“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.” –J. Robert Oppenheimer
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
Our various sister sites, listed in the Blogroll in the sidebar
Our beloved country is under Occupation by hostile forces.
Daily outrage and epic phuckery abound.
We can give in to despair…or we can be defiant and fight back in any way that we can.
Joe Biden didn’t win.
And we will keep saying Joe Biden didn’t win until we get His Fraudulency out of our White House.
Wolfie’s Wheatie’s Word of the Week:
chanticleer
noun
a rooster
a cock, so called from the clearness or loudness of his voice in crowing
a name for a rooster, used in medieval fables
Shown in art which is then shown in a picture
MUSIC!
Somewhere between Wheatie Music (TM) and Gregorian Chants, lies this stuff.
Nice. I like it!
THE STUFF
Ever wondered about black holes not just “bigger than a breadbox”, but sized somewhere between normal stellar-sized black holes, and the giant ones at the centers of galaxies?
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
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!
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 dipped below 2500 on Wednesday but bounced back on Thursday, only to get beaten down again on Friday. For now it seems to be sticking to a relatively narrow trading range, straddling the $2500 mark.
Silver is getting beaten up much worse.
*The SteveInCO Federal Reserve Note Suckage Index (FRNSI) is a measure of how much the dollar has inflated. It’s the ratio of the current price of gold, to the number of dollars an ounce of fine gold made up when the dollar was defined as 25.8 grains of 0.900 gold. That worked out to an ounce being $20.67+71/387 of a cent. (Note gold wasn’t worth this much back then, thus much gold was $20.67 71/387ths. It’s a subtle distinction. One ounce of gold wasn’t worth $20.67 back then, it was $20.67.) Once this ratio is computed, 1 is subtracted from it so that the number is zero when the dollar is at its proper value, indicating zero suckage.
BTW (possibly of benefit to Barb Meier) the plus or minus sign at the end of the FRNSI and Gold:Silver is simply to indicate whether the number is actually slightly above or below what I wrote and that I rounded down or up, respectively. In this case 119.850+ means a bit above 119.850, so I had to round down. A bit more and I would have rounded up to 119.851 and written 119.851-.
A PS. Last week I gave the value of 71/387ths out to about a gazillion decimal places, but it turns out my suspicions were correct: they were garbage after a while. I ginned up a spreadsheet to do long division for as long as one likes, and 71/387ths repeats after 21 decimal places and is: 0.183 462 532 299 741 602 067 (then 183 462, etc). So what? Well take a look at the 2067 at the end. As in $20.67.
The Sun
Resuming our survey of our solar system, we take up the Sun.
It is tempting to call the Sun the 800 pound gorilla of the solar system…but this would be a bad idea because it understates the matter. Jupiter is more massive than the other planets put together, so it is the 800 lb gorilla of the solar system.
The sun is 1,048 times as massive as Jupiter, which makes it the 400 ton brachiosaurus of the solar system. (And in case you’re wondering, the Sun is 332,950 times the mass of the Earth.)
It’s also very different from every other thing in the solar system; it’s a ball of hot, ionized gas and is generating 383 septillion watts (that’s 24 zeros) of power, or that many joules per second. And it has been doing so for 4.6 billion years and will continue to do so for another 4-5 billion years at least. No other body in the solar system does that–the rest shine in our night sky because they reflect the light from the Sun.
It shines like that because its surface is at a temperature of 5,772 K…though it is much, much hotter at the center, 15.7 million K.
Or, to put it in five words, “the Sun is a star.” A star a bit above the median, but about average. It’s brighter than 85% of all stars in this galaxy (many of the ones that beat it really break the curve though), and compared to other nearby stars it’s more massive than 95% of them.
Unlike other stars that are trillions or even quadrillions of kilometers away, the Sun averages 149,597,870.7 kilometers from the Earth.
