Shitstorm Saturday. Finally!
(And how not to spend it curled up in fetal position saying “Oh, shit!”)
Yeah, we’re definitely in a shitstorm right now, and worse (for our morale) is that our side hasn’t really answered the other side’s opening salvo. However, even a skeptic/pessimist like me can see we are gathering our forces for the counterattack. There are some unknown factors in play, but the only thing we can do is plunge in.
This is for ALL OF THE CHIPS. They are “all in.” We are “all in.”
If the Enemy wins, we will never, ever, ever have another chance at this without a hot civil war, and the enemy will have the full weight of the Federal Government on their side. Because we haven’t managed to drain the swamp, and they can certainly either co-opt or get rid of the few good people Trump has managed to install.
Trump having to leave office next January would be a catastrophe, and everything he has accomplished will be undone in a matter of months…if not weeks…if not days. To the applause of the minders of our culture and our educational system.
Welcome to the American Socialist State (ASS). Maybe that’s why the Dems have that as their mascot?
If Trump wins the work has just begun. The swamp MUST be drained, it must become his TOP priority. I’ll be honest, I think it should have been kicked into higher gear a long time ago, but then…I do NOT know what the Generals know, and I also don’t know what they DON’T know. Maybe by delaying, he’s pulling an Alexander I, giving Napoleon a long enough supply line to hang himself on. Seriously, I am reminded of this. Alexander was risking being deposed because the Russian army would not meet Napoleon head on. But in the end it was worth it. Napoleon didn’t just fail to conquer Russia, he himself ended up being chased all the way back to Paris and being deposed.
Which just reminds me of a particular piece of music.
That piece of music is about the war of 1812 between France and Russia, not our war of 1812, but nonetheless we’ve adopted it for our Independence Day (maybe having cannon used as a musical instrument had something to do with that). It’s replete with the Marseillaise theme as well as the old Russian Imperial anthem (neither of which was in use in 1812, but give Pyotr Ill’ich Chaikovsky some artistic license). I found this recording a few months ago and like the period paintings AND the fact that the choral part is included. (You can hear them sing God Save The Tsar towards the end, 15:00 or so.)
There are two parts of this where there is canon fire. One string of five shots at about 12:30, then a minute or so later at about 13:35 the music kicks into high gear, the bells ring, the same hymn that starts the whole piece is sung again, and there’s the big volley, and on July 4th you have fireworks too. When that hymn starts up, I think of it as “Mother Russia is awake, she’s riled, and she is going to bring an ASS KICKING with her.” (The one disadvantage of this recording is this doesn’t have the punch it does with an instrumental recording.)
Sort of like we feel about this election.
That first volley represents the Battle of Borodino. That was when the Russians did, in fact, make a stand. Borodino is a few score miles west of Moscow. The Russian Army and Napoleon’s Grand Armee faced off and twenty five thousand soldiers died.
This is one of the bloodiest single-day battles in history. In fact, it was at the time the second worst ever, second only to the utter annihilation of five Roman legions by Hannibal at Cannae.
For comparison, the Allies lost about 4400 men on D-day.
Napoleon was nominally the winner of this battle, but it drained his capabilities tremendously, and he had not decisively beaten the Russians, so the victory he was seeking continued to evade his grasp. (He specialized in crushing his enemies utterly in one stroke, and the Russians understood this and never gave him the opportunity.)
The Russians continued retreating towards Moscow. They reached it, and the soldiers marching along were waiting for the command to stop, and take their stand. Surely Moscow, the ancient (but not current) capital, the beating heart of Old Mother Russia, had to be defended! But they waited for the stop command in vain, they marched completely through the city and out the other side, giving it to Napoleon. They did, however, arrange to set the city on fire, leaving Napoleon with nothing…and winter was coming.
Hundreds of thousands of troops, French and allies, entered Russia. Almost none of them survived to retreat back out of Russia. An ass kicking indeed. And he was pursued all the way to Paris and deposed.
I think right now we’ve just fought our Battle of Borodino, and we will soon see who wins the war. There’s a hard deadline. The electors cast their vote on December 16, which means we must know before then who they are–Dopey Joe’s people, or Trump’s people.
And if it’s Dopey Joe’s people in too many cases…well, life will get very nasty, brutish, and interesting.
OK enough of that. To the immediate matter at hand. Unfrauding.
Unfrauding is getting out from under the electoral fraud. (I was about to coin the word “defrauding” but then I realized it already exists and means the exact opposite of what I would want it to mean. It must be one of those “flammable”/”inflammable” things.)
