Kicks To The Teeth

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Years ago, when I already had far more experience of traditional publishing than was good for my mental health, I came across someone talking about how you become an “old pro”.

I no longer remember who it was, but I have a vague idea he was a bestseller, albeit one of those who only made it big purely by accident, after having been midlist for oh… twenty years or so. He was describing his experience, and he said his colleagues who became bestsellers off the get-go didn’t understand the industry. Understanding of the behind-the-scenes mechanics was hard earned language you acquired when the impossible and disastrous happened. And it was experienced and learned as a series of hard kicks to the teeth.

That interview stuck with me, because I had just heard myself — ten years ago, twenty years published, after thirteen years trying to break in every way but the right way — referred to as an old pro and wondering when that happened, because I was a rank beginner the day before.

That stuck with an extra hard vicious twist because he was also older than I. By the time I broke in that kind of accidental best seller was bloody impossible. There were no little bookstores run by brilliant autists who could discover your book and sell it to the public in mass quantities. There were just the big chains, and no one in the big chains read your book (discovering this was one of those kicks. And would take to long to explain how I found out) not even the people responsible for “placing it.” They just listened to the house about the “confidence” the house had and ordered a book or a hundred, dependent on what the house said. And son of a b*tch if the house wasn’t always right…

I don’t even hold it against the houses. In a highly controlled market, you have to have a justification for putting money behind a writer/book. And why would you do that (even if one book sold freakishly well) when they have twenty years of mid list? Sure, if you dove in you’d realize why, but you don’t have the time for that for a mid list author and book. You just scan the numbers, and off it goes to fail like its predecessors.

This level of centralization is a lousy model that brutalizes everyone. For writers it tends to make us stop creating. For publishers, it takes out whatever passion they came into the field with, forces them to lie to creatives, and sullies their souls and sucks them dry. For readers, it produces lousy product that doesn’t meat their needs, and makes them walk away to other genres, or long-ago-published books.

It started to break about ten years ago, with Amazon, and now it’s chaotic, and– I’ll manage it. It’s how I’m broken. Even all the kicks only managed to make me stop writing temporarily, and then it came back. It’s a function of being a very simple tool, made for only one thing: in my case, storytelling.

But this long introduction is just for how I came across that image: kicks in the teeth. It applied to writing in later stage traditional publishing and it applies to us now.

Anyway — kicks to the teeth. No matter your efforts, no matter how much you try, there is another factor that comes out of the blue and smacks you and leaves you reeling and walking around as if something had hit you hard on the mouth. Even after you recover, you’ll never be the same again. Things that are natural to you — like eating — will hurt every time you do it. And other things will just feel wrong. All the time. Forever.

But the same way the burned hand learns best, the kicked mouth teaches. Oh, it teaches. It teaches with precision and pain, and you’ll never forget the lesson. Ever. You won’t be the same after either. Any other pain you’ll shrug off. You’ll become more determined, more ruthless, more — no, not more like what you’re fighting. In a way you become more yourself than ever. It’s just all the little hesitations, all the kindness, all the normal decency you owe to other human beings you care for peel away, and you can’t even remember why you felt them.

Because this is what the left has been doing to anyone who opposes them, with their stomping, their game rigging, their “brilliant” improvised patches, a lot of us are feeling these results as much as I did ten years ago, in writing.

I wonder if they know what they’re setting up. The new rules they’re evoking. The new enemy they’re calling to face them.

Look, yesterday my assistant told me I was basically a nice person and I was gobsmacked. This was in relation to some fraud that probably has been taking place with our insurance accounts, and which has us in a bit of a pickle. Not financial. It’s like this: we have a doctor who refuses to transfer records, and a new doctor who won’t take us up, because it’s continuing care without the transfer. The second is being stupid, but part of the reason we want them is that they’re obsessive like that. The first– it’s unexplainable unless you assume massive gobs of fraud. Or an office so effed up they don’t HAVE records. (In this office, that’s believable, trust me. Part of the reason we’re moving.) The problem being Dan (and I but I to a lesser extent) can’t be without care much longer without serious issues cropping up. Yes, we ARE dealing.

Anyway, she called me nice and I was shocked, because I haven’t thought of myself as that for a long long time. (And I don’t think in this case it is that. I think I’m just gobsmacked –if this IS fraud — at the sheer unmitigated stupidity. Because patients will transfer at some point, right? And I suffer from a very specialized form of dumb, in which I don’t understand stupid that works at that level, okay.)

But long ago and far away, I was raised to be a nice girl. With all the meanings that implies. It never took very well, but I could play it for extended periods of time. And the things that took were things like never being rude unless I was ready to go on the war path. This left me curiously defenseless when people are rude to me, because the back of the brain doesn’t believe it. Particularly when they expect no consequences. Because why would you declare war and not expect return shots?

Anyway there were other things, like not being meaner than I had to be. Always helping people even if I disagreed with them. Always honoring and helping the competent, even if they were in actuality rat finks, etc. etc. etc.

The “nice” I was taught is why the right of Lenin side of the political fight has been losing, worldwide. “Yeah, sure, he’s a communist, but he’s a brilliant musician. Of course I buy his albums.” “Yes, he says things like he wants everyone like me dead, but he’s a great writer, of course I’ll support his career.” “Yes, this series of movies maligns all my values, but they’re a hell of a ride, I’ll take my family to the theater.”

And no, we couldn’t call people names. — I still remember the pearl clutching when I called someone in our field an abbreviation after she called me a racist. Oh, no. So mean. Much evil. We shouldn’t descend to their level! Even worse the pearl clutching for calling Occasional Cortex what she in fact is. So evil, very demeaning. Yes, she’s a commie whore, but we need to give her all dignity, or they won’t treat us right either. (Hint, they don’t.) — We couldn’t ridicule them. Under no circumstances could we hire by political bend as well as by competence. We should allow ourselves to be rolled over and our entire work perverted because look at the credentials of Random Marxist. Ignore that they captured the credentialing process long ago. Because if you undermine the institutions, we’ll lose everything.

That was…. Scrubs hand across face… ten? years ago. Somewhere from fifteen years ago to… Oh, I think the last bits shook off around 2018 or so. Or not. There might still be bits of nice sticking to us, which we’ll only discover when the boot comes out of nowhere and hits our teeth again.

Look, I understand. Particularly the hiring for politics thing. It’s bad cess and a bad road. If you hire for anything other than competence, you over time break everything. Because only if you get very lucky does your second cousin, your friend’s nephew, or your political coreligionary turn out to be brilliant and focused on the job. And the more you do it, the more it takes to draw that lucky card. It’s like all gambling.

But we aren’t given that choice. The left started doing it early in the twentieth century — partially because they confuse agreeing with them with intellectual brilliance — and if only one side does it, the side that doesn’t loses.

And there’s other begs for each one of those. Though at this time, the luck is on our side, simply because to make it in anything when the credentialing in every field and the gatekeeping in all the arts have been captured by the other side, it takes exceptional people. As long as we remember to flip it to “just competence” when we win this. I doubt we will, because we’re human. And we’re walking wounded. But I can hope.

Anyway, look, I came here to be nice. Here being described as this time, this place. I’m a very simple tool. I’m made to tell stories. Sure, my politics will leak into some of the stories. But except for kicks in the teeth at really, really early ages, I probably wouldn’t even understand or pay attention to politics. I’d be too busy telling stories.

And even after I had become aware of, and weary of politics, it probably would only show around the edges of some of my stories.

Heaven knows I hope there is an alternate universe in which I ignore politics and just write silly mysteries and ditsy space opera characters, all held together by the rule of cool and a sense of enjoyment. Oh, I hope.

In this timeline… There have been a lot of kicks in the teeth. Weirdly this means I have more teeth, and they’ve gotten sharper.

I can’t list them all. I remember election fraud going back to 2006 and to me it’s been blatantly obvious since 2012. Kicks in the teeth. And then…. oh, the last four years. The last four bizarre years.

Yes, the bio-engineered virus with research funded by our own sh*theads in government. But also the lock down. The inconsistent, varies with every city lockdown, and no one else seeming to realize if the illness were that horrifying, we’d all be dead. And the chicanery with enforced vaccination. And and and and and and —

Government enforcing censorship of social media. People being debanked. “Weird occurrences” around those of us who won’t shut up.

Kick, kick, kick.

To me the last kick in the teeth was October 7. Not that it happened. If you let your pet savages you’ve been nurturing like deranged piranhas out of their box to do what comes naturally, the results will be horrifying. I mean they do the same sort of thing among themselves all the time, it’s just they expect it and no one hears about it.

But that someone planned and financed that piece of lunacy because they thought it would benefit them. And you know who, precisely, by the way the left flipped on a dime to demand the final solution in a way that would make Hitler proud. (Even while still calling their opposition Hitler.)

The evil, the stupidity, the BLINDNESS. Kick, kick, kick.

They think the kicks have softened us for the kill. You see, they confused the nice with cowardice, with a sense that we were wrong, and therefore wouldn’t fight back.

Oh, they might even be right about some of the older people on our side. Not that they thought they were wrong, but they believed in the Marxist eschatological message and thought that the future was pre-ordained and that it all ended in world communism.

But Reagan and what came out after the USSR changed that. We saw the inept, bumbling evil behind the papier mache, flawless monster. And you can’t undo that. Even the kids not being taught won’t undo it. They’ll stumble on the truth sometime.

The rest of us? We’ve been fighting mad a long time, and only holding back because only monsters and crazed cultists want the world to burn.

We still don’t want the world to burn. And we’re not going to lay down a fire storm. Unless we’re forced. We might be forced.

Israel didn’t want to lay down a fire storm, and they’re still being controlled and careful. But the shrieking harpies of the left don’t understand why Israel no longer cares about “world opinion” and no longer stops on command.

Well, you psychotic bitches of the left, because they’ve done that before, and you kicked them in the teeth, and the last one was warning that the next one will kill them. They won’t stop — I pray they won’t stop — till they cut off the kicking foot.

And those of us who would normally try to moderate the feeling that they should be justified turning Hamass to powder? We don’t feel that way anymore.

The left and the right should look very carefully at this event.

The right because you need to understand what’s happening to you. People who still are nice, much nicer than I, are now saying “I told him/her what I think, and if they stop talking to me, I don’t care anymore.”

“I don’t care anymore.” is the anthem of the nice person who’s been kicked in the teeth enough. And next time? Next time it won’t be just words. And they don’t care anymore.

And the left? The left needs to stop. They just need to stop. Look at what happened there, take a deep breath and realize that while their manufactured “opinion” is demanding that Israel stop reducing an enemy that attacked her with no provocation, and which has yet to surrender, the real opinion in most of the world has turned…. On Hamass.

Most of us who aren’t left realize that this is our battle. The battle for civilization itself. That what happened over there can happen over here. Has been happening over here in small increments. In light kicks to the teeth.

And we know it.

Now, it doesn’t mean the right will go to war, as the IDF has been forced to go to war. But the forces are in motion and are going to be damn hard to stop.

You see, the left is starting to get scared. They have a prophecy that they’d win, and they believed it. And sure, the right seemed to give territory up as a matter of course, like we were pre-defeated.

But …. But particularly since 2020 things haven’t been going according to plan. We didn’t turn on and let the Kenosha Kid hang which they expected and which would have stopped all resistance to their rent-a-savages in Buy Large Mansions. And even the soft left is turning against their open borders insanity and their coddle criminals insanity. And only the very young and very pampered buy the lies about “climate change” (yes, it changes. It changes all the time. And it has mighty little to do with humans, really.)

