Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Wapato Jail, the end

Twenty-plus years ago, a $58 million bond was floated to built a new jail for Multnomah county, which I worked for as a Deputy Sheriff at the time. The big jail was built, on industrial land out on the North Peninsula of Portland, but it never opened. Instead, the anti-police (communist) County Government started restricting the Sheriff's number of jail beds.

The Wapato jail became a surplus property, and was eventually sold, and all 13 acres of industrial land it sat on, to the scrap-steel baron of Portland, Jordan Schnitzer, for only $5 million. During the political fooferaw over selling the perfectly-good facility, it was suggested that for a resonable sum, that Jail could be converted into a "homeless shelter". Of course it could! It has a huge kitchen to feed the Homeless Horde, rooms to give them classes in and many dormitories easily converted to sleeping areas. It had a sizeable Infirmary for medical treatment, too. The perfect Homeless shelter, so why wasn't it done?

Enter the emotions the liberloons are well-noted for. We began to hear passionate speeches about hurting the FEELINGS of the Homeless Horde, about how ISOLATED the facility was...

WAIT! Isolated, IS the key this facility wasn't re-pourposed. Read on, my liberty-loving friends...

Those fine folks of PDX don't understand the political motivation of Madam Deborah Kafoury, or they wouldn't be puzzled. Multnomah County Commission leader Kafoury is politically VERY far left. Too far left to be called a traditional liberal, even.

Madam Kafoury is a Socialist, and since she wields her power by fiat, not consent, that makes her a communist. Not a "big-C" communist, she's a snake and won't admit her actual leanings, but a communist nevertheless.

What class of people do communists HAVE to convert to their thinking if communism is to succeed?

Right, the proletariat, the middle class. How do you control the middle class if you are a communist? By taking things away from them: you take away their money by over-taxation, you take away their guns, their property rights, but above all, you must take away their SENSE OF SECURITY! Deborah Kafoury has been at the forefront of Multnomah County's efforts to remove all these middle-class values.

Have you figured out WHY there are so many "homeless" on the street? Over 80% of them have serious mental deficiencies, need STRUCTURE in their lives, but the commies refuse that service to these unfortunates. Why?

Because the Homeless Hordes are communist SOLDIERS, that's why. Their very disorderly existance among the orderly middle class creates that INSECURITY that Madam Kafoury needs to perfect her plan to put the liberty-minded middle class under her commie thumb. Have you ever asked yourself WHY the government tolerates the whacko disorder of the "homeless" in the first place? WHY that government, which has no problem projecting all manner of CONTROL onto the middle class, can't seem to project ANY control onto the "homeless"?

It's because these thousands of crazies infesting our otherwise quiet and stable neighborhoods in Portland are there for a REASON, and that reason is to constantly conflict with we, the residents of those neighborhoods. That constant conflict we are forced into destroys our sense of security, and that is exactly what Madam Kafoury wants. With our security destroyed, Madam Kafoury can then exert control over us to "give us back our security".

No, had Wapato been converted to a homeless shelter/treatment center, it would have taken in up to 2,000 of these crazies and started giving them a normal life, guiding them on their path to a middle-class existance. That's a sizeable fraction of the homeless horde in our area. That would be the very antithesis of what Madam Kafoury wants, so it won't be done, and instead, the junk-baron Jordan Schnitzer will soon have his warehouse to make money with.

You might wonder why that jail was built in the first place. That's a story for another day, but meanwhile, look up the "broken window theory". More on this later.

Support your local Militia

Threat Horizon: Nexus of evil now arriving. The massive in-migration of muslim "refugees", guaranteed to have a significant percentage of Jihadis among them (my estimate  is 10-20%) AND the simultaneous crippling of assertive, crime-preventative policing by marxist groups such as "Black Lives Matter" and the "New Black Panthers" is putting US cities in grave danger. This cannot be reversed for at least 15 months, if then.

Militia is the answer. Our forefathers foresaw this need, and wisely included the Second Amendment among our enumerated Freedoms. The Second Amendment, of course, builds upon the Natural Right of self-defense. Self defense itself must be organized in the face of organized threats such as the Muslim invasion, or Hijrah.

