I’m tired. I’ve been up since six thirty am. Didn’t sleep very well. And the morning has been a long slog, save for feeding and petting the tiny kittens.
The older cats got in the office supply closet. No, you don’t want to know.
But please, do take into account I’m tired. I’m very tired.
Part of what I’m tired of is the American right’s obsession with “electability” “Dignity” and “acting presidential.”
Trump is apparently listening to “consultants”. Heaven knows why. You can tell, because the right is all praising him for being “presidential” and saying he “learned.” You can also tell, because the left has put him in the same cone of silence it put McCain and Romney when they were running.
If you’re very connected and linked in on line, you’ll hear echoes of the fact he’s still speaking at rallies and events. But other than that? He might as well have vaporized for all we hear of him.
Apparently this is called “being presidential” and it makes for photo finish losses. Or losses that are so due to fraud, but can be spun as real, because who hears of them.
You see, someone convinced Trump not to do “mean tweets.” After all, those acting like a cat laser forced the left to cover him during the sixteen election. And heaven knows, we wouldn’t want that debacle of a victory again. The establishment was all ready to give everything up to Hillary, and Trump spoiled it.
No, no, no no, no. Let’s lose with dignity, like gentlemen! We know how to do THAT.
If anyone here has a line to Trump tell him to fire up the mean tweets. Look, we’re probably going to lose this anyway, to fraud. WHY make it easy for the left?
If there hadn’t been a potshot at him, would you even know he was campaigning?
Having worked on THREE republican campaigns now, there’s only one thing I can tell you for sure. Consultants work for the other side. The only people who believe them are “right wing pundits.”
And speaking of right wing pundits: I’m also very tired of all the right wing blogs saying the “surge” for Kamala is real. Oh, sure, the left is jumping and screaming in glee on command. And the “polls” show her winning!
Of course the internal of the polls show something like plus seven for the democrats. Which does not accord to any demographics, except perhaps white house staff.
“But the unskewing of polls in 2012 proved to be a lie. Obama really won by that much.” Yeah. Let’s talk about 2012, the election that told me how deep the fraud goes in the US. You see, I was a poll watcher. In Colorado Springs, at the time considered safe republican. And yet, 1/3 of the people showing up to vote were told that they’d already voted. People in their thirties and forties. WEIRD incidence of Alzheimers, no.
And of course, they were appeased by being told they could do a provisional vote. They never told them the conditions under which that vote would be counted. Because it wasn’t. The vote was in. They couldn’t find it and remove it. And they COULDN’T PROVE IT WAS ILLEGITIMATE.
So, they stole the election for Obama. They also managed a bare majority in Colorado (which is amazing, and tell you how few they were, when you consider that in Denver fellow poll watchers told me it was 2/3 showing up and being told they’d already voted) which allowed them to make Colorado all vote by mail. To save money on elections, you see, because Democrats are all about saving money. Weirdly no state that goes all vote by mail EVER goes republican again. It’s just a coincidence, I’m sure. (Salutes the fallen.)
I’m tired of the bizarre religious martyrdom obsession of the American right too. Guys, listen up: It’s me speaking, okay? I AM religious. A lot more religious since 2020, fairly inexplicably, considering the locked churches, etc.
But if I hear one more of you tell me that the world doesn’t matter/everything is doomed/but you got Jesus, I’m going to come through your screen and beat you to silence with a fluffy slipper.
Does the parable of the talents tell you to bury the talent and sit back, because He comes back, and He’ll take care of everything? No? Gee, I wonder why.
Look, people have been saying He’ll surely return now, because the world is already lost since shortly after He left. He still hasn’t.
Sure, work on your salvation, however you think it is. And prayer never hurts. But don’t be so sure the end is coming soon. You DON’T KNOW. And you’re not SUPPOSED to leave it all to Him.
He gave you two good hands and a brain. FIGURE OUT HOW TO STOP THE DOOM or at least make it shorter. Praying helps, but that’s not ALL you should be doing.
Unless, of course, you’re a refargain gnostic who thinks the material world is a trap. In that case, carry on, but let me tell you better and far more religious people than I got much, much angrier than I am at that heresy.
While at that, stop yelling at young people. No, I mean that. “Kids these days” “I paid my way through college” “Why aren’t they getting married” “I had a job wiping weasels asses. Why are they whining about their beginning jobs.” etc. etc. etc.
I have two kids. They’re not that young anymore, actually. Over ten years out of high school for both of them. They’re working, and making okay money, which is unusual for their generation. I mean, to have both of them have jobs.
And no, it’s not for lack of trying. Kindly remember the circles I run in. My friends are neither low-achieving nor do they lack drive. But their kids are a wasteland.
And it’s not because they were coddled either. We’re not that kind.
So, what is going on? Well, those jobs wiping weasels asses are now either banned due to environmental concerns OR they require a doctorate. And even then you’ll be lucky to get it. (And no, STEM isn’t a guarantee of jobs. Mostly connections are a guarantee of jobs.) Yeah, you paid your way to college, but that was before government took over the financing and prices went through the roof. At one time (paying half the tuition for each kid, back then) we were paying around 40k a year. In a state school. With the kids living at home. I imagine what other people’s kids are in hock for.
And even those who have jobs, even decently paying (much more than minimum wage) jobs are barely making it. Guys, we’re feeling the pinch of inflation/prices/etc and we’re in many ways in our peak earning years. We don’t eat as much as we used to. We have most of our essentials (more than that) including clothes and books. It’s horrendous for the kids.
And most of them never had a first job till mid to late twenties, unless they got skilled training, and even then…. The early jobs are just not there. And all the “child labor laws” mostly protect people from being adults till they’re legal adults. When everyone is competing for the same barely pay jobs.
Statistics can lie, but these are being buried, so they probably don’t. Most kids are not moving out. They’re living with mom and dad into their late thirties. This includes married couples. I know this. I remember it from Portugal. In my parents’ generation multi-generation households went away, (except for my family, kind of, because my parents wanted to save ALL the money before they bought the house) in my brother’s generation they came back, because no one could afford to move out. Because there were no jobs.
So before you say “kids these days” walk a mile in their house slippers. Those doing best among them are the ones inventing their own jobs. And that’s, as always, a minority.
Stop shaking your fist at them, and lend them a hand. Yeah, you had it hard. I had it hard. But the kids have it hard too, and because of the times we live in, it’s all too easy for them to drop out and go into a depression of computer games and computer chats. Forever.
Thank heavens movies suck, otherwise it would be another way for them to disappear. Most of them weren’t even taught to read comfortably enough to get “stoned with books.” Help them with that too.
The kids are all right. Most of them want to learn/do well. They really do. But they’ve been betrayed by society at every level.
And while at that, stop thinking you live in a movie. No, seriously.
I’m having people tweet charts at me, showing that the US is doomed and will cease to exist because the debt is so high.
People, are you actually and for real insane, and how do you type in those straight jackets?
Sure, the debt is scary. It’s also not what it looks like. The main creditor of the US government is …. the American people. They have borrowed from you, your kids, your grandkids. The main way it’s being paid for is RAMPANT inflation.
The numbers in the budget right now, are mostly passing around of tokens.
Look, macro-economics isn’t real, no. We can’t make a coin that will pay the national debt.
OTOH — and knowing BGE will hit me in the comments (I’m not that stupid) — our economy isn’t REAL either. No, seriously.
It’s a fiat economy, guaranteed by the faith and credit of the US government — can we tell them, or can we tell them? — and the current debt is to China, who doesn’t DARE collect, or even cast doubt on it, even if they had real force to do so with (they don’t.) And to the American people. What that debt is doing is making us pay more at the grocery store, the gas pump, etc. And making investment harder.
Is that good? No. Is it the end of the US?
SNORT GIGGLE.
Guys, how the heck can you even believe that — and stop all tweeting the same chart. What are you? Leftist bots? THINK — for a refargin minute?
Argentina. No seriously, Argentina. How many periods of crazy high inflation/can’t survive this has it gone through before Mr. Chainsaw ascended? There’s still an Argentina.
Unlike Argentina, or other places, people in America WANT to work. In 2016 they voted for the guy promising to give them jobs over the chick promising them free money in such numbers they gave him a surprise win.
And our land is rich in resources and ingenuity.
Heck, most of our people still believe in individual rights that transcend the government. It’s the government that’s the problem, and the excess regulations not to mention blinkered ones.
And that it’s a single point of failure. For the other side. All it takes is an election.
Can we win the election? Well, probably not. Not that we won’t win it. We will. We won 2012 and 2020 too. For all the good it did us.
But we can’t win the fraud. And knowing the right that is all too willing to lose — with dignity — those of us who point out it sure as heck is fraud will be told we’re crazy. No, no, it’s those damn kids/women/people who tan who voted for the socialists.
Not just losing with dignity, but alienating people on our side. How is that for a win? Very presidential. Tres dignified. Ten out of ten stars.
Look, I told you I’m short on sleep. And sick and tired of the bs.
Is there anything you can do? Sure there is.
First, on the cone of silence. Hit social media. Yes, I know most of you want to go and hide in a hole till after the elections. About half my regular commenters no longer comment, and have told me it’s because they’re “Staying away from politics. So depressing.”
That’s nice. That’s beautiful, really. Particularly when you encourage me to do the same.
It’s not that I like it here in the muck pit. I ain’t sleeping any too well, and I’m trying to finish a book, but hit a wall every time the scene demands any sort of energy or strength. Because I’m so tired. And angry, but mostly tired.
