There’s a whole rash of pundits and others that are taking a pill the original Morphius never offered. I’ll explain below.

Welcome to the Scuttlebutt, absolutely no clue on dinner tonight, probably leftovers, but hey, pull up a chair, drinks are in the fridge, please notice the tip jar where we collect for the mess. Let’s talk about that pill.

I apologize in advance to anyone that I’m “mansplaining” to, but we have folks from all levels of internet knowledge on this page and I don’t want to lose anyone.

In the movie series The Matrix (and it’s sequels) the Wizard/quest giver of the piece offers our hero a choice. “Take the blue pill, and you wake up in your bed tomorrow, and you can write this all off as a dream. Take the red pill and you stay here, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

The basics to that, is that the red pill allows you to see things as they really are, unplugging you from the machine that is running a simulation in our collective brains. The blue pill keeps you in your comfort zone and running in the machine maze.

To these two options, the gestalt of the internet has added a third pill. The black one. It’s basically a suicide pill. It’s “Oh, we’re all fucked, the bad guys already have it sewn up, there’s nothing we can do!” Move over Eeyore, there’s folks that want some of what you got.

A lot of my fellow conservative pundits have been popping black pills like there’s no tomorrow lately. They seem to believe that the rise of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America, the latest iteration of the American Communist Party, this time, with extra sprinkles!) and the fact that the DSA, now a part of the Democratic Party, has won some primaries and some offices, means “that’s it, game over man!”

Horse Shit.

First off, let’s review another phrase, just in case you aren’t familiar: Astroturf. That’s a movement that claims to be “grass roots” but is actually completely artificial and just happens to look like grass from a distance.

Am I saying that the DSA is astroturf? You bet your sweet ass I am.

Look, the PRC has been looking for ways to sabotage us since before Nixon was stupid enough to normalize relations with those pricks. Is it any wonder that a communist Muslim (boy there’s a concept that would make both Mohamad’s, may bees pee on him, and Marx’s heads explode.) became mayor of a place that had secret CCP “Police stations” operating in plain sight for years?

One of the once reliable internet presences reporting on all things governmental, Politico, has, for the last couple years, been more and more adversarial to the US and US interests, while being more and more of an apologist for all things PRC. It’s funny, when you look at the people they quote as sources, it’s almost always “A former member of the State Department” or they name a high ranking official, who no longer works in government, having been shitcanned… Sometimes they name a flag officer, like Admiral William Owens, Air Force General Ronald Fogleman, or any of a number of others.

Here’s the thing, CDR Sal at keeping-an-eye-on-the-long-game just did a really nice article (go read it, you need to get this from the horses mouth) about how a shit ton of former flag officers, including those mentioned above, are in the pay of the PRC to act as influencers (it used to be called fifth columnists) and are getting paid to try and convince the US that being China’s bitch is good, and opposing China is double-bad-evil-stupid.

We have names. They include a former CNO for pity’s sake! These are the people that Politico is quoting, they’re the people who are advising defense contractors on what gear to source for things like drone ship cameras. Cameras like the ones on drone attack craft that the UK SBS just found out were sending data to the PRC constantly.

The same amount of effort is being spent, by the same folks, to turn our political side, and yes, they have had some success.

SOME

But the thing is this: They’ve over played their hands. That started with COVID, and it’s just been getting more and more obvious. This is the frantic, last-ditch effort to grasp victory from the jaws of defeat. It’s the battles of Kursk and the Bulge.

Those attacks looked pretty scary when they happened, but there was nothing to back them up. They were “Hail Mary” plays, and when they failed, as they were doomed to, the only question was how many more had to die, before the Nazi regime toppled. Now we didn’t know that those were the last gasps at the time… I’m sure that Ike, Zhukov, Patton, and Pukhov suspected it, but they could not KNOW. Even if they did, it had to be played out, because the enemy gets to vote too, and totalitarian regimes never give up until they have lost all capability to do anything else. Even then they’re going to try and take down as many of their opponents as they can on their way out.

Desperation can be generated by an honest assessment of the facts on the ground: Like when Hitler looked at the Soviet army stockpiling on the new border where Poland used to be, and realistically knew that if he didn’t hit them, they were going to hit him, and the numbers were getting worse every day.

But it can also be created by Pravda, by lies meant to cause you to despair. There were a lot of Brits in the aftermath of Dunkirk that wanted to make a separate peace with the Nazis. They were fed the line that “Look how easily we wrapped up your finest armies. You’re fighting a desperate battle in India, and in the far east, against Japan. We don’t want your island, in fact we see the Anglim and the Saxons as cousins, we don’t want to fight you, we want to fight the barbarian Russians. Let’s make peace.” These Brits were sure that they were doomed and wanted to make the best deal they could. Imagine what the world would look like if they got their way.

It’s funny how the more created (as opposed to realistic) the despair, the more that despair turns to a desire to surrender, and the more realistic the cause, the more that despair turns to a desire to fight to the last.

Since the start of the political campaign to elect the 47^th president, there have been six attempts or planned attempts on Trump’s life. Does that sound like a movement certain of victory? Or is that a desperate last “death or glory” shot?

China has a limited window, as I have said before, to achieve their goals, before their population bomb blows up in their face. Unlike the book Population Bomb, which dealt with overpopulation and wars for scarce resources, the real population bomb is lack of people. China’s population is ageing out, and the Chinese model of brute human force is not sustainable. Their “One child policy” was probably our biggest success at political espionage. If they want hegemony, they have to do it while they still have enough troops to make the attempt. That’s why they’re pulling out all the stops to try and convince us that we’re doomed, they’ve already won.

Another astroturf thing they’re pushing is how bad-evil-double-not-good data centers are. Look, data centers ARE going to happen.

Just like factories are going to happen to make the stuff you want, to live your life with the most time and labor-saving devices in history. The only question is, are those factories going to reside abroad, where the government that owns the land they’re on controls what they make and who it’s sold to, or are they going to be built here, where we determine who gets the goodies and at what price. During the 70s, we answered that question and moved most of our factories offshore. It moved the pollution offshore, but it also moved the jobs and control of what is being made, and what spyware is placed inside, to foreign nations. Now we’re trying desperately to correct that idiocy.

Likewise, with Data Centers, the only question is are they going to be on American soil, under American privacy laws and with, at worst, our government looking over your shoulder, or are they going to be in other places, like West Taiwan, where the CCP gets to look over our collective shoulders, and all your data, (which in this modern age means all your MONEY) are theirs to peruse and take as they will?

The city of Nashville decided to use eminent domain to acquire the land near the Nashville Zoo, just to deny it to a company that wants to build a data center. They don’t even know what they’re going to put there, but they claim they have a “legitimate need for the property so that we can expand city office space.” According to the mayor. I want to see this go to court, this is as unconstitutional as it gets.

I don’t know about where you are, but here in TN, there’s this horrible propaganda that “OMG Data Centers are going to kill us all, take away all our water, use up all our electricity, and rape all our women.”

And the boys in Beijing are laughing their asses off at our stupidity.

Don’t buy into their bullshit, if we can hold, they’re fucked. It’s just a question of seeing through the lies and asking “who benefits?”

This of course does not mean that they can’t cause a severe mischief on the way out, and we need to guard against that. The best way to ensure we don’t have to fight them, is to make it clear that we’re ready to, and we will win.

On to lighter things.

I note that the SpaceX upper section smashed into the moon on time, and on schedule. From a lunar geologist perspective this has provided some awesome data. For the first time ever, we know: What, a metallic object, How fast, 5,400 MPH, and How much of it, four tons, along with How big a crater 60 feet wide and twelve feet deep. From that, we can reverse engineer what caused the other craters on the moon, and have a much better idea of the structure of the moon. This was an experiment too expensive to conduct by itself, but as part of a serendipitous event, it’s a great deal.

One more piece, I see where a ten year old in Japan just presented, in association with a renowned American Entomologist, a 33 page research paper before the International Congress of Entomology. It seems that Jo Nagai, of Kobe Japan, raised Swallowtail butterflies. He noticed that the butterflies would fly to him, after he had raised them from pupa. This caused him to wonder if memory transfers through the chrysalis process? So he started asking. When he asked Martha Weiss, in a detailed four page letter, she wrote back, saying in effect “well, we don’t know, how would you propose to test this?”

In the end, he wrote an experiment, and performed it, using a control group, and all the standard set ups to verify his testing as valid. Then he went further and tested across generations.

In the end he proved that not only does knowledge pass through the chrysalis but once learned, the memories pass down through three generations. Jo wants to be a veterinarian when he grows up. The world will be the poorer if he is “just” a vet, hopefully he’ll go into veterinarian research, and help us learn more about the animal kingdom.

QOTD:

“The difference between socialism and communism is that socialists will take your money and give you nothing, while communists will take your money and shoot you.”

Sir Winston Churchill.

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

I’m pleased to announce that the first of the John Fisher novels is back in publication with my new publisher. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HD5KCDZQ the rest will be coming out soon, on about a monthly (more or less) scedule.

Yours in Service
William Lehman

The old Soviet Union used the phrase “Enemy of the People” to mean “Enemy of the State.” They’re not always the same thing, in fact the more government you have, the more the two disassociate.

Welcome to the scuttlebutt, Ruben Sandwiches for dinner tonight, pull up a chair, drinks are in the fridge, or on the outside sink, on your way by, please notice the tip jar where we collect for the mess. Let’s talk about what’s going on.

One of the very interesting things about the US system of government, is that a person can be an enemy of the people, but not an enemy of the state… then a couple years later wind up as an enemy to both… With the possibility always in mind that after the next election he can become a friend of the state again. Let’s look at some examples:

First let me talk about Fauci for a moment again. Yes, I know I tied him to the whipping post last week, but the guy is like Herpes, he’s the gift that keeps giving, especially when you wish it wouldn’t.

I think we can lay to rest any question as to whether or not the Fauci diaries are real. If they were fakes, he would have at least tried to deny them by now. Instead, he’s making statements about how releasing them is a violation of privacy. (Hint, that’s an admission of guilt.)

I’ve never belonged to the Department of Health and Human Services, obviously, but I know that they get the same IT training that we got, specifically “anything you put on a government computer has no expectation of privacy.” Yeah, that’s right, dumbass kept his diary on a government system, which is why we have it…

(Here’s another pro tip, if you’re doing shady shit, or even shit that could be spun to be shady, and you’re so egotistical as to keep a diary about how cool it is that you can do this, and lie about it so as to look like a hero, don’t put it on something that belongs to someone else.)

Hell even Ms. Arkinside herself: Hillary, knew that; she put all her shit on a server that she owned, in her house, so that when the search warrants started flying, she could and did nuke that shit. Hillary is may be, an evil bitch, but she’s not stupid. Fauci on the other hand…

His behavior, his lying to the nation and to the congress, well documented in his diary, certainly made him an enemy of the people. The folks who died because of poor choices made by government, the folks who died alone because of poor choices made by government, the folks who have suffered from “long covid” which appears to be as much a function of the damn vaccine as it is the disease itself, the folks who died or had other complications because of the untested vaccine… all of that can be laid at his door.

All of that makes him an enemy of the people.

On the other hand, all of that, whether intentional or not, made a hell of a test run on how to control a supposedly “FREE” society, how to lock them down, manipulate their minds, completely total their economy in all sorts of “interesting” ways, and how to take extra constitutional action while not being charged with being an enemy of the constitution. There’s a portion of the state that found that to be a great service to the state.

Am I saying this was engineered? That this was a formal test run on how to take over the nation from inside?

No, I am not.

It could have been, I don’t know. But it doesn’t have to have been, to have happened in such a way as to be useful to those in government that long for the days when “because your betters say so, pleb,” was the standard by which government operated.

Lehman’s razor, AKA Lehman’s law of politics #9: Never attribute to malice or conspiracy, that can be explained by stupidity, ego, or greed. You may be wrong, but you can correct that later.

It may have been some Star-chamber conspiracy, but it doesn’t have to have been, to have that affect. Fauci’s ego, being slightly bigger than the Grand Canyon, as witnessed by his diary, is enough to explain it, lacking a smoking gun (or sets of robes and hoods being found, along with a secret meeting room.)

What it surely was, was a lab run, intentional or not, from which a lot of data can be pulled on how to do it, and what the problems are.

All of this having been said, the dog and pony show of Fauci standing before the senate and reciting, 111 times, “upon advice from legal counsel, I am invoking my right not to testify as granted by the fifth amendment” was either stupid, or stupid like a fox… I’m not yet sure which.

