I would have sworn this was going to be about the stock market where "even a dead cat bounces onces", or a Monty Python reference where they repeatedly do bad things to them during the Holy Grail movie, or about the number of ways of skinning cats.
Fascinating, I've learned another phrase.
FYI according to a traumatized/desensitized vet in training, there really is only 1 way to skin a cat.
Identifying what Trump, Musk, and their advisers were up to while I was at ARC was one of the most useful things to come out of covering the conference.
Bit slow on the uptake that. What Trump is doing had already been described as "Blitzkrieg": get inside your enemies OODA loop; while they are busy in Norway, invade the Low Countries; while they execute the Breda Plan, force the Meuse at Sedan and cut off 1st Army and the BEF. The W.Allies did it all by telephone; Fritz by radio. Here CNN v tweets. You might be spending too much time trying to work out what Lorenzo is jabbering about. 😉️
Yes, this is an ugly way to do government, but any effort at slow and methodical would only leave us with the status quo ante. Shock and awe is not sustainable but it was the only possible opening gambit.
The unfortunate thing about the social security issue is that availability of social security numbers (SSNs) that should be purged from the system. For example, in Arizona it was discovered that a single SSN was reused hundreds of times for guest workers. The verification process at the Department of Motor Vehicles for receiving a drivers license only returns a paired SSN and the employer number to validate that the person in question is employed. First name, last name are not exchanged. What happened next was licenses were issued as well as automatic voter registration because the assumption was “you must be a citizen if you have a SSN.”
SSNs are the primary vehicle to obtaining mortgages, investment accounts etc. And while it may be the case the social security is retracted upon death, the families are aware that the payments have stopped coming to them, but that in itself is not verification that the SSN isn’t used in some other process.
Given that the state of records is unknown, it would be difficult to determine if addresses had been changed, or the SSN associated with another recipient and only an occasional payment sent once or twice a year. Because of the state of the database records themselves, there is no reliable way to balance the system in that respect. As a software developer I don’t share the confidence that we know either way what is happening because they are no consistent rules nor constraints with the data that is being enforced uniformly. Three different screens say three different things but the report says it’s right is not really a good indicator that there is enough stability to ensure level of confidence. And the status of the SSN not being tended appropriately leaves the door wide open for fraud other than over payment with voter registration that I think is of even graver risk.
Regarding the date time stamps in the system, Y2K remediation was critical for the financial system, and that was achieved with datasets of the same complexity as the social security system. And given that is critical, the US government could have just increased budget to accomplish the task as they reputedly do with other critical systems. From a Sarbanes Oxley and COBIT compliance perspective, publicly traded companies are under scrutiny for maintaining systems that avoid the errors described in the social security data. In other words the audit validates that your database has rules in place that prevent the integrity of data eroding that would enable a Bernie Maidoff level of fraud. i spent 10 years going through those audits, and hearing that the fed govt doesn’t even try to comply is infuriating. It leaves the door open to such misuse.
I heard a story from an ex work college in Australia who took up with a visiting American and moved there to be with him. Up until he died she used his ex wife’s SSN when ever she touched officialdom with never any problem. Moral of the story if you keep using a shit system. You will continue to Rheep the problems of it
There’s really many different types of fraud going on. Whether Elon is right about the level of payments is a separate issue than the SSNs being recycled. If the system can’t be reliably maintained it shouldn’t be a source of identity. And there can be all sorts of mayhem perpetrated and you can’t reliably perform forensics to detect it.
Came here thinking the headline was a twist on a Crippled Black Phoenix song ("Blizzard of Horned Cats" IIRC), learned a bit of new-to-me political jargon.
I find it ironic that both liberals and conservatives say "Trump is doing [X initiative] as a distraction" but the affective connotation is opposite.
I wish our country had truly expressed it was done with the river of BS spilling over the banks, but the reality is our Congress barely changed. Our gerrymandering has been perfected and the ranks of the reliable lever-pullers (of left and right) will continue to place us in near-stalemate. I live in a district where no Democrat stands a chance of winning, and so the only chance to replace the incumbent is in the partisan primary (which is inaccessible to me as a non-partisan voter). Yes, Trump clearly learned from his first term - something I honestly did not expect, so credit to him. But, he is going to run up against the entrenched Republican interests in Congress and that will grind all his efforts to a halt. To wit...
'I had to point out—especially to naïve, used-to-safety Australians—that the many working dogs and their handlers had nothing to do with drugs. They were explosives detection dogs, and the brains-trust assembled in that venue was indeed a target'
From your article,it did stand out and provides some context to us non-elites and our ability to empathize
We need to re-industrialise; of course we will be protectionist; and for exactly the same reasons as when we were industrialising in the first place. Argentina and Australia are primary producers; they need to trade primary products for industrial goods and dollars to buy those goods in.
