Category Archives: Current News

This is about stuff in the mass media that generally has a short interest life span. Speculation about an election outcome a few days before the election is an example.

Equity Via the Los Angeles Fires

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Quote of the Day

Amidst all of the condemnation of Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass and the rest of California’s Democrat/DEI leadership, we need to give credit where credit is due.

They succeeded brilliantly in bringing equity to Los Angeles.

Now, billionaire movie stars enjoy the same living conditions as the rest of California’s homeless population.

Good job guys, you have achieved “equity”! Yay!

Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius
Posted on X, January 11, 2025

While this is worth a smile and probably a laugh, they have not really achieved equity.

At last count I read, there were only 11 people that achieved total equity. It has been a good try. However, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and other communists set the bars for lifetime achievement awards much higher.

Great Los Angeles Fire

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About an hour ago, I talked to Barb about the fire. I said that the Los Angeles fire will go down in history as a major event. It will be like the Great Chicago Fire. A memorable point of history. Then I saw this from Matthew Bracken on Gab:

Related and also from Bracken:

Underground bunkers are relatively immune and more easily defended from fires. Just saying…

Did Isreal Use a Nuclear Weapon In Syria?

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Quote of the Day

In a step that has shocked the entire world, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) carried out an airstrike on the weapons depot in Tartus, Syria on 16 December 2024. Through the massive strike, Israel reportedly destroyed the Scud missile facility located in Syria. However, reports are speculating that the damage caused by the strike was more serious and a small nuclear weapon might have been used by Israel. 

…

Reports have added that the European Union’s Radioactive Environmental Monitoring found that the amount of radiation increased in Turkey and Cyprus hours after the intense blast, pointing towards a small nuclear attack.

Abhijeet Sen
December 24, 2024
Did Israel explode a small nuclear bomb in Syria? Spike in radiation report says…

I cannot find any confirmation. So, I am going to say it probably is not true. Here is what I did find:

Even if they did not use a nuke, just the speculation will shift the Overton Window. This will make actual use more acceptable.

Prepare appropriately.

Every Single Male Must be Wiped Out

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Quote of the Day

women are the only hope for this wretched world. But even women have been brainwashed by moids for too long theyve internalized the patriarchy and turned on each other, always begging for for male approval and validation. Its disgusting. I realize the truth men are iredeemable. radfem hitler was is fucking vindicated now. They cant be reformed or redeemed. Theyre a fucking scourge upon the earth. The only solution is to total exterminate them and every foid who worships these fucking parasites. Every single male must be wiped out, from babies to the elderty. Only then can women be free to create a new world, ill be a pioneer, ill be the first to take the first step. i dont care if theyr fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, teachers, police, and especially niggers or politicians.ive been craving to kill them all. This is my mission. only when their parasitic sludge has been expunged from this earth is when Then the world will be clean and women can start over. It’s the only way. in aproximately 10 mintue si should be dead, its strange but it feels good.

Abundant Life Christian School mass murderer in Madison Wisconsin
Via a post on X by Andy Ngo 🏳️‍🌈 @MrAndyNgo on December 16, 2024

So sad. So terrible. Such a waste.

Abusive father?

Toxic femininity?

Mental health issues?

All of the above?

At this time, the only thing we know for sure is that the human behind the trigger is responsible. A gun did not do this on its own.

Russians are Now Shooting at German Aircraft

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This makes me very uncomfortable:

Russian warship ‘fires at German helicopter’ as WW3 tensions continue to rise

A Russian warship has reportedly fired warning shots at a German reconnaissance helicopter mid-flight over the Baltic Sea

I’m not sure what to make of all the headlines talking about WW III:

My first impulse is that sensationalism gets clicks, so this is mostly clickbait. But it does not take much thought to convince myself this is far more serious than ordinary clickbait. But what is the actual risk? Are we talking things going sparkly in the next week/month/year? Or is this going to be a bunch of saber rattling and chest thumping for a while before everyone backs down and claim they won the confrontation?

I want to be in an underground bunker in Idaho until this all gets sorted out.

I’m Going to Need a Deeper Bunker

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Quote of the Day

The head of America’s largest bank told an audience at the Institute of International Finance that his team is running scenarios in preparation for a global conflict involving nuclear powers.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, told the crowd that war was imminent and nuclear proliferation was a greater existential threat than climate change.

“World War III has already begun. You already have battles on the ground being coordinated in multiple countries,” Dimon said at the annual event in Washington, DC.

William Koblensky Varela
November 18, 2024
Jamie Dimon Says He and His Team Are Preparing for Serious Conflict with Russia, China.| Moneywise

I need a deeper bunker, and more supplies stored away. Nuclear winter is tough in an already cold climate.

