Making Lemonade out of Nothing At All

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

What if the leftists gave an insurrection and nobody came?

You’ll remember leading up to Jan 6, despite being very unhappy about the big election theft, I was not really that enthused to go to DC and “protest.” Partly because I thought it wouldn’t accomplish anything.

I might still have considered going, just as a show of “we’re here and not happy” if we hadn’t been flat, stone broke at the time. (Which I was. For various reasons including the lockdowns which made it impossible for younger son to find work.)

The funny thing is how many people who never came by again dropped by to tell me I absolutely, definitely must go. It was my duty. (I wonder how those polo shirts fit….)

I do understand the people who went. It was an attempt at showing we existed, an attempt at showing “We see you.” Which we did. I mean people who regularly comment here, or their spouses were kicked out as poll observers just before that amazing jump.

And for the *ssholes reading, no I’m not going to discuss it. That’s not what this is about. Yes, the election was dirtier than my cat’s behind. For recap go here: the 2020 election: fuckery is afoot and here Election 2020: the more fuckery update. Larry says everything I could say, with far less swearing and much less arm waving, but correct in essentials.

I’ll only add that I KNEW it was going to go this way and there’s a lot of posts leading up to it. I’m not a number’s person like Larry or my husband. But I am a people person. No, I don’t mean I’m an extrovert. On the contrary. I’m someone who sits in a corner and observes people. (Unless it’s a con, and I’m on.) Partly because I don’t trust people and need to be forewarned if they’re going to do something freaky like be hyper friendly or — ick — talk to me.

I have half a century experience watching people, alone and in groups, in private and in public.

No one, absolutely no one would run the campaign Joe Biden ran unless they had everything pre-sewn-up with fraud so extraordinary that they could not have had more than say 10% of votes and yet “won.” It was a Potemkin campaign, designed to lend credibility to a fraudulent win. You could see it coming for months before hand. Or you could if you have some experience with how the left operates.

It is the measure of how badly they lost that even with that extraordinary network of fraud in place they had to fraud at the last minute, desperately and in full view, which is what Larry’s post is about.

And since then their entire behavior has been the behavior of those with a guilty, no, a filthy conscience, trying to prevent getting what they know they so richly deserve. From thwarted court cases, to the barbed wire and guards on DC, to… well, everything.

Part of the reason I didn’t go out for the forlorn hope of the 6th is that I couldn’t see how it would help. But the left, feeling guilty, needed to taint a demonstration against fraud and make it sound like an “insurrection” and something unprecedented (Which is hilarious considering how much wholesale political violence the left has engaged in in the last two or three decades, particularly during the lockdowns, but also routinely. Remember the ketchup bottle cosplayers at the SC hearings? They also “broke” into the Capitol. And they’re not sweetness and light either. And let’s not get started on the Occupy movement, because I don’t have all day.)

Of course, the only deaths by violence at the Capitol that day were among the protesters, one shot down out of the blue for no reason, the other apparently beaten to death. If you’re among the idiots who think police officers were attacked, do put it in the comments. I’ll enjoy watching my commenters eat you alive and burp out a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner afterwards while you run away in shame.

And other things have come out and quickly been hushed, like apparently Nancy Pelosi set the whole thing up and got it filmed in style. (She should have cameras in her own house, to prevent her husband’s tricks hammering him. But hey, perhaps she doesn’t care as much for that. She’s all about that power.)

Anyway, the left knows very well what they’ve done. They can also sense the anger in the country and the fact we know very well what they’ve done. It’s little “subtle” things like Let’s Go Brandon appearing everywhere in the night. Yes, sure, the left thinks it’s astroturf, because it always is for them, but at the back of their minds, they are discomfited, scared. They sense this giant ball of anger hanging over them, and they want us to do something highly inadvisable, so they can prove we’re “bad” once and for all.

Over the last couple of years, it’s become obvious this is the left:

It might sound utterly crazy to you. It does to me. But you forget two things:

1- the left is a cult and they believe with the certainty of fanatics that the future is theirs. The arrow of history points to their ultimate and eternal victory.

2- They don’t understand us at all. Violence for them is a knob which they twist up and down for effect (and usually via astroturfing and paying psychotics to scare the normies.) The don’t understand ours is a switch. If it turns on we can’t easily turn it off. Which is why we’re being slow and deliberate. The left meanwhile, like all primitives, mistakes restraint for weakness.

EXCEPT they’re starting to get a feeling they might have misjudged the situation. It’s not open, it’s not fully articulated, but the hair is rising on the back of their neck, and they feel like everything might not be up to their script.

They…. see a bad moon rising, so it put it. And they hear howls here and there. They’ve convinced themselves it’s just lost puppies so much that they’re probably going to try industrial levels of fraud in the mid-terms again. And it will go badly because we can see them. The cover of the media is now veil-thin. But they’re telling themselves that’s not true. And that they can get away with it.

They might… one more time. Maybe. Except that I suspect this time there will be fighting back by peaceful/legal means. But the establishment GOP is not very good at lawfare.

Mind you, I hope lawfare beats their fraud. No one wants an actual boog except the left. And they only want it because they’ve convinced themselves we’re incapable of fighting. May G-d have mercy on their souls.

But they sense something is not right. They sense a disturbance in the force. And they keep going more and more unhinged. Particularly in the whole “The sixth of Jan. was totes and insurrection, y’all!”

Except you know, it’s not very convincing come out of people with identical hair cuts and polos, wearing issue-shoes. It comes even worse from the clown face at CNN.

Take this for instance:

(link in image.)

Oath keepers spent over 400 on a “FEAST” at Olive garden, y’all. Says clown face CNN.

I’m not 100% sure what they think they’re accomplishing. I think they’re as usual assuming that we’re all barefoot scrambling peasants who have never been to a restaurant, or at least not recently. They think we’ll look at Olive Garden and go “Those dirty conspirators must have had foreign money to spend FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS on a meal, at a posh place like that.”

Except those of us who have traveled and/or moved know that Olive Garden is mid-price (And might be the best priced place they could find around DC) and heck, even where I live which is not what you’d call the most expensive place ever, a meal out with the two of us at a cheap place now will set us back $50 once you tally tip and soda. Or it will if we have an appetizer (which husband likes to do.)

And sure, this was early 21, before the bidenflation, but these people had been walking around all day, most of them are men, and if you had ten people or so there’s no surprise they paid four hundred dollars at Olive Garden. I mean, we hit a hundred if we take son to Olive Garden for a celebration. And it’s no “Feast.”

So what has CNN uncovered? That people to the right of Lenin eat? Why, GASP, how dare we? That they eat at mid-price restaurants? Well, you know, not everyone is Nancy Pelosi or that Newsom fellow, let alone the Comos. Right wingers don’t get jobs for their politics. We don’t have money to spend like that….

Were we supposed to have a packed lunch? No one told us it was a brown bag event. Last we heard, the clowns on the left had declared brown bag lunches racist?

You’ve heard about if life hands you lemons, make lemonade?

They don’t have lemons. They don’t have anything they can make anything out of. At this point they’re just trying to spin nonsense out of thin air, and hoping it works.

This is what happens when all you have are lies, damn lies and Marxism.

In the end we win they lose. But don’t get cocky. On the way there unless a miracle occurs, they’re going to make a lot of us wish we were dead.

Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

Be not afraid. Some things you have to go through. As the chicken says, it’s the only way to get to the other side.

Keep on keeping on.

386 thoughts on “Making Lemonade out of Nothing At All”

  1. I’ve never gotten out of Olive Garden for less than 20 bucks a person, including tip, and you could easily spend ten or twenty bucks more if you drink wine or eat dessert.

    Nowadays, I bet it’s thirty or forty bucks for an entree and a drink, not including any tips.

    Was it anybody’s birthday? Did the waiters sing?

    1. Looking at the menu — geez, you can’t even get Olive Garden delivery unless you order a hundred bucks of food? So they’re having a hearing about minimum delivery order x 4?

      1. Okay… current prices in our area have dinner entrees running from fifteen to twenty-one bucks each. Say you have an appetizer, a drink, and a dessert, you’re starting to talk real money.

        I think in the before times there was somewhat more spread, like thirteen to twenty-two dollars. More if you got something like steak or a pricey seafood dinner.

          1. I don’t think I’ve been there for at least five years. So I might be thinking of the wrong numbers.

            Congressional hearings, man. Half of the people there are going to eat a four hundred dollar entree tonight, while they tsk-tsk over Olive Garden.

            (Hilariously, some people are now objecting to describing anything at Olive Garden as an “Italian feast” or even as Italian.)

            3. I noticed that myself with a particular restaurant chain I enjoy visiting, the prices were a little lower at the locations in a certain city our hostess knows well compared to the suburban Atlanta location I usually go to.

      2. We do not go to Olive Garden much. I do with mom & my sisters once in awhile. But our standard Red Lobster or Texas Roadhouse meals, for 3 … Drinks, Appetizer, + main meal, has gone from $60 to $125 (plus 20% tip), By my math that is a 100%+ increase.

        1. We almost never go out to eat, but we order in occasionally. The Chinese place we frequent has doubled in price in the last two years. Pizza delivered has “only” increased about 30%. We live in the Maryland suburbs of DC, if that matters.

        2. We almost never go out to eat, but we order in occasionally. The Chinese place we frequent has doubled in price in the last two years. Pizza delivered has “only” increased about 30%. We live in the Maryland suburbs of DC, if that matters.

    2. Right? And maybe they didn’t eat the rest of the day (which we often do when we’re away from home. It’s one meal the whole day. Which usually ends up meaning appetizers. And yep, that’s still cheaper than two meals.)

