or take up permanent residence in an artificial forest done in the style of the Son of the Dragon. I’m not picky!

                  1. Wait, what? I self-moderated because I thought you might think that too radical and violent an approach. Man, these shifts are way more dynamic than I expected.

                  2. Tar and feathers is the historical customary punishment as meted out by the founders of the USA

    4. Where I come from, the central problem with the Cabal Conspiracy is that eventually — just give it time — it becomes practically axiomatic that Everybody Knows whom the world-spanning evil Cabal comprises … and what the Final Solution to that problem must be. Just saying, and quite seriously; a lot of people in my community are starting to get scared out of our undies.

    5. You can probably discount the Masons. My grandfather was the head of the Masons in New York State, probably the most influential in the nation at the time. Not only have I never been approached or encouraged to join; but I didn’t even get a t-shirt. So that conspiracy theory just doesn’t wash.

      1. My dad and maternal grandfather were Masons. Dad went as far as Shrine. None of his brothers were. Grew up in the Eastern Star orbit. Mom is still involved in the charities with the Shriner shoot offs involving the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters, of Shriner’s and Master Masons. Never understood the Masonic conspiracy. The Masonic conspiracy is in the category of flat earth, fake moon landing, etc.

              2. Until you actually wear them, wash them, etc. Now you have a lovely collection of all the shades of gray, or pink if you’ve really stepped in it.
                I stick with black socks now.

              3. I tend to stick with black and grey work type socks myself. The only issue I have is that some of my thick military surplus socks are different sizes and I do pair those up wrongly sometimes!

        2. That you should divide the day into three equal parts, and spend only one of those on your vocation?
          That’s obviously the work of a commiemutanttraitor.

          Self-improvement and community service are teh evuls!

              1. Not to be confused with a commentator, who switches the direction of coverage depending on who’s in office.

                1. Well, at least with common taters we can just boil and mash with some milk, butter and salt to make them taste great. (although we like to put just a dash of garlic powder, or minced garlic in it.)

        3. To be fair, Masons in Europe are somewhat more.politically active, both historically and currently. But I think the dangerous Euro-Masons have been sucked into Communism and the rest of the Left, so it is more practical to worry about them as leftists.

      2. I am a Mason. 33rd Degree, even. And the conspiracy theories about the Fraternity ain’t worth spit.

        3. I was wondering when you or Holly would chime in on this one, especially given the stories you’ve told!

  3. Sarah:

    Well, I’ve tried several times to reply to your post via WordPress, and have come to the conclusion that I will not use WordPress to set up a website of my own.

    Here’s my reply:

    I’m with you. It seems the Wachowskis were historians as well as fantasists:-)

    For more corroboration, check out anything by Whitney Webb or Iain Davis, especially Webb’s recently published “One Nation Under Blackmail”. “The Money and the Power” by Denton and Morris is another eye opening read.

    I’ve been a history buff for almost 60 years now and have come to the conclusion that whatever you think is going on, based upon media reporting of current events, that ain’t it.

    H. Myers Cape Coral, FL

    Sent with Proton Mail secure email.

  4. FWIW, I am fairly sure that I am real (as well as Mythical, yes) for if I was not real, the kidney stones wouldn’t be such a pain in the… er… best I NOT go into detail, there. You’re welcome.

    And maybe none of history made any sense at the time. People do go on about “How could decent, upstanding Germans let the Nazis happen?” but that is, sadly, rather comprehensible given the times and ‘human’ (and others, yes) nature. What THIS reminds me of is more WWI or Vietnam. Sure, this is not (outside Ukraine) a shooting war, but like those… it makes no [DANGED] sense.

    I recall reading Charlie Company where the author/narrator mused that as insanely stupid and wasteful as it would have been, simply forming up at the southern border of South Vietnam, all along it, and simply marching north would have at least made SOME TINY BIT OF SENSE compared to the nonsense of ‘This area is off limits for anything today’ and ‘This SAME PLACE is a Free Fire Zone – if it moves, destroy it, This New Day’. And then cycle between such.

    I keep wondering if the rye was moldy or if LSD has been re-legalized or such. But those explanations are likely far too simple.

    A post or two back, there was the suggestion that there was some ‘assistance’ “from Below” and that might explain some, but perhaps… has anyone seen Loki of late?

      1. I have passed a couple very small stones.. at work, yet. I think $BigBoss started leaving me Very Much Alone unless there was Something Critical after I let that slip. It’s actually NOT the passing that is painful, it’s the initial movement. There are… other effects.. before passing, but the big one is not painful, but very, Very annoying.

        As for larger? I hope to remain ignorant.

        1. long grain rice sized was big enough, thanks. Seconds was smaller (judged by how fast and less painful it was, maybe it was similar sized but fell right)

          1. The newest thing is using multiple ultrasound beams to move the stone somewhere less painful (ie, out of the urethra and into the bladder), as well as making it easier to blast stones to bits.

            Also they can do it without anesthesia, just like other ultrasound procedures.

            1. Just read about that and thought “Where was that when I needed it?”
              Knock wood, haven’t needed it since, with only one being enough to need pain meds. The first was a ER visit and oh my the pain, the second almost to the year was “I’ll not be in today as I took Oxycontin and will be sleeping.” the next few feelings of a stone coming were passed by drinking a lot more water.

    3. I know quite a few Vietnam vets who believe very strongly that the war was deliberately lost.
      And they’ve got solid reasons to feel that way.
      The only real weakness in the case, was motive.

      For what it’s worth, I also recall my grandfather telling me how close the country was to rising in rebellion when Truman refused to let MacArthur win in Korea.

      But maybe McCarthy was batting a thousand.

      1. The reason? Winning would embarass the people who said it was unwinnable. That’s the way of bureaucracy, and of legislatures.

  5. I’ve thought for the last two years the only way covidiocy would make sense would be if the PTB knew all along it was an artificial virus, possibly a loose bioweapon, but didn’t know just how bad it would be. So they went crazy. (Maybe add in people reading stories about superplagues with really long incubation periods, or ,”looks harmless and when you think you’re over it – WHAM!” scenarios and believing them).
    And there’s always Romans 1, as Setnaffa (and Paul) would say – when you stop believing in God, you’ll believe anything.
    I definitely don’t believe in a secret, multigenerational cabal of bankers because, as Poul Anderson put it, they can’t even run their banks over time. But John McDonald’s theory of an interstellar society keeping Earth -and only Earth – in perpetual turmoil to be a recruiting ground for tough-minded leaders, that could resonate.

    2. (Adjusts tinfoil hat)

      The Anonymous Conservative blog has been wondering about the UFO information that no longer is getting swept under the rug. He is open to the possibility that The Cabal is being run by Other Than Humans. Lizards in skinsuits optional. The shipment of salt is due this afternoon. Pier 42.

      1. I’m open to the the possibility that “the UFO stuff that isn’t being hidden anymore” is a desperate attempt to distract people from the suddenly-overwhelming amount of government malfeasance.

    3. I have always thought that the Chinese government knew it was a lab enhanced virus and the quick extreme shut down of their economy showed their fear. The way they went after any attempt to investigate the Wuhan lab as a source was so suspicious. The ongoing zero covid policy is more about saving face than real effective health policy. I have even seen some reports that they are using their national covid status tracking app to control dissent about the economy.

      1. This has been my theory since at least mid-2020. I e. It was an accidental release, and they were scared it would turn out to be much nastier than it actually was.

        1. Translation? They failed to recognized the incompetence under “we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us”?

          1. More likely, “Something new has appeared in a city that has a bio research lab with nasty diseases, we know that there are issues with the seals at the lab that we’re in the process of fixing, and if something got loose we’re not sure what it is yet.” Makes sense to play it safe if that’s the case.

            1. Everybody has to go and blame the seals. I admit, they’re mischievous, but I don’t think they’re malicious. I’d say it’s far more likely it was the bunnies. All that pent up rage.

              What!?

              1. Incidentally, bunnies aren’t just cute like everybody supposes. They’ve got those hoppy legs and twitchy little noses. And what’s with all the carrots? What do they need such good eyesight for anyway?
                It must be bunnies.

                Or maybe midgets…

                    1. I was trying to come up with a good response to our gracious hostess’ direction, but yours was better than anything I came up with…

    4. The Reader has occasionally wondered whether the ‘first’ version of the CCP flu that was loose in China ‘before’ the official date (how much isn’t known) was a good deal more lethal than any of the mutated strains that found their way around the world. It would explain what appeared to be an extreme reaction in China and among TPTB.

      1. It appeared to be a lot more lethal in China than it turned out to be in the rest of the world. Was that because of the virus, or because of the general poor health care and malnutrition in China? We know the Wuhan Bat Flu hits people with vitamin D deficiency especially hard.

        Looks to me like the modified virus escaped from the Wuhan lab in July or August 2019. The communist Chinese government stopped all travel from the Wuhan area to other parts of China, at the same time they were deliberately flying thousands of disease carriers to other countries around the world. Trump was condemned as ‘Xenophobic!’ for taking the only sensible action to combat the most heinous act of biological warfare in world history.

        The communist Chinese expected their bio-weapon to be far more effective than it was, to kill hundreds of millions instead of a few million. Of course, they are still guilty of killing those millions. What they couldn’t have hoped for was for somebody as stupid, vain and greedy as Fauxi to be effectively in charge of the world’s response, leading the idiots-in-charge to apply tourniquets around the necks of their own economies ‘to stop the spread’.
        ———————————
        “The Science Is Settled!!” we were told, again and again — but then ‘The Science!’ changed every week, and somehow it was always exactly what the politicians needed it to be.

    5. We know mRNA can be written into the genome. We don’t know how often in happens, how random the insertion points are, or what the results of those insertions are. We do know that most mutations are either non-operative junk, or bad for the organism. Only in rare cases do we have a happy accident that is an improvement; and that improvement is only relative to the environment the organism grows up in.

    6. My own pet theory is that there is a very long-lived, secretive conspiracy against mankind lead by a group of practically immortal (along our axis of time anyway) intelligences that can spy on anyone and everyone at anytime, communicate with and perhaps ‘hijack’ their human cronies, influence events in what seem to us impossible ways, and stand invisibly behind our left shoulder whispering bad ideas to any of us. And that other-wordly, ancient leadership (rather than some Earthly continuity) is why the conspiracy seems to echo and repeat (or at least rhyme) down through the ages and sometimes exhibit inhuman patience and planning. Okay, maybe it is more than just ‘my own pet theory’. Perhaps a billion other people believe some variation of that.

  6. Ukraine (and Russia) is interesting because I’m noticing that support of Russia (or negotiations or ….) is being treated like Wuflu/vaccine skepticism, climate skepticims etc. We haven’t yet (that I’m aware of) seen Ukaine skeptical twitteres censored but the pile ons to people like Musk who point out that there has to be an end state that won’t be some implausible fantasy. where Putin is overtrhown, the new leader says “sorry” and everything unicorns sprinkle rainbow farts around. Now I think Musk is wrong, but he’s not wrong to be trying to reduce the suffering and having a zillion morons pile on and call him a Russia apologist is not helpful

    [FWIW I expect the end result of Russia’s invasion is that Russia ceases to exist in its current form but I don’t think is going to be a quick or painless transition. In fact it is not impossible that chunks of Russia resemble Somalia or Libya (or other lawless mess) ]

    In fact the one thing that seems to be common about Ukraine, the Wuflu and Climate Change is that the supposed desired end-state is impossible and always has been. I’m beginning to thing that this is not a coincidence. My only problem is figuring out who benefits because it seems to me that ed state is impossible, the disruption required to get close to the end state is intolerable (and a killer of the global economy) and so on.

    1. The problem with Musk’s idea isn’t that there is an end state. But that his proposed end state is not a sane one.

      At this point anything which leaves Crimea in Russian hands is ignoring how we got here and allowing Russia to get away with it.

      And under the circumstances, Ukraine cannot sanely accept any deal which does not include the return of their kidnapped people. Even if the alternative is having to take apart Moscow themselves without NATO support.

      In fact it is not impossible that chunks of Russia resemble Somalia or Libya (or other lawless mess

      There is another theory which states that this is already the case.

      1. At the same time, Sevastopol is Russia’s only major warm water port. Losing that is unacceptable to Moscow.

        Unfortunately, there’s no way to resolve these two conflicting problems.

    2. I could actually see that. One pretty consistent thing about Russian culture is they don’t seem to have a concept of civic society at all.

      If you watch Masha and the Bear, a Russian children’s cartoon, they have zero local government. No mail, no mayor, no police. SW basic thing in the Metro Exodus games. They have no concept of governance at all.

      1. Trying to understand Russian culture by looking at a cartoon (Masha and the Bear) is like looking at the Looney Tunes to understand American culture. “My name is Elmer T. Fudd; I own a Mansion and a Yacht!” LOL. The primary Russian culture is strong (and help maintained with a strong Orthodox church) and the subcultures (Kazaks, Buriats, etc. are also partly assimilated. For example, russian cuisine is a blend of all these ethnic groups and you can find ethnic dishes and restaurants Hell, even the “Blini” is really the French crepe brought back from Napoleonic wars and Russians troops in occupied Paris with all the other victors (English, Prussians, etc.) Heck, the Russian word for “fast” (Bistra) is derived from the French work for a fast restaurant (Bistro).

          1. If that’s true, the Russian Culture left a lasting imprint on the French instead… LOL

            However, the truth may be unknown and that seems to be a problem these days with lots of things. Here is a Bistro etymology nugget I found online…

            bistro (n.)
            1906, from French bistro (1884), originally Parisian slang for “little wineshop or restaurant,” which is of unknown origin. Commonly said to be from Russian bee-stra “quickly,” picked up during the Allied occupation of Paris in 1815 after the defeat of Napoleon; but this, however quaint, is unlikely. Another guess is that it is from bistraud “a little shepherd,” a word of the Poitou dialect, from biste “goat.”

            “The truth is out there, but we’ll never know it.”

        2. You can pick up a surprising amount on information about US gun culture. Like, for example, the fact that it has one. He may be a caricature of 1950’s hunting culture, but every gun he uses is one that would work, and normally fail the way they do. Which means the majority of the animators in the 1950 probably knew how shotguns worked and likely had used them themselves.

          This is as opposed to Japan, which has no gun culture at all. By in large guns that show up in anime are Chinese mystery pistols. Ranging from terrifyingly bad to exquisite they may look like guns, feel like guns, and sometimes even largely function like guns, upon closer inspection one discovers one has no idea what they actually are, what they were intended to be, or how they could even function at all.

          My point is, Russian media pretty universally lacks low level civics or civic involvement. And its a big enough cultural gap, I could easily see the region descending into no government or just regional war lords of the central government fails.

          Now, interesting, the Orthodox Church is probably the most likely counter force to that, because since the re-unification of the MP, OCA and ROCOR, one of their largest training monestaries is in upstate New York. A significant amount of their new blood is American converts, and they are going to be bringing a lot of the US’s local civic governance culture and methods with them. We were directed to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s after all. If it doesn’t come before God, why shouldn’t we advocate better and more ethically sound ways to do that?

          1. Some anime gets guns right. GATE accurately depicts the Minebea P9 9mm pistol, the Showa Type 64 automatic rifle, Sumitomo M2 heavy machine gun (a copy of the Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun) and Panzerfaust 3, other small arms from several countries, as well as Super Cobra attack helicopters, Bell UH-1 ‘Huey’ helicopters, CH-46 transport helicopters, Type 74 tanks and F-4 fighters.

            Other anime with accurate guns include Black Lagoon, Cowboy Bebop, Full Metal Panic!, Izetta The Last Witch and Hellsing.
            ———————————
            “Nothing I shoot ever gets back up again.” — Alucard

            1. True, but they’re also rare enough that they are notable and generally written by someone who has a passion for firearms.

              Elmer Fudd is about an idiot hunter. I doubt they had a major gun nut on the staff. They don’t even mention what model it is or talk about it at all. Yet they’re generally double barreled break actions or pump action, they have an awareness of how each is operated and at least some concept of magazine capacity, for each, which means they have been casually exposed to them on a routine enough basis to just know how they work.

              1. Well, a lot of anime don’t have contemporary guns at all. What use are rifles against a Gundam, or against Spirits who can project force shields? There are fantasy settings, and far-future settings where guns have been replaced by more advanced weapons.

        3. “Heck, the Russian word for “fast” (Bistra) is derived from the French work for a fast restaurant (Bistro).”
          I had heard it was the other way around from Russian soldiers in France trying to get some food without being derelict in their duty, so they kept telling the notoriously slow French restaurant service people, “Bistra!” meaning hurry up. It soon became good marketing to advertise the misheard word, “Bistro” to get more business. It’s probably nonsense (when were Russian soldiers ever stationed in Paris?), but it’s a much more fun story.

          1. I likely got that one mixed up this morning…Not enough coffee. The main thing is words are culture and culture spreads. Russians do have a culture and as individuals/families are good people. Culture has spread to and from russia. I do think the West with America as ring leader has done more to destroy culture and the family worldwide though.

            It’s the leaders worldwide that are the problem.

              1. Yes, culture at the root is tribal… Families first, then the tribe (and precursor to language- based Nation-states). Problem is when you create a culture based on something besides family/blood/language, you end up with a confused mess. Example: current USA or the ancient tower of Babel-model and confusing of the tongues so that nothing like the tower can be built (because a unified people can do great things but a divided people cannot.) Last time America was unified in an effort was WW2 or 9/11 and perhaps to a lessor extent the Moonshot. (We landed for sure, but even my wife is still a non-believer and can never be convinced… LOL)

                For sure all the Covid and Ukraine Kabuki theater has not had one of the possible desired effects on the American people. We will not unite further when many now see obviously through the smokescreens as the Elite attempt to keep control of the narrative.

                1. Warlord Extractive Culture is admittedly slightly better than a Face Culture.

                  But from the non-shit world 99.999% shit is the same as 99.99999% shit.

