President Obama has a large number of critics but he also has some astounding successes. These successes are unrivaled in magnitude by any other president and perhaps any other person who has ever lived.
He attempted to ban certain types of guns and became the greatest gun salesman of all time.
He made health insurance mandatory and millions of people became uninsured.
This ought to make you feel all warm and fuzzy.
The same company that made the healthcare.gov website (on a no-bid contract, naturally) is the same one that created the Canadian gun registry that cost roughly twenty times the original estimate and got scrapped a decade later after being found to be both useless and seriously defective.
But they want us to just trust their good intentions, ’cause they are so smart and transparent. Yeah, riiiight.
Incentives matter. People pay attention to them. The larger the incentive, the more effective it is. Look at Obamacare. You get heavy subsidies right up to exactly 400% of the poverty line. Then you get nothing, you go directly from being heavily subsidized to being the subsidy, all for that extra dollar in income. This might easily mean for a married couple that they pay an extra $10,000 a year for the same health insurance policy (more or less depending on specifics, but this number is not atypical). Then look at the fact that a lot of employers are shifting to providing employee-only health insurance, and dropping coverage for spouses and dependents.
If a working couple are each making $30k a year, they receive a significant subsidy. If one gets a promotion that comes with a 10% raise ( $3,000), then it kicks them into zero-subsidy land and the net loss of $7,000 a year. The incentive for divorce in order to make ends meet is powerful, because if they divorce, then they both qualify for a bunch of other programs, too, which would effectively boost their effective incomes considerably. Meeting bills vs not meeting bills, being able to afford vacation vs not… This ACA thing is a powerful incentive that, if it stands more than two years, will drive a HUGE boom in divorce and application for “single parents with kids needing government assistance.”
ObamaCare is the most destructive bill to American society I’ve ever witnessed pass congress.
The Tea Party is made up of people who can do math.
Larry Correia
October 17, 2013
The scientific Tea Party
[Citation here.
Of course they can do math! The Tea Party was a response to Obama Care and the massive government spending. And you probably didn’t even need to “do math” to figure that out. Mere arithmetic should be more than adequate for the task. But those on the left had to think of the Tea Party as inferiors in order to justify the condescending attacks. Apparently those on the left can’t handle or don’t want to be bothered with the arithmetic.
I don’t remember where I saw it but I remember reading many years ago something to the effect that politics was much too important to be subject to the impersonal rigors of mere numbers. Whoever said seemed to believe they had expressed some great truth. My thought was, and is, that numbers are a measure of reality. If you can’t express something in numbers then it’s just opinion. There is, of course, no guarantee that any given set of numbers reflect reality but if you can’t or won’t express something in number then it’s a pretty sure bet that it’s an opinion without basis in reality. And if your opinions don’t have any basis in reality you have no, zero, nada, zilch, business being involved in politics.
But that’s not the political system works. Unfortunately reality can only be ignored for so long. If reality could be ignored then something like this would make sense (H/T to ubu52 who said, “It’s total Fail to look at this as a math problem”). Where ‘this’ is the deficit. I was tempted to respond but I’m not sure the intended recipient would (or could) understand. If the deficit isn’t a math (or arithmetic) problem and the amount of spending being greater than revenue isn’t a valid concern then why not just print enough money that everyone in the country (or heck, why not the entire world?) receives $100 an hour for 40 hours per week “following their dreams” or whatever? Everyone could retire and live happily ever after. We could forget the debate over Obamacare because everyone could afford to pay for their own health care or buy the insurance of their choice, right? Everyone could afford to pay for their own education or not bother with it, right?
Numbers matter. If you can’t do arithmetic then you are going have some serious problems with math. And math is what bonds us to reality. If you can’t do math you don’t really understand reality. And that Tea Party members understand math and science better than those that can’t do simple arithmetic is no surprise.
What the Yale Professor who “discovered” what was blindly obvious to me and I would have thought most people didn’t conclude, which is also obvious to me, is that those who denigrate the Tea Party are those who truly deserve the condescending insults, jeers, and casual dismissal. And we have the numbers to back that up.—Joe]
Math doesn’t care about fairness or good intentions. Spending vastly more than you have isn’t good when done by a Republican or a Democrat. Two plus two doesn’t equal 33.2317 after you factor in a secret “Social Justice” multiplier.
