Colorado Joins Cali, N.Y., Ill

 For 2022, Colorado joined the abovementioned 3 states in having more people move out than in. The overall population moved up a bid, but the moving stats tell the story.

The story about Denver being swamped with illegals is too new to show up on these graphs, but next years numbers should be eye-popping.

Plagiarizing Your Way To A Pulitzer - Ukraine

 Today, my hometown paper, the Denver Post (Ved Nanda), and the Times of London, (Max Hastings) are both running similar articles rehashing the old arguments in favor of buying off aggressive tyrants to somehow buy peace. Shades of Neville Chamberlin. Let the Germans Russians have the Sudetenland Donbas regions, and forestall the possibility of an a actual shooting war. Peace In Our Time!

I bet I know how that will turn out.

Both the abovementioned articles are behind paywalls, but you can get the general gist of both by searching for Chamberlins agreement with Hitler which he waved for the press on his return from negotiations.

Fun With Headlines - Armaments

 Here's one that's going around: From WND:

China rocks the world with missile that circled globe before dropping on target.

OK kiddies, here's a clue. Go on Wickipedia, and look up "Silbervogel" which the Nazis looked into back in 1942 as a method to bomb the U.S. by traveling at hypersonic speeds, bouncing off the stratosphere several times, and landing in Japan.

Terrifying new superweapon, indeed. Here's a bit more on that. Seems the thing still needs a bit of work:

The test went like this: China launched a rocket carrying what is known as a hypersonic glide vehicle. The missile circled the earth in a low orbit toward its target, which it missed by roughly 25 miles.

Notwithstanding that close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons, 25 miles is generally considered a miss in the nuclear weapons department.

The Fourth Adversary

 A prominent Chinese professor has outlined his vision of how China intends to become the preeminent power in the world. Various approaches are discussed in his paper which you can see summarized here. Among them is cultivation of active adversaries to the U.S. which he sees as being unable to effectively handle more than 3. 

His list currently includes China (of course), Russia, and North Korea. He mentions Chinas attempt to use its belt and road initiative to coerce Brazil into becoming adversary #4, which Brazil declined to join. So let me ask: Who else in this hemisphere is in bed with the Chinese while having a significant footprint in the U.S. already?

Why the Mexican drug cartels of course! China already supplies the Fentanyl they send here in ever increasing quantities, and they have branched out into the immigrant smuggling business which is probably causing more disruption here because of the publicity the U.S. media gives it. 

Four enemies are needed to stretch the United States’ resources while bogging the government down in domestic debates over which threat to prioritize, Jin said.

For instance, before WWII the United States had two adversaries, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. “The Americans debated over and over about who is the real threat,” he said.

“If the United States has four enemies, it will totally lose its direction.”

RTWT and think about the most divisive issues currently in vogue with the media. 

 

Spread Of Coronavirus

Perhaps the well hidden chapters of this story. Remember back in 1918 when the Spanish flu spread like wildfire on account of a war going on with millions of men packed together in staging bases and front line posts? Now look at a map of China and notice that Wuhan is not that far from Singkiang where the Chinese currently have some 2M Uighers locked up in reeducation camps.

Think about the results of dropping one infected person into each prison colony. Think that the Chinese would pass up an opportunity like this? Rapid spread and a high fatality rate would be a feature, not a bug, and the location lends itself to a near perfect cover-up.

Has anyone looked at satellite pics for smoke plumes or evidence of mass grave digging? One should never let a crisis like this go to waste.

Medical Science Marches On

I have reported here on a technique for fighting cancers involving separating the victims T-cells out, reprogramming them to recognize certain cancers, in the case mentioned, leukemia, then putting them back into the patient where they ruthlessly attack and kill the cancer. An impressive trick which worked best on liquid cancers.

It now seems that a lab in Wales has discovered a naturally occurring t-cell that preferentially attacks cancerous cells, but is present only in modest numbers. They have cultured them and injected significant volumes into cancer patients and had some favorable results.

