Gaslight and Shadows

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

I’ve never consciously seen gaslight, which seems almost impossible, frankly, since when I grew up lighting in Portugal was a patchwork of various methods of making it light when it was dark out.

If you think it’s hard wiring Victorians on wood frame, imagine that to wire (or plumb) a house you’d have to go through sometimes foot-thick stone walls. So, people would have wiring in the living room, sometimes the kitchen, then the rest of the house, you’d have candles, or oil lamps or whatever. In fact,t he electricity service was so unreliable, that even if your house was fully wired, like my parents’ (built in 68) you always ended up having a back up system (mostly oil lamps, though sometimes candles. Depending on the ability of oil.)

But I don’t think Portuguese houses were ever plumbed for gas lighting. They’re not plumbed for cooking gas. Instead you get the “tanks” delivered. Propane, like what you use for your grill.

Anyway– So I don’t think I’ve ever seen it, but I imagine it was much the quality of oil lighting or wax candles, i.e. illuminating a highly targeted area (and not very well) and leaving the rest of the room in worse-than-darkness, with multiplying and overlapping shadows.

This is why gas lighting is such a good metaphor for what the assholes in the self-proclaimed elites have been doing to us for … almost two years now. (And trying to for of course much longer than that.)

I gaze in awe at the bizarre things that cross my feed on social media, and I wonder how many people are falling for it. Like, you know, how the Delta Variant is on the rise and it’s the most scariest thing ever: what they’re not telling you: the tests don’t distinguish between Delta and any other variant of Covid. Yes you can tell the difference by DNA analysis, but no one is doing DNA analysis for every case. If you catch it, they just tag it as “delta.”

Oh, also apparently the tests aren’t very good at distinguishing between flu and Covid-19, which explains what happened to the flu, don’t it? And that one is a puzzle, since we have flu-specific tests, and we thought the Covid-19 test is also specific (if really unreliable, for the most part.) But no. The CDC says it also flagged flu as Covid-19. Which…. well. Much brighter light made, right?

Also deaths aren’t going up. They’re just not. So the China Flu is following the path of every other virus in the history of ever and becoming more widespread, easier to catch, but less lethal. Uh. Uh. Like every single cold and flu, so what’s the big scare?

Oh, but there was a segment from Fox news…. about how our hospitals are getting overwhelmed. Overwhelmed I tell you. — hands over a lighter — Light your hair on fire, and run around screaming, right now. No?

Well, turns out no indeed, because our hospitals aren’t even at the 98% capacity they hit at peak flu season.

But …. why would they hit that? Because ER beds are EXPENSIVE. They’re designed to be almost completely full at flow season, and be rotated out of as soon as possible so the next batch of people can get in.

But isn’t that stupid? No. Not really. I mean, in socialized medicine they’re designed to be ALWAYS full. Because ER beds are EXPENSIVE. Which is why Italy and Spain and such routinely run out of beds during flu season and just let the elderly die. It’s like eugenics on the installment plan.

Anyway, the US has a deep-backing of resources, so if this had been a real death-flu we’d have had several regional centers converted overnight, the hospital ships would be operating, there would be tents set up by charities, and oh, yeah, the Denver convention center, set up for casualties/cases wouldn’t now be full of homeless and virtually destroyed at the order of governor Fumbduck, who is apparently Louis XIV and therefore can dispose of public property as if it were his own personal play budget.

So, if the hospitals aren’t at 98% capacity, with quick rotation of patients to less critical services/home care? Yeah, it’s not an emergency. Which I tried to tell everyone a year ago, and got called names for.

Yep, they’re running the greatest hits again.

Complete with China “closing down” and “having high casualties.” Which you’ll fall for if you are virtually brainless, and think that they actually shut all that much for all that long, and didn’t just run a “get the dissidents under cover of Chinaatchu”. Which means you didn’t look at their trade numbers for last year. I’m waiting for the videos of people collapsing and dying on the street. They’ll probably be recycled, and it will be tracked in ours.

Meanwhile governor Fumbduck is stomping his little foot and demanding we mask in all public spaces. I’d say compliance runs 5% in the more credulous parts of the state.

The rest of us have had just about enough.

You know what stops gaslighting? Flipping on the switch for the electric light. Suddenly all those shadows vanish.

Well, shadows are all gone, governor Fumbduck and the ludicrous and buffonish criminal conspiracy of kakistocrats we call the Democratic party are floundering around in the full light, like cockroaches on the kitchen floor.

We can SEE YOU!

And the light shows us the shadow show you used to scare people before.

No more hiding now.

You’re in full view, and still trying to scare us.

Do you know why gaslight was replaced by electricity as soon as possible, most places? Besides the fact you can see better with electrical light?

Because gas light has a tendency to explode.

Don’t look now, but it’s happening. All over your face.

You’re already almost at the point you don’t recover from. We see the little man behind the curtain.

And we’re pretty mad at him.

Keep trying. The trash heap of history waits you and your seedy, grifty philosophy.

294 thoughts on “Gaslight and Shadows”

  1. “Intellectuals” have lied about Marxism for over a century now. Why ever would one think they would stop now?

      1. If they have all the power, lying and forcing you to acknowledge and celebrate the lie is more satisfying than simply canceling and vanishing you.

          1. They have the media, they have pretty much our entire educational system, they currently have a majority in Federal Government (albeit a very slim one), and they have cooperation with all the major means of communications.
            What we get is those truths that slip through the cracks. Which explains why they are so desperately trying to slap spackle on those cracks, censor all public discourse, ban every comment on social media that does not support their narrative, massively over react to what was nothing more than a case of civil disobedience and trespass.
            In their minds, in their bubble reality, they should be in total control, have absolute power over the great unwashed neanderthals in flyover country. And they don’t so they are afraid, very very afraid, and like cornered rats are starting to lash out.

              1. This. I was at a baseball game yesterday and there were no masks except for some of the food workers. The park wasn’t full because it was the Orioles and they’re at the bottom. I’ve seen a spike in people wearing masks outside, but that seems to have peaked last week some time. More cracks than floors or walls at this point.

              2. By order of the state, health care settings require masking, and pharmacies are included in this. Compliance at the local pharmacy? Hardly. Of the 5-6 people I saw in line or talking to one of the (masked) workers, one was masked. 20% compliance at best. Zero comments from the workers.

                I have to see my regular doctor tomorrow. I know they enforce the mask rules, and I expect to have the not-vax discussion again. Previously, I told him “I’d think about it” if the FDA approved it. (In reality, nope.) Now with the control group shenanigans, he might get the lecture on the proper means of doing a comparison test. I think I’ve calmed down enough to not take his head off if we go that way.

                  1. Social media users have encouraged immunisation sceptics to register for an alleged scientific study called the “Vaccine Control Group”. However, a UK health body said data collected through the platform could not be used in an official trial to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated people.
                    Stinks to high heaven of a typical leftist scam.
                    Details at the link, Reuters for what that’s worth”\:
                    https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-coronavirus-vaccine/fact-check-data-collected-by-vaxcontrolgroup-com-could-not-be-used-for-control-trial-health-body-says-idUSL1N2P31VF

                  2. No Larry, this is a different set of shenenigans.

                    The trial for both Pfizer and Moderna included a blind study of the not-vax. The test group got the shots, while the control group got a placebo. These studies were to be run to completion, to determine effectiveness and safety.

                    However, in this study, as soon as the companies got Emergency Use Authorization, the people running the study (for both of the meds) broke the blind, told the control group, and gave them the shots. Thus ruining any chance to determine differences in effectiveness or safety. Sundance at CTH had an article on in a few days ago (IIRC, the story broke Friday, naturally). It appears that there was at least tacit permission from the FDA, NIH, and CDC.

                    [searching…found: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/08/07/pathologist-dr-ryan-cole-delivers-concerning-message-about-covid-vaccine-and-long-term-impacts/#more-215046 ]

                    In my career (engineering; we didn’t often do “Science”, but we were damned good at design of experiments and knew what was important), if we had done such a thing for a major experiment (one with serious money and/or consequences on the line) *at best* we’d get torn a few new assholes, and the test would have to be redone. At worst, we’d be looking for new jobs with a poor reputation on the street, disclosure laws or no. (Minor experiments–pull that shit and you’d get into less trouble, but it would be “a career limiting decision” to quote a former boss.)

                    Considering the consequences and the fact that mRNA meds haven’t been used in humans, and had a serious level of risk in previous animal studies, learning about this saw me seeing red.

                    I had a “spirited” discussion with my Family Practitioner MD this morning about such. I told him that a medical professional who I seriously trusted told me that it was A Bad Idea for me to take it. FP-MD wanted to know who. I saw earlier this morning that doctors are now at risk of losing their medical licenses for “spreading misinformation” and refused. Apparently there’s another doc in the practice who’s against the not-vax; I assume he’s being targetted. I did what I could to not divulge the advisor’s name.

                    FWIW, Oregon is pulling the same bit for healthcare workers as California: vax or submit to testing twice a week. My dental hygienist is Not Happy, and her sister (also a hygienist) is getting ready to move to Texas. Doesn’t help that the testing swabs use Ethylene Oxide, a known carcinogen.

