No posting this morning.

I typically do my morning post the afternoon or evening before. Since this is the Monday morning post, I am typing this on Sunday night. I woke up this morning and my wife and I went to breakfast. Shortly after returning from breakfast, my wife complained that she was having some indigestion, so I gave her some antacids. 

An hour later, she complained that her indigestion was making it seem as though she was having trouble taking a deep breath. Then she complained about her chest feeling tight. I began to worry a bit. 
Half an hour after that, she said that her shoulder, arm, and back were hurting. That was enough for me. We headed to the emergency room. 
Her EKG, blood work, and other tests were all negative for any sort of heart issues. So now we have to follow up with a doctor for more testing. It is now 11 pm, and we are headed to bed. 
Needless to say, I was too busy to do any research for posting. There will be no posting this morning. 

Beware of Bulletproof everyone

 Last month, I posted about a company that sells covert body armor. The name of the company is Bulletproof Everyone, and I saw an ad that they had level IIa body armor for as low as $249. So I ordered one that looks like this:

That was on October 3, and at the time I placed the order, there was a 2 week lead time. That two weeks passed, and the status of my order- “Awaiting Fulfillment” hadn’t changed since the day the order was placed, so I sent them a message. The reply was that demand was heavier than expected, but the order would go out in a week. 

That week passed, still no merchandise and no change in online status. This time I called. They man on the phone told me that my order would be shipping within 2- 5 days. 

That was more than a week ago. Still no merchandise, still no change in order status. 

They have not answered multiple emails or messages left on their site. When I call, I get a recording that says they are moving their operation to a new site, and if I just leave a message, they will return your call within 24 hours. They don’t. When I call from a number that isn’t mine, they will answer but the call disconnects when I give them my order number. 

I am not holding out much hope of getting my merchandise. If I have not heard that my order has shipped within the next ten days, I will be disputing the charge with my credit card company. 

Buyer beware. 

EDITED TO ADD: 

Just after I posted this, I got through to a man who claims to be the owner of the company. I had to call on my wife’s cell phone, which has an area code from an entirely different state than mine. He assured me that my order would be going out Monday. I will keep you posted. 

Postal Service incompetent

 The lottery offices have been closed in Florida since the COVID lockdown. If you win more than $600, you have to claim your prize by mailing the ticket in. So that is what one woman did when she sent her ticket in by certified mail. Almost predictably, the postal service lost the package containing her ticket. 

Imagine a person overcoming the incredible odds and winning $100 million, only to have the post office lose your ticket. The government is running enough of a scam with the lottery, and then completely mucking that up. 

Government. Is there anything it can’t screw up?

Follow the Money

 According to multiple sources, the supplies that were handed out to Louisville rioters in the wake of the Breanna Taylor grand jury announcement were distributed from the back of a UHaul that was rented by this woman:

Her name is Holly Zoller, and she is associated with the KY Bail Project, which is funded at least in part by George Soros. 

It also turns out that UHaul appears to be aware that its trucks are being used to supply riots

Since Antifa is being declared to be a terrorist organization, it seems to me that this is all ripe for some asset forfeiture. 

That’s not all- Holly Zoller was also prominent in the Charlottesville incident in 2018. The roots of this insurgency run deep. 

Basic COMSEC

 It turns out that the Feds have been tapping the phones of the Portland Antifa crowd. Well, not exactly tapping. They cloned the SIM cards of protesters that they came in contact with, and then were able to intercept calls made to that device. 

Now I know what you are thinking- “Who cares? They are just the pantifa crowd.” Well, you SHOULD care, because the Feds are not constrained to only use this sort of attack on just one group of people. As I posted back in 2017, the people who were plotting to have Trump impeached were careful not to use most means of communication, preferring instead to use 2 meter HAM radio

There are many technical reasons why spying on HAM radio would be a nearly impossible task. Just by using the frequencies and methods permitted to a person with a Technician license, there are thousands of available channels. Toss in the various modes like Digital, SSB, USB, AM, FM, CW, etc., and then consider that the higher frequencies are short range and would require hundreds of listening stations in every state, and it becomes a very difficult proposition to monitor HAM radio.

