Funny Only Once

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

In The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein, Mycroft, the trickster sentient computer that joins the revolution because he’s bored and wants friends, (I figure he’s their Benjamin Franklin figure) tries throughout the book to figure out humor.

In fact, his “first human friend” Manny finds out that Myke has woken up because Myke plays a joke. He pays someone about 100 times what he should be paid.

Part of Manny educating Myke is “funny only once.”

Now part of the funny only once is self defense. Manny can’t have Myke playing big, noticeable, system breaking pranks that will lead to either killing everyone and/or people finding out he’s sentient.

But part of it is accurate for everyone. I know a lot of people here grew up with Star Trek and are impressed by Kirk’s “this one simple trick.” It was impressive, of course, in the context of the show, considering they were going from planet to planet, so funny only once worked, since it was a new audience every night. To an extent, the Saint is the same thing, (the TV series) with the flaw that it’s not a new planet every night. (If anyone does Saint in Space — concept not name — please tell me, I’d love to read it.) I mean, you watch the series to see how he pulls off the trick and double crosses the unrighteous (his name for the bad guys.) But you willingly have to suspend disbelief, because at some point people would notice and know, and start knowing when they see him coming…..

And this is part of the problem that our “governing classes” and self styled “elites” have. Much of what they’ve been pulling is world breaking.

It works once, partly because we can’t believe anyone would be stupid enough to pull that. It is a stupidity so big that we can’t believe anyone would do it.

I mean, look, locking up the entire world over a bad flu, and scaring people half to death just so they could steal the US election? It’s not a clever trick, unless you consider breaking the dome protecting a space colony clever.

But is is so monumentally stupid, requiring that people be unaware or uncaring of where food comes from and more importantly that trust once broken can’t be recovered overnight, that most people refused to believe that anyone would do something so monumentally stupid and psychopathic.

In fact, it’s how psychopath narcissists manage to pull half the stupid sh*t they do. Normal human beings can’t understand the depths of non-human thought that allow someone to use others as pieces in a game.

The thing is that once you see something like that pulled, no only is it funny only once, because you won’t allow it to be pulled again, but it allows you to see all the other “this one simple trick” requiring monumental chutzpah and stupidity to pull off. And once you start seeing it, you can’t unsee it.

No, most people still don’t fully know what to do about it, but let’s face it, despite cooked polls and the koolaid drinkers being special all over social media, this one simple trick, as it unravels further destroys what remained of trust in the media, and government, and “scientists” and… well, the entire structure that allows the left to stay in power, and that in fact allowed them to steal the election.

Even better, by involving the entire world in this, they finally broke the Europeans. Europeans are starting to doubt their “experts” and “smart people.”

Yes, there are pockets that haven’t. But overall, not only was it funny only once but, contrary to what they took from the whole experience, it made their chances of pulling it off again very very small.

Right now, people know they’re being duped, and no one trusts much of anything they’re told that they haven’t experienced by themselves, with their own lying eyes.

This is good, because part of what has allowed the tyranny to grow is a trust in experts and “scientific” governance over the last 100 years. We need people to start trust themselves and (with limits) their neighbors.

It is bad, because as institutions collapse it makes it harder to change and rebuild without it all collapsing or tipping into “blood up to our ankles” type situation.

But this one simple trick was funny only once. And it’s already broken their structures of power. We can pray for a miracle that allows us to cross to new structures and more freedom without massive violence. And we should.

Because most of the casualties happen after victory.

On the other hand, we already won. And they lose. There is no victory condition for them.

We win, they lose.

Be not afraid.

330 thoughts on “Funny Only Once”

  1. My fond memory of the line is “Funny once.” And then the rest of the conversation: “Use it once, you’re a wit. Twice, you’re a half-wit.” “Geometric progression?” “Worse.”

  2. Here’s a “funny once” from the 1960 Presidential election: downstate Illinois dutifully reported their results as soon as they were counted, while Chicago Mayor Daley held up his count until he knew exactly how many fraudulent votes he’d need from the graveyards to tip the state Democratic.

    Thereafter, in future elections, downstate held their count until AFTER the Chicago results were in. Funny once.

    2. Not really…a while back, I think 2008, in the Gubernatorial election in Illinois, the Democrats kept counting for two weeks, and eventually “found” enough votes to win by a slim margin..This tactic had already been used in Minnesota and Washington, where the votes turn up in the back of autos and other strange places, and it seems to work every time…Some of us predicted the steal in advance, since this was one the Democrats really wanted to win for financial reasons…

  3. Even better, by involving the entire world in this, they finally broke the Europeans. Europeans are starting to doubt their “experts” and “smart people.”

    You’d think two world wars would have been enough to do that.

      1. Not totally sure about Europe. Macron just back from Beijing is making, “anti-US,” comments. On the one hand, it’s disturbing. On the other, he’s French, and they’ve been pulling variations on the theme at least since deGualle (?)

          1. IOW, a narcissistic parasite, and as useless as the proverbial mammary glands on a male bovine? Concur.

            1. Hey, mammaries on a male mammal provide a vital service, preserving the genetic pattern to avoid issues.

              At least, that was my mom’s argument when she switched to “tits on chicken.”

        2. DeGaulle, who gets slammed for having the gall to prefer having his own nukes instead of letting the Americans park theirs in his country? DeGaulle, who raised a Down Syndrome child quite openly with his wife at a time when the Windsors were still hiding their developmentally challenged members on country estates? That DeGaulle? Please don’t mention him in the same breath as the likes of banker Macaroon.

          The French intelligentsia are down on the US for the same reasons every other European intelligentsia is, and I include the British intelligentsia there, but DeGaulle’s attitude towards the Americans came from a more pragmatic place.

          (From what I can tell, the working class people in western Europe are or used to be far too fond of cowboy movies to have much dislike for Americans.)

          1. Just meant he ran with, “France will go its own way.” Agree he was cut from different cloth than Macron.

            1. Ok, sorry for ranting. I get a little tired of the “how dare anyone go against the Anglosphere” talk that goes on in some circles, although admittedly it’s died down quite a bit since its Gulf War II heyday.

            1. The intellectools feel that way, certainly. The ones who have to deal with our most obnoxious class (rich young adults) as visiting tourists who get drunk and vomit on people’s shoes, probably.

          3. From what I’ve heard, yeah, get out of the cities (particularly Paris) and into the French countryside, and supposedly attitudes change a lot.

            1. It certainly did when I was there visiting relatives (admittedly as a child in the mid-50s); they seemed to like Americans, even the less well-to-do ones like us. And the rural folks, and even those in cities such as Marseilles, liked the elites, especially Parisians, as little as I do; “Sal Parisienne!” (dirty Parisian) was a common epithet regarding us in our Paris-marked rental car, at least until my dad, with his Marseilles accent, replied; then it was usually “Ah, pardonnez moi, m’sieur.”. 🙂

          4. The French still think they rule the world, or the important parts, or they should. And they get mad whenever anyone shows them that they don’t.
            I’m Canadian; we’ve lived with the French for centuries (not that anyone from France will admit that unless it’s to poke the Anglos in the eye).

            1. The Brits harbor the same delusions about their place in the world, they just hide behind a veneer of political correctness about it. I don’t see a lot of difference between the limeys and the frogs on that point.

              1. That seems to be untrue – the Brits have an enormous guilt complex not shared by the French.
                Possibly because when they did rule the world they were much less brutal about it.

          5. Heh. From the stories I’ve heard, DeGaulle wasn’t that happy when the Americans trashed their base infrastructure on their way out of the country. Frenchies thought they were going to waltz right in and get modern bases where the Americans had built them. I understand that we cut all the cables, wrecked the plumbing, filled in drains with concrete, and all other kinds of denial of resources to the enemy.

            1. Chuckle Chuckle

              There’s a story about what he was asked when he said that he wanted American Forces out of France.

              He was asked “Does that include the American Forces in French Graveyards?”

              Don’t remember how he responded to that question, but there are still graveyards in France that contain American Forces. 😈

          2. This. Known a few English and Scots also, who’ve taken years and multiple attempts to get here. Owning land and a business helps, but still they drag feet. The shocker was the Retired Royal Army Sergeant who got his visa to immigrate in prep of Citizenship in 4 months, to work as an armed bodyguard, no less but had no job lined up, nor permits etc. This was under 0bama. Landlady took years and owned the ranch and rentals for all of that time. The German baker never did get citizenship, though didn’t try an obvious anchor with his youngest (who is “named” after me: J.P. though it is Jean Paul. Older son is “French” named too Pierre, though some comes from Mom who is Thai but likes French names). He eventually gave up, sold his bakery and moved back to Germany.

            1. My last boss was not a US citizen until just before he retired. Didn’t want to lose company of origin supplemental base income. That is until a lawyer friend pointed out the inheritance financial nightmare his estate, as a foreign national, US citizens family was facing even with explicit instructions in his will.

        2. You have to have bucks. Owning a corporation on US soil and employing a bunch of Americans helps, too. Ask my boss.

    2. Poland is in the war to acquire the Western Ukraine…can’t explain the participation of Germany and the rest…

      1. The Reader thinks it would be fairer to say that Poland is in the war to ensure Ukraine remains a buffer between them and the Russians. The Reader thinks the Poles have enough sense not to want any part of Ukraine.

        1. If this were 1923 and not 2023 I could see Poland wanting to acquire western Ukraine (mostly because in 1923 Poland already had what is now western Ukraine). But Ukraine has gone through a period of ethnogenesis and now I believe that Ukrainian national identity is strong enough that even the Poles couldn’t get away with absorbing even the most Polish-influenced part of the country.

          Which is why Eric Weinstein’s assertion that that part of eastern Europe has changed hands so many times that it’s not important which government controls which bit is nonsense.

          1. some of the more “Patriotic” Ukrainians I’ve seen are from the Russian “influenced” areas and primarily Russian speakers of Russian descendance.

            1. And thus more likely to have relatives across the border and be aware of what they’re “missing”.

          1. Yeah. I’d like to see exactly where the Poles said they wanted Lviv back or whatever. That’s, y’know, not a Russian source.

            1. The Ruthenes certainly let the Polish nobility know what they thought of them back in 1846-47. The Habsburg governor was more than a little taken aback by the stack of heads left at his office. And more taken aback by the Ruthenes/Ukrainians waiting for their reward money. (Habsburgs? Money? Surely you jest.)

        4. I suspect if they got a legitimate reason to beat the snot out of the Russian Army it wouldn’t break their hearts.

          2. I read this about a year ago:

            Q. What’s the only thing that would keep the Polish Army out of St. Petersburg?

            A. The Finnish Army might get there first.

            2. During the Cold War, the question was asked – if the ball ever went up and World War III broke out, who would the Poles attack – the West Germans, or the Russians?

              The answer – The West Germans. After all, business before pleasure!

  4. There’s a scene toward the end of Atlas Shrugged where society has fallen apart even more than in the rest of the novel, and Floyd Ferris, a character who could have been on the side of the productive but he just liked power and prestige too much, thinks he can still take control using a weapon he helped develop. Until he meets the thugs who beat him to it, and don’t care who he is or what he designed.

    In a very real sense, it prefigured the Cultural Revolution in China (likely because Rand had watched carefully what happened in Russia before she escaped). But it also seems a good metaphor for certain folks on the left today.

    I mean, Anheuser-Busch has reportedly lost five billion dollars in value since the beginning of this month, and yet the Harvard-credentialed ditz who caused it is still employed. The people above her in the corporate structure have got to be wondering what they did to deserve this, and likely will never figure it out.

    1. Actually, I think you mean Robert Stadler. Floyd Ferris was the head thug, and activated Project X despite lacking the knowledge required to use it properly. Did. Not. End. Well.

