Incompetence or Malice?

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

With the fires in California, as often when dealing with government at all levels, there are rumors that they’re doing this according to some long held plan.

Yeah. They might be. I mean, some of the more tin-foiley versions require all sorts of machiavellianc work arounds, and are probably not true. OTOH the givens are that they really hate their constituents and that they view themselves as harbingers of the utopian future. Oh, yeah, and that they mostly think things repeat as in the scant history they actually know, but mostly the fiction and just so stories they’ve read.

And after great fires, cities have been rebuilt to fit grand utopian visions. Actually pretty much every time: Paris, London, Chicago, and if you go back far enough Rome. So I could see them thinking: great fire equals bringing our wonnerful vision in, and working to make this a reality. Among other things it would totally explain Noisome’s self-satisfied smirk and little dance when being interviewed about the fire, and also how he’s been hell of cagey about his plan for the rebuild. (And FYI calling it a Marshall Plan is a bit of a giveaway since the Marshall Plan was imposed on a DEFEATED Europe.)

So could this be “according to plan?” Sure, I’ll allow it. I’ll at least allow that once the fire had started, idiots saw a “great opportunity.”

But wait, because there’s more. Sure, the wolfheads in power are malicious and possessed of a hatred of humanity in general and those who refuse to go along with their plans in particular. They also have a grand disregard for individual passions and interests.

BUT–

And it’s a bit but (or butt if you prefer) they’re also incompetent, and a vast number of them are absolutely rock-dumb.

I’ve — I think — covered this territory sufficiently before, but if you’re just tuning to this channel now, I’ll do a quick recap.

I’m not saying everyone on the left is stupid. That’s just the flipping around of their (dumb) certainty that everyone who disagrees with them is stupid and uneducated (an assumption that btw makes perfect sense for people of naturally compliant character in a culture that equates education with intelligence, and where education has become iron-clad indoctrination.)

People are on the left for any number of reasons, a combination of character, trauma, family tradition, self-interest and accident of personal experience. And their chance of falling, stumbling or being pulled into the left or even the hard left has nothing to do with their native intelligence. (I’d argue that they on average tend to have a more compliant character, to be “good boys and girls” because the establishment has been left for most of my life and you have to work less to be left. So some of them might also be smart but intellectually lazy. And some are ambitious and know that’s where the money and advancement is, or has been till very recently. (I could name some authors. i won’t.))

However, over time they tend to act stupider, and they tend to be less competent. This is not because something happens to their intelligence and ability to think, so much as the fact that they don’t NEED TO.

And the lack of need to starts somewhere about the end of high school if not before. You can just mouth back the platitudes and you get all the candy. You’re not trying to think yourself into your position, you don’t need to hold your beliefs secret against discernment, you just go with the flow and say “the latest thing” and you get rewards.

This is twice as bad if you come from a wealthy, lefty family and/or you’re a minority. Chances are the teachers never taught you much. They were far too busy making sure you liked them, and they virtue signaled as being the right political color and frankly if you were of a certain disposition making sure you didn’t get them into trouble.

And for the purposes of this, “female” is “minority.” I watched midwit girls in my boys classes get the royalty treatment while getting taught so little and having so little demanded of them that if they were my daughters I’d have had even more problems with the school than before. The treatment goes on through college. And heaven forbid you are female, tan and gay. You’re not going to be asked to do anything and will be considered a prodigy if you can pronounce your name correctly. I’ve seen it.

Am I saying women, minorities, gay people are dumber than white straight males. Oh, bullshit. Only the lefties reading this for rage points will twist my words to say that. There are statistical differences in the distribution of male and female IQ (Y’all have a lot more morons and a lot more geniuses than we do — keeping in mind those are still and always rare at either end — and we have more “normal bright.” (Which is what almost everyone needs to get through life, btw, geniuses share some difficulties with morons in getting along with society simply because they’re not the norm, come to that.) And sure IQ for minorities is all over the place, but IQ measurements are “weirdish” unless you get the people administering them being very careful about the background of the tested (if you’ve never done a certain type of test, you’ll test lower, just on familiarity. Also, not a lie that every time you take an IQ test, you’ll do better.) Also leveling and straight out, they’ve monkeyed with IQ tests so much since the 70s partly to make them more “equitable” that some of them aren’t even really valid any more. And the equitable thing is no better and might be worse.

But note that evolution doesn’t work that fast, even if you assume only the dumber are reproducing, and we’re now at a stage where states are doing away with literacy tests for TEACHERS. Teachers of all races, (though mostly female.)

The only thing falling IQ results and falling competence correlates to is “leftist governance.” Which means it’s two things: stupidity in selection (of teachers, superintendents, mayors, governors, and yes fire chiefs) and NOT TEACHING PEOPLE or not teaching people in a way that anyone can learn. (I maintain the failure of teaching languages in the US is that the method used can’t teach ANYONE languages. It helps to have a record/handed down the stories going back to the great flood or shortly thereafter for this. NO ONE IN MY FAMILY HAS EVER FAILED TO LEARN FOREIGN LANGUAGES. Some have an unearthly facility — that’s my brother — so that you could drop them naked in the Amazonian forest, and they’d emerge into civilization three months later speaking fifteen tribal languages flawlessly. Some are like me, and mutter and groan and scream at the books for the first two years, and then it clicks and we’re fluent. So when my kids couldn’t learn foreign languages I spent summers teaching them. They learned. They learned 3 years in a summer (Younger has forgotten everything, but hey.) The problem is that the pseudo-total-immersion method not only wasn’t teaching them, it was making it impossible for them to learn. Reading and writing are now being taught that way too, I think (I don’t have kids in school.))

Both operate because their blinkered sexist and racist notions enjoin them to demand nothing of females or people who tan or females who tan. I don’t know if at some level they believe we’re less capable, or they never thought about it. Or if it’s the magical theory of “raise their self esteem and they’ll automagically learn.”

So you have a population that ranges from illiterate to merely unlearned. From these they pick not the most competent, but those that fit arbitrary criteria in which “victimhood points” add up to create the perfect candidate.

For obvious reasons this results in a disastrous lack of competency at every level from dog catcher to fire chief, and even into elected positions, in a system as corrupt as California’s. (Almost every dem state is extremely corrupt. I wonder why!)

Here’s the secret: picking for any reason other than competence erodes the competence of the people hired, even if the educational system weren’t already completely borked.

ANY REASON. If you were deliberately picking only white, straight males, you’d hit the same effect. You might have a bump at the beginning, because white straight males have had to work harder to have any achievements for the last forty years so the current qualified crop is a bit better than the competition. BUT that won’t last. Because if you’re advancing white straight males automatically they’ll start suffering from the “don’t have to work” effects.

Or you could be picking people for being related to the people in the job. And then you get Latin countries. Or Gavin Newsome. You see where that leads.

For prosperity, safety and advancement, people must be picked for competence for whatever the position is. ALWAYS for competence.

We haven’t had that in a good long while. Even white males get picked for “Complies with leftist beliefs without question” and have been for the last almost a 100 years.

So, no, our “leadership” and “political” class is not all that. In fact they’re idiots studying to be morons.

Are things like the California fires part of a grand plan? At least at the level of taking advantage of a crisis? Who knows? Who cares?

It’s important not to fall into the trap of thinking these are top of the line chess players. People, these are creatures that can maybe pour their piss out of their own boots with the instructions written on the sole, but only if they decide to work that hard that day.

It doesn’t really matter if they have a grand plan, to be honest.

As we saw during the Biden interregnum (two days and a wake up) their grand plans tend to turn to shite and their great constructions come apart in their hands.

They are at that level. It’s my opinion this is why communist systems fail after 70 years. No, we never fully went there, but our leadership sure was picked that way. After seventy years of picking for compliance and whatever proletarian points apply, you have people so incompetent they have the Mierdas touch.

Be not afraid. It’s okay to be angry, but don’t let it blind you. Stay alert for the opportunity to rebuild where things fall apart. And they will.

In the end we win, they lose.

That’s all.

156 thoughts on “Incompetence or Malice?”

  1. Speaking of incompetence or malice…

    The ERA is the 28th Amendment announcement today on Biden’s X account.

    What the heck?

    Was the post a moron intern who doesn’t know how amending the Constitution works? Or was it an attempt to mess with incoming President Trump by fooling guillable idiots who might then end up causing trouble when Trump is forced to tell the media, “There is no 28th Amendment”?

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    1. Incompetence *and* malice apply to that announcement. With a dose of stupidity, and some other less-than-favorable words.

