My wife and I are headed to Amarillo, where Alma Boykin has invited me to scare terrify enlighten her class about what Africa is really like, versus what their "woke" textbook portrays. Needless to say, the latter bears little or no relationship to reality!
I'll be offline until Monday morning. Amuse yourselves with the bloggers in my sidebar.
Peter
I'm a relative lightweight in the "prepping" world. I have emergency food, water and other supplies to keep my wife and myself alive for a few months in a disaster situation, and (hopefully) enough to share with friends for at least the short term; but that's based on "bugging in", staying in our home and not venturing far unless and until it's safe to do so. We don't have a "bug out" location, or remotely stored supplies, or anything like that - it's simply unaffordable for us.
Nevertheless, I'm often surprised to hear from people who are very much in our situation that they have these grand plans to "bug out" to the sticks, establish a survival homestead from scratch, grow their own food, herd a few cows, steal a travel trailer from somewhere as a place to live, and so on. Frankly, I think they have no idea at all of just how much effort will be involved in making that plan work.
Eaton Rapids Joe has put up a couple of recent blog posts in which he lays out precisely what skills and resources are needed (and vitally important) if one is to homestead successfully. In the first article, "A man has to know his limitations", he looks at all the skills needed to successfully homestead (some required all the time, others for specific situations). In the second, "Why 'Russian' Dachas all look alike", he examines what successful country farms have in the way of facilities and equipment, and also what they don't have (because it's either way too expensive, or too resource-heavy, or unnecessary). Both articles, and both of the lists he provides, are well worth reading. If, after reading them, anyone still thinks it'll be easy to set up an emergency homestead . . . well, you're probably going to learn the hard way how wrong you are!
... if you need to resort to your hideaway stash becase you can’t get to your primary gear, then its safe to assume that your life has just taken a turn for the spectacularly ungood, agreed? So, in that time of (literally) existential crisis doesn’t it seem to make sense that you would want the best gear you can have?
It does, indeed, make sense. That's a lesson I learned the hard way in Africa over many years. If you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Mother Nature is a stone cold bitch who's out to kill you, wouldn't you want the best gear you can get in your emergency stash, to help you withstand her advances? Quality can save your life. Economy can kill you. That applies to all our emergency preps, not just firearms.
(On a related subject, Commander Zero recently bought some land in the back country of Montana, and is beginning to set it up as a private retreat. He recently blogged about his first weekend excursion to begin preparing it for use. So many things went wrong that one can almost feel his pain, but he's not afraid to discuss all the mistakes he made, and what he's learned from the experience that he'll apply in future visits. A very useful discussion, and a very useful reality check for the rest of us.)
Preparation isn't just physical. One's outlook on everyday living - and what it costs - is a foundational element. SNAFU links to a social media comment from a teacher who's complaining that she can't come out on $7,500 net income per month - while spending over $1,500 on a vehicle payment, and over $3,000 on rent! Some commenters at his site question whether the original post is truthful, because the payments seem extraordinarily high, but he makes the very valid point that "Financial Education needs to be a REQUIRED course in school (along with NOT chasing luxury items to impress people that don't give a damn)".
On that subject, here's some brutally frank (and very truthful) advice from the TV series House Of Cards. Kevin Spacey plays Frank Underwood, a highly immoral yet realistic politician.
Yes, that is brutal advice: but in this world of easy-fulfilment dreams, hire purchase, leasing, and all the other debt instruments out there, it remains true. If you're in debt, you're a financial slave to those who own your debt, and most of them will be utterly ruthless in coming after you to get what they're owed. Being prepared for emergencies is as much about financial preparation as any other type of preparedness: and one of the first and most fundamental steps in financial preparation is to get out of debt as far as possible. As Spacey's character says, "The moment you get in debt, you're enslaving yourself until you buy back your freedom with interest." Believe it. It's true.
(Sometimes, of course, we can't afford not to go into debt. We had to replace my wife's car in early 2022, because her old one had been driven into the ground until it was no longer viable. The impact of COVID-19 had led to a drastic shortage of all types of vehicles, partly due to the reduction in dealer inventory, partly due to the shortage of used vehicles thanks to President Obama's "Cash For Clunkers" scheme, which scrapped tens of thousands of otherwise worthwhile cars. We ended up buying a new car, and paying above the manufacturer's MSRP, because nothing else worthwhile was available to us: and, to finance that very expensive purchase, we took out a loan. It was a loan neither of us wanted, but under the circumstances, it was necessary. Under such circumstances, one does what one must. We bought an entry-level model without all the luxury features, and that helped lower the price and keep payments down.)
All of the above articles are food for thought.