The right has learned to boycott. And quietly, on the qt, the right has learned not to hire/buy/promote those who hate them. It’s anecdotal, of course, but all of us are seeing it. So are they.

Their credentials are becoming worthless. No one believes authorities. Their attempts at shutting us down are not effective enough, which is why the WEF — the grand babbling heads of their moron prospiracy — is terrified of free speech. The farmers are in revolt against climate maumauing. And they’re making it stick. AND people aren’t hating on the Jews as the left hoped they would after 10/7.

It’s all going sour for them. And they only know one way to continue. Unreasoning attack and aggression has worked for them for so long.

So, listen up, all ye pampered Jades of the left. Stop. Take a deep breath. Think.

The life you safe might be your own.

Because trust me, from this side — and I’m not the biggest hothead on my side, not by a year of Sundays — one more kick in the teeth, and the remaining HUMAN DECENCY flakes away.

You don’t want to create what will come from that kick.

Hell, we don’t want you to create what will come from it. We’d rather fight you on the details and mop you up in every day life, despite how many more lives and wealth that will cost us, until you damned (I’m not swearing. I use the word advisedly) ideology is in the ash heap of history. We’d much rather.

But those kicks–

If you make it so you survive or we do? Common decency will make it so we have to survive. Because in the world you create if you eliminate us (not that you can, truly) no one WILL survive. Not even you. Your poisonous, evil ideas will destroy all mankind. And the fact some of you just quietly cheered at that tells us all we need to know.

If you make it a choice, we will survive.

You will not like this. No one will. We won’t be civilized anymore.

The world will enter a dark turn that will probably take up the rest of my life, and leave it to my grandkids to rebuild.

I beg you, with tears in my eyes, consider you might be wrong. Consider you don’t want to do this.

Because once it starts, we won’t.

The kicked teeth learn best. And you should have seen what you taught us.

271 thoughts on “Kicks To The Teeth”

  1. just a note that you have a federal right to get a copy of your own medical records, so you can ask for them, and then hand carry them to the new doctor

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      1. Might need your lawyer to write up a nice little demand letter. “Just thought I would let you know about case/law/huge-verdict-owowowow…”

        Yes, they get reasonable time to print it all. But they must deliver it.

        Good luck wiht that. Its a pain in the posterior indeed.

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        1. Just a suggestion… Check them *very* closely; your suspicion about fraud may show up, since if it happened it’s almost impossible to scrub compl;etely from the records.

          Of course, that particular med biz may just be arrogant and stupid; it’s hardly unknown.

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        2. If your new office basically put a little note on your stuff that said “She said she asked for them,” and then handed them to the mean nurse….

          Well, I had my obgyn records held hostage. The Army couldn’t manage to get them for four months.

          Then had to swap to a civilian doctor, he looked Peeved when I mentioned the run around, and the cranky nurse was unleashed on the a-hole. (Same office where I was scheduled to be seen at 12:30, and was admitted into the screening room at 7:30. For a five minute appointment.)

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  2. just a note that you have a federal right to get a copy of your own medical records, so you can ask for them, and then hand carry them to the new doctor

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  3. As you’ve said, there are more of us than there are of them, so when we start kicking back it will really hurt them. 🤣🤣

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      2. The kicks are fine if they are to your shoulder; even 5.56 has *some*. Acceptable cost of doing business. :twisted:

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  4. There’s a line at the end of the Skrull arc in Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes where the Skrull Queen wonders how the heroes could have beaten her people. “It was written in the prophecies that we would have the Earth!” she declares. “How can this [defeat] be?!”

    One of the heroines shoots her down (it was only on stun) with two simple words: “Write that.”

    A kick to the teeth is a bad idea. But there are plenty of people who think it’s fine and dandy until they’re the ones getting kicked.

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  5. The Left has poked the Dragon with a stick too many times. Declaring a pogrom and importing criminal cannon fodder is close to the final poke.

    The prayers have been said, the priest has finished the blessing, now the Dragon waits.

    This is the year of the Dragon.

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      1. “it’s a rheostat and not a switch.”

        The endless January 6th “Insurrection” rhetoric and especially the vindictive prosecution and sentencing are making this even more of a real thing. 

        Telling conservatives that their political rallies and marches are illegitimate or illegal. While at the same time excusing real violence during any leftist political activity. The image of a CNN reporter talking in front of a burning background with the “Mostly peaceful protests” text underneath will always haunt me. The blatant insanity of ignoring the violence disturbed me deeply. 

        Suppressing the speech and actions of the regular conservative people is like welding shut the safety valve on a steam boiler. Most of us want to be left alone to live our ordinary lives. When politics intrude on those lives to the point that we stick our heads up and start to make some noise about changing things is a bad time to tell us to shut up and know our place. It is only going to work for so long. When the boiler bursts the results are going to be bad. 

        I doubt it will look like the Civil War although the back and forth between the southern border states and the feds might lead to a Civil War pattern of succession. I fear it will be more like the French revolution or the Northern Ireland “Troubles”. Throw in some shenanigans by Russia, China and Iran while the US is weakening itself. Don’t forget the many European countries in the middle of cultural suicide via simultaneous demographic collapse and massive nonintegrating immigration. The next couple of decades might be hard challenge for western civilization.

         

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        2. I doubt it will look like the Civil War

          Agree. Even the blue enclaves aren’t 100% blue. Just the not DEI infused aren’t visible. Does not matter what level one is looking at, including down to the neighborhoods, how dark someone’s skin is, how much someone’s skin tans, other “distinguishable” physical characteristics, or personal history.

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        3. it’s a switch, and it’s starting to swing toward the on position.

          Back even a rabbit into a corner and see what happens.

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          1. Its a clacker. Move the safety bail. Squeeze hard and twice again to be sure.

            Not a start. A detonation. Propagates a shockwave. Consequential drama ensues at shocking speed.

            So, please lets not. Shockwaves are fun at the range, not so fun in society.

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      2. The safety clip is popped. They are about to see the pin pulled. When that spoon flies, things soon get spicy.

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    1. “Is it therefore infallibly agreeable to the Word of God, all that you say? I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

      –Oliver Cromwell, letter to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland (3 August 1650)

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  7. some people say violence only begats more violence … and they have a point … but mainly because the people doing the violence stop short … although fictional I appreciate the Keyser Soze approach … “he massacres the Hungarian Mafia, their families and even people that owe them money” … in other words he leaves no one left to continue the cycle of violence …

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      1. If violence doesn’t solve it, at some point, you didn’t use enough of it. When the situation calls for it, that is. You don’t use violence to solve for how to make perfect pasta. Violence is for things like existential threats, getting out of Socialism, or threats to your perfect pasta dinner.

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          1. Same. I’d say this is because violence doesn’t solve problems — because what violence does best isn’t solving things, but *ending* them…or starting them. (If I ever get violent with somebody it’ll be because they started it with imminent violence of their own.)

            So if you have to apply violence to a problem that started with violence or includes an imminent threat of it, you had damn well better apply enough to END it, because if you don’t, you’re just starting an even worse one for yourself.

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            1. That’s exactly what Israel is doing. And as long as the Brandon crew doesn’t intervene militarily (which no longer seems to be unthinkable to them) they’ll finish it the way they should have done after the first rocket attacks on civilians.

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    2. THAT approach is the only way to stop Hamas, others like them, and the states like Iran who are backing them. Kill them to the last chicken, and then salt the earth so that at LEAST the next six generations won’t even THINK about sticking their heads out. It’s brutal, yes, it’s awful, very yes…but it’s the only way to get the message through the heads of savages.

      And I do fear we’re heading to a similar reckoning with our own savages, ie, the left here–because they are ignoring all the warning signs, the growling, the flattened ears, etc from the big dog, and the big dog has just about had enough of the abuse and the teasing. (Because it is NOT, whatever they might think, actually a domesticated dog. It might prefer the trappings of such, but strip it all away and leave it with no other options…)

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      1. It isn’t teasing when the abuse happens every single time, and escalates.

        “It was a’asident!”

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        1. Saw a comment on a reddit board yesterday about how a dude’s roommate came home drunk and wanted a fight. When dude wouldn’t give it to him, the drunk roomie kicked dude’s six week old kitten.

          Drunk roomie then spent the next half hour getting his ass beat. Got the fight he wanted, not in the way he wanted it, though…

          The left just keeps on kicking that kitten…

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      2. They want humanity split into two subspecies, Homo elite and Homo domesticus. And it won’t work because humans have *never* been domesticated (we’re more like bears which have taught ourselves to dance, rather than sheep), so they’re in for a rude awakening.

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  8. I am very afraid that TPTB and leftist ilk overall will just not get it and will continue to kick, kick and then they pull back a bleeding stump. 

    I fully hope that I am wrong, but the evidence and current actions sure do point that way. If, heaven forbid, an action like the October insanity in Israel happens here – it will create a response that makes it look like the IDF stayed home. It will also be a very grassroots response and with no overall control – like it has been said, it’s an “off” or “On” switch and I hope to never see “On”. 

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    3. A significant terrorist attack on US Soil especially followed by the leftist whining about racist Anti-Islamic sentiment could be a tipping point. I think a more likely tipping point will involve Trump. Jailing or bankrupting him via the courts with all the smug “News Coverage” it would receive. Keeping him off the ballot in several states during the presidential election could be provoke violence. They won’t stop this effort just because the supreme court stomped on it for the primaries. God forbid Trump being assassinated.  That would almost certainly lead to violence. 

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    4. There’s such a narrative of Muh PerSonAliTea Cult! on the left about the right, that they’re not going to catch on at first that the “no overall control” is a very real thing. It may well cost several very public faces on our side their lives—not even leadership in many cases, just faces associated with the cause whom the enemy think might be The Führer of what their own Kommisars assure them is the Next Reich. And it won’t even be the charicature of “Hydra™” with the mantra about “Cut off one head…” but the simple sort of existential duel of Leinengen And The Ants.

      Except that we are the ants this time.

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  9. I gave up on feeling sorry for the Palestinians quite some years past – after a couple of rather nasty massacres of families. Well, it had been their hard luck to be on the loosing side of a war, but it’s happened to lots of other groups and nations as well.

    But after October 7th. I don’t care. The Israelis can make every square yard of Gaza bounce repeatedly as if it is on a trampoline. I don’t care. I’m certain there are cute winsome children in Gaza, and house-proud women, just as there were in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan … but we could not let either of those places continue as they were. The Israelis can’t continue with Gaza, not when the Hamasniks conduct warfare they way they did on October 7th.

    I. Do. Not. Care.

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    1. FAFO covers it nicely.

      Practice a ruthless and barbaric way of war? Be prepared when the other side says “OK. Game on. To the knife.”

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        1. Yep. Note the one thing those demanding a “humanitarian cease fire” have never called for, yet is the one thing that would actually allow for such’; the immediate absolute and unconditional surrender of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc., and the release of all hostages. Until then, Israel has every right to continue until Hamas and its ilk are completely destroyed. Needless to say, instead of doing so, the Jew-hating cabal at the White House and the agencies are doing air drop of supplies and now plan to open a port in Gaza, and funnel stuff through Hamas loving, Jew-hating UN. It’s as if “death to the Jews” is the official policy of the cabal….oh wait….it pretty much is. The Triumph of the Shrill speech and its imagery was no accident.

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          1. Maybe more of the secular self haters that have been funding 50% of the Left will realize that the O’Biden administration puppet masters considers them “useful idiots” ? One would hope that October 7 would at least shock them, but 150 billion dollars to Iran early didn’t stir a bit of self preservation.

