Out of Control

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

apocalypse-2459465

This morning I woke up to two bizarre things: three coyotes merrily walking around the path between my back yard and the nature preserve in the full light of day.

For perspective, my neighbors often walk their dogs there.  Add also my reason not to have dogs right now — though we kind of wanted to — is that two weeks or so after we moved in, a coyote got into the neighbor’s yard and eviscerated the dog.  Who wasn’t small.

One of the things I really liked about hanging out in my backyard was seeing the other neighbors boxers (I think.  Yes, I know they’re illegal in Denver.  Yes, people still have them anyway) playing in the yard.  Now they rarely come out except for a few minutes, under supervision, or while being walked because of the coyotes.

At the same time, a friend on facebook, and someone I know is not stupid (and who is a RL friend, because he keeps his mouth shut on politics around me) was talking about what a great thing it was that Trump administration people were getting harassed and refused service in the name of “keeping the nazis down.”  No word yet on whether he wants to make Trump administration people wear an armband with an orange star.  Yeah, I think we found the nazi, and it’s not the people getting harassed.

And it’s our fault.  To a great extent it is our fault.  Oh, not completely, and I’m not going to argue that it is.  The guilt for being horrible people who wish to do violence and cause discomfort (for now that’s all) to innocent people is not ours.

But like someone in a bad marriage, the right has enabled the left.  I was going to write “in the US” but that’s not even true. It’s worldwide, and arguably worse elsewhere in the world.

Why do I say it’s our fault?

Well, guys, every mother of a daughter should tell her something on her wedding day “If he ever hits you tell him ‘one more time, and I leave’ then do it.” This is not as much a danger in modern America, or in America really, unless you’re in certain sub-cultures, but in the village growing up, from what I heard of women talking, every man tried it on at least once. I’ve had friends whose mothers didn’t tell them that, and who stayed.  The best of men, given disproportionate advantage of size and strength can become a bully to his woman, if there’s no enforcement.  Those marriages slide down hill fast.  I also have friends who were told that and left on the second offense.  Some reconciled later. Some didn’t.  Still better than the alternative.  And the ones who reconciled did it on a new footing.

Women have their own form of transgression in an intimate relationship, and if a man doesn’t curb his lady’s tendency to bicker and pick him apart with words, that will also end badly, particularly because she’ll convince herself he really is no good, and either leave him or demand constant homage.

I knew looking for a partner that I needed someone with a very strong will or within a year I’d walk all over him.  (Did it with boyfriends.)  Then grow bored.

So what does that have to do with how the left is behaving?

Same thing.  For years the partner in our political dance, had (still has in Europe) the full advantage of size and force.  Oh, maybe there weren’t more of them (impossible to tell) but there were more of them connected to each other, and they had the advantage of controlling all mass means of communication.

Also because they are crazy *ss people full of their own righteousness, most of us have kept quiet in public and often in private social occasions.  Oh, we weren’t crazy.  We knew that it could cost us our jobs/families/friends to even make slightly-less-left counterpoint to their assertions.

How many conversations did I sit through in the eighties, where Reagan was derided and Carter sanctified and we were told the boom in the economy was Carter’s and “just delayed”? How many conversations did I remain silent in the nineties, when they said that Hillary would run soon and wasn’t that wonderful? Or that sex was a private matter, and so Clinton had been totally right to lie under oath?

The problem, guys, is the same as with coyotes. Or wolves for that matter.  I had a well-meaning new agey friend in the nineties earnestly tell me  that all the campaigns against wolves had been misguided, all the legends of wolves attacking people were slander.  Wolves didn’t like the taste of people.  We were perfectly safe.  It took all I could not to yell in her face “We are made of meat, you dolt.”

But that’s part of it, you know, coyotes and wolves, and oh, hell, bears (there was a pub crawling one on the west side of the springs.  He hit bar dumpsters) and even deer (don’t get too near the large bucks.)  There is a number of custard heads who think they’re “cute” or “sweet” and “would never hurt humans.”

So we let them get closer and closer and proliferate out of control.  And we don’t even hit them with salt on the rear quarters, which would keep them away from people.  They lost their fear.

The same goes for the left and their constant bleating about “evil nazis.”  If they really thought we were that, they’d fall on their knees and lick our feet.  I know it with certainty because they do it with every totalitarian mass murderer from Che to Mao to Chavez to even the crazy mullahs.

No, what they’ve done is lose all fear of us.  And that has tempted them to act like the nazis they claim we are.

Look, sometimes just a dusting with salt on the butt of a wild animal (or super soakers with water with soap, which we’ve used on aggressive raccoons) keeps them away, makes them think twice.

Second civil war?

Sure, if we don’t start fighting back in other ways now.  How?  Complaints to the police for disturbing the peace/harrassment. Talking back in less dire circumstances.  Hell, if it comes to that and you’re feeling assholish, confront them for wearing t-shirts with mass murderers.  Bone up on the facts and statistics and get in their face with them.

But mostly, at home and at work, politely and firmly point out that these tactics are Nazi tactics, and that they are no part of a civil society.  Point out they are deluded and crazed partisans.  Keep on it.

Expect worse before things get better. Part of the reason they’ve gone insane, other than our permissiveness is that right now they’re losing power, and — having cut themselves off from all feedback — they don’t know why.  They lurch from conspiracy theory to conspiracy theory, unable to understand why they stopped winning.  After all, everyone they know keeps quiet no matter how heinous what they say.

They have to realize we’re not fringe, and that they’re out of control.  That takes figuring out not everyone agrees with them and silence isn’t consent.  Sometimes it’s horrified incredulity.

Yes, this is your annual “come out, come out wherever you are.”

As you know I was in the political closet for decades.  It twists your soul.  But more importantly, it lets the left thing they already won and can go totally out of control.

I’m not judging anyone.  You know your circumstances best.  Like me, you might be quiet because baby needs shoes.

But if you can, where you can, speak and be counted.

Fight now with words, so we don’t have to fight later with physical actions.

And may your efforts be blessed.

 

470 thoughts on “Out of Control”

  1. Haven’t even read the blog post itself. Just wanted to comment on that picture. I’m actually looking at it as part of the cover art for a story I’m preparing to release.

          1. Looks like it, though I’m used to seeing pictures taken from about 90 degrees to the left…

      1. I’m blessed – I’m retired, and I really don’t give a rat’s a$$. But, when I do confront them, I’m polite, respectful, deliberately looking for points of agreement, and backing up claims with sources.
        Just yesterday, following that protocol, I found myself argued with (well, not exactly ARGUING – that would require rational evidence-based logical thinking – instead, I got emotional SPEWS), with the other side getting increasingly rude and vicious. Finally cut me off, said she could no longer take the back-and-forth, as it was ‘making her ill’, and called me a Nazi.
        I didn’t do it for her. I knew, when I started, that she would likely not be receptive.
        I did it for the rest of those following along. They could see the difference between cool, reasoned, polite conversation, and rabid, irrational, disjointed, and vicious replies.
        We’re in this for the long haul. Yes, set the boundaries, by all means, but – don’t overlook the need to be as civil as you can possibly be.
        Up until the point when you open a can of Whoop-A$$.

        1. Larry Correia says that internet arguing is a spectator sport… not meant to persuade the person you’re arguing with. Or something like that anyway. 🙂

        2. Recently one of them asked me why I was twisted: I was continually the butt of ad hominem attacks from numerous leftists, so it must be me.

    2. I think a large part of our seeming silence is that we were taught as children to be polite and kind and turn the other cheek, and so we do (being the kind of people who tend to follow the rules and try to do what is right).

      Another part of our seeming silence is that until the advent of the internet Conservatives didn’t have much of a voice in the wider world. The Left owned most of the mass media and controlled what got put out there for public consumption. So even though there were people speaking out against the Left and their objectives, most people didn’t have any chance of hearing those voices.

      I hear a lot of people talking about what’s going on in the world, people who would be scorned by the ‘elite’ as country bumpkins, but who actually have a pretty good grasp of what is going on and why, and who has caused it. Of course, where I live most of the population is Conservative to some degree or other, so I don’t hear much from the other side. But a lot of our people really do ‘get it’ and have things to say. They just need to say it louder.

      1. Even then, as ‘talk radio’ was saving AM it was belittled as a handful of kooks (and it didn’t help that a few really were) and then the folks on the ‘net were just those still in their pajamas.. which got Yankee-Doodled (PJ Media) and then there was “bitter clingers” and the great followup of “Deplorables” which has become a proud banner for many – and there is astonishment, or more just disbelief, that the put-downs simply no longer work.

        “I am not alone.” and “We are not alone.” are powerful thoughts, moreso for those who had long considered themselves, or told they were, isolated cases.

        2. “Deplorables” was when I knew that Her Shrillness had lost it. She might still win the election (thank gods she didn’t) but she was no longer rational, if she ever had been. That one comment guaranteed that every single voter who had ever THOUGHT about voting for Trump would make it to the polls, no matter what.

          The hysteria that followed the election….and continues to this day…is going to cost the Democrats dearly. Hopefully dearly enough. It’s the “deplorables” comment writ large. And I think…I hope…the voters sre heartily sick of it.

          1. I know it helped me make up my mind. I already knew I wasn’t voting for Hillary, but it so enrage me I decided I had to vote for Donald Trump, since he was the only viable opponent. I did have a moment of hesitation a few months later, standing there in the voting booth, but however dubious I was about Trump, the thought of ending up with a president who found much of the nation “deplorable” was enough to make me vote for Trump. As matters have turned out, I’ve been far happier with President Trump than I was afraid I’d be when I filled in the oval beside his name.

          2. The meme that ‘half the nation are racists’ is very pervasive amongst the mostly uninformed Left as well; the ones that are too busy holding down their jobs and just doing their day by day (and are unlikely to get touched by #WalkAway ) I ran into that from a friend who rarely talks politics a long time ago, because he wasn’t happy that I liked Donald Trump (an opinion that really, doesn’t matter because I’m not voting). I gently reminded him that he knew that I’ve always been rather conservative, but what did that have to do with the fact I found this advertisement mockup (that one with the Trump mecha and the cute Japanese girl) hilarious? (Seriously, it’s silly and just a pure mockery of what people seem to think he’d be capable of…)

            It reminds me that there are people out there who don’t get exposed to the shit we do – being conservative and then being called the usual litany of slander – but then are also exposed to only the left wing media’s side of things, and don’t get anything else, because they find that exhausting, can’t be bothered to look things up, or simply don’t have the time.

      2. Not only are we nicer and more polite, but we are actually tolerant of other points of view, even when they get nasty.

    3. My response to such a comment?

      “I find it interesting that you equate being polite with being a coward. Perhaps that explains why all the Antifa, anti-gun, anti-Constitution, and BLM protestors think they have to be loud, rude, crude, socially unacceptable, and threatening. You no longer have the strength of character to be polite anymore.”

      1. Ah, but they have an answer to that now: good manners and civility is “white privilege”, apparently. Therefore, they don’t have to be nice.

        Can’t wait for that particular snake to eat its own tail.

        1. The obvious rejoinder is (assuming the leftist is white), “Then you’re rejecting your ‘white privilege’ (which sounds very much like saying ‘western civilization’) by being an a**hole to everyone you meet, eh? You do know that that only means that you’ll be met with similar behavior in response, right? Perhaps you haven’t thought all this ‘white privilege’ bushwah through…”

            1. I think the spread of outrage against such things is growing. Just today saw a video done by a white rapper named Tom Macdonald, called “White Boy”, where he talks about all the accusations flying against whites just because of being white.

              Then he has a second video in response to all the people who called him vile, hateful things in response to that video.

          1. The whole “white privilege” canard is part and parcel of the race-based Marxist (perhaps neo-Marxist is a better term) Critical Race Theory which essentially boils down to a polite way of stating Nation of Islam Founder’s mantra that “The White Man is the Devil” and creating a framework around that polite reiteration of that mantra to provide justification for the right to treat whites (and others deemed to be “oppressor groups”) as having lessor rights. CRT actually excuses crime committed by “oppressed groups” against members of “oppressor groups” as a permissible method of redistribution wealth and power from the privileged to the non-privileged. Essentially, CRT is a framework for Communazism, taking both Communist ideas with regards to international socialism with the methods and identity group ideology from Nazism grafted on….and it shows in their rabid hatred of Jews.

            2. My preferred critique is that Bell’s Critical Race Theory is flawed. It overlooks the possibility that the potential cause with greater proximity may better explain results. There is a propagation speed to any mechanism of oppression. Distant enough oppressors cannot react fast enough to maintain oppression given the normal churn of human society.

              1. I am old enough to remember when the civil rights movement was about judging people based on the content of their character.

    4. I know people who I have extremely profound disagreements with.

      Sometimes it isn’t the right time for the fight. What do I hope to gain? Who around is persuadable, on what grounds are they persuadable, and how well will what I am biting my tongue on serve? Sometimes by controlling my temper now, by holding my tongue, I preserve some ability to persuade in the future. Remember, I’m the guy here that proposes that the stoners should be killed. There are legitimate grounds to object to a number of my views. Some of them I will never be very persuasive on. If I save my credibility for the strongly defensible positions where it is more important that I actually persuade people, I do more actual good.

      Some times for all that the other person has transgressed, they still fall short of crimes of argument I see from leftist internet trolls. If I would have people judged by their own actions, if I would have peace, I owe some of my opponents a certain measure of peace from me, so long as they haven’t crossed those lines.

        1. I told him I was a poet, I was lookin’ for the truth
          I do not care for horses, whiskey, women or the loot
          I said I was a writer, my soul was all on fire
          He looked at me an’ he said, “You are a liar.”

          “Son, it’s faster horses, younger women, older whiskey, more money.”

          Well, I was disillusioned, if I say the least
          I grabbed him by the collar and I jerked him to his feet
          There was something cold and shiny layin’ by my head
          So I started to believe the things he said

          Well, my poet days are over and I’m back to being me
          As I enjoy the peace and comfort of reality
          If my boy ever asks me what it is that I have learned
          I think that I will readily affirm

          “Son, it’s faster horses, younger women, older whiskey, more money.”

            1. Or to quote from Styx’s “Fallen Angel.”

              I met a man who told me once, “Son, Sincerity’s the key. And once you learn to fake it, well, you’re gonna be home free.”

          1. Always be polite, mind your manners, and have a plan to kell everyone in any room you enter.

      2. Some people aren’t even interested in debate, logic, or truth. They’re only interested in what they want and believe and are absolutely unwilling to even talk about anything else.

    6. Bullies are GOOD about picking time and place confrontations that favor them– it’s foolish to be a good target if you’re not also going to be prepared.

