“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
The situation is unchanged. His Fraudulency continues to infest the White House, we haven’t heard much from the person who should have been declared the victor, and hopium is still being dispensed even as our military appears to have joined the political establishment in knuckling under to the fraud.
One can hope that all is not as it seems.
I’d love to feast on that crow.
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.
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).
Everything is up…except rhodium which dropped over $5,800. However, lately these prices have been bouncing round inside a range (gold has sometimes been under $1700), so this is deceptive; things are at the top of the range today, they were lower in the range last Friday.
I don’t know if there is such a thing as a rhodium futures market, but if so, I imagine anyone who trades in it needs tranquilizers.
Rhenium
Rhenium is our next precious metal to be discussed. It lies to the left of the block of six “platinum group metals” so it’s something of an outlier in the group of nine precious metals (silver, gold, the six PGMs…and rhenium).
[A bit left of center in the table below, you’ll see it, #75, symbol Re. The PGMs are the 3×2 block to its right (44-46 and 76-78), silver and gold (47 and 79) are to the right of the PGMs.]
Rhenium was one of the last stable elements–i.e., one of the last you can find out there and own–to be discovered. (Just for instance the eighteen elements we know of past fermium (100), all discovered in the last 60 years or so, probably don’t even exist right now. Perhaps, though, someone is running an experiment and creating some of them right now, but if so, they’ll be gone within minutes of the experiment’s conclusion.)
In 1914, the period table was looking like it was filling up. What was missing was the blue squares in the diagram, plus #72. Also no one knew of anything past 92; such a thing hadn’t even been imagined.
Henry Moseley had validated the concept of atomic number the year before, so we now could assign numbers to elements and know they either were, or were not, adjacent to each other with no undiscovered element between them. We already could tell this, for the most part, with most elements but couldn’t be sure with the rare earths–and the discovery of the noble gases had revealed an entire column of the periodic table we had no notion of beforehand (the rightmost column in the table above). We really couldn’t know there weren’t more undiscovered columns, until Moseley did his work.
So there were six known holes in the table: elements 43, 61, 72, 75, 85, and 87. We expected 85 and 87 to be radioactive, and it probably wasn’t much of a surprise when they turned out to be hard to find because only a few trillion atoms of them existed all over the earth at any given time…and not the same trillion as there were yesterday. They were found around 1940, by a technique totally unimagined in the teens and twenties. But 43, 61, 72, and 75 should have been findable; they didn’t seem to have high enough numbers to be radioactive.
Really aggravating was the fact that 43 and 75 are in the same column of the periodic table, right below manganese. Those two elements should be chemically very similar to each other, and in fact element 73 (two columns to the left) had been discovered by poking through the ores of element 41, its upstairs neighbor. If we could find element 43, we’d probably find element 75, for the same reason, but we couldn’t fricking find element 43 either! With no element 43 ores, we couldn’t search those ores looking for element 75. A basic catch 22 (titanium).
[72 was indeed found in 1925 by looking through samples of element 40 (zirconium). It turned out to be so chemically similar that almost every sample of zirconium had anywhere up to 5 percent hafnium in it…and we had had no idea. Even today, they usually don’t bother removing the hafnium from zirconium, because it’s a cast iron pain in the ass to do so, and assays of zirconium will say something like “99 percent pure as long as you ignore the hafnium” (paraphrasing). But it turns out zirconium was great for sheathing nuclear fuel rods, because it didn’t absorb neutrons, and halfnium was great for control rods, because it absorbed neutrons like a sponge…so we had to learn how to separate the two elements for nuclear applications lest they degrade each other’s performance. It’s still a pain in the ass, but sometimes it’s gotta be done.]
In 1908, Masataka Ogawa claimed to have discovered element 43. We now know he really had discovered element 75, but back then he was simply disregarded. In 1922, however, another trio of researchers, Walter Noddack, Ida Noddack and Otto Berg discovered element 75, and realized it was element 75, and this time it stuck. In 1925 they reported that they had seen the element in platinum ore and a few other minerals. In 1928 they were able to extract a gram of it by processing 660 kilograms of molybdenite. (An ore of molybdenum, element 42, from the next column to the left.) And we still had no idea where in the bloody hell element 43 was!
They named their element 75 discovery rhenium, after the river Rhine.
Rhenium was considered ultra-rare back then (because there really aren’t any good ores of it) and is still pretty rare stuff. It is, however, used not for jewelry. It’s more like those workhorse elements like molybdenum, and vanadium, and niobium…the sorts of things that get put into steel so you can buy tools with funny names ending in “ium” on them at Home Depot. And indeed, it’s used in superalloys, the sorts of alloys that show up in jet engine turbine blades. In pure form rhenium can be heated and cooled, over and over again, and not show any stress from the process–untrue of other metals. It has been called the perfect metal for that reason, and has even found use in rocket motors, despite the fact that it is very, very heavy (which is hell on spacecraft design, as every ounce of additional weight means many pounds of extra fuel, which means bigger boosters).
A cubic centimeter of rhenium (like the cube shown in the photo above) weighs 21.02 grams. The same amount of water weighs one gram, in fact that’s how they originally defined the gram. Osmium, iridium and platinum come in higher than rhenium’s density. Nothing else does. It’s almost twice as heavy, volume for volume, as lead (11.9 grams per cubic centimeter), and is twice as heavy as silver (10.5).
I’ve had a hard time running down its spot price (an indication there probably really isn’t one), but it seems to cost about $1200 per kilogram. Yes, the price is quoted per kilogram, not per troy ounce. Which is roughly 35 dollars a troy ounce. Given how rare it is, that’s a low, low price.
But it has a very high melting point, which means it’s hard to find as bars. Not impossible, but hard. Once company, Luciteria, does make troy ounce square bars of the stuff but they charge well over $200 for them which seems steep to me.
In the fullness of time, it turned out that element 43 was hard to find because there isn’t any of it to speak of. All of its isotopes are radioactive, with half lives of two million years or so, so any that was on Earth when it was created is long gone, and unlike with something like radium, there’s nothing long lived that decays into it to keep renewing it. (The occasional uranium atom fissions and one of the pieces will turn out to be technetium, but that’s very rare in nature, and could never have been detected in 1922.) In fact, element 43 was discovered in 1937 when we inadvertently artificially created it from element 42, molybdenum, and it was named technetium as a result.
Masataka Ogawa got the last laugh, long after he died. His proposed name for his discovery was nipponium, symbol Np. Well Np as a symbol ended up going to neptunium–when we started creating elements artificially, neptunium was readily created from uranium. Decades later, when a Japanese team created element 113, it got the name nihonium, symbol Nh, and the team was very consciously honoring Ogawa, who had discovered rhenium without realizing it, with this choice.
(And as long as Neptune has slid into this sideways into this discussion of unrecognized finds, I’ll point out that Galileo did see Neptune back in the early 1600s. But he had no idea that it wasn’t just another star; we only know he saw it because he drew a diagram of some of the “stars” he saw and one dot on his diagram could only have been Neptune. Someone finally recognized Neptune for what it was in 1846, having been told where to look for it by analyzing unexpected perturbations in Uranus’s orbit.)
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
Remember Hong Kong!!!
Whoever ends up in the cell next to his, tell him I said “Hi.”
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for 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 !!!
March 4th, the old inauguration day before it moved to January 20th. For some reason I cannot understand, a lot of people were sure that meant something.
It didn’t.
The goal posts have moved again; all we find now that we’re here is yet another empty post hole.
Few…well honestly, most likely no one who is addicted to this crap will learn the obvious lesson, though.
How many times will it take before y’all wake up and realize you’re being had, over and over and over again?
Some Anti Trumper (by which I mean both “Never Trumper” and “Leftist Asswipe”) is probably laughing his ass off at you: Suckered again!
In fact, I think there’s a good chance someone over there is making this stuff up to get you to waste your energy on it.
Indictments after the 2018 election. The Huber Report. The Memo. Declass. Indictments after we’re done dealing with so-and-so’s funeral. Indictments after the election but before Trump Leaves Office, which of course he won’t REALLY do.
Please: Wake up and smell what you’ve been shoveling.
It has been wrong.
Every.
Single.
Time.
“Gee, Steve, if you don’t want to see it, then scroll on by.”
That’s beside the point. What are you doing to yourselves believing in bullshit?
After you get done being furious with me, please, please, ask yourself that. What can give you the confidence to continue breathlessly repeating this crap as if it’s God’s truth, when it has been wrong, every single time.
And if your answer in any way rests on hope being a virtue, I have to then wonder at the spectacle of someone who believes that even false hope is a virtue.
“How dare you tell me what to post?”
I haven’t told you what to post. I am begging you to think critically. and subject this stuff to a test. It’s been false every single time. Come to the logical conclusion. PLEASE. And no, you’re not critically thinking just because you disagree with the conventional wisdom about a few things.