Jon Gabriel
October 21, 2013
The Reality of America’s Finances
[H/T to son James for showing me this.
Sometimes I think that part of the problem is that people think that math, even arithmetic, is subject to opinion. People will just proclaim, “I don’t agree with that”, and they believe they have refuted your numbers.
In many ways politics is faith based. The democrats have a tendency towards being economic tyrants and the republicans have a tendency towards being moral tyrants. Neither really understand principles. Or if they do their principles are to destroy the principles they can and ignore the rest.
With their policies having no principles it should come as no surprise they also believe that numbers are subject to whatever whim they have this election cycle. Numbers are just something you use to make your opinion appear valid. And everyone’s opinion is just as good as anyone else’s so that must mean that everyone’s numbers are just as good as anyone else’s.
Principles? They don’t even understand the concept of a principle.—Joe]
I got a request from a guy who works for one of the gigantic firearms magazine publishing companies. They put out several major gun magazines, all of which you know well. He wanted high resolution images showing off some specific products of ours. I was heading out of town at the time and could not change my plans, no way, no how, and so I went to GREAT lengths, using digital back-channels, running into road blocks, fiddling this and that, and finally I got him his images in short order. It was a pain, but when a major publisher indicates that they want to run an article that shows off your products, you jump, right? So I jumped. I know the guy. He’s a big name in a huge industry– Why shouldn’t I jump?
Days later, after hearing no reply, I get this;
“Thank you for the images.
I am also interested in getting one of those [product name redacted] for myself…
Let me know what I would owe you.”
No mention of any specific, up-coming article in any specific magazine, just an implied request for a special personal deal on some special hardware (nod nod, wink, wink).
So I went through all that dorking around just for this?
This ain’t my first rodeo, bitches– I have decades of experience dealing with people attempting to use their very real influence for personal gain, and with those who accommodate them at every opportunity. Many of them have been in public employ too. I’ve also seen more than few of them fall flat on their faces for doing it.
Most people in any business, and all industries have this sort of thing going in spades, take the position; “Aw, just go with it. Don’t be a fool– It’s how the game is played and there’s nothing you can ever do to change it.” I’ve had it said to my face.
Uh huh. Well consider this post my reply to that, and count your blessings that I haven’t mentioned your name and your employer. Yet. Now let the reprisals begin, if you’re dumb enough. I’m ready.
I get a lot of e-mail spam, and I work in the firearms accessory business, so when I saw a message from a car dealer I read it as “Full Auto Inventory Clearence”.
“Hmm. Someone must have a lot of machineguns…”
Actually it read; “Fall Auto Inventory Clearence” but my pre conditioning made me read it wrong.
That’s just a tiny example of pre conditioning determining someone’s perception. It happens all the time to most of us, in some way or another.
We played a trick on my brother years ago. We wired up a whistling sky rocket firework and clamped it under his work bench. When he came in, we told him we suspected something was wrong with his bench lamp. When he turned on his bench power and all hell broke lose, he was scrambling in a panic, amongst the fire, the smoke and noise, to turn off his bench lamp. We had pre conditioned him to respond in a completely useless (and funny – to us) manner.
Yeah, funny funny hah hah, but this sort of thing is done to us in politics and social engineering, and we do it to ourselves.
Charity is a vitally important component to any civilized society and as such, government should be kept completely out of it.
The first amendment touched upon the concept that a most highly important societal aspect or institution should be hands-off (no government involvement) but it is not well understood. We tend to focus on the particulars (religion, speech, the press, redress and assembly) but ignore the principle behind it.
If the economy is important then government shouldn’t be attacking such a successful industry.
Created by OnlineMBA.com
But the evidence indicates our government does not care about the economy as well as being hostile to gun ownership.
Via Zero Hedge:
Bill, in a comment here, says, “a 1911 costs essentially the same, in gold, as it did in 1911, and 1945, and 1960, and 2000.”