Another pundit, and sorry, but I don’t remember who, pointed out that this puts congress in a pickle. See technically, since he has that blanket pardon from president “Auto Pen” he has no right to protection from self-incrimination, because with that pardon, he can’t be incriminated at the federal level. (more on that in a second) Hence he’s obstructing, and lying to congress, which is a gross misdemeanor, punishable by $100,000 in fines and a year in prison (max on both counts)

BUT

In order to charge him with that, you have to:

1) Admit that the pardon is legal. That alone may make it worth doing, because if the pardon is not legal, that diary opens his ass up to a LOT of charges.

2) Get enough of the senate to go along with the charges to actually prefer congressional charges to the DOJ. In this Hyper-Partisan congress, that’s in no way certain, in fact it’s damn unlikely. And

3) Get a jury from D.C. to convict his ass. Also highly unlikely… In D.C. at this time, taking Fauci (or any other prominent Democrat) before a jury for animal cruelty, with video of him doing the nasty with a donkey, would most likely just get a bunch of jurors to nod and say, “A good donkey will do that, and enjoy it, no crime here.”

Congresses’ only other option is to challenge that pardon. They may win, they may lose, it’s a straight up roll of the dice. By the time it winds its way through the courts though, that 85 year old man will be dead. See at this point, he’s playing to run out the clock. He’s worth over twelve million dollars, and while I’m sure that he does (due to that afore mentioned ego) care what posterity thinks of him, his primary goal has to be to stay out of jail and enjoy the fruits of his labors.

Then there’s the wild card: State charges.

Florida and Texas at least, and I think there are others as well, are reviewing the evidence and looking at whether or not he can be charged at the state level. This is a tricky piece, because he can use it as his defense for taking the fifth with the Senate:

That looks like this:
“Yes, Mr. Prosecutor, I refused to testify to congress for fear of self-incrimination.”

“Ah-HAH, But Dr. Fauci, you have a Presidential pardon, you couldn’t be charged, so you had no right to the fifth.”

“Mr. Prosecutor, I didn’t say I was worried about FEDERAL charges, that pardon doesn’t protect me from state charges, and that was what I feared.”

Fauci’s attorney, “Your Honor move to dismiss, government’s case just fell apart.”

On the other hand, if the states can find a way to charge him, they’re more likely to get it to stick, and between fines, and defense fees, plus possible tort claims, that twelve million might just end up looking awful anemic.

The amazing thing is the number of people that still list him as a hero, including people that were part of his victim list, from the LGBT crowd, to old folks that should know better, to young kids that were completely unthreatened by Covid (the stats in his diary say that he knew that people under 35 were at almost zero risk of issues from Covid, but were at higher risk from the vaccine; yet he testified that “we gotta get all the school kids vaccinated or they’re gonna die.”)

What’s not amazing is that there’s a lot of government apparatchiks that idolize him. He showed the swamp how it could be done.

On to other things.

Another enemy of the people: The press continues to show how to lie without lying: We have a major article from Newsweek https://www.newsweek.com/typical-americans-suffer-major-fall-in-wealth-12145565

Note the title. Typical Americans Suffer Major Fall in Wealth.

The article goes on to say that the US created more than one thousand two hundred new millionaires a day last year. That’s 441,078 new millionaires in a year. Then they’re going to tell you how that’s bad, because “Median wealth stands at only $68,998.”

It’s telling that while they have a lot of statistics and numbers on how well some folks are doing, the only thing they can say about “decline” is that “The typical American has suffered a major decline in wealth since the start of the decade.” No numbers, no explanation of what “major decline” looks like, or what that means either in percentage or raw numbers.

We’re told that “UBS found that inflation-adjusted median wealth per adult in the U.S. fell significantly between 2020 and 2025, while average wealth per adult increased”. No explanation of “significant” and no examination of why. Note here for the statistically challenged:

To get average, add all the “wealths” together, divide by the number of people. To get median find the number that has as many people over it, as there are under it.

Note also that wealth is defined here as net worth. So if your ass is in debt up to your eyebrows due to personal choices, you’re wealth is garbage.

The whole article is playing up “us v them” Those evil rich bastards are getting richer while the “average American” is getting poorer, although they won’t tell us how much poorer, and won’t examine any of the causes.

Look, a million dollars ain’t what it used to be, but trying to find a way to spin that four hundred and forty thousand plus new millionaires a year; that is a city the size of Long Beach, Oakland, or Minneapolis, worth of people who didn’t used to be millionaires but are now, is a BAD thing… well folks that’s some serious propaganda bullshit there. Built to get you to hate the rich and demand that the government redistribute that wealth.

That always works soooo well. If only we could examine how well that works, with case studies. Oh, wait.

Politico is losing their collective minds over a move by the government to sever ties with a nonprofit “that helps unaccompanied minors navigate the immigration courts,”.

Yes, for decades, we have been paying for the lawyers that are trying to deport illegal aliens, while also paying for the lawyers that are trying to keep them.

Now, it’s worth noting here that this is not a criminal proceeding. In a criminal proceeding you have a right under the sixth amendment to have a Public Defender, if you can’t afford a lawyer.

But that’s for Criminal cases. What is defined as a criminal case?

You can go to jail.

So, Misdemeanors are criminal, citations (like a traffic ticket) are not, because you can only get a fine, or have your driver’s license (not a right) revoked.

A deportation is not a criminal charge.

If they chose to try you for Improper Entry under title 8 section 1325 USC, that’s a criminal proceeding, and you can get a fine, and six months in jail. If you do it again, you can get two years, third time you can get ten years.

BUT

If, instead of charging you with that crime, they just want to kick you out, that’s called “removal proceedings.” Basically, it’s “Look, you committed a crime, but we’re not going to try you for that, we don’t want to spend the money or take up jail space, we’re just going to send your sorry ass back to where you came from.” It’s not a criminal trial, because the worst that can happen is the judge says, “yeah, you don’t belong here, you don’t fit one of the special snowflake categories that we’ll allow to stay even though they’re not citizens, so go back home. Bailiff put him on a plane.”

There are a vast number of NGO Nonprofit organizations that pay for the lawyers for the illegals that end up in these “removal proceedings.” Well, what we’re learning now, is that most of them are being funded by…

Yes, you guessed it, the US Government. It seems that most of those NGOs refuse to share “confidential” information with that selfsame government.

Understandable, it is rather an adversarial situation. But then they want to cry when Trump says, “fine, you have the right to refuse to give us that data, but in turn, we have the right to not fund a Non-Government Organization.”

Oh but then the crying starts: “But without that money we’ll all have to shut down, the Acacia Center for Justice, and all of it’s subcontractors which are also NPOs!!!”

If you’re a Non-Government Organization, who has to have government money to operate, are you really an NGO? Or are you just a slush fund for currently out of power leftists?

“We have spent 20 years building this institutional knowledge that we are going to lose on Friday. There is no replacing the organizations providing these services,” said MELISSA LOPEZ, the head of Estrella del Paso, a Texas-based nonprofit that represents hundreds of these children. “We know what happens to children that go to court without an attorney. In one word, it is deportation. The government is trying to eliminate our work and this program because they know that without attorneys, children will be deported.”

Sorry Ms Lopez, but that’s rather the fucking POINT. WE WANT THEM OUT OF OUR COUNTRY. Those that want to keep them in our country can fund you, it’s not the government’s job to fund people that are fighting the government.

Can’t you see it?

“Excuse me, your majesty, but there’s a Franklin gentleman who craves an audience, he would like a donation from the crown for the purchase of arms to defend the colonies from the ravages of Tarleton’s Legion.”

“But isn’t that one of our units?”

“Yes, your majesty.”

“And he wants money to buy guns to fight them?”

“Yes, your majesty.”

Or

“Mr. President, there’s a Christpher Memminger outside who wants your government to donate money to an organization called the ‘CSA’. What shall I tell him, Mr. Lincoln?”

Well, this is getting long, but before I go, I want to mention a little fact brought to my attention by old NFO

Anyone who’s read much of my writing knows I’m not a fan of Flock cameras or any of their competitors in the spying and survelence Public Security field. But while the existence of AI driven big brother is bad, what’s worse is that based on studies, like one in Roseville CA roseville accuracy study it seems that their error rate is about 70%. (OK 71% in a two year test) LAPD has also found huge error rates, and given the cameras the boot.

Man when the LAPD says you’re too fucked up to deal with… Damn. What’s next, the NOPD saying you’re too corrupt?

Last piece, I promise. The NRA is actually working WITH the ACLU. Yes, it can happen. In this case it’s a situation going before the Indiana Supreme Court trying to get them to agree with something called “The Doctrine of Associational Standing.”

Yeah, I know, WTF is that?

Well it’s something that SCOTUS has been using for years. It says that an NPO (or other organization, like a union for example) can bring a suit based on members of that organization being damaged by an action.

Seems like common sense, right? The Police union has more funds, and better lawyers, so having them sue city hall for making cops work unpaid overtime babysitting the mayor’s kid is just a reasonable part of HAVING a union (or other organization) It precludes having 57 different lawsuits going forward, one for each cop that had to babysit this brat over a three-year period. (no that’s not the case in question, it’s an easy example.)

Lets see if the Indiana SC can understand common sense.

No QOTD this week.

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

Orwell didn’t get it quite right, and the reality is worse than he envisioned. Welcome to the scuttlebutt, pull up a chair, drinks are in the fridge, or on the outside sink, On your way by, please notice the tip jar where we collect for the mess. let’s talk about what’s going on.

I want to talk about the “new” communism, but first, there’s a couple of other things I want to get off my desk.

You know, it’s funny, almost every week I look at what I’ve saved to talk about, on Sunday or Monday, and wonder what the hell I am going to do… Then by Tuesday, when this gets written, I’m drowning in sources of information to write on. It’s like the Gods hear my wonder, and reply “Oh, you need content huh? Stand by, fool!”

Before we hit the “main event” I have to notice in passing that Texas is getting ready to hold trial on a group of coyotes (human traffickers) that killed seven Illegals by closing them in an unventilated boxcar for several hours while the train took the soon to be corpses from Del Rio TX to Laredo TX. Gosh, getting rid of ‘unwanted humans’ by putting them in boxcars… why does this sound so familiar to me? I did nazi this coming…

It’s only funny because ICE is supposed to be the bad guys for putting illegals in airconditioned jail cells while preparing to fly them back to their HOME. Meanwhile, the bastards that are trafficking them, the slave traders of the twenty-first century, get a pass from the left.

Okay let’s get on with the big piece.

Orwell’s Animal Farm doesn’t fit modern communism any longer. If you haven’t read it lately, first, shame on you, second, allow me to refresh your memory a little. One of the big players in the original, call it mutiny, call it revolution… was Boxer. Boxer was a draft horse, a Big Fellow. He was “Mister Working Man.” The big stick that made the revolution work, and kept the farm functional. His strength and power were what, in spite of poor management, idiocy, and “central planning” (but I repeat myself, twice.) kept the farm producing, at least as far as it was producing. His reaction to everything was; “Well, I have to work harder, it will get better, Napoleon is always right.” Until it killed him, and his body was sold by the pigs to the knackers to be rendered down for glue and dogfood.

See his type just doesn’t exist in the modern communism (the Democratic Socialists of America) There are no Mister Working Man types who think that the proposed new system will work. There are Pigs, there are Sheep, and there are Dogs. The pigs, destined (they believe) to rule, the Sheep, who believe anything that they are told, and are “good communists, who will be given everything they need, and won’t have to work.” And the dogs, who are the enforcers in this little play.

Let’s look at the Dogs first. There is a certain type of man, (and to make myself clear, I’m using “man” as in “human” not as a sex) that likes structure, likes to be an enforcer with privilege and status, even if that status is given by fear, in fact, especially if it’s given by fear. This is the type of person that other cops call “Badge Heavy” when they’re mistakenly brought into a police force.

A dog doesn’t care about ideology, he doesn’t care, really, who holds his leash, he knows in his heart that he’s not smart enough to run the show, but being a dog, he’ll be well cared for by the guy with the leash, he gets pets and scritches, and he gets to bite people, which he enjoys.

A dog is equally pleased to be a SS Totenkopfverbande, a member of the KGB/GRU, a French Legionary, or a member of the Batallón de Inteligencia 601. Or a member of the ANTIFA Enforcer unit.