Acts 5:1-11. Political Xtianity has to face up to Socialism/Communism being baked into their sad and silly "faith" from the git-go. Priests are the original social parasites and even the Prosperity Gospel only exists to maximise what Mega Churches can bilk from the pews. Of course with the pivot from Peter's pence in the Twen-Cen and towards Marxism, churches had to find some other way of sucking on the public tit and one they could troop as "Biblical". Voila! The Social Gospel.
The Church was also first in that supposed 21st Century thing: men in dresses./s
The things to remember about the "Rules Based International Order" are it isn't so much liberal as it is a creature of Marxists and perhaps above all, lawyers. There are few ideas so stupid as "International Law" or "Universal Human Rights"; and lawyers given free rein not answerable to Legislature and People is just asking for having your head handed to you.
I read the whole thing. I find your writing style, and tone, exquisite.
Great article. I'm really happy I found you. It's always a pleasure to learn and think. Thank you.
Before reading your article, I was thinking about the bigger picture, and as much as it's possible, in a disinterested way. I think it intersects well with a theme in your article. Apologies for being verbose and trying to sift my thoughts while I write.
While it may be true that the ARC participants may include (counter) elites waiting to get in at the next ride of the merry-go-round, and I'll add, it's most certainly true we have to work with what we have (counter elites at ARC already in power, for instance) and not what we fantasize over and the reality of governance is always imperfect, etc, it's also important we recognize how today we're downstream of yesterday.
It's not a coincidence if today we have DJT (or Bidet yesteryear), Starmer, Macron, Trudeau, Meloni, Putin, etc. (Apologies, my knowledge of Australian politics is relatively nul, although I've followed the immigration debacle there through the years). And those waiting in the wings for their turn to run with the baton, I'm assuming, because why wouldn't they be, are more of the same. They only got there by playing the game by the real rules of our constructed reality. It's not a coincidence if the mediocrity of those at the top has been declining for while now: the system insulates against those who would reform its gravy train. And this doesn't presage well looking forward.
The crux is we've been living with perverse, contradictory and misaligned incentives built into every institution, organization and business across western societies for several generations now. And today many of us smell the rot and observe the decadence, but methinks it's magical thinking to assume interchangeable elites will abracadabra it all away.
This is perhaps because the same gravy train of misaligned incentives has created a social public enthralled by dead cats, and the bunga bunga style. For brevity I'll just say we all inhabit the same perfidious constructed reality maintained by elites. I'm not sure who's fooling whom when all is said and done, but the rotten stench left of dead cats could partly help explain why many worthy contenders head for the exits looking for greener pastures, and spiritual fulfillment is, has always been and probably will always be, in anathema to the edifice of babel.
For a while I had hoped RFk Jr. would get the next iteration of ride DJT won, but alas, his compromise to pick a side honors him and validates that he's in it for the right reasons (as much as I can tell, imperfect he is like everyone). But if we're honest, there's not all that many RFK's around, I'd guess even at ARC, as those misaligned incentives inhibit the supply chain. I'm not saying we can't find candidates of similar ilk, just there's not that many (we can disagree about values, but I'm guessing we would both agree it's better to have values, and virtue, than not).
As you aptly wrote about flooding the zone with dead cats, this strategy is used precisely because it works extremely well in our contexts. And this is the real problem, contextually we're generations downstream of misaligned incentives both inhibiting individuals who stand for something from getting to a place where they can realistically attempt to play the game whose prize is a ticket for the top ride and we have a culture enthralled with dead cats and bunga bunga.
And so, now that the stench and rot is inescapable, as Gibran wrote, ideally what we need is to drink the medicine and allow the pain to wash over us as the narrative shells masking reality break. Easy stuff. But since contextually the "public" is enthralled by dead cats and artificially constructed narratives, that 13 year old truant is just one of many examples of schadenfreude, realistically I suspect this artificial reality will continue until something that cannot be repaired or replaced breaks and the resultant pain will be destructive at scale. Then we'll know just how many people of values and virtue exist, whether they be from ARC or not will be of secondary importance, although to it's credit, we need more ARCs to whether the storm we're in.
The strange thing (to me) is that the leftist orthodoxy doesn't SEE itself as an orthodoxy, or even as powerful at all. It's like their self-conception is so focused on gestures toward the 'marginalized' that they haven't integrated the fact that they control most political and cultural institutions...
I would have sworn this was going to be about the stock market where "even a dead cat bounces onces", or a Monty Python reference where they repeatedly do bad things to them during the Holy Grail movie, or about the number of ways of skinning cats.
Fascinating, I've learned another phrase.
FYI according to a traumatized/desensitized vet in training, there really is only 1 way to skin a cat.
Identifying what Trump, Musk, and their advisers were up to while I was at ARC was one of the most useful things to come out of covering the conference.
