Level Setting

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

The time has come to have the most serious talk in a hundred years, a talk that is overdue by at least a hundred years. It needs to be discussed, history needs to be known, and we need to change course as fast as possible.

I don’t know at this point whether we can — or should. More on that later — avoid the butcher’s bill. But I know the sooner we have this talk and change course, the smaller that bill will be. And the less time will be lost. And, hey, perhaps we can avoid, at least for a time, the reiteration of a murderous cycle that has already swallowed a century of history.

First let’s talk about levels. And getting off level. First of all, if I don’t use a level, everything I do tilts to the right (stop laughing) since I had major concussion. I don’t realize it, until I see the results later on. Then there’s the time I had a massive “silent” ear infection. I’m known for them, and won’t realize sometimes for weeks. One of the things it messes with is my balance. I start tilting slowly, until I’m walking almost sideways, still convinced everything is normal. (This is usually when husband corrals me and drags me to the doctor.)

What I mean here is that it’s easy for humans, individually or collectively, to get out of plumb and while thinking they are still completely normal tilt more and more until they’re doing something in a bizarre — or for society’s often monstrous — way, without realizing it.

Do you think that Germany woke up one morning and went “Hey, let’s kill six million people — men, women and innocent children — and use their body parts to make stuff? And treat them worse than we’d treat any animal?

No. Of course not. It started with what everyone knew and acknowledged as only sensible. They had just enough biological knowledge that eugenics seemed super-sensible. They’d also lost a war, were under financial pressure due to wretched leaders, but believed that “the best people should lead” and it was easier to turn on a minority in their midst than to confront their failures as a people, since part of their ideology (and still that of most of Europe) was that their nationality was a race, and superior to all others. (The only thing different between them and the rest of Europe is… well, nothing. Every European country considers itself the “master race” even if they don’t voice it most of the time. Turning on a minority, treating people as things, invading and plundering their neighbors: all of that was easier than confronting the bizarre and inherent contradictions in what “everybody knew.” But they didn’t decide it overnight. They did it a little bit at a time, to relieve psychological pressure, until they were full-on-monsters and still lying to themselves. Those people who said they had no clue what was happening down the street? Well, they weren’t precisely lying. Of course they knew, they could smell the smoke. But they couldn’t tell even themselves the truth.

Which brings me to the situation we’re in. There are now people who aren’t me (mostly because I didn’t say it, even when I thought it, except I think once at instapundit) saying that we need Nuremberg trials for the people — worldwide — who used a virus that they may or may not have cooperated in creating and unleashing as an excuse to make war on their own citizens.

Are they right? Have the crimes committed against the world reached that point? I don’t know. But I know the path we’re threading. And if they’ve not, they soon will.

These people have knowingly and with malice aforethought unlawfully imprisoned the citizens of their country; restricted them in the earning of a living and commandeered their private property and businesses through enforcement of mask laws which have no basis in science; closure of eating establishments, which ditto; closure and curtailment of the operation of stores. They have barred citizens of the use of parks, public buildings, and other community property financed from those citizens’ taxes. They have refused to allow their citizens the exercise of religion. They have forbidden the use of medicines which might or might not be effective, but seem to work in the rest of the world (and are not, at any rate, sufficiently harmful to be forbidden.) They have forced on a vast majority of the population an untried gene therapy and then at the same time hid the deleterious side effects while forcing people to take it to be allowed some measure of liberty.

They have done all this, not just with lack of proof, but in full contravention of proof that it does nothing. The highest vaccinated states have the same rates of hospitalization and death as the least vaccinated; the states that are ordering full masking and lockdown have the same effects as those that haven’t.

Perhaps less important — except to those affected — they have effectively banned international travel unless you take said untried gene therapy (Yes, I would like to see my father, thank you so much. No. I’m not going to mess with my wonky immune system for something that doesn’t protect anyone from illness and is insufficiently tried.) They have unnecessarily terrified anyone within reach of their mass media leading them to believe a “bad flu year” is the equivalent of the black plague. They have caused seniors in their final years to be deprived of contact with their family and friends, causing rapid cognitive decline and often death.

They have laid off health care workers and closed hospitals, denying critical treatment to those in dire need of it, and deeming everything that didn’t have to be done right then “elective.” Yes, this included cancer surgeries. No, this wasn’t while the hospitals were full. In fact most hospitals are more empty than they’ve ever been. Also least staffed. But fear not, they are importing Chinese doctors (And others, but a truly spectacular number of Chinese) by the plane full. As we know it is a culture that respects human rights and freedoms and would never use humans as experimental animals, so you have nothing to fear. (And I wish to make clear for idiots reading this, I have nothing against people of Chinese ancestry who have been raised as Americans and are doctors. I do have issues with our recent training of doctors, but they’re not worse than anyone else. On the other hand, people raised in the post-Mao and now Xi-poisoned culture of China have been poisoned by the same authoritarianism that has galloped through the west these last two years.)

Are these crimes worthy of Nuremberg trials? How many people have they killed and treated like penned animals?

We don’t have a count, and we’re never likely to, since, unlike the Nazis, they don’t keep accurate records. (Perhaps because they learned, perhaps because they are unable to find their own butthole with two hands and a seeing eye dog, being in fact 4th generation Marxists, which is to say idiots.)

But if treating all of your citizens as enemies, attempting to torture them, intending to destroy their economy, culture and long-accustomed ways and force them into an unnatural pattern of living and having — as has been stated often — the intention of reducing their numbers and their standard of living is not a crime comparable to those that led to the Nuremberg trials, then we owe the monsters there tried an apology. Because their errors were of the exact same quality and perhaps less ambitious in scope, since they didn’t make war and terror on the vast majority of the population of their country. (Well, they did, in a way, but that was not their aim.)

However that is not the level we must set; the conversation we must have.

It is important to realize why this keeps happening. By the numbers. In vast quantities. Over and over. If you want to go back far enough, I’d say since the French revolution. People in power imposing bizarre, insane rules on the rest of the population, and making people cosplay illusions and philosophical theories that have no basis in reality.

Just like the French revolutionaries forced everyone to give up the names of the normal days of the week, or attend temples to “reason” or other insanity, our would be lords and masters whimsically suggest double masking, or tell you to stay home, as if your car were contaminated, or make you give up Christmas and cancel fourth of July celebrations, because fireworks carry cooties, or–

All this: a small group turning a vast mass of people into experimental animals, whether social or biological; treating free citizens as widgets and things; demanding you conform to their internal psychodramas is rooted on one thing: the belief that a small number of people knows what’s best for society and can tell you how to live and what to do.

This has been particularly in evidence in the twentieth century, which is why it’s probably the largest graveyard of history. The experts knew what you should eat and what you should wear, what you should learn and what you should buy and how much you should pay for it. And always, even now, the experts knew which lives were worthy of life, and which… weren’t.

As long as that goes on, Nuremberg-like trials will be needed again and again and again, even if they aren’t in fact enacted. I still say we should have hanged Putin and all his ilk from their own rotten guts. Because it’s important for the monsters to die. And it’s important to know they were killed for crimes against humanity. We should have hunted down every petty Marxist, every bureaucrat, here and aboard, and tried them for their share of the 100 million dead at the hands of their ideology (and that’s those directly killed, not counting other casualties.) We should have rubbed their faces in the misery, death and deprivation their grandiose theories and their demand people enact them created. Yeah, some of them were merely idiots and not deserving of death. But they should have been tried, and made to feel their guilt.

We didn’t. And we didn’t — and this is very important — repudiate the poisonous and horrifying idea that a small number of people should have the power to enact vast, sweeping changes in the way the mass of people live their everyday lives.

Yes, there are times — rare — in which the common defense demands unified response. That was the lesson the Romans learned from Hannibal’s attack.

They are rare, they are limited in scope, and they should be restricted to those occasions in the Constitution (in America. Part of letting go of the poisonous idea of centralization is to say I neither know nor care how the foreigners choose to live their lives. I will have opinions, but so long as they leave us alone, it’s their bailiwick.)

All other powers should be exercised at the most regional level possible. And the rights, judgement and ability to choose how to live of the citizen shall not be infringed unless they are affecting someone else (and this would need proof. None of this “you wear a mask to protect me.”)

There might be a time a city block or a house needs to quarantine. Locking up an entire country is not quarantine. It’s false arrest and an act of totalitarianism. And it must be punished, but more importantly, all of them — every one, from the people who corrupted our legal institutions, to the journalists who propagandized fear and panic-porn — must be made to know what they did wrong and must make restitution. Let’s not make the same mistake we made with the fall of communism.

And let’s restructure. The Constitution was written by men who understood well the power and fear of epidemic disease, but they did not put a clause in there saying all our rights are suspended in case of a bad epidemic respiratory illness, nor did they create a post that allows some bureaucrat to play doctor to people he doesn’t know and whimsically dictate what they can and can’t do.

It’s time to get back to government by the people for the people, and to most rights devolving to states, municipalities and ultimately individuals.

Or we will need to hang monsters again and again and again. And millions will be sent to their graves in terror and abject horror again and again and again.

Centralized power kills. Efficiently or stupidly, but it kills.

Give no small group of humans the power kill millions. Start spreading the word. It’s time to level set. You know the tune:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.-

361 thoughts on “Level Setting”

  1. I’m looking at a couple of the more recent developments.

    The arbitrary termination of monoclonal antibody treatment should be impeachable. FICUS’s spokecreep is in full gaslighting mode, with condescension and Snidely Whiplash sneering toppings. (Is there any way for Florida to get the goodies smuggled in? Just thinking out loud…)

    The reaction by Fidel’s son over the Canada truck convoy leads me to wonder if he’s stupid/crazy enough to have military/police action against the protestors, and just how does he think the cities in Canada will get food when the likely backlash happens. The good news on that is the news that other countries are starting to get trucker convoys. Just how does one deal with a bunch of pissed-off Finns?

    1. “Just how does one deal with a bunch of pissed-off Finns?”

      Drop caseloads of alcohol behind you as you flee for your life?

    2. “Is there any way for Florida to get the goodies smuggled in? Just thinking out loud…)”

      If the factories are in the US, probably not since they will be ordered shut down.

        2. Can’t smuggle what ain’t made. And monoclonal antibodies are a whole nother level from meth or fentanyl.

        3. Oh no! No one ever uses fast boats, fishing boats, submarines, airplanes, or anything else at all to smuggle things into Florida. Nope, never. Pinkie swear. (Or would if I had a pinkie claw.) I mean, it’s not like smuggling becomes a national sport when someone announces a blockade or anything. *harmless kitty look here*

          1. Which means we will get to find out just how much “security theater” has been involved when something is being smuggled that the powers that be actually don’t like.

    3. The whole issue of monoclonal antibodies is very strange. The EUA requires there to be no treatments, but they anecdotally seemed effective. I assume that’s why they have been withdrawn – is Omicron really 99% of our cases now?

