The Mark of the Covid

Timothy Birdnow

Does this bother anybody else?

From El Zoro:

The DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE?

But wait! There's more!


How? That can only be if they plan to make it mandatory.

Folks, you probably ain't getting no dern choice on the matter. And the DOD? What are they putting in this thing?

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Viva La Thirst and Filth!

This from David Nabhan

Here’s one that has GOT to make you laugh. The million inhabitants of Rome in Augustus’ day two thousand years ago enjoyed a comfortable, civilized and refreshing 200 gallons of water a day per capita, free of charge for almost everyone. Juxtapose that with the parched, burned-out, electricity-less residents of Los Angeles, eking by on 78 gallons per day and paying through the nose for it. Don’t feel too bad for them though; here’s the real joke. I published an article about them today—they’re out in the streets protesting again in LA, but not because they want more water, they’re complaining because they want LESS. Indeed, they're the first people on Earth ever to have come down on the side of thirst, filth, dehydration and death.

Click the link if you find that too hard to believe.

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Decadent America

On Facebook Andrei Piriutko writes:

How will our descendants name this period of time?!! 🤔

"The word decadence, which at first meant simply "decline" in an abstract sense, is now most often used to refer to a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, honor, discipline, or skill at governing among the members of the elite of a very large social structure, such as an empire or nation state. By extension, it may refer to a decline in art, literature, science, technology, and work ethics, or (very loosely) to self-indulgent behavior...”

P.S. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decadence

A word from Tim:

A world where men can dress as women and a sizable portion of the country will join in their make-believe is a a decadent society clearly reaching a trough. When Donald Trump suggested purchasing Greenland he was roundly mocked; it was simply unthinkable to consider expanding the U.S. That is a classic symptom of a decadent society. Pleasure and amusement become all that matters. Doing something, growing, expanding are unthinkable.

We are actively hostile to Christianity and religion in general. We glorify sex in the most debauched way. We promote women who behave like men as heroes. We promote men who surrender their masculinity as the ideal (and American men are subsequently losing testosterone as a result.) The highest ideal is to not judge bad behavior.

And everyone wants a living out of someone else's pocket. There was a time when people were too proud to take charity; in his shame the boxer James Braddock accepted public assistance and when he fought for the heavyweight title against Max Baer he paid all the money he had received back. Now someone would try to find a way to keep the government money coming in while making a big purse like that. Everyone takes what the Democrats offer. Why not?  If you don't take it someone else will, and are they any more deserving than you? This has changed the way we think, altering us from independent people who take care of themselves to parasites.

So we have criminals and thugs who still have some testosterone out looting and pillaging and we call that "mostly peaceful" so as to absolve us from doing anything about it and say we can do nothing to stop it.

Now the government in California, after having won the quest for homosexual marriage, wants to decriminalize pedophilia. So you will be able to rape a child but not discipline him (unless that is what you are into) in the Golden State.

Decadent? We make Rome look like Puritans.

BTW, in the decline of any great nation there comes a backlash to this which usually culminates in a strong leader who fights a futile battle. The Romans had Diocletian and we have Trump. Whatever you think of Trump he is certainly a reactionary force to the headlong drive to the precipice. Oh, I know he has lowered the level of conversation in this country, thus adding to the decline (remember when he talked about how well-endowed he is?) But overall Trump has sought to be the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike (as opposed to Bill Clinton whose finger was in a whole different place.)

If history is any guide the Trump Presidency will be a hiccup in our rush to the Void. Diocletian's reforms created serfdom and were the direct cause of the Medievalism. What will come to replace the American Republic is anyone's guess but what is happening right now is setting that future dark age in motion.

And it will be a mother of a dark age. Science has become corrupted to the point it now is primarily a tool for the Ruling Class. Technology is still progressing at a strong pace, but that will slow in time. Worse, the technology is becoming more dangerous and destructive. CRISPR technology will eventually allow people to design diseases to attack others. How many BLM types would love to have a disease that kills white people but leaves other races unaffected? It's coming.

And computers and VR technology is separating people, who increasingly live in an artificial reality disassociated from the real world. It's part of why Millenials are so out there; they grew up online and think Twitter represent real life.

So the public grows more confused, more divided, more disassociated as technology blooms into a kind of electronic red tide. And the old values have been lost and probably will remain so for a long time as the new electronic gods busily scrub the old America away.

It took centuries to get out of the Dark Ages last time, and that was in an era when people actually faced concrete dangers and problems. In a make-believe world like ours it will be a long, long time before we wake up.

