The End Of The World

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

The world ends all the time. On the regular. And then a new world begins. Most people don’t notice.

But then there’s moments where what was, all the patterns of life you were used to get burned before your eyes, in real time.

And sometimes you don’t dare talk about it. Other times you talk about it, but no one listens, because the entire thing is so bizarre, you’re a little shell shocked and afraid to make any guesses as to what has shattered your reality so completely. You can’t say anything. You don’t even dare. Because you sound like a lunatic, when in fact, it is the world that’s gone insane. Or at least the people driving the bizarre changes.

On 9/11 I remember sitting in front of the TV, while people talked about how everything had changed and wondering if they were right. I mean, I was hurt, grief stuck, but not really feeling that earth-shattering change that everyone was predicting.

And in fact, except for a long war we weren’t allowed to win, a brief disruption in flight patterns, and the curse of yet another federal bureaucracy and another intrusion on our constitutional rights….. life went on, pretty much the way it had before. Maybe a little crazier.

I’m not discounting, mind, the horror of 9/11. But life, as life, didn’t change, and unless your real-estate was in a certain area of NYC, neither did it.

These last seven months, though, I’ve kept thinking “I wonder if — 9/11 not having worked to destroy us — someone is having another go.”

And I can’t even really guess whom, because I can’t think that China was behind 9/11.

On the other hand, perhaps we owe the Truthers an apology. Only an apology of sorts, though. I mean, beyond the fact that fire does — in fact — melt steel, there are far bigger problems with their theory, including the fact that a conspiracy of that magnitude wouldn’t be silenced, and that frankly, Republicans, even eGOP aren’t very good at conspiracies.

On the other hand, they were absolutely right about the idea that there’s absolutely NOTHING governments won’t do to attain and keep power, as we’ve seen in 2020: from a virus whose lethality and effects are grossly exaggerated to produce panic, to the rigging of elections in such a way that the people have effectively stopped having a say in their governance.

Which brings us to the end of the world. My world at least.

Periodically, for good and sufficient reason, we have to venture to the center of Denver… which now looks like nothing I could have imagined in January 2020.

I have read a lot of books set during or just after World War II in London (mostly mysteries. It just so happened some of the great mystery writers were working there, at that time.) I am familiar with the tone of “Everything changed. It’s a different landscape. If I’d known this was coming, I’d have done– I’d have visited — I’d have enjoyed–“

At some point one of you guys said something about after New Year’s we’ll wake up in January 2020. And I thought “Oh, that would be lovely. I’d at least have two and a half months to say goodbye to all the places we loved, the things we enjoyed doing, the city that — despite it making no sense — I loved as my hometown.”

Because that’s the worst thing, you know? I ‘ve lived in this area for over thirty years. I always intended to go for high tea at the Brown Palace, but we never had time/opportunity/whatever. And now the area isn’t even safe, and, oh, yeah, we’re locked again and can’t possibly do this. And when/if we’re let out of unconstitutional mass-imprisonment the chances of it (or any of our other favorite places) being around are very very low. I mean, the estimates are 75% of restaurants will close. Other places? Who knows?

The zoo, the museums, all send us continuous appeals for money, but seriously? How many people can donate to the facilities they can’t visit? I mean, really, the botanic gardens demand we wear masks — outside. with minimal occupancy. And no, I’m not about to do that. And I don’t think I’m alonne.

And again, all this was commanded in the name of not very much. All over the world. Coordinated. On no scientific evidence whatsoever. (No, there is no scientific evidence of any kind that masks and lockdowns help slow (much less stop) Covid-19 or in fact any other respiratory virus. There is a lot of Chinese flim flam about it, but again — seriously — who believes China, at this point? Take the distancing: six feet here, three feet in Europe. What’s the science in this? Masks? What is meant by masks? Because apparently 17 layer masks do have a barely perceptible effect. But the largely decorative fabric over mouth? yeah, none. If the idea is to stop us from sneezing on each other, perhaps just “Don’t sneeze on other people” which worked for swine flu, as much as anything else.)

Now, if this were a minor thing, if they were requesting we cough into our elbows, or perhaps blasting the airways with hand washing public service announcements, it would be annoying, but forgivable.

Instead, they’re reaching into every one of our lives, and changing the way we live. They’re destroying businesses and restaurants that it took a lifetime to build. They’re destroying education — or at least what passes for it — and ripping apart entire industries. They’re taking us back to a time when flying is something the very rich do.

And all for what? So people don’t catch a disease which has a 98.5% chance of survival? (MUCH higher than that if you only count those younger than 65.) And that from tested cases, which are mostly people who display SOME symptoms.

Yes, I am a terrible person. Indeed. I want grandma to die, indeed. Or not. Because how long do you think that a society that is hard-core destroying its wealth and its ability to feed itself going to be able to keep grandma alive? The third world is already starving, due to our spasm of idiocy. How long till it reaches us? Take a guess. It depends, of course, on whether we allow people to be beyond our reach, electorally.

Speaking of which, we in Colorado have had vote by fraud er…. mail for about a decade. Which means, generally speaking, our governors and mayors can do whatever they please and not fear being run out of power.

What they choose to do is illustrative.

Denver, particularly the very expensive urban areas, is not just being destroyed by the lockdowns — I mean, who is going to spend good money to rent in an area of town known for conventions, when the convention center is now a giant homeless shelter? Which restaurant — should it survive — will choose to stay downtown, when there are feral homeless camping in every sidewalk and parking lot? Which museums will survive, when people get shot on the street in front of them.

It seems like a memory from another life, that as little as a year ago, we ran across downtown Denver at night, to get to our favorite German restaurant (we couldn’t get parking closer.) I now wouldn’t cross those streets in the full light of day.

Think about it. Those areas were expensive real estate. For all I know they still are, but who would want to buy there?

And what kind of government WILLINGLY Detroitizes its city?

Unless of course, they don’t give a damn. And they’re mad at you, the people, because they know that without their extensive fraud apparatus, you’d kick them out in… a Denver minute.

Now contemplate that regime all over our fair land…..

I mean, if I weren’t on this here sinking ship, I’d laugh at the faces in Europe, when they realize that their cheering of American progressives means — largely — that they’ll starve, or get bossed by Russia and China.

But be fair, their surprise will be very brief, since the US has fed most of the world for decades and if we stop doing it, there won’t be much that survives.

And for us, none of this is funny.

A curious observation: in the most affected neighborhoods in Denver, the Biden/Harris signs have multiplied SINCE the election. At least doubled, maybe more. Also BLM signs have appeared everywhere.

They should be honest and put a up a sign saying “eat me last!” It would have the virtue of frankness and help about as much. Perhaps more, since it might make the looters and vandals laugh.

What do you do when the world ends, and what comes after is unimaginably horrible?
Other than determine to fight on, no matter how little you can do?

Nothing, I guess. Save mourn for the completely bizarre destruction, the wanton callousness that murdered a world that worked.

And refuse to kneel and beg.

Remember you’re Americans. They can destroy our world, but they can’t make us anything else.

It’s time for massive civil disobedience. It’s time to show them what we think of their illegitimate rule.

Hurt or not, Americans do not kneel. Not while we’re alive.

469 thoughts on “The End Of The World”

    2. We’re waiting to see where the boys end up. Meanwhile, my mind is telling me to go to a state I never thought of moving to, to a city I’ve never been in. The last time I had that nudge it was 30 years ago, and Denver.
      At some point we’ll drive out, for a couple of days, to check the place out.

      1. Sarah, my family was faced with living behind enemy lines and realized we had to move. the wuhan flu was final straw. The decision for the company to close my store forced a decision and we jumped to Tennessee. The wise, the brave, the bold and especially the smart always are the first to migrate, explore and pave the way. The primary consideration is life and liberty of YOUR family. We have to build communities that can survive, prosper and most importantly REMEMBER.

    1. So, he’s an ignorant lout who paid scant attention to national secrets, or he’s an evil genius who hoarded them all to give to the Russians. So, thou traitors, which is it?? Oh, I see. Doesn’t matter!

      But yeah, this is approaching Fort Sumter.

          1. Enemy-held territory. I’m with the Colonel (LTC(R) Kratman, Thomas, 1ea): don’t cede them a bloody inch of soil, and let every inch they TAKE (even temporarily) be a bloody one.

            Or that’s the gist of the premise, as I understand it.

            1. Yes. This.

              Make the enemy rue the day he made the feckless decision to try to steal an American Presidential election. Of Donald John Trump.

              1. It doesn’t matter whether their hold is true if people acquiesce to it and let them get away with it. Neither the Bolsheviks or the Nazis had a majority when they took power, and they were a distinct minority, but they were willing to do things that others would not in the pursuit of power and were able to bully and brutalize people into acquiescence. The Democrats are following the same game plan.

                1. Well said. The Marxists seem driven by frantic hatred of all that is good in Western society. They’re truly scuttling, subhuman goblins. -_-

                3. Recently saw somewhere that the card-carrying Nazis were about 6% of the voting population.

                  From what I’ve seen elsewhere, 5% is about the threshold for a noisy and slightly scary minority to start seriously taking over.

              2. Judging by the numbers I saw in the Oregon election, I think OR should be somewhat purple, without the dominance of the state legislature and executive branch by the Donks. I also suspect a lot of the lunaticer (totally a word) propositions would not have passed, and certainly not by huge margins.

                Can’t blame Dominion for our vote-fraud by mail. We have the finest Y2K vintage servers running our systems. I figure MS stopped security support for them 10-15 years ago. Some script-kiddie could have inserted a clown as mayor of Portland. Oh wait…

                1. Does not matter what the servers run. What matters is who can access them, and whether it leaves a trail. There is no such thing as secure when the admin is the one injecting bad data, as is basically the case with Dominion. (PLUS there’s reportedly malware running on ’em.)

                  Fact is, servers and electronic vote handling of any stripe are a risk, and should not be in the picture at all. Once it stops being a paper ballot with firm provenance, it can be diddled.

                  1. As the OPM “hack” demonstrated. In reality, that particular event wasn’t really a hack. It was a case of hiring the bandits to guard the vault. And what happened was pretty much what one might expect in a case like that.

                  2. Could have been worse, I suppose. We’ve had vote-fraud by mail since 1987. Could have been Win 3.1 machines.

                    It’s noteworthy that the elections director who complained about a) old servers and non-secure updates, and b) getting stiffed in budgets, was fired by the outgoing Sec of State (who had been appointed by Despicable Kate when the solidly conservative SoS died in office). FWIW, Oregon’s government is such that the Sec State replaces the governor if/when the Gov leaves office prematurely. Kate was that Secretary, and dug enough dirt on the previous governor to make him quit. The now-outgoing Sec State conveniently dropped any investigations on Kate when the RINO took office.

                    Nothing to see here. Move on peasant.

                2. We have the finest Y2K vintage servers running our systems. I figure MS stopped security support for them 10-15 years ago.

                  –
                  About right. Or worse.

              3. See… that’s it! Even darker than dark Seattle could be only slightly more than a Potemkin Seattle.

                That’s one of the great joys of having Dominion, and the way the theft works, exposed.

                My sister and I agreed the other day, couple of weeks ago when we were barely hanging on, that it *had* to happen this way. We had to put the lance to the blood blister of election fraud so hard and deep that we finally heal the wound.

                Apropos of nothing, is anyone else getting the urge to go to Washington DC on the 14th? I sure am, harder every day. My sister just said she’d care for my two kittens.

                    2. I’m way too old for Proud Boys’ style violence. For me it would be all about the boss clothes with lots of pockets. And boots.

                      I wake up in the middle of the night with that same useless feeling; like, what’s the point? I’m weak sauce compared to what I know is needed.

                      Then somewhere in the way-down-deep the Spirit randomly says this or that, and my heart nudges me like “Hey, you might want to listen to that.”

                      Nobody murdered the writers because their words were ineffective.

                      I can cause great violence simply by speaking the truth at the proper, very public time and place. Your writing is explosive, on the blog.

                      “That’s not nothing.”

                    4. Sarah, you may be too old for violence, but you’re not too old for logistics. Provide support for those on the front lines if it all goes hot and violent (which I still pray it won’t).

                  2. Biden alone doesn’t worry me. It’s all the cronies and radicals and backroom moguls that will actually be running the show, THEY worry me.

                    Well, his proposed cabinet is probably a pretty good list of “people who also have a hand in China’s pocket, and have China’s hand up their ass.” (Or Ukraine, or wherever. Same principle.) Nice of him to warn us!

                    2. Not Ukraine these days. Perhaps corporations that happen to operate in that country. But the current president of Ukraine is a non-politician, much like Trump. He’s a former comedian that ended up in the country’s highest office, and he’s been working with President Trump to try and dig out the corruption plaguing the country. Remember that the actual transcript of the supposed threatening phone call that Trump had with the president of Ukraine was a request by Ukraine’s president for Giulliani (who has lots of experience digging out corruption as a lawyer) to talk with Ukraine’s head prosecutor so that the latter could get some advice on how to proceed with Ukraine’s anti-corruption investigations.

                  3. Sarah, you’re not useless. We need you just where you are, doing what you do, with only one change. That change is to be a happy warrior, both to be more effective and to be a shining example to the rest of us. Do not be grim about your cause; be grim toward the enemy. Know that every one who comments here is grateful to you and for you.

                  4. They also serve who only sit and WRITE, DAMMIT!

                    Your words touch a whole lot of people, here and at PJM and MGC. I am sure you inspire at least some of them think about how they themselves can best resist and survive and perhaps spread the word farther, even tho inundated by the Marxist drivel. You are very very far from useless, ma’am.

                  5. Biden won’t survive Biden if they manage to ram him and the commie slut down our throats.
                    And after watching the goings-on in the courts, I begin to understand (and agree with) Shakespeare’s’ comment about first killing all the lawyers – if one understands that in that time period he really meant “judges”.
                    Ah me, back to the loading bench…

                2. “nothing, is anyone else getting the urge to go to Washington DC on the 14th? I sure am”

                  No. Go to the battleground capitol of a state nearest you. This is where State Electors transmit their EVs to The Federal Register Office in DC. These are the Electors Who Must Hear Our Outrage!

              4. If we are right about how much blue thinking is just repeating what TPTB says not very deep.

                A couple of good victories and a lot of Biden/Harris and BLM signs will become MAGA signs for the same reasons.

                  1. Conformity and liberty mindedness are at odds. We liberty minded too often don’t think about how to use conformity mindedness to our advantage.

  3. You don’t need pre-planned coordination to produce the lockdowns all over the world. You just need one country doing it and the rest of the world’s bureaucrats saying “Gee, maybe we’d better do that too, just to be On The Safe Side™” (as bureaucrats do — nobody wants to be the one who can be fingered for the mistake, so playing “follow the leader” is safe for your career, and nobody blames the bureaucrats for killing the economy). It’s classic bureaucrat: delay, obstruct, and then claim it wasn’t your fault. “We were just trying to protect people”.

    Which is why you should never let the bureaucrats get put in charge in the first place, but Pournelle’s Iron Law is there for a reason: the non-bureaucrats have other things to do, and the bureaucrat-minded always look like a good fit for the job because they’re dedicated and have such excellent scores on all the metrics.

    1. When I worked for the Army, as part of the current management fad, about two dozen of us (all in logistics of one sort or another -tech writer/editors, cataloge.rs, maintenance engineers, and so forth) were gathered in a room and given the Meyers-Brigg personality test. All but two of us had the same type:introverted, conscientious, methodical, detail-oriented, conservative, and duty-bound. (If you want to argue about the “conservative,” part, it meant, “tends to use traditional methods and resist change,”).

      I know one of the two non-conformists should have left civil service the second she saw those results. When I met her again a few years later she was emotionally damaged, badly.

