09:34 – I’m not sure what’s going on with the Colonial Pipeline thing. On Monday and Tuesday morning, most analysts seemed to agree that Colonial One might be down for at least several weeks. Then, yesterday afternoon, Colonial announced that Two was already back in service and that they expected One to be back on-line by the end of the week. That’s good news, if true. But as of last night the fire was still burning, which makes me wonder how they can possibly expect service with Colonial One to be fully restored by Saturday, only three days from now. I’m wondering if the initial third-party estimates of repair time aren’t more accurate than what Colonial is saying. If so, the gasoline situation is going to become critical here in the East.
Yesterday was the start of the open enrollment period for Obamacare. I got onto the website first thing yesterday morning. I logged on successfully, and filled out the first screen with my email address. When I clicked the continue icon, I got a pretty green Please Wait spinner. Here it is 24 hours later, and I’m still looking at that spinner.
Two Iowa cops were shot and killed from ambush overnight. The authorities are looking for a suspect, whose photo they published. He appears to be a low-life white guy, which no doubt is why he was identified and pictured so quickly. If it had been a black guy or one of Middle-Eastern appearance, we’d still be waiting for details.
We’re down to our last box of dog treats, so I checked Amazon and Walmart for prices. I’d ordered them from both places in the past, but lately I’ve been ordering them mostly from Walmart because Amazon’s price is so high. This time, Walmart was charging $2.87/box versus Amazon at $7.93/box. This kind of ratio is getting more and more common with Amazon Prime. They used to be competitive on price. Nowadays, they’re more often not competitive. When my Prime membership comes up for renewal, I may not bother.
Lori and I discussed the gasoline situation this morning. Monday night, I called her cellphone and left voicemail for her about the Colonial Pipeline explosion. She immediately headed out to fill her tank, and called her daughter at college to tell her to fill her tank. Lori’s Jeep is also her personal vehicle. It gets truly awful mileage during stop-and-go mail deliveries. She has to fill up every day. She said that until the pipeline situation is resolved she may start filling up twice a day, assuming she can find gas stations that are open. That would allow her to keep her tank at least half full at all times.
I suspect at least one reader will know more about the Colonial Pipeline than I do, however that doesn’t stop me from speculating. In the first failure, a section of pipeline sprang a leak. I am speculating that the pipe leaked because of metal fatigue from years of pressure from the contents of the pipeline. In the second case, someone did something that broke the pipe, so that section of the pipe may be a piece of perfectly good pipe with a hole in it. It may be an easier task to patch a solid pipe with a hole in it than to route around a section of fatigued pipe.
I don’t know anything about pipelines, either, but I strongly suspect that an explosion followed by a 24-hour long gasoline inferno can’t be good for the pipe that was exposed to it.
Nah, bro, the infrastructure’s fine. We need to use tax money to take care of the needy and subsidize pot farmers. The gearhead geeks can worry about the pipes and the bridges and all that crap. Vote Gary Johnson!
I was just saying to Lori that the truly scary part is that anyone who was motivated to do so could make up a bunch of suitable bombs and place them along the pipeline every few miles, timed to detonate simultaneously. Just a dozen or so such bombs, properly placed, could take down the pipeline for at least months. And one guy could do that by himself.
Same deal with attacks on the < one dozen VLTs, without which our electrical grids go down. It doesn't take access to a nuke and a suitable missile to take down our grid. Everyone knows this, and as far as I can tell the only preparations they're making for it is to keep their collective fingers crossed. Which reminds me that I really need to order components for an off-grid solar system large enough to drive our well pump, basic lighting, comms, etc. Hell, there's even a tax credit.
If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion, I would first make a detailed list of what you want to power and estimate how much power it takes. Then come up with a design to provide that much power. Finally place an order for the parts and try it out.
Of course for you there is an additional step I would recommend. Once you have the list of what you want to power and a design, I would share it with your readers. You’ll have a lot of feedback which will help you buy the right parts the first time.
They are spending a lot of money on surveys, and needs assessment, and reports. I’m sure top men are working on it. Top. Men.
As far as I can tell from looking they are also building fences and setting up remote monitoring, either with SCADA systems or more recently with cameras.
I look at a lot of infrastructure while I’m roaming the countryside and I see a LOT of new cams with wireless links at remote pumping stations, test points, compressor stations, etc.
