Special Effects

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

There are still “races” going on for the legislature. By which you might very well read “being stolen and taken away in a sack by the “democrat” election fixers”

You also forgot one important thing: no one pays attention to each individual race in the midterms, which means it makes the whole thing EASIER to steal.

Meanwhile, what is the right fighting about? Oh, yes.

1. “Was it fraud?”

We told you it was fraud. We pointed out it was fraud. We told you how the fraud would be effected. You told us it was harder in mid term elections, which might have been true when the fraud wasn’t automated and baked in through a million security faults in the system. So, from the top:

a) If you think the other side isn’t taking full and amazing advantage of a)vote by mail. b) same day registration. c)no ID required for registration or vote. d) no proof of citizenship required to register (motor voter) e)legalizing and sometimes making mandatory vote harvesting. f)early voting that extends for months. g)machines that we know are connected to the internet and count fractional votes or “enhanced votes”, you must think the other side are angels. You also have never paid attention to how they fight like rabbid weasels every time we try to take these fraud channels away.

b) Unless you can say with a straight face the following sentences: “Joe Biden had the most votes of any president ever elected, and the smallest loss of any midterm first term president ever. I guess he’s the most popular and charismatic president in America and all this time it was Barrack Obama holding him down” it was fraud.

2. “TRUMP OR DESANTIS”. There’s a fight going on. Choose NOW it’s super-important.

According to a video that I linked in the comments a few days go, and cannot now find, DeSantis started this war behind the scenes.

That makes perfect sense. Whatever you think of Trump, no, he didn’t go insane all of a sudden. He is instead responding to insult and attack the way he always does: brashly, and trying to drag it into the light.

Here’s the thing: I think worse of both of them for starting this now. Yeah, yeah, campaign people got to eat. But the campaign is futile while there’s fraud. And all this is doing is allowing the dems to get away with fraud because everyone is watching the special effects and not what is actually going on.

From the top and on theme “Oh, you rockheads, you deserve to starve!”

Meanwhile there is the ever-present “should there be a third party.” Because in fraudulent elections, controlled by one side, it matters if there’s one party or ten thousand….

(Judging by what their Junior division did, following Sad Puppies, to fortify those elections, they’re going hard on “ranked choice” next chance they get.)

And my problem? I’m being Cassandra again. It’s ALL TOO CLEAR. Blame it on going to school with a lot of these crazy people or their Portuguese cousins.

For these elections, the tattered, barely there fig leaf is that the womynz got on it mass because they loves them abortion that well. (Even though in Iowa a strident abortion campaign either pushed the state further right, or you know, the elections were clean and no one gives a fig about abortion. Or very few people do. Which accords with the polls.)

For 2024? Well. “Trump/DeSantis fans were so pissed off they stayed home.”

For 2026/28? “It was these third party spoilers. They divided the conservative vote and the left won.”

Note none of those are the real reasons. They’re fig leafs. But the fig leafs will work to keep the right directing their anger at whoever: women, Trump/DeSantis/third party.

Instead of directing it at the *ssholes who stole their country and keep doing so, as well as driving it into the ground with a steam shovel.

Do you want to keep looking at the special effects? Carry on. I guess it’s a distraction while you’re being killed.

Or do you want to sit down and figure out, from your own place and your own abilities, how to stop the fraud and take the fight to the enemy?

I never made much secret that my own abilities are lacking. I’m sort of okay at putting down words, that’s about it. But a lot of you have amazing talents, and extraordinary abilities and knowledge which will allow you to start digging the sand out of the monolith.

No, they can’t endure forever. I doubt they can endure much more than ten years. But you get to control how fast they fall and what comes after.

I don’t know about the lot of you, but I have children and might have grandchildren. Otherwise, I’d already be unwinding the blog and getting ready to write only fiction, instead of rolling this rock up the hill yet again.

But, hey. I’d rather I suffer than they suffer.

So I’m asking you: which is it going to be? Stay entertained by the irrelevant spectacle while the cyanide drips into the veins of the Republic, or sit down and figure out what you can do where you are, right now?

Even if it’s just yelling “It’s the fraud. Stop staring at the pretty colors, it’s the fraud”?

The ball is in your court.

243 thoughts on “Special Effects”

  1. but but but teh covids! we must all mail in teh votez! mail is perfectly secure, no one’s ever had mail stolen!

        1. In Texas, I used to get stuff for plenty of wrong addresses that were often the same road, but nowhere close to the right number. I mean getting 8514, 8516, 8518, mail in 8512 okay, all four mailboxes were on the same post. But 8332? (I could at least see their house) or even better 7917? I also could tell when the normal carrier was on vacation. I’d have to go hunting for my mail then.

          1. Yep. That is always when the monthly BarkBox would go missing. “Delivery has been made. If not evident, look around, might have been hidden from porch pirates.” Sigh. note: “Next door does NOT count!” I’d understand 996 VS 995 miss read (especially this time of the year. But 997? Really? (oops, before someone else FIFM) Altogether now: “Come on man.”

            I finally signed up for the postal free daily mail digest email. Our mail is so irregular on delivery times, I just want “are we getting mail?” Last night I checked it at 7 PM, nothing. Grabbed it at 12:30 AM. Key, knew we were getting something. Sunday’s drop off (Amazon packages) was at 8 PM … Again, knew it was suppose to be coming (Amazon), digest told me the packages were actually coming.

      1. ding ding ding

        Yes, I think that’s EXACTLY what they’re trying to pull. Just pay no attention to the giant ass we showed you in 2020 and pretend you can “overcome the margin of fraud”, if only you had a “good enough” candidate, and/or compromised on so many thing as to become indistinguishable from the left.

      2. My modest proposal as a lawyer is that any time it takes more than a day to count the votes, everyone involved be hanged, pour encourager les autres…After that, they get an amnesty….

    3. You know, even France understands that mail in voting is prone to fraud.

      Which begs a very humbling question.

      Are Americans dumber than the French?

          1. “It’s super convenient! And it encourages voter participation!”
            Uh huh. Keep your hands off my other leg, you’ve pulled this one clean off.

    5. It’s not just the Post Orifice. UPS delivers packages to us that belong to other businesses nearby.

      And that’s just the incompetence. Now add in malice and malfeasance.

  2. And the Republican leadership is so happy being the Washington Generals. (Harlem Globetrotters reference) that they will do nothing.

    1. What do they care? As long as they’re an ineffective minority, they still get paid, still get sucked up to by lobbyists, still get those cushy K Street jobs when they leave Congress, AND they can still get invited to the best cocktail parties and the news media leave them mostly alone. If they won, they’d actually have to govern, and wouldn’t get those cocktail party invites, and would have to put up with getting called “literally Hitler” every day.

      The politicians made the system, and the system makes new politicians. It’s self-feeding.

      1. This, exactly – the GOP-in-Name-Only have made very lucrative careers out of being elected and reelected, just so they can occasionally dip their beaks into the trough.