Such organized self-defense is known as Militia in this nation, and we have plenty of precedent for it. How do we prepare for the use of Militia?

The very thought of the subject of Militia strikes terror into the hearts of the Federal Government, and they have used and will use every bit of power at their disposal to prevent the development of Militia. What will they do?

Intimidation: Say you want to have a "pre-Muster", that is, get a militia unit going. That calls for communications of outreach, at which time which the Federal Government is immediately alerted to your intent, and they will assume that this militia will attempt a violent overthrow of the Government, and they will react accordingly. Their first reaction will be intimidation. They will send FBI or DHS agents to meet the organizers, to bluster and attempt to intimidate the organizers out of forming any prospective Militia unit.

Militia organizers must be prepared for such repressive tactics. First, organizers must know their Constitutional rights to organize any group, and must insure that good order and discipline is in effect to prevent any legitimate public fear of a Militia. No one can prevent ignorant fear, but fact-based fear must be prevented. No one can be permitted to speak for the Militia unit in terms of political objectives, only in terms of protection of lives and property from all threats. It would not be good to advertise a Militia unit as a "Christian" militia, or an "anti-Muslim" militia, even if those objectives are part of the fabric of organization due to the current threat horizon. The purpose of any Militia is always protection of life and property, period. Proper protectrion strategies are likely to place the Militia unit in conflict with criminal and/or religious-based attacks, and that must be realized and prepared for. Secondarily, the Militia unit should be prepared to assist the civil police, unless it is the case that the civil police have been co-opted by authorities with the objective of defeating the concept and fact of Militia. In no case should the Militia be governed by local police authorities, or it ceases to be Militia and becomes just another police auxiliary unit.

Logistical opposition: Let us postulate that the organization of a Militia unit went well, and the unit has progressed via training to field-capable status. It is still not properly prepared if it is not able to be self-sufficient. You may bet your last dollar on the fact that the Federal government will attempt to impose materiel restrictions on the populace to hamper Militia operations. These restrictions will be on fuel supply, ammunition and weapons availability, and by means of curfews which will always be enforced against Militia, never against favored classes (the opposition). Curfews can be constructed so that even power cut-offs to militia-controlled areas of a city are used against Militia units. Food will be in short supply anyway, as the Federal government will use such a shortage to attempt to control the population.

The success or failure of a Militia unit to achieve it's goal of protection of life and property over the long term will be dependent on the support of the population that is being protected.

In future articles, we will discuss how the average family can help it's local Militia operate, by volunteering not only members of that Militia unit, but real goods to keep the Militia going.

Racism has changed

Overt racism is now a tool of the Left, and that's too bad, because it's being used the most by the hard Left, by the Marxist revolutionaries here.

Racism happens when any power of any sort is allowed to exist for the purpose of advancing an ethnic cause beyond a bright line of ethnic equality. Equality is a simple construct, but when it changes into racial advocacy (one race is superior in any way, or one race is suppressed in any way), then equality morphs into racism.

There is race war in this Nation. Everyone is involved. No one may choose not to participate. That's the choice of the current bringers of race war, the Marxist blacks and their allies. The allies include, but may not be limited to: radical hispanics ("la raza"), the hippie street punks ("occupoopers"), the anarchists, politically-radical techies ("anonymous"), violent environmentalists (ELF, ALF, PETA) and the Congressional Black Caucus. The black Marxists have Enablers also. Chief among them is the Democratic Party, which as currently led, accepts black racism and may even be promoting it.

The simple objective for all these groups and for their conflict is not any sort of racial equality, it is racial SUPERIORITY. Yes, whites and blacks already ARE equal before and under the law, but that is not good enough for the black Marxists. They believe that the white race must be made to pay "reparations", not to force equality, but to bring the blacks superior political power. These reparations take many forms, including gerrymandered Congressional voting districts, indulgences for blacks committing/threatening violence to attain racist goals, and the enforced "white guilt" we see now as official educational guidance policy ("check yourself for White Privilege"). The reparations have no ending date, ever, and that is what makes them racist.

