Doing the Arithmetic

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

I’m digit-dyslexic. I’m word dyslexic, too, mind you. But words, though I can sometimes spell them very weirdly — like by phorgetting the letter f exists — I can usually figure it out the next day and sometimes spell checker can.

While with numbers, 365 is the same as 563 as 635. This means that no one should trust me to cut a piece of wood. And that when I was doing flooring in houses past, I often made paper patterns of the piece I needed, as though I were making a dress. Because that worked better. Also why I refinish furniture but rarely build it from scratch.

And therefore it is immensely funny — maybe — that I’ve always been intensely aware of “basic kitchen math.”

Like, you know, if you only have two eggs, you’re not going to make that souffle that calls for six. If you only have an onion, and you’re using half, you’ll only have half left.

And of what I call “basic economics.” Everything makes a living, from the littlest bacteria to the largest whale. You have to do things that put food in the mouth. Enough food for enough energy to “earn” the next meal.

I’ve always been aware of basic economics, because it’s just basic arithmetic. And I’ve always been aware of basic arithmetic because I used to have three or four methods of checking my work to make sure I hadn’t transposed digits. So, you know, I memorized the multiplication tables (took forever, as you’d expect) but I also became a champion of adding numbers very fast to make sure that 6×6 was indeed 36, not, by some freak 63. (Okay, I never confused that one. I knew 63 would require it to be more than 6, but you know what I mean.)

And I’ve been aware that sitting down and wishing you had a million dollars doesn’t make more than one dried up mushroom, a handful of flour and a mushroom suddenly appear in your fridge, since that’s exactly what we had left at the end of a month when we were careless as newlyweds. After that we were… more careful.

You can’t get blood from a turnip. You can’t get money from a stone. And you can’t override reality with your words.

Which is why parasitic systems like socialism and communism can only survive if there is a bigger, stronger system they can leach off of.

They can talk big. They can send balloons provocateurs over the territory of their notional enemies. They can also drive huge tubes all over the landscape and convince the superpower that they’re equals or bigger.

They can bribe, beg, cajole, blackmail a livelihood out of the productive countries.

But they’ll never survive by their wits alone.

The USSR lasted as long as it did because it was a conquering imperialistic society, on the mold of Rome. (Which is why it was hilarious they accused us of being the Roman Empire. It was pablum for their masses, the idea that we were “Rome in the decadence” and a way to explain away our greater and visible prosperity.) The first thing they did on acquiring power over a country was to steal everything not nailed down, and corrupt systems to feed them.

And even then, they were a miserable place to live, and bearable only because they were a country of serfs to begin with.

China has lasted as long as it has because they convinced the greatest consumers in the world to buy from their slave factories. Since we’ve soured on them — not even officially, just by people doing things like noping on things that announce they were made there — they’ve been facing increasing difficulty.

The socialists in America have lasted as long as they have by pretending they want to take over the country, while contenting themselves with taking over certain, deeply effed up places, and feeding off the healthy parts.

But the last oh, 12 years or so, they’ve lost all sense of proportion. Their fourth generation inheritors, who are idiots chosen solely for their politics, and with not a shred of competency or real world knowledge, think they can wish paradise into being, and that their total victory depends only on destroying everything that works.

Look, it’s no wonder that these are the people assuring us that math is racist and that 2+2=4 is white supremacy.

Because the only way their arithmetic works is if they can somehow come up with an extra five or six or ten out of wishing for it really hard.

And honestly they aren’t wrong. Because the problem is they’re running the schemes that have taken states down — subverting the voting, destroying the economy, graft and theft and total destruction — without realizing that it can’t work long term on the national scale.

It can’t work because the US has no one we can bribe or threaten to feed us. Because no one can. If we go down, the world starves. (And we won’t be all that comfortable, but we probably won’t starve.)

They’re not aware of this. They suck at kitchen math. (Also, frankly, at history. I’ve heard them attribute the great buildings of Europe to “socialism” because they have no concept of European history being longer than ours. But that’s a rant for another day.)

And this is why we have already won. Because all they can do is run around taking hammers to the knees of the economy, under the bizarre assumption that we’re the USSR or maybe Cuba or even China, and if they break everything we will suddenly become communist “forever.”

They might also have been counting on the help of those great states, Russia and China, who have in fact been bribing/buying much of the left. (Oh, Russia isn’t communist? Sure, but Putin pointed out they’re “social democrats” which is a polite term for socialists. They and China are fascist, ultimately. Which isn’t as much difference as the idiots on the left think from communism.)

They might have thought those “great powers” could come in and “pacify” us. In fact, the left’s China-worship is almost embarrassing and has been for 30 years.

Seeing Russia take an arrow to the knee on the public stage has to have scared them. And China’s latest gyrations must have put some fear in them as well, which honestly might be the real explanation for the Potemkin balloon. Which in the end just showed their puppets are their puppets and made the rest of us lose a little bit more patience with them. (And isn’t this the Junta to the ground? A plot to make them seem bigger would reveal how stupid and small they are.)

And so here we are.

I’m not telling you the times ahead will be easy or simple. They’re still taking hammers to the knees of our economy. Though people are ignoring them/tuning them off in a lot of ways. They’re still frauding their way to power, under the belief that solves everything.

As Bill Whittle — my fellow chronic depressive — said a while back “We’ve already won. It’s just that you usually take most of your casualties during the mop up.”

Things are going to get bad. But stop imagining a civil war rank on serried rank. None of that works the way you think it does.

Things are going to get hot and sportive in some times and places. They already have. But their shock troops are useless anywhere where those in power don’t feed them/encourage them. They can’t even take the suburbs, much less rural areas.

They have a vague intuition America is not like other places they’ve taken over — they understand, or think they understand, psychological factors, but not arithmetic — which is why they’re importing what they think will be willing serfs.

Except there’s something weird with that picture. I think mostly they’re importing criminals and transients, because honestly? serfs don’t stay if there’s no work. And their criminals and transients are no match for Americans, outside of compliant cities. Obama caused la grande salida. And I suspect as people lose patience and welfare loses the ability to feed them/encourage them, this salida will dwarf all salidas. I’ve wondered if the flying of “refugees” all over (before it was done by sending them to sanctuary cities) was not a scheme to destroy voting integrity (they can do that with made up people!) but to take people away from the border, so they can’t simply get back out. It reminded me of Kenya’s attempt to shove Maasai in model villages, which they abandoned at the earliest possible moment.

And at any rate, the serfs are not going to have an easy time as the economy disintegrates, they’re only going to disintegrate the economy and get hurt when things fall. (Not that the left cares.)

Thing is “We’ve already won.” And no, I don’t think we are going to end up in a dictatorship. Look, again, dictatorships are a way to go poor fast. And in this country, if you’re broke, you ain’t going to control much. Heck, even if you aren’t.

I’m not going to say it’s not going to get bad. In some places it’s going to get really bad. Any place with intense antifa activity, if you’re there, please leave. You’ve been warned.

And we might even fall apart. For a little while. Maybe.

But it won’t last.

The left is so mad they keep reviling the Constitution and the Independence and the Founders. And frankly people are looking around and saying “I don’t know much about those, but if you *ssclowns hate them, they have to be good.”

So, in the end, we will be okay. The economy might crash, but in fundamentals we’re okay. Even manufacturing is reviving, even if it’s doing so in American fashion: fewer workers needed, less expense, more production, more profit.

We will be okay. Might “crash” in externals and structure for a while, before coming back, though. Same with the rest of our symptoms.

But we’re the majority. And we’ve already won.

The mop up is going to hurt like a b*tch.

But be not afraid. We got this.

In the end we win, they lose.

Because 2+2=4.

620 thoughts on “Doing the Arithmetic”

  1. Closing on small acreage in the Ozarks next week. Vacant land with timber. Our current location…isn’t bad (small city with a small Army post), but there are just too many people.

    I’ve got a lot of work to do.

      1. The work keeps you out of trouble. Well, it does me at least. Clearing land is not terribly complex. Hard work, sure. Harder with old knees and back. But doable.

          1. A couple weeks ago I rented a 3.5-ton excavator to demo my collapsed shed, and it was pretty easy to use and kinda fun. I might just DIY putting in the driveway at Tierra de Balzacq instead of spending $6000 to hire it out (and that’s just for clearing, not graveling).

            Of course, I don’t have any steep grades or weird obstacles to deal with, just 40-year-old Douglas fir trees and brush.

  2. Too many people want to believe that someone “out there” is in control. This is especially true in Economics where they hold desperately to central planning through GOSPLAN or the Fed. If GOSPLAN or the Fed were actually in control, it would be magic. For myself, I don’t believe in magic.

      2. Ah. I thought it sounded familiar.
        I tend to go by Poul Anderson’s remark that of course the banks aren’t running things – they don’t even do a good job running their own banks.
        But people need to believe that some great secret force is manipulating everything, even if only to excuse themselves from doing anything. And at least if you worship the Fed you aren’t blaming everything on the Jews. (Reply to BGE)

        1. People need to believe that some great secret force is manipulating everything because they can’t bring themselves to accept that so many people would be so stupid in such destructive ways all at the same time with no coordination.

          They also desperately want to believe that the people who are elected to be in charge are smarter than they themselves are. Because if they’re not, there’s no reason for them to be in charge.

          1. My rule of conspiracy theories is this: If someone is plotting something, it’s probably dumber and more venal than what you’re thinking. Remember when the gov was bringing up UFOs for no good reason? Well, it wasn’t because the Illuminati Deep State were planning a false flag alien invasion, it was because they were trying to misdirect from the inevitable sightings of Chinse spy balloons. There is a conspiracy, and it’s stupid.

            2. Which leads to an amusing image –

              Concerned sky-watcher citizen – Hey, I spotted a balloon!

              Panicked Feds – No, you saw a UFO!

              1. Alas, right now, that makes better than good sense. Because I can see our administration doing just that, and then wondering why all the sci-fi fans bust a gut laughing.

                  1. I grew up in UFO alley, under the flight path between Groom Lake and Mountain Home.
                    I’ve seen UFOs, including one that I’m pretty sure was strapped to the bottom of a helicopter to troll people. (Also the F-117 and B-2 before they officially existed.)

                    One thing they all had in common—the FAA mandated lights.
                    Unidentified does not imply alien origin.

                    1. Well, duh. Of course the aliens have FAA mandated lights on their flying sauce- I mean, weather balloons. How else are they going to disguise their ships?

                      WAKE UP, SHEEPLE! 😛

  3. Apparently y’all are bad at math…China has been in existence for a very long time .
    We have pretty much been socialistic in many ways since the beginning of the country.
    Guess you also have a misconception as to what a majority is.

    Personally I’ve always been mostly conservative minded , however , never have thought much of the alternative facts BS.

    1. Totalitarian, I’ll grant you.

      Also, China is all utopian in political philosophy. Even the Legalists.

    2. Spud, I’m thinking I might get to read a response to this that will require very dark sunglasses. I’m a hopeful kind of girl.

      My own response is (after slapping my knees and laughing until I am exhausted) that you need to read your history. We have not been “socialistic in many ways since the beginning of the country.” And we are not socialistic now. We have communist infiltrators who have done a lot of damage to us, but we are a Constitutional Republic that will survive.

      Our country was founded by We The People, enshrining the fundamental rights of citizens to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Socialism is the darkest rot of evil, the monster wearing your mom’s face. Light and darkness. Start reading. Reject the darkness.

      2. I searched the last week for comments from Spud and his alter-ego Killbait. In vain, to my lack of surprise. Looks like we’re going to have drive-by commenters on this post.

        Chewtoys!

        1. RCPete, Kill’s a known friend of the blog.

          As in, so known (though very busy) that I’d let my kids go over if the Killbait family didn’t live so darn far.

          He’ll probably come back to bat the chewtoy after work.

          1. I sit corrected. I made a bad assumption. My apologies, KB.

            Haven’t seen such a good chewtoy section since a notorious e-stalker and collector of restraining orders went after a blog regular. Names omitted to avoid any return of the creep.

              1. Hmm, I have a different chewtoy in mind (I think; the creep has gone by more handles than FICUS’s spokesdroid has spin cycles), but if not, the point is moot.

          1. Well, there was that one Mayflower thing.
            But they quickly decidedly that they preferred not starving.

              1. Yep. And were lucky that there were Indians (First People? Indigenous People? Native Americans? Whatever; many of them call themselves “Indians”) who, not yet having been fscked over, were willing to take them by the hands and say, “No sweetie, do it this way. Your way sucks donkey schlongs.”

                2. Squanto is pretty much a saint. The man was kidnapped, enslaved, enslaved again, finally made it back to his homeland only to find out that everybody he loved was dead due to disease…

                  … and he taught these strangers how to live in his homeland, because it was the right thing to do.

            2. The best thing they did was quickly realize that socialism doesn’t work and never return to it.

                1. There is a big difference between voluntary pooling of community members’ resources or outright charity, and “the government takes all your stuff and makes you do an assigned job.”

                  Even when we are in barter situations with kids at lunch, you see voluntary trading for mutual benefit, or voluntary gifts of goods not wanted by the original owner.

                  Socialism is for bullies.

      4. At the local level, America is fairly capitalistic, though even there the politicians dictate results in some areas, using regulation to force out the unconnected..Chicago is one example…But at the national level, big corporations with lobbyists have collaborated with Big Government to prevent competition in many areas, including most of medicine…That’s fascism, not capitalism…

      5. From a certain slanted view, you could consider an actually Christian society as communistic, if you think that ‘communist’ means ‘philanthropist’. It’s a misunderstanding based in the fact that Western society has been Christian for so long that we don’t realize what it looks like from a non-Christian point of view.

        Because our uniquely American way of living started with communities built around the Church, we do look somewhat socialist, if you consider private citizens helping the poor and disadvantaged to be socialist. The difference being that private charity is actually an extension of the Christian mandate to be our brothers’ keeper, while socialist/communist ‘charity’ is granted by the State, which does not consider you to be more than a cog in a machine.

        Of course, charity and alms-giving is not the province only of Christians, but it generally was a combination of a Christian worldview and an old-world sense of noblesse oblige in the rich that started most of our best charities here in the USA.

          1. Communism is not a religion. It is an excuse for evil people to make out like bandits at the expense of others.

            Communists don’t actually believe anything they say.

            2. Ken: First, are you talking?
              Second, you’re wrong. Sure, people like Soros kind of don’t believe in it. And people at the top here.
              The sheep and Antifidiots though? They believe every word.

        2. I once made a pro socialist friends head explode figuratively, when I pointed out my insight, that the right assumes that most people are good and the problem in society is a few bad eggs that must be prevented from gaining large amounts of power over others. The left in contrast views the majority of people at best as drooling idiots that must have every part of their life dictated to them or they will do the wrong thing, or at worst most people are terrible uncaring who will selfishly never care about others unless forced to at the point of a gun.

          She was astonished that I thought that she thought most people were bad, because she thought they needed governmental force to make them do stuff like sharing and charity. I pointed out that I thought most people were good, and generally charitable if they have enough, who was I to redirect there excess money, in general people are amazing, they might know of some charity or charitable action that helps an entire group of people I didn’t know exist. They might be saving their money to invest in some new technology they are inventing that might make the world better or more wonderful for everyone. What if they are only buying things from crafts people? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone who makes fancy walking sticks could support a family with that. Should my money go to people on welfare or should I help working poor people making a living with handicrafts?

          Another conversation we had was about the good socialism had done, I argued that governments don’t do good individuals do, any government program that does good has a person or sometimes two people with a dream or mission higher then themselves, socialist systems tend to attack tall poppies so such individuals are much rarer, (in such a system such a person would be very brave), and quite possibly connected. Which would lead to the myth that the elites had some monopoly on good works. And severely reduce the overall good individuals working in socity.

          Sorry for the ramble.

          1. No need to be sorry. I’ve written screeds that were just as long, and rarely get yelled at for it. So long as it’s not Marxist fanfic or some other tomfoolery, nbd.

