Birdnow's Aviary

January 04, 2023

How they Do It

Timothy Birdnow

This from Facebook:

Steven Chase says:

Try not to consider this political:

The creatures on Wall Street have destroyed 70% of Elon Musk's personal wealth since he took over Twitter and opened it up to free debate a few months ago.

Use you heads. It's always the money. And this is how they do it.

Scott Lazar retorts:

Or Elon Musk has destroyed 70% of his personal wealth. It is all a matter of perspective.

Tim replies:

Well, 85% of Musk's money has been tied up in Tesla and that company lost it's shirt last year. Now why is that? They were going great guns until Musk bought Twitter. There is one reason and one reason only; the terrible press Musk received and the yellow journalism suggesting Teslas were bad cars, dangerous even. Musk didn't destroy anything; he was targeted by the Left and the media because of Twitter.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:49 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Japan Begins Hardening for Chinese EMP Attack

Carlos Velazquez

Faraday Cages are the only protection against EMP attacks.

Fearing Chinese Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attacks, Japan Plans Countermeasures To Protect Its Critical Military Bases
eurasiantimes.com

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:38 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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January 03, 2023

Why 911 Truthers are Wrong

Timothy Birdnow

On Facebook a 911 Truther said Jet fuel cannot melt steel. He noted jet fuel never exceeds 1890 f. while steel requires temperatures in excess of 2200 degrees.

But it may not have been the jet fuel alone that burned and this could have reached sufficient temperatures. Aluminum polymers were used in the building that may have reached over 2000 degrees, bringing it close to the melting point of steel.

At any rate man named Robert Norwood retorted:

Burning jet fuel does not have to "melt" steel to bring down the buildings..
It only has to make it soft enough to not support The tons of concrete and steel above it.

I reply:

I agree with Robert Norwood. See here.

"It is known that structural steel begins to soften around 425°C and loses about half of its strength at 650°C.⁴

The additional problem was distortion of the steel in the fire. The temperature of the fire was not uniform everywhere, and the temperature on the outside of the box columns was clearly lower than on the side facing the fire. The temperature along the 18 m long joists was certainly not uniform. Given the thermal expansion of steel, a 150°C temperature difference from one location to another will produce yield-level residual stresses. This produced distortions in the slender structural steel, which resulted in buckling failures. Thus, the failure of the steel was due to two factors: loss of strength due to the temperature of the fire, and loss of structural integrity due to distortion of the steel from the non-uniform temperatures in the fire."

This is why steel is stress relieved in this temperature range. But even a 50% loss of strength is still insufficient, by itself, to explain the WTC collapse. It was noted above that the wind load controlled the design allowables. The WTC, on this low-wind day, was likely not stressed more than a third of the design allowable, which is roughly one-fifth of the yield strength of the steel. Even with its strength halved, the steel could still support two to three times the stresses imposed by a 650°C fire.

End excerpt.

It was not necessary for the fuel to melt the steel. It was enough what happened.

I wouldn't put it past the commie internationalists though. But I don't think in this instance this was the case.

End comment.

Now this article argues the polymer did not catch fire or it would have been apparent from the white light put out. Perhaps. But the structural integrity of the building was violated even if the metal did not melt. It didn't have to.

The Twin Towers needed the top part to remain in tact. Damaging the superstructure meant the lower portion would not ahve proper support to keep it from caving in on itself.

At any rate I do not agree with 911 Truthers. I think the physics of the situation is entirely logical.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 02:52 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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EV's Less than Useful

Al Moskowitz

Electric Vehicles that use the current, prevalent technology (Lithium Ion Batteries that require charging) need to be used for that which they are currently capable - a supplemental alternative to traditional vehicles for pleasure and/or short-range commuting, only in good weather.

That is the only viable use given the state of the current technology. Here is yet another example of the folly of full implementation, replacing internal combustion engines.

https://www.businessinsider.com/rented-tesla-stopped-six-times-one-day-charge-hertz-2023-01?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sf-bi-tipresents&utm_source=facebook.com&fbclid=IwAR2hrapAMMTd_22DfIKu1sH6ExVvUDln1lmL1PiY5mXXWL9cF09WEBm1KvMc

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What Killed the Mammoths?

Timothy Birdnow

Makes more sense than claims early man hunted them to extinction with spears and clubs.

Personally I think they watched too much hockey and just faded away...

From Richard Cronin:

The extinction of large mammals such as mammoths and sabre tooth tigers took place in a very narrow time frame. Robert J. Tuttle ("The Fourth Source. Effects of Natural Nuclear Reactors”) hypothesizes that a large comet or several comets of frozen methane and ammonia exploded and fragmented across the Northern Hemisphere. The effect would be like flash freezing as the frozen gases immediately vaporized. Large mammals caught in the open in lowlands would be most susceptible.