Peter
Commander Zero, whom we've met in these pages on several occasions, recently wrote an article asking his readers for feedback on cold weather food storage. His exact question was: "If you were going to store foods in a location that was going to be subject to freeze/thaw cycles, what foods would be best choices?"
Many of his readers responded - 44 of them, as I write these words. They've provided a great deal of information that's useful for anyone considering food storage, even if not in a cold-weather environment. I highly recommend clicking over to his place to read his question and explanation, and their responses.
Peter
How many of you have been to, or know the culture of, the Philippines or Cambodia?
How many of you have sampled the (in)famous balut?
If you have, you'll know why this image (courtesy of the blogger at Come And Make It) led to an instant attack of visual indigestion . . .
I can't think of anything more calculated to utterly destroy Peeps' market share!
Peter
(P.S.: My wife's response was "Not just no, but HELL, NO!!!")
CederQ, who blogs with Phil over at his place, put up a meme this morning. I can't reproduce it here, because it's definitely Not Safe For Work and not family-friendly: here's the link, if you don't mind the risk. Even so, I had to laugh out loud at the caption. It reads, on the top line:
SAYS SHE STRIPS TO FEED HER KIDS
On the bottom line:
GETS MAD WHEN YOU THROW CANNED GOODS AT HER
The captions, combined with the NSFW image, had me laughing out loud.
Seriously, though, I can't tell you how many times, as a pastor and a private individual, I've been asked for help by someone. Almost always, their need is stated to be something physical, like food, a bus ticket, or whatever. However, when I offer to buy them the thing(s) they need, rather than give them money, they get upset with me. It's quite clear they want the money for other things, and I'm the bad guy for "giving them a hard time" by havering about it.
I will admit, I've never tried to throw canned goods at strippers (or anything else, for that matter). I've never even been to a strip show or club. Nevertheless, I'm curious about the ballistics. What size can? What contents? How hard should it be thrown? Answers in Comments, please - but keep it clean!
Peter
Yesterday we looked at how vaccine manufacturers may be vulnerable to lawsuits, even perhaps criminal charges, following the publication of the Medicare billing database last weekend. That's not the only example of potential high-level corruption coming out of the COVID debacle.
Eaton Rapids Joe reminds us:
Slowly, ever so slowly, it is starting to leak out that scientists and researchers knew back in 2020 before the vaccines were released that aspirin was the Covid super-drug. Yes, plain, old, garden-variety, low-dose aspirin.
If fact, they knew back in 2007 that aspirin was THE GO TO drug for SARS. SARS is also a corona virus and is a kissing-cousin to Covid-19.
. . .
The "problem" is that aspirin is a commodity with very, very low profit margins.
The other "problem" was that emergency certification of vaccines are not allowed if there are other approved therapies. Powerful people had patents for modified-RNA based vaccines. It was in their economic best-interest to squash alternative therapies. It is also likely that they enjoyed basking in the glory of being called "Savior".
This is one of the reasons why I have a very low level of trust in the Deep State.
There's more at the link. Recommended reading.
There's more to it than just aspirin. The health authorities also cracked down heavily on the prescribing and dispensing of ivermectin (IVM) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat COVID. In fact, they tried to prevent them being distributed at all, withdrawing stocks and sequestering them - despite both drugs being proven, effective remedies for COVID-like diseases for many years.
As Eaton Rapids Joe points out, the problem was that emergency certification of COVID vaccines was only permissible if there were no other approved, effective treatments. Given the money to be made from the vaccines, the solution was simple: remove other effective treatments from the market. That way, emergency certification could be (and was) given - and the vaccine manufacturers, health authorities, and other beneficiaries earned literally billions of dollars. The fact that thousands died or suffered ongoing health problems from the vaccines bothered them not at all.
I knew about this at first hand, because I was born and raised in Africa, where IVM and HCQ have been in daily use by millions of people for decades. The developers of IVM were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015, and both it and HCQ are on the World Health Organization's Model List of Essential Medicines. IVM is a remedy for many parasites and fungal infections, while HCQ was developed as an anti-malarial drug; but both have proven effective against congestive diseases such as SARS or COVID. In addition, HCQ has proven effective against certain forms of arthritis (I use it to treat spinal arthritis).
Don't be fooled by claims that neither has been proved to be effective against COVID. That propaganda was hurriedly poured out in torrents by the medical industry during the COVID scare, because they didn't want to upset the money rolling in from their new vaccines. I'll give you the clearest possible evidence that both worked. Where are the reports of massive COVID infections and mortalities in Africa? Even at the height of the scare, there were no such reports, because COVID never spread wildly in Africa. Why not? My opinion is that it's because so many Africans - millions of them - were already taking IVM and/or HCQ on a regular basis to treat common infections and diseases on that continent. They had already built up a "pre-resistance" to COVID because of that, and so did not succumb to it. Effectively, COVID was stopped before it could get a foothold. That's my opinion, of course, but I know at first hand how effective those drugs were (and still are) in Africa. I took them myself for many years. If there's another explanation, let's hear it. I'm waiting.
