A convincing case is made that the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed not by military action, but through incompetence.
Jun 102023
Jun 102023
Biden and ATF just created 29 million felons
Obviously they’re not going to try to arrest everyone who still has a small piece of plastic and metal that was perfectly legal when they bought or made it. They’ll go after a select tiny number, and do so very publicly, hoping to instill fear… and to instill a subconscious realization that we’re living in an anarcho-tyranny. The result of *that* will be a general erosion of respect for the rule of law and an increased acceptance of generalized criminality. That doesn’t seem like such a great thing to me, but then, I’m not in charge.
Jun 092023
Swedish Prime Minister: “Massive Immigration Just Doesn’t Work”
Claims that Sweden is going to institute the strictest immigration rules in the EU, including such draconian ideas as demanding that immigrants learn Swedish and actually try to join Swedish society.
Probably too late to save Sweden, however.
Jun 082023
The Constitution has of course been amended numerous times before. But amendment that curtail existing right have been few and haven’t gone well.
Governor Newsom Proposes Historic 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution to End America’s Gun Violence Crisis
The 28th Amendment will permanently enshrine four broadly supported gun safety principles into the U.S. Constitution:
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- Raising the federal minimum age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21;
- Mandating universal background checks to prevent truly dangerous people from purchasing a gun that could be used in a crime;
- Instituting a reasonable waiting period for all gun purchases; and
- Barring civilian purchase of assault weapons that serve no other purpose than to kill as many people as possible in a short amount of time – weapons of war our nation’s founders never foresaw.
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Translation: deletion of the 2nd Amendment. The 1st Amendment will be “amended” shortly after, I suspect.
Of course, Newsom knows that this is going nowhere. An amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the states; the map below suggests that that is unlikely at best. But these sort of announcements are always good; it’s useful to be reminded from time to time that some of our “leaders” are evil.
If Governor Newsom *actually* cared about gun crime victims, instead of making millions more citizens into criminals, he’d actually demand enforcement of existing laws, and would ensure that those arrested for any and all violent crimes would actually see justice. But that’s not what he’s doing.
Jun 082023
Uuuuuuuhhhhhhgh.
UK no longer able to manufacture large-calibre gun barrels, BAE Systems admits
Britain is doomed. Lack of manufacturing, wholly uncontrolled mass invasion… “Britain” will soon be relegated to the chapter of the history book filled with nations that no longer exist. But while the Soviet Union or Austro-Hungarian Empire went away, the *people* remained, as did their language and much of their culture. But England specifically and Britain as a whole? Their own government is working to erase their existence. It’s remarkable.
Jun 062023
“Woke” has becoming an ever-present word in recent years, especially since the BLM/Antifa riots and city burnings of 2020. But what does it actually mean? The original meaning, apart from “past tense of wake,” as given by dictionary.com is this:
having or marked by an active awareness of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those involving the treatment of ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities
That meaning was used for some decades by those on the left, in particular black people. But recently the word has been taken up by people on the right as a term of disparagement, the second definition at dictionary.com:
Disparaging. of or relating to a liberal progressive orthodoxy, especially promoting inclusive policies or ideologies that welcome or embrace ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities.
It’s that second definition that interests me. As written, it’s fair as far as it goes… but it doesn’t really go far enough.
“Woke” is kinda like “obscenity:” you know it when you see it. But a proper definition, reasonably accurate and objective, is important for all things especially when it comes to things that will be important for policy decisions. If some classroom assignment or book is “woke,” what does it really mean, especially if “woke” is meant to mean that it should be disallowed? The fact that some statement or book or person is an “inclusive progressive” is not sufficient to be defined as “woke.” To me, this seems better:
Disparaging. of or relating to a liberal progressive orthodoxy, especially promoting policies or ideologies that preference ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities and focus to an obsessive degree on largely or entirely imaginary oppression, threats, enemies or slights
A near-universal feature of someone that most regular people would look at and call “woke” is that they are multicolored, unhinged and divorced from reality. Often shrieking about how oppressed they are while their flags are flying from every government building for an entire month out of the year and they get to dominate any and all discussion, threatening the lives and livelihoods of those who not only express differing opinions, but who use “unapproved” words. it’s not about “inclusion” and “welcoming,” but domination and madness.
Thoughts?
