QOTD

Found at Ace of Spades:

And President Trump Lifted Up His Eyes And Prayed: Oh Lord, I Thank Thee That Thou Hast Made Mine Enemies the Sorriest Collection of Incompetent Boobs and Ass-Clowns That Could Ever Be Imagined. Thou Couldst Not Possibly Make Them More Weak, Foolish, and Corrupt. And The Lord God Saith Unto President Trump, Holdest Thou My Beer:

This commemorating the arrest of one of the founders of the never trump movement regarding a $60M bribery gig.

Impacting The Vote?

I seem to vaguely remember, from way back in the past, some sort of issue that came up that looked like it could impact the opening of the fall semester at the University of Colorado. Maybe a student boycott, maybe something else. I don't remember.

Adding to the tumult, was that this was happening in an election year, and the reason that Boulder was such a hotbed of Marxist thought was because all the students had been registered to vote there. Without the students, Boulder is a republican county. Upshot: The campus was opened and no Donk lost his job.

Now here we are with a momentous political decision to make: Open the schools or not? Keeping the schools closed imposes greater suffering on the working class voters, which will be blamed on Trump. OTOH if the university is closed, some 17,000 generally Democratic voters will not be there to maintain the status quo. Republicans might even get elected. Oh! The humanity!

If the university is opened, it will, of course, become a C19 hot spot. Probably not a really big deal as the students are generally low risk so the fatality rate will be no higher that that due to alcohol poisoning on Fraternity row. The risk might be higher for some of the more ivy-covered professors in the ivy-covered halls, but one can't make an omelette without cracking a few eggs, and the adjuncts will welcome the chance to move up.

If I were a gay, liberal governor with aspirations to higher office, I think I'd judge the potential loss of the state senate to be a greater political risk than the loss of some fusty old academics, and order the universities open this fall.

Handling The Virus

There are lots of ways to do it and which methodology you pick will depend on your favored outcome:

No ones life matters, just power.

Assessing The Virus

First off let me say that I think the C19 virus was, in fact, a modified virus developed in the Chinese lab at Wuhan. That said, I also think it got out by accident, Chinese quality control being legendary.

Having gotten out, the Chinese government turned out to be a fan of the “Never let a crisis go to waste” school of thought. Initial reaction was to try to suppress news of the outbreak in hopes of not getting caught working on biological warfare, but when that failed, the well oiled disinformation machine went into top gear. “Studies” from China told us that the virus was not human-to-human transmissible, That masks did no good, that HCQ not only didn't help, it increased your chances of dying, and that first Remdesivir didn't work, and second that the Chinese had gone into full production of the stuff and were ready to sell it at a good price. We were also told that they had testing kits ready in large quantities suspiciously quickly, and they sold them all over the world to gullible governments.

What the Chinese learned, quickly enough, was that the virus was more dangerous to the elderly than to anyone else. In China that group, “the elderly” has two meanings: First is the old and retired population, or as Stalin called them, “the unproductive units”. No great loss there. The other meaning is “the most senior levels of government”. This hits close to home as it's the most important demographic in China. Just ask them.

In the meantime, shutdowns impact the economies of the capitalist world in ways the Chinese military could only dream about. In parallel with this, is work on vaccines which are currently being tested on Uigurs in Xinkiang. Given that C19 is the same type of virus as the common cold, I expect to see a vaccine against the common cold show up about the same time as the C19 vaccine, which is to say, never. Also remember that Chinese vaccines can be expected to work about as well as anything else you'd get at Harbor Freight.

Meantime there's efforts to “flatten the curve” and to impart “Herd immunity”. What this means in the first case is that not so many cases requiring hospitalization develop at once to overwhelm the hospitals. In the long run, the same number of people die, they just die a few months later. In the second case, once all those susceptible people shuffle off the mortal coil, the virus will kill fewer people over all. Note that it will never actually go away, it will simply sputter along on a reduced number of victims. Thus C19 will join the ranks of leading causes of geriatric death along with H1N1 and heart failure, as just another unfortunate statistic. We are seeing this now in the increasing number of cases being discovered as the economy opens up, and a steadily falling death rate as the most vulnerable are removed from the population. The way it works, any government can expect to see the same infection and mortality curves, and since mortality is going down and infections can be expected to begin to decline similarly over time, all politicians can crow about the success of their plans and get re-elected.

