No Forgiveness Without Repentance

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

I never said I wouldn’t say “I told you so.” In fact, I’ve already said “I told you so” at least once.

Only infants and the mentally incompetent could look at locking up the vast majority of the population and think it would have NO effect on the economic well being of this country. Worse, only infants, the mentally incompetent and indoctrinated Marxists (BIRM) could think — after the numbers from the Diamond Princess were out there for everyone to read — that either COVID-19 was the end of the world, or that we should put the entire population under house arrest to prevent people dying of it. As though it wouldn’t become endemic anyway.

And it took a particular level of bizarre insanity to believe that COVID-19 would kill you at your favorite restaurant or church but not in Walmart.

We won’t even get into the specialness that caused a bunch of you to tell me that it was okay for the homeless to be congregating in every street corner (and in Denver in proliferating encampments EVERYWHERE with all the shared needles, trash, etc. of such encampments) WITHOUT dropping like flies, because they lived outdoors and were “particularly hardy.” Dudes, if you ever work in any emergency room, you’ll learn that not only aren’t the homeless “particularly hardy” but that they have the most bizarre medieval diseases. Yes, there are jokes about “tooth to tattoo ratio” and that low/high means they live forever, but in truth if you see before and after pictures, you know homeless people tend to die early and hard and not just because most of them are crazy and drug addicted (though that’s a contributing factor.) IF THIS HAD BEEN A REALLY DANGEROUS PANDEMIC, the kind those videos from China — some of which were manifestly fakes, like where people put out their hands to break the fall when they “drop dead” in the street — suggested, the homeless would have first been very sick, then dead.

Also, note the same people then said it was very important to wear masks OUTSIDE WHILE JOGGING because this virus was some kind of magical and could hang suspended in the air outside in a “cloud” so that if you walked through it hours later, you could catch the dread disease.

AND let’s not forget treating us like lunatics when we explained that the masks did nothing, and that yes, they’re used in operating rooms — where they’re changed every few minutes, btw — to PREVENT THE SURGEON from coughing on an open wound.

And I want to award no prizes, and may G-d have mercy on your souls to those that told me that the Diamond Princess’s numbers were as low as they seemed to be because “They have the best of care in cruise ships.” This when cruise ships are known as floating illness barges and the population aboard is the oldest of any gathering in the nation.

Oh, oh, oh, and a special mention goes to everyone who ran around with their heads on fire because “the ER is at 95% capacity” when it is at 100% capacity every flu season, AND also all the “special wards” built for “overflow” patients saw not ONE patient. All these facts were available and easily looked up.

And in the end, we failed the vulnerable. The old-age homes, which are for real hygiene and care nightmares, by and large (mostly due to hiring a lot of um…. dubiously credentialed, dubiously documented, dubiously acculturated foreigners) did suffer massive death tolls. None of your locking school kids helped with it. ALL YOU DID was force those people into solitary confinement in their final months, and keep their family away. You bastards. You ugly, unreedemed, you SHOULD be ashamed of looking at yourself in the mirror bastards.

Now we’re treated to Doctor “I am the Science” Fauci sullenly saying he didn’t close anything. No, what he and his co-conspirators did was tell a sitting US president lies to force him to lock things down, and when he refused to do it by central fiat, to run around scaring every mayor and governor so they did it.

The reign of stupid terror was such that would-be tyrants abroad seized the opportunity to terrify and lock up their populations. Damn them all to hell for preventing me from seeing my dad for the last three years (and I don’t know how long it will be now, because — reasons caused by the lockdown) and for terrifying my mother so much I spent hours yelling at her on the phone, when she tried to ORDER me to get the not-a-vax.

Oh, and the not-a-vax. All “vaccines” done on this model had such horrendous side effects and lack of working that the trials were shut down early. This was pushed through with practically no trials. Sure, it might be simon-pure, other than the fact it does nothing to prevent you catching or improve your outcomes from the disease. However, in my inner circle — say 100 people, most of whom managed to avoid taking it — I know THREE cases of serious injury caused by/happening right after the vax, that have no other explanation. If all these *sshats really want forgiveness for what they said and did, they should let real trials run on that sh*t, and also careful examination of what went wrong. No? Well, then don’t blame me if people assume the worst. After what you’ve done, what do you expect?

And then, and then, people have the nerve to complain about how angry people are. There haven’t been incidents of storming various places and hanging everyone inside, so I’d say we’re amazingly controlled and civilized.

So, why am I writing this? Why am I ranting and saying “I told you so.” Why do I say “no forgiveness without repentance?”

Well, because the CDC is busily making sure they have the power to lock us all up again, at the whim of the WHO who are basically Chinese agents. Because the same people will run around screaming “death” and weaponizing niceness and altruism, and telling you that if you simply want to live a normal life and preserve your civil liberties you want to kill grandma.

Because they never admitted they were wrong. So they will not stop it next time they have an excuse. Or they get scared of the sniffles. Or they want more power. (They always want more power.)

I want to see some real “We should have known better.” And “We acted like unthinking lunatics.” And “We knew science didn’t work that way, and should have thought, instead of emoting.”

I WANT TO SEE REPENTANCE, damn you. I want you to look at yourself in the mirror and see the hideous reflection there. I want you to say “I did this” and “I tried to come up with specious justifications, because I’m a cowardly bully.” I WANT some frigging self-examination.

Because without real repentance it will happen again and again and again. And people will die. People are already dying. And lives have already been destroyed. And without realizing that, you’ll KEEP DOING IT.

And it wasn’t funny the first time. And I ain’t laughing.

374 thoughts on “No Forgiveness Without Repentance”

  1. I got so angry all over again reading this.

    I also realize I could murder someone with my bare hands if they try to push me on this junk.

    I can’t even talk about what they did to my Mom. Her birthday would have been tomorrow.

    2. {{{{HUGS}}}}

      I am so very sorry for your loss, Kathy.

      You will be lifted up in prayer all day tomorrow.

      1. You guys are the best. It’s ok. This is the first time I e really mourned her loss and not been relieved she’s dead.

        And I started a great new job at Goodwill today. God is good!

        1. God is indeed good!

          And all things work toward good for those who love the Lord.

          Which will be quite a kick in the teeth to those who work against the Lord. Hehehe.

          1. Ah, the joy of imprecatory prayer. “Dear Lord, smite them with a camel’s bone and crush them!”

            Amen.

            1. Psalm 109? Part of ESV below:
              …
              He loved to curse; let curses come upon him!
              He did not delight in blessing; may it be far from him!
              He clothed himself with cursing as his coat;
              may it soak into his body like water,
              like oil into his bones!
              May it be like a garment that he wraps around him,
              like a belt that he puts on every day!
              May this be the reward of my accusers from the Lord,
              of those who speak evil against my life!
              …

              1. I confess. It was Psalm 151. Made up on the fly, but based on a wide reading of Scripture. And hence, not heresy. 🙂

            2. There’s precedent for taking the jawbone of that ass, fauci, and smiting down 1,000 of his followers and/or abbettors.

              1. I like the way you think. 🙂 Samson? From somewhere in the Old Testament..

              3. Jawbone of an ass. Is that code for an AR-15? /wink
                Keep in mind that even a donkey’s jawbone is just bone, and using one to brain that many assailants is likely to shatter it after not too many uses. Plus, it’s tough on the hands; you might want to wear a decent pair of leather gloves while wielding one. Now a good aluminum baseball bat makes a decent club. It’s light enough to not tire you out with extended use, and swings with decent velocity so you have good momentum at the point of impact. They don’t splinter, although they do dent up after a while. Can’t take them through scanners though, too much metal for that.

                1. Mike is the practical one, that I’d want on my team in a fight.
                  But SAC B-52, with a sense for the classics, will be the one the ballads get written about.

                  Come one, come all! It’s a target-rich environment.

                    2. One can conceal a considerable number of things within the folds of a heavy long work coat. Or in a tool bag, gym bag, or the like. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

                    5. …aaannnd now I’m thinking of a coat with a Pocket Of Holding that really CAN fit a B-52… 😛

                      Although getting it in and out of the Pocket might be tricky.

        2. Hugs. My sister’s husband and his sister are glad their mom was too far gone to not know they couldn’t be there as much as they wanted to. They know. But she barely had any clue who they were before all this stuff started happening. Toward the end, for her, the facility she was in was quietly sneaking in family a few at a time. For her. But really for the family. In her case she had no clue who they were.

          Congratulations on the new job.

          1. Thanks, d. It was lousy at the end for Mom as well. The coof shot gave her a stroke, and I remember my sister and her husband being the only two who, after my sister finally convinced them that she was indeed going to the third floor to Mom’s room come hell or high water, finally let her in.

      1. It touches my heart the way I can tell that you really mean it, like you were standing next to me.

        It’s good, really, both in comparison with previous years, and as a gauge to my own restoration. 🙂 So thank you.

      1. Thanks so much. I’m afraid most of the people I talk to have stories that are at least as horrifying, if not more so.

        Repentance is mandatory. Otherwise, no deal.

  2. I got so angry all over again reading this.

    I also realize I could murder someone with my bare hands if they try to push me on this junk.

    I can’t even talk about what they did to my Mom. Her birthday would have been tomorrow.

    2. Virtual hugs I’d offer you the chance to come down and vent on some dead plants (well-sharpened spade, dirt, you supply the indignation) but it’s a bit of a commute, and the weather won’t be too great tomorrow.

      Congrats on the new job!

      1. Thanks very much. The offer itself is the gold that keeps on giving.
        And the weather here is getting warm for the first time, and sunny!

  5. Psychopaths don’t repent. Look at the recent Fauci and Trudeau clips.

    I work on Wall Street so I know for. Psychopaths, further my FIL was a psychopath, the hardest thing to do is to realize that they’re just not right, that it’s not your fault, that you’re not insane, nor inadequate, they are.

    1. Screw repentance. Forgiveness is a Christian thing, which I am not. Give me crosses. Lots of them. I want the Appian Way post-Spartacus to look comparatively denuded.

      I would settle for short stakes too.

      1. IMHO Dip their skulls in epoxy resin then build a pyramid out of their skulls. Build it by the reflecting pool in DC. That way they and we won’t ever forget again.

      3. Forgiveness, really, is for you, not for the forgiven, because you shouldn’t carry the burden of anger for the rest of your life.

        However, and this is a huge however, forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean the person being forgiven should be trusted — or that the person being forgiven should be spared punishment for doing the things that they did.

        So, I ask you to forgive those who have inflicted this pain on us, even as you’re nailing them to their crosses, or as you walk the streets lined with their crosses. Don’t let the anger destroy you!

        Oh, and it’s particularly galling that the want forgiveness without actually repenting. What’s worse, they want forgiveness, and they’re gaslighting us, pretending they didn’t do anything wrong in the first place! (Yes, I know we should forgive them, but they make it so hard to do!)

        1. Let G-d forgive them. He has the capacity to do so. I am a mere human, and on this issue, I am far more rising ape than falling angel.

        2. Forgiveness? Ah, my friend, forgiveness is not so bad a thing. It is giving up a burden upon your heart that would be a poison, should you let it be.

          But that does not mean one should empty their head along with their heart of worry and wrath. For that would be damned stupid. Forgive, sure enough. Christian or no, it’s the right thing to do.

