Rant

Willful incel stupid

You would have voted for Kamala. But you are a stupid incel, so Trump is president-elect.

racist

It isn’t Democrat messaging that caused people to turn away from Kamala in droves, no, it was you were racist. Against the woman who can’t figure out if she black, brown, Indian, or something else.

uneducated

The uneducated population of America is holding the rest of the country hostage.

You uneducated want to weaken education, ban books and outlaw teaching BLACK history.

entrenched in tribal superstition, irrespective of all facts

You wouldn’t have voted for Trump. Because your mortgage, grocery, fuel prices will go up under Trump.

You need to understand just how wonderful the economy is right now.

didn’t vote for a convicted felon

Those 34 felony counts are real. For you to vote for a convicted felon is horrible.

knew that Trump is coming for your Social Security and Medicare

You wouldn’t have voted for him.

white supremacist and full of toxic masculinity

You would know that Kamala is right for America.

able to recognize bullshit coming from Democrats

The meltdown is incredible. My favorites have been the leftists claiming there was something fishy about this election because 15million votes have “disappeared”. There is no ability on the left to look at the numbers and think that 2020 was the outlier.

Why did they lose? Not their fault. It is your fault they lost. If only YOU had.

There is no introspection going on, only blame.

The last four years have been a shitshow. On the first day of Harris’s term as VP, Joe started signing executive orders to undo what Trump had accomplished.

Since that day, I’ve heard nothing but hate from the left with lies, more lies, and still more lies.

This article will be updated after we know the results.

Trump Wins

Keep your head on a swivel. Stay out of the cities, if you can. Stay away from stupid people doing stupid things at stupid times of the day. Hell, stay away from stupid people doing stupid things.

I expect the cities to start burning at any moment. The left is known to be very joyful as they burn down our cities and tear apart our country.

Please keep your Democrat neighbors in your prayers. They are hurting right now. Only laugh and dance in private. They need time to grieve.

Harris Wins (God, I hope this isn’t true)

Kamala has told us that she would not have done a single thing differently. It is going to hurt. Pray for the justices of the Supreme Court that hold our Constitution dear and treat it with respect.

Keep your eyes on a swivel. The left is known for being joyful in their destruction. They might decide to joyfully stomp those who disagree with them.

Remember, we will survive this.

Conclusion

This was writing at 2100 East Coast time. The first returns are coming in, and it looks good for Trump so far. The problem is that we haven’t heard from any of the battleground states.

I remember when Florida was in play as a battleground state, after they cleaned up their voting methods to reduce the chances of fraud, it seems to have gone strong Red. Correlation is not causation.

@vine.of.liberty I know I got cut off at the end. Go vote, that’s it. Wake up Wednesday and do your normal things. Do not let fear be your master. #vote #vineofliberty #politics #peaceful ♬ original sound – The Vine of Liberty

Look, you may not agree with some of the things I say, or value my opinions, but by all that’s holy, go vote. Everyone: left, right, centrist, whatever. VOTE. Not because the country is divided, but because it is your God given right to vote, and because it is your responsibility to vote. Make an educated choice, after listening to unbiased media, and/or listening to both (or all) sides involved. But vote!!!

I have had good luck with picking up discarded computers, upgrading them, and making them functional members of the computer or services farm.

A computer consists of persistent storage (disk drives and SSD), dynamic storage (memory), a processor (CPU), and I/O devices.

Data is read from disk into memory, the processor then either executes it or processes it, the results are sent to an output devices. I/O devices allow the input from disks, keyboards, persistent storage devices, networks or other devices. They also send output to video devices, networks, printers, and storage devices.

The thing that defines how a computer can be configured is the motherboard. The motherboard accepts one or more processors, one or more memory devices, one or more I/O devices.

Some motherboards come with built-in I/O devices. For example, A motherboard will come with built-in disk controllers, sound cards, video drivers, USB controllers, P/S-2 keyboard and mouse, serial drivers and many more. These are the connectors that you see on the back of your computer or elsewhere on the case.

Many of these drivers lead to a connector or a socket. If your motherboard has SATA disk controllers, there will be SATA connectors on the motherboard. If your motherboard has built-in video, the back will have an ISA video connector and/or an HDMI connector. It might have a DVI connector as well.

