Flotsam and/or Jetsam

Officer Friendly gets federalized

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

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

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.

B-O-B — *Entry #1 in the CF Biggest Orange Belly contest*

Harvey...? — *Her sciatica is gonna give her fits tomorrow*

*This is how Resting Bitch Face usually presents in the Maine Coon Cat*

BIGGEST ORANGE BELLY!!! — *I think we may have found our winner in the B-O-B contest*

Cozy Cat — *How total contentment usually presents in the Maine Coon Cat*

4

Gimme shelter

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

I’ve always wanted a Maine Coon Cat, which as far as I’m concerned are among the verymost way-cool pets one can possibly have. I’ve actually known a few, actually, which served as confirmation for my fondness for them. Unfortunately, it’s a virtual certainty that I’ll never have one, for reasons simultaneously both varied and incontestable. So I’ve tried to ease the heartache by looking at Maine Coon-oriented websites now and then, even going so far as to sign up for the email list of two of the better ones.

Today, I found this urgent missive in Ye Aulde Inboxxe:

Mike — Support Mom’s favorite breed — A card or engraved pet gift will be sent directly to your gift recipient for Mother’s Day:

HELP MAINE COONS

DONATE TO 200+ OTHER BREEDS

VIEW ADOPTABLE PETS

Select ‘Instant Gift’ when donating to send an instant email gift today. Cards and engraved pet gifts requested today may not deliver until Monday. Donation acknowledgment gifts are also available for other occasions including birthdays, anniversaries, and memorials.

Mom’s favorite breed, hell. My mom just spent a few weeks staying at my cousin Karen’s place, whose husband recently died after having spent MONTHS at his brother’s bedside in an Arizona hospital, attempting to comfort him any way he could while he slowly died from cancer. The killer note is that, the morning after the night Karen’s husband had gotten back home, he keeled over on the kitchen floor, dead from a sudden heart attack.

Point being, Karen has two Maine Coons in temporary residence at her place. My mom loves ’em all to pieces, but as is typical of the breed, they’re both inclined to curl up on the nearest available lap waiting for some love to be thrown their way. After a short petting session, my mom’s bony 84 year old legs begin to ache and stiffen, requiring her to shoo the economy-sized fluffballs off and away, then painfully climb to her benumbed feet and do the Biden zombie-shuffle around the house until blood flow and sensation in her legs is fully restored.

By an amazing coincidence, I had a long conversation about all that with my mom just last night, then received the above Maine Coon email this morning. I’ll take this curious sequence of events as a directive from God Himself that I must post something on Maine Coons right away, lest I find myself cast into Outer Darkness to be punctured with tiny pitchforks wielded by proportionately diminutive Satans hanging from my corporeal being in Divine retribution. Being acutely reluctant to directly defy a personal command sent to me from Heaven above, I now fulfill my quest with a few lovely Maine Coon pitchers. We’ll begin with a map of US states with Maine Coons available for adoption, which I find astounding:

*Tortoiseshell Xena having her din-din, wants to know what the hell you’re looking at*

Sluggo III — *Orange tabby Punkin Boy is just too fluffy for words*

AWWWW — *Pocket-sized kitten is just too, too sweet*

*A Maine Coon Tux-cat? Reminds me of my own Fuzzle Wuzzle, a short-hair Tuxie herself with personality and smarts to burn*

It seems incredible that I didn’t establish a “Critters” category years ago. But thats aiight, I gots one now.

1

NASA beclowns humanity

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

Remember, these are America’s greatest minds we’re talking about here.

NASA to launch naked pictures of humans to space in hope of ‘attracting aliens’

DUDE! Have you seen what humans look like these days? Most of us have devolved into doughy, flubberous tubs of jigglesome goo at this point, barely hardy enough to peel themselves off the dangerously over-stressed sofa and lumber over to the fridge for another desperately-needed snack. The remainder of us hoo-mans are, quite literally, starving—horrifying, dead-eyed skels who more closely resemble Auschwitz survivors about ten minutes after being liberated by Allied forces than anything else.

Not for nothing, folks, but I’m thinking “attract” might not exactly be the mot juste here.

NASA scientists plan to launch pictures of naked humans into space in the hope of luring aliens to us.

The depictions will also include an invitation to respond should an intelligent alien race find the space nudes.

Fortunately, the hypothetical aliens shouldn’t be too shocked by the unsolicited nudes.

The pictures aren’t graphic photographs of naked humans but a drawing of a naked man and a woman next to a depiction of DNA.

The article includes this space smut, which is…well, let’s be charitable and call the pre-K level drawing “good enough for government work” and just leave it at that, shall we?

The main aim of the BITG project is to send a message to any alien civilizations that could be out there.

Scientists think the pixelated illustration of a naked man and woman waving hello could help us finally make contact with extraterrestrials.

