We are sending money to the Taliban. Let one more person try to tell me “We won all of the battles, so we technically didn’t lose to the Taliban.”
Education
Fairness, according to the left
This item keeps coming across my aggregator. This third grade teacher has a lesson using bandaids that the left seems to think is brilliant. The conclusion of the lesson is this:
Fair doesn’t mean everyone gets the same thing, fair means that everyone gets what they need to be successful.
No it doesn’t. In real life, not everyone is going to be successful. Some won’t try. Some will try and fail. To hand out materials and benefits to ensure that everyone has the same amount of success is not helping children. It causes them to become lazy and reliant on handouts from a beneficent authority figure. This is how people become cattle, dependent on others for their success.
Instead, teach them to become self reliant. Teach them that anything worth having is worth working for. Teach them that the joy of success after a struggle is something worth striving for.
Military
US Army has a history of trying to take over
General Milley’s actions in refusing to obey the orders of the President, along with the fact that his subordinates knowingly followed along changed the US military from a professional military force under Constitutional authority into an armed mob engaged in a military junta. Make no mistake about it, the four men pictured below engaged in a mutiny against legitimate Constitutional authority.
The framers of the U.S. Constitution worked to ensure the military would be under civilian control. When they wrote the Constitution, they separated the responsibilities for the military, placing the responsibilities firmly in civilian hands. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution states, “The President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States when called into the actual Service of the United States.”
Oddly enough, Milley isn’t the first US military officer to attempt to overthrow the US government. In the early days of the Republic, before the concept of civilian control of the military sank in, some military officers actively plotted against the government.
General James Wilkinson was the senior military officer from June 15, 1800 to January 27, 1812. He fought in the Revolutionary War and outfitted the Continental Army. Wilkinson became a key figure in the plan to induce what was then the “southwest United States” to form a separate nation allied with Spain. He took an oath of allegiance to Spain, spied for his secret new patron, and received an annual Spanish pension of $4,000. He was the governor of the Louisiana Territory from 1805 to 1806.
He continued as the ranking officer in the Army through 1812, when his incompetence and scheming were finally recognized and he was relieved.
The fact that Milley unilaterally decided to disobey the orders of the Commander in Chief, along with his immediate subordinates means that the US military is no longer under civilian control. Not only that, but this also means that no one who is in the military has any obligation to obey the orders of their superiors.
Milley disobeyed orders repeatedly. He did so in 2019 when he lied to the President about troop strength in Syria. He refused orders in 2020 when ordered to deploy the National Guard to stop BLM rioters in the Capitol.
When Marine Lt Colonel Scheller resigned his commission, he cited a loss of trust and confidence in his superiors’ ability to lead. When Army Lt Colonel Hague resigned HIS commission, he complained of “an ideologically Marxist takeover of the United States government at their upper echelons.” It appears as though they both knew more than the rest of the American public were led to believe.
As I have said before, we haven’t even begun to see yet how bad things can get. As the wheels continue to fall off, things will get worse and worse. Sooner or later, some military units will mutiny. That’s when things get sporty.
That is exactly why the Biden administration freaked out when they began to think that the rank and file of the US military may not be following orders any longer.
economics
Shortages
In a comment to a recent post on signs of the collapse, HomePlace asks:
When I see reports of shortages from what I believe are credible sources, I’ve been making sorties to see what I see locally. These trips in the last several weeks have been limited to grocery and home improvement stores. I haven’t seen evidence yet here in the midwest of shortages. Are shortages regional at this point? Thoughts, theories?
There are shortages, but they are being stealthy about it. My local grocery store isn’t doing anything so obvious as to leave shelves bare. A great example:
The canned soup section was most of one side of an entire aisle just before COVID began. Now the selection is much smaller, and the soup section has shrunk down to less than half the size that it was. The produce doesn’t look as good as it used to- more blemishes, more wilting on the leafy greens, that sort of thing. There are other signs, let’s take a look:
Economy
Inflation is how much?
The Federal government is claiming that inflation is only 5.3 percent per year. This is despite the fact that energy is up 25%, gasoline is up 42%, and car prices are up 31.9% from a year ago. Home prices are increasing at a record pace, with June seeing an 18.6% rise– not an annual rise, an 18.6% rise in just one month. Year over year, home prices are up by about 31% year over year. (pdf alert)
We are being mislead. Anyone who buys anything and pays attention to prices knows it.
Meanwhile, stock market investors are happy. Good. I am trying to sell all of my holdings by the end of the year. Read this story to see why.
economics
Signs of the collapse
Back in 2007, there were hints that a financial disaster were coming, it’s just that many of them were simply missed, even though they were obvious in hindsight. As a firefighter, I saw them: Multiple families living in brand new, expensive homes without a stick of furniture. They could barely make the payment on their adjustable rate balloon mortgage, so they certainly couldn’t afford furniture. All it took was an increase in gas prices to set off the entire mortgage collapse.
