Strange Ideas

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I greatly dislike when people refer to the things the Junta that has seized control of our institutions do. I was rather disappointed to find Victor Davis Hanson doing that.

With due respect, America hasn’t descended into anything. We didn’t vote for these derriere buffons, and pretending we did is just adding insult to injury.

Frankly, if the numbers don’t convince you this insanity is an illegal take-over of our institutions (partly by corrupt traitors within. Hey, anyone know how many lampposts there are in the continental US? Asking for a pissed off We The People) look at it from the psychological side: the only way a major party would run Joe and the Ho from a basement, with virtually no appearances in public, and on a platform of “we’ll open the border so you’ll be invaded, and tax you till you teeth hurt, oh and take away your fossil fuels too” is if they knew, because they’d been cheating for years, that they’d finally achieved a level of cheating in which they didn’t need any input from We The People, and no matter how we voted, their side would win. It was a potemkin campaign leading up to a grand theft election. (Or do you think they’re fighting so hard against election reform because they care about the individual? Ah!)

Even so, it backfired, because they don’t know us very well. In the face of their barrage of propaganda and demonization, the American people hunched their shoulders and voted for Orangemanbad in numbers that we probably can’t even guess at (since well, you know, totally unhackable election machines and all that. Yeah. Right.)

The people are all right. The people who have seized control of and squat atop the institutions we created for our self-governance, OTOH are loons running with ideas that they think explain everything.

I would shy away from calling them foreign agents, except of course that they are foreign agents, as we know from Hunter’s laptop that the corrupt press and social media conspired to hide. The only question about Zhou Bai Den is whether he’s a wholly owned franchise of Winnie the Xi or if he also allows Ukraine and Russia voting minorities. And yes, Commie La Whorish was involved in it to her eyebrows, probably the reason she was chosen as fake-VP.

I would shy away, simply because their ideas of the country, while they were acquired from Russia and China, were acquired via our schooling, which was taken over by the agit prop of those countries over the last several decades.

But they are almost certainly ALSO taking orders from their paymasters (which explains the terrible need to kiss Iran butt, since Iran is a Russia client.)

Anyway, the madness is all at the top, though frankly the rest of us are mad too, in another sense. In the sense of barely controlled rage, that is.

And their madness is by definition a hodge podge of foreign ideas, the ideas of the people that only know the country through the distorting lens of Hollywood. I’ve run into this when interacting with foreigners, who frankly have no clue who we are and what we do.

And btw, the foreign ideas are bloody stupid, which is how you know they come from Winnie The Pooh’s murderous brother. The complete idiot is in the late stages of Roman-Emperor madness where he thinks there is no point taking reality into account.

One reality he’s forgetting or never knew is that we own them.

Oh, sure, they have loaned us their play money in vast quantities. But that doesn’t matter. They need to keep growing their industrialization and production. It’s their only actual route to power.

Unfortunately to get there they really need to SELL to us. Which they can’t, if they destroy our economy and/or our interest in not boycotting their skanky asses. In other words, that ain’t gonna happen. Oh, and money we theoretically owe them? How are they going to collect? with their army of little emperors.

Sure, Xi might be stupid enough to try bombing us into submission. If that worked — it won’t. If he does it, it will unleash the fury of the US in a way never seen — they would be left with a ruined country that they still can’t force to buy their crap, or to pay back money we won’t have. (You can’t take money from a stone.) And if he tries to hold our territory…. Well. Look, even our government has trouble doing that. (And more trouble coming up.)

So, we own them. He just doesn’t know it. Yet.

But there are some things the Junta is doing that are so strangely bizarre that they only make sense through the eyes of the Chinese.

You see, they are a very uniform country, genetically. Or at least they think they are. So they have great trouble understanding a multi-racial society except through the lens of “subjugator and subjugated”

Hence, the pushing of CRT and trying their level best to foment a race war.

It’s stupid, bordering on the retarded. All it will do is ruin the lives of inner city blacks some more and piss off the rest of them.

But the Junta’s pay masters think of the trouble they’ve had with insurgent racial minorities, and they think — some of the Junta and certainly their supporters might also — that the US is about 50% black (Hollywood and TV you know?) so they think that they can get us involved in an endless race war while the scoop up the world.

In reality CRT is just exposing how the left views the schools and animating more parents to get involved than ever before. This doesn’t end well. For them. Its also completely discrediting Academia, which frankly wasn’t very credited before.

Or the way they keep changing history and demands. This works — sort of. Xi probably thinks it does — in China, because they have one dissiminator of news.

Yes, they’ve caught on this isn’t working, so now they want to control social media (what more than they did before?) and spy on our texts. It will just cause an exodus to the things they don’t control, but they don’t get that.

Other things they don’t get — and I’m guess Colorado’s governor fumduck is also getting paid by Xi — is that they can only destroy that on which they squat: their city, their state, their department, their institution, their credibility.

Americans are moving, adapting and changing. I mean, we are a nation descended from immigrants who had to adapt and overcome.

Oh, and yeah, the whole “White Supremacy” thing, where anyone who opposes them is a white supremacist, is coming from a country in which they are, yep, racial supremacists. So trying to instigate race war, but they know that the country is evenly divided, and yes, we’re racial supremacists. In fact the rest of the country not in the pay of Xi is looking at this obession with something that, while I’m sure it exists in tiny amounts, is less of a problem than oh, UFO believers (And those aren’t a problem) and going “What in heck is wrong with you?”

Then there’s the insanity of opening our borders, which would in point of fact destroy China, but which is only going to be a temporary inconvenience for us, because eventually we stop paying welfare to invaders (have to) and well, the economy is being killed by Xiden. So there are no jobs. And there will soon be no money. And everyone flooding over the border are an innovative form of stupid, unable to sniff the air and see how things are changing.

Above all, though, how we know the left is taking its ideas (not just its orders) from Xi is their reaction to the Xi-flu. They really thought it was going to be horribly lethal.

I’m going with planned lab release. Yeah, the “design” on the virus is laughable, but anyone who has worked with Chinese scientists and/or reads their papers expected that. I have a friend who keeps them as comical bathroom reading, in his field of specialty.

BUT it still did damage in China. It would. Because their living conditions suck. Their people are malnourished, their public hygiene is a joke.

So the left was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, because they don’t know this about China. They take the Xi lies and projections and swallow them whole. So they think that China really is a first world nation, and therefore as good to live in as the US. Since they had advance notice (What, you doubt it?) they were panicked, and sure that it would kill millions in the US. Now, Xi probably thought it would kill mostly people in the backwaters and hinterlands, because again, projecting his facilities and people on us.

They’re still disappointed, and madly trying to impose the idea it was really really really a killing plague. Bah.

Oh, and that’s the other way you know they’re running on Xi ideas. The left will label most of this “conspiracies form Qanon.” (I didn’t know what Qanon was until someone accused me of believing in it/him/they and I had to ask someone what it was. And then I looked at it and thought “If this exists it’s run by the other side to keep people quiescent.)

This is a Chinese technique, because their people hate to be identified with a…. less popular figure or movement.

Because Chinese culture as a whole is one of trying to fit in and being just like the rest. The nail that sticks up will get pounded down.

Americans work on…. different parameters. We do care for others and for helping others, which is why the early mask mandates and such stuck. But once it becomes obvious what the crowd is doing is crazy cakes, we’re perfectly willing to spin out on our own and not give a hanging fig about what the crowd thinks.

The fact that the Junta doesn’t see that, and is now trying to accuse the “unvaccinated” of making the “vaccinated” sick which frankly is a gross violation of science and sanity. This is the kind of crazy cakes that gets people to go “We’re not stupid and we’re not going. Buzz off.” Only more forcefully.

Because we’re not Chinese.

I have a remedy for this. I advise the Junta and their faithful lackeys to take over China. Crazy cakes though they are, they’re probably better than bloodthirsty Winnie the Pooh. And at any rate they won’t last long, even if their ideas of the country and the people are more in line with there than here.

Most of all, though, I advise them to leave us alone. Everything they say and everything they do only diminishes their credibility. And it wasn’t high to begin with.

The herd is restless, moving, trying to find places of safety. (I think this must be one of the biggest if not the biggest migration in America. This will be visible to historians. We had a heck of a snapshot while looking for houses that tripled in price before our eyes and then sold, in little towns that frankly hadn’t had anyone move in in 20 years.) We’re sniffing the air, and we don’t like the smell. Most experienced woodsmen know what that means.

But people whose ideas come from the elite of China have no clue.

Which is a bad thing. And will end badly. I advise their lackeys in the various institutions to consider that they are standing on less than stable ground. And underneath it is a powder keg. It would be a good idea to abandon ship. Or at least stop tap dancing.

360 thoughts on “Strange Ideas”

  1. Where are all our leaders? The only thing preventing a kick-off event is we have no leaders and no coherent opposition. The right needs a leader to move that switch.

      1. I hope you’re right Sarah, one thing that would convince me that you are is if we storm the Bastille and set free the over 500 political prisoners held in D.C.

    2. I don’t think it’s going to be “A” leader (like the ones that are undercover Feds. See Whitmer, Gretchen.), but more likely a bunch of small team leaders. Similarly, it’s not going to be “The” switch, but a bunch of switches flipped by a bunch of semi-organized pissed off people. OTOH, it is likely to be a precipitating event that causes the events to get going.

      I think the generals in this aren’t going to be as important as the sergeants. At least at first.

      2. I think one such switch will be in Oregon come November 2022. Per CFACT, Oregon has a ballot initiative currently underway, the “Abuse, Neglect, and Assault Exemption Modification and Improvement Act” that will ban hunting, fishing, and trapping, as well as kill the farming industry by making all common animal husbandry practice illegal: e.g. artificial insemination, castration, etc. would all be classified as “sexual assault of an animal.”

        So Oregon is gonna kill their entire agricultural industry. As I recall, this country’s first active rebellion against the government was launched by a bunch of farmers who’d had their livelihoods destroyed, had lost everything as a result, and had nothing left to lose….

          2. Oh. Goody. Both Oregon and Colorado are getting on the bandwagon … Next thing you know they will be advocating for ending slavery of pets. The pets will not be happy. I think they like their slaves (me, hubby, son).

            Dang it. Have to wash off my eyes again. Collected pet hair rolling under the couch.

        3. The test case is always action against dog breeders (who can only just go hide when attacked, because their breeding stock is easy to confiscate and make a media circus from). If the animal rights forces can get dog breeding restricted or banned, assaults on commercial agriculture always follow on that precedent.

          Remember that next time you cheer on some action against “those horrible puppy mills” (a slur invented by the Doris Day Animal League, now part of HSUS)… and get fooled by photos of Korean meat markets.

          1. if the dogs are not pure breeds, they are puppy mills. plain and simple there is SIMPLY ZERO reason for such a business to be allowed to exist. Domesticated household pets are not equivalent to livestock.

            1. You do realize, oh weirdly named one, that actually the ones called “puppy mills” are the purebred ones.
              And there’s tons of reason for mutts. Hybrid vigor. It’s why we Americans ROCK.

            2. Allow me to quote a wise man here:

              “Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

            3. Tell that to PETA and the rest of your “dog is a pig is a horse is a man” crowd of lunatics. Dumb, dishonest: you spew, we decide.

              1. He’s also completely wrong. If they’re not pure breeds, they’re called “backyard breeders”
                PURE breeds are “puppy meals.”
                So, what we’re dealing with is someone who knows nothing and must share his ignorance.

                1. I saw the rest of you dealt with that portion, so I confined mine to his nonsense assertion that these laws are only intended to affect dogs / pets. Classic motte-and-bailey.

        4. We also had a elected rep from a municipality within the Greater Portland Metro propose banning all diesel sales by ’28, I believe (although it may have been sooner).

          The stupidity burns. As badly as Iron does.

            1. Is it a leftist doll? the large lump on the side of the head, from having some sense whacked into it with a crowbar.

        5. Your assertion about the farmers in Middlesex county in 1775 is entirely untrue. They were quite prosperous. Indeed, the American colonists were, as a people, the freest and most well off country on earth.

          This is very important to understand. The War for Independence was fought for the principles Jefferson enunciated in the Declaration, not because of the gabelle (which didn’t exist here, anyway), excessive taxation, poor productions of The Beggar’s Opera, and funny accents of British officers (which didn’t exist, anyway; what we call the British accent didn’t evolve until later).