          2. That would be during the Napoleonic Wars.

            The main problem with the story, apparently, is that the first recorded use of the word is 1884, decades later. The Russian to French story is at least possible, since Bistro actually is a newly coined or derived French word, whatever its etymology.

            Since the Russian word for “fast” is an extremely old and common word, that is inherited from proto-slavonic in very close to its current form, the French to Russian story is ridiculous on its face.

          3. As noted above, Russian troops were in Paris in 1814, following Napoleon’s first fall from power. IIRC, that’s where the post-war peace conference was held. Russian troops made up a large part of the Coalition’s numbers, though I don’t know how many were sent to France, and Paris specifically for the conference.

        1. I think South Carolina is likely next. Lol. They have the Savannah River DOE nuke plant there and they will have all they need if the state seizes it after the US govt collapses in Biden chaos or splits up.

          Hey, wasn’t the last civil war started over a place named Fort Sumter?

      2. Don’t go all State Department on us and think that propping up a unitary Russia is a worthwhile goal.

  8. Remember that the original measurement of the charge of an electron was — within an order of magnitude. Corrections slowly drifted toward the truth. And nobody had a motive to lie.

  9. Incompetence is more common than actual malice, though they usually look similar and often go together.

    I don’t believe in conspiracies because conspiracies require competence and there is no visual supply

    1. It has amused me for some time (a couple decades, now?) that the “Moon Landing conspiracy” folks overlook…

      The amateur astronomers were watching. Sure, they might only see engine firings and ‘water’ dumps, but if they did NOT see them…
      The amateur radio operators were listening in, and if the signals weren’t there, or weren’t where they were supposed to be, Doppler and all…
      The USSR was watching with everything it had, just itching for an opportunity to call out a hoax
      FAKING it would have been at least as much, if not MORE, work than actually doing it. And if if anything went wrong AT ALL, the jig was up.

      Overall, it was simply EASIER to do it “for real” than fake it!

      1. Agreed. But remember, to the conspiracy theorists, the US and the USSR are all the Tools of the Monied Powers and, as such, were both in on it.

        2. Also, remember the $700 hammers (Now likely $5000 hammers) that the government has bought for years. $7 at the ACE hardware store and $693 for black budget payola… It’s all about the dough and who can steal the most for their cronies.

          1. After Pa saw all the fiddly details in a potential gov’t contract, that the compliance with all the nonsense would run to $700/unit is NO SURPRISE. Fwiw, Pa rejected the idea of gov’t work from that point on. And refused to deal with the Small Business Administration when he saw all the garbage they expected that would be anti-productive. Not counter, ANTI.

            1. Back when nuclear power plants were still being built, the company I had a summer job with was providing structural steel for a few of the projects in Michigan and Ohio. The level of documentation was impressive, generally meaning we had to have chemical and physical results for each heat of steel. Where it got painful was the increasing documentation requirements. Every. Damned. Piece. of steel had to have ID marks on it to track to the certificates. (Loads of fun when a piece had to be cut out of a chunk of 3/4″ plate, and it was a crapshoot as to which plate was used. Eventually, I had to go to the warehouse with a hammer and a set of stamps to mark individual anchor bolts.)

              It got to the point where every truckload (50,000 pounds, roughly) was accompanied by several pounds of paperwork (7 copies of the D sheet drawings, plus the certs). For more complication fabrications, it was a lot of paper. And time. This pretty well clobbered our profit, since we hadn’t anticipated the time spent on this.

              We added the admin cost for the bid on the next tranche, and got outbid. The winning bidder sent seven truckloads of product to the project, only to have them all rejected. Seems somebody didn’t notice the certification and documentation requirements, and they didn’t do such. The contractor was pissed at the ensuing delay, and the Schadenboners were epic with our people.

              1. When I was in Texas, we attempted a bid on a Gov’t contract once, and the owner decided half way through the process, he really hoped we didn’t get the contract (though some of the raws used by the winner came from us so we made about the same profit without the hassle). Drums, each required a special RFID label, more labels that were not rfid but special order, an RFID applied on the wood pallet, then after wrapping, 4 RFID labels per pallet with a repeat of the other labels on each side, paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork.
                Odd thing, after they decided not to go with us, the place I work now was the “winner”, and I learned they never had any of those requirements we were dealing with other than the mounds of paperwork and a special wood pallet. Though their load is 3 drums per pallet, not the 4 we were told to go with.

                1. OTOH, I’m still annoyed at Algore’s “plan,” to simplify government procurement regs. He mostly threw out the babies with the bathwater and made my job harder. You can’t force a major defense contractor to do a decent job when you have no spec to bash him with.
                  I enjoyed Trump’s reg-cutting, but suspect it was better done.

              2. I remember when I was reading Lois Bujold’s FALLING FREE. The protagonist, a welding and failure analysis instructor, tells his students; “This next slide is the evilest thing you will ever see. THIS is a falsified inspection report!” As a quality control guy myself, I thought I would laugh myself sick. It really isn’t funny though. There is a coal fired power plant in Ohio that was planned to be nuclear. A suspicious QC guy noticed that the xrays of the certification and recertification tests for nuclear rated welders were many of them the same weld. They would have to basically rip out and rebuild the “hot” parts of the containment building.

                1. Leo Graf had some great lines. Like:

                  “If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, choose learning. It works more of the time.”

                  And, after slugging Bruce van Atta:

                  “It’s all right, I’ve been wanting to do this for weeks.”

      2. Oh man. My father-in-law is into every conspiracy theory you can think of. Let’s see…Illuminati-believer, 9/11 truther, believes the moon landing was faked. Seriously. I can’t quite remember his rationale for the moon landing not being possible, but let’s just say that somehow this pretty intelligent man can’t grasp the concept of escape velocity and orbital mechanics in lower gravity. His latest (which he bombed the daughter with today) is that global warming is caused by the magnetic poles of the Earth reversing.

          2. Ha, I figured you’d have a good response for that from your extensive meme collection!

            1. So proud of me, I actually managed to get my mom with that one. (I have terrible delivery on jokes. Which is fair, most of them are terrible.)

              She mentioned that someone didn’t “believe” in the moon landing.

              “You know they had Kubric work on the filming for that, right?”
              “…oh?” in mom’s oh-no what have I triggered NOW voice.
              “Yeah. Thing is, he’s a perfectionist, so he insisted they film the hoax on site.”
              “[looooong silent pause, then almost drops the phone laughing]”

        2. His latest (which he bombed the daughter with today) is that global warming is caused by the magnetic poles of the Earth reversing.

          :blinks:

          That’s… not entirely crazy, when one remembers that “global warming” is any kind of odd weather at all, and some folks DO think the magnetic field going wonky may be involved in some odd weather stuff….

          Yeah, “not entirely insane” is about it.

    2. As the old joke has it:
      Q: How do we know the CIA didn’t kill Kennedy?
      A: He’s dead, isn’t he?

  10. I am so very glad I found you on the webz. You have a unique perspective and delivery. It’s stilted, at least to my normal processes and it makes me slow down and study what you say, I have to hold the rope to follow your logic. I don’t want to flatter you, but but I think you are a Deborah (OT, Judges). And I have come to regard you as a reference point. A place to go to reorient. Thank you for putting you thoughts out here so regularly.

    Rynn

    1. I assume it’s better to be a “Deborah” than it is to be a “Karen”. /laugh

      Although at times I despair that Sarah has the Cassandra curse, where she speaks the truth, and nobody (except we few) believe her.

      1. I feel the same way sometimes, especially seeing as how she was right about all the insanity of 2020.

  11. It’s a vampire zombie squid government. No-one is in charge. No-one is accountable for anything, and the only way anything happens is if the bureaucrats have been propagandized to believe it is the uniform concensus Greater Good.

    So in practice it is unmoored from reality, myopic, zealous, and insane.

    And yes, it happened in WWII too. I’ve probably gone on a rant about the bomber mafia and their obsession with blocking escort fighters before, but I think about the only reason we did not lose the air war over Europe was because of line individuals who bucked the entire airforce establishment to get the things that needed to happen done.

    Doolittle and 100 octane gas. The guys in Britain who made the papermache drop tanks. The Lieutenant who tanked his career to get the Lockheed Ventura drop tanks tested and rated on the P-38. The North American business development guy who talked the British buying commission into buying a new plane instead of a Curtiss licensed plane.

    And the companies that didn’t go outside channels? Republic had a plane that was perfectly capable of doing the escort mission and even had the tanks, but the bomber mafia scuttled the tank production, and then made them the scapegoat for their own myopia.

    And this happened on all sides. Britain entered the war using an entirely unsuitable float carb system, because one guy in its aviation bureau hates the idea of fuel injection and falsified reports. And the Soviets and axis powers were every bit as bad.

    The difference seems to be that the Allies had more people who were willing and able to break out of the politics and do things like perform testing that was specifically forbidden (Mk14 Torpedo fiasco) or make things they weren’t supposed to.

    1. It eventually got so bad that the entire US Army Armory system had to be shut down after they screwed with the M16 too many times.

      aka the only good thing McNamara ever did….

      1. I don’t know the details by any means, but it sure says something that even now, decades later, there are those “of the day” that have “Shoot McNamara FIRST, then… ” attitudes.

      2. McNamara’s partially to blame for the M16 fiasco. IIRC, the reason why it didn’t initially have a chrome-lined bore was because McNamara said “If if needed to have a chrome-lined bore, it would have have chrome-lined the bore from the start!” despite no less that Eugene Stoner and Jim Sullivan themselves (the AR-15’s primary designers) insisting that while a developmental prototype didn’t need a chrome-lined bore, a combat weapon damn well did! But not chrome-lining the bore saved a buck or so on production, so Penny-Pinching McNamara insisted it go without.

        1. That, and making ammunition with the wrong powder, that burned too fast, generated excessive chamber pressure and beat the action to pieces.

          “It’s not supposed to cycle 900 rounds a minute!”

          1. Yep. Because why spend a ton of money on this expensive IMR extruded powder when we have pallets full of this old Winchester ball powder laying around in our warehouses? So what if the weapon system was designed around the IMR powder? Gunpowder’s gunpowder!

    2. The Mk 14 was a special case. Navy blocked all testing on it until a veteran sub captain took advantage of a disabled Japanese freighter to conduct test shots with his entire allotment of torpedoes save one. The captain thought the problem was with the specific manufacturing run that his torpedoes came from, and not the Mk 14 itself. So he took copious notes about the whole affair, and brought them back along with his last torpedo so that it could be checked for the manufacturing lot information. His status and the work he’d done finally got the Navy to grudgingly authorize a review.

      Unfortunately, that only caught the first of three problems with the thing. But the dam had burst as a result of what he did, and there was less resistance to further testing when the problems still weren’t sorted out.

      1. Well, it really wasn’t that a special case. It got to such a point because the design bureau, owned by the Navy and running on political favors hadn’t done the necessary design testing.

        And as I recall, the Navy still tried to bury his results. I don’t think it was until another Navy officer dropped an armed live Mk14 off of a crane onto a concrete pad and had it not go off that the Navy bureaucracy finally admitted something major was wrong.

        As I recall, in the case of the sub commander who did the testing, he was also breaking doctrine to do the tests. If any hostile ships had happened by he would have been in a world of trouble for doing “silly test runs” in a war zone.

        1. A warship did come by… just as he finished (the incident wasn’t far from a Japanese port, iirc).

          😛

          In any case, a freighter is a primary target for a submarine, and would have been considered more important than the destroyer that the disabled freighter hollered up. So his failed attempts to sink it were perfectly legitimate (i.e. his documented shots that didn’t explode).

        2. It was Charles Lockwood, COMSUBPAC, who finally listened when a couple of his top performers, like Mush Morton in the Wahoo, came back and detailed all the issues. He ordered the tests, which involved stringing fishing nets to check the depth accuracy, and firing torpedoes at a vertical cliff to determine the contact exploder wasn’t working. The steel plate test came when they were trying to figure out just how much of an angle a torpedo would have to hit to allow the exploder to function. This led to the infamous order to try for “glancing blows” instead of 90 degree straight shots. 😎

          BuOrd resisted fixing the problem until there was a speech given by him in DC with Admiral King in attendance where he turned to the BuOrd chief and said “If BuOrd can’t give us working torpedoes, would someone get BuShips to design us a boathook that will rip the plates off the target’s side?” That focused attention. 😎

          BTW, the air launched torpedo had all the issues of the sub model, plus a couple.

          1. There were three issues. And due to the way they worked, one had to be fixed before the next one could be identified. IIRC, They were the firing angle (straight-on impacts wouldn’t detonate), the running depth (too deep, under the target ship), and the magnetic detonator (setting them off too far away).

            1. Exactly. The depth issue was found first, then they realized the magnetic exploder was too sensitive (when they tested it pre-war, they tested it around the Equator, where the magnetic field was least variable…..) because now that it was running at correct depth it entered the targets magnetic influence too soon, and then they realized (because some skippers had already deactivated it and started shooting for contact) that the contact exploder didn’t work.

              The final cherry on top? When they realized that the contact exploder firing pin wasn’t sturdy enough, and BuOrd wouldn’t issue a fix kit, the sub mechanics machined their own out of whatever was available.

              Turned out the best material was machined out of a bunch of Japanese aircraft propellers salvaged out of the ones shot down at Pearl Harbor. 😎

          2. That would have gotten FADM King’s attention…and he’d flay someone alive for that. Great man, but meaner than TWO junkyard dogs combined.

          3. And the Mark Fifteen surface torpedoes carried by the destroyers had the exact same problems as the Mark Fourteens.

        3. Irrelevant. His weapons demonstrably weren’t operationally capable of taking out any hostile ships in the first place. On the other hand, Billy Mitchell would never have been court martialed if military brass were competent.

      2. “a veteran sub captain” — To be exact, it was Lt Commander Fred “Fearless Freddy” Warder, commanding USS Seawolf (SS-197). Ned Beach wrote up the incident for his book Submarine!, and there are accounts in a couple of other books about the Silent Service too.

        The Mark-14 torpedo had two problems: erratic run depth and erratic steering. As I understand it, the erratic run depth had an incredibly obvious cause: live warheads were heavier than the practice warheads that the Mark-14 was tested with. The heavier warhead changed the weight and balance of the thing. The Mark-6 exploder, a separate device, also had two problems: the angle-of-impact issue, and the magnetic detonator frequently went off much too soon. Admiral Lockwood and his people macgyvered solutions for the first three problems, but they never did get the magnetic exploder to work.

  12. I’m going to channel FrankJ and say, “Calm down.” Because that always works.

    Seriously, I understand. We share an inexorable need to know the truth. This often manifests itself as a desire for things to make sense but seeing the truth of the world sometimes means that you will see irrationality. Don’t sweat it when that happens; it’s a sign that you’re seeing liars/idiots in their natural state. You can decide case-by-case whether an individual is acting irrationally because he’s scamming for money or power, he’s trying to maintain social standing, or he’s stupid or crazy. It doesn’t really matter which it is because, bottom line, there’s no global conspiracy with an inscrutable plan. They’re not that smart and they’re not that cooperative.

    Yeah, the craziness is overwhelming sometimes but always remember that we’re already the weird ones. You already know how to operate from the outside without complete acceptance. The going got weird, and you’ve turned pro. You got this.

  13. It strikes me the problem is that we think it ought to make sense. Maybe it is just chaos and error.

    In that vein. China is dumping dollars which will destroy what’s left of their economy. No rational person would do that but Mao did. Lenin did and Xi is doing it now

    1. That’s part of the issue. Our monkey brains LOVE to make patterns out of things. Often there is a pattern, sometimes it is just randomness. 10 flips of a coin coming up heads in a row is not impossible, merely improbable (although you’re at 1 chance in 1024 if my math is right). as attributed to Ian Flemming “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action” . Since 2020 we’re at 10-12 things. Since 1900 were looking at hundreds if not thousands of weird things. something is screwy somewhere. Just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean someone is plotting against you 🙂 .

      1. Xi also has decided that creamer potatoes will save China’s food budget and farming problems. But they aren’t “mini potatoes” as he calls them. They are baby potatoes. And he also wants to grow the same potato variety everywhere in China.

        Yeah. That’ll work.

    3. Time for… the Stupid Barbiturate Joke:

      You are, of course, aware of the barbiturate family of drugs. Once used as tranquilizers, now more as anti-convulsants (as today’s even crappiest tranquilizers aren’t as nasty… )…

      There’s…

      Amobarbital, and
      Pentobarbital, and
      Phenobarbital, and
      Secobarbital, and… many others.

      But you look around and you realize that those are mere drops in the ocean compared to the vast overconsumption of.. cenosensital.

      [Yes, it works better spoken… slowly.]

    4. We (in general) expect that people will learn, as individuals do, that “if you stick your finger into the fire again, you will get burned again, so don’t do that.” But systems (religious, governmental, bureaucratic, all of the above [USSR, China, any other Communist country]) have to follow the scripture and “it will work this time.” So if Lenin and Stalin did it, then it should be or must be done.

      My culture’s “makes sense” and your culture’s “makes sense” don’t always overlap, even though both have some sort of internal logic. Usually. Sometimes.

  14. “Do you not know, my son, with how very little wisdom the world is governed?”

    Apparently this feeling has existed for some time. The proliferation of literacy and the availability of knowledge doesn’t seemed to have closed the gap.

    And now that the internet sucks, due to information being funneled through fewer channels and subject to widespread manipulation, it’s getting worse.

  16. Let me apologize in advance for my lack of both eloquence and brevity.

    If one reads and believes the Bible, one learns that God is only, always, and continually good.

    And yet “bad” things happen to people under His care. Is that a contradiction? No. But let me explain. As a child, we were all forced by our parents to do things that hurt, eat things that tasted bad, or do chores when you’d rather play. You know, things like going to the dentist, eating over-boiled and bitter Swiss Chard, or mowing lawns with a push mower. Things that were, in the long run, good for us…

    If one reads and believes the Bible, one learns we live here 70 years, plus or minus a few decades, and then go to our forever home—Heaven if we trusted Jesus, Hell if we did not. So, maybe, we should live this life as a preparation for the next.

