Author Archives: Joe

Becoming Woke

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Layoffs hit NBC News this week with the network division facing cuts ahead of Comcast’s spinoff of Versant. About 150 jobs have been eliminated so far which only represents 7% of the total newsroom staff.  However, the company has been less forthcoming on where the jobs are being cut:  The majority of layoffs are targeting Diversity and Equity teams.

Tyler Durden
October 17, 2025
DEI Going Jobless: NBC Joins Media Trend And Cuts Diversity Journalists | ZeroHedge

See also: NBC News’ 150 Layoffs Gut Black, Latino, Asian American and LGBTQ+ Diversity Teams.

This is supporting evidence for some of my claims that there are big changes happening in this country regarding racial and sex discrimination.

“Go woke, go broke” is more than a slogan. It is reality. One could say there is a new meaning to “becoming woke”.

I hope this doesn’t go too far. Just as the political left pushed the pendulum too far, the right could do the same thing in the other direction. Backlash can be hazardous to everyone’s health.

From the Personal Archives

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I was doing some clean up in my work area and found an old newspaper clipping from the April 15th, 2012, edition of the Lewiston Morning Tribune (Idaho):

Barbara A. Scott is my ex-wife. This was her response to getting served papers seeking a separation. There was also an entry in the Idaho State Patrol blog (now just a collection of news releases) about the incident. And there was a short video from a Spokane television station.

A distant cousin of mine was second on the scene after the State Patrol and gave me a bunch of information on what he saw and participated in.

I’m so grateful to now be married to someone without mental health issues. I don’t tell my current wife (also named Barbara Anne) every day how grateful I am to have her as my wife, but it probably is close to weekly. Not having a person with a personality disorder in your immediate life makes a huge a difference.

A silver lining from my first marriage is that I learned a lot about psychology and we created some great kids together.

Sociopaths Who Identify as Empaths

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The simplest way to sum up modern progressive activists is this: they’re sociopaths who identify as empaths. Forever lecturing others about compassion, while themselves being brutally cruel.

This was never clearer than during Black Lives Matter mania, which saw almost the entire progressive elite pursue a frenzied vendetta against anyone suspected of ideological impurity.

Michael Deacon
November 7, 2025
Black Lives Matter made our elites lose the plot – and they’re finally starting to admit it

People wondered where it would end. Would the purity tests go as far as they did in the USSR? One never knows. Fortunately, some semblance of sanity gained traction and things turned around. I can see it at my employer. As near as I can tell anyone officially associated with the DEI staff, and many others only tangentially related, no longer work there. The scholarships which were only for “people of color” and the special mentoring programs only for women and minorities are all gone.

Then, the Democrat party paid a price for their involvement in the 2024 election. They are still paying. It remains to be seen if the debt will be repaid by the 2026 election. I’m not certain they have learned their lesson. Sociopaths are notoriously difficult to train. They can learn to not get caught, but changing their nature is an entirely different matter.

WWII Veteran Says it Was Not Worth it for What We Have Today

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My message is, I can see in my mind’s eye those rows and rows of white stones and all the hundreds of my friends who gave their lives, for what? The country of today?

“No, I’m sorry, but the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result of what it is now.

…

What we fought for was our freedom, but now it’s a darn sight worse than when I fought for it.

Alec Penstone
November 7, 2025
Winning Second World War was not worth it, says D-Day veteran

He is talking about the U.K. I cannot help but conclude this means people must be thinking their government of today is tyrannical. With the surveillance society, restrictions on free speech, firearms ownership, and even knife ownership I can see how a strong case can be made for that.

I wish them luck in recovering their freedom.

Government as Sacrificing Virgins to the Volcano

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Voting for communists because you’re poor is roughly akin to throwing virgins into a volcanic caldera to stop an eruption.

But then so are most of the things governments think they can do to improve the economy, from printing more money or less money, raising or dropping interest rates, regulating several aspects of the economy, or just about anything else.