But at the end of that “I’m going to tend my garden” road is the stupid lefty bumperstick “what if they gave a war and no one came?” well, then the enemy wins, by default. Which, I submit to you was the point of that bumpersticker. They wanted the USSR to win, and that was only possible if we stopped fighting. That one was of a piece with all the unilateral disarmament crap, and all the push for US to give up nuclear weapons, and then we’d have “peace.”
The only guaranteed peace is that in the grave.
Going under the socialist boot won’t give you peace. Or them. Because some of us ain’t going down quietly.
The election is PROBABLY lost, but no more so than in sixteen, and that one was miraculously won.
And all we have is to get lucky once, then clean it up — now we know the extent of the problem — while they have to maintain control every time.
So, what can you do? You can engage. You can stop the dooming even when you want to doom.
There are indications that we’re being subjected to a psyop and indoc machine by our own three letters. You don’t have to let them in your head. Take off the overcoat and examine your own back.
Want to doom? Go doom at the cat. Go yell at the squirrels. Tell them all is lost. Even better, tell it to the raccoons. Maybe the fat bastages will believe you.
Go to a Trump rally? Make a twitter account. Post about it. Even better, post a recording. If he’s decided to be dignified, we can be undignified for him. And anyway, we can do mean tweets at will, because we’re not him.
Hit facebook, even if it’s a cesspool and they tell you this photo is fake:
Is it “undignified” for Trump to point out that Kamala Harris has changed races three times? (Born white, claimed Indian, now claims black.) I don’t think so. And it’s not undignified for us. She wants to wear black face, she’d better be ready to explain her earlier identifications.
Is it bad to unskew the polls? Well, don’t call it unskewing. Just show the internals.
Be loud, be obnoxious, be there! Give each person who sees you the sense they’re not alone, and no, the right doesn’t come pre-defeated.
There’s more to the future than the boot stomping on the human face forever. That was the vision of a depressed, disillusioned socialist.
If we free people find ourselves in that position, we’re going to bite that d*mn boot off. And then start on the foot.
Be not afraid. Be not meek. Be not dignified. And BE NOT SILENT.
Are you tired? Hell, how do you think I feel?
Have a sip. And then come with me. We’re leaving the trenches and running at the machine gun nest today.
Sure, it’s sure death. Then again, there are indications that machine gun is CGI so maybe not.
And after all, isn’t the uncertainty exhilarating?
The future isn’t scripted. Let’s write it ourselves.
According To Hoyt 
The Reader humbly suggests we consider flanking the machine gun nest. Exactly what that means in current terms needs to be the subject of vigorous discussion.
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Hon? How do you AVOID vigorous discussion with this bunch?
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No, this is modern times, you call in a 9 line CAS, and say, ”Fuck you and 100 metres around you”.
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AC-130U FTW!
“SPOOKY SEVEN-SEVEN, you are cleared in hot.”
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Puff the Magic Dragon, laid down some fire
And wiped out all the raging fools who’d earned some soldier’s ire…
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Darn you, now I’ve got an ear-worm. Darn you to the sock drawer!
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Peter, Paul & Mary released Puff (The Magic Dragon) in ’69. The song had given its name to C130 gunships before ‘Nam was over….
…
[Verse 5]
But dragons’ ears are very good, and Puff knew Jackie’s voice
And with Charlies in the wire, SGT Paper made his choice.
Puff the Magic Dragon, laid down dragon fire
And wiped out all the communists who’d earned young Jackie’s ire
[Chorus]
Oh, Puff, the magic dragon fought through calm and storm
And turned the jungles into ash in a place called Viet Nam!
Puff, the magic dragon fought through calm and storm
And turned the jungles into ash in a place called Viet Nam!
(https://genius.com/Peter-paul-and-mary-puff-the-magic-dragon-lyrics)
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*Thumbs up*
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MLRS
only you can prevent grid squares….
(grin)
all due respect to my Redleg associates (Field Artillery), I am more of a “one round of .30-06 beats a thousand curses” type.
Go to the range. Practice.
Probably not needed, but calms the nerves while making the enemy sweat.
Range day tomorrow. Packing up.
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I recall being sent on mock patrols at NTA on Okinawa.
The briefing, in an afterthought, told us we had a section of 81s in support.
The brass had obviously not thought that through. “Fire Mission” + “Traverse and Search” solved a great many difficulties.
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Proper application of explosives (in various packages and forms) can expedite many a cross country trip through moderately tough terrain. Also can help to keep the forest in check.
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thats more where my head goes.
just sayin is all
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Machine gun nests are why God made mortars? :-D
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and 11Charlies.
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Personal opinion, the second coming will be either because we’ve all become saints, or because we’ve screwed things up so badly that Himself has to directly intervene to preserve the church, that He promised to preserve.
I sort of suspect courting the second counts as Tempting God.
On the consultants thing, I wonder if Trump has started getting away from them. The interview he did recently calling out the VPs skin-suiting has been a bit of a new cycle, and decried as horribly unpresidental and unrepentantly racist. And seems to have torqued the news into being about ‘how dare he say she faked her race!’ stuff.
We may see the 2016 Trump show up this time.
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Yeah, my immediate response to this post was “wait what, last I heard people were yelling at him about something he said about the VP’s ethnicity, which is pretty much Tuesday in Trumpland.”
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At risk of breaking the rules, I think the last believer must die leaving a world where no one knows the Gospel. Only then will the Second Coming of the Son of Man be like that as a thief in the night because there is no one left to be vigilant.
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Actually we’ve been told that it will be preceded by a period of intense persecution, so it’s the second.
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True, though my understanding of prophesy is more that prophesies of good things are Promises from God and will come to pass while prophesies of bad things are more warnings or horrible things, that can still be stopped.
I want to say that happened in the Old Testament, with the prophet Jonah?
But that’s just my opinion. :)
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There’s a scene in Revelations where the martyrs are asking God when He will take vengeance for them and He replies that it will not happen until all the other brethren have been beheaded. So the second seems more likely.
I don’t know where the idea the believers will all be scooped up by the Rapture and escape the suffering of the Last Times came from. Although it just occurred to me the Snap in Infinity War could be considered a twisted and perverted version of the Rapture.
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“For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord.”
Those who believe in the Rapture hold this is a separate event from the Second Coming, and will in fact lead into Israel ruling the world for a millennia. Hence, pre-millennialist. It is not a common belief.
It has not been definitively defined, but the Catholic Church tends toward the amillennialist view — where “a-” means not “not ” but “in.” The millennia began on Pentecost, and the “thousand” means what it means in the Psalm has “Mine are the cattle on a thousand hills” — a symbolic meaning of completeness.
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Having just finished an inductive study of Revelation, my own view is that things go very fast when God decides it’s done. Also, I think most time frames are metaphorical in Revelation. The most important thing impressed on my mind as I studied is this: The role of the church does not change no matter where we are on the timeline: we are to be preaching the gospel, practicing righteousness, and trusting Jesus to the very end. The pre- or a-millenial theologies don’t change what we are supposed to do, Nor is does pre-, post or mid Tribulation theology.
As for the elections and the USA, God never ceases to be sovereign, prayer always helps, and COVID mania taught me that I was right to chart my own course and that most people just need to see someone else not give into fear and despair.
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Nod.
I agree with the metaphorical aspect of Revelations and IMO writers get into trouble when they get too specific in their interpretations of it and other end-time prophecies.
My position is that Christ will return and it maybe within a terrible time for the world.
And of course, there have been other “terrible times” in history so we shouldn’t try to “predict” when He will return.
Sadly, as for the church within those times, I see the Whore of Babylon as a church or churches that have forsaken God and serves evil.
Looking at the more Leftish churches/clergy, I see the Whore of Babylon.
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“With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day”
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Darby. And then Scoville. And all because Darby could not see that the Promises made by YHWH to Israel are fulfilled in the ekklesia of the Cross. So in order for YHWH’s promises to Israel to be able to be fulfilled, the church gotta go.
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About Count Suckula, I said, elsewhere, “She’s not black. And if she identifies as black, and you cornholers let her get away with it, you need to write a very long and profuse apology to Rachel Dolezal.”
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You have an extra o in your first word of her nickname. I like helping people wish spelling, since I’m so bad at it.
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I’m one of Ace’s Wayward Commenters, and I approve this spellcheck.
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As my wife would say, AHHH HA HA HA HA THAT’S FUNNY!
I’ll make a note of the correct spelling and do better in the future.
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I don’t think dykes would want her….
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Get some rest before you enter the Battlefield.
You want the enemy to be more worn-out than you. 😃😃😃😃😃
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Whenever we put up someone *electable* we lose. Same with *presidential*.
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Look, we might lose anyway. The fraud is a TIDAL wave. But let’s us lose FIGHTING, yes?
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The man reads Sun Tzu. Being a bit unpredictable is a thing. “What the fnord is he doing now?”
He plays “brain (poke)”. One bigly reason he wins at golf. He gets in their heads.
Was it stupid to pull Patton out of command and give him a deception mission, or utter ruthless genius?
What if the whole soldier-slap then relief was planned?
(grin)
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Very possibly was planned, by the same General who set up Mr. Trump’s recent photo shoot with the raised fist and the blood ear, and the poor hapless Secret Service all accidently recreating the Iwo Jima Flag Photo.
Same guy that kicked Sennacharib’s arse in 1st Kings, and whose desk George Patton filed his Christmas Weather request to.