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            1. Given that those secular self-haters haven’t figured this out over the past century (at least)…no, I don’t think they’re going to figure it out. You’d think the secular Jews would have gotten a clue after the Marxists turned on them in Europe and other places, but alas they did not. It seemed like there were some glimmerings after Oct 7–but far too many have turned back around to supporting crap like calls for ceasefire.

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        2. Eh. Perhaps I’m a bit old school. Just wall them up. Nothing in, nothing out.

          Could do it with minefields. Replace as needed. Declare a no-fly zone and enforce it with missiles. Then just wait.

          Wait until there’s no cats or dogs in the streets. Wait a bit more. Then maybe let out the littlest kids. Then wait some more. Eventually, problem solved.

          I know, I know. World wouldn’t put up with it. Shrieking and crying of the professional shriekers. Bah. Got nothin left for ’em. Let them sup on their weapons and slake their thirst for blood on each other. Shoot the last cannibal alive, then clear the area and resettle.

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          1. There’s enough sympathetic morons in the US to cause some collateral damage, so you might have to come up with a policies to handle them and their sponsors with the picnic table cloth scarves.

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          2. That was plan B for Imperial Japan, if someone hadn’t delivered a working Atomic Bomb to Truman.

            It is a millennia-old way to convince hardheads to knock it off. Grim but effective.

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      2. “When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”

        — Golda Meir, 1969

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      3. Carpet bomb them with a Modern New And Improved version of the Tallboy to shatter the tunnels and bring down the buildings. Then a cleansing bath of napalm.

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                1. If Israel thinks nukes are needed to resolve the Hamas purge, the victory trinkets will be of Tehrannite.

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            2. Yeah, it’s really, really close. Even deep nukes placed to cause the surface structures to all fall down without fallout would damage Israeli towns. Too bad – that big deep boomage would pre-frack the Israeli gas fields offshore nicely.

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      1. Same. It probably means I’m a terrible person, but I’ll cheer and raise a glass of bourbon when they finally get sent to hell where they belong.

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        1. Blue Oyster Cult had it so right when they sang about Khoemeni “if he really thinks we are the devil, then let’s send him to hell”. That sentiment applies to the rest of his Jihadist ilk.

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      1. No wonder, actually – I based that character on a couple of military men or veterans that I knew. Who were all quiet, soft-spoken, unassuming men, devoted to their wives and families … but their various war records demonstrated that they were … well, not to be trifled with by an enemy, when it came to combat.

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  10. One of the recent songs I’ve run into has a set of lyrics that translates to something like:

    “In a fallen world, do what you believe is right, because when you die it will be with a smile on your face.
    Besides, even if they tell you all is lost, the future is not written.”

    It’s going to be interesting times. We’re not the only ones feeling it.

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  12. The insane demon eyes gets me. Look at clips of Jenna Griswold from Colorado, claiming that the Supreme Court was wrong to insist that Trump remain on the ballot. Her eyes!

    They’re being driven insane by their failure to complete their nightmare plan. Keep your head on a swivel.

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    1. Yep. Correct me if I’m mistaken, but aren’t these the same hypocrites who shrieked that no state could be allowed to assume responsibilities assigned to the Fed when the border invasion or illegal immigrants were/are the subject, and now think(?) that allegations of insurrection (untried and undemonstrated) are the purview of the individual states? Irony so thick you need an ax to cut it…

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  13. There is a great awakening happening in any number of places. You can see it in the failure of bastions of pop culture like gaming companies, movie and television studios, publishing houses as jobs evaporate and the industry shrinks. People are not only walking away, but they are more and more willing to call things out on their way out the door.

    The one thing you never, never want is for the nice decide that they are no longer going to be nice. The long, hard stare of indifference and turning way are only highlighted by the wailing cries of those demanding that they continue to be paid attention to.

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  14. …we have a doctor who refuses to transfer records… it’s unexplainable unless you assume massive gobs of fraud. Or an office so effed up they don’t HAVE records.

    Erm, not only fraud, but stupid fraud. One of my temp jobs years and years ago was in the call center of a company that did one thing: random spot-checks of doctors’ medical records to ensure insurance compliance. This random check was done annually (and may still be). Not to have the records… that’s just unbelievably stupid.

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    1. I suppose if the office billed for procedures they never did they could not transfer those records over without exposing the fraud. I guess it’d be kind of hard to make up a “second set of books” set of records to transfer years after the fact.

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  15. Anyone can get suckered once. Second helpings of “surprise” bootmouth require willful oblivious.

    Dont be oblivious. Do be porcupine.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. That old meme of men being equated to a simple on/off switch and women to a collection of multiple dials and rheostats is both broadly true, and applicable to the right vs. left issue.

    “Walking away”, I read that and thought “Yup! Me too”. I walk away, not through an inability to argue my point, but because (partly in disbelief that) ‘someone’ just cheerfully and deliberately stepped over a line, a line that (in normal male society) ‘requires’ a ‘more direct’ response, and not because of “cowardice” but the exact opposite, I know just how bad I ‘can’ get if pushed too far. [That they equate “he walked away” to winning when in reality it’s “he walked away rather than gutting you and displaying the remains in an interesting and festive manner”, shows just how delusional they are].

    (poking ‘that’ bear again, I know but …)

    The left thinks/acts/behaves like (stereotypical) women. The right like (stereotypical) men [yes, we know there are a subset of men who don’t. Purely coincidentally I’m sure, the self-same men women of a certain type choose, and throw themselves at, then complain bitterly about them acting in the manner they specifically chose them for].

    The bigger problem, as you say, is that all the organisation and institutions (not to mention norms and values) that evolved as ‘safety valves’, have been completely taken over, co-opted, corrupted or have just been ignored and now operate as entirely partisan (feminised) support structure for the left (justifying and excusing them, whilst attacking dissent). [There are those fences and walls they blithely remove without realising, or even caring, why they exist or were put in place in the first place, again].

    The problem, whilst they ‘appear’ to be “winning”, and it will(has) work(ed) for a while purely on inertia and disbelief (and as parasites, as all marxists are, on the residual effects of something someone else built), is that the pressure in the boiler that is society is rising, and I suspect is now red-lining. I’m almost done with walking away, and suspect many are ahead of me on that curve.

    So, you’re not “nice”, you think/act/behave in a (stereotypical) male manner [please take it as intended, as a complement – ducking and covering. I was once complemented by being called “old-time tough”, because in adversity I simply, and without complaint, carried on with dealing with the issue – when in reality I was seething and complaining, just in my head alone. Outward appearance rarely equates to internal reality, but it does affect how you are viewed/treated. Men whinge and whine as much as women, just not out loud, All. The. Damn. Time lol]. And, like men everywhere, you are subject to that most male of ‘weaknesses’, that men don’t ‘support each other’. Oh practically/physically, you hardly have to ask, but all that ‘icky’ emotional stuff? Yuck! Men assume that if you ‘need’ emotional/intellectual support, you’re somehow ‘lacking’, as such “team left” gangs up and ten, a hundred times as many “not a team, just a group of individuals who might vaguely point in the same rightish direction” leaves its members to ‘seem’ to lose individually. But … even if not involved, the attacks are noted, and “not a team right” is finally beginning to learn, and to support and stand up for each other … sometimes.

    Preaching the sermon back to the choir-mistress but …

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    1. Ah. No, I know I act in a male manner outside private life. Because public life calls for being a “gentleman.” And I was taught to be so, since I always expected to be single and have to support myself alone. It didn’t turn out that way, but there it is.

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      1. I was a woman in a mostly male profession for years. I did my best to be a “ladylike,” one of the boys and it mostly seemed to work.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Yep. That’s basically it. I don’t stop being a woman, but I work within the boundaries set for men in business. When women bring women way of interacting to professional life…. well, there’s a reason I don’t like to work for women.

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          1. I worked in heavy construction safety (basically a mom telling them not to run with scissors, with a huge dose of technical knowledge and a side of behavioral psych). It was an environment where it was polite to leave the toilet seat UP. If you insisted on “women’s rules” they’d laugh you out of the profession.

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          2. But I was always feminine and polite. I have no patience with women who want to be men. This is how God made me, and it would be dishonest not to be myself and suicidal to pretend otherwise.

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        2. woman in a mostly male profession for years. I did my best to be a “ladylike,” one of the boys and it mostly seemed to work.

          Same. The women who chose to be crude (because aren’t men who work in the woods crews “crude”?) didn’t last. OTOH neither did the men who were crude. Not a polite working environment. This was in the ’70s and early ’80s where disruptions were not appreciated. Now were there other things that needed cleaning up? Duh. Smoking not the least of the problems. The crude calendars? Fight with Cute (puppies, kittens, babies). Pictures (until PTB banned them entirely, not my fault) were toned down and went on the shack ceiling, and I didn’t look up. Software industry not a problem. After all these are the people where water cooler gossip gatherings don’t happen regardless.

          Liked by 1 person

    2. ….dude, you need to meet more women.

      In as much as it maps at all, you have it backwards. Women don’t do physical escalation and de-escalation because we cannot take a hit. If it gets physical, we HAVE to go big, go hard, and go to end it. That is why the female of the species is, as described in the poem, more deadly than the male.

      You have to be a male to do the stupid monkey dance with physical threat then step down then “minor” physical assault, then back down, all mixed in with taunts about how someone “Can’t take a whuppin.”

      Maybe quit listening to the media and progressives about what women are like, that’d be a start.

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        1. Of course there’s indirect conflict.

          Which is exactly the opposite of deliberately and publicly crossing a line without expectation of consequence, because the target will just take it.

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      2. The most vicious fight I ever saw was back in high school about 1986. Two girls were doing their best impersonation of feral animals with all the hair-pulling, kicking, and attempted face-gouging with fingernails. They were out for blood.

        There were like 30 people in the vicinity watching (the fight was blocking the main corridor to the cafeteria), and honestly nobody even thought of intervening. I think everybody was in a mixture of fear and awe at the display.

        Eventually the vice-principal and a couple of teachers showed up and pulled them apart and dispersed the crowd.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Watched a girl-fight when I was in high school. Hair pulling, clawing, everything but knives. The principle tried to intervene. The girls stopped, grabbed him, and threw him into a glass-front trophy case, then resumed combat.

          That’s when I fled. I never got close enough to see who it was, and I didn’t care to.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. When I was working with a corrections academy training program one of the ‘lectures’ was about the Special Services team – in prison SWAT if you will. They did the tough cell extractions, cleared rioters out of areas and the like – all of them were big, tough and nasty. The story always told was the toughest, scariest, and most violent cell extraction they ever did was one at the women’s prison. That particular female inmate scared everybody and with good cause. 

            While the “average” guy can physically best the “average woman” in a physical contest… that does not mean she can’t kill you and will if she thinks it’s needed. 

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            1. Just because you physically best someone doesn’t mean you don’t both end up in the morgue.

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            3. And generally in the most appalling way imaginable. There is a *reason* that the few cases of female sadist-killers (such as Madame LaLaurie, or various women who have chosen to target one or two of their children or foster children, and then coerce other kids into “helping”) are some of the most eye-searing acts of depraved evil you will ever see.

              Speaking as an Odd woman who probably acts more like a man in most situations…women are AWFUL when they go bad. And far too many in today’s society have been encouraged and permitted to go bad, and are being egged on.

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              1. :Points at Ham Ass:

                It’s a matter of playing to strengths. If you don’t have raw power to get the job done, you go for something with leverage.

                The good and bad is objective, rather than the tactics. It doesn’t matter if you’re being subtle (poison) or using brute force (a bomb) if you’re trying to slaughter preschoolers.