A sheep, well, we all know sheep. They don’t really have any names, just like in Animal Farm, they don’t really have any personality, other than that of “Follower.” These are the Gray Faceless people of the memes.

They are uncapable of having an original thought, but boy can they bleat out slogans upon demand! They can scream the simple slogan they’re taught, repeatedly, to drown out any debate or discussion very effectively. They are willing to follow anyone who promises them “The best of things,” being too dumb to understand that someone has to make those things, they don’t just drop like mana from the heavens. Destined to be sheered and eventually eaten.

And then there’s the Pigs.

If you have never lived on a farm, you have no true appreciation of “eat like a pig.” I thought that dogs, who “wolf food down,” were the epitome of walking appetite. Having been raised around one, and now having my own wolf hybrid, allow me to assure you that “wolfing down food” is a misnomer. My hybrid can put the chow away, but he is tentative at first. He only takes food from those he trusts, no strangers need apply, and even those he trusts (with two exceptions) he’ll sniff it, give it a little lick, nose it around a bit, and then decide if this is actually food, or if it’s one of those strange things that the two legs put in their mouths that are not really food.

Pigs on the other hand… Trying to dump the food in the troughs is an exercise in psychological mind games, if you want to avoid dumping it all over the heads that are in already in the trough! Multiple pump fakes and moving between troughs to be able to get the bucket of slop into the trough instead of all over the top of pig heads is the order of the day. Followed by biting at each other to the point of drawing blood over the choice bits. Mushu will literally kick everyone’s ass over a moldy tomato.

In Animal Farm, and in the modern communism, all the pigs believe they’re in charge, and they’re going to run things. It’s the same way here at Morrigan’sport. The pigs are sure that they’re in charge, and thus occasionally have to get tuned up by a cattle prod. They’re three-year-old humans, with bigger teeth and no real verbal skills.

Of course, there are some problems with pigs, whether the Animal Farm variety, the modern communist variety, or the real variety. In Animal Farm, and in Modern Communism, all the pigs think they’re going to run things, but of course only a few can, that being the nature of the type of government that runs everything with central planning. Animal Farm had their purges, as has every single communist government EVER. Modern Communism hasn’t had their purge YET, but if they found themselves in charge you can count on it happening, as sure as the sun rises in the east. The biggest, and meanest, most ruthless ones, will remain standing, and the rest will be removed from the official histories. Disappearing into the maws of those dogs we talked about earlier.

Take Mamdani (dear Gods would someone PLEASE take him?) Dumbass decided to publish the names, addresses etcetera of every New Yorker who will be tapped for the new “second home” tax. It was supposed to have 11K to 31K properties. It actually had almost a million. Woody Allen and his crowd, the pigs that helped put Mamdani in power are on that list, with an implication that “these are the enemies of the people, the fat cats that should be taken down, because once we take them down, we’ll all live like kings.”

Of course that’s not the way this works, ever, but the sheep keep bleating the slogans, and the dogs are only too happy to bite. Meanwhile, the Governor of NY is begging the rich to come back to New York, because her tax base has disintegrated. In biology and food science this is known as “eating down the food chain.”

After you’ve eaten all the big critters, you have to start eating the stuff that the big critters used to eat, because it’s all that’s left, until eventually you’re eating your plankton burger and liking it. Financially that looks like: “Well all the millionaires moved out, so we’re going to have to get the fifty billion in taxes that they used to pay, from you folks making a half mil a year. That means we’re going to have to tax you at 50%. Wait, what do you mean you’re moving out?

Okay, you folks that are making a quarter million a year: Guess what?

Now on a real pig farm there’s a moderator. That’s me. Mushu is the second biggest, because Char Siu the barrow is really starting to grow into his full size. In the wild Mushu would be the communist that survived, because she’s not just bigger, she’s meaner.

Ah, but the moderator doesn’t want mean pigs, they’re liable to be shitty mothers. Therefore Mushu is destined for the smoker and the sausage grinder, right alongside Char Siu.

I suppose there’s a moderator to modern Communism as well, a lot of blogs lately are full of examinations of the stuff being put out by everyone from Mamdani, through AOC to that never to be sufficiently despised twat Pramila Jayapal, with stops for the rest of the “squad” and Bernie Sanders etal on the way.

Folks like Michael Smith michaelsmith/p/despicable-me Tom Knighton /tomknighton/p/priorities and Julie Kelly .declassified.live/p/jack-smith-on-the-ropes All of which I recommend highly, are shining a bright light on all of the communist shenanigans, and make no mistake, this is Communism.

You can change the name, but when you start making noises about “seize the methods of production” and “Government control of retail outlets, rent prices, how much you will be permitted to own, and how much you will pay in rent” Dude, that’s communism. It doesn’t matter how many sprinkles you put on top, it’s still a turd.

Here’s the thing though, the original versions had workers that were behind it, because they believed that “well, unions got us some needed changes, this should too.” And in the beginning, unions DID get some needed changes. Trouble is, like any other bureaucracy, once they completed their original mission, they didn’t close up shop, they went grabbing more and more power, for the sake of power.

Most actual “Makers” (remember, there are only three types of people, Makers, Takers, and Fakers.) have figured out that the union is nothing but takers and fakers, and communism even more so. So, to revisit, there are no real Makers in this movement. If you thought that the Soviet Union, which had, at least at the start, the support of a lot of makers, was a failure, let’s look at the failure that was Zimbabwe, where they put “good revolutionaries” from the inner city in charge of the 50,000 acre farms, and everyone starved. That’s where this modern version of Communism is headed.

All while the sheep scream “Eat the Rich” and “Corporations are evil.”

I don’t care if you lie to me, but at least be honest to yourself, if you are one of the followers of this New Communism, are you a dog, a pig, or a sheep? If you’re a dog, well, maybe you should look for a different master, this one is in trouble. If you’re a sheep, I have no suggestions, you will go with whoever promises the pretty flower, and you deserve to be sheered. If you’re a pig, well remember, most of the pigs get eaten in this scenario, cannibalism never bothered pigs.

Speaking of Pigs, let me take a moment to mention once again, one of my favorite bastards to pillory. One Anthony Fauci.

Now, anyone who paid any attention knew that Fauci was a rat bastard long before Covid. He was the one that mislead the world about AIDS for a decade, causing I don’t know how many thousands of deaths not just in the gay communities, but among those who caught the disease by transfusion, or contact with contaminated blood as a first responder/medical professional, and by those whose only problem was choosing the wrong woman to be born to. If you missed that historical era there’s a book you should read, “And the Band Played On.”

Anyone who has been paying attention has probably seen that Fauci kept a diary.

PSSST, Pro Tip here, if you’re the bad guy, or you do shady shit, NEVER KEEP A FUCKING DIARY! That’s pretty much a confession waiting for a trial.

Well, Senator Rand Paul, who hates Fauci more than Churchill hated Hitler, apparently got ahold of this diary, and has released it, in its entirety.

Second Pro Tip, if you are stupid enough to fail to listen to the first pro tip, never, ever, under any circumstances, leave that diary where it can be seen by anyone at all under the cover of heaven, while you still live and breathe. Most especially don’t let your enemies get it.

Now we don’t know how long Paul has had this data, Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy says he “recently” handed all of this data over to Senators Paul and Johnson, but what’s recently? He may have been holding on to it, waiting for the opportune moment to drop the bomb.

Wednesday Fauci is appearing before a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. A more opportune moment will never come. Fauci in these papers admits to lying about the deadliness, falsifying records, even manipulating the stock market, all so that “all can worship at the shrine of Fauci.”

Biden, or the Autopen, wrote Fauci a blanket preemptive pardon. We’re about to find out if that’s legal. Hint, it may not be.

Also in the list of really bad decisions, we have Iran stepping up once again. This time, they’re formally calling for the assassination of Melania Trump and Barron Trump. The Secret Service is taking this seriously. Now I can’t help but think that of all the ways to ensure that Trump just gives you a brief moment in the sun… The sun of a hydrogen bomb that is, killing his wife and kid just about top the list. Iran has listed places Melania shops, when she goes there, and how her secret service detachment is arranged.

At this point, the folks down wind of Tehran better be hitting the prayer rugs and praying for the long continued health of our first lady. Seriously. You want to unite enough of America to get a declaration of war, kill the dude’s wife and kid. Might as well kill Wick’s dog.

To end this week’s take I would like to mention a couple good news pieces:

Science Corporation in Alameda CA has developed an effectively artificial retina. It’s not perfect, it only gives you straight ahead vision, but for Geographic Atrophy, a progressive and irreversible form of dry age-related macular degeneration, it’s at least a partial cure. Europe has approved it’s use. Look, going blind is one of my phobias, so at least to me, this is huge. https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/biotechnology/eye-implant-that-restores-vision-lost-to-age-approved-for-use/ar-AA28NcE0?ocid=BingNewsSerp

And finally, Tristar Centennial Medical Center in Nashville held a very special annual reunion recently. As a parent who has experienced this firsthand, let me tell you that there is nothing in a new parent’s world more frightening than those four big words: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. You hear those and your heart stops. Your stomach drops into your groin, then bounces up and you nearly throw up.

I’ve been shot, burned, stabbed, and nearly drowned, I’ve had real no shit flooding at a depth deeper than I’m allowed to write, I’ve heard shots fired at me in anger. None of them was as frightening as “We’re going to have to send your son to Madigan, that’s the nearest NICU, he’s on the chopper in three minutes, say goodbye now.”

The Country song “Don’t Take the Girl” starts, just starts, to give you a feel for it.

So finding out that TriStar holds a annual NICU reunion between the nurses of that unit, and the kids and parents they saved, yeah, that’s a big thing to me. It gives me hope for a fallen world. And on that note, I’ll leave you.

QOTD: “looks like almost 70 percent of Fauci’s diary are just press clippings about Fauci, w/ his own self-flattery sprinkled between.

He should be sent to a laboratory, studied & observed, so scientists can try to understand how an ego can consume its host.”

Tom Elliott, author and game designer.

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

I’m going to try and catch up on the stuff that I didn’t get to talk about last week, and the stuff that I wanted to discuss this week, without making this so long that eyes roll back in heads, and I lose a lot of readers to TLDR.

Dinner tonight is whatever the VFW is serving after the meeting, so belly up to the buffet. On your way by, please notice the tip jar where we collect for the mess.

As always, I am grateful for those of you that have chipped in to keep the place running, whether through a Substack subscription, or via the tip jar.

Last week, I got kicked in the head by learning a shipmate I’ve known for over thirty years, and who had just been up to visit over the fourth, answered final muster. Well, that just totally took away my ability to write for a couple days, and I apologize.

Life unsurprisingly, did not slow down, or wait for me to get my head straight. We had a Convention that I had already bought tickets for, Imaginarium con in Louisville KY, and Kiti and I attended in spite of the shock to the system. (By the way, I need those of you that are younger than me, especially those of you I’ve known forever to quit fucking dying! I’m completely done with that shit!)

We went to this con because one of my books was up for an award for the second year in a row: Last year Harvest of Evil was nominated for Best Novel, made the finals, but was not awarded. This year, Harvest was nominated for Best Audio Book Narration and WON! I think this is the first award I’ve recieved for my writing that didn’t include the words “pay to the order of.” Not that I mind those!

Speaking of Harvest, it will be re-released by the new publisher, Defiant House Entertainment, https://keithhedger.com/ https://defianthouseentertainment.com/ (the second one is just a shell right now, hopefully Keith will be fleshing it out soon) next week, Amazon willing!

Look for book two, Keeping the Faith, to come out in about a month, and book three, Shadow War, which has been sitting waiting for publication for a year plus now, around a month after that.

Keith is still looking at the first book in a new series, Scout-Ships, (it’s space opera) I’ll let you know more about that when I hear myself. In addition I’ve got a short story/novella in the works that takes place after Shadow War, and there’s a previously unpublished Fisher Short that I’ve submitted for one of Keith’s anthologies. More to come on that as well.

The Con was good overall, met some old friends and new, got meat space time with people I’ve only met through the book of faces, got to hang out with good people, like the Tattooed Authors of Southern Appalachia, (I can’t join, not having any ink.) and the ever memorable Dan Kemp just to mention two at random. The crowd was even more eclectic than normal, being both a lit-con and a film-con. When I say eclectic, I mean everything from Christian SF and Romance (honestly not sure how Christian Romance works… Don’t explain, I don’t care enough;) to a dude with a goatee and mustache in a full-length black evening gown…

And yet, everything was civil, no one was an ass, conversations between different viewpoints were kept to the issues— not the people, in short it was like Cons USED TO BE.