The main problem is one of scale. There is a LOT of ‘critical infrastructure’ out there and most was built at a time when security was not an issue (like the interwebs.) It’s also widely dispersed, and mostly rural.
G Gordon Liddy did an article for esquire or GQ back in the day, shortly after he got out of jail, describing how to take down the Nat Gas distribution system with nothing more than a rifle, so the issue has been around for a long time.
Anyone here could think of a dozen activities, all low tech and in meatspace, that a single person, or a very small team could carry out that would shut down a city. Movie plot threats* are fun, and useful for what if, but not useful for planning. There are more prosaic threats that would be more effective.
Hell, serious disruption can be accomplished just with a threat, called in, or on social media.
nick
*as Bruce Schneiererererer (sp?) calls them.
also, most of the sh!t barely runs now, it isn’t that hard to break it.
And, if you were thinking about some sort of insurgency, you’d be looking at these same disruptions.
As I said, my initial goal is to be able to power the well pump, which runs 120VA at about 1,300W (not counting start-up surge). Beyond that, I’d want enough to run minimal lighting, radios, and recharge AA/AAA cells. We’re gradually getting moved from incandescent/fluorescent/CFL lighting to LED, which minimizes wattage needs.
I’m going to talk to Barbara about buying an off-grid starter kit with four 100W panels, which unguided should yield about 1.2 kW/hr per day on an average day. A quarter of that should keep us in water.
For a fictional look at how you might drop a whole fing planet, read michael z williamson’s The Hero. It’s part of one of his series, is pretty good reading, as is most of his writing. In it Graine (libertarian world) is fighting against Earth (socialist prog nightmare world) and sends a VERY capable team(s) to make sure earth doesn’t have the resources to continue their war of oppression on Graine.
While the setting is scifi, and some of the attacks are specific to the tech of the story, they are extrapolated from now.
All of the books in the series are worth reading.
nick
had a thought.
If our leaders, or someone in the system were competent, it’s possible that the push to solar and local storage and generation is to counter the real threats against our centralized power system.
It didn’t have to be this way. Edison wanted DC and very local power generation.
n
(and the rural electrification program is what you get when someone forgets the goal and uses the hammer they have. It would have been much more economical to help rural farmers improve their local generation capability, than to destroy it and force them onto the remote grid. The goal became forcing everyone onto the grid, instead of helping everyone get electricity.)
“He appears to be a low-life white guy, which no doubt is why he was identified and pictured so quickly. If it had been a black guy or one of Middle-Eastern appearance, we’d still be waiting for details.”
Hahaha; I forgot to make that point, thanks. We’d still be waiting today and if something else came/comes up on the nooz cycle, we’d never have seen a pic of him or a better description.
“When I clicked the continue icon, I got a pretty green Please Wait spinner. Here it is 24 hours later, and I’m still looking at that spinner.”
Hahaha, again. Wife’s next chance for enrollment is in January up here with the locally infamous Vermont clusterfuck. Can’t wait to see the fun. She’s been on top of all the public “healthcare” nooz here and says that major conglomeration is in the air with the big companies, and that furthermore, local rural docs to our northeast a little bit are considering banding together and running their own operation and bailing out of the state and Fed bullshit altogether. If so, that could be yuuuuuge nooz nationwide eventually, or maybe just regionally and rurally.
“Of course for you there is an additional step I would recommend. Once you have the list of what you want to power and a design, I would share it with your readers. You’ll have a lot of feedback which will help you buy the right parts the first time.”
And an additional step beyond that is that once we build and configure our nifty solar power systems, we’re gonna have to be able to locate and obtain spare parts, do basic maintenance and repair ourselves or find somebody locally to do it, and defend that stuff from evil-minded goblins.
“… the only preparations they’re making for it is to keep their collective fingers crossed.”
Gee, maybe the Clinton Crime Family Foundation could spearhead this effort. The gummint is too busy setting up nuke bases right on the Russian borders and poking them in their eyes repeatedly and stomping on their feet, while also fomenting more wars in the Sandbox shit-holes. That’s way more important.
“And, if you were thinking about some sort of insurgency, you’d be looking at these same disruptions.”