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Yeah. It’s almost like ‘electable’ is code for ‘won’t threaten iron rice bowls’…
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So much that.
Don’t threaten the iron rice bowls, you deplorable peasants, you – you really believe you have a right to elect your representatives, and they will do as you want them to?
Well, REALLY! How … deplorable!
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THIS^^^^^
The purpose of the GOP is very simple: get a “fair share” of the graft.
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Republicans are meant to be losers. Gingrich’s predecessor as Minority Leader told freshmen they’d learn to look into the mirror and say “today, I’m going to lose.” Look at how they ran out Gingrich and hate Trump.
They believe their goal is to win not just to line up at the trough. That’s what they must be gotten rid of.
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I’m not convinced part of their attitude isn’t due to being 40 years in the minority and getting used to it rather than planning to win and what to do then.
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I agree that’s the origin and the mentality on the flip side that ruling is their right. And it was closer to 60.as their 46 and 52 majorities weren’t re-elected.
But that was 30 years ago. We should have leaders without that mentality.
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Yep. Plus the assumption up till the eighties that communism would inevitably win. So the best we could hope for was “communism with a human face.”
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lol. Not.
(grin)
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I didn’t say among everyone,b ut it was the assumption of the academics and analysts.
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With respect to consultants and the GOPe, if you’re an empty suit, you’re necessarily very concerned with appearances.
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The fix is now fully in for Arizona:
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/08/02/appeals-court-paves-the-way-for-illegals-to-steal-election-in-arizona-n4931300
That’s right, even illegal aliens can register to vote in Arizona now.
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I think any state that it can be proven that non-citizens are voting in any election that state loses their representative votes. Disenfranchises a lot of citizens votes, but maybe then they will take back their state.
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It’s in everywhere. GA, MI, WI, AZ.
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I’m not going to hit you, I’m no Olympian, my mother made d-mned sure I knew never to hit girls. Further, I mostly agree with you, the vast majority of the US economy is fake and China doesn’t dare sell their US debt holdings, that’s all true. Fiat money is based on faith. That’s what credit literally means after all. When the belief stops the money dies. It’s happened many, many times. Could well happen here.
as for fake, I was talking to a banker friend of mine about this just this morning, when you have free money, everyone’s a genius, when you have 5% paid to you by the Fed money then everyone’s a super genius, when you have to pay for the money you find out that none of the galaxy brains know much of anything, in fact you discover that they’re actually quite stupid. For the last several years the banking system has been kept afloat by massive subsidies from the taxpayer and it’s still not enough.
The recession that’s well underway now isn’t fake though and it’s going to hurt, bad. We’re still the one eyed man in the land of the blind, but it’s bad. They’re already pushing bailouts.
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I know it’s bad. I saw it in my fundraiser. About same donors FAR less money.
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it’s really bad. People are hurting. Asia is worse. Japan is imploding today and China is, well, dying, for all that I tend to profit off it, I don’t like to see people hurt. It’s been a hard slog holding on to my view when the markets moved against me for a full year.
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You missed one item –
Jim Cramer apparently tweeted that we’re not on the verge of an apocalypse.
😋
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Well, that’s it then. Game over, man, game over!
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Time to go long on canned goods, brass, lead, and popcorn. Saunters off to check on popcorn cart status
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Rice crackers? ;) Good with cheddar… and that freezes well….
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Just to clarify: if Cramer says the sky is not falling, be sure to wear your hard hat. I don’t know why that empty-headed loudmouth is giving out investment advice, or why anybody listens.
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Well, it’s useful. See what he says and do the opposite.
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Like anything from the MSM; listen to what they say and assume the opposite is true? Works for me, and has for quite a while now.
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Wondered how it was going.
I’m worri3e that for once the well-off (for values of well-off,” are doing OK while the others are tanking. That’s a recipe for a, “man on a white horse.” And Harris ain’t that man.
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How about a man in a golden hat?
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It could also be a recipe for a reprise of Bastille Day and the French Revolution. And no one wants that crap sandwich, ay least no one sane and with some knowledge of history.😒
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What I find so strange about “when you have to pay for the money….” is that late-Boomers and early-Gen-Xers are still mostly in charge of things. We lived through the late 70s/early 80s inflation. How can these people NOT REMEMBER?!?!
The hot-shot trader on the floor (oh wait, “floors” don’t exist any longer) I understand. The people in charge should know better.
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The Reader notes that with a few exceptions (Warren Buffet comes to mind), managing money is mostly a younger persons game. The ‘old hands’ still around tend to be ignored when they offer ancient history (yeah that is what the 70s are), particularly when it is cautionary. The good news (such as it is) is that Jerome Powell does apparently remember the 70’s, which is why there wasn’t an interest rate cut 9 months ago. The one coming next month is the obligatory pre election cut that no Fed chair with the exception of Volcker has managed to avoid.
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Oh. We remember. Oh do we. We were just starting out together. Just graduating. Not only was inflation and interest rates rises rampant, jobs were more scarce than hen’s teeth. Then I switched careers (along with a lot of other foresters, FWIW). Gee, those programming jobs weren’t just coming out of the wood work begging for people either. The few there were cycled through people like a washing machine (game programming), at least locally. (Oh, and for those who lucked out at MS, Google, etc., hows RV living? Going “back to the office” now?) Glad never got on one of those. As bad as I had it, every 6 – 7 years, until the last, I was a lot better off than a lot of people in computers.
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Living in a studio apartment for 2 years, followed by 18 months in a one-bedroom carved from a Victorian house in Asbury Park. Moving into a real one-bedroom with a living room, a bath, a bedroom and a kitchen felt like the height of luxury, and I could finally have a cat!
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I was in the Midwest, with summers in Houston. Gas lines, stagflation, interest rates that laughed with scorn at today’s 6.2% mortgage rates, the farm crisis when inflation, interest rates, and death taxes all merged, the off-shoring of industrial jobs … I remember a lot of tuna-pea-cheese-rice casserole, and cheap chicken pot pies, and beans-n-bacon on toast. And powdered milk and generic cheap cheese.
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Yes. Gas lines. At least in early ’70s. Gone by the time I hit HS. But fuel was up to just short of a $1. Remember saving change in ’76 when I finally got a car, to pay for partial gas tank.
We’d have been thrilled to get a 6.5% interest rates in late ’70s through the ’80s. Current mortgage is 3.35% fixed 30 year. Did not start out that way. We started with a 13.5% annual adjustable with a 5 year balloon. Was refinanced in less than a year to 12% fixed 30 year. Got it down then to 8% then 5%, to finally where it is now, since 2012. Of coarse amount owed went up. Because we had to pay off HELOCS too (except the last one). In fact the 2009 refinance happened because after 2008 mess, we got credit jacked. Our HELOC allowed dropped by half, to just above what we owed. Had put off refinancing because the HELOC availability was the backstop “loan” to pay college expenses. Credit jack cut that off, so heck with them.
I ate pretty well while working away from home. A lot of salmon steaks, loafs, salmon fish (like tuna fish) sandwiches, trout, venison, etc. (it is called raiding the parents freezer of prior year catch). Did learn to despise salmon for awhile because that is ALL I had.
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Rest of the media may be ignoring President Trump but Fox/Fox Nation isn’t. President Trump got a horrible reception from the people on the stage (rude, etc.) of the black reporter convention, but he got laughs and cheers at his responses from the crowd. Which frustrated the people on the stage asking questions. It was a hoot. That is just one example. In addition even zombie Biden and ho Harris have to talk about what Trump has done or said. Never favorably but they can’t ignore Trump’s name. I think it frustrates PTB that they can’t keep President Trump out of the news cycle no matter what they do.
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Dep729’s post shows why I think Trump is handling things very well. He’s still inspiring his base and likely undecideds, but he’s making it hard for the Gotcha Left to hurt him, waiting for a punch, then counterpunching on point, and point, and point. He’s got another skilled fighter in J. D. Vance, whom I now consider a very good pick. If Shamala Harris is foolish enough to face him in a debate, he will mop the floor with her, wring her out, and do it again.
I’m far more worried about fraud, but while some state courts are opening the gates of Troy, others are taking the matter seriously–which is easier for them to do now that likely and certain fraud in 2016 has become part of the legal record.
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The problem is she’s used to being on the floor….
Urgk
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Gives “beaten to her knees” a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?😉🤣🤣
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As I like to remind my sometime co-religionists in what is called “evangelical” Christianity, until we’re realio-trulio serfs here in the U.S.A. the Bible has clear instructions for us.
As rulers.
Check out the O.T. for the general God opinion on rulers who skivved off their duties. Or go back to Adam, the first “hey, she’s not *my* problem” human bean.
Like the song says “Here am I, send me, send me”. Loads of work on the table.
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Not a forecast and never investment advice. August is the month where the declines before crashes start. The crash is usually Sep, Oct, or early Nov but the decline starts in August. There’s actually a good reason for the calendar bias having to do with earnings massaging, etc., Todays Job report was a negative print if you remove the fraud and even the BLS is running out of lies to tell. jobs are among the last shoe to drop. The market isn’t reacting well.
it was the crash of 2008 that made Obama president. Just sayin. McCain was ahead in the poll until then.
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That’s why the Fed is signaling that it will probably reduce interest rates next month, just in time to have an effect before people start voting.
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Interest rate markets have priced that in for two months and we’re down twice the normal fed cut today on jobs news.
