The Song Remains the Same

1. I have a good friend who call deer and elk “long legged rats” she is not far off. But it is nice of them to convert all that vegetation into valuable meat.

   Personal uneducated opinion only. Don’t think China will invade Taiwan. Communist China has gotten what they want by playing the long game and paying people (and countries) off. Would not be surprised at a lot of saber rattling to gain some concession or other but would be surprised with an open attack.

   IRS, Dept of Education. I guess everybody has to have a SWAT team or else you can’t play with the cool kids.

   Civil War Sweatshirts. As a country we will never know even the majority of the truth as to what actually happened but the FBI needs to be disbanded and their current members barred from future federal service. Sure that would hurt the honest unbiased agents but they are pretty much in the minority anymore aren’t they?.

   Senator Manchin was just negotiating for the best deal. Still in the long run he has hurt his constituents badly. I wonder if they will remember in 2024 when the senator stands for reelection?

   Blinken. Does not surprise me. I was a bit shocked that we are still sending Afghanistan about a billion US dollars a year. I am sure it will be used wisely though.

   • Manchin thinks he has a deal. Watch the greenie bureaucrats place obstacle after obstacle in the way.

     • ++1

2. IRS needs to be reduced in size by a factor of 100, not increased. No weaponry is required to review Returns. But hey, the New Subjugation of Serfs may be their end game, which means we need to maintain more ammo than them. As they say, “It’s a numbers game.”

   Blinken is – what’d we say – 5th in the Oval Office hierarchy string. Yeah, that’ll work out well with this clown.

   Nice bull elk. They know when and where they are safe. Yet they are not pets as many Darwin Award contestants believe. Hunting trip in the Flattops. Arrived late at the parking area, slept under the gooseneck, woke early the next morning to see the entire hay field across the highway – on a private ranch – with at least 400 head, and lots of nice bulls. Guys standing around with their coffee just staring and grumbling. Got up to camp, set up, hobbled the horses…saw maybe two elk all week. hehe

   We decided no chores this morning, went for a hike in the hills, new trail. Got about a mile or so in and came right up on a bull moose having his mid-morning snack just off a small pond and stream…staring at us like “what are you and should I run you over?”. Decided to leave him be and went back to another trail. A lot of rain last night so the critters are taking advantage of the 54 degree Summer temps at 10,000 feet and lots of good grass. Climate Change has been good to our area this year…so far the Earth isn’t dying as some would like us to believe, sounding off every 10-15 years – “The sky is choking!”.

   • That look is genetic for bull moose. Mooses? Meeses? Whatever. Rutting season 1973, I saw a bull moose at the main gate to Eielson AFB just down the road from Ft. Wainwright, having his way with a VW Bug. The occupant of the Bug did not appear to be having as much fun as the moose was.

     • Not to be trifled with, that BW probably weighed less than the moose. Plus they have lousy eyesight so tend to run at things. A wide berth is prudent.

3. My cervine marinade is soy sauce, honey, garlic and black pepper. A little hot sauce never hurt either.

   • X2

4. I thought I read something from TSMC that said they’d blow their factories and silicon foundries to bits before they’d let the ChiComs have them.

   I’ve never seen any elk here in the city. They prefer to stay up in the higher regions. But we do have deer….tons of them. They wander through the West side of town here like they own it.

   Don’t get me started on the @@!!*&^)!! Canadian geese that winter here…..

   • I’ve read that too. “Taiwan’s Silicon Shield”.

     One problem is whether TSMC is as riddled with Chicom agents as the ROC military is. (I’m sure our host knows waaaay more than I do about both these, but even apart from the embedded Chicoms, gundecking is a serious problem, according to my few — and admittedly outdated — sources.)

     • The PRC has plans to capture the silicon shield intact and there are a lot of agents in place in the ROC military. On the subject of gundecking, the Russian experience has been epic.

       China is on the ropes in a number of areas, and the mandarins who oversee Xi are concerned. Invading Taiwan would end foreign trade for China. The public wouldn’t accept the austerity measures on the heels of the recent plague. The PRC can do what they want as can we all but the cause and effect are far from certain.

       • From a lot of what I’ve read, the PRC might well be able to put an invasion force on ROC shores, but it would be nigh well impossible to disguise the preparations for that. How well the PLA and ROC ground forces would fight seems to be a crap shoot. Certainly a lot of peacetime crap would be exposed, as the Russians discovered. Almost as important is how well the the PLAN would be able to resupply the PLA once ashore. That’s still a weak point for the PRC. A landing might easily turn into a Chinese Anzio and the PLA finding itself besieged. A beached whale rather than a wildcat, as Churchill put it.

         • China’s new rifle: what’s wrong with this picture? Keyholing at 10 yards? Ye gods and little fishes!

         • Xi is on the ropes at home. Many people including those who count (Chicom elites) are calling for his replacement. This gives him a reason to change the narrative.