+1,000
Slick operators could wreak utter mayhem nationwide just with phone calls and a few well-placed physical disruptions; probably coming soon, along with the usual brute-force lone-wolf attacks as we sashay merrily along into the post-“election” Holiday Season. Of course the usual meatspace shopping frenzies could also be disrupted by that pipeline explosion and consequences they’re lying about or not telling us about until it’s too fucking late, per SOP with these shit-weasels.
“The goal became forcing everyone onto the grid, instead of helping everyone get electricity.”
Deliberate. The history of this surge toward State centralization began a long, long time ago, and very few read it or know about it. Another related area where this was done is in the cities and ‘burbs when they pushed the trolley systems out and rammed public highways and freeways down everyone’s throat, followed by “urban renewal.”
Gee, maybe the Clinton Crime Family Foundation could spearhead this effort.
Add to that, it looks like the entire Bush Crime Family will endorse Coffin Cankles. What more evidence does Boobus need to realize we are ruled, not governed. Oh yeah, Boobus is just plain stupid and cannot reason, read, write and make decisions.
Game over, man, game over.
Ofukstik is now snarking about Comey. I wonder if he will cashier him?
lol! Right, remember the ongoing VA fiasco. The only ones cashiered came back in other positions or got golden parachutes. Ofukstik is just that. A big ole’ fukstik.
Michelle Malkin’s article today shows what we will continue to get under a “Fifth Clinton Term“. lol!
Fifth? Try eighth. Bush I once. Bill twice. Bush II twice. Obama twice, and HRC would be eight in a row.
In the second case, someone did something that broke the pipe, so that section of the pipe may be a piece of perfectly good pipe with a hole in it. It may be an easier task to patch a solid pipe with a hole in it than to route around a section of fatigued pipe.
The second explosion looks to be a result of a process called “hot tapping”. Sheer guesstimation on my part though. Something went wrong during the process and the new weld(s) failed. Not good. I’ve never been a fan of hot tapping.
Here’s a link I got in email just now; didn’t bother connecting to it:
“Mark Cuban says ‘Obamacare is world’s largest start-up, Trump has no clue how it works”
REALLY? Does ANYONE? Yeah, me, and a few others on this board: it’s a gigantic fucking slush fund and ripoff of Normals DESIGNED to FAIL.
How’s my analysis so fah?
“… it looks like the entire Bush Crime Family will endorse Coffin Cankles. What more evidence does Boobus need to realize we are ruled, not governed. Oh yeah, Boobus is just plain stupid and cannot reason, read, write and make decisions.”
As I’ve said before here, referring to the Roger Stone books on this exact same topic, the two crime families have been in cahoots for DECADES. They’re the ruling regime equivalents of the old “Our Thing” families, only a scale orders of magnitude greater.
“The only ones cashiered came back in other positions or got golden parachutes.”
Same old, same old. My ongoing disability filing shit continues on the 10th as I meet with the state vet services officer; I’m writing and compiling documents here as we “speak.”
“Michelle Malkin’s article today shows what we will continue to get under a “Fifth Clinton Term“. lol!”
She does a good job listing all the shenanigans and parties involved that need to be swinging from lampposts later on.
And a couple of nifty quotes from the Sovereign Man email today:
“Never forget that if you pay any tax at all, you’re already richer than 50% of your fellow countrymen.”
We knew that.
“Or if you have a net worth that’s above zero, you’re already wealthier than your government.”
And if you make more than whatever the latest commie decree says you’re allowed to make, or should make, you’re among the filthy rich bastards who need to be thoroughly fleeced some more or shot.
“Fifth? Try eighth. Bush I once. Bill twice. Bush II twice. Obama twice, and HRC would be eight in a row.”
And her second term, as the drugs fail and she has to be embalmed somehow and then wired up with robotic circuitry, will be the ninth, although the polls allegedly say that Trump is now up anywhere from 4 to 8 points over her and the Evil Half of the Party is allegedly panicking.
Remember yer history, folks; it didn’t all start with Obola or Larry Klinton. Go back, back….LBJ and the Great Society, Pharaoh Roosevelt II, Professor Wilson, and of course the Great Eliminator. Too easy to get caught up in Fox Nooz bitching about Cankles or Obola like this is our first rodeo with these cocksuckers.
