Open Thread 12 April 2022 – TTG

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TTG

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67 Responses to Open Thread 12 April 2022 – TTG

  1. Lefty665 says:

    I’ll tap into it, but I won’t die on this thread. 10-24.

  2. Fred says:

    Shanghai is our future. Prove me wrong.

    • TTG says:

      Fred,

      I don’t think we’ll ever put up with that zero covid stuff. Even when we had lockdowns, they were half-assed. Indoor masking caused so many to cry like rats eating onions. Putting up with inconveniences has been breed out of our DNA. Too bad being hysterically frightened is still in our genes.

      • Fred says:

        TTG,

        Inconveniences? How many small businesses were bankrupted by being declared “non-essential” and forced to close or cutail operations to the point of insolvency? How many children had their educational and psychological development damaged over those indoor mask mandates? Shanghai isn’t about ‘inconveniences’ or Covid, it is about the communist party wielding power and keeping the one successful almost capitalist province in its subordinate place.

        • TTG says:

          Fred,

          Those children had their educational and psychological development damaged more due to home schooling or lack thereof. For Shanghai, that may very well be about China trying to crush the city rather than a maniacal drive for zero covid.

          • Fred says:

            TTG,

            Home schooling? The school closures and remote learning via zoom were directed by the state. Shanghai is certainly about crushing the city, just like the left here is using children to crush parental opposition to its policies.

        • jim ticehurst says:

          Fred..
          I Agree about Shanghia..being the Future for The USA.The
          Next Wave is Prepped Now…My States cases went up 110 Percent this Week…The scenes of People Screaming from Locked Rooms For Food and Water Is Hellish.No Public Exposures..No Road Traffic..

          .Extreme InHumane Measures…in Shanghai..I can Imagine China will Soon Transform This Variant into A ZOMBIE…Maker..and Shanghia..Looking Like a Scene From The OMEGA MAN Movie with Charleton Heston..

          More Crimes against Humanity..
          Honest People Know That..
          I Fear Ukraine will Be Another Aushwitz Too….Soon..All of It..
          JT

      • zmajcek says:

        Maybe the Chinese are practicing and getting ready for something much worse than Covid19.

    • Deap says:

      States control public health policy, so there maybe a patchwork of reactions around the country – some who will choose to get Shanghaied by CDC again; and the rest of us..

      On this state’s frontline, there is a current movement to create “New California”, in the spirit of West Virginia breaking away from Virginia.

      What a surprise to see **all** California counties were going to be part of New California. The only counties left out of New California were LA County and SF Bay Area along with Nancy Pelosi and Gavin Newsom’s vineyard county of Sonoma.

      Finally a California split I can believe in – their manifesto basically sues the government to relieve them of multiple constitutional abuses committed by the current California Democrat super-majority.

      For years there have been fringe separatists in the NE corner of the state who wanted go it alone as the state of Jefferson, or join up with Idaho or Oregon. but this latest New California is much more ambitious.

  3. longarch says:

    News story recommended by anonymous writers:

    https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/04/11/grassley-enough-evidence-to-legitimately-question-if-joe-biden-is-compromised-by-chinese/

    Opinion piece recommended by same:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSrOXvoNLwg

    Does anyone else miss President 45? Does anyone else think his re-election was stolen by traitors?

    • Seamus Padraig says:

      2020 was the absolute fakest election I’d seen since Mexico ’88.

      • TTG says:

        Seamus Padraig,

        The intense examinations of both the Georgia and Arizona elections say otherwise. Especially in Arizona where Republican voters voted for Republican candidates, but not for Trump.

        • Deap says:

          The AZ vote is still going through official scrutiny. Can’t make any claims at this time. Rigging a vote count for one candidate, and not down ticket is well within the range of possibility when you have electronics doing the final tally, and ballots potentially skimmed off pre-emtively, or inserted ahead of time. Hold your powder on AZ.

          Georgia is still playing defense, but the case against GA being rigged grows with every True the Vote video exposure. Let’s see what 2000 Mules shows us.

