Flotsam and/or Jetsam

Messenger: shot dead

Posted on May 20, 2022May 20, 2022 by Mike 3 Comments

You say you want the truth? You can’t handle the truth.

Zac Kriegman had worked at Thomson Reuters for more than six years, most recently as a director of data scientists. Concerned with data and statistics, Kriegman and his team advised numerous other divisions within company.

But in 2020, Kriegman noticed changes within the company, with coworkers publishing numerous articles about “White Privilege” on the company’s internal collaboration platform. When the Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots broke out that summer, the platform was filled with support for the organization without any question as to the narrative being told about race in America.

“This concerned me. I had been following the academic research on BLM for years (for example, here, here, here and here), and I had come to the conclusion that the claim upon which the whole movement rested—that police more readily shoot black people—was false,” Kriegman wrote in an article published on Bari Weiss’ substack. “ The data was unequivocal. It showed that, if anything, police were slightly less likely to use lethal force against black suspects than white ones.”

If I had, oh, the next six-seven days to spend on absolutely nothing else, not to mention the inclination to do any such thing, I’d dig through the Innarnuts and commend to everyone’s attention the eleventy million billion kajillion times myself and other Righty bloggers have howled precisely this into the void over the last several years, beginning well before the advent of BLM in my own case. If anybody was wondering why I usually refer to said criminal/terrorist syndicate as Black Lies Murder, well, there you have it.

Kriegman discovered that, based on a database of police shootings compiled by The Washington Post, police have fatally shot 39% more unarmed white people than black people in the past five years. BLM activists have insisted, however, that since there are six times as many white people in America as black people, police should be shooting 600% more. Anything less, Kriegman wrote, is evidence to the activists of police bias.

Kriegman suggested that such a comparison isn’t as accurate as comparing “Black suspects who pose a grave danger and white suspects who do the same,” but wrote that there isn’t reliable data for such a comparison. Instead, he used Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles County Patrick Frey’s calculations based on FBI data that found “black Americans account for 37 percent of those who murder police officers, and 34 percent of the unarmed suspects killed by police. Meanwhile, whites make up 42.7 percent of cop killers and 42 percent of the unarmed suspects shot by police—meaning whites are killed by police at a 7 percent higher rate than blacks.”

Kriegman broadened the analysis to include armed suspects, finding that with those numbers included, whites are shot at a 70% higher rate than blacks. He then mentions the only study that looks at the rate at which police use lethal force across racial groups, conducted by Harvard economist Roland Fryer. Fryer, who is black, tried to prove BLM’s narrative in 2016, but ended up disproving it by finding that, while black Americans and Latinos may experience some amount of police force, they are slightly less likely to be shot by police than whites.

“Unfortunately, because the BLM narrative was now conventional wisdom, police departments, under intense scrutiny from left-wing politicians and activists, scaled back patrols in dangerous neighborhoods filled with vulnerable black residents. This led to soaring violence in many communities and thousands of needless deaths—otherwise known as the Ferguson Effect,” Kriegman wrote.

Bet you can’t guess what happens next. Don’t be shy, now; go on, give it a whirl. I double-dog dare ya.

Kriegman wrote that his post was removed when he stated his concerns and told that if he discussed the issue on internal company communications channels, he would be fired. Without a resolution, Kriegman emailed colleagues and company leadership discussing the attacks. The next day he was told by Human Resources that he no longer had access to his company computer or communications systems. Three days after that, he was fired.

Gee, are you guys as shocked as I am at this wholly unprecedented turn of events?

A decade ago, my experience at Thomson Reuters would have been unthinkable. Most Americans probably think it’s still unthinkable. That’s what makes it so dangerous. Most of us don’t understand how deeply compromised our news sources have become. Most of us have no idea that we are suffused with fictions and half-truths that sound sort of believable and are shielded from scrutiny by people whose job is to challenge them. This is true, above all, of my fellow liberals, who assume that only Republicans complain about the mainstream media. But this is not a partisan issue. This is a We The People issue,” he wrote.

Oh, it’s worse than you think, pal. Although it certainly SHOULD be a “We The People issue,” well, sorry, but…it ain’t. Your experience at Rooters, sad as it is, would by no means have so much as moved the needle slightly on the Shock-O-Meter ten, twenty, thirty, or even forty years ago, much less struck any of us RightwingNaziHitlerdemons as anything like “unthinkable.” The media has been what it is for quite a long time now; those of us who pay attention to such arcane matters have been aware of it for quite a long time also.

It’s to everyone’s detriment that it should be this way, but this very much IS a partisan issue—demonstrably so, in light of at least two (2) sobering realities: 1) Rooters, along with every other Establishment Media outlet in every medium and/or format, is heavily biased in favor of the Left, has by now completely lost whatever sense of shame they might once have felt (if any) over using their platform to support the Left’s nefarious agenda, and helpfully skews its “journalism” accordingly, and 2) “liberals” do not find this at all inappropriate and aren’t troubled in the least by it, leaving the “complain(ing) about the mainstream media” field as the exclusive province of the Right. Having chosen to abandon the perfectly honorable profession of honestly and impartially reporting the news in favor of a holy crusade to Change The World ain’t helping any.

I opened by saying Rooters “can’t handle the truth,” but that’s being much more charitable than they deserve; it’s not so much that they “can’t handle” the truth as it is that they just flat loathe it. As is true of the shitlibs they serve, truth is to Rooters as garlic is to vampires.

10

OOOOOOPS!

Posted on May 20, 2022May 20, 2022 by Mike 9 Comments

Quite possibly the most hilarious Freudian slip in all of recorded history.

Former President George W. Bush: “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/UMwNMwMnmX

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 19, 2022

More:

On Wednesday, former President George W. Bush made an unfortunate slip up during a speech condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Bush was discussing democracy’s importance and the threats it faces in the U.S. and abroad when he made a gaffe that has since captured a significant amount of attention.

“In contrast, Russia elections are rigged,” said Bush. “Political opponents are imprisoned or otherwise eliminated from participating in the electoral process. The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq – I mean, of Ukraine.”

Bush then laughed it off, shrugging as he said “Iraq, too” under his breath.

“Anyway– 75,” said Bush, making a joke about his age.

By way of useful comparison, please note that the current illegitimate White House occupant has been attached like a remora to the Deep State teat for half a century, is three years older than Bush is, and beclowns himself far more severely than Bush’s little brain fart above multiple times every day.

6

Transgender truth

Posted on May 20, 2022May 20, 2022 by Mike 1 Comment

From an unlikely place.

When I was in my early 20s, I lived in Olympia, Washington, and I had a girlfriend at the time and she told me ‘You are a boy’ and I was like ‘Mmmm not so sure about that.’ But she pressed it and pressed it enough. She’s like ‘Look at the way you dress, look at your mannerisms, look at the way you talk,’ and I’m like ‘Mmmm okay, well, I still talk the same…Still have the same mannerisms.’

But she was damn convinced. ‘Yeah, you’re a guy.’