Oh, sure. Either that, or guarantee that they will never, ever permit such contact, preferring to make a mad dash for galaxy’s edge instead. NASA’s ridiculous and inartful scribblings are more likely to instill in Marvin the Martian a frantic desire to put as much distance between himself and humanity as he possible can, seems to me. The next passage glosses over something important.

Scientists think a binary-coded message is most likely to be understood by aliens.

The scientists explain in their study: “Though the concept of mathematics in human terms is potentially unrecognizable to extra-terrestrial intelligence, binary is likely universal across all intelligence.”

Across all HUMAN-type intelligence, you mean—intelligence itself being strictly definable in terms comprehensible to HUMANS. Me, you, NASA, everybody—none of us have any clue as to alien physiognomy. We don’t know if they even HAVE brains, never mind how those brains work or how advanced their cognitive function might be. IF they have brains at all. Alien perception of basic physical reality might well diverge so radically from our own as to disallow any possibility of communication between our two species. Such an unbridgeable chasm renders NASA’s fanciful speculation that “binary”—an exclusively HUMAN construct, mind, never independently present in Earth’s planetary bioforms, geology, or atmosphere—is “likely universal across all intelligence” the callow daydream that it most definitely is.

This is where we must pay our respects to an irony so deep, so powerful, so profound it almost has a discernible aroma about it: only our most brilliant scientists and thinkers could be arrogant enough to blithely skate past the abundantly obvious possibility that alien life forms are likely to be so wildly at variance with us in every imaginable way—not to mention the UNimaginable ones, which would of necessity be beyond counting—that the very idea of ANY commonality between us physically, intellectually, or emotionally is patently absurd.

Not so for the good-enough-for-government-work Superbrains of NASA, however. These impeccably well-educated and competent “experts” seem to think it squarely within the expansive ken of such Übermenschen as themselves to make certain assumptions without squandering a second of their priceless time and energy pondering whether or not those assumptions are valid. Funny, innit, that one of the bedrock prequisites which help to not only identify true intelligence but also elevate it from mere gauzy potentiality into a genuinely useful thing—from the nebulous stuff of idle fantasy into real-world practicality—would turn out to be plain, familiar old humility.

Funnier still that arrogance should be the easiest, most natural-feeling attitude for most humans to adopt, the very first resort of both the egotistical but otherwise well-intentioned chowderhead and the conniving scalawag whenever forced to confront his own insufficiency of knowledge, his unwarranted overconfidence, his fallibility—while humility is by far the most awkward, toilsome, and wholly alien-seeming and oblique character trait to summon, much less to maintain. The demands humility imposes are numerous, non-trivial, and painful. But the rewards it bestows are rich beyond belief, a fulsome bounty reinforced and multiplied every time we choose it as our response to challenge or adversity.

Arrogance always makes one look like a goddamned jackass in the end. Worse still, most who succumb to its empty blandishments never even know what utter fools arrogance has made of them, their heads being crammed too far up their own asses to see the light of day. Those capable of inculcating and bolstering a proper sense of humility, on the other hand, will find themselves widely admired and respected for the very trait that did so much to ensure their success, whatever their chosen field of endeavor may be.

They added: “The proposed message includes basic mathematical and physical concepts to establish a universal means of communication followed by information on the biochemical composition of life on Earth, the Solar System’s time-stamped position in the Milky Way relative to known globular clusters, as well as digitized depictions of the Solar System, and Earth’s surface.”

“A universal means of communication.” Do these people even hear their words? Across, what, about 2-300,000 fucking years of the existence of what we think of as “modern” man, no “universal means of communication” has ever been developed. EVER. Dios mio, mankind has never created a universal language in all that time, nor is there the slightest prospect of such a thing on the horizon. But hey, that can’t stop the bright boys at NASA, and why should it? They’ve been sooooo incredibly successful since the halcyon days of the 1960s and 70s, right?

The concept of sending depictions of naked humans to space isn’t new.

The Pioneer plaques sent to space on the 1972 Pioneer 10 and 1973 Pioneer 11 missions, also featured drawings of naked humans.

The plaques are attached to the antennas on the crafts.

They’re still sailing away from Earth to this day.

With nary a peep heard from any of our prospective alien friends from that day to this. Those NASA folks might be smart, but they don’t seem to have learned a whole lot. But hey, I’m probably just too dumb to understand such heady stuff; it’s all probably WAY over my head. So shamed am I by my intellectual inadequacy, I’d never even DREAM of asking the NASA brain trust to explain—in detail and with extensive confirmatory references in the footnotes—exactly what all that taxpayer money bought for us.

Hope those brainiacs will remember to request access to the FBI “evidence” locker so’s they can glom some kiddie-porn to slap onto that phallic launch vehicle of theirs. Celebrating the entire spectrum of human sexual “diversity” is what the modern American “space program” is all about, don’tchaknow.

Oh, and Mooselimbs too. Gotta throw a few Korans in there, maybe a nice set of those checkered kitchen drapes they like to wear on their heads.

1

Guitar heaven

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

Ed Driscoll reports from the Dallas International Guitar Festival, and if you’re at all into guitars, it’s pretty sweet stuff.

