Post-Mortem By Thomas Kendall

303 thoughts on “Post-Mortem By Thomas Kendall”

1. DeSantis was one of the founders of the House Freedom Caucus, organized in February of 2015. He’s the real deal.

   H. Myers Cape Coral, FL

   Sent with Proton Mail secure email.

   1. Why the hockeysticks should I trust you, trust whatever metric, or trust a single fact alone that is only reaching back five years?

      The GOP stabbed us in the back, obviously, in 2020.

      They revealed that they had been stabbing us in the back for twenty years.

      These are not good people, these are not decent people, and they have been running complicated and elaborate disinformation operations against us for decades.

      1. And part of that is stacking the deck in the primaries, and ensuring that the conservative block splits their votes.

         Which is what they’re trying with the DeSantis hue and cry.

         1. Yep.

      2. So BobT’R’F’, I think you’re close saying what I’ve been whistling in the wind for years, ain’t no hope ‘lessin we somehow create a third party to ran against the uniparty, -the democrat with it’s Republican auxiliary party.

         Problem is it seems impossible to get from here to there.

         1. We need to look at already-existing 3rd party organizations, to see if we can take them over. If we miss one of the solidly Blue States, so what?
            All we need is to hit enough of the Red or not explicitly Blue states to get to the electoral votes needed to be inauragated.
            Younger people will likely be more in favor of an outsider candidate.
            Face it, we’ve TRIED to reform the GOP – they ain’t having any of that.

            1. Third party will just give us Dem wins. SERIOUSLY

               1. This is the bitter awful truth (says the person who was 3rd party from 1982 until 2016). But when we come in with flamethrowers to root out the RINOs there will probably be red pilled former dems willing to join us because the mask has fallen off that party for real. IMO

               2. The Reader agrees with this. Look at the 2%-4% the Libertarian candidates grab across the country and their impact on races. The Reader thinks a better long approach is to take over the Republican party lock, stock and barrel at the local level. It will be a long, messy and frustrating process, entailing as it will a two front war; one against the RINOs and one against the leftist donkeys. The Reader isn’t looking forward to this; he lived his life and voted and thought that was enough. But challenging both at every level is going to be what is needed to avoid the alternative. The one thing that may help us is that the next couple of years are going to suck in a way that virtually no one alive today has a memory of – there are few left who lived through the Depression and with the government having far more monkeys and word processors than back then they can make it way worse.

                  The Reader has been thinking angrily for the last couple of days. He’ll have more thoughts coming.

               3. Seriously,the Republican Party just gave the dems wins.

                  SERIOUSLY I’ve reached the point where I feel the Republican Party is not salvageable, it’s just the loyal auxiliary of the democrats and, to me seems just as corrupt, if slightly less crazy.

                  Seeing Mitch McConnell’s super-pac, the Senate Leadership Fund, spent over six million bucks campaigning against a Republican candidate to keep try and keep Lisa Murkowski in office, Over six million bucks, not to support a Republican, not against a democrat. Against a Republican! I want a third party to counter our present single party system.

                  1. It’s final then? Murkowski is out? That’s almost as good news as Lizzard Cheney getting the boot.

                     1. I didn’t know that Alaska had enacted ranked choice voting. Right now according to DDHQ, the results are at:

                        Kelly Tshibaka GOP 94,120 44.48%
                        Lisa Murkowski GOP* 90,990 43.00%
                        Patricia Chesbro DEM 20,245 9.57%
                        Buzz Kelley GOP 6,228 2.94%

                        with 70% counted.

                        Unless by some miracle 65%+ of the remaining 30% go to Tshibaka, nobody will have 50% to win. So Buzz Kelley will be eliminated and his 3% distributed to those voters’ second choice, and so on until somebody has 50%.

                        Did Kelley’s and Chesbro’s voters put Murkowski as their 2nd or Tshibaka? I’m far away from Alaska politics, but I would bet that Kelley’s would split and Chesbro’s would go mostly to Murkowski as the RINO on the ticket. But it’s impossible to know other than to say it won’t be the Democrat.

                        1. And for similar reasons, Palin could actually win the House seat if Peltola (currently at 47.34%) doesn’t get, um [does math], 60% of the remaining uncounted ballots, and then assuming that all of Begich’s voters put her as their second choice.

                           Which may or may not be the case. I know from my departed dad and from friends still up there that lots of Republican voters think she’s an idiot. It’s not inconceivable that a lot of Begich voters are NeverPalin.

                           I thought she was being a spoiler, but again I didn’t realize Alaska had ranked choice voting now.

                           1. During the special election for one of Alaska’s seats, the two Republicans had vastly more votes than the Democrat, but because of ranked choice, the Democrat ending up getting the seat (if i recall correctly over 75% of the district votes were for the two Republicans in the first round, and after the ranked choice nonsense they BOTH lost).

                              Ranked choice, just like jungle primaries, is a scam designed to facilitate getting Democrats into offices they would not win otherwise.

                        2. Holy Shit, is that ever stupid. So, even if the Democrats lose epically, they can still sabotage the winner? It’s at least as bad as Jungle Primaries.

                           1. What’s worse is that the Republicans in Alaska passed it, unlike CA’s jungle primaries.

                           2. What do you mean, as bad as jungle primaries? They’re basically running a jungle primary the same day as the election. Or at least the Stupid Party is, since the party chose to endorse more than one candidate and lose rather than pick one and piss off some of their base/donors.

                              A convenient demonstration on why it’s stupid to depend on tax payers to provide your candidate selection process.

                           3. The problem is that they also enacted a “top 4” primary (most other jungle primary states are just “top 2”), so each party has to come together well before the primary and decide on just one candidate. Which basically puts it back to the smoke-filled room and disenfranchises party voters of their choice of candidate at all. Unintended consequences and all that. I’m not sure why Alaska bothers having a primary at all: if there were eight candidates on the ballot to be ranked would it be any different than four?

                           4. Yeah, and in today’s ‘smoke-filled rooms’ they’re smoking crack instead of tobacco.

                     2. Sadly, it appears, nope. Ranked choice runnoff coming up; https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/alaska-senate-race-headed-ranked-choice-runoff-rcna54939

                  2. The Tea Party almost achieved takeover of the GOP. They certainly have had a lasting influence over the rank and file. What they didn’t do is replace the squishy elites running the damn thing. We have GOP committees at the town, county/parish, state, and national levels. Most of the problems are at the national level, with the majority of the remainder at the state levels. Town and county are limited in what they can do (volunteers for poll workers, poll watchers, challengers, door knocking, sign waving, pamphlet distribution, and begging for lunch money.

                     1. Yep, yep, yep quite agree. Which is why I don’t buy (Not faulting those that do, do what you think is right and what makes you happy.) those that say get involved at the local level, we can make a change and if you don’t you’re a poopybutt, so there!

                        Our Alaska State GOP asked Lisa to step down, please, please step down. They supported and endorsed Kelly T. but none the less the national GOP spent six million bucks campaigning against that Republican contender.

                        No I don’t expect many here to agree but I contend the only chance we have, outside the cartridge box, is to create a viable 3rd party to counter the democrat/Republican uni-party.

                        BTW; those folks noting a third party has no chance, it just takes votes away from the Republicans. Hum, in 1776 I’m sure similar sentiments were expressed against those signing the Continental’s Congress’ Tory Act.

                     2. Time and again I’ve seen local leaders rise up through the R party ranks. They stick by their promises, represent their constituents, and fight like heck to keep bad decisions from higher from affecting their districts.

                        And time and time again, once they reach a certain threshold, the State level R’s cut them off at the knees. Those that spend their time in the bluest of blue cities, the state capitals, those that notably don’t represent their constituents, keep their promises, or fight for much of anything except larger shares of the graft don’t want reform.

                        They want status quo, with them at the top, and them drawing all that sweet sweet money from all the sources that want the influence that power inherently holds. One does not simply go from making high five/low six figures to seven simply by making a few good trades on the stock market. Something else is in play. And if you think the numbers they allow to be seen are it, I must assure you that they are certainly not.

                        The last thing the upper echelons of the R party want is reform. DeSantis fought hard. And you know what? The results are there for all to see. That wasn’t luck that turned Florida red. Trump, for all his faults, did the unthinkable. He took the presidency over the objections and interference of both parties. He was sabotaged and attacked from all sides for it, but he still managed to do several good things. Tearing away the plausible deniability was not an insignificant thing.

                        It isn’t just culture, or cleaning up the polls, or the judges, or the spending, or even the economy and the presidency. It’s all the things. It’s the schools, the regulations, the fibbies, the upper level party stoodges (the McConnells, the Grahams, etc), the woke stuff, the child mutilation and grooming, the foreign policy, the Gree Nude Heelism, the wedges they try to place between the sexes, the idiocy of race (which doesn’t exist)… All the things.

                        Fixing just one thing will not save us from the rest. They’re all important. Each of them causes damage, sometimes permanent damage, to the lives and property of the citizens. Putting just one more “right guy” in office won’t save us, either. Not even Trump. Not even DeSantis.

                        Fixing it requires individual effort, everywhere. Not just watching polls. Watch what the companies do, too. Don’t buy from woke companies. Don’t work for them, if you can avoid it. Like West Virginia and their repudiation of the banks over ESG, it can work and work well when done right.

                        All the things.

                        We’ve made a few baby steps in the right direction. Not as many as I’d like, but more than I would have expected back in, say, 2009.

                        Now’s not the time to give up. Nor is it time to remain content with what we have. The garden of Liberty is rife with choking weeds and poisonous growth. There is a LOT of work yet to be done.

                        But the recent successes, small though they may seem, prove that we CAN fix things. There just happens to be a lot that needs fixing.

                        1. One brick at a time.

                           We need to out-wall the Great Wall.

               4. But for 3rd Party Perot in 1992, we would not have gotten Team Billary in the White House. It’s just like ranked voting-a ploy to split and suck away votes for the Republican so that the Democrat can win with a minority of the votes.

                  1. Perot actually looked like he was going to win.
                     In a very convincing fashion. I saw more enthusiasm for him, than for Obama and Trump. By a large margin.

                     Then he bizarrely suspended his campaign, went underground for a week or so, and came back with à cockamamie story of being threatened by the FBI and CIA…

                     At the time, I thought he’d proven himself to be a kook.
                     Now, I’m pretty sure I owe him an apology. (Along with Frank Church.)