Finally, we now have a resurgent "Black Panther" organization. This group arose in the 1960s, along with Fidel Castro's communist revolution succeeding in Cuba, and Che Guevara's exporting of violent Marxism around the world. The Marxism outlived Guevara, of course. The Black Panthers became resurgent after 30 years of quiescence when their racism was seen and recorded in Philly in the '08 election, but the new Obama regime gave them an indulgence.

When the race war comes to YOU, to your neighborhood, to your children's schools, how will YOU respond? Think about it now, because you will have to react very quickly when when the "social justice warriors" are on your doorstep.

 

The Zeitgeist of ignorance

Warning: Philosophy ahead! Critical thought/analysis required!

That's a mouthful, but if you understand the Teutonic concept of zeitgeist, it is nothing less than the spirit which underlies thought.

Zeitgeist is neutral, it's a philosophical concept coming from the interpretation of how the human thought process works, and I won't go into who said what about it, read the Wiki for that. As an individual educated in the use of critical analysis, I have found that zeitgeist is useful to explain some of the underpinnings of more complex patterns of thought, for example, the political process.

Politics boils down to an application of power, one individual or set of individuals over another individual or another set. Politics is supposedly what you get when you replace the sword with the pen and paper, but that concept ignores the applications of power itself.

Power is ALWAYS projected as force, and in the end, it matters little whether power is projected by naked physical force (the sword), or by the more complex process of using words (the pen) to convince the recipient of the power-projection to accept the power of the person projecting it.

Stop me if you've heard this before, such as from the scribblings of Kant, or Marx, or Locke, to name just three who have trod this path....

(coffee break)

I arose this morning and grabbed my tablet, as I am a Modern Man. On the tablet is controlled my Facebook account, and on my News Feed is the timeline of a gracious lady of my acquaintance. On the lady's timeline, of late adorned with screed from energy-limiting and food-limiting Marxists, is an article about Vaccines and Autism, and a link to a book about same, with a "motivational poster" to boot:

The basic premise in that poster is laughable on it's face, but it DOES do an excellent job of pointing out the Zeitgeist of the whacko concept behind it.

This is part "big lie technique", part Earth religion, but mostly, a simple rejection of science.

Using Dr. Haley's premise, we can take any significant point on the common calendar, look up the day in a time-based history of mankind, find some invention and process which started on that day, and insert ourselves into History by making an unsupported association between something evil (or good) that has occurred since.

What I just defined is the Zeitgeist of Ignorance. Zeitgeist can, doesn't have to, include emotion. Emotion is used here ("it's about the children") to try to convince us that a common scientific practice, vaccinating our children against horrible childhood diseases, is somehow linked to an Evil, "autism".

I know about autism. I have an autistic child (now 40 years of age). You can't bamboozle me about Autism, I grew old handling it in my family. Our Government, in one of it's GOOD works, did an exhaustive study on the subject of childhood vaccination vs. autism. The study is science-based, and the science is very good and definitive, as well as repeatable for those who have the time and dollars to duplicate it. Vaccines don't cause Autism.

In Oregon, we have a case study in the danger of this belief system that blames Autism on vaccines. In the city of Ashland, OR, hard by the border of California on I-5, a significant number of parents of school-age children have been persuaded by this belief to not vaccinate their children. The inevitable outbreaks have not happened or have not been reported yet*, but a similar situation happened in SW Utah in 1996, and that WAS documented by the CDC.

Okay, what about Autism, you ask?

Autism is nothing less or more than a grab-bag term used to describe a set of behavioral abnormalities. The term itself is akin to using the word "retarded", which is not politically correct to use any more. Autism is not specific, and "increases" in the "autism rate" have come as science finds out more about these behavioral anomalies and have casually tossed their findings into the Autism basket. My daughter was originally described as " mildly retarded", but that term is not in favor any more, and was totally replaced by the use of the term "autism". What behavioral science has done is nothing more than change the name of their game. That name-change does NOT count scientifically as more disease, but those who would make their livelihoods from "researching" this "disease" will lie to you and say that it DOES count.