I do have one bitch though; the schedule format is Gods’ awful! Instead of printing it all out, everything is via QR codes, but when you go to the link from said code, nothing is sortable, manipulable, or useful.

People, for the love of Heinlein print a damn GRID! I literally had to sit down with a piece of paper and sort things out, because everything was listed based on the room it was in, not the time, or the subject. Every other convention since World Con One can figure out how to do a grid, please, please, make it just a little bit easier for us to find the things that you went to such lengths to provide.

On the house front, we see a lawyer tomorrow to make sure that the contract offer from our finance company isn’t going to screw us over, and then hopefully we’ll be able to get the house finished and move in sometime before the snow flies. I have to give a shout out to Clayton Homes, who is NOT who we bought our place from, but does own the company that set up and assembled our home on our land. They’ve been super helpful, and have gone above and beyond to make things right. If we finally get to move in, they will have been a major piece of why.

Okay, on to other things!

In the unlikely event that you haven’t heard about the backlash against Flock cameras, Kira Davis did a nice piece on it here. Flock sits at the center of a Venn diagram of hate. It uses AI (which by itself gets you a lot of hate in certain sectors) to scan for and identify not only license plates, but every other descriptive thing about each vehicle it sees… Which pisses off mightily both the libertarian folks, (Do you have a warrant, officer? Am I being charged with anything? If not, then FUCK OFF) and the leftist folks that fear surveillance only as long as they don’t control it but most especially if it’s done by a corporation.

(Someone please explain to me why these folks hate and fear corporations, but firmly believe that big government {made up of the same people as the corporations} is the answer to everything?)

The ACAB (all cops are bastards) folks hate it, because the company has been sharing their take with any agency that asks, or even hints that it might ask… Flock promises us that they aren’t using facial recognition… Just like Fauci and the NIH promised us that the vaccine was safe and effective.

Oh and of course there’s no way that this could be miss used, in spite of the number of police officers and Flock employees that have used the technology to go on ‘fishing expeditions’ and to stalk surveil ex-girlfriends…

Now since this is “for your safety” and strictly a license plate reader, why are they turning up in private community centers kids gymnastics rooms, in the middle of hiking trails miles from the nearest road, and other such places?

Well, with that many diverse audiences all with a hate on for you, is it any surprise that here in America, where folks still talk about one of the original acts of corporate/government rebellion with a smile (East India Tea Company, red white and blue curtesy phone please) folks have started sabotaging these fucking devices?

If you feel the need to do so, remember, your cell phone provides a record of your location, so leave the damn thing at home, and it’s worth noting that mercury and gallium eat aluminum, (the poles those cameras are mounted to are aluminum.)

Gallium is fairly safe to handle (don’t get it in your eyes, or eat it, other than that, you’re good… Mercury on the other hand is quite toxic) and it’s also worth noting that a bright enough laser will fry the camera.

Of course, don’t DO THIS, because it’s illegal, and you can’t count on having a friendly jury, that sees the massive overreach of this equipment.

It’s also worth noting however that a couple bright UV LED bulbs in the brim of your ballcap will wash out your face to where a CCD (digital camera) can’t see it, and a rock in your shoe will change your gait enough to mess with the ability of AI to identify you by walk.

There was a court ruling in London a couple weeks ago that could be interesting, The Brawl Street Journal talks of it here. Now they see this as a ‘bad thing’ ™ and I disagree, but then I’m looking at it strictly from a geopolitical and military perspective, they’re looking at it from an economic and energy sector perspective. From their viewpoint it’s bad. From my viewpoint, telling combatants that “no, your shit is fair game anywhere in the world, if we can tie it’s destruction to harming your ability to fight a war” is dead on. Yes, it’s going to cost some folks (quite possibly including me) money at the pump/meter… But it’s also likely to assist in ending the war in Ukraine on terms I approve of. Hey war is expensive, if you can’t take a joke, don’t attack your neighbor.

Speaking of energy policies, and Jokes… San Fran is looking at confiscating and running PG&E’s electrical grid https://www.kqed.org/news/12090521/san-francisco-inches-closer-to-pge-acquisition

Looking back up at “people who trust government but not corporations” well, this will be an opportunity for you fine, wise, sensible folks to prove me wrong. Let’s see if our admirable good socialists that run San Francisco so wisely, can run the electrical grid better than a company has. The guy behind this says: “Energy is a public good, ultimately, the whole state, not just San Francisco, needs to break up with PG&E and build a new utility that puts people and the planet over corporate profits.”

This is going to be fun… Pass the popcorn.

Also in the pass the popcorn files, we have /us-navys-perfectly-named-corsair takes out an Iranian Submarine Now Iran has been doing this sort of thing for years. The USS Cole comes to mind. Of course they do it with living people driving the boat… because suicide bombers are the Mohammadian (may bees pee on him) way.

We do it with robots, because killing your own people is a cave man act. The funny thing, is that we put up barricades and nets to keep this sort of thing from happening. The Iranians seemed to think they were immune. Watch the video in the link. Daylight attack, three suicide boats, no attempt at stopping them. Oops.

That said, as CDR Sal points out, let’s not fall into the same trap. It’s time to up arm ports, it’s time to put in fences far enough out in the harbor that blowing it up won’t hurt the ships in port, it’s time to put anti small boat gear on those fences whether it’s robotic, or a sailor with a chain gun. What we have done will be followed by other people, so let’s not get caught with our pants around our ankles, huh?

So did you hear the one about the congressman’s husband and the dead body? No, you probably didn’t. That’s because it’s a democratic congress critter in Boston, whose husband owns a rental where the dead body turned up. ayanna-pressley-husband-body-boston if it had been a republican it would have been front page news on every rag in the nation.

Along with that, we have that never to be sufficiently damned idiot Mamdani trying to figure out how to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu when he comes for a UN conference in the fall. Someone seems to have told him that he’s a head of state and can set his own international policies. Funny, I thought there was a specific charge in the constitution against that. https://www.foxnews.com/media/mamdani-pummeled-online-critics-call-possible-netanyahu-arrest-pure-political-theater

Oh but then he doesn’t think he’s got to follow that old piece of paper either, so there’s that.

Finally we have the Department of State’s Cuba report. CDR Sal did a wonderful piece on it, so I’ll just send you to him to read about it. cuba-libre Now of course the press and the left have “Poo—pooed” this as Trump propaganda and part of an excuse to invade seeking regime change. I guess they forgot that it was one of their poster boys, JFK that first tried to get rid of this cankerous pustule on the ass of the body politic.

Of course that was before Cuba bought the DNC and made them their bitch…

Oh, dear, I said that out loud.

Oh, no.

Well anyway…

In spite of the denial from the wholly owned subsidiaries, Sal, and the State department brought the receipts. I remember most of this, hell I was INVOLVED in some of this, back in the bad old days. Go take a look.

Okay, that covers the high points, I’m going to get this in the queue

QOTD: “If every arrest is repression, every opponent is a fascist, and every political disappointment is tyranny, then those words eventually mean nothing.”

Michael Smith, Unlicensed Pundit.

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

In which we discuss the state of the writer, and his “Adventures in life” as well as some of the news, mostly navy related of the week. (well, that was the plan, anyway, plans changed during the writing of this piece) Dinner is meatball subs, and various fixings, grab a drink pull up a chair, and let’s get started. On your way by, please notice the tip jar where we collect for the mess.

As always, I am grateful for those of you that have chipped in to keep the place running whether through a Substack subscription, or via the tip jar.

Last week, I started with the worlds events, and then funneled down to the local stuff, this week, I’m going to do the reverse because we’ve had a lot of things going on here locally.

First off, there’s some movement on the home building front. If you’ve been following this blog you know that we bought a modular home, to put on the farm in Tennessee, from a dealership called Yurezz. The contract required that the dealership inspect the place after the contractors put it together and the next set of contractors did the trim work to the then assembled place, before we could move in. They also had to be there when the power was turned on the first time, and when the contractors who they hired turned on the water and tested the plumbing. Failure to do this voids the warranty, among other things.

Well, as the folks that have been around here know, Yurezz suddenly closed up shop, locked the doors and sent everyone home, with no warning; leaving us and hundreds of other people across six or seven states in the lurch, wondering what was going to happen, and how we get our houses. We don’t have it as bad as some, at least one poor bastard around here bought their home with cash. Yurezz apparently skipped with the cash, and didn’t pay the manufacturer for the home…

SO, here’s the latest. Heather and Richard Altman, the owners of Yurezz, are currently guests of the Appling County Sheriff’s office, the GBI is crawling all over their home and other assets with microscopes, there’s rumors that the FBI is also involved, which would make sense as this is an interstate commerce case, and at least one financial company is suing. Of course, none of this fixes people’s houses… But there’s hope. Our Finance company sent us a contract that would allow us to bypass the current status quo and move forward acting as our own general contractors so that we can get this process finished and get our house. There’s some questions as to how it’s worded that we need to chat with a lawyer about, but it looks like we will be able to get this stuff fixed and move in over the next couple months or so.

I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but at least it looks like we have a exit ramp from this highway to hell.

Other news from the author, as you may have seen, my old publisher had to retrench due to health problems, and other complications to life, so he let a bunch of us out of our contracts and released our stuff back to our control. Not just me, but bigger names like Declan Finn suddenly found ourselves out in the cold, and just in time for a con (Liberty Con) that we expected to have books to shill… Well, you can’t shill a book that’s out of publication!

Some of the writers went full indi, and for those that have the skills necessary, that’s probably the right way to go. I, on the other hand, don’t have those skills, and know I don’t have them. I also don’t have the time, unless I wanted to close down the farming side of my life, shut down the woodshop, let the land go wild, and let my better half take all the burden on the house issues.

That’s not an option.

So I was searching for a new publisher, when I went to Liberty. That’s when someone above smiled. At the first panel I was on that weekend, chaired by none other than John Ringo, I wound up sitting next to some dude I had never seen before. I was first to introduce myself to the crowd, and as part of the intro mentioned that the John Fisher Chronicles are temporarily out of print, while I find a publisher.

The guy next to me, as part of his introduction mentions that he’s starting up a publishing company, and looking for writers. Ringo looks over, picks up the microphone, and says “well, now that we’ve got you two straitened out, lets fix the next guys issues!”

I signed the contract on Saturday, Defiant House Entertainment will be publishing all three of the current John Fisher novels, with first denial on any future ones. I won’t have any books at Imaginarium con this weekend, but I will at least have a publisher!

As I was typing this, I got an IM. A dear friend of many many years just passed away, massive heart attack. I’m sorry, but this is going to take some processing, before I can write any more, so I’ll be back next week.

QOTD: “I would rather have four good screws than two blowjobs!”

AT 2 TAR Jean Ellen Tucker, passed 7/10/2026- who hated the fighter mafia and loved her P-3s

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

Staring down the barrel from the wrong end is something most people over the age of thirty have done, either really or metaphorically. Most of us have done it more than once, as has our nation. Here’s the thing, like the James Bond intro that I bastardized this image into, we gotta win every time. The bad guys only gotta get lucky once. Today we’re going to talk about some of these experiences.

Grab a drink and let’s get started. On your way by, please notice the tip jar where we collect for the mess.

As always, I am grateful for those of you that have chipped in to keep the place running whether through a Substack subscription, or via the tip jar.

I’m going to start with the national and work my way down to the individual.

CDR Sal over at the-us-is-failing-its-own-nato-talking is having a conversation about how much we’re spending on Defense, and why that’s going to bite us in the ass. All of this, is, of course, relevant right now, because we’re (NATO) meeting each other at the Head of State level, in Turkey right now. Sal makes the point that as a percentage of GDP, we’re falling behind the target we personally are demanding our allies hit. He also points out that RIGHT NOW, we’ve fallen to fifth place on funding our military, when considered from that perspective.

Now some “Full and vigorous debate” (That’s civil service speak for a verbal knockdown, drag out fight, that goes to knives and knives to the hilt.) can/will happen over the fairness of considering percentage of GDP when our GDP is completely out of the league of any other nation on earth. (Think I’m joking?)

Note that the only outfit even in the running, is our “dear friends” the PRC, who have knives pointed at our backs, groin, and every other part of our anatomy.