                     1. Maybe no loner cockamamie?

                        1. With what we’ve seen in the last 6 years, any claim of threats and / or malicious prosecution are probably accurate.

                           1. That should be “longer” and yes.

                           2. Oh, absolutely longer. I picked a period where it SHOULD have been obvious even to the most rabid Stasi defenders.

               5. See also: Wilson, Woodrow.

            2. I agree. Ideally create a tent big enough to include, enfold all or most of the righteous existing 3rd party organizations. Ignore nit picking details, no matter if you call your group Alaska Independence, Libertarian, Anarcho-capitalists, John Birch, No Nothings, or whatever, -if your group can agree to support our Constitution and the Constitutional Republic, plenty of room for you in the tent!

            3. “we’ve TRIED to reform the GOP”

               Bullshit, in the decade and a half since I gave up on the Libertarians and decided improving the Republican Party was the only path forward I’ve seen at least three waves of enthusiastic “reformers” come in at the grassroots level and decimate the few actual reformers who were still at work from the previous wave. Then, despite their empty promises to be in it for the long haul, most of them are never seen or heard from again. You don’t reform an organization by coming in, making a bunch of demands, then disappearing before you even know who the other players are.

               This years wave in my state steamrollered over candidates who had been holding the line against the worst of Democrat nonsense since they got into the legislature during the Tea Party wave. They dismissed these effective reformers as “establishment RINOS” without knowing anything about them. Instead we got media grandstanders with no political savvy. It takes time to make reforms stick. It can’t be done by saying “Oh, we tried that already.” as an excuse to give up.

               This years one positive development was a lot more volunteers to get involved as election judges and poll watchers. It wasn’t enough to turn the tide this year, but we have to start somewhere if we are going to get back to fair elections. We’ll see how many of the new crop sticks around for the next cycle.

               1. We need to do the the long march.

                  1. My problem is I have a military mind set. Identify the enemy, shoot them, problem solved. That doesn’t do much for due process, but it is effective, although it does result in considerable collateral damage to innocent bystanders; and is one of the reasons for the Posse Comitatus Act.

                     1. I sure hope it doesn’t come to that sort of direct action. I’m not sure it won’t, but I think the side effects would be damage to a lot more than just innocent bystanders.

                        1. That’s not a problem, it’s a feature!

            4. So work harder to take over the GOP! Do you know how many positions at the Precinct Committeeman level are unfilled in your precinct? Legislative district? County? State? Easy to bag on the system when we aren’t even in there working to take over the basic mechanics of the system. It is doable—just like the parents running for school boards, it will be a slog, but can be done. It took the Left over 100 years to get here, are we unwilling to fight back?

         2. No, I see potentially huge differences.

            I don’t fundamentally care about the candidates. It might be fair to say that I hate everybody*, and that I think that the process is important.

            I think a difference absolutely can be made by ‘campaigning’ in a non ideological way on process.

            When it comes to process, I am a monomaniac when it comes to getting rid of electronic voting machines. This is not a complete fix, but this is the element where I have a slight amount of background, and some ideas for what next. There are ways to make it very expensive to an election oversight body for them to retain electronic voting machines.

            I personally think that the Democrat party disappears in absence of voting fraud, and that then we get a replacement faction from somewhere. I’m not at all sure that I care what or how.

            If the result of cleaning up the election process is two factions that I still have profound and deep differences with? So be it.

            The issue with corrupt process is that it is extremely dangerous, especially in combination to unhinged people who are dangerously unstable savages even in comparison to me.

            *So, on foreign policy one of my philosophical cores is ‘why should we not simply kill the others?’ Well, on domestic politics I am likewise not always seeing allies everywhere. Pushing my policy preferences might be nice, but some of them are almost certainly impossible. What matters most to me is that I never surrender on any question of truth.

            1. OK, your last sentence; ” What matters most to me is that I never surrender on any question of truth.”, is where I fault both halves of the single uni-party, almost everyone therein will happily surrender on any question of truth if it lines their pockets or advances them up the hierarchy.

         3. Third party is almost impossible in a first past the post system. What historically happens is one party starts to fail (e.g. the Whigs in the US system pre Civil War when the Republicans came in and basically took over) and some one else fills the void. In this case both parties still have strong bases as much as we’d like to hope the Molochocrats are dying it ain’t so yet. Give them 50 years. All a third party does is pulls away one of the main 2 parties votes especially an effective third party candidate like the Bull Moose or Ross Perot (both wounded the republicans) or Wallace in 1968 and his quasi Dixiecrats. Two bits to learn here. If you want the control you have to take over one of the existing parties. That’s what the socialist/communist strain of the democrats did starting way back and more explicitly with the 1996 congressional shift to the R side which they used to clear their ranks of the blue dogs and the more centrist members. It is unpleasant but at least historically its the only winning strategy. What we have on the R side is a bunch of duffers who think their opposites give them the same gentlemanly obedience to the “rules” they obey. Instead the other side is a bit like the NFL Patriots of the early to mid 2000’s. They play to win and push the rules as far as they can without getting caught. Lately the D’s have been pushing WAY beyond that.

            1. It all make sense if one assumes we are now a banana republic, both sides want the graft in their pockets.

            2. That happened once. I think the primaries can stop that method.

         4. All I can say about a third party can be summed up this way:

            United we stand, divided we fall.

   2. The shiny shoes have already started their verbal fellatio, the Lick Lick as I call it, for “Saint Ron.”
      I trust him as much as I trust anyone who’s a politician, and won’t ever take a civilian job. Which is 0.

      1. No politician should be trusted. We all have to be willing to get in their face / hold feet to fire whenever they stray. My assessment of DeSantis is that he has moved some from the pure RINO position since he was first elected as governor in 2018 when he won by only 50K votes against a drug addict. He has been willing to publicly fight some culture wars as well as run Florida sanely. That doesn’t make him wonderful, but does make him plausible. We need to work to ensure that he continues to see that combination as in his self interest. That probably will also a flood of small donations with a message attached to each – enough $1-$10 donations will make a message.

         1. No to DeSantis for POTUS. Not ever, in my book. I’m happy he’s doing what seems to be a great job for Floridians. I’m also reading an interesting article on The Conservative Treehouse that talks about DeSantis’ history and his ties.

            We shall see, but I think if we trust political animals we’ll be out in the backyard, tied to the stake while they pillage what’s left of the Republic.

            1. People change. Trump spend most of his career as a non-conservative Democrat. At some point he got red-pilled. Why is it hard to believe that DeSantis has had a similar conversion.

               1. People change for sure. Politicians? Rarely, if ever.
                  I see and appreciate what he’s doing for Floridians, and I’m hopeful that maybe we’ll be in a place in six years or so where I’d support him for POTUS. It’s possible.
                  I see no evidence for a change of heart for DeSantis at this point.

               2. The Reader doesn’t know if he has. But he does remember being furious at Trump at his offer to the donkeys of amnesty for a border wall in 2017. The Reader was both surprised and grateful that the donkeys were unwilling to take the deal. The Reader has the impression that there is some movement among Republicans away from RINOism (that is a thing). We need to go with the 2nd have of Reagan’s dictum – skip the trust part, just verify, verify, verify. And call out at every level when a verification fails.

            2. Is that the article claiming DeSantis is just an agent of the Bush/ McConnel establishment? If it’s the same article I read that was linked from insty, I though it was notable for having the same level of credible evidence as all the Trump/Russia from the last few years. I would need to see some actual evidence before I put much stock in it.

   3. And you think this means what precisely?

      1. He’s not a RINO.

         H. Myers Cape Coral, FL

         Sent with Proton Mail secure email.

         1. And again, what? There are dozens of not RINO politicians. DC eats them for lunch.

            1. So many trolls, eh? ~:D I guess you struck a nerve, Sarah. Hit ’em again!

               1. You should see the ones I’m not approving, callin us stupid and demanding we “prove” fraud.

                  1. Fraud has already been proven in South Dakota, as I mentioned yesterday. Machines pulled a 20% undercount on a stack of roughly 320 ballots.

                     The usual suspects have posts up decrying election denial, their flying monkey squadrons are doing the Big Wing again today.

                     Did you get to delete Hyman Rozen yet? I hope so, it would be fun to zap that bug.

                     I can lend you the Iron Finger of Deletion if you get middle finger fatigue. ~:D

                     https://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-iron-finger-of-deletion.html

                     1. Was the 20% undercount across the board or just (or mostly just) the R-marked ballots?

                        Because the former is just lack of integrity whereas the latter would be fraud.

                        1. https://trentloos.substack.com/p/breaking-news-from-tripp-county-sd

                           From the horse’s mouth.

                     2. Fraud also includes things like the conspiracy to censor the Hunter Biden Laptop story the NY Post published until after the election, the hiding of Biden and Fetterman during their campaigns to conceal their mental incapacity, the Zuckerbucks that were used to stuff ballot boxes in Democratic Party strongholds, etc.

                  2. Do you need one of these?

                     

                     1. Waaaay too wimpy. Start with something along the lines of a 10-pound sledgehammer.

                     2. Nothing like a nice piece of hickory…..

2. There’s a four-way division:

   The GOP base thinks that the Democrats suck because they’re a bunch of insane America-hating commies, and that the GOP establishment sucks because they’re spineless fake-conservative wimps who would rather cozy up to the Dems than do anything to successfully advance conservative policies.

   The GOP establishment thinks that the Democrats suck because they’re Democrats, and that the GOP base are revolting peasants who suck revoltingly, such that the GOP establishment would prefer to ally with the Democratic party establishment instead.

   The Democratic party establishment thinks that the GOP base sucks because they’re ultra-MAGA monsters in subhuman mutant form, that the GOP establishment sucks because they’re too beholden to the monstrous GOP base, and that their own Democratic party base sucks because they’re a bunch of semi-useful idiots and wet-behind-the-ears kids.

   And the Democratic party base thinks that the Democratic party establishment and the whole GOP suck because they’re all “right wing,” and the only sin they recognize is to be “right wing.”

   Thus the Democratic party establishment is all in on fraud and and any other means necessary to saaaaave! America (their America, the Deep State of America) from those sub-human mutant MAGA-monsters (aka us). The Democratic party base applauds this, of course, while the GOP establishment covers their eyes and cry “Fraud? What fraud? It’s all the fault of those revolting peasants who suck revoltingly, preventing decent respectable big-government conservatives from being elected.”