As evidence, he points to discoveries of fully intact mammoths found buried in the tundra of Siberia. They died with stiffies caused by the immediate suffocation. Kinda like sado-masochisti c practices.

Sounds more reasonable than a few ppm of CO2.

Something crashed into Earth and helped wipe out mammoths and other animals 13,000 years ago, study says | CNN
cnn.com

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Passive Leadership

Lance Sjogren

Harmeet Dhillon discusses on Megyn Kelly show what she would do with regard to the dysfunctional elections in Maricopa County if she were RNC chair.

She points out that as a swing state, it is essential for a party to win Arizona in order to win a nationwide election.

"If I were chair, I'd be carpet bombing with lawsuits to see to it that this kind of thing never happens again."

That's the kind of leadership the Republican Party needs. The passive leadership of someone like Ronna McDaniel is unacceptable in a political world where the Democrats are aggressively tearing down the institutions essential to a free and just society.

Tim adds:

That is the problem in a nutshell. I don't know what it is with the GOP and their unwillingness to fight for America or their own party. I wonder if they aren't all being blackmailed.

Remember Dennis Hastert; he did nothing as Speaker of the House then we found out he was being blackmailed for pedophilia and I know full well the FBI and CIA and probably the Democrats all knew it before it came out. He was useless and ineffectual. I wonder if most Republicans are not on a list of names "permissible" to the Left and anyone not on the list winds up being kneecapped (like Kari Lake).

This probably even extends to state party machinery at the top. I fear we have a uniparty in many ways. The top guys in the GOP are fundamentally no different than the Democrats. They just want to move more slowly to the left than does Pelosi or Schumer or whatnot.

We will never make any headway saving America with the GOP as it is currently constituted. They don't want to win - just keep things close to use as issues.

We need a real opposition party. Trump was a true opposition President and look what they did to him.

I suspect McConnell and McCarthy and Wronga McDaniels colluded with the Democrats and media to get rid of Trump too. There were no coattails; it was like a surgical strike. People did not hate Trump that much; he won more votes than any other man in history after all. But he got fewer ballots. Yet nothing much changed in Congress. There should have been coattails one way or the other. This proves to me the election was fixed. And our fearless leaders did nothing, lifted nary a finger, to defend either Trump or the integrity of elections. Why not?

We need a new party. America is doomed with things as they now stand.

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China Colonizes the U.S.

Timothy Birdnow

When a foreign power puts it's own police authority in a foreign country you have a colony. America is now a colony of the Chinese.

Courtesy of Carlos Velazquez:

Why is the U.S. permitting "secret" #CCP police stations within our nation?

I posted about this before, but it bears repeating. This is wholly unacceptable. In fact it's cause for kicking out China's diplomats and restricting her citizens.

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India Booted Tik Tok, so Why don't We?

Carlos Velazquez

India banned TikTok 2 years ago. A smart move Trump wanted for the US also. But compromised #ChinaJoe prevented it.

India set an 'incredibly important precedent' by banning TikTok, FCC Commissioner says
techcrunch.com

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January 02, 2023

Federalism -- coming soon to a state near you?

Dana Mathewson

John Hinderaker writes this thought-provoking article in Power Line:

Currently, we have at least two large states, Texas and Florida, that enjoy strong, effective leadership, while our national government flounders. States like Texas and Florida are plenty big enough to go it on their own, and one wonders how long they will chafe under the yoke of an inept and destructive central government.

The most immediate issue dividing these states from Washington is illegal immigration. The Biden administration has not just failed to secure our southern border, it has repudiated any intention of carrying out its constitutional responsibility. In the presence of such a vacuum, the states have no choice but to act. And they can reasonably ask, why should they continue to owe allegiance to a national government that will not carry out its most basic duty of protecting them against invasion?

Another wedge issue is monetary policy. Both Texas and Florida are well-managed and fiscally sound. In contrast, Washington is a spendthrift mess. The federal government’s trillions in deficit spending have caused inflation that devastates citizens of Florida and Texas, along with the rest of us. And the national government levies onerous taxes to support its profligate spending. Residents of well-managed states like Texas and Florida—and also a number of smaller states, South Dakota is a paragon—will reasonably conclude that they aren’t getting their money’s worth. And Texas and Florida are populous enough to issue their own currency, either separately or jointly.

Then there is the issue of freedom. In recent years, the federal government has encroached on its citizens’ rights to an unprecedented degree, and in a way that is particularly hostile to residents of the well-run states. Why should citizens of Florida and Texas—and North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, South Carolina, and so on—put up with a government that leans on social media companies to limit their freedom of speech? Why should Florida, for example, continue to recognize the authority of the FBI if it deems that agency to be hopelessly corrupt? And why should energy-rich states like Texas, North Dakota and Louisiana allow their economies to be suppressed by an unholy alliance of misguided environmentalists, greedy politicians, Big Wind and Big Solar?