Picking Your Victims

The big Twitter hack/scam that just happened perhaps confirms a statement here that better educated people are less prone to get caught by fraudsters.

Scott Adams noted this morning that while the Biden Twitter feed was used, the Trump feed was not. I guess if you're looking for suckers, some places are much better than others.

Whose Life Matters?

Having spent the last 3-1/2 years trying to get rid of President Trump, it now begins to seem like the left will be taking the Chicago approach to the upcoming election. You know the drill; it's where the two gorillas in cheap suits come into your shop and compliment you on it. "Nice shop you got here. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it." This is followed by a request for a percentage of the till to be delivered weekly to insure that nothing does happen.

In this case, it's the rioting. The left can promise that it will immediately go away if the right person gets elected this fall. NOT re-elected. Elected. They can also plausibly promise that the rioting, looting, and burning will continue if Orange man wins, so consider your vote carefully.

Turnout in the just completed primary is being reported as 99.3% which is at the level one doesn't usually see outside of Communist dictatorships. The secondary tactic is to heavily fund the challenger to any incumbent Republican so that the Dem, in the general, will not be facing an incumbent. Thus we see novice challengers suddenly able to outspend established office holders by as much as 14:1. Be assured, that all this support will go to the Dem in the General.

I may be overly cynical, but I'm seeing Colorado as a lost cause and fully expect that in another 2 years, I won't be able to afford to live here any more.

Product Endorsement

OK it's early, but here's my initial reaction. The aftermarket automotive fuel pump previous owner had installed on my Yamaha failed in that it would run for only about 10-12 minutes before ceasing operations. A 10 minute wait would get me back on the road for another 10 minutes but this is obviously not going to cut it.

Fuel pumps of the type normally fitter to the bike are available on e-bay at prices ranging from $15 to slightly over $500. Go figure. The same pump seems to be pictured in all ads. With some skepticism. I got one labeled "high performance". Not sure what that means in a fuel pump but aftermarket parts on e-bay tend to be factory seconds from China so any additional endorsement helps. Price was a bit under $21 so not bad, and it ships from CA. Surprisingly it arrived 3 days sooner than I had expected.

Not mentioned in the ad was any useful specs like flow rate or pressure. Not mentioned on the pump is any indication of inlet or outlet. You have to figure this out yourself. Put a few drops of gas down each of the hose connections and put some power to it and flow direction will become immediately obvious. Hose size is 5/16" which of course I didn't have lying around. No big deal. Pressure turns out to be about 3 psi which is fine for a carbureted motorcycle. One more thing: This is possibly the noisiest fuel pump I've ever dealt with. The rattle from this thing rivals the exhaust noise. It's louder when there's no fuel in it so I suppose it will be easy to tell when I've run out of gas. Or maybe it's just quiet in the garage by myself.

I'll take it out on a test drive today. I expect it will get me there and back again with no problems.

UPDATE: OK under normal running conditions I can barely hear it at idle so I was right about the garage being quiet. Forget what I said about the noise.

How to Celebrate

It's 9:20 PM and the 'hood here sounds a lot like a war zone. In the background I can hear a couple of municipal displays going off. The local noise is much more encouraging as every single explosion is a thumb in the eye of the nanny state.

Rattle the windows, kids!

Gun Sales - Through the Roof!

It would seem that  the powers that be behind BLM and Antifa can sell guns even better than Hillary or Obama. June checks are nearly 4 million and the projection model* is looking at nearly 40 million checks this year. Yes, I know not all checks represent a gun sale, but even using the NSSF estimate, that's nearly 27 million gun sales for 2020.

O.K. then, the 2020 curve is well off the reservation. The Murder Hornets, which seem to have disappeared from the news, don't have a chance. When your revolutionary army is met by liberal lawyers wielding AR-pattern rifles, you could reasonably conclude that you're on the wrong side of history.