So, I went with it… I started binding, I went with a stupid different name…and that was in my early 20s…

Once I broke up with her, got away from those friends, I wanted nothing to do with that and I immediately stopped. And, I was so glad that I am who I am today. Thank God, oh my gosh. Really enjoy just being me.

I look at the younger generation today and what they’re doing to kids, and how easy it is for their minds, and to just flop that – and, it is, it’s like a mental delusion. Because I was a full-a** grown adult convinced by one person, their friends supported me, and it was, like, instant. And if I hadn’t gone away from that, I have no idea what would’ve happened.

So, do I think it’s a mental delusion? Yeah, I do…I really do feel like it’s not okay, especially for the younger kids. Especially. It’s not okay. They’re way too young.

If that happened to me in my early 20s…imagine these younger kids with just, like, a single teacher telling them ‘You are not a boy, you’re a girl.’ Or the other way around.

A few things that seem absolutely incredible to me.

That an idea so damned obvious, so self-evidently beyond argument—that toddlers barely out of onesies should NOT be fed this demented garbage, in public schools or anyplace else—could have somehow come to be seen as radical, far outside the boundaries of mainstream thought
That ANY licensed MD not utterly crazed by political correctness would willingly consent to permanently mutilating children
That the Overton Window has been dragged such an extreme distance in so short a time

Shitlibs like to wrench their shoulders out of socket endlessly patting themselves on the back for their “courage,” for being “brave” and “strong” enough to “live their Truth” (which, of course, is never actually true), but @jeebs4ever could give any shitlib alive a lesson or ten in what those words actually mean, without ever breaking a sweat doing it. Hats off to her for it.

2

Big, big savings!

Posted on May 20, 2022May 20, 2022 by Mike 3 Comments

Goobermint, just doing what goobermints do.

The headline probably has you thinking about the high cost of the EV – so high that whatever you “save” by not buying gas ends up costing you a great deal. But that is only one of the ways EVs don’t save you money.

Another one is tires.

EV tires wear out faster because EVs are much heavier than other cars – because EVs are weighed down by 1,000-plus pounds of batteries. For example, a Tesla Model 3 – which is a compact-sized car about the same size as a Honda Civic – weighs close to 3,900 pounds (two tons) empty. The Civic weighs just shy of 2,900 pounds – a difference of…1,000 pounds.

That weight weighs down on the tires, which must absorb the load – which increases when the car goes around a curve or runs over a pothole. There is also the increased friction that comes from stopping that load, once set in motion. EV touters like to tout the fact – which is one – that EV brakes last longer because the EV uses regenerative braking to partially slow the car, rather than brake pads. Basically, the electric motors that propel the car are used to slow it – and convert inertia back to electricity, to help top off the batteries.

But the tires are still scrubbing against the asphalt.

But – wait! – if I buy an electric car, I will save money on oil and filter changes! Certainly. In the manner of “saving” on utility bills via the purchase of a $500,000 house with triple-pane Andersen casement windows in place of a $250,000 house with double-pane standard-type windows.

Then there is the biggest maintenance cost of all – the battery pack. Which will cost you more, because it’s so huge – in order to move the EV at highway speeds for any significant distance. This, in turn, results in it being so heavy – which increases the amount of power needed to move it plus the car it’s installed in, reducing efficiency.

You do get the power – and the acceleration – but it costs you. Especially if you use either as doing so discharges the battery, rapidly – which means needing to recharge it more regularly. The “faster” you do that, the greater the load/stress imposed upon the battery, costing you battery life. And when the time comes to replace the battery, that’ll cost you more than it costs to replace a non-electric car’s transmission or engine – and maybe both, together.

Plus the oil and filter changes.

Buy an EV if it floats your boat. But don’t kid yourself that doing so is “saving” anything – including the Earth.

If it floats your boat, you say? Better watch that loose talk there, buddy; that’s exactly the kind of subtle advocacy for individual self-determination that will surely get you Gulagged in the land of the “free” and the home of the “brave” nowadays.

6

The return of the Stone Age

Posted on May 19, 2022May 19, 2022 by Mike 5 Comments

Your Leftist masters would like to remind you not to get too attached to having air conditioning, lights, kitchen appliances, and all the other blessings of modern civilization, ‘kay?

Over Half The Country At Risk Of ‘Energy Emergencies’ This Summer, Electric Grid Analysis Shows
Millions of Americans across the Midwest, Southwest and West are expected to face blackouts throughout the summer months, an industry analysis concluded.

A variety of factors, including drought conditions and low wind conditions, are expected to put Americans in roughly 28 states at risk of experiencing blackouts this summer, according to a report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), a U.S. regulatory authority, published Wednesday. The region managed by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) across 15 Midwest states is at the highest risk of “energy emergencies” during the summer due to capacity shortfalls, the analysis showed.

“The Western Interconnection, Texas, Southwest Power Pool (SPP) … are at ‘elevated risk’ of energy emergencies during extreme conditions,” NERC added. “[MISO] is in the ‘high risk’ category, facing capacity shortfalls in its north and central areas during both normal and extreme conditions due to generator retirements and increased demand.”

Bold mine, because I found it so funny I nearly sprung a short rib chortling at it. Don’t miss the aerial photo of an ugly, useless scar on the Nevada landscape included in the article.

PLEASE don’t throw me in that br’ar patch, Herr “Doktor” Fauxci!

Posted on May 19, 2022May 19, 2022 by Mike 3 Comments

Probably the only way we’ll ever be rid of the little homunculus, looks like.

Fauci Laughably Says if Trump Is Re-Elected, He Won’t Serve Again

That’s the good part, the fun part. Here comes the really sad part.

White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said on CNN Sunday that he would not serve in that capacity should Donald Trump regain the White House in 2024. Note to Dr. Fauci: Trump would not ask you to serve and would, in fact, probably kick you to the curb his first minute back in office.

Oh? I think it’s so cute that you think that, I really do. Because Trump already had one perfectly good opportunity to do precisely that, and he blew it.

1

A conversation with Sarah Palin

Posted on May 18, 2022May 18, 2022 by Mike 9 Comments

Salena Zito checks in with a REAL maverick, as opposed to the phony-ass John McCain variety.

Sarah Palin Dishes on Trump, Her Congress Run, and Love With Ron Duguay
She declared her run for Congress on April 1—just weeks after visiting New York City to pursue a defamation suit against the New York Times.

“When I announced, I said, ‘Alaskans, if you hire me, I would love to work for you. I will go to Washington, D.C., and I’ll represent you,’ not really considering all the politics involved because as the days go on, you realize, ‘Oh my gosh. OK, here comes the political machine,’” she said of the reactions to her announcement.

Since her resignation as governor in 2009, Palin has become a powerful force in the conservative populist movement—first dubbed the Tea Party during the 2010 midterm elections. She has since served as a Fox News contributor, hosted several outdoor lifestyle shows on the Sportsman Channel, and written the memoir Going Rogue: An American Life, which spent six weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in 2009. She also endorsed former President Donald Trump’s run in 2016 before the first caucus primary votes were even cast.

