It seems like this is something being pushed by the Boston.Gov:
Oooooh kaaaay.
I am SO glad I got out of there. Didn't even get cut up too badly going over the wire at the border ...
Via Insty, here's proof of the utter futility of gun control:
A man named Tyler Brown opened fire on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Mass., this week, turning an ordinary Monday afternoon into a rolling ambush near Harvard and MIT.
Middlesex DA Marian Ryan said Brown, a 46-year-old Boston man (notice no doctor was needed to identify Brown as a man), fired roughly 50 to 60 rounds from a rifle at vehicles on the roadway.
A Mass Statie and Our Hero (legally carrying, natch) shot the dirty perp. So well done! And I hear you ask, what's the tie in to gun control. This:
Brown didn't appear from thin air; his criminal record included a 2020 shootout with Boston police, and he had pleaded guilty to charges tied to armed assault with intent to murder. He was reportedly out on probation when the Cambridge shooting unfolded.
OK, so Massachusetts is run by dumbasses. Dude was out on parole for armed assault with intent to murder, and he shot up a bunch of stuff, including a Massachusetts State Police cruiser.
But here's the punch line:
[The perpetrator] survived with non-life-threatening injuries and faces serious charges, including armed assault with intent to murder. [Emphasis mine - Borepatch]
This time he'll be sorry!
Some Masshole judge will release him in 4 or 5 years. But more gun control is just the thing. Oooooooh kaaaaaay.
It's quite a mystery why all the retarded Massachusetts liberals think they're so much smarter than we are. The evidence is against them.
I would have something to say about this nonsense but The Silicon Graybeard has it pretty much covered.
As HMS Defiant points out, there's no There there:
The knowing world watches and mocks as the mighty Royal Navy and Great Britain struggle to get ONE SINGLE SHIP underway 12 days after the war started and still the damned thing is unable to leave port ...
You can say exactly the same about all of the Britain's pantywaist partners in NATO. Not one single one of them has ponied up a ship or fighter squadron or bomb wing to send off to do something about the sudden and complete dramatic disruption to their oil and gas supplies. NOT ONE OF THE BASTARDS HAS STIRRED.
I have watched as people are concerned that poor Britain is struggling to get a ship underway but that really isn't the real problem. You see, any relevant and serious government would have seen the damage to their economic fortunes by the oil and gas embargo and sortied the entire fleet and sent every other fighter and bomber to the Middle East to squash the Iranians and as we have all noticed, not one of them lifted a finger.
Yup. If they don't care about oil from the Gulf being cut off, let them buy Permian Basin fracked oil. Otherwise, His Majesty's Government would tell Lloyd's to keep insuring tankers. But they don't.
The USA has let them act like children for so long that they no longer know how to act like adults. c.f. German Chancellor Mertz' comments yesterday that shutting down German nuclear power was a huge mistake, but it's too late to change the decision. Maybe you should try adulting sometime, Chancellor.
And the last word goes to HMS Defiant:
I think the first wave of European refugees is looking around now and beginning their research; where do they want to settle when they pick themselves up and their families and maybe even their businesses and move lock, stock, and barrel to the United States or Western hemisphere as they start fleeing the dire fate their elites have arranged for them all.
This wave of destruction is now unstoppable.
Sure looks that way to me.
His Majesty's fleet seems to be entirely unable to protect His Majesty's subjects abroad. There seems to be only a single ship (MHS Dragon) that can be sent to Cyprus for anti-missile defense, and it has taken more than a week to prepare to sail. And they still haven't left port.
The Royal Navy is no allied force worth considering. Perhaps HMS Defiant can comment on his place.
As they point out, the Royal Navy was ready to sail in three days when the Iron Lady Maggie Thatcher told them to stand ready in the Falkland crisis. And then they had something like 100 ships. Now they can't get a single one.
As Donald Trump would say, sad!
