“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
What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?
January 6 Tapes Reminder
After the first release, we were supposed to get more, every week.
As far as I know it hasn’t happened.
Speaker Johnson, please follow through!
A Caution
Just remember…we might replace the RINO candidates. (Or we might not. The record is mixed even though there is more MAGA than there used to be.) But that will make no difference in the long run if the party officials, basically the Rhonna McDaniels (or however that’s spelled–I suspect it’s RINO), don’t get replaced.
State party chairs, vice chairs, secretaries and so on, and the same at county levels, have huge influence on who ultimately gets nominated, and if these party wheelhorses are RINOs, they will work tirelessly to put their own pukey people on the ballot. In fact I’d not be surprised if some of our “MAGA” candidates are in fact, RINO plants, encouraged to run by the RINO party leadership when they realized that Lyn Cheney (and her ilk) were hopelessly compromised as effective candidates. The best way for them to deal with the opposition, of course, is to run it themselves.
Running good candidates is only HALF of the battle!
Booting a RINO
I’ve spent the last couple of years pounding home the message that RINO McDaniels was a symptom of a problem…a party shot through with RINO officials. In this instance it was the hundred or so members of the RNC who gleefully voted for her again, and again, and again.
Well I got to help take one of those hundred people down, as told here: https://www.theqtree.com/2024/04/07/i-aim-to-raise-a-ruckus/. What’s even better is that oxygen thief was apparently boiling mad at how poorly she did in the vote (according to a MAGA candidate for a county office I spoke to on Tuesday night). Apparently she felt entitled to her office no matter what the rubes thing…and that attitude turns people into RINOs.
Judging from the number of comments received few noticed or cared about the post, but nonetheless I noticed a pattern: Hardly anyone who regularly puts forth “devolution” or “this is all a movie” theories (or any other variant of the idea that Trump and/or his allies are really in charge) seemed to care about it. I described successful action against the enemy and they didn’t care.
I submit that that is the desired effect of such ideas as devolution…to get people on our side not to care, not to participate, not to fight, because they believe someone else will do it for them. “Nothing can stop what is coming?” Great! I don’t have to lift a finger, just be ready to microwave some popcorn!
If any of you really are thinking like this, you might as well be controlled opposition. You’re doing exactly what the other side wants you to do, sitting on your hands waiting for deliverance by deus ex machina.
Biden Gives Us Too Much Credit
…we can move on to the next one.
Apparently Biden (or his puppeteer) has decided we’re to blame for all of the fail in the United States today.
Sorry to disappoint you Joe (or whoever), but you managed to do that all on your own; not only that, you wouldn’t let us NOT give you the chance because you insisted on cheating your way into power.
Yep, you-all are incompetent, and so proud of it you expect our applause for your sincerity. Fuck that!!
It wouldn’t be so bad, but you insist that everyone else have to share in your misery. Nope, can’t have anyone get out from under it. Somehow your grand vision only works if every single other person on earth is forced to go along. So much as ONE PERSON not going along is enough to make it all fail, apparently.
In engineering school we’re taught that a design that has seven to eight billion single points of failure…sucks.
Actually, we weren’t taught that. Because it would never have occurred to the professors to use such a ridiculous example.
Justice Must Be Done.
The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.
Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.
Kamala Harris has a new nickname since she finally went west from DC to El Paso Texas: Westward Hoe.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns. 5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)
Spot Prices
All prices are Kitco Ask, 3PM MT Friday (at that time the markets close for the weekend). (Note: most media quotes are for the bid…the price paid by the market makers, not the ask, which is what they will sell at. I figure the ask is more relevant to people like us who wish we could afford to buy these things. In the case of gold the difference is usually about a dollar, for the PGMs the spread is much wider.)
Gold and silver (and platinum and palladium) continued to surge, until a couple of days ago. Silver touched $32 and gold reached $2,425
Then they got beaten with the ugly stick on Wednesday and Thursday
They recovered a tiny amount on Friday (platinum actually did best, going up $9) except for palladium which dropped $7 that day. Who knows, maybe platinum will remain above palladium for the foreseeable future.
What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?
January 6 Tapes?
Paging Speaker Johnson…this is your conscience calling you out on broken promises.
For all your high talk about your Christian moral background…you’re looking less and less like you have any kind of moral background.
If You are a Patriot and Don’t Loathe RINOs…
Let’s talk about RINOs, and why they are the lowest form of life in politics.
Many patriots have been involved with politics, often at the grassroots, for decades. We’ve fought, and fought, and fought and won the occasional illusory small victory.
Yet we can’t seem to win the war, even when we have BIG electoral wins.
I am reminded of something. The original Star Trek had an episode titled Day of the Dove. It was one of the better episodes from the third season, but any fan of the original series will tell you that’s a very low bar. Still, it seems to get some respect; at a time when there were about 700 episodes of Star Trek in its various incarnations out there, it was voted 99th best out of the top 100.
In sum, the plot is that an alien entity has arranged for 39 Enterprise crew, and 39 Klingons, to fight each other endlessly with swords and other muscle-powered weapons. The entity lives off of hostile emotions, you see and it wants a captive food source. (The other 400 or so Enterprise crew are trapped below decks and unable to help.) Each side has its emotions played and amplified by the alien entity; one Enterprise junior officer has false memories implanted of a brother who was killed by Klingons. The brother didn’t even exist.
Even people killed in a sword fight miraculously heal so they can go do it again.
The second best line of the episode is when Kang, the Klingon captain, notes that though they have won quite a number of small victories including capturing Engineering, can’t seem to actually finally defeat the Enterprise crew. He growls, “What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?*”
Indeed. He may have been the bad guy, but his situation should sound familiar.
We are a majority in this country. We have a powerful political party in our corner. There is endless wrangling.
And yet,
What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?
In our case, that power is the RINOs in our midst. They specialize in caving when on the verge of victory. Think of Obamacare’s repeal failing…by one Republican vote. Think of the way we can never seem to get spending under control (and now our entire tax revenue goes to pay interest on the debt; anything the government actually does now is with borrowed money).
We have a party…that refuses to do what we want it to do, and that refusal is institutionalized. If you’ve been involved with GOP politics, but haven’t seen this, it’s because you refuse to see it. Or because you are part of the problem yourself. (If so, kindly gargle some red fuming nitric acid to clear the taste of shit out of your mouth, and let those not part of the problem alone so they can read this.)
We fight to elect people, who then take a dive when in office. But it’s not just the politicians in office, it’s the people behind the scenes, the leaders of the national, state and county branches of the party. Their job is to ensure that real patriots never get onto the general election ballot. They’re allowed a few failures…who can then become token conservatives who will somehow never manage to win (Jordan), or can be compromised outright (Lauren Boebert?).
That way it doesn’t actually matter who has a congressional majority. I remember my excitement when the GOP took the Senate in 1980. But all that did was empower a bunch of “moderate” puddles of dog vomit like…well for whatever reason forty years later the most memorable name is Pete Domenici. And a couple of dozen other “moderates” who simply had no interest in doing what grassroots people in their party–those same grassroots people who had worked so hard to elect them–wanted them to do.
Oh, they’ll put up a semblance of a fight…but never win. And they love it when we fight the Dems instead of fighting them. Just like that alien entity, whose motto surely was “Let’s you and him fight. It’ll be delicious!”
If you think about it, your entire political involvement has come to nothing because of these walking malignant tumors.
That should make you good and mad.
The twenty five who blocked Jordan, and the hundred people who took that opportunity to stab Jordan in the back in the secret ballot should make you good and mad.
