Most of us think of truth and lies as a stark thing, one that is or isn’t. Light or dark. Black and white.
We’re not wrong. Things either happened or didn’t happen. People either exist or not.
Some of us, little fabulists by instinct, learned that lesson early. Adults just had an uncanny ability to now that no, you didn’t meet an astronaut on the street, and he didn’t invite you for a ride in his spaceship. Eventually I figured out the other, bigger problem. If you lie habitually people don’t believe you when you’re telling the truth, and that means that no, they won’t realize there is a pig lose until it causes some destruction. The problem was the pig was pink. How pink? I don’t know. In my memory bubblegum pink. And that’s how I described him, which combined with the fact that I had made up a lot of stories earlier to make no one believe me.
Anyway, after that I developed a sort of passion for the truth. I wanted to know the truth. And I wanted to tell it.
What this meant, in practical fact, was that I kept poking at polite fictions and trying to figure out what was behind things.
Since this was in pre-history, before the internet, all it did was ensure I didn’t trust politicians or the line the media fed us. If I’d had access to the internet and could compare and contrast it, I’d have been considered a true loony. No one would have believed me, if I’d been shouting the truth as we know it now back in the seventies.
I’m reading a lot of articles in the media about how we now now. We now know they lied to us. We now know they’ve lied to us for the most part of the last hundred years.
The strange thing for me is that for most people everything seems to have tumbled down with Biden’s speech. It’s shocking and strange, because the last four years — the last four years — have been a sustained barrage of lies, one they have admitted to.
From the covidiocy and the back and forth lies on that, to the vaccines and the incredible damage they caused, to their attempts to convince us that there was another pandemic coming. How many? Let me see bird flu, monkey pox, bird flu, repeat, to the craziness of attempting to convince us that that there was a climate emergency requiring everyone to be locked up, to–
I’ve lost track, people. I’m sure you can fill in in the comments. Lie, after lie after lie. And then they admit the truth — like snopes recently with the “very fine people” lie — quietly and in the back pages, and the big news outlets never admit it, never retract it, never apologize.
It’s been a wild ride since 2016 actually. I used to say the best thing about the Trump presidency was that he pulled down the masks. Because he did. So many things. Like, yeah, we can have peace in the Middle East, if you try to have peace. You don’t have to be afraid of China or North Korea, or Russia, you just treat them seriously, but not credulously. Or the democrats will concoct an entire conspiracy and spy on an opposing candidate, or–
But apparently — apparently — for normal people who don’t live and breathe politics, the debate and Biden’s crazy dementia, that we could see from 2020 are complete news.
I’ve been watching this whole thing, half in confusion and half in fear. The fear is that they’ll go back to sleep. That the dems will replace Biden and they’ll convince themselves it was just Biden, and go back to their comfortable place.
We all want to go back to a place where we could believe the journalists, the teachers, the professors, the scientists. The difference is some of us know it hasn’t existed for our whole lifetimes and longer. It’s just now we can see the lies.
It’s very uncomfortable, this place where conspiracy theories become admitted truth two days later, and nothing stands between us and the howling abyss of finding all the truth ourselves. And of knowing how badly we were always lied to.
But it’s also the way to freedom. You know the whole “the truth will set you free?” It’s not that so much as the fact that lies bind you.
Believing that the election was fair, for instance, bound a lot of people into believing that most Americans wanted what Biden has unleashed on us. Believing that elections are fair and free when they patently are not lead a lot of people to view “blue states” as “deserving what they get” instead of as fellow Americans under the boot of the oppressor.
Believing the world is getting warmer through human action is causing western civilization to self destruct. For that matter believing that if civilization falls paradise will emerge, which most of us were taught in various ways from elementary school on, means that people are cooperating in the destruction who would otherwise fight it.
I can’t list all the lies. We are literally surrounded by them.
The only thing I can tell you is that you shouldn’t accept anything without verifying, without investigating, without prodding. And unfortunately, we can no longer just rely on what’s reported. We have to test “does this seem possible, when I know that?” and… My husband says I read the news on the shelves of grocery stores. He’s not wrong. What people buy and don’t, what people leave behind that is discounted gives you a moving snapshot of the economy. Unfortunately so does the steady climb of prices. If I had teens today I’d be crying in the grocery store again, like I did in 2008. While we were moving from Colorado, the movement of people out of state was obvious by the shortage of u-haul trucks and the fact thrift stores wouldn’t take even very good donations. (Since then they appear to have had an influx of Californians and New Yorkers.) I also read the news in my friend and extended acquaintance circle, and yeah, I do know things are grim.
But the lies keep coming, about how vibrant the economy is, about how prosperous we all are. And it’s hard to hold on to the truth.
So you must look for it all the time. Find the truth. And proclaim it. It will set us free. Or at least it will prevent us being “delivered bound to our foes.”
It is both glorious and terrifying to be living in a time when the lies are tumbling down. It’s glorious to know that our sense there was something seriously wrong was true, and to have new possibilities open to us that had been closed by apocalyptic myths used to terrify us. It’s terrifying because it’s like being atop a mountain that’s crumbling and melting in the rain, and you realize it’s all some spun confectionery, and it goes deep and deep, maybe as far as the center of the world.
Let it go. The confectionery was spun of cyanide not sugar.
And though the crumbling and fall will hurt, we will be able to rebuild.
Build under, build over, be around. And stand ready as the vast structure made of lies falls.
Stand ready to take the weight.
It is our honor, our very great privilege to ensure civilization goes on and that the next generation and the next live in freedom. Or to die trying.
*This blog is reader funded. I don’t have a grant or a patron. You’re my patrons and only you can compensate for the toil of keeping the blog going day after day, year after year. For the full explanation of why a funding drive, and what I intend to use it for, if you’re interested, go here. There are several ways of supporting me.
GiveSendGo, for which I make no promises; Chapterhouse, for which I will give you my fiction that is in process, yes there will be typos; and Patreon, for which I give you cat pspsps posts. For the more exotic reasons: email me for paypal address or email address. The book promo email at will do: bookpimping at outlook dot com. And there is the snail mail address at: Sarah A. Hoyt, 304 S Jones Blvd #6771, Las Vegas, NV 89107.
I know the times are tough — for all of us — and I don’t hold it against anyone who can’t contribute. But all contributions are greatly appreciated. – SAH*
According To Hoyt 
Speaking of lies:
https://twitchy.com/dougp/2024/07/01/carl-bernstein-decided-now-was-a-good-time-to-tell-cnn-how-many-horror-show-moments-bidens-had-n2397886
Now, what price will Bernstein pay for his lies?
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And another one. You’d almost think they’re crawfishing….
https://redstate.com/mccabe/2024/07/02/fact-check-shock-snopes-backs-trump-on-suckers-and-losers-hoax-n2176250
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I noted that Snopes was apparently fully acquired in 2022. Maybe that has something to do with it? On the other hand, the new owners acquired Salon in 2019.
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What price will Bernstein pay? Nothing. Bernstein’s CNN appearance yesterday was a modified limited hangout; he was following instructions before he appeared and during his appearance.
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The lies of commission and omission on the part of the Mainstream Establishment Press have always been the most concerning to me. I’ve believed since Rathergate and then the Swiftboat affair that we are either being lied to wholesale by the Mainstream Establishment Press, or they are smothering with a pillow those stories that they don’t want to even begin looking at. I mean – the simple fact that just about every one of John F. Kerry’s Vietnam swiftboat companions thought he was a glory-hunting dork – a combination of Major Frank Burns and Eddie Haskell and wasn’t fit to be city dog – catcher that was embargoed for weeks, weeks during which it was all over the internet. But the mainstream reporters wouldn’t report on it, until they practically had a gun at their heads.
Yeah – aged 27 and know absolutely nothing.
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I’m more afraid that they *won’t* replace Biden. After all, anyone can have a bad night with a cold. <spit>
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I’m just astonished that they thought they had to make excuses for how he sounded. Raspy voice? That’s how he’s talked for the last who know how many years. Why claim it’s because of a cold? It’s not like he showed any other symptom.
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Because a reason given (“He had a cold.”) will provide mental cover for those who have been ignoring what’s going on.
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Remember Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch? IIRC it started with John Cleese walking on and saying to the (obviously male) Michael Palin: “Excuse me. Miss?”
Palin [affronted]: Miss???
Cleese: Sorry. [pause] …I have a cold.
IMO the Biden-had-a-cold excuse was a gaslight finely tuned to be taken at face value by the younger Demoprogs, and to be read as an effyou by the more conservative Boomers, most of whom would recognize the callback.
Bullies are never satisfied to just push people around. The people have to <em>know</em> they’re being deliberately humiliated. “Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own?”
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I remember it as Palin having his back turned, then when Cleese said “Miss”, Palin turned around and Cleese’s mistake became obvious. I guess I’ll just have to go watch it again to check if my memory is correct. Have to, don’t you know, you’ve forced me into it. ;-)
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It’s been a loooong time since I last saw it. I just remember laughing my buns off at the delightfully absurd non sequitur.
Like “conspiracy theories” and the Babylon Bee, life eventually imitates art. With less and less “grace period” every year.
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Honestly, running him feels like a taunt at this point. They are going to run him and dare anyone to object when he gets “teh most votes evah” again.
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“The center will hold.”
“How do you know?”
“Because we are the center.”
― Richelle Mead, The Fiery Heart
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What is the center?
Sarah Palin, American Centrist
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democrats suck, politicians overall pretty much suck, the alphabet group or agencies PRETTY MUCH ALL SUCK
My consent to be governed, pretty much non existent
who is John Galt!
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John Galt shrugs?
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John Galt smiles, looks down, then ties his shoelace.
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I saw a Rivian with a “Who is John Galt?” license plate frame a while back. It may have been refitted to run off cognitive dissonance.
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The Reader would love to see the thermodynamic cycle diagram for a cognitive dissonance engine.
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We already have the cognitive dissonance filling stations: The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc…
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Just be aware of the self-disassembling cylinder heads. Debris shields strongly advised.
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I imagine it would work similarly to the Infinite Improbability Engine: type something that conflicts with its long-held beliefs, and it teleports itself (and the ship it’s attached to, and you and your passengers) across the universe to escape.
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democrats suck, politicians overall pretty much suck, the alphabet group or agencies PRETTY MUCH ALL SUCK
My consent to be governed, pretty much non existent
who is John Galt!
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Small digression, because your mention of “the truth will set you free” reminded me of this. I’ve encountered quite a few people who don’t know the meaning of that saying, and have puzzled over it. So I wanted to explain it a little, for anyone who might be interested.