Assuming there is an election (not saying the forms won’t happen just that connection between votes cast and votes reported will be accidental) it may be too late to matter.
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My wife, who voted for Trump and will again (she understands his policies are far preferable to the Ds), gets mad at his mean stuff. When she heard the “Kamala used to be Indian” line she blurted “Why can’t he just shut up!”
She’s far from unique in this regard. The mean tweets keep the attention on him while also upsetting nice women. Thus the advice from nearly all the Fox pundits to focus on policy not personality. If he can manage to dominate news cycles without the personal attacks he will attract more voters.
Unfortunately, I think you may be right, that he needs the personal to stay in the news. But it comes at a cost.
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I’m feeling a little tired and mean myself today. I apologize in advance for what I am about to say.
It is stupid women and women adjacent men who think Trump ought to “just shut up” because HE is mean when the other side has been calling HIM Hitler, jailing his supporters trying to jail him, doing their best to bankrupt him, and shooting him and his supporters in front of G-d and everybody.
What the everloving heck does it take for people to wake up and see what time it is?
Mean? It’s MEAN to point out the putative nominee claims whatever ethnicity is convenient at the moment? How about jailing elderly women praying on sidewalks in front of abortion clinics? How about jailing people who walked peacefully into the Capital after the police opened the door and let them in? How about dumping the candidate that won all the primary votes for one who has never won a single primary vote ever? Just because they felt like it. How about locking everyone down, destroying businesses, killing residents of nursing homes, and damaging the future of our young people?
People who think Trump tweets mean have no idea what mean actually is, evidently, even though they had a heaping helping of it the last few years.
They will, unfortunately, find out when the commies take over. As will we all.
Once again, I apologize for my tone.
May The Lord bless us all and save us from the final test.
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I’m not saying you’re wrong – just that the emotional “stop that” reaction is a real thing that turns off a lot of potential voters.
Reminding the public that Kamala argued in Court that it was OK to keep prisoners incarcerated after their sentences had already been served would be more persuasive to “nice” people than saying she ain’t black. But, to your point if he can’t get that into the news cycle it can’t be effective.
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“It’s a variation of, “We’re better than that. We refuse to sink to their level.”
Don’t know if that’s partly fueled by the idea that if they just model “decency and fair play,” long enough, the public will realize they are the better people and turn to them.
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It doesn’t work. It’s Marquis de Queensberry rules.
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Worse, it’s limiting yourself to Marquis de Queensberry rules while being mugged by three guys with switchblades in an alley. Your smug sense of moral superiority is about to get punctured along with the rest of you.
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Yep.
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The Marquis de Queensbury was an atheist. Christ threw furniture in church.
Which rule do they THINK will save them?
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My inclination is far more in line with Kurt Schlichter than with Mitt Romney: He pulls a knife (which the Left has been doing to Trump for over 8 years), you double-tap to his chest followed by one right between his eyes.
“Mean tweets” my ass. :-x
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Bugger the Marquis de Fontailer!!
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When the Reader pointed out these facts to his wife, she went quiet about how Trump shouldn’t be obnoxious. We’ll see how long it lasts.
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‘Mean tweets’ seem to bother college-educated unmarried women the most.
I don’t know why, but survey demographics all seem to confirm that.
IMVHO, and I’ve sent this to the Trump campaign several times, the Donald should surrender his phone and make an arrangement like DeSantis-Pushaw. MSM (a) makes tweets about Trump, not the content, and (b) pounces on any small inaccuracy (as well as the deservedly criticized big inaccuracies) and calls him a liar.
Delaying a tweet response a few hours would give some intern some time to do some research, to diminish the inaccuracies, and running the tweets out under a spokesman’s banner might (hope springs eternal) reduce the tweet-venom from the MSM. Of course, the individual non-MSM tweeters will still Do Their Own Things.
Third-party Mean But Accurate seems an improvement to me.
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The small inaccuracies are actually very effective at getting Trump’s message out. The press can’t resist pointing out when Trump claims a statistic is 30% and it’s actually 27% (to use a half-remembered example), so they end up talking about topics they would otherwise ignore. It’s bait, like a lot of what he does.
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He’s a master troll.
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BTW, chocolate? You’re eeeevil. Thank you.
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Evil? Even ‘eeeevil’? I think not. (I’ll cop to ‘a Bad man’, an accolade you bestowed here.)
But Odd enough to pick up on a few things.
We used to listen to A Prairie Home Companion (honest, Keillor used to be funny before he tacked so far Left he fell off the edge of Reality) and one of the faux sponsors was Raw Bits, ‘Oat hulls and wheat chaff, the cereal that helps you get up and do the things that must be done’ or something like that.
Metaphorically, chocolate is the Raw Bits for most women.
I kind of need Raw Bits cereal these days …
I hope the dandelions were in good condition; shipping them to Vegas in mid July seemed perilous, though the shipper claimed to package them for that stress.
I would have gone local to Cottage Grove, if I could. A local firefighter captain had a side business, Sanity Chocolate. But he took a job as a senior official in the Lane County department, and had to close his shop. But he was really having a good time with single-source chocolates, and we liked all of it.
So, you’re welcome. Self-medicate, PRN.
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A little correction: Mike Caven, the owner of the now-closed Sanity Chocolate, is the Chief of the combined Eugene-Springfield Fire Department.
I hate to be that ‘somebody is wrong on the internet!’
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Thank you.
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Or perhaps they are pretending it’s the tweets when they have other reasons to not support him. Perhaps they think it’s more respectable than admitting they want to stick other people with their loans.
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Why, that is simply un-possible; these are College-Educated People, and therefore above reproach! All they want must be for the Common Good!
(Pardon me while I go rinse out the nasty taste…)
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I’m sorry. The nice women need to grow up. The other side is mean all the time.
Kindly ask your wife why she wants Kamala to take advantage of things designed to help the descendants of slaves when she has NONE of the disadvantages. Why shouldn’t any white woman claim to be black, then?
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In my very humble opinion, there is nothing nice about nice women.
They merely worry about appearances. They will go along with every single outrage as long as the neighbors approve.
They will and they have, much to the detriment of us all.
There is a reason C.S. Lewis named the forces behind the evil in That Hideous Srength, the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments, or N.I.C.E.
Don’t give up a single argument to anyone who is trying to discredit you because the neighbors might object. If it wasn’t a damaging argument they wouldn’t care if you said it.
He’s getting flack because he’s over the target.
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I guess I’m not nice. I usually think it’s a hoot.
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Try this one again…maybe I’m in hard moderation.
The day over day forward interest rate curve change today (SOFR rates, the replacement for LIBOR) was just shy of 50 basis points on the front end.
A typical day is < 10. It was big enough to spark conversation at the 3 pm curve meeting.
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Not only is the MG probably CGI, it has a seven-round magazine, the crew operating it has more time in DEI classes than in actual weapons training, it was made by the lowest bidder with overseas parts, and I think I saw one of them shove some trash down the barrel earlier.
I’ve seen what the enemy has done to the institutions they intend to turn on us. Frankly, I kinda like our odds. Not saying it’s a cakewalk, but it’s way more winnable than most think.
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As long as we fight.
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Aye, that’s the trick. Would also help if I didn’t keep seeing people who you’d think know better buy obviously stupid premises and sabotaging the folks actually trying. (There’s your targeting problem–not all the enemy are honest about who they are.)
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Right?
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It is… amazing… yeah we’ll go with that, to watch people see the most in your face and hamfisted propaganda push in the history of this planet and stroke their chins thoughtfully saying “yes, yes, obviously this is what people believe”.
I may have to retract every comment I’ve ever made about the cognitive capacity of communists.
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Step 1: Show the F up.
Step 2: do the dang job.
These two things are critical in any job. And boy howdy do we have one a waiting on us. Each and every one of us has a stall in the Augean stables with our name on it and a metaphorical teaspoon to clean it with. So best we get bustin’ it.
Arseholes and elbows, folks.
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And if this is not your strategy and mode of operation, you really do need to ask yourself two questions.
Q1. What is my proposed better alternative?
Q2. Why (exactly) will it work better than the above?
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One day I got upset about something at home and shoved back from my desk (and whatever issue had me upset) and shouted: “Fix bayonets, up over the top boys!”
My wife looked down at me from upstairs and simply asked, now what? However, she knew I was really mad/upset and it wasn’t going to go away with a bowl of ice cream. As I remember we worked on a solution and something got resolved as I didn’t have to actually kill anybody.
Sort of like the Starship Troopers movie…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-_c6V0U-4k
Really, our host is right – you’ve got to do something and keep doing stuff and maybe, just maybe we can beat the odds. Remember, they are afraid.
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once upon a time, during a major problem at work, I barked out “FIX BAYONETS!” kinda as self motivation.
A dude a few desks over said, nervously, “Can you not do that? I dang near peed myself.”
(grin)
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We all see the fraud coming, and the violence in Venzuela over their fraud. But we can’t seem to stop it.
Also I think Trump is afraid. It’s not a bad thing. He nearly died. They’re going to try again.
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“If you’re very connected and linked in on line, you’ll hear echoes of the fact he’s still speaking at rallies and events.”
Actually, with a non-crooked search engine, a decent-speed Internet connection, and a little patience with (e.g.) Rumble browser crashes, it’s perfectly possible to listen/watch entire Trump rally speeches or large parts thereof. (Charlotte rally. Bitcoin conf.)