I’ll close this with another example of RINO backstabbing, an infuriating one close to home.
In my county, the GOP chair is not a RINO. She got elected when the grassroots had had enough of the RINOs. Unfortunately the state organization is full of RINOs, and the ousted county RINOs have been trying to form a new “Republican Party” and get the state GOP to recognize them as the affiliate. I’m honestly amazed it hasn’t happened yet.
In other words those shitstains won’t just leave when they get booted out; they’ll try to destroy what they left behind. It’s an indication that they know we know how important that behind-the-scenes party power is.
So they must be destroyed. That’s the only way they’ll ever stop.
We cannot win until the leeches “on our side” get destroyed.
What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?*
We know it. What is going to be done about it?
*NOTE: The original line was actually “What power is it that supports our battle yet starves our victory.” I had mis-remembered it as feeds. When I checked it, it sure enough was “supports” and that’s what I originally quoted. On further reflection, though, I realized my memory was actually an improvement over the reality, because feeds is a perfect contrast with starves. I changed it partway through the day this originally posted, but now (since this is a re-run) it gets rendered this way from the start.
If one must do things wrong, one should do them wrong…right.
RINOs an Endangered Species? If Only!
According to Wikipoo, et. al., the Northern White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is a critically endangered species. Apparently two females live on a wildlife preserve in Sudan, and no males are known to be alive. So basically, this species is dead as soon as the females die of old age. Presently they are watched over by armed guards 24/7.
Biologists have been trying to cross them with the other subspecies, Southern White Rhinoceroses (Rhinoceri?) without success; and some genetic analyses suggest that perhaps they aren’t two subspecies at all, but two distinct species, which would make the whole project a lot more difficult.
I should hope if the American RINO (Parasitus rectum pseudoconservativum) is ever this endangered, there will be heroic efforts not to save the species, but rather to push the remainder off a cliff. Onto punji sticks. With feces smeared on them. Failing that a good bath in red fuming nitric acid will do.
But I’m not done ranting about RINOs.
The RINOs (if they are capable of any introspection whatsoever) probably wonder why they constantly have to deal with “populist” eruptions like the Trump-led MAGA movement. That would be because the so-called populists stand for absolutely nothing except for going along to get along. That allows the Left to drive the culture and politics.
Given the results of our most recent elections, the Left will now push harder, and the RINOs will now turn even squishier than they were before.
I well remember 1989-1990 in my state when the RINO establishment started preaching the message that a conservative simply couldn’t win in Colorado. Never mind the fact that Reagan had won the state TWICE (in 1984 bringing in a veto-proof state house and senate with him) and GHWB had won after (falsely!) assuring everyone that a vote for him was a vote for Reagan’s third term.
This is how the RINOs function. They push, push, push the line that only a “moderate” can get elected. Stomp them when they pull that shit. Tell everyone in ear shot that that’s exactly what the Left wants you to think, and oh-by-the-way-Mister-RINO if you’re in this party selling the same message as the Left…well, whythefuckexactly are you in this party, you lying piece of rancid weasel shit?
Justice
It says “Justice” on the picture.
And I’m sure someone will post the standard joke about what the fish thinks about the situation.
But what is it?
Here’s a take, from a different context: It’s about how you do justice, not the justice that must be done to our massively corrupt government and media. You must properly identify the nature of a person, before you can do him justice.
Ayn Rand, On Justice (speaking through her character John Galt, in Atlas Shrugged):
Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification—that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a rotter above a hero—that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as scrupulous an honor as you bring to financial transactions—that to withhold your contempt from men’s vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement—that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit—and that the bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that that is the collapse to full depravity, the Black Mass of the worship of death, the dedication of your consciousness to the destruction of existence.
Ayn Rand identified seven virtues, chief among them rationality. The other six, including justice, she considered subsidiary because they are essentially different aspects and applications of rationality.
I’m sure enough of this that I put my money where my mouth is.
The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system. (This doesn’t necessarily include deposing Joe and Hoe and putting Trump where he belongs, but it would certainly be a lot easier to fix our broken electoral system with the right people in charge.)
Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2024 or 2026 is pointless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud in the system is not part of the plan, you have no plan.
This will necessarily be piecemeal, state by state, which is why I am encouraged by those states working to change their laws to alleviate the fraud both via computer and via bogus voters. If enough states do that we might end up with a working majority in Congress and that would be something Trump never really had.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns. 5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
Silver went up 2.01 today alone, and is up over ten pecent in the last week. I don’t believe it has been over $30 since the 2011 spike.
Gold has busted through $2400 to reach $2415. And remember it was never over $2000 until November last year.
That brings my Dollar Suckage Index to 116.855+. (The Dollar Suckage index is the ratio between the price of gold today, versus the value of the dollar defined as dollars per ounce when we had the gold standard. (I use that clumsy phrasing because the dollar was defined as a certain amount of gold, such that an ounce of gold was $20.67. It’s a subtle distinction. One ounce of gold wasn’t worth $20.67 back then, it was $20.67.)
Palladium spent the last week slipping further and further behind platinum. I remember a long time ago gold was $300 and palladium was $80 or so. We are at least getting close to that ratio once again. But at that same time platinum was $400 and so my gut continues to tell me it’s WAY undervalued right now. And that opinion is probably worth less than what you paid for it.
What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?
January 6 Tapes?
Where are the tapes? Anyone, Anyone? Bueller? Johnson??
Paging Speaker Johnson…this is your conscience calling you out on broken promises.
News Flash
Today, it is still the case that Joe Biden didn’t Win.
I realize that to some readers, this might be a shock; surely at some point things must change and Biden will have actually won.
But the past cannot actually be changed.
It will always and forever be the case that Joe Biden didn’t win.
And if you, Leftist Lurker, want to dismiss it as dead white cis-male logic…well, you can call it what you want, but then please just go fuck off. No one here buys that bullshit–logic is logic and facts are facts regardless of skin color–and if you gave it a moment’s rational thought, you wouldn’t either. Of course your worthless education never included being able to actually reason–or detect problems with false reasoning–so I don’t imagine you’ll actually wake up as opposed to being woke.
As Ayn Rand would sometimes point out: Yes, you are free to evade reality. What you cannot do is evade the consequences of evading reality. Or to put it concretely: You can ignore the Mack truck bearing down on you as you play in the middle of the street, you won’t be able to ignore the consequences of ignoring the Mack truck.
And Ayn Rand also pointed out that existence (i.e., the sum total of everything that exists) precedes consciousness–our consciousnesses are a part of existence, not outside of it–therefore reality cannot be a “social construct” as so many of you fucked-up-in-the-head people seem to think.
So much for Leftist douchebag lurkers. For the rest of you, the regular readers and those lurkers who understand such things: I continue to carry the banner once also carried by Wheatie. His Fraudulency didn’t win.
Let’s Go, Brandon!!
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.
(I’d like to add, I find it entirely plausible, even likely, that His Fraudulency is also His Figureheadedness. (Apparently that wasn’t a word; it got a red underline. Well it is now.) Where I differ with the hopium addicts is on the subject of who is really in charge. It ain’t anyone we like.)
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 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.
Gold has suddenly broken out of the $2300 neighborhood these past two days, and silver has gone up even more in percentage terms. Platinum has almost exceeded palladium’s price (and I continue to maintain it’s on sale right now).
Rhodium is moving upwards again, in spite of the crappy economy.
What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?