    Paul, in a passage that I read repeatedly while going through painful cancer treatments, wrote about this in his second letter to the Corinthian Church (2 Cor 4:7-18)

    But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

    Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

    So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

    1. For those who do not yet have a hope beyond this world, may the LORD send you wisdom and comfort.

      1. No, I did not. I may get banned for it; but I prefaced it with “If one believes”.

        If one does not, they are not the intended audience, so please move on to comments you find less offensive.

        And I’m sorry you were offended by my practicing the 1st Amendment. It was not my intent to offend you or anyone else.

        2. Oops…I had a Tower of Babel comment earlier. No matter, religion (of all forms) is part of our culture, so its hard to eliminate it entirely from a blog. Main thing is moderation and limiting its usage I think to comply with Sarah’s blog guidelines. Heck, I even think she has a guideline on talking about the past Civil War, but I don’t think mentioning it briefly in passing comments (as an illustrative example of history/elite power struggles) rises to the level of permabanning…

          1. You did. It was fairly stupid. It’s also fairly stupid to think that this makes it religious. I’m not eliminating religion ENTIRELY. I’m stopping stupid shit flinging contests.
            As for your comment being fairly stupid: It was. We are a credal nation.
            Nations based on blood aren’t superior, because “blood” is always notional, no matter what you soil and blood nuts think. Europe is a mix up of blood and so is everywhere else.
            The only true soil and blood associations are family-size tribes. And that’s what’s kept Africa hell for millenia.
            DO try not to be stupid. While not banned on the blot, it’s TEDIOUS.

            2. Points taken. I had a bad day today so apologies to this forum. I’ll tone down the autism and stupidity and promise not to ever contribute further about “Russian-Ukraine-WW3 as they unfold”. Remember that “All Wars are Bankers Wars,” and if WW3 happens because of all of the narrative control by TPTB, I had nothing to do with it and was against it. I’m not sure that Peace on Earth is ultimately possible, but the Christmas season is coming and we can hope for this. Let the elites get into one room and slug it out and don’t involve innocents.

              By the way, who funded Hitler and the Bolshevics? I’d love to know the truth of that. Can someone here do research and answer this?

              The odds are that no one knows the full truth and the truth was part of your blog focus today. I do hope that God knows it though, but sometimes I wonder…

            1. But with all these commenters in it, it has to have a dimensional portal, right?

  17. Our Hostess asked:
    What is truth? Well, truth is that which doesn’t go away when you stop thinking about it.

    I like a slightly different answer (from John 14:6a NET translation )
    “I am the way, and the truth, and the life…”

    In either case it is objective truth that can be tested against something. It exists in and of itself outside the context of a society or a person. The Brahmandarins don’t like that, they’ve bought into the relative truth model of modernism hook line and sinker having decided Idealism and Existentialism are the way to go. So for them there is your truth and my truth and his truth and xir truth and marx’ truth and on and on ad nauseum.

  18. Funny you should say that.

    I’ve been places while in the military, where we knew what was going on. But when we read the local papers, and the papers from back home, and listened to the news, we could see that the media, and our own government, were feeding everyone a line of BS that would bury even Orvan under a mountain of bovine excrement. Now part of that is normal counter information warfare against the enemy. But that sort of thing is time dependent, and after a certain point, no longer necessary. Except the mis-information campaign never stopped.

    Even today, I’m dealing with a situation in town, where there are town employees, town elected officials, a business, two groups of opposed voters, and a huge number of non-participating residents, all trying to make sense of what the town employees, the town elected officials, and the business in question are saying, and which ones are lying or distorting facts. (Both sides are being a bit sketchy, so that’s even worse.) But what’s really evident is that for each and every person, they have a completely different story in their heads. There’s literally a thousand plus versions of this “history”.

    It’s been said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. That sounds nuts, but it’s completely true. Humans are communication animals. We have to communicate. But we also have to have a level of trust in the truth of the communications, otherwise, they become chaos, and we go nuts ourselves. So you can increase the false information in the communication flow, and if it’s not obviously wrong, people will accept it as true. And because we are a band of apes that try to conform, even the obviously false messages will be at first opposed, then as the consensus changes, ignored, and finally accepted as ‘truth’.

    What’s this mean? It means that we need to establish the truth as quickly as possible, and then we need to keep shouting the truth as often as possible to prevent the false narrative. It also means that if the opposition escalates to violence against our speaking the truth, that our response is effective, immediate, and possibly lethal, self-defense that squashes those violent operatives; followed by effective speech of the truth against those who sent those violent operatives against us. Like I said yesterday, don’t start any trouble, but go all out to end it.

    Things are getting scary. Had a weird network outage this morning during a conference call with work. Hospital network apparently disconnected. Then my own ISP went down. I looked at the screen for about 30 seconds, and then pulled out my pistol and magazines, before I went around rebooting everything.

    1. LIke your response,,, “Then my own ISP went down. I looked at the screen for about 30 seconds, and then pulled out my pistol and magazines,”

      Yes, the internet can die or its plug be pulled at any time by TPTB

      1. Is it wrong that I’m almost looking forward to that, if only because I can them point and laugh at my employer and say “See, it was a bad idea to put the university’s data on someone else’s servers!”

        1. Heh. I’m been posting that on all the major computer sites for over a decade; as well as advising the hospital I work at the same thing. It gets harder as the costs of maintaining systems increases in the corporation (wages, system complexity, routine maintenance, etc.)

          1. Have they gone to VoIP systems for phones yet? That’s another one that boggles my mind.

            “Lets make all of our communications systems go through the same Other People’s Computers instead of having them separate so that we can still communicate when one goes down!”

            To say nothing of the security problems that VoIP has WRT scanned documents, that copper-line faxes… would have required physical tapping to achieve.

            But apparently Not Being Able To Do Business At All for several hours is cheaper…

            1. I boggled when the techs in our Silly Valley fab showed off their shiny new emergency communications equipment. Previously, they were using handheld radios, but now they were using cell phones with an app. The reason given was that they had to support another facility a hundred miles away.

              Quoth I: “What happens when the San Andreas takes out the cell towers?”
              Answer: Crickets.

              1. heh— that’s a darkly humorous story! Shiny new gadget! New! Shiny! So shiny and new that the shine blinds us to problems, but hey, new shiny tech gadget! We is modern!

                1. Like the people I had to deal with regarding an “integrated,” suite of test equipment. The Big Defense Contractor and the Program Management Office wanted the diagnostic manuals on the central computer. I said (at a meeting, in front of God and everybody), “OK, the technician pulls up the procedure. The first step says, “Turn off power at main breaker.” OK, what’s the second step. “Gee, I don’t know, the screen just went blank.”
                  We put the manuals on the equivalent of a tablet.

        2. It’s not always a bad idea to serve data from the cloud instead of maintaining your own infrastructure – but that shouldn’t be the only place it’s stored. Regular local backups should be a minimum requirement.

          1. Ah, but local backups still require server space… apparently.

            I’m just happy that they’re keeping personnel and fiscal files on the university’s own servers…

            1. Indeed they do, but storage is cheap these days and and increasing the scope of local backups (I assume they are already doing those) to encompass the cloud data shouldn’t increase the maintenance costs significantly.

        3. I almost look forward to that (internet failure) too… The world will change for sure…Kids might actually go outside and play again instead of TikTok/Facebook/Texting all the time. They might actually read books again!

          1. Do you remember the end of the movie, “Ready Player One”? The new gaming company set up by the protagonist deliberately turns off the game on Tuesdays and Thursdays to encourage people to engage in reality.

            Of course, we might get the same effect with rolling blackouts in the next year or two.

            Muhahahahahahahaha!

            Wait. Why am I laughing? I’m not the evil genius doing that!

          2. I don’t. A lot of knowledge is only accessible to me there. And I doubt the internet will fail, though accessing it will be difficult due to electrical supply.
            AGAIN please do try not to exert your stupid.
            I’ve heard your arguments against the internet starting in Portugal against… RADIO.
            You don’t like it, put it on the side of the plate. Leave others out of your totalitarian impulses to break other kids’ toys. Kthanxbye.

          3. You would save a metric shitton of words if you just outright stated that you suffer from Authorophillia instead of hinting at it in a thousand different ways.

        4. We had an internet outage earlier this week at Day Job. I was the only unruffled soul in the place, I think. I work to make sure that for 95% of what I do, the internet is a nice resource but not vital. That 5% requires some “bringing art books and music CDs from home,” or me being musical at the students.

          1. I should add – I’m very fortunate that I have this option. I prefer having the internet. The students prefer my having the internet. For my writing? I need the ‘net.

  19. I don’t believe in purely human grand-scale conspiracies, with universally coherent agendas, but I do think that a lot of people set that concept up as a strawman to distract from more plausible scenarios. Everybody who believes in the Mafia, believes in long-running secretive groups with initiation rituals and shady agendas, who are not consistently punished by the law for their actions, and about whom reliable intel is at times lacking.

    Imagine a group or groups* of rich Anglo-Saxons (or French or German or Scandinavian or Whateverian people), who have a similar desire for power and status within their community without regard to legality or morality, and only a limited concern for the consequences of their own actions. If you want to throw in a sense of being wronged or ill-used and wanting to balance the scales in their own favor, rich Anglo-Saxons are as capable of feeling that way as impoverished Italians.

    Hypothesize that this imaginary group or groups of rich Anglo-Saxons operate in a vacuum of law caused by being above the law, as working class Sicilians and Sicilian-American immigrants originally operated in a vacuum of law caused by being below the law. Hypothesize additionally, given their position in society, that this imaginary group has even more influence over law enforcement and the media than the Mafia ever possessed. I think we would (at least until the Internet Age) know proportionately less about such a group than we know about the Mafia, but we would feel the effects of their selfish agendas more without recognizing the cause. That kind of “conspiracy”-a bunch of selfish people with agendas that overlap without being uniform, discreetly leveraging what power and money they have at everyone else’s expense-I find more plausible at a human level than a Unifying Conspiracy Theory of Everything.

    You can only have a Unifying Conspiracy Theory of Everything by putting hostile preternatural agents, of the kind described in Christian theology, at the root of it. Hostile aliens or transdimensional beings, of the types most ufologists propose, would not understand human nature well enough to manipulate it, and fairies, rakshas, oni, etc are generally described by those who believe in them as too chaotic to do anything that organized. They would be, at a preternatural level, merely a reiteration of the Mafia model.

    *(perhaps originally a family or couple of families)

  20. I think the 99% and 1% numbers are county, not country.

    I have for a number of years said that all history is a reduction of information about the slices of time that are the full ‘state space’ of a human society. It is clearly a data reduction, because history can be stored in a human mind, and the full state space of a society includes the state spaces of very many human minds.

    There is a soft proof that one human mind can not contain perfect fidelity models of very many human minds.

    History, and all academic fields that talk about human societies have theory that is lower fidelity than reality, /and/ people regularly use that theory without care for the degree of fidelity, including in circumstances where the fidelity could easily matter.

    When every single one of your nominal leaders, and of your leader wannabes study that theory, adn are sure that they can and should game it, the situation is very prepared for rapid changes that the theory cannot and will not prevent.

    History at best is descriptive of the past, and never predictive of the future.

    But, modern scholars are doing their best to ensure that their established theory, calibrated against past behavior, will not in the future be completely useful for understanding ‘current day’ behaviors.

  21. I think the 99% and 1% numbers are county, not country.

    I have for a number of years said that all history is a reduction of information about the slices of time that are the full ‘state space’ of a human society. It is clearly a data reduction, because history can be stored in a human mind, and the full state space of a society includes the state spaces of very many human minds.

    There is a soft proof that one human mind can not contain perfect fidelity models of very many human minds.

    History, and all academic fields that talk about human societies have theory that is lower fidelity than reality, /and/ people regularly use that theory without care for the degree of fidelity, including in circumstances where the fidelity could easily matter.

    When every single one of your nominal leaders, and of your leader wannabes study that theory, adn are sure that they can and should game it, the situation is very prepared for rapid changes that the theory cannot and will not prevent.

    History at best is descriptive of the past, and never predictive of the future.

    But, modern scholars are doing their best to ensure that their established theory, calibrated against past behavior, will not in the future be completely useful for understanding ‘current day’ behaviors. Partly because of frauding the theory, but mostly by being theory obsessives who are stupid and crazy when it comes to thinking about theory.

  22. Ooops.

    I was dumb and forgot that I had already attempted posting, and forgot that I was waiting to confirm.

    Apologies.

  23. I have a BA in History from way back when it meant learning actual history. They at least stressed going to original sources back then, something that would be considered fraud by our current academics. In the required Historiography class, I began my take-home final with, “Hegel understood that History is a gordian knot that, once unraveled, leaves you just enough rope to hang yourself with, but he didn’t believe himself.”

    History is usually the best story. Seriously, you can’t actually discern the real truth behind “why things happened”. Real life is chaotic (in the Chaos Theory sense of fractally generated), and you can catch the repeating patterns but never predict where exactly they’re going to go.

  24. One other thing in your essay that I need to mention is my utterly perplexed reaction when suddenly EVERYBODY had to be big supporters of poor little Ukraine. I was opposed to Russian aggression and imperialism. Why would I applaud the ventures of a KGB bureau climber (as opposed to a social climber)? But suddenly having “all the right people” insisting the same thing with the same vehemence that they had just been insisting on every thing on two legs getting the wuflu vaccines made me really uncomfortable. Something about that just made me shiver.

    1. Russian aggression? We, CIA, congress critters, etc. aided and abetted the violent overthrow of the Ukraine’s elected president because he favored Russia. Ukraine has consistently violated the Minsk accord attacking and rocket bombing the two pro Russian areas of the country. Perhaps Putin’s the good guy, trying to save the oppressed minority.

      OK I praised it that way purposely to inflame the statement, but both of the first two points are facts and no matter how I phrase such I’m sure to be accused of being a pro Russian bot so I went full whatever. One can paint him the good guy just as easily as painting us such in Korea, Vietnam, Irag, etc. My point being no matter how it’s phrased, suggesting today that there may be two sides to the story is pretty much forbidden.

      Headline two days ago: “101st Airborne Deployed to Ukraine’s Border ‘Ready To Fight Tonight’.” does not bode well for a negotiated settlement or seeing both sides of the story.

      1. “We, CIA, congress critters, etc. aided and abetted the violent overthrow of the Ukraine’s elected president because he favored Russia”

        Well, I don’t remember the violent part (unless that’s in the new Leftist-Speak dictionary meaning anything I don’t like), but we certainly did the aiding and abetting.

        Trump’s the only president we’ve had in a long time with a coherent foreign policy. Biden is of course demented and incoherent. Obama’s foreign policy should be summed up as “US bad. Everybody else good.” W’s foreign policy was strategically coherent in its goals, (surround Iran with US client states from which we can contain them), it was always wildly impractical.

          1. For folks who weren’t following along, the photo is the month :after: this:
            Now Kiev is trying to be more like Moscow in legal ways, as well — enacting Friday a set of draconian laws that would prohibit almost any protest, curtail freedom of speech, hobble the press, enable the government to ban citizens from using the Internet and classify advocacy groups as “foreign agents” if they receive money from abroad.
            https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/ukraine-enacts-harsh-laws-against-protests/2014/01/17/365f377a-7fae-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html

            Oh, and don’t forget the snipers being used on the protesters, back in January.

      2. We, CIA, congress critters, etc. aided and abetted the violent overthrow of the Ukraine’s elected president because he favored Russia.

        When the Russian puppet got kicked out in popular protests after a dirtier than usual election resulted in protests and he decided SNIPERS ARE A GREAT IDEA TO STOP PROTESTS,so he was kicked out by the locals, there was a leaked conversation between our diplomats had them (gasp!) discussing the local politics, and mentioned a specific guy (Klitschko) as someone who might end up being in power, was this a good thing or not!

        Incidentally, the boxer is the mayor of Kyiv.

        I looked this up months ago, when the claim was “this leaked phonecall shows Americans setting up a puppet government of Ukraine.”

        Because hey, it’s not like folks who escaped the USSR would be a bit upset by using snipers on a protest, right? Gotta be foreign involvement.

        1. You buy it, OK I don’t.

          Two sides, could the snipers have been a false flag raised by Azov et al? Dang if I know. There are videos of our congress critters over there, encouraging violent overthrow.

          Why yes, of course it’s highly improbable our government would ever interfere with the internal affairs another state, right?

          2. You’re skeptical about Russia putting a puppet in to a country they’ve been working to take back over, but are willing to believe the CIA set it up to LOOK like they did, based off of diplomats talking about politics in the country they’re supposed to be interacting with.

            Well.

            That does finish the conversation rather solidly.

              1. Indeed.

                It does not pass the smell test, even if one thinks they’re stupid enough to start an elaborate ploy to manipulate people into what they are already doing.

                  1. K, in defense of that, there are some confirmed Soviet/Russian plots that don’t pass the giggle test…..
                    (The Hitler’s Pope thing, for example: “We’ll write a play and people will believe that over Israeli officials from the time, and even Einstein!”)

                    1. Okay. But have we — OMG I sound like BOB — compared it to the chart of peak drug use? I will point out that sanity in this stuff started in the eighties when casual drug use seemed to start dropping.

                    3. Random trivia: Gian Maria Volonte, who played the bad guy in Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, directed the first Italian theatrical production of that play. Whether this makes those two movies better or worse I leave as an exercise for the reader.

      3. THIS is the truth, but again Putin is no hero either. I was also considered a Russian troll here for a while too. Might still lean that way (LOL) but mostly I am knowledgable about history as others here also are. (Pity poor Generation X, etc. and their lack of ANY knowledge). I’m a believer in reality, not fantasy. I know that history/truth is somewhere in the middle and not fully the narratives that are pushed (by all sides.) I just try to keep an open mind. One rule I try to apply when examining information for truth is “Cui Bono?” or Who benefits?” from the “Truth”. That helps a lot to decide what to believe.