          But to heck with forgetting. No, you never do that. Remember that stuff. Keep it recorded well. Tell your children stories of it. Repeat it to friends and acquaintances alike, so they know.

          DO NOT DO THIS CRAP AGAIN.

          Forgiveness is good for you. Anger can eat at a soul. But forgetting? Screw that with a pine cone, spikey bits down. Make that forgiveness specific. Detailed. Footnoted, with references. Make it long and make it comprehensive.

          Is it for the first time they told us we were killing grandma if we didn’t mask up? Or was it when they said we were killing them if we didn’t get stuck- the first time? The time after that? The time after that? Are they asking for forgiveness for preventing us from seeing our loved ones when they were ill, hurt, or dying? All three? Is it when they wrecked the economy because of a flu scare? Is it for calling us idiots for questioning “the science” that turned out to be wrong? Which time? Specifically. Because “all of them” doesn’t cover it.

          Was it for calling us all liars? Again, which time? Or do they want forgiveness for repeating lies? Which ones? For pushing masks on children? Especially young children in the language learning stage, who will be permanently harmed because you don’t get that stage of life back.

          Was it for the lies they knew, but couldn’t admit- such as the magical virus that ignores political rallies and BLM riots but descends with a vengeance on abortion protests and pro life marches? Was it for being (non-AOSHQ) morons that couldn’t do their own due diligence and research when looking into the history and mechanics of masks? Was it for the same lack of study into lockdowns, effects and efficacy?

          Was it for being dupes that just went along with the lies and never considering they might be at the very least overstated? Was it for attacking others for social points without checking to see if your side was right? Was it for not seeing the rank idiocy of masking alone, in your car, on the highway? Was it for being a pompous ass and reveling in the power to accost strangers for their maskless behavior?

          Was it for the rules and regulations that suddenly came down that did nothing but enrich certain people and inconvenience everyone else? Are you apologizing for increasing the suicide risk due to the various things you did- the lockdowns, the economic crash, the constant, hyperventilating scare mongering and all the rest?

          Just what, exactly, are you apologizing for?

          Because it’s not a true apology if you don’t even know. You cannot address the thing you did wrong if you don’t know what it is. You cannot change your behavior to prevent the same issue from reoccurring if you’re not specific on what, exactly, you are apologizing for.

          And to be frank, yes, I am willing to entertain forgiveness. Really.

          But forgiveness must be earned. And the first step to that is accepting fault. If there are any lefties out there willing to travel that hard road to forgiveness, I have nothing but respect for that.

          So do forgive in your heart. Let that poisonous anger go. And accept apologies when they are given with contrition and earnest willingness to change.

          Just don’t be an idiot about it.

          2. VERY well said indeed. Forgiving these people doesn’t mean I don’t want to see them punished and in a position where they can never hurt people like this again. I do. It just means I’ve let go of the hate toward them. I’m not there yet. Maybe someday. This walk is hard.

      4. No, I wouldn’t recommend that. The people who did this deserve a lot of pain, but inflicting it may do bad things to the inflictor. Be a good man:

        “If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat. They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.”
        — Men at Arms, on Carrot Ironfoundersson

        (…pulled from TVTropes, need to get ahold of those books though I don’t really like fantasy novels too much so never got into Pratchett’s novels before.)

        Or, I guess if you must, you can add three seconds of fear to their sentence. (“You hurt my friends…”) 😮

        https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-12-01

        1. If it helps, the Discworld novels quickly evolved into satire of the best type. But definitely skip the first few, because they were playing off tropes that were common at the time but are all but forgotten now. Plus he got much better at writing.

        2. Perhaps it would be bad for my soul. But I want this crap to never happen again. I have kids, and if blood and terror is required to safeguard their freedom, then I will pound the nails into the politicians’ wrists myself and then sleep like a baby.

  6. When is a vaccine NOT a vaccine? When it doesn’t prevent you from getting the disease.

    I had both shots (Moderna) and both boosters and I STILL got COVID. “Fool me once….”

    1. Mom was poked with Pfizer, with one booster and, yep, got it. She did avoid the Plaxlovid Rebound by not doing anything but resting and letting my Sis take care of her once she returned from Italy (It canceled her cruise of the Greek Isles and Turkey)

      1. Got Pfizer and both boosters, as did hubby. We’ve both gotten covid. Granted, he was a lot less sick than I was. The only reason we know he had it is he had a headache and slight fever for < 24 hours, immediately after son tested positive for covid (son also only had it for a nano second with fever, but son has had zero/none vaccines or boosters of any kind). Remember, son lives with us. Me? I got S I C K running a high fever for almost 3 weeks. Done this twice now (to be fair first time was before any vaccines, working or not). No apparent difference and the closest booster should have been in full protection mode (not decreased efficiency.

        1. I’m mostly annoyed because when I brought back the World’s Worst Souvenir from my son’s 8th-grade East Coast trip, the test showed negative—so my mom visited and caught it. And it messed up her short-term memory to the point where we’d be really worried about dementia if it weren’t for the fact that it is a known long-term effect of COVID.

          I didn’t test positive until I was getting better. And at its worst it was “really effing nasty cold”, not flu.

        2. everyone I know who has had it more than once has been vaxxed. if they got it before the pokes, they got poked for whatever reason, and then got it later, or they avoided it (as far as they knew) then got poked, and then got sick, some several times. A cousin has gotten it 5 times, 4 after the shots though his first time was before it was officially a thing, and no tests were around, but it was the first hard hitter

          1. No difference between the first time hit, and the second time hit after vaccine and boosters. Although since it hit me pretty bad both times the concept of “not as hard” has zero meaning. Hubby: “Are you going to live?” Me: “Groan.”

    2. My sister got the jab and four boosters. Tested positive for Covid at least twice and now has lung issues. She calls it long Covid, I wonder how much it’s four boosters. Can’t tell her that though, she’s a lefty and, thus, avoids critical thought.

      Really, they should hang, in reality they’ll get rewarded,

        2. What, you mean rebreathing all of the bacteria in your mouth in a warm, damp, CO2-heavy environment isn’t a good thing?

          And yeah, this was known. I’m in California, which had this knowledge with wildfire smoke but magically forgot it when it came to COVID.

    3. Never got COVID, did get the Moderna vaccine (never got the boosters because the Vax pushers got way too eager) and still haven’t gotten COVID.

      1. Never got it that you know of

        Remember, most cases were almost completely asymptomatic. That’s why I say I have had it at least 3 times. I could easily have had it a half a dozen others and never noticed.

        1. That’s probably where I am. In all this time I’ve only had one or two slightly stronger than usual colds that may or may not have been Winnie the Flu and I know I’ve been around people who’ve had active cases (got stuck in quarantine from work because of it despite feeling physically fine the whole time). Never took those shots either with no plans to ever do so. I was quite pleased with myself when I got my doctor to back down to “Well, it’s mainly people with x, y, and z health issues that get it bad and you don’t have them so you’ll probably be OK” after repeatedly and firmly refusing to agree to the damn thing.

      2. Got the J&J vax, and Pfizer booster because roommates work for the govt. Have not had Covid, I think, because I take a beta blocker, lots of vitamin C & D, and was very very careful.

        1. I got the thing in Jan-Feb of 2020, then got it again in the fall of ’21 after having the J&J in July. The second round was minimal coughing, but the neurological part took 6 weeks to clear. That was less-than-fun. (Mild brain fog, then vertigo and fatigue.) Certainly not lethal, unless I turned my head too quickly and fell down the stairs somewhere. 😛

          1. We got the first and second shots, solely because my wife is immune-compromised due to biologic meds (CIMZIA) for psoriatic arthritis. She also got the first booster, but the info was becoming pretty clear that at best it didn’t help, so none for me. And no more for her; she was finally convinced of the problems and lack of benefit. Neither of us has gotten any of the variants as far as we know, but the percentage of asymptomatic cases means the we don’t know. If the bastiches try it again with another “world-killer cold” I may not respond civilly; S^3 always works.

            We still get the usual vaccines (real vaccines, not experimental crap) when they come due; I just got the newest PVC, Tdap and Shingrix, which should suffice, except maybe the Tdap (pneumonia) until I’m ready for the next step upward. Well, I hope it’s upward… 🙂

              1. PVC is also a heart condition. Guess how I know? At least it was dealt with BEFORE the schlockdown. Folks, what they call heartburn from food ain’t nuthin compared to having what amounts to an internal RF burn… and they take you just barely out of anesthesia “to talk” so you get to feel it. I was warned this would happened (the ‘surfacing’…) and I know they did NOT use propofol (“milk of amnesia”) as I can recall it. So I also know that I have had fentanyl – but under proper medical administration. I have exactly ZERO desire to have it again. It may be great under those conditions, but it seems best to avoid such conditions.

                1. Wasn’t aware of that (PVC as a medical term); glad it turned out OK for you. Fortunately for me, my open-heart surgery in 2017 didn’t require me to be even partially awake until a couple of hours after it was over.

            2. That’s another thing about this crop of wannabe totalitarians/mean girls:to them, if you object to the covid vaccine for any reason, you’re “anti-vaxx,” for all vaccines. I do wonder how many people who mock folks who refuse the covid Vax believe the mercury in regular vaccines causes autism…

              1. And if you question the integrity of the elections, you are an election denier, who doesn’t believe in elections.

              2. Which is sadly hilarious as autism rates WENT UP after the thimerisol was removed from most all (REAL!) vaccines and antivenoms. This does NOT mean that mercury has a protective value against autism, but it does indicate SOMETHING ELSE was/is going on.

                1. Pretty sure the word you’re looking for is “overdiagnosis”. I swear, every Millennial or Zoomer I encounter claims to be autistic. I remember when that word meant Rain-Man-like near-non-verbal, not “I don’t like loud noises” or “I get hyperfocused on things”.

              3. “you’re “anti-vaxx,” for all vaccines.”

                Self-fulfilling prophecy, as they move more vaccines to mRNA technology (see flu vaccine).

                And of course, there’s the whole question of “are you sure that “vaccine” isn’t a cocktail of clotshot+? Because your medical professional says?”

                1. That last is one that’s been concerning me, too; I just hope we can get the info in time to reject a particular one. Vaccines are great; untried mRNA experiments, not so much.

                  1. Well, that’s one of the three I just got (PCV, Tdap and Shingrix), and nothing I could find mentioned any of them as potential vehicles for “add-ons” (not that that’s any guarantee, of course 😦 ). Do whatever seems best to you, but tetanus is a very nasty disease, and if you get a puncture wound, especially if there’s dirt involved, you’re far more likely to get tetanus that to get a problem from the shot, even if they sneaked their crap into it.

                    My biggest concern is that they might go to mRNA for all shots, or at least the ones for which it’s possible. In that case I’ll have to re-evaluate my vaccine regimen.

              4. Right, they always go straight to the smears and insults rather than actually making a case for their position. Why it’s almost as if they don’t actually have a case to make…

      3. I’ve never tested positive either. I work in an ER, with kids spewing snot. I have had a couple mild colds, which is unusual for me. I assume I had an asymptomatic case at some point before the vaccines were given which gave me natural immunity. The chances that I avoided it completely in my line of work, with masks not doing anything (and me wearing them only when observed) is slim to none.

