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Friday, January 8, 2021

A Quick Run Around The Web (1/8/2021)

VIDEO: "THE NEXT DISASTER | Part 1 - Ice, Fire, Magnetism"--Suspicious Observers (7 min.)


VIDEO: "THE NEXT DISASTER | Part 2 - Applied Galactic Astrophysics"--Suspicious Observers (7 min.)


VIDEO: "THE NEXT DISASTER | Part 3 - When Will it Happen?"--Suspicious Observers (5 min.)

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:
  • "Weekend Knowledge Dump- January 8, 2021"--Active Response Training. First, my thanks to Greg for the shout-out. Second, there are a lot of links to good articles, as well as commentary, but here are a few that caught my attention in particular:
    • In relation to an article on what happens when police stop responding to calls concerning a homeless encampment, Greg cautions: "Think about how you might respond if your neighborhood becomes an armed encampment or 'autonomous zone.' The cops aren’t coming and you will be seriously outnumbered."
    • As to an article about whether there is an advantage to having an automatic knife (aka, switchblade), Greg states: "Barring a rare exception, most users would be better served with a manually opening blade." I agree. It was a different matter before thumb holes, tabs, and other features were widespread allowing easy one-handed opening, but now an automatic mechanism is an expensive extravagance. 
    • And, quoting from an article by Grant Cunningham on defensive shooting myths and misconceptions, advice pointing out that you will probably have to fire 2 to 3 times to stop an aggressor and, therefore, "[t]he better you can control your gun, the faster you’re going to be able to get those rounds accurately on target."
  • A warning about safety: "Police: Man dead in Ada County target shooting accident"--KTVB.
    An Ada County Sheriff's Office employee accidentally shot another man to death while target shooting, Boise Police say.

    The shooting happened at 12:45 p.m. Saturday in the 28000 block of South Pleasant Valley Road.

    According to police, the shooter called to report that he had been doing target practice when he shot the other man on accident. The victim died at the scene.

    Detectives with Boise Police determined the man had been leaning across a truck bed to shoot at a target when the victim emerged from the other side of the truck and moved into the line of fire just as the first man pulled the trigger.

    Investigators say the death "appeared to be a tragic accident." The names of the shooter and the victim have not been released.

There were probably lots of mistakes that led up to this tragedy, but two in particular are: (i) there was not a clear firing line which the person was not supposed to cross, and (ii) the shooter had not verbally verified with the victim that it was okay for the shooter to take his shot before doing so. The latter is not just good sense to avoid shooting someone, but also courtesy to make sure that everyone has hearing protection in place.

    I don't like using the vehicle as a shooting rest because there are times when people will need to get things out of the vehicle and, particularly when using the tailgate, the shooter may not be visible to someone walking on the wrong side of the vehicle. I have used roofs and engine hoods before, but everyone needs to understand from where the shooter is going to take his shot and that he or she is preparing to take a shot. My preference when I will be shooting from a rest, and usual practice, is to take a small plastic folding table and chair or a folding shooting bench with me. 

  • Comparing apples to oranges: "State Your Case: .357 Magnum vs. .44 Magnum"--The Truth About Guns. The two rounds were developed for different purposes: the .357 was intended to be a better law enforcement round offering better penetration against car doors and the basic body armor of the 1930s; the .44 Magnum was intended to be a better pistol hunting cartridge. The .357 can be used for hunting (and many people seem to do so successfully) and the .44 Magnum has been used by a small number of law enforcement officers, but just because these calibers can be used in different roles doesn't mean that they are best for those roles.
  • "Handloads: Reduced-Recoil .30-’06 Springfield"--National Rifleman. An excerpt:
    An easy method of developing reduced-recoil loads is with Hodgdon Powder’s 60 percent formula for H4895 propellant that can be loaded in a variety of cartridges from .243 Win. to .300 WSM. Take the maximum amount of H4895 listed with a bullet in a reloading manual and multiply it by 60 percent to arrive at a starting point for a reduced-recoil load that can be increased slowly to attain the desired velocity and accuracy.

    Hodgdon’s reloading manual lists 51.0 grs. of H4895 as maximum for Nosler 150-gr. Ballistic Tip bullets loaded in the .30-’06 Sprg., and 60 percent of that charge is 30.6 grs. Increasing that slightly to 32.0 grs. resulted in a velocity of 1957 f.p.s.; however, it also produced a three-shot group that measured nearly 2" at 100 yds. and an extreme spread of velocity of 135 f.p.s. Bumping up the charge up to 34.0 grs. increased velocity to 2056 f.p.s., but the group size was still nearly 2" and extreme spread of velocity was 99 f.p.s. The sweet spot came at 38.0 grs., which boosted velocity to 2263 f.p.s. with 81 f.p.s. velocity spread over nine shots with an average group size of 0.91" at 100 yds. 
    Hexlock holds the key to the unique straight pull action, and operates in a rather interesting way. Six hardened steel ball bearings combine to lock the bolt in place inside the receiver's barrel extension. When pressure increases, Hexlock's hold strengthens, making sure that the bolt can't move rearward.

    Once the round has left the barrel, the pressure eases up, and the action can open safely with the straight pull of the bolt handle. In addition, the bolt handle's position can be adjusted to several different angles, which helps ensure you're clearing optics or satisfying your personal preference. You can even switch from a right hand to a left hand bolt operation without any special tools or skills.