          I want the biggest team we can have, but please try to get your facts straight, most especially about the Founding. All you do is hand our enemies ammunition when you profess a history that doesn’t obtain. It’s bad enough they’re tearing down statues of patriots and lying about our predecessors; please don’t aid them with statements that are demonstrably not the case.

          1. You think they wouldn’t outlaw owning a pet? FWIW, the PETA-run animal shelters have the worst reputation for killing off dogs and cats.

            1. I knew about that last part. And yes, you’re right, PETA considers pet ownership slavery, why not ban it?

              (Frankly I wouldn’t trust any of them with the care of a dog either. And I don’t like dogs.)

      3. The left wing plot to kidnap her.
        https://nypost.com/2020/10/09/man-accused-of-whitmer-kidnap-plot-ripped-trump-as-tyrant/

        The “confidential informant” isn’t someone placed by the FBI, or a member of the FBI, it’s someone that is willing to work with the FBI, usually someone that got cold feet or got caught doing something else.

        The way that the story died for a while after it turned out that folks weren’t buying that someone with an anarchist flag that thought Trump was a dictator was a far-right nutjob, and has now come back in the form of “it was entrapment and all really an FBI plot,” is suspicious.

        It’s exactly what you’d do if you were aware that someone in a plot deciding that the group plan is horrible, and/or evil, is what stops a lot of Really Nasty Stuff.

        1. Mainstream media let the story die, but the tinfoil conspiracy media (AKA, those running several months ahead of public perception) has been noting that the CI and UC involvement in the Whitmer affair was large, and that the FBI was trying to cover up a bunch of it.

          I think the story hit more-or-less MSM (I’m including PJ media in that category) because it was getting too much to keep hiding. The fact that the FBI special agent in charge of the Whitmer case went to DC just before 1/6 seems, er, interesting. I gather he’s involved in the investigation of the “insurrectionists” along with the non-prosecution of a bunch of sketchy people in the 1/6 events.

          It’s not like the FBI has been covering itself with glory lately. I’m thinking of the story of the TWA 800 investigation, where they took one witness statement, then said in a second interview that the witness admitted to “drinking too many Long Island Iced Teas”. Said witness a) never heard of the drink, b) says she was never interviewed the second time.

          1. I think the story hit more-or-less MSM (I’m including PJ media in that category) because it was getting too much to keep hiding. The fact that the FBI special agent in charge of the Whitmer case went to DC just before 1/6 seems, er, interesting. I gather he’s involved in the investigation of the “insurrectionists” along with the non-prosecution of a bunch of sketchy people in the 1/6 events.

            Since the most likely route for the help-us-or-be-arrested thing would be things like those arrests of folks setting Portland’s federal building on fire, and there were major, violent outbreaks by antifa on the 6th, that is exactly what one would expect to happen.

            If I had the time to do the work reporters are supposed to do, I’d look at if he was connected to that bus full of terroris– I mean, AntiFa protesters known as Riot Kitchen– getting their caravan shutdown.

            It’s not like the FBI has been covering itself with glory lately.

            If one ignores, as most of the media does, where they are actually doing their jobs.

            Part of what made this catch my eye is exactly that I have seen stories that blart about how “look what these guys did, while the FBI did nothing” and then you go through to the resources and RIGHT THERE it lists out that yes, the FBI was involved, often heavily.

            Look, they’ve GOT a bad reputation as being pushy glory-hounds with chips the size of logs on their shoulders that will carry a grudge to death, and I gather it is not infrequently deserved.
            They also have a reputation for being the guys who find out there’s a compromised cop on a force in the course of an investigation, tell that force, and then nobody does anything, and the department has a grudge about the FBI not giving them information because the compromised guy is still there.
            Law enforcement does often attract folks that fit that personality profile of grudge-forever and stupid-pissing-matches.

            1. Given the current revelations came out of BuzzFeed, and were *trying* to be a haliography of the informants, I’d suspect it’s either damage control for one of their leads getting in trouble for beating his wife, or discovery for one of the defendents turned up something worse they’re trying to get ahead of and drive the conversation.

              All groups of people had bad apples, but I just never see the three letter agencies doing anything about theirs when they find them.

              Maybe they are, and I just don’t hear about it, but from the outside, it looks like they consider that sort of behavior acceptable and commendable.

              1. All groups of people had bad apples, but I just never see the three letter agencies doing anything about theirs when they find them.

                Look at the news stories of appeals put in by Seriously Bad And Very Much Guilty people on the excuse that their case went through an office that worked with a corrupted agent.

                That’s about the only way they get covered, unless it’s connected to Cartel stuff; most of those tend to vanish in the “gosh they forgot their wallet, key ring and shoes when they left the house that morning” type manner.

                1. And then look at the news stories of the FBI lab techs falsifying evidence, DOJ refusing to turn over exculpatory evidence, and consider that ordinary people just don’t get coverage when they get screwed.

                    2. Oh, I heard of it. Of course, I also saw that it went on for years with agents who saw what was going on and said nothing with no consequences; people not getting prosecuted but quit and keep pensions, people losing their lives even if they survived.

                    3. Her misconduct (falsely claiming to have completed tests that she had not) was discovered in early April, in a manner that would be consistent with technical issues. Improbable, but consistent.

                      Based on Jacqueline Blake’s response to the discussion of “hey, that doesn’t look right,” the co-worker reported it to her chain, they contacted Jacqueline Blake’s supervisor, a quick investigation was done to see if the accusation had any sort of merit; evidence consistent with the accusation was found, she was called in at early May, suspended without pay, and OIG was contacted.

                    5. Oh?

                      https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/07/08/new-evidence-shows-doj-was-skeptical-of-fbis-case-against-michael-flynn-n617122

                      ““The skepticism about whether Flynn intended to lie during an FBI interview or posed a national security threat was expressed in handwritten notes that were turned over Tuesday to Flynn’s defense team and the judge overseeing his case under a protective order, according to multiple sources,” explained investigative reporter John Solomon.

                      U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen recently discovered these documents. Jensen was specially appointed by Attorney General William Barr to review the FBI and DOJ’s conduct in Flynn’s case. These documents are part of a trove of exculpatory materials withheld from Flynn’s defense.”

                    6. As I note you are, again, shifting from your original claim when someone digs around to find specifics and discovers it does not match your prior claims– Ciao.

                    1. Thank you for proving his point. Case thrown out, no penalties, “Guilty as sin, free as a bird”. Ah well.

                      “Better that 10 guilty go free…..” Except that only seems to apply to some people.

                    2. Quite the opposite.

                      What I showed was that “I do not like the result” gets claimed as “nothing was done.”

                      And there have been decades for someone who thought the result was unwanted to do things.

                      Rather than scream that “nothing was done” when, in fact, they didn’t like the results.

                    3. Incidentally, “hey yes I know that the guy was stating a falsehood, but they MIGHT be able to accuse you of stuff and thus ::: moves goalposts:::”

                      If you had any faith in the validity of your claim, you’d make the claim that isn’t “even guys who agree with the point say he was wrong” and instead support the second (or third, or….) point that can be supported rationally.

                    4. Not at all. You consistently ignore “equal justice under law”. Again, theoretical “rights” vs real world reality.

                    5. You consistently ignore “equal justice under law”.

                      I require evidence before I take your blackpill declaration of failures, especially those where you simply didn’t get what you wanted, and worse yet I keep showing that your claims are inaccurate.

                      Which is why you keep getting pissed at me and trying to find a personal attack that will actually hurt.

                  1. For that you usually have to get their name and the location from the press release, half the time you have to find out what the court is described as, and THEN you can sometimes get a sentence, because gov’t websites *Suck*. (Searching on the FBI website directly, for example, has difficulty finding the hand at the end of its arm.)

                    This is the same method that I have to use to find out the actual story in those various REASON type articles about poor, innocent so and so got this punishment for no reason type stories. (Spoiler: there’s a reason they don’t link to the actual court documents, or evidence, or even use the names that people went by in the news at the time.)

                    1. You should try the ATF’s web site. I suspect at least a third of it isn’t accessible from any other parts of the site, even from its own search box. The search engines crawl all the individual pages, so they’ll find “hidden” pages on a site.

                      Given it’s the ATF, I suspect that’s deliberate.

                    2. Probably. But I suspect also a combination with the lowest bidder getting the job to do the design.

                      (I find the Bureau of Land Management’s website utterly un-navigable. Not only the public side, but also the employee side! It’s one of the worst designed, least user friendly things I’ve ever met.)

          2. In truth, and having consumed enough true crime to have a fairly good picture of FBI history…they have failed to cover themselves in glory more often than not. And their founder was an authoritarian looney, in my opinion, and I think the organization was infected from the start. (I enjoy the heroic fictional FBI agent as much as anyone, but more and more I have come to think they are VERY fictional indeed.)

            1. The FBI are a bunch of jumped up, corrupt lawyers who couldn’t pass the psych section of the cop’s test, nor the physical section of the fireman’s test and so rather than fail the bar too they became junior Gmen.

              We don’t need a secret state police in the USA so the FBI and all the other non military, armed services should be disbanded with the few needed functions given back to the states where they belong. I suppose the Coast Guard can stay, though even that is a bit of a stretch.

              Next, abolish the Federal Reserve, we don’t need a central bank and they do nothing but harm.

              Open the White House and Capitol, it’s ours after all.

              That’s a start. Then we move on to cashiering all the ones who violated their oath to uphold and defend the constitution. The five or six remaining can then find out just how close you have to be for government work. I mean, how hard can it be?

              1. abolish the Federal Reserve, we don’t need a central bank and they do nothing but harm

                We’ve been there, done that. Look into the national bank controversy during the Jackson administration. We kind-of do need a central bank. Note that by no means should that be taken as an endorsement of the Federal Reserve, as it is currently constituted.

            2. FBI used to have a couple of good ones, but Scully and Mulder left long ago.

              1. It’s a rare institution that has no redeeming features. The point with the FBI, ATF, and all the rest of the alphabet soup with guns is that they shouldn’t have ever existed and definitely shouldn’t exist any more. Their functions belong to the states, not the Federal government.

                  1. K, fun story:
                    not only do we HAVE several of those shirts, but my husband, in a “piss off” mood, wore them to an…event…where he knew there were current ATF employees.

                    …every single one of them asked where he’d gotten it, and he later saw some of them WEARING said shirts. Outside of work, of course.

                    https://www.amazon.com/s?k=%E2%80%9CAlcohol%2C+Tobacco+%26+Firearms+should+be+a+convenience+store%2C+not+a+government+agency%E2%80%9D&ref=nb_sb_noss

                    (Air Force Reserve.)

                    1. Heh. Yeah, that actually doesn’t surprise me. Most low-level gov employees are no fonder of the government, nor do they trust their government (and in some cases, probably less) than any other sensible American. Sadly, it’s the corruption at the high levels, and the fact that incompetence or malfeasance, even when reported to higher ups, is usually ignored for years or even decades, or the person in question is just shuffled off to a different job (usually a promotion for crying out loud, because that’s the ‘easiest’ way to get rid of someone) so that the management doesn’t actually have to DO anything that is the real issue with most of these. It’s the institution and how it’s run that’s the problem, so yeah, I agree that most of them should be done away with (even if it meant, for example, I had to find a different job).

                    1. After the basic “running a public court system”, the government’s only legitimate purpose is preventing anyone from setting themselves up to be a government. That is what “national defense” is once you boil it down.

                      And also underlines the purpose of the 2nd. Because the whole point is to only have enough government to fill the government slot in people’s heads. Rather like how some atheists are wiccans or similar; to fill the religion slot so something else can’t fill it.

              2. If there were, it was before the Frank Church commission.
                The FBI was dinged as much as the CIA, and most of what came to light is still under lock and key.

                1. The problem with the FBI is that, if the guy running the local office is dirty, or politicized, or lazy, he can do a lot to avoid dealing with major problems, while keeping the honest agents too busy to realize and/or fight what’s going on. And the same is true of individual units within the FBI.

                  The other problem is that if you have a small group of experienced agents who also are very very wrong about their understanding of a situation, they will probably reinforce each other’s stupidity.

                  1. The FBI is over a century old. Its bureaucracy fossilized generations ago.

                    I’ve read books by former FBI agents claiming they spent most of their time doing mandatory paperwork than anything constructive.