I’m not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this other than holding onto dollars is a futile attempt to retain wealth.
The UPS guy showed up the other day. I didn’t remember ordering anything recently, so I briefly wondered what the spousal unit bought. Then I saw the box, and I had to chuckle. It was a MidwayUSA box. With some ammo. That I had ordered last year. Now that’s a backorder.
“We don’t make decisions based on common sense” – USAA Insurance claims representative, total loss department. That was pretty obvious by the time he said it. I told him it was going to be a quote of the day.
In June an old man pulled right in front of us in his pickup, from a cross road on our right, while we were at speed in our pickup on highway 26 in central Washington State. WHAM! My 15 year old daughter was driving on her learner’s permit. She could not have done anything to prevent a hard hit, but I think she saved that old man’s life.
You never really know what you’ll do in a situation like that, but I tell myself not to swerve for deer or anything else unless there is a real need to. Hit the damn deer and stay on the road, or hit that car in front of you and avoid a head-on, if it’s a choice between the two. I’ve seen it go very badly when people swerve. She swerved. If she hadn’t, if she’d gone in a straight line, that old man would have been squashed like a melon, I think. As it was we hit corner to corner instead of hitting him in his driver’s door.
I was telling the claims rep that since I had the trans rebuilt and replaced the engine, the hubs, the breaks, etc., that 309K odo reading meant very little, that the newer and shinier pickup I replaced it with actually has “Less useful life left in it, it cost me more than twice what I’m being offered for the totaled truck, and that I shouldn’t have to remind anyone that the injured party (I) should be made whole, within reason, to the fullest extend possible, and we’re not even talking about our ruined vacation.”
“Where did you get that verbiage?” He asked in reply.
“What do you mean?”
“Where did you get that verbiage?” He repeated. Well how do you answer that question? He seems to think that I’m reading from some book, or repeating someone else’s words, which I wasn’t. So rather than argue about that;
“It’s common sense” I told him. That’s when he came out with the money quote.
Yeah, so I’m out thousands of dollars after I take their settlement. Insurance markets, and the whole set of industries surrounding them, like the towing business and the body repair business, medical care, et al, are completely distorted. In a proper world it would be between me and the offending party, and if things fell apart there it would be in the courts, and the insurance company’s role would be to write a check afterwards (or up to the value of the policy). But this is the messed up world of scammers, politicians (but I repeat myself) and Progressives (and again I repeat myself) and so the party writing the check is the same one determining the value of the loss.
I guess that what we were supposed to do, rather than tell the EMTs at the scene that we were all OK and happy to be alive, if a little bruised, and go against their advice to take a ride in and get checked out by doctors, was instead to complain about pain, act all messed up an carry on and so forth, get some prescriptions and braces and all that, like most people, and scam the insurance company for all that pain and suffereing, woe-is-me-I-have-to-take-three-weeks-off-work-and-I-might-have-to-file-for-disability crap. But we didn’t, and won’t.
Karl Marx hated the USSR and what it did under the claim of his ideas.
Don’t believe me? Look it up.
NightShade09
August 4, 2013
Comment to The Invention of Ideology
[I’m quite suspicious of people who claim they can “channel the spirit” of someone. Defending the claim that it doesn’t happen is trivially easy. Hence I think the only look up required is that Marx died in 1883 and no government could claim the title of USSR until sometime after the revolution in 1917.
But Marxist defenders don’t really need facts. They just have to “understand” the benefits of communism even if they can’t understand the simplest and best tested of economics theories.—Joe]
So you think that money is the root of all evil?
Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor–your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?
Francisco d’Anconia
From Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
[I have a silver round on my desk that was a gift from son James a few years back that sums it up far more succinctly than Rand’s character did:
Get your round here.—Joe]
From the Seattle Police Department blog:
Security came out of nowhere,” he told officers, adding that all he did “was not pay for some items.”
I will concede that the perpetrator could just be criminally stupid. But nearly every time I walk down the streets of Seattle I’m amazed at the number of communists openly advocating their failed economics. I can’t walk more than a couple blocks without seeing someone selling “Real Change” (here is one socialist/communist editorial I found after about 30 seconds of looking).