    "IMPULSE will redefine the way you think about straight-pull rifles," said Al Kasper, President and CEO of Savage Arms, in the official press release. "We've studied more than a century's worth of straight-pull actions and kept running up against the same conundrum; straight pull actions are fast, but they don't inspire confidence. Speed means nothing if you can't hit what you're aiming at. IMPULSE changes that. We've brought our tradition of accuracy into the mix to make the fastest, most accurate straight-pull rifles ever built."

    Each model is equipped with Savage's patented AccuStock, Accufit, and AccuTrigger systems. ...

The rifle will be offered in 3 basic models: a big game rifle, a predator rifle, and a hog hunting rifle. Besides caliber, the primary differences seem to be this: the hog hunting rifle comes with a heavy profile barrel (threaded) and flush fit detachable box magazine; the big game rifle comes with a medium contour fluted barrel (also threaded) and a flush fit detachable box magazine; and the predator comes with a plain jane medium contour barrel (also threaded) and a 10-round detachable box magazine with an ambidextrous release.

  • "NSSF: Gun Background Checks Up 60%, Set New Record In 2020"--Bearing Arms. Per the article, the FBI has released data showing that the National Instant Check System processed a total of 39,695,315 background checks over the course of 2020--a 40% increase over the 28.3 million checks performed in 2019. Of course, NICS checks are for more than firearm sales, and multiple firearm purchases at the same time only need one NICS check, so the numbers are not 1:1 on NICS checks versus firearms purchases. The National Shooting Sports Foundation burrows down into these numbers to try to figure out firearm sales, however, and it estimates that more than 8.4 million people legally purchased a firearm for the first time in 2020. It also believes that the number of firearms purchases this year is up 60% over 2019.
  • "How To Build A Hyper-Enabled Operator: Belief Systems" by Marcus Wynne. The top attribute is love. Wynne explains:
    It’s an old triuism that the combat soldier fights for the soldier beside them. In an environment of hellish risk, where one may be working alone under extraordinary danger for long periods of time, the trust engendered by true love of one another might be the only thing sustaining an undercover operator in those dark hours when the terrifying solitude of their mission sinks in.

    Being able to love others rules out sociopaths, narcissists, and psychopaths. It provides a gut check to the senior NCOs who run the selection courses and teams in the field.

    “Could I love this one? Do I love this one? Do I love this one enough to die for him/her?”

    That applies to both the selection officers and the trainees.

    It’s a concept that breaks down the belief of super-operator as somehow inhuman. My research and experience now and in the past has shown me that the best operators in the long haul are MORE human in their emotional ability — managing their own and those of others — while navigating very tough passages. One friend characterized the best operators as “either meteors or moons.” Meteors blazed bright and fast and burnt out; moons were consistent, steady and shone light even in the darkest of times.

    So perhaps a high level of emotional intelligence, starting with the motivation/ability to love someone other than one’s self and the mission might be a good attribute for the next generation of special operator?
All flashlights are definitely not made equal. For a flashlight to work as a self defense tool it needs to be:
  • Small enough to easily carry
  • Easy to turn on
  • Blindingly bright
  • Reliable
  • Solid
For handguns, I believe that a hand held light is best. Hand held lights are much more versatile and can be used tactically as well as for any other application that a flashlight can be used for. There are many positions that can be used to allow the light and handgun to be held parallel and provide mutual support, or the light can be held off to the side of the body to present a false target to a potential assailant. Typically the handgun is held in the strong hand and the light is held in the weak hand.  Unlike the weapon mounted light, the hand held light may be used to illuminate areas that may or may not contain a target, without pointing the handgun at the area. If a target is detected, the handgun can quickly be brought into line to cover the target. The hand held light also allows the light to be turned on or off as needed, additionally the light might have other features such as a dimming or a strobe feature, that become more user friendly with a hand held light. Furthermore the light can be turned off to minimize the ability of an attacker to locate you.
    • Related: "How To Use A Tactical Flashlight: Self-Defense Tips And Training" by Lewis Miller, Online Barracks. This article discusses what makes a flashlight "tactical" as opposed to just another flashlight; eight (8) ways to use a flashlight; how to use a flashlight with a firearm; how to hold a flashlight as a striking weapon and where to strike; and how to choose a good light. An excerpt:
    I already mentioned that the lumens of these flashlights are high enough to blind an attacker. What I forgot to say was that you could also use the SOS and Strobe settings on your attacker.

    This action will create the Bucha Effect which can also be called flicker vertigo. This is caused by an imbalance of the brain cells produced by the flashing or flickering of bright light. It is also common for helicopter pilots or passengers to look up at the sun through the blades of the helicopter which causes this effect.

    It is also known for people that have epilepsy that it can be triggered if they are exposed to the flickering of lights. 
A survival knife is a knife that is designed for a variety of typically outdoor tasks, usually the processing of wood, and chores that one would engage in around camp, or during a survival situation. Survival knives may come with additional survival gear either tucked safely away in their sheets, or even within their handles. Fighting knives are designed as dedicated offensive or defensive weapons, usually with an aggressively textured handle for a no-slip grip, a half or full guard, and a blade designed for maximum sharpness and penetration.