   1. The incentive structure is bad for the GOP establishment, in Congress at least.

      Their incentives are all toward “we passed legislation!” because when they do that they get showered with donations and they get re-elected. (Remember, as a rule everybody hates Congress except for their guy who’s okay.) But to pass legislation, they have to get the other side on board, not being numerous enough to defeat a filibuster or a veto.

      Then the base says “your legislation sucks because you let the Democrats lard it with crap, and besides we’d rather not have any new legislation at all” and they can’t process that statement at all, it doesn’t make any sense to them. So their psychological resolution is that the base is stupid and naive and just doesn’t understand.

      1. None of them seem to understand we sent them there to REPEAL stupid laws, not make more.

         1. Most voters think that the job of legislators is to legislate (it’s right there in the name). WE want them to de-legislate, or non-legislate, but most people hear “Congressman Jones sponsored 3758 bills in the last year” and think “he’s being really effective and looking out for us, let’s re-elect him!”

            This is why 99% of incumbents get re-elected, and why everybody hates Congress except for their Congressperson.

            1. “Congressman Jones sponsored 3758 bills in the last year” and think “he’s being really effective and looking out for us, let’s re-elect him!”

               Jones (and everyone else) does this because there’s no penalty for bad law.

               How about a permanent personal bond of a few million dollars, payable to victims of economic damage? Congresscritter buys expensive insurance and must maintain it until death.

               Obviously more complicated than that, but supplying a dis-incentive to pass laws seems a starting place.

               1. Excellent plan! You should get right on that, and you can start by calling your Congr — oh.

                  1. They also would not like my other suggestion of exactly one introduced bill or resolution allowed per representative/senator per session of Congress – including ‘co-sponsor’. For Pete’s sake, that would be 535 new ‘laws’ every two years!

                     Similar limits at the state level.

                     Pete has to tell them to dial it back.

   2. Seriously, all this while the blue model is now VISIBLY (instead of behind the scenes) collapsing.

      1. The blue economic model is perfectly represented by the SPR, it took decades to fill., And in a few months the Regime/Junta has essentially emptied it. The Regime wants to destroy the Oil and Gas industry, and make petroleum products too expensive to afford. But didn’t want overly expensive gasoline before the mid term “elections” . So they emptied the SPR before hand, which was a win win for them. Depleted the SPR and provide a false sense of gasoline abundance before the Mid term election theft.
         In my area gasoline is up 30 cents a gallon since Tuesday, so now it’s “To the moon Alice, straight to the moon.”
         Now if we have an actual emergency such as a OPEC embargo, or a over seas military conflict, it will be an utter disaster.
         but I digress. Blue economics, Marxist economics is about either spending capital built up over the generations by a former capitalist, or by taxing capitalism that exists in a socialist system, or by using a printing press to steal using inflation, and borrowing to steal from the future.
         It’s always about spending other people’s money.
         And unfortunately for the Regime their blue vote stealing minions and the.rest of us that economic system can’t continue, which means it will end, and end badly. And when it does the Blue will be…..let’s just say … uninhabitable. And leave it at e.

         1. And the human suffering will tear at our hearts. What price are we going to be willing to exact for providing relief supplies? It is an important question.

         2. Remember that early on after the lockdowns, the Democrats were pushing for a national rationing system like that used in WWII, claiming that the CCP Virus needed to be treated like a war. The destruction of energy production is designed to create a pretext for rationing, as they KNOW there are not enough raw materials to build the wind farms, solar panels and batteries they scream about in the Green Leap Forward. Again, they oppose CO2 emission free nuclear energy because in their own words “nuclear energy doesn’t advance the cause of social justice”, i.e. totalitarian socialism. The last thing the left wants is cheap abundant energy.

      2. I have it on very good authority that all is well.

3. All this hand-wringing about elections, as if that was any longer relevant. A lot of very talented writers hang out here, so I know y’all have very good imaginations and probably can project pretty darn well. What do you project the world will look like in Nov. 2024?
   After a world-wide famine, and all that implies ( riots, violence, wars even )? Spotty, expensive, energy for heating, cooling, transportation, etc? Continued die off from the vaxxed. Hyperinflation and/or whatever the end of the petrodollar brings ( yes, Virginia, it turns out you actually can’t print forever ).
   And one other little issue, specific to us ‘Muricans. If you haven’t noticed, the rest of the world is sick to death of us, and here we are fucking over Europe as the sanctions against Russia isn’t hurting them but it’s killing the Euros( and will cause inflation here also ).
   BRIC’s rapidly creating an alternate monetary system to get out from under the dollar yoke.
   Anyway, I think elections in 2024 are a long way off, and the next two yrs. will be so spicy even Heinlein might have problems projecting where the hell we will be.

   1. Thank you for saying this.

      They’re play acting. It’s a giant version of the This Is Fine meme.

      I guess an artist/author could spend time noodling why they’re convinced they’re going to be fine (tunnels? A lot of tunnels? Underground bunkers?)

      But the rest of us need to move onto how we don’t end up in little subdevelopments of the Walking Dead.

      Sarah said prep your house. It’s difficult to get things done in a timely fashion
      Maybe more important to learn how to communicate if the nets are totally against us.

   2. The longer the left holds onto the lid the more violently the pot will boil over. If the American people aren’t allowed to express their anger and frustration through the ballot box it will be expressed through the cartridge box. In some ways it already has.

   3. You’re too fast. 2024 isn’t worldwide famine. There’s a lot of ruin in a world.
      As for the rest of your bs? CAN it.
      The world has always hated us. Not for your crazy reasons.

      1. Heck, some people have hated us since the first amendment was put into the Constitution. Some even before that! We’re always going to be hated. So? Start with local solutions to local problems, then regional solutions to regional problems.

         Fiction isn’t supposed to be 100% didactic, dystopian, drab, horror. It’s to inspire as well as warn. We’ve got plenty of horrible warnings out there (some won Hugos and Nebulas). We need inspiration right now, and heroics. We need history books that make the best of the past shine out and that don’t run the US into the ground for not being Heaven.

         {kicks soapbox back into corner and returns to writing fun stories]

         1. Heck, some people have hated us since the first amendment was put into the Constitution.

            Looooong before that.

            Let me tell you about this Transportation thing…..

      2. Envy. We succeeded too well.

         1. absolutely.

   4. and here we are fucking over Europe

      Ooooh sign me up!

      as the sanctions against Russia isn’t hurting them

      Found the central planner.

      but it’s killing the Euros

      No it isn’t: Euro scum taking orders on energy policy from a mixture of the green mold in their heads and anti-fraking directives from Russia is what is killing them.

      Plus, you know, the rampant socialism.

      1. And an autistic Swedish teen. You forgot that.

         1. I thought she was just the spokes person for the mold in their head.

   5. In January of 2021, we went to the meeting of our local Republican party expecting to hear about a plan to fight the fraud. Instead, at the very beginning of the meeting, the President said, “There’s no use crying over spilled milk. On to 2022!” Several of us brought up the plethora of issues with the election, but were dismissed with a “…we need to move along…” We left knowing they had no intentions of fighting the results. I’m considering showing up at their next meeting to ask how 2022 went.

      1. I got this email from PJM “We’re not going to claim fraud because we just sound like sore losers”
         That was when I stopped writing for them.

4. Also:

   Before turning specifically to the 2020 election, it is important to note that election fraud is not unheard of in the United States. This is worth establishing because if we think election fraud almost never happens then we will have a higher bar of evidence for the justification of any particular claim of fraud

   https://ideasanddata.wordpress.com/2020/11/10/evidence-of-voter-fraud-in-the-2020-us-presidential-election/

   1. Election fraud has been around forever in the US…The electoral system and the very limited franchise in the early days of the US were both antidotes to the known fraud in New York and Philadelphia, the only big cities of the day…Ancient Rome had vote buying, as did Britain where the “rotten boroughs” were up for auction every election…..

      1. That is the question isn’t it? How did previous groups get out from under their fraud?

         I know Rome didn’t: they simply became a doctatorship.

         Britain, I think did, though I recall the rotten boroughs were a large part of what precipitated the American revolution. (Parliament did not want to fix representation in the colonies because that would require them to fix the rotten borough problem at home, and they couldn’t risk their power structure.)

         1. Good point..corruption is insidious, and pushed the UK into a completely stupid war with its own colonists, which could have been easily avoided….And the war nearly bankrupted Britain….

         2. The Battle of Athens is one way. A very American way. https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/the-battle-of-athens-tennessee/

         3. Britain dealt with it gradually as part of the government power struggles and reforms that saw the House of Commons become the dominant branch of the government that it is today.

5. There’s one other issue to look at besides–or more precisely, after fixing–fraud and that is immigration. Hopefully a divided Congress means that Slow Joe can’t open up our borders any more than they already are but even so, we are rapidly replacing a constituency that votes 58-60% R (native American-born white citizens) with one that votes 65%+ D when they either get citizenship or can be frauded into being allowed to vote. And with voting being made easier and easier and the controls being looser and looser in states like CA and CO, don’t tell me non-citizens aren’t voting by the truckload.

   Fix fraud first, it’s the most immediate problem. Then work on securing our borders because we’ll finally be able to elect people that are serious about it, and not before.

   1. IF we have a divided congress. Don’t bet on it.

      1. That’s true. And even if divided, there are more pro-amnesty and pro-open-borders Republicans than pro border-enforcement Democrats so we may be screwed either way, and even THAT is assuming that Joe just doesn’t dribble some Ensure on an Executive Order or sixteen and call it a signature.

      2. Sigh, if we have a 100% Republican Congress, I still wouldn’t bet on it.

6. There’s an old saw that goes “You dance with the one that brung ya”. Donald Trump’s the one that brung us. I’m old enough to remember when loyalty was considered a virtue, not an odd quirk. When all you care about is “winning” without a belief system to support your choice, you’re, in the long run, doomed.
   Does Trump have his faults, shortcomings, blind spots? Sure. But he has/had a clear vision of what to do to fix this mess. Which is more than McConnell et al do. And the only thing those clowns do, with alacrity is bring out their tiny daggers.