      By why approval monoclonals instead of Ivermectin or HCQ? I think it’s because monoclonals are disgusting.

      I think they derived perverse satisfaction from people getting injected with that perverse concoction. Go take a look at everything that it is derived from, including humanized mice made originally from an aborted fetus.

      If I were dying would I take it? I actually might, but I would want to know I did everything else to avoid them, like trying the other drugs which are currently banned, but they took that away from me. If you want to live, you have to take this stuff. Sickos.

      2. “Go take a look at everything that it is derived from, including humanized mice made originally from an aborted fetus.”

        I see that we can add That Hideous Strength to the list of dystopias we are living in.

    6. 50,000 truckers are not hauling cargo in the middle of a Canadian winter. There will be noticeable consequences. Just be sure blame is laid on the government where it belongs.

        1. ….private individuals publicly protesting the government forcing people– many of those protesting are vaccinated, and opposing it on principle– into a medical experiment, and THEY are the fascists?

          … and I thought that the “you really have no idea what that word means, do you” with the f-bomb-as-punctuation sorts was painful.

    7. Yes, if you go by what’s in the Canadian government media/CBC [but I repeat myself], his government is going to use force against the truckers and their supporters. I . . . hope the official bluster is bluster, but as crazy as that government can get, well, I wouldn’t bet against the RCMP and military being told to go after the protesters.

        1. I am seriously hoping that the non-Toronto Canadians still what it takes to be the first people called “stormtroopers”. I’m not super optimistic, though

        2. The Toronto Star ran a cartoon labeling every trucker as a “fascist.” Soon it will be worth about as much as “racist.”
          BTW, the leadership,of BLM has vanished (the woman with the mansion ostentatiously quit and nobody knows who or where the new “leadership,” is) and so has $60 million in funds. Why am I not surprised?

      4. You mean like this?

        ““Let me be very clear: we are prepared to investigate, arrest if necessary, charge and prosecute anyone who acts violently or breaks the law in the demonstrations, or in association with the demonstrations,” Chief Peter Sloly said Friday morning. “We have the capability and commitment to pursue investigations and prosecutions well after the demonstrations have ended.” ”

        https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2022/01/stellantis-makes-decision-on-vaccine-truckers-head-to-ottawa/

    8. Speaking of Florida- my son living there is doing just fine after contracting covid. His doctor prescribes the full I-MASK+ protocol at covid19criticalcare.com He said that 2-3 hours after the first ivermectin dose he started to feel better. Has one more day on ivermectin and steroids. His doctor says they haven’t lost a patient yet treating them with this. I think that’s where the breaking point will eventually be- the deliberate suppression of effective treatments.

      1. We have meekly passed so many ‘breaking points’ already that I am losing hope for the survival of the independent American spirit.

        “…that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

        It is truly astounding, what evils have already been deemed sufferable by the sheeple.

        1. If you take a sample across the entire country, sure. The problem is that the country isn’t uniform, not even a little. Even rural Washington and Oregon aren’t doing what they’re “supposed” to do.

          Iowa got a not crazier than I like, but we didn’t even go Texas level kung flu crazy– how many of the other breaking points didn’t break because those who would’ve broken went somewhere else?

    9. From AoSHQ:

      One of the things that’s going to have to change now that we’ve blown up the whole “just-in-time” global supply architecture is the set of accounting rules that tax inventory. When they made that change back in the 1980s, it probably looked like a good idea, but it was one of the things that drove a lot of manufacturing offshore, and was only really enabled by the burgeoning of globalization. Now that we’re finding out what globalization really costs, well… Yeah, it’s due for a bit of a re-think.

      Years ago, I read a book that was enthusiastic about the “just-in-time” supply philosophy. But the author stressed the necessity of high trust in relationships between the supplier and manufacturer (or retailer, or whatever) in such a system. “High trust” is not the direction our domestic and international relations are going.

      And “just-in-time” systems never really allowed for disasters or emergencies very well. We need more inventory. We don’t need to tax businesses more on inventory.

      I’m not ready to damn all MBAs to the theological place of eternal punishment just yet; but they’re next after the current crop of “elected” Democrat moochers and looters.

      1. The federal judges who agreed to the ruling that made just-in-time far cheaper in tax bill terms than having inventory on hand are close to those MBAs, IMHO.

  3. Totally unrelated:

    A bridge collapsed in Pittsburgh this morning… mere hours before FICUS was scheduled to give a speech to rally support for his $1.7 trillion “infrastructure” plan.

    https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2022/01/28/frick-park-bridge-collapse-latest-updates/

    Paranoid part of my brain (though I admit Mama Raptor put forth the idea before I thought of it) is now wondering if the collapse was not accidental and the timing not coincidentally convenient.

    1. Why didn’t last year’s $1.2 trillion ‘infrastructure’ plan prevent it? Why should we believe giving the government EVEN MORE of our money to waste would prevent future bridge collapses?

      2. Giving government agents money and power is even more irresponsible than giving teenage boys alcohol and car keys. The former is somewhat limited in the scope of damage he might cause. The latter’s petty desire for control leads to a much wider swathe of destruction.

      3. Friend posted a picture from under that bridge that showed one of the supports completely rusted through. Only thing holding it together were cables. Picture was taken four years ago.

        1. Yeah. I give the interstate overpasses around here a hairy eyeball whenever I go near them. Some are old enough to get Social Security. Many are being replaced, but it only takes one “oopsie” to cause mayhem. (Like a few years ago, when a guy had a heart attack, drove off the overpass and hit the abutment. The load of tires caught on fire and the heat did in the overpass.)

        2. There used to be a professor at Cooper Union in NY who took reporters from the local papers on an annual trip under the Manhattan Bridge. The “party favor” was a piece of iron off the bridge that he would break off an hand to them. It really only became noticed when the skells started to use the wooden balks holding up the roadway as fuel for their winter fires. The thing is that the Manhattan Bridge is in better shape than the 59th Street Bridge where the outer roadway visibly slants down.

          the Cooper Union guy has been gone now these 30 years and nothing has been done.

          If you have to cross the east river, use the Brooklyn Bridge, the first and still the best. Roebling built it to last.

            2. They say that the Old Hells Gate railway bridge is the one structure in NY that could last like the pyramids.

              1. No joke. I’ve been over it a number of times, it is the most massive, imposing bridge I’ve ever seen in person. Suspension bridges, even the big ones, can be quite impressive, but they’re mostly airy affairs. The Brooklyn Bridge and its little elder brother, Cincinnati’s Roebling Suspension Bridge, have masonry towers than most modern bridges, but nothing like the presence of Hells Gate.

          2. Usually, those repairs are both a fine idea, *and* mean that you pass the inspection with a footnote– that the repairs will be done.

            That’s normal for anything where you can’t take it out of operation, especially when someone catches the problem before it gets too big; the blame would lie on whoever kept repairs for being done, *if* that was even still there before the collapse. (And yes, after the “prevent issue you can see coming” fix is done, the broken spot does seem to deteriorate a lot faster than it was doing before– not sure why, I’ve just seen in in ships, and buildings, and structures.)

            Were the repairs in process? Were they stopped by some sort of disagreement? (Built in the 60s, wasn’t it? So probably lead mitigation, at the least.)

            1. Or someone wanted additional environmental impact statements and new steps taken to protect any waters below the bridge. (That’s one complaint I’ve read over and over – regulations change mid-process, so the process is forced to stop and address the new regulations, and only then resume.)

          3. Scene from “Falling Free” by Lois McMaster Bujold (loose paraphrase from memory)

            Engineer (teaching a class): “That, is the most evil object you will ever see.”
            Students, confused:
            Engineer: “That is a falsified test report.”
            Engineer: (detailed explanation of what had happened and the lives it had cost)
            Engineer: “Remember, you may fool men, but you’ll never fool the metal.”

            That scene has stuck with me since I first read it these many years ago.

  4. There will be a reckoning. What angers me to my very core is how they took American’s generosity and care for their fellow man and used it to put a jackboot on our necks.

      1. Power is an innately corrupting force. It is naked temptation, and it takes a strong will and moral character to resist it. Even then, the slightest lapse of will leads one to use that power, seek more, and so on.

        That is not to say that power in and of itself is innately *evil.* We all hold some manner of power at some point in our lives. To use it justly is to use the least amount of force possible.

        Put it another way, term limits, no golden parachutes, and make public every law and regulation voted on, and *who* proposed, voted, abstained, or voted against. Make public those who actually *show up* for these votes (see Marjory Taylor Greene’s comments on the fact that the majority of Congress doesn’t even show up for the votes). Let the business of government be made clear, concise, and limited in scope, reduce bloat and shrink it down to the smallest local level.

        Americans are quite able to govern themselves given the chance. As you said, the insults on our honor have grown great and terrible. Best we look to cleaning up our own act soonest.

          1. Alas, it would only result in (even more) fudging of the “poverty line” but a Congressional Salary kept BELOW that line (GET A REAL JOB!) does have some initial appeal.

            2. Ax minimum wage laws. Congress gets paid if and only if their budget is balanced. No bonus when the economy improves as long as they are the ones measuring whether said economy improves or not. Congresscritters no longer allowed to send representatives (HA!) in their stead to stand votes. Congresscritters must live in their district a minimum of 300days/year and have open office hours at minimum twice a week so their constituents can give them what for in person.

              Congress may pass no law or regulation to which they themselves are exempt. Congresscritters may vote on no laws or regulations that they have not themselves read in full (trickier to manage that one, but I like it). Congresscritters found to be willingly compromised by foreign agents subject to treason laws and punishments. Laws must be written in common language, available to the public, and must be read in full by the legislator proposing them aloud in public session.

              Congresscritters may not remain in session for a term greater than 1 week per year absent invasion. No, self created emergencies do not count. Congresscritters not allowed to serve more than two terms consecutively. Congresscritters not allowed to add to proposed laws, but line item veto is possible. No law (with penalty) by regulation- either submit it as law in clear language or eliminate it (and the regulatory state) entirely.

              Penalties for legislators and any government official that willfully or negligently allows the laws on the books to be broken or ignored- either change the law or repeal it, but you cannot ignore it (“space to destroy” my arse). Any laws proposed must be subject to a 30 day waiting period in which the public can view the proposed law in its entirety. Ax the IRS, BATFE (ought to be a convenience store), Depts of Ed, FBI, Pentagon, the BLM (Bureau of Land Management, not Burn, Loot, & Murder).

              And make the penalties for representatives and gov’t employees that fail their due diligence on par with what FFL folks have to deal with if they lose a 4473 or something. Government office ought to be subject to more restrictions, not less, than the common folk. What we need is common sense government control people. Is that too much to ask?

