This Is Not The End

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

This is not the end. This is not the end of the beginning, much less the beginning of the end.

I have two questions: First, was that verdict so unexpected? That’s kind of like everyone being surprised by fraud in 2020 after the Potemkin campaign of Joe the Zombie. If the fraud weren’t baked in, they’d have nominated someone else. And in this case, if the verdict weren’t a foregone conclusion, they’d have tried to make the trial more plausible.

Second: are you buying the leftist narrative again? Have you forgotten that Donald Trump is our instrument? Our battering ram. Our sledge hammer. Our screaming defiance in the face of the screaming bastards who think they can put us in the 15 minute gulags, take away our ability to drive freely, and make us eat the bugs? Yes, Trump is also a human being, and we can feel for what they’re doing to him all because he — stomp stomp — had the nerve to win in 2016 when it was “her turn.” But he is not our leader, or the embodiment of our great cause. He’s our instrument. If they cut him down, we’ll find someone twice as brash, twice as loud and twice as determined to get up their noses. And to destroy their grimy tentacles in the corridors of power. In fact to destroy the corridors and the power, and bring the power back to as small as possible, as local as people and as residing in we the people as possible.

No, it’s not going to be easy. It can’t be easy when they have ensconced themselves in every place with power, every official association, every political sinecure. On the other hand, it won’t be as hard as you imagine, because the left ain’t very bright, and they certainly don’t know us.

There are no guarantees. I believe that their attempts at scaring us and controlling us are going to explode in their faces, metaphorically speaking, just like all their insane attempts to scare us with yet another ‘pandemic’ have. In fact just as the original lockdowns have.

So don’t be despondent. Neither be you stupid. I don’t know what they want us to do, but it’s likely to be something crazy, since they think we are quite different than we are. So don’t do anything crazy.

Keep calm, and keep annoying them.

Oh, and keep your clothes and weapons where you will find them in the dark.

You got this. We got this. We’ve barely started fighting. Keep it up.

368 thoughts on “This Is Not The End”

    1. they are almost Arabic in their mindset. Because they have not yet been utterly destroyed, they believe that the power to do so is lacking, not that the power is restrained by morality.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I don’t think it’s morality, at least not in the sense of exercising restraint due to civility. I think it’s more a case of continuing to believe, deep down, that they’re not beyond redemption. I also believe it’s a delusion that any mortal has the ability to redeem them; the rot is too deep and too well-entrenched. Redeeming a Mengele, a Pol Pot or an Idi Amin is beyond us; the best we can do is remove them from the gene pool.

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        1. That’s why it’s not on us – the only thing we must do is preach Christ and him crucified. It is in God’s hands to redeem. If there is repentance and change of heart, then haleluya, another soul brought into the fold. If not, then there is double condemnation, and the final consequence of that is in the Lord’s almighty hands.

          Liked by 1 person

      1. You sound a lot like Ray Epps, in service to his federal masters, exhorting people to storm the capital before slinking away never to be seen again in conservative circles.

        Liked by 1 person

            1. PS Any idea why I get “likes” on my comments via email, and the email updates I get give me the option to “like” a comment, but there is no “like” option here on the page?

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            2. I know. And I appreciate the warning. Because sometimes, yeah, she glows. But this is just everyone’s tempers are high. And we’re all waiting for the next shoe.

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  2. Make them do it.

    Give them no more default victories. Make them employ every last dirty trick, rigged process, blatant cheat, all of it!

    Make them destroy the last vestiges of the sham they used to hide what they are. Leave no doubt to any but the most blind–or most corrupt.

    Because the Devil WILL turn around on them. And then they will have no hiding place.

    As was noted elsewhere, yesterday was the feast of St. Joan of Arc, martyred by a weak and corrupt king to please a foreign power.

    And most of all, be ready for what comes next…whatever it may be.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. I expected and predicted the guilty verdict but was surprised at how deeply it hurt me. Like someone had died.
    It’s not even about Trump to me. I had felt like this somewhat, to a lesser degree, observing other political show trials – Gen Flynn’s persecution, frex.
    But this is like watching the guillotine fall on Lady Justice.

    God have mercy on us, deliver us from all evil, and lead us to everlasting Life.

    Liked by 2 people

    2. More or less.
      I still had hope in the intrinsic goodness of my countrymen. That at least one member of the jury would stand up for Justice, and save us from the abyss.

      That hope has been dashed. The stakes have been declared. No quarter. To the knife. To the hilt.
      May God have mercy on us.

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      1. We do not have a family lawyer. There is a reason for that. Enough said. I am so disappointed in the token software developer. How to convict when nothing, absolutely nothing made sense? Nothing. Not at any level. How? That is reason enough for at least one hold out. Others have mentioned that the profession leans left. I know of more than a few who do not, including myself. Guess PTB have bodies buried on every single member of the jury. Even rigged though it was, so disappointed.

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        1. “Guess PTB have bodies buried on every single member of the jury. “

          Not needed, when every member of the jury knows they will be doxxed and targeted for everything from bureaucratic harassment up through actual mob violence.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Assumes the participants were unwilling.

            No evidence of that. None. I assume they were willing accomplices.

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            1. Where would you expect to see such evidence?

              Serious question. Most people don’t have recording devices activated 24/7.

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              1. -No evidence- they were unwilling participants.

                They presumed Trump guilty of “other crimes”. To reach the verdict they delivered. They had to -presume- Trump guilty of unindicted federal crimes.

                There is -zero- evidence that anyone said “Hey, even kids in grade school know better.”

                That is now the standard. Presume the enemy guilty.

                Or do you intend to be a “principled loser” like the squishies?

                Nope. They want to play that game? They get what they get.

                Willing participants. All twelve. Unless they prove otherwise.

                No more nice.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. “That is now the standard. Presume the enemy guilty.”

                  I can do that, with a clear conscience. What goes around comes around.

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          2. THIS

            Mr. Trump visibly failed to protect those who stick their neck out for him when he was POTUS.

            Honor to those who still do so, for honor’s sake, but no shame to anyone who did not.

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    3. I had some faint hope that sanity would prevail, but — face it, this is New York. Sanity got the hell out years ago and hasn’t so much as visited since then.

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  4. You are right, Miss Sarah. They didn’t like their new judge rules they initially foisted on the Senate. Next they won’t like the new rules of justice. But between now and then is a lot of “physical therapy”.

    They don’t understand us and never will. So we just need to remember to be Americans.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. “If I’m not me, who am I. And If I’m somebody else, why do I look like me?”

      “I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam.”

      “That’s all I can stands, I can stands no more.”

      Popeye, ‘Popeye The Sailor Man’

      I think we’re getting closer to that point.

      Yes, that’s the verdict I expected. And yes, it still hurts. What this is really doing is (further) showing the extent of the corruption in New York State government and courts. I’m actually hoping for a SCOTUS case against the clearly un-constitutional way NYS as a whole, and this particular judge and prosecution by-passed the requirement of a unanimous decision of guilt.

      Congratulations New York! You’ve succeeded in convicting a ham sandwich!

      Liked by 1 person

        1. Or, it’s misdirection by certain con/libs on the court to deny hearing the case.

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        2. Yeah, I was glad to see that. A lot of people criticize the NRA as being ineffectual at defending 2nd Amendment rights; but the reality is they are the target of choice by the Statists trying to disarm everyone, leaving other gun organizations to carry the fight from cover. And as has been said for years in the American Rifleman editorials, they also right to defend the 1st Amendment just as hard as they do the 2nd.

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          1. It doesn’t help that Wayne LaPierre and his cronies have been looting the coffers for years, giving the leftist prosecutors plenty of ammunition with which to attack.

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  6. The problem is that Biden’s Dept of Just Us will forbid the Secret Service from standing guard at whatever gulag they force President-in-Exile Donald Trump into, and a Soros-paid assassin will assassinate him.

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      1. Ain’t saying nuthin’ expect I hope to Heaven they don’t pull such a stupid act. But I don’t have a lot of hope with Mr. Dementia drooling on the Resolute Desk.

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  7.  “But he is not our leader, or the embodiment of our great cause. He’s our instrument. If they cut him down, we’ll find someone twice as brash, twice as loud and twice as determined to get up their noses. “

    If that’s true, he or she will have to come from an unexpected corner. I don’t see any of our current leaders having the will or ability to do it. Heck, some have already said respect the process. Nope, I don’t respect the process. This was illegal from the beginning.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Did anyone here think, in 2016, that Trump was our instrument? I figured that he was simply a louder McCain – mid-right talk on the campaign trail, center-left as soon as he got into office.

      No, I don’t know who – any more than I had any idea in 2016.

      Liked by 2 people

      3. I did. Though it was mostly to try to bring the GOP to heel, or possibly to a pile of ashes, because of their constant perfidy. I don’t think I understood yet just how bad it all was.

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      4. In 2016, I didn’t know what I thought going into the election. I voted for Trump. The next morning I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was pleasantly surprised to find he won.

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      5. Going to repeat what I said wrote in 2016:

        “Trump is a crony capitalist, Democrat *who is not Hillary and has no ties to that cabal*

        “He is not the man on the white horse, but he might be truthful about truly being a USAian like us”

        “Either way if he’s as bad as you think, or as great as you imagine, he will be a one-off because the system is set up to cope with Trumps”

        To my utter astonishment he turned out to be an honest crook: “Make the deal – elect me as a Republican – and I will do my best to LARP as a conservative”. He kept the deal.

        And thanks to the stupidest self-iwn in the history of politics, I’ll be voting for him in 2024.

        #WriteHisName

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Sorry. Got my WP blocks scrambled.

          “Democrat slut who is not Hillary.

          He has no links to the Beltway cabal.”

          And some other stuff that I back-spaced.

          WPDE

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  8. Yes. All this. He is our instrument. We’ll find another if they cut him down. And when we’re finished liberating our country, we’ll carve his face into Mount Rushmore.

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  10. The ONLY thing that surprised me about the verdict was it took them four years(maybe more? I dunno, the last few years have been one big blur) to finally convict him on something. And it took a blatant kangaroo court with a judge “instructing” the jury that they didn’t actually need to think he’s guilty to convict him *nudge* *nudge* *wink* wink* in order to do it.

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    1. Does anyone know what the actual law was that Donald Trump supposedly violated? Because even reading through all those charges, at most we are talking about a bookkeeping error, not a crime. And like the Loan case he was convicted on, this wasn’t actual law, but an OPINION by heavily biased and corrupt judges and prosecutors.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. The way the jury was instructed, there is no way to know the actual underlying “crime” that was supposedly concealed unless you were in the jury room.

        And I’m betting these jurors will not be out there telling and selling their exclusive inside stories any time soon.

