Speaker Johnson
Pinging you on January 6 Tapes

Just a friendly reminder Speaker Johnson. You’re doing some good things–or at least trying in the case of the budget–but this is the most important thing out there not yet definitively addressed.

We have American patriots being held without bail and without trial, and the tapes almost certainly contain exculpatory evidence. (And if they don’t, and we’re all just yelling in an echo chamber over here, we need to know that too. And there’s only one way to know.)

Either we have a weaponized, corrupt government or we have a lot of internet charlatans. Let’s expose whatever it is. (I’m betting it’s the corrupt weaponized government, but if I am wrong, I’d like to see proof.)

Armistice Day

November 11th was Armistice Day before we broadened it to be a day about all veterans, regardless of which war they fought in, or even whether they did their jobs the best way possible and kept us out of wars.

November 11, 1918 was the end of a war that was far more horrific than any war before it…and in some ways was worse than the next one.

I watched a lengthy series of lectures on World War I, and it was striking how the narrative concentrated on all sorts of advances and retreats until about the middle of 1915. Then after that, you don’t hear about a lot of changes of tide, until 1918.

That is because the war settled down into a defensive stalemate. As long as each side had machine guns that could mow the enemy down, people either stayed in their trenches…and the front line didn’t move…or they died. By the thousands.

The tank was ultimately to change this, and poison gas also had its effects (it was so horrific that even Adolf Hitler didn’t want to use it in battle, though nothing was too bad for the Jews). But until then thousands upon thousands died…with no net result.

And when things did change, they changed a lot. The map of Europe was redrawn. Germany lost much territory; Austria lost nearly everything. The Ottoman Empire collapsed and was almost completely occupied; present day Turkey managed to assert its independence and not be largely given to Greece (1920 is regarded by them as the year they became independent). And of course the Russian Empire…one of the allies…managed to lose its part of the war earlier and lost its monarchy, becoming after over a decade of turmoil and various subject peoples enjoying independence for a while, reunited under the communists.

As it happens my grandfather fought in the war…before he emigrated to America. (He was born in one of the Allied countries.)

World War One was a shock to the European psyche. There had been a century of comparative quiet since the massive disruptions of the Napoleonic Wars, the worst anomalies being the Franco-Prussian war of the early 1870s, and the Crimean War of 1855. Europe seemed to be pretty stable, with the main hazard being the fact that Ottoman Empire was clearly dying. (It was the “sick man” of Europe.)

And then suddenly the roof fell in, and battles that made the Battle of Borodino in 1812 (itself the second most lethal one day battle in history up to that time) seem like a picnic by comparison, became regular occurrences.

World War II wasn’t as much as a shock, even if it was deadlier. Horrific war was less unexpected that time around.

Europe was determined to remember, and two results of that stick with us today. We are not the only country that has a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Many European countries set such a thing up. I don’t know how many of them added a World War II soldier to their monuments, like we did. Or subsequent wars…like we did. And almost every country celebrated Armistice Day, November 11, complete with a moment of silence at 11 AM, the time the war ended (in this case we didn’t correct for time zones; it was 11 AM European time, and the moment of silence is always at 11 AM local time). In many countries men would wear poppies in their lapels (an allusion to Flanders Fields, where the poppies grow).

I don’t recall ever going through that moment of silence ceremony. That appears to be gone. And now it’s a moveable holiday in any case. And now it’s no longer specifically about World War I.

But, barely recognizable though it is, it’s worth keeping in mind this bit of history.

We did not have a World War I memorial on the Mall in DC until 2021–too late for any of the honorees to actually see it. It should have been a no-brainer, but people actually fought against it.

Our national monument and museum to the war is instead in Kansas City. I visited it many years ago. Just a few months prior, the last living American veteran of the war had visited the museum, and you can bet he was an honored guest!

Frank Woodruff Buckles, Feb 1, 1901 – Feb 27, 2011.

One can only imagine the thoughts going through his head as he saw all of the photographs of soldiers from every country, from events he likely remembered very vividly…and to realize that every one of those people is dead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Buckles

A Political Statement

One of my stock jokes is to say, as I head off to the bathroom or washroom or restroom, “I’m going to go make a political statement.”

It certainly seems like urinating is a good way to make a statement about the YSM, and defecating works for politicians. Or the other way around is good too, though “#1” just never seems emphatic enough.

Maybe “#1” is just being polite, and “#2” is telling the fixtures what you really think.

Anyhow, I pretty much do plan to be polite to RINOs that electioneer or fundraise. I’ll tell them, Sorry, but I need to GO Pee…

Language Warning

In the next piece I had to discuss a particular topic. Unfortunately, I couldn’t discuss it without naming it. Therefore I apologize in advance for having to do so, and apologize to anyone offended by the sight of the name.