              2. There’s supposed to be a 60-180 day comment period when we can see pending rules and weigh in on them (I’ve done it for aviation regs, back when I was in the business.) Very rarely that is waived because of emergencies (fatal flaw in a piece of equipment leads to “stop flying right now and check this!!” orders after a couple of plains break mid-flight). However, you have to look for that, know a reg change is being proposed, track down the proposal, read the thing, know what it means, comment . . . Yeah. Too cumbersome and arcane for most people to spend the required time wading through.

              3. Personally, I’d prefer to have all expenses (including office rentals in DC) for congresscritters and their staffs paid solely by the states that sent them. That includes pensions and health insurance.

                That they get paid by the federal government out of money they control is not a situation in which “makes it advantageous for corrupt men to do the right thing”… or however that phase goes.

                1. For the wrong men to do the right thing, the latter needs to be of obvious benefit to them. Becoming re-elected is not enough. But stranger things have happened than a bad man coming to desire the honor and respect given him for doing the right thing,

              1. One angle on SCOTUS striking down the OSHA vaccine mandate, basically on the grounds that Congress didn’t have pandemic diseases in mind when they wrote a statute about things like guard rails and asbestos, is that maybe it opens the door to getting rid of “Chevron deference”, where all an agency has to do is come up with a “reasonable” excuse for whatever they want to implement and the courts won’t look any further.

          3. Once per year, absent invasion. Balanced budget required, overruns cut into salaries. Corral lobbyists and either outlaw the revolving door or tame it somehow. Make proper behavior in their best interest and they’ll work to maintain it- at least for a while.

          4. I’d worry about this backfiring. In particular I’d worry about it giving even more power to unelected bureaucrats.

            A big part of the corruption is that Congress, instead of jealously keeping hold of its power the way the Constitution expected, delegated so much power to the Executive civil service. Now the regulations “having the force of law” greatly outmass the actual laws.

            It’s the Swamp that needs to be drained, the Deep State that needs to be pulled up by the roots.

              1. French revolution, battle of Athens TN back in the late 40’s, a few other skirmishes here and there.
                Trouble is once you clean the local roaches out and get back to your normal life the bastiches always manage to sneak back in.

                1. Don’t forget the 1917 October Revolution. Although they just wound up replacing the old bureaucrats with a new bunch.
                  ———————————
                  They kill a lot of people, overthrow their corrupt rulers and replace them with a new batch of corrupt rulers. Viva la revolution! Yesterday’s oppressed become tomorrow’s oppressors.

                  1. And that was the second Russian Revolution in 1917. The first one didn’t go far enough for Lenin’s (and the Germans’) tastes.

              2. Must Issue gun laws– where the burden to refuse a carry permit is placed on those refusing, ie, presumption of right.
                Homeschool laws starting at the “we’re informing you, not asking you” level and going from there.

                Pretty much *any* reform that requires that the bureaucrat holds the burden of proof if they want to go from record-keeping to refusing, when it started as “giving permission” type stuff.

    2. I’m with you on that. Weaponized niceness and emotional blackmail are some of the most destructive things these creatures employ and some of the damn hardest to fight back against effectively.

  5. Something’s going to give. What it will be, I don’t know. When it will be, I also don’t know. But something’s going to give.

    In other news, there’s apparently an Asian-led revolt against the San Francisco school board. The school board there has been so nuts that even SF’s mayor has repeatedly called them out for stupidity. Now three members (out of seven) are facing a recall. It would be nice to see a strong wedge driven between the modern Democrats and the Asian community here, particularly since much of the left openly hates Asians.

    1. Another blogger I read noted that this is happening a lot in California. Asian immigrants, especially Chinese, Korean, and to a lesser extent Vietnamese, are seeing just how bad the Democrats have been and are taking action, including essentially taking over what passes for the state GOP out there. You’ve got first hand knowledge, though, if I remember your location correctly. Are you seeing the same thing?

      1. I know there are Republican Asian legislators in Orange County. I’m not aware of any in LA County, where I live. And I know that we have at least one Democratic Congresswoman, Judy Chu, in LA County. While it’s been a few years since I last attended an event, I don’t remember ever seeing any Asians at anything hosted by the Pasadena Republican Club (which, incidentally, is apparently the oldest continuously-running Republican club in the country).

        While there’s a good chance that I’m wrong, I don’t think things are as bad here in LA County for Asians as they are up north. My understanding is that LA’s got a *lot* more varieties of ethnicities and immigrant cultures than the Bay and adjoining areas do. This might, ironically, be helping to keep a specific group from getting targeted. Also, the Soros-sponsored crap is fairly new for us. Our DA two DAs back was a Republican. The previous DA was a Democrat, but was serious about prosecuting crimes. It’s only since the last election that we’ve had to deal with a Soros puppet, and I suspect might have moved too aggressively in implementing his plans (he’s already been slapped down at least once by a judge for ignoring the law). Further, the County Sheriff has made it clear that he’s also not interested in siding with the nuttier ideas that the County Supervisors come up with. They didn’t like him from the start (I suspect he wasn’t supposed to win; but he was Hispanic, and his serious opponents weren’t, so…) so he’s not interested in impressing them, and he seems to be well aware that his continued political career relies on keeping the voters happy with what he’s doing.

        The end result of all of this is that we might be looking at a situation in which the local Asian populations are upset with the discrimination by the UC colleges, but not seeing so much at the city and county levels.

  6. I strongly believe that in a year or so when some of the panic has died down, that there is going to be a wave of lawsuits against doctors and hospitals for wrongful death (ventilators, Remdesivir) and intentional infliction of emotional distress (barring family members from the hospital). A whole hell of a lot of hospital administrators need to be out of a job at the very least.

    2. It will likely be against the various private companies that pushed it. The hospitals and pharmaceuticals are exempt from lawsuits under the law. But a private corporation has no such blanket immunity, especially if they were pushing it based on under-the-table directives.

      The question there becomes, will the gov’t bail out their stooges, or decide its a great time to let them die and take over their assets? I could see it go either way, but I’d lean towards them letting the public at large kill them, while the government swoops in to loot the corpse.

        1. Yeah, which is why I’m leaning towards them letting the lawsuits bankrupt the contractors and then taking over their stuff.

          There are a lot of gov’t agencies that desperately want to be the ones building the hardware, but so far they’ve failed because they just can’t do it. But if the vendors get bankrupted by lawsuits, it’s much easier to just swoop in and claim ownership of everything.

          1. Which simply means you move from Fascism to Communism. The failing at building the hardware will continue regardless.

            1. Oh no, the failing will get spectacularly worse. Trust me on that one.

              We’ve yet to build *anything* comparable to the flying Booze Carrier. That plane was so dangerous that the only reason they could get pilots to fly it was because they could steal vodka from the air conditioning system.

              Trust me, we can screw up *so much more* than we do now.

              1. ^^^This. I’ve been watching the YouTube channel Sub Brief. Guy is an ex-US Navy Submariner (sonarman, I believe) who gives rundowns of the service histories of historic submarines from around the world. Mostly Soviet-era boats. Pretty much every Soviet boat had at least one serious design flaw, and most of their nuke boats had at least one (yes, some had more) reactor casualty or radiation leak. Not “most CLASSES of their nuke boats, mind you. Individual submarines.

                America has a LOOOOOOONG way to go before we reach that level of f*ckupitude.

                1. And in response to your observation on January 20, 2021 our current administration collectively told America “Here, hold my beer!”

        2. I’ve seen this worry expressed elsewhere on other matters, especially the way investment companies are snapping up real estate and turning what would be good starter homes for young couples and families into rental properties that they end up stuck in. It’s an argument that could very well find fertile ground with angry and impoverished people and I’m not sure how to get to a free market from there.

      2. “With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do.”
        “What’s that?”
        “Go through his clothes and look for loose change.”

        2. The Judge Roy Bean technique. On examining a corpse and finding a pistol and forty dollars, he promptly fined the corpse forty dollars for carrying a concealed weapon. At least, that’s how the story is told.

    5. A *crapton* of investigations into folks who checked in, informed they had COVID, and were dead inside of a week, without family being able to visit, or speak on the phone/on video.

      With testimony by some of the folks who’ve lived.

      And *massive* scrutiny of the drugging-people-unconscious for weeks stuff.

    6. That’s allegedly what’s cause the sudden (also alleged) lack of mandates and restrictions in Airstrip One.

      Though the Prime Minister having parties – and people finding out about them – might have something to do with it too.

      1. I think “PartyGate” is much more likely to be the main reason. I listen to the Sp!ked podcast and they haven’t mentioned lawsuits at all.

  7. I have to say that of late Psalm 137 has acquired more resonance for me. Though I hope we don’t get to “Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.”

  9. “…we need Nuremberg trials for the people — worldwide — who used a virus that they may or may not have cooperated in creating and unleashing as an excuse to make war on their own citizens.”
    Yes, but given the direction of the legal systems world-wide, would we get our desired outcome?

    At least Putin says the West is destroying itself through wokeness. Start the clean up with the likes of Soros, Klaus Schwab, and leftist oligarchs of governments and business.

    The ever-present biblical beast (no economic or social freedoms for those not complying) gains more power as the systems entwine us with mandatory requirements to lead our lives. The bigger the beast and systems, the more onerous.

    1. Honestly? Putin is a jumped-up KGB Thug and the only reason he opposes wokeness is that he didn’t think of it first.
      He’s part of the centralized tyrants who must be made to pay. BUT he’s the Russian’s problem, and Russia is already dying, which is why it’s spreading its stink around.
      We need to clean our house.

      1. I view Russians, especially wild far eastern Russians, and even Putin different than you, Sarah, but that don’t make no nevermind. Their country, their choices, their problems.

        Parenthetical aside;(Sitting here is Alaska twix Canada and Russia, if I had to choose one or the other for just about any reason, it would not be today’s Canada [Maybe, possibly, the day after tomorrows Canada, after seeing if the trucking to Ottawa had any effect at all]. )

        Our house cleaning? Put off far too long & the sh__s getting deeper and deeper. The sooner we start, the easier the job and the lower the butcher’s bill.

        1. Yep. Longer we put it off, the worse it gets. Keeping tabs on our wayward representatives is rapidly becoming a full time job. Note “representatives” not “leaders.” Americans don’t need leaders of the political sort. Just folks what represent the interests of their districts.

          Seems the more time spent in state capitols and the nation’s capitol, the easier it is to forget that they work for us, not the other way ’round. High time we fixed that little issue.

          1. Alas our two party system is a one big party country club. I’ve often contended we need a third party, to offset the democrat party and their Republican auxiliary, but don’t see any way to effectively get there.

                1. Plays for me, right here in Sarah’s post. I used the ’embed’ codes.

                  It’s ‘Elected’ by Alice Cooper.