        1. Nope Putin ain’t no hero but he isn’t the devil incarnate either.

          My point is unless we allow that there are two sides to the situation there is no way to negotiate a peace and far too many, here as well as elsewhere, are quite willing to continue the good fight until the last Ukrainian dies with an American rifle or rocket launcher in his cold dead hands, and even after such, to Dr. Strangelove, learn to love the bomb.

          1. IT IS NOT UP TO US TO NEGOTIATE PEACE.

            We are not fighting to the last Ukrainian, THEY ARE, because it is literally an existential war for them, because Russia literally wants to erase them as a nation and as a people.

            We did not start this war, Putin did, because he can’t stand the existence of a Ukraine that is progressing and improving and making Russia look bad.

            Stop appeasing a psychopathic dictator. Stop denying agency to other people. That’s an Ugly American trick.

            1. There’s also the motivation that Ukraine is making quite a bit of money– amazing, how you’ll get a bunch of American farmers to come in and make BOTH of you loads of cash, when they can be rather sure they won’t be killed, shaken down, or robbed– and the USSR-Lite really needs to up their looting game to survive.

            2. Can’t agree. I still see two sides to the situation, but wish we could respectfully disagree.

              I do not see myself as appeasing a psychopathic dictator, sorry if you d.

              1. Well, which parts of a country that is not yours are you willing to force them to give away for the sake of Peace In Our Time with an aggressive murderous dictator? All of Czechoslovakia, or just the Sudetenland part?

                2. “.. aggressive murderous dictator?” Putin or the those behind the Biden puppet?

                  Since you asked, leaving the Czecs out of it, I would be quite willing to, if I could, force the Ukraine to allow their eastern portion, Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk to vote to 1) stay in the Ukraine, 2) for autonomy, 3) To join Russia.

                  I can’t of course, but does that answer your query satisfactorily?

                  Quite frankly I think anything, except ten more minutes of democrats in control of our country, is a far better choice than WW III.

                  1. Fine. After the Russians and their collaborators and their agents provocateur are soundly defeated and driven out of Ukraine, then they should have a vote. We can even have the UN and the State Dept. and the BBC and the Boy Scouts monitor it. I think you’ll be very very surprised. You shouldn’t be, considering how literally every other country that’s been under Russia’s yoke is violently opposed to coming back under it.

                    2. You shouldn’t be, considering how literally every other country that’s been under Russia’s yoke is violently opposed to coming back under it.

                      WE CAN’T TALK ABOUT THAT

                      If we do then someone might notice that the Russian vassals ran to NATO the first chance they got, rather than NATO dastardly crawling towards Russia.

                  2. To your first. How about both. And Putin is BY FAR the worse, because he’s good at it?
                    Also the rest of your question: You didn’t understand what he was saying. GO READ IT AGAIN.

                    2. I read it again; “Well, which parts of a country that is not yours are you willing to force them to give away for the sake of Peace In Our Time with an aggressive murderous dictator? All of Czechoslovakia, or just the Sudetenland part?”

                      I replied, ignoring non germane Czechs, addressing forcing Ukraine, admittedly snidely noting that his ‘with an a. m. dictator’ put’s the kibosh on acceptance of any rebuttal…

                      I think I quite understood what he was saving and replied accordingly.

                      If such is unacceptable sorry,

                      None the less, I still stand by my; Quite frankly I think anything, except ten more minutes of democrats in control of our country, is a far better choice than WW III.

                3. Hey, at least they’re only doing ONE country.

                  Right now.

                  Gosh, wonder if that might be why Poland is getting all nervous….

                  1. Make Russia Poland again.

                    After all if “Ukraine was once possessed by Russia” is sufficient justification, then Poland should own Russia. Come to think of it Ukraine should also own Russia.

                    2. Way back in the olden days, the USSR used to have 3 votes in the UN under the fiction that a couple of their “republics” were independent countries. I don’t remember which ones, but it sure wasn’t the Baltic States.

                    5. One of my husband’s former employees has a son on first deployment in Poland. She is not happy.

                  2. At this point, I suspect that Poland plus the Baltics plus Finland and Sweden could probably take on the Russian Army by themselves and win. Even more so in a couple of years when they’ve replaced all their Soviet-era junk.

                    2. With the latest buy of military equipment, Poland can probably do it themselves if they can train up a force large enough to use it. Tanks, artillery, and jets from South Korea and the largest fleet of Apache helicopters outside of the US and Britain.

                4. Putin is trying to accomplish what Stalin first tried with the Holodomor, the genocide of the Ukrainians as a people and turning Ukraine into western Russia. Period.

            3. IF the US wanted peace, it would stop funding Ukraine. Don’t ignorantly comment without knowing the real facts and history of Ukraine and Russia. Research for yourself the true history (if possible to find) and make up your mind. Here is my understanding as simply as possible so you can understand. First of all, the Donbass and eastern areas of current Ukraine are populated by fully ethnic Russians. (look at some online voting “Color maps and you can see this Kruschev assembled “country” is really divided.) Also, Crimea has been Russian territory for hundreds of years before the Soviet breakup and so were these eastern “Ukranian lands with Russian ethnic speakers. Kruschev happened to be Ukrainian and during his term, he redrew the Russian maps to have more regional centers of control and so the Russian speaking areas of the eastern provinces (Donbass, etc.) where now part of the Ukraine “soviet republic”. When the Soviet Union broke up, Ukraine went its separate way, but had a majority of Russian speakers in those eastern regions. When the CIA sponsored Maidan color revolution in 2014 gave control to the ethnic Ukrainians in the west (Kiev, etc.) and the Biden Crime family start Grifting Ukraine, the eastern ethic Russians didn’t want to be ruled by the Ukrainians. Ever since then, there has been indiscriminate shelling of the Donbass by Ukrainians (and the Ukranian Nazi’s called Banderistas who WERE ON HITLER”S SIDE!) despite the Minsk agreement which was to give limited autonomy to the Russian speaking areas. The Ukrainians, with the US/CIA/UK, etc. supporting, just kept intentionally provoking Russia. The Bear had had enough poking and it was the final straw when VP Harris said it was fine to let Ukraine into NATO (which was against all the agreements with Gorbachov that led to peace after the fall of the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand eastward). That’s my general take. You can take it or leave it, but my view of the truth is the US and Ukrainians are responsible for provoking this war. As Jiminalaska said, Putin’s not the devil either. He is sticking up for ethnic Russian civilians who were indiscriminately being shelled by Ukranians. I wonder how many American and British “Observers” were captured with the fall of Mariupol and the Azovstal factory! That number is NOT public.

              1. IF the US wanted peace, it would stop funding Ukraine.

                Peace in our time!

                Good grief.

                In spite of American public school history, even I know that no, you won’t make Russia be peaceful by letting them take over the neighbors.

                  2. Then they start taking over Africa and South America as they did as the USSR.

                    Nota bene that the consistent allies of Russia in the UN are Cuba and… Nicaragua.

                    Reagan wasn’t wrong in opposing the Sandinistas, it’s just that letting Ollie North cowboy around with the Saudis and Iranians to support the Contras and then lie about it was a mistake.

                    2. Oh, I agree. I’ve just always thought it was a stupid plan. I remember hearing about it on the radio when the story first broke and thinking, “how did they think they’d ever be able to get away with THAT plan?”

                    4. Sorry, that was a totally brilliant plan by Col. North, worthy of a fiendish mastermind. Sell the evil Iranian terrorist regime the replacement parts they needed for their aging, obsolete fleet of F-4’s left over from the Shah’s era. Use the money to fund the Contras’ guerrilla war against the Communist Sandinista regime that wanted to turn Nicaragua into another Cuba. Also use the sale to Iran to try to get them to release Americans held hostage in Lebanon by pro-Iranian forces.

                      Did North lie to everybody? Pretty much, and he admitted it to Congress at his hearings. Brilliant all the same. Call it evil if you like, but brilliant. IIRC they did get the American hostages in Lebanon released. We can all debate whether North’s actions aided that release or not.

                      Affairs between nations are messy and can rarely be categorized as good or bad, frequently based on the time frame from which you choose to look at them. In the words of the Chinese parable, “We’ll see.”

                      In the words of one of the characters in Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, “There are no ends, only means.”

                      Instead, of trying to decide the ultimate good or bad result of our usually futile actions to influence world affairs for the better, I like to focus on the minor amusements that come my way. When the hostages held in Lebanon were released, they remembered a very peculiar incident where their captors came in and berated them with “New Jersey bad!” One hostage said, he agreed that New Jersey was pretty bad, but was surprised by his captor’s knowledge of US geography. Only when he was released did he found out that Reagan had sent the Battleship New Jersey to shell the terrorist camps in Lebanon.

                    5. Call it evil if you like, but brilliant.

                      I do not call it evil; in fact I said that I thought it was a good idea. But the plan?

                      Too clever by half, as the British say.

              2. Those ‘eastern areas of current Ukraine are populated by fully ethnic Russians’ because Stalin moved them in after exterminating the ethnic Ukrainians in the Holodomor.

                Is it any wonder some Ukrainians sided with the Nazis against Stalin?

                Putin-sponsored ‘separatists’ have been raising hell in those eastern regions of Ukraine for years. Is it wrong for the Ukrainians to oppose them?
                ———————————
                It takes two to make peace. It only takes one to make war.

                1. Lots of ethnic Russians sided with the Nazis too. See, e.g., the Hiwis (Hilfswilligers or “want to helps”) at Stalingrad. Until they learned that the Nazis would treat them just as badly either way.

                  Most of the “separatists” were in fact Russian nationals injected into Ukraine to foment unrest. And then when that didn’t work out, the “little green men” — i.e. Russian army troops — were sent in to fight the Ukrainian Army.

                2. Um… yes, indeed, but not just then and not just them.

                  One of the reasons some of the Baltic republics have such, hm, intense laws about speaking the local / national language is the Soviet policy of bringing in ethnic (usually Party) Russians to run things, economic as well as governmental, because all the same thing in Communism. To the tune something like 20-30% of their population today is ethnic Russians who (mostly) love and pine for the Good Old Days of Everything in Russian, Everything Run From Moscow.

                  Or in a word, Russian colonialism. Pretty much throughout the whole Soviet era, with the underlying idea that someday the ‘provinces’ would be enough ethnically-Russian to ‘win’ any vote — even (gasp!) an honest one — for the Russian-colonial side.

                  This goes double for the ‘Donbas’ etc. in today’s independent (if partly occupied) Ukraine.

                  1. I think the early days of Texas could be considered a similar situation; only in this case, where U.S. people immigrated into the area, colonizing it, and then taking over from the previous inhabitants until they had enough to tell Mexico to go lump it.

                    All of which supports the concept of controlled, limited, legal migration; and absolutely stomping out invasion/illegal immigration.

                    1. Texans were invited, from memory– it was only when Mexico decided that they’d done the job well enough and should now go away without the agreed benefits for service rendered that things got sticky.

              3. TLDR.
                IF the US wanted peace, it could get mired in a widening war.
                Stop funding the Ukraine, and they’ll fight on. And the other countries near Russia will join in on their side.
                look, I think I’ve said NO STUPID. I can’t handle it today. Just no.

              5. We both bad Tom. The world’s divided and all in the middle must be wrong.

                Meanwhile 4,700 guys in the 101st Airborne sitting on the benches by the border waiting for the coach to put them in play.

                On the benches as least 39 minutes ago according to the latest news on them I could find.

                1. The Reader really can’t figure this one. 4700 troops aren’t going to make any material difference in the conflict. However, they are a target for a Russian ‘accidental strike’ given that they are on the Romania Ukraine border. Now if the Poles were mobilizing, things would be different.

                  1. I don’t see any reason for them being there except as a threat.

                    Now if Russia were to airlift 4,700 troops to Big Diomede (Hey, it’s 11 square miles, they’d all fit.) only 2.4 miles from Little Diomede on the Alaska side of the border, even though the 4,700 troops couldn’t change history, I suspect we’d see it as a threat that needs a significant response (Little Diomede’s only around 2.8 square miles putting double Russia’s troops there would be a tight fit, we better deploy artillery and missiles there instead.)

                    My worry is we sent the 101st there to up the ante. Those in power here are worried about the mid terms and nothing like a war to unite and re-direct anger.

                    Such would probably work. Even here, among mostly rational folks, my take is they’re four square behind the Ukraine action and see the only acceptable conclusion of such is the devastating defeat of the Russians, no other end to the game is acceptable.

                    1. Even worse, nothing like provoking a war with a nuclear power in order to use it as a weapon against domestic political opponents; there is a reason why Team HarrisBiden has been essentially inviting Putin to use a nuke or two; they think it gives them their pretext to radically change the conduct of, or even suspend the upcoming elections, and if held and they lose, to simply declare an emergency because of “threat of nuclear war” and assert dictatorial powers that make the CCP Virus emergency declarations look minor league.

                      The Democrats are not going to voluntarily cede power. Period.

                    2. The Pentagon, BTW, has just changed their rules, headline: “Stunning Strategy Reversal: Pentagon Will No Longer Rule Out Use of Nuclear Weapons Against Non-Nuclear Threat…”

                    5. Sorry. we’re done being blackmailed by Russia with “I keel you” while we let them eat countries.
                      As someone who lived in one of the countries they plunged into chaos though they never took us over (just the African colonies. And for what they and their Cuban mercenaries did there I direct you to Peter Grant.)
                      I say they’re bluffing. And if they aren’t, well, we’ll find out. We’re not going to let them rule over the world — their ultimate objective. No.
                      The cold war was a mistake. We should have dared them. they admit they had NOTHING.

                    6. Senator Black suggests the Ukraine, at our governments request, may set off a dirty bomb and blame Russia an an October surprise. Years back I would have thought such an idea was just plain crazy, but, now, with our present administration..

                      Black may well be wrong, I sure hope so, but sorry, I don’t see that as Russia blackmailing.

                      As for world domination, I feel the western globalists are a far greater threat than Russia.

                  2. Well… if they did get hit that would give the FICUS (or who ever is in charge of his “WWIII in our time” cadre) an excuse to actually declare war on Russia.

                    1. And there in lies the real concern over that troop movement. The Reader is also sure that Putin has not forgotten the ‘incident’ between his ‘mercenaries’ and US Special Forces in Syria four years ago. An opportunity to hit back will be hard for him to pass if his military can find the means.

                2. Jim. I like the line in the movie “War Games,” where the killer AI supercomputer controlling all the US nukes says, “Greetings Dr. Falken, Interesting game (of Tic Tac Toe.) The only way to win is to not play.” No point trying that here unfortunately because of entrenched and intractable thoughts and thinking and I also really don’t want to argue with people on this blog. Hopefully I stimulated some thought, whether it was good/bad/smart/dumb; at least people were thinking and not in ignorant stupor like many Americans. And that’s something the world needs: people who think critically. I’m still glad many of those people are here though even though we don’t always agree.

                  All this reminds me of some lines from Yeats poem, “The Second Coming’:
                  Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
                  and
                  The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

                  The world seems at this point. Let’s all vow (together) to somehow not make the rest of his poem happen. Unfortunately, our leaders seem to want World War 3.

                  I won’t play the game by the elites’ rules anymore, so I will stay neutral in the likely coming conflict. What was the line from that song? “What if they had a war and no one came?” At least you are likely safe up there in Alaska. Keep warm by your fire and keep your boots and powder dry. I’d like to share a snifter of brandy with you there too and if not in this life, perhaps the one after.! LOL

                  1. Yep. Yep. Yep. I don’t really want to argue either, I like the folks here a but as you say, stimulate thought.

                    Maybe safe here, two fighter jets, F35s, just flew over the house doing touch and goes at Ft. Wainwright. F35s, with a 12 hour flight time, can reach just about anywhere in the northern hemisphere from here.=, which would make it a plane of interest and this a location of interest to any group not friendly to the U.S. Not worried for myself, no matter what, I had a grand run, but the thought of others cut short, here, the Ukraine, Russia does saddens me.

                    Yep brandy, John Jameson, or my brewed, here on the premises White Night Stout.

                    1. JIm,

                      I know you are a man of more years and wisdom than I, and I respect my elders and their wisdom. Many people don’t these days and that is a big problem in this country. As a gift and thank you for just being here in this world still, I would be glad to mail you a signed copy of my book for your pleasure. Just email your mailing address to: tahunter.author at that gmail dot com location

                    2. And in this you demonstrate that you do not have the faintest clue how respect works.

                      Respect is earned. You don’t get it because you popped out of the womb before I did.

                3. The Pentagon, BTW, has just changed their rules, headline: “Stunning Strategy Reversal: Pentagon Will No Longer Rule Out Use of Nuclear Weapons Against Non-Nuclear Threat…”

                  GOOD

                  Inviting the rest of the world think that a nuclear armed America was a tame puppy on a leash was one of the stupidest things we’ve ever done. Treating nuclear weapons as some sort of magical talisman of doom is why we take wonderful chemical feedstocks and use them to generate electricity instead.

                  1. Can’t say I agree. I’m all for productive use of atomics, but I was around when Little Boy and Far Man were dropped. I’ve been to Hiroshima. BTW: I do think it was the right thing to do, then, it ended the war and saved many Japanese, as well as American lives. Japanese friends, that lived through the war that I’ve talked with pretty much agree. Japanese friends of the following two or so generations, not so much.

                    Frankly I think the carpet firebombing of Tokyo was more horrendous but I still don’t want to see nuclear weapons used again.

                    1. The best way to prevent them from being used again is to make it clear that one is ready to use them if needed; deterrence works against rational actors. The crazies you need to prevent them from getting them, and if necessary destroy the crazies before they can use them.
                      Peace through strength and peace through superior firepower works. There is good reason for the saying if you want peace, prepare for war.

