Tuesday, October 15, 2024

The infuriating thing is that nothing will be done about it

 

I'm sure many of you saw and read reports about blatant, in-broad-daylight robberies of container-carrying trains in Chicago last week.


Jarring video from a news helicopter in Chicago Friday captured a gang of thieves ransacking a freight cargo train moments before they were confronted by cops with their guns drawn.

Chopper 7 with ABC Chicago was on the scene as a group of ransackers made their way through a train in the South Austin neighborhood on the west side of Chicago.

The plunder included televisions and air fryers, according to a CBS News report.

Officials said the railway is no stranger to these types of freight cargo thefts – but rarely, if ever, are they caught live on television.

Police officers were eventually called to the scene and a confrontation with the highwaymen was caught live on television. Officers swarmed with their guns drawn as some suspects tried to make away in their cars. 

. . .

There were no reports of shots fired and there have been no reports of arrests made.

Less than an hour after officers and looters left the scene – Chicago’s ABC7 caught more people breaking into train cars.


There's more at the link.




It's reminiscent of reports from early 2022 of similar crimes in Los Angeles.


Photos and videos showing piles of empty boxes littered alongside rail tracks in Los Angeles County, California have gone viral as shipping companies say they’ve seen a dramatic spike in railroad theft. Some of the boxes are packages from companies like UPS, Amazon and FedEx.

Union Pacific, one of the country’s largest railroad companies, says it may avoid operating in Los Angeles County following the spike in thefts, whichit blames on lax prosecution of crimes. The containers and trains are locked, but can be broken into.

Union Pacific said last month in a letter to the Los Angeles District Attorney that it saw a 160% year-over-year increasein theft in LA county. The company claims that a December 2020 special directive issued by District Attorney George Gascón that changed how low-level offenses are prosecuted has contributed to the uptick.


Again, more at the link.




Note the reference to the LA District Attorney and his "soft-on-crime" policies.  Chicago has the same problem.

What this means is that:

  • The police have no incentive to catch the criminals, because they know they'll be back on the streets within a matter of hours;
  • The criminals have no incentive to stop committing their crimes, because they know they'll get away with it almost without penalty;
  • The railways have no incentive to spend money on greater security, because if that greater security catches criminals, the cops won't arrest them and the prosecutors won't hold them in jail.
The ony winners are the companies that insure goods in transit, who make fat profits by raising their premiums because of the higher risk of loss.  Guess who pays those higher premiums?  That's right - we do.  The price we pay to vendors, who ship the goods to us, includes the costs of shipping and freight insurance.  Those thieves are literally costing every single one of us money.

Welcome to the modern economy!




Peter


Another post-hurricane after-action report, this time from Florida

 

Big Country Expat describes his experience dealing with official relief efforts in Florida after the passage of Hurricane Milton.  To put it mildly, he's not pleased with them.  Emphasis in original.


This was, in ALL my previous experience(s) as VAST and VARIED as they are across the board, this was BY FAR the most inefficient, inept, incapable and utterly inadequate operation that I have ever had the (dis)pleasure of witnessing in action.

Whomever was in charge of this particular “Jug ****” should be stripped of their job, their pension, their retirement, and then tarred and feathered, if not optimally ridden out of town on a particularly sharp and splintery rail.

Their relatives and children should be publically shamed for that matter. They should be afraid to show their faces in public… drive them from the community at large as an example to others who would be this worthless. To those who’d say that’s cruel?

Nope.

It’s a preventative.

Those ****ing kids carry one half of that “Stupid DNA” and therefore they should be sterilized proactively as to prevent any more urination in our collective gene pool so to speak.

At the barest minimum, they should utterly be publically humiliated, scorned, and/or Horsewhipped plus beaten for good measure as an example for Future ****tardery as a warning against such things. Put them ****er(s) in the stocks and let them be pelted with rotten fruit and/or animal viscera.

Preferably skunk.


There's much more at the link.  Be warned - it's frequently profane!  If foul language offends you, do not click over there!

Peter


That's taking autumn entirely too far!