        1. Yep. The Republican Party as we know it needs to die. (Trump is doing his best to help with that, God love him.) The Democratic Party just needs to die; killed with fire, the ashes drowned in holy water, and the sarcophagus launched into the sun.

          1. There still needs to be an opposition. Because humans are not angels, and thus subject to fallibility and all its little subgroups, there needs to be a place for different voices.

            If that ends up being different ways to be free, but agreeing that freedom must be paramount, I’m fine with that. So long as no one is being forced to be “free” in only one, specific, narrow, approved way that changes with the whims of the elite.

            One thing I can guarantee with iron certainty, though, is that there will be goblins, bandits, and thieves. There will be opposition to everything, most definitely to things like common sense and decency, rule of law, and freedom. Because there will be human beings that prefer foolishness, rancor, theft, murder, and slavery.

            Kill the D party today and tomorrow it will arise with a different face, but the same ethos. Same with the Establishment R’s. We don’t need to just defeat them today. We need to teach our children how to defeat them.

            And that they can be defeated.

            1. This. “The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance,” and so forth.

              In the “future history” (as you might call it grandiosely) of the World Federation (which invades Mars in the first story), this socialist mob came to power after the current Big Reset / Commie power grab / etc. failed, more or less in our own time and just following.

              One reason the bad guys succeeded, a handful of decades later when they tried it again, is so many truly-deeply freedom-loving people had gone offworld (incl. via the new space elevator).

              But the other reason is, “Our mistake was we stopped pouring weed killer on the stump where we cut down the Communist tree. When we chop it down a second time, even our great-great grandchildren are never gonna stop again. Never ever again.”

            2. “So long as no one is being forced to be “free” in only one, specific, narrow, approved way that changes with the whims of the elite.”

              And that’s the motivating sentiment behind my assertion, because “freedom” that consists only of what a self-anointed elite allows you to have is exactly where both parties are headed in their current state.

    2. Hell the Generals Occasionally scored a basket from time to time and actually looked like they knew how the game was played. The GOP, not so much…

  4. As for grandchildren, perhaps it’s time you or Dan had “THE TALK” with Marshall.
    With Robert and Blake the ball’s in Blake’s court, but I’m reasonably certain that she can be bribed, perhaps try chocolate or horses.
    As for the state of our nation, we don’t have to burn it all down, they are going to do it for us.
    Things will get very ugly later this winter in Europe. No longer any way around that. And as that all progresses it will spill over and exacerbate our own shortages and other issues here at home.
    People are going to be very unhappy here, most likely during and right after the Christmas holidays. Nation will be a powder keg waiting for the newest and latest idiocy from the left to set things off.

    1. I forget where I read it this weekend, but one of the right-side pundits basically said that Americans need to get a lot more unhappy before they actually will get up the gumption to do something about it.

      1. And here are my specific digits to that – I have been miserable for decades because of stuff inflicted by other people, I did as much as I possibly could, and I barely scraped out with my life. Anyone who says “people need to get a lot more unhappy” can go… sit on it and rotate.

        1. /laugh
          I think you may have misunderstood that. He wasn’t calling for more misery. He was observing that it takes being buried in crap before most conservatives realize that they need to get out the pooper scooper.

          1. I was pretty sure that was what he meant, I’m just not sure it’ll work. Unless most people are personally buried in near-death circumstances, they don’t feel inclined to change anything – and if they are, they have no energy to spare to help someone else.

            1. Part of the reasons why people were more inclined to take direct, physical action against tyranny in the colonial period was (1) they had more contact with their neighbors and more buy-in for fixing problem members of the community, or even more so, for perceived interlopers like Red Coats and their ilk stationed in their towns; and (2) they could load up the wagon and skedaddle to other parts without being pursued (I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t a motivator for a lot of our westward push.)

              Nowadays, there’s nowhere else to go; unless you want to reenact the plot of The Dogs of War on some 3rd world nation run by ruthless dictators. And even then, you have the unenviable job of trying to educate the populace in western democracy, which we’ve found due to much of our “nation building” failures, to be rather difficult.

              1. (2) they could load up the wagon and skedaddle to other parts without being pursued (I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t a motivator for a lot of our westward push.)

                ………………
                To which the British said to the established migrants before the European migrants “help us and we’ll stop these movements that are pushing you more west” (which in turned pressed others more west). But the tighter the British squeezed for control, the more those with little to nothing to lose, packed up what little they had, and moved west.

                Nowadays, there’s nowhere else to go

                ……….
                Up, to the Stars? Ocean?

                What that means? Now since neither “pack and get out” is not an option? Well those of us in blue areas have that option. But people in non-blue areas?

                  1. 100%

                    Though I’d prefer my own wagon & horses rocket ship (motor home equivalent, mini-ranch-farm, with garage for planetary use shuttle) for family VS colony ship. Just saying.

                    A colony ship is just using the space between planets going to another planet.

                  2. I’d live on a rock between here and Mars, breaking other rocks and refining out the periodic table. I’d do that with no tax man or busybody to tell me what I can and can’t do, and only the cold grip of space to keep me between the lines.

                    And I’d wager you a pound of gold to an ounce of sand that there’s more than a few like you and me.

              2. This.
                The Mormons fled Missouri.
                Southerners fled Reconstruction (especially those from Missouri and Virginia who weren’t covered under the general amnesty, or those who refused to “swallow the dog “ under Bloody Bill Brownlow and the like).
                Bummers were Yankee forces who came home from the war to find no job, no girl, and no future waiting for them.

                That’s the better part of Western expansion right there.

              3. The thing is, the people who’d have very little hesitation about opening up a can of whoop ass are precisely those who are being bought off by taxpayer provided largess.

      3. I think that’s human nature in general, plus the knowledge that once the fuse is lit, nobody really knows how bad it will get before it gets better or how long it will take or what “better” will be.

    2. Look, I’ve always been a fan of hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Things generally break somewhere in between the two extremes.
      I do follow english language bloggers in Holland, Germany, and Austria and what they say is not at all pretty. Food, energy, and fuel shortages that put our situation to shame. Entire villages are stripping the surrounding woods of fallen tree limbs and sometimes entire trees (highly illegal most places there) just in an effort to keep from freezing to death.
      And the Green backed WEF is still pressuring officials to dramatically cut back on food production due to climate change malarky.
      Hey, climate change is real, it’s what climate does. The massive con being perpetrated on the ignorant masses is that 1) the current climate trends are entirely due to man made carbon dioxide emissions, and 2) that crippling cutbacks in human activities will somehow magically cause the current trends to reverse themselves. And, by the way, just give the UN and an assortment of other multinational hucksters billions of dollars and they will work their voodoo and save us. They are all about the children after all, without kids how long will human trafficing, pedophilia, and gender reassignment surgeries continue to be the cash cows they currently profit from?

        1. The stories should. There are areas where lack of trees worsen avalanche problems … While trees do break when avalanches hit, they also slow down avalanches in general and flat out stop smaller ones before they become bigger ones. Which is why the trees are not allowed to be cut in the first place. Freezing to death isn’t an option either.