Could be nothing or could be some really Major Chit:
http://truepundit.com/breaking-bombshell-nypd-blows-whistle-on-new-hillary-emails-money-laundering-sex-crimes-with-children-child-exploitation-pay-to-play-perjury/
Edited: more here, and IIRC, one of our TX correspondents spotted the photoshopping capers a couple of weeks ago, scroll down for pics on that and a vid of the patent-pending Cankles cackle:
http://madworldnews.com/hillary-melts-weiner-public-pics/
Ballistic gel farting after being shot by a .44
https://laughingsquid.com/ballistic-gel-violently-farts-in-slow-motion-after-being-shot-with-a-44-magnum/
_299 Days: The Visitors (Volume 5)_ by Glen Tate
https://www.amazon.com/299-Days-Visitors-Glen-Tate/dp/0615788106/
Book number five of a ten book financial apocalyptic series. I bought and read the POD (print on demand) trade paperback version with the larger font. This books was about the average length of the previous books at 188 pages.
I am trying to decide if I am going to buy more books in the series, I suspect not. The tail end of the book indicated that they are moving from “circle the wagons” mode to “find and kill the people who got us in this mess” mode. In other words, a revolution and I am not very interested in that.
The book is about Pierce Point in Washington state, a small group of home owners with around 200+ homes and 500 people. The average homestead is between one to ten acres and the area is very densely forested. There is only one road into the area and that has been blockaded and guarded. The other side of the community is beaches with ocean access which is also being guarded. The USA is not in a total collapse but things are very bad financially with total bank failures across the nation. Interstate and intrastate commerce is in bad shape with nothing happening except through government seizure.
The book starts off with the community having to deal with a Meth house. Several of the mall ninjas rush the house and take down the dealer, his meth lab, his buddies, a couple of women, and a nine year old girl. Quite a bit of the book deals with the meth nonsense and the child rape that was going on.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (269 reviews)
And a couple of nifty quotes from the Sovereign Man email today:
“Never forget that if you pay any tax at all, you’re already richer than 50% of your fellow countrymen.”
We knew that.
One of the biggest scams that Ronald Reagan fell to was that the bottom half of the population should not pay income. However, when people do not pay income tax they seem to get this feeling that they are owed a living by the government. So, my thought is that ALL should pay income tax. The minimum income tax should be ten percent on the first dollar of income.
Interestingly enough, when the federal income tax was being debated a century ago, there was a suggestion of putting in a 10% cap. That was shouted down, as such a hard cap could be seen as authorization for the federal govt to raise it up that high. Considering that suggested tax rates were about 2%, and only on the top earners, 10% was seen as utterly unacceptable.
Woulda been nice if they’d put in that 10% cap. 20/20 hindsight and all.
As for your major point, I agree that every person within US borders or claiming US protection should pay something into the system. An income tax won’t do it, as a large number of people have no income other than entitlements. I’d like to see a head tax. It doesn’t have to be large. $100/year/person, due in cash as a lump sum, would suffice as an indication that living here is not free.
Making a buck while mocking a dumbfuck. I love American ingenuity.
“I love American ingenuity.”
Indeed.
“In other words, a revolution and I am not very interested in that.”
Correct. What we want is a counter-revolution. We are counter-revolutionaries. Sort of like the Whites after the Russian Revolution, but we don’t wanna end up like them. We have LOTS more firepower, for one thing, and just as much techie skillz and knowledge as the revolutionaries, if not a LOT more.
Take haht, fellow counter-revolutionaries; we will win in the long run. This shabby house of cards cannot stand.
Just signed up Mrs. OFD for NRA online pistol course, followed by Phase II at the range. She needs to know how to work the arsenal in the event of whatever. RBT & Co. and others here are probably way ahead of us on this already. Long overdue but got the green light tonight. Wants range time.
Me and Mr. DadCooks, starting almost from scratch. Wife shot skeet briefly twenty years ago and has seen all my stuff (or maybe 1/4 of it, haha) and that’s it.
Got all my VA paperwork done, six pages, for meeting with State Veterans Service Officer on the 10th. Hauled in some firewood. Off to vets group tomorrow to get some more input and see how everyone else is doing, followed by making a dent in our tax records documents and wrapping that up Friday in preparation for obtaining the services of a reputable and local tax attorney finally, green light on that, too. Green light on storm door, at least, for rear porch door. It’s been a green light day here.