The covers most of what you find on the motherboard. The rest are the important sockets.

There will normally be extension slots. These are where you would plug in extra I/O devices, such as network cards, disk controllers, or video cards. There will normally be memory slots. Depending on the amount of memory supported by the CPU and motherboard, this could be two, four, eight, or even more. Finally, there is normally a socket for the CPU.

For me, I have found that the cheapest way to upgrade a computer is to give it more memory. Most software is memory intensive. If you exceed the amount of memory in your machine, your machine has to make space for the program you want to run. Then it has to read into memory, from disk, the program or its data before it can continue.

The more memory, the less “paging” needs to happen.

Upgrading the CPU is another possibility. This is normally a fairly reasonable thing to do. Consider an AMD Ryzen 7 3700, which is the CPU in one of my machines. It runs $150 on Amazon, today. I purchased it for $310 a few years ago.

Today, I can upgrade to a Ryzen 9 5950x from a Ryzen 7 3700x for $350.

Buying the latest and greatest CPU is expensive. Buying second tier, older CPUs is much more price effective.

The motherboard in this particular server is nearing its end of life. It has an AM4 socket, which has been replaced with the AM5 socket. This means it is unlike that any “new” CPUs will be released for the AM4.

Bad Design

The first place I see bad computer designs is in the actual case. This is not as bad as it used to be. It used to be that opening an HP case was sure to get you sliced up. Every edge was razor sharp.

The next major “bad design” is a case and motherboard combination which is non-standard. The only motherboard that will ever fit in that case is a motherboard from that company. Likely the only place to get such a motherboard is from E-Bay.

The next issue is when there are not enough memory slots, or worse, not enough memory addressing lines. Apple was actually famous for this.

In the old days, Apple used a 68020 class CPU. The CPU that they were using had a 32-bit address register. This is 4 Gigabytes of addressing. More than enough for the time period. Except…

Apple didn’t use all 32 bits, they only used 24 bits, leaving 8 bits unused. This gives 16 Megabytes of addressable memory. More than enough in a time period where people still remembered Billy saying “Nobody will ever need more than 640 Kilobytes of memory”.

Apple made use of the extra 8 bits in the address register for “Handles”. Not important.

Most CPUs today use a 64-bit address registers. I don’t know of a CPU that uses all 64 bits for addressing.

Which takes us to bad designs, again. Some motherboards only bring enough address lines to the memory slots to handle what is the “largest” memory card currently available. This means that you can have slots that support 16 Gigabyte DIMMs, but the motherboard only supports 4 Gigabyte DIMMs.

Often, it is worse. Cheaper motherboards will only have 2 DIMM slots. There is nothing more frustrating than having a machine with 8 GB of memory and finding out that it isn’t one 8 GB DIMM leaving room for another 8 GB, but instead two 4 GB DIMMs. Which means that when you receive that 8 GB DIMM you have 12 GB total instead of the goal of 16 GB, and you have a 4 GB DIMM that isn’t good for anything.

Sub Conclusion

If you want to be able to upgrade your computer, buy a motherboard with the latest socket design. AMD or Intel. Buy one that has enough DIMM slots to handle 4 times the amount of memory you think you are going to need. Buy a CPU that is at 1/4 to 1/3 the price of the top-tier CPU. Depending on the release date, maybe even less than that.

Make sure it has a slot for your video card AND having one PCIe-16 slot still open. You might never use it, but if you need it, you will be very frustrated at saving yourself $10.

Source of the rant

My wife is using an employer supplied laptop for her work. All of her personal work has to be done on her phone. With the kids off to university, their old HP AIO computer is available.

The only problem is that word “OLD”. A quick online search shows that I should be able to upgrade the memory from 4 GB to 16 GB and the CPU from an old Intel to an i7 CPU. This means that I can bring this shell back to life for my wife to use.

At the same time, I intend to replace a noisy fan.

Looking online, the cost of a replacement CPU will be $25. The cost of the memory, another $25. Plus $25 for a new keyboard and mouse combination. $75 for a renewed computer. Happiness exists.

Before I order anything, I boot into my Linux “rescue/install” USB thumb drive. I run lscpu and it spits out the CPU type. Which is AMD. AMD sockets do NOT support i7 CPUs. This means that my online research does not match what my software is saying. I trust the software more than the research.

