A Clearer Picture

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I have good news. And then again bad news.

Because in history there is never unalloyed good news. Or if you prefer, the enemy always gets a vote. And sometimes their vote is stupid, cruel, full of malice and destruction. And when they know they’re losing it’s worse.

The good news, and I’ve said this for sometime, is that we, the lovers of liberty, are winning.

This is so shocking that people my generation and older have trouble seeing it or believing it. You see, for most of our childhood, not to mention my parents’ youth, it was assumed by all the educated people — and all the experts for which there was no counter because social media didn’t exist, and mass media was tightly controlled and suborned — that communism eventually won.

It was assumed a centralized economy was more efficient. It was assumed they had better answers to the problems of poverty, education, discontent and lack of connection of the industrial society. It was assumed that people liked it better, living under tyranny.

This was all assumed because in a way we too lived in a kind of tyranny, not so much governmental (thought that too was more controlled than now. Some of us remember the idiocy of price controls and the thought they somehow “helped”) but of news and communication in general. Because of the centralized nature of the industrialized society, mass communication took place through a narrow pipeline. Which means– Well, what you expect. Since the universities, the bien-pensant and the controllers of the gate into media and the arts, were all infiltrated (or outright in the pay of) communists (mostly Russia though it might be laundered through their satellites, notably the DDR) of course the idea that communists were so caring and had the moral high ground not to mention a better answer to perennial human questions was everywhere. And accepted. (Okay, I didn’t accept it, but I was born contrary.)

By the seventies, the gilding on the lie wasn’t even particularly convincing. But because it was what everybody knew, you couldn’t dissent without being thought crazy.

And the one thing the left is right on, is that if the lie comes from every direction at once, and you can never voice dissent you end up doubting yourself, and kind of sort of accepting it. My default was “Communism sucks and is dehumanizing. It will probably win and enslave mankind forever. But at least I can go out fighting it.”

Judging by all the doomies, I think some of you are stuck there, but it’s time to spit out that black pill.

I realized we would win, of all things, in the depths of the covidiocy, when at long last I did the math. (Maybe that’s why they wish to teach us that 2 + 2 = 5.)

Mathematically, they cannot win. They cannot. They can’t even hold on.

You see, communism (or socialism) is not an economic system. It’s a parasitical form of human organization. It can’t survive on its own.

In that it’s far far worse than the feudalism it comes to resemble, because feudalism was held up and enforced by an idea of Christianity and eternal life. You can live like dirt here, but if you fulfill your obligations and do what you must, you will live like the king in heaven, because your worth before G-d is like the king’s. So, while hierarchical society and um… innovation discouragement led to impoverishment (not as great as we were sold on, mind, and in some places not bad at all) it wasn’t unsustainable. in fact, the best thing about feudalism was a certainty of stability, and of knowing your place in the world, even if that place sucked. (Not as great as has been painted. I don’t want suburbanshee to smack me, but still.)

But communism is not Christianity. In fact, the heresy replaces G-d with the state, and removes all hope of after life. It also removes anyone’s investment in society with it. There is simply no point to anything much. It covers human ideation and imagination with the same sort of uniform grey it covers its buildings. Which– Well, you know?

Communism, the perfected (snork) form of socialism, has managed what nothing else — not poverty, not famine, not slavery, not plague — managed: it made humans stop reproducing. This achievement is so “great” and so bizarre that it gives you an idea of how anti-production and anti-future the mind set it fosters is.

Which brings us to the fact that it will never survive on its own. It is to our great shame, as the most free and arguably wealthiest nation in the world that we let, no enabled, the communist system to survive WWII and conquer half the world bringing with it misery and destruction.

Then again, it’s not really our fault because by the end of WWII we were mostly occupied by the system ourselves. And while they couldn’t impose it fully on use — though it took large bites of several systems — they could control our government and our media (stop me where this sounds familiar!) The people were not complicit, and in fact were sold the gigantic lie that the USSR was our co-equal. (Some of us even now are shocked at how great the lie was, as Russia uncovers more and more of what was beneath it all in their deranged quest to recreate the USSR.)

Anyway, the only reason communism survived is that we allowed it to invade and/or control country after country. And because Russia is a relatively small (in terms of both population and wealth, not landmass) country, it could swallow vast parts of, say, Africa and live on what they pillaged for a while. Oh, not well. Our homeless live better than party pets in Moscow in the heyday of communism. But okay. Not die. And not be overthrown. Also, you know, they followed the Tsar’s regime, and the Tsar’s regime during wars, so by comparison if not much better they were okay. Even a modicum of industrialization, even run by communists, was a little better. Enough not to have a revolution, and to project a much better image to the world. Oh, also we fed it. Sometimes directly with food to keep them from starving, more often by sending food to those countries they controlled, under the guise of various humanitarian proceeds. Most of this, or at least the majority of it, ended up in Moscow.

But the thing is that when America said no, and stopped letting the USSR swallow more and more countries, and because America kept the prosperous countries of Europe from being swallowed, eventually the whole thing collapsed. (And then we gave them more aid, because you know, we didn’t want them desperate. Which caused the pathologies you see today because the regime fell, but the culture wasn’t rebuilt.)

So, in the depths of Covidiocy, I realized that it couldn’t happen here. Not with the forever and ever component. That our victory was baked in, though things might get very bad in between. No, worse than that.

Which brings us to… Since the implementation of the hapless — would be hilarious if it were happening somewhere else, far away — Biden regime, it’s become obvious they’re already collapsing, before they could even get the boot fully seated on our faces, which I honestly expected them to for a decade or so. (As did all the others who had experienced the tender mercies of weaponized socialism. After the election one of my friends who has, announced she would no longer mention politics on social media, in protection. She’s rethought it since, I think. Or at least she’s not been so quiet after all.)

They conducted the most pervasive and insane campaign to destroy the man who won an election from them, they distorted the bureaucracy of state, they ginned up a false plague, they implemented a complex mechanism of election fraud combined with riots and burning to scare the Supremes, and at the end they frauded in front of G-d and everyone, only to lay this rotten egg of a regime.

A regime that was so snake-bit from the beginning (they know, you see how big the fraud was. Sing me not of margin of fraud. From their behavior I’d guess it was around 75% and I’m only half joking.) that they surrounded themselves with state guard and barbed wire for the first half year of their “administration”. A regime that so lacks confidence in the people being “with them” that they enacted a program of censorship in the media and social media that would make Woodrow Wilson proud.

And yet they failed. Their goal — and it was these regimes advanced, covert footsoldiers who implemented it. Trump’s biggest issue was not wanting to trample state rights or overstep the advice of supposed experts, not to mention the “opinions” and work of his “loyal” vice-president. I admire his restraint even as I curse — was to implement the lockdowns and then keep us locked down forever. Their goal was to implement the most thorough degree of tyranny known to man, one that is probably impossible and certainly impossible given the physical plant and culture of the US. They wanted the dystopic dreams of the WEF, the level of control only seen in post war Russia or the more insane periods of Chinese empire/administration. They wanted to move populations around, to pile us all into their probably unworkable 15 minute cities. They wanted to keep us confined to the house and unable to talk to anyone outside of he controlled social media.

I’m not absolutely sure if they wanted to kill us all in the ensuing famine, or if their little fevered brains actually believed that it’s possible to feed people who don’t work and don’t produce from concentrated chow de bug. I suspect they at least try to believe it, so they don’t see themselves as Bond Villains. In the same way I think they try to believe the Earth is boiling, so they can sleep at night, despite all their crimes and plans for more crimes.

At any rate, it didn’t take.

Yes, some places were highly locked down. We know. Our little suburb of Denver certainly was, though not as locked down as downtown Colorado Springs (thank heavens we’d moved by then.) We could go for walks, stop to pet neighbor’s dogs, talk to neighbors in our front yard, watch the neighborhood kids run around in a vast rowdy band the likes of which I hadn’t seen since I was a kid myself. We still couldn’t go to church (I think eventually there will be reckoning, not of man, for the churches rolling over on that), shop most places, or go out to eat. But we could and did go to random drives when I couldn’t take it anymore. Often late at night, but that was our preference, rather than necessity.

But I was fortunate to have to do a cross country drive in the late summer of 2020. Even before leaving Colorado, there were signs by the highway “Such and such town is fully open for your business.” This in a state that was actively suing bar owners and restaurants for allowing no-mask access, or access at all. At a diner, still in Colorado, we discovered absolutely no masks. Just normal people eating. Thank you. I don’t remember your name, but thank you to that diner’s owners, staff and the cheerful — packed — customers. You might have saved my sanity.

And from then on we encountered patches of lock down and patches of cheerfully ignoring the mandates. Not where you’d expect. Some cities or parts of cities in blue states were completely ignoring the nonsense, while some rural places were obviously convinced they were living through the bubonic plague.

But the point is, we didn’t, all of us, head home and stay home. Despite the pervasive propaganda, the majority of places cocked a snook at the fear and giggled at the propaganda. Heck, Europe didn’t fully obey. (Though way more than we did.) And some places (Sweden! Who had Sweden on the bingo card?) ignored all and vexed the authoritarians.

They couldn’t proceed with their plan. Their admitted attempts at implementing “the new normal” failed so pathetically that after admitting it in public several times, they’re now pretending they never had such intention.

Several things broke in their plan. Despite their control, their terror tactics failed. The vast underclass didn’t rise for the riots (they keep trying this, as though they can’t believe it doesn’t work. The first attempt was OWS) and instead, they were stuck with the usual psychopaths, psychotic female followers, and the rent-a-rioter crowd, which could not be deployed outside certain cities.

Even worse, when someone stood up against them — if he does nothing else, for the rest of his life, the Kennosha Kid has earned his place in the history of our times — and killed some of their foot soldiers, they tried to destroy him, but the right didn’t abandon him. It was that, the right’s refusal to roll over that scared the heck out of them for the first time. (Though I think they were genuinely discomfited earlier because we did not, like dystopian novel characters, roll over and let them lock us in forever.)

They’ve been snakebit ever since. Yes, the vax is horrendous in side effects and it’s possible some of them, or most of them knew it. However, I don’t think administering it was a plan of population control. I think it was a plan of “I don’t want to be lynched, and would like my hoary head to go untouched to the grave.”