            1. I was in graduate school when I first read Atlas Shrugged. It was an epiphany. I think I have read it at least 13 or 14 times by now. Including the entire 50-page speech. 😉

              1. I know people who think the speech is skippable, because the whole rest of the book illustrates what Rand means. And I just look at some of the idiots who claim Rand was a fascist, or whatever the latest idiocy is, and arguably she should have made it longer, in smaller words, so even dullards would get it. (I know, it wouldn’t help.)

                That said, I do think the speech is one of the flaws in the book, in dramatic terms. Because the idea that a single three hour speech could turn history like that does not comport with anything in history that I know of. On the other hand, I’m not sure how she could have changed the book to accommodate something more realistic without massively changing the plot.

                1. Tuesday, but some cultures have had different tolerances for long speeches. As in enjoying three hour sermons. (Though sleeping in church does go back all the way to Paul, Eutychus and thr all-night message).

                  1. The literary snobs are easy to flummox on this point, too. Just point out that the bulk of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim is a very long monologue by Marlowe sitting in a club, and nobody ever calls that bad writing or unbelievable. (Well, a few did call it unbelievable at first, but Conrad pointed out that it was about a three or four hour story, something not at all unheard of in British gentleman’s clubs.)

              2. When I read Atlas Shrugged, it was like I had always known those principles and she provided the words to express them. It is impossible to promote a functional society by crushing the individual. There is no such thing as ‘a little bit’ of slavery; whoever takes the products of your labor by force is making you a slave. There is no room for compromise between freedom and collectivism.

              3. To D. Jason Fleming: To me the speech is the distillation of all of the concepts she explores in the book. It puts it all in clear terms so that the reader, who may have been simply enjoying the story up to that point, is suddenly presented with the meaning of everything that has happened, with no ambiguity. Kind of like the moral at the end of a charming Aesop fable.

                If one only read the speech, one would I think still understand what Rand was saying in the rest of the book. But it would not have as much impact without the careful buildup of character and plot. IMNSHO.

                To Imaginos1892: My use of epiphany was perhaps ambiguous. I had in fact been raised with many of the principles and concepts Rand explored in such depth, but the college environment made me feel an outsider because I did not know anyone else who felt that same way.

                The epiphany was the realization that the author not only understood and believed in those principles, but was able to show clearly what happened when they were ignored or acted against deliberately. It was a vindication of my own moral code and it shifted my perspective of myself both as a student and as an individual.

                (Sorry if this isn’t clear – it is 1:00 a.m. and fuzzy-thinking time.)

                1. The speech is several steps beyond beating a dead horse.
                  I mostly* agreed with it, and I was very put off by the sheet anviliciousness of it all. (Not to mention the redundancy.)

                  It should have been cut out. The editor was completely right.

                  *Mankind is capable of reason, but that does not make them intrinsically rational.
                  Bears are capable of walking on their hind legs. This does not make them bipedal, and their walking on all fours “against nature”.

                  1. John Galt’s speech was not intended for his enemies, but for the few his words might reach. It wasn’t about ‘saving the world’ either; the world was already swirling down the crapper.

                    Humans are incapable of surviving on the instincts we don’t have. We have to make plans, use tools, and pass those skills on in order to survive. We must either think, or have somebody else think for us.

      3. Ah the poor goats. That image was unforgettable, and the pay off to that was seeing the ruin of Robert Stadler, who had once been a man, screaming his last breath.

        Sorry, not sorry. There’s a lot of very bad people in our world today that deserve a sticky end.

        1. Rand was a far better writer than she gets credit for (outside of Objectivist circles, who tend to be blind to her faults and overbearing in general). Her training in screenwriting shines through in all kinds of ways, starting with her imagery.

          Ten-fifteen years ago there was a brilliant analysis of the opening chapters of AS published by a screenwriter, basically saying “look at what she did and learn from this“, but it was the last thing he ever wrote, and after his passing it was quickly scrubbed from the internet for one reason or another.

          But seriously, you can learn so much from, for instance, her depiction of the restaurant on the top of a skyscraper where Jim Taggart is having a meeting, with a worker’s cafeteria underground where Eddie Willers grabs a bite.

    2. Even funnier, that.. thing… that said it was about getting away from the frat party image.. well, some images turned up and guess what? Puppies from Karma or something like that.

    3. Story in the British press I gather that suggests upper management is starting the, “It wasn’t our idea!” dance. That usually leads for firing a scapegoat, so we’ll see.

      1. Considering the outside pressure that was brought to bear (which is why every trans representative is the same dude, everywhere), I’m calling it 50/50 that the glorified midwit responsible keeps her job and they sacrifice an actual scapegoat. After all, she can’t be wrong, she went to Harvard. And she has the people who threatened the company in the first place on her side.

        1. According to a post over at Ace’s blog today, they’re currently blaming it on a low-level staffer.

            1. Almost as believable as this chick being VP of marketing fora major brand as her first actual job.

              Except that’s somehow true.
              She had an internship somewhere else, and that’s bloody it.

              I have more questions about this, than about the stupid decision.

              1. I was under the impression that her fratty pictures from Harvard were from circa 2006, so if she had no employment between then and now except an internship, that’s… curious.

  5. Then there is the garbage that fails the “funny once” test and the idiots expect us to laugh. 😈

    1. There was a guy who would ask me to “work with him” on his unfunny, tedious, and sometimes politically bigoted spiels.

      One day I asked him what he wanted me to work toward. He just about went into shock.

  6. In fact, it’s how psychopath narcissists manage to pull half the stupid sh*t they do. Normal human beings can’t understand the depths of non-human thought that allow someone to use others as pieces in a game.

    Fun fact: you never actually run out of places to run where you’re new and unknown, but eventually you lose the mobility to pull it off. 😀 Doesn’t matter how easy it is or if nothing in you tells you it’s wrong, make sure the take will get you everything you’ll ever need all at once, because you are burning your whole future potential <.<;
    Just fyi

  7. The Idiots In Charge make up fanciful theories of How The World Should Be, become fully invested in them, and try to put them into practice, without ever once bothering to test their flights of fancy against reality. And then are Shocked, Shocked! at their dismal failure.

    What happened? Their Plans were Perfect, why didn’t they work? Whose fault was it? Wreckers and Kulaks must have sabotaged their Perfect Plans! Off with their heads!

    No, it wasn’t even funny-once.
    ———————————
    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. And -that- is the punch-line to Atlas Shrugged. Rand is as guilty of wishful thinking as the opponents in the novel.

        Small example: People long conditioned to drivel on the radio are not going to listen to a three hour speech raptly, and think “deliverance!”

        1. I dunno. If you’ve been beaten down for years, and someone comes on the radio laying out the truth, it might resonate and you might find yourself listening raptly, and not even realizing three hours have gone by.

          1. That would have to be more like a conversation, than a lecture.

            At that point, you might think the guy speaking has talent on loan from God….

          2. not even realizing three hours have gone by.

            I’ve had that while listening to Joe Rogan sometimes.

    2. You give them too much credit. You are assuming good faith in the absence of evidence, from people who eagerly and vocally cry for your death.

      The people who say communism doesn’t work, are comparing the results to the stated goals.
      But there’s every reason to believe that the people pulling the strings consider the ideology a marvelous way to destroy a society and give themselves unconstrained power.

      1. Communism is better than any ideology ever conceived at doing one simple thing: creating misery. It’s a system tailor-made by a sociopath for the enrichment of psychopaths.

    4. Ahh, yes they were born with boots and spurs and the rest of us were born with saddles on our backs.

      1. And as they walk around us, admiring their new mounts, at some point they will be directly behind us and in line with our hind legs. Fun times…

  8. And yet I still see people falling for AI fakery even when it’s obvious. Heck, there’s a lot of people falling for bad Photoshop fakery still. So there’s a deep well of gullibility to overcome.

    1. Just imagine the near future where every single non-Leftist will have deepfake videos of them heiling Hitler or some such thing. And of course Leftists will gleefully pretend that deepfake technology doesn’t exist and would never be misused anyhow.

  10. So, once again we have the major “SECURITY LEAK!” which is now taking over most of the news and it is a young Air National Guardsman who has destroyed national security.

    Yeah… pull the other one, it has bells on. If in fact there is any, I mean the least tiny bit of reality to this story I would be amazed. ‘They’ keep pulling this stunt every time some sort of info dump is needed and it’s viewed as a way to put out a bunch of distracting and, oh my, ‘dangerous’ information that all the “other” stuff is not important. Zimmermann Telegram anyone??

    1. I hadn’t heard the latest theory that it was an Air Guard person. But that has me asking why someone from the Air Guard was in the SCIF to begin with.

      1. Given that the massive leak of federal personnel records a few years ago was due to a Chinese contractor being given root access, I can totally believe this.

      2. The previous theory was that a glowie was trying to win an argument over a couple of anons on a game server and wanted to prove his point. (Maybe the one on his head…) It’s not clear if said glowie made the original leak (apparently that was done in January, but got broken out in March) or if he had seen the leaked into and pushed it out.

        Lots of other possibilities for the scenarios, but I’m not assuming it was a Clever Plan by the US intelligence community as part of an underpants gnome scheme. IC =/= intelligent, sigh.

        1. Since the release was directly contrary to the plans and intentions of the White House and Pentagon, I don’t think it was a deliberate release to damage national security or whatever. I think it’s far more likely that this is a stupid security breach that should cause senior IT heads to roll, but we know that consequences are a foreign concept to the bureaucracy so I don’t expect anything will happen.

          1. The Reader would say it was contrary to the STATED plans and intentions of the White House and the Pentagon. The Reader thinks this was a deliberate leak to set up something. What isn’t clear yet. Daniel Ellsberg, call your office.

          2. This poor little ANG SOB is gonna do life in Leavenworth, The guys who actually f’cked this up is gonna get promoted until they age into inflation indexed pensions with nice consulting jobs at Beltway Bandits on the side,

            The incompetence scares me more than the dishonesty, We can live with rogues, incompetents will get us all killed.

        2. Note for those who don’t know, classified technical specs have actually been posted to at least one on-line game forum in an attempt to win an argument over whether s certain real world combat vehicle was properly represented within the game. The one instance I’m aware of involved posting technical specs of the PRC’s MBT on the War Thunder forums. But I also know that this has happened (and on those forums) more than once.

        3. It doesn’t make any sense for winning an argument, though. The documents are a real grab bag of items that for the most part don’t appear to have anything in common with each other. There doesn’t appear to be any focus to the stuff that was leaked, which is perhaps the strangest thing of all about it.

        4. I know someone who is a crypto-communications repair person. They have the clearance because they get exposed to TS-SCI, compartmentalized intel, etc. during the course of maintaining the equipment. What they aren’t supposed to have is access to the whole
          shebang. i.e they can’t do a file dump and transmit it or copy it and walk out with it. (replacing or recovering data storage for classified information is supposed to be done in highly controlled environments, and iirc two-person authentication is required.)

          1. My experience with classified document handling dates back to when the documents were either typed on a typewriter, or printed with a typesetter and printing press, but I think you are confusing “cannot” and “should not”.

            In any computer system, the technicians need root access to do their jobs. That means they can read, copy, or print out everything if they are willing to break the regulations. Technical means protect against unauthorized access by users with limited accounts, but cannot prevent unauthorized access by your technicians. The only way to do that is to hire technicians that will respect the regulations and classification system, and to back this up with access-logging and surveillance to catch those that are breaking security.

            So far, it looks like this twerp printed out classified files, took the printouts out of the facility, scanned them, and posted them on the internet – all this just to impress internet acquaintances. If this is accurate, he was a complete idiot, because printer logs revealed unauthorized activity – but by the time someone reviewed the logs, it was too late (and always will be). Putting the fool in prison for decades is a poor substitute for preventing the leak!

