Your not Paranoid if Someone is Really Trying to Get You

When a person speaks out against abuses and stupidity, like TSA's daily gropathons, as one example, it is expected that one will not earn friends in high places. When a person speaks out against the "religion of peace" as I have, it should surprise no one that I might have ruffled a few feathers here and there. I have been writing this blog for two and a half years now, and I note that my readership includes people from countries like Iran, Japan, South Korea, Great Britain (welcome), Germany (??) and a few others. But most of you are here in the USA. So, for my USA readers, the Survival Blog has an interesting piece by law enforcement officer warning to Beware of Homeland Security Training. This is what our local police are being trained in by our government. In other words, your and my tax dollars are being used to turn you and me into criminals.  Are you as offended by this as I am?

So how does a person qualify as a potential domestic terrorist? Based on the training I have attended, here are characteristics that qualify:

He goes on the list of number of items such as expressions of libertarian philosophies, Second Amendment oriented views and membership in the (gasp) NRA, stockpiling food, water, medical supplies and purchasing gold or silver, religious views concerning Revelations, fear of Big Government, and insistance on the Constitution as the basis for Government action. Now, while I am not a Libertarian, I do side with the libertarians on a number of issues. Of course, my Second Amendment advocacy is out there. Isn't preparation always considered a good idea? I thought FEMA encouraged people to stockpile stuff like food and water.  Do DHS and FEMA talk to each other?  Finally, any Christian who hasn't at least read Revelations and wondered what this apocolyptic book means, and doesn't want to make sure when the music stops that he is standing with God....just sayin's all.

Look, if a police officer buys into this stuff, he will be seeing Domestic Terrorists all over the place.  And, sure enough, they provide some helpful tips on how to make a criminal out of someone lawfully going about his business:

Methods of developing evidence of terrorist activity from virtually any search have also been discussed. Various common materials which may be associated with homemade explosives are listed, such as lengths of pipe, gunpowder, matches, flammable liquids and fireworks. Officers are told when these items are found, they can be listed as “bomb making materials”. The training even goes so far as to instruct officers that the items are cleverly disguised as legitimate, such as gasoline stored near a lawn mower, pipes stored in a shop building or gunpowder stored with reloading materials.

One course I attended used the example of a person employed as a plumber being the target of a search warrant. In this example, the officers were told how to use his employment as a plumber as further evidence of terrorism. The suspect’s employment would be described as an elaborate scheme to justify possessing pipes and chemicals so as to have bomb making materials readily available. Based on this example, all plumbers are potential pipe bomb makers. All gun dealers are plotting to provide arms to gangs or terrorists. All pest control companies are preparing mass poisonings. By using this logic, simply having the ability to do something criminal automatically makes the person guilty of plotting the crime. With all the various methods of manufacturing methamphetamine, it would also be easy to claim that a disassembled clandestine drug lab was located during the search. In other words, it is easy to frame anyone for possessing bomb making materials (or other crimes) if the officer knows what items to list in the report and how to link these items to terrorism.

So, the DHS wants to be able to turn virtually anyone they desire into a criminal. Once upon a time in the country, to insist that the Government follow Constitutional procedures, and that each person recieved those natural rights protected by that Constitution was considered a patriot. When I was a young man, such a person would have been considered simply a crank. To now be considered a domestic terrorist flips the system on its head.  Can anyone look at this and not think we are heading towards a Fascist dictatorship?

So simple even a Progluddite can understand

In an earlier post, I pointed out that what the people who are creating the chaos, and the Islamists, who are doing the same thing, want to do is stampede the average American into capitulating to an old idea, the Strong Man, with them as the Strong Men, of course. It's all about power and control. In today's American Thinker, John Pechette has an article that looks at the issue from a slightly different angle, but ends up coming to the same conclusions. In Our New Age Saboteurs, Pechette takes the Leftists apart by creating a new word Progluddite Just as the original Luddites were afraid of the new industrial revolution that would make lives better, so the Progluddites keep screaming "Stop, go back! It used to be better."

Really? For whom?

Today's Progluddites have irrational technological taboos and preferences: they hate nuclear power and the internal combustion engine and love 'clean, sustainable' and inefficient energy sources. The taboo technologies are clearly more productive, and the so-called sustainable technologies are nothing but updated versions of the Medieval energy sources our ancestors discarded.

