With the sudden rise in the cost of commodities, I’ve had to fire a midget and pull an extra shifts to pay for clean underwear. Its a cotton picking shitshow, let me tell ya.
Here is one as per my usual habit of refusing to pay for bullshit that passes for journolists:
Conservatives beware: If the main elements in Joe Biden’s American Families Plan become law, they’ll be very hard to repeal. Why? Because they’ll deliver huge, indeed transformational benefits to millions.
I mean, just imagine trying to take away affordable child care, universal pre-K and paid leave for new parents once they’ve become part of the fabric of our society. You’d face a backlash far worse than the one that followed Republican attempts to eliminate protection for coverage of pre-existing health conditions in 2017. And that backlash quickly gave Democrats control of the House and set the stage for their current control of the Senate and White House as well.
So what’s the Republican counterargument? Well, much of the party appears uninterested in debating policy, preferring to lash out at imaginary plans to ban red meat or give immigrants Kamala Harris’ children’s book.
The official G.O.P. response to Mr. Biden’s speech on Wednesday, by Sen. Tim Scott, seemed low-energy;
Wut? His response to president colostomy bag was low energy? How fucking hard is it for you to just call him a house negro like you want to? I’d respect you more for at least being honest instead of picking up 30 peices of silver every time you come across as a communist hack trying to troll MAGAtards.
Mr. Scott is still complaining about “big government” and denouncing Mr. Biden for spending money on things other than roads and bridges. The closest thing to a real argument was the claim that Mr. Biden is proposing “the biggest job-killing tax hikes in a generation” — presumably a reference to Bill Clinton’s tax increase in 1993.
Indeed, Mr. Biden intends to pay for his proposals with higher taxes on corporations and high-income individuals, including a dastardly plan to give the Internal Revenue Service enough resources to crack down on wealthy tax cheats.
Who will move their assets to places the IRS cannot control. Lets all give a round of applkause for the government’s revenue windfall in taxing the poor.
It’s important, then, to realize that the families plan would, if enacted, be a major job creator. That is, it would increase the number of Americans — women in particular — in paid employment substantially, probably by several million.
To understand why, the first thing you need to know is that while Republicans always claim that raising taxes on the rich will destroy jobs, they have never yet been right. Mr. Scott’s rejoinder to Mr. Biden appeared to suggest that the 1993 Clinton tax hike killed jobs; in reality, the United States added 23 million jobs on Mr. Clinton’s watch. People also seem to forget that Barack Obama presided over a significant hike in high-end taxes at the beginning of his second term; the economy continued to add jobs rapidly, at the rate of about 2.5 million a year.
Oh, and employment in California boomed after Jerry Brown raised taxes on the wealthy in 2012, defying conservative declarations that the state was committing economic suicide.
It’s also instructive to compare the United States with other advanced countries, almost all of which have higher taxes and more generous social benefits than we do. Do they pay a price for these policies in the form of reduced employment?
They do pay a price in terms of reduced buying power. The EU citizen last year as a whole only compared $0.67 to the $1. That clearly has no effect on employment if your an idiot that can’t read a chart.
And California? You know better than that….maybe not. While you are correctly cherry-picked their unemployment stats in 2012, it was perfectly in line of an overall trend that began in 2010. Not to mention the drop in unemployment in 2012 was in part a parlor trick by Obama’s BLS changing their definition of “unemployed” to not include people leaving the workforce.
Those people by definition weren’t employed then or now, you dumbfuck.
Many Americans would, I suspect, be surprised to learn that the truth is that many high-tax, high-benefit countries are quite successful at creating jobs. Take the case of France: Adults between the ages of 25 and 54, the prime working years, are more likely to be employed in France than they are in America, mainly because French women have a higher rate of paid employment than their American counterparts. The Nordic countries have an even larger employment advantage among women.
How can employment be so high in countries with lots of “job-killing” taxes? The answer is that taxes don’t visibly kill jobs — but lack of child care does. Parents in many rich countries are able to take paid work because they have access to safe, affordable child care; in the United States, such care is prohibitively expensive for many, if they can get it at all. And the reason is that our government spends almost nothing on child care and pre-K; our outlays as a percentage of GDP put us somewhat below Cyprus and Romania.