      1. Every time I see “I have not yet begun to fight” I think of some poor marine, lying on the deck at John Paul Jones’ feet, bleeding from multiple wounds. He speaks: “There’s always some poor son of a bitch who doesn’t get the word.”

  3. With your permission, I’d like to repost this on my admittedly goofy blog which tends more towards recipes and micro-rants about things that make me crazy.

      1. Hey, you’ve release two (at least) short story collections, and been collected in several others. I’ve read those; they’re pretty good to down-right good.

            1. Feels too tight like a new pair of shoes that you’re tempted to buy in a half-size larger? (I’ve made that mistake twice at least.)

              1. Yah know darlin’ girl, if you hadn’t written so many of those shorts in some obscure defunct word processor my life would be ever so much simpler. A global replace for your habit of double spaces after a period is the least of it.

  4. One idiot on another Blog was talking about the dangers of Right-Wings groups.

    The problem is that the idiot (I think an European one) said that the American Tea Party was Nazi/Fascist.

    So why should I listen to his concerns?

    Oh, I made it clear that he/she was badly mistaken about the Tea Party Movement.

      1. True. Freedom of speech and the press really doesn’t exist in Europe. Heck, you complain in public about a Muslim raping your daughter, you get arrested and go to jail for hate speech.

        1. That’s what surprised me back in June, was that every news outlet from the tabloids to Die Zeit* had front page stories about the girl who was murdered by the Iraqi “refugee.” The government could not keep the lid on it.

          *Die Zeit (“The Times”) used to be THE paper of record in Germany, with the Frankfurter Algemeine and Suddeutsche Rundschau not far behind. I’m not sure if it is still #1, but it is up there.

        2. Flip off a security camera, and the British police will track you down and arrest you. It’s what the cops spend effort on that shows the priorities. The lack of interest in what was going on in Teleford, despite the local clergy repeatedly bringing it up, is telling.

          1. I saw a story a couple days ago about a Swedish dental worker who told the authorities that several of the Muslim “children” he was treating were adults by dentition. The response from TPTB was swift and fierce; he’s out approx $50,000, and might see criminal charges for privacy violations. Summarized (with a link to the Swedish language original) here:

            https://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/29473-swedish-dental-expert-fined-50-000-for-exposing-adult-migrants-masquerading-as-children

            No surprise, the anti-immigrant party in Sweden is growing quickly.

            With respect to Telford (and Rotherham, and, and), one wonders what incentives the police received to look the other way. Considering other pedophile problems there, I’m not really surprised.

            1. Honestly, what do they think is going to happen?

              We worked hard and long and *hard* to establish the Very Important concept of free speech as something that ultimately defuses prejudice and hatred because nothing grows it faster than suppression of speech and of thought.

              Portray every person who is frustrated as evil and prohibit them from voicing their frustration and *punish* them when they do, particularly if they’re pointing out something true (if not complete or whatever) and there’s no chance at all to reduce what is no longer legal to hear.

              But Europe seems to have been that way forever… if we punish people for *saying* these things, then hatred will go away. If we toss the holocaust denier in jail then antisemitism will go away.

              Note that NO ONE is suppressing the speech of the “left” in America and there’s a darned good reason on the right to WANT them to keep screeching. It exposes a hateful ideology for what it has become. (I know that liberals still exist, but there’s nothing “liberal” about the loud-mouths and it shows. #WalkAway )

            3. They were afraid of being charged like the dentist with being racists; and there’s also the well-known Muslim habit of killing people who cross them.

      2. It’s not just the Europeans. The American Left’s blinders and echo chamber make them just as clueless about what goes on in most of America.

        A British author was expounding about “America” to his blog readers. He considered himself an expert; he’d been to conventions in New York, Boston, Austin, San Francisco, and Seattle; America was an urban hive with big hotels and convention centers, full of properly-left-thinking people just like him…

        2. The amusing part is that the Europeans I know who visited the non-urban America absolutely loved the place.

          But then, I found France outside of Paris positively charming.

          1. The various exchange students I met while at university in Wyoming were pretty much always absolutely *floored* by the size of the US. And when I lived in Romania, and was asked if Denver (where I lived at the time) was closer to New York or LA, and I had to explain not only neither, but that it was like from where we were in Romania to Paris, and the shocked and disbelieving expressions I got…

            Even the students from China were shocked, partly because they’d never traveled freely in their own country, and so had no relative comparison.

          2. Yeah, then you get people like Pojelainen(sp) who have driven across as much of the country as I have…

          3. My mother (a former history teacher) said that the History if France is the history of what Paris did, amd how the rest of te country dealt with the resulting mess. Take Paris out of the equation and the French are a pretty decent people. Pity so many people are in love with the Human Sewer on the Seine.

            1. To be fair, there are a lot of people in France outside of Paris who don’t particularly care for Parisians either.

                1. My dad visited there in the late 60s/early 70s and they were hearing it then, too. I suspect it’s as old as France itself, as a country.

            2. That’s pretty much the history of England as well, except with London being the hub of everything.

              People from those kinds of countries have problems understanding the USA, Canada, or Australia, where the capitols are of little importance other than being hives of scum and villainy.

              1. Are supposed to be of little importance. Today in reality not so much. Wake up, use a bathroom with appliances handicapped by epa, drive a car defined by the epa and dot work as allowed by dept of labor and go home and repeat.

                1. If the Sweet Meteor of Doom took out DC, we wouldn’t have to worry about all those problems.

                  I’m not seeing a clear downside here.

                  1. That’s one of the reasons I was hoping OBL and Al Qaeda actually had a nuke. Of course they probably would have considered bombing New York to be much more disrupting that bombing Washington D.C., and they’d probably be right.

                  3. Because sadly smod is less likely than dc and it’s jackboots filling train cars

            1. “Mein General, why do we keep invading France? It’s full of Frenchmen!”

              “I’m not sure. I think it’s a tradition…”

            3. Heathen! You should know that after God created the angels, he created the French…. to perfect the design!

        3. Part of it also is that I think Europeans are simply incapable of understanding just how big the US is. My go-to example is still Agatha Christie having Poirot say that the Hungarian Ambassador to the US, stationed in Washington DC, would “obviously” have known all the prominent families of Chicago.

          1. The USA – and Russia – take size to an extreme Western Europe has a hard time grasping.

            1. Might get some traction by pointing out that the US is the size of Europe (or close enough for an approximation), and States are roughly equivalent to European Countries.

                1. I personally am fond of saying it’s roughly the same distance from London to Moscow as it is from where I live to D.C. would you expect Moscow to govern London well?

                  Usually causes mild consternation-guess Brits don’t like Russian government too well.

            2. LA to New York City is roughly the same distance as Lisbon to Moscow might help get it across…

        4. Friend visiting from Australia years ago was thrilled to be taken to little out of the way places in the “middle of nowhere.” That way he experienced something that wasn’t yet another chain restaurant or such. Seems a friend of his had visited and never ventured very far off the Interstate at all and claimed everything was dully uniform.

      3. Is there even the Euro equivalent of a personal responsibility meme in public discourse, or is it all socialist of one stripe or another?

    2. Ah yes, the threat of right-wing extremism, always trotted out when left-wingers lose an election.

      1. That’s “anyone to the right of John McCain”… Or the GOP’s officially sanctioned nominees before Eviltrump whipped the tablecloth out from under them… both of them have either decloaked or lost their minds. (I know, “embrace the power of ‘and’…”)

        1. Don’t be ridiculous.

          John McCain was a right-wing extremist, as we were informed when he ran against Obama. McCain was occasionally useful to the Left when he was a “maverick” running against the rest of the GOP, but he got demonized as quickly as the rest of them when he might have had a chance to take power.

          1. Every Republican nominee since Goldwater has been declared to be the “next Hitler” and as soon as they lose or are out of office, they are transformed into the type of reasonable candidate that “Republicans used to run” instead of the current “next Hitler”. Of course now, they are simply not even trying to be coy about it and are simply declaring that all Republicans and anyone who votes for them is by definition a Nazi (even when the people voting are small government libertarian types who are choosing the lessor of two evils).

    3. The obvious response is, “If the non-left was as vicious and powerful as you continually claim, you wouldn’t be able to keep making these libelous statements without being visited by someone unpleasant. That such things never happen only proves that what you’re claiming is total prevarication.”

      1. IMO it’s more simple.

        They just don’t know what fascism actually is. 😦

        1. They don’t know what Communism is, either… Frankly, they don’t seem to know much beyond “point and shriek.”

          2. Karl Marx was Fae. The stories of Faerie gold being sticks and leaves or such fits. It’s just that so many are still under the spell and have yet to wake up. That’s bad enough, but that insistence that others believe the leaves are gold is the big(ger) problem.

      2. I’ve been saying variations on that ever since they started calling George Bush (Bush, of all people!) ‘Hitler’.

        I wish I could run down the orginator of the quote “If you accuse somebody of being a Nazi, and you are not dead one minute later, you have been refuted”

        1. Much like the one that goes… “If all the gun nuts were as violent as the anti-gun nuts claim, there would be no anti-gun nuts left.”

        2. I don’t think the quote works much, but it does show the ignorance of the slander. They now believe it is true (they said it enough, it must be true, no?) but really if you are accusing someone of it and they actually are a nazi, they don’t care. The rest are not and all you now have done is ensure they will tune you out. If you get too annoying you might end up hurting. (“See how violent that guy I accused of being violent was, after I verbally berated him and then physically threatened him, and maybe slapped/punched,etc? How dare he fight back!. The nerve.”)

          I got a giggle out of the bint who went to an actual neo-nazi gathering and learned they wanted A LOT of the same things she held dear. Heh, she learned that they are National Socialists (Just like Bernie!) who happen to be antisemites and bigoted against those not paste white.
          Then again, if they were smart, they’d not be leftoids.
          Okay, there are 3 kinds of leftoids:
          1-Those stupids who are ignorant enough to think it will work this time, no really.
          2-Those who ride them into some form of power, who stoke the flames to ride the thermals. It doesn’t need to actually work, they just need to be the top powers.
          3-And the effing Morons (apologies to actual morons) who are a combination of 1 and 2.

  6. They have to realize we’re not fringe, and that they’re out of control.

    They know we’re not the fringe, Sarah. And they know they’re out of control. It’s not about their ignorance of such things.

    The whole BLEEP!ing mess arises from a lack of punishment for their bad behavior:
    — By their parents, when they were maturing;
    — By us, now that they’ve become our problem.

    Their behavior confers certain emotional rewards and political advantages on them. Without the counterbalance of sufficient punishment, that’s enough to keep them going…right up to the point where they’re on the dirty end of a pogrom. I submit that we don’t want to reach that point. There aren’t many fabrics that are easily cleaned of blood. There aren’t many such consciences, either.

    1. Oh yes. It’s Jordan Peterson’s point about don’t let your children do things that make you dislike them. In other words, channel and discipline the kids when they are small so you don’t have a disaster when they grow up. As children, so society…

    2. Can’t rely on the courts to punish them; or even convict them most of the time.

      1. Can’t rely on the courts to punish them; or even convict them most of the time.

        You are correct, Mike. I hope the implication is as plain to all the rest here as it is to me.

        1. People look at me funny when I go on a rant about how hard governments worked for centuries to supplant vendetta justice, and it’s all behind thrown away in a matter of decades.

          A Justice System must be seen to be pursuing and dispensing justice if it is to have legitimacy.
          In the absence of that, reversion to mean is inevitable.

      2. That’s assuming they ever make it to court. I wonder how many jurisdictions are running a catch-and-release system like Broward County…

        1. Are the elected officials Democrats? Then the answer is yes.

          Then there’s incidents like the one in Charlottesville, where an investigation found copious evidence that the Governor of VA, the Mayor, and the Police Chief deliberately planned to allow violence (yeah, it COULD be criminal negligence) so they could cancel the permit a Federal court forced them to grant.

          This article has a link to the actual report.
          https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/12/04/charlottesville-report-tells-us-what-happens-when-police-fail-do-their-job-glenn-reynolds-column/917521001/

          “Furthermore, though no specific evidence of a “stand down” order was found, as some have charged, the report did find that police didn’t do their jobs: “We did not find evidence of a direct order to officers to ‘stand down’ and not respond to fights and other disorders. Even if there was no explicit ‘stand down’ order in place, CPD and VSP both failed to ‘stand up’ to protect human life.” Areas where conflict could be expected to occur didn’t have police officers assigned to them; areas where police officers were stationed were out of the way.

          When violence first broke out, according to two witnesses Chief Thomas reportedly said “let them fight, it will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.” “

          1. And doesn’t that sound just like the law enforcers at the last school in Florida that had a mass murder? I’m seeing an awful lot of data points in the same area on that graph.

      3. It really seems to depend on the local courts. In deeply blue areas? Maybe a slap on the wrist. In areas where the rule of law still applies? They don’t actually get to act out so there isn’t much they can be charged with.

        Where they are the worst is places where the city is condoning, if not outright assisting, them in their attempts to create chaos.

        I’ve seen claims that they want to disrupt Sturgis this year. I’m really tempted to venture up there for what could be some rather entertaining confrontations.

        1. The OWS/BLM/ EIEIO crowd made a tactical error in Austin this past spring. They assumed that the State Police would stand aside like the city cops. Oops. Should have checked jurisdiction a little more closely when they got the protest permit. *evil kitty smirk*

          1. Admittedly I’m waiting until hat snatcher is actually convicted to have any trust in the legal system. So far assault with gross bodily injury in CA with multiple unattached witnesses is ok if trumper. And not one person will be punished for inauguration riots. Nevermind the political skaters

            1. Law enforcement not acting on this in accordance with existing law will be a step too far. At that point I’m afraid it will show far to many people that the only option left to get justice is vigilante style.

              1. Already noted that the two step happens. Whether it is dc police and park police failing to stop rioting or Berkeley acquitting assault with multiple witnesses the legal system has proven that its default is to have not a single iota of justice in the “justice” system. Never mind the fleas like BLM and FIB.

                They’ve already taken steps too far. Assume malice unlessproven otherwise and keep that in mind when you think that the jackboots in blue won’t massacre subjects if instructed to for say gun control.

          2. I think I missed hearing about that one! I know the one in Georgia did not exactly go like they’d planned (Police forced them to unmask and arrested like 10 of them).

            For those frequent times Antifa screws up. . .Nothing says ‘Hello Antifa’ like a pepper ball to the nuts.

            1. It was on the state capitol grounds, and apparently that requires a little more than just showing up and being obnoxious.

        2. > Sturgis

          I would pay actual money to see video of that.

          Sturgis is like cosplay for seniors… but it’s thousands of “get off my lawn” and “don’t tread on me” people, in a gun-friendly state, of a demographic identifiable as “armed to the teeth.”