Because once the lockdown didn’t work forever, and each scary variety elicited more and more derision, not to mention their amazing disconnection from reality causing supply shortages and distribution problems (they never remember people still need to eat) they needed a way to dismount. The vax, for which they thought everyone would be grateful, gave them a way to dismount. Not only did it make lots of money for the compliant and complicit pharma companies, but if everyone took the vax, they could attribute the lack of deaths to it, and go back to normal with their prestige enhanced. No one need ever know how contrived the emergency was, or how little purchase it got in hearts and minds. Certainly the city elites that they mistake for the country, would praise them and be theirs forever. The side effects were bad, but they weren’t concerned about them. After all, the people taking this would be conservatives, who are compliant and also would be very scared of the disease since they are all very old. (Yes, the left really believes this. They believe because they call us “conservatives” we fit the dictionary definition, instead of us wanting to return to the Constitutional Republic of our founding.)

Since then there have been almost cartoonish moments when their plans go awry. As a measure of not getting hearts and minds, the viral spread of Let’s Go Brandon, which came about because people were having impromptu F*ck Joe Biden rallies at every place it was likely to get on camera, was one such. While the original might be profane, it was hilarious watching the bien pensant maintain that Let’s Go Brandon was shocking and shouldn’t be said around children.

Then there are things you know they’re sitting on, which aren’t reported. Like the fact that suddenly our work force is much smaller gets mentioned but not why. Yes, there have been retirements, but that doesn’t account for the shortage of people in pink collar, young and highly female fields. I can’t tell you this is true for real, of course, since all my knowledge is anecdotal, but I’d estimate a vast amount of women decided working wasn’t worth it, and they actually liked family and neighbors. The evidence for this are the strangely waspish and upset articles you see about how staying home with your kids is betraying womanhood, and how being traditional wives is the worst thing ever. They write about it as a vast movement when complaining and trying to convince young people to stop it, at the same time you see nothing about it in the news media. It’s ….. curious for those of us who learned to read pravda in English, so to put it.

Also friends who homeschool report almost shocking growth, that would indicate in some places homeschooling is now the default. Don’t expect to hear about it officially, because the spice must flow…. I mean, money must continue going to schools and teacher’s unions.

But we are seeing those parents whose kids must remain in school rebel against what they realized was not school at all but little pioneer indoctrination camps, with an added dose of pedo grooming which is frankly baffling (Unless you look at other things.)

There is also, I’m sure much to the consternation of Chinese-bought Joe Biden and co, a turning away from China as a trading partner in droves. Yes, I do realize this is terrible for the Chinese people, but feeding that horrible regime is also. There is a quiet re-industrialization of America, and also working with countries not as floridly insane.

This is dismaying to a regime for whom China was their beau-ideal and who thought they could replicate here people locked in apartments to starve, people in camps for being “infected” and people shoved into incinerators alive. Not to mention the digestion of Hong Kong, to which we’ll come back later.

The most clear sign that things are changing though is the rats leaving the ship. There has been a steady trickle of leftists — sometimes vociferous leftists — leaving the left. At this point it’s no surprise. We have a name for it “getting red pilled” and we assume — naively — they’re coming to our side because they’ve seen the light.

While a few have, or have been turned against so hard they fled to our side for protection, the truth is most of them haven’t changed. Not intellectually. This was brought home to me while reading an article by Naomi Wolfe about Trump. While admitting Trump is not the devil she’d believed, it’s all obvious none of her mechanisms of, for lack of a better term, thought have changed. This was particularly brought home to me by her being offended on behalf of all women, mind, by Trump saying Occasional Cortex didn’t know much. How this in any way means he doesn’t think highly of women is a mystery of the Marxist mind, where humans exist only as sex, race and orientation or professional affiliation categories, and you can’t malign one without maligning all others.

This woman hasn’t changed. She hasn’t even remotely started to think. She is what she’s always been. A go along. A “I want to be one of the good people.” A “I want to be on the side of victors.” That last might be the strongest. A vast component of left wing followers are people who are terrified of being killed or even of being called bad names. The left’s “arrow of history” gospel convinced them — as it did most of us, to be fair, but not that late in the game — that communism was inevitable and would win. They’ve been rolling over and showing their soft underbelly to every leftist loon and criminal since.

Also, these people are for lack of a better term, highly social and compliant. And, this is important to realize, they’ve got exquisitely fine tuned feelers for where the majority is. It’s almost an instinct. They sense where any group, any country, any association is. And they try to match. I suspect it is a function of the dinosaur brain, an instinctive component, like the one that makes me uneasy if a majority agrees with me.

They are a type and their movements have been known through every turning point of history. They are the regime’s most faithful servants, until things start to change at which point these people — not the big wheels, though some are medium — turn their coats so fast it creates weather systems.

Here’s the thing — this only happens when things are more than half turned. And yes, I’d missed this too.

The way this type of regime — where they have the outward mechanisms of power (the shell if you will) unsteadily set atop a restive population, particularly when they still have media control — breaks in the way a dune moves, through the mechanics of a sand pile. The grains on the bottom move first, and the whole thing on top looks solid until suddenly it’s elsewhere.

It’s always first slowly then very fast, and the big open displays are always a shock, like when we woke up one morning to the Berlin wall being hacked to pieces. One night you could get shot for trying to cross over that wall, the next day a cheerful crowd was tearing the whole thing down and people were getting in their ladas and travantes and driving west till they hit the ocean.

I’d just somehow missed that not only have the sand grains been shifting, but it’s accelerating. And it’s not going the other way. Sure, there was seeming movement in 16, but not really. those people didn’t shift positions or opinions, which were always “the left will win, but not so fast.” And in their case it’s because they can’t do math and thought the glorious revolution was forever. They will be the last to come over again, and only in extreme and immediate panic. Though I’d bet sphincters of those more sensitive to opinion are, in the colorful Portuguese expression, “too tight to pass a bean” now.

I expect to see some major movements soon. Some of the more precariously placed are hearing the Tumbrils in their dreams and starting to make noise. But it’s still not really visible.

So that’s the good news. The bad news…. are about as bad.

The digestion of Hong Kong and the destruction of the island’s economy was because the Chinese regime was unstable. They’d rather kill the goose that that laid the golden eggs they desperately needed than allow the leaking in social media, communication and other anti-regime chatter through the island. They then proceeded to gin up the covidiocy, yeah, maybe under the impression they could kill us, or at least our economies, but mostly to control the internal dissent.

That’s what a regime desperate for control and knowing it’s losing it does. It’s not pretty and it’s very dangerous.

Our own idiots have tried to start a nuclear war because that is a way to control the populace under war powers and war hysteria. They were thwarted mostly by the fact that Russian maintenance on nukes apparently sucks. (No, I don’t think Putin held his hand. Though he might not have nuked us, but Ukraine. The show of force would be enough for our idiots to do what they wanted. Alas it didn’t work, like so many of their plans.)

People that desperate will do anything. In fact, right now the ball is firmly in their court. Despite their attempts to get us to “rise up” in an easily put down and demonized uprising, we’ve balked them of it. Partly because their ideas of how to get people to rise up are mostly from movies, and nothing works that way in real life.

With the entire apparatus of agents provocateurs at their disposal, they manage, sometimes, rarely, to start a group of five or six to plan something stupid — and four of those five or six will be FBI agents — but nothing ever comes to scary fruition. They are stuck with demonizing an actually peaceful demonstration where the only dead were unarmed protestors. And no, despite the wet and twisted panties on the right, it’s not working, except with the very old, or those already on the left. Convincing people white haired mee-maw was there to kill Pelosi is a stretch. Also, none of the actual violent people, who apparently are known from Antifa (knock me down with a feather) have been arrested.

However they can’t be underestimated. Regimes desperate enough to want to emulate China are terrifying.

Also, the script they’re attempting to follow is combination of Woodrow Wilson, FDR and the Russian and Chinese Revolutions.

They’re not very good at it, and America is far larger, more varied, and more fractious than they expect, so you know, it won’t be as bad as they want to make it.

But it will be bad. I would bet their plans involve both famine and war. (Apparently Biden, the wonder fraud, has been depleting our petroleum reserves at Chinese orders, for instance.)

It won’t work, but I would be surprised, and it will be a sign of extraordinary divine favor, if we don’t lose a couple of million or more. And yes, it might include me and many of the people commenting here.

As for when…. well, the election is a nexus. Already they are trying to break fraud mitigation measures. They probably know frauding again is very dangerous, but what are they going to do? They don’t want to die, and more importantly they don’t want to lose power or give back the uncountable millions they’ve stolen. And the way the world is going chances are they can’t get asylum anywhere. So they must fraud.

And the thing is, though I think we will know it’s fraud, I don’t think we will rise up at frauded results. For one, they’ll be ready then. I think it will be their panicky, terrified reaction to no one taking their “win” seriously that will cause them to go insane.

And their insanity…. well, if we’re lucky they only break things and impoverish us. If we’re lucky we get through this losing only a few million. Under 10% of the population, say.

That’s not the way to bet though.

They’re already losing, but the next ten years or so are going to hurt very badly.

Prepare, prepare, prepare, including moving where you perceive to be safe. (Note there are no guarantees. Do your best.)

And be not afraid. The worst they can do is kill some of us. There are far worse things.

Hold on to the side of the boat. The water is starting to get very rough. But there in the distance, there are calm seas, and sunlight, and fruitful shores.

230 thoughts on “A Clearer Picture”

  2. Your comment about the Naomi Wolfs of the world is interesting. We’ve seen people like that turn once before. It was in the dawn of the Reagan era, and we’ve known them since as “neoconservatives.” A neocon is basically just a liberal that’s a little bit to the right of Lenin on most things except defense policy, upon which they are a mega-hawk and want us throwing our power around everywhere except where it’s needed. Basically, they wanted to build an American Soviet empire instead of a Soviet Soviet empire.

    1. Neocons are a thing but the Reader doesn’t think Naomi Wolf fits the description. The Reader has called folks like her ‘purple pilled’. They have a vague discomfort that all is not well in the leftist hive, and are scrambling to find something that explains what they are feeling without actually leaving the hive. A very few of them eventually take the red pill. The Reader doesn’t know if Wolf will be one of those, but having read some of her recent writings, thinks she is profoundly uncomfortable with the state of the hive.

      1. Naomi comes on Warroom frequently, which is an Ultra MAGA podcast. I don’t completely trust anyone in the public space, so I can’t say if she’s been red pilled. Her biggest beef is the vax lies and destruction. She has a team at daily clout dot io that’s taken real data and published it to prove big Pharma’s perfidy. If she isn’t pilled yet, she’s close.

      2. She’s been “mugged by reality,” but thinks it was a one-off. Intellectual honesty and physical safety have not defeated mental habits and the need to belong to the Right Crowd yet.

        Yet.

        1. It’s happened to her several times, though, hasn’t it? She wrote all that stuff about how porn and dressing like skanks was bad for girls and young women, and then all of a sudden it was feminist to have porn everywhere and no permanent man.