Speaker Johnson Pinging you on January 6 Tapes
Just a friendly reminder Speaker Johnson. You’re doing some good things–or at least trying in the case of the budget–but this is the most important thing out there still hanging. One initial block released with the promise of more…and?
We have American patriots being held without bail and without trial, and the tapes almost certainly contain exculpatory evidence. (And if they don’t, and we’re all just yelling in an echo chamber over here, we need to know that too. And there’s only one way to know.)
Either we have a weaponized, corrupt government or we have a lot of internet charlatans. Let’s expose whatever it is. (I’m betting it’s the corrupt weaponized government, but if I am wrong, I’d like to see proof.)
Justice Must Be Done.
The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.
Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.
Small Government?
Many times conservatives (real and fake) speak of “small government” being the goal.
This sounds good, and mostly is good, but it misses the essential point. The important thing here isn’t the size, but rather the purpose, of government. We could have a cheap, small tyranny. After all our government spends most of its revenue on payments to individuals and foreign aid, neither of which is part of the tyrannical apparatus trying to keep us locked down and censored. What parts of the government would be necessary for a tyranny? It’d be a lot smaller than what we have now. We could shrink the government and nevertheless find it more tyrannical than it is today.
No, what we want is a limited government, limited not in size, but rather in scope. Limited, that is, in what it’s allowed to do. Under current circumstances, such a government would also be much smaller, but that’s a side effect. If we were in a World War II sort of war, an existential fight against nasty dictatorships on the brink of world conquest, that would be very expensive and would require a gargantuan government, but that would be what the government should be doing. That would be a large, but still limited government, since it’d be working to protect our rights.
World War II would have been the wrong time to squawk about “small government,” but it wasn’t (and never is) a bad time to demand limited government. Today would be a better time to ask for a small government–at least the job it should be doing is small today–but it misses the essential point; we want government to not do certain things. Many of those things we don’t want it doing are expensive but many of them are quite eminently doable by a smaller government than the one we have today. Small, but still exceeding proper limits.
So be careful what you ask for. You might get it and find you asked for the wrong thing.
Political Science In Summation
It’s really just a matter of people who can’t be happy unless they control others…versus those who want to be left alone. The oldest conflict within mankind. Government is necessary, but government attracts the assholes (a highly technical term for the control freaks).
His Truth?
Again we saw an instance of “It might be true for Billy, but it’s not true for Bob” logic this week.
I hear this often, and it’s usually harmless. As when it’s describing differing circumstances, not different facts. “Housing is unaffordable” can be true for one person, but not for another who makes ten times as much.
But sometimes the speaker means it literally. Something like 2+2=4 is asserted to be true for Billy but not for Bob. (And when it’s literal, it’s usually Bob saying it.) And in that sense, it’s nonsense, dangerous nonsense. There is ONE reality, and it exists independent of our desires and our perceptions. It would go on existing if we weren’t here. We exist in it. It does not exist in our heads. It’s not a personal construct, and it isn’t a social construct. If there were no society, reality would continue to be what it is, it wouldn’t vanish…which it would have to do, if it were a social construct.
Now what can change from person to person is the perception of reality. We see that all the time. And people will, of course, act on those perceptions. They will vote for Trump (or try to) if their perception is close to mine, and vote against Trump (and certainly succeed at doing so) if their perception is distant from mine (and therefore, if I do say so, wrong). I have heard people say “perception is reality” and usually, that’s what they’re trying to say–your perception of reality is, as far as you know, an accurate representation of reality, or you’d change it.
But I really wish they’d say it differently. And sometimes, to get back to Billy and Bob, the person who says they have different truths is really saying they have different perceptions of reality–different worldviews. I can’t argue with the latter. But I sure wish they’d say it better. That way I’d know that someone who blabbers about two different truths is delusional and not worth my time, at least not until he passes kindergarten-level metaphysics on his umpteenth attempt.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns. 5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
Gold took another beating…but not as bad as last week. It did actually drop through the 2300 mark a couple of times on Friday but at least partially recovered.
On the plus side platinum is doing very well right now; you will note it has almost closed the gap with palladium (and I can remember when palladium was 1/5th the price of platinum).
Science Series
Although I appreciate the kind words from last Saturday, my heart just isn’t in it at the moment.
What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?
Speaker Johnson: A Reminder.
And MTG is there to help make it stick.
January 6 tapes. A good start…but then nothing.
Were you just hoping we’d be distracted by the first set and not notice?
Are you THAT kind of “Republican”?
Are you Kevin McCarthy lite?
What are you waiting for?
I have a personal interest in this issue.
And if you aren’t…what the hell is wrong with you?
Booting a RINO
I’ve spent the last couple of years pounding home the message that RINO McDaniels was a symptom of a problem…a party shot through with RINO officials. In this instance it was the hundred or so members of the RNC who gleefully voted for her again, and again, and again.
Well I got to help take one of those hundred people down, as told here: https://www.theqtree.com/2024/04/07/i-aim-to-raise-a-ruckus/. What’s even better is that oxygen thief was apparently boiling mad at how poorly she did in the vote (according to a MAGA candidate for a county office I spoke to last Tuesday night (4/16)). Apparently she felt entitled to her office no matter what the rubes think…and that attitude turns people into RINOs.
Judging from the number of comments received few noticed or cared about the post, but nonetheless I noticed a pattern: Hardly anyone who regularly puts forth “devolution” or “this is all a movie” theories (or any other variant of the idea that Trump and/or his allies are really in charge) seemed to care about it. I described successful action against the enemy and they didn’t care.
I submit that that is the desired effect of such ideas as devolution…to get people on our side not to care, not to participate, not to fight, because they believe someone else will do it for them. “Nothing can stop what is coming?” Great! I don’t have to lift a finger, just be ready to microwave some popcorn!
If any of you really are thinking like this, you might as well be controlled opposition. You’re doing exactly what the other side wants you to do, sitting on your hands waiting for deliverance by deus ex machina.
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.
Gold and silver took an absolute beating on Monday morning. Monday was payday for me, and the precious metals in general cratered so hard that I woke up poorer on Monday, even having just been paid, than I was when I went to bed on Sunday. I suppose that makes up for the handful of times in the past few weeks where my paycheck was less than half of my added net worth that pay period.
Precious metals haven’t recovered from that beating, but seem to have stabilized–somewhat–around Friday’s price. Which is still vastly higher than the price was a few weeks ago.
What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?
January 6 Tapes Reminder
After the first release, we were supposed to get more, every week.
As far as I know it hasn’t happened.
Speaker Johnson, please follow through!
A Caution
Just remember…we might replace the RINO candidates. (Or we might not. The record is mixed even though there is more MAGA than there used to be.) But that will make no difference in the long run if the party officials, basically the Rhonna McDaniels (or however that’s spelled–I suspect it’s RINO), don’t get replaced.
State party chairs, vice chairs, secretaries and so on, and the same at county levels, have huge influence on who ultimately gets nominated, and if these party wheelhorses are RINOs, they will work tirelessly to put their own pukey people on the ballot. In fact I’d not be surprised if some of our “MAGA” candidates are in fact, RINO plants, encouraged to run by the RINO party leadership when they realized that Lyn Cheney (and her ilk) were hopelessly compromised as effective candidates. The best way for them to deal with the opposition, of course, is to run it themselves.
Running good candidates is only HALF of the battle!
Booting a RINO
I’ve spent the last couple of years pounding home the message that RINO McDaniels was a symptom of a problem…a party shot through with RINO officials. In this instance it was the hundred or so members of the RNC who gleefully voted for her again, and again, and again.
