“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
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).
“….because if you’re not rooted in principle – ah – if all we are is listless vessels that’s just supposed to follow – you know – whatever happens to come down the pike on Truth Social every morning – that’s not going to be a durable movement.”
Used in a tweet
To Hillary Clinton, Trump supporters are 'deplorables.' To Ron DeSantis, they are 'listless vessels.' The truth is, Trump supporters are patriots.
Ron DeSantis is showing his true colors. The pressure of polling in third place is getting to DeSantis and now he is lashing out at… pic.twitter.com/S6UU4790W9
Note how the reference to “Truth Social” was skillfully removed in Community Notes to make sure that DeSantis’ meaning was portrayed as “not about Trump” – when it clearly was. What the heck is happening at “X”?
Nothing that a bit of music can’t help us get through!
How about some vocal and orchestral epic?
Heck – let’s try some orchestral Western, too!
And maybe a string quartet, Bluegrass-style?
No breathers allowed in local politics.
Fortunately, there’s still time for a brief stop in here.
What’s shocking is how much national politics filters down into state and local politics. People are worried about big national ideological issues causing friction at our level. Sometimes the friction is there – sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s an inch away from all hell breaking loose. But this is where the reality happens, and trying to solve that reality for the best effect is HARD.
I must thank DePat, Steve, Carl and TradeBait for carrying the weight of authorship, and everybody else for bringing the news. God bless you good folks for what you’re doing. Your carrying the load is helping me carry the message.
This Rejoice & Praise God 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 your opinion addresses the issue only, and does not confront or denigrate 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.
God is in Control . . . and His Grace is Sufficient, so . . . Keep Looking Up
Hopefully, every Sunday, we can find something here that will build us up a little . . . give us a smile . . . and add some joy or peace, very much needed in all our lives.
“This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn nor weep.” . . . “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
Dragged by God
The clearest verse on God’s drawing to salvation is John 6:44 where Jesus declares that “no one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” The Greek word translated “draw” is helkuo, which means “to drag” (literally or figuratively). Clearly, this drawing is a one-sided affair. God does the drawing to salvation; we who are drawn have a passive role in the process. There is no doubt that we respond to His drawing us, but the drawing itself is all on His part.
Helkuo is used in John 21:6 to refer to a heavy net full of fish being dragged to the shore. In John 18:10 we see Peter drawing his sword, and in Acts 16:19 helkuo is used to describe Paul and Silas being dragged into the marketplace before the rulers. Clearly, the net had no part in its being drawn to the shore, Peter’s sword had no part in being drawn, and Paul and Silas did not drag themselves to the marketplace. The same can be said of God’s drawing of some to salvation. Some come willingly, and some are dragged unwillingly, but all eventually come, although we have no part in the drawing.
Why does God need to draw us to salvation? Simply put, if He didn’t, we would never come. Jesus explains that no man can come unless the Father draws him (John 6:65). The natural man has no ability to come to God, nor does he even have the desire to come. Because his heart is hard and his mind is darkened, the unregenerate person doesn’t desire God and is actually an enemy of God (Romans 5:10). When Jesus says that no man can come without God’s drawing him, He is making a statement about the total depravity of the sinner and the universality of that condition. So darkened is the unsaved person’s heart that he doesn’t even realize it: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Therefore, it is only by the merciful and gracious drawing of God that we are saved. In the conversion of the sinner, God enlightens the mind (Ephesians 1:18), inclines the will toward Himself, and influences the soul, without which influence the soul remains darkened and rebellious against God. All of this is involved in the drawing process.
There is a sense in which God draws all men. This is known as the “general call” and is distinguished from the “effectual call” of God’s elect. Passages such as Psalm 19:1-4 and Romans 1:20 attest to the fact that God’s eternal power and divine nature are “clearly seen” and “understood” from what has been made, “so that people are without excuse.” But men still do deny God, and those who acknowledge His existence still do not come to a saving knowledge of Him outside of His drawing them. Only those who have been drawn through special revelation—by the power of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God—will come to Christ.
There are tangible ways in which those who are being drawn to salvation experience that drawing. First, the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sinful state and our need for a Savior (John 16:8). Second, He awakens in us a previously unknown interest in spiritual things and creates a desire for them that was never there before. Suddenly our ears are open, our hearts are inclined toward Him, and His Word begins to hold a new and exciting fascination for us. Our spirits begin to discern spiritual truth that never made sense to us before: “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). Finally, we begin to have new desires. He places within us a new heart that inclines toward Him, a heart that desires to know Him, obey Him, and walk in the “newness of life” (Romans 6:4) that He has promised.
Just remember…we might replace the RINO candidates. (Or we might not. The record is mixed even though there is more MAGA than there used to be.) But that will make no difference in the long run if the party officials, basically the Rhonna McDaniels (or however that’s spelled–I suspect it’s RINO), don’t get replaced.
State party chairs, vice chairs, secretaries and so on, and the same at county levels, have huge influence on who ultimately gets nominated, and if these party wheelhorses are RINOs, they will work tirelessly to put their own pukey people on the ballot. In fact I’d not be surprised if some of our “MAGA” candidates are in fact, RINO plants, encouraged to run by the RINO party leadership when they realized that Lyn Cheney (and her ilk) were hopelessly compromised as effective candidates. The best way for them to deal with the opposition, of course, is to run it themselves.
Running good candidates is only HALF of the battle!
SPECIAL SECTION: Message For Our “Friends” In The Middle Kingdom
I normally save this for near the end, but…basically…up your shit-kicking barbarian asses. Yes, barbarian! It took a bunch of sailors in Western Asia to invent a real alphabet instead of badly drawn cartoons to write with. So much for your “civilization.”