          Shrug. She must be well-connected, I guess.

        3. This is just another example of how Covid and the reactions thereto cut across standard liberal/conservative divisions, just in the other direction from the usual example of the hypochondriac conservative who’s all for lockdowns.

      3. Oh no, I don’t think Naomi Wolf is a neocon. I was simply noting that people like Wolf, Greenwald, Taibbi, RFK Jr., etc., are not the first time that people from the left have suddenly jolted to the right on one specific issue or small range of issues (i.e., got mugged by reality on something important to them and had their eyes opened), and we kind of have to be careful that we don’t let the media and pundits pass them off as “right-wing.” Glenn Greenwald, for example, is still quite liberal, but at least he’s honest enough to see what’s going on with Biden and the way the media has been handling him. Same sort of thing with Wolf/RFK Jr. and the vaccines, Dershowitz and the law, Taibbi and press freedom. Because they have dared to differ with the Hivemind on one set of far left talking points, and only one, they are now persona non grata and treated as “right-wing” as Alex Jones. They aren’t.

        1. One of the annoying activist traits is to take someone like those on your list, declare they’re on the right, and then declare everyone who doesn’t agree with them on each and every topic is not on the right.

          First time I saw this happening was when Fiscal Conservatives tried to declare that Social Conservatives were not actually conservative because they didn’t agree with the FiCons on social issues. Even if the FiCon in question was a new convert, and the SoCon had been active politically as a conservative far longer.

    2. :interested:

      I had heard that was the origin of the term, but by the time I could read about politics it had come to mean something like “boogerhead.”

      One of the complications on the “Right” is exactly that the “Left” keeps booting out the impure, and we don’t shun them– so we have a lot of partly overlapping interests, which makes our coalition much harder to fight * but also makes it like herding cats on meth to go in one direction.

      It’s like when someone arguing theology will bring out a pre-packaged argument against “Christians,” the target listens politely, and then cites chapter and verse that the attack is on something their faith doesn’t teach. I once very much annoyed a guy because Catholics don’t require Young Earth beliefs but I let him finish talking before I pointed it out. ^.^

      1. According to the ever-unreliable Wikipedia, “Historically speaking, the term neoconservative refers to those who made the ideological journey from the anti-Stalinist left to the camp of American conservatism during the 1960s and 1970s. The movement had its intellectual roots in the magazine Commentary, edited by Norman Podhoretz. They spoke out against the New Left, and in that way helped define the movement.”

        They are centrist to left socially, centrist to left economically, but very hawkish on foreign policy and don’t mind throwing money at the defense budget…and using it whenever and wherever possible. Except, I dunno, on the Southern border.

      2. So “the right” has the furry problem?

        That is, being considered the lowest of all fandoms, they would supposedly take anyone – and there are some mighty distasteful anyones (actual bestialists [these DID get rejected, at least once awareness occurred], those who get intimate with stuffed toys and go on about it, etc.) that were not booted good hard and fast enough. Then there were the mere leeches and hangers-on trying to ‘speak for’ those they didn’t represent. One of them got a lot of ink in ‘Vanity Fair’ some years back. No fur I know who recalls it has ANYTHING but utter contempt for VF. As in, “Wouldn’t whizz on them if they were on fire.” For a long time it was a very simple/simplistic response: “Media” is ENEMY.

        1. More like a fandom problem, really– all that, and then add in “but we made this show FOR YOU (which treats you with occasionally disguised contempt), why don’t you PRAISE us?!”

  3. I read the same article by Wolfe. I think she is, at least somewhat, becoming aware of her automatic assumptions. Uneasily aware, perhaps, and not ready to utterly abandon them, but the faint, queasy sense that All Is Not Right in her worldview is there.
    She was certainly kinder to Trump than a lot of the Twitterati who hate him with rocklike fervor. I think some of that is pure, desperate delusion- if they admit Trump has any good in him, or Biden is utterly bad, they might have to admit they should have voted for the Donald. And that would destroy their vision of themselves as the honest, clear-eyed, Men of Integrity who simply could NOT sully themselves by voting for That Man. So they cling to their vision of Trump as self-centered buffoon, etc.
    And I offer another, ahem, “interesting,” sign. As in hearing a uniformed service person say, quite casually, “Well, you know, FJB and so on-“

    1. I suspect that a lot of what Wolf and Maher are having trouble with is the same thing that got to Taibbi. With Taibbi, there’s an awareness that no matter how right you are, there are certain lines that you simply do not cross if you’re not trying to actively destroy the country. Taibbi saw the rabid frothing to get Trump as one of those lines. Wolfe seems to be having similar concerns about the people in power (who she’s been associated with in the past). Maher seems to have concerns about everything associated with Woke.

      Yes, they’re still all progs (though Wolfe might have developed an anti-authority element, and is a convert to gun rights). They’re still no more conservative than Rowling is.

      1. :blinks rapidly:

        Well, there is a mental image I won’t soon shake.

        Buffy Summers : What do you want?

        Spike : I told you. I want to stop Angel… I want to save the world.

        Buffy Summers : Okay, you do remember that you’re a vampire, right?

        Spike : We like to talk big, vampires do. “I’m going to destroy the world.” It’s just tough-guy talk. Struttin’ around with your friends over a pint of blood. The truth is, I like this world. You’ve got… dog racing, Manchester United… and you’ve got people. Billions of people walking around like Happy Meals with legs. It’s all right here… But then, someone comes along with a vision. With a real… passion for destruction… Angel could pull it off. Goodbye Piccadilly, farewell Leicester bloody Square. You know what I’m saying?
        https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0533398/characters/nm0551346

  5. I watched a short video by a woman who survived the Texas freeze. She was advising the people of California that there would be no help from the government or the state of California if the hurricane was destructive. She said the media showed FEMA handing out water and supplies during the Texas freeze but that was fake. She wasn’t a prepper before she lived through the Texas disaster, but she is now.

    I know our kindly hostess tells us to prepare, prepare, and prepare some more. The communists are going to try to burn us, or freeze us, and force us to comply. They will fail. But they sure are vicious. Burning children alive in Hawaii just hurts. And enrages.

    1. At least in my part of LA County, the storm was anti-climactic. I’ve been through worse rains just as part of the normal rainy season. The only thing unusual about it was that it came during the summer.

      Also, the wind was virtually non-existent.

      1. I saw another blog mention the anti-climatic nature of Hil[l]ary and went to the NOAA website for some further data. According to the 3 day history, Downtown LA had OMG really high winds; with the worst gusting to 16 miles (Eleventy!!!!) per hour. Sorry, my sarcasm is dripping. That’s Pooh-grade Blustery Day weather, not TEOTWAWKI Kills-a-lot hurricane grade.

        OTOH, the 24 hour 2.98″ of rain was impressive.

        On the gripping hand, the moisture from the story have us enough water to drop the fire hazard from Extreme to High. I can legally run a chainsaw. As if I had the time to do outside projects right now. (Too much inside work that has to be done ASAP. The master bedroom is a construction zone, and bed-in-living-room is decidedly suboptimal. “Soon”, I tell $SPOUSE. And $DOG.)

        1. Cousin lives in Baker, Oregon. Her rain gauge showed 6″ on her FB picture. Had temporarily stopped raining. Don’t know what the official total was for there. Also don’t know if her folks saw as much rain out on the “ranch” (40 acres Pine Creek area SW of Baker).

          Willamette Valley? After all the whoop hollering and screaming about getting the high wind edges from the storm? Less than we’ve been getting. TFPTB have even backed off the Level 3 evacuation warnings on both the Lookout (McKenzie Hwy 126) and the Bedrock (Fall Creek, Hwy 58) fires. Looking a lower temps (low 80s) until Friday when it goes to low 90s. Fingers crossed we stay no higher than that. But September it can still get into 100s. One thing noticeable with the wind, whether onshore or offshore, and it has an undercurrent of bite to it. Trees are starting to turn. Fall is in the air.

          1. The rains were coming through Siskiyou County in very northern California and generally passing just below us. I can see how Baker would get multi-inches while we got some, but considerably less.

            The weather radio has been going nuts with evacuations in Siskiyou for flash flooding in the McKinney burn scar (last year’s fire, started by a Pac Power FU). That’s on CA 96 along the Klamath River. 1:30AM Sunday, the weather radio woke me up with one of the evacuations. $SPOUSE slept through it. Lucky lady. Kat moaned but went back to sleep in her dog crate.

            The winds have dissipated the worst of the Bedrock smoke. We’ve had ‘orrible air quality from that one, with occasional contributions from the Flat fire west of Medford.

        2. 16 MPH winds heck 20 MPH is most days in Boston due to sea/land breeze in the summer. In winter gale force winds are not uncommon (25-40MPH) throughout and some places in Boston get higher winds due to tunneling between the tall buildings. Gloria back in the 80’s was most impressive I’ve ever seen in New England. Class 2 in MA so 85mph sustained with gusts to 100. In CT that was barely class 3 so 100 MPH sustained with 115 mph gusts. Mom had lived through the 1938 hurricane as little girl (class 3-4) and that was MUCH worse than Gloria. Rain this summer has been weird. New England is usually dry in the summer with quick short showers such that we skate on the edge of drought. We’ve had a lot of long soaking rains this summer including 3-4″ in 3 days 2 weeks ago. Last week we had 6″+ of rain in a little over 2 hours North of here. With the ground saturated and streams and rivers full things went bad quickly Lots of damage including my daughter who’s car got 3′ of water in spots just sitting parked in her work parking lot. 15K+ of damage that essentially totalled the car, Of course a Richter 4-5 earthquake would probably level many of the pretty structural Brick Brownstone houses in the tonier parts of Boston so you build for what you get…

    2. Well, a lot of private organizations, churches, etc. do end up handing out water and food, or other kinds of help. Usually well before FEMA gets there.

      Maui is an island, so I suspect that other islands are going to have to do a lot of the helping. And I’m not sure if they can.

        1. The good news is that people who live on islands have boats, jet skis, and small planes, so that is how the food and water and other supplies are getting in.

          The bad news is that there really does seem to be an attempt going on, to put islanders in the position to be forced to sell their land and move away. Magically the land reserved for native Hawaiian tribal people, especially.

          If it is just paranoia, it is well founded just the same.

    3. FEMA’s job in disasters, from my experience, is to enhance corruption, build personal status by handing out cash and what supplies there may be, and having sex with as many people you’re not married to as possible. This was Puerto Rico after Michael. And notice how well PR is doing.