Progluddites, however, are not interested in productivity or efficiency. High productivity is conducive to individual liberty and free choice, whereas low productivity is more conducive to collectivism. Progluddites believe that individual liberty and free choice are dangerous. Progluddites believe that, if only our political and economic culture became collectivist, the modern consumerist society would cease to exist, all excesses and inequities would be eliminated, and humanity would save itself from a technologically-induced disaster.

The Collectivist Utopia envisioned by Progluddites is not modern in concept: it is purely feudalistic. In their Perfect State, a Progluddite Oligopoly, a cadre of Leftist experts, would have dictatorial powers and the vast majority would be vassals serving the interests of their self-anointed rulers. Our future under the thumb of the Progluddite Elites would be identical to the past in which our Dark Age ancestors suffered. Once again, the mass of mankind would be born with a saddle on its back, to be ridden by a favored few who are booted and spurred; once again mankind's lot would be one of tyranny, stagnation, poverty, drudgery, cold, and hunger. But Progluddites, because they exist on a higher moral plane, and rule by virtue of a New Age Divine Right, would be exempt from the rules that they force upon their inferiors.

If you didn't get it when I wrote about Mordor awakening, perhaps the Progluddite analogy will make more sense.  But make no mistake that these people mean to rule over you and me.

Mordor has Awakened

Thanks to Kevin of the Smallest Minority for point me to the Forbes piece by Jerry Bowyer entitled American Nomeklatura. The whole article is good, and you should read all. I wanted to highlight this though:

“The new order articulated in [the Pentateuch] stands in contrast to a primary socioeconomic structure prevalent … throughout … the ancient Near East: the divide between the dominant tribute-imposing class and the dominated tribute-bearing class… These two groups, the exploiters and the exploited, are opposite sides of the same coin. The dominant tribute-imposing class consists, in short, of the political elite…This class includes not only the nobility but all who benefited by association with it: administrators, military and religious retainers, merchants, and landowners who directly or indirectly benefited from state power. What all of these have in common is that they all participated in the extraction of produce, or surplus, from the dominated tribute-bearing class: agrarian and pastoral producers, slaves, unskilled workers … Their production was drawn as surplus in the form of taxation, slave labor, rent, or debt service…”

Reading about dominant tribute-imposing tribes and their exploitation of dominated tribute-bearing classes by means of debt, tax and mandated labor, seemed strangely similar to modern times. It seems that Washington is not as far removed from Ur, Nineveh, Cairo or Babylon as we would hope. It seems also that our emerging system of central control is not what its advocates claim: It is not new; it is ancient.

There is a point that I have been making as well: that far from being new and improved, original, fresh, innovative, the latest thing! and whatever other buzzwords you want to use, Marxism is just the same old dusty politics of the past dressed up in class envy clothing.  Tribal chiefs, kings, emperors, tyrants, dictators, and whatever title they ascribe to themselves have been around since man first walked the earth.  It is the strong man theory.  The strong man, no matter his initial intentions, always ends up taking your wealth and your freedom, but doesn't fulfil his end of the bargain, which is to protect the freedom of those under him.  Even the ancient tribes of Israel living under the Judges, did not achieve freedom and liberty for the people, though I suspect they had more of it than when they petitioned Samuel for a King.

The first "new thing" under the sun in terms of a system of governance was the Constitution of the United States.  It was the practical working out of nearly 1800 years of Christian philosophy.  For the first time in history, and apparently the last, the philosophical roots of the Constitution set the individual above the collective, and made the government the servant of the citizen.  But what we have going on today, and for almost a century now, is a reversion to older ideas.  Boyer points out that there is little difference between Socialism and Crony Capitalism in practice.  I would also note that there is little difference between these two systems and the old idea of the King's friends getting the Royal franchise, and everyone else gets out of the business.  These are not new ideas.

People are impressed by the Roman Empire.  My high school Latin teacher was mightily impressed, but should have known better.  People are impressed with the roads, the aqua ducts, the stadiums, the imposition of Roman culture, and the Pax Romana.  But if I were to pinpoint the time that the Roman Empire began to crumble, it would be when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon.  All of the wealth of Rome, you see, was stolen wealth.  When the Empire could no longer extract enough tribute, the Roman Empire began to die.  The truly remarkable thing about Rome wasn't the Empire, but the Republic that preceded it.

