A post by my friend Bill Foster.
In the post linked above, Bill talks about chaotic nature of race relations in the USA. While, the trend is generally positive in my experience, setbacks are anything but difficult to find. If you look at most any 100 year period, things have improved towards the end. If instead you look at most any random 10 or 20 year period, negative or neutral trends are at least as likely as positive.
We really need to do better. Read the essay and share it widely.
I am starting to suspect that Felon47 is not just catastrophically bad for the USA. Given the unpredicted military troubles Russia is experiencing as the 2nd best army in Ukraine, it just makes sense to look at the factors that weren't taken into consideration when doing the assessments prior to Russia's initial attack on Ukraine.
No one in the Intel community would have actually expected POTUS to run interference for Vladimir Putin. Our nation was (rightfully to my thinking) concerned about the expansion of the conflict to the point where a NATO ally was threatened or harmed which would result in us having to respond to an Article 5 situation.
While I never actually thought Putin's initial estimates of a week or less to take the capital, I did think that Ukraine would lose the hot war and then spend the next 20 or so years in a guerrilla war that would keep Russia occupied and out of the affairs of the "free" world.
The only reason I can come up with as to why the professionals - and my own - assessments were so wrong is that Felon47 is so mind-numbingly incompetent that his efforts to run interference for his Vladdy Daddy have actually helped Ukraine. Other nations are willing to undertake extreme measures to assist Ukraine in no small part because they hate Trump and want him to fail. Putin might have benefited from access to the American Intelligence apparatus but the Felon pays no attention to them and in some ways, they are comfortable with that. If Putin says it, the Felon takes it as gospel. So Putin has no one on his staff and no major allies that are willing and capable to tell him the truth or to demand the truth from him.
There are two major rules you must follow to win a war. Know your enemy. Know yourself. Trump is too ignorant for rules and it is starting to look as though his ignorance is contagious.
It could not happen to a more deserving dictator.
Several years ago in my hometown and the area around it, we had an absolute slew of public meetings in an effort to decide what our area was going to be. Were we going to be an extension of the campy tourism that attracted hordes to Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge? Were we going to be a tourist trap with a different set of lures? What if we didn’t want to be a tourist trap at all, what then?
A lot of opinions were expressed and notes were taken. Plans were developed. Some of them were immediately discarded but others made it further along in the process before being discarded. A few came to some level of fruition.
One of the ideas was developed into a concept and some conceptual drawings were made for the benefit of those of us whose internal graphic generator doesn’t function as well as your average architect’s. The architects & developers chose to present one of the concepts with a large PR push to help sell it. The concept was graphically revealed during a program at a recently renovated theater.
I was there in the theater, near the back of the main seating area. When they unveiled the artist’s rendering of how their project would look, I reacted verbally loud enough for those in my immediate vicinity to hear although I was mostly talking to myself. I said something to the effect that “apparently Black people will not be welcome”. I said that because the artist’s rendering was liberally populated with people but all of the depictions appeared to be of white people. There was some strained laughter in response to my comment and again, only the folks sitting about three or four folks in either direction would have heard me in that 1500 seat theater. Still, a week or so later when I saw another version of that artist’s rendering posted publicly, it contained what appeared to be depictions of Blacks and other minorities along with the whites.
I am not of the opinion that my casual linguistic expectoration somehow interrupted a sneakily planned racist act. As a matter of fact, I do not have any reason to believe there was any racist intent at all. That’s a problem in itself. Neither the artist, the architect, the developer or the money people they showed it to first saw a problem. Not one of them (and yes, I acknowledge they might have served more than one role) noticed the absence of their neighbors of color when presented with the graphic. If you ever need a clear example of institutional racism, there it is. There was no racist intent because there didn’t need to be. The lack of intent however, does nothing to stop an act or behavior from having a racist effect.
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A while back I expressed to a friend that the first time I ever saw a Black person on television for something that had nothing to do with being Black, it was Neil DeGrasse Tyson explaining something about an astrophysical event that was going on and that it happened well after my exit from the USN in 1983. My friend concluded that I must be misremembering. Now, I have no idea why that was their kneejerk response. Perhaps they could recall several instances of that happening and I just didn’t see it. Perhaps it was simply a “That can’t be right” moment.
In the end, the response doesn’t matter. What matters is the effect experienced by all of those who could make a claim similar to mine. It is a particularly insidious form of racism which, like the theater reveal, does not necessarily result from racist intent. It has been taught in several disciplines for a long time that you can’t do what you can’t see yourself doing. You have to be able to mentally visualize yourself doing a flip or a jump or a kick or beating a time record etc etc. When young me watched television or movies, the folks who did stuff were white, criminals were “other”. Scientists? White and male most every time. Drug dealers? “Others” most every time.