            As I see it, two things went badly wrong. First, what kind of background investigation allowed this guy to get this job? Second, how did he walk out of the SCIF with a stack of printout? In my day, you were searched when you left. Did he pull a Sandy Berger and stuff the paper down his pants?

      3. Kamas said
        “But that has me asking why someone from the Air Guard was in the SCIF to begin with.”
        Yeah and if in the SCIF how the frick was he able to take the data out? I’ve never had the clearances for a SCIF, but having had access to a (much) lower level classified computing facility called an IS (information system). IS machines are air gapped from other machines , only connected to OTHER machines in the IS. Their writeable media (USB/DVD/CD/ Bluetooth) are usually disabled except is special cases. The machines are monitored constantly and anything odd (like disconnecting a USB keyboard or changing things on the system disk) is logged and supposed to be review weekly on a secret level IS by the ISSO (Information System Security Officer). If that ANG guy did that he certainly deserves some time in Leavenworth as the rules for classified stuff are clearly spelled out and you go through training each year on what you can and can not do. If he shouldn’t have had access (i.e. had no need to know or was not read in for the material) he should have the ISSO and ISSM as companions as I suspect the review requirements for Top Secret/compartmented are far more stringent than those for garden variety Secret material. I wonder if the poor ANG guy was played by someone who wanted to leak the info and found a gullible patsy to do the dirty work.

        1. The current story is that he printed it out (yes, some scifs have printers) and took it home. Of course use of the printer is logged making it easy to figure out who it was.

          1. And indeed one of the tasks of the ISSO/ISSO team is to review those print logs on a regular basis looking for irregularities. I worked in two different closed areas on different IS with lower clearances than would be found in a SCIF. In both of those the restrictions on printing were VERY strict as this was a classic way to create a security violation (unintentional or not). Merely the act of printing out files could get you dinged for a violation if you did not immediately go and pick it up. The document would then need to be placed in cover papers with the appropriate clearance marked and date recorded. From that point you either needed to be physically present with the document or you had to store it in an approved safe. These ephemeral documents could only be kept for 90 days. Woe betide if a surprise inspection happened and you were sitting with a 91+ day old document in a safe to which you had access. A SCIF which is for secure compartmented information would have considerably stronger restrictions.
            Because the Airman was likely doing system based things he would likely have privileges suitable for the task in the OS in question (Usually a proprietary UNIX or a Windows OS of some sort). This might have let him bypass some of the security, but any accesses to secured files should still have been logged. This argues for some VERY sloppy security procedures in the Pentagon as this went on for a long time and several documents were accessed or printed.

            The thing was the force used to apprehend the Airman. We’re talking a fairly large number of folks in tactical gear (Not clear what group). It included a armored vehicle (not a Bradley, nor an M113 but something wheeled), as well as what appeared to be a large State Police presence/cordon including helicopter(s). That seems like massive overkill for one miscreant Airman. Far more attention than even like the Walker spy ring got and their stuff (crypto, war plans) was WAY more critical. This is someone saying “Look we’re dealing with the issue”. And of course they’re claiming this is a racist christian bigot (their beloved target demographic). I suspect this falls into the “Never Let a Crisis go to waste” column…

            1. The show of force is consistent with some of the crap they did for J6 “insurrectionists” who might have been guilty of a misdemeanor.

              Gotta keep that narrative going.

            2. “It included a armored vehicle (not a Bradley, nor an M113 but something wheeled),”

              MRAP.

              1. I was unaware that Massachusetts had a high incidence of IEDs. Although we are 10 years from the Marathon Bombing And Tsarnev is still breathing (spit). My thought when I saw the vehicle was “Since when did the US use BTRs?”.

                1. It’s also become standard equipment for FBI / DHS / BATFE. Got to keep the proles scared.

                2. When the Iraq occupation was over, there were a lot of surplus MRAP’s. Any law enforcement agency wanting an armored truck could do some paperwork and get one. Mine resistance is overkill, but it’s armored against small arms, it’s impressive to those that don’t understand the difference between a tank and a lightly-armored truck, and it’s “free”.

            3. 1) Intimidation – sheer terror
              2) Justify the swat budget – use it or lose it

        2. So we have an arrest of an Airman First Class (an E-3) from the MA ANG for the leak. Neither DoD, DIA or FBI was able to identify him, It was some folks from the press (Washington Post) that found him by tracking back from the discord account to his steam account on which he had the information public (smooth move ex-lax). His MOS
          was cyber transport systems journeymen (CTSJ) according to information here https://victorygirlsblog.com/arrest-raises-more-questions-than-answers-about-pentagon-leak/ and seems to be verified the NY post. This is AFSC 3D1X2 . Description includes

          These Airmen are like the IT specialists of the Air Force. They provide mission-critical voice, data, and video services, deploy and operate expeditionary communications systems, and monitor the performance of systems and circuits.

          They’re also responsible for testing and troubleshooting network systems equipment and circuits. This may include IP detection systems, which identify cybersecurity breaches, as well as cryptographic equipment.

          So maybe an ISSO kind of position, or at least someone who would have physical access to the systems where the info was stored and setting up its hardware and potentially crypto. Probably highly cleared (Likely Top Secret for a SCIF) but probably NOT read in for the particular compartments in the SCIF. So we MAY have the watchman watching himself. So either folks involved in the compartments were sloppy (CF H. Clinton and the current Turnip in chief and their handling of classified documents) or perhaps we have said person getting trolled by people who wanted the info out. If the latter the trollers were pretty ineffective as the info sat in a quite corner of discord with ~20 people seeing it for several months before it flowed out. Unless one of the people on the Discord worked for the FSB or similar. Perhaps our doofus Airman had bragged that he had access (a BIG no no if you have clearance) and someone cleverly challenged him prove it and and our 20 something went about doing so. So this idiot airman will sit his backside in Leavenworth until he’s 40+ and be released with a BCD so he pretty much will have trouble even getting jobs flipping burgers or being at the end of a push broom when he gets out. Rather sad if the Airman did this to himself, which is the way I lean at present.

    2. A “young Air National Guardsman” they don’t know who it is, yet. Never will. Or will be a patsy ordered to release the information they need to throw under the public bus.

      Me cynical? You jest.

      1. They’ve released a name. Someone in the Massachusetts Air National Guard. With a Discord.
        FWIW.

      1. Just like the FBI raid on his residence. I’ve been hearing jubilant crowing “We’ve got him this time” for the past six and a half years. Puts me in mind of this:

        1. Snickers in cat DadRed and I were reciting the chorus of that this evening as Athena T. Cat left, then came back in hopes that we’d forget that she’d just gotten her evening treats.

    4. I easily believe it was a young national guardsman, The question that will never be asked is why would a young national guardsman have access to this stuff? Which giant intellect decided that was a good idea? That we will never know.

      1. One plausible way: Because he was an MI MOS with a short training period and they were on drill weekend somewhere that had the info and someone didn’t set up permissions correctly.

        1. There are also protocols and processes for entry/exit along with how material is to be managed. I’ve got a hunch that a bunch of the “rules” went out the window and the folks around this Airman were busy ‘smoking and joking’ and were not taking business seriously. That sort of attitude will result in an impressionable young fool into taking “chances” and not being caught. He finally got caught and will now pay the price.

          Well – this poor kid is looking at life in Kansas and the other officers, NCOs and staff at the facility will do a hurry up CYA and blame everything they can on this “rouge” element. I really feel sorry for him but stupid hurts.

          1. Verily, but there also seems to be a lot of surprise that anyone his age would have been near classified information without A Conspiracy. (One twit elsewhere suggested only officers should have access to classified information.)

            1. That would be interesting, especially when the classified material involved mission orders for a spec ops team… “General, you and your colonels and majors will HALO onto…” 😉

              1. Or “Sorry, Colonel, you’re on maintenance duty for the Top secret thingamabob, here’s your wrench.”

                I will admit my first thought when the guy said it was “You think a butterbar would be an improvement? Really?”

            2. When I was in the Air Force, there were 19 year olds doing repairs on the Top Secret Electronic Countermeasures gear. Graduate from High School, enter Basic Training. If your expected career field may involve anything Top Secret you fill out the application on day 1. Unless the FBI turns up some reason to deny it or to investigate further, you’re cleared by the time you graduate boot camp. (The one time I know of that clearance didn’t come through by graduation was a cadet in OTC rather than enlisted in Basic Training. His parents were missionaries and he grew up somewhere in New Guinea, so it took longer for the FBI to talk to the neighbors and confirm he really existed rather than being a Russian mole…)

              So, graduate high school at 18, go to boot camp, then about 6 months of advanced training. You can be on the job, working on Top Secret gear on a $100 million airplane when you’re barely 19. Now, you’re supposed to be doing OJT (On the Job Training) for about a year, but your trainer can’t be looking over your shoulder all the time.

              1. Yeah, I understand on the clearance thing. My dad was a missionary kid, born in Okinawa Japan (naval base). Worse, his mother was a naturalized citizen. We were tracking down reference numbers to databases we weren’t sure were digitized yet. Army when I went in tended to be a bit slower, then again our schooling for my MOS was… very long so they probably felt they had time.

          2. That -adult- airman, who had all the needed briefings and training, ad nauseum, knew dang well what he was doing. Doesn’t matter, for him, one whit if some higher-up wanted crap leaked, or screwed up, or didn’t audit. He knew not to even talk -about- work with outsiders.

            He knew not to do what he did. He did it anyway. He will now get to contemplate that for a few decades.

            He made his cellblock bed. Now he gets to not sleep well in it.

            1. And if some higher-up wanted stuff leaked (which in this case I highly doubt) then he is free to finger them at any time.

      3. Never underestimate the power of bored junior Enlisted to do things that boggle the minds of long-service senior NCOs.

        It’s a super power. One loses it upon achieving NCO status.

        It’s like “second lieutenant” power, but super-humanly creative.

        1. Ah. I have a t-shirt which encapsulates the idea nicely: it says, in Latin, “It seemed like a really good idea at the time.” (The translation is on the shirt).
          One of my favorites.

            1. …unless he’s a mustang with over 15 as an NCO. Best junior officers in the Corps.

            2. In a similar vein what are the three most dangerous things in the universe (in increasing order of threat)
              1) A software engineer with a soldering iron
              2) An electrical engineer with a software patch
              3) A User with an idea

              Please note there is some argument on which of the first two is the lesser threat.

              1. The Reader has never seen a software engineer with a soldering iron. He believes that is a boogeyman intended to scare young hardware engineers. He has seen (in fact has been) a hardware engineer with a software patch. That particular circumstance ended with the Reader calling the head of the F22 radar software team an idiot along with several unprintable add ons.

                He would also add 2.5) A systems engineer with either a soldering iron or a software patch (saw plenty of these in a 40+ year career).

                1. I have been that Software engineer. Although at least once it was me making a Heath H19 terminal and that worked. Although I did swap two wires in the power supply which blew a fuse in the h19, and managed to ground the powered off CRT through my elbow to the work surface. Note for those who have never dealt with them, CRT’s act as giant capacitors and can bite long after they are powered down if you forget to ground them out while working.

                2. Technically I was both a software and the hardware engineer at my first job after getting the second degree. Had access to a solder iron. Never used it. Note, when that job went away, I was perfectly happy to drop the hardware engineer portion of the job. (I can deal with hardware. I just do not like to.)