Well I got to help take one of those hundred people down, as told here: https://www.theqtree.com/2024/04/07/i-aim-to-raise-a-ruckus/. What’s even better is that oxygen thief was apparently boiling mad at how poorly she did in the vote (according to a MAGA candidate for a county office I spoke to on Tuesday night). Apparently she felt entitled to her office no matter what the rubes thing…and that attitude turns people into RINOs.
Judging from the number of comments received few noticed or cared about the post, but nonetheless I noticed a pattern: Hardly anyone who regularly puts forth “devolution” or “this is all a movie” theories (or any other variant of the idea that Trump and/or his allies are really in charge) seemed to care about it. I described successful action against the enemy and they didn’t care.
I submit that that is the desired effect of such ideas as devolution…to get people on our side not to care, not to participate, not to fight, because they believe someone else will do it for them. “Nothing can stop what is coming?” Great! I don’t have to lift a finger, just be ready to microwave some popcorn!
If any of you really are thinking like this, you might as well be controlled opposition. You’re doing exactly what the other side wants you to do, sitting on your hands waiting for deliverance by deus ex machina.
SPECIAL SECTION: Message For Our “Friends” In The Middle Kingdom
I normally save this for near the end, but…basically…up your shit-kicking barbarian asses. Yes, barbarian! It took a bunch of sailors in Western Asia to invent a real alphabet instead of badly drawn cartoons to write with. So much for your “civilization.”
Yeah, the WORLD noticed you had to borrow the Latin alphabet to make Pinyin. Like with every other idea you had to steal from us “Foreign Devils” since you rammed your heads up your asses five centuries ago, you sure managed to bastardize it badly in the process.
Have you stopped eating bats yet? Are you shit-kickers still sleeping with farm animals?
Or maybe even just had the slightest inkling of treating lives as something you don’t just casually dispose of?
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
And here’s my response to barbarian “asshoes” like you:
OK, with that rant out of my system…
Biden Gives Us Too Much Credit
…we can move on to the next one.
Apparently Biden (or his puppeteer) has decided we’re to blame for all of the fail in the United States today.
Sorry to disappoint you Joe (or whoever), but you managed to do that all on your own; not only that, you wouldn’t let us NOT give you the chance because you insisted on cheating your way into power.
Yep, you-all are incompetent, and so proud of it you expect our applause for your sincerity. Fuck that!!
It wouldn’t be so bad, but you insist that everyone else have to share in your misery. Nope, can’t have anyone get out from under it. Somehow your grand vision only works if every single other person on earth is forced to go along. So much as ONE PERSON not going along is enough to make it all fail, apparently.
In engineering school we’re taught that a design that has seven to eight billion single points of failure…sucks.
Actually, we weren’t taught that. Because it would never have occurred to the professors to use such a ridiculous example.
Justice Must Be Done.
The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.
Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.
Kamala Harris has a new nickname since she finally went west from DC to El Paso Texas: Westward Hoe.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns. 5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)
Spot Prices
All prices are Kitco Ask, 3PM MT Friday (at that time the markets close for the weekend). (Note: most media quotes are for the bid…the price paid by the market makers, not the ask, which is what they will sell at. I figure the ask is more relevant to people like us who wish we could afford to buy these things. In the case of gold the difference is usually about a dollar, for the PGMs the spread is much wider.)
Gold has been see-sawing around a bit (it broke $2400 earlier this week but dropped again–not as hard as last week, certainly; it’s still close this time) but slowly trending upwards when all is said and done. Silver is also showing strength at this level. Platinum and palladium on the other hand are not doing that well; they’re actually down for the week (even though palladium closed up for the day on Friday). Rhodium is the only PGM that is doing at all well.
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
Remember Hong Kong!!!
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.
Joe Biden is Asshoe
China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.
But of course the much more important thing to realize:
Joe Biden Didn’t Win
乔*拜登没赢 !!! Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!! Joe Biden didn’t win !!!
What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?
January 6 Tapes?
Paging Speaker Johnson…this is your conscience calling you out on broken promises.
For all your high talk about your Christian moral background…you’re looking less and less like you have any kind of moral background.
If You are a Patriot and Don’t Loathe RINOs…
Let’s talk about RINOs, and why they are the lowest form of life in politics.
Many patriots have been involved with politics, often at the grassroots, for decades. We’ve fought, and fought, and fought and won the occasional illusory small victory.
Yet we can’t seem to win the war, even when we have BIG electoral wins.
I am reminded of something. The original Star Trek had an episode titled Day of the Dove. It was one of the better episodes from the third season, but any fan of the original series will tell you that’s a very low bar. Still, it seems to get some respect; at a time when there were about 700 episodes of Star Trek in its various incarnations out there, it was voted 99th best out of the top 100.
In sum, the plot is that an alien entity has arranged for 39 Enterprise crew, and 39 Klingons, to fight each other endlessly with swords and other muscle-powered weapons. The entity lives off of hostile emotions, you see and it wants a captive food source. (The other 400 or so Enterprise crew are trapped below decks and unable to help.) Each side has its emotions played and amplified by the alien entity; one Enterprise junior officer has false memories implanted of a brother who was killed by Klingons. The brother didn’t even exist.
Even people killed in a sword fight miraculously heal so they can go do it again.
The second best line of the episode is when Kang, the Klingon captain, notes that though they have won quite a number of small victories including capturing Engineering, can’t seem to actually finally defeat the Enterprise crew. He growls, “What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?*”
Indeed. He may have been the bad guy, but his situation should sound familiar.
We are a majority in this country. We have a powerful political party in our corner. There is endless wrangling.
And yet,
What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?
In our case, that power is the RINOs in our midst. They specialize in caving when on the verge of victory. Think of Obamacare’s repeal failing…by one Republican vote. Think of the way we can never seem to get spending under control (and now our entire tax revenue goes to pay interest on the debt; anything the government actually does now is with borrowed money).
We have a party…that refuses to do what we want it to do, and that refusal is institutionalized. If you’ve been involved with GOP politics, but haven’t seen this, it’s because you refuse to see it. Or because you are part of the problem yourself. (If so, kindly gargle some red fuming nitric acid to clear the taste of shit out of your mouth, and let those not part of the problem alone so they can read this.)
We fight to elect people, who then take a dive when in office. But it’s not just the politicians in office, it’s the people behind the scenes, the leaders of the national, state and county branches of the party. Their job is to ensure that real patriots never get onto the general election ballot. They’re allowed a few failures…who can then become token conservatives who will somehow never manage to win (Jordan), or can be compromised outright (Lauren Boebert?).
That way it doesn’t actually matter who has a congressional majority. I remember my excitement when the GOP took the Senate in 1980. But all that did was empower a bunch of “moderate” puddles of dog vomit like…well for whatever reason forty years later the most memorable name is Pete Domenici. And a couple of dozen other “moderates” who simply had no interest in doing what grassroots people in their party–those same grassroots people who had worked so hard to elect them–wanted them to do.
Oh, they’ll put up a semblance of a fight…but never win. And they love it when we fight the Dems instead of fighting them. Just like that alien entity, whose motto surely was “Let’s you and him fight. It’ll be delicious!”
If you think about it, your entire political involvement has come to nothing because of these walking malignant tumors.
That should make you good and mad.
The twenty five who blocked Jordan, and the hundred people who took that opportunity to stab Jordan in the back in the secret ballot should make you good and mad.
I’ll close this with another example of RINO backstabbing, an infuriating one close to home.