    I'm going to discuss what I believe are the differences. Idaho law prohibiting the concealed carry of a deadly weapon was originally lifted from California law and brought to Idaho during its gold and silver rushes (why reinvent the wheel, right?), back when people understood and appreciated the difference between various utility knives and weapons for fighting. It's list of deadly weapons for over 100 years was this: "any dirk, dirk knife, bowie knife, dagger, sling shot [i.e., a "slung shot"], pistol, revolver, gun or any other deadly or dangerous weapon." State v. McNary, 100 Idaho 244, 247 n. 1, 596 P.2d 417, 420 n. 1 (1979). Of course, just as in California and other states with similar lists, generations of ignorant judges, police and prosecutors basterdized the included bladed weapons to pretty much mean anything sharp and pointy no matter the size, intended use or design. Eventually, in 2015, the Idaho legislature completely reformed the laws regarding knives to provide more objective factors and completely remove certain types of knives from the list.
 
    But getting back to the topic, if we look at the original list, all the knives included were fighting knives employing a fixed blade, traditionally with guards. The dirk and dagger were double-edged weapons. The bowie knife, in the form popular in the 19th Century, also had a partially sharpened back edge--modern versions have a false edge instead and should be considered "bowie style" rather than true bowie knives. Daggers and bowie knives typically had blade lengths in excess of 10-inches. Dirks had shorter blade lengths and would be concealed in socks or boots. Because of the size and (generally) double edged nature of these weapons, they were not all that practical for utility purposes. And that is a key point--the design of these knives meant that they were optimized for fighting; they weren't all that useful for skinning or butchering animals or many of the other varied tasks knives were put to.

    A survival knife is a little harder to define. When I hear that term, I tend to think of the hollow handle knives popular in the 1980s and 90s where a survival kit was generally included in the handle with a sawtooth back edge on the blade, two of the best being the Aitor Jungle King I and Jungle King II knives. Others probably think of various camp or field knives that are on the market. But I would say any sort of general field utility knife that is able to withstand prying and batoning would qualify as a "survival knife". 

    Evaporative cooling is limited by the current wet bulb temperature.    No matter how much liquid evaporates or how fast it evaporates the minimum temperature that can be reached by direct evaporation is the wet bulb temperature.   A wet bulb temperature is an indication of the amount of water vapor (relative humidity) in the air.  

* * *

    So if it is 90°F (32.2°C) outside and  the relative humidity is 50% then coldest a direct evaporative refrigerator could possibly get is 74°F (23.3°C).   That is much better than no cooling at all but far less than what we expect with our modern day refrigerators which keep food at 40°F (4.4°C) or below.    On the other hand, the device is inexpensive, easy to build and operate. 

    I use the word ‘direct’ evaporative cooling because there exists another type of evaporative cooling called indirect cooling.  It involves feeding an evaporative cooler air that has already been chilled by another evaporative cooler.  So it is possible to get evaporative coolers to temperatures below that of the wet bulb.  At that point, we are talking about a much more complex device and not a simple pot in pot refrigerator. 
    Once it gets cold enough, diesel fuel will "gel", meaning that the components of the fuel will solidify and fall out of suspension. Normal #2 diesel has a fair percentage of paraffin wax as a component which solidifies easily. Solid wax doesn't flow, so fuel lines and filters tend to get blocked and fuel pumps have a hard time moving it through the injectors. This means that a cold diesel engine won't start or won't stay running once the fuel starts to gel.

    The exact temperature of "cold enough" will vary with the grade of fuel, so in the winter most sellers will either switch to the more expensive, wax-free, #1 diesel (kerosene), or they will blend their #2 diesel about 60/40 with #1 diesel to keep the price down while still being able to pump it.

And specific recommendations (referring to a photograph in the article):

    The white bottles on the left are Power Service diesel supplement. It provides good anti-gelling and stabilizes the fuel for storage, and a one-quart bottle will treat up to 100 gallons of fuel. This is my choice for my diesel truck with a 50 gallon fuel tank.

    The red bottles are Power Service 911, and that is used to fix already gelled fuel. The normal method is to remove the fuel filter and pour the 911 into the canister, where it can dissolve the congealed wax and allow fuel flow. The rest of the container, or another one, is dumped into the fuel tank and left to sit for an hour or two so it can do the same to the fuel there.

    The clear bottles of brown liquid are Howes Diesel Treat, our best seller. Howes does everything that the Power Serve does, but backs it up with a guarantee that if you run six bottles of it through your equipment and it still gels, they will pay for the tow to get you fixed up. The two-quart bottles shown will treat up to 320 gallons of fuel, which is easier to use in storage tanks and commercial vehicles with large fuel tanks.
    CCTV footage caught the moment the man, carrying a torch [i.e., flashlight], was attacked and bitten by the wild beast in the east of Russia.

    The farmer and the wolf fought in the snow before he grabbed and held the animal by the neck.

    The full grainy video is around three minutes long and ends with the unnamed farmer repeatedly striking the predator, but reports say he used no weapons.

    'The farmer had no time to pick up his rifle, and went into a bare handed fight with the animal,' said one report.

    He feared the wolf would attack his cattle, after killing two dogs and attacking a horse, he said.