                2. I saw notice this mornig that my county of residence is reverting to mask mandates. The clever thing is that there are no (direct) penalties on individuals; it is the stores and businesses who get fined for not enforcing masking requirements.

                  Pfui. Typical bureaucratic BS, force some third party to inflict your tortures.
                  ~

                  1. aka the dictionary definition of Fascism: “private” businesses controlled by the government.

            2. The majority looks less slim when 20% of the opposition is afraid to oppose you (see recent Senate vote on infrastructure).

            3. They just got 17 “Republican” Senators to sign off on that pork fest of an “infrastructure bill” by making sure their trough was full. Tell me again about how “slim” their majority is.

          2. But if they *think* they have all the power, they would absolutely do that.

            Similarly if they think they have all the power, but have a creeping fear in the back of their heads that it ain’t so.

          3. It IS a delusion, but remember they’re deluding *themselves* as well. The more they think that maybe the Emperor maybe could be naked, the more they have to loudly proclaim about the richness and vibrant color of his vestments, and the sophistication and discernment required to see them.

          4. Not wearing a mask is explicitly a rejection of the Democrats and their policies. For over a year, anyone who looked up the facts about mask wearing knew it was pretty useless, especially if you took it off and then put it back on at all.

            One of my highly left influenced friends told me after she got vaccinated, that she was going to continue wearing her mask so no one would mistake her for a Republican.

            When I was unprepared to get into a fight about masks I would wear American Flag bearing masks so no one would mistake me for a Democrat.

            The Democrats for months have connected politics with mask usage.

            If the majority are now going maskless this is a distinct political statement. The winds are turning.

            Since the left intrinsically mistakes the power of the name plate on the corner office, for the intrinsic power of someone capable of gaining that name plate through virtue, They get the corner office by hook or by crook, they don’t have the power to hold it.

            They will do something drastic, which will not gain them compliance but rather delegitimize them more.

            1. Also my left leaning friends, including the one that a month or so ago wanted to keep wearing her mask, are now all going maskless. I assume because of peer pressure. They don’t have the strength of will to oppose the majority, and it is basically an admission that they were doing those things because of politics and not because they believed the authorities.

              I see a lot of hope, the little boy cried wolf too many times, and now almost no one is listening.

              1. I see a lot of hope, the little boy cried wolf too many times, and now almost no one is listening.

                –
                Saw that one coming from the very beginning. Didn’t bother saying anything to the local liberals. Why bother? They’d deny it anyway.

          5. I would believe they lacked power if I was typing this from my office instead of my home.

            I would believe they lacked power if I didn’t have to wear a mask to pick up my copy of the comic you wrote.

            I would believe they lacked power if I didn’t feel like a chump for paying my rent every month the past year only to watch the “rent moratorium” extend again (own a rental property? don’t expect reliable rent ever again).

            Do they have the power to rule us they think they have? No.

            Do they have the power to burn it all down into ruins if they don’t get their way? Like a never-spanked toddler with a lit match and a full gas can.

            2. *adds* ‘I would believe they lacked power if I’d been told that my family could have skipped the legal immigration process by going to Mexico and then walking across the border.’

              1. We all are. I had some stupid comment about how I was about to start a revolution.
                Hell no. We’ll proceed slowly, cautiously, and in G-d’s good time.
                And if all hell breaks loose… we’ll fight like cornered cats, every man Jack and woman Jill of us.

                1. WTF?

                  How stupid does someone have to be to either come to that conclusion, or to think that it is propaganda useful here?

                  1. Oh, no more than typical Leftish sophomoric stupidity. The really stupid ones say that to your face rather than doing a “post-n-run” comment.
                    ~

                2. It is the tyrants imposing their arbitrary rules who start revolutions. Asserting our rights as sovereign citizens, not subjects, is not a revolutionary act, o matter how the tyrants try to depict it.

                  The only real question is what kind of “revolution” will we see: American or French?

                  These “leaders” are asserting an authority they cannot legitimately claim, no matter how many an election they’ve fixed.
                  ~

                  1. They’re acting like they REALLY WANT to re-enact the French Revolution. They just don’t have a clue which side they will wind up on.

            4. Sigh. Herb, it doesn’t mean they have power. They are a kid running through a glass store swinging a mallet. BUT the glass heals in weird ways.
              Look, what are they doing: killing cities. Polis is now asking people NOT to leave CO…. They’re killing public schooling. They’re killing the sources of their power.

              1. ::Gives Sarah a weird look::

                So… dream last night, I was fixing a window. “fixing” involved fire, but theproblem was it wouldn’t function. Normal-ish if old style window, of the you can raise it type.

                Long story short, the right side stayed attached, the body of it billowed out to kind of hang over the hot point, and the left side was completely detached.

                But the window started working again.

                  1. Also every person who gets sick after getting vaccinated because they were promised they wouldn’t get sick is another person who can turn very angry.

                    3. Wilsonville (south of Portland) & Eugene: Costco: $3.45/gal

                      Highest seen here in Eugene: $3.85/gal

                      Regular. Son just shakes his head when someone asks what premium blend cost is. (His car is is one expense.)

                      Wouldn’t surprise me to have it top $4.00/gal before summer is out. Not sure what the switch from “summer” to “winter” blend will do to cost/gal.

                    4. Gas is already between $4.06 and $4.70 here. Price varies by brand and proximity to a highway.

                      8 months ago gas was in the $2.60 region. Prices starting creeping up in about September, then shot up in November. There is no limit in sight.

          7. I thought they would have better lies. It would have been so easy to declare victory over Covid and restart. The fake vax could have worked as a temporary anti-Wuhan Gurgling Death for the vulnerable, as less-lethal and more infectious versions of the CCPox sped through the population.

            They could WON the whole tamale.

            Instead they are running a gain of function experiment on the world population.

            There is no peak folly.

        2. In upstate NY almost nobody (I see maybe 5% mask wearing inside) is paying attention to the Royal Pronouncements. Though I do feel sorry for the masked children with uber-woke parents…

        1. Certain parts… meanwhile, where I live even most of the recent transplants have ditched the mask. Work from home is stronger than it was, but more due to expense of office and commute times. And increased Availability of rural fiber

          3. I’m seeing lots of masks at the local stores – more than half masked, possibly two-thirds because of the “deadly delta” (booga booga!). Even before “delta” the masks hadn’t gone away completely. The low point was about 30% or so masked. And this is in what I thought was Kyle Rittenhouse country.

            I’m sharing Herb’s pessimism. The scenario of “The Boot” is looking more and more likely.

            1. Went to Sizzler’s last night for first time in almost 20 months. They have the signs up “Stay masked until seated”. NO one other than staff was masked. No one. Almost exclusively senors when we were there.

              1. Even the Asian food store didn’t have folks masked– Costco has the ladies who always have pinched looking expressions around the eyes masked, but nobody else who wasn’t a worker. (and a lot of the workers weren’t masking when they got a chance, too)

                1. Even at the height of the craziness (assuming we’ve passed the “height,” which isn’t guaranteed) most people wore their masks under their chins or below their noses. And no one said a word.

                  Rather like that lone stop-sign in the middle of nowhere, with no cross-trail or cross street in sight. Who stops?

                  1. It is functionally impossible for me to mask for much longer than I can run, so I didn’t get a very good selection of masking styles for folks in places where masking was involuntary, other than the family trip back east.

                    Then I got not one but TWO pissy guys who zeroed in on the mesh hat and were ineffective bullies, notably only when I was out with a single child and no husband. Husband there, angry guys of generic age were oddly absent…

                    Digression, since it’s been a few months since I talked about it. Every authority and several theoretically-should-have-been-karens types asked me where I’d gotten the mosquito hat and declared it was a great idea; several non-pissy guys of Generic Age made a point of catching my eye and giving me a thumbs up, I feel like I should note, in defense of guys who aren’t really either young or old.

      1. They know that they’re lying to us. We know that they’re lying to us. They know that we know they’re lying to us.
        And still they lie!
        (The full quote from A. Solz* might be longer.)

    3. The difference is that Marxism is a long con, a reliable Ponzi Scheme which typically requires a few geerations to fail, especially in a wealthy natioin where there’s abundant seed corn to plunder and redistribute.

      This WuFlu con is more like the old “Pigeon Drop” con and basically depends on the ability to be elsewhere before the mark looks inside.
      ~

  2. It doesn’t really speak to the point you’re trying to make here, but gas lights (residential lighting) doesn’t quite work like you think. They’re not so much like candles or oil lamps as they are like the old-style propane camping lanterns (brighter than kerosene lamps, which we also used on occasion). With a good mantle they’re pretty much as bright as incandescent bulbs.

    1. I think she is referring to the old style gas lights that you see in the movies about the victorian era. They were an open burner type of setup, and actually were adjusted to burn incompletely so the light that was given off was a bright yellow. Mantles didn’t come into production into the mid 1880’s. A properly adjusted lamp would burn blue, like a Bunsen burner and gave off little light at all.