Consider how many folk might have made amazing contributions to the nation or to humanity in general if only they had known they had the ability. Plenty of minorities have done amazing things in this nation and elsewhere. They have overcome the issues I describe and probably several others. Imagine what they might have done if instead of wasting time and energy “overcoming” the various obstacles - whether they were intentionally or unintentionally placed, they instead started from a position of confidence and encouragement. Racism takes on a life of its own. It reaches a stage where no driver or decision is needed, no intent need be expressed. It is built into the system and it keeps working unless steps are taken to stop it. It effectively becomes autonomous.
Things are better now than they were in the early stages of my lifetime. Images of minorities as successful people are not difficult to find. But if you think racism is over, especially institutional racism, do a Google image search on the phrase “welfare queen”. Do that with the knowledge that the majority of folks on welfare in the USA are white people.
The engineer in me feels the strong urge to remind you that “better” is not the same as “all good” or “perfect”. It may be heading in that direction but it aint there yet. The Voting Rights Act made things better for minorities. The effect was dynamic rather than static and it had a tendency to spread. But while it made things better, there is still a significant amount of work to be done. The Google search I suggest above is not the only example of that by far but it is an example of it. The VRA’s work is not done and anyone who actually looked and was honest with themselves would not need that explained to them. Tennessee’s governor and other state politicians clearly have no desire for honesty, either expressed to them or from them. Unfortunately, TN is not unique.
The VRA was a known entity. It was peaceful, predictable and not punitive. I do not know what comes next. In that not knowing, neither I nor anyone I know is willing to guarantee that the next thing will meet those criteria. “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” — John F. Kennedy
I found the content of this talk to be comforting. The idea of humans who don't understand or have a clear and coherent definition of consciousness being able to create it has obvious undesirable elements. Imagine a cave man getting his hands on a nuclear weapon. He could kill and cook his mastodon in one fell swoop. Also everything near and not so near the mastodon most likely including the cave man.
Anil Seth does a pretty good job of suggesting that we are unlikely to have to face the modern equivalent of that scenario in the near future. Again, I find his reasoning comforting.
During my time in the USN, I went to sea several times on several different ships. I have been all over the Mediterranean and seen a goodly portion of the North Atlantic. Sometimes the ship anchored out of sight of land. Sometimes we basically cut large circles in the water.
Whether we were sitting still, moving slowly, or traveling at “operational” speed there is one thing in particular that we were NOT doing. We were not protecting the ocean. We were not there to stop others from using the ocean near us. As a matter of fact, we quite frequently shared the ocean immediately around us with other vessels commercial, military or recreational from any number of nations.
But if we were not there to protect the ocean in whole or in part, why were we there?? We were there to prove we could be there. We were there so that if something happened closer to there than to our nation, we could respond (assuming a response was necessary) more quickly than a response that had to come from the USA proper. In government/military speak, we were there to “force project”. We also are typically very visible so as to let others know that we can force project at will.
It is not necessarily obvious but the Army works that way too. When we either establish an American base or are granted significant access to a foreign ally’s base, we are not doing it to protect that particular bit of geography or the local inhabitants. Our primary purpose will be to force project. The Philippine Islands were not in particular danger of being invaded or assaulted. We put multiple bases there anyway. We did it so we did not have to respond to Asian issues from the USA.
There are secondary and tertiary reasons for those bases. The economic benefit to the area can be significant but, it is generally a side effect.
We do not have bases in Germany because we think Hitler might not be gone for good. We have them to enable a quick and effective response to issues affecting our European allies and by extension, us. The primary threat consideration for those bases has been the Soviet/Russian/Eastern Bloc nations.
Removing a base or simply reassigning the soldiers from that base does not directly endanger the area immediately around that base. It does diminish our ability to force project. It does diminish our ability to present a speedy response to threats coming from that general direction. It effectively makes our nation weaker and less secure.
Sometimes a base outlives its usefulness. Political and national alliances have been known to change. Technological changes can render a base significantly less useful. But the core truths do not change. The removal of several thousand troops from any given European base might well cause some fiscal and social discomfort to any number of individual Europeans. But it will not significantly impact the EU. What it will do is negatively affect our ability to project military power. It might make some less willing to do business with those who purchase consumable supplies for our deployed military units. It will hurt us more than it hurts them.
I would suggest that is not sustainable “leadership”.
Belle of the Ranch is fond of communicating any of several truisms. One of my favorites I hear from her is “Nations don’t have friends, they have interests.”
She does not mention another observable truism. That being that leaders of nations can be susceptible to influence from specific leaders of other nations or otherwise powerful people. We observe that in our own “leadership” in which other national leaders appear to have outsized influence. I could also point out that current leadership in particular appears to be especially vulnerable to flattery and useless gifts of frippery.
A reasonable assessment of the motivation(s) for our current military involvement in Iran would suggest that Bibi Netanyahu was very instrumental in convincing Felon47 to commit huge amounts of national treasure and no few lives of USA citizens for gains we will not need to brag about.