Besides her son Trig, Palin said the rest of her children are now living all over the place. Eldest son Track, 32, is a father of three who still resides in Alaska. Bristol, 31, is now a mother of three and owns a real estate company in Texas. Willow, 28, and her husband, Ricky, are the parents of twins and welcomed their third child on March 30; they also recently moved to Texas. Piper, 21, is in college in Arizona. Palin herself lives in a home not far from her father, Chuck, in the suburbs of Wasilla, the fourth-largest city in Alaska, about 40 miles from Anchorage.

Meanwhile, Palin and her husband of more than 30 years, Todd, 57, quietly divorced in the spring of 2020. Palin said she found out in 2019 that her high school sweetheart—with whom she eloped in 1988—wanted out of the marriage via an email from an attorney.

The pain and shock of the divorce are still evident. “It was the most earth-shattering, bizarre thing I could have ever imagined and it kind of remains so,” she told me.

While they share custody of Trig, she said it’s the only connection remaining between them. “He spends his time with his girlfriend whom he’s had for some time now..,” she says as her voice trails off, adding, “She lives down in the lower 48, so he spends a lot of time down in the lower 48.”

Since the divorce, Palin said, she hadn’t even thought about dating again until this winter, when she went to New York for the defamation case she filed against the New York Times for falsely claiming in a 2017 op-ed that her political rhetoric led to a mass shooting.

She called up a longtime friend, retired New York Rangers star Ron Duguay, because she figured he knew New York well enough to be her Gotham fixer—and a romance suddenly took off.

She lights up when she talks about Duguay, who played with the Rangers from 1977 to 1983, saying she finds the relationship “safe and comfortable.”

“Ron is the first person that I’ve ever even talked to about a lot of this personal stuff. So, it’s been helpful and refreshing to have Ron to talk to about not just politics, because he’s got more common sense in his little finger than the collective in D.C., but just about life,” she said.

Good for her. I’ve liked Palin ever since I first heard of her during her days as governor, and I still do. In fact, she’s got a lot in common with Trump when you think about it: a populist, an outsider, as fanatically, rabidly hated by the GOPer/NeverTrumpTard ilk as she is by the Demonrat Left, and for some of the exact same reasons. Palin is about the only contemporary American politician I can think of offhand who’s been as relentlessly hounded, investigated, slandered, and just generally pecked-at by the hellhounds of Old Media as Trump himself has, another thing they have in common. Only that one, they both probably wish they didn’t.

As for Sarah’s fake-Right detractors, far from harming McCain in his doomed-from-the-start ’08 Prexy run against shitlib dreamboat Barry-Bob Hussein Obloobaloobo as they so like to whine, the only point at which McCain even so much as managed to pull even with Jugeared Jesus in the pre-election polling was right after Palin was announced as the Veep pick. The brief boost with which she gifted the universally-disliked asshole McMaverick lasted a few days, maybe a week or so, after which the sleazy RINO prick’s lizardly snout quickly sank right back beneath the surface of the Swamp muck, never to come anywhere near parity with Obongo again.

One thing that makes seeing the pseudo-Right reminded of that reality such a pleasure is that it’s so easy to see how much it annoys ’em. They, like the insufferable McCain, have never stopped blaming Palin for McStain’s inevitable defeat, a comforting lie which McLame clung to desperately until the frabjous day he finally joined the Choir Invisible. Blame Sarah! was an endlessly-running loop of bitter pissing and moaning which only served to underscore several of the many reasons Juanny Mav been so widely disliked for so many decades: his piss-poor character; his unrestrained egotism; his complete lack of any sense of loyalty to anyone or anything but himself and his own selfish interests.

So yeah, you go, Sarah. Nothing but the best to you from here, ol’ girl.

9

Know thine enemy

Posted on May 17, 2022May 17, 2022 by Mike 1 Comment

Cancel Culture 101: An introductory course that ain’t just for beginners.

WHAT IS CANCEL CULTURE?
In simple words, it is the means by which the Marxist goal of attaining world communism will be realized. The two key components that must be canceled are Western Culture and Christianity. Western Culture cannot be canceled without,first, the cancellation of Christianity, because Western Culture is based on Judeo-Christian religious traditions, thus why the attacks on churches and synagogues are legion. That is not to say religion will be canceled, but Christianity must be eradicated and replace by socialism’s one-world religion – a mishmash of the world’s other religions, always with an underlying basis of socialism and man will be god, or the state will. (Bear with me, I am giving the history first {short version}, so you can know your enemy.)

The Marxists drew their mystical theory from Des Cartes’ idea that he could erase his history at any time and replace it with a new one, over and over again. But the Marxist Cancel Culture isn’t out to destroy their messed-up culture and replace it with something better. Their goal is to replace the world’s greatest culture – the Great American Experiment – and replace this with their own corrupt, tyrannical one. The United States Constitution is the only one set up to protect the God-given inalienable rights of the individual. All other nations grant rights to their citizens, the rights their governments deem to be acceptable (and won’t aid the people to demand their sovereign rights).

WHY DOES OUR CULTURE NEED TO BE ERASED?
Why do Western Culture and Christianity both have to be annihilated? Western Culture represents the reasoning, logical, fair and open minded aspects of our world.Out of Western Culture sprang the United States Constitution, the framework of the nation.And the Christian religious traditions, especially the Ten Commandments, are the underlying pillars of Western Culture. As Antonio Gramsci wrote in his prison notebooks, “Any country grounded in Judaeo-Christian values can’t be overthrown until those roots are cut…Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity…in the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.” That, to me, seems a very up-front answer.

This in-depth expose is from 2020; I stumbled across it whilst doing some research for another post, left the tab open, and VIOLA!, here we all are. No matter how well-educated you might believe yourself to be on this vital topic, this one’s still well worth a look. I suspect there are very, very few of us who won’t be able to glean at least something they hadn’t known before from reading it.

4

Dream come true

Posted on May 16, 2022May 16, 2022 by Mike 2 Comments

This lucky kid just got to live out a fantasy quietly treasured by every aspiring rocker who ever lived.

Teen drummer Kai Neukermans had counted off the beat for many songs before, his drum sticks leading into fierce covers of bands including Black Sabbath and Queens of the Stone Age.

But this time it wasn’t his younger brother and a friend at guitar, bass and mike. Seated at the drum kit, the 18-year-old from Mill Valley stared back at none other than Eddie Vedder and the rest of popular grunge band Pearl Jam. Plus a crowd of fans in the nearly 20,000-seat Oakland Arena.

“Everybody this is Kai; Kai this is everybody!” frontman Vedder called out to the cheering crowd.

Four beats from Neukermans, and they were off. He had led them into an explosive rendition of “Mind Your Manners” from the group’s 2013 “Lightning Bolt” album. Vedder leaned over and screamed into the microphone, chugged from a bottle of red wine and pumped his fist as the audience sang along.

Spin back about 24 hours to get to the unlikely series of events that led this Tamalpais High School senior to share Friday night’s stage with one of the most steadfast bands still kicking from Seattle’s grunge movement.