    2. At the other end of the spectrum we have ornamental gaslighting. Several years ago I attended a wedding held in one of the old, ante-bellum plantations in Louisiana. The house itself was long converted to electricity, but one exterior walkway was lighted by open-flame gaslights. I have seem campfires that gave more light.

      1. The Kimmel Center Academy of Music here in Philly has the original gas lights at its doors, all along the front of the building. Four original entrances, lights on both sides of each, eight lamps with four “candles” in each. Yeah, even with the modern street lights, there’s not a lot of light there.

        1. The Lonoke County Courthouse in Arkansas has all of its original gas plumbing and fixtures, still functional, as far as I know. It was built in the 1930s, and wasn’t high on the the Rural Electrification Authority list. The electrical upgrade is through surface-mount runs anchored to the walls, which are of stone.

          You can still walk in any of the many doors, admire the architecture, and conduct your business. Meanwhile at the capitol in Little Rock, the county courthouse has all the doors chained shut except for a single entry door behind the building, where supplicants have to queue up to pass the metal detector and security gauntlet, and all internal doors are locked, and where there used to be counters, there are now bulletproof panels with 2″ holes just above head height, that you have to shout through.

          1. In college I was in a rental that still had the gas fixtures in the walls. One day a roommate discovered they still had gas in them. We called to get that shut off and discovered that gas stove was in that gas, too. We had to go without a stove for several days while they got the right parts to separate them.

            The guy gave us the choice between that and keeping the gas in the pipes.

    3. In fact one of the objections was the light was uniform and could not be adjusted by shifting about the room.

      IIRC. I may have confused it with the complaint about central heating vs fireplaces.

        1. Ah … I was very small when Mom read RLS’s “Children’s Garden of Verses” to us – and have always recollected the verse about the lamp-lighter.

          “My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky;
          It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by;
          For every night at teatime and before you take your seat,
          With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.

          Now Tom would be a driver and Maria go to sea,
          And my papa’s a banker and as rich as he can be;
          But I, when I am stronger and can choose what I’m to do,
          Oh Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!

          For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door,
          And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more;
          And O! before you hurry by with ladder and with light,
          O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him tonight!”

      2. Type of gas? Or type of wick?

        The gas lanterns we have, used canned compressed propane, are a lot brighter than say the white gas unit mom and dad have (still have?) when we were kids. I know mom still has the 3 burner white gas stove. (They wanted to donate the units to the troop in early ’00s after son crossed over to scouts from cubs. Troop couldn’t take it. Fuel type not allowed.)

        1. Good point, those would matter a lot, too– I know that my grandfather’s old propane (I think?) probably-army-surplus lantern was nothing like as bright as the ones we got to use, too.

  3. There is a lot of misunderstanding about hospital procedures/economics. Understandably, because a hospital is a complex microcosm of multiple, overlapping systems (which is how, for instance, one of my local hospitals is still known for amputating the wrong limb off a patient). The “ICUs are designed to run at 80-90% capacity, or else they don’t have the money to keep them going, and end up sending staff home” thing keeps getting missed. Particularly since hospitals serving smaller populations, or in more rural locations, really don’t have a ton of capacity. So “how can you say your hospital isn’t overrun when mine has patients dying in the halls!’ might actually be true on both sides: if your ‘90% capacity’ is 5 beds, it’s pretty easy to have ‘so many patients they’re flying them to other hospitals!’

    It’s so easy to be honestly confused by these metrics that it’s criminally easy to use them to confuse people on purpose. Like talking about pediatric ICUs being ‘over capacity with respiratory illnesses!’ and letting people assume it’s Covid when it’s actually RSV. (RSV is worse for kids! It is a reason for concern! But not a reason for driving adults back into masks and isolation.)

    I was about to type ‘it drives me crazy’, and then thought, ‘no that’s hyperbolic, and that’s bad writing’, but I realized… it really is driving me crazy. -_-

    1. When I was living in Carson City– there was an airplane accident (air races) in Reno. Immediately all of the hospitals were too full. They had to bus people to any hospital within a hundred miles for treatment. The worst cases were taken to the Reno hospitals. This is true with all of the hospital beds in that area. When we tried to get my late-husband in the hospital, we sat 8 hours waiting for a bed to open up. This was in the case of normal operation. Also a hospital is a microcosm. You learn that quickly when you get the hospital bill and then a separate bill for radiology, and specialty doctors. You think you are getting the one bill and then five to six others show up.

      1. I think it’s fascinating, which is why I set a book in a hospital! But it is definitely not as straightforward as the news is making people believe.

      2. I saw something similar when I had eye surgery last year. I was expecting a separate anesthesia bill but the others that kept hitting after that was a bit of a surprise. Manageable, thankfully, but still not a pleasant one.

      3. I’ve only ever been with Kaiser, which is a one-stop-shop like the Mayo Clinic. The hospital *is* the insurance company and the doctors are all part of the system.

        I’m really boggled at how it’s even possible for other styles to exist.

        (Note: My OB never got to deliver any of my babies, since I never had them on her hospital shift. It’s okay, because their whole team was really good—and rested.)

    2. And they’re counting on people not understanding all of that to keep the fear stoked.

    3. Also note beds-per-population has been trending down for a long time. Insurance companies don’t like paying for more stays than they have to, which is why you can leave the hospital three days after a triple bypass instead of three weeks. And a lot of things that used to take a hospital stay are now done outpatient, or in specialized or satellite clinics.

      1. And a lot of things that used to take a hospital stay are now done outpatient, or in specialized or satellite clinics.

        Good point– and none of those “count” for available beds, either.

        1. Hubby’s hips were done in the hospital. Had he had them done today, the surgeries would have been outpatient surgeries. Only if patient has an underlining condition that warrants it, does the procedure get preformed in a hospital. Same with replacement knee or carpal tunnel procedures.

          1. My knee repair was outpatient, because the hospital was not allowed to have full usage due to Covidiocy. The surgeon would have preferred I spent the first night there, though it worked out OK at home. I already knew how to check suture sites and redo dressings, but it could have been way too interesting if problems developed.

      2. My gallbladder was an outpatient procedure.
        Since spouse’s GB had gone gangrenous, he got to stay several days.

    4. In my little corner of the world, the local paper made a point of showing the numbers of “Covid beds” in each of the area hospitals. My go-to hospital for emergencies had ONE Covid-dedicated bed; “full-capacity” meant something different at the bigger hospitals nearby.

    5. That one particularly makes me want to bang my head against walls, because I spent several days in the hospital with my then-not-quite-one-year-old son (who did NOT enjoy having an oxygen tube taped to his face tyvm) with RSV shortly before all of this started. >.<; (NYE-ish 2019.) It's like, srs, COVID is not the only thing that makes people sick!!

      1. I had RSV a couple of months ago and it laid me out for three days. And I am pretty tough. I can’t imagine what it does to little kids. :/

    6. Not to mention nurse staff quitting because (1) Branch Covidians: It will never be safe enough (2) Playing Russian roulette with there fertility and heart health wit the Covid Jobs: oh hell no. (3) Burnout from the lockdown craziness and inconsistent and inconsistently enforced rules.

      Lose enough nurses and onedoes not need a pandemic to be overwhelmed.

      1. My Internet buddy Brickmuppet works in a package delivery warehouse, where they have made them wear masks for more than a year, and apparently the oxygen deprivation made his blood thick enough (more red blood cells) that he had a stroke.

        3. I saw a woman at the grocery store last month with a horrible blotchy rash where the mask was.

          They’ve been lying to us for a year and a half. Now they’re trying to cover up the lies with more lies.

  4. I’ve been wondering about the flu statistics disappearing. I do believe it was rolled into the Covid numbers. And the deaths from Covid are slightly higher than the normal death rates — I could be wrong of course.
    –Have you seen the movie Gaslight? Very creepy.

        1. Not so much his age as his taste in cinema. I never saw Gaslight until a couple of years ago.

          This phenomenon of chornodistant lust had been heralded by the Who some sixty years ago. Ironically, there are probably some young lassies drooling over sixty-year-old pictures of Daltrey.
          ~

    2. My husband looked up death rates and there is no sign of any unusual increase in deaths over the past year or so. There is a slight increase, but there has been a slight increase for the last four or five years at least. Something about an aging population.

    3. That movie is where the term “gaslighting”, meaning trying to convince you that YOU are the crazy one, comes from.

  5. These people think they are French aristocrats, and soon they will share a similar fate.

  6. A fellow on the financial board I frequent said his mother was from a large family. They have stayed in the same area and all go to the same doctor. Three of his aunts had their annual physicals and the doc sent them all to the local hospital for blood work. All three in turn were tested for COVID19 to use the facility. When they were all positive they were admitted and family couldn’t visit. This is without any symptoms – just the test. Within 3 days they were told every one of them became sick, were put on a vent, and died. His mother refused to go for any testing. She and he are convinced this was euthanasia for the sake of the bonus payments. There’s nothing to do about it but I’d be suspicious too. I’ve had the experience of refusing treatment at the local hospital and they refused to listen to me, so I’m a serious skeptic.