      1. I know a nice retired couple who used to be civilian military contractors on the engineering side. They throw a lot of cookouts, and I go because I’m a friend of their adult son. Every once in a while, they take a whole bunch of their son’s friends out for dinner to a really fancy place, and they pay the whole bill, just for the pleasure of hanging out and eating well.

        That’s a feast. And I’m pretty sure that they pay more than four hundred dollars, and don’t really worry about it because it’s fun and they like to feed people.

    3. I think they’re just outraged that these terrible people paid for a meal, instead of eating the breadsticks and leaving. 😀

        1. If they were really insurrectionists, wouldn’t they have stormed one of the swank downtown DC restaurants that Democrats go to, surrounded the Democrats eating there and demanded they chant slogans on command to show that they surrender to those surrounding them….oh wait, that’s what the mobs that Democrats support regularly do.

          1. Maybe… We do eat lobsters which my youngest daughter refers to as sea bugs. But you’d need a darned big pot to boil one of those beasts and cracking the shell is going to be a bear…

            1. Nah. No problem. Throw a logging chain around it, drag it out of the pot, and use a nice splitting maul. Wear gloves and eye protection because they’re probably still hot!

              1. I’m trying to imagine how to get a log chain down, around, under, back up and hooked around something that big, in a pot of boiling water.

                Maybe cook them in a foundry crucible, and just dump it out when it’s done.

                1. I have logging chains around the shop. I don’t have tongs big enough for a 500lb bug. Come to think of it, I don’t have a pot that big either.

                  (And please don’t suggest it to my wife. She’s likely to get that distant look in her eyes and I’ll have to drive all over creation looking for one.)

                  1. Now I’ve been nerd sniped, and engineer brain is thinking things like this: what if we chopped the top off a water tower, and boiled it in that?

                    Rough approximation: the movie version of the brain bug is ~12 ft tall. Your average water tower is roughly 20 ft around and holds one million gallons, enough to boil a big brain bug, Bouillabaisse style. A good candidate is going to be in a small to medium sized city. Try to find an older one with a pitched tin roof, they’re easier to ‘unlid’ than the newer ‘inverted teardrop’ style.

                    Next up, you’re going to need a crane to get your cartoonishly oversized lobster up 150 ft to go over the side. I don’t have Grandma’s Alien Seafood Delight recipe at hand, so no exact figures, but I will say that you are going to need a lot of salt. Both your salt and your bug are going to need some custom rigging as well. Wherever you got your crane should have some recommendations. Keep in mind from previous discussion, that you may want to leave the bug sling on and hooked over the edge for easy retrieval when it’s done.

                    Ok, so you’ve got crazy crayfish in the world’s largest improvised stock pot. Now we need to heat this whole mess up. One million gallons more or less, is going to take 8.3 million BTU to go from 72F on a warm day to boiling brain bug bisque. Adjust up or down if you’re in Maine in March or Abilene in August. They make million BTU heaters for construction use, so back to your equipment supplier for a dozen of those. It’s better to have extra than not enough – you don’t want it to be cold, do you? Don’t forget a couple of 1000gal storage tanks either. Good news here, though, is that if you forgot to get them at the equipment rental, you can always steal, er borrow these from your rural neighbors.
                    Oh! Very important – make sure to shut the water off – tell people there’s a boil order. You’re not trying to move the whole town onto central hot water or put bug stew on tap.

                    I’m skipping over some details here of how exactly you’re going to get your tanks and burners up there, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You’re pretty well committed at this point, or should be.

                    An ordinary lobster is about 1 foot long, 1-1/2 lbs, and boils for 5 min. Your celestial crustacean, however, is a dozen times larger, and 12k lbs. It can take up to six weeks to cook clear through. It needs to reach 118F in the center of the thickest part. Cooking thermometers won’t have long enough probes – you can affix them to a suitable length of rebar or insert a pipe and point an IR thermometer down it. Be sure to vent the shell first – pressures inside can build enough to turn you into a shish kabob if you blindly go thwacking at it with a hammer. Don’t forget to keep an eye on your propane supply!

                    Once it’s ready, remove, let cool for up to several days. Crack open with a clean, new concrete saw. Serve with 1000 gal of clarified butter. Serves 12,000. Expect leftovers.

                    On second thought, that sounds like a lot of work. Maybe we won’t eat the bugs.

                    1. For that much weight at that height, it might be simpler to lower the Bug into the pot with a cargo helicopter, and hoist it out the same way after cooking.

                    2. /cheer!

                      I was thinking of using a wood fire for that oversized kettle. (Certainly not going to cook it in the kitchen on my stove.) Considering the size of that water tower, I’ll probably need a steady stream of logging trucks, and 24/7/6 week excavator rental to keep feeding those logs into the fire.

                      About that water tower. Once we slice the top off, we should bend over the edges of the top and bottom to be able to lock them together again. Poke a hole in middle of the top and park a D6 caterpillar over it as a weight and turn the whole thing into a pressure cooker. That should greatly reduce the cooking time and amount of fuel needed.

                    4. “Couldn’t you just crack the bug open, scoop out the meat and cook it in batches?”

                      Probably not. We’d need a glacier parked nearby to keep the uncooked parts refrigerated. Of course we could move the whole setup to Antarctica and the refrigeration problem gets solved; but there aren’t any water towers in Antarctica, and even fewer trees.

                    5. We don’t need to go clear to Antartica, though. There are several places in the Rockies that have enough snow cover year-round. A little difficult to find one with good road service, but better than the South Pole, plus closer to your forestry logistics. Get a firefighting helicopter to drop it off – might even be able to use the existing rigging. Then pack in your other supplies on a ski slope machinery. Crash the international seafood market.

                    7. I want to say you’re being silly, but it’s far too late for that.
                      What are the economics if we fill the blimps with hydrogen, consider them disposable, and burn them for additional fuel at their destination?

                      If we want to scale up even more, say, in the face of an alien invasion, if you have natural gas infrastructure handy, you can flambe ~530 bugs an hour.

                  2. “Silly” is how we get tall tales like Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan, and John Henry. Oh, and Iacob Crane and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow since we just passed Halloween. Cautionary tales mixed with humor.

                    1. I enjoy taking silly far too seriously, from the classic “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex”, to more recently, “The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel” – also on the food theme.

            2. Still thinking of the cartoon of a lobster being held over a pot, seeing another lobster and saying, “How’s the hot tub, Bob? Bob? BOB!”

              1. Sigh, My father had one – he had wandered upon an ancient Native American camping site in the Mojave, and found a sort of clay cylinder smoking pipe. He gave it to a archeologist friend of his, and the archeologist was so chuffed, that he gave Dad a huge white-flint knife blade. Dad had it in a frame, in the den for years – always telling us that it was the sort of thing that the Aztecs cut out hearts with.
                I have no idea of what happened to the blade, eventually. With luck, one of my sibs has it, as Mom and Dad’s retirement home burned to the ground in 2003.

                1. Dad found an obsidian arrowhead in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, a few yards off a major trading path in Virginia. The nearest known obsidian deposits are about 2,000 miles away. Imagine the trip it had….

                2. I used to have a couple of large chunks of obsidian from California. Lost ’em in one of our many moves. Wanted to do (attempt! it’s not easy) some core flaking and make a couple of knives, scrapers, and arrowheads.

                1. I guess they were heart-on-their-sleeves leftists, rather than the heartless establishment types?

                    1. You know, the “this isn’t mental illness” group gets routinely undercut by the fact that a lot of these people are out and out crazies.

                      I mean, it truly sucks for the ones who have what is really a super nasty birth defect (IIRC the brain can get the wrong sex hormone bath in utero), but most trans-identifying people are either socially pressured into it (autistic girls) or bugfuck nuts.

          5. Not that anyone in Oregon is likely to see a lunar eclipse anyway. Not with our current weather projections. Rain, Rain, and more Rain, oh Snow! (Doubt snow. It never snows in Oregon when they predict it. At least not in Willamette Valley … When they don’t predict it, then we get almost 5′ … 1969).

              1. Wish we could. It is looking very wet, down to possible snow flurries. Baker has already has had 2″ of the white stuff, in town, and expecting more (cousin posted pictures of their deck, with a ruler showing snow depth).

            2. Did they predict snow for Feb of 2019? Clobbered CG (and Eugene, too, I think) before we moved up; convinced me to install a whole-house standby generator.

              Locals who were here for 1969 said that was worse.

              1. “Did they predict snow for Feb 2019?”

                Not that I remember. PTB were caught by surprise that first Friday. Let out early for school, because not only not planned on snow, but “deeper” than normal (2″ or so); expected to be gone by Monday … Boy did they get that wrong (out a week, then I was out a week sick). I was 12, 7th grade. We had to stay out in the breezeway waiting for the school buses (we lived 4 miles from the school). I’m 66. I still remember freezing (girls had to wear dresses), we were not allowed back in the building. Then the snow kept coming down.

                It gets better. The house has a flat roof. Very WET snow. We were up on the roof shoveling snow off (I was old enough to help). We had snow piled as high as the roof by the time we stopped having to shovel off the roof. Had snow patches until early May. Never lost power or heat (gas heat + wood fireplace, didn’t have the wood stove yet). Did have delivery issues. Not enough snow plows, for neighborhoods, or even River Road. Don’t remember how far North or South this snow went. I do know it was worse in Drain, south of Cottage Grove. Grandparents took (old style) movie film. You could barely see the top of their (large, back then) car.

                House still has a flat roof. Where mom still lives. So if weather pulls this again. We, the 3 of us, are hiking over. At 88 she doesn’t belong up on the roof. At almost 71, hubby should not be either. I’m iffy. Hopefully some younger neighbors will help our son. My BIL (hubby’s brother) is in the same boat with his MIL’s house. Flat (ish) roof. She’s 93. BIL is 76. His wife is 68. Her brothers are over 70 … BIL and his wife live in a 5th wheel, which that much snow on top isn’t good for either. They live at least 10 miles from us. Mom is one mile from us.