 

I've seen pumpkin spice coffee, pumpkin spice candy, pumpkin spice scents in just about anything and everything . . . but this is taking it entirely too far!



That's right.  Pumpkin (or, rather, Dumpkin) Spice butt wipes!!!

Somehow, I've never come across many "Manly Men" who actually like the scent of pumpkin spice;  and I don't think I've ever met anybody, male or female, who actually wants to smell like that.  The thought of a pumpkin spice scented butt after an . . . er . . . evacuation does not overcome me with the urge to spend my hard-earned money on it!

Pumpkin spice butt wipes.  Has the Apocalypse crept up on us unseen - and, until now, unscented?  Is this the much-prophesied Fall of Man (well, the male component of the human race, anyway) as much as the season of the year?



Peter


Sunday, October 13, 2024

Sunday morning music

 

Let's go classical today, with Serenades for Strings from Tchaikovsky and Dvorak.  The recording also includes several short pieces by the former, and another Serenade by the latter.  The track listing is:

Composer: Tchaikovsky
Artists: Baltic Chamber Orchestra, Emmanuel Leducq-Barôme & Lev Klychkov
Serenade for String Orchestra in C Major, Op. 48: 
00:00:00 I. Pezzo en forma di sonatina
00:09:34 II. Valse
00:13:13 III. Elegia
00:22:01 IV. Finale

Composer: Dvořák
Artists: Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice, Petr Nouzovský & Stanislav Vavřinek
Serenade for Strings in E Major, Op. 22: 
00:29:26 I. Moderato
00:34:11 II. Tempo di Valse
00:41:17 III. Scherzo. Vivace
00:47:11 IV. Larghetto
00:52:11 V. Finale. Allegro Vivace

Composer: Tchaikovsky
00:58:22 Elegy for String Orchestra in Memory of Ivan Samarin, TH 51 (Jacopo Taddei, Roma Tre Orchestra & Sieva Borzak)
01:08:20 String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11: II. Andante Cantabile (Orchestra Orfeo & Domenico Famà)
01:15:29 String Quartet in E-Flat Minor, Op. 30: III. Andante Funebre e Doloroso (Baltic Chamber Orchestra, Emmanuel Leducq-Barôme & Lev Klychkov)
01:27:05 Snow Maiden, Op. 12 – Melodrama (Baltic Chamber Orchestra, Emmanuel Leducq-Barôme & Lev Klychkov)

Composer: Dvořák
Artists: Amati Ensemble
Serenade, Op. 44 in D Minor: 
01:31:06 I. Moderato quasi (Arr. by Mordechai Rechtman)
01:35:11 II. Tempo di minuet (Arr. by Mordechai Rechtman)
01:41:17 III. Andante con moto (Arr. by Mordechai Rechtman)
01:50:48 IV. Finale. Allegro molto (Arr. by Mordechai Rechtman)



A lovely selection of light classical pieces for a peaceful start to our Sunday.

Peter


Friday, October 11, 2024

One does wonder...

 

It seems that Israel's onslaught against Hezbollah in Lebanon may have claimed another high-level casualty.


The location of an Iranian general is under scrutiny amid reports he’s being investigated for his involvement in Israel’s dismantling of Lebanese terror outfit Hezbollah.

Brig. Gen. Esmail Qaani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, has not been seen in public since Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a massive air strike on Beirut on Sept. 27.

Some Arab outlets say Qaani is alive and unhurt — but under guard — as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) investigates security breaches into how Israel was able to bring down the terrorist movement’s most senior leadership and identify where and when he could be found.

Others, including Sky News Arabic, reported Qaani is being probed over alleged ties to Israel. The outlet also reported the general had a heart attack while he was being questioned.

Suspicions escalated that senior Iranian commanders may have been compromised when the terrorist set to succeed Nasrallah — Hashem Safieddine — was most likely also killed in an Oct. 4 airstrike on his Beirut base in Lebanon. 


There's more at the link.

Israel has demonstrated such a vast superiority in its intelligence-gathering structures that its enemies are reduced to casting about for explanations and excuses.  It's the old story, seen so often in history:  "We must have been betrayed from within!  They couldn't have done it any other way!"  Well, of course they could:  but the easy excuse, so believable to those who are suffering, is always to blame some insider for betraying them.