      1. I felt guilty about the 20 percent of the people who run around like crazy and actually make it work, as well as it can. That’s the fun part, finding the people who couldn’t care about the rules, or really anything except getting things done and going home. There’s lots of great people who risk life and limb to do great things. Again, the higher you go, the more free time they have on their hands. Not universally, but that’s the trend I saw.

        1. John Ringo cites a study from Katrina several times in his work: in a disaster, around 10% of the people involved pitch right in, do what they can, and get out when they’re no longer needed. Another percentage will take whatever you give them and not move, no matter how bad it is. Three hots and a cot and they’re good. They have to be thrown out.
          And of course you have to have the logistics set up. Midwest Distribution in Illinois does an outstanding job assembling and distributing disaster supplies. Just discovering how much prep work goes into the assembly line for flood buckets is impressive. (If you want a good charity that takes no government money and sqeezes every bit of value they can out of donated money and supplies they’re your guys. Even if they are in Illinois).

    4. My daughter and I also got through Snowmagedden by being basically pretty prepared, with lamps, a lot of quilts, bottles of propane for the bbq, and collecting snowmelt from the gutter downspouts to flush the toilets with, since the water was turned off for three or four days – as did a fair number of our neighbors who had camping gear and fireplaces and stoves powered by natural gas. But that experience put some extra zip in our determination to never be caught short like that again.
      As for Maui … g*d what a disaster – a farrago of fail in every respect. No warning, no water, no effective brush-clearing program in advance of the fire, no evacuation plan … it’s a failure so complete and total that no wonder people are beginning to wonder if it was deliberate – a plan to clear away all those inconvenient prole landowners and turn that nice beach-adjacent properties into high-rent condos and resorts.
      I think the missing in Lahaina are dead – and the local government is trying frantically to hide it, especially as so many will turn out to be school children whose parents had to be at work, and seniors who couldn’t move that fast.

          1. Okay, I looked it up. Mauicounty.gov has a police news section, and that’s where they are releasing names of the identified Lahaina dead who’ve had next of kin notified.

            So far, all the released names are of old people. There are eleven.

            There are sixteen identified dead in Lahaina where they are waiting until they notify kin.

            The total number of dead people found so far is 116. Everything else is estimation.

            1. Unofficial reports coming from the area have reported north of 480 fatalities. Apparently the official recovery people are slow-walking things, and the locals are taking measures into their own hands.

              One guess as to the Hilary overhype (beyond the usual reasons for overhype) is to try to drive the disaster in Maui out of public memory, thus the media lockout and slow-walking updates on casualties.

              If Biden gets a robust FJB reception in Maui, what will they indict Trump for this time?

              1. That is much more what I would expect the figures to be.

                Sigh. I mean, obviously they are overwhelmed by the job, but also obviously the governments involved seem to be doing everything wrong. And deliberately wrong, in some cases.

                1. The concerning bit is that the number of missing is still officially listed as 1000. If they had good news to report, I would think that number would go down.

                  In terms of major disastrous fires (thinking of the Camp fire in Paradise, CA as a prime example), the Maui one looks like they saw what went wrong and doubled down. I’ll go with Heinlein’s corollary to Hanlon’s Razor in this case.

    5. Aye, prepare. And looking the fool for “over-preparing” or preparing “for nothing.” is a GREAT outcome. Looking foolish beats looking dead.

  6. I keep hearing rumblings that they’re going to try use whatever the new Sooper Skarie Variant of the WuFlu is called to try and ram another round of lockdowns down our throat. I suspect that said rumblings are true, because it worked before (at least in their minds), and because they are laughably un-creative. If I were a betting man, I’d say that the Lockdown 2.0 hits just in time for the election so that they can Fraud again and completely crush/circumvent any fraud-mitigation methods in the name of “Public Health” or “Public Safety” or whatever.

    However, I suspect that compliance will be even lower this time around, and that enforcement will be a bear. My own home state’s now-former governor (sadly, he was a lame-duck during WuFlu, so I can’t say we voted him out of office over it) got smacked down HARD by both the courts and the voters over the shitshow that was the arbitrariness and capriciousness of his decision-making and enforcement processes (which rather famously included secret back-room deals that allowed major events that he favored to operate without/with minimal restrictions, and two different attendance caps for for-profit and not-for-profit events. Between the State Supreme Court (which, tellingly, usually sided with the Governor and State Legislature historically) and the voters, the governor’s office was pretty well stripped of its power to unilaterally implement, prolong, and enforce States of Emergency.

    Sadly, our one Majorly Corrupt City (you know you’re awful when Chicago calls you out on your blatant corruption) frauded yet another Democrat into office, so I’ve no doubt he’ll at least try something Lockdown 2.0 rolls around.

    1. I have read the code name for the new variant is, “Eris.” Either a genuine Freudian slip or a warning? Assuming this is true. I haven’t seen a word on symptoms, severity, or where it’s turning up.

      1. It’s all over the UK. All the usual suspects are bloviating led by the execrable Ferguson who really, really likes being on TV. they’re pushing for masks, lockdowns, forced drugs, The whole damned thing all over again.

        They have no shame,

        2. They may kiss my rosy beige keister.
          I’m in Washington state, so I’m seeing more people with masks. I feel sorry for them (while reminding myself I don’t know the reason they’re doing it).

          1. I see the usual people at the regional club store who wear masks. These seem to be really old people (north of 80) and in marginal to horrible health, so it’s not out of the ordinary.

            What is surprising are the number of young people (frequently workers at the Kroger affiliate) who are wearing masks. Not a lot of them, but seeing a handful of worker bees wearing masks (usually in Basic Black) is odd. These seem to be people who never stopped when the mandates expired. Go figure.

            The good news is that the young moms and 3 year old kids are no longer wearing face diapers.

            I don’t have a good read on our newish governor. She doesn’t seem to be quite as quietly-thuggish as Despicable Kate Brown, but I’m not sure how she’d deal with a chance to impose lockdowns/face diapers/wear your underware on your head madates. With the rumors coming out of the Feds, I’m afraid we’ll get a chance to find out. OTOH, I’ve quit traveling by air, so a no-fly order won’t bother me one bit.

            if the current Variant of Death is “Eris”, will the next one be “Bob”?

            1. Eugene, or rather southern Willamette Valley, has a fair number of people wearing masks. The smoke has been particularly bad (barely see the Coburg or South Eugen Hills from the river, bad). Even yesterday when we supposedly had some wind to blow it out back east. Smoke pools down here on the southern end of the valley, regardless of the source area. Always has.

              1. Not all workers, and not all in one category. If there’s a mandate, it’s not store wide. It might be 5% of the workforce, like one or two checkers, and a couple of the “we’ll shop for you” types, with most of them women in their 20s.

                1. Ah. Understood. I took your first comment to mean “all the workers.”

                  Yeah, “women in their 20s” seems to be the primary demographic aside from the older and infirm.

              2. Maybe, although smoke is a legit reason to wear masks. They’re even somewhat effective against it, since smoke particles are are about the same size as the pollen that most allergen masks are designed for.

      2. “No worse than the existing mild variants” was what I heard at first, but I haven’t run across anything else since. Not even the Seattle Times is making a big deal of it other than to note that it’s becoming the dominant strain.

      3. “I have read the code name for the new variant is, “Eris.” Either a genuine Freudian slip or a warning? ”

        … some clever dick trying to be clever, probably.

        Like the people who named Operation Plowshare.

  7. More flooding in China. Three northeastern provinces that are well north of the Yellow River have been flooded out by a typhoon (and apparently another is on the way…). Those three provinces apparently produce roughly 23% of China’s rice crop. And now that crop has been ruined.

    1. Have we all seen the news report that China’s TFR is down to 1.09? I think that when Zeihan says China has maybe a decade left that he’s being optimistic for them.

      1. I think Zeihan has a lot of blind spots, unfortunately.

        Also, it looks like China’s giving a real-world demonstration of the “… and then all at once,” part of a collapse. You can’t predict when exactly that will happen, no matter how smart you are.

        1. Perhaps I wasn’t clear: I think Zeihan’s “China is doomed!” prognostication is correct, and it’s going to be earlier and worse than even he thinks.

          1. And I’m agreeing with you on both points. 😛

            I’m just noting two reasons why Zeihan’s time-table is likely too long.

      2. In a normal nation, yes. Lotta ruin in a nation — look how long it took the Soviets to finally ruin Russia and Xi will not go peacefully. Stalin and Mao are his examples. If it ends suddenly it will likely not be peaceful at all.

        Another great famine and leap forward wouldn’t surprise me at all.

  8. Feudalism was an agreement that was only kept by people who wanted to keep it, or who were surrounded by people who made it advantageous to keep it. Being a vassal, or having conflicting vassal and/or lord obligations in war, was definitely not all fun all the time.

    And being a serf was (generally speaking) not funsies, although it was better than The Barbarians/Muslims/Bandits Come and Kill You, or being a straight-up Roman slave on the old latifundia farms.

    On the other hand, not everybody wanted to live in medieval Siena and have several different types of government in a single year, or in Bologna and have tower vs. tower clan warfare inside a city.

    1. modern anthropological research indicates that the workers on the roman latifundia were free men, very healthy and well fed, and had a life expectancy of 175. Also a rich spiritual life that was very symbolic and voluntary, and exactly aligned to modern woke expedience.

      Modern anthropologists totally are not regime propagandists desperately trying to pretend that the left isn’t trying to carry out a mass murder.

      2. If it just hadn’t been for those darn Aryans coming from the east, all would have been fine.

        Obviously, the Vandals were proto-fascists, and Hitler’s beliefs came because of his obsession with the heritage of the Germanic people’s ancestors.

        1. Also, sadly, Mussolini’s obsession with Rome caused him to miss the lessons of the ancient latifundia, and instead develop Fascism.

        1. The thing where they had their own slave jails, underground, on latifundia is one of the creepier things about them.

          And it’s also creepy that Roman agricultural manuals discussed how to build yours.

  9. Upon my return from Afghanistan in the summer of 2020 during the height of the Covidiot hysteria I chose to attend the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis SD. I found it to be indistinguishable from previous rallies I had attended despite the cries of superspreader et al. I knew going forward from then that it would work out in the end, there are enough of us contrarians who resist the mainstream to ensure our side will win.

      1. Am I a horrible person for… how can I put this… not being overjoyed that the ANTIFA types that went to “protest” Sturgis that one time made it out unscathed? Especially after the one dumbass deliberately kicked over someone’s bike?

      2. Covid was really smart remember? It knew the deference between mostly peaceful rioting, looting, and murdering by antifa, and bikers in South Dakota. Of Course it was afraid of the bikers, that’s why there was no spike….sarc.

