Some schools in Oregon are being informed that asking students in math class to “show their work” is “white supremacy.” What exactly would happen if this faction got its way and all American classrooms are like this?
Zaid Jilani @ZaidJilani
Tweeted on February 14, 2021
[What if thousands of parents demanded the people who wrote, approved, or distributed this be fired and their names and pictures be published?—Joe]
What we’ve done in the legislation is really create the set of circumstances and conditions that will facilitate the buy-back.
We are eliminating all legal use of these prohibited firearms. They can’t be legally discharged. You can’t fire them. You can’t take them hunting or to a range. They can’t sell them or transport them. They can’t bequeath them or trade them in any way. They will be required to store them in a very secure safe or vault.
I think the vast majority of people who bought these guns to use as firearms, now that there is no legal way to do that, they’ll be highly incentivized to surrender them for destruction, and then we’ll have a fair compensation program available to them.
Bill Blair
Canada Public Safety Minister
February 16, 2021
Bill Blair says new gun bill will help keep handguns off the streets without a federal ban
[It would seem to me that some incentives, and a fair compensation program, need to be given to Blair and company to respect the rights of the people.—Joe]
God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.
If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?
Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
Thomas Jefferson
November 13, 1787
Letter to William Stephens Smith
[This provides more context to the one I usually see.—Joe]
Global markets today seem irresistible to central bankers with plans for better times. Planning is the central bankers’ baleful vanity, since, for them, markets are a test tube in which to try out their interventionist theories.
Central bankers control the price of money and therefore indirectly influence every market in the world. Given this immense power, the ideal central banker would be humble, cautious, and deferential to market signals. Instead, modern central bankers are both bold and arrogant in their efforts to bend markets to their will. Top-down central planning, dictating resource allocation and industrial output based on supposedly superior knowledge of needs and wants, is an impulse that has infected political players throughout history. It is both ironic and tragic that Western central banks have embraced central planning with gusto in the early twenty-first century, not long after the Soviet Union and Communist China abandoned it in the late twentieth. The Soviet Union and Communist China engaged in extreme central planning over the world’s two largest countries and one-third of the earth’s population for more than one hundred years combined. The result was a conspicuous and dismal failure. Today’s central planners, especially the Federal Reserve, will encounter the same failure in time. The open issues are, when and at what cost to society?
The impulse toward central planning often springs from the perceived need to solve a problem with a top-down solution. For Russian Communists in 1917, it was the problem of the czar and a feudal society. For Chinese Communists in 1949, it was local corruption and foreign imperialism. For the central planners at central banks today, the problem is deflation and low nominal growth. The problems are real, but the top-down solutions are illusory, the product of hubris and false ideologies.
James Rickards
2014
The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System
[See also Book Review: ‘The Death of Money’ by James Rickards which concludes with:
Rickards book is packed with cutting edge analysis and rational perspectives on pretty much every topic the world citizen has to know about. As of this moment, there is no other book offering explanations and solutions to the most pressing problems the world is facing, making “The Death of Money” an absolute must read.
I’m only about 25% into the book and find it fascinating. I found the market intelligence and financial war sections particularly interesting. Rickards and others worked with the CIA to design and implement a system which could have predicted the 9/11 attack a few days before it happened based on the shorting of airline stocks by people in the social networks of the hijackers. It also has other uses related to insider trading.
“An absolute must read”? I probably wouldn’t go that far, at least not based on what I have read so far. But it’s highly recommended.—Joe]
Has anyone done business with The Brass Exchange recently? That is where I used to get used brass for reloading .40 S&W and 30.06.
On September 28th, 2020 I ordered 1000 pieces of .40 S&W brass and received a confirmation of order email. My credit card was charged the same day.
As this was in the middle of the massive buying frenzy I didn’t expect it to arrive for a few weeks. But the weeks went by and I didn’t receive the order nor did I receive a tracking number.
I tried to contact them to find out the status of my order. The email bounced:
Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.
Subject: Missing order.
Sent: 12/21/2020 7:22 PMThe following recipient(s) cannot be reached:
‘thebrassexchange@gmail.com.’ on 12/21/2020 7:22 PM
Server error: ‘550 <thebrassexchange@gmail.com.> invalid address ‘thebrassexchange@gmail.com.”
Phone calls were not answered.