Turns out that there are two versions of this particular All In One model. One is AMD-based, the other is Intel-based. The Intel-based version has a socketed CPU. The AMD version has the CPU soldered into place. It cannot be upgraded.

These maroons have rendered this machine locked in the past. With no way to upgrade the CPU, it is too slow for today’s needs. Even with maximum memory.

Conclusion

An old computer is sometimes garbage. Put it out of your misery. Use it for target practice or take it to the dump.

There are many left-leaning people out there. Many are broken. They cannot see what is in front of their faces and refuse to accept any fact that is counter to their current world view.

These are the people that can look you dead in the eye and tell you that calling you a racist piece of shit is just fine, but it is unacceptable for you to call them ignorant. This is why their riots were “mostly peaceful” while the January 6th protests and walk through was an “insurrection”.

There is another class of left — leaning people who aren’t really into calling you names. They are just so deep in the left bubble that they cannot believe that what you say could possibly be the truth. These are the people that watch nothing but CNN and will report what CNN says as being unbiased and fully truthful.

It is these people who still believe the “fine people on both sides” hoax. They have never seen anything to indicate that it could be anything but the truth.

There are the evil ones, who know exactly what they are doing. They are willing to lie to accomplish their goals. And are greatly offended when they are called on it.

The remaining are what I like to call “thinking leftist”.

These are not as uncommon as you might believe. They are often silent, they seldom get in your face. If you challenge them to check a primary source, they will. If you give them sources, they are willing to view them.

The Bubble of the Left

There is an information bubble that exists for everybody. This is the set of sources for news that we are presented with. It is how we get our information. It is from this body of information and opinion from which we build our world view.

Back in the olden days, there was a TV show called Murphy Brown. It was a show about a hard charging investigative journalist and news anchor.

She also happened to be female.

A strong female lead that was “believable”.

This isn’t a joke, “women are just as good as men in every field,” it was a profession where sex did not matter.

Single Mothers

What the character did was to have sex, get pregnant and decide to keep the child. Becoming a single mother.

This was a huge political message, though most didn’t understand it. Even today, most people consider it to be a major milestone in taking the stigma away from being an unmarried mother.

The biggest predictor of being successful in life is having a two parent family unit. There are so many things where two parents can accomplish something, while it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do it as a single parent.

Back in my single days, divorced from my first wife, she would sometimes decide I could have my kids for the week. This was always highly disruptive. I had to find temporary childcare, or I had to take the week off.

I always made it work because my children have always been that important to me.

Being a single parent is hard, difficult, all consuming, and will cost you more than you expect. If you are male, it might even be worse, it is harder to get help as a single father.

So what Murphy did, was she made it “ok” to be a single mother. Dooming hundreds of thousands of children to lives of hardship and lowering their chances of success.

This is part of that bubble. “Think of the single mothers.”, “Single mothers are so amazing.”

No, they are losing. Not always their fault. But those are the facts.

Firearms

Ignoring the magic technology of most procedural cop shows, there is a political message in most of them: All Guns Are Registered.

The scene: the duty room of NCIS, Washington, D.C. Abby has come upstairs with the identification of the type of firearm used in the latest murder.

“He was killed with a 9 mm slug from a Glock 17 with a 6-inch barrel,” she dutifully reports.

“Ge me a list of all owners of Glock 17L’s,” Gibbs says.

Ten minutes later, he is presented with a list of names which are then reduced to just a few, depending on plot needs, to investigate.

I have a few firearms that are registered with the state police of Maryland. That’s because they do not have anything to stop them from creating such a registry. Every firearm sold by an FFL in Maryland requires you to fill out an ATF-4473 plus an MD-4473.

The state is not allowed to keep records of the ATF-4473 information. Indeed, they request for that background check only states who you are and what type of firearm you are purchasing, pistol, rifle, et so forth.

The MD-4473 is sent to the state police, and they do keep a record. There are also waiting periods involved.

I have personal knowledge that they have a registry. I had purchased a featureless AR-15 during the assault weapon ban. That required the MD-4473 and a waiting period.

No big deal, I didn’t understand. That information bubble at work.