          Seriously. Get off my lawn…

          1. I’m planning on taking popcorn and a video camera 🙂

            My money is going to be in the guys cosplaying ‘biker gang’. Leathers make pretty decent general purpose armor and there will be enough vets and violent felons mixed in that I’d be willing to bet the people cosplaying ‘revolutionaries’ go home sorry and sore.

            Plus, I doubt if the LE is going to let anything serious happen. To much of a chance of someone getting dead if those 2 groups mix it up.

            1. I was just talking to a friend who has been there several times. He said that, given his knowledge of the Sturgis city government, they’d probably capture everything on video, edit it, and sell it on CDs…

              1. Hey, that might get a woman I used to work with in the video! She has gone and worked Sturgis for the last several years. She’s still looking really good for being in her 40s, too.

            2. Worked with folks in Louden NH which had its own bike week albeit much calmer. Even that way there were areas that no uniform (fire/ems/pd) would enter. “Clubs” brought people out.

        3. Given that Sturgis is still a mandatory ride for almost all of the one-percenter MCs, the SJW crowd is going to get a very rude wake-up call if they try to disrupt that event. Never mind that Sturgis is absolutely inundated with law-enforcement, precisely because of all the one-percent MCs who go. Pass the popcorn.

  7. Well, guys, every mother of a daughter should tell her something on her wedding day “If he ever hits you tell him ‘one more time, and I leave’ then do it.”

    The subject is a particular bug-a-boo of mine.  

    A close friend The Spouse and I made during college moved many states away.  We kept in contact and saw each other when we could.  She eventually got married, but it was in a marriage that spiraled downward.  He was initially very charming.  He always remained so around The Spouse and myself whenever we visited, apparently we intimidated him.

    One day during a phone call I found myself asking if he was abusing her.  She told me that ‘he never hit me.’  As the conversation continued I discovered he had picked her up and thrown her against a wall and had locked her out of the house in three feet of snow when she was wearing nothing but her underwear.  At the time she still insisted that she was not abuse, because he had never hit her.  He had convinced her of that. 

    After she finally left him her mother, even after she understood the extent of the problem, said that he was still her family to her.  It took years of therapy for the friend to put herself back together, and in the process she also had to draw back from her family.

    I hate it when the very people who should be a major part of your support system are the ones that are breaking you.   And I would add, ‘Or if she ever hits you,’ as I have observed it from both sides. 

    1. We need to also remember that not all abuse is physical. Emotional and verbal abuse can leave their own scars. (unfortunately, I know this all too well.) Tell someone that they are worthless, good-for-nothing, worse-than-useless, enough times and eventually they will start to believe it.

      1. Tell someone that they are worthless, good-for-nothing, worse-than-useless, enough times and eventually they will start to believe it.

        Yes.

        In the friend’s case it was the damage created by the steady emotional abuse that convinced her that she was somehow at fault in the marriage and that had her staying in the situation when he escalated to physical actions. The emotional damage is taking the longest to heal.

        1. You probably know this already, but since someone reading might not–
          this is standard abuse tactics.
          The abuser works through to making the abused think they DESERVE far worse.

          That’s why “just leave him if he’s abusive” doesn’t work for the guys who are really abusive, just the ones that are…what, culturally abusive, I guess would be the right way to put it?

          It’s like a lock on a door– someone who wants to break in WILL break in. But someone that might pick up your wallet if it was on the table won’t bust through the door to get it.

          1. I unfortunately have far too many friends who have been abused, and almost none of it was physical. There’s a couple of things to note: 1. Abusers have a “public face” and a “private face.” They can keep themselves under control until they have their victim under their thumb. 2. Don’t discount the term “gaslighting” because you’ve heard it misused. It’s a very useful word, because it’s basically warping your perceptions to their reality.

            Someone I know got a divorce and explained it simply: “I realized that it couldn’t always be my fault.” The interesting thing is that by reporting this to somebody else, she recognized the narcissism in her own ex, because the same thing had happened to her.

            1. In VA Beach my wife took a neighbor to the hospital where she heard the woman tell the nurse “I fell down the stairs.” The injuries were rather obviously not from a fall. Wasn’t reported to the police.

              A year or so later we get home and there’s frantic messages on the answering machine from the oldest kid (hers). (The two younger were hers) This was a Friday night. He was TAD to some island. She had her head on the kitchen table and was incoherent. Didn’t know where she was. Didn’t acknowledge she had a kid. Couldn’t even tell us her name. Her kid had the number for his CO and had called, and she arrived about 2 minutes after we did. We briefed the CO on the abuse. Who wasn’t happy. We took the kids. She took the mother to the Navy Hospital ER, which promptly transferred her to a civilian psych ward. Dad? It was Friday night. On a Caribbean island. They didn’t find him until Monday morning. He was flown back with orders to go straight to his CO’s office and wait at attention… Since it wasn’t my chain of command, I know not what the final disposition was.

              So, here we are. With me. A 9 month pregnant wife. With plans where to farm our 2 out when she goes into labor, with 3 other kids. Talked to the neighbors on emergency kid allocation… and informed all of what was going on. Next morning called CPS, since we had 3 unrelated kids and the parents had no clue and we had nothing that said we had them legally, and I was asked “Are you feeding them?” Do they have clean clothes?” and one or 2 additional questions answered yes. And they said “No problem then.” And hung up. Civil servants? Faced with a real problem? That’s not going to happen… I wasn’t a fan of CPS before that, and certainly less of a fan after.

              When she recovered she moved out. With her kid. I had never before (nor since) seen a complete mental breakdown like that. Abuse can and does have serious aftermaths. From what my wife gathered, she watched her mother getting beat when she was growing, and thought that’s just the way things were. She was from a Pacific island, I don’t know which one. I’ve read that abuse occurs across generations. And can believe it from the one experience I’ve had with it.

      2. Oh, yes, this. Between the glass fishbowl effect of being a preacher’s kid (and the absolutely VICIOUS way that church members take issues with the preacher out on his family), being adopted, introverted and overweight her entire life, my wife was so beaten down it’s a miracle (and one I thank G*d for every day) that she’s been able to be such a good mother to our children. A quarter of a century later, between my support and her therapist, we’re finally seeing some of the pieces going back together.

        Folks who think that there must be nothing wrong if they aren’t any physical signs, disgust me. This goes just as much for folks who see a person with chronic illnesses/pain and can’t see any physical indicators and insist that it’s not a problem. Tell that to someone who’s dealing with something like fibromyalgia. Depending on how that day is going (and how badly my RA is feeding into and being fed by my fibromyalgia), they’re lucky if they only get a tongue lashing.

        1. If someone who has constant health problems including pain finds a way to function many observers, because they cannot imagine being able to do so themselves, conclude that the problem must not be that bad.  

          I have had my own health challenges, and was surprised to learn what I was capable of managing when there was no other choice. Now, instead of doubting other’s challenges, I say a quite prayer for them and thanking G-d that that it is not my cup, at least for today.

    2. I told my husband before we got married that if he ever hit me even once, he would never see me nor any children we had again. He never did hit me, though I think he came close a time or two.

      The women in my family don’t put up with that kind of thing. Though I think they haven’t always realized that other things constitute abuse (like being yelled at for no good reason, or other things….)

      1. “other things constitute abuse (like being yelled at for no good reason, or other things….)”

        Slippery slope when you start on the “emotional abuse” train. It’s easy to say someone has no good reason for yelling at someone; especially if you’re angry or fearful yourself and not at all interested in digging into why other spouse is yelling.

        1. It’s not that they’re yelling, it’s what they’re yelling. Any variation of “look what you made me do!” is a big red flag, but “why did you do [thing hazardous to life and limb]?” is not.

        2. Coming home from a bad day at work/bad commute/bad whatever and walking in the door yelling….When it gets to where you dread seeing the person come home from work because you don’t know if you are going to get yelled at because of things you had nothing to do with…it gets a little rough.

      2. My mother told my father a variation on that, with a “and if you LIVE, you will never see me or the kids again.” He believed her. And in his younger, hotter-tempered days, he did punch a hole in a wall or door or two, but never threatened any of us physically. And while he has said some cruel things from time to time, and skirted the line of verbal abuse, Mom has always called him out on it, and he’s recognized the behavior (eventually). And this is a man who grew up in a physically AND emotionally/verbally abusive home, and who struggles with some very nasty clinical depression. (I am proud of him for defying the odds, and also marrying the kind of woman who *would* stand up to him and call him out on his crap, because he could so easily have become a monster had he actually married the mouse everyone always mistakenly assumed my mother to be.)

        1. MIL did the same. Apparently FIL came from a very abusive family. Not known by their kids until they were well grown. He was strong enough to over come it. She was strong enough to be a major assist.

          Hubby has punched a wall, once. In response to something he caught a cat walking on his just shellacked (dry) shelf. The shocked, terrified, look on my face, scared the h*ll out of him; I was ready to bolt almost as fast as the cat**. Then I made him make up with the cat he scared, whom we hand raised, FYI. First & last time.

          Me? Never yelled at him, ever, let alone physical. Water works OTOH … at a drop of a hat.

          ** Legacy issues from an Uncle who had extremely violent seizures; yes, it wasn’t his fault, I know that NOW, does it make a difference? Heck no.

          1. Water works OTOH … at a drop of a hat.

            Irish?

            I freaking swear, if there was something I could edit out, it’d be the “hey, look, an emotion– time to tear up!” thing.

            1. Scottish, at least traceable. British Isles in general. The “stiff upper lip” sure didn’t get handed down in the genetics or is very buried.

              Empathy in spades. The family joke is I went back for 2, three, or four, helpings in the genetic department. Now that the hormonal stew is abating, still have all the empathy, just don’t get the heavy on set water works as easily. Ditto with the frustration water works, OTOH old enough, that doesn’t occur. If I can’t get my point across at the offset, well, that’s their problem, not mine. If it matters, it’s still their problem (Hey, it only took 60 years! 🙂 )

          2. “Water works OTOH … at a drop of a hat.”
            Which can be every bit as manipulative…. especially around third parties.

            All most of us want is for our SOs to be happy. When they aren’t, we blame ourselves.

            1. “Manipulative”

              Not for me. But then I wasn’t doing it deliberately either. On command wasn’t available.

          1. My wife’s version was, “I know where you sleep.” Kind of tongue in check, because she NEVER said it while angry. It was usually when I was getting wound up to be angry and it put a stop to that pretty quick if I was just getting frustrated-angry.

      3. I did hit my Lady. Once. I won’t go into details, but it had to do with her telling me that I was screaming at her any time I raised my voice above what would be appropreate in a Library. Which meant I had no way to let her know I was angry that she was bound to notice.

        *shudder*

        I was VERY ashamed of myself, and once we got into therapy she was told, bluntly, that a somewhat raised voice is a safety valve, and if you weld it shut you won’t like the results. We worked on it. I raise my voice a lot less, but she lets me shout when I need to (like when somebody on the road has tried to kill us). She understands that shouting is how I bleed off the ape’s desire to hit something or do something equally stupid.

        Couples therapy is a cliche, but it can help a lot if you are BOTH willing to work at it. If one or both of you go in with the attitude “there’s nothing wrong with ME” and expect validation from the therapist, you will fail. And if the therapist is only validating one of you, even if it’s YOU, you need a new therapist, pronto.

        We have been lucky. That only happened once, and she creeped my Lady out.

      4. The one story I have on the subject isn’t mine to tell. Let’s just say that if your wife’s family connections is the sort where you capitalize the F in “Family”, hitting her even once can have very permanent results.

    3. Sounds like my sister– she was bodyslammed, hit with a (large, old) phone, etc, but never where someone he didn’t trust could see– and he ALWAYS had an excuse. A favorite was that she “drank too much.” Which, incidentally, was usually when HE was drunk and angry…..

      One of the phone incidents happened in front of one of his “friends” who is actually a decent guy, who dragged her to the side and told her it was NOT OK and she had to get out before it was in a body bag. (none of their houses were of a sort you could rationally secure it and call 911 and expect them to have anything but body removal when they got there)

      That’s when we found out that Oregon doesn’t recognize abuse unless he leaves in cuffs or she leaves in an ambulance…no matter how many witnesses they call. And they give split custody with similar restrictions.

      1. “That’s when we found out that Oregon doesn’t recognize abuse unless he leaves in cuffs or she leaves in an ambulance…no matter how many witnesses they call. And they give split custody with similar restrictions.”

        ((Blink, Blink, Blink)) Really??? (not sarcasm). Born, raised, & lived most of my life in Oregon (just barely north of border for about 5 years), I did not know that. Shows you how protected my life has been; so NOT complaining, may it stay that way forever.

        1. My mom, likewise, except for when she was living in a state adjacent– but it does explain why there’s the “she locked him out of the house and called 911 even though he had only yelled and thrown things, rather than laying hands on her,” doesn’t it?

          According to her lawyer (who I don’t think much of, but anyways…) the law was adapted to be gender neutral at some point around the turn of the century.

          There is… lots of stupid. Hard to give much detail without saying too much.
          😦

        2. Hmm, that might explain a couple of things. OTOH, justice happened eventually in the two that I can think of, but it took a while.

        3. Yeah. Really don’t want to talk about a situation I know in Oregon where there’s a kid involved. There’s a narcissist and they’re really good at getting judges’ sympathy even in the face of physical evidence in front of a cop.

      2. Interesting. One of my friends found, years ago, that in whatever state he was living in at the time, when the cops are called there, the man leaves in handcuffs, even if he’s the one who was getting the shit beat out of him (because he had been raised never to hit a woman, not because he was incapable of defending himself).

        1. Sounds like the kind of policy that’s rooted in a true observation– if you’re called on a DV, and nobody is removed, murder frequently happens– but oy.

  8. Also because they are crazy *ss people full of their own righteousness, most of us have kept quiet in public and often in private social occasions.

    My first thought as I started reading today’s blog was:  At some point you have confront the proverbial drunk at the party or the family member who always comes to the gathering making a scene or the whole thing collapses. Then you got there.

    I just keep wishing that I had the spirits of Ben Hecht, Dashiell Hammett and Dorothy Parker in my mind to provide me with quick, witty and pointed words with which to address the situation.

  9. I’ve been watching the #WalkAway movement with equal parts hope and trepidation. My hope is that the movement does facilitate positive change from those who have chosen to walk away from the abusive mess that constitutes the Democratic Party.

    My trepidation that either many of those people will return after being given sweet promises of “Oh, I’ve changed and this time it will be better!”, or that the powers that be will attempt to hijack the movement for their own ends, as with the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements.

    Right now, I’m choosing to see some glimmers of hope. The left may be acting like the abusive spouse who asks why we made them hit us, but if the slow burn reaction of “Get Woke Go Broke” is anything to go by, maybe we can get through this without a breakout of violence.