Funny how you don’t mention they get that same shit in Cuba,or the declining birth rates in all of the countries mentioned. Something they’ve noticed for decades and cite declining economic growth as a factor. Its easier for old people to remain in the workforce if employers have no choice but to employ older workers.
And what the fuck are you trying to say about Romanians? You better stay the away before you find yourself impaled.
The American Families Plan would completely change this picture, providing free preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds while limiting child care costs to no more than 7% of income for lower- and middle-income parents. If this raised employment of prime-age American women to French levels, it would add about 1.8 million jobs; if we went to Danish levels, we would add 3 million jobs.
Just to be clear, making it possible for more women to take paid jobs isn’t the principal point of this plan — and there’s nothing wrong with parents’ choosing to stay at home and care for their kids. Instead, it’s mainly about improving the environment in which children grow up, partly as a matter of social justice, partly so that they eventually become healthier, more productive adults.
But higher employment — jobs generally expand to meet the available work force — would be a significant and more immediate side benefit. And it would also offer a partial fiscal offset to the direct cost of child care and pre-K, both because newly working Americans would pay taxes and because they would be less likely to need support from safety-net programs like food stamps. No, Mr. Biden’s spending plans won’t pay for themselves. But they’ll cost taxpayers less than the headline numbers might suggest.
And if these plans improve life for millions of Americans, will anyone besides professional ideologues care if they’re “big government”?
Same old limp-dick assurances that this will somehow work if we just prog harder. Trust this guy, he has an award from Socialist Euroweenies so he could never be wrong.
Paul Krugman is a natural seconder. He looks like he’d pay to have prostitutes shit on his chest.
His last check bounced, did it?
You are a writer and you work for the government. You’re in no position to call anyone else a whore, let alone the First of Firsters.
I did not. You’re the one who demoted yourself from the initial status of Pimp.
I’m still trying to recover from UCS essentially saying celery > peanut butter.
When I use a word, it means exactly what I want it to mean, nothing more, nothing less.
/Humpty Dumpty
What?
“We can lower unemployment by redefining unemployment”
What the piss? No we can’t. Do you even read the articles?
There’s an article?
Terms often heard on French news: chomage, grève, manifestation, émeute (unemployment, strike, demonstration, riot).
He also pointedly picked the 25-54 age range (which, yes, was because of his argument about “free” child care). French youth unemployment rate, March, 2021 = 19.5%; late 2019, French youth unemployment +20%. Everything’s connected.
jobs generally expand to meet the available work force
Is this true? Because if it were true we’d never have any unemployment.
His whole argument seems to hinge on this. I guess there would be a lot of openings for child care workers, but you’d be taking women away from their kids so they can spend the day watching other people’s kids.
Hole? Meet shovel …
Or teaspoons.
But Friedman was a Jew, so how can you trust him?
If there is no price floor on labor.
ie, if there were sufficient people seeking work with no minimums on wages and no subsidies for not working, then the wages will fall until there is work available for them to do.
It used to be that even middle class families could afford at least one domestic servant until the labor market changed.
With the artificial constraints of a minimum wage and a welfare state, there is a block on the market’s ability to absorb bottom of the barrel candidates.
He is so spectacularly wrong and/or lying in every sentence it’s hard to know where to begin demolishing it.
jobs generally expand to meet the available work force
They also contract when, say, millions of people are paid to not work and are thus not “available work force”.
Clinton had Newt and the nascent internet to thank for the good economy. (Thank, steal credit for, whatevs.)
And there was a bunch of investment capital lying around because of the 1980s tax cuts.
Krugman is so sheltered, he has no idea of the true cost of things, increasing prices? What are those? Women being paid? You mean they work for free?
/Idiot!!!
“Assume a can opener.”
https://babylonbee.com/news/lego-unveils-new-genderless-bricks-with-no-malefemale-connectors
Excellent.
Unlike Krugman.
I find it’s easier to tolerate Krugman when you realize that while he’s pretending to evenhandedly analyze things, in reality it’s his job to make everything the Dems do look good. Unfortunately people on the receiving end often don’t realize it’s propaganda.
I don’t find its easier to tolerate propagandists than, say, idiots.