Major media “cone of silence”? (Madly) biased search engines?
If you’ve not started yet, now is the time to begin your own personal journey into “Build over, build under, build around.”
(And for some of us and especally post J 13, Trump rallies with their YUUGE crowds can be something of a tonic for the soul.)
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The DOJ and FBI are stepping up their effort to ensure that online info, particularly media and social media, is rigged to demonize Trump and promote the Democrats:
https://nypost.com/2024/08/02/opinion/the-fbi-is-back-to-meddling-in-free-speech-on-social-media/
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The DOJ and FBI ever stopped “rigging media and social media, demonize Trump and promote the Democrats“?
That is news to me. Seriously. They never stop.
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Apropos of nothing but the title, since I’ve not yet read the post, I’m reminded of an interview with Steve Earle.
The subject was songwriting legend Townes van Zandt, with whom Earle was close friends, and the interviewer sidled up to a question he didn’t quite have the heart to ask directly. More or less, it amounted to “Why didn’t Townes have success as a recording artist? Was there some kind of conspiracy against him?”
Earle kind of looked at his feet while the interviewer hemmed and hawed, and finally said: “It was his own fault. It was his own fault. He shot himself in the foot. I mean… his foot was Right There. And he had real good aim.”
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And sometimes, no matter what you do to warn people about the foot, they’re still going to shoot it. And then do it again. And again.
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Which is basically what Townes did, alas. Such a genius, but such a wounded soul.
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Known a couple people like that. Am watching one at a distance and praying that the individual gets help instead of getting used and then discarded.
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I’m in the weird position of black pilled but not hopeless. As in everything has gone to shit and will get worse before it gets better regardless of how the election goes, but also a lot of the stuff poised to be destroyed is trash anyway and we’re better off without it. No one likes a forest fire, but we’ll be happier and better off when it’s over and the metaphorical brush and bureaucratic deadwood is burned away. I’m just focusing on building up skills to get me and mine through and to thrive on the other side.
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apocaloptymist. I’m there myself.
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C’mon. We won’t be bored, and some of it might be fun.
(grin)
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There’s also “the anticipation is the worst part” factor.
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Yep, there’s been plenty of times that I “imagined” some-future-event to be worse than it actually turned out to be.
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a long block quote I came across that I think deserves distribution and is related to the post. It begins by describing the media’s attack on Romney.
“obviously the media did this because it is an extension of the Democratic Party and it needs its guy to win. it also worked much more effectively back then because people took it more seriously. if a presidential candidate is a racist, sexist pig, isn’t that worth knowing? why would they lie about that?
Trump’s core insight wasn’t on immigration, NAFTA, China, etc – it wasn’t *political* at all; it was aesthetic. if these people are this corrupt, unserious, and *boring*, then simply refuse to play their game. don’t waste time addressing the lies; just laugh in their faces and call them ugly and stupid. you can’t win playing by their rules, so make up your own rules, and revel in the entertainment value of how shocking it is to everybody that you aren’t begging for forgiveness of your nonexistent sins like a fucking pussy.
They are going to call you a racist, sexist pig no matter what you do. moreover, everybody knows that now – not just for presidential candidates but for every walk of life. it’s corrupt, childish entertainment no matter how you try to deal with it. so you may as well recognize the game being played and dominate it.”
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THIS
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Or as we said in the Tea Party “no matter what this sign says you’ll call it racist.”
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And just to add to this point, one of the biggest draws Trump has had, right from the beginning, is that he says the stuff so many of us used to think, or say in private, but seldom/never did in public because we were either afraid, or “just too polite” / “did not want to offend.”
He says it right out loud, into the Twitterverse or to the world on stage.
Yes, mean tweets. Yes, not-nice nicknames.
We’re (all) fighting for civilization against its enemies. F-orget nice.
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Rush did it, too.
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Having worked on THREE republican campaigns now, there’s only one thing I can tell you for sure. Consultants work for the other side. The only people who believe them are “right wing pundits.”
they are professional opposition. If they are in power they don’t get paid.
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“Look, people have been saying He’ll surely return now, because the world is already lost since shortly after He left.”
And… how well did that argument test out in the days of the Black Plague (~30%+ casualties)? Of the Little Ice Age ~400 years ago? Of the Nazi World Empire of Room For Us (not you) to Live? Of…
Even if it were true, and it looks like it’s not, wouldn’t it be fun, given that assumption, to go a little Warsaw Ghetto or French Resistance on the destined-to-win bad-guys?
If you don’t get this point yet, you don’t know what bad times are yet.
Please adjust your aim accordingly.
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I just saw a pro-Kamala ad on TV.
In August.
In LA County.
Hmm…
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i love how any comments I make of substance get eaten by WP
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Must be a length > x goes to moderation feature.
Got it.
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My experience is anything over ~8000 characters goes directly to moderation. That’s totally ignoring all the other Willie Pete triggers, of course. Including wrong phase of the Moon / conjunction with Mars.
And then there’s the BURP! what post?
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Yep. I have the bad habit of running on and blathering walltext. WP has eaten many of mine and length seems to be the most common reason.
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Yup. Happens on other WP blogs, like MGC. I wonder if it stems from the days of long-wall-o’-text sales spams?
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There are conservative types who seem to be going stupid/tribal. Kyle Rittenhouse, for whatever reason, said he was going to write in Rand Paul for President because he didn’t feel Trump was pro-2nd Amendment enough. And a bunch of folks instantly piled on, calling him an ingrate, a traitor, a generally worthless human being, “How COULD you do this?” sort of thing until he made a statement of repentance.
Stupid. It’s none of their business who he votes for, and freedom does mean, free to be an idiot. It’s ugly when the progressives do it and it’s not prettier when conservatives do, either.
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Consequence of freedom is responsibility. That includes suffering the consequences of your own stupidity from time to time.
We on the right disagree mightily on a lot of things, all the time. Where we do agree, mostly, is where we want to go. Less government, lower taxes, fewer regulations, safer cities and homes, rule of law, and all the rest.
DEI in your place of business? Trannies in the girls’ dressing rooms? Sexual perversion and child mutilation? Child sacrifice? Rape and murder apologists? Riots in the street, terrorists crossing the Southern border, institutions cannibalized from within, corruption rampant and bloody obvious? We want none of that sh!t.
Just safe, sane, and unbothered by oppression. Leave us the heck alone and defend our rights and freedoms. Enforce contracts properly. Defend our borders and quit selling us out to our enemies.
Freedom includes the freedom to do dumb stuff that is still legal. Even if it upsets somebody’s little mental teacup. Freedom requires you to occasionally be offended, because people are not perfect, nor can they be made so.
I get the impulse to control others. It’s very understandably human, but it is also utterly wrong. You don’t get to prevent stupid people from breeding. You don’t get to ventilate that guy that cut you off in traffic because the world would be better off without his dumb ass. You also don’t get to force people to change their, admittedly stupid, minds on the stupid things they say/do.
Argue about it? Persuade? Try and educate? Sure. All for it. That’s the way a civilized society works. I think writing in any other name because Trump is insufficiently perfect is damned stupid. Ron Paul will not win on write in votes. That sort of protest is childish and immature.
By the same token, calling someone a traitor, ingrate, and generally worthless human being for saying that is also childish and immature. Ad hominem ain’t proper arguing for a reason, folks. Sure, it might be personally satisfying in the moment, but it’s utterly dumb.
Like it or not, freedom from government will not free us from endemic stupidity. That curse shall haunt the human race until their ain’t none no more.
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Leftroids don’t want responsibility. They’ll give up their freedom, and yours, just to avoid it. They want the government to protect them from the consequences of their own stupidity.
But when the government is composed of Leftroids, we all must suffer the consequences of their institutionalized stupidity, imposed from above.
———————————
If you always expect the government to do the stupidest things you can imagine, you will rarely be disappointed. Indeed, from time to time the government will exceed your expectations and do UNimaginably stupid things.
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I’ve been saying for several years now that any real civil war would be primarily fought between different segments of the “right”.
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The Kyle is very young. BUT it’s not tribalism. It’s fear. I understand. Yes, it’s stupid, but I UNDERSTAND.
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He also retracted the statement saying that Trump’s views on the Second Amendment had been misrepresented to him. Needless to say, establishment media is not mentioning this retraction.
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Color me surprised! I’m shocked. NOT!
(/sarcasm JIC)
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Yes, exactly this.
That “General quarters! All hands on deck!” fear.
That Maxwell Smart-y “Missed it by THAT MUCH!” fear.
The kind of fear the more you try to ignore it, only gets stronger.
“To aim properly, first look directly at the target…”
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Down 50 points…I wasn’t clear.
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I like your style when you’re tired!
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“There’s more to the future than the boot stomping on the human face forever. That was the vision of a depressed, disillusioned socialist.
If we free people find ourselves in that position, we’re going to bite that d*mn boot off. And then start on the foot.
Be not afraid. Be not meek. Be not dignified. And BE NOT SILENT.”
And THIS is why we love you. Liberty or Death isn’t a motto, it’s an attitude. When we are willing to Fight for Freedom, Freedom Wins.
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According to this site – https://www.thebalancemoney.com/who-owns-the-u-s-national-debt-3306124
The US owns 24 (ish) Trillion of the debt, followed by Japan 1(ish) trillion, and China 800(is) billion.
I thought more of it was foreign than that.