They reportedly discovered a new type of T-cell that carries a receptor that latches onto human cancers but ignores healthy cells.
In fact, the receptor is said to be capable of killing several cancers, including lung, skin, blood, colon, breast, bone, prostate, ovarian, kidney and cervical cancer.

They say that human trials could begin by the end of the year which by health care development standards is  blindingly fast. Since at this point the process involves using the patients own T-cells, the word "drug" does not appear in a description of the therapy so the FDA whose function is to insure that NOTHING gets to the market, in minimally involved.

Coincidentally, two political icons, one of the left, and one of the right, seem to be candidates for the treatment. Rush Limbaugh and Notorious RBG have between them supporters with enough money to outright buy Wales and establish the Limbaugh-Ginsburg Cancer Treatment Center.

Fun With Headlines In The New Year – Iran

Found on Strategypage, this article looking at how the world is and speculating on how it might be

I found the bits on Iran to be interesting in light of their recent adventurism in Iraq. President Rouhani says Iran never bows to superpowers but their history tells a different, and much longer story.

From Strategypage this:

First there is Iran, which has been a regional superpower for thousands of years but fell on hard times after the 7^th century because of a succession of damaging visits by invaders. First came conquest by the Arab revival (the initial wars of conquest by newly converted Moslem Arabs). This was humiliating because Persians never thought such a thing possible. That was followed by a devastating visit by the Mongols (1219-1221) after which came a series of exhausting wars with the Ottoman Turks and finally the Western nations and all their new tech and ideas.

The protests in Iran which have reportedly resulted in over 1500 deaths by the regime include some interesting demands by the protesters who are acutely tired of the Islamic dictatorship and are proposing some interesting changes:

Even more disturbing was that some of the protesters are calling for Islam to be banned and replaced with something else, like Zoroastrianism, the ancient Persian religion that Islam replaced, violently and sometimes incompletely in the 7^th and 8^th centuries.

Replacing Islam with almost anything would be a big help to Iran or anyone else. RTWT, mainly the first link. It's lengthy but covers most of the world and in a lot more detail than you get from CNN for sure.

Flat Earth - The Convention

The Colorado Sun, a new news source made up of refugees from the dying Denver Post and other places, went to the Flat Earth Society convention here in Denver, and has reported on the doings. I almost wish I had been able to go as some of the memorabilia would have made fine supplements to my collection.

Questions About The Norks

Li'l Fat Kim has just tested a missile roughly equivalent to a Titan II only with a mobile launcher similar to, but much bigger than the one proposed for our Midgetman ICBM. Having worked on this sort of stuff myself, I can assure you that the design and building of them is non trivial and quite expensive. Seeing all this technological advancement from a country that is probably the economic equivalent of Detroit makes me wonder.

The story on the launchers is that they were provided to the Norks by the Chinese (surprise, surprise) ostensibly to be used to transport logs with their timbering industry. Nice story. The launchers are big, heavy, and relatively inflexible thus requiring some pretty good roads to operate on. Yes, they can run on dirt roads, but the dirt needs to be deep hard packed gravel and not the sort of thing that turns to mud every spring, and winds tightly up the sides of mountains.

The Norks have also had a great run of good luck with the missiles in test with only a few failures before running like they had been extensively tested already, like in China for example.

Found this pic at Theo Spark. I'm thinking that it's missing the hand of Chinese God-King* Xi stuck up Kims butt. Also Chinese missile and troop movements to the North of China and along the NK border make it look like Xi is trying to goad Trump into attacking Kim so the Chinese can intervene on behalf of their brothers like they did the last time. It would be unlike the Chinese to toss a useful ally/stooge like Kim summarily under the bus although for the right price...