How do we know that? We bounce radar off of it. But before that…well, that’s a fascinating story having to do with transits of Venus across the face of the Sun as seen from Earth. I’ve told this story before here (yes it’s about Venus transits but tells the whole story): https://letreasonreign.wordpress.com/2012/05/13/venus-transit-6-june-2012/ but here’s a different take:
As I mentioned before, the Sun is made of ionized gas. It’s 73.5% hydrogen, 24.8 percent helium…and remaining 1+% is basically everything else (mostly oxygen, a lot of carbon, iron, neon… This is pretty close to the composition of interstellar gas in nebulas, which is, after all, what collapsed to form the Sun in the first place.
Since the Sun is a ball of gas, it has no solid surface. But it has a diameter, given as 1,390,000 km (versus Earth’s 12,756 or so km). What’s that the diameter of, if there’s no solid surface?
What we see when we look at the Sun is a glowing sphere; below that “surface” we cannot see because ionized gas is not transparent. We call that surface the photosphere, from the Greek for light and sphere…in other words, “ball of light.”
It’s not a good idea to look at the Sun, it’s an even worse idea to look at it through a telescope. But you can cut the light down by 999,999/1,000,000ths and take some decent photographs. (However, you’ll see my photographs here instead.)
You might be wondering why I used a black and white photograph. It’s not a black and white photograph; it turns out the Sun isn’t yellow, it’s white.
If you look closely, you’ll see some dark spots; these are sunspots and we’ll get to them. For now, I’d like you to notice something else, a subtle darkening near the edges of the disc. This is known as limb darkening, and it doesn’t mean what you might think it means.
If you were looking at a ping pong ball or something similarly white, you’d see darkening near the edges; it’s that kind of shading that conveys to your eyes and brain that the ping pong ball is a sphere.
But that’s not what’s going on here; the Sun doesn’t reflect light, it generates it. Every point on the surface radiates light and heat in every direction (including back into the Sun where it is absorbed and radiated again). So a point near the edge of the disc should be sending us just as much light as a point near the center of the disc, instead it looks dimmer. It turns out this is a consequence of the light we see being emitted from anywhere within a depth of a few hundred miles below the “surface”, with the upper layers cooler than the lower ones. More discussion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limb_darkening
If you could somehow stand on the “surface” of the Sun without being instantly vaporized, you’d weigh 27.9 times what you do on Earth. The escape velocity for a rocket would be 617.7 km/sec (versus 11.2 km/sec for Earth). I doubt a rocket could be built that would do that…it’s actually over 0.2 percent the speed of light.
We actually have a solar orbiter probe…which if you think about it, Earth itself could be thought of as such a thing. But no I mean an actual spacecraft, the Parker Solar probe, launched in 2018. It is in orbit and gets as close as 4.3 million kilometers (compare to the 150 million kilometers we average on “Spaceship Earth”). It moves as fast as 690,000 km/hr or 191 km/sec, which is 0.064% the speed of light…by far the fastest thing we’ve ever built. Its main task is to study the solar corona. But I am getting ahead of myself.
The Sun, like the Earth, is a sphere, and, like the Earth consists of concentric layers. The Sun’s core, the inner 25% by distance, is where the nuclear fusion happens. Surrounding that is the radiative zone, about twice as thick. The energy generated in the core works its way though this zone by radiation…gamma rays from the fusion eventually weakening to something that won’t kill us. It can take ten thousand years for the radiation to get through, because it bounces from nucleus to nucleus in a random walk, so the light you see now is the result of fusion that happened as we were emerging from the last ice age.
Both the core and the radiative zone rotate uniformly, but the next zone, the convective zone, does not; the parts of it near the equator rotate in less time than the areas below the poles. The primary mode of heat transfer in this layer is convection; hot material rises, carrying the heat to the surface; after cooling it sinks down again to get reheated. The boundary between the two is called the tachocline, here is were the layers actually slide past each other because of the differences in rotation rate. It’s thought that this layer creates the Sun’s magnetic field.
Above that layer is the photosphere, which is cool enough and transparent enough that the photons that make their way to it finally, are free to go…and one in a billion end up hitting Earth eight and a half minutes later–and turn night into day.
Above the photosphere is the chromosphere, which is visible briefly as a reddish flash at the very start and end of totality during a solar eclipse.
Above this is a transition region where helium becomes ionized (visible in ultraviolet light, from space), and then, finally the corona.