A "Woke" America is a slumbering America, a land of dreams and illusions. We need to face reality; it won't go away.

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The Real Unemployment rate

This from James Doogue, our friend from Down Under:

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Massive Arms Shortage

Timothy Birdnow

Question; is the shortage in arms and ammunition being caused by people worried about civil war in November, or is it being bought out by those seeking to deny patriots arms? Remember; we had a big shortage of affordable weapons and ammunition during the Obama era too. I believe back then it was done to keep it out of the hands of the public and get it into the hands of the radicals.

The Sales Boom

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NASA - Global Wildfires Down by a Quarter

This from Anthony Watts:

I guess those climate change zealots will have to label NASA a "climate denier" now. Facts, they are stubborn things.

This NASA satellite data is irrefutable.


https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/16/irrefutable-nasa-data-global-wildfire-down-by-25-percent

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Culture of Coercive Compliance

Timothy Birdnow

A brilliant essay on the tyranny of Covid 19.

A brief snippet:

Do read it all.

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What's Wrong with C.A. Power?

This courtesy of Stephen Heins:
What’s Ailing California’s Electric System?

California made headlines for all the wrong reasons recently with widespread rolling power outages in the middle of a heat wave and a pandemic. These blackouts were not an accident—they were intentionally scheduled by the grid operator, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), due to a shortage of resources available to keep the lights on.

The California blackouts led to a frenzy of hot takes and finger-pointing based on instant diagnoses of the problems. The situation is like a Rorschach test on which people superimpose their preconceptions about energy. Opponents of renewable energy, including President Donald Trump, blame the outages on California’s use of solar and wind to decarbonize their power supply. Others have jumped to the conclusion that this must be a recurrence of Enron-type market manipulation as in the 2001 energy crisis. Still others have offered silver bullets based on whatever they are selling....

[...]

1. Lack of clear accountability for having the resources to keep the lights on.

In some regions of the country, electric distribution companies directly invest in power plants under the supervision of state regulators. In others, regional markets use an auction system to buy enough resources to keep the lights on. I personally prefer market structures, but either system can work if it is clear who has the responsibility.

In California, the roles of the CAISO and the state regulators to keep the lights on are quite tangled. CAISO has the job of dispatching power plants but has little authority to ensure they get built. Lining up enough resources is largely under the supervision of state regulators. In other words, the buck stops nowhere. This should be remedied through the actions of the California legislature and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates CAISO.

2. Lack of resources to balance solar and wind power.

California leads the nation in solar generation, and also uses a lot of wind generation. These carbon-free resources help reduce the climate impacts of burning fossil fuels. But unlike conventional power plants, they cannot be turned on and off as needed. By design, their availability depends on the sun and wind at any given moment. They can work well in conjunction with resources that can be turned on as needed, especially in the evening when the sun goes down. These "balancing” resources can be gas-fired plants, pumped water or battery storage, hydroelectric power, or the collective actions of homes and businesses to move their consumption to different times of the day. California does not have enough of these resources. See problem #1—someone needs to be in charge.

3. Closing disfavored resources before opening the new ones.

It is hard to site and build new energy resources, including carbon-free resources, anywhere in the country. Even in regions where there is strong political support for clean energy to fight climate change, it often doesn’t translate to people allowing wind turbines or a high-voltage transmission line to be built anywhere near them.

California has been decisive about what resources it doesn’t want anymore, including many of its gas-fired power plants and its last nuclear power plant. It has been much slower to actually construct resources to take their place. In the past three years, California has closed 5,000 megawatts (MW) of gas generation in anticipation of building 3,000 MW of battery storage that is still on the drawing board. In a heat wave, when every resource is needed, this gap in resources came home to roost.

4. Operating in a silo.

California is a large state, but it is not an island. It is part of a larger region whose resources could help to balance those available in the state, helping both California and the West as a whole. While CAISO and its neighbors have shared resources when they have extra, this does not help when resources are scarce. California would benefit from a regional market that took advantage of different weather, time zones, and resources to keep the lights on at least cost. California legislators have repeatedly considered legislation to change CAISO to allow regional operation, but have preferred in-state control. I believe that decision should be reexamined to take California into the future.

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Trump Middle East peace approach was not conventional

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A Potential Breakthrough?

Timothy Birdnow

Here is a big breakthrough; researchers have isolated a molecule that blocks Covid 19. It's small enough it could be taken with an inhaler.