      2. Trillions, not billions of dollars, and even if the USA and Europe stopped all emissions tomorrow, it would have negligible impact, something that when pushed even the alarmists who blame everything on CO2 acknowledge that because of the output of China and India, which those two countries have no intention of decreasing. (this is when they usually revert to “but it advances social justice”)

      1. It’s the ones that vehemently deny it that I have questions about. Serious questions.

        Ignorance is curable with education, and the ease of education in this matter is pathetically simple. Willful ignorance looks more like quislings to me.

  6. There are precinct committee slots going begging…if enough of us sign up to be significantly bored once a month, and volunteer where/how we are able, we can take the party over from the bottom up…

    1. THIS.
      Nancy, please write me a post on this: I don’t have experience. And I’m not an old resident here, so I’m following the rule of five years to get involved.

        1. I’m guessing e-mail it to Sarah’s first-initials lastname at hot mail dot com — at least that’s what seem to have just worked for me.

          You very likely already know this, but there was an entire episode of Uncover DC’s podcast dedicated to the “precinct strategy” some months ago… essentially a how-to an hour long.

          Of course I also posted her much more recent update, on how she and her whole cohort of SC precinct committee people had to resign in protest, due to their getting “sandbagged” by the (badly-entrenched) SC-GOP leadership. (“Leper colony” was one of the terms used.)

          Still, as always, it’s true that “you can’t win if you don’t enter” — and IIRC, re-org time is coming up just about now!

          1. Thank you. I think I can keep it simple with clues for where/how to start, and some items like deadlines to be aware of, enough to get interested folks started. With an hostile entrenched bunch it may take longer than with a welcoming set, but it can be done. I started in 2010 in Maricopa County, in my small west side city, and I am still working on it.

      2. RAH wrote a book called “Take Back Your Government.” Consider it a primer, or inspirational, as it’s several decades old.

        Step one is basically finding the political party committees in your town.
        Step two is contacting the election office in your town and getting on the help list.
        Step three is finding other sources of training in election process and government. Here in New Hampshire, there’s the NH Municipal Association, and a conservative oriented group called the 603 Alliance. And I know the State has briefings for the election officials on the new changes before each election.

        1. kinda hard to ‘take back your government’ when the opposition just keep[s finding enough votes…

        2. Back in the 90s I bought a case of it and passed it out while doing election work.

          If you can find it, it’ll be a good guide until the Dems get their first (and last at this point) win in your locale.

  7. That’s the problem with fraud. There is no signal to tell the frauding side they are governing badly. So they change “nothing” about how they are governing, and it gets worse, and people try to vote them out and fail because of fraud and it gets worse, rinse and repeat.

    Then the God Damn media says “things are better than evar!!!”

    But everywhere the elections aren’t fraudulent, just get redder and redder. There are areas in my state where the farmers used to always vote Democrat, but they don’t now because, well frankly, they really don’t like the “let’s cut the teen boys penises off and the young girls breasts off”. My state is dark dark red now.

    The problem here is that everyone knows it’s fraud, but like the actual fucking Soviet Union, we are told what you said “Biden is the best dear leader to ever live!!!!”

    One thing I’ve thought on in the past week is that we won’t start the second civil war and we won’t need too.

    It’s gonna go down something like this: a federal law will be passed enshrining the rights of teens to switch genders, the red states will disobey the law, and blue states will send agents into red states to literally kidnap these poor children that need “affirmative care”, law enforcement from both sides will conflict, and deadly violence between them will erupt. Situations will exacerbate and the fucking pedo Pretendident will arrange, with blue state governors sending in national guard to escort the abused children and the red state will call up its guard to fight. Eventually red state guard will secure the red state borders from neighbors blue states, then the piece of shit commander in chief will attack with regular military.

    The second civil war will start because the pedophile elites can’t leave our kids alone.

    The elites are more evil than we can imagine.

    1. That is such a large pile of just-followed-orders-in-lock-step assumptions that it makes Brandon winning honestly look plausible by comparison.

      1. We are in CLOWN WORLD. The Covid release to take down populism around the globe and implement totalitarian bullshit sounded pretty freaking far fetched in 2019 and yet it totally fucked the world. You DON’T think they’re going to double down on Climate Change, CRT, and the “trans ideology”?!?

        Look at the last to year, and then admit, we are in an insane place. So, yeah, they’re gonna force the tranning of the kids.

        1. You DON’T think they’re going to double down on Climate Change, CRT, and the “trans ideology”?!?

          Nice strawman. The only people who don’t think that haven’t been watching that that is what they’ve been doing for a few years.

          Which has nothing to do with your assertions that all of the blue national guards and the federal military are going to support it because the rats in your head say they will.

          1. The fleas and the mercs will do exactly as their paymasters tell them. Execute a woman holding a child? bang. Kneel before a rioting mob, giving space to destroy? of course. Degrade combat effectiveness by going for the rainbow warriors? sure. Falsify documents to spy on American citizens, including prominent political candidates? Hell that’s been going on since Elliot Ness wore a badge. Send thousands of troops to DC to militarize the city and make a show of force? Done. Ignore orders from a Republican cinc? That’s the JCS and that whole first impeachment.

            The failed right has this white horse mentality of lawmen, mercs, and countrymen. The entire country is not like your small rural 5 acre plot town where money is extracted from the ground as food, minerals, or the like. The big cities are significantly more blue and agreeable to nannyism and their extractive industries are parasitically taking money from lessers through consumerism, advertising, and financializing your physical extractive industries. Morals are overruled by money in the vast majority of people, as long as those morals are seen as not being the majority view. And as the populace continues to sort, with those with nonleftist views being pushed farther and farther out of these positions you will see more and more of these soldiers being willing to do whatever they are told to defend the DC emperor.

            1. Yep. Well said.

              They are literally demanding that people be fired for not asserting “trans women are biological women.”

              This insanity will go far worse than we can possibly even predict.

              1. Admittedly I’m not sold it’ll be the rainbow nutters that will light the fuse, but gun confiscation, food confiscation, or epa and federal land disputes all could fall the same way. But the historical precedent is on the feds side since Eisenhower. Nationalize the guard, send in the army, shoot resistors.

                1. See also: Bonus Army; Hoover, Herbert

                  Back the Blue? Not on your bloody life.
                  Given the choice between your liberty and their pension, liberty loses nearly every single time.

                  1. Douglas McArthur first gained fame as the guy who led the tanks into DC to break up the veterans’ protests after WWI.

                2. Energy rationing with rotating blackouts, gas restrictions and limitations on driving, mandatory “smart” meters that reduce or turn off electricity when usage is deemed to high; those will be the triggers.