      I was in the majority group, but I eventually got out because of those traits – the bureaucratic system wouldn’t let me do my job the way I felt it should be done. There are more people in civil service than you might think who get just as frustrated as any outsider.

      I can’t speak to state bureaucracies, and Lord knows there’s a good bit of dead wood in the Feds.

      1. I can’t speak to state bureaucracies, and Lord knows there’s a good bit of dead wood in the Feds.

        –
        I can’t speak to state bureaucracies OR Feds, but I can for counties, or at least some. Used to get the excuse
        “well there isn’t a lot of population in this county to choose from”. What? They can’t hire from out of county, to move there, to get a decent hire? Then there was the county that were HIGH population.

        Former I could count on phone ringing by 9 AM and without answering it say “It’s XYZ”, for 6 months straight. It wasn’t the person calling, it was their supervisor chased off everyone about every 12 to 18 months, without fail, for the 12 years I was there. Then you’d end up training the replacement, over the phone, who except for one exception, had absolutely no background to do the job. This was before we had software where we could “see” their workstation & follow visibly what they were doing, or visibly demo the point. Usually about 3 months in the boss would twig to the new person & insist on onsite training (which cost), which sped the phone training.

        Latter, at least one client (IT go between users & us) had been on the software as long as I had. They were new when I started. The last six months I stooped to handing off this client to someone else whenever possible. The last email conversation was “Um, here is the approved, signed, quote, for the change that you want reversed for XYZ, because ABC, isn’t happy. It’ll mean another quote (tripled, per boss) to make a customized option. Do you want me to make a formal quote to be approved and signed?” and copied to the boss, and office manager. Funny, never heard back, on that topic. The other thing this guy would do is call at 4:30 PM (I quit answering the phones after 4 PM … what were the going to do? Fire me? Not give me a reference for retirement?) with “Payroll is wrong.” Payroll was due by 4 PM, which of coarse was now and emergency. Every Single Time it was their fault. Not only that proof was through the tools they had and were suppose to use.

        That is just TWO examples. I repeat, new math –> -25 * -1 = -25 … I think it comes from 2 + 2 = 5, but what do I know? I think both are wrong.

    2. Robin — also “Michels Iron law of oligarchy” — “Who says ‘organization’ says ‘oligarchy.”

  4. It does make one wonder if there is an.. outside… influence. As in outside the normal plane, etc.

    Or maybe I’m just in the middle of the latest Familiars book.

    2. Oddly enough, I have a relevant thought.

      Like with QAnon’s pedophilia/satanism, the term demonic possession can be used to approximate something we know is there, but do not have the correct words to describe.

      The reflexive “Oh, widespread pedophilia/satanism is obviously crazy” push ignores that a) sex ed in public schools can be understood as pedophilia aligned b) Communism and Socialism are heresies of Christianity.

      When we put on our psychologist and anthropologist hats, and discard the academic theory of those fields, we can see that Shamanism is obviously a real thing, regardless of whether the things channeled exist or not. As in, the behavior exists regardless.

      I can tell you that the apparent stuff in my own experience, including stuff I probably should not have done, was not something I went into thinking “I’m going to channel spirit x”.

      Human evil. Mental illness. What are these things?

      Theologies can include definitions of demons. Suppose that wrt to a society practicing Christianity of that theology, behavior tends to empirically match that definition.

      A society might have behavior that does not fit a traditional theological understanding of it, that might still be fairly labeled shamanistic channeling of demons. Atheistically, Christian societies exhibit common unusual behaviors that are probably outside of normal variation, and the same phenomenon should also work for other collections of information.

      Consider Kamela Harris, who prostituted herself for access to power. Probably messed her up. The right combination of induced and congenital problems, combined with choice of evil, could perhaps be considered demonic possession, even if it isn’t strictly correct by any Christian theology.

      Sexual behavior can be very damaging. It might possibly be objectively said to ‘scar the soul’ in some circumstances.

      What is labeled secularism may be a religion, and whatever the mechanism, might be producing a commonality of behavior pattern across many individuals. Combination of the same information with the same damage.

        1. It is really Paul’s and Sarah’s fault.

          I just had the background to put the pieces together. Which I’ve been working on since the initial dispute.

          I can say that I just found three different flavors of unpleasant possible conclusion. Which I neglected to include, because /three/ and /possible/. Would have weakened the whole comment, for no immediate benefit.

          It is more important that we sort out whatever the hell is going on right now than it is to be guessing at possible long term remedies.

          2. I was never sane.

            There’s a remote chance that an ongoing medical intervention might fix some of the underlying issues. I’m not expecting huge benefits, but maybe those will show up.

            What gets me marked out as particularly crazy is philosophical stuff, which specifically is informed by formative experiences. I’m not going to all of a sudden lose ages two to sixteen, and everyone else is not going to suddenly develop the obsessions in question.

            So it is probably more accurate to joke that I’ve already lost so much SAN that I cannot lose any more. 😛

            Beyond that, my unhealthy level of interest in politics goes back to childhood. And I’m young enough that I don’t have very many elections between Obama and when I was too young to have good data about how badly my level of political investment was hurting my productivity.

            2016 was around when I started making a good effort to turn my life around, in several respects. Some of those have born fruit, at least partly.

            This has been a more difficult year for me. I’ve been worrying so much about what has changed in RL, that I haven’t had much space for the purely political, which has actually helped force myself to stay oriented to approximations of sane on politics. The stuff I’ve been most stressed over is stuff I haven’t been talking about, partly privacy concerns from it having too much information about what I’m like in RL. Another part is it makes me sound like a lunatic. 😉

              1. Spells In Secret should have been put out months ago.

                And I’ve got a half win on NaNoWriMo: I did write the first drafts for both stories I planned on writing, but they came up short (only 37,500 words total).

                sigh What a year.

                  1. This was going to be a NaNoWriMo year for me. I was prepping then just before November I found out I didn’t have the heart to do it.

            3. So you’re saying that the world has now reached your level of crazy?
              ———————————
              It’s reassuring to find that the world is crazier than you are.

              1. More that in desperation, I eventually found coping mechanisms that sort of work for my self inflicted problems.

                I have one month left in 2020. The coping mechanisms, after much effort, have carried me through eleven months. Problems of 2020 were a little challenging, but better than I remember 2016 leaving me.

                But I may have gotten through the 11 by delays, etc. that will seriously cause me problems in December. I cannot claim success yet.

                And things could have gone differently this year, and that might have been much worse for me.

                1. Well, when the whole world reaches your level of crazy, it means you are actually well-adjusted for it!

                  1. Recently had to delay a big goal, because shorted myself too much time from the schedule.

            4. Something that took me far, far too long to realize… and even longer to understand (still working on it, in fact).

              Normalcy is not the same thing as sane.

              It is normal for one to think so. And it tends to allow one to “pass” in social settings easier, I think. But it is not so. In times of societal stress things tend to fall even farther outside the norm than usual. Times of stress are also times of change. And there are elements trying to force that change.

              Establishment types watching their card castles burn in the Trump era, red-daiper Marxist-Socialist types, Chinese Communists and their cats-paws, corporatists trying to navigate the increasingly choppy waters of the woke era, the wokists themselves (used by everyone, never advancing save as someone else’s pawn), the criminal types taking advantage of the chaos… You could write great (and terrible) fiction with this as a backdrop, too. But they’re all caught up in the pursuit of power. The times, they are a chaingin’ (left the typo, it fits).

              Voting again and again for the ones that abused their position and treated promises made like toilet paper might have been normal, but it was never the sane thing to do. Sanity can be a scary thing, stark and uncompromising.

              Most people would rather the comfort of normalcy to sanity.

              1. What’s the saying?

                “When the going get weird, the Weird turn Pro.” isn’t it?

                Note it doesn’t say they WISH to ‘turn pro’.

                I picture it rather like this….

                Odds: Just leave us alone, is that so hard?
                Reality: Here’s your draft notice.

              2. There are no ‘normal’ people, there are just people that can do such a good job pretending to be normal, that other people believe them.

              2. I’m pretty bad at geometry, and don’t really grok the higher dimensional stuff.

      2. Consider Kamela Harris, who prostituted herself for access to power. Probably messed her up.

        Especially when she has to do it inside of the group that insists they are All About Woman Power, and oh yes, everything that is actually female specific is dirty/bad/objectionable/shameful, and everything good about a woman can be had by putting a man in a dress.

        Makes me wonder about the symbolic value of talk about Satan hating Mary most of all.

        1. Note:
          it has nothing to do with Mary being “more” than God– exactly the opposite. She is basically Satan, but opposite. She is weak, and obedient, and a creature of God; Satan was strong, and rebelled against God, while also being a creation of God.

        2. “ and everything good about a woman can be had by putting a man in a dress.”

          Which sorta makes sense out of their determination to put a lot of men in dresses…

          Except that the Trans people they champion (who are not ALL Trans people, some are far less deranged) are so damaged that there isn’t much of ANYTHING good about them.

          1. To the point that I’m thinking the incredible damage is the point.

            Have to be broken, and not mended. To be mended is an insult.

            1. Perhaps because, like bones, a mended soul is made *stronger,* less likely to bend and break in the future.

              Also, the possibility of redemption is anathema to the ones seeking control over all else. Redemption in others shines a light on their own failures to redeem themselves. So it is that everyone else is always the problem, always the failure, always weak. Because they know they are weak they wish to seem strong.

          1. Main reason I don’t think she did is because she hasn’t be subtle before now, and a common step-up is being a mean girl type. She’s got power, that can be used to get more power, and it’s more fun to destroy people.

              1. Her husband is connected to Dominion, is my understanding. Smartmatic used to use DLA Piper Global as its lawyers and advisers, Dominion Financial Group still does, and Kamala’s husband Doug Emhoff works for DLA Global.

        4. No dress. Alright, for enough money or a good enough cause (And *I* judge what is “enough” and/or “good enough”) perhaps. But for everyday? No. I could deal with a kilt. Not sure anyone wants that, really.

        5. Except they don’t believe “everything good about a woman can be had by putting a man in a dress. They are promoting something much worse:

          1. The only things of value a woman can be are those things we naturally associate with men.
          2. Men are defective women and can only become fully human by behaving the way women, who we think are worthless in their natural state, behave naturally..”

          They don’t want the leopard to change his spots; they want the leopard to swap his spots with the tiger for his stripes and consider each inferior until they pretend to be the other.

          That way lies madness.

          1. I decode it as
            1. Superiority is evil.
            2. Men who are superior at being men are therefore evil.
            3. Women who are superior at being women are therefore evil.
            4. Thus good men are those who are inferior women
            5. And good women are those who are inferior men.

            1. You should take something for that.

              I advise at least 80 proof. Otherwise the derangement could take root, and spread. 😛

          2. They don’t want women to be men, though.

            They want women to be bad men.

            Similarly with making guys be gals– they never want a guy to be my husband’s Scary Lady grandmother, they want that DC villain Granny Goodie or whatever it is.

            Boys are supposed to turn into mean girls, and women into cads.

            1. Hmmm…I thought boys were supposed to be sissies, both in the vernacular and kinky sense (read what you will into the later).

              1. Outside of my frame of reference; I just notice that guys who they point to as good examples are basically 14 year old girls, as far as emotional manipulation techniques go.

                  1. He does remind me of a lot of the guys friends have dated, and guys who dropped out of the geek group because they couldn’t be queen bee.

              2. When they read (or, more likely, watch) Tom Sawyer, their favorite character is Cousin Sidney (a person with fewer “masculine” traits than has Becky Thatcher.)
                –

      3. I’ve read that at least one investigator of demonic possession noted that sometimes the boundary between possession and mental illness can get very fuzzy. He thought that some cases are evidently one or the other, but others are decidedly ambiguous. Likewise, I have anecdotal evidence that drug abuse can open the way to malign influence. I’m not at all convinced that science can eliminate the possibility: The methods of science work well in investigating the natural world, but have are far too crude when it comes to what may be spiritual and invisible. Since “Enlightenment” of the 18th century or so, belief in both angels and devils has been regarded as superstition, but Shakespeare had this one right: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (Natural philosophy, that is, the precursor of modern science.)

        1. Yeah, I have something to add to that on the ‘can be very bad to assume demonic possession’ side of the ledger.

          Someone with an organic form of brain damage, causing a mental illness, can find a religious belief that tells them that the problems are demonic possession, and can be mechanically prayed away. Praying done, they are ‘no longer sick’, and quit all of the meds.

          Quite possibly a serious mistake.

          Not my own damage. But I would not object to prayers on behalf of everyone who does this.

          “If they are wrong, Lord, please help them to realize the error, and correct it. Amen.”

          Mental health is /weird/. We do not have all the answers from science. And the best developed theology in the world will not help someone who wants theology that isn’t correct.

          1. It certainly depends on the mental illness. One of my depression symptoms is having intrusive violent and/or suicidal thoughts, like the mental handicap radio in “Harrison Bergeron.” Does the fact that it goes away under medication mean that it’s simply a biological failing, or is it perhaps a demon that can only push its way into my mind when I’m not medicated? And how would I tell the difference?

            1. A sort of vulnerability that can be strengthened until It can’t attack you anymore?

              I know there are various tests for possession, not sure about influence– but it seems like when there’s a cold, creepy room, you try other routes to fix it before you call in a priest for a demonic infestation. Even if it “only” works because it makes it harder for something Like That to work, well, wouldn’t that be humans doing God’s work, like we’re supposed to?

            2. I wouldn’t say “simply” a biological failing, but since science can’t detect devils or demonic influence, medicine can only treat the biology. If there is a medical or biological condition present that creates an opening for malign influence, It would be seem sensible to close that opening with appropriate treatment.

        2. Exorcism 101 can be boiled down to “assume it’s biological, and try to fix that first, then invoke God.”

          If nothing else– He gave us these tools, we should USE them before asking Him to fix it for us.

        3. M. Scott Peck wrote a book on that point. He didn’t want to believe in possession, but his experiences as a shrink forced him to do so.

        4. A drug-weakened mind can let…. things… out. Even if those… Things… are just the Darkness that sane beings keep contained and only out in times of Desperation And Dire Need – if even then. And if there are.. Other Things… what better means than a ‘receiver’ which is no longer properly selective – and might be overly sensitive…? …which is a combination that allows Interference.

        5. Way back when I started in medicine, one of the neurologists in town got the hospital to put an exorcist on staff to work on one of his patients. We were much more open minded in those days, before *SCIENCE* became a cult.

          1. *grumble* Simply on the placebo effect level, that’s a good idea.

            And it’s not like calling in a priest or authorized lay person with holy water, or even blessed chalk, is a big expenditure.
            (I haven’t done the chalk thing, it’s a little-t tradition for blessing houses.)

            1. My SIL when she was an atheist had occasion to resort to one for BRAIN CANCER (not actually joking) in a patient, which was then rather mysteriously cure.
              SIL is no longer an atheist.

    4. Now I’m not saying Epstein’s head is being artificially kept alive and being possessed by demons and used as a means of issuing their orders to the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments. I’m not saying that at all. But does anybody have a bear?

      1. No bears here, but I my wife and I spotted four in two days while honeymooning in the Great Smokey Mountains last month. Thankfully from a distance.

          2. From a distance is the best way to see bears

            –
            From the vehicle … thank you, very much.

            Worst way to not see a bear? To hear it crashing through the brush, then find, very, fresh bear scat on the down the trail you were on when you heard the very large animal decamping the area through the trees and brush. An area where bear is either black or grizzly.

            Question? How do you tell Black Bear and Grizzly Bear Scat apart?

            Answer: Black bear scat has berries & nut seeds in it. Grizzly bear scat also has berry & nut seeds in it, but it also has bells and smells slightly of pepper spray … Enjoy Grizzly Country!

              1. Worse. We have a small dog with us. Who knows better than to bark at wildlife, at least while in gear (loose in fenced backyard is a different story). She does however stare intently. We’ve only had the one close call that we know of, that was before I had her.