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    3. Biden also mumbled a warning that the U.S. might become an oligarchy. Well, duh, dipshit — and you’re one of the oligarchs. Like Bernie Sanders squawking that nobody should be allowed to have billions of dollars that they earned by their own efforts. So it’s only OK to have billions of dollars if you didn’t earn them honestly?

      Bernie just proved what I said yesterday: socialism, and its bastard spawn fascism and communism, are punishment systems based on taking value by force from the people who produce it.

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      1. Bernie has never worked outside the government – local, state, or federal – as best I can tell.

        I had a mentor who was/is an old school labor socialist. He worked in the skilled trades, and still keeps his union membership and does some work on the side, as well as his main job. I disagree with him, but he walked the walk and worked, hard work. I respect him highly, for all that I think some of his economic ideas are incorrect.

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      2. He issued an Ike “military industrial complex” warning / George Washington “Foreign Entanglements” warning against those nasty rich people intervening in politics – the week after giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to George Soros.

        The prosecution rests, your honor.

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    4. Kind of a flip side to that was back in ’92 when I was working on Kwajalein, during a conversation at dinner I mentioned in passing the 27th Amendment to the Constitution. I was immediately ‘corrected’, and informed that there were only 26 Amendments. This by a fellow who was not just a teacher at the expat school but a teacher of High School-level civics.

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      1. Since the 27th was ratified in May of 1992, it could just be that he hadn’t caught up on current Constitutional events. Not really defensible in a civics teacher, but it wouldn’t be the first time. Of course, that’s the point…

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    5. On my way home from the store today I heard a sound clip of Biden telling us we have to ‘reconcile the needs of Israel and the Palestinian people’.

      Yo, dumbshit, there IS no way to ‘reconcile’ the Israelis’ desire to live with the Palestinians’ desire to murder them all. They’ve announced that desire loudly and repeatedly, and made numerous attempts to carry it out. Why can’t you idiot Leftroids understand what those savages are saying in plain language?

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      2. Two reasons for this:

        1) The people writing what Biden says absolutely loathe Israel and Jews, as does what little bit of brain Biden has left, and they know full well that pursuit of such an agenda aides those who seek “death to the Jews”, and

        2) they people writing what Biden says are true believers in the nonsense that dates back to the Cold War that proclaimed that all the USA had to do was give up all its nuclear weapons and eviscerate its military and the Soviet Union would stop its campaign of global conquest, when anyone with a brain would know that doing so would have resulted in the Soviets ramping up the aggression to 11.

        These people are the poster children for combining malice, idiocy, and incompetency wrapped all in one.

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            1. One reason they have so much antipathy towards any mention of the Ten Commandments, much less people actually knowing them, is that the admonition against coveting what is thy neighbors, is in fundamental opposition to Marxism given that Marxism’s essence is exactly coveting what is they neighbors, and stealing and murdering they neighbors to get it. People who think that coveting what is they neighbors’ is wrong will reject Marxism, and that simply cannot be permitted by the left. Thus the idea that such a core part of Marxism is morally wrong must be erased from history.,

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          2. Oh, they’re big on envy. What they don’t get is, while they’re busy envying everybody with more than they have, they are in turn envied by everybody with less — and there are a lot more of those.

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    6. Biden, and now Harris, are telegraphing the Lawfare for Trump’s second term.

      Link this latest up with his harping on “the oath” to the troops. This will be “insurrection 2.0” as he “disobeys” the Constitution.

      But even if they skip DoD entirely, they may file dozens to thousands of suits in carefully selected jurisdictions. I would pay attention to that last round of judge appointments. Plus of course the previously creative ones.

      popcorn time

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    7. The WH interns who are in charge until Monday counted up the state legislature “YES” ratification votes without regard to the congressional ERA amendment proposals explicit time limit, under which the ERA inarguably failed to gain enough state approvals to be ratified, while also not counting any of the state legislature “previously-YES-reversed-later-to-NO” un-ratification votes that also happened since.

      “Forget it, Jake. It’s Biden.”

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      1. “But what if they didnt?”

        “But that other one didn’t have a limit.”

        “ButButButWhaddabout?”

        Endlessly. In Courts. Endlessly.

        SCOTUS already blew away “separate but equal”, so Title IX dies with any “ERA”. So everyone, men, women, trans, other, all compete with equal rights in the one sport offered. Hey! One set of PT standards for all military. If the ex-she gets a chunk of his social security ex-he gets a chunk of hers!

        R*pe law gets very different.

        Remember, it is long settled law voiding “separate but equal”. The so called “ERA” doesn’t enable it.

        Next, of course, they start arguing other amendments did or did not, actually, pass.

        …

        Be very careful, left-folks, of what you wish. Very.

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  2. In your 5th to last paragraph, are you calling Biden a ‘grand plant’? :-P

    ‘Plant’ or ‘vegetable’ I’d go along with, but not ‘grand’. Biden is a petty little nonentity propped up by venal opportunists and installed by fraud.

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  3. there comes a point where incompetence becomes indistinguishable from malice.

    You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist, though, to understand that the City of LA and certain favored banks (cough Blackrock, cough Goldman cough, cough) are going to end up owning large plots of desirable, waterfront property in LA. How? Mortgage and Tax defaults leading to Sheriff’s auctions. You don’t think they’re going to suspend tax payment do you?

    Goldman, in particular, did a lot of this back in 2008, but were somewhat stymied by the bank foreclosure mess. Both firms have been buying up all the property they can, albeit not so much recently with interest rates higher, I was going to do it myself, in a small way, back in 2009 but the wife wanted no part of other people’s misery so we didn’t do it,

    In any case, you can’t sell your property, but the state will happily sell it for you, to the people they want it sold, a few months down the line. You’ll get nothing and be happy.

    malice? Incompetence? Is there a difference?

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    1. There is a lot of malice; If I recall correctly, the current Mayor of L.A. was one of the founders and leaders of a revolutionary Marxist group. Add incompetence and corruption (the movie Chinatown was about corruption of the LA Public Water agency after all, for good reason), and the only thing that is surprising in any way as that this kind of stuff has not happened more often.

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    2. Don’t forget how many mortgages require Homeowner’s insurance…. that no one will be able to get. Entities able to self-insure excepted….

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      1. State Farm refused to renew a lot of properties for fire insurance last spring, continuing the trend of fire insurance being danged-near impossible to get in the Gilded State.

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        1. State Farm has recently walked that back, stating that they will go ahead with renewals in the fire ravaged areas. The cynic in me suspects it’s because State Farm is well aware that those areas have burned themselves out, and thus are relatively low risk (at least as far as fire is concerned) until the brush starts to build itself back up.

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          1. State Farm going to retroactively grant the policies renewed from the original should have been renewed date, provided the homeowners pay the premiums?

            No?

            Didn’t think so.

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            1. Yeah, so many people are willing to take public relations pronouncements at face value, whether companies or governments. Facts on the ground are all you can count on.

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        2. The situation for us in Oregon was interesting (Chinese sense, alas). We had a major (top 5 in acreage; 400,000 or so) fire in 2021, officially caused by a lighting strike-smolder. Maybe, but 2020 was the year of Pantifa getting at the Deplorables, so I’m using that grain of salt.

          2023, our insurance company raised the rate by 40%. (Country Insurance; based in Illinois, but had heavy coverage around here. ) I asked the agent about alternatives, he said he’d look, but crickets. Tried again. Still crickets.

          2024, I got a packet in the mail. Cover letter said all the great new things they had in store. Having read 1984, I looked carefully for the chocolate ration. Buried about halfway in was a modification. If a manufactured house was not connected to a continuous foundation (concrete block does not count), coverage was cancelled. For one of the really rare cases where it did sit on and was connected to the right foundation, other restrictions applied.

          OK, time to move on. Was quite annoyed at how they buried the lede. Got fresh insurance (Farmer’s Foremost covers manufactured houses, but not in fire areas. American Modern does, and has reasonable rates. Recommended.) Since I felt they deserved the same response as they gave me in 2023, I got the bill. Even though I knew about the restriction, it still took a good half hour of study to figure out how they did it. It was no longer “house insurance”, but “homeowner’s insurance”. Effectively renter’s insurance.

          TK;DR: Be wary of Country Insurance. They’re sneaky.

          And yeah, we changed auto insurance companies, too. Rusty chainsaw. Sideways.

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          2. My dad was Air Force, so I’m able to have USAA. The best thing about insurance like that is that the people in it ARE the shareholders, so there’s no perverse incentive to screw over the folk in it.

