Labor Day 2024

Welcome to Labor day, or as we refer to it this year: August 33rd, just about the earliest Labor Day there can be. I'd even call it September 2nd because it has been an exceptionally cool day here today with the high only reaching 82 - thanks to drizzle on and off all day and dense clouds to temper the sun. The chances of rain tomorrow are being put at 70% so rather than smoking something, I'll be trying to duplicate my method of smoking some ribs but using an indoor oven. Since I don't have a backyard pergola to keep the rain off things. 

Since we're celebrating Labor Day in a time when the Teacher's Unions are coming to the forefront of union abuses of power, I thought it would worthwhile to use a "blast from the past" re-post of something I originally posted in 2013.    

The Bloody History of Organized Labor

 I enjoy my extra day off this week as much as anyone, but the history of the American labor movement that led to this day off is a pretty bloody history. Most of us are probably aware of the recent incitements to violence and riot, such as the problems in Wisconsin in 2011, when legislation to attempt to get control of the state budget led to confrontation in the state offices.  Remember this email, sent to several State Senators by a union supporter because lawmakers were going to ask union members to simply contribute to their benefits plan, instead of it being 100% paid for by taxpayers?

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks.

Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families, then it will save the rights of 300,000 people, and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. ...

We have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes: your house, your car, the state capitol, and well, I won’t tell you all of them because that’s just no fun…

Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones. [W]e will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!

In what world is it acceptable to threaten killing someone and their family, and not expect any negative consequences for it?  Only in the upside down world of labor unions.  Daniel Sayani at the New American puts together a short history of union violence in this country.  The first blood spilled by union activists apparently goes back to the Haymarket Square massacre in 1886, in which:

... striking union workers threw a bomb at Chicago police, killing eight police officers and countless civilians, after being incited to their lethal rampage by socialist Samuel Fielden (not unlike how Marty Lamb was beaten after the crowd of unionists was inflamed to violence by “progressive” Rep. Capuano) [Note: explanation of Rep. Capuano reference in that article from the New American - SiG] 

Because of their enormous influence in the Democratic Party, unions have specifically gotten themselves exempted from laws the rest of society must follow.  You probably know about the exemptions from the anti-trust laws, and extortion laws, and that they're trying to exempt themselves from Obamacare.  (just one example for each of those).  And, of course, you know when unions physically assault conservatives like Kenneth Gladney there never seems to be any consequences for the union thugs.

Unions are progressively more desperate because membership in non-government employee unions is down. Only government workers' unions are growing, where no true negotiation takes place because there are no parties at the table risking anything. Unions like the SEIU and the AFSCME are the beneficiaries of fat government contracts. They get more union dues which they siphon off to contribute to getting Evil Party politicians elected who will negotiate new, fat contracts with them.

(source)

While I could tweak things here and there in text, it's pretty good as it sits. It's showing its age a bit with references to efforts to pass a $15/hr minimum wage and it mentions the SEIU instead of the American Federation of Teachers - which in way just underlines the persistence of this problem.

The Not-Space Story of the Day. Maybe of the Year

It's good news, for once, coming out of the colleges.   A team of researchers from Oregon State University sent surveys meant to assess the representation of "transgender and gender nonconforming" of undergraduate STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) majors.  The proportion of sarcastic answers they received (which frankly wasn't terribly high) was high enough to trigger some of the researchers and cause them to whine about the rise of fascism in STEM programs; proving once again they don't understand what the word fascism actually means.  Of 723 responses, only 299 were considered valid, and 50 of the 299, 15%, were classified as "malicious."  It even led to one of their data analysts being so triggered they (it? I don't know their pronouns) had to be given weeks off from looking at the responses.

This story has hit the headlines over the weekend, but the best and deepest coverage I've found is on ZeroHedge, so I'll be quoting from there the most. 

The 28-page paper is titled "Attack Helicopters and White Supremacy: Interpreting Malicious Responses to an Online Questionnaire about Transgender Undergraduate Engineering and Computer Science Student Experiences." It was rejected by multiple engineering-education journals before finding a home at "Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies,"  which Northwestern University alumni can proudly claim as their alma mater's contribution to society.  

“Online memes associated with white nationalist and fascist movements were present throughout the data, alongside memes and content referencing gaming and ‘nerd’ culture,” wrote the authors, who call for academia to face STEM's surging fascist menace head-on, as the survey results demonstrate "social justice STEM education must include perspectives on online hate radicalization and center anti-colonial, intersectional solidarity organizing as its opposition."

What sort of dressing would you like on that word salad?  

The questionnaire first asked students the gender they identify as:

• I identify as a gift card
• Apache Attack Helicopter
• F-16 Fighter Jet
• Pansexual attack helicopter
  
• Cis gender lizard king
• A human being
• F**king white male
• V22 Osprey
• DID YOU JUST F**KING ASK FOR MY GENDER
• Non-cookie-cutter cis-furry dragonkin. Don't judge. 
• Quasi-Demi-poney; bankai-released state queercopter with a hint of faggotdrag lesbian and homosexual upside-down Frappuccino cake
• I'm just here for the gift card

A total of 24% of respondents used the second through fourth answers: an "Apache Attack Helicopter," a "pansexual attack helicopter," and an "F-16 Fighter Jet."  So many chose the Apache that the paper's authors singled it out for criticism. 

"It is notable that the specific descriptor of an Apache Attack Helicopter is referenced by several different participants—itself a synthesis and reflection of U.S. military force and the appropriation of Indigenous language by colonizers." 

They asked about Race/Ethnic Identity:

• I'm an ethnic gift card.
• My skin color is not important 
• Afro/Klingon-Asicatic Galapogayation
• AH-64 Apache
• Republican
• Come on man, these questions are stupid. Everyone is a grab bag of genetics from all over the world
• I'm a Swedish Muslim
• Native American (Elizabeth Warren)
• Pansexual attack helicopter
• Cracker
• Colored Native Mix w/oppressed ancestors
• Born white but I spend a lot of time in the sun so I identify as a light skin black male
• My skin is blue, I think I might be a smurf

If they had a Disability: 

• I don't have enough gift cards
• My country is run by communists
• Being 2.86% white
• Pedophilia
• Gender dysphoria
• Thinking I'm not a man
• Being trans
• That I'm a tranny
• I'm mentally retarded
• I have hands where my feet are and feet where my hands are 
• Like all transgenders, my disability is the inability to come to terms with biological reality. Madness, essentially.  

The many references to gift cards are because the group conducting the study used $5 Amazon gift cards to entice students to participate.

There were other great responses.  I've probably copied too much of this already, so let me just refer you again to ZeroHedge.  Another good source I found was a Fox News piece.  That piece included this nugget that's worth quoting:

The research team declared that the mockery they received "had a profound impact on morale and mental health," particularly for one transgender researcher who was "already in therapy for anxiety and depression regarding online anti-trans rhetoric." The paper claimed that "managing the study’s data collection caused significant personal distress, and time had to be taken off the project to heal from traumatic harm" of having to read students' responses in the survey.