    I hope.

    1. I am concerned that all of these left-wing people joining the Republican party are going to turn it even farther left than it already is.

      1. May be time for us to reiterate, or realign the goals of the Republican Party so there’s no question about what they stand for.

        1. The Republican Party is quite clear about its platform. “We hate Trump too! Eleventy!”

          1. Yep. Part of why my cynical side says that a rep senate isn’t an obstacle to impeachment and since the party apparatus is fine with torpedoing nominees I half expect Speaker Water’s HR01 to pass early February with articles of impeachment. And not sure 20 reps wouldn’t vote in favor in senate

      2. That’s basically one of my original issues with Trump.

        But my alignment with the Republican party has always been in terms of opposition to the Democratic Party. I think the American Democratic Parties are organizations as legitimate for me to support in any way as the Communist Parties, or the NSDAP. Trump’s nomination, and finding out about Wendell Willkie’s history was hugely disenchanting and demoralizing.

        Success, ease, safety, and a secure political home were never a likely result of such extreme politics.

        1. I’m not nearly so concerned about a safe political home (belonging to a Party) as I am about the welfare of my country and her people. Those parties determine who is allowed to run for office — we may get to vote on which one of the candidates is elected, to some extent, but they choose who runs. So it’s important that we-the-people maintain a short leash on the Parties, or this country will keep tipping over the edge. Actually, we may have already passed the point of no return in that direction, given that I haven’t seen any effort yet being made to correct what’s being taught in the public schools.

          1. Public schools are a mess, and I’m intensely skeptical of how responsive the Republican establishment is to the will of conservative voters.

            1. The only rational response is, “we’re washing our hands of the whole thing, shutting down the Department of Education, and returning the entire educational system back to the various states and their sub-polities.”

              If the Fed’s thumb is in it anywhere, it’s going to stay broken.

          2. How do you propose to “maintain a short leash on the Parties” from the outside? Political parties, like everything in American politics, are run by those who show up. The only way I know to influence a political party is by becoming a part of it. It is amazing how few people are politically active at a local level. One person doesn’t have much influence and politics does make for some strange bedfellows, but looking on from the outside and complaining is completely ineffective.

        2. Always been open to suggestion on candidates, so give everyone a look… but have always wound up voting GOP. Biggest reason is I’ve observed that while GOPs will at least somewhat vote with their constituents, conscience or some other non-Party factor, Dems almost invariably vote in lockstep with the Dem Party. Which means zero Dem resistance to stupid ideas, if only they get floated as a Party plank.

          So my policy has become… when in doubt, vote GOP; you’ll regret it less.

      3. Most of them aren’t joining the Republican party. Some have, but most are trying to figure out where to go from here.

        Frankly, after all of the infighting occurring within both major parties, I wouldn’t mind seeing some third party shake-ups jolting the system.

          1. Ranked voting is a way for a dominant party to freeze out all competition. It is already being used in Minnesota urban areas to consolidate the DFL stranglehold. Good luck on getting any third parties going when there isn’t even a viable second party.

            1. The Daughter, who has faced mostly depressing options available to her come election time, wants a ‘none of the above’ option.

              I ask her, ‘What will happen when it wins?’

              1. Others are selected, no one in that group is allowed to be in the new group, and another election or primary is done. Seems simple to me.

              2. Every other candidate for that office is disqualified from running for it ever again. New election.

          3. For the most part, the groups that I see push ranked choice voting are very liberal (just like the people who have pushed ‘non-partisan redistricting commissions’).

            1. Redistricting commissions should have a “shortest perimeter” program, with natural elements as natural barriers. (Rivers, ridges, interstates, civic boundaries.) Take it out of the hands of agenda-driven folk.

              1. I agree they “should have” such a restriction, but I’m cynical enough that I doubt I’ll ever see such a system established. Redistricting commissions are just another opportunity for people to grasp for power. I’d rather have the the admitted politicians in a legislature do the redistricting — I know their biases.

    2. I hadn’t paid all that close attention but I wasn’t assuming that those who #walkaway were walking *to* the Republican party.

      1. No. They’re angry and disillusioned, but the Republicans are still their enemy.

        They’re prime Beer Hall material, just waiting for their own whack-a-doodle messiah.

        1. Fortunately they lack the Beer Hall putschers’ experience of having just survived a war.

          That’s one of the reasons I don’t see a civil war erupting out of this no matter how frazzled the rhetoric gets. Angry and violent as some of the left seem quite willing to be, as far as I can tell the training and discipline are still all on the Right’s side. The left’s peculiar genius in the West, post-Vietnam, has always been to gin up just enough violence to make them look like the martyrs, then trumpet the resulting imagery and exploit the resultant political capital. (Part of the exceptional froth of today’s outrage is, I suspect, due to their realization that this tactic is finally beginning to slide ever more rapidly down the slope of diminishing returns.)

      2. Some are headed to the Republican party, some are headed to what are currently far-left fringe parties (they’re likely to stay far left, but cease to be on the fringe, if enough ex-Democrats join), and some seem to be headed away from politic parties generally. I hope that most of the latter are headed toward non-involvement in politics rather than violent opposition.

      3. Some are, and a few have realized their ideas align with Libertarianism as well. Many are left trying to figure out where to go, but a common theme in the #WalkAway confessionals are that they are sick of the violence that the Dems have advocated for.

        I may not agree with everyone walking away, but I respect what they are doing. Given the hatefulness, violence, and outright socialism* of the Democrats and the infighting amongst the Republicans, I think both sides use a little shaking up as a reminder that they are working in DC by the will of the people.

        *Repetitive Department of Redundancy, I know.

    3. Objection: the Occupy movement was not hijacked. It was what it was from the very beginning.

      1. I have acquaintances who participated in the initial movement because they wanted corporate accountability. Then the paid protesters showed up.

          1. Day 5. Took awhile to round up enough short buses for all the crisis actors. 😀

            1. I remember seeing job ads on Criagslist from the ‘Working Families Party” in L.A. for OWS.

          2. Met a fellow who hung out in various fora most just taking things in. His conclusion was the real OWS ‘controllers’ were simply trolls with the agenda of “How many fools can we make stand around in the cold?”

            Not sure I believe that, but it makes about as much sense as anything else regardings OWS.

            1. *Someone* was taking it in seriously. Truckloads of vegan pizzas don’t just spontaneously materialize (and someone was apparently delivering large quantities of them to at least one of the early Occupy events). Someone was paying for at least some of the supplies.

        2. I don’t know your acquaintances, so I cast no aspersions on them, but a whole lot of people who claimed to be there because they wanted “Corporate Accountability” were in fact advocating for restrictions that would have ruined a whole lot of companies, as well as significantly higher taxes on companies.

  10. Totally OT, but I followed the links from this post to older ones and found a post I commented on 5 years ago.

    It really doesn’t feel that long.

            2. I think everyone here has at least one pair oh horns. Cloven hooves and forked tongue optional

      2. I actually did a search the other day to see what my oldest comment was (easier for me – I started with a pseudonym that didn’t last long), and the earliest one I found was April, 2012. Yeah. Doesn’t feel that long.

    2. I wandered over here from Instapundit after the utter disappointment of Obama’s reelection in 2012.

          1. Jeff Duntemann directed people over here to read some of Sarah’s “human wave” articles. So now Sarah knows who to blame for my annoying drivel.

  11. I’ve never had a problem telling Lefties off, but then I’m an anti-social maniac. I make people “uncomfortable” just walking in and saying “good morning.” I literally had a complaint lodged against me one time, and that’s what I had done. Turned out my voice was too loud.

    1. I friend of mine used to be a tech for a local computer store. Every month or two his employers would get a complaint. Not about his work; he knew his stuff – but because he made someone “uncomfortable.”

      Part of it was that Joe only has “outside voice” and “fingers in ears” for speaking, but the major factor seemed to come down to him being six and a half feet tall and built like a bear.

      There was a big SF convention when he was back in St. Louis visiting some relatives; I offered to pay his way if he’d wear a badge that said, “Hi! I’m LARRY CORREIA!” But he said it would conflict with other plans, alas.

  12. Wolves didn’t like the taste of people.  We were perfectly safe.

    Even if wolves were disinclined to attack people, which may be true as they first go for what they perceive as the easier prey.  They will attack sheep and other farm animals.   We are not safe from attack if alligators, cougars, bear, wolves or coyote are near neighbors. 

    The re-introduction of the wolf is a conundrum.  I recently saw a nature program presenting how the reintroduction of the wolf in the Yellowstone Park improved the overall ecosystem and bringing back the beaver and the aquatic life dependent on the beaver ponds.  When the wolf was removed the coyote moved in as the primary predator.  The coyote is not able to successfully hunt elk as the wolf, which does so in packs.  The elk, no longer wary of predation by wolves stayed along the waterways and overgrazed.  With no new trees and brush growing the water quality was effected and with the conditions for much of the wild life, particularly the beaver was inhospitable.  Still, wolves cannot be expected to stay within the park boundaries, particularly when hungry.

    1. I like wolves, I think they’re beautiful, and on one level I’ve always been glad they’re no longer endangered. But. Only a fool thinks that this is 100% sunshine and unicorns. Because it’s hardly fair to ranchers to tell them they can’t protect their herds/flocks from predation because “wolves don’t do that” or “you’ll just hunt them to extinction again.” Because wolves WILL go for the easier option. And sheep/cows are easier than elk. Also, having watched a few social-media videos with wolves in them (or at least part-wolves, as they weren’t trying to eat the humans)…those suckers are a LOT bigger than I think most people realize they are. I’ve noticed that in most Hollywood films, they use wolf-like dogs, I think, that are apparently a good deal smaller than the real deal… o.O Huskies may look kind of wolf-like, but an actual wolf looks to be more the size/weight class of, say, a Saint Bernard or a Pyrenees or, y’know, a wolfhound…

      Wolves are predators, and only silly brainless people think they can live easily with other predators (ie, humans).

      And coyotes are just nasty, nasty bad news beginning to end. And they are also getting bigger…

      1. Wolves are predators, and only silly brainless people think they can live easily with other predators (ie, humans). 

        I agree.  (Your parenthetical had me laughing.) 

        And coyotes are just nasty, nasty bad news beginning to end. And they are also getting bigger…

        Yup.  Their range has expanded and they now can be found throughout the states.  Not good news at all.

        1. Coyotes are also fairly comfortable living in or near urban environments. City people don’t worry them. They’ve even been spotted on Cape Cod, where the only land access is across a couple of highway bridges.

          I remember seeing one coyote in New Hampshire standing on the center stripe on the southbound lanes of an interstate highway, facing north and watching the oncoming traffic, waiting for a big enough gap that he could finish crossing the pavement.

          1. Oh, yeah. I’ve personally spotted one on the outskirts of an Indiana county seat while driving I-74. They’re something of a pest in some suburban areas here in Ohio, and are often seen in the more-densely populated Northeast Corridor. I’ve even heard reliable reports of coyotes in Manhattan, for crying out loud.

            1. They have urban video of coyotes in packs, waiting for traffic lights to turn red to stop traffic!!! Plus, urban coyote packs are night hunters. Non-urban coyotes aren’t, usually dusk, early morning/late evening, hunters, & at best hunt in paired couples, with or without pups.

            2. A few years ago, I was riding an El train through downtown Evanston (the suburb immediately north of Chicago on Lake Michigan – a fully built-up extension of the city). The tracks of the UP (former C&NW) commuter line run parallel to the El there. I was looking out the window and said to myself “That’s a funny-looking dog trotting along the UP right-of-way. Oh, that’s not a dog…”

              1. A few years back, there was a sighting of a coyote in the Chicago Loop area.

                There was a comment then that it must have followed the Lake Street EL to the Loop.

        2. And what’s worse, they’re urbanizing. As are bears. I recall one particular news story–from nearly twenty years ago–about a teen in a Denver suburb who had to escape via a second story window onto the garage roof because a bear had broken in through the screen door one summer while she was home alone. And my younger siblings frequently had to be kept indoors at recess at one school because of mountain lions, which haven’t advance *quite* as far, but are definitely not as bothered by large numbers of humans as they used to be…

          Foxes and raccoons are one thing. Bears, coyotes, and mountain lions (and possibly, eventually, wolves) are a whole other kettle of fish. O.O

          I live in a nowhere-rural town in Wyoming, and wise folks keep the pets indoors at night, on account of the coyotes on the edge of town. And early this summer we had a bear. Again. In fact, it was the SAME bear that has already been relocated from this area at least once, who has returned and has figured out how to break into various garbage-storage areas. Thank goodness we had tight fitting lids–I came downstairs one morning a couple of months ago to find one of our trash cans sitting upside down on the porch, still closed and intact, where the frustrated bear had abandoned it. (And which explained why the dogs had suddenly gone nuts at 3am.) And after the bear, we got an exceedingly grumpy moose (which, in some ways, is worse than a bear.) Now imagine it happening in a far more urban area, where most people haven’t got the first clue about large mammals that make humans look puny. Humans might be scary, when one gets down to the nuts and bolts of it, but one human versus an herbivore larger than most cars–and ill tempered–let alone even pissier carnivores…

          The eco-sillies who screech about how we’re destroying wildlife really do not get it. We’re not, not really. The wildlife is adapting and that is, just possibly, the scarier prospect.

          1. “I live in a nowhere-rural town in Wyoming, and wise folks keep the pets indoors at night, on account of the coyotes on the edge of town.”

            More than a few stories of bears & cougars coming in through the doggy door too. Or rather chasing the family dog in through it. Those FB pictures of bears & cougars on the porch are adorable, especially with “FOUND CAT: Cream Colored. Well cared for. No collar/tags. Doubt it’s chipped. Can’t keep it because my dog seems afraid of it.” as narrative. Or the snowy picture with “If you’re cold, they’re cold, let them in.”

            1. All good reasons for people to carry firearms when they are out and about, aside from the human predators out there as well. Unfortunately in the People’s Republic of New Jersey, lots of luck getting a license for a gun much less a license to carry one.

          2. I’ve told the story before about the mountain lions that are officially not found in eastern Flat State…

            1. DNR: There are no $CRITTERs in this area.
              * Homeowner shoots threat on property.
              DNR: This is a spurious case…

              Until repetition happens, a few times. Any wonder why rural (and other) folks don’t have much trust in DNR (and other gov’t agencies)?

              1. Critters aren’t officially found in a state/area because DNR or its equivalents don’t want to have to write and implement a management plan for the critter. Those cost time and effort.

              2. A friend lives in a moderately hilly part of central Arkansas. There are a bunch of lakes. And they’re full of freakin’ *alligators*. He has property and a hunting lease he can’t use now, because even though they’re clearly an “invasive species”, Game & Fish has declared them “protected.”