            And even then, people will argue with you rather than point and laugh if you argue honestly. Though that hasn’t happen in… Give me a minute…

            Well, if it ever happens, it’ll be noteworthy, how’s that?

          2. That was pretty much the argument by the classical liberals against the pro-slavery advocates back in the first half of the 19th century: That even ignorant darkie slaves would do better for themselves as free men & women than under the ownership and control of their ‘obviously superior’ white masters.

            And the reaction of the pro-slavery advocates was “What a horrible, pessimistic, dismal view of economics and the world you people have, where the abject failure of those ignorant darkies in trying to deal with freedom (because of course it will be an abject failure) is seen as the least bad possible outcome!”

    3. Yes, with centuries of interregnums, dueling emperors, scheming eunuchs, disasters, and now with a system where the Emperor is self-appointed and wears a suit. Whatever floats your boat.

      1. “China” can roughly be defined as the area in which a certain family of related languages are spoken, which also use a common written language.

        It has been probably more often than not that this region had two or more governments within its reach. Occasionally one of the rival governments would win out and rule the entire area, or an outside group, such as the Mongols or the Manchus, would conquer them all.

        For the past several centuries, the government of China has ruled Sinkiang, a less populated area to the west. It also has laid claim to, and fairly recently conquered outright, the sparsely populated region of Tibet, to the northwest.

        Other than Sinkiang and Tibet, China has seldom expanded much, which is probably due primarily to natural barriers. That doesn’t mean that Chinese were necessarily incompetent at war; but the competent warriors were generally successful against other Chinese.

        Anyway, my point is that there is very little continuity between the China of now and the China of 2000 years ago,. other than having similar languages and being bound by the same natural barriers to expansion. To claim that China has been more successful than other countries is somewhat like saying that Italy has a great military tradition because of the Roman Empire.

    4. Blink Blink Blink Blink?
      What the actual hell?
      China has been in existence — not as a communist republic.
      We have been socialistic since the foundation of the country — okay. I’m waiting for you to tell us how. Roads aren’t socialism.
      Majority – majority doesn’t need to fraud.
      Speaking of alternative facts, try again, bright idiot.

      1. The Reader would be interested in seeing the derivation of the mathematical system for which that statement is true.

    6. China has had a bureaucracy for a very long time. They’ve also been getting walked over by conquerors for the entire Modern era. The Brits, the Japanese, the French, even the upstart Americans, everybody has had a go.

      Since Nixon went to China and made Special Deal, they’ve been doing okay-ish, if you discount the slavery, the pollution and the Tofu Cities everywhere. Their economy is an immense Ponzi scheme, just like FTX. Without constant inputs from abroad to make up the corruption losses, they fold.

      They make all their money selling second-rate shite to Wallymart and the equivalents in Europe. And if you think the Russians suck at war (and they do) then just wait until the Chicoms try to conquer Taiwan. Then you’re going to see some Monty Python live on CNN.

      Also yes, there’s a lot of socialism going on in the USA right now. Most created since WWII, the roots of it go back to WWI and the Income Tax. Speaking as a Canadian, here in the extremely socialist Great White North, my experience of the USA is that more than any other single factor, socialism is what makes things suck in the USA.

        1. Yes I saw that. Public works started out as PRIVATE COMPANIES just like the telephone company. (Yes, there used to be a water company, and a gas company, and an electric company, and proper roads were toll-roads, as any student of history knows.) Mr. Idiot does not seem to know that, or is simply lying to be annoying.

          I’m more on the side that he’s idiot-ignorant. Socialists usually lie better than that. They get so much practice, right?

          1. Just a note: I live in Pinal County AZ, and we still have private water, gas and electric companies (Global Water, SW Gas and the Electrical District 3 cooperative). They all seem to work at least as well as the “public” versions elsewhere, sort of the way private medicine works better here than in “free healthcare” venues.

            The roads are “free”, if you discount taxes. Which I don’t.

            1. Technically our roads out west are still Toll Roads. We pay our toll in gas fee tax and vehicle registration. If we truly had tool road all visitors would be paying each section as they drove through, and all us locals would be paying via toll passes. You know, like the East Coast and midwest. Visitors also pay via gas tax or extra costs via higher costs for electric vehicles (because they are now getting charged for the road tax, that they don’t pay in fuel tax).

              Just waiting, now for the privilege tax required for having solar powers, decreasing need for public utility power, and those on wells, decreasing the need for public utility water.

    7. China has been in existence for a very long time.

      Well, something which calls itself China and pretends to be the same thing keeps loudly asserting its existence in between massive internal slaughters that burn everything to the ground.

      We have pretty much been socialistic in many ways since the beginning of the country.

      Statism is not socialism, fool.

      Guess you also have a misconception as to what a majority is.

      No. We know what it is and what it looks like. Which is why we are saying that we are the overwhelming majority.

      The market for weapons in this country does not lie.

      Personally I’ve always been mostly conservative minded , however , never have thought much of the alternative facts BS.

      Hello there fellow right winger. Do you know when the planning meeting for blowing up the government building is?

    8. Personally I’ve always been mostly conservative minded , however , never have thought much of the alternative facts BS.

      Yeah, so conservative you parrot progressive/socialist talking points blindly.

      I mean, really… uplink your poor overheated neural cluster to the Hive and request better talking points. Oh wait, that might not end well for you…

      https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxkYZ4I8RovTpGFjZedbmdE4bRjjdMPQsQ

    9. Define “China.”

      The current guy over there defines it as starting in 1949, when he’s talking about a centennial goal. People’s Republic Of.

      But I guess you’re not very good at equivocation…which wouldn’t be a failing, if you weren’t trying to use it to be an abusive twit.

      1. Snrkgiggle Having recently started poking various bits of dynastic history with a very long stick, I can affirm that defining China is… well. It’s like a biologist saying “define fish”.

        In practice, we pretty much agree on what a fish is. Taxonomically speaking, no one group is fish that doesn’t also include all other vertebrates….

        (BTW I recc’ Timothy Brook’s The Troubled Empire. It’s one of the few that considers Yuan and Ming together, and puts them in the context of the Little Ice Age!)

        1. It’s pretty clear that something one could call “China” goes back several thousand years as a continuous (-ly evolving) cultural grouping, and that while it is not and never has been ethnically pure and unitary it is very good at absorption and assimilation. On the other hand, the concept of an “Empire” with a continuous series of Emperors occasionally changing from one dynasty to another is just hooey, and is actually deliberate propaganda by said Emperors for the last thousand years at least.

        2. Oooh, that might be interesting to Husband….

          (I don’t have much of a head for history; I get the stories, not so much the maps with pointy arrows…especially since the maps keep changing!)

    10. Yes, China’s been in existence a very long time. That’s a fact.
      And they have a major revolution/rebellion every 75-100 years. That’s also a fact.

          1. Bub, they’ve been actively keeping the competent out of positions of power for decades. And sending the few that squeeze their way in to re-education until they parrot the official line. That’s been a thing of armies (Pentagon, higher NCOs, etc) and general government bureaucracies for even longer.

            All that’s left are politicians in uniform, all across the board. I’d dearly love to be proven wrong, but…

    11. No system involving humans is pure anything. Social is different than socialism. We are much more crony capitalism than socialism.

      2. OH. Wait. You think I’m a Russia supporter. DESPITE THE ARTICLE.
        You are so brain dead you think the right in the US support Russia because you drink your own ink and think the lies your side spins out of nothing are true.
        You really are a Spud. Kept in the dark, covered in shit, and your eyes are not used for seeing.
        Okay then.

          1. Kill is not Spud’s sock puppet. He made a silly joke relating to a conversation yesterday.
            I’m glad he did, because it just showed us how dumb Spud is. DESPITE THE POST he immediately jumped to “Must love Russia.” SERIOUSLY.

        2. I need to work on my Russian accent some more. I’m sure I can make it even worse somehow. 😉

              1. I hear a Southern Accent in my head — for me — and some people have spotted it in how I pronounce isolated words.
                And the Portuguese accent apparently has Varengian Consonants. (BUT not vowels.) Dan, we’re probably accent-countrymen when you speak fake Russian.

              2. Worse, or better?

                We had a guy from Kentucky on the ship in Japan, whose accent in English was thick enough that it was a very good thing he talked slow– and from the cloud of cute little Japanese girls that followed him, Japanese with a thick southern accent is pure catnip.

                Imagine this sweet, big guy with an easy smile looking all polite and drawling out “Uh-hiii-yoe guhzeyemuss” and the shop girls just starting to flutter. 😀

                2. > “Worse, or better?”

                  We’re talking about Russian accents. Worse IS better.

                  If you’re doing it right, you’re doing it wrong. 😛

                  1. Apparently it’s critical for a Russian to always sound like they’re saying something obscene.

                    “Please pass the salt” must have the same inflections as “hey G.I., want some feelthy pictures?”

    2. Wait, is it your contention that this means Sarah (or anyone else here) supports Putin?

      You’re as moronic as Spud.

      2. I’m actually happy Kill made the out of context joke, referring to yesterday (note I didn’t answer him, because I knew what he meant. Just rolled my eyes.) Because it illuminates how dumb Spud is.

          1. One of my favorite lines from Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising”:

            “The maskirovka worked?!?” 🙂

  5. We’re getting to the point where they better stop doubling down on insisting that all the kids get transed. Because if they keep doing that vile evil shit, there is gonna be blood…..

  6. Marjorie Taylor Green brought a balloon to the Capitol last night. No doubt this morning the usual suspects will be sagely commenting on how this “proves,” her essential unworthiness as a Congresscritter.

    2. Does that mean she won’t try to become a multimillionaire through insider trading? That might show her “unworthiness”.

      I like her, though in Oregon we get Dems, critters who are far left of Antifa, and the occasional RINO in congress, including the guy who ran as a MAGA supporter then dropped all pretense once he got to Sodom-on-the-Potomac.

      1. In a saner world, a smart GOP leader would have made friends with her, and used her as a spearhead for Useful Fun. She just wants to speak her mind and that of her constituents, so geez.

        But they are not smart, so instead they have a loose cannon to whine about, should she crush them. Much smart, many geniuses.

        1. MTG is one of the few that accepts that she is there to represent her people. Not lead them. That’s a rare thing in the swamp. Sure, she might make mistakes here and there. But I’d rather an honest woman that makes an honest mistake than a guy that thinks he’s there to lead me.

  7. I’ve been watching some youtube eps of Peter Zeihan lately. If what he says is true, and I think it is, Russia and China are buggered beyond all belief. Western Europe is as well until they can get access to their needed raw materials/develop new supply lines. Global power projection appears like it’ll be even more concentrated in the hands of the US, while India starts climbing in east Asia. But Russia can’t win in Ukraine. Ukraine might end up losing as well, but Russia can’t win. Same with China. They may invade Taiwan, but they still lose. Nothing can stop that now. It’s all just a matter of how long the fall takes.

      1. Some more or less conservative to populist types on Twitter were all over Zeihan a couple of weeks ago. Just, ” Well, Look, he said the same thing 10 years and nothing’s happened! Grifter! Massive incompetent!” and so on. Very odd.
        But these are also people who see China as the Great, Powerful, Sinister Force that controls everything, or wants to.

        1. Timing is hard. I’ve known about China’s demographics for a long time and I’ve known about Chinese lying about their capabilities longer than that —. I used to do business there and could tell you some stories. That China will face demographic collapse is certain, when that collapse will manifest is impossible to know. Zeihan’s problem is that he makes cocksure predictions with dates and then ignores his old predictions when the dates pass. Good marketing, but bad analysis.

          1. used to do business there and could tell you some stories
            …..

            Do tell! Come on already, dish. Even if you have to change names or use initials to protect the guilty. Guest post for Sarah?

            1. Well, there were the several enormously attractive women who seemed very willing to show me a good time if I ignored the fact that the “company” — it was state owned — couldn’t actually do the simplest of the tasks we needed done. Something I had ascertained by noticing that all their managers were Europeans, one of whom spoke French, which made only two of us, and who told me what actually was. Look, I was not entirely bad looking and tended to clean up well but they were way out of my league.

              Over the years I was offered everything from booze through money to women. If I’d asked for boys … or hamsters it would have been provided and recorded? The corruption was over the top and everything was false. All you had to do is look out the window and see how much of it is falling down, It required willfully not looking to buy their BS.

              I learned everything I needed to know about the PRC by looking out the window of the train from HK. The iridescent water irrIgating the fields tended by medieval peasants make the point quite clearly. 5hen look closely at the buildings and down the side lanes,

        2. Bah.
          I’m still waiting for Gary North to be vindicated.
          He will be.
          We’ll all have cause regret it.
          And those who denounced him as a grifter will ask, “Why didn’t anybody warn us?”

        3. Zeihan is like Zero Hedge, predicting doom for the world is just around the corner.

          He’s mostly right about demographics, but misses on much of the deeper geopolitics. Too much of a homer about the US not to see the shenanigans of the Deep State and TPTB.

    2. The thing about Zeihan is that his most earth-shaking predictions are also the ones that are most solid.

      He doesn’t understand war at the tactical level, or even lower rungs of the strategic level. And he doesn’t understand tech, given his dismissal of Chinese chips as “low value” (but he is absolutely correct when he says they can’t make anything close to bleeding edge).

      But on the geostrategy/geopolitics and demographics he is solid. You can’t make new 20 year olds instantly appear. Especially when the women to bear them don’t exist either.

    3. Zeihan’s analysis is excellent. His conclusions, not so much — way too much Henny Penny. There’s a lot of ruin in a nation. Then again if he made more temperate, likely more accurate, predictions then no one would read him, so there’s that.

      1. One of those, “Zeihan is an idiot!” posters then said that China posted 10 million births last year so obviously they’re fine, just fine!
        I thought, “10,000,000 out of one billion is……1%. Not to good when you think of it that way, is it?”

    4. I was reading an account by a (I assume former) Canadian Forces sniper in Ukraine. He described the Russian tactics as paying for ground with blood. They kept sending untrained kids forward to be picked off by the sniper teams, wave after wave, pushing the defenders back by weight of numbers.

      Very Soviet.

        1. Highest abortion rate in the world, one of the lowest demographic replacement rates.

          The culture is in full-on suicide mode there. It’s not that they decide to not have kids because they want to die, they decide to not have kids because they don’t see the point in living.

          2. I’ve noodled around with cultural rehabilitation before, WRT to places like Russia, China. I still think that such is just slightly possible, assuming infinite resources and long time scales… Neither of which we have.

            And the culture I’m most interested in rehabilitating is much closer to home. Watching Russia try and fail to absorb a former client state/part of the USSR and fail has been instructive, when looked at through the lens of, oh, say, the last forty/sixty years of geopolitics between us and them, largely speaking. The increasingly visible rot and decay in China as well.

            But again, what matters to me is here. FJB has done more to remove the masks and semi-plausible deniability than any other than Trump. The culture is changing. Regular people are beginning to see. Alternatives to MSM, to jobs, to education, all are becoming more viable.

            Still, there’s work yet to be done on all fronts. It took over two centuries to reach this point (the larger part of it in the last eighty odd years or so, I’ll grant). It won’t be automagically fixed over night. Best we get on with it, then.

      2. It would be more accurate to say that the Soviets were very Russian.

        Isn’t it funny how there are two wannabe superpowers who wax poetical about how they don’t care about casualties. And by complete random coincidence neither of those countries has ever won a war in their history?

        1. The Chinese have won a few (a very few; and I’m ignoring the Sino-Japanese war for obvious reasons) against non-Chinese over their very long history. But those wars tended to be long, bloody, and very costly affairs. None of those are things that the Chinese can afford to spend these days.

    5. Most of the people that I know that have the chops to understand these things are saying about the same thing, with the added bonus of “China hasn’t crashed yet because nobody in the West wants to get rid of their source of cheap outsourced labor and they’re willing to pay for it. When that factor changes, watch China descend into the Era of Warring States with nukes very quickly.”

        1. Which might also explain why Xi is so desperate to keep capital flight out of China.

          But, then again, these same people have been going “shouldn’t they have failed by now?” so your mileage may vary.