      4. I’ve never tested positive either. I work in an ER, with kids spewing snot. I have had a couple mild colds, which is unusual for me. I assume I had an asymptomatic case at some point before the vaccines were given which gave me natural immunity. The chances that I avoided it completely in my line of work, with masks not doing anything (and me wearing them only when observed) is slim to none.

      1. No shots, Pretty sure I had omicron once and delta once, both times was mild cold with brain fog.

      2. At this point, I refuse to bother with tests. The tests are STILL garbage, and the results of a (most likely FALSE) positive aren’t worth the hassle. It’s a dang cold, if maybe a slightly weird one. I can deal with that. Most anybody not immune-compromised can.

        “But it’s a WEIRD one!”
        “Have we MET?”

        I’d get stranger things in my breakfast cereal if I still ate cereal for breakfast.

    5. Problem is, how badly have those shots screwed up your immune system? I’ve seen a few reports of new cases of auto immune disorders, and increases in severity for existing cases associated with the jabs.

  7. And No Amnesty for the people who created and supported the COVID panic. 😡

  9. Unfortunately I can like this post only once. Head of nail, meet hammer.

    I want war crimes trials and public hangings.

    Unfortunately they won’t happen.

  10. Amen. I want Fauci and Birx and their ilk IN JAIL. It’ll never happen but damn I want them doing a perp walk into a courthouse, handcuffed and with a bulletproof vest awkwardly slung around them, while flashes pop and a crowd screams obscenities behind a cordon of riot police.

    BTW, my wife is double-shot, no booster. I’m completely unvaccinated. We’re pretty sure we both got the most recent “Arcturus” variant (wtf is this now, Star Trek?) of Coof. Because the main symptoms are stuffiness, mild fever, and one mother of a case of conjunctivitis. I thought my allergies just went ham but she doesn’t have allergies and we both got it sequentially. And it hit her way harder than it did me.

    BTW, regarding: “Dudes, if you ever work in any emergency room, you’ll learn that not only aren’t the homeless “particularly hardy” but that they have the most bizarre medieval diseases.”

    And mental illnesses as well. But it’s sooooo much more progressive to let them live on the streets than it is to keep them in a safe institution.

    1. No it is cheaper for the Government, and easier for them to steal from social services and run up phony votes when needed during elections.

    2. Nope. Fauci and his cohorts are going to continue enjoying their lives in their multi-million dollar houses, and their snobbish parties, and never see the slightest punishment. I rather doubt they even care about negative press from us faceless masses of gun and bible huggers in flyover country.

      1. I’m going to repeat here something I said waaaaay down below:

        What goes around, comes around.

        Also, Confucius said being wronged is nothing if you don’t dwell on it.

        So take comfort in the fact that Dr. Foxxy is exposed as the lying little weasel he really is. He’s stuck living with the faceless masses of gun and bible huggers that he f-ed over, waiting for what he sent around to come back to him. Unlike us, he knows what he did.

        For myself, I don’t care what happens to those people. If I read in the news that Dr. Whatever had Something Bad happen to them, it doesn’t really improve my life that much. Knowing that Dr. Whatever is a lying POS who I can ignore, that is a big life benefit. I’m satisfied with that.

        I say this not to be a smart guy or something, but because I don’t have many spare liver cells left to burn up worrying about this crap. Others are clearly feeling the same. This method works pretty good.

    1. If it walks like a duck, it’s probably a penguin. Sorry, but that’s just the way politics works. 🙂

      1. And you had to make me flashback to Batman’s enemy the Penguin. The one who went “straight” and “respectable” in at least one series and ran what was essentially a front that all the elite could visit, so his criminal activity was overlooked because “Oh, but he’s reformed now….”

          2. 😀
            I can’t help it. They just freak me out. Most birds do, actually; some of them look really cool, but at the core they’re all beady-eyed psychopaths.

              1. Not to be a spoilsport, but yes, I’ve seen baby pigeons and they are really ugly! No wonder they are called squabs!

  12. It was clear that the purpose of the lockdowns and diktats was to gain power over people and not for public health. Indeed after the first months, when it became clear that the diktats made no difference at best, the Democrats/globalists started pushing the talking point that the lockdowns were good because they “reduced pollution” and started calling for perpetual lockdowns and controls as part of their Green Leap Forward. They even demanded, and still demand, that a “climate emergency” be declared, with similar rule by decree, only even more totalitarian than the CCP Virus rule by decree was.

    What they did in 2020 and onward was simply a trial run for what they seek to impose permanently.

    1. And now TPTB are screaming at those who can work at home need, must go into work at an office, because Reeeeeeee

      1. because Reeeeeeee

        Because RE — as in: Real Estate, investors therein, see also campaign donors.

      2. Such PTB ought be given a private office. A very small one. Four walls, roof, a place to sit… with a hole. a door – often with a crescent moon cut out of it. But they get the basement of such. Nice and deep! The mask-pushers and lockmeisters can get the same.

        1. I think an underground home using ambient geothermal heating. Tiny houses of course, about 2 meters long, roughly a meter wide, and somewhat less than a meter in height. Semi-light weight; about what 6 grown men can carry.

  13. My sister sent out invitations for the previous family Christmas gathering (not this past one, but the one before that), saying “In an effort to protect the safety of us all, we would like to request that if you are not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 please wear a mask indoors except while eating.”

    Not wanting to cause a huge rift in the family, we just refrained from going, rather than saying, “Do you want us to also ring a bell and shout unclean?”

    This last Christmas invitation had no such nonsense, fortunately.

    My son is an adult, so he does what he wants, but it bothers me that he is still wearing a mask when we’re out in public places. But he at least doesn’t lecture us about not wearing ours (not that he ever did).

    1. I actually did that, say ding ding and call out unclean. I’d go on until the wife stopped laughing and then stopped me. Better than that, though, was using the bloody 6 foot apart dots to play modified hopscotch. The poor clerks at Costco would nervously laugh.

      The single most liberating moment was the first time I told a mask Nazi to F-ck off. I’d always been reserved and introverted but the WuFlu lockdowns completely removed my filter. It’s all I can do to do basic self preservation now,

      1. You’re our kind of guy.
        When my beloved was told to go home from the office because he’d been exposed to wuflu, and I had to as well since I’d been exposed to him, I walked down the hall saying, “Unclean, unclean.”
        I enjoyed that. (For the record, neither of us got sick).

        1. I got the Pfizer nonvac, but none of the boosters. Bad, very bad, reaction to the 2nd jab–worse than the actual case of covid that I got, which was a middling bad cold.

          I live in a free state, and only wore a mask when required. Didn’t lock down long either, we were in restaurants and pubs by June 2020.

          Got infected once, while masked, and caught it from someone who was double masked, because she had a mild cold. If it weren’t for the fascism this would have been a nothing burger for most of us.

      2. “Stand on the X”

        “No”

        “Whaddya mean no?”

        “Which word did you not understand? Besides, that Coyote’s tricks never work.”

        “Wait. What?”

        Meanwhile, the whole dang place was laughing at Junior ShutzStaffel.

      3. My bride once told a bemasked couple in the supermarket, “Cool 2020 costume”. She’s a keeper.

        1. Oh, didn’t they? You find out who’s on what side so fast.

          Being a doesn’t-really-fit-in type, I’ve always kind of known that I wasn’t on the team. Being consistently picked last will do that. But watching the whole f-ing society do it and confirm that A) yes there’s definitely teams and B) no, you’re not on one, you scrub, that was really a line in the sand moment.

          Kind of like watching millions of people wake up, one after another to the realization: “Oh. They’re lying. This is a scam.”

          Many are in denial, but nobody managed to sleep through it I don’t think. Too pervasive.

          1. Yeah, team sports didn’t want me either. Which is why I went into martial arts and fencing. (Although the national level of organization in fencing is a woke-ass mess.)

    2. Our Christmas gatherings with the wife’s family for 2020 and 2021 were similar, except no mask, I just couldn’t go period because I was unvaccinated. In fairness, the host was (and still is) badly immunocompromised so I didn’t get too pissed about it…although I never get flu vaccines and that never stopped me from going over there on Christmas and Thanksgiving. Oh well. We all got through it.

      1. Ma was a bit taken aback when informed that if the flu vaccine goes to mRNA, I am DONE with the flu shot (it won’t be a vaccine then). Had to explain that while I did have the Nottavax (Pfizer 1 & 2, NO “boosters’) I was done with it, and the side-defects were worrisome. Sure, mostly to the younger, but that’s where the issues STOOD OUT. I would be utterly unsurprised to find the older also had issues, but were dismissed as age-related.

        I have a regimen of supplement that I suspect has been doing much good – even before the COVIDiocy, I was rarely ill. (Work nights in MN, of course I take vitamin D!) When almost everyon on my shift was down with WuFlu, I was seemingly unaffected. This was BEFORE the Quaccine, mind. $BOSS (only half joking), “Don’t you dare get sick!”

        Now, I figure I’ve been exposed six+ ways from Sunday to dang everything[1] that made to $HOOTERVILLE, but haven’t been symptomatic yet.

        —
        [1] Respiratory. NOT STD. Bull can keep his pants up.

        1. I’ve been assured that teaching is the best way to become immune to most common viruses. You get exposed to every thing the students pass around. The first seven years, you catch them all if they’re respiratory, and possibly a few bouts of “the tummy crud.” After that? You’re pretty much common cold proof. Influenza’s a slightly different story, but my last bout was dang mild.

        2. I am not getting the covid boosters nor am I getting the flu shots ongoing. Not. Happening. Family gathering for holidays is about done now. 2020 might have started it earlier but it was coming anyway. (2020 Christmas dinner was cancelled because we HAD covid, well son had it first. 2021 was the start of the new “normal”.)

          Most the “grandchildren” now are married or have significant others. Have children and are out of town. Sister and her brother have started taking the one local child’s family and going to where the other 3 are at, and doing Christmas the weekend before. The other sister is doing essentially the same, but they are all in the same general area. One of the younger set have a child that has to be shared every holiday with another set of parents. One niece is immune compromised. So, that leaves just us, maybe mom, and maybe one sister and brother for Christmas day dinner if no one is sick. Happened as we were growing up with our cousins, knew it was coming with our kids. Took over 30 years, but here we are.

        4. $SPOUSE and I got the WuFlu in March ’20. Despite multiple attempts by A. Quack, MD, I refused to get the not-Vax. When he said I couldn’t have gotten it (no tests were available then) because the First Official Case of it hit Flyover County in April, I saw the gaslight. Still stuck with him for primary care, but the Real Doc who has the most impact on my survival agreed that not getting the shot was a good idea. Part of that discussion was an implicit understanding to avoid ratting him out to TPTB. [spit on them] Lots of pressure to reveal the Badthink. I’m still pissed.

          (When the downsides of the not-vax came out last year, AQ, MD forgot to talk about COVID and the “need” for the clotshots. Funny that. I’m not laughing.)

          When trials of mRNA flu not-Vaxes were announced, we figured the chances of “accidentally ” getting such were high enough to skip flu vax for the next few decades. I did manage to get either a mild case of flu or a really bad cold. Shared it, too. Oops. That’s the first flu I’ve had in forever, and it’s been many years since I had a cold. Living in the back of beyond can help.

          1. “the First Official Case of it hit Flyover County in April”

            Oh, EFF that.

            I know that COVID hit my county in December of 2019 at least, by simple logic. How? Because the first nursing home deaths we had were in January of 2020. For them to have gotten infected, there had to be at least one and more likely two to three links in the chain prior to their getting infected, so all you have to do is backtrack the math.