                1. Oops. Missed 2019. Did not predict the snow for 1969.

                  Snow was predicted. Whether they expected that much in the valley? I don’t know. It really wasn’t that bad. The 2017 ice storm was worse. Both had power outages. Ours was out less than 24 hours. Outlying areas had power outages a lot longer.

                  2. They looked into adding a pitched roof in ’80s before dad’s stroke (when they had to redo roofing material). Too expensive. Not practical. Not one local contractor would bid on doing that. Dad’s little brother (contractor, just not local) concurred. Not an unusual configuration on the Willamette Valley floor (they are ~1 mile west of the Willamette River). In 1969, when we’d been in the house only 5 years, it seemed to be a mistake. But now, 1969 is one incident in almost 60 years. When it snows, it rarely gets very deep. South hill area has problems, but that is the steep roads, not snow accumulation. 1969 was not normal.

                    https://www.google.com/maps/place/2675+Dover+Dr,+Eugene,+OR+97404/@44.1029123,-123.1405656,3a,75y,102.09h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s4xbLp7969oAlAGjeg3jEwA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D4xbLp7969oAlAGjeg3jEwA%26cb_client%3Dsearch.gws-prod.gps%26w%3D86%26h%3D86%26yaw%3D102.0891%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0x54c11d65208242bd:0x3bc4a1a0d30514a!8m2!3d44.102862!4d-123.1402504!16s%2Fg%2F11c2bn58sw

      2. The Thomas Disch anthology? At goodreads, a review says
        “Subtitled “An Anthology of Political Foreboding,” it contains mostly dystopian stories about ecological doom and political malfeasance, most of which fell short of the mark of pessimism compared to what became the reality the world experienced in the years that were forecast.”

        As Yogi, our national thought leader, has said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

    1. “Freedom’s just another word
      For nothing left to lose?”

      No.
      But those harboring thoughts of tormenting others to the brink of despair might want to spend some time thinking through the implications of those lines.
      Because sometimes, all you can do is gibber “The horror. The horror.”

  4. It will be interesting. Taking our “Mail Fraud” ballots to county drop box today. Already reports of people telling others to not use their own home mail boxes to mail them. The blue mail boxes around town are not any safer, nor are general county drop boxes. I use the one in front of the county fleet office. I’d wait until next week but one of the cats keep hauling the envelopes off. I’d hide them but do not want to forget so …

    1. I dropped ours off this week. The drop box we’ve always used is in the county building, about 5 feet from the county clerk’s office, so it’s reasonably safe. (It’s also where people line up to pay property taxes in person, so there’s not a lot of opportunity for funny business.) I did notice that Flyover County got tagged as a defendant in a ballot harvesting suit, and I have favorable experience with one of the plaintiffs. It might be interesting, depending on how crooked the presiding judge is.

    2. I voted early yesterday in person. I got confused. I was ill, it was Tuesday, and I was seeing a lot of election stuff so I forgot “after the first Monday” and went to vote. Not my original intent, but I did vote.

        2. Agreed.
          Vote on Election Day.
          In person.
          Physically put your ballot in the ballot box under seal, direct observation, and proper chain of custody.

          Accept no substitutes.

            1. Oregon is exclusively vote by mail, now too. Only one change since it started which is do not have to put a stamp on it (like I’m using the mail, where everything has to go through Portland, let alone it is no longer just snail mail, it is slower than the 7 year itch snail mail). Ballots have to be at county election offices on election day. Late comers (no matter when mailed) do not count. It is still fraud vote by mail. We just don’t get a choice (anymore).

              Oh. Very disappointed the proposal for gun/ammo registration/back ground check had something other than “yes/no” for an option should have been “yes/get-off-my lawn-hell-no”

            1. That’s not an option here. It’s all machines, although they do produce a printed ballot that goes in the box.

              What’s inside the machine? Has the software been audited? Is it secure from intrusion? “You’re not allowed to ask that! ELECTION DENIER!!!”
              ———————————
              Elections are far too important to be left up to a bunch of uncontrolled voters. The Party MUST exercise oversight and management to prevent mere voters from electing the wrong candidates!

              1. Same here, which is why I’m reasonably sure we’re going to see some midnight miracles in Atlanta again this year that ends with the state turning blue.

                1. It will be the same places as 2020; Atlanta, Philly, Maricopa County, Madison Wisconsin and Minneaopolis Minnesota. Also expect a lot of found ballots in NYC, which will not be able to complete their count for weeks in crucial statewide races.

        3. In the Reader’s neck of the woods, early voting polling places are set up exactly the same way as the precinct ones are on election day. The Reader voted early because there were a lot of incidents here in 2020 were folks went to a polling place on election day and found that they had already ‘voted’.

            1. Life is full of tradeoffs. After the oncoming unpleasantness, we need to revert to 1 election day (maybe 24 hours), paper ballots and purple fingers.

        4. I didn’t want to, but since I’m overseas I didn’t have a choice. I still mailed it as late as I felt I could to make sure it arrived by election day.

    3. I never use the fraud-by-mail ballots. I take the unopened envelope to the walk-in polls on Election Day and tear it up in front of them. They have a bag to throw the pieces in.
      ———————————
      Those who do not remember the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the mistakes. Those who do remember are doomed to watch everybody else repeat them.

      2. Oregon passed a vote-fraud-by-mail law before we moved up here. IIRC, somewhere in the mid-late 1990s. There are no precinct voting stations, so not an option. Curiously, after that happened, the state started to turn blue. OTOH, Portlandia has a lot of voters, both alive and “virtual”.

      3. Oregon does not have the option to take the mail by fraud ballot into a poling place. Heck I’d prefer that we have the option to take our ballot in to poling location, signature verification, and watch it get counted. Means hubby and son have to make an extra effort (we used to when poling places were still a thing, when we were both working and had a child at home).

      1. Technically we have two (of the 4) and one Kelpto in training.

        None of the 4 came from a shelter.

        Note. Democats or not. Once they enter this household they are not leaving.

        OTOH should one or more been damaged (none were), at least we have a different story from the “dog ate the ballot”. Our story is “cats …”

  5. My first thought, $400 for Olive Garden was, so it was like 10 people then? Though we usually just go for soup, salad, and breadsticks. For a “feast”, it has to be 5 people or less.

    1. It makes me think of the FBI busts of an “arsenal” consisting of four guns and a few hundred rounds. That’s not an arsenal, that’s a good day at the range.

      Likewise, the Jan 6 evidence of copy of Constitution, Declaration of Independence, puzzle of US Capitol. Or the various evidence of extremism slides floating around that would indict all of America circa 1990.

      Hey, I’m beginning to notice a pattern here. I know, I know, we’re not supposed to do that, but it’s almost like this emperor’s suit is kind of sheer? Lawyers say if the facts support you, pound those. If the law supports you, drive that. If you neither facts nor law on your side, pound the table. Explains the “Save Our Democracy” billboards I’m seeing again this year.

  6. Knew an older couple that went to the Trump rally that day. Fortunately, they didn’t go to the Capitol Building protest, but instead returned to their hotel.

    1. Doesn’t mean they’re safe. A Homer, Alaska couple, Marilyn and Paul Hueper, never got within a hundred yards of the Capitol yet four or so months later they were raided for stealing Nancy Pelosi’s laptop from the Capitol and handcuffed, by the FBI. A U. S. Declaration Of Independence was seized as evidence.

      Turns out that apparently a NYC woman and her son stole the laptop.

      Don’t know if the Huepers ever got their Declaration Of Independence back.

      1. That D.O.I. was likely shredded as they don’t want anyone repeating that again! Jim, last attempt…I want to mail you a book copy as sort of a belated Birthday Gift. email me if you can tahunter.author@ gmail.com

  7. $400? So with apps, drinks, and a tip, that’s what? Six, eight people? They really gotta be grasping at straws to make a big fuss out of that.

      1. Note, the differences of what restaurant costs are now VS a year ago, for the 3 of us, does not include taxes. We are in Oregon. Taxes does not apply for restaurants ….

          1. Sales Tax? What is that? Asks every Oregonian 😉 We do not have stinking Sales Tax. We do have hotel hospitality room (%) and gas (fixed) taxes. And now a dealership and new vehicle “fees” (%, Sales Tax by any other name, but …) Not product or service sales tax.

            (Really is surprising how many people in other states do not know that. Had fun with new employees in counties in other states, calling with sales tax questions. Seriously. When I first started I did have to ask what “Use Tax” was. Was hired because I could code, not that I was an accountant. Company based in Oregon. By the time I retired, the software was installed in over 50% of the county public works departments between Washington, Oregon, and California. Plus one in Colorado, and one Federal Tribes. Does not count multiple installations for a few counties for other than public work departments. Given there are exactly 2 county, and one city, public works in Oregon using the software, that says something. Don’t know what. But something. Don’t know how they are expanding. CCFlu slowed them down. Before Boss wouldn’t fly. Current manager will, but CCFlu.)

            Problem is, people aren’t apposed to a sales tax, exactly. But only if they get rid of income tax at the same time. Which the legislators won’t do. Plus Sales Tax must go out to be voted on by Oregon residents. Since by law, anything to be voted on by residents cannot have multiple items on the same vote. Or:

            “Add Sales Tax and Remove Income Tax” is two items, not allowed.

            “Add Sales Tax” Yes or No. “Remove Income Tax” Yes or No. Is two different items to vote on. Naturally the fear here is item 1, sales tax, passes, and item 2, remove income tax, fails. Or the TPTB fear, sales tax fails, and remove income tax passes.

  8. Yep, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, & when democrats have nothing but hot air they use it to howl at the moon and screech.