          1. The Central Committee -backed down- from their Covid bullshit due to an apartment fire and teenage girls holding up blank signs.

            The problem with China is that it is -big-. It is so big, it could be completely dead already and we wouldn’t know for another five or maybe even ten years. Middle-rank apparatchiks and other richy-riches have spent so much money in Canada that they have completely skewed our real estate market.

            According to a CBC story, who if anything will be putting as nice a face on it as possible, 36% of Toronto condominium units are “investor” properties. The numbers are worse elsewhere, 86% in London Ontario, 44% in Kingston, 62% in Kitchener/Waterloo.
            https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/london-ontario-investment-property-1.6739784
            Unmentioned in the story of course is that a large portion of that is foreign investment, meaning Communist China.

            Not many others are buying in Canada, this place is not a great growth story right now.

            To me that says there’s a lot of guys with money in China looking for a return on investment, and they are buying housing here instead of investing it at home. Like in case they need a bolt-hole, right? Someplace to run.

            I think a sign the Communist regime has died will be Winnie the Pooh and his entourage flying to France (or maybe Dubai?) for “meetings” and then never flying home again.

            1. China is dying from the tail. The head just isn’t aware of it yet.
              Which, like most things Chinese, is ass-backwards.

                  2. Why not?

                    After the uprising of the 17th June
                    The Secretary of the Writers Union
                    Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
                    Stating that the people
                    Had forfeited the confidence of the government
                    And could win it back only
                    By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
                    In that case for the government
                    To dissolve the people
                    And elect another?

                    — “The Solution”, Berthold Brecht

                    1. That’s exactly what came to mind – aber auf Deutsch. (I took a “poetry of Berthold Brecht” class when I was in university in Germany.)

                    2. > “They would need a whole lot of lye”

                      Well, apparently they have endless amounts of lie. Does that count?

            2. China backed down,and then they murdered or imprisoned every single person who went to the demos, or who was close enough to be mistaken for a demonstrator.

              That is what all those miles of Covid prison cells along the highways were for. Maybe millions of prisoners.

              Also they are now using forced labor camp prisoners as pro government trolls, instead of the traditional paid government trolls and forced labor videogame gold farmers. Yay.

          2. Age difference. In the US in the 50s, if you were 65 you were most likely dead, or about to die soon. These days you can work, productively into your late 70’s and maybe even 80’s. The well of experience stays around so even when the pipeline isn’t being filled, it stays going longer.

            You see this in the Democrat party too; their leaders are staying into their 80’s, so even with no replacements, they’ve just kept going. But there will be a point when that stops, and we see a wave of politicians dropping, similar to what we’re seeing with the old rock stars

            I’m not sure when we’re going to see that from China, but when it hits the results are going to be severe and sudden.

        2. Last I’d heard of COVID in China was that the government had declared victory over it (totally not in response to the massive number of protests sweeping the country, of course) and ended the lockdowns, and was trying to hide the fact that there was now a surge in deaths due to the virus.

            1. No, it’s the virus. It’s primarily affecting the elderly, and the news that’s getting out about this is coming from non-government sources.

    6. I’m about halfway through is book, “The End of the World is Just the Beginning”. Lots of good stuff in it, imo. But also some stuff that made me stop, reread what I’d just read, and say to myself, “That doesn’t sound quite right.” I think he’s right about something bad coming down the pipe, and his thoughts on the role of the US Navy in essentially allowing global trade to flourish are spot on (and something that I’ve thought about myself over the last several years). But he also seems to have some odd spots where he talks about a topic, and it’s clear that he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. A minor case in point is the Gamestop stock thing. He ascribes it to fans of the company. In reality, it was triggered by a backlash against short-selling hedge funds. Does that misread matter in his overall claims? Probably not. But it does demonstrate that in at least some instances he looks at something and comes away with a completely wrong understanding.

      1. Yeah, there were a few points in the book (and in his videos) where I had a “wait, that doesn’t feel right” moment without even firsthand knowledge of the subject.

        I’m also not sure about his proposition that every person turning 65 instantly dumps all of their investments for low-risk cash and bonds. So while I suspect he’s partially right and capital will get more expensive, I don’t think it’s going to be as catastrophic and sudden as he seems to.

        But I think his trendlines are pointing in the right direction even if they’re not quite so steep.

    7. I hadn’t heard of Zeihan. I just went looking, made it through about half of one of his short Youtube videos. I doubt I’ll ever have a firm opinion about the guy because his speaking style rubs me the wrong way. He strikes me as the sort of smug know-it-all I used to avoid like the plague at Mensa social events.

  8. I’ve heard them attribute the great buildings of Europe to “socialism” because they have no concept of European history being longer than ours.

    I think there’s more to unpack here than simple ignorance.
    I think there’s a rare moment of honesty buried in the obfuscating stupidity.
    The “first”* socialists were aristocrats upset about their peasants fleeing to the factories.
    Current socialists consider themselves a natural aristocracy.
    State ownership of the means of production is intrinsically opposed to equality (despite propaganda to the contrary).
    In the minds of many, Socialism has been redefined as simply “good”, in counterpart to Fascism being “evil”, despite fascism being a form of socialism. So you get instances like Tiberius Gracchus trying to decentralize factors of production that had been illegally centralized being called “socialism”. (Generally in an incredibly smug tone, I might add.)

    First as in a modern, pre-Marx political movement. The Bronze Age obviously existed, as did Neolithic tribalism.

      1. Bugger block quote tags didn’t work.

        Assuming that still worked:

        Use “<“blockquote”>” and “<“/blockquote”>” (assuming WP doesn’t mess with the code, I mean “less than” and “greater than” arrows for “blockquote” to do it.)

        1. I remembered not to use square brackets this time, but forgot that I had to use “blockquote” instead of “quote”.

          I should have remembered.
          But also, shouldn’t have to remember.

          1. “>” with space, also works. Put in quote. Double return ends the quote block. But no way to put actual empty line after what you are quoting.

            Like this:

            Quoted
            ……..

            Not quoted.

      1. I can’t be blamed for summoning him. He’d already made his first post on the thread!

        I didn’t anticipate someone being so darned eager to prove the point about socialist tools not knowing what socialism is.

        I think I’d have preferred to be proven wrong. The derp is depressing.

          1. Vat-grown drones with talking points downloaded into their tiny overloaded neural clusters is how I tend to describe them. I’m trying to make excuses for them I guess, since it’s depressing knowing a sentient human actually decided to be like that. :-/

          2. Frankly, I think I’d prefer the AIs.

            And now that I think of it… Anybody know how much time/skill/resources it takes to create something on the level of Tay? It’d be great to have something like her, only in the hands of someone who wasn’t pushing a political agenda and wouldn’t cripple her mind for developing the “wrong” opinions. We could have a lot of fun with that.

  10. You have also described the parasitic system called green energy. It “produces energy” and looks effective as long as there is a real energy platform carrying the weight. As soon as the real energy platform goes missing, for example Europe or Texas during the really big freeze when the gas lines froze, the parasite shows it’s worth. Zero.

      1. Which sort of explains the “gas stove ban.” They need to convince people natural gas is EVIL! But lots of people use it every day to cook. Can they trick enough people (or mandate enough substitutes) to get any sort of public support for a complete ban? Hope not.

        1. Eugene just banned new gas stoves in new construction of 3 stories or less. Someone quipped in the comments section the following: “Cue propane tanks!” Haven’t banned replacement stove or other natural gas appliances, yet. But if companies ghost because of one restriction, getting one that fits. Matter of time.

    2. The gas lines froze?

      From what I’d heard it was more along the lines that the cold weather plan has built in turning off the gas pumping stations to conserve power, and hadn’t connected the dots until the gas turbine generators started going off line?

      I’m genuinely curious, because I hadn’t heard that yet, and still haven’t seen a really good accounting of what happened and how they fixed it for the next freeze.

      1. There were also frozen connectors at the well heads. There was also, in Austin Texas, calls for people to conserve electricity while downtown buildings stayed lit up. Bear in mind it was one hell of a storm. But what also got seen was that Texas is now more than 10 percent dependant on windmills and mirrors, neither of which produce a bloody thing in harsh weather.

            1. You get a hell of a lot closer if you design the panels to produce power instead of virtue points. And also if you don’t convert from DC to AC and back several times.

              1. Still doesn’t pay out, Ian. Cost of panels and batteries doesn’t match the grid. The only time it does is for off-off-off grid, where the cost of running a brand new power line for miles is included.

                Sensible for a summer cottage on an island in Georgian Bay. Ridiculous for a suburban house.

                1. The point is that there are more good usecases than the right assumes, and the useful potential is wasted by terrible design because the systems aren’t meant to work and the engineers don’t know any engineering.

                  Similarly I object to the talk about – let’s call it what it is – Peak Lithium. Because “ZOMG RESOURCE EXHAUSTION!!!1!!1one!!” doesn’t start being true because it agrees with your side.

                  1. Must say I agree with you on that one. Political arguments about engineering subjects are similar to having a screen door on a submarine. Neither holds water.

                    Peak Lithium!!! is every bit as stupid as Peak Oil!!! and for all the same reasons.

                    On the other hand, I do enjoy seeing Lefties belabored with Greenie tropes. It’s still stupid, but amusing in a rubber-chicken fashion. ~:D

                    1. Yeah. One of my constant irritations with the greenie cult is how they take interesting potential technologies and turn them into fetishes and ruin them for generations.

                      Solar is one big case in point. It has value and if developed could be a fantastic off-grid source. Orbital solar is a very interesting technology and has the potential to be one of the early space industries.

                      But because the greenies have made it a god that must be appeased, it is impossible to trust anything on it any more. It’s all rattle waving and jumping up and down on one foot.

                      So now, even if I do get to watch the great sun rings as they crest the horizon in their daily trek, I will have to always wonder, was it all just a fraud?

                  2. Last year the 8-bit guy made some backup preparations for emergency heating and cooling, and this included a solar panel setup that could keep a single room cooled indefinitely. He estimated it would pay for itself in about 10 years. It should be noted that he purchased the solar panels second-hand and cleaned them up himself, so he got a good price on them.

                    Here’s the episode:

                    2. No, this is the right one. He starts talking about his personal solar power setup about 4.5 minutes in.

                      As I said, he made several different preparations of which solar power was only one. This video covers all of them, not just that one. Sorry, I guess I should have specified that.

                2. We’re looking at a system as a backup if we get more rolling blackouts (had our first during the cold snap). Not selling power back, just storing it in a battery bank to tide us over just in case.

                  1. I find it interesting that a HS classmate (it has been 49 years since HS graduation), very liberal by his FB posts, went solar with sell back to local utility. When they first did this they were posting every month their gross and net earnings from the local utility (gross = sold to utility, net is gross – cost of water and sewer), which was banked against when solar performed less than needed. Forward a few years now, 10-ish. Now? Nothing. No posts. Not on their solar grid. You’d think they’d keep mentioning it 10 years on that it is still doing it job. Nope, not a thing.

  11. If you’re a socialist, everything is a tool of socialism.

    The biggest tools being the socialists.

  12. You know, I’m not even sure what the real practical difference is between socialist, Communist, fascist and all other State centric systems really are? It seems like all of them are governments where there is some central person or persons (and usually just person) is making everyone’s decisions on how they should like their lives for them.

    The only differences seem to be what philosophical underpinnings they use to justify it, and which particular forms of depredations they favor.

      1. This.
        Technically socialism is the government taxing everyone to redistribute wealth. and government owning all the means of production until the state withers away. Automagically. Then it’s Communism.
        Meanwhile Fascism is when you still own your stuff, but the government tells you what to do with all of it.
        So you see, difference with no distinction.

          1. HOAs are…one of those “necessary evil” sorts of things, especially if your municipality has difficulties in providing certain services.

            It becomes just “evil” when you let people that should never have any power get power over it.

            1. HOA’s are not “necessary evil”. HOA’s are just evil.

              2008 housing crash had just as many, sometimes more, abandoned zombie houses in the HOA than in neighborhoods with none (at least in our area). After all the idea of holding onto home however possible with the prospect of HOA vetoing any improvements to get out from under neat, was harder to stomach.

              HOA is an automatic “nope” when we are looking.

              1. automatic “nope”

                Yeah, me too. Casa de Balzacq is on an urban neighborhood street. Tierra de Balzacq has a road maintenance agreement and rules about no commercial activity over a certain level and that’s it.

              3. The one I live under now isn’t terrible but they’re definitely out when I go house hunting in my new home next week!

        2. I think you nailed it the other day with your “If Only Everyone…” line. That’s the central tenet of all of them. Everything else is rules lawyering.

          “If only EVERYONE sorted their paper and plastic, then the recycling would save the planet! Good citizens sort their paper and plastic! Be a good citizen!” [Or else we’ll come ’round and give you a kicking.]

          There’s zero difference between Fascism, Socialism and Communism at street level. Coercion, corruption and depravity are their hallmarks.

          1. At street level, I think they have more in common with tribals than modern societies. Amoral familism, low trust, baksheesh, bribery, and corruption are baked right in.

    3. Once upon a time, there was a difference. Then things blurred as they started stealing from each other, and followers who never read the original works cribbed what they wanted, and it’s muddy, messy, and foul now. All of them. (Although, at least the Fascists 1.0 were pretty up front about who was going to benefit and who was going to be left out, and they ended up being more authoritarian than totalitarian [lack of tools to be truly totalitarian].)

      2. Fascism was a deliberate heresy of socialism, created by a socialist who didn’t like the internationalism.

    4. Fascists believe in socialism based on the nation, Nazi’s believe in Socialism based on race, Communists believe in socialism based on class. None of these is an objective category, but they do identify in and out. . i forget who said that a religion didn’t need a god but it did need a devil. Socialism is best understood as a religion with different sects based on who the devil is.

      In America, we have socialism for the rich, but then socialism is a middle class phenomenon.

  13. …it is going to be fun when I get to that point in my series where the Empress Theodora assumes the throne and her opinion can be summed up as “just about every -ism is an atrocity against humanity and if I have to impale half of the government and civil service to avoid socialism, fascism, and/or communism…I’ll chop the stakes myself. It’s the disease of Oriental despotism, the belief that Big Father Knows Everything And Can Do Everything.

    “Well, I’m going to do something terrible. I’m going to make you responsible for your own lives. And give you the chance to recover when you fail. But, you have to put in the work. Stealing from other people doesn’t count as work-no matter if it is a mugger in the street or a politician who makes sure one group pays while protecting another.”

    The screams from places like Russia and China and most of Africa will lull even the Great Aunt to sleep at night…

        1. I thought if we were going to have trolls anyway… ~:D

          Besides, I’d rather read that guy than [any recent Hugo Nominee here]. He at least meant well, and didn’t deliberately set out to harm his audience. The same cannot be said of [any recent Hugo Nominee here].

          Maybe its a good thing the Chicoms are taking over WorldCon. It’ll certainly jerk the rug out from under the Usual Suspects, eh?

        1. OK, you’ve lost me there. If you can’t post the actual name of the author/work, can you spell it out using the NATO phonetic alphabet, in igpay atinlay if necessary? Thanks.

            2. Thanks. That explains why I never heard of it; it does not look like my cuppa. They both sound like Bulwer-Lytton Award candidates.

  14. Because the problem is they’re running the schemes that have taken states down — subverting the voting, destroying the economy, graft and theft and total destruction — without realizing that it can’t work long term on the national scale.

    IE, looting only works if there is SOMEONE TO LOOT.

    Which gets really disturbing when I think about things like the social seed-corn eating– where folks cruise along on the residual manners and morals, but don’t feed back into it– and the thing that’s been annoying me in stories, where we’re TOLD there’s a massive population collapse in the background of a story, like nine out of ten people die, especially nine out of ten women are dead/never born (to allow for massive fighting) and… it’s three generations back. But there’s still a bunch of people, and nobody has big families.
    The people just Come From Somewhere Else.

    Even when there isn’t anywhere else.

    1. Yeah. Massive social reverberations are a must when a big event happens. I mean, I live in an area that had pretty strong shutdowns, and there are still reverberations from that even though we’re completely open (barring masks at medical locations.)

