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?

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 (i.e., paper) Prices

Last week:

Gold $2,498.20
Silver $28.04
Platinum $931.00
Palladium $933.00
Rhodium $5,050.00
FRNSI* 119.850+
Gold:Silver 89.094+

This week, 3PM Mountain Time, Kitco “ask” prices. Markets have closed for the weekend.

Gold $2,578.70
Silver $30.80
Platinum $1,004.00
Palladium $1,092.00
Rhodium $5,100.00
FRNSI* 123.745-
Gold:Silver 83.724+

Lots going on…gold surged on Thursday, and I was expecting a beat-down on Friday. Instead, it rose almost 20 more dollars. The FRNSI went up quite a bit, nearly four points! Silver did even better on a percentage basis. Note that an ounce of gold is worth 83.724 ounces of silver…but last week it was worth 89.094 ounces. That means that, in comparison to gold, silver became more valuable.

*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.

Piling On

One claim that Flat Earthers (“flerfers”) make is that there aren’t any time lapse videos of the sun doing a full circle around the viewer in Antarctica; that there’s always some sort of eight our gap in the videos.

This is a LIE. Don’t fall for it. Here is FIVE SOLID DAYS worth of timelapse with no hiccups and no breaks, taken in early March just before south polar sunset.

By the way there’s an absolute plethora of videos about the Amundsen Scott station, tours of the main building, tours of the buried areas, tours of the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory (the largest science experiment by volume), and so on. And plenty of ways to get there as a tourist…provided you have $60K (or more). That’s roughly 24 ounces of gold right now.

Also we have a few cases of flerfers trying to run an experiment and finding they don’t get the results they expected…and not coming to the obvious conclusion.

There are three instances here: One where people stood on opposite sides of a body of water, put lights at 17 feet above water level, then tried to establish a line of site through temporary barriers with holes in them at 17 feet above water level. On a flat earth, there’s be no problem; on a curved earth, however. the barriers in the middle would cut the beam off. And that’s what happened; the light had to be raised a number of feet to be visible through the hole. Second, a gyroscope was seen to precess 15 degrees per hour…as it would if the earth were rotating over a period of 24 hours. On a flat, non-rotating Earth, it shouldn’t precess at all. Third, a striped flag was seen to disappear from the bottom to the top as it sailed off, again, as predicted by Globe Earth but not by Flat Earth.

This all forced the Flat Earth charlatans to do a lot of tap dancing, and one body language expert thinks at least one of the Big Flerfer “names” knows he’s a lying sack of shit. (Well, they didn’t say the “sack of shit” part.)

Mars

A while back I wrote something about why Mars sucks. Meaning, why it had such a thin atmosphere and virtually no surface water. This is interesting because by every indication (everything from visible stream beds on the surface, to minerals that only form in water, to sedimentary rocks which form in fairly stationary bodies of water like lakes and oceans), Mars used to have liquid running water on its surface, which in turn implies it once had a much thicker atmosphere. (There is still a fair amount of water on Mars, in the form of permafrost below the ground. This will be useful should we start human exploration.)

And it turns out that there are two key things going on here: one, Mars has weak surface gravity making it easier for the atmosphere (including water vapor) to escape and two, Mars has no magnetic field, allowing the solar wind to help that process by stripping away the atmosphere. Both in turn are consequences of the fact that it’s considerably smaller than Earth. (There’s no magnetic field because the interior of the planet has cooled off, because it is smaller than Earth, which hasn’t cooled off internally yet, and still has molten iron inside.)

This in turn has a bearing on the question of life. We’re mostly convinced nothing lives on Mars (though there’s a significant minority of scientists who make plausible arguments that there could be). But the tougher question is whether Mars ever had life, back when conditions were much better. That’s largely dependent on how long the conditions were good, how rapidly life actually develops…and whether it’s a rare event even given the right conditions. All of these are very much open questions at the moment; the frontiers of human knowledge.

Time to revisit Mars.