Further discussion can be had over what should be allowed to be considered as part of “defense spending” with the knowledge that “Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics” is a fact of life. What the PRC reports for Defense spending doesn’t count a lot of spending that we count in the way of R&D, and defense adjacent stuff, and what our allies count includes a lot of stuff that we don’t, like ICE equivalent offices, Civil Defense stuff, and frankly, stuff that doesn’t relate to defense at all, but some little gnome in Belgum or somewhere wants to claim to pump up their numbers.

All of this discussion is good and is a reasonable part of being in a democratic world. My own contribution to it, was:
“Yes, and.

The US is not, at this point at least, staring down the very real threat of tanks rolling across her borders. Norway, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland are. It is historically hard for a republic, or a democracy, to put a massive effort into military might in peace time.

Add in the communist propaganda machine that feeds the “no one is threatening us, we need to quit threatening those poor innocent Chinese” narrative, along with all the other propaganda machine stories designed to weaken and divide us, makes convincing Joe and Sue American that we need to spend more on prepping for a war they don’t see coming, is hard.

The left, which is to say the PRC and Russia’s sock puppets, can find a million things other than a “war machine” that it’s more important to spend money on. They own the Mainstream Media.

This makes the job of bloggers and politicians who can see the collision coming vital.

Bang the drums, blow the horns, make it a steady drumbeat that “War is on the horizon, if you don’t arm up before it starts, you won’t get a chance to arm up at all!” We succeeded in this in 1937-40, which is why by 43 we had ships coming down the ways and ready to take the war to the enemy. Will we even survive long enough to have that six year window in a modern war?

Do you want to bet the future of the world on it?”

Sal’s perspective is that to lead the free world, we need to be unquestionably in the front, in all areas. I have a slightly more nuanced perspective. Honestly, at this point, I’m having a real problem giving a shit whether or not Germany falls to Russia. Even less whether or not Turkey falls to them.

Europe has, by and large, with the notable exception of Poland, the Baltic republics, and a couple of the Norse republics, already ceded their birthrights to the Islamic invasion. Defending them with American Blood and Treasure against another invading force is just low on my priority list. It comes down to “Is this a threat that will affect my nation’s survival?”

By and large, the answer to this, on the European front, is NO.

But

The trouble is that you can’t take the fall of Europe in isolation. When looked at as part of the world picture, the fall of Europe makes the fall of Asia that much easier. Do we “need” Germany (for example) to defend Asia against the PRC? Directly, NO. Indirectly though… we need places to build the missiles, aircraft, tanks, and other weapons of war that a modern war in the pacific will go through like a sailor going through free shots at the bar.

The US can’t build everything for everyone. Even if we shit-canned all the environmental and safety regulations that have hog tied modern American Industry, (as opposed to American Industry during WWII) we couldn’t keep up with the voracious hunger that a modern war has for shells, missiles, and equipment, with a true World War going on in Europe and Asia.

We NEED factories in Europe, in Asia, and in South America kicking out equipment and getting it to the front.

For that, there has to BE a Europe, that is not occupied by the enemy. I would, if I was in charge, treat the European theater in a future war, the way we treated the Pacific theater in WWII. IE, you get the stuff that we can spare from the war we need to fight first.

Make no mistake. The PRC is our deadly enemy, they’ve been trying their best for the last five decades to weaken us, ever since that never to be sufficiently damned bastard Nixon was convinced by the even worse bastard Kissinger that “we can win Communist China over to our side and use them against the real threat, the Soviets.” Ever since “Nixon went to China” they’ve been honing their knives and looking at our backs, our throats, and our balls. Far from becoming our allies, we became their “tools of convenience” to wipe the Soviet Union from the map, leaving them the heir of Marx, Lenin, and Asia in general.

Our allies Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines are all that stand in the way of their goal of owning all of Asia. Well, and of course, US.

Without us, those folks fall. Europe can stand against the remnants of the Soviet Union that call themselves Russia, with some small technological backing (AWACS, Fighters, and Air Defense systems, help in producing organic designed anti drone defenses, things like that). I don’t think they can WIN, but they can hold the line. Asia can’t. Without American troops and gear, Asia falls to the PRC. Even with our gear, as it currently stands it’s going to be LONG, BLOODY, and Expensive.

What sort of Expensive? Look at the UK, who “won” WWII but in doing so, destroyed their economy, and their empire, to the point that it never really recovered, and has now relegated the UK to a small second-rate power that probably couldn’t defend the Falklands if that invasion were to be redone.

Seriously, the RN probably couldn’t take on the Hellenic Navy and win, at this point, and India would send them packing in short order. When your navy is the weakest in the “Commonwealth” are you really in charge any longer?

I would just as soon not have that happen to the United States, if it’s all the same to you, because as I look around, I don’t see anyone standing in the wings ready to pick up the standard of civilization and continue the advance. All I see is the very real possibility of a PRC dominated Asia driving “a boot stomping on a human face—forever” except it won’t be forever, because without something propping it up, the Communist system of the PRC is doomed too.

What does that mean for humanity? Well, look at the fall of Rome, and the aftermath. Let’s not go there, huh?

How to avoid it?

Well that’s the part that’s going to be painful. We’re going to have to cut things. Foreign aid, social services, “money for the arts” a lot of oxen are going to get gored. The thing is, building ships takes time and money. A lot of it. Ships are the long leg in the war machine, and don’t look now, but ships are what we need, against the PRC.

It’s a big damn ocean, and the Navy is going to have to lead the way when we go to war against the PRC.

“But we don’t have to go to war, against the PRC” Yeah, I heard you, in the back. No we don’t… We can just surrender the idea of freedom, throw our allies to the wolves, and thus buy ourselves some breathing room.

It worked so well for Neville Chamberlin…

Or we can be so big, bad, and scary that the PRC decides the game isn’t worth the prize. This is why there isn’t a “Soviet Union” any longer. They decided that they dared not try the big game, because they would lose. That was their end, because their system demanded a steady intake of pillage to survive. They quit growing, and collapse was inevitable. If we can keep the PRC inside their borders for about ten, fifteen tops more years, their fall is just as inevitable. To do that requires that we remain just too dangerous to attack. Pain now, or a lot more pain later, if we don’t keep deterring them.

On the states level, we’ve had guns metaphorically pointed at us, by politicians who were frightened of our having guns to point back. This has been going on for my entire lifetime. For most of my life, the politicians have been winning.

In my memory we went from being able to order a gun and a suppressor mail order, to whole states where you couldn’t own a weapon that has a removable magazine, cities where you couldn’t own a gun at all, unless you’re politically connected, or you’re willing to break the law, (this of course is the rub, if you’re planning to break the law anyway, after the first one, felonies are free) states where owning a gun legally gave the state permission to barge into your home at any time, with no warrant.

Well, like the villain in the Bond opening credits, that seems to have failed, and between the voters and the courts, we’ve turned the corner. Oh they’re still trying desperately to fight it, but a wounded animal will fight to the end, even if they are bleeding out. That’s what we’re seeing now.

Yes, Virginia’s governor went on a gun grabbing spree as soon as elected. The courts in Virginia are breaking it off in her ass. SCOTUS has taken for action the bans on Semi Auto rifles like the AR platform at the national level. Yeah I’m reading tea leaves here, but… I don’t see a way that this doesn’t become another “Heller” case, with a watershed moment of “NO, the mechanism of firing, the number of cartridges the magazine will accept, how ‘scary looking’ the firearm is, none of that matters, what part of “shall not be infringed” so confuses you stupid bastards?”

Hawaii got spanked by the Supreme Court, Illinois has been spanked by them a couple times, California has been spanked so often that I’m beginning to think “You don’t come here for the hunting, do you?”

Also on the state level, in Maine, we have what looks at first glance like a “final straw” piece. Graham Platner, democratic candidate for Senate, has been a target since he showed up on the scene. The bare chested pictures of him with a (since covered up) Nazi Totenkopf tattoo was, shall we say, problematic? His history of issues with women, and other bad judgement weren’t enough to get the DNC to officially shitcan him, although he’s become more and more of a albatross around the neck of their body politic.

But now ‘divine providence’ seems to have handed the party the excuse they need to get rid of that smelly bird, some “ex-girlfriend” named Jenny Racicot is throwing the Rape Card on an incident of 5 years ago. Suddenly the heads of the DNC are all demanding he pull out of the race, now while there’s still time to change the ballot.

Pardon me, but finding some gal to cry rape seems to be awful ‘on brand’ for the DNC whenever there’s a man they need to get rid of. (Clarence Thomas, black courtesy phone, please, Donald Trump white courtesy phone please)

Seriously isn’t it funny how anyone who gets too difficult for the Democratic machine to deal with suddenly has some gal come out and say “well back in the day, he had sex with me, without my permission!” When you tack onto that, the hush money fund that exists within the “Office of Compliance” to pay for the victims of congressional sexual (and other) harassment to keep their mouths shut… It’s all just so convenient, isn’t it?

Now at the local level, our saga with our house continues… The wiring is hooked up, but we can’t turn it on without a representative from a company that is probably as dead as Marley’s ghost. We have had no progress in contacting the company: Yurezz Home Centers, registered letters get signed for, but not responded to, our finance company still thinks that they (Yurezz) will make good on their promises in spite of the lack of contact and radio silence, and the house still sits just as it did when the contractors walked off the job part way through.

There is some news though, another finance company: 21^st mortgage, has filed suit against the owners of Yurezz, (Richard and Heather Altman) saying basically, “they haven’t paid us, we want all the houses that we have notes for, OR we want our money.” Said company has also sent out forms to the folks that are in our situation, that offer to have all the work completed by contractors 21^st hires, in return for signing over the rights to any money recovered from Yurezz in future lawsuits, and holding 21^st blameless in future suits, among other considerations.

How this is going to end, I have no idea. It appears that to sue the company I will have to go through Appling County Georgia, so I will end up seeing what I am permitted to do, while bigger guys like my finance company lead the legal charge… SIGH.

And to add insult to injury, I had to be outside in what I can only describe as a firehose downpour Sunday… I dried out, my phone did not. So, I am phoneless until I get a replacement. Well, like kidney stones, this too shall pass.

QOTD: “21^st mortgage has agreed to provide monetary assistance to you in order for a contractor selected by or approved by 21^st mortgage to complete the following services that were included in your home purchase.

(later in the document) In exchange for this monetary assistance, you hereby agree to assign any and all claims you may have against any party you engaged with… ”

21^st Mortgage document.

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

Convention. It’s an odd word, it can mean “the way that something is usually done” especially within a trade or industry, it can mean something like a treaty, but not quite as formal, or it can mean a large gathering or meeting of people, usually in an industry, or with similar interests.

We’re going to talk about conventions today, including, of course, Liberty Con, and SF cons in general, but branching out beyond that as well. Grab a drink and let’s get started. On your way by, please notice the tip jar where we collect for the mess.

Thanks to the folks that have chipped in to keep the place running.

I want to talk about Liberty Con up front: In the unlikely event that you don’t give a rat’s ass about SF cons in general, and L/C in particular, by all means skip ahead to the askterisks.

This was my first time going to L/C so I’m seeing it with fresh eyes. Let me emphasize that none of what I am about to say is meant to be derogatory, I will be back, and I would prefer not to catch rotten eggs to the face when I show up.

That said, L/C is NOT your typical S/F Con. At least not as I have experienced them. This is not a “Fan Con” with hall parties and hall costumes, Fanzine tracks, Furry tracks, “Alt lifestyle” tracks, and so on. It was started by a guy and his family, and they still run it, and they run it family friendly. If that’s a problem for you, be warned. Some of the stuff I have seen at west coast cons, and heard of at Dragon Con, Things like “Scenes” taking place in the hallways (If you know, you know. If you don’t know, it’s probably better that you stay ignorant of this particular behavior… Lets just say that the Meese Report would not have approved.)

Conventions in general (by the third definition) fall into a few different types:

1) the Trade show or convention. A lot of SF cons come under this, but so do things like the NRA convention… It’s an opportunity to sell stuff associated with the subject matter, buy stuff, and listen to a few bigwigs in the field tell you about whatever it is that they’re shilling. Narrow target SF cons are particularly this way (Star Trek cons, etc.) and these are often but not always designed to strip fans or audiences of their cash as quickly as possible and send them on their way.