If the main elements in Joe Biden’s American Families Plan become law, they’ll be very hard to repeal. Why? Because they’ll deliver huge, indeed transformational benefits to millions.
Slippery slope, FTW!
WHEEEEEEEEE!
+200 years
Every time this shitstain, [Upper Manager], starts talking, I want to murder people. He should have been canned over a decade ago, preferrably prosecuted. But he’s a part creature, so the party protects him.
I just ditched the manditory meeting because I couldn’t stand to hear him upselling the godawful, evil Excelsior Pass bullshit.
My condolences.
Ask him to explain all the stories in the news about people who can’t get into the system because NYS can’t actually locate and validate their vaccinations.
The meeting is set up so that the peons can’t ask questions without having them pre-approved by the admin assistants. Stuff like that would go nowhere but getting you into the “find a reason to fire” bucket.
If the meeting is that big I’d blow it off too.
Even if they do check attendance that would be easy enough to play off on some technicality.
It’s an all staff meeting. The problem is it’s also where they announce the return to work policy updates. And Andy the Tyrant made changes to the public diktats. I had to find out that nothing was changing at work to update my subordinates if they blew off the meeting too.
Huh. I often have trouble with my mute button when there’s a question I’d rather duck at the moment.
“How the hell could you pardon Nixon?”
-Red Foreman
Have you considered picking up a tarantula at a pet store, and hiding it under a coffee mug on his desk? It won’t solve anything but if he has a fear of spiders the ensuing heart attack might free you of this asshat.
Even if we weren’t working from home, he’s in a different building.
Andrew Cuomo?
jobs generally expand to meet the available work force
I, uhh…..
Supply creates it’s own demand – which Say didn’t actually say.
Wet streets cause rain!
I know Krugnuts is dumber than a short bus, but wow. What happens when you dumb supply into a market? Is it all soaked up immediately and increase prices (wages)? Yeah right. I can see why large companies would support this universal childcare.
Or dump supply.
The supply is dumb, so both phrases check out.
mainly because French women have a higher rate of paid employment than their American counterparts. The Nordic countries have an even larger employment advantage among women.
Definitely couldn’t be cultural differences at play, nosiree.
I notice he didn’t mention that nordic women are overwhelmingly in “traditionally female” jobs and that they notoriously self-segregate into the pattern the modern social engineers hate
The crusty old curmudgeon who’s our receptionist just got ordered to go home by his supervisor. COC just got his second ‘VID shot and was obviously feeling like shit but was trying to tough it out. He already had the ‘VID itself, but NOOO, that wasn’t good enough.
I hope he’s OK driving himself home. ☹️
I have a co-worker with both the ‘Vid and vaccine. Unlike those who never caught the ‘Vid the first shot usually has stronger side effects on those who had the virus.
TL;DR Krugman:
“People like free shit.”
Krugman and all the MMT loons are guilty of extreme short term vision. An economy is an extremely robust system with uncountable feedback loops to adjust to abuse from on high. That we’re not thrust into a grinding depression a quarter after implementing abusive policies doesn’t mean the damage isn’t being done. Like a rubber band, the longer the economy stretches out of equilibrium, the harder the snapback will be.
The damage done by pandemic policies have yet to make themselves fully known.
I’d imagine there are many surprises ahead.
Just how is it that people thought shutting down America wouldn’t have grave economic consequences?
We’re feeling the first tremors. Widespread supply chain disruptions like we’re living in 80’s Leningrad. Prices shooting up like Jimmy Carter’s back in office.
Next comes some minor shock that kicks off a bear market. Then comes the layoffs.
Australia & NZ are starting to deal with that. The government still dumping large amounts of money into the system in the form of payments to people who can’t go back to work. As vaccination rates pick up in both countries people are expecting things to get back to normal. Both governments are saying not until mid-2022 at the earliest. Still no overseas tourists in either country. And, at least one minister in NZ told a bunch of business owners that they shouldn’t expect all the businesses in a tourist town will survive. Which is fine, except they’ve been telling people for 18 months that, if they follow the rules, all will return to normal.
“Well, I’m still getting paid, and those poor workers who were laid off are getting plenty of money from unemployment. Plus they can’t get evicted for not paying their rent. I wonder why there’s all these random shortages?”
