A lesson from the Holocaust

One of the things that seemed odd as I was looking at immigration patterns to the US over time was that very, very few Jews moved to the US in the 1930s as Hitler ramped up antisemitism in Germany.

Where did they go?

The went to France and Denmark and Poland and other nations that were over-run by the NAZI or crushed by the Soviets six-to-ten years later. Most of them did not run far enough.

History rhymes

It appears that the New York Democrats are in the midst of a major pivot from "Israel is genociding the poor, innocent Palestinians who support Hamas" to "Hamas is a terrorist organization" and "Hate has no place in NYC". 

The abrupt reversal is causing whip-lash in political observers and major questions revolve around "Why? Why now?".

One possibility is that Jews know what happened to the Jews who were in denial and who stayed in Germany. They died.

They also have the institutional memory of what happened to the Jews who did not flee far enough away from the storm. They died.

The wealthy Jews in New York City are putting their homes and businesses up for sale and moving. They are not moving to Long Island, Scarsdale or White Plains. They are not moving to Connecticut or New Jersey. Nope. They are moving to Florida, Texas and the Carolinas.

Just 15 months ago that would not have been a huge issue for the New York Democrat machine. They still had funding spigots originating in US AID and other Federal agencies with lackadaisical oversight. Much of that cash-flow dried up.

With that no-strings-attached cash gone, the Democrats actually have to be responsive to their donors just as those donors are flocking to the exits.

Human nature is responsive to change. The US auto industry, for instance, was not responsive to their core customers in the 1960s because they thought they had a lock on the US market. The Japanese came in and ate their lunch. People will take their spouses for granted and then are surprised when the spouse cheats or leaves them.

The Democrats took their major funding sources for granted and now some of those funding sources are abandoning New York City and New York State and the metastasizing WOKE implosion. 

The lesson in this for us is that if you have to leave a location due to political instability...make a big jump. Don't stop at the city limits or the county line. If you live where breakfast is always served with bagels then don't stop until the menus list waffles or grits as the default side.

Supplemental info

In 2019 the city of Seattle, Washington implemented a higher minimum wage than required by the state of Washington

 

Between 2018 and 2025, the number of restaurants in the city of Seattle decreased by 40%.

There were other factors: Covid shutdowns and Antifa activities, for instance. But one can argue that the draconian shutdown rules and the tolerance for Antifa activities were simply other manifestations of the creeping Marxism in Seattle.

Some context for the time-line when the Pledge of Allegiance was popularlized

 

The Pledge of Allegiance was first popularized when it was published in The Youth's Companion magazine in 1892 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus (re)discovering America. Peak percentage of foreign-born population occurred around 1890.

The Pledge of Allegiance came out at a time in the middle of a period when the United States was absorbing a large number of non-Anglo Saxon, non-Protestant immigrants. They were also immigrating from regions that were not Constitutional Republics.

The floodgates opened during the Great Irish Potato Famine and didn't slow down until 1930. From the perspective of a Native, 13 Colonies descendant, the stream of newcomers became increasingly exotic; from the Catholic Irish with the weird cadence of speaking English to the Germans (still Saxons but not English speakers) to the "Hunkies" and "Wops".

For the record, my paternal grandmother was born in 1903 and spoke German at home. The first words of English she heard was when she went to school at age 5. Needless to say, she had a rough time during WWI when she was 14-15 and anti-German sentiment was rampant. 

A time-line 

1850 to 1880 

Germany (Monarchy form of government) and Ireland (Constitutional Monarchy) were the largest immigrant origin countries in most states and territories. In 1860, Ireland was the largest origin country in 22 of the nation’s 39 states and territories.

By 1880, Germany was the largest origin country in 16 states and territories. Chinese immigrants (Imperial Monarchy) were the largest group in California, Nevada, Oregon, and the Idaho and Washington territories. Mexicans (Authoritarian Republic) were the largest group in Texas and the New Mexico and Arizona territories.