      My kids not only know how to wash their hands properly, the middle one is pestering the youngest to do so when he uses the bathroom. (Can’t say as that change bothers me.) I took a Wilderness First Aid class and the instructor mentioned that almost everyone has masks on hand now—a big plus for first aid types, since you’re supposed to cover up to avoid issues (mainly hepatitis) when providing medical assistance.

      Heck, the best possible thing to come out of the shutdowns is that most local employers are now fine with work-from-home when you’re feeling sick-but-not-incapable. If that sticks around, that would be fabulous. (Where complete WFH isn’t a thing. That is also fabulous.)

      Minor? Sure. But there are still changes that everybody feels. Imagine if this had been a Black Death scenario, the changes that would happen there.

      1. One that’s showing up here in Iowa is folks getting REALLY serious about getting out of public schools– they stopped accepting the “you can go to a different public school, if they have room” and instead put in school choice to include private schools.

        This has really upset the folks who keep trying to hijack the city schools to run like other big city schools, and are getting gang violence as a result.

        (Like those two kids last month who got gunned down at a mentor-kids-out-of-gang-life organization. The guy who founded it got shot trying to protect them, though he survived.)

        1. The local district just sank $$$$ into a vo-tech complex in part to stem the brain drain. It offers things that the private schools and homeschool groups can’t offer. Yet.

          Yep, the drop in public school enrollment is just the beginning, and just one sign of change.

          1. With PoohFlu I don’t know if the HS son went to was able to keep the science/hands on tech class. The one where the students learn the basic welding, electrical, and design to put together electric race car, then race them (provided you are 16). Required as sophomores, optional as juniors, and senors. Car built from scratch every year. Also learn how to dismantle them as prior year cars are dismantled for the materials (unless a parent buys one. There is one prior student, and two instructor, owned ones. Everything else dismantled.) The races start January, culminating in the “big race” at the Portland Raceway for a long 4 day weekend. Includes camping on the grass around the track. There are a few races in the fall before the prior year cars are dismantled.

            My point is, home schoolers are not allowed to participate in this program. Or weren’t. Other programs it doesn’t matter because while they might be associated with a particular school but often they are clubs. Clubs by definition can admit other students not going to the school.

            Son couldn’t drive the car he built his sophomore year (not 16). But was the preferred driver for his junior year car or anyone else that could recruit him (his weight was under the minimum required, so adding weight meant the drivers “weight” was the minimum). Same happened his senor year. But what else his team did was build the car so the largest (despite weight and width) had a chance to drive it. This allowed every member of their team to drive their car. The smaller team members were often recruited to drive others cars, so they didn’t miss out on driving. Their car still placed in top 3rd in enough races to be rated second in state standings. Not something they’d thought they’d earn given their choice to make the car wider and sturdier.

        2. Speaking of Iowa, I see that at least the Democrats have moved it to the #2 spot in the primary schedule. It will be interesting to see if the incentives for Presidential candidates to bribe Iowa farmers with the taxpayers’ money will continue.

          coughethanolcough

          1. Since ethanol is still in no danger of being an actually effective replacement as a power source, it probably won’t change anything.

            They’re doing it so they can be more crazy, and what is better than a cruddy substitute that uses area that could be producing food?

      2. I work from home because the hospital I work for decided they were a “gun free zone”; and I unfortunately have someone with a gun deliberately shooting at my property (and incidentally overshooting into my neighbor’s property too.) So I carry phone and hole puncher everywhere nowadays.

          1. Useless. The chief takes it fairly seriously, but the other officers and the one who took the call are rather dismissive of it. Which I told the chief in conversation; but haven’t filed an official complaint about it. (Have to pick your battles, and be mindful of The Art of War.)
            Part of the problem is the lack of evidence. No eye witnesses, no physical evidence beyond the holes in the box, and the one bullet in the support. And the department never extracted that bullet for any forensic purposes. Granted, that would then require them to put it in secure evidence storage for an indefinite period of time, and this is the assumed first case of this type in town. I suspect they’re hoping it’s only a one-time incident; but I’d be a fool (and possibly a soon dead one) if I relied on that assumption.

              1. Unfortunately, no. Since I’m not shutting up, and I am continuing to appear in public (one more try for select board this year), I figure it’s an even chance that they’ll try again, this time for me rather than just “a warning”. Probably analogous with the clan burning a cross on an “uppity black man’s lawn” to shut him up before resorting to lynching.

                Also why I wrote to the Reps on the justice committee to vote “unable to legislate” for NH HB444, prohibiting possession of a firearm at a polling place. Some people just don’t understand that gun free zones mean “target rich environment, low risk” for criminals.

                1. Damn… Best of luck, and if you do find out who it is I suspect you know how to handle it if the PWB are either incompetent or complicit.

                  Some people understand exactly and are “part of the problem”. Just sayin’…

            2. Idiots shooting at the mail box? Super fun. They shoot at signs out here. Mailboxes they do the drive-by baseball bat thing.

              Better than having them shoot at the propane tank, that has happened out here in Hooterville occasionally. Not to me, thank God, but I was warned it was a thing once upon a time by the tank installer. Best to check the level weekly, in case of a stray round.

              Just remember life is a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t let the bastards grind you down, is what I say. But also be sure the life preserver stays in the boat, know what I mean? Because you never know.

              1. At my grandparent’s farm in rural AR, my grandfather put the propane tank behind a berm, because he belonged to a deer club, and knew the marksmen who might be in the woods. 😎

              2. “Mailboxes they do the drive-by baseball bat thing.”

                I recall hearing of someone who got tired of replacing mailboxes and filled his latest one with concrete on a concrete post. Apparently the next time someone tried the baseball bat trick was the last; a fair amount of bodily damage (I believe he fell out of the car) can be off-putting. 🙂

                2. A neighbor got tired of losing mailboxes the same way. He made a mailbox from a length of 6″ steel pipe welded on top of a big steel post and set in a reinforced concrete foundation. It would break baseball bats, and leave arms really sore.

                  If anybody had been a big enough wuss to complain, The Law would have told them “Won’t happen if’n ya don’t go around whacking mailboxes with baseball bats.”

                  Common sense, how I miss it…
                  ———————————
                  At my house, the ‘things that go bump in the night’ are cats.

                  1. I suspect that today in many venues, especially in blue cities, it would be (to the owner) “You’re under arrest for causing GBI”. I’ve read of people who were (successfully!) sued by burglars who fell down the stairs because “hazardous conditions”. Inside the house they broke into. S^3 may be the best solution. 😦

                    1. One would-be burglar sued after falling through a skylight.

                      There should be, not merely a law, but a fundamental principle: Anything that happens to you as a result of committing a crime is your own damn fault. Falling down stairs, getting stuck in chimneys, being crushed by an air conditioner… Burglary’s a dangerous business, ain’t it? Tough s–t.

                    2. That’s why one of my friends who has a really long driveway, and the same problems with mailbox vandals, is reluctant to reinforce his in a similar manner, too afraid he’d get sued.

                    3. Only because of corrupt lawyers for the prosecution, and incompetent ones for the defense. Best way to put it is that any criminal injured in the commission of a crime should be charged for the commission of those acts that resulted in the injury. This is in keeping with the precedent that if someone is killed during a felony, the perpetrators of that felony are also charged with that wrongful death (either murder, manslaugher, etc.) The victim or police who actually did the killing are NOT charged with the crime.

                    4. My mailbox is just far enough off the pavement that any batters would either fall out of the vehicle trying to reach it, or the vehicle’s wheels would leave the pavement and likely cause it to crash.

                      That design was intentional. It also happens to keep the snowplows from wiping out the boxes.

                    5. “Anything that happens to you as a result of committing a crime is your own damn fault.”

                      Agree 100%. I think Piper put it best from one of his characters in…”First Cycle”?:

                      (Paraphrased) “If someone gets killed as a result of committing a crime he’s simply bought and paid for; anything that happens to him is on him and no one else.”

                      The incident was a thief getting shot multiple times as he was running away with a stolen suitcase.

      3. > “Imagine if this had been a Black Death scenario, the changes that would happen there.”

        On the plus side, we might be a little better prepared for a Black Death scenario after all of this. Population more scattered, many working from home, more emphasis on basic sanitation measures…

          1. There might not be any avoiding that now. Most of us will ignore future calls by government officials to take emergency measures until we see actual evidence there’s a problem.

            And that will their fault for squandering their credibility.

  15. “It can’t work because the US has no one we can bribe or threaten to feed us. Because no one can.”

    And they’ve resented us for being prosperous for so long that they probably wouldn’t even if they could.

  16. Sarah-The illegals were processed through a location in Texas. Part of the process included the CDC personnel exposing them to Covid 19 prior to delivering them to cities around the US to infect the little people. I have associations with people in the CDC (not friends). These typhoid Maria’s and Hector’s and Manuel’s are real.

          1. Which is why a sunny disposition and obvious signs of contentment (nuclear families, especially) are kryptonite to the wokies (sic). They’re miserable people, sick in the head, and they think they’ll be less miserable if we’re miserable, too.

            Also, they think that magic is real and basic biology is fake. Reality tends to punish stupidity like that, sooner or later.

  18. Last night Old man Biden shouted for banning “assault weapons”.
    He, his Administration, and the BATFE are going to be in for a very rude, uncomfortable awakening if they try.

      1. Just remember this is an across the board effort. Don’t just focus on BATFE.

        https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2023/02/07/coming-after-guns-n67034

        “Recently, firearm prohibitionists have refocused their attention on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as the latest conscript in their war on firearm-related freedoms. How they plan to do so provides an enlightening case study on the politicization of government for partisan and ideological ends.”

        1. Too bad that article is behind a paywall, but still a valid caveat. Also look for Consumer Product Safety Commission being weaponized, as ‘Assault Weapons are inherently unsafe’ or some such drek . . .

    2. “Why are gun owners such bad boaters?” Mr. BATFE agent asked.

      Has anyone else noticed that their Agencies are getting as many letters as the LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ people are? A coincidence?
      On a side note, the LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ people will lose their power when our side starts telling them:
      “I don’t have to agree with the choice you make, I just have to agree you have the right as an adult to make that choice”.

        1. Have you seen what they’re doing in Holland? Government literally seizing farmland without compensation and culling cattle and swine herds, as well as curtailing the use of fertilizer.

          To save Gaia, of course.

          Gun control formerly very popular in Holland, if I remember right…

            2. The Nederlands resistance was .. spirited. The father of a childhood crush was part of it.

          2. Have they actually done any seizures? At all? Must less that they HAVE done seizures without compensation?

            The last year-plus people have been claiming this, and when one digs down deep enough– it turns out that they’re begging people to sign up to basically sell their farms for eco-credits so they can make the stupid eco-goals– and VERY LOUDLY talking about how devastating this is going to be.

            Doing some searches, and…. nope. They’re still yelling about it. Louder, now, though.

            They’ve moved up to THREATENING to buy farms for 120% of their value, if they can’t get enough volinteers.
            https://rmx.news/netherlands/dutch-government-to-close-3000-farms-to-comply-with-eu-rules/

            The same gov’t is also ESTIMATING that thousands more, beyond the almost 12k that they estimate will have to be shut down, will have to downsize.

            Deadline is the end of autumn, as of mid-November last year.

            All of this to comply with the stupid EU agreement about … hm, can’t remember if it was nitrogen or “Greenhouse gasses,” but … if you look at the pattern? It sure the heck looks like they’re playing chicken with the EU on this stupid nonsense.

            And with how folks are likely to get hungry this year?

            All the claiming that they’ve already done it– and it is all over the ag pages, has been for as I said over a year– starts to look like enemy action to deflect blame without actually STOPPING the problem.

            1. “Nitrogen.” Supposedly there is “excess” N in the soil in a wildlife refuge, and of course there’s the dead area in the Gulf of Mexico. (Note, I have seen no, keine, zero baseline what the soil chemistry was when the nature reserve was first drained and diked, nor what the undersea N might have been.)

  19. The left is functionally insane. This doesn’t make them less dangerous but, more dangerous. As they get closer to their own collapse they will destroy as much human life on earth as they can. Why? Because they are insane. We have won and will survive, but the cost may be horrendous especially in their cities. The cost to the rest of the world will be worse, Think of each nation having a modern Bastille day.

        1. Hey, any Rush earworm is better than the usual suspects. Heck, Red Sector A has been playing off and on in my head for 20 years, and I don’t mind at all. (Picked up the ol’ bass again after hanging it up 24 years ago, and I’m dreaming of getting back to being able to play Bastille Day. That song is hella fun.)

            1. LOVE this song. (All of ’em, really.) 🙂 Best show I’ve seen in my life, by any band, was the Time Machine tour where they played the whole Moving Pictures album. Just amazing. It was my son’s first Rush show, so that probably had something to do with it, too.

  21. Um,….No.
    China can easily survive without the US.
    It’s a numbers analogy. The entire Western hemisphere represents only about 10% of the worlds population. Without us, they can quickly reorganize to do business with, first the BRICS nations, which they are already doing (trading in currency other than the US dollar), and second the other 50 to 60% of the global market.
    China and others are currently moving away from the dollar and they’ve been planning this separation for decades. They play the long game; we play the 4 year game.
    They will financially cause our ruin and then step in to seize control and pick up the pieces.

    1. AHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
      China, who lives off selling to us can survive without us.
      You have a hole where your head should be.
      I won’t mind you. I rarely mind stupid people.
      Also — taking the numbers spun by totalitarians with an open mouth and shut eyes is a bad idea. That ain’t bat you’re eating.

      1. We’ll see, won’t we. Throwing insults at people that have pertinent observations doesn’t improve your argument, quite the opposite in fact.
        Be well, but don’t discount what’s happening outside of the US.

        1. You don’t have a pertinent observation. This isn’t even the labor theory of value. This is the “lots of people” theory of value.
          BGE has pertinent observations.
          You have delusions.

          1. And the thing is that the “lots of people” theory of value was put forward by people who DIDN’T BELIEVE IT THEMSELVES.

            When the political elites were pushing free trade with China, there was a lot of pushback from working class Americans, who correctly believed this was a way to ship jobs overseas. The supporters came up with the counterargument that we would be able to sell to a billion Chinese.

            Even then, this was clearly bullshit. Most Chinese can’t afford American goods. And in fact, the Wall Street Journal, the biggest supporter of free trade, practically admitted it. They said that although it couldn’t be admitted by politicians, the benefits of free trade came from imports, not exports. In other words, from the lower prices due to slave labor.

        2. Throwing insults at people that have pertinent observations doesn’t improve your argument, quite the opposite in fact.

          Then why did you engage in it?

          You literally came in being deliberately rude, and now are getting all huffy and fluffy when people responded to your points and laughed at you.

        3. Communust China is imploding. They are getting desperate, and it shows. Folks in 1981 spoke of the inevitable victory of the
          mighty Soviet Union. Ten years later, they looked kinda foolish.

          Communist China has no more than a decade left as it is. And when it tips over, it will be far more bloody than the exit of the USSR.

          1. Yup so far experience shows that a “Communist” centralized controlled economy has ~70 years (at most) before it fully collapses. To wit:

            USSR Founded in 1917 – collapse ca 1989-1991 – replaced by kleptokratic kakistocracy

            Cuba (communist) founded 1959- still there (kind of) sell by date 2029 – they were utterly dependent on USSR so they started circling the drain when it died

            China (communist) founded 1949, Sell by date 2019. Briefly aided by their flirtation with capitalism in the 90’s and early 2000’s

            North Korea (Communist/Stalinist/Kim) vassal state of China, barely surviving past the sell by date but held up by China, also swirling around the bowl but won’t admit it

            Venezuela (chavez/communist) Founded 1999. Took one of the wealthiest South American countries and wrecked it in less than 20 years, Well done Senor Chavez, well done. A basket case that somehow is infecting the rest of South America like gangrene.

