COVID-19 and car sales - a ripple effect?

As regular readers know, I've followed vehicle sales as a major bellwether of the country's economic health for some years.  Not too long ago, the expectation was that used car prices would show a massive decline, thanks to an oversupply of vehicles coming off lease, accompanied by so great an increase in the price of new vehicles that many people would no longer be able to afford them.

Over the past couple of months, that's changed.  Bloomberg notes:

Distortions from the official CPI report can be seen in used-car pricing, which showed their biggest monthly jump in August since 1969, but are still far short of the increases seen by used-car auctioneer, Manheim, an Atlanta-based firm that sells roughly 7 million vehicles a year.

“The jump in used car and truck prices over the past two months might reflect the increased demand from city-dwellers who no longer are comfortable taking mass transit and others who have left the city and now need a vehicle,” said Kathy Bostjancic, economist at Oxford economics.

There's more at the link, including a larger version of the graph above.

That graph is really interesting.  Officially, used vehicle prices are very stable;  however, a leader in that field of business says they're anything but stable, having gone up by almost a third compared to the beginning of this year.  What's going on?

Ms. Bostjancic's theory is probably correct, as far as it goes.  Mass transit has been shown to be a hotpoint of infection for COVID-19, and it's also become a focal point for violence this summer, both criminal and politically motivated.  As a result, many commuters are no longer comfortable with using it.

Also, there have indeed been many relocations from cities to outlying suburbs and smaller towns for health and other reasons.  (I've seen figures suggesting that between half a million and one million households moved out of New York City this summer - and that's just one major metropolitan area.)  I know that in places like NYC, many residents haven't bothered to own cars for a long time, because it's difficult, inconvenient and expensive to keep one there (for example, monthly parking fees in a secure facility can range from $300 to $1,000 per month).  If they leave the city, and no longer have ready access to taxis or public transport, they need their own wheels.

However, there are several other factors that I think are playing a role.  They include:

• With increased health risks, airlines cutting schedules due to reduced demand, and requirements for travelers to wear masks at all times (over and above the "normal" difficulties with TSA security theater, etc.), a lot of people are flatly refusing to fly.  They'd rather drive to their destination.
• Thanks to restrictions on cruise ship sailings, hotel sanitation risks and quarantine requirements in some states, there's a boom in RV sales as families go on the road to vacation together - and travel trailers have to be towed.
• With more families staying at home as schools are closed, there's a greater need to ferry kids to and from outside activities - if only so that stay-at-home parents can retain their sanity!
• Restaurants in many parts of the country are severely restricted during the pandemic.  Households have to shop for and prepare their own meals, on a scale that hasn't been needed for years, if not decades.  There's also a greatly increased need for toilet paper, paper towels, and other domestic supplies now that so many more kids are learning at home.  All those factors mean more shopping trips, and a need for larger and/or more reliable vehicles.

There's also the undeniable fact that new vehicle prices are ridiculously high.  Added to that, there are greater restrictions on formerly-easy credit, as existing borrowers lose their jobs and lenders eye new applicants with increased wariness - they want to be as sure as possible that they can and will repay their loans.  That means many buyers can no longer aspire to new cars, and are forced to turn to the used vehicle market to find something affordable.  As always, greater demand pushes up prices.

Rental car companies, the largest buyers in the US car market, have also modified their purchase and resale patterns to adjust to the COVID-19 business environment.  Previously, they'd buy hundreds of thousands of new vehicles every year, and sell a similar number of older ones on the used car market.  When demand collapsed under the impact of the pandemic, some put a lot more of their vehicles up for sale to trim their fleets for the new business environment.  The Hertz bankruptcy in particular dumped hundreds of thousands of vehicles into the market.  That did initially depress prices;  but the surge in demand, due to factors outlined above, rapidly absorbed the new supply of used vehicles, after which prices rose again.  Meanwhile, the rental companies cut back drastically on their purchases of new vehicles, and kept older ones in service for longer (aided by the fact that their mileage wasn't increasing as fast as it usually did, thanks to lower demand from travelers).  That hurt new vehicle sales, but shielded the used car market from an ongoing glut in supply, keeping prices higher.

Finally, I'm informed that many people who leased cars at attractive monthly rates over the past few years suddenly found that it was harder for them to qualify for new lease deals at affordable financing costs, thanks to tighter credit requirements during the COVID-19 economic downturn.  However, they were often able to extend their existing leases for another year or two, usually at very attractive rates.  Thus, many vehicles that would have come on the market in normal circumstances no longer did so, further reducing supply.

Put all that together, and the supply-and-demand equation makes for greatly increased used vehicle prices.

Peter

Heh

Spikes Tactical, one of the better-known vendors of AR-15 rifles, parts and accessories, has something new to offer.  It's an engraved magazine for the AR-15.

For its inspiration, refer to the Kenosha shooting incident a few weeks ago.  One of the rioters attempted to assault the shooter by striking him with his skateboard.  That proved to be Not. A. Good. Idea.

Spikes Tactical has several other not-politically-correct engraved magazines on offer.  Some of them made me smile.  No, I'm not being compensated in any way for mentioning them:  I merely found them amusing, and thought I'd share them with my readers.

Peter

Lies, damned lies and propaganda

I've noticed that, in some of the photographs of rioters and activists demonstrating in our streets, they're shown wearing T-shirts with stylized likenesses of Che Guevara.  I don't think they have any idea what a psycopathic, merciless, murdering SOB he was.

The problem is, those of us who saw Che Guevara for what he was aren't helped when false "facts" are used to vilify him.  For example, I've found this image circulating on the Internet recently, and being used explicitly to condemn those rioters wearing his image on their T-shirts.

I confirmed that this image was, indeed, the winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 1960.  However, the details provided above are not correct.  The condemned man was not a farmer, but accused of war crimes (their nature was not specified) as a member of the Cuban armed forces;  his trial lasted two hours, not four minutes;  and he was convicted by a tribunal, not by Guevara personally.  The photographer commented on the image in an interview published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 3, 1960, shown below.

We do ourselves no favors by spreading lies as counter-propaganda.  When they can so easily be disproved, we discredit ourselves.

Propaganda aside, history confirms that Guevara was indeed a vicious, remorseless killer.  I won't pray for any man to burn in hell. I'm going to need far too much of God's mercy to cover my own sins to try to deny it to anyone else. Nevertheless, there's so much innocent blood on Guevara's hands that it's very hard to imagine him anywhere else in eternity . . .

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 24

Gathered during the past 7 days of Internet wandering.

