We Win; They Lose

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I’d planned to do this post anyway, and then I realized it is the perfect post for the last day of the year.

Look, everyone: it’s going to take a long time for us to stop flinching and deciding we’re going to be betrayed. 2020 left scars in the collective psyche, and scars take a long time to fade if they ever do.

The last four years we were hunching our shoulders and just enduring the blows, and that will take a long long time to fade.

And sure, there are things that won’t go our way. But you shouldn’t worry too much about that.

Look, the edifice that supports the boot on our necks is not only rickety. It always was rickety.

Keeping the big lie of the all powerful centralized government in place was a full scale production, and it required a fully coordinated media, fully coordinated panels of “experts”, and a trusting public that believed all of it. Or at least a majority of the public that believed all of it.

It has been eroding for a while, since social media and blogs got really big in the wake of 9/11. Despite their best efforts at censorship, a massed multitude of — what did they call us? — hobbits is harder to control than a few journalists who want to be invited to the right parties.

Trump’s election in 2016 was the first time the media lost to the hobbits. Really lost, publicly. They didn’t like it. The hell the establishment has put us through since is their payback.

It came with unexpected consequences though. The main ones being: their masks were yanked off; and we don’t believe them anymore.

This is the sort of thing that not all the king’s horses and not all the king’s men can put together ever again.

Sure, we’ll “lose” some. Sure, they’re making cunning plans to thwart the will of the people.

But be not afraid. If we win even a few places, it’s enough for the whole edifice of oppression and lies to come tumbling down.

It has been tumbling down, already, even while they were nominally in power, which is why we won 2024.

Be not afraid. This is very important. The rest will fall into place, provided you keep your heads and remember you’re Americans.

Even if we’d lost the H1B argument, the truth is the mass importers of obedient visa-slaves are already losing. For the same reason the South would have lost in the long run if there had never been a civil war.

Look, slave-economies are inefficient. Any economy that minimizes the ability of the employee/order receiver to innovate, create and talk back will lose to one that does.

Yes, we need a certain amount of discipline. Of course. But particularly now in the 21st century, we’re not in an era of silent, robot-like workers standing silently by machines making the precise movements.

And the reason that big management adores H1B holders — other than their being cheap — is the reason they’re a weakness. They obey. They don’t come up with innovations.

Look back at the last 30 to 35 years of our corporations and you’ll see a big history of fail. Since we started hiring by HR and racial preferences, and giving priority to cheap and obedient labor, things have been falling apart. I know this intimately because my husband has made a career in computers despite this and only got laid off once. But we saw friends have career interruptus, and many getting sidelined in their forties and fifties because they were just too expensive. And taking institutional knowledge with them, let alone ability to innovate.

Slaves — and H1B visa holders are that to an extent, as they’re tied to that visa and can’t protest — are always inefficient, and regardless of whether their culture allows them to be creative or not, won’t dare be so while under restrictive conditions. They always lose out to free people.

Take a less obvious case: Journalists who had to stick to the approved story. I have friends who got laid off, sidelined, thrown into peril because their employers demanded absolute conformity. And now newspapers are failing and blogs are eating their lunch. And some of my friends are doing better off of substack.

Same for traditional publishing.

And the same will happen to the big companies that are H1B visa hogs. This is not visible yet, because they’re in bed with government and government is covering their tootsies (and yes, there’s a name for that. It starts with an F. It will come to you.)

But — But– Hear me out: this just means they will fail, if even a single pin holding daddy-government up fails. And we stand to remove a whole lot of them. We have to, because it’s dead and rotting while propped up and pining for the fjords.

Be not afraid.

The future is ours. And the winning is just beginning.

And yes, that kind of open future, where the old certainties are falling is scary all on its own, even if it’s going its way.

A young friend/fan was scared she couldn’t prepare the kids for the wide open future. What will they need? What must they learn?

Well, it’s not just the kids. It’s all of us. G-d willing I have thirty years in me, and that’s time for a whole career. And even in my case, between midjourney and the animation programs (I should show you some of those clips I’ve been playing with) guys…. I could perhaps tell my stories in movies in another ten years. It’s not even a joke. And it is mildly terrifying.

Because change is terrifying, and we’re at the edge of a whole lot of it, in catastrophic, rushing amounts.

So? Prepare the only way you can. Stay flexible, stay ready, stay creative.

America is the country best set to survive and thrive in this, because our culture and we, ourselves, have maxed our creativity stats at the expense of our compliance and orderliness stats. Or if you prefer: we are made of chaos. We’re just entering our element.

How to prepare your kids? Well, by ten make sure they have all the basics cold: math, reading, a modicum of history. As soon as they enter their teens, encourage them in entrepreneurship in a small way. A craft business or something small that they can do. Something you can stake them with a couple hundred dollars. Be prepared to have a lot of them fail, if not all of them. But it will teach them. Teach them to plan and account. Teach them to see what’s a usable niche and where innovation can come in.

And you learn too, along with them. Our lives are getting longer. You’re nowhere near done, and I don’t care how old you are.

America can suck at first and second acts, and rescue it all in an amazing third act.

We haven’t even started. But we’re getting ready to.

Innovate, create, be free in mind and in thought.

Be not afraid.

Dance on the wave of chaos and arrive triumphant at the future.

We win. They lose.

Be not afraid.

204 thoughts on “We Win; They Lose”

  1. Imagine being George Soros. You spend decades and hundreds of billions of dollars working incrementally to get your political allies into positions of power and influence then, at the end of your life, that damn upstart Musk buys a social media company mostly as a joke and completely undoes all of it practically overnight.

    That is 100% pure, grade A, high test schadenfreude. It should come with a Surgeon General’s Warning.

    Liked by 3 people

      1. This is a perfect corollary for the huge companies who get those thousands of waivers for H1b jobs over the legal limit – those Soviet assets in the U.S. bought in completely to the orthodoxy and basically sold their souls for the cause and it’s inevitable victory, and then unexpectedly it became oh so evitable, and those assets were left hanging out in the breeze when their masters fell and devolved into organized crime.

        I think the corporate soul-sellers are looking into that same abyss now, with the first few bricks in the metaphorical Berlin Wall becoming loose, and the first few metaphorical Romanian Christmas events gathering on the horizon.

        Liked by 2 people

          1. I’ve always liked Romanian, and more so Hungarian. They use Roman Letters, and then get VERY creative with them because ye olde Latin alphabet doesn’t really fit their language, but by damn they make it work. Accents, cedillas, hacheks (AKA S and Z carons)…

            Just my ridiculous, humble, and irrelevant opinion.*

            But Ms. Hoyt is quite right. Don’t lose hope or you defeat yourself before you even engage the enemy.

            *Yeah, I’m willing to die for that Oxford Comma.