Although I like what he says about the "1000 ship Navy" at about 11:40 into the video. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
But after all, what today is the "special relationship" or even the transatlantic alliance? But it's really weird that we're getting more support from Germany than from Great Britain these days.
Whatever you do, don't mention the war. Gosh, the darn Krauts have no sense of humor ...
The Royal Navy is the fleet of Great Britain. You know Great Britain, right? It used to be where Britain is now. Sic transit Gloria Mundi.
So Donald Trump seems to be following the ravings here. Consider this post from December:
In general, mid-term elections favor the party out of power. This is true so often that it is almost considered a law of nature, particularly during a President's second term. What you don't ever see is anyone ask why do voters reject the party in power in the mid-terms? There's quite a simple answer.
Fatigue.
The voters have had some time to get used to the Administration and starts to tire of the typical amount of scandal, incompetence, and general dum-assery that any administration accumulates.
That's not at all what we see today. The main focus of the Trump 47 administration has been border security, deporting criminal illegal aliens, economic growth, and lower inflation. There are remarkable results for all of these, despite the legacy media's frantic efforts to hide them.
Each of these are 80% issues - i.e. the issues all get 80% support in polls.
I would go so far as to say that the voter fatigue is on the other foot. It's the Democrats who spent the last four years stumbling through a morass of dumb-assery. And who are all on the 20% end of the issues that voters care about.
And here comes DJT with the State of the Union Address. Here's the TL;DR version:
Boy, those Democrats are crazy, aren't they?
You're welcome.
Farewell to the Washington Post. Journalists never cared when mills across the land shut down and people and towns were wiped out; now it's wailing like the End Of The World by journalists, for journalists.
I'm having trouble summoning up sympathy. Welcome to the club, pal.
Who would have guessed a hundred years ago that Stanley Baldwin was right?
I dunno - he looks a little Woodrow Wilsonish to me. But if you're right, you're right.
And Nota Bene: it seems that DuckDuckGo can't find the link to that last post. Strangely, Google can. Search sting site:borepatch.blogspot.com best worst presidents on each site. So long, DuckDuckGo, it's been fun. But I can't trust you, and neither should my readers.
All I've ever seen before in this neighborhood are the usual run-of-the-mill printed campaign signs, and only during election season.
Something is different.
Having grown up during the Cold War, I got used to European leaders who, if not always friendly, were all serious people. Francois Mitterand was serious. The Iron Lady Thatcher was serious. Heck, even pinko Willy Brandt was serious.
Now Donald Trump lines them up like school kids.
It's arguable that the only serious European leader today is Vladimir Putin. Good Grief.
UPDATE 19 AUGUST 2025 16:46: HMS Defiant leaves a comment about Hungary's Prime Ministor Viktor Orban as being a serious leader. I 100% agree. I would also suspect that many of the leaders from Central and Eastern Europe are also serious. The ones in the photo, not so much.
I was born by God's dear Grace in an extraordinary place. Happy Birthday to that place.
I pledge allegiance to that flag, and if that bothers you, well that's too bad.
But if you have pride and you're proud you do, we could use a some more like me and you. Glen Filthie, this means you. You're already half way thrown out of your current place. The air smells of freedom here ...
Aaron Tippin: Where The Stars And Stripes And The Eagle Fly
Well, if you ask me where I come from
Here's what I tell everyone
I was born by God's dear grace
In an extraordinary place
Where the stars and stripes and the eagle fly
It's a big ol' land with countless dreams
Happiness ain't out of reach
Hard work pays off the way it should
Yeah, I've seen enough to know that we've got it good
Where the stars and stripes and the eagle fly
There's a lady that stands in a harbor for what we believe
And there's a bell that still echoes the price that it cost to be free
I pledge allegiance to this flag
And if that bothers you, well, that's too bad
But if you got pride and you're proud you do
Hey, we could use some more like me and you
Where the stars and stripes and the eagle fly
Yes, there's a lady that stands in a harbor for what we believe
And there's a bell that still echoes the price that it cost to be free
No, it ain't the only place on earth
But it's the only place that I prefer
To love my wife and raise my kids
Hey, the same way that my daddy did
Where the stars and stripes and the eagle fly
Where the stars and stripes and the eagle fly
This song sums up the current Cold Civil War here on the shores of the New World*. It also sums up the increasing Cold War between Western Europe** and the USA under the Trump Administration. It's a fundamental disconnect between world views - us vs. them***.