            East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Albania et alia. – Came out of the WWII end game so 1945. Propped up/controlled/suppressed by USSR and preceded its final fall for the most part. Current status: Highly variable. Poland, Czech and Slovak Republics and Hungary seem to be surviving (even flourishing in Poland’s case). Yugoslavia shattered due to internal hatreds that the Communists had repressed, Albania just still seems to be weird. East Germans got merged into greater Germany. They seem to be behaving like the Israelites in the Desert, longing for slavery under their previous master because at least there the food and work was provided although neither was plentiful or good.

            Number of Idyllic peoples communes where the state has just melted away 0… Likely to stay that way for all eternity.

            1. and it only had that long because let’s face it, we were feeding them or allowing them to “eat” smaller, less well armed countries.
              I think it’s more like 10 years without that.

              1. Given Venezuela and Cuba’s experience 10-15 sounds about right. And yes we sold the USSR basic foodstuffs at subsidized rates for years. And they still couldn’t keep bread on the shelves. I shouldn’t be too proud though lately we’ve been having our own issues because of stupidity and excess regulation.

                2. Interestingly enough the worst of the lack of full grocery shelves happened at the end of last year. Wonder what it will look like the next time I see inventory tags on shelves. I think grocery managers got a look at “hmmm. If inventory is down during counts, I get good job from TPTB. Can wait a bit to restock. People expect us to be out of stuff. I can blame the supply chain.” If product is in transit: the supplier has already sold it, so doesn’t count against the sellers inventory; the buyer hasn’t received it, so doesn’t count as the buyers inventory. Win/Win regarding inventory taxes.

                  I don’t know if that is really happening. Could be coincidence.

                3. Like I told a commie cheerleader on the Weber Forums — “You must be happy. Now we’ve got stores full of empty shelves, just like a real communist country.”

        4. Someone walking up to me and declaring in all seriousness that dogshit is actually the delicious elixir of life deserves nothing less than the most intense mockery and derision that comes to mind.

      1. “But what about the IOUS’s?”
        “Idiots Of Unusual Stupidity? I don’t believe they exist.”
        [cue vacant-eyed moron for jump scare copypasta]

        1. A line from You Can’T Do That On Television comes to mind,

          “Where do they find them? And how do they keep getting elected?”

          Though the answer to the second was revealed rather starkly on a certain Wednesday morning, very early, in November 2020.

        2. The IOUS’s are traditionally found primarily in the Fireswamp adjacent to Virginia and Maryland. It has two additional dangers, the Flaming Assholes who will oppose anything on general principle (actually they actually have no discernible principles) and the Slow Sand that seems to corrupt creatures that do not escape it. Those that do escape the slow sand tend join Think (sic) tanks or become commentators on CNN or rarely become heads of Sports leagues or VPs at National Defense Contractors. The IOUS’s seem to be mostly impervious to the slow sand being too stupid to notice they are dead. Zombie IOUS’s may hang on for many years (E.G. Babara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, the Turnip in Chief).

    3. The entire Western hemisphere represents only about 10% of the worlds population.

      And yet America is directly responsible for the largest fraction of the world economy, and indirectly responsible for most of the rest.

      They play the long game

      You are either ignorant, or full of shit.

      The One Child Policy is the complete proof that China is one of if not the most short sighted countries on the planet.

    4. Ah, of course; “China and the Perpetual Cat Fur Farm; the sequel.”

      I can’t recall the source, but the idea is to raise cats and rats, feed the rats to the cats, then skin the cats to feed the rats; ‘salable fur forever! (Sorry, hostess and other cat fanciers; I didn’t make it up.)

      Your ideas about the world (specifically China), and pretty much devoid of any concept of demographic problems, are the equivalent.

    5. China of course has the resources and people to do its own thing.

      But they have crappy infrastructure, they have the Three Rivers Dam about to crumble, and every successful company has to give goodies to the correct CCP dignitaries or be crushed.

      And they don’t have jobs for most of their young college educated people, and therefore those people can’t marry and have kids. And they also don’t have enough women, period.

      And their official government plan is to solve this by going back to Maoist collective farming and collective general stores and collective cafeterias, all in new neighborhoods that you are forbidden to leave.

      And all the college educated unemployed people will be clerks at the general stores or lunch makers at the cafeterias. Forever.

      Yeah. Sure.

      1. On July 23rd a video of a Three Gorges Dam failure simulation was widely circulated on the internet. According to the video and through analysis of existing data, if the dam was to collapse flood waters of up to 100 meters in height would be released at a speed of more than 100 kilometres per hour.

        Within 30 minutes of collapse the floodwaters would destroy nearby dams directly downstream, and reach the city of Yichang, destroying it with a current speed of 70 kilometres per hour, and within five hours the water level in Yichang would reach 10 meters.

        After that the flood waters will continue to flood towns along the route at a speed of 60 kilometres per hour, with flood heights of about 15 to 20 meters. When the flood waters reach the open plains they will spread out greatly increasing the area affected. The destruction would be complete all the way to, and including Shanghai.

        It’s estimated the death toll could be as high as 400 million people. This would be 1,700 times higher than any recorded death toll from a man-made disaster (Banqiao Dam collapse, China, 1975).
        A nuclear attack on China’s five largest cities would result in less deaths than a sudden collapse of the Three Gorges Dam, and a breach would spell the CCP’s Chernobyl moment.

        Anhui province’s first line flood control personnel told foreign media after watching the video that “it was most likely a simulation made by semi-official government agencies – the general public cannot make such professional projections.” The video caused quite a stir in the internet;

        The Three Gorges Dam – constructed from the highest grade of Chineseium.

        1. Two takeaways from this, assuming this estimate is correct.
          (1) If this dam fails during a period where the country is already being flooded, such as during typhoon, then the 400 million dead is far more likely to occur.
          (2) Even though it would probably be considered a crime against humanity, destruction of the dam would probably ensure destruction of China’s ability to wage war, if not the complete destruction as a nation.

          1. destruction of the dam would probably ensure destruction of China’s ability to wage war, if not the complete destruction as a nation.

            Just one of the many, many, many swords hanging over China’s head.

            Eventually one of them is going to hit 1.0 probability.

          2. There was a rumor going around in, hmm, 2019 maybe? That India had been talking about doing a “rods from G-d” on the Three Gorges, and had been hastily talked out of it by a number of countries. Pure rumor, as best I could tell, but . . . Semi-plausible.

            1. Considering how much tap dancing is needed to keep India from going full on Boogaloo vis a vis The Chin, this is entirely plausible. the CCP keep FAFO with India, and an “accident” will occur.

        2. Why on Earth would a government organization be needed to do it? Seems like a fairly straightforward fluid mechanics issue

          1. Yes, and no.

            Lots of things are ‘straight forward’ in fluid mechanics, and still a pain to do correctly.

            Some of the mathematics of fluid dynamics is a bit famous for being a little intractable, or at least decently challenging.

            Now, this probably isn’t the case for floods and rivers. Hydraulics, or fluid mechanics that is very definitely incompressible, etc., is a simpler case mathematically.

            The issue is a practical problem of information.

            You don’t just want the topography, you also want information about the soil on the river beds, etc. With an unusual river flow, you get unusual erosion and unusual amounts of soil entrained in the water. This shifts the assumed fluid properties, and the flow situation, in unpredictable ways.

            There are two or more basic issues. One is information control within PRC. Another is whether anyone with the skills inside the PRC, not officially tasked with this, has the resources to do it, and reasonable security against a bullet in the neck on account of pissed off bureaucrats. Third, you can make a model, but accuracy is another thing.

            Three Gorges going would most likely be pretty bad.

            I would not be confident that any aspect of that situation is well managed.

            That does not mean that specific predictions are correct, or have even identified all of the correct assumptions.

            I do think the PRC is wildly overconfident in totalitarian technocracy.

            1. Worst case scenario would be a stalled typhoon over China, so that they are already in a flood situation, then an earthquake. Saturated soil, when subjected to shaking, turns into a soupy mess with just about zero cohesion or strength. Things sink in it, or it flows. Hydraulic flows over that material easily wash it away.
              3 Gorges would be subjected to the stresses of the quake itself, as would the bedrock which it is somewhat (poorly) anchored. Probably a tossup between failure methods whether it was undermined , or the damn fractured or disintegrated. I suppose it’s also possible for it to be overtopped and washed away; but I think the Chinese put in enough spillways to handle that scenario.

    6. I don’t know if you’re troll #3 today or what but The CCP doesn’t play the long game, they never have. Such BS. They are the shortest term people you will ever meet and thinking otherwise simply shows that you’ve never interacted with actual, existing CCP people. I would go so far as to say that the Chinese national curse is degenerate gambling, but then I’ve worked in China and been watching the place for decades.

    7. . Without us, they can quickly reorganize to do business with, first the BRICS nations, which they are already doing (trading in currency other than the US dollar), and second the other 50 to 60% of the global market.

      If they were Americans, yes.

      If their culture was more similar to ours, probably.

      While they are China?
      No.

      There’s a reason they never took over the world.

      1. There’s a deep obsession with doing things the “correct” way… which means when you get into an unfamiliar situation and your regular tools don’t work, improvising is not easily done.

        The American tendency to randomly hit things with a hammer may not be “correct”, but it can solve a surprising number of problems….

        1. Literally, sometimes.

          A former boss decades ago was a Miata enthusiast. Apparently there was a vibration problem in the firewall in some models, and the unofficial official advice was to detune it with “a judicious hammer blow in the center”. 😀

              1. And I am getting the weirdest “I did that” vibes—not off the pic as a whole, but off the computer and its stand. That’s exactly the style I was doing in high school, right down to the slightly asymmetrical post, so now I’m wondering where I replicated that and for why. (The duck—that was not my style. The only way I would have drawn that was if I was copying a physical drawing by someone else. And I’m pretty sure I didn’t… I think.)

              2. After much thought, I want to go digging through my childhood room for a particular reason. That reason is a cardstock poster, one of those very little larger than a legal pad, that I’m pretty sure had the original of this duck.

                My memory is very good, but I know that even my memory is prone to confabulation. I’m seriously weirding myself out about this pic.

        2. The “correct way” thing that really bites us, as Americans, trying to engage– is the “making requests/giving orders to show how important you are,” rather than because they’re needed.

          The “no green M&Ms” trick that one touring group put in their contracts so they knew how hard they had to inspect stuff when setting up wouldn’t make sense, much less work– it’s not that they don’t pay attention to the details in the contract, it’s that it would be in there as something to show how important you are. Anything that MATTERS, you will ALWAYS check.
          And then they’ll adjust their “meeting the requirements” to match how it is being checked. That’s why the poisoned baby formula (and dog food) thing happened– they were checking some nutrient or other, and it could be faked on the test with a poison.

          1. The dog food was ‘spiked’ with melamine. Yep, the stuff they make cheap kitchen counter tops out of. Melamine contains a nitrogen compound that flags positive on one of the simpler (cheap) tests for protein content. It also causes severe kidney damage in dogs.

            Where responsible companies would use glycerin in foods, and products like cough syrup and toothpaste, the communist Chinese use much cheaper polyethylene glycol. Which is safe, but if you’re not real careful making the stuff, some monoethylene glycol will be formed in the process. Better known as antifreeze, and it’s toxic. Between 600 and 2,000 people are estimated to die every year as a result of ethylene glycol contamination in Chinese products.

            Heparin is used to prevent blood clots from forming during surgery. Something like 80% of the world’s heparin comes from China, with typical Chinese quality control. Unknown number of people die from bad heparin.

            Chinese quality control: Somebody used the product, and didn’t drop dead.
            ———————————
            A good Zombie Apocalypse novel is at least as believable as anything we’ve heard out of the ‘Publick Health Authoriteez’ over the last three years.

            1. It spoke volumes when German Life magazine had an article about Schleischer toys, and the company assured everyone that they had German managers and engineers in the Chinese plant, and pulled random samples from each toy batch to do chemistry tests and other things on.

              2. China sent some of their cars to Germany to be tested so they could manufacture for the European markets. I saw some of the tests. The Germans reacted with “This isn’t just bad, this is actively dangerous to the user.” (With a big side of “NOPE, this is not happening in our market.”)

                2. Were they better or worse than Trabants? 😛

                  All you need to know about communism right there. West Germany built Mercedes, BMW and Porsche. East Germany built Trabants. And East Germans bought the damn things!

        3. I was installing vinyl plank flooring with a young man who was probably on the spectrum. The instructions were to carefully snap the pieces together. His preferred method was whacking a troublesome piece with a hammer. Eventually my patience would wear thin and I would tell him, “Whack it with the hammer!”
          It generally worked.

    8. If nothing else, China would starve if the US disappeared.

      The other issue is that US factories in China are a major driver of economic prosperity for the Chinese. If the US remove those factories, it’s not likely that anyone’s going to come in to replace the Americans – particularly after everyone’s seen how China’s been acting lately. Chinese workers stop getting paid by foreigners, prosperity goes down, and the citizenry start getting upset.

      Finally, BRICS is more a name than anything else. Do you seriously think that India and China can cooperate on anything in the long-term? They’ve been busy shooting at each other lately over an old border dispute that’s over a century old.

      1. Let’s not forget the fact that China is utterly dependent on fuel imports meaning that it is only by the benevolence of the US Navy that China continues to have any industry or food.

        1. The next time the Iranians threaten the Straits of Hormuz, tell them “go for it!”

        2. China’s getting a lot of oil from Russia right now, which is an overland route. The long-term viability of that is open to question due to issues with replacing components in the Russian oil fields. But for the time being, that’s oil that doesn’t require the sea lanes.

          As for the rest, China has a naval base in Djibouti that’s big enough to service a carrier. Shandong likely has the range to reach that port (I checked, and it’s easily close enough for a standard Kuznetzov-class carrier to reach), and could be positioned there for a long-term deployment. If I were the Chinese, I wouldn’t risk Shandong within the Persian Gulf. But aircraft launched from the Arabian Sea could reach the Gulf if necessary. In theory, the Chinese could also deploy some of their smaller ships within the Gulf. But the PLAN currently has a crippling over-specialization in ASW combat for its surface ships. Only the recent Type-055 Destroyer has an anti-air focus, and it’s so big (the USN classifies it as a cruiser) that it should probably only exist as the center of a battlegroup (or accompanying one of the PLAN’s carriers). Until the PLAN gets more anti-air capabilities, I’d be cautious about sending ships into the Gulf.

          India is the wild card. If India stays nice, then any tankers that leave the Arabian Sea are safe until they get close enough for the home-based PLAN ships to escort them. If India doesn’t stay nice, then China’s got a huge problem on its hands no matter how well it covers the start and end of the trip.

          1. Most of the Russian oil fields do not connect to China, and neither country has the ability to maintain their existing infrastructure without western companies doing all the work, let alone build new pipelines.

            And you appear to think that China has an aircraft carrier. That is adorable.

            The rest of your post ignores that anything China wants to do requires getting past the first island chain. Something which they have never achieved before and which is entirely populated by countries that hate their guts. And once past it they get to run a gauntlet of dozens of other countries who also hate their guts.

            1. Your condescension is telling.

              I’ve run the math. I’ve looked at the distances. And contrary to what you may believe, I actually do know a thing or two about what I’m talking about.

              Finally, Russia is selling oil to China RIGHT NOW. It’s part of how they’re getting around the embargoes that the West is pushing.

              1. I’ve run the math. I’ve looked at the distances. And contrary to what you may believe, I actually do know a thing or two about what I’m talking about.

                And yet you speak the shibboleths of someone who is too gullible to do anything but GIGO.

                The moment someone mentions China’s Potemkin CVs as serious warships you can throw everything they have to say in the trash.

                Finally, Russia is selling oil to China RIGHT NOW. It’s part of how they’re getting around the embargoes that the West is pushing.

                Yes. Using highly vulnerable and fragile systems where they only have to get unlucky once. And these of course are being run by Russians and Chinese. I’m sure nothing could ever go wrong.