                1. Heh. It’s rather like our problems here with the “sensitive” greater sage grouse. The lefties (and others) like to claim it’s because of human activity. In truth, it’s down to two major reasons: grouse are dumber than a bag of hammers, and crows/ravens/magpies heavily predate their young.

                  But we can’t kill the crows/ravens/magpies, because they’re protected under the migratory bird act.

                  (And, as with wolves, I rather like crows/ravens (not so much magpies). They’re fascinating, and massively intelligent. Which, of course, means they are also massive a**holes. So while I like them, I’m not blind to the problems they cause as an overpopulated and invasive species in this area…Them and the damn European sparrows.)

            2. Rode past a dead one on the shoulder of I20 outside of Tyler TX back when they were not supposed to be east of DFW.
              If the trooper hadn’t been sitting near it, I’d have had the tail as a souvenir. Ive heard they have been seen in places around Shreveport now. The State here in Michigan has finally admitted they exist in the U.P. Game cameras, cell phones, and some official finding kills with tracks, scat nearby, so the finally came out.
              We got wolves too, and they are also in Wisconsin. One got a calf down south of Peshtigo, and the farmer was shocked the DNR agent took one look at the carcass and said “Yep, wolf got it. Coyotes can’t break the femur like that.” One drawback is they are driving the coyotes into Peshtigo and Marinette, though we got reports of the wolves being within Marinette, there are too many yodelers about for it to be common.
              Michigan’s DNR lied for years about the wolf reintroduction programs.

          3. On a tangent, I saw a fun observation on all those trending animal-seeks-help-from-unknown-human stories: “Great. The wildlife has started thinking WE’RE the Fair Folk. Desperate? Go to the Hollow Tree Stumps and ask for help. They may kill you or they may help in ways you never imagined…”

            1. Valeria, the re-adopted cat was abandoned in front of a store by mom cat. Eye infection, less than 4 weeks old. Not killed, jsut left by mom to find help.

            2. I think it’s pretty cool, in many ways, that some (an unexpected percentage, that’s for sure) wild critters recognize that while humans CAN be a deadly threat, they’re also just as likely to help you and save your life. (And it always makes me feel a little better about humanity as a whole, those stories.)

              I haven’t seen that interpretation of it, but…it makes a lot of sense. Fits in nicely with the whole “what if WE are the “immortal and ageless” elves to our dogs and cats…?”

              1. Fits in nicely with the whole “what if WE are the “immortal and ageless” elves to our dogs and cats…?”

                There is a totally make-you-cry tumlr thread on this– someone did a flash fiction of The Master now being old, and slow, and the dog talks about how his grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather’s time, the man’s own children left home, that kind of stuff.

                2. Yeah, that would be the one I saw that first introduced me to that idea. Damn onion-cutting ninjas.

                  (On a funnier note, if you can track down the original tumblr thread that had the insurance agent fanfic, that thing is solid comedy gold and utterly glorious.)

          4. Up the road a piece near Billings… about a mile out of town… house next door got broke into by a bear, who then had its way with the freezer. We have wolves brave enough to leave tracks on my neighbor’s porch. I guess when they intro’d (NOT re-, they’re not native to the high country) wolves to Yellowstone, they forgot to teach ’em how to read a map.

            A good documentary on how this wolf problem came to us… basically it was a financial scam from the start.
            https://www.facebook.com/CryingWolfDoc
            (Video must be there somewhere… it’s gone from Vimeo.)

          5. My little sister had a bear in her yard last week… in near-rural central VA (30 mi from Richmond)

        3. Growing up in the northeast (not too long ago) I knew coyotes were around but not common. Only had to be warned about them in camp. Last year i went diving and the beach ive dove/swam off for two decades had a ‘beware coyotes’ sign.

      2. Half-grown wolf by my folks’ house.

        I’ve got a picture of my size-seven or eight (I can’t remember) lady’s sneaker by the print he left in the middle of the road, in the snow, just before dusk. (Can’t figure out how to post it, sorry….)

        It’s 45% of the length, not counting nail marks.

        Folks who have dogs, translate that into animal size. I did a rough translation after I took the picture and figure out wait, there ISN’T anybody with a dog that size down here….

        1. Mom measured wolf prints in the snow one time when we lived in Alaska — the tracks were six inches across. That was in fairly firm new snow on our driveway, and they had just been made, so there wasn’t any expansion going on. I think she may still have a picture of the tracks and the ruler somewhere.

        2. For perspective, our St. Bernard that weighed just shy of 200 lbs. had paws 5″ across.

          Granted, he was rather more stocky than wolves…

        3. Had a neighbor with a couple of friends who raised 94% wolf hybrids. They brought down one of their breeding stock. I’m 5’9″ and that sucker’s nose hit the base of my throat when it was standing with all 4 feet on the ground.

          1. *shudder*

            I’m guessing they were doing a good job of it, since they were still around…. Jeeze, I’ve got enough issues with poodles.

          2. O.O I mean, the Pyrenees we had when I was a teen were BIG dogs…but even they weren’t that big! The male–who was probably a good 180-200 lbs–reached my hip. I’m 5’11”, for perspective. Sounds like that wolf would have been…a lot higher than that…

            1. I have seen photographs of men I know are at least 6’3, with their arms around a wolf’s chest, and the wolf’s butt is on the ground. They’ve got their arms locked on their own wrists to hold him up, and barely fit.

              1. Coywolves tend to be the size of german shepherd dogs. Coyotes are kinda dinky. That should say something.

                1. About the size of a standard Rat Terrier, yeah, dinky– although with crosses sometimes the womb environment makes for strange results.

                  I was going to use the example of lion/tiger crosses, one of which ends up growing WAY bigger than either parent, since I know there are quarter breeds, but they might not be a good example– since we only have proof of the females being (highly!) fertile and there’s a full blown psycho burn-the-witch style movement against finding out of the males are sterile or not.
                  Thou Shalt Not Sin Against Their God, Evolution, apparently. That which Evolution has split in twain shall not be crossed. *shudder*

                  1. Reading the Coyote entry on Wikipedia to check their average size is funny, someone got their information on coydogs from DGIF.

                    1. I avoid wikipedia….and skimming over that article, I’m reminded why.

                      No source for the size given (which conflicts with actual records of coyotes turned in by a minimum of ten pounds) coyotes have little to no regional variation, then a few paragraphs down it notes that the “eastern coyote” is at least 20% larger than the coyote-coyote, and is probably a wolf hybrid. (It’s not sourced, but the “normal size” they list is what i’ve seen listed for Eastern Coyotes– up to 40-some pounds; Utah did a years long survey that topped out at 30.)

                      *head hurts*

                      And I thought it was bad when college biology pages were saying coyotes COULD NOT interbreed with dogs…..

                    2. yeah instead they are sticking their thumbs in their ears going lalalalaIcanthearyou

                    3. Man, all kinds of things interbreed, in defiance of what “scientists say.”

                      Around here, the concern is the whispers that bull snakes and rattlesnakes may have started crossbreeding, as well as the problem of all the rattlers with the big rattles being killed by folks looking for a nice big rattle. Which means the ones left to breed have LITTLE rattles…and they’re getting smaller, and smaller…

                      And considering how damn grouchy the average rattlesnake is in this part of the world, this is very much not a good thing. (At least rattlers aren’t quite as horribly deadly as, say, the cottonmouths or copperheads of the South, but still…)

      3. Oh, in defense of coyotes– they are alright, if you don’t have something smaller and weaker like sheep. Think more like a big fox than anything else– their idea of pack hunting is two of them trying to catch mice on either side of a hay stack, usually siblings.

        Wolf/dog in your coyotes, THEN you get unpredictable, crazy and nasty– can edit in feral dogs and it’s pretty accurate.

        1. In our valley (25 miles NE of K-Falls), we’ve had a horse and a cow go down to coyotes. This was before the wolf introductions happened. Not so many cattle in the area since the Tribes did water calls on the Klamath and tributaries, so that problem might be easing. Maybe. I’m seeing signs of more deer in the area, with a doe and a couple of yearlings running around our place near noon. I suspect/hope the state offers more deer tags than normal for our area come hunting season.

          There have been a few of the radio collared wolves that have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Anybody who knows, ain’t talking.

            1. The first rule of the Shoot, Shovel, and Shut Up Club, is that you DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE SHOOT, SHOVEL, AND SHUT UP CLUB!
              The second rule of the Shoot, Shovel, and Shut Up Club, is that you DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE SHOOT, SHOVEL, AND SHUT UP CLUB!

            2. I’m not talking about it. 🙂 Note to TPTB, I know nothing beyond what’s in the official Pravda Daily local news.

                1. Well since most newspapers are AP wire reports and associated propaganda it is neither local nor news.

          2. Sounds like you are close to the area we just recently moved from (Sprague River). The ranchers lose newborn calves to coyotes sometimes. One of my neighbors had three horses (that she just let run loose, which is another story) and one day came over to warn me that a pack of coyotes had cornered her horses right up by the house the night before and persisted in attacking them even with people and dogs yelling at them. That actually kind of surprised me, because I’d had some close encounters with coyotes in my yard the first summer we were there (probably the same coyote — within thirty feet of the house) and each time it took off as soon as I opened the door to go out. Then I turned my livestock guardian dog loose (instead of keeping her in the pasture) and we didn’t see coyotes anymore — heard them yipping pretty close sometimes, but they didn’t come down close to the house again.

            1. Yeah, that’s the place. We’re a hair north of the town limits. We get a good view of Eagle and Watchdog Buttes from the kitchen window.

              Haven’t heard too many coyotes the past month, but there’s a former pasture just west of us, (going to be somebody’s home now) and a big ranch north of us (across the river) that gets a bunch, especially in breeding season. OTOH, somebody on the ranch is pretty well practiced with a rifle.

              Our dogs are too old and small to wander; I’m not putting a couple of 50 pound older dogs up against the ‘yotes.

        2. if you don’t have something smaller and weaker like sheep.

          And if you do, they’ll happily teach their cubs to hunt by tearing up your young lambs.

          I am told that my grandfather, a gentle and meek man, and also a sheep rancher once hit a coyote as he was driving down the road.

          He backed up and ran over it again, just to make sure.

          1. Yep.

            Notice I didn’t do the usual “how dare people shoot coyotes” thing.

            They are good opportunists, and I’d value even my neighbor’s yappy dogs over them– but I don’t like them getting the blame for mostly wolf.

            1. I don’t like them getting the blame for mostly wolf.

              Good point. It’s harder to come up with good countermeasures when you’re looking for the wrong threat.

            3. We need to reclaim our status as apex predators! I don’t want to be penned in my house by wild animals. We need to encourage hunts of wild animals that have lost their fear of man. If they eat lambs how long before they attack small children? This is our world. They need to be reminded that they continue to live on our sufferance. I live in a northern suburb of Dallas. A neighbor saw a bobcat on our block.

              1. Probably nothing will keep them from going after lambs– if only because sheep seem to spend their lives trying to die!– but when they’re walking up to homesteads to do it?

                BAD STUFF.

                Hunting with dogs– not the stupid movie version where the prey is torn to bits, but the mildly obnoxious one where the dogs are scaring the animals– will improve their life-span.

                But these folks have anthropomorphized the animals into having feelings, and dehumanized people.

                  1. *groans* Oh, Emily, it’s too dang early in the morning for me to be having at least pseudo deep thoughts about how the folks who most object to killing of problem (to someone else) animals are more likely to support out-of-MY-misery euthanasia…..

                    2. *wry* Not like I don’t get triggered by a sneeze across the road…and not like I’ll get good explaining it if I don’t keep thinking it.

                      *pulls a face and looks at the not-quite-empty coffee cup*

                      /wry

                    5. Use mention of either to segue into discussion of the other, then start laying out the case for euthanizing druggies, socialists, and environmentalists? XD

                      More seriously, practice thinking and practice expressing are how I got to my current level. Which still leaves me incoherently unable to explain the thing at times, but is much improved over ten or twenty years back. This place is great practice environment and a great learning environment.

        3. Back in the 1980s Little Rock started having people maimed by dog packs. Eventually one elderly lady was attacked and killed.

          Even then, I was interested that despite all the “Do Something!” outcry, nobody was asking, “why did Animal Control, who we’re paying to prevent exactly this sort of thing, let it happen, and why is nobody calling them to task for it?”

          The city and newspapers eventually announced the problem was taken care of, and I think the Animal Control people got a bonus. Whether it was really fixed, or stayed fixed… who knows.

          With the collapse of the local newspapers, we could have a zombie apocalypse and never know unless you happened to see one yourself.

          1. I’m thinking the feral dog mix might be what happened with RCPete’s coyotes near K-falls– I know they were having occasional big, tough dogs get loose and slaughter the males, then take over sire duty, in the mid 70s. (No proof, but after Blacky vanished the next year, most of the new coyote pups were black….)

            Over on the west side of Washington, the feral dogs are hard to tell from the wolves as far as the damage goes. Officially, they’re all dogs.
            Officially.

            1. The Estates has (or had, it’s been a while) at least one dog-wolf hybrid that was allowed to wander.

              I’ve seen coyotes near Dairy, and they’re running about 25 to 30 pounds. These are the ones willing to go around during the day.

              To make life more interesting, we have the occasional mountain lion; running about 100 pounds. Gets a bit nervous-making to see deer tracks with a huge kitty track in the same spot. When the border collie won’t go outside, that’s a really good clue. She’s smart, but not brave. 🙂

              1. They’ve been shipping the jogger-hunting cougars up to Modoc from the LA area since at least the late 70s– I’d be shocked if they haven’t made it at least partway that way.

                But only 100lb on the cats? I know that they’re not likely to be doing official weights, but that sounds rather small; don’t bobcats run 35-45?

                ****

                I’m not much good at dog weights, I just know that the coyotes I grew up around moved differently than dogs, and were…hm, maybe the body size of a corgi, but lean/skinny, with longer legs. The movement was just NOT dog or wolf, while wolves usually moved more like a mean or feral dog. Some of the hunting dogs move like that, but some don’t, and I can’t really describe it other than it makes me want to hiss.

                1. I’m going from the guesses of those who’ve seen the critter. One was a bit bigger than a 70 pound mostly-lab. I’ve only seen the tracks, but I’m seeing the deer. The bucks are hiding better, but the small ranch south of us has a dozen or two mule deer on their land. I’m seeing a full-sized doe and yearlings so far.

                  1. I’m glad YOU haven’t seen them– that’s a giant flashing red light SCARY sign, there, for cougars– but I hope the folks who have seen them are careful.