I still keep supplies of IVM and HCQ on hand, because they still work against a wide variety of congestive diseases, viruses, etc. My wife and I have both felt the beginnings of the current flu bug, or whatever it is, during the past few weeks. We have a simple solution: the moment we feel the crud coming on, we take one tablet of IVM and one of HCQ right away, and then alternate them daily until the problem is past. Neither of us developed full-blown crud, and neither of us felt (light) symptoms for more than 24-48 hours. We've been doing that for a long time. I know that "correlation is not causation", but after years of using both drugs in Africa, I'm in no doubt about how useful they are.
There you have it, friends. If you can't get your hands on IVM or HCQ locally (and the US medical establishment is still pretty firmly against them, for obvious reasons) then I suggest you consider other means of doing so. Some go to Mexico and patronize local pharmacies, who have no such reservations and don't even require prescriptions. Some buy online from pharmacies in other countries, which is illegal under US law, so I'm not going to recommend you do that. Of course not. IVM can be had in veterinary form in this country (derided by the authorities as "horse dewormer" - but what horse dewormer has won a Nobel Prize?). The horse dewormer version still works on humans.
Thanks to Eaton Rapids Joe for mentioning aspirin and COVID. It's a worthwhile reminder.
Peter
Karl Denninger has written extensively about the effect of extreme cold on your home's plumbing, heating problems, and related issues. His article is too long to excerpt here, so click over to his place and read it for yourself. Very interesting and useful information.
Stay warm, friends.
Peter
Aesop, whom we've met in these pages on many occasions, is back from his blogging hiatus and demonstrating that sarcasm, acerbic wit, and not giving a damn do, indeed, convey points of view very well. Here he is discussing the US dollar and fiat currency in general.
Wages since 1985 have cratered. Case in point, my parents' combined household income in 1985 was at the 50th percentile at the time, i.e the mid-point, nationally. Or notionally. Mine is currently at the 90th percentile nationwide, all by my ownself, IOW, better than 90% of US households. But for me to have the purchasing power they enjoyed near the household median in 1985, my paycheck would need to be larger than it is by seven- to ten-fold. IOW, I make 500% of what mom and pop did, yet the purchasing power of my income is only about 40% of what theirs was then. That's how much nothing my fiatbux "Real wages" command currently, and how badly "Real wages" have dropped.
Gold is gold, which is why the spot price is USD$4500/oz as I write this, compared to +/- USD$300 in 1985. That means a dollar in 2026 is worth less than 7% in real terms what it was 40 years ago.
. . .
For Common Core grads, that means your dollar now is worth less than 5/1000ths - 0.005% - of what a dollar was worth in 1932. ($1 x 0.065 x 0.07 = 0.00455. QED) A dollar currently is worth less, in real terms, than the cost for the ink and paper to print it. Maybe write that down on your hand in Sharpie, lest ye forget. We don't need zinc pennies anymore, because $1 bills are the new 1/2¢ coin. And the only people who've figured that out are EVERYONE who's selling you anything, worldwide, and why all your s***, from cars to houses to Happy Meals, has zoomed in price. Gold hasn't zoomed. Your dollars are simply worth Jack, and S***. That's how inflation works, with the Treasury printing fiatbux three shifts a day, and inflating the unbacked money supply by trillions, year after year. Fun times, dead ahead.
. . .
This reality is why Fiatbux - dollars, francs, yen, renminbi, whatever - are all finely engraved toilet paper. Don't make me do a retard crayon talk here. The only things that have cratered harder than "real wages" since 1985 are Russian armored regiment performance, or possibly Minnesota fraud investigations. Even Catholic church child abuse investigations have improved more than real wages since 1985. To suggest otherwise makes CNN economic reporters and hosts on The View sound wise.
. . .
Sometime between tomorrow and death, most of the world is going to discover firsthand what the inhabitants of Weimar, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela all learned about financial reality. It isn't going to be pretty. In a Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff kind of way. Mind the drop.
Just saying.
There's more at the link.
Of course, he's saying nothing new to those of you who've been following our discussions on this blog over the past few years. We most recently addressed the problem less than a week ago. Nevertheless, there are relatively few people, in my experience, who actually understand the issues and/or will reorient their lives in such a way as to live according to reality as it truly is. Most people will continue to spend money, not on things of lasting worth or that will retain their value, but rather on what the Bible calls "riotous living": weekends in Vegas, fashionable clothes, fancy frou-frou imitations of coffee, and so on. If most people would spend on true necessities what they spend every month on such fripperies, they could prepare themselves and their families for hard times and sleep easier at night. However, most don't bother.
