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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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).

Yes, It’s True — Pictures Are In!!

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.

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.)

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.

Capitol Police At work.

Almost a hundred pictures after that one, I was in video mode and caught the guy with the megaphone getting pepper sprayed

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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).