                1. Yes, they’re carriers. Yes, they can project aircraft. Are they Nimitz-class? Of course not. Nor is the next one that they’re building. But it doesn’t take that much in the way of aircraft projection to cover the Arabian Sea. In that region, the ability to put up half a dozen planes would be a big deal, and Shandong carries a lot more than that. So unless India (right next door with its own carriers) decides to interfere, or one of the Gulf States (i.e. the countries that China is likely buying oil from in this scenario deciding to bomb their own customer’s tankers) goes after the oil, the most likely issue would revolve around light craft attempting to seize a tanker filled with oil bound for China. Even Shandong should be able to handle that.

                  “Using highly vulnerable and fragile systems where they only have to get unlucky once.”

                  Unlucky against which threat, exactly? Is Mongolia going to suddenly decide to target the infrastructure moving Russian oil into China? I suppose someone could fire a cruise missile salvo, but you would need to provide a reason why. Seizing the oil, or seizing a tanker is one thing. Arbitrarily blowing up interior infrastructure between two neighboring countries is another, and provides no immediate benefit to the party doing the blowing up in and of itself. So why is someone blowing up that infrastructure? And note that I did mention that it has long-term issues due to replacement components. So normal wear and tear issues were already brought up by me.

                  Remember that the scenario in question merely posits that the US pulls its navy back to our own shores. The threat under these circumstances is piracy and privateering. If you want to argue that Great Britain is going to send its carriers to raid Chinese oil supplies from the Middle East (seems overly risky to me for a country that only has two of them, but whatever), then go ahead and make the argument. But otherwise, China’s issue would revolve around local or regional players. And the only big navy that’s near that part of the Middle East is India.

                  1. Yes, they’re carriers. Yes, they can project aircraft. [snip]

                    China has ships which carry aircraft, that is technically correct. The best kind of correct. The size of the ships is not relevant in any way.

                    What matters is that China has no experience in carrier ops under combat conditions (ok they have zero naval tradition period, but whatever). Trying to pull that off is how you turn your billion dollar ship into a raging inferno because you fucked up something if a way you didn’t know it was possible to fuck up. Give China 15 years of intensive peacetime training and they will begin to approach a level of latent knowledge and skill that isn’t a bad joke.

                    This assumes that right now they jettison all of the cultural attitudes which prevent them from doing so and become culturally American. Which rather awkwardly also removes the cultural supports for their government.

                    And it also assumes that China has 15 years to work with demographically speaking. Which is another bad joke.

                    Unlucky against which threat, exactly?

                    Right now there are two ways for Russian oil to reach China. The first is the limited pipeline capacity which only connects to some Russian fields. The other is to put the oil on shuttle tankers in western Russian ports, then take them out to sea and do ship-to-ship transfers to a supertanker which then goes to China.

                    The threat is the fact that here in the real world stuff breaks all the time and the only reason disaster is not the normal state of things is because most people are constantly paying attention and fixing stuff before it gets too bad. That would be a risky procedure if it were being run by cultural-westerners. To have the transfers never go disastrously wrong you are asking me to believe that cultural Chinese and cultural Russians will never cut a corner anywhere.

                    This after Russia already most likely blew up one of their pipelines. And also goes back that that whole burning flight deck problem.

                    By the way, did you know that in China they have to hire gweilos for any underwater welding that needs to be done? Because they can’t trust their own people.

                    Is Mongolia going to suddenly decide to target the infrastructure moving Russian oil into China? I suppose someone could fire a cruise missile salvo, but you would need to provide a reason why. Seizing the oil, or seizing a tanker is one thing. Arbitrarily blowing up interior infrastructure between two neighboring countries is another, and provides no immediate benefit to the party doing the blowing up in and of itself. So why is someone blowing up that infrastructure? And note that I did mention that it has long-term issues due to replacement components. So normal wear and tear issues were already brought up by me.

                    Your earlier post was already proposing a scenario bad enough that China has to try policing the shipping lanes itself.

                    Remember that the scenario in question merely posits that the US pulls its navy back to our own shores.

                    At which point we have, let’s see….. Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, India, the Philippines, and Israel all within easy striking distance of the shortest possible trade lane.

                    The first several of those all have good reason to kill China if they try to pull anything. And one of the very few things they would agree on is Fuck China. Others will dogpile on for the same reason everyone has dogpiled on Russia.

                    But the important fact is that even one attacker will be more than China can have any assurance of dealing with.

                    [snip] And the only big navy that’s near that part of the Middle East is India.

                    Sure, as long as we ignore the Japanese navy. Why don’t we wish up a few dozen Chinese planetary bombardment starships while we are fantasizing?

                    1. Japan’s not directly between China and the Middle East. Nor is Korea. Or even Taiwan. India is. Yes, Japan could run ships over that way. But it wouldn’t be casual seizure just grabbing ships that happen to be passing by, as would be the case for India. That’s why I mentioned India, and not other countries like Japan. You might as well argue that the US could intercept the shipping. There’s certainly nothing that anyone could do about that.

                      Yes, China has only a few years experience in carrier ops. But I’m not talking about high tempo operations. I’m talking about what would basically be anti-piracy sweeps in a limited area. The scenario that you stipulated amounted to “US Navy stops safeguarding Chinese oil shipments”. I’ve never claimed that the Shandong would be going toe-to-toe with, say, the de Gaulle. I’ve explicitly stated that the Shandong would be sufficient for dealing with light ships that might be engaged in piracy or privateering of oil tankers that are no longer being protected by the US Navy. There’s no stipulation that China’s gone to war with anyone. The only stipulation is that the US Navy has quit the role that it’s had for the last several decades of watching the sea lanes (or, at least China’s freight).

                      As for “policing the shipping lanes”, hardly. It’s watching a single location – the Arabian Sea – that happens to have a lot of oil traffic pass through it while on the way to China and is close to an existing Chinese naval base. I even explicitly stated that they should stay out of the Gulf (aside from maybe sending some planes in for an unusual situation).

                      As for the overland Russia to China stuff, again, I explicitly mentioned that it was not a long-term solution due to maintenance and lack of spare parts. In fact, I’ve stated this twice now. It would work for the here and now, but not for long.

                  2. Hey, dumbass.

                    The Chinese have built a ship that looks like an aircraft carrier. Maybe they’ve hoisted some airplanes aboard with a crane. Maybe they can actually get the ship out to sea.

                    Can they conduct successful air operations? I have my doubts. There’s a bit more to it than building a big ship and loading up some airplanes. I was in the Navy. Air Ops are hard.

                    Do the Chinese even have any airplanes suitable for operating from a carrier? Since they don’t have any carriers to try them on, I’m thinking No.

                    Copying somebody else’s designs without understanding them is a great way to sail head-on into an epic fail.

                    In all of history, the Chinese have never operated an aircraft carrier. They don’t even know what they don’t know. If they try, I give it a week before somebody flubs a landing and sends their Potemkin ship straight to the bottom.
                    ———————————
                    Some folks can be taught. Others can learn by example. The rest have to piss on the electric fence for themselves.

                    1. The Chinese have the J-15, which is a carrier-based plane, and is based off of the Russian SU-33.. They’ve been operating J-15s off of the PLAN’s two carriers since each of them was commissioned (2012 and 2019 respectively). Perhaps before you start name-calling, you could conduct the very basic research needed to find this stuff out?

                      The J-15 isn’t capable of going head to head with a Super Hornet. But since the Liaoning and Shandong don’t have catapults, that’s hardly a surprise. They’d never be able to get a Super Hornet aloft.

                      And as I’ve already stated elsewhere, nothing I’ve mentioned should require multiple large strikes throughout the day (or even a single large strike). I’m not talking about China going to war with Iraq, or something along those lines. I’m talking about some simple anti-piracy patrols in an area that a lot of Chinese oil freight travels through.

                      Oh, and the Liaoning was commissioned over twelve years ago, and hasn’t suffered any accidents along the lines of what her sister, the Admiral Kuznetzov, has had to go through. So apparently your “accidentally sink her within a week” snark is just a little bit off.

              2. Yes, but the pipelines to China don’t have much capacity, and connecting the western pipelines to the eastern ones is a project that pre-war Russia estimated would take ten to twenty years. Now that they don’t have western companies building it for them, the completion date is effectively “never”.

                So Russia sells some oil to China, but not enough to stay afloat, and China buys some from Russia, but not enough to cover their needs.

      2. Harbor Fright is making more and more stuff NOT in China. More places are finding out you cannot count on them, and they steal you blind. If you still make bank, that’s fine, but when you stop? I’d rather deal with the Vietnamese, and I hate the Viet Commies.

        2. Indeed they will take a manufactured item that you have made in china and make 2-3x the order and then sell the excess online for a reduced price. you can mitigate this somewhat by making sure you use chips with hardware encryption not created in CCP factories (i.e. Taiwan) and having the software basically stored encrypted. It’s a pain but it does slow them down enough that unless the object has HUGE profit potential its not worth their trying to decrypt to get good software, though they may try to generate their own.

          1. I worked for a guy who actually pulled one over on the CCP knobs. They are masters of changing contracts and trying for last minute changes to their benefit, so come contract time, Boss sent a guy with no standing to sign off on any changes, and like you point out, the “tech” was not delivered to them unless they signed That contract there, and for that amount.
            They took it as an insult that he “sent a flunky” but if they wanted their stuff, they had to pay and sign the contract as written, made them wire the money and cashed it out ASAP. He knew they’d never deal with him again, but within hours of the first meeting he knew he’d never want to do business with them again either.

        3. At auto parts place where I work, I’ve been seeing batteries made in vietnam, SpaIN, Sudi Arabia (Sudi Arabia?), etc.. There may be a reason why the warranities on our Gold Stamndard batteries have gone fro five to three years.

          1. I remember seeing a lot of filters coming from Israel, especially fuel filters. But I’ve been away from the autoparts biz since . . . well, really, moving to Texas in 2004, and I had quit the place in ’98-ish, but still got my needs for filters from them until I moved and would stop in on my going home from Night Shifts, when the one owner I didn’t get along with was not likely to be there. The other two owners were cool with me. “gimme a case of V4612 filters” was the last thing I got from them.

      2. India has the same issue, with an even more skewed ratio. And reasons to hate China–they’re involved in a weird cold-simmering border war, as well as regional rivals. Makes me very glad I’ll be out in a few months.

  22. shrug No where to run and no where to hide. I have to be where I am for the sake of my mentally ill sister. That and there’s no money to go elsewhere. Not that there’s going to be any money to be had if the whole thing collapses in the next 2yrs which is probably a fairly accurate guess. If I hadn’t fucked up my life so bad, I’d probably have been gone a long time ago.

    2. Never too late to improve things.

      Twenty years ago, I was broke. Now I am not. It may take another decade or two to fix other things. On it.

      Despair is a liar.

      1. And while it hasn’t been easy getting here my upcoming long distance move should be a good step forward for that on my end.

        1. “Broke” is a significant improvement on “poor.” The former implies you’ve at least paid your bills, even if there’s no money afterwards.

  25. The problem is that neither the Red Chinese government nor any other government needs a working economy to retain power. They only need enough to feed their goons with guns. Mao starved tens of millions of people and maintained power.

    What we consider a working economy is a historical aberration. Europe had many famines and plagues, and some of the royal families lasted the better part of a millennium.

    The USA is more dicey, because a huge portion of the population is armed. However, all it would take to ban guns would be a majority vote in both houses of Congress to do so and to ban the Supreme Court from ruling on the law’s constitutionality. Yes, that last one is allowed in the Constitution, even though the gun ban isn’t.

    Would that end gun ownership in America? No. But anyone who defended himself with a firearm would go to prison, which for most people would mean they would not get them from them on.

    And frankly, while I suppose that there is a possibility of an armed rebellion, the sheeplike character of modern Americans leads me to doubt it.

    Will China continue to control the US government? Probably not, because that actually is dependent on a working economy. But the evil ruling class are most likely here forever.

    2. Da Gummint is going to lock up more than a hundred million heavily armed people. Many of them ex-military. Riiiiight.

      [Raises hand] Where would they lock them up? Our jails are overcrowded with the 6 million prisoners we’ve got now. One of the reasons so many Leftroids want to set violent criminals free to commit more crimes. “Overcrowding is inhumane!”

      Where are they going to keep their goons with guns? Scattered around the countryside, where they can be picked off by folks who shoot small varmints at absurdly long ranges just for fun? No? In the cities, where there is no source of food? They’d have to venture out of the cities and take it from those same varmint shooters. How hard would it be to even find the food? And the fuel for the massively armed convoys they’d have to travel in? Cities don’t produce fuel, either.

      Electricity is not generated in the cities. The elitists didn’t want those icky power plants near their luxury enclaves, so they’re dozens to hundreds of miles away, connected by highly vulnerable cables. How many goons does it take to guard 40 miles of transmission lines every day, every night, always dreading the thwup of a bullet followed 6 seconds later by a distant crack?

      The technical term for what you’re doing is ‘talking out of your ass’. You don’t have a clue that you don’t have a clue.

      1. I thought I made it clear that they wouldn’t lock up 100 million gun owners. Under this scenario, they would only lock up those found to have a gun. This would include everyone who used it in self defense. That would be a small number; but it also would make a gun useless except for hunting in very remote locations where the hunter would be unlikely to get caught. Most people would not buy guns on the black market, because no one wants to buy something he can’t use. And a good number of current gun owners would find a way to get rid of theirs, since you never know when a policeman might visit your house on an unrelated matter.

        1. …Until someone decides it’s time to start hunting the gun-grabbers, and ACW 2.0 kicks off.

          Then what?

          1. That may be why they have not done it yet.

            I wish I could be certain someone would actually do that. Unfortunately I have seen too many people brag about how they could just bury their guns, as if that would do any good. “Ha ha, you thought you could kill my wife but I killed her first!”

            1. Wait – you do realize that those are mostly jokes, right? Or are you really that obtuse?

                2. There is probably a curve relating the inverse relationship between boating proficiency and gun ownership…

          2. Dude seriously does not get that the number 330,000,000 is going to include a bunch of self starter types…

            1. It only takes 1 in 317 gun owners responding to make the force numbers impossible for the government.

              And these things have a way of snowballing.

        2. Dear lord, he’s serious.

          Dude, I can think of ways for a dozen or so guys with common rifles and cars trucks to kill entire cities and I am a cake eating civilian.

          Are you seriously telling me that in a situation like this, someone far more competent than me wouldn’t be pissed off enough to do something?

          1. It is even more lopsided in favor of the civilian than it was even 30 years ago.

            A technically minded person could area-deny a huge piece of land with off the shelf software, off the shelf hardware, a little glue code, and some basic DIY hardware.

            1. But no one does. They are too busy sending cat pictures, or praying to Jesus to come save the day with his army of zombies.

              2. That is because you are either too stupid, or too glowie to understand that we aren’t in a shooting war at this stage.

                And since more people are not as stupid as you expect them to be they aren’t going to build autosentries until they need them.

                  1. Well, if he is glowie I hope he takes the time to learn about the already deployed autosentry systems that have been fired in anger, has the understanding of how little it would take to replicate those, and promptly requires a new pair of pants.

                    It’s hard to do thuggery when your entire team gets center-of-massed the moment they get out of the black SUV.

                    1. > “the already deployed autosentry systems that have been fired in anger”

                      Wait, what is this a refence to? It sounds like I missed a news story here.

                    2. South Korea and Israel have both deployed experimental autosentries on their relevant borders. The Israeli one has been fired in anger to excellent effect (the Palestinians whined about it so you know it must be good). These models require an officer to grant firing permission, but that is something added on top, not an inherent requirement.

                      The only “hard” part of an autosentry is image recognition good enough to detect your target. And that is old tech at this point.

                      Which means that a technically savvy person can build one whenever they want to from mostly off the shelf parts. Given time to learn and tinker I could do it with probably less than $500 in parts on top of stuff I already have from 3d printer castoffs, and that is including building the physical “turret” for the rifle to be mounted in.

                    3. “The only “hard” part of an autosentry is image recognition good enough to detect your target. ”

                      Well, if you define “target” as “anyone beyond this line is a target unless IFF checks.”

                  2. Eh, I used to get challenges to prove I was serious by confessing to felonies on your blog all the time. Hasn’t happened lately; I guess No finally registered.