If you want a glaring example of evidence about our present situation, it's actually the absence of a piece of evidence. It's simply this: What happened to the audit of US gold reserves in Fort Knox that we were promised? Where is it? Where are the results? The subject has literally vanished from view. My conclusion is that it's being deliberately suppressed; and if that's the case, then I can only assume that our gold reserves simply aren't there any more. Where they are, and/or what happened to them, I have no idea: but if we had them, there's no reason at all why we, the people who (in theory) own them, just as we own (hah!) our government, should not be told about them. I'm pretty sure the powers that be understand full well that if they aren't there, they no longer underpin the value (such as it is) of the US dollar, so they'd rather ignore them and pretend the problem doesn't exist. Trouble is, after we've been lied to and misled so often by so many administrations, nobody with two or more working brain cells trusts the deafening silence which is all we hear about the subject.
(If you think differently, I have this bridge in Brooklyn, NYC I'd like to sell you. It's beautiful! You'll make a mint out of charging people tolls to cross it! Price on application. Cash only, please, and in small bills.)
Oh, well . . .
Peter
We've all heard variations of the meme that "If you import the Third World, you become the Third World". To a large extent, it's true - just look at the crime, welfare and health statistics of most enclaves of such immigrants and they tell their own story. Unfortunately, it's regarded as racist to point out that reality.
Lawdog has written a blunt, in-your-face summary of Third World reality.
When you import the 3rd World, you get 3rd World values
He's only the latest to point out that reality - and although he's writing about Somalia, you can extend his conclusions to cover the whole of tribal Africa. I've written about that at length myself: see my article "What to do about Africa?" for an in-depth discussion. (For an overseas perspective, The Spectator's Australian edition published earlier this year an article titled "Importing the third world: The cost of accepting immigrants who don’t share our values is too high". It's also worth reading.)
Like Lawdog, I grew up in Africa, and I've worked in most sub-Saharan African states. I entirely agree with him. The whole continent is a colossal mess, and probably will remain so, because nobody is ready, willing or able to impose a working system of ethics and social standards upon the existing morass. It's no wonder so many are trying to flee the continent by any means possible, even risking their lives to do so - because staying put will be just as great a risk to their lives, if not greater. Many will quite willingly commit murder if that's the only way to get here. I know. I've seen it happen.
Far too many of our illegal immigrants come from backgrounds like this. Only by removing them from our midst will our own crime, welfare and health burden be eased, because they're a very large part of the reason why it's so heavy.
Peter
I was fascinated to read an account of the development of the term "bulldozer" and the machine known by that name. The thing is, in our politically-correct society, I found it hard to believe the article's explanation of where, when and how the word originated. Here's an excerpt.
According to an 1881 obituary in a Louisiana newspaper, the word “bulldozer” was coined by a German immigrant named Louis Albert Wagner, who later committed suicide by taking a hefty dose of opium dissolved in alcohol. Little else is recorded about Wagner, but his term became a viral sensation in late 1800s America, going from street slang to dictionary entry in just one year. It likely originated from a shortening of “bullwhip,” the braided tool used to intimidate and control cattle, combined with “dose,” as in quantity, with a “z” thrown in for good measure. To bulldoze was to unleash a dose of coercive violence.
If, like gods, we aspire to create machines in our own image, then it’s fitting that the original bulldozers were humans. Leading up to the corrupted U.S. election of 1876, as the Southern states were being reconstructed following the Civil War, terrorist gangs of predominantly white Democrats roamed about, threatening or attacking Black men who they thought might vote for the Republican Party. The men were the bulldozers, and the acts they carried out were bulldozing.
. . .
“The good people have been cowed down, brow-beaten, insidiously threatened, forced to silence or worse, the countenancing of outrages, blackmailed and their contributions made the lever for future extortions, their tongues muzzled, their hands tied, their steps dogged, their business jeopardized and themselves living in continual fear of offending the ‘bulldozers,’” read an article in the New Orleans Republican in June. By the following year, the association of “bulldozer” with rampant voter suppression during the election made it a common term across the U.S. for any use of brutal force to intimidate or coerce a person into doing what the aggressor desired.
It’s hard to trace when the word first became a label for machines. For decades, it floated around the language tree, resting a while on branches where some instance of terrific violence needed a novel and evocative label. A handful of arms manufacturers marketed various “bulldozer” and “bulldog” pistols in these years. As the 19th century came to a close, it popped up in a Kentucky newspaper as a term for a towboat used to smash through heavy ice and in an Illinois court case to describe a manufacturing machine that had ripped off a worker’s left arm.