    • Bill Roche says:

      Larch, yes and yes. He is a big mouthed carnival huckster. He is also a patriot.
      If the swamp steals another election you can be certain the GOPe (Grand Opportunist Party) will have again been complicit. What recourse would there then be? The dogs of civil war will feed on us all. We get a free and fair election in ’24 or all bets are off on the Republic.

    • David Kissinger says:

      No, I don’t miss him at all. The persistance in which some people cling to the Big Lie is truly breathtaking.

      This election was not stolen. Biden beat Trump in a 7 1/2 million vote landslide in a free and fair election.

      Well before the first vote was ever cast, Trump claimed that if he lost, it would be the biggest theft in history. After the election he claimed that had the election not been “stolen,” he would have won in a landslide.

      The fact is that of the hundreds, if not thousands of polls taken, Trump never once surpassed 50 % in any methoodologically sound poll, not once.

      Trump brought more than sixty cases to court pushing the Big Lie. Judges looked at the allegations and determined that they were without merit.

      Given those facts, how is it possible that Trump won in a landslide, or for that matter any margin at all?

      Trump was a very weak and feckless president. Had the republicans put up a worthy nominee, that person may have even won.

      This conspracy theory about a stolen elecection will always persist, but the facts just don’t back it up.

      Trump will go down in history as the worst president in history.

      • Deap says:

        The facts are several states have started crushing investigations that are now demonstrating the Big Lie is claiming the election was not rigged, fixed and/or stolen by strategic insider moves. Be sure to view the documentaries “Rigged” and “2000 Mules” for more background information.

        • longarch says:

          I have heard of such documentaries on anontimes. I suppose most of the folks who read anontimes do not need reminding of it, but I should explain that it reports on a broad range of stories. Some of its stories are very thoroughly sourced and unimpeachable. Some of its stories are wildly speculative and should be regarded with great skepticism.

          While I suspect “2000 Mules” will prove to be carefully supported with evidence, I will have to review it carefully. Before I start that project, here is a link to a thought-provoking discussion among many anons all about how little they trust each other:

          https://anontimes.com/post/laptop-from-hell-leaking-on-4chan_64203

          The point of the linked page is not to argue that the laptop from hell has verifiably leaked. The point is to argue that some anons claim to be in the process of leaking it and many anons do not trust that claim.

  4. Steve says:

    How is Col Lang? Any update?

  5. Sam says:

    I compiled some representative videos of the lockdown in Shanghai, all from the Internet, I hope this collection could help you get to know China as a real face but not as their propaganda

    https://twitter.com/donnawonghk/status/1512471322051366929?s=21

    Another example of zero covid madness that the covidians unleashed. Is this the type of world people want?

    We shouldn’t forget what the covidians in the supposedly “free” west with citizens having certain inalienable rights did. And we shouldn’t forget who among our friends, neighbors, families that went all-in with the covidian emergency to strip citizens of their bodily autonomy and rights of movement and access to public services.

    There are many authoritarians who showed their cards from Jacinda Arden to Justin Trudeau and so many governors in our states. We should note that our liberty is only in name and that governments will strip that veneer at the slightest opportunity and the judiciary ain’t there either to defend constitutional rights.

    We all live in Xi’s CCP vision of totalitarian control of all aspects of our lives.

    • blue peacock says:

      Sam

      Yup. Let’s also not forget who among this Committee were big cheerleaders of lockdown. What remains very interesting is that there’s yet to be a randomized, double-blind study that demonstrates the efficacy of lockdown and masks against infection with the covid virus. In fact the “vaccine” has failed that test too. The Pfizer clinical trial data appears to be a doozy from the reporting I have read about it. It makes sense why the FDA and Pfizer wanted to hide that data for 75 years! And, even after the 24×7 covidian hysteria there’s no calls for a transparent and independent investigation of the origins, and what role did Fauci, Collins, et al play in the engineering of the virus.

      States that imposed the harshest lockdowns had the most devastating impact on the public, the most wide-ranging study into Covid restrictions in the US to date has found.