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As far as China is concerned China can just eat its US debt. Seriously, just wipe the debt out of the line item. “What debt? Your actions have consequences.” Also think any assets of Iran, Iraq, and Russia, need to be seized, with a soft “thank you, actions have consequences”.
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I think most of the US owned debt is because Social Security can only buy US bonds. Its kind of like borrowing against a 401k. Of course with the demographics looking somewhere between an inverted pyramid and a turnip that can’t continue. We need to stop spending somewhere and unfortunately payouts now make a larger portion of the “budget” than any other portion. Thats got to stop but the people to stop it are the Congress and they benefit from it. Its the old Bread and Circuses conundrum.
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You only say, “Jesus Take The Wheel!” when the steering is out.
Otherwise, it’s still under your control (Well, and Newton’s. Physics is a bitch.)
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It’s always under Jesus’s control. But to call on Him for overt miraculous and immediate action is to put the Lord your God to the test. Ordinarily He works mediately. And you are one of the the means.
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He seems to love when we tell Him why we can’t do something. Like: “I don’t have $500 to fly to Nashville.” If you want me to go…
Although, you may get the picture of Peter in the boat. “I’ve told you what to do. Now you need to get out of the boat.” Just trust Him. Simple, not easy. You want me to do What!?”
That is the problem with being a prophet. You see the slime pit coming. Elijah sent to the widow, about to eat her last meal. “Bake me a cake”. If I ever feel down, I ask myself am I in worse shape that either Elijah or the widow. Still an easy answer.
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And of course, there’s the tall tale of the guy He sent a canoe, a powerboat, and a helicopter to rescue he from a flood.
I think the phrase, “Thou shalt not test the Lord”, should be modernized to, “Thou shalt not play stupid games with God.” Especially since so many people don’t know the various definitions of the word, ‘test’.
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Lots of little bits. First, their is a civil war in Bangladesh. Havent heard much aboit it. I know of it because I have a friend whose entire family is there.
It started with the PM chewting her way into power again….then trying to have it both ways on something people cared about…reserved government jobs.
Students protested….and police were ordered to use violence to end them. So now the whole country is fighting and no real idea when or how it will end.
How many others of this type are out there?
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I hope the firey but peaceful protests in England spread.
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A lot.
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WSJ editorial dept had a piece on it, though they didn’t quite call it a civil war. The piece focused on the economic progress the country has made, plus the leadership getting more and more authoritarian. They see it as a situation where even more authoritarian (and militantly Islamic) leaders are in the background, waiting for their chance and likely to get it.
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I went looking for information on how mamy corruption arrests/charges there have been in Argentina since Javier took over. Oddly it is hard to find anything more recent than 2022.
it is as though there is censorship afoot.
I looked because I wondered this. How did Javier get in? Why wasnt he cheated out or killed?
so far as I can find….and anyone with better data point me to it please….he is cutting departments and laying off g9vernment employees….and when hisbterm is up the old network takes over and starts over again with the buying of votes and corruption because he renewed the well.
Mind you I think he is wxactly whom he seems to be, its just that ai cannot find anutbing about fixing the underlying problems
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Well, the Secretary of Defense has revoked the 9/11 please deal, while the Secretary of State has ordered ships and planes to the Middle East. The Preeident is in Delaware.
We are dancing on the lip of a volcano, and I don’t think these guys can dance.
And, yes, Iran is expected to attack Israel any time now. I keep expecting their first nuclear “test,” to be Tel Aviv.
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“We are dancing on the lip of a volcano, and I don’t think these guys can dance.”
Remember, the grown-ups are back in charge! Seriously, next to these guys Trump’s mere competency seems like outstanding superhuman ability.
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It’s not just incompetence. It’s malicious intent and outright evil.
https://www.jns.org/israelis-accept-the-breach-in-relations-with-the-biden-administration/
Yes, they told Israel that they want an immediate surrender to Hamas and will punish Israel for defending itself even more than they are already doing. They are now outright blaming Israel for being attacked by genocidal enemies who openly proclaim their desire to carry out a global Holocaust.
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Wow. They just told Israel to do whatever it needs to do. Hamas needs to be cleared out down to small children (because that is what you do) and then “surrender”. Better than what Hamas would do, they’ve proven this time and time again. It is what every civilization has done to the beginning of time when threatened with annihilation. Israel is threatened with annihilation. Time to end it.
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And this more than even what they’re doing to us is why we MUST win.
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Wouldn’t surprise me if those US Navy ships are being sent their to be used against Israel to prevent it from acting against Iran. It is very clear the regime is on the side of those screaming “death to Israel” and “death to America”.
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Commander Shepard from Mass Effect will be doing the dancing… oh crap we’re doomed.
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No. If it’s one of the guys I was in grad school with, then we’re doomed. (Nice guy. Great taste in music, expert in the Blues as a style and art form. Less sense of rhythm than, well, anything currently known to science.)
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We need this guy:
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I saw that SeDef Austin had revoked the plea deal and (having only seen the headline, not the details of what and/or why), thought “SecDeaf Austin did something right for once.” The plea deals–ANY deals with such misbegotten SOBs–were a bad idea, but not knowing the terms, it’s TBD whether revoking the deals was (as it may well have been) even worse.
Intelligentsia defenestra sunt. Amen.
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The Reader believes that someone in the Kamala campaign woke up and realized what a political disaster the plea deal was. Expect it back November 6th, along with Hunter’s pardon, no matter who wins.
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That’s one possibility. Another is that with the clear lack of leadership at the top of the administration, a lower-ranking underling thought that he could call the shots himself. Austin belatedly got wind of it after the fact, and stepped in.
Neither possibility is flattering for the administration.
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I’m trying to help! Did you get the eye of Saur
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Oh. Was that you? Yes. I did. Thank you. I can replace one of the failing chineseum knock offs…
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That was cut way off; supposed to be the Eye of Sauron, version 3 litter robot for the kitties, sent to your Las Vegas address… Glad it arrived okay!
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Got it. Next time, ping me privately for a closer for me to drive to address. LOL.
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Will do :-)
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But thank you. I should have put it in use today, but the kids came by, and I made them dinner. So… Tomorrow.
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Can’t wait to see what Indy the engineer cat does with it; it’s got to be intriguing to figure it out! My boy cat won’t touch it but my girl loves it…and he loves tools and is my project cat, so go figure.
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I expect Trump to win, and handily. Will it be stolen? I don’t know. But, why would he survive the attempt, just for God to have him lose? Eh, who knows, because I don’t know. No reason to stop fighting. Our only problem with be with the weak sisters of the GOPe who won’t support anything. They’ll come out with some outrageous bill to anger the middle of the roaders who might be open to voting for Trump right before the election. Lindsay Graham ring a bell? Unless we can neuter or get rid of the RINOs, even if we win, we can still lose.
I think the danger comes from our side, not the commies.
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Scott G said
One would think this would be so. Kamala has the charm and appeal of Hilary Clinton mixed with the backbone of Walter Mondale, the mental stability of Tom Eagleton and the self-awareness of Mike Dukakis. She ought to be hammered in a loss like Mondale or McGovern in any rational universe.
However our first past the post electoral system can be manipulated in states where large urban/suburban regions which are very loose with their voting process and prone to local manipulation. Last time Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia (among others) had very suspect behaviors in single city (Philadelphia, Las Vegas) or large counties (Fulton, Maricopa) in the counting of their votes. There has NOT been a major effort to correct this. The case of Georgia and Fulton Co is particularly egregious as the Republicans have large advantages in their legislatures. Pennsylvania went slightly blue at the mid term. Arizona has a Democrat Governor but (small) republican majorities so it probably cant override vetos. Nevada is Blue and other than pre 2006 (senate) and 2014 (house). 270 to win (https://www.270towin.com/) has NV and GA as weak republican thus likely easily tweaked. They also have PA, MI and WI in play. I think Philly even with its normal (i.e. not 2020 but mere 2008/2012) level of shenanigans makes PA blue. If it goes red early on election night ( highly unlikely not win MegaBucks unlikely but maybe draw to an inside straight) it is game over for team blue. I can’t see them letting that happen. If 270 to win has NV/GA right than MI is a winning solution. So I expect to see LOTS of weirdness in MI. Oh and NH is theoretically in play. That gets mangled regularly by UNH in Durham and same day registration so I’m just ignoring it although a NH/WI pair is winning pair (Given NV/GA). Not sure how hard WI is to manipulate.
One thing that worries me is SHOULD a miracle occur and Nov 6 Trump/Vance is the winner they have to be ready for a whole sh*storm of issues. There need to be detailed plans to fight lawfare against the inevitable challenges. Someone should be lining up nominees for EVERY position that can be replaced, NONE should be left (assuming we have Senate Majority Deus vult). Planning needs to be done to immobilize the swamp denizens early and start tossing them ASAP if they misbehave (and maybe toss anyone with taxes over 30 days overdue or give them 14 days to correct). And particularly additional protection for both Trump and Vance needs to be provided by folks NOT in the SS until the vote in congress on 1/3/2025.
Similarly, someone should be planning for lawfare should the election be stolen (although this is often pointless) and plans for Irish Democracy to break out in the red states just like the Blue states did when Trump was elected. It would be nice to play by Marquis de Queensbury rules, but when you know you’re opponent has rolls of dimes in his gloves this is highly inadvisable.
Of course it would be nice to be ready to fight at the county level in known suspect counties, but that strategy needed to start about 2020 we’re likely too late on that front.
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Biden’s threat to pack the court is to keep the supreme court quiet after fraud.