The bulldozer we know today took shape in the first quarter of the 20th century. In 1917, the Russell Grader Manufacturing Company advertised a bulldozer in their catalog: a huge metal blade pulled by mules that could cut into the earth and flatten the land. Other manufacturers like Holt, Caterpillar and R. G. LeTourneau were working on similar devices, technological descendants of scraping tools developed in the American West and associated with Mormon farmers. In time, animals were replaced with tractors (on wheels or continuous tracks) powered first by steam, then gasoline and eventually diesel. The word, which at first referred only to the blade itself, started to mean the entire machine, one that was unrivaled in its ability to rip, shift and level earth.
There's more at the link. It makes very interesting reading. A tip o' the hat to Ted Gioia for including it in his list of the best online articles of 2025.
I decided to investigate further. One of the meanings of the word "bulldozer" given in the Collins English Dictionary is "a person who intimidates or coerces". Until I read the article above, I'd never heard the word used to mean that - but then, I learned to speak English-English (actually, colonial-English) rather than American-English, so it's not surprising I'd never heard of the historical American roots of the word.
Wikipedia (hardly a trustworthy source, I know) does not list that meaning under its disambiguation entry for "Bulldozer". However, its sister site Wiktionary does list it:
3. (historical, chiefly in the plural) A member of a self-identified group of white US Southerners who colluded to influence outcomes of post-Reconstruction elections by intimidating, coercing and bullying black voters and legislators, including burning down houses and churches, flogging and murdering opponents.
4. (by extension) A bully; an overbearing individual.
Again, more at the link.
So, unlikely though it sounded to me, I guess the article is accurate. I learned something new today.
Peter
Kudos to CDR Salamander for sharing a letter from Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll in preparation for the holiday season. Mr. Driscoll addresses a long-standing problem, and offers hope. Click the image below for a larger, more readable view.
I had some experience of that sort of stress during my own military service, decades ago. Back in 2011, I wrote in these pages about a friend.
I remember Gavin, who was a member of a patrol that found a baby, too young to walk, sitting in the middle of a dirt road in a township, crying. As the point man and a couple of others walked up to see why the baby was just sitting there, the terrorists waiting in ambush blew up the landmine they'd buried beneath her, killing the point man and savagely mutilating the other two soldiers. Bits of flesh and blood from the soldiers, and the baby, splattered all over Gavin . . . across his face . . . in his eyes, nose and mouth.
For years, Gavin would start awake in the small hours at night, a scream of horror on his lips. "They blew up a baby! A baby!" Gavin's wife eventually left him, because she couldn't handle the strain of living with his nightmares. Psychiatric treatment couldn't break the cycle; nor could alcohol, or drugs (legal and illegal). Gavin took his own life at last, too tormented by what he'd seen to endure any longer, in the small hours every night, the parade of images across his closed eyelids. He was a hero in my book . . . and I'll always remember him as such.
There's more at the link.
There are too many like Gavin who never receive the help they need - not just combat stress and trauma, but the quiet accumulation of too many incidents, too much angst, too few friends. I hope Secretary Driscoll's letter will help to reach them before it's too late.
Peter
From a reader over at Larry Lambert's place:
"I like to think that my Scots-Irish ancestors came to America in the early 1700s because it later gave them one more chance to shoot at the British."
Now why is that so instantly believable? Could be because I have Scots and Irish ancestors as well . . .
From a comment over at Virtual Mirage, Larry Lambert's place:
Portland Naked Bicycle Parade:
Seems like a good target for cropdusters full of Nair.
That's an evil thought. That's an evil, evil thought . . . and I like it!
Following on from our first article this morning, my friend Lawdog has penned his thoughts on the ghouls in our midst. They've been exposed (yet again) by the murder of Charlie Kirk, but that's only the latest episode in which they've metaphorically danced in the blood of those they dislike.
Charlie Kirk — like him or dislike him — was willing to hold a dialogue with those on the other side of the political spectrum from him. He was right-wing, and he was willing to have conversation with those on the left-wing.
He was murdered by someone on the left-wing — yes, the alleged murderer was a leftist, I’ve read the charging instrument — and Charlie Kirk wasn’t even cold before left-wing doctors, teachers, attorneys, media personalities, therapists, professors, real estate agents, insurance agents, administrators, food service people, and service members didn’t just get callous, contemptuous, and cruel; but were gleefully laughing, dancing, singing, and ghoulishly posting evidence of such on social media, along with suggested kill lists of other conservative names, and wishes of suffering and death upon his grieving widow, kith,and kin.
Huh.