2) Fan Cons. The largest number of SF cons fall into this category, as do cons and seminars on things from knitting to BD/SM (and no we’re not going to examine the Venn diagram of folks that want to attend both.) These often have multiple different classes taught during the convention, some are presentations by pros either shilling something, or talking about how they do things, some are interactive classes, and some are just chances to Fan Boi out with one of the Guests of Honor. They cater to the hard corps fans who live and breath the subject matter, and the parties and gatherings all revolve around, to a greater or lesser extent, the subject matter. There are usually a limited number of pros, and the main thrust is celebrating “The Thing” whether it’s welding, S/F, or baking.

3) Business Cons. These are things where an organization, from the political parties, through unions and organizations like the Federal Manager’s Association, conduct their official business. There will still be dealer rooms and such but the main thrust is the business meeting that will report on last years stuff and set the goals for this year’s work. Everyone there is part of the “pro” group for that thing, and it’s of very little interest to those outside of that organization (unless that organization controls your life or livelihood, like: Oh, say, the DNC or RNC)

4) PRO cons. This is actually sort of a hybrid. It happens when there’s no “organization” that controls the industry, (and for those in the know, don’t you dare mention the SFWA, I’ll make you wash your mouth out with soap) but there’s a lot of interest in getting together and sharing techniques, new tools, etc… It also brings in the hard corps fan folks, who really want to understand and maybe join the industry. Yes, there will be fans, but they won’t outnumber the pros by more than at most 2:1. Most of the attendees want to get better at the target of the con, or are looking to network, and want to know what’s going on in the industry. This is Liberty Con.

Is Liberty Con Conservative? Well, yes, a little, more like libertarian, or OLD school liberal, but by modern definitions, it’s conservative. While I saw a smattering of “alt lifestyle” and LGBTQUILTBAG folks, it wasn’t shoved in anyone’s face, nor was any particular religion shoved in anyone’s face. This is a very “Live, and let Live” style place, like everywhere used to be, before the alphabet soup Nazis decided they were big enough to take over and enforce their beliefs on the rest of the world. I think it would be fair to say that “your personal beliefs and proclivities will be tolerated no matter what they are, as long as you don’t force it on others.”

Hell, Eric Flint was a L/C Guest of honor for multiple years, and the Master of Ceremonies three times, and he was an avowed and active member of the Socialist Worker’s Party, whose politics sat somewhere between Trotsky and Lenin. But here’s the thing: He wasn’t a bomb thrower, and he didn’t demand that you believe the way he believed or say you were the devil if you didn’t. He even got along with Tom Kratman, who is probably the furthest thing from a communist in this fallen world.

Primarily this is the place where the pros, from little guys like me, to THE big names in the industry, rub elbows and chat without gatekeepers and handlers.

Where the guy that just stepped on the back of your shoe and elbowed you in the ribs by accident is SM Sterling, and the guy that sets you up with your new publisher is John Ringo. Where people that have known each other on the book of faces for years, but never met, actually get to meet in meat space, and have a drink.

Where people you don’t know from Adam’s off ox walk up to you and say “are you ‘the Scuttlebutt? I love your stuff, I read it every week!” thus allaying (slightly) my fears that the only people that read this rag are a few friends that do it out of pity, and my mother. (yes, imposter syndrome is a thing.)

The Con committee say: “Here, we’re all family, but we’re the parts of the family that LIKE each other.” They’re not wrong. It’s not Cons as I have known them, but that’s not a bad thing.

It’s lower pressure, less crowds (although the Koffieklatch was so noisy and so crowded that I don’t think I’ll do that part again, I don’t do very large noisy groups well.) Oh, and if you go, get over to a restaurant called Attack of the Tatsu, it’s walking distance. It’s also worth going to Bea’s: southern food, fed farmhouse style, and if you leave less than filled to the brim with good food it’s your own damn fault.

******

Now let’s talk about some other conventions. For years there has been a convention that power is more and more residing in unelected bureaucrats. The Supreme Court just stop punched that shit. They stood up to Trump and told him that he could not fire a Governor of the Federal Reserve, which is (no matter what the tinfoil hat boys want to paint it) the “bank of banks” whose governing body sets banking policy for banks in the US.

It is NOT part of the government, although the Governors are appointed by the President, with advice and consent from the Senate. In this (and only this) the Fed is more like the Judicial Branch, where you can appoint, but you can’t fire, because they’re required to be isolated from the politics of the day.

Oh and they didn’t actually say “you can’t fire them” they said “You can’t fire this one now, until her lawsuit challenging her firing is settled.”

The key sentence in the decision is “Not only the fact of independence but also the appearance of independence is key to the Federal Reserve’s design”. The decision went on to say, paraphrased “you CAN try to fire her for cause, but you have to make the case, and she gets to defend herself against the charges. What you can’t do is fire her because you don’t like her.”

Now while they limited the Presidency on that, they also said that “Independent Regulators” are not some magical fourth branch of the government, but work for the Executive.

A little review is in order, because so many people seem to have forgotten or were never taught the three branches of the government.

Put simply, the Legislative branch creates laws, and sends them to the Executive. They also control the checkbook.

The Executive branch enforces the laws and signs off on them. The President can veto a law, but can also be overridden, if enough of the legislative branch wants something. The Executive also runs the military but that’s not pertinent to this discussion.

The Judicial branch decides whether or not a law is legal under our constitution, and interprets the law. They get to say “naw, that shit ain’t right.” Or “Yeah that’s good, and you, sir are in violation of that good law, to prison with you.”

Nowhere in this do you find anything about Independent Branches answerable to no one, that exist to audit or overrule elected officials. That seems to be the novel argument that Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Slaughter wanted to use as a justification for why she could not be fired. She seems to have claimed that though she was exerting the powers of the executive branch, she could only be fired by congress.

She was relying on an old ruling called “Humphrey’s Executor” that ruled back in the 30’s that President Roosevelt shouldn’t have been able to fire FTC commissioner Humphrey over policy disagreements. The court of the time made the ruling based on the claim that the FTC and other agencies like it had been created by congress as “Quasi-legislative” or “Quasi-judicial” agencies.

Now the truth here is that FDR was racking up quite a record of trying to become “king in all but name” by the time this ruling came down, and the Executor ruling was more about politically reigning in an imperial president, than it was good law.

So, what, you ask, is the difference between the Fed’s powers and the FTC’s powers?

Good question.

The FTC can investigate, issue trade rules having the force of law, fine people, and charge people or companies with crimes that if convicted in court will send folks to jail, close their business, or take their money.

The Federal Reserve sets interest rates, controls the liquidity of money by printing more, or tightening up the supply, enforces some regulations on how much a bank can “play the market” and can, with reason, shut down a bank. It also governs the transfer of money between banks, to limit the amount of hanky panky.

To me, the big difference, and what I interpret the findings by SCOTUS to differentiate based on, is this:

One can put people in jail, or fine them. That’s Executive Branch powers.

The other can limit money supplies, and otherwise mess with the US monetary policy. Think back to which branch owns what… The Legislature owns the checkbook.

Other news on SCOTUS includes the ruling that mail in ballots postmarked by the day of the election can be counted, which is being billed as a loss for Trump. I see it as a victory for deployed troops. They refused to hear an appeal by Trump of the $5 mil. Jury verdict in a suit against him, and Trump also lost his case against Birthright citizenship, as SCOTUS ruled that being born on US soil, even if you’re born to illegal aliens, or theoretically to an alien species makes you an American. Obviously, it’s time for an amendment here.

But, they also handed down a bitch slap to Hawaii on their latest anti gun initiative that would make it a crime to bring guns into a public facing business without express permission, so that was nice. Of course, Hawaii (like all the other anti-freedom states) will just go back to the trestle board and draw up some new illegal way to fuck with gun owners… But I’ll take the “W”.

We’ve got one final definition of Convention to mention, the “slightly less than a treaty” piece, which brings us to Iran. Every time there’s a deal made with Iran, the mad mullahs wait less than a week to break it. The latest one was just last night, with still more shooting at civilian vessels for the “sin” of being in the international waters that Iran promised not to attack people in. This of course was followed by the US blowing up the newly disclosed radars that hadn’t radiated until then.

Look, this is the game:

Don’t use a radar, so no one knows where it is, until you need to. Once you light that puppy up, people know where it is, and can take it out. Until then a radar is the easiest thing in the world to hide. That’s the game Iran is playing.

It’s time to quit playing “wack a mole” and quit playing Charley Brown to Iran’s Lucy Van-Pelt. I always wanted to see Charley aim the kick for her head, instead of the football. Right now, it’s time to see if we can kick a Dolband between the uprights, with the head still in it. You can’t make a deal with someone that sees deals only as “a chance to reload.”

Closing roundup: Kira Davis wrote a beautiful piece on Scott Weiner getting bitch-slapped by the people he has been using as his power base at screw-democrats-like-scott-weiner Surprisingly, fags, communists, and muslims Queers for Palestine, DSA, and CAIR don’t give a fuck if you’ve supported them financially and politically; if you’re a dirty jew, you gotta die. Kira is more sympathetic about this than I am, I hope they do to him what he cheered about them doing to his co-religious brothers and sisters. He deserves it.

Governor New-scum came out against the California state bill to tax billionaires “because no one should have that much money,” with the argument that “this is bad for the state, because they’ll just move out.” At the same time, Candidate New-Scum came out with a proposal to Federally Tax billionaires because no one should have that much money…Hey Gavin, think this thing through, just a little bit, Huh? I know that thinking hurts your head, but, TRY.

QOTD: “Independent agencies are not so independent after all.”

Supreme Court Judge Gorsuch.

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

It’s been said that “One man’s Utopia is another man’s Dystopia.” Well I’ll go a little further than that: There is no such thing as Utopia. It just looks like Utopia until you experience it. We’re going to explore this a little bit today, so pull up a chair. Dinner is beef and mushroom ravioli with cheese, you know where the liquids are, grab something. Please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess.

Thanks to the folks that have chipped in to keep the place running.

Take for example, California (dear Gods, would someone PLEASE take California?) California is working hard to be a better socialist utopia than NYC. Let’s see how that’s working.

Cali claims to be the defender of safety for the world, to the point where “known by the state of California to cause cancer” is a running joke. Safety rules created in California bog down the works everywhere they’re adopted. You would think that would make Cali the safest place in the world, right? Well… not so much.

They do have the fifth best Life Expectancy in the US, but it’s worth noting that the numbers vary by less than eight full years between the worst, at 73.89 years (Mississippi) and the best, 81.11 (Hawaii). Further, when we look at “safest” California comes in at 38^th in the nation, based on 52 key indicators from natural disaster occurrences, through the chance of getting hurt on the job, to the likelihood of catching a bullet.

They just added what seems to me to be another chance to get dead, or at least sick as a dog; California Assembly bill 660 completely bans “Sell-by” dates. It seems that in the view of the California assembly, people are throwing away perfectly good food because it’s passed the “sell-by,” which is causing folks to fill up the landfill, and adding to the lack of nutrition.

First off, that’s going to really complicate the life of companies that sell in multiple states, because with the exception of California, “Sell-by” is compulsory, while IN Cali, it’s now verbottin.

Second, it further complicates everything by mandating two other labels, either “BEST if used by” for food that will not taste as good (IE STALE) but is safe to eat (they think) and “USE by” for things that have strict expiration dates. So if you’re a food producer you have to re-tool to print one of those two on your label, and remove the “Sell-by” on the stuff going to California, and still print the old labels for the rest of the nation.

Then there’s the merchant in CA who has to figure out when he’s going to pull things that are either close to, or past one of those two dates… DO I sell stuff passed the “best by” date? It’s legal, but is it ethical or will it lose me customers?

How far before the “use by” date do I pull things? A week? a month? If it’s fresh foods, then a week seems resonable. if it’s cans, or frozen, theres a reasonable expectation that I can buy it and sit it on the pantry or in the freezer for a month without killing my family. If I then pitch the stuff not yet expired, is the state going to have an issue?

If you read between the lines, at what the legislators that passed this are saying, this isn’t about food safety, it’s about “we don’t have room in our landfills, so we want to discourage the throwing away of food.”

For people that actually understand food safety, this is all a waste of time, we know that “sell by” does not mean “Use by” and is at best a guideline telling you what is older, and what’s more likely to be sketchy… and even that’s of only slight use; after all, we put, by law, expiration dates on SALT for pity’s sake! “Yeah bubba, this pink Himalayan salt, it’s been in that mountain for ten thousand years, but thank gods we got it out now, because it expires next year!”