  10. Eternal Socialism/Communism won’t work here, because America is not Europe. This continent has been draining Europe of its yeast and creativity for 400 years. We’ve taken the people who would not put up with one more war, one more tax, one more Inquisition, one more pogrom, one more Lord riding down the peasant in the road–and left for greener pastures. Central and South America drew the feisty ones out of Spain to become conquistadores in the New World. And the Bering land bridge drew the restless ones out of Eastern Siberia as soon as the glaciers started melting. We get the smart ones, mostly. And I think of what it must take for someone to walk out of Central America, across Mexico, and hazard the border patrols and the coyotes to get a new life in the north. We get the ones who want something better for themselves and their children. Welcome, welcome all!

    1. Aside from the ones who are foot-soldiers for the cartels and gangs (MS-13), or the Tongs. Or Hizballah and others of their ilk. Or the ones who bring their culture with them and don’t want to adapt to ours (honor killings in Houston come to mind.)

      I’ve watched Central Europe since June of 2015, and seen what migration without assimilation has done, especially when governments favor the new arrivals over the natives. “Ugly” is just the start.

      1. Yes, of course. There will always be bad apples, disguised enemies, and those who want the benefits of freedom without the necessity of bending toward assimilation. But for the most part, we are still a beacon. Coming here is hard: it takes a decision to uproot yourself and find yourself in new waters. I salute that spirit.

        >

      2. THIS. A lot of them are being transported to the US border in buses and trucks, by communist front organizations. And many are, weirdly, being forced to come.
        So, the latest wave? Withhold welcome for a good while.
        And Europe isn’t dead. it’s in extreme trouble, but starting to turn.

  11. California: “Hurriquaaaake!
    Rest of the Lower 48: “Overachiever.”

    More and more people out here sound like Coast to Coast Radio at 0300 sounded back in the 1990s-early 2000s. The feds talking about choking off artificial fertilizer and “encouraging” the use of manure is not going over well, but no one acts surprised, either. The local government handled the May-June emergency pretty well, considering how many of them are new, and are coping with a steep learning curve. They are also pretty up-front about “You’re right, we didn’t understand what that office does, and it’s not what we thought from the name.” Which is a refreshing change. They seem a little less self-interested than the last batch. That’s an improvement.

    Drip, drip, drip, the Establishment rock is being worn away and revealed to be hollow.

    1. Maui is another crack in the facade. The guy in charge of the water refused to let water loose to fight the fires until it was too late. He’s the same one who’s talked about how Hawaii should really see water as a “unifying force” and a Polynesian god (yes, really). Plus the police chief out there is the same guy who was chief of the Las Vegas Metro PD during the 2017 mass shooting, truly one of the strangest and least-explained crimes in history.

      1. Well. Aside from the fact that a lot of Hawaiian deities are not terribly nice… I’m pretty sure that forest fires were not seen as desirable by any Polynesian culture, including Hawaii’s.

        OH! That reminds me! Old NFO had that story on his YT channel about a shark that kept hanging around the same area of Pearl Harbor!

        It turns out that Hawaiian families, back in the pagan day, had pet shark deities as sort of family guardians. It involved burying a respected dead person at sea, and then the shark was regarded as being that person in deified form. So you’d feed the shark nice (normal) things and make it sort of a friendly pet, and then maybe the shark spirit would help you if you got in trouble while fishing or at sea.

        I think some of these sharks did make a connection between “they feed me fish after they fish, so I shouldn’t hurt them,” but yeah, anyway, that’s a thing that some Hawaiian people still do. (Probably not the burial at sea anymore. But pet sharks probably have pet sharklings that continue the tradition of being friendly for food.)

        So that Pearl Harbor shark might have been hoping for a guardian gig.

        1. Also, I saw a video today taken by a guy who was driving around Lahaina and got caught in the traffic snarls as the fire approached. The guy was incredibly calm and composed. He parked his car in a local Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall parking lot (I think he was a JW), got out on foot, walked down to the shore, along the shore for a couple miles to the hotel district, sporadically videoing and calmly providing explanation as he went. Eventually he managed to snag a bus to the airport the next morning where his wife picked him up. The thing I noticed the most, other than the fact that the guy was skirting Armageddon like he was out for an evening stroll, was that the wind was SCREAMING the entire day. Easily tropical storm force caused by some hurricane well offshore, probably 50-70 mph, and there was a fair bit of light wind damage–trees and powerlines down, awnings blown off, etc.–in Lahaina before the fire even got close. Power was out well in advance of the fire.

          1. Looking for the link… Ah.

            Cliff Mass had an excellent blog post – https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-real-cause-of-maui-wildfire-disaster.html

            Whole bunch of pictures and weather-geekiness, but it was not a hurricane or tropical storm or even a tropical depression. Shamelessly summarizing, what happened is that a nice, moist, warm air mass ran up against the mountains west of Lahaina, was forced up to where it dumped the moisture, got much colder (and thus denser), then poured over the mountain top. On the other side, that denser air then came down like Thor’s Hammer.

            This happens frequently wherever you have a mountain (or range of them) that intercepts the flow of an air current. I’m sure that Sarah has seen many while in Colorado; it happens all up and down the Rockies. Given the right (wrong) conditions on the ground, it turns a tiny spark into a raging fire in very little time. (It can provide that spark, too – just one downed power line…)

      2. Paddock was probably psych meds.

        With how hard everyone was saying ‘what a mystery, nothing to see here’, and the slip about him being on those, covering up the influence of psych meds.

    2. “California: “Hurriquaaaake!”

      Saw the meme where the guy with a girl is checking out another girl. The guy was “California”, the original, indignant girl was “Storm”, and the girl being checked out was “Earthquake”.

      😛

    3. I’ve already grumbled about the government trying to move on from proving “Alex Jones was right“, to proving “Art Bell was right”.

  12. Yep. This is going to be bloody ugly.

    I’ve written my state AG (Idaho) and asked him for concrete action that will prevent me from being hauled away or murdered by the FBI. Haven’t heard back, but that was only the 12th. The woman I talked to in the AG’s office couldn’t speak for about 10 long seconds after I asked her “What’s the AG doing to keep me from being murdered by the FBI?” I had to ask her if she was still there.

    Idaho is ruled by health tyrants, by region. The Panhandle Health Authority epidemiology department had no idea that PedoHitler was ramping up the coof tyranny, but she will call me when she has news.

    I’m seeing a pattern here: the vast majority of people have no stinking idea what’s happening around the world and in America. Honestly no idea. It’s as if I’d stepped on another planet. They are too unaware to push back because they don’t even have an idea of what to push back against. “OK, Daddy” is their answer to authority.

    More and more brave souls are rising up, and I think that’s what’s intended for “such a time as this.” We get to find out who we’re fighting with, and who we’re fighting against.

    Work. Build. Create.

    Rise. Stand. Run. Fly.

    We’re Americans. We write novels while in prison, and we create billion dollar chicken franchises when we hit retirement and need a bit more to keep us interested.

    We.Are.Americans.

    1. To be fair, even somebody based and redpilled would probably boggle a tad at that phonecall.

      There’s also the crucial question as to whether to take you seriously as a concerned citizen, or worry about the caller’s intentions and sanity level. I’m pretty sure that they soon realized that you were a concerned citizen asking a serious question, though.

      It’s a very important skill for call centers and receptionists, to learn the difference between somebody angry and sane, versus someone who definitely is not sane. A weird question or a question that people are normally afraid to ask, is totally different from a crazy questioner.

      Frankly, it’s refreshing to get a call saying the things that you yourself have to be professional and silent about, during work hours. I hope that person really enjoyed your call, especially since you sound like a great caller.

      1. That’s very kind. And I wasn’t nearly as direct with her over the phone as I wrote here. I do think I used the word “guy in Utah who was murdered by the FBI…” Might want to tone that down a might.

        She was lovely, as are virtually every public employee I’ve talked with since I’ve moved to North Idaho. She told me she would certainly bring it up with the AG, and that’s mostly all I’m looking for.

  13. I loved that phrase so much, Sarah, I went to google translate.

    It gave me this: muito apertado para passar um feijão. I’m going to start shouting that every time I get mad, the translation was so awesome. I don’t know what it says, really, though. 🙂

    2. It’s not quite right. Idiomatic would be “fechado demais p’ra um feijao.” BUT as I said, they just say “Nao lhe cabe um feijao” (A bean wouldn’t fit.)

  15. I certainly hope for but I’m not sure of a win, call me black pilled if you want. I’m not sure where we’re going, nor how long it’ll take to get there.

    None the less I try to assure I am, and that mine are prepared for whatever occurs along the way.

    Also I (& again mine.) plan to do everything possible to thoroughly enjoy whatever’s happening.

    Washington’s around four thousand two hundred miles away from where I’m sitting and I’ve much more important things to deal with, like a small crop on barley I need harvest once the rain stops and a roof to get on my savage teenage granddaughter’s new house, at the far end of the eighty acres before snowfall.

    1. Uncertainty is to be expected. If there weren’t uncertainty, we wouldn’t be in the mess that we’re in right now.

  16. I’m afraid they’re going to find that when the system resets it will be worldwide and utterly uncontrollable. The trigger will be something no one expects, likely something innocuous like a song or a scientific study, something that should have been totally overlooked.

    As the reach expands the censors will go into full swing but will be unable to stop the building momentum. Governments will climb on the bandwagon and try to squash it by law.

    Then critical mass is reached and the world explodes.

      1. I’m not so sure. It’s pretty much obvious at this point that they’ve lost their minds. I’ve been watching social media try to squash a song, and it’s quite interesting how it gets past the algorithms. With over 20 million views, it wasn’t “trending” until people started to notice and comment on it. And yet it keeps spreading. The song itself is not being recommended by the platforms, but it keeps spreading. People are talking about it, recommending it to others outside the approved paths.

        People all over the world have heard it. I think the trigger might be something just that simple.

        1. Saw video of Oliver Anthony doing “Rich Men North of Richmond” at some gathering here in NC over this past weekend. The crowd was RABID. Singing their lungs out with every word.

          1. It hits a lot of people right where they live. I think part of it is the shock value, because he says right out what others don’t dare to say. The song itself is brilliantly done, directed outward instead of inward, so people feel like he’s talking directly to them.

            1. Yep. The song directly references: inflation, the shit job market, that the elites are pedophiles hiding their crimes (Epstein pals), the idea that the elites have bought out the poor for votes, AND ties it all to the WEF elites in plan for total control they they know we know they are trying to shove down our throats.

              It’s time we take the lefts slogan “eat the rich” seriously and make it happen….