When the D.C. Sniper was killing people, they were having a difficult time tracking the sniper down. They were able to determine that the bullets were coming from a .223/5.56 rifle. They even suspected that it was an AR-15 platform.

I, personally, received a call from the MD state police because I owned an SUV and I had purchased an AR-15 platform rifle.

Impossible without a firearm registry.

Abortion

I would have a hard time finding a single show or opinion piece in the media that was pro-life. Even in the cases where there are characters who are pro-life, they are almost always portrayed poorly.

Take a look at how the annual March for Life was covered. (is covered?) The organizers estimated attendance at 650,000 for 2013. The media reported it as “tens of thousands”. The pro-abortion groups protesting the march normally get more media attention than the march itself.

It isn’t uncommon for a small pro-abortion march to get significantly more media coverage than the largest pro-life march.

The amount of positive coverage of pro-abortion positions makes me cringe.

Women’s Reproductive Health Care/Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood is an abortion business. While they claim that only 3% of their services are “abortions”, you need to dive into what “services” are. Services include handing out literature or condoms, answering calls, and all the other myriad things that are just part of being a business.

In 2014-2015, the received over half of a Billion dollars from the government. Every cent of that is fungible. That means that they had millions of dollars from us that freed up money to fund abortions.

When the federal government looked into shutting down that flow of money, they went into overdrive. The selling point was, “If Planned Parenthood shuts down, there will be no women’s reproductive healthcare.”

There are more women’s reproductive healthcare clinics in my state than there are Planned Parenthood clinics. The difference, most of them offer real women’s healthcare. Teat squishing, pap smears, and all the rest of taking care of unique women’s health issues.

Misc

The list goes on and on and on. Everything from gun owners are fat, stupid, and ignorant to people who watch Fox News are not as smart as the rest of the smart, to their elite know better than you.

Laughter

Ally went on a rant last night. What was she ranting about? The stupid Kamala ad which says that the wives of conservatives can vote for Kamala without telling their husbands. That conservative/Republican wives are just robots of their husbands.

It wasn’t a great video because she was so upset she was fumbling her words. I think the strongest message in the rant was, “…give me a break.”

At morning conversation, she started ranting about it again.

And I broke out in a giant smile.

“Stop laughing at me!”

Ally was a thinking leftest. She took the blinders off a short time ago and is seeing everything with newly cleared eyes.

For years, I’ve been listening to her responding to my indignation over things the left has done. And for years the response was always the same, “What about this thing that the right is doing?”

No matter who the Republican candidate was, she found a reason to disapprove of them. Of course, she couldn’t go to the Democrat candidate because they were just horrible. So it was always a third-party candidate.

For years, I bit my tongue so that I wouldn’t go too far, “can’t you just accept that they did something evil, bad, or stupid?”

She couldn’t.

The reason seemed to be that she was fearful of what “The Right” was going to do. They were going to take her rights away, They were saying mean things about people. They stood on the wrong side of an issue that she was passionate about.

Watching her accept her own views without those blinders has been invigorating. It makes me smile, every day.

And yes, she would have ranted at herself of a year ago. And the person she was a year ago would have written this Ally off as evil, bad, stupid, and moronic.

So smile and laugh. It feels good.

For years, I’ve been hearing about how Republicans are calling for some horrific or ridiculous thing.

I’m reminded of the days when Glenn Beck was the voice. You would hear, over and over again, how he had said terrible things.

If you search YouTube, you could find those videos. Those videos were maybe 30 to 60 seconds long.

All of those videos contained the same things. In other words, with thousands of hours of audio, the left could only find a few minutes of questionable audio. Plus, it often turned out that the audio was taken out of context.

The left runs on emotions. Unfortunately, they are not good with joy and excitement, they always fall back on fear and hate.

I had the misfortune of listening to a short clip of Obama stomping for the Democrat candidate for governor of NC.

The clip was about a minute. There wasn’t a thing that came out of his mouth that wasn’t a lie. It was all accusations of Trump, conservatives, Republicans, and anybody else that wasn’t in lock step with his wants.

It was worse than when Kamala’s people make a statement.

Kamala’s people just dropped an ad suggesting that conservative women have no agency. That “the only place they have a choice” is in the voting booth. It was disgusting.