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That’s why he’s kept (illegal) mobs outside their homes for over two years.
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Which, if they declare there was fraud, and Trump wins, won’t be a particularly effective threat. Hopefully.
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Has anyone ever considered that Harris is supposed to lose? Maybe that is why none of the “big guns” like Whitmer or Newsom wanted the VP spot. Trump can only serve one more term leaving 2028 wide open. That give the contenders four year of screeching of how much they hate Trump to establish their bona fides with the faithful.
If Harris wins then that opportunity dissapears. Further, Whitmner and Newsom are term limited and will face at least two years of being out of power. Maybe six if Kamala decides to run again and they cannot snag a Senate seat or something. That is a serious disadvantage going into a Presidential campaign.
All Harris has to do is enable the Democrats to win enough down ballot races to block Trump’s agenda. They don’t even need a majority if they can ally with rogue Republicans.
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Sure, there’s been talk of that in conservative circles. Doesn’t mean the Ds won’t try to cheat her in. All the other possible candidates are fighting among themselves, and perhaps don’t have enough pull to get on the ticket. There are factions among the Ds. The way the press is hyperventilating over her means they’ll try, and then if we aren’t believing it, or she says something so stupid as to turn their voters off, they’ll dump her, or just decide to let her sink. Then put their money into saving senate and house seats.
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They are very careful not to let her debate Trump in an unscripted situation in front of an audience. That tells you the fraud is planned.
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That, and they can’t afford to let Trump back into the White House. The “damage” that he could do to them there is tremendous. Maybe they can keep him contained. But if they can’t…
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God knows where we are. He’s not surprised. Trump survived, so there’s hope as long as we ride out and meet the foe.
We don’t need to kill them, just mock them. Their egos are more fragile than we realize. That’s part of Trump’s power over them.
Whatever they say, laugh them to scorn. Treat them with the contempt they deserve. Don’t give them a break.
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Mock them until they cry then mock their tears. :)
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Blast, you, Sarah! You wound me up and I have stuff to do today. I can’t afford the time to sound off on your wonderful platform.
https://camagacoalition.com/product/booming-economy/
Months ago I tried to provide a method for undoing the fraud, which begins with NOT saying fraud. When you allege fraud you must name the persons accused. You must specify ** WITH EVIDENCE** what they did, when they did it, where they did it, how they did it and why they did it. Can anybody do that? No. That’s why Trumps initial court filings were thrown out (besides corrupt judges abetting the fraud).
I was shouted down as some kind of fraud denier. Now pay attention, class.
Maxim of law: Where the law prescribes a form, the nonobservance of it is fatal to the proceeding, and the whole becomes a nullity. (Best On Evidence, Introduction, s.59)
Maxim of law: Where form is not observed, the nullity of the act is inferred or follows. (Sir Edward Coke’s English King’s Bench Reports, 12, 7)
Go look up Maxims of Law, I’m not going to type it out for you.
All that had to happen was to a few hundred people to give their local county officials notice of their demand that they prove that the election was in all particulars conducted in strict conformity of the law as specified in each of the State Constitutions. If they can’t, if they screwed up even in the smallest particular, the election is automatically nullified. The process is a little more involved, but that is the gist of it. But because learning how to write a notice with teeth, filing affidavits is not all that emotionally satisfying and takes time and effort, well, nada.
But, no! FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD!
Trying really hard here to refrain from dispensing incendiaries and pyrotechnics.
Because the easy, sensible approach provided by the law and the Constitutions was not employed and only a few really stupid people were ever arrested and tried, but not dangled for treason, we are now at this pass.
Typical Americans, we’ll get around to saving ourselves when we’ve exhausted every other option. Meanwhile . . .
https://camagacoalition.com/product/silence/
Hat tip to St. Catherine of Sienna
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Sorry, the fraud is endemic. No you can’t name a person. There are ten or so per zipcode. We can name the mechanisms that make this inevitable.
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Ah, but in several cases we CAN. Ruby Freeman was the one in Atlanta who pulled the boxes of Spare Votes out from under the tables at +/- three in the morning. And despite EXPLICIT evidence of her fraud, the court handed her Giuliani on a platter like John the Baptist when she sued him for the defamation of calling her spayed a spayed (think veterenarily).
Or look at Dinesh D’Souza’s 2,000 Mules. Names are named. In some cases major names (one hub of the vote-mule op was at Stasi Abrams’ campaign HQ, though nothing was made of it).
The very open circumvention of PA’s own constitution and election law should by the cited Maxims have nullified the Keystone State’s entire Electoral College ticket for either party in 2020.
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I see what you did there…and I approve! :-P
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Ditto. I missed it the first time through, but it’s perfect. 😁👌👌
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WordPress! Yes, that is all the evidence needed. But did anybody follow up on that? Did any any group of We the People exercise their Constitutional authority and demand that the election be nullified and re-run correctly?
If that sounds crazy, read your State Constitution.
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YES THEY DID. THE COURTS WERE SUBORNED. Again, please, have you been asleep.
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Definitely not asleep. We the People have all the power but we are not exercising it for the most part. The courts are irrelevant when the People call their government officials to task.
The forensic audit in Maricopa County Arizona was not obtained through the courts. It was obtained because 127 members of We the People gave proper, formal notice to the Arizona Senate that it was their (the 127’s) wish, desire and demand that a full forensic audit of the 2020 election be conducted in Maricopa County.
The result was a full (almost) forensic audit despite the fact a majority of the Arizona legislature did not want it. None of the County Commissioners (or whatever they’re called) did not want it. The Governor did not want it. Secretary of State did not want it. Almost nobody in government, executive, legislative or judicial wanted it and fought against it.
But it happened, it was amazing, and the results were astonishing.
For the love of all that’s holy divest yourself of the idea that a case needs to be filed in a court with lawyers to beg a judge (corrupt or not) on the People’ behalf to give the People the rights they (government officials) swore they would protect above all else and never touch.
If the government officials are trampling the Constitutions it is because We the People have forgotten our power and have been trained to lay supine and silent, else hire a lawyer to plead with a judge on our behalf.
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Did a different President take office because the electoral votes were reversed? How about a different Senator? Or a different governor? Heck, were the attorneys who worked on it not sanctioned by the state bar? Spoiler: none of those things happened.
Your “results” were jack shit.
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True, there was a definite lack of follow through. In part, at least, self professed good guys weren’t. We didn’t know how wide and deep the corruption spread.
On the bright side (for certain values of bright) we now know all the multitudinous ways they cheat.
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Again, the state constitution is overridden, routinely, by the incorporation doctrine and the Supremacy Clause. ESPECIALLY in Federal election questions.
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Uh, what? No. Elections are controlled at the County level. The uniparty wants to federalize elections, but that hasn’t happened yet. And even if it did, the People can reverse it.
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Saying it is fine, because its true. But simply saying it without the necessary evidence, or with the evidence if it is not properly filed and prosecuted in court, accomplishes nothing. As we have seen.
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Also, the entire project of socialist bureaucracy is to so diffuse and distribute responsibility that nobody is actually responsible for any given thing, even if you can pin them down on exactly what “thing” is.
Go back and watch the acting head of the Secret Service testifying to the Senate. If we are to take his answers at face value, nobody at the SS is responsible for any decision, ever. It’s all group consensus and process, for which no individual is accountable.
Same deal here. You will never, ever be able to pin down anyone to any particular act of fraud, and not using the word “fraud” gives these monsters even more protection through insulation.
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THIS.
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It occurs to me that perhaps a half-dozen instances of violence per state, in the 48 hours before an election, could remove individuals who hold no elected or appointed positions, nor are formally employed by either government or political party, yet act as key transfer points for fraudulent ballots, fictitious counting, etc. Say 300 individuals nationwide, and potentially less than half of that.
Close enough to showtime that they can’t be readily replaced, and does it count as political violence if the targeted individuals aren’t formally employed in the political sphere?
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Not saying fraud does NOT solve anything. Sorry.
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Saying it is fine, because its true. But simply saying it without the necessary evidence, or with the evidence if it is not properly filed and prosecuted in court, accomplishes nothing. As we have seen.
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THERE IS EVIDENCE. The courts were terrified. That was what BLM was about.
Have you been under a rock?
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Courts used proxies to outright state to the freaking public that the courts were going to pretend that the evidence was not lawyerly enough, and did not exist.
Letter dated January 12, 2021, Yale, Harvard, and other law school heads.
Obvious self impeaching elements of that letter, that by association discredit the good faith and impartiality of courts:
1. Letter purports to be bipartisan. This is correct in so far as Paul Caron, and others, are registered Republicans with some sort of alignment of interest with the Bush faction within the GOPe. It is incorrect, because they failed to cite any of the obvious Democrat parallels to what they allege that Republicans improperly did. For example, Marilyn Mosby did precisely similar to what they allege, and that whole series of claims is ignored. They ignored it because it would not have been politically possible within the universities to make such arguments that implicate the BLM and associated criminal conspiracies.
2. Introduce a novel legal theory of professional wrong doing, and implicitly only apply it to lawyers arguing certain specific cases. Criminal defense attorneys routinely represent people who are later accused of criminal acts. To retroactively prejudge lawyers for representing clients, based on clients later committing criminal acts, should seemingly at a minimum also apply to criminal defense lawyers.