                    1. If I have to go somewhere after dusk, I carry the .45ACP. Most of the time, it’s out the door and into the kennel with the dogs.

                      One was in her house, and thought she was seeing her dog in the distance. Then she realized the dog was at her feet. Yikes.

                      I don’t know the circumstances of the second sighting, but he’s a rancher, so I assume he’s been pretty wary.

              3. I went and poked around for official numbers! Rather than going off of my memory and utter fail of weight guessing.

                From surveys of non-hybrid coyotes– a really big male for them is 30lb, with adults of both sexes being in the teens not infrequently. Body can be less than two foot, another foot to foot and a half for tail. Utah did a HUGE study where they found most populations were topping out at 25lb.

                Eastern coyotes top out at 45 to 50, US, recorded. (that’s the coyote/wolf mix)

                Red wolves (wolf/coyote mix) are 45-80.

                The “starving to death” type cougars that get shot after maiming/killing bikers are usually about 100lb, with the claimed Washington average being 140-200 for three years and up males. (I think that’s when they’re full grown, it’s used as a standard comparison.)

                There’s a note on one of the Minnesota sites that they’re significantly heavier than dogs of the same size.

                For comparison, our house-cats are over 20lb each– pretty sure there’s something like maine coon in there. Corgis are 25-40lb. (when not fat, according to a pets site)

                Here’s a list of dog breeds that are under 30 lb:
                http://www.smalldogbreeds.info/under-30-pounds.html

              4. Apropos of nothing except for non-brave dogs, when Large Dog was a four-month puppy he weighed a mere 45 pounds or so. I was walking him early in the morning, when a bullfrog in a culvert decided to announce its presence. It *resonated*. He pinned his ears back to his skull, plopped his butt on my feet like it was made of neutronium, and indicated that he would like to go home now. “Some protector you are; you’re about a zillion times its size.” “I AM PROTECTING YOUR FEET AND I WOULD LIKE TO GO HOME NOW.”

                This is the dog who, three days prior, had trotted past a full-bore fire truck with utter unconcern.

                1. The border collie has some unusual concerns along with perfectly rational ones. Deer wandering around at night get barking (and we usually get a lot of deer). If the resident cougar is close-nearby, she’ll refuse to go out the door. If it’s not close, but upwind, she’ll sit in the outdoor kennel and stay on watch. I made a roofed kennel years ago that’s proof against anything short of bears, but they don’t stray far from the National Forest land.

                  Thunder and gunshots are the worst. A neighbor (now deceased) used to shoot ground squirrels with an absurdly large caliber hunting handgun. I suspect the round would have been effective against coyotes, but if he missed, the squirrel should die of fright. We’d get a border collie trying to walk on the ceiling. It was really annoying when he got Tannerite explosive targets, but he eventually figured out that they were illegal to use during fire season.

                  Where it gets crazy is small noises. Paper rustling, strange beeps, and our terminally squeaking washing machine* drive her nuts. When the phone rings, that starts a barkfest. Outgoing, it’s almost as bad. I have to be careful to avoid the word “call” at times.

                  (*) The LG agitator-less toploader lasted 7 years before the transmission started to fail. We have a new machine coming this week. I hope.

                  .

            2. I know they were having occasional big, tough dogs get loose and slaughter the males,

              That’s one argument for neutering your dogs that I hadn’t considered.

              1. Coy-dog, or a bad guess at the weight.. (I’ve been going from a quick sighting, and my vision has been compromised for a while.) Now that my eyesight resembles normal, I’ll try to make a better guess when I see a coyote.

                The official [snort] tally of wolves says there might be less than a dozen in south central Oregon. Considering they have a strong incentive to understate the count (and a strong dis-incentive to count accurately), it could be a lot more.

                The good news is that more and more of the wolves aren’t ID’d with collars, so if they succumb to ballistic lead poisoning, it’s easier to follow the [redacted] club’s rules.

        4. We had a single coyote take down seven calves in one night.
          Our neighbor had sheep. I recall him losing over thirty lambs in a single night.

          Coyotes range from minor nuisance to major menace. Most of them won’t cause too many problems, but a significant percentage of them are ax-crazy.

          1. Good grief, where the heck ARE you? Straight coyotes are smaller than an underfed cowdog– even a large dog would have issues taking out a calf alone.

            Did people see it, to know there’s just one?

            1. Ranch in Southern Idaho.
              Tracked it and trapped it. It wasn’t even especially big for a coyote, just canny enough to take advantage of weather conditions, and utterly vicious.
              (Extreme cold and wind had the calves bedding down in ditches. They couldn’t see him coming. Once he had them by the throat, they didn’t have the leverage to struggle to their feet, and the ditchbanks pinned them so their ability to fight back was minimal.)

              It wasn’t rabid. Just ax-crazy.

              1. In fairness, I guess I can also say that I’ve seen a toy poodle (who was his own kind of crazy) teach a coyote that the latter’s preconceptions about who was the predator, and who was the prey, were very much mistaken.
                (There are times you just shake your head, and shout encouragement. )

                1. “Ever see a little dog tell a big dog to get the hell out of the little dog’s yard?” – Lazarus Long to Andy Libby, in Methuselah’s Children

                1. Heh.
                  We had one cow who was an even better example. I could not believe that we were allowing her to reproduce.
                  It’s thanks to her that I can say with certainty that the best tasting meat comes from an animal that has done its level best to kill you on multiple occasions.

                  1. …and they were KEEPING HER?

                    Please tell me it was a beef ranch, and they at least didn’t keep her calves as replacement heifers… the genetic thread can breed true.

        5. Not true. Coyotes are all right so long as they fear humans, tho a pack is hell on sheep, and will occasionally try something larger. (Domestic dog admixture doesn’t seem to make a difference, in my observation. Seen both pure and mixed around Los Angeles.)

          But lose that fear, and they have absolutely nothing against killing your kids (there _have_ been attempts, don’t recall offhand if any succeeded). Urban coyotes have very little fear of man.

      4. A few years back, I walked past a guy walking a dog with big feet and yellow eyes. I asked him how much wolf was in his dog. He said it was about 70%.

        1. We visited a reenactor event in the Texas Hill Country a few years ago, and one of the vendors there had a 3/4 wolf hybrid. Who was big, and the 1/4 dog portion was VERY, VERY friendly to humans. But some of the other reenactors said that when the sun went down, and the dog-wolf hybrid began singing the song of his people in response to distant coyotes … it was really quite scary.

      5. “you’ll just hunt them to extinction again.”

        As my mother has said, it took a hundred year of unlimited hunting with poison and traps and guns to get rid of them the first time. They don’t go away so easily.

        And, generally speaking, if you can see that they’re there, there are too many of them.

        1. Funny how they’re so common in Canada that they’re regularly hunted from the air just to keep numbers halfway in check (estimate I’ve seen was about 35,000 wolves), but as soon as we cross the border, they’re endangered.

            1. The California grizzly has been extinct for over a century. As someone who has worked in the Sierras, I’m kind of grateful for that.

      6. I read recently that part of the reason coyotes are getting bigger is that they are crossing with dogs. When they do that they get some of the benefits that we have bred into dogs for our convenience. ie: more frequent heats, bigger size (depending on the breed), and loss of fear of humans. I wish I could remember where I read that so I could give proper citations. It was an interesting read.

      7. There’s a fund to reimburse ranchers and sheepherders for wolf depredation.
        But the cause of death has to be certified as wolf depredation by a federal wildlife biologist. Which doesn’t happen without actual witnesses or video evidence. (Who knew that wolves were such enthusiastic scavengers of carrion? Or that such an abundance of cattle and sheep would suddenly start succumbing to the elements, breaking their legs, or otherwise conveniently dying where a wolf pack would find them almost immediately?)

        We had wolves in Idaho before their reintroduction, (yes, with my own eyes had I seen them) but because they didn’t officially exist, there were no official protections, and they were dealt with on an ad hoc basis by those affected when necessary. As such, they were a bit bashful.

        In addition to all that, elk and deer harvests are 10% of what they used to be. When I was young, a good chunk of some families protein coming from hunting was common. Now, it’s impossible.

        Then there are the fool hens (AKA sage grouse) that the feds want to declare endangered because they’re simply too stupid to live without effective coyote control. (But federal wildlife biologists will swear that cattle are the problem. Even though there’s no correlation, and no causation posited. )

        1. I had sage grouse set nests in the middle of land. We don’t have livestock (the border collie and lab-aussie shepherd cross don’t count), but the feral cats took care of the birds.

          Had a robin try to lay an egg in the middle of the dog kennel. It was quite upset when I scooped it up and evicted it. The dogs were pissed!

    2. Wolves have found people to be very easy and tasty prey. I remember a true story about a young oil worker in Canada who was prone to taking hikes on his spare time from their camp. He didn’t come back one day. His fellows tracked what was left of him down and could easily see where the pack stalked him, herded him, and took him down.

      And of course there was Taylor Mitchell, the eco-freak singer from Canada, who apparently tried to make huggy-huggy with a pack of coyotes and got turned into their dinner.

      All the legends and stories about wolves stalking people had to have started from something and I’ll wager dollars to doughnuts they started from true stories.

      1. Being the clever and successful predator wolves are they go for what they perceive as easiest prey first. If that is a person, they will attack the person. I didn’t say otherwise. People should never mistake themselves as safe from attack if alligators, cougars, bear, wolves or coyote are near neighbors.

      3. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett from The Fifth Elephant: “There haven’t ever been any reports of a wolf eating a human.” “Because they didn’t leave any witnesses…”

        1. *shudder* Was only pretty recently (decades wise) that a wolf biologist got attacked by one of the wolves he was studying, it was shot through the chest rather than the head, and they were able to verify it was:
          1) completely wolf
          2) not rabid
          3) in otherwise good health.

          They FINALLY started admitting wolves will, occasionally, without being sick, attack humans.

          Seems to be wearing off, now, as the since-the-60s rhetoric keeps bubbling up.

    3. I’d always figured (been told?) that predators avoided humans because we hunt them. The fear of humans is learned. Wolves were afraid because we hunted them. Bears were afraid because we hunted them. Deer were afraid because we hunted them. Bison were afraid because we hunted them. Squirrels were afraid because we hunted them. Sharks are not afraid because we never hunted them.

      Now go anywhere that bison or deer or squirrels are not hunted. They aren’t afraid any more. Same goes with the predators. The aversion to humans is learned. It can be unlearned.

      1. skunks, having no natural predators (including man). all animals will go out of their way to avoid them. nothing and no one will harm them. right up until they become roadkill

        1. Which would be why attempting to remove them when they’ve moved into someone’s basement (a regular occurrence where I live) is always…interesting…

          1. The safe, fool proof method of removing a skunk is to pop a heavy duty rubber sack over it and seal it shut. Teeth, claws, and smell are safely contained for you to transport the nasty critter elsewhere.

            Oh, how do you get close enough to pop the sack over the skunk without getting sprayed you ask? What? You want me to do everything for you?

        2. I was surprised at how bold skunks can be. A while back I was losing a lot of eggs to skunks; they were coming into my goat-and-chicken shelter in broad daylight. Twice skunks came in while I was there; one slowly ambled off when it realized I was there, the other (a young one) was after a couple of eggs in a rabbit nest box on the floor and ignored my yelling at it. I finally had to go get the hose and spray water on the little stinker to get it to go away.

        3. Great horned owls will kill them. We have a small skunk family in the area, and a boatload of owls of varying sizes hooting away at night. They’ve been a bit laggard with the jack rabbits, but it’s been a good season for rodents.

      2. We were hiking up in Rocky Mountain National Park last week and ran across a chipmunk that just would not be shooed away. We had to whack it on the nose with a tupperware before it finally got the message that it wasn’t welcome.

        The park has been around for about 100 years now, so in chipmunk terms, its been about the equivalent of 2000 years since humans hunted them. They’re about as likely to be afraid of humans as we are of dragons.

        1. The ground squirrels at the top of Vernal Falls are fat suckers, because not only are they not hunted, they’re fed by all the hikers (intentionally or not.) I remember that my dad peeled an orange in one shot and put it down like a whole orange, and scared one of those critters by whacking his staff just in front of him. He’d been annoyed by all the begging…

          1. FWIW, chippies with bubonic plague have been present in Yosemite and near Lake Tahoe for a while.

            I’ll give the local chipmunks a pass, but the ground squirrels get trapped and killed if they go in the garden.

            1. One of the two fun disease factoids most people don’t realize. There are still deaths from “Black Death” in the US and there is a ‘mildish’ (1/3 fatal in US) hemorrhagic fever (Ebola is the most famous of this family) in the US in hantavirus.

              1. Rumor has it that the widower we bought our place from lost his wife to Hantavirus. I’ve encountered one dead deer mouse a few weeks ago, and they tend to be the big vector. The good news is that those aren’t the mice that try to take up residence in our Subarus.

                1. My understanding Black-Death/Plague is endemic at least from the east side of the Rockies to the Pacific. Hantavirus in the Southwest US down into Mexico. Hadn’t heard it was as far north as Southern Oregon, but makes sense. Rabies is endemic in the Americas, period. I’ve been told you do not approach rodents or bats acting strangely. Do not pick dead ones up with bare hands & cover your face with something. Keeping your pets free of fleas is critical, ditto on ticks.

                2. It’s pretty rare but just one of those things that is hidden in plain sight. Just interesting when you think of just how ‘advanced ‘ medicine is and how we have some of the same dangers faced elsewhere.

              2. One thing you *don’t* hear about is that there were several hantavirus deaths in Yosemite when they tried a new style of cabin—apparently the mice *really* liked the insulation in the walls. That was this century, and those cabins have been remodeled to remove the problem.

                (Note that the greatest cause of death in Yosemite is water. Not falls or falling rocks (even combined), but deciding to “cool off” and losing your footing. Some nightmarish 911 calls used in their cautionary video.)

                1. I kind of remember it getting mentioned in the San Jose Murky News, but they dropped the story rather quickly. Hmm.

          2. The squirrels on the University of Wyoming campus not only aren’t afraid of humans, they’re downright aggressive. As in, will try to steal your lunch out of your actual hands aggressive.

            The crappy weather isn’t the only reason I preferred to eat indoors…

        2. *Snicker* A dozen years ago and more, my daughter and I were tent-camping in a campground along Lake Tahoe, and all the signs warned us against feeding the golden chipmunks. Yeah, the brazen little buggers would hop up on the picnic tables and help themselves, while you were sitting right there!

          1. Camp Baker, Oregon (south of Florance). Every year. Don’t pack food in your kid’s backpack. Don’t send a cooler, they will get fed enough. We will have a secure(ish) location for kids & adults to store food, short term, that they get at the camp store rather than their bunks or backpacks.