Orbit

First, where is it? Its orbit averages 1.52 AUs in radius…which is to say it’s 52 percent further away from the Sun than is Earth. But that is an average; it varies from 1.38 at one end of the elliptical orbit, to 1.67 AUs at the other. This is a large variance and Mars therefore has a much greater orbital eccentricity than most planets, at 0.0934. (0 is perfectly circular, 0.9 and above are very “cigar” shaped with the Sun close to one end of the cigar. No planet comes close to that though some comets do.) Since Earth is at 1 AU and orbits in 1 sidereal year, it completes one orbit in 1.88 (Earth) years or 686.90 Earth days.

As seen from Earth, Mars moves from west to east against the background stars, usually. It can appear to travel in the opposite direction at times, when we “lap” it in our orbit around the Sun. Here’s an animation from 2020, showing the actual relative positions of Mars and Earth, and an inset showing how Mars appears to move across our sky. (Note how, even though Mars’s orbit appears to be circular, it’s not centered on the Sun; that’s because in fact it is very slightly elliptical.)

If you watched that and paid attention to the trace of Mars across the sky as seen from Earth, you might wonder why it’s not just a straight line. That’s because the two planets don’t orbit in exactly the same plane. The Earth’s orbital plane is the zodiac line, Mars is at a slightly different tilt so even though it roughly follows the zodiac, it doesn’t stay precisely on it.

Surface Conditions

So Mars is significantly further away from the Sun and one would expect it to be colder…and it is, with an average surface temperature of -69C or -60C depending on how you take that average. (This is Antarctic winter type temperatures.) Yes, you will see that it sometimes gets up to +35C, but that’s rare; it’s just as liable to get down to -110C.

What else would you experience on the surface other than it being cucking fold there? Surface gravity is 0.3794 of Earth…almost exactly 3/8ths. (A 98 pound weakling is a 37 pound weakling there.) Air pressure depends on elevation, like it does here on Earth. Our scientists picked an arbitrary “sea level” that is about average for Mars (there is of course no sea), and at that level atmospheric pressure is 0.00628 our sea level pressure…not even one percent! We couldn’t live in that, even if it were pure oxygen, which it is not; it’s 96% CO₂. There is a fraction of a percent oxygen but when you multiply that by how thin the air is, it might as well not be there. There is actually more argon than oxygen.

This is not to say there isn’t wind on Mars, and even dust storms, sometimes those storms can cover huge parts of the surface; at least one even covering the entire planet just as our first Mars orbiter arrived in 1971. These tend to happen when Mars is nearest to the Sun, and they help keep it warmer than it otherwise would be.

Another aspect of Martian weather is that the surface radiation is extreme, because there is nothing to block the solar wind and also nothing to block ultraviolet light. Solar flares and the like would cook you just as much as they would on the Moon.

Does Mars have seasons? Yes, cold, and colder. But seriously, yes. The axis is tipped a bit more than 25 degrees, and that causes seasons just as it does on Earth.

The Martian day is 24^h 39^m 36^s long on average. That’s noontime to noontime; to avoid confusion with the Earth day, we call the Martian day a “sol.” Of course since it is orbiting the Sun just like we are, it has to rotate slightly more than one time on its axis to do this, it has to rotate another half degree or so to account for the Sun not being in the same direction against the stars as it was the day before. The true “God’s Eye View” rotation of Mars (i.e., relative to the stars) is 24^h 37^m 22.7^s. Visitors to Mars would have an extra 39.6 minutes to kill every day. And this matters a great deal to some people even now, because Mars surface rovers only function in the daylight (because they run off solar panels, besides, it’s hard to see in the dark anyway). So the scientists and mission controllers here must follow the Martian day night cycle. Imagine a job where every day you have to wake up and go to bed 40 minutes later every day; you’d be out of sync with your family pretty quickly, and it would take about 36 days before things got back in sync.

Size

Mars has a radius of 3396 km, or about 53% of Earth’s. Which means a Mars globe and an Earth globe to scale should have the Earth globe looking about twice the width as the Mars globe.

Mars’s surface area is 144 million square kilometers, 28.4 percent of Earth’s. BUT…Earth is mostly covered by water, so Earth’s land area is 149 million square kilometers. Virtually the same. So there’s a lot of real estate there, however, as of now it’s about as valuable as that land just west of Miami or San Francisco.