It’s sad seeing such clearly intelligent people ensnare themselves in demonstrable falsehood again and again and again.
“Gee, Steve, you want us to quit fighting?”
No. NO!!I want you to start fighting. To the extent that you’re waiting on the next bullshit goalpost/deadline, you aren’t fighting, you’re waiting for someone to rescue you.
We’re not going to get rescued like that. We have to pull ourselves through this. Trump is continuing to fight; he’s not waiting for someone to miracle him back into the White House. And it should be pretty obvious by now he’s not providing the miracle himself. He has acknowledged that Biden is now the president, albeit not the rightful president.
It’s up to us, collectively and severally. Get off the hopium, sober up, accept that the current situation is exactly what it is, and figure out what to do about it. Because you aren’t going to do squat if you continue to delude yourself it will magically get fixed. If you think someone else is going to solve the problem, or that the problem is a bit of phony theater, you won’t, yourself, do anything to solve the problem.
And that is just what the Left wants you to do. And that’s why I am starting to suspect these wacky scenarios and deadlines are made up by the Left.
It’s a free Q tree. You can go on doing this. Really you can. But I really hope you’ll come to your senses someday.
That hope is my hopium, but I am realistic enough to realize how unlikely it is. Prove me wrong.
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.
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).
I talked a bit about rhodium last week (by the way, even though it’s higher than last Friday, it did drop a bit Friday.). I’m going to talk, this week, about platinum.
Platinum appears in some ancient Egyptian relics, but there’s no sign that the Egyptians themselves realized it was something different. It also shows up in some pre-Columbian artifacts produced in South America. I don’t know what they thought of it, whether they considered it different from gold and silver.
It first began to come to the attention of Westerners in 1557, when Julius Scaliger (who invented the Julian date used by astronomers, which is very different from the so-called “Julian date” used by some businesses which is simply the number of days since the prior new year). He noted it as an impurity in gold “which no fire nor any Spanish artifice has yet been able to liquefy.”
Now the Spaniards weren’t at all happy to find this stuff, at least not at first. Having a density actually a bit higher than gold, it would remain in the pan when panning for gold. It then had to be painstakingly separated from the gold, flake by flake. Because it was basically caca blanca.
In addition to being dense, more so than gold, platinum is even more resistant to acids. Which means that it will pass most of the easy tests for gold. You can scratch a gold-plated platinum item and give it the literal acid test, and it will pass. Fortunately, since it couldn’t be melted by any method known at the time, it was hard to make jewelry out of it to plate it, or, really, any solid mass.
Useless!!! They named it Pinto Silver (from the name of a river), and the later name “platina” is basically just a derivative of “plata”–silver.
But then it turned out that if you dumped platinum into molten gold, it would dissolve, just like salt dissolves in water. Once people realized this, mint workers had a new way to steal gold. By holding back some and swapping it with an equal weight of platinum, they could adulterate the coinage and pocket the gold. Meanwhile, no average person, prepared to test gold coinage to ensure it wasn’t gold plated lead, could detect it.
The Spanish government got wind of this. And they banned the possession of platinum. You had to sell it to the Spanish government, which would take it away and store it somewhere, to ensure it didn’t end up in their coins. (Later on, of course, they’d eventually decide to debase their own money with the platinum.)
In the mid 1700s chemists began to notice this stuff. The first chemist to look at it and decide it was a new element was Antonio de Ulloa, in the mid 1700s.
But a use for platinum did finally turn up, once someone figured out how to work it. By dissolving it in aqua regia (an acid that attacks gold as well as platinum), then precipitating it out of solution, one gets a powder; by compressing and heating it, you could, at least form it into shapes even though this was basically “sponge” platinum. People began to make crucibles out of it, it being handy for crucibles to withstand any amount of heat one could throw at it.
Another use was boilers for sulfuric acid. Take a flat sheet of platinum, bend it around into a cylinder. Solder the seam with gold (and begrudge every tiny bit of gold you have to use for the seam). Also weld on circular ends. You now have a pressure vessel, you can pour dilute sulfuric acid into it, boil off some of the water and concentrate it. Otherwise, you’d have to use a glass vat, and having a brittle glass vat explode with sulfuric acid inside…well, you don’t want to be around; if the glass doesn’t lacerate you, the acid will burn you. And if the glass does lacerate you, the acid will still burn you.
By the early 1800s platinum was, ounce for ounce, about six times as expensive as silver (and gold was about 15 times as expensive). And more deposits had been found in Russia.
Three things to say about the Russian platinum deposits. First, nuggets were found, and some of the locals would use them as birdshot!!! Imagine blowing platinum out of your shotgun!
Second, work was done on this platinum in England. A couple of chemists dissolved platinum with aqua regia, and there was some stuff in there that wouldn’t dissolve. Eventually Tennant and Wollaston concluded there were new metals there: rhodium, palladium, osmium and iridium. Because these metals (and a fourth, ruthenium, discovered in 1844) are always found together in minerals, they became known as the “platinum group metals.”
Finally, someone in Russia came up with the bright idea of minting coins out of platinum, and this was done from 1828 to 1845. The coins were the same sizes as the quarter, half and ruble (silver coins), but weighed twice as much, so their face values were 12 times as much.
A three ruble platinum coin. A bit smaller than a quarter…and twice as heavy.
Almost exactly 1/3 or a troy ounce, but the platinum is not terribly pure
When I said a couple of weeks ago there was no such thing as junk platinum because there were no platinum coins (with one exception) ever made for circulation, these were indeed the coins I was thinking of, but the problem is these coins are very valuable, especially the 6 and 12 ruble pieces. They’re worth far more as coins than they are as metal, which means they’re not “junk” in the way that “junk silver” is. So you won’t be finding this for “dirt cheap” or “just above melt.”
These coins were also made out of sponge. Pure platinum is about 21.45 times as dense as water; these coins tend to be about 20.5 times as dense. About five percent of these things is air! They’re also not especially pure; some effort was made to remove impurities (such as other platinum group metals), but much remained, and there’s also some small amount of iron in them.
Finally in the mid 1800s someone invented a furnace that could melt platinum, so we now had solid platinum to work with (and in fact, people make fakes of the Russian platinum coinage out of real platinum, but they never go through the trouble of making sponge out of the platinum. So the fakes tend to look better than the real ones, sponge platinum having a kind of ugly appearance to it.
Later on, platinum’s use as a catalyst gave it real value and most of those coins got scrapped and sold to Johnson Matthey, which is still today a major refiner of the platinum group metals.
Eventually platinum’s price exceeded that of gold, and then, people decided it would make good jewelry in its own right.
And so, when I was a kid, platinum was always more expensive than gold. It was in the 400s when gold was in the 300s, and when gold spiked to $850 an ounce one day late in the Carter administration, platinum was over a thousand bucks. I don’t recall when its price slid to below that of gold, but that situation has persisted for quite some time. It feels “wrong” to me.
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
To conclude: My standard Public Service Announcement. We don’t want to forget this!!!
Remember Hong Kong!!!
If anyone ends up in the cell right next to him, tell him I said “hi.”
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.
Joe Biden is Asshoe
China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.
But of course the much more important thing to realize:
Joe Biden Didn’t Win
乔*拜登没赢 !!! Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!! Joe Biden didn’t win !!!
Scroll down for some info, some of it may be useful, some may be interesting, some might even be both, but more likely most is neither, about precious metals and what sorts of products are out there.
His Fraudulency
Joe Biteme, properly styled His Fraudulency, continues to infest the White House, we haven’t heard much from the person who should have been declared the victor, and hopium is still being dispensed even as our military appears to have joined the political establishment in knuckling under to the fraud.
One can hope that all is not as it seems.
I’d love to feast on that crow.
The last distraction/hopium magnet was the Supreme Court pretending to think about taking up a bunch of election-related cases on the 19th. This week, they weaseled out of hearing them on the grounds that they were moot. I’m not terribly surprised; under the Constitution Congress is the final arbiter of elections and they arbitered it arbitrarily on the 6th. Done, get out of my courtroom!
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.
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.
Basically, everything but rhodium took it in the shorts. Rhodium went up by more than the price of any one of the other metals. It has gone up over 200% in the last year, because, apparently, it’s needed for catalytic converters. Of course, so are platinum and palladium, and they don’t seem to be going bananas.
Rhodium, powder, sintered, and melted.
Rhodium is an odd one. It’s recovered as a byproduct of mining other things, even more so than some of the other PGMs. When there’s a sudden upsurge in demand (or we start running out of it), it’s still too expensive to mine for its own sake…we’re not going to mine more nickel (say) just to get the tiny amount of rhodium that’s along for the ride. Of course if the price goes up enough. who knows? We (meaning the world, in this case) only produce about 30 tons a year.
