“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.” –J. Robert Oppenheimer
Now that the pork tenderloin is in the marinade (extra-virgin olive oil, honey, soy sauce, and lots of garlic and score the meat before you put it in; after at least an hour in the marinade, broil or grill about 7-8 minutes on each side; cut into 3/4 inch medallions and grill/broil an additional 4-5 minutes on each side), and the broth is on the stove for tomorrow, it’s time to admit I thought this was going to be meme and open tab clearance day.
The real problem with CNNplus is that no matter how many sprinkles you add to a pile of shit, you're still basically left with a pile of shit. https://t.co/LLuFRj8sfZ
Gail brought this to the QTree on Tuesday, and IMHO, it is worth the time to have it on in the background while doing chores or walking on the treadmill. Lots of good information there.
Related to that interview, this was in an open tab from Monday:
In a time when various “developed world” intelligence agencies are filling up petabytes of hard disk space with domestic phone recordings and tracking their own citizens who – in the pursuit of a “liberal” agenda – have been escalated to a greater terrorist threat than actual foreign terrorists, some people have had enough and are throwing their smart phones into the trash and replacing them with “dumbphones” instead.
One among them is seventeen-year-old Robin West, who according to the BBC is an anomaly among her peers: “she doesn’t have a smartphone.” Instead of scrolling through apps like TikTok and Instagram all day, she uses a so-called “dumbphone”.
Those readers who had a cell phone in the late 1990s are all too familiar with these; for everyone else these are basic handsets, or feature phones, with very limited functionality compared to say an iPhone. For the most part, you can typically only make and receive calls and SMS text messages. And, if you are lucky, listen to radio and take very basic photos, but definitely not connect to the internet or apps.
Robin’s decision to ditch her former smartphone two years ago was a spur of the moment thing. While looking for a replacement handset in a second-hand shop she was lured by the low price of a “brick phone”. Her current handset, from French firm MobiWire, cost her just £8. And because it has no smartphone functionality she doesn’t have an expensive monthly data bill to worry about.
“I didn’t notice until I bought a brick phone how much a smartphone was taking over my life,” she says. “I had a lot of social media apps on it, and I didn’t get as much work done as I was always on my phone.”
The Londoner adds that she doesn’t think she’ll ever buy another smartphone. “I’m happy with my brick – I don’t think it limits me. I’m definitely more proactive.”
According to BBC, dumbphones are enjoying a revival. Google searches for them jumped by 89% between 2018 and 2021, according to a report by software firm SEMrush. And while sales figures are hard to come by, one report said that global purchases of dumbphones were due to hit one billion units last year, up from 400 million in 2019. This compares to worldwide sales of 1.4 billion smart phones last year, following a 12.5% decline in 2020.
Well, there’s a switch.
In other news, Russell Brand took a shower and washed his hair.
Okay, what else have I got.
This was on the radio as I drove home from the store.
It’s not the best to which to dance.
____________________________________
One of the obstacles to full understanding of just what the enemy is all about revolves around the concept of symbolism.
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And now for the business portion.
Please review our HOST and site owner’s Guidelines for posting and discussion for this site. Wolf is kind enough to put up with *most* of us and our antics after thorough vetting. Violators of the baiting and deliberately attempting to divide the group rules WILL face consequences.
The discourse on this site is to be CIVIL – no name calling, baiting, or threatening others here is allowed. Company manners are appreciated. Those who are so inclined may visit Wolf’s other sanctuary, the U-Tree, to slog out discussions best saved for a wrestling mat. If, for some reason, this site is not available, head over to the UTree and visit the post at the top of the list or the closest rescue thread.
This site is a celebration of the natural rights endowed to humans by our Creator as well as those enshrined in the Bill of Rights adopted in the founding documents of the United States of America. Within the limits of law, how we exercise these rights is part of the freedom of our discussion.
THAT MEANS THAT ALL OF US HERE ARE ENTITLED TO OUR OPINIONS AND PREJUDICES, ETC., SO LONG AS THEY CAUSE NO PHYSICAL HARM TO OTHERS OR DOXX OUR FELLOW TREE DWELLERS.
All opinions here are valued for the diversity they bring to the issues, and the shaping of understanding regarding topics for which many of us do not have all information. Correcting the record on any one topic is appreciated.
Be careful in expressing thoughts as we would all like to think well of the rest of the group, and ill-thought out comments have a way of wrecking that for everyone.
Fellow tree dweller Wheatie gave us some good reminders on the basics of civility in political discourse:
No food fights
No running with scissors
If you bring snacks, be sure they are made with bacon
Auntie DePat’s requests as we are all supposedly adults and don’t just play them on TV like the body doubles pretending to be the squatter in chief:
If you see something has not been posted, do us all a favor, and post it. Please, do not complain that it has not been done yet.
The scroll wheel on your mouse can be your friend. As mature adults, please use it here in the same manner you would in avoiding online porn.
Thank you so much for any and all attention to such details. It is GREATLY appreciated by more than one party here.
7And the LORD said to Moses, “Go down; for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves; 8they have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them; they have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, `These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!'” 9And the LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people; 10now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; but of you I will make a great nation.” 11But Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, “O LORD, why does thy wrath burn hot against thy people, whom thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12Why should the Egyptians say, `With evil intent did he bring them forth, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. 13Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou didst swear by thine own self, and didst say to them, `I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it for ever.'” 14And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people.
PSALMS 106:19-23
19They made a calf in Horeb and worshiped a molten image. 20They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass. 21They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt, 22wondrous works in the land of Ham, and terrible things by the Red Sea. 23Therefore he said he would destroy them — had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath from destroying them.
JOHN 5:31-47
31If I bear witness to myself, my testimony is not true; 32there is another who bears witness to me, and I know that the testimony which he bears to me is true. 33You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. 34Not that the testimony which I receive is from man; but I say this that you may be saved. 35He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. 36But the testimony which I have is greater than that of John; for the works which the Father has granted me to accomplish, these very works which I am doing, bear me witness that the Father has sent me. 37And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness to me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen; 38and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe him whom he has sent. 39You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; 40yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. 41I do not receive glory from men. 42But I know that you have not the love of God within you. 43I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive. 44How can you believe, who receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? 45Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; it is Moses who accuses you, on whom you set your hope. 46If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. 47But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”
Remember Zach Vorhies, the Google whistleblower who was subjected to all kinds of shady police action when he tried to tell the world what was really happening at Google?
The man has a deep inside knowledge of what goes on in Google-world, but he also knows that there are problems in Patriot-land and TRUTH-WORLD. Our comms are FRAGMENTED.
One problem I have, is finding great videos on hot topics on our side.
YouTube used to be wonderful for finding all the videos I needed, until they started aggressively removing videos that didn’t take the “woke” viewpoint. Next came DuckDuckGo – which was not much better, fronting MOSTLY YouTube – and then it became DuckDuckWoke.
Rumble’s content is good, but their search is crap. BitChute and some of the others are not much better. And they’re ALL separate.
For instance, I’m thinking about covering the Eric Greitens story. It’s complicated, but the message is simple. Karl Rove and Mitch McConnell GOT CAUGHT trying to RIG the Senate for the UniParty, playing a dirty communist trick on Eric Greitens. These assholes are gonna pay for their CCGOP skulduggery. I would love some GREAT HOT VIDEOS to catch people up to the story.
Blast Dot Video does the work.
Type Eric Greitens or Karl Rove in the search and just find what you need, at the top.
This is exactly what I needed. Once they get some fresher OANN videos in here (there is a delay right now), it will be fully Wolf Moon compliant, as we say around here.
Russia and India took a small but important step towards non-dollar trade financing and investment on March 25, when the Reserve Bank of India allowed Russia to invest the proceeds of its arms sales to India in local-currency corporate bonds.
Russia’s account with India’s central bank is small, with a reported balance of US$262 million, but the prospective advantages to both countries are enormous: India will pay for one of its most important import items, namely Russian weapons, in local currency, and Russia will invest the proceeds in a financial market safe from sanctions.
India changed its rules on external commercial borrowing to accommodate the Russian proposal, Bloomberg News reported. The US, European Union (EU) and Japan seized Russian central bank reserves as well as the assets of wealthy Russian nationals after Moscow’s troops invaded Ukraine in late February.
That is another small but indicative crack in the framework of the US dollar reserve system. Saudi Arabia reportedly will accept RMB in payment for oil shipments to China, its largest customer.
That implies in turn that the Saudi kingdom will maintain a significant portion of its reserves in Chinese currency, possibly in an arrangement like the Indian-Russian agreement for reinvestment of the proceeds of arms sales.
Then there was this that could well be mis/dis information:
A CIA officer has confessed that the ‘Deep State’ rigged the 2020 election in Joe Biden’s favor, and has boldly admitted that the agency would do it again.
Former CIA officer John Sipher claimed in a stunning Twitter thread that he took “particular joy” in discrediting the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” narrative and enthusiastically admitted to “shifting” the election away from Trump.
Sipher was among the many “intelligence experts” who falsely claimed the Hunter Biden laptop story from the New York Post back in October of 2020 was part of a “Russian disinformation campaign.”
Redvoicemedia.com reports: A March 18th report from the New York Post mentioned how Sipher was among those “officials” who’d “signed a letter saying that the laptop ‘has the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.’”
Don’t forget: Cypher was the villain/bad guy/black hat in the movie “The Matrix.” Yes, it is spelled differently, but….
The opening sequence of this video of Jack Maxey talking about the laptop features the Russian information operation montage from the dinosaur media.
Also of interest is a RedVoiceMedia clip from Dr. Zelenko. It seems he has landed on some sort of pharma hit list.
