Stop Trying To Stampede Us

284 thoughts on “Stop Trying To Stampede Us”

1. “These are our middle fingers.”

   A couple of years back, you phrased it in a particularly memorable way that I’m going to share with everyone who missed it the first time around: “SIT AND SPIN.”

   1. Ewwwww!
      I am now off to see what deals Amazon has on bulk packs of medical grade latex gloves. Ain’t no way no how my precious middle fingers are going to be exposed to that swamp unprotected!

      1. I think turning and delivering calves by hand is probably more sanitary, and less dangerous.

      2. Remember, once you get one finger in, it isn’t that hand to get four.

         After that, tuck your thumb to you palm and slowly ball up your hand.

         Then you all in and can grab them by the gizzard.

   2. For hygienic reasons, I prefer; “F*ck off, f*ck directly off. Do not pass ‘Go’, do not collect your moral superiority.”

      1. “F*ck off, and when you get there f*ck off from there, and when you get there f*ck off from there, and when you get there, consider f*cking off from there TOO”

         1. Sweetie, you really do need to unwind and start telling us how you really feel about things.

            1. 1. Ah yes, I love that little ditty.

               2. I love it! (taken away to my store of defiant gestures.)

               3. Last month I inherited a shitty project with crappy code. I went to my manager and told him I was going to Costco to get a pallet of WTFs, ’cause I was totally out…

               4. Unrelated, but worth listening to…there are videos from the same concert (in a men’s store apparently) of him covering “Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush:

                  1. Oh wow, I’d missed that one, thanks!

         2. I like Larry Corriea’s take on it:

            For my field of fucks is barren, and I have none to give thee.

         3. This is how I’ve been feeling about a LOT of things lately, honestly…

            1. According to the song, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”, but it is also about just not giving a ****.

               1. “Freedom’s just another word
                  for no more fucks to give …”

   3. As for middle fingers, the Greeks had it about right with the hecatoncheires. 😉

      1. It’s not often I need to look things up. Sadly, you win nothing for it.

         1. Uditto.

         2. I’ll admit my own memory of that name comes from the Appleseed manga series.

      2. Well, I knew what the word translates as – but like everyone else (maybe – there are a lot of people here that would know their Iliad far better than I), I had to look up what it refers to.

         Thank you. Pulled a PDF from Wikipedia for possible, um, “recasting” if I ever get around to the S & S series.

   4. Fred Rogers did it best:

      “Where is TallMan..”

2. They’re stampeding themselves and telling themselves we’re the ones in motion.

   They’re engaging in the sociological equivalent of attempting to talk to foreigners by speaking slower and louder.

3. BTW: is anyone else as annoyed as I over the imputation that we’re the violent ones and that’s why the “whistleblower” must remain anonymous? Over the last three years I can recall numerous instances of Left-wing threats of violence* and only one instance of any conservatives** initiating violence.

   They’ll know conservatives have gotten violent by the scorched earth we leave behind, scorched earth that will make California look like rain forest.

   *Too many to list, but start with the shooting at the GOP softball team, add in all the Antifa “demonstrations” and season with other instances to taste.

   **Charlottesville, and that kid was not a conservative.

   1. I’m not “as” annoyed, because I’ve passed annoyed an am now incandescently angry at them ALL THE TIME.

      1. Ah, the Fleet Admiral King method to staying even-tempered.

         (His own daughter claimed he was the most even-tempered man she ever knew. Mad all the time.)

   2. You see, THAT is practically the definitional difference between liberals and conservatives; generally speaking, that is. Liberals, like most terrorists, are liberally prone to violence, and really don’t use it very effectively. Conservatives use violence very conservatively, but use it thoroughly and effectively when forced to do so.

      1. I remember the first time I ran into that favorite Liberal triteness ‘Violence is the final resort of the incompetent’. My gut reaction was, “Yes, because the competent resort to it earlier, when it might accomplish something.”

         1. It’s still the final resort though.

            Or as Maxim 6 has it “If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it”.

         2. Ultima Ratio Regum

         3. That was a favorite line of Issac Asimov, which arguably tells you all you need to know.

            He’d fit in quite well with the Left of today, at least temperamentally, given how impressed he was with himself.

            1. He really believed that one could always finesse a situation. Helps to hsve the author onside.

               1. Germany in the Thirties had lots of Jews who believed “one could always finesse a situation.”

                  The Author was not on their side.

   3. ** Aside from there exists video from the opposite angle, showing his car didn’t touch her — you try driving straight when you’re being chased by thugs with baseball bats. Kid was an idiot, and off his meds, but there was nothing deliberate about this.

      1. Don’t know, and don’t trust the court system to arrive at the truth, much less render anything resembling justice.

         1. Yeah. At the time they needed a scapegoat, and the dumb kid with existing mental issues presented himself. At worst it should have been deemed an accidental death, with shared culpability on the assholes with baseball bats. — There was a coroner’s report floating around that said she died of a heart attack, not of injuries, tho I wasn’t able to verify that. But the video was pretty clear.

      2. I didn’t want to get into that rabbit hole, but yeah — my recollection is his Mum said he was autistic and prone to panic in tumultuous circumstances, e.g., with a bunch of shouting, threatening people waving [stuff] and pounding on his car.

         Doesn’t matter. Stipulate he was what they claim — that still means there are hundreds of instances of Left-Wing violence to one “Right-Winger.”

         For people who denounced George W Bush’s “preemptive attack” strategy they certainly do love to employ it.

   4. I’m particularly fond of the rhetoric about how “most terrorists are right-wing”, because something-something Neo-Nazis, or white supremacists or whatnot. I’m guessing this refers to comic books or something. In real life, in just about every ranking you can find of the top ten most prolific terrorist groups worldwide, six or seven are Islamic, two or three are Communist, and the number ten spot is permanently reserved for the IRA. But sure, ole’ Billy Bob and his Confederate flag bumper sticker – that’s the real problem.

      Otherwise, back on Monster Hunter Nation, I saw the notion that liberals regard violence as a knob – they think it can be dialed up or down, from harsh epithets to suicide attacks, and always under control. Meanwhile, conservatives – and any sane individual altogether (oops, tautology) – see violence as an on-and-off switch. Once it starts, you never know how it’ll end; so it’s best not to start none, so there won’t be none.

      In this sense, the situation nowadays can be described as liberals trying to turn the knob, and ending up flipping the switch. Only instead of just violence, it’s about everything. In media, most people have probably always been just a bit skeptical about what kind of narrative they were being peddled by the mainstream outlets; but now, they’re outright dismissive. Sorry, the boy cried wolf a few times too many. In social circles, the formerly low-key split between left and right has now become a crescendo, a line in the sand officially drawn. And if it comes to violence, well… we can only hope it’s still an “if”, rather than a “when”.

      1. I’m particularly fond of the rhetoric about how “most terrorists are right-wing”, because something-something Neo-Nazis, or white supremacists or whatnot.

         At various points I’ve seen it asserted that Islamic terror is right-wing because it’s religious.

         Which puts me in the mind of “You’re spiritual? Um, demons are spirits. Can you be more precise?”

         1. In the US it’s sometimes because the skinhead prison gangs get lumped in. Skinhead shanks a rival (usually different race) gang or inmate and that’s right wing terror. Same as adding in sidewalk counseling in some cases and every random murder of a streetwalker transgender or other minority.

            1. Oh, gads, don’t get me started on the drug dealing addict who was horribly murdered by two other drug dealing addicts– one a sometimes homosexual sex partner– and it is STILL being reported as an anti-gay murder rather than meth fueled horror.

               1. Doesn’t fit the soundbite. The reality is nearly always complicated. Press nearly always gets it wrong (every story I’ve been a part of they have, far as I can recall).

               2. My brother still believes the propaganda on that one.

               3. Well, you know: he probably wouldn’t have been a drug addict were he not forced to live in a homophobic society.

                  Excuse me; must go gargle with 150-proof brain bleach after that one.

               4. Ah, yes. The guys who concocted the original story years later wrote a book that amounted to this: “Yes, we know he was no innocent victim and that the guys who killed him were themselves gay, but the CAUSE was so noble, man. Plus, deep inside we could tell it was the way we wanted it to be, on some level, sort of.”

                  1. Are you talking about The Book of Matt? It has been a long time since I read it, but I believe it seemed to me that the book’s author was genuinely regretful about that incorrect narrative.

         2. I’ve seen the “right wingers do more terrorism than (sainted) Muslims” horse manure, cleverly proven by starting the count as of 9/12/2001. OTOH, I’m pretty sure even that dodge wouldn’t work, with various Aloha Snackbar incidents ignored.

            1. Yeah — thinking about the Islamists driving trucks through crowds in France,Britain and New York and the number of rednecks driving pick-ups and it is clear that conservatives are comparatively non-violent.

      2. “liberals regard violence as a knob – they think it can be dialed up or down, from harsh epithets to suicide attacks, and always under control. Meanwhile, conservatives – and any sane individual altogether (oops, tautology) – see violence as an on-and-off switch”

         This is because conservatives (and sane people) watch (and understand) John Wayne movies.

      3. This. So much this. Islamic, deeply irrationally commie, and the old IRA.

         Yeah, go and accuse ol’ Billy Bob with his Confederate Battle Flag.

         1. Is the IRA still in the mayhem-and-violence business? I thought they had made a peace settlement.

            1. Thought I saw something about it coming back because Orange Bad Man Brexit and the Ireland/Northern Ireland issues coming from that.