                Liked by 1 person

            4. Add in that what they have to do in those situations (riot control) is subdual without death and with minimal damage, and you can see why. Sure, in a “this guy is willing to kill me and doesn’t care how much damage he does in the process” way, I’m pretty danged vulnerable as a woman. In a “try to remove/subdue/settle down this woman” situation, there’s a lot more I can do to the person trying to do that than he or they can do to me. Partially just because I am more fragile, so the hold or whatever they would use on a guy is going to have more of an effect on me.

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        2. My brother and his best friend became friends after fighting each other … that never happens with girls.

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          1. In a sense. One idiot was pushing my sister, getting up in her face, screaming that she didn’t dare hit her.

            She knocked said idiot on her butt. Said idiot spent the next few years fawning. It was interesting to watch.

            Just because B is psychologically subservient to A and there’s no bloodshed, doesn’t mean they’re friends.

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          2. Translating between the sexes, women being friends after a physical fight would be something like guys being friends after they stabbed eachother.

            There’s probably cases of it, but it’s really not normal.

            The healthy female social group version is when women do the at most verbal posturing and spitting to figure out where the other stands. That doesn’t “read” as female because it’s also how you deal with situations in business.

            Liked by 1 person

      3. I suspect you are the one who has it backwards.

        Women don’t do de-escalation period (differentiating between the extreme verbal attack and the physical response it rightly engenders [“War is diplomacy by other means”] is an … entirely and exclusively female thing) because they rely on not being the target themselves (whereas every man ‘knows’, in his bones, that push another man too far and all bets are off). Neither do they have ‘any’ limits as to what they will say ‘or’ do, for the self-same reasons.

        [Schroedinger’s women, simultaneously both strong, independent and not just the equal of any man but better, ‘and’ frail, weak, precious souls who must be protected. The wave-form collapses based entirely on the situation, the consequences, and which will benefit the woman most].

        The “stupid monkey dance”, known to the rest of us as ‘consequences’ (only experienced by males, apparently), is why male discourse has always had limits, and the female has not (whilst it ‘may’ be phrased in flowery tones, it will always be more vicious and vituperative, not to mention emotion-laden and fact-free, than any male equivalent).

        It’s very interesting how you disparage the male response, yet fail to even mention the predictable female response, pretence at fear (pretence since they have deliberately forced the reaction) and shock at how ‘anyone’ could be upset with little old them, followed by the predictable tears and demands ‘someone else’ defend them (ask ‘any’ man, who has proven he was right in arguing with a woman, and he’ll tell you he ends up being in the wrong anyway because he’s bad for ‘upsetting her’). One is at least honest, the other manipulative hypocrisy. The fact that ‘most’ women deliberately, intentionally and habitually use it (it’s a stereotype for a reason), and escalate by using rumour and innuendo to ruin reputation and attempt to ‘other’ their victims and separate them from social support, not to mention using ‘other men’ to do the “monkey dance” for them. (They ‘can’ do so because if anyone is driven to the last resort, they cry foul as claimed victims).

        ‘I’ should meet more women?! You act as if you had never met one (other than the imaginary one in the mirror – who is, of course, utterly without flaw).

        Remember the “witch trials”? What no-one ever mentions is that ‘all’ those poor women victims were accused by … other women. Neither do they consider the fact that many of those women accusers will have been getting revenge for years of abuse ‘by’ those “victims” when they were the ones in power.

        I was an ER nurse and I can tell you >90% of all domestic violence (just like divorce) is instigated by … the woman. Why? Because whatever the result (and whilst most minor injuries ‘are’ to women, the vast majority of major injuries and BID brought in dead, are men) whoever caused it, the women is always the victim (even when she kills him). When there are no consequences, there are no limits, and you get more of it.

        The ‘story’ has always been that women are all virtuous and perfect, except we all know they aren’t (any more than men are, and arguably considerably less since they never ever experience those icky consequences that act to limit excesses).

        Maybe stop being a tribal feminist (blindly supporting those with a vagina only because of that irrelevant fact, and ignoring the evidence) and start judging on what they, as individuals, say and do.

        [cue the vituperative attack, followed by a sob story of victimhood]

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          1. Not saying she identifies as one, but if it looks alike a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck …

            You ‘have’ actually read some of her ‘tirades’ against unruly men, right?

            In most things, I not just agree, but admire her opinions, interpretations and knowledge, but when a discussion turns to even vaguely examining, let alone criticising, women … the response is predictable, and all filters get dumped.

            So just what else do you call someone like that?

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              1. I ‘did’ type specifically a “tribal” feminist, not a “political/ideological” one.

                Men will defend others for their opinions beliefs, ideologies, religion, even race, etc., but ‘never’ for simply being a man.

                Women though …

                The stereotype of women ‘b*tching’ about each other, then rounding ‘collectively’ on any man who dares join in is a there for a reason. We’re all ‘tribal’ to one extent or another, but (dare I say) most women are tribal about ‘all’ other women (I’ll just point out – witness the fact that it is ‘other women’ now leaping to ‘her’ defence).

                I do find it amusing(?) that the defence doesn’t rely on refuting my statements, only that they were (unreferenced) strawmen, or joking about throw-away irrelevances (ducks).

                I never stated she was misandrist, merely she will always leap to defend women, even when justifiably criticised or even just questioned, always (and since the responses always include a portion of ‘mere men’ tone or direct statement [see “monkey dance”], I suggest there is a justifiable use of the term feminist too. You don’t need to claim the title if your utterance is the same, verbatim, as those who do).

                But … your house, your rules, I shall refrain from ‘upsetting’ her.

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                1. A lot of the women here are not typical in the sense you mean. I, for one, have never understood, or liked, the “stereotypical female reacitons,” you describe, or the cattiness, or the backstabbing. OTOH, the last time I got backstabbed, it was by a man. (My future beloved gave me excellent advice on resolving that, though he doesn’t remember doing so).

                  I’m me, that’s all. And if I prefer honesty and straightforward dealing, it’s not because I’m “masculine,” I’m me.

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. Men acting like women are the most despicable. I know a hand full.
                    THAT last paragraph. THAT. Must of the gender confusion could be resolved, if people just understood that we’re all individual. And made peace with being themselves.

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                  3. Forgive me, I may be showing either my age, or possibly upbringing/education, but to me you appear (as are the majority of women here) to be simply stating that you are a ‘lady’ (which I might add is obvious). But saying that I would add that those here do (thank God) ‘tend’ towards not being ‘typical’.

                    Codes of behaviour, restraint, consideration, manners are hardly a (or even mostly) male domain. (The old, ancient now it seems, idea of chivalry imposed restrictions on the behaviour of both parties, limiting each sides possible excesses with penalties imposed for breaking them, collectively on behalf of the aggrieved. I, now I am showing my age, almost wish for a return to that balance, since what we have now are the restrictions and penalties for men, but not either for women or those men who simply don’t care).

                    Neither masculine nor feminine approaches/psychology/viewpoint(?) is superior. They are different, complimentary, and the best examples of both have more in common than not.

                    What we have now (unfortunately) is, as Sarah says, despicable men acting like the worst of stereotypical women, whilst women are acting like the worst of stereotypical men. Each ‘thinks’ they are aping the other sex, when in reality they are simply acting … despicably (for whatever reason, mainly i suspect for the licence to simply do as they please).

                    Did I say “I feel old!”

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              1. I don’t know. she also could be an unleaded swallow.
                Look, I’ll admit sometimes she goes overboard in argument, but if she’s man hating it’s news to her husband.

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        2. Women don’t do de-escalation period 

          Well, that does a better job of proving your judgement is absolutely worthless than anything another person could possibly say.

          There is failure to notice things, and then there is routinely dumping literally thousands of years of observation because it doesn’t match the just-so story you happen to have chosen.

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          1. “thousands of years of observation“, citation, reference or at least an example? Blanket statements of imaginary occurrences don’t refute, so persuade (or is that too much like de-escalating?).

            Deflection, distraction, submission and, the favourite, attacking using a completely irrelevant factor are what women do, none is de-escalating (want an example? Read this very discussion thread impartially … if you even can).

            I realise mere monkey-like males aren’t allowed an opinion, but I suggest most men (and most women when not in earshot of the sisterhood) would agree unreservedly . Provide irrefutable evidence in an argument and the response (as with those of the left) is to deny, deflect and then focus on irrelevant minutia whilst ignoring the meat of an argument.

            I fully realise that nothing I can ever say will persuade you that your ‘bigotry’ and ‘sexism’ (yes, those words were chosen advisedly) are so overt they should be embarrassing but … Feel I am wrong? Feel I have overstepped the mark? Take your own ‘pronouncements’ and swap the sexes and re-read them, then tell me just that.

            The sisterhood may have been mobilised in your defence, but one thing I noticed following our last discussion. Almost everything I said, so vehemently attacked by you, was then repeated, as their own opinions in following posts and articles (I’m not so narcissistic as to think my opinions influenced them, they already held them, just kept silent). think about that, that even your colleagues and friends stay silent on certain topics around you.

            I served for 32 years. I yomped from Teal to Mount Kent in 82. I was in The Det for 8 years. Then served the rest (technically) in 22 RWW (in reality in The Incr… I mean E Sqdrn.). I have seen, and (often to my shame) done things that would make you soil yourself. You have no idea just how little your opinion actually means to me (and a sizeable number of people better by far than either you or me trust my judgement), so savour your ‘sad little victory’ (yet again) for what it is really worth, nothing. You may claim not to be a feminist, but your words show you to be the very poster girl of that mean-girl clique (and all here know it, even if they apparently dare not say it).

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            1. “thousands of years of observation“, citation, reference or at least an example?

              Why?

              You threw a tizzy fit when you, by your own assertion, deliberately made a statement that you knew would get pushback.

              You did not rationally engage at either point, prefering to stick to flat assertions.

              And now, when your assertions have been answered at the level of support you offered, you demand that others provide better support than you have?

              Why bother? You, in objective fact, behave as you project.

              You plead ignorance to the tradition, across a wide range of human cultures, of having women act as diplomats to lower the degree of escilation.

              At this point, you’re deliberately igorant, and proud of the fact.

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              1. I tried not to respond (as so many others here do, for what I now know are good reasons), I truly did, but after reading that last “of having women act as diplomats to lower the degree of escalation” I think I may have hurt myself laughing.

                Have you read ‘any’ history (or how about more recent or even current events)? You obviously haven’t met, or dealt with any women diplomats, that’s for sure.

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                1. :pats on head:
                  Don’t worry, Jerven. Clearly people have been handling your messes for you for your life thus far, they’re unlikely to stop now. I’m sure you’ll be able to do the “loudly and bravely move in to the attack, throw yourself on the couch having a fainting fit when someone responds, scream names and hope they suddenly start trusting your judgement” tactic and have it work someplace.

                  If you someday figure out that being a funny mirror version of a rabid feminist isn’t a great thing, the facts will still be there.

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              2. My spouse commented about his posts:

                Look at that!

                “Manspaining” and a new variation of the “Navy Seal/Internet Tough Guy” Copypasta for the collection.

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                  1. I can imagine:

                    “Oh, look. Mr Tough Guy seems to have fallen down a ladder and is asleep on the deck. Dropped a expensive spanner wrench, too. I guess we will have to requisition a new expert on everything… maybe another E4…”

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                    1. Oh dear Larry! There’s white-knighting and there’s … sucking up (did I really upset you so much in politely pointing out your misinterpretation of my intent in a previous response?).

                      As to “mansplaining”, that’s a topic that has been done-to-death, and as an man I’d have expected somewhat better of you.

                      As to the rest, my name and handle have been openly published on the couple of occasions I was gazetted. Feel free to check.