Neukermans is not just any teen drummer; he’s one-third of the hard-charging teen rock group the Alive, a band “launched between surf and skate sessions in 2018,” as their web bio explains. They’ve played significant stages, from the BottleRock Napa Valley main stage to Lollapalooza Chile and Boardmasters in England. His 14-year-old brother, Manoa Neukermans, plays bass, and their friend Bastian Evans, 17, of Laguna Beach (Orange County) handles guitar and vocals.

Neukermans and his brother had just seen Pearl Jam perform in Los Angeles — the band was in town for a recording session. During Pearl Jam’s first show in Oakland on Thursday, Neukermans and his family started receiving text messages from friends watching the band perform. Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron wasn’t performing because he’d tested positive for the coronavirus.

Unbelievable. So we’ve now reached such an advanced stage of pussification that nothing more menacing than a positive test for this grotesquely overhyped malady is excuse enough to skive off work and stay safely home quaking in fear over your imminent demise from the Chinky Pox, eh?

Now, I have no wish to bring down The Jinx on our non-pussy readership by being impertinent about this silliness, mind. But I can’t help but wonder: would those weak-kneed Pearl Jam panic-ninnies have called off the show if the stand-in hadn’t been up to it for whatever reason? Would disappointed, screwed-over fans have received an expiditious, full refund of the exorbitant admission price they shelled out? It’s a dead cert they’ll have to eat the cost of gas, food, drinks, plus the staggeringly high cost of parking about a good half-hour’s trudge, maybe more, from the venue, no helping that.

But still. Does Pearl Jam feel any obligation to not let their fans down if they can possibly avoid doing so? Can they possibly be so naive, so profoundly gormless, that they do sincerely believe that a single positive test is adequate justification for abjuring that solemn obligation? Could the band make a plausible case for that, collectively or individually, to the fans with a straight face? WOULD they?

They pressed him to offer himself up as a replacement for Friday night’s show.

“It was a last-minute thing, and I didn’t think it was going to work out,” Neukermans said.

But he gave it a shot.

Neukermans had met Vedder’s daughter Olivia Vedder in 2018 at Ohana Fest, founded by her surf-loving father and held on the beach at Dana Point in Orange County. So Neukermans sent her a text. She responded that night and said she’d ask.

Friday morning Neukermans went to school. Around lunchtime he heard they wanted to see a video of him drumming.

Neukermans left school before his last two periods — with permission from his parents, Stefaan and Alexandre Neukermans — and drove down to Green Room Music in Pacifica. He put “Mind Your Manners” on repeat in a rehearsal room and started drumming. Over and over and over.

Okay, enough with the excerpting. If you’re at all interested in these momentous affairs, click on over for our thrilling conclusion.

1

Officer Friendly gets federalized

Posted on May 16, 2022May 16, 2022 by Mike 4 Comments

This, as with all other things directly influenced by FederalGovCo overreach, intrusion, and excessive ambition, can only end badly.

Local control of the police is vital to the preservation of American democracy. Police officers and sheriff’s deputies swear an oath not only to serve and protect their communities but also to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Ideally, the police should serve as guardians of public safety and as defenders against government tyranny. Leftist elites detest these safeguards of liberty. The woke oligarchs are the tyrannical faction the American founders had the foresight to protect us against by establishing a constitutional federal republic.

A central feature of any totalitarian regime—Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Communist China—is a national police force under total control of the central government. Totalitarians nationalize the police not to control crime, but to control their citizens. This is what the leftist elites envision for America and they are working hard to make it happen. The rampant lawlessness, violence, and chaos that has engulfed our cities since the summer of 2020 directly results from their scheme. They want to create dysfunctional local police departments as a pretext to nationalize all law enforcement.

Policing in every major city is in crisis—the rule of law has collapsed, people are not safe, and the war on cops is escalating.

Let’s take a look at where we are, the current policies of the Democratic Party that got us here, the historical context of the Left’s assault on the police, and what we need to do to defeat them.

We already know what must be done to defeat them. Sadly, it’s against the law—for now, at least. But as Amerika v2.0 continues its death spiral into a spectacular crash ‘n’ burn, one suspects that “the law” might become less and less effective at constraining the baser impulses of hungry, desperate people whose focus has been narrowed by circumstances to day to day survival.

The author goes on to sketch out as good a thumbnail outline of Marxism, Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, Cultural Marxism, and their unwholesome impact on the health and vigor of American society as I ever did see, before moving on to more specific, less broad topics. I doubt you’ll be surprised to learn who the main author of both our skyrocketing crime rate and steadily metastisizing policing woes might have been.

While recent external attacks have shaken American policing, other forces have been at work for years, undermining and subverting the institution from within. This arguably started during Barack Obama’s administration, with Attorney General Eric Holder acting as his point man.

Before Obama effectively declared war on the police, law enforcement agencies across the United States had been making significant progress in improving officer behavior and building effective police-community partnerships. This was accomplished by implementing training in “police legitimacy” and “procedural justice,” both concepts developed by social psychologist Tom Tyler.
Legitimacy is the belief that the police should be allowed to exercise their authority and maintain order. It is achieved when people accept their obligation to defer to police authority based on trust and believing that police are honest, and their actions are appropriate and morally justified.

Procedural justice is the “roadmap” to achieving legitimacy through positive police interaction with citizens. These police actions include allowing people an opportunity to explain their side of the story; taking a neutral disposition; making decisions based on the law and facts instead of personal bias; treating people politely, with dignity and respect; and, finally, explaining clearly the reason for police decisions and actions. Experience has shown that legitimacy is increased when people believe the police have treated them fairly and with respect, even when the final outcome is not in their favor.

At the forefront of these policing innovations was the Chicago Police Department (CPD). By 2012, CPD was leading the way, and had developed a 40-hour training program that 8,400 CPD officers would complete by 2016. Police departments across the country and worldwide came to Chicago for training and to become certified as trainers for their departments.

As a Chicago police lieutenant, I completed the training in early 2015. I recognized its value in reenergizing veteran officers who may have become cynical or burned out and correctly orienting new officers at the start of their law-enforcement careers. Importantly, through its emphasis upon communication and treating all people fairly and respectfully, legitimacy and procedural justice greatly helped to transform police-community relationships in positive ways. I brought Chicago’s groundbreaking policing philosophies with me when I took on the role of chief of the Martinsburg, West Virginia Police Department in October 2015.

CPD’s program was a major success, resulting in significantly fewer use-of-force incidents and citizen complaints against officers. This presented a unique opportunity for improving American policing. But instead of promoting it as the primary training focus, it was sabotaged by the Obama Administration, which identified a new priority: implicit bias training.

Not only did Barack Obama do more to divide Americans by race than any president in our lifetimes, he was also the most anti-police president in history.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, too. Credit where due: for such a scrawny, jug-eared, slope-shouldered, emasculated little punk-ass pussyfart, Barky Hussein Obooboo (MMMM! MMMM! MMMM!) has made a bigger contribution to the ultimate destruction of America That Was than just about any other single soul I know about. With his record, Bathhouse Barry could well be the definitive example of what the expression “punching way above his weight” signifies.