   5. Here’s a few:
      https://foxfier.wordpress.com/2019/11/08/quick-list-for-linking/

      If I miss some, folks, drop me a link and I’ll put them in my folder, at least.

   6. I have thought about this a bit. If some one on the right did go for focused violence the “whistleblower” and his buddies in the FBI etc. would be the top targets. The thing is if you hang around in DC you know who these leakers/plotters etc. are and you probably know where they live, what cocktail parties, sports events etc. they attend. Probably even what car they drive, where their kids go to school (if they have them), where they walk their dog and so on.

      “Accidents” would probably be quite easy to arrange for the first two or three, After that you might need to go sniping but you could probably pick off a bunch before getting caught. And if you were careful and stopped before things got too dangerous you could probably do this for a while. Just off one every 3-4 months. If you had someone else distribute “you’re next” messages to deserving suspects you might even get the persistent leaking to stop after the first two anyway.

      1. “you probably know where they live, what cocktail parties, sports events etc. they attend”

         They use natural gas in DC, don’t they?

         1. I think they use the bloviations of politicians instead. 😛

         2. I also note that the organizer of “Unite the Right”, the ostensible group seeking to identify the “Right” with Nazis, NeoConfederates,and skinheads, had, a year an a half before, been a street leader for Occupy Wall Street, at their New York campout.
            The complete report from Charlotte, such as it is, is available online. I read much, but not all, of it.
            His links and past history are also available online.
            Charlitte from the start seemed to be a false flag operation. I noted that the “Nazis” were using the same closet rod flagstaves as Antifa uses, that their pants still had packing creases, and that ther Nazi flags were creased brand new, and stapled to the flagstaves.
            The couple of neoNazis I have observed were very symbol- focussed, and focussed on that history. My belief is that if those marchers had been Nazis, their uniforms would have been period correct, properly ironed, their flags the same, and properly mounted to a flagpole with a Nazi eagle atop it.
            These assholes are too used to the pass that Hollywood usually gets for their ignorance of history.
            Thanks all for the continuing great discussions.

      2. I saw speculation somewhere today that the whistleleaker could very well get killed off, with Jusse Smollett type “proof” that one of the Deplorables done it. Gives them an out from Republican questioning and a handy scapegoat.

      3. And Epstein didn’t kill himself. Has it been 3-4 months, yet?

         1. I’ll drink to that!

            ‘Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself’ printed on California brewery’s beer cans
            The Jeffrey Epstein murder conspiracy is really brewing.

            A California beer maker is selling a special, limited batch with “EPSTEIN DIDN’T KILL HIMSELF” printed on the bottom of its cans.

            Tactical Ops Brewing started printing the special message Wednesday on the blue cans for the Freso-based firm’s Basher Oatmeal Stout.

            Manager Carlos Tovar told Fox 26 that he got the idea about a week ago — which would have been when famed pathologist Dr. Michael Baden made international headlines by insisting Epstein’s autopsy “points toward homicide rather than suicide.”

            Tovar said the Epstein conspiracies are “a big thing right now” — with his beer-can phrase exactly the same words as a former Navy SEAL blurted out at the end of an unrelated TV interview, making him go viral.

            The company joked on its Facebook page that the boss’s dabbling in the conspiracy may see employees meeting the same shady endings. …

            1. Why do they keep saying “blurted”? I think the SEAL guy slipped it in pretty suavely.

      4. I’d say there’s a good 20% career/retired infantry, marines, or special forces folks who have all it takes to do the deed if they thought it necessary for the good of the country. Probably a similar number of just plain citizens who could do it also. Thing is, all of us tend to be conservative (there’s that word again) law-abiding citizens who also understand the consequences of doing so. It’s not that any of us are afraid to do it and take our lumps; it’s just we’d like to see if there’s a better way to stay truer to the Constitution than temporarily putting it in a protective sleeve so we don’t get blood and guts all over it.

         1. The left pretty much depends on the fact that as good, law-abiding Americans, we’re unlikely to hoist the black flag and start slitting throats, as the expression goes. They take advantage of that so they can get away with their shit. None of us wants to be the first, and though they should be careful, because when it goes, we may all go.

      5. The problem is, that if they manage to push us far enough that violence is the only cure available – we won’t be taking names. “Oh, you say that was the guy that lied about the phone call? Neat… Do you have a spare magazine, by any chance?”

         That is the major problem, too – if it gets that far, a lot of our friends and allies are going to be “blue on blue” incidents. Our hostess being a prime example, as she has noted.

   7. Their conviction of their own moral superiority is bad for the enamel of my teeth.

   8. Charlottesville, where there’s fairly good evidence that kid was set up by the various Democrat attendees. I’ve linked before to the article written by Glenn Reynolds for USA Today showing the findings of an independent investigation making the case for the cops allowing the riot.

      And when I say “set up”, I mean conspiracy to facilitate murder, at the very least.

      Dixon bragged on Facebook about confronting James Fields with an AR-15 rifle, moments before Fields drove his car into a crowd of protesters at the Charlottesville, Virginia protests (and in doing so, perhaps pushing Fields’s emotions past the point of reason). During Fields’s trial, though, Dixon changed his story, claiming it was not Fields’s car he approached with his weapon, but another one.

      https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/07/unc-chapel-hill-a-sanctuary-campus-for-terroristic-radicals-on-the-taxpayers-dime/

      An AR-15 is not a concealed carry gun. How did he get it into the area without the connivance of one or more of the law enforcement agencies who were shown in the independent investigation as ensuring that the Antifa mob would be allowed to assault the protesters who had a permit?

   9. And that kid may not have been either violent or even a neoNazi. Despite all the claims that he ran over that poor women, I haven’t seen any video of it. I have seen video that purports to be the incident where the alleged car was driving too fast and rear ends another car which then hits another car which rolls forward (and not very fast) into a crowd of protestors. And the odd fact that the woman’s cause of death from being run over was apparently a heart attack. The only ‘proof’ I have of him being a neoNazi was that the media (who if they said the sky was blue I would go outside to check) said so. I’d seen other claims that he was mentally ill also. I’ve also seen video of supposedly the same car right before the incident being pelted and beaten on the rear by protestors, with the claim that the driver hit the other car while trying to escape the people attacking his car.

      I don’t know which (if any or both) flavors of the descriptions are true, but I am way past taking anything at face value on such high profile cultural incidents.

4. Of course, some of the morons expect us to “believe them” because of their “feelings”.

   One idiot “expects” us to believe Trump is a monster because the idiot’s “feelings” tell the idiot that Trump is a monster. 😡

   1. We saw the beginnings of this in the late lamented Sad Puppies kerfuffle.
      Those of us supporting the true intent of SP were tarred, feathered, and lambasted with viscious accusations that had absolutely no basis in reality.
      You see, the anti puppies, and truthfully the entire left refuse to deal with reality. Instead they create straw images of the perfect opponents in their fevered brains, rife with flaws they then proceed to attack, ignoring the fact that those flaws only exist in their fictional reality.

      1. I call it “the voices in their tiny overheated heads” and sometimes wonder if I use it too much… then I read another fever dream and wonder if I’m underusing it.

         1. It has amazed me (and I am not easily mazed) the degree to which the released transcripts convey, not facts, but their corrupt impressions of what Trump meant. It’s like reading a sexual harassment charge akin to “He said ‘Good Morning, Ms Dove’ but I knew what he really meant!”

            So they didn’t agree with Trump’s foreign policy approach; their job is to inform him of more effective means of achieving those goals or resign in protest of his goals and means. They did neither. The American People did not authorize them to run our foreign policy, they were hired (and given mighty cushy jobs, at that) to implement the policy directive of the people we did elect.

5. Look at how Facebook and Youtube try to micromanage what you are allowed to say (seriously, watching news commentary has gotten painful in the past several months, because creators have to talk around words and names that will get them memory-holed on Youtube), and now extrapolate that to what the left wants to do with government power.

   This is why you decentralize power as much as possible, at every opportunity. Because they will not stop, ever. Like any sociopath, they’ll simply speak the words they think the victim wants to hear, then redouble their efforts to get what they want.

   1. It’s to the point I start wondering if perhaps the old Radio Moscow wasn’t more truthful in its very slanted reporting.

      1. Back in the heyday of shortwave, I used to listen to Vladimir Pozner’s “Daily Talk”, from whence I learned two phrases: “From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs” and “All things not compulsory are forbidden.” (And even as a kid, noted a peculiar consanguinity.) Now I recommend his book, “Parting With Illusions”, which I need to finish reading one of these years.

         Truthful indeed, for certain values of truth.

      2. RT (Russia Today) seems to be considerably more honest than the usual suspects in the MSM.

         1. That’s because the truth is so damning to the political class in Washington.

   2. Well, YouTube is owned by Google, and Google has a company policy that practically requires discrimination against all conservative viewpoints, or more likely, all view points to the right of Lenin, as our esteemed hostess is wont to say.

      FWIW, “Brighteon.com is “the answer to YouTube censorship,” explains founder Mike Adams” is one alternative. DTube, and BitChute are a couple of others.

      Part of the problem with places like FB and YouTube is how they finance themselves. When you finance based on ads, that leave you vulnerable to the mobs, especially when they play the Saul Alinsky/Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton game to force a business to capitulate.

      1. The irony here is that I watch news videos on Bitchute. But the creators upload to Youtube, and Bitchute auto-mirrors them, so they still try to stay within the deliberately-unknowable “guidelines”.