Biden’s body double doesn’t know what he’s saying, either.
I recently got banned from YouTube because I had a discussion w/ another doc about what we were seeing in clinic. It was labeled as " medical misinformation" by the fact checkers. Amazing that they know better about what we're seeing in clinic than us docs do.
From my colleague Dr David Healy: “Imagine if, several decades ago, the tobacco companies had been able to ensure that any linkage of lung cancer or heart attacks to their products was deemed misinformation.”
And some good news courtesy of one of our participants.
Have a good day y’all.
(I don’t remember who brought this to a daily in the comments, but thanks.)
And, of course, the obligatory George Carlin:
Per the Boss:
And now for the obligatory message from our sponsors:
Here at the Q tree we believe in the concept of CIVIL open free speech and the discussion that fleshes out ideas. When commenting and participating in the OPEN discussion on this thread all comments MUST NOT CONTAIN personal threats, baiting, name calling, or other anti-social words fomenting hate, violence or destruction. Our host Wolfm00n has strict rules about that.
Fellow tree dweller Wheatie gave us some good reminders on the basics of civility in political discourse:
No food fights.
No running with scissors.
If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone
Please, stock up on blanks for celebratory gunfire, be ready to swing from the chandeliers…and no messing with the nuclear weapons.
Please remember to remain locked and loaded and ready for trouble should the insurrectionists try to invade your space.
Those who have things to say that do not fit the generally accepted limits of “civil” discussion, Wolf has provided a venue known as the UTree. You’re welcome to visit over there and say hi to anyone hanging out over there. The “Rescue Thread” is also over there. In the event a rendezvous of the tree is needed, please check it out, as well as the newest rescue venue.
Auntie DePat’s requests:
If you see something has not been posted, do us all a favor, and post it. Please, do not complain that it has not been done yet.
The scroll wheel on your mouse can be your friend. As mature adults, please use it here in the same manner you would in avoiding online porn.
Thank you so much for any and all attention to such details. It is GREATLY appreciated by more than one party here.
One other vital note:
Please, review these rules that our host Wolfm00n outlined toward the beginning of the growth of the tree itself. it won’t take long.
8Thus says the LORD: “In a time of favor I have answered you, in a day of salvation I have helped you; I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages; 9saying to the prisoners, `Come forth,’ to those who are in darkness, `Appear.’ They shall feed along the ways, on all bare heights shall be their pasture; 10they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall smite them, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them. 11And I will make all my mountains a way, and my highways shall be raised up. 12Lo, these shall come from afar, and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Syene.” 13Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the LORD has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his afflicted. 14But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.” 15“Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.
As always, prayers for the fight against that which seeks to enslave us are welcome.
Please include: President Donald Trump, the Q team, our soldiers in the field, special forces, tactical units, first responders and those working behind the scenes…and any and all people with family members in the hospital, COVID or not.
And…members of the QTree who no longer participate for one reason or another.
It is quite clear, as per Wolf’s message from July, that we are under spiritual attack. Building up a robust arsenal of prayer and discipline is a must in fighting the enemy and his minions.
In that spirit, the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel from Tuesday’s threads, and the Breastplate of St. Patrick, not to mention the Litany of Humility are favorites recommended by exorcists in spiritual warfare.
Patel Patriot put forth this podcast that features the pod caster cherry picking various Brian Cates posts to his Telegram channel. The stuff worth listening to starts at about fifteen minutes in:
I had an early morning airport run on Monday (as in it was still dark when I got back to the house), so it might be sleep deprivation, but it really made a lot of sense. For those who prefer to read, the material includes a number of Epoch Times articles, which are behind the paywall. Here is a link to Cates’s channel.
The information presented begins with Cates pointing out that “known super villain” in the SpyGate fiasco, Rod Rosenstein, is not named in the lawsuit filed last week against the full pantheon of swamp creatures accused of trying to railroad President Trump’s political career. Cates goes on to build a case scenario that puts Rosenstein in charge of several SpyGate investigations, including appointing and supervising Durham after former Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself. Cates calls Rosenstein Trump’s mole, and nothing this big could have happened without moles. That’s simply a reality. Was Rosenstein in the role of the mole? Time will tell.
Cates also sets up the argument for the reason Sessions recused himself from all Russia related investigations. His premise is that Sessions is one of the several members of the Trump transition team who remains masked in the surveillance probe. If Sessions was a victim of the illegal surveillance, he has a stake in all the cases and there’s an obvious conflict of interest. The only person surveilled who is known at this point is General Michael Flynn. There’s a good chance Cates is right that Sessions was one of the victims. There were no leaks on these investigations, so we simply do not know what we do not know.
There are a number of other people who are considered to be on the dark side discussed there, but that’s the big thing.
Next, Freshman Congressman Madison Cawthorn did an interview with Warrior Poet Society hosted by John Lovell. He dropped a bombshell that anyone who follows SD and CTH has known for a while, but, still….
The GOP congressman went on to share anecdotes about interactions he has had since coming to the Capitol.
“The sexual perversion that goes on in Washington, I mean, being kind of a young guy in Washington, average age is probably 60 or 70,” Cawthorn said, “I look at a lot of these people, a lot of them that I’ve looked up to through my life—I’ve always paid attention to politics—then all of a sudden you get invited to, ‘Oh hey we’re going to have a sexual get together at one of our homes, you should come.'”
Cawthorn then put on a shocked expression, saying his response was, “‘What did you just ask me to come to?’ And then you realize they’re asking you to come to an orgy.” The Republican lawmaker also said that “some of the people who are leading on the movement to try and remove addiction in our county” have done “a key bump of cocaine” right in front of him.
Cawthorn did not name names, but, still, that didn’t come out of nowhere.
Dear woke billionaires 1. There is no green energy 2. There are no gender choices 3. America’s founding was good 4. There is no synthetic beef 5. We are gonna kick your asses in November https://t.co/xHcVjAuWuh
I’d throw in a few Rockefellers and Rothschilds also.
Of course, this does not mean committing felonies, but standing up to the forces that want to tear this nation – and humanity apart. The very people XVII told us will be destroyed by the time this movie comes to an end are currently roaming the halls of power…supposedly. It’s a sickening sight.
Your weekly reminder to take the pledge:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”
The discourse on this site is to be CIVIL – no name calling, baiting, or threatening others here is allowed. Those who are so inclined may visit Wolf’s other sanctuary, the U-Tree, to slog it out. There is also a “rescue” thread there for members of the Tree to rendezvous if the main site goes kablooey. A third site has been added for site outages of longer duration.
This site is a celebration of the natural rights endowed to humans by our Creator as well as those enshrined in the Bill of Rights adopted in the founding documents of the United States of America. Within the limits of law, how we exercise these rights is part of the freedom of our discussion.
Fellow tree dweller Wheatie gave us some good reminders on the basics of civility in political discourse:
No food fights.
No running with scissors.
If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
And Auntie DePat’s requests:
If you see something has not been posted, do us all a favor, and post it. Please, do not complain that it has not been done yet.
The scroll wheel on your mouse can be your friend. As mature adults, please use it here in the same manner you would in avoiding online porn.
By now, I have learned to keep my reactions pretty close to my chest. There is such a thing as reacting too soon before more information is released, and it’s easy to make assumptions if you don’t see the whole picture. There’s power in observation.
1After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Hebrew called Beth-za’tha, which has five porticoes. 3In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed. 5One man was there, who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 7The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me.” 8Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your pallet, and walk.” 9And at once the man was healed, and he took up his pallet and walked. Now that day was the sabbath. 10So the Jews said to the man who was cured, “It is the sabbath, it is not lawful for you to carry your pallet.” 11But he answered them, “The man who healed me said to me, `Take up your pallet, and walk.'” 12They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, `Take up your pallet, and walk’?” 13Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. 14Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse befall you.” 15The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16And this was why the Jews persecuted Jesus, because he did this on the sabbath.
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Hosts, by the power of God, cast down to Hell Satan and all his evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
>>148156518 Amen brother. Q
As always, prayers for the fight against that which seeks to enslave us are welcome. Via con Dios.
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
And indeed, it’s Monday…again.
But we WILL get through it!
…and we will have fun doing it, too!
The Rules
Boilerplate, more or less, but worth reading again and again, if only for the minor changes, and to stay out of moderation.
The bottom line is Free Speech. Theories and ideas you don’t agree with must be WELCOME here, and you must be part of that welcoming. But you do NOT need to be part of any agreement.
Bottom line – respect other people’s FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS.
Our only additional requirement is that you do so NICELY. Or at least try to make some effort in that direction.
SO….. [ENGAGE BOILERPLATE…..]
We must endeavor to persevere to love our frenemies – even here.
Those who cannot deal with this easy requirement will be forced to jump the hoops of moderation, so that specific comments impugning other posters and violating the minimal rules can be sorted out and tossed in the trash.
In Wheatie’s words, “We’re on the same side here so let’s not engage in friendly fire.”
That includes the life skill of just ignoring certain other posters.
We do have a site – The U Tree – where civility is not a requirement. Interestingly, people don’t really go there much. Nevertheless, if you find yourself in an “argument” that can’t really stay civil, please feel free to “take it to the U Tree”. The U Tree is also a good place to report any technical difficulties, if you’re unable to report them here. Please post your comment there on one of Wolf’s posts, or in reply to one of Wolf’s comments, to make sure he sees it (though it may take a few hours).
We also have a backup site, called The Q Tree as well, which is really The Q Tree 579486807. You might call it “Second Tree”. The URL for that site is https://theqtree579486807.wordpress.com/. If this site (theqtree.com) ever goes down, please reassemble at the Second Tree.