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            1. It’s considered by many linguists to be the closest living language to Latin. I always joked that I figured it was like speaking Latin with a Russian-ish accent (although I do not actually speak any Latin at all, so…) I *did* find, when I was at the height of fluency, that I could understand quite a lot of Italian and Spanish in particular, although I could not make myself really understood going the other direction, heh. Alas, I am exceedingly rusty nowadays, not having spoken it hardly at all for 20 some years. If I ever get enough spare energy (ha) I’ll dust off my Romanian copies of Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings, and find my Romanian copy of the Book of Mormon. Being so familiar with those, it makes it a bit less of a slog to dust off the language…at least, that’s the theory…

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              1. I had (non-Portuguese) professors who claimed Portuguese was. What I can tell you is that Romanian and Portuguese are close enough to be maddening. I understand every third word. Pronounced much closer than Spanish!

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                1. Yeah, I don’t think I ran into any Portugese speakers when I was over there (unless the poor lost tourist who asked us for directions was actually portugese and not italian–I really am not sure, we just guessed Italian, lol), but it wouldn’t surprise me at all!

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            2. Forgot to add: And Hungarian doesn’t really have any relationship to Romanian at all, that I ever noticed. And struck me as one heck of a tongue twister! While Romanian shares some very obvious synonyms with Russian (the word hope, for example, with the latin-origin speranţa and the russian/slavic origin nadejde) I never found any Hungarian ones. At least, if there were, they weren’t recognizable as such. The pronunciation/special characters rules for Hungarian were…very alien to the ones in Romanian, by and large, heh. I think the only one I ever figure out was that “cz” is, kind of, maybe? a ‘ch’ sound….

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      2. That, or he’s decided that since the world will not arrange itself to his desires, and justice is not done, the world needs to burn. The US, UK, and others block his ideals, so he broke the Bank of England, and is trying to take down the US and everything we stand for.

        His son is a red diaper baby of sorts, or so I get the feeling.

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      3. Thecson that’s the designated heir is likely a yes man. I read a brief blurb about Soros’s heir situation, and why his two oldest sons weren’t the designated heirs of his empire. The conclusion I drew is that both of them were too independently-minded for Soros.

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        1. Soros is an authoritarian jerk (I’d use another word but this is usually a family blog :-) ). Whether the boot stamping your face is imprinted with a swastika or the hammer and sickle makes little difference to the stampee. The two ideologies have many of the same ideas, You didn’t Make that (cf Obumbles), you won’t own anything (courtesy Soros and his buddies) and you’ll be happy (or else you dirty prole).

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          1. Despite the rhetoric of the MSM, the world isn’t divided left-right; what they call left and right are two sides of a single coin. The world divides authoritarian-free, and both the “left” and the “right” are authoritarian. A pox on both their houses.

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  2. What do you teach the kids, to survive in an uncertain world? (The world has always been uncertain, despite massive efforts to pretend it’s not)

    Teach them to learn. Teach them to think. Teach them to be wary of ‘experts’. If the ‘experts’ won’t (can’t!) explain their reasoning in plain English, they’re trying to hide something nefarious. Like the origin of a virus that killed thousands and was used to terrorize billions.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. So much THIS!!!

      But do not look to the current American educational system as thinking questioning students are anathema to their mandate to churn out complacent obedient drones to serve in those industries that provide the donations to fund the lifestyles of the elites in the system.

      And for Gawd’s sake can someone teach the kids the barest modicum of history and civics.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Amen. Some wannabe smart-mouth female was defending Jimmy Carter going to our Middle Eastern allies before the Gulf War and telling them not to support us, because, “maybe he knew all the wars were BS? 9/11 was an inside job.” She doesn’t realize the Gulf War was *ten years before,* 9/11.

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          1. Welll….. -technically- one side can make peace. When they remain the only side at the end.

            Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

            (grin)

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            1. This. Our opponents need to remember this is an option. and through much of history was the only option.

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      2. I’m trying, Uncle Lar, so are my colleagues. It’s getting harder and harder, since “I can just look it up online.” But we’re trying.

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    2. Teach your kids to read, starting with whatever they want to read. I learned to read by reading comic books and then Baseball Digest. Eventually they’ll move on to the more mature stuff, but let them learn to read first–and not by the See Johnny Run (or maybe it’s See Johnny Fornicate now) books that are of no interest to anyone.

      At first the kids will accept everything they read as true. It’s a necessary step. Then teach them that some books are wrong. It took me until I was in college to truly learn that. I was reading a required book and didn’t understand one paragraph (only one? Yeah, it was the old days when books still mostly made sense.). I usually just ignored such a paragraph, but I decided I’d really dig into this one and understand it. Studying it, I realized that the concluding sentence flatly contradicted the topic sentence, and the sentences in-between proved nothing. The scales fell from my eyes, and it became easy to disregard moronic polysyllabic puffery. It’s a rare bad movie that I stay with longer than 15 minutes. That’s enough to prove it’s un-fixably bad.

      Some books can be hard, but worth it. Many books are just nonsense, and only one tricked me into reading it all the way through in the last 50 years. Let your kids find something to read, then teach them to respect their own judgement, and they’ll do fine.

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      1. With both of my boys the key was car magazines.

        Once we had established that it was a slam dunk for me. They would show me the picture of a hot car and my response was always “Nice!” followed by my asking them to tell me all about what the magazine said about it. Funny thing that, in order to satisfy my curiosity they actually had to read the associated articles which often had long hard words that had to be looked up.

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        1. I had a class that had a practicing component – we had to put in some hours teaching adults to read. Best thing I did was to raid my mother’s stash of National Enquirer magazines. I brought them in, and watched them all devour the set of reading material. HIGH interest, simple sentences, commonly used vocabulary.

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      2. Hehehe. My sister hated reading. Like, 2nd grade level in 6th grade hated it. Then I handed her The Wheel of Time and she never stopped.

        When they find something they love to read, it will overcome just about anything. In her case, ADHD and dyslexia.

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        1. Exactly this! Find out what they love, are passionately interested in — and show them the stuff in book form that addresses it! Dinosaurs, race cars, science fiction with bug-eyed monsters, technical manuals for 1930s cars! Whatever it is, they will eat it up and beg for more, and possibly branch out into a love of books generally. But they must be lured into taking that first step…

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          1. I jumped from dinosaur and horse books and whatever random magazines we had around (National Geographic, Boy’s Life, Birds and Blooms, church magazines) to Little House on the Prairie in about a weekend (Mom wasn’t reading it fast enough), then went on to chow down on Les Miserables within two years. Did I understand it then? Heck no. But I learned how to figure out words from context REAL quick.

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            1. One thing I really enjoy in reading online is being able to highlight a word and get a definition in a pop-up. It was always too much effort to stop reading and pull out the dictionary, so I just made assumptions. Led to some interesting misunderstandings.

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              1. What I love about the online reading is not so much the definition lookup – that is frequently taken care of by context – but being able to get the pronunciation of words that you never hear in daily conversation. I’ve corrected some truly weird malpronunciations over the last few years.

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                  1. Reading too quickly when in need of a new glasses script can also have amusing results such as the “prostitute cow dying by inches in the chimney” in Busman’s Honeymoon. In my defense, destitute wasn’t an over common word in my reading at the time.

