Getting on with Things

Blog Post
Larry-Lambert

16th century ring that unfolds into an astronomical sphere

 

 

Bullet Points:

** 9 Forgotten American Wars.

** Since Ukraine was involved in massive bribes to the Biden crime family, and a money-laundering scheme involving FTX cryptocurrency with the #2 top donor to the Democrat Party, and that attempts to investigate Ukraine corruption was what triggered the fake impeachment of Trump (not to mention Joe Biden boasting on camera that he threatened to withhold a government loan to Ukraine unless a Ukrainian state prosecutor investigating his son’s influence peddling in that country were fired — which he was) I have most sincere doubts whether Ukraine is an American ally. Will USGOV target me for doubting the resolve of Ukraine as our best buddy? I’m sure that there’s a separate list for Ukraine deniers.

…Not having a Russian spy running the White House apparently led to the Afghanistan debacle, Chinese expansion into Cuba, the stagflation of the American economy, transsexualizing the US military, supply line crises, energy shortages, train derailments, and food supply arson, open borders, skyrocketing crime rates, massive voter fraud, and dethroning the dollar as the world reserve currency.

** We need to refrain from referring to the DC Beltway and the Permanent Washington Administrative State as a swamp. Most swamps are amazing ecosystems. We need to call it the Sewer, full of floating turds, piss-drinking rats, and so forth. For the sake of accuracy.

** (Daily Wire) The Secret Service is reportedly refusing to comply with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests regarding the cocaine that was found in the White House just over a week ago. All of you who think that Hunter Biden or any member of the Pedo Joe regime or family will go to prison for smuggling cocaine into the White House, please stand and raise your hand. Remain standing until instructed to be seated.

** From the Tom Woods Letter: A few weeks ago I reported on recent math and reading scores among American eighth graders, and the news wasn’t good. The U.S. history scores released this year aren’t good, either, it turns out. Just 13 percent of eighth graders were found to be proficient in the subject.

If the point of the government’s education system is to produce informed adults who can participate meaningfully in the public debate on contentious subjects, it’s not exactly a smashing success. If it’s to make them into ignoramuses who blindly do as they’re told, it’s working as planned, because the ignorance doesn’t get better over time.

** Reconstruction:

 

The Bar

 

Summer viewing: Netflix – Mile 22 with Mark Wahlberg

Maybe the film isn’t for everyone but I enjoyed it. There was a sequel in the works but it never made it to film.

Wikipedia: CIA Agent James Silva leads a top-secret CIA Special Activities Division unit, code-named Overwatch, to infiltrate a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) safe house in the United States. Under the supervision of James Bishop, Overwatch’s mission is to locate and destroy shipments of cesium before the highly toxic substance can be weaponized to kill thousands. The unit kills the occupants, while Overwatch Agent Alice Kerr is wounded. One of the Russians, an 18-year-old named Anatole Kuragin, falls out of a window during an explosion after failing to save the cesium. Silva executes Kuragin despite his pleading, and everyone escapes…

The plot has some holes, but it entertained me.

 

Is this LSP?

PaulM asks the question.

 

 

 

Identify both #1 aircraft if you’re able

1

Just another angle on the right aircraft

2

3

 

Identify the Tank

Related Posts

This and That

  From the Babylon Bee   Bullet Points: * FEDEX and UPS?  I wonder who is PAYING THEM to track…

Meanwhile, in The Koreas

Christmas Dinner in the land of the Norks Here is  your dinner, Dear Leader It’s winter in North Korea and…

Mish Mash

    A Cautionary Tale Girlfriend, 31, ‘killed partner who said she was a ”nutter but the sex is really…

52 thoughts on “Getting on with Things”

  1. Good thing the wealth chart didn’t further break down the top 10% to top 5, 2, and 1%. Because it’d look even worse.

    Really good thing it didn’t display ethnic distribution *within* those top bands. That might have led to noticing. Noticing is Hate Think.

    1. Whenever I see a wealth distribution chart I always wonder what it’s supposed to look like.

      Nobody ever says that.