If the Second Tree goes down, please go to The U Tree, or to our Gab Group, which is located at https://gab.com/groups/4178.
We also have some “old rules” and important guidelines, outlined here, in a very early post, on our first New Year’s Day, in 2019. The main point is not to make violent threats against people, which then have to be taken seriously by law enforcement, and which can be used as a PRETEXT by enemies of this site.
In the words of Wheatie, “Let’s not give the odious Internet Censors a reason to shut down this precious haven that Wolf has created for us.”
A Moment of Prayer
Our policy on extreme religious freedom on this site is discussed HERE. Please feel free to pray and praise God anytime and anywhere.
Thus, please pray for our real President, the one who actually won the election.
You may also pray for our nation, our world, and even our enemies.
Call To Battle
Our beloved country is under Occupation by hostile forces.
Daily outrage and epic phuckery abound.
We can give in to despair…or we can be defiant and fight back in any way that we can.
Joe Biden didn’t win.
And we will keep saying Joe Biden didn’t win until we get His Fraudulency out of our White House.
Wolfie’s Wheatie’s Word of the Day Year:
placeholder
noun
something which holds the place of another, such as this default post which “holds the place” of what would be an interesting and varied weekly Monday post.
verb
to do something to Eric Holder, as in “Please placeholder under arrest.”
In the fog of war, as I learned from the Balkans, the first side that the sheep are told to pick is usually the wrong side, which is not to say that the other side is great – it’s just less of an immediate danger. We in the Fakely Democratic West have learned the hard way that the phony Deep State narrative is usually a lie – it just takes some precious time to unravel it.
If you go back and check my postings on both this site, and at The Conservative Treehouse, you will see that for YEARS I have likened the eternal Russia-Ukraine love-hate marriage to an outlaw biker and drug dealer (Russia) with his floozy, junkie, common-law wife (Ukraine), who are constantly fighting and making up, and perpetually trying to involve everybody else in their fight, while scamming them ALL at the same time.
So when the mini-skirt beayatch Ukie comes to your door, BEGGING for help, fingers all grabby-grabby for those “my what strong biceps you have”, the smart play is to do whatever it takes to get her out of your life as QUICKLY and CLEANLY and PERMANENTLY as possible.
When her big biker boy Russ has an invitation and then a deal that seems too good to be true, hold that thought, because it’s not only too good to be true – it will put YOU in jail and HIM selling your house. The SMART play is to get out of whatever is coming NOW, because you likely WON’T be able to get out of whatever is coming NEXT.
Don’t call me “pro-Russian” just because I think that treating Russia without hypocrisy is the right thing to do. If WE have any right to the Monroe Doctrine, then so does Russia. That doesn’t mean I trust “Russ” any more than “Ukie”, or that “Russ” picked the smartest, best, or most inspired option here. I just trust GTFO-ing their world of hurt ASAP, and doing so on PRINCIPLES is usually a move that is automatically smarter than we are, BECAUSE GOD.
After seeing the results of NATObama’s immoral, haughty, and ill-advised over-expansion folly – daring to stupidly and corruptly push NATO into even-more-corrupt Ukraine, using his favorite bag-man, Joe Biden, and Joe’s stupid son, it is absolutely clear that we have corrupt but very clever geopolitical idiots behind this mess, working for the election-stealing, virus-releasing, globalist scum who got 1000 feet beyond the tips off their skis with their idiotic “Great Reset”.
Now. I could sit here and appeal to your logic all day, and it might wake you up, but I have a special treat that will wake you up faster.
Begin by questioning Ukie’s request for a sleep-over. This will help.
Be sure to watch the SECOND video. That’s the one you need most of all to WTFU.
You really want me to get in bed with these people, Adolph? FUCK YOU.
PS – Long before this crap, I was always astonished that the Ukrainians embraced the Nazis so fervently. The idea of Jazis like Soros and Schwab never even dawned on me.
Now I look back and just see how much of a dupe and a sheep I was. Evil is far more varied and inventive than what we were tricked into believing.
Are these videos disinformation? Are they propaganda? I don’t care. You need to embrace them to begin questioning. Right or wrong, don’t be afraid of the TRUTH that will come.
By the end of this, I’m betting you will agree with my little analogy.
This Sanctuary Sunday Open Thread, with full respect to those who worship God on the Sabbath, is a place to reaffirm our worship of our Creator, our Father, our King Eternal.
It’s also a place to read, post, and discuss news that is worth knowing and sharing. Please post links to any news stories that you use as sources or quote from.
In the QTree, we’re a friendly and civil lot. We encourage free speech and the open exchange and civil discussion of different ideas. Topics aren’t constrained, and sound logic is highly encouraged, all built on a solid foundation of truth and established facts.
We have a policy of mutual respect, shown by civility. Civility encourages discussions, promotes objectivity and rational thought in discourse, and camaraderie in the participants – characteristics we strive toward in our Q Tree community.
Please show respect and consideration for our fellow QTreepers. Before hitting the “post” button, please proofread your post and make sure you’re addressing the issue only, and not trying to confront the poster. Keep to the topic – avoid “you” and “your”. Here in The Q Tree, personal attacks, name-calling, ridicule, insults, baiting, and other conduct for which a penalty flag would be thrown are VERBOTEN.
In The Q Tree, we’re compatriots, sitting around the campfire, roasting hot dogs, making s’mores, and discussing, agreeing, and disagreeing about whatever interests us. This board will remain a home for those who seek respectful conversations.
We live in a world that enjoys tearing people down. From reality TV shows to the coarse interactions on talk radio—there is a continual display of putting people down instead of building them up. The misuse of words and actions can bring destruction spiritually, emotionally, and physically.
However, it should never be said of those who follow Christ. The church is built on the foundation of Christ’s love and continues to grow as we build up or edify other people with our words and actions. As followers of Christ, we are mandated by the Spirit of God to enlighten or improve the whole body of Jesus. Practice your gift of edification with the knowledge of the following top 8 Bible verses:
Edify with our sensitivity
“Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another” (Romans 14:19).
The church is a mixture of the spiritually mature and those who are new to the faith. Some of us sense God’s freedom to do things that others may feel a strong conviction to avoid. Choosing to be sensitive instead of judgmental within the body of Christ can be most edifying and will allow the church to continue to grow as outsiders sense our sincerity towards each other.
Edify with our unselfishness
“Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification” (Romans 15:2).
It’s easy to be selfish, we don’t even have to think about it first to practice it. Yet we need to recognize the opportunities to practice selflessness towards others. The church is built up when we relieve our brother’s or sister’s burdens with our gifts of time, money, and energy.
Edify with our respect
“Therefore I write these things being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness, according to the authority which the Lord has given me for edification and not for destruction” (2 Corinthians 13:10).
There are times when we are stretched in our faith by the teachings of our church leaders. Godly pastors have been led by God to preach truth in sometimes difficult circumstances. As the body of Christ, we have the responsibility to edify our leaders and church by respecting and obeying the word of God as taught in authority.
Edify with our love
“Now concerning things offered to idols: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies” (1 Corinthians 8:1).
Nothing builds up the church more than the demonstrated love of Christ. As we love one another, we are encouraged to continue the faith in times of joy and difficulty. Our spirits are rejuvenated by the Holy Spirit when we sense and appreciate the love of God demonstrated through His people.
Edify with our gifts
“And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11-12).
God has poured out spiritual gifts on the church. As we come into the knowledge, application, and demonstration of our own individual spiritual gifts—we have the responsibility to help grow the church. Our gifts aren’t meant for our own personal edification (although we can sense the edifying feeling of gratitude); rather, we are meant to use our gifts for others.
Edify with our hope
“So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11).
There are many times when under severe pressure, hope can seem elusive to the saints of God suffering under tremendous persecution. As believers, we have the ability to build them up in the faith with hope from God’s word. By knowing and sharing the truths of Scripture, we can witness the power of God breaking the devil’s grip of despair.
Edify with our testimony
“The church then had peace throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, and it became stronger as the believers lived in the fear of the Lord. And with the encouragement of the Holy Spirit, it also grew in numbers” (Acts 9:31).
When the Lord intervenes in our lives, we should never keep it to ourselves. Sharing our testimony—both the good and bad parts of it—can strengthen those who have difficulty believing that God will do great things for them. Our truthful testimonies give others the ability to overcome fear, anxiety, and doubt.
Edify with our words
“But, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:15-16).
The words we speak are so much more powerful than many of us recognize. Our words can bring new life or death to any situation. By speaking the truth in love, we grant grace to the hearers so that they can push forward in this life when bombarded with overwhelmingly negative words both inwardly and outwardly.
Equipped to Edify
As believers, we are equipped by the Spirit of God to take up our cross and build up the church. We can resist our carnal nature by staying humble in the process of growing in the faith. Our Father longs to see His children help and edify one another for the building of Christ’s kingdom.
YouTube is doing their censoring again! Right Side Broadcast has been suspended for 1week right before President Trump’s rally in Commerce, Georgia. You’ll be able to see it on Rumble. RSBN said, we will not allow the voice of Pres.Trump and his supporters to be silenced! Amen
Before European settlers arrived, the area around present-day Commerce was inhabited by the Creek and the Cherokee people.[6]
The Lacoda Trail, which extended from present-day Athens to the north Georgia mountains, was a significant trade and travel route through this area. (Georgia State Route 334, which follows a 9-mile (14 km) section of this ancient trail, was designated the “Lacoda Trail Memorial Parkway” by the Georgia General Assembly in 1998.)