I mean, all of those do something. They just rarely do what the government thinks its doing/wants them to do.

…

Which is why communism is the worst of all systems, because it thinks it can “scientifically” and “top down” control all of economy from production to consumption.

And all it does, over and over again, is throw virgins in volcanos to stop the lava flow.

Only the promised wonderland of free stuff never arrives.

And you end up tragically short on virgins. And everything else, as well.

Sarah A. Hoyt
November 6, 2025
Throw Another Virgin Into the Volcano! – According To Hoyt

My analogy for this is that an economic system is a like a machine. Government is like friction in the machine. It removes energy (wealth) that could have been used for something else. Some of this government removed energy is put to beneficial interests. Enforcing contracts and protecting the rights of individuals are essential functions that government has the potential to do reasonably well. When government imposes regulations the friction does little more than turns the machine energy into heat and the benefit is near zero as far as the machine (economic system) is concerned.

As more friction is inserted (regulation and taxes) into the machine the net energy decreases and more and more system in the machine must be shut down to conserve energy while still allowing the machine to run in some capacity. Black markets appear as bypasses around the friction points. These bypasses work after a fashion but there are other problems. Contracts are ultimately enforced by violence and threats of violence. Trust decreases because of all the laws that are being broken put people at risk of being ratted out to the government. Planning becomes difficult because supply chains are not predictable. If enough friction is added the machine slows down and stops (economic collapse).

The socialist will not admit responsibility for their destruction of the economy. Among other excuses, they will claim it was bad luck.

Time Will Tell

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Today, there’s possibility in politics. Mamdani’s win ensures that the Democratic Party isn’t dead. It’s just in need of a redesign.

Sara Pequeño
November 4, 2025
Mamdani’s win is bigger than New York. Now Democrats have a clear path forward. | Opinion

This is an interesting perspective. I wonder how these words will stand the test of time.

Scouts Could Take Canada and Mexico

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US could take Canada with eight Scout Troops, a supply of Mountain Dew, beef jerky and .22LR.

Mexico is a bit more sporty. Need eight Venturing Crews with .223 AR-15s.

Tirno
November 3, 2025
Comment to Instapundit » Blog Archive » AS IT SHOULD BE:  Gun Control in the U.S. is Futile.

I suspect he is exaggerating. But he is the scout leader and would know better than I.

Good News in a Story of Evil

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In a landmark operation, U.S. authorities have seized 127,271 Bitcoins—valued at roughly $15 billion—from an international scam syndicate operating out of Cambodia. This unprecedented recovery, the largest in American history, marks a turning point in the global fight against cyber-enabled financial crime. Investigators traced the digital currency to a sprawling network of fraudulent investment schemes orchestrated by Chen Vincent Zhi, a prominent Cambodian businessman. The case not only exposes the dark underbelly of cryptocurrency but also highlights the growing sophistication of law enforcement in tracking illicit digital assets.

Shay Johnson
November 2, 2025
World’s Largest Crypto Seizure Announced—DOJ Takes Down $15B Pig-Butchering Empire Across 30 Nations

I heard a presentation on the pig butchering* scams about two years ago. The stories told were just heartbreaking. Lonely, frequently elderly people where completely drained of all their wealth and left with huge loans they were unable to repay. They were frequently convinced to borrow money from friends and family.

The authorities knew the geographical location of the scammer were. It was near the border with China. When the location was revealing in the presentation, I was of the mood to advocate for just bombing the place. If the local authorities would not shut them down, a few dozen bombs should do the job, I thought. Then they told of the slaves they held to implement the scams. Their situation was even worse than the financial scam victims. My high explosives solution to the problem suddenly became significantly less ethical.

That this evil empire has been broken up, some restitution is likely, and the slaves are being rescued is extremely good news to me.