Peter

Sunday morning music

Lamoral, count of Egmont, was a leading Dutch nobleman and politician in the sixteenth century.  His resistance to Spanish encroachment led to his arrest and execution in 1568, and was one of the factors that led to the Eighty Years' War, during which Holland became independent of Spain.

Egmont's life and example were widely publicized throughout Europe.  This led Goethe to write a play named for him, which he completed in 1788.  It portrays "the downfall of a man who trusts in the goodness of those around him".  In due course, Beethoven was asked to write incidental music for the play.  His Egmont Suite was completed in 1810, during the latter part of the Napoleonic Era.

Most of the Egmont Suite is seldom performed these days, although there is one complete recording on YouTube.  The most famous part of the Suite is the Overture, which is widely performed as part of the standard classical music repertoire.  It's one of my favorite short works.

I was reminded of it yesterday when I had the opportunity to make a pun on its name in a comment about a friend's blog post (greeted with a groan and a facepalm, of course).  I thought those of my readers who don't know it might enjoy it, so here it is.  The Gewandhausorchester Leipzig is conducted by the estimable Kurt Masur.

(If the embedded video below won't play, click here to go to its home page on YouTube.)

This is one of my favorite recordings of the piece.  I think the conductor and orchestra got the tempo just about dead right, unlike many other recordings that I think tend to take it too quickly.  After all, its subject (and Goethe's treatment of him) is imposing, exemplary, but ultimately tragic, so I think a certain gravitas is appropriate.

Peter

Saturday Snippet: USS Archerfish and her sixty thieves

USS Archerfish was a Balao class fleet submarine that served during and after World War II.  This photograph of her was taken in June 1945.

She is famous for sinking the largest aircraft carrier ever launched by Japan (and the biggest of any World War II combatant), the Shinano, while the latter was on her maiden voyage.  Shinano is shown below during sea trials in Tokyo Bay in 1944, shortly before she was sunk.

Shinano was originally designed and laid down to be the third Yamato class battleship, but was converted to a super-large aircraft carrier after the Japanese lost four carriers at the Battle of Midway in 1942.  She displaced approximately 72,000 tons, more than twice as much as a contemporary US Essex class fleet carrier.  She remains the largest warship ever sunk by a submarine.

After serving as a training submarine through the 1950's, USS Archerfish was reclassified as an auxiliary submarine, tasked with measuring the earth's gravitational variations for the benefit of the guidance systems of intercontinental ballistic missiles.  The last decade of her life was spent on this task.  The US Navy insisted that because she spent years away from any home port, she had to be crewed by bachelors only.  Needless to say, this led to some of the wildest parties in the Submarine Service when Archerfish pulled into some exotic foreign harbor.  She developed quite a reputation as the "bachelor party submarine", and competition to join her crew was reportedly intense.

The fun began even before she started her surveying career.  When she was assigned to the task, she was badly in need of a full dockyard overhaul;  but there was no budget to provide one, and since she was no longer a combat vessel (her guns and torpedoes having been removed), it was difficult to justify diverting scarce funds from fighting submarines for her benefit.  Accordingly, she was allocated minimal funds, and told to do the best job she could using her own crew and resources at the quayside, because no dockyard could be spared.

That was a mistake of gigantic proportions by the US Navy bureaucracy.  Keen to get down to work, and knowing the fun that awaited them, Archerfish's crew proceeded to demonstrate the fine old arts of scrounging, cadging, wheedling, repurposing, misappropriating, and just plain stealing what they needed, to an extent seldom, if ever, equalled by subsequent ships.  In their book "Gallant Lady:  A Biography of the USS Archerfish", authors Ken Henry and Don Keith (both former crew members) devote an entire chapter to the chaos that ensued.

They named the chapter for the ship's captain at the time, and called it "Kenny Woods and his Sixty Thieves".  Here are some excerpts.

Archerfish arrived at Philadelphia in early 1960 to find that there was very little money available for the refitting she desperately needed.  The navy didn't want to spend any money on the boat.  They had turned her over to the Hydrographic Office already.  The Hydrographic Office maintained they didn't have any money allotted for that purpose.  They were under the impression that the navy was going to fix up Archerfish so that she would be seaworthy.  The orders were that the boat was to be made safe to dive to a depth of two hundred feet and be able to maintain a speed of ten knots.  The two-hundred-foot restriction would keep them from having to find and fix problems with the boat's watertight integrity at greater depths.  The only work that was approved was whatever it took to accomplish those two simple goals.  Not another penny was to be spent on Archerfish.

The crew quickly realized the quality of the overhaul they were to receive was directly proportional to their ingenuity and the limited time they had to accomplish it. Not only that, but time was as scarce as money. The first phase of [Operation] Sea Scan was to be conducted mostly in Arctic waters. If they didn't complete the overhaul quickly and get away on schedule, the weather in the higher latitudes would quickly worsen in the fall. The mission would have to be postponed for a full year. It was far too crucial a job to be put off that long.

. . .

When the seriousness of the job they faced was fully realized, the crew of the Archerfish turned to and performed miracles. Despite the continual crap games and long nights in the bars, these dedicated men performed superhuman feats of strength and endurance. They also displayed a streak of larcenous ingenuity that was beautiful to watch, unless the observer was the one having his pocket picked ... Often they could not afford to go through channels or do the proper requisitioning paperwork. They simply found what they needed and did whatever they had to do to appropriate it.

The creative acquisitions began as soon as they berthed in Philadelphia. Even before leaving Key West, they had requested new sonar equipment to replace the totally outdated JP system ... There was no money available for such a luxury. About the same time, they learned that the sonar school in Key West was replacing some of their obsolete but far more modern JT equipment. Instead of being scrapped, that gear ended up on Archerfish ... Once they acquired the sonar gear for nothing, Ted Armstrong ordered cable for it. It was supposed to be waiting for them in Philadelphia. It wasn't ... Armstrong, with the help of Tom Salisbury, scavenged up enough cable around the dockyard to get the job done. Maybe it did belong to another submarine that was to be refitted, but it was not being used at the moment, so Armstrong and Salisbury put it to immediate good use on Archerfish.

. . .

[The submarine got a new skipper and a new executive officer while she was undergoing overhaul. The latter was Lt. David Dimmick.]

"If I had demanded a textbook relieving procedure, I'd still be there [in the naval yard]," Dimmick says. He quickly took his cue from the crew. Their job was to get the boat shipshape by the first of May, whatever it took. He was willing to do his part. He learned to turn his head and ignore the crew's actions when appropriate and to do whatever it took to expedite them when called for. If someone handed him a paper to sign, he simply signed it without reading it and told the bearer, "Now go away."

. . .