All I can say is that God spared Donald Trump last summer for a purpose. That statement probably bothers some people.
Well, that's too bad****.
* I only use the term to bother the Usual Suspects.
** Ibid
*** Well, except for the European oppressed political minorities, like the AfD, Marine Le Pen, Tommy Robinson, et al.
**** Damn, this has turned into a rant. I guess that calls for a clarification. Maybe it's not a rant, it's a desire for a Reckoning:
So on Saturday there was a "No Kings" protest at the local library. The Queen Of The World said that they posted pix on Facebook, so there were there in the morning.
But I went by there on my way to the supermarket at 11:00 AM and there was NOBODY there. Nada. Zip.
That's some righteous protest, right there. [rolls eyes]
Because nothing says "Father's Day" quite like street barricades and burning cars ...
Big Country points out a nation-wide planned day of fire that's coming this weekend. Check out your locale for places you might want to avoid. After all, the first rule of gunfighting is to not go stupid places with stupid people.
It will be really interesting to see what happens. It looks like the polling on this - illegal aliens waving Mexican flags in front of burning cars - it absolutely terrible for the Democrats. If there are any adults left in that party you'd think they would clamp down on this. This will likely result in lots of blue area police departments being unleashed on the rioters.
The political story of the West in the 21st Century has been one of devolution of power. Several EU referenda were soundly voted down (e.g. Netherlands and France) although the Powers That Be made the publics there vote again and again until the "got it right". Brexit was a shock to the elites, as was the election (and re-election) of Donald Trump.
All of these are statements of majorities rejecting the Conventional Wisdom of centralized power controlled by credentialed "expert" elites (scare quotes used intentionally).
Now it's Canada's turn. Alberta is making serious noises about leaving Canada and joining the USA. Here is a forceful statement from Alberta's Premier laying out the causes of their unhappiness with Ottawa, and quite frankly making numerous demands of the central government.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
That's what this speech is. And it includes an "or else" after the demands, that next year will see an Alberta referendum.
This seems like it's pretty big news.
Peter brings up a point I've been making for quite a while that is being highlighted by Elon's DOGE:
It doesn't give enough attention, IMHO, to the "poverty industry" of NGO's, consultants, therapists and others who make a good living out of "managing" or "addressing" the causes, effects and reality of poverty, without ever doing anything to resolve the issues they identify - because that would cut off their income, and nobody (at least, from their perspective) wants that.It's Rich People's Leftism:
Rich People's Leftism is one of the clearest explanations I've ever seen for the utter failure of government in Blue States:
With this new approach in mind, let me contrast Rich People’s Leftism (RPL) with Poor People’s Leftism (PPL).
RPL thinks that its goal is to help poor people, while PPL thinks that RPL’s primary goal is to ensure that wealthy leftists dominate and get great jobs.You really should click through to read about Rich People's Leftism, which dates to 2010. We've known about this for a long, long time. A different view is "red pill/blue pill":
... an old post from Isegoria (you do read him every day, don't you?) gives the best introduction to the topic, phrased in explicitly "Blue Pill"/"Red Pill" terminology:
The nature of the state
- The state is established by citizens to serve their needs. Its actions are generally righteous.
- The state is just another giant corporation. Its actions generally advance its own interests. Sometimes these interests coincide with ours, sometimes they don’t.
You should read Isegoria's post as well. Then think about the proposed $3.5T spending bill that is before congress. Who will it help? Who are we told that is is going to help, but won't? To ask the questions is to answer them.