Data like this can also be presumed to show a rather drastic decline in popular support for government. At this point, the lack of faith is in local level governments. Mayors and Governors. People are beginning to ask who is funding all this turmoil. Looks like outsiders.

*Yes, I know that projection models are in rather bad odor currently, but you got to use something if only to point a general direction.

Calculating Reparations

OK this seems to be a hot topic since the Danes are through the city gates and threatening to burn more of the town if they aren't paid off. Keeping Kiplings thoughts on this topic in mind, let's see if there isn't some way to figure out who is owed and how much.

Between 200 and 400 years ago, some black people were rounded up by their fellow black people, and sold to some white people who took some of them to the British colonies or the recently formed United States, and resold them. There they labored up until 1865 for room and board and minimal healthcare provided by their owners. After this they were freed to do with their lives whatever they wished. 150 years later, lets see how they are doing compared to their former countrymen who avoided their evil fate.

I looked up some statistics, and keeping in mind that such numbers may not be entirely accurate, let's use them anyway as no others are available. First off how well are the Africans who avoided slavery by selling their cousins doing: I picked 2 countries, Ghana and Nigeria to represent Africa. Good picks? Who knows. Feel free to look up others. Most American slaves came from the West Coast of Africa, and there are a lot of small countries along that coast.

Current average income per household in Ghana is listed as $7442 USD/yr. Current average household income in Nigeria is listed as $15,746. I suppose it's higher there because of the larger proportion of royal princes in the general population. I could be wrong. Sue me.

The average black family in the U.S. is earning some $67,426 USD/yr. This is lower than the U.S. Average by a bit, but that's the published number.

This implies that at worst the former Africans are on average bringing home between $51,680 and $59,984/year MORE than they would be making had their ancestors never been enslaved. Put another way, the average black American is bringing home between 4.28 and 9.06 times as much as he could have been making “back home”.

Was the long strange trip easy? No! Life's like that. Easy for some and harder for most of the rest of us. The methodology has been published and re published, Simply follow the directions, and Voila! Cake! At this point it might be fair to ask how much of a gratuity the rest of us should be asking from these fortunate few for their 400-900% pay raises.

Get Trump – Chapter 6?

At least 6.

Started out with the locker room talk scandal, but as Trump never presented himself as a plaster saint, it didn't carry any weight.

Next came the Russia. Russia, Russia. Trumps energy policies pulled the rug out from under the Russians, and Gen Mattis put a stop to their more egregious adventurism in the middle east so unless Putin was trying to undermine his own country, the charge against Trump made no sense.

As a by-product of the Russia fiasco, the involvement of the DNC and Clinton campaign in the Steele dossier became painfully obvious.

The impeachment effort filled headlines daily with people increasingly noticing that it served as an excuse for the House to do nothing else. I suppose that if you know that whatever the House does will be stopped in the Senate, and vice versa, there must be little incentive to even show up for work.

The involvement of the Chinese in stealing everything they could get their hands on in the US and adventurism abroad was met with resistance which the left tried, unsuccessfully to label as racism.

The virus problem was used as an excuse to shut down the fastest growing economy ever seen and mute Trumps claims to economic success. Used as an attack on Trump, it worked, but it worked sort of like setting off a giant stink bomb in a crowded elevator. The Chinese are trying to blame the virus on Trump. So far, no one is buying that. Trump is trying to get people back to work and is meeting strong resistance from the Dems who would prefer we all stayed home and starved.

Now comes the latest attack: The George Floyd riots. Note that the riots are happening in Donk controlled cities, and that the municipal administrations are for the most part, siding with the rioters. Black Lives Matter? Not really. If they did, the riots would be put down, the Antifas would be jailed, and black-owned businesses would not be burned out. Unemployed blacks are victims and as such are actively courted by the Dems. It's a good thing since the last time we had unemployment this high they elected their president 4 times in a row.