All liberty was canceled [for the engineering crew]. Gene "Doc" Barboza gave the men little white pills that helped them stay alert. Someone else discovered another way to keep awake. The electricians were using half-gallon cans of "gilly", 190-proof alcohol that was used to fuel torpedoes and clean electrical parts. If the sailors took the rags and dirty parts out of the liquid and allowed the bits of dirt and solder to settle to the bottom, they could then pour off the cleaner liquid from the top of the container, mix the stuff with coffee or soda, and drink the devilish mixture or use it to chase down Doc's little white pills.

The need for sleep disappeared entirely.

. . .

The commissaryman in the submarine barracks took an immediate dislike to the guys from Archerfish. Thirty-five-pound cans of coffee and sugar seemed to suddenly begin disappearing not long after the boat first sidled up to her berth in the yard. The large tins made wonderful cumshaw, or bartering material. "Greasy Joe" Osier recalls that they managed to get all the boat's handhole covers and injector drip pans for each of the four main engines chrome-plated in exchange for the items that had been appropriated from the galley.

. . .

It was common knowledge that the other submarines in the yard for overhaul had an abundance of [spare parts] in their cages, the fenced, locked storage areas that were assigned to each boat, but they were not willing to share.

The Archerfish crew happened upon a scheme that worked quite well. They sent a couple of guys to the cage area that had been assigned to one of the other boats. They went on the pretext of trying to find someone who they needed to talk with. While one sailor engaged the other boat's men in conversation, an accomplice slipped around and unlocked one of the windows to the cage. He also memorized where all the parts were stored.

All the other boats in the yard were on normal daytime working hours. Only Archerfish's crew worked around the clock. That meant the other boats' cages were locked but unguarded at night. Since the weather was cold, the windows stayed closed and were rarely checked at quitting time when everyone left for the day. In the wee hours, the men from Archerfish sneaked back and crawled through the window that had been unlocked the previous day. They were able to "shop" at their leisure for the parts they needed.

Once inside the cage area, it was often necessary to pick locks to get at the stuff they wanted. Mike "Mother" Lintner and Galen O. "Turkey Neck" Steck became very adept at it. They fashioned burglar tools from tap extractors and hacksaw blades, and these implements became invaluable in filling the "orders" for the parts they were unable to obtain through normal channels.

It's important to note that there was a strict ethical code in place during the entire process. The Archerfish crew never took anything they didn't specifically need. And they never took anything personal. Since it was navy property in the first place and they were going to use it on a navy boat, it wasn't really stealing. They were merely enhancing the navy's distribution process, redirecting items to where they were most needed. Besides, it kept the supply petty officers from having to worry about all that paperwork, so their methods were good for the navy in the long run.

. . .

Mike Lintner ... spotted a desk and a safe in [USS Hake's] yeoman's office that he knew Archerfish needed worse than Hake did. He had to take the desk apart to get it through the torpedo-loading hatch. Lintner also managed to remove the captain's bridge-wing chair from the aircraft carrier USS Tarawa. These items went into Lintner's "office" in the after torpedo room and became the home of the slush fund. Using cumshaw, he was able to Formica the fronts of all lockers on the port and starboard sides and added stainless steel trim. He gathered two years' worth of "Playmates of the Month" from Playboy calendars and had the beauties laminated into the Formica. The whole thing added a nice decorative touch and made life in the after torpedo room much more pleasant.

. . .

David A. "Loony" Stevens recalls that a crucial part of the periscope assembly needed to be replaced. Naturally, there was no money available to buy a new one. Stevens and Joe Cronin, the chief auxiliaryman, borrowed a couple of pairs of overalls and two hard hats from one of the shops, grabbed their tools, and went aboard one of the other boats that was in the yard for overhaul. They had long since discovered that if you act as if you belong where you are, you can usually bluff your way into any place. They proceeded to the conning tower, removed the built-in stadimeter housing assembly from the bottom of the periscope, and calmly walked off the boat, back to Archerfish. No one challenged them along the way.

"Speedy" Gonzalez was walking through the yard one day when he spied a small water valve. It was just like the one they needed in Archerfish's pump room but had not been able to get through proper channels. There was a rub, though. The valve was attached to a copper line that supplied water to a spigot outside one of the yard buildings. Gonzalez happened to have his tubing cutter with him and promptly liberated the required valve. He ignored the spray of water and the quickly forming puddle he left behind as he returned to his boat to install the much-needed part.

Then there were the aluminum deck plates from the after engine room and the angle iron framing that held them in place. The old ones somehow got misplaced during all the confusion when the boat first hit the yard and they began tearing her apart. Again, no problem. One night, the guys from the engine room found what they needed, right there on the dock on a pallet where they had been removed from USS Angler. At least the deck plates were there. The framing was still rigged inside the other sub. It took them most of the midwatch (midnight to four AM), but they managed to get the framing unbolted and everything moved to Archerfish. Before daylight the entire deck assembly was installed, deck mats fitted, and bench lockers in place.

. . .

Next on the shopping list were new mooring lines. The old ones were seriously frayed but, as usual, there were no funds for new ones. This time the USS Cutlass was selected to be the latest donor to the Archerfish "refurbishing fund". They had 1,200 feet of brand-new nylon line lying right there on the pier, prime for the taking. By morning, new eyes had been spliced in the line and all the old stuff had been replaced. For a nice touch, dirt and grease had been tossed on it so it looked well used.

A lot of people were looking for the line the next day. They never noticed that Archerfish had already put it to good use. The boat was tied up with it!

It wasn't long after that incident that an irate executive officer ... showed up in Dave Dimmick's office.

"One of your thieving crew stole a watertight locker right out of our superstructure," the officer charged.

"No way," Dimmick answered. "We don't need your damn locker. We already have one."

And to prove his point, he took his fuming counterpart down to the boat to show him. Sure enough, there was the locker, welded into the forward superstructure up by the escape trunk, just as Dimmick had said.

Neither man knew that the Archerfish crew members had gone aboard Cutlass in the dark of the night, removed the locker, brought it over, welded it into place, cleaned the welds, then painted it to match the superstructure of its new home. They had accomplished all that before anyone aboard Cutlass even knew it was missing.

. . .

By the last few weeks of the refitting, all the other submarines in the yard set up rotating watches on both the Archerfish's brows to stop any more of their stuff from finding its way to the boat. They made lists of anything coming aboard to check against items that suddenly turned up missing. Eventually, no one from Archerfish was allowed on any other submarine in the yard. Each boat checked yard badges and navy ID cards. If an Archerfish sailor needed to see someone on another boat, he had to wait on the pier until the person came out to talk to him.