                    5. sigh

                      Look, we’ll wrap them into Orion Drive launches. And we can open protest grounds for nucleophobes underneath the pusher plate.

                      Kill three birds with one stone.

                    8. Unless they changed it since the ’80s when I took a course in Nuclear Policy & Strategy, US doctrine has never been “no first use”. Because we knew we might need them to stop a Soviet invasion of Germany. Also, the US has repeatedly said that we considered any NBC attack the equivalent of “N”.

              6. Where does the shoot-down of the Malaysia Airlines airliner by separatists using a Russian SAM system fit into all of what you wrote?

                1. shoot-down of the Malaysia Airlines airliner by separatists Russian Army troops without insignia

                  FIFY

                  2. More likely mercenaries from the Wagner Group, who provide a thin veneer of plausible deniability for the Russian government (and also get bombed by the US Air Force when they decide to test the US in places like Syria).

              7. Crimea has been in the Russian Empire for about as long as the US has existed as a nation. During that time Russia has ethnically cleansed it twice that I am aware of: first kicking out the non-Tartars in the late 1700s (those exiles went on to found places like Mariupol) and then the soviets kicking out lots of the Tartars. Despite that, back in the 1990s over 50% of the people in Crimea at the time voted to be part of an independent Ukraine.

                The Russian Empire is the only European colonial empire to survive the 20th century – the rest were dismantled either after WW1 or during the British/French decolonizations of the 1950s/60s . There’s nothing special about the Russian Empire that means it should continue and plenty to suggest that actually the world would be a better place if it didn’t

              8. Also worth noting that the Russophone areas of Ukraine emphatically do not want to be part of Russia. If they did Russia would have been able to easily conquer places like Kharkiv.

                1. Indeed. This seems to be one of Putin’s major miscalculations, probably due to overdosing on drinking his own ink.

                2. ArmorySmith on YouTube is one such. His Rus viewers were befuddled that he supports kicking the Russian Army out of Ukraine, and instantly many went full leftist on him (i.e. calling him a Nazi because as a Ukrainian born and raised, though a Russophone, he’d rather stay Ukrainian, not be part of a Rus Puppet State)

              9. Donbass et al have a lot of ethnic Russians, but a lot more ethnic Ukrainians and other ethnic groups. The ethnic Russians and their parents were shipped in for mining and factory work. Some of the Russians want to live there as Ukrainians, some don’t.

                Crimea was Muslim tribal territory and Christian Cossack territory, but not Russian territory until recently. A fair amount of Black Sea towns, including Sochi, are also only recently Russian.

                1. And btw, the Cossacks (Kazaki) are Eastern Slavs, but they are not Russian Slavs. Ask them. They have been part of various Slavic countries and have run their own, but they have never been of Russian ethnicity.

              10. “First of all, the Donbass and eastern areas of current Ukraine are populated by fully ethnic Russians. (look at some online voting “Color maps and you can see this Kruschev assembled “country” is really divided.)” And we all know that people’s political loyal is 100% determined by their ethnicity.

        2. I haven’t seen enough of your posts to have an opinion on your specific knowledge of history, but I’ve known plenty of boomers who were as ignorant of the subject as anyone younger.

          1. Yep. America would be a much better place if the Boomers weren’t so very sure of a lot of things that just ain’t so, history among them.

          2. Hum youngster, I can’t think of any boomers I know that are as ignorant concerning history as anyone. as anyone, younger. Not some, not most but you suggest anyone younger? Most boomers can tell you the year the Battle of Hastings was fought off the top of their head, as each and every one of them had to answer that query 10 or 20 times on high school history tests. Can you tell me why it was fought without googleing it? Not faulting you if you don’t not lauding you if you do, just curious.

            None the less, I’m not a historian, nor do I claim to be, nor am I a boomer, I belong to an earlier generation than them. OK young person, I am an adult simply expressing my opinion and, while it’s not germane to the discussion, I’ve no problem with your insinuation I may well be ignorant, I quite agree, the one thing I know, that I’m quite sure of, is how little I know.

            1. 1066, part of a larger fight over the succession of the English Crown, which involved rival Saxon, Dane, and Norman claimants. Norman claimant William (alias the Bastard or the the Conqueror) won, partly because Saxon claimant’s army was exhausted after winning a battle over the Danish claimant. Immortalized in the so-called Bayeux Tapestry, arguably the first bande dessinee (apologies to French speakers, I don’t feel like wrestling with l’accent aigu right now), which was a sort of scroll of embroidery depicting the battle and the events leading up to it, including Halley’s Comet. It was commissioned by the cudgel-wielding Bishop Odo, a kinsman of William, and executed by William’s wife and her ladies-in-waiting. The most entertaining person in William’s known family tree was possibly Duke Rollo I (or Hrolf) of Normandy, who swore fealty to the King of France but when asked to kiss the King’s foot as part of the ceremony, grabbed the King by the ankle and flipped him out of his chair.

              I do not find Russo-Ukrainian history particularly interesting, so I’m less knowledgeable about that, and largely agnostic as far as the current conflict goes.

              *No google or wikipedia employed in this response, although I had occasion to look up Duke Rollo some weeks back on wikipedia because I’d heard the story mentioned above but couldn’t remember the name of the Viking-turned-Frenchman involved. I’m only about 90% sure of him being a direct ancestor of William’s but I’m 99% sure they were related.

              1. “I do not find Russo-Ukrainian history particularly interesting, so I’m less knowledgeable about that, and largely agnostic as far as the current conflict goes.”

                I almost failed my Russian History course in college because I couldn’t keep all of the damned Ivans straight. Friend of mine was in the class, she frequently bemoaned how boring it was (and the fact that like 90% of the Tsars were named “Ivan the Something-Or-Other.”) I told her to stick it out until we hit the Late 19th-Early 20th Century, because I assured her it would FINALLY get interesting. After the semester, she admitted that I was right.

                    2. The Reader wonders how long a Russian novel would have be to convey that thought.

                      The Reader is stealing it if you don’t mind.

                  3. I may have already written this somewhere in the comments over the years, but jokes say a lot about a culture and a country.

                    Great Russian Tragedy. Everybody dies.
                    Great Russian Drama. Everybody dies.
                    Great Russian Comedy. Every dies–but they die HAPPY.

                    Then there’s the one about the Russian who discovers a supernatural granter of wishes who offers to grant a man’s 1 wish, but there’s a catch:

                    “Whatever you wish for, your worst enemy gets the same but double.”
                    Unfazed the Russian replies, “Make me blind in one eye.”

                  1. Peter the Great was interesting, but we only spent maybe a week on him at most since we had over a thousand years of history to get through and a single semester to get through it.

          1. One would have to search long and hard to find somebody that wouldn’t have been a better President than Obama.

            Unfortunately, the Democrats did. They even found two.
            ———————————
            Harris-und-Biden were never elected — they were installed, like a toilet and a bidet. Unlike them, a couple of plumbing fixtures would actually be useful.

            2. Obama selected Biden as assassination insurance. No one rational would take him out only to get Biden as President. That’s one lesson Biden learned from Obama.

              1. There’s a limit to that, right? Please tell me that we’re already at the event horizon of incompetence, and not in the timeline where we find out what kind of insurance policy veep candidate President Harris (vomits) would select.

                2. After the recent debate, some wag was promoting Biden/Fetterman 2024 (as a joke of course). Please God, don’t anybody be giving these people ideas.

            1. True. But that’s a problem we all run into when we start thinking about alternate pasts, presents, and futures. “If only…” doesn’t just apply to personal regrets. But I’m willing to bet we are the only animals on this planet that keep trying to apply that to our real world in our attempts to make sense of it.

      4. Oh, hell. That’s BS. We did not. Our guy (the democrat’s guy) got overthrown.
        There are things we know. The Ukraine tried to kick the Russian mob out. That’s the origin of all this.

        1. OK maybe it’s BS, I think maybe is isn’t or it is bottom line, damnedifiknow. The only thing I know about the Ukraine war is folks are dying in it, folks are profiting from it, we are closer than I like to WW III.

          Most disagree, here very strongly disagree, with trying to see the situation from the other side but I’ll keep on pushing the idea and a negotiated peace, not that I see such as likely.

          1. I agree with Jim in alaska and agree civilians die because of Elite games. Let Biden Zelensky and Putin have a life or death cage match like in Mad Max Beyond thunderdome.

    2. Here’s a question: Where is the U.N.?

      I thought they were the international body that’s supposed to prevent invasions and wars and whatnot. What are they doing about the conflict in Ukraine?

      Why, it’s almost like they were just a bunch of useless self-important windbags…
      ———————————
      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. UN can stay in the US. Just so long as we relocate their headquarters (preferably while occupied) about…. [consults map] ….eh, call it 1,500 feet or so east-southeast.

                  1. hazard to navigation, pollution, and the sound of whiny know-it-alls demanding saving . . . Okay, the last could be good for some sort of target practice.

            3. Hear me out: we leave it right where it is, wait until they meet, and lock the doors.
              Because I’m such a softie, I’d allow food and water in. We could charge admission: Come see the useless bureaucrat and dictator exhibit!

              If you prefer, though, skip the food, toss in some knives, and put it on pay-per-view.

              1. Would erase the national debt, that would. Have some gifted voice actors narrate it soccer style.
                “The kleptokrat of Rwanda has the knife, and he’s facing the useless bureaucrat of Belgium, and that’s a KNIIIIIIIIIIFING. KNIIIIIIIIIFING. Ladies and gentlemen, we haven’t seen a more beautiful stab to the liver since the leech from Spain ate out the liver of the scab from Morocco.”

                2. Hmm, there may be an environmental protection angle here we could use to sell them on it…

    3. That’s how I felt about the whole thing as well. Current Thingism really is spooky to watch.

  26. I won’t say it makes sense but it all is quite understandable if I assume everyone, except you and me, of course and I’m not so sure about you, is Bat Shit Crazy.

    I’m only being a little facetious, if one accepts this is an age of mass hysteria, mass psychosis, the world around, the actions of others are quite understandable.

    Mass hysteria always existed but the size of the mass, the spread, due to slow travel, communication limits, of the hysteria was limited; a nunnery full of sisters sheep baaing, a town square of barking merchants, whatever. Witch & heretic burning often got out of hand but was never a world wide occurrence, until today.

    However today with many world wide town squares like, say, twitter, farcbook, etc., each and every psychosis passes to the masses fastest.

    Don’t assume the inmates are running the asylum, assume there is no asylum and Katy bar the door!

    1. I have puzzled some with the line, “Just because I am crazy, that does not mean that I am stupid.”

      The classic joke for that is…

      Mr. BigShot (or Mr. WannaBeBigShot) is driving to Very Important Meeting. And then, BLAM there goes a tire. And right in front of the NutHouse, too.

      So he gets the ‘spider’ and ‘breaks’ the lugs, lifts with the jack, pulls the blown tire, fits the spare (old joke, see) and is distracted just enough that he winds up knock ALL the lugnuts down the storm drain. Oh crap, now what?

      And then one the bunch of Napoleon and the Gang who have been watching says, “Hey Mister… you know… it ain’t gonna be ideal, but you can take one nut from each of the other wheels and use them, and you can get by for a little while.”

      The fellows ponders a moment and realizes the ‘nut’ is right about the nuts. “Say, that’s rather smart and clever. Do you really belong with that bunch?” and gets the reply, “Mister, we’re crazy, not stupid.”

  27. Having participated in the conspiracy to raise oil prices in the 1970s by working to service, preserve, and shut down producing oil wells in California for 6 moths before the great “Oil Shortage” happened, for years, I thought that it was an actual conspiracy.
    It wasn’t.
    That was the time that the oil Princes came home from Wharton, the London School of Economics, and similar colleges asking why oil was priced much lower per BTU than was coal. The answer was to reduce supply to raise prices.
    People in an industry talk to each other, and seek to know what each other are doing.
    Common interests, commonality of education, and similar circumstances, each acting in their own self-interests, reaches the same result as does a conspiracy.
    This does not mean that their are no conspiracies active, but they are more likely to be money driven, top down, with multiple-levels of actors who think that their employers are acting in what their teachers told them was in the best interests of society.

    1. That was the time that the oil Princes came home from Wharton, the London School of Economics, and similar colleges asking why oil was priced much lower per BTU than was coal.

      urge to throttle fake economists intensifies

      (in minecraft of course)

  28. The Russia/Ukraine Thing has never quite squared with reality in my head either. I’ve been playing with a theory that it’s more like a Gang War between two organized crime families over resources. “Turf.”

    Yeah, I know, you could model all wars that way, but it fits better in my mind.

    What resources? We’ll, lots of them: oil, warm-water port, lots of great farmland… the classics. But one item has been in my mind since “antebellum:”

    Server Farms. Am I right that Ukrainian Server Farms are a source of a disproportionate amounts of evil hacking and metric tons of Spam? Are the Ruskies trying to muscle-in on the Ukrainian’s Action? Just Business. Nothing Personal?

    Anyway, that’s my $0.02.

    1. The Ukraine tried to kick the Russian mob out. That might be it. BUT I think it’s that our domestic idiots tried to use it to stomp on opposition.
      How? Well, they’ve now convinced themselves (snort giggle) that Trump is a Russian stooge. And therefore they KNEW we’d all side with Russia and they could arrest us for sedition and…
      Yeah, they dream a lot.

  29. At one point in college, a bunch of my friends got it into their heads to (jokingly) claim that I was the only real person, and everyone else were figments of imagination. Then they would start a chain similar to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon figuring out which of them I had imagined up, which people those individuals had subsequently imagined up, and so on.

    No, I have no idea how it started. Or why they picked me.

    The topic reminded me of that.

    Regarding Ukraine, the situation I can see based pretty much on where the front lines are and where they’ve been seems to make sense to me. I don’t claim to be a military expert, but I do have a lot of armchair historian knowledge on military stuff. And what I can see makes sense.

    Of course, I’ve also been telling people over at Ace’s blog that they need to pay more attention to the utterly inadequate Russian logistics system, and keep being told by doomsayers that my insistance that Russia likely can’t supply many more men in the field than it already does is just silly.

    1. Because RUSSIA STRONK and because we thought they were so big a conventional threat back in the ’80s, and a big conventional threat must have a logistical system for it, and the WW2 Red Army was huge, so of course they can support a giant army in the field forever…

      /eyeroll

    1. “I’ve been working on latest invention. A sort of ray-gun built in spectacle frames. Perfect for after hours in dubious areas.”

      “Ray-gun glasses? After hours? You mean…”

      “Yes. I’ll wear my STUN-glasses at night!”

    2. I make a terrible anime character. Jaw’s too square, can’t get my hair to go like that (or that color), and I never seem to be able to get the light to shine off the lenses properly.

      1. It’s that last point that is the real killer, honestly.

        There’s square-jawed guys– although they’re usually not the glasses guys– but why can’t we get the evil reflection thing to work?!

        1. Yikes! And I like elven women. And dwarven women. And halfling women. And Pantherian, Hopper, and lizard women.
          Waaaaiiiit a second.
          Did I just describe myself as Emile Bichel Berger, from “How Not to Summon a Demon Lord?”

  32. Read a few posts here.
    Here’s my hypothesis:
    1. Ukraine – Follow the money being laundered.

    Covidiocy – Part follow the money and part compliance.
    Some people made lots of money.
    Some Sheeple even wore masks when home, alone in a completely clean and disinfected house.

    Just my hypothesis.

  33. Good one. Hey, did I ever tell you I was paranoid? Well, I am and it’s served me well. And it’s nice to have company. These points, in particular bother me as well, ,”the war that makes no coherent sense… Biden first gave the all clear to a “small incursion” then withdrew it, then once Russia went in…attempts to provoke Russia to a nuclear war… ” This is reminiscent of when our UN ambassador (or someone, some gubmint hack) mentioned that ‘we,’ the U.S., would not have a problem if Saddam went into Kuwait. He did. The door closed, and that was our pretext to take him out. (No weapons of mass destruction) The whole war makes no sense. Saddam kept Iran at bay and vice versa. All the war did was grind up our best soldiers and sucked out half the national treasure re-building Iraq while American cities declined.

    One thing I would add, and it’s a big one, to your points about the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia- Putin, Putin, Putin’ war is this. There is absolutely no desire in our gubmint in Washington to put an end to this war. Anyone suggesting some kind of mediated peace or pause is instantly labeled a Russia lover, or a Putin lover, or, most egregiously, a traitor. WHY? Why this war to smash everything in Ukraine and fight to the last Ukrainian and last American dollar? There are people who believe that Ukraine was, has been, our satellite, or ‘laundromat’ over there. How does it work? We Americans send massive amounts of our money over there with little or no accountability, and then it finds its way back here in the luggage of gubmint princes like Hunter Bye-done, Pelosi’s son, and others, on both sides of the aisle. So it’s all corrupt. The other reason for this war, in my opinion, is regime change in Russia, just like we did in Iraq. Putin (and I know some will brand me as a Russia/Putin lover for saying this; but I could give a shit)… Putin, like some of the Middle East potentates, is appalled by the West’s turn to woke, feminist, and sexual pervert culture. He, Putin, and the sheiks, want nothing to do with it. Even people here who do not want to be ‘JUDGEMENTAL,’ now that they see what’s being promoted and normalized, don’t want anything to do with it. So Putin must be taken out so that Russia will allow Pussy Riot (google it) and the gays and the trans transform their culture into the cesspool that we’re going to have here if we don’t turn back the tide.

    Regime change! The deepstate/Democrat Party covering up their ‘business’ deals and bio labs in the Ukraine… This is why we must have war over there. Google the Green Revolution in Ukraine engineered by the Obama regime in, I think, 2014.

    Okay… let it fly.