    Thinking about it, no matter what they have, they howl at the moon and screech anyway.

    1. We’ve been making life’s lemonade for most of our lives while THEY skim the cream off the top. Sometimes, you just need to add more sugar to the lemonade to sweeten it up. Let’s all try to do that!

        1. Ture. Many of those people already have “brain damage” already. LOL I remember a really terrible poison case on the news some years back involving lemonade. There was a family where many members developed total liver failure about the same time and most died. As I remember, some psycho man who worked at a CDC? cancer lab got his hands on a cancer-causing lab chemical (tasteless I think) that is undetectable after the body processes it (liver processes the poison). Somehow he was wronged by the family (I think wife was coworker) and he somehow broke in when they were not home and put the toxin in the lemonade. A real tragedy. Unfortunately, there is evil in the world! I think a few family members did get liver transplant and survived, but several also died, including the mother. Sad. They did catch the murderer though but it took a while and a lot of detective work. I hope they fried him and he rots in hell.

  9. Interesting. Yeah, it seems to be happening in Brazil. And you know, if the commie/perverts steal this mid-term, I would rather there’s a bloody fight, than our side gives in to a bunch of pervert slackers and their commie, or Chinese, handlers. I tapped my paranoid brain for a ‘what would civil war 2 be like,’ vision, and it became Crossing Over. And I know that the people who fare worst will be the old, children, and those with ‘special needs.’ But, like I said, I would rather some kind of ‘tit for tat’ pushback. Something, for crying out loud. Keep ’em coming. I enjoy your musings and prognostications.

  10. The left is not the only place where there is a disturbance in the force. The Reader is noticing all sorts of stresses popping out in the area of VA where he lives. People are much ruder than when the Reader started visiting this area in 2008 (when the Reader’s son started law school at a local institution). Drivers are also much more aggressive; this area had some of the sanest drivers the Reader had encountered. Now, not so much. Another straw in the wind is that the number of folks called out by the range safety folks at the range the Reader practices hole punching at has increased a lot and so has the talk back. A couple of folks have been escorted out (quickly). The only good news is that folks are still not going crazy in the stores; hopefully that continues.

    The Reader worries.

    1. I’m seeing some of that here, but not as much as many report. OTOH, I avoid a lot of the places where such stress would be easily visible, and people are more likely to be armed, which seems to give others pause. (Armed society, polite society, and all that.)

      1. The Reader guesses that about half of the people here carry concealed. There are some odd signs it may be needed soon. There was a murder about 5 miles from the Reader’s house; someone saw his car being broken into at around 3am, went out to confront the individual and was shot dead. Surprised the Reader that anyone would do that without taking a freedom pellet dispenser. In the Reader’s neighborhood a woman was out walking a dog around dawn and was followed around by a car. The car took off when the woman took a picture. In response the Reader is now carrying everywhere; even on daylight walks in the neighborhood. The Reader hates the need for that.

        1. Yep. I suspect that everyone who can carries wherever it is allowed. And I am pretty sure that some people have the philosophy of “Concealed is concealed” and don’t ask/don’t tell when it comes to carrying elsewhere.

          1. “The right of the people to be secure in their persons,”

            Granted, that is a restriction on the federal government; but the philosophy carries down hill too; as the 14th Amendment stipulates.

    2. The aggressive driving is something I’ve also noticed. People are on edge in a way that I haven’t seen since 1994.

      1. You have ranges that permit full-auto? The least distant one that I know that allows it is about 70 miles away. Rather a PITA, as I’d like to take the Uzi out once in a while…suppressed, of course.

  11. I think you’re right about the fury building – I’m working on a post about the insanely angry response across a number of blogs to that whiny article in the Atlantic about how we ought to just put all that Covid stuff behind us, forgive and forget.
    Ummm … nope. After all, Emily “Litella” Oster was one of the enthusiastic vax/mask/isolate campaigners. Commenters are furious, as the response to Covid hit everyone, deeply and personally; dead and dying friends and kin, isolation at home, constant harassing by mask Karens, vaccinations that likely are doing more harm than good, kids cheated out of two years of learning, kids with mental/emotional problems worse off than before, jobs and businesses lost… The anger is palpable.
    If the Dems cheat this time, like they did before … all that fury is likely to go up like a nuclear explosion.

    1. A nuclear explosion results from a critical mass. When enough neutrons in the mass start colliding, Boom. Kind of like the internet, when enough TWEETS say the truth, people WAKE UP.

    2. No, no, no.

      She glibly glosses over the number of people who could not wear a mask who were “othered” People who are hard of hearing and rely on lip-reading to communicate.

      You don’t just get to say “oops, my bad” and move on. Her ilk made life a nightmare for my sister and I for two years – and it isn’t over. Sissie’s doctor’s office is still in full on mask mandate.

      1. Oregon “Health Authority” (two lies in three words, they’re not trying hard enough) says that masks are still required in health care settings. OTOH, I haven’t seen masking enforced at pharmacies lately, though they still have the sound-disrupting barriers up.

        OTOH, in other settings, no masks are required, and the ostensibly healthy people who are masked up only get occasional funny/puzzled looks.

        1. We were out shopping in $CITY this past weekend, when we see a couple, both in N95 masks. The wife comments to me once they were out of earshot, “I just love their 2020 Halloween costume”.

          1. Sounds about like a couple of months ago in Florida Costco (99% don’t wear masks) where I was walking down an aisle and a beautiful 30 something woman was wearing a mask. I mumbled just barely audibly as I walked past without looking at her “You look stupid in that mask” On the next aisle I passed her again and she said to me “Were you talking to me?”, and I replied with a whisper stoically walking past without looking at her “Nothing you would listen too.” Evil maybe? but sometimes you almost have to slap people in the face to get them to wake up.

              1. Nope. If an allegedly sane and competent human wants to put his/her/its stupidity and gullibility on display in public, thus disproving both sanity and competence, it’s no skin off any part of my anatomy; bad examples are as useful as good ones. Besides, if you’re carrying (and if not, why not?) inciting an argument is not a good idea.

        2. When you go to the doctor, just say you don’t wear a mask because of a medical condition called hypoxyphobia. A mental condition caused by a fear of lack of oxygen. Works like a charm. They tried pulling the mask con on me in a medical office building run by a hospital about a month ago and I used that line. A month later, all the receptionists had stopped wearing masks, so everyone know the “control” gig is up.

            1. I think a lot of doctors’ offices are contractually bound to follow whatever their HMO, insurance, or parent investment company says they have to do.

              Most doctors’ offices around here are mask-free, but I gather that some doctors are not.

                  1. Oh no. You had to wear face diapers UNDER the fencing mask, while performing what’s basically a full out sprint for 3 minutes per bout. Which killed fencing for people who had breathing problems in the first place.

                    1. I thought you were making a joke! Is the Fencing Association run by total idiots?!? Next up, marathon runners?

                      Sheesh…

                    2. Did you see the video of the high school track runner? They made her wear a mask, she passed out two steps from the finish line and fell across it.

                    3. I’m beginning to think that it’s impossible to overestimate the stupidity and malice of some “authority figures”, and that Mencken may have been an optimist. 😦

                    4. Idiots AND Woke. They tried making all the regional division officer volunteers sign non-competition statements (i.e. not doing equipment sales or training without their certification first.) I’d been secretary for the NE Division for several years and I told them where they could stick their form in no uncertain terms. It’s so hard to get people to volunteer for those positions that it took two years for them to find someone willing to replace me. And the last correspondence I had from national had the writers preferred pronoun crap on it; so I e-mailed her back saying I didn’t want to receive any more woke crap from her ever again.

                    5. Sounds reasonable to me. As for the “pronouns” crap, try “sir, master”. 🙂

                      Whenever I run across “gender assigned at birth” I cross out the “assigned” and write in “observed”; no flak so far, but one can hope…

                      I haven’t yet written in “human” in the “race” field, but it probably won’t be long, given my disgust with all the “woke” garbage.

            2. Maybe it works better in Florida? Also as a man, I might be more affirmative in general than a woman? I basically ignored them and walked to my waiting room chair. The receptionists were woman. Funny thing was the female lab tech came out to grab me for my test and she wasn’t wearing a mask either. Lol. Sorry for any gender inequality here.

            3. It’s still required here, though the dentist’s waiting room is frequently an island of “illegal” sanity. I carry a mask with me just in case (at the beginning of Despicable Kate’s lockdowns, she had OR-OSHA stasi touring businesses for compliance. They never seemed to show up at the single store in $TINY_TOWN, since I suspect they’ve also heard of the 3S strategy.

          2. Just say “No”.
            You are under no obligation to justify yourself.

            If I’m feeling nice, I might say “thank you for the reminder” before ignoring them.
            But I haven’t felt nicely disposed towards one of that ilk in well over a year.

            1. That been my sentiments a while. I remember a week before Costco here lifting their mask requirement standing at the front mask complaining about “private property” mask tyranny. In about two weeks, masks were not required after “the vax miracle “ and Herd immunity was achieved.

        3. I honestly do not know what Virginia Health is doing ’cause my doctor’s stopped requiring masks early this year.

          Just my sister’s that is still covid crazy.

        4. When it’s people seriously older than I am, I’ll give it a pass. I think some of the younger people with the face diaper are from Cali-f’n-ornia. Flyover County and F-Falls isn’t big on mask-Karens (outside medical facilities, sigh) and I’ll just let the apparently healthy people wearing them figure out the consequences on their own. I don’t have to breathe their mold and dried spittle, so whatever floats their boat. My eyes might just roll a bit…

          1. The winner of the virtual signal prize this week was the 25ish birthing person wearing a rainbow-flag face diaper. Had to pause a moment to find my eyes.