                  1. All the areas that is high risk are the northeast and blue wall, and ones that simply playing the greater good card will put people in place. These are same places that embraced covid rules

                    1. You mean like rolling blackouts in California, gas shortages in the southeast, diesel being at 3 weeks for the entire country? Keep in mind I am not just referencing market shortages, but the government imposed rationing that Team HarrisBiden is eagerly waiting to impose. They want to create sufficient shortages to be able to use it as pretext to declare a national energy emergency and impose rationing.

                  2. We’ve had a Smart Natural Gas meter since we installed natural gas, no choice.

                    We’ve had the power smart meter now for about 6 months. They installed it with no power interruption notice. Water smart meter we just got. Water we’d been told they wouldn’t install smart meter unless we took the ground level back to original. We raised the yard, with a box extension so the meter could be read,, late ’90s … We said, “No”, multiple times, multiple ways, to multiple people. Couple of weeks ago, out front (street, sidewalk, meter, etc.) were painted in front of the house. While we wondered, we weren’t “notified”. They came out and raised the meter and installed the smart meter.

                    So, yes. 100% this is what they are aiming for. At minimum, higher rates during times usage is deemed high. Whether they try it on an household level or not? I mean we can game the system. So the standard heavy water use before bed or 6 AM – 9 AM (before work or school) doesn’t apply to us. We don’t have specifically high use time throughout the year. Now maximum usage then cutoff? That they could pull, easily.

                    Energy rationing with rotating blackouts, gas restrictions and limitations on driving, mandatory “smart” meters that reduce or turn off electricity when usage is deemed to high

          2. Uh huh. Now with a straight face say “the blue state governors aren’t going to mandate kids wear masks in school again this winter because no one will believe them when they say ‘we need masks again because flu, Covid, and racism!!'”

            That on is on its way right now. And it will be obeyed and enforced by too many authorities.

            1. I’m sure one of these days you will attack something that was actually said.

              I have to ask; does the inside of your skull itch with all the rats moving around in there?

              1. I’m just pointing out what step one down the path will be. They will reimplement restrictions for all kinds of insane reasons.

                It’s not a slippery slope, we’re falling down a cliff.

                “That’s insane, that will never happen” is so quaintly 2019…..

              2. The Reader hates to admit it, Ian, but he may have a point on the issue of remasking. Someone is certainly attempting to lay down a rationale that the Karens will swallow, anyway.

                “The decision in some school districts to sustain school masking policies longer may therefore reflect an understanding among parents and elected officials that structural racism is embedded in public policies and that policy decisions have the potential to rectify or reproduce health inequities.”

                From https://www.nejm.org/journal-articles?query=recirc_mostViewed_railB_article
                https://nypost.com/2022/11/11/us-medical-establishment-has-gone-woke-with-masking-racism-study/

                The Reader is so old, he remembers when the New England Journal of Medicine was a serious publication.

          3. One example: in Spokane a group of parents, iirc mostly mothers, protested a Drag Queen Story Hour at a local library. The Spokane PD responded with several offices including SWAT and snipers on rooftops to “protect” the library.
            Another one: klantifa showed up with ARs – and supposedly also with a sniper in a parking garage – in a Fort Worth suburb to protect another DQSH and police refused to respond to any complaints
            Yes, this is only two cases, but that they happened at all and apparently without any consequences is not a good sign.

        2. I don’t think we’re in a clown world. I’d recognize a clown world. This world is one where everything I’ve trusted and depended upon for 62+ years is being destroyed, melting into…. what? Not a clown world. More a deadly toxic mess where you kill your neighbor’s children just to keep them from stealing what you have to eat for the winter.

      2. It is, but it’s not completely implausible that at least some Guardsmen would follow along. I don’t think anybody in Little Rock thought they’d ever be facing the 101st Airborne walking down their streets with fixed bayonets but it happened. (And no, I am not drawing a parallel between desegregation and this example. I’m just saying that for normal people, it would be a shocking escalation.) Or that we ever thought we’d be facing the lockdown insanity where police just went along with it worldwide and “just followed orders.”

        Our law enforcement officers and military do a nasty thankless job and the vast majority of them do it well and with pride. But assuming that they would spot an illegal or immoral order and stand up against it is a thin assurance to base things on. Some would, some wouldn’t.

        1. We’ve already had a number of examples around 2020 where they refused illegal backchannel orders. Usually by telling the backchanneler’s to put it in writing.

          1. How many of them have either been purged or quit their jobs in disgust already? The more that have left, the better chance that the ones left will do whatever they are told.

        2. I’m happy to see some sheriffs in Red Oregon refusing to enforce the blatantly unconstitutional gun control bill “passed” this November. AFAIK, 5 counties have already said nope, and I suspect (hope) that other counties will quietly refuse to go along.

          The bill added a lot of responsibilities to the SOs, while cleverly neglecting to allocate any funds to do the extra work. Yet another way to defund the police from doing real work.

          I suspect any counties that aggressively enforce that bill will discover that “back the blue” isn’t unconditional.

        3. The most important law enforcement official is the state Governor.

          Given the past three years, how many do you think would stand firm in the face of federal pressure?
          They couldn’t even stand up to an unelected bureaucrat writing them nasty letters demanding they imprison their entire populace.

  8. Note none of those are the real reasons. They’re fig leafs. But the fig leafs will work to keep the right directing their anger at whoever: women, Trump/DeSantis/third party.

    Let’s not forget Millennials, er, wait, forgot the NPC script has been updated. Let’s not forget Gen Z.

    Because for a lot of people the central and most important conservative principle is the 2500 (recorded) year tradition of shirking all responsibility for everything bad and putting in on those who are too young to have been around when the problems started.

      1. Ancient Greece.

        Lot’s of recorded bitching about Kid’s These Days. Which is why I specify “recorded”, because I assume it has been happening since T=0.

      2. “Times are hard, children have no respect for their elders, and everyone is writing a book”?

      4. Aristotle had a rant on it. I used to have a copy. I’m reading through Cicero and I wouldn’t be surprised if HE had a rant on something similar as well. (I haven’t hit it yet, though.)

        1. Oddly, I can’t think of any examples of that sort of rant in the OT. Far more likely to have the prophets ranting against the generation in power, comparing them to their forefathers for good or ill.

            2. It’s an “and,” thing. Children should honor their parents, but God and His prophets are free to criticize. (“Remember what happened to your forefathers in the desert? They didn’t listen! And you’re not doing so good either.”

        2. There’s always Gilbert & Sullivan. Nowhere near as old, but quite satisfying:

          “The idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone / Every century but this and every country but his own”

          Cicero had a bit about rashness attending to youth as prudence does to old age, but I forget the context at the moment, and my google-fu has failed me.

    2. ALL OF US were liberals till about 30. Including me. the only difference with millenials and zers? There’s fewer of them than there were even genX.
      So tell me how they made all the difference, again.

      3. Sorry, Sarah. I was never a liberal. Might have been a case of adolescent/teenage rebellion against parental values (my folks wewre democrat party county workers), but it grew and was renforced over time. My first voluntary political activity was attending the Republican party caucus in 1980 (nearly gave my Mom a heart attack), and campaigning for Ronald Reagan when I wasn’t ‘enjoying’ Army basic training. I was 17.