RINO McDaniel

[Well, perfect timing for this one to pop up in the rotation again!]

RINO McDaniel continues to infest the GOP. But RINO McDaniel isn’t the problem.

Let me be crystal clear on this, RINO McDaniel is a lower-than-whale-shit, piss guzzling ratfucking shit eating traitorous rancid syphillitic cunt. Her worth as a human being is substantially less than zero, any oxygen sucked into her lungs is wasted, and it would be, no matter what job she had.

I fear I haven’t been clear enough, but that will have to suffice.

But she is not the problem…or rather, she would not be a problem were it not for others. She’d still be as I have described, but we wouldn’t know who she is and would not care, because she could do no damage. She’d just be anonymous human refuse.

No, the real problem is the fact that a majority of the 168 top GOP people voted for her. And now that has happened five times so they cannot claim they didn’t know what she was.

In spite of the fact that under her “leadership” the party has deliberately sabotaged the will of its base, has deliberately refused to challenge blatant election fraud, had gone out of its way to ensure certain candidates do not get nominated, has diverted donor money to namby-pamby candidates who have all the electoral appeal of a puddle of dog vomit…and in general has done nothing whatsoever to help fix the problems that plague America.

However that last is to be expected; I cannot expect anyone who IS the problem to help FIX the problem.

RINO McDaniel would be powerless without an entire party leadership of the same mind as her. They want this dismal performance; they want to ignore the party base.

If she were to drop dead this instant, it would solve nothing as someone just like her would be elected by those same pustulous people.

According to Charlie Kirk, about 55 people voted against her, 10-12 wanted something different but were too chickenshit to do the right thing, and roughly 100 people voted for her enthusiastically, and even had the unmitigated gall to complain to Kirk about US. Fuck ’em. Rusty 12 gauge bore brushes would be too good for these arrogant pricks and cunts.

Every single one of those hundred is just as bad as she is. In other words, they are all worse than I described at the beginning of this piece. And no doubt those people in turn have people who supported them to be state party chairs and whateveritis they call the other two people from each state and territory who were voting.

It’s time to face up to the fact that the Republican party is effectively owned by the shit-eating RINOs. We’ve got more work to do, a lot more work, to make the GOP an instrument for the restoration of the United States of America. And that’s in addition to cleaning up our elections.

There’s no point in cleaning up elections just to elect ratfucking RINOs.

OK, hopefully now you will have some inkling of my true attitude towards RINOs. Sorry that words were inadequate to give you the full picture.

The Real Fascist is His Fraudulency Joe Biden*

*Or whoever has his hand rammed up that meat puppet’s ass.

Brandon (which I will use as a term for whoever is the power behind the Porcelain Throne) has thrown down the gauntlet…but in a way where most of America will never see it. The networks didn’t carry his tirade. CNN air brushed it (or whatever you call editing the red background) for its five viewers (who aren’t trapped in airports).

Luckily for me I live in Colorado, and therefore, despite my best efforts, I probably didn’t vote for Donald Trump.

Of course, for this purpose who I actually did try to vote for will be essential, and they undoubtedly know.

Come and get us, asswipes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h6ZZ28QtX4

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.

Small Government?

Many times conservatives (real and fake) speak of “small government” being the goal.

This sounds good, and mostly is good, but it misses the essential point. The important thing here isn’t the size, but rather the purpose, of government. We could have a cheap, small tyranny. After all our government spends most of its revenue on payments to individuals and foreign aid, neither of which is part of the tyrannical apparatus trying to keep us locked down and censored. What parts of the government would be necessary for a tyranny? It’d be a lot smaller than what we have now. We could shrink the government and nevertheless find it more tyrannical than it is today.

No, what we want is a limited government, limited not in size, but rather in scope. Limited, that is, in what it’s allowed to do. Under current circumstances, such a government would also be much smaller, but that’s a side effect. If we were in a World War II sort of war, an existential fight against nasty dictatorships on the brink of world conquest, that would be very expensive and would require a gargantuan government, but that would be what the government should be doing. That would be a large, but still limited government, since it’d be working to protect our rights.

World War II would have been the wrong time to squawk about “small government,” but it wasn’t (and never is) a bad time to demand limited government. Today would be a better time to ask for a small government–at least the job it should be doing is small today–but it misses the essential point; we want government to not do certain things. Many of those things we don’t want it doing are expensive but many of them are quite eminently doable by a smaller government than the one we have today. Small, but still exceeding proper limits.

So be careful what you ask for. You might get it and find you asked for the wrong thing.