Trump was Made a Martyr

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Quote of the Day

The yearslong effort to vanquish Donald Trump in court was a dismal failure. For liberals like me, it may be tempting to attribute the collapse of the various cases against him to convenient explanations of process or personnel. The more uncomfortable truth is that our search for political salvation primarily through the law has backfired. To oppose Mr. Trump in his second term, liberals must learn the lesson of this defeat, which is that there is no alternative to persuading our fellow citizens of our beliefs.

Samuel Moyn
Yale professor of law
November 22, 2024
Opinion | The Legal Battle Against Trump Was a Miserable Failure – The New York Times

Basically, they made President a Trump a martyr. The overreaching on all the legal claims made Trump a sympathetic figure. People related to him on this because they have been suffering abuse inflicted by the “liberals” for decades. The more they attacked him with such thin legal cases, the stronger the sympathy became. People became more and more convinced the attackers were on the side of evil.

Moyn doesn’t understand a key point. Alternatively, he is deliberately dodging it. His political bedfellows know what he avoids saying here. They are pushing a faulty belief system that cannot be sold to the majority of the people. In today’s world, lawfare is of one of the only tools they have to achieve their goals. The Internet exists, so restricting information through “approved gatekeepers” does not work as well as it used to. The remaining other primary option they have is criminal violence. And they don’t have the numbers or the monopoly on firearms to win on that front either.

Hence, they are losing their battles for mind share.

As a side note, here is a useful hack. You can use it to read some pay walled websites, such as the New York Times. This works on Windows Edge. I’m not sure about other browsers or operating systems.

  1. Go to the web page you want to read.
  2. Type “Ctrl-A” (select all).
  3. Type “Ctrl-C” (copy).
  4. Open up something that will accept HTML from the clipboard, such as Word.
  5. Paste the clipboard into the document.
  6. Read the entire web page.

Already WWIII?

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Quote of the Day

Joe Biden‘s administration has allowed Volodymyr Zelensky to launch American-made missiles into Russia, with allies of both Donald Trump and Putin decrying the move as escalation towards World War Three. In his statement, Medvedev took the warnings a dramatic step further, declaring it is “already WWIII”.

In response to the move by the US, Putin has signed a new decree, titled the “Fundamentals of State Police in the Sphere of Nuclear Deterrence”, which, state-run news agency TASS reports relaxes the parameters by which Russia will respond to attacks with nuclear weapons. The document reportedly states: “Nuclear weapons (NW) are an extreme measure to protect the sovereignty of the country.

Liam Doyle
November 19, 2024
Vladimir Putin’s top crony Medvedev warns West and NATO ‘World War 3 is here’ – World News – Mirror Online

Is this just saber rattling? A bluff? Or is this a serious threat that requires I now need to head for the hills of Idaho?

We Live in Interesting Times

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This is not what I want to be reading in the news:

Putin lowers the threshold for using his nuclear arsenal after Biden’s arms decision for Ukraine | AP News

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday formally lowered the threshold for Russia’s use of its nuclear weapons, a move that follows U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to let Ukraine strike targets inside Russian territory with American-supplied longer-range missiles.

The new doctrine allows for a potential nuclear response by Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power.

I really wish I could live in an underground bunker in Idaho for the next few months.

Expectations

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Quote of the Day

Eight years later, after being dragged from courthouse to courthouse, two assassination attempts and being labeled a “fascist” by his opponents daily, Trump has a real chance at another victory against long odds. The Daily Caller spoke to various experts across the political landscape about what to expect if that happens. From violence in the streets, to Democrats’ plans to contest a Trump win, to the media meltdown, to election lawfare from Democratic super-lawyer Marc Elias, they all predicted a much more dangerous and extreme response this time around if the “threat to democracy” is democratically elected.

McGinniss told the Caller he is preparing for unrest across the country that will be more intense than what was seen in 2016. He says nearly a decade of persistent anti-Trump messaging will be an accelerant for extremism.

“[We’ve been] told that, effectively, our country is going to be under a dictatorship if Trump wins,” McGinniss told the Caller.

He predicted that violent activists throughout the country would target the nearest avatar of the government they could find, whether that be federal courthouses or police precincts.

Julio Rosas, a national correspondent for The Blaze who has years of experience covering riots and social unrest, had a similar prediction, adding that migrants who have been let into the country under the Biden-Harris administration may join in big cities such as New York and Chicago. Above all, Rosas said protests can be expected because violent demonstrators have never learned their lesson.

Reagan Reese
October 27, 2024
What Happens If Trump Wins? (msn.com)

Expectations by other people are similar.