Fed job recruiter called me yesterday and I should know one way or the other if I’m climbing on board in the next week or two. I doubt it, but will have to jump about right smartly if I do. And back to working 40-60 hours a week, probably on-call, and ramping up on Cisco routing and switching CCNA, M$ Server chit, and storage. If not, back to other sources of revenue again. With the wunnerful Holiday Season approaching after whichever creature gets elected to do or not do whatever the rulers want them to do.
And tempus fugit irreparabile…fratres…pax vobiscum.
May I ask why you didn’t get a decent tax attourney years ago?
I frickin’ hate taxes. I know that I could (in theory) count the ways, but I simply don’t have the patience.
Yes, everyone should pay taxes. No, it should not be workfare for accountants that can’t get a job in industry.
One page, 10 pt. font., 8-1/2×11. Anything more than that it too complicated and should get someone fired. Tax collectors should number no more than congress critters.
I’m flexible about that last paragraph. Feel free to simplify as you see fit.
Just another “temporary measure” that is still in place 100 years later.
If the founders had put an automatic sunset provision in the bill of rights, think where we’d be.
Of course, they couldn’t imagine how distorted things have gotten.
Remember this country was founded in part because of TAX dissenters. Anyone here feel like they have real representation on whether or not they’re taxed?
n
“Anyone here feel like they have real representation on whether or not they’re taxed?”
Maybe a little more so in this, and other rural or semi-rural small towns, where the reps are our neighbors and we can see them and talk to them anytime. Not so much in the cities, which have too many layers and too many interests.
We were founded in part, yes, by tax dissenters, but prior to that, and something people forget, except maybe around Thanksgiving, is that it was started by religious dissenters, too, Calvinists, and we continue to live with their legacy today, despite what anyone likes or wishes; this was/is a British Protestant country. Picture a gigantic Northern Ireland, but with dozens of other races and ethnicities and religious faiths imported and/or assimilated over the same 400 or 500 years. With only vague ties left to the mother country across the Irish Sea.
Then, I guess, throw in a couple of hundred years of more or less constant wars.
One page, 10 pt. font., 8-1/2×11. Anything more than that it too complicated
Agreed. My tax return numbers 74 pages for my records, about 15 that get sent to the IRS. That is 14 too many. I use TurboTax otherwise I would be stumped. Even then I am not certain I am not paying too much. If I was paying too little the IRS would be on me in a heartbeat, well after three years so they can maximize their interest and penalties. When you overpay the IRS is strangely silent.
Assholes.
“Assholes.”
Don’t get me started. I’ll be wrangling with five to ten years of records here tomorrow and probably longer as I compile some kind of organized chit we can bring to a lawyer. I’m tired of paying only interest and penalties and then still getting more mail from them that we owe even more from some OTHER year, too. Not a dent in the alleged principal so far. “A band of thieves write large.”
You make a mistake or pay too little and they’re on you like white on rice. They screw up and good luck even finding out or fixing it or getting an apology, say, after they freeze your bank accounts, cause checks to bounce and ruin your credit. Their error. While the bank sez, tough chit, dude. You still pay the OD charges. So you’re fucked multiple times by multiple entities with zero recourse.
Now imagine that instead of simple mistakes or clerical errors or whatever, they are really after you.
They screw up and good luck even finding out or fixing it or getting an apology
I have been the victim of one of their mistakes. Fixing to sell my house for back taxes that were not mine but were someone else. They just matched a name on the property and went after it. Never bothered to check if it was the right person.
Couple of other incidents where they screwed up but I stood my ground on the taxes that I had paid. They eventually agreed with me. Amazing that you get different answers from different people. And what one person tells you apparently is not a reason you did not pay enough. There own answers, by their own agents, are wrong and you pay the penalty. Too bad as you should have known the rules even when the IRS agents don’t know the rules.
Assholes.
They screw up and good luck even finding out or fixing it or getting an apology
I have been the victim of one of their mistakes. Fixing to sell my house for back taxes that were not mine but were someone else. They just matched a name on the property and went after it. Never bothered to check if it was the right person.
Was this the IRA or your local tax assessor ? One wonders what would have happened if somebody showed up at your front door and said that they now owned your property. Serious 4th and 5th amendment issues there.