Local histories that originated in the mid-1800s describe a territorial war between the Creeks and Cherokees over the land in the county during the 1770s.[7] This war never occurred. The Cherokees were decisively defeated by the Koweta Creeks in 1754. For about a decade after their 1754 defeat, all Cherokee villages in the Georgia colony and the Hiwassee River valley in North Carolina were abandoned.[8]William Bartram traveled through northeastern Georgia in 1773 and described the Creeks as being completely dominant over the Cherokees.[9] The Cherokees never occupied or held title to lands within the boundaries of Jackson County.
The Creek Confederacy ceded its lands east of the Oconee River in 1785.[10] A subsequent treaty in 1793 ceded the remainder of the land that was to become Jackson County. The last corridor of Creek land, located west of Jackson County, was ceded in 1818.
The first permanent white settlement in Jackson County began near present-day Commerce on January 20, 1784, when German immigrant William Dunson was awarded a land grant on Little Sandy Creek. The settlement was named “Groaning Rock”,[6] supposedly because of a nearby hollow rock formation that produced a moaning sound when the wind passed over it. (Descendants of William Dunson are still living on the original tract of land.)
A trading post was established by Eli Shankle near Groaning Rock in 1808, named “Harmony Grove”. The common explanation is that the name is a play on his wife, Rebecca’s, maiden name: Hargrove. There is also an old Appalachian hymn tune called “Harmony Grove”, found in an 1830 book called The Virginia Harmony. This tune is popular today as the melody to “Amazing Grace“.
The Harmony Grove Female Academy, the first all-female school chartered in the state of Georgia, was chartered by the state legislature on December 20, 1824.
The Harmony Grove post office was established on October 14, 1825; Russell Jones was its first postmaster.
On September 1, 1876, the North Eastern Railroad opened its line from Athens to Lula, which passed through the heart of Harmony Grove. The railroad line had the most significant impact on the shape of the city, which began expanding both directions along the line. These tracks are now owned by the Norfolk Southern Railway.
City history
The Harmony Grove community was officially incorporated as a town on December 24, 1884, including all areas within a one-mile radius of the railroad depot, one half mile east, and 400 yards west.
Harmony Grove Mills, Inc., was organized under the laws of Jackson County on April 3, 1893, for the purpose of processing and producing cotton textiles. It served various purposes over the years, including the manufacture of denim overalls and the earliest production of electricity in the city. The mill village created to house employees makes up a significant portion of the homes on the southeast end of Commerce today. The mill had been in operation under various corporations until the spring of 2004, when it closed operations and was sold; it has been used for warehouse storage space since, and is currently for sale. The building is still a major feature of the city.
Near the end of the 19th century, many began to feel that the name “Harmony Grove” was too long to write and sounded too much like a country village. In addition, many didn’t like the fact that mail frequently went to another post office by the same name in Dawson County. Harmony Grove was reincorporated and renamed “Commerce” on August 6, 1904, in an effort to address these concerns and reflect the city’s commercial dominance in the north Georgia cotton trade.[11][12]
In 1959, a series of controversial town hall meetings were held to try to convince members of the federal Interstate Highway System to re-route the proposed Interstate 85, originally planned to go through Gainesville (Hall County), through Commerce and Lavonia (Franklin County). The proposal was changed, and the interstate was routed through Jackson County. Even more so than the railroad nearly a century before, this major transportation artery brought tremendous commercial advantage to Commerce, at a time it desperately needed it.
About the rally:
Venue:
Banks County Dragway 500 East Ridgeway Road Commerce, GA, 30529
Special Guest Speakers:
David Perdue, Former United States Senator from Georgia and Candidate for Governor of Georgia
State Senator Burt Jones, State Senator from Georgia and Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia
Herschel Walker, Heisman Trophy Winner and Candidate for United States Senate from Georgia
Representative Jody Hice, U.S. Representative from Georgia’s 10th Congressional District and Candidate for Secretary of State of Georgia
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, U.S. Representative from Georgia’s 14th Congressional District
Representative Andrew Clyde, U.S. Representative from Georgia’s 9th Congressional District
Vernon Jones, Former State Representative from Georgia and Candidate for Georgia’s 10th Congressional District
Mr. John Gordon, Candidate for Attorney General of Georgia
Patrick Witt, Candidate for Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner of Georgia
Tom Homan, Former Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Todd Starnes, Conservative Columnist, Commentator, Author, and Radio Host
Timeline of Events:
8:00AM – Parking Opens
2:00PM – Doors Open
4:00PM – Program Begins
7:00PM – 45th President of the United States Donald J. Trump Delivers Remarks
Over the past four years, President Donald Trump’s administration delivered for Americans of all backgrounds like never before. Save America is about building on those accomplishments, supporting the brave conservatives who will define the future of the America First Movement, the future of our party, and the future of our beloved country. Save America is also about ensuring that we always keep America First, in our foreign and domestic policy. We take pride in our country, we teach the truth about our history, we celebrate our rich heritage and national traditions, and of course, we respect our great American Flag.
We are committed to defending innocent life and to upholding the Judeo-Christian values of our founding.
We believe in the promise of the Declaration of Independence, that we are all made EQUAL by our Creator, and that must all be TREATED equal under the law.
We know that our rights do not come from government, they come from God, and no earthly force can ever take those rights away. That includes the right to religious liberty and the right to Keep and Bear Arms.
We believe in rebuilding our previously depleted military and ending the endless wars our failed politicians of the past got us into for decades.
We embrace free thought, we welcome robust debate, and we are not afraid to stand up to the oppressive dictates of political correctness.
We know that the rule of law is the ultimate safeguard of our freedoms, and we affirm that the Constitution means exactly what it says AS WRITTEN.
We support fair trade, low taxes, and fewer job-killing regulations, and we know that America must always have the most powerful military on the face of the Earth.
We believe in Law and Order, and we believe that the men and women of law enforcement are HEROES who deserve our absolute support.
We believe in FREE SPEECH and Fair Elections. We must ensure fair, honest, transparent, and secure elections going forward – where every LEGAL VOTE counts.
When I was a kid, I got nicknamed “Bald Eagle” because I actually was getting notably thin “up there.” Of course today “Bald Eagle” might be a cool nickname, but in junior high school, it definitely was not a cool thing.
Fast forward to today, and now here I am over twenty years older than you are, and even in spite of that poor start, I have better hair than you do.
And I am not a piss-guzzling, shit-gobbling communist “journalist” (what a sick joke) either.
On both accounts you must absolutely hate looking into the mirror.
And Oh By The Way probably more people read my posts than watch you bloviate on air. And yes, I know your ratings dropped again. One would think there’s be a limit to that…you can’t drop below zero, can you?
RINOs an Endangered Species? If Only!
According to Wikipoo, et. al., the Northern White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is a critically endangered species. Apparently two females live on a wildlife preserve in Sudan, and no males are known to be alive. So basically, this species is dead as soon as the females die of old age. Presently they are watched over by armed guards 24/7.
Biologists have been trying to cross them with the other subspecies, Southern White Rhinoceroses (Rhinoceri?) without success; and some genetic analyses suggest that perhaps they aren’t two subspecies at all, but two distinct species, which would make the whole project a lot more difficult.
I should hope if the American RINO (Parasitus rectum pseudoconservativum) is ever this endangered, there will be heroic efforts not to save the species, but rather to push the remainder off a cliff. Onto punji sticks. With feces smeared on them. Failing that a good bath in red fuming nitric acid will do.
But I’m not done ranting about RINOs.
The RINOs (if they are capable of any introspection whatsoever) probably wonder why they constantly have to deal with “populist” eruptions like the Trump-led MAGA movement. That would be because the so-called populists stand for absolutely nothing except for going along to get along. That allows the Left to drive the culture and politics.
Given the results of Tuesday’s elections, the Left will now push harder, and the RINOs will now turn even squishier than they were before.
I well remember 1989-1990 in my state when the RINO establishment started preaching the message that a conservative simply couldn’t win in Colorado. Never mind the fact that Reagan had won the state TWICE (in 1984 bringing in a veto-proof state house and senate with him) and GHWB had won after (falsely!) assuring everyone that a vote for him was a vote for Reagan’s third term.
This is how the RINOs function. They push, push, push the line that only a “moderate” can get elected. Stomp them when they pull that shit. Tell everyone in ear shot that that’s exactly what the Left wants you to think, and oh-by-the-way-Mister-RINO if you’re in this party selling the same message as the Left…well, whythefuckexactly are you in this party, you lying piece of rancid weasel shit?
Justice Must Be Done.
The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system. (This doesn’t necessarily include deposing Joe and Hoe and putting Trump where he belongs, but it would certainly be a lot easier to fix our broken electoral system with the right people in charge.)
Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is pointless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud in the system is not part of the plan, you have no plan.
This will necessarily be piecemeal, state by state, which is why I am encouraged by those states working to change their laws to alleviate the fraud both via computer and via bogus voters. If enough states do that we might end up with a working majority in Congress and that would be something Trump never really had.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical 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. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns. 5. Rule one of gun safety: 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. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)
Mozart
Mozart wrote two distinct pieces called “Symphonia Concertante), both in E flat major.
The more famous of the two (at least, judging from youtube hits) is K 364. Three movements, Allegro Maestso to start, 2nd movement (Andante) at 13:06, 3rd movement (Presto) at 23:47.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBTVWI6-eCc
But I think I like this one better, to be honest. KV 297b, also in three movements: Allegro at the start, Adagio at 13:53 and Andantino con Variazione at 22:37. This one has considerably more in the way of woodwinds to add color.