I doubt very much that the head of the Quds Force is a traitor to Iran or Hezbollah, or an agent of Israel.  Quds has done immense harm to so many nations, and so many people, that I don't see how Israel could possibly allow one of its sources to continue to lead that organization so effectively.  They'd be damaging themselves if they did so.  However, I can see Israeli agents dropping "hints" and "suggestions" about treason, and then laying a trail of false but believable evidence pointing to someone like him.  That's much easier to do than get their own man into such a position of command - and we know for sure that Hezbollah at least must be riddled with their agents, as evidenced by the recent bloodbath among the leaders of that organization.

As for "the general had a heart attack while he was being questioned" . . . that strongly suggests the questioning was kinetic in nature, and not just verbal.  Perhaps drugs were employed as well as torture.  Suffice it to say that a fit, strong man like Qaani is very unlikely to have had an undiagnosed cardiac problem that's just (very conveniently) manifested itself under questioning.

Whatever the truth of the matter, I'm sure the confusion, disarray and mutual accusations among the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Quds Force rivals, if not exceeds, that among Hezbollah right now.  What's more, I think any candidate to replace the deceased leaders of those organizations must be aware that their life expectancy, should they accept the position, will probably take a sudden and dramatic turn for the worse as soon as Israel hears about their promotion.  I can almost hear the conversation now:

"Abdul, you've been chosen to be the new Head of -"

"No!  No!  I - ah - I'm very sick!  I have an ingrown toenail!  It's agony!  My mother/wife/son/daughter needs me to be with her right now!  I don't have transport!  Find someone else!  Please!"



Peter


Citizen self-reliance - it's not just for hurricanes

 

From Wyoming comes a tale of citizens fighting fires, even after the authorities recalled all "official" firefighters to safer places.


When the Elk Fire was bearing down on all three sides of the Horseshoe subdivision west of Dayton, evacuating the area was the last thing on resident Warren Tritschler’s mind.

He wasn’t going to leave the home he and his wife spent 30 years of their lives building. He was going to do everything he could to save it.

So, when fire roared down the hill, an 8- to 10-foot-tall inferno headed for his home overnight Friday into early Saturday morning, Tritschler was there with a garden hose in hand.

He used the hose to put out a burning tree that was too close for comfort. He doused softball-sized embers that blew in, threatening to set his home on fire. And he wetted down a neighbor’s well, trying to prevent its destruction.

Tritschler kept spraying with his garden hose until a transformer blew and the power went out, cutting off his water supply.

But he wasn’t done in. He hopped into a buggy outfitted with a weed sprayer, using that to keep things wet all around his home.

“I put out a lot of fire with that weed sprayer,” he told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday. “I can’t imagine what I could have done with an actual fire truck.”

Tritschler is one of the many self-described “guys in blue jeans” — or as others have called them, Hillbilly Hotshots — who have outfitted their own trucks with water tanks.

They are self-appointed protectors, patrolling their own ranches and neighbors’ homes, alert for embers carried far from the Elk Fire’s frontlines, doing what they can to protect their land and their homes.

“I think there’s a misconception here, too, because the volunteer firefighters and these guys in blue jeans are the ones who are actually working together,” he said. “Going against the grain of the feds. The feds are the ones who called all of the firefighters off of (Horseshoe subdivision). They were trying to get us to fall back to the IXO (Ranch). And there’s a bunch of those guys who said no, and just stayed.”


There's more at the link, including photographs and a video interview.

I was glad to read that report.  It shows yet again that by using our own resources, we can often deal with emergencies where local, regional and national authorities - hamstrung by red tape and disputes between agencies - might be stymied.

It reminded me of tales my late mother told me about the German bombing of Britain during World War II.  She spent many nights on the roofs of buildings working the fire watch.  She was "armed" with a gas mask, a bucket of water, a bucket of sand, and a stirrup pump.  Here's a World War II photograph (courtesy of Wikipedia) showing a woman doing that job.