* “Pig butchering” is a type of financial scam where fraudsters build trust with victims over time—often through social media or dating platforms—before convincing them to invest in fake or manipulated financial schemes, such as cryptocurrency or forex trading. The term refers to “fattening up” the victim with attention and false profits before “slaughtering” them by draining their funds. It’s a blend of romance scam and investment fraud, often run by organized criminal networks.

No Matrix?

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Via Newsweek:

You can stop looking for glitches in the Matrix—it’s finally been proven that our universe is not merely a simulation running on some powerful alien civilization’s supercomputer.

I did not read the original paper. But the claimed solution involves quantum gravity and Kurt Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem. There is more than enough mind twisting physics and logic in there that I am not going to even try to really understand it. That complexity means there might be room enough for an oversight in their proof.

I don’t know that it matters to me one way or the other, but I am vaguely pleased it is less likely our reality is huge computer simulation.

Gun Control in the U.S. is Futile

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The actual figure really is innately unknowable. You can legally build an AR-15 rifle at home with a wee bit of mechanical skill and a router. However, for the sake of discussion, let’s pin that number at 30 million.

A fixed-stock AR-15 is 39 inches long. An M4 carbine with a 16-inch barrel is 33 inches long with the stock collapsed. Let’s therefore establish an average length for an AR-15 as 36 inches. If the typical “assault weapon,” whatever that truly is, spans 36 inches and you arrayed every one of them muzzle to butt, that line of guns would stretch from Boston to Los Angeles 6.5 times. That’s 17,045 miles’ worth of weapons. Starting to appreciate the scope of this thing?

There are around 400 million firearms in the U.S. A Glock 19 is 7.3 inches long. That M4 was 33. Some pistols are shorter. Some rifles are longer. Let’s just guess that they average around 20 inches across the board. Place every gun in America end-to-end, and now you have an unbroken line of weapons that will circle the globe five times.

There are 77 million lawful gun owners in the U.S. That’s 2.5 times as many Americans packing heat as there are soldiers on Planet Earth. We are some seriously well-armed rednecks.

After the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, the Australian government outlawed most guns, confiscating some 650,000 firearms. Gun control enthusiasts often look lustfully at our friends Down Under as role models. Even in a slow year, we gun-crazy Yanks buy that many new firearms every two weeks.

Will Dabbs
September 15, 2025
Gun Math is Hard | Field Ethos

Although the numbers above might seem definitive to gun owners, I’m not so sure it will have the desired effect on anti-gun people. I have often said gun grabbers don’t even understand arithmetic and some don’t even understand numbers. And with that blindness they may just double down. They may view this as all the more justification in saying, “There are too many guns on the streets.”

AI Girlfriends and Nazi Insults

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Via Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras

She is even more beautiful than I thought she would be. (As my degrees were in E.E. I have a thing for good hardware.)

Via Thecackalackyhightest @Cackalacky2:

I suspect, that in most cases, it is a little more complicated than that. I think it is more likely they think of the worst possible insult, that in their warped sense of reality sort of fits, and they come up with “Nazi.” Then after using that insult without much effect the homicidal thoughts percolate to the surface. The Nazi label lets them feel justified in having the murderous urges.

And, of course, there will be people a little further left on the bell curve will seek approval/self-esteem/etc. by killing a “Nazi” or two.

Still, the end result is the same. When you start getting called “Nazi” you know they want you dead and it is time to plan appropriately.

The Power to Starve You

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If you give them the power to feed you, you give them the power to starve you.

Stop being retarded.

The Redheaded libertarian @TRHLofficial
Posted on X, October 30, 2025

Nice. It is more direct and a novel twist on the famous quote:

If your government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away from you everything you have.

Paul Harvey (maybe)
1952

Starvation of an entire nation does achieve one of the goals of socialism/communism. Equality.

Prepare appropriately.

You Have a Mayor Who Hates Guns

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You have a mayor who hates guns. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t have any handguns in the District of Columbia. I swear to protect the Constitution and what the courts say, but I will do it in the most restrictive way as possible.