                  We got problems right here in Central City
                  We have problems in the North, South, East and West
                  New York City, Saint Louis, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago
                  Everybody has problems
                  And personally…
                  I don’t care!

        2. Canada has been bad for a long time. I have a book by Edgar Friedenberg, who emigrated to Canada during the Vietnam War so that his taxes wouldn’t support the war, where he discusses Canadian political culture. He notes that Canadians disliked American police dramas because they taught young people to think that, if arrested, they had rights.

      2. Lot of cleaning to do, but it’ll make for a good project to get started with.

        Academia and entertainment is the best place to start. And a complete overhaul of the tax code.

      3. We’ve needed the house cleaning for quite a while. Could go back further, but trying to keep it reasonably contemporary, the JFK assassination should have been a splash of cold water in the face.

          2. Oswald was not in control. He was a tool and a red herring. It was a 1963 lesson that our President and visible government was/is subservient to others. Still the same but worse now.

            I’ll apologize now for being a conspiracy theorist, since I know things like that can’t possibly be true.

              1. My second para. was a joke, if that’s what you mean.
                If that’s not what you mean, are you saying that you think our Presidents have always had full knowledge and control of everything and there were no behind the scenes groups and people wanting to stop an agenda or two of theirs? I believe that has happened and continues to happen. JFK’s assassination was an illustration that there is much going on in power struggles of government invisible to the average Joe. Sometimes I’m surprised that Trump is still alive, but I don’t think that it would have been Russia trying to kill him.

      4. Gonna just assume he’s a thug therefore easily dismissed, or listen to what he actually says?

        .

        1. He has a valid point, and he of all people should recognize Marxist thought, since that’s what he was trained in (among other things). That doesn’t change the fact that he’s KGB to the bone, and an autocrat.

          1. Is what he was saying true? Yes. KGB? Yes. Also leader of Russia.

            Yuri Bezmenov was filmed and recorded talking about how they would subvert the US. Look up the video and watch it. KGB? Yes. But you can see from where we are today that Bezmenov knew what he was talkng about.

            If wokeness was a communist plant here in the US, then perhaps blame Putin for pointing out their success in planting it.

            1. Yes, of course he’s the leader of Russia, an insular, nationalistic and outright evil culture with illusions of world domination.
              This means we should listen to him?
              He’s saying the obvious, so we must listen to him?
              DUDE, everyone knows woke is bad. We also know it’s on the ropes, and not the death of us. Which is what he wants you to think.
              Wokeness is not a communist plant. It’s the commies reaction to the fall of the USSR: Like rampant alcoholism and population collapse in Russia.

              1. At the risk of you throwing me off, I have to say that on one hand you’re saying you assume what he’s saying has zero to do with truth but on the other hand you’re saying that he’s saying the obvious. Huh?
                If you don’t want to listen to him I fully understand that.
                Since wokeness has been used to undermine our societal traditions and create unrest, I wouldn’t be too sure that it wasn’t injected by an opposing team. See if you can find the Yuri Bezmenov video on KGB plans for the US. Short, very interesting.
                Alright, go to sleep now!

                1. No, I’m not saying what he’s saying has zero to do with the truth.
                  I’m rather puzzled at you saying that he’s saying “Woke is bad for the west” and this is AMAZEBALLS. Are you for real? Everyone knows that.
                  I’m saying he’s saying it for evil and devious purposes, because that’s the only reason he does things.

                2. And also that he doesn’t understand us very well.
                  I’m saying that the “The Russians had a plan to undermine us” is both real and the rankest bullshit.
                  They had a plan. Some of it even sort of kind of worked, but mostly they ran around pointing at everything and going “THAT WORKED.”
                  Seriously? The soviet union, who couldn’t feed itself was infallible internationally?
                  Pull my other leg. It plays jingle bells.

                  2. I will admit that the USSR was better at propaganda than anything else. BUT that’s propaganda, not action.
                    They handed massive amounts of cash to people to “corrupt western culture”. (Seriously, this is known.) Most of it was used to support US commies in style. Some was given to push…. abstract art? and SF in which the commies won?
                    Dear Lord. All that was ascendant as backlash since WWI. They didn’t have to pay for it.
                    This was like most of their efforts on line.
                    They send out tons of trolls to make white supremacist comments on most right wing blogs, but you know, I blocked Russian IPs and that stopped.
                    And they do facebook ads.
                    Annoying yes. Supergeniuses? YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.

                3. Not sure about your age and background, but opening with accusations that the opposition is going to silence you for disagreement dramatically increases the likelihood that they’re going to boot you for poisoning the well and/or demonstrating ill faith.

                  That’s been a bog-standard emotional manipulation tactic since *at least* the 60s, probably earlier.

                  1. I think this question/comment is meant for me, but not positive since thread is so long.
                    I’m 75 and half way between conservative and black pilled. I’m not a writer and I don’t even try to turn phrases like the writers here do. I’m not a manipulator. If my comment that I think George Soros and Klaus Schwab are more dangerous than Putin is poisoning the well, then the well is not very deep. The reactions I got were as if I had commented to our MSM echo chamber.

                    1. As you say it’s not in your usual sphere, then I will be blunt.

                      I was pointing out that you got the reaction you got because of your behavior, ie, using social pressure (badly) rather than rational support of a statement, just because you got anything but full-throated agreement.

                      You are not entitled to our agreement, support, or even presumption of good judgement, ESPECIALLY when you seem to be having issues with people saying that just because a guy says something obvious, it doesn’t mean he’s not a known liar who will say absolutely ANYTHING that he thinks will get him what he wants.

                      You want to take his arguments and write them out, so they can be checked? Go for it.
                      Drop a known to be highly skilled sociopathic manipulator saying things in a setting that he controlled?
                      Uh, no. Nopey nope nope nope. Not even when you then start trying to abuse good will.

                4. He DOES have zero to do with the truth. If he says ‘water is wet’ it is not because that is a true statement. He says it because he thinks there’s some benefit for him to say something that happens to be true. It being true had exactly nothing to do with why he says it. Truth is irrelevant to him. He would just as readily say water was dry if he thought it would be effective.

                  I don’t think Woke is Russian in origin other than the fact it’s their ideological allies who are getting their knickers in a twist that way. If Putin thought that WE thought television was a dangerous concept he’d bee all about how Television was destroying western civilization, or puppies, or butterflies, or anything else he thought WE thought was a weakness.

                  He’s saying ‘Oh yes, we have totally subverted you. We did this thing that you hate and that you see as your biggest weakness. We did it. We win. You loose, despair now and let me take over the world, idiots.” The subtext? If we oppose him… he looses. Not if we BEAT him. No, if we OPPOSE him he looses. His position is so weak he can’t take any resistance. He’s a big swaggering bully, give him the finger and over he goes. But we’re the only folk in the world who seem to have figured that out, and big swaggering bullies can do a lot of damage on the way down.

            2. Is what he was saying true? Yes, in other news, Putin also agrees that water is wet and the sun, by and large, rises in the east and sets in the west. This means he’s not a lying asshole why? Yes, he’s the leader of Russia. And? Why should we care what another tin pot dictatorial THUG thinks? He’s a dangerous man, but he doesn’t grok us. He doesn’t get it. He thinks the Woke are all there is in America. He doesn’t realize that they’re HIS ideological allies loosing their shit.

        2. I’m going to assume what he’s saying has zero to do with truth and self-serving.
          Sure, we know wokeness is bad, but this is a guy who tries to enforce his own views crazily and arbitrarily.
          HE”S A KGB boss. So, no. Not going to pay attention to him.”
          He should have been hanged with the other commie thugs. Because monsters have to be seen to die.

        3. No, I’m going to assume he’s a dangerous, amoral thug who would decree water to be dry if he thought it would get him millage on his goals. Just because he will occasionally mouth truths doesn’t change any of that. The only reason Putin cares about Russia is because, as far as he is concerned, he IS Russia. Everything else is a means to his personal ends. *shrugs* He’s too damn blind to watch how Russia has been destroying itself since before Stalin’s Purges.

        4. a) I don’t speak Russian
          b) I don’t trust translators
          c) If he is speaking in English, he definitely has the skill to calculate deception to an English speaking audience c2) If someone has deception skills to defeat my meager level of lie detection, the counter measure is collecting lots of little bits of information about a very long time. c3) Guess what, anyone telling me that I must trust X can go f&ck themself.
          d) Again, little details over a long time. There have been a lot of suspicious deaths. Ergo, he is not sane, not after Russia’s good, and not someone who I should predict is likely to willingly outright tell me useful truths.
          e) It is a video. I’m perfectly justified in refusing to listen to videos on the grounds that I dislike the format.
          f) There are a /lot/ of people who I don’t trust, and who I can cheerfully get through life without needing to trust. Cosmologists I think are one of the disciplines of physics that I can outright pretend do not exist.

          I don’t have to listen to Macaroon in France. I don’t have to listen to whoever the hell thinks they are running Mexico. I don’t have to listen to anyone in the Russian government.

          He’s a f&cker who would cheerfully cooperate with Dems to provide an excuse to be used against Republican voters, so long as he calculated that the Dems would have a weak international presence as a result of trying to hold out against scrutiny.

            1. And if he did, it’s because he calculated that it would cause the most political instability in the US.

              Everyone here is probably already aware, but it bears mentioning again. Examination of political spending in the 2016 election and shortly afterwards of Russian funding sources determined that the Russians were funding both sides with an apparent eye toward increasing political chaos. In at least one instance early in 2017, they helped fund two competing rallies pushing both sides of the same argument at the same general location on the same day.

              1. Putin is a Russian nationalist, he is looking out for the interests of Russia. The US is run by globalists who are not looking out for the interests of the US. The recent attempted color revolution in Kazakhstan was most likely a US backed operation. The US main interest at this point is to take Putin out and replace him with a globalist, and break Russia into smaller pieces.

                Putin is the enemy of our enemies (the globalists) but that doesn’t mean he is our friend.

                It seems so many people have bought into the Russia! Russia! Russia! narrative that the deep state deployed against Trump. I saw in Canada the TV news is claiming Russians have infiltrated the country and taken over the trucker protest. Everything is a Russian conspiracy.

                1. Except what Russians tell me is that he’s not even a Russian Nationalist. He’s a Putin-ist. Russia is just his means to an end.
                  And no, it’s just the left has NO imagination. They started it because they figured it would turn the right against Trump (“they hate Russia”) and now they’re just running with it because they have no brain.
                  Whatevs.

                2. Putin is a Russian nationalist, he is looking out for the interests of Russia

                  …so long as you add in the final part of that line, “and he is Russia.”

                3. Putin is only a Russian Nationalist because, as far as he is concerned, he is the only part of Russia that matters. Everything else is evaluated on how it benefits him.