Political Science In Summation

It’s really just a matter of people who can’t be happy unless they control others…versus those who want to be left alone. The oldest conflict within mankind. Government is necessary, but government attracts the assholes (a highly technical term for the control freaks).

A Few Things We Cannot Blame on His Fraudulency

I am pretty sure Joe Biden had nothing whatsoever to do with the 30 Years War that ran from 1618-1648 and probably killed about a third of the people then living in what is now Germany.

Nor did he cause the collapse of either Roman empire (Western, 476 CE, Eastern 1453 CE). Nor the ignominious failure of most of the Crusades. Nor the collapse of Bronze Age civilization around 1200 BCE (including the collapse of the Minoans and the blowup of Santorini).

However, my utter lack of ability to imagine how he could possibly be responsible for these things is not a valid argument against them, so I await correction if appropriate.

His Truth?

Again we saw an instance of “It might be true for Billy, but it’s not true for Bob” logic this week.

I hear this often, and it’s usually harmless. As when it’s describing differing circumstances, not different facts. “Housing is unaffordable” can be true for one person, but not for another who makes ten times as much.

But sometimes the speaker means it literally. Something like 2+2=4 is asserted to be true for Billy but not for Bob. (And when it’s literal, it’s usually Bob saying it.) And in that sense, it’s nonsense, dangerous nonsense. There is ONE reality, and it exists independent of our desires and our perceptions. It would go on existing if we weren’t here. We exist in it. It does not exist in our heads. It’s not a personal construct, and it isn’t a social construct. If there were no society, reality would continue to be what it is, it wouldn’t vanish…which it would have to do, if it were a social construct.

Now what can change from person to person is the perception of reality. We see that all the time. And people will, of course, act on those perceptions. They will vote for Trump (or try to) if their perception is close to mine, and vote against Trump (and certainly succeed at doing so) if their perception is distant from mine (and therefore, if I do say so, wrong). I have heard people say “perception is reality” and usually, that’s what they’re trying to say–your perception of reality is, as far as you know, an accurate representation of reality, or you’d change it.

But I really wish they’d say it differently. And sometimes, to get back to Billy and Bob, the person who says they have different truths is really saying they have different perceptions of reality–different worldviews. I can’t argue with the latter. But I sure wish they’d say it better. That way I’d know that someone who blabbers about two different truths is delusional and not worth my time, at least not until he passes kindergarten-level metaphysics on his umpteenth attempt.

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.)

(Paper) Spot Prices

Kitco “Ask” prices. Last week:

Gold $1,993.20
Silver $23.31
Platinum $942.00
Palladium $1,142.00
Rhodium $4,525.00

This week, 3PM Mountain Time, markets have closed for the weekend.

Gold $1,939.70
Silver $22.36
Platinum $853.00
Palladium $990.00
Rhodium $4,600.00

WOW. An absolute hammering. Look at palladium. Down over ten percent in one week. Platinum bleeding too. Rhodium managed to eke out a net gain though lost a lot on Friday. And gold is basically on a yo-yo right now. I was visiting a coin shop and the individual I was working with expressed amazement at how volatile the markets are.

Tread cautiously if you are planning to change your position.

Infinities

No…not this.

And not this either…but it’s a little closer.

I am speaking of the mathematical concept.

There are really two variants. The one usually represented by the “lazy eight” (∞) is the end point of the number line. Which actually has no end point. It can also be thought of as the limit of 1/x, as x gets closer and closer to zero (but never quite gets there–more on that shortly). Or, when a function “increases without bound” ∞ is the symbol for that (non-existent) limit.

It’s commonly thought of as the biggest number. Unfortunately, that makes little sense when one thinks about it. It doesn’t behave like a number. If you add 1 to any number you get a different number (and the prior number clearly wasn’t the largest). Add 1 to infinity…and you get infinity.

The other concept commonly “bucketed” under the term “infinity” is more correctly termed the aleph number. Georg Cantor (1845-1918) first enunciated this concept and, apparently feeling we needed fresh meat for symbols, went to the Hebrew abjad instead of the Greek or Latin alphabets, using the symbol aleph (א).

Aleph numbers have a lot to do with set theory, they count the number of elements in infinite sets. And notice I am using the plural here. There is more than one aleph number.

The “basic” aleph number is aleph nought (or aleph zero, or aleph null), with a zero subscript:

(This is one of those things that over in Wikipoo is an embedded graphic, rather than character data.)

There are many sets of infinite size. For example, the set of all integers is infinite in size. The number of points on a line segment, is infinite in size. The set of all rational numbers (i.e., those numbers that can be expressed as the ratio of two integers)…again, infinite.