Jun 022023
Today I swung by “The Davenport,” the century-plus old apartment building that partially collapsed a few days ago. Roads were closed off for a radius of a block or two around it so I couldn’t get very close in my car, and I didn’t have the time to find someplace to park and walk. Ehhh, oh well. Anyway, a lot of information has come out about it; the city of Davenport has released a bunch of inspection reports and other documents going back several years showing that it has been falling apart for some time. Bricks have been popping out of the face of the building for years. It looks like the sort of place that your average person would have been able to look at and go “Nope” and run to some other accommodations.
Someone’s gettin’ sued.
The City of Davenport website with the documents:
https://www.davenportiowa.com/cms/One.aspx?portalId=6481456&pageId=19580321
In retrospect this sort of thing is not too surprising. A lot of the buildings around here are old brick structures, and The Davenport was only a few blocks from the Mississippi river. “500 year floods” seem to happen every few years now; this had *got* to have an effect. Whether water seeps into the ground that far inland I don;t know, but having tens of thousands of tons of new watery overburden from time to time has got to cause the ground to flex at least some. There are also the occasional earthquake; small by the standards of even Utah, but if you have a brick building not built with earthquakes in mind… that’s not so great.
In all honesty, “The Davenport” looks like a *lot* of buildings in this part of the midwest. Built a century ago, having seen better days. Like our roads and bridges, the infrastructure has not been well looked after. I won’t be surprised if the next few years are filled with increasing tales of buildings and bridges falling. Imagine if the dozens of trillions dumped down the black hole of welfare were instead spent on repairs, maintenance and replacements of structures that needed it.
Jun 012023
A recent Mexican TV news piece showed a cartel member wandering about with a shoulder-fired AT-4 anti-tank rocket slung over his shoulder. A number of commenters immediately leaped to one or both of two wrong conclusions:
1: It’s a Javelin missile
2: It’s a missile we gave to Ukraine, which they then turned around and sold on the black market.
Number 1 is easy enough to debunk; it’s simply not a Javelin. Number 2 is more troubling: but then there’s a little detail on the launch tube that makes it clear that wherever the cartel got this thing… it’s not something to fret about too much.
May 272023
It seems obvious by this point that a rational corporation would, when presented with the option of weighing in on politically decisive “culture war” topics, just stick their fingers in their ears and hum real loud until whatever -themed month it is ends, and spend their time trying to sell their normal merchandise to their normal customers. But, no. Due to the insidious and invasive influence of “woke” ideologies and diversity initiatives, companies have been led to believe that they *have* to build up their diversity social credit scores, or else… something.
Target stores are the latest to discover that attempting to appease a small group of weirdos ticks off a far larger group of people who don’t want to sterilize, mutilate and drive insane their children.A lot of customers have expressed outrage; a few by pestering the employees (these are just regular folk trying to earn a paycheck, leave ’em the frak alone); a few others by causing damage (come on, you’re not on the left… the law *will* go after you for vandalism). But by far, from Targets perspective the biggest threat to the corporation are the large number of customers who are simply not spending their increasingly thin dollars there. Apparently Target has lost about nine *billion* dollars so far. So Target has decided to move their displays of child-grooming-friendly products further back in the store where they’ll be less conspicuous. This, supposedly, is in response to threats to the stores, products and employees from customers who don;t like those products.
But now they’re getting threats from the *other* side… bomb threats from weirdos ticked off that Target is now attempting to appease right wingers.
You know who’s not getting bomb threats from *either* side? Companies that didn’t delve into goofy identity politics in the first place. There might be a lesson there.
Utah Target Evacuated After Reports of Trans Extremists Threatening to Bomb Multiple Target Locations for Removing Satanic Groomer Products
May 252023
Well, here’s a study to shock exactly nobody:
Antagonistic narcissism and psychopathic tendencies predict left-wing antihierarchical aggression, study finds
Narcissistic individuals and those with psychopathic tendencies are more likely to strongly endorse left-wing antihierarchical aggression, according to new research published in Current Psychology. Antihierarchical aggression refers to a specific type of hostility aimed at challenging or opposing hierarchical power structures or authority figures. The new findings shed light on psychological mechanisms that motivate some individuals to participate in violent political activism.
You want a “red flag law?” Start here.
The study itself:
Understanding left-wing authoritarianism: Relations to the dark personality traits, altruism, and social justice commitment
This, to somewhat stretch the discussion a tad, argues against the recent notion that “Star Trek has always been woke.” Yeah… no. The original series made it clear that in the 23rd century, the Federation – which of course included Humanity – had basically wiped out mental illness. Crazy people more or less didn’t exist in any meaningful form. Which would argue that far lefties would be rare in the United Federation of Planets.