I contacted my bank about the failure to receive the product I had paid for. They investigated for a month then told me:
Dispute Number: 19289113
Date Posted: 9/28/2020
Merchant Name: THE BRASS EXCHANGE
Amount of Transaction: 107.10
Status: Credit is PermanentWe are pleased to let you know that the temporary credit we posted to your account for 107.10 on 12/24/2020 is now permanent.
Your dispute is now closed.
The Brass Exchange web site is still up and they claim they have product in stock. But I’m not willing to risk an order, and suggest others don’t either, unless there is reason to believe they are shipping the products ordered.
Dominion’s suing Rudy Giuliani, but not these Democrats. But an “unbiased” voting machine company that only sues Republicans has kind of blown its credibility already.
Glenn Reynolds
February 13, 2021
WELL, YES. THE DEMOCRATS’ AND MEDIA’S — BUT I REPEAT MYSELF — EFFORT TO MAKE ELECTION FRAUD CLAIM…
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
The sky has been sort of teasing us with a few snowflakes for several days. Then, last night, it got serious. By about 6:30 PM there was an accumulation of ten inches in our backyard.
Here is the view of the front of the house after I finished shoveling about 4:30 this afternoon. Barb started the work about 10:30 AM and I had a couple inches to remove from the stairs, sidewalk, and part of the driveway which had accumulated since she did her share.
So far it looks similar to Snowmageddon 2017 and just a few days later in the month than then.
We are thankful it is nothing like Snowpocalypse 2019.which gave us over 16 inches of snow and nearly canceled our wedding. Interestingly that storm was almost exactly the same days in February as this year.
We’re thinking maybe we should spend the middle weeks of February in Hawaii on the odd number years from now on.
Update 2/14/2021: Barb “played snowplow” this morning and cleaned the driveway and sidewalk again:
We have now essentially run out of room to put the snow. I’m glad it’s supposed to warm up today and continue with above freezing temperatures through the next few days.
Communists will be communists and do what communists do. The following newspaper clippings came from my hometown paper of almost 104 years ago. Via Brother Doug:
Click on the picture to get a high resolution image that you might be able to actually read. Or better yet, download it and open it in something you can enlarge it still more.
This was my great grandfather’s response:
As Brother Doug pointed out (I would add cities to the list of things they want to destroy):
The leftists were just as destructive 100 years ago as they are today.
Back then they wanted to burn the crops. Today they want to destroy the dams. “IWW” stands for Industrial Workers of the World. Grandpa Carey said, “boys and girls will patrol the entire section on horseback.” His oldest son was only 16 at the time. His oldest daughters, Ada, 23, Sadie, 20 and Pet, 18, were likely part of the patrol.
Sadie was my grandmother. At that time she, Ada, and Pet owned the land where Boomershoot is held.
If you’re over 40 you’ve lived through at least three epic financial bubbles: junk bonds in the 1980s, tech stocks in the 1990s, and housing in the 2000s. Each was spectacular in its own way, and each threatened to take down the whole financial system when it burst.
But they pale next to what’s happening today. Where those past bubbles were sector-specific, which is to say the mania and resulting carnage occurred mostly within one asset class, today’s bubble is spread across, well, pretty much everything – hence the term “everything bubble.”
When this one pops there won’t be a lot of hiding places.
John Rubino
February 8, 2021
Is This The Biggest Financial Bubble Ever? Hell Yes It Is
[I wrote about complex systems and emergent behavior last night. Our financial markets are another example of emergent behavior. The rule sets are large and complex but behavior still emerges that some may claim can only be explained by a conspiracy. But, again, no conspiracy need exist.
There is a financial bubble about to pop. Simultaneously there is a growing mass delusion about the existence of millions of “extremists” who must be “canceled” or even killed. And there is a pandemic (real or imagined, it doesn’t matter much in the context here) that are all contributing to epic shear forces in our society.
Prepare accordingly. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.—Joe]
Lyle comments here that:
Clearly, you’re pointing to a conspiracy.
I was about to press the “Post Comment” button a couple times and kept thinking of something else I wanted to add. It became post material rather than comment material.
Study a little bit about complex systems and emergent behavior. A simple example is John Conway’s Game of Life. A very simple rule set (read the “Explanation” on the web page) results in complex behavior and patterns. In addition to the default initial value click on three square in a row either vertical or horizontally and let than run.** The “rules of life” didn’t include explicit instructions for that pattern. Those patterns emerge from a very a simple rule set.