        5. I have begun to use the after-visit Press-Gainey surveys to complain that the hospitals must start pushing back against OHA. I prefer the baseline 2019 behavior.

          Hospital manager-droids are terrified of bad Press-Gainey scores.

        1. Between masks and the damned barriers, conversations were really screwed up. Just about all the barriers are down (haven’t been required for a month or three). I don’t consciously read lips, but the jury’s out on subconscious.

          1. I wore a mask. But when I have to talk to someone, down it comes to the chin with “You won’t hear me with this thing on.” Only got push back once. Put it back on. Responded with “Can you hear me now?”, “What?”, “Can you hear me now?”, “What?” Take mask back down “Can you hear me now?”. Mask stayed down. Of coarse people behind me in line were howling in laughter, well one or two were. Now it is a non issue most places. Only place still masking are the hygienists at the dentist and they actually make sense.

            1. Dental hygienists have been wearing masks practically forever (at least at my last couple of dentists, dating back at least to 2000 or thereabout, maybe well before (senior memory 🙂 ). As you say, it makes sense

              1. My dentist was double masking, though for the procedures, there was a lot of stray enamel flying around. I need partial dentures. Doesn’t mean I like partial dentures. Refuse to consider implants.

                The hygienist wears some kind of mask; she damned near quit due to the OR-vax requirement, though somehow she was able to avoid it. (Perhaps the weekly testing; dunno. There’s a strong libertarian strain running through that office. Small “l”, not “L”.)

      3. I’m hearing impaired, and aids don’t do anything for me. I NEED unmuffled speaking, and view of the person’s mouth and face because I’m a partial lip reader. Two years of COVID was a sentence.

      4. You want to fight crime? BAN masks, except in the most inclement weather (meaning below zero). We’ve had a two-year lesson in why they were considered evidence of criminal intent.

        1. Hoodies, too; same restriction. It’s probably not a coincidence that “hoodie” and “hoodlum” share a base. 🙂

    3. “Professor” Emily had posted nagging tweets to make pregnant women get the dangerous vax..which ultimately must have lead to miscarriages, still births and even infant deaths shortly after birth…She’s a murderer IMO, and should be dealt with very harshly…

      1. My daughter was pregnant during the height of it all, and she was asked once by her OB if she wanted the Covid vaxx – she said ‘no’ – as we had already heard disquieting things about spontaneous miscarriages after getting the vaxx. NOTHING would have induced either of us to do anything that would harm Wee Jamie in utero. Her OB didn’t ever mention it again, so I thought then – and still think so – that there must have been a lot of quiet word of mouth chatter among OBs about the vaxx being a bad idea.

        1. Apparently the vaxx headed for “distal organs” and concentrated there. Which included the reproductive organs of both sexes.

          So yeah… I’m glad your daughter never got it. And that Wee Jamie is with us.

        2. Of all the vax issues, I want this to hit mainstream consciousness the most. Let them feel the rage of the would-be moms. The dads, too, but I don’t think a dude could on his best day muster the rage that this would cause in a woman who had miscarried post-vax.

          “When the Himalayan peasant sees the he-bear in his pride…”

    4. Angry, yes…but not insanely so. The Panic Brigade has neither admitted their errors nor begged pardon for the damage they did.

      They’re trying to avoid being held to account.

      1. Yep. Very abusive: “Hey, just because the decisions we made tormented you for two years and we called you ugly names for disagreeing with us, no harm, no foul, right? Why don’t you just let go and let’s all move past this.”
        I’m a little surprised that no one on my Twitter timeline has pulled the, “If you were a REAL Christian you’d forgive me without my having to ask!” Schtick. Yet.

      2. “They’re trying to avoid being held to account.”

        What a shame that it’s not up to them… 😦

    5. And I have not yet begun to blog post about that article.

      Writing it could be anything from a calm event, to an angry event.

      The thing is, I think a lot of the really angry posts might miss some of the details and technicalities of why the claims were sus, and why some of the actions really do merit extended consideration when it comes to future positions for those responsible.

      It is remotely possible that I have a rare amount of information to share, and I am not sure that I have ever properly organized it all in one place.

  12. Back when the whole blended family was getting along, wife and I took our kids to dinner at OG (for my birthday IIRC).

    Cost was $342 after tip for the 10 of us back in 2018.

  13. One of the things that might be adding to their unease is the response to the recent Atlantic article on declaring a “COVID amnesty.” You know, nobody knew anything and obviously mistakes were made, but there’s no sense in clinging to anger, so why don’t “we” all just forgive one another and move forward? “We,” of course, meaning, “you simple people out there who disagreed with us from the beginning.”
    Yes, it’s Twitter, but the level of, “not no, but HELL no!” has been on for two days now. Aside from people like Randi Weingarten (thinks it’s a great idea) and David French (who used to be bearable, but has become almost a parody of himself), the responses have boiled down to, “When we get sincere apologies for all the grief and damage you caused, we’ll consider forgiveness. But not until you prove you’re truly repentant and try to make amends.”
    No, if they were hoping to shame folks into behaving like abused spouses, it ain’t happening. And the level of fury and bitter anger people are expressing is scary.

      1. There can be no forgiveness without contrition and an acceptance of guilt, which don’t exist here….So…absolutely not..

          1. And they seem to think that “forgive” negates the possibility of punishment. It doesn’t; transgressions still require redress.

      2. There’s still an expectation that those asking for forgiveness should go to the trouble of apologizing for their transgressions. Didn’t see that in the Atlantic article.

        A minister I knew once stated that “turn the other cheek” was an act of defiance, not submission.

        1. Turning the other cheek is in Lamentations 3:30 and Job 16:11, and in 1 Kings 22:24 and 2 Chronicles 18:23, in a way that connects to “Play the Prophet”! I was so excited!

          Jesus was such a nerd….

                1. Sort of the same way that, whenever I hear “What would Jesus do?”, I immediately picture tables being flipped over and moneylenders being thrown bodily out of the temple? 🙂

                  1. Also, wasn’t Jesus the guy who told his followers to sell their cloaks and buy swords?

                    I’m guessing he would have told them to buy guns had they existed at the time.

                    1. IIRC, yes, he was. The stories do not make him out to be a wimp.

                      AK-47s, probably; easier to keep working under field conditions than ARs. After all, they were designed to be used by Russian troops, who made “break things” into an art.. 🙂

        2. I think it comes down to a point of Roman etiquette – forcing them to slap the other cheek meant they were treating you as a citizen or somesuch.

      4. As a Catholic Christian I will certainly forgive them if they have true repentance since I want to be able to pray the Our Father and there is that pesky part in there about forgiving us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

        However, in charity I must insist that the guilty be punished for their crimes. Otherwise they might go to H. E. Double toothpicks or purgatory. So it is best for their souls that they should come to terms with the evil they have done, apologize, and offer to make amends and restitution.

        Should they do these things I stand ready to forgive.

        I shall not, however, trust any of these fiends ever again. And at least after all this they have unmasked themselves and we know who they are.

      6. I can forgive a serial killer, but as a Christian I would be in no way obligated to allow a serial killer the freedom to murder again. Sadistic vengeance could be appropriate against the covid freaks, but I’m not wedded to that hypothesis.

        But, there are positions of trust and responsibility whose future occupancy can definitely be justly evaluated based on past behavior.

      1. [nods]

        I was afraid at first, before we had any solid data to go on. One of the main reasons I calmed down was the DP numbers.

    4. The reaction has been “Scary”?

      As I said on my FB share of it:

      People threatened to have me murdered in the streets, my LITTLE KIDS murdered in the streets, have actively prevented me from getting medical care for two plus years (I still can't, and the gynecologist's office may still cancel my December appointment because I can't wear a mask). Made me suffer a significant and enduring PTSD relapse. Explicitly denied my TODDLER medical care, just two months ago. Barred me from all public transport, tried to have me fired. Threatened to take my kids away.

Those are just the big ones.

How about: Fuck you, no.

      That’s not even including the school issues, being locked out of playgrounds, and everything else.

      Given the severity of their transgressions, the reaction isn’t aggressive enough. Although I’m mildly relieved that there was first an aggressive “no” to the attempt at gaslighting us into agreeing it didn’t really happen, and when that tactic has shifted to “amnesty”, it’s continued unabated. But I expect it will peter out sooner rather than later.

      After all, that was what happened in April 2020, when we were among those trying to protest the lockdowns.

        2. You can have the heads after #TeamVladTepes is done with the other end.

          No, I’m not particularly rational wrt people who hurt kids…

      2. Speaking of scary reactions, someone sent me a link to a YouTuber named Razorfist.

        Now there was some righteous anger.

        Whhooo boy.

        Not the way I would have said it but he certainly has some good points.

          1. Yeah that’s it. Not how I would have said it. But honestly, that’s how I feel.

            So help me God.

            I missed my youngest grandaughter’s first year and my oldest Two grandson’ high school graduations. A godson didn’t have a wedding and my aunt’s funeral.

            Not to mention all the coworkers and family members I had that went stark raving mad.

            1. I haven’t seen my parents in THREE years. I don’t know if I’ll see dad again in this world.
              They’ll never bleed enough to satisfy me. I’m not feeling merciful. May G-d help me forgive should they repent, but I’m weak.

              1. My wife’s grandfather dies a couple of weeks back. He had only seen my daughter a few times before they locked him down. That’s 18 f-ing months of visits they took away from him and from her. She is 3 now, and only knows that “his body broke, he died”, not how much he adored her (dude could have been the illustration for the encyclopedia entry “grumpy old man”, but damn he lit up when he saw her)

        3. Razorfist the Rageoholic is all sorts of awesome, especially when he gets really exercised about something.

            1. He becomes more exact in his speech. The vulgarity is an affectation, he gets super eloquent behind it, and it becomes noticeable.