There are again signs of an impending financial disaster, and they are everywhere. For example:
My in-laws were in Maine for the summer. They returned last week. Just before they returned, my wife went over to their house to prepare it for their arrival. While she was there, she smelled something odd, like rotting garbage. The smell was coming from the refrigerator. Even though the display on the door said it was cold, it was not. All of the food had rotted.
After a rather nasty cleaning session, the in-laws returned home. They went shopping for a new refrigerator, and there were not many to be had. It turns out that there is no supply coming from overseas, where most of them are made. The ones that ARE getting through are not enough to meet demand. There are lengthy backorders.
Yet another sign that the economy is grinding to a halt is coming from the auto industry. GM and Ford have suspended the production of pickup trucks because of the shortage in computer chips. This is a disaster for Ford Motor Company. All Ford makes is trucks, SUVs, and the Mustang. Ford reports that its sales are down 32 percent.
Total Ford Motor Company sales during July 2021 decreased 32 percent from last July, selling only 120,053 units. Sales of cars were hit hardest, with a 78% reduction to 4,365 units. Trucks were down 38 percent to 72,574 units, and SUV sales dropped 35 percent to 43,114 units.
That news was bad enough, but was ever worse for August, as Ford sales dropped 33 percent in August from the same month last year.
If this is a disaster for Ford, it is also a disaster for the US economy. Ford is the 21st largest company in the USA, and GM is the 22nd.
We are seeing shortages in all sorts of things: supplies are hard to find. Chicken, lumber, microchips, gas, steel, metals, chlorine, and ketchup packets are all in short supply. We shut down the world’s economy, and it is not wanting to restart. We can’t even get people to return to work.
“Experts” can argue about it for months, but no matter the cause, the result is the same. This slowdown of the economy is going to continue for months, perhaps several years. How many businesses will fail as a result is anyone’s guess. One thing is for sure, though. The economy is going to get much, much worse. Inflation is going to increase markedly as the law of supply and demand begins to take hold. Once Suzy Soccermom figures out that there is a problem, expect panic buying and even more shortages as she begins to panic shop for things.
The things that begin to skyrocket in price and see scarcity will probably not make sense. Remember the toilet paper shortage of last year? Like that, but with more products being involved.
I am getting completely out of the stock market. We began a complete sell off last week. As soon as funds are released, we are moving into other investments, things that are not based in the US dollar.
Military
On watch
When I was in the Navy, we would periodically have women on board, usually reserve units. Back in those days, women were not normally present onboard combat ships. Whenever they were aboard, they were housed in a berthing compartment that had its own head, as well as having only one easily guarded entrance. A lucky petty officer was then posted at that entrance to make sure that no males entered. One of them was on this watch when a friend saw him just standing there in the middle of the passageway. The conversation that ensued was very much like this:
Passerby: “What are you doing, standing here in the way?”
Person on watch: “I am on the pussy watch.”
Well, one of the females housed in the aforementioned compartment overheard the exchange and filed a complaint for sexual harassment. The petty officer was brought to Captain’s Mast for punishment. It went like this:
Captain: “Why did you refer to your assignment like that?”
Petty Officer: “Well, when I am on duty caring for the ship’s generator, I am on Ship’s Generator watch. When I am caring for the steering gear, I am on steering watch. I was guarding the pussy, so I figured I was on the pussy watch.”
The Captain reduced him one full paygrade, took half of his pay for two months, and confined him to the ship on extra duty for 45 days. In other words, he got the maximum punishment permitted without a courts martial.
Can you imagine how that would go today?
Power Grab
We are on our own
The list of those who are exempt from the vaccine mandate grows:
- Postal workers
- Illegal immigrants
- Members of the both chambers of Congress and their staff
- Employees of the Federal Judicial Branch and Federal Judges
Meanwhile, OSHA doesn’t have enough inspectors to enforce this. Not by a long shot. So what this will become is another weapon to allow businesses to be targeted for political reasons. I am sure that OSHA will be all over Mypillow.com.
The fix is already in. So called “legal and Constitutional experts” are already lining up to say that the courts are going to let this stand. Once it does, the precedent will allow the President to enact almost any mandate he decides to.
Education
Al Qaeda won
If someone had told you 20 years ago, as you watched the towers fall, that our military would flee from Afghanistan, leaving their weapons and Americans civilians behind, and there would be a Muslim woman on television, telling our nation’s teachers to teach children that the 9-11 attackers were not terrorists, and avoid promoting American exceptionalism, would you have believed it?
Presidency
Money making opportunity
Here is how the governor of Florida has an opportunity to get billions of dollars in free Federal money:
Former Vice President Joe Biden said on Thursday that those whose pay is threatened by Governors for refusing Federal COVID mandates, “I promise you, I will have your back.”
So here it is: Governor DeSantis should immediately stop sending money to every single entity who refuses to follow the Biden vaccine mandate. Then Biden will use Federal money to completely fund all of those entities and Florida will be free to keep the money they held back.