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            2. Your fascination with “monkey dance” as a male insult also betrays a complete lack of knowledge of anything in the 2A / self defense / criminology world.

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              1. Ian

                How it may, or may not be used in such contexts is irrelevant. How it was being used here was as an insult (to dismiss and disparage).

                Now reverse the sexes, or use the equivalent in the opposite direction, and I’d suggest even you would agree it would automatically be seen as offensive, unacceptable, if not actionable. Right?

                ‘We’ rightly point out the fact that so much of the lefts “anti-racist” rhetoric is actually, not only thinly disguised but blatantly obvious racism itself.

                Similarly, so much of the “we just want to be equal” female rhetoric ‘is’ nothing more than blatant sexism, no?

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                1. How it may, or may not be used in such contexts is irrelevant. How it was being used here was as an insult (to dismiss and disparage).

                  No, it really wasn’t. it was being used in its normal sense.

                  Now reverse the sexes, or use the equivalent in the opposite direction, and I’d suggest even you would agree it would automatically be seen as offensive, unacceptable, if not actionable. Right?

                  Nope.

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                    1. Dude…. Ian doesn’t lie. Doesn’t know how to.
                      And to get him into this sort of argument is… kind of hard.
                      Let it go. You’re upsetting the people who don’t get into these things.
                      Just Let.it.go.

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        1. Once someone has made it clear that reasonable expectation of fatal to me is on the table, it’s rather stupid to do anything else.

          Even if, were I a foot taller and male, it wouldn’t be much of an issue.

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      5. Foxfier,

        You are absolutely correct. I always thought it was absolute insanity to put female police officers on street duty. If a 5′ 8″, 160 lb. woman gets in a physical fight with an average-sized male, she’s going to get beaten more than nine times out of ten.

        Given that, for a policewoman, this means she’s going to get her firearm taken away and quite possibly be raped and killed into the bargain, she would be crazy NOT to draw that pistol and use it while she still can. So, in a society where the leftist idiots are complaining about police brutality, it makes no sense whatsoever to have even MORE police who MUST use their firearm fast and early in any situation that looks like it might be a physical confrontation.

        The leftists love to put people in situations where they almost certainly cannot succeed, and then to complain about how things are not fair. Again, it’s insanity.

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        1. You are absolutely correct. I always thought it was absolute insanity to put female police officers on street duty. If a 5′ 8″, 160 lb. woman gets in a physical fight with an average-sized male, she’s going to get beaten more than nine times out of ten

          She’s also going to get chosen as the target almost always– I’ve watched guys go at my Valkyrie cousin (sports star and farm girl) while ignoring the five foot two guy next to her. (computer guy)

          Criminals tend to be sexist, news at 11!

          You can actually induce this “the fight is started, I should finish it ASAP because I’m screwed no matter what happens” reaction, by routinely throwing any cop who is attacked under the bus. Seattle has horrible police shooting stats because once the guy pulls a knife, the cop knows that not killing him is risking his life for the same outcome as making it hope that evening.

          Liked by 1 person

        2. I agree, a woman’s only hope in such a situation is never stop full on aggression, not something police can always afford to do. In 2001, while I was deployed to the opening months of Enduring Freedom, my wife (22 years old, 134 lb, 5’8″) charged out one night to save a girl from being beaten to death by her drunk boyfriend in the parking lot. By the time the police arrived my wife was stabbed, the girlfriend was unconscious, and the man had to be taken away in an ambulance for a crushed larynx and several broken bones. {To add worst to it, my wife had been sleeping nude so only threw on a flannel shirt when she rushed out of our apartment. So the police arrived to find her nude beating the hell out of the guy stabbing her}. My point being, a woman can hold her own against a bigger man but only by raw aggression and superior skill. It is just not fair to believe that women law enforcement will always have those circumstances.

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  17. Kicks to the teeth. Oh hey, I know that one.

    So last week, my daughter’s troop went to a new number. For the second time in eighteen months. Because of… well, last time it was the equivalent of distancing ourselves from toxic people. This time? Lack of paperwork on someone else’s part.

    I wish I were kidding. See, a troop can’t just change a number. It requires, basically, chartering as a new troop, with all the records shenanigans you might expect. The council softened the blow for us this time because they knew it wasn’t our fault, but the upshot is that someone didn’t file when they were supposed to file and therefore we didn’t exist, and after several months of trying to get them to just send the danged stuff in, we decided to change over to someone who would actually, you know, get it done. And the group that originally didn’t file the paperwork didn’t file the letter allowing us to keep the number. So, new number.

    And what this means is… well… all of our numbered t-shirts, neckerchiefs, hats, etc. have to be replaced. All of our GEAR does not belong to us and can be demanded back. (We have means of getting the stuff we need to camp, but oy.) All of the money in the troop accounts that does not belong to the individual scouts goes back.

    But… it was a choice between that and not having a troop at all, because they were dragging their feet.

    So, yeah. Kicks to the teeth.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Ouch.

      Never considered the problem the former troop we were chartered with. So, for reasons, the troops charter changed hands. Willingly on everyone’s part. Then it was learned that the troop had a wilderness fund, that had been building. The problem? Small non-profit groups can only have $X amount in all combined accounts. It is a big deal. Since the troop belongs to the charter, that money counts against that organization, even though it is the troops money. Between the two, and another sponsored organization, the charter organization was put in jeopardy. Some rules came down that was (understandably) not appreciated by the troop (adults). They lost autonomy over their money. They were not happy about that fact. I get both point of views. Here the troop is building up funds to take scouts to special camps (one in Hawaii from Oregon, Philmont, Seabase, etc.) and they now have to get permission from others than the troop committee. But, this limit, is a huge deal with the state. The same limit applies to the family historical graveyard, non-profit.

      Saw something similar with the forestry club. Club had a bit of money from wood cuts (even in the ’70s it was $75/chord Maple, $100/chord Oak, not stacked, and before the year was done, the club would deliver easily 5 to 10 chord of each a month, for the cost of fuel, and lunch and pizza for participants). Used for different projects (and parties at the club cabin in the school forest). Made the mistake of filing a financial plan on the spring fling (competition) with the university student club organization. “How are you paying for this?” was asked. “No problem. We have the money.” “You have How Much Money?!?!?” Blink. Don’t know how all shook out, other than, last time those “rules” were followed (went into the unofficial club notes on “don’t do that”). Also no way that the funds were going to be transferred to the student commons custody as banker as recommended (luckily not required, and the club advisors backed the club).

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      1. When I did scouting back in the Permian Period, the local troop was associated with a church and apparently it was easier to resolve any financial situation back then.

        But the two of church deacons were a lawyer and a banker respectively. So as long as the troop and the adult leadership busted butt on volunteer work and good citizenship, the books didn’t seem to be a problem. Then again the IRS had bigger fish to fry back then.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. as long as the troop and the adult leadership busted butt on volunteer work and good citizenship, the books didn’t seem to be a problem.

          Not the problem. Problem is the charter takes their responsibility serious. Problem is the charter is a target demographic of the state IRS. The problem is the charter did not know they were skirting a possible problem (I can’t emphasize enough how huge of a problem). The total funds the charter was responsible for, between the troop, crew, GSA, 4H, and the charters own accounts, were too dang close, especially close to property tax time but before paying that out. They couldn’t monitor if they didn’t know what was going on. Thus the new rules. Which were not appreciated. Like I wrote before, I get it from both point of views.

          Like

  18. A couple of thoughts on the larger point.

    I have long considered the left (and, really, the overculture in general) to be organized sociopathy. And one of the traits of successful sociopaths is that they are manipulative. They have to be. And, as Jordan Peterson points out at one point in this utterly harrowing interview, one tactic of manipulators is to poke someone and keep poking until they provoke a reaction, and then use the reaction to denounce the victim as the kind of person who does that “all the time”. Also, to create situations where, no matter how the victim reacts, they are in the wrong.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts-lN22nzIg

    And I think the confusion and insane claims contradicting observable reality and the general melt-down-iness of the left is because that has stopped working. Culture-wide. Anywhere they do not have total, insidious control, the left’s tactics are blowing up in their faces.

    The hilariously over the top charges against Trump, and the trials that are not trials at all, such as the New York case where the judge declared Trump guilty before the trial began, and all the rest, were *supposed* to turn Nervous Nelly conservatives against Bad Orange Man because of the taint of criminality. Instead, Trump is heading toward an electoral landslide, helped in part by numbers among blacks and hispanics that are historic for a Republican. Sure, the firehose of nonsense is obvious, but it’s been obvious before, and worked. It’s not working any more.

    I won’t go into it, but for those who know, just look at how the whole WorldCon/Hugo situation is playing out. That one has the added spice of lefties getting played by commies, and wondering what the hell hit them.

    Hollywood is looking at utter destruction because the money has stopped rolling in. (And no, Dune Part 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine are not enough to save the industry.) There is some complication because the suits bought into “streaming is the future” without ever stopping to run the numbers and figure out how “the future” was supposed to, you know, be profitable. But mostly it’s because the insane leftists got control and fired everyone who knew how to tell a damn story. (It’s a wonder they haven’t tried “me too” charges against Chris Nolan and Denis Villeneuve; if or when they do, the charges will land with a resounding splat.) They have nothing waiting in the wings, they have no idea how to make something people want to see, and they are addicted to massive tentpole budgets because of all the status anxiety in town. If your latest project doesn’t have at least a half a billion dollar budget, are you really Anybody any more? And so, losing money hand over fist, facing challenges to their power in the board room, they declare their devotion to “creativity” while also trying to blame the audience for being too stupid to know what’s good for them. And that’s just working like a charm, ain’t it? (In fairness, “the audience is stupid” has been the creed of Hollywood executives since, at the latest, the 1980s.)

    Bud Light and its parent company are trying to buy their audience back. They could recover, probably, for the most part, if they took ownership of their fuckup and apologized. Instead, they’re paying conservative influencers to support them, and it’s going over like a lead balloon.

    The video game industry is going through an upheaval. Gamers have identified a consulting firm that injects wokeness into games where it doesn’t belong, and are failing to give money to any of those games. And the consulting company is whingeing how unfair it is that people are pointing out the games they have worked on. And nobody cares.

    But here’s the thing. I don’t think they can stop. It’s not that I don’t think that they will, it’s that I don’t think they can. The actual sociopaths and psychopaths and narcissists literally cannot understand any other way of operating in reality. And the kids who bought into their indoctrination either have never encountered, even in theory, another way of interacting with people, or were convinced by their indoctrination that any other way is “stupid” and “for losers”. (I’m fair to certain that most kids coming out of the indoctrination factories have not bought into what they were being force fed.)

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    1. Also note the screams about the pedophile, “non-binary spokesperson,” Frito-Lay hired to represent them in Spain. F-L has already fired him, but the damage has probably been done. When your spokesperson has old messages saying how much he/she/it hates rape victims and wants to assault young girls….

      Liked by 2 people

      1. The whole “pedophile” hysteria scares me a bit, because while those in power on the left do seem to be protecting/enabling some of the real scum, the hysterics on both sides have been anxious for years now to define “pedophile” as “any attraction to an individual under 25”, to make smearing and disposing of their enemies just oh so easy.

        Mixing that with the left’s obsessive assault on any and all beauty, and things could get ugly even as they’re losing, simply because certain socon Karens would be too tempted to take advantage as opportunity presents itself.

        Like

        1. Here in the UK, there was a rash of accusations, culminating in the smearing of Saville (a weirdo for sure, , name a 70s DJ or TV personality who wasn’t, but amazingly they could only ‘prove it’ after his death. Read the Anna Racoon archives, a lawyer now sadly deceased, who actually went to the school involved, knew most of the accusers never did, and knew, provably it was all a lie. She campaigned for years in his defence, and was smeared herself for the attempt).