      New York, California, New Jersey and Illinois were panned for their pandemic performance after bringing in draconian measures to shut their citizens in their homes.

      Those states’ Democrat Governors’ policies caused high death rates, ruined children’s education and destroyed businesses due to the severe curbs on freedom, researchers found as they slapped them with an F-grade.

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10708225/The-states-FAILED-protect-people-COVID.html

      Indeed, the covidian emergency has broken all the taboos like the fig-leaf that there’s rule of law and constitutional rights have precedence. Governments have demonstrated they can arbitrarily, claiming whatever emergency, force you to take medical procedures, freeze your bank accounts, prevent employment, travel and access any public services. However, we’ve also seen that the ruling elite are exempt from their draconian actions. We should stop pretending that we live in a constitutional republic.

      • Fourth and Long says:

        The vax nearly killed me with myocarditis first, then beginning of kidney function decrease. Then I got covid. I was double Pfizer vaxed. As TTG might possibly say,they can ESAD.

      • Bill Roche says:

        Stupid of Trump to try and force that issue. The swamp sure showed him whose boss.

      • Sam says:

        BP,

        All of this was obvious from the beginning

        -Zero-Covid leads to disaster
        -Trillions in Covid stimulus leads to inflation
        -Lockdowns lead to depression
        -Business closures lead to supply chain collapse
        -Masks lead to developmental delays
        -Remote school leads to learning loss

        https://twitter.com/robber_baron_/status/1513923122449170432?s=21

        Lockdown was one of the worst policies that was promulgated by The Science. It had no scientific basis. The preponderance of harms was well known. Yet they did it. Of course the laptop class enjoyed their “staycation” but those harmed were the voiceless kids and the ignored poor and working class.

      • walrus says:

        I’ll own up to that. The fact that some lockdowns were half assed doesn’t change the science. We have known for at least 700 years how to stop the spread of contagious disease through quarantine – lockdown.

        Dealing with the costs of the lockdown is another question. Melbourne, Australia, has had the longest lockdown in the world and we are still dealing with the aftermath in terms of business failures, mental and physical health issues, etc., and the Government gets a big FAIL because it inflicted completely unnecessary restrictions as part of the lockdown for political purposes.

        For example: no hunting, no fishing, no boating, no use of holiday houses for quarantine, no golf – this was all to satisfy the left wing Green agenda and had nothing to do with the spread of Covid.

        Then of course we had the corrupt deals over contracting Covid related services.

        • Deap says:

          Was this ever really the “disease” to warrant these extremes – or just a bad flu season and financially incentivized shoddy record keeping. The long view on the data continue to emerge and it is not compelling it was the Global Plague of All Ages after all.

          New Danish study in Lancet reviewing all cause morbidity data is as confounding as the one Johns Hopkins tried to bury in Oct 2020 – where are the excess covid deaths?

          • TTG says:

            Deap,

            A bad flu season kills up to 60,000. Covid killed substantially more, enough to lower life expectancy for two years running. Far from a world ending global plague, but bad enough.

          • Eric Newhill says:

            Deap,
            We still don’t see the covid deaths in the under 65 age cohort. In the over 65 we don’t really see it either. In the US there are some excess deaths due to drug overdoses and deferred (or skipped) care during the hysteria. That impacted life expectancy, which was expected to decline anyhow due to various epidemic conditions in the population and the influx of poor uneducated people into the country. Covid attributed deaths are being revised downward by governments (even the CDC), though quietly. Some elderly and sick people lost a few months of life.

            I stand by my professional conclusion that covid was an hysteria and a scam with regards to 99% of us. The vaccines are BS at best and more dangerous to young people than covid; far more dangerous. But what I do I know? I just paid to understand these things by a Fortune 100 company.

            OTOH, Covid looks like will probably make a return just in time for mail-in ballots in the midterm elections so democrats can pull another rabbit out of the hat.