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              2. Many times those assumptions are NOT misunderstandings, but actual enlightenment. The smoke temporarily clears completely from view, and you see the real with crystal clarity before the smoke swirls back into place, obscuring that which you have seen and now know.

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        2. Early ’60s. My 3rd grade teacher sent home a book for the summer. Because I was so far behind in reading. Have no idea what level. Not I couldn’t read. Wouldn’t. Part of it, and still is somewhat, reading out loud. My kryptonite is horses … Black Stallion, and sequels, Misty, Saber Horse From The Sea, and expanded from there.

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          1. The Black Stallion series, the Hardy Boys, Tom Corbett, The Altsheler Civil War books, the Heinlein juveniles; all of them were like heroin.

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            1. Everything on your list +
              Bobbsey Twins
              Little House on the Prairie
              Nancy Drew
              Stewardess Mystery (can’t remember series name)
              Andre Norton
              Revolutionary War series

              Reading still is an addiction 60 years later.

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            2. Oh yeah, Thank God for the Heinlein juveniles. I went to Catholic school, and they kept a cabinet with all the Heinlein books (among others) in the back of the classroom. Elon Musk read those as a kid too. You can tell!

              That reminds me of a comic book that the church gave us in 1961 serializing a US Presidential Primary campaign between a young handsome rich guy with great hair and his chief rival, Senator Oilengas. Makes me chuckle just thinking about it.

              Liked by 1 person

      3. I started reading when I was very young and never did stop.

        My biggest issue these days is a complete lack of anything good to read. Playing around with ChatGPT and working in Marketing for a year has given me far too much skill in detecting filler content.

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        1. I was two years old when my parents found out I could read.

          My father was painting the house when I toddled up and began reading the paint can’s label out loud.

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          1. Or the Gutenberg sites (US and Canada). If you can’t find anything there you’re way more picky than I am.😉

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  3. I don’t normally give recommendations, preferring to take all the glory myself. Hey I’m a writer. Ego comes with the territory. But I must defer to somebody else in this case, someone who’s a very good, very tough, and very smart person.

    Regarding this and, particularly yesterday’s discussion, I recommend checking out Hollymathnerd’s Substack https://hollymathnerd.substack.com/. She elucidates and eviscerates the H1-B industry from personal experience here: https://hollymathnerd.substack.com/p/our-collective-order-keeping-fiction and from a facts and figures standpoint here: https://hollymathnerd.substack.com/p/about-h-1b-visas. More importantly, she has a series of free discussions on how to learn math for the kids.

    Besides all that, she has many things to say about surviving life, especially one guaranteed to be worse than yours.

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  5. Regarding the whole H-1b kerfuffle, a very good friend worked in the IT department of a well known theme park in central Florida. A department of some 300 IT professionals. It’s all about animatronics and computer controlled everything from rides to light displays don’t you know.

    So one day a few years back they are informed that 150 of their jobs were being abolished. And in truth 150 job descriptions were made redundant. The employees working those jobs were offered two choices: just leave, or stick around for a certain period of time training 150 H-1b new hires in totally new jobs which coincidentally seemed to have certain similarities to those that had been abolished and get a much better severance package.

    Parent company of that theme park has always had a reputation for being high handed with both employees and customers, so one should not be so surprised by such tactics. Will observe that the parent company has also invested heavily in the film industry and managed to utterly eff up their brand with the complete commitment to modern woke culture.

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    1. The “Smart People” decided Walt was a fool, and They Could Do So Much Better Their Way.

      And now they see the accelerating slide into Oblivion. “Faster! Harder!” is their cry.

      Liked by 1 person

  6. Time for “The Scouring of the Shire”.

    There is a reason that one of the two concluding chapters, “The Scouring of the Shire”, got left out of both movie versions of LOTR. The Hobbits won the War, and were forever enabled and empowered by this. Thus the -Hobbits- freed themselves from the shadow over the Shire. No self-respecting wannabe Aristocrat, or Aristocrat-believer is ever going to suggest one free oneself, or that “the little people” can control their own destiny. Just wait for the King’s Good Men to deliver you what is allocated to you. Serfs.

    (HONK!) that crap.

    Scour the Shire. Politically drive out the lying bastards and their sycophants. Put things back to right. Grace and Mercy must be part of it. So is insisting on Right.

    Liked by 2 people

      2. As I’ve said before in other forums Sharkey is still in Bag End (Though it is White in our reality not a pleasant hobbit hole), Oddly Wormtongue did stab Sharkey round about early July. Also Wormtounge had run the place for 8 years before Sharkey showed up).

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    2. “Scour the Shire!” seems a pretty good battle cry; one advantage is that almost none of the current young crop of “elites” will have a clue, never having bothered to learn to read. :twisted:

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    3. To be fair, Jackson’s reasons for cutting it were more to do with time/pacing than anything else (and let’s face it, the ending of ROTK is already *really* long). The Scouring done right would have required a whole additional film, or at least another hour and a half.

      Now, him declaring he doesn’t LIKE the Scouring anyway, and never saw the point, well. He’s an idiot in that respect, and entirely missed that the Scouring of the Shire was actually the POINT of preceding events.

      But yes, we are certainly overdue for a real-world Scouring…

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  7. What to teach your kids? Fall back on the classics: To ride, shoot straight, and speak the truth

    Or to put it into modern day terms : To Shoot, Move and Communicate

    That gives the basic framework. Being able to fulfill those objectives gives them the tools to adapt to whatever may come.

    Also, spend more time planning on what you are going to do to your adversaries than you do on worrying about what they plan on doing to you.

    Happy Solar Orbital Rotation Completion to everyone

    Liked by 2 people

      3. The motto of mobile artillery.

        Can you say ‘radar directed counterfire,’ boys and girls? I knew you could!

        Shoot & scoot is also a leading principle of using pepper spray.

        On TwitteX (I do like that construction!) it’s Blather and Block.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Or “Teach him horsemanship and archery, and to avoid all lies”. The concept goes back quite a ways; it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that its equivalent was already a cliche to the charioteers who invaded Mohenjo-daro and Harappa.

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      1. Or “Teach him horsemanship and archery, and to avoid all lies”.

        The version of that I heard is “despise all lies.” And I think the difference is important. Despise implies not only that you won’t tell them or spread them yourself, but that you will actively work against the lies and those who tell them.

        “I will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do.”

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        1. I felt “avoid” wasn’r exactly right, but I couldn’t remember the exact wording. And you’re right; “despise” captures the intent better. Thanks for the correction!😉

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  8. “They obey. They don’t come up with innovations.”

    Especially certain cultures where The Boss Is Always Right.

    When Americans start acting like The Boss Is Always Right, it’s usually malicious compliance. They know the boss is wrong, but instead of talking back to him and telling him it’s wrong, they just do exactly what he says, and let the consequences land on his head. They do this usually because they know the boss wouldn’t listen to them anyway, or they seriously dislike him and want upper management to notice his incompetence and remove him.

    But those other cultures? They’re going to do malicious compliance by accident, because that’s how they have been taught to relate to bosses all the time.