A somewhat longer, and I think somewhat angrier argument can be found at the American Thinker yesterday entitled Obama, Islam, and the Forcible Virginity Test by James Lewis. In the opening paragraphs, Lewis gives us some insight into the Egyptian revolution by noting that some of the unmarried women protesting were arrested, and then forced to undergo a "virginity test," without anything being said by various womyn's groups. There should be outrage, but there is not. Then comes this part:

The United States Constitution is still by far the most successful political outcome of the Enlightenment. Nothing else comes close. Constitutionalism is the only successful political tradition that has ever been designed to deal with the disease of abuse of power. If you want an image of raw abuse of power, think Tahrir Square and the forcible virginity test.

Apparently the White House and every liberal looneytunes airhead in the West is stunned, just stunned, m'dear, by the Muslim reactionaries who are grabbing power all over the Arab world. Who coulda thunk? Obama meant so well. All the good libs are eager to vote for him again in 2012, 'cause of all the good intentions and lovely words he has brought to our foreign policy. Liberal delusions are always stronger than reality. If reality had anything to do with it, they would have dumped their dysfunctional beliefs fifty years ago.

Conservatives have known about the threat of Islamic fascism for 30 years, ever since Jimmy Carter let "some kind of saint" Ayatollah Khomeini assume absolute power in Tehran in 1979. When Carter stopped Iran's military from supporting the Shah, Khomeini promptly had assassinated, imprisoned, and tortured the Shah's supporters, plus any democratic opposition groups, plus the Communist faction of the Mujahhedin Khalq, plus anybody else who stood in this way -- including those American diplomats he kept locked up at the US Embassy for a year until Ronald Reagan got elected.

Lewis is angry because time, after time, after time the Left attempts to put its schemes into place, and time after time, after time, they fail. But the Left never sees the failures as a reason to rethink their position. No, instead they begin working on the next moonbattery. They always think the last one didn't work because they didn't have the right people in power.  Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin and Stalin, Castro, Pol Pot, Mao-they all just weren't the right people, but this time we'll get it right.

No kidding. Really?  It is just the strong man theory wrapped up in appealing language.

Another thing Conservatives have known, and are constantly telling Leftists is there are no "the right people." Give a person power, and he will inevitably be corrupted by it. Give a person absolute power, and he becomes a tyrant, a "President for Life," a Dictator, or whatever he wants to call himself.

The New York Times reports that the Egyptian Bros and the military are now allied to take over. Right at the start the Bros called for war with Israel, because it was their enemy Mubarak who kept the Egyptian-Israeli Peace treaty going for three decades. The Bros also brought back from exile their own Ayatollah Khomeini, Al Qaradawi, and celebrated with their own Million Muslim March in Tahrir Square. They also threw out the Google twitter mobster who helped make the revolt happen.

Which brings us full circle. Let me ask this, have you ever wondered why a so called "Abrahamic Religion" which is founded on the same Pentateuch that Christians also use as the Old Testament, hates Jews? Not just hates them, but wants to savagely exterminate them? Are not the Jews God's chosen people to be a light to the nations? Note the word, Light. Christians are also called to be a Light? Islam? Not so much:

Islam came straight from the Arabian desert of the 7th century. It reflects the lives of desert pirates, robbers, rapists and genociders, which was perfectly suited to nomadic life in the desert. That's how tribes conquered each other, as Lawrence of Arabia found out again in World War I. Desert Arabs literally took no prisoners -- except for women and children, who became slaves. Lawrence was a British romantic who hero-worshipped the desert Arabs, and then, after putting King Faisal into power, he decided to disappear forever, in deep disgust with his own romance with murderous primitives.

Wherever reactionary Islam takes over it re-creates the 7th century desert. Since the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, the Muslim world has been zig-zagging between modern values, like equality for women, and medieval desert values. Iran was a great victory for the reactionary throwbacks, and Obama has just tipped the balance in that direction again.

Something ancient is stalking the land again. Mordor has awakened.