Yeah, the WORLD noticed you had to borrow the Latin alphabet to make Pinyin. Like with every other idea you had to steal from us “Foreign Devils” since you rammed your heads up your asses five centuries ago, you sure managed to bastardize it badly in the process.
Have you stopped eating bats yet? Are you shit-kickers still sleeping with farm animals?
Or maybe even just had the slightest inkling of treating lives as something you don’t just casually dispose of?
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
And here’s my response to barbarian “asshoes” like you:
OK, with that rant out of my system…
Biden Gives Us Too Much Credit
…we can move on to the next one.
Apparently Biden (or his puppeteer) has decided we’re to blame for all of the fail in the United States today.
Sorry to disappoint you Joe (or whoever), but you managed to do that all on your own; not only that, you wouldn’t let us NOT give you the chance because you insisted on cheating your way into power.
Yep, you-all are incompetent, and so proud of it you expect our applause for your sincerity. Fuck that!!
It wouldn’t be so bad, but you insist that everyone else have to share in your misery. Nope, can’t have anyone get out from under it. Somehow your grand vision only works if every single other person on earth is forced to go along. So much as ONE PERSON not going along is enough to make it all fail, apparently.
In engineering school we’re taught that a design that has seven to eight billion single points of failure…sucks.
Actually, we weren’t taught that. Because it would never have occurred to the professors to use such a ridiculous example.
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.
Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless 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 is not part of the plan, you have no plan.
Kamala Harris has a new nickname since she finally went west from DC to El Paso Texas: Westward Hoe.
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.)
Spot Prices
All prices are Kitco Ask, 3PM MT Friday (at that time the markets close for the weekend).
Gold sliding. I guess to Wall Street things are just fine. Meanwhile we work for bullshit pay and inflation keeps on going…
Watch Me Pull A Rabbit Out Of My Hat
Last week we left off showing that it’s possible using the Maclaurin series (a special case of the Taylor series) to compute sines and cosines of angles. The closer the angle is to zero, the easier it is to do.
Technically you don’t get an exact answer unless you run the series out forever, but you can typically get acceptable precision in just a few terms.
Here they are, sine and cosine:
sinx = x – x3/3! +x5/5! – x7/7!…
cosx = 1 + –x2/2! + x4/4! + –x6/6! + x8/8! +…
But if you recall, from way back, there is another such series for the exponential function, i.e., ex.
(It’s so much nicer when I can find an image of a properly typeset formula, ain’t it?)
Can We Tie Trig and Exponentials To Each Other?
Take a really close look at these three formulas. Compare like terms…and by that I mean x3 in one formula should be compared to x3 in another, and so on.
You’ll notice that the formula for ex contains terms for every power of x. Sinx, on the other hand contains only the odd-power elements, and cosx contains only the even-power elements.
It’s almost as if you could somehow combine sine and cosine to get the exponential function.
But if you add the sine and cosine functions together you get this:
Well…it’s almost right. Except for one rather awkward problem. The terms have two positive signs, then two negative signs, then two positive signs, then two negative signs. and so on, whereas the exponential series has nothing but positive signs.
And you can’t fix this by subtracting cosine from sine (or vice versa), thereby flipping some signs, because some of those errant negative signs come from sinx and some from cosx.
You still have an alternating sequence of two positive numbers then two negative numbers, then two positive numbers, and so on; you’ve just shifted where the pairs of negatives and positives are in the sequence.
So what looked like something that would have been a really cool way to tie trigonometry to the exponential function, fails.
Tying Up A Loose End
I mentioned here: https://www.theqtree.com/2023/06/24/2023%c2%b706%c2%b724-joe-biden-didnt-win-daily-thread/ that complex numbers, i.e., numbers of the form a + bi,where i is the square root of -1, could have all sorts of things done to them, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division…and you could even raise other numbers to complex powers. I said that last part, but then I said I’d have to talk about it some other week.
Well, this is that week.
Nothing says that the x in the Maclaurin series has to be a real number.
So why don’t we plug a complex number into the Maclaurin series for ex to see what happens?
Well I can tell you beforehand what will happen if we plug a + bi into it…we’re going to have to square that expression, then cube it, then raise it to the fourth power, and the fifth, and we will have a gawdawful mess on our hands very, very quickly.
But really, that would be a chimpanzee move.
ea+bi, after all is ea x ebi. By splitting it up this way, we can handle the two pieces separately and then (at the end) multiply them together. We already have a handle on ea but we should check on ebi since the power we are raising e to is an imaginary number. So let’s set ea aside (but we will not forget it’s there).
This doesn’t seem to do much for us; you could put anything in for x and you will be raising it to all those powers. But i has a very interesting behavior when you raise it to successive powers, and we can use that here:
In other words it goes through a 1, i, -1, –i cycle, over and over again. So we can go back to the expansion above and replace all of the i-to-the-somethingth powers with the appropriate value (and do more simplifications….0! is defined to be 1, and any number raised to the 0th power is also 1). Also, when we do this if there is an i or –i we’ll bring it to the front.
Now some of the terms have i in them and some do not, which makes this the epitome of a complex number. It’s a little hard to deal with this in this form, so let’s collect all the real terms together, and all the imaginary terms together–like we would for any complex number. We end up with the sum of two series:
The first series is the same as the expansion of cosx from earlier, except of course it’s on b instead of x. Makes no difference. They’re the same.
The second series, moreover is i times the sinx series from above (again with b substituted for x).
In other words, switching back to x:
eix = cosx + isinx.