                3. I’d say that a program manager with a “simple change request” beats them all…

                  1. The Reader believes that is a subset of ‘User with an Idea’.

                    3. I believe you’re correct, since “User” can be divided into two broad categories, “Ueseful” and “Useless”. 🙂

                  2. Or a supervisor that says to management “Oh! That will be no problem. Excel calls the procedure (this). See?” Demo with quick small dummy data set. Except: 1) where needed not in Excel. 2) If correct data type used in “quick demo” process would have worked, but the result would have been a 100% failure. Yes, I was able to do what was needed. Yes it worked for all data sets. No it would not work long term. (More than 6 years. Programming tool made the solution a “bug”, 6 years later. Did have a plan to rewrite in different tool, just in my copious time, never got around to getting it on the schedule, much less around to rewriting it. Whomever ended up with the program & data after the company sale found that out the hard way.)

              2. Edison was the best person at assembly lining the User with an Idea process. The really interesting revelation was that users had horrible ideas that didn’t work, some catastrophically, 99% of the time.

    5. The thing that has me shaking my head is the news agencies on our side are running with the child on tv this morning and this rando gamer airman were the ones to leak operational war plans.

      Mmmm, children, no. No, no, no. The junta isn’t capable of finding two people in a day who have actually done something. But they can lie.

    6. Some Russia shill on another site mockingly called it the “Putinbot leak” (in the sense of well, you call us Putinbots, but here’s the CIA agreeing with us). All I could think, especially given the apparently altered Ukrainian casualty rates in the docs was, “Well, how do we know this isn’t a piece of Russian maskirovka?” So that’s my default theory on the leaks until proven otherwise. 🙂

      1. I’ve read on some other sites that the information in the leak doesn’t add up. Maybe it was going to be ‘misinformation’ but it got out into the wild so, que up the scapegoat.

        Then again, the current Political and Military management folks are a cry for help and don’t seem to have any common sense or an IQ above room temp so this could be a usual FUBAR on their part and the Airman was a fool who got caught up in it all.

    7. I just watched a short video on this (by Ward Carroll). One thing that hit me (and that Carroll also briefly touched on) is the seemingly random nature of the information that’s been leaked. Stuff on the war in Ukraine, sure, that makes sense as it’s a hot spot. But the leaks also include info on spying on South Korea and Yemen. Why would there be a leak that covers three such highly disparate topics? It doesn’t make any sense.

      He also explained something I hadn’t heard explained before; namely, why there is reason to believe that the leaked Ukraine casualty figures are – as our government claims – disinformation by a third party (claimed to be Russia, of course). Apparently the info in question is part of a set of power point slides, but the numbers have font issues when compared with the rest of the text on the slides, and are also out of alignment. In short, it apparently looks like a sloppy cut and paste.

      1. Folks are noticing that the narrative is shifting from the content of the leaks (whether or not they are accurate) to the “ZMOG! There’s classified information on a game server! We Neeeeeeeeeeeed to pass the RESTRICT Act to shut down those MAGA creeps once and for all.”

        To borrow from CTH, Suspicious Cat is suspicious.

        1. What no one has mentioned yet (Junior comes closest) is the possibility that NONE of the “information” “leaked” was actually real classified information. I remember enough about classified markings, and have a fair hand with editing software, to gin up a pretty damn convincing document.

          1. Some of the information is about our spying operations against a couple of different countries (ROK, and one of the Gulf states). I can’t imagine that would be unclassified.

      2. A sloppy cut and paste to fake a document, or a real powerpoint presentation where someone took last week’s slides and sloppily updated the numbers?

        1. Anybody updating a document would have fixed the table on the original, not be downloading the one that was sent out and visually editing it.

          Husband is adding that you’d be able to see that, with both an updated and a created date on the powerpoint.

          1. I wouldn’t assume a sloppy cut-and-paste job necessarily disqualifies it as a genuine government document. Not after all the weaponized stupidity I’ve seen lately.
            ———————————
            “This is an EX-PARROT!!”

            1. Think harder about where the stupid has come from.

              These guys replace the high level folks, because they think that’s where the power is.

              Not the low level folks.

              The low level folks are the ones who make the shiny power points for the higher ups to glance at and push along.

              1. Oh, I think there’s plenty of stupid all the way down. The imbeciles are in charge of personnel, after all. You think stupid managers won’t hire stupid worker ants?
                ———————————
                They say I can’t be a nonconformist because I’m not like the other nonconformists.

          2. “Anybody updating a document would have fixed the table on the original,”

            Only if they understand how the software works, and only if they saved the source files. If all you saved is a PDF or a printout, you have to work from that next time – or recreate your whole workflow.

            I’ve seen a whole lot of idiots in high places who never bother to learn how things work, and a whole lot of missing source files of all sorts. I’ve charged hundreds of thousands for reverse-engineering software source code, circuit schematics and circuit board CAD files for companies that outsourced the work and either didn’t get the source code and CAD from the programmer and designer, or lost every file that wasn’t directly required for production. In these cases, doing the whole software development or hardware design over again would have cost much less than the reverse engineering – but they didn’t even save the specifications that the designs were based on!

            1. This is where the lower level guys who actually make the reports not being as stupid as the theory requires comes in.

              The general isn’t messing with power point himself.

            2. they didn’t even save the specifications that the designs were based on!
              ………..

              Wait? You are presuming there were design specifications for designs to be based on? Since when?

              Not in my experience. At most all I Ever had was code. Sometimes it was even working code.

    8. Their excuses so far make the leak happening worse, not explain it away. It’s either “Wait, he managed to get past security THAT easily?” or “Wait, you let him have that kind of access?”
      It’s all coming down to “Yes, we are that incompetent. Maybe more than that . . . it just ain’t bit us . . . yet.” Best part was “We’ve had a security leak! No one look at it!”

  11. Hey, we* here in the Peoples’ Paradise of California are going to Lead The Way in combatting global climate Change by banning gasoline powered cars and trucks and force everyone into more expensive and less reliable EV’s, At the same time we’re making it prohibitively expensive to build new power plants. And we’re going to give the vote to all the oppressed immigrants, whether they are citizens or not, and give everyone a free house and a free college education. And we’re going to empty the jails, let the poor oppressed thieves and burglars run free, and let the homeless drop feces and drug needles in the streets. And we’re going to pay massive reparations for slavery to people whose great-grandparents were never slaves. And we’re going to pay for it from savings on water retention and flood control in a climate that’s normally either too dry or too wet, and hey, where are you all going?
    *Not actually one of the sainted we

    1. I am one of the sainted we. And all I have to say is –

      Don’t get too smug about California’s insanity. DC is currently in the process of bringing it to the rest of the country while you’re distracted laughing at the foolish Californians.

      1. I’m in neighboring Arizona where we’re getting refugees from California and Mexico, enough of whom still think these are all good ideas that we’re not nearly far enough behind, and not laughing. Apart from the shenanigans in DC.

      2. Sadly there is no wilderness to flee to. And the Californians are bringing their insanity to Utah as well.

      3. WA is well on its way to the same stupid destination, and at this very moment is telling big brother Californistan, “hold my beer.”

  12. “But is is so monumentally stupid, requiring that people be unaware or uncaring of where food comes from […]”

    Unfortunately, most people are blissfully unaware of where food comes from. Most folks seem to thing “The Back” of a supermarket — or any other store, for that matter — is a TARDIS-like place (i.e. much bigger on the inside than the outside) that is either full of zillions of whatever product it is they want, or else it’s where the product is made. And yes, that includes the fresh meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, etc. that they just plopped in their shopping carts.

    Seriously, I had to explain what “Wild Caught” meant when referring to the “Wild Caught Smoked Salmon” in my counter to many more customers than I care to remember. And they were all HORRIFIED to discover that it had been a real live fish “just like Nemo” (I know, I know, I know Nemo was a clownfish, not a salmon! Don’t yell at me!).

    This is what happens when we stop teaching children where food comes from. And while I may not have learned about that in school, I definitely learned about it from Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and/or The History/Discover Channel. But rants about what passes for entertainment these days, especially so-called “Reality” TV, is a rant for a comment on another post.

    1. Grade school in the ’50s and ’60s included a handful of field trips to see where food came from. Those avoided the blood and guts of butchering, but dairy processing (milk and later on a cheese plant) as well as some others were on the list. One of them was a farm, so there wasn’t a complete disconnect in the food process.

      I also recall sprouting radish seeds as part of a science segment.

      1. Yes, I remember the 6th grade field trip to the grocery store – to include “the back” and the loading docks.
        Also remember the class project to build little wooden trucks and vans that followed on that trip.

      2. My first edible plants were the radishes we planted on the playground in 5th grade. I had a neato artistic teacher.

      3. My 7th grade science class took a field trip to a local meat processing plant. We saw every stage of the process, from the humane slaughter all the way to the large cuts of beef they sent out to butcher shops. Very educational. Very. (I came down with the flu that day and was running a fever by the time we got off the bus, so the whole experience had a very surreal feel, and the first part–the kill and bloodletting–is all I clearly remember.)

    2. I did glance at a recent particle which was about the horrors of 4H clubs teaching children to raise goats. I don’t remember having that option when I was in 4H, But my grandfather had both cows and horses. Hy parents tried raising goats and had given it up a few years earlier, I didn’t have the hand strength to milk either cows or goats, but I saw it done and knew where milk came from. And my uncle raised a heifer as an FFA project. And the butcher in the grocery had and used a meat saw, (Right in front of the customer! ) and a diagram of which cuts of meat came from which parts of the cow. And my mother talked about having to pluck chickens when she was a girl. And my Dad occasionally took me fishing, and we cooked and ate the fish. And my mother tried vegetable gardening everywhere we lived. Where food comes from wasn’t a big part of my formal education, but it was a part of everyday living. For most people today, it isn’t.

      1. My dad talked about the time someone didn’t keep a firm enough grip on the chicken after its head came off, and they really did have a headless chicken, blood spouting everywhere, running around the back yard.

      2. And my beloved took a cooking class which featured cooking very fresh quails. How fresh? You had to take your quail (s) and wring their little necks.

      3. Great Uncle had a sheep farm and a huge vegetable garden. Uncle tried to keep that tradition at two different locations. They put on lamb/mutton barbecues often. Cousin just married into a retail family farm (he got his degree in agriculture). Another cousin (his sister), family have a farm where they had sheep and goats. Just bought the neighbors property. While their major income comes from their other electrical business, their farm makes money. They are in the Willamette valley. Another aunt and uncle still have their 40 acres near Baker. While they don’t have farm animals, or a garden, anymore (they are 88 and 85), they did for decades. I spent 4 summers there, learning to milk cows, weed gardens, picking up and stacking hay, dealing with pigs (they are mean), making sure the one cow they didn’t milk let the not-her-calves eat (the other two cows calves and a steer calf they bought). Occasionally, even got to ride the horses. If we had beef, it was from one of the steers raised by aunt and uncle. If we had mutton, we got it from the other relative farms. Otherwise, fishing season (we ate trout, mostly, some steelhead), and deer (at that time both east and west side hunting) and elk hunting seasons. Us kids were taught how to gut and cook fish. We participated in the butchering (well wrap) of game meat. The home backyard garden never did very well (except the marion blackberries. Mom currently does hanging tomatoes, which she gets some results.

        Our son and the scouts we worked with we tried to teach that food did not magically appear in grocery stores or farm stands. Took with our son. Don’t know about the others.

      4. Lehto talked about that one on his YT. The issue was that 4H absolutely does allow takebacks and remorse, but the local Karen (male or female) is notorious for doing various shady things. The speculation is that he/she is taking cuts of auction money for him/herself, possibly giving cuts to other local officials.

        So Karen refused takebacks, lied to the buyer, and got the police/deputies to drive several hundred miles away from their jurisdiction to confiscate a goat.

        It also turns out that minors who sign contracts can still renege within three days, so Karen violated that too.