Tonight as I was heading to my bus I crossed Pine Street on the east side of 3rd. There were a bunch of people chanting and holding signs in the middle of Pine street. The one sign I bothered to read was something about demanding a $15/hour minimum wage. I couldn’t understand all the words of the chant but it ended with “against the wall”. I don’t know for certain but it sounded like a threat to me. On the north side of Pine there were a bunch of police officers on bicycles. One was giving directions to the others and they broke into two groups and surrounded the chanting crowd. A few minutes later I received a couple Tweets from the Seattle PD:
Officers have made 8 arrests in demonstration @ 3/pine. Police now working with crowd to unblock Pine St. Between 3/4 Ave.
— Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) August 1, 2013
3/Pine demonstrators requested “symbolic arrests.” After giving dispersal orders, officers granted their request.
— Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) August 1, 2013
I have to wonder; Is this what it was like in the early days before the communists took over in other countries? Even in the cities of Kirkland and Bellevue just a few miles to the east of Seattle openly advocating for communism is rare. On the east side of the state and on into Idaho it’s even more rare. Yet in downtown Seattle it’s so accepted that someone there acts as if there isn’t a problem with taking things from a store without paying for them.
We have a serious problem if the concept of private property is so alien that when these people get caught stealing their response is bewilderment and ask, “What’s the problem?”
One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people’s motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans– anything except reason.
Thomas Sowell
Dismantling America: and other controversial essays
[It’s so bad that people cannot distinguish between a coherent argument and an emotional appeal. I see this most frequently in the gun control movement but it is common in all of politics and probably all human interaction.
We saw it in government legislating “affordable housing”. We saw it in government legislating “affordable health care”. We saw it in the government creation of the welfare state. We saw it in government “creating jobs”. The list is probably impossible to enumerate.
Look at advertising. Do the majority of ads give you numbers and statistics or attempt to evoke emotions?
Reason is nothing but a thin veneer which is easily and frequently pierced.—Joe]
Die verfluchte Hure, Vernunft.
(The damned whore, Reason).
Martin Luther
[While this and similar words from Luther are frequently used as justification for rejection of religion I, even as an atheist, tend to give him a bit of a pass for it. It appears that in context he was referring to using reason to determine the nature or validity of god(s), not the general use of reason. He was not consistent in this however. For example he concluded that the earth was motionless and the sun, moon, and stars moved around the earth because some phrase in the Bible said as much.
But an analysis of Luther’s philosophy is way beyond the scope of a blog post as well as my interest. I bring up this quote because of it’s application to politics, economics, gun control, and even interpersonal relationships.
As Lyle has pointed out many times:
If you’d been born in Saudi, you’d most likely be a Muslim, in Borneo maybe a cannibal, born in America with low self esteem and watching the Old Media, you’ll be what I call a “default leftist”, meaning you’ll have the mentality that has you expressing puzzlement. It’s a given, and very few people can escape it, and even then they don’t really escape conditioning really, but are merely receiving conditioning of a different kind.
In Luther’s case he had a set of assumptions that he would not, perhaps could not, challenge despite evidence those assumptions had flaws. The Muslim, the cannibal, and the “default leftist” have a different set of assumptions about the world around them. To a certain extent those assumptions are unchallenged or even buried so deep into the unconscious they are invisible to the possessor of said assumptions.
The very basis of truth and knowledge within a culture depends upon a base set of shared assumptions. If those assumptions are at odds with the real world, as in the movement of the earth versus the sun, moon, and stars in Luther’s case, then reality is frequently rejected rather than the unacknowledged assumptions.
Lyle goes on to claim:
To be truly objective means you have no Earthly conditioning. How possible is that, being as we’re all born into some form of conditioning?
What are we doing right here, right now, if not attempting to reprogram people to a different set of cultural assumptions or “stimulus A = reaction B”?
Is our over-arching thesis that there is an “Ultimate Measure or Ideal of Right and Wrong” and if so, where is it? Or are we trying to tell people to “be objective” and then be the ones ourselves to define what is objectivity, thus forming our own cult?