   But they made, at least in my case, one tiny miscalculation. I’m not voting for ANY candidate they put up. I’m not supporting the “Grand Old”, “Same old” party. I’ll let the Left take this thing down, and destroy it first. Because the ‘Pubbies deserve the same loyalty they’ve demonstrated.

   1. I don’t know about you, but I was voting R long before 2015. Maybe we’re the ones that brung Trump.

      1. I’ve been voting [GOP] since 1968. That brought two Bushes, a McCain and a Romney, and a dwindling support base. The GOP is where it is now [larger minority participation, Blue Collar enrollment] because of Trump. I’m not knocking DeSantis , but a party willing to dump the architect of the coalition they work in, with the speed they’re doing it, all in the name of “winning”, tells me they have NO real principles [hence the moaning about saving unborn lives because the Roe v. Wade ruling should have come later, so as not to affect the mid-terms].
         Trump wasn’t a professional politician. They’re like slugs. They eat sh*t for a living and leave a trail of slime wherever they go. They can have the chimera of victory. I’ll take honor.

      2. You dance with the one you brung.

   2. I’d consider backing Trump. BUT, he has to get rid of Jared Kushner. Kushner backed many of the worst personnel moves Trump made.

      1. THIS. SO MUCH THIS.

         Kushner whispering in Trump’s ear was apparently a huge negative. This time, DJT has to surround himself with America Firsters and not listen to family about policy. Which is tough, admittedly, as every President’s family has significant input into policy (comes with living in a bubble and having spouses/kids who have grown up in the world of politics/high rollers I guess).

7. I’d like to see the vote totals across the country. How did the R vs D totals compare with 2018. Did not enough Rs show up? Or did more Ds than expected show up? What was the breakdown for election day voting, early voting (in person), and mail-in/drop-off voting.

   My own belief is that we were probably neutralized by D votes. And my feeling (without facts yet) is to point to mail-in/drop-off votes. I suspect that in the heavy D cities, D workers go around rounding these up, telling people how to vote, and then dropping them off. Technically, this is not fraud, but somehow it just doesn’t pass the sniff-test for good govt.

   1. You’ll never get the real numbers. WHICH IS ONE OF THE PROBLEMS WITH FRAUD. Quit making excuses for them.

      1. Yes. It’s time to stop arguing about their deck and how many red kings it has in it when yourell never see the deck, and there are other decks, and they’re just cons. All of the premises about turnout, message, it’s irrelevant since no numbers can be validated anywhere outside of FL.

         What’s coming is very very bad. That’s what we should prepare for. The people who have platforms still, be it Nigel Farage or Elon Musk, maybe they can mount a credible alternative to the power that’s been ossified. The rest of us need different methods.

         1. Thumbprint on every ballot. If it looks “hinky”, compare to the print of the alleged voter.

            1. Then The Party knows how everybody voted. Bad, BAAAAAD idea.

               Serial number on every ballot, registered BEFORE the election. No unregistered ballots will be counted. Each precinct reports how many ballots were filled out by actual, live voters. Every ballot to be entered into an online database viewable by the public. Anybody with the interest can download a copy for review. Anybody can conduct an independent vote count, to see if it matches the ‘official’ count.

               ONLY YOU, THE VOTER, KNOW THE SERIAL NUMBER OF YOUR BALLOT. You get a little tear-off strip with the serial number to take home. You can look up your ballot online, to be sure your vote was recorded accurately. You can look it up again later, to make sure it STAYED the same as when you filled it out.

               Our elections have to be brought out of the smoke-filled* back rooms into the light. Those are OUR votes, we have the right to watch every step of how they’re handled and counted. We have live-stream HD cameras now, we have exabytes of data storage capacity, we can watch every ballot being counted in real time and look at the records again later. If there are ‘technical issues’ with the cameras, COUNTING STOPS until the problem is fixed. Really stops, not ‘stops’ and then the vote totals are changed radically when counting ‘starts’ again.

               *Yeah, I know, these days the smoke is weed, not tobacco.
               ———————————
               The U.S. Capitol is OUR house. Congresscritters are just the help.

               1. That allows vote-buying, which the Democrats would then deploy in large numbers. “I’ll pay you $50 if you show me your serial number, and we look it up together and it shows you voted for the Democratic candidate”. Tell that to a bunch of unmotivated voters beforehand, and then pay them after the election. Costs a lot of money, you say? It’s probably cheaper to do that than to buy a single TV ad.

                  Actually, ANY scheme that allows you to look up your own vote would also allow vote-buying, because you could prove to someone else how you voted.

                  For the rest of what you said, though, I agree. Every ballot counted should be in front of cameras set to record, and the footage made available for review by the public. And that’s just the start.

            2. destroys secrecy

               1. The secret ballot is stone dead in my precinct. Every four years since 2008 we get new machines; all of them require “authentication” of the voter before they can make their selections.

                  This time, we got new machines that we enter our choices into, and then they print out a “ballot” with our names, addresses, and several barcodes along with our selections. They we carried them over to a shredder sitting on a trash can. Supposedly the ballot is scanned before shredding. The shredder, of course, destroys any evidence that might contradict the electronic count.

                  The scanner might not pick up my name and address from the ballot, but this isn’t the 20th century. “If data can be collected, it must be collected.” And that particular data is quite valuable in some places. It’s up to them to prove to my reasonable satisfaction that they’re not keeping a record of my votes each and every time I use the machine. As if. And then… the shredder.

                  Where did my votes go? I have no way to tell, and there’s no way to do a recount. I went through the motions again anyway, but even if the fix wasn’t in this time, all the mechanism is in place for it to be done next time.

                  I spent several days a few years ago, trying to find out who authorized changing from our old hand-counted paper ballots to the machines, and where the money comes from to keep buying new ones. The county and state offices that looked like they should know that couldn’t be bothered to answer their phones or return voicemail.

         2. This pretty much sums things up:

            

            Until fraud by mail, ballot harvesting, ballots being accepted a week after election day, etc., there will never be free and fair elections. Period.

      2. THIS.

      3. Even Glenn Greenwald gets it:

         

      4. I KNOW the 2020 election was filled with fraud. If it were just the statistical anomalies, I’d be saying I strongly suspected it, but didn’t know it. The fact that every legal (and illegal) trick was pulled out to prevent any real audit or investigation sealed the case that it was frauded. (And the ones that were done did detect fraud, but were so whimpy that nobody could pursue anything.)

         Since legal means of proof weren’t available; what should have been done, in my opinion, was execution of the guilty. i.e. everyone who prevented those audits and investigations: DAs, judges, senators, representatives, governors, secretaries of state, poll supervisors, etc (I’m half tempted to throw various MSM persons in that bushel.) And because most of them are still in place, 2 years later, we have similar results in this election.

   2. Embrace the power of “and.” It’s straight-up fraud, it’s loose controls allowing ballot harvesting, it’s “fortified” mail-in and drop-off votes, it’s demographics, it’s the news media pumping low-information voters’ heads full of leftist-approved BS. All of the above is the correct answer. We have to disassemble the pieces that we can disassemble, one at a time. It will take time and we will be swimming against the current the entire way but if we don’t do it, things will get even worse.

      1. All of that makes sense to me.

      2. “…it’s loose controls allowing ballot harvesting, it’s “fortified” mail-in and drop-off votes…”

         This can more-or-less be summarized as ‘previously disenfranchised voters.’ Which doesn’t mean anyone else put bigger hurdles for them to vote than the folks that did; they just thought it too much effort.

         Which leads into “the news media pumping low-information voters’ heads full of leftist-approved BS.” There’s a lot of overlap between low-information voters and low-effort voters.

         You’re unlikely to convince any group to disenfranchise themselves, especially a group that believes the media re:secure elections when ‘securing elections’ is your excuse for disenfranchising them.

         All of which sidesteps actual fraud, of course.

   3. “Technically,” they weren’t cattle cars, as they were full of human beings.

   4. D workers go around rounding these up, telling people how to vote, and then dropping them off

      …….
      This is not “technically not fraud” … it is 100% fraud.

   5. “D workers go around rounding these up, telling people how to vote, and then dropping them off.”

      No, it’s not fraud. It’s vote harvesting, and still against the law.

      1. Call me naive but it was so #$%^ing blatant in Nevada that I didn’t know it was illegal. Harry Reid’s last victory. I’m voting early at a shopping mall on my lunch break. Up rolls a charter greyhound bus full of casino worker maids with their free lunches in their hands. They join the long line of other casino maids and porters. Yes you absolutely know by the uniforms and if you’ve been around you can identify which casino. Not one word of English was spoken in the line. What ticket do you think that entire line voted?

      2. Depends on where you live. It’s quite legal in California.

      3. The Reader’s father in law was a low level Democratic Party official in Philadelphia. Every election he was given a wad of cash and sent into the black areas of the city. His job was to fill buses with blacks to be taken to the polls using a couple of dollars each and the promise of hot meal. He was really good at it by all reports. This stuff has a long history.

   6. Try Rich Baris and Robert Barnes; they are deep diving the numbers to figure out what happened and where so we can do something about it…

8. “DeSantis certainly doesn’t seem to make the kind of dumb-as-rocks hiring choices Trump did, although also, he did have Trump’s poor example to learn from. ”

   As I’ve said often over the years, I can’t wait to see the egg on your faces when the next Republican, whether DeSantis or someone else, has to make hiring decisions under the same “rules” Trump did. Starting with the outright intimidation of the hiring pool, the Deep State background checks, and what nominees can make it past the RINOs in the Senate.

   1. More nominees need to own their mistakes, not try to hide them. Democrats (and far too many GOP members) love playing the fake Diogenes searching for faultless nominee. There aren’t any. So pick the apple that has the least number of spots on it and eat the damn thing anyway.

   2. THIS.

   3. Yep.

   4. Good points. Intimidation of the candidates took out a lot of folks.

   5. There’s something I never quite got – POTUS is the ultimate authority for executive branch agencies, so how can their background checks override his decisions if he decides to go “yeah, I don’t care”?m

      1. Well, for example, if one of Trump’s nominees for a post in DoD can’t pass the background check to hold a security clearance they can’t take the job, because they can’t see the info they need to do it.