In my county, the GOP chair is not a RINO. She got elected when the grassroots had had enough of the RINOs. Unfortunately the state organization is full of RINOs, and the ousted county RINOs have been trying to form a new “Republican Party” and get the state GOP to recognize them as the affiliate. I’m honestly amazed it hasn’t happened yet.
In other words those shitstains won’t just leave when they get booted out; they’ll try to destroy what they left behind. It’s an indication that they know we know how important that behind-the-scenes party power is.
So they must be destroyed. That’s the only way they’ll ever stop.
We cannot win until the leeches “on our side” get destroyed.
What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?*
We know it. What is going to be done about it?
*NOTE: The original line was actually “What power is it that supports our battle yet starves our victory.” I had mis-remembered it as feeds. When I checked it, it sure enough was “supports” and that’s what I originally quoted. On further reflection, though, I realized my memory was actually an improvement over the reality, because feeds is a perfect contrast with starves. I changed it partway through the day this originally posted, but now (since this is a re-run) it gets rendered this way from the start.
If one must do things wrong, one should do them wrong…right.
RINOs an Endangered Species? If Only!
According to Wikipoo, et. al., the Northern White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is a critically endangered species. Apparently two females live on a wildlife preserve in Sudan, and no males are known to be alive. So basically, this species is dead as soon as the females die of old age. Presently they are watched over by armed guards 24/7.
Biologists have been trying to cross them with the other subspecies, Southern White Rhinoceroses (Rhinoceri?) without success; and some genetic analyses suggest that perhaps they aren’t two subspecies at all, but two distinct species, which would make the whole project a lot more difficult.
I should hope if the American RINO (Parasitus rectum pseudoconservativum) is ever this endangered, there will be heroic efforts not to save the species, but rather to push the remainder off a cliff. Onto punji sticks. With feces smeared on them. Failing that a good bath in red fuming nitric acid will do.
But I’m not done ranting about RINOs.
The RINOs (if they are capable of any introspection whatsoever) probably wonder why they constantly have to deal with “populist” eruptions like the Trump-led MAGA movement. That would be because the so-called populists stand for absolutely nothing except for going along to get along. That allows the Left to drive the culture and politics.
Given the results of our most recent elections, the Left will now push harder, and the RINOs will now turn even squishier than they were before.
I well remember 1989-1990 in my state when the RINO establishment started preaching the message that a conservative simply couldn’t win in Colorado. Never mind the fact that Reagan had won the state TWICE (in 1984 bringing in a veto-proof state house and senate with him) and GHWB had won after (falsely!) assuring everyone that a vote for him was a vote for Reagan’s third term.
This is how the RINOs function. They push, push, push the line that only a “moderate” can get elected. Stomp them when they pull that shit. Tell everyone in ear shot that that’s exactly what the Left wants you to think, and oh-by-the-way-Mister-RINO if you’re in this party selling the same message as the Left…well, whythefuckexactly are you in this party, you lying piece of rancid weasel shit?
Justice
It says “Justice” on the picture.
And I’m sure someone will post the standard joke about what the fish thinks about the situation.
But what is it?
Here’s a take, from a different context: It’s about how you do justice, not the justice that must be done to our massively corrupt government and media. You must properly identify the nature of a person, before you can do him justice.
Ayn Rand, On Justice (speaking through her character John Galt, in Atlas Shrugged):
Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification—that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a rotter above a hero—that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as scrupulous an honor as you bring to financial transactions—that to withhold your contempt from men’s vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement—that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit—and that the bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that that is the collapse to full depravity, the Black Mass of the worship of death, the dedication of your consciousness to the destruction of existence.
Ayn Rand identified seven virtues, chief among them rationality. The other six, including justice, she considered subsidiary because they are essentially different aspects and applications of rationality.
I’m sure enough of this that I put my money where my mouth is.
The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system. (This doesn’t necessarily include deposing Joe and Hoe and putting Trump where he belongs, but it would certainly be a lot easier to fix our broken electoral system with the right people in charge.)
Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2024 or 2026 is pointless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud in the system is not part of the plan, you have no plan.
This will necessarily be piecemeal, state by state, which is why I am encouraged by those states working to change their laws to alleviate the fraud both via computer and via bogus voters. If enough states do that we might end up with a working majority in Congress and that would be something Trump never really had.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns. 5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
Earlier in the day on Friday, gold was over $2400 and silver touched $29. Then towards the end of the day both of them cratered, hard, ending up down for the day (gold down 25 bucks instead of up $35 or so, silver similar). But do note that silver is continuing to show signs of life.
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
To conclude: My standard Public Service Announcement. We don’t want to forget this!!!
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.
Joe Biden is Asshoe
China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.
But of course the much more important thing to realize:
Joe Biden Didn’t Win
乔*拜登没赢 !!! Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!! Joe Biden didn’t win !!!
Yes. It was a new moon. They don’t get any newer than in an eclipse.
And it was a Monday.
So here we go:
Official Video…blocked from being played elsewhere as usual And I can’t find one that’s not blocked. Sorry…
The Event
I am going to talk about the event here, the adventure of going to see it and how I took the pictures I am showing, but I’m not going to discuss the science (much); I will save that for Saturday (with, probably, some of the same pictures).
Where did I end up going? I concluded on Sunday Morning that the best shot would be Indiana. The page I was looking at showed it as “green” for cloud cover; huge swaths of Texas were red…now including Eagle Pass, which was yellow until Saturday.
So I drove to St. Louis on Sunday, and then re-checked the weather guess…Indiana had gone yellow, but much of Texas had also gone yellow. So I decided (tentatively) to go to Southern Illinois and assess with eyeballs. I ended up at Rend Lake off I-57, south of the intersection with I-64; specifically at the Ken Gray trailhead. I got there in plenty of time.
Over the course of the next few hours a number of other people also joined us in the parking lot. One group had a fully professional video camera with them; apparently they’re making a movie of some sort. Another had a 600 mm lens (a big white!). He set up on the other side of the road.
Although sometimes there was a thin haze (looking like a dispersed contrail, but much greater in extent), it would often clear up. There happened to be one of these during totality but it impeded our view too little to notice if at all.
I did not buy a new camera (despite my joke from last time); I did buy a new 20-stop neutral density filter. And then I put it and the lens on a cheaper camera (a Canon M6 mk II). Why? Because that camera has a crop sensor and the pixel density is much higher. In other words, the images of the Sun that I took would be higher resolution. I put a wide angle lens on the expensive camera hoping to capture the planets and comet during totality. (The comet, it turned out, was a pipe dream; no one knowledgeable expected to be able to see it, and in this context I was not knowledgeable.)
The tripod lets you swivel 360 around an axis, which can be tilted. I decided to try to tilt it at about the same angle as the sun’s path across the sky, to try to avoid having the Sun appear to rotate in the field of view. There’s no actual way to make this work since (except on the first day of Spring and Autumn) the Sun doesn’t follow a great-circle arc across the sky. I’d have needed an additional wedge between the tripod “head” and the camera. However, I probably came pretty close; at least the Moon seemed to exit the Sun opposite of where it entered. Since I didn’t have a drive motor anyway, it didn’t matter much.
I was in touch with someone in Texas (a bit further northeast than Eagle Pass); they weren’t much interested in photography but I got not-very-good cell phone pics taken through some sort of red filter. So I could report to all that it had started in Texas. I was relieved to hear that the Moon hadn’t disappeared overnight (that would be just my damned luck).
So here’s the Sun just before the festivities started (f/5.6, 1/1000, ISO 100, ND 20 filter. An ND 20 filter reduces the light by roughly a factor of a million without changing the color.)