No matter. The crew had somehow accomplished the impossible.

On May 5, 1960, the overhaul was pronounced complete, at a cost of $562,910. Of course, there is no way to determine what the work and equipment would have cost if a lot of it had not been creatively appropriated.

. . .

Rumor has it that soon after Archerfish's departure from Philadelphia, one of the boats in the shipyard sent a priority message to the submarine base in New London. Its contents were supposedly quite straightforward. "Lock up your wives and daughters and all your loose equipment. Kenny Woods and his sixty thieves are heading your way!"

I guess that amounted to a master class in "unofficial" appropriations!  I experienced very similar "creativity" during my own military service, but not to anything like that extent.

You'll find more information about USS Archerfish at a Web site dedicated to her, and to those who served aboard her.  It contains many photographs of her adventures (and the crew's misadventures).

A final note.  USS Cutlass, mentioned in the excerpt above, now serves in Taiwan's Navy as ROCS Hai Shih.  She was recently overhauled and updated.  The 75-year-old boat is now the longest-serving submarine in history.

Peter

Earth in the very dim and distant past

Ian Webster has created a very interesting visualization of how the Earth - the entire planet - looked during various past ages and eras and epochs.  One can select an era from a drop-down menu, and see what the globe would have looked like during that time.  The continents move, vegetation patterns are shown, and other details provided.

For example, here's our planet during the Ediacaran Period, about 600 million years ago.

And here's Earth during the early Triassic era, about 240 million years ago.

You can see how the continents are radically different in shape and layout compared to today.

Recommended viewing, particularly for children studying at home.

Peter

Is China sowing the seeds of its own dissolution?

I was unpleasantly reminded of the Soweto uprising of 1976 in South Africa by a recent article discussing China's crackdown on the Mongol language and culture.

Chinese authorities are searching for protesters in Inner Mongolia after a new policy aimed at pushing Mandarin-language education across the region sparked widespread unrest among the country’s ethnic Mongols, with many angered by what they saw as a move to erase their culture.

Thousands of students in Inner Mongolia have taken to the streets during the past week to rally against the government’s three-year plan to push Mandarin-language education across the northern region and phase out local history, literature and ethnic textbooks in favor of national coursebooks, according to rights group Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center.

Parents are also refusing to send their children to school in defiance of the new policy, said the New York-based human-rights center in a report earlier this week, while unverified videos of demonstrators protesting outside schools have circulated on Chinese social media.

Under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party has intensified efforts to promote Mandarin and push the country’s ethnic minorities to adopt a uniform Chinese identity.

There's more at the link, although the article may disappear behind a paywall.

What's the connection between China in 2020, and South Africa in 1976?  It's all about language and culture.

The Soweto uprising was a series of demonstrations and protests led by black school children in South Africa that began on the morning of 16 June 1976.

Students from numerous Sowetan schools began to protest in the streets of Soweto in response to the introduction of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in local schools. It is estimated that 20,000 students took part in the protests. They were met with fierce police brutality and many were shot and killed. The number of people killed in the uprising is usually given as 176, but estimates of up to 700 have been made.

. . .

For the state the uprising marked the most fundamental challenge yet to apartheid and the economic (see below) and political instability it caused was heightened by the strengthening international boycott. It was a further 14 years before Nelson Mandela was released, but at no point was the state able to restore the relative peace and social stability of the early 1970s as black resistance grew.

Again, more at the link.

The Chinese government doubtless thinks that because Han Chinese are the biggest ethnic and cultural group in the country (about 92% of the population), it can use them to dominate and suppress all others.  The trouble is, one is dealing with numbers so great as to dwarf the imagination.  The Mongol cultural group in China may be only about 5.8 million strong, but if even 1% of that number becomes sufficiently radicalized to fight back, that's tens of thousands of potential insurgents.  Add to that the other minority ethnic groups in China, all of which are under similar repression by Han Chinese language and culture (see, for example, the Uighur concentration camps), and one has the potential for real disruption.

It's instructive to compare what happened to two other nations when their central governments tried to impose their respective visions of ethnicity and the state.  In South Africa, the apartheid government tried to forcibly divide the nation along the lines of tribal groups, establishing so-called "Bantustans" for the larger tribes and seeking to force their members to be citizens of their "homeland" rather than the nation as a whole.  This policy met with massive resistance;  and when apartheid collapsed, the result was that everyone who had been "forced apart" demanded to come together into a central, unified nation.  That was actually a pretty bad choice, from an ethnic perspective:  South Africa to this day has eleven official languages, making for huge bureaucratic headaches to manage translation between them and running the country with due allowance for all of them.  Nevertheless, that was the result.  Remember Newton's third law of motion?  "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction."  In political terms, push people apart hard enough for long enough, and they'll rush back together as soon as the pressure is removed.

In the former Soviet Union, the opposite problem was seen.  Moscow implemented centralized rule over all the nations that made up the Union.  The Russian language was imposed on all other ethnicities;  administration was centralized in Moscow, and regional governments were forced to hew to the Moscow line;  and any political leaders who wanted to get anywhere in their own states were forced to conduct themselves like "Russians in miniature" in order to get Moscow's permission to run things locally.  Deviation was met with at best suspicion, at worst imprisonment or death.  Thus, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the "equal and opposite reaction" in political terms was that most of the minor nations that had been forced into the Union demanded their independence.  They almost all went their own way, so that we have today the many "Stans" of central Asia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, and many other former Soviet states that regard Moscow with suspicion and don't want to risk losing their "independence" - such as it is - to a resurgent Russia.

In South Africa, pressure to separate eventually forced a stronger, greater union.  In the Soviet Union, pressure to unite eventually forced the breakaway of those who did not want to be forcibly united.  Equal and opposite reactions, in both cases.  Will the same thing happen in China?  I guess the Chinese government and Communist Party think they have sufficient centralized power, and sufficient Han Chinese ethnic dominance, that they can ride roughshod over all objections.  Trouble is, that ignores the lessons of history.  Even the greatest Chinese imperial dynasties eventually collapsed.  If history is any indication, sooner or later the same will happen to the current Communist Party dynasty there.

Will ethnic oppression hasten that day?  My experience in South Africa leads me to believe that it will.  We'll have to wait and see . . .

Peter

9/11: We remember . . . and we prepare

Nineteen years ago, in New York City, the twin towers fell to a terrorist attack like none ever experienced before.

We remember those who died, and we honor their sacrifice.

We also take note that there are those among us who seek to do precisely the same thing all over again, this time to our entire Republic:  to overturn and destroy it, in the name of a poisonous ideology that has caused misery and death across the world.  Marxism drives Antifa and Black Lives Matter, by the open - even proud - admission of their founders and leaders.