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            1. Niece’s family is entitled to USAA and the house interest program company, because her husband is ex Navy. They always have both to fall back on if needed, but got better rates staying with her original **State Farm (like insurances are loyal, USAA probably an exception), and different bank.

              *8 or 10 years. He did not reup when they married. His choice. She did not ask it of him. Had to do with custody with his son. Bio-mom was fine with the non-legal binding (no courts or lawyers, never married) 50/50 custody as long as his mother was the caregiver on his 50% when he was deployed. Even okay with the girlfriend. Until she became fiance and soon to be step-mom. (Rolls eyes.) Also bio-mom married. Apparently a “3rd” mother wasn’t appreciated. Working now. But dang.

              **I did not have the same luck with State Farm when we married. Would not ***insure us together (State Farm will now, but OMG their costs!) OTOH was not happy with insurance we had in Washington when we moved to Eugene. Expected rate raise. Did not expect 3x on car insurance. When asked they said we hadn’t reported an accident had in Washington weeks before moving. Not required to. 1) No damage to us or our car (tapped by car behind us after they were rammed by chain reaction starting two cars back from them, every car except car initiating the chain reaction were stopped). 2) Not our fault. No claims against your insurance, and no perceived problems of the at fault side, you do not have to tell your insurance anything (not normally the way to bet, but in this case it was). 3) Did file police report as witnesses. That insurance lost all of our insurance business. Currently we are with a broker which split our business. Not real happy with that as we like with all same insurance. But reality speaks. 1) not like house policy talks to vehicle policy or umbrella policy even with same issuer. 2) Policy break for all policy with same insurances, across the board, didn’t match what broker put together. 3) Broker is local. Anymore, even in Eugene, the major insurances do not have offices locally (Portland metro, yes. Eugene, no.)

              ***Each of us had non-ticketed at fault accidents, and no speeding tickets. His minor, mine not so much (even though they didn’t have to pay for the car. Or me. Did have to pay for what mom called an expensive Bigleaf Maple tree, which the car took out.) His insurance took us both on (Farmers). Been with farmers off and on for our marriage. Dropped last time because Farmers would not issue son his own separate policy (because same address) even after he got his own, in his name only, car. Normally the other way around, but he has to worry more about us, as > 65 senors, causing problems for him, than him causing problems for us.

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      1. Noisome’s EO forbidding private parties from buying fire-afflicted parcels seems to give away the game. It’ll go to the state and/or preferred entities, at a price to be determined by the Inner Part (Cabal, as it were).

        Did anybody else catch the slip when a spokescritter talked about the Eaton fire as “one we set”? Hell of a statement… Only saw a video with that portion, so not sure if he corrected himself.

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      2. One might note in interviews and such of the folks who lost their homes how many are “legacy” homeowners, who inherited or bought from family or such, and thus did not pay nearly as high a price as more recent buyers. And some number bought some time ago when prices had not climbed to nearly their pre-fire dizzying heights.

        And note in California, the land of Prop 13, there’s a way to carry over the previous Prop 13 1975ish property tax assessment when one buys from, say, one’s parents. Otherwise the assessment is frozen (basically, with tiny increases annually) at the last sale price.

        So the property tax income from all of those $4m homes is indexed from an assessment as low something on the order of a couple hundred thousand dollars, and in most cases well below current market value, which means the property tax itself is similarly depressed’ and old folks are not priced out of their paid-off homes by taxes.

        Okay, why would they not want everything to turn over by sale and reset those assessments higher? The issue is what would sell now is not a property with a house and other improvements, but a smoking debris-filled lot, without utilities or local services, with a proven danger of wildfire vulnerability, thus that sale price would be far below the nominal $4m.

        And due to Prop 13 limitations that depressed sale price would lock in an assessment well below market.

        Yes improvements would get reassessed, but I am not sure how they assess rebuilding, especially as homeowners who stay and rebuild will be generating political pressure for favorable property tax treatment for rebuilding.

        So it is in the State and local governments interest to insure any sales are as high priced as possible’ thus Hair Gel’s order that no sale can be below the pre-fire market price.

        It’s always about the money.

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        1. “the assessment is frozen (basically, with tiny increases annually) at the last sale price.“

          Answer to google question: “Is Oregon property tax reset to sold price?”

          “Oregon does not reset property values or recalculate tax at the time of sale or refinance.“

          Answer to google question: “

          “houses are rebuilt larger than the home that was burned, that additional square footage will be assessed based on its value at the time of construction.“

          Renovations:

          “if your project includes any new construction, additional square footage of living space or large-scale home upgrades will lead to property tax increases.”

          If 2250 sqft home burns down (although in our case we have to pound into the tax assessors that it is 2250 sqft, effective 1988 because it is wrong on the rolls. We have copies of the filed build permits, by prior homeowners, gotten from the tax office.) Our taxes do not go up if the reconstruction is =< 2250 sqft, regardless of construction costs.

          All the above kind of takes the incentive out of shenanigans that Oregon counties/cities could pull. Doesn’t mean they can’t impede rebuilding, as witnessed housing replacement from the 2020 Holiday Fire up the McKenzie river corridor; a lot of lots for sale.

          Interestingly thing about Washington state, while construction costs “count”, it is also considers the number of bedrooms regardless of size. Sister & BIL built a beach home in Long Beach (sqft? IDK, other than smaller than their main house). Technically 2 bedroom/3 bath. When assessed, without the actual construction costs in hand (because “not needed”) the assessment was “right on”, per sister. The non utility, great room/kitchen, enclosed 4 season porch, are: enclosed sun room with screened porch off it, office, and semi-finished garage attic (no flooring). None of the latter have closets, so “not bedrooms”. The bunk/play room (over garage) does not have anything setup, yet (one grandchild, age 1). The other two rooms do have beds.

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  4. From a strictly public affairs/media relations background and training, I am … boggled by the video released by the LAFD department head – you know, the chunky lesbian of color, who basically blamed the victim for expecting her, or someone of her ilk and heft to carry them out of a burning building. Who in the name of all that they might hold holy, thought putting that sentiment out there was a good idea?

    I’m not hopeful for Californians wising up, sad to say – and I was born and grew up there, still have my sister and brothers and their families living here. It’s all a lotus land, and they have breathed too deeply. There was a commenter on Powerline today, speculating that perhaps living in an area where the weather is always mild gets residents out of the habit of being prepared for the unexpected – like the habit of keeping a kit in the car in case you get stranded in snow, of keeping a stock of groceries in the house, or knowing that you might have to nail up plywood over the windows because of a hurricane coming. He thought one might lose a bit of mental edge, through never having to think about getting yourself out of trouble.

    There might be something to that, though. I remember hearing about people in LA deciding to drive up to see the snow on Mt. Wilson … in shorts and tennis shoes, no winter coats … and getting stranded by a car breakdown, above the snow line.

    Food for thought, anyway.

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    1. Just a quick clarification –

      The woman who gave the insulting answer about a man trapped in a fire isn’t the LAFD fire chief. She’s one of 14 immediate subordinates.

      Confusion is understandable given that – like the fire chief – she’s best known for being a DEI hire lesbian named Kristin (one of three among those 14 subordinates plus the fire chief).

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      1. Thanks for clarification. I meant to describe the chunky lesbian of color as one of the subordinate department heads – not the head of the FD itself.

        Whoever they have working their PR … ought to be fired, for approving that video release. Talk about own goal…

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        1. The fire department clearly misunderstood the water department in its effort to increase the number of d…

          I’ll just skedaddle along now.

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        3. That’s the problem when you’re talking about a department in the fire department or police department. It can get a bit confusing. :P

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    2. I don’t think it’s the mild weather that gets people out of the habit of being prepared. After all, that area is subject to unscheduled earthquakes, and near-annual fires and mudslides. It seems to be mainly a case of people thinking that “the government will protect us”, and “it can’t happen here”, when it comes to wildfires actually getting into the cities. That attitude was probably strongly supported by the government of the area, too.

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      1. When it looked like the Windy Deuce* [aptly named!] fire started racing toward the city limits, and they started evacuating communities north of RedQuarters, I started loading a go-bag, like I keep in tornado season. And looking at back roads to take away from the flame front, because three towns had already come south to get away from that and the Smokehouse Creek Fire. Everyone would hit the main routes, so I needed alternatives.

        Thanks be, the fire was stopped before it got close to RedQuarters, but we’ve had range fires inside the urban limits in the past. Fire doesn’t read city-limit signs. Why knew?

        *Deuce can also mean “devil” in the local dialect.

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    3. Best response I saw was “What do you say to the 350 lb. female of gender preference nonconformism when you show up to a house on fire containing that person incapacitated?”