                Only time I’ve seen a bear, from a trail, was when I was 13 or14. Younger cousin & I were a couple of switch backs behind dad, uncle, & our siblings, headed up to Little Crater Lake Willawa Wilderness. Trail was open, just sage brush, down into the ravine and over to the next ridge. We saw a big black boar crest the ridge … um, we caught up …

                Seen a lot of sign of bear, growing up (dad always pointed it out, freaked mom out), working in woods, and we always pointed sign out to son, then later to scouts, both hiking & backpacking. Black Bear where we are. Grizzly or Black, when we go to Yellowstone, Tetons, N.-Cascades, Canada, etc.

            2. In similar vein, Canadian Authorities advise motorists against permitting moose (or, one presumes, bears) to lick your vehicle. They are attracted by the salt, it seems, but are not considered an effective means of avoiding salt damage to your paint job.
              –

              1. Meece are surly and uncooperative, and can weigh as much as a small car. Did the brainiacs at Transport Canada explain exactly how people are going to make the meece stop? I doubt they’re amenable to counseling or self-criticism sessions…

                1. Canada has moose? Seen them in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, but not in Canada.

                  #Kidding. Just because we haven’t seen them in Banff/Jasper, & other CNP along Hwy 1, we’ve visited, doesn’t mean there aren’t any.

                  Note. Colorado historically didn’t have Moose. Nor were they transplanted there. Per rangers (1997, that was their story & they were sticking to it) they started showing up. We have some really good slides of a pair clashing antlers (way) below the road. Don’t remember why we pulled over because it wasn’t visible from the road.

      2. Sarah had one in her yard not all that long ago.

        I mean, living in bear country, one doesn’t exactly have a bear. One simply co-exists with them.

        The real question is has Merlin awakened? I doubt the bear will do any good without inspiration.

        Or, this being the USA, that would be the wrong story. Has Johnny Appleseed awakened?

          1. Personally, if someone’s going to come back to purge the wicked, I’d prefer it be Gen. William Tecumsah Sherman.

            Or perhaps bring back the whole Civil War victorious trio – U. S. Grant to run the overall shebang, with Sherman and Sheridan to act as his hands. After all, Sheridan also did quite a number to the Shenendoah Valley.

        3. Don’t know.

          To shift from Lewis to Tolkien…think a eucatastrophe is possible?

          It looks like either 1) Frodo is inching closing to Mount Doom or 2) it’s the last days of Tar Palantir before the Downfall.

          1. Sadly I think its option 2, as there are far too many people dazzled by what they are tricked into thinking are shining “gifts” while having their egos massaged and being told that they are gods unto themselves, while the ones selling them the big lie internally laugh in glee at the destruction they are bringing about and the power they will achieve.

            1. …being told that they are gods unto themselves, while the ones selling them the big lie internally laugh in glee at the destruction they are bringing about and the power they will achieve.

              None (of them) comprehend the warning, alas: Ambrosia is a trap.
              “Even if it works and you live?”
              “Especially so, then.”

          1. Well, hell, if we’re going fictional, I’ll take Sergeant Taura, in battle armor with a plasma rifle.

          2. As I remember the tale, Merlin more brought in the wildness that was his own self, and the animals along with it.
            Thus I picked Appleseed as the character most like Lewis’ version of Merlin, more so than other American folk heroes.

            Perhaps the proper character would be one of the Native American set. Not Coyote, he doesn’t feel right. One of the others.

  6. At the risk of sounding British, I offer this gem (and may God defend the right!):

    There’s a breathless hush in the Close to-night—
    Ten to make and the match to win—
    A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
    An hour to play and the last man in.
    And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
    Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
    But his captain’s hand on his shoulder smote
    “Play up! play up! and play the game!”

    The sand of the desert is sodden red,—
    Red with the wreck of a square that broke;—
    The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel dead,
    And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
    The river of death has brimmed his banks,
    And England’s far, and Honour a name,
    But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
    “Play up! play up! and play the game!”

    This is the word that year by year,
    While in her place the school is set,
    Every one of her sons must hear,
    And none that hears it dare forget.
    This they all with a joyful mind
    Bear through life like a torch in flame,
    And falling fling to the host behind—
    “Play up! play up! and play the game!”

        1. You could even commit Dead Poets! Ack!

          Recently (at long last) saw said Robin Wms. puff-piece (Dead Poets Society), wherein the greatness of poetry and verse is lauded and praised and gilt-calved*— and their poets laureates plus ultra are Langston Hughes (not bad, but overrated), Walt waste-of-pages-on-Free-Verse Whitman, and Henry Navelgazer Thoreau!

          Shakespeare is mentioned only in the scorned formulas from the Textbook Introduction. Somebody says “Tennyson” in passing. Frost gets only the one line everybody and his mother knows by heart. But not a breath about Kipling, Robert Service, T. S. Eliot, E. A. Robinson, or even Coleridge or Yeats! They could at least have mentioned Shelley. Nope.

            1. I can never un-see Edward G. Robinson dancing wildly in front of the calf, and Charleton Heston catching them all partying and throwing the tablets down.

              But it was Edward G., man. Whoa.

              1. The whole tune is good, but the relevant lyrics start at 1:56 if you’re impatient.

                (I always hear the next bit as Hepburn giving out Hydramatic Art rather than High Dramatic…)

                1. For the current lack of festivities, I think “Der Fuehrer’s Face” is quite appropriate.

                  Or, if we shift to Tonio K and turn it from a post-breakup song to something a bit more political: “H.A.T.R.E.D.” might work.

              2. I’ve seen a lot of Edward G. Robinson performances, from Little Caesar to Soylent Green and I’ve never seen him do other than deliver the goods, whether in a leading role or a mere walk-through.

                A terrific, terrific actor.
                –

          2. Hmm, the most significant takeaway I got from DPS was that suicide is an effective, but lousy way to tell the world to fuck off.

            IMO Mr Williams was decent in small doses, but when he did serious, Good Lord Almighty! “Bless his heart.”

          3. THE DEAD POETS SOCIETY is one of a raft of Robin Williams vehicles where he plays a maverick fighting the forces of Conformity…and I sympathize mostly with the forces of Conformity.

            I’m sorry the man is dead, and sorrier that he lived with the Black Dog and all the pain that involved. That said, I never had much use for the man’s work. I loathed Mork. I thought Mrs. Doubtfire was creepy (the film, too). And the string of films he did that the Usual Suspects thought were so goddamned wonderful, I thought were tiresome. Popeye wasn’t bad, as a performance. It should have been animated. What’s wrong with it is mostly that Elsie Segar’s world is ugly in a way that only animation (or comic art) can excuse. His turn as the megalomaniac King of the Moon in THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (sp?) was pretty good. The rest of his work bored or irritated me.

            Sigh.

            Sorry. Sore spot.

              1. True story: Williams practically created that character whole-cloth. He just came in, ad-libbed, and they wrote around him.

                1. My understanding was that yes he did ad lib from time to time. It was a major issue. When you’re putting the voices on the characters you are usually doing it to fairly complete pencil tests with all the tweening done. It’s being inked and colored while you get the voice track, so the voice track MUST fit the pencil test. But Robin Williams didn’t do that. He ad libed, he dropped into various voice characters, he tweaked dialog. Luckily there was some time left and the folks doing the recording loved it so they talked Important people into reworking it. Apparently they barely had it ready in time for release.

              3. Sorry. Thought I’d said that. Yes, he was a great genie. Most of his work affects me like fingernails on a blackboard, but the genie was outstanding.

                Still, the best line from an Aladdin genie wasn’t his. There’s a Mr. Magoo Aladdin (generally dreadful) and when Aladdin tells the genie that he’s trapped in the cave because if “Uncle Ben” tricked him, the genie says “I’ve known thousands of ‘Uncle Bens’. They all rubbed me the wrong way.”

            5. Williams was a comic genius. But he had a certain hyper-activity that could ruin his humor. He worked best, imo, when he had someone who was able to carefully rein him in when needed.

              There is one of his serious films that I like – Awakenings. De Niro’s in it, as well. IIRC, it’s based on a true story about a doctor in a hospital with a number of patients (one of whom is played by De Niro) that are seemingly trapped in a near-vegitative state. Williams’ character realizes that a new drug might be useful in treating the patients’ condition.

              2. Let me guess — the more and better results he got, the more the Medical Establishment tried to shut him down.

                1. No. Both the medical and pharmaceutical establishments (as shown in the film) are largely disinterested in his theory. There’s no active opposition to the treatment from anyone.

                  I’d say more, but to do so would give away important parts of the plot.

            6. I like his turns as an ex-psychologist in “Dead Again” and as Osric in Branaugh’s “Hamlet.” Mrs. Doubtfire … his character is hard to like, but he played the character well. Serial job losses, a bitter divorce, and losing custody of one’s kids is what happens when you are the man-child Daniel was at the beginning of the film. The growth in character Daniel experiences feels like a real coming-of-age. Everyone remembers the silliness Williams does in drag, but the range of anger and betrayal and acceptance shows that Williams could be more than silly. And I appreciate that he insisted on changing the ending so that the parents do not get back together but just learned how to be mature in how they parented their kids.

  7. I went to Portland over Thankgiving to visit some antique stores. Didn’t stay there, just drove in for the day. There were thousands of homeless camping amidst piles of garbage and I do not exaggerate. It was disgusting and sad. I don’t understand why the residents of the city put up with it, but they seem to.

    1. The progs accept it because they have no fixed external point of reference. They’re “lost”, too… Maybe worse off than many of the homeless… (No, BLM! Don’t trash my house! See the Biden sign? See the BLM sign?)

        1. Without knowing any particular details of the relevant local ordinances, I suspect that would fall afoul of laws against boobytraps, out of concern that emergency personnel might accidentally set them off.

          2. Do those laws define “booby-traps”? Does it count if their presence is clearly indicated?

            I can imagine adding a sign reading, “Private Property! Trespassers Will Be Ventilated!” and defending it as clearly indicating the risks posed.
            –

              1. Your logic is irrefutable. Like my cats who say they live with us to drive away mice. we see no mice so voila they’re doing their job.

                    2. Love that meme. I had a cat who did exactly that though he kindly left it on the hearth. Had another that brought live mice/voles that would sneak into the cellar when it was cold and drop them in the living room. I think that one figured we humans seemed unable to hunt for ourselves and needed remedial instruction.

                    3. “I see a little
                      Silhouette-o of a mouse
                      (Hunt it down
                      Hunt it down
                      Bring the vermin to Mom-o!)
                      Stalking and the pouncing
                      Who’s the best at mousing?
                      Me!
                      Tom and Jerry!
                      (Tom and Jerry!)
                      Tom and Jerry!
                      (Tom and Jerry!)
                      Tom and Jerry, Azrael
                      Kitty, hello-o-o-o!
                      I’m just a poor mouse
                      Nobody loves me
                      (He’s just a poor mouse
                      From a large family
                      Spare him his life
                      from this cat-as-trophe!”)

          3. The Soros DA has refused to prosecute BLMifa, he would have (and has had) plenty of time to prosecute anyone with the nerve to try to defend himself. Witness the VWRC reporter who drew (but did not fire) a *legally carried* handgun to discourage the thugs preparing to send him to Valhalla. He was arrested and convicted. IIRC, something like a 10 year sentence. (Can’t recall charges. Might have been assault, and certainly Walking While Supporting Trump.) Self-defense is not a viable defense in the People’s Republic, unless you have the right (well, left) ideology.

            If you actually injured one of the poor dears (regardless of their trust-fund status) or managed to kill one, you’d be in deep. It might be tempting, but I would not suggest you plant such an augmented sign on a city council member’s lawn. No. Not a good idea.

    2. My daughter and I were in Austin last month – and my daughter was appalled at seeing the homeless camps all along the highway verge in Austin’s western suburb.

      1. I was in Austin 15 years ago. The city government had just put benches at major intersections, so the beggars had a place to rest when not panhandling cars stopped at Austin’s famous ten-minute traffic lights.

      1. Seattle the same.
        Ride to town in the heroin bus, get off in the violent crap zone that used to be Pioneer Square, one of the most beautiful spots in the City.

        I haven’t been in a couple of years. I won’t even meet friends there. Ever.

        And “back the blue?” Not any more, not there.

    4. I don’t understand why the residents of the city put up with it, but they seem to.

      –
      Trust me residents have no say. We have the same problem in the greater Eugene area. Complaints go to the City. City says it is on the highway right of way or in the county, but it is within the urban growth boundary. Funny how no one has jurisdiction. It is going to take someone getting hurt or killed, and every government entity getting sued to stop it.

      Really irritating? Springfield, you know the city right next door to the east, does not have this problem. Why? Might be that panhandling is not allowed in Springfield (both the panhandler AND anyone stopping to give money are fined, panhandler is given a lift out of town) … just saying.

      1. Springfield, literally separated by the interstate. The town the Simpsons live in, and the first time I really realized that cities had a soul, since it was SO DIFFERENT from Eugene.

        1. Springfield, literally separated by the interstate

          –
          Yep.

          FWIW. We are west of Willamette River. North of Irving Road …

            1. We rented just of off E Beacon before we bought. Looked at a lot of homes in ’88 in River Loop areas. Just too close to the river for my taste. I grew up at Dover & Irving. I remember the River Loop kids being gathered in ’62 because their families were being evacuated from their homes because of flooding. I know flood control dams have gone in since then, just that image … Note, we can see Irving Elementary from our house …

              When (yea right), IF (more likely) we move, we’ll probably choose Junction City. We have a house plan, single story, that we love. We’ve just never figured out where to go (we know where not).

    5. As one data point to assist in gauging just how bad is one specific place of note, escapees of my acquaintance who recently moved from about a block south of Oracle Park, home of the SF Giants in actual San Francisco proper, up to Portland report that the place is paradisical by comparison, if a bit empty seeming.

      1. San Francisco has, for over fifty years, been a destination for runaway children — often victims of domestic abuse, often simply innately feral humans. Apparently Portland has followed that model:

        [O]bservers like Mary Eberstadt continue to parse the implications of family breakup and social isolation. From Eberstadt’s perspective, “nasty old isms are everywhere” is the cover-story, false god, and all-purpose silencer obscuring the real story of our time: family decline.

        “The Fury of the Fatherless” is Eberstadt’s latest effort along these lines. The statistics on cop-on-black crime don’t add up to an explanation for our recent riots, but the statistics on fatherlessness (white as well as black) just may. One of Eberstadt’s most interesting points is the link she draws between Portland’s seemingly unending anarchy and Portland as a national mecca for abandoned and runaway children. Family decline is now so pervasive that it’s difficult to isolate it as an explanatory variable. This is perhaps Eberstadt’s greatest challenge. From my point of view, however, that challenge ultimately adds plausibility to her argument.

        Stanley Kurtz [ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/our-real-systemic-problem/ ]
        –

  8. I saw this morning a patriot I trusted to fight to the bitter end. He was giving up, bleating about how fight to the death means wait till 2024 and then we’ll really let ’em have it. It was Kurt Schlichter, and the article is this one on townhall.com: https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2020/11/30/liberals-want-you-demoralized-so-dont-be-n2580773. Kurt’s words do more to demoralize me than anyone else. He and Hewitt (the never Trumper with the radio show) decided they heard POTUS sound defeated on Bartiromo, so let’s quit.

    I think we’ve evolved into two camps: the first camp includes people with incomes, homes, and influence. They have something to lose if they fight. The other camp includes those without those things; these people feel like they have nothing to lose. I’m in this camp.

    There is no America for me if Trump is forced out of office by the forces of evil. My only hope of crafting a life after the one I was living blew up was based on an America I recognized; an America that held space for the working class, the working poor, the middle class. We saw real wages rise at our level, and we saw illegal aliens blocked entry from the country. Hope!