What is interesting about the opening moves of DOGE is that we are now getting names to put next to all the Rich People's Leftism projects.
How did the would-be assassin know where and when to find Donald Trump? Was he just lucky like Gavrilo Princip? Or was he "lucky" like Thomas Matthew Crooks?
It's Labor Day, which means "It's the end of summer". It used to mean a lot more than that - a celebration of labor in general and the working man in particular. Just in my lifetime, this has been stood on it's head - literally, politics of labor is upside down from when I was a kid.
It used to be that the Democrats stood for the working guy, and the Republicans were the party of Wall Street and the Country Club. Man is that different now. I wrote almost a decade ago about the rise of Donald Trump is basically explicit Class terms.
Which seems weird, because it was the Democrats and their buddies the Socialists and Communists (and the University professors, but I repeat myself) who were always bringing up Marx' class theory about politics. You don't hear that anymore, either, which is really interesting - it's the Dog who Didn't Bark. An old post from Eric Raymond explains this completely:
Marx believed, and taught, that increasing exploitation of the proletariat would immiserate it, building up a counterpressure of rage that would bring on socialist revolution in a process as automatic as a steam engine.
Inconveniently, the only place this ever actually happened was in a Communist country – Poland – in 1981. I’m not going to get into the complicated historiography of how the Soviet Revolution itself failed to fit the causal sequence Marx expected; consult any decent history. What’s interesting for our purposes is that capitalism accidentally solved the immiseration problem well before then, by abolishing Marx’s proletariat through rising standards of living – reverse immiseration.
I wrote about that here. Even in the 19thm Century - maybe even during Marx' own lifetime - this was a realy problem for Marxist theorists.
The most forward-thinking Marxists had already figured out this was going to be a problem by around 1910. This began a century-long struggle to find a theoretical basis for socialism decoupled from Marxian class analysis.
Early, on, Lenin developed the theory of the revolutionary vanguard. In this telling, the proletariat was incapable of spontaneously respond to immiseration with socialist revolution but needed to be led to it by a vanguard of intellectuals and men of action which would, naturally, take a leading role in crafting the post-revolutionary paradise.
Hey Vladimir, maybe the proletariat was incapable of spontaneously responding to their immiseration because they were undergoing the most remarkable increase in their standard of living that the world had ever seen? No? Better to kill 10 million of them? Oooooh kaaay.
Only a few years later came one of the most virulent discoveries in this quest – Fascism. It is not simplifying much to say that Communists invented Fascism as an escape from the failure of class-warfare theory, then had to both fight their malignant offspring to death and gaslight everyone else into thinking that the second word in “National Socialism” meant anything but what it said.
And the walls of the US House of Representatives are adorned with fasces.
During its short lifetime, Fascism did exert quite a fascination on the emerging managerial-statist elite. Before WWII much of that elite viewed Mussolini and Hitler as super-managers who Got Things Done, models to be emulated rather than blood-soaked tyrants. But Fascism’s appeal did not long survive its defeat.
Hey, none of OUR Representatives are fascists! Don't look at the wall decorations! I mean, fascism is for losers - HEY, stop looking at the wall decorations!
Marxists had more success through replacing the Marxian economic class hierarchy with other ontologies of power in which some new victim group could be substituted for the vanished proletariat and plugged into the same drama of immiseration leading to inevitable revolution.
So the working class stiffs that the Progressives/Liberals/Labour/Social Democrats all used to stand for were doing decently well, and might just start voting for the other guys. What to do, what to do?
Outsource all the good high paying hourly jobs. Use Environmentalism to justify this - I mean, you don't want your kid to drink dirty water or breathe dirty air, right? Better for them to grow up to be methheads because there's no jobs and no hope for the future.
Meanwhile, the government and associated white collar employment exploded, pretty much at the public's expense. These people voted in great numbers - and always for the Progressives/Liberals/Labour/Social Democrats, and big business found that they could really enhance their profits by getting in bed with the Progressives/Liberals/Labour/Social Democrats. Some new regulations to kill new upstart competitors is just what the doctor ordered.
