Free Republic

I think there are black political movements, but they don’t have any outrage over how the Democrats have done this or that policy that affects blacks. I think they are all about what’s in it for them...the insiders of whatever faction they’re involved with. As far as being angry about something that happened to a former white president in a court in New York...if they think about it at all that thought is, “meh.”

“Some of them would like to see the human population reduced to 500,000,000 “in harmony with nature”.”

I’ve met a couple of these people. I think they see themselves in this utopian world enjoying the BMW’s, cell phones, cable, infinite variety in food and free energy. They have no concept of the logistics required or the supply chains needed to produce any of that. Oil starts in the ground. Somebody drills for it. Someone transports it. Someone refines it. Someone delivers it to the gas stations. Someone mans the gas stations. All of that takes lots and lots of people. People we never see or even know about. But they’re there. Reduce the population and suddenly, they aren’t there. Without the huge potential markets of millions or billions of people nobody will build the plants to build the things we take for granted. The people who want fewer people around are idiots without a clue how things work.

“That’s sooo yesterday! The latest “we’re all going to die!” prediction is in two years according to the UN climate chief.:

This is good. Because, if something stops working, then do it again...harder...louder. This means the threat isn’t working as well as it once did.

I’ve gotten very good at spotting clickbait. “And then this happened,” or any description with a juicy adverb. I thought about making a list, but it would be long and never ending. Sort of like Biden gaffs.

The absurdity of the “carbon” crisis and “global warming” is so amazing I find it incredible that there are still articles and studies going on. What it tells me is that there are no real crises. At least not ones anyone can get behind to resolve. Social Security, illegal immigration, government overreach all easily come to mind as much more real and immediate than carbon or global warming. But mention them and someone waves his hand and says, “We’re all gonna die in just ten years.” They’ve been ten-yearing the rubes since the sixties when the crisis was the coming ice age and peak oil. I remember an article stating we were all going to die in the freezing dark by 1975.

As a culture there are two, I can think of offhand who, person per person by any metric punch well above their weight. The first is the Jewish culture. Lay out all the Nobel Prizes by culture and I’ll bet Jews outnumber or at least equal the other cultures combined. If you see a Muslim, like Yassar, it was a political gift and not a contribution to mankind.

The second is the Druze. But corner a Druze and you’ll quickly discover that for all practical purposes they’re more culturally Jewish than anything else. Their actual religion and beliefs are practically secret, and I think that’s because they live amongst...uhm, culturally hostile, cruel animals who are so culturally different they might as well be from Klingon territory. Fortunately for the Druze the people they live amongst are so disinterested in learning about their neighbors that the Druze are able to walk amongst them like the Star Trek Federation people can walk around on a Borg ship as long as they aren’t perceived as a danger.

Everything exists in the context of the politics, society and economics of its time. That context is the culmination up to that moment of millions of decisions that had been made from time immemorial before then. No individual event or action can legitimately be evaluated or criticized except in the context of the time the decision was made, or the event happened. If we stand in judgement from our vantage and from the prospective of our morality then we put ourselves in the role of God deciding what was right or wrong or moral when we can’t see the laws, rules, morality of those who made the actions. People today view Christopher Columbus, as an example, as some horrible monster. But had it not been for him and others like him we likely would be living in a vastly different and poorer world. In his time, he was a hero. And, indeed, until recent times his accomplishments were acknowledged as crucial...then, woke happened.

Did a lot of very bad stuff that hurt millions of people happen in the past? Definitely. But you don’t have to go very far to find the equivalent happening today. Just flip through the news.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

“But I thought having had chicken pox in the past increased the likelihood of getting shingles.”

Here’s my understanding. The virus remains in some nerve cells where it is normally dormant. As we age or experience stress, our immune system fails to counter the virus which it apparently normally does on a daily basis. The virus emerges as patches on the skin. My aunt eventually died because she couldn’t tolerate any of the treatments. Apparently, it was a hard way to go. My father had an outbreak while visiting family in Sweden and suffered horribly. I got special dispensation to get the vaccine because at the time the standard treatment model was to only give the vaccine after a certain age unless you met whatever the criteria were. I told my doctor I didn’t want to risk going through what my father and his sister had suffered and he made it happen for me. I have on occasion, had a horrible itchy sore which my doctor identified as shingles. It’s always in the same spot as it appears in whatever nerve is carrying the virus. It’s just one tiny spot and it hasn’t happened in the last few years. It happened when I was under terrible stress at work.

I plan on asking my doctor if I need a booster as I’m seventy now and I was fifty-something when I got the shot.

“Pretty harsh take on two Christian missionaries.”

The number one goal of any Christian should be to protect his family. I tried my darndest to help a renter, a 27 year old “special needs” guy. I got him a working car, which I was giving him for free, agreed to pay the insurance and teach him to drive. Turns out he wasn’t as “special needs” as his live-with Christian grandmother had molded him to be. When she found out, she went ape$hit on me and tried to strike me. I think she was afraid that he would get a job, a girlfriend and move out. (He’s modestly good looking.) He can’t survive without her income as he has practically none of his own. She even stopped me from getting him assistance because she wants him dependent. I asked her, “What happens when she (in her mid-eighties) dies?” She said, “God will take care of him. Now stop interfering with our lives!” So, there’s Christian, there’s Christian and then there’s Christian. They sound the same, but they aren’t.