Now the conservatives are smacking back. Performative exhibitions of merriment and joy at the murder of another human being are getting the performers fired.
And we’re suddenly hearing: “We need to open a dialogue between the two political sides.”
. . .
Tell me, do: why should conservatives open a dialogue with people whose ghouls so publicly and exuberantly celebrate the deaths of conservatives — whether the conservatives be a media personality, or eight-year-old girls who just happen to live in Texas — to the point that I worry about how they treat any suspected conservative in their care?
I should open a dialogue with people who — should Rita or I die — will caper mirthfully upon our bodies?
Conservatives should open a dialogue with the side that paints a bloody huge target on conservatives — using brushes dipped in “Nazi”, “fascist”, and other dehumanising epithets — and then cheers when a conservative who dares open a dialogue gets murdered?
Nah. I’m good.
. . .
Get your sodding ghouls under control, first. Teach them — loudly, publicly, firmly, and often — that this sort of behaviour is not to be tolerated in polite society.
Then I’ll think about a “dialogue”.
There's more at the link.
I try to be Christian in my approach to people; not to pre-judge them, but to accept them as fellow sinners in need of the grace of God. However, there have been times over the past week when I could have sworn that some of those dancing in Charlie Kirk's blood (metaphorically speaking) were no more than demons spouting the propaganda of their master in Hell. There was precious little (if any) humanity to be found in their rejoicing over the murder of an innocent man whose only "offense" was to believe differently than they did.
If we in the center and right of American politics were to behave towards the Left, and speak of them, the way they do to and about us, we'd have civil war in a heartbeat. There'd be no room left for discussion, civilized argument, or debate. I can only thank God (literally) that saner heads have so far prevailed in the center-right of US politics . . . but I don't know whether that will (or even can) continue.
I'm seriously concerned about Charlie Kirk's memorial service in Arizona this weekend. President Trump will be there. How many hard left supporters will consider it a good idea to try to assassinate him while he's there? How many are already making plans to do so? How many are likely to follow through with their plans, and are capable of doing so? If I were the Secret Service right now, I'd be losing sleep considering those possibilities.
And yes, I agree with Lawdog. There is no possibility of meaningful "dialogue" unless and until the knee-jerk hatred stops. Golda Meir once said of Arabs: "We will only have peace with [the Arabs] when they love their children more than they hate us." Our progressives hate us, and our children, with a burning fire. We will not have peace with them unless and until that fire is extinguished. That can happen through their choice. I hope and pray that it will - because if it doesn't, it'll take a fire brigade to put it out. That fire brigade won't be using hoses.
Peter
Ted Gioia is worried about the state of the economy, and the mixed signals from higher levels that are conflicting with data "on the ground".
Are we entering an AI-driven boom time like an out-of-control Monopoly game? Or will we be too broke to eat breakfast?
Let’s try to answer this question—because a lot is at stake in getting the answer right.
I see signs of economic turmoil everywhere in the real world:
- Starbucks sales are down and they are closing 100 stores.
- KFC and Pizza Hut sales are down in the US.
- Dozens of other restaurant chains are closing locations.
- Las Vegas tourism is down sharply and visitors describe it as a ghost town.
- In fact, the entire hotel and hospitality industry is shrinking.
- There are now a half million more homes for sale in the US than home buyers.
- Credit card debt is rising—and is now back at its all-time high.
- US unemployment is the highest it’s been since the pandemic.
- The jobs data was so bad that the person compiling the numbers got fired!
Companies are getting desperate, and they can’t hide it. A friend reports that Pizza Hut sent him a promotion on Tuesday morning, offering a two dollar pizza. He wondered how they could possibly make money on this deal.
And then that same day he got a notice from competitor Papa John’s, also promising a two buck pizza.
Two bucks for a pizza? Really?
This is how businesses respond when customers totally disappear. They will do anything to bring them back. Otherwise they have to shut down.
And this is a reality untouched by promises of an AI boom time. It’s everywhere in the real world where flesh-and-blood people live and work.
Mr. Gioia goes on to note five important points about the so-called AI "boom":
He concludes:
By any reasonable measure, the current trend is unsustainable. And there’s one thing I know about unsustainable trends—there’s a day of reckoning, and it’s not a happy one for the people who caused it. But, even sadder, they take down a lot of others with them when the bubble bursts.
There's more at the link, including some informative and worrying graphics to illustrate his points.
If you've followed our discussions in these pages over the past few years, you won't be surprised by any of this. Previous administrations have spent us into near-bankruptcy, and papered over the fiscal cracks with almost unlimited treasury bond sales and other measures. Our deficit is so high it's almost impossible to visualize: and as always, excessive debt becomes a drag on the economy as a whole, both for those who caused it and those who simply happen to be in the same country. Sooner or later, our economic chickens will come home to roost, and some (like myself) think that won't be long delayed.