Economic Terrorism: Look For the Union Label

Anthony Martin, the Columbia Conservative Examiner beat me to the punch. But I felt there was more to say. You can read his article over at the Columbia Conservative Examiner entitled Smoking Gun: Glenn Beck Exposes Plot of Economic Terrorism by Unions, Leftwing. Be sure to also listen to the tape, on the side bar. You should also go and see Mr. Beck's story at his site, glennbeck.com. A shorter version of the tape can be heard on the public site. If you are an Insider Extreme subscriber, you have access to the whole thing.

The rough outlines of the plot involve targeting JP Morgan Chase with a bunch of people protesting in the streets of New York and perhaps other cities in early May of this year.  SEIU would provide talking points, and these would be explained in the press, on blogs and talk shows before hand.  The people doing the protesting mustn't look like a typical rent-a-mob, but must seem to be ordinary "citizens."  Since Glenn Beck and others are onto the union printed uniform signs, they will have to revert to signs that at least look home made.  They hope to crash JP Morgan, and by extension, the rest of the banking system, and the markets.  This is, not to put too fine a point on it, the same thing the 9/11 terrorists were trying to do.  Take down Wall Street, and with it our ability to make and sustain the material goods needed for our modern technological society.  Now many have decried our "materialism," and it is easy to become ensnared in the idea of having the latest gizmo.  But how many people survived childhood to become adults, and potentially come to God because of that material wealth?  How many people have been saved because we had the wealth to be able to send a fleet around the world, and provide assistance in time of need?  How many people survived long enough to know their grand children?  How many?  All of that can be attributed to a single innovation in our history.

The one phrase that stood out to me was when he talked about "the corporations."  The phrase implies that all corporations can be lumped together as the same, and by implication, all are universally evil.  I have heard this phrase often when talking to leftists.  The notion behind it is that here is a bunch of money.  The corporation somehow stole it, and we want it back.  But that's not how it actually works.  In this day and age, when everyone from union pension managers, to mutual fund managers, to Grandma is invested in the stock market, there really is no excuse for such ignorance.  There is no excuse either for demonizing corporations as fat men, in top hats and smoking cigars, unless one has an agenda.  For in the end, corporations are you and I, and our money. 

Before you had the innovation of the capital corporation, if a person had a good idea, but could not fund it himself, the only thing he could do was seek a rich patron.  Such patrons might fund the idea, and allow the inventor to live well, but if there was any getting rich to be done, you can bet it would be the patron who got rich.  Such a plan surely did not get anyone too excited about inventing new things, or if they did invent them, it was only for themselves.  A study of technologies suggests that many of our modern inventions have been invented at least once before.  The thing that allowed them to be brought to a mass market was the development of the capital corporation.  The capital corporation existed in a limited way until the advent of the railroad.  Building railroad companies was such a huge undertaking that there were no patrons rich enough to fund them.  So, shares of the corporation were traded for money-capital.  In return, the shareholders got a say in the corporation, and got to share in the profits.  A market was established to trade the shares, initially under a tree on Wall Street in Manhattan.  The existence of a market for shares encouraged other corporations to be formed to pursue other lines of business.  Over time, the capital corporation has allowed people of very modest means to become wealthy by investing in businesses that were well run and consistently made money.  That is how the money got there.  They didn't steal it, and it belongs to the shareholders.

Now, consider how it was before the development of the corporation, and how it still is in Islamic societies living under Sharia.  The word to describe it is stagnant.  You have the rulers, either someone calling themselves "King," or a kleptocratic dictator who publicly styles himself as a "president."  In either case, the rulers take as much from the people as they can, and squirrel it away somewhere out of reach.  You probably have a small aristocratic class, members of the extended royal family and trusted henchmen, a small middle class consisting of merchants and tradesmen, and the vast mass of the poor, who live from hand to mouth.  Everyone basically stays in the class to which he is born, and everything seems to reinforce the notion that this is the natural law.  In the middle ages, the priest were largely taken from the aristocratic group, as parents sought to buy their way into heaven by donating what was, in essence, an extra son.  The church got an educated youth, and the parents didn't have to worry about one more son fighting to claim the family inheritance.  But as you can see, the sympathies of the church were with the rulers.