Obama’s self-righteous anti-police rhetoric and bogus claims of systemic racism fueled hatred of the police and prepared the groundwork for the war on cops. He legitimized Black Lives Matter in the public consciousness—excusing their mob violence and inviting BLM leaders to the White House, even though they had regularly chanted for the murders of police officers. Race-based demonization and anti-police propaganda has only accelerated with Joe Biden in office, even as Biden has made a show of walking back the “defund the police” rhetoric.

Implicit bias training is derived from Harvard University’s implicit association test (IAT). The IAT measures and compares how quickly a person responds to positive and negative words by clicking a computer key when viewing a black or white face. Its inventors claim that timed differences in reaction, measured in milliseconds, reveal unconscious racial prejudice. Advocates further claimed that “implicit bias” causes police officers to discriminate against black people, including racial profiling, unjust arrests, and disproportionate use of force. These claims are not grounded in science and have been thoroughly debunked.

The implicit association test and implicit bias training are colossal scams. As a psychological testing instrument, the IAT fails two basic scientific standards—it is not reliable, and the results are not valid. The same person taking the IAT may score significantly different levels of “bias” every time the test is taken. And the test is absolutely unable to predict bias or discriminatory behavior in the real world.

But the implicit bias training scam has become a billion-dollar business and now pervades law enforcement. The New York Police Department jumped on board early, with 36,000 NYPD officers taking implicit bias training at a cost of $5.5 million. The program continues even though NYPD’s own study showed no change in officer enforcement behavior. The wasteful misdirection of billions in taxpayer dollars is a disgrace, but the true evil of implicit bias training is much worse.

Implicit bias training and the racist ideology of critical race theory go hand-in-hand. The false belief of the entire implicit bias project is that racism is an unconscious psychological phenomenon in all white people, fostered by white supremacy, and manifests in every human interaction. This is also the central tenet of critical race theory. Both maintain that all white people are racist—regardless of their behavior. So it’s hardly surprising that implicit bias training has paved the way for the poison of CRT indoctrination in federal agencies and police departments. Both the FBI and the Austin, Texas Police Department have programmed their members with CRT’s racist, anti-American ideology.

Funny, innit, how seemingly every one of these shitlib “moral” crusades accomplishes not a damned thing but making a bunch of shitlibs rich.

Okay, enough with the excerpting, I think. Since this one was culled from AmGreat’s “Weekend Long Reads” section, you might conclude that this is a lengthy piece, and you’d be right about that. In fact, I haven’t finished it yet myself, having made it only about two-thirds of the way through. But I’m gonna; unless Chief Richards veers badly off the rails in the final third for some strange reason, I think this article is very much worth bulling on through to the end. It’s a serious treatment of a serious subject, engagingly written by a former lawdog who’s been there and done that, and therefore knows quite well whereof he speaks.

Update! I swear, the more I read of this thing the better it gets. Richards covers a tremendous amount of territory here, which has got me thinking I just might need to do a follow-up post so as to address some of the overspill. One thing this article deftly if somewhat obliquely suggests is how readily the malignancy of Leftism can be discerned throughout every least nook and cranny of our society—they worm their way in, then immediately get to work undermining, sabotaging, and ruining absolutely everything that lifted America That Was to unprecedented heights of national greatness. It provides yet another reminder that there must be a day of reckoning for these skulking, slinking hyenas and the numberless crimes they’ve committed, and that right soon—not merely for simple justice’s sake, but for our own self-preservation as well.

2

Words mean things

Posted on May 15, 2022May 15, 2022 by Mike 11 Comments

Has there ever been more productive ground for Leftist linguistic manipulation than the abortion issue?

It’s always a red flag when accurate vocabulary becomes verboten. “Pro-Choice” is just one of many Orwellian phrases adopted by TPA (Team Pro-Abortion—M). There’s also “products of conception” for the physical remains of the dead fetus. National Public Radio, Wikipedia, and the New York Times say “abortion care” rather than “abortion,” trying to transform an ugly word into a pretty one by appending the suffix “care.” Kind of like “siphoning-the-brain-out-of-the skull care” or “dismemberment care.”

On NPR, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries ranted about wicked Republicans denying women “health care.” I don’t think Jeffries ever used the word “abortion.” Abortion: you must love it, but can’t see it, and you can’t say it. TPA even gets worked up about the word “abortionist,” insisting that “abortion provider” be used. The word “abortionist” is comparable to the phrase “final solution,” one doctor writes, apparently unaware of how revealing his comment is.

A human fetus is “a clump of cells.” And that is not the worst thing they call a human fetus. The Facebook page “Occupy Democrats” posted a meme that encourages viewers to conflate a human fetus with an animal fetus, as per the falsehoods circulated by influential Darwinist and eugenicist Ernst Haeckel. Under this meme, a poster remarked that a human fetus is comparable to his “boogers,” that is, snot. Another post remarked, “Birthing babies is the emotional distraction to creating a Fascist country.” A Facebook friend holds a PhD in the hard sciences. On his page, one of his leftist friends compared a human fetus to “cancer.” I did not see my scientist friend object. Rather, he said, “Instead of referring to the embryo as a ‘clump of cells,’ given the demographics, it might be more accurate to say ‘future cartel enforcer,’ or ‘future STD-infected crack ho.'” He said this because low income black and Hispanic women are much more likely to get abortions.

In any case, if TPA’s chosen God – perhaps Oprah or Obama – came down from Heaven and announced to them in unambiguous language that a fetus is a human life, they would still be Pro-Abortion. They celebrate selfish power of the strong over the weak as the highest virtue, and vulnerability and dependence as crimes justifying capital punishment. A popular Facebook page makes just this argument. “It doesn’t matter whether a fetus is a human being or not…it doesn’t matter if we are talking about a fertilized egg, a baby, or a five year old.” We are stronger so we have the right to kill.

Another Facebook friend, someone who spends hours devoted to animal rescue, said that she believes in abortion up to and including infanticide of a born child. Killing is morally acceptable, she argued, if a child – a dependent human being – is unwanted by anyone who will meet the child’s needs.

Atheist and Princeton University ethicist Peter Singer concurs. Infants, “because they are not ‘persons,’ have no interest in staying alive, and it is only superstition that makes us think that killing them is intrinsically wrong…Infants with known disabilities … do not bring the same amount of happiness into the lives of their parents … the very fact that someone is disabled means that he or she will have an unhappier life … Singer argues that it should be legal for parents to decide to have their disabled infants killed up to 28 days after birth.”

The left, I was sure, was all about being kind. About championing the oppressed. About condemning selfishness, greed, exploitation. We were on the side of prisoners on death row, of striking workers, of the handicapped who needed government services. We were anti-fur and pro-vegan.

Why were we betraying the most vulnerable humans of all? Why were we championing a morality that privileged the selfish convenience of the powerful ignoring the very lives of the powerless?

My comrades’ dedication to the oppressed was nothing more than a theatrical production in service to a narrative. It was all sets, costumes, scripts. Yes, yes, the left will tell you that they champion the powerless. When they tell you that, they are exiting objective reality and entering the gauzy realm of fairytale storytelling. The left simply takes the costume, “The Victim,” and the other costume, “The Oppressor,” and assigns those costumes to serve political ends.