I am not married to a robot. I’m married to a living, breathing, thinking, thoughtful, and beautiful lady. She listens and makes her own choices. Until the debate with Biden, she wasn’t going to vote for Trump.

At that point, there was nothing I could have said to get her to vote for Trump. She had to decide herself.

Hate is a powerful emotion. It is much easier to get people to hate than it is to get them to love, like, or enjoy something.

That has been the Democrat playbook for as long as I have been aware.

In 1964, LBJ aired the “Daisy” ad. The emotion he was looking for was fear. Fear that Goldwater would start a nuclear war, while he, LBJ, was only going to send boys to Vietnam to die. Oops, he didn’t say that last part.

There have been so many hoax hate crimes. The reason is that actual criminal actions based on race are very low. Sorry, that is whites acting in a criminally racist way towards others. Blacks often act in racists ways towards Whites, and it is just accepted.

Fearmongering on the Left has been about abortion. There are 50 states. Each state gets to set their laws, regarding abortion, according to how their people want, via their legislators.

So why are so many women screaming that Republican’s are going to take their “right” to an abortion away. They never had a right to an abortion. A right is something you have from existing. Everybody has it.

If abortion is a “right” then the mother OR the father should be able to choose to abort.

When they scream about their right to an abortion, what they are really screaming for is access to abortion services.

There are a few states that have put in strong anti-abortion laws.

The left is screaming about those. They search high and low for something to go wrong. The first person they found to shove a megaphone in front of was an abortion for a child.

She was transported out of the state of Ohio to have the abortion done. She was raped. The rest of the story includes the fact that the mother’s illegal alien boyfriend was the rapist. That she went out of state to protect him from the law.

And that there was an exception in the Ohio law to cover that type of case.

That is who they held up as an example of horrific outcomes from anti-abortion laws.

They scream that horrible things will happen. So they find a victim. Who was the victim? It was a woman who wanted an abortion rather late, not “late term” but not early in her pregnancy. Her social situation had changed.

She opted for a surgical procedure. Then didn’t allow enough time to get to her appointment. Almost as if she weren’t the sharpest crayon in the box. She was late, they couldn’t do the procedure. She agreed to have a chemical abortion.

She did no follow-up care. She waited until very late to seek treatment for the sepsis that she was suffering from. The hospital she went to didn’t do the required abortion to remove the dead baby from her in a timely fashion.

At the clinical mortality review, it was determined that she would have survived if she had received treatment at the hospital without the extended delay.

Now, the findings of death review panels, mortality committees, and clinical mortality reviews are closed. This is a place where doctors can feel free to say that somebody fucked up, badly. That a doctor’s error killed somebody.

This is who got the megaphone. A woman who didn’t keep her knees together. That got pregnant out of wedlock. Who’s baby father left her. Who waited until then to decide to abort her baby. Who didn’t seek treatment. And who was dead as a result of medical malpractice.

Is she an example of horrific anti-abortion laws killing women? Not in the least.

When Ally and I were talking about the “push for outlawing birth control”, my response was, “you’ve got to be kidding me. Nobody is pushing to outlaw birth control.”

When she posted, you replied that you hadn’t heard a push for banning birth control.

But Ally has heard it.

And that’s because somebody is shoving a megaphone in front of somebody. Who are these people? We don’t know. What are the odds of them getting a bill passed to ban birth control? Nonexistent.

But it adds more volume to the fearmongering. Look, The EVIL Republican’s have not only taken your right to reproductive health care away, now they won’t even let you use birth control!”

That megaphone is being used to chase the sheeple right of the edge of the clif.

As I contemplate another deep dive into a legal case, I realize how thankful I am to Justice Thomas.

Our Second Amendment protected rights had been eviscerated. Most of the country was under the suffocating opinions of gun hating inferior courts.

If a stated wanted a gun control law, they passed it. Challenges were always dismissed. To listen to the gun grabbers, everything that was done was constitutional because everybody knew that the Second only protected the rights of the militia.

In 2008, the Supreme Court issued the Heller opinion. In a five to four decision, the court found that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to keep and bear arms. Even Justice Stevens’ dissent says it is an individual right.