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  5. “Incompetence or malice?”

    Yes!

    No longer safe to assume mere incompetence, when you see a guy leaving fire reservoirs empty during fire season, and turning away volunteer fire fighters. All against the -strident- objections of the probably incompetent DEI hire fire chief, who can at least stand up, see lightning and hear thunder. And who is surrounded by old b@st@rd firemen who know what’s up, that’s something nobody talks about. Even Joe Rogan got told LA was going to burn by some old fire dog.

    Same thing in Hawaii? We do know -somebody- refused to let water be used for a fire there, too.

    Jasper Alberta? SAME THING. Federal government, among other incompetencies, used non-standard fire hydrants in Jasper that regular fire trucks could not hook up to. The excuse was lowest bidder, the result was the town of Jasper burnt to the ground because the town fire trucks couldn’t hook up. They were told all about this, for a very long time, and they very deliberately did -nothing-. And then the whole f-ing town burnt down, as predicted, and nobody is going to jail.

    When you KNOW its wrong, because experts and amateurs alike tell you its wrong, and any fool can see that its wrong, and then you go ahead and do it anyway? That’s malice.

    Its also a scam. Does anybody think those non-standard fire hydrants were cheaper than the regular ones off the shelf? There’s no way. Payoff. For sure.

    Just watch the LA real estate market. That’ll tell you all you need to know.

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  6. Their plans are made of the finest chinesium.

    Or as anotyer pundent said of one of their earlier apparent plan to have Biden retire part way into the term so they could scoot Kamela in, “it [pooped] the bed so hard it broke the box springs”.

    There plans do tend to be the sort of plan where they lose their hat. And generally in a cesspool geyser cause by their execution.

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    1. Chinesium? Do I have a story for you.

      https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/tiny-homes-microshelters-1.7433258

      CBC link, read at your own risk. Money Quote:

      “When City of Hamilton staff agreed to buy 40 tiny homes from a Brantford, Ont., company for a new outdoor shelter site last fall, they thought they were supporting a local, Indigenous-owned business that was one of the few capable of delivering on a short timeline. 

      What they didn’t know was MicroShelters was a new corporation that would go through an American company to order the tiny homes from China, staff said at a general issues committee meeting Wednesday.”

      And why didn’t they know that? Because they DIDN’T CHECK. That’s why.

      And why didn’t they check? Because “local, Indigenous-owned business” gets priority over everything else, because politics, and the staff knew better than to check. They’d have got fired for checking, but not for letting the city be scammed $35K each for an $8k shelter.

      That’s why.

      And when the Chinesium shelters collapse and kill somebody, as I expect will happen, or possibly burn to the ground and kill several somebodies, will anyone go to jail? No, most certainly not. Because a government job means never going to jail no matter what you did, no matter how appalling.

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      1. Most likely electrical fires. Go read electrician fora sometimes and look for their opinions about the electrical hardware that can be mail ordered from Alibaba or similar which is perfectly legal to use in home wiring in the Middle Kingdom, which they find from time to time used by “handy” US homeowners in home repairs, often with extra melty and smoky wiring spiciness.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Yep. Had to replace all the 15A outlets and the light switches in our 1999 vintage manufactured home. Magic smoke release from the outlet that was behind the TV. The switches didn’t fry, but the housings were breaking.

          Mercifully, the 25A outlets (kitchen & laundry room) were decent, and actually had the UL approval.

          Our place is considered one of the better-constructed manufactured homes. 2 x 3 studs in the non-loadbearing walls and all. Hey, we could afford it. And make key improvements.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I bought brand-name breakers, switches, and outlets when doing some renovation a few years ago. All of the components were noticeably more cheaply made than the old ones – thinner bracketry, crunchy moving parts, etc. They were all bought from local Lowes and Home Depot stores, not over the internet.

            I never could decide of they were counterfeit or just the result of multiple passes by the Product Cheapening Department, but I didn’t get a warm fuzzy from them.

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  8. When someone starts a story with “I have this friend…”, it’s often about them. This one is NOT about me, I want to make that clear.

    I have a friend with a very high IQ who is a perfect example of what you are talking about when you say that “geniuses share some difficulties with morons in getting along with society simply because they’re not the norm …”. He once wrote an article comparing IQ to vehicles. Having a “normal” high IQ (say, 120) is like owning a sports car. You can do everything that the average person can do, but usually can do it faster, and there are some situations where you can leave the average person in the dust. Whereas having an IQ up in the 160 range, four standard deviations above the norm, is like owning a Blackbird SR-71 as your only vehicle. Sure, it can go super fast, and there are many things you can do with it that normal people can’t. BUT… two problems. One, you’ll often feel lonely, wanting to share your experiences of flying with others who can’t relate because they’ve never been able to get their vehicle off the ground. And two, good luck finding a parking spot for it when you just want to go to the grocery store.

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    1. Like having a Ferrari when everyone else is driving a Trabant? And they’re JEALOUS? So they all get in your way as hard as they can, and you never get to hear the engine roar?

      About like that? Yeah. And they key your paint too, because Normies are malicious, resentful little !@#%s. Tell me about it.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. I worked with people like that. Go to them for what I could do, easily. But OMG having to plan things out with them was like pulling hair. The “User doesn’t need That!” from them was constant. The ONLY response and phrasing allowed was “Um, you realize that, either this huge client, a list of these smaller clients, or this part of the software, are already using this in the old method? Right?” This is someone who was suppose to have a handle on all the software features. He was also trying to clean some things up. Sigh. Another? I was shocked they didn’t have the concept that cell coverage was not universal (if it was, there wouldn’t have been a problem to solve). Told them, but they didn’t agree. Then it slapped them with the metaphorical 2×4. Huge major redesign required. FYI, “not the right questions were asked” problem.

        I kept being told that at least one individual had worked directly with clients before. Kept silent, but my thought was “How?” OTOH the clients were always telling me that the preferred my explanations because they knew not only what, but how and why without pulling their hair out. I thought that concept was reasonable. Because if they new what, how, and why, the odds were higher they wouldn’t be calling, again, and again, and again. Not like we had any incentives for the number of calls we took, or the time to complete them. Not a call center.

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        1. In 2008-ish I was was in a mostly-uninhabited part of the Ozarks and came upon a very recent and serious crash. As in “severed limbs in the road” serious. As was (and is) normal in north Arkansas and south Missouri, there was no cellular service. I did what I could to help, flagged down a lucky passing car, and then a couple more, just in case. Eventually an ambulance showed up, followed shortly by a helicopter.

          That the guy survived wasn’t due to my limited help. I had no idea what to do. So in the next few weeks I started asking around.

          Even starting off with “no cellular service”, people would tell me “just call 911!” in the manner you’d deal with a particularly stubborn child. That the Magic Slab would not connect to anything simply Did. Not. Compute.

          I looked around for some first aid courses. The fire department, local hospitals, the Red Cross, the scouts… all basically shrugged. “Call 911.”

          A friend had recently got back from Afghanistan, and loaned me the “combat medicine” manual he’d been issued while over there. Basically, make sure they’re getting air (and dealing with things like sucking chest wounds), and how to prevent them from bleeding out before the *real* medics get there. Exactly what I wanted.

          A remarkable number of people were outraged that an “unqualified” person might be so presumptuous as to render aid, even if their only other alternative was “die right there.”

          More than fifteen years later, there *still* isn’t any cellular service in most of that area. The fancy colored charts the cellular companies provide are apparently where they’re licensed to operate, not where they actually have towers.

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          1. tourniquets and / or clotting guaze stop bleeding if direct pressure doesnt

            space blankets to treat for shock (keep warm)

            red cross first aid and cpr.

            Army / armed forces first-aid /buddy-aid manuals

            check the web site for North American Rescue. (They sell gear.) Look for “training”.

            Stay in your skillset. Grow your skills.

            if you frequent “no cellular” areas, get a CB radio. Learn the ways and lingo. Truckers still use channel 19. You can likely hit another person on CB from where you are, or the nearest higher ground. (I had one in my first car, pre cellphones. Helped a whole bunch of times.)

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            1. CB is essentially worthless (having owned a number of radios for a number of years). 30 years ago I came upon a severe crash, and using the CB on 9, 19, or any other channel was a complete waste. Amateur radio repeaters (license & exam required) used to be good, but it’s a complete crapshoot if anyone is listening on many of them, even on ones labeled “emergency” in the books. I spent much of my first career working in areas with zero cell service (to this day) and I was fortunate that I had access at the time to a 2-way radio system with a real human at the other end.