         1. If you check, Clinton never cared about it. I doubt Obama did either.

            1. Agreed. The rules were in place, but were not enforced. Do you think they won’t be enforced against a Republican?

               1. LOL. Yeah.

                  1. Laws that are not evenly applied might as well not exist, and should not be considered when deciding future plans.

         2. Again, so what? As the ultimate classification authority, POTUS can go “He’s authorized. What was your point again?”

            1. Yeah, he could. And if he didn’t have a Congress full of RINOs prepared to “reach across the aisle” and impeach him, and a national security bureaucracy that would feel comfortable with refusing to carry out his orders or just looking the other way when they know others are, he might be able to make that stand up. How did that work out the first term?

      2. It can’t. That’s why none of the Clintons or Obamas had a circle that passed the background checks. BUT they can take forever to “check” and slow the whole thing down.

         1. They can also concoct accusations out of whole cloth, as we have seen with “Russian collusion “.

9. Here’s some fun for all you fellow Veterans out there. It’s not King Harv, but Black Rifle Coffee isn’t bad either. https://youtu.be/l-urynk63Wg

   1. If they hadn’t bent over, I might consider. As it is? Roll left and DIE!

      1. Huh?

         1. Their fuckery WRT Kyle Rittenhouse. NOT ONE PENNY to those asshats!

            1. Ah. Gotcha. Yeah, I have to agree with you at least on the CEO. He’s a veteran, but he’s also ex-CIA, so that tells you a lot right there.

               However, the video was enjoyable.

               https://thepostmillennial.com/black-rifle-coffee-roasted-for-woke-ad-campaign-as-kyle-rittenhouse-is-exonerated

               “The closing of the piece has Black Rifle Coffee company CEO ranting about the people who supported Kyle Rittenhouse. “It’s such a repugnant group of people. It’s like the worst of American society, and I got to flush the toilet of some of those people that kind of hijacked portions of the brand,” said Hafer.

               Even if Black Rifle Coffee changed their minds about how they handled the Kyle Rittenhouse situation, the damage to consumer trust will still last forever.”

               1. but he’s also ex-CIA

                  Oh.

                  Suddenly everything falls together.

                  Never ever Ever EVER trust a spook. And there is no such thing as an ex-spook; only one deployed to the private sector.

               2. “ONE AWSHIT wipes out a THOUSAND “attaboys.”

                  And that putz is at LEAST 1000 in the hole.

               3. Aye. IF I am going to buy anything from DAMNED COMMUNISTS, I will at least prefer to buy from those HONEST to declare UP FRONT that they ARE COMMUNISTS. LIARS? NOPE!

                  1. Try frontier coffee then

                     1. When I did the King Harv push, one of you READING THIS sent me (via our public address, poor coffee. Long forwarding) this: https://www.harmonycoffeeroasters.com/

                        The Nocturne is possibly my favorite, but ducttape son who was visiting thought well of Babba Yaga. And this is HUN COFFEE. So, you know, send it some love if you can.
                        Apparently as many Hun coffee roasters as writers.

                        1. I can vouch for Nocturne being awesome, though I do need to try Baba Yetu. Busker’s Blend wasn’t bad either! Also, if you want another veteran owned coffee company with attitude Indies isn’t bad from what I’ve had of them. Thriller is the only one of theirs I can vouch for but I don’t think you have to worry about guys who had a limited edition called Karen Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – complete with a label featuring a mask-wearing Pelosi caricature and Brandon licking ice cream and saying every purchase of it makes idiots cry – going squishy! Shame I missed my chance to get that one…

                        2. Looks interesting. Unfortunately the Reader is a long way from Kansas.

                           1. No worries, they do mail order! That’s how I tried them out. 🙂

                           2. The Reader didn’t see that option on the website. I’ll go back and look again.

                           3. She ships. I’ve had stuff shipped since.

                           4. The Reader will have to call. When he enters his zip code the only option is pickup.

                           5. It does look like the checkout defaults to pickup and doesn’t give you a mail order option, yeah. Hopefully they’ll fix it soon!

               4. FWIW, I grant the video was amusing. But that’s ALL I am willing to grant that lot.

                  1. Brother and SIL got married in Boerne, (she lives/lived there, his house is over in Spring Branch) so wife and I have stomped and driven all over those streets and roads in the video.

            2. I’m glad you said it. I didn’t want to be negative Nancy. Black Rifle went to its knees and started the suck during Rittenhouse, and then they partnered with some other organization so they wouldn’t go out of business. They’re frauds.

               1. Before that, $HOUSEMATE did try their stuff. Not bad, but NOTHING SPECIAL.

                  1. Bitter, overpriced, and their service was horrible.

                     1. I hear good things about frontier coffee

                        1. There are an abundance of good small batch coffee brewers.

                           1. There’s a couple I have heard of through social things. Reformed roasters is another. I think they are in Idaho as well

                           2. Well I surely love their Reformed message! My heart sings at their “TULIP” discount…. They are in the communist portion of Idaho, Boise, so they truly are salt and light in that dark area. Thanks for the suggestion.

                           3. And again, at least one more Hun one: https://www.harmonycoffeeroasters.com/

                           4. Thanks, these guys look good, and I’m in the market.

                           5. Going to have to try that Mole Canoli from Harmony.

                           6. I had my eye on at least one of their blends. (As a coffee lover I am swimming in a sea of riches.)

                           7. I haven’t seen that one. I’m considering sending out that and King Harv (depending on where my friends are in the country) as Christmas presents.

               2. Not a problem. You all knew more about the company than I did up until a couple hours ago.

                  1. Sheesh. Making me do research on Veterans Day. At least I got to have lunch over at the American Legion and jaw about old days with them. Now I think I’m going to do me some yard work and cogitate on the state of the universe.

               3. Did you know that Black Rifle Coffee was banned by name in the Trudeau gun bill?

                  https://nationalpost.com/news/trudeaus-gun-ban-appeared-to-ban-some-coffee-a-website-and-a-toy-heres-why

                  Talk about friendly fire. ~:D Bwaaahahahaha!

                  1. “oft evil will shall evil mar.”

            3. THIS

10. Given the way fraud is facilitated, will running Trump make any sort of difference; he won’t overcome the fraud either. What is needed is to go after the states in 2023 that have election methods that facilitate fraud and work hard to end or limit them before 2022. Engage in lawfare the same way leftists do by forum shopping for favorable judges and getting them to recognize that these election set-ups disenfranchise voters. Stop trying to play by “gentleman’s rules” when the leftists are using the “by any means necessary” playbook. Fight as dirty as they are and then some.

    1. You mean like what was done against Pennsylvania. Where the state basically told the courts in two sequential elections “you and what army?”

       1. Well they did have their dirty fixer Elias go into federal court and get a federal judge to basically overrule the PA Supreme Court even though conduct of the election in PA is a state matter as expressly held by the US Supreme Court-thus the federal judge, like leftist judges do, simply ignored a higher court”s ruling when it was interfered with achieving leftist goals.

    2. end or limit the states? I’m all for it. I don’t know how we get them to drop the fraud otherwise. And I am being deliberately obtuse to make a point, and no, I don’t want to “end” my beloved Colorado.

    3. Did I hear someone say Nevada? Please.

11. Short answer, prepare to live under the boot of the empire of DC until it collapses. You ain’t voting your way out, the media still has a choke collar on a significant portion of the populace, and as the goodies start to fall off expect to see them get restricted first to the “good citizens”, e.g. those that never were registered as or donated to Republicans and then to district one and its dachas. Fraud is a catch 22 as in order to stop it you need to get voted into a position to do so where because the fraud is now both widespread and spun as justified to save our sacred fortified democracy. you wont be able to do that. At least still have abortion so you can prevent inflicting the collapse on innocent children.

12. Folks are overestimating the central government.

    They don’t have sufficient hard power to project much of that. Their soft power project relies on being able to shuffle low level bureaucrats around the country. Their, for example, planned aviation electrification screws this over.

    And, there are hints that without effective leaders, elements of the federal gov are rebelling to screw over the whole.

    Local elections require local elements of fraud.

    As in, locals doing the heavy lifting.

13. Within the ‘margin of fraud’ — BINGO!

    People of the Left are not honorable persons, they are all anarcho-communist Bolsheviks!

    Fraud ‘stink’ is indelible nonetheless.

14. This was great, Sarah, the words came straight out of my head.

    The enemy’s #1 goal now is to demoralize MAGA, to remove us from the battlefield. And if you want to know how I feel about that, watch/listen to Alex Jones on the Warroom this morning. If he can fight, I can fight.

    1. Alex Jones is looking more reasonable with every passing year. They fined him $1.5 BILLION dollars for -talking- about Sandy Hook.

       Does that seem reasonable? That’s more what you fine Pfizer for manufacturing a deadly flu jab.

       1. He got fined $2 point something TRILLION.

          And the judge froze his assets.

          The soviets would have been proud.

          1. Soviets? They were pikers!

             In Kanuckistan you can have your assets frozen for contributing to a legal charity.

             1. Yeah . Canada turned commie so fast I missed some of the details.

                1. We have Chinese police stations in Toronto now. For-real Chinese cop shops, meaning cops directly from the People’s Republic of China, paid by PRC, working for the PRC. In Canada. Three of them in Toronto. More elsewhere. Not kidding.

                   Also the shop teacher with the titanic latex boobs is still teaching in Oakville. The latest is that the Oakville school board will not enforce a “dress code” on teachers “because they don’t want to get sued.” That’s what they said.

                   But you know, you look out the window and everything seems normal. Except for the gas station signs. Carbon tax. Yee haw.

                   1. Sigh. I’m just so, so sorry.
                      I am of Canadian descent–my Grandpa Leicester was born in Nanaimo, BC and was naturalized later. I have his naturalization certificate, really special.

                      1. Not your fault, Kathy. Not mine either, I didn’t vote for ’em. Chicom officials show up to my house, well I guess we shall see. Unlikely though, they focus on harassing their own people.

                         Still, I must say I do get some pretty strident Mandarin phone spam. Can’t tell if they’re the PRC or selling duct cleaning, my Mandarin extends only to oranges. ~:D

                         1. I’ve been told that most of the Chinese phone spam is along the lines of “there’s a problem with your visa and you need to pay a fine/bribe/consulting fee to fix it!”

                            Sort of like those English-language phone spams claiming to be from the IRS.