Of course, this didn’t stop Justice Stevens from joining Justice Breyer’s dissent

This case was much closer than we hoped for.

There is a good reason the court did not take up another Second Amendment case (outside McDonald, which was an easy, “Yes, the Bill of Rights applies to the states, morons”) for 14 years. We would have lost. And if we had not lost outright, the opinion would not be strong enough to protect our rights.

In 2022, we had a strong majority on the Supreme Court. Not a majority of Republicans, but a majority of Constitutionalist.

The Court issued a powerful opinion in Bruen. It slapped down the inferior courts. It set clear guidance for how to adjudicate Second Amendment challenges.

The inferior courts had a meltdown. We have judges who have sworn to uphold the Constitution, claiming they are too stupid to understand the Constitution. Judges who have decades of training and practice in reading old laws and interpreting them, correctly, claim that the plain text is unclear.

This is not the fault of the Supreme Court. This is the fault of those rogue inferior courts.

I worked for an incompetent lead analyst for a couple of years. One evening, I found him still at his desk, programming. He was trying to do something in FORTRAN. I explained that what he wanted to do wasn’t possible to do in FORTRAN. He insisted it could.

I wrote a short C function that did the task that FORTRAN could not. Gave it to him to use. This would have allowed him to complete his program without any architectural changes.

When I checked in with him the next day, I asked how the function worked for him. He reported that it had worked, but he had done a redesign, so he didn’t need that function.

To this day, I believe he made that change to exclude me from having participated in the project. He was a rogue, inferior programmer/analyst.

Rogue inferior courts will twist and squirm to avoid the clear guidance of the Supreme Court, when they don’t like the outcome.

The remarkable strength of Justice Ginsburg, was her ability to find law to support her positions.

From President Obama, we got Sotomayor. She has grown into her position, but she has never been a strong justice.

We also got Elena Kagan, a Justice so corrupt that she felt that there was no conflict of interest in sitting on a case that she had worked on as a member of the Obama staff.

Those two “powerhouses” don’t come close to the idiocy of Ketanji Brown Jackson. This is a person that can’t find case law, regulation, or original meaning in anything that goes against her agenda. She writes as if the Supreme Court should be writing law, not following the law.

The Three!

Neil Gorsuch was our first win. He has done a good job for the Second.

Kavanaugh was our second win. He is doing an ok job for the Second. I’m not sure of him, but so far, so good.

Amy Coney Barrett is our third win. I believe she could become the next Clarence Thomas.

Conclusion

Next Tuesday is the day our Constitution set as the date to vote for our President. A week from today, we should know who our next president will be.

Please, PLEASE, vote.

The most lasting wins from the first Trump presidency were the amount of reform that was done to the courts. We do not want to have Kamala replace Thomas. Imagine another Ketaji Brown Jackson replacing Thomas. It would be years before we could recover.

VOTE!

Trolling at its finest.

If there is one word that truly does not describe Kamala, it is “authentic.”

Everywhere she goes, it feels fake. Everything she says, feels fake. There is nothing authentic about her.

While people made fun of her for saying she owns a Glock and that ends her description of the type of firearm she owns, I didn’t find that off-putting.

I own a SIG. Lord help me if I know what model it is. I look when I need to. I have a Glock. Which model? I don’t know.

They are just tools. The Winchester Model 94s? Well, they are more history than tools. And yes, they have taken deer and raccoons. The Henry has taken a raccoon. The Rossi R95 has taken raccoons and possums.

It depends on the person just how detail they get with their firearms.

Regardless, I don’t think Kamala is part of “gun culture”. Not first, second, nor 100th generation gun culture.

While my accent changes, depending on whom I am talking to, that is mostly because I’ve had a southern accent in the past, and Michigan, and Wisconsin, and ugh, California. When I’m talking to somebody with those accents, I will slip back into it.

I was talking to a woman from Kentucky the other day and my southern came out.

Ally reported she had a thick accent. I found it pretty tame and lovely to listen to.

Regardless, Kamala is not authentic. If she told me that water was wet, I would want a second opinion and would test myself.

Trump is Trump. This election season, I find myself liking the man. “I don’t think he knows what he is saying” is a great line.

He has been more controlled in his messaging. Attacking their policies and capabilities rather than the person.