This quote is the very embodiment of where the idea comes from that you just shouldn't use resumes from people who list their pronouns.  Slip them under the papers on your desk, or somewhere even less accessible. "Are you sure you sent that to me?  I can't seem to find it."

I find this story the most encouraging news I've seen in quite a while.  Engineering undergrads are still being wise asses.  Instead of reflexively parroting the indoctrination they've been fighting for years, they're making fun of the indoctrinators to their faces.  It gives me hope for driving across bridges or flying in airplanes over the next 20 to 30 years.  Maybe everything isn't going to fail.  Those of us who have been talking about how new dark ages are being forced on the world by people who think math is racist have some inspiration.  The answer to "what's your race/ethnic identity?" that one person gave, "Come on man, these questions are stupid.  Everyone is a grab bag of genetics from all over the world" displays common sense in quantities rarely seen anymore.   

Time For the Annual Holiday Celebrated By White Liberals

It's Kwanzaa, the made up holiday from the 1960s, not mostly celebrated and noted by blacks but by White Liberals, especially women.  

I've searched the blog history and find only one post out of the 4400+ posts I've put up that mentions the word Kwanzaa.  So why a second?  A couple of weeks ago, Divemedic put up a post that mentioned it and got me thinking of it.  Eight days after that, BizPac Review had an epic, long post on it.  Sounds to me like some sort of harmonic convergence.  Or harmonica virgins, I always get those mixed up.  Either way, it was crying for me to talk about this, too. 

The piece I ran, back in 2017, focused on some acerbic wit from Ann Coulter.  That's a link to a piece from 2013, but she wrote the original farther back than that and re-used most of it regularly.  After all, the facts don't change.

It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga -- aka Dr. Maulana Karenga -- founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers. He was also a dupe of the FBI.
....
Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the '60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. They did not seek armed revolution (although some of their most high-profile leaders were drug dealers and murderers). Those were the precepts of Karenga's United Slaves.
...
Kwanzaa praises collectivism in every possible area of life -- economics, work, personality, even litter removal. ("Kuumba: Everyone should strive to improve the community and make it more beautiful.") It takes a village to raise a police snitch.

Is there any other holiday that was created by FBI COINTELPRO?  In this case, the “African American” alternative to Christmas was invented by ’60s-radical and convicted felon Ronald McKinley Everett – who changed his name to the more “African” sounding Maulana Karenga back in the ‘60s.  The only thing “African” about it is the corruption of a Swahili phrase, “matunda y kwanza,” which translates as “first fruits of the harvest.”  Did you notice that Everett or Karenga or whichever you call him spelled kwanza wrong?   

As Ann Coulter notes, Kwanzaa is a pure move toward communism.  Perhaps you've seen the observation about communism, "ideas so bad they have to be mandated and enforced by death penalty" at some point?  Why would a black man inventing a "black holiday" want to incorporate ideas that have led to the torture and death of so many Africans? Just for a couple of examples, consider Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Sani Abacha of Nigeria and Idi Amin of Uganda.  All torturers and murderers. 

The easy answer is he was one of them.  A Robert Mugabe/Idi Amin wannabe.

In 1971, Everett-Karenga was convicted for doing just that to two women – Deborah Jones and Gail Davis – who had been part of his United Slaves group of Leftists radicals. According to a May, 1971 LA Times news story about the trial and subsequent conviction of Everett-Karenga, Jones “testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths.”

The article goes on to state that “the victims said they were hit on the heads with toasters.”

A writer for FrontPage magazine who has studied Everett/Karenga, Paul Mulshine, notes, Kwanzaa has “nothing to do with Africa and everything to do with California in the ’60s.” That is, the radical leftist policies of '60s California. California.

The good news is that a survey by National Retail Foundation said that only 1.6% of the American population actually celebrates Kwanzaa. The math tells me that's probably the woke mob. A tiny percentage, but a bunch of annoyingly loud people. Hmm.  Makes me wonder how many people celebrate Festivus - that other made up holiday. At least that one was joke on TV. 

A sure sign you're dealing with an idiot is if you hear them talk about the "country of Africa", or about an "African culture," as if the continent has some sort of single homogeneous culture, instead of hundreds of cultures at war with each other for hundreds - or even thousands - of years.  That's the mindset that, aided by mid-60s tax dollars, created Kwanzaa.  

Lost to eternity is the creator of this image of what you'd get if you invented a White Kwanzaa.  Just take a bunch of different cultures that share nothing but skin color and mash it all together.  Just like the "real" Kwanzaa. 

Conceptual Repost - "The Universal Currency is Energy"

While I have just about 4300 posts to go back to when I feel like it, I don't actually repost much.  It ends up being just about the same amount of work as coming up with a new post.  Tonight, I'm going to use an old post as the nucleus of a repeat.  Maybe even parts of more than one old post.  The main idea is reflected in this post's title and comes from 2011.   

I think the quote that this is based on comes from Robert A. Heinlein.  All transactions between people reduce to transactions about energy.  Think about it: what's the most fundamental of your needs?  Food and shelter.  What is food other than energy to run you?  Shelter?  How do you build your home?  Don't you need energy to make your home livable; to keep the inside in and the outside out?  If you buy anything, you're trading some of your concentrated energy for someone else's.

For as much of my life as I can remember, people have been preaching that we are running out of oil and we needed alternatives.  I first remember seeing the term "peak oil" invoked in the second 1970s gas crisis, when OPEC was deliberately raising the price of their product to gouge us.  When we started making motions to develop our own resources - rather than just talking about it - the price of oil came down.  A lesson for today?  It seems every 10 or 15 years or so, someone else announces we're at peak oil and the world will soon be ending.  It's demonstrably not true.

If there was a free market in oil, I'd say, "peak oil, schmeak oil - I don't care," because all that means is that as oil gets more expensive, other sources of energy will replace it; and it's not like oil hasn't been getting more expensive for the last 40 years, anyway.  Nuclear is the obvious choice for electricity production.  The rising price of oil will put strong incentives in place for someone to develop the Next Big Thing.  In a free market, people will gradually shift from the more expensive energy to the cheaper one and balance the effects of peak oil automatically.  It appears to me that the administration's policies are intended to force us into paying more for oil to get us to make that shift before the market dictates it.  For either eco-NAZI or other fascist reasons. 

Environmentalists and other idiots are always screaming how we need green energy or renewable energy; both terms are code.  What they mean is they want to return the world to some idealized pre-industrial state that never existed.  They want fewer people, and some have fantasized about killing up to 98% of humanity.  It's not just about magical unicorn farts to power everything.  

Enter Alex Epstein now of the Center for Industrial Progress with a great review article "Four Dirty Secrets About Clean Energy."  This is a well thought out piece, and worth the time to read.