        1. I went back and actually read the article, still not too carefully, but it appears that some busybody became overly aggressive about forcing the goat to be sold and slaughtered regardless of the girl’s wishes. Well, yeah, some children do become so attached to animals that are being raised for the specific purpose of becoming meat to be killed and eaten that they adopt them and can’t bear to part with them. That’s been happening since the first goatherd before the dawn of civilization. Some parents are ruthless about it, some aren’t. Either way, the children then either somehow learn the difference between livestock and pets or they don’t become farmers or ranchers. However, the author of the article went on to claim that this busybody, and indeed the whole 4H program was representative of the entire heartless merciless meat-is-murder industry. I smell an agenda composed of animal waste product and refuse to get excited.

          1. You don’t develop the “but I can’t bear to sell him” between the time the goat is auctioned and when he’s delivered, though.

            Especially when you have to sign the “yes, I really really really mean it” paper that weekend, before show and auction.

            Which is why this:
            I smell an agenda composed of animal waste product and refuse to get excited.

            Is absolutely correct.

            (even when it appears, from the claims I’ve heard, that there were plenty of adults being idiots– not including the guy who actually bought the goat, but apparently including who the goat was to be donated to)

    3. FWIW, the folks who ask you to look for something “in the back” are more likely to know someone who worked in a store, if they didn’t do it themselves; they’re aware most stuff is delivered during the day, and stocked at night.

      It only takes it working once to train someone to ask, every. Single. Time.

      (my mom does this, half the time I think it’s an excuse to talk….)

      1. That wasn’t my experience, though I spent all my time in the Deli Department or Prepared Foods. Never actually stocked shelves in nonperishables or frozen, so it may well be different there. But in my departments, everyone learned very quickly which day of the week that every product was scheduled to be delivered (all of the Kosher stuff in prepared foods was delivered Thursday, Monday was Charcuterie, Land O’ Lakes cheeses arrived Wednesday, etc., and no, I can’t believe I still remember that after all these years either) and we knew that if we were out of stock and it wasn’t that item’s delivery day, then we were out.

        And I had more than one customer demand that I go in the back and “make them some more.” And no amount of explaining that we did not make whatever it was they were asking for on-site would make them see the light of day.

        1. My family is too cheap to eat at the deli, and too short to work behind the counters, that would explain it. 😀

          And I had more than one customer demand that I go in the back and “make them some more.”

          BBQ chicken wings, makes sense if quite entitled (seriously, if it was a reasonable option, you would’ve said “it will be 30-40 minutes” or whatever); 90-days-aged-cheese-from-France, what are they smoking….

          1. Most often they wanted us to go in the back and make store-brand product (most of that chain’s deli products are sold under the store brand). A not-insignificant number of customers believed that supermarkets have a factory or something in The Back where they produced all of their respective store-brand products. The big tractor trailers only carry name-brand items, I guess?

            One incident that will be burned into my mind forever involved latkes (potato pancakes) in the Kosher department. The customer wanted something like a dozen, but we were down to our last three or four. And I understand why the customer would ask me to make them some more since the latkes were ordered and sold from the counter (vs. being prepackaged), but the Kosher section didn’t have a kitchen, so everything we sold in the counter that needed to be cooked before consumption was shipped in pre-cooked and either frozen or refrigerated.

            But that customer just. Did. Not. Get. It.

            The conversation, I swear, went more or less like this:

            “Okay, so why can’t you go in the back and make me some more?”

            “Because we don’t make them here. The store doesn’t have a kosher-compliant kitchen.
            They’re shipped to the store already cooked.”

            “Okay, but why won’t you just go in the back and make more?”

            “Because I don’t have a kitchen or any of the ingredients anywhere in this building. They’re shipped to the store already cooked.”

            “Yes, I understand that, but why won’t you just make more?”

            Repeat for, I swear, at least five minutes until the customer’s spouse arrived. Thankfully the spouse had more than one functional brain cell and dragged them away from my counter. They still couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t go in the back and make them some more.

              1. I certainly hope not: IIRC they were in their late 20’s-early 30’s at the time.

                Could also have been a form of entitlement complex: my main customer base was comprised of Liberal Soccer Moms and proto-Karens (and the male equivalent). She probably couldn’t comprehend that I either would not or could not comply with her request, or else she was trying to say “I don’t care, make me some anyway,” and couldn’t comprehend why I wouldn’t do as she wanted.

                1. What is funny is to see someone do that at Sheri’s for their “homemade” pies. Sheri’s does not make the pies. If Sheri’s is out of what you want? They ain’t got it.

              2. This sounds like a cousin of mine, as a teen. Her grandfolks owned a place in FLorida, and bought a pontoon boat. “Where will you store that in Michigan?” “Not a problem because if we sell the place in FL we will sell the boat, I don’t need it up there” “. . . But where would you put it? You don’t have any room there!” [repeat for an hour as her Gramps gets more and more frustrated with her then 17 yr old butt]
                Oddly she went to college for radiology and is VERY good at her job, much to the bafflement of those who have known her growing up.

                2. Did she live in Michigan and really, really, want Gramps to bring the boat up where she could use it?

                  I knew people that had a pontoon boat near Traverse City, on Silver Lake in Grand Traverse County, IIRC. (You have to specify, because Wikipedia lists more than 30 Silver Lakes in Michigan alone. Not to be confused with the Silver Lake in the later Little House on the Prairie books, near Desmet, North Dakota.)

            2. You were just saying that because you didn’t want to make more. Why won’t you go make more?

              Getting the picture?

              Those folks vote to make you make more.

            3. Good thing the spouse intervened, too, since with the way retail is if anything within the Karen family of awful customers gets anything less than what he/she wants that’s Bad Customer Service and the crap usually comes down on the employee’s head rather than the idiot and/or abusive customer’s. It’s why I’d have to be looking at eating the cats before I’d do that mess again.

              1. Yep. Customer service is the ultimate Catch-22: if you break the rules and give the customer what they want, then you get written up for breaking the rules, buuuutttttt…. if you follow the rules and deny the customer’s request, then you get written up for providing poor customer service AND the spineless managers break the rules and give the customers what they want, only THEY don’t get in trouble for it.

                I’d go back to working customer service again only if I was well and truly desperate. But working for a specific rent-a-wreck place again? I’d rather starve to death while living in a cardboard box under a highway overpass than ever do that again!

                1. Indeed it is and that’s part of the reason I gambled on being able to find something comparable after I moved while hopefully not burning up too much of my cushion rather than transfer from my previous abusive employer’s supply chain side to storefront side. Which is still in the almost but not quite paying off phase, though I seem to be getting closer to said payoff. And that last part is absolutely how I feel about the employer I had before that!

                  1. I haven’t had to work direct retail customer service. Non-retail, software customer support, but rarely have to tell them “no, can’t be done”. At worst it was “will put it on the list” (never comes off the list but hey no direct confrontation). On the retail side however, as a customer, I have been known to make loud snide remarks about another customer verbally beating berating the retail worker (witnessed the entire exchange). Does not happen often (I think the “karens” see me coming). Hasn’t happened in a long time.

                    1. The closest I’ve worked direct retail is running booths during base open houses. Setup, stocking, resupply, cooking, taking and delivering orders, handling the register. It’s fun for a day, but gets old fast. I can’t see myself doing that for a living.

                2. When I worked on the floor in a warehouse club, the way out of that mess was
                  “I’m not allowed to do that. I can call a manager for you if you want.”
                  About half the time the customer got what they wanted from the manager, but either way it didn’t come back on me. And, yes, I politely declined all suggestions I should go into management. 😉

        2. Imagine day 3 of a crisis, where trucks can’t deliver to stores in cities.

          Now imagine hundreds of angry people in in the store demanding the grocery folks make more food.

          Elsewhere is looking good.

          1. I don’t have to imagine that scenario because I came frighteningly close to it one winter.

            My store was outside of Philadelphia, but most of the company’s supply chain either originated in or was routed through upstate New York. One winter, I either 2012 or 2013, New York and northern PA were hammered by one major snowstorm after another for something like four or five weeks straight. Our supply chain was completely screwed up. We never completely ran out of food- the company was able to get something through to us every day or every other day – but we quickly ran out of all but our least-popular products and had big holes in our shelves and display cases. There was always something available, but it wasn’t what the customers wanted and they were NOT happy about that. Why should a little snow in New York prevent a store in southeast PA from having their premium cold cuts in stock?! Get me the store manager now!!! We had more than one customer threaten (and a few try) to come over the counter at us to “teach us a lesson” for “disrespecting them.” And like I said, this wasn’t the ghetto: these were upper-class, mostly white, folks. They were acting like we were deliberately starving them by forcing them to buy fat-free ham and yellow American cheese.

            Hell, there was one Holy Saturday where somebody – I never did learn if it was the manufacturer or our distribution center – shorted our store by something like 50 Easter Hams. Enough that the store didn’t have enough on hand to fulfil our pre-orders. The Store Manager and District Manager were able to find enough hams at other nearby locations to cover our existing orders, but that was it. If you hadn’t pre-ordered an Easter Ham for pickup that day or already purchased one from us, you almost certainly weren’t going to get one. We had scrounged up maybe a half-dozen extra, but that was it. Once those were gone, there were no more?

            There were fights in the meat department. I mean knock-down, drag-out, fists flying, hair-pulling fights. Who eventually came over to the deli and demand that we sell them our hams for the sale prices that the meat department’s Easter Hams were listed at. Which we weren’t allowed to do. So we got screamed at and cussed out and threatened with physical harm. I had one woman chase me, in the most literal sense of the word, into the Employees-Only area when I clocked out at the end of my shift (at 9:00 PM) screaming at me, demanding that I find her a ham and that proclaiming that she wouldn’t let me leave until I did. Thankfully, she booked it when I grabbed the phone next to the punch clock and threatened to call security (especially since I couldn’t remember security’s number!).

            Like I tell my family, those incidents (and many more like them) are the reason why I own a rifle. Because if that’s how people will act when they can’t have the food that they want, imagine what they’ll do when there isn’t any food at all.

            1. Had they all been watching ‘Ben-To’? 😀

              It’s an anime comedy about nightly battles over bento boxes that get marked down to half price at the end of the day.
              ———————————
              “Ehh, on second thought let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.”

            2. Come across the counter and “teach you a lesson”? The chorus of Clutch’s Binge and Purge comes to mind. (Which deli platter do you want your head served on, sir?) 😀

              1. They changed their tune when they attracted the attention of Big Alec (so nicknamed because we had two Alecs in the department at the time, and Big Alec was the taller of the two). Six-five, probably north of two-fifty, healthy-build, and a perpetual scowl (which was funny because he was the nicest, most upbeat guy in the department). He came over to “help” and they suddenly decided to stay on their side of the counter.

                But that reminded me of a funny story. Different incident. I was working the Kosher Counter, and the counter was closed for the night. It was about a half-hour after closing time, and I was just finishing clean-up. Three young gangbanger-looking guys approached the counter and asked me to make them some corned beef sandwiches. I politely explained that the counter was closed and that I was about to leave, and pointed at the sign with the counter hours. They began copping an attitude, demanded to know “what time y’all close for white folks?” and began making not-very-subtle threats about what they would do to me if I continued to refuse. At that point, a well-dressed African American man approached, looked at the sign, looked at me, and told them to knock it off since I was closed.

                The three of them start going off on him, posturing like they wanted to fight, saying stuff like, “Oh you want some too, ol’ man? You wanna go? C’mon, bring it b****!” The man just gave them a stone-faced look and slowly took off his sport coat, folded it up, and set it on the ground. The muscles in his arms were so toned, they looked like steel suspension bridge cables, and he had a large tattoo of a Ranger Tab on his right forearm. The three punks slowly stopped their posturing and threats and got that universal “ooohhhhhh shhh**********t” look on their face that indicated they’d become ware that they’d just bitten off WAY more than they could chew.

                The man crossed his arms, scowled at them, and said “Well? Bring it, b*tches.”