              3. ❤ 🙂

                And the paranormal Krewe of Hunters (Graham) keeps a low profile and is little known …

                What!?!?

                🙂 🙂

        2. Given history, entrapment is more likely than not.

          I haven’t forgotten that Bill Barr was largely responsible for Ruby Ridge.

          1. WHICH history?

            Because I’m quite familiar with claims of entrapment in the last 20 years– it’s been a go-to for anybody that got caught, And when there is physical, objective evidence, (especially if you include “the internet is forever” as physical) those claims don’t fair well.

            Some of those cases, the supposedly entrapped individuals recruited FBI agents.

            That the ATF under Clinton massively screwed to a horrific, awe inspiring degree, an attempt to create a confidential informant when, quite literally, most of the current US population was in single digits is a very narrow window of “history shows” to be going off of.
            Not quite as bad as the usual demands that I respect fad-norms from when my mom was younger than I am, but still quite limited.

            1. I just referenced Ruby Ridge.

              Randy Weaver was entrapped, and this finding was verified in a court of law.

              The FBI spent THREE YEARS trying to entrap him, so that they could use him as informant.
              When he refused, they changed his court date without notification so that he would be found guilty in absentia.
              When he didn’t turn himself in, a multi department task force killed his dog, killed his son, shot him, killed his wife, and taunted the survivors over loudspeakers.

              The federal government had to pay millions, but none of the perpetrators ever faced Justice.

              That is the quality of the organization you’re defending.

              1. You’ll have more luck if you
                1) notice I did respond to that case, specifically, including that it was the ATF doing the recruiting, with complicating factors,
                2) noticed the timeline I pointed to.
                3) could offer atrocities that have the details correct and are at least somewhat recent. Even SNelson managed to find an objectively wrong and punishably example from the last 20 years, even if he got the details such as how it was responded to, etc, wrong.

                At this point, you’re sounding a heck of a lot more like AntiFa and such with the “here’s how horrible a group was when quite literally most of the country currently alive was below the age of reason, they must be punished and oh yes any contrasting evidence cannot be considered.”

                1. For the “that was years ago” defense to work you would have to at minimum show they have changed. To make the point stick you would need to show that they fixed the problems rather than just pretending they never happened. (or fucking gloating about them every year….)

                  Now I can provide a couple easy pieces of They Changed evidence:

                  1. Part of the ATF issued a document a few years ago (IIRC just before Trump came into office) saying that they would really like to take Suppressors off the NFA, because it is a bunch of stupid paperwork for zero benefit.

                  2. There are whispers that while ATF leadership (talk about an unworthy title….) are demanding that Technical find a way to classify the FRT-15 trigger as a machinegun, the response as been “nope, doesn’t work, can’t do that”.

                  OTOH there are a couple recent pieces of They Are Still Scum evidence:

                  1. The 80% regulations they are trying to impose.

                  2. The pistol brace regulations they are trying to impose. Now here I’m not going to point to the overall picture, because even if they were honest they are caught in the unenviable position of having to write the spirit of the law into the letter of the law which….. doesn’t work. Rather the statement at the end of the description of the proposed point system which translates as “if you comply with the law 100% but we still don’t like it we get you fuck you over anyway”.

                  3. The yearly twitter gloat threads. Maybe it is just the person running their twitter account. Then why haven’t they been told to stop? And if it isn’t just the guy running the twitter, then what is said illuminates the internal culture and how it views the ATF’s previous actions.

                  And if Biden[‘s handlers] get their new director installed all of this is out the window anyway. When Chipman the Butcher is the guy calling the shots any decent person left in the ATF just hasn’t been noticed and replaced yet.

                  1. *points to prior links* I did, actually, show there has been work done to fix it.

                    If you had taken a few seconds to research, you would be aware that your notion that ‘claimed the the problems never happened’ is untrue.
                    https://vault.fbi.gov/Ruby%20Ridge%20Incident

                    And as you then start talking about “gloating about it every year,” when it was decades later that Deputy U.S. Marshal William F. Degan’s death was remembered, you hit the three-falsehoods-in-a-single-paragraph limit for my tolerance today.

                    1. *points to prior links* I did, actually, show there has been work done to fix it.

                      Ok?

                      My point in that paragraph didn’t really have much to do with what the ATF’s real position is. More that you are leaning on a particular argument which doesn’t get you are far as you seem to think it will.

                      And as you then start talking about “gloating about it every year,” when it was decades later that Deputy U.S. Marshal William F. Degan’s death was remembered, you hit the three-falsehoods-in-a-single-paragraph limit for my tolerance today.

                      *looks up name*

                      Oh, Ruby Ridge. I was talking about the yearly “look how brave the poor Waco agents were” tweets. aka; the general state of the ATF at that time period, not just one isolated incident in Idaho.

      4. Yes, numerous leaders in different areas. Just like the original revolt. However, these leaders were established and known before Concord. Where are the leaders even on the local scale? I kinda thought the Tea Party would evolve into the movement we would unfurl our flags behind but….meh…

          1. Precisely!
            Previous Navy Nurse here … I learned very quickly (especially with field exercises with 2nd Med Battalion in Lejune) … take care of my Corpsmen FIRST!!

        2. OK, I could have worded that better… OTOH, somebody has to attend the surrender ceremonies, and a few thousands of SGTs would crowd the room. 🙂

      6. The Strategic Corporal:

        “A strategic corporal is a soldier that possesses technical mastery in the skill of arms while
        being aware that his judgment, decision-making and action can all have strategic and
        political consequences that can affect the outcome of a given mission and the reputation
        of his country.”

    3. Why should I have any need for a leader?

      The opposition cannot negotiate in good faith, will fight us to end, and will never hesitate to visit any atrocity on us that they can. I do not need someone who can negotiate on my behalf.

      Strategically, we are in the position of a boomer captain, sealed orders in the safe, no longer in contact with command after the sudden burst of radio noise. I do not need someone who can clarify strategy for me.

      Lists of targets? The tactics here, if you don’t know who your targets are, you do not need to be servicing targets. I do not need someone who can provide me a list of targets.

      What about instruction on skills I haven’t developed? Of the relevant tasks inside of my basic level of ability, I might actually be as well trained as I can be. Furthermore, the tasks we have the broadest need for are ‘be less insane than they are’ and ‘speak truth’. This case is more arguable, but I do not need someone to show me how to do what I can do and should do.

      What about help stiffening my resolve? This one I do get help on, and at the same time is something where my situation is very much not representative; My objectives for this have enough personal idiosyncrasy that no one else can provide much of the resolve. There are few to none whose goals entirely coincide with mine.

      Okay, there are definitely /some/ leadership tasks in this mess. Plan for those to be filled by people rising to the occasion. IIRC, Sherman was a drunk before the war. Great man theory is wrong, /and/ the historical forces theory is wrong. Cromwell*, El Cid, and Don Juan were representative of greater numbers of unhappy people, but Clio does not have her thumb on the scale.

      Our confidence in victory is part guesswork, and part faith. Guessing in how all of this really works, and faith in our fellow Americans. If they were of the character to fail us in this, the nation would have been in much worse shape, at an earlier time than now.

      *For the regulars: I had an improved and yet still interesting night of sleep. Still short. I woke up with a tedious urge to essay at folks, wrapped around a few new nuggets of genuine relevance.

      1. Why do we need a leader? Because we need a large group moving in generally the right direction. Why do we need to act in a group? Because otherwise you end up with anarchy. It’s not the revolt we need a leader for, it’s to win the reorganization afterwards.Overthrowing an illegitimate regime is one thing, keeping the country on an even keel afterwards… well, that was the real miracle of the American Revolution.

        1. There’s a bunch of stuff that needs doing without organized leadership to compromise it through.

          Three items of note: The go along to get alongs currently think the Dems/left/communists are more powerful, but will turn coats once they realize the truth, so fewer to kill. This is basically waiting on preference cascade. Security services are apparently heavily relying on intercepts and informants, so have much less they can do against other methods. Furthermore, there are a number of mid and low level opposition figures who have not made sufficient security arrangements. Which brings us to the third item, a lot of our people can pass for opposition when examined casually, so the targeting situation for our side is a bit noisy. Which is one reason why it is important to work on being more sane and to speak the truth; we want the necessary targets to be illuminating themselves with their own noise. The people who see what is going on, and go quiet drop off of one of the lists for target selection. The people we need to kill are the ones who cannot shift out of the left mindset (or, trivially, the criminal mindset), they are going nuts now, and they will really lose their minds as this plays out.

          At some point, things become very obvious, and the opposition figures who are broken by it are in two categories: Harmless/can be confined safely, and in need of killing.

        1. And the Muslims are salty about the Crusades. Which I vaguely recall postdated enough Muslim incursions onto previously Christian settled lands that one might be able to argue Islamic cultural influence on some of the Christians heavily involved in the Crusades.

          I’m not anywhere near familiar enough with his merry old time in Ireland to have an opinion of whether the Irish were largely innocent, or not. I would not be surprised if they had been largely innocent, because of what brought to mind my vague understanding of his activities in England.

  2. I’m at the stage of “If I could take getting the damn vaccine back I would” just as a middle finger to these idiots.

    Of course, in the event that some gov goon DOES show up at my door to pester me about my ‘vaccine status’ they’re gonna get told “None of your damn business, now eff off.”

      1. Alas, that’s the one thing I can’t do (although I do have family members who can). I have to learn how to actually use a freedom-seed dispenser before I am willing to carry one (I don’t believe in carrying a tool–especially such a deadly one–if I don’t know how to use it properly.)

        Though given where I live, I’d be highly, highly surprised if any such people ever show up. Or get far enough without getting a freedom seed somewhere inconvenient before ever getting near where I live 😀

        (The only problem my state really has is we don’t have a recall mechanism. Which is why Liz Cheney can continue being such a twerp so loudly. And if she STILL gets re-elected after this garbage, I’ll lose all faith in my state, heh. But I think she’s torched her career with her behavior–she got elected so long as she didn’t do anything that her constituents really cared about or that really pissed them off. Now she’s managed it, and people are NOT happy.)

        1. It is not hard. There are a lot of classes that will teach you and a lot of them are cheap and taught by women.
          You really should learn. Even if you don’t plan to pack.

          1. Although I’d fired pistols for decades I took a series of classes at my local indoor gun range that started with finding the weapon you liked (you shot 20 or more), learning how to use that particular weapon safely and well, and then starting to learn how to concealed carry.

            You meet really fun people that you wouldn’t expect and some you would expect. It’s fun, and it makes you happy.

            1. I know the safety. I know how to carry. I’ve had the lessons. In fact my primary instructor, dad, was harder than the secondary instructors, Hunter Safety give by local county Sheriffs, um, mumble years ago, when I was 12 (turn 12 at the end of hunting season so couldn’t hunt then anyway). I just know my limitations. Granted the new safety locks are typically slide locks, not hammer locks. I have to use two hands to put the hammer in safety mode on the old 30-30s, even then it is iffy (so I am really good about muzzle safety). But the other part? If told to remove magazine and eject anything in the chamber? I can’t. I have a very hard time removing magazines. Can’t unload revolver type at all. Not particularly dangerous packing, but endangers me, and those with me, if I’m ordered to unload pistol by authorities.

              1. If it’s largely a grip strength issue, you might be amazed at how much variation there is in regards to the required hand strength.
                A good local store will be able to point you in the right direction.

                1. Haven’t fired it yet (dang boat accident) but we did find a small one that we both should be able to use. Hubby has fired it. So has son. Before boat accident, it went with us on the Spring Teton trip. Hubby has also range fired the Rugar 9ml he won at a golf tournament raffle; cost of the background check (and tournament fee) … also a victim of the boating accident, alas …

                2. True. The recoil spring on my Star 9mm is so soft I can move the slide back with one finger. I looked up the spring specs, and it’s the way it’s supposed to be. Mrs. TRX has grip issues, and not only had no problems with it, she bought one of her own.

                  Generally, the smaller the gun, the stiffer the spring, to try to balance lack of slide mass. Also, the heavier gun reduces the recoil signature. That’s why you see some small-framed people carrying full-size pistols; they’re trading “easier to load and to shoot” for “concealability.”