I wrote about that at length here.
And now people are mystified about the rise of Brexit/Donald Trump/Les gilots jaunes/Alternative fur Deutschland. And remember how the UK Labour party got wiped out five years ago? How voters in their heartland of formerly industrial Britain voted for Tory politicians for the first time in a century? Sure, Labour just won (in a very low turn out election); does anyone think that their voters from Sheffield will ever be back in the way they used to be?
Raymond discusses at length this inversion of politics around Labor, using the UK as an example:
This is the Great Inversion – in Great Britain, Marxist-derived Left politics has become the signature of the overclass even as the working class has abandoned it. Indeed, an increasingly important feature of Left politics in Britain is a visceral and loudly expressed loathing of the working class.
To today’s British leftist, the worst thing you can be is a “gammon”. The word literally means “ham”, but is metaphorically an older white male with a choleric complexion. A working-class white male, vulgar and uneducated – the term is never used to refer to men in upper socio-economic strata. And, of course, all gammons are presumed to be reactionary bigots; that’s the payload of the insult.
Catch any Labor talking head on video in the first days after the election and what you’d see is either tearful, disbelieving shock or a venomous rant about gammons and how racist, sexist, homophobic, and fascist they are. They haven’t recovered yet as I write, eleven days later.
Observe what has occurred: the working class are now reactionaries. New Labor is entirely composed of what an old Leninist would have called “the revolutionary vanguard” and their immigrant clients. Is it any wonder that some Laborites now speak openly of demographic replacement, of swamping the gammons with brown immigrants?
Is it any wonder that the Progressives/Liberals/Labour/Social Democrats are bleeding support and desperately trying to import a whole new voting class of unassimilated immigrants? Interestingly, Donald Trump is doing very well here among Latino Americans - and so Biden/Harris opened the border and Nancy Pelosi is pushing amnesty. Parliament is dissolving the People and electing another one.
This is all very weird for me, because this has all happened in my lifetime. I used to be a Democrat - a real one, a strong supporter of the party - because they stood for the Little Guy against Wall Street. Now Wall Street is the party of Bill Clinton and Hunter Biden, not of Youngstown or Akron or Toledo or Fitchburg. Those places are all going to vote for Donald Trump (yes, even Fitchburg in deep blue Massachusetts).
It's all upside down. And it's upside down all over the Western World, for exactly the same reason. On this Labor Day, ponder what it would take to get a bunch of political parties to sell out their strongest supporters - to stab them in the back, really. They sure must have had some powerful motivation.
I do so wonder what that motivation might have been.
Libertarians have ditched their support for "free markets and free people":
I would prefer not to lose my Libertarian purity certificate. I want a political philosophy that is simple and has universal application. That way I don’t have to think too hard. For the last 30 years libertarianism has been that philosophy. Name an issue of the day and I can give you the answer. Sluggish growth? Privatise, lower taxes and de-regulate. Busy roads? Privatise. Inflation? Abolish the Bank of England or re-introduce the Gold Standard, or, er… privatise the Bank of England. OK, some issues are not quite that easy but usually they are. Until we get to immigration. Because if libertarianism means open borders then libertarianism is wrong because open borders are a disaster.
Read the whole thing, and the comments. And remember that this is Libertarian Central. If the Open Borders crowd has lost Samizdata, they've lost everybody.
So some Covid Karen tells us we all need to forgive and forget about the damage, deaths, and pain inflicted by the Covid lockdowns. Lots of folks are talking about this - I particularly like Aesop's. Better people than I have written eloquently about the death and destruction, and about how forgiveness requires repentance. I really don't have anything more to add about that, either.