    Case in point: https://stackoverflow.com/q/42384565. If you’re not technical, this person is asking for something impossible (duplicate keys in a JSON object) and everyone who answers (including me) is saying “That’s impossible, here’s what you really need.”

    Notice also that after multiple people tell him “You simply CANNOT do that”, his answer is “The client requirement is as like [sic] what I posted. That’s why I’m trying to get the solution.” The idea of going back to the client and saying “Your requirements are impossible, let’s change them” just Does Not Compute in his head.

    That’s the kind of worker that businesses usually bring in on H1B visas. They will sometimes get geniuses who can innovate and aren’t simply rote learners. But usually they get guys like the one who wrote that Stack Overflow question. I’ve seen code written by people like that. It usually takes other, more skilled, coders enough work to fix that code that it has actually contributed negative value to the company: they would have been better off not hiring that guy in the first place. But to realize that, you have to have an understanding of what quality code looks like, which middle and upper management usually don’t.

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    1. You also have to have clients who are not practicing the same mindset (whether from the same culture, or modern American management which doesn’t allow one to admit mistakes, and who seemingly have a near infinite tolerance for throwing good money after bad).

      Now garnish with a hefty helping of accusations of raaaaacism and intolerance (worked especially well as long as the management was people of pallor).

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Which is why innovators are also good at lying to clients. “Oh yes, we did [horrible thing that would break your program]! We ran it around [a bunch of gobbledygook] and [more gobbeldygook] to do [thing client actually wanted to have done, but rephrased to make it sound like it was what would have broken the problem].”

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    2. Now imagine what happens when that coder stays in the States, gets a green card, catches on as a full-time employee somewhere, and gets into middle management. That’s what I live on a daily basis now. My last Indian manager was a complete disasterpiece; fortunately he got laid off a couple weeks ago. Fixated on small things, micromanaging, and only caring about whatever HE thought was the most important issue until the next day when a new most important issue would come along. It seems to be a cultural management style and not all of them un-learn it as easily as others do. We’ve got some good Indian managers in various areas but hoo boy, not where I am.

      It also depends on onshore vs. offshore Indian worker. I used to work for an offshorer (now part of NTT Data) years ago, and our onshore people were generally the better ones. They had better English, better interpersonal skills, and at least a modicum of flexibility. The ones in the offshore offices? They were like your gent above. Do by rote, show no creativity or flexibility or ownership, just grind code (or in my case, test things) and shut up. If something breaks, just stop, notify somebody, and sit back. I guess I can’t completely blame junior people for thinking like that, especially doing contract work 7000 miles away in the middle of Hyderabad (which was kind of a war zone at the time with all the Telangana stuff going on) but it made my job a lot tougher.

      Oh, and those offshore guys got mental if they didn’t get at least a 4.5 out of 5 score on reviews. They accidentally sent my two to me to do once and I gave them a 4 and a 3.5 (and that was being super-charitable on the 3.5). Then I got informed that I wasn’t supposed to do their reviews since I wasn’t actually their supervisor, only their office supervisor was supposed to do it. And then one of them called me up and went off on me about how unfair a 3.5 review was and could I please change it? I went to my boss and he was apologetic for me getting dragged into it, and explained this to me. I mean, hell, you could put an inert block of tungsten in front of one of those desks and they’d probably give it a 4.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Oh, and those offshore guys got mental if they didn’t get at least a 4.5 out of 5 score on reviews. 

        That’s because their boss will get mental. You see it here all the time; I’ve had delivery people, PAs, etc. tell me that if they don’t get 5 star reviews, they’ll get fired because it will drag their managers down.

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      2. “If something breaks, just stop, notify somebody, and sit back.”

        As soon as I read that, some of the older, classic union test techs I had to work with popped into my head. Thankfully, the last of a dying breed; the younger ones were usually proactive, and only called for help if the fix required authority they didn’t have or if it was outside their skillset. And sometimes they had more expertise at specific technical things than I did, and I learned something. But we all generally learned something from every problem; good times…😊

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        1. “If something breaks, just stop, notify somebody, and sit back.”

          This is something (Inadvertently?) encouraged by modern development and security practices. If I am conducting testing, I can correct the testing tool settings, the actual automation scripts, etc. However, I am not given access to the OS to set up monitoring, to the application code to set up any kind of debugging messages, etc. I have to raise a ticket and let the admins and developers do the investigation, change the settings, etc.

          Hopefully, my manager allowed me to work on multiple tasks, so I have another productive path.

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          1. Valid points, but I was thinking more of a supposedly-qualified test tech who runs a series of factory acceptance tests (on a radar system, for instance), and when a correctable failure shows up makes no attempt to fix it. That seemed characteristic of the older (union-brainwashed?) ones; the younger ones were willing to dig in and try to find the problem and get it fixed, then re-run the failed test as the contract required (usually 3 successful runs), document everything in the logbook, and only notify me afterward. I only got called if the tech was stumped. If they found a problem with the test procedure, OTOH, I was called immediately; they couldn’t dig into that beyond “Hey, that doesn’t look right…”🤔

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            1. re: “Hey, that doesn’t look right…”

              My response was generally “Um. I think I am doing something wrong ….” When I knew whatever wasn’t working and I didn’t have access to make a code correction, or even if I did, but certain creator(s) were touchy about those sections of code.

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              1. Since the members of our group weren’t particularly touchy, and since we interactively generated the test code, designed, built and tested the test systems, and supported the test runs in the factory, that wasn’t particularly an issue for us.😉

                But I have run into that issue a time or two, and learned to refer it to higher.

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    3. “When Americans start acting like The Boss Is Always Right, it’s usually malicious compliance.”

      BINGO. Unfortunately, that’s the mode I’m currently in for the place I currently work for. There’s a secondary trick that you can add to that, and that’s documenting everything, and including instructions on how to fix those screwups. The documentation serves several of purposes. First, you have a record of who actually made the decisions and gave the orders, in addition to your recommendations against them. That covers your butt when it comes to adverse personnel actions, and often against adverse legal actions. (Just make sure you don’t fail to report required reporting.) Second, it tosses the real culprits right in the chipper. (That assumes their bosses aren’t going to try to cover it up, and such coverups usually entail NDAs and juicy compensation.) Third, you may be able to position yourself to taking the job of those people who are screwing up by the numbers. Just beware that the environment that allowed it to happen in the first place may not be the best place for you to be working.

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      1. As I said in a meeting with HR and a former manager “I must be doing -something- right. I have been here for 19 years. Most of my former managers are not.”

        .

        Now 21 years and another manager gone. Hmmm.

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            1. Of course this time around they sold the entire hospital down the drain, so we’ll see what’s left when I finally say goodbye. I remember 20 years ago they were having steak and lobster dinners for entire departments multiple times a year. Now you’re lucky to get corn on the cob and chicken once at employee appreciation day.

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    4. I have also heard (although keep in mind that I am not a programmer) that an unfortunate amount of code nowadays is just copy paste, and few of the so-called “programmers” can actually WRITE code, or write it competently. They just copy/paste what came before (and you end up with a lot of weird junk code that leads to weird bugs…)

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Oh, you CAN copy-paste…. but part of that is cutting out the parts you don’t need before testing.