PGMs going down and the “traditional” precious metals going up indicates to me that we are expecting inflation and a recession. Or it will tell me that if the pattern holds for more than a few weeks (so far, one week and counting). Why? Because the platinum group metals are valuable primarily for their industrial uses, so they will tend to go down if industry expects to be in trouble, while gold and silver tend to be places people go when they’re worried–perhaps because industry is expected to be in trouble. Or perhaps because they think the dollar will suddenly approach its intrinsic value.
On the other hand, inflation tends to show up as rising stock and gold prices. A company’s nominal value goes up due to inflation, just like gold’s value will.
This market bears watching in light of recent world events, and recent couldn’t-be-worse-if-they-tried-which-makes-sense-because-they’re-probably-trying economic policies.
James Webb Space Telescope Update
Multi-instrument alignment continues. There are no less than five instruments inside the telescope, behind the mirror, and the mirrors have to be able to focus light accurately on all five instruments’ sensors.
One of the instruments is MIRI (Mid InfraRed Instrument) and it requires temperatures even colder than the telescope is getting just from being shielded from the sun. This is because it’s sensitive to longer wavelengths of infrared, wavelengths given off as black body radiation from even things quite a bit colder than the other instruments. It actually gets cryogenically cooled even more with liquid helium. But right now it is actually the warmest instrument of the five, at 94 K (-291 F). It needs to get down to 7 K (-447 F), which is still about 18 degrees K warmer than Hitlary Clinton’s personality.
T1: Heat
Finally, I have found some time to work on a “science” post. I’m going to cover a topic I skipped over the first time around through the physics series, because initially my main goal was eventually to talk about neutrinos. And every once in a while I regretted it. So if there’s a logical place for this in the old sequence, it’s somewhere in between a pair of the single-digit posts. But there’s more than one part to this, so I wouldn’t go renumbering things just yet! For now I’m going to treat these as a separate series, with numbers T1, T2 and so on. (T for “Thermal.”)
The issue of heat is important in physics, and chemistry, and biology. I’ve talked about “black body radiation” being dependent on temperature before.
(To refresh memories: The hotter something is the brighter it glows, and the higher the wavelengths it glows at; if if gets hot enough it glows in visible light, if it gets even hotter, it glows in ultraviolet light or (really, really hot) x rays or even gamma rays. Many stars visible in the night sky glow in primarily blue wavelengths, these are basically the hottest objects we have everyday (well, everynight) experience with, at 10,000 K or even higher. Fortunately they’re quite far away so they don’t barbecue us.)
But I never really talked that much about heat as such, just this one side effect that’s very important to astronomy since it can tell us a lot about a star.
If you remember all the way back to Newtonian dynamics (parts 1, 2, 3, and 5), it describes a view of the way the world works which at first seems totally at odds with the way things actually work.
Newton’s first law of motion is: A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, unless acted upon by a force.
But we see moving objects come to a halt all the time with no obvious “push” being given to them.
Even billiard balls stop eventually, and those are the inevitable example given for working with momentum. Or air hockey pucks. Or cars on ice. (I have occasionally found myself in a pickup game of two-ton-puck road hockey. Not fun. The only way to win is not to play at all.)
Outer space is actually the only place this seems to be true; objects in orbit will stay that way forever, at least when you can ignore third-body influences. (Which, even when dealing with the planets of our solar system orbiting the sun, you really can’t, not in the long term.)
This is probably why it took us so long to get to the point where Newton could do his thing. For one thing we had to figure out how, in fact, the planets moved, so that Newton could explain that with universal gravitation (thank you Johannes Kepler for the setup). And Galileo had to do all of his experiments with kinetics. Before this the theory was objects would be given an initial impeteus, which would then bleed away. Then, they might want to return “home.” Smoke’s home was Up There; a cannonball’s home was Down Here (and most things were like that). Fire a cannonball, and you give it an impetus. It travels in a straight line as the impetus bleeds away, finally halts, then drops straight down. That was the theory anyway. (Actual artillerymen knew this was bullshit, though, even before Galileo showed that cannonballs moved in parabolas. And then Newton showed that no, they were really moving suborbitally, in very small sections of a very eccentric ellipse–effectively indistinguishable at the ranges cannonballs could be fired in the 1600s. By the way, high school and college freshman physics teaches the parabola, not the ellipse.)
But in fact Newtonian dynamics works very well. The problem is, in order to teach it effectively, you have to pretend, at first, that friction doesn’t exist, because friction, though covered quite well in Newtonian dynamics, makes the story problems more complicated. Only after you master frictionless behavior do they throw friction at you and expect you to account for it as well.
Friction is a force from the air, or the ground, or something touching the object in question, and is both proportional to the speed of the object, and opposite in direction.
OK, I’d better unpack that with an example. Imagine you’re pushing a heavy box across the floor. And you’re able to shove the sucker at 1 MPH. It requires a certain continuous force to keep the box moving at a mile per hour. It would require twice as much force to move it at two miles per hour, half as much to move it at half a mile per hour. Since the box is not speeding up, the net force on it must be zero (by Newton’s second law of motion, good old F = ma). But you’re applying a force. But it’s countered–precisely–by the friction between the box and the floor, which is in the exact opposite direction. Now if you double how hard you’re pushing on the box, it speeds up, but eventually settles in on moving twice as fast as it was before, without moving, so your push and the friction are again in balance. So the force from friction is proportional to how fast the box is moving. Hopefully you can go back and reread the previous paragraph and it will make more sense to you.
OK, so Newtonian dynamics can, with added difficulty, account for friction. It’s a variable force working “against” us pushing that box across the floor. (And to save effort, we get a dolly, which reduces the friction. Our salvador is dolly.)
But we’re not done yet. Remember how momentum is supposed to be conserved? When the box quits moving because we stopped pushing, where does that momentum go? Well, let’s suppose we are pushing the box eastward, so our applied force is eastward. The force of friction on the box is westward, then. But that force of friction must also be acting on the floor, which is attached (ultimately) to the Earth, and the friction force acting on the floor must be pointed eastward (because of Newton’s third law, the one about every action bringing about an equal but opposite reaction). So the earth is getting pushed on by the friction. But it’s roughly a godzillion times more massive so you can’t see the effect. The effect (as invisible as it is) disappears when the box stops moving, because at that point the friction force on the box, and therefore on the floor-attached-to-the-earth, is zero.
And one more thing…the one that’s actually where I’m going with this (took my sweet time about it, didn’t I?). Isn’t energy conserved?
The box, while moving, has kinetic energy. Then it stops. This doesn’t seem like much of a problem, though, does it? After all we routinely swap kinetic and potential energy, pretty much any time gravitation comes into play, and orbiting bodies do this all the time unless they’re in perfectly circular orbits.
Indeed. We are free to swap potential for kinetic energy. But we are pushing the box across a level floor and it still comes to a stop when we quit pushing! The very definition of “level” is a surface where the potential energy is the same no matter where you are standing on it* so the kinetic energy cannot be getting turned into potential energy.
(*[skip this if you don’t want your mind blown] Incidentally, you can get some very weird shapes that are “level.” A non-rotating planet would have a spherical surface, all at the same potential but level, a rotating planet will have that surface be an oblate spheroid (i.e., one a bit squashed looking), with the equator being the maximum bulge, but then you have the moon and sun pulling on the earth which raises tides and makes the “level” surface a bit more complicated (and ever-changing). That level surface nevertheless looks flat to us, because it’s so doggone big.
You could conceivably have a double planet orbiting so closely that the two planets would each form a teardrop shape, with the points of the teardrops each pointing at the opposing planet. If they were close enough together they might even touch. And that would be “level” ground to the people on those planets, though the force of gravity would be zero where the teardrops touch.)
If energy is conserved, and at everyday scales it most certainly is, the kinetic energy of the box must be going somewhere, and it is: it becomes heat energy.
Not only that, but since you were pushing the box against an opposing force (before you quit and let it stop) across some distance, you were doing work, and that too is a form of energy, and it too all became heat energy.
I’m not quite sure when heat was recognized as a form of energy, as opposed to the older theory that it was a fluid named calor that flowed from one object to another (sort of a reverse-phlogiston; or rather phlogistion was a reverse of calor). Antoine Lavoisier, who late in the 1700s dismantled phlogiston theory and came up with a largely correct but incomplete list of elements, actually considered calor (as well as light) an element.
Chemists were able to determine that different substances required different amounts of heat energy to change their temperatures. The amount of heat energy needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water one degree Celsius (or one Kelvin) was defined as the calorie (note a small c). A thousand calories was a kilocalorie, enough energy to raise the temperature of a kilogram of water one degree C or one K. But sometimes a kilocalorie is written as “Calorie” with a capital C. (It is this Calorie-with-a-big-C that you contend with when you are dieting.)
A substance like iron, on the other hand, could heat up a degree per gram with a lot less energy than a calorie. In fact, it only takes 0.107 calories to do this.
How do you determine this? In principle, you can drop a one gram lump of iron at, say, 20C into a gram of water at 21C, then wait for the heat to transfer. Once everything is at a uniform temperature, you can measure the temperature, and notice that the water barely cooled down at all, but the iron nearly reached 21C. So the water dropped a little bit in temperature but the iron heated up quite a bit. If the energy is constant, the iron heated up a lot more (with the same amount of energy) than the water cooled off (by giving up that energy); thus iron takes less energy to heat up than water. Obviously, you can alter the mass of the water or the iron, or the temperature difference, and things change in proportion; you can do the math and figure that iron’s heat capacity is 0.107 calories per gram, per degree K, if water’s is 1 calorie per gram, per degree K (which it is, by definition).