The capital corporation, together with a market for readily trading shares, upset the stagnant economic system that had been.  Suddenly, the economic pie became elastic.  With the railroads, came cheap transportation.  Goods could be sold to bigger markets, making innovations at the producer level as well as at the consumer level affordable.  That in turn spurred more innovations, with each innovation making the economic pie bigger.  Ford would never have revolutionized the assembly line process had he not had a nationwide market for his Model T.  Indeed, we would still be riding around in buggies.  The automobile would be a strange devise that only the very richest individuals could afford.  Did the existence of a nationwide market also spur some, shall we say, less uplifting innovations?  Surely.  But, Reagan was right, in that as each innovation comes to market, things generally become more affordable, and so a rising tide lifts all boats.

Remember earlier I said that the capital corporation allowed people of modest means to invest those modest means in larger enterprises that over time made them wealthy?  Let's explore that for a moment.  By making more people, if not independently wealthy, at least well off enough to allow them to pursue their own interests, corporations have also contributed to more freedom for more people.  When you are living hand to mouth, you do not have the resources to tend to your health, to travel, to educate yourself, or to contemplate how one might do better. Having some resources allows one to have leisure time, and to contemplate not only how to do things better, but the more importantly your place in God's creation.

Now, most union pension funds are invested heavily in capital corporations, i.e. in Wall Street.  Yet here are union leaders plotting to destroy that system.  They are plotting to destroy union members pensions, against the interest of the very members who voted them into leadership positions.  Why?  Frankly, I think the union leaders do not really care about their members.  The union members were always just pawns, to be used and discarded when their usefulness was done.  The union leaders are Leftists, who want power for its own sake, and will take it by any means necessary.   Union members are left to make their own deal.  Meanwhile, if you are looking to the Government to provide your pensions and healthcare, I've got news for you, the Govenment is broke too.  No, the only way to save something of your life is for union members to stand up with one voice and say to union leaders "Oh, Hell No!"

Can't We Compromise on Gun Control?

This is too funny.

It is rare to find comedy in a publication like the Washington Times, but today I found comedy gold. Eric Gould writes a piece entitled A Gun Control Compromise for Everyone. Go read it for a great laugh. But be sure to put down the coffee or soda first. I'll give you a quote or two though to give you a little taste:

Until then, why can't we all just, to quote leftist union thugs trying to divide us, "come together?"

It is high time for a gun control compromise that will satisfy the philosophies of those across the ideological spectrum.

Since liberals favor gun control and conservatives are against it, just take away all the guns from the liberals. That way, if there is ever a conflict like the 2000 election that cannot be resolved peacefully, the right will win because we will have all the guns.

Wiping some coffee off the computer screen, I realized I just had to bring it to readers' attention.  Also read the comments to this piece.  In case you still don't get it, the answer is "NO." 

Of Nuclear Energy and Sidewalks

On March 16, 2011 Ann Coulter published an interesting article entitled A Glowing Report on Radiation at www.anncoulter.com. If you have to look it up later in the archive, that should give you enough to go on.

Earlier this week, Mrs. PolyKahr and I had a "discussion" concerning a woman who called into a radio station saying that she didn't want cancer and therefore she didn't want any nuclear reactors built within a thousand miles of her location. Mrs. PolyKahr kept saying that she had "valid" concerns while I noted that the risks may be valid, but her concerns were irrational. As it turns out, Mrs. PolyKahr was more right than I was. The validity of something has nothing to do with the truth of it, and more to do with what you can document. Perhaps this is why the alarmists are always emphasizing the validity of peoples concerns. If they can keep you focused on people's valid concerns, they can keep you from discussing the fact that valid or not, these people are crazy.

As for the rationality of these concerns, Ann Coulter does a wonderful service for us all by pointing out the many fallacies and myths associated with radiation, and nuclear power.  Early in my career as an environmental engineer, I was tasked with overseeing the radon program for the Navy.  While the Federal Government could not directly force everyone to test their homes (we were not far enough along on the progressive timescale yet) they could make the Department of Defense test all of its housing for both bachelors and married couples. Without getting into the details of the program, let me just say that some of the "reasoning" behind the EPA's "action level" caused me to begin to wonder about the motives of the EPA.  In any case, at one meeting involving all of the agencies working on the program, a man from the U. S. Geological Service pointed out that based on the EPA "action level," several counties in Iowa would have nobody left alive.  He reasoned that they would all be dead of lung cancer.  He must have seen Bernard L. Cohen's study:

Bernard L. Cohen, a physics professor at the University of Pittsburgh, compared radon exposure and lung cancer rates in 1,729 counties covering 90 percent of the U.S. population. His study in the 1990s found far fewer cases of lung cancer in those counties with the highest amounts of radon -- a correlation that could not be explained by smoking rates.