I could of course, go on about any of several current and former national leaders with autocratic tendencies who dubiously earned the admiration of the guy trying to destroy our nation for profit.
But for as betrayed as I might personally feel, there are those who have been betrayed far worse. I’m thinking specifically of Iran and their leaders. I would have to include the religious leadership, the Republican Guard, and the military leadership. As much as Felon47 appears to be under the direct control and influence of Vladimir Putin, it is difficult for me to conceptualize the situation wherein he commits us to violence in Iran and the Strait without the express permission of Putin. The same Putin who has been counting on Iran for drones and electronics and other goods to help them in their doomed-to-failure “special military action” in Ukraine.
I’m serious. While run of the mill Russians may be starting to doubt Putin’s competence, they have been conditioned to believe whatever he tells them. Iranians may have been conditioned but NOT to believe or revere Putin. Were I in charge of the military in Iran, I would be developing the plan to grab and relocate Putin immediately upon his political fall or even shortly before. They are well within reason to believe that he could have ordered Trump to stand down or at least to continue with the status quo wherein we commit the occasional act of terrorism after punishing them for adhering to the internationally agreed upon JCPOA.
International relations are complicated. I don’t know what was in Putin’s mind. (Although to be fair, I seriously doubt he values Iranian lives and comforts as much or more than he values the lives of the Russian soldiers he has been using for years now to soak up Ukrainian ammo.) What I know is that as soon as he perceived his interests as diverging from Iranian interests, he was willing to betray them regardless of what they had done for Russia.
I don’t know where Vlad will go to attempt to escape accountability but, I will be the least surprised person in the world if I wake up to a headline informing me that Persian elements have assisted him in a definitive test of localized gravitic effects.
In several different discussions over the last few weeks, I have compared the state of AI (which I still think would be better described as a Manufactured Intelligence or MI) to the state of transportation in the nation when the Model T was first being sold.
Imagine you were there for the first sale of a “T” in NYC and you heard the purchaser say “Finally, I can drive to California”. Perhaps you would consider the fact that the car needed smoother travel surfaces than a horse did and that gave you some doubt. If you were a time traveler you might note that there were no gas stations and the hardware stores that carried fuel were not guaranteed to be conveniently placed. Perhaps you might think about the fact that the car and the engine that powered it were fairly new and largely unproven technologies.
If you were able to consider all of those things, you would be hard pressed to come to any conclusion other than that first purchaser was optimistically delusional at best and creatively suicidal at worst. However, if you were honest with yourself, you could also conclude that if absolutely everything went as well as it could, such a trip was absolutely doable. Sure, it might take you a month or two but, in theory, it would have been possible even if the failure probability was north of 90%.
Basically, that early adopter would be trying to shortcut evolution. Our cultural evolution has given us Interstate highways and a vast loose network of refueling locations. As one who has driven from East TN to CA more than once, I can assure you there were no concerns that I would not be able to find fuel or that a flat tire or other minor mechanical failure would result in the cancellation of the trip. Though the vehicles I used for the trips I took were far and away more advanced than the Model T, I would suggest that with a moderate amount of proper planning, the probability of catastrophic failure for a Model T to make that trip today is probably less than 40%. That is with leaving the car the exact same and using the evolved transportation environment.
The use case(s) being pushed or marketed for AI for your average human has them attempting to do that evolution skipping thing. To accept the uses as marketed, we would have to ignore the fact that LLMs have been delivering fallacious answers to the communication medium being mined by LLMs for answers to our questions. We would have to ignore the fact that there exists among us no few “trolls” who purposefully post wrong or misleading information on that communication medium with the primary or secondary intent of corrupting the answers an AI might deliver.
I am not a Luddite. I firmly believe that there will come a time when the way AI is being marketed will seem reasonable and will reflect their actual and honest abilities. I firmly believe that there are use cases in specific industries where the AI is currently a useful and reasonable tool. (AlphaFold anyone?) But for anything “mission critical” LLMs in their current (and past) state are a risky tool at best. They should only be used if you are willing to check their work.
Unfortunately, cars and AI are not the only places where we(humanity) are attempting to skip evolution. One such effort is particularly vexing to me. The approximate cost so far of the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) is $10billion. That covers development, manufacture, launch, and ongoing operations. If you happen to be as much of a tech nerd as I am, you will be aware of the massive amount of science that continues to be done on the data being provided by JWST. OTOH, the NASA Artemis program cost has been estimated at approximately $100billion through 2025. Four really nice people got to take some pretty kewl photos with their mobile phones. A rough seat of the pants analysis suggests we paid ten times more for a ten thousandth of the science. Surely I cannot be the only one that sees the problem with this.