Well, well, well. We can connect exponentials and trig functions after all! We just needed a bit of (I can’t resist) imagination, taking the exponent of an imaginary number and getting a result that has both a real and imaginary component.
This is known as Euler’s equation, after Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) who first noted it. Euler is arguably the greatest mathematician that ever lived though he has plenty of stiff competition from others.
It would be hard to overstate the importance of this result. It underlies much of physics, and is all over the place in electrical engineering.
And yet you never hear about it in the popularizations of science (well, not until now).
This is largely because, in order to get here, you need a pretty solid advanced math background. Or someone who’s willing to skip over a lot of formal proofs as he presents it to you. Most math educators won’t do that, and rightly so. Mathematics education relies on proving everything along every step of the way. It’s bullshit-free, everything is proved based on what comes before and you don’t have to trust the perfessor or take his word for anything. And here I am giving it to with little in the way of proofs and enough hand-waving that I am raising myself off the floor from flapping my arms so hard. (As such, if you find this interesting, I ask that you at least ask someone else with the right knowledge if it’s true. DO NOT just take my word for it. Better yet, take a bunch of math courses.)
Putting It Back Together
But there’s one little detail that must be dealt with. We got here by trying to raise e to the a+bi power, and we set aside the ea that we must multiply ebi by. So let’s put them back together.
ea+bi = eaebi = ea(cosb + isinb)
But now, the last thing should remind you of something. (Though this time I will not jump on the table and yell that it should do so.)
It looks a bit like how you convert polar to rectangular coordinates.
<r, θ> = (rcosθ , rsinθ)
And if you consider your rectangular coordinates to be complex number in a complex number plane, you get:
<r, θ> = r(cosθ + isinθ)
So another way to represent ea+bi is:
ea+bi = <ea, b>
I’ve said before that the angle brackets < and > are not standard mathematical notation. I just use them as a visual cue that the coordinates are polar coordinates. Mathematicians generally don’t bother with that, they just use parentheses for both cases. But sometimes (actually rather often) they will write polar coordinates like this:
<r, θ> as: reiθ
(And need I remind you: the angle must be expressed in radians. eiθ will give you the sine and cosine of θ, but only if θ is radians. Another reason why mathematicians prefer radians.)
A Maximally Geeky Bonus
What if θ is π? (I.e., what if θ is 180 degrees?)
The sine of π is zero. The cosine of π is -1.
So if eiθ = cosθ + isinθ, and θ = π, then eiπ = cosπ + isinπ = -1 + 0.
eiπ = -1
Adding 1 to both sides we get:
eiπ + 1 = 0
Note the beauty of this. It contains all three of the numbers I introduced you to, e, π, and i, plus the numbers 0 and 1–which I sure hope I did not have to introduce you to (though maybe some reader of this took woke mathematics and got to hear about “saving the planet” instead of actual math).
Arguably these are the five most important numbers in mathematics, and one formula ties them together, and no other more mundane number appears in the formula.
This is known as Euler’s identity, and it’s a favorite. There’s absolutely no way anyone can see this intuitively, no way to see that e, i, and π should be related to each other in any way, much less all three of them directly like this.
And yet they are. And much of our modern world depends on this crazy little fact.
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
Remember Hong Kong!!!
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 His Fraudulency 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 !!!
Nobody campaigned harder for Ron DeSantis for governor in my state of Florida than me. I didn’t want another Gavin Newsome ruining our state and I fought hard to make that happen. I was celebrating when he won his landslide.
BREAKING:#MAUI Just had confirmation by phone from a Private Detective that Maui Authorities turned the Water Supply OFF when Residents began dousing their homes with Water from hoses. Maui was a Terror Attack
— The White Rabbit Podcast 🐇 (@AllBiteNoBark88) August 17, 2023
When more Americans hear this and other facts, they’ll start to get a sense of why there was such a heavy attack against myself as the incoming National Security Advisor and, of course, @realDonaldTrump . Attacks that continue to this very day. @RobertKennedyJr is a for real… https://t.co/RAz4UKnmaC
There is a cluster of military satellites around earth that are controlled by an AI called "SENTIENT".
SENTIENT is able to predict future events.
SENTIENT predicts future events and coordinates all satellites under its control to work in tandem to analyze potential problem… pic.twitter.com/2aqqMwYcj2
🔊 The cost-of-living crisis in Europe is leading voters to reject environmental policies seen as expensive. @reuterssarah explains how a green backlash is impacting elections there, on Reuters World News daily podcast https://t.co/dmuCBb89S8pic.twitter.com/Oydpick6xB
Trump would face off against Never-Trump mercenaries funded by globalist dark money – Mike Pence, last seen sticking a knife in the back of the man who rescued him from political oblivion; Chris Pillsbury Doughboy Christie; and lean and hungry Cassius “Nikki” Haley . https://t.co/wc4PIlF4lE
Many say climate change caused the deadly fires in Hawaii but it didn’t. What caused the fires was Hawaiian Electric’s failure to clear flammable grasses from around electric wires because its focus, and ratepayer money, was going to renewables.https://t.co/Ygf4kxamaq
"It's not an objective, moral 'good' to be polite to terrible people … They want you within a set of rules they don't plan to follow, and if you follow them because you think it makes you a good person, all it does is weaken you."
IDK, one of my brothers had a bug that presented as Lyme Disease and did damage to his heart. Could it have been a tick bite? Sure. HIV? No. The thing is, he had a pacemaker put in at the age of 32 due to severe arrhythmia.