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        1. Whatever “crime” it was purported to be, he was not convicted of it, and therefore the convictions of ancillary crimes (which, even if correct, are misdemeanors in themselves, and beyone the statute of limitations) are null and void. Let’s see how the USSC handles it.

          4th box, waiting…

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      2. As best as I’ve been able to determine…

        New York State has a law making it illegal to use illegal means to influence an election. The claim is that Trump violated Federal laws about violating the election by listing the payment to Stormy Daniels as a “legal fee” instead of an “NDA payment to convince a slut to shut up”. This is possibly a misdemeanor under federal law (note that the Feds decided this didn’t warrant taking to court). New York State’s law relies on the idea that Trump violated Federal law, which then violates New York State law, and is a felony.

        i think that was actually a bit off, but that’s the basic gist of it.

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        1. In other words, since Trump never committed a federal crime, NYS has no grounds to charge him with a crime, much less a trial and conviction.

          I SO want to see Bragg and Merchan lose their jobs, and be sent to Riker’s.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. No, Trump was never charged. That doesn’t mean that a crime wasn’t committed. Part of the jury instructions were to determine whether Trump broke the federal law. If he did, then he was guilty of violating the state law. However, the judge did not require the jury to agree on how Trump had broken the Federal law since the jury was actually deliberating over the New York law. The jurors – according to the judge – only needed to agree that a law had been broken.

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            1. Of course, the FEC already said that no federal law was broken. Which is why Merchan forbid having an election expert testify to that effect. What a farce.

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            2. However, a State empaneled jury cannot determine whether a Federal law was broken. (Note that if this were so, a State could bring charges against every illegal they catch, and convict them under Federal immigration law.)

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              1. No, the state jury didn’t convict under Federal law. They found that he violated a state law, and the basis of that state law violation was a Federal law violation. But they did not convict him of breaking the Federal law.

                So it’s not like a state jury finding someone guilty of illegal immigration. A comparison might be a state law that banned illegal aliens from using state welfare services. As part of a conviction, a jury would need to determine whether the suspect was in the country illegally (which is a Federal law). But being in the country illegally would not be the state charge.

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                1. Does it matter all that much, exactly how they twisted the pretzel? It’s still a Stalinist show trial, which even Stalin would be ashamed of.

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                  1. Yes it does, because the example that I provided is – imo – a potentially useful law. That sort of fact-finding by a jury is perfectly legitimate.

                    There is still a problem with the Trump case, though, and it’s one that’s been pointed out even by legal experts in the media. In the example I provided of a jury needing to determine whether someone is an illegal alien, the result is a pretty clear either/or pair of options. Either the person is in the country legally, or the person is not. And the jury would need to decide that every piece of evidence that the defendant offered regarding his or her legal status in the US was unpersuasive. There needs to be unanimity by the jury about the evidence on this point. If even one piece of offered evidence of citizenship is viewed by a juror as legitimate, then the defendant cannot be (honestly) found guilty.

                    Merchan’s instructions were the opposite. So long as all twelve jurors believed that Trump had committed a Federal election crime – even if the jurors didn’t agree on what the Federal crime was – then Trump was guilty of violating the State law, according to Merchan. Even many in the news media are seeing this as a problematic decision by the judge, and grounds for an appeal by Trump.

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                    1. Ignoring, of course, the fact that all the allegedly illegal paperwork was done after the election, when it could not have affected the election itself. There’s a timeline which, of course, I can’t find the link to now. Gah!

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                    2. Yes. I won’t argue that the basis of the finding wasn’t absurd. There are a *lot* of problems with this case.

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                2. So, the state law conviction is based upon an -assumption of guilt-.

                  If that isn’t shitcanned, very bad things are going to happen, and for a great many defendants.

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                  1. “So, thestate law conviction is based upon an -assumption of guilt-.”

                    Precisely. And not only that, but presumption of guilt of a Federal crime, which, as the leftists have been screaming for decades, cannot be adjudicated inb a state court.

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                4. As I said elsewhere, that requires a presumption of guilt. Our system prohibits that.

                  If you do not see just how incredibly bad that is, you might want to consider what comes next if it is permitted. And just what that will unleash.

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            3. The NY Post has an editorial addressing how much of a farce the Trump show trial was:

              https://nypost.com/2024/05/30/opinion/trump-falls-victim-to-a-prostituted-court-of-law-more-reason-to-vote-out-biden-in-november/

              Note that the prosecution didn’t even prove that the bookkeeping entries were false, a necessity for their to have been a conviction, much less prove that there was an actual second crime that was committed that would turn state misdemeanor bookkeeping charges into felonies. Nor was there unanimity as to each and every element as is required for due process under Supreme Court precedent.

              The simple fact is that there was not a single piece of evidence or testimony presented that even hinted at a crime, Paying for non-disclosure agreements out of personal funds is not a crime. Period. Trying to bury negative news stories in an election is NOT a crime. Period. Cheating on one’s wife with an over the hill pornstar is NOT a crime (although the wife might have problems with it, which of course provides a motive for the non-disclosure agreement that is utterly unrelated to running for office).

              The ONLY crimes that there was evidence presented for, aside from the blatant corruption of the prosecutor, judge and the DOJ/White House, were Cohen’s perjury, and Daniels extortion attempts that resulted in her breaching the non-disclosure agreement when she joined the “get Trump” cabal.

              For those who note that the show trial did not have the Stalinist “confession of guilt”, note that New York requires as part of the initial probation officer meeting by the newly convicted for the person to admit guilt, even if they are appealing from a kangaroo court conviction. Trump of course will never do so, and the failure can, and will, be used by Merchan to justify imprisoning Trump.

              Anyone who doubts the regime is capable of this hasn’t been paying attention. The regime is filled with idiots, but they are power-hungry idiots who recognize no limits on power.

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              1. In 3rd World Sh*thole countries, half the punishment IS the process. And the Democrats are hell bent for leather to turn the US into said 3rd worlds.

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              2. “Cheating on one’s wife with an over the hill pornstar is NOT a crime”

                And, as usual, there was no actual evidence presented beyond the over the hill pornstar’s word for it. That was another thing that came out in the trial.

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            4. The Feds found nothing to charge him with so any allegations he did a criminal act is pretty baseless. Refusing to allow testimony by the FEC guy and otherwise eliminating any actual facts from reaching the jury’s ears was pretty overt.

              ignoring the defense objections was another strike.

              those jury instructions were pretty well guaranteed to result in a conviction with the “pick-your-own-crime” instruction.

              Having what’s her face tale the stand and perjur herself with salacious nonsense was done only to influence the New York jury prejudically.

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          2. You have small desires that do not meet the karmic payment required to balance the scales.

            Their actions warrant a more enduring example of justice.

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        2. That was only one of the supposed “predicate” crimes. Merchan told them that they could pick any one of the three that Bragg threw out – and they didn’t have to pick the same one as any of the other jurors.

          Which, as SCOTUS has already ruled at least twice, is not valid. The jury has to agree unanimously on what “crime” the defendant is trying to conceal.

          This is why the conviction is dead in the water, at least once it gets to SCOTUS. No, they can’t go back to the jurors after the fact, either, to get a unanimous decision on the “predicate.”

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Harvey Weinstein’s case was thrown out by the NY appeals courts. It took three years, however. The Democrats will get to spend at least the next three years referring to Trump as “convicted felon”, after which most people will consider it to be a true statement. After all, about a third of Americans still believe the Russia Collusion Hoax.

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            1. About a third of Americans depend on the government for some major portion of their lives, too. Weird how that lines up…

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              1. It gets problematic when you’re drawing Social Security, and have Medicare. If you have a government pension, you’re even more under their thumb.

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      3. Apparently, during closing arguments, they claimed it was the federal campaign law that a) was a fine-type misdemeanor and b) had already been dismissed by the feds.

        No surprise, I gather they “introduced” evidence in closing that never was presented in trial. IIRC, one of the PJ media columns had that tidbit.

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        1. Not that the Trump legal team didn’t anticipate that. They tried to get the former head of the FEC to testify about that part of election law, but the Judge forbade it.
          Talk about handcuffing a defense – don’t charge the crime, don’t allow testimony about the elements of the crime, then put that “crime” (but not the necessary elements thereof) front & center in the jury instructions.

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          1. And in the jury instructions cite specific pieces of testimony and “evidence” that create a roadmap towards reaching a conviction, which is yet another thing that was proof of Merchan’s bias, and in and of itself is reversible, as a number of commentators, including if I recall correctly Professor Turley, have noted.

            The problem of course is that the appellate courts in NY are just as biased as the trial courts in NYC, and there is no way the case doesn’t get assigned to radical leftist partisans who want to destroy Trump.

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        1. ”Felony Fizzbin” is the best one I’ve seen.

          “Felonious Calvinball ‘Rules’ Violation with Intent to Win an Election while being Other Than Dem” is too long.

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    2. That’s because doing it three years ago would have enabled the appeal to go all the way to the US Supreme Court and get the convictions tossed on the fundamental denials of due process. They wanted it close enough to the election to where appeals would not be heard/decided until after the election. Additionally, conducting the trials while he is tied up in court limits his ability to campaign (which would backfire, even in a state like New York, but for the fact that the margin of fraud will ensure Democrats win there).

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    3. Every time that travesty is mentioned, I hear in my mind “Puffer Billy”.

      The theme from Captain Kangaroo.

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  11. A sad coincidence that on the same calendar day that New York State was the first State to establish Decoration Day (which later became Memorial Day) 151 years before New York State became the first State to establish precedent for fraudulently convicting a previous President and active candidate for President.  Should we be strewing flowers over soldiers’ graves, or maybe filling those that have been dug by the hundreds if not thousands of current traitors?  Just a thoughtful question, not a suggestion.

    Liked by 1 person

  12. There are two disturbing threads (only two? Yeah, I know) on my Twitter feed.

    One: “Don’t talk to me about “civil war.” You people don’t bother to vote in local elections. You can’t even leave your Netflix to vote for the local school board, so shut up.”

    Two: “We are a nation of child-killers, our hands covered in the blood of innocents. We deserve the coming judgment if we do not turn away from the abominations.”

    The second reminds me of the original Abolitionists, specifically John Brown. History may well look favorably upon them, but both these messages bother me. And I don’t even have Nexflix.

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    1. You’re probably not missing much. I wanted Netflix to watch a Voltron (lions) reboot, but that’s been about it. MomRed got Hulu just so she could watch the new Shogun.

      Something about “57 Channels and there’s nothing to watch!” as Weird Al so eloquently phrased it.

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      3. Our son has Disney + , and keeps offering to pull things up for us. So we’re finally seeing, “The Mandalorian,” and “Forged in Fire,” episodes we missed. That’s about it, so far. That, and sometimes especially watching UFC with him.