In my entire thirty-plus year working career, I had one, fabulous, standout boss. From careful observation and listening to what he said, and watching what he did for people who never knew their good fortune was related to him, I found out he was a Christian. I was so impressed. Incidentally, he put his foot down and would not let his daughter go to Haiti. And this was years ago.

Conversely, the man who arguably did the most damage to me introduced himself to me as, “I’m a good, God-fearing Christian man.” Seriously, those were his first words. I should have run away.

I feel sorry for these people.

I knew a terrific guy who had gone to Africa as a missionary. They were digging wells. He said, (approximatly) “I will never do that again. The men sat around smoking dope under the trees while we and their woman worked. F***k ‘em, I’m never going back. I will do my work for God here at home.”

Haiti is a lost cause. You can’t help people who view us as worth whatever they can take off our dead bodies.

Incidentally, I won’t travel to third world country where whatever I’m wearing and carrying is worth more than they’ll make in two months. I’m reminded of a magazine photo* of a naked woman in Africa squatting over a hot rock making some kind of food. She was watching Mary Tyler Moore on a little black and white TV. Is it a good thing to expose these people who have no hope of ever escaping their lot to a life they can’t even espier to?

* Remember when it was perfectly okay to show photos of naked black people in magazines?

“A total failure on the part of husband and dad to protect their most precious treasure.”

I remember my bleeding-heart sister who would go crazy over whatever the latest cause was, crying, yelling, etc. Nobody was willing to debate her or try to talk to her because there was no logic or reason inside her head to appeal to. She grew out of it in her thirties, but by that time nobody in the family wanted anything to do with her. When someone is espousing something totally ridiculous, like, say, going to Palestine to prove how wonderful and accepting of gays Muslims are, I just say, “good on you. Enjoy.”

“...thanks, in large part, to America.”

I’m reminded of the parable of the blind men describing the elephant.

1600–1700
Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648)
Kalmar War (1611–13)
Thirty Years’ War (1618–48)
Powhatan War (1622–44)
Bishops’ Wars (1639; 1640)
English Civil Wars (1642–51)
First Northern War (1655–60)
War of Devolution (1667–68)
King Philip’s War (1675–76)
War of the Grand Alliance (1689–97)
King William’s War (1689–97)
1700–1800
Second Northern War (1700–21)
War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14)
War of the Emboabas (1708–09)
Carnatic Wars (1746–48; 1749–54; 1758–63)
Queen Anne’s War (1702–13)
Yamasee War (1715–16)
War of the Polish Succession (1733–38)
War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739–48)
War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48)
King George’s War (1744–48)
French and Indian War (1754–63)
Silesian Wars (1740–42; 1744–45; 1756–62)
Seven Years’ War (1756–63)
Lord Dunmore’s War (1774)
Rohilla War (1774)
American Revolution (1775–83)
First Maratha War (1775–82)
War of the Bavarian Succession (1778–79)
Cape Frontier Wars (1779–1879)
French Revolution (1787–99)
French revolutionary wars (1792–1801)
1800–1900
Cape Frontier Wars (1779–1879)
French revolutionary wars (1792–1801)
War of the Oranges (1801)
Tripolitan War (1801–05)
Second Maratha War (1803–05)
Third Maratha War (1817–18)
Napoleonic Wars (1803–15)
Black War (1804–30)
Peninsular War (1808–14)
War of 1812 (1812–15)
Creek War (1813–14)
War of Greek Independence (1821–32)
Padri War (1821–37)
Naning War (1831–32)
Pastry War (1838–39)
Mexican-American War (1846–48)
Crimean War (1853–56)
Bleeding Kansas (1854–59)
American Civil War (1861–65)
War of the Triple Alliance (1864/65–70)
Seven Weeks’ War (1866)
Selangor Civil War (1867–73)
Franco-German War (1870–71)
Acehnese War (1873–1904)
Red River Indian War (1874–75)
Serbo-Turkish War (1876–78)
Anglo-Zulu War (1879)
War of the Pacific (1879–83)
Gun War (1880–81)
Sino-French War (1883–85)
Serbo-Bulgarian War (1885–86)
Sino-Japanese War (1894–95)
Spanish-American War (1898)
Philippine-American War (1899–1902)
South African War (1899–1902)
The War of a Thousand Days (1899–1903)

After America imposed the Pax-Americanna there were no more major power wars. The world, since 1945 has seen the greatest period of peace and prosperity in human history. Take America out of the equation and we’re back to continuous war, but with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. All that Global Order stuff...history. The reason for the Russian invasion is once there were no more mean, late night tweets, the Russians realized the guard dog had retired. The Russian invasion is a taste of what the world is going to look like. These won’t just be in some remote place, but divide the US and all those powers will be backing the extreme political movements on both new Americas. There will be no keeping them out and they’ll provoke us to fight each other. Divide up America and the world is headed towards a huge depopulation and a new dark age. But with nukes.