Watching people from all walks of life connect with Rich Men North of Richmond reminds me that we are not alone in the struggles that we’re facing. Nothing scares them more than us unifying against them. pic.twitter.com/b9nKEp1tQE
This happens because of a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering: cirrus clouds scatter the longer, red wavelengths of light and give the sky an orange or reddish hue
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. In that spirit, though, threats of violence real or hypothetical are out of bounds.
Fellow tree dweller the late 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.
1Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel; and they presented themselves before God. 2And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, `Your fathers lived of old beyond the Euphra’tes, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. 3Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac; 4and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. And I gave Esau the hill country of Se’ir to possess, but Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. 5And I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt with what I did in the midst of it; and afterwards I brought you out. 6Then I brought your fathers out of Egypt, and you came to the sea; and the Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. 7And when they cried to the LORD, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians, and made the sea come upon them and cover them; and your eyes saw what I did to Egypt; and you lived in the wilderness a long time. 8Then I brought you to the land of the Amorites, who lived on the other side of the Jordan; they fought with you, and I gave them into your hand, and you took possession of their land, and I destroyed them before you. 9Then Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose and fought against Israel; and he sent and invited Balaam the son of Be’or to curse you, 10but I would not listen to Balaam; therefore he blessed you; so I delivered you out of his hand. 11And you went over the Jordan and came to Jericho, and the men of Jericho fought against you, and also the Amorites, the Per’izzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Gir’gashites, the Hivites, and the Jeb’usites; and I gave them into your hand. 12And I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out before you, the two kings of the Amorites; it was not by your sword or by your bow. 13I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and cities which you had not built, and you dwell therein; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards which you did not plant.’
Note: I am still unable to link up things so that the articles open in a new tab. Please, right click on the link and chose “Open in a new tab” to make this happen.
🚨BREAKING: Trump announces plan to appoint Special Counsel to investigate Joe Biden criminal corruption when re-elected:
“I believe we have a compromised President. He was bribed, and now he’s being blackmailed. He’s a Manchurian Candidate… Justice will be done.” pic.twitter.com/qHl6a6udnf
Welcome to the Jackson Pollock school of prosecution. The 98-page indictment from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is the legal version of Pollock’s style of throwing paint splatters on canvas as artistic expression… https://t.co/vbtyeoJvY3
Ron has "rebooted" several times and is still dropping in the polls. He's now in single digits behind an Indian guy nobody's ever heard of. At what point does DeSantis do the right thing and stop accepting donations for a failed campaign, bow out, go home and get back to work for… pic.twitter.com/lIRojj2P31
They are fully cognizant of the fact that what worked in 2020 will **not** work in 2024.
They can't do massive ballot dumping at 3 am after the polls have closed on election night, and then use Fake News to gaslight the country into buying into the claim Biden got 81 million… https://t.co/hsE0NUOq8m
— Brian Cates – Political Columnist & Pundit (@drawandstrike) August 16, 2023
John Kennedy on Trump indictments:
"This is the sort of thing that happens in countries whose Powerball jackpot is 387 chickens and a goat.” pic.twitter.com/FKy7fg67ll
Civilians in Maui, Hawaii approach chief officer John Pelletier demanding answers.
Funny how news coverage has also completely subsided where normally they would be driving home the climate scam narrative relentlessly for weeks on end.
"These 'Never Trump' people. There are people that will vote for a f–king box of hammers before they would vote for Trump, and that's a real segment of our population," pic.twitter.com/t2o0ZeAqAm
Wind turbine in Scroby Sands has burst into flames, kicking out more carbon today than it would have reduced in its entire lifetime. pic.twitter.com/B06jU1qePA
Russian Chief of Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Protection, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, on Zvezda today:
“They (US) have a policy of global biological control. They understood that by creating artificial biological crises, they can rule the world.”… pic.twitter.com/fnq5hudjEr
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, the late 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.
1821Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven. 23“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. 24When he began the reckoning, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents; 25and as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. 26So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, `Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27And out of pity for him the lord of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. 28But that same servant, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat he said, `Pay what you owe.’ 29So his fellow servant fell down and besought him, `Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30He refused and went and put him in prison till he should pay the debt. 31When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32Then his lord summoned him and said to him, `You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you besought me; 33and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ 34And in anger his lord delivered him to the jailers, till he should pay all his debt. 35So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” 191Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan;
. PRAY ……. Like Nehemiah OBEY ……. Like Daniel LEAD …….. Like Moses BUILD ……. Like Noah FIGHT ……. Like David SERVE ……. Like Martha BELIEVE ….. Like Mary EDUCATE … Like Paul PROTECT .… Like Peter LOVE ..……….Like JESUS
Again, the content editor is not allowing for “open in a new tab.” Please, right click and pick that option if you wish to view content in that manner.
President Trump’s attorney @AlinaHabba is outraged that they are allowing cameras & the press in the courtroom right now.
“It is part of the show. This is a show. It’s a political show. Fani… it is not okay what you are doing. This is unacceptable. The fact that we have… pic.twitter.com/w9NPRKep3a
The part of Hawaii that got destroyed by the wildfires was a prime land next to luxury mega mansions. How the hell the fire knew to avoid the part of the island where these celebrities have their multi million dollar houses? pic.twitter.com/lstpFfogde
Evidence keeps mounting that the #Lahaina fires were DELIBERATELY shaped:
1) The (hurricane) warning sirens did not sound. Were they turned off on purpose? 2) The local fire department was ordered OFF the fire, claiming it was "contained" 3) The fire was still burning, though,…
Please can someone explain how a book was able to be written, published then sold on Amazon less than a week after the Maui, Hawaii fires? pic.twitter.com/9N7khATCLd
Trump's handpicked and in-training for 3 1/2 years "2020 Election Theft Proof Team" is about to be given a forum in trial in GA to prove its case that massive fraud occurred in GA in 2020.