Pitt Scientists Make Antibody Discovery that Could Potentially Treat, Prevent Covid 19

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The Fermi Paradox and You

This from Andrei Piriutko:

What has been humanity’s greatest achievement?

Survival.

The World is Doing Better than Ever; Here's Why You Never Hear About It

When you boil it all down, survival is, and will continue to be, the most important thing ever achieved by humanity.

All our other big achievements have merely been in pursuit of survival. Farming led to fewer people dying of starvation. Medicine means fewer people die of disease. Diplomacy means fewer people die in wars.

All these achievements lead back to survival.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the way in which you survive is also incredibly important. But in order to lead a life you enjoy, and pursue meaningful endeavours, you need to be alive in the first place.

Without survival, we have nothing. Which is why I find the Fermi paradox so fascinating.

If you’re not aware of the Fermi paradox, here’s a short explainer courtesy of Wikipedia:

(But be warned, you may never think about your life in quite the same way again after you learn about it.)

There is no reliable evidence aliens have visited Earth and we have observed no intelligent extraterrestria l life with current technology nor has SETI found any transmissions from other civilizations. The Universe, apart from the Earth, seems "dead”; Hanson states:

Our planet and solar system, however, don’t look substantially colonized by advanced competitive life from the stars, and neither does anything else we see. To the contrary, we have had great success at explaining the behavior of our planet and solar system, nearby stars, our galaxy, and even other galaxies, via simple "dead” physical processes, rather than the complex purposeful processes of advanced life.

Life is expected to expand to fill all available niches. With technology such as self-replicatin g spacecraft, these niches would include neighboring star systems and even, on longer time scales which are still small compared to the age of the universe, other galaxies. Hanson notes, "If such advanced life had substantially colonized our planet, we would know it by now.”
The fascinating part, for me, is when you start to think about why the universe seems "dead”. And in particular, I’m drawn to an explanation known as the "Great Filter”.

Have we already survived the great filter, or will it turn out to be our one true test?

If there really are no aliens, this then means there must be a point in the development of life that is very, very difficult to get through.

This event is known as the Great Filter.

The idea of the Great Filter was hypothesised by physicist Robert Hanson, who has become since become famous for it.

Hanson describes nine stages a lifeform must go through before it can expand out into the universe.

1) The right star system (including organics and potentially habitable planets)
2) Reproductive molecules (eg, RNA)
3) Simple (prokaryotic) single-cell life
4) Complex (eukaryotic) single-cell life
5) Sexual reproduction
6) Multi-cell life
7) Tool-using animals with big brains
8 )Where we are now.
9) Colonisation explosion.

A word from Tim:

And bear in mind nine out of every ten stars are red dwarves. Red Dwarf suns are the oldest in the universe as they burn low and slow. But they generally don't put out much energy, and a planet warm enough for life would likely be so close as to be airless thanks to the solar wind. Also, most red stars are flare suns, and being close would fry any life not in the oceans Sea life is unlikely to develop a technologically advanced civilization as they would not have fire or electricity or the things we have. So it may be alien life is just at the level as are we. Bear in mind the universe is HUUUGGGEE. If you use a basketball to represent the Earth's sun you would put Neptune about nine feet away (using a one to one ratio based on the size of a basketball) but you would put a second basketball to represent Alpha Centauri A where? If you had the first ball in Boston you would place the second ball in Omaha, Nebraska. Yeah; it's THAT far! Nobody is going jaunting around the universe like in Star Trek. IF there would be any interstellar travel at all (and it might be impossible given the amount of debris and dust in space) it would be a civilization-wide effort and undertaken for a serious reason (like your star is going nova.) BUT that doesn't mean we wouldn't see evidence of them; radio transmissions, for instance. On Earth we put out as much radio chatter as a small star; that would stick out like a sore thumb to aliens. So if they are out there they are a long way away.

And as Andrei observes, most life on Earth is extinct. That is the natural order of life; it rises, flourishes, then dies off. We think our intelligence will spare us that, but why should we? Other great creatures came and probably thought likewise (if they thought at all) because of whatever attribute they had. They are all gone.

And the greater our power the more likely we are to kill ourselves off with it. Diseases killed a lot of people over time, but now we are using Crispr technology to make new ones. Real smart. Ditto nuclear bombs. And we have no idea where computer technology will lead; we might find a way to make ourselves extinct with it. (Anybody remember the Fred Saberhagen's stories about Berserkers?)