Long run: wuzzat?
That’s when we’re all dead.
I was dead when he said that, and yet…
OT- saw your reply late. You dodged a bullet and got out at the right time. You should also be pleased (or disturbed) that most of that era middleware systems are still in place. Apims was only turned off last fall.
I wish I could have gotten one more year out of it. That would have boosted my credentials meaningfully. But yes, last I heard the middleware was still up. A huge Smalltalk app.
Cisco wanted so badly to replace it, but their “system” was a joke. Not even a joke, really.
Nobody seemed to ‘get it’ that we had two sets of customers to attend to — DSL subscribers and ISPs.
sigh
The dodge put me in the path of other bullets, unfortunately. Dark times.
Acquired joke, partially. Hardware has been MD’d for nearly 20 years but still some running, some even in the chassis of the company that Cisco bought to get into the DSL market (Netrunner, Netspeed? Something like that. Can’t remember exactly).
And I’m sorry about the Dark Times. Easier for me to imagine brighter alternatives and things not done.
Cisco came in with the advent of their vpn tunneling router/DSLAM as Qwest was running out of ports. Badly. The router/DSLAM (I’ve forgotten, or repressed, the model) was an over-engineered under-capacity mess. It had major impact on both our systems and the network management folks’s, and we could already see end-of-life looming for it, new though it was. Meanwhile, Qwest, having taken over USWest, was changing our upstream order flows, and mangling the job.
I’m not sure I’d have lived through another year of Qwest management. ;-\
Not to worry, the USWesties seized back control and proceeded to keep things sideways and treading water for the next ten years. Would have been better to go BK and start with a clean slate.
On the way here, I noticed a pair of Hate Birds, trailed by a bunch of gray fuzzy Hateballs.
THEY’VE LEARNED HOW TO REPRODUCE!
Baby Hate Birds are the ugliest infants in the animal kingdom. “Gray” on them is usually, in my observation, more like a particularly vile yellow-green under the gray fuzz.
At one place I worked, they would come and nest. Invariable a new hire would try to walk by one of the nests when there were chicks or eggs in it. The waddling, hissing hate bird, wings outstretched would chase them away and give the rest of us a good laugh as we knew to avoid them. Of course, this same place sent us a “warning” not to cut across the grass, and stay on the walkways as there was a danger of slipping in the grass.
Does pepper spray work on hate birds? Would anyone be interested in a practical experiment on the subject?
It most likely would not. Capsaicin generally only effects mammals, birds are not effected by it. The peppers attracted birds to eat them, and then pass their seeds as they flew around an area.
Pepper spray (and the like) is very effective against chipmunks.
This is also why red pepper flakes are a great deterrent to squirrels in the bird feeder.
I have two different populations of chipmunks. The ones in the north woods are stupid, and alarm when the dog is near, which attracts her attention and starts a chase. The ones in the south woods just move out of the way and Lily doesn’t even notice them.,
Before we put up our fence in the backyard we’d get get families of hate birds walking through the back yard.
There may have been a year or two that I waited until the goslings had grow to the point where they were just about to get their first set of feathers and then shot two or three of them in the head as they walked by. I’m not a big fan of goose in general, but those little fuckers were like avian veal.
And being stupid hate birds, the parents walked blithely on not noticing that they were short a few chicks by the time they got to the pond.
Raised by a government nanny instead of by its own parents?
Everybody knows that putting a kid in a daycare where they get minimal individual attention is a much better environment than all that one-on-one time spent with a parent.
My sister had her daughter in a day care (not a government one though)l until the day Sister realized that her kid was picking up a country twang in her accent that Sister does not have.
It was a sign that the kid was spending way more waking hours at day care than with her parents.
Sister immediately sought a work-at-home job to correct that state of affairs.
It amazes me how many people are shocked when that happens. The daycare provider spends 40-50 hours per week with your kid in solid multi-hour blocks. You spend 25-30 with them at the very most, and it’s mostly chopped up partial hours in the weekday mornings or evenings. The daycare provider is obviously the primary caregiver and will be treated thusly by the child.
Yes, exactly. Krugman considers a top-down government child-rearing program to be far superior to any haphazard method parents might come up with on their own.