After 3 1/2 years of careful preparation, they're about to…
— Brian Cates – Political Columnist & Pundit (@drawandstrike) August 15, 2023
Did he…did he just freaking WAIT FOR THEM TO INDICT HIM in GA to suddenly reveal he ‘has it all’ and will be releasing a devastating election fraud report?
IF Trump isn’t bluffing, isn’t the only real way to beat a corrupt political prosecution to GO RIGHT AT IT to build his… https://t.co/K10MYJgIMK
— Brian Cates – Political Columnist & Pundit (@drawandstrike) August 15, 2023
I’m being told there is a 12 MILE "MEDIA FREE ZONE" around Lahaina, Maui where the "wildfires" struck
I’m so sick and damn tired of these corrupt soulless parasites in the Washington D.C. sewer, in both parties, purposely destroying our country for their personal gain and shitting all over We The People 24/7 – and the lying ass communist media propagandist scumbags.
For those who think it’s an absurd conspiracy theory that out government will set ablaze its citizens to further their agenda let me remind you of something;
They forced the population to take an experimental jab that causes cardiac failure in order to keep your job and to…
(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, the late 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.
15“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 18Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 19Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
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.
We are getting ready to experience a level of evil that will be hard to comprehend. Stay strong. Be prepared.
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.
SATIRE SECTION
Biden's 'No Comment' Praised As Most Rational, Coherent Statement He's Made As Presidenthttps://t.co/nmkWqbT5B7
LAND GRAB ALREADY BEGINNING! Darn investors are beginning to call Lahaina residents that lost their homes! These investors want Lahaina land so badly! You decide but IMHO this is a heartless mean evil tactic! Where will a Lahaina resident go with whatever they offer? A…
That many personal accounts can’t be a coincidence.
Hawaii fires result from poor tending of the land. First, industrial ag plantations obliterated native ecosystems. When these farms were abandoned, combustible invasive grasses took over.https://t.co/WNEp5HnRIz
Quick housekeeping note: as of the hour when I am putting this together, the option to have links open in a new tab has disappeared from the content editor. This is actually an etiquette thing I learned LONG AGO in managing content. To get links to open in a new tab, right click on it with your mouse, and choose that option from the drop down box.
Okay, some of this came to the Q Tree in yesterday’s comments. Still posting it due to the gravity of the subject matter.
There’s no such thing as a “fossil fuel”, it was given that label by Rockefeller owned Standard Oil to give the impression of “limited” so it could be taxed at a higher rate, millions upon millions have used this “limited” resource for over a century and that shows you that… pic.twitter.com/vHAKMawpkK
President Trump exposed their entire system, which is why they hate him so much.
First you have to shine a light on the problem (now). Once everyone has a general understanding of said problem, you take a sledgehammer to it (future).
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.
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, the late 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.
Thank you so much for any and all attention to such details. It is GREATLY appreciated by more than one party here.
20But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27“For God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “All things are put in subjection under him,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things under him.
Be afraid neither of the world, nor of the future, nor of your weakness. The Lord has allowed you to live in this moment of history so that, by your faith, his name will continue to resound throughout the world. — Benedict XVI
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).
Our various sister sites, listed in the Blogroll in the sidebar
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.
Word of The Week:
starboard
noun, adjective
The right-hand side of a ship or aircraft as one faces forward.
Nautical that side of a vessel which is on the right when one faces the bow: opposed to port (larboard). See port.
That side of a vessel which is on the right hand of a person who stands on board facing the bow; — opposed to larboard, or port.
Used in a sentence
“On this fascinating ship of political fools, beware RINOs off the starboard bow, coaxing us toward various rocks, while never forgetting the wise navigators astern, keeping us on the straight and narrow path to freedom and victory.”
Time for some classical.
And maybe some classic country, too!
The battlegrounds are shifting now. The establishment game of endless division is clear. I’m learning a LOT about how politics is mainly about perpetuating politics. However, I believe that WE THE PEOPLE have ways to cut through that and find American unity. I’m excited.
I miss being here with you all. I now realize that I’m YEARS ahead of the people around me, because I had this resource of honest people speaking honestly. Please continue to cherish each other. This is a great place. I can feel the cost of my absence to my own understanding, and I will have to do something to make sure I have more time to be here.
And yes – I STILL hope that every one of you is STILL having a great summer!
This Rejoice & Praise God 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 your opinion addresses the issue only, and does not confront or denigrate 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.
God is in Control . . . and His Grace is Sufficient, so . . . Keep Looking Up
Hopefully, every Sunday, we can find something here that will build us up a little . . . give us a smile . . . and add some joy or peace, very much needed in all our lives.
“This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn nor weep.” . . . “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
God is in Control
Before we can trust that God is in control of all of life’s circumstances, we have to answer four questions: Is God really in control? How much control does He have? If He is not in complete control, then who/what is? How can I learn to trust that He is in control and rest in that?
Is God really in control? The concept of the control of God over everything is called the “sovereignty” of God. Nothing gives us strength and confidence like an understanding of the sovereignty of God in our lives. God’s sovereignty is defined as His complete and total independent control over every creature, event, and circumstance at every moment in history. Subject to none, influenced by none, absolutely independent, God does what He pleases, only as He pleases, always as He pleases. God is in complete control of every molecule in the universe at every moment, and everything that happens is either caused or allowed by Him for His own perfect purposes.
