Category: why we prepare

10:21 – Yesterday we got 80 pounds (36+ kilos) of pinto beans repackaged into 21 two-liter soft drink bottles, at just under 4 pounds per bottle. That’s sufficient to fill out the amino acid profile for about 500 pounds of rice/pasta/oats, in combination yielding complete protein.

Barbara volunteers with the Friends of the Library. They had a Quiz Bowl event last night, and Barbara had volunteered to be one of the judges. When the lady from the library called Barbara yesterday afternoon to verify that she’d be there, I asked Barbara what it involved. She said there’d be teams of high school kids competing against teams of adults. I told Barbara I’d be happy to help out if they needed more adults. She checked with the librarian, who said they could always use more people.

So we had an early dinner and headed over to the library about 6:00. I ended up sitting at the back of the room with several of the other other adult volunteers. I was between Tom Smith, who’s the Chairman of the County Commissioners, and Bryan Edwards, who’s the Sparta Town Manager. We got along great, making whispered remarks about what was going on up on stage. Tom’s a funny guy, and at one point I remarked to him, “You know, that’s the fourth time that you said something just as I was thinking it.” He replied that the two of us were going to get along fine. Bryan is also a funny guy, and between the two of them they made me feel like part of their group instead of a newcomer to the area.

Few or none of the adults had ever done a Quiz Bowl event before, so they started with two teams of the high school students facing off so that we could see how it was done. The winner of that round then faced another team of students to determine which team of students would face the adult team in the final. We had two teams of adults, so we had another round to determine which adult team would be in the final round with the winning student team. The adults, of course, crushed the student team in the final round.

Barbara commented on our drive home that experience had won the day, and that 20 or 30 years from now those kids would have experience and would probably beat a student team handily. I told her that I didn’t think that was true. The adults are from a generation when the public schools still actually taught. These kids are unfortunately in public school at a time when teaching is no longer the priority. They’re in at least the second full generation of people who’ve grown up attending school but not being educated. Still, I take comfort in the fact that there were a lot of bright kids there, and bright kids learn despite all attempts to keep them from doing so.

I just wish there had been a team of home-schooled kids there. They’d have probably kicked adult ass. Which is why Barbara and I do what we do. Home schooled kids are the future of this country, now that the public schools have been destroyed.

Uncle Remus, as usual, has a post worth reading up on Woodpile Report. FTA

After action report. This is where I disagree with Trump. He asks us to put ill will behind us and work together for the good of the country. He says we’re all in this together. No, we’re not. Sure they’re our fellow Americans, but so are Jeffrey Dahmer and Charles Manson. We’re all in this together in the sense we coexist with termites.

Ayup. I, in common with most Normals, used to tolerate progs, if only grudgingly. No more. In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, “You realize, this means war.”

The leftists aren’t merely wrong, they’re dishonest and malevolent. They still hold us, our values and our heritage in contempt. They still mean to destroy the reputations and careers of dissenters. They still adore illegal aliens, jihadists, dindu thugs and the perverts du jour. They still insult and demean us and teach our kids to despise America, us and themselves. They still mean to trash what remains of the Constitution.

The progs don’t understand that we Normals are by nature polite and conciliatory, but when our anger is aroused it’s a truly fearsome thing. We are the children and grandchildren of those Normals who bombed Germany into rubble and nuked Japan. Like those warriors, we can be pushed only so far before we respond devastatingly. And I’m afraid we’ve reached that point already. And we’ll be opposed by a bunch of effete, unarmed, tofu-eating metrosexuals, very few of whom have even been in a schoolyard fight.

And finally the bottom line:

Gambling with the tipping point, Market Ticker – Urban centers consume roughly 90% of the energy and food in this country yet they comprise 5-10% of the land mass. What if the people who peacefully conceded the result of two elections over the last eight years despite vehemently opposing the outcome decide that if the “blue” folks can riot, loot, beat people who vote the “wrong way” and similar they will not accept any further election result that doesn’t go their way, and instead of rioting or burning things they will simply shut off the flow of food and energy to said “blue” areas? After all, you don’t value them at all—you consider them subhuman, racist, xenophobic, deplorable and irredeemable—all at once. If you keep it up, that at some point, given that you’re utterly reliant on those you’re abusing for the basics of life—the loaf of bread, the gallon of gasoline, the electricity that powers your lights—they decide they’ve had enough. That day your supply of cellophane-wrapped meat and plastic bag full of bread disappears.