Sunday, November 28, 2021

Democrats Have Eyes But They Just Can't See

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The mainstream Democrats, as represented by Joe Biden, have learned nothing from the Trump disaster.  They long for an America that hasnt existed for two decades and so they fail and fail and we are cursed to suffer and to suffer because they refuse to open their eyes.  They want those good old days of bipartisan gentleman behavior to return.  They dont understand that it is dead.
 
As Aldrick says at the end of No Sudden Moves (2021):

"Motherfucker's got eyes, they just can't see."

 



Friday, November 19, 2021

Driving Home from Home Depot

So I am coming home from Home Depot (owned by a right wing nut) with a big heavy thing in the back and my seat is scrunched up so I am driving extra carefully. And on my approach home here in Santa Barbara, about 2 miles out, I get a big van behind me, and he is really unhappy. He is honking at me whenever I stop at a stop sign or intersection and its weird. He is pissed off about something, but I dont know what it is. And it concerns me because I am driving to my house and he will see where I live and he is pissed off. Like I am afraid he is going to try and ram me or something, or get out of the car or whatever. So I pull into my driveway and he honks a few times to indicate how much he hates me, and his partner, in a big van behind him does the same thing and it beats me what this is about.


So I am home unloading and I notice something. I have an Antifa sticker on my bumper. You figure it out.



Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Observations on a Vegetable Garden in Santa Barbara vs Escondido


I am into my third season of a Santa Barbara container garden and I can make some comparisons to Escondido.  You might at first glance not think that there would be much difference or if there was that there would be a balance of good and bad things between the two locales but there isnt.  Santa Barbara seems to be superior in all the ways I measure.  This assumes, in both cases, that there is adequate sun for your designated plants and sufficient water.  
 
But given these requirements, in Santa Barbara we have much less problem with plants bolting.  I have basil and lettuce that have not yet bolted which would have been long gone in Escondido.  We also have less predators in Santa Barbara. I have had only one instance of tomato hornworm, no spider mites, and no aphids.  There is some of that fungus mold stuff for the tomato and bean leaves, the usual bordeaux solution seems to knock it back but it can get out of control.  
 
I dont know why Santa Barbara is so much better but I speculate that the moderation in weather (less hot, less cold) helps keep things from bolting.  




Sunday, November 14, 2021

Indications of War and the Underwater Surveillance System of Norway

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[If this event in Norway had happened, wouldnt we have heard about it from many sources?  Wouldnt it be a big deal?  I am guessing that either this did not happen or people are being seriously discreet.  Well I guess we will find out.]

This post is to bring to your attention that something has happened recently that has almost certainly caused concern and sleepless nights for many people.  It may sound innocuous if a little aggressive but it may actually signal that something important is about to happen.  The particular event involves the silencing of a Norwegian underwater sensor system which probably had the ability to track Russian submarines which work very hard not to be tracked.

See the following story.  These people have a good reputation for discussing things of interest without using secret sources. 

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43094/norwegian-undersea-surveillance-network-had-its-cables-mysteriously-cut

Even when rivals do not intend to go to war, they do things we might call provocative and not all that trusting or friendly. So for example, since WW2 we have flown jets somewhere close to the Russian border to see how long it takes for their radar to light up, where they are, and a bunch of what is sometimes called "signals intelligence", which means we may not know what they are saying but we know they are talking. Russia might fly a strategic bomber towards the UK to see how long it takes for them to be intercepted. This is all normal peacetime activities. If you want peace, they say, prepare for war. So far so good. But there is more to it than that.  When JFK was assassinated and people asked why the pentagon did not go on alert, the guy in charge of that said something like "the board was clear", the board probably referring to something called NMIC.  in other words, yes, the president had been assassinated which could be the opening stage of a war, but none of the other things they look for had happened.  What sort of things?  Well there is a list of things.  Assassinations for example, mobilization of the ground forces which are in maneuver near the border. Important reconnaissance systems becoming inoperative.  The satellites go dark.  The relevant embassy or embassies starts destroying classified material.  All of these things happen now and then, sometimes for innocent reasons (e.g. a satellite went dark but thats because it simply broke, no need to get your panties in a bunch over it.)  But there is more history here.  

When Israel was about to do the 1967 preemptive strike they told us to take a listening post, a ship in the Mediterranean,  away. We refused or ignored them and they blew up the USS Liberty so that we could not hear the fighters being scrambled for Egypt (even if we did not know what the pilots were saying, they wanted surprise so no warnings).   There is a fuzzy line between what you might normally do, try to catch spies for example, and things you might do if you were about to attack and needed tactical surprise (or in some cases strategic surprise, a whole other thing). Its one thing for Russia to roll up an amphibious tank onto a beach in Sweden to spy on a naval base in the middle of the night, but its a whole other thing to cut underwater cables, revealing they have that ability, which is a big deal independent of the cables actually cut.  We knew they had that capability but they had not demonstrated it on operational cables of a strategic listening system by a neighbor.   You only do that right before you need to do something you dont want people to see. Something fairly big. 

So in deterrence theory we say that if there is nuclear war it is very important to have a few days notice, if you can, because all kinds of things can be moved around for safety. So we keep a 24/7 team in the basement of the pentagon connected to a bunch of different sources to ask what is going on. Are the satellites mysteriously going silent? Have NATO generals suddenly disappeared? Are the bad guys on maneuvers near the border. Are the underwater cables going out?

The job of the people on the ground is to read the clues and form the right conclusions about what is going on.  Thats what they get paid for.