Or even think about a situation where a moderately large group of people (say a few thousand) are put on an unpopulated island and interact with each other with the simple rule of “do not intentionally inflict harm on others”. Or perhaps the slightly more complex rule set of The Ten Commandments.
Given the correct environment with sufficient readily available natural resources, won’t that group of people develop specialized skills, transportation systems, markets, entertainment, schools, etc.? And it will all happen without the need for any any “Master Planner” or “conspiracy” of the entire, or even a majority, of the people. Did that rule (or set of rules) include plans for some people to be farmers and others to be bakers and merchants? No. That behavior emerged from the simple rule or rules.
I claim that there exist a moderately large subset of people who enjoy, or at least get some sort of reward, from exerting power over others. Given the correct environment* that simple “rule” can result in the complex “cancel culture” and even genocidal behavior periodically emerging. No conspiracy required.
* I suspect a necessary component of the environment may be related to population size and perhaps population density. I suspect this because a certain amount of objectification is required. And with small group sizes objectification is difficult. Do we see tribes of a couple hundred people murder 10% of their own group? I don’t think so. I think the group size has to be in the thousands before that behavior sometimes emerges.
** A very cool one I just discovered is the following:
XXX
XXX
XXX
That is a cube with three on a side.
Data companies are starting to sell “extremists scores” to help companies avoid doing business to Trump supporters. What is your score?
Andrew Torba @a
Posted on Gab February 11, 2021
[Exercise of a specific enumerated right is evidence of being an “extremist”?
“Extremist”? With those type of numbers…
I don’t think that word means what they claim it means. Or, probably more accurately, someone is doing some really heavy duty projection.
As I have pointed out before, historically, the political left progressively tightens the purity tests and eventually eats their own. It is an almost inevitable consequence of their psychology.
This is particularly relevant to current events. For example. Gina Carano was fired by Disney for an “anti-Semitic” post on social media. One of my sources says this was the post:
This is, at least partially, confirmed by Variety and the WSJ.
Variety and the WSJ quote a Lucasfilm spokesperson as saying:
… her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
I see absolutely nothing to indicate she did anything even approaching what she is accused of doing. And, as one person in a private post on Facebook said:
Them firing her kinda proves her point.
We live in interesting times.
Prepare accordingly.—Joe]
Based on the first three weeks of this year and what appears to be on the short-term horizon, I am confident the term “detonation” will apply to this fateful year. The intensity level has already reached 10 but is headed up to 11.
Jim Quinn
January 25, 2021
FOURTH TURNING DETONATION (PART TWO)
[Quinn points out the events of 1781, 1861, and 1941. These were 80 years apart. And 80 years from 1941 is 2021.
Interesting.
And while 2021 has a lot of potential to be something more for the history books than we have already seen I find it difficult to believe history rhymes that perfectly.
Of course they could have used a very poor pseudo random number generator in the simulator and we can now see the pattern.—Joe]
Always love when the facilitators of Rapists & Hate Crime abusers expose themselves when demanding women, minorities, & LGBTQ+ be forced defenseless.
sacrebleu14 / SA Hinchcliffe @sacrebleu141
Tweeted on February 7, 2021
[This was in response to:
Martin Hussey @HusseyMartin
For a start in-depth background checks including mental health, raising the age limit for ownership of any firearm. Ban all assault weapons. Making it law that all firearms are stored in a secure place. Better still ban all firearms.
It is the obvious goal of the political left to make people helpless. That puts the politicians in a position to provide “protection” to those they decide are deserving. And, probably more importantly, to enable the punishment of those who would challenge their authority.—Joe]
Free men don’t obey unjust laws, they prepare for the tyrants who try to enforce them.
UR a Smart Ass, Carl @cleflore23
Tweeted on February 8, 2021
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Conservatives and moderates MUST start to physically separate from the political left. We must remove ourselves from the blood sucking parasites that have attached themselves to us. This allows us to remain free to think and speak as we like, and it takes all power away from leftists to hurt us by disrupting our means of making a living.
Secession is a more extreme measure, but it WILL become necessary if leftists refuse to accept that we are no longer participating in their games of fear and subterfuge. Leftists are collectivist by nature, and collectivists see people as property. Walking away is not an option in their minds. So, though we might successfully separate, this would only be the beginning of the battle.