One of the toughest things about our youngest starting school for my wife (other than missing her babies) was being kicked out of the Korean Mommies Club.
When we had little ones running around, she and other Korean moms would get together a lot of afternoons to chat and eat. Of course, they all compared their kids to each other and woe be to the poor kid who came up short. Remedial training would be in order for any kid who didn’t shine.
None of those Koreans would ever let their kids be raised by strangers. My wife wasn’t all that sure it was a good idea to leave our kids with me when she had her part time job at night.
Nothing groundbreaking but good to see more like this get into mainstream pubs rather than being dismissed as fringe crackpot.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/what-really-happened-with-that-weird-yankees-covid-outbreak.html
*cusses under breath*
Grr, got logged out while I was typing out a comment. Here’s the tl;dr:
I’m judging a science fair and it’s clear to me that the enviro indoctrination takes hold around grade 7. Most everything for grade 6 and below is focused on improving something in the kid’s life. Most everything from grade 8 and up is focused on measuring, mitigating, or eliminating the effects of climate change.
I noticed that at a science fair once for one of my workers. Her 9th grade experiment was testing the durability of diaphrams by securing them to a PVC pipe and blasting the other end with a high pressure garden hose.
The judges were not amused.
I’d take that one over some of the crop I’m judging right now.
This fair is more inventing related so we need to find a practical use for that contraption. Maybe “hydraulic, contactless third-party prophylactic insertion”, aka “spread ’em and spray”
How many diaphragms? Where did she get them?
Where else? Planned Parenthood. They gave that shit away for free in the 70’s.
I thought they were a prescription device.
I don’t fucking know. Personally, I have a doomsday supply of sponges I picked up after bribing a security guard at OB/GYN clinic in 1996.
What’s your standard for “worthy”?
Hotel room. A nice one. Its why I liked Rush so much, he always got the executive suite at the Four Seasons.
I am sad now.
“Just ignore the cracks… they’re like an obstacle course for the sperm”
/Dr. Fuckci
So double wrapping should be more effective to prevent pregnancy right?
/Narrator: It is not.
OMG, I’m tearing up reading one of these projects. These poor kids don’t have a chance. I feel ridiculous for nearly crying about this, but the kids are being so acutely abused.
As part of the process of the science fair, they’re given various sheets that help them think about what problem they’d like to solve. One such sheet has them list problems they see in the news on one row and problems they encounter in their lives on another row.
The top line of the one I’m reading (5th grader) is filled with armageddon. The oceans are dying, the air is toxic, homelessness, shootings, riots, drugs, cancer, covid.
The bottom line is filled with those small things you expect from a kid that age. Not liking dealing with their pet’s poop. Their younger sibling has a hard time doing some things and they’d like to find a way to make it easier. Getting hot while doing outdoor chores.
It hit me like a ton of bricks while reading this. This is how neurosis starts. This is how you grow a generation of people addicted to anxiety medicine. This kid shouldn’t waste an ounce of brain power on the bullshit the news is peddling, and yet it seems to weigh on her at age 10 or 11.
Teachers have always had a streak of that. Fictional, but (for context, the father Cary Grant is an ad man):
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040613/characters/nm0595643
If you ain’t eatin’ Wham, you ain’t eatin’ ham!
I haven’t watched that movie in a few years. It’s one of my wife’s favorites.
This one really hit me in the feels. This poor girl thinks the world is imploding around her, and yet there’s still that spark of innocent childhood, soon to be extinguished.
It’s over 70 years old, but it’s funny because it’s true. Just ask anyone who’s done a new build or a renovation.
+1 50’s bomb drills
40’s bomb drills at school
Grr, got logged out while I was typing out a comment
Everyone hates that.
I’m judging a science fair
You’re zombie Glenn Seaborg?
“providing free* preschool”
*for some values of free
For those of you who don’t get crypyo:
Something, something, crypto is like a fax machine.
It’s still widely used in Japan?
Hell, fax machines seem to be widely used in the American healthcare industry in my experience. I fucking hate them. We (long-term care pharmacy) waste hours and hours calling nurses back asking them to refax the image because one of the pages was folded in the machine or the image is too degraded to read.