                  He’s the Tsar. He’s as self absorbed as the worst of the old Tsars. He is looking out for the best interests of Putin. Russia is his greatest resource, but that’s all it is. Other than a chunk of his Ego.

                  1. It’s horribly glib, but — in terms of Deep Space 9, he’s Dukat, but at least as smart as Garak.

                    It’s creepy how well it works, right down to the “are they serious?” plots and promotion stuff, combined with the whisper-campaigns and subverting the organized religious groups.

                    1. I haven’t followed DS9 particularly, but from what I’ve seen it fits. Though they’re not nearly as amusing when you run into such a fellow in real life.

                    3. Shoot him a lot. Then stab him a bunch. Cut off his head, but *do not burn the body*. You want to be able to keep an eye on him.

          2. You have more accurately read Putin than many, Bob.
            a) I do speak Russian, or did. I’m rusty as hell now. On the other hand there’s a reason “V Izvesti ne Pravda, v Pravda ne Izvesti” is a very bitter Russian saying. (In News no Truth, in Truth no News!, with Izvesti = News, and Pravda = Truth being the two dominant Russian news sources until very recently. Don’t go to their websites. Virus city.)
            b) Official Russian translators spin hard enough to run a helicopter.
            c) You know he’s trying to pull one over on you because he’s breathing. (not talking. Just breathing.)
            d) He’s evil not insane. He’s stone cold sane. He’d be a much less scary thug if he was nutter butters. If he’s telling you a useful truth it’s because he thinks that truth is useful to HIM not you. He probably thinks the truth will actively harm you.

            Putin is dangerous. That doesn’t make him NOT a thug. And he manifestly was KGB. Not that he’s likely to have any love of the KGB or any particular ‘buddies’ from there. They are useful or they are an incipient 9mm brain hemorrhage at a convenient moment.

            1. What the cartels aren’t, the gov’t is as corrupt as can be. Being an honest Pol in Mexico is to have a short lifespan in all too many cases.

    2. At least Putin says the West is destroying itself through wokeness.

      Putin says whatever he thinks will get the result he wants, and is quite willing to enforce the desired story through killing those who say the wrong thing.

      1. He’s also the sort who will GLEEFULLY try and convince his enemies (Us) that All Hope Is Lost ™ and we should Give Up in Despair. With, of course, suitable lamentations and crocodile tears.

          1. Some folk seem to fail to register that just because he’ll say things that are glaringly obvious doesn’t mean he’s HONEST. Just means he feels he can gain an advantage by actually saying that water is wet.

              1. I also bet he wouldn’t have come out and said it was a problem if he thought Woke was going away any time soon. He’d have picked something else as our ‘fatal flaw’ to pontificate about. (Oh look! Here’s that wandering soap box must have snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking.)

          2. Right? Right? People are so gullible
            As for “he says woke is bad.” NO DUH. Everyone knows that. They’re just too scared of the woke to say it. I.e. not dictators.

            1. Does remind me of that Soviet joke, though, the one where the American says “I’m so free, I can say my president is a drunken son of a whore!”
              And the Soviet says “Well, we, too, are free! I can say your president is a drunken son of a whore!”

  10. A couple weeks ago, I saw a new-to-me doctor about my arthritis. At the end of my visit, he tried to talk me into getting “vaccinated”. I said I have no intention of getting a shot. He started to call me an anti-vaxxer, and I said “No! I am not anti-vaccines. If the traditional type of vaccine was available, I would get it. I get the flu shot every year. I am mRNA hesitant because of the risk of blood clots, heart issues, and shingles.” Then he said that the shingles only happened in Israel. I ignored that statement and then said that I thought that more children had died or had health problems from getting the shots, than from catching Covid. He did say he’d have to look into that. Not surprising as most of his patients are elderly.

    By the way, this doctor’s name is Khader Mustafa.

    1. “He started to call me an anti-vaxxer,”

      Make sure you request an official copy of your medical records so you can ensure that comment isn’t in it. The ripple effect is way wider now.

    2. I mentioned the VAERS issue the last time my primary care doctor tried to talk me into the not-vax kill-shot. He managed to ignore that, and trotted out the “90% of those hospitalized are unvaccinated” wheeze. It seems that this percentage never changes, and that VAERS is a forbidden topic.

      I’m not in a position to find better doctor (the downside of a rural county), but he knows I won’t budge. (Another one of my doctors told me not to get the shot–said doctor unidentified because of reprisals.)

      1. ever notice the Leftoids favorite Scandinavian nation when it comes to “See! Socialism Works” is not at all being foisted about as an example by the leftoids right now?
        Didn’t lock down or mandate masks, and after all this time ranks 16th in Europe for deaths and cases per 100,000 (and admitted at the start they had a larger percentage than average of vulnerable population), and just yesterday said “Nope, not gonna vaxx kids, it ain’t worth the risks”

      3. Funny, I’m hearing that 80% of those hospitalized are ‘vaccinated’. Close to half got at least one ‘booster’. It’s a ‘Pandemic of the Vaccinated’ at this point.

        All indications are that the experimental retrovirus inoculations are not effective against ‘OhMyGod-icron’ anyway. Quite aside from the fact that they’re STILL not approved. ‘Emergency Use Authorization’ is NOT approval.

        One of these days they’re going to have to admit that if it hasn’t killed us all after two years, it ain’t gonna.
        ———————————
        A good Zombie Apocalypse novel is at least as believable as anything we’ve heard out of the ‘Publick Health Authoriteez’ over the last two years.

          1. I worry more for ConCrud than Omycrud. A little flu I can handle. Concrud being a cocktail of a dozen or more regional virii having a mosh pit against your immune system? *shudder*

            1. Right? I blame our being so sick on safeway select cold (Generic and not very strong) on two years without cons. Our immune systems got lazy.
              (Actually probably the exhaustion of the moving/renovation/mess.)

          2. I grew up in a little town with two pulp mills surrounded by dozens of those old “teepee burners”. I’ve had the crud since I was 4. All the Wuhan Sinus Syphilis symptoms except loss of taste/smell and fever every day for nearly 60 years. Not debilitating, just ever-present. After fighting off two cancers (by the grace of our Lord), catching a bad cold doesn’t terrify me.

        2. they gave Pfizer “approval” so employers could claim it was now fully “approved” and no longer experimantal, but it is not true approval because then the others’ EUAs would expire, and they have not, and they are willing to release the research data . . . in 2075, a mere 50 years after the FOIA request.

          1. My understanding is that they gave Pfizer full approval of one of the not-vaxs, but it’s *not* the one that Pfizer is actually shipping. They did not rescind the EUA for the other one, so it’s an interesting sleight of hand. It’s hard to smell a mouse when you’re downwind of the town dump…

  11. “And let’s restructure. The Constitution was written by men who understood well the power and fear of epidemic disease, but they did not put a clause in there saying all our rights are suspended in case of a bad epidemic respiratory illness, nor did they create a post that allows some bureaucrat to play doctor to people he doesn’t know and whimsically dictate what they can and can’t do.”

    My vote would be to start with the Articles of Confederation and then do what the Constitutional Convention was supposed to do – tweak it minimally. I believe much of the willingness to consolidate power in this country originated from the folks who left their mandate in Philadelphia in 1787. Time to admit it; the Anti-Federalists were right.

    1. The Anti-Federalists were right. At the time however, centralization as structured by the Constitution made sense and ensured survival of the US. The 13 states were weakened by eight years of war with Great Britain and now squabbling amongst themselves. They were ripe to be picked off one by one by European powers wanting a bigger foothold in the new world. Even if they’d managed to tweak the AofC in a good direction, it still would have been herding cats to get all 13 to move in one direction even with an existential threat. Georgia didn’t really give a damn about what happened to New York and vice versa.

      1. Maybe. My suspicion is that the states would have gotten the hang of balance of power politics with Europe pretty quickly even if a revised AofC didn’t give the central government primacy in foreign affairs. It’s the damn Commerce Clause and several other oops-es that we probably didn’t need. Given the tendency of people toward power, starting from a noticeable weaker base than the Constitution would have been better.

        1. The commerce clause is fine, the necessary & proper clause is fine, the Constitution as a whole is fine.

          We’ve just degenerated to the point where the referees are willing to pretend the rules don’t say what the rules actually say. No system is immune to that.

          1. THIS.

            I wonder how much of it is Kompromat, how much bribery, and how much just being foresworn

            1. Yes, this.
              As another example, look at the way the Second Amendment gets beaten like a red-headed stepchild.

            2. Well, it goes back to Wilson’s pre-presidential writings, so i doubt it’s kompromat, other than maybe the surrender of the Supreme Court to the New Deal.

              Instead, it’s just public choice theory applied to an ever-increasingly unitary “elite” class.

              1. It’s the courts I have in mind. They have arrogated power they do not have and they are the ones that ignore the law and violate their oaths.

                As for Kompromat, cough Roberts cough, cough. Or it could be they’re all made guys and have each taken part in something heinous that requires omertà. Every once in a while, they whack someone, think Epstein or Weinstein, to keep the others in line. That’s where the three letter agencies come in. they take care of business,

                I wonder how Fauci got his button.

                This is why Flynn had to go. He called out DoD for corruption and military intelligence for incompetence.

          2. THIS!!!! When Supreme courts started going all Humpty Dumpty from “Through the Looking Glass” on the commerce clause and other bits and bobs things started going to hell in a hand basket. Also doesn’t help that they’re logically inconsistent. Marriage (state based laws via 9th and 10th amendments ) each state must honor the others, Drivers Licenses (state based via seam) must be honored. Carry licenses (prohibited from congressional regulation by 2nd amendment reserved to the people) nope. In interpretation of scripture there are two main models. Exegesis is looking at the text (preferably with reference to original language), looking at its literary context (Is this a history (chronicles), poetry (psalms, song of songs), etc), looking at what the text meant to its intended hearers, and THEN looking at how this might apply from that context. Eisegesis is looking at the text and going right to its meaning to you and the current culture. The liberal justices (and from time to time some of the allegedly conservative ones, I’m looking at YOU Justice Roberts…) lean toward this. In fact almost all literary criticism coming out of the modern/postmodern school does as it denies that a text has any innate meaning. The ONLY meaning it acknowledges is that of the reader/hearer/viewer. The author/creators intent is considered either unknowable or uninteresting.

          3. This is exactly why a constitutional convention will not work. What are we going to do? Append “we really, really mean it” on the ninth amendment?

            1. Exactly. The important part of my post was “NO system is immune to that.”

              It’s a fun party game thinking up rules and procedures that would limit the government in this way or that, but if parts of the government just decide to ignore those rules and the judiciary part of the government is unwilling or unable to stop them, then it literally does not matter. You have to Drain the Swamp, and then (metaphorically) not rebuild in the exact same low spot or you’re just going to have the same problems when the canals clog and the water table rises and you’re right back where you started.