I hope I'm wrong. I really do. It would be wonderful to think that President Trump will be given enough time to stave off the crisis, and do what's needed to begin restoring our economy . . . but I somehow suspect that the damage is already too great. He'll paper over the cracks as best he can, but no matter how good his policies may be, he's not a miracle-worker. (He also contributed to the problem by not controlling deficit spending during his first term of office. He gets a great deal of credit for his current policies, but also a share of the blame for the mess leading up to the present situation.)
Go read Mr. Gioia's whole article. Food for thought.
Peter
Fellow blogger Big Country Expat has taken the time and trouble to photograph every page of the Minneapolis church shooter's ramblings (I refuse to use his name - let him be forgotten!), and has published them on his blog, along with a translation of the weird mixture of English and pseudo-Russian, Latin and Cyrillic script in which they're written. Click here to go to his place and take a look.
I think he's done us a public service by putting this stuff out there. I suggest each of us bookmark his post, and if possible save a copy to our own computers, because sure as hell the progressive left is going to try to deep-six the "manifesto" in order to "protect" the trans community. We need to remember, and be aware every day, that the proportion of mass shootings and other such crimes committed by trans people is out of all proportion to their actual numbers. It's getting to the point where I think we might start classifying all trans people as at least potential criminals of this sort, purely to protect ourselves against the larger-than-usual proportion of mass murderers coming out of their number.
Also, it's long gone time to improve our school security. I suggest training and arming teachers, since they're the people on the spot if trouble starts. I know this latest shooting occurred at a school church service - but that can be catered for, too. I knew more than a few priests in Africa who routinely carried a gun beneath their vestments as they celebrated Mass, and for good reason. They lived in parts of the continent where inter-religious violence was the rule rather than the exception, and they saw it as part of their duty to protect "the flock of God which is their charge". I'm sure their successors are continuing the same policy today. More power to them!
Peter
That's how El Gato Malo, blogging at Bad Cattitude, describes our society today. (He [?] eschews capital letters.)
consider the possibility that the advent of moronical modernity finds its roots in a simple tenet of economics:
when, all else equal, the price of something drops, people choose to consume more of it.the price of being moronical declined and so consumption of this "good" increased.
pre-enlightment, people were poor and life had more notable tendencies toward "nasty, brutish, and short."
it was a time full of severe selectors any of which would both cull you from the herd and assure future generations that genes like yours would not be around to commit further foibles.
. . .
such calamity used to be near instant. now it is a slow burn through the sizable fat reserves of the once replete civilizational success that made everyone so comfortable in the first place.
the plenty of the post enlightenment removed these penalties even replacing them with welfare state subsidy.
that's how you fertilize a moron farm.
it's also how you drive and enable antisocial behavior and open up a society to conquest and collapse.
. . .
such safety nets are a positive right, a right to food, to shelter. on a first order basis, this seems a good thing, but the second order underpinning is always authoritarian and a violation of the negative rights to self determination which stand as fundamental. the mantra becomes: we will take (by force or threat of force) from some in order to give to others.
. . .
and the safety net is cushy enough and the overall level of life around us high enough that behaving is such a fashion can keep you afloat and OK without needing anyone else. life as a low-trust non-contributor has become tenable and shame at the idea of doing so has attenuated and even inverted into levels of astonishing entitlement.
. . .
the selfsame good intentions of "wanting to make sure everyone is OK" are precisely what land us in a society of takers crowding out makers and where plenty and safety are lost.
this selects for those low in motivation, intelligence, aptitude, and trust to have many children to maximize benefits while at the same time upping the burden on those who do pay and rendering their own child rearing options more limited.
There's more at the link. The article is well worth reading in full.
I've seen this at work in multiple levels of our society, from the inner city ghettoes to so-called "refugees" being handed more money and largesse at the border than many Americans earn by the sweat of their brows. One incident in particular sticks in my memory. A few months after I came to this country, I was invited to speak to a couple of classes of high school seniors in Lake Charles, Louisiana, about Africa and current events there. After a couple of classes, I went outside during a break to talk to any students who were interested to learn more.
A young woman introduced herself to me, and wanted to know about "welfare programs" for single mothers in Africa. She was openly shocked and disbelieving when I told her that most African countries don't have any. It emerged during our conversation that she was 17 years old, and was currently pregnant with her fourth child. She'd had the first when she was only 12. All four had different fathers. The truly shocking thing to me was her casual claim that her mother encouraged her to have them all, because the State of Louisiana would pay her welfare and other benefits totaling several hundred dollars per month for each child. She'd basically chosen to have her babies as cash cows - not because she valued them as human beings.