The corona–and for that matter everything else outside of the photosphere–is effectively invisible to us here on Earth…except during a total solar eclipse.
As seen here, in this photograph I took during the last eclipse:
If you look closely at this picture you will see pink “flames” around the disk of the Moon. They should look vermillion; alas they’re blown out in this picture. These are prominences, and are caused by the interaction of ionized (charged) gas with the Sun’s magnetic field.
The prominences are a lot more prominent (ahem) in this picture, near the bottom of the disk, and there’s also a beauty of an arch at 3 o’clock.
Prominences can be seen by telescopes with the proper filters to blot out all but the hydrogen alpha wavelength of light. Here’s a closeup taken by a competent photographer, with the correct colors:
Besides pumping out visible light and heat copiously and relentlessly for billions of years (even more persistent than the IRS), the Sun creates gigantic numbers of neutrinos from fusion. Neutrinos rarely interact with anything; the neutrinos generated in the Sun’s core leave the Sun seconds later, moving at the speed of light through everything without being affected, like Democrats and the criminal justice system. Even at this distance from the Sun, every square centimeter that’s face-on to the Sun has ten billion neutrinos pass through it every second (less of course if the surface is at an oblique angle to the sunlight).
By the way, it means this many neutrinos pass through every square centimeter of you every second. And don’t think it doesn’t happen at night…they go right on through the Earth as if it’s not there, and come up at you from the ground. The good news is if they go right through you, they do nothing at all to you. It’s when you stop one–very rare but it does happen–that you’ve actually taken a hit. This will happen to one person out of four during a normal lifetime. (At ten billion per second per square centimeter, and one chance in four of getting a hit with the rest passing through harmlessly…you can see this is a rare event.) A single hit from radiation is nothing, though; you get vastly more from other sources. (Like potassium as in bananas.)
Far more important to us is the Sun’s magnetic field. As I’ve said the Sun is largely ionized gas…which is to say it’s full of stuff with electrical charges. This stuff moves (the Sun rotates, on average once every 28 days or so), and moving electrical charges generate magnetic fields.
The Sun’s magnetic field has a role in everything from sunspots to prominences to full-on coronal mass ejections; that’s where the Sun belches and flings a bunch of plasma out into space. If one of these hits Earth, it can muck with satellites and the power grid, conceivably even causing massive blackouts. The worst of these was the Carrington event of 1859. We just barely had a grid then, of telegraph lines. Nonetheless some telegraph stations caught fire. It was possible to send messages without supplying any power to the system. The chances of another like it within the next decade (which would be catastrophic) are rated at well under 1 percent.
The magnetic field of the Sun goes through cycles, gradually increasing over the span of roughly 11 years, then flipping polarity, decreasing, and then repeating the process with the magnetic field in the opposite direction. Sunspots, prominences and CMEs all increase (or decrease) in frequency as the magnetic field increases (or decreases).
But even when the Sun is calm, there is a constant stream of charged particles from the corona, outward in all directions; this is the solar wind and it would have long since stripped our atmosphere away were it not for the fact that Earth’s magnetic field deflects almost all of it. In fact this is why Mars has almost no atmosphere: It has no magnetic field.
Many ancient cultures worshiped the Sun. They realized that without it there’d be no life. We know more about the Sun, but if anything that just makes it even more impressive than we had realized. But we don’t think it is a god any more. We just call it the 400 ton brachiosaurus of the Solar System.
Already late…I don’t feel like this ready, but as Klingons would say, today is a good day to die. Hit Publish.
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
Our various sister sites, listed in the Blogroll in the sidebar
Our beloved country is under Occupation by hostile forces.
Daily outrage and epic phuckery abound.
We can give in to despair…or we can be defiant and fight back in any way that we can.
Joe Biden didn’t win.
And we will keep saying Joe Biden didn’t win until we get His Fraudulency out of our White House.
Wolfie’s Wheatie’s Word of the Week:
irrelate
adjective
unrelated
irrelative
unconnected
not associated
not connected by kinship or marriage
MUSIC!
How about some REAL country? Vintage, but still awesome.
Oh, that is…..
THE STUFF
Nobody gets excited about LEAD any more. Well, heck, at least one person does. Just had to share.