“We need that here in America.”

If America split up it would be the end of American power, military and financial. The first thing A1 and A2 would do is fortify their borders. then, we’d probably fight a war. We did this once before, remember the Civil War? Well, it would be that all over again.

America is the reactor rod that stops the world from exploding. End American dominance and the entire civilized world would collapse in under a hundred years.

“Virtue signalling.”

I sat wondering why this was said. What is the probability that Netanyahu would visit or even transit Germany? And if that was likely a quiet conversation with the Israeli ambassador over tea would have prevented an incident. But this was unnecessary, loud and public. Then it hit me. The German leader is doing the same thing Biden is doing, currying favor with their Muslim population. And not the reasonable German speaking population but the loud, dangerous terror supporting Muslim population. Letting third-worlders flood in, especially Muslims who will mostly never acculturate, has wide, deep and dangerous side effects.

1948 Plymouth Special Delux, 1952 Pontiac Chieftan straight 8, 1956 Studebaker, 98 Mark Eight, a pair of 20-year-old Continentals, and the new youngster, a 2017 Expedition.

The Expedition is so complex I bought an extended warranty and when it runs out, the Expedition will go. I plan on replacing it with a truck from the seventies.

“OTOH, God could have caused/allowed them to make some really bad judgment calls about the best flying conditions.”

Possible. But I’ve known Iranians, and they don’t need God’s help to make bad judgement calls. When your culture tells you that whatever thing happens is due to Allah’s will, what’s the incentive to think anything through? A guy who trained Muslim’s in flying the aircraft his company sold would take a qualified pilot up, but it into a flat spin and ask them to recover. He said, they’d start screaming “Allahu Akbar” (I think that was it.) But they wouldn’t take the actions he had taught them. He’d backhand them, take the controls and pull out of the spin. Then they’d do it again. The thing was, because God was in control, they weren’t. Until he could get them to recover from a flat spin, he wouldn’t sign off on them flying the plane. (He was a massive, big guy. He said, only physical force could overcome their innate stupidity.)

“What is to stop Ukraine right this minute, from creating atomic weapons? They have the scientist and the means.”

You first need the fissile material. Ukraine has that. A reactor uses, from memory, fuel refined to five or so percent purity. And, also from memory, a bomb is made, depending on the element, from 90 percent pure material. Getting from five to 90 is the challenge. It’s not insurmountable. It could be done in a small, one or two bomb set of material, in a lab and probably no one would know. Iran set up a huge and very public capability but that’s only because they are using that capability for political ends. It doesn’t have to be that big or that noticeable for a small number of bombs.

The machineing and material handling for the types of bombs the big boys make is difficult, expensive and requires some exotic capabilities. But, if you only want the type of bombs dropped in Japan, then just banging together two subcritical masses to make one critical mass will do the job nicely. That could be done in the Pakistani outback, any of the Stan countries or any European country.

The delivery mechanism can be anything that can carry the required weight. The US and Soviets had nuclear artillery shells. The Davy Crocket man portable bomb was the size of a small beer keg.

There’s no magic to making nukes. Just about any modern economy can do it. The expense comes in with all the stuff the big boys have added, security, secrecy, handling, disposal, systems to move and deliver, etc. The long-term cost of keeping this stuff usable and secure is a huge expense. But if you feel threatened by a big bully neighbor who publicly states they want to “manage your security policy” meaning run you like they’re the Mafia, then all other considerations are suddenly secondary to having a bomb ready to fly.

If the Russians get their way using nuclear posturing, then in twenty years there will be a handful of tiny countries that DO NOT possess nuclear weapons. Ever other country will field as many as they can possibly build. Everyone realizes that if Ukraine had not given up their nuclear arsenal in exchange for American assurances of help if they got in trouble and a treaty with Russia promising not to cause that trouble, then this war would not have happened.

Imagine the opportunities for accidents and lethal missteps when every country has its own chain of command to unleash death on an unimaginable scale. The US, which arguably has the best command and control has on a couple of occasions accidentally loaded nuclear weapons on aircraft because they were mistaken as nonnuclear. A couple of years ago nuclear tipped cruise missiles were accidentally loaded onto a B-52. Had that plane been on a mission to launch them, it would have fired nuclear tipped missiles thinking they were standard ones. (Presumably without the codes they wouldn’t detonate. But imagine how scary that is when you add in thirty or fifty new countries to the nuclear club.)

As incompetent as the Biden administration is, standing up to Russia is only way to avoid even worse future problems. I’m still of the opinion this whole situation would have been effectively short-circuited by a couple of strategically placed mean tweets.

I believe it was a Westland helicopter, a model not made since 1999. So, it was at LEAST 25 years old. Most likely closer to thirty or more. Iran has been under a parts embargo for decades. The pilot took off in bad weather with bad visibility. Just that fact alone tells me he probably wasn’t the best pilot. He’s flying on instruments in bad visibility in mountains with sudden wind bursts. God didn’t need to do anything. This had DEATH written on it from the beginning. Had they made it, God would likely have been involved. Though, why he would intervene for this guy beggars the imagination.