    The wounded man - who posed with the dead wolf - is being tested for rabies after the attack.
  • "With Whom Is Law Enforcement Aligned?" by Herschel Smith, Captain's Journal. Short answer: with whomever is writing out their paychecks. Slightly longer answer: "LEOs the world-over will work [to] ensure one, single, solitary thing: the continuance of the status quo and their chain of command.  They will obey orders.  They work to ensure continuity of government, not justice." I would add that our military forces will do likewise. 
  • "5 Terrorism Trends to Watch in 2021" by Bridget Johnson, Homeland Security Today. They are: (i) conspiracy theory extremism (e.g., the Nashville bomber); (ii) violence against faith-based institutions (e.g., churches and church owned or operated schools); (iii) domestic extremism (i.e., the perennial warnings about Neo-Nazis); (iv) complex coordinated attacks (not a Mumbai style attack, but multiple "lone wolf" attackers according to the article); and (v) ISIS and al-Qaeda.

VIDEO: "What Is the Great Reset? | World Economic Forum"--America Uncovered (12 min.)

Miscellany:
    For months, we have watched as politicians, the media, academia, and other political and cultural institutions have either been silent or given approval to rioting, destruction of private property and the harming of innocent people under the auspices of achieving “justice”. Some of those same politicians, reporters and professors are now shocked when another group of people have decided that their concerns over injustice warrant a similar response.
 
    You cannot act in such a way that diminishes people’s faith in processes and institutions and then act surprised when people turn on those processes and institutions. If you claim that the system is irrevocably rigged, racist, sexist, bigoted, you do not get to then turn around and appeal to those processes and institutions for the peaceful adjudication of problems. And yet that is exactly what many in positions of influence have done. Simultaneously condemning such institutions as corrupt when it suits their purpose, and then holding them up as models to be followed when they approve of the outcomes. 

Hoyt then adds:

    My biggest disagreement, besides talking of “storming” the capitol as though they’d gone in guns blazing, is his contention that we should all work on the culture: news, the education, entertainment.

    It’s not that he’s wrong. It’s that he, and most of the people outside those fields don’t know there has been a political line for at least fifty years.  The left took the institutions and companies over and they will not hire anyone to the right of Lenin, or promote anyone to the right of Lenin, or, if they have to take you absolutely, they will make your life as miserable as they can.  There are exceptions. Some fall in anyway.

    BUT those institutions are leftist because the left makes sure of it.

    My friend Dave Freer, brilliant man, has long told me that the rights hires on competence and ability. The left hires (buys, etc.) on politics alone.  He’s told me for 20 years “That means they win over time.”

She suggests that we need to consciously seek to buy from people on the Right when possible. 

  • "Enough With The Outrage" by John Hinderaker, Powerline.  Hinderaker observes that "[u]ntil yesterday, one might have thought that liberals consider rioting and other forms of political violence to be as American as apple pie." He continues:
    ... Do you remember when President Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017? Leftist Democrats rioted in Washington that day. That riot was arguably worse, more violent and more destructive, than what happened in D.C. yesterday. The liberal rioters destroyed stores, set vehicles on fire and battled with the police. Six police officers were wounded. ...

    I don’t recall a single Democratic office-holder denouncing the Democrats’ Inauguration Day riot, and the Associated Press came perilously close to praising the rioters.

    Over the ensuing four years, Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioted countless times, bringing devastation to cities like Portland, Seattle, Kenosha and Minneapolis. Did any Democrats denounce these riots? Not that I remember. Many Democrats endorsed them, or seemed to do so. Kamala Harris, for example, said about the riots in June:

They’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop. This is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop. And everyone beware because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day and they’re not going to stop after Election Day. And everyone should take note of that. They’re not gonna let up and they should not.

This was after 12 people had been killed in Democrat-sanctioned rioting, and billions of dollars in destruction committed. Have any Democrats denounced Black Lives Matter for its role in the riots? Not one. Has any Democrat denounced Antifa? Not that I know of, and some, like Keith Ellison, have specifically endorsed Antifa’s political violence.

    Democratic Party journalists have joined the party’s politicians in excusing riots. The New York Times, for example, published an admiring profile of Antifa. The Washington Post, likewise, has carried water for Antifa.

    The litany could go on for a long time. Yesterday’s assault on the Capitol was outrageous, but let’s not forget that last time out-of-control demonstrators interrupted business at the Capitol, shouted down senators and pounded on the doors of the Supreme Court, it was Democrats objecting to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

    And speaking of assaults on capitols, did any Democrats object when leftists occupied the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison for four months, destroying property, impeding public business and violently assaulting conservatives? Not a peep.

    Minnesota’s capitol has come under attack, too–or at least, Republicans who tried to gather there. In March 2017, Antifa Democrats besieged the state Capitol:

    On March 4, Antifa members…flooded the Capitol building to disrupt local Trump supporters who were gathering in conjunction with the national March 4 Trump movement.

    Many Antifa members attempted to conceal their identity by covering their faces with bandanas and goggles. [T]he rioters used mace, tasers, smoke bombs, and firecrackers on members of the pro-Trump rally, and punched others in the face.

    One of those arrested and prosecuted for carrying out this criminal violence was Linwood Kaine, son of Senator and Vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine. Yawn. Democrats couldn’t be bothered to criticize rioting by their own supporters, let alone their own family members.

    And let’s not forget James Hodgkinson, even though every reporter in America apparently has. Hodgkinson was the Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer who tried to assassinate the entire House Republican baseball team and very nearly succeeded, inflicting grievous and permanent injuries on Congressman Steve Scalise. Hodgkinson was not the usual 20-something loner, he was a middle-aged union official who was not insane, but just full of hate. His Facebook page was festooned with over-the-top attacks on Republicans, taken directly from speeches by Bernie Sanders and every other prominent Democrat.
    In 2018, the media was writing up glowing stories about the hundreds of Women’s March members who were engaging in "direct action” to disrupt the Senate’s Kavanaugh hearings.