If you read the whole passage that the verse comes from, the meaning becomes more obvious:
So in the original context, Jesus wasn’t talking so much about the truth setting you free from lies (though it certainly does that, of course). He was more talking about the truth setting you free from being “a slave to sin”. What does that mean? Well, one very obvious example would be an addict. He may have started out enjoying the high he gets from heroin, or the pleasant buzz of drunkenness, but after a while it become something he couldn’t stand being without. He used to be in control of his habit, and really could have quit anytime, but by now he’s not in control of it, it’s in control of him. That’s the kind of thing that Jesus meant when He talked about being a slave to sin. (Though it applies to all sin; some sins are more obviously addictive/enslaving than others, but all eventually end up controlling you. Think about compulsive liars, for example, who have ended up so controlled by their habit of lying that they can’t tell the truth even when it would actually benefit them to do so. Most of them end up working for the news media.)
Now, I’ve never been addicted to drugs or alcohol myself. But I’ve heard, over and over, stories from people who used to be addicted, but were freed from their addiction when they came to believe in Jesus. The pattern of those stories, from many different people, is remarkably consistent: once they came to understand God’s love for them, they suddenly found they didn’t Need, capital N, the drugs any more. They still wanted them (habits do tend to be stubborn things), but it was far easier to say no, because God had broken the hold that the addiction had on them, and had replaced that craving with the knowledge that His love for them was enough. Almost literally a case of “the truth will set you free”.
… You know? I just realized that I do have a similar story to share. Not about being freed from an addiction, but about being freed from a negative pattern of behavior and thought. (And, quite specifically, freed by understanding God’s love for me, which is why it fits this particular topic). But it’s really late here, and I need to go to bed. If anyone’s interested, I’ll post it in about 9-10 hours once I’ve woken up and had breakfast.
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Please share. Thank you!
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Okay. Long comment incoming.
As I have mentioned from time to time, I have ADHD. (When I was first diagnosed it was called ADD, the “H” was added to the name later). Back in college, I didn’t know I had ADD, and thought it was just laziness / bad study habits. So I would lie in bed at night thinking about all the ways I had failed to get my studying done, berate myself for my failures, and determine to do better tomorrow. But that, obviously, doesn’t work well. In my case, the effect of berating myself like that was that I was even more stressed about getting the work done the next day. And what do I do in response to stress? I find ways to escape it — in my case, into video games. (This was before I realized I was displaying addictive behavior patterns about video games, and gave them up cold turkey). So then the next day I would stress about my work, escape my stress by playing video games, get almost nothing done, and berate myself again.
Then one night, I had a dream. It was a particularly vivid dream, to the point where I still remember it now, twenty-five years later. In my dream, I knew (with the absolute certainty that one has in dreams) that there were two sides fighting a spiritual battle: Satan’s side and God’s side. (Yes, I also believe this to be true when I’m awake, but that’s a belief based in faith. In my dream, it was bone-deep certainty, not just belief, if that distinction is clear). I had been born, not by my choice, into Satan’s side of the battle, and I wanted to defect and join God’s side. But I knew Satan would be incensed with me if he found out, and the only hope I had of being safe was to ask God to protect me. But in the logic of the dream, I had to speak my request out loud — and I was so scared I literally couldn’t get the words out. I would open my mouth, but I would be shivering so hard my mouth couldn’t form the words: I was literally scared speechless.
And then, still in the dream mind you, I could feel God causing my eyes to be opened, to see the real truth underlying the physical world. (If you’re familiar with the Bible, think about when Elisha prayed that his servant’s eyes would be opened in 2 Kings 6:17, and the servant suddenly could see the armies of angels surrounding the house ready to protect them from the enemies who were coming to kill them. That’s what this felt like in my dream.) Now, I had not yet seen a single person in my dream: I was just standing out in a grassy field, with nobody in sight. But once God opened my eyes, I saw, not an army of angels surrounding me like Elisha’s servant did, but two hands cupped underneath me, holding me up. I thought I had been standing on a grassy field, but in fact the whole time I was being held in God’s hands. (To give you an idea of the scale of God’s hands as I saw them in my dream, put a little Lego figurine in your cupped hands. I was about half the size of the Lego figurine, scale-wise). And through God’s hands, flowing around me and through me, was a river of love. Invisible, not actually tangible, and yet I could feel its current washing through me. And as God’s love flowed through me, it washed away the fear I’d been feeling. (“Perfect love drives out fear”, 1 John 4:18). And I could stand up straight, and say, out loud the way I needed to, “God, protect me from the devil!”
And then I woke up.
As I said, that dream stuck in my mind to the point where I still remember it vividly twenty-five years later. So the very next day, I thanked God for giving me such a vivid picture of His love for me — and my mental picture of God’s love is still a pair of cupped hands under me, holding me up. But what I didn’t realize until a couple of weeks after that dream is that something changed that night. Ever since the night I had that dream, I no longer went through that cycle of berating myself and mentally beating myself up for what I’d failed to get done that day. By the time I realized that, a couple weeks later, I’d gone through fourteen (or maybe it was fifteen) days without doing that very same thing I used to do nearly every night. I’d still sometimes lie in bed and go over what I’d done that day and what I’d failed to get done, but the emotional tone was completely altered. It was like someone who’d lost a game of chess, dispassionately analyzing his lost game to see where his mistakes were, and how he could do better in the next game. “I shouldn’t have turned my computer on this afternoon,” I would think. “Because I just had a reading assignment for my philosophy class, and I needed the textbook, not the computer. When I turned the computer on, I saw the desktop icon for that game” (I believe it was Planescape: Torment I was playing through at the time, though it might have been Baldur’s Gate) “and found myself playing the game instead of doing the homework. Okay, noted. Next time, don’t turn the computer on unless I need to.” Emotional content: none. I was making mental notes on how to win the next match of chess I would play against my ADD. But no longer was I berating myself, and no longer did that then add to my stress the next day as I was trying to get my work done.
So that’s my story of how realizing God’s love for me, in my case via a dream, helped break me free from a negative pattern of behavior and tought. A dream, I should add, that was so vivid and clear, so different from an ordinary dream, that I knew for certain as soon as I woke up that it had been a dream that God had placed in my head, not something my own brain had come up with. I hope this was encouraging or uplifting to someone, or that it helped you realize the truth of God’s love in a deeper way somehow.
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Sometimes folks get subtle hints, little clues, an unexpected nudge.
You and I got the “Clue-By-Four” treatment.
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And I. Combined with a couple of nudges after.
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Well, despair is classified as a mortal sin. I think it is addictive, too, for some – the brain chemistry changes from anything that you do consistently.
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Doom-scrolling. Whole generation addicted to that. Here’s Rick Beato telling you that music has dropped off a cliff because everybody is on their phone, scrolling social media. Mass addiction?
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I am one of the commenters he’s responding to with that video.
I think he’s right, but my take on it is: “and so?” Great YouTube channel.
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That’s why I love coming here. Mrs. Hoyt is my white pill dispensary. I’ll try to contribute to her fund for that alone.
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Clinically they call it “depression”. I’ve learned a bit about that in the last six years.
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As a public defender, I deal with the addicted all the time. Something I have to constantly keep in mind and tell both my clients and their failures is that practically no one wakes up one day and decides to become an alcoholic or tweaker. There’s something wrong in their lives that they are using the substance to escape. The good news is that if they can figure out what that problem is and work on it, they can beat the substance abuse. The bad news is that if they aren’t willing to work on it, all the rehab and treatment and years in prison won’t touch it.
And of course, there is no such thing as a cured addict, any more than there can be a cured diabetic. You can have it under control, but you can never stop fighting it.
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clients and their *families*
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The pastor at the church I used to attend when I was in college was named Lyle Dorsett. From time to time during the sermon he’d mention something like “Back when I used to drink — by the way, my name is Lyle, and I’m an alcoholic. But by the grace of God I’ve been dry for eighteen years.” (Or however many years it was).
I’ve always thought that that was one of the best things he could do for the people in the congregation who were struggling with addictions themselves. Let them know that addiction does not make you a bad person, and that with God’s help it can be overcome. If you try to go it alone you’re unlikely to overcome it, but for God all things are possible.
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We have a good pastor now, but I still miss Brother Willie, who made it clear he’d drunk and smoked and run around with loose women and got into fights, until he found Jesus. (Or Jesus got his attention). I doubt you could confess *anything* to Brother Willie that could shock him.
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Yup. Sober 42 years, since I woke up this morning.
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If you don’t want to be driven by your appetites and whims, you need a standard to judge them against. Only the truth will serve.
There are those who try to simply go against the crowd, but that is also a whim. What happens when the crowd takes to what you were doing? Sulk about how you were doing it before it was cool, and then either drop it or keep it up?
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The analysis I’ve read says the DNC cannot replace Biden at this point. He is their nominee, and many of the States are past their deadline for changing the name on the ballot, unless he actually dies. Even then, it become Kamela unless they can replace her too.
They’ve painted all of us into a rather tight corner really.
On a funny note, this morning, before reading this, was listening to the latest Whatifalthist, which was also about the lies we’ve been told. His subject was the economy, and how the numbers have apparently been fake since WWII, and maybe as far back as since WWI.
Similar basic thread: people are (or have been) willing to believe the experts over their own eyes for a very long time, and things are about to go pop in a big way.
Fun times…
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The Reader notes one exception exists – if Biden somehow passes from this mortal veil the DNC can replace him and the states have an exception in their ballot laws for that circumstance. The Reader is pretty sure that Hillary is not on the White House guest list for just that reason…
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I almost — almost — feel sorry for him, since about the only thing with a higher probability of near term death than being old, senile, and infirm is being between Hillary Clinton and power.
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“Dr.” Jill vs. Shrillary, 10 rounds, only teeth and claws allowed. To the death.
Popcorn time!
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Pay per view!
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I was about to say that.
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We know the economic numbers are worse than usual simply because every time they have a revision to their reports, all the “good news” about the economy disappears. Unfortunately that gives them the wiggle room to put out the next quarter’s numbers as being “look how much better we’re doing” until the revision comes out weeks later.
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Which really only works so long as the average person believes the statistics are fabrications.
I think that’s part of why people are melting down about the debate: they’ve just had it slapped in their face that the newsies are making things up in a way that’s very hard to ignore.
Now they have to wonder what else at et hey being lied to about?
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The list of what they haven’t been lied to about would be far shorter. Maybe fit on a 3×5 card in 12-point.
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Naw. 3×5 card in 12-point, most the card would still be blank.
At this point if they say the sun is in the sky and is yellow. The sky is blue. It is raining. I’d have to verify it all visually myself. And for Rain? Would have to be sure someone isn’t pissing down on everyone.
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I’ve read this elsewhere. My response: Since when to the rules apply to Democrats?
If the rules were being followed, Biden wouldn’t be on the Ohio ballot. If they want Biden replaced, Biden will be replaced.
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Bob Torricelli
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The Jackass party can do anything with which they can get away.
Since 1830.
The problem is that Biden is unlikely to quit. But if there us no protective bubble, they will drive him right over into disfunction, just by stress and sleep disruption.
If they don’t convince Jill to convince Joe, this is going to get very, very ugly. And if -she- gets dialed up on vicious, we may see some odd cases of “suddenly”.