      In France, the top 10% of incomes have 60% of the wealth; in the US it looks like 75%. OK. So what? It’s easy to think in the US it might be a higher percentage because of the handful of billionaires who own companies that are in the US and there are more of those companies here than there. What % of the wealth should the top 10% of incomes have? Why? Remember the top 1% of the incomes pay around 40% of all Federal taxes, which is more than the bottom 95%. If the incomes went down, the taxes for the bottom 95% would have to go up.

      1. Goes back to the Tom Woods quote…far too many have no clue about what you state, preferring “feelings” over knowledge.

        Confiscate 100% of the top earners income and you could run government for …what?…about 4 months. The graduated income tax is theft and punishes wage earners above a certain threshold. Time to abolish the Federal Income tax…and, well…do a significant reduction in government that now has more employed than the private sector.

      2. I was thinking along similar lines, though not exactly. A wealth chart (WC) such as the one we’re looking at is hardly the whole story, as you guys note.

        As a non-economist and non-policy maker, my perspective is that it doesn’t really matter what the WC looks like so long as most people in the population are able to lead a decent life based on the income or wealth they possess. In other words, if 1% holds 90% of the wealth, so long as the remaining 99% of people are not suffering on their 10% share of total wealth, it’s not horrible. Especially if the 1% are seen as “us” and not “them”. (Our king, our lord the count, the great industrialist, the best-selling novelist, etc. I.e. either “natural hierarchy” or earned privilege.)

        BUT, when the most wealthy act as and are seen as condescending outsiders (Blackrock and its ESG; hedge funders, people who make a personal killing offshoring American industry, opioid pushers, fake-vaxx pushers, untalented actors who fly a private jet to Davos to lecture us about “carbon”), AND when the average person is suffering… Well then, things are bad.

        My point is that too many of those at the top are not only assholes, but hypocritical and sanctimonious assholes. An oppressor who justifies his oppression of you with “I’m smarter, tougher, and meaner than you, so what I say goes” is one thing. That’s bad enough. But the oppressor who cries out “YOU are oppressing ME with your white privilege! My ancestors were forced to pick insecticide (or were murdered with cotton), so YOU owe me forever and anon!” THAT is intolerable. Yet here we are.

        1. the top are not only assholes, but hypocritical and sanctimonious assholes.

          I think that historically, that’s the rule rather than the exception. I’ve known some very high net-worth people who you would never know had 9 figures in the bank. We see the flaunters and the posers because of their flamboyance. One guy I knew who was mid 9’s drove around in a new Jeep Cherokee and collected some exceptionally cool firearms and we would go out and shoot them. He didn’t care how many rounds we put through the mini-gun, fired from his helicopter, on his ranch.

        2. The charts also ignore that the wealth level in the US is orders of magnitude greater than that of pre-Revolutionary France. I expect that the 50th percentile in the modern US is wealthier than the 80th percentile in historical France, at least.

          I don’t really care how much money Bill Gates has, it doesn’t make me any poorer. Even bums are almost shockingly well-off in the modern US, compared to when I was a kid in the ’70s.

          -Kle.

          1. I managed to earn well throughout my life and did better than my parents and grandparents, but my children aren’t following that pattern.

          2. Mike_C et al…after sending over a WSJ article on how the “elite” were losing their shirts, my brother recently succinctly pointed out (he’s a lot more succinct than I’ll ever be):

            “These people are NOT smarter or better than anyone else but act otherwise and are given a free pass because…money. People incorrectly assume due to their bank accounts.”

            Live well, screw the bastards who wish you to be a Peon Sub-Class 2 Serf to their rule.

          3. I ran into an asshole yesterday who may have been wealthy or flaunting debt. I can’t say which/don’t care. He got into my face and I said in my best Scary Larry, “Every bullet tells a story, friend.” He backed down immediately.

            There still aren’t hearses with luggage racks.