        1. I guess some Ukrainians are fighting to be independent of Russia. Some of them were probably happy with their lot before the war. I say, let them fight it out. I say, we ended one forever war (Afghanistan) and immediately started another. Why? Why are we always poking our noses into others’ business around the world. And why does this administration, or whatever it is, seem to want to provoke Russia into a nuke exchange. And I say, you may well be ready to take a nuclear strike… for Ukraine, and all our insane rulers, diaper Biden among them, but I’d rather not. So, I’m for peace. Might have to be an imposed peace like Cyprus. But I’m for peace. I’m for keeping our money and our troops here.

            1. I hate it when they turn leftism upside down and think that means they’re on the right.
              And I’m on benadryl, which means there’s so much stupid I can take, before I happen to someone.

          2. Much simpler answer: enough hurting has happened to make a LOT of Ukrainians ready for some payback. No sinister motive or corruption required for them.
            There’s some giddy, “Wow! We’re still alive! And we’re kicking Russian butt!” going on, too.

          3. Afghanistan wasn’t a forever war; although military violence was used. The thing is, Afghanistan is really a sewer of the world, and the Taliban et. al. are the pathogenic viruses and bacteria, fleas, rats, and alligators inhabiting the sewer. Point is, you can never clean out the sewer, only limit the amount of pests proliferating in, and flowing out of it. Our military in Afghanistan were pest controllers. They performed two functions: they stomped on the bad guys when they got too dangerous, and they acted as a lightning rod to keep the bad guys focused on them, and not on our own continent.

            1. I know what Afghanistan was. No, I was not there, but I was involved in another guerilla war in Vietnam, where you had an indigenous anti-freedom element. And it was like Whack-a-mole. But my point about Afghanistan is that it was a forever war. We got in and we never left, and culling the gators from the sewer, yeah, that went on and on and we have a lot of guys walking around with prosthetic limbs because of it. But, our Masters of War had no problem with that, ’cause… somebody, them, was making a lot of money over there in ‘rebuilding,’ Afghanistan, as if it was ever ‘built.’ All the military industrial complex guys were getting rich. President Biden’s brother, who had no experience as a builder, was given a plumb job of building housing over there. It was, in the years after it’s take-over by U.S., a big firehose of cash flowing out of the National coffers over to ‘people’ in Afghanistan. Then that money started flowing back here, or I should say, back to our ‘rulers’ in the government and the congress. Like Trump, I was for putting an end to it. But, as we all know, you don’t just end it like Biden did. There’s a way to go about it. Anyway, I stand by my opinion that it was a ‘forever war.’ Now we have a new one. Popped up right after the other one shut down. And the same people went over there (in 2014, when obama and biden engineered (with the CIA) a ‘green revolution’ and installed their puppet government. The the money pumps in the U.S. started pumping that cash over there and the bag men followed (Hunter Biden and other Princes of our elected (not really) leaders (not really; they’re rulers). I rest my case.

              1. And the same people went over there (in 2014, when obama and biden engineered (with the CIA) a ‘green revolution’ and installed their puppet government.

                Please, go look at the actual events involved, instead of the very pretty just-so stories that keep being pushed as insight– and fail to correlate with the objectively factual events on the ground.

                The same people pushing the narrative in your quote also claim that Zelensky was “installed” in 2014, bribed Biden, and Trump tried to blackmail him with the phonecall. Oh, and the Jewish comedian is a Nazi, or at least the neo-nazi’s preferred candidate….

                  1. I’m pretty sure it’s just subverted routes of information– I know that a lot of folks over in Insty’s comments that were perfectly reasonable on politics, right up until Putin went into the Ukraine.
                    Then wooooosh suddenly arguments were inside out upside down and backwards.

                    1. So I’m a Lefty? That’s funny. But what’s funnier is how my opinions are characterized as ‘conspiracy theories.’ Whatever. I just want people to know, that in stating my opinions, and defending them, I have not attacked anyone or engaged in name calling. I’ll just leave it at that and hope that I will still be allowed to state my conspira… I mean, opinions, here. Good day!

                    2. That’s not what she said. That’s what I SAID.
                      You’re buying into a lot of lefty conspiracy theories.
                      You’re not a lefty. You’re an upside-down lefty, one of those people who decided that if the left was wrong the opposite MUST be right.
                      I submit to you that you have a ton of thinking to do.

                    4. Sometimes you need a mirror, don’t you?
                      Presuming you”re not malicious, you might want to investigate your sources of information.
                      If we were EVER worthy of your attention you’d consider it, I think.
                      Instead, you prefer to do the grand jete flounce, I see.

                    5. If I was going to call you a lefty, I would have done so.

                      I said you have been lied to by people who, previously, were at worst unobjectionable in their claims.

                      That is pretty much what the Progs live on, and have for DECADES, at least.

                      That’s the “skinsuiting” that Ian has pointed out.

                  2. I don’t think Carl is exactly wrong when it comes to the military industrial complex, their motives, and their actions. Hell, Eisenhower even warned us about them, and practically admitted to being powerless to stop them, even as President. That right there tells me that that can of worms isn’t fixable within the Constitutional framework. And that bothers me, because I swore an oath to uphold that Constitution; and due process, and civil control over military action is a big part of that.

                    1. The military industrial complex is mostly leftist, as we’ve learned.
                      His conspiracy theories, starting with 9/11 trufferism ARE ALL STRAIGHT FROM THE LEFTIES.
                      Yes, I know one blog that claims to be on our side and echoes that.
                      That blog has issues, including the fact the owner LOATHES the US and only thinly disguises it.
                      If he’s getting his information there, he’s WILLINGLY drinking the koolaid.

                    2. THIS. The real question is who controls the MIC? Methinks it is a shareholders/banker’s game as always. Find the shareholder and you have the culprits. Who (i.e. the individuals) owns the FED? Money is the root of all evil (or at least majority of it).

                      Our global monetary system (FED led and controlled since 1913 and also the Dollar at Bretton Woods) is on the brink of collapse based of the inevitable mathematical fact that compound interest grows exponentially out of control and interest unpayable. Hence current inflation, debts will eventually be defaulted on, and the infinite pile of printed and digital dollar bills will be worthless. This whole World War III discussion is really about that! Parts of the world want out of the dollar system to trade real goods for real value (not printed digits on a debt ledger). Those who control the dollar don’t want that to happen.
                      World War III (we’re likely in the preamble right now) will be fought about that. Tiawan is likely the next fire born and fanned from the flaming plans on their (the bankers/elite/globalists) agenda.

                    3. I don’t know enough about George Orwell to posit how much he based the endless bush wars in 1984 on manipulation by their MIC. That those wars were used as a distraction to control the population, and a means of diverting wealth was pretty well established; and reflected almost daily in today’s world.

                    4. “That right there tells me that that can of worms isn’t fixable within the Constitutional framework.”

                      Mike, it’s fixable within the CONSTITUTIONAL framework. Read any number of the Founding Fathers. Fixing that can of worms is why they included the Second Amendment.

                      What you cannot fix it within is our so-called LEGAL system. Which is why so many people are sticking their fingers in their ears and singing “alt-right, doomer, blackpilled, glowie” when they get confronted with clear evidence that is the case.

                      Ah well. As one of those Founders said, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” It really isn’t a coincidence that he also said “Experience keeps a Dear School, but Fools will Learn at No Other.”

                    5. Steve, it’s interesting, you know? The ones that get called alt-right are alt-right, like brother Tom Deplorable there, who’s obviously been drinking deep from the shit fountain of “only white anglo saxons” if you read what he’s saying. “Blood and soil is superior” my raw bloody feet. You have to be ignorant of history.
                      The ones called black pilled are the ones to whom we’re saying “It’s all over. we’ve already lost.”
                      The ones being called doomer are the ones screaming “If we haven’t fought yet, we never will.” You fall into this pit sometimes. Please read about what the founding fathers did put up with before flipping, and what they ENDURED before. And how many fought RELUCTANTLY.
                      We’re not there yet. This is not a movie.
                      I don’t see anyone saying “can’t hear you” OR “everything is okay.”
                      I see a lot of people desperately hoping we can vote our way out of it. I’m divided. we might, if we get a miracle. BUT there will still be crap here and there.
                      THAT turn is also much slower. But much less likely to land us in a racialist, dictatorial shit bowl. (Which we will then have to fight.)
                      So, possess your soul in patience. Maybe people don’t tell you what they’re really thinking because you scare them?
                      What I hear is not remotely that nothing will EVER happen. Okay. Chill.

                  1. Sarah,
                    I’m definitely not from the other side and although you may think I am Alt-right, I really am not. I am conservative in the fact that culture should be maintained and I see the American culture of the Founding Fathers being destroyed with history being erased intentionally and the slow creep of the Overton window leftward. I am also very libertarian too and I do believe in right and wrong, good and evil. My book is about good and evil and partly about defeating the global elites. Near the end, the local sheriff takes down the Crimson banner with 54 yellow stars (future American flag) and burns it. So I am definitely against communism, socialism, AND fascism. Right now, America is a fascist country too (by the definition ” the merger of State and Corporate powers”).

                    As has been said, “all wars are bankers wars” and I am smart enough see that the Ukraine War has been manipulated to fruition from above (by global puppeteers) for years. I am skeptical of both sides and actually feel Putin is likely (somehow) in the same WEF/elites club as all the others and has been given the mission to do the Ukraine t ng at this time.
                    As to what the elites plans are, conflict (World War) is what they seem to want and I am against that. However, the likely goal is a World War to erase the world’s reserve currency (Dollar) problems. That let’s the bankers off the hook and gives them a scapegoat. (i.e. Putin did it; just like they have been promoting Trump as a Putin’s stooge for years).

                    My take is let Putin have his Ukraine war, and if he makes a single further step to any other country, gloves should come off but don’t let this mess turn into World War III just yet. With China as the manufacturing capacity/manpower and Russia’s natural resources supporting them, with our Woke military, we likely won’t stand a chance unless we use Nukes. Then we are all toast, and I am NOT in favor of that!

                    Let us agree to disagree and like I said earlier, I will keep off this topic further (this post excepted to give me a chance to defend myself). But if WW3 is started over this Ukraine stuff, I was against it and will be protesting against it all the way until I am hauled away to FEMA Camp Bravo! I’d be proud to share that train car with Jiminalaska, Carlmelcher1, and others on this forum too, as they seem to understand to stay out of this one (World War III) for now. FWIW, no one here has answered the question yet: Who funded Hitler and the Bolshevics? I haven’t fully researched it, but I think you will find its likely the same elite team promoting the current conflict.

                    On another note, I hope your new novel BOR is successful!

                5. For the record: I believer the U.S. has, and still is, engineering coups around the world. By U.S., I mean, whoever is running our CIA and military. Okay? And I don’t like Zelensky and I don’t feel any allegiance to him or his government. As the Southerners would say, I don’t have a dog in that hunt. And not caring a wit for Zelensky does not make me an anti-semite. So I’ll leave it at that. I say, what the fuck are we doing over there? Why are we threatening the Russians will nukes? (Yes, I know he’s threatened us, ’cause we’re backing him into a corner. Why? Why must we ‘regime change Russia? Is Russia in Mexico? Is Russia setting up bases all over the globe, like our friendly competitor and manufacturing base, CHINA, is? I don’t think so. I go back to my earlier opinion that I don’t hate Russia. Sorry. I don’t hate Putin. I don’t hate Zelensky. I don’t like him either. So what. My opinion is my opinion.

                  And I think by now everybody on here knows my opinion. So, on this topic I will argue no longer. Have a nice day.

                  1. For the record: I believer the U.S. has, and still is, engineering coups around the world.

                    Based on what do you hold this belief of competence?

                  2. THIS Carl. No point debating intractable positions or even bringing up discussion points for debate. This is the same stuff that started World War 1 when no one was willing to talk to each other to solve their problems and I surely don’t want this on this (Sarah’s) blog. We clearly know her views and must respect those. I’ll do my best to keep it tone down the rhetoric a minimum and I think we all need to do that.

                    From a global perspective, the dogs of war have likely been let loose and all of our attempts (not much we can do as individuals) to cage them again will likely be unheeded. Now which of the Horsemen was first again? (Sarcasm)

                    1. Interesting.
                      So, you bring nothing in support, but we should just submit?
                      You know, your comments on this blog have always been…. interesting. We’ll just say that.

                    2. Sarah. I just don’t want excessive arguments on this board. Sometimes people don’t agree and its best to leave it alone. Sure, heated debate can be good to bring issues into the open for analytical discussion based on facts, truth, and open-minded discussions, but with the truth really fully unknown by those debating, it is kind of pointless when peoples views of the truth are so different and in opposition. Therefore, sometimes it’s better to move on to a different topic.

                      I’m glad I have provided some interesting comments (Some agreeable/disageeable). I do know that deep down, I stick up for Liberty and Freedom in America. I’m definitely not a leftist or communist. As for the rest of the world, we can howl at the moon, but really can’t do much about it (other than our fraudu-voting for the next selection just to make us feel like we did something here about it. I don’t think voting for Trump even in the next election will solve our problems either.)

                      At least I am helping us all to live up to the ideals of that Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times” LOL

                    3. I just don’t want excessive arguments on this board. Sometimes people don’t agree and its best to leave it alone.

                      Arguments are one thing; it’s the throwing bombs, and then demanding that folks ‘agree to disagree’ and ‘not argue’ that’s an issue.

                      Heaven knows that we have a LOT of arguments here, we’re just rather picky about being able to support them, and not dancing on top of the rather few banned subjects.

                    5. Ones I get (a little) chuckle out of, at least eye rolling, always an “um, wait a minute” head scratching, are the ones arguing making the same argument from slightly different angles. It happens, a lot.

              2. If you for some reason think that we militarily lost in Nam, you weren’t paying attention.

                That the Dems in Congress, in their strong dislike for Nixon, decided to give the Republic of Vietnam to Uncle Ho does not mean we ‘lost.’

                1. Well, first off, show me where in this thread I said we ‘militarily lost’ in Vietnam. If you cannot, then maybe you should pay attention. Vietnam was an abortion. 58,000 young men, like myself ‘lost’ their lives over there. Hundreds of thousands of them were ‘changed’ significantly by their experience over there. I was. And I see it as neither good nor bad, simply as ‘fate.’ And, speaking of fate, the same grenade that garnered me the proverbial ‘million dollar wound,’ and got me medevaced to Japan, killed the guy next to me. So he ‘lost’ his life. I saw others lose their lives. I came back and the war went on for another five years. For what? Because nobody wanted to be the one that ‘lost Vietnam.’

                  1. Carl, I respect your service in Nam. And don’t have your experiences, as I was an REMF linguist, although a number of my fellow REMFs are also on The Wall. Rockets, mortars, and SAMs don’t care what one’s MOS is.

                    But WRT Nam you said it was like ‘Wack-a-Mole’. Which is a game designed for the player to lose. From that I inferred that you believe that we (the US military who were wacking the moles) lost.

                    1. Yes, “SAMs don’t care what one’s MOS is,” that’s true. But we do know,and what is also true, is that the ‘combat arms, artillery, armor and infantry, took the brunt of the casualties.’ So we’ll leave that there. You seem to be invested in ‘whether we won or lost’ in Vietnam. I honestly don’t know. It all depends on what you consider winning and losing. I’m not going to debate that with you. We (and I) went. We did what we were told to do. We suffered through it. Yes, in just about every skirmish, we ‘won.’ That is, we killed the enemy and they ran off. But we owned the skies too. Without that, we would not have been there for eight years. Anyway, you seem to want to paint me in a corner. ‘C’mon, Clayton. Did we win or lose?’ That’s bullshit. For the record, having shed a little blood for my country (that’s what we believed at the time), I’m vested in it. I love my country. And if there are combat vets out there who believe we ‘lost’ Vietnam, or we should never have been there, well that’s their opinion, and they have every right to say it. By the way, so do people who did not serve in Vietnam.

                      Some people just want to ‘win’ the argument. I’m not saying that that’s you; I’m just saying that I don’t care about ‘winning the argument.’ I simply come here to state my opinion and I try not to offend anyone. And, as I feel like I’m playing tennis against four people, I’m not going to respond to any more comments today.

                      Have a great day, my friend.

                  2. Because nobody wanted to be the one that ‘lost Vietnam.’

                    Which was only a problem because the people in charge were a mix of idiots and dead set against doing anything which could lead to a win (see also: idiots).

                    1. Damn, Ian. I have to respond one more time. Did we win or lose in Vietnam. I have an opinion on that, but I’m not going to state it here. Instead, to help people think about this. What was our objective? Did we, after eight years, achieve it? Yes or no. Winning is, I believe, defined as achieving one’s objective. I believe, but I could be wrong, our objective was to kick the commies (that would be the NVA and the Viet Cong) out of South Vietnam. Actually, it seems a lot like our objective in Afghanistan… to run the Taliban out. Did we achieve our objective? Again, to reiterate. In Vietnam, what was our objective? Did we achieve it? That’s all. All this business about ‘idiots’ who screw things up… that’s a side issue.

                    2. What does anything in that have to do with what I said?

                      You complained about “no one wanting to be the one to lose”. I pointed out that they didn’t want to win.

    2. The Reader is reminded of this quote from Heinlein’s Friday.

      “I hope he doesn’t have brothers; one is too many. Yes. But Finders, Inc. is just a front; he’s a stooge for Shipstone Unlimited.”
      “But you said you were working for Shipstone, too-the laboratories.”
      Mac looked surprised. “But the whole Red Thursday ruckus was an intramural fight amongst the top boys; everybody knows that.”

      This is what the Ukraine thing appears to be to the Reader. Some conflict among TPTB is being acted out.

      1. THIS. Two sides in a fight to the death for control of the world… Doesn’t really matter how its starts, but what’s important is how it ends.