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      4. My spouse works in a role related to media and can get almost any media source for free.

        We watch absolutely .0000001% at home. None of the services are used unless the older extended family “has to” follow sports while visting. 7 gillion channels of crud.

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        1. We get a LOT of free tv, various ways.
          What do we watch? Lately? The Bob Ross Channel. It’s in the background while we do stuff, mostly. VERY soothing.

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            1. Only thing is, you’re giving the thieving Kowalski family money, not Bob’s family.

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      5. Gave up cable years ago now. Why? Paying over $50/mo. (it was a while ago) and realizing I was only getting maybe a nickel’s worth.

        Nowadays, if I stay at some motel, I don’t even switch the set on. Where there is TV, it’s so…. annoying. And it’s not even the commercials.

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    2. The messages bother you because there’s a bit of truth in each one.

      I’m not saying they are absolutely true, but the first reflects my experience with local elections. I absolutely shut people down when they bitch about local taxes, because 90% don’t even vote and we have 2% of the locals that vote on local bonds and the politicians directly involved.

      Many measures pass by a few hundred or less votes out of a 100,000 registered voters. Sometimes 12 votes make a difference on a bond package of $120M.

      And it’s not about you, it’s about your fellow citizens. You really want to think better of them. They are “good” people but absolutely “lazy” citizens. I’ve asked and heard every possible “the dog ate my homework” excuse for not voting in the world.

      It’s like living in a commune where a handful of people do the work. And the “work” isn’t hard and doesn’t take much time. A few hours a year to stay in touch with the issues and 15 minutes to cast a ballot. That’s the minimum.

      They don’t have to rig most local elections in most areas, nobody cares.

      As for the latter message, I don’t like it, but I understand. We have a whole government/corporate sponsored month celebrating the same sins that caused the doom of Sodom and Gomorrah.

      We went down the slippery slope from gay “marriage” to let’s multilate and fsck children. Already been sacrifice them to Ba’al in the womb for the last 50 years.

      I don’t think we need to worry about Gods wrath, the elite are trying their best to start a nuclear WWIII ASAP. Hopefully I’m in the blast, not the fallout zone.

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      1. This ismp part of it, but part is the sad, “Is this a real opinion or a provacateur?” question. As a little more trust slips away.

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      2. Messed up and didn’t vote in May 2024 primaries. Should have dropped it off with nothing marked as a protest if nothing else. Reality check for us locally. Both major candidates selected. State, nothing there. Local, all candidates single runs (county only, we aren’t in city), would have “under voted” regardless. No measures at county or state level to vote against (oops, sorry, “on”).

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        1. We had the primary and one runoffs with the city council runoff coming up in June.

          Voted against more bills and incumbents. Voted America First against RINOs. RINOs are outspending everyone else 10/20-1. Worthless shitstains. We are winning some of those races against the big money.

          As soon as I find out whom my councilman will be, I’ll schedule a coffee shop meeting with them and a few others. Also need to make my bi-annual pilgrammage to city council meeting for their Larry is Right ass chew/praise awards.

          (Yes, they do somethings right when they aren’t in bed with property developers. Can’t totally beat them with a stick. )

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          1. City had measures (no new stadium for the EM’s at the county fair grounds). But we didn’t. Everything down vote from president had only one person running, on the republican ballot. Don’t know if the positions are on the ballot in November or not.

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            1. Doesn’t that just give you the warm fuzzies about voting, when there’s only ONE candidate, picked by The Party without any input from you?

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              1. No.

                Write in candidate “None of the Above” for protest doesn’t register, anywhere.

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              2. You can’t say “people should be involved” and then say “but The Party makes the decisions anyway” if you aren’t a part of The Party. If you care that much, join and have a say. It’s not hard. The D Party does it all the time to influence The R Party results. Most recently that fellow down in TX-23 won his R Primary in part due to encouragement by the D Party for all the D’s to get out and vote for him in the primary.

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                  1. At least in our state it isn’t the party elites. It is the party members. You join the party, you go to the meetings, you get to vote. Precinct Committee Officers have even more responsibility and there are usually spots to be had. I became one almost by default because I happened to be on the candidate filing website the last day to register, and no one had registered. So I stuck my name in there. Your state may vary but that is how you get involved here where I live (a deep blue state, btw).

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                    1. Except that’s not what the Democrats did in your election example. They simply told their voters, “Go to the polling places and say you’re a Republican. The Republican party can’t stop you and check, it’s not allowed.”

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                    2. snelson, that’s why open primaries are wrong. All you have to do is check the box saying “I am…”. That is completely different, however, than party bosses choosing the candidate.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    3. In our rural and very conservative county, there are a lot of Republican precinct boards, and frequently the elections for those seats are “Vote for three” with two candidates running.

                      In places like $TINY_TOWN, getting a few friends and neighbors to vote for you would get you on the #3 seat.

                      Around here, local offices can (though not always, see below) be a springboard to higher orifice. One of our county commissioners was able to run and get elected to the state senate, curbstomping the GOPe.

                      OTOH, he was prohibited from running again, because he was in the GOP walkout–that prevented some really horrible bills from being law, but the Empire struck back with a constitutional (for values of) amendment that struck off people with too many “unexcused absences”, validity of excuse determined by the Donk leader. #rolleyes

                      His wife is running for that senate seat, while a nother former county commissioner (he was also the Flyover Falls police chief before the county gig) got lots of ads out, and an absolutely horrible loss. Needed a heart of stone not to laugh at the guy.

                      TL;DR: try running in really minor offices, like precinct. If you have a taste for it, try higher.

                      By the way, we had 7 candidates for Sheriff. The incumbent elected not to run due to complicated and messy issues, including having a commissioner determined to destroy him. Said commissioner got re-elected. This time… All the candidates were current or former (and he’s an idiot) LEOs.

                      Like

        2. It was more interesting for us. GOPe vs Deplorable+++ for state senate, a range of Sheriff candidates ranging from quite good to You Gotta Be Kidding, and other county races. The one incumbent commissioner we wanted to dump got reelected at the primary, so 0 for the good guys, but the aging hippie in the other seat lost out. Our selection made it to the runoff in November.

          And our chronically underfunded 9-1-1 system got a bit more money on a very close vote. (Years ago, I was a first responder and have since called in a fair number of fire calls and medical calls. I saw them work wonders with Stone Knives and Bearskins(tm). They can do better with modern equipment.)

          Like

      3. Fifteen minutes to drop a ballot if there are no lines and everything goes smoothly. If you have to take time off work or go after work like everyone else, then the time required starts to go up quite a lot. Particularly if you need to pick up children from childcare or do anything else after work or on lunch break. Or work a considerable distance from your polling place.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. We have no polling places. They took them away. Vote-by-mail.

          And as Sarah says, no place with vote-by-mail EVER recovers from the Blue Plague.

          Yes, I still vote. I consider it a gesture, nothing more, because The Fix Is In.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Technically in Oregon, every county is suppose to have an in person voting locations, even with mail-in-voting. Came up in “Nextdoor” post. Where that is? Who knows. I think county offices downtown. But that makes it difficult for anyone except greater Eugene area. Oops excuse me, giving the parking situation, that makes it difficult for anyone. Downtown Eugene parking sucks. Suppose to be able to “google” the location. Yea, uh huh, that worked. Not!

            Like

          2. An upraised middle finger is also a gesture. Sometimes it is more for good of the waver than the smack to the recipient.

            Do it because you -can-, and to maintain the -habit-.

            Liked by 1 person

  13. Can’t say it wasn’t expected of course. Like the last election, the whole thing was rigged from the beginning. The encouraging thing has been how many Americans, many who don’t want to support Trump, have become outraged by this.

    The dems should have recalled Yamamoto’s words after Pearl Harbor.

    Like

    1. I assume you mean the one about waking a sleeping giant, not the (possibly apocryphal) one about a rifle behind every blade of grass?

      Like

  14. Most of the people I’m in contact with are lit like Roman candles and are done being polite.

    Like

      1. $SPOUSE didn’t want to bring it up, since she figured I’d be upset. No, I saw it coming and the hope of a hung jury was a slender reed. Meanwhile, the blowback is looking pretty impressive. Biggest concerns is if they think it’s a good idea to assassinate President Trump (particularly a la Epstein), or if they try WW 3. The first two episodes of that one sucked, not looking forward to the trilogy.

        Liked by 1 person

  15. I’m a public defender, and I have to say that I see a good side to this in my work.

    Specifically, I now have the perfect poster child for why being a felon shouldn’t be an automatic loss of one’s Second Amendment rights. Even most hardcore gun rights folks think felons shouldn’t have guns, because felon conjures up visions of murderers, rapists, abusers, and thieves.

    What they don’t realize is how many felons are felons because of picayune hipposcat like this. I defend felons who didn’t pay enough child support, who drove without a license too many times, who crashed a car into a building without insurance, who spanked their kid hard enough to leave a bruise. Clearly, these are dangerous criminals who don’t deserve the rights of citizens, just like Trump.

    As bad as Biden and his economy are, minorities are flocking to Trump because they see him getting treated with the same sham justice so many of them get.

    Like

    1. “Even most hardcore gun rights folks think felons shouldn’t have guns,
      because felon conjures up visions of murderers, rapists, abusers, and
      thieves.”

      This hardcore gun rights guy doesn’t think that. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone, either.

      In fact I consider the gun rights folks who support the “prohibited persons” exception to be soft-core. They only look hardcore because they’re graded on a curve. It’s as if censoring bluenoses were considered hardcore freedom of the press advocates because the opposition wanted to ban literacy.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Fair. I should not have said the hardcore gun folks. “But not the felons” is the gun rights version of “except for rape and incest” on banning abortion — the caveat that’s included to bring in the people guided by mushy emotions instead of hard principles.

        And hell, I’ll happily admit that I’ve had a few clients that I don’t want to have guns. There are some seriously awful people in this world. But I also had a felon in possession case that really pissed me off, because the police ignored my black client when he called the police twice on his white neighbor for threatening him with a gun and having a vicious dog, but when my client is plinking cans with a .22 and the white neighbor calls it in, suddenly that is a serious crime worthy of investigation.

        My current docket of felony defendants includes:

        a twenty-something dad who spanked his kid hard enough to leave a bruise.

        a twenty-year-old who crashed into a building while driving her informal foster mother’s uninsured car.

        a man in his fifties who is being required to pay for child support accrued after the children were legally emancipated.

        a man in his sixties who pushed away an officer making an illegal arrest.

        The state legislature makes the stupidest things felonies that never would have been considered felonies or even crimes by the Founders, then uses that felon status to treat them like the most hardened criminal scum who deserve no rights at all.