  2. Identify the Aircraft:
    1. Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.12 (left), Halberstadt D.III (right aircraft)
    2. Blackburn Skua
    3. Handley Page Halifax Mk II

    Identify the Tank:
    T-35

      1. That’s a great T-35 picture, one that I hadn’t seen before.

        The T-35 was a terrible tank, but I am very glad that they were made.

        -Kle.

        1. They worked out the bugs in combat and came out of WW2 with some very good machines once they found out what worked and what didn’t. The same is true with aircraft, submarines, aircraft carriers, infantry rifles, uniforms, boots, etc.

          Then we re-learned everything in SE Asia.

          I have personal stories but will spare you all.

  3. 1. Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.12 (left), Halberstadt D.III (right aircraft)
    2. Blackburn Skua
    3. Handley Page Halifax Mk II
    Oh. Did Surly beat me again?

  4. As for forgotten wars, the article mentioned the Moros.
    In 1968 I met a guy who had just come back from fighting the Moros.
    I was incredulous that we were fighting there as it was never mentioned in the news.
    IIRC he was a sergeant in an artillery outfit.

  6. Agree on rebranding The Swamp to something more directly descriptive. “Sewer” is appropriate, but I’ve taken to calling DC and its inhabitants an Outhouse Pit; small footprint, full of s—- at the bottom, potentially contains all manner of poisonous bugs, has a ‘house” that if the door is left open spreads it stink far and wide…and every few years needs to be filled in and moved to refresh the place.

      1. Good point…how about a Port-A-Pot? Usually gets placed in some put of the way spot, requires cleaning out once a month, has blue water, stinks no matter what (because most have no clue to shut the lid for proper venting), and when your done with it after the project is finished it gets hauled away.

  7. My kids all went to, and thrived in public education. It was a smaller rural school district and class sizes were small and the teachers appeared to be competent. The last child graduated high school in ’09 and all four are doing well in life. I don’t know how the district is now, but given the state of public education today, I’m not confident. Fortunately the parents of all my grandchildren have good incomes and are putting the kids in private schools. It’s sad that it’s come to this.

    1. My grandkids are split between public and private schools. 2 of my daughters teach school. One public and one private/Christian school. The public school teacher makes 2x as much.

  8. We need a single name for the swamp, the deep state, the 1%, those folks who have been in full control since 1963….I’ve been calling them the cabal but that’s not really “catchy’.

  9. Does the relative wealth of the highest 5% translate into happy families and children and generational achievement? I’m not seeing a lot of that.

    1. No.

      Never envy the wealthy, can’t know how they got their money (I’d bet half was ill-gotten), and money never buys happiness, that’s a character thing.

      When they got married my parents didn’t have two nickels to rub together (per Dad). Yet by hard work, perseverance, and smarts, became “successful”. Their measly (by today’s standards) 70’s-level income ($25K or so) had us in a nice home with property, room to roam, fun dinners out every once in a while, cars in the driveway paid for with cash, a dinky mortgage, food on the table, and clothes on our backs….and vacations down the jersey Shore every Summer. Not for want and a great life.

      Today that same lifestyle requires $195,000, which has the added benefit of paying a higher tax rate.

      Yeah, sure…government has really helped us prosper as a nation.

      After Reagan, Trump has been the only President who generated more bang for the buck (you could feel it), the rest have been the demise of the middle class into forced slavery.

  10. Wealth charts – perhaps they can do a historical compare & contrast with the Pareto ones?

    1. Are you referring to Pareto distribution or something else? If the idea is that a minority does a disproportionately large amount of the work, and should be rewarded correspondingly, no objection in principle. The problem I have is that our society gives far too much reward to “Mercurians” (middlemen, manipulators of symbols and information) as opposed to “Apollonians” who do the physical work that keeps civilization running.

      A man who invents something useful, or manages to be more efficient and thus “wins” is excellent. We WANT to see people like that rewarded. Wildly rewarded if they were clever enough. What I object to are people who “win” through regulatory capture, through govt-backed crony deals, through lawfare, and so forth. Which sort rules us and makes (or interprets/perverts) the laws?