But one thing struck me about Karen's (actually Brown University Economist Emily Oster) article. Specifically, this:
The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat. Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts. All of this gloating and defensiveness continues to gobble up a lot of social energy and to drive the culture wars, especially on the internet. These discussions are heated, unpleasant and, ultimately, unproductive. In the face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck. And, similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing. Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward. [My emphasis - Borepatch]
Whoa, slow down Cowpoke. There wasn't any luck involved at all. Case in point, Borepatch, March 22, 2020 - a week after lockdowns were imposed:
There are three very interesting Coronavirus narratives emerging in just the last day or two:
- The virus looks to be less bad - and perhaps much less bad - than we had feared. As we learn more, we learn that the worst case scenario that had been put forward is much less likely.
- Government actions have been a factor in making the outbreak or response worse or of using the outbreak to cover up their failures.
- The government response is strangling the economy. By their own admission (i.e. bills being discussed in Congress), there is at least a Trillion dollars of damage so far.
So look at this situation: things are not as bad as we feared, governments are to some extent demonstrably incompetent and untrustworthy, and the draconian crackdown/overreaction is destroying businesses, jobs, and people's lives.
Man, I sure was lucky in that analysis, wasn't I? But I guess that I'm particularly lucky because a month later I wrote this:
Most importantly of all, we're not tracking (well, modeling) how many of the Kung Flu deaths are people who had severe health problems and would likely have died soon anyway. Sure, there are stories about young healthy people keeling over from this; we know that this is a vanishingly small minority of the total deaths.
But we know that we are putting the population of the country under severe strain, and that this has very real consequences. Aesop left a comment from the health care front lines that illustrates this:
And yes, in one night, three of the traumas we had were domestic violence.
Normally, we see one of those a month; at worst, one a week. Not three in one night.
But it hasn't been that way every night. Yet.
Man, that's two in a row for Borepatch! How lucky can you get? But wait - there's more! Posted here September 3, 2020:
A groundbreaking new study commissioned by Revolver News concludes that COVID-19 lockdowns are ten times more deadly than the actual COVID-19 virus in terms of years of life lost by American citizens.
Up until this point there had been no simple, rigorous analysis that accurately and definitively conveys the true costs of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Accordingly, Revolver News set out to commission a study to do precisely that: to finally quantify the net damage of the lockdowns in terms of a metric known as “life-years.” Simply put, we have drawn upon existing economic studies on the health effects of unemployment to calculate an estimate of how many years of life will have been lost due to the lockdowns in the United States, and have weighed this against an estimate of how many years of life will have been saved by the lockdowns. The results are nothing short of staggering, and suggest that the lockdowns will end up costing Americans over 10 times as many years of life as they will save from the virus itself.
Bold in original. That's some medical response, right there.
In all honesty, this really isn't controversial at all. We've studied the health effects of unemployment for decades and decades. We know what happened to employment, and how many people lost their jobs. Applying known health impacts to those people allows us to quantify mortality due to the lockdown. It's just math.
What is interesting here is the analysis of age at death. For virtually all (90%) of Covid deaths, the patient was very old. This means that there were few "life years" left for that patient. However, for unemployment caused mortality the age at death was much younger, and so there were many more years for each of these people.
The process of higher mathematics gives the result that is in boldface in the quote.
It's hard to see a more counter productive government response.
Man, I must be the luckiest man on the face of the earth, stringing these analyses and predictions together like that. I'd better buy a Powerball ticket for tonight! [/snark]
So what is it that makes me so much smarter than a Brown University Professor? I wrote about this in the April post linked above, specifically:
Once a government executes a particular power, they will want to do it again. Most of the country in under house arrest; where does that lead in the future? To SiG's point that people will answer this by saying that people will die and isn't it heartless to let them die over a hypothetical, let me reply by asking how many people? Because we don't know the number because we're not measuring the factors that would tell us the answer: how many are very sick and would die within the next 6-12 months? Sure their lives are valuable but do we wreck 50 million lives to give them and extra 6 months? That sounds harsh, but that's exactly the tradeoff that we are making.