                1. Hand strength. Beyond that IDK. I can pull the magazine on the little pistol (380, I think), because when we got it we made sure I could handle it. But can’t on the 9 mil, not easily. Hammer locks … that is 100% my hand size, and thumb strength. When I was younger and actually hunting with them, practice makes it easier. But I never, not once, took that for granted. I’ve had a hammer slip more than once. Never had it go off (because NOT keeping a round in the chamber was a thing), and even if it had, it was aimed properly. Still would have been tears and self recrimination because um, age 12 – 16 … don’t tell me hunters won’t cry … they will!

                  Hubby is more tolerant. But his brother gets a funny look on his face when he watched me pull the maneuver when we showed him the two 30-30s.

                  One is my dad’s, from 1940’s, probably made not long after end of WWII, given he’s had it since he was 12. Considerably lighter than the other one, slightly smaller size. The other belonged to dad’s uncle. Hex barrel. Has a sighting mechanism. Age? Unknown. If he got it new, probably 1918 or so. Have heard it called a 1911 or 1890 version. He could have had it from age 8 to 12, as he was hunting for meat for the table from a young age (born 1906).

                  Neither have been fired now for at least 35 years. I’ve have had them since dad died in ’09.

                2. Revolver types, I can not push in the lever that triggers the ejections; maybe if I took a hammer to it (which dad would not allow for some reason). It has been a long time since I’ve tried. We haven’t looked at one since (then new) hubby saw I had troubles doing this.

              3. That is a set of difficulties I haven’t heard before. Does an extended mag release help?

                You may want to look into the S&W Shield EZ line. They are designed for people who have difficulty with normal semiautos.

                1. I have almost no grip strength. This is an issue with handguns, and my range fellow is invaluable helping me test pistols to find one that I can manipulate easily and well.

                  The mag? I have to use a special technique to push it one handed.

          2. It is on my to-do list, but circumstances (including where I live) have meant it’s not super high on the list. On the other hand, I just started on happy pills, so possibly that will help with my utter lack of energy and desire to do anything. (Though it won’t fix the problem of probably having to drive several hours to get to anything like a class. You gotta understand, I *really* kind of live in Nowheres-ville 😀 )

            Of course, if I could arm-twist my father into helping, he probably could teach me to shoot. On the other hand, going on past experiences of ‘my-father-trying-to-teach-his-offispring-things’ it might really suck. I love him dearly, but when it comes to things he is either naturally good at (math, shooting) or done for so long it amounts to the same thing (driving, crochet), he is…a frustrating teacher at best, lol.

            (And right now, I’d rather expend the energy-cost on trying to get him to finally help me replace the plumbing in my house so, y’know, I CAN ACTUALLY LIVE IN IT…)

            1. You might go down to your local freedom-seed and fishing license emporium and inquire, discreetly, about local, private instructors. At least enough to get the safety basics (hunter safety classes?) of firearms in general.

              1. I have taken hunter safety. 🙂 I do know the basics, I just don’t consider myself skilled enough to carry, or use one in anything other than a dire emergency.

                One of the local (corporate, alas) ranches does do shooting classes, and while I don’t think it’s on the table this year, I plan to sign up next year. (Among other things, I’m likely to be eyeball deep over the next few months in getting grandma shifted to a nursing home–FINALLY–and all the readjusting (and de-stressing and de-toxifying) that will come after that. I do love her, but she is not a nice person, and we’re tired of being treated horribly.)

              2. Although I have heard that the freedom-seed-dispenser store in a town 3 hours away has a range they let people try them out. I may look into that, as well, because I don’t want to shell out a lot of money until I can find something that will fit my long freakish alien hands 😀 (I am inclined towards Colt 1911, but I don’t know that my wrists could take it. My hands are big enough and strong enough, but the wrists probably aren’t, heh. But a dinky tiny gun wouldn’t work either, because freakish alien hands…)

                1. A fairly small Asian-ancestry lady picked a 1911 for her carry pistol (she worked at a local hospital in a so-so neighborhood, but on a horrible shift). She went to Gunsite for the pistol class, had a ball, and was a pretty good shot. She was *not* large. Of the pistols and revolvers I’ve shot (some of which I still own), the 1911 is the most comfortable to shoot. YMMV.

                  $SPOUSE, alas has tiny hands. Curiously, the Ruger LCR fits her fairly well. (We have both .38 SPL and .22 LR, the latter in the “need the round tuit to check out” bin.)

                2. Might look at a CZ-75 or CZ clone in 9mm. The steel frames tend to mitigate recoil, and the EAA versions at least used to be built large enough to run 45 ACP.

                  Europe has some interesting firearm restrictions, such that, if you wanted to run multiple calibers, it was easiest to get a pistol that you could swap the barrel and slide assembly out of the change calibers.

                  1. Addendum: looks like they are branded as Tangfolio now. Basically, the Tangfolio Steel Witness Full Size and the Tangfolio P Witness Full Size, in 9mm should have large grips and low felt recoil.

                    The H&K USP also has a fairly substantial grip for large hands.

                    1. Like the Colt 1911, there are lots of companies making copies and variants of the CZ-75. Most people never heard of Josef and František Koucký, but they done good.

                    2. True, but it’s also a cautionary tale. The CZ-75 was designed for export when Czechoslovakia was under the iron curtain, but because their patent laws were thoroughly Soviet (it was patented, but the patent was secret) it meant that pretty much anyone could copy the designs at will.

                      It’s a fantastic design, but the designers got royally screwed by Soviet laws.

                  2. IIRC there was a “Columbo” episode that turned on the barrel-swap capability. The victim was murdered with a .38 (or whatever), but the suspect didn’t own anything in that caliber. Hmmm. Just one more question…

                3. If you’re looking for a full-size dispenser that’s a good fit for big hands, look into something along the lines of the 92FS in 9mm. Recoil isn’t horrible, double-stack gives you a nice loadout (15 rounds, 16 if you keep one in the pipe.)

                  Alternatively, you can also get 1911s in 9mm, so the recoil is going to be less.

                4. It’s big enough that the mass of the dispenser helps mitigate some of the force of the dispensing. I also have alien hands with very long fingers. I found smaller dispensers gave me issues because they were designed with broader palms in mind.

                  My 1911 is a Sig not a colt, but that’s my take.

                5. I also have freakish alien hands (very long fingers, not so big palm, so a lot of the stupidly fat grips the smaller seed dispensers have feel like I’m going to drop them). I recommend at least trying the 1911, though mine is a Sig not a colt.

                6. If you get the opportunity to try one out, consider the Keltec PMR-30. It’s not small, but is chambered for .22 WMR, a reasonably hot .22 load with little recoil. Best of all, it has a 30+1 capacity.

                7. The 1911 is a large, relatively heavy pistol. Its reputation for fearsome recoil dates back to the days when .32 ACP or .32 S&W were considered adequate. Compared to a modern subcompact 9mm or compact .40, it’s a pussycat.

                  That said, recoil signatures affect people differently. You might agree it’s a pussycat, or you might not like it at all. You don’t know until you try one.

                  FYI, the muzzle energy of 9×19 and .45 ACP is virtually identical; the 9mm has just as much recoil as the .45.

                  I taught a friend’s skinny 14-year-old sister to shoot with one of my 1911s; her only reaction was “wheee!” Another friend’s girlfriend was also slender, and had broken her wrist a few years before; she said the gun was uncomfortable to shoot… but she mostly hit the targets and went through two boxes of ammo, so it wasn’t *that* uncomfortable for her.

                  1. Energy and momentum are two different things. Momentum is what matters for recoil.

                    In general the .45 chambered in a 1911 has a slower recoil impulse, vs the snappier impulse of a typical 9mm.

                    1. With one in each hand, I can’t tell any difference. [hangs head in shame] Yes, I actually own a 1911 in 9mm Europellet… what can I say. it was less than $5 per box at the local Wal-Mall. Until shortly after I got the gun…

                8. Sig Sauer M-18 has low recoil (9 mm) and a pretty soft spring so it’s easy to cycle the slide with two fingers and not using much grip force. It’s designated “carry” size. I have carried a 1911 for years and bought this on a whim, love it.

                9. Ok, this is an incredibly stupid suggestion for several reasons which I will go into, so please don’t take it.

                  Try an FN Five-seveN? It has a huge grip, almost no recoil, very lightweight, light recoil spring.

                  Now for the reasons it is a terrible idea:

                  * the gun is around 1000-1200 in normal times.
                  * the ammunition is ~50 cents per round in normal times for plinking ammo, over 60cpr for carry ammo. In abnormal times you can’t find it at all.
                  * plenty of people will tell you that the caliber is insufficient for self defense and doesn’t do nearly enough damage to be effective (personally I think this is a load of crap and can be proven as such, but the objection is there).
                  * it is a full size service pistol, so have fun trying to CCW.
                  * it has a somewhat unusual control layout

                10. Fortuitously, the posters for the annual gun-classes for a nearby ranch just showed up on the bulletin board at my office. So I plan to sign up for the pistol one. (You can bring your own if you want, but they also provide. Which is good, because otherwise I’d have to borrow my mother’s revolver, and it is uncomfortably teeny for my hands 😀 )

              3. This! As the T-shirt said:
                End of the World 9 Miles
                $TINY_TOWN 12 Miles

                The problem had an easy solution. A guy at our church (and involved in various other organizations), just happened to be a certified CCW instructor. He came to our house, befriended our dogs (including the border collie who disliked strangers) and did the class. (Oregon doesn’t require qualification on a firearm. Mileage will vary among states.)

                As it stands, I had attended Gunsite in the early 1990s. This would have been proof of training for a CCW, but it was helpful to get a briefing on Oregon law. That particular class was a Mon-Sat morning one, so it wasn’t cheap above and beyond the cost of the class. Nice way to spend a week’s vacation, and the instruction was worth every penny, too. Other such classes exist. Might check at the local range.

            2. While knowing how to shoot properly is the best solution, sometimes persuading someone else to keep their head down will do in a pinch

              Just a thought.

              1. Yeah. Or making it really hard for the bad guy to aim anything. (I am a big believer in that anything you can pick up can be a missile. And I’m big enough and strong enough to pick up a LOT of things 😀 I don’t even have to hit them. But anyone will flinch if a chair is thrown in their general direction.)

        2. I’d suggest getting an air pistol and practicing in the privacy of your own home. Voice of experience speaking; stuff your backstop/ target holder with rags, not paper. The paper shreds and falls leaving a void in the backstop so pellets end exiting the back of it and up making interesting designs on your wall.

            1. Up here in North Pole, Alaska, when the temperature drops to the minus double digits during the winter, I found the inside air pistol a good way to maintain one’s skills and good habits with firearms.

              1. Heh. And while we don’t get as cold or dark as Alaska here in Wyoming (most of the time), winters still can and often do last 9 months (not to mention the W-I-N-D (it’s absent today, so don’t want to type it too loud lest it come back)) it’s a good idea.

                The living room in my house is even rather long, not unlike a bowling alley. Though I expect the cat would seriously cuss me out (he hates loud noises, and demands a blankie when thunder happens)

                1. Might not bother the cat, air pistols go psss, not BOOM! 😉

                  Don’t use a laser sight though, the cat might enjoy pouncing of the red dot at just the wrong time! 🙂

                  1. Thankfully, mine doesn’t seem to be able to see the red dot! I still can’t decide if it’s because he is nearsighted (he is, he’s a terrible klutz) or just too lazy to bother (which he also is, notoriously so).

                    On the other hand, I do intend to inflict a kitten on him when I finally get moved in, so THAT might be an issue 😀

                    1. Our Tuxedo boys do not care about catnip. (Well, one will eat it, but he eats artichoke, paper, probably rocks….)

                      ….we have *bush sized* clumps around the house.

                      Thank goodness the idiot kitten acts like a cat about it, or the kids would be bored.

                    2. Heh. My giant ginger chonk loooooooooves him some catnip. At least in the dried form. (Tried the catnip ‘kitty wine’ once, and he wasn’t interested.) He likes fresh as well, but not as much as dried. I usually keep it stored well out of reach–though when his brother was alive, they tended to collude and more-athletic and agile brother would climb to wherever I’d stashed it and get it out, and I’d come home to an empty catnip bag and two blissed out cats…)

        3. For large hands, you might consider a Para-Ordnance .45 ACP pistol. Very similar to the 1911/1991 model, mine even has a Springfield Armory 1911 top end (slide, barrel, hammer and a few other associated parts).