            2. Yep. The song directly references: inflation, the shit job market, that the elites are pedophiles hiding their crimes (Epstein pals), the idea that the elites have bought out the poor for votes, AND ties it all to the WEF elites in plan for total control they they know we know they are trying to shove down our throats.

              It’s time we take the lefts slogan “eat the rich” seriously and make it happen….

          2. I’ve seen a video or two from his events over the weekend. People were shouting the words.

          3. It’s the most popular song on the web app I use to copy songs from YouTube. And the most downloaded/copied song, until now, has always been whatever stupid pop/hip-hop song is echoing in the skulls of the empty-headed.

            (FWIW, I copy the songs not because I actually want to pirate them, but because I run them through an app that gives me chords and makes it much easier to learn to play them; and my legal source of music, for which I pay a monthly subscription fee, won’t let me do any such thing.)

          1. Still, even if Zuck the Cuck was honest, it’s been seen a LOT more times than the original video. A lot of people watch the “reaction” YouTubers. I know that theblackconservative has done one, and Brett Cooper (that’s where I saw it myself – okay, old guy, she’s just much easier on the eyes and ears – one of those where “if I were only 40 years younger and unattached…). I’m not sure of officertatum, but it’s right up his alleyway, too. Tim Pool has played at least parts of it.

          2. I think that was the version with the lyrics printed. The original has 32 million views. I’m seeing reactions from all over the world with the reactors agreeing with the sentiment

        3. There’s “lost their minds” as in nuts. And there’s “lost their minds” as in panic mode. The former applies. The latter still hasn’t been reached yet. I’d argue that what we’re dealing with is “I can fix this!” syndrome. You know, the syndrome that afflicts the villain’s underling who keeps watching in more and more of a panic as things spiral further and further out of control while said underling keeps attempting ever more rash plans to salvage the situation.

          And then the chief villain arrives has said underling executed for incompetence. Because, after all, you can’t have a serious attempt to destroy New York when you’re still only halfway through the plot arc.

          They’re still only part-way through said syndrome. I suspect that BBESP is anticipating that as they approach the end of that syndrome, they’ll finally do something in a desperate attempt to “fix this” that’s so far beyond bounds that all but the most willfully blind turn on them in a fury.

          If true, the primary concern then comes in both hoping you can ride things out until that happens, and that we’re not blind-sided by something completely out of the blue in the meantime that upends the table, so to speak.

        4. $SPOUSE listens to the radio in the morning, and the preferred country station has the “Big D and Bubba” show on in the morning. AFAIK, they’ve been ignoreing the song until yesterday. It finally got mentioned, but they decided to play a cover by someone who has difficulty carrying a tune in a bucket.

          Couldn’t be bothered to play the original or even a cover by somebody competent. That show seems to be closely tied to the Nashville Country establishment. IMHO, too closely tied. Screw that show. It’s rare that I listen to radio when I’m going to town, but definitely not these these guys.

      2. I don’t want a Ceaușescu Christmas, Great Aunt.

        But considering how crazy they are right now, and how crazy they are getting, and it’s going downhill from there…

        My bet is it’ll either be somewhere around the big RNC convention or when Trump goes to trial in Georgia. Somebody’s going to push too far and too many people are going to decide that it’s time to just pull the pin.

        ESPECIALLY if it’s something like Rittenhouse shooting, where you have a clear self-defense shooting that shows up in the news and we’re being told to trust the People In Charge and not our lying eyes.

          1. Canada is overdue for that.

            And once we get this end of the world cleaned up, maybe you guys should get an actual written constitution involved. And a heavily armed populace. We’ll sell you the guns and ammo!

        2. I just fear the only shooting is going to be … well, let’s just say that I hope a certain ebullient New Yorker has a VERY loyal and dedicated security team.

          1. My bet is that they false-flag against FICUS and/or Commie LaWhorish (because how else are they going to get her out of the way) and use that as an excuse to revoke 2a and forcibly confiscate arms. And that will be the spark that ignites the powder magazine.

            2. Commie LaWhorish
              ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

              Because how else can they get her out of the way? It is obvious they can’t control her. If we’re lucky her own secret service will blow the whistle on them, if her secret service is allowed to survive the initial incident.

            3. Raptor that solves two (well three) of their problems in one fell swoop. They’re TRYING to get rid of the Turnip In Chief but he (or more Likely Jill Biden, Reign Name Edith II) won’t let go. And even if they did they still have Biden’s 25A insurance/Willy Browns side piece to deal with. And they need to get control of votes again so they can fortify as even their best candidates are not as welcome as a case of stage II/III syphilis. Ridding themselves of 2A is one of their wet dreams, perhaps they’d have some one go after the Chief Justice too to up the ante?
              Of course most grass roots attempts against several targets go wrong (C.F. Lincoln, Archduke Ferdinand) because the attackers are usually absolute looney tunes, and there is the old issue that 3 people can keep a secret only if 2 are dead (and maybe not even then). Anything that well planned would stink to high heaven of false flag even though they blame it on Nazi/Fascist/White supremacist types all 2-3000( that’s probably a high estimate) of which in the country are drooling idiots on their good days and are more incompetent than the ruling Brahmandarins.

  17. All I see is the ratchet cranking down ever tighter. Statists on the left, statists on the right, and an ever-narrowing gap between them. None of them want to cut back on the government that gives them their power.
    ———————————
    ‘Progressives’ suppress free speech because they don’t have the means to suppress free thought.

    Yet.

        2. ALSO: DEAR WP, how about NOT demanding I re-log-in every time here when I am ALREADY LOGGED in for my own site? What are you, some goddamned DEMOCRAT or other FasciCommunist?

      2. One observation. The LGB bumper stickers/window decals seem to be dropping in popularity while the FJB ones are rising. We’re a red county in a state under the thumb of a blue “majority”, but I suspect that the hardening attitude is catching.

        1. Here in Taxachusetts I regularly see LGB stickers, and even FJB ones although often clearly on vehicles of trades types. But I’ve been seeing them on hardware (Lexi and Audi’s) that are traditionally Karen transports. And the I did that stickers were everywhere until the gas stations started having people clean them off. It doesn’t get much bluer than here and outside the cities and direct suburbs inside the 128 belt folks are NOT pleased.

  19. This woman hasn’t changed. She hasn’t even remotely started to think. She is what she’s always been.

    True.
    On the bright side, not an active weapon against us.
    On the even brighter side, has lost the anti-thought that previously kept her from even considering! Paying attention in one place might get her to pay attention in others, especially if she starts questioning emotions.

    2. I suspect that she’s more or less set in her ways, and thus not likely to change. But at the same time, she’s been hit hard enough on a couple of issues (guns, the jab) to realize that she might have some blind spots in her current thinking. It’s probably worth noting that I think her suspicion of the jab comes at least in part from her hyper-aggressiveness in favor of women. The suspicious numbers regarding pregnancies and the jab got her thinking of opposing it as a women’s rights issue. She’s also developed a strong suspicion of the elite right now, and I suspect her opinions on the jab have a lot to do with that.

      But in the meantime, everything else will remain the same. I would be absolutely shocked if she ever became a conservative, or even a moderate. On the other hand, an argument by her will hold more sway with some I know than an argument by anyone on the right.

      1. And they will, likewise, not have changed.

        But fixing them is a much, much lower priority than “first, stop the damage.”

    3. My experience in seeing this happen to people is like watching a Kuhnian scientific revolution take place in a single mind: first they notice that one thing doesn’t match their current paradigm, and then they notice another and another and all of a sudden their entire outlook has switched polarity.

      See, e.g., Neo (née Neo-Neocon). Also the occasional goth in the Seattle community who quickly gets socially ejected.

      1. David Mamet might fit better than Neo. His was a gradual conversion, until one day he was talking with his rabbi (iirc) and his rabbi pointed out that Mamet was a conservative. And Mamet realized the rabbi was right.

        IIRC, Neo and Roger L. Simon both had an awareness that they didn’t quite agree with those around them. Both had a pivotal event – 9/11 – that dramatically ripped the blinders off of their eyes and revealed just how much they disagreed with their neighbors.

      2. And THAT formation clarifies the thing I was reaching for in my mind, on how the change-of-view and change-of-method are different– someone identifies that the very tools they use are wrong.

        They may end up not even changing outcome, but their methods to get there change.

        1. Hmmm… I don’t think I ever changed the mental tools I use. And I don’t think my fundamental outlook on right vs. wrong or what was actually desirable for society changed at all. It’s just that once I started looking, I saw that what I had been told would get us to a good place wasn’t going to do any such thing, and furthermore, that the good place “liberals” intended to reach wasn’t in any way good.

          1. One of my mental tools is testing the mental tools– I describe it badly, but it’s like doing a science experiment. “Do my assumptions actually work?”

            I’ve drawn bad conclusions from bad data like anybody else, which mostly taught me to be careful about the data I accept. 😀

            1. I’m not actually sure what anybody means by mental tools most of the time. 😊 I tend to think of them as innate, which probably means I’m thinking of ability, not tools. But if mental tools include things like the enabling assumptions that you use to draw conclusions from events and data (which makes perfect sense now that I think about it) then yes, I did change some of my mental tools by discarding faulty and previously untested assumptions in response to better data and analyzing for myself where they led. The bedrock beliefs about what right and wrong actually are, those didn’t change. My understanding and assumptions about what gets us to good or bad outcomes did.

              1. Language is a mental tool. ^.^ (one which folks keep trying to hack….)

                So you could define at least two levels of mental tools– the ones you learned before you knew anything and thus don’t ever NOT remember (“This is how you figure basics”) and then secondary ones. (“Nuclear means scary and probably evil.”)

                Secondary is much easier to change. Not to be confused with EASY.

                Now… if you had to change your base idea of right and wrong? Say, “the strong DESERVE to do whatever they can get away with, taht is what makes them strong”?

                That is hard. It’s why conversion is so hard.

      3. I haven’t seen it happen to people, although I did see it happen to me. (Am I people? Probably…) Somebody like Naomi Wolf may be in a more difficult position than I was, since I grew up in a very conservative environment, and even though I never felt like I fit in there, it’s nonetheless where my thought patterns and early examples of being a good person came from, so I had that frame of reference to fall back on when the “liberal” paradigm started to fall apart for me.

        I considered myself liberal for quite a while, and didn’t question it much. But to make a long story short, when I started doing my own research on a couple of topics that mattered very much to me, it turned out one side relied mostly on fear and spurious appeals to authority, and in fact frequently lied, while the other tended to use facts and logic, and frequently cited its sources. And the identities of those sides were not the ones I had been primed to expect. And one thing led to another, and well, here we are.