        The other pernicious part, though, is that as long as it will run, the development managers don’t write schedules that allow for that much. Besides, they probably won’t be supporting it.

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        1. Ugh. As I deal with daily in the dumpster fire of a system the BLM (fed not thug…well, usually not thug) forced us into in 2023. It’s built on the Shopforce platform–which was designed to track INVENTORY not to act as case recordation for rights-of-way, oil and gas leases, mining claims, and all manner of other things. AND THEN some bright bulb decided to shove the billing in there as well. (Which, now into the second round of billing with this monstrosity, STILL isn’t working entirely right. Although at this point, that’s partly down to the management who knew–KNEW–five years ago that the rent schedule was gonna change in 2025…and yet still hadn’t signed it two weeks before billing was supposed to be out (ie, Dec 1).

          Actually, they still haven’t got it out. (And don’t even get me started on the renewable energy billing crap…Or the fact that the programmers–both on the developer side and the BLM side–decided that the fact that realty has entirely different regulations to oil and gas wasn’t a big deal, and we could just use the oil and gas stuff…)

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          2. Not surprising. During the 2000s / 2010s the Government was mandating using COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) software to cut down on customizations.

            Unfortunately, between Congress and the bureaucracy, government accounting processes are about as far away from COTS as it is possible to get….. which means any software has to be configured / extended in ways Cthulhu’s non-Euclidean architecture can’t handle.

            And when they don’t extend it, you see the results.

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      2. Last place I worked at. Not that my co-workers couldn’t program, they could, given a chance to actually start a major new piece, but they were not great at retro “fixing” awkward code, so cut and paste. Took me 9 years to be able to tackle some real pet peeve coding. But when I did … took off running. I think I shocked the co-workers. But comes right down to it, they had 5 or 6 years experience on the specific system and (most) the tools company used, but I had 5 to 10 more overall experience overall. ALL of my prior experience was retro “fixing” code, in multiple program systems, so that the next major change was quick, and move on (when you are one person, you do that). Instituted in anything new I wrote too. I knew who was going to have to go in an fix or change anything … Me. Might be why my “after employment” <b>silent</b> attitude when called was “I figured it out. Why can’t you people?” Actually were more people there which is why I “was not needed” at either of the new companies that purchased old company assets. They had “enough” programmers.

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  9. Having been through the H1B-visa nightmare, take it from me, the Canadian dude: it is -slavery- and it is bad for the USA.

    Do yourselves a favor, Americans. Burn it down and sow salt in the ashes to make sure it never grows again.

    I will propound upon this theme later, I have stuff to do this afternoon.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Yes, whether you’re on the side that’s happy to see more immigration or the side that wants to see less immigration, H1B is a worst-of-both-worlds ‘solution’ that needs to die the death.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. And yet there are people all over Xwitter saying stuff like “you don’t understand how economics works,” “legal immigrants make us all richer,” “you’re just a racist.”

        Man, some of these establishment pundit types that have become MAGA-adjacent are freaking insufferable. So arrogant. Dozens of tech workers have hit them with stories and they just shrug it all off and tell us we don’t understand. No, we understand, dude. We’re living it.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Get ready for the next few years of MAGA arch-enemies morphing into MINOs.

          “Sand Lube ButtF(HONK!)ing S(HONK!)tWeasel” wont be an adequate slur.

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        2. My sister (I mentioned her yesterday) who works in HR is the same. Any mention of the H1B issues in tech are just sad boy incompetents who weren’t up to the job. Or lying trolls.

          Ironically, I’m currently working for one of the companies that got publicized for this sort of behavior, and have had a conversation about it with someone who was in an adjacent department when it happened.

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        3. I understand how economics works just fine. And what I see is a system where people are only allowed to come into the country to work a particular job, can’t change employment without permission, and consequently can’t negotiate to get market wages. That’s called indentured servitude, and it is a gross market distortion by government fiat. It is a crock of HONK!, and it stinketh.

          The whole system reminds me of Nazi Germany, where employees had passbooks granting them official permission to work, and the passbooks were physically held by the employers so the employees could not change jobs. Doing it to a small segment of the work force instead of the entire country does not make it better, let alone make it right. It’s an abusive system and must stop.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. “It is a pail of dung, and none may abide the odour thereof.”

            “It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it.”

            “It is a vessel of fertiliser, and none may abide its strength.”

            “It contains that which aids plant growth, and it is very strong.”

            “It promotes growth and is very powerful.”

            “This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigour of the [country]; with powerful effects.”

            And that, folks, is how H1B visas happen.

            Liked by 1 person

              1. It’s hard to say since we still don’t have accurate statistics about 2024. I believe we’ve been in a recession for some time but the government statistics have been falsified. They’ll be reversed now and “everyone” will blame Trump. You know how it is. On the other hand, the leading indicators started to improve for the first time in a long time so maybe the worst is over. Trouble is that the stock market is insanely expensive right now and I worry about price inflation. Interest rates are doing funny things. Bidenomics is going to be costly before we finally see the last of it wash through.

                Anyway. Happy New Year, we only have three weeks left of the reign of error.

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                1. Yes. Look at the consequences of Carter. It was President Reagan and President Bush Sr. who got things rolling so interest rates came down, in the ’90s and into the ’00s. Not in the ’80s. Not Clinton; he just didn’t screw it up.

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          3. It also smacks strongly of the Soviet Union and their “you have to have our special papers to be allowed to work”…

            (But then, fascism/communism are, after all, close relatives)

            Liked by 1 person

        4. I don’t have a problem with legal immigrants, in acculturateable numbers. H1Bs are not immigrants, legal or otherwise. They’re foreign workers temporarily in the U.S. to take jobs that there are allegedly no America workers qualified for. What most people fail to understand is that the H1B program is just another means of the federal government completely distorting the free market economy to enrich a specific politician (ahem, hi Joe), corporation (Eeeloonnn), or lobby bloc (Soros & Co.)

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    2. I get you. It’s completely unfair for the visaholder as well. Then again, these visaholders are (for the majority) coming from a country that has such a vastly inferior standard of living to the United States, it’s a golden ticket even if they’re chained to a cubicle and worked to death. These body shops even rent apartments, we had one across from us in RTP, North Carolina years ago. A constantly-rotating cast of 4 or 5 Indians in a small two-bedroom apartment, all carpooling in together in a clapped-out Corolla. But they were probably sending immense amounts of money back home.

      Also, I’m hearing now that there are over a *million* Indians alone that are stacked up waiting for green cards. When did the H-1B become a pathway to a green card? I thought they were strictly for temporary workers, three years and out. Instead they’re getting perpetually renewed to keep the visaholder’s place in line for a green card, which is apparently now decades long.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. H1B has always allowed a path to citizenship, afaik. It’s supposedly for “best and brightest”, after all, and not mindless corporate drones.

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          1. No doubt.

            I’m sure the only reason they aren’t doing amazing things over there is because the British stole $45,000,000,000,000 from them.