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          2. It would have been later than 2008, to be sure, but they have “Stop the Bleed” classes now (Red Cross and other types.) These classes are based on the principle of “sometimes you can’t have medical personnel on hand for various reasons,” and are also designed to teach bystanders for mass casualty events.

            There’s also Wilderness First Aid, where “wilderness” is designated as “more than an hour from professional medical help.” Which, as I pointed out, includes a common low-level hike at a state park just off a highway, given that it’s two and a half miles at the end of the trail from the trailhead. (Basic calculation is 2.5 miles an hour for a hike, with an extra hour for every thousand feet in elevation change.)

            Anyway. You’d think in the OZARKS that they’d understand the concept of “far enough away to need help now,” but I dunno. Maybe as you go further west and further out, it becomes more and more apparent.

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            1. Renamed maybe.

              We certified for “Wilderness First Aid” and “When Help is Delayed” winter ’03.

              Closest we’ve ever come actually using it was when hubby fell on the road at the top of the cliff at the Firehole swim platform, Yellowstone NP. “Closest” because he fell in front of 3 vacationing emergency nurses (only other people there). All I had to do was get our well supplied first aid kit out of the truck. Scrapes and bruises, but lots of bleeding because > 65 and medications. At least he fell at the top of the platform, not either side of it, he’d gone over the edge. I would have been very unhappy with him. Kind of reminds me of when son, riding his little bike, fell …. in front of a vacationing pediatrician! (Bloody and scraped nose, chipped eye tooth, and dented helmet. Fine as soon as the blood stopped.)

              The other two times involved cars going off the road over the side.

              One on the Banff/Jasper Ice Parkway (no cell service). We weren’t the only ones there. Car went over empty. Someone was hurt because the car ran over them when they failed trying to get in and stop the car from continuing to roll. No sooner than someone got to her a number of crew trucks pulled in. They had crew medics and they took over. They were also able to call for help through their radio system.

              Second one was just this last October. Had entered Tetons from Yellowstone (yes, the Rockefeller area is between them). Had 3 cars pass us (hubby was not going slow). When we caught up with them, one was over the embankment. All but 1 wheel embedded over the side. Good thing caught at the top, because a whole lot of nothing between there and Jackson Lake. Not a cliff, but steep, and not a shallow entry edge. Other two cars had stopped. Driver out of the over embankment car (don’t know if there was a passenger). Other two cars already directing traffic. There was 1/2 a bar on our Verizon cell. We didn’t stay. They were lucky. Late October is a great way to see Tetons and Yellowstone without a lot of traffic and people (animals a bit lacking, but few people!)

              Liked by 1 person

              1. My information is old (circa 2006-8) and the radios have been upgraded, but areas in the north county (Chemult on northward) had (have?) major problems with the 911 emergency dispatch coverage. Seems lots-o-lava raises hell with VHF radio coverage, and the terrain means that the county couldn’t have enough repeater towers to ensure coverage.

                There are spots around $TINY_TOWN where coverage via hand-held radio was iffy, though the few truck radios we had at the time were good enough. Cell service in the river canyons? Naah.

                Again 10 years since I checked, but the stretch between Lakeview and US 95 north of Winnemucca had some impressive cell coverage holes. I don’t need to go that way any more, but that’s a long stretch of road to have troubles on.

                Liked by 1 person

                  1. Yeah, I use weather radio as a good proxy for VHF conditions, and it’s pretty clear that volcanic rock doesn’t pass RF at all well. For the north county, reflections from mountains and buttes make it a challenge. We have that, plus a lot of sea bottom rock*.

                    ((*)) I’d love to see an animation of the past few tens of million years for the local area. The rock shapes imply that a fair number of volcanoes dumped balls of lava into sea bottom–that ended up at 4500′ elevation.

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          3. Yes.

            I am constantly shocked how many people do not realize that cell service is not only not given, but at least in great swaths of anything west of the Mississippi, not having cell service is the rule, not the exception. Not even on sections of I-5.

            FWIW. BSA has both “Wilderness First Aid”, and “When Help is Delayed”, through the Red Cross.

            In early ’00s BSA put in a rule that at least one adult on an “expedition” (backpack, car camp, anything short of council/summer camp/district events where medical is required to be on site) had to be trained/certified in both. I think the rule now is multiple have to be trained, but IDK (B. Durbin, being currently active would know). When hubby and son were going to Philmont in ’03, all the adults on their contingent, their sons, (and us wives, even though we weren’t going), and the other 4 remaining youth going, took the classes. FWIW, put it to use too. Not their group but another contingent had a medical emergency. They just happened to be the first contingent between the camp having the emergency and where help could be gotten. Hubby and I are trained, we just aren’t currently red cross certified.

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            1. My parents last house, two miles from a major CT casino usually has no cell service. I suppose things might have changed since I was last there in December as we finished clearing it out for sale, but I doubt it.

              Liked by 1 person

            2. I think the Philmont requirement is now for at least four per trek group, at least two of whom have to be adults. That certification only lasts two years, but is the identical training to regular Wilderness First Aid, which lasts three years.

              I will have to re-up my training next year, but we’re not doing any expedition-style treks anytime soon. I just want to keep it up because, as I said, with “wilderness” designated as “an hour away from professional medical help,” you don’t have to get very far on a hike to enter wilderness.

              (For those who don’t know why it is different, the point of Wilderness First Aid is to evaluate whether a person is able to assist in their own evacuation. If you can get a person out under their own power, it saves ten to twenty times the hours a search & rescue team needs. If not, you have to be able to stabilize them until help arrives.)

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              1. Been 22 years. Not surprised. Philmont staff, by reports, was not surprised that both Oregon Trail (now Pacific) council contingents showed up 100% of both crews certified. Not standard, but also not unheard of either. Wasn’t required for local units for local treks, including wilderness week backpacks, until ’08 – ’10, sometime (charter through ’10, but non-participating at troop level, unless asked, starting ’08). When originally required locally for treks, at least one adult on the trek (unlimited youth) had to be certified. 100% anywhere locally, most car camp weekends are a minimum drive from any type of help. If you can’t load them in a car and go. Even then dang close to an hour.

                When hubby helped troop with ’10 Yosemite trip, all the adults, including us, life and eagle scout youth, were certified (backpacking planned, but not pulled off, except one adult with his two sons, lots of hiking for the others. Non-critical elevation issues. Backpacking was not advisable. Three of the 12 reserved backpacking permits used. Made 9 last minute, no reservation, hopefuls very happy.)

                Liked by 1 person

          4. Reminds me of the very simple IQ test that I’ve been hearing about lately on X.

            Ask a person to imagine that he or she missed breakfast. If the person insists that he or she had breakfast, then that individual has an IQ on the lower end of the spectrum.

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          5. I took a junior college course when I was between jobs back in the mid oughts that was titled “First Aid for First Responders”. The class enrollment was mostly young guys who were gonna-be-firefighters (which here all have to have their paramedic cert to even get on the firefighter selection list) plus females who were gonna-be-nurses (the main local nursing school is so oversubscribed that they have a lottery to assign spots, so getting extra training while waiting for your number to win that lottery looked good), thus mostly pretty serious students especially for a JC course. I was the lone old guy. The course was the “intro” to feed into the EMT3-EMT2-Paramedic training course sequence.

            The topics were basically any first aid stuff any first responder could face rolling up to something. I still have the memory aid chant “Scene Safe, PPE” in my head on occasion from needing to say it at the start of every demonstration in that class – the scene has to be safe and you need to put on your personal protective equipment first, before diving in. The topics included an update for me on the latest CPR guidance (and right afterward they changed again to only compressions, no breaths), my first Automatic External Defibrillator training (“Turn it on and do what the AED’s voice prompts tell you to do” – there, you too can now get your card), an Oxygen update, latest on tourniquets, and a semesters worth of other stuff. Finals were a whole bunch of demonstrations that ended up giving me about twelve new Red Cross cards.

            It was definitely worth it. Check locally with your local junior colleges to see about their intro course for your state’s paramedic certification sequence.

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      2. “Some people insist that ‘mediocre’ is better than ‘best.’ They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can’t fly. They despise brains because they have none.” Robert Heinlein

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  9. Part of planning is having more than one plan in case if failure or unexpected events.

    If you have no plan B or C (insert letters as needed), you haven’t actually planned you are just writing a list of things to do.