          • Eric Newhill says:

            I have a theory. The placebo effect – proven real by our new god, Science – works both ways. If you believe in the sugar pill’s power to make you better, you get better. However, if you believe in the pill’s ability to make you sick, or even die, those things will happen, especially if you are already of frail health and have a susceptible mindset (which apparently a lot of believers in Science and MSM do). So you get a cough and a fever. You are convinced that you have the very deadly covid and the placebo effect kicks in and you die. The good news for the rest of us is that you were going to die in a couple of years anyhow. But the covid (a real virus that can sometimes result in cold and flu symptoms) wasn’t what really did you in. It was the brainwashing that got you. SWMBO and I remain unvaxxed and unafraid – and alive and healthy and socially active.

        • Kilo 4/11 says:

          Nope.

          We have known for over three hundred years that lockdowns don’t work. Read Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year.

    • Deap says:

      Floating around the net is a fake CDC card with the title “COVID-19 Control Group” that looks exactly like the real CDC proof injection record.

      In the lines where one is supposed to enter the dates for 1st dose and 2nd dose is printed in bold “Never”. Needless to say, I printed one up, laminated it and stuck it in my wallet.

      Back in my days working my way through grad school as a cocktail waitress (great hours, tips and amazingly good practice for survival social skills) and barely 21 myself, I would ask others for their ID.

      I always just skimmed the drivers licenses and never did the math using their actual their birth dates. Assumed if they handed me something, it was more likely “valid”. Thus this fake card, much like th fake ID’s many college students considered essential parts of their campus wardrobes

      As a wise pundit recently said on MOTUS, when the government “F’s with you, sometimes you just have to “F” them back.

      NB: Of course, don’t try this at home. Or anyplace where it really counts. It is totally illegal. And you could get into real trouble. Just one of the artifacts from this crazy time.

  6. English Outsider says:

    Lefty665. The ingenious puns I get – took me a second or two but I got there – but 10-24? I might never find out but to return to the illustration. That’s the sort of kit my sons bring out when I’ve snapped a bolt or I can’t get it out with the impact driver and blowtorch.

    They’re a bit secretive about where they keep it. When it comes to repair work they regard me as the maniac with the club hammer and adjustable and like to keep me well away from anything more delicate. There’ve been one or two unfortunate times when they’ve actually seen me in action with the club hammer. Only one or two but it seems to have made an indelible impression. They don’t understand that there are some times when getting the thing working – and now! – is more important than fancy etiquette.

    But our Greens have finally managed to wreck all my petrol machines and the repair work needed there goes a lot further than getting a few bolts undone. My lovely old grass cutter, built like a tank and still going strong after decades of misuse, has finally packed in. Ethanol in the petrol. So too a rotovator I keep for corners and strips. That one’s the best America can produce, carefully tended, and brand new. Well, four or five years old but still runs as well as when I first put it to work.

    Or ran. Now it’s refusing its duty. Ethanol in the petrol again. Even my immaculate Stihl chainsaw is grumpier than it was. Short of boiling the stuff off, is there any way of getting the ethanol out and the petrol back the way it used to be?

    • Fred says:

      English,
      Marine or aviation fuel here is usually ethanol free, though it does cost about 20% more. Not sure what availability you have nearby.

    • TTG says:

      EO,

      With my father being a tool maker, I “tapped” into this knowledge a long time ago. Used my own tap and die set a few times over the years, most often just to clean up threads. We have a few places that sell ethanol free gas, but it doesn’t seem to do much harm to my current mower. It’s 15 year old Honda engine and it starts first pull every Spring, even with leftover gas from the previous Fall. All I do is change the oil and ensure it’s topped off. Only replaced the spark plug once. It’s a mechanical fluke, but I’ll stick with it until it dies.

    • Lefty665 says:

      EO, Glad I amused you:) 10-24 was a twofer. It is 1) a screw with a diameter 10 (3/16″) and 24 threads per inch (coarse thread-for coarse humor) and 2) a “10” radio code that dates back to the 1930s. 10-24 being “assignment completed”. 10-4 meaning “Ok” is the most familiar. I favored 10-7 meaning “out of service” – for me that was often taking a coffee break. http://www.everets.org/kevin/ten-codes.php

    • scott s. says:

      I own a Triumph TR6. By that time (73) things had been mostly standardized, but there still are applications of Whitworth hardware, which need their own taps/dies/”spanners”.