This leads to a dynamic where the price is reasonably stable, then suddenly jumps up when we run out. Inelastic supply, as economists would call it. Once we recover some more the price drops again. But will it ever drop from this surge? Hard to say. People seem to think this time is different, somehow. Anyhow, I can’t afford to play this, but if the price drops to a sane level, I may just buy some for the next time time. Hopefully someone else here can play this time.
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
Remember Hong Kong!!!
Whoever ends up in the cell next to his, tell him I said “Hi.”
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for 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 !!!
Scroll down for some info, some of it may be useful, some may be interesting, some might even be both, but more likely most is neither, about precious metals and what sorts of products are out there.
His Fraudulency
Joe Biteme, properly styled His Fraudulency, continues to infest the White House, we haven’t heard much from the person who should have been declared the victor, and hopium is still being dispensed even as our military appears to have joined the political establishment in knuckling under to the fraud.
One can hope that all is not as it seems.
I’d love to feast on that crow.
But we do have a nice little distraction at the moment. SCOTUS at least pretended to pay attention to a lot of election fraud cases on the 19th; as I write it’s 5PM ET and I have no idea how that went. It’ll be interesting to see how they weasel out…this time.
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.
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.)
Silver (and Other Bullion): The Basics
First thing: Bullion is not a coin collection, and a coin collection isn’t bullion. People I know who know I collect get the two mixed up a lot, and I suppose it’s understandable, because coin shops generally sell both rare coins and bullion.
The key difference is that collector coins are generally worth considerably more than the metal they contain, and even when they’re not, they’re being bought because of the date of issue, the design, the error made in producing it, or any of a number of issues that have nothing to do with what it’s made off. The value of the metal in the coin puts a floor on its value, though. For instance, there are plenty of “common” gold coins that collectors want (because they’re trying to put together a date set), that are worth barely more than “melt” (the term for the value of the gold or silver in the coin). Their prices move up and down whenever gold fluctuates. But they’re still being bought for their interest as collectibles; they’d be worth something even if the gold value dropped to zero (like that’s going to happen!).
Bullion, on the other hand, is being bought because it is made out of what it is, and other considerations are secondary. But not necessarily insignificant: People will buy precious metals in a form that makes it easier to sell. One of the issues is it being in a form that the buyer will trust to actually be made of silver (or gold) rather than somehow faked (e.g., gold or silver plated lead). If it has to be assayed, that has a cost, which will eat into how much you’ll be paid for your bullion. Which is why a struck coin (or coin-like) object is often trusted, and why some of this stuff comes in tamper-evident packaging.
To sort of drive home the difference, I was told this story by a coin dealer one time, and I’m sure it’s not a terribly uncommon occurrence. Someone offered him a gold coin. It looked to be a rare date, so it’d be worth a lot more than the gold content. On closer examination, though, it was counterfeit, but undeniably made out of real gold. He paid the customer what the gold in the coin was worth, then took a pair of pliers and bent the coin…and tossed it in a pot he was going to sell to the wholesale market, where it would no doubt be simply melted. He didn’t want anyone to mistake the coin for something rare…as opposed to just a lump of precious metal.
I’m going to assume here you want silver itself, not a piece of paper saying you’re entitled to it, not a futures contract, not mining stocks. You want the lump of metal in your hand.
History and Overview of the Metals Themselves
Some history, because why not? Copper, silver and gold (among other metals) were all discovered so long ago we have no idea who discovered them. When coinage was invented in the 600s BCE (at least in what we think of as the Western world, though that place–Lydia–was in present day Turkey) it started out as an alloy of gold and silver. These materials were known to be rare, and were valued as jewelry if nothing else. Gold, in particular, simply didn’t tarnish or corrode. Silver would tarnish, but once it did tarnish, that was the end, it didn’t turn to useless powder like iron did. Copper similarly. In fact, these metals are sometimes found free in nature, not needing to be extracted from ore: gold most commonly, then silver, then copper. (Because of this, in most ancient Egypt, gold was considered more common than silver and was less expensive. Once we figured out how to extract them from ores, the situation changed.)
Unsurprisingly, given their similar chemical properties, copper, silver and gold appear in the same column of the periodic table, and they’re known as the coinage metals, because once we started making coins, those were the metals that went into them. Gold, in particular, was difficult to convincingly fake, because it was denser than anything else known. Nothing else was as heavy on a per volume basis. If you gold plated a lead brick, that brick would be much, much too light! (Only in the 1700s did we discover other things, like platinum or tungsten, that could equal or exceed gold’s density.) Their chemical symbols are Cu (copper), Ag (silver) and Au (gold). But, when talking to someone whose interest is in historic coins, they’ll be abbreviated AE, AR, and AU, usually as ligatures (like Æ, but AU and AR don’t seem to exist in unicode as ligatures). I learned the chemical symbols long before the numismatic ones, and get twitted for writing Ag a lot.
Immediately to the left of these three, under iron/cobalt/nickel, are a group of six metals called the Platinum Group Metals. These are: ruthenium (Ru), rhodium (Rh), palladium (Pd), and osmium (Os), iridium (Ir), platinum (Pt). Platinum is quite famous, the others less so. Platinum was discovered about a century before the others, and they’re almost invariably found together in nature. You can buy platinum, palladium, and sometimes rhodium as bars and rounds (and even NCLT platinum and palladium, I’ll explain what that means below). At least in theory you can, for rhodium–you’d better bring about $25 grand to the table. But the others (ruthenium, osmium and iridium) are very specialty items, hard to find in solid as opposed to powder form, and available in 50 kilogram lots.
And to the left of osmium is rhenium (Re), an interesting metal in its own right, and the second to last stable element to be discovered, back in 1908. It’s sometimes used in spacecraft and jet engines, relatively cheap compared to the PGMs but more expensive than silver and considered the ninth precious metal, sometimes.
Anyhow: Once we started making coins, gold and silver began to be thought of as “money.” (Copper was good for making money out of too, but it had a number of other uses as well, and still does.)
Troy Ounces and Purity
The precious metals (but not copper) are commonly weighed out in either grams or troy ounces. Troy ounces, though are different from the grocery store ounces (avoirudupois onces); it’s a parallel weight system. Avoirdupois and troy both use the same “grain” (the grain you use at the reloading bench; the grain your ammo’s bullets are weighed in). But an avoirdupois ounce is 437.5 grains, where a troy ounce is 480 of them. Worse, a troy pound is twelve troy ounces, 5760 grains, whereas an avoirdupois pound is 16 avdp ounces, or 7000 grains. Fortunately, you will almost never hear about troy pounds except in some weird Parade magazine ads for silver weighing a quarter or a third of a pound (don’t do these–you’re paying their advertising budget). Pretty much, everyone in the US who deals in precious metals thinks in terms of troy ounces, and even multiples will be in ounces. There are ten ounce, hundred ounce, and even thousand ounce bars of silver out there, but I don’t recall ever seeing bars denominated in troy pounds. (Which doesn’t necessarily mean some eccentric guy isn’t doing that, somewhere.) Even overseas in the metric rest-of-the-world, the troy ounce clings to life, and foreign countries and companies make products in ounces, alongside their other products in grams.
You will sometimes see gold sold in kilogram bars. A kilogram is 32.15074657 troy ounces…if you can afford to buy that much gold in one lump, good for you! And those bars you see in videos of bank vaults? They’re typically about 400 ounces. They don’t make them precise, but they are marked with their precise weight. At that level, the institutions have no trouble whipping out their calculators and knowing what it’s worth.
Even a futures contract is for an approximate amount…you’ll be delivered about 100 ounces of gold, possibly in one big bar, but will be expected to pay a certain price per ounce. Just be prepared to buy a bit more or a bit less than that. I wasn’t planning to talk about futures, but there is one good thing about them from our standpoint; if a company can say that their bars are “good delivery,” that means the Big Boys trust that company and its bars, and therefore you can too.
[A troy ounce, by the way, is 31.1035 grams. That’s a number I have memorized. But I don’t remember other than “twenty eight point something” how many grams are in an avoirdupois ounce, which should tell you where my head is–precious metals, not groceries. [If I need to know I can grab a calculator and do the following: (437.5/480) x 31.1035.] And incidentally, since the mid 1900s the ounce (both of them) has been defined in terms of the metric system. (Aw, geez, now I have to look it up): one avoirdupois ounce is exactly 28.349523125 grams, by definition. And that also means the troy ounce is exactly 31.1034768 grams by definition, just in case the six digits of precision I have memorized isn’t enough.]