            Why? There is ALWAYS a mama bear or two with cubs (usually relocated within first couple of weeks of camps). Otherwise, the raccoons the size of small rottweilers will open packs to get at food, they will destroy them if they have to. Chipmunks will steal what they can get & they make holes to get at them, then parents yell at leaders as to why their kid’s equipment got destroyed (got really good at rolling eyes).

            Funniest sight I’ve seen is watching a triple package of Reece’s Cups “running” down the side trail, just under the brush. Chipmunk had scored. Kid came back to camp & complained someone had raided their stash. Chorus of “chipmunk” was heard by the two leaders that witnessed it. Wasn’t a coon, all we saw was the bright orange package making a run for it …

            1. I got the GS Certified Camp Leader training, and one of the things they emphasize is that nobody should have food in the tent ever on a campout. “Doesn’t matter if there’s no bears in the area; a squirrel can ruin your tent and your day.”

              1. “I got the GS Certified Camp Leader training, and one of the things they emphasize is that nobody should have food in the tent ever on a campout.”

                Well, yes. Do they listen?

                Parents are just as bad or worse. Youth get packs inspected Thursday night before & packed into rigs. All they need Friday night is their uniform & sack lunch dinner, if they haven’t eaten before showing up for load up. Adult packs aren’t inspected (really, really, needed to be sometimes, especially backpacks, but I digress).

                We gave them the paper, repeated the lecture on the paper, verbally. Repeated it again in a humorous skit; do you know how many times the “running Reeces” has been repeated? AND every time some kid “thinks” they are different. If we are lucky one of the newer adults does it first & kids learn by example. But someone is going to break protocol. You can’t inspect tents or cabins for contraband once they are setup (not anymore). Pack inspections before leaving, yes, after at camp, no.

                Not Baker, but the camp up in the Cascades between Or-126 & Or-242, Camp Melwaka, not only sees Bears regularly, but more than one Cougar considers that area as their territory. Melwaka is placed such there is no removing either like they can with Baker.

        3. At scenic overlooks like Rainbow Curve and Many Parks, you’ll often see people feeding them right beside the “Don’t Feed the Animals” sign. (sigh)

          1. Humans are stubborn animals and very difficult to train, but I think that they have finally broken them of the habit of feeding bears by the entrance signage for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Cherokee.

            1. My mom man-handled a football player onto the bus because he had a pack of sunflower seeds at that park. (She was 5’4 at the time, in her 30s, etc; he was…not.)

              He was too busy gaping at the herd of deer that were trying to mug him to GET THE HECK AWAY before they hurt him.

              Salt starved–they were nibbling kids’ sleeves and arms, too. She ended up doing an off the cuff biology explanation for the kids, collecting salt packets from the group and dumping it outside of the gate with the salted snacks, well away from the camping area, road and people. Freaked her the freak out, freaked out the kids who’d grown up around goats, the town kids were all wide-eyed “but deer are harmless” types. Pretty sure she made some very nasty phone calls.

        4. Most humans, well, most westerners would probably run up to a dragon to hug it.

          We’d have a global epidemic of obese dragons for a short while afterwards.

          1. its a cute idea, but i don’t really think so. Not unless they look like Puff. Like Smaug? no, people would be terrified.

          2. Not really, the vast majority of dragons don’t want to eat humans.

            On the other hand, a great number of dragons don’t want to be hugged by humans so there would be a great number of dead humans but only a very small percentage of them would be eaten by the dragons.

            On the gripping hand, a dragon would have to eat hundreds of humans to become fat. 😈

            1. “I ate a human the other day. Should I feel guilty about depleting the population?”
              “Don’t worry, there a plenty more where that one came from. They breed like rabbits. Besides, you’re doing the species a favor by weeding out the weak, aged, and terminally stupid.”

    4. But that guy in “Never Cry Wolf” told me that wolves don’t hunt big herd animals!

      /sarc off

      1. One of my high-school teachers knew him. Said that he never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Probably why he was such a good novelist.

    5. The only way to deal with canine predators in the area is to make them fear coming too close.

      When I was a kid, we had problems with feral dogs getting in the chickens, attacking the cows and most especially attacking the young calves. To fix this problem, my father would piss along the fence line to get his smell out there, then whenever he shot one, he would piss on it and leave it outside the fence. It wasn’t long before we rarely saw the pack anywhere near the house, although we knew they still lived in the trees along the creek behind our property. Dad once kidded that he was telling them that “Death lives here”.

  13. I have a relative who I am very fond of and have always thought highly of. But she is a flaming liberal — something that at one time didn’t matter all that much, until it did (actually it never came up until after Obama was elected President, then for a long time we just agreed not to discuss politics during family gatherings). Recently in a discussion on social media I commented that I was afraid that our country was headed towards civil war between left and right. Her reply was that she thought so, too, and they would let us have some of the South, perhaps. LOL! I was busy and didn’t reply, and haven’t found the thread since, but my thought was, Look at the maps of this country that show which counties voted red and which voted blue! Only small areas voted predominantly liberal — and those were mostly urban. I really don’t think that it’s going to come down to them *letting* us have part of the South, LOL!

    1. Should it get to such a point, bridges, valves, switchgear… cities are Great Islands of Dependencies. Not that it wouldn’t be a mighty rough go of things even well outside the cities, but they would seem to be great places to not be just then.

    2. She’s a moron who doesn’t understand that she is aligned with the Democrat candidates of 1860, and their deeply offended supporters.

    3. Well then, they can have California. No take backs when Arizona shuts the water off.

        1. And there are little pockets of blue in the South. My joke was if your friend was going to be so kind as to give the Right part of the South, they can have Cali in return. The Right gets the better end of the deal – better food, nicer people, prettier beaches, better property values …

      3. California court: Issues injunction to Turn The Water Back On Instantly Or Suffer Dire Penalties.”

        Arizona water department: tosses junk mail.

    4. Voting in 2016 was very deliniated geographically. The best graphic I’ve seen are those Trumpland and Clinton Archipelago maps, based on counties going more than 50% one way or the other.

      Trumpland pretty much boils down to where the food comes from. The maps do % vote on a colour gradient, which is quite instructive. Little islands of intensely DemocRat voters surrounded by huge areas of Trump voters, where roughly zero people voted DemocRat.

      Looking at that, and thinking from a tactical and strategic viewpoint, I’m going with the Trump bumper sticker unless I have to spend time in those intensly Dem areas. That these Dems simply don’t understand how physically isolated they are from the rest of the country, and each other, really amazes me sometimes. They are busy talking shit about a civil war, but they hold maybe 5% of the physical territory out there. That’s going to be a really short war. We’re talking hours here.

      2. But what you hear them say, over and over, is we need to abolish the electoral college because it’s not fair for the minority outside the cities to tell them what to do.

        1. I think a huge chunk of Jebusland would love not to tell them what to do. But they have to do the same. And therein lies the rub.

      3. No, longer than that. Nothing drags out quite like urban warfare. You’re looking at a two-week minimum before all the food stocks are consumed, because the rightists would hopefully not be stupid enough to attack into the cities. That, mind you, is just for the inland areas.
        On the coasts, you’d have to set up blockades at nearly every port, and I don’t see the rightists having the capacity to effectively cut off more than two or three ports at a time. Furthermore, everybody and heir brother would be sniffing around looking to get a piece of the action, which would extend things.
        The Second American Civil War would last for at least a year.

      4. Those color-gradient maps are much better than the ones that just color the entire country red for 51+% R and blue for 51+% D in the county. The maps with gradients actually give you a feel for which counties are solidly one way and which ones are pretty mixed.

      1. The only way the left could possibly win a “hot” civil war is if they get their leftist state national guards and or the US Military fighting on their side. As far as the NG, i could see blue states like California using the NG in such a manner or even sending them against Federal troops sent to restore order. Of course the whole point of Obama’s officer purge (which is very much overlooked) was to get rid of officers with “traditional values” and to replace them with Social Justice Warriors who would be personally loyal to him and the Democratic Party’s leftist ideology of “fundamental transformation” than it is to defending the USA. Depending on how much that took hold, there could be serious division within the military in such a scenario. Of course the left at this point seems determined to try to re-enact the Bolshevik revolution,

        2. The problem with using the military or the National Guard is that the Left replaced the high officers. “The dumb grunts will always follow the orders of their Generals.”

          Not so, if it ever comes down to cases.

  14. Metaphorically, baby needs shoes.

    I’m not lying, but I am keeping my head down. For a finite period of time, which I’m hoping will be shorter rather than longer. Long term, I hope to be in a position to let the chips fall where they may.

  15. Because Our Esteemed Hostess

    Although would I prefer that we not discard the Democratic Republic created by the founders.  Democracy has a bad habit of descending into mobocracy.

  16. I am grateful to the fool that was my wife’s fiancé before me. Three weeks before her wedding to him, he hit her. Her local friends, his parents, HER parents all said “Give him a second chance.” “Nobody gets a chance to hit me twice.” was her reply. We had known each other for years. I was living on the other side of the country. She asked if she could come and stay for a while to get away from her “friends” and parents who were badgering her to forgive him. Of course, said I. What are true friends for but a refuge from the storm.” This December we will celebrate 47 years as husband and wife.

    3. Sounds like one of my mom’s buddies– although they were married for at least 15 years when she accidentally found his second set of books and found out that he’d had a mistress longer than they’d been married. Literally the weekend after their honeymoon he went to another woman…. (Private trucker. He was cheating on his taxes, too.)

      Everyone in the area, including her MOTHER, is still pissed that she left him and took the girls. My folks are about the only ones going “WHAT THE FREAKING FREAK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!?”

      Of course, since mom thought the guy was a scumbag BEFORE the lady married him, might not help……

      1. Awww. The fellow was probably just practicing to become a Muslim with multiple wives.

        /ducks

  17. Maybe there is something to be thankful to Obama for after all.

    In the years of his presidency we went from horrified and compulsive aversion to any accusation of racism, no matter how undeserved, no matter how accidental the action that prompted it, to the realization that no one making the accusations *cares* if they’re true or not. Same with every -ist and -ism. What’s true doesn’t matter. It only matters if the accusation and call for empathy can be used as a weapon to make people shut up.

    And that doesn’t work so well any more. Empathy is shouted even louder than before (You monster!) but it has less power as a weapon to silence people than ever before.

    Though I’m not thankful for the next step which seems to be to develop a set of excuses for violence when people refuse to shut up and remove themselves from the public sphere. Words like “provoking” and “polarizing.”

    And “nazi.”

  18. There was a line in the movie “Roadhouse” that fits this situation. Patrick Swayze’s character is addressing his bouncers in a meeting. He tells them, “Be nice until it’s time to stop being nice.”

    I think it’s time we stopped being nice.

  19. “We know wolves do not attack people. After all, no one has ever staggered out of a dark winter forest and complained of being attacked by wolves.’ — Sir Terry Pratchett

  20. The left’s Derp seems to have been ratcheted up the last few weeks, starting with the immigration thing. It was bad before that, but since they found out that kids have been getting separated from adults it’s been ever more intense. Because even though it’s been going on for years, this is new. this is different somehow.

    And yeah, if they really thought we were on the same road as the Nazis they’d be shutting the hell up and figuring out how to get out of the country. Instead they’re making loud noises and attracting attention to themselves.

    1. My favorite Big Media move this year is MSNBC coming out with “Trump’s controversial SCOTUS pick!!!!” before the actual guy was announced. Nobody even knew man or woman at that point.

      1. I’m a bit annoyed by the “big decision” circus. It’s not like Trump has to think hard about it; all he has to do is rummage in his desk drawer, find his list, and call the next name under “Gorsuch.”

        1. This way he got to have the media blow up for a week+ and got gems like CNN leading the biography of the lady that was in the final three with a tally of her children…and not one mention of if the two guys nominated were even married, much less had kids.

        2. The CNN thing might sound like an “of course they did that” thing to anybody HERE, but it hit the mostly-sane-but-on-the-left type “of course I’m a feminist, they’re for equality” folks right between the eyes.

          Maybe it’ll go away in a few weeks. But maybe it won’t…..

          1. I thought that kind of thing just prompted them to conclude that the media is actually full of Republicans.

        3. Also, he was fast enough that I didn’t finish any of the half dozen things in the way of completing my satirical nominee post.

          Curse that thoughtful, diligent madman!

      2. Some “Womens” organization actually screwed up and put out a press release complaining about Trump’s new pick for the Supreme Court, ‘XX’. That was apparently the placeholder, and they forgot to replace it before releasing the statement.

        1. And then they misspelled his name in the next paragraph. *facepaw* It was the Women’s March (pink hat) organization.

        2. So… the Women’s Organization was saying they’d have objected to any female justice he picked?

          Iiirony~

          1. Well…

            Keep in mind that one of the Final Four that people were talking about was a woman. And it’s apparently been confirmed that at least some of the groups “demonstrating” against Trump’s pick already had pre-printed signs for all four of Trump’s likely choices ready to go for use immediately following the announcement.

        3. It’s amusing these days to watch the alphabet shrinking again. “Ls” in England want to eject the “Ts” – because they are expected to have no problems about sex with someone who “identifies” as a female, dangly bits notwithstanding. I expect the “Gs” will begin to express the inverse protest any day now. How long the other letters will stay together is anybody’s guess, as the differences in their “victimhood” continue to become more important than the similarities.

      3. I’ll forgive them for that one. No matter who he nominated, it would have been controversial. If he nominated a pure “Living Constitutionalist” the conservatives would have been up in arms, otherwise the progs would be up in arms. So it was a very safe prediction.

    2. Except they have learned it works. At least one ice official has stated that they are no longer referring aliens with children for prosecution. And judge just (as anticipated) decided that children couldn’t be held more than 20 days and so the parents couldn’t as well. Catch and release was judicially reactivated. Don’t remember if ace or bb had it thismorning.

  21. Hmph. Of course wolves will eat you. That’s just common sense…and a basic knowledge of history. Old folk stories. This is one reason anyone hiking in remote areas needs to be armed. It’s just common sense.

  22. they were not punished by their parents. they were not punished by their teachers. they were not punished by the law. I lived this during the Seventies. two words on were this is leading to. weather they can learn from it are not I do not know. two words
    KENT STATE

    1. Well, they didn’t learn from Kent State, did they?

      Besides, where all this is going to happen is big East Coast cities. Places where the cops will not be shooting at rioters, they will be shooting at any civilian that tries to stand up to the rioters. Berkley cops were disarming the Patriot side of those riots last year, Antifa was getting through with all kinds of weapons.

      But here’s the thing: they’ll be burning down their own neighborhoods, just like Detroit in the 1960s. From a purely strategic standpoint, that looks more like an opportunity than a problem. Portland Antifa is going to riot -in- Portland, they aren’t going to travel to Hooterville Oregon in the middle of nowhere.