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            1. It can’t be cultural problems, religious problems, philosophical problems, and other things that long predate the English getting around the Cape of Good Hope. Noooo, no, it is because the English were Supervillains, and that’s the only reason Britannia ever ruled the waves.

              Tries to nod and look sober and sincere. Really.

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              1. And never mind that the British ended up likely losing money hand over fist before it all ended. There’s a reason why the East India Company had to be bailed out and shut down, with its governance turned over to the Crown.

                Liked by 1 person

      2. “constantly-rotating cast of 4 or 5 Indians in a small two-bedroom apartment”

        Or more. In addition to other refugees (illegal or not) crowding into two bedroom apartments or housing. Yet legal citizens with large families can’t rent because the family exceeds “occupancy” per bedroom limits (if they can even afford the rent with two incomes VS 5 or more of the H1B occupants).

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        1. I’m pretty sure that this group was only 4 (then again it was 15 years ago). But a new one would show up every few months and another would disappear. Maybe there were more in there, I never went inside, I just saw them in passing. The apartment even had a little printed label on the door that said “IT PEOPLE” (I guess the name of the body shop).

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        2. Plenty of smart impoverished students front a person or couple to rent a cheap place, then make it a cheaper bunkhouse.

          Knew a “couple” that rented a dive house next to a soup kitchen, added bunks, and housed about 8-12 at a time. The hardest part was putting up and maintaining chicken wire on the ground floor windows and screen doors to keep out bums.

          The SCAdians finally ran off the more stubborn bums. When the cops finally arrived, the mousy girl and effeminate dude convinced the cops the winos had DT halucinations, because ogres with clubs is kinda silly in town and do -you- see any ogres?

          Sigh. Fun times.

          Have personally observed a squad of Spanish speaking contractors (8-12) sharing a 900 square foot apartment, quietly and neatly. One of the “brothers” was clearly ex-US-military and kept barracks rules. They would straighten -my- doormat. They polished their freaking doorknob.

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      3. They’d be chained to a desk and worked to death in their home countries, with far less to show for it.

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  10. I believe that matters will develop for movie and short film creators in the next few years just as it had for indy writers/publishers, and as it did for small bands and musicians about twenty years ago. That is – the tech to create professional-grade product (be it music CDs, or printed books and ebooks) will make it possible for small-time creators to go indy and find a wide audience. I watch a good few YouTube creators – many of them are furniture restorers or people renovating houses/farms/castles, and the video production values are pretty darned good for some of them, so they are already creating what would have been acceptable and interesting broadcast TV back in the day.

    When musicians could invest in some decent recording and editing gear, and a way to press DVDs/CDs and make up nice packages for them, plus setting up a home recording studio – who needed to sign with a big recording company, when you could sell your own releases at live gigs and make a decent (but not block-busting) living. When indy authors could work with Ingram-Spark or Lightning Source, and do print distribution, and get their books on Amazon or B&N, and then D2D and Smashwords for e-books, and have a nice income stream from that – who needed to get a nibble from the New York publishing establishment.

    It will be the same for movies. Honestly, I can hardly wait.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Heck, my favorite heavy-metal guy has had his own imprint for years, which means a lot of what he’s been putting out goes away from the strict metal genre and does its own interesting thing. (And let us not forget his goth country side project, either.)

      You support him direct and it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t have Taylor Swift numbers of fans, because the money doesn’t erode from the large amount of friction in the music industry.

      Liked by 1 person

        1. Devin Townsend. If you want to know how bonkers he is, look up the official video for his song Genesis. (Not a live performance but the release video.) That should tell you everything you need to know.

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            1. I like to point people at it because it tells you everything you need to know about him. Basically, he’s the crazy-but-fun uncle of the metal scene.

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      2. I’ve come across more than a few musicians who have discovered that YouTube is a great means to reach more listeners. And more than a few have either ended up landing lead-singer gigs (Yannis Papadopolous–who not only did a cover of Ghost Love Score, but did it in the same key, ie, meant for a soprano with epic range), or are using it to launch their solo careers (Tommy Johannsen, most recently of Sabaton–his covers of various things are a blast).

        And many of the gardening and cottagecore types have production values that are just as good as anything mainstream. So long as you aren’t asking them to act, Early American is AMAZING, both in terms of old (really old) recipes, and beautiful video production. (Fortunately, both twigged early on that people came for the recipes and the soothing silence, not the acting of their characters. While their storyline is pretty good…yeah. I don’t know if her husband is still doing the “acting” on Frontier Patriot or not–I go for the recipes and their adorable cabin.)

        Country Life Vlog is another stunningly beautiful one. They’re in Azerbaijan, and when the 2020 insanity sent their chef son home, he decided to start filming his parents doing traditional cooking and work on their farm…and now the entire village is making money hand over fist, because turns out son has an amazing eye for beautiful videography!

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Check out the ‘Star Babes And Starships’ series by 21st Century Mouse. Whatever you might think of the content, the technical proficiency is stunning. True, there is the occasional glitch, hands briefly morphing from normal to 3 or 5 fingers and a really strange scintillating effect on a certain skintight red…garment, but overall very impressive.

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      1. Sadly, of the ones I watched, there was a satisfying variety of starships and guitars, but the babes were pretty much the same spacechick with slight color/accessory/peripheral variations. They all could likely share wardrobe. And not a word spoken.

        Tsk

        “Red” had a certain charm. The red I dated long ago wasn’t so chesty, but could mesmerise by reading her Masters thesis work in Geological Oceanography. And her awesome mane of hair was curly and more orange-ish. Brilliant brain and smile to match.

        Sigh…. ahem.

        Those spacebabes need another 500-1000 calories daily.

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  11. Speaking just for myself, I think I would have to tell stories in the fictional mode rather than any of the video modes. On one hand I just am not good at visual imagery, and on the other I care intensely about the nuances of language, the way a painter cares about brushstrokes (the people who talk about “post-painterly abstraction” can go whitewash a tomb or something).

    But it’s academic in my case: I’ve concluded that my real artistic medium is not fiction but game mastering, which is not telling MY story but collaborating with a handful of other people to tell OUR story. Alas, it’s an ephemeral medium . . . but that doesn’t lessen the satisfaction.

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    1. I also am not good at visual. But I’d like to do both. Video reaches people that words can’t, though. And I also think that I should know how to do it, even if I don’t.
      I too care deeply about words.

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        1. No. I thought I should clarify.
          We went to Topeka today, but because w ecould only go today it was a flying visit. We’ll try to make a meeting in the new year.

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  12. America is chaos. The driving spirit of our founding fathers is basically boiled down to, “Leave me alone and I will find a better way to do it.” Add in all the various dreams of the population and millions of different ways of doing all sorts of things are discovered. Some work better in some ways, others work better in different ways. Find the ones that work best in your situation.

    Our entire lives have been nothing but constant adjustments to the way things are done. As an example, look back to the media of the past. How many stories would end within minutes of their starts by the extremely common items available to us today? How many struggles of the past are solved within minutes or hours with today’s tech?