1. Dirty Secret #1: If “clean energy” were actually cheaper than fossil fuels, it wouldn’t need a policy.
2. Dirty Secret #2: Clean energy advocates want to force us to use solar, wind, and biofuels, even though there is no evidence these can power modern civilization.
3. Dirty Secret #3: There are promising carbon-free energy sources--hydroelectric and nuclear--but “clean energy” policies oppose them as not “green” enough.
4. Dirty Secret #4: The environmentalists behind clean energy policy are anti-energy.

For every one of those four bullet points, he has several paragraphs of explanation.  It's worth a read - for a piece from 2015.  Fundamental truths don't change. 

What the world is going through now is so outrageously blind to reality that it's hard to summarize.  Our "leadership" is in a blind rush to shut off all sources of energy that aren't green enough; they're shutting down food production when the supply chain is deeply impaired by both the Covid shutdowns and the skyrocketing cost of fuels from those stupid, destructive energy policies; and they're shutting down fertilizer use because a demonstrably bad computer model says nitrogen fixation in soil is bad, 

To shut down all carbon based fuels when there's nothing coming that can genuinely replace them is so horribly cruel to the population it's hard to put words on.  An analogy I've used in comments around at a few blogs is that it's as if we're being thrown out of an airplane without a parachute by people believing that somehow, against all experience and all abilities to predict, something that will save us will be invented and appear in time to keep us from dying on impact.  Would anyone really do that willingly?

On Broken Toothbrushes and The Great Reset

Just some ramblings on some minor events in life that all seem to converge going in one direction.  

First thing.  I have joked on occasion that I have a tendency to need to get dental calculus (literally, "tooth math") on my teeth so I need to have then cleaned more often than normal people do.  Decades ago, my dentist told me it wasn't my hygiene but a genetic thing, probably made worse by having allergies that force me to be a mouth breather more than most people.  Because of that, I got my first high-end electric toothbrush around that time; a Philips Sonicare, because my dentist had told me that these were particularly effective.  Call it 1997.  

That toothbrush was simple, but rugged and reliable.  That brush lasted a long time with twice daily use, traveled around the country with me, until the battery would no longer hold a charge.  I think it was 15 years.  I replaced it with another.  The replacement added some little feature and lasted nowhere near as long.  I've had three Sonicare brushes and the latest one I bought on January 3, 2021.  This one had more features added.  It failed Sunday night.  When I turned it on, it made an oddly louder noise and didn't feel right.  In three generations the toothbrushes went from a lifetime of 14 or 15 years down to not even lasting two.  It's actually still under warranty but (1) I'm not sure I'd want another - this one is actually a replacement for the first one I got in early '21 which suddenly wouldn't turn on.  Not exactly an impressive product.  And (2) while looking for a replacement online Sunday the website actively discouraged my business. 

The one that just broke. 

If you're keeping track, the easy explanation is that every time they add features to the product they shorten its life.  I get it.  I'm an engineer.  I understand that all design decisions are a compromise and TANSTAAFL There ain't exactly a lot of room in one of those things and if they add anything that takes up room, it's a tough trade.

The next morning, Mrs. Graybeard was using our immersion blender to make home made mayonnaise, as an ingredient in Caesar dressing.   The blender suddenly broke.  This is the second of this model blender we've had.  We bought the first one on April 1st.  At the end of June, it broke.  The company customer service was nice enough and once we sent them a phone video of how it failed they sent us a replacement.  This one hasn't been here longer than 3 weeks and has barely had a workout.  Before the first one hard failed, it ruined things she was blending by getting too hot to touch, thereby overheating and "breaking" the mayonnaise.

There's a point to this rambling.  If you're used to living in a world where things last more like that first Sonicare, but when something breaks you can fix it - or even just get it fixed - that world seems to be coming to an end.  Unlike big things like my vacuum cleaner adventures, neither of these small appliances could be fixed.  If we have to get used to the idea of buying a new electric appliance, toothbrush or blender, every few months or every year, how different is that from paying rent every month to always have one that works?  (Except for not always having one that works!)  Remember "you will own nothing and you'll be happy" from the World Economic Forum?  Doesn't that refer to no one being able to own homes, cars or other major purchases and being forced to rent? 

I see the whole world pushing in that direction.  In my other big hobby, my metal shop, it has become common for CAD programs to be sold on the yearly maintenance fee model.  I know for sure that some of the big photo editing programs work on a rental model.  If you buy an electronic doorbell with a camera like so many people have, it virtually always works under the monthly fee model.  The same for some medical devices.  It's arguable that Microsoft is pushing in this direction for Windows 11.  This guy, a PC repair shop owner, points out how the things Microsoft has done to improve security also have the effect of making you unable to control what you can install and run on YOUR computer

I had been looking at this change to everything going to a monthly subscription model as independent of and different from what the Great Reset people are talking about.  My toothbrush made me start thinking maybe not.  Then it made me start thinking, "what's the difference?" 

Dumbest Headline of the ... Oh, Nevermind

In a time when at least once a week I say out loud, "what planet is this and how did we get here?" it's hard to say a headline is the dumbest ever, the dumbest of the week, or even the dumbest of the day.  I saw this one yesterday, but there was actually an important story yesterday, so I let this one sit.  Since the important story today is that yesterday's important story is resolved, I'll go back to the dumb shit headline.  

'Urgency is a White Supremacy Value' Says Oregon Health Bureaucrat 

from PJ Media, a story based on coverage from Reason.  A health bureaucrat, as in a state health department officer?  To be as exact in the quote as I can get:

...the Oregon Health Authority’s office for equity and inclusion delayed a meeting with a partner agency on the grounds that “urgency is a white supremacy value.”

Say that again: a HEALTH Authority person thinks urgency is just something those evil, white-privileged people care about?  I can tell at a glance that anybody in healthcare who thinks urgency is some sort of value reserved for white people is not someone actually working with patients at all, and most especially not working in an Emergency Room.  Which is to say they're not healthcare workers and never have been; they're simply bureaucrats.  Furthermore, they've lived such a blessed life that they've never been in a situation where they or a loved one was in need of urgent care in an ER or hospital.

In an email obtained by Reason, Regional Health Equity Coalition Program Manager Danielle Droppers informed the community that a scheduled conversation between OHA officials and relevant members of the public would not take place as planned.

"Thank you for your interest in attending the community conversation between Regional Health Equity Coalitions (RHECs) and Community Advisory Councils (CACs) to discuss the Community Investment Collaboratives (CICs)," wrote Droppers. "We recognize that urgency is a white supremacy value that can get in the way of more intentional and thoughtful work, and we want to attend to this dynamic. Therefore, we will reach out at a later date to reschedule."

Tell you what, Ms. Droppers, I propose an experiment.  I'll put duct tape over your mouth and caulk in your nose to get an airtight seal and see if you feel any urgency about being able to breathe within about, say, 15 seconds.  Or maybe we can induce a heart attack?  Not a cardiac arrest where it's just "lights out" and (if you're lucky) you barely even feel pain, but a racked with chest pain, desperately gasping for air, heart attack.  Think you'll feel any urgency to get help Right Frickin' Now?   