                            1. Probably they want to know where Chinese-speakers live.

                            2. Probably that too, yes.

                            3. When the company I was with was in Boston we got those calls constantly. The numbers in the open office were roughly sequential so the rings would flow around the desks. One of my coworkers speaks Mandarin and Cantonese. And yes it was basically “This is the Boston Chinese Chancery, Your visa has a problem and we can take care of that for you for a small fee” .

                         2. 🙂 No, I know it. I have an old, odd tendency to try to carry everything that’s wrong with the world. I guess I believe that if I’m involved, there’s a hope of fixing it. (Tee hee).

                   2. NYC has one as well. https://nypost.com/2022/10/08/chinese-police-station-spies-on-dissenters-linked-to-shady-us-charity/

                      1. I am not surprised they would be in NYC. Payola can be a pretty wonderful thing, eh?

                      2. Doesn’t the FBI pretty much count as one these days?

                   3. There’s a Chinese police station in NYC, as well. Beijing gets them in by claiming that they’re to help Chinese tourists with local bureaucratic stuff. But what I’ve heard is that they’re really for getting troublesome Chinese immigrants back to China where the authorities can deal with them.

                      1. I think they need their doors blocked, and then burned to the ground.

                   4. Don’t be too proud, there is one at least in NYC and likely several other large areas. There are some agreements for traveling across borders in pursuit, but even there the local government must be informed as soon as feasible. A standing foreign police force is just unacceptable. Those “police” should be rounded up and either expelled as persona non grata if they have diplomatic immunity, or tried for kidnapping or similar affronts (want to bet they have a license in NYC for any firearms they have? Have they paid federal income tax? etc.)

                      1. They get approval from the local government. As I noted above, they claim that the police are present to help visiting Chinese with things like government forms and translation services. The only city in the US that’s currently granted permission is NYC.

                         At least one European country – Netherlands, iirc – recently threw them all out.

                         1. Hmmm, I don’t remember where in the Constitution cities were granted the right to conduct foreign policy. But seeing much of our political system seems bought and paid for by the CCP I shouldn’t be surprised.

                            1. Why would you think that foreign policy has anything to do with this? So long as there aren’t any extra-territoriality claims, and there aren’t any security risks, there’s no reason for the Feds to be involved. And if the Chinese police office in New York City was acting as claimed, that would be the case. The Chinese police aren’t engaging in normal policing activities here. Again, the official explanation for their presence is that they’re here to help Chinese citizens within the US. That doesn’t require Fed approval. If Belgium or Japan wanted to do something like that, no one would have any complaints.

                               There is grounds to throw them out, since their purpose here is much more sinister than the offered rationale (which would already fall under the purview of their embassies and consulates in any case).

                            2. Junior if they are “police” of any sort they are outside the bounds of normal diplomatic behavior. They have NO jurisdiction. If the Chinese have an issue they may request extradition, but it is within our rights to deny extradition. If these were British Bobbies I would be no more pleased, This is a fundamental part of our sovereignty as a nation and to yield it even in the breach makes it clear that anyone that has sworn an oath to uphold the constitution is forsworn perhaps to the point of committing treason. In reality I expect it will continue Much of our political class sold their birthrights to the CCP long ago and didn’t even get a bowl of pottage out of the exchange.

                            3. Again, they are NOT acting as law enforcement within New York City. They have no authority to arrest criminals or carry out other duties that police ordinarily perform. Their stated function is PURELY to assist Chinese citizens in the US. I’ve stated this multiple times. I’m not clear why there’s confusion on this point.

                               As to their actual purpose, they pressure their targets to voluntarily return to China using a variety of cultural influences. This is not extradition. It does tend to be sinister and they really ought to be kicked out of the country, but it’s not illegal.

       2. He got fined $2 point something TRILLION.

          And the judge froze his assets.

          The soviets would have been proud.

15. One issue the original article omitted…
    The Republican Party fundraised heavily on “stopping the steal” in 2020, before pocketing the money and doing almost nothing to fight it.

    Yes, gmail is sending Republican fundraising emails straight to spam.
    But even though Alphabet is distilled evil, in this particular case I think they’re innocent. In November of 2020, I was getting twenty or so desperate appeals from the Republican Party to give them money to fight the fraud. Even after they had shown that they weren’t going to do a thing other than fundraise on the issue.
    At some point, I designated all their messages as spam. And I’m sure that almost everyone else they were spamming did as well.
    Actions have consequences.

    1. They aren’t fighting the fraud because they are benefitting from the fraud.
       ANY republican that has been in office for any length of time at all is sucked inexorably to the trough. They can then pay off whoever they need to so they can stay in office.
       The only person I know of that has actually LOST money in office is Donald Trump.
       The Republicans currently in office will do nothing to stop the fraud. Perhaps, but only perhaps, the MAGA enthusiasts that have been voted in will turn the tide. I suspect that TPTB are afraid of that which is why we have the full court press against Orangeman Bad. They can’t take the chance.

       Even if it is a snowball’s chance in hell.

       1. “The only person I know of that has actually LOST money in office is Donald Trump.”

          BINGO.

          And that’s the difference. Trump SACRIFICED for the office. None of those other elected officials sacrificed squat.

       2. > The only person I know of that has actually LOST money in office is Donald Trump.

          Add Richard Nixon to the list, as Congressman, VP, and President.

          He was accused of profiting from insider knowledge as a junior Congressman; he put his portfolio into a trust and had them divest any stocks from companies that were related to bills or committees he dealt with. The missed investments and short sales cost him money, along with the “lost opportunities” of doing a Pelosi, of course.

          The Democrats dug hard for financial impropriety during the 1960 election; they were certain it was there. “Everyone does it.” Tricky Dick was clean, and again in 1968 and 1972.

16. I loved this. I don’t know anything about Thomas Kendall, but I think he covered all the bases (except one) beautifully. I’ll get to the one later.

    First off, he really obliterates the Siren Song of … well, if we just get somebody not as bombastic as Trump… you know, like Romney, we can win. Win what? A big fat nothing. Anyway, Thomas covered all of that and I hope millions get to read his missive.

    I’ve been railing against this nonsense that became mysteriously ‘mainstreamed’ after Nov 6, mouthed by the usual suspects and repeated by the defeated and the unintelligent. But Thomas destroys it hands down. Well done!

    And regarding Rod Dreher… Years ago I was calling him out for his weak, flawed articles over at the American Conservative. I don’t believe I ever called him names, but I do believe I put the lie to much that he pontificated on, so that he banned me. Yes, I’ve been banned from the American Conservative, not just from responding to his columns (if they still carry them), but from any column. They guy just couldn’t take any criticism of his stance. The other thing that appalled me was his veil of Christianity. It also seemed flawed to me, weak and un-nourishing. Anyway, so obviously, I don’t like the guy and what he’s selling. So, I really liked this.

    So, as to the one ‘base’ that I think Thomas should have included, and maybe will in a future post, is CULTURE, Art, Story… especially story. As we all know (but hardly anyone acts on), politics is downstream from culture. And the democrat commie left OWNS culture. AND, Conservative Inc. gives lip service to this. They don’t embrace it. Case in point, Anne Coulter, the one who’s been mouthing this latest piece of shitty democrat propaganda about Trump having too much baggage. Conservative Inc. bankrolls her $29.99 dollar door stoppers full of ‘politics.’ Yet, they ignore real culture, that is to say, conservative fiction, yeah, I’ll say it, like mine, and Sarah’s and other good conservative (or if you don’t like that term, traditional) story tellers.

    To beef up the importance of my argument—that we have to program the kiddies—the way the Left has for decades… it’s the demographics, sweetheart. People like me are on the way out. And who is taking our place? Young minds full of liberal mush. Young Americans who hate their country, their gender, their race, etc.

    We have to turn them around with Culture, that is, story.

    Yes, I know, if order to do that, we first have to wage war against Big Publishing and the Teachers Unions.

    Again, Thomas, thanks for a great article!

    1. As I’ve told the nieces … “We only have to live with this for 30 – 40 years or so, grandma less.” (she turns 88, Monday). (And yes, I do expect to live to be over 100, so there. When the day comes, I expect to be saying “Well. Crap!”) “You have to live with this another 70 to 80 years. Your children longer. What are You leaving to Your grandchildren?” Two nieces, and their significant others, are coming around (now over 30, both with children). (Never lost the son to the other side, all we did was set the example, no preaching.)

17. I’ve been frustrated for decades with the thinking that we can’t have a candidate because the biased media will say bad things about them (Sarah Palin comes to mind.) Let’s stay “extreme” instead of muted, but retake the language and correct the definitions. Properly label the true Fascists.
    In my perfect world…
    The Republicans use the bullhorn of committees (assuming manage to gain control of the House – which is STILL up in the air) to investigate / expose the left while fighting their policies tooth and nail. I’m hearing pundits saying we should forget about 2020 – that no one cares. I think people will care if we loudly prove our arguments, and some criminals actually suffer REAL consequences (when will someone be frog-marched for the last 6 years or so?) Why should they care if our alleged leaders won’t even discuss what happened?
    There are 3 Senators outstanding at the moment. I’m hopeful we’ll get to 51 Senators, but cheating and all, we may wind up stuck at 49. Whoever we have needs to fight the Dems like they mean it.
    I want Trump in 2024. Barring possible age issues (he has been running rings around much younger men, so I’m not sure age means the same thing with him), he is the original for knowing how to deal with the propagandists (they finally had to ban him from social discourse to protect their narrative.) Four years to get us back where he had us before plus purge as much of the swamp (including “our own” career critters), then hand off a renewed country to the next most likely person to continue the work (it could be Desantis, but who knows?)
    Trump made some mistakes, but I believe he learns. A lot of effort is being put into keeping Trump off the ballot, even blaming him for the lack of a “red wave” (which either never was coming, or wasn’t big enough to overcome the fix.) He wasn’t on the ballot. Another effective four years from him plus another eight from an acolyte is worth the effort.
    Never give up. Never surrender.

    1. When will someone be frog marched? Three words. “No reasonable prosecutor”. You could have someone announce under oath that they ordered the creation of false ballots in Philly, Detroit, and MSP to make sure the elections went the right way and since those precincts are run by those that benefit from fraud, those states are, and the federal govt is there is no way to force them to be tried. Prosecuters only prosecute those with money and no power today to make sure to feed the beast or those that draw the beast attention as a warning to the others. Congress cannot force prosecution as that is a function of the executive branch. We have neither the time nor ability for a counter March thru the government.