A significant percentage of the Artemis cost has to do with the fact that it carried humans and they were nice enough people that we wanted to bring them back safely. Imagine how much of that cost could have been eliminated if we did not need any life support for the mission. Imagine that we had included a number of sensors and then left the capsule/sensors in orbit around the Moon. We could be receiving scientifically valuable data for months or years to come (and sure, yea, occasionally some really pretty pictures of Earth-rise). Even if we wanted to drop another robot (or five) on the surface, according to the size and complexity, it would be vastly less expensive than Artemis.
I am not a space Luddite either. I simply believe that an awful lot of what we get from sending astronauts to space would be better done by automated systems. Astronauts are hugely important for figuring out how going to space affects astronauts. Other than that, most of what they do, not all by any stretch, could be done less expensively by automation. With the exception of physical sample recovery, the automated systems would not need to be brought back which is itself a significant expenditure. Rather than wait for a conveniently timed and placed asteroid strike, we could crash the automated craft into the surface for science as we have done on some other missions.
Once we know more about space and science advances in other arenas, we might choose to spend the money to launch humans on extended missions. For the foreseeable future however, it is my considered opinion that automated missions - whether to the Moon or other bodies or Lagrange points - make far more fiscal AND scientific sense. Humans and human habitable constructs are not yet ready to do long term work in space and I think our insistence on trying to force the issue is actually retarding our scientific advancement.
I sent everything before this paragraph to a scientist friend to make sure I wasn’t leaving anything out and was reminded that some of the things NASA and other humans do is for marketing. The engineering aspects of my background lead me to find marketing to be a necessary evil but still an evil. Without humans in the story, the argument goes, other humans will lose interest and will not want tax dollars spent on it. I cannot argue effectively against that but I can say that marketing that increases the costs by a factor of 10 over the actual project costs is something I can and will argue against. Again, my opposition is rooted in the effort to skip the orderly evolution of a given science. When it is time, when we are ready, when the science justifies the fiscal and physical risk, I am all in. For now, I think we need a lot more robotic additives before we declare the mix of space travel ingredients to be soup.
I asked Google Gemini if the White House Ballroom has ever hosted the WHCD. Obviously, I was curious because immediately following the latest "event" Felon47 harangued about the fact that such an attempt could not happen in the event space he is attempting illegally construct after having illegally destructed the East Wing.
If one were to look for an active and recent example of a non-sequitur, this is it. The ballroom he wants built would not have affected the WHCD in the least. Felon47 will always attempt to find a way to lie to you. He doesn't care if it makes sense, he doesn't care if it is relevant, he doesn't care if most of us know it is a lie. As long as he gets to lie to those that are willing to contort their logic and morals to accommodate him, he is willing to lie to them.
Everything that follows is the response I got from Google. Feel free to do your own research.
The short answer is no. Historically, the White House has never hosted the White House Correspondents' Dinner (WHCD) in any of its rooms, including the East Room (which is the closest thing to a "ballroom" the historic residence has).
Here is the breakdown of why that is and how the current landscape is changing:
The WHCD is organized by the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA), which is an independent organization of journalists.
The White House simply hasn't had a room large enough to accommodate the modern dinner.
The East Room: The largest room in the Executive Residence, it can only seat about 200 guests for dinner.
The WHCD Scale: The dinner typically draws over 2,500 attendees.
As of early 2026, there has been significant news regarding a "White House Ballroom."
Following a security incident at the April 2026 WHCD held at the Washington Hilton, the administration has cited the event's safety risks as a primary reason to move such large-scale gatherings onto the secure grounds of the White House.
| Era | Typical Venue |
| 1921 (First Dinner) | Arlington Hotel |
| Mid-20th Century | Various (Willard Hotel, Statler Hilton) |
| Modern Era | Washington Hilton (The "Hinckley" Hilton) |
| White House? | Never. Only used for State Dinners, not the WHCD. |
It is an old joke. Well, technically it is several old jokes.
Since I am, to my discredit and shame, only familiar with humor traditions of Western culture and in the English language specifically, I acknowledge there may well be far more “biggest lie” jokes than I have been exposed to.
Sometimes it aint a joke. I have heard the phrase used when humor was the absolute last thing anyone was attempting to communicate. Sometimes usage of the phrase precedes a verbal or physical altercation.
As a general rule, my experience with the phrase is limited to those two use cases. It is used either as a joke or as a threat. That changes today. Okay, perhaps “today” is minorly disingenuous but, I assure you it is a recent change.
The ironic thing is that I have a maxim for pretty much my entire life that is as deserving of the description “the biggest lie” if anything is. “All’s fair in love and war” is that maxim. Until recently I gave it no thought at all. That lack of thought was justified (in my mind) by the blatant wrongness of the claim. Anyone who has served in the military knows full well that war has all kinds of rules. There are also traditions and habits and absolute no nos. No matter how much you love someone, inflicting physical pain is frowned upon. Taking fiscal advantage of your love interest is not something you do to impress their family. Making promises you have no intention of keeping is not typically seen as a loving act. As it turns out, there are in fact rules in love and war. There are things that are considered unfair or out of bounds in love, war or business.