Every day you get out of bed is a victory.

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Drudge Dying

Warner Todd Huston

Drudge Report Loses Millions of Visitors After Turning Anti-Trump, Left-Wing

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Hard Cases; Stealing Liberty

Timothy Birdnow

Masks are a slippery slope; if we let them force this little piece of cloth over our faces we will let them do worse. Readers of the Aviary probably understand that. But much of America does not, or they would be mad as hell about it.

Well, some people understand.

From the Federalist:

On Sunday of Labor Day weekend, former Olympian Kerri Walsh Jennings declared on Instagram her rebellion against mandatory masking. Jennings explained she had recently been inspired to resist restrictions more actively because "our freedoms won’t come back unless we are willing to push back and stand up for them.” She shared that her small act of pushback was to go to the grocery store without a mask.

Predictable condemnation ensued, and on Monday Jennings published a quasi-retraction she titled "Truce.” While Jennings repeated parts of the formulaic apologies typical of stars who incur the wrath of the mob, she didn’t capitulate entirely.

Her final comment voiced a very concrete concern. Jennings said she worries masks are "the potential starting point for so much more,” and that she "truly believes we are on the slippery slope of a mask mandate evolving into a vaccine mandate. That,” Jennings concluded, "scares the [fire emoji] out of me.”

Jennings is absolutely correct. Proponents of masking dismiss complaints about mandatory masks as the selfish whining of people who aren’t willing to put up with a small inconvenience for the greater good, but nothing could be further from the truth. Mandatory masking policies stifle the American spirit and are segueing us right into mandated COVID vaccines.

Masks set the stage, because they are an extraordinary intermediate step that Americans were — incredibly — willing to take. If Americans had refused to put a piece of cloth over their face to leave the house, the likelihood that the public would be willing to accept a mandated shot would be far lower.

And if you think it will stop with vaccinations you have another thing coming; governments are insatiable. Having tasted this power they will exercise it again and again and again - and the public will submit over and over, now that they have accepted the bit in their mouths. It's how horses are broken.

The author realizes this, I think:


Or, as has been attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes "hard cases make bad law". Crisis drives despotism. A despot does not come and say "I'm going to steal your liberty because I want to tell you what to do" but rather finds a series of  crises, real or imagined, to panic the public into allowing him to fix the problem. America has been in an endless series of crises for decades now, and systematically we have been surrendering our liberties.

Would anyone have dreamed that we would have cameras feeding information on our movements to the government? That we would have the NSA processing data about our telephone calls or computer usage?  That even a guy running for President would have the CIA spying on him, and that the national security apparatus would attempt to bring his Administration down with a black op? But we built a police state-style system with the Patriot Act and other draconian measures to fight terrorism (rather than just stopping aliens who were suspicious from coming to America in the first place). It was the crisis that drove this. And now we have the crisis of Covid to empower government to force vaccinations, mask wearing, home arrest, etc.

When are Americans going to remember we were a free people?

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Military Coup Coming?

Timothy Birdnow

Is the military planning a coup? Read this and decide:

The Democrats and their establishment allies in the media and military-industrial complex will do everything in their power to ensure that the American people will never be able to meddle in their own elections again.

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The Revolution is Here

Timothy Birdnow

Here is a little analysis of the origins of Black Lives Matter and Antifa. These groups are at their heart communist revolutionaries.

Written by a retired CIA ops officer.

From the article:

The leader of the so-called RevComs is Bob Avakian. Avakian is a lifelong revoutionary, who spent his youth with Students for a Democratic Society, a domestic extremist group active in the 1960’s and 1970’s. In 2016 Avakian’s RevComs and other leftist groups formed Refuse Fascism. Avakian is remarkably direct about about the goals of this movement.

"Let’s get down to basics. We need a revolution. Anything else, in the final analysis, is bullshit,” he said recently.

Avakian’s party is no less direct. It has published a proposed constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which it hopes to establish. Some excerpts from it read as follows:

"The New Socialist Republic in North America is…a form of dictatorship – the dictatorship of the proletariat…”

"In accordance with this, the governing bodies and processes of this socialist state, at all levels, must be vehicles for the furtherance of the communist revolution…”

"The armed forces, militia and other organs of public defense and security shall be under a system of overall leadership combining the central Executive Council and the Revolutionary Communist Party, with the Party having the ultimate leadership responsibility and role.”