I don’t buy the conclusion that there is no, or perhaps cannot be, an objective view of reality. Yes, we have biases from our culture. Yes, we have limitations of our senses. Yes, ultimately we cannot say with absolute certainty that our universe is not just an incredibly detailed simulation in some super-being’s computer lab. But even in this later case we can characterize the essence of our universe in a way that can be reproduced by others with significantly different cultural biases. For example, a dropped rock always falls and boiled water always evaporates and you will be find wide agreement with those claims across nearly all cultures.
From such simple, reproducible, observations one can build an entire objective view of the world that includes mass, time, distance, and temperature. You may lose some people as you start manipulating the simple concepts and forming derived concepts such as energy, sub-atomic particles, and quantum effects but a (perhaps very long, detailed, and expensive) set of experiments can be done to retrace the path and arrive at the same conclusions. If a different conclusion can explain the same data obtained from the repeatable experiments then two or more people can discuss the differences in the conclusions and, in most cases, devise an experiment to disprove one or both of the differing conclusions.
This is the scientific method.
Yes. The scientific method can be, at some level, described as a cult. This is because, if you dig deep enough, there are base assumptions which are not provable. An example would be that we can trust our senses to correctly tell us there does exist some object we call a rock and that such an object does fall. You might claim this is clearly provable. But I claim that you cannot disprove the claim the entire universe was created a millisecond ago complete with intact memories, buildings, books, and archeological evidence of ancient plant and animal life. Or try proving that the “rock” you are so certain actually exists is not just an elaborate model, along with models for all life forms and the rest of the universe, in a super computer.
But even if you can successfully argue that the scientific method is a “cult” not all cults, or world views, are of equal validity. The cult that believes a spaceship with aliens will soon arrive and carry off the true believers saving them from the imminent destruction of the earth can be proven wrong when the arrival date of the spaceship passes and the associated destruction of the earth fails to occur.
Data and reason conclusively demonstrates that some “cults” are more valid than others. It is only by the willful, or negligent, rejection of reason and/or data that most “cults” continue to have followers.
Many will claim, with what I find to be fairly convincing evidence and reasoning, that reason has been destroyed in our schools. While this may have a great deal of validity a case can be made that reason is just a thin veneer over a very primitive brain that does not recognize reason and is far, far more eager to embrace the assertions of authority figures or comfortable beliefs of simple sound bytes.
How else can you explain the widespread embracing of assertions as “Violence is always wrong.”? Or the small parade of people marching past my office window yesterday chanting, “No justice, no peace!”? It is my opinion that people gather into crowds and chant in unison because it helps them believe the irrational and the unbelievable. It penetrates that thin veneer of reason and taps into that deeper primitive brain. It gives them a sense of accomplishment when no accomplish, beyond the destruction of reason, has been achieved.
The “currency” of the left is in masses of people with simple, and almost always, wrong ideas.* Why do you think we run into “Reasoned Discourse” so often? Why do you think the leftist talk show hosts shout down their “guests” who disagree with them? It’s because they actively reject reason and data. Their minds have been stripped of, never developed, or actively reject that thin veneer of reason.
Peterson Syndrome is merely an articulable example of the absence of this thin veneer. I have recently mentioned to Ry and Barb L., “There are far too many crazy people in the world.” It’s true that much of the bizarre behavior we see around appears “crazy”. But these people are not really crazy in the usual sense.
It is crazy to reject success? The left has made tremendous strides in Dismantling America (Thomas Sowell) by rejecting reason. All the advances in gun control in the last century was through the rejection of reason and data on both the benefits and the clear intent of the 2nd Amendment. It’s crazy that an abusive spouse would claim their victim deserved the beating because dinner was five minutes late. But if they repeatedly convince their victim it was their own fault and the victim stays with them was it really crazy to make that claim?
It is my belief “the damned whore, reason” only services a small subset of the human population. That small group of people were, and are, frequently attacked for being seduced by the “damned whore”. But that same group of people, when they could escape the inquisitions, purges, and genocides, brought us health, wealth, and knowledge billions of times greater than the collective minds of 100’s of millions of others who could not or would not partaking of her services.