Here is a map, with elevation coded by color.

Note the northern hemisphere would largely be ocean, if there were an ocean, with the south almost all highlands. But there is a big basin, the deepest/lowest spot on the planet, in the south at 60 degrees longitude–this is the Hellas basin, and likely an old impact basin. Another smaller basin is at about 320 west. But the true highlands area straddling the equator at 240 degrees is the “Tharsis bulge.” There are three white peaks in a line running southwest to northeast, then west of that, an isolated white peak. That peak is Olympus Mons, the largest volcano known to man. It’s so large you could be on its slope and have no idea you were on a volcano, just that the land has a gentle slope to it.

This thing is BIG. Here it is compared to France.

The other tourist attraction on Mars is Valles Marineris, a canyon 4000 km long, 200 km wide, and up to 7 km deep. It would stretch most of the way across the United States. It cuts through the left hand side of the red area on the map. There are other smaller canyons thought to have been cut by running water, but Valles Marineris is actually thought by some to be a rift zone from plate tectonics, one that failed as the mantle cooled too much for such things. (Photographed in infrared which apparently has better contrast.)

Moons

Mars has two moons, insignificant little things that weren’t discovered until August 12 and 18, 1877, by Asaph Hall. They are too small to have forced themselves into spherical shapes. The inner, larger moon is Phobos (named after the Greek deity of panic and fear) roughly 22 km across (it’s hard to average it when it’s basically shaped like a potato), with Deimos (named after the Greek deity of dread and terror) being 12 km across (same caveat).

The names make sense, because Mars was after all the god of war. (In Greek mythology this god was known as Ares, and a lot of scientific terms to do with Mars actually derive from this root, e.g., “areography” analogous to “geography”)

Phobos has an average orbital radius of 9,377 km, while Deimos has one of 23,460 km. Phobos orbits Mars in a mere 7.66 hours while Deimos orbits in 30.35 hours.

Note that Phobos orbits Mars faster than Mars rotates. These are both in the same direction (counterclockwise as seen from over Mars’s north pole), so Phobos’s actual west to east motion overwhelms its apparent daily east-to-west trip across the sky as Mars rotates. So, it actually rises in the west and sets in the east!

There is some thought that Phobos could be used as a transit point for people traveling to and from Mars; imagine how convenient it would be to set up a space station there. There’s plenty of room for such a thing there.

Exploration of Mars

Mars is undoubtedly the best explored planet other than, of course, Earth. The first successful flyby of another planet was by Mariner 4 in 1965. The first successful orbiter for another planet was Mariner 9 in 1971…at which time Mars was suffering a planet wide dust storm. Fortunately it cleared while the spacecraft was still alive, and we finally discovered the great volcanoes and Valles Marineris. (All prior flybys had just happened to fly by when the wrong side of Mars was presented.) The Soviets tried multiple times but had my luck, having few successes. They were the first to attempt a landing…and failed, repeatedly. They finally succeeded with a flyby about the same time we put Mariner 9 in orbit. (They had better luck with Venus, which is harder. Go figure.)

Finally in July and September 1976 the two Viking landers successfully touched down on Mars. Here is the first photograph taken from the surface of Mars. (With one caveat. The Russians successfully landed on Mars in 1971…but the spacecraft went belly up less than two minutes later, having transmitted part of a picture. I can only imagine the profanity they must have used.)

And a panorama, which I remember being printed on the front page of the newspaper (with messed-up colors that made the sky look blue):

One of their missions was to search for life–presumably microbial life–by running various tests on soil samples. Although most think the tests returned negative results on the whole, there was enough activity in some of the tests that some to this day hold out hope that there was, in fact, life there.

Since then, of course, we’ve had a plethora of orbiters and rovers, but as yet no sample-return mission. China has gotten into the act.