            Mind you, I’m pretty sure it was even earlier, because my kids’ elementary school had “a super-nasty flu that won’t stop” in December of 2019 (a third of my youngest kid’s class was out at one point), and here’s the kicker—another parent’s brother-in-law had come home from a conference in Wuhan in November and gone to their Thanksgiving. After which, they all got sick and stayed home… but who knows if they were infectious right before they developed symptoms.

            By the time they’d done shutdowns in March and then blamed people for not “staying home and making the lockdowns work” the barn door was too late to close by at least four months.

            1. No, no, couldn’t have been before April 2020. After all, Fauxi was still helping the communist Chinese cover up the outbreak until March.

            2. My first bout was Dec 2019 too. Right after Thanksgiving. School system locally was being swept with a “very bad flu” starting around Oct 2019 too (not that we have any kids in the system now, but the nieces all do, and the great-nieces/nephew were there Thanksgiving dinner). But naturally what I can couldn’t have been coof flu. Nope. Absolutely not. (Pull the other leg, at least it makes noises, it has bells on it.) Note. Exactly the same thing I had Jan 2021, after son tested positive for coof flu Christmas day 2020. Do not tell me I haven’t had it twice. (Which is exactly what every single medical person I know is telling me.)

            3. I had been in Medford for a few days in February. That was about 3 weeks before I presented, and $SPOUSE was less than a day behind me. So any carriers were in Flyover Falls the first week of March. I’m lucky (for values of) that I didn’t get it from everything I had to do on that trip.

              FWIW, the ChiComs were starting to Bogart (hmm, anachronism alert, let’s use “hog”) PPE supplies around July or August 2019. The military games with unsuspecting foreigners were in October, so yeah, it could have been a lot sooner. OTOH, while there’s a military presence in F-Falls, it’s not a huge number of people, so that vector might not have been key. The tech college could have been; winter tourism is light.

              It’s possible I got the coof last December. Virii gotta mutate. As best as I can recall, the closest I’d come to influenza in my life was the night after I got my first flu shot. That had me crawling to the bathroom because standing was not an option. Seems there was a 22 year hiatus in flu shots after that…

          1. Well, I do not need them, but Society has all these Issues, see, and it’s easier for a minotaur to ‘pass’ if dressed about like everyone else.

    3. I may know someone who crashed a “masks required” event wearing a Lone Ranger mask.

      (Grin)

        1. Full-on 3M N-95 paint mask with the organic carbon filters. Big hit at the grocery store as time went on. And on and on, and onnnnnn…

        2. Still got my plague doctor mask and top hat somewhere (although the time for that joke has passed).

    4. I see lots of healthy teenagers/young adults wearing masks. I think we have induced such anxiety in these people they can’t take the masks off. It’s really sad.

    5. I see lots of healthy teenagers/young adults wearing masks. I think we have induced such anxiety in these people they can’t take the masks off. It’s really sad.

      1. It’s also a social signal and maybe even a fashion item.
        Plus, I suspect some businesses are still requiring them.

        1. There seem to be fewer young ones in the mask-wearing crowd compared to the older, ill-health/immunicompromised people. I’m thrilled to see the disappearance of the
          mother/little kid combinations where both are masked up.

          What I’m not seeing are the defiant not-really-a-mask, like the one where sequins covered up the fact that the mask was like a kitchen strainer. Saw a few of those during the Covidiocy until TPTB caught on. I’d think such would be a popular fashion item for the suitably deranged.

          $SPOUSE guesses that it might be a carry-over from the Californians shopping in Flyover Falls. There were some Oregonians who kept wearing masks for a while when the mandate ended, though the majority dropped it very fast.

          What seems to have a longish tail is the plexiglas barrier. One grocery store (Kroger) and the restaurant supply still have them, as does the dentist’s office. The last one seems to be a permanent installation and it would also reduce other problems. Nobody’s jumping over that counter, if that were ever an issue. See a few at other businesses (Home Depot for one.) Some of that might be inertia or the expectation that TPTB will try the same BS again.

          1. Store barriers are down in Eugene where we shop. Which is Fred’s, Petsmart, BiMart, Petmart, and Costco. Costco has also squeezed the manned check out lines together, again. Flyover falls Fred’s might not have gotten around to it yet.

            1. Plexiglas barriers disappeared in the Phoenix area months ago, and only one medical group (Dignity; what a misnomer!) still requires masks in their doctor offices (ours is Optum, and literally everyone in the office agrees they should disappear, but ignorant bureaucrats gonna bureaucrat…). Dunno about the hospitals; haven’t been inside one since 2019.

            2. It might be manpower issues here. I’ve seen a lot fewer worker bees at a lot of stores, and there might not be enough in-house people to do it. With the roaring [sarc] economy, the outhouse people might not be cheap enough to call in for some of these places.

            3. Central Point Costco didn’t seem to widen the manned checkout lanes. I haven’t been there since January, so am not sure about barriers and such. Will know in July.

              I’m hoping (but not expecting) that they’ll bring back the Caesar salad. Since I can’t eat the other items (gluten intolerance/allergy makes mistakes incredibly painful and/or disgusting), it’s pretty much hot dogs and the soft serve ice cream. No bun, but they’re almost used to that. I miss the Caesar salad, though I doubt it will be back soon, if ever.

              1. Local Costco just remodeled the food court. No more going to counter and ordering. Must use the order machines and pay with CC or Debit.

                I miss the wider distances between check out stands. Oh well, will use the self checkout. The regular distance between the checkout stands has two side by side forcing people into not quite two width (can happen but tight). Which with a service dog, small one at that, is a PIA. I put her between me and the checkout stand and just get in the other line’s way (but it is me getting in their way, not her). People seem to resent that for some reason. Self checkout I put her between directly next to the stand and position the cart just right. Then I don’t let the cart move. I’ve gotten glares. Just glare back and point to her. Hasn’t failed yet. (No one notices her. Which is what we work for. But sometimes it is a PIA.)

                1. The Central Point food court has the order kiosks, but since I have to ask for a bunless hot dog, I go to the single cashier. (A server will break from his/her normal duties to run the register.) At least the only time I looked, they didn’t have special handling instructions in the terminal. Taking the tubesteak out of the bun would leave too much residue, and I’d still have a reaction.

                  Not sure about the spacing. That Costco was built in late 2017, and there’s room for two people, though if I’m coming in and want to hit the washroom, I’ll not try to squeeze in between the customers. I now go to the end where they put in the self checkout stations. There’s room where they took out a manned register or two. The stations seem to have enough room, and they’re fairly quiet on the days & hours I go there. If it’s backing up, people will shift to the manned registers. Haven’t tried self checkout with a flat. I doubt they’d add a barcode gun.

                  1. At the Costco self checkout they have staff, just not there to checkout non-heavy items. They do have handheld barcode scanners there. You, the customer doesn’t weld it, the staff does. I go through with heavy (cough, pop/water cases, cough) all the time. If your cart has a lot of non-heavy items you have to scan, then the self checkout won’t work. Just not enough room to stack everything and no option for “scan and put immediately in your basket” like the regular checkouts.

                    1. I forgot about the barcode gun that the helper had. Semiannual shopping makes it quirky. I stay a night or two (need two for the medical trip, varies for the January trip). It’s not a good idea to leave stuff in the Forester overnight, so I’ll get what fits in the extra cooler and both (one with roasted chickens to be refrigerated) go to the room. We learned that the birds do better if they’re cooled off rather than continue to cook themselves on the two+ hour trip. The suite setup is well suited for such stuff.

                      On the way home, I’ll get a flat and get all the stuff that wouldn’t fit in the coolers. It’s probably best that that trip is solo; there’s no room for anybody else in the vehicle. Any resemblance to the Clampett’s or the Joad family truck is purely coincidental. 🙂

        2. I suspect both you and Dr. T. are right about this in the younger people I see still wearing them. I have yet to see any businesses in the new place requiring them and same for the old place and if a sign is still up it’s not enforced and even the employees usually don’t wear them. At least it’s been useful for “don’t spend any more time in this place than you have to” signals for me for a couple of businesses, though.

            1. Those were starting to phase out back in GA that I saw. My former doctor, my former vet, and, surprisingly, the ophthalmic surgeon I used to go to in suburban Atlanta all had them as optional (and the vet never asked for proof of jab when that was the condition to not wear one). I haven’t had a need to go anywhere medical-related in the new place and hopefully I won’t need to for a while.

      2. In Japan it seems to be more than the teenagers/young adults sadly. But the numbers are gradually decreasing as us leaders in the non-masking trend fail to die

        1. Remember, Japan (and lots of the rest of Asia) had a habit of going masked well before the WuFlu.

            1. The mask actually are quite useful if one has allergies to grass and has to, say, cut down all the grass in the yard.

              My sister sent me some nice allergen masks that she bought at Daiso, which I will be wearing for yardwork this summer. The anti histamines just don’t quite do the job…

          2. True. But it was never as high a proportion as now. Plus many of them are not wearing the masks in ways that would even theoretically block transmission – unless I’ve misunderstood and the danger point is actually the chin

      3. A certain author who is also a teacher confirms this; many of his high school students are terrified of going without masks. We’re talking adolescents, who are usually defiant about everything.

    6. One co worker was told by her family to come to Easter dinner but they were going to put her dinner on the porch and have her sit outside by herself. Because she worked in the ER and might have been exposed. She was understanding. I was furious on her behalf.

    7. One co worker was told by her family to come to Easter dinner but they were going to put her dinner on the porch and have her sit outside by herself. Because she worked in the ER and might have been exposed. She was understanding. I was furious on her behalf.

  14. Have there been reckonings in the past? I can’t think of any.

    For me it has destroyed my trust in experts and large systems. Had to do some flying for work and found myself waiting for ATC to do something incredibly stupid that would smack airplanes together.

    And it is not like I had a fear of flying; I used to love being in the air. I know how it works and love planes. I just no longer feel like I can trust all of the nameless faceless cogs to not do something fatally stupid: over climb and stall the plane, taxi the wrong way on an active runway, cross a live runway with someone past the abort limit, etc etc etc.

    These systems are marvels that have so much margin for failure built into them, but have very very little margin for moron. And I don’t trust that the systems involved won’t engage full retard to please some idiot in power. I just don’t.

    And it has been so fast, too. Only the last few months that it’s hit me.

    1. The question is: does the air traffic control organization have DIE administrators?

  15. I may be the only one at my company (a NASA contractor) that refused the jab. (I had the disease in December 2020, and did not see why I needed a vaccine developed for a strain six months older than the one I encountered.) I told them they could fire me, but I was not planning to get the shot or resign. They backed down. I am still there. But no one else had the gumption to say no.

    I still get angry over that. Just like I get angry about my blood CO2 going high on my physical because of the masks. (It was back to normal after the mask mandates went away.)

    For me it was a moderate chest cold.

  16. And I’ve long said that the actions they were doing did more damage than the virus would have, even if it had been as bad as they were saying. Which it was really nowhere close, as we all know.

  17. I’m tired of how these…people (and I use that term loosely) did this for what is pretty much an overhyped case of the flu.