            2. Even with the best of intentions (not saying we had them, but even if we did…) you’ll get “Constitutional Creep”–a shift over time of what the Consitution is considered (rightly or wrongly) to permit of forbid. After all, as intelligent and well educated as the folk who wrote it were, they were only human. This means that anything they produce is going to be imperfect. There are going to be “gray areas” where reasonable individuals can disagree. Then, add in that there’s no incentive but the restraint of individual legislators not to push the limits of any such gray areas and the result will be a gradual “stretching” of the Constitution beyond all recognition from its original form.

              The folk who wrote and ratified the Constitution seemed to assume “good faith” in the part of future generations of legislators, that they wouldn’t really push it the way it has been–either that or they considered “pushing” and subverting it a feature, not a bug, since they fully intended to do so (I’m looking at you Alexander Hamilton) themselves.

              My proposal would address both of those issues by creating a strong incentive not to push the limits, avoid the gray, and stay safely within the black and white areas. To wit:

              “Any legislator who votes in favor of a bill, executive who signs said bill into law, or judiciary (saving only Supreme Court Justices) who holds said bill Constitutional, three times, when the bill/law is later determined to be unconstitutional shall be immediately removed from public office and forbidden from holding any future positions of public trust.”

              I figure once or twice could be honest mistakes. Three is a pattern. And I exempt Supreme Court Justices because they really need the freedom to actually debate and disagree on the issue. And, frankly, I wouldn’t expect it to come up to them much because the penalty is severe enough that most people intent on a career in public office wouldn’t be willing to take the chance. All without being so far “out there” as to be immediately dismissible as snark. I’m dead serious that we need something like that although possibly worded better than my own clumsy attempt. I’m just at a loss as to how to make it happen. It would need to come from a convention of states but…well, I can dream I suppose.

      2. The anti-federalists thought that without a Bill of Rights, the government would soon start infringing on the rights of the people.

        The anti-federalists were right.

        The federalists thought that with a Bill of Rights the assumption would be made that government has powers not explicitly granted to it in the Constitution (because otherwise, why specify verboten areas?).

        The federalists were right.

        Why, yes, as a matter of fact I do believe in the no-win scenario.

        1. I can see it now a paper titled “The U.S Constitution and The Kobayashi Maru: Or why we can’t have Nice Things”.

      1. I want the humiliation of them being cuffed, dragged out in front of everyone, a news crew taking photos, people snapping shots on their cell phones…

        …or worse, them expecting this, and nobody shows up, because other people are much more photogenic and important.

        1. Wasn’t disagreeing with that, just the choice of soundtrack.

          The power-mad freaks who are ruling the Earth
          Will show how little they think you’re worth
          With animal lust they’ll devour your life
          Slice your world to bits like a knife

          One last day
          Burning hellfire
          You’re blown away…

    2. Saw a magazine headline: “Restoring Joy To Politics” and all I could think of was mass resignations/arrests.

  13. This is monstrous…The excess death rate in the working age group was up and incredible 40% last year, with no increase in deaths from disease..That’s at least 500,000 killed by the “vaccines”, which is fully supported by anecdotal evidence, since the CDC and health establishment has made it impossible to report vaccine deaths, classifying them as Covid deaths if they occur within 2 weeks of the jab…And then there are the large number of ,primarily men , cases of myocarditis following the jab, which is just a crippling condition and longer term death sentence…rg People were hanged at Nuremberg for much less….

  14. There’s a meme going around noting:
    ___________
    125 YEARS AGO YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO ASK PERMISSION FROM THE GOVERNMENT TO:
    • Collect rain water
    • Go fishing
    • Own property
    • Start a business
    • Renovate your home
    • Build a home
    • Use a transportation vehicle
    • Get Married
    • Hunt
    • Own weapons
    • Cut hair
    • Sell a product
    • Protest
    • Grow food on your property
    • Set up a lemonade stand
    • Sell food

    You can do virtually nothing without being extorted by government to obtain permission first. If you still think you are free, you are delusional.
    ________
    As with many memes, much therein is questionable, Pennsylvania, for example, issued their first fishing licenses in 1919, 2022 minus 1919 does not equal 125. None the less today’s government is everywhere, the only checks are on We The People, the only balance is how many politicians and bureaucrats can dance on the wallet of a tax payer.

    Level? The only way I see to get there is to get government out of most everything.

    D.C. etc., filthier than the Augean stable and as there ain’t no Heracles in sight, ain’t gonna get cleaned ‘lessin’ we do it.

      1. It’s built on a swamp. That alone is enough. Drain that swamp and cleaning up the remaining crap becomes an order of magnitude easier. Metaphorically speaking, of course. ;p

    2. New York City and several others regulated trade going back to the 1780s, in order to protect established businesses. Granted, that goes waaaaayyyyy back to the guild system of the Middle Ages, so it might not be a good example.

    3. Government power:
      annoying = having to get permission from 2 different offices to put up an small storage shed in my backyard.
      catastrophic = the educational system

      1. I built my house without permits but that was 50 years ago. I just built a shed for my forge last year, wonder if any permits were requited. Oh well in a decade or so I might check with the borough to find out.

  15. Much of the governmental over reach due to regulations and whatnot have been foisted upon us by people trying to keep other people from horning in on their turf. Owners of hotels, for instance, want regulations on bed and breakfast establishments lest they lose business to them. Hairdressers need to be licensed to keep some upstart from braiding hair on the side and undercutting the establishment prices. Once you need a license, then someone gets to provide the training and they don’t want people evading their reach, so more regulations.

    Now we are in the situation that whoever has the most money can buy enough votes to get regulations passed to keep all competition at bay because regulations come from the feds now instead of the local burghermiester.

    So as great an idea as federalism was at the time it has morphed into something heinous and evil if it can be used by a senile old coot to stop medical treatment for citizens living hours away from his assisted living home.

    1. Add in “the government is giving away money” and “we just want our share,” and boy do you get government creep.

  16. These people have knowingly and with malice aforethought unlawfully imprisoned the citizens of their country; restricted them in the earning of a living and commandeered their private property and businesses through enforcement of mask laws which have no basis in science; closure of eating establishments, which ditto; closure and curtailment of the operation of stores. They have barred citizens of the use of parks, public buildings, and other community property financed from those citizens’ taxes. They have refused to allow their citizens the exercise of religion. They have forbidden the use of medicines which might or might not be effective, but seem to work in the rest of the world (and are not, at any rate, sufficiently harmful to be forbidden.) They have forced on a vast majority of the population an untried gene therapy and then at the same time hid the deleterious side effects while forcing people to take it to be allowed some measure of liberty.

    You know, this sounds an awful lot like the list of grievances in the Declaration of Independence, in spirit if not in detail. And since you quote the opening paragraphs of the DoI, I presume that was no accident.

  17. But they still get cuffed and dragged away, right?

    Cuffed and dragged away in total silence.

    Well they can scream if they want. But if no one is there to hear their screams, I find that acceptable.

      1. I would rather #teamheadsonpikes wait and get the heads after either #TeamCrossesLiningTheAppianWay or #TeamVladTepesStakes is done with them.

        Yes, I’m that pissed off. I have… issues with child abusers.

        1. What Would Buckman Do.

          (Sulla and Cromwell agree that Buckman was a small time..)

          1. I’m approaching #TeamRomanianChristmasPresent.

            I see that Let’s Go Brandeau is trying the Jan 6th “insurrection” slur against the pissed-off truckers. OTOH, they’re not driving around Ottawa, but they say they’ve managed to achieve gridlock…

            1. Yeah, someone tried to tell me that was a coup from their “deep state.”
              Their “deep state.” Heaven help me. The rulers were the equivalent of kings. Shakes head. IDIOTS.

      2. If you say no to taking them apart slowly, you are being intolerant of my identification as a Necron.

        Trillions of Dalek-Americans are being super mega hyper oppressed by the refusal to take the masking sons of bitches and one at a time shove a plunger so far down their throats that it comes out the other side.

            1. No, no, Pointy end first #TeamVladTheImpaler . Although we might have to repeal/waive the 8th amendment for a bit.

              1. No need to repeal the 8th amendment. It prohibits cruel and unusual punishments.

                If a punishment isn’t both cruel and unusual, it’s good.

                Make this the usual punishment.

  18. You know, after the God Emperor Trump float the Italians did, perhaps we could arrange for thme to give us a fiberglass statue of “We Really Mean It.”

    MAGA hatted Pepe modeled on Liberty, Teutonic Order surplus under the robe, holding flaming sword aloft, and with a Teutonic Order shield?

    Possibly my artistic judgement is unsound.

      1. It’d have to be both hands extending their middle fingers or it won’t be authentic. 😉

        1. ‘s right. I have a matched set.
          What you guys don’t know is the scream that goes with this in person. “Sit on this. I’ll take you to Lisbon.” (Punch line of a VERY old joke, but it became my war cry.)

    2. Hey Bob. Good News. Oak-tree Capital has taken control of a huge Evergrande site near Shanghai. Everyone has been too afraid of the CCP to act. This is the first step and hopefully not the last.

      In other news, Guizhou province is in negotiations to delay payment of its debt.

  19. I don’t think a Nuremberg trial would be a good idea. It was really bad law. exactly why i think so won’t fit in a blog comment, but it was really bad law.

    I do think that self interested lawyers suing everyone in sight is a great idea., it’ll get the asbestos commercials off the teevee and hit them where it hurts. The only thing better would be an “event” at Davos during the forum, but that would, alas, take all the hookers and hustlers too and they don’t deserve that.

    1. The chief justice of the Supreme Court at the time seemed to agree with you on Nuremberg trials being questionable in principle.

  21. Speaking of trials we should’ve had, and of Nazi records….
    Today is when I learned that the Soviets stole (or destroyed) the records at Auschwitz. It wasn’t from anybody making noise about Holocaust Remembrance, either, it was because of someone looking at something completely unrelated, although the Jewish virtual library does have a page on figuring numbers that is footnoted that the slaughter in Poland was such that they have no idea who killed who and why.

    Was also when I found out that, while the Germans were putting their half of Poland into camps (I did at least know that they put as many non-Jews in as they did Jews, even heard about the attempt to wipe out the Polish people after harvesting those children deemed Aryan enough, though that was not from school) the Soviets were… well, likewise purging Poland, and bringing in their own settlers.

    And then our ally, the brave Russian bear, as the song went, was handed the rest of the country, when all was said and done.

    … this is what the “never again” folks were standing next to?

    This is what the recent push about how Russia’s neighbors that have ethnically Russian populations should be free game for Russia to come in and take over?

    Are they trying to set up ethnic purges?!?

    Just like with using the stuff that failed during the Spanish Flu and, just a handful of years ago, I was reading off and going “wow, nobody could be this stupid” and– hey! Look! they think being that stupid is a GREAT idea!