Bit slow on the uptake that. What Trump is doing had already been described as "Blitzkrieg": get inside your enemies OODA loop; while they are busy in Norway, invade the Low Countries; while they execute the Breda Plan, force the Meuse at Sedan and cut off 1st Army and the BEF. The W.Allies did it all by telephone; Fritz by radio. Here CNN v tweets. You might be spending too much time trying to work out what Lorenzo is jabbering about. 😉️
Sharp and witty. Delighted to hear that I'm in the "counter-elite".
Sounds cooler than "populist". But is there a distinction between them?
Yes, this is an ugly way to do government, but any effort at slow and methodical would only leave us with the status quo ante. Shock and awe is not sustainable but it was the only possible opening gambit.
The unfortunate thing about the social security issue is that availability of social security numbers (SSNs) that should be purged from the system. For example, in Arizona it was discovered that a single SSN was reused hundreds of times for guest workers. The verification process at the Department of Motor Vehicles for receiving a drivers license only returns a paired SSN and the employer number to validate that the person in question is employed. First name, last name are not exchanged. What happened next was licenses were issued as well as automatic voter registration because the assumption was “you must be a citizen if you have a SSN.”
SSNs are the primary vehicle to obtaining mortgages, investment accounts etc. And while it may be the case the social security is retracted upon death, the families are aware that the payments have stopped coming to them, but that in itself is not verification that the SSN isn’t used in some other process.
Given that the state of records is unknown, it would be difficult to determine if addresses had been changed, or the SSN associated with another recipient and only an occasional payment sent once or twice a year. Because of the state of the database records themselves, there is no reliable way to balance the system in that respect. As a software developer I don’t share the confidence that we know either way what is happening because they are no consistent rules nor constraints with the data that is being enforced uniformly. Three different screens say three different things but the report says it’s right is not really a good indicator that there is enough stability to ensure level of confidence. And the status of the SSN not being tended appropriately leaves the door wide open for fraud other than over payment with voter registration that I think is of even graver risk.
Regarding the date time stamps in the system, Y2K remediation was critical for the financial system, and that was achieved with datasets of the same complexity as the social security system. And given that is critical, the US government could have just increased budget to accomplish the task as they reputedly do with other critical systems. From a Sarbanes Oxley and COBIT compliance perspective, publicly traded companies are under scrutiny for maintaining systems that avoid the errors described in the social security data. In other words the audit validates that your database has rules in place that prevent the integrity of data eroding that would enable a Bernie Maidoff level of fraud. i spent 10 years going through those audits, and hearing that the fed govt doesn’t even try to comply is infuriating. It leaves the door open to such misuse.
I heard a story from an ex work college in Australia who took up with a visiting American and moved there to be with him. Up until he died she used his ex wife’s SSN when ever she touched officialdom with never any problem. Moral of the story if you keep using a shit system. You will continue to Rheep the problems of it
There’s really many different types of fraud going on. Whether Elon is right about the level of payments is a separate issue than the SSNs being recycled. If the system can’t be reliably maintained it shouldn’t be a source of identity. And there can be all sorts of mayhem perpetrated and you can’t reliably perform forensics to detect it.
Came here thinking the headline was a twist on a Crippled Black Phoenix song ("Blizzard of Horned Cats" IIRC), learned a bit of new-to-me political jargon.
I find it ironic that both liberals and conservatives say "Trump is doing [X initiative] as a distraction" but the affective connotation is opposite.
I wish our country had truly expressed it was done with the river of BS spilling over the banks, but the reality is our Congress barely changed. Our gerrymandering has been perfected and the ranks of the reliable lever-pullers (of left and right) will continue to place us in near-stalemate. I live in a district where no Democrat stands a chance of winning, and so the only chance to replace the incumbent is in the partisan primary (which is inaccessible to me as a non-partisan voter). Yes, Trump clearly learned from his first term - something I honestly did not expect, so credit to him. But, he is going to run up against the entrenched Republican interests in Congress and that will grind all his efforts to a halt. To wit...
https://babylonbee.com/news/republicans-clarify-that-deficit-spending-only-a-problem-when-democrats-do-it
If you think the Democrats need a chance of winning...
I like competition - it keeps both sides honest. The problem is both sides are more than willing to be anti-competitive in any and every way they can.
You sweet summer child; honesty is not a Dhimmiprat thing.
Republicans aren't really any better IMO.
If you have a district that can swing from one to the other, it trims the excesses from both.
So there you are: hoist by your own petard.
'I had to point out—especially to naïve, used-to-safety Australians—that the many working dogs and their handlers had nothing to do with drugs. They were explosives detection dogs, and the brains-trust assembled in that venue was indeed a target'
From your article,it did stand out and provides some context to us non-elites and our ability to empathize
“The whole exercise is a hail of dead cats.”