It's the Unseen. And the costs are Unseen, too, because no Governor in the land wants to make it explicit to the voters just what are all the many miseries that have been unleashed on them by said Governor. That it is Unseen is not by accident.
And so our policy makers see the situation poorly, looking through a glass darkly at only a portion of the situation. Of course the resulting public policy is hideous. Interestingly, the misery is concentrated on Trump voters (the hourly wage class), not the governing class (who work from home via videoconference). You can't get to your factory job that way, but the salaried class are doing fine. No doubt this is all a coincidence.
Even a private University like Brown cannot exist without the generous support of the Government. Professor Oster has a financial incentive to follow the government with respect to this policy, and when a person's dinner depends upon their support for a particular policy they tend not to see any evidence that runs counter to that policy.
Oh, and no doubt Professor Oster did just fine during the lockdowns while working class people in Providence lost their businesses. No doubt this was all a coincidence, too.
Moving on is crucial now, because the pandemic created many problems that we still need to solve.
Student test scores have shown historic declines, more so in math than in reading, and more so for students who were disadvantaged at the start. We need to collect data, experiment, and invest. Is high-dosage tutoring more or less cost-effective than extended school years? Why have some states recovered faster than others? We should focus on questions like these, because answering them is how we will help our children recover.
Many people have neglected their health care over the past several years. Notably, routine vaccination rates for children (for measles, pertussis, etc.) are way down. Rather than debating the role that messaging about COVID vaccines had in this decline, we need to put all our energy into bringing these rates back up. Pediatricians and public-health officials will need to work together on community outreach, and politicians will need to consider school mandates.
The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward.
There is simply no rational, science-based justification to keep the lockdowns in place anymore. We see this recognized by Governors (who are starting to end the lockdown) and by the population in general (who are starting to willfully violate the lockdown). Everybody but the "experts" is starting to recognize this, and the "experts" may be refusing to recognize it so that they don't get blamed.
She was standing at the front door
When I came home last night
A good book in her left hand
And a rollin' pin in the right
She said you've come home for the last time
With whiskey on your breath
If you don't listen to my preachin' boy
I'm goin' to have to beat you half to death
Give me just a one more last chance
Before you say we're through
I know I drive you crazy baby
It's the best that I can do
We're just some good ol' boys, a makin' noise
I ain't a runnin' 'round on you
Give me just a one more last chance
Before you say we're through
First she hid my glasses
'Cause she knows that I can't see
She said you ain't goin' nowhere boy
'Til you spend a little time with me
Then the boys called from the honky tonk
Said there's a party goin' on down here
Well she might've took my car keys
But she forgot about my old John Deere
So give me just a one more last chance
Before you say we're through
I know I drive you crazy baby
It's the best that I can do
We're just some good ol' boys, a makin' noise
I ain't a runnin' 'round on you
Give me just a one more last chance
Before you say we're through
E.M. Smith has a typically thoughtful post about what is happening in Europe right now:
Do note that at present the EU & UK are having about a 10% to 20% reduction in their natural gas flows. This is about 5% to 10% reduction in their “Carbon”. Now both currencies have dropped about 1/3 of their value vs the $ US (that is also losing value fast to inflation….). They also have a political revolution in the starting phases, governments being turned out, and massive marches in the streets. It isn’t even winter yet… With that small a step toward the WEF “Decarbonization Goal”, this is what you get. What do you think will happen with a double of that “decarbonization”?
He then goes on to point out that the EU's "accomplishments" to date are only about 10% of the decarbonization goal and that to meet these goals each of the next ten years will have to do even more than what the last year has seen. He points out:
Street Protests in the EU / Europe writ large are the prelude to riots that are the prelude to insurrections and revolts. I’ve often said these Elite need to remember “The French Haircut”. Yet they do not.
A lot of folks in Europe are going to die this winter. We'll see what things look like in March, but I wonder how many of the EU governments will still be in power by then.