All of that is knowledge I would expect most any human to have. Perhaps we might have to think specifically about a given situation but eventually, we will come to understand that regardless of where you are or what you are doing, there are actions that are unacceptable. Most every human and plenty of entities in other species appear to know this. But not Felon47.
A look at Donald John Trump’s life, casual or indepth, leads one inescapably to the conclusion that he actually, honestly lives his life in such a manner as to indicate absolute belief in that flawed maxim. He openly expresses the desire for those subordinate to him to ignore the laws, local, state, national or international, and carry out his orders or follow his suggestions. He had sexual affairs with girls or women even while he was ostensibly in monogamous relationships. He appears to have done it in every allegedly committed relationship he has been in. It looks for all the world that he fully believes that “All is fair in love and war,” The evidence that gives lie to the maxim for the majority of humanity, has had no apparent effect on him.
I am starting to think that the reason he lies so frequently and completely is rooted in the fact that he believes whatever he does is perfectly fine within the arenas of love, war, and business. I suppose I could point out just how incredibly flawed such thinking is but, the other thing that Felon47 demonstrates is a slogan from one of my biker tee shirts. “If I have to explain it, you wouldn’t understand”. A different quote may be even more relevant here "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary (also applicable: power) depends on his not understanding it."
As a young, innocent and ignorant peon in the USN, I found myself needing and acquiring a pretty damn high security clearance. The military is pretty good about telling you what to do and when to do it and how it should be done. Unfortunately, the "why" is frequently a parental-esque "because I said so."
A result of this is that my understanding of what might disqualify one for such a clearance was flawed. Time, experience, scuttlebutt(read: gossip) and observation did a fairly good job of filling in the blanks for me and correcting my fallacious assumptions.
Being a preacher's kid in a family that all but lived at the church, there was damn near nothing in my personal history that could have disqualified me - or so I thought. Well after I had my clearance, I spoke with others who also had received clearances and was astonished to learn they had admitted to things in their interviews that I had believed would be immediate disqualifications. They had admitted they had smoked pot, masturbated, associated with felons etc etc. They got clearances anyway.
While honesty requires me to admit that it took a while to put it all together, eventually I was made to understand that quite frequently it was not the act that was disqualifying. It was an effort to hid the act that got folk into trouble. See, if you want badly enough to keep something hidden, you become a prime target for foreign intelligence operatives or even our home grown malintentioned citizens. They will find out just how badly you want to keep your secrets secret. OTOH, if you just openly admit to having screwed your wife's cousin, in theory no one can use that information to pressure you into divulging classified information.
And so we get to the ironical aspect of the essay. If someone wanted a clearance but had had a close and long-term friendship with a known and convicted pedophile, they might choose to attempt to minimize that information. They might reasonably choose to hide the friendship especially if the individual is no longer in their social circle for whatever reason. That effort, the choice to hide something negative of significance, would easily be enough to disqualify them for a clearance if the investigator knows of it or even just suspects.
Felon47 would not be able to get a clearance via the path that I used to get a clearance. However, as POTUS, he has the ultimate national control over access to classified material. His own access to our most classified information is an irony of near infinite scope. An individual who could not survive the process I went through is now the national ultimate authority on who gets access to classified information. I am not of the opinion that him having that power has been good for the nation.
I am guessing that Putin, Orban, Netanyahu and associated dictatorial asswipes are pretty comfortable with it. I am hugely disappointed that so many of those I served with and those who were protected by my service, are so willing to turn our national secrets over to one who demands complete loyalty while offering no loyalty whatsoever to anything that is not money or power.
I feel the urge to remind everyone that the USA is by no means the only nation with an intelligence apparatus. While POTUS is the ultimate classifying authority in this nation, he has no authority whatsoever over the information generated by and classified by other nations. Whether or not “we” feel like it is justified (and for the record, I do), those who would normally share their intel with this nation are being a lot more circumspect. Rather obviously, that does not make our nation more secure.
If the foreigners should suspect that others in the misadministration have adopted the Dear Leader’s casual attitude about intel from other nations, for their own security they MUST stop sharing with the USA.
The final shoe to drop may never actually drop but the potential is too juicy to ignore. Those who have shown themselves to be fine with the manner in which this misadministration handles classified information regardless of the source, could quite feasibly find themselves no longer able to get clearance once some level of sanity is restored to our political system. That potential does the heavy lifting of letting me sleep comfortably.
WE ARE LOOSING
TO BLACKS, THEY ACT MATURE
Soooooooo, the video linked below showed up in my feed with the two lines quoted above, visible on the video. Being true and honest about my own pedantic assholeishness, I ignored it.