        Like

      2. I believe that once the sentence is served fully, you go back to being free. No further penalty. Thus former felons should vote, keep and bear arms, etc. If they -haven’t- completed sentence, they stay in prison. If paroled, they finish parole and are free.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. That’s something of a restatement of the argument ‘if we cannot trust them with guns, why are they out of jail?’

          See also https://www.fd.org/news/ninth-circuit-holds-felon-possession-unconstitutional-non-violent-offenders-after-bruen, the Duarte felon in possession decision.

          He argues that, under the Supreme Court’s recent decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), § 922(g)(1) violates the Second Amendment as applied to him, a non-violent offender who has served his time in prison and reentered society. We agree.

          Like

            2. Three judge panels in the 9th Circuit frequently make rulings that are 2nd Amendment friendly. The problem is the en banc panels. The 9th Circuit is big enough that the en banc panels are supposed to be a random selection of 9th Circuit judges, plus the Chief Justice, instead of the entire circuit as is the case elsewhere. And yet somehow, the random selection of justices for the en banc panel NEVER comes up with a majority that’s in favor of the 2nd Amendment.

              Every. Single. Time.

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        2. I do not agree.
          Being punished does not mean you have been rehabilitated, much less that you’ve paid your debt to society. You ought not regain full citizen status until after you have made your victims whole.

          That being said, “felony” clearly needs to be redefined much, much closer to its original meaning. (Except, perhaps, for public officials who have abused their power.)

          Like

          1. Yeah, right now a felony is any offense that has a maximum possible sentence of more than 365 days.

            In my state, this includes:

            theft totaling $750,

            any act that was intended to cause emotional distress that does,

            the third time driving without a license or on a suspended license,

            being more than a year behind in child support,

            resisting arrest when being arrested for a felony (and the law specifically calls out that the arrest being illegal is not a defense),

            any form of unwelcome physical contact if the recipient is a special victim, which includes law enforcement officers, court officials, elected politicians, utility workers, cable repairman, the handicapped, and the elderly, (notably, not defense lawyers)

            Using a lie (e.g. frozen meat salesman saying his truck freezer is out) to sell more than $100 to an elderly person.

            sending a picture of one’s genitals to a minor.

            As annoying as my left-wing, woke, and abolitionist colleagues in public defense are, they’re not wrong that our system is in desperate need of reform. Decriminalizing and unpolicing everything — their idea — just isn’t the solution.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. I fully agree regarding the crying need for reforms in the (in)justice system, but a quibble: Re: “(notably, not defense lawyers)”, I was under the impression that all trial lawyers, not just prosecutors, are considered “court officials”, and that thus they would also be covered as “special victims” under the statute. Not so?

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          2. I do not give a flying fig for the opinion of “rehabilitated”. Prison cannot -make- anyone reform. Only the person can change themselves.

            Prison is -punishment-. The purpose is to be a cost of doing bad business.

            And once your court assigned punishment is over, you are -done-. If they let you out early, on promise if good behavior, it’s-over- when that clock runs out.

            Because we are a free country.

            if they re-offend, back they go. And ramp it up. Either they stop crooking, or they will be caged long enough where they won’t bother anyone.

            But when it is over, it is -over-. Because you paid what the State said you owe.

            And in practical terms, the real crooks, the unredeemable ones, won’t obey any prohibitions. So why punish the ones that do decide to play by the rules? That seems counter productive, working against real rehabilitation, by near-permanent official exclusion.

            Like

    2. Once the punishment is completed, parole is over, and all fines and restitution are paid, full rights of citizenship should be restored, including all Constitutional rights, including keeping and bearing arms.

      But you’re right about this being a total miscarriage of justice. It’s really too bad that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is dead. I’m sure he’d have plenty to say about the Sovietization of Amerika.

      Liked by 1 person

  16. “First, was that verdict so unexpected?”

    Honestly, I’m pretty surprised. This is as shocking a kangaroo court action as anything out of Soviet show trials. Seriously, they went full retard this time. You never go full retard, and this is why.

    “Second: are you buying the leftist narrative again?”

    Their narrative has devolved into “SHUT UP SLAVES!!!” so no, not really buying it. This isn’t really about Trump anymore. This is getting to be about my personal future.

    For example, I have to decide where to invest my money, because I’m an old guy. My government in Canada has intimated that they would very much like to destroy the middle class and take all our money. This is because they are broke, but more because they hate us. They’re using inflation, immigration and taxation to do it.

    Looking at what they’re doing to Trump, and hearing what the Canadian lapdog media is barking about it, I can see that there will be no quarter given. So at this point, can I even make an informed investment decision? Can I really plan for the future, beyond what’s in my bug-out bag?

    Everybody with two nickles to rub together in the USA and Canada is thinking that right now. That’s not good. Because smart people WILL find a way to get around crooked courts. They do everywhere else in the world, right?

    Like

    1. “This is getting to be about my personal future.”

      Yeah, it’s annual evaluation time where I work. I don’t think they want the answer “In a gulag or a shallow grave.”

      Liked by 1 person

              1. I’ve always liked “get off my lawn” in answer to things like that, but in truth “where do you see yourself in three years?” probably rates an answer more like “Portugal, if I’m lucky.”

                Sarah will now laugh herself silly at the notion of fleeing -from- Canada -to- Portugal, to -escape- taxes and corruption.

                Liked by 2 people

                1. “Sarah will now laugh herself silly at the notion of fleeing -from- Canada -to- Portugal, to -escape- taxes and corruption.”

                  Maybe the day before yesterday. Today? Today is a very different day.

                  Liked by 1 person

                2. IF you do end up in Portugal, please let me know. I’ll hook you up with fam. Half of them are commies, but in Latin countries connections are EVERYTHING. It will greatly help you.

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. That is remarkably cool of you, Sarah.

                    Currently no plans to decamp, but you never know.

                    Like snelson said up at the top, “where do you see yourself in three years?” has become a political and economic question, not something you casually put on a performance review.

                    On the bright side, my pickup truck still works and now I have a two-man lifeboat, my motorcycle. ~:D I can get out of Dodge in style.

                    Liked by 1 person

            2. “Serving as an executioner for the revolutionary government’s liquidation of the progressive establishment” may go over better. Somewhere.

              Like

          2. Or as the Tumblr post goes, “Look, buddy, I’m just trying to make it to Friday.”

            Every time I’ve made a plan for where I’ll be a few years from now it’s been vastly derailed. Every. Time.

            I’m just going to try and stay out of debt, stock up, and write.

            Liked by 1 person

                1. Made it to Friday, but I chipped one of my front teeth, a consequence of grinding them.

                  Like

                  1. I lost a chunk off of the crown on a molar too, and my dentist is no longer open on Friday or Saturday.🦷😬

                    Like

                  3. “Don’t give the price the satisfaction.”

                    Seriously.

                    Teeth grinders, your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to use humor to turn that grind to a grin.

                    I am serious. They -cannot stand- to be mocked or ridiculed. And doing so is-power-. It also us therapeutic, because to do humor, you have to analyze and discerne. You learn to target weakness, vulnerability, and -nail- it.

                    Every time I now think of, read of, hear of, that fraud in a black robe in NYC, my mind plays that “Puffin Billy” theme from Captain Kangaroo.

                    I may yet get a big plush toy kangaroo for my desk.

                    (Mumblesomething) decades ago, I was taught POW resistance by some folks who were “guests” of the enemy. One was an SF guy that spent years as a captive of VC then NVA, pror to finally escaping. His advice was that humor is -essential- to survival. Always nickname the bastards, something really vile or ruthless, at least absurd.

                    So please knock of the dental damage, and -fight back-. Mock the bastards. Smile. Mirth or predation, don’t care.

                    “dit dit dit dah, dit dit dit dah….” (kzin grin)

                    Liked by 1 person

          3. Where do I see myself in three years? Considering how close I live to a major airbase, and how things seem to be escalating, under a sheet of molten glass most likely.

            Liked by 1 person

            2. Meh. We’re talking about Russian missiles. Half are down for unable to do maintenance. 20% of the remaining won’t launch. 20% of those launched won’t reach target. 20% of those on target won’t detonate (although pieces of scattered radioactive material won’t be pleasant.) Very few of the launchers, and none of Moscow, are likely to survive a retaliatory strike.

              Like

    2. My thought locally? “Well dang. Metal costs just sky rocketed again, and the popular forms will be difficult to get. So will the popular dispensers, and rapid installation storage options.” Making me regret the boat accident. Yes, I know in Canada, that ship is already difficult (has sailed?).

      Liked by 2 people

          1. They are.

            My brother’s boathouse on Georgian Bay was 10′ above the waterline about 2017-ish, if memory serves. Barely enough water in the inlet to get him from the town dock to his dock. (Island, basically.)

            Now? His boathouse is threatening to be washed away, the bay is within a foot of the front door. They may have to move it. He did have to remove the old bridge from the cottage down to the floating dock, replaced by another floating dock.

            It has been -wet- up here the last few years.

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            1. Every time the Great Lakes rise or fall, someone somewhere talks about them being at an unprecedented high or low level.

              I do recall a few years back when Lake Michigan lowering to never before, ever in history, new low levels, that fully built docks started appearing. Apparently our ancestors were so stupid they built their docks underwater!

              Sort of like the glacier in Switzerland that had ALWAYS been there. And was now retreating. Unprecedented! Due to global warming! It had always been there! And an opening appeared in the side of the mountain. And people went up to explore the newly revealed cave. And discovered it wasn’t a cave- but an adit. A mine entrance, And stacked just inside were all the mining tools neatly put away- so next spring, which apparently hadn’t come for a while, the miners could go back up and continue mining.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. The “Great Lakes” were once a -massive- single inland freshwater sea, hundreds of feet deeper. A retreating glacier gave way, allowing 89-80% to drain over a few years, carving the current channel and leaving the remnants as the Great Lakes.

                And when Niagra Falls finally moves upstream to Lake Erie, that lake will rapidly drain, leaving a much smaller remnant.

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            2. The Great Lakes water level has nothing to do with Globull Wormening. They are LAKES. The sea is not rising, and the sky is not falling. Water levels in the Great Lakes are highly dependent on how much they let out through the locks and canals.

              Like the Lake Mead ‘crisis’ they’re wringing their hands about — STOP TAKING SO MUCH F*KING WATER OUT OF THE RESERVOIR!! Shut down most of the hydro turbines for now; they’re wasting water when the level (and head pressure) is so low.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Upstream from Lake Mead is Lake Powell, which has roughly the same capacity. Between the two lies the Grand Canyon. Upstream from Lake Powell are dozens of additional reservoirs with an aggregate capacity of about 40% of Mead. Alas, the “crisis” isn’t just hydropower, though that is the easiest to address – build nuke plants! Water is also drawn directly from reservoirs for drinking water and irrigation, and indirectly drawn from taps and diversions downstream. There are lots of agreements in place that mean they have to keep water flowing at a minimum rate.