              1. Yep, that’s how it seems to me. When he’s really pissed the number of f-bombs drops dramatically.

                1. > “When he’s really pissed the number of f-bombs drops dramatically.”

                  Beware my Youtuber when my Youtuber grows polite.

        4. > “Speaking of scary reactions, someone sent me a link to a YouTuber named Razorfist.”

          Razor’s got several fans around here, including our hostess. I’m surprised you didn’t already know who he is given that his videos get linked here fairly often.

      1. I actually read an Atlantic article yesterday about why the Ds are losing Hispanics. Lots of casual anti-conservative bias, but the gist was the Democrats are treating Hispanics exactly the way they treat blacks – patronizing them, making promises they don’t keep and taking their votes for granted.
        (My dad swore his black employees told him they were voting for George Wallace because, “He hates us, but if he tells us he’ll do something for us he does it. The Democrats make us all sorts of promises before the election and “forget,” them afterwards, every time.”)

    6. Not “scary”. Justified. The Panic Brigade went WAY overboard, both on policy and rhetoric.

      The only question in my mind is whether or not Congressional hearings will be enough…or if a Biological War Crimes Tribunal is needed.

      1. Biological War Crimes Tribunal IS needed.

        “Gain of Function” is a euphemism for biological weapon development; and is specifically prohibited by international treaty ratified by the United States. That makes Fauci, BU “researchers”, et. al. war criminals.

    7. I don’t want no friggin’ apologies. I want a signed statement that if they ever try that again, I have permission to immediately execute them.

  14. So, my wife and I went to Olive Garden this past May for a combined anniversary/birthday celebration (we both have birthdays in May, and our wedding anniversary is in May). Total for two entrees, sodas, shared appetizer, and I think at least one dessert (I can’t remember if both of us had dessert, just one of us, or neither of us), tax and 20% tip was $83.00. So, $400 for a “group” makes me think it was either a small group (8-10 people?) or everybody ordered the cheapest meal on the menu.

    Regarding the anger, yes I feel it too, and I feel it is growing. I worry sometimes that I am getting a skewed view of things from watching/reading too much media from the “right”, but then I remember that the other view pervades the mainstream and I see enough of that to balance it. And even those that aren’t necessarily angry feel like something is wrong, and things need to change. More people are speaking up more often, disagreeing more often with the narrative (or outright scoffing at the narrative), and taking steps to counter the narrative. I feel like that is a good thing, and may be (hopefully) enough to stave off actual violence. But if the Left pushes it too far… then it will get bad, very quickly. IMHO.

    1. Hey, the Left has been angry for years. They’ve been spewing out anger all over their left-wing media. Now we’re getting angry back, and they’re all butt-hurt about it.
      ———————————
      Lennier: “I see they taught you well back home.”
      Marcus: “My teachers said I had a lot of repressed anger.”
      Lennier: [looks around seedy bar full of unconscious lowlifes] “And?”
      Marcus: “It’s not repressed any more.”

      1. Best Paul Pelosi meme I saw so far was his X-ray image. An X-ray image of his pelvis with a hammer in the middle! LOL

      2. I don’t know who invented the term “cry-bullies” (I think I first read it in the comments on a Larry Corriea blogpost) but the term fits the Left very well.

    2. I read Politico and other left political sites almost daily (job). They seem to sense that they might be whistling past the graveyard. So they are pushing harder that yes, some small changes might be good, but “we need to do more of it and people will see that we’re right!” Like the flip from “Fetterman is fine” to “you hate sick people if you don’t vote for Fetterman.”

      2. That’s not a flip; the Left can hold contradictory beliefs with no effort, and bring out whichever suits their purpose. I suspect they can “believe six impossible things before breakfast”. All mutually exclusive, and simultaneously.

  15. Remember, remember that 3rd of November.
    Voter fraud, treason and plot.
    I see no reason why voter fraud treason,
    Should ever be forgot .

  16. They even bragged about how they fixed things in their favor with that Time Magazine piece about how a group of insiders “saved the election”, i.e. rigged it so that Democrats would win. They were and are so confident that their power, once achieved, will never be lost, that they are brazen about their egregious misconduct.

    The reason they are ramping up the hysterical Triumph of the Shrill style rhetoric (Biden is being trotted out again tonight at Union Square Station in DC to give another speech denouncing political opponents as enemies of the state) is because they are trying to create a foundation and environment where if their efforts to fraud their way into continued control of Congress fail, they can take it the next level of effectively nullifying the election results that what against them and using the full force of the state to crush opposition and maintain power.,

    These are people who think Medicaid can be used as a means to give people free housing in the name of public health. They have no restraint and no conception on limitations of power.

    I expect things to get very ugly simply because between their hysterical rhetoric, their repeated Reichstag Fire Redux efforts, and their treatment of political opponents (imprisoning opponents without trials for 2 years, disappearing reporters, etc), it is clear that they do not intend to surrender power peacefully if they are unable to use hooks and crooks to retain it through the elections.

    When a political party’s highest leadership has declared that its opponents winning is a “fundamental threat to democracy” and has equated those opponents with domestic terrorists, EVERYTHING is on the table for them. Worse, they are stupid enough to think they can succeed. They won’t, but it will be very ugly.

      2. Summary: Democrats are sowing public doubt, getting ready to frame Republicans for cheating and contest most of the elections they’ll lose. If/when they lose the majority in Congress, they’ll browbeat Sinema and Manchin into supporting their so-called voting rights legislation as a Parthian shot before Republicans take office in January.

    2. “…they are trying to create a foundation and environment where if their efforts to fraud their way into continued control of Congress fail, they can take it the next level of effectively nullifying the election results that what against them and using the full force of the state to crush opposition and maintain power.”

      Leftists have puled similar stunts before; see Spain in the 1930s.

        1. Well yes, we remember. The problem with Democrats is that like all leftists, they think that somehow it will end differently this time.

      2. And that goes really sideways the first time a gov’t agent gets shot, and even more so if it is a 3S situation.

        The thing to remember is that the 1930s fascists had armed opposition from the other parties, not from rando victim who just decided “screw it”. The latter is a ton scarier.

          1. Yep. They are used to a generally compliant population and nobody being pissed enough to risk targeting them specifically.

          2. I was thinking more along the lines of:

            ““And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

      1. The 1st Amendment rules, but only when supported by the 2nd. Just like every other part of the Constitution. The Founders were nobody’s fools.

        “The Great Object is that Every Man be Armed” – Patrick Henry, 1778

  17. One of my newish coworkers has an interestingly monotone speaking voice, at least with strangers, and a more Northern Cities/flat sounding accent than most folks around here. Unfortunately people read this as rudeness, especially if she tells them something that they don’t want to hear.

    So yeah. I am trying to lead her along the Vocal Way of Perkiness and Smiling, but without much success. I was kidding her that she should do Sultry Radio Voice instead, but that was also a no-go. But she’s come out of her shell a lot.

    We also had somebody get mad at me for saying, “If you didn’t see it, we’re out of it,” because apparently that’s insulting too. (I had prefaced it by saying that I’d just put out the last batch we had; and sure enough, we were out of it.)

    Threat Level Cheese PIzza Guy has not returned, but apparently somebody nearly got into it with a couple other coworkers when they informed him that we didn’t have any X.

    So I have been trying to make sure that people know we don’t have X before they can order it; and I have also been trying to make periodic announcements about what we don’t have, if there is a longish line.

    Halloween and the weekend were ridiculously busy.

    But yeah, a lot of sirs and ma’ams, a lot of hon, a lot of perkiness and dad jokes, singing, and so on.

  18. I got upset at a restaurant yesterday when I discovered they’d shut down their salad bar and took it out on the waitress (then apologized). Waitress could not have been nicer and got me what I wanted. Yes, the tip was larger than the bill required.
    Around here there are jobs going begging, but the people who are working are mostly trying very hard to give good service.

    1. And even leaving aside the need for politeness to those who are not at fault (like waitstaff when shortages pop up), I can’t think of a worse idea than to yell at people who are preparing your food out of your sight. Unless it’s yelling at your pharmacist, your surgeon before the surgery, or your parachute packer. Relying on their professionalism is almost always valid, but… 😉

      1. I know. At least I mostly stopped channeling my dad and learned to apologize at once. And mean it.

    1. The economy must be better – people can afford both gas and ammo!

      Well, one could look at it that way, if one wanted to.

        1. Jim Steinman laid a bombastic swathe of destruction across the world of popular music: Meatloaf, Air Supply, Bonnie Tyler, Barry Manilow, Celine Dion, the list goes on and on.

          1. You left a word out. It was a bombastic swath of glorious destruction! Steinman and Meat Loaf were a perfect match of bombast and glory. We’ll not see their like again.

            Every hero was once
            Every villain was once
            Just a boy with a bad attitude!

  21. I would like to think that after the mid-terms when people have had their say at the ballot box things will simmer down.

    However, if there is a red red wave, I foresee the progs going full on freakout like they did when Trump won in 2016. Screaming, crying, rioting around and whatnot.

    What will happen if there IS no red wave, but instead there is open cheating, I have no idea.
    I am concerned though.

    1. I’m thinking a massive Red Wave, partially canceled out by blatant election fraud.

      So, instead of 56 seats in the senate, the Republicans-and-RINOs wind up getting 51 or 52. Instead of 250 House seats, they get 220 to 230. Still majorities, but wafer thin.

      But this time around, the Democrats don’t hold all the committee chairs. This time, the Strumpet-In-Chief doesn’t have the tie-breaking vote. This time, there are investigations with teeth, and referrals for prosecution which the Department Of Injustice has to openly refuse.

      I sort of want to see the Democrats spend more millions of dollars and exercise their election fraud to the max getting Fetterman installed as Senator from Pennsylvania — and then try (and fail) to cover up the resulting clown show on a burning dumpster.