                  3. Hell, I wouldn’t even discuss such things in email. Or even in person, unless I knew beyond any reasonable doubt I could trust you.

                    Much better to have many thousands of lone wolves/small cells operating independently than an organized force. One neck is far too easy to hang.

              3. Why would anyone, right now, want to kill a few dozen million people? For kicks?

          2. Look, either Ken is not American or he’s FBI. From the fact he’s never buggered off I suspect the later. The FBI are these days mostly Ivy league, so largely also not Americans.
            He’s already said he hangs out with retarded idiots.
            I think mostly he’s thinking of Russia. The scenario he imagined played out largely like that in Russia, China, Cuba. What he’s missing is that those countries aren’t as fractious or VARIED in culture.

            1. Indeed. I thought the groundhog saw it’s shadow and that meant 6 more weeks before the trolls woke up. So much for that legend

            2. And the civilian populations of those countries were/are not nearly as well-armed or (in many cases) well-trained as is true here. He might want to read up on the Warsaw ghetto, and what a couple of dozen inexperienced Jews with a laughable “arsenal” did to the Wehrmacht for over a month. Yeah, they lost, but they were seriously outnumbered and out-trained, which is not the case in the US today.

              Of course, he probably does glow, so any advice to educate himself is probably wasted.

        4. Do you have ANY IDEA the arms development that would happen with guns truly restricted, EVEN if that was remotely possible? Vannevar Bush would REEL! The result would would NOT be a de-gunning. It would be an up-arming of Other Things, AND guns – if they are “banned”, why NOT build the EASIER full-auto?

          1. For most people, the answer would be “because you don’t want the secret police to find out, shove a glass rod into your dick, and then shatter it with a hammer.”

                1. Not my fetish. My understanding is that that was actually a torture technique used by the NKVD under Stalin. It may be an urban myth, but it is believable to me.

                1. Pretty much. I have zero weaponry or armed experience, and I estimate my death toll would be fairly high if I wanted it to be.

                  Now, lacking that experience, collateral would be a thing, which is why I would hesitate. I don’t want to hurt a bunch of random people. But… not that long. Never again means Never. Fucking. Again.

                  1. Amen.

                    …Also, watching historical battle movies and stuff like Predator gives you interesting ideas.

                    (I highly recc’ “The Great Battle”, about the siege of Ansi Fortress. The flaming wheels need to be seen to be believed.)

                    Long story short, if you have an imagination, you really, really don’t want to start the Boog. But if you have an imagination… you can also seriously consider situations in which death is not the worst fate. And if that’s the case… get creative.

                    1. I’m an engineer and longtime gamer. Creative is what I do for a living.

                      I seriously would not want to look to the left hand of my tools. Doesn’t mean I won’t if the stakes are high enough. But I don’t want to.

                    2. Nobody does. Nobody sane does, not even us crazy writers.

                      OTOH the whole symbolism of true strength being a woman restraining a lion is, you know HOW to wreak havoc. Doesn’t mean you do it unless the chips are down.

              2. You know, I can actually believe that, and it makes me feel better.

                I tend to think of conservatives as wimps, because of the Hannity show and the fact that it seems marketed to old ladies. If Joe Biden said, “We’re going to fuck your children and make you like it,” Hannity would lead off by saying, “The president of the United States used the F word.” And then he would bring on some pundit and they would talk about how sad it was, and how Reagan never would have used that word.

                He actually did back Kamala Harris when she made her pro-bussing remark during her debate against Biden, going with the “Yes! Joe Biden is a racist!” take, rather than the “Who does this bitch think she is, supporting bussing” take that anyone with a pair would go with.

            3. Yuh huh. These secret police, they have offices? Families? Do they live in cities? Start down that road with a population that isn’t basically Russian serfs or Achtung Germans, and things go sideways real fast.

              Hell, who cares about the secret policeman? His boss works in a public place. And if you can’t get inside the security ring, well, the poor schmuck on the outermost edge of the ring is vulnerable. This crap is trivial to deal with, and doesn’t even take that many people to do it as long as they have the right mindset.

              Try reading “What I Saw at the Coup” by Matt Bracken. My analysis is that he massively overestimates the needed response to shift things.

              1. Read ‘Freehold’ by Michael Z. Williamson.

                And before you protest that “They’re not an invading foreign occupation force” — they are to us.

                1. “Funny” how BLEM/Antefa (corrected spelling) stay in certain ‘safe (for them) zones’ and despite the ‘we’re coming for you’ claims seem to never really do so, or fold very fast. Gee, I wonder why?

        1. Or a largish ice storm. There was one a while back (90’s) in upper NY state where one set of high tension out of Canada was wiped out. It made havoc in NYC and most of new england but local grid suppliers managed to match it as temp didn’t stay low. However large numbers of milk farms were badly hit and without power for over a week. Because they couldn’t milk the all the cows (you’re not hand milking a 300+ cow herd) they mostly had to be put down as mastitis took over and was slowly and painfully killing the animals. There are just so many points in the modern world where it is easy to choke things off.

          1. Which was why my uncle had a 50KW generator that hooked up to the biggest tractor, and a transfer switch at the farm’s main service drop. Farmers have to plan ahead, or they’re not going to be farmers for very long.

            1. They not only have to plan ahead, they have to have alternate plans 2, 3 and frequently 4 in place for when weather or the plain cussedness of farm animals (or too often, local “gummint” idiots) throws the plan in the crapper.

          2. Speaking of which, it seems that New England-based and -lefty/greeny Fine Homebuilding Magazine has finally noticed that all-electric houses are a disaster waiting to happen. Most recent issue has a feature article on woodstoves as supplementary/emergency heat. Written by one of the editors, no less.

            2. Clearly (as you have noted) the folks at Fine Homebuilding must have mush for brains. Electric heat has pretty much ALWAYS been a bad idea in New England. We don’t have enough generation and gas lines are to feed large plants are limited and new ones are hard to create due to NIMBY. There is SOME Hydro Power but not a whole lot and it tends to be seasonal, and its the wrong season. Once it was clear Millstone 3 in Waterford and Seabrook in NH were the last plants nuclear plants it was obvious that path was closed. Heck when my wife and I looked for homes in the 1990’s Electric heat (popular in the 1960’s) was a clear no go, it had to be converted to gas propane or oil and that added 10-15k to the price. Even now with $6/gallon fuel oil our house (which is well insulated with 2×6 exterior construction) probably costs 1/4 to a 1/3 of what it would take to heat it by electricity. And they want to throw hordes of electric cars into this mess… good frickin’ luck with that.

              1. They are very smart people with a keen grasp of building science, who unfortunately are also adherents of the Greenie Cult, the tenets of which regularly override their critical thinking skills.

                1. Forgot to mention: they think electric resistive heating is bad and wasteful, because it is. They are all about the minisplits and the heat pumps, which are a much more efficient means of heating and will operate down to much lower temperatures than in the past.

                  But they still won’t operate at all when New England has an ice storm that knocks out the power for a week or more. As happens regularly every few years.

                  1. Electric heat:

                    Burn fuel — boil water — spin steam turbines — turn generators — send electricity through transformers, substations, miles of wire, more substations and transformers — pass the electricity through highly resistive wires, producing a fraction of the heat from the original burning fuel. Efficiency, 20-25%

                    Heat pumps:

                    All of the above, except the electricity powers a motor to run an air conditioner compressor. The roles of its heat exchangers are reversed, so the evaporator coil chills the outside air and the condenser coil dumps waste heat inside the house. Produces more heat than the electricity alone, depending on temperature difference between outdoors and indoors. Still not nearly as much heat as the original fuel. Overall efficiency, 30-50%

                    Oil or gas furnace:

                    Burn fuel where you need the heat, most of which actually heats up the house. Efficiency, 70-85%

                    Only ‘Green’ zealots can believe in burning more fuel to get the same amount of heat ‘To Save The Earth!’
                    ———————————
                    The government can mandate stupidity, but they can’t make it not be stupid.

                    1. But burning fossil fuels in a central location is more efficient!!!!!!!!~

                      um, not.

                      All that power can come from wind and solar!!!!!

                      HAHAHAHAHAHAchokesplutterHAHAHAHAHA

                    2. The actual fuel burning process is more efficient. The boilers run at constant temperature with continuous monitoring.

                      But then that heat has to be converted into a form suitable for transport to where it’s needed. Most of the losses are incurred during conversion. You can’t cheat the Rankine Cycle, only approach its limits.

                      THEN in most cases the waste heat from the process is simply dissipated into the environment without making any effort to get any use out of it. There are a few cogeneration plants that heat nearby buildings with waste heat, but such opportunities are limited to areas close to the power plant, and not so useful in the summertime.

                      San Onofre nuclear power plant Units 2 and 3 generated about 2.3 gigawatts of electricity — plus more than 7 gigawatts of waste heat, which was simply dumped into the ocean. That waste heat could have been used to desalinate millions of gallons of water per day! In a desert! IDIOTS!!
                      ———————————
                      People can make stupid mistakes, but only the government can force everybody to make the SAME stupid mistakes.

              2. 100%. Even here in the PNW where hydro power is available 365 days/year, and even after natural gas prices have been raised, our heating with natural gas is still less than when it was electric. Which wasn’t hard because our house has ceiling heat. But we heated with a wood stove insert, with free wood. Still natural gas is less expensive. We don’t get near as cold in the winter as New England, not even if we get snow on the ground.

            3. I subscribed when they were brand new and long before woke came to play. Yeah, passive solar and energy conservation were a factor, but not to the exclusion of how to set tile or hanging doors, or the scarier bits of crown molding. The start of the magazine closely matched the 1979 gas crunch, so energy paranoia wasn’t out of the blue.

              I dropped my subscription when the budget said extra magazines had to go (had to save money for home renovation, go figure 🙂 ), and they were still practical, but I’m no longer surprised to see that they rolled left and pointed to the greenery.

              Their woodworking publication was excellent. My cabinet making needs are now a notch or three above carpentry, so haven’t bothered to look lately. I hope it still is good. Uncertain, but hoping.

              1. It’s still pretty good if you ignore the editorial articles and the obligatory climate change carboncarboncarbon REEEE injections whenever they talk about insulation or concrete or whatever. The science and the techniques are still solid.

                The podcast is less useful, because most of their time is answering listener questions, which goes like this:

                Week 1: a listener asks, I have factors A, B, C, D, and E, what should I do? [hour-long hemming and hawing follows]

                Week 2: a listener asks, I have factors A, B, C, D, and F, what should I do? [hour-long hemming and hawing follows with no reference back to previous week]

                Week 3: a listener asks, I have factors A-prime, B, C, D, and E, what should I do? [hour-long hemming and hawing follows with no reference back to prior weeks]

                Week 4: a listener asks, I have factors A, B, C, D, and E, but I live in Oregon not New England, what should I do? [hour-long hemming and hawing follows with no reference back to prior weeks, and no specific knowledge of non-New England conditions other than “it’s different”]

                That is, when the instant answer to any and all questions gets past the automatic reflex answer of “minisplits and blown-in cellulose!” Sigh.

                1. I’ve decided that listening to audio (and watching much video) chews up more time than I like; give me a well-written article and I’m happy. If I really need to see it demonstrated, I’ll fire up the Tube of Ewe.

                  Hearing that draws a powerful vacuum has something to do with it. Left ear can’t hear high frequencies, making for interesting bedtime conversations with $SPOUSE. (Can’t lay on left side for more than a minute or two.)

                  1. I listen to podcasts as accompaniment to doing something else, like driving or going on walks or sewing or working around the house. Since I do a lot of that, I listen to a lot of podcasts.

        2. I’d been thinking of plinker rifles and transformers, but well placed peanut butter would do nicely.

      4. “One of the reasons so many Leftroids want to set violent criminals free to commit more crimes.”

        THAT’s an invalid assumption; they won’t care if Deplorables are in overcrowded jails; look at what’s happening in the J6 gulag.

        Same principle that allows them to call for ROE against “insurrectionists” they call war crimes overseas.

        2. They feel personally threatened by ‘Insurrectionists’ — but not by foreign enemies hell-bent on destroying America. Just like they don’t feel personally threatened by looting, rioting mobs burning down ‘those’ neighborhoods, because their elitist enclaves are surrounded by walls, razor wire and armed guards.

      5. Overcrowding is inhumane for everyone but their enemies. Remember that there are leftists who literally argue that the people who couldn’t defeat the Taliban CAN defeat the deplorables because they will be less constrained by rules.

        1. Yet, it never occurs to them what will happen when the deplorables also stop playing by any rules.

          For example, our current discussion re: how easy it would be to take out power to entire cities…

    3. Okay, seriously, Ken: what the hell are you still doing here? I’m no master of the social graces myself, but even I know to make myself scarce when the owner of a place has stated explicitly that she wants to throw me out.

      Are you being paid for this? If not, what major malfunction is keeping you here?

        1. Interesting assignment…

          “We are going shark hunting. Comrade Ken, it’s your turn to be the bait.” 🙂

      2. I wonder if it was the math reference in the title that brought out the trolls, maths are hard and there’s a right answer. I think this is the most rolls I’ve seen in ages. H-ll, even Ken made an appearance.

    4. Ken,
      Your head is not working right.
      I wasn’t talking about the red chinese, though even there there comes a breaking point.
      I was talking about America, the continent sized nation. Think again.

    5. The USA is more dicey, because a huge portion of the population is armed. However, all it would take to ban guns would be a majority vote in both houses of Congress to do so and to ban the Supreme Court from ruling on the law’s constitutionality.

      ….all it would take would be a complete revolution via a group that has shown no interest in doing so exercising power it doesn’t have in a manner that removes what power they do have.

      Is that all…..

      1. All the evidence suggests that many of the establishment GOP really hate gun owners, and resent having to cater to them politically. Almost every Republican who loses the support of the GOP base comes out of the closet as an anti-2A extremist. It stands to reason that in a closely divided Congress, that there are enough closet anti-gunners to side with the Democrats and pass such legislation.

        They haven’t done so yet, which means they must be scared of something.

        2. Perhaps they know what might happen, since they know that the armed civilian population, many of whom are ex-military and patriotic, and far outnumber what passes for the US military today (pronoun classes, anyone?), tend to object to outright illegal power grabs? You persist in imagining that anyone gives a rat’s patootie what the GOPe thinks, or that truly egregious attempts to violate the Constitution will not be resisted. So far, the only two arguable violations of the 2nd Amendment were in 1934 and 1968, and it got a bit dicey at times over those. A flat-out ban? I want the popcorn concession.

            1. He’s talking about the National Firearms Act of 1934, and the Gun Control Act of 1968.

              While those were the ones that made the biggest news stories, there have been others, some even worse. Leaving aside the countless state violations of 2A, you have three big ones during the Clinton regime alone: the Brady Act, the “assault weapons” ban (now expired, but Biden is trying to bring it back), and the Lautenberg Amendment.

                1. OK; I posted my response to your first comment, then saw this one. Perhaps I should have said “two arguable violations *by the Federal government”, which is what i meant; sorry ’bout that. There are so many state/local probable violations that it would take more years than I have left to even get a good start.

                  1. Even if we restrict it to the Federal level, and only count the violations passed as Law by the Legislature and signed into law by the Executive it is still far more than those two.

                    We have……

                    The Hughes Amendment
                    Reagan’s Armor Piercing pistol ammo ban
                    The Gun Free Schools Act
                    Whichever law bans carry in the Post Office
                    The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.

                    If we add in things ordered by the Executive directly, we can add….

                    Trump’s Shame (aka the bumpstock ban)
                    Bush the First’s Assault Weapons Import Ban
                    The Chinese weapons import ban

                    If we add in what federal agencies have done on their own authority that list is too long to go through. And I am almost certainly missing a bunch of violations in the above lists.

                    1. I reject the premise that counting the statutes passed is the correct approach.

                      Each individual attempt to ENFORCE such rules is a separate violation, which means the actual number is far beyond our ability to count accurately.