If a German incendiary bomb (shown below - a lightweight device designed to set fire to roofs and buildings, rather than explode and cause blast damage) fell on the roof, her job was to grab it (using a pair of fireplace tongs, if necessary) and drop it into the bucket of sand, where it could burn itself out without causing further damage.



She would then use the stirrup pump and bucket of water to extinguish any flames already started on the roof itself.

She, and thousands of women like her, kept Britain's homes and shops and factories from being destroyed while their fathers, husbands and sons fought the Germans in the "shooting war".  Without such citizen involvement, Britain would have been far worse off, and might have suffered damage so crippling that it could not have sustained its war effort.  My late father and other servicemen deeply appreciated their hard work.  He told me more than once that my mother had faced just as much danger as he had during the war, albeit in different ways.

Those Wyoming citizen firefighters are acting in the same tradition.  Well done, those people!

Peter


True dat

 

From the Conservative Curmudgeon on MeWe (I can't link directly to his post, unfortunately):


Here in Florida the day after MiIton I see a lot of people helping. Linemen from all over North America. Police. Firemen. Medical people. Churches. Rednecks. Florida Guard. Neighbors.

Who I don't see helping . . . . . LGBT-P. BLM. ACLU. Planned Parenthood. Climate activists. The teacher's or IRS unions.


Quite so!  When the objective is to make a noise and get noticed, the latter are past masters at it.  When it comes to actually getting things done . . . not so much.



Peter


Thursday, October 10, 2024

Detailed after-action report from North Carolina

 

Regular readers will have seen mention of Killer Bees Honey in these pages on several occasions.  They produce what I believe may be the finest honey in North America.  The "beekeeper", Sean, is an online friend of many years' standing.

The apiary is in the the Pisgah National Forest area of North Carolina, and took a pounding from Hurricane Helene last week.  Here's Sean's after action report to his friends, shared on this blog with his permission.


Things are slowly returning to normal here. Food is coming back onto the grocery store shelves, but it’s still cash only for some. Banks are still limiting withdrawals of $1k.

As I wrote the below, I continually thought about your dealings with Katrina.

Sean

******************************************************************

Like all good horror stories involving a demonic woman, it began in the darkness of night. I awoke Friday at 0230 and watched as the metal patio furniture, sans cushions traveled S/B past the bedroom windows. My drowsy WTF reaction was mirrored by the cats WTF stare. The whole house generator had already kicked on. Ten minutes later and with a head lamp piercing the driving rain, I was in the lower bee yard placing heavier rocks on the hives. When I was done, Helene’s 55 knot gusts were pushing the hives off their foundation. Luckily, each hive had around 65 pounds of stored winter honey. I’m sure that’s what kept them from being blown over. I could not say the same for me as I had to get on my hands and knees with each blast of wind. Retreating back to the safety of the house, I could hear trees falling, some snapping in half deep in the forest around me. No bueno. All I could now do is start the coffee maker and wait for dawn. First light came with continued howling winds and rain. A sourwood tree narrowly missed the house and was laying across the pad in front of the kitchen window. Its leaf laden boughs frantically waving to me in distress with each shock of wind.Too dangerous to step outside, I went downstairs to the mechanical room to begin the quick process of charging up the battery bank.

Since then it’s been a total shit show in WNC. I celebrated my 69th birthday chainsawing my way down our mile long driveway. Two days, several naps and six bar chains later, the driveway was passable. This can’t be said for adjacent mountain roads. The 26” of rain washed out or made local roads and bridges impassable. I jumped into the Polaris Ranger once I cleared the driveway and drove the four miles to the main road. What I saw can only be described as post apocalyptic. Neighbors working chainsaws clearing roads and driveways. Head on collisions of trees into houses. Many homes were uninhabitable. Peaceful creeks and flowing water rock falls turned into churning rivers and torrential waterfalls. Bridges and damns were breached. Duke power was releasing water from lakes causing more destruction, but they had no choice; a damn failure would have been more disastrous. 