I don’t want to be in the city for the next few months. Unfortunately, my employer insists we be in the office four days a week. And, I don’t have an underground bunker in Idaho to live in. It is a lot of work to keep my small camping trailer there livable in the winter. And with two people in it, it is miserable to live in for extended periods.

We Live in Interesting Times

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Quote of the Day

Gold has been on a parabolic run since October last year, rallying from near the $1,800 level to score consecutive back-to-back all-time record highs – not once, not twice, but on 37 separate occasions, so far this year.

Yes, you read that correctly. That’s 37 all-time record highs, so far in 2024.

On Tuesday, Gold prices skyrocketed to a new all-time record high of $2,758 an ounce, surpassing the precious metals previous all-time high of $2,749 an ounce reached only a day earlier – extending its gains by an impressive 53%, from this time 12-months ago.

According to GSC Commodity Intelligence – “Gold’s record-breaking run has been nothing short of impressive. Never before in history have we seen the precious metal score multiple back-to-back all-time record highs in such a short space of time”.

Phil Carr
October 24, 2024
Will The New BRICS Currency Supercharge Gold Prices? | FXEmpire

Of course, another way to read this is that the dollar has reached a new low.

Prepare appropriately.

Interesting Psychology Lesson

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The L.A. Times and the Washington Post both decided to not endorse a presidential candidate this time.

My initial thought was they had decided to try appearing to be more factual rather than cheerleaders for their preferred political party. Perhaps it would be better for business, right?

But other people have a much different interpretation the decision. From the article linked to above:

… a desire to avoid angering Donald Trump, and/or a move to avoid angering readers.

I never saw that coming. After calling him a threat to democracy, a felon, a rapist, and literally Hitler they are now concerned endorsing Harris will make Trump and/or his supporters angry. Really?

That sounds like the rational of a paranoid person. They have the mindset that Trump is incredibly evil and will use any power he acquires to exact a business and/or life-threatening revenge. And anyone that appears to give Trump the slightest of concessions must be doing it out of fear.

But shouldn’t the failure to endorse Harris result in a concern about invoking her wrath?

See also:

What I find most interesting is that my immediate thought of why they did that apparently did not occur to anyone writing in the legacy news media. I am not a normal person.

Private Enterprise Demonstration

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Quote of the Day

Read the whole thing. He expects the booster to ultimately have a one-hour turnaround time.

In the late 1990s I expressed the thought that, if he wanted, Bill Gates could afford to finance a manned Mars mission. My friend, Eric Engstrom, claimed it would cost more money than what Gates had. I hadn’t done any number crunching but was skeptical of that claim. It seemed Eric was using NASA numbers. I had briefly worked on a shuttle orbiter project and saw enough of NASA bloat to be very suspicious of NASA numbers. NASA, being a government entity, was going to spend something on the order of at least ten times more than what private enterprise would require.

Among other things, the technology NASA was using was absurd. Part of the extreme expense was that they would not allow technology that did not have the required reliability numbers. Fair enough, except to get those numbers required something like 20 years of use. The integrated circuits they had the numbers on were no longer manufactured! The circuit boards had to be double sided! Multiple layer circuit boards came out in the 1960s. But since the Shuttle was designed in the 1970s there wasn’t enough reliability data on them to make NASA happy. When I was working on my little project in the late 1980s NASA would not allow replacement parts to be anything other than what the original design used.

You should not be surprised that SpaceX is running technological circles around NASA efforts.

See also these videos:

This post was heavily inspired by an email from pkoning with the subject line of “SpaceX magic” and this link: SpaceX arm ‘catches’ Super Heavy rocket booster | Fox Business Video.

We Can Line All Those Guys Up and Shoot ’em

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Quote of the Day

We can line all those guys up and shoot ’em. And they clearly don’t understand the way the world works.

Phillip Lowcock 
October 9, 2024

Via a post on X from Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras.

Violence. It is their language. It is what they think they can do. It is what they do.

See also:

I find it “interesting” that in the video he clearly says, “… we can…”. But in the msn.com, Newsweek, cjonline.com, and ksnt.com articles they “quote” him as saying, “…we could…”. Other articles don’t provide any quotes at all. They just say “Lowcock made some remarks about some men.”

What bias in the mainstream media?

Perhaps you really can’t hate the media enough.

We Are Glad We Don’t Live in a Hurricane Zone

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Barb and I saw some of the terrifying videos of the destruction caused by hurricane Helene:

We are so pleased we don’t live in a hurricane zone.

Instead, we live in a place with earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes.

There Are Many Answers

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Quote of the Day

There is but one answer to be made to the dynamite bomb and that can best be made by the Winchester rifle.

Theodore Roosevelt
1887
Did Teddy Roosevelt Say the ‘One Answer to Terrorism’ Is a Winchester Rifle?