18. I got a little salty here yesterday, which was cured by the wife making pumpkin muffins … yum. Still it got me to thinking as I was reading about the latest financial scandal in crypto where one of the “exchanges” (BTX)filed for bankruptcy among accusations that its founder had skimmed the money. Zerohedge is gleefully posting about this including a list of who lost money, Lots of names that I know, but I was shocked that Tom & Giselle Brady seem to have lost enough to be listed. Anyhoo.

    The guy behind this has been all over the news as he has donated around a billion, with a B, dollars to democrat campaigns. he’s second only to Soros. Now it appears this was all client money. It’s a classic control fraud

    I think a great deal of our anger is tied to feeling helpless. What after all are we to do about stolen elections? We could run out in the street waiving guns, that would be pointless and really stupid, or we could look to do something productive.

    I’ve realized that what makes the fraud go is the money. I know money and I know fraud — fraud is the ethical short seller’s bread and butter. I have a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that could make me a nightmare to a certain kind of person. I am thinking about how I might apply some of those skills to our current predicament. The what is simple, the avoidance of Arkancide, less so.

    Still, each of us should think about what skills we may have acquired and think how to productively apply those skills to this situation, then do so. Do something productive.

    Oh, and pray. We can all pray,

    1. Thank you. I also was thinking of money last night. if Soros and China went poof, the problem might disappear overnight.

       1. China is poofing as we speak, but how long it will take to poof poof is anyone’s guess. Soros is out of my league. Still, there is a whole ecosystem of overlapping frauds. This Bankman-Fried character is just one of them — I suspect he’ll be swimming with the fishes before long, like Epstein, which is what makes it difficult.

          The money and the child abuse is where they have to be hit. The trouble is that they’re all in it together and omertà is the rule. Difficult, very difficult, but not impossible. I have to think on this.

          It’s very easy to identify high likelihood of fraud situations, proving it not so much. Anyone can look around their own part of the world and find where it’s likely to be. Looking through donor lists and is a good start. See who’s giving your local politician money and find out where that guy gets his money.

          Private jets are a real weak point, our aristos like private jets. perhaps we could crowd source a lot. Stuff like that.

          1. What the heck is up with the market? Going up like a rocket makes me nervous.

             1. At the moment it’s a short squeeze, really big up days happen in bear markets, not so much in bull markets. CPI came in cold so they’re all looking for the “fed pivot” like in 2018. China rumors too. For whatever reason, there’s a lot of weak hands selling short and playing with put options. This is kryptonite for most people and they have no business doing it, but it’s a continuation of the meme stock thing from earlier in the year. Damn fools. Very few short sellers die wealthy,

                The market currently believes that the Fed controls everything and when the pivot comes it’ll be happy days are here again. The problem with that is we haven’t seen a real bear market outside the bloated bubble names like FB and AMZN. Add to that that the action was in the unprofitable tech space and that NONE of the pros were involved and it starts to get sticky. Add to that that there has not been any capitulation and the likelihood that this is just a short squeeze gets higher.

                It really feels to me like 2000-2002 where the tech bubble bursting was followed 18 months later by a fundamental downturn as the recession broke and hit earnings. 9/11 didn’t help, but the economy was in recession before.

                Every shortage is followed by a glut and every inflation is followed by a recession. Every Single One. It could be different this time, but I doubt it.

                of course, I don’t know, no one does. All the experts are saying that the Fed will pivot and fix everything. I don’t actually believe the Fed is this powerful, but that’s what the market thinks. Still, Bob Farrell’s rule #9 should be kept in mind “When all the experts and forecasts agree – something else is going to happen.”

                Bear markets = Big Days. This is the third pullback since the peak, but we’re still in a bear market. If S&P goes through 4000, drawn with a crayon, I’ll start rethinking, but now just a short squeeze. Look for more big days, though it might be quiet into the new year when the fourth quarter earnings come in. I suspect that the Grinch will have stopped Christmas from coming for far too many people. Then we’ll see.

                1. The Reader sees a rhyme with the 70’s when the Fed tightened, loosened, tightened, loosened etc. Inflation ratcheted up each time they loosened until Volcker and 19% interest rates. He hopes he is wrong.

                   1. Demographics are different. 70’s was the maturation of the baby boom, 2020’s the bust. China is in Full deflation mode right now. take away the Ukraine war and Europe would be too, they’re in recession anyway. US Money supply has started to decelerate. Housing prices declining fast, which should lead to a decline in CPI and Core CPI over the next few months, We’ll see.

                      It pays to look at the increase and acceleration of the 25-64 age cohort, which began to decline exactly when Volcker did his 20% rates, just sayin.

                      I really think deflation is the long term problem.

                      1. The Reader thinks you have some good points. However, the Federal government continuing to implement Directive 10-289 piecemeal (one industry at a time), drive the cost of energy ever upward and pass multi-trillion ‘investment’ bills causes the Reader to think the arrow still points in the other direction. The Reader is expecting another year of sustained inflation.

                         Keynes was right about one (and only one) thing – in the long run we are all dead.

                         1. Just so, but perhaps we should put the quote in context. “In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.”

                            Keynes gets blamed for a lot, which makes sense since he said and wrote a lot of stupid things, but he can’t really be blamed for a lot of what goes under the name of Keynesianism, which is mostly the work of a bunch of Harvard clowns led by Samuelson. I suspect Keynes would have been horrified by what was done. His correspondence with Hayek is illuminating on this point along with an analysis of his rhetoric. A book I’ve often wanted to write, but almost certainly never will.

                            We’ll see how it goes. LOyd-Weber had it right, what a circus, what a show.

                            1. WSJ is reporting FTX is asking customerss to stay off their website because they may have been hacked. Seems $400 million of their funds are missing.
                               I had to strongly resist the urge to put, “hack,” in scare quotes.

                2. Used to be you’d get a rally in December (Santa Rally) as exuberance and money from Black Friday came in. We aren’t there yet. One thing I do note is the speculator types are far bluer than they were when I was a kid. Maybe they’re relieved that the Turnip in Chief will not get investigated by the crimson wave (sounds like a super hero) so they won’t lose their phoney baloney jobs…It’s a dumb reason to raise stock prices, but rationality doesn’t seem to be the strong suit of the markets.

                3. > Every shortage is followed by a glut and every inflation is followed by a recession. Every Single One. It could be different this time, but I doubt it.

                   That’s why the markets need a firm, steady hand from the Federal government, to rationalize supply and demand so these wild market swings can be prevented. A series of three- and five-year plans…

                   Ooops, wrong timeline. That’s one of the ones with secret police and gulags.

                   “Never mind.” “We now return you to your regular programming.”

          2. dryly

             Soros is not out of anyones league. You just need time, skill with wireless paper hole punchers, determination, and a good friend by the name of ´Éamonn Wright.

       2. This. Soros with no money is just another POS on the street.

          1. Soros is 92, he can’t last that much longer.

             (Unless he really is a lich, in which case like I said before: we have bigger problems.)

             I hear his children are all in on his agenda as well, but the second generation always tends to be more divided and (literally) not as single-minded about their goals.

             1. Whatever his flaws, Soros is brilliant. His spawn not so much.

                1. I keep wondering if he was a Soviet sleeper.

                   1. Nope, just a psychopath. they happen,

                   2. He was a Nazi collaborator., no matter how much he says ‘he had no choice”; he had a choice, he made the wrong one.

                      1. Yup, for all their screeching that ‘MAGA Republicans’ are ‘Literally Nazis’ the Leftroids are taking payola from a real one. And then following the Nazi play-book page for page. Brownshirts? Check. Reichstag Fire? Well, Reichstag Fizzles so far, but, check. Horst Wessel? They sure tried that with Brian Sicknick. At least they didn’t write a song. Biden’s infamous red-light speech looked like a tribute to Leni Riefenstahl. And by refusing to enforce the law, they’ve got looters enacting Krystallnacht in slow motion.
                         ———————————
                         Why do so many idiots believe that our problems will be solved by the same shitheads that caused them?

                      2. THIS. And he says those were his happiest years….

                      3. Also, the Nazis didn’t force him to crash the British Pound to make a few bucks.

                         1. I’m glad he crashed it, stupidity should be punished.

                            On the other hand, he tends to back politicians that make decisions that tend to lead to situations he can profit from. Bad decisions by politicians are usually good for him. He’s always profited from other people’s misery.

             2. I keep thinking that about Pedo Joe. How on earth is he still completing even one sentence…? Actually at this point I’ll take a (former) sound tech’s bet that his scripted stuff is done entirely with taped voice over. That would explain the hand mic, that thing is actually muted, or slid down to a very low level during the speech.

       3. How is Soros still alive anyway? He looks older than the cryptkeeper.

          1. And uglier. 😛

          2. I swear I think some of these people are getting “young blood” transfusions. Probably from China. I suspect Nancy Pelosi too, but I was sure of it with RBG because people with that type of cancer don’t live that long.

             1. Demons have longer lifespans.

             2. So they really are vampires.

             3. Epstein bragged about his “secret laboratories” in public a few times. Maybe he had something more than underage girls to trade for power and influence.

                I always thought it was interesting how little interest there seems to be in life extension research, particularly given the age group of the wealthiest and most powerful.

                1. Research into aging and life extension happens. Glen Reynolds posts updates on it whenever something on that topic catches his eye

    2. That’s a good angle to work regardless and I hope you can pull it off successfully.

    3. BGE, you’ll be amused by this:

       Crypto Confidence Soars After CEO Defrauds Customers Just Like Real Bank — The Onion

       1. 👍Just so. It’s fraud all the way down.

          1. Yup very mathematically fancy Ponzi schemes.

             1. Interestingly enough, none of the failures have been part of the blockchain. One area where it’s failed is in the “stablecoin” space. I think I wrote about that here before, short answer, in order to guarantee a (e.g.) dollar price, you have to have sufficient dollar reserves. the only source of those reserves was sub prime Chinese property bonds, which have stopped paying or been downgraded. QED.

                There’s a reason the dollar continues to go up and it’s NOT because of relative inflation rates, or anything else in the Money and Banking books. It’s all about collateral and Repo.

             2. Where the winner is the second-to-last sucker to cash out.

19. The one thing we get from a House R majority, even a wafer thin one, is to boot MaligNancy’s petrified ass out of that comfy Speaker’s chair. That alone will make the world a better place.