The ham radio community immediately initiated an emergency net. Numerous surrounding repeaters were connected and a call went out for volunteers, SAR and swift water rescue crews. This was the only way to communicate for four days. People from all over the world were using their HF stations to contact net control for welfare checks on loved ones or family members. Net control then used UHF and VHF frequencies to contact local ham operators. They in turn left the safety of their homes to brave dangerous conditions. Some had to abandon their cars and hike into hazardous conditions. It was heartbreaking to hear one station report back on a welfare check of an isolated elderly couple's home located deep in a holler. He radioed that all he found was a driveway at the end of which was a raging river.

I was on generator and battery b/u power for nearly five days. There was no damage to the hives and out buildings. AVL was closed to all traffic for four days. Denise was in Chicago, but I was able to pick her up when HWY 64 and the airport reopened. My immediate neighbors, a young family of five had no power. I gave them a five gallon water bladder, a daily thermos of coffee, venison and a Honda 2200 generator along with a jerry can of gas to keep the fridge and essentials powered. They came up to the house to eat and shower, but left last Wednesday to be with relatives in Raleigh. 

We now have grid power and cellular. WISP (internet) is spotty.

Intial Impact

Massive flooding and wind destruction. Total devastation. No power. No cellular. No internet. No water. Land lines were down. Everything was closed. Many towns and communities were literally swept away. Chimney Rock, Swannanoa no longer exist. Boone and half of Asheville were inundated with water. Interstates 40, 26 and HWY 64 were impassable. The geography was literally changed by the flood. I don’t know how some roads, businesses and homes can be rebuilt. Many deaths; a community near the French Broad river in Hendersonville was told to evacuate at the beginning of the storm. Some stayed. Two days later, several bodies were found hanging out of windows and trees. Five were found in a debris field a mile away. Around 250 water plants were destroyed or inundated with muddy water and won’t be operational for weeks if not months. Within 24 hours 37 private helicopters were air dropping food and water to isolated communities. FEMA was non existent.It was private citizens and small businesses helping each other. 

Presently

230 deaths and rising. Nearly 1000 still missing. I was talking to a local Sheriff’s Lt who said they’ll be pulling bodies out of debris fields through the holidays. 50% of homes in the county are still without power.  Most roads leading into town are clear. Interstate 40 at the TN border will remain closed for approximately a year during repair. 26 now has passable lanes, but will need repair. Hwy 9 leading into Chimney Rock is non existent. Hwy 19 leading into Asheville is severely damaged and unusable. All national and state parks are closed due to immense tree falls and trail damage. The Blue Ridge Parkway and all buildings along the Pkw are closed. The nearest town to us is Brevard which now has power. Prior to that, the local grocery stores were open for two days after the event, but it was cash only. I understand they closed soon thereafter because they were cleaned out. Propane is still in short supply. Gas stations which have power have no 93% and are limiting gas to ten gallons per vehicle. There isn’t any non ethanol gas. Lines for gas go for 100’s of yards. Portable generators along with chainsaws and 2 stroke fuel are sold out. Nightly looting around Asheville. The Ingles (grocery) warehouse and Walmart were looted within 24 hours of the storm. Cash only stores and gas stations are causing a run on the banks. As a result, customers are only aloud $1K cash withdrawals. Essentials such as food, water, diapers and baby formula are currently being distributed at churches and community centers by local citizens. What people need isn’t FEMA’s $750. They need food and water. It’s been eight days and some isolated communities are literally going hungry. Good Samaritans, some from out of state trying to reach those in need are being held up at gun point for supplies. There is fear among health professionals of dysentery caused by lack of clean water and unsanitary conditions. 

I read there is a loss of some 60,000 bee hives in the Southeast. There may be greater losses if beekeepers can’t get to the remaining hives and feed them sugar water. My bees are good; they keep their first 65 pounds of spring wildflower honey for the winter.

There were multiple episodes of civil unrest and violence. A dude in Brevard shot out the tires of someone else cutting into a gas line. A fist fight broke out near the local credit union. My bee out yard is near a sketchy neighborhood. Apparently, some local meth heads broke into a home thinking the owners had split. Nope. The husband comes out of the bedroom busting caps from a 357 revolver… we’re old school up here. Said meth heads retreated to their vehicle and returned fire. Husbands wife opens the bedroom window and throws down with a full mag from an AR-10. The next morning nothing was found other than broken glass and some blood. The sheriff’s dept. never responded because no one called (no phones) Like I said, old school.