    No one can prepare for every possible contingency but to pretend that not preparing for ANY contingencies is doing your job is malfeasance at the very least.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. There’s a certain type of man in the Silent Generation (older than Boomers) whose solution for problems is, “I gotta guy who…” And generally, if you need something done, you should take advantage of the recommendation, if the SG man gives you the name. In places like fire departments this means the head of the department has lots of “guys who,” i.e. subordinates who take care of defined tasks. It’s generally necessary, manual, and boring work, that which keeps the trains running on time.

    However, I’ve noticed that some ambitious younger people bristle at the idea of having “a guy who…” The best of younger leaders continue to make certain the necessary tasks get done. The not-so-good are looking for the next promotion. It’s more hip to talk about the world being flat and the 15 minute city, than to say, “I gotta guy who…”

    It seems to me that many of the leaks about a lack of preparedness come from “the guys who,” who in this instance know precisely what has not been done–because they used to do it.

    Liked by 1 person

  12. I’ll add, it was incompetence. This is why cities die–the leaders get bored. They get bored with husbanding resources. (I almost wrote stewarding resources–both verbs refer back to male stewards of the past.)

    All that money devoted to firefighting. Just sitting there. After all, what are the odds it would burn up in their terms in office?

    Liked by 1 person

  14. I’m not going to say the Left are stupid and uneducated. I will say that most of the Leftists I know (yeah, not exactly a huge sample) tend to be far less introspective than their conservative counterparts. Which means they have less consideration of their own biases than we have, and are less likely to self-identify errors in their thinking. Who does “due diligence” better? I choose the Right every time, and usually make the right pick.

    Liked by 1 person

      2. Worse, they honestly don’t believe in the existence of communist (well, they eventually seem to when picking doctors…at least sometimes).

        Consider this Marx classic that I’ve seen idiots on Twitter use as their answer on “what will be my job after the revolution” threads:

        In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

        No, Karl, one cannot “become accomplished in any branch he wishes” by “do(ing) one thing today and another tomorrow.”

        Such a thing can only be believed that there is not depth in any field, no knowledge requiring study, no skill requiring practice.

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        1. They have been indoctrinated to believe that 2+2=5 whenever that is what The Party requires of them, and that reality is whatever they declare it to be as long as that declaration is not politically incorrect, i.e., thought-crime. This is why the idiots keep referring to things such as “my reality” and “my truth”. There are no such things. There is merely reality and truth.

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          1. A hint, Leftroids: When ‘your reality’ collides with the universe’s reality — the universe will win.

            Reality is that which does not change no matter how hard you wish at it.

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        2. I’m pretty sure that Karl never wanted to “become accomplished in any branch” other than sitting on his butt, having servants cater to his every whim, and writing nonsense.

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          1. Yeah, if any of that BS was true people would be doing it now. There is no ‘society regulates the general production’ unless you’re the Borg. ‘Society’ is a whole lot of individual people each doing their own thing. We’re not ants, or termites.

            That’s a common theme in most of Marx’s maunderings. If we just destroy everything else, Perfect Communism will magically arise and all our problems will be solved without thought or effort.

            100,000 years ago our primitive ancestors didn’t have capitalism, or money, or any of the other ‘evils’ of our modern world. Why didn’t Perfect Communism arise then? Why hasn’t Perfect Communism arisen in ANY of the societies that have been destroyed in its name? Why do they always devolve into squalor, tyranny, brutality and mass murder? Why can’t communists ever ask themselves those questions?

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            1. 100,000 years ago capitalism was in its initial development stages. You made tools to make tools. I’m sure certain people had their favorite hammer stones and drills and scrapers; and maintained them as long as possible, and even invested the time and energy to make spares when they could. Heh. If I have TWO spears, I can throw one as a ranged weapon, and still have the other for melee attacks.

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            2. You could argue the closest to Perfect Communism was hunter/gatherers, right down to maligning skill. In some cultures a hunter who scores a great hunt is excoriated for it. This is done to remind him tomorrow someone else might get it.

              Even in ones that don’t go that far food is shared from the most successful at any given time because living that close to the margin you need to be able to rely on the generosity of others if you have a bad day/week/year.

              As societies grow margins or tech they develop specialization (flint napping vs. tanning is probably a good example) and thus the need for trade. Money of some kind, a standard of value, makes it easier than barter for trade and while coins are an Iron Age thing we now have evidence for standardized bronze bars for trade.

              So, why do communists societies regress? Because they work as the most primitive form of human social organization. If you force a technological society into communism it will start to regress to a more primitive one.

              Of course, no industrial society has gone communist internally. While some in Europe had it imposed by the USSR after WW2, nations with communist revolutions mostly native in nature (although even Lenin had outside help at the beginning) were still agrarian and trying to compete with industrial ones.

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          2. Probably, although he thought his writing was a great accomplishment and probably thought it was such a gift to the world he was entitled to the other.

            But I’ve seen his followers quote that as an aspiration. They think a couple of hours doing something will be just as productive as a master doing it.

            Hell, they think the tyro making an inferior chair has provided more value than the master making a superior one in half the time because the tyro provided more labor.

            The labor theory of value, as practiced by Marxists, is inherently anti-competence.

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            1. “According to your need.”

              Only it’s always someone else deciding what you need, and they’re almost always wrong. Not only that, but they always decide their needs have greater priority than yours do.

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                1. In the end you decide your abilities. You cannot be forced to work. You can be threatened to work harder but you just learn to hide your abilities.

                  And they can only force you so far. Dead men are never productive.

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                  1. looks at the gulags

                    You do realize that while they nominally know that, they also “know” that people will start to work long before they are dead.

                    Liked by 1 person

            2. “It doesn’t matter how hard you worked on the project, if the project still turned out to be crap.”

              I probably didn’t actually say that to my students, but there were certainly times when I thought it at them.

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              1. I used to be in the Navy. I wouldn’t want to see the snipes (boiler and steam turbine guys) try to fix a radar, or a secure satellite communication system. I wouldn’t want to see me try to fix problems with the ship’s high-pressure boilers and engines, either. There’s years of very different training and experience goes into those jobs. Hell, even within the ET shop we specialized. I didn’t work on the AN/SPS-40 radar, and ET2 Schultz didn’t work on the AN/WSC-3 UHF transceivers.

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                1. Leslie was a Wobbly, and cross-training seemed to be one of their big ideas. I’m not sure she realized just how fast that breaks down when specialized knowledge is required.

                  Enough cross training to keep the ship from blowing up? Maybe. Enough to get full efficiency and performance out of her? No.

                  Liked by 1 person

                2. That is true to a degree. But to another it isn’t. When I was in, Hull Techs and Damage Controlmen could fill each other billets as could conventional Boiler Techs and Machinists Mates (we had the same A school at the time and even Nuke MM went to it until right before I enlisted).

                  Similarly, I’m sure a nuke ET and radar ET could swap at least maintenance duties (not operational…too different) and muddle through with manuals at first (just like a new ET did anyway).

                  But asking an ET to descale a condenser or one of us snipes to do anything but module swap repairs (assuming such was even possible)? No, not an option.

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              2. Anarchists don’t seem to be quite so clueless, especially someone like Fish. I find people with an actual skill or two aren’t hard core commies most of the time.

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  15. When one subscribes to a “there are too many human, we should kill large numbers” while also promoting for proletarian points and victim bingo…. :gestures at California: Depraved, negligent, and incompetent malice is practically guaranteed. And that, sadly, is the part a lot of people miss. When they say there are too many people they not only mean that you are the carbon they want to reduce, but they will happily sit back and watch you burn. Or drown. Or freeze.

    Because you are one of those Bad People and therefore You Deserve It.

    No. I will not leave this river of truth. You move.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Of course, my response to those who contend that there are too many people on the planet and the population has to be reduced is, “OK, fine. You first.”

      That never seems to fly. Apparently, they have to be around to make sure that the right (wrong?) people are culled . . .

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I find it blackly amusing that the carbon they want to reduce is exactly the carbon they need to keep the world they enjoy working. Or do they want to live in all the physical and medicl luxury of a 5th century BC northern European ruler?

        Liked by 1 person

          1. Exactly.

            When the dinosaurs roamed the earth. When the entire earth was covered with lush jungle. When no polar regions at the north and south poles. When the main seas were much higher. When inland seas dotted the continents. The CO2 was multitudes higher. It took an asteroid to reduce those levels. Plants, including Trees, eat CO2. Do they want to starve and kill trees? (Don’t answer that. Of coarse they do, er do not, er do, er do not, er …. Them “reeeeee” …)

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  16. When I think about California it’s with deep ambivalence. It was my home for many years, and I used to love living there, and many of my friends still live there. And you know, on one hand, I don’t really want to celebrate if their lives are ruined by physical catastrophe or economic collapse. But on the other hand, virtually all of them are staunchly Democratic voters and favor the leftist policies that are destroying their state (and other states, but California is especially far gone, I think). And I find myself thinking of the character in Atlas Shrugged who is asked what will happen to the United States, and answers “Just exactly what it deserves . . . Don’t you believe in the operation of the moral law?” And I’m not sure it’s a good thing if they are shielded from the Gods of the Copybook Headings.