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Or the other way. “Hey, I don’t have cell service! What do we do?” Or the bad guy uses technology to track the good guy’s (or other people’s) cell phone.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. ^This. We have new and different problems for our stories!

        (Although I do wish police procedurals would quit with the tech/science fantasy already.)

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  14. What I think is going to be big for the next few months is how much lawfare our opponents are going to use to try and stop anything Trump does. Be assured that every single law firm and group that can file suits is getting ready and already picking out judges to stop everything that they can, the moment it happens.

    If we’re really lucky, the H1B issue and getting some actual reforms in government procurement and systems will “encourage” enough idiots to get out of the way so that we can actually apply for jobs and get them.

    Fuel and power are the next big things on the list. When putting a solar panel system on the house with batteries cuts our power bill by almost half (okay, People’s Republic of California, but still…), there has to be an issue with power generation. Along with fuel, especially gas and diesel-lower those costs and a lot of secondary factors start to kick in.

    Dealing with the border and the cartels…that’s going to be tricky. It’s either going to require the Mother Of All Border Walls with a lot of bodies hitting the floor or the Mexican government actually being competent in a very short period of time. I’d bet on the border wall.

    At the very least, 2025 is going to be some kind of interesting and maybe we’ll all survive it somehow.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Did the power bill end up being cut in half because California offers subsidies for people who put up solar panels? Or was that purely savings on your end by reducing the kilowatt-hours you had to pull from the grid, with no (direct) state subsidies involved? (Handwaving the question of whether a tax would count as a kind of negative subsidy, in which case avoiding the taxes that inflate your power bill would count as subsidies of a sort).

      Liked by 1 person

        1. All I know about solar panels is two in the neighborhood who had them did not have them replaced after needing a new roof. “Not worth it”, was the response when asked “why not?”

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            1. Yep. Notice we’ve never put any in.

              A HS classmate did put some in on their local retirement home. He is a local architect. When they first moved in, all kinds of posts on how much money they were saving on the EWEB bill, and building up credit (slow, because the excess power credit covers the rest of the bill – water and sewer). Haven’t seen any posts now for years. Guessing ongoing costs caught up.

              There are areas of Oregon where solar will work (RCPete) like the high desert prairie for specialty projects. But near as I can tell better plan on some type of backup, like wind, and a third option.

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              1. But near as I can tell better plan on some type of backup, like wind, and a third option.

                And by that point, I would bet the ROI is negative.

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                1. Depends on what the goal is. To make money? Then ROI being negative is bad. To have power for frequent outages? Would a generator be better? ROI, negative might be less, especially less maintenance. To have power at all against the cost of having power grid lines ran out to home? ROI then is “who cares”.

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                  1. You should hear a cousin and his wife talk about the solar farm a neighbor let someone put in, leases out the land. Actually don’t. They will burn your ears. It screws with the grid taking out their farming power. Affects the greenhouses, and irrigation wells, not to mention the family housing on their farm. They are southeast of Portland, east of Woodburn.

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                  2. I’m somewhat jaundiced because I live in DFW, and hail is a thing. Solar panels get damaged, and you not only have to replace them, you may have turned your house and even neighborhood into a mini Superfund site from the runoff.

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                    1. Likewise – hail and dust. Solar, like large-scale wind, is an example of a solution that works very well, at varying scales, for some uses. Saying that large scale solar is the answer to all power needs, or even all household power needs? Ah, no.

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                    3. I live in California’s Central Valley, and solar was *made* for places like this. Extremely sunny and biggest power draw is in the summer for AC.

                      Incidentally, the reason the bill gets halved by a partial solar system is that power prices are tiered in California. By using less than the top tier, you can save a bunch even if you’re using more than half the power from the grid.

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                    4. Oh, and the best place for solar panels is PARKING LOTS. Shade structures and power all in one. Our local power utility and most of the medical clinics have solar-shaded parking lots. (Trees are still better, TBH, but they have to have water and water is often scarce.)

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                  3. Your ROI also depends on 2nd-order costs. Our rural residentail solar system was very pricey, but still cheap compared to a new power line more than a mile from the closest possible connect. Last I had any price for running a new line (many year ago, and 2nd hand information) was to estimate $1000 a pole (@ 40 per mile). Even factoring in battery replacement in 10+ years, and back-up generator, it’s still lower cost than bringing in grid power.

                    Steve O

                    Liked by 1 person

                    1. Yes.

                      I watch HGTV off grid building. Not all the homes are that far off grid. As in overlooking town in the valley. To a person the reason for solar, and one location home wind too (if sun not shining, generally windy). I think they even had a small hydro setup for rain coming off roof into water catchment system. Reason was cost to run power to house, plus the high likelihood power lines would go down and they would be responsible for getting them back up.

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      2. I put up solar panels (without batteries) about 20 years ago and haven’t paid an electric bill since. The panels generate more power than I use. The excess power is pushed back into the system, where it’s mostly used by the neighbors. Since the power is used very close to where it’s generated, it actually saves SDGE from generating 10%-20% more power than that to make up for 20+ miles of transmission losses.

        Residential solar power makes all sorts of sense. The roofs are just sitting there, collecting sunlight and turning it into heat. Make use of it!

        Industrial solar power, not so much. Factories need constant, reliable electricity that solar (and wind) just can’t provide economically.

        I did get a tax credit of about $5,400 for installing the panels and converter. No ongoing subsidies.

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        1. Often, there is a law that mandates buying the power, snd often at an above market rate, even if they can’t use it. That can skew things. Since they need the powerplant base load for night use, the day load is now covered redundantly at additional mandated cost.

          This was the system where I lived previously. There was, back then, a bit of a stink over how much tax money went into all the “free” stuff and subsidies.

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        2. My power bill last month was less than $5. Would be a net producer, but since the house stood empty for a year before I bought it there was no usage pattern for the power company to determine an acceptable system size.

          What went up was a smaller system than we were contracted for, so I had them put the extra panels on my sisters house, which was approved for a larger system size than the contract.

          The way the net metering agreement is written, additional power can only be applied to the same month, so there’s no carrying over the additional power generated during the summer. If the power bill is less than 0, the difference is essentially lost. I don’t get any kind of credit.

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          1. My electric bills show an accrued (negative) balance, higher in the summer and lower in the winter. The account is supposed to ‘true-up’ every February, and I thought I was supposed to get a check, but haven’t seen one yet. I’m happy enough just to not be paying an electric bill.

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        4. We put up a system last year. Don’t notice much difference in power bills and the salesman warned us in advance it would take a long time to break even, but my beloved wanted it as a backup/emergency system. Ironically, we had a power failure the day after it was turned on and didn’t realize it.

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          1. Either your system is far too small, or you’re in a bad location for solar power.

            If your system is properly sized and receives good sun exposure, it should generate at least as much electricity as you use, on average.

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    2. I’m not holding my breath on the Mexican government. They’ve made it pretty clear they *want* the illegals here–and are even hiring lawyers to “defend” them. I think it’s going to end up being the Motherwall, a LOT more stringent laws and nasty punishments for violation, and–given the cartels–not a few bodies, sadly.