The riots being municipal level disturbances, the president has limited ability to jump in and put them down. It's a local problem after all. Somehow Trump is expected to come up with a Federal solution to local police problems while the house panders to black nationalists and tacitly supports their militia, Antifa. As such, I expect the left will be actively supporting the riots all the way through November with calls for more every time some thug of the right pigmentation gets shot by a cop in the commission of a crime. They will probably call for more if Trump gets reelected to protest “Vote Suppression”, something that can be investigated through his second term. Get out in the street, wave a sign, spread plague, burn your house down, and vote Dem. It's a safe bet that if a Dem becomes President, money for the rioters will dry up over night.

Every Monday, for the last 3-1/2 years, we've been told that the coming Friday would be the big day with Trump frog marched out of the White House in handcuffs. I'm still hearing this. I expect to hear it until 2024, unless the election turns into a huge landslide of voters fed up with Dem shenanigans who hand Trump a second term with both the House and Senate. In that case, the republicans will revert to form and spend most of their time attacking each other.

Defunding The Police - How I'd Do It

Well, maybe not, but consider this: First the local government defunds the police. This frees up considerable monies which of course would NOT be returned to the taxpayers. Let's say it gets spread around among the other government entities.

First you let everyone know they're on their own so you encourage the populace to always go armed.

Second, you encourage the populace to view lawbreakers not as underprivileged victims, but as dangerous predators. This is the hard part as many elected officials view these people as valued constituents and supporters.

Third, if you are accosted by one of these predators, you are encouraged to use your armament to stop the predation, with an eye toward also including possible recidivism.

Lastly, you should call the newly expanded city trash service and have them pick up the debris and move it to the local landfill. This also requires that any paperwork would need to include not only cause of death (lead poisoning) but reason for death (Attempted Wealth Redistribution). Again we have to be careful here as tax collection, while being the same function as AWR, is done under color of law and shooting tax collectors is frowned on. At least by the local government who rely on the swag to keep themselves employed.

Biden Calls For Military Coup!

Well, O.K. this is actually a fun with headlines post. Breitbart puts this up:

Biden: Military Will Remove Trump From W.H.

The actual story following the Breitbart link isn't nearly as exciting. More like a work of bad Science Fiction in Bidens head.

During an interview aired on Wednesday’s broadcast of Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” 2020 Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden said that he has thought about what would happen if he won the election and President Trump refused to leave office and that he believes the military would remove President Trump “from the White House with great dispatch” if such a scenario took place.

When you think about it, Trump has refused to leave the office for 3-1/2 years now and I suppose the Donks are beginning to think that he won't. After all if it was them, they wouldn't now would they?

As long as we're cooking up conspiracies, how about this: The Wuhan Flu was developed by the Chinese at the request of the Clintonistas as a last-ditch effort to make Trump look bad by destroying all his economic gains. Makes as much sense as anything Biden has come up with so far.

Name That City!

I own the world  has a contest up to name the instant city the rioters have declared in the middle of Seattle. As of this printing, there are some 250 suggestions, some quite good.

I suggest naming the lace "Utopia" as this seems to be the stated objective of the founders. It does require that you ignore the sudden absence of food within the city limits, and the near instant appearance of a warlord type who is managing something that isn't actually a police unit, but which enforces his rule with a iron fist.

Gee! Who could have seen that coming?

Voting

Voting the man rather than the party is high principle indeed. Unfortunately it seldom pays off. The "Man" you voted for turns out to have no principles, just a talent for persuasion that tops his opponent. Should a man with principles actually get elected, no sooner does he take his seat than the political equivalent of Guido and Nunzio come by and carefully explain his first choice to him: He can keep his principles or he can keep his seat, but not both.

Democrats have an unpublished agenda of "Power for me, but not for thee". Dissenters are summarily tossed under the bus. Republicans are a party on minimalist government and carry this philosophy through to party management. Dissenters are tolerated and become known as "Mavericks" (McCain) or "Moderates"(Romney) who go on to destroy any narrow margins of majority their putative party may hold.

Vote the silver-tongued devil of your choice, but in the end, you get the Democrat platform. Quickly or slowly, your choice.