      4. Funny – the Reader never was. He guesses there was something old about his soul, even in his twenties. It did make connecting with peers difficult.

  9. The fact that it is taking a week (or longer) to tally results is exactly why some people don’t trust the elections any longer.

    We really should replace the phrase “margin of error” in polls with “margin of fraud.”

    2. It’s not a margin. If the race is important enough it will be taken under the current ruleset. Turnout of 120% doesn’t matter if you allow for same day registration. The ruleset needs to be changed, but to do so you need to actually win first. The changes to GA and FL are all positive but they are the result of long periods of control. The FL cleanup was started by Jeb! just after 2000 elections (please clap). It still took the ability of the governor to effectively fire the election commissioners to clean up Dade two decades later and to my knowledge this isn’t a common ability.

      This ain’t just Trump, ain’t just fraud, ain’t just the hogs at DC trough, and aint just the poisonous corporatist establishment. This is a major, systemic flaw that WILL drop the building. And with the amount of toxic sludge in the populace it will be difficult if not impossible to rebuild with any similarity.

    4. A week to count a race with fewer votes than the State Treasurer, no less. Which was counted on election night.

      Suspect the current thing is “find and spoil.” then pretend that tons of people who had an opinion on the dog catcher didn’t on the governor.

    5. Aye, we have more computing than in all the history of history and yet we can’t COUNT, or ADD as quickly and as well as was done in 18XX? (For XX<<50, yet!)

      Pull the other one, it’s got a Moog on.

  10. “what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.”

    Liberating, isn’t it?

    Don’t underestimate your skills. The pen is much mightier than the sword. The sword can move some, the pen, many.

            1. Well, if you only want to illuminate the dark portion, where the sun is not shining on it, you could probably make letters visible from Earth by shining about 250 watts of light per square meter on it. If you want text visible on the sunlit portions, that would probably take something like 2,500 watts per square meter.

              Excluding the extreme edges, where the surface is curved far away from our line of sight and would be pretty much unusable, you can approximate the Moon as a flat disk some 3,400 kilometers in diameter. Say your text takes up 1% of the 9.08 million square kilometer useable surface area, and the moon is mostly dark. You would need a 23 terawatt laser (2.3 x 10^13 watts) to provide the light.

              That’s only about 50 times the total amount of electricity used in the U.S.

              1. The Reader now knows that the flux capacitor will be built. Anything needed for advertising gets done.

              2. What if we put really big mirrors and optics in orbit to make use of the existing solar radiation, redirected appropriately to spell the message in the dark space of the moon?

    1. That was an interesting article. I don’t think it’s too far from the truth. This is definitely the result the Vichy Republicans wanted.

      The author does perhaps give the GOPe swine too much credit for competence and planning, but I think simple malice and backstabbing can achieve a very similar result. As for intent, I think that’s simply to keep swilling from the trough, and long as it’s not their races getting frauded away by Democrats (and it won’t be, as long as they pretend everything is fine), they don’t give a rat’s ass what happens to everybody else.

  13. This morning I woke up with Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA” in my head. It occurred to me that I have indeed lost everything I’ve worked for my whole life: the Republic and its institutions; a family that blew up with no one wanting to reconcile; neighbors who suckle at the teat of tyranny because they have their nice house and stuff and hey, stop being so extreme. Libraries are no longer sanctuaries but hotbeds of deviance.
    And all elections are now stolen.
    And warriors succumb–MTG just went on Warroom and said we should elect that POS McCarthy as speaker of the house, assuming we need a GOP “leader.” She’s full on MAGA warrior, and now this?

    When I say “It’s going to be really, really bad,” I mean like Chinese soldiers marching down the streets of Seattle with the citizens on the sidewalks cheering bad.

    So hold on, pull yourself upward, know what you believe, why you believe it, and FIGHT.

    1. When I say “It’s going to be really, really bad,” I mean like Chinese soldiers marching down the streets of Seattle with the citizens on the sidewalks cheering bad.

      I’d like to see the logistics on that plan.

      2. Thing is, with the scumsuckers in charge of this country, China doesn’t actually have to send any soldiers on boats across the ocean to achieve much the same effect.

        1. Exactly the same way the US army sends its men to Germany, Korea, or any of the empires current colonial holdings. They get put an a commercial flight.

      3. That’s the movie that played in my head when I thought about the craziest stuff that might happen. Not real except in my cranium.

  14. ‘Cheat to win’ — its the Democrats way!
    Where have all the honest Democrats gone?
    Long time passing
    Where have all the honest ballots gone
    Long time ago?

  15. We know it’s fraud, and we know how they’re committing the fraud. The questions are whether the cheated candidates have the nerve (and funds) to sue, and whether the courts will treat them fairly.

    If they don’t sue, or if they lose, then we’re now a banana republic, and may as well stay home until God sends us another Pinochet to get us out of our tyranny.

  16. Anymore, it’s picking the ‘least’ bad of the choices… sigh… No honest person wants to run for ANY government position due to the fact that their entire lives/family’s lives will be drug through the mud by their opponents.

        1. shhhh.
          Wanna bet the Biden Admin wants to drill under Yellowstone for geothermal energy?
          Wanna bet they screw it up and cause the world’s largest man-made hydraulic blast removing the cover over the Yellowstone hotspot?

          1. Fortunately, geothermal isn’t renewable. Otherwise, yes, they’d probably be considering it…

            1. “…geothermal isn’t renewable.”

              Well, no. But in that sense neither is solar. And wind is Right Out.

          2. IIRC that they’ve nixed that on several occasions, because of fears of damaging the hot spot or interfering with water flows in the park, or upsetting the wildlife. I’ve seen the idea proposed more than once, and it never goes anywhere.

            1. Yellowstone, Rainer, Hood, Sisters, latter two do not have National Park designations, wilderness and forest land, but not national park. All have been shot down for geothermal type activities.

          1. offended kitty sniff No ma’am! The volcano is a natural-born US citizen over age 35. The meteor of doom is NOT native born. Just being practical is all, ma’am. walks off with nose in air, doesn’t see edge of rug, trips

  17. Something that stuck me today: how many of the people who want to move on would be comfortable flying in a plane who’s Safety of Flight certificate was signed by someone who also swore under oath that the 2020 election was clean?

      2. That’s kind of my thought. Once you start demanding people sign off on one thing they don’t believe to be true it becomes easy to sign off their things that they also do not believe are true.

        And the whole thing accumulates.

    2. Well, I refused to get Real ID early “because you’ll need it to fly”. Flew last in 2002, and the two or three occasions where it might have made sense to do so, I drove. TSA Security Theater was a major issue. The sight of little old ladies being checked in $FOREIGN_AIRPORT while the Usual Suspects were ignored didn’t help my attitude.