         1. It’s their playground and their ball, and they’ve enthusiastically shut down entire categories of people they don’t like.

            People keep trying to play in their sandbox anyway, but no matter how much they self-censor, sooner or later Google’s jackboot is going to kick them off the platform.

         2. I caught a little of the Bombard’s Body Language videos on Tube of You a few months ago, but that went away when she switched to Bitchute. OTOH, a bit of research tells me I need to get WebTorrent running on my machines. There’s an Ubuntu package, and I found a translator script to get the package ready for Slackware.

   3. What is super-creepy is that people have to avoid words for entertainment commentary. What??

      1. The will to control what other people say, and even think, is stronger in entertainment companies than anywhere I’ve ever seen, and I lived in mainland China for a time. Just look at the philosophy behind sales and marketing. People cannot think, they are mere meat puppets who will do what you want if you find the right combination of magical words.

6. “Other things we need to start screaming about is motor voter and vote by fraud mail. They need to know they’re not invisible. ”

   Pay no attention to the folks behind that curtain.

   1. And the more I hear from the “This man must never be President” crowd, the more I see and learn about what they do and what they try in order to accomplish it… the more I’m reminded of this.

      This, this particularly, precisely and most exactly this.

      (But at least, to misquote Einstein, the Wizard was subtle, but never malicious…)

7. Two thoughts;

   1) “ Which is ridiculous, since I — thank heavens — am not Hilary Clinton.” Dracula – the really creepy blood-filled tick one from ANNO DRACULA – wakes up each evening thanking heavens he is not Shrillary Clinton.

   2 “ their impression that the future came with an arrow and their victory was “inevitable.”” whereas, in fact, the future comes with a nozzle and their enema is inevitable.

   Yeah, I’m in a MOOD today.

   1. me too. being sleep deprived doesn’t help.

      1. Dear Dan:
         Please take 5 minutes today to have a tickle war with your spouse.
         Alternatively, spend that time making silly faces at her until she starts cracking up.
         This advice is offered at no charge and with no guarantees for success.

         1. And now they’ve deleted younger son’s post on same subject, both from a private group and his own page.
            Younger son, aka my clone, is not a good one to wind up at the same time they wind ME up.

            1. “Declaring war on the Hoyts” may go down in history along with “Winter assault against the Russians.”

               note to self: buy more popcorn

               1. Yep, right up there with a land war in southeast Asia or a permanent victory in Afganistan.

                  1. “… permanent victory in Afganistan” is attainable.

                     For certain glowing values of victory, measured in half-lives sufficiently long as to be relatively permanent.

                     1. There are always solutions. They may be awful, unthinkable, horrifying, sanity destroying, immoral, or merely temporarily unfeasable in some form or fashion.

                        But they exist.

                     2. Or generous application of certain compounds that interfere with normal mammalian life functions.

               2. Costco has it by the gallon jug (unpopped.)

                  1. I prefer their boxes of microwave popcorn, then you save the time getting the salt and such just right and can still just about keep the bowl full by immediately starting the next bag.

                     1. I can’t stand the smell of microwave popcorn—and yes, it is subtly different from popcorn you pop in the microwave. I blame a time when someone put a bag in a college communal microwave for twenty minutes instead of two minutes.

                        1. That reminds me of the time… 😀

                           I was sitting in my office, programming, and smelled something burning. Followed the smell to the lunchroom and saw smoke issuing from a trash can. Opened it, found a smoking bag of popcorn.

                           Some idiot nuked popcorn for at least 10 minutes, then just threw it in the trash, STILL BURNING!!

                           I pulled it out, opened the top, and saw that there was still a red glow inside. Took it to the sink, added water until all combustion ceased, and then some more, just to be sure.

                           Damn, did that thing ever stink! Can’t stand the stench of burnt popcorn to this day. Nobody confessed, either; all I knew was, somebody I worked with was stupid enough to throw a burning bag of popcorn in the trash.
                           ———————————
                           I used to think I was paranoid.
                           I thought people were out to get me.
                           Now I know the truth — they ARE out to get me.
                           I feel so much better.

                           1. Popcorn is rather insidious; it will smolder for a while, and LATER catch on fire.

                              I can’t remember who put it in, but we had one go for just a minute or two more than it should’ve. Was just notably scorched when I pulled it out, dropped it in the (dry) sink and started cleaning the microwave, because I didn’t want the smell sticking in the micro.

                              About three minutes later the bag was BLACK, and came apart when I turned the water on over it, and steamed and hissed like crazy.

                        2. I was reading elsewhere that the smell of burnt popcorn in a dorm is often used as cover for the smell of smoldering hemp leaves.

                           1. This wasn’t a dorm, and there wouldn’t have been a reason to cover anything. It was just someone’s idiocy—in the Honors Program house. 😉

                     2. Cast Iron skillet + olive oil. Both in the jug size. Very tasty and seasons the pan beautifully.

            2. If the popcorn starts popping by itself, we need to seek underground shelter?

               1. Way too late.

8. Ace just pointed out that Christopher Steele is doing the same thing in Britain now as in the US a few years ago and with the same dynamic. He says:

   So, here we have:

   * A report partly compiled by Christopher Steele

   * A “whistleblower”

   * An attempt to claim that because this person knows this person and that person knows a Russian, the Russians have kompromat

   * An attempt to claim that the Russians are in league with the party that’s been opposing them for 100 years, and to claim that they’re working against the party that’s been promoting Soviet/Russian interests and in fact has frequently produced actual bona-fide Soviet agents.

   * An attempt to weaponize this bullshit to swing an upcoming election

   Wait wait wait wait wait — I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some of this before.

   ….

   What jumped out at me was the point (well, other than all of it) about claiming that the party that has always opposed Russians is being accused of being in cahoots with them while the party who’s been objectively soft and even promoting of Russia’s interests is acting like this is the biggest deal ever.

   (It wasn’t just Romney and his very laughable “1980’s foreign policy” har har, but also Palin being scoffed at for bringing up Russian petroleum interests.)

   And what is it, what is it REALLY other than choosing what might be used to “stampede” the right? Of *course* Russia is the boogie-man because they’re trying to stampede US and the right has viewed Russia with concern since forever, so that’s obviously the strongest lever to attempt to use.

   They do this all the time if you pay attention… Kerry trying to “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” us about Cheney’s gay daughter… the “sex positive no slut shaming” left going on constantly about “Have you seen these nude photos of Melania?” and then complaining when people didn’t pick up pitch forks… oh, and my fav ever, the teachers union in CA some years back bought advertisement opposing homeschool and charter school reform by warning the Christians that Wiccans were going to have the right to teach their children at home.

   No one knows what the left believes because they seem to promote whatever fantasy that they’ve made up about “those people over there” and how to influence (stampede?) them. “Ha ha, can you IMAGINE if black people started buying guns? HA!”

   It doesn’t matter that they’re trying to get people to express fear or hate toward gays or “sluts” or Wiccans or blacks or whoever… it only matters if it works.

   (People on the right *did* admire some things about Putin compared to Obama, specifically that he wasn’t apologizing for his country all the time, but that’s a far far cry from “he’s a good guy and we trust him”.)

   1. As far as I can tell, whatever his faults, Vladimir Putin works for the benefit of his country, and to hell with the rest of the world.

      Barack Hussein Obama, on the other hand, seemed more interested in working for the rest of the world, and to hell with his country.

      1. BINGO.
         That’s one of the reasons why I used to say that I’d rather have Putin for President than BHO.

         1. You too?!

            1. Say what you want about Putin, ruthless, a kleptocrat, a KGB retread, pining after the glorious USSR (as in United Soviet Socialists of Russia), but he IS a Russian patriot.

               If he was an American, heck yeah I’d have voted for him.

               1. ‘Zac’ly so. And Trump may be whatever his detractors say… but he is likewise first and foremost an American patriot.

                  And that has become the critical point.

                  1. The thing about Trump – and it seems to me that the Progressives have yet to grasp this – is he isn’t a perpetual scold. Ok, he also isn’t Granny Maojackets von Pantsuit, but unless they are stupid enough to nominate her again, that isn’t relevant.

                     1. Well, if they’d stop dissing him every 5 minutes, he’d probably settle down and behave closer to their idea of a “proper President”. ‘cept they’re like stupid people who keep poking at a wound and never letting it heal.

                        1. I’ve noticed the Left has long tended to “shoot people in the knees then condemn them as cripples.” One likely reason Trump has relied on Giuliani to handle such foreign affairs as investigation in Ukraine is likely because he knows himself surrounded by vipers with Rudy as one of the few he can trust.

                           Not that it matters — they gaslight Trump and then declare him mad.

                           ‘Mental instablity’: Psychiatrists who called Trump dangerous want to testify on impeachment
                           A group of medical experts who claim that President Trump’s mental health makes him dangerous and unfit for office is seeking to testify during House impeachment proceedings.

                           The group, comprising four psychiatrists, a clinical neuropsychologist, a neurologist, and an internist, are planning to announce their availability next week to members of Congress and the media. They’ll also be available to consult privately with members of Congress, with 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, or with members of Trump’s cabinet.

                           Dr. Bandy Lee, a Yale School of Medicine psychiatrist, announced the group’s plans to the Washington Examiner on Friday.

                           “We think that hearing about mental health aspects in the context of the impeachment hearings is critical, partly because, for the past 2.5 years we have been very deeply concerned about mental instability of the president, and pretty much all that we have said has born out to be true,” she said.