    I lost my job (okay, it was a crappy job, but still), and I haven’t had a steady year’s worth of employment since.
    The lack of mobility probably didn’t help my mom (who has lung issues to begin with) and her health issues.
    Stress all around for everyone.
    Too many people either GTFO of California or guzzling the Jonestown Flavor-Aid of Woke politics.
    …which is making things worse because only the idiots and their handlers are staying here.
    And our escapist media is just another brick in the Woke Wanker Wall.

    The only good things about this whole three to four years of dumpster fire?
    1-I got my degree.
    2-I have savings.
    …and that’s about it.

    Unless they prove that they’re truly repentant, I can’t forgive them.

    None of them know how to be truly repentant.

    1. There is no repentance without an act of contrition.
      Basic catechism.

      They aren’t the least bit sorry.
      And they’d totally do it again.
      But they’d like us to forgive and forget.
      Ain’t gonna happen.

    2. Yeah, I lost mu job too, thanks to a boss who acted like Covid was sentient, and just waiting outside his door to wrestle him into incapacitation. Haven’t worked since. Nobody wants to hire a near-retirement ago woman with bad knees, heart issues and COPD. Go figure.

      So I have been making do with social security, for however long it lasts, and whatever royalties I get from Amazon. Which, this year, was a whole seven dollars! Whee!

      1. That’s a start. Seven becomes fourteen, becomes twenty. “Back in the good old days” it wasn’t much better when you started out.

          1. So, did the Infernal Revenoors try to make you pay tax on that $50? It wouldn’t surprise me in the least, logic being a foreign language to them. 😦

  18. The boy who cried wolf over a chihuahua should have never been entrusted with the sheep again. The next time there’s a real plague, no one will believe the Public Health Authorities until it’s too late to do anything effective.

    1. They shouldn’t believe the public health authorities. They should look around them and evaluate for themselves the danger and degree of risk.

      That’s what most of us do on a regular basis: AIDS didn’t pose much of a risk to us, so most of us didn’t worry about it except in sympathy. The 2008 flu was supposed to be bad, but flu is pretty much unavoidable and people weren’t dropping like flies, so we didn’t worry about it. If that one case of Ebola in the US had turned into a hundred, we might have worried, but cursory research told us that without certain funerary practices Ebola is pretty hard to spread, so we didn’t. And so on.

      If there’s a “real” plague, we’ll notice and take such precautions as we can.

      1. They could have had an issue in Texas with that Ebola case since they had blood all over the place and had the property owner/janitor just wash it down the storm sewer with a garden hose. I’m glad that didn’t blow up in our faces.

        1. Indeed, since what I’ve read says that Ebola is a fairly hardy virus, and can remain infectious for at least several days, and maybe up to a week or so outside the body at normal temperature (4C to room temperature, maybe higher).

          Who made that “hose it down” call?

          1. Not sure. But if I had to guess some bureaucrat told the guy, “Get this cleaned up!” without actually explaining what it was, or why it needed to be cleaned up, or how to clean it up safely.

      2. There are public health measures that work, and they do require some basic medical knowledge of how pathogens spread. But when the authorities began ignoring proper practice, I knew that they were no longer taking the matter seriously. For instance, when BLM protesters got a pass on not gathering in groups or were exempt from contact tracing…For crying out loud. If you’re not going to be thorough, then don’t even bother. You might as well try to burglar-proof a house and leave the front door standing open. (Not that the protesters were the primary vectors, but giving them a pass showed that the Public Health Authorities were being at best half-assed about the whole thing.) And their measures weren’t working, anyway: Covid kept spreading. So what did they do? Double down and prolong the masking and social isolation and vaccinations that prevented nothing, for the population at the least risk (children) but most easily controlled. No thank you, ma’am. Panicked futile overreaction is not how you do responsible public health. The more extreme disruptive measures should be reserved for the more deadly diseases…which this wasn’t.

        1. Plus the fact that AFAIK not one single authority figure followed the restrictions on any regular basis. French Laundry, anyone?

        2. I’m no epidemiologist. But from the beginning, responsible epidemiologists were outshouted and ignored in favor of people who would DO SOMETHING!! And so the people who want to control everyone got their chance to DO SOMETHING with all the force of law and panicked ignorant public opinion behind them. Whether that something was based on good science or not.

      3. AIDS wasn’t a serious risk until it got into the general population and started showing up in the nation’s blood supply. Of course, if they had done the right thing and immediately quarantined the infected so they didn’t have opportunities to spread it, that would have pretty much stopped it in its tracks. Since it required intimate contact and exchange of bodily fluids, such a quarantine would have been effective.

        2. That would have meant shutting down gay bathhouses. I suspect too many Politically Connected people couldn’t have that, public health be damned.

          1. Thank you for saying that. That’s one of the reasons I lay the deaths of everyone after the initial infection stage on the LGBTQ advocacy cabal. Maybe AIDS would have made its way here and spread anyway; but they actively obstructed any organized attempt of public health to try to stop it. Come to think of it, that should have been one of the warning signs to us that the CDC and other government agencies weren’t trustworthy.

            1. Speaking of, where’s that AIDS vaccine Fauxi promised us 35 years ago?

              That’s right, Fauxi was in charge of the government’s response to the ‘AIDS epidemic’ which was strangely confined to a narrow demographic in a few cities. Should have been sacked for incompetence back in the ’80s. And has only gotten more incompetent since then.

              1. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, that just sent a cold chill down my spine. Fauci and company were planning a country/world-wide jab program even back then. We know the modRNA has the capability to be written into our DNA. Just what do these people have planned for the 90% of the human race they consider to be worker drones? And what kind of long-term horrible side effects from their mistakes will happen even from this COVID experiment?

                1. We’ve seen some of them already. Mysterious deaths from Suddenly, miscarriages and infertility…all blamed on COVID, of course. Which was also Fauxi’s doing.

                  Shortly after Trump was elected, Fauxi predicted ‘a pandemic during your term in office’. Sure enough, less than 2 years later…

                  Is it really a prophecy if you have to make it happen yourself?
                  ———————————
                  Why do so many idiots believe that our problems will be solved by the same shitheads that caused them?

                    1. They’re all ultraterrestrials, beings who appear in this universe and whose mission is to screw with humans.

                      Ultraterrestrials also include the Fae, and — ahem — leprechauns.

          2. I remember reading Randy Schilts’ essay about pleading with the leadership of San Francisco to shut down the bathhouses because of HIV and other things. He was gay. They ignored him.

    2. The Publick Health Authoriteez didn’t do anything effective this time. We just lucked out when the Dread Pan-Demic turned out to be a dud. If it had been, say, H5N1 from The Last Centurion, nothing those clowns did would have helped in the slightest.
      ———————————
      A good Zombie Apocalypse novel is at least as believable as anything we’ve heard out of the ‘Publick Health Authoriteez’ over the last three years.

      1. If COVID had been a test of the Public Health Defense system, the experts and authorities would have flunked. When politics comes into the picture, the science leaves. Yes, I’m looking at you, Governor Lockdowns-for-thee, parties-for-me. You, too, Dr. I-Speak-For-Science.

  19. They cost school kids years of normal life. Two of my grandsons didn’t even get to have high school graduations, or senior proms, or homecoming or anything resembling a senior year. There are young children who will never be able to use language as well as they would have because of masking and isolation.

    And this happened because they told these kids grandma would DIE if they didn’t give up their life for her.

    Dying in a fire, slowly is too good for them.

    1. Toss in that the three months (at best) to two years without in-person school caused and are still causing havoc with kids and school. Eighteen months staring at a screen aren’t the same as reading and looking up material in a real book and working with a decent teacher. Dry kitty tone Who’d have imagined that? End dry kitty tone

      1. Eh, the school district here has decided it’s best to ruin the kids completely. Almost all of the “learning” (that’s a very loose definition BTW) is done on an iPad now. And grading is pretty much non-existent since they went to “Standards Based Grading” (once again, very loose definition of grading and standards). They can barely read, multiply/divide, or reason.

        1. That’s a feature, not a bug for those “people”. An ignorant population is much more easily control then an educated one.

      1. They shut down the playgrounds around here. This is an area where people mostly don’t have yards.

  20. I want to see heads on pikes and crucifixes along Pennsylvania Ave marking a new Appian Way. But then again, I’m not a very good Christian.

    2. Not my place to judge that, but I might have a (friendly and supportive) opinion on how good of a politician you are, what with you going around surrendering the metacontext like that.

      The Appian Way was arguably the most important road built by the Roman Republic. I ask you, is our republic’s equivalent really Pennsylvania Ave? Or might it be more like something that’s actually useful, such as I40 (incorporating Route 66)?

      Which is why I have been arguing for some time now that as hanging has proven not to be an effective deterrent we need to go one louder and therefor I want all of the People Who Think They Own The World, together with their lackeys and enablers to be brought to West Texas, where they will be given a fair trial and then crucified alongside I40, which will be renamed the New Appian Way.

      1. Works for me; buzzards and ravens gotta eat, too.

        I want the popcorn concession. 🙂

  21. “I WANT TO SEE REPENTANCE, damn you.”

    So do I. But there won’t be any. And when the same bunch of psychopaths and village idiots try to pull that stunt again…because at some point they will…what then?

    1. I guess if they don’t want to repent they don’t have to. Free will and all that.

      But, by golly, it would be very fine to see the terror in their eyes when they come to their final judgement and see the cloud of witnesses arrayed against them.

      I will now have to go to confession and confess that I have wished I’ll against another lest I suffer the same fate.

    2. I guess if they don’t want to repent they don’t have to. Free will and all that.

      But, by golly, it would be very fine to see the terror in their eyes when they come to their final judgement and see the cloud of witnesses arrayed against them.

      I will now have to go to confession and confess that I have wished I’ll against another lest I suffer the same fate.

    3. Next Time will be different I think, because we will all remember Last Time. Whichever faction you’re in, you can’t -forget- who lied and who told the truth.

      1. You may be correct; we can only hope. And unlike what has been the case for similar things, they’ll almost certainly[1] try it too soon, since they have essentially zero patience and The Revolution must happen NOW.

        [1](Apparently my fingers know more than I do; I first typed “cretinly”, which fits to the proverbial “T”. 🙂 )

  22. Forgiveness shmorgiveness.
    What is really depressing is that the next time they do this, it will work even better (for them).
    The population will just as quickly buckle under and abide.
    Karens will mask-police beaches with just as much sense of virtuous wrath, and people will line up around corners to get jabbed with the next not-vaccine.

          1. I love your optimism, Sarah!
            Without a hint of sarcasm, I do.

            Me, I was truly shocked at how Americans — AMERICANS! — just… submitted. Blindly, unquestioningly, willingly, almost eagerly, because the submission narrative was a brilliant combination of fear and civic duty.

            Sure, I expected that from Europeans, the Russians, certainly the Chinese, but Americans? Yes, the Aussies were somewhat of a surprise (the Kiwis weren’t), but not by much.
            But, to belabor the point, the Americans? Including the reddest of states.

            I don’t think I can unsee that. Which makes me a pessimist. Once the spirit is broken, how can we expect Us the People to withstand the next assault?

            1. See, I wasn’t shocked. Americans were less complying than anywhere else. So, no. I wasn’t shocked. And if you watched mainstream media it was THE END OF THE WORLD.
              However, now people have lived experience. It’s not optimism. It’s knowing how mad people are.