I am hoping there is indeed something to the one pixel dot identifiers. Actually, I do know there is something to it; that HP printer over to my left undeniably uses them. The question is whether the Big Honking Machines that printed off all those mail in ballots months ago also do this. A home/office printer is one thing, this other thing is an industrial printer you could probably print dead-tree books and magazines on.
If they do, then great: We can certainly discern whether a ballot was or was not printed on those machines and toss those out (unless, of course the counterfeiters were clever/able to change their machines to match–unlikely but not totally impossible–if it really was in China, big resources were in play and I’d expect someone over there to at least try).
But it’s important to remember how many different ways to commit fraud there are, and that this won’t catch all of them. For example, we know for a fact that many of those ballots printed on the perfectly legit machine were mailed to people who are dead, or who have moved away. Any of those “harvested” and filled out will have the correct dot pattern on them. Also, legit ballots with votes for Trump can be, and have been thrown away, and the correct dot pattern on those won’t prevent them from hitting the dumpster.
And there is a third factor. I’ve mentioned in the past that Colorado is mail-in only…but you can vote in person in Colorado; I did so on Monday. I had to go to one of about ten places in my county, fill out paperwork giving my name and address (and affirming that I am a citizen). They then looked me up, and on the spot, a big machine the size of an office copier but with a big attachment on top, printed my ballot.
I tried to explain this to someone, that Colorado prints legal ballots on the day of the election, and he simply denied it. Well, I saw it happen the day before the election on my behalf and I know people who voted on election day the same way.
Now this machine presumably prints the dots. And the dots encode a time stamp. But what happens if they run off a ballot or two during a slow time of day and vote them? Well, with THAT there is an audit trail; the number of ballots will be off from the number of people who voted, but I can think of ways around that, and the dot pattern will not, by itself, save us from that form of fraud.
Basically, folks, as useful as the dot pattern is…it had better not be the only thing in our quiver, and I’m 99 percent sure it isn’t.
A Reminder Of Today’s Big Issue.
Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American People...Our campaign represents a true existential threat, like they’ve never seen before.
Then-Candidate Donald J. Trump
Needs to happen, soon.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
Please note that our menu has changed, please listen to all of the options.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Political correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. The first rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government take your guns.
5. The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
9. Social Justice Warriors, ANTIFA pukes, BLM hypocrites, and other assorted varieties of Marxists can go copulate with themselves, or if insufficiently limber, may substitute a rusty wire brush suitable for cleaning the bore of a twelve or ten gauge.
(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)
Coin of The Day
Иван Грозный – Ivan The Terrible
I made a joke Thursday, telling the left not to make me go Ivan the Terrible on them. Wolf appreciated it, which got me to thinking about him (Ivan, not Wolf). He was the fourth grand duke of Muscovy named Ivan (and the ones before him all had nicknames too, Ivan Moneybags, Ivan the Red (or Ivan the Fair), and Ivan the Great). He flourished in the late 1500s, and was the grandson of Ivan the Great. Ivan the Great had defeated the Mongols, which is how he got to be called the “Great”, and Ivan the Terrible, his grandson, capitalized on that to assume the title “Tsar” (a derivation of the word Caesar). Russia at that point (in 1547) became a “Tsardom” with Muscovy becoming its most important constituency.
His reign started out promisingly in 1533, and he managed to conquer the Khanates of Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan (1556) on the Volga, and made the first inroads into Siberia (50s-1580).
But then something happened, and he became erratic in the 1560s, starting a rather “Red Guard” like force called the Oprichnina. He eventually (1570) turned them loose on Novgorod, one of his own cities, and it was as if an invading army were sacking it, murdering and pillaging. Novgorod at the time was second only in importance to Moscow. It never regained that level of prominence.
He also built St. Basil’s cathedral on Red Square in Moscow (that’s the one with all the onion shaped domes on it).
His sobriquet isn’t really “the Terrible” in the sense of “awful, horrific.” The word Terrible made sense as a translation back then, but its meaning has changed over the centuries and now the Russian word groznyy is a bit difficult to translate, it’s somewhere between fearsome, formidable, dreaded, and awesome (as in awe-inspiring, not excellent). To be “terrible” in the modern sense of the word, to a Russian, a ruler would have to allow the country to descend into anarchy or lose a major war or something like that. Ivan Groznyy did none of those things. he kept a tight grip, he expanded Russia’s borders…basically, you didn’t fuck with him.
That first picture of him shows him robed with a walking stick. But that walking stick is actually a spear. He was not above literally pinning someone’s foot to the floor with it.