I work in corporate tax, and one good thing about COVID is it seems state revenue departments are finally moving away from faxing. I can now email an actual person instead.
The few times I still need to fax there is e-faxing, but I still have to babysit it because it fails 3-4 times before finally going through.
Hell, fax machines seem to be widely used in the American healthcare industry in my experience.
Pet peeve alert!
Drives me nuts. They are a throwback to the pre-internet age, and the belief that faxes are more secure/private than sending a scanned image via email. They are not.
Especially considering that most phone lines are VOIP now anyways.
They’re a bit of a security risk, since patient PHI is sitting on the machine. So you have to setup the office space so only authorized people can physically access it.
You have no idea – says guy who was shocked at installing a rack of 56k modems in a hospital data center 10 yrs ago to fax lab results.
Even granting the question of still faxing, at the time the very software we were using was capable of sending faxes over ethernet to a phone system (and had for years) but that’s not how the vendor does it….
Hah! An old company I worked for made a ton of money on a fax/IP (secure) product. It was cool in the ’90s and early ’00s and has lived on and on.
The poor guy who owned the product had a love/hate relationship with it. Hated having to support the things, but loved the revenue coming in. As they tried to sunset the things, people who had them would offer to pay even more in support to avoid having to switch to something else. (Lot’s of elderly doctors in that group).
Lunchtime aliens. Today’s topic: Was daVinci visited by aliens and given secret knowledge?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes.
Aliens are gnostics?
Or were the Gnostics taught by aliens, hmmmm????
They wouldn’t be very good theorists if they said, “Probably not. That’s too far-fetched even for us.”
True. I just love the phrase “ancient astronaut theorists”. So much more dignified than “crackpot”.
First time I heard it, I thought “Cool. We have actual ancient astronauts theorizing about stuff.”
I had a disappoint.
For a few minutes, we considered using that as a band name. I’m sure it’s been done by now.
For a few minutes, we considered using that for a band name. I’m sure it’s been done by now. ?
“Server Squirrels” would also be a good band name.
Not as good as School of Fish.
It makes you think they went to school for it, or have some kind of credentials. Which they do not.
It’s interesting/scary that a handful of the people on that show have legit advanced degrees.
There are people with degrees who are far more scary and far more influential, thus damaging to a whole lot of other people.
Crackpots are mostly harmless.
And now Steve Smith is on the History Channel. And by “on”, mean …
https://twitter.com/LPMisesCaucus/status/1395800500503678978
How about an early afternoon nut punch? (I hear Winston’s mom will do that if you are into it and if you pay extra.)
Bullshit, I’ll punch you for free. Hog tying you and the ball gag rental costs extra.
Now this is good wine
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YyUMSk79nOGfb6jc-JbNu1fXTxlNpCEY/view?usp=drivesdk
So what is everyone drinking? It is 9 pm of a friday
I’m drinking coke zero because I have another 4 hours of work to pretend to do
Iced tea, as I’m on a conference bridge due to a provider outage.
My company is basically moral support on this call.
“LOOK! We care about you!”
Coffee with an Apple fritter.
“…an Apple® fritter.”
You kids and your Steve Jobs worship!
iFritter.
Can’t drink tonight, got a match in the morning.
Gunsports are not things to engage in hungover.
I gotta clean some guns tonight for tomorrow’s range visit. I’ve been putting it off all week, in hoping they might clean & lube themselves. It hasn’t happened yet.
You’ll never get your GM card with that kind of defeatist attitude.
Coffee. Black as a libertarian’s heart.
Wait, libertarians have hearts?
Several of them. In jars.
2:40 US EDT here, and I’m still working on the cold dregs of this morning’s coffee, but in the meantime I had an Atkins Vanilla Latte Iced Coffee Protein Shake. I can OD on caffeine because it’s not a “school night.” (As if anything could keep me awake on a Friday evening.)
Beer. Duh.
But Im going to bed soon, since you’re not the only creature of the night on here.
Water.
I’ll have a glass of Orvieto with dinner.
“Well, I’m still getting paid, and those poor workers who were laid off are getting plenty of money from unemployment. Plus they can’t get evicted for not paying their rent. I wonder why there’s all these random shortages?”
Food comes from grocery stores.
Electricity comes from the wall.