            2. Note they’ve tried to work up a panic again and again and again “REALLY SCARY VARIANTS” and “FOR TRUTHIES MONKEYPOX” And people are ignoring them.

              1. The reaction, or rather non-reaction, to the monkeypox fearmongering was reassuring even for me. It never got beyond just some isolated bits of hand-wringing among a few soft left people I know and most everyone else was rolling their eye.

                1. Along the lines of the well-known “hammer/nail” maxim, to wannabe despots every common fact looks like an opportunity. They never remember the “boy/wolf” one, or the tale of the Emperor’s clothes.

                1. And Monkey Pox (IIRC) wasn’t lethal and could be treated.

                  But yes, you caught it by having sex with the infected person.

                  1. The reason they are ‘sexually transmitted diseases’ is because they are so hard to catch any other way. They are the least contagious germs.

                  2. And even though we know how to contain a fatal and incurable VD — we did it with syphilis — it was utterly impossible with AIDS or monkeypox.

                    1. “it was utterly impossible with AIDS or monkeypox”?

                      Why?

                      Besides the “fear” of being called “homophobic”?

                    3. There’s a difference between “Wasn’t Done” and “Can’t Be Done”.

                      Your statement implied that “It couldn’t be done”.

                    4. It couldn’t. Because while reformation is possible for individuals, there were too many to expect the necessary changes without which it couldn’t be done.

                    5. Yet, you said “we did it with syphilis” so why wasn’t it possible with AIDS and monkey pox?

            3. Mostly because Americans were going to comply with use of force by the various governments, and were unwilling to step up and employ their own force in self protection.

    2. I don’t think so. I’ve heard people I absolutely wouldn’t expect say things like “Never again” and “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”

      Especially as we learn more about how they knowingly lied and obfuscated.

      1. This.

        Shortly after the mask mandate was lifted here in TX, I was in the 24 hour Walgreen’s at 0 dark something, when a recording extolling the virtues of masking started playing over the loudspeakers.* Without thinking I said “We’re not falling for that shit again!” Realising that I had spoken more loudly that intended I gave one of those embarrassed looks around that you do. It wasn’t exactly crowded at that time of day but there were a few people shopping and all those within earshot were smiling, nodding or both.

        Side question – would people have understood my meaning if I had written “… over the Tannoy”?

        1. I would have, but then I read about mid-Century Britain a lot. Do you connect the Tannoy to the wireless mounted in your lorry? I first encountered a sentence like that in about the fourth grade, and boy did it confuse me. 🙂

          Looking it up, apparently “Tannoy” is short for “tantalum alloy” used in some frammistat they invented.

    3. Yeah. No.
      There are too many of us too fricking pissed off to willingly don the muzzle of subjugation again.

      Next time, resistance will be immediate and full-throated. We’ve experienced the costs of appeasing the most neurotic among us. And how hard it is to regain our freedom after surrendering the moral high ground.

      More to the point, it only takes a few people to stand up before others stop going along.
      I got to see how it affected my community when I started refusing to comply. (Then how much it relapsed when family medical stuff removed me from the community for a month.)
      And that’s with me being just a random nobody. Someone with actual social capital opposing it would have magnitudes more effect.

      1. You do know that they’re going to go jack-booted thug on us the same way the RCMP did with that pastor don’t you? They’re going to give the order to the local cops or sheriff department to enforce it; and they will drag your butt off to jail for it. So, what are you willing to do to stop it?

        1. There are things, sir, best not discussed in polite company.

          That said, I would suggest that simple logistics demands most of the jackbooting be outsourced to local personnel.
          I believe it would behoove everyone to become personally familiar with those such an effort would likely be outsourced to.
          Friendship is extremely corrosive to jackbooted authoritarianism. (As are many other things best accomplished with a personal touch.)

          Those wishing for strife, wish to dehumanize everyone into faceless jackboot, faceless sheep, or faceless victim, all straight from central casting.
          There’s no benefit to us for playing along with this collectivist mindset. Treat people as individuals. Remember that the Shire Reeve and his men are only nominally under central control, and represent a rival power structure. They’re on “the list” as well.

  23. Luke said “There is no repentance without an act of contrition.”

    I’d go back a step further and say there is no repentance without the recognition of sin – both as a thing and as a personal failing. Therein lies the problem with the so-called elites. IMAO

    I can’t argue with a single thing in Sarah’s analysis, but it did add several items to my list for my next confession /eyeroll Well, that’s on me.

  24. The Reader agrees with you Sarah. But he believes there will be no repentance from them until the other side of the oncoming unpleasantness.

    1. And probably not even then. I think a significant portion of them would never repent. Why would they? There’s nothing after death so the worst you can do is kill them. And if they think there is something after death, they think they’re righteous enough to come back as a tree or something.

      1. The Reader thinks (hopes) that there will be a preference cascade in the direction of repentance after the aforementioned unpleasantness. There will be some who don’t – the Reader would throw a wall around Chicago and toss them in.

        1. Applies only to other Israelites, and is in a list of injunctions designed to prevent inter-clan war amongst the tribes.

          “‘Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt.” – don’t hide it, be clear and open about any issues you are having

          “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” – don’t screw over your community because you are pissed off.

          None of these call me to forgive.

            1. That’s the thing – it’s not about forgiveness. It’s about “don’t trash your neighbour just because you are pissed off” if you read the text surrounding the passage, it is all about not doing things that screw over your community.

              1. Then you would be free to hate him in your heart. That does nothing against your community.

                1. Consider the second part of the verse – private hatred without resolving the issue leads to badness down the road.

                  Listen, I suspect we are both unconvinceable on this, and Sarah frowns on theological debates in her living room. May I suggest we virtually shake hands and share a pint?

  26. Honest thoughts: can anyone think of a way to get the Vax-miscarriage link out in the open where the public as a whole will see it and not instantly write it off?

    You want them to pay, consider what women who wanted to be mothers will do to them.

  28. I’m conflicted. On the one hand, agree completely repentance is required of the sinner. On the other hand, we have Christ’s, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” These people don’t know what they’ve done, even when they think they do. It’s that thing about not noticing second-order effects. I find myself in the position of praying for people I’m angry with -after all, Himself might be able to turn a few of them and they’d make very effective warriors – while also praying for their plans to fail. Bigly.

      1. …and there’s this picture of tables being flipped over in the Temple…

        WWJD has multiple possibilities, depending on context.

    2. But did they not know?

      The masses (yes, occasionally the “m” is silent) probably didn’t given the FUD peddling and suppression of “inconvenient” data by the government and media, but the people promulgating those policies? I believe that the upper levels (at least) knew exactly what they were doing, and were all-in on “never let a crisis go to waste”.

      Maybe it didn’t go the exact way TPTB thought [sic] it would, but the economy tanking opened the door to all sorts of government controls increasing, not to mention more people needing “help” from the government that screwed them over in the first place.

        1. In just about any other case, what Biden’s handlers are doing to him and did to him in running him for office and then putting him out as their puppet POTUS would be charged as criminal elder abuse., and a court would be holding a competency hearing and appointing a guardian.

    3. Ignorance must be invincible to prevent guilt.

      Vincible ignorance at most mitigates it.

      Supine ignorance does not change it at all.

      Affected ignorance aggravates it. And given that they were (and are) actively censoring people telling the truth, their ignorance is affected.

    1. BANG
      “God, receive the soul of this sinner and forgive him. Amen.”
      BANG
      “God, receive the soul of this sinner and forgive him. Amen.”
      BANG
      “God, receive the soul of this sinner and forgive him. Amen.”

      Okay, paraphrased from a fragmentary memory of an old movie.

      1. There’s a medieval executioner’s sword with an inscription praying for the soul of the executed.

  30. They have never admitted they were wrong, and they never will. Because doing that might bring consequences, or be used to ask them why they’re not wrong the next time, since they admitted to being wrong once. Not going to happen.

    Indeed, they’re all going to try the same things Governor Hairdo of California and Prime Minister Castreau have been doing: claim they’re for all the Really Good Stuff, like freedom, and claim they never did any Bad Thing to anybody. (No, seriously, go watch Hairdo’s advert claiming Cali is the home of Real Freedom, unlike Fascist Florida, or Castreau’s recent claim that he never locked anybody down.)

    Sociopaths. Never. Admit. Anything. Except as a tactical ploy to get at something they really want, or to smear someone they cannot get at any other way.

  31. Spider Robinson – or at least his characters – get quite a bit wrong out of (left-? my impression)libertarian optimism, but one thing he definitely got right:

    You can’t have absolution, without solution.

    We’ve seen a few “forgive us and forget how badly we treated you” articles from the “poor innocent scaremongers, it was an honest mistake”, but they’re not interested in admitting their wrongdoing, nor are they interested in offering solutions for the next time someone plays the scare cards.

  32. Pingback: fit to be tied | Dio's Workshop

  33. Illegal “Gain of Function” research funded by Fauci in Wuhan plus “CCP morality” = why we should never trust government “experts” again.

  34. I’ll forgive the low-level jerkwads if they show actual repentance. Actual, as in “publicly accepting all criticism and anger and showing an actual understanding of the science behind why masks and lockdowns actually contributed to deaths.

    Higher ups? Need to pay with their lives. So much evil done everywhere.

    As to the Covidiocracy’s lethal rate? If you take away all (or a good portion) of the ‘Deaths with Covid’ then you end up with a seasonal flu that was far less deadly than the one that swept through nursing and old-folks homes in 2002. Where the local hospitals had patients bedded down in hallways because the rooms were full of the old dying.

    It was obvious way before the lockdowns that Covid wa just not bad at all, and that immediate supportive care when someone came down with real symptoms (so deadly that one found out by taking a test while asymptomatic and remaining asymptomatic) and that pretty much would have stopped a good portion of the dying. Treat the secondary infections, support the body during the worst of it and ride it out. Just like any other flu, cold, whatever.

    Yeah.

    God Forgives. Me? No. Not one ounce.

    1. Forgiveness is for deities. I’ll take justice; we don’t (or shouldn’t) let murderers, rapists and other such trash get away with “I was wrong, and I’m sorry”. You can even call it revenge if you wish; suits me.

  35. ‘Sackcloth and Ashes’ served a vital purpose. It forced both the perp and the public to face the misdeeds.

    These perps continue to pretend they did nothing wrong, and the public pretends to believe them. They’re just waiting for a chance to do it all again.
    ———————————
    They’re the Experts! They only sound stupid to you because you’re not as Educated as they are.

  36. It occurs to me that the forced lockdowns, isolation, and masking are significant contributing factors to the number of mass killings we are apparently seeing recently. Daily, or at least frequent, contact with other people is necessary for reinforcing cultural-social norms and behavior. It increases feelings of belonging to the group. With people of marginal empathy and control, this loss of contact directly eliminates this reinforcement. Small wonder they flip out and start attacking everything.

    1. Not necessarily.

      Left have been gambling hard on this time for sure.

      LEft seems to correlate towards shooters. LEft religion seems to lack the stabilizing value of Christian or Jewish practice.

      The shootings could also be explained by info war, federal provaceteurs, and lefties goading each other into worse insanity.

      1. Suicide-by-cop is fashionable in certain circles. Lots of Eco/Social/Gender faction Lefties see no reason not to take a bunch of Oppressors!!! with them when they check out. Some few seem sufficiently deranged to really do it, egged on by the rest.