                Like

              2. The crust of the Earth is rising in the Great Lakes area due to the absence of sheet ice from the glaciers that used to cover north america, say about forty thousand years ago until about twenty thousand years ago. They still can’t tell you what caused the Ice Ages or the warming that ended them. Man made Global Warming/Climate Change/Whatever lie they want to tell next, my ass.

                Liked by 1 person

                3. The “ice age” is ongoing. We are in an interglacial warm period. They occur periodically. There is no indication, none, that the current warm era is going to continue. Based on prior events, we have a max of a few thousand years. The short end of the estimate is “past due”.

                  And the geological record shows upward trend until sudden cold snap. Then glacial return is rapid, The snow starts falling and doesn’t stop utill we have ice sheets over Pennsylvania.

                  Return to gkaciation isn’t gradual. It’s a phase change.

                  Ouch.

                  Liked by 1 person

  17. Thanks, Sarah. The sun rose, the storms weren’t as bad here as forecast, and SpaceX has a launch on Wednesday if permits go through and no surprises are found with the rocket. Boeing might launch tomorrow, but they’ve had some tech glitches that delayed earlier planned launches.

    We’ll get through this. Build under, build around, look at your local institutions and see how we can help, can constructively criticize, can quietly support good people doing good things. Western Civ made it through the Black Death, the Little Ice Age X2, the Thirty Years War, and a few other things. Someone had to keep Vienna alive until the Winged Hussars and the Imperial Army arrived.

    Liked by 2 people

  18. I wish I could be surprised by the verdict, but I’m not. My understanding is that the jury instructions basically made it impossible for any other finding.

    This may be seen as a new low in the judicial system, but I suspect it is just a new middle. Lawfare being practiced against a political opponent is something I never expected to see in this country.

    Why did I spend those years in uniform?

    Liked by 1 person

    1. What was in the jury instructions to such an effect? Aside from the obvious intent of the judge to find any book at all to throw at the defendant, I mean?

      If it can be shown, publicly, that jurors were forbidden to find him innocent, that would be a blow for liberty like few we’ve heard in a while (if it can be applied to the defenestration of the lawfare-&-fraud engines of the Democrat machine, at least).

      Like

      1. Well, first of all, the JURORS did not have a physical copy of the jury instructions. NBC News said they did, within 30 minutes or so of the jury getting them and starting deliberations. That’s why the jurors had to have portions re-read to them.

        Secondly, the judge gave the jurors permission to pick among three crimes Trump MIGHT have committed, so if any juror found one they liked, they could say GUILTY without the unanimity that the actual 6th Amendment requires.

        Third, they could consider all of Stormy’s irrelevant and salacious testimony. As I said earlier, there wasn’t really any physical evidence presented that Trump had actually slept with her; apparently, he was paying her to not make those claims whether they were true or not.

        That’s enough to let you know that his instructions gave a biased jury full scope to exercise their bias.

        Like

    2. Why? Duty. Liberty. Because our Nation is not the nincompoops.

      Neither despair nor quit.

      We served The United States of America. Not those d(HONK!)ds trying to wreck it.

      If we won’t quit. They -cannot- win.

      Never quit.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Sure: it’s ONLY violence, harpies, sodomy, and suicide. No fraud (8ᵗʰ Circle), wrath (6ᵗʰ), or treason (9ᵗʰ). Not even any Atlanta traffic (285ᵗʰ).

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          1. Bah. I’ve handled the Lee traffic circle thousands of times. The traffic circles in Boston are nothing. I’ve weathered the roundabouts of England. The ten lanes of traffic in Seoul where no one pays attention to the lane markers. The Arc de Triomphe in Paris during rush hour was merely annoying.

            The Traffic Circles of Hell would be quiet relaxation.

            Liked by 1 person

  20. Back online.

    …

    Naively, I thought perhaps our wonderful system might actually work.

    Idiot.

    …

    So not wanting to melt anything with some epic Infantry-grade expressions, in several languages, I put myself in timeout. I work better “cold”, so chilling out is a positive. But that is usually a 5 minute thing, not 12 hours.

    …

    I take note of the RNC and PAC donation sites crashing and several zillionaires kicking in six figure donations. (And its the faceless Prole horde with a sawbuck pried loose crashing the site, not zillionaires.) They done gone and fornicated fido.

    Into the briar patch Trump has been hurled. They want lawfare and no-holds-barred? So be it. No standard but Victory. No rules but Victory. No apology, no squeamishness. Unleash the JDs. Let every Podunkvilleburg DA from the great state of KlodKicks file charges for felony fizzbinn. If its all gonna crash, let them enjoy the ride into the ditch with the rest of us Peons. Either they wise up, or they get what they wanted to serve. Good either way. Victory.

    …

    FJB and the whores he rode in on.

    Victory.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I think the donation sites crashing and the tech elite publicly announcing six-figure donations were the biggest follow on news yesterday.

      I don’t think they had any idea what was going to result from a guilty verdict, even with the example of the mugshot photo campaign boost staring them right there in his scowling face.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I see the first snap poll, small sample, came out yesterday – waiting for the major polls. Will be interesting indeed if opinion polling reporting suddenly gets downgraded in news coverage.

        Like

    2. AMEN.
      As I told Protein Wisdom on Twitter “Welcome to the party pal.” I’ve been ALL IN on Trump for 7 years not because I love him, but because he’s our battering ram

      Like

          1. Are we on Legion rules? Because once the first ram touches a wall, the sack of the city is required.

            (kzin grin)

            Liked by 1 person

  21. I’m guessing the first line is based on the 1989 film Millennium in which time travelers from the future kidnap people who would otherwise die in plane crashes (and in the book, any kind of disaster with a high body count) as the future population is either all sterile or mutated and they need new breeding population to save Earth. The last line is “This is not the end. This is not the beginning. This is the end of the beginning.” One of my favorite ending lines. (The novel of the Dark Crystal is my other favorite. “The end. At which the endless spinning wheel enjoins a new beginning”)

    Just wanted to drop that in.

    I seriously hoped for jury miracle and that they would hang. The fact that deliberations only took them two days indicates there was no prayer. They went into this intending to vote “guilty” on all counts. They just needed time to go over the list at least once.

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    1. The, “This is the end of the beginning quote,” is attributed to Churchill. But it was the best thing about an otherwise truly awful movie. (To quote Jean Kerr, the sort of thing where, “you sit there, fearing for your sanity, while all around you people are fleeing for the exits.” She was married to a NYT theater critic, so they couldn’t leave until the show was over. We stayed for the end of Millenium more or less because we couldn’t believe anyone could butcher a John Varley story that badly).

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      1. Sorry, I didn’t realize it was a Churchill quote. It’s just a line that has stuck in my head for 40 years.

        Like

      2. I’ve never heard of that movie either. Ditto not a movie person.

        But I do vaguely remember a short story with the same plot, from the POV of a time-traveler disguised as a stewardess whose disguise included concealing her hideous mutations.

        John Varley? A rapid-two-canards web search finds his short story “Air Raid” which he later expanded into a novel and a screen play titled Millennium

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          1. Great songwriter and singer. Better-than-average at finding terrible movies to star in. “Convoy” was THE exception, with a pity-nod to Ang Lee’s “HULK” where Kris played the villain.

            Like

  22. You know how when they stomped all over the Tea Party folks with the full force of all the various agencies, and tried to give us Maverick except when he suspended his campaign, and then called milktoast Mittens obviously Hitler, and rammed through O’care then used their kompromat to make sure neither the Senate nor the Supremes got rid of it, and then propped up Teh Clearly Felonious Dowager Countess of Chappaqua as the mandatory default choice?

    That’s why we got DJT.

    If they get rid of DJT, the next person is not going to be LESS.

    You want more? THIS is how you get more.

    Morons.

    Liked by 1 person

  23. For all the comparisons flying hither and yon to the end of the Roman Republic*, for those playing the Roman parallels home game we are not even up to Sulla yet – he was the first to take dictatorial power by military force after winning the first major Roman civil war. We are not there yet.

    —
    * And I agree with Sarah that we are very much not Rome – Russia is more Rome than we are.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. My view on the Roman parallels game is that we’re at Tiberius Gracchus. It’s a poor comparison, since (as agreed) we’re very much not Rome, but I think it’s the most closely similar inflection point.

      Liked by 1 person

  25. It is not the end, but it will bring about many ends.

    Oddly the verdict wasn’t what bothered me. It was seeing people who I had previously respected and thought knew better swallowing it whole. I expect the aftermath of this will bring about a sorting as big, if not bigger, than the flu that shall no longer be named.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. They swallowed the dentist mask and ‘social distancing,’ right?

      I -still- see people alone in their car wearing the dentist mask, and they are still lining up at ‘social distancing’ distances at the grocery store, even though all the official “Stand Here” footprint stickers and pointless plexiglass shields have been taken down.

      Frankly, I expected better from Canadians. I really did. And now, I know I was f-ing well wrong.

      So now instead of having confidence in my fellow citizens I keep a list of potential camp guards and dime-droppers who so conveniently self-identified. For next time, right?

      Like

        1. We are talking about processes dependent on internal mental states, and also by way of that not necessarily the same in how they split for each surprise, or uncertainty.

          When people are not stressed and confused, it is more practical to just color match to your preferred faction.

          But, where the factional markers of the future are unknown, people guess, and may default more to whatever of their own internal magical ideas are most important to them.

          We are always gonna over weight our own mind in our models of how other minds work. Degrees of alien are harder to verifiably exhaustively model.

          If we don’t retreat into permanent austistic mode, times like these can be a constant whirl of ‘Aha! Another factor I did not think to account for.’ Very intellectually stimulating, but can consume all sorts of time and emotional energy.

          When we are tired, and just want something to make sense, can be a bit wearying.

          Anyway, lots of stuff are not that urgent, and will prove to be a longer story involving wait and see.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I guess? It sort of seems like the people he triggers strong emotion in are going with their strong emotion response, so i suppose that does map. It’s just, I’d thought some of them were more willing to be rational than that.

            It is such an odd thing, seeing candles snuff themselves and join the chorus.

            Like

        1. I see more than I used to. But it could be that some (many?) of those people are continuing to wear them because they are helpful. The dust and/or pollen here can get quite nasty – and those particles are trapped by the mask.

          I would probably benefit from one myself, if I weren’t one of those that gets the “suffocating” reaction. So, never did, never will.