As Thomas Sowell points out, after Roman collapsed it took a 1000 years to recover to a point comparable to the peak of Roman culture. How much more clear of examples than Detroit, Greece, Cyprus, and Spain do people need to reject the politics of the left? Will it take another 1000 year lesson?
The answer is no example will be “clear enough”. These people do not operate on examples the way those serviced by the whore do. They cannot distinguish between intention and results. They cannot distinguish between truth and falsity. They are missing that thin veneer of reason and appealing to reason in someone without reason is a fools errand.
I see only three futures with numerous variations ahead of us. Two are exceedingly unpleasant and I believe the third is exceedingly unlikely. Those options are:
For a long time I assumed rural areas, such as the farm where I grew up, would be relatively safe. But there is historical evidence that farmers (along with bankers) are frequently among the first victims of societal collapse. So now I don’t know what to think or how to prepare for the final fall of reason to the barbarians.
I’m left thinking about the wise words of Marty Smith:
To hell with the 72 virgins … Give me three good whores.
—Joe]
* One of the most basic tenets of the political left is that is somehow wrong for there to be wealthy people. It’s not wrong that there exist super wealthy people. The world would be a better place if everyone, by todays standards, were super wealthy. And in fact by the standards of 1000 years ago the bottom 1% of the population in the U.S. have nearly unimaginable wealth. 1000 years ago all the richest king’s gold could not have bought a vaccine to prevent their child from contracting small pox. Nor could they have purchased a ride on a vehicle that could take them 50 miles in less than hour. Or gotten a valid answer to some of the toughest questions ever asked within a few minutes. But almost anyone today can get that for a pittance if not for free.
Without that thin veneer of reason the people of the political left cannot, or in some cases will not, recognize that the poor are only temporarily, if that, improved by taking wealth from the rich and redistributing it. The situation of the poor is improved through the creation of more wealth.
This creation of more wealth was how our world today became so much better for everyone than the world of 1000 years ago. We created a trillion (just a WAG) times more wealth. Creating more wealth may increase disparity between the rich and the poor but in the long term the poor will be improved far more than if the wealth of the rich was taken from them. This is not just an assertion but a simple extrapolation of countless “experiments” run in hundreds of cultures around the world over hundreds if not 1000s of years.
This creation of wealth required a large population growth and a dramatic increase in the consumption of natural resources. Both the population growth and the consumption of natural resources were, and are, seen as catastrophic by the political left. Yet, humans are far better off for it.
Everything centralized, from the Federal Reserve to the Too Big To Fail Banks to Medicare to the National Security State depends on the Federal government being a Savior State that must ceaselessly expand its share of the national income and its raw power lest it implode. All Savior States have one, and only one trajectory– they must ceaselessly expand and concentrate wealth and power or they will fail.
They are like the shark, which dies once it stops moving forward: the Savior State must push forward on its trajectory of expansion or it expires.
Stasis is not possible, nor is contraction; the promises made to the citizenry cannot be withdrawn without political instability, but the promises cannot be kept without fatally disrupting the neofeudal financialized debtocracy.
charles hugh smith
July 4, 2013
The Next American Revolution (Emphasis in the original)
[His main point is that the next revolution will be much different than any in the past. It will be one where the existing bureaucracy is bypassed and ignored rather than being forcibly removed from power. It will be, he claims, a place where, “wages are no longer an adequate model for distributing the surplus generated by the economy.”
I agree with his characterization that the government is on a path where it must constantly expand or implode. I can believe his is right that the next revolution will be different than any ever seen before. But I am far from convinced that he has it right on the nature of the next revolution.
It seems to me that the nature of the majority of people is that they want/desire/require a central leader or authority. Either they either want to be ruled or they want to be a ruler. The concept of just leaving people alone to freely associate with others is inconceivable to most people. Even in a relatively free state they think in terms of freedom being forced upon them by some authority.
It is my expectation that from the ashes of our current government there will rise some new form of claimed authority to rule over the people and the vast majority of people will have not learned the lessons of history and will welcome it.—Joe]
I started repairing musical instruments in the 1970s. My hippie days. Started a business doing that when I was 19. Taxes and red tape slowly turned me, or helped turn me, into a conservative, if by conservative we mean someone who believes that people should stay the hell out of other people’s business.