         • True. And what looks rational to one group may be completely irrational in hindsight. Like Japan deciding to go to greatly expand the war in China to almost all of Asia and big chunks of the Indian and especially Pacific Oceans.

         • Larry:
           FDR turned off the oil spigot for Japan. They had 18 months of stock, and then it was going to be lights out for their entire economy, not just their military. FDR expected the US military to stomp all over theirs, which is why he made the Army and Navy move so much of their forces to the forward bases in Pearl Harbor and The Philippine Islands, so the stomping would be easier, once they were forced to look for an oil supply. FDR’s buddies were bitching about how the Japanese were damaging their China market. So, he decided to fix their wagon. Idiot.

5. My cousin in Flagstaff inquired of me; “is it considered chumming when you shoot a deer from your bedroom window while it’s eating your landscaping?” I told her only if you specifically planted that landscaping to attract them!
   Is that an old A model John Deere hooked up to the bush hog behind your Elk?

   • Yes on the tractor. It belongs to Albert Hunt, a friend of mine. The photo of the bull elk with his snout in the half cask was taken at his house this week.

     • PS – a neighbor paints river rocks red, covers them with apple juice and leaves them in a pile to decoy elk away from other plants and it works. Elk love apples above all other things. If I was going to chum them in, I’d leave baskets of apples behind the house.

6. i understand we have nearly all of our naval assets in home port or port of call. just the reagan out near the china sea. the ad hoc war game exercise could be cover for invasion in retaliation, but i agree that putin’s folly has scared the hell out of the ccp/pla leadership. as to irs/ammo, well a fed is a fed at this point. they’re all trying to take my rights and my freedom, they will all get the same reception should they come calling. the irs needs to get their damn return processors back in the office and get my refund sent. they said it could be SIX MORE MONTHS…..i learned as a wee lad on the farm that a bull anything was not to be trifled with, when one tried to stomp me into a greasy spot. ya don’t have to show me but once, lol.

   • The submarines are forward deployed.

7. Far be it for me to speculate on China’s next move, not being anywhere close to an expert on these things….but it seems like their economy is crashing faster than the US and if history is any guide, despotic authoritarian regimes always start a war to distract the people from their failures. In order to save face, Xi and the CCP have to do something. Interesting times.

   • When you start a war to distract, you have be damn sure you prevail (see Argentina/Falklands) and Russia’s performance has caused a lot of questions. Is the CCP ready for the answers.

8. Regarding the IRS – Paul Harvey had some interesting comments about taxes and national strength back around 1965:
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0FF13u13WE

9. Seems like I was a tad premature yesterday in calling the race for Kari. Katie Hobbs and her merry band of cheaters are apparently hard at work trying to fabricate enough fake mail in ballots to tip the scales. And I thought Georgia was ground zero for voter fraud shenanigan’s. Maricopa and Pima counties are out of control. I hope she prevails.

10. Was China outraged when all those other senators visited in April and May? Duckworth, Burr, Sasse, Portman, etc. You know, the neocon war wing of the uniparty? I don’t recall hearing a peep out of real analysts, like Krugman. (“Why Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan Is Utterly Reckless”). Or the great SOS Blinken. Of course Xi did get Biden to show his true colors. Does anyone in Asia trust Blinken when he talks, or his alleged boss, Biden?

    • Does anyone, anywhere trust those two?

      -Kle.

      • I think that Camela Harris does.

        • Has Camela figured out that those who want to remove Biden before it is too late see her as a hindrance to that?

          Mike_C,

          Yes that Foundation series, when I read it after adulthood, was troubling. The social manipulation by the self-annointed was not heroic, but horrendous. Thanks for the link.

          • Camela seems to be completely vacuous.

        • “Completely Vacuous”……HAH!

          Had a girlfriend like that once. Sweet as could be, but…..completely vacuous.

          I bought her a set of earrings for her birthday. One said “IN”, the other said “OUT”. She thought they were very cute, and said they were “Just like my mailbasket at work!”.

          She was a sweetheart, though. Very nice, pleasant, great personality, and….completely vacuous.

    • Krugman. An admittedly highly energetic man. I’ll leave it at that.

      I did not know the following about Krugman, per Wikipedia until just now:
      According to Krugman, his interest in economics began with Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels, in which the social scientists of the future use a new science of “psychohistory” to try to save civilization. Since present-day science fell far short of “psychohistory”, Krugman turned to economics as the next best thing.

      Whoa! This explains much about Krugman. Foundation was a deeply nasty vision of the far future. (God save us from the Hari Seldons, always with the plans to Save the Universe through social manipulation. And always with the deception — for which we should be grateful, since it’s for our own good. I reject that completely. Theoden’s reply to Saruman comes to mind: were you ten times as wise, you would have no right to rule me and mine for your own profit as you desired.)