"The responsibility for the enforcement of the laws and the defense of the Constitution by the organs of public security resides with the Executive Council, with the overall and ultimate leadership of the Revolutionary Communist Party.” [RevCom.us]

Behind the RevComs, Refuse Fascism and their allied organizations is a fundraising and financing apparatus that has been building inside this nation for decades.

For instance, Refuse Fascism is partially funded by an organization called the Alliance for Global Justice.The Alliance for Global Justice originated in an organization called the Nicaragua Network, a group created to support the Marxist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. The founders of the Alliance are both veterans of that effort and have strong ties to the Sandinistas. One of them, Chuck Kaufman, was also one of the founders of a group called A.N.S.W.E.R., an organization focused on ending U.S. "threats” against North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba and an end to the "colonial-style occupation in Palestine and in Haiti”.

The Alliance for Global Justice, in turn, receives funding from a wide range of organizations. One of them is the Tides Foundation. You may have never heard the group, but its power is vast:It annual spending is measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Tides is generally credited with having pioneered anonymous "Dark Money” transactions for leftist organizations. "Structural racism” is a common theme in many Tides Foundation projects, as is the concept of "white privilege”.

Other financiers of The Alliance for Global Justice include George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, the Arca Foundation (which also backs the Communist regime in Cuba), the New World Foundation (which sponsors radical leftists movements in El Salvador), and the Foundation for Deep Ecology, an extreme environmental group that sees humans as a plague on the Earth’s surface.

More connections could easily be drawn, but the point is not the individual links. What matters is the big picture: The mobs wrecking our cities and terrorizing the public are not spontaneously organizing or self-funding. They are the manifestation of years of preparation, organization, and sponsorship from a vast network of foundations and front organizations.

The groups sponsoring the 2020 rioters are hostile to the United States of America as it currently exists. They have long since made common cause with some of our most dangerous enemies. Now, what they want is not reform. Phrases like "Black Lives Matter” are a deliberate obfuscation, a time-honored tactic of radical left groups, used to make themselves and their goals seem less threatening.

Do read the entire piece.

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Man Made

Timothy Birdnow

Yeah; the fires ARE anthropogenic! Just not from carbon dioxide...

Oregon man arrested twice in 12-hour span for starting 'multiple' fires near Portland freeway

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The Abject Failure of Emissions Trading and Carbon Taxation

Stephen Heins

Both, a carbon tax and cap and trade, have yet to provide a single good example of working. In fact, the EU ETS has been an abject failure since its inception in 1997 and its implementation in 2009.

Also, CA's trading scheme is just another hidden tax that gets rolled into CA's general revenues or state subsidies; and, RGGI has just increased the cost of electricity without providing any real market signals, plus, it makes New England less competitive than other regions of the U.S.

As for a carbon tax, there are so many questions. Here are some of them:

1. Who is the controlling political body?
2. Who writes the rules?
3. Who determines the price point?
4. What qualifies for the tax?
5. Who decides the definition of "renewables?
6. Where is the mechanism for scientifically measuring and verifying emissions throughout the entire supply chain?
7. Who collects the money?
8. Where does the money go after it is collected?

Then, there is the political science in the noisy world of over 200 nations without a legitimate ruling body, just think the corruption of the United Nations and totalitarian rulers.

Finally, the actual implementation of technology of all things energy and its integration into the global environment is unsettled.

Climate Change Poses Major Risk to Financial Stability, Report Finds WSJ

Heath Tar­bert, the Re­pub­li-can chair­man of the CFTC, in a state­ment ac­knowl­edged cli­mate risks but noted that the re­port also refers to "tran­si­tion risks” as­so­ci­ated with gov­ern­ment ef­forts to re­duce green­house-gas
https://www.foxnews.com/us/california-oregon-wildfires-growing-bigger-moving-faster

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Cancel the Sexual Rebellion

Selwyn Duke

"Our problem is...that we have to 'cancel' the Sexual Devolution and put carnality back in the closet — and then take God and virtue out of it."

Solving the pedophile "cuties" problem means canceling far more than Netflix

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Irony is Lost

Timothy Birdnow

So, after looting and burning down grocery stores in their own neighborhoods they now seize a Trader Joes to "protest" lack of grocery store access in their own neighborhoods. Irony is completely lost on these people.

Seattle blm takes over trader joes, protesting 'lack of access to grocery stores'

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Biden Benjamins

Warner Todd Huston:

Data Shows Much of Biden’s Donations Likely Illegally Coming From Foreigners

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