But where to from here? Elon Musk has famously pushed for actual permanent human habitation on Mars, with an aggressive timeline. The idea would be to send one of his Starships to Mars, after refueling in Earth orbit, then on Mars making fuel from the CO₂ in the atmosphere and subsurface ice, which would be used to make methane and oxygen. Not the best fuel in the world, but far better than lugging it all the way from Earth (which would require MUCH bigger rockets to launch the mission in the first place). This is similar to the Mars Direct concept put forth in the 1990s by Robert Zubrin, which involves sending a return vehicle first, waiting for the next launch window and sending a habitat with crew and another return vehicle, then again every launch window. Habitats would accumulate on the surface, and fuel would be manufactured for both the return vehicles and for rovers. By spacing the habitats and return vehicles several hundred miles apart, a network of them is eventually set up, and they can even back up for each other in emergencies since they would be in rover range of each other. (And if a previously sent return vehicle fails, there’s one that came with the crew during this launch window.)

Mars is in some ways an ideal target. There are resources there that could be used by human visitors; carbon from the atmosphere, water from subsurface ice. We could breathe there, indefinitely, with help from machinery. We could likely grow food there too. Everything we can create there is less stuff we have to schlep there in the first place. In many ways, it’s a better bet than the Moon, even if it is scores of times further away.

There was an epic set of novels by Kim Stanley Robinson describing the future on Mars, with the first bases, terraforming, and settlement, they are “Red Mars,” “Green Mars” (as some plant life takes hold), and “Blue Mars” as Mars gets an ocean. In fact there’s even a Martian tricolor flag inspired by these classic books, with red, green and blue.

How feasible is that? Can Mars ever be that earthlike?

Maybe more than you might think! It turns out that a big magnet (I can’t seem to locate how powerful it would have to be, but it’s something we could put there) placed at the L1 point between Mars and the Sun might actually be enough so that Mars would find itself in the “tail” of the magnetic field, now protected from the solar wind.

https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-wants-to-launch-a-giant-magnetic-shield-to-make-mars-habitable

The people putting forth this idea claim we might see significant thickening of the Martian atmosphere in years, not decades or centuries. The atmosphere would be mostly carbon dioxide…and that is a greenhouse gas. It might get warm enough even to melt the subsurface water, eventually.

We might not be able to breathe the air, but if the pressure is high enough, we can ditch “space suits” and just wear an oxygen mask over our faces, and maybe a parka if we need to keep warm.

I definitely see our future involving Mars in a big way…provided of course we have a future. I can’t imagine us ever making it if current trends continue…unless Musk is able to pull a rabbit out of his hat, quickly. Because 40 or maybe only 20 years from now we might not have a civilization capable of it any more.

November is important.

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.

—Ayn Rand Lexicon (aynrandlexicon.com)

Justice Must Be Done.

Trump, it is supposed, had some documents.

Biden and company stole the country.

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.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot Prices

Last week:

Gold $2,513.10
Silver $29.88
Platinum $973.00
Palladium $988.00
Rhodium $5,050.00

This week, at Friday close:

Gold $2,504.30
Silver $28.92
Platinum $936.00
Palladium $993.00
Rhodium $4,975.00
FRNSI* 120.146-

Note: Five weeks ago gold closed at 2,387.10.

Gold seemed to move around a fair amount between $2500 and $2530 or so. I don’t believe it ever dipped below $2500 this week but I wasn’t watching it continuously and was very preoccupied at work today and never looked. Notice that palladium has pulled further ahead from platinum; it’s the only thing that went up this last week. Silver dropped nearly a dollar, which is over three percent.

*The SteveInCO Federal Reserve Note Suckage Index (FRNSI) stands at 114.486+. (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. 25.8 grains of .900 fine gold was a dollar. This works out to 23.22 grains of pure gold. With 480 grains in a troy ounce, you can do the arithmetic as fractions (rather than decimals to get a precise value) to find one troy ounce of gold was 20 260/387ths dollars (precisely) or 20.671834625323 dollars (approximately–I suspect the decimal won’t repeat until 386 digits have gone by). It’s a subtle distinction. One ounce of gold wasn’t worth $20.67+ back then, it was twenty dollars and 67 71/387 cents)

PS: I was able to do the arithmetic in double precision and got 0.1834625322997416041470586378636653535068035125732421875 followed by zeros. How much of that might be roundoff error, I do not know. Note that there is an 8637 followed by an 8636…darn, almost started repeating.

(OK it’s 22:04 MT, time to hit “Publish.”)