      • walrus says:

        UNC, UNF, Whitworth, NPT, BSP and of course Metric. Its enough to send you mad.

        It almost did when I was building my aircraft. All the hardware and fasteners are American AN (Army Navy)specs – sixteenths and thirty seconds of an inch UNC threads and number drills for the hole sizes. Then the engine, being German, has everything Metric. I spent a small fortune on freight because Australia is metric and just about everything had to come from America.

  7. The Beaver says:

    How I miss not having Brig. Ali with us ? His insights about what is happening in Pakistan since March would have been edifying for those who can see that corruption is back in the big picture in that country

  8. Sam says:

    1. Ok, there aren’t that many real conspiracies in politics, but the secret plan hatched in 1980 to unleash monopoly power is a real honest-to-goodness plot that worked.

    https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1512482359320498177?s=21

    This thread by Matt Stoller is worth a read. You can see how market and economic power have been consolidated over the past few decades.

    • TTG says:

      Sam,

      Monopolies and wealth concentration are clearly bad for the US, except for our wealthy oligarchs. It’s the ugly side of capitalism. Unfortunately, the only politicians who want to do anything about it are Bernie Sanders socialists. To disparage the wealthy and regulate monopolies are dangerous ideas to most Republicans and Democrats.

      • Sam says:

        TTG,

        Everyone who believes in a free market economy should want a competitive market. Anti-trust is the opposing force to the natural tendency of consolidating market power. We have the laws but lack enforcement due to regulatory capture. Now we’re on the other end of the scale in terms of consolidation in practically every major market segment from agriculture to media. Big Government in collusion with Big Business and of course the judiciary have played an instrumental role in achieving oligopolies.

      • Deap says:

        Do oligarchs create concentrated wealth; or do we create concentrated wealth for them when we buy what they are selling?

        I personally worry more about the illegal drug cartels now preying on customers, competitors and supply lines than any other “monopoly”.

        • TTG says:

          Deap,

          Oligarchs create it and/or steal it. Same the world over. Here buying politicians to shape business and tax laws seems to be the way to go.

          • Deap says:

            It is their money. Tax laws of any sort merely confiscate what they own in the first place. And tax loopholes we create are okay with me.

            Depends on the primary choice – who owns money earned? The producer who will share only with the government what he/she must. Or is it the government, who lets the producer keep only part of it. I do swear this is a basic difference between Democrats and Republicans in the US.

        • blue peacock says:

          It is really simple.

          Will a market economy function better with 100 seed companies or 2? Or 50 meatpackers or 2? Or 50 media companies or 5? We’ve seen this type of consolidation across practically every major market segment since 1980. Jonathan Tepper’s book chronicles this consolidation across hundreds of market segments. So the question is what if there’s only 1 company in each market segment, is that good?

          https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2021/jul/14/food-monopoly-meals-profits-data-investigation

          Is it capitalism when the biggest banks get bailed out by future generations but not the smaller banks? You do know that it implies the cost of capital is going to be much lower for the biggest banks because they have implicit government support compared to the smaller banks? That’s obviously not a level playing field.

          Many folks focus on the theoretical and not on the practical. It is worthwhile reading up on the debates in Congress when the early anti-trust laws were written, debated and enacted into law.

          To draw an analogy: Is a sport better or worse if the teams are nearly evenly matched and both teams to a game follow the same rules enforced uniformly by a referee? Or is it better if one basketball team has all 7ft players and the other 5ft players and the referee only calls foul on the 5ft player team?

          • Sam says:

            Well said BP.

            This is precisely the point. We’ve gone from multiple competitors in a market segment to a few mega-corporations that dominate that segment. Competition is the heart of a market economy and anti-trust legislation was enacted to do that. Instead of reinforcing this we’ve allowed consolidation of market segments to a few mega-corporations with enormous market power. That’s oligopoly.