On Saturday, I attended the 2022 Dallas International Guitar Festival at the Dallas Market Hall, the second festival after a timeout in 2020 due to the pandemic lockdown. As I wrote last year at Instapundit, unlike the previous guitar shows in the DFW Metroplex, 2021’s show had a somewhat more low-key feel, lacking the large exhibits by the music industry heavy hitters such as Gibson and Fender. (In pre-pandemic times, a large trailer owned by Gibson would be displaying their newest and most impressive guitars, Fender usually had a large display, and Roland was showing off the latest effects in their Boss line as well.)

While Gibson and Fender were still absent in person, this time around it was nice to see a few bigger names back on display, such as…

Fender, Boss, Gretsch, Taylor, Eventide; Les Paul, Strat, Tele, Black Beauty—the names alone evoke an overwhelming nostalgia in me whose taste is bittersweet at best nowadays, seeing as how my hands have been utterly ruined by the curse of DePuytren’s Contracture, or Viking Disease. My left-hand ring and pinky fingers are curled tightly up against my palm and can’t be straightened, even by physical force; as I tell foks who ask, my once-agile fretting hand is useful mainly as a place to hang my keys, no more. The right hand is only a little bit behind, but well on its way. The sensation brought on by this condition is so intensely unpleasant it actually wakes me up at night sometimes. It’s fucking awful, is what it is.

All that aside, any halfway serious guitar slinger—by which I do NOT necessarily mean a professional musician who earns his daily bread wielding an axe onstage and/or in the studio—will enjoy Ed’s reportage tremendously. The photos alone will be enough to bring a tear of joy to your jaded eye, trust me. Although I must say the Les Paul pics run way heavy on the Tobacco and Honey Burst varieties—which, I can’t stand those ugly, dull-looking turdballs—and way light on Cherry Sunburst—which are my all-time faves. Examples:

Purty! — *Cherry Burst: a little bit of Heaven on Earth*

Of course and as always, your mileage may etc on that. There’s no real shame in disagreeing with me; it just means your taste is in your ass, that’s all. I should maybe also mention the subspecies of the parent Tobacco and Cherry Burst finishes, such as Lemon and Tangerine. In fact, the Honey Burst model depicted above is actually a sub-category of Tobacco Burst its own bad self.

One last photo from Ed’s post to take home witcha.

For the uninitiated, that two-headed beastie at Foreground Left flying Distressed White colors and decked out in its Sunday-best gold hardware is something of an odd duck: a double-necked Strat-style body, with the top half being pretty much the standard three-pickup Stratocaster deal. The bottom half, though, veers off in a decidedly different direction: one single-coil pickup, slightly beefier than those found on Strats, mounted on a steel plate way back by the bridge with the familiar, jaunty Telecaster tilt. It also sports the knurled steel volume/tone knobs and long-throw three-position pickup selector switch which typically adorn the Telecaster control panel.

Ahh, the precious memories. All well beyond my reach now, alas. As my Uncle Murray always insisted, with no little heat: Gettin’ old sucks. Wise man, Uncle Murray was.

1

Tender mercies

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

Greatest. Auto. Review. EVAR.

‘Suffice to say the A110 absolutely crushes expectations, and your berry hanger’
The absolutely brilliant Alpine A110 is anything but sterile to drive
You’ll have heard how the Alpine A110’s combination of lightness and rightness has earned the admiration of evo’s tillermen. And that’s all well and good, but what’s it like if you’ve just had a vasectomy? To find out, I went to a central London clinic and invited a large, medically qualified man to have a good rummage amongst my underparts, then realised with dismay that I had booked to borrow a low-slung French sports coupe almost immediately afterwards.

The first thing to cross your mind upon seeing the A110 is just how little it is and also how much your balls hurt. You can immediately sense that this is a car from which all excess has been banished, and this impression is reinforced by opening the featherweight aluminium door, which is so lacking in mass that it puts no strain whatsoever on your mangled knacker sack, unlike its low-slung driving position, which is absolute agony.

Once in, you can take a moment to admire the bespoke seats with their one-piece backs and upsettingly unpillowy cushions. You might be interested to learn that these chairs weigh just 13.1kg each, despite fine detailing including quilted leather and a grippy central section that expertly rides your jeans up into the tenderest parts of your plum pouch.

The rest of the interior is, perhaps, a little less successful, featuring a smattering of Renault parts bin components, including remote audio controls seemingly taken from the Renault 19, and the flat keyless entry card from the Laguna, though wrapped in a smart leather case that makes it both more attractive to look at and better equipped to shift awkwardly across your pocket and nudge stoutly into your tenderised clacker hammock.

Okay, that there is some truly inspired stuff. Hats off to Richard Porter for his dedication to his craft, taking one for the team and putting his boy beans in harm’s way to bring us this truly stellar article. Well done, young feller, well done.

“Clacker hammock.” I swear, I just can’t stop laughing at that one.

1

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