                I’ve never seen anyone run so fast in my life. I swear, their legs were spinning like they were in a Scooby Doo cartoon.

                1. LOL! Love it when that kind of karma happens.

                  One of the more satisfying moments in my life was when I was helping the in-laws get a new washer and dryer set — an arduous experience at a gigantic big-box store, with all sorts of confusion at the checkstand, followed by waiting in a 100 degree parking lot for a half hour while they sorted things out. Giving up on waiting, I went in search of the fam. Found them in the front of the store. Turns out that some nimrod of a manager had been trying for that entire half-hour to browbeat them — my wife, her tiny, bespectacled mother, and her blind father — into agreeing that they couldn’t really have bought what they’d just paid $2k for, and that they’d have to go back in and pay more before he’d release their purchase to them. I didn’t know this until afterward. I was just sweaty, hungry, and very irritated.

                  I looked at the manager and simply said, “What the hell is taking so long?” He gulped, handed over the paperwork, said “Thank you for shopping at Fry’s,” and scuttled away like the devil was nipping at his heels. I was in much better shape back then — 6’2″, 270 lb., shaved bald, with a big. long biker goatee. Occasionally there are very real advantages to being big and angry. 😀

          2. Can I also imagine store staff armed with AK-47’s? Times like that are when a quick reduction of the excess population starts looking desirable.

            1. MARKM – Remember the fabulous Rooftop Koreans? They seemed to have a keen insight into human nature. It served them well, as I recall!

  13. Dj by thing that struck me about Bud Light nuking itself from orbit is the S tire discussion starred from the assumption that it was neither a widely drunk beer and that is was mostly drunk by frat boy types when it was.

    I don’t think either of those are the case, and I still don’t know who really drinks it. The implication is there is a very large class of people who drove the world who all of our political pundit core in both sides has no contact with and almost zero awareness of.

    Honestly, that should probably be a very big concern for anyone trying to run anything bigger than a breadbox.

    1. I think part of it is that they live in little “bubbles” where they don’t associate with, and therefore don’t really understand, how people are or things work outside of said “bubble.” Wouldn’t surprise me if they’re all academics or else don’t have any “real world” experience outside of a classroom or laboratory. Little Brother and Sister-in-Law are both teachers (him college, her high school) and Mama Raptor and I both agree that they don’t live in the same reality as the rest of us.

      Other part, and this is probably a result of the aforementioned spend-all-their-time-in-the-classroom-or-lab, is that they view people as widgets or programable automatons. They can change something “for the better” and expect everyone to go along with it because it is (in their addled minds) A Good Thing, or because they are our superiors and we should accept what they want because they are So Much Smarter And Better Than Us. And they can’t imagine every being wrong, or that what they want is not A Good Thing, or that “So it is written, so shall it be done” doesn’t automatically bend the universe to their will.

      1. Well, in this case, I had the blind spot as well. As near as I can tell, I don’t know anyone who routinely drinks Bud Light or similar beers. I’m a white collar worker, and any degree of drinking is extremely heavily discouraged.

        Yet I’m reading they managed to wipe out millions in sales in only a few days, and possibly lost a billion in market cap. That is a lot of beer. And I have no idea who is drinking it.

        1. Was, apparently. And neither did whoever originated or signed off on this, (excuse the colloquial milspeak) FUBAR marketing scheme.

        2. I gather it’s main virtue was that it had alcohol and was cheap. Having had a fair amount of cheap beer in the past, I never had the urge for Bud Light when I could still drink.

          1. I dated a person for awhile who once told me that he didn’t drink ‘those fancy craft beers, because he could get drunk for so much less money on Bud.’ My immediate family has absolutely no problems with alcohol, as we drink between 3-5 glasses of wine or beer per year. His attitude to drinking scared me as I think someone who seeks getting drunk and thinks finding a cheaper way to get drunk is virtuous is probably on a path to alcoholism.

            It could be that Buds main costumer base was alcoholics…

            1. “because he could get drunk for so much less money on Bud.”

              Well, if that’s the justification, he could save himself a lot of time by spending his Bud money on something with a higher alcohol content, like bottom-shelf vodka…

            2. Only took 6 months in Korea to double my liver size. Cheap beer all the way, with some mixed drinks in it for variety. Took a wake up call with a doctor to get my head screwed back on straight.

          2. I dated a person for awhile who once told me that he didn’t drink ‘those fancy craft beers, because he could get drunk for so much less money on Bud.’ My immediate family has absolutely no problems with alcohol, as we drink between 3-5 glasses of wine or beer per year. His attitude to drinking scared me as I think someone who seeks getting drunk and thinks finding a cheaper way to get drunk is virtuous is probably on a path to alcoholism.

            It could be that Buds main costumer base was alcoholics…

            1. Bud’s crap is so filtered that gluten intolerants can drink it – you have no idea how good a beer tastes after twelve years. Even Bud. may they rot in hell.

          3. That’s my experience. College kids like Bud Light or Coors Light it’s about as cheap a beer as you can find that’s still “good” (for varying degrees/opinions of “good”), so they buy it by the case for parties and such. Stuff like Keystone Light or Natural Light are, from what I understand, even cheaper, but they’re usually regarded as being nasty, barely-drinkable swill.

            Though I did know one gentleman who LOVED Natural Light. Dude was, if not rich, than very well off (IIRC he’d made quite a lot of money in the construction business before retiring), but they only thing he’d drink was his “Natty Light.”

            2. Let’s not leave PBR out of the godawful swill category! That being the first beer I ever had is probably a big reason I never got into beer. Some sake (preferably junmai ginjo at least) once or twice a year, if that, is good enough for me as far as alcohol goes!

              1. back in the olden days, PBR draft was drinkable to a Stroh’s Drinker (Dad, later me), Long Necks were somewhat (if that’s all there was, and someone else was paying), but cans were considered horrid. Seemingly they aimed for the poorly canned beer taste for their overall target. Also, Pabst the company doesn’t make beer anymore. Other brewers make it to their recipe (iirc Miller/Coors makes it now in the DFW Texas plant Miller killed Stroh’s too)

          4. I was on a bus one day when a guy was holding forth on the demerits of non-alcoholic “near beer” . “I don’t drink (regular) beer for the taste, because it don’t taste that good. I drink it for the buzz”. I don’t drink beer at all, but that sounded about right to me.

        3. It’s just kind of the default beer.

          Need something that isn’t expensive and doesn’t totally suck? Bud Light. Don’t feel like taking a flyer on some microbrew you’ve never heard of? Bud Light. Don’t know what you want or maybe don’t even want a beer at all, but you kind of have to order something? Bud Light. Don’t know anything at all about beer but want to get one without looking like an idiot? Every bar has it, and nobody’ll make fun of you for ordering one.

          Info I saw yesterday was $4 to $6 billion lost. Bud Light doesn’t have that many dedicated fans. It’s just the “meh, whatever” beer for millions of people, and now it’s gone from “meh” to eww, squick for everybody who saw that stupid tranny canny.

          Me, I’ll go for Coors or Coors Light if I’m in a “just need a cheap beer in my hand” situation. It’s what all the dirtheads drank back in the day, it’s what I defaulted to when I didn’t know from beer and needed to fit in with the guys at the titty bar (those were very different days) and it’s not exactly good, but…it’s beer. And it’s an American company that hasn’t recently beclowned itself to my knowledge, which is a nice bonus.

          It’d be interesting to see where those customers went instead.

          1. The amazing thing about that whole ad campaign is, in every single shoot, the guy looks like he’s about to jump out of his own skin.

            Even if I didn’t know the backstory, the pictures alone would put me off. I haven’t seen anything that screamed “photoshoot by Jigsaw” so strongly in, well, ever.

            1. You ain’t kidding. I’ve been seeing pictures of that dude in various places for months now, and creepy is the only word for it. It’s like watching an alien in a skin suit.

              I almost feel bad for him. Almost. Poor guy should be under the watchful care of compassionate professionals, but instead he’s paid and petted for dancing to the horror show inside his head.

            2. I heard that there was a video clip of him going nuts (backflips, running around the stage, and so on) after winning something on The Price is Right. Either he’s nuts or an attention whore, though I’m willing to consider “and”.

              1. “And” is usually the way to go. The guy is absolutely, certifiably an attention whore (thus the TikTok thing) and also obviously not right in the head (the wearing-female-like-a-skinsuit thing), although there’s no telling far the insanity goes.

      2. Oooh, that makes sense— like how some doctors have the same “you shall listen to me, inferior one” mentality.

        High authority level over a very limited area for a very limited duration, which will self-select for the people willing to repeatedly put up with you… I can see that causing the “so much smarter and better” problem.

        1. Yup. Little Brother developed that attitude a few times during his graduate studies; students and faculty that particular Ivy League school (not naming names, but Sam Adams gives it a call-out in 1776) is well-known for developing an snobbish, elitist attitude towards anyone who didn’t attend.

          Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on your point of view – he copped said attitude towards Mama Raptor a few times. She did NOT let that attitude fly! Boy howdy, did she not let it fly! Cured him of his delusions of grandeur right quick.

            1. As a once assistant scoutmaster who never did take the Wood Badge course, the Reader can say you nailed it.

              1. I got to the rank of Life Scout when I was a boy. Completed all requirements, including project, except for the three citizenship merit badges. The passing of my mother disrupted my life at that point and I was never able to complete those in time to earn the Eagle Scout badge. I’ve been hunting and fishing and foraging all my life, so my woodcraft is excellent.

                I’ve also been through multiple courses in supervision and management in the military, and gotten my MS in Management.

                But I made the mistake of letting a few friends and fellow scout leaders convince me to take the Wood Badge course. COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY. I could easily teach all the camping skills. And every one of the management portions were freshman grade at best. But it was the unrelenting indoctrination that was throwing me off And the “We care about everyone” ethic they kept preaching. Until they ignored the symptoms one of the adult students had, and had to evacuate him for a cardiac emergency. (He survived, never returned.) They also ignored my complaints that I’d blown through my allergy meds (horrible week for the state, and a very late flare up of the season) and needed to skip out and get more. And after I did, they gave me a dressing down for doing it.

                Ever since BSA went Woke and LGBTQ+, things have evidently gotten worse. They began failing when their leadership made the mistake of confusing “morally straight” with unjudgmental compassion for deviant behavior.

                1. every one of the management portions were freshman grade at best. Multiple courses in supervision and management in the military
                  …..

                  That I wouldn’t know personally, as Woodbadge was my first experience at the management & group theories despite the fact I have two 4 year degrees that both required quarter long single group project for outside entities, with the requisite group presentation (despite Toastmasters, which I completed the full program, I still Hate). But I have heard this said, especially those who were in the military. They also said that, while not new material, was interesting to see it from the BSA method (and these were scouts as youth, some barely out, like 19 years old). The latter is what I found useful (someone who while a girl scout youth, never encountered the boy scout side until an adult as do not brothers). Say this much, was one group where at least everyone did their part of the group projects, on their own time, away from the group, without whining or anyone nagging, VS only one or two. (True of the other two degree related groups, but the motivation was definitely different.)

                  easily teach all the camping skills
                  ………..

                  True for everyone in the class I went through and the class I was part of the instructors. Camping skills isn’t the point (or shouldn’t be) of Woodbadge. (Our patrol had a couple of chefs. They came to the campout weekend with everything prepped. Cooked every meal. Rest of us cheerfully cleaned up.) In fact both Woodbadges gleefully had experienced participant campers provide instruction on some more fun aspects of tent camping that some might not know about. (After all it was also about taking new fun things back to troops.)

                  I can’t say what is happening now. I am not sorry I took Woodbadge, or that I was part of an instructor group (once), I don’t think everyone needs it, or should take it. (FYI, 2001 & 2002.) I don’t tend to think about it, unless someone, like here, mentions it. OTOH while credentials after my name should have been my goal professionally, I didn’t do that either. Never saw the point. That might be just me.