What sort of mother brings up her daughter to think like that? What sort of family brings up kids who will surely realize, at a very young age, that nobody really loves them or cares for them, except as a source of money? When they grow up, they'll be kicked out of the house to make their own way. What are the odds that they'll do precisely and exactly the same thing as their mother and grandmother? The highlighted sentence in the last paragraph cited above fits their situation to a T.
Another example came my way during my time as a prison chaplain. There's a program run by a group of churches which aims to give a Christmas present to the children of incarcerated inmates, who otherwise might receive nothing. During September and October, the chaplains at my prisons pass out forms to inmates, one per child, and have them fill in the details, then return them. I was dumbfounded at the number of inmates who casually asked for six, or eight, or ten or more forms, and returned them all with the names of all the children they'd fathered. Almost all the children were born to different mothers. It was almost like a contest among the criminal element, the "winner" being the man who'd begotten the most children on the most mothers. Not one of them showed any shame or embarrassment at their conduct. This was just the way their lives were.
I fear El Gato Malo is correct . . . but I don't know how to change that, apart from cutting off all such benefits - which would undoubtedly result in rioting and plunder on a huge scale as the outraged "moronicals" demanded that their free stuff be restored.
Oy.
Peter
... with apologies to Neil Diamond, of course.
This morning, friend Alma Boykin put up this video clip of the sounds of cicadas in Texas.
It reminded me that I find American cicadas to be so quiet that they're hardly noticeable. My friends here tell me I'm crazy, that they're really loud . . . but I come from southern Africa, where cicadas can be so loud that you could use them as an instrument of torture - like this:
Must be a different variety of cicada, I guess, or maybe a lot more of them. I have many memories of camping where the noise was so great, one had to use earplugs to try to fall asleep. (That was its own hazard, as "things that go bump in the night" were very frequently encountered in the bush, and one needed to be able to hear them in order to do something about them - before they did something about you! We usually had someone awake and alert, or at the very least not using earplugs.)
Peter
Daddybear, also known as our online and meatspace buddy Tom Rogneby, has published a helpful guide to washing your Labrador retriever. It's packed full of helpful advice. For example:
2. Barricade the gate to the deck stairs. This is crucial. It is amazing how agile a 13 year old lab is when he doesn’t want to do something, and he’ll do a stutter step that will bring a tear to Jerry Rice’s eye and squirt right past you and down into the mud puddle that is your back yard.
6. Get your hose and start soaking the lab as best you can. Labs have, on average, 13.72 separate layers of fur, so this is going to take a bit.
- Side note – Labrador Retrievers, as a breed, were created for fishing and duck hunting, both of which require the dog to plunge into icy cold water. It can surprise the new dog washer to learn that labs can have that sort of fortitude, but are absolutely against the idea of cold hose water being applied to their person.
8. Once the wet dog is thoroughly coated in suds, get your hands into a ‘claw’ configuration and proceed to scrub the everliving whey out of that hound’s fur. You’re trying to scrub soap down into all of those layers of hair, so you might have to be a bit more aggressive. Take frequent breaks to flip handfuls of sudsy fur into the yard. The pile you make will survive several thunderstorms, but will be prized by the local gopher population as they soundproof their latest tunnel under your air conditioning unit.
- A side benefit to this activity is that it gets in your cardio for the day. Not only will you be bent over, vigorously moving your upper extremities repeatedly, but you’ll also be wrestling with a sopping wet dog that thinks you’re playing with him. At some point in this process, there will likely be as much suds on you as there is on the dog.
There's much more at the link.
Having grown up with a golden Labrador retriever, and owned another one during my last years in South Africa, I can attest to the truth of Tom's testimony. Both dogs would happily run and play in the surf at the beach, or in a stream in the mountains, or even run outside in heavy rain - but if you so much as reached for a bucket, their warning antennae kicked in, and they'd do a Houdini every time you tried to corral them for washing.
The only dog I knew who really liked being washed was a huge cross between a St. Bernard and another big breed, possibly a Great Dane. He weighed 140 pounds, and his shoulders were at waist height on even tall men. He had some sort of irritating skin condition, which plagued him particularly in the summer months; so if you appeared with a bucket, shampoo and a hosepipe, he'd eagerly run to meet you and submit to your ministrations with every sign of pleasure. A dog that big sure gave us a run for our money to get him clean.
Peter
Courtesy of Cederq, posting at Phil's place, we find this pearl of wisdom:
To anyone who believes that, may I gently suggest that sexual intercourse might be a lot more to blame than any other politically-correct factor?
Sheesh!!!
Peter