Flat Earth?

My opinion on this is well known.

But let’s play devil’s advocate for a bit.

Usually I see something like this presented as the way the Earth looks. (Although some say this has been changing recently.) In essence, north is towards the center of the disk, and south is towards the rim. Antarctica, rather than being a (very) roughly circular continent straddling the south pole on the globe, is a raised rim near the edge. East and west would depend on where you’re standing, but wherever you are, “east” is counterclockwise on the disk, and “west” is clockwise.

Things seem a bit vaguer when it comes to discussing the sun and moon, but what I usually see is something like this (my apologies for the extra white space…it’s actually part of the image):

The Sun and Moon are depicted as considerably smaller than the Earth, and relatively close by; here they are less than one earth radius (i.e., the radius of the disk). And they are below a dome of some sort, which many associate with the Biblical firmament. The stars (and presumably the planets) are either on or beyond that dome.

There appears to be an immediate problem here. The entire surface of the Earth is lit by the Sun, at all times. Thus it would seem that the very existence of nighttime is proof that this can’t be right. However, the claim is that the sun does not shine in all directions, but is more like a directed spotlight, lighting only part of the Earth at any given time.

The sun travels in a circular path over the Earth’s surface, one circuit per day, and that circle is centered around the north pole, though the circle varies in size from season to season, as shown on the left side of the following diagram (with the left side being the “conventional” picture). The red path is the one the Sun follows in winter, the orange path around the equinoxes (March and September), with the yellow being the beginning of summer.

So for us people living in North America, we see the sun fairly high in the southern sky in June when it’s on the yellow track, but lower in the sky in December when it’s on the red track, and farther away. (NB: It should be possible to measure changes to the apparent size of the Sun, where it appears larger in summer and smaller in winter, if this is a true description of things.)

Someone in Australia, on the other hand, should see the Sun closest to them at noon, their time…and it will pass to their north.

This is indeed what we see, but broadly speaking the same prediction is made by the globe earth model, so you can’t use this to show which one is right.

Narrowly speaking. on the other hand, the two differ somewhat in terms of what path the sun will appear moving across the sky. Globe earth predicts the sun will follow a certain arc across the sky then drop below the horizon, following the continuation of the arc. Flat Earth predicts a different path across the sky, particularly in the Southern hemisphere, and also does not predict the sun will drop below the horizon. Globe prediction: On the first day of southern summer, the sun will rise in the south east, and climb into the sky on a northward slope, eventually crossing directly north of the viewer halfway across, then set in the southwest. Flat earth prediction: On the first day of southern summer the sun comes into view in the northeast, arcs across to the north, and disappears from view in the northwest.

I’ve been to the Southern hemisphere–though not outside the red circle–and can attest the midday sun was indeed to the north of me. But again that’s expected by both flat and globe earth models. Unfortunately I didn’t think to take note of where it rose and set.

Note though that the truly dramatic differences are in Antarctica. Which makes sense because the two different versions of what Antarctica must be are quite different, more so than, say, Greenland which is near the center of the disk in one model, or near the north pole in the other. It’s either this:

…or that white ring around the rim of flat earth.

And it should be easy to tell, if you’re there. For instance, going from Wilkes Land to Ellsworth Land should be about 4000km if globe earth is correct, but on Flat Earth the shortest way to do it is to cut across the disk, which is to say, cross over the north pole; distance unknown (since no flat earth map ever includes a scale) but certainly a lot more than 4000km.

But I’ve been talking about the Sun a lot, so I’m going to focus on that. On flat earth, a person standing in Antarctica should see an even more exaggerated version of the sun motion I talked about before…becoming visible to the northeast or even, perhaps the north-northeast, coming closer and being highest in the sky when directly north of the view, then receding off to the northwest or maybe even the north-northwest.

Globe Earth predicts something else entirely. During southern summer, provided you are inside the Antarctic circle as shown on the globe earth map above, there should be at least one day every year where the Sun doesn’t set at all. The further south, the more days that are like this; at the south pole the sun wouldn’t set for six months. In fact over the course of a 24 hour day, it circles completely around you, getting lower in the sky to your south (unless you’re at the south pole, where its height above the horizon will be constant) but not setting.