The important thing is to first make sure that conservatives KNOW that there are places they can go where their civil rights are valued and defended. If conservatives feel completely isolated and alone, many will give up, go dark and pray they are not discovered. This is unacceptable.
Brandon Smith
January 20, 2021
Biden’s Presidency Will Be A Catalyst For Secession – And Perhaps Civil War
[See also my previous QOTD from this same article with particular attention to the “scapegoat Olympics” comment.—Joe]
American politics would be a lot better off if we had a lot more of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
…
Now, is the time for the Democratic congressional leadership to embrace Ocasio-Cortez.
Brad Bannon
February 5, 2021
AOC is an asset for Democrats, Greene is an albatross for the GOP
[Brad, I like the way you think. You just keep believing and advocating that.—Joe]
Lee’s bill so far has no cosponsors, and it is unlikely to make much progress. But it reflects a broader mindset in the Democratic Party, which used to at least pay lip service to the Second Amendment but lately talks and acts as if it does not exist.
Jacob Sullum
February 5, 2021
This Draconian Bill Would Turn Millions of Peaceful Gun Owners Into Felons
[I see lots of chatter about this bill. I think it is best to save that energy for something else. President Biden has his own plans which have a much better chance of success than those of Representative Lee.
Give money to SAF and others who are engaged in the court battles protecting our rights. Contact your representatives and let them know how important respect of the Constitutional limits on government are to you, your community, your state, and the nation.
Other potentially useful activities might be to document your boating accidents, camouflaging your gun safe, and establishing relationships with people you meet at the range. Be creative and do what you are comfortable doing to prepare for and resist laws such as Lee’s if it does get passed sometime in the future.—Joe]
Religion is very comforting to people because it offers complete guidance about every aspect of one’s life from what to eat, whom to have sex with, to which exact minute to light a candle. Today, religion has been replaced by “loving omnipotent” governments that offer the same.
Gad Saad @GadSaad
Tweeted on February 3, 2021
[I see the wisdom in this assessment.
More importantly, I see the terrifying consequences of this development.
What I desire to see is a large majority of the people able to think for themselves, arrive at good decisions, execute on those decisions, and take responsibility for their actions.
I fear my desires are beyond the capacity of our current population and certainly beyond their current programming.—Joe]
Via a tweet from Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras we have the work of gkchesterbelloc:
Forty-two derringers, three hundred forty-seven revolvers, and one thousand ninety-three pistols make the list. One thousand four hundred eighty-two total handguns are now de-certified by State of California and can no longer be bought or sold.
California should be “decertified”. It has been a long time since they have been fit to claim membership in a country which began with these words:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Went to Boomershoot … with my son. He shot my .223 with my ballistic tip prairie dog loads while I shot a .243 also with ballistic tip bullets. What an amazing time. The .223 was killing the 375 yard targets while the .243 was in the thick of it at 600 to 700 yards. The next year, it was my son and me along with three of my brothers. The year after that, we added my son’s wife and my wife. What a fantastic family experience. It is really difficult to put into words the exhilaration that comes with successfully hitting those targets but is it ever fun!
Powerwagon
February 2, 2021
Comment to From a first time Boomershooter
[There are bunch of things about Boomershoot that have to be experienced to be appreciated.
Yesterday Keith mentioned:
700 yards is so far that you can bring your eyes up from your scope, see the detonation, and let out a holler of joy before the sound reaches you.
When you are shooting a paper target you don’t fully appreciate the time of flight involved. A spotter with a good spotting scope and watching the trace has a clue. But most people don’t have that experience either. And still the whole, pull the trigger, lift up your head, then see the column of dust and smoke erupt from the ground and then wait nearly two seconds to hear and feel the explosion is something quite different and remarkable.
Time of flight for a 700 yard target with a .308 Winchester shooting a 168 grain bullet is about 1.1 seconds. The sound arrives back at the shooter after another 1.93 seconds. From trigger pull to sound is a full three seconds.
Another thing which must be experienced is the thump to your chest. You feel the explosions as much or more than you hear it. Windows rattle and buildings shake miles away.
That’s for the one and two pound targets 375 to 700 yards away. I’ll let you imagine, if you can, what the 35 pound charge used to lift 30 gallons of gasoline into the air is like from 30 yards away:
Boomershoot 2019 Fireball from Joe Huffman on Vimeo.
Or, you could experience it for yourself.—Joe]