In my book, urgency is appropriate when the situations are urgent, like these two hypothetical conditions.  Urgency can be appropriate at other times, such as in the work world when missing deadlines has serious implications.  Droppers' derogatory use of the word urgency for putting off yet another meeting between bureaucrats is a crock.  Blaming it on white supremacy may agree with some book, but it's still brain dead.  

Image source on Twitter, linked by PJMedia.  

The Splintering of Society Gathers Steam

If there's any company in the country that best embodies the concept of "we don't depend on the government, we help each other when need be," it would be - or it should have been - GoFundMe or GFM (nope,  no linkies from me.)  By now, just about everybody has heard the story of how they decided, apparently based on rumors from one or two sources, that they were going to confiscate all the donations from everyone who had donated to the Canadian truck drivers and give that money to places people never intended it to go.  If you haven't seen it, there's a good summary with a ton of comments on Irish's blog.  

It was a fast changing story and continues to be.  It's rumored their legal department quickly told the asshole who made that pronouncement that they couldn't do that - it violates many laws.  Within hours it turned into, "donors who want a refund should request one" and then apparently turned into, "we'll just refund everyone's donations."  As of 2PM this afternoon, Florida's Attorney General Ashley Moody announced her office has begun criminal investigation into GFM, as have the Attorneys General of Georgia, Missouri, Texas, West Virginia and Louisiana.  So far.  I bet by Monday afternoon it will be a majority of the states, not just the "Red states."  

Like most people, I've donated through GFM several times, most recently to help Mike of Cold Fury.  I won't go back to GFM until I see some sort of statement, as close to ironclad as can be, to never, ever change donations over to something other than pledged.  And then only if I believe it.  

As I see it, GFM is responsible for this whole thing, so they should return their 2.9% handling fee and reimburse card holders for any expenses from their credit card companies.  They should refund any expenses donors incurred.

If the government of Canada wanted to outlaw people giving the truckers money, I don't see how that could be legal - what's the difference between sending a guy $20 via PayPal instead of handing him a $20 bill? - but IANAL and that's especially true for Canadian law.   Even if Canada somehow forbade the donations, there shouldn't be a nanosecond of GFM giving anything to Black Lives Matter or anyone else.  The payment should be refused, the donation page should be shut down and they shouldn't get remotely near the corner they've painted themselves into.

Meanwhile, the free market does what it does best: there are alternatives to GoFundMe.  The group or groups that are requesting the funds seem to have moved to GiveSendGo, which calls itself the #1 free Christian crowdfunding site in the top banner on the page.  I know nothing about them.  There's absolutely no reason for anyone in the crowdfunding business to encourage or prefer donations in any political direction.  It would be like them saying, "we can't host your fundraiser to help your grandmother battle cancer unless she swears she never votes Republican."  No sane person should ever think or say that, but GFM has obviously violated it.  

Remember That Patriot Front March Last Saturday?

Lots of people commented on it and how it looked as much like a Fed Boi false flag as the "Only Feds" one last September.  "Hello, fellow insurrectionists! I'm happy to meet you for the first time so we can all MAGA together. Let's ask the other MAGAs if they have forgotten their AR-15,'s and offer to give them some." 

A very interesting rabbit hole appears on PJ Media this afternoon, courtesy of Stephen Green, who writes and does video podcasts with Bill Whittle regularly.  It seems that there's some evidence being talked about that one of the main voices behind the "rally" on Twitter is an AI Bot, given an AI face blend (made up face) of a pretty young blond woman.  (Because that won't attract attention, right?)

I could quote the entire article here and not take up too much more space, but Stephen's got some Twitter links to go poke around on and there's some funny stuff there.  There’s an entire Twitter thread devoted to this young lady, who joined Twitter last month and whose existence can’t be verified anywhere else.  The guy who posted this picture says he did a search engine dive for the screen name she's using, “Sheryl Lewellen,” and can find only one other thing she supposedly posted: a GoFundMe to help her friend's dog get surgery.  

That's right, no Google history at all.  Two Twitter threads.  I just checked and “her” account has been suspended for some reason.

Final words to Stephen Green because he's Vodka Pundit, after all, and he's funny. 

The whole thing is day-old fishy, and it stinks.

Finally, Insanity Wrap would just like to say that “Media Frenzy Over ‘White Supremacy’ Protest Hyped by AI FaceBot” isn’t just the most 2021 headline you’ve ever read, it’s the most 2021 headline possible.

Then again, we do still have three-and-a-half weeks to go until 2022.

 

 

Biden Nominates Yet Another Commie

In what must be just the wildest of coincidences, the administration has nominated another questionable nominee, this time Yet Another Commie (YAC) to high federal office.  This time the office is Comptroller of the Currency, the nation's highest banking official, and the nominee is Saule Omarova.  

Ms. Omarova isn't the typical leftist YAC kid from the US who went to a big lefty school in the US and was indoctrinated in how wonderful communism is; she was actually born in Kazakhstan, part of the former Soviet Union. 

Omarova graduated from the Soviet Union’s Moscow State University in 1989 on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship, according to the Wall Street Journal. As recently as 2019, she was still praising the USSR’s economic system as in some ways superior to our own. “Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best.'”

One report that I heard said that she was in the US during the tumultuous period when the USSR collapsed.  She spoke some English but certainly wasn't fluent in it, and still has a dense accent.  Nevertheless, she apparently applied to be allowed to stay and was granted the privilege.  Unlike any other former Soviet or refugee from any communist country that I've ever seen or hear speak, she apparently liked the the old country's way of doing things and thinks more government control is a good thing.  You might gather that from the last sentence quoted above. 

Among the first things she has said is that she wants to destroy all the banks in America.  Not just your big, national-name and "too big to fail" banks; she wants all banks to go away.  From what I can see everything from your neighborhood small bank or local credit union to the big national banks like Chase, Citicorp, Wells Fargo and so on.  All banking will be done through the Federal Reserve Bank so if your local bank survives at all, it will be as some sort of office of the Federal Reserve. 

Omarova’s goal is the eventual elimination of private banking and the establishment of the Federal Reserve as the nation’s only bank.

In her own words:

“The core idea here is simply to allow all U.S. citizens and lawful residents, local governments, non-banking firms and non-business entities to open transactional accounts directly with the Federal Reserve, thus bypassing private depository institutions,” she wrote. “In this sense, it is a variation on the familiar FedAccounts — or FedCoin, ‘digital dollar wallets,’ etc. — theme. In principle, FedAccounts can be made available as an alternative to bank deposit accounts, upon a person’s request.”

For those who have never learned this, or let this fact evaporate, the Federal Reserve isn't a government agency; it's a private corporation that enjoys a special tight relationship with the Fed.gov.  "Tight" might not be strong enough.  Perhaps incestuous is a better word.  There's a word for a merger of big corporations and governments.  Benito Mussolini was a big advocate of the idea; it's called fascism.  