Of course lead is special! That’s why it needs to be in a safe – along with the gunpowder, the gold, the rhodium, and the EMP-proof incandescent light bulbs!
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
Our various sister sites, listed in the Blogroll in the sidebar
Our beloved country is under Occupation by hostile forces.
Daily outrage and epic phuckery abound.
We can give in to despair…or we can be defiant and fight back in any way that we can.
Joe Biden didn’t win.
And we will keep saying Joe Biden didn’t win until we get His Fraudulency out of our White House.
Big News!
Two of our newest authors are going to have regular columns in our daily opens every week!
On WEDNESDAYS, Gail Combs will be presenting her evidence-packed deep dives and analyses, which have proven to be a thorn in the side of the enemy. This will be especially important as the November Presidential Election approaches. Depoppers, Caballists, Marxists, globalists, pedophiles, satanists, Fabians and other brands of social destroyers are going to have a BAD HAIR DAY every Wednesday, and I’m there for it!!!
Bring Your Own Camels!!!
On FRIDAYS, PAVACA will be presenting a weekly post related to health, particularly vaccines, pharmaceuticals, BIG PHARMA, nutrition, diet, and all things medical. We will NOT be going into another “plandemic” without some serious brain-power in opposition to the madness, and that opposition will be coming STRONGLY from this site. HEALTHY FRIDAYS are going to be a thing!
AND – in honor of the past – if people want to bring a drink or two – for medicinal purposes, of course – trust that Wolf Moon approves!
Thus, please welcome Gail Combs and PAVACA to regular authorship in the daily opens!
I am deeply grateful for their help. This is the Lord’s work. While we ARE a church here, and not an unimportant one, Deplorable Patriot directly serves our God by singing for some far bigger and very important congregations. It is critical that she spend more time with those believers, and not be run ragged by 4 nights a week of posts on this site. Thus, I am extremely grateful to Gail and CV for stepping up, thereby allowing DePat to bring her talents to the believers of St. Louis. You have made a difference, ladies! BRAVA!!
a portable reed organ of the 16th and 17th centuries
Shown in pictures
MUSIC!
How about some music played on a regal?
Nice.
THE STUFF
Imagine the very long Oppenheimer movie distilled down to just 30 minutes of video that you can stand, without all the interesting but potentially distracting and boring story details that many people can’t abide.
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.
Silver up nicely, palladium higher than platinum again (platinum is on effing sale, people), but all that pales in comparison to the big news which is:
GOLD BUSTED $2500 ON FRIDAY. Up $51.40 on Friday alone, yes, we’re over 2500 “ferns” (FEderal Reserve Notes) on gold.
The SteveInCO Federal Reserve Note Suckage Index (FRNSI) stands at 121.357+. [Edit: 120.357+…I forgot to subtract 1]. (This 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, minus 1 (so that an index of 0 means the dollar is at its original value and doesn’t suck at all). I use that clumsy phrasing because the dollar was defined as a certain amount of gold, such that an ounce of gold was $20.672. It’s a subtle distinction. One ounce of gold wasn’t worth $20.672 back then, it was $20.672.)
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
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.)
Friday morning gold was well into the 2460s which as far as I know was a record. Silver has basically gone back to sucking more than it should.
The SteveInCO Federal Reserve Note Suckage Index (FRNSI) stands at 117.244-. (This 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, minus 1 (so that an index of 0 means the dollar is at its original value and doesn’t suck at all). 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.)
In light of the above, let me add the following. From 1837 through 1933, 25.8 grains of .900 fine gold was a dollar (by definition of the dollar). Thus a one dollar gold coin should have weighed that much (and a 20 dollar coin would weigh 516 grains). This works out to 23 2/9ths grains of pure gold, the rest being “crud.” (And a 20 dollar coin had 464 4/9ths grains of pure gold in it, similarly the rest being “crud”). “Crud” of course is my highly technical term for the stuff they add to the alloy, however it could be as much as five percentage points silver before 1873 (and one percentage point after) with the rest being copper. Not truly crud, it’s not as if it was zinc or something. Who would make coins out of zinc?