    3. Family member recently went into assisted living.

      She “couldn’t hear” her phone ringing, and then the night before her daughter flies in for a visit, she has a stroke that they “mistook for extreme pain, and treated with morphine.” She would, of course, “never recover normal motion.”

      Thankfully, that daughter’s husband is a hell-fire rules lawyer of the first water who met their “policy” with laws and a cellphone that has lawyers on speed dial, and the lady had an AMAZING recovery.

      He also put the fear of him into local relatives who had been enabling said warehouse– I mean, nursing center.

      1. Thank God mom can not afford a assisted living facility. Plus it would take all 3 of us to sign off on it (and her too). Mom recently confided that she does not like apartments, that is why she isn’t even interested in senor living or assisted living situations.

    4. “She and he are convinced this was euthanasia for the sake of the bonus payments.”

      Not just the bonus payments. Just think of the savings for Social Security, Medicare, pensions, etc.

    5. Look up “Undercover Epicenter Nurse” – exposé book about that exact thing in NYC last year by a nurse (subsequently blacklisted) who volunteered to help.

      Violently un-surprised.

  7. Agree with Uncle Lar. And yes, the ‘control’ is cracking as more and more people ignore both the media and the wokies…

    1. Especially as Obama and his family and 600+ of their closest and dearest friends, who are all such special people (spit!) partied hearty, without a whisper of masking and social distancing, just this last weekend.
      Yeah, try and tell the rest of us to mask up and social distance. No sale, a**holes.

      1. While Fauci lectures the folks at Sturgis for being irresponsible. It is getting noticed.

          1. I’ve come up with a term that I think perfectly describes the likes of Obama and the NYT staff, as well as most of the Democrats with (or aspire to) significant influence: sophistrycated.

            1. Actually the original meaning of “sophisticated” meant something very similar to “sophistic”.

              1. The curse of a living language, you have to keep coming up with new terms to describe things as the terms that used to describe them gain new meanings.

      2. Celia Hayes wrote: Yeah, try and tell the rest of us to mask up and social distance. No sale, a**holes.
        And Haircut Nancy and all the other Demon Rat politicians, plus the Gore bull warmening crisis; I will believe y’all when y’all act like it’s a crisis, instead of just rules for the “little People.”

  8. Now, now, there’s no reason to be uncharitable towards Governor Fumbduck…

    Wait, what am I saying? There’s every reason to be uncharitable towards Governor Fumbduck. Although one could argue that it’s impossible to be uncharitable towards Governor Fumbduck, because whatever you say, it underestimates the depth of his fumbduckery. He’s something like fractally dumb: no matter how deep you look, it always keeps getting dumber.

    Where’s the state Bill Owens used to govern? I miss that state.

  9. Interesting to look at India’s numbers. They had a big spike in cases during the fertilizer season, and spike in deaths, but the overall death rate has dropped down to a tiny fraction of the sick.

    India COVID: 31,976,785 Cases and 428,504 Deaths – Worldometer
    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/

    For a country that’s still borderline 3rd world, that just shows that this isn’t the doom death and destruction the anointed ones are claiming it is.

    But they’ll cheerfully burn the world down to save it from us deplorables.

    1. Headline (via Michael Yon’s locals.com feed) on Just the News: “Vindication for the swedish model of non-coercive pandemic mitigation?” sub head “Mask-free Sweden had near zero COVID-19 daily deaths in July…” I checked the artilce date, which is August 8, 2021.

    2. My understanding is that India also hands out HCQ like candy (due to malaria being a problem there).

    3. The pundit class is assuming the Indian government is not reporting accurately and they assume up to a ten-fold increase in the death rate. Whether this is even slightly justified I don’t know.

      2. While I can see them under counting the whole thing, simply due to their records systems being poor, I’d expect everything to be similarly undercounted. Further, mass death would show up on media, unless it is not noticeably greater than the normal death rates.

  10. Now it turns out that Fauci spent 400k torturing dogs for “research” that had already been finished…He’s our own native Dr. Mengele, and deserves a similar fate….

    1. Oddly, whenever I see him now the chryon in my head flashes “Grima Wormtongue” and I ignore all he sayeth.
      ~

  11. Well-put on all counts and I hope you’re right by how visible this all is. I’m expecting to be disappointed by the general public as usual, though that could be due to the Winnie-related life monkey wrench I’m dealing with right now.

  12. Based on my purely anecdotal “research” (e.g. seeing what progressive friends have to say in public vs. in private), I’m pretty sure that the percentage of people that believe what the politicians and bureaucrats have to say about preventive measures is shrinking rapidly.

    1. The contrast in the pronouncements by TPTB about this year’s Sturgis event, and what we know happened at Obama’s birthday shin-dig, haven’t helped to boost that percentage back up.

  13. On Baen’s Bar, we have this Irish Barfly who keeps talking about “Harmful Disinformation” and how it is “rightfully” bannable.

    It’s getting old. 😡

    1. Far too many are in favor of banning ‘wrongthink’. They only disagree over which ‘wrongthink’ to ban, and who decides.

      1. Annnd just like that Vox Dai was banned at blooger(spit) for “violation of terms of contract”. Anybody have his back up IP number?

    2. The Leftiest guy in my synagogue was trying to hide behind false modesty on the subject of “protecting the public from disinformation.” The first examples he gave of material dangerous to the public were EIB and Tucker Carlson (you’re way ahead of me, right?). I proudly proclaimed myself an avid consumer of both at times, and demanded to know how any “protective” censorship could keep from turning into tyranny and book-burning. To which he answered, with an aw-shucks demeanor, “I wish I could tell you, but I’m just not that smart.” Which got the inevitable response from me: “Good thing that I AM that smart! The answer is: It’s impossible! So there.” Made my day, he did.

      1. So he advocated for something that he ADMITTED he didn’t know how to keep from turning into a tyrannical mess, but wanted to push anyway? There’s so much wrong with that.

      2. Next comment to him should be a question…and what information falls into your disinformation category and why? And who will be in charge of that? Can I pick the books to burn?

    3. The elephant in the room is that “disinformation” isn’t the same things as “misinformation.” The yahoos who want to ban “disinformation” are treating speculation, layman’s bad math when using data, etc. as Spreading Dissent Among the Masses.

      1. You give them too much credit. Anything the party doesn’t not currently approve is forbidden.

        1. I lurk on the edges of social media. It’s bizarre to see a known lefty get reamed for musing “Looking at the data, I’m hopeful the worst is behind us.” That’s not exactly a threat to party lockstep.

          1. Hit “Send” too soon. The point is, the yahoos are throwing the buzzword “disinformation” at everything from simple mistakes to rhetorical questions. It’s going to end up like the word “racism.”

            1. Yeah, because it’s everything it’s no thing.

              I think we have to remember that we’re dealing with malignant narcissists and psychopaths. Any difference is a threat to party lockstep. We err when we put ourselves in their place without plumbing just how vile they are. It’s best for them to make us believe what isn’t true, what a rush that must be. What was it Orwell said about fearing that 2+2=5 might be true?

    4. True disinformation doesn’t need to be banned because it can easily be refuted. If you can’t refute it, how do you know it’s disinformation? Because it doesn’t agree with what the Pope government bureaucrat says?

      A lot of people believe they’re Galileo while acting like Urban VIII.

      1. Usually, they know it’s something that must be banned because it can’t be refuted.

        Kind of like “alternative facts” are the ones that are supported by the evidence….

    5. The onnly “harmful disinformation” I can think of is the argument that there exists harmful disinformation which merits government suppresioin of speech.
      ~

  14. I hope you’re right Sarah, that our lights can produce enough lumens to drive out the cockroaches.

    However the mass hysteria’s world wide and our beloved leaders control most of the wires feeding the electric to those anti-cockroach lights. It’s gonna take a lot of lux and a heck of a lot of luck to counter this world wide mass psychotic pandemic.

    Extending your gaslight metaphor, they control the wires, media, academia, etc. we may have to use gas fed to limelights to light our path out of 1984. Quite as bright as electric incandescents but as you noted might, explode.

    1. You summed up my worries, and why I continue to be pessimistic, better than I possibly could have.

  15. So it’s lunchtime, and I open Yahoo to get my daily dose of Hoyt … the featured Yahoo! “News” story is about a church in Florida, 7 of whose members, 5 of them under 35 and perfectly healthy, have just died of Covid. I cut straight to today’s AtH, of course. But after reading, I start wondering: That headline seems frightening and provocative; maybe I should actually get the details. Yahoo! “News” reopened … the story seems to have vanished. One wonders, don’t one? Just another anecdote.

    1. Doing a search of Florida church covid brings up a bunch of stories having six people dying within 10 days, causing the church to hold vaccine clinics.

    2. https://news.yahoo.com/florida-church-urging-vaccinations-6-171300268.html
      This look right?

      I can’t seem to find much for good info on it, but I did find that they require masks during services, and that this just happens to be reported right before they hold a second vaccination clinic– at the first one, over 800 people were vaccinated.

      They also quote two different pastors, and stories use the singular of “pastor,” but some stories have the quotes being half from a Joseph Cooper and half from a George Davis. (Who appears to be the founder of the group, but apparently knew one at 24 year old.)