      Schadenfreude? Moi? 😛
      ———————————
      Grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.

      1. THIS. A plausible scenario for STEAL 22. They know we are on to them, so just make it enough to barely keep control…. I still think the Virginia Governor race recently was a dry run. Make us think elections are still fair and people still love democrats by just “squeeking by” a percent or two the republication candidate when it really was likely a landslide.

        1. The Reader lives in VA. He believes the turnout in the red areas (most of the state physically) dramatically exceeded the margin of fraud that had been prepared in Northern VA for that election. It was higher than any modern state election and larger than most presidential elections. Next year we have to work to take the state senate back.

          1. Yes, but also, at 8 p.m. when Fairfax County said they had ballot problems and would have to “reprocess” them, Youngkin had lawyers on the scene instantly. I heard that the poll watchers had his lawyers on speed dial. I’ve always assumed that made a difference as well. I’m hoping somebody learned something from that…

            1. The Reader does know that the Republicans recruited a large group of ‘new to election law’ lawyers here in VA and gave them a primer in election law so that they can be on call for the early voting and election day. The Reader’s son is one of them.

            2. Also note that Youngkin was part of the Carlisle Group and is an insider to the uniparty. I believe there also is a connection to Dominion there to. He was SELECTED as an example to plausibly demonstrate to the public that “elections still work just fine”. Youngkin is NOT A HERO.

              1. Nobody said Youngkin was a hero.

                It was pointed out that Youngkin is effective in using legal, peaceful, but lots of work, methods.

                I can’t help noticing that the attacks on him have gone from specific claims which could be checked, and were uniformly either false or literally complaining that he didn’t do exactly what we complained about when the progressives did it, and into accusations of being part of The Enemy, woooooo—!

                1. I think both rhinos and donkeys are both the uniparty enemy. With Youngkin, I sense a rhino wearing an elephant suit is all. Research his background and connections to make your own conclusions.

                  1. So you don’t have anything he’s actually done wrong, or even questionable.

                    You have a feeling that he’s The Enemy, and… we’re all supposed to go along with that. Or we are the ones who fail at research.

                    For someone you can’t actually point at having done wrong.

                    Nope, no sale, especially not when the accusations echo the ones the Progs have been making at him since he started running, which mirrored the ones thrown at Trump.

                    1. That’s the standard Leftroid mantra: “[Candidate] is EEEVUL!!”

                      “What has [Candidate] said or done that is so Eeevul?”

                      “”How can you defend such an EEEVUL!! racist/homophobe/whatever? You’re EEEVUL!! too!”

                    2. Where there’s smoke, there may be a fire. See my reply to writer in black. When you live in a time that the truth is often proven lies and the lies are often proven truth, it’s hard to know anything definitively. I do know that where there is smoke there may be a fire. I said I had a “sense” he may be rhino player. For sure his finance connections with Washington are worrisome. His future actions will let us know more.

                    4. All I’m really saying here is that Younkin’s “Victory” may not necessarily be one for us is all. George Carlin said “it’s a big club but we’re not in it”. People high in power sometime work for the other team(which may also sometimes be the same team (e.g. Rinos) Just remember that and keep questioning what you think is reality which is often is in the middle between left and right. at least my reply was respectful. Let’s just agree to disagree

                    7. You started out with a DARINGBRAVE stand that Youngkin is “not a hero,” accused him of being a member of the “uniparty,” declared his election to be a selection to give us false hope, oh and declared him an “insider”.

                      In response to someone pointing out that being prepared, and deploying trained lawyers, WORKED.

                      You have YET to give any solid evidence or argument for this claim that Youngkin is just as bad as the people he beat, and in fact keep retreating…without actually admitting that your accusations have no rational foundation you are willing to share.

                    2. FINALLY some kind of a solid accusation!

                      That said, the claim is false– as the link itself says, a completely different investment company bought Dominion in 2018. Staple Street Capital

                      One of the founders previously worked at the Carlyle group…. over a decade earlier. And in a completely different sector.

                      For bonus points?
                      Those lawyers he had on call were from his Election Integrity Taskforce, which was established to follow the law with respect to auditing voting machines.

                    3. That a fair conclusion to make for yourself for now. Only time will tell. But after all we’ve been through the past years. I’m not sure I trust many politicians at all.

                    1. On a related note:
                      “People think the way you change things is by electing the right people. It’s nice to elect the right people, but that’s not the way you change things. They way you change things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.” Milton Friedman.

          2. This.

            I’m seeing panic among the Dems and I think it’s because they see this one will be so far beyond the Margin of Fraud that there’s no hope of saving it, and if they try it will be so blatantly obvious that There Will Be Serious Repercussions.

            As to Larry Correia’s Violence Switch, I agree the Left does not know what that means, it’s just hyperbole from The Dumb Cousin-Humping Rednecks as far as they’re concerned.

            It is, however, a real thing and no one, especially those of us who know exactly what it is from experience, want to see that switch flipped because we are very much aware what comes next. Some of us may be old but with age comes experience and knowledge.

            And just because we are light years better at patience and tolerance does not mean our patience and tolerance is infinite. Most, in fact, I’d guess nearly all, long for the days in America when we could have open and honest discussions and disagreements and still be friendly with each other. Those days are past, unfortunately, and it would be a very poor choice to continue making what we have now worse rather than working to restore what we used to have.

                1. And let’s not forget, there will be nobody with the authority to say “stop, it’s over”

            2. They need to read “men who wanted to be left alone”, attributed to Solzhenitsyn, and take it to heart; it is not allegory. And that is why it really is a switch.

  22. On the Paul Pelosi thing, I’m coming to suspect that what really happened was a drugged out illegal Canadian went off his rocker, and Sam Francisco is so completely lawless that he really was able to break into the home of the Speaker of the House and assault her spouse, even on supposedly one of the most monitored richest and safest streets in the world.

    And the newsies are letting the whole “gay tryst” thing swirl because the alternative is that the bluetopias have become so completely unsafe that no amount of wealth of power can protect you from the roving violent drug addicts they set loose upon themselves.

    It’s the difference between a king dying from syphilis, and the king being eaten alive by feral dogs in his own bed. These are not the same.

    1. People who live nearby said that the Pelosi alarms went off if you even slammed a car door too hard, across the street. (Or something similarly hardcore.) And apparently there is a ton of staff, even if Madam Pelosi is gone, or they’re both gone.

      Really rich people are not alone in a house, ever. And they are really rich.

      1. True, but just because the alarms go off doesn’t mean anyone it paying attention.

        A guy on a different forum who worked as unarmed security for a while pointed out its really easy for a professional guard to get in the ha not of ignoring alarms when all of them are false. Including that one time a crazy meth-head with a hammer showed up.

        Remember, if it really is crazy underpants meth head, it may not reflect poorly on Paul Pelosi. But everyone else involved, from the Capitol police on down the line ends up looking like a pack of incompetent clowns.

        And all of them are democrats.

          1. Dorati and Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra; Mercury MG 50054 . My dad had a copy; “‘brilliant sound engineer C. Robert Fine successfully captured the hefty thud of the 1761 brass cannon at West Point.”
            The album has an extended cut on recording that and the selection of the particular ‘take’ for the 1812 use.

            Youtube has the 1812 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATdvddmDNRs; link to the cannon and bells commentary on that page.

    2. Statements from the Vast Rightwing Media Conspiracy have claimed that Paul P used the attacker regularly as a boy-toy.

        1. As a lot of people said when Monica and Bill were an item:

          “If you were waking up next to the Hildebeeste, you might be tempted too.”

          1. True…but Sick Willie was impeached for Perjury and Subornation of Perjury, not Infidelity.

            1. That was Bill’s biggest mistake. He should have admitted to it, trotted out the historical precedents (PLENTY of historical precedents!) At that point, it wouldn’t have made one iota of difference with his Presidency. On the other hand, it’s quite conceivable that Hillary would have had Bill assassinated for it.

              1. Doubtful; she knew for years what Bill did in his “free time”, and she always had her eye on the main chance. Bill was her meal-and-power ticket.

                1. Oh no, she would have. At that point he would have lost any value as her significant other; and Hillary is one vindicative biotch. The assassination would be have set up as accidental, or a random crime. And it’s quite possible she could have suborned a secret service agent into doing it.

                  1. Could be, but at the time Bill was the Big Cheese, Hillary was just his wife, and a junior Senator (or maybe not even that yet; the timeline escapes me and I’m not interested enough in them to dig it out).

                  2. Strong echoes of Ahab and Jezebel there.
                    I call that the first power marriage. A shame both Ahab and Jezebel were so rotten.

      2. Well, a 42 year old-toy.

        I feel sorry for the hippie guy. He seems to have been used and abused, and now he’s going to be a scapegoat in prison. And probably get Arkancided.

          1. She looks like a madam running a string of male prostitutes, and “marrying” or getting “boyfriends” in order to get new merch to sell.

            She was arrested trying to lure a 14 year old boy into her clutches, from school. And apparently there’s a good chance all her kids have been abused.

            But God forbid the police should look into any of it, except for the kidnapping!

              1. There was a horrifying set of tweets from a gay guy who’d just caught monkey pox, where he graphically (and almost proudly) cataloged the various activities he’d taken part in the week before he started showing symptoms. You could get sick just reading it.

                  1. If you lose at Russian Roulette you’re not happy. You’re not sad. You’re just “not”. Just sayin’… 😉

      1. I expect they did, and the entire street did, but the question is did they have competent security?

        But thing is, unless they actually release the footage, we really don’t know what happened. All we know is all the reports are not adding up at all.