“The LORD of hosts has sworn, saying, ‘Surely, as I have thought, so it shall come to pass, And as I have purposed, so it shall stand’” (Isaiah 14:24). Nothing is random or comes by chance, especially not in the lives of believers. He “purposed” it. That means to deliberately resolve to do something. God has resolved to do what He will do, and nothing and no one stands in His way. “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please” (Isaiah 46:10). This is our powerful, purposeful God who is in control of everything. That should bring us great comfort and help to alleviate our fears.
But exactly how much control does God have? God’s total sovereignty over all creation directly contradicts the philosophy of open theism, which states that God doesn’t know what’s going to happen in the future any more than we do, so He has to constantly be changing His plans and reacting to what the sinful creatures do as they exercise their free will. God isn’t finding out what’s going to happen as events unfold. He is continuously, actively running things—ALL things—here and now. But to think He needs our cooperation, our help, or the exercise of our free will to bring His plans to pass puts us in control over Him, which makes us God. Where have we heard that lie before? It’s a rehash of Satan’s same old lie from the Garden—you shall be like God (Genesis 3:5). Our wills are only free to the extent that God allows us that freedom and no farther. “All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: ‘What have you done?’” (Daniel 4:35). No one’s free will trumps the sovereignty of God.
Some people find it appealing to think that Satan has control over a certain amount of life, that God is constantly revising His plans to accommodate Satan’s tricks. The book of Job is a clear illustration of just who has the sovereign power and who doesn’t. Satan came to God and, in effect, said, “Job only serves you because you protect him.” So God gave Satan permission to do certain things to Job but no more (Job 1:6–22). Could Satan do more than that? No. God is in control over Satan and his demons who try to thwart God’s plans at every step.
Satan knew from the Old Testament that God’s plan was for Jesus to come to the earth, be betrayed, crucified and resurrected, and provide salvation for millions, and if there was any way to keep that from happening, Satan would have done it. If just one of the hundreds of prophecies about the Messiah could have been caused by Satan to fail to come to pass, the whole thing would have collapsed. But the numbers of independent, “free will” decisions made by thousands of people were designed by God to bring His plan to pass in exactly the way He had planned it from the beginning, and Satan couldn’t do a thing about it.
Jesus was “delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). No action by the Romans, the Pharisees, Judas, or anyone else kept God’s plan from unfolding exactly the way He purposed it from before the foundation of the world. Ephesians 1 says we were chosen in Him before the world was even created. We were in the mind of God to be saved by faith in Christ. That means God knit together Satan’s rebellion, Adam and Eve’s sin, the fall of the human race, and the death and crucifixion of Christ—all seemingly terrible events—to save us before He created us. Here is a perfect example of God working all things together for good (Romans 8:28).
Unlimited in power, unrivalled in majesty, and not thwarted by anything outside Himself, our God is in complete control of all circumstances, causing or allowing them for His own good purposes and plans to be fulfilled exactly as He has foreordained.
Finally, the only way to trust in God’s sovereign control and rest in it is to know God. Know His attributes, know what He has done in the past, and this builds confidence in Him. Daniel 11:32b says, “The people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits.” Imagine that kind of power in the hands of an evil, unjust god. Or a god that really doesn’t care about us. But we can rejoice in our God’s sovereignty, because it is overshadowed by His goodness, His love, His mercy, His compassion, His faithfulness, and His holiness.
But we can’t trust someone we don’t know, and there is only one way to know God—through His Word. There is no magic formula to make us spiritual giants overnight, no mystical prayer to pray three times a day to mature us, build our faith, and make us towers of strength and confidence. There is only the Bible, the single source of power that will change our lives from the inside out. But it takes effort, diligent, everyday effort, to know the God who controls everything. If we drink deeply of His Word and let it fill our minds and hearts, the sovereignty of God will become clear to us, and we will rejoice in it because we will know intimately and trust completely the God who controls all things for His perfect purpose.
I also believe that God is in control . . . full, complete, 100% control. Absolutely nothing happened, happens, or will happen that is outside of God’s will. Never . . . ever.
When I hear or read “Relax. God’s in control,”or “Don’t worry. God’s got this,” I believe that a significant number of people that say, write, or read these phrases are thinking something along the line of “Yup. This is going to come out alright for us because God is behind all that happens, and He wouldn’t let the bad guys win and the good guys lose in this circumstance.”
However, God doesn’t guarantee in this world that, for example, all Christians will be happy or even satisfied with God’s ordered outcome. Certainly Adam and Eve weren’t pleased when they were banished from the Garden of Eden, or when Cain murdered Able. A huge number of the Children of Israel weren’t pleased to learn they would never see the Promised Land. Likewise with the Christian persecutions under Nero and Diocletian.
More recently, I’m sure many Christians were not pleased by the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire, or by the Nazis during Hitler’s reign. Researcher David B. Barrett, puts the number of Christians martyred since the time of Jesus at 70 million.
And I haven’t even mentioned the evils performed around the world that don’t involve the martyrdom of Christians.
God, in His infinite wisdom and everlasting love has chosen to give faith to His select people to believe in Him and His Son, to forgive their sin, and to guarantee us an eternity of Peace and Joy with Him. God has also promised us certain things concerning our walk with Him. Any conclusions beyond that concerning God causing specific outcomes for specific events that are ongoing on this earth, I can’t fully accept. Mankind, at some time in the future, will be made to walk down the road that leads to the horrors of the Tribulation.
God is in full control, the wicked will be justly judged, and the Church, the Bride of Christ, will spend an eternity of peace and joy with Christ and God.
McCarthy 2.0 seems a vast improvement over Speaker Dungsmear. So here’s the question. Was he once a conservative with a little fire in the belly that got captured by the system and now is finding the bellyfire again? Or is this all completely under duress?