Abusing words needlessly is a good way to make sure I ignore a given video or essay. Be it wrong, stupid or something else, I prejudge frequently on the basis of language. Oddly enough, I can forgive honest ignorance. TBF, I do not wish to be held responsible for things I actually and honestly do not know. As such, I cannot in good conscience hold others responsible for things they honestly do not know.
I have no real idea who added those words to the video. I am at this stage, pretty damn sure it was not the speaker featured in the video. I encountered the video several times prior to actually watching it. However, when a "trusted" source recommended it, I thought I would watch at least a couple of minutes which should be sufficient to justify my casual dismissal. It turned out that the speaker was an author I paid a lot of attention to in the early days of the internet/Web. I watched it in its entirety and strongly suggest you do as well.
Seriously, stop what you are doing and pay attention to this video.
It is incredibly atypical for me to agree fully with anyone on just damn near anything. That is somewhat intentional. It makes me very nervous for everyone to agree with me - it makes me assume I got something horribly wrong.
So you should absolutely take it seriously that I am struggling to find something to disagree with in my friend's post on Substack. You should go read it in full and point out where I should be in opposition since my reflexively argumentative nature is apparently malfunctioning.
You may want to read other of his musings and you could even find yourself wanting to subscribe. Click this link and share it if you feel so inspired.
I own weapons. Several as a matter of fact. Some are traditional martial arts weapons. Some are my own improvisation. Some, are firearms. Some are projectile weapons that do not require chemical explosions.
I legally own and possess those because I am a law-abiding citizen and I can. All of that to say that my ability to own, possess and wield weapons has not been obliterated in the recent or distant past.
I am 99.999999999999999999999999% sure that if I knew the exact flight path and the exact time and intensely practiced for a year, nothing in my (small) personal arsenal could bring down an F15 or an A10.
No sane person needed the confirmation that Felon47 is an obligate liar but that confirmation is here anyway. Obliterated weapons systems or obliterated military capacity would not be any better at bringing down either of those warplanes than I am. Yet, both of them went down and other aircraft have taken fire.
For no reason or for any reason at all, Felon47's first impulse is to lie to you. (unfortunately it is also his second, third, fourth ad infinitum impulse)
I understand the temptation to cheer at the dismissal of senior misadmistration officials.
But we need to be honest with ourselves. The replacements are always more evil and less competent - even when it seems like no one could possibly be.I am not a youngster. My corporeal form has circled the Sun 70+ times. Depending on when exactly during those rotations you approached me, there is a solidly high probability that you could well have found me being somewhat less than serious.
Yea, I like to joke around. Practical jokes, funny memes, satire, or whatever else I thought someone would laugh at are all things you might have to suffer through interacting with me. This year though, this year is different. Well, technically this month is different. I might even suggest that it is just today that is different. I mean, I said "today" but really, I should say "this date".
Today is 4/1, April the first. the 91st day of the year. Today is April Fools Day. Traditionally, this is a day for practical jokes, outrageous lies and in general a good natured exploration into the gullibility of humans.
I have been on both sides of the April Fools silliness. There have been years when I was working enough that I did not notice the date and as a result, fell prey to those paying more attention. Other years, I was the asshole enjoying the mild discomfort of those trying to give their sense of humor a break.
Today was different though. For the first April Fools in my memory, I neither saw nor proposed one single date related effort at humor. Like others on social media, I saw some posts suggesting that what the misadministration is doing is more outrageous than anything I might come up with. Still, I am not possessed of sufficient ego to believe that the nation would follow my humor lead so, I was prepared to observe and ideally, enjoy the efforts of others. That didn't happen.
Regardless of what you actually think of Felon47 and crew of incompetents, that he has reduced the level of humor in the nation (probably world). We are more polarized and more bitter than at any point in my memory. We have the biggest April Fool ever.
It ain't funny.
If you happen to be a news junkie, as several of those who opine on things political and cultural are, you might have noticed some of the same things I noticed. Among those things, I have read reports of individuals who served honorably in the USA military but who were not citizens of this nation being deported. Some of them had combat included in that honorable service. They were deported anyway.
I have seen reports of folks who have lived in this nation for decades - raised children here, held jobs, paid taxes, and generally obeyed every law that had nothing to do with immigration. When identified and apprehended they were unceremoniously deported.
The federal (mis)administration currently in power has undertaken an effort to eliminate birthright citizenship. They want citizenship to not be automatic upon being born here. Now this is going to shock no one but, I do not agree with them. The reason we have lawyers and judges is that the law is neither perfect nor absolute. Extenuating circumstances exists. I am not saying to ignore the law. I am saying that each case should be looked at individually.
But never mind my issues with the system as is. I am used to having political disagreements and I understand the art of compromise. This ain't about that.
What I want to know is the other half of the battle. If neither military service, abiding by the laws, or being born here is enough to guarantee one citizenship, what will determine eligibility for citizenship? Will it be wealth? Skin tone? Whether or not Felon47 finds you fuckable? Seriously, what will the qualifications be?