      Up here, until a few years ago, if I wanted to fly almost anywhere, I had to take a puddle jumper flight to Portland for a connection. Now, even that option is gone. Ain’t driving over the Cascades to fly.

      1. Son and mom just upped their driver’s licenses. Son did his online. Mom went in (she wanted a new picture). Neither got the higher cost enhanced Oregon drivers license. That is what passports are for. mom does fly for trips, a lot over the last 12 years. Son doesn’t. I am looking at flying, maybe, in late March to St George Utah from Eugene (Eugene, Denver, St George). Maybe for a lot of reasons, not the least is TSA. I’ll have two carry on, one for me, one for medical for Pepper. So two bags and a Service Dog to take through TSA security; plus current cost around $335, one way. Not sure it is worth it. (Fly to meet hubby at end of the winter golf road trip and then drive through Utah to stay at the 5 Utah National Parks, and South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Instead I think we are going in mid-late September, or even October, and go to North Rim instead. Well provided there is any fuel …)

        2. Me ‘n the wife went on a trip of similar distance to a similar destination this summer, and the gas alone, for a compact truck that gets about 20 mpg on the highway, cost us over $700.

          $335 one way ain’t bad at all…cost-wise, anyway. The thought of submitting to their invasive “security” makes my skin crawl. I don’t see myself ever flying again if there’s a way I can get out of it.

          1. It isn’t the cost. Hubby will have already driven (on someone else’s dime, because driver doesn’t pay for fuel) there. Our fuel costs are less than your truck fuel costs, but likely more than the $335. More the inconvenience, north rim of Grand Canyon, we have a trip planned for late May, the March trip keeps changing (long story). By the time it is “safe” to book plane tickets, the cost will be more. (I’ve also heard horror stories of plane changes in the Denver Airport, and they didn’t have a dog with them.) We’ll go In September or October.

      2. roomate’s 4′ 10″ pale redhead wife used to regularly get selected for special consideration at TSA checks.

  18. They SAID SO and they KEEP SAYING SO.

    “his kind must never be allowed” (spit) ie, anyone who gives even the slightest indication that the Constitution is something we should follow, let alone crazy things like listening to one’s citizens and looking out for their interests as they see them.

    But sure, if someone pretty-pony enough runs for any office then the press will love him or her and not shriek “Literally Hitler!!!” Suuuuuuure.

  19. Ranked voting, Alaska, U. S. Senate race: Kelly Tshibaka 44.2%, Lisa Murkowski 42.8%.

    The Republican super-PAC, The Senate Leadership Fund, spent around six million bucks in Alaska campaigning against Kelly, a Republican, conservative, contender, to keep RINO (Voted 65% of the time in favor of Buck Fiden’s and democrat’s bills.) Lisa in office. It looks like their plan will be a sure thing, once the democrat’s second, third, fourth choices are recounted.

      1. Blue is the chosen color of cheaters, frauds and traitors. Most of that blue we see on the map is no thicker than a coat of paint.

    1. And perhaps relevant, as mentioned by Larry Schweikart’s “The News of Today is the History of Tomorrow” column at Uncover DC:

      New Poll Shows Trump CRUSHING DeSantis with 50 Point Lead in National Republican Primary Poll

      Trump 65% (+50)
      DeSantis 15%
      Pence 7%
      Cheney 3%
      Cruz 3%
      Haley 1%
      T. Scott 1%

      .@premisedata, 661 Adults, 10/31-11/2

      From

      https://bigleaguepolitics.com/new-poll-shows-trump-crushing-desantis-with-50-point-lead-in-national-republican-primary-poll/

      (So, perhaps that “let’s change horses in midstream / split the vote” idea is farfetched, as well as, uh, questionable..?)

  21. And I don’t know whether to call this, “gaslighting,” or what, but Stephen Hayes won my personal, “Reach through the screen and slap him silly,” award today for matter-of-factly stating that TRUMP tried to steal the 2020 election. (Presented in classic, “everybody knows,” style).
    He is, of course, a Principled Conservative, a guardian of the True Way of Conservatism, etc.
    Grrrrrrr.

  22. Even 41% of Democrats acknowledge that use of mail for elections facilitates fraud:

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/11/14/poll-voters-still-hold-election-integrity-concerns/

    The Democrats are trying to gaslight people into thinking that genuine concerns about election integrity are an attempt to overthrow the United States. Of course, since the Democrats believe that there is no distinction between the Democratic Party and the USA or its government (talk about self-hatred given their loathing of the USA), it is any wonder that threats to the Democratic Party efforts to maintain its power by any means necessary are declared by them to be threats to the nation, and the people who point out what Democrats are doing are declared to be traitors and insurrectionists.

    1. IIRC, a majority of citizens on both sides of the aisle want simple safeguards like ID for voting. I suspect that a lot of those same people also like “ease of voting” stuff like mail in ballots and ballot harvesting, so I’ll be the first to admit that there’s probably a mental disconnect with many of them. But a majority of voters really do seem to want basic safety safeguards in place to prevent fraud at the ballot box.

  23. There are quite a few AP stories regarding schmendrick involved in election violations, to say nothing about the others that seem strange.

  24. Clamor around me, a din and a hum
    Of what’s to be surrendered, what’s to be done.
    Shrill accusations, and “I told you so!”
    When the voices were crowing their deaths to go.

    Triumphant in anger, some smile up on high,
    Thinking it better to lay down an die.
    Frustration boils, and sears friend and foe,
    And anger run rampant, an unrestrained blow.

    No words come to me from the clamoring din.
    The words that come to me come from within.
    No sword to my had, as yet have I found.
    My words are my weapons upon this ground.

    So I close out the din, and still lift my pen
    A verse here and there, though I rarely know when.
    When words are the right ones, the ones that ring true.
    So I set them all down, it’s all I can do.

    And each to their own works, turns day by day,
    And lets the din of anger, yet slip away.
    One to the building, another will fight.
    Who knows when things will come right?

    But the works we can manage, those we should do,
    Despair is a death blow, of everything true.
    What future yet comes? I cannot forsee.
    There’s work to be done to bring it to be.

    Leaving this here. I’ve promised someone something on the battle of Athens, and this one is grimmer than my wont. We’ll see what hope tomorrow brings.

    1. When my poems argue with each other:

      What do you do when the words don’t come?
      When you can only stand, cold and numb?
      What do you do when the world comes down?
      And the sane around you start to drown?

      You reach in the waters and find a hand,
      And pull them onto the dry land.
      You bring them up to your side,
      And don’t worry just yet about the tide.

      Reach into the flood and stand your ground,
      Find whoever wants to be found.
      The ones that won’t come, you never could save,
      No matter how daring, no matter how brave.

      Reach into the flood and offer a hand,
      Each one that joins, the work will expand.
      Reach into the flood whatever must come.
      Hold on for life, you will still save some.

      Drive into the waters and never look back.
      Strive into the night, no matter how black.
      Reach into the flood, even if it’s just one,
      One more beside you to greet the sun.