        Social media seems full of people screaming “JUMP! JUMP!” at the guy on the ledge. Takes a toll, I’d guess. That’s why I don’t participate in social media.

        1. I wonder if the hormonal cocktail some of the shooters/aggressors have been on affects things. I remember when weight lifters and body builders were considered at high risk of overly aggressive ” ‘roid rage” behavior. (And having observed that problem when I was prescribed a weak steroid, I can only imagine what high doses of the stuff do.)

  37. I don’t think I can comment substantively on this subject without it turning into a rant.

    1. For tonight, I think I will concur most heartily.

      I have many thoughts around this. Lengthy thoughts.

      I choose not to recite them yet.

  38. I wrote this last year – https://freethepeople.org/try-saying-sorry-first/ – I’m still not seeing people actually admitting they were wrong

    There’s a ton of “mistakes were made” kinds of commentary without people manning up to add “by me and/or due to my advice”

    People that I now respect because they did add the “by me” bit include Naomi Wolf and Piers Morgan. The fact that these two are almost the only ones that did is an indictment of every other leader and talking head in the world

  39. If one already didn’t get the flu vaccine because the cost risk benefit analysis for a vaccine for a highly mutating, likely to have a full recovery, upper respiratory virus showed that it just wasn’t worth it. Then all anyone had to do to decide to not get the Covid vaccine was look at the CDC’s own numbers for age and likelihood of death.

    I actually extensively self isolated, because my parents are in their 70’s and I live with them, then my Mom kept going out and having people in so we caught it anyway (although it was an asymptomatic case and no one, not even my parents had a discernible cold).

    I just feel like I’m in crazy world. But I always kind of thought the flu vaccines were programming people to blindly line up for their government injections.

    1. I think there’s truth to that. On his way out the door, Fauci admitted that flu vaccines don’t work and can’t work. (As part as his brief on why he knew the fauxine would be ineffective.)

      Simply put, the residual immunity offered by a vaccine does not affect mucous membranes. So an infection that grows and spreads through mucous is going to get firmly established (and be spread to others) before most of your immune system can respond.

        1. No need for anything so drastic. Merely engaging in normal social discourse and interaction will provide all the necessary exposure for transmission.

  40. My belief in divine justice is all that keeps me going sometimes. That said, I hope the unrepentant wicked face the full wrath of God.

    1. The Iron Law of the Universe, otherwise known as the Golden Rule in its positive expression, is as follows:

      What goes around, comes around.

      Sooner or later, it will. You only have to wait.

      Another Iron Law once said by Confucius is that being wronged by another is nothing if you don’t dwell on it.

      That’s a powerful combination.

      We are not required to fix those people. We are not required to repent for -their- sins. All we really have to do is clean up the mess they leave behind. That’s not so bad. I can do that.

      1. Dwelling on it, obsessing over it, agreed; bad for folks.
        Forget about it? Never. There is an evolutionary survival reason for memory.

    1. Yeah; saw that. I wonder what happened to the rule that new drugs must be demonstrated to be not only safe, but effective, a mainstay of drug testing (and the reason for th ecost of intrioducing new drugs) for at least 70 years, more probably 100? I guess that since they dropped the first the second might as well go, too. I wonder if being beholden to Big Pharma might have had something to do with Marks’ redefinition…?

        1. These days I wouldn’t bet against anything that involves the venality of so-called “experts”.

  42. I’d love to think that retribution is coming. I can’t tell you the level of anxiety that I get even now seeing people in their masks. They created a faceless society and we’re suffering the consequences still. I may forgive (as my Deity demands) but I darn sure won’t forget or blindly follow “the experts”. And will remain un-not-a-vaxxed!

    1. > “I’d love to think that retribution is coming.”

      Between this and their obsession with raping and mutilating children, I wouldn’t be surprised if hangings and crucifixions came back in vogue in the next decade or so.

      1. Nah, just bring back the guillotine. Set one up right outside the Capitol building where the Congresscritters have to walk past it every day, to keep them focused on their responsibilities to The People.
        ———————————
        “You are now under oath. Do you understand what that means?”

        “Yes. I do have one question, though.”

        “You’re here to answer questions, not ask them. What is it?”

        “Why are none of you ever required to tell the truth? You lie most of the time.”

    2. All too many of the sheeple will blindly follow ‘The Experts’ again, even after ‘The Experts’ have proven themselves to be evil incompetent liars, because they need somebody to tell them what to do.

      Because having to make their own decisions is sooo much scarier.
      ———————————
      I used to live on a farm. I know what bullshit smells like.

  43. One thing they accomplished…many will no long blindly follow “the experts” ever again. But being on the list of folks who weren’t able to visit dying parents makes me long for Godly retribution!

  44. If repentance was only enough. Would we trust the same people or alphabet groups a second time? I don’t. There has to be a rearrangement in the matrix.

  45. “Also, note the same people then said it was very important to wear masks OUTSIDE WHILE JOGGING because this virus was some kind of magical and could hang suspended in the air outside in a “cloud” so that if you walked through it hours later, you could catch the dread disease.”

    Only reason to wear masks outside while jogging is to keep from inhaling the blackflies. And then a fairly open weave slightly smaller than the holes in a screen are what you want to not impede airflow.

    1. Wearing masks outside in general seems stupid – except when doing certain types of yardwork. I wish I’d worn a mask two nights ago when doing some spring cleanup in the yard – last two days have been hell for my allergies.

    2. There was a point (c. April 2020) when it sort of made sense to not exhale heavily on someone but running past and breathing in a different direction was quite sufficient to prevent that unless you were running in a crowd, which at the time you definitely weren’t.

      Running (or doing any other strenuous outdoor exercise) with a mask on has always been stupid if the mask has a thick enough weave to prevent you from breathing properly.

  46. Four reasons to wear a mask while driving alone in your car: (1) Lockdown nostalgia, (2) there’s something dead and stinky in the trunk, (3) you’re driving a stolen car and haven’t had time to disinfect it, and…(4) you don’t want anyone to think you’re a Republican.

    If you’re still walking around in public wearing a face diaper, you can never be my friend.

    1. My “favorite” memory from the pandemic is still the time I saw the guy driving alone in his car, wearing a mask … but not wearing his seatbelt!

      1. I still see people driving alone in their cars with the mask on.

        Whenever I go out there’ll be one somewhere, at the store, in the car, walking outside, wearing the mask. What really gives one pause is that those mask people think they’re the smart ones. Everyone else is -crazy- and they’re not.

        The seatbelt part is the cherry on top though. Hard to beat that level of clueless.

      2. I saw a similar idiot once, long ago.

        Driving a motorcycle, wearing a helmet and knee pads–no shirt, shorts, and barefoot.

        1. Flip-flops and shorts, no shirt. My favorite. Next to me in leather, boots, gloves, full-face helmet at the stoplight. Pretty sure he could hear my eyes rolling.

          1. One thing you can be absolutely sure of, assuming his intelligence was higher than a turnip (even if his judgement wasn’t); he never dropped a bike at speed (or probably at all), since even turnips can learn. “Road rash” is such an innocuous sounding term… 😉

            1. Having once fallen off and had the bike lying on top, with the exhaust pipe across one’s bare calf, the thinking man will never, EVER ride in shorts again. Ever.

              I discovered I could levitate a whole motorcycle that day. ~:D

              Still, flip-flops, crocs or bare feet require a -special- kind of obliviousness that even as a brainless youth I was never able to summon. Running shoes at bare minimum, and even then only for riding in and out of the ditch on the front lawn.

              1. Ouch! I have to confess that, while I wasn’t very safety-conscious as a stupid 14-year-old (BIRM), I never rode in shorts or any sort of open footwear, even in Florida in the summer; I didn’t wear a helmet, but almost no one did in the early ’60s. And on my next bike, in my mid-20s, and on subsequent ones until I stopped riding in ’06 when we retired and moved to AZ, I always wore a helmet (open-face; personal preference) and at least gloves, boots and a heavy jacket.

                I only got sideswiped and knocked into a ditch once. My own fault; early morning, a bit hazy, and no lights (not legally required at that time in MD), and the driver simply didn’t see me. Kicked away from the bike and slid to a stop with nothing worse than a small teat in the shoulder of my riding jacket; I was even able to ride the bike back home. I was very lucky, and for a wonder (mid-20s, remember) I learned from that and always made sure I was visible. And I still exercised paranoia around cars. 🙂

                  1. Point, but “paranoia” is the closest I could come to how I rode. “Extremely cautious, with head on a swivel, prepared to accelerate, swerve or brake in milliseconds” is so…clumsy. 🙂

                2. Started riding off-road at 16, I fell off so much that I became quite the motorcycle mechanic. Ended up riding racing bikes on the street, like a -lunatic-, so I fell quite often. Kamikaze Driving School: He who lets off the gas has no honor!

                  I’m alive today thanks to the same beneficent Goddess that looks after drunk men and little kids.

                  My “favorite” was streetcar tracks. Even knowing that they were trying to kill me, and even having developed -skillz!- to prevent it, they would still, occasionally, grab my back wheel and dump me on the road. BANG! There’s no riding it out, you just go down. I got really good at falling, let me tell you.

                  When riding a motorcycle, the only mindset that will allow you to survive is you assume all the other drivers are actively trying to kill you. Indeed, sometimes they -are- trying to kill you. What else explains the cabby that looks you in the eye and then changes lanes into you? You don’t give them a chance. That’s how to stay alive.

                  That and sheer brainless luck, like the time I wiped out on wet leaves on University Avenue in Toronto and missed -all- the concrete planters in the middle of the road. Picked up my bike and carried on like it was no big thing, but anyone who looked would see my knees shaking.

                  Kamikaze Driving School graduate says now I’m too old for it. I don’t bounce the same as I did at 25, that’s for sure.

                  1. All male children are immortal; didn’t you know that? 😉

                    BTW, in my comment above, that should have been a small tear in my jacket; what I wrote, while it could be interesting visually, is just…wrong. 🙂

      3. Yesterday in Japan I saw a man on a bike with a mask but no helmet. Admittedly he probably didn’t need the helmet either given the speed he was peddling and the emptiness of the roads but …

    2. I saw a guy wearing a mask while riding a motorcycle – when there were lots and lots of moths and gnats. I suspect he’d worn a bandanna or something like that in the past.

      1. Re: “Speedball, the Wild Motorcyclist” (the Ray Stevens one):
        “Here come dat happy fool on dat Harley!”
        “Say how do you know he’s happy?”
        “Say by de bugs on his teeth!”
        🙂

      2. I bought my first full-face helmet after getting a bumble-bee to the face at 30 miles an hour. First the THWACK! impact and then the sting. I must have been tough as a kid, I didn’t crash that time.

        But I did go spend my hard-earned money on a Shoei road-racer helmet I couldn’t afford.

        I recall June bugs being quite the experience as well. Like gravel. THWACK!

        1. An open-face helmet with a Plexiglas or Lexan shield works fine for flying hazards like bugs, and doesn’t restrict vision as much as a full-face. Not quite as protective, but I was always willing to put up with that for the added visual field.

          1. I like the chin guard. It’s what keeps things from knocking all your teeth out when you face-plant the street, or a car. Or a tree branch. Ask me how I know. ~:D

            Also very nice for keeping out the wind when its 45 degrees, raining, and you’re doing 80 mph down the 401 at 7:30 in the morning on the way to a crappy job you hate. Full-face plus bullet fairing plus bandana and some leather mits. Not gloves, or your hands freeze off.