Gasoline comes out of that hose thingy at the place I buy my morning latte.
Watched Biden award the Medal of Honor to a 94 year old Korean War Vet. I got a little dusty hearing the citation. Remembering Biden’s several deferments and reaction to the corona. He couldn’t carry Col Puckett’s dirty underwear.
We are circling the drain. The deficit/debt will destroy us. The antisemitism, the border crisis and the pandemic are symptoms of a greater malfeasance.
When the currency collapses and takes the economy with it, that’s when we will learn how much of our social capital was vaporized, and how poorly a society without a lot of social capital deals with a crisis.
Which reminds me: My shipment of Swiss military-issue 5.56 should get here today or tomorrow. Penetrator rounds that I got a “deal” on, by current standards. I’m going to start looking for something more oriented toward soft tissue damage next. I’m feeling OK with my stockpile of self-defense ammo across all calibers except the 5.56, and mostly am looking for deals on training ammo now.
Mrs. Dean visited the eye doc yesterday. Turns out she is also a shooter, and is going to optimize Mrs. Dean’s new prescription for shooting – bifocals rather than progressive lenses, a tweak to the prescription also.
I’m hoping, at this point, that some kind of “Green” boondoggle is passed with phat subsidies for home solar. I’m thinking the grid isn’t going to get cheaper or more reliable. I’d love to have a water well, but (a) I’m about 99% sure I can’t get a permit for one and (b) I have no idea what kind of well I could actually get where I live. Our water utility is talking about raising our rates for water 50% (not a typo), which will mean I turn off at least half of our landscaping drip system.
I’m eyeing up another case of 7.62×39. Just over $400 with tax and shipping. A “Deal” by today’s pricing.
Its been a long time since I looked at it, but in AZ all water rights are retained and allocated by the state. Private wells are exceedingly rare and most are on properties grandfathered in. Even those have limitations.
I’ve only seen it once that wasn’t a farm, and the house was built north of Deer Valley airport.
Be advised that most installed solar systems are grid tied and will shut off the Solar chargers if the grid goes down. Even if you have a battery system, it will only run the inverters from the battery and won’t re-charge them from Solar.
https://webosolar.com/grid-tie-solar-home-system-blackout/
(yes, this product will provide 1 set of separate outlets with direct power).
Non grid tied systems are fine, where you use batteries as the float medium, but you can’t send excess power back to the grid.
Another who just passed away
RIP LTC (ret) Hagemeister
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_C._Hagemeister
Drafted into the Army, walked as a giant among men on a random day, and stayed in for a full career.
Fourscore you better lay in an extra pallet of hankies for when Biden awards Walz a medal for all his heroism.
The citation – ranging from his heroism in the Minnesoda Natl Guard to his diligent manning of the Covid dials – will make people blubber more than the ending of Old Yeller.
Walz is pissed that Cuomo got in on the ground floor of the CV, rendered a big fucking book deal, molested (alleged) a few ladies, while he (Walz) was pretending nothing was happening on Lake Street.
WRT Hate Birds, the birds that H8
I-675 goes around SE Dayton, and some of the swankier areas that seem to have a higher population of those creatures.
Every so often, when Im going down the road, I see a giant red smear and feathers. I kinda smile inside.
Honestly, its like someone hit a down pillow full of strawberry jelly.
In the parking lot that had the nesting birds, one decided to go for a nap behind someone’s front passenger tire. When that person left for the day, the bird decided that it was fine where it was. The bird did not win the fight with the car tire.
Once, when I did a project for AK Steel, there was a nesting pair that set-up house about 20′ from an entry door to a part of the plant.
I heard they were tolerated for a bit, but once the aggressive drake pissed-off the wrong steelworker. The hen(?) was a widow after that.
Male goose == gander, female is just goose.
On a nicer bird topic, I got to participate in an egret rescue the other day.
They nest in the woods right behind our house. A hawk, or something, got at one, broke its wing, it couldn’t fly, but otherwise seemed in good health. I had to help the rescue guy get the bird into the crate.
Cool! Any injuries? My ex-gf said that egrets could be really nasty to handle.
No, it was pretty chill. The rescue guy gave us blankets and we blocked its retreat as he snuck behind it thru the woods. It struggled some, then we put a blanket over its head and it calmed right down and went into the crate pretty easily.