Purity is usually given as a decimal fraction; you will see notations like “.900 fine” which means ninety percent of whatever it is you’re looking at, is of the precious metal, the rest is some sort of alloy. Generally, when looking at a piece of bullion, you will be told how much pure metal is in it. A one ounce gold American Eagle, for instance, will weigh more than an ounce, but there will be a full ounce of gold in it plus some copper and silver. Our old silver coinage was .900 fine (this will become relevant below) and people call that “coin silver.” British silver was 0.925 fine in the good old days, that’s commonly known as “sterling silver.” In a way it really doesn’t matter, what matters is the net amount of silver or gold. (The other metals will generally be .999 fine in any product you will find.) Gold, by the way, is often given in karats, 24 karats is pure, 18 karats is .750 (common in European jewelry), 14 kt is common here in the US (and the Europeans wonder why we go gaga over it).
Your Choices for Silver
So how do you get into silver? There are three main methods–and the first two apply to the other metals to some extent or another.
1–Rounds and Bars
A lot of people produce “rounds” that look like coins; when you look at them closely, though, the writing says they contain so much silver (usually an ounce). There won’t be a denomination, and usually there’s no country name, but there will be a company name. In this same vein, there are one ounce bars (rare for silver) and larger bars (5, 10, 100 and even 1000 ounce). Sometimes the rounds are prized and even collected for the artwork; even I once bought a two ounce round that had a “Don’t Tread On Me” motif on it. In all cases, there is a marking on the rounds/bars indicating how much silver is in them, and they are usually 99.9% pure, better known as .999 fine. Gold purity will usually be given this way too, but sometimes, you will see it given in karats, 24 karat being pure. Back when I was buying lots of precious metals (when the price was a lot lower), I tended to buy silver in larger bars, with some rounds thrown in. I also had bars of other metals (but not gold).
If you get into more expensive metals’ bars, there are some big, internationally known companies whose one ounce (and higher) bars are considered trustworthy, such as Johnson Matthey, Hereaus, PAMP (formerly Credit Suisse and you’ll see plenty of bars marked as such), APMEX, and Engelhardt. Some of these come in a tamper proof plastic pack. Recently, I’ve seen gold come as a sort of wafer like a big chocolate bar, with individual blocks you can twist and break apart. Although this looks like a decent way to buy gold in one gram increments, I have no idea what the aftermarket is like once they’ve been broken apart.
1/2 ounce platinum bar from PAMP; they sell many different sizes in both metric and troy, the troy sizes being more common here, but 1 gram being conveniently small. They also do silver, gold, palladium and even rhodium.
Don’t be fooled, this bar is MUCH larger than the PAMP one above.
This is one of those break-apart-able chocolate bar style, I’ve seen them with little piece sizes of 1 g (like shown here) and 1/10th of an ounce. As I said I have no idea what the aftermarket is like for the pieces, but it might help you own gold (or platinum) in small pieces, which might be convenient for trade.
2–NCLT Bullion Coins
There are the current crop of coins–yes, legally coins because they have a denomination on them–that only an idiot would spend at face value. Because they don’t circulate, but are legal tender (to unmask idiots, maybe), they’re called “Non-circulating Legal Tender” or NCLT for short. These coins will have a government’s name on them, a denomination, and they will also give their content and purity. Generally even when the metal isn’t pure, there is a net ounce (or half ounce, or quarter ounce) of gold or silver or whatever in them.
Your choices are American eagles, Canadian maple leafs, Chicom Pandas (please don’t buy these!), and so on, often in ounces, sometimes in grams. Back in the 70s and 80s there was pretty much one country doing this, South Africa, and they were producing the krugerrand (the gold rand). If memory serves, they came in 1 ounce, 1/2 ounce and quarter ounce sizes. They were not pure gold, however: with copper alloyed they tended to be tan in color.
The Krugerrand, which started something…
Our gold eagle is also not pure gold but is alloyed with a mix of copper and silver, so it has a proper “gold” color to it. We also sell a “buffalo” that is very pure gold; but I don’t see those as often.
Canada, in particular, loves to make pure gold coins, one ounce and up, and they’ve even made manhole-cover sized 100 kilogram gold coins (I got to see one once) that were 99.999% pure. However, this isn’t necessarily a good thing. Because gold will dent easily, these “Maple Leaf” coins get beat up and generally won’t sell for as much as you would think they ought to.
Since the impure coins still contain an ounce of gold or silver (or whatever) in them, the alloy is extra and usually helps the coin’s physical durability.
This is actually my favorite way to hold gold–American eagles. They come in 1/10th, 1/4th, 1/2 and 1 ounce sizes, denominated 5, 10, 25, and 50 dollars (and yes, that $10 should be $12.50 to be consistent–but again no one is actually going to use these at face value!). In general the buy sell spread is narrow on them, but is significantly wider for the smaller sizes.
Silver eagles (they are only made in one ounce size, denominated a dollar) tend to sell at a huge premium…nevertheless I buy one each year, because…yes, well, I am collecting them by date. (So much for the great divide between bullion and collectible coins–but I consider them part of my collection, not my bullion stash.) Actually, since I’m not the only one collecting (rather than accumulating) these coins, that’s probably why they sell at such a premium.
Junk Silver
Finally…yes, you can buy old coins. There’s an entire market for what is called “junk silver.” Junk silver is real coinage that actually circulated, once, not like those NCLTs we were just talking about.
“Junk” silver. That 1964 quarter (and the dime next to it) is surprisingly worn…and 1964 is such a common date that any wear at all makes it worthless as a collectible. But it’s a bona fide piece of silver!
But, these are old coins that are common dates, or they worn so badly they have no numismatic value. (You will find a LOT of early 60s coins in junk silver, that are in pretty decent shape, and you will see the occasional very worn coin from before 1940 as well.) They’re worth their silver content, and that’s it. Prices will be quoted in terms of face value. Ask a coin dealer how much he’s selling junk silver for, and he’ll tell you something like, “26 times face.” (Kitco is selling hundred dollar bags for $2,596.24–so basically, 26 times face. But that includes quite a substantial volume discount!) That means he’ll sell you a silver dime out of his junk silver dime stock, for $2.60, a half dollar for $13.00…and a quarter for $6.50. In general, though, you buy several of these at a time. A dollar’s worth, face value, contains .72 ounces of silver in it. (It also contains copper; the silver is 90% pure.) With these coins, it will be a bit less because many of them are worn, but this is figured into both the buying and selling price. The Kitco bag I just mentioned, for example, claims to have 71.5 ounces of silver in it, not 72. If you are on a super-tight Biden-era budget, this is the only way to get into silver, because no one makes rounds or NCLTs with only 0.072 ounces of silver in them, but an old dime has that much.
When you go to sell these, you will be paid, again, some number times face value. The difference between what the dealer sells for and what he pays is how he makes his lunch money.
But now I need to tell you some things that are well known to the experienced, but probably won’t be obvious. First off, half dollars from 1965-1970 contain 40 percent silver, not 90 percent. You can buy those as junk too, and they’ll be cheaper, but there’s less of a market for them and the buy/sell spread is really bad. pricing and almost no demand. Second: Old silver dollars have .77 ounces in them (they’re different because the events of 1853 and 1873 left them alone–I’ve talked about this) and sell at more of a premium because too many people just like silver dollars. There are “junk” silver dollars, usually loose in a tray at the coin shop, but they will cost a lot more for what they are than junk dimes, quarters, and halves, because they’re popular as silver dollars–you’re edging into “numismatic” territory here. Finally: the part-silver “war nickels” from 1942-1945, identifiable from the fact that the manganese in them turned black AND the large letter over the dome of Monticello (that’s the mint mark) don’t trade in this market. At least, I haven’t ever seen them offered as bullion–but then I never really went looking, either. They contain 0.05626 ounces of silver in them, which is more than half as much as a silver dime…fancy that. (Silver was so cheap relative to gold at the time that none of our silver coinage at the time was worth even close to face value.)
Is there such a thing as “junk gold”? Sort of. There are plenty of US gold coins–some even desirable to a numismatist–that sell for just barely over their melt value, simply because that melt value is high. You could buy one of those. If you buy one that’s just barely of numismatic interest, you might not lose that much money if gold drops. You could go look up prices, figure out how much the gold is worth (gold was 20.67 an ounce back then, so a $20 gold piece that is “junk” should sell for a bit more than gold spot; proportionately so for the $2 1/2, $5, and $10), and if the coin isn’t priced that much more, you can go for it. I’d buy something with the highest grade manageable because those are least likely to drop in value; these coins will almost certainly come in a certified holder with a grade on it. You shouldn’t technically rely on that grade but use your own judgment (which if you are a beginner, you don’t have!) but in this case it doesn’t matter that much.
How about the other metals? Nope, no junk rhodium. No junk palladium. The only other precious metal that ever got used in a circulating coin (other than via fraud by Spain) was platinum, and that was by Russia in 1828-1845. Those coins came in 3, 6, and 12 ruble denominations, weighing almost exactly 1/3, 2/3, and 1 1/3 ounces. And the sixes and twelves are all scarce to rare, selling for far more than their weight in platinum (try five figures). You might luck into a three ruble piece that is beat to hell and gone not selling for too much over a thousand bucks…but that’s still far more than the platinum is worth.