So all we have to do is go to Antarctica during southern summer, and look.

Well, this is supposedly impossible, according to proponents of Flat Earth. You won’t be able to hitch a ride there (none available), and if you were to buy a boat or an airplane and try to sail or fly there…you’ll be killed by those desperate to keep you from being able to prove the globe wrong.

This turns out to be incorrect; over 30,000 people a year visit Antarctica as tourists. People have cross country skied to the south pole. This company will even arrange a trip to the south pole itself (though who knows how much it costs): https://www.antarcticacruises.com/

But it is difficult and expensive, making it not an option for most flat earthers…or for that matter, most globe earthers.

Fortunately, Pastor Will Duffy is offering to pay trip expenses for 12 each, flat earthers and globe earthers (we are talking influencers, not just adherents–Or I’d sign up and cross Antarctica off my bucket list for cheap). The purpose is to go to Antarctica during its summer and see whether there is a 24 hour sun or not. Thus far he has three flat earthers and eight globe earthers signed up. https://www.the-final-experiment.com/participants

OK now I revert to globe earther, trying not to laugh at the inanity of this.

We’re already seeing a couple of things happen in the flat earther camp. One, the three going on the Final Experiment are being condemned by many of the others. Also, many are trying to rework their model to account for a 24 hour sun in Antarctica, after years of denying any such thing could be true…almost as if, in fact, they do expect it will turn out to be true.

And, as is pointed out here: https://youtu.be/7xoW49mkLyw?t=178 if the flat earthers actually went back and reported that by golly they saw a 24 hours sun, they’d simply be accused of having been bought off. Or never having really been a flat earther to begin with (in exactly the way some Christians will accuse those who lose their faith of never having really been a Christian to begin with).

So what I see is Flat Earthers running scared when someone offers to pay the expense for this–change the theory, start condemning the participants…but not one single globe earther is running scared, being ostracized, or anything like that.

So who’s trying to run a cover-up here? Who’s acting as if they’re scared to find out the truth?

On a closing note, Antarctica proves to be a problem for flat earth anyway:

PS: I was about to write this, and saw that Rayzorback has posted a newer version of the 200 Proofs video by Eric Dubay. Well, fortunately someone has done a debunk (though it may be of the older video). [looking at points 55 (25:01) through 59 (ending at 27:22) will address 24 hour sun claims and other similar ones.]

Unfortunately, in order to get through it in any reasonable amount of time he has to skip over a lot of background and just say “This person doesn’t understand physics,” which although true is unhelpful. So, Rayzorback…pick your ten favorite (with your absolute favorite first) points from the video you posted…give their numbers…and I will put two hours worth of effort into countering those ten points, a bit more thoroughly than “Professor Dave” did. At my option I may divide that time amongst all ten or really concentrate on a subset of them. I make this offer in spite of the fact that I believe you will simply dismiss anything I have to say, just as you dismiss people when they debunk the points you have raised in the past (such as Wolf finding air flights you insist don’t exist).

My apologies for the delay. Tonight was a comedy of errors.

Check back later; I will insert a commentary. [It’s posted.] Right now I just need to get this posted as fast as possible.

Sorry I forgot to delete that when copying it from five weeks ago. And of course someone spotted it and called me on it so I can’t just wipe it out of existence.

Here’s hoping I manage to delete all four of these paragraphs the next time.

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.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot Prices.

Kitco Ask. Last week:

Gold $2,508.70
Silver $29.11
Platinum $964.00
Palladium $975.00
Rhodium $5,100.00

This week, markets closed as of 3PM MT.

Gold $2,513.10
Silver $29.88
Platinum $973.00
Palladium $988.00
Rhodium $5,050.00

Gold was as high as 2,526 or so but then got hammered on Thursday, mostly recovering. Similar things were true of the other metals (except rhodium which didn’t move much at all). Palladium has occasionally dropped lower than platinum, but it posted the strongest recovery (percentage-wise, 4.41%) of any of the five on Friday.

The SteveInCO Federal Reserve Note Suckage Index (FRNSI) stands at 120.570+. (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.)