Thus, the woman choosing to abort the life inside her is draped in “The Victim” costume. She chose to have consensual sex, knowing full well that intercourse creates life. Who victimized her? Amerikkka, of course; who else? You had to ask??? An astounding meme now circulates. It insists that America forces women to get pregnant and have children. This meme from “Susan of Texas” has been shared thousands of times.

With the deft touch of a pickpocket, the left has transposed The Victim role from the life form that ends up dismembered in a petri dish – the fetus – to the woman choosing to terminate that life. The antagonist is not the fetus; the fetus is erased through euphemism. It’s a “clump of cells.” Rather, the antagonist is “misogyny,” “patriarchy,” or “The Catholic Church.” In objective reality, none of these made the choice for sexual intercourse that the woman made; in the leftist theatrical production they are all the mustache-twirling villains who control the poor, poor woman’s agency. They got her pregnant, not her own choices.

Follows, a detailed, step-by-step description of the abortion process that is so gruesome, so macabre, the horror of it would have to leave any decent, compassionate human being physically ill. A former Planned Parenthood director, Annette Lancaster, speaks of her experience of it in the bleakest terms:

She’d seen and dealt with sick and injured people, and witnessed surgeries. But nothing prepared her…’to actually see…the workers piecing the baby back together in a petri dish…I’ve seen many women break down and cry.'”

This is done to make sure no pieces of the slaughtered infant are left behind inside the woman to rot and cause a potentially life-threatening infection.

Lancaster said in an interview that she and her co-workers could not bring themselves to talk to outsiders about their grim tasks. Rather, they gathered with other abortionists and abused drugs and alcohol to cope “with the things that we did and the things that we saw.” After an “abortion day…we would say that we were having a staff meeting…we would get pretty intoxicated.” Even her children noted a change in Lancaster. She would refer to the women who came for abortions as “cows” and “cattle.” “We called the trashcan where we would put the aborted babies the ‘nursery.'” She underwent a “hardening of the heart”

Well my God in Heaven, I should think so, yeah. Unless one is a soulless, sadistic psychopath, how could it possibly be otherwise?

This lengthy, impassioned screed makes for some damned unpleasant reading. Nonetheless, it is an essential piece, maybe as important a one as I can remember seeing right offhand, and it covers a lot of ground. Of course and as usual, the very people who need to read it most…won’t.

5

2

World gone mad

Posted on May 12, 2022May 12, 2022 by Mike

As in, bugfuck nuts.

Where did this all come from, and what do we do about it? Well, as with most diabolical movements in Western Civilization today, the radical transgender project can be traced back to the Frankfurt School of neo-Marxists. Whether it’s environmentalism, globalism, open-borders policies, or just systematic anti-Americanism, it can usually be traced back to that motley crew of malcontents.

Transgenderism itself is particularly rooted in something called “queer theory,” the best analysis of which can be found in Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay’s crucial work Cynical Theories. In it, using the works of key postmodernists, we learn that: “Queer Theory is a political project [designed] to challenge what is called normativity—that some things are more common or regular to the human condition.” If it’s normal, if it’s morally sound, if it’s traditional, it must be challenged and eventually overturned.

How else can you explain the fact that a federal judge recently confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court can’t say what a woman is, despite being one. But it’s not just confusion over simple words a 2-year old could explain to you. It’s far more sinister. This judge isn’t simply confused over what an adult human female is, her strange attitude to sex extends to pedophiles and child rapists. Over the years Ketanji Brown Jackson has persistently sided with the purveyors of pedophilic pornography—so much so that she even gave a repeat offender just 12 months in jail for raping his 13-year-old niece. As far as I am concerned, this is why a decent nation has the death penalty.

So what is to be done? First, all of us must cleave to the truth. Never ever bend to the demonic cult that is endangering our children and our civilization. The facts are plain. God is on our side. So is science. Just ask MIT. A man is a man and a woman is a woman. At conception new and unique DNA is created. If that human has XX chromosomes she is a woman until the day she dies. If that chromosomal make-up should instead be XY, he is a man until the day he dies. Those are the incontrovertible facts. Nonnegotiable facts. No matter what drugs you inject yourself with, whatever surgery you mutilate yourself with, or the clothes you wear, it remains true. All we need now is courage to speak the truth. Always.

According to early 19th century thespian Edmund Kean, dying is easy; comedy is hard. But in an age when the lie is so ubiquitous it’s become standard operational procedure for politicians, bureaucrats, federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, establishment-media “journalism” outlets, transnational corporations, and far too many other walks of modern life to go into, simply speaking the truth is going to be the hardest thing of all to do, and honest men and true will become mighty scarce on the ground.

1

RIP Randy Weaver

Posted on May 12, 2022May 12, 2022 by Mike

One of the very worst of innumerable “FBI run amok” stories.

Randy Weaver has passed away. Three decades ago, he was entrapped by an ATF agent. Federal agents subsequently killed his son and wife. The Justice Department denied that anyone’s rights were violated but still paid a multi-million dollar settlement for the Weaver family’s wrongful death lawsuit. Federal abuses at Ruby Ridge, the subsequent FBI coverup, and the outrageous arguments that federal lawyers made in court to protect the FBI sniper helped awaken legions of Americans to the danger of boundless federal power.

On August 22, 1992, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi killed Vicki Weaver as she stood in the door of a cabin at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, holding her baby. The FBI initially claimed that killing Mrs. Weaver was justified and then later covered up key details and claimed it was accidental. FBI chief Louis Freeh pretended his agents had done nothing seriously wrong. After an Idaho prosecutor indicted Horiuchi for manslaughter, the Clinton administration Justice Department swayed a federal court to dismiss the case based on the “supremacy clause” of the Constitution. But the Founding Fathers never intended for “federal supremacy” to nullify all of the Bill of Rights. Federal judge captured the soul of the case in a dissent that warned of the new James Bond “007 standard for the use of deadly force” against American citizens. Kozinski summarized the case: “A group of FBI agents formulated rules of engagement that permitted their colleagues to hide in the bushes and gun down men who posed no immediate threat. Such wartime rules are patently unconstitutional for a police action.”

Though the FBI insisted its agents had behaved impeccably, the feds paid a $3 million wrongful death settlement to the Weaver family. A top FBI official was sent to prison for destroying key evidence in the case.

The FBI has become more powerful and more dangerous since Ruby Ridge.

It damned sure has at that, which is an abomination before God.

I’ve told the story here of meeting and hanging out with Weaver at the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot one year. He was friendly and personable enough, although it would be stretching things a good bit to say he was gregarious. In the middle of an enraptured group of shooters who considered him to be something of a martyr/hero combination and were hanging on his every word, Weaver seemed to know he was among friends at KCR. But he remained slightly guarded nonetheless.

I was struck by how easy it was to see the anguish in the poor man’s eyes over having federal thugs murder his entire family right before his very eyes, for no good reason at all. Weaver’s pain was etched deeply in him like a burning brand, a wound still as fresh and raw as if his personal nightmare at the hands of an irredeemably evil government had taken place only the day before, rather than several years.