There are currently 3 U.S. Carrier groups hovering around N.K. In the event of hostilities, I would be trivially easy for Kim to launch 3 of his smaller missiles in a nuclear ballistic attack against them. To the best of my knowledge, the carriers have only limited defenses against such an attack although the missile frigates accompanying them might well surprise us. With the "unfortunate loss" of the carriers, the Chinese buildup in the South China Sea goes on pretty much unchallenged and the Norks take the fall.

Or maybe my blood sugar is a bit low this morning.

UPDATE: Others have noticed as well.

*It is an Emperors prerogative of course to call himself anything he wants. The Chinese have already published a New Revised Koran and made possession of old ones illegal. Additionally the Chinese Government has taken it upon itself to appoint the senior leadership of the Catholic Church in China, and is encouraging all Christians to replace aging images of Jesus with similar images of Xi.

Relocate The U.N.

Long overdue idea to relocate the famous hive of scum and villainy to more suitable accommodations, here's a suggestion. There's a 105 story hotel needing only a bit of interior finish work to be ready to host the world's representatives in the style in which most of them would like to become accustomed.

The Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang North Korea awaits with restaurants, living quarters, office space and meeting rooms suitable to the status and dignity the organization has accrued over the years. Passing the hat among the membership would surly quickly raise the billion or two necessary to put the finishing touches on the structure with enough left over to assure the approval of DPRKs top leadership*.

*Fat Kim III** and a few close family members.

**What the Chinese call him, informally of course.

What To Do With The U.N.

Charles Krauthammer addresses the question here. Several commenters have suggestions, one of whom reminded me that the building appeared in the movie Heavy Metal as low income housing.

The whole building must be well past its usable life. Tell the occupants to find a new place, in another country, then sell tickets at $10/ea for the honor of pushing the big red "reset" button to blow the thing up.

Proceeds to be used to pay off the national debt.

The World's Most Powerful People

According to Forbes anyway, #1 (Putin) thru 75 (Schumer) and somehow Soros didn't make the list. I assume he paid the people at Forbes to remove his name as the Secret Master of the DNC.

Lame Duck O'Bummer is on the list but well down on it at #48.

A Historian's Take On The Election

Here's a post on Samizdata from a historian who points out that small omissions in speeches can leave other countries with an incorrect impression as to what exactly our country is prepared to do in some situation. Running down a detailed list of places where we announce we're prepared to intervene and leaving one small country out by oversight or design can lead to a rapidly escalating military conflict. WWI and 2 are cited.

So for the right sized contribution to the Clinton Foundation, President Clinton would have no problem with Russia taking over the "administration" of the Baltic states and Ukraine? Or perhaps if Iran were to repatriate 10% of the tribute Obama paid them to the Foundation, Iranian administration of Syria would be acceptable.

Brexit

Against all dire predictions of the chattering classes and the (obviously) better judgement of the political elites, Britain is leaving the EU:

It's not hard to see a line of northern European countries looking at this and thinking "Why not us as well?". The architects of the EU envisioned a unified Europe which is a good thing, and have produced the worlds largest copy of Venezuela, complete with an invading foreign army on the South and an ambitious empire builder on the East against which they seem to be powerless.

Now comes the dicey part where the Brits, having thrown off one form of tyranny, are now free to replace it with one of their own devising. I wish them the best of luck with that. History does not encourage optimism but hey! they could get lucky. An opportunistic and economically literate U.S. President or candidate would be over there right now, trade agreements in hand lining up the deals that generate the wealth, or at least would have a qualified advisor doing this.*

Over here one could easily see the King replaced by any of several people including His Serenely Oblivious Majesty King O'Bama I, Hillary (I am not a crook!) Clinton, and any of several leaders of the GOP establishment.

Seems like a lot of us peasants are in fact Mad As Hell and Not Going To Take It Any More.

*Update: Oh look!

Learn A Foreign Language

Apparently French reporters are not in the guild of DNC operatives with bylines and today I learned two new French words that I did not previously know; “Connard!” and  “Trouduc!”. These come back from Google translate as having the same meaning so I guess they're interchangeable. For you Francophones out there, don't be offended. The description is accurate and we've known this for about 7-10 years now depending on where we live.