      1. when I referred to kent state I was referring to the shooting. in todays world I do not think it will be the police. I do not think it will be the military (reg. or national guards). it will be us. I mean us armed citizians, pushed to far. and that should scare both sides

        1. as for were they will riot, you are likely right. unless Soros busses in rioters to Hooterville to protest … whatever? I think it will mostly be someone wearing a MAGA hat that will be attacked. make that someone armed being attacked
          people are already calling for trump supporters when they go out in public to go armed. and you know that their are people that will be looking (or provoking) an excuse to “defend themselves” … any excuse.
          I am not condoning this behavour, I am predicking it.

          2. Important safety tip, do not self-identify to the enemy. Look like them, talk like them, walk like them. Leave the MAGA hat in the trunk of the car.

            Let -them- self identify. Much better. ~:D

          3. I would prefer they go concealed. Wearing or carrying a visible weapon makes you a target. And they will go for provoking the carrier as much as possible, As soon as the weapon clears the holster, they’ve got enough to charge the person. Makes the concealed carrier insurance policy look better and better each day.

            1. it is not the person carrying openly, it is the ccw. who’s hats get stolen, who gets a drink in the face, who gets punched, who is confronted by 3 maybe 4 maybe 10 people. not knowing he/she is carrying. the results will be bodies on the ground. and I really don’t think the left will from one event. I think there will be a lot of bodies on the ground. from both sides

      2. > burning down their own neighborhoods

        It took me a while before I understood how that worked. On the surface it looks like a stupid thing to do… but all the Section 8 people get upgraded to new lodgings and get their stuff replaced with free money, and the slumlords collect their insurance payouts and walk away, or collect *and* sell the properties to developers for “urban renewal.”

        Burn down your own neighborhood? Everyone wins! Except for the suckas paying taxes, but nobody at all cares about those dirtbags.

    2. And, yet, in 1969, the year I graduated, Kent State was the school you went to if you wanted to party.
      A year later, it hit the headlines.
      There was a pretty fair documentary (made by the Osmonds, I believe), about Kent State. The film concludes that – yes – outside agitators were the reason that the ROTC building got burned down, and likely a lot of other conflict leading up to it.

      1. Several ex-KGB people have claimed the USSR pumped a bunch of money and support into “student groups” during that time. As I remember it they were impossible to direct to any particular purpose, but they were always good for causing *some* kind of trouble.

        The “student riot” thing drove Nixon nuts; he talks about it at length in some of his books. Nixon couldn’t understand why they were doing that sort of thing, and why the FBI was apparently helpless to do anything effective, no matter how many times he brought them to task over it.

        It’s my personal opinion that the FBI’s inaction was for the same reason as the KGB’s actions; to keep Nixon upset over something he had no effective way to deal with. The FBI has been dirty for a long time.

        1. Tbh, the FIB was born dirty. Just went from murder in pursuit of law to outright lawbreaking and arguably treason.

        2. In the early 1970s, Felt had supervised Operation COINTELPRO, initiated by Hoover in the 1950s. This period of FBI history has generated great controversy for its abuses of private citizens’ rights. The FBI was pursuing leftist groups, such as the Weather Underground, which had planted bombs at the Capitol, the Pentagon, and the State Department building. Felt, along with Edward S. Miller, authorized FBI agents to break into homes secretly in 1972 and 1973, without a search warrant, on nine separate occasions. These kinds of FBI operations were known as “black bag jobs.” The break-ins occurred at five addresses in New York and New Jersey, at the homes of relatives and acquaintances of Weather Underground members. They did not contribute to the capture of any fugitives. The use of “black bag jobs” by the FBI was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in the Plamondon case, 407 U.S. 297 (1972).

          The Church Committee of Congress revealed the FBI’s illegal activities, and many agents were investigated. In 1976, Felt publicly stated he had ordered break-ins, and recommended against punishment of individual agents who had carried out orders. Felt also stated that Patrick Gray had also authorized the break-ins, but Gray denied this. Felt said on the CBS television program Face the Nation he would probably be a “scapegoat” for the Bureau’s work.[55] “I think this is justified and I’d do it again tomorrow,” he said on the program. While admitting the break-ins were “extralegal”, he justified them as protecting the “greater good.” Felt said:

          To not take action against these people and know of a bombing in advance would simply be to stick your fingers in your ears and protect your eardrums when the explosion went off and then start the investigation.

          That American memory problem that starts and begins with AP and the national media propaganda arms.-Y

          In June 1973, Ruckelshaus received a call from someone claiming to be a New York Times reporter, telling him that Felt was the source of this information.[54] On June 21, Ruckelshaus met privately with Felt and accused him of leaking information to The New York Times, a charge that Felt adamantly denied.[46] Ruckelshaus told Felt to “sleep on it” and let him know the next day what he wanted to do. Felt resigned from the Bureau the next day, June 22, 1973, ending his thirty-one year career.

          In a 2013 interview, Ruckelshaus noted the possibility that the original caller was a hoax. He said that he considered Felt’s resignation “an admission of guilt” anyway.[54]

          Don’t worry, spying on Americans is only a crime when it is Democrats doing it to their enemies and not the other way around.-Y

          President Ronald Reagan pardoned Felt and Miller.
          In a phone call on January 30, 1981, Edwin Meese encouraged President Ronald Reagan to issue a pardon. After further encouragement from Felt’s former colleagues, President Reagan pardoned Felt and Miller. The pardon was signed on March 26, but was not announced to the public until April 15, 1981.

          In the pardon, Reagan wrote:

          During their long careers, Mark Felt and Edward Miller served the Federal Bureau of Investigation and our nation with great distinction. To punish them further—after 3 years of criminal prosecution proceedings—would not serve the ends of justice.
          Their convictions in the U.S. District Court, on appeal at the time I signed the pardons, grew out of their good-faith belief that their actions were necessary to preserve the security interests of our country. The record demonstrates that they acted not with criminal intent, but in the belief that they had grants of authority reaching to the highest levels of government.[64]

          The FBI determines which US Presidents gets to spy on which political parties and citizens.-Y

          So basically, the FBI wasn’t doing what Nixon wanted because the FBI was mostly busy trying to figure out a way to get rid of Nixon. Eventually Watergate landed in their laps. It’s hard to say if the FBi was helping Ayers or trying to get rid of Ayers. After all, if the FBi wanted to get rid of Ayers, they would have used the same trick they did with Nixon, Ruby Ridge, Waco 1, Waco 2, or any number of other successful operations.

  23. FWIW, I have been expecting significant violence from the Left since last summer. If the Republicans can hold Congress in the mid-terms (and I now think that likely), expect Left-wing terrorist attacks.

      1. The people who work for Trump (the most visible ones) probably need to consider sending their kids to live at Grandma’s for a year or so.
        No sense putting them in harm’s way.

      2. It’s within his power as President to declare them all “law enforcement” and I’m sure some Federal sidearms could be arranged for the ones who don’t want to buy their own.

        I am in point of principle opposed to “law enforcement” having privileges beyond the rights of ordinary citizens, but watching the Left go into carpet-chewing spasms of outrage would be entertaining…

        1. Heck, Fineswine used to be one of the only San Francsico CCW holders until she surrendered her CCW… conveniently, *after* she was made an honorary federal marshal and didn’t need it anymore…

          Oh, and she bought her grandson a .22 in Maryland, thus breaking Federal law. But anyway.

      3. Unfortunately, that’s all too likely. And it’s hard to maintain protection with that many protect-ees.

    3. Another fire season in Berkeley? Wouldn’t be surprised. I don’t think Wall Street would want to tolerate another occupation, but it might not have a choice. I picture it as large scale tantrums by giant sized toddlers who have long lacked proper supervision.

      1. Oh, I suppose we should consider sending a couple of illegal alien cholera carriers to the next occupy event.

    4. I’ve been anticipating 60s and 70s style domestic bombing ever since the election. Except I don’t think the bombers will be as careful about not causing casualties (which the bombers back then quickly realized was the smart thing to do).

      1. Freakishly enough, we can thank 9/11 for a lot of that not happening– after 9/11, even Seattle’s eco-terrorists started getting smacked down.

    5. I’m expecting leftist terror attacks BEFORE the midterms, myself. And at least one assassination attempt. Or perhaps I should say “one MORE assassination attempt” after what happened to Steve Scalise . . .

      1. Would make sense for them to try for a couple of Senators before the confirmation vote.

      3. In fairness, the guy who tried to shoot the Republican Congresscritters was apparently not the most stable individual. He wasn’t someone who was likely to be in an actual domestic terrorism group because anyone smart enough to rise to the position of group leader in such a group would have instantly thrown him out as too unstable.

        And apparently at least a few individuals like him have been arrested over the last year and a half. The police just recently arrested one for threatening to take an axe and chop up the Republican in question along with his wife and kids. If he hadn’t been arrested, then it could have potentially ended with an assassination attempt. So it’s not that some people haven’t seriously considered it. It’s that they weren’t stable enough to plot such a thing properly without giving it all away beforehand.

        No, the worrisome types are the ones who can manage to put together a Weatherman-type cell full of largely stable (if horribly misguided) individuals. And to the best of my knowledge, we haven’t seen any of those yet.

        1. “…apparently not the most stable individual.”

          They never are, right? The Kennedy assasins, MLK assasin, Loughner in Arizona who shot Gabrielle Giffords, all of them crazy.

          But who was whispering in their ears?

            1. The last three mass shootings, the shooters were well known to the cops. The one in Florida, the cops were actively preventing charges from being laid against the shooter so as not to adversely affect their numbers in the Broward County school district.

              In England of course the cops have essentially stopped arresting people entirely. Too much trouble, too dangerous for the career.

              1. I can give benefit of doubt to ‘known to police’. Crazy does not mean stupid. But the Broward Cowards and their immediate full court press against me and millions of other Americans sent up red flags with klaxons and flashing lights

                And the “Ferguson effect’ is real

                1. In the case of the Florida shooter, “known to police” means “deputies responded to an incident in which the suspect was actively threatening a fellow student with a deadly weapon, and the deputies talked the victim into not pursuing charges against the suspect”.

                  1. Oh I’m not speaking of giving benefit of doubt to them. The immediate use as a political weapon and stuff like the above are obvious. But true nuts can talk themselves out of trouble that should be obvious in hindsight

    6. I am extremely happy that I have no need to go to Ashland (home of the Shakespeare festival and lelftist-loonies-at-Lithia-Park, and S Oregon U) any more. Having to go there in circumstances where it was practically impossible to carry was a nightmare.

  24. A couple of my friends – who I KNOW know better – have been sharing those stupid talking-points memes about systemic racism/sexism, immigration, and even that stupid chart that claims false rape accusations never happen by only counting the ones that went to trial, etc.

    But they know better. I personally think they’re both sharing the posts out of a sense of obligation and a desire to get along with other friends. They’re also both women, and maybe it’s the sexist in me thinking that’s got something to do with it.

    I always make it a point to refute the posts, but I try to be entertaining about it at the same time, and they invariably ‘like’ my comments.

    1. Which leads to a second point: when refuting this stuff, try to be entertaining about it.

  25. Too often, we give the Left more credit for good intentions than is its due. Everybody quotes Churchill (though really said first by Clemenceau, I think) that “If you’re not a Leftist at 20, you have no heart; if you *are* a Leftist at 40, you have no head.” But I think many of today’s Leftists have neither heart *nor* head.

    Most especially, the behavior of today’s “SJW”s is very often motivated by extremely bad personality traits, not just bad ideas. I touched on this in my new post “Conformity, Cruelty, and Political Activism”

    2. The old question about Communists: are they idealists who ended up becoming psychopaths because that’s what they’re ideology required, or are they psychopaths who adopted those ideals because they wanted an excuse to engage in the murder and mayhem that they would have enjoyed anyway?

      1. I saw two paths in front of me, picked one and rejected the other. I’ve always had some very nasty tendencies of personality. I had the choice between identifying with a religion that would hinder me from my worst desires, offering no license, and ideologies that would let me justify anything. (Well, actually, I more or less committed myself to the religion before I faced the temptations of socialism. Though, there are grounds to think that the actual conversion to faith was much later, presuming that it actually counts yet.)

    3. I wasn’t left at 20. I will cheerfully concede on the matter of having a heart, compassion, etc. The desire to appear caring will be used against you, excise it. Other people’s opinion on that is worldly, there are very few opinions that really matter, and they can figure it out without you posturing.

    1. I’m just going to pause before reading to note that “Valerius Geist” is an awesome name.

  28. Pingback: Out of Control | Wannabe Martha

    1. Foiled Again! [Very Big Evil Grin While Flying Away Very Very Fast]

  30. C’mon — we all know why.

    Why Do Americans Have Political Blogs, and Why Are They Rare Elsewhere?
    By Sarah Hoyt
    What if they gave a singularity and only America showed up?

    I know, I know, but keep in mind that singularity is any form of living/life that changes your way of living at a fundamental level so that anyone transported from the past would be unable to understand it.

    I’m not sure we’re quite there in our use of the Internet, but we’re not far off.

    Our embrace of ebooks and, particularly, our embrace of the Internet as an alternate means of news and information has arguably transformed the way we live.

    No? Tell it to President Hillary. Or explain why no one, except a few sad, deluded people believe Obama’s successive summers of recovery actually worked? Or why publishing houses are in trouble in all their fiction lines? Or why bookstores are also in trouble, or—

    Look, guys, I remember Clinton’s administration, when Hillary was the most stylish woman ever and smart too, and Bill was the nicest and smartest of men. The media couldn’t do that for Obama or even keep it up for the Clintons, really.

    You see, it’s been 20 years now, give or take, since we dropped into the world of blogs, at first tentatively, then full force. Nine-eleven gave political blogs (and not the personal journey, culinary and craft blogs) an extra impetus.

    I’ll be honest, being an optimist, I thought that 2004 would be the last election where blogs didn’t have a major hand. Heck, maybe I wasn’t wrong. Given how hard Democrats fight against measures to make the voting honest, the only thing we can be sure of is that they take advantage of it not being honest. So real totals for voting are actually impossible to calculate, and it might just be we didn’t escape the margin of fraud.

    But then there was the election in 2016, and everything since. …

  31. Sure, if we don’t start fighting back in other ways now. How? Complaints to the police for disturbing the peace/harrassment. Talking back in less dire circumstances. Hell, if it comes to that and you’re feeling assholish, confront them for wearing t-shirts with mass murderers. Bone up on the facts and statistics and get in their face with them.

    I got tired of doing that kind of stuff during Bush II.

    If people want to die… let them. It’s only a prologue and not even 1% of this story.

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