Watch the Spread
However you choose to pursue this, be aware of the spread. Find out not just how much the dealer is selling it for, but also what he’s buying it for. These two numbers are different; this is how he pays for his lunch. And his mortgage. For example, gold eagles often sell for more money than other gold coins. But they also are bought for more money. The dealers have to make a living, and they do so based on that buy/sell spread. You want to pick a product that has the narrowest buy/sell spread possible, because that represents how far the price has to move before you can make your money back. For example, if they want $1850 for an eagle, but are willing to pay $1825, that’s a better deal than a Canadian Maple leaf selling for $1830…but they’re willing to pay you $1790 for it. Even though the Eagle is $20 more expensive. Because in the first case, you can make your money back after gold goes up $25, in the second, you have to wait for it to go up $40. The same sort of considerations apply to rounds, junk silver, and the like. (And this is why new jewelry is often a terrible buy for such purposes–though second hand might not be so bad–the first owner paid for the artist’s labor.) But, as with everything else, there is a caveat…the spreads themselves can change with time, and what’s true today can be not true five years down the line. But a really huge difference in spread between Major Well Known Refinery’s platinum bar versus Fly By Night Platinum Company’s bar probably won’t change all that much.
Junk silver has a wide spread and if you’re a major investor it sucks for that reason, but if you are expecting a huge price hike, or the end of the world, it has its advantages. If you find yourself in some post-apocalyptic market trying to buy a head of cabbage, a silver dime is the right size; a one ounce gold eagle will be a pain in the ass, if not impossible, to get change made for and you’ll probably not get all the change you should because of that (you’re paying them for the pain-in-the-ass factor). I’m sure I need not make snide remarks about moneychangers to this audience, though in this context, they have to make a living too. (The objections, in the Bible, were to them doing their business on Temple grounds.) Because of all of this, I do have a notable amount of junk silver–bought years ago when it was a lot cheaper. It’s part of the picture; I wouldn’t want it to be all of it…but if it’s what you can afford to do, it’s better than nothing!
In that mode, I have another combination coin collectiong/bullion story to tell. I went to a coin show with a couple of gold eagles just in case I found a coin I really wanted to buy (gold was a lot cheaper back then) but didn’t quite have the money for. Sure enough, there was something I didn’t have the cash for. “Can you take a trade for some of it?” I asked. The dealer asked me with some trepidation what it was I was offering to trade. After all, it could be something he’d have no use for, and he’d have to sell it to some other dealer and get less than it was worth so that dealer could make his lunch money–what a pain! I pulled out a gold eagle. His eyes showed his relief. One of those is instantly negotiable at a coin show as if it were a really odd-denominated piece of paper money. If nothing else he could walk over to the APMEX table and sell it. Of course so could I, so I basically got what it was worth in trade, just so he could save some time and not have to wait for me to run over there and make the deal. I even got some regular money back as change. Moneychanging, indeed!
Finally, there’s the issue of spot prices. Which by the way are now (Kitco Ask):
(Rhodium is insanely rare stuff, and tends–in the long term–to go up and down a lot. I’ve seen it as low as $400…but that was 20 years ago. And back then you couldn’t buy it as bars, you had to buy it by the 50 kg lot as powder. Now PAMP makes bars and I don’t make nearly enough money. Gold bullion taste…chicken bullion budget!)
Anyhow, the issue of spot prices. You’ll never pay spot. You’ll invariably pay a bit over it, and that amount will fluctuate. And sometimes spot does something crazy, like taking a major dump, and no one will have any precious metals for you to buy. Sure, silver spot is fifteen bucks that day after the huge drop, but there’s no silver to be had. Some coin shops will have a tray full of miscellaneous silver rounds…and the price card on the tray will say something like $3 over spot. That means they’ll look at the spot price at that instant, and add three bucks to it, there’s your price. (And that implicitly means “per ounce” so if there’s a two ounce round in there it will cost you six bucks over the spot price of two ounces of silver.)
Spot prices tend to be a product, largely, of the futures market and doesn’t reflect what people will pay for physical metal that day, on Main Street.
I have deliberately given you no advice on whether to do this. That’s because I have no idea what’s going to happen in the market. Of late silver seems steadier than gold, which seems to be sliding. Even platinum (which has been ridiculously cheap lately compered to gold) seems to be doing well, going up mostly. But that could turn around at any time. I venture no predictions. I am not responsible if you run off and buy a bunch, and the price drops, because I haven’t told you to do so or even claimed it’s a good idea. All I’ve done is given you some pointers on how things work, and what kinds of products there are, and how you might evaluate them compared to each other. You can lose money on this. I know people who ran up their plastic buying gold and silver back in the early 2000s…and lost their shirts and ended up with monster credit card debt. I’ve been mauled and even eaten by that bear a few times myself (though never with plastic), and no one else was responsible for that.
If you want some notion of the bewildering array of different products out there, check out kitco.com and apmex.com But also check out your local coin shop(s), and price shop all of them and the internet, IF you decide to go forward with this.
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
Remember Hong Kong!!!
Whoever ends up in the cell next to his, tell him I said “Hi.”
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for 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 !!!
His Fraudulency continues to infest the White House, we haven’t heard much from the person who should have been declared the victor, and hopium is still being dispensed even as our military appears to have joined the political establishment in knuckling under to the fraud.
One can hope that all is not as it seems.
I’d love to feast on that crow.
But we do have a nice little distraction at the moment. Trump’s side took the floor today, and after only four hours of the sixteen they were allowed, let it rest.
I saw none of it, but the consensus seems to be that they kicked some ass, at least as far as rebutting the prosecution’s case is concerned. The Great Fraud was unaddressed and of course some are complaining about that.
I guess we’ll be discussing that today.
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.
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.)
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
Remember Hong Kong!!!
Whoever ends up in the cell next to his, tell him I said “Hi.”
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for 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 !!!
The situation is unchanged. His Fraudulency continues to infest the White House, we haven’t heard much from the person who should have been declared the victor, and hopium is still being dispensed even as our military appears to have joined the political establishment in knuckling under to the fraud.
One can hope that all is not as it seems.
I’d love to feast on that crow.
Rally Update
Perhaps you remember this picture
I showed the video this was taken from to a LEO of my acquaintance, and he nearly exploded in rage. Not at the person being sprayed, but at the cop doing the spraying.
He’s spraying the guy for a verbal confrontation. And he’s spraying him in a place where he could have fallen over the edge, in which case his non-lethal spray could have become deadly force.
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.
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.)
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
Remember Hong Kong!!!
Whoever ends up in the cell next to his, tell him I said “Hi.”
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for 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 !!!
It’s 2000 ET on Friday as I write this. 16 hours or so to go in the ten days of darkness that began at the inauguration of His Fraudulency, 1200 January 20.
It’s ten days precisely at noon ET on Saturday, in other words, the “ten days of darkness” end halfway through the time this daily that you’re now reading, is current.
Many of us think this is meaningless, just more hopium, like we’ve been fed for four years. We’ve waited four years for justice, we’ve waited four years to finally reclaim the system, as opposed to having just one lone man there as a beach head.
Others think this is finally IT.
Soon enough we will know.
What are your plans if you turn out to be wrong?
I’m in the first camp; my mounting skepticism can’t be denied any longer. And I can tell you what my plans are if I’m wrong. I will feast on crow, and it will be delicious. I’d love to be wrong about this, I really would.
But to those of you who think this is finally IT…what if you turn out to be wrong? I know what some of you will do; many people…some of whom must know the truth in their hearts…have already begun focusing on March 4 as the day.
Maybe some of you will finally notice that the goalposts keep being moved by the Hopium Drug Lords. While Trump was in office there was always some reason why it had to be delayed for just a few more months. Someone died. Elections coming up. Don’t want to disrupt the SCOTUS nominee’s hearings. On and on and on, excuse after excuse.
ENOUGH.
We have to accept that it is ON US to carry this battle forward. We aren’t going to be magically delivered from this. If it couldn’t happen when President Trump had the power of the Oval Office behind him, what makes anyone think that anyone in the Federal government is going to do it for him? This is a Federal government which had never been cleared of its Uniparty embeds, but certainly is being cleared of any Trump holdovers.
The first step to victory will be to acknowledge that we have to fight this from the outside. It’s OK if you don’t know how, yet, or what you are going to do, yet, so long as you’re looking to figure it out. Just like last week, I’m looking for suggestions. (In accordance with the fine print below, they must be legal.) We’ve had some good discussions about this over the past week.