I don’t think disunion will happen during my lifetime. But I do think that the potential for disunion will play an increasingly important role in our national debates. It would be relatively easy to establish a contiguous nation, based on our current Constitution, that reaches from North Dakota to Texas, then includes the entire Southeast as far as Florida, and extends north to include, at a minimum, Indiana and Ohio. Other states would no doubt choose to join. Such a nation would be vastly better governed than the current United States, it would contain our most important natural resources, and it would include most of the territory from which our armed forces are drawn.

There are strong reasons for the states to re-assert their sovereignty, and, given how poorly our national government is performing, that can only be a good thing. Perhaps the prospect of disunion will concentrate the minds of the political class in Washington. Or perhaps disunion will become a reality, maybe sooner than we can now imagine. Either way, I think the issue of federalism will come to dominate our political debate before long.

The article is found here: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/01/the-coming-crisis-of-federalism.php

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:19 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 He's right. Partition is our only viable option at this point. We are in a marriage made in Hell with an abusive spouse.
In the '90's there was a Russian analyst named Igor Panarin who predicted the U.S. would splinter in such a fashion. At the time I and others just thought it sour grapes; the Soviet Union was so splintering at that point. But the more time goes by the more I think Panarin - who has always stuck with his prediction - was right.

The Union serves no party interests at this point except the corrupt bureaucrats, the politicians, the lawyers, and the rich moneied classes. The vast majority of Americans get little of real benefit from it.

But it will be a huge task to separate us. The Left is not going to let us go without a fight - a big one. Like any jilted spouse they will seek to extract vengence.

And so many liberals now live in the conservative areas that such extrication will prove quite complex.

There are midwestern states that need to go with the old central government. Certainly Chicago and Detroit need to go. So too does Minneapolis (sorry Dana) and a couple of cities in Wisconsin, as well as my own St. Louis. The northern tier state cities you can kick out; Chicago certainly could be booted and can join Canada or some such. But how do you kick out the others?

It would be interesting to see.

I think we'd wind up a wealthy smaller country and the old U.S. would wind up impoverished, a Third World hellhole in constant civil war. Without the boogeyman of the "right wing" to focus their energies on the leftists running tne new country would quickly fall to fighting among themselves. And they would be unproductive. California would look lik Columbia or Venezuela in short order.

We have the farmland. We have the guns. We have the military people. We have oil and gas. WE have all the really creative centers, the business people, the manufacturing. I think we'd be the economic superpower and they - wouldnn't be.

But the act of partition would be a messy, messy process. And it's time we started seriously thinking about it.

I wonder about old Abe Lincoln. Would he be all about a permanent union today? I rather think not.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at January 03, 2023 09:37 AM (+AVfR)

2 While the underlying cause was slavery, the proximate cause of the Civil War was to prevent the southern states from leaving the union and severing the nation into two. Why, precisely, does anyone think that the federal government would not declare war on the seceding states a second time, and if they did, what chance is there that the "red states" would win?

Posted by: Bill H at January 03, 2023 10:40 AM (Q7br2)

3 They may well Bill, but this is a different era and I wonder if much of the military would go with the new country, which in reality would be the old country. Just because it failed last time doesn't mean it would fail this time. And even if it does, what are our options? We're all going down if things continue as they are now. That was not the case in 1860.

And now there are outside powers that would intervene, which is what Panarin spoke of. In 1860 none would help the Confederates because of slavery. Times have changed in that regard.

And while there a liberals who would be mad about it, the anger that stoked the war machine in the Union and got so many soldiers in the North to enlist is not there and won't be. The old government here is not going to find hot and eager citizens to fight. They'll have to depend on technology, of which they will have considerable weaponry, but we've seen guerilla warfare win such wars around the globe against American military technology before. And as I say much of the military will be on the side of the new country if this plays out as I suspect it will (suspension of the Constitution.)

Again, it's a measure of last resort,but it's reaching the point where it may be the only option to save anything of America. We are fast becoming a People's Republic.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at January 04, 2023 08:29 AM (BwaTe)

4 Don't get me wrong. I favor disunion, and would support it. If younger and more healthy I would don a red uniform and fight for it. But I think you underestimate the determination with which the Deep State holds on to power, and the lengths to which it will go to do so. This war is not about Democrat vs. Republican, or liberal vs. conservative. This war is about the Deep State vs. the people.

Posted by: Bill H at January 04, 2023 10:47 AM (Q7br2)

5 I agree Bill; they will do whatever it takes to hold power. BUT they still have to contend with the people. Many who are now neutral or apathetic will perhaps wake up. They have the task of keeping power and keeping the public blind to what they are doing.

I don't deny they will be most unpleasant. That's why I say this is a measure of last resort. It will be a terrible thing. But it may be either that or the iron boot in the face forever.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at January 05, 2023 08:59 AM (iOGtB)

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