      Despite the popular conception of Issac Asimov as a charming polymath, he was also a member of the Futurians, a very left-wing, New York City-based group of science fiction writers and hangers on, which explains much of his world view. Asimov also (IMNSHO) was terrible at writing actual human beings, and probably didn’t understand them well. Or at least he refused to write about that, if he actually did have insight into humans. (Contrast with Poul Anderson, for example.)

      The blogger Morgoth has an interesting piece on “Asimov, Foundation, and Spengler” on YouTube. Worth the time. And you get used to the heavy Northooomberland accent in a few minutes.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxTz4pIXTFY

      • It’s like reading Brave New World or 1984 and deciding that they should be the ideals that we strive for. Come to think of it, that is what the woke seem to be using as a playbook.

      • Read the starting series of Foundation early on, but it got wearying. Our civilization is going to collapse, so we’ll rescue it by starting it back up again….with all the flaws that made it collapse in the first place. Doing the same thing over and over, while expecting a different result. Um, sure, okay, whatever.

11. Yeah, that explains a lot about Krugman.

    Asimov wrote some cool stuff, but you’re exactly right – abstract, bad human characterization. My impression of him, I saw him speak a couple times, and what I’ve read about him. is that he was charming, and a fun guy to be around (despite his somewhat predictable Manhattan Pinkoism) as long as you were a man who he considered intellectually adequate. Everything I know indicates he was generally horrible to women.

    As for the Foundation books, I liked them as interesting ideas worked through interestingly. As a model for society, no; and the “good guys” were only that in extremely precise, narrow ways. Of course, I read them in 6th grade, so perhaps if I read them again they’d be tiresome.

    -Kle.

    • Since I brought up Anderson, I’m going to spend a few of our host’s electrons and quote an excerpt from his novel A Stone in Heaven. THIS is how you do a character intro that shows you so much about the man, and the universe he lives in, without having to tell.

      (from: https://www.you-books.com/book/P-Anderson/A-Stone-in-Heaven)

      “Vice Admiral Sir Dominic Flandry, Intelligence Corps, Imperial Terran Navy [rose] at an unsanctified hour—after a visitor had kept him awake past midnight—to review available data in advance of the [Grand Duke’s] appointment. Flandry left her drowsy warmth […], groped his way to the gymnasium, and plunged. A dozen laps around the pool brought him to alertness. [He hated exercise] more in every successive year of his sixty-one. But [it had kept him] trim and tough beyond anything due to gero treatments.

      At last he could shower. When he emerged, Chives proffered a Turkish towel and coffee royal. “Good morning, sir,” he greeted.
      Flandry took the cup. “That phrase is a contradiction in terms,” he said. “How are you doing?”
      “Quite well, thank you, sir.” Chives began to rub his master dry. He wasn’t as deft as erstwhile. He didn’t notice that he nearly caused the coffee to spill. Flandry kept silence. Had he, in this place, let anyone but Chives attend him, the Shalmuan’s heart would have cracked open.

      Flandry regarded the short green form—something like a hairless human with a long tail, if you ignored countless differences in shapes and proportions of features—through eyes that veiled concern. This early, Chives wore merely a kilt. Wrinkles, skinniness, stiff movements were far too plain to sight. No research institution had ever considered developing the means to slow down aging in the folk of his backward world.

      Well, if that were done, how many other sophont races would clamor for the same work on each of their wildly separate biochemistries? the man thought, for perhaps the thousandth sad time. I may have my valet-majordomo-cook-bodyguard-pilot-factotum-arbiter for a decade yet, if I’m lucky.

      Chives finished and gave the towel a reassuringly vigorous snap. “I have laid out your formal uniform and decorations, sir,” he announced. […] “I suggest you be ready for breakfast in twenty minutes, sir. There will be a souffle.”

      “Twenty minutes on the dot. Very good, Chives.” Flandry [dressed] his tall frame with the skill of a foppish lifetime. These days, he didn’t really care—had not since a lady died on Dennitza, fourteen years ago—but remained a fashion plate out of habit, and because it was expected of him. […] Brushing his sleek iron-gray hair, he checked to make sure his last dash of beard inhibitor wasn’t wearing off. […] The eyes of changeable gray were more clear than they deserved to be after last night. The skin, lightly tanned, stayed firm, though lines ran over the brow, crow’s-feet beneath, deep furrows from nostrils to lips.

      Yes, he thought a trifle smugly, we’re holding our own against the Old Man. A sudden, unexpected thrust brought a gasp. Why not? What’s his hurry? He’s hauled in Kossara and young Dominic and Hans and—how many more? I can be left to wait his convenience.
      He rallied. Self-pity! First sign of senility? Squash it, fellow. You’ve got health, money, power, friends, women, interesting work that you can even claim is of some importance if you want to. Your breakfast is being prepared by none less than Chives—He glanced at his watch, whistled, and made haste to the dining room.

      • Thanks Mike

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