Water’s heat capacity happens to be one of the highest. Iron’s is more typical.
It turns out that experiment is difficult to run precisely because, of course, the heat leaks out of the container of water while you’re trying to do it. Still, you can try to control this by putting the water in a thermos…a very good thermos, or something better than that. (These sorts of painstaking efforts to eliminate outside effects are why science is harder to do than it is to write about…or read about, no matter how badly I write these posts.)
On to James Prescott Joule, 1818-1889, who came up with the first definitive way to relate heat energy to mechanical energy. Calories were convenient for chemists working with water and other substances, but just how big is a calorie compared to other forms of energy?
In the metric system, we’ve built up our units of force, and so on, from meters, kilograms and seconds (MKS, also known as the international system or SI (its French initials)); there’s also an older system that worked off centimeters, grams, and seconds (CGS). Thus the Newton, the unit of force, is one kilogram-meter-per-second-squared (kg•m/s2 or, preferred by pedants, kg•m•s-2). Work is a force applied by a distance, so the natural units for this ought to be Newtons times meters, N•m, or substituting in, kg•m2•s-2. And indeed that’s what energy’s metric unit is. (It even has a convenient name, but I’ll hold off on telling you what it is for now.)
So can we somehow equate the calorie with this natural metric unit of energy? How many metric units of energy does it take to make up a calorie?
Joule was able to do a known amount of mechanical work on water and measure its temperature change, thus he could determine how much mechanical work it would take to raise the temperature of a gram of water one degree C, and so he knew how many natural metric units were equivalent to a calorie. In fact, he ran multiple different experiments, including some using electricity to heat the water, and (the most direct), the weight of an object hung from a pulley to turn blades in the water to stir it and thereby heat it up. He always got close to the same answer, working in English units (foot pounds of energy).
Over the years we’ve refined his work and have a very precise answer (and we express it in metric.) And the answer is: 4.184 natural metric units equals one (small c) calorie.
And because of Joule’s work on this and related topics, we gave that natural metric unit of energy the name joule, symbol J.
We have also named the metric unit of power, which is to say, the rate at which energy is delivered, the watt, yes the same “watt” you see on light bulbs and microwave ovens. (It’s a metric unit as are volts and amperes and ohms…which, if you’re anti-metric, ought to chap your hindquarters.) One watt is one joule per second, or one joule is the energy delivered by one watt, for one second. A kilowatt-hour (which you might be more familiar with since electric companies like to use them to bill you) is one kilowatt (a thousand watts), delivered for an hour, which is 3600 seconds, so a kilowatt-hour is 1000 x 3600 = 3,600,000 watt-seconds or joules. (Of course, it could also be 500 watts, delivered for two hours…or 2000 watts delivered for half an hour…anything that will multiply out to 3,600,000 watt-seconds.)
Returning to heat, 4.184 joules equals one calorie, but this isn’t the usual number you’ll see. Remember, a calorie is the amount of heat necessary to raise the temperature of one gram of liquid water 1 kelvin (or one degree C), but today, almost everyone works in MKS (meters, kilograms, seconds, newtons, joules, watts), not CGS (centimeters, grams, seconds, dynes, ergs…), so kilograms of water are preferred over grams and you’ll generally see that 4,184 joules equals one kilocalorie (abbreviated kcal preferentially, because “big C” versus “little C” gets confusing especially when talking). Or better yet, 4.184 kJ (kilojoules) = 1 kilocalorie.
(But note, the kilocalorie is still just called a “calorie” when we’re talking about food; the author of your book on the new fad kumquat diet may bother to capitalize it…and may not.)
Chemists still use kcals and calories, because it’s convenient for them, but offically, they are neither base units (kilograms, meters, seconds, kelvins, amperes), derived units (newtons, watts, joules, coulombs), nor even the list of non-SI units mentioned in the SI (like the astronomical unit, electron volt, or minute (of time or arc, take your pick).
I’ve talked a lot about temperature, as if we knew what it means. And everyone thinks we do because we measure it all the time, for weather and cooking and refrigeration. But our everyday understanding is very incomplete. (It’s certainly not the same thing as “heat” because different amounts of heat energy change temperatures by different amounts depending on the materials being heated.)
Physicists, of course, looked into this as well and gained a deeper understanding. And with that cliffhanger, I’ll stop here. Next time we move onwards.
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
To conclude: My standard Public Service Announcement. We don’t want to forget this!!!
Remember Hong Kong!!!
If anyone ends up in the cell right next to him, tell him I said “hi.”
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.
Joe Biden is Asshoe
China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.
But of course the much more important thing to realize:
Joe Biden Didn’t Win
乔*拜登没赢 !!! Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!! Joe Biden didn’t win !!!
‘ The Socialist Revolution in the US cannot take place because there are too many small independent farmers there. Those people are the stability factor. We here in Russia must hurry while our government is stupid enough to not encourage and support the independent farmership.’
V. Lenin, the founder of the Russian revolution
1932 to 1937 — “The Collective Farm Policy was a terrible struggle, Ten million died. It was fearful. ” – Joseph Stalin
1934 — “[Our] future is becoming visible in Russia.” Assistant Secretary of Agriculture —Rexford Tugwell
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” —MauriceStrong
“Each year, [Strong] explains as background to… the novel’s plot, the World Economic Forum convenes in Davos, Switzerland. Over 1,000 CEO’s, prime ministers, finance ministers, and leading academics gather in February to attend meetings and set economic agendas for the year ahead. With this as a setting, he then says: ‘What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude that the principle risk to the earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? …In order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring this about?’
“‘This group of world leaders,’ he continues, ‘forms a secret society to bring about an economic collapse. It’s February. They’re all at Davos. These aren’t terrorists. They’re world leaders. They have positioned themselves in the world’s commodities and stock markets. They’ve engineered, using their access to stock markets and computers and gold supplies, a panic….. This is Maurice Strong. He knows these world leaders. He is, in fact, co-chairman of the Council of the World Economic Forum. He sits at the fulcrum of power. He is in a position to do it. ‘I probably shouldn’t be saying things like this.'”
September 1995 – Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program, and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, stated “Food is power. We use it to change behavior. Some may call that bribery. We do not apologize.”UN’s 4th World Conference on Women: Beijing, China. — LINK
We cannot divorce what is happening to the US dollar from the food supply. In 2020, Americans allocated the highest proportion of their average pre-tax household income (APTHI) to housing (25.4%), transportation (11.6%), and food (8.7%). In 2022 food is expected to increase by 7.3% to 12.9%, transportation by 5.8% to 15.9%, and housing by 5.3% to 33.1%. LINK
Tucker Carlson does a great riff on the problem:
I already presented a chart on money devaluation. The price of gold indicates the steady devaluation of the US dollar as its purchasing power is diluted by the ever increasing supply of fiat money. This is important to know as we go into high gas prices ==> higher food prices. Now we are looking at the possibility that the US Dollar will lose its Reserve Currency Status. Some think that could cause the ‘exported inflation’ to come flooding back.
As of July 2013, currency in circulation—that is, U.S. coins and paper currency in the hands of the public—totaled about $1.2 trillion dollars. The amount of cash in circulation has risen rapidly in recent decades and much of the increase has been caused by demand from abroad. The Federal Reserve estimates that the majority of the cash in circulation today is outside the United States.
If you look at the price of gold, you can see how the value of the dollar has dropped and how the minimum wage no longer has the buying power it had in 1959. You could also look at minimum wage vs the price of a gallon of gas. From $0.31 in 1959 (minimum wage = $1.00 or 3.2 gal/hr in pay) to $4.41 on March 22, 2022 (minimum wage = $7.25 or 1.64 gal/hr in pay)
However the price of diesel fuel has even more of an impact than gasoline, on the cost of living. Before 1993, the allowable sulfur level in diesel fuel was 5,000 parts per million (ppm). From 1993 until 2006, allowable sulfur was 500 ppm. And beginning in 2006, EPA began to phase-in more stringent regulations to lower the amount of sulfur in diesel fuel to 15 ppm. This caused the cost of diesel to go from well below that of gasoline to $0.95 cents more than gasoline today. This has a major effect on the transportation costs of all commodities AND the production of food.
THE SET-UP BY MR GLOBAL
Four privately owned grain traders control 90% of the grain. They are Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, Andre, and Bunge. Dan Amstutz, who worked for 25 years as a grain trader and VP at Cargill drafted the original text of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture. He also wrote the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act that was passed a year after the USA entered the WTO. The Grain Traders say this about Amstutz: “Throughout his very successful career Dan Amstutz represented and championed the ideas and goals of NAEGA membership “ (That’s the North American Export Grain Association.) Dan Amstutz did not represent the interests of farmers or consumers when he wrote that draft, or that farm bill. Instead he represented the interests of the Transnational Ag Cartel. NAEGA: Dan Amstutz Tribute
Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Bunge, Ag Processors
Dry Corn Milling: 57% of milling
Bunge, Illinois Cereal Mills, Archer Daniel Midland, ConAgra (Lincon Grain)
Wet Corn Milling: 74% of Milling
Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Tate and Lyle, CPC
Source: W. Hefferman “Concentration of Agricultural Markets” Unpublished paper; Dept of Rural Sociology Univ of Missouri-Columbia (October 1997)
Forty percent or more of the processing of all agricultural commodities in the Midwest are controlled by the four largest firms. Although debate continues in the United States and in other countries on what constitutes an oligopolistic or near oligopolistic market, much of the economic literature suggests that when four firms control 40% of the market they are able to exert influence on the market unlike that in a competitive system….