    Hundreds of members from the radical leftist group had invaded the hearings and were arrested. Their travel expenses and bail for the disruptions were covered by the Women’s March. Radicals from the March and other leftist groups blocked hallways, shouted down Senate members, and draped protest banners from balconies. Democrats cheered them on.

    When a leftist mob assailed the Supreme Court, pounding on the doors, MSNBC called it an “extraordinary moment” and praised the crowd, “besieging the Supreme Court” and “confronting senators”.

    "If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them," Rep. Maxine Waters had urged earlier that year.

    Later, the Democrat House member told MSNBC, "They’re going to absolutely harass them".

    In 2020, Black Lives Matter rioters vandalized the Lincoln Memorial and the WW2 Memorial, along with statues of Gandhi, General Kosciuszko, and Andrew Jackson. The racist thugs marched through the city starting fires, including at a historic church, and tried to besiege the White House. Attempts by federal law enforcement to fight BLM terrorism were falsely denounced as a brutal attack on “peaceful protesters”, and as “militarism” and “fascism”.

    Democrat House members took to proposing bills to protect the racist mobs from law enforcement. Meanwhile the BLM mob besieged the White House and battled Secret Service personnel, allegedly forcing the evacuation of President Trump and his family to a bunker.

    This was the new normal enthusiastically supported by Democrats and the media. 
    • Related: "6 Other Times People Broke Into the U.S. Capitol" by Tyler O'Neil at PJ Media. Includes the following:
      • "On March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists shot 30 rounds from semi-automatic pistols from the Ladies’ Gallery, a balcony for visitors, of the House of Representatives chamber in the Capitol."
      • "On March 1, 1971, the radical left domestic terror group the Weather Underground exploded a bomb on the ground floor of the U.S. Capitol."
      • "On November 7, 1983 the leftist terrorist group Armed Resistance Unit took responsibility for detonating a bomb in the lobby outside the office of Senate Minority Leader Robert Byrd."
      • "On July 24, 1998, Russell Eugene Weston, Jr. burst into the Capitol and opened fire, killing two Capitol Police officers, Jacob Chestnut and John Gibson."
    I think Greenfield picks up on the disconnect here when he asks, "Why is broken glass on Capitol Hill so much more precious than the broken glass in Kenosha?" The difference in reactions is more than just Left versus Right (although that is a great deal of it), but also elitists versus populists within the Republican party. To the populist, there is and should be no difference between riots that target and destroy communities and riots that target the Capital Building in Washington D.C. But to the elitists, there is a world of difference between violence that targets the peasants and petty bourgeois and violence that targets the elite and the seat of government.
 
    Thus, while the Antifa and BLM protestors that have wreaked havoc across the country this past year have largely escaped arrest, and even when arrested, almost entirely escaped prosecution, "[s]upporters of President Donald Trump who stormed the U.S. Capitol, breaking windows and stealing things, could face charges including sedition, insurrection and rioting, Washington, D.C.'s top federal prosecutor said on Thursday."

    And ABC news, which was okay with Leftist protests, says this about what happened in Washington D.C.:

    It was bad, unspeakably and unfathomably so -- utter lawlessness and disorder, carnage in the seat of American government, happening with the seeming encouragement of the outgoing president.

    It could have been worse. It might still get there, even with President Donald Trump's statement Thursday morning pledging "there will be an orderly transition on January 20th."

    Until Wednesday's siege, when a mob of extremists engaged in an attempted insurrection and violent occupation of the Capitol, there seemed to be little cost to some Republicans in indulging Trump's conspiracy theories, lies and fantasies.

    That fiction was exposed by Wednesday's horror. The trauma of the day saw seemingly sincere concerns about election security melt away, amid a newfound bipartisan resolve to finish final certification of President-elect Joe Biden's victory.

    Now, there's something approaching bipartisan unity in disgust for Trump's behavior through the post-election period. Denunciations and even some resignations are flowing in more steadily after Tuesday's Georgia runoff losses and Wednesday's repulsive events.

    "Remember this day," Trump tweeted Wednesday. He will surely get that wish.

    Even aside from impeachment and 25th Amendment talk, Trump will be an ex-president in 13 days. The fact is that getting rid of Trump is the easy part.

    Cleaning up the movement he commands, or getting rid of what he represents to so many Americans, is going to be something else.

Tellingly, the op-ed includes this line: "This wasn't just any federal property, this was the Capitol -- the most famous and important symbol of democracy in the world." 

    John Daniel Davidson, writing at The Federalist, also observes:

    But elite outrage is not really about what happened at the capitol—about the “sacred citadel of our democracy being defiled” and so on. The outrage, like almost all expressions of righteous indignation from our elites in the Trump era, is performative. It is in service of a larger purpose that has nothing to do with the peaceful transfer of power and everything to do with the wielding of power.

    Specifically, it’s about punishing supporters of President Trump. If the pro-Trump mob can be depicted as “terrorists” and “traitors,” then there’s almost nothing we shouldn’t do to silence them. Right? Rick Klein, the political director at ABC News, said the quiet part out loud on Thursday when he mused (in a now-deleted tweet) that getting rid of Trump is “the easy part” and the more difficult task will be “cleansing the movement he commands.”