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    1. I’m in the same boat, floating on the ambivalent waters. Born there, grew up there, loved it all, have close kin still living there … saw how marvelous so many aspects were … but the gross mismanagement that too many of them all keep repeatedly voting for, and the awful conditions that many seem to avoid looking at …

      Lotus land. And I just don’t think that many will ever wake up from the stupor.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Well, we can hope they die in their sleep, and don’t take the rest of us with them. The problem is saving what we make to sustain ourselves while they’re speeding down the road to hell.

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      1. No, no. These are people I know personally, and have for many years, and have occasionally discussed politics with. When I say that they support the Democratic Party, I mean that they personally support it and favor its general range of policies. My wife largely withdraw from Facebook because she could not endure the ongoing barrage of Trump Derangement Syndrome from them. So if California perishes, and they with it, they will indeed be getting what they supported.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Yeah, not really, though I am certain there’s enough fraud to “clean up” any close votes, as we saw in all teh long-count Congressional losses this time. But the voting matches the environment, as the workplace politics are very heavily Dem here. Being anything but leftist during my decades working in cubical-land was very, very out of the ordinary, and I know I was not alone in keeping my own views in the political closet.

        I wonder if the vastly huge numbers of H1b immigrant tech workers who stay and naturalize has contributed to this skewed Dem political dominance, at least here in the SF Bay Area, as a carry-over from politics in India, where it seems “socialist” is the unquestionable everyone-agrees good, and China, where the Party obviously indoctrinates all from primary school on with Marx. Even the tech-industry Vietnamese who had emigrated after things opened up had all the Hanoi propaganda positions as their internalized default.

        I think LA was pushed over that single-party-rule line by the immigration reform amnesty that Reagan was tricked into. Up here I think it was to a major part this imported tech demographic.

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  17. They are at that level. It’s my opinion this is why communist systems fail after 70 years. 

    Most systems seem to breakdown to some degree/require refreshing after 70 years or so. The US had twice before: FDR comes 71 years after the start of the Civil War. The Civil War 73 years.

    I suspect every refresh, regardless of claims, doesn’t really embrace competence 100%. The usual failure points were be nepotism or some forms of tribalism, such as Civil War Veterans.

    What makes Communism, and TBF would probably have done the same if any Fascist state had lasted long enough (was Franco’s Spain fascist? Not sure, what day is it. was Salazar’s Portugal? I don’t know and even if I had an opinion I’d defer to our hostess, but neither made it 70s years, lasting about 40 and 30 years respectively), is their non-competence selection criteria are actually anti-competence. The nature of their religion actively rejects competence seeing it as a sign of evil (commies) or weakness (fascists).

    A theocracy, being the same thing but with god(s) added, will likely have the same issue although the Vatican seems to be able to maintain competence in most administrative tasks. Is there any large religion that sees competence as evil?

    But it does seem the order needs a good shaking up on the 70 year calendar.

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      1. A lot of Arab societies seem to run on the philosophy that, if Allah wills, it will all go well. If He doesn’t, it won’t. No reason to worry about it.

        There are serious theologists who have a problem with the philosophy of “God helps those who help themselves,” but it tends to result in a much better-run society.

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    2. 70 years is the average span of time spent as an adult (excludes childhood years.) It’s also the span of time where a person’s ability to affect his or her environment grows, reaches its maximum, and then declines. (Although with Joe Biden, it seems the bell curve dropped below the zero line somehow.)

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    3. “Fascism” in the Italian and German instances, were in their own words nationalist socialism, so they have the same socialist feudalistic leadership limits you are seeing in explicitly international socialist places like Russia. I think the only reason China didn’t go over was their hard lurch to state-capitalism, and that is wobbling pretty badly these days from all I can see. I think your generational limit of 1 or 2 for these systems matches up with the dependence on ruler lifespans vs. accumulated societal friction. The CCP 100th anniversary was in 2021, and I doubt they will make it past their 140 (two lifespans).

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        1. That’s why I make a point to refer to the party by its full name instead of it’s short label. “Socialist” and “workers” seems to slide right by the Believers, though.

          I think they just see “National” and “German” and automatically go off parroting “nationalism BAD!!!” indoctrination.

          Liked by 1 person

  18. You don’t have to have a master plan to make the disaster, you just have to have enough foresight to put the right appointees onto the California Coastal Commission so that when the inevitable disaster happens, they can block those nasty houses right on the coast ever being rebuilt, and the insurance commission to make enough small silly rules that cause insurers to not insure, and the California Air Resources Board to outlaw new construction containing any useful reasonably priced appliances.

    No vast schemes or clever turnip plans required, just enough predictive ability to know which levers of power would be able to impose what you really want once the excrement interposes the impeller.

    Liked by 1 person

  19. I shall be rude and comment before reading.

    I wasted the 90s watching the Clintons do breathtakingly stupid/destructive things, wondering if they were just stupid or actively evil.

    They were and are evil. Of intent. No doubt left. No point in asking. Any sufficiently advanced incompetence, etc. Etc.

    Now I shall read your post and see how redundant my comment is. 😂

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  20. My Dad is an incredibly color/gender blind individual. He had quite a few female and black interns (as a NASA contractor) That absolutely counted him as a mentor and friend.

    He would actually help them to figure out how to do their job. He has always had the ability to understand and teach complex tasks easily.

    But I will note. There was nothing wrong with the capabilities of the minorities he helped. It’s just no one had corrected their mistakes and shown them the way to do things.

    From my own experiences as a women in stem, I have encountered the same problem. Because of the shrieking feminist bullies, it’s hard for a female to get the help they need, reasonable help any intelligent person might need. Perhaps why I like books, they don’t know my sex.

    Affirmative action is terrible, because it actually makes the minorities people encounter statistically less talented in their field. And the hind brain can count.

    If selection was purely on metrics, they would pretty much be similar in talent, habit, and performance.

    I just barely tested into the gifted classes all my life, it is not fun to be on the stupid end of smart, I got an inferiority complex. I expect affirmative action does the same thing to talented, but not that talented minorities.

    IQ is not the be all and end all, I think the quality I call ‘show up’ is more important. But it tests something that is necessary for many types of success in our modern world.

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    1. “not fun to be on the stupid end of smart, I got an inferiority complex.“

      No kidding.

      Because of witnessing shrews, I usually (usually? Who am I kidding? I waited too long.) waited longer than I should to get help. When I did ask for help, I always, always, prefaced with “Do not know what I am doing wrong/missing. Can you help me?” Even if I knew full well what was wrong, but had to bring it to the attention of the person who had to be the one to fix/change it. I still do that. Yes, part of it is the concept of honey/nice VS vinegar/accusatory, but not completely.

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    2. I had several subordinates that I recommended taking as many English writing and speaking courses as they could because their command of the English language was less than adequate. Adequate being defined as a 9th grade ability by the military at that time. Generally speaking, you’re not going to get ahead in life very well if you speak and write like an uneducated gangster from the hood. Although that may not be a problem if you’re writing for a leftist publisher, and you fit the right demographic.

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      1. I’ve dealt with research scientists (MSs/PhDs) who couldn’t write coherent English to save their lives. We prefered dealing with the stuff from the non-native English speakers, at least we could figure out what they were trying to say, even if their grammar wasn’t perfect.

        There is at least one research paper out there which I had to rewrite for publication which may or may not be what the author intended (he never got back to us on our final draft). But what he submitted made absolutely no sense whatsoever, grammatically or scientifically. At last when I was done with it, the sentences were complete.

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        1. Considering that logic is a requirement for proper scientific research, an inability to effectively communicate is often one of being unable to form logically consistent statements. Furthermore, said MSs and PhDs should not have been able to get their degrees without having written coherent and logical Masters and Doctoral theses. Unless they ascribe to the Joe Biden School of Plagiarism, or had hacks for their reviewers.

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          1. This was the written version of a poster paper from a conference for the proceedings. I hadn’t attended the conference itself and the editor couldn’t remember that specific poster paper, although she didn’t remember any that were incoherent. But dang, that write up was something special. We tried to contact the author for clarification and got no answer so I rewrote it into something that was at least readable, and we sent that version to him for final approval, and even with a month (I think, this was over 30 years ago) before the publication deadline, never heard back, so that was what went to the publisher. I really, really hope no one based any further studies on Long Island Sound marsh grass on that specific paper.