            Take this example:

            Check out my latest in-depth work on how fans are now paying the price for the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger 12 years ago with skyrocketing ticket prices, opaque terms and exorbitant fees, as a result of their unparalleled monopolistic power.

            https://twitter.com/chatwan_mongkol/status/1512465794092855297?s=21

          • Sam says:

            And another example.

            Amazon isn’t what you think. If you want to get what this gatekeeper does and how it operates, check out the @econliberties report “Understanding Amazon: Making the 21st-Century Gatekeeper Safe for Democracy.”

            https://www.economicliberties.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Working-Paper-Series-on-Corporate-Power_5-FINAL.pdf

            When you combine market concentration and concentrated economic power with Citizens United we get what we have Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. And a ruling power elite who act with impunity to the detriment of the bottom 80% best exemplified by the socialization of speculative financial losses in the 2008 GFC.

      • Fred says:

        TTG,

        ” except for our wealthy oligarchs…. the only politicians who want to do anything about it are Bernie Sanders socialists. …”

        LOL Bernie, millionaire socialist of the people.

    • longarch says:

      In a similar vein, if a version of capitalism produces excessive profits, that version is characterized by market failures.

      https://hipcrime.substack.com/p/billionaires-shouldnt-exist?s=r

  9. Mark Gaughan says:

    Give them more jeeps!

  10. Babeltuap says:

    ‘Tis but the same rehearsal of the past. First Freedom and then Glory—when that fails, Wealth, vice, corruption—barbarism at last. And History, with all her volumes vast, Hath but one page’.

    http://www.explorethomascole.org/tour/items/63/series/

    I don’t where we are in the pictures exactly. Past the corruption phase maybe?

  11. Fred says:

    Babeltuap,

    “THE FATE OF EMPIRES and
    SEARCH FOR SURVIVAL
    Sir John Glubb”
    http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf

  12. blue peacock says:

    Twitter’s board of directors will be meeting soon to discuss Elon Musk’s $41.39 billion hostile takeover bid, with the company saying it will ‘carefully review the proposal’.

    The Twitter board will meet on Thursday morning at 10am PT consider Musk’s bid to take the company private, according to CNBC, after Musk in an offer letter told the chairman: ‘Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.’

    ‘The Twitter Board of Directors will carefully review the proposal to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of the Company and all Twitter stockholders,’ the company said in a statement.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10718427/Elon-Musk-tries-buy-Twitter-41billion-Tesla-CEO-offers-54-20-share.html

    We know what the woke Twitter board will do? In any case you have to admire Elon and how he shakes up the establishment. He took on the big defense contractors with SpaceX and the big automakers with Tesla and kicked their ass through innovation.

    We need more mavericks who are willing to buck the status quo especially in politics. The duopoly is now so corrupted and so many of our governmental institutions especially the national security apparatus is gone so far down the deep end, we need to kill them and start with new organizations. Organizational restructuring is so necessary.

    • Sam says:

      I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter. He seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.

      https://twitter.com/maxboot/status/1514570168730636290?s=21

      Neocon Max Boot having the sads. He wants censorship of views he opposes so that his ilk can have the free run for their propaganda. But, of course this censorship is for DEMOKRACY!

  13. JK/AR says:

    I declare. This fellow has grown on me:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXgf7xwu8ws

    An acquired taste?

    Perhaps …

  14. Sam says:

    Today’s Guardian. A letter that will punch the breath from you 💔

    https://twitter.com/doctor_oxford/status/1514869593629675521?s=21

    The harms of the “covidian emergency”. We must not forget or sweep it under the rug. Or let our short attention spans obscure what was done in the supposedly “rule of law” “democratic” west and is being done in Xi’s totalitarian dictatorship.

  15. JK/AR says:

    Push this up to the seventeen minute mark and watch from there. The subject matter I’m pointing to has to do with Elon Musk’s *effort[?]* at Tweeter. The “discussionists” are definitely not in any way Right-Wingers but even were they what they’re presenting ought be concerned to all of us!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnmXHqTFoqY

    (Beginning at the 17 minute mark gets one past the commercials.)

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