1890-1919

The next wave of immigration to the U.S. lasted from 1890 to 1919, when more than 18 million immigrants arrived. By then, over 60% came from Eastern (Constitutional Monarchies and Absolute Monarchy) and Southern Europe, with large numbers arriving from Italy(Constitutional Monarchy), Austria-Hungary(Constitutional Monarchy), Russia (Absolute Monarchy) and Poland (did not exist as a country but was ruled by Russia and Austria-Hungary and Germany).   Source

That warm, fuzzy feeling that goes with the word "Collectivism"

If you were to be so bold as to point out to a socialist that "collectivism" has a poor historical record, you are likely to get the response "That was then. This is now. Its different now" or "It hasn't been tried here".

Those are testable assertions.

Home Owners Associations

Home Owners Associations have don't have outright abolition of private property. They still let you pay the full mortgage payment AND HOA fees to boot.

However, they often severely curtail what I think of as private property rights. Want to plant a fruit tree in your front yard? Gotta get permission. Want to mow your own lawn? Gotta get permission. Want to opt out of the cost of the decorative, new street lamps? Ain't gonna happen.

There are few social constructs more hated than HOAs. If you hate living in an HOA then you are going to loathe socialism.

The Florida Condominium Crisis

The 12 story Champlain Towers South building in Surfside, Florida partially collapsed in June of 2021 and 98 people died.

Investigations into the structural failure revealed that the primary cause was corrosion of the steel rebar in the concrete that had been exacerbated by leakage from the swimming pool. The corrosion caused the diameter of the rebar to increase which shattered the concrete it was embedded in.

Investigation of similar structures in Florida revealed that the problem was systemic and all condominiums with above-ground swimming pools showed similar degradation to the reinforced concrete pillars supporting the building. They are all ticking time-bombs.

Remediation is extremely expensive (vacate underground parking, jack up building, demo rotten concrete and rusted structural steel, replace with new). The condominium assessment for the "fix" will likely exceed the market value of the unit. 

Owners stopped making payments and allowing the properties revert back to the banks they had borrowed the mortgage from. The multi-unit, beachfront condo market in Florida is in free-fall.

Socialism (socially owned property) has a poor record of maintenance of long-term assets. Look at Venezuela's oil infrastructure...it was in total free-fall under Chávez and Maduro. 

Grab bag

I bit the bullet and bought a new laser copier/scanner/fax machine today. The move to Windows 11 computers meant that the computers with the drivers for that model of printer were on the mothballed Windows 10 computers. It still functions as a "dumb" copier but we lost the scan/fax functionality and the "drivers" for that model of printer are no longer available.

Bummer!

Little trees vs big trees

Southern Belle wants some evergreens planted for a windbreak. I provided samples of species that have done well in our climate and SB and Handsome Hombre chose Eastern White Pine and Concolor Fir. Norway Spruce and Douglass Fir did not make the cut.

They have about 300 feet perimeter where they want to wrap the windbreak around the yard. At 6' between trees, that is fifty trees.

Young seedlings cost in the neighborhood of $1.25-to-$4.00 a stem for bare-root stock.

4' tall seedlings in containers run closer to $40 per stem. 

The total cost of the plants for the project will be somewhere between $60 and $2000.

Time or money. That is the trade-off. I am not even sure that they will lose that much time but the larger trees will definitely create a greater visual barrier early on even if the smaller ones catch up with them on year 10 or 15.

Ear infections

I haven't had one in more than twenty years. Then I got one around Christmas and went to the Doc-n-a-Box on December 26. I was prescribed an antibiotic.

The infection went away.

Two weeks later, I had a relapse in the same ear. I went to my family doctor and was prescribed a different antibiotic and ear drops with steroids in them.

So, if I seem to be a little bit scattered and slow to respond, it is because I am not operating at 100%. 

Pledge of Allegiance 

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Those of us who grew up reciting this every day at the start of the school day knew that the United States was not a democracy. We knew it was a Republic and we knew what that meant.

We also believed that there was not a separate set of expectations for city kids vs country kids. It was one nation under one Constitution and while the wording of the laws might vary from state-to-state they still had to comply with the Constitution.