  20. Also, none of the actual violent people, who apparently are known from Antifa (knock me down with a feather) have been arrested.

    Not kept, anyways; that guy who’d been previously arrested at an ANTIFA riot, who from memory posted video of himself inciting that led up to that lady being shot, was arrested and then released which is how we got his name and which got a lot of folks to look for patterns.

    1. (although I suspect some of the folks reported as protesters were “protesters,” I don’t have much evidence– I faintly remember some folks pointing out that the social media for some was notably odd, but I can’t remember much beyond several were obvious crazy types.)

  21. Just watched part of a segment on ABC revealing the likely cause of the Maui fire. Authorities think a tree fell on a power line. The line broke as a result, and the brush underneath was ignited. The video then goes on to talk about how firefighters initially had the blaze under control… “until winds picked up”.

    Huh. Odd.

    I could have sworn that there was something else that made it impossible for the firefighters to continue to fight the fire. But I’m sure the press wouldn’t neglect to mention something that important, would they?

    I turned it off in disgust at that point.

    1. In fairness, the video I saw from Lahaina had some pretty ridiculous winds even well before the fire got bad. High enough to drop trees and powerlines and damage awnings and other very light structures. So I could see them having a lot of difficulty controlling a brushfire in those winds, although they were not helped by the weird reluctance of the Maui water department to release the water.

      1. In fairness, inhabited islands in the middle of salt water.

        Potable water could be fairly hard to come by, and replace.

        1. OTOH, if you’re worried about that– you set up your systems to work with salt water.

          Navy has them. (They’re nasty, and a pain, but they beat being dead.)

          1. Most off the shelf fire fighting hardware Is NOT suitable for use with salt water. Certainly as Foxfier noted naval hardware is and any commercial vessels that sail the oceans can at least cope with salt once. But I suspect it adds some heavy costs to the hardware especially things like pumps. Assuming that the initial site is inland from Lahaina you could be several miles from ocean and most fire departments don’t usually have runs of hose for that. If it was rough terrain (and that part of Maui butts up against a mountain/volcano) a standard pumper might not have been able to get there. With heavy winds you may also NOT get all the sparks they can blow a long way. Which is why they wanted more water to douse things down just to be absolutely sure. I wonder if Maui has firefighting helicopters that can dump large loads of (possibly salt ) water on things. But it sounds like the idjit that held up the water should be held for 100+ cases of negligent homicide…

            1. Don’t forget that this feckin’ idjit would probably have screamed over “contaminating the ecosystem” with salt water.

              1. True although honestly one does avoid using salt water near agriculture. Most plants are NOT fond of salt, thus salting your enemies fields. Sorry Nephew and grandson/great grandson of volunteer firefighters. At least in New England firefighters HATE brush fires. The preponderance of poison ivy in our general brush means you can almost guarantee some is burning, These days and since the seventies it means you put on SCBA hardware to fight it if there is any smoke. Before that you made darn sure you were downwind of the fire and if the wind changed you bugged out and prayed. Poison ivy in the lungs is a very bad way to go. Dont think Maui has anything like that unless some idiot imported it.

                1. Poison Oak in Oregon is the same. Major areas to be leery of is the Willamette Valley, east coast range into the Cascades foothills. Going south it gets worse as one goes east into the Cascades. The recent fires in the North and South Umpqua river basins would have been burning a lot, emphasis on a lot, of poison oak.

                  1. From what I’ve heard Poison Oak is worse and far more folks are allergic to it so even nastier.

                    1. Raises hand. I used to get it really, really, really, bad every 3 years or so. Blisters bad over two arms and top of my back, the last time, my fall senor HS year (got into blackberries loaded with it on poison oak hill Sheep Hill (hunting). Then I’d get a mild case of it for the next few years. Then I’d get hit badly, again (grandparents lived on Sheep Hill, so the animals would come in covered with the oil). Luckily my years on the south Umpqua USFS district, where you can’t get off a USFS road without getting into it (unless high enough to encounter Snow Brush, which has it’s own problems … sneeze, and I don’t have allergies, usually) I was in the inoculated stage. The Willamette USFS district, my last summer, doesn’t have poison oak anywhere near as bad. In fact I haven’t been in poison oak now since ’77, my last year on the southern district. The family graveyard has poison oak (not on Sheep Hill, but same ecology). I avoid it like a plague, it has been so long since I’ve had it.

                      Scouting: Camp Murnane, Loraine, OR, Weyerhauser Woods, Springfield, OR, Mooney Scout Ranch, Tenmile, OR, are riddled with poison oak. I declined to participate in brush activities, like compass challenges.

                      Doris Ranch, and Mt Pisgah, are riddled with it. Worse poison oak is “natural” and has an “ecological niche”. So it isn’t discouraged in these natural preserves. Doris Ranch is where used to take my dog to join dog pack walks. Poison Oak can be avoided by staying on the asphalt path. But be careful with some of the exercises (too easy for dog to brush up against it). That and Ticks (which aren’t near as bad as back east).

                      I don’t know enough about the comparison of Poison Ivy to get into a debate on which is worse. I’ll conceded both are bad to deadly for those of us afflicted.

            2. Navy systems add chemicals to make a saltwater foam– it would be a residential area defense, not for broad use.

              Besides the helos, here’s water dipper planes like those used in the US, too– though again that’d be residential use, because the salt is not so great for plants. (Or the planes, honestly.)

            3. I figure that Hawaii is a fire ecology, burning is not inherently bad (especially for native plants, although that can get complicated), we just don’t want people to burn.

            4. Except that you’re thinking of “off the shelf” and “what could they have done in the moment?”.

              The whole point is:

              • island
              • constricted terrain
              • proximity of the ocean to human habitation
              • limited fresh water supplies

              Why TF didn’t they build salt-water-capable firefighting systems, like, oh I don’t know, A HUNDRED YEARS AGO?

              It’s not like this is an uncommon situation anywhere in the Hawaiian Islands, or anywhere in Polynesia. Surely somebody has thought “hey, maybe we should just drop some pipes out into the ocean that’s RIGHT THERE and run some of that water through our specialty pumps and specialty hoses to put out fires in town, instead of worrying about whether the cisterns are full”. Surely.

                1. D’oh! Of course! They should have called up the base commander at Pearl Harbor!

                  An aircraft carrier can produce thousands of gallons of fresh water a day, supply several megawatts of electricity, and has a pretty capable hospital on board.

                  I’m sure you’ve seen a berthing barge. Not luxury accommodations by any means, but racks, heads and a chow hall for a couple hundred people.

                  The Navy could be on the scene providing relief in 4 hours.

                  1. And are apparently ready to do so, but they have to be asked by the Governor…. who’s busy making sure things are being done woke and so hasn’t asked.

                2. Hmm looks like ~120 statute miles Pearl to Maui. There have to be sea going Fire boats there, but at 20-25 knots maybe 5-6 Hours from the time they get the go command. Could help Lahaina or other coastal spots and give you some where to evacuate too. Possibly more useful might have been helicopters for rescue and get an LHD or similar moving to provide evacuation and additional hospital facilities and the onboard Marine units to help. But that order HAS to come from way up the chain at least the lead Admiral at Pearl possibly up at CINCPAC or the CNO maybe even Turnip in Chief. Getting an LHD that is not ready rolling might take a bit. Thing is somebody has to shout for help and various folks in the chain on Maui sat with their thumbs up their asses for half a day.

                  1. The squadrons and Marines that popped over to help would be the fastest option, vs fire fighting boats– which I believe would only be able to hit the closest houses to the coast, if that– and they did activate the guard guys.

                    (put a link below with some of the information)

                    If they had properly prepared, though, they could’ve stopped the fire from getting the houses.
                    Salting the earth of house-gardens and the ungodly stink that is AFFF is worth stopping that slaughter.

                    1. “fire fighting boats– which I believe would only be able to hit the closest houses to the coast, if that”

                      I think the idea there was to use them as mobile pumping stations and either feed into the water mains so the hydrants would work and / or run hoses out past where they could spray.

                    4. My thought was with the fire boats large capacity you could create a “safe” area to get the people to and rescue them as it seemed Lahaina had only one major road out and that got blocked/cut off early in the problem. There has to be some heavy earth moving hardware almost medium sized town has some from various contractors. Cut a fire brake and then soak the area behind it down. I imagine there are Sea Bees or their modern equivalent at Pearl but getting that kind of stuff moving is a matter of day or days if it is not ready to roll (and why would it be in the modern world) so that’s only of help in the clean up.
                      It’s really telling that we can think up potential solutions (which may or may not work). Although the city managers might not have any ideas I’m certain the fire response folks did, but none of that got communicated or if it did the upper tiers ignored the suggestions. There really need to be trials of the Water gent and the town managers on trial for 100+ counts of negligent homicide.. If the locals have any brains these folks certainly will not be reelected/reappointed. However, I fear they’re going to play itsy bitsy spider and essentially build in the same waterspout again.

              2. No by off the shelf I mean “You can buy it from American LaFrance (or similar)”. A pumper (which has to be shipped to Maui by sea) is already probably 20-30% more expensive than getting it on the mainland I bet $1.5-2million before the shipping lead time is likely 3-6 months plus. There is a huge infrastructure involved, the fire plugs, the hoses, the pumps, it ALL has to play together. Most of your connections are mild steel, Likely for salt resistance you’re looking at bronze or brass so every piece of hose you use gets more expensive as its attachments have to change. And attaching bronze or brass to steel has corrosion issues. In addition the steel with tend to strip/break threads at the connections. Firefighters are in a hurry when they’re hooking up, stuff needs to be seriously sturdy. Or you can use the mild steel for the connections and except the cleaning time it you have to use salt water (which ought to be rare). The pumps and tanks on the pumper are less easy to clean so those have to be salt resistant/tolerant. I’m certain American LaFrance will make you this, but I’m also certain you really don’t want to know the price or delivery timeline. Even where I grew up on the shoreline no one bothered with salt capable stuff except fire boats for marina work. You need water you drop a hose into local fire ponds and pump. If you empty the pond oh well human life is worth more than several thousand cubic yards of muddy water and a few sunfish. The problem here is likely lack of planning. There was no plan so the locals vacillated in a situation where minutes let alone hours counted. Of course who knows if any plan these idiots would make would take the value of human life (let alone property) into account.