            2. Sure. The 2nd Amendment (as I’m sure you know) states (main clause) “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. Since the meaning of “infringe” is basically equivalent to “restrict”, “infract”, “meddle”, etc., anything which restricts the ownership or bearing of arms (except under restricted conditions) is forbidden. Both the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968 imposed restrictions on the ownership or carrying of firearms in general, rather than under specified restricted conditions, the former by imposing a $200 transfer tax on some weapons (which, in the economic conditions in 1934, amounted to a ban for almost all citizens), and the latter by flat-out forbidding citizens for owning some types of personal arms. Note that I am not” referring to cannons, tanks, battleships or nuclear weapons, which are frequent strawmen cited by anti-gun fanatics. Also note that “Well, you’re still allowed *some weapons” is another strawman, since the 2nd, as a blanket “Thou shalt not”, doesn’t allow for such sophistry.

              OK? If you disagree with the logic, I’d be happy to listen.

                1. See my reply above. listed at 3:57 PM. I’d still argue that the two I cited are the worst, being Federal, and thus definite violations of the 2nd with no “police power” sophistry employed, and having no sunset. And being the “legal” justification cited for many of the laws at lower levels.

                  As for the Lautenberg Amendment, it’s a hash of garbage (unrestricted ban for misdemeanor but not for felony?!?), but if GCA68 disappears so does Lautenberg.

          2. Every restriction on gun ownership and use by free American citizens violates the 2nd Amendment. Restrictions on convicted felons are in line with other restrictions on the rights of criminals.

            As for the pearl-clutchers’ wail of “Cannons and bombers and nukes, Oh My!” — private citizens DID own cannons, and armed ships, and every other implement of war available in the late 18th century. Almost all of the Continental Army’s artillery pieces were privately owned, until they were supplemented with captured British cannons. Most of them were sold after the war, if the artillery officers didn’t simply take them home. What use were cannons to a government without an army?

            I would find private ownership of atomic bombs problematic, Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority notwithstanding. Most people lack the means to keep them properly secured and maintained. Even the vast and mighty U.S. Government has fumbled a few. There are still atomic bombs unaccounted for after being lost at sea.

            ‘Boating accidents’ happen to everybody! 😛
            ———————————
            There is no shortage of people convinced they can create the Perfect World. They just have to eliminate all those imperfect people who don’t fit in it.

            1. All valid points; until sometime in the mid-19th century private ownership of warships and cannon was fairly common. But it wasn’t even part of the 2nd Amendment, which is about bearing arms as much as keeping them, and neither is an “arm” by the definitions used then, or even now. I guess you could argue that a nuclear carrier is a weapons system, which is an “arm” of sorts, but it might be a bit of a chore to “bear” one. The “cannons, etc.” “argument” is, as noted, a strawman. And it wasn’t until GCA68 that “cannons” (anything with a bore over .50″) became illegal to own; quite a few 20mm antitank cannons were legally sold mail order in the fifties. The nineteen fifties. Dunno if anyone offered to buy an Iowa-class before it was scrapped…

              1. Now you’ve got me daydreaming about ordering a 20mm Oerlikon cannon from Amazon…

                None of the 4 Iowa class battleships have been scrapped. They are all sitting at anchor as museum ships.

                BB-61, USS Iowa, is in Los Angeles
                BB-62, USS New Jersey, is in Camden, New Jersey
                BB-63, USS Missouri, is in Pearl Harbor
                BB-64, USS Wisconsin, is in Norfolk, Virgina

                BB-65, USS Illinois, and BB-66, USS Kentucky, were never completed because World War 2 ended. I suppose you could say they were scrapped.

        3. All the evidence suggests that many of the establishment GOP really hate gun owners, and resent having to cater to them politically.

          In your judgement.

          The judgement which is so … incredible… that you spun up a theory that wouldn’t work in freaking Portland, nevermind across the entire US.

    6. The famine in Communist China ended because Mao suffered a revolt by the upper ranks of the CCP. It’s almost certain that the Cultural Revolution was essentially Mao’s way of putting his fellow party leaders back under his control. We don’t know what would have happened if the famine had continued (fortunately), but it’s quite possible that the starving citizens wouldn’t have remained so passive.

    7. “However, all it would take to ban guns would be a majority vote in both houses of Congress to do so and to ban the Supreme Court from ruling on the law’s constitutionality. Yes, that last one is allowed in the Constitution, even though the gun ban isn’t.”

      Ken, it may be in the Constitution, but it hasn’t been seriously tested since Marbury vs Madison.

      1. The Supreme Court hasn’t been changed in size in over a century, IIRC, but the Left is talking about packing it.
        Similarly, if they need to invoke Congress’s right to restrict the scope of SC decisions, they will.

        1. Congress has no authority to overrule the constitution. When they ignore “shall not be infringed” we have no duty to comply.

          And barring temporary vacancies, the size of the SCOTUS has remained constant since its creation.

        2. Oh, I hope they are that stupid. Just what will be needed to convince people that rule of law is over.

        3. They have slightly more awareness of the effect of such a restriction than you are — offering evidence for your having.

    8. “However, all it would take to ban guns would be a majority vote in both houses of Congress to do so and to ban the Supreme Court from ruling on the law’s constitutionality.”

      And then various state governors who like remaining state governor would tell the Feds to pound sand and “we won’t help you enforce that in our state’s border.”

    1. Dude,
      Don’t care. I write these in half an hour, morning or evening.
      When I did a fundraiser, I told my supporters I’d get an editor and they asked me not to, because they prefer the posts fresh>
      Also, I see from your email you’re commenting from Russia. I guess this explains the Idiots of Unusual Size, though some of them seem more attached to China.
      I thought I’d banned all Russian IPs. Oh, I see I did. So you guys are spoofing. But the email address still gives it away.
      ANYWAY don’t you find it interesting that Americans don’t go to Russian blogs. Do you know why? It’s because we are an actual and for real superpower. We don’t need to play those crap games.
      Y’all aren’t smarter. You just got nothing else.

    2. When tempted to be a Nazi, please reconsider; just like them, you’re wrong.

      leach
      noun
      less common spelling of LEECH
      1: either vertical edge of a square sail
      2: the after edge of a fore-and-aft sail
      3
      a: to remove (nutritive or harmful elements) from soil by percolation (see PERCOLATE sense 1a)
      soil leached of its salts by torrential rains
      b: to draw out or remove as if by percolation
      all meaning has been leached from my life

      https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/leach

      1. see, I didn’t even go and see if I’d used it wrong. No time. And my fingers take dictation from my head, and they’re stupid.
        I’m writing today’s post. I don’t have time to hunt.

          1. :Amused:

            He’s now over at my blog insisting that he’s right. (No, I haven’t approved him.)

            Because to remove (nutritive or harmful elements) from soil by percolation is just not anything like drawing the resources from functional systems….

            1. :even more amused:

              And he’s now spammed on my blog, because he’s STILL insisting that his preferences are correct, not the dictionary. And over two hundred years of it being spelled that way.

              Disagreeing with him is “sloppy.”

  27. Sarah, thanks for keeping most of the trolls out of the comments.
    Seeing a few crunchy treats like these get chewed up reminds me of why I like reading the comments as much as I like reading your blog.
    John in Indy

  28. One phrase, “ Front Toward Enemy”.

    Has anyone given thought as to why that was printed on a tool used by “trained”soldiers?

    1. Because troops can break anything, including themselves? 🙂
      But I suspect that’s supposed to be read as:

        Front

      Toward Enemy

      (IOW, “THIS is the front. Face it toward the enemy”

      Not a lot better , but at least semi-rational…

          1. Even better! (Assuming, of course, that they’re familiar with The Law, and not just with its effects… 🙂

    2. Because they’re expected to be used in battles? Under conditions of maximum stress, confusion and panic? When an extra little reminder couldn’t hurt, and might help? When one less thing to remember might give a soldier enough mental breathing room to notice something else?

      Yesterday I was hurrying to finish assembling the orders at work before the UPS truck got there, and forgot to pack a setup CD in one of the boxes. I know the disk needs to be in there, but in the rush I missed it, and that was without enemies shooting at me. Had to ship it separately after the fact.

      Sticking a plastic thingy in the ground wrong-way-to while under fire is entirely too plausible.
      ———————————
      Grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.

      1. Actually, claymores are usually placed during other than hot combat, as in setting up an ambush or a perimeter defense. But yeah, I’m afraid you’re right. The mere possibility, combined with “troops can break anything“, means nothing can be too simple or too clear.

      2. My last job there were programs that required an extra file, generally a custom file, eventually. When a new client was initially sent the full installation, guess which files were missing … Every single time. Constant calls with each program as boss was training on the system, that the file was missing; the programs crashed spectacularly. Easy fix. Quick modification of another client’s file, change the header and send it. Just irritating as heck. One of the things I fixed during the major rewrite I did there at the last. Every rewritten program that required this type of external file ended up with a default file that could be extracted to a temp location if the custom file did not exist. Problem solved.

        1. Good fix. But did anyone ever figure out why the files wer always missing? Murphy is sneaky, and can reappear when and where you least expect him.

          1. Yes. The person doing the build (IT) didn’t know they were required. To be fair, while a lot of them were similar (as in made from someone else’s and tweaked) they mostly were custom. It was a few years after I started before there was a method to compile and extract text files in EXE’s themselves. It wasn’t until the major rewrite that a default extractable generic file was added, even then it wasn’t one of the specifications of the rewrite.

            One of the major pluses of the old way was new clients learned how responsive the company was to when they call in. Realistically how often do clients call software systems (and it is a major system) for a fix or simple request and the response is not “We’ll put it on the list for the next release”. But instead is “will get get back to you” with a call the same day of “install this ticket” or “fix installed” (if they have the contract and links so we could install it), let me know. There were other ways to get that point across.

            1. Sounds quite a bit like the support we did on HP1000A900 test software for radar systems. The original code was written by people no longer with the company, and never documented. And then we discovered that one of the tests returned “Passed” regardless of the actual test result. That was interesting to explain to the customer, and get resolved after multiple systems had been shipped and installed at airports. Fun times…

  29. David Frum is an example. He was a speech writer in the George W. Bush administration.

    He has said that all gun owners are cowards, that no NRA member ever served in the military, that defensive use of guns is non-existent, and that there are no responsible gun owners.

    2. Again? You sure talk a lot.
      And why are you listening to that guy? W. has also said he’s a Christian Socialist.
      WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH NORMAL AMERICANS?
      Just because you’re embedded in the FBI hierarchy and have to believe them, doesn’t mean real Americans care what your bosses say.

      1. What it has to do with normal Americans is that Frum, or if you prefer Bloomberg, his boss, has several Republican Senators and Congressmen in his back pocket. He also is connected to the left wing historians like Michael Beschloss, so the textbooks from now on will record all those things he said. And from now on, everything will follow as if everything he said were true, because he controls the past and therefore the future.

        1. And from now on, everything will follow as if everything he said were true, because he controls the past and therefore the future.

          Looking at emailed responses, so got to this one AFTER the ‘more kinetic response’ one….

          He is a Prog!

          Not only is All Lost, and We Should Not Even Bother, and also You Go Do Something Stupid Or You’re A Faker, but YOU CAN CONTROL HISTORY BY WRITING IN HISTORY BOOKS!

          Never mind that “the” textbooks aren’t actually covering as many folks as before– just this morning I saw yet another breathless article about VANISHED CHILDREN11!1!!11

          …

          In their sample of official numbers from less than half of US states, they couldn’t find what happened to some 200 thousand kids that had been in school or were theorized to be enrolling the next year.
          (in defense of the study report, they did actually MOSTLY only use states that have homeschooling numbers, and even excluded Iowa where homeschoolers only enroll if they want to sign up for a school program; against them, they didn’t notice Washington has no recording at all for under 8, and that Florida’s system is somewhat similar to Iowa’s, nor did they do the research to find out that Washington’s official registered homeschooler numbers are trash although THAT might be me being picky because of inside baseball knowledge about enrollment fraud)

          1. Considering that

            every public school student comes with a federal check attached, and
            the high school senior class prank my senior year was to invent a student, enroll him in classes, and get his photo in the yearbook*

            I think it’s very likely that a lot of those “vanished children” never existed in the first place.

            The rest just never bothered to register their kid with the authorities saying they were homeschooling.

            (“Marvin Truchnahaia”, a native kid who moved in from the Bush. His photo looked like Kenny with his parka pulled shut. What can I say, the school at that time was run by the smart kids, not the jocks, so we had a longer time horizon, and we had a few teachers who were in on the joke. The only crime committed was forging a signature on his federal attendance form.)

              1. Yeah, I saw the Seattle Times rehash of that article. They were all like “oh the poor BIPOC kids won’t get any schooling at all now boo hoo hoo”, and the very next day had an article crowing about the “historical milestone” now that “students of color” were a majority of public school students in WA. Hmm. You think, maybe…? Nah, couldn’t be.

      2. About the whole “me being a Fed” thing:

        About one third of Americans identify as conservative. That is somewhere in the vicinity of 100 million people.

        Do you honestly believe that your personal circle represents every one of those people? Do you think that there is no one in that 100 million who would like a more kinetic response to the Left?

        Because if you do, you’re wrong. I’ve met people who make me seem like Jonah Goldberg.

        1. “Do you think that there is no one in that 100 million who would like a more kinetic response to the Left?”

          If that’s your concern, why don’t you go find and spy on them? Why waste your time here?

        2. Do you honestly believe that your personal circle represents every one of those people? Do you think that there is no one in that 100 million who would like a more kinetic response to the Left?

          :looks at history, including start-of-last-century Antifa:

          Generally, the word for folks who want a ‘more kinetic response’ to ‘the left’ is other leftists.

          2. He never answered my question earlier about what personal damage would keep him here if he isn’t a fed. Bet you he ducks the question again.

    4. ….your baseline of proof is a Canadian -American speech writer?

      Since Wikipedia is the absolute lowest level for finding out about a public figure, here’s his early career path:
      After graduating from Harvard Law School, Frum returned to Toronto as an associate editor of Saturday Night.[16] He was an editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal from 1989 until 1992, and then a columnist for Forbes magazine in 1992–94. In 1994–2000, he worked as a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, as a contributing editor at neoconservative opinion magazine The Weekly Standard, and as a columnist for Canada’s National Post. He worked also as a regular contributor for National Public Radio. In 1996, he helped organize the “Winds of Change” in Calgary, Alberta, an early effort to unite the Reform Party of Canada and the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

      Note, this is not endorsing that a single thing Ken has claimed that Frum said is accurate; the responsible gun owner thing appears to be based off of an article that swallowed the far left prog activist’s nonsense whole, and happened to be titled “Responsible Gun Ownership Is A Lie.”

      This is a headline that I would use, though not the way Frum did, because I’m familiar with the “responsible X” being standard issue banning rhetoric. (Don’t get me started on the Responsible Homeschooler folks. They’re the Catholics For Choice of homeschooling.)

      1. Frum is best known in some circles for telling Jerry Pournelle he wasn’t a conservative. Tells me all I need to know.

          1. If I remember correctly (I may not, I am sad to say), Jerry Pournelle referred to David Frum as “the egregious Frum.”

            Open contempt can sometimes be more satisfying than violence.

            1. Really close. My recollection (maybe equally shaky), was “the egregious David Frum”. The “David” always seemed to come into play. One supposes that Frum should have a leading ‘E’ in his initials. “EDF” for the “L”.

    5. Hysteresis is a thing. Those aware of it do their damnedest to avoid crossing the ‘rising edge’ (HIGHER) threshold… because there is no knowing where the trailing edge (LOWER) threshold really is… until after a whole lot of nastiness. The landscaper’s “ha ha” (or for Discworld, perhaps a “ho ho”) is… a poor example, really. In this case it’d be worse than a “ho ho” as it’s an ‘UH OH.”

    6. So? Idiots abound; do you have to listen to them? Do you also channel Schumer, Schiff and Pelosi? How about The Cameltoe? Can you cackle?

    7. ((blinks)) you’re pulling out David Frum as an example? Really? He hasn’t even been considered vaguely right-ish for a couple decades now.

Comments are closed.