For the moment, it doesn’t matter which one. But some day it will matter, and we will have our answer.
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 our most recent 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?
In Defense of Ranked Choice Voting
One of the biggest obstacles to direly-needed change is RINOs, and one of the weapons in their arsenal is the “Wasted Vote” argument.
Periodically a third party has arisen, trying to hold RINOs to account by putting pressure on them from outside of the party, since doing so from the inside has historically done very little good. But, even if you find a third party candidate who perfectly reflects your views, you’re likely to vote for the RINO anyway. Why? Because if you don’t, the Democrat might win, and that would be even worse. So if you vote for that third party (that few will vote for), you’re throwing your vote away and increasing the likelihood of the Democrat winning. (It’s half as much a gain for the Democrat, as actually voting for the Democrat would be. Not as much, but half as much. Because although you denied the R your vote, you did not flip your vote to the Democrat.)
The Republican Party Establishment knows you don’t love them. But they know you hate the Democrats worse, and they use that to continue to herd you into supporting them. With gritted teeth you cast your vote, but your vote counts the same whether you cast it enthusiastically. And the other alternative, pissing on the voting apparatus to express your actual feelings, is probably a felony.
But what if you could vote for that third party without increasing the chances of the Dem walking away with the prize?
This is what ranked choice voting, or instant runoff voting, can do provided it is properly implemented. (And this includes the votes, and only genuine votes, being counted honestly, of course. However, I’m going to compare it to what we have today, and pretend that is honestly done too. RCV can’t work if it’s not honestly administered, just like our current system isn’t working because it isn’t honestly administered.)
The idea behind RCV is to vote by expressing your order of preference. You could vote for the Patriot Party, then for the RINO Party as your second choice (and ignore the Democrat, the Green, the Overt Socialist Schmuckmonkey Party, etc).
What does this do? It nullifies the wasted vote argument. Your vote will be counted for the Patriot party, first, then instead of it being “wasted” when the Patriot Party loses, it ends up going to the RINO. Actually, it’s just barely possible that the Patriot Party would actually beat the RINO, if people weren’t all individually afraid to vote for it.
It’s just like the famous “Prisoner’s Dilemma” where your fear of other peoples’ actions prevents you from doing the optimal thing–and vice-versa. As long as Job Lowe is afraid to vote Patriot because he’s afraid you’ll vote RINO, you’ll have to vote RINO because you fear that Job Lowe will, because he fears you will.
So on the whole I like RCV. It gives you a no-risk way to vote against the RINO scum, and in favor of someone who deserves your vote.
The problem is, as done here in the US, it comes packaged with a “jungle primary.” A bunch of candidates get to put their name out there, and the top four (or so) candidates get onto the “main” ballot. This gives party establishments their way around the threat of a good third party bumping them off. Because they know that few people bother with primaries, and third parties don’t have the resources to run in a primary…so they throw two or three establishment hacks into the primary and they will probably beat the third party. The result is the RINOs end up with two of the four slots in the general election, and the Dems get the other two. Now there’s suddenly no third party candidate on the ballot at all.
If we were to combine RCV with the present system where each party could nominate exactly one candidate to appear on the November ballot, or at the very least, ensure minor parties could get onto the ballot with at least one candidate regardless of the primary, we would be getting somewhere, but the establishment is smarter than we like to give them credit for. They will support the jungle primary + RCV “solution” rather than the more appropriate one-candidate-per-party + RCV solution.
It’s not RCV that is the problem, it’s the primary structure grafted onto it.
Justice
It says “Justice” on the picture.
And I’m sure someone will post the standard joke about what the fish thinks about the situation.
But what is it?
Here’s a take, from a different context: It’s about how you do justice, not the justice that must be done to our massively corrupt government and media. You must properly identify the nature of a person, before you can do him justice.
Ayn Rand, On Justice (speaking through her character John Galt, in Atlas Shrugged):
Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification—that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a rotter above a hero—that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as scrupulous an honor as you bring to financial transactions—that to withhold your contempt from men’s vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement—that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit—and that the bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that that is the collapse to full depravity, the Black Mass of the worship of death, the dedication of your consciousness to the destruction of existence.
Ayn Rand identified seven virtues, chief among them rationality. The other six, including justice, she considered subsidiary because they are essentially different aspects and applications of rationality.
I’m sure enough of this that I put my money where my mouth is.
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 2024 or 2026 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.
Everything down or flat except palladium. Interesting!
Sines and Cosines from Plain Old Arithmetic
Well after last week’s difficulty with editing I’m going to have another go at it.
I ended by stating that there was a way of computing the sine and cosine of any arbitrary angle, without knowing any other sines or cosines.
This is good because if you do need other sines and cosines as inputs, then roundoff error in the previously determined sines and cosines will start you off wrong, and you’ll be making an roundoff error here (remember you can’t specify most of these numbers precisely, they’re irrational). These errors will only accumulate. A direct method that doesn’t depend on other calculations would be much better.
We have that method. Sort of. There are a couple of caveats: This method will give you an approximation, though you can put more work into it and get it as close to the actual sine or cosine as you want. The more accurate you want, the more work you will need to do. (It becomes precisely accurate if you do infinite work.
And the other caveat is you have to give your angle in radians, because that is the “natural” way to measure an angle: as a distance along the arc of a circle.
OK, here we go:
Remember a few weeks ago (https://www.theqtree.com/2023/06/10/2023%C2%B706%C2%B710-joe-biden-didnt-win-daily-thread/) I talked about the Taylor series, and a special case of it called the MacLaurin series. These can be used, in some cases to compute values of a function that might otherwise seem intractable, and by using pure arithmetic.