I don’t expect PDJT will be silent. He may very well urge us to do something. (And methinks that “something” isn’t joining anything calling itself the “Patriot Party.”) At which point we should try our darnedest to do so, just like January 6th.
Our Republic must be restored, renewed, and reinvigorated. We will have to do it.
One thing I did in DC on the 6th that I haven’t mentioned here before, was to lay my hand against the foundation wall of the Capitol, and implore them, “Be worthy of those who died for you.”
Those pustulous, rancid, syphilitic, gangrenous bags of rat puke were not.
Which means we must be. Our Republic is in need, who will answer the call?
THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.
Thomas Paine, The Crisis No. I (written 19 December 1776, published 23 December 1776)
Justice Must Be Done.
And yet, no justice has been done, not in four years.
The ONE person convicted of a crime directed against President Trump and us, a man named Clinesmith, was just sentenced. Sit down before you read this. Ready?
Probation and community service. I’m sure that slap made his wrist red for a whole five seconds!
No Justice, No Peace.
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.)
The Mandatory Coin
Hopefully I’ll think of something before 10 PM my time on Friday. If not, you’ll find yourself reading this.
Standard Disclaimer: Any item I show is not mine. Anything I do own is not kept at home, but my lead-projecting technology stays with me.
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
To conclude: My standard Public Service Announcement. We don’t want to forget this!!!
Remember Hong Kong!!!
If anyone ends up in the cell right next to him, tell him I said “hi.”
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.
Joe Biden is Asshoe
China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.
But of course the much more important thing to realize:
Joe Biden Didn’t Win
乔*拜登没赢 !!! Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!! Joe Biden didn’t win !!!
[That’s pronounced “SHTOE DYEH-lat?” and if you can push your tongue to the roof of your mouth as you say that last t, so much the better. And yes if you know a little bit of Russian, you’re probably about to tell me that the Ч should be pronounced like the “ch” in “cheese”–and you’d be right except in this one case, a rare rule-breaker in Russian. And что was the very first word in the book I learned Russian from.]
Что Делать? is a question that was asked in a pamphlet written in pre-Revolutionary Russia in 1901 by a then-obscure individual who took the pseudonym Lenin. [Well, except he spelled it Что Дѣлать but after the revolution the ѣ was deemed redundant with е and was dispensed with, along with millions of kulaks.]
It was actually a question about some arcane matter of Marxist dogma, and Lenin was an evil man, but the question, ripped out of context, is apt today.
Having been boned up the hindquarters by our political class, what is to be done?
We got suckered.
Almost everything anyone has quoted on this site has turned out to be hopium, and much of it delivered by bullshit artists. Most of us are realizing this and getting good and mad about it, while others seem to be looking around for more hopium to cling to. I’ve had my suspicions all along, but caught so much grief for trying to point it out I long since stopped trying. Now I regret it.
If you’re in that group of people addicted to hopium, looking at more and more implausible scenarios, please stop. You’re consciously evading reality, and you’re needed out here in the real world.
I am not going to assume that anyone is going to bail us out of this by some hail Mary move. Every day that passes sees more Trump people fired from government; soon there won’t be anyone even potentially interested in helping out remaining in anything remotely like a position to do so. By noon on Saturday (today) the administration of His Fraudulency will have been in power for three days. Seven more and the “ten days of darkness” have run out–on the day of my next “daily.”
Of course that won’t stop someone from saying, “well those weren’t the ten days of darkness. No, the ten days of darkness are really going to start…” That person can go fuck his perpetually goal-shifting self, because the ten days before the “inauguration” were supposed to be the ten days of darkness before we entered into this “ten days of darkness.”
The only thing worse than falling for the Lucy and the Football Maneuver is setting ourselves up for it again.
Drop the fancies of eating popcorn (or bacon) while watching someone else pull a miracle out of his ass.
Four years of tease and disappointment should be enough. You should feel STUPID, Dumbass!!! I sure do.
I hope a number of people here feel like I just dumped ten gallons of icewater on them.
Here, have some towels and dry yourselves off.
Are you awake now? Good. Are you mad? Even better.
Because here is the Real Deal: It Is Up To Us. It Is Entirely Up To Us. No imaginary friend is going to bail us out.
And only if we realize that can we begin to do something about it.
To be clear, I sure hope this ages poorly. But I don’t expect it to and neither should anyone else. I think the odds are less than twenty percent right now, and rapidly declining.
So how do we fight this? Yes, we fight. That shouldn’t be in doubt. We fight.
I think what each person does is going to depend on their circumstances, talents, and mindset. I’ve been seeing some good suggestions out there on what we can do. We need more of this!
This is a time to brainstorm, not about yet more ridiculous scenarios of how someone else will bail our asses out, but rather about what we can do.
There are loads of things that can be done; I’m going to confine myself to stuff that is legal.
One thing we can all do is refuse to mention the current administration without mentioning the fraud; hence why I call the current occupant of the White House “His Fraudulency.” (Inspired by “His Accidency” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tyler. Though he was legitimately in the White House, I’ll still rip off and rework the crap his enemies dished on him.) And of course Wheatie’s strategy, hence the title I put on this daily.
And boycott anything/anyone who tries to shut out conservatives/patriots.
Dialing up pressure on the scumsucking ratfucking weaselshit pissguzzling RINOs–politicians AND wheelhorses in the organization–is good. We’ve stopped donating. Let’s see if we can send them invoices! (And I can start by refusing to be this charitable towards them in the future.)
Whether we should try to take over the Repugnican party or abandon it is a trickier question. Kicking out the entrenched shitbirds will be hard. But starting a new party has its own hazards. Most states won’t give third parties ballot access without a lot of work, and of course they can try to take it over like they did with the Tea Party. But anyone wanting to engage in “conventional” politics has to pick one and go with it, and be ready to switch strategies if something breaks.
Figure out all kinds of ways to fight…and FIGHT!!
A Reminder Of Today’s Big Issue.
I won’t be including this section any more after this time. It’s moot.
Cthulhu, the fish is right. There ain’t no justice.
But wait! Maybe not. We have a new big issue.
You guys do know that Joe Biden Didn’t Win, right?
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
Please note that our menu has changed, please listen to all of the options.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Political correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. The first rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government take your guns. 5. The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Be sure of your target and what is behind it. 9. Social Justice Warriors, ANTIFA pukes, BLM hypocrites, and other assorted varieties of Marxists can go copulate with themselves, or if insufficiently limber, may substitute a rusty wire brush suitable for cleaning the bore of a twelve or ten gauge.
(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)
Coin of The Day
Today’s coin is the plugged nickel.
Boy that sounds cynical, doesn’t it. But it doesn’t have to be.
It is our actions and not somebody else’s that will determine just whose lives/careers won’t be worth one of these plugged nickels. So, which will it be? Us or them?
Standard disclaimer: I never show pictures of my own coins. I may or may not own coins like the ones I show. Burglars will be interested to hear that gold and silver aren’t the only heavy metals I have, and I have quite a bit of one with a heavier nucleus than either. And I keep it around a lot more than the gold and silver.
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
Remember Hong Kong!!! And remember the tens of millions who died under the “Great Helmsman” Chairman Mao.
If any of us ends up in the cell next to this guy, tell him “Hi” for me!
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
For my money the Great Helmsman is Hikaru Sulu (even if the actor is a dingbat).
China is in the White House
The only thing lower than China, which is already lower than whale shit, is the (nominal) Americans betraying their country to help China. Including His Fraudulence, currently infesting 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
His Fraudulency Didn’t Win
I figure you probably were unaware of that, so I decided to let you know.
Ever since it became apparent that the election had been hit by massive fraud, I’ve been saying this, but I’m going to say it again: This is for ALL of the Chips.
If Trump were to not continue to be President, then history, looking back, would see his term as a mere speed bump in the course of the collapse of the United States of America. The deep state would come back out of hiding, his gains would be wiped out almost instantly, we’d end up with Obolacare Plus, NAFTA Plus, You-name-it Plus. We’d be facing a Leftist backlash, because they’ve been boiling mad for four years, and now they’d have an unimpeded outlet for that rage.
That’s why President Donald John Trump must prevail. Because without Justice for the Deep State, for the Ruling Class, everything we gained these last four years is transitory.
I’m not just saying this, I put my money where my mouth is last week and went to Washington, thinking (as many others did) that he wasn’t calling us to watch a defeat. Though it certainly did look like a defeat on many levels, we’ll see what happens between now and Wednesday!
Only time and a tell-all memoir will tell how useful our individual actions on that day actually were. But no matter what, those of us lucky enough to be able to go did see history unfold. And those unable to go, well, be assured that we represented you in spirit.
I’ve seen some positive signs. For instance, it seems significant that the overwhelming majority of arrests stemming from the “festivities” of January 6 are Leftist or Democrat agent provocateurs, not MAGA people. Is something actually changing at the FBI?