                  FYI. Our local council rarely has week long Woodbadge. They can’t get enough adults for patrols. The two I participated in were multiple long weekends, at most (Friday – Sunday x2, Thu – Sun x1). Even then there was barely enough patrols formed to allow the coarse to proceed.

        2. It was HILARIOUS to watch the code-switch caused by asking really simple, obvious questions go from “I’m telling this yutz what to do” to “Wow, I can (must?) TALK with this person!” And this is the MAYO system, so…. make of that what you will.

                1. Hmm.
                  I wonder how many potential adoptees I can catch with a standard roll of duct tape? Of course with 20 acres of property, it’s going to take a whole case to put down a single strip, sticky side up, around the whole place.

      3. The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it.

        He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.

        ― Adam Smith

      4. Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessmen had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning; if you were not only uncertain about your adversary’s men, but a little uncertain also about your own; if your knight could shuffle himself on to a new square by the sly; if your bishop, at your castling, could wheedle your pawns out of their places; and if your pawns, hating you because they are pawns, could make away from their appointed posts that you might get checkmate on a sudden. You might be the longest-headed of deductive reasoners, and yet you might be beaten by your own pawns. You would be especially likely to be beaten, if you depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt. Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with the game a man has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for his instruments.

        ― George Eliot

        1. We’re going to play a game called, In Vivo Chess. Each time it’s your turn, you roll a 20-sided die. If it comes up 1-19, you just make a standard chess move. If it comes up 20, you get your standard chess move, plus you get to move any one of your opponent’s pieces. Lest you think that sounds great, consider that your opponent has the same opportunity.

          1. Ah, but what piece would she bear? And what questions of legitimacy would arise?

      5. Say you want to design an intricate machine. You have to understand each part individually, how all the parts are to be connected, how every part will interact with the ones it’s attached to, and how they will all function together.

        They are trying to design a ‘Great Society’ composed of 320 million parts, and the parts are people — but without taking the trouble to understand more than the very few that share their simplistic views. They are trying to break all the existing connections, because those are not the connections they want.
        ———————————
        ‘Progressives’ believe everybody else is even stupider than they are. This explains a lot.

      1. As I understand it, the theory was that the brand was failing to attract new customers, so by rebranding themselves as the DIE beer, they would lock in a market.

        The problem appears to be they had/have no clue who their primary customers are, so they just assumed they didn’t have any. That seems like a major corporate culture failure.

        1. Or, sales of Bud Light have slowly declined over decades, but not quite enough to slaughter the cash-cow.

          But if some udder stupidity causes Bud Light drinkers to switch to another Anheiser-Busch brand….

        2. From what I’ve read, Bud Light was the most-sold variety of beer in the US. (Take with however many grains of salt you desire.) One of the anecdotes was from a sports bar in New England. About 80% of the people who used to get BL stopped, and the 20 who bought it were told about Trans-gate by those already boycotting. No reorders from them.

          To further warm the cockles of my heart, there are a fair number of posts showing all the Anheuser-Busch brands so the boycott could be complete. We’ll see.

          I can’t boycott any beer since the last one I had was in Bavaria in 2002. With one of the meds I’m on, ethanol offends my sense of survival…

          1. I can’t boycott because I Just Don’t Like Beer™. I never drank in high school or freshman year of college, so I never acclimated to cheap swill and my first drunk was on gin and vodka, so that’s what my tastes channeled into. I’m a gin and tonic guy, and I drink maybe one beer a year at my July 4 party.

            1. That’s not too different from me, like I told Raptor. I waited until my junior year of college to drink, never really enjoyed it that much even with the kinds I enjoyed (a Kahlua and milk mix was my first ever), got put off of beer by a PBR, and these days just stick to a very, very sporadic bit of sake of at least junmai ginjo quality! And the last one of those I had didn’t mess with me mentally but I was definitely uncoordinated for a bit! I blame getting old and being 75-ish lbs lighter than the last time I drank anything.

          2. I can’t boycott beer anymore than I already do. I don’t like beer. I don’t drink beer. I don’t buy beer. If hubby wants it he has to buy it. We rarely have beer in the house (someone else brought it and it got left).

              1. Can’t drink anything with ethanol. Friend of Bill W and Doctor Bob.

                Got the NA genetics. Firewater, including that horse-whizz, wrecks my brain. So total tea-total.

                Try being an Infantryman, who doesnt drink, nor smoke, nor dip, nor coffee.

                dive bar near Fort Stewat, just outside Hinesville ( you will never find a more wretched hive…)

                Bartender, after serving my drunk buddies:” whaddya having?”

                11b-designated-driver: “two bottles of grape nehi. Leave one capped.”

                (Record scratch noise)

                (much derision and baleful gazes)

                After a bit…

                Thug: (something charming, including reference to mom)

                (Bash! With capped bottle. Thug down.)

                11b-DD (to my crew): “You see, with the cap on, it doesn’t break in your hand. (Toss ten on bar) Sorry for the mess…..”

                After that, I never paid again in that dive. The bar girls brought me soda pop, and said “you no pay! You bring all you drunk friends!” ( I, of course, tipped them)

                And always two there were, one capped

                  1. I have …. mellowed a bit since then.

                    But yeah, I used Solo’s line in a dive bar.

              2. Bud light is like sex in a canoe, F***ing near water. I’ll admit to drinking it on tap when I play darts. In house Dart League, my social night out, its on a monday so you know its just for fun. I also Home Brew when I can. I prefer a light wheat Ale, but most craft beers are so over priced. So I stick with my Canoe beer. I really don’t watch TV or ads nor do I care about who they advertise with. If they want to screw themselves by being woke, well more power to them.

        3. I think some of it might have been how Pabst Blue Ribbon became a hipster trend some years back.
          PBR was a solid American style lager*, cheap, and widely available. Some hipster was probably being ironic when he first tried it, but then passed the word to others of his clique… And Pabst suddenly had two very different customer profiles enjoying their beer.

          I can see some clueless marketing hack trying to astroturf a repeat.

          *The biggest problem with the style, is that most of it is produced by breweries run by MBAs. Start with a good beer, trim costs of inputs until it can just barely pass an A=B taste test. Repeat, with every new iteration becoming your new baseline. Invest a percentage of the money you save into marketing. And you too, can be the champagne/king of beers.

          1. My dad is still annoyed by that.

            PBR is quite good for people who do heavy work for a living.

            And then all these frufru boys showed up and started making it more expensive….

            1. Hamm’s. Or Old Style, if you can get either. Nothing fancy, but not utter garbage.
              There are the same, really. Yes, I have tried them side-by-side.

        4. The VP was quoted as having contempt for their market, calling them, “bratty.” Presumably she wanted to attract a higher, more sophisticated market.
          And I said that with a straight face.

          1. DOROTHY DIMOCK – Assuming your gender, may I ask, have you EVER known a female to prance around flapping arms like a windmill having a grand mal seizure, flicking limp wrists, rolling eyes, shrugging shoulders and crooning about how great it is being a girl? I would wager the answer is no.

            1. No, not even drunk. Mullvaney is insulting, but that covers most “trans activists”.
              I was indulging in sarcasm.

          1. Nothing of any practical use. English is racist, history is racist, math is extra racist, biology is racist and sexist…hell, even driver’s ed is probably something-ist. School is where children are taught not to think.
            ———————————
            It takes a LOT of Education to make somebody that stupid.

    3. Bud Light is usually consumed by blue-collar men under 35. Not exclusively, but mainly.

      1. My pre-sober weekends included Iron City Beer, for those familiar with it.

        You really have to be Pitsburgeese to grok Iron City Beer.

  14. my wife is French and during the lockdowns (when she was just the fiancé and still in Paris) she had blind faith in their “experts” and politicos … when I would point out a flaw in the science or their response she would say “it must be worse than they are saying to keep people from panicking” …. I have realized that the highly educated in France and I assume much of Europe are so hooked on experts that they have stopped thinking for themselves … they simply can’t imagine someone having an ulterior motive (which is why corruption is rampant in France … ) … they are very much the “children” of their paternal governments …

    1. You want and need the experts to be right because that means you can focus your time elsewhere. Not having to second-guess every word coming out of the mouths of the experts is a good thing, as it allows you to do what you do best, instead of also needing to start researching virology and MRNA. Time that Our Hostess spends looking at Diamond Princess passenger statistics is time not spent writing a new book.

      The world is more efficient when the experts are worthy of trust.

        1. We know that they aren’t. I won’t argue with that. But the reaction of Dorsai’s wife is completely understandable. She needed the experts to be reliable so that she could focus on her daily business. So she would go to extra lengths to justify why they weren’t telling the truth in instances where she realized that they were giving bad information. Because if they were giving bad information for any reason other than her own good, then she’d be forced to start auditing every single statement that they made. It’s tedious, and there are other things that all of us would rather be doing.

        2. Some people are becoming aware of that. The lady prepping me for my platelet donation is one who’s late to the game. One of the pre-donation questions is “Have you been vaccinated against covid?” to which, of course, I answer no. She asked me about that. o I said- There has never been a successful vaccine in human or animal for any coronavirus previously, and never been any successful use of mRNA for anything. So they take these two things with a record of failures, combine them and say – Look! A new miracle vaccine! Ummm, no, just no. So there’s still no successful coronavirus vaccine or successful use of mRNA for anything…

          So she says she thinks they were and ARE lying. One of her relations, I forget who, has had some serious problems post-vax- including Bell’s Palsy- and is still a believer that the vax is harmless and didn’t cause it. I mentioned I was this many years old (67) before I knew anyone with Bell’s Palsy, supposedly so common. My son-in-law, mid 30s, who refused to believe the vax caused it.

          I’ve seen in a number of blogposts that it’s really very hard to convince someone they’ve been fooled or believed a lie. Because no one wants to admit they were that foolish. When they finally do admit it, even if at first just to themselves- they get very, very angry. Especially if the lie hurt them or a family member.

          I don’t know when the “I’m angry!” crowd is going to turn into the “I’m angry and I’m going to do something about it crowd!” and I don’t know what the something they’re going to do is, but it’s coming. How’s that saying go, it happens very slowly at first, then all at once?

          1. Oh, there’s a lot of anger.
            But a good chunk of it is directed at people who declared that the emperor was naked.
            You see, if we’d just believed, everything would still be fine.

    2. they simply can’t imagine someone having an ulterior motive

      They’ve already forgotten a certain Austrian art-school reject who blatantly lied every time he demanded “just one last thing” already?

  15. “The Big Lie”, as a failed Austrian painter once referred to it. Tell a falsehood that’s big enough and brazen enough, and people will believe you, ignoring evidence to the contrary.

    Something’s gotta give, and soon. I’m hoping things will break here in California when it finally dawns on people that the state government is going to take away our cars. Though the new EPA proposal suggests that the Feds might be trying to up the timetable.

    1. “They’ll change their minds before then.” I heard that more than once. Um, no, it didn’t happen the way the person thought. (Although in this case, the PTB held off on the stupid for a few extra years when it was pointed out that half of aviation would grind to a halt if they insisted on imposing the original timeline. [Having their own people get really, really sick at their stomachs from the fumes of the “perfect solution” may also have played a little role.]

    2. Even here in sunny Phoenix where we don’t thaw out until it hits 90, the thought of banning gas stoves and heating in the winter is horrifying. And I have lived long enough in places where wintertime freezing is a thing to know that it’s worse there, On the other end of the scale, routine 112 daytime summer temperatures make some form of AC a necessity, not a luxury, and restrictions on it would be quite literally murderous.

        1. Followed by “What are you going to do about it? Sue? Pass a law? Vote us out?” as they collapse laughing on the floor.