          If you look at the ‘timing’ though, it becomes clear as to why them, there and then. The whole Rotherham (and every other one of a dozen cities) obscenity had just ‘come out’ and they needed (desperately) to prove it wasn’t just that certain demographic, so they accused anyone and everyone they could.

          So? Perhaps the reason they ‘expanded the definition’ was to dilute the offence felt when the true paedophiles (in their midst) were revealed (Just like they did with the ‘rape’ definition).

          Just like the whole “Epstein Island” thing, choosing to trumpet and display 17 and 18 year old girls who chose to be prostitutes (hardly, unfortunately, unusual) – “legal” in almost every jurisdiction (including, I believe, where it occurred). As ’embarrassing’ as it is, my first thought was always, if they admit this, what are they actually hiding.

          It’s (“There is no Pravda in Izvestia and there is no Izvestia in Pravda”) not what they say, it’s what they don’t say is important.

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          1. Usage of the terms “true paedophiles” and “‘rape’ definition'” sounds like weasel words for excusing sexual abuse and pimps.

            Ages 11 to 12 isn’t the same as ages 17 and 18. And if Epstein Island was just a “thing” and a minor “embarrassment” there wouldn’t be as much cover up and fuss.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. I understand (and agree), but how do ‘you’ differentiate between the real criminal obscenity and the massively expanded woke definition? I’m not saying such (17 and 18 year olds being ‘used’ by much older rich/powerful “people”) is even vaguely acceptable, but such is still considerably different than 11 and 12.

              I (at least intended, if I failed I apologise) to indicate that ‘what has been aired and admitted’ is there precisely to attempt to obscure the true extent of the crimes.

              I (again believe) I said the self-same thing. If ‘this’ is all there was, then ‘they’ wouldn’t be so desperate to cover it all up.

              Look what the expanded/muddled woke definition of rape did. It lumped genuine violently traumatised victims with a mass of date-regret and revenge-for-not-calling-me types, Result? The true victims became almost invisible (and were doubted even then because so many others using the same word were obvious frauds) multiplying their injuries. And, perhaps their real aim (since they don’t care one way or another about anyone else) it hid their ‘real’ rapists in a mass of wrongly accused men (hoping, perhaps, to be viewed the same way)

              I fear the same is being done here (and the extent to which they are going would indicate it what they are hiding is … nuclear).

              As a Marine I had to help ‘clear up’ the shattered wrecks of women and children so assaulted (and way too many “remains” of those that were then hacked to death, impaled or nailed to ‘display’ them – you don’t want ‘my’ nightmares!). As a nurse I have cared for similar in “civilised” western cities. You won’t find mealy-mouthed excuses and justifications from me!!! (and, with all due respect, in the real world if anyone even suggested such I’d rip their f*cking head off and p*ss down their neck).

              Like

    2. “Instead, they’re paying conservative influencers to support them, and it’s going over like a lead balloon.”

      Same thing with Doritos. Their issue wasn’t as much that they hired this turkey, it’s their claim that they didn’t know about any of this, when a bunch of internet sleuths tracked it down in 2 DAYS. It’s glaringly obvious they are lying.

      Liked by 2 people

    3. There was a recent ‘expose’ by an independent journalist/blogger about the finances of Fani Willis.

      The ‘gist’ of the discussion (re: ghost donors etc.) was that ‘they’ all do it (laundering campaign donations into a personal slush-fund), and it was suggested that that was the real reason Nicky Haley continued in her campaign (gathering a nest-egg for her late personal enjoyment).

      Point? I wonder just how much of the budgets of those movies and companies development/advertising budgets finds its way unobtrusively into numbered offshore accounts. They then won’t really care if they run the studios into the ground, as long as they get to milk sufficient largesse before it happens.

      Just a thought.

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      1. Yeah, I saw her interview with Viva Frei. She was mostly policing Republican swamp creatures up to that point.

        As for the studios… “Hollywood accounting” has been a thing since at least the 1980s, and probably since the demise of the studio system in the early 1960s.

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      2. There’s about 40+ trillion sitting in off shore accounts. Not all of it comes from Mitt Romney, the SPLC or drug kingpins….

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      3. Pretty well-known. For example, it was noted that the “crowdfunding the recount to catch Trump’s fraud” effort funded by Jill Stein pulled in quite a bit more money than Stein actually spent. What happened to that excess money?

        Hint: It wasn’t refunded.

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          1. The Arizona audit wasn’t criminalized, and turned out some *extremely* suspicious results. But the results were downplayed, and the focus kept on the recount portion of the audit (which found a very slight increase in votes for Biden). The DoJ did issue a number of threats over the audit beforehand, though.

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        2. “Salaries”

          “Consultant fees”

          various “expenses”

          Most of those get paid to folks also in the game, who then cycle back teh cut to the first, directly or through yet another cutout.

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    4. If Trump manages to overcome the fraud this time, he’ll become the first president to pardon himself on day one. The left will, predictably, crow about how that proves he was a criminal all along, when what it actually proves will be that they were never going to stop unless someone made them stop.

      Liked by 2 people

      2. They will never let him take office, even if they have to murder him. The Democrats/left are that insane, and if they end up resorting to that means to keep him out of office, they will blame their political opponents. They have no intention of peacefully surrendering power ever again. They are that power hungry and delusional and they believe their own BS.

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        1. I will *happily* go back to working at the local grocery store if I lose my job in fedgov because someone decided to gut 98% of it all. (I actually do my job, and do a good job of it–most of us lower level folks do–and the real issue is management and above…but. I think the only way to fix it is to purge it pretty much to the bone.)

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Pretty much. Managers exist for a reason, as it’s difficult to coordinate a large number of low levels without the management. But the people in management are almost certainly self-selecting, and therefore expanding the number of people like them within the management.

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      4. Robin, there’s already been at least one case of Trump commuting someone’s sentence and the DOJ is already trying to prosecute him again. What makes you think they won’t ignore Trump’s pardoning himself?

        https://reason.com/2023/04/06/trump-commuted-his-sentence-now-the-justice-department-is-going-to-prosecute-him-again/

        “In a move that defies historical precedent, the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden is using a legal loophole to reprosecute Esformes’ case—raising grave questions about double jeopardy, the absolute power of the clemency process, and the weaponization of the criminal legal system against politically expedient targets. “

        This is why there WILL be bloodshed; the Left won’t be stopped by anything ELSE.

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          1. They aren’t even trying to hide it anymore, as they continually use their Reichstag Fire Redux to call their opponents “literal Nazis” who must be stopped to “save democracy”, thereby in their feeble minds justifying the use of all the tactics every totalitarian regime in history has used to destroy dissent and silence opponents, including outright murder. The Democratic Party cares about only one thing, their will to power, and they intend to grab and keep that power by any means necessary. The only things that are stopping it as they are as stupid as they are power hungry and an armed citizenry.

            Liked by 1 person

      5. Long standing SCOTUS precedent is that acceptance of a -pardon- is an admission of guilt.

        Trump won’t pardon himself day one. I doubt he would ever do it. He -might- do so on his last day in office. -might-, but i doubt. Note that he did not do so last time. And he had every reason to expect Lawfare then.

        Trump doesn’t think he is wrong. He has a huge ego. I believe he would rather be jailed as a martyr than slink as a pardoned, thus admitted, felon.

        Trump’s opponents are making a fanatic of him. This may have consequences. Dire ones.

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    5. They can’t. Take it from someone who grew up under a narcissist and a psychopath. <em>They cannot stop.</em>

      They must manipulate. They must prove they’re Better Than You. They must force you to submit, for only your pain makes them feel alive. They haven’t won until someone is broken and weeping on the floor – and they <em>must win.</em> At all costs.

      Walk away when you can. If you can’t… realize they will <em>destroy you</em> rather than admit they don’t have power over you. And they don’t much care if they have to destroy everything around them in the process. Someone else will pay for it. Someone always does.

      Liked by 2 people

    6. The firehose of nonsense basically stopped working when people realized the victims of the left were people like us. People by and large are not going to feel sorry for the Koch brothers when the left comes after them. People take an entirely different view about a 17-year-old boy defending himself against pedophiles.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. And the crap they’re pulling on Trump has now made it so people ARE going to take exception when the left comes after people like the Koch brothers now. The left has made it clear that if you dare to use money and power to defy them, they’ll come after you even harder.

        I’m wondering when the day will come when the UK is going to be dumb enough to try and arrest, say, JK Rowling. And what will happen then.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. That might be fast approaching. Ace had a bit up today that mentioned she’s been reported to the police for “mis-gendering” someone.

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          1. Even worse, someone in the Portland Soviet Republic just got convicted in an Oregon state court for “misgendering” someone. Democrats are already prosecuting thought crime in the USA, and getting leftist jurors to give them convictions in the US version of Soviet show trials.

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  19. The left is always most dangerous when they are losing, and they are losing big time. There is no way out for them. Don’t do it leftoids, the next kick will be your last, we will burn your cities down to the ground and let the rats gnaw off your feet. Your choice, choose well.

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  20. When our son was in college he needed some medical records for a surgery he had when he was 12 (2001, on his birthday). First two problems were surmountable 1) he was over 18, 2) he was out of town for college. Just took a letter allowing me to pick up the records. Getting the records, OTOH, were a PIA. Because they were pediatric records, not digitalized, now no longer a patient (although still in the same extended system), the records had been moved off site. The surgery? He was out, but no cutting. He’d taken a hardball to the orbital socket at baseball practice. Bad timing between him and the coach (he missed catching the ball). (Oh, the coach? Dad.) Surgery was to pull the eye out of the broken orbital socket and add a thin plate, since orbital socket does not mend, to keep the eye from falling back in the blown out hole (what the scans showed). Actually the plate was not needed. Very luckily did not blow out the lower socket plate, just cracked it. They eye was holding the crack open. Pull out the eye, the crack closed, and then healed. But that was not obvious on the scan. Something he needed to participate in required that verification.

    Now days? How can they not have medical records? Heck I can pull mine up on my computer through the patient portal. How far the records go back?

    1. Office visit summaries back to 2019
    2. Test results, and hospital back to 2010

    I doubt I could get anything physical any further back. Any pediatric would have to come off of mom’s and my notes. (Which illnesses, when, etc.) 100% off of faulty memories.

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    1. At least in Texas, pediatricians have to keep all records until the patient turns 21, then they can be discarded. Most docs just put them in storage, then send out word as best they can before they destroy a batch.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. That is what happened with son’s records. In fact they’d just been moved into intermediate storage. It was finding, retrieving, and getting the records to son (not the hard part) in the timely manner that son needed them. I could work on the emergency schedule, getting the medical records people to realize that “Yes, my emergency constitutes your emergency”, was something different (and yes, I 100% understood their POV, and? 😜) We were blindsided by the PTB would require the official records. The description wasn’t enough? Given who it was. Nope. It wasn’t like he was on medication because of the incident. He wasn’t on any medication. It was the answer to the question “Have had any surgeries.” Yes. Description. Also answered yes to “ever taken cortisone”, when he was 20 months because of reaction to medication. They didn’t ask for those records. Sigh.

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    2. I ran into that last week. Several weeks ago, I fell when trying to step over a low berm of plowed snow that had frozen solid. Misstepped, and fell on the frozen gravel drive. Fell on my left hip/butt, then I rolled and stopped the fall with my right knee. The same one that needed tendons reattached 3 years ago.