Love that phrasing given the explanation and context preceding it.
I want that door knocker.
We need to re-industrialise; of course we will be protectionist; and for exactly the same reasons as when we were industrialising in the first place. Argentina and Australia are primary producers; they need to trade primary products for industrial goods and dollars to buy those goods in.
Apples and oranges.
Acts 5:1-11. Political Xtianity has to face up to Socialism/Communism being baked into their sad and silly "faith" from the git-go. Priests are the original social parasites and even the Prosperity Gospel only exists to maximise what Mega Churches can bilk from the pews. Of course with the pivot from Peter's pence in the Twen-Cen and towards Marxism, churches had to find some other way of sucking on the public tit and one they could troop as "Biblical". Voila! The Social Gospel.
The Church was also first in that supposed 21st Century thing: men in dresses./s
The things to remember about the "Rules Based International Order" are it isn't so much liberal as it is a creature of Marxists and perhaps above all, lawyers. There are few ideas so stupid as "International Law" or "Universal Human Rights"; and lawyers given free rein not answerable to Legislature and People is just asking for having your head handed to you.
I read the whole thing. I find your writing style, and tone, exquisite.
Great article. I'm really happy I found you. It's always a pleasure to learn and think. Thank you.
Before reading your article, I was thinking about the bigger picture, and as much as it's possible, in a disinterested way. I think it intersects well with a theme in your article. Apologies for being verbose and trying to sift my thoughts while I write.
While it may be true that the ARC participants may include (counter) elites waiting to get in at the next ride of the merry-go-round, and I'll add, it's most certainly true we have to work with what we have (counter elites at ARC already in power, for instance) and not what we fantasize over and the reality of governance is always imperfect, etc, it's also important we recognize how today we're downstream of yesterday.
It's not a coincidence if today we have DJT (or Bidet yesteryear), Starmer, Macron, Trudeau, Meloni, Putin, etc. (Apologies, my knowledge of Australian politics is relatively nul, although I've followed the immigration debacle there through the years). And those waiting in the wings for their turn to run with the baton, I'm assuming, because why wouldn't they be, are more of the same. They only got there by playing the game by the real rules of our constructed reality. It's not a coincidence if the mediocrity of those at the top has been declining for while now: the system insulates against those who would reform its gravy train. And this doesn't presage well looking forward.
The crux is we've been living with perverse, contradictory and misaligned incentives built into every institution, organization and business across western societies for several generations now. And today many of us smell the rot and observe the decadence, but methinks it's magical thinking to assume interchangeable elites will abracadabra it all away.
This is perhaps because the same gravy train of misaligned incentives has created a social public enthralled by dead cats, and the bunga bunga style. For brevity I'll just say we all inhabit the same perfidious constructed reality maintained by elites. I'm not sure who's fooling whom when all is said and done, but the rotten stench left of dead cats could partly help explain why many worthy contenders head for the exits looking for greener pastures, and spiritual fulfillment is, has always been and probably will always be, in anathema to the edifice of babel.
For a while I had hoped RFk Jr. would get the next iteration of ride DJT won, but alas, his compromise to pick a side honors him and validates that he's in it for the right reasons (as much as I can tell, imperfect he is like everyone). But if we're honest, there's not all that many RFK's around, I'd guess even at ARC, as those misaligned incentives inhibit the supply chain. I'm not saying we can't find candidates of similar ilk, just there's not that many (we can disagree about values, but I'm guessing we would both agree it's better to have values, and virtue, than not).
As you aptly wrote about flooding the zone with dead cats, this strategy is used precisely because it works extremely well in our contexts. And this is the real problem, contextually we're generations downstream of misaligned incentives both inhibiting individuals who stand for something from getting to a place where they can realistically attempt to play the game whose prize is a ticket for the top ride and we have a culture enthralled with dead cats and bunga bunga.
And so, now that the stench and rot is inescapable, as Gibran wrote, ideally what we need is to drink the medicine and allow the pain to wash over us as the narrative shells masking reality break. Easy stuff. But since contextually the "public" is enthralled by dead cats and artificially constructed narratives, that 13 year old truant is just one of many examples of schadenfreude, realistically I suspect this artificial reality will continue until something that cannot be repaired or replaced breaks and the resultant pain will be destructive at scale. Then we'll know just how many people of values and virtue exist, whether they be from ARC or not will be of secondary importance, although to it's credit, we need more ARCs to whether the storm we're in.
The strange thing (to me) is that the leftist orthodoxy doesn't SEE itself as an orthodoxy, or even as powerful at all. It's like their self-conception is so focused on gestures toward the 'marginalized' that they haven't integrated the fact that they control most political and cultural institutions...
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/the-schism-of-the-elites
Nailed it! Thank you