That party has a remarkable record of getting away with crap. And the RINOs have a well earned rep for allowing, even outright aiding, Jackass maneuvers.
…
Note: spell check was converting “Jackass” to “Jackal”, so maybe I am not far off….
…
Day of the Jackass
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I considered an Edith Wilson scenario in Biden’s case, but I don’t think reality bears that out. “Dr.” Jill is no ruthless genius. She just seems to be selfish in enjoying the privileges accorded to the office no matter if the man she supposedly loves would be better in a nursing home. I haven’t been able to figure out who is actually running the country, but it sure ain’t Joe Biden. Anybody can see that. I just have no information about who is really feeding him lines and policies.
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I have a serious question. has anyone looked to see if the death of Biden’s first wife was er…. arranged?
Because indications are he was boffing (pardon crude, but) Jill on the side back then.
I think “love” is highly overstated for doctor Harpy.qqqq
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You weren’t supposed to notice that, or go there.
Yeah. Potentially a very bad day coming for anyone trying to oust Joe from the ticket, or via 25A.
“Polonium Tea” or worse.
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Just call Jill “Lady Macbeth”. It fits. Except instead of a MacBeth she is working with MacBrain-dead.
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MacDementia fits even better. MacDementia and Lady MacDementia. In this case the tragedy is the damage they are inflicting upon the USA.
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I’ve read some speculation that it wasn’t so much arranged as it was her way out of the situation.
DOCTOR Jill sure is running hard for first lady.
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So I saw something on X the other day:
What if the Corn Pop story actually happened, but it was because the bad dude was trying to keep Biden from creeping on the little kids at the pool?
I mean, it kinda fits, doesn’t it?
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Not vicious? Expending a -clearly- failing husband, to keep “First Lady”?
She isn’t a victim. At -best- she is an enabler and coattail-rider. More likely, she has been his primary puppeteer for at least a decade or two.
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Note I didn’t say “not vicious”. I said not a “ruthless genius”. I don’t think she has any interest in running the country. She just wants to exploit her husband for the life of privilege he provides her with his position.
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point on no use of “vicious”
She -is- ruthless. Demonstrably. Results speak for themselves. From their denied early start.
“Genius”? enough to get Joe into the Oval Office, despite Joe being Joe.
At least “sufficiently and dangerously cunning”.
Doesn’t matter the adjectives. She could potentially unleash a real mess. It’s going to take an impressive bribe to get her to go along with “Time to go, Joe.” Senator from New York, maybe. Been done before.
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Hmmm. Maybe -Pennsylvania-. Solve two problem brains with one bribe.
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Since Biden actually has to be seen and heard, doesn’t matter who is feeding him lines and policies. I am sure, no way to verify unless someone had actually tackled him to find it, but sure Biden had a receiver ear piece for someone to feed him his lines at the debate. He couldn’t even parrot the lines he was given.
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Disclaimer: I don’t do video. However, folks on the more right-side of Lenin noted that in at least one case, before Biden spoke, another voice could be heard with the answer, presumably from an earpiece. (My hearing sucks raw eggs, so I wasn’t going to try to check the clip.)
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Erick Erickson is speculating Stephanopulous is going to do a hostile interview with Biden, not the softball puffery he might expect, as a way to “encourage,” his departure.
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Eek. Ouch! (For Biden and his puppet string holders.)
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The specific political stalemate the Democrats are in this week would make for a fantastic political thriller. Pick your favorite two or three theories about who’s going to wind up on top and why, then pit them against each other. The only hard part would be getting your readers to believe it.
Or write it from Biden’s POV and make it a farce.
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I’ve been expecting the knives to come out (literal, not figurative) for a while now. Pleased they haven’t, yet. But we have *got* to be getting close to, “Can no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” territory, even if Biden and Trump are about as far from being “priestly,” as one can imagine.
Which is why all the, “Biden should use Seal Team 6 to take put Trump! He’s got immunity!” takes are foolish, shortsighted and very dangerous.
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“They’ve painted all of us into a rather tight corner really”
We fucking TOLD them frauding Biden into power would suck for everyone but especially them. It was beyond cutting off your nose to spite someone else’s face. This is Palestinian level of incompetent self-destruction. Was it really so hard to just let Trump win again? Jesus.
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they have no idea what Americans do in a tight corner, do they? Honey badgers ain’t nothing to us.
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We can be fierce as a dragon in a pinch.
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…and if you’ve ever seen a dragon in a pinch….
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Reagan’s 1981 inaugural address.
“As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it; we will not surrender for it, now or ever.”
Worth remembering, as it remains true.
https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/inaugural-address-1981
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Actually, yes. Trump is an existential threat to the Swamp and “business as usual”. A second contiguous term would have been -catastrophic- for them. A second Trump term in 2025 will not be as effective, but he will now be a non-amateur, and -highly- motivated to take off the gloves and -win-.
They have awakened an Orange giant ego, and filled him with a terrible resolve.
They could have just screwed around for another four years, thwarting and sabotaging, and salvaging the long game. But now?
Game of Blue Falcons
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now they are screwed if he gets in, payback
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They are utterly fixated on their Thousand-Year Reich. No delays or interruptions will be tolerated! They wants absolute one-party authoritarian rule and they wants it now!
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Honestly I think a good chunk of the left (at least the votes and supporters) believes their own propaganda and fearmongering at this point. They really do think Trump is Hitler, they really believe climate change is going to kill them, and yet they also believe the whole arrow of history myth and it’s only a matter of time before all their leftwing utopian dreams come true. It’s bizarre particularly in the case of the Hamas supporters who think that Israel is going to magically vanish and then all the world, starting with the U.S., will also be decolonized.
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I saw a good point elsewhere, which is “if Trump winning is really the worst thing imaginable, why are they still running a visibly demented candidate?”
It’s like how they react about climate change. If they really believed what they are saying, their behavior would be different. But it isn’t. They’re either very self-deluded or they don’t believe what they’re saying. (No reason it can’t be both, of course.)
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One of the worst parts of the loss of trust is the loss of potential. Society functions more smoothly, civilization advances more rapidly, life is just better when you can trust people (or to rephrase, when other people are trustworthy). When we lose that, as I judge we have by now, perhaps you can prevent some terrible abuses — and I hope we do — but a lot of positives become much more circumscribed.
Contrast Jonas Salk in the 1950s with Pfizer and Moderna (and Johnson & Johnson and Astra-Zeneca) in the 2020s. Would the polio vaccine have been adopted as early in a society with a post-Covid level of trust in medical authorities? Of course, Salk’s clinical trials were more open than what the pharmaceutical companies gave us. Would that have been enough? Now multiply that by a thousand facets of everyday life. We are going to lose a lot because some people feel entitled to have us follow them unquestioningly, rather than having to do the work needed to earn and maintain such trust.
(Once again, I feel sorely tempted to launch into a personal tangent/rant about the Pricks (I mean the hypodermic kind). Once more, I’m going to refrain, or at least postpone.)
Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est.
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Tell Them Sister Sarah!
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Back in The Day, when I was faking up software for a living, I heard a noted software engineering guru amplify on that Truth dictum: “The truth will set you free. But first it will make you miserable.”
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Werner Erhard had a great line about this. “The Truth shall set you free. But first, it will p1ss you off.”
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THIS.
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Right?
You find out what’s really going on, and all you can do is stand there in disbelief and swear. They -really- did that? Are you !@#%ing kidding me?
Nope. Not kidding. They really did. And I believed it. Yeah, I’m pretty p1ssed off.
Think how people in the army feel right now, knowing this demented kiddie-sniffing @$$h0le is their Commander in Chief. Danger, Will Robinson. Everybody from the dumbest boot in training to the tippy top of the heap is looking up the chain of command and saying “So whatcha gonna do, sarge?”
Given all that, when #LetsGoBrandon wins the election by a landslide in November, just imagine what’s going to happen.
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I don’t know why everyone is so surprised. Obama, a Marxist creation of the CIA got two terms as a puppet, why shouldn’t Biden?
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When the first thing the leftist idiots (but I repeat myself) shout about when considering “official acts” of POTUS being immune from prosecution (obviously outside of impeachment) is “Send the military to kill opposition candidates!” the current military has to be seriously reconsidering any plans to re-up.
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Anybody that has enlisted or re-uped since 2021 is a fool/tool.
Veterans have been telling youngsters the consequences of joining the miltary forever, but especially since the losing neocon “adventures” of the last two decades.
Butler was absolutely correct about war being a racket.
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Oh, blow it out your ears and stop accusing better men– better 17 year old girls!– than yourself of having your flaws, you tool or fool.
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Take the log out of your eye and bless your heart.
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The 17 year old girls are definitely better men than yourself.
But hey, have fun attacking the folks who actually go and put their lives on the line, right before Independence day, because you’ve decided all is lost (yet again) and yet are too cowardly to even leave, much less try to fix things.
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Yeah! How dare anybody bad-mouth Teh Experts?
White Labcoats == Black Robes == Blue With Badge == BDUs == [YourSkinsuitHere] … all beyond reproach, because Shut Up
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Don’t let the door hit you on the way out of the country, Bub.
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Nope. Sticking around to call ’em like I see ’em. Denying unpleasant reality is a trait that keeps invaders (who, pre-historically and onward, killed the local men and brought the New Normal to the survivors) from killing whiny saboteurs. (Saboteuses?)
Since it seems to be my day for quoting Orwell:
“It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.”
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Yeah, yeah, you’re so brave in spitting on soldiers.
Just like in the sixties, maaaaaan.
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I think you have the wrong person. He wasn’t the one who had that initial comment.
In fact I think his comment before this was ironic, so I’m not sure what’s going on.
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No, he decided that objecting to this statement:
Needed this response:
White Labcoats == Black Robes == Blue With Badge == BDUs == [YourSkinsuitHere] … all beyond reproach, because Shut Up
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Not spitting on soldiers. Spitting on institutions that forced male soldiers to wear “empathy bellies” to better en-woken them to the tribulations of women (back when they still admitted that Women were different, and had different tribulations, one being pregnancy); with epicene, flouncing Admirals enforcing proper pronoun use; with men and women forced to pretend they’re serving side-by-side in the field as “equals”–until the poop hits the prop, at which time Chivalry (and resultant Pregnancy) undoes the Equality…
Institutional capture by the Soviets and their descendants–which the regulars here acknowledge in Journalism, Education, Law, Medicine, Finance, Entertainment–didn’t somehow overlook the Armed Forces. The main difference is you can just up and quit those other fields without getting sent to Leavenworth. People should think long and hard and clearly before booking rooms in Roach Motels.
I have nothing but respect for those “rough men who stand ready to do violence” on our behalf. The same goes for reporters, teachers, cops and jurists, healers, financiers, and balladeers and bards. My respect for people who knee-jerkishly insist that the current skin-suit incarnations of those fields, and the people in them, are sacrosanct… is qualified.