Antifa and BLM and their supporters seek another 9/11 on a national scale, this time to destroy all that America stands for.  It's up to us to stop them . . . because if we don't, we'll be lying dead among the flames and the ruins as they stand around and cheer their handiwork.

It's time to stand up for what we believe in, because if we don't, we concede victory to our enemies by our inaction.

For decades, troops of Israel's Armored Corps have completed their basic training with a ceremony on top of the hill of Masada, where Roman forces destroyed the Sicarii rebellion in 74 AD.  They swear an oath:  "Masada shall not fall again."

Let us make our own the spirit of that oath, and do likewise.

Peter

"What the Captain Means" - political correctness meets combat reality!

I laughed out loud on several occasions while listening to this clip.  It's from Vietnam in the mid-1960's, where "politically correct" bureaucratic military officers were trying to control the flow of information about the Vietnam War.  Needless to say, those actually doing the fighting were more blunt about it - not to mention profane and pugnacious.  The video is a fictional portrayal, by actual serving officers, of how they experienced attempts to manipulate what they had to say about the reality of war.

LANGUAGE ALERT - This is blunt, profane and filled with F-bombs and the like.  So are many combat veterans of my experience!  If that bothers you, please don't watch it.

I was alerted to this video by a reader, but I'm afraid I thoughtlessly deleted the e-mail before I could acknowledge him/her in this post.  Sorry about that:  if you'd like me to mention your name, please send me a reminder.  Thanks!

Peter

The devil is in the details - urban crime edition

President Trump has claimed that violent crime rates in numerous Democrat-controlled cities are getting worse, and has offered to provide federal law enforcement personnel to help with the problem.  Most cities have rejected his claims and his offer, insisting that things are either not as bad as he says, or are in fact getting better.

The mainstream media are downplaying the President's claims, too.  As an example, the BBC reports:

President Trump has said the crime rate in certain cities such as New York is "through the roof".

But in many major US cities, including Chicago and New York, violent crime overall is down compared with the same time last year.

Various cities define violent crime in slightly different ways, but it usually includes murder, robbery, assault and rape.

Individual years can fluctuate but violent crime across America has been on a downward trend since the 1990s.

In April and May, violent crime in many US cities declined significantly compared with previous years, due in part to coronavirus lockdown measures.

But President Trump has pointed to a string of murders in certain cities, and homicides in contrast have increased sharply in some areas.

There's more at the link.

The trouble is, all those news reports don't take a major problem into account - namely, the deliberate efforts by many metropolitan police departments, at the urging of their political bosses, to disguise the true crime rate by falsifying the figures.  We've discussed that in these pages on several occasions.  Two recent examples:

• Lies, damned lies and statistics - California edition
• Falling crime rates? Not so fast . . .

There are numerous reports of the problem, from Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans and many other cities.  So-called "hate crimes" appear to be underreported nationwide.

Having worked with law enforcement professionals for some years during my service as a prison chaplain, I remain in contact with a number of them.  They all, without exception, tell me that things are actually getting worse, not better, despite claims that the rate of many crimes is going down.  They universally blame interference from city and state politicians, who want to reassure voters that they're "taking care of business" and that they should therefore be re-elected.

I wish we could get politics out of the picture, and just provide accurate data so that everyone concerned could make up their own minds.  Sadly, that's not about to happen.  Even so, when we meet this sort of disagreement and conflict over statistics, it's important to ask whether the statistics themselves are trustworthy.  Overwhelmingly, the evidence suggests that they're not - and therefore any claims made by politicians that "Things are getting better!" on the crime front are not worth a fig.  That applies particularly during times of urban unrest, protest and riot such as we're presently experiencing.

I can only suggest that we arm, train and prepare ourselves accordingly.

Peter

Sculptures that can kill your friends???

I have to admit, this is one of the weirder stories I've covered on this blog.  It's mostly in translation, too, which only makes it stranger.

Marcus Copper was a Finnish sculptor and artist.  Born in 1968, he died last year.  He seems to have had a weird fascination for sculptures and other "works of art" that were waaay out of the ordinary.  Here's his "Archangel of the Seven Seas" from 1995, currently in the collection of the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, part of the Finnish National Gallery.  Click the image for a larger view.

Those huge horizontal "posts" are actually organ pipes.  An article about the sculptor describes it as follows (original in Finnish:  this excerpt courtesy of Google Translate):

Copper’s best-known work is also his gentlest. Archangel of Seven Seas ... has built eight-meter-long organ pipes singing humpback whale. Copper bought the old organ of the Church of Kotka, twelve huge organ whistles, the largest of which was five and a half meters long. "The whistles were used to collect coins that come from the fear of the lord, and people gave more than coins."

Apparently, when played (using built-in electric motors and blowers), the work produces noises at a pitch and volume that make its surroundings shake.

Many of Copper's works were actively dangerous to the viewer.  For example, he built "Juggernaut", which Wired described as:

... an enormous steel ball that weighs as much as two cars. It has a motor, motion sensors, a juicy battery, and the mind of a psycho killer. It hunts you. If you don't jump aside, you'll be trampled under it. And it won't stop until the battery is dead.

Copper says he's not concerned about injuring people. Accidents can happen, but folks know what they're about to face. Juggernaut is stored behind a steel fence in Helsinki, and anybody who wants to play with the killer ball must unleash it first. The message is obvious: this experience might just take your life.

Copper's next project? "Bombs. I want to make bombs."

Copper died last year, but his obsession with destructive sculpture - particularly bombs - appears to be reaching out from the grave.  His "Sixpack of Instant Death" was sculpted in 1995.  It comprised six pieces, all somewhat deformed phallic shapes, that were designed to be linked together if the owners desired.  It's just emerged that they have a more sinister side to them.

ON TUESDAY, Helsinki police issued a surprising bulletin that initially gathered amused and surprised reactions on social media ... "Helsinki police are looking for parts of a work of art that may contain explosives - Three missing parts need to be found and rendered harmless", the title of the story said.

Sounds confusing. It became even more confusing when reading the bulletin revealed that it was a 25-year-old work.

The picture published in connection with the press release also clearly aroused interest. As Leevi Haapala, Kiasma's museum director, describes to Iltalehti, the sculptures in the six-part work were “ phallus-shaped”.

The [work], Sixpack of Instant Death, was made by sculptor Markus Copper , who died suddenly in his office in May 2019.

How has the Helsinki police now ended up chasing genital parts of a dangerous work that is 25 years old and the author himself has died?