    3. (No weapons of mass destruction)

      U.S. troops found chemical weapons and facilities for making more. Not nearly what Saddam had claimed to have (and when a country’s leader claims publicly to have WMDs it’s better to assume he might be telling the truth even if skeptical) but the No weapons of mass destruction chant was anti-Bush politicking.
      Not that I supported the nation building mission that followed the military response. The military is for breaking things and killing enemy soldiers – not for trying to change a warlord model cobbled together country into a democratic republic. That’s a basically impossible mission.

      1. now that I think about it, this was the argument that made me go with my actual name online. The knob made the same nothing found and no yellow cake claims, I had multiple receipts from “rightwing sources” like the NYT, WaPo, London Times, CBC, BBC, AFP, etc
        somehow the folder with those links went missing.
        The knob who accused me of hiding behind a screen name said the CBC story of the shipment of retrieved yellow cake arriving in Canada for processing and sale wasn’t a reliable source (though anything the Gruaniad said was holy scripture to them) and the chemical weapons didn’t count as they had mostly been tagged by the UN for destruction . . . which never happened to them for some reason, and besides, they were old and might not work. Wasn’t willing to allow one to be set off in their yard for some reason, though.

      3. when a country’s leader claims publicly to have WMDs it’s better to assume he might be telling the truth

        …………..
        The truth as the country nut ball leader believes …. 100%. Can one presume that the people telling him they are the WMD are, current, and working, were telling said leader the truth? Without going in and verifying? No, and Hell No.

  34. ust… no sense whatsoever.

    In fact let’s look at the last two and a half years. Oh, no. I insist.

    30 Xanatos Pile-Up where at LEAST half of the Grand Plotters Supreme would need to up their game to not be losing to Mr. Magoo, Mr. Bean and/or Agent Maxwell Smart.

  35. To echo several others here, there is no grand conspiracy. What we have isn’t even a prospiracy, in that there isn’t even a unitary goal that all the actors are separately pursuing.

    What we have is a worldwide system that has been selecting for liars and corruption and corrupted data for nearly a century. That may be because we’re reaching a Bronze Age Collapse level of “palace”-centered civilization with all its over-centralization and over-complication. Or it may be due to simple decadence and moral exhaustion.

    It’s just pareidolia that turns our brains to looking for One Big Explanation. It ain’t there.

    • Greenery is a new religion, so its acolytes fanatically pursue its ends.
    • Wokery is the newer religion, so same, plus I expect that there will be conflicts with Greenery for fanatics.
    • The Davoserie want control to better line their pockets, and there’s all this new tech that can give it to them if they just trick people into using it.
    • The Chinese have control, but can’t ever let it weaken lest they fall, so they lie to everyone including themselves, especially about things that would make them lose face like Covid.
    • The “public health” establishment has to look like they’re Doing Something to justify their enormous budgets (mostly wasted) so they can’t just say “go about your business and wash your hands more”.
    • And so on.

    None of it adds up, because it’s not adding 2 + 2 = 4, it’s like adding 2 + Ford + elephant + orange + ineffability = WTF?

    Meanwhile, I keep seeing articles and blog posts and tweets that all manage to say “Fourth Turning” without using the words “fourth” or “turning”. Something is going to give, soon, and in a big way, and it’s up to us and people like us to make sure the new ground state is freedom and not tyranny.

    1. Oh, and I forgot this:

      • The US State Department negotiates with Iran because Negotiating Is What They Do and they’ll bring in any bad actor as a Trusted Negotiating Partner if it furthers their goal of endless negotiations. (It’s been heartening lately to see messages where they’re starting to admit that the JCPOA is as dead as we’ve known it was they whole time.)

    2. Yes, that’s my take too with a good dose of drinking their own ink, as in the people trying to push their little prospiracy meanwhile drink the lies fed by others.
      But me? I just want to see the truth. And that’s not an invitation for grand unified conspiracy theories. Which I should have put on the OP.

    3. The problem is institutional. It came about because the environment supports it. It came about because of the types of people who gravitate toward it.

      According to the organizational management theory I was exposed to in my Master’s program, the only way to permanently change that situation is to simultaneously remove the environment and the people currently in it. If you remove the people, but don’t change the environment (vote the bastidges out), the same types of people will flow in and be supported by the same environmental conditions. If you dump the same people in a different environment, they’ll set about changing that environment to match the old one they proliferated in.

      Based on that theory, what I see as required to fix our government is to wipe out 100% of legislation and court rulings since Constitutional ratification, 100% removal and permanent banning of all current employees of the government and appointed or elected officials; and start with a clean slate. I think we can safely leave all the amendments in, but the rest has to go.

      Radical? Hell yes. And chances of it ever happening approach zero.

  36. I submit that this thread contains ample evidence for my position that the doomer / blackpill / against-the-current-thing ideological axis is just a slightly different kind of skinsuit.

    1. I think it’s usually sincere cynicism or contrarianism. I see a lot of echoes of the mood that TV shows as different as X-Files and DS9 tapped into back in the 90s. The trouble is that “The Dwarves are for the Dwarves” (from The Last Battle) too often leads to shooting Talking Horses, and “I’m for anyone who will cast out the Telmarines, either Aslan or the White Witch” (from Prince Caspian) ought to be a nonstarter.

      1. Didn’t say anything about how sincere they are. Lots of progressive footsoldiers are very sincere.

        It is the shape of how they think which identifies them.

  37. “Defenestration is a wonderful word
    Defenestration is the way forward”

    Sarah, the Reader implores you not to tease us with any more catchy tee shirt phrases!

  38. “Defenestration is a wonderful word
    Defenestration is the way forward”

    Sarah, the Reader implores you not to generate any more material for tee shirts

  40. Posted in Larry Correia’s Facebook comments –

    Everyone: Biden is the most cognitively impaired person to ever hold public office.

    Fetterman:. You to put grasp on my beverage can.

    Heh

  41. Meanwhile, I can’t help but notice that no one has mentioned the Illuminati. Why is that, do you thi++===++NO CARRIER

            1. What?! Maybe those feckin thick culchies in Kerry do, because they’re from Kerry, but everyone left us alone in Clare! They knew better! And we wanted to be left alone, because when we weren’t, the knives came out of the ráth.

  43. I think the war DOES make sense…but it’s based on bad judgement. Never forget the Durant’s dictum (repeated by Heinlein) that no man is a villain in his own mind.

    From Putin’s standpoint, he wants to restore the Russian Empire. He saw what he thought was an opportunity to grab the Eastern Ukraine (which Catherine the Great took from the Tatars), and turn out the government of the rest in favor of a puppet regime. Unfortunately for him, the Ukrainian people regarded the crooks in charge (and they admit their government is corrupt) as THEIR crooks…not foreigners from Moscow who will kill Ukrainians as well as loot the till.

    Add in a Russian military that turned out to have been selling off their equipment and stealing training funds, and you had a recipe for trouble.

    The real question is why the Western powers, particularly the United States, have been so extremely supportive – to the tune of emptying our magazines and shipping the contents to Zelensky, plus sending him funds equal to the ENTIRE acquisition budget for the Department of Defense.

    I think part of it is bribes and blackmail…Zelensky probably has enough evidence to put Biden in prison. Another part is that China ALSO has blackmail leverage…and every missile sent, every penny spent, is one that can’t be brought to bear against China.

    1. Russia has blackmail material, as well (according to Hunter). So it’s anyone’s guess who knows what regarding the current occupant of the White House.

    2. I think there’s a simpler explanation: When Russia invaded the former Soviet clients said something along the lines of “The whole reason we joined this alliance was to defend against Russian aggression. If you aren’t going to do something about this then we’ll leave NATO and you can go down in history as the idiots who destroyed it.” Combine that with the popular outcry in support of Ukraine and the extremely low cost of shoveling obsolete and near-obsolete weapons out the door and you have a political no-brainer.

      1. Is HIMARS an obsolete weapon? If so, why are we still buying the launch vehicles from Raytheon?

        Joe is shovelings out the weapons the US would need for its’ own defense.

        1. Defense from whom? Russia has proven itself to be weaker than some of the larger Boy Scout troops, and there’s zero reason to believe that China is any better – the fact that China isn’t taking this opportunity to grab some resource-rich territory right across its border could indicate that China knows it isn’t significantly stronger than the obviously weak Russia.

          1. So why waste money replacing any of it? Since there’s no one to fight? And no need to get bent out of shape about all those weapons we let the Taliban have?

            Maybe we’d rather have them to send to Taiwan? Unless Ukraine is more important.

              1. 1) Ukraine has a functioning democracy. That’s what pisses the Russians off.
                2) China hasn’t actually invaded Taiwan yet. Putin did invade the Ukraine. Twice.

            2. Taiwan already has enough weapons to defend themselves. It turns out a few dozen miles of seawater does a much better job of hindering invasion than the European Plain.

              Every comment you make makes me realize that I have overestimated your intelligence.

            3. Ukraine is the war happening now.

              Also Ukraine has had all of 8 years starting from zero on their military. Taiwan on the other hand has been continuously fortifying the island of Formosa for decades.

              It is more likely than not that Taiwan could mop the floor with the PLA with zero support from anyone. But they will also have ample support when the support is needed.

              Also, also; if you had been paying attention you would have heard that Taiwan is in fact being sold additional weapons.

                  1. Ugh…

                    I don’t even want to think about the massive bloodbath that would be required to reach the point where the size of India’s population versus the size of China’s population would determine the outcome of a military conflict.

                    shudder

                    It would be death on an absolutely horrific scale.

                2. The Reader thinks that the Himalayas would defeat both sides in that case.

                    1. True they did. The Reader was considering the implications of something larger than a border skirmish in that part of the world.

              1. I agree. Whether what is being sent, weapon wise, being reported, is accurate (wags hands). Given all sources agree, I can give some credence that it is being reported accurately. Then what is being sent is replaced with new, old unused WWII/Korea/Vietnam surplus. Ukraine gets what it can use, and all the old inventory is off the books, deposed of. The money OTOH. Is it in actual cash (some of it), or and is it the value of the old ordnance being sent?

                Would like to see better protection saved for Israel, also I am biased too.

              2. Sarah, the weapons are not being replaced at anything like the rate they are being used. We simply can’t; the supply chains of the Great Big Defense Contractors are simply not capable of surge production of weapons. This has nothing to do with COVID and the current commercial issues (although that may make it worse). Instead it results from the fact that many of the 2nd and 3rd tier suppliers in the defense supply chain are either too small or do defense work as a sideline. In either case they lack the facilities to add any notable volume to their normal output. The Reader railed against this at the Great Big Defense Contractor he worked at over a decade ago after reviewing the ‘surge capacity plan’ for a weapons contract. Sarah, I promise you that you and the other writers here could write better fiction. After that, the Reader had an off the record conversation with some in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and was told essentially ‘we know but there is nothing we can do about it without funding’.

              3. “Steve, I understand these are things already replaced.”

                Sarah, I have worked as an IT consultant to military supply systems for over 25 years, My contacts in that world are arguably more extensive than anyone else’s on this blog, in addition to the actual data I’ve seen.

                The military has not been maintaining the necessary stocks of replacement weapons and ammo since at least 2006. This includes the high tech ammunition they fire off not only for combat, but to conduct adequate training. Note that the supply situation for our allies is no better and probably worse. Our readiness states have been met more due to the endless ingenuity of the supply and maintenance folks — whom Zhou Bai-Dan is driving out of the ranks.

                The last thing the military needs is to be sending the stocks of weapons and spares overseas. Given that situation, giving those stocks to one side of a gang war in Eastern Europe is ill-advised. If we must, we have far more essential allies (Israel being one) who should be higher on the priority list.

                1. Not your level of expertise, but I second the comment on the ingenuity of supply and maintenance types, given I rubbed elbows with them for over 30 years. A lot, of them are/we’re retired noncoms, meaning they had a personal stake in doing their jobs well.
                  A lot of the guys I worked with have probably aged out, not to mention gotten terminally frustrated.

                  1. Mere data point, but the contractor making the Javelin warheads has recruiters lighting up my phone non-stop to go work on making more of those, faster.

          2. China’s getting oil from Russia that can’t be sold internationally due to the embargo.

            Also, Russia has nukes. And Putin would be justified in using them if the Chinese invaded.

            1. Russia’s mostly getting the oil from the land that’s pretty close to China.

              Russia says it has nukes. It also says it has a modern and powerful military. Now, that could be sufficient strategic ambiguity to keep China from invading, these are nukes we’re talking about, but China has never been shy about racking up the body count.

              1. If China makes a grab for that land, then the oil becomes unavailable until the pumps are repaired.

                Russia has nukes. How many of them work is an open question. But it has nukes. Meanwhile, China’s wealth generating areas are all concentrated along the coast. Russia wouldn’t need to take out half the country to knock China back to the Iron Age. Also, unlike the 60s, the Chinese population has a lot more citizens who aren’t illiterate peasants, and would get very upset with Beijing if the richest parts of the country disappeared in nuclear fireballs.

                1. Russia only has to hit 2 targets with nukes. Shanghai and the Three Gorges Dam will suffice to kill about 140 million Chinese and set China back around 50 years. The same two targets that I’m sure Taiwan has targeted with the ones they don’t have, but the Reader is pretty sure they will work.

                2. If China makes a grab for that land, then the oil becomes unavailable until the pumps are repaired.

                  It is much worse than that: anything happens anywhere in the system and the oil becomes unavailable until the broken parts can be repaired.

                  And the only people who have to capacity to maintain, let alone repair oil infrastructure are western oil companies.

          3. The Reader is quite sure that any Chinese invasion of Russian territory would be met with nuclear weapons detonated on / over Russian soil and / or chemical warfare on Russian soil. The Far East is certainly where Russia keeps any of those WMDs that still work. He is also sure that Russia has made that perfectly clear to the CCP.

        2. Ultimately HIMARS is artillery.

          America like it’s artillery. But it depends on air power. This is just like the shrieking about stingers and javelins: they are nice to have but even if all of them are gone it doesn’t measurably reduce US combat power in an actual war.

          1. Well, someone’s completely missed the memo about “professionals studying logistics”. Wow. The US military’s advantages are based on the availability of better weapons, and the parts and ammo they need to maintain them.

        3. HIMARS was first introduced into the military in 2010. It’s been used against various groups in the Middle-East and Afghanistan. It’s still in use by our military, but it’s also not exactly brand new.

          Sending some to Ukraine is useful for two reasons. First, the Russian SAM systems, which are supposed to be quite good and can function in an anti-missile capacity, apparently aren’t configured to deal with missiles fired by the HIMARS. The Russian tracking software ignores the HIMARS missiles, and stuff I’ve heard suggests this is due to the speed of the missiles (which are faster than the other SSMs that the Ukrainians use). This could get changed in the future (I’m not sure why the software doesn’t already track them, though presumably there’s a good reason that the Russians left this out; they’ve had months to fix this issue), but in the meantime it’s an advantage for the Ukrainians.

          Second, it’s an opportunity to evaluate our current artillery system against an enemy that’s better equipped than light infantry irregulars operating in unsupported formations out in the middle of the wilderness. That’s very valuable data to planners.

    3. Zelensky probably has enough evidence to put Biden in prison.

      The FBI & the DOJ already have enough evidence to do so. How do you blackmail somebody when the damaging information you hold is already widely disseminated and the JustUs system is deliberately ignoring it?

    4. MIke,
      It’s also a banker’s war and very likely instigated by them. World needs a distraction from the real causes of our economic malaise and Dollar printing that will lead to loss of global reserve currency status. Hence, “Putin” did it. If/when US dollar fails/falls, living here will be like in a third world country. Not looking forward to that, but preparing for it anyway as it is the only thing the each of us can really to make it through the long crisis that is coming.

  44. I’ll add another note. The current leadership class of the West is VERY intellectually and culturally inbred. If you think about it, Trump was the first President since Reagan who was NOT a product of Harvard or Yale. The first in nearly 30 years who didn’t bring in an entourage of Ivy League snob school graduates to run their regime. The same is true in the UK…if you’re not part of the Public (read: Private Prep) School/Oxford/Cambridge clique, you get nowhere. (Never forget that the British Establishment NEVER forgave Thatcher for being the greengrocer’s daughter). And the same thing holds true throughout the West.

    What we’ve got is a degree of intellectual inbreeding reminiscent of the genetic inbreeding of royal families in Europe circa 1900. And that didn’t work out well.

    2. And the Founders never really intended our government to be run by a hereditary elite. It was supposed to be run by amateurs who were first successful business people.

      1. THIS. I think of it more as successful citizen volunteers than businessmen. Spend a couple of years in Congress and then go back to your business/farm, etc. Back then, you could sort of manage your personal affairs long-distance by using letters since the pace of life was so slow. Now, if you left your personal affairs alone for two years, you would be broke.

        1. That’s a problem for elected officials in Washington. Due to the nature of their control of legislation at the national level, they have insider knowledge before the rest of the population/market. That’s one way they have been able to increase their wealth ahead of the rest of us. That same control of legislation gives them the ability to tailor it to their benefit, which the rest of us can’t do; increasing their wealth yet again.

          We saw a whole bunch of whining by Dems and RINOs over Trump’s business empire; and he basically had to hand it over to other people to run while he was in office. Frankly, I think all of Congress should be required to put their business and investments into a managed trust of some kind, and be prohibited from having contact with them for the duration of their terms.

  45. I understand your fears, Sarah, and even agree to some extent. I just wonder how much of all this can be ascribed to malice, and how much should be ascribed to sheer incompetence and stupidity.

      1. I kind of lean toward the malice, myself.
        That level of vengeful anger leads the basically stupid people into massive incompetence, which increases their anger which increases…..
        I like the tidy, Ouroboros schemata.

        1. What I call ab Hugh’s law (from a guy I knew back in the old days of GEnie and the Science Fiction Roundtable): “‘adequately’ explained by stupidity; the truly powerful are rarely stupid.”