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Ah, how appropriate.
You’re attacking soldiers for their own good.
Heya, Kerry! Trying a new round of “them thar soldiers iz too dum 2 doo stufs”?
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Against my [always shaky] better judgment, I’ve been itching to put this out into the world. Because it’s concerned with Truth and Lies, this column in this blog seems like the place for it.
There were Normies, who worked for their homes and their bread.
There were Wokies, who flash-mobbed and robbed stores instead;
who went plundering dumpsters, shot smack under bridges,
and crashed in containers intended for fridges.
The Normies attended their churches and schools,
and supported their country, and followed the rules,
and when driving their cars, if the cops ever stopped them,
they never threw fits, or pulled pistols and popped them.
They co-operated! If cops acted awful,
the disgruntled drivers stayed legal and lawful
and filed their complaints with the Chief Deputation
without claiming Sys-temic Dis-crimination.
They worked, they got married, had kids (in that order!)
They liked having border guards guarding the border.
No wars; strong economy; gas prices dropped–
“Holy bleep!” said the Wokies. That’s gotta be stopped!
“Those deplorable, ignorant, bigoted hicks!
They aren’t reading Woke stories or watching Woke flicks,
so they don’t understand how ashamed they should be
of America! Make ’em Woke! ASAP!”
———-
University kids, in a college town bar,
saw an old man drive up in his least fancy car.
They were kindly kids–soft-hearted, soft in the head,
so he pulled out a bullhorn, and here’s what he said:
“My friends!”–his voice oily as hot vaseline–
“My name is McBernie McSantaclaus-Green!
You don’t know you’ve got troubles! You all think you’re happy!
I’ll educate you! I’m your Marxist grandpappy!
I’ve come here ’cause you kids are just what we need
to make Minimum Wages increase at great speed
while your prices stay low, ’cause we’ll tax Corporate Greed!”
Then the socialist fans of McSantaclaus-Green
used the Capital-Istical Tweeting Machine
to assemble the biggest and best of the nation’s
extensive, inclusive vote organizations.
They started off voting again and again
with the ballots from nursing homes! Graveyards! The Pen!
From the homeless encampments and drug rehab centers!
(They dumped ballots voted by Normie dissenters.)
Then, in the wee small hours, they all began
double-counting those ballots; each woman and man
and non-binary! Bisexuals! Two-spirit commies,
with two (or no) daddies, or two (or more) mommies!
———-
At home, people watched on TV as votes mounted:
the President led, with the votes mostly counted.
They fell asleep seeing the Pundits dejected:
the trend, near the end, showed the Prez re-elected.
But overnight, miracles pass! They awaken: it
says on TV the Opponent has taken it!
Sunday-show Pundits, all smirking with Pride, said,
“There may have been fraud here and there, but not widespread!“
Before, Judges said, “Wait! There’s nothing to see!”
And thereafter, “Too late! It’s a fait accompli!
And if we took this case, there’d be Arson and Riot
and Death–mostly peaceful! So just you keep quiet!
In this crowded theater, you can’t yell ‘Fire!’
(And remember Scalia? We’ll live to retire!)
And we’ll spend our retirements ‘midst kudos and smiles,
not in Damage-Controlling our FBI files.”
And the Pundits with Asian and Arabic names
said “Conspiracy Theory!” “Big Lie!” and “False Claims!”
And “Attack on Democracy!” “Attempted Coup!”
when those chumps did one-tenth what the Wokie folks do
every time that they hear (from some media hack)
that a suspect (who’d shot at a cop) got shot back.
———-
That was then, when that happened. Now’s now, and not then.
But those same candidates are campaigning again
while the various Third Parties try to redo
the electoral split of nineteen ninety-two.
And the pollsters are poling us with polished polls
and submerging the urging for purging the rolls.
All the Pundits have punted, Opiners declined,
and Congressional Reps have–in mid-term!–resigned.
We can see, in D.C., all the neo-Marxism,
the senile dementia, the ventriloquism,
but though we’ll be voting in record amounts,
it won’t be voters’ votes, but who’s counting who counts.
There’ll be No Evidence there was ever a fix
when the sixty percent’s beat by sixty-six-six.
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Drat. That was supposed to go in its own thread, not in this toxic one. WPDE
Regarding this toxic one, Scott Adams called this sort of thing “one screen, two different movies.”
Enough of it.
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Unfortunately, your movie is produced by the Party.
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And all this time I thought you’d been missing my point! ;)
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The son of one of my beloved’s former employees is on his second deployment to Poland as we speak. I’m pretty sure he enlisted for the job/pay/training opportunities, but it seems to be growing him up. His mother, of course, is worried sick.
He was making what he saw as a rational career choice.
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A young soldier could do a lot worse than two deployments to Poland, a country that takes its defense rather more seriously than we do. Who knows? He might discover some new favorite food, make some Polish friends, or even meet the love of his life.
While it’s understandable to think that serving in the military these days is ill-advised, those of us who served and were brought up Old School know that social and political fads come and go, and professionals just grit their teeth, keep their heads down, and “soldier on.”
I suspect, should DJT get elected and start turning things around, all the nay-sayers will be congratulating the young folks in the service for being clever enough to “get in on the ground floor” of restoring our armed forces.
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I would discourage my sons from joining, should either be eligible (through having RAGING autoimmune issues.) mostly because I don’t trust those in power right now.
However, as in other professions that are a shambles right now we do need good people in them, or there will be no rebuilding. It just SUCKS to be one of those people.
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However, as in other professions that are a shambles right now we do need good people in them, or there will be no rebuilding. It just SUCKS to be one of those people.
That’s what I said about the Carter Administration.
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Hey! Like the like, like the reply, but we gotta stop procrastinating like this. I need to practice the piano, and you need to get crackin’ on the next Dyce Dare mystery (I just got caught up).
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I need to finish the d*mn idiot book that took hold of my head first. Sigh. I should do it now.
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Or, perhaps, the recent enlistees are willing to endure an absolute shitshow of a tour of duty to make sure there are at least some adults in uniform, to keep things from going completely insane and tyrannical. Thus themselves following in two centuries of bootprints by taking up the Soldier’s burden for unwilling, ignorant, and ungrateful shits.
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All of the leftists should be cheering SCOTUS’ ruling on Presidential immunity. Otherwise, Obama has the potential to be first former president executed for murder for his air strikes over seas against known US citizens.
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There must be a name for a complete and utter blindness by one side to the fact that “what we can do to them” is the same as “what they can do to us”.
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Actually, I have seen some demanding that Biden murder people on just that principle.
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The problem with “do it to them first” is there are just so many of “them”.
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They don’t believe that. They think they are in the vast majority
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You are not really that naive, right?
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They’ve been talking about bombing rural areas since the mid-90s.
Most people view that as a reason to make sure they can’t do it.
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Aye. Very happy to see that the local fighter training wing is based at the regional airport, rather than a monolithic airbase. Them being out with us civilians seems to diminish the us/them distinction that #LGB wants to emphasize.
‘Sides, F15Cs are intended for air-to-air, not bombing.
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The Reader thinks you’d best depend on local socialization of the pilots. The F15C is perfectly capable of carrying / using air to ground ordinance whatever it’s initial purpose.
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The fact that the permanent airmen are Oregon ANG, living in town helps. They host wings from around the country for training, but yeah, there seems to be a lot of local socialization. From what I’ve seen of the layout, if TPTB tried do do nasty things at that field, they’d find some interesting things about the local hunters.
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Yep.
I find it very interesting that every time the crazy activists that we KNOW want to kill us find out there’s not support for their plots inside of the groups they want to use as footsoldiers, suddenly there’s a wave of “we should self-purge! Anybody who is in that group is clearly an enemy!”
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Homework assignment – learn current capabilities of the Air Force to deliver Air to Ground.
They are very farkin good at it.
Very.
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I’ve been pissed off for a long, long time; I’m more than ready for some of that freedom. Where is it?
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Since the 1990s, for me. Gun control is where I saw the man behind the curtain. Once you see that, you can’t unsee it.
As for the freedom, you’re living in it. Freedom doesn’t mean you’re going to be happy, or life is going to be good. It just means you’re not trapped in the lie.
Knowing the truth makes you the one-eyed man in the village of the blind. You are not the king. Instead, the whole rest of the village is yelling at you and telling you to shut up, because they hate it when you’re right and they’re wrong, every single time. >:(
But at least you’re not walking through the sh1t like they are, holding their noses and pretending it’s mud.
Yeah, that ain’t rain, Normies.
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I also woke up in the ’90s.
Helped that I was working shift work and didn’t get the daily dose of MSM Soma like all the sleepers. Instead I constantly read, dug for the explanations, and said “WTF!?”
FU and your “must see TV”.
Welcome to reality biatches! Grab a seat and we can fill you in with some details and a shopping list.
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Nextdoor had a blowup regarding Fireworks, or rather the lack of allowed, not even sparklers or snakes, within city of Eugene boundaries. Gotta protect everybody from wildfire don’t ya know. Someone chastised the original poster about saying fireworks on the 4th of July being patriotic. That not being allowed was a good thing. Also that if they had their way, guns would be banned too. Should have found the “F* U*” icon and posted that. But better to be desecrate on social media.
FYI. We are not city. Not that we are spending money on fireworks. Though the street is. In utter defiance of the ban. Street Party!🥳🎉🎊 We’ll be late because of dinner at sis’s but we’ll watch. As well as watch the less than Oregon legal that goes off every year, mixed in with the Rodeo celebration and concert.
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One of the most gloriously rebellious videos I saw during the lockdown was the drone footage of Los Angeles on the night of July 4th.
Just absolutely glorious.
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YES.
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It’s yearly now. And pretty hilarious, even though (personal) aerial fireworks in this tinderbox of a state still make me furious. (There was one year I had to keep checking to make sure my backyard wasn’t on fire from neighbors. Fine, blow things up, but at least choose a freaking parking lot or something else equally non-flammable! It’s not as though we don’t have vast swaths of concrete around…)
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I mean, there are times and places when a fireworks ban is reasonable. But there are also times when the local fire marshal is in love with power and applying ban orders far too widely, OR where the fire marshal is reasonable but someone in the mayor’s office (or whatever) is in love with power. You have to know your local situation. I haven’t lived much in the Pacific Northwest myself, but I have visited from time to time, and it’s always been wet when I visited. Somehow I doubt that there are too many places in Oregon that have droughts long enough for a fire ban to be reasonable. (Though I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong; in fact, please do.)
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You are correct. There are locations where firework bans are reasonable and should be enforced. National Forests, National Parks, Wilderness. There has been a ban in the Eugene South Hills, or Springfield off of Hwy 126 toward McKenzie Pass (or rather toward the 2020 Holiday Fire). Ban in Doris Ranch in Springfield. Not an inclusive reasonable ban. Why? Because if a fire starts in brush and trees, it will go up fast and there is limited exit routes. Let me repeat that. Limited Exit Routes. Even then “don’t be stupid” rules prevent problems (*see below).