    That’s not the kind of language you use when you’re in the business of reporting the news. It’s the kind of language you use when you’re in the business of social control.

    A lot of people on the right have noted the supposed hypocrisy of media elites like Klein, but it’s not really hypocrisy because Klein and his comrades don’t really have a problem with violent mobs storming into buildings and smashing windows, so long as they agree with the mob’s agenda. That’s why corporate media was so tolerant of much larger and more dangerous mobs destroying American cities for months on end last year. When Black Lives Matter rioters stormed city halls and police stations, burned down churches, and ransacked shopping districts in major U.S. cities, killing dozens and destroying livelihoods, the media offered support for the rioters’ cause, which they invoked time and again to justify their criminal acts.

    That’s why CNN’s Chris Cuomo said, “Please, show me where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful.” That’s why his colleague, Don Lemon, compared the riots to the Boston Tea Party, saying, “This is how our country started.”

    That’s why Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued “the whole point of protesting is to make ppl uncomfortable.” That’s why incoming Vice President Kamala Harris urged her supporters to contribute to a fund to pay bail for militant anarchists who set fire to Minneapolis. That’s why reporters at MSNBC and CNN described fiery, riotous scenes as “mostly peaceful protests”—sometimes while buildings and cars burned in the background.

    What happened was fairly simple, I’ve come to believe. It was an accident. A virus spent some time in a laboratory, and eventually it got out. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, began its existence inside a bat, then it learned how to infect people in a claustrophobic mine shaft, and then it was made more infectious in one or more laboratories, perhaps as part of a scientist’s well-intentioned but risky effort to create a broad-spectrum vaccine. SARS-2 was not designed as a biological weapon. But it was, I think, designed. Many thoughtful people dismiss this notion, and they may be right. They sincerely believe that the coronavirus arose naturally, “zoonotically,” from animals, without having been previously studied, or hybridized, or sluiced through cell cultures, or otherwise worked on by trained professionals. They hold that a bat, carrying a coronavirus, infected some other creature, perhaps a pangolin, and that the pangolin may have already been sick with a different coronavirus disease, and out of the conjunction and commingling of those two diseases within the pangolin, a new disease, highly infectious to humans, evolved. Or they hypothesize that two coronaviruses recombined in a bat, and this new virus spread to other bats, and then the bats infected a person directly — in a rural setting, perhaps — and that this person caused a simmering undetected outbreak of respiratory disease, which over a period of months or years evolved to become virulent and highly transmissible but was not noticed until it appeared in Wuhan.

    There is no direct evidence for these zoonotic possibilities, just as there is no direct evidence for an experimental mishap — no written confession, no incriminating notebook, no official accident report. Certainty craves detail, and detail requires an investigation. It has been a full year, 80 million people have been infected, and, surprisingly, no public investigation has taken place. We still know very little about the origins of this disease.

    Nevertheless, I think it’s worth offering some historical context for our yearlong medical nightmare. We need to hear from the people who for years have contended that certain types of virus experimentation might lead to a disastrous pandemic like this one. And we need to stop hunting for new exotic diseases in the wild, shipping them back to laboratories, and hot-wiring their genomes to prove how dangerous to human life they might become.
    According to Pottinger, the latest intelligence points to the virus escaping from the Wuhan lab located 11 miles from the wet market that was blamed originally. As late as 2015, this lab conducted experiments with chimeric viruses, which are lab-modified using parts from multiple viruses. This type of research may or may not be aimed at a gain of function, which can make a virus more infectious or transmissible.

    Pottinger did not speculate that COVID-19 could have been this type of virus. However, if a laboratory leak from this facility is the most credible source for COVID-19, it is unnerving because the facility was and may continue to be engaged in modifying viruses.
    Police broke up a church service of around 150 worshippers in the town of Herford, in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, on Saturday evening.

    A police statement said more than 100 attendees were facing charges for violating coronavirus restrictions on congregating, social distancing and communal singing. Some of the individuals present, particularly the organizers, may face hefty fines.

    Under Germany's lockdown rules, up to 20 people can attend such services indoors, as long as hygiene and social distancing is adhered to.

    According to police, the large group in Herford, which included children, were not wearing face masks or observing distancing regulations, and were singing at times. 
    “We’re entering a second stage of the revolution, and everyone’s invited,” said Klementyna Suchanow during an online press conference on 22 December, after two months of mass protests organised by the Polish Women’s Strike.

    The demonstrations began in response to a ruling that would ban abortion in cases of severe foetal anomaly in October, but they soon took on a broader anti-government sentiment. 

    “On the one hand, we’re planning a revolution. On the other, we’re already making plans on what the world should look like once we’re able to manage things ourselves”, said Suchanow. 
  • Civil war is inevitable: "The American System Is One Big Grift" by Peter Van Buren, The American Conservative. Corruption is endemic in every country. The author begins by outlining bribery in foreign nations, before turning to the United States:
    In New York we use the euphemism “tip,” and it is as required as oxygen to get through the day. A restaurant table pre-COVID. A last minute anything. A friendlier handling by a doorman. Timely attention to fix-it requests. My, um, friend, used to pay a lot of money for better hotel rooms until he learned $20 at check in with a friendly “anything you can do” often got him upgraded to the same thing at a fraction of the price. What, you still paying retail, bro?