Muriel Bowser
Mayor, Washington D.C.
2015
The Trump Administration Reveals the True Cause of Crime | An Official Journal Of The NRA

I appreciate her apparent honesty. But my guess is this does not begin to reveal the depth of his malfeasance.

Do not ever let someone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.

I look forward to her words being used at her trial.

Overkill Caliber for White Tail Deer

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I use a .308 to hunt deer. My wife uses a 2025 Subaru. She has got more deer than I have.

My Next-Door Neighbor (in Idaho)
October 30, 2025

I was busy shoveling dirt on and around my underground bunker to improve the landscape and fallout protection when the closest neighbor to the north (over a half mile away) drove in on his ATV to say hi and ask how the construction was going. We chatted for probably 20 minutes, and he told me of the recent collision of his wife’s car with a deer in Orofino (yes, inside the city limits). He also explained that he had his rifle on the ATV in case he saw a deer while he was driving around. He has been in the area for a few years, and I asked if he usually gets a deer. “Only one so far”, he said, but this is his wife’s second deer.

I Admire Their Ability to Lie

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Kirk was shot in the throat by a high-powered sniper rifle while speaking to college students at Utah Valley University on September 10.

Phillip Nieto
October 29, 2025
Kash Patel shuts down Charlie Kirk foreign intelligence probe in explosive feud with Trump’s counterterror chief | Daily Mail Online

I have to admire the ability of some people to pack so many lies into a single sentence.

  • The bullet did not involve his throat. *
  • The rifle used was not a “high-powered sniper rifle.” **
  • The rifle did not shoot Kirk. It was a human who fired the shot.

See also: CCRKBA ALERT: MEDIA NOW CALLING KIRK ASSASSIN’S GUN A ‘SNIPER RIFLE’ | Citizens Committee For The Right To Keep And Bear Arms. Which includes this:

“The media couldn’t blame Kirk’s murder on a so-called ‘assault rifle,’ so they’re doing the next worst thing,” he added. “They’ve slapped a defamatory label on commonly-owned hunting rifles, hoping to make them the new bogeyman for the gun ban lobby. The Daily Mail has pulled a page out of the gun control playbook simply for the purpose of sensationalism. It doesn’t pass the smell test.

Gun banners lie. It is an essential part of their culture.

* Via Grok: No, it would not be accurate to say the bullet hit him in his throat.

The precise point of impact was the right side of his neck, specifically in the lateral cervical region (near the sternocleidomastoid muscle, approximately at the level of C5–C6 vertebrae). Medically and forensically:

  • The throat refers to the anterior neck (front), including the larynx, trachea, and thyroid area.
  • The neck is broader, encompassing anterior, lateral, and posterior regions.

The bullet entered the right lateral neck, not the anterior throat. It traversed obliquely leftward and downward, damaging the right carotid sheath and spinal structures before lodging near T1 on the left side—never entering the throat proper.

Saying “throat” would be anatomically incorrect and could mislead, especially given conspiracy claims misidentifying blood from internal vascular rupture as an anterior wound. Official autopsy diagrams and surgical reports consistently label the entry as right posterolateral neck.

** Via Grok: The rifle in this case was grandfather’s hunting rifle, modified with a shortened barrel and basic scope—functional for a 200-yard shot, but far from a modern sniper system.

…

Bottom line: Calling it a “high-powered sniper rifle” is inaccurate and inflammatory—it was a vintage bolt-action hunting rifle, effectively used but not technically either “sniper” or “high-powered” in the modern sense.

Any Kind of Independence is Considered a Threat

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Burning your own fuel in your own house is about far more than the “aesthetic of it”, no matter how hard the papers try to tag it with that superficial label. A wood burner offers energy independence, and for that reason, like everything else that offers any kind of independence, they are considered a threat.

The existence of anyone or anything outside of the system, even in token or vestigial ways, threatens the idea that the system is even necessary. Therefore they must be attacked.

It’s an autoimmune response, a reflex; they can’t help it.

They need to know everything you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and why.