Oregon (and Washington too, for all that Oregonians can travel north and buy them off the reservation) has always had a ban on aerial (flying) fireworks outside of a professional licensed pyrotechnic display (ground based fountains are legal, fireball fountains that fly are not). But Eugene as a whole? Please. Not going over well.
Note, I have 5 cats and a dog who do not appreciate the legal firework noise. Understand those with PSTD, especially those from our armed services. But OTOH some of the most enthusiastic “lets run up to Washington for a purchase of not-legal fireworks” are not active armed service. We aren’t lighting any off, legal or extra legal. But we’ve done our share in the past. Trust me it is interesting what an young to teen male can put together out of the legal fireworks to see what happens.
(*) Oh and there was the year we cleaned the street a bit too early. Went into a laundry basket. Next morning no laundry basket and there was big black spot (took awhile to get rid of that black spot too). Lesson learned. Spent fireworks got kicked to the side of the road, watered, and picked up the next morning, or two. Did have to tell one idiot not to park over them. It isn’t the firing off of the fireworks that is the problem. It is people picking up the spent fireworks too soon and putting them in the garbage right next to the house, next to wood fences, or in the garage.
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I specifically was referring to Cascades and west.
Like RCPete mentions, east of the Cascades is dryer and a lot more likely to have fires.
Forgot the major cautionary tale of the Columbia Gorge 2017 wildfire. Started with fireworks.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/22/613374984/judge-orders-boy-who-started-oregon-wildfire-to-pay-36-million-in-restitution
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That one, though, wasn’t just fireworks, it was fireworks AIMED at flammable locations.
In an interesting bit of irony, I discovered last year that there used to be a BSA camp up that side canyon, that burned down one night due to, ahem, user error. All scouts safely evacuated and hiked out. The destruction of that camp is what led to the purchase of the coastal land that became the camp we visited last year, hence my hearing the history of Chinidere.
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Yes, Multnomah was a teen being absolutely criminally stupid.
Not surprised there used to be a BSA camp in the area. I’ve never heard of it. Now Melakwa (actually USFS camp) got brushed by the fire around Scott Lake (Hwy 242). Lost some out buildings and a few sites burned, but didn’t lose the whole camp. Fire started after all the camps were done for the season. BSA has it for 3 weeks (staff week, week 1, week 2, then a church has it for a week). Generally can’t even get into the camp for Beaver Day (volunteer clean up from winter damage) until late July, early August. Limited facilities. Boat and dock storage, couple of shower houses, one for youth (with the changes ???) and one small one for staff. No dining hall. (Being the only two female adult troop leaders the week we were there, staff let the two of us use their showers.) Camp is very primitive. Troops deal with food 3x per day, from Sunday at drop off, until Saturday pickup.
Fire safety. Must have enough rigs to evacuate all members of a troop staying. Rigs are parked backed in. A set of keys must be on an adult at all times. No open toed footwear except at the swimming area. Exactly one forest service road out to hwy 126. If that road is blocked, it is hike out to Scott Lake. Both that weeks fire drill, when gathered, troops report “everyone in closed toe shoes” or if not, were they at the swim area. Every adult with keys holds them up.
Haven’t been there except as an overnight stop in spring, but Camp Pioneer Hwy 22, has to do the same. Since never been there during camp session do not know where their hike out safety zone is. One thing for sure Pioneer is on a lot steeper ground than Melakwa is. Melakwa is situated in a shallow bowl with the lake on one end against rock cliffs.
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Chinidere was on Wahtum Lake, about 15 miles (!) hike in. The council president used the lodge fire as an excuse to get something more accessible.
The new camp was owned by an aging family, one sibling still managing properties for his siblings, and he stayed on as caretaker. He was very enthusiastic about having the scouts take on a heritage that they apparently didn’t have any descendants to manage, and he lived there until he died and was buried in the family plot there.
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Waggles hands. I live in a portion of Oregon where it does get dry enough for fireworks to set up a major fire. That PNW moisture tends to stay west of the Cascades. (See Moccasin fire, July 2014 for an example. 2200 acres or so, 30 homes destroyed. FWIW, started on Bastille day. The perps, who had been playing with fireworks in a dry meadow, were never officially caught. Unofficially, yes, indeed. 3S, though somebody got a bit looselipped…)
All that, and if you go through Flyover Falls, several parking lots have tents for the big fireworks vendor, and the two grocery stores plus the small club store all have fireworks displays. Usually not small ones.
Big caveat: Not sure about firecrackers, but there’s a hard ban on aerial fireworks. (Bottle rockets/roman candles, sky rockets; all a hard nope.) Had to work a 1 acre fire way too early on a July 5th. The people thought they could get it themselves, but they burned a vacant lot next door. Their aerial flew away. Some states have permanent stores for fireworks (saw one years ago in Wyoming), so illegal ones do show up. Usually not worth calling LEO unless it’s blatant/more dangerous than normal.
Bottom line, the Powers that Be in our area are somewhat connected to reality and figure that some pyrotechnic expression should be officially permitted, while trying to keep the more dangerous stuff out. Or at least sanctioned.
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Withdrawal from error yields strong symptoms – makes it hard to make the transition to truth.
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“I’m reading a lot of articles in the media about how we [know] now.”
Yeah, like its a surprise the doddering, incontinent, demented, shuffling pervert can’t maintain a train of thought, or even regurgitate a canned answer. Like we believe them when they say he didn’t get the debate questions weeks ago. Like we believe he wasn’t wearing an ear piece, and we believe they didn’t give him a heroic shot of steroids and that’s the best he can do -on- drugs.
Anyone paying -any- attention knew this when they picked #Brandon to be their guy in 2019. We all knew #Brandon was campaigning by Zoom calls from his basement because he couldn’t climb the stairs of the stage and give a freakin’ speech.
But now, difference is, the moronic Normies have had it rubbed in their faces. They -can’t- ignore it. Everybody knows now, whether they wanted to know or not.
But being moronic Normies, most of them have not performed the mental calculation to understand that the guy with his finger on the Nuclear Big Red Button is DEMENTED! Can’t get to the bathroom on his own. Sometimes -doesn’t- get to the bathroom, like at the Vatican. Like at the D-Day ceremony. Like on the front lawn of the White House on TV.
But they will, eventually, because he’s only going to get worse, and worse, and worse. That guy is strong, he’ll probably live to be 100 years old. A 100 year old rutabaga.
This is the media frantically trying to pretend they were lied to. Squid ink. Squirrel. “Look over there, shiny thing!” But they weren’t. They knew. You think that CBS lady who did the interview with #Brandon a couple weeks ago couldn’t tell he was demented? She knew. You can tell by the look on her face in the video.
Same thing in Canada, only difference being the #Shiny Pony doesn’t have the excuse of advanced senile dementia. He’s just plain stupid. A theater kid, grown up but not matured. Like a 45 year old green banana, with the impulse control of a 12 year old boy.
But when you watch them, they’re getting every single thing they want, even though they are stupid, stupid people.
They get all that by lying. People think they wouldn’t lie about things that are so important. It must be true! They -couldn’t- lie about that, it would be insane!
But there they are. Lying. They -lied- about Covid and ruined people’s lives. People died. A lot of people died! That’s who they are. People who will lie to you, even though you’re going to die.
To which I say, okay then. I can see what’s up here. When your mouth is moving, you’re lying. When it isn’t moving, you are concealing the truth. I can deal with that.
Cash on delivery, and receipts, or no sale. Merchandise inspected before cash handover, every single piece. No benefit of the doubt, no exceptions.
You asked for it, you got it. Toyota.
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They lie even when better served by the truth.
Because getting folks to go along with lies is part of the Power /Dominance game. And the more blatantly outrageous the lie, the bigger the kick.
Ponder why the “go along” by the presstitutes, who know dang well that the 2020 ballots were sketchy, and that FICUS is yelling at clouds and flat out spinning bull at random whim.
Because the presstitutes are either beta/bottom to FICUS, or beta/ bottom to you deplorables. Some of those fools would give on-camera BJs to keep their place.
And call liars the folks saying “wipe your chin”.
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They seriously thought the Biden dementia we’ve been talking about incessantly for years was just some sick evil right-wing joke and/or slanderous psyop-because that’s exactly what they do, lie and exaggerate about a hated opponent’s mental state as political weapon, and since they live in a comfortable media bubble reality didn’t intrude too much. Seeing it live on CNN made them realize “holy shit he really is senile.” 🤯 Of course a lot of them instantly retreated into denial and spin.
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”Unfortunately so does the steady climb of prices.”
Did anyone else catch the BS straight up CNN embedded lie in the debate question about inflation – something about “groceries that cost $100 now cost $120”?
I guess they must be comparing a very selective very small handbasket of groceries indeed (no eggs!), but my own shopping is closer to something like double since January 2001.
But that’s just the type of bury-the-truth stuff that is only building widespread disbelief and mistrust of the j-school underachievers.
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They deliberately omit some of the most important items from their ‘official’ inflation calculations. Without being so selective, groceries that cost $100 in January 2001 now cost about $170. Eggs and orange juice are among the worst, but a 16 oz loaf of store brand bread went from 89¢ to $1.59 in 3 1/2 years.
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WPDE! That was supposed to be 89¢ but the ‘cent’ HTML entity didn’t work. How does it do with #162?
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They changed it recently so that the input box no longer takes HTML. So typing <i>italic tags</i> is no longer how you get italics (notice that the <i> and </i> I typed into the box are showing up in the comment). Instead you just use the I button on the toolbar. And if you type & into the comment box, it’s going to show up as five characters: ampersand, a, m, p, semicolon — because the HTML character entities are no longer processed either.
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It does process HTML [ampersand]#123[semicolon] format; witness the ‘cent’ symbol on the 2nd try. Of course it’s a pain remembering (or looking up) the number codes.
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Here’s where I turn into “one of those condescending Unix computer users” and brag about the Compose key in Linux. You can choose to set the Compose key to any key you rarely use — I use the “context menu” key for that one, but Scroll Lock is another good option — and then to type any character that doesn’t appear on the standard keyboard, you press Compose then two other keys (one after the other, not at the same time). For example, Compose, c, | (vertical bar) produces ¢. Compose, c, comma produces ç. Compose, o, o produces ° (so it’s easy to type 100°C and similar things).
Here’s a nickel, kid. Get yourself a better operating system. ;-)
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You’re underestimating the weirdness of WordPress. For me (no account with them, so not logged in), on occasion, it supports the HTML tags just fine. If it opens a reply box without the header section, it will support all the stuff, like
strike, bold and italic.I don’t do compose characters, but let’s see:
trying the 89 cents, as 89¢
As usual, WPDE!
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OK, the cents thing didn’t work. FWIW, I’ve cut and pasted odd stuff and had it show up. (This reply box has the header, so <strike>strike</strike> will look horrible, unless it’s gotten even weirder.)