The next step will be “if we catch you throwing away food that has not passed the USE-BY date, we will fine you. You will eat that food and like it Tovarich, the mold adds character. The swollen can is just an inconvenience. You don’t want to be seen as adding to the hunger problem, do you? That would make you an oppressor, and you know what we do to those, right?”

No, this is just another opportunity to stick their nose in, and mess with people’s business.

Another example is new state law AB 732, and if you thought “you can’t have a sell by date” was stupid, check this: This law, passed unanimously, allows “agricultural commissioners” to fine a landowner up to $1,000 per acre for “neglected” land!

Yeah, you read that right, if some county ag officer decides that your land is “neglected” they can fine you, possibly to the point of taking away your land. Suffering from drought? Have your citrus crop fail?

Well, now, along with having the bank dogging you because your crop failed, which means you don’t have the money to pay back the “Operations loan” that keeps you running up until the harvest, you now get some Comisar showing up to fine you for “neglect” of your land. The theory expressed was that “Pests” grow in “neglected” land and then spread to production land.

Now I can almost see this, after all, Mexico is “neglected” and “pests” have been migrating from there to the once productive land of the Southwest, costing hundreds of billions of dollars in damages, lost opportunities, crime, medical care, social services and so on… (Note, I’m not saying that hispanics are by definition “pests” but I am saying that a lot of the ones that are coming across the border illegally are.) But the theory that “neglected land causes pests” is like the old medieval “Scientist” theory that the sun breeds baby mice in hay.

This is a land grab by another name. It’s an opportunity for some appointed apparatchik who may or may not have a fucking clue, depending on how crooked the local government is, to decide that “Your land is “neglected” comrade, the state must ensure that farmland is properly utilized, so we must fine you until you use it as we see fit. What, you can’t pay that fine? Well then comrade, the state will take your land. Maybe we’ll let you farm it, under a state manager.”

This is the face of socialism.

It’s not the utopia that your teacher promised. It’s not safety and security for all, by the benevolent hand of a caring government. It’s centralized planning deciding what is best for all (themselves) and who must do what or be fined and imprisoned, for failure to follow the “five-year plan.”

(For those of you too young to remember the old Soviet Union, they were big on “five-year plans”, and perfection was always one “five-year plan” and just a few more regulations away from happening. “Trust us, government will fade away, and all will be great for the working man, it’s just one more centralized plan, and a few hundred-thousand more counter revolutionary deaths away!”)

It’s some punk named Rohit Khanna who grew up in Pennsylvania, got a law degree specializing in I P law, clerked for a federal judge for a couple years, did two years in private practice, then joined the federal government gravy train. He did two years as the Deputy Assistant Secretary to the Department of Commerce (OK lets stop right here, this guy has two years as a lawyer and a few years as the clerk for a district apellate judge, and he’s somehow capable of being an SES for the Department of Commerce? Of course this was under Obama, who he had stumped for as a college student, so…)

Then he got elected as the US Representative for California’s 17^th district (Silicon Valley) Democrat, of course.

He worked on Bernie Sanders presidential Campaign like a good little socialist… Oh, he wrote a book, “Entrepreneurial Nation: Why Manufacturing is Still Key to America’s Future.”

This “expert” on Commerce, that has never made a thing, or worked in a manufacturing field in his fucking life, feels justified to lecture Elon Musk on how horrible he is, and why he should have his fortune confiscated and redistributed to “those in need.”

Well, how much is a good little socialist who has spent most of his working years in college or in the public sector worth? After all, the biggest paycheck he ever saw was probably that House of Representatives job, at $174K a year, and a book doesn’t make that much money, unless you’re Roling, King, Correa, or someone at that level. If he’s lecturing Elon and demanding that Elon’s money be taken away, he’s probably giving all his excess money to charity, like he wants Elon to do, right?

Right?

Yeah, how about; this little bitch is worth 232.7 million dollars?

Said little bitch is, it seems, also thinking that he can get on the ticket as the Presidential nominee for the Democratic party. Now I’ll admit that they’ve got an awful shallow field to draw from, but this guy?

OK, I can see where he’s coming from, he was a ward healer while in college in Chicago, for Obama’s campaign.

Then he worked as a Bernie Bro.

He probably figures that based on not having done anything stupid, he can pull an Obama and get the nomination by “I’m a minority, and have the least baggage.”

The scary thing is, he might be right. The even more frightening thing is that there are people who would vote for him, based on his promises of “taking care of all the folks that have been screwed by the capitalists.”

He talks a great game, promising to take all the money from this rich guy, and spread it around to all the poor guys. It’s a great game if you can’t do math, but then most socialists can’t do even the simple math that is economics.

But, did you ever notice that the guys that want to take the rich cat’s money and spread it around, never spread their own around?

Oh and funny thing, you don’t make that sort of money if you can’t do math, so he’s got to know what he’s saying is bullshit. Musk’s money wouldn’t run the US Government for more than a couple months. Spread evenly over everyone not Musk, it’s only a couple thousand per person. Shit, my mother made more than that off a drawing at the Eagles. It’s nice, but it’s not “life changing money.” And it would kill every business that Musk owns, putting hundreds of thousands out of work, and stoping all the stuff that his companies are doing for the nation.

Ro Khanna is worth nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. Money made, somehow, while doing a job that doesn’t pay that much more than what I was making when I worked at the shipyard. (yes I had other sources of income, but still… with all sources combined, we were up around that 175K figure. There’s no way I could have made that into a quarter of a billion.) OK, he inherited a good-sized chunk (no one is saying how much) but if he were a good socialist shouldn’t that have been spread around to some charities?

Instead, that time working for that judge, and that time working for Sec. Commerce seems to have provided him with some sort of special insight (I’m not saying insider trading, but he, like Nancy P, seem to have awfully good guesses on who’s going to make money in the market, and the ability to buy in at just the right time.)

Bernie is worth approximately 2.6 million after never having worked outside of an elected office in his life.

Shifty Shiff is at around the same number, he’s another guy that wants to take all Musk’s money.

Nasty Pelosi? Yeah, she’s around Ro’s money, a quarter billion. Both of them seem to have an awful lot of money in healthcare companies…

There’s a really great blog that discussed the lure of Socialism and the lies embedded there in, this week:

Lady Liberty

Why Young Americans Still Believe in Socialism

The Beautiful Lie…

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2 months ago · 26 likes · 1 comment · Ivana

you should go read it.

The truth is that people, as a whole, are interested in their own best interest. That may include “This is best for my (fill in group, from family to nation) so it’s in my long term best interest.” Hell, if the person is exceptionally brilliant, they may be able to see and support “This doesn’t directly help me, but the people that it helps are people that will help others that will help me.”(Third order thinking.)

Capitalism understands this, and says “prices send a message, either ‘there’s too many people making this, so you can’t help yourself by making it too’ or ‘the price is extremely high for this thing, there’s money to be made here, which will help you and your family.’” Capitalism encourages you to do well by doing good. It discourages you from ripping people off, because once word gets around, no one will buy from you.

Yes, that means someone is going to get hurt in the process while people learn you’re a crook. That’s what I’m going through right now with my house. Yes, it sucks. This is also why we have courts and laws, so that when you are a crook I can seek the reimbursement I am due and recover from being ripped off.

The difference is I have recourse. If it was the government in a socialist country, unless I had contacts in government that owed me favors, I would have no recourse.

Nothing is perfect, there is no “utopia” this side of the grave. The best you can do, is design a system that checks and calibrates, that makes everyone answerable to laws, not people, and then makes those laws wisely, and minimizes the number of them. We aren’t there yet, but we’re closer than any other place on earth. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of better.

QOTD: “That is where the socialist romance begins. A generation was handed real grievances and a fake villain. They were pushed through expensive universities, buried under loans, priced out of housing, mocked by inflation, managed by apps, lectured by HR departments, and then told the problem was capitalism. Not the universities feeding on federal loan money. Not the politicians choking housing supply while pretending to care about affordability. Not the regulators who make small businesses harder to start and giant corporations harder to kill. Not the central bankers who punished savers and rewarded people who already owned assets. Not the bureaucratic class that makes everything slower, uglier, and more expensive, then calls itself public service.”

“Lady Liberty” a blogger who just goes by Ivana.

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

There is a possibly apocryphal story stating there’s an ancient Chinese curse that hopes you “live in interesting times, come to the attention of those in high places, and have your fondest wish granted.” I’m looking for the bastard that so cursed me.

. You know where the liquids are, grab something. Please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess, and I thank those that have thrown a few bucks in the jar.

We’ll start with the national and international, then descend to the personal:

I’ll start with this group of mental midgets that cooked up a plot to blow up shit at the White House, shoot up a bunch of people, then “storm the gates” bringing about the “glorious revolution” against Trump and his Nazis, during the “UFC Freedom 250” fights.

Look, this is strictly amateur hour. Yes, there were at least nineteen people involved, and they did have some of the equipment, as well as the basic knowledge of how to carry on such an attack. Yes, they were theoretically capable of pushing the attack through.

No they would not have succeeded in anything except dying and maybe killing a few people on their way to the realm of Hela, where they would suffer the fate of traitors and oath breakers. (that’s assuming that this wasn’t some sort of a false-flag operation, a highly unlikely, but admittedly possible thing.) Look, even if this neck beard nineteen year old’s mommy hadn’t blown the whistle, these clowns were strictly CoD (Call of Duty) commandos.

The alleged leader of the crew “Shepard” seems to be the only one who even might have had some Real-World experience at this sort of thing, and based on what I’ve read, he’s been using some of the pages from Hamas in the organization of the attack. I suspect that was the best model he could find, which says something about his knowledge of insurgency and COIN.

I’ve seen better.

All that said, we keep seeing this sort of thing, always aimed at various Republicans (even though these guys were framed as “Ultra-right wing Cristians” by the press, they were targeting strictly Republican office holders and conservative figures. That sure doesn’t sound right wing to me!)

They only have to get lucky once, we have to win each time.

So, let’s say that neckbeard and his crew manage to use some drones laden with explosives, and actually kill a few people. Hell, let’s say they get lucky and kill the President, and the VP.

That gives us Mike Johnson as the new president. Johnson is a Trump man to the core, but even if he weren’t it wouldn’t matter. There could be only two results from an attack on the Whitehouse killing the President and the Vice President. Martial law would be declared immediately, or Civil War would break out immediately, as various right-wing citizens decided that the neighborhood needed an “Uplift Association” and broke out the hemp neckties to do the uplifting.

Just in case that is too vague for you, I’m saying that there would be a hell of a lot of Leftists hanging from lamp posts come morning.

Yes, Lefties have guns too. Neck beard and his buddies had guns. This has been yet another example of why that doesn’t matter.

Guns are not some magic talisman that you can wave like Harry Potter’s wand while saying “Expelimous I have a gun-us” and magically your opponents will do what you want them to do. You actually have to be trained in how to use them, and capable of doing so in a competent manner. The Left has yet to exhibit that trait. Without the training and competence, you’re just a mobile training target, single use.

All of which brings us back to the fact that the only thing this will do is create a lot of confusion, a bunch of dead Americans and pseudo-Americans, and push the nation into something that will end up looking a lot more like a military dictatorship and a lot less like the America of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. It will, however, keep us focused internally, and unlikely to respond to international adventurism and empire building for a bit.

It continues to beg the question “Cui Bono?” Figure out who benefits, and you will identify who is behind this shit. It’s at least possible that this is a strictly internally funded set of operations, but if it is, they’re the naivest bastards on the face of the planet. They would have to believe that they could actually win the resultant civil war. Even AOC hasn’t been drinking the cool aide that hard. No, my money is on international involvement. The PRC wouldn’t need to care “who won” the Third American Civil War (we call the first one “the Revolution” because we won.) The only goal China needs to care about is “can we keep those fuckers busy long enough for us to gobble up Taiwan, and the rest of the “First Island Chain.”

Dear Leftists, quit being useful idiots.

Let’s go on to California. California may be the worst shitshow in America, but it could get worse.

How you ask?

Well, a study that a bunch of the most intelligent geologists and volcanologists in the world just published states that not just San Andreas, but the San Jacinto fault systems are cocked to the highest level of energy that has been seen in a thousand years.

In case Earthquake theory isn’t your bag, let’s review a little bit of it, so you can understand the gravity of this thing. Earthquakes are caused by tectonic plates or sections of them that are moving past each other. In a perfect world those plates would just slide past each other like two lubed bearing surfaces… Minimal friction, greased plate gliding against greased plate.