                           The idea of doctors presenting a mental health assessment of someone without personally examining them is controversial and against some medical association codes. Lee and others who agree with her stance stress, however, that their description of the president’s behavior, of his showing mental instability and dangerousness, shouldn’t be interpreted as issuing a diagnosis. …

                           1. Right. It isn’t a diagnosis because if it were one they would be violating their professional ethics. Calling it something else makes this PERFECTLY ok.

                              Magical thinking. These are the kinds of mental health professionals who, back in the day, decided that when you had a patient that was so uncomfortable in their own body that they believed they should have been born the opposite sex, it would be a good idea to mutilate them. An idea that they continue to hang on to in the face of a lot of evidence that it makes matters worse.

                              I’m gonna trust those ninnies to pronounce on the fitness of a President they don’t like. Sure.

                              I’d flog you this bridge I have in Brooklyn, but it’s too much trouble.

      2. Putin is Garak with Dukat’s style and sense of justice.

         (I’m a die hard Cardassian fangirl, but I will point out again: the only reason I wouldn’t do my best to kill Garak immediately if he were real is moral restraint, and I’d likely die cursing said restraint. Many characters are much better in fiction.)

         1. Don’t get cocky. Given his history it would seem Garak is much harder to kill than people realize. 😉

            1. True facts, there.

               My one advantage would be that he’d be unlikely to expect it from a human.

               Remember how shocked he was when Bashir shot him?

               Still, there’s a REASON that I expressed it as “try”!

               1. I don’t think he was shocked because Bashir is human, I think he was shocked because it was BASHIR. ;D

                  1. I’m not sure if I’m flattered or disturbed that you believe Garak would find me less of a hopeless case than Bashir. 😉

      3. If that were really true, then what is the innocent explanation for his involvement in the matter that inspired that m-something act he hates so much?

      4. I’ll concede that he may well be saner and less evil than Barack Obama.

      5. Vladimir Putin works for the benefit of…Vladimir Putin.

         Which differentiates him from Obama…not at all.

   2. Don’t forget the Dems trying to campaign on the platform of John Kerry being a genuine bona fide war hero.

      1. I found it darkly funny.

         “You must respect the veteran.”
         “NOT THOSE VETERANS!!!!”

         1. That is because they do not deem us human, engaging in abstract reasoning so much as reflexive response to symbols.

            They “think” — or rather they think we think — in flash cards.

            1. Not just the Dems. It can be a problem in any field. You misidentify why a particular thing happens, so you start looking for alternative reasons why. It’s basically perspective blindness (is that a term?), and can hit anyone.

               Why’d Trump win? One could argue that it’s because he’s a rich celebrity. I suspect most of his votes weren’t because of his wealth or celebrity status. But Schwarzenegger won the governorship here in California largely because he was a celebrity, so it’s something that experts can grab onto while pointing to examples of it working in the past.

            2. Another issue with the stampede is that leftists think in terms of The Group; collectivism uber alles, and tending to run in a herd. Note that one of the greatest leftist punishments is to outgroup or shun the target. Hell for them, meh or Yippie for others.

               IMHO, a lot of their strategy assumes that we act and think like they do. No, nope, nyet, nein, fuck no!

      2. What sank Kerry for me wasn’t his questionable citations; he and Bush both served in dangerous positions and gamed the system as it existed at the time, which anyone with any sense would have done. What sank Kerry was that he had testified about the Vietnam War in the company of men who later investigation proved were lying about their service, AND HE DIDN’T ANTICIPATE THAT THIS WAS A PROBLEM.

         Bush knew he had a drunk driving record, and that that was a problem. Early on in his National Political career, he held a press conference where he said he was an alcoholic, although he hadn’t had a drink in years. Then, when some twit tried to October Surprise him with an old DWI conviction, he could say “I told you I was an alcoholic back in (month/day/year). Weren’t you paying attention?”

         Kerry could have, at any point up to announcing he was running for the Democrat nomination, said “When I got back from Vietnam I was a very angry young man and did some things that weren’t very well thought out.”. That would have covered a lot of ground, without getting too specific. Kerry didn’t realize the necessity…and that, to my mind, disqualified him.

         I also thought he was a Liberal Establishment Arrogant Twit, comma, one each, and wouldn’t have voted for him had he been running against Jimmy Carter (who I loathe), but that degree of lack of foresight was what made me decide that, beyond being tiresome, he was unfit.

   3. The Left don’t believe in anything except control. That’s why they deliberately foster FUD, even when they contradict themselves. As said in the first Captain America movie, “The sanity of the plan is of no consequence”, as long as they can make you jump when they say so.

   4. About trying to engender fear and hate toward… well, anyone who isn’t of the pandering class… Jim of the extremely cranky blog lays it out ugly, but in my observation, he’s seldom wrong:

      https://blog.jim.com/war/genocide-on-the-way/

      Note the bloody handprints in the Huffpo piece (secondary link).

      TL;DR: when someone tells you, without qualification, that they intend to kill you — take them at their word.

   5. “Wiccans were going to have the right to teach their children at home.”

      I am FAR more concerned about the Wiccans teaching my children in their public schools … although Wiccans are preferable to the devotees of Baal and Moloch currently controlling curricula.

      1. It was outrageous. Firstly, most of the Christian homeschoolers would probably have been perfectly happy to know that even more weird hippies were teaching their kids at home, after all, they wouldn’t be hearing the gospel in public school anyway and if you believe in a parent’s god given mandate to educate your own children, that’s not conditional. What was outrageous about it was that no matter that the straw-man Fundy who would have a freak out about “whooo hoooo scary” Wiccans teaching their kids at home, the teachers union or whoever paid for this was willing to foment and encourage hate toward Wiccans if it got them what they wanted.

         Also, after posting I remembered that thing where the pro-affirmative action (iirc) student groups at Berkeley invited David Duke to campus… they got caught and called out and had to uninvite him. But same dynamic… if getting some guy on campus to say horrible things about racial minorities helps you, then this seems like a good thing to do.

         1. RE: Inviting people so that they say bad things and advance your cause –

            Wasn’t that exactly what CNN tried to do not all that long ago with the White Supremacist Spencer (as opposed to the other R. Spencer, who’s not a White Supremacist)? IIRC, they were hoping he’d say good things about Trump so that they could tar Trump by association. But it didn’t work out that way.

   6. On this: ” left going on constantly about “Have you seen these nude photos of Melania?”” I would answer with: If you can provide me a good quality 8X10 glossy I’ll be happy to frame it and display it in my living room.

      There’s an old, and methinks not apocryphal story about a British government official of some sort who the KGB attempted to blackmail with compromising photos of him with a pretty young woman. He sorted through them, picked some out, and tried to place an order for copies….

      1. I was once told I was a smartass (imagine that) during initial Counter-Intelligence training in the 80’s when they asked what I would do if an attractive (way out of my league) woman with a Slavic accent started to chat me up at a bar. My answer was that I’d do to her what the Soviets had been doing the Eastern Europe for 40 years and call the OSI in the morning.

         They told me I wasn’t taking this seriously enough. Apparently they didn’t realize I wasn’t joking.

   7. Yeah, that never made sense to me. No matter what his moral failings (once a Nekulturny Chekist, always a Nekulturny Chekist) Putin isn’t stupid. In what universe would he fear Ms Reset Button as president?

9. I do have a bit of a quibble. I think it is entirely reasonable to suspect The Empress and her filthy philandering hubby had nothing to do with Epstein’s demise. There are a LOT of people who didn’t want him talking about anything, so it is possible Shrill One got lucky and someone else helped him depart this mortal plane allowing hr and Billy Boy to go the Alfred E. Newman route.

   1. Sure. Possibly. But I’ve started smelling her running for the presidency again, and that’s only possible because Epstein died. Maybe it’s coincidence. I hear they happen. But it smells bad.

      1. it does, but actually, someone might well have beat her to him, or said “I got this”
         Bets there are 110% turnout districts in Milwaukee and Detroit again?

         1. “Who will rid us of this troublesome panderer?”

            “No I never told anyone to kill him. Things just happen, you know.”

            1. But people have noticed (and had noticed some time ago) and… coincidences don’t keep on happening.

               1. Inconvenient witnesses to Clinton behavior have a distressingly frequent habit of catching a bad case of dead at an early age.

                  1. Arkancide. Haven’t you heard of this new word?

            2. one of my clues is Shrill One allowed whatshisname to jokingly ask her how she had him killed.
               If his show goes tits up or he gets Metooed in the next few weeks, Arkanacide might have had a hand . . . if it blows over with his crappy show still plugging along, I think it might well have been someone else who needed silence

         2. and Boulder. Don’t forget Boulder.

            1. Every time I drove through the People’s Republic of Boulder I could feel the Lefty smugness in the air.

            2. And Chicago, origin of the graveyard precincts.

               Just for efficiency, the Cook County combination death certificate and Democrat registration form!

            3. If it all goes tits up in CO we have room waiting for you in Plano. Lots of hospitals here too. Opportunities for engineers exist as well.

               Future president of Texans for Hoyt Inc.

         3. The list of those who wanted Epstein dead would be huge, though perusal of the Lolita Express flight logs and his little black book might (maybe) narrow it down. OTOH, that’s still a lot of people…

            On the gripping hand, Shrillary might value the intimidation factor.