Omarova herself wrote that her proposal is “deliberately radical in scope and substance.”   As Kristin Tate wrote for The Hill on Wednesday:

Taken to its extreme, this would mean that the Federal Reserve, acting on behalf of Washington, could become the only place citizens could deposit their money. Such a massive transformation would be accomplished by replacing consumer deposits into a new digital dollar, held by the Fed.

And just like that, the end of the dollar and replacement of paper money with a digital currency would happen.  It would be replaced not by Bitcoin, Doge coin or any of the existing Cryptocurrencies, but a new one that has been called Fedcoin.  No need for dollars, and buying things for cash would probably be outlawed.  Since everything will be done through the Federal Reserve Bank, there's no need to pass that law that they monitor everything you buy over the course of a year that adds up to over $600, $10,000 or any other arbitrary number.  They will know every penny (or whatever they call it) that you spend.  They would literally hold your checkbook in their computers, just like my bank (a local credit union) now has records of my checking account back over the years.  

Omarova is far beyond "just" wanting to get rid of banks like Goldman Sachs.  A big deal is being made yesterday and today about a Twitter video someone found in which she calls matter-of-factly for the destruction of the oil, gas, and coal industries. To save the planet, of course.  

In the clip, Omarova, who was born in the Soviet Union and is not a native English speaker, is seen discussing “troubled industries and firms that are in transitioning.” She continues: “And here what I’m thinking about is primarily coal industry and oil and gas industry. A lot of the smaller players in that industry are, uh, going to probably, uh, go bankrupt in, in, in short order, at least we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change, right?”
...
This radical and destructive rhetoric was to be expected from Omarova, who, as Stephen Green pointed out, “graduated from the Soviet Union’s Moscow State University in 1989 on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship.” Omarova was apparently such a convinced Marxist in the late 1980s that she wrote her thesis on Karl Marx’s thought, and tellingly has refused to release that thesis now.

The opposition to other appointees has risen to the point where some nominees, like Chipman, have had their nomination blocked.  We really need to do it on this one, too.  Same process in that she will have to go through the senate confirmation process.  None of the three articles I read and linked to here give a date for the hearings, or said that the hearings are imminent. 

A Repost On Agenda 21 or Whatever They're Doing Now

Today, J.KB at Gun Free Zone posted an article on Genghis Khan talking about how Genghis Kahn is being talked about as so good for the environment.  Why?  Because he killed off 40 million people and "scrubbed 700m tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere – roughly the quantity of carbon dioxide generated in a year through global petrol consumption – by allowing previously populated and cultivated land to return to carbon-absorbing forest."  Khan killed a lot of people; 40 million was a substantial percentage of the population then, but he's still a piker compared to Chairman Mao who killed off at least twice that number.  

Then Borepatch ran a post about that with some links to older posts he did talking about the same concepts. 

Which led me back to one of my older posts that I've found myself looking up a few times a year (more, lately).  This is from June of 2011.  With 11 years of content, it's pretty amazing how often I go back to something I researched and posted years ago. This one of the posts I've looked up the most.  (The first short line with two links adds surprisingly little to the story, although the second adds more than the first.)

Let's Tie A Couple of Stories Together - part ii

Let me tie Wednesday and Saturday together.

As I said Wednesday's post, it's all about UN Agenda 21, and allowing the flooding of wide tracts of the US supports that idea.  Trevor Loudon at New Zeal has a great post to help you get up to speed on the UN's Agenda 21.   The implications of this plan make Soylent Green or any of the worst, most dystopian-future movies look like Mary Poppins (the most relentlessly optimistic, happy movie I can think of).  To begin with, let's look at a map.  Trevor has a small version, so I went and found one that's readable if you click on it:

 If this UN plan goes into effect, every area in red will be "forbidden zone" for humans. Every area in yellow will be "highly regulated".  I assume that means you will only be allowed there with permits and strict time limits - not to live there.  Humans will basically be allowed to live only in densely packed urban areas, shown as black dots.  Think all of the worst places in America: Chicago, Detroit, New York, Boston, DC... you get the idea. 

Central to the plan is the idea of being carbon neutral.  That's right, "global warming" or "climate change" or whatever they call it this week, is the basis for mass murder on a scale that Mao, Pol Pot, or Hitler could never aspire to.  You see, to quote from this piece at End of The American Dream, (source missing, 4/14/21) the population must be reduced:

• CNN Founder Ted Turner: "A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal."

• Dave Foreman, Earth First Co-Founder: "My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world."

• Maurice Strong: "Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?"

Gee, the moderate guy only wants to kill off more than 95% of the human race.  See the current world population is around 7 billion people.  For Dave Foreman, 100 million out of 7 billion is 100 out of 7000 or 1.4 %.  At 300 million, Ted Turner would generously let 4.3% live.

Around 20 years ago, I heard that the entire population of the world would fit in Jacksonville, Florida, without resorting to vertical high rise buildings.  It would be austere, but they would fit.  I found the area of the city (885 square miles), ran the calculation, and it worked.  Even today, you still could fit every man woman and child in the world in the area of Jacksonville, but each person would only get 3.5 square feet, so it would pretty much be shoulder to shoulder.  According to the Wiki, the area of the state of Florida is 65,755 square miles.  Given the 7 billion people in the world, if you spread them evenly across the state, every person in the world would get 261.9 square feet.  Not a big room (unless you're in NYC), and small by US standards, but generous compared to much of the world.  Of course, the infrastructure would take room, so you'd probably need to spread them out, but I suspect everyone in the world would fit comfortably in the southeastern US.  And we need to kill off 95% of them because they're taking up too many resources? 

John P. Holdren, Barack Obama's top science advisor, co-authored a textbook entitled "Ecoscience" back in 1977 in which he actually advocated mass sterilization, compulsory abortion, a one world government and a global police force to enforce population control.

source for that and this:

“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”

So the Fed.gov, acting under the Agenda 21 of the UN, wants to forcibly - at gunpoint, I assume - abort your babies, put sterilants in the drinking water, move you to a city center where you can be stacked up like cord wood, and "live" where every move you make, every thing you eat, every decision you make, is made for you by the state.  If you're one of the few percent who aren't killed off.  All in the name of the skankiest, most corrupt "science" humans have ever put on paper (pretty good summary).   It's pretty damned obvious why they don't want us armed, isn't it? 

---

Oh - if the idea of fitting the entire population of the world into Florida is shocking, you may want to look at this 2013 post.

Do You Like Bridges That Don't Fall Down? Cars That Don't Explode?

If you like all those aspects of modern life we've become used to; bridges that don't fall down, cars that just run, aircraft that don't fall out of the sky, things like that, you might want to get involved with your local school board.  The "math is racist" nonsense is really getting out of hand.  

Stephen Green at PJ Media has gotten a little deeper into the subject in his regular "Insanity Wrap" column on PJ Media web site.  It has gotten worse since I last looked at what the advocates were saying back early in the Obama years, about 2011.  I downloaded a file from Radical Math and their emphasis was that thinking about math was too foreign to some people and the teachers needed to make it relevant to their lives.  Now it's gone hard left and the arguments are that math is part of systemic racism and white supremacy.  