This crew has a consistent habit of claiming something is a problem and in need of immediate banning. Then they absolutely avoid presenting a fix or a preventative or process going forward that will not result in the same problem in a few weeks/months/years. They do that because you let them. I strongly suggest you stop letting them. Whether you agree with them or not, demand a plan. Demand that the plan be Constitutional. Demand that the plan be feasible. Demand that the plan be something you would be happy to put your name on.
Due to the lamentable lack of any surprising great things AND the lack of unforeseen horrible things, I did indeed attend the No Kings protest in Knoxville, TN.
Historically, East Tennesseans are notoriously publicly apathetic. Even if we do love something or hate it, we would keep quiet about it. Getting us to show up to protest something was hard. Yesterday we showed up pretty good.
Felon47 is for reasons I will never understand, an incredibly polarizing figure. (I fully and easily understand any hatred expressed towards him. It is my inability to see anything in him worthy of support by an actual human that escapes my understanding.) If there is one positive thing about him, accidental though it may be, it is that he is causing my communities to reflect and decide what our values really are. While I remain dismayed by the number of my neighbors who appear to value greed, immorality, misogyny, dishonesty, and racism, I am also impressed by the number who have decided to publicly reject those things.
As I have gotten involved with Indivisible Knoxville, the local organizer of the protests, I had an assigned duty. I was an observer/counter. I walked the entire length of the protest with a clicker counter and attempted to get a rough count of attendees. The snapshots and videos will have to tell the story as the crowd was quite fluid. Folks crossed the streets and in that manner could have been counted twice or not counted at all. I did not observe any untoward events. No LEOs were attacked - physically or verbally. I observed one well-behaved counter protester who was treated with respect or ignored.
I started my counting at the official start time of the protest and was done with an hour still to go. I attempted to count the cars honking their horns or otherwise indicating their support of the protest. I counted the south side of the protest first and by the time I had gotten through about half of the north side, the south side appeared to have approximately doubled in number. Again, a rough count was the best I could do. I got about 2800 with my clicker and I estimated the final number to be better than double that. 5k - 8k is my guesstimate.
BONUS: As an apparent accident of scheduling, the Washington D.C. Gay Men's Chorus was in town and performed a few songs enjoyed by those close enough to hear them. Click on this link for a sample.
When Ford Motor Company released their first automobile for sale, there was an issue. The Model T ran on a refined petroleum product.
I get that the fact that fuel was needed fuel is not news to you. That also was not actually the issue. The issue lay in the acquisition of said petroleum products. There was no such thing as a gas station or a convenience store with gas pumps. When an automobile operator needed fuel, a trip to the hardware store to purchase a container or two of fuel.
Now, if the need for fuel was absolute and immediate, say you ran out during a drive (fuel gauges and such did not yet exist), then you would probably need to find alternative transportation to the hardware store or wherever else the source was. A one horsepower vehicle was a very likely choice. Although TBF a carriage or wagon could be pulled by more than one horse. While I was certainly not around in those days, I assume that some folks ended up taking an unplanned walk.
That scenario is what I think about whenever some short-sighted moron suggests that electric cars can't go mainstream because there is insufficient infrastructure to conveniently refuel them. Then I think about a television commercial from a few years ago. A rugged individualist type driving a pickup truck that is pulling a horse trailer. The truck and trailer somehow magically (certainly through no fault of the aforementioned rugged individualist) gets stuck in mud/soft ground. Rugged individualist (RI) does not get frustrated or angry. Instead he harnessed up the horses he was hauling and uses the horses to pull the truck out of the mire thus demonstrating his something something tough guy RI.
The morons laugh about out-of-power EVs having to be charged up on road by an internal combustion vehicle carrying a generator. Apparently actually thinking about stuff and Gawd forbid, studying history is just too damn difficult.
Infrastructure has not historically appeared fully formed all at once. Building the interstate highway system, electrifying rural America, or even simple sewer systems, all of that took time and planning and effort to come to fruition. The same will be true of the infrastructure for EVs. Whether we are talking battery swaps or solar powered parking lots or straight grid connections, eventually there will be enough of it that people will act and speak as though it had always been that way.
Look, I get that some folk really like gas/diesel vehicles. I have owned sports cars and currently own a couple of motorcycles. I enjoy my gas powered pickup truck. That does not stop me from seeing that EVs and autonomous vehicles are coming and they are coming in a hurry. Making a stupid argument is not gonna stop it.
This piece was originally written and published in 2016. I referenced it in a previous post so, here it is in total.
Any number of my friends have described themselves as “Fiscal Conservatives”. One did so a while back in a Facebook comment. I answered with the following response.