      2. I tend to embrace the power of “and.”
         Having lost the huge power that the Clinton Foundation cash flow gave them their organization has been curtailed, though they still retain open access to the media naturally.
         And apparently there was a host of rather famous folk who partook of “pimp to the nobles” Epstein’s services. I’ve heard rumors of a Royal or some such, and those types seem to run in packs.
         And none of such elites ever do their own dirty work. They always rely on a multiple link chain of cutouts that can easily be disappeared. Epstein was just far too much a direct link for him to ever be allowed to speak of what he knew.

         1. But the Clinton Foundation is back, and heavily funded. And Chelsea is running it once again. And people are pointedly not asking where all the money went the first time…

            1. Wait, what? Big donations rolling into CGI again?

      3. Yep, Hildebeast is positioning herself to swoop down onto the primary scene as “the only sane Dem candidate”.

         1. That the Hildebeast thinks she is the only sane candidate shows that she is clearly not. But of course pointing this out on the other side of the aisle may mean needing life insurance.

            1. To be fair to her, she’s partially right in that none of the other candidates are sane…

               1. I don’t know Zsuzsa. 2016 was in the margin of error. With the Demoncrat cheating machine going she should have won in a landslide. I don’t think any of the current candidates (excepting Slow Joe, but he behaves like he has Tertiary syphilis mixed with severe Alzheimers…) is quite that insane/stupid. Admittedly all their policies are about as realistic as poorly written fantasy, but show me a democrat in the last 30+ years that hasn’t had crazy ass policies.
                  I think its more that she thinks she’s more Sane/Electable than the others and that in itself is delusion at a grand level.

                  1. we were lucky in that she thought, for some reason, she’d lose the popular and win the electorals, so she concentrated GOTV in NYC and Chicago to make her victory “A Landslide!!!11!”
                     I know here there were many a dem who looked at the ballot and decided “Hell No. I ain’t listening to her for the next 4 years”

                     1. JP you may be right, I think a lot of the old “Reagan Democrats ” defected. But I think a lot of Democrats said “She’s going to win in a landslide so why waste my time voting”. Combining stupid GOTV efforts in places where she was already going to win (thus wasting funds) and not focusing on the battleground states through hubris or ignorance because her pollsters were boot licking yes men made her fail. That election was a lovely evening. What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!

                        1. “stupid GOTV efforts in places where she was already going to win (thus wasting funds)”

                           For as long as I’ve been following politics (which is nearing fifty years) one of the characteristics of Democrats is that they are “vote inefficient” — rolling up large majorities in races they’ve got in the bag and narrowly losing to Republicans in competitive districts.

                           One reason for that is to keep their GOTV machinery primed, paying your pawns to keep them active & loyal. Besides, if those dead citizens miss an election or two they might get removed from the voter rolls.

                           1. True the democrats do seem to do a lot of that. And also often doing unnecessary vote mangling. 100% turnout in Philadelphia? You wouldn’t get 100% turnout if you had a free bar in a truck in Philadelphia. Its so blue no matter who is running the D is going to win. It’s like cheating at poker when you already hold a Royal Straight flush, all its going to do is alert your opponent that your cheating… This must be one of these things driven by living off the feels instead of reason. It’s like Democrats are AntiVulcans who gave up reason lest it run them down some evil path.

                           2. Heh — you bring to mind a tale, origin long since forgotten, of the novice poll watcher proudly calling his boss at shift end to report “100% turnout for our guy!”

                              “Go back and add some votes for the other guy,” instructed the boss. “We don’t want this looking too good.”

   2. I’m inclined to agree with you on that one. Mostly depends on what goods Epstein had on the Clintons. At the very least, it sounds and looks like Prince Andrew and Fam had a far greater reason for ensuring Mr Epstain had the 5th enforced.

      1. as with many of there “former” (read – dead) associates he had a lot on them. But tarnishing them is a bit like dirtying up a turd. Many others it would really tarnish, and they really, really, needed that to not happen.

         1. *their
            dammit!

   3. I figure that it’s entirely reasonable to believe the Clintons had nothing to do with any specific death that happened in their sphere of influence; that’s a side-effect of the spheres they swim in.

      I’m rather less sure about them having nothing to do with any of said deaths…..

      1. Point. Something a former co-worker of mine said (and I have shamelessly co-opted) is that it is not so much single actions that define us, but patterns of behavior. There are enough patterns around the Clintons that are shady, dirty, corrupt, and downright malicious. They act as a criminal enterprise cloaked in the thin veneer of politics.

         To put it another way, it is offensive to basic common sense to say that they had no knowledge of *any* of the proven and alleged criminal acts that happened within their sphere. There may be some, minor ones here and there. But to claim that *all* of it was done without their knowledge? Without consent, or as I believe, *at their explicit direction?* *shakes head*

   4. I’m weird. I think Epstein did kill himself, and there was a conspiracy to make sure that he was able to kill himself, and perhaps provide assistance.

      1. oh, that is certainly not ruled out. because gee wilikers, no one would find something amiss when he is given back the items needed to do it himself, and monitoring is adjusted so he has the time to do it, and wow, what a coincidence all camera monitoring seems to have become offline as well. It very well could be “We are getting you this stuff back, and you know what to do with it, or we can show you”

10. c4c

11. > no idea who they’re dealing with.

    They *can’t*. They only perceive people as linked collections of categories. If A, then B, C, and D. Even if B, C and D are risibly inappropriate.

    As a white Mormon male you ought to understand this…

    1. They know how evil *they* are, so we HAVE TO BE much worse!

12. “Ciaramella is not really a whistleblower….”

    No, what he (hearsay-by-news-media-and-friends Whistleblower #1) really is instead is someone abusing the whistleblower statute and system and protections to try to gain cover (politically and tactically) for an attack on part of the government (the President) — who is by definition not part of the “intelligence community” since he ranks it all, in its entirety, bottom-to-top.

    And when all is said and done, this escapade of his (or theirs) will have likely done considerable damage to the entire concept and system they abuse. (Real whistleblowers, beware!)

    Compare: abuse of FISA court and its secrecy to try to hide the “Dossier” as the basis for (what sounded far-fetched at the time)… partisan tax-funded “deep-state” spying on Trump.

    Also notice a “whistleblower” practically by definition does not try to remain anonymous — try grabbing the rope of that big ol’ steam whistle and pulling down hard and see how “anonymous” you stay for long — the point of the protections is to enable you to do that without retaliation or reprisal later due to sour-grapes from the bad guys you just outed.

    1. And as I recall, the statute protects whistleblowers against retaliation by their employer; it doesn’t protect them from being outed, by anyone who cares to.

       I think the truth is they haven’t yet got their story straight and all their lines memorized.

    2. And since the whistleblower regulation was revised at precisely the right time for this implicates the entire CIA as being immoral, unethical, and anti-American.

       1. implicates the entire CIA as being immoral, unethical, and anti-American.

          Clowns In Action acting as a rogue agency? Where’s my fainting couch! Ah! right over by Sarah’s pallets of Shocked Faces.

13. Had a thought in the middle of the night, and it still seems plausible in the morning, so I’m going to throw it out there and see what happens:

    Top-down centralized control is only possible for relatively simple systems. The more complex the system, the more complex the task of controlling it becomes. That relationship is not linear, it is exponential. The complexity function feeds back upon itself because the centralized control is also a complex system which must be controlled.

    I can’t provide any formal proof, or specific numbers, but the logic seems inescapable. Think about it — is managing four kids only twice as complicated as managing two?

    This principle neatly explains why every attempt at centrally controlled command economies have been such dismal failures.

    A nation consisting of a third of a billion stubborn, contrary, ornery folks like us is millions of times too complex to be micro-managed by some autocratic central government.

    But, the leftists will never believe that. They have their Dream Of Utopia, and they will damn well bring it about, or we can all die trying.
    ———————————
    There is no shortage of people convinced they can create the perfect world. Trouble is, they always start out by fucking up this one.

    1. I think you’re right. That’s why whenever we have a leftist in power we get declared ungovernable TM

       1. And they always say that like it’s a bad thing.

    2. There’s actually a field by the name of Controls Engineering. One of the bastard children of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering.

       I am very certain that they have a lot of math showing under what conditions a centralized control system can handle a complex system. I also know that the theory and practice of distributed controls has not been 100% solved.

       So, complexity alone is probably not the key factor, although there are challenges. And complexity is probably a huge problem generally, most definitely in software.

       The key problem appears to be the transition to human beings. An electromechanical system, you can at least predict what state space it might be able to exist in. Not so human beings. With humans, you also lose a lot of information once you get away from individual decision making, and some of that lost information is important.

       Humans also have a lot of behavior that is not really predictable beforehand, and may specifically be prone to a shift in behavior when controlled that undermines the theory behind the control, whatever that theory is.

       So you don’t have a reliable state space model or behavioral model for human beings, and your prescribed responses according to such models will eventually be figured out if you try to use them on enough people. Once they are figured out, they will be gamed, and the behavior of the ‘controlled system’, will eventually suddenly and unpredictably change.

       I think this is a very important topic. I also think that us sensible sorts have not figured out the theory of why these will malfunction when used on humans to the same extent that the regular theories of controls are understood.

       1. I vaguely recall a cartoon (Looney Tunes? Merrie Melodies? Something shown on the local kid’s afternoon show.) Retelling of the Little Boy and the Dike story. Sticks his finger in the first hole – and two more leaks pop up. Plugs those, four more leaks. Etc., etc., until the flood comes.

          (I’m not sure that it’s even a geometric progression; it could be exponential. Amazon’s “anti-scamming” efforts seem to produce more than two new gaming methods for every one they think they’ve “plugged.”)