    I can’t afford not to fight. The only other choice is euthanasia, which is legal in my state. I haven’t made that choice yet; it only niggles in the early morning hours or the middle of the night.

    Watch this video, and you’ll know how many of us feel. And why many of us are moving forward without those we trusted to walk alongside: https://youtu.be/0YJx-Zv2RYc

    We cannot quit. America is all we have left.

        1. Odd, I just read a column of his that was basically the opposite. Yeah, he’s talking about voting, but he was otherwise of the, “Don’t give up now. They want you to give up now,” school.

          1. I’ve read nothing from him but “Don’t be a wimp, fight!”

            Until the last column. And he did a 30-minute podcast just as he was recovering from the flu that sounded defeatist, under the admonition “not gonna sugar coat.”

            As an attorney he might see the SCOTUS case as “impossible.” And he would know. That would be hard expertise to live with.

              1. Yeah. I’ve heard enough today to step back, take a breath, and give him some space.

                Good Lord in the morning, I’m ready to off my neighbors at this point. I won’t stand on an opinion right now. I *know* my heart’s flailing.

                1. If you’ve paid for VIP at the PJM Media Empire there’s a podcast from Col. Kurt today that addresses these, and I think your stepping back is a fair assessment – at least in the podcast he’s more in a Patton-slap mode than he is giving up.

                  Here are a couple of (lightly sanitized*) quotes:

                  “I refuse to accept the cold comfort of defeat. I refuse to take the easy path out of just giving in because it’s too f(rell)ing hard to deal with occasional setbacks.”

                  …

                  “You fight on the ground you’re put on – you choose the battlefield if you can, and if you can’t, you do the best with what you’ve got. And sometimes the enemy outguns you. Sometimes the enemy outmaneuvers you. And sometimes the enemy outnumbers you. Sometimes you’ve got to think about the next fight.

                  But you always have to coldly and rationally analyze your situation. Coldly and rationally. No f(rell)ing emotion. I don’t want to hear how you are ‘Literally Shaking ’cause Joe Biden cheated!’ You think I don’t know he cheated? You think I wasn’t working in frikking Nevada for the President? You think I don’t get it? You think this is a newsflash? It’s not.

                  The question isn’t whether there are bad people who want to take your freedom. The answer to that’s all ‘Yes’. The question is: ‘What the f(rell) are we going to do about it?’ Are we going to whine like little bitches and complain about yesterday, or are we going to learn from it, reorganize, rearm, refit, and counterattack? That’s what I say.

                  So if you want to follow me, if you want to fix bayonets and go over the top, let’s freakin’ go.

                  If you want to be a whiney little sissy who’s pointing out ‘How Hard stuff is, and How we’ve Been Wronged’, I know that s(tuff) I don’t need to hear it again. Give me something constructive. How do we win tomorrow’s fight? ”

                  So he’s executing more along the lines of an ass-kicking halftime locker room attitude readjustment session than he is any acceptance of defeat.

                  * The Col. didn’t say f(rell) or s(tuff).

                  1. THANK YOU!

                    You’re amazing, thanks, and I’m giving your arm an affectionate squeeze.

                    I’ll go listen right now.

                    p.s. I was in the Army for awhile and Kurt’s language makes me laugh. He’s a typical crazy-ass Armored Cav Colonel, even saltier than I am. I suppose when you have to wear special zippered boots so you can rip them off your feet before they, too get consumed by diesel-induced fire, you get to talk like you wanna talk.

                    4. > Salty? Let’s get the CENSORED party started!

                      “If you don’t feel good every way you could
                      don’t sit there broken-hearted (sit there broken hearted).
                      Call all your friends in the neighborhood
                      and get the party started(get the party started)…”

                      They released that one in 1976. Somehow, that seems appropriate.

                    1. Yeah, that’s actually how I view being here in the Glorious Gavin’s Hair Peoples Bear Flag Republic: I’m not locked in here with them, They are locked in here with me.

                  3. Another thing to consider is that the inclusion of pro-forma language that hint at accepting Harris/Biden as the winner in pieces that set forth the massive Democratic Party fraud is to try to get past the Twitter/Facebook censors so that they don’t get censored or banned.

                    1. It does no harm to acknowledge they stole it fair and square* by outplaying the Trump campaign, driving trucks through every available loophole. After all, Nancy made it one of the items i her first bill after taking the Speakership.

                      *All’s fair in Love & War and War is just Politics by other means.
                      –

      2. I’m amazed that the logic seems to be “they stole this election, we will let them get away with it; next time they won’t steal it again?” What?!?

    2. Then you completely misread his article. He’s saying the fight is on multiple fronts, and declaring you’ll give up on one of them is not an option.

      1. Nope. I didn’t misread anything. And he’s worked hard as an attorney in Nevada in the effort. He’s no sissy.

        His interview on Hewitt’s radio show settled this question. They thought the President implied something in the Bartiromo interview that was “well, we’re screwed, 2024 it is.”

        Nope.

        1. I heard the Bartiromo interview. My guess of Schlichter & Hewitt’s discussion is that it would have been, “If Trump won’t fight there’s nothing we can do.”

          BTW, I dispute the labeling of Hewitt as a “Never Trumper.” He has written multiple columns in the Washington Post supporting Trump:

          0 – How Trump has made the country better off than it was four years ago
          0 – The haters won’t admit it, but Trump’s UAE-Israel diplomacy is an extraordinary triumph
          0 – Pay attention to Trump’s real successes, not media distractions
          0 – I didn’t think the GOP had a great virtual convention in it. But it did.
          0 – The Republican convention may be virtual, but there are real reasons to celebrate four years of Trump
          0 – The Israel-UAE agreement is Trump’s Nobel moment
          0 – The case for Trump will come down to his record. It’s a strong one.

          That’s just going back to August First.

          1. Thank you for the perspective. It feels solid.

            Good news about Hugh. When I lived in San Diego/Santee he was my #1 go to guy. He’s so, so good when he’s on his game. I moved up to Seattle (home) in 2013, and didn’t listen nearly as much.

            It was his comments about the Billy Bush tapes, that Trump should quit the race, that led me to discard Hugh’s opinions as coming from the “Never Trumper” side. You’ve shown me I’m wrong.

            I’m glad for that.

            1. I used to be a regular, then irregular listener — when I had to go on line to get the show it became too much a chore — over the last twenty, twenty-five years. I recall him going off on Trump early i that 2016 campaign, decrying Donald’s ignorance of the components of the nuclear triad.

              But Trump caught up with the wonkage (he’s a fast study) and Hewitt fell in like the good party man he is.
              –

    3. We can prove the Democrats poisoned the soup. Our problem is, what do we do now? It’s the only soup we’ve got.

      It’s impossible to separate the poison out. We can’t afford to just dump it down the toilet. The Democrats are all-in on serving everybody the poisoned soup, promising that if you eat juuuust enough, it won’t quite kill you.

      Not only that, we KNOW the Democrats are going to poison the soup again in the Georgia Senate election. They’ve already bought the poison; now they’re just waiting for the soup pot to go unwatched for a few seconds. What can be done about that?
      ———————————
      Some folks believe ‘Soylent Green’ had a happy ending.

      1. Sorry about the double post, folks. WordPress [spit!] ate this one, then spit it back out twenty minutes later. I didn’t save a copy, either, so the redundant post is a little different.

      3. > It’s impossible to separate the poison out. We can’t afford to just dump it down the toilet.

        If it’s proven in court that Dominion’s software allowed them to alter election results, given more than half the states used it, there’s no alternative but to flush the whole thing. I’d prefer a fresh election, but Constitutionally it would be decided by pod people who were *also* installed in their offices via Dominion software…

        “Throw them all out and start over” is looking pretty good.

        1. “‘Throw them all out and start over’ is looking pretty good.</I?"

          I'm afraid we need greater specificity. "Throw them all out" of what? A skyscraper penthouse window? A helicopter? A DC 7?

          Inquiring minds want to inquire.
          –

          1. A ship.

            That’s the solution a couple of my characters are going to go with — dump the bodies 1,000 miles from the nearest land, or shipping lane. Circle of Life, indeed.

            Not much difference whether they’re still breathing when they go in the drink.
            ———————————
            Pugsley: “Are they dead?”
            Wednesday: “Does it matter?”

              1. Okay. The one detail everyone leaves out of woodchipper body disposal is that you freeze the body first, and do the woodchipper disposal while the temperature is below 36 or so. Then you can simply brush out the chips of material when you are done.

            2. Full Fargo. I’m there.

              I’ll bring the sharpening strop and the machete, if you could bring the oil for the chipper. And the steel brush, too. Gonna be messy.

        2. I wish they’d throw out the whole election. I don’t think there’s any chance they will though. Too many corrupt governors, secretries of state, and judges. I’m clinging to the thought that they are incompetent at their evil… I can’t believe we’re at this point. It feels like it all disintegrated so fast.

          2. I like your thinking.

            Nobody thought we had a chance against Britain, either.

            With our POTUS? Everything is on the table. Everything.

            Peace is breaking out in the Middle East–miracle enough for me to believe in what I can’t see. Much of the time.

      4. That and they are going to refuse the seat the Republicans that flipped Democratic Party seats and seat the Democrats instead. Just watch…..

    4. “He and Hewitt (the never Trumper with the radio show) decided they heard POTUS sound defeated on Bartiromo, so let’s quit.”

      That article doesn’t even MENTION Bartiromo. What the heck?

      1. Sorry to have been confusing. I need to remember my thoughts don’t get broadcast.

        In the comments section of the article was a discussion of Kurt’s appearance on the Hewitt show this AM. That was the source of the Bartiromo comment.

        Kurt is a good man, and solid. I think he’s in a position to believe two things: the case for the SCOTUS is “impossible,” and “2024 is a chance for us to regain America and right the ship.”

        I’m saying that both of these things are, to me, “nope.”

    5. Either put in a link to where he’s ACTUALLY said that, or a transcript o the podcast, or something.

      1. Fair enough.

        And… I have failed you. Only out of a resistance to listening to the entire show, so I can find the spot where they talk.

        I cannot prove what I said, therefore, I must withdraw it and ask your apology.

        If I do listen, I’ll followup so you can hear it, and we can decide for ourselves. OK?

        1. And I’ll listen to it and post a link here. If he sounds that way, I’ll say that too.

          For the rest:

          “Heart shall be bolder,
          harder be purpose,
          more proud the spirit
          as our power lessens!

          Mind shall not falter
          nor mood waver,
          though doom shall come
          and dark conquer.” JRR Tolkien The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son

          1. I bow humbly in your presence. Thank you for the words of power and courage.

            It would take a lot more than one post and a sickbed podcast for me to abandon Kurt Schlichter; I hope what you hear validates that opinion.

            1. Or Tennyson:

              “Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
              We are not now that strength which in old days
              Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
              One equal temper of heroic hearts,
              Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
              To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

              (That was my motto in my high school yearbook).

              1. Damn.

                I’m going to have to up my game.

                This made me cry. The reason it made me cry is because I had forgotten who I am; when I recognized the bravery and resolve in myself as real and true, I cried.

                Now that I know there are others alongside, and I mean really, truly alongside, that makes me cry, too.

                1. Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden!
                  Fell deeds awake, fire and slaughter!
                  spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered,
                  a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!
                  Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

                  Our history is shared. Americans one, and all. We have come from all over and our family histories are different. Some at the dawning, at Plimouth Rock. Some coming here to find hope, some life and a chance to eat, some during the clash of brothers. Some later, finally finding freedom running from the English hounds, the Red purges, the Nazi knives.

                  But nevertheless, we still remember that:

                  … through the night rode Paul Revere;
                  And so through the night went his cry of alarm
                  To every Middlesex village and farm,—
                  A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
                  A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
                  And a word that shall echo forevermore!
                  For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
                  Through all our history, to the last,
                  In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
                  The people will waken and listen to hear
                  The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
                  And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

              2. I prefer Bobbie Burns
                Scots, wha hae wi Wallace bled,: Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,: Welcome tae yer gory bed,: Or tae victorie.
                I fear we’re awful close to that point.

                1. That was the post-hypnotic berserk trigger in the first battle of The Forever War. I twitch a bit whenever I read it.

                  1. That is true. I guess it’s a bit like Beethoven’s 9th/Ode To Joy in the background in the conditioning in Clockwork Orange :-). I first heard that particular poem in full from one of my high school history teachers taking an English history course. His mom was apparently straight from Glasgow and was a fan of Robert Burns. He could drop into a quite passable Scots accent and often quoted us bits and pieces of Burns for various things.

                2. By Oppression’s woes and pains,
                  By our sons in servile chains!
                  We will drain our dearest veins,
                  But we shall be free!

          1. Yeah, Hugh does a good job getting the transcripts in a couple of days after the broadcast.

            You can see on the sidebar his guests for the day, and Kurt’s there. We already have a committed Patriot who will listen.

    6. “They have something to lose if they fight.”

      Some would see it as our nation’s Founders did: they’ve more to lose if they don’t fight.

      Some think we can concede this cause as lost, regroup and re-challenge in 2022, 2024 — but others see this as the last redoubt, the last defense against the deluge.
      –

      1. We need only believe the Dems’ own words to learn our fate, should we concede, regroup, and rechallenge.

        It’s the same motivation George Washington used: It’s already too late. Either we do this now, or we will be hanged.

        .

    7. We can prove the Democrats poisoned the soup. Our problem is, what can we do about it now? It’s the only soup we’ve got.

      It would be impossible to separate the poison out. We can’t just dump the soup down the toilet. The Democrats are all-in on serving it up to everybody, poison and all, promising that if you eat juuuust enough, it won’t quite kill you.

      Not only that, we KNOW the Democrats are going to poison the soup again in the Georgia Senate election. They’ve already bought the poison; now they’re just waiting for the soup pot to go unwatched for a few seconds. What can be done about that?
      ———————————
      Some folks believe ‘Soylent Green’ had a happy ending.

        1. Which means we have to declare the election irredeemably polluted, and schedule a new one. What are the chances of getting THAT to fly?
          ———————————
          They say I can’t be a nonconformist because I’m not like the other nonconformists.

        2. No, no, no. Waste of good poison. Force-feed the soup to the Democrats.

          Seriously, that’s one avenue: they’ve poisoned electronic voting (not that it was ever better than toxic), but now we know how it’s done. They steal one vote, we steal two, and leave them wondering WTF went wrong, since they still think we’re overly honest rubes.

            1. If we don’t beat and kill dead the fraud this election, and assuming it hasn’t devolved to CW2 before the next one, we won’t have a choice but to outdo ’em at fraud, or our side never wins another election.

              1. If we can’t kill the fraud and bury it at the crossroads, we wont’ have the Republic – so I’d MUCH rather kill the fraud now.

                Yes, I realize (now) that you are talking about the dire circumstance (God forfend!) that we can’t kill the fraud now.

      1. Thanks so much for the perspective. I’m more thin skinned and reactive lately than is wise. I’ll be more wary.

    9. I just read that.

      No, we won’t give up. Not until we exhaust our remedies to this fraudulent election and not until we use our considerable political power to ensure it never happens again in the future. And we don’t give up then either.

      .

      Doesn’t sound like giving up.

      We’re in a fight. Fix your bayonets and follow me over the top.

      Haakkaa päälle!

  9. There is a large Trump march on Washington planned on December 12th. That could be an opportunity to show the beginnings of massive civil disobedience and what can happen to officials who so want to turn the US into a Marxist dictatorship and permanently crush the middle class. Resist now or become serfs of those who are trying to steal the country.

    1. I’ve had a strong urge the past couple of days to be there. It feels self indulgent. It also feels like a revolutionary war battlefield.