          Like

          1. I always wear an N95 when I operate a blower, either for dust on the patio or leaves/Desert Willow flowers in the yard. Dust in the Phoenix area is nasty.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Yep. Worse than here in Tucson. I think that it’s because you aren’t quite so surrounded by mountains; the wind picks up a lot more crud on its way in to town.

              Like

              1. Well, we are surrounded by mountains, but we’re not in them as much as Tucson is; the surrounding desert in the Valley of the Sun and points south (I’m in Maricopa in Pinal County) is far more open to the prevailing winds, and the desert is disturbed by agriculture, far more than the area around Tucson, at least from what I’ve seen. The combination almost guarantees major dust storms on a regular basis, something extremely rare in Tucson unless I’m mistaken. And when the dust blows the spores of Valley Fever, along with any other crap that might be waiting in the soil, are carried along with it.

                Like

  27. That feeling you get when you recognize your own goobermint has evolved into the worst group of bad guys on the planet.

    Like

    1. Right? And you wonder how you missed it all these years.

      It isn’t like we weren’t warned. A lot. Barry Goldwater anyone? “A government big enough to give you anything you want is big enough to take everything you’ve got.”

      How about Benjamin Netanyahoo? There’s an interview on Youtube that he gave when he was 27 years old, where he PREDICTS every damn thing that’s happened since. “If this keeps up, this is what’s going to happen.” And it did! So obvious a wet behind the ears kid could see it.

      How about George Carlin? Most of us have seen that talk-show thing he did near the end of his life where he predicted what’s happened since. Including Covid. He was wrong about who would be doing it, but right about everything else.

      Or how about Bill Maher? Carlin said all that stuff on his show in 2008. Here we are 14 years later with Maher calling out the DemocRats for fascism.

      I became convinced in the 1990s that the Canadian government had some sort of unpleasant aspirations for what they wanted to do in this country, based solely on the gun control act C-68. It was too insane to be real. But I never really -believed- they were going to do what they’re clearly doing right now, much less what they seem to have planned for later.

      This is the plan for later, in case you were wondering:

      https://x.com/TPostMillennial/status/1796275689974300878?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

      That’s Mark Holland, the Federal Minister of Health ranting about how people going on a summer holiday car trip are destroying the planet.

      They’re planning to take our cars. Really. That’s the new plan. And they’ll do it by making it too expensive to have a car. Oh, and by rigging elections too. Because nobody is going to vote to have their car taken away.

      Asking why they would want to do that is at this point a waste of time. That’s the plan, Stan. So now, knowing that, we must consider what our response is going to be.

      Like

      1. BIL does this regularly, so not an indication of health, wealth, age, or anything. But an indication of the status of cost of vehicles. Especially pickups in the US. In addition BIL is a retired vehicle mechanic (worked for Ford for decades, retired as Pacific Power fleet mechanic supervisor. Management? Please, no insults.)

        Selling 2018 F350 Diesel 4×4 xCab, 30,500 miles, with extras (box cover, 5th wheel ready, etc.) $55k. <— This is a bargain for a used diesel. Not giving it away. But worth every dollar.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. That’s more than I paid for my F250 crew cab new in 2011. Same truck almost. These days they’re nearly breaking $100K for a new one. And funny enough, I never see the new ones.

          Like

          1. Have recently been looking into local larger scale diesel vehicles so as to retain the ability to crush their Priuses, drive their Teslas before me, and hear the lamentation of their dirt goddess when my Tahoe ages out.

            Oddly for out here in Silicon Valley, where diesel Tahoe and Suburban and the similar GMC Yukons never used to show up in local dealerships online new inventories, there have recently been a fair number show up, and then rotate off sold after a reasonable

            I am thinking Silicon Valley people who for some reason do not want new vehicles that require a state-operated utilities’ consent to “refuel” are becoming interested in enclosed large haulers that get 20+ mpg and well over 400 miles range, even in the land of omg-there’s-a-lot-of-Teslas-you-don’t-want-Gaia-to-cry-do-you?

            Liked by 1 person

          2. Yes.

            Not quite what BIL paid for it new, then paid for the addons. But, not taking into account inflation, makes the cost/year owned minimal. And yes, they needed the F350 and power. They live in, year round, a 5th wheel. Just for reasons they no longer are hauling it from southern snowbird wintering to northern camp host gigs. OTOH the costs of a new one is way higher than inflation can account for. Rarity, limited production, OTOH, can. Not going to get any better either. These rigs are not known for bettering the fleet MPG federal requirements by any stretch of the imagination.

            Like

            1. Just dropped $5500 for a rear brake job and transmission rebuild on our GMC van. Hoping to keep it in service a few more years, since nobody makes that style of van any more.

              Which is why I am very much hoping that this is indeed not yet the beginning, that we have some time to recoup that money in sales. We still have a couple of weeks off before we start a double-header that may become a triple-header if we can still get tables at our hometown sf con (weren’t planning to sell at it this year, but circumstances have changed, and I’m hoping it’s not completely too late to get in).

              Liked by 1 person

              1. I hear that.

                Last year it was a new roof, including two custom sky lights and 3 flashings, and 1/2 garage door (old one split early December, by the time we ordered one, half down, half on delivery and install).

                This year it is the other 1/2 garage door, exterior house painted, and new kitchen countertops ($11k – Costco), kitchen sink ($170 – Costco for the win), and garbage disposal, plus two new bathroom sink faucets ($40/each – Costco). Not in that order. Hubby asked about new kitchen cabinets. I said “no” (puppy corner chew can be hidden). If there was a way to rearrange VS cost? Maybe. But there isn’t. So not worth it. Still need to paint room above garage (that is us) and replace the carpet/flooring (TBD). Then a break. At some point bedrooms need flooring replaced (carpet), and I want to replace hall, living room, kitchen/dining and sun rooms flooring too. All with vinyl plank. Last requires removal of old not-carpet floors. But the last just got new flooring about 6 years ago. Just too soon with the costs.

                But, and it is a huge “but”, money isn’t a problem. Just pull it from IRA’s saved. No penalty. Not required to pull it, but we can. This is what it is there for. Lot less than selling and buying something else, especially if something else is “new”. Kind of a funny feeling for once. Biggest problem on counter tops paying was “how much hits the CC?” and timing because of credit card limits. Not that they wouldn’t boost it. It is Costco’s CC. But still.

                Like

  28. I am convinced that election cheating this year is going to make 2020 look sweet and innocent by comparison. Ballots will be created, other ballots will disappear, and evidence will be destroyed. The “powers that be” and their complicit lapdog media will declare that all is fair and aboveboard and those that say otherwise are traitors to “democracy”. The die is cast.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Oh yeah. They’re already doing it. There’s plenty of examples from this year already. People challenging voter roles all over the country and finding hilarious levels of corruption.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. I will vote, but I don’t think it matters who for President gets the “win” anymore. The Left has crossed the Rubicon.

      If Trump wins, the Left goes into riots, lawfare and worse. An more visible, repressive “coup”.

      If Trump “loses” (ha) to shitnanagins for the second time… all bets are off as to what crazy shit happens.

      The big question is: Can NATO force Russia into a nuclear conflict to kill a majority of US population or will they be forced to commit a false flag attack?

      There is some other questions concerning foreign invaders/saboteurs and what will retired Spec-Ops folks will do, etc…

      Liked by 1 person

        1. Yes. Why do you think the Soviet Union backed down twice over nuclear brinkmanship. They were and are a paper tiger in the nuclear arms arena. There was musings that only about 25% of their actual missiles would actually launch. And of those, about 10% would actually reach their intended targets. And we don’t even have to talk about how many of those would have actually detonated properly.

          Liked by 1 person

        2. There was a noticeable inflection point change in Vlad’s rhetoric last year, where prior he had been ramping up including nuke threats in public, and then all of a sudden those vanished from his statements and speeches.

          And from a technical point of view, nuclear devices left unmaintained since 1991 are very far into various failure mode probabilities by now, to say nothing of the delivery vehicles.

          Both of these data points would correlate with a technical assessment reporting back on a lack of capability during last year.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Each nuclear equipped missile has at least three different systems that need to work pretty well. Engine, electronics, and warhead.

            If you don’t have a pretty good technical and maintenance culture, your organization will not be able to make sure that those chances of working are correlated. IE, you will not be able to reliably sort systems into high reliability, maintain well, and low reliability, accept problems for lowering costs. On paper you might have those categories, but it would be hard to make that knowledge reliable.

            Much more generally, ignoring Russia, there is a lot of evidence of bad people.

            Some of that has been tampered with, to make the voices of bad people louder.

            The reality is maybe an interesting estimation problem, that we may not have the information to solve, yet.

            Some courses of correction will take a very long time, and some data collection in support of those efforts will take a long time.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. There are also issues of endemic corruption, theft, and politics to consider. By ‘politics’ I am meaning sometimes a man is put in a position for reasons of correct politics, not technical ability or even aptitude.

              Like

          2. I wouldn’t bet the farm that they could not get one or two to work, especially if you are in one or two of those targets. OTOH, Delaware and DC please.

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            1. From the launcher’s side pov, the problem is you have no way of knowing which two shots will fully work, so you basically have to flood the probability curve to get your one or two that work. If everything works on one missile but the warhead device itself, you get a radioactive narrow hole in Delaware, the best remediation for which is probably bury it in concrete with some additives to the aggregate to sop up stray particles. Anything you can remediate with one cement truck with a special order mix does not count as a strategic weapon.

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              1. “Well General, it turns out one of the several hundred warheads actually worked, but…”

                “No buts! How did we manage to make those Atlanticist dogs pay for their crimes?”

                “We, uh, successfully destroyed a, um, decommissioned missile base in Utah…”

                “…”

                “…intelligence confirms it was sold to civilians in the ’90s and converted into secure storage. A few million dollars in ‘Magic: The Gathering’ cards, specifically.”

                “…Major? Do you by chance have a spare cyanide pill? I think it would be preferable than explaining this to Mr. Putin…”

                Liked by 1 person

                1. How would you explain being invaded by thousands of p*ssed-off gamers who roll dice and other things to decide the RoE, when they bother with an RoE?

                  Like

              2. Also note there’s a reasonable probability failure mode where the launcher gets a small number of meters up, then stops thrusting, and the safety gizmo on your device fails such that it detonates when it hits the ground, near enough to on top of your launcher.

                If you went with rail-mobile launchers you’d best hope you picked a remote section of track as your launch point.

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            1. While the launch vehicles get full-up test-launched fairly regularly, the aging warhead issue and it’s impact on reliability in the absence of testing is a real concern, especially as all the designs in use were designed under the assumption that regular testing of at least subcomponents would continue to happen, and were not originally designed to last 50+ years.