          Both CA and NY have already shown they’re not obeying court decisions. They’ll get away with it too.

  16. “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” is my favorite Robert Heinlein novel. I even wrote a song about it called “Free Luna”. Here are the lyrics:

    Ludmilla Davis-Davis,
    Ludmilla, my youngest wife,
    Dashed out to fight the Federal Troops
    Armed only with a knife!
    They shot her at the foot of the Bon Marche
    And when we found her, she was dead,
    But I know that she paid Ferryman’s Fee
    For the blade of the knife was red!

    CHORUS:
    Freedom’s yours if you want it!
    Freedom’s yours — if you’ll pay the price!
    Don’t you see that Freedom isn’t free?
    And the Ferry won’t carry you twice!

    “Mother Of The Revolution”,
    Mimi was there from the start!
    She built the Davis family
    With head and hands and heart!
    She was always with us when we needed her
    Oh, Mimi, were we there for you?
    And three times three
    She paid Ferryman’s Fee
    As she helped every one of us through!

    CHORUS

    Why did we fight for Freedom?
    One answer is simply Wye Knott!
    She preached “no importado”
    She fought fiercely for total boycott!
    She showed us that Freedom was personal —
    Oh, if only her child could know!
    And three times three
    She paid Ferryman’s Fee
    That other children might grow!

    CHORUS

    Our architect of Liberty
    Was Bernardo de La Paz!
    He knew that a free Society
    Is more than a bunch of Laws!
    “The State” is nothing but a state of mind —
    “You can change your mind,” he said —
    And he lived ‘til he’d paid Ferryman’s Fee
    And Authority was dead!

    CHORUS

    Mike was our computer,
    Mike was my best friend!
    Mike led the Revolution,
    But he didn’t see the end.
    The War was over when we reached poor Mike
    Blasted blind on his last try!
    But I know that he paid Ferryman’s Fee —
    Not a warship flew the sky!

    CHORUS

    TANSTAAFL is Luna’s motto!
    TANSTAAFL was our battle cry!
    “No free lunch” was our policy
    Whenever we had to die.
    Free Luna? Yes! And we paid the price
    In full and in advance!
    For Liberty we paid Ferryman’s Fee
    On a fifty-fifty chance!

    CHORUS

    (Lento)

    Authority will harry you —
    But every thrust there is a party to….
    So find a Line to marry to —
    Live until they bury you —
    For the Ferry won’t carry you twice!

    Sarah — I’d love to have a private email with you — and you have my email. Thanks in advance! Craig

    2. Not bad at all.

      Slight quibble: very few folks knew about “Mike”. “Adam Selene” was the public persona. And he mimicked a flesh-folk for operational security.

      You could sing of the nameless, who fought anonymously and died so. Lots of those in any revolution.

      1. My song is written in the first person — that is, as if sung by Manny, who called his friend Mike. Thanks for reaxing so carefully — and glad you liked the song!

        1. Makes sense, thanks.

          I am not much of a lyricist, outside of cadence calling… and that was a long time ago.

  17. Folks, way past time to stop believing “the Left is -stupid-“.

    They win -way- too often to be stupid. They may be wrong as a glass hammer, but they are not stupid.

    Their actions are achieving their goals: 1) Destruction of what is, and 2) accumulation of the power to impose what is -not-.

    You won’t “wise them up”. They -want- what is coming. They may individually be mistaken as to who will rule the slag heap, or shape it, or be under it, but most rather openly agree what -is- must be reduced to slag to achieve what is not. They wont often use such terms, but neither will they strongly refute them.

    If you want to solve this by voting, better vote for the ones who want to destroy the plans and objectives of the Left, who fight like hell to -defeat- them, not who want to take turns with them or get along with them.

    Mitch McConnell should have been voted out of office a long time ago, primaried as the squish-RINO he is. Instead, he retires with a Donk to name his successor to the Senate. Way to go, Mitch. Did you learn nothing from Ginsburg?

    Yeah, yeah, judges. Yeah, look at everything else.

    Stop re-electing squishies and RINOs.

    California is not a fluke, nor is Chicago. Those are templates. Be warned.

    Still time to politic/vote this back to Constitutional Republic. Way past time for playing “nice” in those politics, or for assuming the opposition wants to preserve the system.

    Vote wisely.

    1. They have one simple rule: there are no rules for them.

      https://pjmedia.com/columns/athena-thorne/2022/01/17/is-this-how-democrats-will-steal-the-midterm-elections-n1550302

      “And that’s how the trick works. When they are stymied by laws that have been properly passed by the people’s representatives, Democrats simply proceed with their plans. Sometimes they get away with it indefinitely and sometimes the courts rein them back in, but by then they’ve already gotten their way. (Obama’s DACA beneficiaries are still here, and many have children of their own now, who are native-born U.S. citizens.)

      This Leftist tactic — just going ahead and doing whatever they want even if they don’t have the authority — was widely used to circumvent election laws, especially in swing states, during the 2020 general election. I reported on an example just yesterday when a judge finally ruled that election officials had illegally overruled the laws already on the books when they created a whole bunch of new ways to vote. In this case, the Wisconsin Elections Commission, using the all-purpose excuse of COVID-19 safety, issued instructions that local election officials could create ballot drop boxes and facilitate ballot harvesting. The arbitrary new rules did not go through the correct process and enabled all sorts of irregularities, but they produced a few hundred votes more than the margin by which Biden was declared the winner in that state. The judge’s ruling that these votes had been cast illegally is a nice vindication, but it comes too late to undo the damage. The Democrats got what they wanted because they went ahead and did it anyway.”

      And they are STILL doing it anyway. The stupid people are the ones still acting like there are rules.

      1. There’s also the point Ace made yesterday that when the lefties are confronted with something that might put a stop to what they’re doing, they double down on it. Ace’s example involved the Tennessee legislators who were expelled. His home city sent him right back. And the Dems are now filing a lawsuit against the Tennessee legislature in order to punish them for having the temerity to try and exercise a little control over what happens during their sessions.

    2. The problem with trying to ‘solve this by voting’ is that we can only vote for candidates yacked up by the corrupt political machine. No candidate posing any threat to ‘the system’ can even get close to a spot on the ballot.

      Add to that spectacles like Soros buying the Wisconsin state Supreme Court, the teachers unions installing their creature as mayor of Chicago, and Bloomborg buying the entire Virginia state government in 2018…the votes of actual, breathing American citizens have only minimal effects on today’s rigged elections.
      ———————————
      Grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.

      1. The one thing they have forgotten is that when the ballot becomes untrustworthy, all the people have left to turn to is the bullet. The question is when the people will start using it on those on the left. Those on the left have already been using it on the Christians among us. I fear that it won’t be long before others start to shoot back. Anyone who is rooting for a civil war is dumber than I am. Keep your powder dry and your head on a swivel.

        1. Too many people mistake “recognizing the inevitability” for “rooting for”.

  19. The thing is that once you see something like that pulled, no only is it funny only once, because you won’t allow it to be pulled again, but it allows you to see all the other “this one simple trick” requiring monumental chutzpah and stupidity to pull off. And once you start seeing it, you can’t unsee it.

    And you get all the joyous fun of the folks who haven’t seen it yet getting VERY indignant when you check for stuff.

    …of course, half the time they’re being egged on by someone, and sometimes they ARE trying to pull the exact same thing.

    K, I’m guessing everyone here is familiar with the prank of walking in with a place with a “work order” and taking a table for “repair,” right? Bonus points if they help you load it, not funny if you don’t make sure to clean it before you return it, too.

    It’s the on-purpose version of what a lot of us do in here, where we end up where we have no business being because we act like we belong there/

    Well, also familiar with the malicious version.

    And have caught folks doing the malicious version.

    They sound exactly like the people who get pissed that you’re checking ID in an area that is controlled access.

  20. Now, now, we sound a little cranky, probably because we didn’t get our booster today!! Let’s take our newest booster shot and have a nap, then watch a scary, prophetic short video before they remove it and ban the creators… BEYOND THE RESET

  21. The problem with the elites is that they are so filled with the lust for power and control over others, they are blind to the fact that their ideas are so breathtakingly stupid and unworkable that they don’t even work once; nevertheless they keep trying them again and again thinking the next time will be different. This of course makes them insane using Einstein’s definition-which is pretty much correct.

    1. Insane =/= stupid

      Sufficiently great evil may be indistinguishable from insanity, but neither imply stupidity.

      Assuming an enemy is stupid is a good way to lose.

      1. They are stupid, though, in that their plans aren’t congruent with reality.
        If you’re only seeing their wins, kick that black dog. They’ve been losing hard for fifty years, except in the TRAPPINGS of power.

        1. They are panicking. They used to be sly back in FDR’s day. I think they see the ability to centralize disappearing. So they are trying to instate CCP style control. But, my opinion, is that the leaders in the CCP are riding the tiger, the China that our idiot overlords are in love with doesn’t exist, much like socialist Sweden doesn’t exist. And America is a guilt culture, whereas China is a shame culture, our idiot overlords don’t understand that, American reactions to CCP style tactics will be very different.

        2. They are panicking. They used to be sly back in FDR’s day. I think they see the ability to centralize disappearing. So they are trying to instate CCP style control. But, my opinion, is that the leaders in the CCP are riding the tiger, the China that our idiot overlords are in love with doesn’t exist, much like socialist Sweden doesn’t exist. And America is a guilt culture, whereas China is a shame culture, our idiot overlords don’t understand that, American reactions to CCP style tactics will be very different.

        3. Their stated goals are not congruent with reality.

          Their plans are to destroy, and they’re more effective than not, as their failures still do damage.

          The inner party doesn’t believe in the stated goals, and likely never has. They’re merely a means to an end.

        4. I have.. Issues.. with Reality… and yet somehow I manage to be more connected to to it.

          Ox head not hurt from this, but ONLY because ox have THICK skull!

  22. This seems appropriate…

    Congresscritter (from Cali) asks witnesses at a House Transportation Committee meeting, “What percentage of the atmosphere is made up of CO2?”

    1. He let ’em off way too easy. Not a one of them has a clue what they’re bloviating about.

      “Be thankful that you are so ridiculously wrong. If the carbon dioxide level was 5%, we would all be dead. One tenth of one percent can cause headaches, dizziness, mental impairment and a constant feeling that you are out of breath. You really should learn something about the subject before you go around proposing massive changes to government policies that will cost the American people tens of trillions of dollars and accomplish next to nothing.”

      1. They have no real experts, just yes men/women kissing their ass. The only research they do is to reaffirm lies, upon lies. The pay for certain results to bolster those very same lies. You want to make a climate freaks head explode? Just ask them how the Last Ice Age ended?

    2. So, they barge in thousands of cubic yards of aggregate from places like Columbia, and then wonder why they have invasive animals, insects, molds, and fungi destroying their ecologies and farms.

      1. Weirdly, also not in:
        Marxism
        Socialism
        Progressivism
        Anarchy
        Third Way

        But Freedom, on the other hand, produces poor people with a major health issue of

        wait for it…

        Obesity.

        Yup. American poor eat so much surplus calories as to damage their health.

        When, in all of human history, have large numbers of poor folks suffered death by gluttony?

        But don’t worry, folks. Wise progressives will soon re-seat “famine” upon his horse, and send him forth to restore norms to human civilization.

  24. Now -this- is how to fight back, and is very funny:

    2. Yeah, I’d have a problem with that. Too many teachers are “baptizing” our children into progressivism, self-hatred, and sexual dysfunction without their parents knowledge or consent.

  25. Context Free (but is it, really?) Theater Presents…

    “After taking an Intellectual, wipe, flush, and thoroughly wash up. We can’t risk that sort of thing spreading!”

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