The 82 page pdf document contains month-by-month programs for the math teachers, September to June.  This is the summary of the teaching goals for April.  I want  you to really look at the bottom paragraph on the left and this sentence in particular:  “Schooling as we know it began during the industrial revolution, when precision and accuracy were highly valued.”  There's no need for precision and accuracy today?  To hand the floor to Green.

Today we build little four-banger car engines that produce more than 300 horsepower, reusable rockets, entire constellations of communications satellites operating in every imaginable orbit, and stealth jet fighters that lose their near-invisibility if a single element is slightly out of whack.

But no, this modern age of ours no longer values precision or accuracy.

Well, we’d better, if we want to prevent the whole damn system from falling down around us.

We could do days on the need for precision and accuracy.  How about landing Perseverance on Mars after seven months and hundreds of millions of miles of travel?  How about creating rocket engines and getting the analyzed performance out of them?  Digging underground tunnels and having them meet up properly?  The world offers tons of examples.  Do these "teachers" think that precision and accuracy only come from the computers? 

This "2 + 2 = 4 is racist" nonsense is a dire threat to the kids in school and to everyone in society by the time they're working for a living.  In particular, as Green put it:

Real racism is telling black and brown kids that wrong answers are OK, and thus condemning them to second-rate educations — if that.

They would do much better for their students if instead of that, they told them that "I'm bad at math" is just a myth. 

Bill Gates' Self-Serving Absurd Statement on Synthetic Meat

Everybody has been making fun of Bill Gates' almost comically wrong statement about eating synthetic meat.   Everybody talks about the easy quote, that the bottom 80% of income countries won't be eating synthetic meat, so rich countries should eat nothing but synthetic stuff.  You'll get used to the taste!  Honest!  But nobody has talked about the rest of the quote:

“Eventually, that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the [behavior of] people or use regulation to totally shift the demand.”

My turn to make fun of it. 

First off, how is this different from the Massachusetts environmental officer talking about breaking your will to keep you house warm in winter, or driving a car somewhere?  Gates is saying they're going to use regulation to break your will to eat meat.  The Masshole guy was forced out of office.  The only difference is that Gates isn't a public official who can be forced out of office. 

Gates' reason for breaking your will is that tired, old claim that cattle release too much methane, which everyone refers to as cattle farts when they're really burps, but the claim is disputed by actual agricultural scientists who have investigated it and is widely considered nonsense. 

One of the memes going around is that people say it's remarkable these companies take all sorts of plants and stuff and make it taste like beef, but cows must be smarter because they've been doing that forever.  When I say "all sorts of plants and stuff" I mean it: 

There's at least six ingredients in that list that I wouldn't put in my body, but the issue is deeper than that.  I actually did a blog post on this topic back in 2019 (two years and five days ago), which I'm going reproduce here. 

The Bullshit About Cattle Farts

If you pay attention to the Green New Deal and the incessant screaming from the vegan community, you'll think that cattle farts containing methane are the worst threat to the climate.  The UN has backed this lame idea before but their claims have some serious mistakes in them.  Mistakes or lies.  I have several good sources on that, but The BlazeTV released a short video of an interview with Dr. Sara Place, an academic researcher in animal science and sustainability.  This is only five minutes long and gives a good start.

First off, the methane from cows is 1.8% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the US.  Second off, methane doesn't come from cattle farts, it comes from cattle burps.  I realize that might be a minor distinction, but the EPA, those high priests of junk science, jumped on the "regulate cattle farts" bandwagon under Obama.  The UN claims cattle create 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions - more than comes from transportation - but they're lumping in all livestock, not just cattle, to include poultry, lamb and all sources of meat.  They're also including the effects of animal feed production, feed harvesting, feeding the animals, the farm vehicles that tend to these animals and everything up to the emissions from the slaughterhouse.  A third of that 18% is blamed on deforestation specifically in Brazil.

Both of those summaries are dishonest.  First, it's not fair to blame methane production in chicken farming on cattle farming, and it's unfair to include everything that the goes into food production to just the tailpipe emissions of vehicles rather than the equivalent entire life cycle associated with transportation.  Second, the part about deforestation is dishonest for two reasons; the easiest being that there's no equivalent deforestation in the US, or in other parts of the world.  In the US the story is reforestation.  We have more trees today than a hundred years ago.  The other reason is that not all grassland could be forest and not all forest can convert to grasslands.  There is some relation between the two, but it's not simple subtraction.  Simply, much of the planet can't be dense forest and can only be grassland. 

One of the most interesting videos from Ted talks about science is a 2013 talk about desertification by Allan Savory.  Dr. Savory talks about discovering that large herds of grass eating animals restore grasslands and reverse the damages to the environment.  Yes, herds of life stock "save the Earth".  It's a story of how a hundred years of following the agricultural scientists' best recommendations and removing livestock converted lush grassland to wastelands, and how reintroducing livestock has restored millions of hectares of that wasteland to productive grassland.  The before and after pictures toward the last few minutes of the video are jaw-dropping. 

Dr. Savory recommends eating the livestock, which naturally makes the the vegans haaaate him with a white hot, burning hate.

An interesting guy I've heard talk on this subject several times is Dr. Peter Ballerstedt, who calls himself a leader of the Ruminati.  He's an infrequent blogger, and regular speaker at various conferences.  Here's a quick summary of the basis for a new video, We Need A Ruminant Revolution.

Human beings exist because of ruminants. Today’s societies rely upon them. Humanity’s future depends upon improvements in the productivity and efficiency of worldwide ruminant animal agriculture. Like the general public’s confusion of what constitutes a “healthy diet,” tremendous misunderstanding exists regarding the environmental role of ruminant animals. Human beings didn’t evolve to eat meat, they evolved because they ate meat - and because they learned to cook and process meat and other foodstuffs. Unsurprisingly then, diets rich in butter, meat and cheese have been shown to promote human health and development. Of significant worldwide impact, such diets can correct the symptoms of metabolic syndrome, offering hope in arresting the current worldwide epidemic of chronic diseases.

The dire predictions from Anorexia Pistachio Kotex and her Democratic Socialists of America comrades that say we need to end cattle farts would be laughable without the need for a single fart joke.  Except it's not funny, it would kill many people and make the planet worse off because the planet needs livestock.  The planet needs ruminants.  You can say they were designed for each other or you can say they co-evolved this way, but the result is the same.  Like everything the socialists say, this argument is demonstrably wrong.

I think I'll leave the last words to an MD who advocates for high quality meats and minimally processed foods (which that synthetic meat is most certainly not).