For further information, I urge you to read the below link regarding Helene’s impact written by an eloquent local writer for USA Today:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/10/03/helene-asheville-north-carolina-flooding-climate-change/75490093007/

Opinion: Helene devastated my NC community. What I saw next helped me survive.

My Preps

My wife and I live in the Lake Toxaway zip code area, but not in the HOA. We have 75 acres on the apex of Walnut Cove Mountain. Our driveway is exactly one mile long. We are surrounded by 512,000 acres of the Pisgah National Forest and game lands which is adjacent to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park and Nantahala Wilderness. We are very isolated from the rest of the world which is fine by me. Most of my prep education came from being a LEO out of Southern California. I was an active participant in earthquakes, wildfires and riots. Until recently, I was a certified AEMT and SAR member. Presently, I am a beekeeper, a full time house bitch and part time sex slave. Titles I proudly embrace. I hunt deer, wild turkey and bear off my property. My wife, Denise is a retired CFO of a company in NYC. She is an anti gun liberal who happens to know the benefits of capitalism. Go figure.

All our preps worked out amazingly well and without issues. From the initial storm to grid up, all I missed were fresh bananas. First world problem.

Power: We are grid tied with 21 roof mounted solar panels producing 7kW midday. Energy we don’t use from the PV system is stored in a Sonnen Battery 18kW system. During grid down situations, which happens a lot up here, A 30kW, water cooled, Generac powers the entire house. Combined with a buried 1000 gallon propane tank, I can live off grid indefinitely. The Generac was utilized just three hours a day to charge the batteries until I had full sun. Afterwards, everything was powered by stored solar energy. 

Water: We are on a well and septic system. The well is powered by both the grid or generator and PV array/Sonnen system.

Food: I have three freezers filled with wild game. Most I give away to my sister’s in law who are also anti gun liberals, but will take wild meat killed with my guns. Again, go figure. Besides the wild game, we have two walk in pantries filled with supplies for immediate use. I have other food supplies for the real ZA. Bags and cans of food for the Children of Satan (cats).

Cooking: Propane stove top. Electric range. Outside propane grill with multiple tanks. 

Fuel: I have several caddies filled with 93 [octane] non ethanol gas treated with Startron. We have several vehicles including a UTV and ATV. Both with winches and other accessories to make them more functional for our mountainous property. We have not been to a gas station since Sept 26.

Security. Multiple overlapping surveillance systems one on a local server (not dependent on WiFi or cellular)

I have preps specific for such events and had the chainsaws gassed and ready. All vehicles were gassed up and garaged. Speaking of preps, it’s a bit ironic that Sept was “preparedness month” and the national prepper conference in nearby Sylva was washed away. Both emails I received two Thursdays ago saying it was definitely on was not only irresponsible, but dangerous. Stupid decisions lead to stupid results.

Fall back: A separate fully functional building with a Jotul wood stove, running water and stored cots with sleeping bags. 

Fall back #2: A sprinter 170 chassis van converted by Outside Vans in OR. It has 45 gallons of diesel fuel, 20 gallons of fresh water and 630 amp hours of lithium ion batteries with solar. The van has a Guzzle H20 which can purify more water (we have 3500 linear feet of spring fed streams on the property).

Hope everyone is well. 


Sounds like Sean and his wife had quite a time of it.  Good to know you're both safe, buddy, along with your bees!  Thanks for the great after-action report and feedback.  We'll all learn from it.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE:  Take note of the "cash only" nature of business after the storm.  This happens very often when power and/or communications are knocked out.  If you haven't got an emergency cash reserve at home, this can leave you stranded, particularly if banks aren't open for any reason.

Killer Bees Honey is currently donating all profits from honey and merchandise sales to local hurricane recovery efforts.  If you'd like to support them, please do - and enjoy the honey!  They haven't yet updated their Web site to reflect that, because Web access is extremely difficult for them right now;  but that'll happen soon, I'm sure.