Rest now, Randy. No flesh and blood man could see the things you’ve seen and walk away with soul and spirit unscarred. May the pain and horror be far removed from you, now and forevermore.

2

Don’t look now

Posted on May 12, 2022May 12, 2022 by Mike

Looks like somebody didn’t get the “Saddam had NO WMDs” memo.

Gulf War Syndrome mystery SOLVED: US scientists blame the condition on SARIN gas released into the air when Iraq’s chemical weapons cache was bombed

Quarter of veterans who served in Gulf War suffering unexplained symptoms

Scientists left flummoxed by the cause fatigue, memory problems and body pain

But now US study has found the usually fatal nerve gas sarin is to blame

UNPOSSIBLE, I SAY!!! I have been assured by All The Best People that Saddam had no WMDs, never did have them, and had no interest whatsoever in acquiring any. The whole thing was just a lie dreamed up by Chimperor Shrub II to provide an excuse for launching his Forever War against an entirely blameless nation for the sole reason that the damned drunken fool believed that Saddam was plotting to assassinate Daddy Shrub. All those truckloads of WMDs that were seen filing into Syria for safekeeping just before Operation Desert Shrub opened had no WMDs in them, either.

In fact, there’s NO SUCH THING AS WMDs, period. Even if there were, Moslem shitrapies in the Middle East would be the last place you’d be likely to find them, Pisslam being the Religion Of Peace™ and all that. Hey, did you know that the word “Islam” actually means “Peace” when translated into English? Because it does. I bet you didn’t know that at all, did ya, H8R? Well, you do now.

2

Dennis Hopper, American icon

Posted on May 11, 2022May 11, 2022 by Mike

Just so’s you know, I freely admit that I’m running this as an excuse to repost this most awesome Nicholson/Hopper duet from Easy Rider at the end.

I’ve always loved Dennis Hopper and found him to be a kindred spirit. He embodies American consciousness without a shred of sentimentality. We see in him a mixture of rebelliousness, sorrow, loss, and even grace. But more than anything, we see American restlessness. Although he is most known for his films, both as a director and actor, Hopper’s talent was also visible in his photography. After his career had a bit of a downturn in the 1960s, Hopper’s then-wife, Brooke Hayward, gave him a Nikon camera for his 25th birthday.

Hopper’s photography oeuvre covers only the years 1961-1967, which is short chronologically speaking, but the creations that came out of restlessness transcend time. Hopper himself didn’t want to have anything to do with the pictures and put them away in a vault. “I was trying to forget…,” he said, “the photographs represented failure to me. A painful parting from [daughter] Marin and Brooke, my art collection, the house that I lived in and the life that I had known for those eight years.” Still, the photographs continue to live as artifacts of America’s past, separated from Hopper, the man, but bound to Hopper, the artist. His own view of their existence and status as photographs is almost irrelevant because of our gaze into the world he has recorded.

Hopper’s photographs, particularly in this collection, In Dreams, are a window into the soul of America during the 1960s. We see street scenes of Los Angeles: people frozen in time, sitting, standing up, looking into the distance of their own lives, or just staring at the passing dog. We see a close up of hands writing; jazz musicians in a smokey club; streets in rearview mirrors offering both a reality and an illusion of our strange world; George Segal and Sandy Dennis in 1965, a year before the release of Mike Nichols’ adaptation of Edward Albee’s 1962 play, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” standing among the broken nude statues, embodying innocence not unlike their characters, Nick and Honey, in Nichols’ film.

We see Brooke Hayward in a grocery store, pushing a cart somewhat sadly, lost in her secret thoughts; a couple in a kissing booth; a girl in a rearview mirror driving to God knows where (a job? Seeing a friend? Or is she running away?); a cocktail party where a kiss between a man and woman appears seemingly from nowhere (Are they strangers? Friends? Lovers?).

We see the filming of Henry Hathaway’s 1965 western, “The Sons of Katie Elder.” Hopper does not discriminate and sees everyone as a human being, not in their respective societal or film roles. Hathaway and John Wayne are in the middle of a scene with Wayne pointing at something out of frame. There is a calmness, steadiness, and stability, but also the bubbling of creativity. I am drawn to these images precisely because they point to a time and a place when even the possibility of steadiness and masculinity was present in the culture. Things are getting done and life keeps moving forward.

In the collection, there are even self-portraits, in which we see Hopper’s need to be seen, a rebellious streak, and over the top self-importance. But there is also a certain sensitivity that only comes from someone who has the soul of an artist. They are the most dreamy of all. Is this how Hopper saw himself at the time? He is hovering like a ghost of America past and present.

On one occasion, Hopper’s daughter Marin, reflected: “My father, Dennis Hopper, believed that being on the road in search of something was very American. You had to keep moving forward no matter what. Ride into town, gunfight at high noon, then off into the sunset.” Hopper represented—and even in his death, represents—not simply the one American dream, whatever it may have been or whatever shred of it is present now. Rather, he represents American dreams—lives lived on the photographic paper, on the celluloid, and in the American desert of desires.

Okay, I take it back; the article is good enough to serve as its own justification, no excuses required for running it. Same-same with the vid, actually.

Update! So the whole Hopper trip got me to rooting around here and there, which eventually landed me on this incredible site covering all things Easy Rider. Captain America and Billy’s route to Mardi Gras is mapped out, literally; the entire movie is posted; there are then-and-now pics of some of the locations where scenes from the movie were shot, among other way-cool stuff. No foolin’, gang, this is one hella-awesome website for any Easy Rider fan.

2

Monstrous trains

Posted on May 11, 2022May 11, 2022 by Mike

An aspect of the supply chain collapse most of us haven’t given a lot of thought to, if any.

Imagine a train 16,400 feet in length weighing 17,500 tons: That is three miles, 560 feet and 35 million pounds. One train. And it is hauling hazmat, tanks of say, chlorine gas, or anhydrous ammonia. Just one tank car alone weighs 131 tons, that is 262,000 pounds. To give an example from history, 262,000 pounds of chlorine gas is approximately two-thirds of what the German army used during the trench warfare of all of WWI. One tank car alone.

“And then we pick up more enroute! My conductor is three miles away while I reverse this train into an active rail yard! Crossings don’t matter, and communities? Are you kidding? No sane country would move materials like this. These trains exceed the coupler and drawbar limits of the very cars themselves. The risks the Class I carriers are taking is a race to disaster. It is absolutely dreadful and grotesque.

Another Precision Scheduled Railroading factor in supply chain failure: Even when the majority of these PSR trains make it, without dramatic ends, they rarely get across the road during a crew members hours of service (HOS) time limit, which is 12 hours. Several factors:

“The rail infrastructure, in particular rail yards and sidings, were designed and built during the great Industrial Age. They did a lot of things right: they overbuilt bridges, for one. But it is not a failure of imagination that they could not foresee, from a sane perspective, that someday the bosses would want to normalize 15,000-foot trains.