    If they can avoid replacing it with McCarthy’s squishy ass, so much the better. There are far better options than McCarthy and Vichy Mitchy. I’d really like to see Jim Jordan as Senate Majority Leader. THAT would be a nightmare for the Donks.

    I’m in favor of Trump 2024. Say DeSantis runs in 2024, and is as good as we hope he is, and gets re-elected — then what? Trump will be over 90 by then. Who will be around in 2032 to take up the MAGA banner?

    If we get a Trump comeback in 2024, DeSantis will be even stronger for 2028. R’s have a chance to hold the White House for 12 years, instead of just 8. Way better than giving it back to the Donks.
    ———————————
    There are forms of stupidity that businesses can’t indulge in. There are no such limitations on the stupidity of government.

    1. THIS

       1. We should probably replace the actual, physical Speaker’s Chair after prying NecroNancy out of it. Who knows what horrors that poor thing has been through? And what residues might remain? 😛

          1. Point. Exorcism might not be enough, even if we remove the cushions and boil the whole thing in linseed oil and holy water (the H2O holy water, not the stuff WeeFree and company make.)

             1. gimlet eye

                I wouldn’t be donating the dregs of me still to light that thing on fire ar chor ar bith – some things are too much even for Us.

             2. You touch that thing with Holy Water (Or Nancy) and and it will catch fire. Hey Ms. Pelosi is nominally a Catholic yes? Anyone ever seen her touch the holy water? And does she avoid Mirrors (alright she might do that just not to scare herself).

                1. Pretty sure there is a hellmouth under the basement of the Capitol Building, just like Sunnydale High.

                   1. Tell me about it… I live about 2 miles from the Danvers State Hospital (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danvers_State_Hospital) site which was part of the original inspiration for the Arkham Sanitorium in Hp Lovecrafts works which was in turn inspiration for the Arkham Asylum. If there is a hell hole in Massachusetts that’s where it is…And someone had the sheer chutzpah to build a set of high end apartments on the site, reusing much of the timber and flooring from the old Mental Hospital. Just what I want to pay $1200 a month for a place that needs Monster Hunters Inc. quarterly for extermination.

                      1. And then of course you could get the tenant who wants to try to summon a Great Old One…of course one can probably do that just trying to pronounce furniture names at IKEA 🙂

                         1. Please do not jest… Danvers original name was Salem Village. It was the actual place where the witch hunts and trials happened. And current Salem is so full of Satanists and Wiccans etc. that I’m certain some idiot is mucking with summoning and such like. I’m not a big fan of Woo-Woo stuff, but even I have enough care to know that that stuff is the spiritual equivalent of playing with subcritical masses of pure U-235.

                            1. However there is this:

                               

                               The younger generations especially can’t read or write cursive at all.

                            2. Well at least it is contained in a pentacle. An enraged or injured lemon is quite dangerous might squirt you in the eye…

                            3. Yes, indeed.

                2. Tangentially related. The Reader would have thought Nancy would have wanted Paul’s attacker quietly deported. The fact that a SF DA spurned ICE indicates she doesn’t summon the class of demon she used to.

                   https://www.theblaze.com/news/da-brooke-jenkins-wont-turn-over-illegal-alien-who-allegedly-attacked-pelosis-husband-to-ice-claiming-san-francisco-is-a-sanctuary-city

                   1. Now THAT’s funny. Talk about being hoist by your own petard…

          2. Douse it with holy water, pour salt on it, radiate it with Cobalt 60 for 6 weeks, then burn it, and launch the ashes into the Sun (because the nearest black hole is too far away.)

             1. If you doused the Capitol Building with Holy Water there would be flame and smoke that would put a mushroom cloud to shame.,

                1. Mushroom cloud good.
                   It’s really too bad the Russians and the terrorists of the world know that blowing up Washington DC would be doing us a favor, not crippling us.

       2. On second thought, maybe they should wheel the Speaker’s Chair out of the Capitol with the crone still in it. Let her take it home, even. Not like anybody else would want it.

    2. Who will be around in 2032 to take up the MAGA banner?

       Probably somebody nobody has heard of, like nobody had heard of Ron DeSantis in 2012. Ten years is a long time, and forever in politics.

       1. Whoever they are they’re likely a state rep or something even lower down on the food chain. As Balzacq noted 10 years is an eternity in the political world.

    3. Don’t worry, the UniParty has that covered.

       https://americanwirenews.com/dem-lawmaker-calls-on-kevin-mccarthy-to-cut-deal-with-democrats-for-speaker-reject-freedom-caucus/

20. What can we do?

    All the time my kids were growing up and would say it isn’t fair, I’d reply, nobody ever promised you fair. Something we all need to remember.

    Thanks to the post mortem and the comments, I’m not really angry, sad, hopeful, I realize that I am, I just am and I’m planing to stay and enjoy it all no matter.

    I don’t know about you but I can (& am) stock(ing) up, clear(ing) the perimeter, and (schmaltzy but true) facing whatever tomorrow comes with a song in my heart and a smile on my face.

    What can we do? Maybe we can save civilization, maybe not, but we can protect ourselves, our near and dears, and those things within our reach. Again, don’t know about you, but that’s where I’m directing my efforts.

    Interesting times are interesting.

21. Yes absolutely. If Nevada outvotes the fraud margin and we keep our red governor and red senator it is entirely because Trump stumped for them. Exit polls on live cameras confirmed this. “I’m voting for trump” “He’s not running” “I’m voting for who he picked”. The person saying that was loud, proud, middle aged female (just a hair above soccer mom age).

22. PS, the RNC didn’t get a dime from me, my candidates did. That trend will absolutely continue going forward.

    1. I stopped ever giving money to the Republican Party even before I stopped paying the NRA

    2. $HOUSEMATE has stopped getting requests, I think, after telling them REPEATEDLY, “Until you actually FIGHT the FRAUD, you don’t deserve a cent!”

23. We aren’t going to be decorating lampposts with strange new fruit this winter or next. We won’t have to. The starving, freezing, desperate constituents of the parasite class are going to do that for us. These people have no real skills, no stores of food, no way of getting water, no way of creating heat or light. Yes, they’re going to boil out into the suburbs and rural areas, but I predict they will first take their revenge upon the people who promised to provide for them in return for their votes. We can see the oncoming wave right now, like the little twirling sprites of water in a river that marks rapids ahead.

    Like our good hostess reminds us, keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

    1. Watch out for cannibalism.

       1. The left things this is something to be achieved. For them, Soylent Green is the ultimate “sustainable” food source. And just like the movie, the small wealthy elite will still get real fruit, jam, etc.

    2. PJ Media has this:

       https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ryanledendecker/2022/11/11/heat-or-eat-natural-gas-prices-set-to-skyrocket-this-winter-on-bidens-watch-n1645031

       Europe of course is even worse, and the media here is doing their best not to cover the already increasing unrest.

       Perhaps the phrase “Now is the winter of our discontent” will be global.

    3. No the aren’t. They’re bad at that too. they’ll just burn down their own neighborhoods and wait for the cameras. And it will take more than two years in America.

       1. Yup these are the same kind of folks that got told a Cat 5 Hurricane was headed for New Orleans (where in some places you look up hill 10-15′ to the top of the levee that barely holds back the Mississippi, e.g at the original Cafe Du Monde) and sat on their hands. The cities will burn and they’ll steal/appropriate what they can but outside of immediate suburbs in direct contact with the city (e.g in Boston, East Boston, Cambridge, Allston Brighton, etc might have to worry (although they themselves are effectively cities too). Will they get to 128/95? I doubt it. The little cities (Lawrence, Salem, Lowell) may be a problem but even there the residents just aren’t particular prone to activity.

          1. I recall the comedian who said he had no great of things in the Big City. There was always someone nearby to pull into things, if things happened. But he was worried about being “out in the country” as country folks have all this time… in that time, they THINK.

24. Florida cleaned up their election process, and were successful, Texas has too, but the Blue states never will, the Dems are too embedded in the process. I fear there will never again be ‘fair’ elections at the national level again. It’s been let go/ignored too long… dammit… About the only thing left is the last box…

25. “To the MAGA diehards, I say: is this really what you want? A Republican Party that can’t decisively whip the Democrats even in an extremely favorable year?”

    It is evidently what Trump wants – with his attacks on viable Republicans who could take the 2024 presidential nomination, efforts to replace viable GOP candidates with sycophants who are not viable candidates (which is how the GOP lost the Arizona Senate seat and Pete Meijers House seat in Michigan – not to mention the fiascos with the Governor’s seat and Senate seat in Pennsylvania), etc. He was happy to see a Democrat win in Colorado because it meant a Republican candidate who did not kow-tow to him lost. His handpicked candidate for the Senate in Georgia ran 8 points behind the other statewide GOP candidates – including the Governor Trump tried to slander.

    I don’t blame Whitmer’s win in Michigan on Trump, even though she beat Trump’s preferred nominee. Whitmer’s Secretary of State disqualified four candidates running ahead of the eventual GOP nominee from competing in the primaries on a claim of bogus ballot petition signatures – including the front runner, a black former Detroit Polic Chief who was polling far ahead of Czar Christine.

    1. If The Chief had been the nominee, there would have been way too many votes in those parts of Detroit they use to manufacture their votes. The occasional 100%+ turnout in a ward might be hand-waved away, but push 150% in a bunch, and well, there will be queries.

    2. Oh, for the love of BOB.
       It’s pussy and you’re arguing bear.
       Who the fuck cares what Trump does? It’s the fraud. Until you iron out the fraud, you don’t have a choice.

    3. Also, saying this as not a Trump diehard, if I’d put up with half the crap he’s put up with from both sides, I’d already be stacking bodies like cordwood.

    4. Didn’t the FBI also go after the four leading primary candidates as well?

       1. May have been the state AG, but ya, the praetorian guard is in full effect. Part of why I figure we will be seeing trump and DeSantis in defendant orange in DC for inciting a mob and kidnapping respectively.

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28. Senator Paul nailed it:

    

    1. All of them, several times.

    2. How many of them cashed the checks? 😛

       “Just what I needed to have my coffin reupholstered!”

29. Good post over on PJ Media.

    https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/11/11/desantis-2024-think-again-n1645202

30. Pingback: Current Events 11-15-2022 – HUCKSWORLD.com

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