Peter


The scariest graphic I've seen in a long time

 

In a lengthy analysis of the USA's debt overload and what might be done about it, Glenn Reynolds provides this graphic.  It illustrates how long, in years and (lately) months, it takes to add $1 trillion to the national debt.  Click the image for a larger view.



The slope is inexorably rising, and the time taken to spend each trillion (that we haven't got, but have to borrow) is growing shorter and shorter.  It's completely unsustainable.  Sooner or later (and my bet's on sooner), lenders and investors will refuse to fund such profligate expenditure - and then where will we be?

Reynolds offers several interesting suggestions for ways to approach the problem, but none of them can actually fix it, because that depends on politicians - and the politicians depend on their rake-offs from such wasteful spending, and are not about to shoot themselves in the wallet for the good of the country.  That being the case, Reynolds suggests that states and businesses prepare themselves for the inevitable by building up cushions of essential necessities, putting financial reserves into alternate stores of value or investments, and cutting our own wasteful expenditure to a minimum.  His whole article is well worth reading, and I recommend it.

For us as individuals and families, a primary concern is that if we rely on federal government money to survive (Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, welfare, unemployment insurance, or anything like that), those subsidies are not likely to survive a debt collapse.  FEMA disaster assistance might be a distant memory.  Even government pensions and workers compensation programs might face the axe.  The money to pay for them (at least, at present levels) simply won't be there.  That means even basic services like the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), often paid out via Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT), will also no longer be available.

Millions upon millions of Americans depend on those services.  What will they do when they find themselves unable to pay for the food they eat every day?  I suspect the answer to that question is going to be very, very ugly.  A national debt collapse might lead to a collapse of our national society (at least in large cities, where those most dependent on such programs are concentrated).

There isn't anything we as individuals can do about this, except prepare ourselves, our families and our homes as best we can with the resources available to us to survive hard times;  and, of course, team up with like-minded people to help each other make it as best we can.  I hope most of my readers are already doing that.  Nevertheless, forewarned is forearmed.

That graphic makes clear, more than any words, how parlous is our financial situation as a nation.  We're shortly going to experience Stein's Law in action at first hand.


THIS CANNOT CONTINUE.

SOONER OR LATER,

THINGS ARE GOING TO GO SMASH.


Peter


Er... oops?

 

Found on X:


My poor husband. I have to share what happened to him yesterday.

So we lost a chicken to a predator during the day over the weekend, we guessed it was a raccoon and we put out a trap. 

Yesterday we caught a young raccoon in the trap. We debated what to do with it, we decided to just let it go a few miles away instead of killing it. 

The thing was VICIOUS. So he took some bear spray with him in the car just in case he would need it when he let the raccoon go. 

As he was driving to the release point, he heard a noise. He looked in his rear view mirror and the raccoon popped up his head right next to his from behind the drivers seat. The racoon had escaped the trap and was running loose frenetically around the car!

So he sprays the raccoon *in a closed car* with the bear spray while driving.🤣😂 The thing ran across the dashboard, over seats, over my husband - going nuts running all around the car (MY car), my husband keeps spraying it and managed to open the windows.  

By this time he'd slowed down the car to a crawl. My husband couldn’t see or breathe because of the bear spray, the raccoon jumped out the window, my husband pulls over to the side of the road, gets out of the car, gasping for breath.  

I can only imagine what drivers behind him were thinking seeing the erratic driving and then watching a raccoon jump out the window!😂

After about a minute catching his breath by the side of the road, he has searing pain in both legs. He looks down, his legs are covered in fire ants. He’d been standing on an ant hill.😂🤣 

Anyhow, I have pepper spray all over my car now. EVERYWHERE. It smells like musky wild animal and pepper.


There's a photograph of the interior of the car at the link.

I suspect the next raccoon they trap is going to be speedily and efficiently euthanized.  Anyone suggesting it be put in the car and taken to a release point is probably going to be bear-sprayed until they scream for mercy!



Peter