“Yards and sidings do not accommodate this scale. It is a clash of function and design. So, imagine this: A 15,800-foot train with distributed power locomotives placed in the middle and at the rear of a train, comes to work a station with 4,500-foot tracks and needs to pick up and set out cars in the middle and rear of the train. This will not be lickety-split.

Plenty more at the link, all of it both fascinating and terrifying at once. Bayou Pete follows up:

All I can say is, my hat’s off to anyone who takes on a job like that. The stress must be beyond most people’s imagination. Also, if something goes badly wrong and the train is involved in a major derailment or collision, the crew’s safety is probably anything but guaranteed. The inertia built up by such weights, at such speeds, makes it impossible to slow down or stop in any meaningfully short distance. The crew are going to have to jump for their lives (at speeds almost guaranteed to cause serious injury or death) or ride it all the way to impact, in the desperate hope they won’t be smeared all over the wreckage like strawberry jam. That’s not much of a choice.

When I think of the long, long trains of tank cars and chemical cars that I see rumbling through our little town every single day, and realize that even one of those cars carries enough potentially lethal cargo to kill every person within city limits in a matter of minutes…it puts a whole new perspective on rail safety.

Don’t it, though. Don’t it just. Over the years I’ve known a cpl-three guys who worked as train engineers, brakemen, even one out in Arizona who was a conductor, if I remember right, for Amtrak. My cousin Steve, who has had a huge fascination with trains his whole life and is locally famous for his incredible collection of HO-scale model railroad builds, used to say to me: “I really wanted to work for the railroad, until I found out the job would involve having to go out and decouple those big steel boxcars during a lightning storm. That’s when I lost all interest in it.” As it happens, that’s also when I realized how happy I was that I’d never had any interest in it to start with.

Another refugee

Posted on May 11, 2022May 11, 2022 by Mike

Codrea takes the Big Leap away from GoogSpot and over to a hosting service where, presumably, he won’t be fucked with. Congrats, Larry, and good on ya. Bookmarks and Blogrolle duly updated anon.

Government internet: now a Thing!

Posted on May 9, 2022May 9, 2022 by Mike

Oh goodie gumdrops, looks like we just found ourselves a brand new Constitutional right!

High-speed internet is not a luxury. It’s a necessity.

But today, too many families simply can’t afford it.

That’s why in November, when we passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we created something called the Affordable Connectivity Program. Here’s how it works.

— President Biden (@POTUS) May 9, 2022

The Obamanet, like its predecessor Obamacare, will be more efficient, lots cheaper (FREE!!!), more reliable, much faster, and WAY more entertaining, educational, and just plain FUN!!! Sundance assures us ALL IS WELL.

There is nothing nefarious about the U.S. surveillance state wanting to make surveillance more efficient. Nothing nefarious at all.

Do not be discouraged by those extremist voices outlining the benefits to government that are provided by a wider, more inclusive, national broadband internet system; that connects to a more efficient 5G internet system; that permits you to experience a new world of telecommunications benefits tailored to your individual needs.

The new network of all things interconnected will make life far more convenient, perhaps allowing you to eliminate the worry of finding gasoline in rural areas when it becomes scarce. Our new national networks will help ease your mind as the internet proximity services work seamlessly with your portable transponder unit (cell phone) to facilitate your needs.

The convenience of finding stuff you need; intersecting with voting and data-connections with your social media network; helping the government track you; all of it. The opportunities are endless my friends. Smiles, everyone, smiles.

You’d think they would be saying thank you. Man, I just can’t wait to get my hands on my new 56k/600 baud modem from dear old Uncle Sam! It’s FREE, you know!

2

Electric bricks

Posted on May 8, 2022May 8, 2022 by Mike

We used to have a fine old term for this that got used quite a bit back in the 70s: planned obsolescence.

None of these are old cars. In fact, the oldest Spark is younger than the average non-electric car currently in service as a daily driver, which is about twelve years old. Most of these with many more years of useful service left, because they don’t have battery packs that cost more than the car is worth (by then) to replace.

Which is a built-in problem for all electric cars. Some may recall the case of the irate Finnish man who TNT’d his not-very-old Tesla Model S when he found out that replacing its dead battery pack would cost him on the order of $20,000.

But at least a replacement battery was still available.

Without that, you’ve got nothing – no matter how much you’re willing to pay for it. And unlike non-electric cars, there is very little you can do about it – other than eat the loss and move on to the next one. This is because an EV’s dead battery pack is not like a non-electric car’s failed transmission or engine – or even both, together. In the case of the latter, it is almost always possible to swap in a used or remanufactured/rebuilt transmission or engine – and drive on. It is not possible with electric cars for which there aren’t any replacements available, new or used.

And even if the original manufacturer no longer makes new replacement engines/transmissions for a given IC car, these can usually both be rebuilt at a price that’s worth the doing. Electric car battery packs, once dead, are throw-aways – just like the dead battery that no longer powers your sail fawn. At which point, you throw away the sail fawn.

The electric car, too.

The difference being you probably paid a lot more for the electric car.

Interestingly, there has been little-to-no coverage in the general or even the automotive press about this business. It’s interesting – because you can imagine the uproar that would arise if any other barely ten-year-old car was no longer supported by its manufacturer – and had a built-in design feature that assured it would be rendered useless years before it reached the age of the average non-electric car currently in service.

Of course, the reason for the absence of such coverage is because it might call attention to the shorter useful lifespan of electric cars, due to the shorter useful life of their battery packs relative to the useful life of an IC car’s engine or transmission. These are expected to last at least 12-15 years – and most last longer. If they fail sooner, the car – and its maker – gets a well-deserved reputation for shoddiness and most people will avoid buying a car made by that maker.

It is discharge-recharge cycling that ages a battery. Especially “fast” charging. You can limit the damage by not “fast” charging – and not discharging – the EV battery. But then the EV isn’t much use, is it?

No such issue exists with non-electric cars in that driving down to fumes in the tank has no effect at all on the useful service life of the vehicle. A non-electric car that’s 15 or 20 years old holds as much gas in its tank – and travels just as far – as it did when it was new. An electric car’s battery pack is unlikely to be capable of holding the same charge it could when new when it is ten years old – and maybe sooner.

And if there’s no replacement battery available – or it costs more than it’s worth to replace it – the car is useless.

Many people will find out about this after they bought an EV. It probably explains another interesting thing about EVs that the general press (and the automotive press) haven’t covered much, which is that a large percentage of first-time EV buyers didn’t buy a second one.

Yeah, well, you know what they say about “fool me once, fool me twice.” Guess that smug, superior feeling an EV owner gets from knowing he’s being a good, obedient little shitlib and Doing His Part to help save Gaia only goes so far when, after being a full-time pain in the ass the whole time he’s had it, his little toy strugglebuggy shits the bed for good at the exact same time his neighbor’s Focus or Elantra is only just beginning to hit its stride.

2

Moar Maine Coon!

Posted on May 5, 2022May 6, 2022 by Mike

As part of a discussion about the coolest housecats in the world with my friend Don, he confessed to never having seen one, even in a photo. Naturally, I busied myself right away with a Startpage image search, wherein I caught some really good ‘uns.