          The grip is thicker because the Para-Ordnance frame takes a 14 or 15 round double-column magazine. After shooting mine for a couple of months, a standard 1911 grip felt skinny and inadequate. (I’ve got big hands, too. XXL gloves are Just Right.)

          I’ve never had a problem handling the recoil of a .45 ACP pistol. Try one, you probably won’t either. It’s just not that bad.

          As for gun safety, I can sum it up in four words: Don’t Do Stupid Shit.

          In detail?

          Don’t ever point a gun at anything you don’t want to shoot.
          Don’t ever assume a gun is not loaded unless you check it yourself.
          Always be sure of your target.
          Always be aware of what’s BEHIND your target.
          Pay attention to what you might hit if you miss your target.

          Every ‘accidental’ shooting I’ve ever heard of has been a result of some idiot breaking at least two of those rules.

          1. I would amend your second rule to “Always check your weapon when you first pick it up. Even if you just saw the person who handed it to you check it.” It should be a habit as automatic as breathing, and the best way to establish that habit is NEVER skip it.

            1. I have a different approach. If the firearm is in the house, it’s loaded. Unloaded firearms belong in the shop, either on the cleaning bench or in the dispenser-storage unit. (And yeah, I check.)

            2. Heh-heh. Reminds me of the scene in ‘Kildar’ where Mike pulled a trick on Oleg:

              “What did I just tell you? Check the chamber.”

              “But, Kildar, I just watched you check it.”

              “Oleg. Check. The. Chamber.”

              [Oleg pulls the bolt back and a 7.62 x 39 goes flying across the room] [Oleg gives the Kildar a dirty look]

              “I palmed a round and slipped it in when I closed the bolt.”

            3. Oh, I should also have added:

              Don’t ever assume a gun is loaded unless you check it yourself.

              Hell, don’t ever assume anything unless you check it yourself.

              1. My personal preference is “assume a gun is always loaded, even if you just finished unloading it yourself” for purposes of safetly. (Obviously, if you plan to use it for some reason, do make sure it actually IS loaded 😀 )

                1. “assume a gun is always loaded, even if you just finished unloading it yourself” for purposes of safetly.

                  –
                  This is what I was taught!!!!

          2. I’ll keep that type in mind, thank you!

            Dad did make sure we (well, those of us stable siblings, that is) knew about gun safety. Alas, when I was of an age where I might have gone hunting with Dad like two of my brothers later did, Dad wasn’t hunting then. (We are very, VERY spread out in age in my family.) And while I’m willing to go hunting with him now, his knees don’t allow it, and he seems to think that I will magically know how to shoot a rifle and hit the critter. (Also, the one time I *did* go hunting with him, about eight years ago, he got the suburban so thoroughly stuck in a giant mud puddle–that I told him not to try and cross–that we spent the entire day digging it out. Dad thinks that’s fun, I do not, lol.)

            1. My two younger Uncles were the same. I’m sure they were taught firearm safety before their dad died. Grandpa died when they were 8 and 11. However, stepping in to take them hunting, was older brother (dad), two uncles, and 5 other not blood relations related through their SIL (my mom). Including my mom, her dad (other grandpa), her sister and husband, and his dad. They, as well as mom’s younger brother, were taken hunting, and fishing, by all the above. By the late 50’s, and on, hunting, at least was an extended family affair. All tags were filled one way or another. Both west and east side tags.

              We were well taught firearm safety by that age by dad, their older brother, and we’re girls. In early ’60s that mattered. By the late ’60s, and ’70s, however, being girls did not any of us out of hunting.

          3. A Para with base grips is only about 1/16″ thicker than a Colt with base grips. The difference in feel comes because the shape of the Para frame is “boxier”, so the overall circumference is larger; the corners mean you need more reach to get to the trigger. Though a short trigger can help that.

            Para used to provide frames for RIA and STI when those first started making double stack 1911s. Though the purists didn’t like the Paras, it’s still all Browning; the double stack bits were copied directly from the Browning Hi Power.

        4. Even if you had a recall mechanism there, it wouldn’t help with Lyin’ Liz. Elected Federal officials cannot be subjected to removal by their State, they can only be removed by the Constitutional impeachment process. In fact, even candidates for Federal office can’t be bound by State law, as even the Nitwit Ninth Circuit had to acknowledge when California was trying to force Trump to submit his tax returns.

          Oh, there is one exception that is tolerated by the Courts, which is the requirement for a certain number of voters to sign a nominating petition for someone to appear on the ballot. Although a couple of those have been struck down over the years as “excessive” – meant to completely lock out any candidates from the “fringe” parties.

    2. I scheduled my annual physical and was pointedly asked my vaccine status…I declined to answer, but asked a couple of questions after the physician said “Masks are working -not one single case of the annual flu this year” My question: So, if the masks stop the flu, why are we still spreading covid19? Answer: “Oh, it’s different” Really? I mean, REALLY?? Shaking my head, I lamented on the fact that I have become sick each time I’ve attempted the annual flu vaccine (the last many years ago) – answer from physician: “Well this isn’t a vaccine in the same sense. And it’s not meant to stop you from getting Covid19, but to mitigate the symptoms. Oh, and I had a patient who contracted Covid19 and suffered memory loss! Now be compliant and make sure you’re vaccinated” Really? A vaccine that is known to cause problems up to and including death to “mitigate the symptoms” of a virus that 80% of the people who have it don’t exhibit symptoms at all? And to top that off, if you’re asymptomatic, you’re not spreading the virus, according to the CDC. We are definitely living in crazy times…

        1. It may not be possible to find anything other than a doc-in-a-box, but I’d advise the same.

          1. Amen. Finding a doctor–and especially a decent doctor–where I live is nigh impossible. We finally have one (who commutes, oh, three hours or so because his wife refuses to live THAT far from civilization, lol) that is promising. At the very least, he’s more interested than any I’ve seen in a long time in looking into WHY something is causing problems, rather than just throwing pills at it. And he’s a cheery soul, so that’s nice.

            But yeah. Even if it’s hard to find a good doctor in your area, at least finding one with more of an acquaintance with basic reality would be good, heh.

            1. Yep.

              At least, with the doc-box, you can dictate the treatment. I’ve been doing this for years. You just go in and tell them what to do, what to prescribe. And they do it.

            2. There are a couple of rural practices around here where the “doc” is an FNP. I usually get my flu vax from him, and he’s the backup doc if I need an appointment right now (like the molar that had a sinkhole of a cavity. The antibiotics got me through the end-of-year wait until I could see the dentist.)

              1. Most of ours in recent years have been PAs. And I’ve got nothing against the breed, or against Nurse Practitioners, but the ‘throw pills at it’ attitude just seems to be something pretty ingrained in the profession nowadays. That, and an apparently inability to communicate with any other doctors one might have (even when told about it) or even to remember your medical history from visit to visit… :p

                Heh. And then there was the previous actual doctor who showed up, fired all the staff (with or without cause) and proceeded to be so sneering and contemptuous of his patients that he pretty much got booted by the community in under a year. That was…pretty stupid of him.

      3. Oh my gosh, the local radio morning guy– he’s 1040 WHO’s sorta-liberal– is utterly bonkers about how mutations are bad.

        Because…um… because.

        Even though looking at history, we WANT the stuff to mutate, because they *tend* to mutate to easier to spread with lower bad effects. Which is why the 1919 flu is still around, but isn’t wiping folks out…..

        1. Yeah. There’s a big hole of scientific understanding in the general population. I can get away with dropping real facts on people, because I have decades of establishing that I Know Things (and I translate from geek-speak to general-pop pretty well.) My current thing to drop on people is that masks are not the thing that works; it’s the distancing behavior that is what works. If pressed, I have the experience of several nurse friends during active COVID times to fall back on—seriously, if they were basically clean-suiting for work and were still getting it, how are two layers of cotton worn improperly and not washed daily going to help?

          But anyway. People believing that I Know Things really helps, and calm delivery with no panic also helps.

          1. Yeah, I keep hearing people say “every new case means it might mutate into something deadlier” and I wonder if they’re just completely scientifically and historically illiterate, college “education” notwithstanding.

            Or they’re just such doubleplusgood duckspeakers that they’re just nonskeptically repeating anything and everything they hear from “experts”.

            1. I mean, given that the ::spits:: “experts in education” are starting to feel free to declare that math and science are raaaaaaaaacist, I’d lay good money that they haven’t actually been teaching the scientific method with anything approaching seriousness for a long time. Also given the fact that good math or science teachers (good in their subject, that is) are rarer than hen’s teeth… Most of my science or math teachers were actually sports coaches who weren’t much good at it. And this was in the 90s.

              So yeah. Unless the individual is interested enough to read up on science things on their own, they’re not likely to have acquired much of anything resembling science basics in school. (Of course, my opinion is that this is true of most subjects. They haven’t offered good educations in school itself for a long time–you only get a good education if you want one, and do the work yourself.)

          2. And oh my gosh, the folks who get smug-nasty about “you don’t understand how vaccines work” when they’re pushing something that is so messed up it’s not even WRONG, it’s magenta, or otherwise just….”wat?”

      2. QAnon: “A ship, sinking. The blue cat warples the laser printer. 43-112. Emphysema.”

        followers: “See! He predicted *exactly* [SOME_EVENT]!!!”

  4. I’ve suspected that the release was intentional as a test to see how fast it would spread through the world and whether they could control its spread internally. Relatively safe for use as a trial run since it mostly kills the elderly and infirm.

    1. Except even in the US–except in places like NY where the governor ACTIVELY forced exposure on the elderly and infirm–it still had a danged high survival rate. As our hostess said: it’s because they were projecting. Intentional or no, they really expected it to be deadlier than it was, because they assume American “peasants” are in as poor a health as theirs are. (Their first and biggest mistake, of course, is assuming that there is such a thing as a peasant in America. ::laughs heartily::)

      1. There’s also that any means of judging how bad it is requires a large sample set.

        1. And we know how far out of the way the average pollster in the US will go to avoid sets bigger than, say, 50 people…(I really hate it when I see an “80% of Americans think THIS” and it turns out they talked to less than a hundred people…)

      2. I don’t have a large number of contacts in meatspace, but some of those have extensive family groups. At two degrees of separation maybe 100 people, of which maybe 90 tested positive for “asymptomatic” COVID, some had a rough week of the flu, and a few were hospitalized briefly. Some were elderly and in poor health already. Several were ill and tested positive more than once.

        None of them died of it.

        The local hospital closed last year; a couple of days ago I was in the area and noticed it was being demolished. The parking lot at the big medical center in the next town is still mostly empty. I keep reading about urban hospitals being overwhelmed to where they were putting patients in the halls and lobbies, but I’m not seeing anything like that here.

        1. I’m pretty sure the urban hospitals (in the US) weren’t overwhelmed, either. Note the news agencies that got busted using pictures of that from ITALY. Not the US. And the shenanigans of NY about refusing to use the medical ships sent, or shutting down the volunteer medical tents (because Christian and therefore “homophobic”) rather than actually using them.

          Now, our local hospital might have been in danger of being ‘overwhelmed’…but that’s because they have, like, maybe 6 beds? Total? (Also no one wants to go there unless unavoidable anyway, as they have a reputation for ‘unsanitary, poorly skilled’ going back decades–it may or may not be true now, but they haven’t managed to shake the bad rep)

          1. They may have been ‘overwhelmed’ in terms of hospital beds with intensive care skilled labor available– especially when they had places doing the “nurse was exposed quarantine two weeks to see if you get symptoms’ thing.

        2. (Forgot to add: and they were NOT overwhelmed. And several of the COVID cases they ‘counted’ in our county didn’t even LIVE here. Or were even physically present at the time of diagnoses–they were where they actually lived.)

        3. Yep, and how many of the ‘600,000 COVID19 Deaths!!!’ actually died of something completely unrelated and just happened to test positive? Or had ‘suggestive’ symptoms? Or were ‘exposed or potentially exposed to COVID19’ which included EVERYBODY who set foot in a hospital with ONE COVID19 patient?

          “No, no, ignore the bullet holes, this patient died of COVID19! Now put that on the death certificate so the hospital gets thousands of dollars extra from the government.”

        4. I keep reading about urban hospitals being overwhelmed to where they were putting patients in the halls and lobbies

          So like lots of places during ordinary yearly flu epidemics, then?

    3. Who the Chinese wanted to get rid of anyway. Do you really think that would bother them AT ALL???

      2. Nope. They’re probably like the NorKs and have calculated how many hundred thousand or million people is the minimum needed to run the country, and everyone else is a natural resource to be used or disposed of if needed.