            Which is why I drive the F-250 crew cab now that I can afford a proper vehicle and gas. Youthful privations and an immense, well-earned distrust of other drivers.

            1. Back in the late ’60s, after I got out of the Corps, we both had to work. My wife got the car, so, expense being an issue, I got a 125 Sears (Moto Gilera) to use. For a 125 it was pretty peppy, about 70 top end; it had no fairing (on a 125? No way!), and tended to not want to start in the rain. I rode it for about 2 years, rain, shine, summer, winter, down to just below zero (F), and in snow and on ice. Never dropped it except for the aforementioned sideswipe, which happened about halfway through my use of it. And you’re right; I wore mitten-type gauntlets (and a snowmobile suit) in cold weather, not gloves. I also stitched a piece of suede leather to the bottom of the face shield and tucked it into my collar; I wasn’t toasty-warm, but I was fairly comfortable. Interesting times…but fun.

              OK, I think we’ve probably exhausted our hostess’ patience with bike talk… 🙂

  47. Indeed. And, for anyone wondering what exactly a rite of repentance would look like, permit me to offer the following proposal:

    LEADER: Lord, have mercy.

    CONGREGATION: Lord, have mercy.

    LEADER: Christ, have mercy.

    CONGREGATION: Christ, have mercy.

    LEADER: Lord, have mercy.

    CONGREGATION: Lord, have mercy.

    LEADER: Upon those who have trusted the enemies of Your word:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, have mercy.

    LEADER: Upon those who have feared evils of the body before those of the soul:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, have mercy.

    LEADER: Upon those who have made their bodies profess the lies of the Enemy:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, have mercy.

    LEADER: Upon those who have deprived Your saints of Your Most Precious Body and Blood:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, have mercy.

    LEADER: Upon those who have dishonored the holiest of Your feasts:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, have mercy.

    LEADER: Upon those who, wayward sons of Aaron, have claimed power over the mysteries they dispense:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, have mercy.

    LEADER: Upon those who, by the weakening of their witness, have enabled the victory of evil in the Church and in the world:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, have mercy.

    LEADER: Upon us all, miserable sinners:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, have mercy.

    LEADER: For those deceived out of their rightful joy in human contact:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, hear our prayer.

    LEADER: For those deprived of their loved ones’ company in their last days:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, hear our prayer.

    LEADER: For those who would yet be alive had the spirit of fear not deprived them of aid:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, hear our prayer.

    LEADER: For those whose livelihoods were destroyed by the wanton abolition of custom:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, hear our prayer.

    LEADER: For those whose childhoods were defaced by the imposition of unnatural confines:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, hear our prayer.

    LEADER: For those deprived of faith in Your grace because Your priests have held it cheap:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, hear our prayer.

    LEADER: For those slain legally in utero because Your people went defiled to battle:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, hear our prayer.

    LEADER: For all victims of all evils attendant on the Sevenfold Anathema of 2020:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, hear our prayer.

    LEADER: By Your Incarnation as man:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, deliver us, we pray.

    LEADER: By Your Sacred Passion:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, deliver us, we pray.

    LEADER: By Your holy and venerable wounds:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, deliver us, we pray.

    LEADER: By Your death and resurrection:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, deliver us, we pray.

    LEADER: By Your conquest over sin and death:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, deliver us, we pray.

    LEADER: By the merits of Your saints:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, deliver us, we pray.

    LEADER: By the blood of Your martyrs:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, deliver us, we pray.

    LEADER: By Your return in glory on the last day:

    CONGREGATION: Lord, deliver us, we pray.

    LEADER: Let us pray:

    O Lord, we come before You crippled in heart and soul, from our own sins and from those of our brethren – for the Church, Your immaculate dove, is one, and the ill of one member is the suffering of all. May the prayer and penitence of us few likewise cause healing grace to flow to all the members of Your Body; give Your people courage, humility, and wisdom, that Your Bride, wounded three Lents ago by our cowardice, pride, and folly, may once more stand before the nations radiant in beauty and strength.

    Through Christ our sole and sovereign Lord:

    CONGREGATION: Amen.

    [To be offered publicly and communally in any and all American parishes, not less than once weekly, for three months, accompanied by fasting and almsdeeds at the discretion of the participants. Spread the word.]

  48. “I want to see some real “We should have known better.””

    The only place you’re going to see that is death-bed confessions.

    Couple of data points to add to the pile.

    One: “Unknown Cause Of Death” is the leading cause of death in Alberta Canada. That one I looked up, at the official Alberta gubmint site. “Unknown Cause” did not exist in any appreciable numbers prior to 2019, when 500 some-odd deaths were labeled that way. In 2020 it was ~1,400, in 2021 it was ~3,300, and again in 2022 over 3,300.

    By contrast, “confirmed” Covid deaths were ~1,900 in 2022 and similar in 2021.

    Why this came up is a campaigner for children’s health wasn’t getting answers from people, and buttonholed a hospital administrator. Who of course had -all- the boosters. And who died “suddenly” from “Unknown Cause of Death” two weeks later. There’s video of the talk. https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2023/04/27/when-you-become-the-statistic/

    Two: The Prime Minister of Canada (HONK HONK!!!) is going around these days claiming (HOOOOOOOONK!!!!!) that he -never- (HONKHONKHONKHONK!!!!11!) forced people to get jabbed. Never happened. Nope. Uh uh. That’s just a Conservative talking point from those hateyhatinghaternazi Conservatives.

    In as much as people were not kidnapped off the street and stuck with a needle by the cops, at gunpoint, after being beat and immobilized in chains (that we know of anyway) that statement is technically true for certain cases of the word “forced”. Its all in how you define “is”.

    We all imagined the bouncy castles in February 2022. That never happened, and those were Nazis anyway.

    Also in the news the last little while there is word that Health Canada KNEW in 2021 that the Jabbed carried the same viral load as the UnJabbed, and lied to us about it. And are still frigging well lying, right now.

    So no, Sarah, none of them are going to back down, they’re not going to admit they were wrong, and they ARE going to double/triple/quadruple down for next time. Because there’s going to be a Next Time and probably pretty soon. I’d like to think my tinfoil hat was on too tight, but they already did it once. We watched them do it. They’re still doing it! They just need a newer, bigger, better disease to be afraid of.

    Why else would we be suddenly seeing news articles about American “biolabs” in Ukraine and Sudan? Wouldn’t they want that kept quiet? My tinfoil crinkles at the thought.

  49. I got COVID almost 2 years ago, when I was 62. I’ve always been moderately overweight and probably check a few other boxes which put me at above-average risk. The vaccines were still being rolled out and here in Illinois not everyone was deemed eligible to receive the jab yet, and when I became qualified on April 15 (along with everyone else in the State) I already was showing some symptoms, though I didn’t recognize it as COVID. Neither did the emergency room personnel when I showed up with a splitting headache (then into its third day) and elevated blood pressure. No fever, no cough (yet), but a bit of congestion. I’ve had BP issues before, and the focus was on that. I did mention all of my symptoms, and even suggested that the congestion might possibly warrant a COVID test. Although one Doc came back wearing a face shield I was not given a COVID test during that visit.

    Anyway, my symptoms continued to develop over the next few days, and I did get tested 2 days later. Positive. By then I was hacking pretty good and it really messed up my digestion (lost over 10 pounds before it was over). I recovered at home with prescriptions for Benzonatate and Mucinex.

    Even before I got sick I had discussions with some friends and told them I was going to wait and see what went on with the vaccines, but if I was required to get vaxxed to keep working I would. After recovering from COVID I and knowing how “effective” the vaccines are I am betting on natural immunity.

    I think Trump got very bad advice when he approved Operation Warpspeed, and it was a big mistake to indemnify the pharma industry against liability for adverse effects. But after the election the Democrats did a complete 180 and went from “not gonna take no Trump vaccine” to “everybody get the jab”. The circumstances were very informative.

    The vaccine rollout was delayed until after the election because a quicker rollout might help Trump. As soon as the Dems were positioned to take credit for defeating COVID the vax was going to save us all from COVID. It was central to the Dems that Trump claim no credit. If this resulted in additional deaths they did not care.

    We now know the vaccines have limited effectiveness and a suite of nasty side-effects. But Pfizer, Moderna, and a bunch of important people have made tons of money selling them, along with multiple boosters.

    I think it is likely that the pharma industry misrepresented the effectiveness of the vaccines. They probably suppressed or altered evidence of the worst side effects in order to get a vaccine out as fast as possible and figured that the government couldn’t or wouldn’t come after them later.

    Fauci is a successful lifelong bureaucrat, an administrator. He is a desk doctor. I doubt he has any deep understanding of the medical literature and gets credited on many medical studies because he was central to getting the funding approved. He was pressed into the role of Authority Figure, and then claimed to represent Science itself. He actually represents Bureaucracy and the idea that Policy rules. His job as Authority was to sell Policy.

    1. “it was a big mistake to indemnify the pharma industry against liability for adverse effects.”

      That’s been part of the law for over a decade; so many frivolous lawsuits that ALL the vaccine makers said “we won’t research, develop, or manufacture existing vaccines unless you do.”

      1. The dishonesty here was classifying a “not a vaccine” as a vaccine to fit under the existing law.

      2. 1986 they carved out a seperate section of the civil courts specifically to handle claims involving vaccines, which the federal government then pays for.

        1. Like I said, vaccines have had a special place in the law for a while, provided they actually worked like, you know, vaccines.

    1. Color me unsurprised; nearly every nation in the EU, as well as in the EU as a supranational government, has been in love with censorship for decades (the EU) to centuries. Authoritarianism is in their DNA.

  51. “Only infants and the mentally incompetent could look at locking up the vast majority of the population and think it would have NO effect on the economic well being of this country. ”

    You have succinctly summarized the entire governing body of the United States. With few exceptions – damned few! – that captures the competence of . . . Washington . . . State Houses . . . City Halls.

    Those who passed with the complicity of WHO, NIH, and other bureaucrats can only be mourned – they cannot be resurrected in this domain.

    We must pledge, as the post-Holocaust Jews did, “Never Again!”. If it kills me, and it well may, I will never submit to that kind of treatment by my government again. Why, it’s almost like they were repeating the Tuskeegee experiments but on a wider scale.

  53. Apologies if someone has mentioned this upthread somewhere, but apparently Randi Weingarten is on a media blitz trying to convince everyone that the teacher’s union spent all of 2020 trying to reopen schools as quickly as possible, and it’s all the fault of that meanie Trump that they couldn’t.

    Yeah, even the usual teacher’s union cheerleaders are responding to this one with, “You at least need to give us a plausible lie.”

    1. I sort of keep hoping that a Sign from Above will happen when she proclaims things like, “We tried to keep schools open,” and “Charter schools only help the rich and non-minorities.” (No, I’m not wishing for harm, just … for the clouds to open and a scroll to unroll bearing words sort of along the line of “mene, mene” et cetera. Or for a small lightning bolt to zap the sound system.)

    2. Ah, the wonders of Community Notes. Even shutting down the replies can’t always save you.

  54. Pingback: Sarah Hoyt – “I told you so” « Quotulatiousness

    1. I wonder if a case like this will get the attack lawyers drooling…

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