          1. To be fair it’s not just money. It’s a significant investment in time. I’m asthmatic, so I can’t fly while they require masks.
            And driving from CO is….. time.

  10. The number of people cheering on the destruction of the American Republic is disconcerting. Sure, I understand that many people just can’t get over OrangeManBad, but their not being able to consider 2nd and 3rd order consequences is rather horrifying. Heck some can’t even wrap their heads around what it means if the Dems get their policy positions just as they’re written. There are so many people that are going to rejoice in their new chains, right up to the oven doors, and probably give a smile and a wave as they climb in.

    1. they’ve been trained to hate the place by people who hate the place.
      As leftoid hippy as my world and Gov’t teacher was, I know he actually loved this place and didn’t try to turn us against the place (and was rather good at not pushing his non-sense hippy thoughts on us)
      Our most “conservative” teacher was probably our Mexican import Spanish teacher, btw.

    2. I believe that many, many people are victims of our own success. They simply can’t conceive of anything really changing, or that people in charge could deliberately want to see them harmed. They see “movements,” as simply tweaking things to make them even better, but their lives can’t possibly be changed for the worse by any of it. That Just Can’t Happen.

      And a fair number of that group will be prone to battered women’s syndrome – if the bad thing does happen, they must, somehow, have done something to deserve it. Because someone in charge wanting to harm them for power or for pleasure just is not in their worldview.

      1. I’d argue that from that group, they did do something to deserve it; they supported dangerous and unconscionable people/policies. The rest of us that didn’t support that are the ones that don’t deserve it.

          1. I hold the contemporary press with the same warmth as bad checks and (unconvincing) counterfeit money.
            –

        2. At least Soviet era Pravda and Tass had the excuse of very literally knowing that failure to push the party line would result in their being lined up against a wall and shot. Our modern day media are true believers who are enthusiastic supporters of the party line. Indeed they would be very happy to be the ones lining people up against the wall and shooting them for disagreeing with the party line. It should surprise no one that they are already essentially calling for doing

      2. Wasn’t the first time.

        Remember “binders full of women”? Even many Democrats later admitted that it was one of the silliest things that you could come up with for going after someone.

    4. Democrats don’t “do” second-order effects for things they want.

      But for things conservatives and libertarians want, they’ll go right to nth-order effects, bolstered by dubious inferences and slippery slope fallacies as necessary:

      Trump wants A, which implies he wants B, and that means conservatives really want C, and then SCOTUS will vote for D, and then Congress will pass law E, and then… and then… and then.. and then… HANDMAID’S TALE!!~!~!!!

      But “you get less of what you tax” is somehow beyond them.

      1. As is ‘you get more of what you subsidize’.

        So they can’t understand what happens when they tax work, and savings, while subsidizing indolence and debt.

  11. I’ve said it before in other media, the litmus test will be what happens once the vaccines are in full distribution. Truly, once the most vulnerable have been inoculated against the virus (the old, the infirm, those with co-morbidities, etc,) that should be the end of masks and lockdowns and the worst tyrannic abuses. But once despots gets a taste of power it is damnably difficult to wrest it from them. So I fully expect that either the vaccine rollout somehow gets delayed indefinitely or some pet medico announces a totally bogus yet plausible reason why opening things up and getting back to a semblance of normalcy is far to dangerous. And that will be the rallying cry for asymmetric warfare against our illegitimate rulers the like of which hasn’t been seen since we broke with that bastich King George.

    1. “… that should be the end of masks and lockdowns”

      But look at all of the benefits we’ve see! Look at the reduction in flu cases, in colds, in handwaving! Sure, we adopted masks for the current crisis but now see how beneficial it is!
      –

      1. The next thing they will do is continue the lockdowns based on the justification that it reduces :”carbon pollution”, i.e. emission of CO2 which is not a pollutant but is in fact essential for life to exist on Earth. They are already floating such lockdowns and massive restrictions with the justification that they are needed to “save the Earth” because there is a “climate emergency”.

        Anyone who doesn’t realize that the CCP Virus theater has been a dry run for far worse has not been paying attention or is a supporter of it.

      2. I know you well enough to be dead certain that you are being facetious, but I fear many residents of this country could be persuaded to buy into that argument, ignoring the crime, suicides, domestic abuse, deaths from people postponing critical medical visits and proceedures, not to mention the massive failures striking at small businesses. After all, Biden got a ton of votes and probably some of them were not fake.
        To quote the Grand Master himself:
        Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people slip back into abject poverty.
        This is known as “bad luck.”
        As “right-thinking people” seem bent on pushing an illegitimate president and his backers into power, it’s not all that hard to extrapolate how our luck will run over the next few years.

          1. Back of the envelope, I estimated the vote at about 30% Biden, 70% Trump (so Trump 85-100M votes, Biden about 40M, rest imaginary). There are an awful lot of yellow-dog Democrats among the college-woke and old union types.Tho not nearly as many as they’d need for an honest win.

              1. Dr.Shiva presented some fascinating stats at today’s hearing. (About half an hour after they came back from lunch break. Don’t have a timestamp cuz I’m not to the end yet, and they might not be yet either.)

                Looking only at Maricopa County AZ vs party affiliation vs the recorded election results, TL;DW:

                ===
                First a general observation:
                — the more GOP a district, the higher the turnout.
                — the more Dem a district, the lower the turnout. (Same for independents.)

                Second, the only analysis where party demographics and turnout can be made to match reported results requires that Biden get +130% of the Dem votes, while Trump gets -30% of the Dem votes (while also getting 100% of the GOP votes. The indies cancel out.) Insert here several entertaining charts.

                “Simply put, vote-swapping.”

                And a discussion of the software’s documented “weighted race feature” which is DESIGNED FOR multiplying a candidate’s votes.

                Shades of Dredd Scott and the 3/5ths compromise!
                ===

                Which extrapolated to the national stage, when the cheat is negated comes out at something like 96M vs 56M votes.

                .

                2. ‘Vote weighting’ is the whole reason behind them storing votes as floating-point numbers. No honest, competent programmer would EVER store Boolean values as floating-point numbers. The entire Dominion/SmartMatic system was intended from the beginning to be used for fixing elections.

                  The Democrats insinuated them into our elections in 28 states through a combination of bribery and don’t-give-a-shit. Fraud-by-mail was just the cherry on top.
                  ———————————
                  “The bridge is out! Harry! The! Bridge! Is! Ooouuut!!”

    2. With regard to enforcement of lockdowns and limiting numbers in your own home and other patent nonsense… post this on your door, and no law enforcement will cross it without a warrant. (And if they do, call the federal marshals, who take a dim view of violations.)

      U.S, Code Title 18 Section 241-242

      You just need the citation, but here’s the statutes:

      18 U.S. Code § 241 – Conspiracy against rights

      If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or

      If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—

      They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

      18 U.S. Code § 242 – Deprivation of rights under color of law

      Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

  12. > Those areas were expensive real estate. For all I know they still are, but who would want to buy there?

    Easy enough. The people responsible for turning Denver into a shithole will wait until property values sink as low as they’ll go, snap up choice spots, and then have their politicial flunkies institute “urban renewal” programs to re-value their properties by at least an order of magnitude. Even better, they’ll arrange grants or “incentives” of some sort for their purchases, so they’re not out any of their own money.

    It’s post-trust America. We now assume malice by default.

    1. Snap up choice spots by actually spending their money? Hah! Nope they’ll either wait until the back taxes equal the highly depressed property value or they’ll take it by eminent domain paying out the pittance (or some portion thereof) that that yields.

      1. No, they’ll get Denver or Colorado to *pay* them to assume ownership and “develop” the properties.

    3. That’s basically how Lancaster, California, got urban renewal for its downtown, tho without the step involving shitholes and riots. (The actual shithole area, two blocks away, was allowed to remain a shithole.) Made things difficult for local business until they closed up, property values sank to nothing, then the mayor’s cronies swooped in and bought ’em all up, and sucked a whole bunch of money out of Obama’s stimulus to urbanly renew it. (Mostly by using a small fraction of the funds to turn a formerly easily-cruised main drag into too-long-to-walk, too-cramped-to-drive to the point that I stopped going there.) So now they’ve got prime property at no cost to themselves, to be sold at a nice profit when they find suitably gullible investors.

      Meanwhile, this mayor (who runs as a GOP but is really from the Little Tin God party) managed to get a mere 2800 votes out of about 30k registered voters, a result startling enough that a complaint re voter suppression was filed with the Sec’y of State (tho nothing ever came of it).

      So, yeah… any election not paper ballots hand-counted, I now regard as fraudulent, and any large “urban renewal” or infrastructure project as a money funnel for someone’s cronies.

      1. “Meanwhile, this mayor (who runs as a GOP but is really from the Little Tin God party)”

        Thanks for the reminder of this hallmark of Broadway cynicism.

        Not that I know a thing about cynicism.
        –

  13. > And what kind of government WILLINGLY Detroitizes its city?

    The Detroit kind? [bada-bing!]

    Also, Gary, Indiana, which more or less led the way to civic disaster. It has been half a celtury since Gary’s precipitous decline, but Gary was once a *player*, an industry powerhouse, the fastest-growing city in the USA. It was high-density manufacturing and skilled labor, expanding post-WWII as factories left Michigan and surrounding states to take advantage of Indiana’s more-favorable labor laws. Gary had the Progress button stuck in Fast Forward… until it wasn’t. And it turned into a post-apocalyptic wasteland a decade before the rot hit Detroit and Flint. Hardly anyone even *remembers* Gary now.

    But… every largeish city seems to have the Detroit kind of government now, bent on destroying the cities they were elected to manage. And even my tiny Arkansas town has joined the flock, taxation and regulation have run out all but a handful of our never-more-than-modest manufacturing base, leaving Wal-Mart the largest employer in town… and they don’t even pay taxes, thanks to a sweetheart deal with the city. When McDonalds’ and 7-11 close their doors, your town has a problem… but not one the city council seems to want to deal with.

  14. > US has fed most of the world for decades and if we stop doing it, there won’t be much that survives.

    It’s a win-win for the Davos types. The US is full of “excess population” they’d like to trim back, and exporting their food will be profitable.

  15. The Zoo is closed? Around here in deep blue Massachusetts one of the few institutions that is still open is the Stone Zoo (and likely Franklin Park Zoo too although that one is kind of lame). Roger Williams in Rhode Island is also open (though crossing state lines is frowned upon which is hard for Rhode Island residents as pick up a stone and throw it and it lands in Connecticut or Massachusetts…). The Stone Zoo closed its two indoor exhibits (bugs and reptiles, no great loss) and has timed tickets, but it’s a nice outdoor walk where its easy to socially distance.
    Man they are not trying to hide anything at all in Colorado they’ve gone all in on this madness.

    1. NONE of the new regulations make sense from one state to the next. Remember when one state opened beaches, and another closed them? Both were claiming it was based on “science”

      2. And yet, none of them show the science.

        As most of us learned in grade school: if you don’t show your work it isn’t science.
        –

    2. I went to the zoo in Little Rock once, somewhere around 1970, as part of a school field trip. Since the mid-1980s I’ve attempted dozens of times to return, but they’re either closed (their default state) or they have cars backed up for miles down the street and onto the freeway, waiting for parking places. But mostly it’s closed. Which seems odd, since their overhead is going to be much the same whether there are visitors are not; electricity, water, food, veterinary services… most of the “staff” are probably part-timers with no benefits, given how seldom the place is actually open.

      Many times I’ve wondered why they even bother; due to gentrification, the Zoo is now sitting on ultra-prime real estate.

      1. Yes they do require masks. Stupid state wide rules put in place by our (nominally) republican Governor (he really doesn’t even qualify as a RINO, think Mitt with less backbone…).

        1. Most such behaviour by politicians and bureaucrats follows a simple analysis, one familiar to sports fans as “managing by the book.”

          “Managing by the book” entails taking the expected, the traditional, action. It means bunting in a “bunt situation” or punting on fourth down, or “giving the ball to Michael Jordan when down two or less with ten seconds remaining. It might not be the best play but it is the safe play, the one no manager is likely to be second-guessed for, will not have to give difficult explanations for in post-game interviews.

          Calling for masks will do politicians and bureaucrats very little harm, will allow them to seem like they’re being proactive and taking the crisis seriously. Eschewing mask mandates means spending news conferences in a defensive crouch, treated like Trump as reporters activists with bylines hector, interrupt and draw attention away from your message explaining why masks are ineffective.

          It would be like addressing a pre-K classroom on the existence of Santa Claus. Tell them what they want to believe and it’s a cakewalk; tell the truth and there’s hell to pay.
          –

          1. Dumping sick people in with seniors didn’t hurt hoozis in Noo Yawk. And businesses are starting to revolt against the mask orders.

            They may be French-kissing the media, but it’s not the media who is going to be financing their opposition at the next election.

  16. There’s a picture of an on fire church with it’s marquee reading “Black Lives Matter” in Kenosha with the apt caption of “Your Virtue Signalling Will Not Save You.” That pic needs to be sent to the sign people.

  17. Here in Michigan, it’s getting almost as crazy…
    Restaurants can be open for either carry-out only or for “outdoor” dining.
    Wife and I went to a restaurant with “outdoor” dining over the weekend, despite having their patio heaters going (presumably) full blast and us sitting RIGHT next to the (open) rollup door to the indoor dining area, I kept on my coat and sweatshirt and was STILL cold. Sure, they’ve got the roll-down vinyl panels around the patio area, but they were all up.
    Asked the waitress about that, she stated they’d had them down before and gotten in trouble for it…

    Picked up breakfast from our usual Sunday spot, apparently they’ve heard that our “3 week” lockdown WILL be getting extended (big f**king surprise.) As for the staff, there were all of 3 people working (1 cook, 1 waitress, and the manager / owner) instead of the usual multitude of waitstaff, busboy/dishwasher, couple of cooks, and hostess…

    This state is being driven hell-bent for leather to bankruptcy and on other forums there’s people essentially CHEERING. I think the state (and the people all gung-ho for the lockdowns) are EXPECTING a federal bailout. Of course, the same people counting on this, also don’t realize that, hey, guess what, the feds are basically “loaning you” your own taxes back and I’d bet dollars-to-donuts it’ll get counted as “income” (if there’s another round of stimulus checks) to be added in come tax time. I will NOT be surprised if we keep getting lockdown extensions until at least February, either.

    I’d say to start planning on a couple things in the next couple years, massive inflation because of the feds likely starting to print money for the magical stimulus and bailouts, a SERIOUS economic depression (worldwide,) and MORE civil unrest. Taking bets on the over/under for unemployment numbers in the US, I’ve got 10%+ unemployment, even using the “we don’t count the people who’ve stopped looking for work as unemployed” numbers…

    It’s gonna be an UGLY next several years…

    1. It’s been a tight the last year or so for me, and the temptation to trade real money for cash has been sore trying, but I fear the coming inflation too much to get rid of hard currency for paper. Then again, went to a wedding yesterday, and gave the groom some ammunition, which probably outvalued everything else on the table.

    2. “… don’t realize that, hey, guess what, the feds are basically “loaning you” your own taxes back”

      As we can see from audits of the PPP disbursements, when the federal government opens the spigots there is plenty of opportunity for the “clever” to slosh about in the pool and collect more than their share.

      Of course, only the cynical embittered would point out the “unemployment” finds paid to people on death row.
      –

      1. I’d even heard some restaurants were set to use those plastic igloo things for outdoor dining…
        Then they were declared to be “indoor,” despite sitting in a parking lot.
        So to have a tent for outdoor dining here, it needs to have 3(!!!) sides open.

        I think the only restaurants that will survive this mess are going to be the big corporate chain places. Franchisees? Mom-and-Pop places? Bars? I’ve seen some predictions saying up to 75% of restaurants won’t re-open after all this, I’m betting it’ll be closer to 95%…

      3. We’re takeout only in Oregon, though Wednesday we go to the tiered system. As of last week, 21 of 36 counties were in the “extreme” category, with we’re-not-calling-it-a-lockdown essentially the same as the previous “freeze”. It was to be re-assessed today, but if the information is available, it’s well hidden.