Anniina Tourunen , a communications expert at the Helsinki Police , says that the search for parts of the old work that she understands has not started with a dangerous situation. None of the parts of Copper's work are known to have exploded.

Tourunen cannot very accurately explain why attention has been paid to the work right now.

“In August, the police received a contact regarding the matter, on the basis of which we set out to investigate the matter. It was not opened, who and how contacted about the [work], ”says Tourunen.

. . .

Copper divided his work, which was divided into six parts, specifically [among] his friends and colleagues.

"The idea was that when connected together, they would explode," Haapala told Iltalehti.

. . .

Sixpack of Instant Death is not a particularly significant work. Timo Valjakka says he has never seen it, but considers it a small-scale work that was not intended for the public.

"No museum would have included it in its exhibition because it had this dimension [opportunity to explode] all the time."

“I think this was a typical work by Mark,” Valjakka says.

There's more (courtesy of Google Translate) at the link.

You can read more about Mr. Copper's strange life in this 2009 article.  It's interesting, in a weird sort of way.

One has to wonder whether Mr. Copper warned his friends never to connect the six interlinkable "sculptures" when he distributed them.  With his somewhat strange outlook on life, he may have neglected to do so.

All I can say is, good luck to the Helsinki police.  If Mr. Copper's friends had the same sort of sense of humor (?) as he did, they may never find the rest of the set of six sculptures.  Perhaps a future generation of art-lovers (?) will rediscover their explosive nature the hard way!




Peter

Strong link between marijuana use during pregnancy, and autism

A major study has revealed a strong link between marijuana use by mothers during pregnancy, and subsequent rates of autism among their children.

A recent analysis of more than 500,000 Canadian mothers and their children revealed a 50% increase in the risk of autism in kids whose mothers had used marijuana while pregnant, according to a report published Monday in Nature Medicine.

. . .

The 503,065 children analyzed — 3,148 of whom had mothers that had used cannabis while pregnant — were followed for an average of seven years. Exactly 7,125 were diagnosed with varying levels of autism.

Researchers found that the rate of autism diagnoses among children with in utero cannabis exposure was 2.2%. Of those whose mothers did not use the drug during pregnancy, only 1.4% were diagnosed with autism.

"Cannabis is not a benign drug and any use during pregnancy should be discouraged," Corsi said. "We know that cannabinoids can cross placental tissue and enter the fetal bloodstream. There are cannabinoid receptors present in the developing fetus and exposure to cannabis may impact the wiring of the developing brain."

After researchers accounted for factors that might distort the results, they found that the risk for autism increased by 50% when mothers used cannabis while pregnant.

There's more at the link.

Needless to say, pro-marijuana voices are already being raised in an attempt to question or discount the results of the survey.  Nevertheless, I remain unsurprised.  I lived in Africa for decades, as regular readers will know.  Marijuana use is endemic there.  I have little doubt that it's one of the factors affecting the mental development of African children.  The continent rates chronically low on objective measurements of IQ;  and I'm sure drug and alcohol use has more than a little to do with that.  (Yes, mental underdevelopment is not the same as autism, but AFAIK they're related issues.)

It's a sobering thought that many of today's autistic and "special needs" children may have been made that way by their mothers' self-indulgent behavior.  Lawmakers, too, should take note.  De-criminalizing marijuana use may have had the unintended consequence of condemning many more children to a lifetime of retardation, and possibly permanent incompetence to manage their own lives.

Peter

Useful advice from the combat zone on lubricating your weapon

A US Marine Corps sergeant writes about using synthetic motor oil as a very effective and efficient weapon lubricant in extreme climates.

Problems would occur when troops were engaged for prolonged times and couldn’t risk breaking down their weapons to clean out all the dirt. We would simply pour in more CLP. An AR-15 type rifle will fire and function dirty as long as it is liberally lubricated. The problem is the more oil you pore down the bolt and into the chamber the more dirt it collects. What we discovered is that using Mobil1 synthetic motor oil usually in a 0w30 or 5w30 works much better than the CLP.  At $10 per quart it is on the expensive side as motor oils go.  But when compared to CLP or Rem Oil that are usually sold in 6 ounce containers at $5 to $6 it is much more cost effective. We also experimented with it on out crew served weapon systems. We found it to out perform the Lubricant, Small Arms (LSA) used on the M2 (.50 Cal Browning machinegun) and MK-19 (40mm grenade launcher).

. . .

I still recommend cleaning your weapon as frequently as possible. In the Corps we would hold random weapons inspections and any NCO could demand to see the bolt on any junior Marine’s weapon at anytime. I also want to mention that we never tested traditional (non-synthetic) motor oil on our weapons but the use of motor oil for cleaning and lubrication of weapons systems has been recognized by the US Military as early as WWII and can be found in numerous field manuals.

There's more at the link.

My military experience was decades ago, in a war on a different continent;  but the lessons we learned in African dust and dirt were very similar.  We used gasoline or diesel fuel as a quick-and-dirty field cleaning fluid, and then used motor oil as a lubricant.  If you didn't dry off all the gasoline, or mixed it with motor oil, this could lead to flaming embarrassment when firing a test round or two, but apart from that, the combination worked just fine.  Later, I learned that automatic transmission fluid (ATF) was even better than gasoline for cleaning and lubrication.

Today, I keep a bottle of ATF and a five-quart jug of synthetic motor oil in my garage (I use this brand because I drive an older car), to have a long-term reserve of gun cleaning and lubrication fluids.

There's also a very good bore cleaner and general firearm cleaning fluid known as "Ed's Red".  You can easily mix it yourself.  There are recipes for it all over the Internet;  here's one that is typical of the others.  You can follow it with synthetic motor oil for lubrication.

Peter

If the law is against you, neuter the law! Dirty politics strikes again

We've seen how, since the Democratic Party takeover of Virginia's state government almost two years ago, the administrative apparatus of state and local governments has been deployed - in some cases, weaponized - against conservative causes.

Now comes the clearest example yet that the progressive left will not allow the law to come between them and what they want.  When it does, they act to suppress it.

Portsmouth, Virginia Police Chief Angela Greene has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation just weeks after announcing felony charges against Democrat State Senator Louise Lucas, local NAACP President James Boyd, and 12 others in connection with a June 10th attack on the city’s 144-year-old Confederate monument.

While the department has yet to release details surrounding the investigation, City Manager Lydia Pettis Patton claims that Greene should have never been investigating the case due to an undisclosed “conflict of interest,” presumably that the case involves some of the city’s elected officials and representatives. In response, Greene said that her department had exhausted efforts to have an external group conduct the investigation and that no conflicts of interest had been revealed.