It’s interesting that in the time it took me to write this article the paper above was pulled from the internet. However it was captured by the Wayback Machine. The following article is also no longer available on the Internet, however it was not archived so I am reproducing what I saved here. (Remember this was the bill written by Dan Amstutz, the same guy who wrote the WTO Agreement on Ag.)
THE FREEDOM TO FARM ACT — (Senate hearing – March 28, 2000)
MR. WELLSTONE: Mr. President,… …in 1996, both houses of Congress approved a new farm bill, described then as “the most sweeping change in agriculture since the Depression. It would get rid of government subsidies to farmers over the next seven years.”
….The bill has made sweeping changes in agriculture–it has produced one of the worst economic crises that rural American has ever experienced….The Freedom to Farm bill is not saving tax payers money, in fact we have spent $19 billion more in the first 4 years of the 1996 farm bill than was supposed to be spent through the 7 year life of the law….However, what has resulted is the precipitous loss of family farmers because this legislation has not provided small and moderate sized farmers with a safety net. Instead payment loopholes have been inserted in legislation that has allowed the largest argibusiness corporations to receive the lions share of government support.
In my State of Minnesota, family farm income has decreased 43 percent since 1996 and more than 25 percent of the remaining farms may not cover expenses for 2000….In addition, merger after merger in the agriculture sector leaves producers wondering if they will be able to survive amidst the new giants of agribusiness…. …unless we address the current trend of consolidation and vertical integration in corporate agriculture, nothing else we do to maintain the family size farms will succeed.The farm share of profit in the food system has been declining for over 20 years….From 1994 to 1998, consumer prices have increased 3 percent while the prices paid to farmers for their products has plunged 36 percent. Likewise, the impact of price disparity is reinforced by reports of record profits among agribusinesses at the same time producers are suffering an economic depression….In the past decade and a half, an explosion of mergers, acquisitions, and anti-competitive practices has raised concentration in American agriculture to record levels….
[long list of ag consolidation by product]
According to the economic literature, markets are no longer competitive if the top four firms control over 40 percent. In all the markets I just listed, the market share of the top four firms is 40 percent or more. So there really is no effective competition in these processing markets.But now, with this explosion of mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, marketing agreements, and anticompetitive behavior by the largest firms, these and other commodity markets are becoming more and more concentrated by the day…..
Dead link: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:S28MR0-0011:
“ According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, almost 90 percent of the total income of rancher or farmer households now comes from outside earnings….
The driving force behind U.S. farm policy is the 1996 seven-year farm program titled the Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act — with the ironic acronym (FAIR). The bill, dubbed “Freedom to Farm” by its bipartisan proponents, put an end to the New Deal system of production controls and eliminates federal price supports. It provides farmers with a guarantee of fixed but declining payments to end in 2002, and allows flexibility to plant whatever they like.
Prior to Freedom to Farm, if the price for a market commodity — such as soy, wheat or corn — dipped below the price floor, the government would cover the difference, thus ensuring that price wouldn’t fall below the cost of production. Freedom to Farm eliminated price floors and removed “production controls” including land set asides and farmer-owned grain reserves. By giving farmers some ability to limit the amount of commodities on the market, these policies had given farmers some control over the price for their crops. Finally, the FAIR legislation gradually transitions away to the point of eliminating farm programs after the year 2002….
The effects of Freedom to Farm have been immediate and devastating. Proponents touted the program as a way to increase exports and the price of crops. But “Freedom to Farm” has failed miserably on both accounts. Exports of corn, wheat, soybeans and sorghum have dropped by nearly 10 percent since enactment of Freedom to Farm. More importantly, prices have collapsed, with corn going from $3.24 a bushel in 1995-1996 to $1.90 in 1999-2000, wheat dropping from $4.55 to $2.50, soybeans declining from $6.72 to $4.70 and sorghum plummeting from $3.19 to $1.60…..
Ben Lilliston and Niel Ritchie
When people started learning that farmers were losing money growing food the USDA SPRANG INTO ACTION. They revised the calculating method and started including the hypothetical RENTAL VALUE OF THE HOME AS PART OF THE FARM INCOME!
LAND CLEARANCES
The last time the Banksters collapsed the US economy they stole all the privately held US gold, thanks to FDR. This time they want our land. And not just USA farmland but everyone’s. LINK
Removing farmers from the land to increase profit and to provide cheap labor for factories is nothing new.
In the late 1700s and early to mid 1800s Crofters and highlanders were systematically removed from their lands and their livelihoods to make way for sheep farming which was much more profitable at that time. The first mass emigration was in 1792 when many of the people were forced to leave the land that had been farmed by them and their forefathers to go to America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Those that did not emigrate were forced to live in cities or on poor unfarmable land by the rugged sealine. They were not sea farers and did not know how to make a living from the sea. Often their small crofts and out buildings were razed to the ground with fire. Sometimes with the elderly still in them.
These brutal Highland clearances devastated the Gaelic culture, split up families and clans and removed entire communities from the lands that they had farmed for centuries leaving them no option but to emigrate for a better life, as in Scotland they were left fairly destitute.
Many of those that did not emigrate were instead moved to cities such as Glasgow. In 1840, as many as 30,000 Gaelic speaking highlanders moved from farming their small tracts of land and tending a few animals to the English speaking city where they had no skills and were forced into factories. The population grew so quickly that housing was a huge problem with many families sharing one room….
With World War II, America saw its agricultural system intentionally subjected to political policies that radically transformed it. What was once a decentralized system that provided a means to self sufficiency and independence for tens of millions of farmers was purposefully centralized into a capital-intensive fossil-fuel dependent system that restructured local economies, permitting their wealth to be extracted by what are now transnational cartels dedicated to the so-called free market and globalized trade at all cost.
This transformation was the result of organized plans developed by a group of highly powerful – though unelected – financial and industrial executives who wanted to drastically change agricultural practices in the US to better serve their collective corporate financial agenda. This group, called the Committee for Economic Development, was officially established in 1942 as a sister organization to the Council on Foreign Relations. [Both belong to The Rhodes/Milner/Round Table Group -GC] CED has influenced US domestic policies in much the same way that the CFR has influenced the nation’s foreign policies.[1]
Composed of chief executive officers and chairmen from the federal reserve, the banking industry, private equity firms, insurance companies, railroads, information technology firms, publishing companies, pharmaceutical companies, the oil and automotive industries, meat packing companies, retailers and assisted by university economists – representatives from every sector of the economy withthe key exception of farmers themselves –
CED determined that the problem with American agriculture was that there were too many farmers. But the CED had a “solution”: millions of farmers would just have to be eliminated.
In a number of reports written over a few decades, CED recommended that farming “resources” – that is, farmers – be reduced. In its 1945 report “Agriculture in an Expanding Economy,” CED complained that “the excess of human resources engaged in agriculture is probably the most important single factor in the ‘farm problem'” and describes how agricultural production can be better organized to fit to business needs.[2] A report published in 1962 entitled “An Adaptive Program for Agriculture”[3] is even more blunt in its objectives, leading Time Magazine to remark that CED had a plan for fixing the identified problem: “The essential fact to be faced, argues CED, is that with present high levels farm productivity, more labor is involved in agriculture production that the market demands – in short, there are too may farmers. To solve that problem, CED offers a program with three main prongs.”….
And do not forget that NAFTA plus taxpayer-subsidized grain in the EU and the USA was used to wipe out Mexican farmers. “…According to a study by Jose Romero and Alicia Puyana carried out for the federal government of Mexico, between 1992 and 2002, the number of agricultural households fell an astounding 75% – from 2.3 million to 575, 000…” Small Farmers And The Doha Round: Lessons From Mexico’s NAFTA Experience
After driving farmers and others from England and Europe to settle in North America and Australia, allowing them to tame the new land and make it productive, Mr Global/City of London is ready to takeover.
As world population expands, the demand for arable land should soar. At least that’s what George Soros, Lord Rothschild, and other investors believe….
And if you cannot buy it at the ‘right price’ then you go and drive farmers & ranchers off their land. Most are aware of the Bundy ranch mess. The Bureau of Land Management director was Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) former senior adviser. A commenter checked out Nevada land transfers and found BLM was grabbing ranches and transferring ownership to Harry Reid’s family members for a $1.00. The BLM’s official reason for encircling the Bundy family with sniper teams and helicopters was to protect the endangered desert tortoise, which the agency had previously been killing in mass due to “budget constraints.” However the BLM has purged documents from its web site stating that the agency wanted Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle off of the land his family had worked for over 140 years in order to make way for solar panel power stations. Free Republic reposted the BLM documents for posterity. One of them, entitled “Cattle Trespass Impacts” directly states that Bundy’s cattle “impacts” solar development, specifically the construction of “utility-scale solar power generation facilities” on “public lands.” Rory Reid (Sen. Harry Reid’s eldest son) represents the Chinese firm ENN Energy Group and JA Solar…. GEE he sounds like Hunter Biden doesn’t he?
…..On Oct. 17, 2007, Marcelle opened the door to a loud knock. Her heart jumped when she found a man backed by two armed county agents in bulletproof vests. She was alone in the cabin, a dot in the vast open space of the Antelope Valley, without a neighbor for more than half a mile. She feared that something had happened to her daughter, who was visiting from Montreal.
“It has a bedroom, bathroom, kitchenette, all that.” Joey Gallo, a disabled vet facing homelessness under county orders, with his friend Lucky.
The men demanded her driver’s license, telling her, “This building is not permitted — everything must go.” Normally sassy, Marcelle handed over her ID — even her green card, just in case. Stepping out, she realized that her 1,000-square-foot cabin was surrounded by men with drawn guns. “You have no right to be here,” one informed her. Baffled and shaking with fear, she called her daughter — please come right away.