In general, there’s a lot of odd stuff going on. Something’s brewing!
This will not have been in vain!
A couple of cautions: Let’s be careful, please, to do some checking on the rumors we post.
And let’s remember that we do not know Trump’s battle plan. We’re speculating here.
A Reminder Of The Need for Justice.
Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American People...Our campaign represents a true existential threat, like they’ve never seen before.
Then-Candidate Donald J. Trump
Needs to happen, soon.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
Please note that our menu has changed, please listen to all of the options.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Political correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. The first rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government take your guns. 5. The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Be sure of your target and what is behind it. 9. Social Justice Warriors, ANTIFA pukes, BLM hypocrites, and other assorted varieties of Marxists can go copulate with themselves, or if insufficiently limber, may substitute a rusty wire brush suitable for cleaning the bore of a twelve or ten gauge.
(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)
Coin of The Day
The Gobrecht Dollar, Redux
I talked about this back, what, six weeks ago? My first post on the new Q Tree.
Here’s a reminder picture of the Gobrecht dollar, in 1836 our first tentative step towards resuming silver dollar coinage which had ended in 1804.
1836 Gobrecht Dollar (“Original”)
That awesome flying eagle reverse motif had problems, namely that it was hard to get the sucker to strike up properly. In the picture, for instance, you can see high points on the design (like the eagle’s “armpit” area, and the tip of the nearer wing) that just weren’t fully detailed, because the metal didn’t flow completely into the deepest parts of the die. To be sure it took a lot of force (100 tons or so) to strike up a coin the size of a silver dollar in the first place and that no doubt had something to do with it, but ultimately, the design got rejected in favor of a reuse of the “sandwich board” eagle that had been used on our silver coinage since 1807/8.
But that eagle wasn’t completely dead.
Twenty years later, in 1856, the mint was about to embark on an experiment. We had, up until that time, used a coin 29 millimeters (or so) in diameter, and quite thick (compare to a quarter which is 24.3 mm in diameter), made out of fairly pure copper, as our cent. It weighed 168 grains (exactly 0.35 troy ounces, not that you’d measure copper in troy ounces). Collectors now call these cents “large cents” to distinguish them from the considerably smaller pieces we use today.
The government wanted something a bit lighter. These coins were noticeably heavy and really didn’t have a whole lot of purchasing power, even back then.
The Flying Eagle Cent
So it was decided to create what we now call the “small cent.” But what came out of this design process was still a bit odd to today’s eyes. The new coin weighed 72 grains (exactly 0.15 troy ounces, but again no one would weigh this metal in troy ounces). And it was 12 percent nickel (almost exactly 1/8th), 88 percent copper. This was done to bring the intrinsic value up, nickel being more expensive than copper.
It had the same diameter as our current “penny” (a misnomer), but was quite a bit thicker.
Because it had 12 percent nickel, instead of being red, and toning to a brown color, it was a sort of tan color…and stayed that way. You could almost call it “stainless copper.”
(And, note, that our current “nickel” and the surface layers of our dime and quarter, are 25 percent nickel, 75 percent copper. Even though they are mostly copper, there’s no copper color to them at all!)
What design appeared on the 1856 patterns, and then the full production run of 1857 and 1858?
Why, that same eagle from the Gobrecht Dollar, of course.
Flying Eagle Cent, 1857 – 1858 (with patterns in 1856)
As you can see, using a smaller coin didn’t help. Notice the eagle’s breast is flat. The wingtips, at least look good.
This peculiar copper nickel alloy earned this coin the nickname “nick,” but it did prove popular as it was much more convenient than those old large cents. So it looked like, on the whole, the experiment would be a success. Other countries had tried making nickel coinage, but usually it was pure nickel, and it was finicky to work with at the time, the biggest problem being to measure the heat of the coins when they were being annealed. (We had no thermometers, so the workers had to judge by the color the coin was glowing. And on a cloudy day, or late in the day, the light would be different enough to throw them off.) Poorly annealed planchets wore down the dies.
But we apparently had found an alloy that was tough, but workable.
(Incidentally the 1856 Flying Eagle cent pattern is a rarity, only 2000 were made, and they are nearly as expensive as Gobrecht dollars.)
The Indian Head Cent
Nevertheless, in 1859 we went to a new design, still on those copper-nickel thick planchets with the tan color.
Indian Head Cent, 1859.
Interestingly, this was the year Abraham Lincoln turned 50; no one at the time thought he was important enough to commemorate by changing the design of the cent, but that would change by the time he turned 100. Or 150. Or 200. But it’s funny that a major design change did occur for his 50th year just to complete the pattern!
The Indian Head cent would last until 1909. But not quite like this.
The very next year saw a change to the reverse, with the laurel wreath replaced with oak leaves and a shield added.
1860-1909 reverse Why on earth Wikipedia took such a badly stained coin and used it for their illustration beats me. It takes hard work to stain this alloy, yet someone did it. But if you really want to see the stains in pin-point detail, the original uploaded file is 6442 pixels wide by 3250 pixels tall.
This reverse would stay with the Indian Head cent until it ended. But we’re still not done.
In mid-1864 it was decided to debase the coin just a bit. The nickel was removed from the alloy, and some tin was put in instead to make it bronze, rather than copper. The overall weight was reduced to 48 grains, exactly a tenth of a troy ounce. This, finally, was the “cent” we grew up with.
The new alloy, of course, would turn from red to brown over time, as people handled it. Interestingly, the better struck the coin, the more likely it was to turn brown (this had been true of the large cents as well).
1881 Indian Head Cent (Red).
And now we have coins where, when they are graded, there is a distinction made between red, red-brown, and brown colors (and red coins typically command a premium). The third party grading companies guarantee their numeric grade, but since their holders aren’t air tight, they will not guarantee that a coin they graded as “MS 60 RD” (Mint state 60, Red) will actually stay “red”.
I personally prefer them in red-brown–the price is cheaper (I won’t lose as much if the coin does tone on me) and it’s still not completely brown.
On these coins, the tips of the feathers are often poorly struck. Nevertheless we stuck with the design until mid 1909, and then it was time to commemorate Abraham Lincoln’s 100th birthday, which was probably a bitter pill to swallow for a lot of old vets from the South who remembered the Civil War.
There was one more minor change in 1864. After switching to bronze, it was decided to add a small L to the design, it was the initial of James Longacre, the designer. 1864 L cents as they are known, are much more expensive than 1864 “no L” cents, but of course the L was retained from that point forward, so if you want a cent with the L on it and don’t care what year it is, that’s easy. Another tough one to find and pay for is an 1877, for some reason.
A “red brown” 1877 cent. Yeah, it’s purple instead of brown, but the point is parts of the coin are still the original red, and other parts are toned.
In 1908 and 1908 only, some of these were made in San Francisco and there is an S mintmark on the reverse. Those are also considerably more expensive than the non S ones. (Any 1909 cent with an S on it is expensive than without…and there were three of them: the Indian Head cent, the Lincoln Cent with VDB initials [a rarity even non-collectors have often heard about], and the Lincoln Cent without the VDB initials.)
So there you have a history of the Indian Head cent. My thanks to Wolf for suggesting the topic.
Standard disclaimer: I never show pictures of my coins, and in many cases don’t own anything remotely resembling the coins in these pictures. Any prospective thieves should know I also collect other heavy metals–anything with a heavier nucleus would be unstable–and keep those a lot closer to me than the coins.
Obligatory PSA
I think Wolf would fire me if I were to forget this.
Remember Hong Kong!!! And remember the tens of millions who died under the “Great Helmsman” Chairman Mao.
I sure hope he’s OK, but he’s in Hong Kong…
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
For my money the Great Helmsman is Hikaru Sulu (even if the actor is a dingbat).
I hinted at this in yesterday’s thread. I was there.
Why didn’t I tell anyone beforehand? Because of personal OPSEC. I’m not going to post on the internet that I am gone, just in case someone knows who I am AND doesn’t believe my disclaimers about where my coins are not located.
(Even if you don’t own valuables, thieves will steal your shit anyway, and they don’t care how much damage they do to your abode in so doing. I once got to pay hundreds of dollars to fix a car window (just under deductible) while on a road trip because some thief wanted a portable CD player that was worth maybe five bucks, tops.)
I will be posting pictures to this article overnight (I got over a thousand pictures, though many are near duplicates because my camera is fast and I took multiples at a time). No way can I finish that job before 10 PM Mountain Time, I’ve barely over an hour left right now.
I flew to a distant (from DC) city on Tuesday, rented a car, drove to a hotel outside DC that night, took the Metro in Wednesday morning, and took the Metro out Wednesday evening. Thursday was the reverse of Tuesday.