We, however, do not live in that world. Instead we live in the sort of world where there ain’t no grease. Where plate grabs against plate until the amount of energy that is built up overcomes the coefficient of friction, and, like a set of failed brakes, lets go with a series of pops, grating noises and slips. Those pops and slips are what we call earthquakes.

The two major places that plates are passing against each other, (called fault lines) in California cross each other at Cajon Pass. Both of them are now holding more energy against a slip than anyone has ever seen released in recorded history. And here’s where my frustration comes in.

Look, there have been proposed solutions to this for most of my life. We know what causes earthquakes, the only thing we don’t know, is how the mechanism ‘decides’ when to let go. That’s why we can’t predict the damn things with any degree of certainty. What we are petty sure though, is that we know how to get the plates to slide. Yes, I am talking about causing an earthquake intentionally. Why? Because releasing some of that energy when we know it’s going to happen, even if it only releases one of the two faults, is far to be preferred to releasing both of them when we have no warning. A series of “small” quakes, even if “small” means a 7, is preferable to one “large” one, and by large, I mean a 10. If you are not familiar with the Rictor scale, it’s logarithmic. 10 is not “three times” more than 7. It’s 31,600 times more powerful.

The problem is that no one wants to try. We know that there are several things we could do to the faults that would get them to slip a bit. But we don’t know how much it would slip at a time, and we know that some shit would get broken. Knowing Californians, people would also get killed. There’s bound to be some group of twits standing on the fault to protest the release, demanding that we do more to “Protect the lesser gopher tortoise from the earthquake” or some such bullshit. No one wants to be the guy that actually pulls the trigger on that.

Further, because it’s California, before the release could happen, the exercise would get tied up in injunctions, and lawsuits that would keep it from happening until well after Mother Nature gets fed up and decides to, “Let it go.”

So, because we lack the self-discipline and courage to allow some damage to occur under a controlled test, instead we will get something catastrophic. Let me be clear, when I say catastrophic, I mean mega-deaths, and the complete and total leveling of parts of LA, San Bernardino, Riverside, and the Coachella valley, with damage extending down to San Diego, and up to San Lois Obispo. Short of the cutting loose of Yellowstone, this is the biggest natural disaster we could possibly experience. We could at least attempt to moderate the damage… But we won’t.

I’ll touch on the Iran MOU briefly. I don’t think it’s a good deal. Let me be very clear on that, based on what I have seen, and I have NOT seen the actual text, I don’t think it’s a good deal. But Trump has earned enough leeway to carry it a ways, and see what his plan is. Honestly, he may be expecting the mad Mullahs to renege on it, which then allows us to say “look, we tried to deal with these clowns, but they just will not keep their word, so we’re going to have to just end them.”

I do note that France and the UK have said that they will join the fighting, once they’re assured that there’s no more, you know, FIGHTING.

While we’re talking about the UK, I suggest you go take a look at my friend Tom Knighton’s recent tomknighton.substack.com/p/to-suffer-the-slings-and-arrows-of-outrageous-governance It seems that MI6 has a special propaganda arm designed to make sure that you believe the government, and not your own lying eyes.

When you combine that with the absolute shitshow Ian over at the Bugscuffle Gazette talks about in you-know-in-certain-older-civilized-cultures you understand why I consider the UK to be a failed state. Ian talks about the recently released Government study “Rape Gang Inquiry Report” From MP Rupert Lowe.

The executive summary includes, “Organized networks of perpetrators built coordinated operations that transported victims between locations, supplied them with drugs and alcohol, recorded abuse for distribution and blackmail, and passed girls between multiple adult men. These crimes have been committed for decades, since the 1950s by Pakistanis in particular, and have affected every region of our nation.” “It has been previously established that, at the very least, 250,000 young white girls have been subjected to repeated rape, gang rape, trafficking, torture, pregnancy, forced Islamic conversion, and lifelong trauma. The true number is probably higher.”

The cops ignored it and covered it up. The government officials and elected officers covered it up and sometimes joined in. The press vilified the victims and glorified the perpetrators.

The United Kingdom has fallen. There are no men left. For if there were, these actions would result in the sort of pogrom last seen in Spain, during the Reconquista. The actual report is located at the+Rape+Gang+Inquiry+Report.pdf

Let me be clear. It happened there, it could happen here. It requires nothing but that we pretend that criminals are something other than criminals. That we excuse their actions as “well it’s their culture” or “well, they were deprived, and they don’t know any better” or any of a vast number of other duck billed platitudes. If you behave like these individuals, (I will not call them men, or even people) you are an animal. Like an animal, you need to be put down.

So far, instead, we’ve given such beings titles, like “Violence Interrupter.” That’s the title that the Anti Gun group “CeaseFire” gives to professional criminals that they claim are now “rehabilitated” and capable of taking on the job that used to be performed by police officers before the ACAB (all cops are bastards) and “Defund the Police” movements took charge in Blue cities.

Places like Shitcago where the mayor was giving a photo op to a Violence Interrupter (VI) who was wanted in four states on active warrants, just before said dirtbag did a smash and grab and the victim was killed. Where three of these VIs were busted packing pistols while out on bond for (wait for it) Felony gun crimes, and working for the city to (wait again) reduce gun violence.

Places like Minneapolis, where two Vis were arrested for shooting a dude, while they were working for the city as a VI. In St. Louis MO, at least the VI didn’t pack heat, he strangled a mothafucka to death. In NYC where the “director” of one of these programs is currently awaiting trial along with his entire gang for running guns and drugs. In Baltimore they have one of the VI awaiting trial for attempted murder, and multiple firearms violations, but hey they might just interrupt the violence… by killin’ the dude that’s doing it. (oh, wait, isn’t that what they complain that the cops do?)

CeaseFire and other such organizations are now under federal investigation. That’s great if there’s some perp walks and some jail time, otherwise, it’s great sound and fury signifying diddly squat.

If you missed the note I posted, Bastiat’s Window posted an incredibly useful piece of information that I suggest you not only read, but save as a reference on how to make AI search engines work for YOU instead of the advertisers that are paying to get you to their sites. .50-ways-to-stop-using-google-like This is the good stuff folks, if you’re not a software geek, this is how to get results as if you were.

Along with that we have OldNFO’s post on Microsoft’s newest way to rob you blind,

OldNFO’s Substack

Microsoft...

Is at it again…

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2 months ago · 23 likes · 11 comments · OldNFO

which includes what to do about it.

Back when the Vietnam memorial was created, I thought that was the rock bottom that we could sink to for a war memorial. Silly me, what did I know? Go look at the design of the GWOT memorial proposed:

https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/so-gwot-will-get-a-memorial.

The first time I saw this monstrosity I though it was a parody. Nope, they mean it. This thing is an insult to every troop that served in the last twenty years. The designers of this piece? First off, the dude and his company are Japanese. We’re letting foreigners create our war memorials now??? His book on design is “ Anti-Object: The Dissolution and Disintegration of Architecture” The guys that hired him, and he himself are on the list of people I’m looking for with a ball bat.

Finally, let me tell you a tale of my own struggles. As I have mentioned, when we moved to Tennessee, we bought land, and bought a modular house to be put on the land… Well, they finally got the house here a month or two ago, and started putting it together. The design is good, but the implementation, well… There’s issues.

A lot of issues. We were working through those issues with the “trim out” crew, contractors working for the company that we bought the house through, not the company that built the house. The company that we bought the house through was ALSO supposed to get the factory guys out to fix the legion of fuckups that the guys on the factory floor made.

And all of that was proceeding, albeit at a glacial pace, until the end of last week.

Our finance company called us up to ask about the “Punch List” a list we were supposed to generate of all the things wrong that need to be fixed before we will accept the house. As a result, we called the Trim-Out contractors to ask for copies of the pictures that they took to document things that were “factory problems” as opposed to “we gotta fix it” problems. On Tuesday, they said “we’re supposed to be getting the last parts we need tomorrow, and we’ll send you the pictures after that.” On Wednesday, they said “the parts didn’t come in, we’re supposed to get them tomorrow, and yeah we’ll send you the pictures.”

On Thursday we didn’t have the pictures, so we called them… And were told “we’re not talking to THOSE PEOPLE any more, and we can’t send you the pictures.”

“What??? What’s going on?”

“They locked their doors at 10 AM. They’ve shut down. And they owe us $20K for other work done. Fuck those guys.”

Now this is a four state (at least) company, with offices all over the place. So we do some checking online. Google, etc know nothing. So we try to call the company (name withheld because legal action is pending) and all we could get was robots.

So we called the finance company. They said, “What??? This is above my paygrade, I gotta bubble this up, my bosses will be in touch!” followed by “click.” Later we hear from “the bosses.” Seems we may have been the first ones to learn of this, but we are far from the only ones in this pinch, the company claims they’re still going to honor the contracts and commitments that are outstanding, but yes, they’ve ceased operations.

The bank did not know that there were contractors out there with debts owed. At this point no one knows how this goes forward, the house is on our land but we can’t move in, there’s issues that need fixed, and it’s not clear how that happens, a lot of work we paid for has not been performed, and I’ve got a ball bat that needs to be fed. I have no idea how this is going to end.

“Retire” they said, “it’ll reduce your stress,” they said.

QOTD: ““Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion.”

General Norman Schwarzkopf

Yours in Service,

William Lehman

Sorry folks but the normal post is going to be late this week. We went up to celibrate a cousin’s highschool graduation, a granddaughter’s birthday, and help my mom out by doing some of the stuff she can no longer do around the house.

I’m still out of pocket, will be home Wednsday afternoon and will get something out Thursday or Friday. Until then there’s plenty of great stuff in the folks I recomend’s pages.

YIS
William Lehman

I’m writing this a day early, since tomorrow is my thirtieth anniversary and Kiti and I will be out all day. Unfortunately, I have a plentitude of things to write about. I say unfortunately, because it’s all bad, stupid, or worse.

You know where the liquids are, grab something. Please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess, and I thank th…

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With the Gods as my witness I tried to find a unifying theme for this week’s discussions. I failed miserably, so this will be another of the “target rich environment” posts.

Welcome back, pull up a chair, Brats and Kraut for dinner tonight, with plenty of hot mustard. You know where the liquids are, grab something. Please don’t forget the tip jar wher…

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No, there wasn’t ANOTHER blackout in Spain, but the cartoon is the best thing I had on my computer as a lead in for the first story of the day.

Welcome back, pull up a chair, dinner tonight is pulled pork Mac and Cheese. You know where…

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Language used to mean something. A word’s definition was formed by the dictionary, and by common usage. Now we’re in Orwell land, and it’s a further push towards a physical crash. A crash no one should want.

Welcome back, pull up a chair, dinner tonight is whatever the VFW is feeding, it’s business meeting night. You know where the liquids are, grab some…

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I’m not sure if it’s enemy action, or just native stupidity, but the push for a break continues, hard. We’re going to look at some of the events today, ones that will, in all probability wind up in some future history textbook, in the chapter “events leading up to the third American Civil War.” (the first one was the revolution)

Steak, and salad for dinn…

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A friend of mine just published an article

Cameron M. Bailey

Japanese Zippo

Have you ever heard about Japanese Zippos…

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3 months ago · 8 likes · 1 comment · Cameron M. Bailey

That I felt the need to riff on. And being basically lazy, thus wanting to get the maximum use out of anything I do, I felt the comment was worth posting and adding to, here.
Cameron was talking about the good thing (In his oppinion) that was US made items being shipped overseas, embelished, and shipped back, a…

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Well, as the regulars know, I added a new career to my resume a while back, in addition to Submarine Sailor, Cop, Shipyard worker/instructor/manager, Author, and of course surly curmudgeon, I’m now a farmer.

Specifically, a Hog farmer, although we also grow other things here at Morrigan’sport Farm, and will be selling various things bye and bye, My main …

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This is not going to be a friendly discussion. This is more what was known colloquially in the Navy as a “Come to Jesus” session. The fact that I feel like absolute ass, because I ate too much grease last night while taking Ozempic, is not going to make it any more pleasant, so let’s get on with it. You know where the drinks are, grab something, and ple…

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Well, I’m going to be a day late on the blog this week folks. My mother is in town for a couple days on her way north for the summer… So I’ll be writing on Wednsday and publishing on Thursday, instead of my normal schedule.

Hey, I don’t know how many more times I’ll get to see her, so bear with me.

V/R

William Lehman

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