  26. FWIW, in some ways, it is as if Western society has traveled beyond the event horizon. Nothing works as is supposed to do, accountability has largely vanished from not just ours but worldwide in the supposedly democratic West. Most people ‘know’ that they are being fed lies on the economy, foreign affairs, what goes on in schools, elections, etc. but right now they fall back to the tried and true hobbyhorses of the past such as blaming individuals, blaming the Commies, blaming conservatives, libertarians, abortion policies, and so on.

    Simpy put, this is a societal reversion to a particularly nasty oligarchy across national boundaries in a pathetic imitation of aristocracy. You can call them Communists if you will. However, naming them that has little if nothing to do with classic Marxist theory. Instead these oligarchs and their liegemen are the wealth structure that has been propelled by and large by leveraging the savings, donations, and taxes paid by ordinary people. Some of these companies/non profits loot the governments; some of these companies loot their investors, and some companies/non profits screw their erstwhile ‘clients’ or ‘customers’.

    The bright news is that a multi headed corrupt pseudo aristocracy has essentially no beliefs behind them–the people at the head of the table believe in global warming, dangers of covid or China, or whatevercurrent fears like they believe in the tooth fairy. Their very actions belie it. Instead, it is an opportunity to feed and continue the grift because, pardons to Frank Herbert, the spice must flow. Rotten establishments end up destroying the very institutions of rule that the aristos rely on to keep the peace because the institutions can’t work as everyone adopts the same attitude as their chiefs (see Soviet factories for example or agriculture), there is no trust in anything so people withdraw loyalty from the regime, and people lose all faith in their leaders enough where they will no longer fight and die for them.

    The danger is you end up with something like the Spanish, French, or Russian revolutions with a strong man. The cure for that is make your local and state governments as strong as they can be, fraud free, virtuous, etc.. Spain, France, and Russia had centralized governments with no credible leaders or centers of opposition for people to rally around.

    2. Oligarchies regress to tyrannies.

      I think that’s part of the freakout about Trump. We’ve evidently had a stealth oligarchy for a while.
      Then a class traitor rallied the plebs…

  27. And then there’s the co-worker of mine who keeps saying he’d “like to see some evidence” of fraud. rolleyes

      2. Agreed.

        Of course, I have been forced to respond to the “Aristo, aristo…” voices in my head by reminding them I’m too old and crippled to play that game anymore. If I ever was able.

        All I can do is read the Bible and pray. That may not sa e my earthsuit; but that has an expiration date anyway.

          1. So, Mary, you think I should try to hang Democrats from lampposts to honor God?

            Young lady, round is a shape; but not the tight shape for a vigilante. And each of my 11 surgeries (scattered across head, neck, abdomen, and both legs) took a little more away from my remaining “fighting trim”.

            Can God use me? Of course. But I don’t read anything in the Gospels or Epistles of slaying unbelievers. In fact, in Ephesians 6, after putting on the Whole Armor of God, Paul told us to pray for the Gospel to be sent. (Setnaffa’s Paraphrased Edition).

            Plus it irritates the young’uns to see a Boomer doing Boomer stuff…

      3. How do we know the Left frauds?
        Oh, so many ways, but Big Tell is how The Left squeals like a stuck pig if anyone even suggests investigating it. What The Left does NOT do is one thing that a non-frauder would: Say, “Go for it! I could use a good laugh.”

      4. If you look at the Carter-Dole report that was done way back when, widespread use of voting by mail presumptively results in election fraud due to how easy it is to manipulate results under that method.. Even Jimmy freakin Carter and Bob freakin Dole got this. Why is it so hard for so many people to understand something so basic.

  28. So, the short term is dig in and brace for trouble, which most of us have been doing as much as possible for a while. (My power provider has to convert from coal to natural gas, because of Colorado and the feds. I’m not happy.) In the mid-term, we look at what we can do locally to shore up things and be ready for shinanigans. Long term, we teach, build, learn, and get ready to rebuild what deserves to be rebuilt. All of these are based on where we are, who we are, and our various skills and networks.

    And through it all we pray, hope, and live life to the fullest because us being happy and telling fun stories p-sses the bastages off.

  29. I look at my area. In my precinct, the lowest Republican for any office got over 80% of the vote. For the state Senate district, the Democrats didn’t bother to have a candidate. For the Congressional district, the Republican candidate got over 70%. But if you look at a state map, the only major area voting blue was Minneapolis.

    I really wish the idea of the western 2/3 of the state leave and join South Dakota had gone somewhere, taking 3 or 4 electoral votes with us.

  30. Ian,
    Communism itself with its dictatorship of the proletariat is nothing more than despotism and later oligarchy as pseudo aristos. China is almost at the emperor stage with the princes simply being people that inherited their social position from their grandparents or earlier struggles in the Chinese Revolution.

    Aristotle’s Politics basically derives down into elite competition for leadership, money, and power. Those wanting power usually have to subvert what it there. Kings used the common people and the merchants against their own nobles in Europe for example until you got neutered nobility such as in England and France. Nobles consistently tried to become king themselves or allied themselves enemies of their kings for power (see the Fronde and how it shaped future King Louis XIV’s views).

    Bagehot in his Constitution of England was controversial in noting that by the 1860’s, King and Queen reigned, Parliament still had a lot of members, but essentially what people believed in how the government worked were sustained by myths. An analyst could see by the 1860’s, the power had shifted to those in cabinet. Nowadays, even cabinets are not a fair description of government in the UK. Instead, you get prime ministers who are front people for a collection of advisors, party donors, and interests.

    So, you get something that invokes all these hoary cliches of Gramsci, Lenin, Mao, or Stalin but in essence believe in them no more than they believe in a democracy. It is simply an excuse to seize power and get the rewards from doing so via money and perhaps more power. And we have followed Bagehot in believing that we have a presidential or even an older congressional system. GWB, Obama, Trump to some extent, and Biden are perfectly comfortable being the frontman government while the real decisions appear to be made elsewhere by leaders who are essentially unaccountable to the people through elections.

    When you see this replicated in nation after nation, it is not the horny handed toilers manning the barricades for revolution. Instead, like in Arab Spring, you get the sense that these people are posers to a large extent, they practice none of the revolutionary rhetoric they espouse, and by and large, the leaders end up wealthy while a new social cause is found and the whole dreary mess begins again. Anti-war protests, BLM protests, Anti-nuke, protests, whatever the cause du jour are simply means to distract people from what is going on behind the curtain.

    Communism is essentially feudalism or it can become despotism if one el Supremo wins out with a new face. The Kims in N. Korea have went whole hog to make it to a faux monarchy. Xi is probably intent on something like that too.