    3. I aim to misbehave.

    4. Isn’t this one of the reasons the USSR fell?

    5. The main problem with top-down systems is they lack feedback. Orders go down the chain, but they never really know what, if anything, happened. In most cases, it’s to the personal or organizational advantage of the order-ees to hide what is actually happening, so it turns into a chain of lines from end to end.

       Look at any of the 5-Year Plans in the USSR, or Hitler’s staff creating nonexistent divisions. Or even companies like the former Miniscribe, which was shipping boxes containing bricks instead of computer hard drives, and reporting to management and their receivers that yes, they were making shipments…

14. it’s a coup attempt and Schiff, Pelosi, Comey, Brennan at all know it. Ciamerelli’s own lawyer was calling it a coup as early as January 2017 and stated that they would impeach Trump as part of it. It needs to be treated like the coup attempt it is.

    1. Yesterday I backtracked said lawyer as far as info was readily available (oughta set kiwifarms on him) and developed a sneaking suspicion that he’s deep cover Muslim Brotherhood.

       1. The anons are digging, and Wikileaks re-released an allegation that he screwed over a CIA whistleblower, who ended up in prison.

          FWIW, Wikileaks just did a dump of their records from origination to about 2016. Sounds like it was *everything* they had.

          Sauce: https://twitter.com/GeorgeMNasif/status/1192938383284195328

          1. Oy. Must be by the ton…. can’t get it to bulk-download.

    2. Drag the conspirators out of their beds in the middle of the night, throw them in jail without bail, try them, convict them, send them to GITMO or Supermax until they can’t walk, and can’t talk, and drool all day?

       1. Hemp Fandango. Then heads on pikes.

          1. A conspirator dangling from every lamppost along Pennsylvania Avenue, from the White House to the Capitol. Any extras can hang from the lampposts on the roads encircling the Capitol. Pour encourager les autres.

             1. I don’t think those people shouting “I. Am. Spartacus!” remember how that movie ended.

                
                Of course, a comprehensive list of all they do not know about History would require we have a bigger blog.

       2. I’m willing to settle for burning their offices to the ground, shaving them bald, painting them red, and chaining them in the public square next to a buckets of aged offal for any passers-by to distribute.

          Because I’m merciful like that, and we could all use a nice morale-building viral video.

          1. Would you be okay with simply relocating their offices to someplace closer to their responsibilities? Ag Dept. to Boise, perhaps? Put the EPA in St. Louis Cairo where they can better monitor the nation’s water? Place the Park Service in Salt Lake City (or wherever we can determine is most central to the national park-lands.)

             1. If going by concentration of acreage, thanks to how much land in Alaska was given into the care of the National Park Service, I think they’d be based somewhere in British Columbia, Canada. If not weighting by acreage, I think that’d put them somewhere near Topeka. But am I allowing Hawaii proper influence? Perhaps a hundred miles west of Astoria, Oregon would be the right location. 😉

                1. 🙂

                   100 miles west of Astoria, Oregon works.

                2. I haven’t been there, but I have Guaranteed-Correct reports that that space is Paradise on stilts, the sun always shines and the palm trees sway in the breeze and the hula dancers are just ever so nice to residents.

             2. As long as I still get the stocks and the buckets, we’re good.

    3. They all need to do the hemp fandango. In public. Pour encourager les autres.

       1. Alas, the only way we’re going to get that would be martial law, and even then you’d need someone as hard-nosed as me sitting in the Oval Office. What I think is feasible is a prosecution for Seditious Conspiracy. 18 USC Section 2384. Carries a sentence of 20 years imprisonment.

          1. Don’t forget the treason charges for some, though I think it would end with high-speed lead poisoning.

15. > You can see PRECISELY why they wouldn’t want
    > Ciaramella’s name to be out in the open, right? It
    > endangers their little coup.

    Which is Teh crazy. It appears they really expected they could impeach a president using secret testimony from an anonymous witness, and that it’d all stay secret and anonymous, even with probably hundreds of people involved in the conspiracy.

    If they’re been a bit smarter they’d have just made it up from nothing. At least nobody would have been able to identify their fake witness.

    1. They CAN impeach the President. Nothing really prevents them from staging their kangaroo grand jury with totally contrived “evidence” and opinion. What they’ll never be able to do is convict him in an actual trial; and without that, they can’t legally remove him from office. The timing of this is part of their election campaign strategy; make “Orange Man Look Bad” so fewer people turn out to the polls to support him, fewer vote for him, and they get to play their ballot stuffing fraud once again.

       1. Except its backfiring in some parts of the country. I mean the locals here in taxachussets eat this nonsense up. Heck short the proverbial dead girl or live boy found in the D candidates bed no way Trump wins here (and if I’m honest pictures of the candidates doing horrible things to underage humans, cats, dogs and sheep wouldn’t sway the local demoncrats) but here doesn’t matter. But this is not making things go well in the places that might be tipped. All we need is for the Dems to get cocky like Hilary.

          1. Ditto west coast. D candidate can “win” the popular vote, again, because the few states they do win are so heavily populated. But lose the overall electoral vote, which is what counts. Hopefully because the states they win are the only ones they can actually get 110% turn outs in.

             Again. The county or prescient maps of the states they take will tell a different story. But since those states it is winner takes all, popular vote, map just tells a story.

             1. There are some states which have decided to override their own citizen’s votes and require the electors to give them to the Democrat who can manufacture 200+% of the vote in their various one-party machines get the popular vote.

                “…DC, DE, HI, RI, VT), 8 medium-sized states (CO, CT, MD, MA, NJ, NM, OR, WA), and 3 big states (CA, IL, NY)… ”

                https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation

                1. Oregon’s at least read (I think it got kicked back to general election, so wouldn’t be enforce in 2020) “the popular vote”, which means any party (he he ha ha) … like that’ll happen even if not a “D” behind the name. Oregon will go “D”, thanks to Portland/Salem/Eugene/etc.

                2. Note that every one of those States are where it makes absolutely no difference. And they will not face a lawsuit that will shoot down their “feel good,” but thoroughly unconstitutional legislation.

                   1. From your mouth to God’s ears

                   2. Oh, they will.
                      The problem is that until the “Compact” gets triggered there is nobody with standing to bring suit

                3. Yep.
                   And that CANNOT be constitutional, having been passed by fiat, without consulting hte people. I’ve been disenfranchised.

                   1. You’ve not been disenfranchised until they trigger the compact. OTOH, doesn’t it seem a more credible form of voter suppression than any effort at cleaning up the voter rolls.

                4. Not a one of those states matters a whit. Those states are all so blue they were going for the democrat anyhow. The only fun would be if the popular vote went R through some odd miracle (freak snowstorm in CA tanking turnout?).

                   To be honest I think the states have a right to hand out the electoral vote in whatever manner they want as the constitution is written. There is a requirement that the states have a republican form of government but not sure that directly applies.
                   However, the National Popular Vote has a compact between the states as it does not take effect until enough states have passed it to break the 278 barrier. The Constitution EXPLICITLY forbids compacts between the states (that kind of nonsense is part of what made the Articles of Confederation untenable). I’m not sure who has standing to sue but the compacts should be attacked through that.

                   1. The 14th Amendment requires that a state’s representation be diminished according to the disenfranchised citizens.

                      1. Mary I believe you’re referencing Section 2 of the 14th amendment
                         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text
                         But that speaks of representation (i.e. how many representatives a state has) based on which indeed does affect the number of electors. How the electors are chosen is laid out in article two section 2 clause 1

                         “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector..”

                         The first sentence is the binding one “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors”. In a strict sense if the legislature chose to apportion the electors to the winner of a cat race to a post where each candidate was associated with a cat and the candidate of the winning cat got all the votes (call this a first past the post system) this would be valid AS LONG as the residents of the state can then elect a new legislature that fixes this insane system (The state would have a republican form of government).

                         My own feeling is that the most effective form is that of Maine (and at least one other state Missouri?). Each elector for a congressional district is assigned by the victor in that district, and the two senate electors are assigned on total state vote (or we could go with that cat race…) . This gets an electoral vote which will avoid things like California and New Yorks rural districts getting swamped by the insane cities and lets insane cites (E.G. Austin TX) not be swamped by their state. It also forces NATIONWIDE campaigns not cherry picking of a few states and can also isolate fraud (you cant take all of California but cheating wildly in SF/LA). Because of this neither side would ever accept it in bulk. I also think a strong 3rd party Ala Perot might toss this into the house so it does have some issues

                         1. Maine and Nebraska.

                            And I agree with you that said system would be better–Pennsyltucky should not be overridden by Pittsburgh/Philadelphia, and the Black Belt/Birmingham should not be locked out by the Alabama backcountry.

                            1. And it would possibly hew closer to the “popular” vote. Although it will probably be closest in years shortly after the census. Nearer the end of a census things may get a little scattered. Sadly Nebraska and Maine are small electoral vote states (5 and 4) so its not always obvious this would be useful. Although more rural Northern and Down East Maine has split with its more citified parts down towards the NH border in some elections. It would be more interesting in a BIG state (CA, NY, TX). But NY and CA are very blue in their legislatures and unlikely to take the chance of giving votes to non blue candidates. TX is kind of the other way around although more in the vaguely purple range due to Austin and the border areas. If you wanted it to go through it would probably have to be in the form of a constitutional amendment and good luck getting that passed.

                            2. Such a system seems an invitation to gerrymandering the Electoral College, and we know full well that Progressives only oppose Republican gerrymandering, as that is intended to thwart the Will of the People, unlike Democrat gerrymandering which is intended to allow the authentic voice of the people to be heard.