    4. And did NOT figure on knowledge spreading of zinc and D3 and ionophores…. and ready access to such (though the ionophore did take of time to find one that was NOT readily restricted by Arschlocher).

      1. I think they’re most likely natural mutations. There’s a theoretical possibility one of them could trigger an ADE response in vaccinated people, but I doubt they’re good enough to have planned a binary bio weapon like that.

          1. The problem there is Fauci lies like he breathes, and isn’t even consistent. I mean, come on, we’ve heard It’s not that bad/it’s super bad! and wear masks/don’t wear maks/wear masks flip flops HOW many times now?

            Here’s what I do think is true of Fauci:

            1. He did indeed funnel money to that lab in Wuhan, and didn’t care to find out what kind of research they were actually doing (and opted to believe the lies the communist researchers undoubtedly fed him, because that’s how it works)

            2. He is a typical high-level gov bureaucrat, and will say anything to keep his power and/or gain more power. And in line with the modern ones, he will say one thing one day, and the complete opposite the next, and then claim he’s never lied about anything. Because he, like most of them seem to, somehow thinks we’re not seeing what he’s doing.

            3. You can’t trust anything that comes out of his mouth, no matter what it is. He’s lying about SOMETHING in anything he says. Ergo, whatever he says is so completely unreliable, no inferences can be made from anything he has claimed at any point in time.

              1. Ah, but a so very useful lie as it gives them a premise to interfere with the election audits.

                2. You see he and his team were the ones that found the treatment protocol for Wegener’s Granulomatosis. –a prednisone/ chemo protocol in the 1970s. Before that this disease that I have was a death sentence– and the maximum amount of life after diagnosis was 6 months or less. So yes there were accomplishments.

                  1. Based on subsequent behavior, one wonders how much of the protocoling he did vs. how much of the paperworking.

      2. I’d lean toward a small, very small, but real possibility. More likely; Viruses mutate. Naturally occurring new strains, even if the original strain was lab grown is quite probable.

        1. Since mutations tend towards less serious illness, if a new variant terns out to be substantially more lethal/serious, that itself should be taken as presumptive that such particular variant is a now intentional release from a CCP lab.

            1. It is not. Look, very lethal versions die out, because they kill the patient too quickly. mild versions spread faster and further. Hence, Delta is less lethal.

        2. Yes they mutate… but they usually mutate to less lethal variants.. at least that is what I understand. So — I think there is doubt that any of this is natural

          1. Delta is far less lethal and possibly natural. But the claims were it was aimed at the Indians by the CCP, but I think much of that deadliness hype is panic mongering to keeps things unsettled for control reasons. The last numbers I saw were unvaxxed having a 99.998% survival, in the UK no less, and most of those were unvaxxed for medical reasons (already ill with something and not able to deal with the effects, known allergies and comorbidities, etc)

                1. Yeah, but that’s not unexpected either. There’s a *reason* I don’t bother with the flu vaccine every year–they nearly always guess wrong, or they guessed right, but it mutated in the meantime.

                  And the accounts I’ve seen (anecdotal, but not MSM, so in my book more reliable) of those who got the delta variant after vax, it wasn’t much worse than typical cold sniffles.

                  I still think it’s hilarious that the Texas dems got it. May their noses drip for the next SEVERAL months as consequence :p

  5. As incompetent as they are, I still doubt it was intentional. They really would have prefered it to be worse. Then again, are they so incompetent they thought it would be? I’d think they’d have done a slightly better hiding of its origin if intentional, too.

    1. I also think it was an accident, largely because of how much effort they spent trying to cover it up through the end of 2019.

      As I understand, they have a thing where if there are to many natural disasters in a year, it means the government has lost the Mandate of Heaven and needs to be replaced. If Covid-19 had officially started in 2019, then they would have been over that limit.

      A planned release would have been scheduled to kick off in January 2020 to avoid that.

        1. I think is a bit of both. I suspect the release was accidental, and the initial cover-up was to preserve the Mandate of Heaven, but they were also trying to push it outside their borders, so it would be other people’s problems.

        2. I think it was an accident that they then took advantage of. If you look at the timeline, they squashed their own scientists who tried to warn people that something got out. They bought up huge stocks of PPE and restricted internal travel while encouraging external travel. They lied continually about the spread, the severity, the symptoms, the timing, everything, then tried to sell all the PPE they’d bought up at inflated prices to their victims. I think they spotted that they had a disease on the loose and decided that they weren’t going to be the only ones to suffer and deliberately spread it as far and wide as they could in an attempt to damage the rest of the world at least as badly as they were going to get hit.

          1. ^This. But it didn’t work like they thought it would, because they thought the rest of the world was as unhealthy as their people. We have them, but only in much smaller chunks that do not represent the population as a whole (especially here in the US).

            I keep seeing shrieking about the death toll in India, but I’m skeptical how reliable it is. But again–very different standards of hygeine, especially amongst the poorer folks. India is improving, sure, but.

            And of course there was Italy–most of whom smoke like chimneys and were a lot older than most everyone else. (Also, I suspect the death toll in Italy was also deliberately allowed, to reduce the ‘drains’ on the public coffers. Much like what Cuomo was undoubtedly doing in NY.)

            1. Wasn’t the spike in India tied specifically to the fertilizer season? I recall they were using human waste as part of it, and it was suspected early on that covid has a fecal transfer route.

              I’ll have to go see if I can find the numbers now, but I seem to recall it spiking and then cratering shortly thereafter.

              1. Theory is that India routinely and vastly underreports deaths, therefore outsiders are assuming the actual death count is at least three times the official one.

            2. Italy refused health care to everybody over 70. No matter what was wrong, if they were over 70 they got NO ‘free socialized health care’. Run over by a drunk driver? Tough shit, you’re over 70.

              And the Democrats are pushing ‘free socialized health care like they’ve got in Europe’. Or Canada. Hospitals in the northern U.S. are full of Canadians paying for American health care instead of their ‘free socialized Canadian health care’. British National Health is an abomination. Leftroids that fled the country when Trump was elected came back to escape from British National Health.

        3. hell it could be all of the above or a rush job to release during the Mil-Olympics or whatever was going on where they tried to blame the US Military.

      2. The Mandate of Heaven is largely the rationale that the Confucian Historians used to explain why one dynasty was replaced by another. There are no rules regarding it. But since the Emperor reigned by the will of heaven, an explanation needed to be provided as to why dynasties fell.

        A certain number of disasters won’t spell the loss if the Mandate. Rather, too many disasters in too short of a period of time will make the population restive, and more likely to decide it’s time for a new government. The mandate is then used later on to explain why the Heavens allowed this particular attempt to replace the dynasty to succeed.

        1. This. It’s entirely retrospective and is as much an artifact of Chinese historiography as is the trope of the Last Bad Emperor: the last emperor in a dynasty must have been awful to lose the MoH, so the reasoning goes, so historians feel free to heap calumnies on him, the more clichéd the better, it would seem.

      3. The podcaster who runs the History of China podcast talked about the Mandate of Heaven in a recent Q&A episode, in which he compared it to the western concept of the Divine Right of Kings. As in, there’s maybe an atavistic subconscious feeling in that direction, but nobody takes it seriously as a real thing anymore.

        He’s an American (I believe married to a Chinese) who’s lived in Shanghai for over ten years and is fluent in both spoken and written Mandarin. So I give his opinion on this a good bit of weight.

      1. Shame cultures are not fit for civilization.

        China is what happens when one tries. One could also point to a number of middle eastern countries.

      1. I think it was primarily being worked up to get the oldsters off the books (and the infirm) to help deal with their past stupidity of One Child, but it wasn’t there yet and someone messed up and it left with/on/in them. Just a gut feeling on that, but I ain’t alone there either. It is almost tailor made for weeding out the old and certain infirmities.

          1. “We won’t have ‘Death Panels!’, we will just convene discussions on who should or shouldn’t get everything available.” If Stephen Hawking wasn’t who he is, he’d have been helped along some time ago (likely right about wheelchair needing)

  6. Yes, yes and yes! I am finally starting to be thankful for the privilege of living in such momentous times.

  7. If you parse the data on the CDC website for male vs female deaths in the US you find that for every age group except 85+ male deaths outnumber female deaths significantly (source – https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex-and-Age/9bhg-hcku). In the reproductive years (18 – 49) the percentage of deaths that are male exceed 60%. Think these numbers hold for China? If they do, what are the implications of the ‘accidental release’?

  8. If anyone really believes that the delta variant is really a mutation in the wild, ask yourself if, having weaponised the virus, the perpetrators wouldn’t make variants to ensure success of the weapon. Alpha, beta, gamma have all had a run at us. Now therapeutics are critical. The success of HCQ and Invermectin where used properly is proof this is the way to rid ourselves of this pestilence. Meanwhile lampposts are also useful.

    1. It looks like a mutation as far as I can tell. More contagious but less harmful which I believe is the usual path for airborne viruses.

      1. That’s my impression, as well. My elderly parents are just getting over it, and the duration of it was about a quarter what my wife and I suffered through just before it was officially here.

      2. Everything I’ve heard–from more reliable sources than the MSM–indicates that while it’s different enough you can catch it even vaccinated, it’s fairly mild and over in a few days to a week.

        As I keep trying to get through my dad’s head (an otherwise usually sensible man, but who has bought the covid-hysteria hook line and sinker–I suspect it’s his black dog causing most of it, but also a desperate desire to continue working from home, which alas, our employer–the feds–may or may not make increasingly more difficult), covid is going to be with us just like the cold and the flu. It’s not going away, and it’s time to just live with it, and be sensible about it.

        1. So, just another corona virus, like the ones that go through the schools ever year. (And the tummy crud, and the other general crud, and the ‘flu, and . . . )

          1. Honestly, abolishing public schools* would vastly improve the general population’s health, let alone getting rid of the indoctrination 😀 Even when I was only living in the same TOWN as baby brother while he was still in school, I caught every dang passing crud he brought home from school. It was a revelation when he graduated and left for his mission…none of the rest of us got sick that winter! 😀

            *Admittedly, primary (the kid’s classes) at church isn’t a lot better, but that’s mostly because they bring everything they caught at school in. And long before COVID they were trying to pound it into parents’ heads that “Look, we know you want a break and to go to Sunday School in peace, but we canNOT deal with your kid if they are puking, squirting out the other end, or running a fever, okay? Please don’t bring them.”

            1. *nodnodnod*

              The only time we got even a fraction of the School Cruds is when we had a Sunday School the kids could go to— other than that, we only caught what folks’ grandkids gave them via Elf’s office.

              1. Every time in the last four years I have caught something from work, it has been brought in by someone who caught something off their kid (and came to work sick).

                One of the very, very few good things about the lockdown insanity around here is that people stopped coming in to work sick. (And given our quite generous sick leave, it was utterly ridiculous that they did. This isn’t retail folks, where they expect you to be there unless you are actually dead and rotting.) I haven’t had any crud since I got over the last (and which I’m not convinced wasn’t COVID) round in March-April 2020. Just allergies and minor stomach bugs.

                1. YES. I very much want the “stay home when you’re sick” to become the new normal (when it should have been normal all along.) That and actual telecommuting, instead of “we can’t figure out if that will work.” (I know at least one very talented computer troubleshooter with cerebral palsy who would very much like to get off disability and work for himself again, but he’s dealt with years if not decades of people saying he HAS to come in for work for a job that is done completely by telephone. And trust me, public transit and paratransit do not work well enough to guarantee timeliness at a place of employment.)

                  1. Telecommuting. I think I’ve mentioned a time or dozen that I retired when I did because the then boss/owner said “no to telecommuting if you live in the same town”, or we could have moved I guess. Nope. I mean I had other reasons to want to telecommute, but wasn’t quite willing to quit. Now? Thanks to new owners and now ccpflu, the office in question has downsized to servers and 4 people working in the office, well 4. Really only 2 regularly, as the other two are on the road, or will be again (training and sales). The other two? Well one is a mentor, doesn’t want to work from home, the other is the student, and part-time in house IT.