But it turns out that not all of these are the same size. Or to make noises like a mathematician, they do not have the same cardinality.

What does it mean for two infinite sets to have the same size?

Let’s consider the set of all whole numbers. 0, 1, 2, 3, etc., ad (ahem) infinitum.

And also the set of all odd whole numbers: 1, 3, 5, 7… and so on.

(One of the perennial arguments in math is whether “natural number” means 1, 2, 3… or 0, 1, 2, 3… I was taught the former but apparently that’s not a standard everyone abides by. Whole number is also ambiguous, but I was taught as seen here, 0, 1, 2, 3… Just to clear up any misunderstandings. If you are pretty sure this isn’t what you were taught…you’re probably right.)

You would think that the second set would somehow be half the size of the first. But no, not really.

The most primitive method of comparing the size of two sets is so simple in concept that it does not involve counting and checking equality. Rather, it’s to pair elements from one set with elements in the other. If you run out of one set before the other, it’s the smaller of the two sets. For example, consider {3, 17, 14} and {a, r, x, p}. Pair 3 with a, 17 with r, 14 with x and p is left over; the first set is smaller than the second.

You can pair the odd numbers with the whole numbers; every whole number, if you multiply it by two and add one to the answer, has a “mate” in the set of odd numbers. Pick any whole number, it has a mate in the other set, and the reverse is true…start with any odd whole number, subtract one, divide by two, and you have one of the whole numbers. In mathematician-speak, they map one-to-one.

So these two sets are considered to have the same cardinality, and that cardinality is called aleph-nought.

It has been shown (but don’t ask me how) that rational numbers (in other words, all fractions you can write with integers) have this same cardinality as well, and so do all algebraic numbers…numbers you can find as roots of polynomials with integer coefficients. This includes numbers like the square root of 2, the golden ratio, etc. but it does not include the transcendental numbers like e and pi.

But all real numbers, including the transcendental numbers, and points in a line segment, have a different cardinality.

Returning to aleph-nought, there’s a common misconception out there: If a set is of infinite size, it contains everything.

This is simply not true. For example the set of all even integers is clearly infinite, it just as clearly doesn’t include everything. It doesn’t include your dog. It doesn’t include your house. But more significantly and less wiseassedly (is that a word? It is now), it doesn’t include odd numbers.

OK, let’s get our feet on the ground.

I talked about infinity being the limit of 1/x as x gets closer and closer to zero…but was careful to specify you can’t set x to precisely zero. This seems like a bit of nitpicking, but there’s a very good reason you cannot divide by zero, and it’s not just to avoid infinity.

It’s fundamentally undefinable. If you can’t define it you can’t do it (not even if you’re Chuck Norris). Consider:

(Any number ) × 0 = 0

(Any number other than zero) × (Any number other than zero) = (some number other than zero).

But there’s no way to multiply a number by zero, and come up with a non-zero answer.

Division is the reverse of multiplication. If a × b = c, you can start with c and divide by b and get a. Or divide by a and get b.

But there’s no way for either a or b or both to be zero, and for c to not be zero. So there’s no reverse of this operation. Let’s say a is zero. Then c must be zero: 0 × b = 0. You can’t have a non-zero number on the right side. Since such a statement would be invalid, re-arranging it with algebra can’t give you anything valid either.

You can, however, legitimately divide by b, and have 0 = 0 / b.

But what if you divide zero by zero? That seems to be legitimate at first, because at least in converting the multiplication to a division, you’re starting out with a possible multiplication, not an impossible one. Take a look: 0 × b = 0 (legit) so b = 0/0 ought to be legit too.

The problem here is that in the original multiplication, b could be literally anything, and you end up with zero. If you try to reverse the process, you literally cannot tell what b ought to be. So 0/0 is considered undefined too.

OK, this turned out to be more “rambly” than I was hoping…and it’s nine minutes to midnight, ET. I’ll just post and hope for the best.

But one last point (which I’m adding shortly after this drops)

In physics, if the math for some theory leads to infinity or has a divide-by-zero in it, it’s called a singularity, and physicists consider that a sign that under those circumstances, we need a new theory, one that will look like the old one most of the time, but doesn’t have the singularity. This is so for black holes (that, it seems, must be of zero size and therefore of infinite density) and also for the time=zero mark under the big bang theory. No credible astrophysicist doubts that black holes exist or that the big bang happened…but these are nagging issues.

But if science had no nagging issues, it wouldn’t be science. We’ll figure these out someday…maybe a huge surprise lurks here. (Quantum mechanics came out of one such old singularity.) And then there will unimagined-by-us nagging issues to replace them.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=L3tnH4FGbd0

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 !!!