Greene has been under intense scrutiny since announcing the charges last month, with local clergy members, operating under the umbrella of the “Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Steering Committee” holding an August 19th press conference demanding Greene’s immediate firing or forced resignation. The group was joined by Portsmouth Vice Mayor Lisa Lucas Burke – the daughter of Senator Lucas – who demanded to know “who is running the God damn city.”

As previously reported by National File, Senator Lucas played a pivotal role in the attack on the monument and was caught on camera ordering law enforcement personnel to stand down and allow the attack to happen – all while shielding her face from view behind Antifa-style masking.

. . .

In addition to Lucas’s caught on camera actions, an investigation conducted by the Portsmouth Police Department found that Lucas had conspired with local NAACP leadership in an effort to orchestrate the monument attack.

. . .

Supporters of Greene held a rally outside Portsmouth City Hall Saturday, with a group of over 200 people coming out to show their support for the chief, wearing the color green in her honor.

“She didn’t do anything wrong, they suspended her because she charged people that are in power,” said attorney and gun store owner Chris Anderson, who organized the showing of support. “They’re fabricating things against her and it’s wrong. The chief of police is experienced and if that means it’s Lydia Patton that needs to be fired, so be it. The City Council, which meets here on Tuesday, needs to get our city manager under control and reinstate the chief of police for doing her job.”

There's more at the link.

The latest developments are still very fluid.  The city manager has resigned and one of the city attorneys has been dismissed, but there are still two power blocs fighting for what each considers to be right.  Here's a video report from the city yesterday evening.  If you prefer text, the report may be read here.

In so many words, Portsmouth, VA is a microcosm of the state at present, and of much of America.  Two opposing views, two opposing groups, neither of whom is prepared to concede that their opponents have any right on their side at all.  It's a recipe for conflict without any solution.  In this case, I'm entirely on the side of the Chief of Police, who appears to have done her job without fear or favor.  Sadly, that's only recognized by part of the community - the part that has some respect for law and order.  The other part wants to remake "law and order" into what they think it should be.

In how many other communities across our nation is the same dynamic being played out?  Pretty soon now, the whole country will be voting for our shared future - but will all of our divided citizenry accept the outcome as binding on them?  I fear not.

Peter

Fishing with ... shotguns???

Yes, apparently it's a thing.

Americans seem to make sport of almost anything, and today’s example is no exception.  Several sportsmen made lemonade out of lemons when it came to the invasive species of fish dubbed Flying Carp that’s been plaguing southern boaters since the 1970s, and have reached as far north as Minnesota.  Silver Carp, or Asian Carp, are termed Flying Carp because they literally fly out of the water when startled by a boat motor. The carp in question have caused injuries to boaters and have raised concerns over the aquatic ecosystems they’ve invaded.  People have taken to catching them with nets in the air, hitting them with baseball bats, and shooting them with bow and arrows… and most recently, shooting them with shotguns.

. . .

The Clarion-Ledger reported that two Mississippi residents have been having loads of fun blasting the Flying Carp as they come out of the water.  On one outing, they went through more than 500 rounds.  They clarified that they were only shooting on a privately owned lakes and that it’s not legal to conduct their newfound sport on the Mississippi River.

One of the men explained that they stick to 20 gauge shotguns for the reduced recoil and due to the high volume of shooting. They did say that if anyone else wants to try shooting Flying Carp, they should be proficient with firearms first, as you don’t want to put a hole in your boat or motor.

There's more at the link.

It seems this isn't a new idea.  A quick search turned up this video clip from 2014.

There are also plenty of videos of bow-hunting flying carp with arrows.  Since it's an invasive species that needs to be kept in check, such methods are apparently fine with nature conservation authorities.

However, I still think I had the best idea for hunting aquatic life with shotguns, while on vacation at the Gulf Coast some years ago.




Peter

Boys and their aviation toys, current and future

Here's a great video showing the US Navy's VAQ (electronic attack) squadrons and their operations over the past year.  Wikipedia notes:

The VAQ designation was established in 1968 to designate "Tactical Electronics Warfare Squadron". On 30 March 1998 the name of the designation was changed to "Electronic Attack Squadron" and all VAQ squadrons then in existence were renamed from "Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron-____" to "Electronic Attack Squadron-____".

Electronic Attack Squadrons consists of seven Boeing EA-18G Growlers with the exception of the Fleet Replacement Squadron which has more. The primary mission of the Growler is Electronic Attack (EA), also known as Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) in support of strike aircraft and ground troops by interrupting enemy electronic activity and obtaining tactical electronic intelligence within the combat area. Navy Electronic Attack squadrons carry the letters VAQ (V-fixed wing, A-attack, Q-electronic).

The Growler is a great aircraft, but potential threats are already posing problems.  If the enemy can launch missiles from far outside its range, and take out its launching carrier, the Growler will have no choice but to land elsewhere or ditch in the sea.

The US Navy is already thinking about its potential replacement.

After nearly a decade of fits and starts, the Navy has quietly initiated work to develop its first new carrier-based fighter in almost 20 years, standing up a new program office and holding early discussions with industry, USNI News has learned.

The multi-billion-dollar effort to replace the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and electronic attack EA-18G Growlers beginning in the 2030s is taking early steps to quickly develop a new manned fighter to extend the reach of the carrier air wing and bring new relevance to the Navy’s fleet of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

. . .

Despite the Navy sketching out a plan for its new fighter aircraft, Clark argued the service still needs to contend with an adversary’s ability to use lower-cost long-range missiles to target aircraft carriers.

“The idea of just continuing to build new manned aircraft with longer ranges to try to overcome the ability of a China or an Iran even or a Russia to shoot long-range missiles at the carrier, it’s sort of a losing game because the missiles are cheap,” he said. “The airplanes are expensive. So you’re in a bad cost exchange situation.”

Combining the manned fighter with unmanned systems could help the service confront this issue.

“That may be a way to get around this cost exchange problem, where maybe the airplane doesn’t need to fly as far,” Clark said.

“You know, the airplane could go a thousand miles, and it doesn’t matter if the enemy has a two-thousand-mile anti-ship ballistic missile because your manned airplane is not going to fly that whole distance. He’s going to stop at a thousand miles and then these unmanned systems go the rest of the way.”

There's more at the link.

I used to "indulge" in electronic warfare to some extent during my military service, not airborne like the Growlers, but ground- and ship-based.  We used to listen in to enemy transmissions, translate their messages, triangulate their positions, and direct counter-attacks based on electronic intelligence.  I used some of that background in my short story "Unintended Consequences", which appeared in the recent anthology "Trouble In The Wind".