              There’s design work happening to come up with really long lifetime warheads, as redesigns of existing stuff to address known time-limited fiddly bits, but any warhead redesign or rework funding is always a political football.

              Like

              1. You test non-critical. Does the “inert alloy” shape get explosively forged into the expected new shape and density? Then you can safely infer that the hellstuff would convert to enerjetic mayhem.

                It’s how they pre- test in design phase. Method goes all the way back to the Manhattan Project “gadget”.

                Also, when they decom an old warhead, it’s a handy way to de-mill all the non-fissile bits, while providing very useful data.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. It’s my understanding from open source that the items of concern are not necessarily the splodey compressive-shape-changing bits, rather some electronics are aging unexpectedly poorly, and I have seen some discussion regarding certain booster fiddly bits.

                  I think the decommissioning inspections are yielding a lot of really interesting data.

                  Like

                  1. The electronics are damaged by ionizing radiation and neutrons. They have to be rad-hard to survive being near the missiles, and to survive nearby blasts.

                    Rad-hard is very much the sane for space use. Once upon a time, I worked for a firm that made rad-hard chips, and another that made rad-hard circuit boards.

                    Fascinating field.

                    The other short-life component is the tritium. It decays to Helium3, which soaks up neutrons, which is exactly what you do -not- want in a warhead. So in a fairly short time, you have to swap it out, or the thing will likely fizzle. Granted, 5kt versus 150kt is still One Very Bad Day for a city, but it isn’t “enough” to take out hardened military sites or deep shelters.

                    Learning how to maintain nukes is as important as how to build them. Because without maintenance, they are billion dollar bluffs.

                    Liked by 1 person

                    1. Back in my days in semiconductor cubeland I worked at a place that, in addition to consumer level stuff, did both rad-hard and space rated programmable devices, the latter of which, i.e. our parts, were onboard in every contemporary lander that successfully landed on Mars, and several that tried but failed due to the Mars Defense Grid waking up.

                      Rad-hard does not just mean programmable semiconductor devices like our stuff was – there are rad-hard discrete components as well. A lot of rad-hard and space-rating was the packaging, which was a lot more expensive and robust than the consumer standard, to try and shield the more sensitive stuff from various particle events.

                      In our stuff a big thing was innate resistance to single-event upset because of how our process and tech worked, which ended up leaking over into the non-rad-hard product lines as a thing we tested because the server-rack silicon device density was becoming so thick that the blade manufacturers were seeing spooky things that traced back to cosmic-ray cascade events.

                      But leaving something in a radiation environment for decades, the damaging particle events just accumulate, and eventually even to most large-process old school semiconductor device will give up the ghost. The Voyager processor that they just jimmied a fix on is just such an example – some 1970s-process bit flipped hard to a 1 due to damage, and they had to figure out and then work around what that bit was originally supposed to make it do.

                      Which is just the thing you don’t want on a warhead.

                      Like

            2. Silos need to be rebuilt or modernized. The air crews and sub crews aren’t as proficient as they used to be. DOE is spending $$$ to see how long the warheads can last before rebuild. And most of the warheads are at Pantex. Not to mention DEI and officer corp rot/corruption. (We are becoming the Soviets…)

              I think we could launch more than the Russians. But I think they can launch enough to hurt us plus do some unconventional warfare. There’s Chechens , Chinese, and others probing almost all installations at an increased rate.

              I think our nuclear force will be used as a bargaining tool against the US population if the Uniparty thinks it will lose big time.

              Like

          1. Oh, no. BGE is correct. China is unimaginably worse.
            I honestly believe this was both Brandon’s and Vlad’s plan, and if not collision giving each other signals. Both could use a major war to stomp on domestic opposition.
            BUT it fizzled like a wet fireracker.

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            1. Right now, I figure the biggest danger is Iran, with a shipping container ( gad, I’m creating nuclear, “Clue”).

              Because why are our foreign policy wunderkind assuming *everyone,* will announce their entry into the nuclear club with a nice, safe underground test , instead of trying to incinerate an annoying enemy?

              Liked by 1 person

        4. I’m not going to bet on that. If they can launch satellites and shorter range hypersonic missles, they could probably send nukes down range to do an EMP attack or worse. Their technical ability is probably greater than “Little Kim’s”.

          Remember, before SpaceX came along, the US space industry was buying rocket engines from Russia and using their space craft as taxis to the ISS.

          And as porous as our border is, you really don’t need a nuke. Ordinary sabotage at a few dozen key locations would do some serious damage. Plinking at hard to replace electrical transformers only made in China is one example. And as many groups that coming across the border, it would be easy enough to hire some third party willing to make some $$$ to do some easy monkey wrenching with a high probablity of escape.

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        1. I can just see the querulous, uncomprehending faces of the news readers and the paid shills staring dumbly. “What’s wrong? 400 million means, like, he won! Right?”

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    1. I agree with what someone posted the other day, ‘I hope we can get out of this without killing a lot of the press, but I don’t see how’ paraphrased.

      Like

      1. And is that necessarily a bad thing? To Steal from the Bard (paraphrase Henry VI)

        DICK. The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

        JACK CADE. Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment, that parchment, being scribbl’d o’er, should undo a man?

        Simply replace Lawyer (Apologies to our resident Lawyers) with Reporters and voila. Certainly the presstitutes abuse of parchment (or paper in the modern case) is equally as vile as the lawyers in Henry VI. And honestly Merchan and the prosecution seem to be doing precisely what Dick and Jack were lamenting. Perhaps “Les brahmandarins à l’hélicoptère” is appropriate and a general reference.

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    2. The being up Watergate whenever they conceivably can. And plenty of inconceivable times, too. This is nothing new. They brought up Watergate with Bush the elder, and I think with Reagan too, if I’m remembering right.

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      1. Funny how none of Slick Willie’s or Barry’s scandals ever got compared to Watergate, except dismissively when Willie got impeached.

        Also funny how Willie is never “Impeached President Bill Clinton” when he pops up in the press.

        The press is full of funny.

        Liked by 2 people

      2. What was Watergate all about, again? Nixon tried to cover for some of his guys after he found out what they’d done. Not exactly an earth-shaking threat to Democracy Itself.

        Liked by 1 person

  30. If Trump didn’t have assets in New York, I doubt he’d have taken the entire episode of the trial seriously, New York can’t touch him in another state, if that state decides to not honor extradition agreements. He knew he’d lose, but had the opportunity to not only find thousands of people to vote for him, he raised an enormous amount of money for campaigning. When you add the precedence that will allow almost unobstructed opportunities of political prosecution, he won all the way around.

    It’s sad that it has to be this way, but it is, and the political show to come will require enormous amounts of popcorn. That, and some of those infected with the progressive virus will find life somewhat miserable when their neighbors decide to cause the misery. It’s obvious the side not to choose has no concern for basic human dignity, and staying on that side is staying with the side of the loser.

    Liked by 1 person

  31. Okay, my thoughts on the subject, in no particular order.

    1-They had to pack the jury and set up everything possible to even get this conviction. A lot of people realize this and they aren’t saying anything for a lot of reasons. Not all of them are “Hurr Durr, Trump got dumped!”, most of them are the residuals of faith in the system.

    2-Our opposition truly doesn’t understand second-order effects. By doing this, every former Democrat President-who have whole walk-in closets of skeletons-can now be targeted. This is going to be painful.

    But it’s what they deserve. And you can tell them “I told you so.”

    3-It is not time for the boogaloo.
    It is not time for the boogaloo.
    IT IS NOT TIME FOR THE BOOGALOO.
    It might be closer than any of us want it to be. Check your supplies and preparations accordingly. But it is not time and anybody that is saying its time wants to have a nice “MAGA Bad!” incident for the election. Defend yourself, but don’t go out looking for trouble.
    If and when the time comes-God help us all-you’ll know.

    4-Don’t let the turkeys get you down. There’s some good news in here-poll numbers for Biden are being spun so hard that they’re turning the bullshit into brown silk. The Brandon Herrera campaign for the Republican primary in Texas lost, but his RINO opponent won by about 700 votes. And had to spend nearly ten times as much to get those 700 votes. A lot of things are happening at the ground level that, if you’re seeing them, suggests a pendulum shift in the other direction.

    Do what you can to keep that shift going.

    5-Trump has appeals, even liberal commentators are pointing out that this case is perfect appeals bait. And this is turning Trump into a martyr with the people the Democrats want to come out and vote.

    6-Build around, over, and through. The only reason I even SEE CNN in the house is Dad trusts the Mainstream Media (I blame this on the people who are on his retired officers list-they make John Birch Society members look positively communist). I’m not buying anything that insults me or calls me terrible because of what I believe.

    (It doesn’t help that a lot of the things I liked have become very niche these days…)

    7-Avoid large cities for the near future, at least until the election’s over. If you have to go-in and out as fast as you can.

    8-Vote. Encourage your friends to vote. The Democratic strategy this year seems to be dependent on a discouraged voter base.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The Brandon Herrera campaign for the Republican primary in Texas lost, but his RINO opponent won by about 700 votes. And had to spend nearly ten times as much to get those 700 votes.

      We had two RINO vs Real American races in the local North Texas area. Both RINOs spent 14 times more than their challenger and only one won.

      :)

      Liked by 2 people

    2. 8 is important because the most basic form of voter fraud is when a poll worker at the end of Election Day makes a note of who didn’t cast a vote, and “helps” the voters that didn’t.

      Ballot Harvesting also works with this.

      Liked by 2 people

    3. 7- Avoid crowds. As a rule, nothing good happens in them. Avoiding blue hotspots is like avoiding bandit camps, and for the same reason. Well, unless you are bandit bounty hunting, that is.

      Liked by 1 person

    4. “2-Our opposition truly doesn’t understand second-order effects. By doing this, every former Democrat President-who have whole walk-in closets of skeletons-can now be targeted. This is going to be painful.”

      By the GOPe? It’s not who they are!

      Like

        1. Yeah, they can do it, and do as seen by the Menendez trial. But, by and large, it’s for Republicans.

          Like

  32. How long before the NYC/State Democrats turn Staten Island into the New Auschwitz?
    Conservatives and Jews will have to wear new stars soon, only this time they will be red.

    Like

      1. NYC would have a fairer system of judging people under the Duke of New York and his trial by combat over what it has now.

        Liked by 1 person

  33. completely coincidental to the reading of the verdict, I was reading Emerson’s essay on Heroism. Read it and see if you see Trump in it the way I do. Then go and do likewise.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I had not read that before – thanks.