    I used to think it was all small stuff.... We have our petty corruption like anywhere, but our souls are filthy on a much larger scale. America goes big or it goes home.

    Things like the Clinton Foundation accepting donations from the Saudis to help with women’s empowerment, an issue of course dear to the heart of the Kingdom. When it looked like his wife was going to be president, Bill made six-figure speeches to businesses seeking influence within the U.S. government, earning $50 million during his wife’s term as secretary of pay-for-play state. The Foundation, now mostly out of business, was at its peak a two-billion-dollar financial dangle. It spent in 2013 the same on travel expenses for Hillary and her family as it did on charitable grants. The media, forever big Clinton fans, told us we should be used to it. Hey, Nixon was so much worse.

* * *
 
    With Joe as vice president, the Bidens made $396,000 in 2016. But in just the four years since leaving the Obama White House, Joe and Jill made more than $15 million. In fact, as his prospects for election improved, Joe and his wife made nearly twice as much in one year as they did in the previous 19 years combined. Joe scored $10 million alone for a book no one read. Jill was paid more than $3 million for her book in 2018. Joe has a tax-dodge S Corporation that donated money back to his own political PAC. Then of course there was Hunter, who scored millions in Chinese and Ukrainian money for doing nothing but being Joe’s son.

But, he notes, even this is small scale corruption:

    ... Real corruption scales. Pre-COVID America’s 614 billionaires were worth $2.95 trillion. As the Dow hit record highs this month, there are now 650 billionaires and their combined wealth is $4 trillion. The 400 richest Americans own 64 percent of the country’s wealth.

    Where’d all their money come from? You.

    Dan Gilbert, chair of Quicken Loans, worth $7 billion in March, is now at $43 billion (thanks for paying on time each month.) Who benefited more from COVID and everyone buying from home then Amazon and Jeff Bezos? It takes a lot of poor people to sustain that amount of wealth at the top.

    Money is always good. But it is wrong to think just in dollars. That’s how small-time grifters like waiters and the Bidens think. The real rich understand wealth as power. The power to shape society and government to ensure they make more money for more power until someday they Have. It. All. ...

    To talk about conspiracy theories is to imply something “different” happened, that the system does not work as intended; for example, instead of an election the president was assassinated to change leaders. So let’s not call what happened this autumn to elect Joe Biden a conspiracy. But here is what happened.

    Corporate media owned by the wealthiest Americans spent four years attacking Trump. Working as a single organism fused to the Democratic party as its host, they tried to bundle Trump into a SuperMax as a literal Russian agent. When that failed they ginned up an impeachment with more holes in it than a bad joke about Stormy Daniels. The same media then pivoted to defense when it mattered most, sending information about Hunter Biden that would have changed the election down the memory hole, and policing social media to Joe’s advantage.

    Corporate pharma, also owned by the same people, held back announcement of COVID vaccines until just after the election. The intel community, tightly bound with Big Tech and its super-wealthy owners, did its part leaking and concealing information as needed. They too worked to discredit the Hunter Biden story by calling it Russian disinfo. Money that actually controls information is gold.

    Earlier in the contest something happened, again, in Democratic primaries which began with some of the most progressive candidates in the running since Henry Wallace. Instead a politician known as the Senator from Mastercard was pushed into the White House. It was just a coincidence two promising candidates, Buttigieg and Klobuchar, dropped out nearly simultaneously just ahead of the South Carolina vote Biden desperately needed to end Bernie, again. How many people in America are powerful enough to have made those phone calls to Pete and Amy?

    Biden promptly returned the favor, filling his Cabinet with the same old thinkers corporate America liked from the Obama years. ... Biden was wrong when he told donors “nothing would fundamentally change” for the wealthy when he’s in charge—actually, things’ll get better.

    A tiny percentage of Americans own, control, and benefit from most everything.... You know a handful of the names—Bezos, Gates, Buffet—because they own public-facing companies. Most of the others prefer less public lives while they control the public. And silly you, you worried that it was the Russians who stole the election. What, you aren’t down with using Prime points to vote in the next election, bro?

  • "The Realignment Is Real" by Jonathon Van Maren, American Conservative.  Since 2016, the question within the Republican party has been whether Trump's election was a fluke or if it represented an actual change among Republican voters. Van Maren reports: 

With the 2020 election results coming in, we have our answer. There was no blue wave. Trump lost by a handful of votes in a handful of states; the GOP unexpectedly won congressional races; if Republicans win the two run-off races in Georgia, they will retain the senate. Trump, the “white supremacist” candidate, won the highest share of non-white voters of any Republican presidential candidate since Nixon in 1960—double Romney’s 2012 count and nearly triple Bush’s count in 2000.

He continues:

    ... Renowned conservative intellectual Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, says that the message for the GOP is clear.

    “The elections of 2016 and 2020 seem to show that there is a large constituency for a combination of social conservatism and economic populism,” he told me. “That was Donald Trump’s message, and it worked—outperforming even Trump himself in 2020, as the down ballot races tended to show. The GOP is becoming a working (and small business) class party. Its supporters are saying: ‘Uphold our moral and religious values; protect our industries against unfair practices and unfair competition, thus securing our jobs and reasonable prospects for real wage growth; and protect and improve programs that we rely on such as Social Security and Medicare.’”