      My left buttock/hip area had an impressive bruise for three weeks (and is still tender, maybe 6 weeks after the fun), but the right knee keeps putting out “Something’s Wrong” signals. Xray showed nothing, so an MRI was ordered. Fine. Until the pre-screen phonecall.

      They wanted a list of surgical procedures, those with implants. I have a small chunk of wire from a bunion procedure circa 2019. No problem) In 1991, I had ear surgery and (as I was told) a titanium implant was used. (Had three(!) procedures in the left ear, with the first two failing after a year each. Third time, non metallic implant, and working (for values–nerve damage) 30 years later.)

      The interviewer freaked at the titanium implant. “We need to know the make and model of the implant.” Yeah, like that was given to me–seems that never happened in the early 90s. “But it was titanium! Nonmagnetic!” sez me. “No can do” sez them.

      Looked it up. The clinic had been Borged by the regional hospital shortly before I left California, and the youngish doctor left medicine a few years after the third round in my left ear. (Cause and effect? Wouldn’t be surprised. Not sure why I didn’t squawk after the first failure… Nor the second, but it did work.) Said clinic seems gone. The old building belongs to another medical group, and the regional Borg-med complex is now huge.

      I had tried to get some 1998 records back in 2006 and they were archived in some warehouse. Somewhere. No enthusiasm on their part to find them, and they wanted details it would be a challenge to unearth. It was going to be easier to find the Ark of the Covenant, but in that case, I worked around the problem. This time, no luck. I don’t have the date of service, either. Sigh.

      The kicker: Back in the mid 1980s, some outfit made stapes prostheses with 400 series stainless steel. Implants are supposed to be made from non-magnetic material, which isn’t the case for 400 series. One unfortunate person had the bad implant and an MRI. The literature is silent as to the consequences for the patient, but the lots (about 1200 units made) were recalled in 1987. The last known use of that implant was in 1989. (Things that make you go “Hmmm”) The kick in the teeth? About 200 of the implants were never recovered, though 60 people got those implants and were notified to stay away from MRIs.

      One up from the bottom line: There’s an incredibly slender chance that I got the wrong implant in 1991, despite what the doctor said. (Though her track record raises eyebrows…) But that slender chance is non-zero, and the odds of me finding the surgery records (and record retention laws for medical says it’s something like 7-10 years for adults) is lower.

      The real bottom line: At 7:30 this morning, I’m getting a CT scan. Had that when my tendons were severed in that fiasco 3 years ago, and the orthopedic surgeon wasn’t thrilled that the MRI wasn’t used due to lack of staff. (Covidiocy issues, plus Saturday afternoon) OTOH, it was already clear what had gone wrong. So, the CT scan might tell something. There’s ultrasound, too. Not sure how well that would work in a knee.

      If I stay in the Comfy Chair(tm) most of the day and take acetaminophen, it’s tolerable, but dammit, I want to walk properly again. (I’m hoping it’s just a bad bruise on the bone, maybe treatable with a steroid shot.)

      Postscript: The CT scan is busy! They offered me a 6:30AM, 7:30AM and 5:00PM appointments for today. (5PM doesn’t work for reasons). The next slot is 3 weeks away. So, drive to town in the dark. Somehow, that’s easier than driving home in the dark–turns are easier to find.

      Like

      1. So, drive to town in the dark. Somehow, that’s easier than driving home in the dark–turns are easier to find.

        Ouch. With the construction we ran into in K-Falls? The drive was bad enough in the middle of the day, granted, low cloud ceiling and pouring sheet of rain. The only reason we could follow where we needed to go was, hubby had driven the route before multiple times, both of us were paying attention, and we were trusting the GPS as to which lane we needed to be in. The lane lines were not distinguishable.

        Sorry about your knee.

        Hubby has a picture of his implants (hips). More for if/ever he has to go through airline security scanners (sheriff department scanner didn’t trigger). Don’t know if *he has specific information about the materials, other than it was a porous material (for bone to bond to, socket plate at the top, and where it was inserted into the lower thigh bone) and serial numbers used. His outcomes (both hips) has been fantastic. Just has certain positions he can’t position his leg (or the hip joint pops out of the socket plate).

        BIL just had a knee replaced, again. Don’t know the specifics. Aware of old implants being bad from the get go. Cousin had hip replacements in the ’80s or ’90s, that have failed frequently; do not know the specifics.

        ((*)) Rather, do we have a medical files with the information, somewhere. If we do, it is some place “safe” (translation: Damn if I know where it is).

        Like

        1. Information on the implants should be part of the Doc’s documentation, and with MRI people being kind of twitchy, it’s probably A Good Thing to have.

          The CT tech said it would take a week to get any results. Whether they’re useful will have to be seen.

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  21. I learned how to manage people from the worst manager I ever had to work with. I learned about upper administration from a horrible college president. The horrible warnings are instructive when they are small-scale and localized. When they are your own government and major institutions? Oooooh boy.

    Like

  22. Totally unrelated. Good news for me.

    My latest liver scan was shockingly better than last year. Like “how is this even happening?”

    Got a raise and bonus.

    Two big/good in a week. Must mean the drunken Martians on spring break are about to drop a space-whale turd on me.

    (grin)

    Like

  23. Speaking of kicks to the teeth. This was in a Senate hearing today.

    https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2024/03/07/east-palestine-train-explosion-unnecessary-ntsb-chair-n2393708

    This was from CBS. Let that sink in. Not even the Enemedia could hide this one.

    “Experts from the company that made the vinyl chloride inside those tank cars, Oxy Vinyls, were telling contractors hired by Norfolk Southern railroad that they believed that no dangerous chemical reaction was happening, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said. But Oxy Vinyls was left out of the command center.

    “They informed them that polymerization, they believed polymerization was not occurring, and there was no justification to do a vent and burn,” Homendy said. “There was another option: let it cool down.”

    However, that information was never relayed to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and the first responders in charge, she said.”

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Maybe my tinfoil hat is wrapped a bit too tight, but given that the enemedia (I’m stealing that term, btw) has been reporting on every single little screwup that Norfolk Southern has made since East Palestine… who wants Norfolk Southern to go down, and why?

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      1. Enemedia….Enemadia

        ToMayToe ToMahToh

        CenTOOri CenTAHHHHHrrrri

        Lets call the whole thing off….

        …

        I use “presstitutes”

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  24. Light em up Sarah. You are the best.

    Sweetness and light on the outside.

    Cast iron and cinders where it gets them.

    I’m begging you with tears in my eyes

    Don’t change a thing.

    Liked by 1 person

  25. I’ve previously mentioned the Steam curator “Sweet Baby, Inc. Detected”. This particular curator now has the 6th highest number of subscriptions on Steam.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. For providing a quality service that the customers actually *want.*

      I do not think this will be the end of it, however. There will always be anti-civilizational goblins. The envy and greed the grows in the dark corners of the human heart is not so easily stamped out.

      But it is a good sign nonetheless. I will take it.

      Like

      2. A Steam Curator is a volunteer who posts short, quick reviews of games on Steam. The reviews are generally no longer than a paragraph, and have either a “Recommended” or “Not Recommended” rating. Anyone can become a Curator, though getting a large number of subscribers can be difficult.

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    3. “The right has learned to boycott. And quietly, on the qt, the right has learned not to hire/buy/promote those who hate them. It’s anecdotal, of course, but all of us are seeing it. So are they.”

      I was going to go with the SBI exposure as the third item type after boycotts and don’t-hires/buys/promotes – the internet-fueled crowdsourced exposure of the various schemes and “Milord, I have a cunning plan” things the left is pursuing. It’s surprising them over and over again, that the peasants are not only revolting, they are thus with way more accurate intel than they “should” have.

      ”Not Fair!” they cry. “You should not know that! You’re Cheating!”

      Yup. If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.

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  26. And according to X, pro-Palestinian protesters are blocking Biden’s motorcade to the Capitol….

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    2. Isn’t this blocking an official proceeding, by preventing the President from getting to the House Chambers to give the required State of the Union address an insurrection according to the Democrats own logic?  Needless to say, don’t count on any of the Jew-hating Hamas lovers to be arrested much less held without charge for three years in solitary in the D.C. gulag.

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      1. What? Like the <del>terrorists</del> peaceful protesters torching parts of Portland, Chicago, etc., were ever held accountable.

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    3. Bwahahahaha!!! The more pain those racist pieces of shit cause that thieving traitor, the better. I hope they feed on each other until they die.

      Like

    4. Reports right now are that at least some of the pro-Hamas protestors that are planning on showing up for the Oscars this weekend are going to try and shut the whole thing down.

      Keep in mind that about a month ago, there were two separate incidents that involved groups of these protestors blocking traffic in critical areas in LA County (one on a freeway in Downtown LA, the other just outside LAX). So yes, they are stupid enough to shoot themselves in the foot by trying to do that.

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    5. The “Palestinian” protestors with very pale pasty complexions, the occasional Amazon-procured keffiyeh, and signs saying “the working class….”

      ….

      Riiiiiiiiiiiight!

      ….

      Its Auntie-Pah!

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  27. I saw this very apropos quote over at OldNFO’s blog earlier today: “All middle-class citizens of education have a common belief that the tendencies towards centralization and paternalism must be halted and reversed.” – Dwight Eisenhower, July 1949

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  28. Preach it! Yes, I’ve learned to recognize that the occasional communist has talent (frequently used in a sadistic, evil way, but sometimes even producing things of value).

    Dalton Trumbo is one I use as an example. He wrote the screenplays for Spartacus and Lonely are the Brave, two excellent movies. He was also a vile, ruthless Communist who worked hard to destroy Hollywood, and blatantly propagandized for the Soviet Union, even when they conspired with the Nazis to invade and destroy Poland and took the opportunity to attack a completely innocent Finland, then switched sides completely when the Nazis attacked the USSR .

    I was a wild beast as a child, throwing angry tantrums at the slightest deviation from how I thought the world should treat me (like the greatest human being to walk the earth, of course). Then Catholic school taught me religion, and I slipped into “turn the other cheek”. Eventually I grew to understand to not take insults and attempts to destroy my life, my career, or my family, lightly. I wish I could have the gift of discernment that my wife had to recognize irretrievably evil people at a glance, know the difference between them and lost souls, and ruthlessly slice the former to ribbons while gently comforting and bringing the latter to the light.

    Now, I at least quietly but firmly stand up and insist on what is right, no matter how “polite” it would be to zip my lips and sit on my hands.

    This is why I pay no heed to my Eastern Orthodox pastor who wants to recognize that Israelis can be scum who treat Palestinian Christians like dirt and make no distinction between them and Islamic evil-doers who just want to kill and rape. I’ve known Israelis who can be racist and arrogant, but that’s a far cry from nihilistic, ‘set the world on fire and dance’ vile terrorists.

    That’s also why I voted for a hypocritical, phony, adulterous slime for Senator even though his campaign was widely promoted only by his stupid, treasonous, perjuring evil opponent because said Democrat thought said Republican would be easier to defeat than another Democrat.

    Yes, the elections are rigged, and in California, the Republican Party has laid down and thrown dirt on their own grave, but I still voted, and I still write.

    “I still live!” as John Carter said.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Dalton Trumbo is one I use as an example. He wrote the screenplays for Spartacus and Lonely are the Brave, two excellent movies. He was also a vile, ruthless Communist who worked hard to destroy Hollywood[….]

      So glad that someone else knows Trumbo for what he was, a deeply talented monster.