The function must be infinitely differentiable, which is a calculus concept. I’m going to try to explain it, but if you don’t want to know it won’t hurt you not to know…much. You may want to skip the next few paragraphs…I’ll put bold where it’s safe to pick up so you can scan for it.
Basically, if you have a function like sinx which is shown below with x in radians.
…you can create another function that gives the slope of sin x at any given point. So what would such a function look like? Well, when x is zero, the slope of the wiggly line is just about 1. Which is to say, right there at x = 0, it’s climbing at the rate of one square vertically for every one unit to the right (in radians). Our new “slope of sin x function” has a value of 1 at x = 0. At π/2 (or 90°), the curve of sin x is level, so the slope is zero. At π, the slope is -1. At 3π/2, it’s zero again. And at 2π, it’s back to being 1 again.
We already know of a function that has these values at these points. It’s the cosine of x. Is that a coincidence? Actually, no. It turns out (after a lot more proof than I am going to show you), that the “slope of sin(x) function” is indeed cos(x). Now for some terminology; the correct way to phrase this is “the derivative of sin(x) is cos(x).”
You can repeat this exercise for cos(x), and you will get -sin(x). So the derivative of cos(x) is -sin(x). But cos(x) is already the derivative of sin(x), so the derivative of the derivative of sin(x) is -sin(x). But we don’t want to say “the derivative of the derivative of..” so we call that the second derivative.
Unsurprisingly, the derivative of -sin(x) is -cos(x). And the derivative of -cos(x) is back to sin(x). In other words, you can keep taking the derivative of the derivative of the derivative…forever. Kind of boring.
But that’s what it means to say that sin(x) is infinitely differentiable. With most functions you’ll eventually end up with a derivative that’s zero for all values of x, and then you’re done. But not with sin(x) and also (since it shows up in the chain) not for cos(x).
Which means that sine and cosine are infinitely differentiable and we can use the Maclaurin series on them.
(OK the calculus-averse are back with us now, and we can continue.)
So here is the Taylor series of any function, f. The idea is to pick a central point, a, and then compute the value of f for some nearby x. Note that all of the terms have x–a in them; you get closer if x is very close to a.
If a is zero, it becomes the Maclaurin series:
And the tick marks denote the first, second, third, and four derivatives.
The 1!, 2!, 3! etc are factorials. You get a factorial by multiplying the number by every smaller number down to 1. So 4! is 4 x 3 x 2 x 1. (Practically, of course, you don’t bother multiplying by 1.)
So if we set a equal to zero (we’re going to be interested in values for x close to zero), the formula can simplify.
I pointed out in the section you skipped over that the first derivative of sinx is cosx, the second derivative is -sinx, the third derivative is -cosx, the fourth derivative is sinx again, and so on…the cycle repeats.
But we know that the sin(0) is zero, and so is -sin(0). So we can simply throw a bunch of these terms out (and as I do so I’ll bring in more terms from where the ellipsis was)
And the others (cos(0) and -cos(0)) can be replaced with 1 and -1 respectively, so simplifying:
sinx = x – x3/3! +x5/5! – x7/7!…
This is a nice pattern. Every odd power of x, divided by the factorial of the power. Every other term gets a minus sign. The further you carry it out, the more accurate you will be. Also, the closer to zero x is, the more accurate it will be, but you can always just carry it out further if x isn’t very close to zero, to make up for it. If you can follow this infinitely far, you can get the correct answers for numbers very far away from 0, as far away as you like.
Here is a graph of sinx, along with a graph of what you get out of the Maclaurin representation taken to the x7 term.
As a practical matter you do not need to go past x=π/2, because the function makes the mirror-image curve going down to π as it did climbing to π/2. So the sine of 89° is the same as the sine of 91°, and so on. And the stretch from π to 2π is also a mirror image, except flipped vertically. After that, it repeats. So even though you can see some difference at x = π, and a lot of difference at 2π, you can probably get everything you need from the range 0 to π/, where this is pretty close.
So you can get pretty close with this function, between –π/2 and π/2. I’ll repeat it with the factorials written out:
sinx is roughly equal to: x – x3/6 +x5/120 – x7/5040.
Certainly the brain inside a calculator should be able to do that very quickly! And so, that’s probably what it does. It might go out one or two more terms:
x – x3/6 +x5/120 – x7/5040 + x9/363,880 – x11/39,916,800
But you can see if x is small you’re not going to get much change from the x11 term.
So let’s do the same thing for cosines. Now when we go back to the MacLaurin series, everything shifts over, it starts with cosine, then -sine, then -cosine, then sine.
And now we know that the cosine of zero is 1, and the sine of zero is zero, so:
cosx = 1 + –x2/2! + x4/4! + –x6/6! + x8/8! +…
So here we have a pattern oddly like, but oddly unlike, the sine version. Now it’s the even powers of x (including x0 = 1) that show up, again with alternating signs.
And we have:
cosx is roughly equal to: 1 – x2/2 +x4/24 – x6/720 + x8/40,320.
So we can get increasingly accurate. Because, remember sine and cosine swap at 45 degrees. The sine of 60° is the same as the cosine of 30°, so if you want the sine of 60°, compute the cosine of 30° instead; your answer will be closer. (Needless to say first, convert to radians!) So we really only need these series to be accurate enough for whatever our purposes are, to 45° or π/4 radians.
Next time: I pull a mathematical rabbit out of my hat!
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
To conclude: My standard Public Service Announcement. We don’t want to forget this!!!
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 !!!