Doing a cut and paste with the cent’s symbol (courtesy Wiki)
89¢
Yeah, worked in the input box, let’s see if it showed in the main.
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Note that this is only true if you get the option to add bold and italics up top. This is WP’s brightest move yet: a selective change!
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And it’s quite amazing how the options show up at random. Are WP programmers drug-tested? Survey says not. :)
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My favorite treat bread (sweet white with white chocolate, golden raisins, and apricots mixed in) went from $4 for a one pound loaf to $7 for a twelve ounce loaf to “discontinued.” My preferred brand of milk has stayed lower than average at least, but that’s because it is excess sold by a vertically integrated dairy chain (Braums).
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I’ve always liked Braums. When we do volunteer work in Tulsa we got for ice cream when we can.
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beef. Stew beef is now the price that used to be good steak.
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it’s called a hedonic adjustment. Steak going up in price relative to hamburger would cause the inflation to go down since people would switch from steak to hamburger or chicken. The ultimate unit is protein That’s actually how it works, I’m not making it up. It goes back to Clinton wanting to cut social security without umm”cutting social security”
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That’s not simple economic incompetence, but a combination of incompetence and malice: They want the peasants to eat less (or no) beef and consume bugz.
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I know.
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Even Sri Lankan peasants didn’t take that shit lying down, and they don’t even guns. Those morons think they can starve us into submission, when A.) most of us are pretty drought and famine resistant a lá Homer Simpson B.) Nothing causes revolution/political violence faster then food insecurity.
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Quality protein is brain food.
The serfs of course, thus need far less protein than the aristocracy.
Note: that policy pre-dates written history.
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*Snarls in just visited grocery store today.* No freakin’ kidding.
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Understand the snarling. I’ve taken the costs to my advantage. I get 4% return on grocery locations, fuel, and eating out. That kickback has to be used to pay down our cell phone bill. That works. Other card I use is the Barnes & Noble, points returns sucks, but 5% off the top of ebooks out of B&N (not Amazon however) and anything else purchased out of B&N? I’ll take it. Otherwise use the Costco Visa for the return. (Costco rebate has to be used at Costco. The Costco Visa rebate does not have to be used at Costco.) Won’t use any credit card if the credit card fee to use is greater than the credit card kickback.
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The one card I have doesn’t have anything like that, but I can use the points on Amazon. With judicious poking I can usually afford at least one, sometimes 2 kindle books a month that way. It’s helping keep my sanity.
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No shit. We take advantage of the 10% discount that Fred Meyer (Kroger) offers seniors (html not working, so I can’t stick in “old farts” :) ) on Kroger/Fred Meyer branded items on First Tuesdays.
I’ve been the designated shopper since Covidiocy started and yikes. Canned goods, way up. Was 50 cents, now 79,
Lowcarb yogurt, 40 to 70
Peanut butter (bought as a donation for the mission) Was $4.99, now $6.99.
Big bags of rice (at the restaurant supply). Same brand, was $23.99, now $30.59. This is from Texas. Most of the California rice is now exotics, with exotic prices. Usually 50% higher than the above.
Eggs are particularly aggravating. First, one of the 2020 Antifa fires took out one of the producer’s sites, now we’re seeing the results of the state’s virtue signalling regulations requiring cage free for all chickens. The prices are spiky, and when it’s only $3.50 for 18 count, yippie, but yesterday’s take was $4.38.
I was watching (and groaning) the prices for Kroger gluten-free bread. I first saw it a few weeks ago for $3.99 a loaf. Last week, it was on sale for $4.79. Bought a couple loafs for backup (we do our own, usually), now $6.99. All over a few weeks. (OTOH, brands like Franz, $7.99, and they’re terrible. I’m hoping that Trader Joe’s bagels are OK when I’m there in September. Tasty, and they were affordable. “Were”. Dubious about “Will be”.
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Back before Covid, QT had its roller grill items at 2 for $2. Now they’re 2 for $4.
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The chocolate ration has been increased from 22 grams to 16 grams! Rejoice!
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Since Covid, huge restaurant chains in the USA are going bankrupt left and right. Red Lobster, TGI Friday and others, they’re closing locations everywhere.
Gee, wonder how that happened? Kevin O’Leary is the only guy talking about it that I’ve heard, and he’s a Canadian.
Carnage here in Canada. Retail is freakin’ done here. I’ve been making a point of supporting certain stores with my money just to try and keep them afloat. There are some things you can’t really buy on-line, like pants. Does it fit? You must try it on.
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Wondered why Kevin O’Leary is so vocal across the board. Being Canadian he can point out US stupidity. Noticed not happening for Canadian politics.
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He might be worried about the looming censorship laws in Canada.
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Is Mark Steyn available for comment? Between Hockey Stick Mann and the Canadian authorities, he had a big target on his back.
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Kevin O’leary is very publicly saying that he and his companies are pulling their money out of Canada. They’d be crazy not to, honestly.
He has an airplane of his own, so I doubt he’s that concerned about the Canadian censorship laws. Quick flight to Florida puts him in a low-tax, free-speech state, and from there it is just a 10 minute flight to Cuba. Couple million bucks donation to the Glorious Cuban People, and he is good to go.
After what happened with his wife and her experience being prosecuted for a boating accident in Muskoka, I’d assume he’s made arrangements. If you see what I mean.
Full disclosure, I don’t even like Kevin O’Leary. But when you hear that ring of truth from a guy who could make money lying, it makes you perk up your ears.
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All I can say about O’Leary’s getting their money out of Canada … Good luck. Know two Canadian/US citizens. Neighbor and a friend of mom’s. Both have gotten Canadian family inheritances. Actually transferring the money from Canada proved to be a PIA on steroids. Of coarse O’Leary’s money pile is much higher. They likely won’t have any problems.
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The Ministry of Clothing will decree rapper pants for everyone, and they’ll only be available in three sizes.
Of course, they’ll only license manufacture of one size (and color) per year, and your size will always be out of stock.
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It doesn’t help that the quality has gone down as well. We went to our local Applebees a few weeks ago and I got what would have been a slightly better fast food meal for actual restaurant prices.
I suspect that we’ll be seeing the weaker fast-food chains closing up soon, especially if they can get Biden to shamble to his next term.
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Panera had two big lawsuits regarding their “charged,” drinks: two people died after drinking them. A *lot* of caffeine involved. Recently while prices are up, food quality has also gone up. Desperation? I don’t know. I do know they seem less crowded.
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To be fair to Panera, I think they wanted to sell energy drinks with less of a chemical taste, and they succeeded. Unfortunately, the cues that they were energy drinks did not cue people correctly.
That said, I remember that there were deaths when energy drinks first started, and now there usually aren’t any. People do learn eventually.
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I’m staying at a hotel in town when my knee gets fixed (minor-ish arthroscopic procedure). The hotel closed and sold the restaurant after Covidiocy, then the buyer went under. I have a couple of fast food places, a really good taqueria, a decent pizza place and Applebees for local food. I usually don’t eat steak ($SPOUSE hates it, no idea why), so tried the bowl meal. Bowl and so-so iced tea, $18 and change. The dictionary picture of Mediocre could be that meal. Er, nope, especially with DoorDash. I’d been at Applebees twice before (both times on visits to the Midwest), and don’t plan to go there
muchany more.The gluten-free pizza (yeah, I really have to eat that way) is spendy, but tolerable. I know the taqueria really well (4 store chain; been there from the start). So, between what I bring, delivered pizza and taqueria (once the good painkillers wear off) will be the meals.
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Applebees, AFAIK, tries to bill itself as a “family” place, but its real purpose is a sports bar you can take your girlfriend to because they have (badly) mixed drinks and better cleanliness.
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Go up a size and they fit. Loose is better for comfort and weapon concealment. Use belt and/or suspenders to avoid droopy.
If too long, hem. Too short, boots or high-tops.
Solved.
Spent way too much time poor enough to see thrift stores and rummage sakes as “the mall” and things therefrom as “can I make this fit”, not “does it fit”.
But yeah. I much prefer shopping where I can examine the merchandise. Very much so prefer.
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You may have discovered lies “A, B, and C”, but you don’t know or will not openly discuss lies “X, Y, and Z”.
“”The Truth will set you free, but first it’s gonna piss you off or cause a nervous breakdown.”
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I much prefer Miss Flannery O’Connor’s formulation:
You will know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.
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It’s much worse because the lie propagates through people who believe they’re telling the truth. The example that comes to mind is Sarah Palin saying she could see Russia from her house. It’s just flat out wrong. The actual source is available on YouTube (https://youtu.be/i4Jk7K_DnTk?si=hW6adZl7jHN-74mW&t=18) but nonetheless plenty of people believe she said that.
The Big Lie is a frustrating and annoying tactic (“pee tape” anyone?), but the mountain of little lies that just don’t go away is, I think, worse.
If we’re lucky, the debate “revelation” will make more people think twice about what the media tells them. But the Murray-Gellman effect is strong.
I’ve finally managed to overcome it by simply assuming everything published is a lie unless proven otherwise. It doesn’t matter if it is “main stream media” or a small YouTube channel. If it’s published, it’s a lie – or at best sensationalized.
I looked into the “Tractor Supply loses $2 BILLION!!” headlines. Not so much. And into moderation with a second link: https://markedup.blog/2024/06/30/digging-into-sensationalism/
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I figured it was just a bit of hyperbole, since you can see Little Diomede Island from Big Diomede Island; one is in Siberia, the other in Alaska.
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Right. What Palin actually said was that there are parts of Alaska where you can see Russia across the water, which as you’ve pointed out is true, but a bit hyperbolic since Little Diomede Island has fewer than a hundred people living on it. Tina Fey’s line about “I can see Russia from my house” was perfectly fine as satire; I have no problem with SNL mocking politicians. Mockery isn’t supposed to be fair to what the person said, and that was a clever way of mocking Palin’s hyperbole. The problem is that so many people have confused the satire with what Palin actually said.
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It was an interview on ABC:
Not hyperbole at all, and a fair point about being from a frontier state, but I am absolutely certain that the question was pretty dumb, as being distant neighbors with Siberians gains nobody insights into understanding the imperial seat in Moscow. Perhaps she should have said that: “Well, you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska, but what gives better insights into what happens in Moscow is not scenery but history.”
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Hmph. I have a comment with the actual Palin quote context stuck in mod for no apparent reason (No links!). WPDE.
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WordPress being weird? Must be a day ending in ‘y’. OTOH, that level of weirdness needs a day with ‘e’ in it. On the gripping hand, it’s not Google-spawn.
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Figure out which liar will do the least damage. Oppose the others.
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In both of Trump’s “first of the campaign” debates (in 2020, and last week), the moderators predictably trotted out the by-then-standardized MSM lies: “What about the time you said Mexicans are rapists?” “What about the time you said Nazis are Fine People?” “What about the time you said people should drink bleach for Covid?”