Egrets? I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention.
***
OperaClassic American Pop Music applause***Technically, only the lyrics are American; the music is French. :-p
This is interesting.
COVID Fraud – Lawyers & Medical Experts start legal proceedings against W.H.O and World Leaders for ‘Crimes against Humanity’
It will probably come to nothing, but I’d sure like to see some heads roll over this.
I just finally hit 20,000 points in my employer’s “reward each other” system, which I can cash in for a $200 Virtual Visa!
So what should I use it for? Suggestions welcomed and will be considered but probably ultimately disregarded.
BBQ & bourbon.
Put it all in dog money!
https://www.shootingillustrated.com/articles/2018/9/26/8-affordable-home-defense-shotguns-under-200/
The Hawk is a Chinese near-clone of the Remington 870. My shotgun instructor at Front Sight had one and liked it well enough, but I have heard not-good things about durability/reliability. I think he had it because Front SIght got a ton of them to use as member promotions.
Already set for that – right
along the side of the bedat the bottom of the lake.Then ammo it is, I suppose. I’m partial to the Federal LE 00 Buck, myself. The Flight Control wad really does tighten up the groups.
Holla. LE133-00 is the 8-pellet Flite Control load, and IME it patterns tighter than the 9-pellet.
When I bought my case of 00, I looked for the 8-pellet but I want to say I just did not see it. Not at home so I can’t confirm exactly what I got (I don’t store ammo at the hospital), but I know it was Federal LE, and I’m pretty sure it was 9 pellets. I have a few rounds of their Power-Shok 00, which patterned wide for me out of the combat shotgun at Front SIght (Just under 16 inches at 15 yards, which surprised me). I’ll be interested in a side-by-side on how they pattern.
Well, okay, how about this one?
https://www.pyramydair.com/product/ruger-air-magnum-combo?m=2354
Everyone needs an air rifle for discreet post-apocalypse subsistence hunting…
Hmmm…..
?
Do you have an edc knife?
Now that’s pretty sweet! ?️
Not for $150
It’s within budget!
Apropos for a Winston’s Mom post:
https://thepostmillennial.com/ad-for-room-rental-in-portland-antifa-whorehouse-goes-viral
Among the many things I don’t get about the story is the fact that xey’ve decided xey need to rent out this “room” (an 8’x8′ corner of the living room demarked by discarded doors) for $302/month.
$302. That’s what, an hour of work at most? Between the three of xem, xey can’t work an extra hour a month, xey need to find someone to pay xem to live in xeir living room?
How xey acquired the cash to be a large donor to anything is an exercise for the reader.
How a 25 year old feminist activist affords a half-million dollar house is also an exercise for the reader.
Lord knows I like the ‘larger ladies’. But the pic of that thing caused a very visceral reaction. The bile stopped just @ the top of my throat.
Woof.
A secret roommate. Kind of like The Gimp.
This seems like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for David Attenborough. In the wild, whales are notoriously secretive about their sex lives.
Fuck you ATT outage! FUCK YOU!
[hands Nephilium a dildo with which to fuck the ATT outage]
/gets ready for to reenact the (NSFW!) Harry the ‘atchet scene from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (NSFW!).
Fuck you dolphin and whale !
Just blew my gun budget. Landon Tactical has the PX4 back in stock.
There’s my economics for the day.
Damnit, those are really nice…
I finally found my unicorn tractor (garage-kept diesel 4×4 compact) and got 8 implements including an about new 5′ bush hog thrown in.
My wallet is past the screaming stage. It’s lying dead in the corner.
That’s an awful lot of sex toys.
Heh, nice.
Cabelas had those available for ordering ship to store again when I checked last week. Looking for a subcompact and the compact carry.
Nice.
William Jennings Bryan tried to warn you – Charles Darwin is bad news.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9604287/Charles-Darwins-famous-book-Descent-Man-warped-racism.html
Now do Margaret Sanger.
Who? The name doesn’t ring a bell. Is this another right-wing conspiracy theory?
“An Unexpected SpongeBob SquarePants Character is Getting Her Own Spinoff Movie”
Already done I’m sure: Rule 34.