        1. I believe it is a gated community as well.
          ‘
          Note that apparently had an apparent opportunity to flee outside away from the psycho with the hammer and did not do so:

          https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/11/01/a-detail-in-the-paul-pelosi-attack-story-makes-no-sense-n1641917

          Remember the number of changes in Paul Pelosi’s story after his recent drunk driving arrest, and how the cops apparently tried to help cover things up. One wonders whether this entire thing was staged precisely so that Pelosi and Democrats could try to use it to attack political opponents as violent loons (again even though the “perp” has a background of being both a psycho and a leftist) and if so, how much was DePape paid for his services. Perhaps he got angry because he was getting shorted on the promised payoff.

          Something really strange with the whole story.

          1. Now there’s a report the Capitol Police have cameras in and around the Pelosi home….but due to undersaffing and overwork, no one was watching them when the attack occurred.

            1. And if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you 🙂 . They have ~1700 uniformed offices (compare with the whole of Boston a city of ~675,000 which has ~2000 uniformed officers) and responsibility only for the capitol grounds and Library of congress (used to be separate Library of congress police but they were merged in). Before 9/11 it was ~800 but the big increase was from that period. That’s a LOT of essentially security folks for 3-4 buildings. Although with their main principal (Nancy) not there but in D.C. they may have been very lax, or they may just have decided to stay the heck out of a potentially ugly domestic issue (Rumors are this was some kind of tryst with the dude in question being a homosexual prostitute).

  23. I suppose I think differently enough from other people that I have frequently encountered people who cannot imagine that I would think any differently than they do, and if I do, it is because I am evil.
    The political left has substituted the thought and values of secular and atheistic philosophers and cultural icons from the Enlightenment on for those of Judeo-Christian religion. They cannot imagine that anyone would think differently than they do, and suppose that if they do, they are ignorant, racist, sexist haters. They go on beating on abortion, gay and transgender rights, and racism as campaign issues and are mystified when voters are more concerned about inflation and employment, lockdowns, political subterfuge in elementary education. and the collective dishonesty and hypocrisy of political leadership and major media. They do not see that censorship, propaganda, political imprisonment, one-sided show trials, persecution of political opposition, and possibly rigged elections, all in a supposedly righteous cause, are the very tools of tyranny employed by the notorious dictators of the 20th century whose ghosts they invoke as bogeymen. “It’s different when we do it”. How so?

  24. I asked someone not too long ago about the six figure jumps in numbers for one candidate after counting was supposed to stop for the day and poll watchers were sent home.

    He said “That’s normal.”

    Did those gaslights just filcker?

    1. https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/11/01/bidens-cisa-director-tells-us-not-to-worry-about-election-irregularities-n1641838

      Consider yourself warned! According to the Biden administration, you should be prepared for “errors” and “glitches” in the upcoming midterm elections. But fret not; according to Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), these irregularities are “normal” and “not nefarious.”

      Wow, apparently it only took two years of Joe Biden to go from having the fairest and most secure elections in history to the administration’s warning that we should expect irregularities because they happen all the time.

  25. The Left puts up an image of being a monolithic block, but there’s been a division all along (or at least from deep in the Before Times) between those who fear a boog and want to finesse a victory without it happening, and those who want a boog because they expect it to be a straw boog with just enough bloodshed to produce a few bloody shirts to wave.

    Or: They want the advantages of them being at war with us, without the drawbacks of us being at war with them.

    1. “They want the advantages of them being at war with us, without the drawbacks of us being at war with them.”

      It occurs to me this is another difference between the left and right; we understand that we will not be unscathed and there is risk not only to ourselves but also to those we care for. By contrast, see how some of these idiots react when one of their children is murdered – I’m thinking of the German politicians who wanted to fund more “refugees” after their daughter was raped and murdered by one (or maybe more?) of them. There are plenty of other examples.

      1. That German politician doesn’t work as an example for me. “I support Policy X as the right thing to do, even if it produces some bad effects as well as the good ones, and even if those bad effects gore my own ox” isn’t something limited to any one side.

  27. “In the end we win they lose. But don’t get cocky. On the way there unless a miracle occurs, they’re going to make a lot of us wish we were dead.”

    I’m going to repeat a quote from Admiral Thomas Hayward, Chief of Naval Operations in the late 1970s and early 1980s (some VERY hard times, if you aren’t old enough to remember).

    “I’m sick and tired of hearing about ‘the threat’. Let US be ‘the threat’. I want to hear about how Admiral Gorshkov (commander of the Soviet Navy) is losing sleep about our threat to his fleet.”

    It’s time we did likewise.

    1. I’m not losing sleep. I just don’t want anyone thinking I’m promising them candy and roses. I’ve had commenters go “You say it will be easy.” I’VE NEVER SAID THAT.

      1. You say that things aren’t forever doom and hopelessness against the thousand millennia communist reich.

        To the average blackpilled conservative there is no difference between that and saying that not only will it be easy but there is no threat at all.

        1. That’s because the “average blackpilled conservative” is a moron who can’t understand simple English.

    2. I am NOT supporting the side of the Takers. I do want to throw out a caution, that conservatives need to be aware of the dangers of listening too much to our own echo-chamber. The popular perception, that any armed conflict will be heavily one-sided in our favor is very likely a gross simplification, if not outright wishful thinking. I’m pretty sure it was in Zed Nelson’s non-fiction book “Gun Nation”, the survey result that 60% of conservatives reported owning at least one firearm – and that 40% of liberals did, too. There’s no monopoly on owning an “equalizer”.

      2. One sided? No.

        Massively disproportionate deaths based on where people live and fragility of infrastructure? Oh, yes.

    3. That was James Mattis’s plan –
      “What keeps you awake at night?” CBS host John Dickerson asked Mattis during an interview on “Face The Nation.”

      “Nothing. I keep other people awake at night,” Mattis responded, almost instantly.

      I don’t get that attitude from Lloyd Austin.

    4. Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do. Ulysses S. Grant

  28. 1- the left is a cult and they believe with the certainty of fanatics that the future is theirs. The arrow of history points to their ultimate and eternal victory.

    The modern Left is an unholy hybrid of the Mafia and the Chuch of Scientology, with considerably less moral scruples than either.

    2. I was just about to post a different version of this. 🙂

      Cave Johnson’s not someone you’d ever want to be involved with in real life, but he’s awesome as a fictional character. So many good quotes and a great delivery.

  30. Pretty much when I heard about the Jan 6th protests, I told my friends “go the other way from them, I suspect that they’ll be 50% federal law enforcement there by numbers.”

  31. Here’s an idea for Republican candidates in the closing days of this campaign:

    “You worry that if you elect me, I won’t do a good job. That’s a valid concern. But, you know what a lousy job my opponent has already done. Do you expect me to do worse than that?”
    ———————————
    There are forms of stupidity that businesses can’t indulge in. There are no such limitations on the stupidity of government.

    1. @ Imaginos1892 > “Do you expect me to do worse than that?”
      When Trump was campaigning in 2016, he told a Black audience they should vote for him because “What the h… have you got to lose?”

      Considering the numbers of defectors from the plantation shown by recent polls, a lot of them thought seriously about his challenge, liked what he accomplished (Lowest black unemployment numbers in decades, or forever), looked at the current situation, and decided that Republicans couldn’t do any worse to them than the Democrats had already done.

  32. I’ve been trying to avoid the black pills, but a known doomer pointed something out recently about the left being ‘afraid’ and ‘panicking’ and how that’s not really an accurate metric to judge how close they are to defeat.

    Because to the left, calculated hysteria is a tactic.

    Every minor setback or stumbling block is treated like one of the signs of the Apocalypse and a harbinger of a new age of slavery, dictatorship and national socialism (though of course they use the abbreviated name), but it’s just a way to whip the foot soldiers on the ground into a frenzy for an immediate counterattack.

    On the other hand, no sooner do they get a victory, no matter how minor, than they begin working on how to capitalize on it, get a foot out of that inch, then a yard, then a mile. The ink was barely dry on the gay marriage mandate before the suits against bakers and the push for transgenderism.

    On the other hand, how does the right capitalize on any of its victories?

    But anyway, it cast all the ‘the left is afraid/the left is panicking’ sentiments in a chilling light.

    1. Because as has been often pointed out, and observed among backpackers in Afghanistan, the left is rarely frightened of things they should be frightened of, and the things they are frightened of tend to be imaginary or no real threat, so their fear isn’t a good metric for their actual status.

      1. I was going to point that distinction out. 😀

        The Left saying they are scared, and the Left acting like they are scared, are two radically different things with very little overlap.

        The people loudly proclaiming how they don’t feel safe speaking their mind in The Current Atmosphere, where at the absolute worst they’d face public disagreement or a challenge to their claims?

        They’re not afraid.

        The people lashing out when challenged?

        Very unlikely to be scared, although decent chance they are startled— they said The Thing, where is their praise? How dare you deny them the reward for saying The Thing?
        Which can be hard to tell from actually scared– where they’re so deranged that they think disagreement is a threat.

        And THEN we are into the current “it’s afraid” zone. Where they actually behave as if there is some cost to being caught.

        1. As I was wont to say when people claimed that Trump was “a new Hitler”: If Trump were anything remotely like Hitler, you’d already be in a camp. That you aren’t even the least bit reluctant to spout such nonsense shows that even you don’t believe it.

  33. Your cat’s behind? Sounds like a slur against cats, but maybe yours is different. In any event, I think you meant “dirtier than Joe Biden’s behind”.
    As for why to attend a protest when it’s useless? Here’s a football analogy. Sometimes a good coach will keep running the ball during the first half even though it’s not yielding good results. But often, it’s softening up the other team for later in the game, when it becomes effective. Perhaps the same could be same about politics. And the left certainly does plenty of useless protesting – but keeps pushing the envelope. We can certainly do the same.

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