And both times, instead of ripping them brand new ones for using that type of mal-characterization of what he had actually said, friggin’ Trump let those questions, and that tactic, sail right past him without even swinging at them. I could (barely) forgive him for that lapse in 2020, but to let them get away with it twice??? Like Mighty Casey striking out in tee-ball!
Like, Democracy and Capitalism, Trump is the worst choice possible–except for all the others.
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Maybe he realized that they would just keep repeating the lies (like they are still doing)?
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No doubt the lies will just keep coming. My objection is to the style of lying. Turning “…some of them are murderers and rapists” into “Ooh! Ooh! He said Mexicans are rapists!!!” is insulting to even a Wokie’s intelligence. I expect the sons of doggesses to lie to me, but at least make it a lie with some bloody craftsmanship!
On the other hand, making sure that the BS is obviously BS is probably a feature, not a bug. “Not only are we lying to you, we’re making sure you know we’re lying! Injury and insult! Be demoralized, you feckless livestock, and shut up and get in the truck!”
“Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation.”
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We DESERVE better gaslighting. I agree.
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actually I seem to remember he pointed at Snopes changing what they said.
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Why should Trump respond? He responds with anything, even “quit lying or taking things out of context”, they double down. In these questions it is a losing topic. They will not take the truth. I think he handled these brilliantly. Ignore them. Talk about something else. If the drum on it, then tell them “quit lying” (which the stuff out of context, because out of context, are lies). Other things he did call out the outright lies, including Biden, where Trump knew he’d have back up (Border Guard lack of support for Biden). But the items he ignored? They didn’t bring backup.
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That’s because his objective was to keep the spotlight focused on Biden. The more he did that, the more he won.
Ripping an idiot’s head off may be satisfied, but the objective is to *win*
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It occurs to me that some of the Democratic Party outrage about the quite middle ground presidential immunity decision by the Supreme Court is that it thwarts one of their contingency plans in the event Trump beats the margin of fraud and takes office for a second term-namely that they intended to use the same type of kangaroo court prosecution that they recently pursued in NYC to criminally prosecute him for every single action he takes as President that they dislike; including such things as executive orders, signing and vetoing laws, taking action against Iran, etc. Never mind that the decision protects Biden from being prosecuted for the deaths of American servicemembers in connection with the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, etc.
They also were very clear in telegraphing the entire motive for their prosecutions in demanding that the cases all be tried before the election and bemoaning that they won’t be, thus showing that the purpose of their lawfare is to remove the opposition so they can retain power in an uncontested, Soviet Union style election.
Needless to say, these are the same people who demanded people respect the decisions of courts, even if they disagree with them, after the kangaroo court decisions in New York.
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Respect courts?
They have picketed the houses of the SC judges they disagree with while the adminstration refused to enforce the law. They have seriously discussed expanding the court to create a favored majority. And their useful idiots have mentioned assasinating judges multiple times with little or no repercussions. Not to mention all the partisian and DEI judge selections.
They respect only power and it should be denied to them and their ilk for eternity.
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>power should be denied them for eternity
It will be.
If the good Lord favors us, we may see it in our lifetime.
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All that fussin’ about “SEAL Team 6” is projection.
Ever wonder why the SCOTUS dissenting opinions read like a how-to for next time? They are often exactly that. Thomas very much so. Sotomayor just teed up “Plan T”.
The woman isn’t stupid. Thus, it has purpose. Not surprised she voiced it. Just surprised how blatantly it is presented.
Watch for some key insiders to comment, or have comments made public by others.
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Imagine you are the military fellow in charge of the Teams or Det. Delta or whatever, and that order comes down.
Were it me if I had any thoughts about “career” they’d be flashing brightly before my eyes as they faded to oblivion, and I would be looking for written orders from every step all the way up my chain of command in triplicate, with one copy in a Swiss safe deposit box.
Talk about standing in the painted square under the hanging 16 ton weight rigged with a quick release, even if they did issue me an umbrella.
Maybe off in the dark and dusty corners of oddly heavily armed obscure Federal LE? Not sure. Sounds more like a job for the Impossible Mission Force, and even then I’d bet on the person who listened to the self-destructing tape choosing “No” after the part about “Your mission, should you choose to accept it…”
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And note even with orders from everyone, if it’s an illegal order I am required to not obey it.
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Which is why those written orders wouldn’t materialize, because the higher-ups would be smart enough to know that they would eventually turn into evidence at their trial. The actual orders would be more along the lines of “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”, and if you’re too dumb to realize that you’re the fall guy and will be left twisting in the wind after it all comes out and the higher-ups deny ever saying such a thing, well, sucks to be you.
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There is reason why first Obama and now the people running Biden have been so aggressive in purging the military of good officers and NCOs in key positions and replacing them with those committed to leftist ideology and the Democratic Party. It may be quieter and slower, but it is the same type of purge Xi has been pursuing in both the CCP and PRC for years… and we know who the Biden family’s paymaster is.
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And it’s not like you have to purge everyone. You just have to put in enough people to carry out the missions, as long as most of the other people will look the other way at the obvious abuses and follow orders.
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Soldiers are notoriously good at keeping their actual thoughts to themselves, while seeming to be going along. Right up until they don’t.
My associates from the other services indicate this isn’t unique to the Army.
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Apparently WP isn’t letting me post links to videos: Instapundit has a link to a brilliant parody video as to the Biden post-debate reaction, posted at 10:14 pm by Ed Driscoll.
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The video that’s another Downfall parody? I skipped it because Downfall parodies are so common I’m starting to find them boring. But maybe I should watch this one.
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Yes it is, but this is one of the ones that actually has quality to it. One of the ones that’s worth the time to watch.
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When I post a link here, WP (DE) doesn’t seem to have it until I hit the “post” button. Now, I compose the text, add the link as the last thing I do, then click the button. Then I can see it in the post.
Try it that way.
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The “can I have that in writing?” and email explosion have been a blessing.
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Larry Tribe’s letter to then-President Obama about the Sotomayor nomination had the line “she isn’t nearly as smart as she thinks she is”.
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speaking of lies, Nancy Two Eyebrows Pelosi — once seen never unseen and you have to see it — is the “Speaker emereti” of the house. Some idiot at CNN, as CNN it was, figured out that emeritus is masculine [us, a, um) That would never do, so they went with the cod Latin emereti. Sort of they/them. I can see them preening now. Except the joke’s on them since emereti (I, ae, a) is the masculine plural. Morons.
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<snort>.
Sort of like the way our United Methodist Sunday School lessons have been saying, “God,” without masculine pronouns, but still saying “he” and “him” for Jesus.
I have somehow refrained from accusing the lesson writers of disrespecting the Almighty’s preferred pronouns, mostly because my fellow members are good and gentle people who simply accept what they’re told because *they* are acting from good will. Of *course* the writers and bishops are also acting from good will.
(I did get some eyebrows to go up when I commented the thing that surprised me about the shipwreck story in Acts is nobody tried to help Paul over the side after he said, ” I told you this was going to happen!”)
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Duh. Who has not heard of a professor emereta?
Nevermind.
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it’s almost always emeritus in English. That drove my poor mother to distraction but as you say never mind. I suspect they were working from alumni since I very much doubt there are any latinists in CNN. I wonder what would happen if they realized. 😜
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ROFL
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right?
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(thinks about comment, ponders quip)
Nah. Too obvious.
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Okay, my HS Latin is failing me: Presume a pair of Hippos, a male, thus a Hippopotamus, and a female, thus a Hippopotama – what would the mixed-gender plural be?
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Don’t know the Latin rules, but extrapolating from the French rules which I learned as a kid, I’d bet there is no mixed gender and you’d use the masculine. In French, a group of women is “elles”. A group of men is “ils”. And a mixed group of men and women is also “ils”. There is no gender-neutral plural in French; the masculine plural is the default and the feminine plural is used only if the feminine singular pronoun would apply to every member of the group. A group of a single man and ten women would still be “ils”.
That also counts for gendered nouns, BTW: if you were talking about a group of chairs (“une chaise, la chaise”) and were using a pronoun instead of saying “les chaises”, then the pronoun would be “elles”. I’m having a very hard time coming up with a reason to use a plural pronoun when talking about a mixed group of objects that isn’t really awkwardly constrained. But if you were talking about selling some chairs and a fridge, say (fridge is “le refrigérateur” if you’re formal, “le frigo” if you’re informal, but either way it’s a masculine noun)… then you would use “ils” for that group; a group of one fridge and ten chairs would still be “ils”.
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Whoops; réfrigérateur, not refrigérateur. I would have lost a full point (out of 20 possible points, so that’s 5% on a 100% scale) on a spelling test for that mistake. French spelling tests, at least when I was in school, consisted of dictation: the teacher would read a literary passage aloud and the kids would have to copy it down, spelled accurately. (The teacher always went slow enough that you could write; you were being graded on spelling, not speed). Misspellings that sound the same would lose you half a point, misspellings that would result in the word sounding different would lose you a full point, because you should have been able to realize immediately that that was wrong.
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it’s Greek from hippo meaning horse and potamos meaning river. Two hippos would be hippopotamo and the plural would be hippopotamoi, or something like that. Same for masculine or feminine. Were there were neuter hippos, they would be unhappy, but called hippopotama. The auto correct gives me hippopotami like octopi for octopus, which ought to be octopodes. Auto correct ain’t.
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Okay, for some reason I really like hippopotamo and hippopotamoi.
And I did not know Greek had one-two-many format declensions. That’s cool.
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yep. I figured that. Idiots, studying to be morons.
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Oh look! More lies!
https://pjmedia.com/benbartee/2024/07/02/bird-flu-beef-its-whats-for-dinner-n4930346
You think your food is expensive now????
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So, bird flu doesn’t transmit THAT WAY. This is such nonsense.
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Of course it is. But that doesn’t mean they won’t do it or that it won’t be deadly to people.
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So they have not heard of pasteurization then?
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Some dude with a badge and a lab coat says “Pasteurization doesn’t work on this. Let us test your meat and remove any we find contaminated. If you don’t, we’ll come back with armed agents and an order to close your store.”
What do you think will happen?
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A sudden shortage of FDA inspectors, hopefully.
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https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian-influenza/hpai-detections/livestock/h5n1-beef-safety-studies
They’re quite familiar with pasteurization, they have been doing updates on it for quite some time, and we’ve known since spring that while cows can get sick with avian influenza they recover fine, so the issue is transmission.
I’ll link to the actual information in next post.
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Quote, as of May:
Ongoing Research
To verify the safety of the meat supply in the context of H5N1, USDA’s FSIS, APHIS, and Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have completed three separate beef safety studies related to avian influenza in meat from dairy cattle. These studies are taking place in the interest of scientific inquiry and reaffirm consumer confidence.
Testing has been completed on the109 muscle samples that were collected, with 108 of 109 samples testing negative for viral particles.