And, more importantly, they need you to be OK with that, to welcome it, even thank them for it.

They need you to know that is the safe; the normal; the only way the world works.

So, expect this messaging to continue until the ban is in place, or licenses are required, or they manage to wire a smart meter to a wood axe.

Kit Knightly
October 22, 2025
They’re Coming for Your Wood-Burning Stove. Again. – OffGuardian

While the article is referring to potential U.K. regulations it would only take an administration change in D.C, for the U.K. craziness to be imported with similar motivation.

It is Time to Hold Them Accountable

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 I am DONE. If you have ever excused or condoned violence or knowingly consorted with those who have, and I don’t care one whit if you’re someone as lofty as Barack Obama, you need to be driven from polite society. I will happily engage in the ritual malediction of saying that the call to ostracize obviously extends to forces on the political right. Except I do so knowing that no matter how much corrupt Democrat leaders cook the stats to pretend right-wing violence is a serious threat, nothing the right has ever done comes close to setting off five bombs a day for 18 months straight, proceeding to terrorize the country for more than a decade, and then electing new generations of politicians that knowingly excused this insane level of violence.

Mark Hemingway
September 11, 2025
The Left Has Never Been Held Accountable For Political Violence

A Copilot summary of the “cooked stats” reference is here. I think Copilot downplays things more than is appropriate. Read the original report to get your blood pumping.

Hemingway overstates things some. There are times where violence is called for. Justified homicide is a thing for a reason. Using lethal force to prevent death and/or serious bodily harm to innocent life is certainly moral and almost universally legal.

My hypothesis is that many on the left leverage this moral and legal right to violence to their own evil ends by redefining “violence” to include people saying things that offend them and/or prove them wrong. We must be on guard to notice and call them out on this linguist sleight of hand. And especially hold their feet to the fire on actual violence they condone.

Violence is in the nature of the political left. It comes to them as naturally as defense of the innocent does to most people. Aside from the recent examples of assassination attempt on candidate Trump, and the murder of Charlie Kirk, you saw it in their blindness to Antifa and Black Lives Matter crimes as well as when Kyle Rittenhouse defended himself against threats to his life. In their minds it is a crime if someone tries to defend themselves against a violent attack by a leftist.

The Hitler/Nazis/Fascist rhetoric, whether intentional or not, is them working themselves up for serious violence. This must not be allowed to continue. Hold them accountable. Prepare and respond appropriately.

Unholy Trinity of Threats to our Republic

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Mamdani represents the unholy trinity of threats to our Republic—Islamism, Communism, and the Democratic Party.

Xi Van Fleet @XVanFleet
Posted on X, October 25, 2025

Just a FYI, Van Fleet was born in China and participated in the “Cultural Revolution.” She has been in the U.S. for many years now and is fighting for the good guys.

She uses an interesting collection of labels. I’m not sure they are all compatible. Pure communism not tolerant of religion. But then, coherence is not a defining characteristic of any of them.

My expectation is that within a few years New York City will be a shining bad example for the rest of the world to see. It is also my expectation that most people will look at the mess without seeing the root cause.

There is virtually nothing I can do about the problem, so I’ll get back to work on preparing my underground bunker in Idaho.

Teach a Person About Socialism

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Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.

Teach a man about socialism and he eats his neighbours fish for ever, while envying his neighbour for catching fish successfully and regulating his neighbour so he can’t catch as many fish for both of them.

Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith
Posted on X, October 25, 2025

It doesn’t have to be a man. Women can be just as stupid as men.

And not forever. Just until both the person and their neighbor both die of starvation.

Only an Intellectual

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Via Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell:

I thought I had posted this famous quote before, but I can’t find it at the moment so here you are, just in case.

The late, great, Eric Engstrom once told me his analogy of socialism, “Socialism is like a piece of candy that gives you cancer. Later you start feeling sick. The offered cure is always another piece of socialist candy.”

Only an intellectual, indeed.