Note a big, bold sunspot just above the center, another one further out at about 9:30.
The Sun Gets Mooned
In an eclipse the lunar farside faces the Sun. Please, it’s “far side,” not “dark side.” It faces away from us; it’s not dark. Especially not here; it’s lit.
(OK…I suppose it’s “dark” in the same sense that the “Dark Ages” were dark. Not literally dark, but few records were left so we have trouble “seeing” them from our vantage point today. Likewise until spaceflight we had no idea what the far side looked like.)
More importantly, though, the far side could be considered the backside, and so during an eclipse the Moon is pointing its backside at the Sun. Meaning the Sun is getting Mooned.
OK, childish humor aside…until the next time.
I took one shortly after the start; the Moon is moving in from the lower right.
And you can see the progression. I got one in fact just before the sun spot got occluded.
By now, the lighting looks strange. Even a bit before this if you put down the eclipse glasses and looked around, there was this funny twilight quality to the light, though it was from overhead. Seconds before totality it got downright spookily dark.
And then totality hit. And the eclipse glasses went away.
And yes, its impact is a hit. Like flipping a light switch, suddenly you see the solar corona, surrounding the blackest black you have ever seen…the actual dark side of the Moon. Looking around it was like a super bright moonlit night, probably brighter than any moonlit night ever is (even when it’s a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious moon).
I was close enough to I-57 to hear that truck traffic continued unabated during the eclipse. Hard to believe that some people either didn’t care, didn’t know…or simply couldn’t interrupt their work (if it were someone doing CPR or fighting a fire I could understand!).
This eclipse was long. I hastily unscrewed the filter from the lens, and took more pictures. (I probably should have reduced the ISO to 250 or so.)
This one shows the whole corona. I’m going to go back to my regular crop after this one. Notice around the edges of the Moon, a few pink areas. Those are prominences (flares). Remember that the Moon is still moving towards the upper left. This picture was early (as in, just as fast as I could unscrew the filter!!!!) and prominences up near the top are most visible.
Note in this one that a prominence at about 5 o’clock is very visible. In fact it was easy to see with the naked eye. Because of the Sun’s position and orientation in the sky, that one looked like it was at the bottom of the disc to our eyes. Closer to the end of totality the one on the right hand side became visible too but wasn’t as bright as the one at the bottom.
The prominence at the right is actually showing an arc.
But all good things must come to an end. And end it did.
When even the slightest sliver of the photosphere (the visible “surface” of the Sun) shows up, the corona is gone. As you can see in the picture above.
Our celebrity sunspot is back!
And here with the Moon just about to uncover the last sliver of the Sun’s disc, it’s over.
This eclipse was far better than the one in 2017, what with all the prominences and the greater duration of totality (I actually put the filter back on too soon, took it off and took the last two pictures).
If you missed it due to apathy or negligence…well it sucks to be you!
I could see as soon as I got back on the interstate that traffic northbound (to Chicago and St. Louis) was already jammed. And I was tens of miles away from St. Louis and hundreds from Chicago.
So I went south, intending to catch I-40 west at Memphis. It was longer, but probably faster. Even there the last 10 miles before the I-55/I-40 interchange took about an hour; Memphis too had eclipse jams, made worse by police blocking off exits on the way in.
I stopped in Conway, AR, and didn’t get going until late on Tuesday (I had just had two short nights and made up for it bigtime). I finally got home at 2AM Tuesday.
Now for the bad news. I was only able to see Jupiter and Venus. The comet was too faint. Mercury was simply lost in the glare. And Mars and Saturn were down in the trees.
And I had to guess about the right exposure to try to capture them on the wide angle lens. And I don’t know how bad my guess was, because I took two totally blown out white rectangles for pictures. Was I off by twelve stops? eighteen? Who knows. I didn’t even save them.
Hopefully on Saturday there will be a “regular” science post.
No, the real problem is the fact that a majority of the 168 top GOP people voted for her. And now that has happened five times so they cannot claim they didn’t know what she was.
In spite of the fact that under her “leadership” the party had deliberately sabotaged the will of its base, had deliberately refused to challenge blatant election fraud, had gone out of its way to ensure certain candidates do not get nominated, had diverted donor money to namby-pamby candidates who have all the electoral appeal of a puddle of dog vomit…and in general has done nothing whatsoever to help fix the problems that plague America.
However that last is to be expected; I cannot expect anyone who IS the problem to help FIX the problem.
RINO McDaniel would have been powerless without an entire party leadership of the same mind as her. They wanted this dismal performance; they want to ignore the party base.
Her being gone will likely solve nothing as someone just like her will eventually be elected by those same pustulous people.
Me, over and over again in my openers (as amended when RINO McDaniel got the boot
So there I have been screaming at the top of my QTree lungs time and time again, that we have RINOs up and down the Party leadership and as long as that is true we will get nowhere.
Well RINO McDaniel is gone. But what about those 168 people?
In particular, what about this useless bint?
This is Vera Ortagnon, the National Committeewoman for Colorado.
The RNC consists of one woman and one man from each state and territory in the United States, plus (I believe) the state (or territory) chair. 50 states + DC + 5 territories = 56, 56 x 3 = 168.
And as I have been pointing out, likely to the point you’re sick and tired of reading me do so, most of these people loved RINO McDaniel.
Including Vera Ortagnon. She endorsed RINO McDaniel the last four times RINO McD ran for RNC Chair.
At the Colorado State convention, which was held on Saturday April 6, both the national committeewoman and national committeeman were selected for a new four year term.
The Committeeman for Colorado was unopposed for re-election, claimed he did not vote for RINO McD, and I heard absolutely no grumblings or suspicion of him at all.
National Committeewoman, on the other hand…well, I just told you Ortagnon’s a problem.
And two people ran against her.
Ortagnon first. In addition to her love of RINO McD, one thing that’s a bit aggravting is that it is impossible to hear from Vera Ortagnon without her making the point that she is Hispanic. I mean she explicitly says so, just in case her accent doesn’t make it clear. (She is a legal immigrant from Colombia; I have to admit that when she told the story of her naturalization, it was touching.)
The first opponent was Laura Imer. She was endorsed by plenty of prominent people (including the committeeman, once he was re-elected)…but there’s something offputting about her. Maybe it’s the fact that she looks a bit like Lynn Cheney. She is loud, and angry. But I saw no sign whatsoever that she is a RINO.
When she gave her speech, she dropped in the fact that Ortagnon had endorsed and presumably voted for RINO McD four times. Now it’s customary NOT to sling mud at your opponents, so that just showed a mean streak to most of the deletages, and I am glad she did it because Ortagnon and Imer took hits from that shot.
Because I wanted the third candidate to win. Meet Christy “Ruckus” Fidura.
She has been the driving force in turning Pueblo, yes Pueblo, the town of steel workers’ unions and lots and lots of Hispanics, RED when it has been “blue” for decades upon decades.
Unlike many places in Colorado, the geography makes sense. Pueblo is in Pueblo County, which is the county immediately to the south of El Paso County, in which is not El Paso. For many years, Pueblo was more famous than Colorado Springs; globes and small-scale maps would show two cities in Colorado: Pueblo and Denver. Even as a kid I would see these. By the time I was looking at maps, though, Colorado Springs had exceeded Pueblo in size, and now Colorado Springs is much better known across the country and to some extent even around the world, than Pueblo is.
So why the nickname “Ruckus”? Because she fights and the Dems in Pueblo know better than to mess with her. And someone coined the slogan “I aim to raise a ruckus” and Ruckus herself loved it.