On California Banning Gasoline or Diesel Cars by 2035

It was in May of 2017 that I noted California decided to become uninhabitable in 10 years (2027).  The reason?  The state legislature had mandated they reduce carbon emissions to 40% of the state's 1990 levels by the year 2030.  The new levels were to be 60% of the required 2020 levels passed previously.  Using advanced technology called a pocket calculator and an available number estimating CO2 sensitivity, I calculated how much difference this would make on world temperatures.  

In a piece I wrote in 2010, my first year here, I found a number for the amount of CO2 required to raise global temperature 1 degree C - according to the warmist's models. 1.8 million million metric tons.  California is going to reduce emissions by 172 million metric tons.  Since 172 is close to 180, lets be generous and round their reduction up to that.  That means they will reduce global temperature rise by 180/1,800,000 or .0001 degree C, which simply isn't detectable in a system as big as the planet.   

Not to be outdone by previous virtue signalers, Governor Gabbin' Nuisance (D - Uranus), issued an executive order on the 23rd banning the sale of internal combustion engine cars by the year 2035.  

“This is the most impactful step our state can take to fight climate change,” Newsom said. “For too many decades, we have allowed cars to pollute the air that our children and families breathe. You deserve to have a car that doesn’t give your kids asthma. Our cars shouldn’t make wildfires worse – and create more days filled with smoky air. Cars shouldn’t melt glaciers or raise sea levels threatening our cherished beaches and coastlines.” 

That's just full of nonsense.  I tell you what, I'll say it might possibly be true that Internal Combustion Engine exhaust is contributing to kids getting asthma.  Cars are having no effects on wildfires.  Historical records show the number and intensity of wildfires going down for the last hundred years.  What you're seeing, Gabbin', is the effect of your terrible forest management.  Cars aren't melting glaciers or raising sea levels, which have been rising since the end of the last ice age (and you'd best be damned glad they're not going down now because that would indicate the glaciers are coming back).  That's too much to get into the space here tonight.  

As full of nonsense as that is, my favorite quote is this from Newsom's Twitter account:

By 2035 every new car sold in CA will be an emission free vehicle.

There is simply no such thing as emission free vehicles if you look at the total environmental cost.

But ignore for the moment that the cars need to be produced from raw materials that are extracted and refined in ways that produce emissions, and are higher emission than ICE-powered cars.  Electric cars run on fuel, too, it's just not in a tank inside the vehicle.  In particular, they run on natural gas, coal, or whatever is producing electricity in the state (which in California these days is practically nothing).  In 2019, U.S. domestic production of electricity was 12.9 quadrillion BTUs (quads) from natural gas followed by 9.4 from crude oil, 5.3 from coal, 8.5 from nuclear, 2.7 from wind and 1 quad from solar power. The last two (wind and solar = 3.7 quads) can’t even begin to replace the first three (oil, gas and coal = 74.6 quads).  [Note: my numbers derived from numbers on that EIA.gov website]

Eric Worrall, writing at Watts Up With That notes:

Governor Newsom in his interview said “we no longer need to drill things or extract things to advance our economic goals” (see the Twitter video above).

Every study I have seen about renewables suggests that any serious attempt to go 100% renewable would require far more drilling and extracting than a fossil fuel powered economy, like a 2700% increase in lithium extraction. Even carbon intensive cement production would have to increase substantially – all those wind turbines and solar panels need cement bases.

Manufacturing cement largely consists of heating limestone or other Calcium Carbonates to 825C (1517F) degrees, to separate the limestone into Calcium Oxide and CO2. There is a lot of CO2 in limestone. Current cement manufacture accounts for 8% of global annual CO2 emissions. Cement does not last forever. A substantial permanent increase in global cement production would pretty much cancel any CO2 savings from going renewable.

If California continues their silly commitment to not having nuclear power and creating more "renewable energy", they'll be clear cutting forests to make way for wind turbines and solar panels, and then turning the Sierra Nevada mountains into strip mines to mine the rare earth metals there.  

Which raises the possibility that California is deliberately trying to get most of its population to leave the state.  That would reduce their energy demands to meet their Green Dreams. 

An early electric car from here.  Electric cars predate IC engine cars by nearly 80 years - the US Department of Energy says primitive electric cars were around in 1828, and it wasn't until the Model T in 1908 that IC engine cars left them behind.  Interesting that the range hasn't gone up in proportion to the other advances in cars today. 

The Color Revolution

Let me lead by saying that while I said I didn't feel comfortable with the subject last night, I did several hours of reading and digging into the subject, enough that I think I can be conversant.  Not at all an expert, but maybe I can help a little.  As I said then, if you really want to come up to speed, the article on Revolver is worth the time to read.  

I find that everyone is all over this story.  That article on Revolver links to two more pieces in a three piece series (so far).  The Burning Platform has a piece, linked to three others.  A simple web search brings up many people saying we're in the battlespace prep phase of a Color Revolution here in the US, starting no later than Election Day.  Glenn Beck has devoted hours of radio air time to interviews with people who know about the tactic, and put an hour special show up on YouTube last night. 

The Revolver article talks about the originator of the concept, with this introduction:

This combination of tactics used in so-called Color Revolutions did not come from nowhere. Before Norm Eisen came Gene Sharp—originator and Godfather of the Color Revolution model that has been a staple of US Government operations externally (and now internally) for decades. Before Norm Eisen’s “Playbook” there was Gene Sharp’s classic “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” which might be justly described as the Bible of the Color Revolution. Such is the power of the strategies laid out by Sharp that a Lithuanian defense minister once said of Sharp’s preceding book (upon which Dictatorship to Democracy builds) that  “I would rather have this book than the nuclear bomb.”

It's hard to keep the characters straight because they bounce back and forth, only seemingly having worked in the Bill Clinton or Obama administrations and being Trump haters seems to unify them.  One of Gene Sharp's disciples, Michael McFaul, served as ambassador to Russia under Obama.  McFaul is now one of the group apparently organizing the Color Revolution against the US.  He put together this list of the seven pillars needed to support a Color Revolution (my notes):

1.  Need to start with semi-autocratic regime, not fully autocratic – gives them the ability to say, “he’s a fascist”
2.  Unpopular incumbent leader
3.  United and organized opposition
4.  Effective system (control of media) to convince the public voting was falsified; plants the ideas before the election
5.  Mainstream media to push falsified vote message.  Currently doing battlespace prep
6.  Political organization to flood the streets, protesting election fraud; “thousands to millions in the streets”
7.  Divisions among regime’s military and police – so that they fight each other instead of stopping the attacks in the street.

McFaul put out this tweet that's emphasizing the last pillar.  Concerned that people were seeing it that maybe shouldn't, he deleted it.  But the Internet is Forever:

If you look around, there's battlespace prep everywhere.  A group called Momentum, veterans of Occupy Wall Street - training people to do occupy tactics.  They're training communist groups like BLM and the Sunrise Movement (Green New Deal commies).  You might recall a group called Axios was in the news last week (week before?) talking about how there could be a “red wave” on election day that they overthrow with mail in ballots.  Another group is called Fight Back table.  Their role is “occupy shit, hold space, shut things down – for weeks or months” 

There's more.  You may have heard of a group called the Transition Integrity Project (as in transition after the election).  As always, the name is the exact opposite of what they want.  They feature John Podesta and Bill Kristol,  so it’s “bipartisan.”  Advisors from the Clinton/Obama/Biden teams are war gaming civil war.  In the war game, John Podesta played Team Biden.   He proposed that California, Oregon and Washington (“Cascadia”) secede from the country unless Republicans agree to reform the country: eliminate electoral college, divide California into five states so they have 10 senators, make Puerto Rico a state.   All of which will ensure a conservative will never be president again. 