      A snippet …

      Our culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of the man. Let him hear in season, that he is born into the state of war, and that the commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self-collected, and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and life in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity, dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech, and the rectitude of his behaviour.

      Like

    1. Not sure – unless you’re talking about the portrait itself. A lot of Dems look pretty hideous…

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      1. Dude as ugly as Democrats are in real life, you could do a horror movie just with their ‘Dorian Grey’ portraits.

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            1. What a great way to pay down the Debt, sell tickets to the hangings of all Democrat Politicians and Rino’s. For the Bureaucrats we can have play game shows, Like ‘whack-a mole’ for real, the winner is the one who whacks the most heads with a sledge hammer. Bowling for Democrats, you line Democrats up and you role an oversized bowling ball at them. ‘To Tell the Truth’ every time a Democrat lies they increase the voltage until fatal or he confesses all his crimes. Beats the current game show the Democrats are playing, ‘Let’s Make a Deal’ with the taxpayers money.

              May all the Deep State and Democrat Politicians and Rino’s burn in hell until hell no longer exists.

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            2. Why not? Hangmen have to be paid; if the public is willing to foot the cost directly, it would save the hassle of taxes and appropriations.

              Wait, never mind, I see the problem with that. Carry on, then.

              Like

              1. “Six at a time.” [first character] looked the job-lot over. “Why, if we started right after noon-meal, we could be through in time for dinner.” He thought for a moment. “Look, [second character]—Pardon, your Majesty. Suppose we use the big bombards, here. We could load the skinny ones all the way in, and the fat ones up to the hips.” He pointed at [third character]. “I think that one would go all the way in a fifty-pounder, almost.”

                [second character again] frowned. “But I’d wanted to do it in the town square. The people ought to watch it.”

                “But it would make an awful mess in the square,” [fourth character] objected.

                “The people could come out from town to watch,” [fifth character] suggested helpfully. “More than could see it in the square. And vendors could come out and sell honey-cakes and meat-pies.”

                100 quatloos to the one who first identifies the source. 😉

                Like

  35. When we finally oust the communists from the federal government, I want statehood revoked for New York State, Illinois, and California. At minimum. And then I want a federally-appointed governor to go in and govern the territories they revert to until the citizens there understand that communism is not the way to run the railroad. Then and only then will they be allowed to write new state constitutions enshrining the Bill of Rights and damning communism as inimical to the goals of a modern State, and then petition to get their statehood back.

    Yeah, fine, call me a dreamer. Just don’t call me late for dinner.

    Liked by 1 person

  36. This is the stupidest timeline. It’s just one rude awakening after another for all those folks who have been in denial about which way the wind has been blowing, lo, these many years.

    I’m tired of waiting for a critical mass of LIVs to get with the program.

    OTOH, I am not entirely sure I do want to see the next chapter after clues are achieved.

    As for myself, I will go with what Joan of Arc said, “I’m not afraid. I was born for this.”

    Okay, well, I’m no saint. I’m slightly afraid. But determined.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. In my case, I used to be afraid. Now “I’m not afraid, I was born for this” is my mind set. I think I was, you know? LITERALLY.

        I believe this to be true. In which case, I was meant to find this place.

        Which is a very comforting thought.

        If you’re not afraid I am going to “Joan Up” too.

        Thank you!

        Liked by 1 person

          1. There are days Himself asks a lot. Some tasks make me want to go “REALLY? Me? Of all your people?” There are countless ways I could have gone more wrong than I did, but just as many that I failed to meet the standards, no matter how low. There are things I’ve done that were absolutely and beyond the shadow of a doubt NOT things I was good at, or intended, or ever thought I would do.

            But none of those petty little details matter. When He asks a non-violent scrawny kid to defend, He means right bloody now. He asks for courage from the lazy and tireless effort from the weak. He demands eloquence from the timid and expects quiet humility from the habitual braggarts. In so, so many things He finds a seed of something quite literally no living man could expect, and tells you “grow.”

            To those of us with more years gone than left, I’m seeing a pattern. “Live as example.” How we meet temporal failures is even more important than our conduct during the easy, profitable, and uncomplicated times.

            I never expected the farcical “legal” shenanigans to so much as have a hung jury, let alone find the man innocent. It was quite obvious from the get-go that this was not proper jurisprudence. The short sighted habits of the Left meant that this was nigh inevitable.

            They don’t get WHY this hasn’t been done, ever, in the history of the United States. Not one time. They don’t even realize that it was even significant, let alone the shining shield that protected them for generations.

            The rule of law exists to protect the GUILTY from their accusers, along with the falsely accused. This was so damned important it shows up everywhere in our history. Allowing the president grace from whatever ire he drew during the commission of his duty is one of the strong supports to our manner of government.

            Now that support is gone.

            Let the metaphorical chainsaw rip. Chop up the departments, defund the lot of them, shutter the buildings and sell off the land. Put tens of thousands- or even millions- of bureaucrats out of work. Open up public works to give them opportunity for meaningful effort (learned this lesson- again- in Iraq). But do the meaningful, necessary work to set things right.

            Slash spending. Make those cuts DEEP. Without the bloat of unnecessary bureaucratic infrastructure, start paying down the debt. Cut off payments to peoples that hate us. Let the pig butts in the Middle East sink (keep Israel, of course). Promote and support folks who are willing to make the hard changes.

            Get energy independence soonest. Clean up election integrity on the local levels, and work upward. Show yourselves, then your neighbors, then the whole world what we can do when the chains of taxation, regulation, and inflation are cast off. Everyone must be their own Milei, their own Trump.

            Be brave. Make them cry, make them fear the whirlwind their seeds have sown. Hold them accountable. Teach the next generation well. There are many lessons to be learned from these last few decades.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. When the Divine calls to you, you have to accept that you are just a tool to His will and being Chosen doesn’t mean special status and privilege, usually it’s just the opposite -you sometimes suffer a great deal. And sometimes your highest purpose is to be a martyr to inspire others. Which why I pray for Trump a great deal.

              Liked by 2 people

        2. This is why I focus on my story of the King inviting me on an adventure. An adventure is dangerous, it is filled with uncertainties. Yet it promises a possible goal of restoring the kingdom, where freedom is valued.

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      2. Dry kitty tone Which should scare someone spitless. They have no idea what havoc an unleashed Sarah can wreak. The chancla of doom is just the start. End dry kitty tone.

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    3. I’m pissed.

      After 4 decades of work, I wanted a mellow retirement job that covered some of the bills and left me time for hobbies.

      These rich arseholes got bored and decided to play checkers with billions of human lives. I guess fscking and killing kids on private islands wasn’t enough of a thrill.

      At least now I know I won’t die in a nursing home or hospice.

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  37. I think you are seeing the Communist/EU’s answer to all the protests. World War III. Putin’s plan to bleed Nato dry, and then the take over the European countries by Islamist’s that hate Euro trash, Jews, and Christians.

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    1. It is weird that everybody is so afraid of Putin.

      Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s. Even if Italy poured all its resources into the military, they would not be much of a threat beyond their immediate neighborhood.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. They have to have someone to hate, Putin is white, by their definition Arab’s are not. But if you told Arabs that they would stab you in the heart. That is according to their current oppression decoder ring. Much like the old Ovaltine decoder rings only they make less sense.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. That’s what’s even funnier. Ten years ago when Mittens said Putin was a threat, Obama said “The ’80s called, they want their foreign policy back”. Also, HRC’s “reset” button that wasn’t. They only jumped on “Russia! Russia! Russia!” when they thought it could somehow hurt Trump.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Did they start out thinking, “Hey, the stupid rubes hate “commies”! We’ll tell them Trump’s a tool of the commies and they’ll hate him!”

            And then, somehow, fall for it themselves? Maybe by realizing the Russians aren’t commies, but heretic, apostate commies and therefore hateful to all correctly-thinking people?

            Liked by 1 person

            2. Overthinking it. Their mentality is now at the level of the Argument From Cooties. Trump has cooties, and everything and everyone he has ever touched has cooties, and why can’t you stupid rubes see that? Cooties are obvious!

              Liked by 1 person

  42. I am tempted to say several thousand things here. I will restrict myself to two.

    First: it is in my nature that I don’t swear. I was a huge prig as a kid, and thankfully much of that has held up. If I’m seriously tempted or pushed, I will resort to Spock-talk circumlocutions, such as saying of the current situation that excreta has reified. If you ever hear/read me swearing (outside of certain professional writing), head to the southwest corner of the basement, because excreta has really reified.

    I say this because I am very, very close to letting that barrier down. You might want to follow my responses here, and take them into account when deciding whether to run for the hills (or toward the sound of the guns). Seems like it might be useful.

    Second: there is a statement I came up with last October regarding Hamas, that I now apply to our situation. It is simultaneously the strongest blessing and the direst curse I can think of, all in the same four words.

    May we receive justice.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. One of my characters has this to say about justice:

      “Justice? Who said anything about justice? Justice would be giving the people you murdered their lives back. Can you do that? I can’t. Therefore, in lieu of the justice I can’t provide, I will have to be satisfied to see you receive retribution. That, and the certainty that you will never hurt anyone ever again.”

      And then, when the presstitutes harangue her for ‘murdering an innocent disabled person’:

      “Innocent your ass! The little turd shot me in the back! The bullets reflected off my force shield, one of them hit the wheelchair’s battery pack, and it caught fire. Not my doing.”

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    2. FIRST: You and my husband are twins. He hasn’t sworn yet, but…. it’s coming really close.
      Me? I’m doing inadvisable on Twitter. I am at heart a Jacobin, in the sense that I want to destroy the system start up the guilhoutine and set fires. (My principles, though, are different from theirs.) Normally I keep it under control. These are NOT normal times.

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  44. heres the thing folks, there is no way this was legit!

    but when most of the pop of NYC is raging libtard what would you expect.

    we already know liberals dont care about common sense, let alone legality of the whole slew of things that go along with that, all they care is mean tweat awful man get em, im tempted to ditch my other half just because of this, almost rather just be alone than with someone who doesnt get it no matter how long ive been with them.

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    1. That’s why so many people want to hang them from lamp posts, burn them alive, Impaled on metal spikes, line them up and shoot them with machine guns, throw them out of helicopters, bury them neck deep in sand at low tide, send them on a cruise ship and torpedo the ship, I could go on and on and on. They have gone too far, we shall have our revenge, make no mistake about that.

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  46. Are you fen? “The more you tighten your grip, Vader, the more star systems will slip from your grasp”

    Of course there’s nothing to worry about. Everybody loves the rebel underdog.

    With this verdict, we might just get a chance to elect Trump. Better yet, the fortifications will be visible from Antarres. The cogdis, even among the pearl-clutchers is at Ceti Eel strength.

    Top kek.

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