          2. That’s my impression. With the original strain in late 2019, my then-girlfriend was horribly ill for three weeks, and her doctor tested her for all sorts of things, ultimately getting her on the mend with a steroid and nebulizer treatment. The severity of my case was less, but it still took three weeks to shake the last of the coughs. With Delta variant, my Dad was back to normal in week and my Mom seems to be on track to do likewise. It was a shame it ruined the plans for the party for Dad’s 70th, but from what we’ve heard, I’m getting that Delta variant is much closer to a garden variety coronavirus, rather than being somewhat nastier than the seasonal flu.

          3. Exactly. A covidophobic friend of mine recently posted to FB to the effect of, “if you’ve been vaccinated and now are feeling the symptoms of a cold, go get tested! it might be Covid!!”

            Um, if you’re feeling the symptoms of a cold, who cares what’s causing it? It’s a f***ing cold fer chrissakes.

              1. Hm. A week ago or so I had some cold-like symptoms, though no fever. I do have the vaccine so if it was Covid then it reduced it. So yay, I guess. Of course, I have allergies, sometimes which get bad enough to feel like a cold so it could be that too.

                1. The CDC’s web site says (or used to say…) that you could have COVID-19 without a fever. And then that kids couldn’t get it. Except now they must be ‘vaccinated’. And masks good. Then not good. Then good again. Then… oh, whatever.

      3. Queensland and OZ are in a panic because 1(one) single person died this week.
        over 80 btw
        lock down the country because one guy died
        oh and they have 111 new cases of SinoRot

  9. I would argue they didn’t run the campaign from the basement because they thought they could, but rather because they had no other choice.

    Biden was already dissintegrating during the campaign, and Kamela, despite her intersectional bonifides cratered spectacularly during the campaign. Meanwhile every other D candidate either wouldn’t tow the line, or unravelled.

    They just don’t have anyone else.

    The only reason they were able to take control was because so much of the beltway is so massively corrupt that another four years of outsiders digging into their stuff would mean hell to pay that they were willing to do just about anything to stay in power and cover up their crimes.

    The cover up is *always* worse than the crime. The ferocity of this one gives us a clue at just how much they’ve been up to in the dark.

  10. Funny thing is, China used to be at least somewhat multi-racial. Sure, the Han were the dominate ethnicity. But there were other ethnicities as well, and over the generations those got moved into the “Han” classification, much like Irish are now generic “white”.

    From what I can tell, the shift in attitude may have ended along with the Tang Dynasty. If I had to speculate, the cause would have been that the subsequent Song Dynasty only ruled the southern part of China. Barbarians ruled the north. And then the Mongols swept in, conquered all of China, and replaced both the barbarians and the Song with the Yuan Dynasty. That was the first foreign dynasty that ruled all of China, and I suspect that the Chinese might not have gotten over the indignity yet.

  11. I believe it was engineered, but it walked out of the lab on someone’s shoe. Imagine a virus that kills the elderly, the disabled, and those in poor health, leaving behind strong peasants who will not be a drain on the State. The perfect communist tool.

    But they didn’t quite get the virus tuned up. It was supposed to have a much higher lethality rate and kill millions. Remember the initial death projections? They were frighteningly high because that’s what the virus was supposed to do. But it got out early. And I thank God for that. He still loves us.

    1. No. They can’t get the virus tuned up. Their “science” is the weird science of totalitarians. “look good.” So they thought it was tuned up.

      2. Well they do have plenty of US mad scientists helping them achieve their goal.

    2. The prediction was 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. If you take the raw numbers from the 1918 flu epidemic and scale up to the current U.S. population, you get 2.2 million. There is reason to suspect that’s exactly what they did.

      The communist Chinese actually have a point when they blame the U.S. for COVID19. Fauci funded its development. And is still desperately lying about it.

      1. I wish Trump’s campaign people had had the smarts to counter the, “he killed X hundred thousand people!” with, “No, I saved 2.2 million minus X people!”

      2. Yeah, that was the Imperial College modeling number, and I’ve pointed out that ratio here on this blog before.

        I suspect that the IC model, in the best academic hack-job spaghetti-code tradition, was spitting out wildly different numbers on every run, so they just did some simple arithmetic and drew a bullseye around the one model run that matched it. (Rather like the climate models that spew out random numbers: they take the one result that matches observation and say “see, look, our models are accurate!” Sure, pumpkin, sure.)

  12. The one thing the Left’s cordial, co-dependent takeover of the bully Social Media behemoths has done quite successfully, so far, is to make it virtually impossible to know how many of THEM actually exist here in the U.S. and how many of US. Thru cancel culture, outright censorship of WrongThink, distorted polling, suppressed polling, election fraud, psyops like “January 6th” & “The Whitmer Kidnapping Attempt” (both of which seem to have had a core of FBI agents cajoling and urging soft-brained hicks into acting out fantasies & Capitol police letting them through, not sure which of those LEO cohorts actually shot unarmed people, but they did), and unrelenting screaming from the bully pulpits of CNN, NYT, WaPo, MSNBC (just kidding, if their audience has to leave the room to pee they have zero audience), they have made it more difficult than Pravda & Izvestia did to find the truth about anything. Yes, we have alternative media and some of it works well, but we have to work harder than a forensic accountant to vet any source, these days. And they will de-platform any threat, real or perceived. Now, Larry Elder, in The People’s Republic of CA is blocked from the ballot by Atty General intentional negligence.

    My point is that I powerfully want to agree that they are desperate, overstepping their actual dictatorial power, and will lose, but I JUST DON’T KNOW how many oppose them and if the election mechanics are so corrupted already that they will win 110% of every election forevermore. Or not. Disclaimer: I live in Southern California, so the bars are tightly fitted to our cells and we are more locked down, both literally and figuratively, than much of the country. I do plan on fixing that locational handicap, but it takes time and money and they are intent on ruining that for the independent individual (i.e. AB-5).

    1. You do know. If they had the numbers they think, they wouldn’t have had to cheat by emergency in front of G-d and everybody. I’d be surprised if, even with dumb supporters, they’re more than 25% of the country. Of course that varies by area.

      1. If they had the numbers they project Chimpman the butcher would already be in office and ordering ATF strikes on every gun owner who has kids.

      2. Well, you ARE more centrally located, at a higher elevation and can see more of the country, so you are probably right. I sure hope so. And de-platforming the Walk Away movement from FB signals their fear of constituent defection, so there are encouraging signs in their choice of targets. There is that.

    2. Basic argument for knowing goes as follows: Notice how they are changing their stories? Some of that is typical communist ‘breaking people by making them speak lies’, but some of it is clearly information warfare. Desperate information warfare, because of how badly the combination of statements hurts them. So, they are doing stuff, getting blow back from it, and fear the blow back enough that they try to fix things with another lie. They are badly mis-estimating the public, and fear the public.

      Consider just the BLM arsons.

      The transition from ‘yeah, we are the arsons, arsons are good’ to ‘actually, it was white supremacists doing the arsons’ is an example.

      1. And it’s like they think people can’t see the lies. They seem to be living in some weird 1950s world where you can suppress information relatively easily, and before it can spread. It’s really bogglingly bizarre, and so disconnected from reality that I frequently wonder how most of these people remember how to continue breathing in and out, let alone anything more compicated…

        1. Another is, “Republicans are anti science,” because they’re too maliciously stupid to believe in the reality of climate change, the goodness of gay marriage, and so on. (Broad paraphrase of a tweet I just read on Twitter).

          1. Oh, I believe in climate change. The climate is *always* changing. but the year-to-year and region-to-region fluctuations are such that it’s hard to tell the signal from the noise. Whether or how much it’s anthropogenic is not so certain. I have reason to suspect that climate prediction isn’t all that much simpler or more advanced than weather prediction, the efforts of the IPCC notwithstanding.

            1. I don’t see how anyone can go to a standard, everyday geology exhibit and not come out a skeptic. You quickly learn the earth had been warmer and cooler for millions of years, with no human help.
              I mean, Utah used to be a warm, shallow sea bottom. Just walking down the signs at the local river rafting company showed just how often the planet has changed and how long the changes lasted.

            2. Sometimes climate sits on deep freeze for a while, but even then there tends to be some variation.

            3. The normal climate for 80% of the last few million years has been Ice Age.

              We are currently near (or at) the end of the Holocene Interglacial Period — the most recent of those brief intervals of warm climate between Ice Ages. The next Ice Age is several thousand years overdue.

              1. And the current spate of drought and flood is an early ice age pattern, per what I’ve read of how the climate shifts. We’re in a cooling trend and on our way into the next Little Ice Age (probably not fullblown this time around), perhaps as soon as 2050 or thereabouts.

      1. That, is awesome! Not sure of Elder can get elected in CA, or save it if elected, but he’ll pretty much be the smartest, savviest, funniest guy ever to hold that job.

    4. Preference cascade: “Average people behave the way they think they ought to, even though that behavior might not reflect their own personal feelings. Given a sufficient “A-HA!” moment when they discover that their personal feelings are shared by a large portion of the population their behavior may change dramatically.”

      TPTD know this, so they’re trying to prevent the A-HA moment by making that discovery more difficult.

  13. “Colorado’s governor fumduck…”

    Supposedly there was once a racehorse named ‘Lord Phumducker’ and the name was somehow allowed, despite the trouble it could potentially cause for race announcers. The story further goes that ‘Cunning Stunt’ was, however, considered to be going too far and disallowed.

    2. When I was an outside ringer in my first wife’s college plays, we did warming-up vocal exercises. Try this one:

      One sock cutter, he cut socks.
      Two sock cutters, both cut socks
      Three sock cutters, they cut socks
      Four sock cutters, all cut socks.

      Try saying it fast, and I think you can see where I’m going with this…

  15. I was talking to a very calm, level-headed businessman today. He pulled out his phone and asked “What do you think of this?” and read parts of the so-called infrastructure bill. Then he said, in essence, “Something’s going to blow up.” I couldn’t disagree with him. (On some history stuff, yes, I did, minor detail in European history, but not on that.)

  16. Here’s the thing, I’m oddly optimistic.

    They’re losing the ball-every time they come on TV to try and prove that OrangeManBad and his followers are responsible for everything…they keep coming off worse. And worse in ways that they can’t hide and it keeps getting harder and harder to roll back. I think more people than we expect have noticed this…but they’re afraid to say anything because they have jobs they need to keep, family peace to be maintained, and not having their neighbors shame them.

    Then, there’s going to be, as Sarah puts it, this Ceaușescu moment where the magic stops working. Remember when Hillary! uttered the words “basket of deplorables”? Or any number of stupid words that have come out of the mouths of these idiots over the last twenty years?

    And, more people than not are going to realize that they can see that the Emperor has no clothes on. That other people can see it as well. And, the Emperor is really ugly. We might be seeing it now, it just hasn’t shown up in the news yet, especially in China (where hiding scandals is the norm and if they start showing up, it’s just the tip of a massive iceberg).

    Start fighting local as well. Go for election reform, especially to prevent ballot stuffing. And don’t let these people get away with making things worse. Hold their feet to the fire.

  17. Pingback: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Strange Ideas

  18. I’ve enjoyed the dust ups between Rand Paul and Dr. Falsie. I hope Falsie pays for his lies and confusion.

    1. A commenter on Instapundit called him Gesundheitsführer Fauci. I think that about sums it up.

  19. I think the lefties can see defeat for themselves in the mid-terms and 2024 elections IF they are not allowed to cheat. They are going to be tempted to shut down the elections somehow by false flags, psyops, state of emergency, etc. Bet they are noodling plans already.

      1. True. It might still be possible for repentance and prayer before the bloodletting… but I’m not counting on that… too many abortions…

      2. Akshully, vigilantism is voting, democracy style.

        Insert three and a half thousand words praising vigilantism as /the/ core part of our democratic values.

        To end a day started, more or less, by raving about how republicanism is the One True Way, blah, blah, blah, Lincolnism-Shermanism is the only legitimate position, and thus under Trump’s executive power the treason of the federal legislature and judiciary must be capitally punished…

        PS Turns out that ‘feeling better’, while true, does not automatically correspond to being well. 😛

    2. You still think there’s going to be an election next year. SO adorable.

      People might go through the motions of filling out ballots and putting them in the boxes, but the results will have nothing to do with that. The ‘winners’ will be decided in locked counting rooms in the middle of the night.

      In states where Democrats don’t control the elections, they will be declared ‘illegitimate’ and the House Democrats will refuse to seat the winning candidates.

      Historians will mark that day as the beginning of the revolution.