            5. With heavy winds you may also NOT get all the sparks they can blow a long way.
              …………………

              Heck with the 2020 fires, we are a good 30 – 40 miles (by road, so call it 20-air-miles) from the Holiday fire western limit (by which could see from hwy 126, might be further west not visible). We were getting warm/hot ash. No visible embers. Big flakes of ash that dissolved on contact. Was noticeably warm on contact, but not burning hot. Hot ashes was the reason that Deerhorn Road developments, west through Thurstan subdivision of Springfield, were on level 3 evacuations.

            1. Not that the islands don’t have a lot of rain, it is the lack of aquifers. The lava rock very porous. Know someone now local, who lived on one of the Hawaiian island. Water source was collected rain water stored in a water tank. For the pool, yard, and house. Not a well or a service that piped it in.

          2. Bret Weinstein had on a local Hawaii-based journalist who said that west Maui has been super dry for months and months. I imagine rainfall there depends on El Nino/La Nina/normal year variations.

            Also, Bret tried to go for the conspiracy land-speculators-buying-up-burned-land-cheap and releasing-water-to-protect-the-rich-people angles, but the journalist pretty much shut him down on that. He also said that just the way Lahaina is laid out it was pretty much a deathtrap once the fire got into the town.

            1. Yeah… But apparently some police guy blocked the evacuation route out of Lahaina, so a whole line of cars died. Him too, probably.

              1. I saw that on Gab early on, and was surprised (and mildly pleased) to see such irregularities mentioned on more establishment news sources.

            2. Also it looks like one end of the island is a large mountain/volcano depending on how the island is situated and local prevailing winds one side of that might be rain forest, the other might verge on desert. Certainly the Mauna Kea peak on the big island is VERY dry as that’s part of what makes it great as an observatory.

    2. “We need to have a conversation about water equity….” That, and something about the water being a god got me angry at the fool responsible, and just angry at the situation in general.

      Check this out. Guess who has the contract for power generation on the island of Maui? BlackRock. NOTE: I heard this from a trusted source, trusted enough that I’m bleating. I haven’t yet checked for myself.

      If you can, find the clip of the Lahaina (?) mayor being called a worthless whatever, loudly, by the citizens. It does your heart good, they’re standing up for each other.

    3. The reports I have read about the start of the fires there are that the initial fire(s) were controlled, but that when the water ran short, the firefighters called ?? the private? water company to divert a stream to fill the private? (Land Co?) reservoirs that the firefighters would draw from, the State water regulator refused permission for ? Five hours ?, and when he finally gave his permission for the water to flow, tge fire gadget overrun the valve station that controlled that water.

      1. Reminds me of the scene in The Last Centurion where the L.A. public health department had a 6-hour meeting to decide what to do with 4 million doses of H5N1 flu vaccine while they cooked in the hot sun. They were ruined long before the meeting was over.
        ———————————
        If you always expect the government to do the stupidest things you can imagine, you will rarely be disappointed. Indeed, from time to time the government will exceed your expectations and do unimaginably stupid things.

      2. That’s what I’ve been seeing. I’ve also seen reports that the power company left lines that had dropped, and the grid in general, live even after the wires broke / were obviously about to break. Sparky!

        1. The power company was forced by local government to spend all their money on going green. Not on updating the system. They also could have built desalinization plants for water years ago but haven’t. What burned were empty fields covered by nonnative grasses. Instead of taking care of the brush, like all democrats ignore they let these tender boxes grow and dry out. This was years of mismanagement in the making. You vote Democrat and you will die, it really is that simple.

          1. What burned were empty fields covered by nonnative grasses. Instead of taking care of the brush
            ………………..

            While I do not know, because not a specialist on non-native invasive plant life. I’d have no problem betting that those invasive grasses and brush are flash fire greasy – burn easily, hot, and keep burning to ash down to through the roots, no matter how much water is poured on (pretty much has to be smothered in dirt). That is what we have from the coast, over the coast range, through the valley (where not farmed), and extending up into the Cascades, even growing in lava where native species haven’t cultivated yet. I give you Scotch Broom. Evergreen with waxy leaves and yellow flowers. We’ve even seen inroads along the highways approaching Sisters with the native Manzanita (which is bad, very bad, because Manzanita is just as bad for having fire go through, but at least native). How bad it is further east in the sage brush country, that I don’t know.

            1. “But recently, an invasive species of grass has spread throughout the islands, making wildfires far more likely if it ignites. But the Hawaiian government was so intent on dealing with climate change, it failed to address the problem of the new grass by cutting it back.”

              https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/08/22/bad-government-caused-the-maui-wildfires-not-climate-change-n1721130

              “wildfires are among the natural disasters least affected by climate change. The media and activists do everyone a disservice by portraying every environmental issue as a climate issue.”

      3. I don’t think the water was private. I think it was a different district than the one that was supplying water to the firefighters. So what caused the issue was a combination of bureaucratic turf war and DIE.

        I hope that guy flees Hawaii, and spends the rest of his life avoiding reporters as “John Smith” in some rural hinterland.

  22. I’ve been wondering about the possibility of another round of lockdowns next year ever since I realized that this year’s show season would end just like 2019, with Grand Rapids Comic Con at the beginning of November being our last show, and no December event — and 2024 is also a Presidential election. I’d been thinking primarily in terms of how to keep myself productive and turning out fiction instead of losing all focus and spinning my wheels in a desperate search for information on What Next.

    Now I’m hearing reports from certain sources that whistleblowers are claiming that the lockdowns may start as soon as October, or even September — and my first thought is, oh please, not while we’re on the road. Ever since the con circuit’s first tentative re-opening in 2021, that thought’s been in the back of my mind, of everything blowing while we’re far from home and and leaving us stranded among strangers who have no reason to give a d*** about us.

    OTOH, a friend I trust, who’s also following the same sources, thinks that it may be a false flag or a trial balloon to gauge possible reactions. So maybe things will hold together at least until the end of the show season, if not the holiday season (at least then we stay with family then).

      1. Of course not — but while they’re trying to pull it off, it could really suck for two older, neurodivergent people with health problems and stuck far from home. If things are going to come apart, I’d rather be at home, or at least with family or close friends who actually give a d*** about our lives.

        2. Leigh… If push comes to shove, either put something up here, or, better, have Sarah put up a post. I think you’ll find that there is Hun reasonably in reach that will “give a d***” and come to the rescue. NOT as good as close friends or family, but at least get you out of the rain!

          (If that happened to be Arizona or western New Mexico, I’d ask you to DM me dietary restrictions – this household currently has none, so I don’t cook for them, although I do remember how.)

    2. The whistleblowers are saying that the TSA will be the first agency to enforce masking if TPTB try the fear-porn/lockdown tactic. I’d use that as the red flag to get the hell out of Dodge and to a safe place ASAP.

      1. TSA
        …………….

        We don’t fly. However if they shutdown the hotels, not looking forward to tent camping. Not only sleeping on the ground (not enough pads, and cots are cold). It is getting back up off the ground. I don’t want another RV.

        Mom will mask up. She’s done with the big trips, but she still has at least one activity that requires flying. But she’s 88 and not going to stop going. She’s decided if she gets sick and can’t get home (she’ll pull out all the stops too, the only reason the whole world won’t know about it is because they censored the story), and dies. “Well, Oh Shit. Cremate me. Send the notification, ashes, and death certificate, home. The kids know where to plant the ashes.” (With dad.)

  23. There are leftists who want to be political opponents of the right, rather than political enemies. Opponents are people you can have a beer with, even while vigorously disagreeing. Enemies are people you want dead.

    I think of Glenn Greenwald as one of those “political opponent” leftists. I don’t know where Naomi Wolf fits in.

  25. The triumph of communism wasn’t assumed by everybody. We even older Brits who were stuck with a semi-communist government for years post-Churchill eventually managed to vote it out!

    Cheers, John

      1. Sure, some of both Oxford and Cambridge went very far “Left*and still do. Some of their people also went very far toward a chap called Adolf Hitler. But I was talking about the emthusiams of MY generaton – both post~communist and pre~Nazi. Maybe my schoolnasters were of different generations to either having served in the same war that chrysalised my thoughts whe I became old enough to have any/

  26. It will be interesting to see if anybody watches the first debate on Paul Ryan’s Faux News?

    1. Should we call the debates the VP tryout debates? Debate the night before Trump turns himself in to Atlanta, interesting timing.

      1. But the debate date has been set long before the Atlanta date that Trump is to surrender. I agree with “interesting timing”, just not on the part of Paul Ryan and Fox News.

        What I find interesting is what isn’t being blared out by headlines. The fact that various states are purging voting lists. Tightening up voting requirements that can’t be steam rolled by anyone. No evidence of fraud? Also there be rumblings in Atlanta, too. No evidence of fraud? BS. Although the Atlanta people’s screams are “What the heck, we listened to Hilary for 4 years! All over the news. Trump gets censored so we only hear from him a few months, and they indite him? WTFH?”

        1. I read an article, Brietbart I think, where Georgia was going to purge 191,000 voters off the rolls. No voter fraud indeed. Screw the Rhinos, screw the Democrats.

          2. where Georgia was going to purge 191,000 voters off the rolls.
            ………….

            Trump, and his lawyers, aren’t dummies. Every single one of the above at minimum, will be linked to the number of differences in votes. All purges will exceed the difference. Guarantied. That is not counting the list of what is being done to stop governors, etc., from overruling the rules, that are the purview of state legislators, during an “emergency”. If only because the legislators do not like being usurped.

            What I don’t know is when all this will be introduced. When/if Trump’s lawyers go for initial judgement to dismiss with prejudice? Or hold it all for trial release, then release it in bulk to the public. Trump’s lawyers are not required (are they?) to give the prosecutors discovery and plan of defense.

        2. It probably won’t happen, but my fear right now is…Trump turns himself in on Thursday, and at the hearing, the judge orders him held without bail as a flight risk, and he’s walked off to the Fulton County jail. It would be so obviously political, so beyond the pale, so outrageous, that…let’s just say I hope they don’t do that and it’s a normal hearing and it’s just like the other three political prosecution turn-ins, sort of a non-event except for leftist pundits.

      1. And how will that affect the mental state of those who wish to do harm to Orangeman? If a debate without him crashes and burns, and his Tucker interviews gets more views on X/twittzer/truth social, what do they do then? That’s why I said Interesting timing.

  27. “…but if everyone took the vax, they could attribute the lack of deaths to it.” This is an update to the previous Y2K panic, wherein the people who made bank off of the ‘repairs’ could claim that they saved civilization by their efforts.

    1. Y2K was real. I found a lot of bugs about it. I also heard of a number of glitches that fortunately were in not critical applications.

  28. This article reminded me of driving through western Kansas in 2020. The only people I saw wearing masks were two women in a Prius with California plates.

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