      While I appreciate the sentiment that the free market should rule, there is virtually no such thing any more, certainly not at levels above the local nail salon or similarly inconsequential (sorry, but it’s true) enterprises. It’s the same thing as those “principled conservatives” who tut-tut “we’re better than that. We will not stoop to that level!” Those people are either beautiful losers who haven’t conserved a damn thing, or worse, controlled opposition on the take from the very Mercurians they claim to oppose. Alinsky was an asshole, but he had a point regarding “Alinsky Rules”. The alternative is going to be Hama Rules.

      1. Create an App…say…for tracking the best Latte’ in statewide coffee shops so it dings you when close to the top 10…or some such nonsense. One of the many bloated tech outfit buys your App…wham-o, instant millionaire.

        What exactly did you – App Person – do to help society advance? Nothing, but you got bragging rights and a flashy car and video games all day.

        Facebook was created in a I just got dumped by my hot girlfriend drunken pity party to rate campus girls, hacking into all manner of campus data bases. Once formally launched one gal in the movie (The Social Network) put it plainly: “It’s weirdly addicting”. Yup. A cancer that has ruined more lives than it helped.

        But, hey, Zuckerman is “worth” billions. So what. Good for him (PT Barnum comes to mind). I still wouldn’t have him over for a burger or beer. Yet I contend he should not pay a higher tax rate than the guy behind the 7-Eleven counter working the night shift. Unfortunately Tax Law was made by attorney’s for attorney’s with built-in work around’s for the higher echelon to take advantage, otherwise it’d be a Card:

        1- Income
        2- x10%
        3- Pay this amount, send check or EFT.

        But I still contend the Federal Gov’t has no right to tax the American public, so most of this is moot, but would solve a lot of graft and “legal” criminality.

  11. I recall back in the last quarter of 21st century that either Alabama or Arkansas (?) eighth graders’ math scores were part of the algorithm they used to determine the number of beds they would need in their prison system twenty years on.

    Algorithms are amazing: a couple of hundred years ago a mathematician who wrote an algorithm predicting how many Prussian Calvary men would be killed by being kicked in the head by their horse.
    Using only pencil, paper, data, and his brain.
    Now there are computers with almost unlimited data doing the math,

    The Minority Report is old news.

  12. With LL’s indulgence, I have a question and a conundrum that MrsPaulM might be able to answer. A reader on my blog sent me four pictures taken at Fort Robertson, Nebraska at the cavalry museum in the veterinary officer’s office of what appears to be veterinary instruments. The reader stated the staff at the museum had no idea what they were and I know from reading this fine blog that Paul M’s better looking half was a vet. I worked for a couple of years for a rural Vet in Alabama as a scrub nurse when he preformed procedures on large animals, and I have never seen instruments such as these. Thank you
    https://bustednuckles.com/

    1. Total mystery. MrsPaulM says this:

      Note:Appears all of them are not complete. Also should not assume these are all veterinary tools, most vet’s worked equine, cattle, hogs and were farriers, let alone likely had animals.

      U/R (Round item)- Looks like an old hog hair scraper (missing the wood handle).

      L/R- Total mystery. Thought it might be from a cattle speculum but this is flat, those were curved.

      U/L- Don’t laugh, but we both think it looks like a gauze roll holder of some sort. Think vertical paper towel holder. Screw holes to hold it (vertical positioning), one finial unscrews to remove the shaft.

      Bottom- Looks like the main tube piece of a large fluid pump used for nasal gastric mineral oil/water pumping to assist in a colicking horse.

      L/L- Strange one, no idea. Clamp area, heavy shoe, adjustment screws. A mystery tool or device.

      1. Vet and blacksmith at the bar, drinking. They decide it would be fun to make some fake items that will confuse later generations?

      1. x1000…Feel like a 12yo giddy kid watching that operation. Some old tech is just cooler.

  14. Kinda funny really ,why do all the t-35 pictures seem to have German soldiers posing for pictures on them?

  15. Wow. Two outstanding infographics: Blackrock and Wealth.

    And what a ring! Surely the owner possessed a diamond too.

Comments are closed.

Scroll to top