(“Mommy, mommy, why do I keep walking around in circles?” “Shut up or I’ll nail your other foot to the floor.” — from a compendium of sick jokes I read as a teenager, the natural market for such books.)
Ivan beat one of his pregnant daughters for dressing immodestly in 1581, she ended up miscarrying (probably as a result of the beating), then his son, Ivan junior, got into an argument about it, and Ivan beat him with his staff, and Ivan junior died.
Ivan Groznyy finally died in 1584.
Because he had killed his son, his dynasty, the Ryuriks (who had ruled in some form since the 800s) petered out after a nephew succeeded him, and Russia spent the time from 1598-1613 in the Time of Troubles, after which a more distant relative of Ivan, Michael Romanov, was asked to be Tsar, and he founded the Romanov dynasty, which endured for just over 300 years.
But this is the coins section, so you might be thinking I’ll show you some of his coins. And they must surely be fabulously expensive.
Half right. I’ll show you the coins. But they’re cheap. And not terribly impressive to look at.
(You can spot part of the word ВЕЛИКИЙ “Velikiy” in the lettering, Russian for “Grand” or “Great”)
These coins are considerably smaller than a dime. Dengas (I’ll explain that in a moment) were originally about a gram in weight but over time got debased down to 0.14 grams. A silver dime weighs 5.0 [edit: not 6.25] grams, for comparison.
Russian coins at this time were made by a very different process. A bit of silver wire was carefully measured and cut. If the wire had consistent thickness, the cut piece would have consistent weight. This bit of wire was rolled flat, resulting in a rather oblong shape. It would then be struck by hammered dies. The dies were much larger than the coin, meaning that the coin would never show the entire design. However, by examining hundreds of these bits of “wire money” one can assemble a composite and see what was on the die.
One side was the name and title of the tsar. The other had a man on horseback, fighting a dragon with either a spear or a sword. That man, of course, was St. George. And him fighting the dragon was the emblem of Moscow (and still is). If you’ve ever seen a double-headed Russian eagle emblem, it generally has a shield on its chest, and on that shield is St. George.
Wire money is occasionally found in hoards (someone buried a pot full of them for safekeeping and never returned to dig it up). These sometimes have many hundreds of pieces and thus the coins aren’t rare and aren’t very expensive. They’re also generally not very attractive. It’s a rare collector who takes a fascination with them, but in principle you can buy a book that shows you all the dies we know of and figure out which one struck your coin. If it has the name of Ivan Vasilievich on it, it will either call him “Veliky Knaz” (grand duke, pre-1547) or “Tsar” (tsar, post 1547) and you’ve got a coin of Ivan the Terrible. (Pro tip. If the lettering contains an X, it cannot be anything other than a coin of Michael Romanov.)
They commonly came in two sizes; ones with St. George and a sword were called “dengas”, ones twice as heavy with St. George using a spear (in Russian, a kopye) were called “kopeyeks” and that is what ultimately led to the kopek. There was, occasionally, an “altyn” worth six dengas, and it got that name from the Tatar word for six. That fact right there should tell you how hard the Mongol/Tatar yoke sat on the Russians during the late middle ages. (Even “denga” is probably a Turkic word.)
Rubles at the time only had a theoretical existence. Centuries earlier there were cast silver ingots and ruble, from the Russian word for “to cut” was a cut-off piece of an ingot. But by the 1500s, no physical “ruble” existed, so rubles were a “unit of account” equal to 200 dengas.
Nice round coins like ours didn’t come to Russia until Peter the Great introduced them in 1700.
Standard disclaimer: I never show pictures of my own coins. I may or may not own coins like the ones I show. Burglars will be interested to hear that gold and silver aren’t the only heavy metals I have, and I have quite a bit of one with a heavier nucleus than either. And I keep it around a lot more than the gold and silver.
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
Just two more things, my standard Public Service Announcements. We don’t want to forget them!!!
How Not To Find Yourself In Contention For The Darwin Award
(Nothing to do with bearded dragons)
It has been pointed out that all of the rioting is nominally on account of criminals who resisted arrest in one form or another, and someone suggested schools ought to teach people not to resist arrest.
Chris Rock on a similar vein, in 2007
Granted an “ass kicking” isn’t the same as being shot, but both can result from the same stupid act. You may ultimately beat the rap, but you aren’t going to avoid the ride.
China is Lower than Whale Shit
Remember Hong Kong!!! And remember the tens of millions who died under the “Great Helmsman” Chairman Mao.
中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!
For my money the Great Helmsman is Hikaru Sulu (even if the actor is a dingbat).