“I am going to have to take exception to your description of yourself as fiscally conservative. The problem is that some people are not as smart or given to indepth thinking as are you. As such, they will jump to the conclusion that if someone does not describe themselves as a fiscal conservative, they must be a fiscal liberal. Of course, there is no such thing. Oh sure, there are plenty of folk who indulge in profligate fiscal policies for their personal or business finances but there is no significant group with any power base that could be described as fiscal liberals. That makes the term "fiscal conservative" a variation on Robert Heinlein's best way to lie. He said the best way to lie was to tell the truth so unconvincingly that no one believes you. While you really are fiscally conservative, saying so implies an opposite that simply does not exist.
Now there are plenty of folks who prioritize things over fiscal policy. The Greens prioritize environmental policy and it does make sense that if you can't breathe or if you have no clean water, saving money will not be anywhere near as impressive. Other groups prioritize other things but none of them are proponents of profligate spending for frivolous reasons. The icon of the majority religion of this nation, as told in the sacred book the alleged adherents allegedly revere(the bible), prioritized caring for the poor, sick, children, and helpless over saving or making money. According to said allegedly revered book, the icon went so far as to violently remove those engaged in fiscal operations from the temple. But as I said, an awful lot of people lack the depth of thought necessary to extrapolate and adjust their actions accordingly.”
Of course, the idea continued to percolate in the back of my mind. It occurs to me that there is always a cost associated with regulations. Typically for a code or regulation to mean anything at all there has to be some level of inspection and/or enforcement. In theory, the goal of the codes or regulations should be to ensure that the cost of an action, product, or process is borne by those who profit from it. So we have a situation wherein the public, in the form of the government, pays to enforce regulations that prevent the public from being unfairly burdened with the detritus left over from the action, product, or process that profits or benefits an individual or small group. Now, I am happy to go on at length about risk socialization and profits privatization but that is for a different essay. For this one, the takeaway is that codes and regulations have a fiscal impact.
Generally the fiscal impact is negative - it costs money. I acknowledge there could be situations where that cost is offset but generally, enforcement of regulations involves paying someone to do inspections and making provisions for accurate records keeping or, to put it another way, establishing a bureaucracy.
The leap that realization sponsored is probably not an obvious one for most folks. It occurred to me that in the political realm, one could not honestly be both fiscally and socially conservative. The terms are of necessity mutually exclusive, considered from the aspect of codifying behavior into law. There is no way to ban abortion or control the sexual activities of consenting adults or even to regulate the use of organic recreational substances(psilocybin mushrooms or cannabis etc) without funding those who would enforce the rules made about those behaviors. In other words, to be willing to regulate social behavior is to be willing to spend common funds in that effort. (Yes, you could push for turning enforcement over to private entities and allowing them to collect fines or confiscate assets but surely that can’t sound like a good idea to anyone. If it does, please go elsewhere to discuss it.)
The only way to force compliance or verify compliance is to allocate tax dollars.
Even the tax dollars from those who vehemently disagree with the necessity of those rules, even the tax dollars from those engaged in the very behaviors being regulated, even the tax dollars from those who refuse to follow the teachings of the Christ because it would cost too much in their opinion, those tax dollars will have to be spent on enforcement or, the regulations mean nothing at all.
I do not doubt or argue the existence of people who find both the wasteful expenditure of public funds and certain individual behaviors distasteful. Politics however, is about setting priorities, about choosing what gets attention first. That doesn’t mean you don’t think other things are deserving of attention, just that you believe that YOUR THING has to be considered first. If a person prioritizes restraint in public spending, they could make the claim of being fiscally conservative. Something HAS to be the primary concern. However, simply saying it is the primary concern doesn’t make it so. Actions have to support the words.
Now, the individual “you” can believe anything you like. You can tell yourself and others that you want to minimize tax dollar spending and that you want to ban abortions and you want to ban Gay sex and you want to ban minorities walking around in public as though they had rights. It cannot however, be a movement or political organization. At the governmental or societal level, you cannot want to create new regulations and oppose spending. You can twist your words and torture your justifications all you like but the basic truth of it will not change. If you want to regulate what I can smoke or who I can screw, you are simply not even a little bit fiscally conservative.
If you want the government to spend wantonly on the things you deem deserving of wanton spending, the takeaway is that you want the government to spend wantonly. A social conservative cannot be a fiscal conservative. Lying to me, lying to yourself will not make it so. If you want the government to spend wantonly to save fetuses or to prevent adult citizens from addressing their mental, physical or social issues with a plant that grows wild or to continue the effective subjugation of humans you feel are inferior, the takeaway is that you want the government to spend wantonly. Regardless of what you call yourself, you are no fiscal conservative.
Your actions and the results of your actions will determine how you are known. The aforementioned allegedly revered book quotes the allegedly revered religious icon as saying that you will know a tree by the fruit it bears. It isn’t what you say, it is what you produce or cause to be produced that will identify you.
So, what is it going to be?