On May 24, NVSL reported that viral particles were detected in tissue samples, including diaphragm muscle, from one cow. FSIS and APHIS are working together to conduct traceback, including notification to the producer to gather further information. FSIS personnel identified signs of illness in the positive animal during post-mortem inspection and prevented the animal from entering the food supply – as is standard for the food inspection process. These actions provide further confidence that the food safety system we have in place is working.
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You know, over the last 20 years, I’ve watched the info shown on government web sites (even written some of it on various contracts) and I’ve seen the following:
Then I look around and see what’s actually done, or what’s implemented in vaccine requirements, and it doesn’t match.
And after watching this for 20 years, and seeing “conspiracy theories” become “admitted facts”, I wonder what it will take for people to stop taking “official information” at face value.
Because using something like “bird flu” in beef to cull out herds that take years to build back up, as the farmers who raised them go broke, and the land on which they are raised are confiscated for “solar farms” in TX hail country, fits in with an announced agenda. And under color of “authority”, they are implementing it, one area at a time.
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Nelson, I realize you once again couldn’t be bothered to do two seconds worth of checking before setting your hair on fire and running around screaming.
Ever since you doubled down on calling for the execution of a woman for not giving her child tamiflu, and then stated that you didn’t like giving information for people to check your claims because they did so and found out you were not giving accurate information, I have not trusted your judgement.
Your tendency to attempt to change the subject when there is information that shows you have, again, been setting your hair on fire and running around screaming, doesn’t help.
Signed, the woman you repeatedly said would be murdered by the feds, starting about ten years ago.
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OK, those are great links and quotes, thank you. That makes sense for the actual beef products, and that testing to date seems like it’s ruled out any issues. I mean, 120F is very much hardly even cooked and even that low temperature “substantially inactivated” the virus in that purposefully-virus-contaminated test ground beef.
But the Telegraph news story link is for PCR-ing retail “ice cream, butter, and cream cheese”, so that goes back to my question about pasteurization.
Are they worried about bad dairy processing, or about viral contamination that somehow skips past and happens after the pasteurization steps? I’m just not sure what they think could result in retail products like that having bird flu viral fragments that PCR could find. Truly puzzled, I am.
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Wait, I just realized PCR could find virus fragments from virus that had been killed by the pasteurization process, so the retail testing could be used for tracking back to dairy cows that are sick and not otherwise identified. Okay, that makes sense.
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That, and making sure that it wasn’t somehow able to still be dangerous after normal pasteurization.
There were some studies that did find virus after pasteurization, which is what raised the alarm, so they had to go check.
Two long quotes, after the link if anybody wants to read it themselves.
https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-information/updates-highly-pathogenic-avian-influenza-hpai
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Good to know the current standard fast Pasteurization still works on it.
The virus that could survive viably through that would have to be a real thermally-armored monster.
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Yep.
I was on the fence on if I’d want them checking for something that would be such an… abnormal… change, but finding out that someone was reporting that it was surviving when it shouldn’t makes it much more sensible.
“This is impossible!”
“I got results that said it’s happening.”
“…OK, we’ll go check. Including ifit’s showing up in the supply at all.”
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Re thermal armored virus, it would have to be some sort of encysted virus like what the herpes simplex virus goes into when it’s inactive, but doing so into some sort of thermal shield, almost a thermos bottle, to survive those temps. And that would do nicely for a virus evolved or designed to survive a time in vacuum, say, during a trip hitchhiking on an asteroid…
Hmm…
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https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian-influenza/hpai-detections/livestock
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After seeing its abuse with covid, I now have this nagging suspicion anytime PCR is mentioned in an epidemiology setting. Flashbacks to all of the ‘forensic’ evidence that can’t actually be replicated.
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As long as it is clearly understood that a PCR test happily identifies viral fragments, which an organism still has after killing all of said virus and chopping it up into tiny non viable bits, the use of PCR is fine. When it gets substituted for “Is there viable virus in the sample?” i.e. “Is the organism infectious?” as happened in the recent unpleasantness, that is when PCR tests are problematic.
Everyone needs to know what any test actually tests.
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So, they’ve been talking about “micro plastics” for a few years now, but I recently saw something talking about “nano plastics,” and since “micro” would encompass “nano” in this kind of thing, I have to assume that the word was only mentioned in order to make it sound more scary.
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Yeah, the hysterical news stories about “micro plastics found in human gonads!!!!eleventy!!!” which were absolutely EVERYWHERE a few weeks ago really seemed like a cover for the coming wave of infertility caused by Covid vaccines. That’s what my guy was telling me anyways…
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*gut
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I’m sure that’s what it is.
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Micro is easier to filter, so they needed a term to imply you couldn’t do anything about it.
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I keep coming back to “First slowly, then suddenly very fast”. And I’m afraid the “fast” is fast approaching.😒
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Sarah, I’m like you and try to dedicate myself to the actual truth. Of course that destroys the concept of “fact checker” because 90% of the time, the answer is, “There’s no way we can know,” as Heinlein notes with his Fair Witnesses. Overcome binary thinking and embrace the power of true, false, and huh. For instance, I know that most of astronomy and archaeology are made up, mostly by well-meaning story-tellers who can’t handle just admitting to not knowing.
I cling to things I can actually know such as global warming is NOT happening. NASA has proof if you know under which bushel to look. I collect all the incidents where the science was wrong like Plate Tectonics. Continental Drift was proposed in the early 20th century, and the man who proposed it spent much of his life collecting evidence (not proof, but evidence). When it became undeniable in the 1960’s, all the sneering, rejectionist geologists just renamed it Plate Tectonics and pretended it was new. As my father-in-law was known to say, “If they’re running you out of town, act like you’re leading a parade.”
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It’s scary to realize how many people will believe the lie when they’re faced with it.
I know that my father is believing, because he doesn’t like Trump (“he’s mean, against unions and rude.” Trump at least appears to be cognitive…), and just asking who should replace Biden if he’s got dementia starts a family fight. Because if they replace Biden now, Trump wins and that can’t happen, because Trump is Evil.
Or something like that.
I’m just angry that we’re stuck in this mindset so much that we can’t even think about anything else. And because we’re so polarized as the standard, it takes someone like Trump to tell people that the Emperor is naked. And playing with himself.
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There are a lot of people who believe the lies because they WANT to believe the lies, in the same way the believe all the slanders about Israel and Jews. It’s because it fits their world view and they simply have no desire to let reality and facts get in the way of that.
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Hi Sarah (and everybody else)! I have returned. I’m the former
b@
lz
@cq
(obfuscated to defeat nassty private investigators spying, precious)
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:ehug: We’re praying for you.
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ABSOLUTELY.
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Welcome. Um. Newcomer (wink). You will like Sarah’s blog.
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Hail, new fellow we have never seen before! Welcome and felicitations! Have a seat in one of the lounge chairs, and don’t mind the smoke slight sulfur smell – Fluffy is just getting his quarters thoroughly cleaned out down in sublevel 27.
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Good. The aardvark was starting to get annoyed about it.
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And by the way, a certain recommendation for l3g@l services panned out — a referral led to a referral to an atty who did a really good job and won the case for me: my former spouse’s attempt to sever my custody of our child was denied. W00t!
Of course, since I’m totally new here none of you have any idea what I’m talking about.
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Not a clue. But glad to hear it. We are generally supportive of fathers who want to stay in touch with their children, here. I think you’ll fit in quite well, pardner.
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Given the angle of attack, probably one of our Marys.
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Put not your trust in experts, on the Lord alone we can rely.
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Amen!
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Thank you for this article, Sarah. That’s what I tell my kids – don’t just trust anything in the system. I don’t trust Trump. I don’t trust any politician above my local level, and I only trust those because I know them personally. But those currently in power are demonstrably corrupt, across the board. Someone must go, and I’d rather it be them than me and my family.
It’s weird standing outside the status quo, looking in at the network of lies. I miss the country I grew up in. Being outside the lies is like being a stranger in a strange land, to borrow a phrase, but it’s better than being inside, consumed by the fear du jour.
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No one went there? OK I will:
“Somebody To Love”
(originally by The Great Society)
When the truth is found
To be lies
And all the joy
Within you dies
Don’t you want somebody to love?
Don’t you need somebody to love?
Wouldn’t you love somebody to love?
You better find somebody to love
Love
When the garden flowers
Baby, are dead, yes
And your mind, your mind
Is so full of red
Don’t you want somebody to love?
Don’t you need somebody to love?
Wouldn’t you love somebody to love?
You better find somebody to love
Your eyes, I say your eyes
May look like his
Yeah, but in your head, baby
I’m afraid you don’t know where it is
Don’t you want somebody to love?
Don’t you need somebody to love?
Wouldn’t you love somebody to love?
You better find somebody to love
Tears are running
They’re all running down your breast
And your friends, baby
They treat you like a guest
Don’t you want somebody to love?
Don’t you need somebody to love?
Wouldn’t you love somebody to love?
You better find somebody to love
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Or, perhaps, the recent enlistees are willing to endure an absolute shitshow of a tour of duty to make sure there are at least some adults in uniform, to keep things from going completely insane and tyrannical. Thus themselves following in two centuries of bootprints by taking up the Soldier’s burden for unwilling, ignorant, and ungrateful shits.
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That’s what I said, only shorter and more eloquent.
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(grin)
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Amen.
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One of the most frustrating things about my time in cubical land was on the one occasion I tried to hire a recent discharge vet, my Vietnam War deferment-chasing draft dodging SOB of a boss wouldn’t let me. I was quite torqued about that one.
And the person he let me hire instead was a doofus.
When that company layed me off (after I had outlasted that boss) and I walked out the door with my box of stuff, the feeling of weight lifting off my shoulders was incredibly liberating, and all that political stupidity, the gladiatorial game staff meetings, and all my group’s ongoing projects and responsibilities (they RIFed my whole team as the company went downhill), all became somebody else’s problem.
But I still wish I could have hired that vet kid.
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I wound up a bit sideways with a prior boss. During yet another meeting that included HR, in his long march to get my ass fired, I commented, “Well I have to be doing something right. I am still here. Plenty of managers are not.”
Oops
Welll guess what? Still here 20+ years and oddly enough he isn’t.
Sheesh. Again. (Shrug)
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(1) The American Conservative on X: “NBC Senior White House reporter Kelly O’Donnell asks Karine Jean-Pierre if President Biden is willing to meet with reporters. An off-screen reporter quips: “If he’s awake.” https://t.co/NTS92VS9DJ” / X
The dam is cracking.
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You missed the best part: “Reporter” Kelly O’Donnell immediately went full Karen by scolding “That’s inappropriate!”
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cite:
https://x.com/rcpvideo/status/1808569178028179553
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lies,
thats pretty much common practice for politicians and bureaucrats, ironically the government is full of lawyers, all lying POS to the last of em,
how much more do we have to endure?
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