                               Embittered? Me?!? Perish the thought.

                               
                               Although the reason they took my picture off these bottles was children, seeing the wallaby cuteness, kept drinking them in hope of becoming wallabies themselves.

                   2. It matters because we are moving to a post-constitutional America. Which is not America at all.

                      1. America essentially went post constitutional early in the 20th century most distinctly as the 1930’s court allowed nearly anything to be attributed to the commerce clause granting power to legislate in cases where a strict reading of the constitution would forbid it. The 60’s and onward was when the rest of the camel got in the tent. At that point the progressives took off the mask and admitted they hated and ignored the constitution rather than paying it hypocritical lip service as they had done in the 30+ years prior. You could argue the failure was even earlier when the 14th and 15th amendments were ignored even by the supreme court to let Jim Crow and the more subtle northern segregation to exist.

                         1. I interrupt normal programming to…. wish the USMC a Happy Birthday (244th)

                         2. I think there are places in America which are still “constitutional” but they are at the mercy of the Federal bureaucracy which is most definitely not.

                            The failure has two points. The first is Pres. Wilson’s creation of the federal Deep State: A massive, unelected, permanent law-making body: All other political shenanigans were planned for. The second was the de-Christianisation of the population. I.E. Our Country was designed for free men.

                            The former pretty much dooms us to Mrs. Hoyt’s future. The latter, however, is utterly and completely out of reach of our soi-disant “superiors” and would-be masters.

             2. A prescient map would be nice to see – if only to see where we might could stand to work harder. Of course, if it were truly prescient then any extra work would be pointless.

       2. Of course they can. The crazy part is they thought they could do it on made-up “evidence” and not get caught.

       3. My thought is that this would bring all of we deplorables out to vote for him, and many of the wized-up and pissed-off dem voters to join us.

16. You know how some novels are awful, because the main characters are stupid assholes, but get away with it because of course they do, because after all, the author is on their side?

    So what you’re saying is that modern American politics is an Idiot Plot of the second kind (plot only works because everyone’s, or nearly everyone’s, an idiot) written by an incompetent novelist?

    1. Yep. At least and for sure on the left.

17. A decent number of the folks over 13 can reality-check things. Most are intelligent enough to not announce it while they’re in school, though…..

    1. (Note: I wasn’t.)

       1. Me either. I learned it though, to get into college.

          1. Me either.

             Luckily, no one listens to me anyway.

             1. Nor I.

18. “FB is right wing”

    Yeah – like I have cloven hooves and a curlicue tail. These [donkeys] are so far Left they’ve lost sight of Center. I would no more trust their evaluation of “Right-wing” than I would rely on my granny’s opinion that my clothes are “groovy.”

19. As convenient as it was for a lot of people, I’m still persuaded Epstien was a suicide, if only because the crew who would want him dead have a long and stories history of being primarily spectacularly inept.

    This is the party of Corey Booker who could not even successful break the law when he tried to. Trump, when he joked about how he could shoot someone in the street and no-one would care, at least you knew, if he really decided to, someone was going to end up shot. These knuckleheads would some how manage to screw it up, and not in the normal “oh, I missed” sort of way. It would be epic, silly, and worthy of the most macabre Monty Python routines, when the only reason we’re not laughing at them is because people are actually getting hurt.

    These people couldn’t organize an orgy at a brothel for all the money in the world. How are they going to organize a hit in a functional prison without accidentally rolling a car full of purple melons down the elevators while it was on fire?

    1. First off, since the entire reason that they want the guy dead is that quite a few people did manage to organize a boink in a brothel (in spite of it being a long time half-secret, with illegal sex subjects) and it’s only a spectacular failure because they had REASON to be over-confident, bad basis.

       Secondly– you checked out the reports on that jail? WHAT functioning jail?

       1. Foxfier has it right. Either that jail was dysfunctional beyond belief or something fishy was going on. All the cameras not working? Guards not checking for hours because they were sleeping? It seems like someone ought to be trying to follow the money because those guards didn’t do that for giggles. Epstein had been on suicide watch and had just come off. That feels a little like where they’d walk up to an officer in USSR or Nazi Germany, put a pistol on the desk and walk out. He was being told “Off yourself or something really bad is going to happen”. He certainly didn’t do it out of any sense of honor…

          1. Well, yes, the jail was totally dysfunctional. As near as I can tell most jails are stunningly dysfunctional. “Who pulls a gun on an ambulance? , would pull a gun on an ambulance. “! You know who I am! Put the gun down and open that door right now!” The door opened…

             However that ends up supporting both possibilities. He was the one who talked himself off of suicide watch, and indications are he was the one who talked the other prisoner (a gone bad police officer) out of his cell.

             And yes, I can see him bribing the guards to look the other way. I can also see them simply being incompetent and not doing their job, then kicking themselves for life for not taking bribes. What I really can’t see is that same crew sneaking anyone else in without leaving a chaos trail behind them the size of Detroit.

             These *aren’t* the people who organized the orgy: that was Epstien. They just went along for the ride.

       2. Right.
          Epstein did NOT kill himself.

       3. I’ve friends who have worked in the jail system for years. The things said upon realization of just how very, very badly they had eff’d up… are not repeatable in polite company. Or most impolite company, even.

          There are professionals in nigh every niche in every part of the system. There *have* to be. It p*sses off a lot of good people who do a hard job to see some of their own paint them all in such an incompetent and corrupt light.

          Lastly, I’ve not seen the full report. But as a physical anthropologist (even out of practice for a decade or so), I would *dearly* love to. There are factors alluded to that just don’t add up.

          1. I can imagine; my only “jail” experience was in getting qualified to supervise the brig for watch duty (no, they weren’t stupid enough to assign me, but you need enough females just in case) and I was boggling.

    2. Another reason to suspect assassination disguised as suicide: Whitey Bulger was murdered as soon as he arrived at a prison even though it wasn’t his final destination and without any advance official notification. A second, in-prison murder of a high profile suspect with connections would raise too many questions. The incompetence you speak of is in their thinking that this was sufficiently different that nobody would notice; not in their actual “execution”.
       And the “official” version was Vince Foster suicided; even though the evidence for that has more holes than a spaghetti colander.

       1. I still have my suspicions about James Forrestal’s “suicide.”

20. I agree with so much of your post but would add this: If (and he probably was) Epstein was murdered, the number of possibilities for suspects is WAAY more than the Clintons . Like a skunk, he fouled anyone and everything that came close to him. And that is a great many people.

    1. Oh, I know. OTOH Hillary wants to run again…

       1. Do I recall corrdctly that Whitey Bulgers’ son was one of the young turks feeding at the Ukrainian corruption trough along with Biden fils?

          1. I think you do.

             1. I thought it was a nephew, but I could be wrong.

21. None of this matters. The House will vote for impeachment, and it’ll pass purely along party lines, perhaps with a few key Democrats who need to pretend to be non-partisan because they are from R-leaning places, but that will be very carefully managed and scripted so as to not put the vote in jeopardy of not passing. We’ll have to hear a few weeks of Democrats crying and slobbering about how UNFAIR it is that they need a 2/3 vote to convict.

    Then, because they have to, the Senate will hold a trial. The Democrats will vote en bloc to convict. Perhaps a few Republicans will join them because Trump is an asshole and probably called them a stupid name that one time (boo-hoo-hoo, my heart bleeds), but it is HIGHLY unlikely that they manage a 2/3 vote to convict. The entire time, nobody is going to give two fucks about the truth. Neither Democrats nor Republicans will care if he’s guilty or not, or if the shit they are voting over really rises to the level of an impeachable offence.

    Hell, the only reason we can’t just hold the impeachment trial today is because everyone involved thinks the American people are fucking stupid and will be fooled by the giant dog and pony show. The Democrats especially want to drag their feet, because for them, this is all about having an excuse to smear Trump before the election. They aren’t delusional enough to believe the impeachment will actually work.

    Oh wait…. I just read Warren’s plan to pay for everything for everybody. Maybe they ARE that delusional.

    1. ANY Senate Republican who votes to convict Trump will kill their career. Might as well announce retirement as they cast the vote.

       1. I can think some senators might not have an enjoyable retirement if they voted (as an R) to convict. There are going to be a lot of really ticked off people if this goes to trial.

    2. > smear Trump

       They’re going to try harder than for the last three years? What are they going to do, claim he failed to return a library book when he was in the fourth grade?

       I’m going to start referring to him as “Teflon Don.”

       1. “What are they going to do, claim he failed to return a library book”

          You know, they just might …

          Michigan mom faces jail time after returning library books two years late
          They’re throwing the book at her!

          A Michigan mom of five has been charged with returning library books two years late — potentially facing up to 93 days in jail, according to a report.

          “I really don’t think going to jail over those two books is OK,” Melinda Sanders-Jones told WILX. “I definitely didn’t wanna steal their property.”

          Sanders-Jones told the station that she had no idea she even had the two overdue books until she tried to use a printer at Charlotte Library and told she was banned from using the services.

          She fetched the books, “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and “Night,” and returned them to the library, expecting nothing more than some hefty late fees, she said.

          Instead, the mom’s literary lateness may actually cost her her job. Her boss called to warn her that he found the warrant out for her arrest while doing background checks for impending promotion. …

22. According to something I just saw over in the comments at Ace’s blog, Facebook has apparently stated that any posts providing Ciaramella’s identity as the whistleblower will be removed.