        The key factor is number of “cases”, with a lab notorious for false positives and presumptive case definitions being so loose it’s absurd. Despicable Kate Brown doesn’t have the Nurse Ratched look of Wretched Gretchen Whitless, but without a mask, she makes the phrase “you look good enough to eat!” a bit too real. She creeps me out. (And the last is not a joke…)

  18. “The World” is, for most of us, a social construct. We don’t really know much about it and much of what we know is not true. That is why Liberals and Conservatives can occupy different and overlapping worlds. It is also one of the greatest distinctions between Left & Right is that the Right generally recognizes that the World is not what we believe it to be, not what it appears to be. Thus we on the Right seek ever closer correlation between the world i ur heads and the one that actually is.

    Of course, those on the Left think the same distinction applies between them and those of us bitterly clinging to our guns and our Bibles.
    –

    1. The left lives in its own reality and has for a long time. When reality catches up with them many will not survive it. I’m worried the rest of us might not survive it either.

      Interesting headline and sub headline from the Telegraph:
      “History suggests the roar of rebellion will follow Covid’s suppression
      The Government would do well to realise that excess authoritarianism can backfire badly”

      Even the UK is talking about it 😲

      1. That is, of course, a reason for them to never lift their boot.

        Once you steal an election this baldly you do not dare ever again permit an honest election.
        –

        1. Hence, the thought about briefing the Supremes “No, we have to keep oppressing the Jews and Catholics, do anything possible to keep them from practicing their faith, or the boog starts, and everyone on Earth dies.”

        2. The “Biden Transition Team” is accepting security briefings and Federal funds. That’s obtaining classified information under false pretenses, a felony. And defrauding the GAO, another felony.

          They’ve burned their bridges; they’re going to Club Fed unless they can get Trump to concede, even without the electoral fraud thing.

          2. Biden, Inc. can [EXPLETIVE] themselves in the [BLASPHEMY] [EXPLETIVE], and welcome! Y’all’re likely right about them being unable to lift their boot without even worse consequences than putting the boot down brought– at least for themselves. On one hand it’s a terrible thing to be under that unliftable boot. But on the other hand…

            The reason they cannot afford to lift their boots is because they know what they’re standing on. This land is mined. The signs say Don’t Tread On Me! for a

            BLAM!

            good reason. And there are some days I wouldn’t much mind being part of the mine when the boot gets tired.
            —–

            But in practical terms, what can one do?

          3. Is it now… seems someone might suggest that to the Trump legal team, to file away against future actions.

        1. Oh, it would lead to a Marxist state. Just like it did in North Korea, East Germany, China, Russia, Cambodia, Romania, Cuba…

        2. And various idiots on the left (but I repeat myself) are specifically citing the Spanish Civil War while ignoring the fact that the revolutionaries there were Franco’s Nationalists, rebelling against the leftist government.

          And yet they want to go there.

  19. Was 9/11 a massive conspiracy on the part of forces far removed from Islamic Fundamentalism? No. Has the continued existence of Islamic Fundamentalism been supported by a variety of forces that wish harm to Western Capitalism? Oh, hell, yes. Are those forces now in near panic mode because the Peasants of the United States and Western Europe are getting sick of their elitist transnational bullshit and becoming restive? Yuppers! The United States has always been hard for them; we have too many opinions and far too many guns to be overawed by the Poison Ivy League / Oxbridge majesty of their wonderful selves. But now, because of ostentatious mismanagement, even solid EU countries are getting rebellious around the edges, and Britain actually said “Screw this for a lark!”

    They must be crapping their nappies.

    1. Oh, I realize, I didn’t clarify something. I don’t believe that the transnational elites conspired to make 9/11 happen because I don’t think that our reaction, which was entirely predictable even from their deranged worldview, was something they wanted. They’ve done their best to play it down, but our wiping out the governments and military of two Islamic Nations in a month, with only a few hundred thousand troops, has to have upset a LOT of plans.

      1. Those setting up the dominos don’t necessarily care who topples the array, they need only be confident that somebody will. Similarly, California can be confident there will be disastrous wild fires because they leave tinder piled all about. It doesn’t matter what will strike the spark.
        –

        1. I don’t think that THEN they were sufficiently panicked to risk provoking the United States into a War they really didn’t want. Now? Maybe. Since 9/11 the EU has started falling apart (due in equal parts to the idiocy of the concept and the Elites’ extreme mismanagement), Britain has said “Bugger off!” to the British Elite and followed that with a “No, seriously, go molest a goat. We’re sick of you. We were sick of you when we voted for Brexit.”, and the United States has elected a Populist who won’t get with the Elitist program.

          I think, in the end, they will be very sorry.

          Briefly.

          1. The whole Muslim structure really seems to be imploding quietly. After one of the most prominent Muslim “missionaries” interviewed one of the most prominent Muslim academics, and the Muslim academic pretty much agreed that, yeah, we don’t know which of a good hundred qira’at (recitation versions) of the Qur’an is actually “the real one,” but we don’t talk about Qur’an Fight Club in front of the rubes… well, a lot of Youtube-watching Muslims apparently got really disgusted, and converted to Christianity or atheism. And apparently a lot of Muslim preachers have been complaining about how they keep losing people.

            Because it’s a big Muslim thing, to claim that the Qur’an has never changed even by a letter, even though it obviously has, and a lot of Muslim sources say that it has. But at least in the Youtube viewership world, a lot of young Muslims had managed not to know that. Until now.

            I don’t know if this is going to help Civilization in the short run, but it’s a big thing in the long run.

        2. The Democrats will never forget or forgive Americans for beating the margin of fraud in 2016 and have gone all in on making sure that it never happens again.

  20. I am writing an op ed comparing our current conflict to the Warring States period in China. In short — the Legalists won the right to govern the first Chinese Empire. Fifteen years later it was destroyed by massive protests and revolution; broke up into 18 independent states. Sound familiar?

    Not being a writer myself I am looking for publication advice. And maybe editing. I sent my very first op ed to Adam Ford (Disrn, Not the Bee) but was rejected, probably because I write like a sociologist…. I predicted exactly what has happened as a result of the society-destroying prohibitions on social interaction, the womb of “society.” This time I intend to show how Confucius’ vision of social order counteracts the evils of Legalism.

    Sarah — is that Grebo sitting on your lap? I need a photo of him….

  21. “I can’t even really guess whom, because I can’t think that China was behind 9/11.”

    I have found that much Time & Thought can be saved when exploring such questions (or those of what motivated, for example, school shooters or that guy in Vegas a few years ago) by assuming that The Devil is responsible for the event.

    This does not mean I imagine The Devil to be a real entity, dressed in red jumpsuit and waving a pitchfork. It is merely that for some things there can be no understanding of motivation short of staring into the abyss until it stares back. Investing energy in scrutinizing the inscrutable merely leaves you screwed, so shrug it off and get back in the game.
    –

  22. “But the largely decorative fabric over mouth?”

    I once spent the moments necessary to read the labeling on one of those masks while in line at the store. As best I can recall, it said, “Fashion mask only. This mask provides no protection from airborne disease.”

    Because their lawyers may be excessively cautious but they aren’t fools.
    –

  23. I’ve taken to reading Michael Yon’s posts regularly again. I had only looked at his site occasionally in recent years. Now he is back in America and providing a ground level view of the conflict that is brewing here.

          1. Nope, just a normal empathic artist trying not to lose her soul in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

      2. I read Michael Yon quite a bit when he was reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan over a decade ago. He is former Army Special Forces turned war correspondent and has spent quite a bit of time in volatile places in Asia and Eastern Europe.

        Along with you and Michael Bane, he is someone I refer to on the topic of civil unrest and riots. My own experience of such things is limited to the last gasp of anti-Vietnam War protests when I was a college freshman. I successfully avoided the places and times that got exciting, so my experience was indeed limited.

  24. “Yes, I am a terrible person. Indeed. I want grandma to die, indeed.”

    Well, that’s the “If it saves just one life” fallacy, ennit?

    One notable attribute of most Leftist thought is it always assumes there is no cost, or at least no notable cost. All policies are “examined” in vacuum, as if there were no trade-offs involved. But the reason Economics is called “The Dismal Science” is because it refuses to pretend there are no trade-offs, that choices can be avoided.

    Sorry, Sophie – there is always a terrible choice. The dollar you spend for the pinball machine is not available for $1 Beer Night. Pinball or beer, you can’t get both for that dollar. And while you can pretend there’s an infinite supply of dollars not even Magical Monetary Theory can make it so.

    Frankly, I don’t think Granny would want an additional few months of her life be bought at the cost of her grandchildren’s liberty. Nor do I believe that those asking the question actually give a damn about her, they’re simply trying to intimidate me for some purpose the nature of which they’re keeping concealed.
    –

    1. Lockdowns are a prime example of the fallacy illuminated in the 1850 essay “That Which Is Seen And That Which Is Not Seen” (aka TWISATWINS) by Frederic Bastiat, available in many places such as here

      https://www.lifestyleupdated.com/2015/06/18/that-which-is-seen-and-that-which-is-not-seen/

      TWISATWINS is an acronym that should be as commonplace as TANSTAAFL (and maybe TWANLOC).

      He wrote it in French, of course. Unfortunately, the title acronym in French is much less pronounceable: CQOVECQONVP

  25. Had a nice ̶S̶u̶n̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶d̶i̶n̶n̶e̶r̶ ̶ protest, yesterday, number of un-masked friends over, ages ranging from the teens to the eighties. a lot of conversation with the meal, no TV football, after the meal we got a couple of miles of cross country skiing and trail breaking in.

    You only can do what you can do. However, if we keep on doing, what we can and want to do, yesterday and again today, at least we slow the fall of civilization for one more day.

    1. Until they come for you, your home, your family, and your skis.

      “No one needs a home so big for such a small family, comrade.”

      The idea that you can do this is…. not true. It’s just not true anymore.

      1. You know they actually did that in Italy? Confiscated a hotel (basically a big old house that the owner still lived in and had partly remodeled as a motel) and gave it over to migrants, and the cops enforced it. There is video of the poor guy being ousted from his own home and migrants being ushered in, and if you’re now homeless with no income, sucks to be you. I doubt it was the only such example.

        There’s a policy in ?Sweden? I’ve heard of that basically does the same thing: they shut down your hotel until you agree to take in migrants. Gov’t pays their bills, but the property value goes to pot. I forget the details as I heard of it from one of the victims, back when this migrant crisis thing was new, but that’s the gist of it.

            1. The second one I posted mentions hotels for the people displaced by the Fires, like the Holiday Fire, as well as the chronically homeless. Problem is a lot of them are balking (rightfully so) about being housed with the chronically homeless. It’s like they are afraid nervous about those who choose drugs or their mental illness over treatment.

              Locally most used RV’s have been snatched up. Even new are limited. Instead of being packed side by side, end to end, if you look closely RV sale locations are skimpy. Not just because of the fires, though people are doing that to put on their burnt properties to protect them from looters, even if there isn’t much left to loot. But also as alternative to traveling this summer*.

              * Boy was that a hoot people watching in Yellowstone NP campgrounds. We might have offered to help a few; so did others already setup. It was very obvious which ones were “this will be easy!” Not all accepted help. The one who pulled their 30+ trailer through the pull through spot 3 times before driving off … with the trailer door open … comes to mind. Hey! I resemble that. We’ve been camping for 42 years together, almost 32 with an RV. I can do everything myself, just will take awhile, because there are things I don’t do (well didn’t, now … **sold the trailer) … you know, like back in truck to hook it up, let alone tow the dang thing. I may only help get it level (watch the bubble), but even I know the sites are “level-ish” and one might have to do something (have seen worse, a lot worse) to get rigs level.

              ** We got a good fair price. Good for us. Fair to the buyer (less than a dealership would charge, more than a dealer would pay us). Not about to gouge just because of limitation of market.

              1. We bought our trailer in August with an advance payment. It took a few weeks for the factory to get it to S Oregon, but all 5 units the dealer received were either sold in advance or sold within a day. Not a huge trailer (16 foot), but if we need emergency shelter, we have it.

                Not as easy to tow as the old Coleman tent trailer, but it’s considerably more comfortable.

                1. I guess the manufacturers are having difficulty getting parts. Thus the only new deliveries are/were(?) those in the pipeline already. Between Guaranty, Sutton, Camper World, and all the small dealerships in between, Eugene isn’t lacking for options, even now. We’d been talking about selling for awhile now. We haven’t been using it as much lately … Hubby kept going back and forth. It was paid for. This last summer tipped it over to the sell category. Where we are located, if we have to use an RV for backup shelter … things are really, really, really, bad.

        2. I didn’t know about Italy. No surprise. The only way to make them stop is to kill them, cut the parts and burn them. Even then it’s only 50-50.

          This was a scene from Dr. Zhivago, tempered by time and my imagination.

    2. Went to my sister’s home for Thanksgiving. No one was wearing a mask… well, my brother-in-law got a group photo with his brothers and they all deliberately put on masks just for the photo but they removed them when they were done.

      I guess the doomsayers will gloat if we come down with Covid, but I have a feeling that won’t happen.

  26. I really think the mindset of progressives is nihilism and self-deification. What is, must be destroyed. The very act of destruction is beautiful and creative. Destruction also proves superiority, because something worth surviving could not be destroyed in the first place. “Must we ourselves not become gods to appear worthy of it?”

    What is the source? I don’t know. Is it the externalization of an inner discontent with the self? I see a lot of progressives blame “the system” for what are essentially their own personal failings; in fact, just about all the BLM nonsense is an attempt to blame the destructive, impoverishing result of many personal failings on “the oppressive other.” Sure, many people turn to crime and drugs when their lives are hopeless, and hopelessness may be encouraged and enabled by pseudo-schools and the egg-breaking omelette of economic globalism. But if morals don’t direct one’s conduct in a hopeless situation, then what good are morals to begin with? Morals aren’t a function of luxury, they’re the operative foundation of prosperity.

    Anyhow, Godwin’s Law says we’re not supposed to think about how a certain middle European country was a showcase of everything that can go wrong in a morally-untethered industrialized democracy, and that anyone who notices such a similarity must be wrong. So I won’t go there, attempting to draw parallels between that culture and modern progressive culture. Nossir.

    These people are insane, and they’re turning society into an awful version of Winchester House in which people will live in misery internal and external before being killed. Usually the people who do that are stopped by an outside force, like the certain middle European country, or Pol Pot in Cambodia. What keeps them alive is the infrequency of their insanity; most people want to live, and try to live on any terms available. So they register, and line up, and give their names, and assure themselves that they’re too valuable to the war effort to be killed, anything to avoid accepting that their lives have been turned into another staircase to nowhere in Wichester House.

    I don’t know what to do. Except go back to work, because this was my lunchbreak.

  27. The COVID response seems to be doing a rather effective job of killing off undesirables. Got money? Stay home, don’t get sick.
    Not much money, existing conditions? Can’t afford to leave New York City for the lockdown?
    No treatment for you, unless you’re one of the easy cases.

      1. At least not in job lots, because it doesn’t kill or even require hospitalization for most who get infected, even those who have risk factors Most people I know who had it just got told to quarantine, and spent 2-4 days feeling a bit ill. OTOH, my asthmatic now-wife had it a year ago, before they knew what it was, and had a more serious response. They were able to treat it because her doctor was using her brain – a steroid treatment got her healthy again within a week or so.

      2. Other than being druggies– which, I’m sorry to be crass, tends to be a self-ending problem if they’re mentally disabled enough to be truly undesirable — how many of those are undesirably expensive to the degree that, say, half of the folks in here over about 65 are? I know the folks here run towards “interesting” medical issues, but good heavens!