    “So far, the big inroads against the Democrats—who are now the party of the professional classes, ‘Woke’ corporate America, and the super-rich—have been with the white working class,” George observed. “The obvious goal for Republicans now is to win over minority working class voters. Their values and concerns line up well with those of the white working class. Clearly, there has been some movement by working class minority voters (Black and, especially, Latino voters) towards the Republicans, and this should terrify Democrats. Because of their professional class base, Democrats don’t have the option of trying to compete with Republicans on social issues such as abortion; if minority voters see the Republicans as friendly, or at least not hostile, to them on economic issues, the Democrats are in trouble—big trouble.”

The Democrats have been bleeding social conservative voters since the 1960s, but the migration accelerated in the 1980s with the "Reagan Democrats", and seems almost complete. 

    ... In theory senators represent the citizens of their states and members of the House represent the people of their congressional districts. In practice they represent individual and corporate donors and political allies and future employers, who may live anywhere in the United States—or in some cases abroad. Joe Biden was the senator from the credit card industry, based in Delaware.

    The donors to American politicians in all 50 states are concentrated in a few ZIP codes. According to Open Secrets, of the ZIP codes that delivered the most campaign funding for the Democrats in 2020, not counting dark money or soft money for liberal groups, four of the top five were in New York City (10024, 10023, 10022, 10011), followed by Chevy Chase, Maryland (20815), a suburb of Washington, D.C. Other top Democratic ZIPs this year were Silicon Valley (94301 and 94022) and Cambridge, Massachusetts (02138). New York City was also overrepresented among donors to the Republican Party, whose donor base is more geographically diverse, with a lot of money coming from Dallas, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Palm Beach, Florida.

    A former Democratic senator from the Midwest told me a few years back why he got out of politics: “I got tired of the fundraising. They [the Democratic National Committee] give you a list of these rich people in New York, San Francisco, and L.A. No matter what state you’re from, you have to fly out there and grovel before them. They don’t know anything about your state or its people. All they care about is their pet issues.”
  • "While Nashville Exploded, Other Things Happened"--The Captain's Journal. Specifically: "An election whistleblower (who was prevented from testifying in Georgia) was the victim of a drive-by shooting."
  • A long string of failed predictions: "Opinion: 'We are close to the point of no return'"--DW. Per the author, Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), we must make 2021 the year climate action came of age, or face disaster. We've heard predictions like this for a long time. Ed Driscoll has collected some of the most egregious over the past 20 years, including the infamous headline from The Independent in March 2000 claiming that "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past," after which the UK experienced some of the harshest winters (including snowfall) on record. But if you look beyond climate change/global warming, we see similar doomsday predictions with impending deadlines proclaimed regularly, whether it was population growth, global cooling, or pollution. For instance:

    Perhaps the most famous Malthusian doomsayer is Paul Ehrlich, who famously said, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970’s and 1980’s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” That was in his extremely influential 1968 book, The Population Bomb. Ehrlich went on to predict that

At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…The train of events leading to the dissolution of India as a viable nation is already in motion… If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.

Both Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) and H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) were masters of the pulp horror story. While the former placed action at the heart of his masculine and violent tales, the latter focused more on psychology and the “cosmic” dread of an indifferent universe. One element that united both men were their frequent portrayals of ethnic enclaves in the heart of Anglo-America. For Lovecraft, Upstate New York symbolized the social and intellectual decay of Dutch civilization in the Catskills, while Howard often used the landscape of West Texas and the rural Deep South to speak about the problems associated with Hispanic and African cultures refusing to fully assimilate to Anglo-American norms.

I don't believe that Howard, or even Lovecraft, were trying to speak to anything, but merely describing what they saw or heard about. Certainly, in Howard's works, for every evil minority figure, there is another that exemplified something honorable or commendable about that race or culture.

    On Boxing Day in 1900 the clocks stopped as three lighthouse keepers on a remote Scottish island vanished without trace, leaving behind their untouched meals and work notes for the following day. 

    James Ducat, Thomas Marshall and Donald MacArthur had been stationed at the Flannan Lighthouse, some 215 feet above sea level near the highest point on Eilean Mòr, in the Outer Hebrides off the coast of Scotland.

    But when passing ships reported the light had gone out, a search party was sent out. 

    When rescuers climbed the 160 steps up the cliffside and into the 75ft-high tower, they found the clock had stopped, half eaten meat, pickles and potatoes on the table, a toppled chair and two sets of oilskins missing. The third was hanging on its usual hook.

    A canary was starving on its perch and the lighthouse log and work notes for two days were on a slate. 

    There was no trace of the men and it was assumed they had been swept away by a freak wave.

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3 comments:

  1. Bad AttitudeJanuary 8, 2021 at 4:49 PM


    RE: ABC "Threats that will outlast Donald Trump exposed in siege of Capitol."

    The communists have plainly and repeatedly stated that they thirst for retribution against Trump supporters. The communists are drunk on their own perceived power and will overreach. Be prepared.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DocentJanuary 8, 2021 at 5:08 PM

      Yup. 2021 is going to be more interesting than last year.

      Delete
  2. John WilderJanuary 10, 2021 at 10:33 PM

    Arrrrrrgh! Biggest Bug Out Bag peeve. YOU DON'T NEED FOOD FOR 24 or even 72 hours or even 120 hours unless you have a condition that requires it.

    It's useless weight in an emergency.

    ReplyDelete