    1. Yep. Which is why we’re all posting about it.
       One observation: they don’t catch either archive links OR pictures of comments.
       Have at it if you’re on FB, anyone reading this.

    2. Heh. Let’s see how long it takes FB to remove my post.

23. Insight provided. Their reasoning is stupid but it is not irrational (N.B.- rationality does not mean what many people think it means.)

    Facebook Plans to Remove ‘Any and All Mentions of the Potential Whistleblower’s Name’ from Platform
    A Facebook spokesperson confirmed on Friday that the platform would ban “any and all mentions of the potential whistleblower’s name,” the latest iteration in an ongoing debate among journalists and activists over the propriety of identifying the intelligence official.

    Facebook began taking down articles mentioning the alleged whistleblower on Wednesday, according to a report from Breitbart, and provided a statement saying that “any mention of the potential whistleblower’s name violates our coordinating harm policy, which prohibits content ‘outing of witness, informant, or activist.’”

    The statement also mentions that Facebook will revisit the decison “should their name be widely published in the media or used by public figures in debate.”

    The Trump whistleblower has not yet been confirmed after initial reporting by The New York Times in September stated he was “a C.I.A. officer detailed to the White House at some point,” but multiple outlets have reported on the individual after RealClearInvestigations published an alleged profile on October 30.

    [SNIP]

    On October 17, Zuckerberg defended a policy of allowing political campaigns to run false or misleading advertisements, telling the Washington Post that “I don’t think people want to live in a world where you can only say things that tech companies decide are 100 percent true.”

    The move drew internal criticism from Facebook, where an open letter from hundreds of employees condemned the decision as allowing “politicians to weaponize our platform by targeting people who believe that content posted by political figures is trustworthy.”

    “We are proud of the work that the integrity teams have done, and we don’t want to see that undermined by policy. Over the coming months, we’ll continue this conversation, and we look forward to working towards solutions together. This is still our company,” the letter closes.

    1. Facebook began taking down articles mentioning the alleged whistleblower on Wednesday, according to a report from Breitbart, and provided a statement saying that “any mention of the potential whistleblower’s name violates our coordinating harm policy, which prohibits content ‘outing of witness, informant, or activist.’”

       Uhhh…that ship has already sunk. Patching the holes is useless, and just makes them look stupid…er.

24. c4c

25. “There might, of course, also have been a trigger on the name of Eric Ciaramella, because the frigging idiots THINK they can keep it secret, after Schiff for brains forgot to redact it.”

    I had to go look this up. Yes, Schiff’s clown circus DID post the transcript with this guy’s name right on it. I love it! No wonder Trump is beating these guys, they’re friggin’ sand-lot league!

    Dear Lefties, I stopped believing any of your horseshit back in 1992. Time has only confirmed my decision again and again and again. The sheer mendacity of the Dems and the media is so profound, you can set your watch by it. If a Dem has his/her mouth open, they are lying. If their mouth is shut, they are composing their next lie.

26. “Someone in comments pointed out that the left is complaining that FB is too right wing.”

    Indeed. FB is one of the scapegoats for the Unthinkable Defeat of the Inevitable Hillary Presidency. They have been too right-wing in not policing the content of every single post made on the platform and are thus responsible for Trump, Putin, the alt-Right, etc. While I have no great love of The Zuck, I get the feeling that FB’s beatings from the Left will continue until morality improves.

    1. I wonder if Zuckerman will try to be a better minion or if he’ll finally see sense if they keep beating him?

27. Magnitsky Act.

    I will go on the record as saying that I don’t really think Hillary Clinton killed Sergei Magnitsky.

    On the other hand, Cummings. The death of a man in his seventies is extremely suspicious. (All jokes aside, I really did wonder, and would not object to seeing the autopsy and his medical records.)

    On the gripping hand, I have been speculating lately that the failure to produce sequels to the 2012 Dredd movie is a nefarious plot.

28. A thought on the “suicide”.

    When I look at it I don’t see one botched operation, I see two (& boy howdy were they, both, both botched).

    Primus, to me the death looks like it was meant to be an obvious fake, like you’d use for a false-flag (which I would then have expected Occaisional-Cortex & Co. to have tried to pin on Trump, somehow).

    Secundus, the declaration it was a “suicide”, this only makes sense if there had been credible effort to make it look like one…

    So, really, to me, this looks like there were two plans under consideration, & some Clin…^h^h^h^h…idiot managed to push the “go button” on both at the same time.

    1. Two botched operations? Makes sense…

29. It’s amazing the difference in how whistle-blowers are treated.

    Against Trump? Defend their existence to the end of days.

    Against Epstein? A comment from years ago about a spiked story that would have put too many of the friends of the MSM in risk causes the people to be tracked down and fired and black-balled from their industry. Which might be perfect material for a lawsuit.

    (BTW: Epstein didn’t kill himself. The question is, who got to him first?)

    1. Well, I suppose it could have been a technical suicide, as in “Take thou this sheet and noose thyself, or my several large friends will beat you into itty bitty pieces, very slowly and thoroughly.”

       1. That wouldn’t explain the three broken bones in his neck, would it?

30. Solving Epstein’s murder will be tricky, because I see so very many possible suspects. He was in a position to impact a hell of a lot of high-profile people.

    1. What about the folks who’d just want Epstein dead on general principles?

       1. Well, a lot of us would want his former clients and fellow travelers dead as well, and wouldn’t take out Epstein until they wrung all the appropriate information out of him. The current lack of high profile suspicious deaths or outright assassinations from his likely client list mitigate against this being a public service killing.

31. Pingback: On The Attempted Stampede | Western Rifle Shooters Association

32. EC’s name was all over youtube yesterday. Yep, FB is trying to lock the door of the stall after the horse got out.

33. I had a bad dream about Elizabeth Warren. She was broke and she had a collector to make us give her our extra cash. I was pretty mad and said no— But I woke up with a headache and a bad attitude. I heard a report that Elizabeth Warren was touting her medical plan that would lose 2 million jobs and would be funded by taxing billionaires. I can see why I had the dream…

    1. I have to wonder what the Democrat reaction to the inevitable campaign ad will be.

       “Elizabeth Warren lied for decades about having Native American ancestors, to get racial preferment. Now she wants to be President. What else is she lying about?”

       1. Yep

34. NaNo not quite:
    500 words

35. Obvious truth:
    They have never seen a stampede.
    Much less, been close enough to hear the thunder and feel the ground shake.
    .

    1. > never seen a stampede

       Go to Wal-Mart on Black Friday…

36. I agree with Joy Behar that O’Rourkes candidacy went down because he wasn’t a good enough dissembler about religion and guns, although I disagree that he should have been. Apparently, the failures of the more obvious wackos are providing encouragement to better dissemblers to jump in the race now so that they can be the man [ahem] on a white horse that saves the country, or at least important part of it, the Democratic party.
    And yes, cowboy movies and ballads are a nice antidote to those who think they can start and then control a stampede. Ask Robespierre’s ghost how to ride a mob into comfortable old age.

37. Eric Ciaramella*Eric Ciaramella*Eric Ciaramella*Eric Ciaramella*Eric Ciaramella Bock this, chickenpoops. (heading off to FB to spam it there.

    1. I don’t play in the FaceBook pond — too much scum there — but suggest you put up links to MSM articles citing his name, post (without reference to “whistle-blower” his Wiki (or other fact source, e.g., Who’s-Who listing) or even simply post the question: “What do you get when you Google ‘Eric Cia …?'”

       I wonder whether one could create a meme of a tin whistle named Eric? Or write a childhood remembrance of a favorite toy whistle …

       Or post the Baby Names listing for Eric? Along with some fun facts* such as:

       How Popular is the name Ciaramella?
       As a last name Ciaramella was the 38,754th most popular name in 2010.

       Weird things about the name Ciaramella:
       Your name in reverse order is Allemaraic. A random rearrangement of the letters in your name (anagram) will give Reaiamalcl. How do you pronounce that?

       How many people have the last name Ciaramella?
       In 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau surveyed 570 people with the last name Ciaramella.

       How likely are you to meet someone with the last name of Ciaramella?
       Chances are, most people haven’t met someone with Ciaramella as their last name since less than 1 person in 526k people have that last name. If you know one, consider yourself lucky!

       Source: https://www.names.org/n/ciaramella/about#associations

38. Interesting: a search of ‘eric ciaramella’ on Bing returns 683 K results, Da Goog coughs up 281 K, & DuckDuckGo apparently doesn’t count responses . . .

39. Someone in comments pointed out that the left is complaining that FB is too right wing…Well, their “FB is right wing” is based on the idea we’re just like them.

    And is based on their idea that anything to the right of Stalin is “right wing”. So much for the modern, moderate and civilized Left.

    1. “… idea that anything to the right of Stalin is ‘right wing’.”

       When the Daughtorial Unit was quite young and we’d take her shopping for new shoes she was wont to declare any shoe offered to be “Too tight! Too tight!” We could have put her in clown shoes and she’d have denounced them as “too tight!”

       After we eventually deduced the pattern we had “a conversation” explaoning that there were perfectly legitimate reasons to decline offered shoes other than their being too tight, and that everybody’s shopping experience would become more enjoyable and more efficient if she could provide more informative explanations.

       Whenever I hear our Marxist fellow countrypersons declare anybody “far-right”, “racist” “reactionary” I translate that as “too tight” and ignore the ignorant toddlers.

       They have not earned the right to label anybody.

       1. Nice anecdote.

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