        I’m not saying it very well, I’ll try a different route… look at Italy.

        Remember how they were talking about how people were dying untreated, and then you find out that all the folks with pre-existing conditions were refused treatment, like that gal with a nerve disorder who lived with her two elderly parents and because one symptom matched COVID, they refused to let anyone out of the house?

        Or putting infected into old folks’ homes? Or isolating those in nursing homes, which we know that speeds up death?

        The medically expensive are a tiny part of the total population, so it is entirely possible both to increase their death rate, and not manage a significant increase in mortality from a statistical POV.
        Which is part of why I am wondering if I lost my mind, because I could SWEAR that there use to be a deaths-by-age-by-week type chart on the CDC website, and I can’t even find the deaths-by-week beyond week 40 of ’19……

        1. I had this specific thought during the Cuomo-and-the-nursing-homes debacle… the state has a 6.1 billion dollar budget shortfall right now, with Medicaid being responsible for 4 billion of that.

          https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2020/01/30/nys-executive-budget-medicaid-costs-new-york-city-over-1-billion-dollars-city-says

          I’d been wondering for a while (…probably two years, since I started working at a doctor’s office) how NYS would deal, having put something so completely unworkable in place; simply killing the elderly hadn’t occurred to me until he, y’know, did it. -_-

        2. In conversation, we’re trying to figure things out. Phrases like “undesirably expensive” can help illustrate a point. Don’t be shy to use wounding words or phrases. I think we have to when talking about big things like death and my money.

          It’s honest to say my Papa should never have sought treatment for pancreas cancer at age 79. From all aspects, it was a disaster. Our family is blown completely apart, he’s dead, the finances never recovered–and that’s after medicare covered their pittance 80%. When one chemo treatment can cost around $70,000, it’s time to ask the question “who’s paying for that?”

          I could go on for days about the topic, but my purpose was just to say have at the language the best you can, and if we feel outraged we’ll let you know, and you can clarify. We’re Americans. This is how we do stuff.

      3. Fox said undesirables, not the poor that the ruling class rarely sees. That’s anyone not taking a government check and of those who do, anyone that might oppose the ruling class

  29. > They’re destroying education

    When is a student not a student?

    When he’s an employee.

    You have a sizeable number of people who are accepting money to do work – that is, they have a job. Their job is “attend school”, and they’re being paid for it. That makes them employees by the letter of most labor law, even if they’re calling it “grants” or “financial aid.”

    The whole “higher education” thing looks a lot different viewed through that filter… and if they’re employees, those student loans were part of their compensation, and taxable income, even if they were called loans. The IRS has definitions of how all that works; unless you meet very specific requirements, accepting money for work makes you an employee no matter what your job title and terms of employment are.

    Hey, as employees they could probably file suit to get their missing benefits and retirement packages… this could be interesting.

    1. Interesting perspective. And if the IRS decided to go after ’em for back taxes, and current taxes… might be some of this nonsense dries up as unprofitable.

  30. Following a story dropped by Limbaugh substitute host Mark Steyn I entered “dominion server kamala photographer” into my search engine and got the following headlines:

    Dominion Representative for Fulton County Was Kamala Harris’ Presidential Campaign Photographer

    Dominion Technician Who Scanned Ballots in Georgia Also …

    Dominion Representative for Fulton County Was Kamala Harris’ Presidential Campaign Photographer

    Kamala Harris Directly Connected With Dominion Voting Software

    Dominion Technician Who Scanned Ballots in Georgia Also Worked for Kamala Harris in 2019

    Kamala Harris Directly Connected With Dominion Voting Software

    Dominion Rep Who Scanned Ballots in Georgia County Where Thousands of Trump Votes Were Uncounted Also Worked for Kamala Harris

    Kamala’s photographer was also a Dominion Rep. who counted …

    Kamala Harris Connected With Dominion Voting Software …

    Of course, the closest to a “legitimate” site is Gateway Pundit, so nothing to see here, just move along quietly, move along.

    –

      1. Checking their site:

        0 – Dominion Server Crashes During Georgia Recount
        0 – Dominion Systems Were Connected to Internet During Election: Cybersecurity Expert
        0 – Georgia Groups Attempting to Register Out-of-State Voters: Official
        0 – Judge Blocks, Unblocks, Then Blocks Georgia From Wiping or Resetting Election Machines
        0 – Brazil’s Bolsonaro Says Aware of Fraud in US Presidential Election
        0 – Anonymous Email From Arizona Tech Worker Alleges 35,000 Votes Given to Democrats in Pima County: Witness

        S, that’s interesting.
        –

        2. Updating, with link:

          Arizona Lawmakers Call for Resolution to Hold Back Electoral College Votes
          At a public hearing in Arizona with select members of the state legislature and members of President Donald Trump’s legal team, lawmakers called for their colleagues to support an upcoming resolution that would delay the release of the state’s Electoral College votes.

          Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem told reporters during the Nov. 30 hearing that they hope to have a resolution “within the next 24 to 48 hours.” The state holds 11 Electoral College votes.

          “We are clawing our Electoral College votes back, we will not release them,” Finchem said. “That’s what I’m calling on our colleagues in both the House and Senate to do—exercise our plenary authority under the U.S. Constitution.

          “There is a legal brief out there that says we are not tethered to state statute when it comes to this one question.”

          According to Finchem, the move would be easy to make and would be legally binding.

          “A simple majority can call the House and Senate back, and in a day can pass a resolution and cause those electoral votes to basically be held,” he said. “And it is binding—I’ll see y’all in court.”

          In total, nine Republican state lawmakers attended the meeting, which was held at a hotel in downtown Phoenix. They had requested permission to hold a formal legislative hearing at the state Capitol but were denied by the Republican House speaker and Senate president, according to The Associated Press

          [SNIP]

          During the hearing, a cybersecurity expert said the user manual for Dominion Voting Systems machines guides users on how to connect to the internet, and that the machines, used by multiple states, were connected to the internet during the election.

          “The Dominion suite user manual is about an inch and a half thick. My team went back through the user manual and looked at all the instances where in the user’s manual, it tells operators to connect the ethernet cords to the router, and it is, the systems are connected to the internet,” said Phil Waldron, a cybersecurity expert and retired Army colonel.

          “Our teams looked at spirographs on the Dominion network on Election Day and showed the increased web traffic, internet traffic on Election Day for Dominion servers.

          “In a nutshell, these systems are not what you’ve been told, if you’ve been told anything.

          “They are connected to the internet. There is no transparency of how the voter information is processed, moved, and stored. And, as a matter of fact, these companies have refused to allow any type of inspection into their code and they always decry, it’s our IP, it’s IP protection.”

          [SNIP]

          Current data shows Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden leading Trump by about 11,000 votes in the state.

          Earlier, Giuliani opened by saying that socialist-leaning politicians and officials have gradually eroded the personal liberties of Americans, noting that the allegedly fraudulent election process on Nov. 3 was an extension of that.

          “We have been warned for 20 years that going to major mail-in ballots … will be fraught with tremendous fraud,” he said. “We were warned by former President Jimmy Carter,” former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, and prominent Democrats to “never do it.”

          “Democrats used to be against mail-in ballots,” he said, adding that the current crop of politicians has reversed that viewpoint to gain more “money and power.”

          In Arizona, much of the state’s alleged fraud had to do with the mail-in ballot system, Giuliani said.

          “Once the ballot is separated from the envelope, it’s gone forever,” he said.

          In Pima and Maricopa counties, there are hundreds of thousands of votes that should be “declared null and void,” the former mayor alleged. There was “clear fraud” in which poll workers were observed changing votes in Arizona, he said, remarking that ballot box stuffing also occurred.
          –

          1. Also:

            Pennsylvania Lawmakers Formally Introduce Resolution to Dispute 2020 Election Results
            Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania on Nov. 30 introduced a resolution to dispute the results of the 2020 election.

            The text of the resolution, first previewed in a memo on Nov. 27, states that the executive and judicial branches of the Keystone State’s government usurped the legislature’s constitutional power to set the rules of the election.

            “Officials in the Executive and Judicial Branches of the Commonwealth infringed upon the General Assembly’s authority under the Constitution of the United States by unlawfully changing the rules governing the November 3, 2020, election in the Commonwealth,” the resolution (pdf) states.

            The resolution calls on the secretary of the Commonwealth to withdraw the “premature certification” of the presidential election and delay certifying other races. It declares the 2020 election to be in dispute, and urges the U.S. Congress “to declare the selection of presidential electors in this Commonwealth to be in dispute.”

            Members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly said in a statement: “A number of compromises of Pennsylvania’s election laws took place during the 2020 General Election. The documented irregularities and improprieties associated with mail-in balloting, pre-canvassing, and canvassing have undermined our elector process and, as a result, we cannot accept certification of the results in statewide races.

            “We believe this moment is pivotal and important enough that the General Assembly needs to take extraordinary measures to answer these extraordinary questions. We also believe our representative oversight duty as Pennsylvania’s legislative branch of government demands us to re-assume our constitutional authority and take immediate action.”

            The proposed text lists three steps taken by the judicial and executive branches to change the rules of the election.

            [SNIP]

            The resolution also lists a variety of election irregularities and potential fraud, including the issues brought up by witnesses during the hearing before the Pennsylvania Senate Majority Policy Committee on Nov. 25.

            “On November 24, 2020, the Secretary of the Commonwealth unilaterally and prematurely certified results of the November 3, 2020 election regarding presidential electors despite ongoing litigation,” the resolution states.

            “The Pennsylvania House of Representatives has the duty to ensure that no citizen of this Commonwealth is disenfranchised, to insist that all elections are conducted according to the law, and to satisfy the general public that every legal vote is counted accurately.”

            Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Republican, said on Nov. 27 that the GOP-controlled state legislature will make a bid to reclaim its power to appoint the state’s electors to the Electoral College, saying they could start the process on Nov. 30.

            “So, we’re going to do a resolution between the House and Senate, hopefully today,” he told Steve Bannon’s War Room on Nov. 27.
            –

          2. And now we have a precedent for breaking past that argument about IP.

            https://thespectator.info/2020/11/27/green-party-candidate-jill-stein-won-groundbreaking-case-in-october-gives-campaign-right-to-examine-voting-machine-source-code/

            ““This is a major win for voters everywhere,” Stein noted. “The courts have affirmed that the largest manufacturer of voting machines in the US, Election Systems & Software, has no right to suppress the findings of our upcoming inspection of key election software. “

          3. That reminds me, I haven’t heard a word about that electoral vote suicide pact so many states were bragging about a few years ago. Remember, the one where they were going to cast their votes together with the other shithole states, regardless of who their citizens voted for? The “voting compact”, they called it.

            1. That particular pact only goes into effect when they have commitments totaling 270 or more electoral votes. It commits signatory states to selecting their electors according to the winner of the (so-called) popular vote. Since Biden won (for certain values of “win”) the popular vote it would not go into effect this year.

              I doubt it was anything more than a sideshow at best, and more probably a scam akin to the Lincoln Project, intended as a way to suck money out of the pockets of the gullible (which pretty much qualifies as any person thinking the popular vote should decide things) and into the pockets of the consultant class.
              –

          1. Except then Kamala wouldn’t be to blame for her actions. It would be the symbiote.

            (Though I did pick up an RPG supplement for a game set in the Stargate SG-1 universe. One of the NPCs created was a Goa’uld whose host was a lot more sadistic than the Goa’uld could ever be, so the symbiote sits back and lets his host do a lot of the mayhem. Maybe Kamala’s like that.) 😮

  31. “A curious observation: in the most affected neighborhoods in Denver, the Biden/Harris signs have multiplied SINCE the election. At least doubled, maybe more. Also BLM signs have appeared everywhere.They should be honest and put a up a sign saying eat me last!”

    Ya know, that seems like a fine opportunity for folks with a bit of spray paint… those signs need “Eat me last” tacked on where they won’t immediately notice the vandalism.

    And who can forget this immortal warning….

    1. Phil Ochs, a genuine Red, explained why – when the power changes hands – it is the Liberals who will get first eliminated:

      Like our Lord warns, those who are but lukewarm will be spat out.
      –

          1. She’s one who accepts the consequences of her philosophy, including the bad consequences. That’s refreshing, even if I disagree with parts of her philosophy.

            1. Exactly. I’ve been an acquaintance for 25 years. We have several differences but she’s honest about what she believes and why.

              1. It hasn’t been my impression that Ochs was covert about his philosophy. He was a very talented songwriter, evidence that talent and brains are separate packages with some elements in common. Mostly he’s one I sing along with ironically (a quality shared with Tom Paxton.) Sometimes I wish some folk were singing in a different language so that the content didn’t distract from the song.

                But you cannot deny the brilliance of this performance, even if he did “steal” the lyric. I am sure it was this talent and the honesty of his views that Fish appreciated.
                –

  34. New Jersey is apparently taking a full 21% bite out of people’s paychecks for the next two months, regardless of one’s income, basically because the state is strapped for cash and is simply taking the money from the people who work for it regardless of their actual tax liability:

    Some N.J. workers say they are wrongly being taxed at the millionaire rate
    By Karin Price Mueller | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
    November 30, 2020

    Earlier this fall, Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law the millionaires tax, which raises the state’s gross income tax rate on income between $1 million and $5 million from 8.97% to 10.75%. People with income over $5 million already pay that top marginal tax rate.

    But a provision of the law that instructs employers to withhold state tax at a rate of 21.3% from salaries, wages and other payments, such as commissions and bonuses, from Nov. 1 through the rest of the year may be hitting people for whom the tax was not intended, according to several readers who contacted NJ Advance Media.

    The state Division of Taxation website says the higher withholding rate “allows taxpayers affected by the rate increase to `catch up’ on their withholdings for the year since the new tax rate is retroactive to January 1.”

    One worker, who asked not to be named, called it a cash grab by the state for a zero-percent interest loan that will eventually be refunded to non-millionaire taxpayers.

    Workers who may be getting hit include those who get a large one-time payment such as a bonus or commission check. Employers could end up withholding the 21.3% amount as if the worker earned that much every pay period and would end up with income of more than $1 million.

    Workers would get the funds back when they file their tax return on April 15, 2021.

    For example, let’s say a salesperson earns a $60,000 salary and gets quarterly commission checks of $100,000. In the pay period when the $100,000 check is received, the employer would withhold 21.3%. But in the end, the worker would have earned $460,000 for the year, well below the income level subject to the millionaires tax.

    The Division of Taxation said that while employees can ask their employers to withhold less, they should be careful.

    “It’s very important to stress that there are generally significant differences reported on an employee’s W2 between the federal and state incomes – most often because IRS rules do not tax health care premiums, some pension payments, etc.,” spokeswoman Melinda Caliendo said.

    Taxpayers who are subject to the millionaires tax won’t face penalties or interest for insufficient withholding paid before Nov. 1, 2020, the Division of Taxation said.

    While the Murphy administration estimates the tax will bring in $390 million from 16,491 New Jersey residents and 19,128 non-residents in the shortened fiscal year and more in future fiscal years, it’s unknown how many taxpayers are stuck paying a higher tax they ultimately won’t owe.

    “The state is strapped for cash,” said Bernie Kiely, a certified financial planner and certified public accountant with Kiely Capital Management in Morristown. “They can’t wait until April 15th to get the badly needed funds.”

    He said those with 2020 taxable income of between $1 million and $5 million have under withheld their taxes for the past 40 weeks, so this inflated tax rate is a way for people to catch up on what they will eventually owe when they file their tax returns.

    Howard Hook, a certified financial planner and certified public accountant with EKS Associates in Princeton, said he’s not surprised at the state’s strategy.