In short, she’s effective, combative…and just absolutely Deplorable.
OK so I’ll come back to this race in a bit.
I mentioned that El Paso’s delegation to the two races we worked on yesterday was very small. Seven of us in a meeting of hundreds for US Congressional District 4. Twelve of us for House District 56. Completely overshadowed by other counties, even ones we tend to think of as “small” counties.
At the State convention, though, El Paso County is by far the biggest one. We owned an entire block of chairs on the floor. A supercontinent of our own.
But only seven of us had gotten to vote for Boebert the day before.
Did I exploit the sheer envy value of my photograph of a ballot with Lauren Boebert’s name on it? Who, me?
I went over to the Hinsdale County delegation during a break and told them, “Now I know how you must feel at these things.” Hinsdale is one of the emptiest counties in Colorado, with a population of a 788 people in 2020. And Hinsdale is famous for being where Alferd Packer, the “Colorado Cannibal” had his meal of long pork.
[Aside: Here’s what the sentencing judge, presumably a Democrat, is supposed to have said when he sentenced Packard (spelled phonetically): “Stand up yah voracious man-eatin’ sonofabitch and receive yir sintince. When yah came to Hinsdale County, there was siven Dimmycrats. But you, yah et five of ’em, goddam yah. I sintince yah t’ be hanged by th’ neck ontil yer dead, dead, dead, as a warnin’ ag’in reducin’ th’ Dimmycratic populayshun of this county. Packer, you Republican cannibal, I would sintince ya ta hell but the statutes forbid it. ”
Well, that’s one answer for the question of what to do with Democrats. But not one I endorse. Probably too much mad cow disease in the meat.]
After an additional discussion about this quote (the Hinsdale folks were adamant that Packer et all of the Dimmycrats) I went back to my seat.
People who arrive at these events have to be “credentialed” and it seems like that cannot be anything but a gigantic clusterf*ck no matter what. We were supposed to start at 9 AM, didn’t come close to that, and the credentials committee finally submitted their final report (including alternates who had been made delegates) at 3 PM. After which we could vote.
So the candidates made their speeches including an electrical engineer alumnus of CU Boulder who was running for the board of regents (we’re close to the same age and may even have been in classes together). He was unopposed (no petitioners either), and nominated by acclamation; I wish him luck in the general election.
One useful bit of business that got done is the party leadership is now allowed to explicitly endorse candidates that won at the assembly, which can be used to give them a leg up over those who petitioned on.
And we had some speakers. Including…drumroll…Matt Gaetz!
(I regret that I have found no video of his speech, which was excellent.)
He was here to help out both Lauren Boebert and Dave Williams (apparently Matt’s wife and Boebert are besties). Dave Williams is our state chair, and he is running to replace Doug Lamborn in the 5th district (the one that covers most of El Paso County; the one I was in before redistricting). By all accounts Williams, should he win the primary and the general election, would be a fighter for MAGA; some think he’d be just as solid as Gaetz. Good luck, Dave!
The registration process was complicated. We got our badges (showing photo ID to claim them). We then had to walk through a doorway and they put a sticker on the back with a six letter, mixed case code on it. We were then supposed to scan a QR and give it both our badge number (on the front) and the code on the back to complete sign in. Out of a couple of thousand people, however, about a 150 didn’t do that last step. When they went to vote for committeewoman, they had to complete their registrations before they could vote, but then…the credential committee report had to be amended one more time. That caused a…er…ruckus.
The delegates had to walk right by the Pueblo County delegation to cast their ballots. As you might imagine there were a lot of Ruckus signs there. In order to avoid mobbing the voting area, delegates were divided into six roughly equal-sized groups, El Paso County was Group One (all by itself). After I voted, I looped back to the Pueblo area and held up a Ruckus sign. Next to us were a bunch of very young people holding Immer signs; then we realized they were guests, not delegates! Our spiel incorporated “Ruckus has support from actual delegates!”
Finally after all that, at about 6:30 PM (it had taken three hours to vote and hand count the ballots; that was actually a smooth process), we got to hear the results. I don’t recall the exact numbers but, with just under two thousand ballots cast:
Vera Ortagnon : roughly 200 votes. Crushed!!!
Laura Imer : roughly 500 votes.
Christy “Ruckus” Fidura : Over 1100 votes!!!
Kickass!!!
And THIS is how you kill a RINO! By Raising A Ruckus!
What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?
January 6 Tapes?
Where are the tapes? Anyone, Anyone? Bueller? Johnson??
Paging Speaker Johnson…this is your conscience calling you out on broken promises.
Boebert Day
Friday was the day that delegates from all over Colorado’s 4th Congressional District met to designate a candidate. This is Ken B*ck’s old district. Lauren Boebert who now represents Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, has moved into this district believing that she has a better chance of winning here. Her election in 2022 was the closest race for Congress anywhere in the United States; she won by a few hundred votes.
OK a bit of personal background. I live in El Paso county; that’s the one where Colorado Springs is located. It’s actually the most populous county in Colorado (even beating out the City and County of Denver). As a result of the last census, Colorado gained an eighth house seat and everything got redistricted. My old congressional district, 5 (Doug Lamborn, who is also leaving) had formerly included El Paso County and a bunch of smaller surrounding counties, now CD5 can’t even cover the whole county. A bit on the west side of the county got shaved off and given to CD 7, my piece on the east, on the prairie, got shaved off and handed over to CD4.
Finding myself in Ken B*ck’s district I have said several times that I wished I were in Boebert’s district. With her making this move…well now I am…but first she has to win the election!
It’s a near certainty that the Republican nominee will win the district; the problem is to ensure that Lauren Boebert becomes the nominee.
I was an alternate to this assembly but did manage to fill in for someone who didn’t show, so now delegate SteveInCO had the opportunity to vote.
Four candidates were vying for the nomination at the assembly. Boebert, some guy named Ted Harvey, someone else named Richard Holtorf and yet another named Jerry Sonnenberg.
As it turns out, the other three are verifiable RINOs with scores in the 60s (100=perfect conservative) though in the case of Harvey I had to talk to another former state legislator who worked with him to find it out; his term was too long ago.
Of course every single one of them talked a good game…Did you know that they are all ranchers? No? You would within five minutes of arriving at the assembly; every one of their signs said “rancher” on it.
An observer from Mars would be forgiven for concluding, on the basis of their speeches, that all four were equally conservative. (This is why listening to the speeches is pointless. However, IF you’ve been around long enough to know who the old retired RINOs are, you can sometimes figure things out by watching WHO is doing the nominating.)
So after the speeches it was time to vote. (And yes one of the other three went out of his way to say he wasn’t a carpetbagger from Rifle, and I could hear people’s surprise that he would attempt to call out Boebert that way; generally candidates at these things do not sling mud at each other.)
And at 12:20 on Friday, April 5, I happily cast my ballot for Lauren Boebert.
That felt good.
And it has been many years I could feel good casting a ballot (with the exception of the presidential primary on Super Tuesday).
So here’s the deal. To get to go to this assembly, you must attend precinct caususes; each precinct is assigned a number of delegates in proportion to the number of people who voted for the Republican candidate for governor the last gubernatorial election. (That really should be spelled goober-natorial.) At the caucus they vote for people to go. I failed to get into this (but did get into county and state house level assemblies) but secured an alternate slot. If enough people from my county failed to show up I could replace one of them. As it happens, out of 7 delegates total, one did not show up, and I was the only alternate from my county, and I got “elevated”…and so I got to vote for Boebert. (El Paso County, the 900 lb gorilla of the state, only had 7 delegates here…because only a tiny sliver of the county got put into this congressional district.)