    2. Honestly, I’m surprised the ethnic cleansing in the former Soviet republics didn’t start in 1992.

      2. Maybe because Stalin had conducted extensive ethnic cleansing in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and many ethnic minorities in Russia left (of their own accord?) after the Soviet Union fell?

        1. He’s talking about there *being* any “ethnic Russians” left *alive* in Poland or the Ukraine.

          If Putin succeeds in being allowed to invade any country that he can hand-wave as having “enough” people of Russian ancestry in, as keeps popping up as a justification in radio phone-ins and blogs… oddly, not the blogs that blocked Russian IPs, but I digress… that’s got a very obvious, and very horrible, solution.

            1. The US, too– one of the Ukrainian families I met in the Seattle blob, who fled Putin being stupid there, were of Russian ancestry.
              (They were VERY pointed that they WERE NOT RUSSIAN. Ukrainian-American! UKRAINIAN!)

              Heck of an evil win/win, no?

              The rest of the world *helps you* imprison anybody you lay claim to, and anyone who offers shelter to those who escape becomes a target for “freeing” that population.

            2. And if “ancestry” is the criteria, he’s got a claim on Alaska, and the Left Coast (which deserves him). Not to mention everywhere Russians fled after 1917.

              1. Using that criteria China has a claim on every country in the world, as does India, as does Europe, as does the middle east, and Africa. Ireland could claim much of the world as well. Could turn into quite a free-for-all.

              3. Hey. Now. Russia SOLD Alaska. Begging the US or Canada to take it off their hands. Okay, it wasn’t communist Russia that sold it. But still. Also doesn’t mean greedy guts won’t want to steal it back.

          2. I’ve read of a nutjob in Germany in the 30’s who went about about invading countries with lots of ethnic Germans.

                1. That is a highly qualified maybe. I think rather we might have gotten later unpleasantness or different unpleasantness. Maybe said nutjob would have charged into Poland with assent from Uncle Joe and then gone right through the Red Army and on to Moscow . Focusing everything east 2 years early might have tanked the USSR. Their officer corps and air forces were a mess in 1939. When the nutjob finally turns west it will be MUCH harder to stop him and he’ll have more resources at his disposal.

                  1. Apologists for Chamberlain like to claim that he was “buying time” for Britain to prepare for war. What those apologists fail to acknowledge is that Germany made better use of that time and the correlation of forces was more adverse later rather than earlier.

                    1. Yep. To give Chamberlain the benefit of the doubt, he may have thought he was “buying time” but he was wrong. In the years leading up to WW2, Anglo-French estimates of German military strength were generally higher than reality, and neither the Brits nor the French were nearly as aggressive as the Germans at building strength. The end result was all that delaying did was let the Germans increase their relative strength.

                    2. I wouldn’t even give him that benefit of the doubt. He spent too much time bragging about “peace for our time” and how the Austrian Corporal was someone he could work with. And, (serious question–I’m unclear on this part) what did he do to rebuild England’s warfighting capability?

                  2. A DeGaulle able to order 2 divisions into the Rhineland in 1936 would have enabled even more; Satan with a small mustache would have been delivered in a straitjacket.

                3. Maybe, But Great Britian wasn’t ready to fight at the time, as her land and air forces were woefully understrength. She needed time to prepare. And France wouldn’t have supported it. Finally, there’s little that Great Britain could have actually done to directly support the Czechs other than wagging her finger at the Germans. Any action would have required support from Poland.

                  On the other hand…

                  According to Shirer, Mustache Man toured the Sudetenland after it was ceded to Germany. And even Mustache Man had to agree that the terrain was so dense that it was probably a good thing that the infant German Army hadn’t had to fight it’s way into the country.

            2. He was widely praised by random guys on the ground for being strong and willing to say things straight that nobody else was saying. >.>

              1. I think it was a Dorothy L. Sayers book published in the 1930s that had a (minor side) character proclaim, “What this country needs is an ‘itler.”

                Mind you, this wasn’t supposed to be taken as an approving comment, just sort of a character illustration, but it shows how the views were in ENGLAND at the time.

                1. Gaudy Night, the working-class repair guy.

                  If I remember right, she probably read Chesterton and probably knew that something was coming, but…well, even the folks who knew Something Bad was Coming and were reading the tea leaves didn’t expect that big and that fast.

                2. Chesterton never approved of Hitler and called Germans accepting him the stupidest thing not only in the last year but in the last few centuries.

                  Nevertheless, if you read The End of the Armistice, you will see how different Hitler looked without the benefit of hindsight.

      3. *wags paw* My folks were up int he Baltics in the early 2000s, and ethnic Russians in Estonia (?) were basically ostracized. Mom bought two beautiful hand-knot sweaters from an ethnic Russian lady in a cash market. The Russians wouldn’t take their settlers back, and the locals had no enthusiasm for their former overlords.

    3. What exactly about the riots from at least Ferguson to present didn’t make you think they’re going for ethnic purges?

      The only question to my mind is exactly which group do they intend to purge which?

              1. That depends on which “them” you’re talking about. The Ferguson riots appear in hindsight to be about real estate acquisition (since all the destroyed properties are on the edge of an opportunity zone, and a short distance from more high value real estate). Planned demolition? Sure the media coverage was all about the feelz, and most of the lower level froofaraw.

        2. Or they’re like Manson, who apparently believed that when the whites launched their race war against the blacks (due to the terror crimes that Manson’s group was committing), Manson would be picked by the blacks to lead them in self-defense.

      3. At the very least, someone picking political tactics has made some very concerning choices.

        I’m pretty sure that they are a race war nutter, but I’ve hit the point of the day/week where I’m a bit confused by everything.

    4. I’ve wondered for a while if the “Nazi atrocities” discovered in the camps in areas that were “liberated” by the Russians, were not, in fact, Russians taking advantage of the situation and lack of Western observers.

      1. When I mentioned it to my husband, he nodded– his grandfather was very interested in this stuff, so he grew up learning about it– and added that we know they were looting the camps as they went, while Americans were finding stuff and trying to return it.

      2. Well, given what they did at Warsaw . . . I would not put it past Stalin to have encouraged the Red Army to eliminate anti-Nazis and Jews as well as carrying off everything not nailed down. (And it turns out that during WWI, the Imperial Russians were doing something similar in Galicia and into German Poland. They sent captured Slavic-Habsburg troops to Siberia or used them as forced labor, as well as destroying Uniate churches and forcing them to convert to Russian Orthodox, and allowing pogroms, and other not-nice things.)

        1. My stepfather was Ukrainian and was captured by the Nazis during the war. He survived being slave labor in the “Sudatenland”. The farmer was told not to feed the slaves, but had a heart and a brain, and fed them — that way he didn’t have to go hat-in-hand to the Unterfuehrer for more workers every couple of weeks.

          Petro was told that if he returned to the Ukraine after the war, Stalin had fatal plans for “treasonous” people who weren’t killed before capture. So, he ended up as a refugee and landed in the Midwest.

      3. The camps themselves were clearly Nazi, but any random mass grave found elsewhere could just as easily be Soviet as Nazi. One need only look at the Katyn massacre to be convinced of that.

      4. Well, they did stage the Katyn massacre.

        But probably if the atrocities were found by other Allies, they were in those camps, too.

        1. Are you talking about Katyn Forest? That wasn’t staged. It wasn’t supposed to be found, and was only discovered by the Nazis (who loudly publicized it) when they launched the invasion of the USSR.

  24. I think there are more than enough creative patriots to figure out what to do to destroy the enemy and restore the Republic. Look at the comments on this blog post and you’ll agree with me, I think.
    What we need are men/women who are “bloody minded” enough to talk in the terms you did, Sarah–death by hanging, heads on pikes, for real–and mean it. Really mean it. We need to find people willing to actually do the killing, and talk about it so they gather more people with that courage/temperament to do it.
    Can we still try and hang traitors? We’d better start making that a requirement for our elected officials at the very least.
    Can we destroy the federal bureaucracy, really destroy it and start from scratch? We’d better start making that a real topic of discussion.

    No more killing fields, no more holocaust. No more halfway measures. You want to know what Esther had to deal with? Cowards who refused to do what they were told to do–they saved one dude, for reasons. And his descendent tried to destroy the entire Jewish race.

    We need bloody minded courageous people, and we need to find them sooner rather than later.

    I think it’s come to this, IMO.

  25. Amen. That’s a grand summary of the long string of abuses and usurpations that have been piling up and that exploded to an absurd degree with the Covidiocy. Something really will have to give sooner or later, especially with the psychos running the institutions and government. I just hope we can make it through reasonably intact.

  26. BTW, just to note, I have read that actually, the meaning of the Right to “Pursuit of Happiness” is Right to Private Property. (Because the Founders waffled, and refused to reject slavery and the idea of people as property, just to get the votes of delegates from the slave-owning states.)

    1. I’ve read in the past that “happiness” has changed meaning a bit in the past couple centuries, and had more to do with good fortune. Shared root with “happenstance”

        1. Those of you who follow Rusty & Co. may remember that the luck cleric is Dorilys Happ for that very reason.

  28. OT but concerning:

    Does anyone know what’s going on with Peter Grant? He hasn’t updated his blog since Monday morning, and he usually gives advance notice if he’s going to be away from the keyboard for an extended period.

  30. Michael Shellenberger (San Fransicko) in his latest Substack quotes an unnamed SF government official critical of their secret open drug injection site:

    The official said progressive advocates of supervised drug consumption sites are highly ideological. “They live in a world of decision-based evidence-making instead of evidence-based decision-making,” said the person. The official said that pro-drug activists have misrepresented the research into supervised drug sites. “They are good at manufacturing peer reviews. They peer-review each other’s
    materials.”     The official called it an agenda for “decivilization.” [emphasis added]

    .
    Not only is that a great turn of phrase, it applies to so much more than this one local instance:

    Climate change “research”
    Voldemort Ivermectin
    Covid policy generally
    EPA rules post-1995 or so
    The entire field of sociology, apparently
    The Replication Crisis

    Most government and science these days generally, really.

    1. Michael “hockey stick” Mann was known for flat out telling non-cultists they weren’t allowed to see his data or model because “all you want to do is disprove it.”

  32. This is in response to Foxfier’s 1/30 12:35pm comment to me. Her comment was mysteriously missing the normal “reply” option at the end. That in mind, I doubt this message sees the light of day.

    After giving a brief description of myself, I’m told I’m not in my usual sphere. I’m not a writer, I’m older, half black pilled? Any one thing in particular? So I shouldn’t make honest comments here?

    Putin is obviously paranoid, especially about their borders. Sure he says things (even obvious) to further his narrative. Don’t the US and other countries peddle narratives, including lies, through various means? (Yes, I’m an American). Putin will be gone someday. Other forces trying to destroy the US and establish a central world government will go on.
    The thrust of my comment was that we should be more concerned about people like Soros and Schwab, who work to destroy us in favor of a WEF paradise. But there was zero response about that.