Anyway it’s difficult to get away from the musical instruments completely. Below is a Yamaha 894– solid silver body and keys, and this one has a custom headjoint made by Drelinger in White Plains, NY. The Japanese have been making some fine instruments and this one is no exception. Each key is like a piece of jewelry, not in the sense that certain guns are said to be “jewelry” but literally.
Every key is fit to its pivots or shaft to perfection. Any tighter and it would bind with temperature changes. One key can have a half dozen or more parts, silver soldered together in a jig and hand polished. The soft pad each key holds must produce an air-tight seal with a light touch to the tone hole, it must do it quietly, and it must usually do it in mechanical combination with one or more other keys, so there is a fair amount of regulation of each key, and more regulation between keys.
The soft pads are leveled to the tone holes by use of paper shims of various thicknesses. I work with .001″, .002″ and .003″ shims mostly. Mark, remove the pad, cut a shim, paste it on the back of the pad, reinsert the pad, and try. Repeat as necessary, which can be many times per pad. You can see the punches, of which I’ve made several to fit various pad cup sizes, and bits of round shims, and a razor blade for cutting them into pieces. Sometimes you use whole shims to increase the effective thickness of the pad.
If you’re not already crazy it can drive you there. Many, many attempts, by many people (myself included) have been made over the decades to come up with a pad that’s more or less self-leveling and that can still hold up to moisture and all the rest, without sticking or making more noise, and so far it’s still the old felt and bladder skin pad that’s generally preferred.
It takes hours and hours, but I love it when it all comes together and the instrument finally becomes a “single thing” again, rather than the many parts I’ve been working on separately. You could even say it’s music to the ears. Lately though I’m given pause, wondering what good any of this does for anyone.
This flute is one of several owned by the principal flutist in a Northwestern U.S. orchestra, and yes; she knows that her flute is being worked on by a gun accessory corporation president. We’ve known each other for decades. She’s also a university professor and so it is safe to say that our world views differ somewhat. Two worlds. We get along very well all the same.
I don’t want to face being driven from my home by the likes of Mike Bloomberg, Joe Biden and Barack Obama. No more two Americas. This has to end. We need to stop these people and ruthlessly crush them.
Sebastian
June 18, 2013
40 Round PMAGs
[This is what is required and, at least on the gun issue, there is a reasonable chance of success (for some values of “success”).
The bigger problem is that repression is much more than just guns. Currently it includes soft drinks, light bulbs, collecting rain water, how many gallons flushing your toilet requires. In another year it could include restrictions on owning gold and/or silver, TSA groping at train stations, and rationing of health care.
Although I’m a pretty optimistic person I’m essentially convinced (the Obama Care ruling on health care was the last straw) we are getting out of this without tremendous pain. The question is how to optimize the chances for my immediate family in the various scenarios.
I have have ancestors that go back to pre-revolutionary war (Barb L. even has Mayflower ancestors) and most steadily moved west in as the country opened up. They escaped the big cities with the corruption and repression associated with them. There isn’t much further we can move. Maybe Alaska could offer some respite but Alaska has to import a lot of goods which means they can’t really be self-supporting in many cases.
I fear collapse with the associated risk of a rise of a dictator is possible. Or would such a collapse follow the USSR model where the individual states regain power as the Feds go broke? Or would the Feds confiscate the wealth in such a way that it destroys the infrastructure as it goes down?
There are far too many “columns on the spreadsheet” to predict. I think what needs to be done is write up the plausible scenarios and plans for dealing with them. Prepping with food storage, “bug out locations”, and low level medical training until the economy recovers? Learn blacksmithing and soap making, acquire draft horses and horse powered farm implements and prepare for a return to technological world similar to 1900? What’s common to most scenarios? What’s likely and what is implausible?
The looters are destroying the country and, really, the world. The only question I see is how much will be left when they are stopped. The answer hinges on whether it is because they ran out of things and places to loot or is it because the producers finally stood up to them and said, “No. Stop. No further. Looters will be shot.”—Joe]