      Given the lack of details, lack of multiple sources (like the families), and the apparent size of the group, I’m getting suspicious.

      While digging around, found that Davis apparently has a Twitter account where he laid down guilt trips, and then demanded that others take the religious and political games elsewhere.

      …Yeaaaaaaah I’ll take the ten screen IMAX for five dollars…..

  16. We must be like the characters in an old Fred Saberhagen story, “Wings out of Shadow” Bonus kudos to those who have read it.

  17. The real problem with gaslights is the gas, which contains methane and carbon monoxide. If the flame goes out, or burns improperly, everybody dies. Oops.

    As you noted, ICU beds are EXPENSIVE. So, most of the time, empty ICU beds get re-purposed for regular patients, leaving only a few free for emergencies. If more are needed, the regular patients get moved out. They might wind up on gurneys in the halls temporarily. They’re not dying. The hospital is not ‘overwhelmed’. They’re just dealing with more patients than usual, in a way they’ve planned for.

    1. Hydrogen and CO although I guess that some of the free hydrogen could ave reacted with the coal. (It is known as coal gas for a reason.)

      1. Britain mostly used “coal gas” or “town gas.” In America, natural gas (“wellhead gas”) was usually the default.

        “Coal gas” and “town gas” were mostly carbon monoxide, which is a low-value fuel. CO molecules will also hose hemoglobin and kill you, like in old British murder mysteries. Natural gas, you’d have to have enough to displace all the air around you so you smothered, and it’s not likely the small gas jets in an oven could do that unless you packed blankets or towels around your shoulders to keep the gas from dispersing.

        1. I had a distant relative commit suicide by putting her head in the gas oven. I suspect where there’s a will there’s a way.

          1. Ditto. That was back in the early 1970s. That was one of the things that led MomRed to discover that clinical depression runs in her maternal line.

          2. That was a trope in the old movies I saw on TV in the 1960s. I have a recollection of assertions that some CIA types suicided (were epsteined?) using that technique. (Source, some book I ran across at the town library in the later 1960s.)

            Our 1950s oven was dormant until you turned it on *and lit it with a match*. No idea what the detailed plumbing was, but full-on, our current oven is something like 17,000 BTUs. That’s a lot of gas.

    2. I (finally) got a poke from Orvan so I’ll add my “Hey, I’m just a bit too busy, but here and hale”
      reason I say finally is he sent it on the 6th iirc and I have not even had time for email outside of work since about the 4th.
      Also, dad’s pc beeps when i type and it is annoying

      1. Reminds me of something from one of Jerry Pournelle’s ‘Chaos Manor’ columns, back in the 80’s. He put the dot-matrix printer in another room because the noise disrupted his writing. Printing out a novel could take more than an hour, so the print spooler ran as a background routine when the computer was idle. Higher-priority activity would suspend the print spooler.

        Every time Jerry touched a key, the printer stopped. Every time he stopped typing, it started up again. It made him feel like the printer was eavesdropping, pausing in breathless anticipation of his next words. He found it impossible to write under those conditions.

      2. You also accepted a contact request from me, JP!

        Ok, so everyone, do us all a favor, yeah?

        Establish meatspace contact with someone else. Someone you’ve known on the blog or assorted media for a while and trust as much as you trust anyone. And then if you need to drop off of blog/internet, there’s someone who can check on you, make sure nothing catastrophic happened, help kick the black dog, bug you with a list of possible ways to source cat food, whatever. And let the rest of us know you’re ok, and more importantly, get you help if you aren’t.

        Please and thank you?

        I have several folks’ real contact info. I’m generally not going to bug anyone, but at least one regular can, if they so choose, confirm that I will message/text/call until response if someone goes off-radar.

        1. I do try to get a like at the least on a post if too effin busy, so someone might notice I’m still lurking about, but, as you can see by the delay here, still seem to be too preoccupied
          Though I have been doing a touch more on mewe.

    3. A non-exhaustive search shows he posted on June 21st. I didn’t look at all the subsequent posts, but he didn’t show in any samples.

      2. Take Care RES! (If you can “see” this).

        Sarah, if you’re talking with RES, Please pass on my well wishes.

        1. Thanky, all. It is well to be missed, especially when one has the proclivity for flatulent jests that I practice.

          As elsewhere mentioed, I have cut back on onliine activites for a variety of reasons, and only G-d and Bill Gates know whether they’ll ever be resolved.

          (I jest – we all know there is no Bill Gates.)
          ~

  19. Saw some stuff on more healthcare workers being fired for refusing to emergency approval vaccines, and realized that can be another way to get hospitals at “max capacity”– because “beds” isn’t how much space they have, it’s based off of current manning hours for beds, IE, how much wiggle room before they have to put in more hours/hire more nurses/ask the nurses they fired to pretty please come back.

      1. Hell, it’s called July. My mother fell down a flight of stairs while we were in Galway and cracked a couple of ribs (could have been a LOT worse). It was 48 hours before they were able to move her out of A&E up to a bed. I saw a couple people still on gurney’s in the A&E hallway when mom got out three or so days after that. They’d come in about a day after her.

        1. Same thing happened to my aunt. She broke her in Kilkee on a Saturday. They took her to the orthopedic hospital in Croom, which is miles away. They put her on the second floor despite their being no patient elevators in an orthopedic hospital. No doctor till Monday. Long and short, it never really healed.

          The winter before The WuFlu they ran out of gurneys in Limerick and Cork, never mind beds. Happens every year. When we lived there we made sure we could go private and always could come back to the US for anything complicated.

          Of course, those who wish public medicine on us won’t have to use it.

    2. I’m not sure of the situation in Oregon, but Aesop (ER nurse in SoCal, blogs at raconteur report) has his opinion of Gabbin’ Noisome’s executive order for all health care workers to get the not-vax. He’s pretty profane, and subsequent posts indicate that he’s more than a little pissed (see the Monday memes), but here’s his take:

      https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2021/08/all-hail-governor-horseass.html

      TL;DR. There’s going to be a worse acute shortage of nurses and other healthcare workers in Calif’nornia, and a lot of lawyers will have a lot to do. Meanwhile, be careful not to stand near the Gov or any of TPTB. Especially if you see red dots on or near them.

      I’ve heard rumors that Oregon was going to go that way, but haven’t seen any executive orders on such from Despicable Kate Brown.

        1. Confirmed (with slight diffrences) by my dental hygienist. It’s either take the not-vax, or submit to ChiCom virus testing twice(!) a week. My hygienist is really unhappy with the ethylene oxide (known carcinogen) used on the swabs.

          1. Caught a rumor (which I find quite believable, based on comments) that a boatload of health care workers are ready to walk off the job if the mandate comes down. FWIW, the latest vax mandate includes all state workers in the executive branch; Despicable Kate can’t do anything to legislative nor judicial employees.

            I wonder how many lower level workers calling in “I refuse” it takes to shut down a hospital or big clinic. For that matter, how many missing OSP officers does it take to turn Oregon highways into California North? (And California highways into Tiajuana North?)

              1. Yeah, well, that’s raaaaacisssss.

                From PBS:
                Black and Latino communities often have low vaccination rates – but blaming vaccine hesitancy misses the mark
                By early July 2021, nearly two-thirds of all U.S. residents 12 years and older had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine; 55 percent were fully vaccinated. But uptake varies drastically by region – and it is lower on average among non-white people.

                Many blame the relatively lower vaccination rates in communities of color on “vaccine hesitancy.” But this label overlooks persistent barriers to access and lumps together the varied reasons people have for refraining from vaccination. It also places all the responsibility for getting vaccinated on individuals. Ultimately, homogenizing peoples’ reasons for not getting vaccinated diverts attention away from social factors that research shows play a critical role in health status and outcomes.
                ~

                1. The participants in the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment were unavailable for comment, but one supposes it would be a considerably more pungent version of “Trust the government for health care? Pull the other one.”

                  For those not aware of such (am I a domestic terrorist for even posting this? Chinavirus “misinformation” is now one of the top 3 domestic terrorism concerns, according to the communists running Homeland Insecurity), here’s the CDC’s own words. Uninformed they had syphilis, they were untreated to record the progress of the disease. This, even after an effective treatment was proven.

                  I’m not going to cite Wikipedia, because I don’t entirely trust them on the narrative. Let’s try Infogalactic’s mirror…

                  https://infogalactic.com/info/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

                  The CDC has a writeup, assuming it’s not scrubbed…

                  www dot cdc dot gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm

                  1. “am I a domestic terrorist for even posting this?”

                    Short answer: YES.

                    Slightly longer answer: “Fuck your freedom!” — Arnold Schwarzenegger

                    “Uninformed they had syphilis, they were untreated to record the progress of the disease. This, even after an effective treatment was proven.”

                    And now we have the flip side, where the vaccine makers foreclosed on any possibility of figuring out long-term side effects from their vaccine by giving the control group vaccine when the FDA issued the emergency approval, because they could claim not repeating that history. Never mind that the “effective treatment” was anything but.

  20. “They’re making a list of thought criminals, which are us, and we’re making a list of thought police.”