That, my friends, is the Zeitgeist of ignorance. As we crowd more and more people on the face of this planet Earth, we are more and more affected by the lack of scientific thinking. The effects of that affectation are serious, and Malthus wrote all about it.

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* the lack of accurate childhood disease reporting in Ashland is complicated by the fact that these earth-religion parents clustered there have networks, and they hold "pox parties" wherein they deliberately expose healthy children to measles, chicken pox or whatever else, they don't know what it is their kid may have, as their "workaround" so they don't have to get the eevill vaccinations for their kids.

 

War talk

...from Europe. Seems a Saudi Prince Bandar is in the middle of it.

Basic claim is that unless Russia ceases to back Assad, the Saudis, who claim to control the Chechen rebels within Russia, will let them have their way and disrupt the Winter Olympics, or something like that. Izzat Saudi state-sponsored terrorism? Sounds like it to me.

Putin, upon hearing of this threat, said that Russia would wipe Saudi Arabia off the face of the Earth if that happened. We are pledged to support the Saudi King militarily, so that would put us toe-to-toe with Putin and the Russian Federation, if the pledge means anything, which I doubt with the Chief of Weasels in charge in DeeCee.

All very interesting, but "woo-woo" nontheless (as the Rivrsis would say).

H/T to the Armorer of Argghhh!

"Million Muslim March"

A muzzie-hugging outfit I never heard of before has jumped up and claimed that they will put on a "Million Muslim March" to Washingon, D.C. on the twelfth anniversary of the muslim extremist attack on the USA on 9-11-01.

Well, this wins the prize for chutzpah, if nothing else.

It boggles the mind that there could be a million muslims who want this "expression of freedom", other than those coming from that number who have been converted to the religion while in prison for various felonies. If that's who this group (AMPAC) wants to turn out, there won't be many turbans showing. Quite a few black berets of the New Black Panthers, an associated group, but not many in authentic Muzzie clothing.

Never mind, the US Constitution, Edition 4,329, as promulgated by raised-as-a-muzzie Barack Obama, says that everyone must come to Washingtoon, DeeCee to count and be counted, and the muzzies must feel that they don't count in the country. I have no idea why they feel that way, since their President has bowed and scraped to all manner of muzzie kings and princes, has voluntarily given up two successfully-fought wars to put down muslim extremism, has punted on and allowed three muslim-extremist revolutions to happen, replacing muslim secularist leaders.

Nope, we're already friendly enough to muzzies in the US of A. and overseas. Why, when US muzzies confab with Al-Q, our sworn enemy, then conduct Jihad against soldiers and civilians at a military post, we don't even call that terrorism any more, just "workplace violence".

This march will happen, I guess, unless those real muzzies who are probably being solicited to pay for it, like the Saudi king and his oil sheik buddies, decline to support this inferior brand of the religion.

Okay, in honor of Jay Leno's coming retirement, I've written a gag for him to use on his "Tonight" show:

Jay: "What do you call a million muzzie wannabees gathered in Washington D.C.?"

Bandleader: "I don't know, Jay, what DO we call that?"

Jay (choice of answers)

1. Hot under the turban
2. A quran looking for someone who can read it
3. 500 imams competing for two taxi driver positions, and 999,500 prospective taxi-ride no-pays
4. A strange way to express reverence for the victims of 9-11 

There, my life as a comedy writer just flashed before me in an instant, and was gone.

My pothead Congressman

Yep, you read it correctly: MY pothead Congressman. U.S. Rep Earl Blumenauer, (D) East Portland, just came all out (or was that all in?) for Federal MJ legalization. He gets Maroon of the Month for that.

Before all you Libertarians jump all over me, I'm coming around to the idea of legalizing weed by states, but not by the dot.gov. Simple, really. The government can't afford to be in the business of encouraging stoners, simply because unlike fine whisky drinkers like me, they are a motley lot.

Seriously, let's get real. NO Government has any business legalizing ANY sort of intoxicant until and unless it can detect and control intoxicated behavior where such behavior is legally and practically inappropriate. The Government can do that, more or less, with alcohol, but has NOT learned how to do it with weed. Hell, the Government can't even control intoxication by prescription drugs, which it DOES control at the front end, but does NOT control at the user end.