Via an email, which had “terrorism” instead of “the dynamite bomb” in the quote, from pkoning.

While it captures the appropriate sentiment succinctly, it is not all that accurate these days. It appears to me that Israel is doing rather well in their fight against the terrorists/dynamite-bombers in their neighborhoods while using few, and perhaps zero, Winchester rifles. As was reported in a briefing at work last week:

They compromised the supply chain and delivered pagers with explosives to Hezbollah leadership. They blew them up almost simultaneously. Hezbollah then went to walkie-talkies and those were blown up. When Hezbollah then assembled in a single building for face-to-face communication, they blew up the building.

This will be studied and admired for years to come as one of the most creative, complex, and well executed operations in the history of warfare.

Precision guided bombs, M-4s, M-16s, tanks, and hand grenades have been delivering some very authoritative answers as well.

Whatever you think of their religion, ethics, and/or political behavior, they have certainly demonstrated if you don’t respect them, you risk coming to fear them.

I hope gun owners don’t have to teach similar lessons to those who fail to respect us and our rights.

A Specific Enumerated Right–VOID by Passing Hurricane

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Via a posts on X by Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras and Bryan LaFonte
@bryanlafonte:¡

There are few other situations where you would need defensive weapons more than when the social structure has been ripped apart. Either this is either mind boggling stupid or deliberate enabling of criminals.

I hope he enjoys his trial.

Tens of Millions Believe Political Violence is Justified This Election

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Quote of the Day

Pape surveyed more than 2,000 Americans in late June, before the first attempt on Trump’s life on July 13. The survey found a disturbing willingness, across the political spectrum, to say that violence was warranted to eliminate political foes.

The poll, from the Chicago Project on Security & Threats, released in June, showed that 6.9% of Americans — or the equivalent of 18 million adults — believed that it was justified to use force to restore Trump to the White House. In another question, 10% of Americans — or the equivalent of 26 million adults — said they believed political violence is justified to prevent Trump from becoming president again.

James Rainey, Kevin Rector
September 15, 2024
A second assassination attempt against former President Trump raises new questions (msn.com)

The ratio of people on the left willing use violence compared to people on the right in consistent with my hypothesis.

With 26 million people believing violence is justified to stop Trump from reaching office we should expect assassination attempts every few weeks. And every attempt against Trump increases the likelihood of an attempt on Harris.

Remember, the spark that started WW1 was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. A civil war could easily be sparked by a political assassination in this country.

Prepare appropriately.

Another Assassination Attempt

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This is an election for the record books. There has been what is being called another assassination attempt on former President Trump:

Donald Trump targeted in ‘second assassination attempt’ FBI reveals as man with AK and Go-Pro arrested (msn.com)

A man with an AK-style rifle pointed the firearm’s muzzle into Donald Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, as the former president was playing a round, prompting the U.S. Secret Service to open fire, according to three law enforcement officials.

The former president is safe and unharmed, and the FBI says it is investigating “what appears to be an attempted assassination” of the Republican presidential candidate.

See also:

Secret Service fires at gunman after apparent ‘attempted assassination’ on Trump (msn.com)

The FBI is investigating what it called an “attempted assassination” of former President Donald Trump after Secret Service agents fired at a man with an AK-47 on or near Trump’s Florida golf course on Sunday.

A spokesperson for Donald Trump‘s campaign said the former president is “safe.” Law enforcement sources told ABC News a suspect is in custody.

Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said the gunman was 300 to 500 yards away from the former president when he was spotted. Secret Service agents fired and the suspect dropped the gun and fled, a senior law enforcement official told ABC News. It was not clear if the suspect was aiming his weapon at Trump.

The source said the suspect got into a vehicle and witnesses reported the license plate number which was tracked by authorities. The suspect was stopped and taken into custody.

Even at 300 yards a semi-auto AK has pretty low odds of connecting with a single fatal shot. But it sounds like the suspected assassin may have been waiting for Trump to get closer.

Secret Service agents prevent Trump shooting; suspect captured with help of witness (komonews.com)

A gunman was captured Sunday after apparently trying to shoot former President Donald Trump at a golf course in Florida.

Trump is OK, and no injuries were reported by authorities after Secret Service agents fired at the gunman they spotted in the bushes.

Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said the incident took place about 1:30 while the former president was golfing at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.

They immediately sealed off the area, after Secret Service agents fired four to six rounds at the gunman.

The agents were a couple of holes ahead of where the former president was playing when they spotted a rifle barrel sticking out of the course shrubbery.

I could make a lot of speculative comments but I’m going to let the story develop more before saying what Trump supporters are probably already thinking.