      You did leave out the ironic fact that he proudly got anti-communist writers blacklisted in Hollywood, years before he himself got blacklisted for being a commie and never stopped bitching about how he was persecuted and how awful the blacklist was.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. There’s certainly a lot more to say about Trumbo, who was a truly vile, but talented, villain. In God’s irony, Trumbo and his band of Hollywood Communists are responsible for Ronald Reagan’s awakening to the evil threat that Communism posed, when Reagan was president of the Screen Actors’ Guild.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. And in fairness, even one of the Ten recanted, director Edward Dmytryk. Who may not have been as good a director as Trumbo was a writer, but made some damn fine movies just the same.

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  29. This is the sort of thing that I’m honestly scared of.

    That our opponents are going to decide to take that one last kick. Probably by trying to steal the election again and doing it in a way that is so obvious that the media is lying through their teeth.

    (My second one last kick? A proper “summer of rage.” And the third and possibly worst last kick? Something happening to Trump before the election.)

    And they can’t understand that we’re taking the kicks because we understand what happens when the pin is pulled on Mr. Grenade.

    A lot of people that I’m talking to are making the same kind of noises, Great Aunt. And that scares me.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. You missed one…

      Trump is declared the winner after the final tallies (i.e. before the end of the year), and the “Defenders of Democracy” move to overthrow the election (take your pick on which of the many different methods available they use).

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I’d like to think that they aren’t that stupid, but considering how much anger is bubbling under the surface that they can’t or won’t see, I’m not going to be surprised if they do try that.

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        1. There’s been active suggestions by some on the left (no one anywhere near the levers of power, I hope) that the military should step in if Trump wins. Some of them definitely *are* that stupid.

          Liked by 1 person

            1. Yes, and no. The actual event itself could likely be done with a small group of carefully vetted troops.

              But after that…

              Hoo boy…

              Liked by 1 person

            2. Well, none of them said “Boo” to Milley openly saying HE wouldn’t follow orders and would run any of them past the Chicoms, so…..

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      2. Does anyone else remember what I recall sounding like expectation-setting back in 2020 pre-election day about the fiery but arsonful protests that were expected to inevitably break out after a potential DJT win? I know I read about Antifa and BLM chat groups organizing where they were going to peacefully burn, loot, and murder first.

        So yeah, totally believable that things could get all “peaceful but with dead bodies and widespread combustion” if Team Brandon loses.

        Remember the Marxian cultists keep thinking the NEXT time they manage a spark, they will have built the tinderbox just right with just enough gasoline to get their Revolution to light off, finally, and put them in charge as is their just reward. They likely are hoping the way more than 10 million “migrants” they brought in will do the trick, “This Time For Sure!”

        Liked by 1 person

  31. Sarah, you are a nice person.

    When you are allowed to be. Or can find a way to be. Which is most of the time, at least around us.

    Like

    2. and, this is pretty strictly behavior, and nothing to do with blood.

      If it was blood, that and the consequences thereof would have been in evidence many years back.

      Young kids are inherently a bit barbaric, because of not having fully internalized the behaviors of a civilized society.

      Many of our academics have carefully learned behaviors and magical thinking that make them barbarians and savages.

      I’m gonna see what happens.

      Liked by 1 person

  33. Did anyone watch the SoTU last night? I’m hearing (through alternative sources) that Biden did a lot of yelling, and eventually slurring. And a snippet of the response is airing in which the young Republican congresswoman sounds like she’s delivering an overly dramatic reading.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I did not, but I gather they arrested a gold star father (of one of the 13 who was killed in the Afghanistan disaster) for heckling.

      Someone (an R politician, I think–I haven’t had the time today to read up on all of it) pointed out that they LITERALLY just walked past Jamaal Bowman, who committed a felony by pulling a fire alarm to disrupt a vote–and he’s sitting there smug and free while a grieving father who shouted rude things during SOTU sits in jail. But of course, there is no double standard, right?

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    2. No. Couldn’t pay me enough to watch Biden give the SoTU. What little I’ve caught in replays, he’s deep into the belligerent part of alzheimers.

      Like

    3. I swear they had Biden hopped up on drugs last night. Heavy ones. How long will the recovery take? I’m thinking 3-4 days minimum before the Pretendent can appear in public again.

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      1. They most definitely did. I’ve heard that as the evening wore on, he started slurring more and more. And even one of the carefully hand-picked soundbites that the local TV news was showing today had him stumbling over his words.

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  34. I think they mostly realize that if they play it -that- hardcore, then the result will be their own dates with destiny.

    Ever consider what the heirs of a martyred billionaire might do with the inherited funds, or their own considerable wealth? It would make one heck of a movie script. “One billion US Dollars in Gold, open contract, to whomever nails up the most Red Leftroid VIPs on crosses, to extinction, by noon of December 31st. Escrowed with (unsavory org) and fully funded. Oh, and 10 million USD in Gold each to the top ten runners up. Have fun!”

    heh. One might clean up on the pay-per-view rights.

    If a nice guy like -me- can think of something hideous like that, what will come from 80 million Trumpers? His actual kin? Populist-leaning heads of state elsewhere?

    They had best hope for him to “Live long, and prosper”, because absolutely no accident or Force Majeure will -ever- be believed.

    Live long and prosper, Mr. Trump. Stick around a long time, to live to see the good fruit of the good tree you planted. We do -not- need the alternative.

    Liked by 1 person

        1. Potential “Kinetics”? Probably no more than 3 million, total, on all sides, who will actually -so- something more than glorified bitching, actual deliberate and planned lethal acts and/or felonious destructive ones.

          But those 1% are of absurd potential violence. And like any other fissile, under the right conditions they trigger others, and the reaction runs away.

          Liked by 1 person

            1. Most people will just gripe, no matter how offended or frustrated. A small but significant minority will engage in unstructured, pointless, low level chickenshit WTF misbehavior, -maybe- beyond minor sabotage, vandalism, or graffiti. Even if a smaller subset rise to riot, arson, or homicide, it will be to no structured purpose, no net effect, thus pointless and ultimately futile.

              Only about 1% will truly engage in effective purposeful high-level misconduct. Purpose here is something beyond “annoyed!” or “so there!”.

              I am referring to folks like those who “have a list”, have the willingness and ability to action it, and there are -functional- reasons for the acts based in reality. Its manipulative. It is intended to, and actually does, change opposition behavior or circumstance.

              Chess, poker, or calvinball, those 1% have goals beyond rage expression and achieve them.

              The 2020 “riots” are illustrative. A -tiny- handful of hardcores stimulated widespread rioting that scared the crap out of much larger organized armed folks, and resulted in changed behavior, largely a -constraint- of law enforcement, thus furthering the effectiveness of that core group. They were not prepared for their success, or the sheer incompetence of their opponents, thus they ran out of steam before things avalanches.

              The 1% of 1% both willing and able, with plans and realistic goals, who actuall -do-, are the Revolution.

              Few can sustain success better than failure. Folks get much more practice dealing with “fail”.

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              1. “The 2020 “riots” are illustrative. A -tiny- handful of hardcores stimulated widespread rioting that scared the crap out of much larger organized armed folks, and resulted in changed behavior, largely a -constraint- of law enforcement, thus furthering the effectiveness of that core group. “

                And then, having achieved their objective, were withdrawn. You assume failure while your example doesn’t supply proof either way.

                Meanwhile, if there were any “organized armed folks” visible, their side can target them, along with any future attempts. Our side is encouraged to stay disunited by chants of “glowy”.

                One is reminded of the delight ascribed to Our Father Below by Screwtape over both materialists and magicians.

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                1. Are you trying to provoke shooting? Or only see that as the only hope? I certainly hope not. Hinting, blackpilling, oh why dont you see…. You keep making statements that seem to go to “lets you and him fight (with guns)”.

                  Or misreading it? lol.

                  The current disgrntledness of the USA isn’t a shooting problem. Not even close. If it actually becomes one, it will be really, absolfuckinglutely obvious. No one will need to suggest it or ask “is it boog yet?”. The participants will not be posting on an open forum, or any thing else online. No balloon will go up, here.

                  So no, we are not -there-. Lots of game left to play in this election drama. And its ballot, soap, and jury box time.

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                  1. He’s been doing this for years at this point.

                    At least five years since when I pointed out that no, Federal Employees are not lockstep zombies, and gave examples, and he told me that my fed friends were going to kill me.

                    He’s since moved on to doing the same stick with military members, and no amount of evidence will get through to him, in no small part because he is choosing to ignore it. He has point blank stated that he doesn’t like including enough details for people to go look up the stuff he gives as examples because I keep doing the research and showing facts and/or evidences that don’t fit his conclusion.

                    Liked by 1 person

                  2. I don’t see how we avoid it given the visible and increasingly open corruption of our legal system, election system, etc. And now you have people openly saying that if by some miracle Trump DOES win, it’s perfectly acceptable to refuse to carry out his policies, and lie to him about it.

                    https://www.bizpacreview.com/2024/03/10/deep-state-sedition-obamas-top-spook-says-intel-agencies-could-withhold-info-from-trump-1444002

                    And it won’t be “let’s you and him fight.” We’ll all be in it regardless unless we kiss the chains.

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                    1. I will add that I am not alone in these thoughts. Sarah mentioned this one at Instapundit.

                      Looking at her other entries for today, I will say that her lead in to the next entry is my only response to Ms Foxfier.

                      “And the FBI knows it, too. If they had an ounce of self-respect they wouldn’t lend themselves to these schemes. Hey, Feebs, your oath wasn’t to Biden, but to the Constitution. What are you doing?”

                      A chunk of the problem is that we’ve grown accustomed to looking the other way at people who accepted positions of increased power and authority, such as government or medicine, exercising the authority while ignoring the responsibility contained in the oath they took to gain them.

                      And it is that mass of time servers keeping the machinery functioning that frees up the truly dedicated cadre to act. I’ve cited many examples that show the phenomenon, whether Ms Foxfier will accept them or not.

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                    2. If someone genuinely believes this is now inevitably shooting war, and instead posts online “hey, Boog!”

                      That would be kinda dumb.

                      The nineteen sixties were much more upheaval, and no boog. There was that -epic- idiocy in the eighteen sixties, granted. But we got over that.

                      Its not a shooting war. Its not inevitably a shooting war. Lots of options and lots of opportunity to resolve our differences.

                      Losers quit. Don’t quit.

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      3. Well I am sure no one would turn down a pardon that reads “The bearer has done this deed for the betterment of the republic.” Right?

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    2. “Ever consider what the heirs of a martyred billionaire might do with the inherited funds, or their own considerable wealth?”

      You mean the wealth that New York State is confiscating as we speak? One reason they set those ridiculously low valuations, including on properties outside NY, is to make sure their cronies can pick up the properties at low enough prices that the proceeds won’t cover the fines, etc.

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      1. Its just a chunk. Half a billion out of several billions.

        How many top-tier mercs would one billion USD buy?

        He has rich kin, rich friends, rich allies, and rich supporters.

        They cannot defeat him with that fine. Its not big enough. Did you catch that an ally backed his bond for the libel case?

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  35. I’m naturally nice, but I’ve learned over the years. I am now Prisoner’s Dilemma Tit-for-Tat.

    I’ll start nice, but if you go off the rails, I’ll follow you as far off the tracks as you want to go.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I have limits in how far I will go to tit-for-tat.

      Some is scruple, but much of it is less scruple and more that I often have a golden path of retreat, and a place where I can avoid annoying people.

      There are a lot of jerks that I can avoid engaging with, and thus have no need to make any choice in how I choose to treat them.

      Now, I cannot promise being able to match the higher end of proportionate.

      It is possible that it might be stupid to truly corner me, and leave me nowhere to retreat. I do not know that for sure.

      However, there are a great many people that I have found it profitable to try to avoid unnecessarily annoying.

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