Now comes pot and it's millions of users.

Society is getting further and further behind the power curve on protecting itself from people doing complex, dangerous tasks while impaired by intoxication.

Earl Blumenauer wants to make it worse.

Oh, well, I'm represented by a pot puffer. It could be worse. I could be represented by an actual socialist.

Oh wait...

It's 0038

...what are YOU listening to?

Here at Schloss Rivrdog, I just turned off Leno, then listened to the chorus of coyotes, one from the up-creek clan and one from the clan 100 meters away, tell each other how much the female 'Yote wants the male 'Yote's babies. Of course, once they start this up, it can go on all night...

Useful tech equipment - the "Driveway Alarm"

I have a house containing guns and sharps, guns well secured but ammo not, and had two mobile children over for Xmas who might be in danger from the sharps (bayonet collection, mostly), so I made the upstairs off-limits, and put one of these handy-dandy alarms in place at the head of the stairs (sensor unit), with the receiver unit/alarm box down in the living area.

It worked well. I have been using a model of these out on my property perimeter to secure the M-35A2 bug-out truck, and that first one just turned up it's toes after 2.5 years service in the rain, freezes and baking sun in summer.

Two years-plus service is okay for the price I get these for. Note: at "Hardly Freight", they are half of the Shack's price, and sometimes on sale for less. If you are going to use multiple ones, you have to make sure to buy them on different channels, but I noticed that the new ones don't list the channel, hmmmmmm. My old one was marked "Channel 5".

Their function is to protect everything in front of the motion-detecting sender. It has very good detection sensitivity, it alarms on my cat when the Orange Terror struts the hallway between his various napping positions and his scratch box in the upstairs laundry room. Outdoors, it will alarm on a man working seventy feet away in the neighbor's yard, then send the signal to the box inside my house 105 feet from the sensor, through a cedar-board fence and a box hedge. The alarm is a loud tone which can be subdued to a less-loud tone. It will get your attention, and my old ears can hear the soft tone a half-house away while inside.

Seems to me that this would make a useful travel system. In a sedan, you could set it up on the package deck facing forward, and if anyone got into your car, it would sound off in your room, assuming you could park within 400 feet line-of-sight distance of your room.

Good stuff, but not stealthy. If you have it set on loud, and the thief it detects is nearby, the thief will hear the warning. I suppose a savvy e-builder could mod it to have a silent alarm somehow, but that's a challenge, as it has a sealed chassis which would not then be sealed anymore.

For SHTF preps, this alarm uses both AAA and AA cells, which should be in your kit in the rechargeable variety, right next to your solar charger, right? 

Civics bleg

This info request is about civics, the way your Citeh funds itself. Most municipalities work off of a tax base that is tied to property value, which is not the actual, immediate value of the real estate. The only reason that Citehs are not the worst of the gummint vote-buyers is that the millage rate limits their expenditure of public money, so they have to budget. Make that USED to have to budget.

Enter the monthly fee, in my Citeh (Gresham, OR), labeled "a fee to prevent more cuts" (cute name, innit?) Our City Council is trying to impose a fee, outside of the tax base, on every household and every business, of $7.50 per month.That's not a lot, but my basic research tell me that once these fees are introduced, they are usually raised, sometimes obscenely. In my case, I have to pay twice, because I run a small business here.

Back to the millage rate. The process of raising the millage rate involves the consent of the residents via an election. The process of sticking a new fee up our hoo-hoos does not, unless an ad-hoc committee arises to collect signatures and put the fee on the ballot in a special election (that could happen). Note that in Gresham's case, the City Council will put a new tax base on the ballot in 2014, and using the bludgeon of the new fee, will tell us to pass the new tax base or the fee will be continued, and likely, raised.

This is pure blackmail. As far as I know, the Gresham City Council members don't belong to the Mafia, but they are sure acting like they learned their civics at Mafia University.

Any Dear Readers who have information that might enliven my testimony before the Citeh Council next Tuesday, please leave it in comments.