    — SciVo on April 14, 2016

    1. “You will be chasing this the remainder of your life until you recognize that the Center For Disease Control and the Indiana State Board Of Health are giving you very bad scientific guidance.”

      “People who have recovered from COVID19 infection actually get no benefit from vaccination at all; no reduction of symptoms, no reduction of hospitalization, and suffer two to four times the rate of side effects if they are subsequently vaccinated.”

      Wow, they’re gonna go after him like Jack The Ripper. Will they arrange a ‘suicide’?

      I’ve got a better idea. Sack Fauxi and put Dr. Stock in charge!
      ———————————
      People can make stupid mistakes, but only the government can force everybody to make the SAME stupid mistakes.

        1. Thus the seven-year rule in teaching. For the first seven years, you catch everything the kids bring to school. After that? You’re pretty much immune to colds/general crud. The tummy crud? 50/50 odds.

          1. That’s because tummy crud is more often bacterial, which gives poor or no immunity.

            Back a couple decades there was an interesting survey from emergency rooms. Turns out ~90% of severe “stomach flu” was actually food poisoning. Which can behave as if contagious (get a fleck of spew on yourself and unwittingly transfer active bacterial culture to your mouth, and you’re next). Little kids can spread it among themselves like wildfire.

            That was back about when they discovered that the most severe food-borne illness arrived not on meat or fowl, but on row crops (mostly leafy green vegetables).

            1. A friend of mine used to be a health inspector in New Jersey. He said a comment complaint came from people who got violently ill in McDonald’s and called in the Health Dept while threatening lawsuits. It was my friend’s thankless job to point out you don’t get food poisoning five minutes after eating a Big Mac. It usually turned out the victim was feeling a little funky when he came in and had stopped at McDonald’s to try and “settle his stomach.”

  22. self-proclaimed elites have been doing to us for … almost two years now. (And trying to for of course much longer than that.)

    One of the results of the past two years has been my re-evaluation of what even people I used to trust told me. Lots of people and past beliefs are now at best questioned and at worst abandoned. Oddly, it has been nominally conservative writers and GOP officials who have suffered the most. If they were this onboard for the anti-Trump and covidity brigades, were they really ever on our side or “loyal” opposition.

    but no one is doing DNA analysis for every case. If you catch it, they just tag it as “delta.”

    Are they that honest? I figured if you test positive you had COVID and if you die or your local area doesn’t have enough deaths, then you have DELTA (it is in all caps, of course).

    Also, I trust numbers from any African nation on anything more than official US government COVID numbers.

    1. Goldwater/Reagan/Trump Republicans believed in “Small Government”. Nixon/Bush Republicans believe “Government needs to protect us”.
      The GOP had a split personality. Primaries are more important now than at any prior point in my life. I pray the former group prevails.

      1. Given in 2014 a lot of GOP bigwigs were endorsing the Democrat Senate candidate here (Michelle Nunn) before the GOP had a primary, I have a hard time believing winning primaries mean much except a label on the ballot, if that.

        It doesn’t mean the party will back you with money, volunteers, or campaigns unless you’re the right kind of Republican.

        1. That came up some years ago locally. The country-club Republicans were horrified at the Tea-party types running, and were furious and “you’re on your own” when the latter won the primaries. The first batch of TP county commisioners didn’t last (some clay feet, some collateral damage), but the current crop seems to have rendered the country-club types irrelevant. (A smoke-filled room attempt at reinstating the GOPe here blew up in several faces, and the “mastermind” of the thing got defeated as mayor of Flyover Falls.)

          At least one of the GOPe former commissioners flat out left town. DLTDHITYINTAONYWO, sucka!

          OTOH, fresh news is that one of the more moderate ones just got into trouble for not disclosing his son’s employment by a company that got a big county deal. He *might* survive. The company in question has a good reputation, and the commissioner might get away with an “I was an idiot” defense. Maybe. Possibly.

          1. “The country-club Republicans were horrified at the Tea-party types running, and were furious and “you’re on your own” when the latter won the primaries.”

            After telling us for YEARS we HAD to support whoever they put up (McCain, Romney, etc.). They morphed into the NeverTrumpers without a pause. “Here is naught unproven, nothing new to learn…..”

            However, they do allow Democrats cover by torpedoing anyone effective while being “bipartisan.”

      2. Here in Kalifornia the ‘jungle primaries’ yack up two Democrats most of the time. Republicans can’t even get on the ballot.

      3. Both parties used to have that kind of split personality, that’s why you could have Democrats like Truman and Kennedy, but starting in the early 1970’s the Progressives made a concentrated push to take over the Democrat party, which culminated in 2008. The next year conservatives started their move to take over the Republican party. The problem is we don’t have 40 years in which to do it.

      4. Until Republicans stop doing open primaries, the Left will determine their candidates.

    2. Admittedly too lazy to play fact-checker, but I think I read that 3 leaders of African countries and one Caribbean recently died unexpectedly. Common thread was that they refused to take the “vax” into their nations. One of them was the guy that sent some ridiculous tissue samples in for Covid testing and they all came back positive, which he knew to be impossible. He wasn’t quiet about it.

      1. https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/five-world-leaders-targeted-in-assassination-attempts-within-six-months/news-story/48911630732d0c06aa8c985212df4dca

        — Haiti, that boil on the ass of the western world, who is surprised?
        — Chad has an ongoing civil war (there are some U.S. troops there, last I heard); that whole region is suffering from Muslim invaders vs natives. (Detailed info on the link to The Africa Report.)
        — Uganda is a dumpster fire at the best of times.
        — Colombia is on the outs with Venezuela over the latter’s refugees.
        — Maldives, no idea.

  23. Re churches, I’ll give a positive anecdote.
    We’re on the road currently in West Virginia. Headed out to local Methodist church, parking lot empty. The website said services at 11, the sign on the road said 9:30. We got there at 10:40.
    When it became clear we’d missed the service, husband said, “I think I saw something,” and turned at the Catholic church. And we found an Independent Baptist church next door.

    It was….normal. No mention of masks. No mention of social distancing. They couldn’t have anyway because the place was full. Including kids. We had our hands frequently shaken, they milled around shaking hands at the passing of the peace….and not one single, solitary word about WuFlu. (One older and somewhat frail-looking gentleman wore a mask. Noone else).

    The sermon was full of joy, references to Heaven and being saved. Also to the idea that the US is “under judgment,” and that Christians are a minority, will continue to be a minority and will suffer increasing persecution. But the answer to is to be not afraid, nor ashamed of Christ. And to rejoice at the thought of seeing Him in Heaven.

    It was the most positive, energetic service we’ve seen on the road. And my beloved seems to be getting directions from above.

    2. My congregation – which has a number of people that tilt leftward – is chomping at the mouth to get the masks off. We had them off, until LA County reimposed the indoor mask rules recently.

    3. Went to a church like that last Sunday. Not saying where because I am now deep, deep in the blue,*. But I did have to drive 45 minutes to get there, our local town having been colonized by the “diverse*”

      The local churches all of course doing whatever the State government tells them to do because Jesus*.

      *LOT of personal reflection on what I did or did not do to let That happen.
      **AWFL lesbians mostly.
      ***No, Jesus does not tell you to betray your family, your duties to the republic or the Truth because Niceness uber alles. Sorry.

      1. If you happen to be around 45*-47*N, ~122* W, I’m in that area as well. I have a positive charge email, so if you need something, let I know.

      2. yep. I haven’t been to church in three months. And in my religion we have a grave obligation.
        But masks? Separate seating with proof of vax? Railings from the pulpit about your selfishness for not taking the jab? Nope.
        Hey, I should be able to do church this Sunday because we’ll be in landing place. (Then coming back to finish this house.)

  24. Please look at what California is doing with the recall. They are not even trying to hide the fraud. Not even a little bit. The Democrats believe that nobody can do anything about it because they own the California courts and the Federal Courts are too scared/in the bag to do anything about. They are destroying the Ballot Box. It was destroyed in 2020 but some people had hope that something would be done to get it working again. No, the Democrats learned that they can cheat as much as they want, as openly as they want and nothing will be done to stop or punish them. I am too old for this BS. I had hoped that this wouldn’t happen in my lifetime. I had prayed that this wouldn’t happen. But it is no longer a question of IF, it is a question of when. I don’t know what I will do. Maybe nothing, if not pushed. Fat old man, certainly not going to be marching or anything.

    Why did the Democrats have to be this stupid?

    Get ready, get everything setup, don’t wait. The forest is as dry as it can be and the Democrats are children playing with matches, lighting them and then throwing them. Just to see them burn. Laughing and partying(see Obama’s tent) without a care in the world.

    God help us all, and the Devil take the Democrats.

    1. Dave in Florida (a regular over at Ace’s blog who specializes in predicting election tallies) is hopeful that we might just beat the margin of fraud in California. Based on what he’s seeing, he believes that the Yes vote totals in the counties that the Dems don’t control will be enough. Keep in mind that what he means is that even if the Dems take every person in the counties that the Dems control who didn’t vote at all, and “helps” those people vote No, and then adds those to the number of people who actually did vote No, it still won’t outweigh the Yes votes to recall Newsome.