As her ordeal wore on, she heard one agent, looking inside their comfortable cabin, say to another: “This one’s a real shame — this is a real nice one.”
A “shame” because the authorities eventually would enact some of the most powerful rules imaginable against rural residents: the order to bring the home up to current codes or dismantle the 26-year-old cabin, leaving only bare ground.
“They wouldn’t let me grandfather in the water tank,” Jacques Dupuis says. “It is so heart-wrenching because there was a way to salvage this, but they wouldn’t work with me. It was, ‘Tear it down. Period.’ ”
In order to clear the title on their land, the Dupuises are spending what would have been peaceful retirement days dismantling every board and nail of their home — by hand — because they can’t afford to hire a crew.
Tough code enforcement has been ramped up in these unincorporated areas of L.A. County, leaving the iconoclasts who chose to live in distant sectors of the Antelope Valley frightened, confused and livid. They point the finger at the Board of Supervisors’ Nuisance Abatement Teams, known as NAT, instituted in 2006 by Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich in his sprawling Fifth District. The teams’ mission: “to abate the more difficult code violations and public nuisance conditions on private property.”
L.A. Weekly found in a six-week investigation that county inspectors and armed DA investigators also are pursuing victimless misdemeanors and code violations, with sometimes tragic results. The government can define land on which residents have lived for years as “vacant” if their cabins, homes and mobile homes are on parcels where the land use hasn’t been legally established. Some have been jailed for defying the officials in downtown Los Angeles, while others have lost their savings and belongings trying to meet the county’s “final zoning enforcement orders.” Los Angeles County has left some residents, who appeared to be doing no harm, homeless…..
Turns out that Our old friend Warren Buffet was the one who ultimately benefited from this set of Land Clearances.
HOUSE AGRICULTURE COMMITTEE LEADERSHIP — 10/11/06 The following is a joint post from the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Agriculture Committee, Va. GOP Rep. Bob Goodlatte and Minn. Dem. Rep. Collin Peterson:
Despite the decline in gasoline prices, asserting our nation’s energy independence continues to be a challenge. To move us closer toward the goal of greater energy independence, the House of Representatives recently passed a resolution that established a goal of producing 25 percent of the all energy consumed in the U.S. on America’s farms, ranches and forests by the year 2025, an initiative known as 25x’25
H. Con. Res. 424
So there is a LOT of money to be made in using former farmland to produce green energy. I will address some of that in the next article.
The Other ½ of the Land Grab is Verticalization
These are feel good articles but they give you an idea of what is happening.
Vertical integration of the broiler industry allows producers to combine different biosecurity and sanitation practices, housing technologies and feeding regimens to improve food safety. This structure allows greater governance over each aspect of food safety from the breeder farm to the hatchery through the processing plant.
Vertical integration allows the industry to maintain strict biosecurity measures, vaccination programs and testing for bacteria such as Salmonella at breeder farms and hatcheries. In the feed mill, feed is frequently heat-treated to prevent the spread of any bacteria between the feed and the birds. At the grow out house, strict biosecurity measures, pest management control and the “all in all out” concept controls the spread of disease between the birds, houses and flocks.
Once the birds are removed from the grow out houses, they are promptly delivered to the processing plant where strict testing regimes are in place throughout the plant to minimize the spread of bacteria.
Strict records are maintained and steam lined throughout the entire process regarding testing results, vaccination schedules, biosecurity and sanitation protocols.
Growing chickens under contract Today, more than 90 percent of all chickens raised for human consumption in the United States are produced by independent farmers working under contract with integrated chicken production and processing companies. Most of the other ten percent are company-owned farms and less than one percent are raised by individual growers.
The contract growing system provides many farmers an additional source of income outside of crop farming, livestock farming, or production of other agriculture commodities. When growers enter into an agreement with a chicken processor to raise broilers, they get a guaranteed market and thus avoid market risk (that is, the risk of being unable to sell their products or having to sell at a loss). They also have a reliable source of income and access to production resources such as “technical advice, managerial expertise, market knowledge, and . . . technological advances” (ERS, USDA, 1999) provided by the company.
Contract terms vary from company to company; most outline the division of responsibility between growers and contractors. In general the “grower cares for the chickens, and usually provides land and housing facilities, utilities, labor, and other operating expenses, such as repairs and maintenance . . . The contractor provides chicks, feed, veterinary supplies and services, management services or field personnel, and transportation for the birds to and from the farm” (ERS, USDA, 1999). Through the contract growing system, processors reduce uncertainties in production and marketing by controlling quality and quantity of their products, and diversify their operations to better meet consumer demands of high quality, economical chicken products.
The chicks are hatched at company-owned hatcheries, vaccinated against poultry diseases, and delivered to the grower’s farm, where he (or she) houses them in large, specialized structures called growout houses. The company also delivers feed, which the farmer distributes to the flock through a mechanical system.
When the birds reach market age and weight in six or seven weeks, the farmer is paid on the basis of weight gained by the flock, which is influenced by the farmer’s skill and good management. This incentive system is considered a time-honored way of rewarding growers who do a better-than-average job. Successful farmers are committed to the business and understand the need to improve their facilities and adapt to changing conditions….
The Food Safety Modernization act regulated independent farmers out of business. It also transferred liability from the corporate processing plant to the farmer via “tracability.’ We looked into raising chickens on our farm. What they do not mention is you are actually paid about a $1.00 an hour for your labor. (If your kids are doing a lot of the labor, then it is not as big a deal.) You have to have chicken houses that meet USDA standards (Remember the new regulations?) and these are SOLD TO YOU by the corporation. Funny how those standards change just after you have paid those houses off so you have to buy NEW. Just like the truck driving companies that lease/sell you the truck you drive, you end up a slave to the corporation via contract. SEE: Lease Owner Operator Plans – 10 Reasons to RUN the Other Way!
China’s largest meat processor struck a surprise $4.7 billion agreement to acquire SmithfieldFoods, a deal that would mark the biggest Chinese takeover of an American company. Shuanghui’s offer was a 31% premium to Smithfield’s Tuesday closing price of $25.97 on the New York Stock Exchange. The company’s shares jumped 28% to close at $33.35 Wednesday following [the] news
…..Their core business focus was on mainly pork, and beef to a lesser extent. The company opted for an aggressive growth strategy which is primarily based on amongst others a geographic expansion:
They carried out 32 acquisitions since 1981. They expanded into foreign markets – Smithfield made acquisitions in Canada, France, Romania and Poland. Acquired meat processors in Poland and Romania; including a hog farming operation in the latter country….Most importantly, they followed a vertical integration strategy into the pork business: This entailed a full or partial integration (depending on location), with operations ranging from operations in hog farming, feed mill, meat packing plants and distribution. They also carried out joint ventures . Established joint ventures in Spain, Mexico, and China …
Feeding the Factory Farm The significance of these findings is clear. To the extent that federal farm policy has reduced the market prices for the main components of hog feed, it has reduced costs for operations that buy feed—specialized, industrialized operations. We calculate the cost savings to industrial operations at an average of $947 million per year between 1997 and 2005, or a total of $8.52 billion over the nine-year period. This discount was not available to smaller operations that grew their own feed. The availability of low-priced hog feed on the market may have contributed to a structural transformation in hog production, encouraging the growth of industrial operations by giving them a cost advantage over diversified competitors. These cost advantages may have had less to do with efficiency gains accruing to larger operations than with U.S. government policies that reduced corn and soybean prices below production costs.
So American tax payers are paying to feed Chinese owned hogs and Cattle and Poultry…
…Vertical integration, by definition, is the combination in one company of two or more stages of production normally operated by separate companies. This is typically done for reasons that tie back to quality control, reduced costs through economies of scale and even increased market share due to the high barriers of entry.
Backward integration occurs when a company acquires a key supplier or takes over a process typically done earlier in the value chain. In recent years, retailers have taken the spotlight, with a few exceptions, as follows:
Kroger, Albertsons, Meijer vertically integrate dairy products: Milk, cheese, butter and ice cream are commonly sold under a private label and these companies have set up manufacturing sites and dairy farms to bring production in-house. As of 2018, Kroger produced around 40% of its private label milk in-house.²
Walmart opens 250,000-square-foot milk processing facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana: The move will expand Walmart’s in-house private label milk brands. The company began production in late 2018.³
Costco announces a $400m investment in poultry production facility in Nebraska: The company will control every aspect — from egg hatcheries through to the processing of birds. Costco expects production to begin in late 2019 and ramp up to full production over one to two years.4
Amazon acquires Whole Foods for over $13b: Amazon now has access to customer data, private-label product lines and several hundred physical locations that are visited by affluent consumers.
General Mills partners with Gunsmoke Farms to convert 34,000 acres (53 square miles) of farmland in South Dakota to organic: This will guarantee a stronger supply of wheat for their organic brand Annie’s, which can be tailored to General Mills’ standards.5
Walmart creates its own supply chain for Angus beef: “As clean labels, traceability and transparency become more and more important to customers, we’ve made plans to enter into the beef industry creating an unmatched system that allows us to deliver consistent quality and value,” said Scott Neal, Senior Vice President, Meat, Walmart U.S. “By enlisting a number of best-in-class companies to take part in the supply chain, we’ll be able to provide customers with unprecedented quality, provide transparency throughout the supply chain and leverage the learnings we gain across our business.”
What we the consumer are never told is that once penetration pricing strategy (below cost) is used to capture a major market share, by bankrupting the small competitors, a business can then set a price to maximize profitability. Of course when all of those companies have interlocking boards….
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