          2. And here we hit the issue of intelligence vs wisdom vs ability to use either effectively. Are they stupid? Most of them no I’d say they are mostly at or above the mean intelligence of the populace. There are exceptions the Turnip in Chief was never the sharpest knife in the drawer and these days a dull butter knife looks like the finest Toledo/Solingen Steel compared to him. Fetterman wasn’t a genius (and he’s giving Biden a run for his money these days) nor are Sanders, AOC or similar. Are they running stuff? Likely not so much, people are using them as cats paws (no offense to felines). But I don’t want to go full up on this otherwise you wander into Illuminatus! territory. I think what we have is one hell of a lot of unknown unknowns, and that is a BAD THING. As our Hostess says, they drink their own ink, to steal from the Honor Harrington series, there is rarely real strategic or tactical surprise, what happens is through various biases (sometimes helped along by a smart opponent) they misinterpret data that is lying right in front of them. The Democrats (and often the Stupid party) have a tendency to cover their various eyes,ears and other sensory apparatuses and scream “LA LA LA LA”. We need to be very careful not to do the same thing.

            1. There are exceptions the Turnip in Chief was never the sharpest knife in the drawer

              There is also the question of just who are the “truly powerful”. I submit that neither the Turnip in Cheiv nor the Affirmative Action Hire were “truly powerful” but instead puppets for their handlers who remained behind the scenes.

              1. Yeah I wouldn’t give either of those two a box of strike anywhere kitchen matches, they’d likely hurt themselves. There’s a puppeteer somewhere and it hasn’t got 2 heads and three hooves…

              2. The ones running this clown show are the same ones that had their arms up 0bama’s backside for 8 years. It was less obvious because they had a more articulate dummy.
                ———————————
                Candidate Joe Biden, August 2020: “We have assembled the most extensive, comprehensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”

                Minutes later: “What do you mean, I wasn’t supposed to say that?”

            2. I meant to take out that second link and post it separately with this excerpt:

              January 31, 2006 The Two-Edged Sword
              Judiciary – Hatched by Dafydd
              ….

              In fact, I believe that the Alito Rule — party-line vote for Supreme-Court nominees in the Senate — will apply in the future only when the president is a Republican. When a Democrat is in the White House and nominates a controversial but highly regarded leftist to the Court, the Republicans will be unable or unwilling to use the “Alito Rule” against him: they will vote for the nominee the same way they voted for Ginsburg and Breyer.

              Republicans have proven over and over that on certain issues, they will take the high road, following their own consciences, whatever that may entail, even when the position is a political loser; in fact, even when it’s political party suicide. Look at Sen. Arlen Specter calling for hearings into the NSA al-Qaeda-tapping program, or to conservative Republicans who vote against the president’s position on any number of issues, from drilling in ANWR to reforming Social Security to banning partial-birth abortion.

              Notwithstanding the foul, revolting Democratic revolt against Samuel Alito, in which they finally stooped all the way down to personal vilification and out and out slander — if there were not an exception carved out for speeches on the floor of Congress, a number of Democratic senators would find themselves in civil court — I see no evidence that Republicans plan on following suit the next time a Democratic president nominates another Ginsburg. Rather, they will complain bitterly, recall the Alito mini-fili and the near party-line vote, lecture the Democrats — and then hold their noses and once again vote for the qualified but far-left nominee.

              It’s simply one element of the Culture of Clarity that permeates the Republican Party. And the Democrats know it… they would never dare push the envelope as they do if they thought the GOP would respond in kind.

              The penchant of the GOP to approve leftist judges is true even now, except for the single exception of nixing Merrick Garland, although the number of Republican “defectors” has dropped for some nominations.
              At least they haven’t put any biologists on the Supreme Court.

              1. Whoops – the link referred to is in a comment that was apparently still in moderation, in re Dafydd ab Hugh at Big Lizards Blog.

            3. Now, I say this as a staunch Particular Baptist, who despite being Irish and a Solitary “person” ( 😉 ), who has very little tolerance for what the Mistress of This Place calls, “Woo Woo” – The more that comes out about the paedophilia, the blood drinking, the Moloch-worshipping, the utter depravity of so many people, particularly ones visible and influential, leads me to see the works of the Accuser and his followers. I have a hard time not.

              2. Well dang there’s 2 of us particular baptists in here, shall we form a caucus 🙂 ? And yes indeed there are things about this that scream the Father of Lies is doing stuff. I dislike the woo-woo answer and yet I can’t wholly refute it.

                  2. From Tugboat Granny…

                    Oh, a tug-boat whistle goes toot-toot-toot!
                    It can toot High!
                    It can toot Low!
                    But the toot-toot-toot don’t mean a hoot!
                    It’s the CHUGGA CHUGGA CHUGGA that makes it go!

                  1. The Reader believes two Reformed Baptists are an Argument, three are a Shouting Match and at four there are three new Reformed Baptist Churches on the block. This is from observation only as the Reader is neither Baptist nor reformed.

                  3. I’m Methodist, former Southern Baptist and not sure where I’ll be post-schism. At least the volunteer group we work with is changing its bylaws to let us work with both branches.

                    1. Having gone almost exactly the other way, I’m pretty much obligated to call you heretic, right?

                      But not really. I just found that the Methodist church in $College Town shared little other than a name with the one I grew up in, and still attend when I visit the folks. I guess from their perspective I’ve just been slightly over-baptized.

                    2. Indeed that also captures the spirit. Some days the issue reminds me of a (possibly apocryphal) Story I heard about Roger Williams (founder of Rhode Island) that at the end of his life he was so particular about peoples beliefs that at the end of his life he was onlu in communion with himself. Even his wife and children were heretical to his tastes. I do strive to avoid that state 🙂 (hot Rhode Island, although it is easy to miss).

                    3. There is also the oul saw about Unitarians and Baptists:

                      The Unitarian: Even if you don’t agree with me, I agree with you.

                      The Baptist: Even if you agree with me, I don’t agree with you!

          4. He was wrong.
            No, seriously, he was wrong.
            He discounted generational power. Once you cease being a meritocracy and generational power, be it by descent, Ivy League graduation or political affiliation sets in, you can get very powerful BIZARRELY dumb leaders.
            The only thing his axiom applies to is self-made rulers.

  46. Ukraine and Wu Flu make perfect sense as soon as you realize that all the decision makers are dumb. Not stupid, but unable to put the intelligence they have to practical use. Their skills have always centered around appealing to their superior, whether it’s the teacher in class, their boss, or the politicians who make/approve their nominations for the top of the bureaucracy. They never have to actually demonstrate more than a basic competence in their chosen field.

    The panic over Wu Flu probably started as a way to Katrina Trump.

    Masks were like WWII scrap drives: useless, but it made the participants feel like they were doing something. They eventually rose to a religious symbol (remember the Fauci prayer candles?) so the heretics had to be brought to heel.

    The lockdowns could have been an escalation of the Katrina-ing (totally a word) of Trump, but I think it more likely stems from the fact that public health officials have three tools to combat pandemics: Isolation, treatment, and vaccination. Early on the latter two options weren’t available, so the various public health authorities more or less independently (I’m sure there was some effort to not be seen as the least effective) started mashing on the third button as hard as they could.

    The vaccines were seen as their ticket out of the religious hysteria they stoked in 2020. Again, we had the campaign against the heretics who needed salvation whether they wanted it or not and we had the “push the button harder if it didn’t work the first time” mentality from the lockdowns. You can be sure that if Trump had stopped the Steal the media would be full of nothing but sob stories about people who lost loved ones to Trump’s “rushed so-called vaccines,” including the guy who got vaccinated, refused dialysis a week later, and died in the night (an actual VAERS entry).

    When it comes to Ukraine, that’s even easier. Take Putin drinking his own ink regarding inherent Russian strength, the Democrats’ idiotic “soft power” doctrine (European nations won’t invade one another, we’ve outgrown that), the Democrats desperately trying to avoid another foreign policy debacle post-Afghanistan, and the eastern tier of NATO who know that they’re on Moscow’s “to-do list” and joined to avoid precisely what is happening to Ukraine and you get pretty much what we’re seeing: Ineffectual attempts to forestall the invasion followed by a botched invasion that is being thrown back by Ukrainian forces with moderate Western help.

    There’s no plan, there’s no cabal pulling the strings, there’s just a bunch of morons working to a shared, and deeply flawed, worldview.

    1. Yes. And mostly they’re all educated in the same education bubble.
      BUT seriously I figure that’s what it is — incompetence and drinking their own ink.
      IT’s WAY less comforting than a conspiracy. A conspiracy can be defeated.

      1. So can this, it just takes longer.

        Ultimately we’re up against another form of bigotry, the idea that these people are fundamentally better than Americans is just as divorced from reality as the idea that Whites are better than Blacks or that Catholics are better than Lutherans (or vice versa). We’ve defeated those forms of bigotry before, we’ll defeat this one as well.

    2. The medical industry is pushing COVID vaccinations again, hard.
      Not one mention by them of the risks or adverse side effects. And they’re also pushing an effectiveness narrative that seems, fraudulent?

      1. El Gato Malo has an interesting post on that today. Studies beginning to appear indicating the latest Covid boosters not only don’t work but make things worse. I’ve seen statements that the latest variant is hitting the vaccinated at a much higher rate than the unvaccinated.

  47. I read your post and the comments, and I understand this urge to try and have this whole disaster make sense.

    But…it’s feeling like the run up to 1914 and we’re waiting on that moment where the Crown Prince and his wife are driving in Sarajevo…

    I still think that it’s an ignorant sort of malice. People that have never really been hungry, been in a bad place, been where the rules break down and being far outside of the streetlights. They think that the lovely theoretical model they’ve made works and by God they are going to prove that it does, no matter what! And, like any addict far too deep in the hole, they’re going to double down on money they don’t have.

    And it’s everybody else that’s going to pay.

    1. I want it to make sense, because otherwise it’s going to hurt way worse. BUT I’m convinced they actually have no clue. It’s an information problem. They all lie to each other, as well as us.

  48. Treatment was always available — vitamin D, Chloroquine and Ivermectin. The Publick Health Authoriteez moved with lightning speed to prevent anyone from using them, and doctors from prescribing two cheap, proven drugs that have been used to treat colds and flus for 50 years. Remember the ‘horse dewormer’ hoax? There were proposals to make vitamin D a restricted substance, available only by prescription. Why? Not for any valid medical reason, that’s for sure.

    2. There were proposals to do WHAT?

      Vitamin D is made naturally by skin cells, given enough sunlight (and “enough” isn’t very much). It’s also in milk and a number of other foods. How the hell do you restrict that?

      Also, I never heard of Vitamin D called “a treatment for COVID-19”. I saw a couple of studies that linked infections to vitamin D deficiency, but that means vitamin D helps prevent infection, not that it treats an existing infection.

      By the end of March 2020 I knew two things about COVID-19 that weren’t being talked about anywhere. One is that it was loose in China at least a month before it was detected there, and loose in the world at least a couple of weeks before it was detected there. The spread pattern allowed for no other conclusion. The other is that it was not a “Disease X” scenario – the Diamond Princess, as fine a case study as one could ask for about infection and lethality rates, proved that to my satisfaction.

      To this day I do not understand how I could see these things, but the medical experts could not. I am intelligent and a self-trained nexialist, but I’m also no more than an armchair scientist, and an amateur one at that. I really don’t want to believe I’m that much smarter and better informed than the people who are paid $$$$ to know these things.

    3. My recollection was that there wasn’t a plan to restrict Vitamin D specifically. Rather, the plan was to make all vitamins restricted.

      1. Yes, for reasons never well explained. I suspect the tsunami of e-mails and (worse!) phone calls to Congresscritters from those Of A Certain Age, as well as others of us who take certain vitamins under doctor’s orders, was somewhat persuasive. “Sure. Vote for it. YOU can go back to your district and face 500 irate Grey Panthers and three dozen pregnant women who can no longer afford prenatal vitamins, plus the dozen or so very angry pharmacists who have to dole out the things. I’ll sit back and watch the carnage.”

    4. Vitamin D and Cholorquine were more prophylactics than treatments, and by the time those came on the radar the public health apparatus was wedded to the idea that lockdowns could solve the problem and that all the suffering they were forcing on people was justified. And then all the Cool Kids started mocking Trump for talking about these treatment options, and nobody wanted to be seen as anywhere close to him.

  49. I’ve been catching up on my reading, having been away from home for a week.

    Sticking with domestic things, Richard Fernandez has a parallel article from Oct 21:
    “Ironically, the more information a society has access to, the less effective trust becomes as the currency of institutional acceptance. A 2021 UN report noted that: “while data for long-run trends are limited, the data available show a marked decrease in institutional trust in developed countries. In the United States, trust in the national government has declined from 73 per cent in 1958 to 24 per cent in 2021. Western Europe has seen a similar steady decline in public trust since the 1970s.” The Internet in developed countries was in many respects a bane for institutions.”
    https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2022/10/21/the-civilization-that-knew-too-much-n1636373
    Of course, then you’d have to trust the UN report…

    And then there is Crichton’s formulation:

    “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

    In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
    – Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

    I’m something of a crime statistics bug. There’s a tendency for some to compare US stats to those of other countries, especially UK. A couple years ago, UK changed its crime reporting methodology and classifications (Rotheram, anyone?). It occasionally happened that the FBI (ptui!) Uniform Crime Reports had a notation on some state’s data being ‘incomplete’. Now we get places like Los Angeles and Chicago fudging their data, clearly for political ‘it ain’t as bad as you guys claim!’ purposes.

    I think the US Census might have been captured by the progs around 1990.

    1. @ JohnS > “I think the US Census might have been captured by the progs around 1990.”

      They certainly have it now.

      https://justthenews.com/accountability/why-did-census-undercount-some-red-states-over-count-blue-one-lawmaker-demands
      “The U.S. Census Bureau admits it undercounted populations in five Republican-led states while overcounting people in six Democrat-leaning states, a disparity one congressman says cost Texas a congressional seat to which it was entitled.”

      They only regret getting caught.

      “Census officials acknowledged they were disappointed by the accuracy rate of the 2020 count, which they said was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. None of the under and overcounts can be fixed for apportionment, but the survey will be sued [sic] to try to make the 2030 count more precise, they added.”

      The “post-count analysis” that supposedly revealed the problem is not explained.
      And I have no confidence that anything will be done to correct the problem by 2030.

      1. The solution would be pretty simple, and it would solve another big problem: Congress just needs to pass a law saying that the federal deficit each year will be funded by a head tax levied on the states. The bigger the state’s population, the more of the deficit they cover (and the more people they have being productive to cover that bill). Boom, federal budget is balanced and states have an incentive to avoid overcounting.

  51. Remember that CCP twisted version of the story of the woman accused of adultery, that was printed in a CCP textbook on the history of law? The one where Jesus said that he was a sinner, but sinful people had to enforce the law or the law was dead?

    Benjals95, a poster on the Catholic Memes subreddit just pointed out that it’s a direct quote from/reference to a section of Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead. (Which I skimmed right past, and thus did not remember. Sorry, OSC! I just don’t like those books/universe!)

    OSC’s section says Jesus wasn’t the only rabbi to face this situation, and tells the story of one rabbi saving the woman by pointing out that everybody has urges, and then tells the woman that her powerful affair partner owes him a favor. So everybody is corrupt and the city is doomed, basically.

    And then, before referencing the real Jesus story, OSC has this:

    “Another rabbi, another city. He goes to her, and stops the mob, as in the other story and says, “Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.”

    “The people are abashed, and forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. Someday, they think, I may be like this woman, and I’ll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her the way I wish to be treated.
    I
    “As they open their hands and let the stones fall to the ground, the rabbi picks up one of the stones, lifts it high over the woman’s head, and throws it straight down with all his might. It crushes her skull, and dashes her brains onto the cobblestones.

    “Nor am I without sin,” he says to the people. “But if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead, and our city with it.”

    “So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.

    “The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far, they die. Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation.

    “So of course, we killed him.”

    Compare to the CCP textbook version, from Professional Ethics and the Law, 2018:

    “When the crowd disappeared, Jesus stoned the sinner to death, saying, “I too am a sinner. But if the law could only be executed by people without blemish, the law would be dead.”

    So basically, THE CCP PLAGIARIZED ORSON SCOTT CARD!!!

    And missed the point of OSC’s praise of Jesus, of course….

      1. Goodreads has the section listed in its Speaker from the Dead quotes, as a quote from the fictional Letters to an Incipient Heretic by San Angelo. It is listed on a 2010 blog as having been on pp. 277-278, but no edition is listed.

        So unless this is some weird philosophy reference, it is OSC.

  52. OK, today’s what the heck? Somebody got into the Pelosi home in San Francisco and attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer. Nancy wasn’t home. Her spouse is expected to recover and of course law enforcement is on the case. Some question of whether law enforcement was in the house when it happened.
    What the freaking heck?

      1. They were still “looking for a motive,” said ABC News.
        But of course people like Lawrence Tribe are on Twitter explaining it’s all due to the “climate of violence,” created by Republicans.

        1. Hopefully someone will ask Lawrence how many Leftist SCOTUS judges have had assassins caught outside their homes.

          Tangentially related: I’m finally back in my house after having the inside dug up for foundation repair; it’s why I’ve only been sporadic about posting. Side note to the side note: It’s amazing what steel piers look like when you scan them for alignment on ground penetrating radar. Cover a multitude of sins, they could….

          My lovely bride presented me with an insulated glass as a return gift inscribed with “Sorry: No Hablo Fucktardo”. It’s remarkably soothing when contemplating my next meeting…. 😉

      2. Not on Fox News yet. Local NextDoor posters are already blaming it on the “Jan 6 Maga created environment” (as apposed to three or 4 summers of “peaceful protests” by the left fascists).

  53. Michael Shellenberger is reporting the guy who broke into the Pelosi’s home is homeless, has a serious drug problem and is basically unhinged.

      2. More to the point, we have plenty of people who have gone to her house for various reasons (like serving a lawsuit) who can testify that even when the Pelosis aren’t there, security IS, and they were challenged. Hmmmmm.

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