      We’ll see. But it’s cause for at least mild optimism.

      And if the Dems cheat, hopefully it will be blatant enough that even many of those who insist that the November presidential election was completely free and fair (and I know plenty of people in this category) will start to say, “Wait a minute…”

  25. one story about an “overhelmed? ” hospital – when I fact checked the story – the hospital said the reason is they are short 240+ nurse positions. they are offering $25,000 cash signing bonuses and simply can’t find staff.

    1. And that’s because the federal + state unemployment benefits are sufficient for nurses to live their accustomed lifestyles on without working.
      Incentives work…

      1. Not medical, but I just saw a similar conversation on Facebook. Someone posted a snark about people not being able to find jobs to pay the rent. A commenter claimed that there’s a “pay crisis” – i.e. that companies weren’t offering enough money. Someone else responded by noting that Panda Express is now paying $16.50 an hour, while Chikfila is paying $19 an hour.

        The effects of these benefits on the economy is insane.

    2. I have a friend who is an RN. Last year, she worked night shift at the local hospital. This year, she works in the county health dept, mostly doing immunizations and education. She says *many* nurses have left hospital jobs for something else. She says this will be the determinant of hospital capacity for the foreseeable future. She turned away from $50,000 bonus for completing a year as a travel nurse, that’s in addition to the lodging/meals/etc. payments they receive. She just wants her 9-5 clinics for awhile. She is not alone.

      1. Worth noting that this is a normal employment cycle: businesses pick up, work staff overtime for a while until they can be confident the uptick is going to last long enough to train new hires up to “worth their pay.”

        Meanwhile, employees put in the extra time and pay down debt, bank some for a while but eventually decide they’re living to work instead of working to live and start tellig their boss “Sorry – I got a thing with the kids tonight, you’ll have to get somebody else to cover.”
        ~

  26. So, I went to San Francisco on Saturday. Seeing a friend before she moves up to Washington state in October, and I also wanted to get her something nifty.

    I parked at Japantown, because I like their parking lot, I can do some shopping there either before or after, and sometimes I’ll have lunch there. I didn’t know that they were going to have a festival that day…and by the time I got there, they’re usually packed and the streets are full.

    Streets were quiet, crowd levels were non-existent. I got a good parking spot in the garage. Which never happens at the festivals. There was maybe a quarter of the usual vendors there. Maybe.

    So, I took a Uber to Amoeba Records in the Haight, which was where I was going to meet my friend. Do some shopping along Haight Street. I did get to enjoy a classic record store and realized just how little I wanted from there (I either own it or don’t want any of it, but still…it was nostalgic). Takes you back to the days when there was a record store in every town.

    Going to the Haight was a mistake. The entire time I was there-and the crowds never really reached more than “slightly better than summer weekday” level-I hated it. The chemical set was out on the streets, screaming from windows, and I just felt both bothered and worried. Not scared, but worried. That kind of “hair on the back of your neck” feeling that you get when you’re wondering if the chemical set might think you’re a cockroach for them to eat, that kind of thing. Everybody was on edge. Everybody seemed like they were waiting for a shoe to drop.

    I had a good time with my friend, but going into SF is becoming less and less of an option. Most of the places I want to go are closed. What little I want to get, I don’t feel the urge to spend the money to travel there just to get that. And, it’s like every time you turn on the TV, they’re trying to make us all terrified and worried and afraid and just as crazy as they are. People are leaving SF, they aren’t coming back, and no amount of employer demands are going to change this.

    And, I got a chance to play with what “gaslight” looks like in the real world. It does hide as much as it illuminates and in some ways…actual darkness would be better.

    1. The Seattle Times keeps running articles about how Seattle has been adding population throughout Covid, just not as fast as before, and most recently how the number of people living in “greater downtown” has rebounded to an all time high of just under 99,000.

      I’ve been downtown a couple of times in the last few months, and while it’s not deserted it sure ain’t full of people, either.

      1. I suspect that it’s a combination of people working from home if they can (I know people that have said, “I’m doing MORE work from home. I don’t have to go to these two hour meetings that have an hour before and an hour after of bumf and questions and donuts and nothing gets resolved…”), people not wanting to linger downtown because they can’t linger (places aren’t open to just “hang out”), and fear. A lot of people have been terrified that the Crow Flu is going to get them if they don’t do all the right things.

        I know that I’ve gotten into SF quicker on weekdays since this started than I ever did on the weekends. And weekends are even faster.

  27. Their gaslighting on climate is even worse than their gaslighting on the CCP virus. For example, see today’s hysterical “red alert” announcement by the UN that repeats their decades long “the end is nigh unless global communism is imposed RIGHT NOW”. They even claim that “it is the first time paleontologists participated in the report and that the Earth will be warmer than it has been in 100,000 years”. Never mind that 100,000 years ago was a Climate OPTIMUM, which the geological record shows was a period when live THRIVED on Earth.

    Needless to day the release was timed to go with the Democrats effort to fundamentally transform America through their massive tax and spend boondoggle that should be called “The Turning the USA into Venezuela Bill”

    They are seeking absolute power “by any means necessary” and their perfidy simply can’t be underestimated, even if their competence and intelligence is often lacking.

  28. I live close to Sturgis where the motorcycle cycle rally that killed everyone last year is happening again this year.

    Judging by the number of bikes around, it is going to be even better attended than last year. So I guess we will all be twice as dead.

    The very same people who were certain sure that every street in the entire state was going to be filled with diseased dead bodies last year are convinced that it will even be worse this year because of DELTA!

    Evidently, in the back of their reptilian brains they somehow get that vaccines didn’t help.

    Or they are listening to the nightly news.

    Or both.

    The attendees are having a good time though. And virtually zero mask wearing anywhere.

  29. My university president just put out an email last week that as of Monday (today) everyone is encouraged to mask indoors. He even included a gratuitous appeal to emotion, “Even if you are cavalier about your own safety because you perceive (rightly or wrongly) that you are not at risk, I would ask you whether you are comfortable with infecting up to nine other people, some of whom may be at high risk of significant illness or death. I hope you are not.” He also added that masks are “effective”. They can be, but not for an airborne nor an aerosolized virus.

    1. My question to the university president would be, “Why are you forcing people who ‘may be at high risk of significant illness or death’ to come to the office?”

    2. With all appropriate courtesy, the university president can go fuck himself in the kidneys with a tarnished spoon and a rusty barbecue fork.

      During the lockdown, many employers for blue collar workers ceased to provide work to their employees. Many of the universities at the same time arranged to continue in operation, with ‘masking’ as one of their pretenses to having addressed the claimed hazard.

      Universities pretty much by definition have undergraduates, as well as a number of international graduate students. The undergraduates are an many cases not prone to habitual hygeine, or to carefully conservative choices in the matter of personal risks. They are a petri dish for infection. International graduate students cross a national border at least once during their studies. They are an avenue for spread of infection. Trump tried to suspend visas for international students who were only enrolled in online courses, and the universities complained.

      “We are all in this together” was and is a lie. The same medical schools endorsing economic hardship for others were willing to turn a blind eye to associated universities trying to maintain undergraduate enrollment, and to bring in potential bioweapons vectors in from China on student visas.

      But that is all okay, because masking.

      The medical faculty almost certainly know that this stuff about masking is a politically convenient lie. Any university with an engineering program could just ask a mechanical engineering faculty; entropy means that separating out fluid particles from air takes work. The masks we are encouraged to use, and to consider adequate, are not powered, or chemically active. So they are mechanical separators, and are powered by breathing putting a pressure difference across the filter media. The masks do not have appropriate filter media, do not seal properly around the edges, and do not have straps carrying tension enough to seal around the edges.

      They are a cheap theatrical pretense at providing the alleged safety, and due to bacterial concentration are actively harmful.

      That university president wanted to suck up to the Democrats, and so tried to avoid compromising their disinformation. That university president also not willing to reduce business activity to a level that the university would provide adequate masks for. That university president also wants to profit by supporting the current tyranny, and to mock the appearance of safety without paying the costs that ‘university researchers’ would see inflicted on others.

      University presidents, senior administrators, and law school heads are often among those seriously underrated in people’s understanding of deeply guilty persons who are complicit in recent serious criminal acts. That subset of university presidents, university senior administrators, and law school heads are beyond the bounds of civilized discourse, and do not deserve the benefit of doubt.

      It might be reasonable for the public to conclude that they are deliberately promoting the spread of bacterial bioweapons, and should be compelled to cease activity.

      Even without that, CRT is reason to dismantle the universities, and ensure that professional schools are entirely separate organizations from any place with critical theory researchers.

        1. I was careful not to say that.

          So will neither confirm, nor deny.

          Additionally I am both on slightly short sleep, and have been able to tell that my forecasting, intellectually speaking, is not something I should be trusting for details.

          1. I’m also short on sleep, so my forecasting is incredibly strong.

            Oh, the tumbrils are rolling and they’re
            Coming to town
            I wonder if they’re coming for me.
            (Sung tot he tune of the wells fargo wagon.)