Another way of communicating to others is the use of a “dictionary code.” Short messages can be encoded rather simply:

1 Eliminate null words that add no real content to the message – words like “the” “and” – the fewer the words in the message, the better. 

2 Use a book that has been agreed upon ahead of time. A dictionary or thesaurus is easiest. No one would think twice about seeing a dictionary on your bookshelf. Then you simply look for each word in the book. Then write down the page number, and the number of the word. 

Let’s say that the word is “habit”- I look and see that the word is found on page 335 and the word is the 16th word listed on that page, the word habit would be replaced with the number 335.16  

3 Do the same for each word in the message. You can add fake words at the beginning and end of the message as red herrings to complicate a potential adversary’s task in decoding the message. Use your imagination. 

4 At this point, the weak link is probably one of the people in the communication, or perhaps traffic analysis. Sometimes the people who are communicating and the frequency of those communications are nearly as informative as the contents of the message themselves. 

5 To hide this, a blog is a great way of putting messages out there. Post often, and simply append a short message to the end of each post. You can even make most of them fake and have it begin with a prearranged “real message” number at the beginning of the post, so your intended recipient knows if they should waste time trying to decode it. Say, any message that has a word on page 327 as the first word is a real one, the rest can be ignored. 

I am sure there are other ways. Use your imagination. Just remember that Big Brother is listening. 

Marines to close Parris Island and San Diego facilities

Recruit Depot Parris Island was required to integrate boot camp at the platoon level by 2024. According the the Corps, that means closing the current recruit training depots in San Diego and Parris Island. More than 100 years of Marine Corps history is coming to an end. 

The gutting of the US military continues. It is only a matter time before the entire US military is a mere paper tiger. 

Silencing the opposition

 In the middle of a 3 week Facebook Ban that began on September 17. It all started when I posted this on September 3:

Kyle Rittenhouse shot a child molester, a domestic abuser, and an armed communist. He is only 17 and has completed half my bucket list.

That earned me a 24 hour ban for violating Facebook’s Community standards. Then they went all the way back to July 31 to find this comment to a friend posting an article about Iran doing practice runs on a mockup of a US aircraft carrier:

I saw that. The Iranians are idiots. Maybe they should remember operation Praying Mantis.

They said that it violated Facebook’s ban on hate speech and added a 7 ban. Then they went back to March 11 and found where I posted a link to a scientific study that claims masturbation increases your immune system. I believe that I made the comment that “This is why teenagers aren’t getting COVID,” or something along those lines. 

They added another 7 days for that one, because it violated the Facebook ban on sexual activity. 

Then they went and added another 7 days for a post that they claim violated community standards back in November, but they won’t tell me which one it was. According to them, the next violation will get me another 30 days. This 3 week ban is the 5th time I have been banned this year. I was banned 3 times last year. 

Before I get any snarky comments about how it is Facebook’s site and they can do as they please: I get what you are saying. It’s just that I think that there are two problems with that statement:

1 The rules are not universally enforced. It seems that FB picks and chooses who catches a ban. I have had actual death threats against me that FB did not find were a problem. 

2 Which means that FB is inserting its political beliefs into its Community standards. That means that FB is not just a platform. Its policies are in fact statements of their own- they are editorializing by what they allow and do not allow. 

In my opinion, this should make FB legally liable for any statements that they allow to be posted on their site. After all, those statements are there because FB approved of them. You either allow all comments, whether you agree with them or not, or own them and all of the legal consequences that go with them. 

In the meantime, my ban continues. 

Failed court, failed state

 Slate says that Trump selecting a new justice before the election means that we are living in a failed state. My response to you is this: If you think that the Supreme court is there to pick sides in political fights and manipulate the Constitution to whatever ends the party in power deems expedient, then we are already in a failed state. 

The Supreme court was never intended to be an elected board of directors for the nation, yet that is what it has become. The states were never intended to be mere subdivisions of the Federal government. The Federal government was supposed to be a subservient arbiter of interstate disputes- a Republic. I would argue that the original idea of our Republic became ill during the Lincoln administration, went into a coma with the passage of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments, was placed on life support during the FDR administration, and died in 1968. Our nation has been a rotting corpse since then.