    “The states as well as the federal government continue to be concerned about people not paying the right amount of taxes and would prefer to refund money that’s overwithheld rather than wait until April 15 of the following year to collect,” Hook said.

    Retroactive withholding tax is frustrating to both taxpayers and tax professionals, said Gail Rosen, a Martinsville-based certified public accountant.

    “It’s comparable to changing the rules in the middle of a game. How can anyone plan for that?” she said.

    But, Rosen said, the good news is that you can adjust your withholding for any payroll period by providing a new Form NJ-W4 withholding certificate to your payroll department. Then you can control how much tax will be withheld.

    NJ Advance Media Statehouse reporters Samantha Marcus and Brent Johnson contributed to this report.

    1. ” would prefer to refund money that’s overwithheld rather than wait until April 15 of the following year to collect”

      Wouldn’t we all love an interest free loan.

      1. Reducing withholding was yet another thing the Democrats hate about the Trump tax cuts; they reduced the amount of the interest free loan the Feds get ever year.

        1. I reduced withholding years ago. I never get a tax ‘refund’. No matter what they tell you, it’s not illegal.

          Yet.

          1. The closest thing we’ve ever gotten to a refund is a refund from one state that covers the extra taxes for the feds or another state.

            Heck, for a good chunk of our married life, having a kid would have been revenue neutral, what with all the tax credits for children and eligibility for social services.

            1. Exactly. Most our working lives we paid both Feds & State, or got enough back from the State to pay the Feds, or (rarely) got enough back from the Feds to pay the State. Our belief was they owe us the free loan. At worst maybe a point or two penalty for under paying Feds too much (then the next year got a huge refund without changing anything … WTH?). Now? We pay a few hundred (<$300) to the Feds and get a huge State refund back. We are withholding the minimum allowed (without getting hit with a huge penalty) that we can for state on his pension and anything we pull from the taxable funds. We don't withhold anything on either SS, nor my pension (we might as well say "here take it").

  35. Arizona hearings are live (you’ll have to backtrack to the beginning. YT’s notification was a bit laggard)

  36. I keep sharing stories about the hypocrisy of “leaders” who urge shutdowns and then behave the other way. Since I live in California, there are lots of targets, starting at the top, but other states have been joining in. “It was a mistake,” is the excuse most of them make.

    Excuse ME, I don’t go to a restaurant indoors by mistake. Or get on a plane even if it is just to visit my spouse. Or fly to Hawaii for a conference. “One law for me and one for thee.”

    My brother was very surprised in a childhood game of Trivial Pursuit when I was able to correctly name Benjamin the donkey from Animal Farm. Be like Benjamin. Remember what has actually happened, not what they tell you has happened.

    1. A restaurant in California is refusing to follow new coronavirus restrictions and erected a banner reading “The French Laundry” over its sign, in reference to the swanky French restaurant where Gov. Gavin Newsom was seen breaking his own virus orders.

      https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/california-diner-owner-refuses-to-close-outdoor-dining-puts-up-sign-riffing-on-governors-dinner-at-swanky-french-restaurant

      Sadly, he’s putting a big target on his back — the various NYC protests have resulted in the restaurant owners being targeted and their licenses pulled. But that’s the American spirit, right there.

      2. I’m guessing, hoping might be more like, that he intends to put a target on his back, on purpose.

        Because it’s such a classic example of Americanism, I’m guessing that’s what he’s up to.

      3. To clarify, the “no outdoor dining” order that’s being flouted here is from the LA County Health Department, and not from the state.

        The order extends to the entire county except for the City of Pasadena. The reason why it doesn’t apply to Pasadena is because Pasadena has its own health department, and said that they don’t feel a need to shut down outdoor dining again. I would expect the city to get VERY cranky if the state or county decides to try and push the issue before the middle of January (there won’t be a Rose Parade in Pasadena on New Year’s Day 2021, but there will still almost certainly be a Rose Bowl drawing in out of town visitors).

        The City of Long Beach also has its own health department. But that city has decided to follow the county’s direction for now on this particular topic. Apparently no other cities in the county have their own independent health departments.

  38. I did feel the jolt from 9/11 and saw the changes. I’m seeing the jolt now. It does feel like someone is jangling the weighted dice. I’m not looking forward to the next throw.

    1. The jolt– we were freer before 9/11 then afterwards. Someone didn’t think we course corrected to slavery enough so another jolt under the name of Covid.

    2. 9/11 wasn’t a jolt for me. My second thought on seeing the towers burning was “I’ve been expecting this for twenty years.” (My first was “This is taking architectural criticism a little far.” I thought the towers were ugly. Sue me.)

      Nor was I astonished that the Left fought so goddamned HARD to make the War on Terror into a mess. I’m sorry Bush allowed them to, principally by A) not fighting back in the Media and B) not pulling out when the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan were wrecked. We could have left, and the whole thing would have been a stunning object lesson, “Don’t piss off the United States. You won’t like the results.”. Hell, we could have left before Saddam was found, as when he emerged, waited for his first vainglorious speech and interrupted it with a cruise missile. The Left would have had a cow, breach presentation, so there would have been very little down side, per se.

      We didn’t even lose that much freedom, it’s just that the freedom we had already lost because of the endless (stupid) War on Drugs became more obvious. Very little that Homeland Insecurity was authorized to do was new.

      What changed more than anything else was that more of the common folk saw through the love affair the Left had been having with Islamic Extremists. The Left still hasn’t really come to grips with that. Which is why they can’t cope with Trump making peace deals in the Middle East.

  39. “Throw them all out of what? A skyscraper penthouse window? ” It’s how Jezebel ended, so that sounds good to me.

    And re Foxfier’s musing on covid practices designed to eliminate the costly and inconvenient portion of the population … just had this conversation with my physically handicapped family member today. The nearby hospital where one must go for various screens and treatments has one – count it, one only – entrance, which is located clear across the parking lot from handicapped parking. People who really need that extra hash-marked space have to hike across the lot to get into the building. What is wrong with these people? You would assume that medical staff would have thought that one through from the patient’s point of view, but i am quickly coming to the awareness that medical staff aren’t there for the sake of the patients, but for someone else’s benefit. Wear them down until they quit asking for services, I guess.

    As for fighting back, i hear a lot of chest-pounding, but never anything about organizing. A few sheriffs have made “resisting” statements (and i assume, instructed their staff), but that’s all i’ve seen. If a bona-fide resistance breaks out, i guess i’ll be taken by surprise.

    2. On the poor building access front, remember that every building you come across was built by the lowest bidder. “Must have X number of handicapped parking spots per Y number of expected customers” doesn’t mean they don’t have to cross an eight lane road using a walker.

      1. They built a 9-story “diagnostic and outpatient clinic” in Little Rock. They marked off a huge chunk of the parking for handicapped. Which was reasonable, since it was a hospital. But the section of the lot they marked was on a “set the parking brake good and trudge up to the hospital” slope, going steeply downhill to a busy street.

        I could just see some ice or rain, or a slip of the hand on a wheelchair… “Granny! Granny! You come back here!” and then “Whooooooo!” as she leaps the curb at about 30mph and lands in one of the middle lanes of traffic…

  40. David Horowitz has a superb piece that he wrote for and is posted at Powerline:

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/11/david-horowitz-where-we-are-and-what-we-face.php

    “The “social justice” radicals still have the best slogans. They call themselves progressives but are actually reactionaries. They call themselves liberals but are actually bigots. They say they’re for peace when they are organized for war. It is always the same war: to bring down the United States of America”

  41. Hospital “authorities” are telling us that regular 2 ply cloth masks are 50% effective. Of course they can’t explain if that means half the people wearing masks caught covid anyway; or if mask wearers caught covid at half the rate the unmasked did.

      1. And I hate to make this a Col. Kurt day, but he and his wife got the bug, confirmed by test, and they are over it, again as confirmed by test, describing it as a head cold where he got a metallic taste and his wife lost her sense of taste for a few days.

        And in return, nationwide what has been the impact of all these closures and medical treatment prohibitions? Hey look, there is data – the link below goes to a chart of the deaths above the average for each state by cause for other than the bug:

        https://public.tableau.com/profile/dataviz8737#!/vizhome/shared/DCXQ652D4

        There a link where you can see the time series deaths above the average by state that I’ll put in a reply to avoid mod purgatory.

    2. 50% effective? So they’re admitting it’s a coin toss?

      That isn’t even as good as condoms’ effectiveness rate. Heck, the “rhythm method” is rated at about 75% effectiveness and that’s including those who don’t do it properly.
      –

      1. Heh, some of the stats for “rhythm method” are even worse– they took medical records that included people using fertility awareness to get pregnant.

          1. IKR?

            I found out the same time that I was at my ob/gyn for pregnancy treatment and the gal doing the records explained that no, she hadn’t mistakenly marked “not sexually active,” the definition used was non-monogamous. (I was able to find the definition for the first one, but not the second, on… guttenmacher or something? The same honest pro-abort guys where they actually had the definition they were using for “pro-abortion,” which included allowing any treatment that might cause harm to the child. By which definition the Catholic Church is pro-abort.)

            My doctor, back then, did informed consent for studies.

          2. When they studied couples who’d actually gotten training (both of them) and were not trying to get pregnant, the normal use stats were the same or better than trained condom use.

            I’ve seen some that include the pull out method to buff up the failure rate for fertility awareness and the rhythm method, too– call it stuff like “technique based birth control.”

  43. I was quite sure I am not now nor have I ever been, crazy … but it’s nice to get reassurance.

    Five Quick Things: No, You Are Not Crazy
    After the way Americans have been censored, gaslighted, and lied to, no one is obligated to accept anyone’s narrative anymore.
    Over the weekend, conservative Christian blogger and podcaster Brannon Howse, who has been denounced by the leftist media repeatedly over the past two decades as a conspiracy kook, generated quite a bit of attention for a bombshell interview he conducted with Gens. Tom McInerney and Mike Flynn.

    It was Flynn’s first interview since being pardoned by President Trump. In the years since he was attacked by the FBI for having committed no crime in a politicized prosecution that stands out as one of the most egregious injustices in modern American history, he had been mostly silent in media interviews. But no longer.

    Flynn, a long-time military intelligence specialist who was President Trump’s designee for National Security Adviser, and McInerney, who was the head of NORAD and rose to the No. 3 position in the U.S. Air Force, both lent their support to the Sidney Powell narrative of American elections corrupted by foreign sources through software manipulation of Dominion Voting Systems machines. The narrative no doubt reads like a David Baldacci or Tom Clancy novel; one is quite justified in thinking that it sounds a bit crazy.

    McInerney even echoed the story, which has been posited on social media and in the conservative blogosphere, that a Frankfurt, Germany server farm was the scene of a firefight between Special Forces operators and CIA personnel over a raid to seize those servers.

    This column neither endorses nor disputes what McInerney or Flynn said in the interview. I don’t presume to have enough information to know how far to the wild side Powell’s tale can go while still being taken seriously.

    But if you find yourself believing part or even all of it, don’t let anybody tell you you’re crazy for doing so. The people thus scolding you have a lot to answer for.

    What lies below applies to a whole lot more than “conspiracy theories” surrounding the failed 2020 presidential election. But we’ll simply apply it to that set of controversies, since this week is likely to see a ramping-up of expository information on just how failed an election it was despite the legacy corporate media’s insistence that it’s over and Joe Biden is the “president-elect.”

    1. The Death of Media Curiosity
    [SNIP]
    2. What is Evidence, Anymore?
    [SNIP]
    3. Two Plus Two Equals Five
    [SNIP]
    4. Corruption For Thee, But Not For Me
    [SNIP]
    5. They Created 2020, And Now They Can Live In It
    The year we are ending didn’t just happen out of the blue. Twenty-twenty is the culmination of a very long chain of events going back 30 years or more.

    It’s the culmination of 30 years of coddling Chinese communists and allowing them influence over pop culture, our news media, our political class, corporate America, our technology industry, and our economy without imposing any of our standards on them.

    It’s the culmination of well more than 30 years of the Left wrecking our institutions with critical theory, poisoning the American people against our traditions and power structure with crackpot advocacy and idiotic double standards.

    It’s the culmination of half a century of pop culture destabilizing our values and challenging the notion that business and government in this country exist to make things better. The Left told us that corporations were evil, no? The Left has convinced us the FBI and CIA were corrupt, haven’t they? They’re not credible in assuring us corporations and government are incapable of colluding to steal an election.

    Everyone in America knows the system is sick. Everyone understands we are in decline. We all know our institutions are failing. And yet they want us to believe the rout of our way of life can’t manifest itself in a Third World stolen election?

    What have you people been saying for the last four years?

    Anyone who believes what Sidney Powell is saying, stand up and tell the world. You’re entitled. Fly that freak flag. They lost the ability to call you a kook long ago.
    –

    1. They lost the ability to call you a kook long ago.

      Next time they call you a kook, ask them to answer this:

      How do you justify putting so much trust in those deemed the “societal elite” to make your decisions FOR you, and impose those decisions upon you … when they CAN’T tell YOU apart from a statistic? As though your own common sense and insights count for nothing?”

      That takes a level of blind faith, in selected members of a species with a well-documented record of error, greed, mendacity, and delusion, that qualifies one for the label of “kook”.

      Nearly all the erosion of our values and institutions you describe, are enabled by that blind faith – encouraged for over a century by our allegedly Best and Brightest, to the point that we have replaced respect for wisdom and common sense with the worship of credentials, position, popularity, and presentation … setting the expectation of society from the vast majority of us that …

      All you need to do is show up for work or go to school; we have experts who have the answers to your housing needs, your health care needs, your financial needs … no need to plan for your future or actively manage your career, since we can do a better job than you can; just trust us to solve those problems FOR you.

      And the expectation that you should just accept whatever the “experts” and “leaders” tell you as The Way Things Are and beyond the need to question, because you are told that ordinary people neither have the resources, nor the intellect, nor the virtue, to help themselves – or each other – in the “right” ways.

      That way of thinking, is what is kooky.

  44. https://www.fsp.org/
    The Free State Movement in the “Live Free or Die” state of New Hampshire would welcome new participants. We already have a few thousand who have moved here to live and several thousand more committed.

    Several free staters are already serving in elected offices in the state, including our legislature.

    “The Free Life Starts Here
    The Free State Project is a movement of thousands of freedom-loving people to New Hampshire, where we are working to reduce the size and scope of government to achieve Liberty in Our Lifetime. Our efforts have the potential to demonstrate the benefits of liberty and to set an example for the rest of the nation and the world to follow.”

  45. If anyone here is a fan of Ursula K LeGuin, this year has reminded me at times of her darker stories. Sometimes “Things”. Sometimes “The Ones who WalkAway from Omelas”.

      1. Well, nothing effective. As a step one of withdrawing support, it’s stopping cooperation with evil.

        And we can look around to see what happens in real life, when people try to walk away and do nothing but not support objective evil.

        *points to the Orthodox of New York, targeted for refusing vaccines made from the sacrifice of human infants*

  46. Pingback: Alea Iacta Est | NC Renegades

  47. “And I can’t even really guess whom”

    sure you can. you know who. “the silver is mine and the gold is mine.” “the kings of the earth will bow down with their faces to the ground and lick the dust of your feet.” “the nation that will not serve you shall be destroyed.” and in every generation they set out to enact exactly that.

  48. Pingback: Alea Iacta Est – Zpatriot

  49. “Yes, I am a terrible person. Indeed. I want grandma to die, indeed.”

    Ah yes, lefty reply to any attempts to attenuate the lockdown fiasco. BUT, if I have video evidence that grandma was a Trump supporter, thought the concept of “my pronouns” was stupid and had doubts as to “transitioning’ a 5 year old from boy to a chemically-induced hermaphrodite, those same lefties would be licking every doorknob in grandma’s house and punching holes in her N95 respirator (something that might actually protect her). Go figure.

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