I ended up somewhere south of the Ellipse for the rally, then along with many thousands of others, walked along Constitution avenue, “behind” the big Smithsonian museums on the north side of the Mall. (American History, Natural History, etc. Air and Space is on the south side of the Mall.) We walked past the National Archives, and then, where Pennsylvania Avenue meets Constitution, we continued along Pennsylvania avenue. Thus, we ended up on the north side of the stands being built for the inauguration/installation. The pictures I saw Wolf post are from the south side. And apparently ForGodAndCountry was somewhere in the middle, in front of the stands, if I understood him correctly.
I was close enough to get CS gas (a couple of times) and tear gas (once), all in very limited quantities. (Others got it far worse.) At least I think that was what they were. What I am calling CS just made one want to cough a lot, but the “tear gas” stung, and I didn’t even realize I was near it. And hey, the covid “mask” I was carrying around might have been helpful.
On the way out, I followed Pennsylvania avenue, walked past Trump International Hotel, and found my way to the same Metro station I came in on (Metro Center). I encountered national guard starting to set up. (He ordered me to put my mask on.)
I’ll describe all of this in more detail, below, as I fill in with pictures. This is just an outline. When I change the title of this section to indicate “pictures done” then it’s over, in the meantime keep checking back for updates!
The Situation
Congress, as we know, couldn’t get through the certification process fast enough, apparently, so we now have a President Elect. Under normal conditions, that’d be the end of it; Biteme, absent some personal catastrophe, would become president at noon, January 20th.
One thing that is true, even under our abnormal conditions, is that the term we elected Trump to serve in 2016 positively ends at that moment. His successor’s term starts. Now if Biden becomes disabled, Harris as VP elect becomes President, if Harris too is disabled or doesn’t qualify (and apparently a case can be made she is not qualified to serve, being non-natural born, though that doesn’t stop ’em), it then falls to the Speaker of the House to become “Acting President” until we get a real President. And there is a long succession list after that, the President Pro Tem of the Senate coming in after the Speaker, and then running down through the Cabinet.
This could come into play if Biden, Harris, Pelosi, and whoever becomes President Pro Tem of the Senate once the Georgia Thieves assume their seats, all get arrested and convicted. And as of right now the Cabinet is full of Trump appointees, they will not have been replaced yet on the 20th!! (Though many are resigning, apparently).
[A check of Wikipedia implies that Patrick Leahy will be President Pro Tempore of the Senate now, as that POS was it the last time the Dems had the majority and he’s still (dis)serving.]
Things are very fluid. Whatever plays out will play out against that backdrop but may overshadow it totally. This will be an interesting time!
The Curious Case of Mike Pence
When Pence announced that he didn’t think he had the constitutional authority to simply reject ballots before Congress could certify them, he caught a ton of abuse from the MAGA movement. They accused him of stabbing Trump in the back and of having been a black hat all along.
But I see a couple of possible problems with this conclusion.
If Pence’s goal were to stab Trump in the back, why has he not pushed forward the 25th amendment removal process?
And more importantly, if the VP (in his role as President of the Senate) has it in his power to do this, why didn’t Algore reject the Florida votes in 2000/2001 and put himself into the White House? Given that half of the country believed (wrongly, idiots!) that the election had been stolen from Algore, he could probably have gotten away with it…if he had the power.
So I think a case can be made that Pence genuinely thought he had no choice but to play it the way he did.
But there is NO EXCUSE for the Representatives and Senators who refused to uphold the challenges, especially those who refused to do so because they were mad at Trump for the “riot” and “storming.” They not only had the authority spelled out in black and white in the Twelfth Amendment, they had the positive fucking duty to look into that and reject the obvious fraud.
And Now for the Pictures
Walking from Metro Center to the Rally. I turned a corner and saw the Washington Monument.
George would be disgusted.
Then getting closer, I saw a rally approximately six billion times as large as the biggest one our “President Elect” held. And this was the outlying crowd, not the crowd in the ellipse, which was behind me.
Ultimately I found myself wedged into the crowd. I was able to zoom in on and take pictures of the White House Under Seige.
Second Group of Pictures.
I didn’t get to see President Trump. I could understand very little of what he was saying. But by holding my camera up above peoples’ heads and using the tilt screen, I could aim at “under the banner” and get him.
Cropping away most of the picture, doing what we call a 100% crop (each pixel I uploaded was a pixel on the camera, no “reducing” the pixel density). Handheld in an awkward position with the bulletproof glass, I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with this one
I don’t know who she is or who she works for, but that’s well over $10K of cameras and lenses there, a Canon 5D series and a 1D as well. I don’t know who she works for…
But no problem reading her name even taken with my (comparatively) crappy camera.
A bunch of people left before Trump was done speaking; the march was beginning already. You can see a lot of people walking towards the left.
These next few pictures are all captures off the video I took while walking. OK, as you can see I can’t hold the thing perfectly level for half an hour while NOT paying much attention to it!
I don’t know what this building is but I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer indicates they defiled the 1st Amendment by putting it on there.
Having rounded the corner of Pennsylvania and Constitution avenues, now heading straight at it.
I think this next picture is from a Congressional parking lot. Who else would be allowed to park this close to the Capitol? (On the other hand, I did see some cars that were decorated MAGA, plainly not Congresspukes.)
Congressional Parking Lot?
And here we are…north of center. The north end is where the House meets, and joint sessions are usually held here. So this is where the crime was sealed.
Third Group Of Pictures
As we arrived, we heard a loud report, and people cheered, assuming it was fireworks. Turns out later that was the sound of a gas canister being launched.
There’s already a standoff in progress.
Capitol Police At work.
This guy is about to get a nasty surprise.
Almost a hundred pictures after that one, I was in video mode and caught the guy with the megaphone getting pepper sprayed
Screen Capture from Video
What is THAT he’s holding?
At this time, people came through the plastic sheeting on the scaffolding.
At some point I got hit with a light dose of something or other. I beat a bit of a retreat but someone got to the top of the scaffolding with an American flag.
Fourth And Final Dump of Pictures
The next thing I remember, after getting close in, is a gas cartridge landing about ten feet away from me. I had already gotten light exposure twice to something that made one cough, and once to something that also stung when you inhaled it. Sticking around here would no doubt entail more than light exposure. I backed away.
This photo was timestamped six second later than the previous one.
When the smoke cleared, I noticed people charging up the steps. Lots of people charging up the steps. In fact I can see them in the prior picture too if I blow it up.
Breached!
Someone I was talking to found this object on the ground, I think it was a gas grenade.
Meanwhile over on the scaffolding…I had seen a large crowd carry an extremely large flag up the steps.
At first they unfurled it facing the inaugural platform, but then they brought it over to our side.
Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
(We have the only national anthem that ends in a question, and even that is only if you ignore the later verses which are rarely sung.)
Remember when Pepe was a constant fun presence? The flag of Kekistan.
I soon began to notice that people were coming down the stairs.
And indeed the cops were herding people out of the capitol building so that Congress could conclude the business of selling us out.
I moved to in front of the inaugural platform, and got this shot.
A memorial to the man who did more than anyone else to create this country.
And a memorial to the last man who saved it.
When I look back on this and realize that conservatives cheered while the US Capitol was being occupied by protestors…things have changed a lot in our country, and we’ll never go completely back to the way it was. We were carrying flags with the word “fuck” on them, shouting slogans with that same word. Imagine conservatives doing this ten years ago.
We’re fed up, all right.
On the way to the Metro station, I saw this building and thought, “I know what that is…”
Sure enough!
OK, that’s it!
A Reminder Of Today’s Big Issue.
Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American People...Our campaign represents a true existential threat, like they’ve never seen before.
Then-Candidate Donald J. Trump
Needs to happen, soon. Like in the next eleven days.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
Please note that our menu has changed, please listen to all of the options.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Political correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. The first rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government take your guns. 5. The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Be sure of your target and what is behind it. 9. Social Justice Warriors, ANTIFA pukes, BLM hypocrites, and other assorted varieties of Marxists can go copulate with themselves, or if insufficiently limber, may substitute a rusty wire brush suitable for cleaning the bore of a twelve or ten gauge.
(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)
Coin of The Day
Well, I do have an idea for this. I just don’t have time, so perhaps next week, or the week after, depending on the timing of the brown stuff hitting the ventilation device.
Standard disclaimer: I never show pictures of my coins, and in many cases don’t own anything remotely resembling the coins in these pictures. [This would be one of those cases.] Any prospective thieves should know I also collect other heavy metals–anything with a heavier nucleus would be unstable–and keep those a lot closer to me than the coins.
Public Service Announcement
Remember Hong Kong!!! And remember the tens of millions who died under the “Great Helmsman” Chairman Mao.
I sure hope he’s OK, but he’s in Hong Kong…
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
For my money the Great Helmsman is Hikaru Sulu (even if the actor is a dingbat).