On Sunday, Trump kept his word and showed up for work. At a McDonald’s.

They started him on the Fryer, but at some point he moved to the drive—through window. My guess is that it took a bit of work for the Secret Service to figure out how to allow people to get that close to Trump in a vehicle “safely”.

It looks like he had a blast. And the people seemed to enjoy it as well.

And at this point, Trump has more documented time working at McDonald’s than Kamala has presented.

The suspicion of an attack on Route 4 is growing: a fatally wounded person at one scene and a moderately wounded person at a second scene Amit Segal on Telegram, Google AI translation

Five injured Amit Segal

One of them died of his wounds Amit Segal

Ben Gvir: The person who killed the terrorists was a citizen who received a weapon thanks to my reform. Amit Segal

The title on the web page is now “Israeli Civilians Are Taking Up Arms”.

The article is another anti-gun screed by the normal people, decrying the number of deaths “caused” by guns.

One of the things that Ben-Gvir’s new regulations have accomplished is that Israeli citizens are no longer disarmed after a self-defense shooting.

While we in the US have backup guns for our backup guns, many people that own firearms in foreign countries consider themselves to be lucky to have just one. … the practice of requiring citizens involved in an attack to hand over their personal weapons for extended examination and investigation.—id. at 681

It seems like they are starting to come around to “it is a good idea for people to be armed”.

To put this in some sort of perspective, Israel is smaller in area than New Hampshire. It is a little longer north-south and about the same east-west. There isn’t a place in New Hampshire that you can’t reach from the border within an hour of driving.

The enemies of Israel surround it. There is no place more than an hour from the border with hostiles.

“Management Agency” is the key here.

In leadership courses we hear the phrase “Either lead, follow or get the fuck out of the way.” There is a strong reason for this, projects fail when leadership is weak.

“A bad decision now is better than a good decision too late,” is another.

What this means is that in a situation where leadership is needed, we need a good leader, and then we need to follow them. If we are not following, then we might be the de facto leader. If we are not following, and we are not leading, we are the problem.

If you want to see a prime example of failed leadership, consider your local PTA. There are reputations at stake, there is money on the table. And there are a dozen voices, all attempting to get their way.

A natural leader has an ability to lead that comes from their nature, and their upbringing. They might have augmented that natural ability with training. They are still few and far between.

Trained leaders are those that have been through training on how to lead. They might be able to lead, but they are likely to be uncomfortable leading. This causes failure in trust and mistakes.

In a disaster, leaders will step up at the time of the event. These will be those that who are natural leaders. The “trained” leaders are likely to be slow to step up, hoping that someone else will take on the mantel of leadership.

This is precisely what we saw in the current disaster. The natural leaders got up and did.

These people heard the call of duty, put their lives on hold, grabbed what they could and went into action. When they arrived at the scene, they self organized. That is to say, leaders stepped forward and did what was needed.

Because they are doers, things got done. The right people were in the right place doing the right thing.

When FEMA arrives, they bring two things with them, a checkbook and “management”.

If the management is good, then they will slide into the existing system, their natural or trained leadership skills will shine through, and they will make it easier for the doers to get things done.

The horrible truth is that the people that FEMA brings to the party are unlikely to be natural leaders. Natural leaders do not find themselves as low-level government employees.

These examples of petty bureaucrats arrive on scene and start following their scripts. Just like they were taught in class.

They start by making an inventory of the goods and capabilities they have on hand. According to the book, this is more important than actually seeing those goods and services being delivered to those in need.

A primary goal is to make sure that those most in need get the help they need. This means holding back on the supplies at hand, to have a reserve for when they find those in desperate need.

Because they are a management team, when they step in, they take over all the prepositioned goods and services.

Being management, they need to make sure that they are rested and prepared for the next day’s work.

As you might guess, this is written from the perspective of the petty bureaucrat. They believe they are doing good. They believe they know better. They believe they are the saviors.

The correct answer is that they should arrive with hat in hand and ask, “how can I help?”. Instead, they know they are supposed to lead, and leaders take control and bark orders.

FEMA is a failure at this point.

That, and they have been used to funnel money to illegal immigrants, makes it all the worse.

“We are from the government, we are here to help.” is a strong indication that it is time for SSS.