The Napoleonic Conquest - Again

With millions of young men in the 18-45 age demographic currently invading Europe under the guise of being refugees, we are now seeing a replay of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. The little general, you recall, marched his army into Russia expecting to arrive in Moscow in time for Thanksgiving only to find himself caught outdoors in the Russian winter which defeated his army more thoroughly than anyone in Europe could have.

Today we have a rerun of the Caliph's invasion of Europe with an even bigger army, now being caught in the European winter without their winter gear. Predictably some European leaders have noticed this and are calling for the Europeans to provide the invading army with the gear they forgot to bring. As though the Czar would have provided Napoleon with shelter.

Working Things Out

There are now reports that ISIS recruiting efforts worldwide are bringing fighters to Iraq from around the world including some places from which you really don't want any immigrants. Seems there are outbreaks of Ebola in Basra and Mosul.

Reminds me of a strip from the Wizard of Id in which the king was faced with two crises: In the first the peasants were dying of thirst due to a drought. In the second, he was notified that the monsters in his castle moat were starving. The king observed that sometimes things have a way of working themselves out.

Happy New Year!

Scotland The Brave

Better late than never I guess, but I've heard it suggested somewhere (sorry, no link) that now that the Scots have voted to keep living in England's basement, so to speak, the English should be allowed a vote on weather or not they should be allowed to stay there.

Seems fair to me.

Scotland The Brave

Brave Scots rush in where Angels fear to tread, as they say in the old country. The English have a slightly different version of this which you've all heard, so I won't repeat it. Last I heard, the secession was going to be a squeaker with no one willing to bet much on the outcome. Let's assume for a moment, that it passes.

First off I'm told England will swing to the Conservatives since Scotland  is mostly Labor. Absent the Scots, the party that mismanaged England to the point of dissolution will be tossed out. Of course that leaves Scotland to be managed by the very people that made being part of England so intolerable.

The bankers are predicting disaster for no good reason. Or maybe there is a good reason. As an independent country, Scotland will no longer be tied to the pound which the common government can print to make up budget shortages as they go along. Scotlands choices are:
 1. Do nothing and continue to use the British pound. They just get no say in how many get printed which might force some fiscal responsibility on them. Along the same lines, they could also adopt some other currency; the Euro or even the U.S. dollar, but why change all the price tags?
Choice 2: Print your own currency. Suggestions include the Numpty and the Poond. Advantage: You can print as many as you like. Disadvantage: See advantage.

A newly conservative England could start an economic turnaround if the new majority acts quickly. Lowering taxes, eliminating a lot of nanny agencies, deporting a lot of undesirables, etc, etc. It would also greatly strengthen the anti-EU parties to the point that England could post a real threat to leave the E.U.

If the parties over there operate like the parties over here, the Laborites in Scotland derive a good bit of their popularity from being able to rob British Peter to buy the votes of Scottish Paul. Absent Peter, this will be much more difficult. Of course the newly independent Scotland could immediately join the E.U. and become a member of the PIIGS Portugal, Italy  Ireland, Greece and Spain. Germany who has been making the bailout loans may not be amused.

Should make for some good entertainment at least.

Biological Warfare

Now that the administration has given us Enterovirus D68 in minor epidemic quantities, along with Scabies and TB, his latest idea is to send US troops to western Africa to help with the Ebola epidemic.

The last time soldiers got involved with a disease it was the Spanish Flu of 1918. Large numbers of people in close daily contact coupled with a contagious disease is bad news all around.

Of course the military is a group that famously has been voting the wrong way of late, so maybe this isn't such a hare-brained idea after all. Speaking of hare-brained, Sen Durban thinks that a general amnesty would help contain the spread of Ebola. Presumably limiting it to West Africa and North America.