I probably wouldn't understand a lot of the computerized equipment in use today, but I daresay it does much the same thing - just much faster and better than our old steam-driven, manually operated stuff.

I wonder what the Growler equivalents of the mid-20th century will look like?  I won't be around to see them, of course, but the youngsters of today will.

Peter

Israeli assassination techniques: terrorists in the crosshairs

I found it interesting to contrast a recent article about Israel's targeted assassination of an Islamic Jihad terrorist commander in Gaza with its attack, a decade earlier, on another Palestinian terrorist in Dubai.

The Dubai attack was an embarrassment for Israel, because while it succeeded, it also exposed that country's external operations to international scrutiny.  GQ magazine, which broke the story in 2011, notes:

An elite Mossad hit squad traveled to Dubai to kill a high-ranking member of Hamas. They completed the mission, but their covers were blown, and Israel was humiliated by the twenty-seven-minute video of their movements that was posted online for all the world to see.

. . .

The sequence of events described here is based largely on the exhaustive investigation conducted by the Dubai chief of police, Lieutenant General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim. In-depth interviews were conducted with former and current members of the Mossad and with high-ranking intelligence experts in Israel and Europe. The Mossad, in response to the long list of questions submitted formally by GQ, stated that it does not comment on its activities or those attributed to it.

There's more at the link.

In Dubai, the assassination team gained access to the terrorist's hotel room, and waited inside for him to return.  When he did, he was killed, and the team left the hotel and - within hours - the country.  Nevertheless, they left enough clues, and enough surveillance video of their movements, to make it clear that Israel was responsible for the killing.

In the Gaza attack, any element of confidentiality was obviously not even remotely possible.  The attack would have to be an air strike, by its very nature highly visible, and there would be only one possible source for it.  Nevertheless, the clandestine intelligence-gathering that would have to precede it was probably even more complex and sensitive than that preceding the Dubai attack.

THE TARGETED killing of al-Ata was not that different from the many others the IDF has carried out over the past decade. It was characterized by meticulous planning meant to reduce collateral damage, precise intelligence and the utilization of advanced technology, aircraft and munitions.

But it also shows the results of an amazing journey the State of Israel has taken over the past 20 years, going from dropping one-ton bombs on apartment buildings in the Gaza Strip to take out a single terrorist, to firing a missile with amazing precision onto a bed, killing just the target and his wife and not injuring their five children sleeping in the next room.

Around the world, a story like this would not make headlines. Instead, the focus would be on the damage caused to Gaza and the death toll. People would ask why al-Ata’s wife had to die with him. They wouldn’t focus on the length of the mission, how much detail and effort went into its planning and how precise it was in execution.

This journey, though, is unique to Israel. Other Western countries fighting terrorists around the world rarely invest even a fraction of the effort Israel does to minimize collateral damage.

Again, more at the link.

It's well worth reading both articles in full.  They're in-depth analyses of the respective attacks, with many details of fieldcraft, technology, preparations, and the actual assaults.  One comes away much better informed of the many parameters influencing such operations - and the challenges facing those who must carry them out.

That, of course, includes US service personnel and intelligence agencies.  Given current riots and unrest in this country, they may even have to be mounted domestically in due course.  That's a scary thought.

Peter

The election campaign that cried "Wolf!"

Honestly, the fear/doom/gloom/disaster election campaign being waged by the Democratic Party has now jumped the shark.  Allegations over the past few days that President Trump called soldiers killed in combat "losers" have been trumpeted all over the mainstream media - but they're so obviously false that nobody in their right minds believes them.  No verifiable evidence is offered to prove them, no witnesses are named, no sources are identified.  Only a fool would believe such "reports".

I had an interesting discussion over the weekend with an acquaintance of mine, a building contractor.  He's Black, and he and his family have voted in lock-step with the Democratic Party not just for years, but for decades.  Now?  Not so much.  He's so angry at this latest nonsense that he told me openly he's going to vote Republican in November.  He believes the Democratic Party is trying to manipulate him and "his people", deliberately lying to them in the expectation that they'll respond in blind obedience.  "They want me to jump when they say 'Frog'.  Well, this frog ain't gonna jump for a lie!"

He's not a veteran of military service, but he has some (of all races) among his workforce.  He told me their discussions about the matter on job sites have been really angry, with almost nobody believing the talking points being circulated in the mass media.  They're such obvious, blatant propaganda that they can't pass the "smell test".  Anyone with half a brain knows they're contrived.  They're such a clumsy smear attempt, with no evidence whatsoever to prove them except unsubstantiated, anonymous allegations, that it's almost embarrassing.  When even its long-term supporters can see that, and openly resent that they're expected to believe such brazen fabrications, then the Democratic Party has a major, major problem on its hands.

Stacey Lennox suggests that the allegations are part of a seven-stage attempt to foster a "color revolution" in the USA.

The recent full-court press is meant to diminish President Trump with the troops. As noted in the war game, Democrats will take drastic action in the case of a loss and wait to see what the military does ... You should expect moves to try and ruin his reputation with police officers as well.

There's a lot more at the link.  Recommended reading.

Michael Anton agrees with Ms. Lennox.

Remember that phrase from the Dem war game: “street fight.” In other words, a repeat of this summer, only much, much bigger. Crank the propaganda to ear-drum shattering decibels and fill the streets of every major city with “protesters.” Shut down the country and allow only one message to be heard: “Trump must go.”

I.E., what’s come to be known as a “color revolution,” the exact same playbook the American deep state runs in other countries whose leadership they don’t like and is currently running in Belarus. Oust a leader—even an elected one—through agitation and call it “democracy.”

Again, more at the link, and also worth reading.

I think that for more and more Americans, the incessant drumbeat of the anti-Trump propaganda machine is backfiring.  It's like the fable of the boy who cried "Wolf!"  The stories are no longer being believed, but seen for what they are - a tissue of lies, fabrications and deceit.  When people who've voted Democrat for decades, even generations, stand up and say "Enough!", that's significant - and it appears to be happening among many minorities that until recently have been solidly Democratic in their voting patterns.

As I've said many times before, I don't vote for a party:  I vote for the individual.  There are some Democrats I'd support over most Republicans, because the former's track records convince me that they're honest, honorable, sincere men and women.  (I put up a video clip of one of them last week.)  Nevertheless, when one party seeks to bamboozle me with such obviously false propaganda, my reaction is one of anger.  Do they take us for fools?  Do they think we're blind, to lie to us so blatantly?  Are they trying to make Americans vote against them out of sheer frustration?

If so, I think they're succeeding.




Peter