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        2. Still remember an Enginieering Improvement Recommendation (EIR) when I was a newly-minted intern that I had to edit. Don’t remember the subject, but I do remember the first sentence was 84 words long. I counted. It was several much shorter sentences when I finished with it.

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          1. Pfah, 84 words is nothing. Some Fan Fiction writers can spew out a dozen 84-word sentences before breakfast. You can complain when you’ve read a sentence over 200 words long. :-P

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          2. “Who does he think he is? John Norman?”

            I remember one of Norman’s books took more than an entire paperback page for one sentence. I no longer remember which one it was, though as the bloviation seemed to increase steadily through his career, I would suspect one of the later ones, though I bailed long before the series was finished.

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            1. His Gor series started out okay for swords and tech fantasy; but you’re right, as it went on it got more tedious. I don’t mind sexual fantasies, but his became downright boring and my ability to suspend disbelief in such a world actually functioning just faded away.

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        3. I spent the first half of my copy editing career working entirely on scientific journal papers. It persuaded me that scientists in general have imperfect mastery of English; things look better than they are because their papers are copy edited. Since then, the large scientific publisher I formerly worked for has discontinued having papers copy edited by native English speakers, who cost too much . . .

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  21. Having been downrange of these people, their jobs are not the jobs that they were hired to do. That is an avocation, at best. A hobby for when they’re not doing their real jobs.

    Their real jobs, their vocation, is politics. Using the position to protect and reward supporters, to prepare for the next jump up the rungs of the ladder, to punish their opponents, to make the peasants dance according to what they think the peasants should be doing when their betters tell them what to do.

    Consider California for a moment and the Train To Nowhere. We could have had the same effect-if not more-if we spent a quarter of the money on widening and repairing I-5, improving regional airports, improving other freeways, etc, etc, etc…

    Instead, we spent several billion dollars on a “high speed train” that at best might make a ninety-minute flight into a day trip from San Francisco to LA, at nearly twice the cost…and put a lot of money into Democratic supporters’ coffers. I suspect that the goal is part of the gentrification of the Bay Area-move all the icky commoners out of there to the Central Valley and give them a way to commute to San Francisco and the LA Basin.

    Meanwhile, we have a water system that is surviving on emergency repairs, has not had a major upgrade since the 1990s at latest, and they are deliberately knocking down dams that provide cheap hydroelectric power to protect a rare species of fish that is a minor mutation of a common pike (maybe).

    Could having an improved water system slowed down the fires near LA? Maybe, maybe not, but not having it certainly didn’t help any.

    We have at least two, three bridges in the Bay Area that are needing replacement and improvement at some point soon. Instead, they’re trying to expand BART, which is a pretty good regional transit system (think commuter rail, not the New York Subway), but it is nearly fifty years old at this point and requires major renovations and upgrades just to keep pace. And BART doesn’t go to the North Bay, so your only options are the Golden Gate Bridge or a LONG drive around the north near Napa and Vallejo.

    Parts of 101 are in a rolling state of being upgrades for the last twenty years, and there is no particular rush to get them improved.

    And it’s all graft, corruption, and bananas the further you go up the Democratic hierarchy. Happens to Republicans as well, but their corruption is usually small beans in comparison.

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    1. That was one nice (?) thing about studying New Mexico politics – it was bipartisan corruption from the beginning, so you don’t have to worry about party affiliation when you’re considering the state’s history. It’s graft and shenanigans all the way down, all sides of the aisle.

      When FDR’s New Deal people join the Army Corps of Engineers to scream about the corruption and rot, it’s BAD.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. Back when light (In the word of my grandfather, “Hah!”) rail was being proposed in the Twin Cities, I spent some time at the State Capitol observing hearings on the matter. One of the Mantras of the supporters was, ‘You can’t build your way out of congestion!”. One crusty opponent replied, “Maybe not, but you can sure as heck not build your way into it.”

      Of course, we ended up with LR and all it’s ancillary, uh, ‘blessings’ . . .

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Light rail can be done right. That is, it has to be built OFF the streets, or it’s no better than a bus, and often worse. There’s some decent light rail in Sacramento, but the stretches on the street aren’t great. Having it right next to the stadium and going out to outlying cities is where it’s good.

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        1. I see passenger rail (light or heavy) with no perceptible advantage over bus in fuel use (I think). Rail is expensive to maintain and requires dedicated tracks. Buses run on available highways and streets and can be rerouted on a moment’s notice. Once build a rail line, and you are stuck with it.

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        2. It’s been in operation for 44 years, and the San Diego trolley system STILL doesn’t go to the airport. It goes to the Mexican border, almost 30 miles from the main stations downtown, it goes through Mission Valley 15 miles away, but not to the airport that’s only 4 miles away.

          This tells me public transportation is not the first priority.

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  22. What a shame, the large battery storage for renewable energy projects in Cali just went up in flames as lithium Ion batteries are like to do when over heated by a wild fire, spewing toxic gasses all across a wildlife area, poisoning it. you just can’t make this shit up. Not to mention all the toxic residue from burning Electric Vehicles. Oh the irony…

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        1. Vistra Energy is the remains of Texas Utilities after being taken private back in the 1990’s, going bankrupt, screwing over retirees, and now back to buying other electric utilities. They just bought out First Energy, a nuclear plant utility in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

          Texas Utilities===>Luminant===>Vistra

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      2. I think he was speaking of the EVs parked in various garages and car ports around the Pacific Palisades area. Those areas now being heavily contaminated with said lithium products. I don’t recommend home gardening with native soil for a LONG time.

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      3. California is on the order of 750 miles long as the seagull flies along the coast. That’s pretty much NYC to Savannah, GA, all in one state under Glorious Governor Hair Gel.

        From LA to the Moss Landing battery fire location is basically 270 miles.

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  23. My beloved remains on FB, but he has suffered the same thing from people we regarded as good friends. And I’m still irritated over the, “Great Civil Rights Issue of Our Time!/Respect my Pronouns!” struggle Zoom session we got put through during Covid, that tore a perfectly good SCA household apart.

    Liked by 1 person

  24. So there are some open questions here.

    Can they keep long term plans secret? Do they?

    Valuing coordination and theater means a certain amount of coordinating between cast, while keeping the rubes in the audience less aware.

    Some of the long term goals, like a lot of Hillary’s continued personal ambition, has been obvious. Unclear how much that is primed observers, and would have had false positives if that effort were applied to other targets.

    Fruit of the tree tests. They are maybe not doing those, and are following a theory of factions, so questions about what they see and perceive in their behavior. Could they control better the tiny details that add up, if they wanted to, or needed to?

    Specific hypothetical long term plans may fail on the question of whether they had what information when to base such a plan on.

    When we hypothesize in the present, there is the stuff we ‘know’ that they did not, and never did. There is also the stuff we know now, that was not necessarily available when the plan might have been made.

    Obviously, I do not have all the information, and do not ever have access to all of the methods of obtaining information.

    There can be a natural suspicion that I am about to be mousetrapped again by ‘genius’.

    I thought I was too clever to fall for Obama, and so I am a little shocked still that he ever won, or seemed to win. So I might expect the failures against him, to predict similar failures here, and a part of me is waiting for the blow to fall.

    Certainly, left has expressed a lot strong emotional reactions, and also confidence. (Also maybe desperate flailing.)

    Why not a single decisive blow that changes the whole strategic picture?

    One reason not to expect this, is that left seems to rely on at least the appearance of people being all in on the current thing. So a six year old plan, premised on Biden failing, might be less likely, because of whether Democrats four years ago were confident that Biden was going to pay off for them. Obviously, if one knows that one is faking, one can plan on the basis of the pretend object being wrong. Communicating, and getting buy in and delivery? Hmm.

    Long term genius planning, that is genuinely intelligent and informed, has plausibility issues because of the intervening examples of wishful groupthink. They probably were not thoughtfully maintaining and acting upon a plan, that relied on the opposite of what they were energetically wishing for.

    Which does not mean that we should blindly trust ‘our’ plan. /Never/ trust the plan.

    We don’t have to fuss about every single indicator that, in isolation, is not completely positive. But, that is not the same as being blindly confident that there is a plan, and that our plan, or their plan, or Meng Harrison the gray alien from Pluto’s plan, is whatever quality of extreme.

    We shall see. I dunno.

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