  30. Topic-adjacent, apologies, but I just got an email from Providence Health (WA) saying that they couldn’t come to an agreement over compensation with Cigna*, so that means that as of September 1, if I want to see my doctor of 15 years I’m going to have to pay out-of-network prices.

    [Cue long string of profanity]

    On the other hand, his office is all the way across town so on the infrequent times I did have to see him it was inconvenient. But now I have to train up a new one.

    [Cue more profanity]

    (* Providence said “pandemic caused higher costs and lower revenue”, Cigna said “too bad, we won’t pay any more, and how about a cut on top of that?” Sigh.)

    1. My primary doc sent a letter saying, sorry we don’t take your insurance anymore so you’ll have to go elsewhere. Okay, found another doc that I like better anyway and he happens to be an MD and DO, and seems to listen better. Then my original primary makes contact and says I’m past due for an appointment! Hey, remember the letter you sent? Oh, sorry, that was a mistake. Come back to us. No and hell no.

      On the heels of that, I needed a new dentist, so I go to a local one, get x-rays and exam. Then the tech switches on the monitor on the wall and a dentist starts talking about a crown I should think about getting. I’m wondering why the dentist is sitting in her office and not standing next to me. When I asked, they said, oh our dentist left abruptly to open his own office but we should have another in 2 months from now! The dentist on the screen was in one of their other offices about 90 miles away! Of course, it was followed by a, “How Did We Do?” e-mail survey.

      Going back to my old pattern of seeing doctors as little as possible.

      1. My dentist (DDS) was the junior partner to her father, the DMD. When Dad passed away, they found another DMD for the hairy procedures, and they carried on. For reasons, there are a lot of dental practices in town, with one chain gone toes up, another succeeded in pissing most people off, with the third considered OK. (They are a teaching practice; our neighbor goes there and has had good luck with the DDS resident types.)

        OTOH, my DDS and DMD are both good, friendly, affordable (with good hygenists and assistant types), and have no apparent plans to conquer the state. One side benefit is that my hygenist’s (yes, that’s been fixed since I started many years ago) treatment room has the best view of $WACKING_GREAT_MOUNTAIN in the area.

  31. Read the Book of Job in the Bible. God allows things in our lives for His purposes. Note that Job got back double everything he lost.

    Cancer, unemployment, drooling dentia patients elected to President and Speaker of the House… It’s fair.

    How is it fair, you ask? America has killed more unborn “legally” be abortion than Stalin killed Kulaks. And we, as a people, keep reelecting the same amoral grifters.

    Put on the whole armor of God and pray (Ephesians 6:10-20). Or not. Still your choice.

    3. … we, as a people, keep reelecting the same amoral grifters.

      But do we actually keep reelecting them? Because we have limited knowledge, it’s almost impossible for us to know how much fraud there is, and whether the “leaders” (contempt quotes) who keep pushing for more murdered babies really were elected by legitimate votes or not. But God knows the origin of every single ballot, and whether it was really cast by a real voter or was manufactured by a fraudster. He knows which of those leaders really represent the will of the American people, and which do not. And there are many places in the Scriptures where God delivers punishment selectively, punishing a nation for its sins but sparing the people within the nation who were innocent of that sin.

  32. My current annoyance/concern is with the current talking point that, “blue states (or blue cities within red states) subsidize thriftless, improvident red states,” So residents of red states should show proper gratitude and subservience.

    1. Which red staters look at the livestock and fields, and when we’re done laughing . . . yeah.

    2. This has been a long-running thing from the left. My understanding is that it depends on a number of different factors, including how you account for the costs and effects of military bases in states, and similar such things.

      I tend to snort and ignore those sorts of arguments these days.

      1. The American left is a scam.

        Part of that is the electoral fraud.

        But part of what is sells, as opposed to what it brands itself as selling, is ‘suck up to the powerful, and glean the scraps of their extra wealth’. They push a narrative of wealthy leftists, that you alienate by being visibly right, but who can make life happier if you please them. Left lies constantly, but some lies have more effective utility. To make the scam work better, they have to juice up actual wealth in left hands by creating illusion of more wealth. (Some of the left spend unwisely in support of that illusion. The left does not feel personally obligated to support those that impoverish themselves this way.) These people are not interested in realistic, accurate, or holistic views of how wealth actually works.

        Anyway, apparently, scammers tend to rely on the greed of their marks. A narcissist scammer model would explain some of the left reaction to folks who aren’t greedy enough to fall for their con.

      2. The trick I saw was calculating earnings based on where the head office is.

        So if your farming alliance has the tax office in [Big City of state], as is common, then they count all that rural earning as city earnings.

      3. Oh, and freeways are counted against the area they’re in– not the area they serve.

        So that airport outside of the city limits? All expenses are rural, all earnings are at the company office– city.

    3. That one always makes me want to breathe fire and rend flesh, because I *do* live in a Highly Subsidized Red Area (upstate NY, basically an old rustbelt town–so, picture standards of living and state benefits set by NYC, which more-or-less everyone is eligible for.

      And, I mean, if you want to make it super-difficult to hire, a *thriving* underground economy, widespread drug use, kids out of wedlock… (and, you know, it doesn’t seem to matter if you say “We consider ourselves married, we’re just not making it official because benefits,” those relationships don’t frequently seem to last past the kid’s second birthday.)

      And you have to wonder if maybe, just maybe, seeing all these effects on a population miiiiight influence someone to think that a lot of these blindly compassionate policies just don’t have the vaunted beneficial effects they’re supposed to. Whodathunkit, right? -_-

  34. Being an old person, I studied and learned about Marxism. It’s all about power and control. As a nurse for many, many years, I say this: the delta variant is basically nothing more than the usual variant that comes from a virus….the flu virus has zillions of variants….all viruses do, because that’s what they do. That’s how viruses live and survive. Vaccines are made to “try” to cover most “usual” variants, but immunology can’t predict the life of a virus….it tries, but it just can’t. If a person takes the vaccine for flu or covid, they are covering themselves for “most” variants. So they should feel safe.
    Marxism is about control and power. Today our Democrat Socialist Government is pushing hard and harder to “control” people. They see 2022 elections coming>>>>>>>>>>>they push harder and harder. They feel “fear of loss of control”. They will invent anything (a new crisis) to, with the help of media, control until 2022 Nov.
    Remember this………………do not let the Government invade your personal healthcare or “mandate” a healthcare decision to you that THEY HAVE NO RIGHT CONSTITUTIONALLY TO DO! FIGHT THEM!!

    1. If sixty two is your date of birth, you ain’t old. You’re late middle aged.
      Like me.
      Young enough for support work. And in your case much better equipped to support people. Nurses are more valuable than writers in foxholes.

  35. Yesterday, I learned that excessive masking is an alternative explanation to vaccines for strokes.

        1. Seattle schools will be all masked this coming school year. I’m sure Covid won’t be transmitted much if at all from student to student or student to teacher*, but I really wonder what the incidence will be of strep throat, sinus infections, and bronchitis, compared to “normal” years. I assume we’ll never hear about it, of course.

          (* I’m sure that every case of a teacher getting Covid — even though vaccinated — will be trumpeted to the skies, even if it’s obvious they got it from somebody outside the school.)

        2. As I keep telling folks, my mom has permanent lung damage.

          She got walking pneumonia from wearing a (cloth, effective against burning trees) mask for longer than the OSHA allowed time, because it was that or let cows burn to death.

          THAT is the “not a real risk” that they are demanding I take, because they are scared of a bad flu.

  36. Even the fellow who built a cabin to live off-grid and had it set up for gas lighting also had electric light. It was 12V as I recall, but he wasn’t willing to single-source illumination. Also, he wanted the TV to work

    And the cabin went up in flames…. storing a propane tank (not a one-pounder…) indoors was a Bad Idea. But moving it while the wood stove had a fire going was the Worse Idea. Valving got hit whilst moving the tank and… free flowing flammable gas, roaring ignition source. He and the fellow moving the tank survived pretty much unscathed (miracle…) but the cabin & everything in it was history.

  37. “… what the assholes in the self-proclaimed elites have been doing to us …”

    Oh, they are elite, alright – by their standards, and as they can conceive of no other standards they think they’re right. They contrl the levers of power and institutions which they deem important, after all.

    The fact that most of the nation avoids those institutios as sources of cooties completely escapes them.

    And yes, I am making a return visit, albeit a brief one. Eyes are mostly back to normal, a single, clear visioin piercing the gloom of the gaslighters. OTOH, my aging computer is developig more quirks than a nervous wallaby, prone to freezing at random yet all too frequent intervals when the browseers are not simply collapsing in utter terror at what comes across their tabs. I have found that spending less time active online has enhanced my enjoyment of life and will like make o more than sporadic appearances for yet a while.
    ~

    1. Replace your old computer with a Raspberry Pi. I connected one to my TV and it’s working great. $75 for a computer with quad-core 64-bit ARM v8 processor, 8 GB RAM, dual 4K HDMI outputs, two USB2 ports, two USB3 ports, gigabit Ethernet, wireless networking and Bluetooth.

      That’s more computer than you could get for any price not so long ago.

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