Nor could it be explained by the EPA.  There is a general principle of toxicology that says "the dose makes the poison." Any substance taken in small enough doses is probably safe, and any substance taken in large enough doses will kill you. Water, if ingested in high enough amounts will kill, though I would not recommend it as a way to commit suicide.  Alcohol is the classic case. In small doses it does no harm, either short term, or long term, and it may even do some good. In bigger doses, the ingester loses coordination and judgement is inhibited. In massive doses, it can kill. Caffeine is another such substance, as is nicotine. Many trace minerals are necessary, but too large a dose will kill. Knowing this, I have always found EPA's warning that there is no safe level of radon to be misguided, if not downright deceptive.

Then there is this study:

A $10 million Department of Energy study from 1991 examined 10 years of epidemiological research by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health on 700,000 shipyard workers, some of whom had been exposed to 10 times more radiation than the others from their work on the ships' nuclear reactors. The workers exposed to excess radiation had a 24 percent lower death rate and a 25 percent lower cancer mortality than the non-irradiated workers.

Isn't that just incredible? I mean, that the Department of Energy spent $10 million doing something useful? Amazing, right?

That study was news to me, but it certainly fits in with the idea that some substances may be necessary, while too much is toxic. Keep in mind that correlation does not indicate causation, and there may be confounding reasons yet to be found that may explain the study.  But I still have to ask, why does EPA ignore these studies, and instead scares people out of their gourds? I don't say that these are the definitive studies, but as things stand, we can't even have a rational conversation. Which may be the point. If people are as frightened as the woman calling into the radio show at the beginning of this post, we are never going to have significant nuclear power in this country. It means continued reliance on burning fossil fuel, which if the goofball wormenists are to be believed, is even worse.

Meanwhile, over at the New York Times, where every silver lining has a dark cloud, John Tierney has an opinion piece bemoaning the fact that many things are now done with greater energy efficiency. The net result is that the same amount of energy is used to produce more stuff. That in turn, tends to foil our betters, who wanted us using less energy. Cars, for example, get around twice the miles per gallon that they did in the 60s, but now we apparently drive twice as much. It's enough to make a member of the elite want to raise taxes.

Instead, they ought to seriously consider nuclear. I had a professor who taught transportation engineering. He was a commonsensical old coot. He was also the man responsible for sidewalks and parking lots at the University. He said one time to us students "You can put sidewalks where it is aesthetically pleasing, but if you wait, you will soon see paths through the grass. Put your sidewalk there. Works every time.

Power Corrupts

And the corrupt seek power for its own sake. Timothy Birdnow had a quick blog post up at the American Thinker yesterday that I didn't have time for, but which I wanted to highlight here entitled Power Corrupts. A quote:

His fundamental premise is but partially right; the inner core of liberals (as opposed to the useful idiots) don't fear breaking a few eggs to make an omelet, but rather understand that control of the populace can only be achieved by controlling their energy usage. The goal is to keep 'em poor, ignorant, and lethargic. Wind and solar and the menagerie of "green" power guarantee a low energy lifestyle, which guarantees the elites can turn off the lights when and where they choose. Without energy you have no water pumps, no farm vehicles, no heat, no refrigeration. You have no internet, no talk radio. Control the energy flow and you control the masses. It's why they oppose drilling for oil. It's why they oppose nuclear. It's why they oppose coal. Anything that brings the prices down, makes for easier access to energy, weakens their stranglehold.

and:

That's not to say Mr. Smith isn't nearly right; liberals are a fearful bunch, and their lust for power bespeaks a lust for control of their own destiny. Liberals fear the chaos and uncertainty that freedom engenders; they want everything neatly pigeonholed. This desire for order, for control, drives their efforts to wrap the human spirit up in a tight, pretty package that they think of as compassion but which strangles. Liberals see security as the foremost virtue, and to get security they will bind everyone in a straightjacket.

Go read the whole thing. As usual, the truth is much easier, and takes less words to say than the lies you usually hear. Mr. Birdnow's sharply worded piece tells you all you need to know. When you see these people, this is what you are looking at. Pretty sad, huh?