      2. I’m saying that the Dems already know they will lose 2022/2024 elections, so they will either cheat again or they will create something to shut them down, like martial law for whatever reason.
        Either of those actions may very well be the tipping point.

        2. Because that will be the point at which the vast LIV-middle-right will realize that it wasn’t just about Trump, the Democrats really do mean to disenfranchise all of us. That’s why “vote harder” really is our best strategy right now.

          Much like the Iraq/Afghanistan wars were a necessary experiment to disprove the proposition that democracy can be imposed at gunpoint and that everyone wants western-style liberty. Next time we won’t bother trying to fix a country after we blow it up.

  21. Personally, I think the fit hits the shan this fall when our would-be overlords try to pull the COVID=Black Death thing again and lock everything down again. Because they will. And many, many people will refuse to play along.

    But eh, what do I really know, anyway? I didn’t think any of that lockdown crap was going to happen in the first place. I figured nobody would want to be “that guy/those people who demolished the economy and Americans’ way of life,” but clearly I was very wrong about that. All I really know is that I’ve forking HAD IT with the kakistocracy.

    1. I thought many people in the churches would defy at Easter. And Christmas. And Easter … But fuck off no. Why did the White Christ want people again … ?

      *sighs in whiskey*

          1. As Foxfier says, our “niceness,” is being used against us. Church people don’t want to be responsible for “killing,” people, so tell them they should show “true compassion,” by staying home and they take it seriously.

            1. *nodnodnod*

              weaponized “nice.”

              ….which scares me, because I’ve seen how folks respond when they find out their “nice” has been turned into a weapon against them.

                1. Some of us saw through the “civility” scam a long time ago. And yeah, being gaslit will induce rage.

    2. it is harder and harder for them. Michigan just revoked Whitless’ emergency powers, so she’ll have to find a new way that likely won’t work.

  22. I hope Sarah’s right but I’m quite pessimistic about seeing change in my lifetime (As I’m 82, I think quite justifiably so.) and not at all optimistic that the change will occur within most of your lifetimes. Our beloved leaders, today and historically, have no problem shedding our blood for extended periods if it keeps, or gets, them in power. War of Roses, for example, 32 years, 3 weeks and four days (Had to look up the 3 weeks and 4 days.).

    1. True, but that conflict was 1) generally limited to the nobles and their direct supporters, and 2) fought mostly away from the centers of agriculture and commerce. No one seemed to have been willing to destroy the wealth of the kingdom in order to claim the throne (who wants France invading and taking over [again]?). Yes, anyone caught in the way suffered, and yes, there were persecutions (although not as bad as what Henry VIII seems to have done after the Pilgrimage of Grace.) But it wasn’t a general civil war like that of the 1640s.

      I don’t think the bulk of the populace of the Lower 48 would tolerate a power struggle like that one. We don’t NEED a monarch or single dominant party. Yes, having a central government to handle things like trade negotiations and diplomacy is good, and to coordinate national defense, but even a decade seems a bit long. *shrug* Note, that’s just my take, and I’m not as up on a lot of current security and defense things as I probably ought to be.

      1. Tend to agree with all your points, T’Red, but I’m still pessimistic.

        Perhaps I should clarify; my pessimism concerns the state of the Nation, not we individuals that ARE the Nation, I’m quite optimistic we will survive and, no matter what, prosper, it just might be a very long road back to the point where we live in a world wherein we hold these truths to be self evident.

  23. Story on Google forwarded by my weather ap…flooding in China “kills hundreds.” Allegedly the area got a year’s worth of rain in three days.

    1. From what I’ve heard, bad flooding on the Yellow River, with multiple dams wiped out

      Flooding is a periodic problem in China, and both of the major rivers (Yellow and Yangtze) have jumped out of their beds and changed where they flow multiple times over the course of recorded Chinese history. But one bit I was skimming seemed to say this instance has been made worse by construction during recent years making it impossible for the extra water to find reasonably safe spots to flow to.

    2. one of the things that is a potential issue for the PRC regime, generally,is management or mismanagement of water drainage, with flood prevention being a big one.

      Some of the dams may be screwed up enough to collapse even during design conditions.

    4. I wonder if 3 Gorges is decrepit enough to fall down yet? The last satellite photos I saw showed it getting mighty crooked.

      If it does collapse, how long can the communist Chinese keep the story hushed up?

        1. Um… If Three Rivers lets go, everybody down to Vietnam will know about it.

          Plus there’s a gigantic lake in Laos that has been mostly empty, thanks to China cutting off the water. If all the boat towns are suddenly floating again, that’s a good sign too.

          1. When you see a wall of water moving across Southeast Asia that makes the special effects in _The Ten Commandments_ look tame, you’ll know which dam(s) have cut loose. Because Three Gorges will take out everything downstream. Heck, it may well change the location of the mouth of the river. (See the Yellow River in the late 1000s).

        1. I’m not sure I would consider America’s ABM a robust system. And for all the ills of American defense procurement, PRC appears to be massively more screwed up.

          It is most definitely not in doubt that the PRC regime is fairly seriously crazy. Even by my standards.

          Thing is, the possibilities are not binary. Analysis of CCP doctrine there seems to assume PRC has a choice between dense pack, and a delivery system that isn’t dense pack.

          PRC may be screwed up enough that their choices were dense pack, or no nuclear missiles.

          Other possibility, they may be planning to use government infiltration to counter our ability to launch against them, and have no serious plan if that fails.

      3. Fortunately (for the moment), Three Gorges is on the *other* major Chinese river, and not the one that’s having all of the problems with flooding right now..

        1. China in Focus (one of the NTD/Epoch Times shows) showed footage of a dam giving way, tho by the time it did, water (or rather, flowing mud) was about level on both sides, and it mostly behaved as heavy debris and moved around a bit.

      4. If Three Gorges lets go, millions of people die within hours and whole cities vanish from the map. Most of Wuhan will be under 12 feet of water, and Wuhan is bigger than NYC. I don’t think they would be able to hush it up even if all our satellites went blind at the same time. They might be able to delay reporting for a day or two, but that’s about it.

        1. Were three gorges to go it would be a world historical disaster and, after last year, the dam is weake but these floods are not on the Yangtze but on the Yellow River, which has been historically even more prone to flooding. That said, China didn’t go an build a civilization single point of failure on the Yellow River like they did on the Yangtze so it’s less likely they’ll lose 100mm people in a day. —. idiots.

          Population wise there’s little to choose between them but economically the Yangtze region is much bigger. However while money comes from the Yangtze, political power traditionally comes from the Yellow River.

          This is the peak of the rainy season so we’ll see how it develops. This is the heart of China’s wheat growing area and, given the state of the US crop, supply, and thus prices are already under severe threat — though the total world crop was strong, China cannot stand large food price inflation, they live too close to the bone already. They’ve been buying record amounts already and this might be damaging the crop.

          Interesting times. If only we had a President.

  24. Odds and ends…

    Speaking of racial strife…

    The leading Republican candidate in the California Governor Recall Special Election is a black man, Larry Elder. And he was kept off the ballot by absurd rules invoked by the Democrats in power. For those who haven’t heard, there’s a law in California that requires all candidates in an election (courts have ruled that it doesn’t apply to presidential candidates) to submit their tax returns. Elder did so. From what I understand, the state claimed that he hadn’t redacted enough of his returns, and refused to include his name on the list of candidates. Elder filed suit, as did the former mayor of Monterey Park, an asian woman named Betty Chu.

    I can just *feel* the Republican racism flowing off of that one!

    The judge found in favor of the plaintiffs, ruling that the law requiring that candidates hand over their tax returns didn’t apply to recall special elections.

    Plus, Elder had already complied with the law, though I don’t know whether the judge also pointed that out in his ruling.

    Our hostess left out another reason why China can’t really hurt us. China only manages to feed itself because of the US. Piss off the US, and China suddenly loses the ability to keep its population fed.

    1. I totally screamed like a toddler when I heard Larry Elder was running.

      *crazy clapping*

      Yes, yes!

      OK, it is PROBABLY a hopeless run– but he might win!

      AND THE GUY CAN ACTUALLY DO THE JOB!

      2. Plus, he’ll do good just from the extra publicity that he gets from running. The man is sharp, and has a way with words that includes the ability to explain things in a way that people can understand if they’re keeping an open mind.

    2. *blink* He hadn’t =redacted= enough? this is the first time I’ve heard of someone getting tossed for handing over too much information!

  25. Being an “old person” (77) the 2020 election did not surprise me one iota. When you put modern technology capabilities together with a hoard of academia indoctrinated generations of 30 years, a group of “billionaires who profit from a spend, spend, spend, give- you-free- stuff Party” (screw the working man). An individual thinker? What’s that? And a culture that is offended by any word uttered, well>>>>>>>>>>>>Hello, TODAY! I think it’s called “Quiet Enforced Socialism, better known as Communism” Sometimes I think Americans are apathetic. Maybe just stupid. Today, it seems they all thrive on attention (Just must take a SELFIE and post it online)
    Yes, I sound like the “old curmudgeon”……..age happens and suddenly you can see it. *at least I always spell correctly

    1. Sigh. Americans are not apathetic. Apathetic people don’t vote in numbers that force the cheating into full light of day.
      We’re busy, productive and have LIVES.
      Revolt? will eventually come, but we’re maybe months to a year away.
      Since you’re an old person, perhaps you haven’t noticed most people my age 58 and under were indoctrinated. MOST of us kick it by thirty. Most academics are faking it, heck. And the push is so much crazier no sane person can abide it.
      The people are okay. And the kakistocracy is not nearly as powerful as you give it credit for.

      1. You give me great hope for America’s future!! Thank you!! Hope the 20 and 30 year olds’ are watching closely and “might” wake up soon!

        1. Millenials are possibly the most unruly of the lot. They’re unfortunately also accomplished liars. Had to be to survive, because my kids are youngest of the cohort and the regimentation was next level.
          They’re ….. very contrary. Yeah, some of them are still stupid, but I doubt the majority is.

          1. They’re unfortunately also accomplished liars. Had to be to survive, because my kids are youngest of the cohort and the regimentation was next level.

            Reason #50946795840589 why Peterson exploded into civilizational consciousness.

    2. Yep. I’m in my early 40s, got the same indoctrination garbage in grade school, kicked most of it before 30, kicked the last traces in my mid-30s (that would be some of the stupider bits of feminism). Not apathetic, I voted, but like so many like me I don’t have the luxury the unemployed and/or paid-to-protest lefties do to go and wave a sign and shout slogans. I have a job, and bills to pay. That’s most people. That doesn’t mean we aren’t paying attention, and aren’t angry.

      1. I don’t know if it is this way for anybody else, but both my husband and myself look at protests and think:
        that is a really big target of opportunity.

        We’re also the people who at food courts will actually look in the garbage bins when we use them, and notice if the people doing garbage rounds aren’t in uniform, or put things into the bin. (Sometimes they do this and it’s obviously too light to be something Really Bad, but we wouldn’t know that if we didn’t look.)

        1. I don’t look in garbage bins (admittedly, I can count on one hand with fingers left over the number of times I’ve been in a mall in the last ten years :p ), but I do tend to plot out “Okay, if Something Bad starts happening here, this is what I’ll do to get out/help others get out/etc.”

      2. And visible protest may be tits on a boar useless.

        The large ones will definitely be twisted or coopted by the opposition.

        Smaller? Regime is using them as excuse, and to intimidate the voters. Regime politicians do whatever they personally want, and are not persuadable.

        1. Yeah. The whole American way of war is basically “this is taking me away from the important work I do, in my own fields, so that I can feed my own family. So I will d@mn sure finish the job now, so they I don’t lose so much in future years.”

          1. It’s a pity the idiot politicians wouldn’t go for our never-ending war in the Middle East to be done like that. We’d have been out of there long ago, and I doubt the Taliban would still be a problem.

            Of course, the politicians were making money off us being at war, so of COURSE they wouldn’t allow that.

  26. CLARIFICATION: My comment above is in Reply to another who was saying certain folks in Lexington and Concord in 1775 were poor or deprived. I realized it could be misconstrued as a Reply to Ms. Hoyt, which it is not.

    Felicitations,
    J E Lee

  27. Sarah,
    It’s always reassuring to read your posts because they are optimistic- unlike the conservative establishment. I know they are incapable of fixing this mess and they probably don’t care to try. But we will!

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