      Liked by 2 people

  15. “As soon as they enter their teens, encourage them in entrepreneurship in a small way. A craft business or something small that they can do.”

    Harder than you might think, I fear. At least where I grew up. The traditional “Kid jobs” such as delivering newspapers were held by grown men with cars – and in a rural area, a kid on a bicycle had NO chance. Even if his parents weren’t telling people to cut the lawn mowing money in half.

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  16. What I really respect about Musk is that he left the entire H1B debate on Twitter up, even though he was getting roasted.

    I think the only thing he deleted was a bunch of his own tweats.

    A pretty solid commitment to Free Speech right there.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I didn’t follow much of it (I generally avoid X, and get the highlights on places like Twitchy), but I got the impression that he was at least realizing there was more to the debate than he thought there was, and might be considering taking a deeper look at it. And yeah, good for him for not killing the debate, even though he was losing it. I think Trump, after a few initial poorly-thought-out comments–backed out and is wisely keeping his mouth shut on the matter for now. (But I could be wrong–I’m only following the highlights, lol)

      Whether or not Vivek walked back his “it’s only because Americans are stupid and lazy” attitude…I haven’t heard. (If he doesn’t…well, that right there is likely to kill any future political aspirations he might have. Americans don’t appreciate being informed by a rich dude that they’re stupid and lazy, who then doubles down on it when shown evidence that they are, in fact, not and that the system is rigged.)

      Liked by 1 person

      1. The Donald went back to his 2016 position, which roughly paralleled where Elon ended up: this program has been seriously used (abused) in ways it wasn’t intended to be, either in design or in actual enforcement of the guardrails.

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  17. I’ll extend and revise my comment – One of the big impacts of importing a horde of Criminal Invaders is that they take ALL the jobs that used to be held by high school kids and college students. Working your way through school used to be practical. Not so much, any more.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. So does jacking up the ‘minimum wage’ until the jobs are not worth what employers are forced to pay. So the $5.00 an hour entry-level jobs just go away. There’s no path to accrue an employment history and prove you’re worth hiring at a ‘minimum wage’ of $20.00.

      The true minimum wage is $0. As in, you can’t find a job to save your life.

      It is not within the power of any government to increase the value of unskilled labor, only to raise the cost. Nor can the government compel any employer to pay some arbitrary ‘minimum wage’, only punish them for paying less.

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    4. Not to mention that the “student loan” scam has run up university costs so high that you could be working 80 hours a week at a job or jobs, and STILL not make enough to cover the tuition, let alone rent, food, and other things.

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Maybe something strange will happen, and Protestants will get mad at the Bee. (Instead of reading, laughing, and saying, “Oh, that’s gotta be from [other denomination]. We’d never do that.” ) *Ignores youth leader who just learned fourth guitar chord*

      Liked by 1 person

        1. I assume it must be a running joke of theirs.

          I’d have laughed even harder if they’d said “Mormons get really mad at the Babylon Bee” but really, they’re too funny to get mad at!

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  20. Times Square was not bombed or swarmed by armed drones. That’s a relief.And apparently CNN did a New Year’s Eve roast of Kamala (“forced so hard on us she might have been patented by Pfizer.”)

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Yeah, that roast was…whoa. (I saw it later) And now the anchor is on social media firing at all the other mainstream media folks and lefties (but I repeat myself) attacking her for “spreading conspiracy theories.”

      I have no idea who this woman is, but she was entertaining as hell. Maybe she’s twigged to the idea that the best job security at CNN is acting like Scott Jennings, and taking shots at idiots or tying them up in knots until their pointy heads explode.

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        1. Ahhhh, okay, the outrage makes even more sense now.

          Of course, if she’d been toeing the party line and cracking jokes about Trump, they’d all be wittering on about how stunning and brave she is… (eyeroll)

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  22. @ Sarah > “Dance on the wave of chaos and arrive triumphant at the future.”

    I would love to see that as a visual!

    May your New Year be full of blessings!

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  23. The Reader hopes we are winning but offers this as an indication of how much work we still need to do. For the geographically challenged this location is 3.5 hours from Ashville but less than 30 minutes away from schmoozing with the state bureaucracy in Raleigh. The Reader wonders which Democratic owner of empty real estate was the beneficiary. https://scontent.fagc3-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/471729395_902842638687878_1156875215999593903_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=833d8c&_nc_ohc=FSzG9p6kwwEQ7kNvgGHjimo&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent.fagc3-2.fna&_nc_gid=AIpIxMrK1pjRvxrEq0Ed-Hg&oh=00_AYCzKr6Uh5ayYywxy3jwUaU7ueIpfucGCjIFTLvjpLZcMw&oe=677B012F

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  25. NY Post editorial says in nicely:

    https://nypost.com/2025/01/01/opinion/journos-who-joined-gaslighting-on-bidens-decline-should-never-live-it-down/

    The difference between these modern day leftists/Democratic Party propagandists and Soviet era Tass and Pravda is that the people at the Soviet outlets had to literally worry about being taken behind the building and shot (if they were lucky-if they were unlucky they were tortured first), while all these modern day Marxists face is not being invited to all the cocktail parties they love. The proper word for such people is collaborators.

    Shouldn’t New York City and State and the rest crew be going after all the people who lied early and often to the public about Biden’s mental competency and actively conspired to defraud the American public by covering it up? Just more proof that their cases against Trump were pure banana republic lawfare, as if there wasn’t enough solid proof of this already.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. It was an insult, because it reflected how they saw us: simple inconsequential little folk not worth paying attention too. The Scouring? That just meant that we could be kept quiet until a “leader” took charge. They expected it would be them.

      Liked by 1 person

      2. If somebody called me a hobbit, I’d take it as a compliment.

        I mean, think about it. Hobbits are stalwart, sturdy, kind, great farmers, take care of nature, live in a high-trust society where they take care of each other, love their families, have lots of kids, stay faithful to their beliefs, and inordinate lovers of second breakfasts.

        And when the fit hit the shan, four of them saved the world.

        Damn sure rather be a hobbit than a blue-haired orc.

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        1. I always joked that while height and build-wise, I more resemble an elf (and that was a favorite go to costume in high school and college–pre LOTR movies, much of it) at heart I am a hobbit. (Especially when it comes to food, and mushrooms in particular. I’m just grateful I still have fairly high metabolism for my age, because I *hate* exercise!!)

          And yeah. Hobbit values are absolutely what I hold dear.

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      3. Yeaaaahh…they *really* missed the point there, heh. (Especially the part where there was actually a full fledged resistance going strong–but they just didn’t quite have the military know how to pick an open fight. And then a Knight of Gondor, a Knight of Rohan, the Ringbearer, and, most importantly, the Ringbearer’s Gardener and manservant whom even the Ring could not really tempt, and who was arguably the de-facto leader of any hobbits that weren’t Tooks or Brandybucks…

        Well. These ARE the same idiots claiming that reading LOTR will “radicalize” you into white supremacy. I’m amazed they remember to keep breathing in and out, they’re so stupid…

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