We also believed, naively in retrospect, that every citizen had God-given freedoms and liberty and that we were afforded due-process when accused and that criminals would be duly convicted and be sentenced to a proportional consequence.

What was not made clear to me when I was in second grade was the significance of flags.

Flags were the command-and-control technology on the battlefield before there were radios. Various units on the battlefield rallied beneath the flag of their leader. Atop a nearby hill, the overall commander had a signal corp with flags that corresponded to the units on the field. The commander coordinated the units on the field through the signal corps.

Pledging allegiance to the flag meant that you promised to play your part by following the flag even if we didn't understand the global significance of every command to march this way or that or dig breastworks there. The Pledge of Allegiance was a promise to trust our leaders and in turn demand that they be worthy of our trust.

There are some people who HATE the Pledge of Allegiance. Many of them have real problems submitting to any kind of external authority. They are virtually unemployable because they fight with the boss and they stir up conflict with other employees. They are agents of chaos.

A Sticky Wicket?

If the police were to respond to a domestic-incident at my address and I were to admit that I had beaten Mrs ERJ to death with a hammer*, Go Fund Me would not allow anybody to start a fund for "Newly Widowed Blogger ERJ".

The wife of the woman killed in Minneapolis is reported to have stated something like "I am responsible for her death" immediately after it occurred.

The Go Fund Me page for that wife and the dead woman's three children has collected more than a million dollars worth of pledges.

I have no quibbles about the money going to the three children through proper channels.

However, I also believe that the wife materially benefiting from the woman's demise before all of the criminal trials, civil suites and counter-suites and the appeals wind their way through the courts is shaky at best. After all, she admitted owning a significant share of the guilt/culpability at the time of the event.

 

*Just an example. Mrs ERJ is fine. 

Teaching a dog to bite

I had a supervisor tell me that the way to create a junkyard dog is to randomly reward and then punish a dog.

Dogs, in general, like and trust humans. They can bond with almost anybody as long as that person follows a few, simple rules.

That poses a barrier to creating a threatening, intimidating dog to guard properties like "junkyards".

According to my boss, the surefire way to create that kind of dog is to have random strangers first sweet-talk the dog and to give him treats and to pet him. As soon as the dog starts to reciprocate with body-language that shows trust...to have the stranger kick or TASER the dog.

"Hey, Big Boy, I am not mad at you..." Scylla whispers to the sailors.

Organizations that exercise ruthless ideological "purity" tests and then vilify former members who deviated the tiniest amount from the ideology spawn junkyard dogs. I wonder if the theory of junkyard dogs explains why so much "crazy" is manifesting around the periphery of the political landscape. 

Particularly troubling is that the extremes are rapidly mutating and what was once a fringe view is now viewed as "mainstream" by many. This mutating ideology means that mainstream members are pushed to the edges and are accused of disloyalty when, in fact, the dogma (pun not intended) is constantly changing.

America’s Most Common Drugs by Medicare Spending

 

Data from the Visual Capitalist.

Reformated to make it easier to read. 

Added later while Quicksilver is playing

The court heard how the 48-year-old Belgian male victim escaped from his home in Grobbendonk on March 18, 2025, barefoot and wearing only underwear and a T-shirt, when he fled a dog kennel where his wife, Anna V., had locked him. He staggered to a nearby home and knocked on a kitchen window, begging for help. 

You cannot make this stuff up...

A female prisoner was thrown into a locked cell (solitary confinement) at a Massachusetts prison after she told authorities she (had been) raped by one of at least four transgender sex predators housed there, a report has claimed.

According to an investigation conducted by The Hill, MCI-Framingham, the state's all-female prison, is punishing biological female inmates who speak up about alleged abuse at the hands of transgender inmates who also call it home.

"Always believe the woman".

"If I say that I am a woman today, then I am a woman and you have to believe everything I say and write because it is impossible for me to lie."

Random thought

It occurred to me that the number of genders is now roughly equal to the number of the members of the House of Representatives and Senate. 

If Noah came again, he would need an entire deck devoted to the Green-Blue-and-Purple Haired Obstrepottimii.