OK so here are the rules: only candidates who get 30 percent of the vote are considered “designated” and will appear on the primary ballot. UNLESS the candidate also gets an adequate number of signatures by petition, in which case the threshold is ten percent. This is a major problem, as I will explain below.
In any case the final vote tally (with 159 votes being 30 percent, or 53 votes being ten percent) is: Boebert 215, Ted Harvey 135, Richard Holtorf 81, and Jerry Sonnenberg getting 96 votes. So only Lauren Boebert would appear on the primary ballot.
Except for those damn petitions.
Under Colorado law, you can petition onto the primary ballot and completely bypass these assemblies. Almost every incumbent GOP politician does this; they’re generally despised by the party grassroots because…they’re RINOs. Or you can petition AND go to the assembly and be designated with only ten percent of the vote.
In this case, Harvey did not petition at all, so he is out of the race, and good riddance. However Holtorf and Sonnenberg did petition (perhaps unsuccessfully, I don’t know yet) and therefore WILL be on the ballot if they were successful.
There is at least one other candidate, Flora (I don’t know if that’s a first or last name) who petitioned on and did not go through the assembly; she (?) will be on the primary ballot. There may be others.
The one bit of good news is that assembly winners go on the ballot above the petitioners.
The reason I said petitioning is a problem is that Incumbent politicians use the petition process to circumvent the party grassroots. They don’t have to pay any attention to us whatsoever; they hire someone to gather signatures for them, they end up on the primary ballot with no indication of how they got there (other than they aren’t top line on the ballot), and because of name recognition they win the primary, again. Petitioning needs to either be ditched, or require a 20% showing at the relevant assembly. But this will never happen, the incumbents know they can’t get re-elected without the petition process, so it will remain required by law, because they won’t change the law.
Other races decided on Friday were state school board…where a RINO and a good candidate ended up almost tied, so both will be on the primary ballot, and my house district (at a totally separate meeting), where there were two good people and one RINO, however his home base county (whose people he has snookered) had half of the delegates in that assembly. So it was a 50-25-25 split and the RINO will be on the ballot unopposed (no petitioners for this race). The incumbent, by the way, is a RINO who has brain cancer; he opted not to run.
I still have the (unused because unnecessary) second round ballot from the House 4th CD race; it’s going to become a treasured souvenir of the first time I got to vote for Lauren Boebert. I even have a picture of it:
Saturday (today) will be the election of RNC committee people; three candidates, the incumbent talks too much about being Hispanic and endorsed RINO McDaniel in 2022 (HELL NO!), of the two others, one has managed to turn Pueblo County red (former union democrat stronghold) and will get my vote. The third one has been spamming me a lot (almost as much as the incumbent) and I’ve been ignoring her.
News Flash
Today, it is still the case that Joe Biden didn’t Win.
I realize that to some readers, this might be a shock; surely at some point things must change and Biden will have actually won.
But the past cannot actually be changed.
It will always and forever be the case that Joe Biden didn’t win.
And if you, Leftist Lurker, want to dismiss it as dead white cis-male logic…well, you can call it what you want, but then please just go fuck off. No one here buys that bullshit–logic is logic and facts are facts regardless of skin color–and if you gave it a moment’s rational thought, you wouldn’t either. Of course your worthless education never included being able to actually reason–or detect problems with false reasoning–so I don’t imagine you’ll actually wake up as opposed to being woke.
As Ayn Rand would sometimes point out: Yes, you are free to evade reality. What you cannot do is evade the consequences of evading reality. Or to put it concretely: You can ignore the Mack truck bearing down on you as you play in the middle of the street, you won’t be able to ignore the consequences of ignoring the Mack truck.
And Ayn Rand also pointed out that existence (i.e., the sum total of everything that exists) precedes consciousness–our consciousnesses are a part of existence, not outside of it–therefore reality cannot be a “social construct” as so many of you fucked-up-in-the-head people seem to think.
So much for Leftist douchebag lurkers. For the rest of you, the regular readers and those lurkers who understand such things: I continue to carry the banner once also carried by Wheatie. His Fraudulency didn’t win.
Let’s Go, Brandon!!
Hey China!
Or rather, “Hey Chinese Communist Party and your entire array of servitors, ass-wipers, and fellators!”
You’re not even worth my time this week. When you decide to act like civilized people, maybe I’ll give you a lesson or two in how non-barbarians behave.
Hey BiteMe! (Or, Whoever Has Their Hand Rammed Up That Putrefying Meat Puppet’s Ass)
[Language warning]
You and yours have caused a lot of injury. Literal injury with your war on people who don’t want to take an untested vaccine. When people die in an emergency room because a hospital won’t admit them because they haven’t had their clot shot, that’s a crime.
I’m going to address here the insult on top of the injury, because I am among the insulted. I still have my health but apparently you want me to live under the 8th Street Bridge (which actually isn’t on 8th Street, but whatever, that’s what the I-25 overpass over Cimarron is called), so maybe if you have your way that won’t be true for long. Dreadful time of year to become homeless.
No, you’re just trying to make me unemployed, because I won’t take your fucking shots.
Well, that threat is NOT going to work. I. Won’t. Take. Your. Fucking. Shots.
And it looks like enough people agree, that you’re having to back down, you worthless asswipe.
You’re LOSING.
You LOSER.
You Chinese-bought ratfucking traitor.
I would love to see you die an agonizing, humiliating death. (This isn’t a threat, because I am not threatening to cause that death. I am just announcing my intention to party if it happens.) It would be just recompense for the way you’re killing America…and millions of Americans.
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.
(I’d like to add, I find it entirely plausible, even likely, that His Fraudulency is also His Figureheadedness. (Apparently that wasn’t a word; it got a red underline. Well it is now.) Where I differ with the hopium addicts is on the subject of who is really in charge. It ain’t anyone we like.)
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 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.
Gold has been going up, and up, and up. It touched $2300 on Wednesday, dipped on Thursday, and more than made up for the dip on Friday. And Silver Finally Woke Up. It was $2.50 over the previous week, just shy of a ten percent increase. (Gold went up less than five percent.)
Gold is well above the magic $2,067 mark. That’s the point at which the dollar is worth one cent in gold by the old gold standard of one troy ounce of gold is $20.67. Does that mean the dollar is worth a real penny? I would say it probably has more purchasing power than a cent did in the 1920s, but then we’ve gotten better at producing things…what you should see with stable money is a decline in prices as we get more productive. Instead we get a steady inflation. Sometimes very strong, but never do prices trend down. Gee, I wonder what that could be about.
(I think we all know.)
The Eclipse
Of course the big news in the hard sciences is the upcoming solar eclipse.
But I will show this map of the path of the eclipse.
A bit of a joke there but it highlights the point that only totality is going to be something more than mildly interesting. If you can get to that O! M! G! stripe, do so; the closer to the center the better.
Weather is looking bad through all of Texas with slightly better chances of good weather near the border with Mexico. But chances are, we’ll have this to say on Tuesday.
As has been pointed out a solar eclipse occurs somewhere on Earth roughly every 18 months or so. These are not rare events in that sense. But it can be centuries between occurrences at any one particular spot on Earth, so they seem like truly unusual events. Most people must travel to see one during their lifetimes. (And some make it their rather expensive hobby to try to see them all; these people are called “eclipse chasers.”)
Well I am part eclipse chaser. I’m going to this just in case the weather turns out better than expected.
See you on the 9th.
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 !!!