  31. Yeah, I have to confess, I went into the mid-terms with a feeling of hope. And I know also that I’ve posted before the mid-terms that if the last election (2020) was stolen and the perps and mechanisms never exposed, than it would be silly to go into the mid-terms with an expectation of ‘free and fair.’ But, being human, I went with hope. I really don’t have much left. I honestly don’t see how anything will change, except for the worst. What lies ahead? Well, as I’ve said here before, barring a real civil or revolutionary war, we will gradually settle into something much like Soviet system. People will say one thing publicly and another in private at home. Only thing about that, is, unlike the 1970s, people’s coffee pots and TVs and dishwashers weren’t spying on them. So that will be a problem. We will see a big decline in public life, in the number of choices we’ll have as far as products, where we can live, and the kids will probably all have to go to Public (that is, commie/pervert) schools. Race problems will get worse. And it will be bad, as weapons used for home protection will be harvested by the gubmint. Or, or, or, or, Like I said, the question is, once enough people wake up to the fact that we are thoroughly screwed, what will they do? Will they go quietly into the long, dark night of commie hell? Or will people fight back? I hope for the latter.

    1. How are they going to ‘harvest’ (at least) 600 million guns from (at least) 120 million cranky, uncooperative gun owners?

      And I’ll bet the last week has seen another big spike in gun sales. Back when the International Lord Of Hate owned a gun store, there was a picture of 0bama on the wall labeled “Gun Salesman Of The Year”. We don’t like being told what to do, or what not to do.

      1. How did they do it in China, Russia, England, and Australia? I always thought the Aussies were bad asses, but they turned in their guns. How will they do it? Not all at once. But slowly, over time, with WACO and Ruby Ridge type scenarios. I’m not saying they’ll succeed, but I think that’s how they’ll go about it. When ten armed government agents show up at a person’s house and demand entry and confiscation of all the weapons within… how many people are going to go out in a blaze of glory? Remains to be seen. Bottom line, they have to seize all the guns if they want to complete their takeover. How they do it, and at what pace, is the question. And also, of course, will there be any successful resistance by patriots? If most of the videos making the rounds are of innocent patriots being burned out of their houses or shot like dogs, then, that tends to weaken the opposition to gun grabbing. If the bad guys get to star in videos like that, that will have a different effect. Who knows? I’m only speculating.

        1. China, Russia — they didn’t have a ton of guns. Australia, they didn’t have enough care about it.
          Trust me, this is the only thing stopping the current assholes.
          Buy another gun for Christmas.

        2. It’s not the guns the government might have some ability to identify — which by government records is somewhere around 400 million sold in the private market over the past decades (50 or more years). The estimate mentioned above of 600 million is realistically on the low side for weapons in private hands.

          It wasn’t all that long ago that guns could essentially be ordered by mail, bought on a whim at a corner store, etc. Virtually all of those guns have not ‘worn out’ — still fully functional. AND, no way to track down. How many folks have a gun (shot gun, deer rifle, revolver) in a closet inherited from grandparents / uncles / etc? These are not traced.

          It is easier to machine an automatic (machine gun) from scrap metal in a garage machine shop than a semi automatic weapon. A rudimentary weapon can be made from off the shelf items at Big Box store quite easily.

          There are both folks with only one or two, as well as a number of folks with dozens…

          1. their 400 estimate is based off of rates of firearms wearing out that dont happen in the real world…

            1. Witness “Pawn Shop”. They can only buy “antique” weapons, which are defined as pre-1900. They only buy working weapons which are taken to a range, where their expert meets them to check to see if not only is the weapon able to fire a round, but the weapon can be fired safely. Then the weapon is actually loaded and fired. Process does not always result in a purchase by the pawn shop, even when all initial 3 criteria are met/ 4th criteria needs to be met too: what the Pawn Shop is willing to pay.

  32. “being stolen and taken away in a sack by the ‘democrat’ election fixers”

    Some places, in some ways, perhaps more literally than others.

    Places like Arizona, where the large fraction of ballots “mysteriously rejected” only on Election Day, for most of Election day, at specific places (interestingly R-heavy ones) are now the subject of questions like “where did they go?” Some people spoiled their voted but rejected ballots, and went lather-rinse-repeat until they were read; others put their ballots (often as instructed) into “Door #3” — where they appear to have been mixed at least some of the time with voted and tabulated ballots. (And contrary to elction procedure manuals.)

    “Vote suppression” — anyone? Only this time not as a court claim to redistrict / gerrymander the districts to favor D candidates overall, but as a visible reality?

    Witnesses and whistleblowers are already coming forward on this. See, along with earlier articles,

    http://www.uncoverdc.com/2022/11/12/maricopa-county-door-3-ballots-where-did-they-go/

    Quote:

    (…)

    Arizona voters showed up in droves, earnestly hoping their votes would count, according to Sweet. Both Swinick and Sweet told UncoverDC there were long lines, with voters waiting for hours in the heat in some cases. The on-demand ballots were long and took time to fill out. Sweet writes:

    “We had a daughter bring her mother on a rolling bed to the vote center to vote at the poll on election day. We had elderly people in line with walkers who were alone, wanting to vote on election day. We had American citizens who cared so very much. I feel it is unacceptable that these people had to deal with tabulators that randomly rejected so many of these voters’ votes.”

    In her letter, Sweet talks about Inspector McCall’s instructions to voters concerning their misread ballots. According to Sweet, he instructed voters throughout the day to put their ballots into Door #3 if they were rejected and the “3 of us would count those ballots at the end of the day.” Sweet eventually asked him “whether it was true” those votes would be counted at the end of the day. He answered, “it was not completely true, but it was too complicated to tell the voters what will happen.” He also told Sweet that he, Sweet, and the other Judge would “run the ballots again through the tabulators” at the end of the day, adding, “if they were again not accepted, we would package them into an envelope and send them ‘downtown’ to be counted in a couple of days.”

    Other Maricopa County poll workers seem to corroborate the issues witnessed by both Swinick and Sweet. (…)

  33. May God be good to the hospitable and quickwitted….

    Some guy in Springfield came into a gas station and was threatening a fellow patron with a gun. The gas station owner told him not to have a shootout in the little gas station building. The guy said he would go out if the gas station owner would send the other guy out.

    So of course the gas station owner said he would send the patron out, watched the other guy walk out the door, and then locked up and ducked down, and called police.

    It took 20 minutes for the police to come… and the grudge guy stuck around all that time, and then had a shootout with the police. In a gas station, out by the pumps.

    Luckily it’s a cold windy day.

    And to be fair, the gas station owner did eventually send the customer out… after it was all over….

    I hope everyone will be okay. The gas station owner was very brave and clever. (He’s an Indian immigrant, so we got a good neighbor acquisition there.)

    1. Good on him, that man. We don’t live in a world of perfect solutions, but he acted well and intelligently under pressure. That’s a good example to set.

        1. Notice that “the suspect, who is black” said that he “was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.”

          This was the second report, and Mr. Ram seems to have cheered up since the initial interview.

          1. I wonder if the KKK will disavow the shooter…. Heh, maybe they have a diversity and inclusion department. Or maybe the shooter had been watching that movie about the undercover FBI guy who was black.

            Lots of drug users in Springfield, sadly.

Comments are closed.