The Obama administration ran the Color Revolution in other countries.  Sometimes it worked, others it didn't.  I think the highlighted portions of this text, from the Revolver article, sums it up pretty well.  

Considering the people behind the Color Revolution in the US, and the number that have worked for the US Fed.gov at various times, the whole revolution seems to be the Deep State revolting against the American people.  They are mounting a Color Revolution to ensure the American people don't interfere in the election.  As always, they know better than you what you need or want, so shut up and let them rule. 

 

 

Chinese Launch Drops Booster Near a School

Last November 27th, I posted a piece saying among the things I'm thankful for is that the Rocket Ranch 35-ish miles north of here doesn't drop boosters with poisonous propellants on me, like the Chinese launchers do over there.  This week we get another close look, courtesy of social media coverage and citizen reporters who got the film out.  This was covered last Tuesday in Ars Technica, where Eric Berger brings the details.  

On Monday, a Long March 4B rocket launched from China's Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center carrying a remote-sensing satellite. This 50-year-old spaceport is located in north-central China, about 500km to the southwest of Beijing.

As often happens with the first stages of Chinese rockets launching from the inland Taiyuan facility, the spent Long March 4B booster fell downstream of the spaceport. In this case, it landed near a school, creating a predictably large cloud of toxic gas.

The reason this is an issue is the Long March 4B, and other rockets regularly launched from the Taiyuan site are fueled by Hydrazine (fuel) and Nitrogen Tetroxide (NTO - oxidizer).  The combination is an efficient and good fuel.  The drawback is that they're highly toxic and highly corrosive.  

Check out this image taken from an observer near the school:

I honestly don't know what a fatal dose of that gas would be, but I'd be running upwind from that.  The full video embedded at Ars shows the booster falling and some shots of the damage. Worth the 40 seconds to watch.  There was no release of a number of injuries or fatalities from the booster or the gas.

The combination of hydrazine and NTO is well known in rocketry and used in modern craft like the SpaceX dragon and crew dragon capsules where it's the fuel for the emergency abort system.  Other than small-volume, limited-use systems like that, the last US rocket to use hydrazine-NTO for an entire stage was the Delta II which used it to power the second stage.  That rocket's last launch was in 2018.  It's not widely used in the world.   

Yet the majority of China's launch fleet is powered by hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer. This includes its human-rated Long March 2F rocket as well as the widely used Long March 4 family. All of these rockets, with their toxic first stages, launch over land and have caused numerous incidents over the years. These fuels are cheap and relatively easy to use, and it would have been natural for China to use them in the 1980s and 1990s when these boosters were developed. But their use continues unabated today.

As I noted in that post last year, China has decided to start investigating grid fins, like the Falcon 9 uses, which could give them the ability to avoid dropping rockets on schools, but that R&D project doesn't seem to be out of compassion for their citizens.  It appears to be related to a desire to master the technology to reuse rockets like SpaceX has done, not to protect citizens.  China has been launching rockets for more than 30 years, and grid fin technology has been known the entire time.  It's only now that SpaceX has made the technology useful and dependable that they're interested in it.

The Long March 5 uses kerosene and liquid oxygen, just like the Falcon 9, much less poisonous in the event a booster crashes into a populated area.  So it's not like they don't know how to use that fuel system.  

Oh, by the way, the Long March 5 is launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site, not the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center.  Wenchang launches out over the ocean.  The only schools it affects are fish. 

Credit: Xinhua/Liu Qiaoming via Getty Images 

This shows the launch of another Long March 4B from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Taiyuan in north China's Shanxi Province in April, 2019.

Watermelon Socialists Unveil Themselves

They seem to be a largely UK organization, but I bet most people have heard of the group Extinction Rebellion.  They're probably best known for a comically bad attempt to spray fake blood (beet juice) all over the Treasury building in Westminster.  Because reasons, I suppose.  Another protest was so bad the people they need for allies, everyday working people, took matters into their own hands.  The group was blocking The Tube, the rail system people use to commute to work, and commuters dragged protesters from the roof of an underground train so they could get on with their days.  The stories are some of the commuters beat the crap out of the protesters. Way to get people on your side!

They may think they're dedicated to The Cause but speaking as a Southerner you can understand when I say they're about as sharp as a bowling ball.  Bless their hearts.  

Eric Worrall, writing a Watts Up With That gets right to the heart of the matter with a photo:

Photo credit: Neil Hamilton, UKIP MS England and Wales  

Again, sharp as a bowling ball.  How can anybody espouse socialism as a cure for their imagined environment problem when socialist countries have had the worst records on pollution in the history of the world?  Did they ever hear of something called the Chernobyl nuclear disaster?  Did they ever hear it was largely caused by the Soviet government concealing major reactor design flaws instead of addressing them?  Listen up, Extinction Rebellion.  You know, the Soviet Union's flag featured that hammer and sickle you guys have on your banner.  It shouldn't be that hard to look up.  

Wait, I know the punch line!  They didn't do socialism right!  Right?  No matter how many times you point out to socialists the disastrous, murderous history of socialist regimes, the answer is always that they just didn't do it right.  My answer to that is always to say, "if nobody that has tried it in all of human history has gotten it right, what makes you think you're smarter than everyone before you in all of human history?"

The article on WUWT, by the way, links to a summary of how bad it was in the old Soviet Union written by a guy who actually lived there as a reporter on environmental issues.  I'll borrow one little paragraph out of it:

The Niger delta? The development of the oil industry of Western Siberia was carried out from the 1970s with great haste, using pipes and welding equipment that were often defective. By the 1990s the wells and pipelines were leaking like sieves, a Niger delta every few hundred kilometres. The Bhopal disaster in India? It’s only through enormous good luck that in Dzerzhinsk, the city east of Moscow that remains a key centre of the chemical industry, thousands of residents haven’t been killed by a similar leak of toxic gas. An activist from the place once argued to me that in any case, the levels of dioxins and other lethal chemicals to which the population was exposed ensured a cumulative “Bhopal” every few years. What were the local morbidity rates? Either the information was purposely never collected, or effectively suppressed.

The entire article is a couple of screens long and has example after example.  The punch line to this story is the article describing how bad the environmental care was in the Soviet Union is published on The Socialist Alliance, a pro-socialism Website!  Of course, the root cause of their problems is that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics didn't know how to do socialism right.  

As Ronald Reagan said, “Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don't need it and hell where they already have it.”