    Who expects total agreement in this world? I don’t, but when you get beat over the head about a comparative opinion with really nothing beyond, don’t you realize he’s KGB and will say anything (true or not) to get what he wants, you can feel a need to defend yourself.

    Now, you say you’re being blunt, but what you left unsaid specifically (“OUR” in your 3rd paragraph) is that this is a close knit closed group for which you are a gatekeeper. Your (Sarah’s) privilege.
    I will bow out (you can clap now), but it’s really a shame. I’ve enjoyed the posts and comments and this is the first site where I’ve been told I have bad “behavior”. Believe me, since I am old as dirt, I have been posting for a LONG time.

    1. This is in response to Foxfier’s 1/30 12:35pm comment to me. Her comment was mysteriously missing the normal “reply” option at the end. That in mind, I doubt this message sees the light of day.

      It’s called the comment wall.

      If you look at the format of the comments, you’ll notice that they are slightly indented and narrowed to indicate which is responding to which.

      This has an end-point, to prevent the quite ugly and illegible result of single-character-wide comments.

      So I shouldn’t make honest comments here?

      You should probably attempt basic reading comprehension.

      I took your description, which would have explained why you were not familiar with certain things, and then suggested:

      TRY ACTUALLY MAKING AN ARGUMENT INSTEAD OF WHINING WHEN PEOPLE DON’T AGREE WITH YOU.

      Adding on the assumption of malice because you can’t be bothered to either understand the location, or even skim around and see if, hey, do some of the other comments lack a “reply” button?”– it truly does nothing to add to the lack of persuasiveness embodied in being unwilling to support your own statements.

      1. No, I didn’t know about the comment “wall”. Never saw it here before.

        I think I had reading comprehension down probably before you were born. I really don’t ned the patronizing comments. Maybe it helps you.

        My “not being familiar with certain things”. To what does that refer specifically? Comment walls, Putin, behavior?

        All my explanations of why I said what I said about Putin and others (as in my last comment) is whining? It’s not trying to support my original statement? What do you want? A full posted bio on Putin? And then would you do the same for Soros and Schwab with a full write-up on the WEF? This stuff is all common knowledge.

        Good grief.

        1. I think I had reading comprehension down probably before you were born.

          Then apply it, because you objectively are not doing so now.

    2. One stupid question: As it’s plainly obvious I’m not banning you — note I ban very few people — why are you so obsessed with it?
      To prevent future freakouts: WordPress ALSO randomly puts comments in spam or trash without my ever seeing them. I don’t know why. Foxfier and Snelson who have been regulars since the blog has existed, just about, regularly get put in spam and trash without my seeing it (I only look at the blog every few hours and on busy days only morning and evening.)
      I TRULY have no clue why. It’s not according to some rule I’ve made, and it makes no sense. It just happens. Sometimes all of someone’s comments get eaten for a day, and if they mind, they ping me, and I go rescue them when I have time.
      Also comments with more than two links are supposed to be held for approval. But sometimes they’re not. And sometimes only one comment is enough to be held for approval.
      I have no clue why.
      And this is why we say “WordPress delenda est.”

      1. Sarah, I’m sorry for the fuss I seem to have created with my original comment. I was nailed to the wall and had “moron” branded on my forehead. When I responded to those posts with explanations I got more of the same. But I’ve been told I’m whining, lack reading comprehension, and that your little community here is under no obligation to agree with me. Shucks, I thought I was just defending myself and explaining my reasons for what I said.

        Only reason WP comes into this is that I got another ‘you’re a bad boy’ comment which had no reply option. The commenter said it was because of the “wall”. Okay, I understand. But already being hit with remarks from a few that seem to be above a common non-writer such as I, the no reply option was mistaken as perhaps intentional. My bad.

        In a nutshell what I was saying is that while Putin is KGB and says anything he wants for his advantage, so do we (all the work our alphabet agencies and others world-wide do). Putin is paranoid about his borders but will be gone someday and there are other threats to worry about.

        This is a close knit little community where obviously some hold the reigns. I thought my original comment and subsequent explanations were all reasonable and defended them. I just don’t really want to put up with the condescending comments coming from a few. As I posted before, I’ve been commenting on sites for a LONG time and have never had this problem. A few people here should get over themselves, but that’s probably the way they feel about me.

        I’ve always enjoyed your posts!

        1. You were somehow perfectly fine as long as nobody disagreed with you; you’ve been posting here for at least six months, maybe even a year or longer.

          When you got some disagreement on Putin, rather than supporting your statements with arguments, you decided that was unacceptable and unpleasant, and when I noticed you seemed distressed and offered suggestions on style-related reasons why you were getting a reaction you didn’t like, you decided to take offense.

          I notice that other than highly offended because my trying to explain that accusing Sarah of planning to ban you isn’t a great display of good faith, you’ve basically avoided all the new comments focusing on engagement with your claims after the first couple of mostly emotion-based arguments were not persuasive– the gal who speaks Russian? The lady pointing at the proverb about the Devil quoting scripture?

          Nope, you feel bad when someone suggests that, just maybe, you might not want to publicly accuse someone of wanting to ban anybody who disagrees with them as a persuasive technique, so you follow it up with more unsupported accusations.

          Even when they take the information that you are not exactly formed in the online arena, and explain the thing that you just complained about, you presume malice and demonstrate an unwillingness to even look at what is actually written.

          Somebody’s acting like they’re use to being in an MSM bubble with which they agree, but it’s not the commenting community at large.

          1. Please, give it up.
            I’ve already said the “wall” was my bad.
            I never said Sarah was going to “ban” me. You were the one with the condescending remarks playing cop.
            I’ve read the entire thread, including the one mentioning knowing Russian and the one using the scripture. So? Oh yeah, I have no reading comprehension.
            I’ve shared reasons for my thoughts, gave you a few personal details about me.
            I’m used to being in an MSM bubble? Boy, you really don’t know me.
            Goodbye, Foxfier! Give ’em hell!

            1. For the easiest aspect:

              ivehadit46 says:January 30, 2022 at 9:37 pm
              …
              I never said Sarah was going to “ban” me.

              ivehadit46 says:January 29, 2022 at 12:47 am
              At the risk of you throwing me off

              ivehadit46 says:January 30, 2022 at 3:21 pm
              …
              That in mind, I doubt this message sees the light of day.

              All of this because you found the advice that it may not be a great idea to suggest that someone is going to purge views that they disagree with to be a great offense against your personal dignity and proceeded to demonstrate that you are willing to employ a range of those manipulation tactics, including completely ignoring the suggestion of making rational support of a statement when one meets disagreement, going instead for the “so what you’re saying” angle.
              Such as forming the response I’m used to being in an MSM bubble? out of the statement: Somebody’s acting like they’re use to being in an MSM bubble with which they agree, but it’s not the commenting community at large. Which was a reference to your claim that: The reactions I got were as if I had commented to our MSM echo chamber.

              Boy, you really don’t know me.

              No, not in the flesh, but–assuming your statements about yourself are accurate–I am quite familiar with your intellectual offspring, and your contemporaries, from when they were being paid to teach at school.
              They didn’t deal well with the idea of being addressed as an equal, either, especially when one could back up the disagreement with evidence. And I didn’t even have access to the ability to do direct quotes, back then….

              1. I was done, I tried to leave it, and after this I really will be done.

                I said at the risk of YOU throwing me off. NOT SARAH. Check YOUR reading comprehension. You live on this site, even contributing posts to exhibit your writing skills. And you certainly seemed critical enough to want do it. Why should I not think that you could get me “thrown off” (not that I care after this interaction with the great teacher).

                The MSM echo chamber, meaning Putin! Putin! Russia, Russia, Russia! Does a 75 yr old have to advise you to consider larger and future threats?

                No, you certainly don’t know me. I am far, far, far from what your perception may be of an average 75 yr old, if that is what your “contemporaries” remark is alluding to.

                Please check your ego someday. And take me out of your head starting now, please.

                1. I said at the risk of YOU throwing me off. NOT SARAH.

                  –
                  Well, now, that’s the stupidest thing you’ve said yet. And that’s saying something.

                  Fox can no more throw you off Sarah’s web site than you can throw her off. A few seconds’ rational thought would make that obvious.
                  ———————————
                  Zathras used to being beast of burden for other people’s needs.
                  Very sad life. Probably have very sad death.
                  But, at least there is symmetry.

                2. I said at the risk of YOU throwing me off.

                  :scrolls up and, again, copies off this very page:

                  accordingtohoyt says: January 29, 2022 at 12:09 am
                  …
                  Reply
                  ivehadit46 says: January 29, 2022 at 12:47 am
                  At the risk of you throwing me off,

                  While there is some satisfaction that I did, indeed, accurately identify your behavior pattern– I’d rather you’d just offered rational support for the statements, rather than stating flat falsehoods.

                  People were responding to what you wrote because it was different, and if it could be supported, we wanted to see how. That is what people who are open to changing their minds do. They ask, and listen, and weigh the support.

                  I don’t care that you say you’re 75. That makes you about the same age as my those paid to educate when I was in school. So? Like most here, for me, that definitely does not buy you some sort of presumption of good authority. Would it be better for your words to be coming from my 12 year old?
                  Like the blatantly false statements when people pay attention to what you wrote, right here, would be any better if I had a twin who tried the ‘I never said that’ route?

                  Then again, given your obsession with thinking that addressing you as an equal is insulting– you very well might believe that, which is interesting, when added to the demands that we listen to Putin because he said something that was not in obvious, complete contradiction to objective reality.

                  You live on this site, even contributing posts to exhibit your writing skills.

                  Sarah asks for guest posts, so she can rest when she’s been working herself half to death and then her whole HOUSE gets sick on top of it.
                  ANYBODY can contribute guest posts, and if it hits Sarah’s interest (and manages to dodge the random slash and burn of the spam filter) she’ll run them.

          1. Sarah, if I were MUCH younger I’d be more willing to put up with the condescending remarks from an inflated ego. I’ll continue to read your posts, because they’re so good. But I won’t post. We can all be happy!

    3. ivehadit46, two things I’ve learned in the 10 years I’ve been here:

      1. If Sarah wants you to leave, she’ll tell you flat out.

      2. That said, you’re never going to figure out the invisible tile that triggers some people. My advice is not to try. Say what you want to say, and let the chips fall where they may.

      1. No problem with Sarah. Outspoken with great sense of humor and balance. If I was told to leave, I’d leave and probably be blocked anyway.

        I said what I wanted to say, got ridiculed, and I have no evidence of anyone responding to the latter parts of what I said.

        I’ll read and stay away from posting.

Comments are closed.