3. ‘Riots after a lawyer says something in court’ has at least three parallels in history that we know that the law faculty would not be politically able to continue their academic careers after making such argument. These are obvious to any layman. I. 1919, 1921, and other race riots from that set. In particular, those cases where a black man was falsely accused of raping a white woman. The faculty implied that a public defender, who showed that a prosecutor had not proven the rape, would be professionally guilty for the later lynching, and any damages or disruption caused by the riot. II. 1960s, civil rights disputes. The faculty implied that lawyers who made civil rights claims on behalf of black clients were behaving improperly, because of later riots. The faculty implied that the legal profession could have ethically colluded to deny black clients any representation in court. III. The various claims made that were later taken as excuse for riot by Black Lives Matter.
4. Claiming fitness to judge the facts of fairness of the 2020 election. They can only personally speak to previously established legal standards, which are in fact an incomplete subset of a multidisciplinary problem. In particular, it is vanishingly unlikely that law faculty are particularly statistically numerate nor that they are particularly scientifically literate in the engineering of electronic devices. There are legal standards around electronic security, but to be brief may specifically be invalid, and are generally quite terrible in mitigating security problems.
5. Speaking about wrong doing by others. The same obstacles to proving fraud and prejudging, also apply to prejudging and proving wrong doing. Innocent until proven guilty. The way the courts handled the claims made it impossible to prove them either way. Impossible to prove guilt of fraud. Impossible to prove guilt of knowing the elections were clean.
Now, this is written very cleverly, and they did not say that they were doing anything criminal as lawyers would parse things.
The fundamental problem that they have made for themselves, and for other university trained professionals, is that layman will not read it that way, and that the letter was meant to intimidate layman. Arguably, it was an act of the profession trying to defraud the public.
Lawyers, Judges, and JDs have participated in making case law for elections over the past sixty years.
They have also proclaimed a need to make JD training accessible to blacks, women, and so forth, so that ‘representation’ would prevent industry wide collusion against such parties.
The modern face of the pursuit of representation in law schools at modern universities is critical race theory. Critical race theory is also a conspiracy theory that believes modern life is controlled by ancient super conspiracies. If law faculty have conspired criminally, it is likely that the context of critical theory would mean that they would not have seen it as an additional wrong doing.
The laymen do not know that the judges and lawyers cannot have criminally conspired to defraud Republican voters.
The silences by various prominent Republican lawyers can sound quite telling. Some of the Republican JD tied into the Bush faction election services network on the one hand. Christie, Vivek, and DeSantis on the other. The legal theory of the star chambers against Trump is inherently dubious. (We’ve spent decades not litigating the ACW in certain ways, but a precedent that could restrict executive power uses parallel to Lincoln’s, in principle could have been extended to overturn the 13th amendment.) That Christie, Vivek, and Desantis did not each publicly call out the current head of their own instructors sounds maybe a wee bit damning.
Even if it would make sense for someone who wants their degree to continue to be a meal ticket.
People who use degrees for meal tickets? They can calculate that university CT, and the ABA (which accredits all legal programs) have damaged the legal profession. They can calculate that the university CT, and the AMA (which accredits medical programs) have damaged that medical profession. They are thinking next ‘what happens when it is my degree’, and ‘does my own profession have a path forward from this disaster?’
The path forward involves some changes to degree programs and accreditation, and to licensure by the states.
Now, some would say that after the appearance of discrimination, all the needed remedy is the embrace of critical MAGA theory, and of affirmative action towards MAGA JD and MD students. This is not correct.
A number of law faculty need to retire. There also needs to be some sort of reevaluation of case law for elections. Furthermore, the whole computerized method of scheduling federal judges has incidentally made verifying fairness of that system intimately related to federal all cases since implementation.
They’ve fundamentally undermined the utility of the formal legal system in resolving disputes, and no legal victories can be relied upon until the basic fundamental reforms are addressed.
In this case, the evidence provided by the cover up is much more damning than the evidence provided by the initial crime. At least in my eyes.
But, evidence not prepared and presented appropriately? I see two choices before me for that. A. Learn to become a lawyer myself. Do a terrible job. B. Trust a lawyer to represent me fairly as a client.
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Trump’s election fraud cases were not ‘thrown out’, the various courts unilaterally decided that:
Courts refused to accept cases without the evidence Trump’s lawyers needed a subpoena to obtain which can’t be issued other than as part of an active court case. Neat little Catch-22 there.
If you file an election fraud case before the election, it’s rejected because no crime has been committed. So if six dudes are waving guns around in a bank lobby, they can’t be arrested because they haven’t robbed the bank yet?
If you file an election fraud case after the election, it’s rejected because the damage is already done. ‘Moot’, they call it. Fait accompli. Whatever.
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THIS.
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Don’t forget “standing”. According to the courts, no voter has any “standing” to bring a case involving fraud.
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Yep, that too. Nobody had ‘standing’. Not the disenfranchised voters, not the defrauded candidates, nor the political organizations that backed them.
Now, if the Democrats had lost, everybody would have ‘standing’, especially the left-wing mega-donors.
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We may be treated to exactly that in November if/when Trump wins; it’s not only election results that can be falsified. :-x
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The problem is that those processes were followed. And you know what the Democrats’ response was? “Fuck you, make us.” And rather than do what was actually required, aka Athens TN, we followed the Marquis of Queensbury law and took them to court. And what happened then? The courts looked at the two sides and said “On one side, we have the people that burn down cities (including my city) and on the other side we have people who write stern letters. Hmmm. I don’t think the letter writers have standing.”
The lesson should have been obvious.
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Yep. But part of it is that we aren’t there YET. Sorry. We’ll know when we are. Sigh.
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I misspoke. Filing in court is useless.
In every State in the Union has a Constitution that states that all political power is from the people, or words to that effect. It is the People who constitute the government and the elected and appointed officers are to be amenable to the People at all times. When the People assemble to consult for their common good and direct their government servants to fix something the officials have two options: 1. comply; 2. be declared inadequate and removed from office on the spot. We saw that happen with certain school boards and city councils. Read your State Constitution.
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I did read my state constitution. The problem is that the fraud in question affected FEDERAL elections. AND in other states.
So Texas and several others tried to raise the question with SCOTUS. You know, the court specifically called out in the Constitution to handle cases where one state’s actions affect another? And Roberts, who’s spinelessness was well demonstrated with Obamacare, punted harder than Taney with Dred Scott. Never even considered it.
You place a lot of reliance on the same state constitutions that are routinely brushed aside under the supremacy clause, and have been since Appomattox.
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Also, saying “Remove them” is easy; it’s actually removing them that’s the sticking point. Exactly how does a group of citizens accomplish that, without resorting to violence when defied by the “removees” and their sponsors? And resorting to violence, no matter how justified, will be met with force by the corrupt state, triggering another Lexington/Concord Moment. And IMHO, the cartridge box, no matter how personally satisfying I might find it (being trained in more kinetic techniques than diplomacy) remains a last resort.
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No, not letter writers. Formal petitions instructing the government officials of what the People demand be done. Yes, they will ignore the first one. Send another. If they ignore that one then send as many notarized affidavits as you can stating that that they are in dereliction of their sworn duty.
The notices should have teeth. A notice puts them on notice – duh! -, and they have a certain time, say five days, to respond to the demands by sworn affidavit. Failing to do so, tell them, is an admission that they are deliberately opposing the will of the People and that if they fail to respond they agree to pay, oh, say, $200,000 each for their breach of fiduciary duty. They further agree that they will be subject to arbitration by an arbitrator of the People’s choice. And that this notice stands as settled in law, they can’t change it.
This is a process that has been used in other situations with prompt good effect. Once they realize that their assets are on the line they usually yield. In one case a school board president decided not to go along. The rest of the board removed her and complied.
Election fraud is more serious, and they will know that they can be sent to prison for it, which is why they fight so hard. One of the things they have been fighting hard about for generations is hiding the extent of the actual power that We the People have over our government.
Here’s an example of a notice; https://camagacoalition.com/example-of-a-formal-notice-to-government/
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Cute idea. How is one to enforce these things? It’s them, vs. “You and what army?” so I need to know, where’s my army when it’s time for the Franklin, Tennessee option? Who’s collecting the levied fines, and who’s spending them once collected? What LEOs are coming around with silver bracelets and orange jumpsuits to help them make the right kind of fashion statement?
In other words, show what teeth your bulldog has before I sic him on the sons of bitches.
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THIS!!!
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You are making the same sort of mistake as people who don’t understand the difference between testing hypotheses and forming them, and thus condemn people trying to do science as being unscientific.
This isn’t a court of law dumbass.
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I woke up from a nightmare about political violence at 3AM this morning.
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I got weary, long ago, with the alarmed appeals to Do Something about the descent of our country and culture into socialist barbarism. Aside from sending money, there has never been any mention of something that I can actually do.
This is the first practical suggestion that I have seen -Get on social media and argue with the wokeistas, Show the flag! Obviously, you won’t change their minds, but you can have two effects on the lurkers: One, you might change their minds, since their minds are not made up enough yet to start commenting, and two, there may be many sympathetic to our views who don’t really realize that they are not only not alone, but may even be in the majority.
Ok, I am convinced. So, as someone who has not used social media since Samizdata in 2005 when I got disgusted with them over the Terry Schiavo affair, where should I go? I won’t do much good here, among right thinking people and I won’t have much effect on a hard leftist website either. I need something that is run by soft leftists and that has a large commentariat and a larger readership. Any ideas?
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Are you any good with finding and sharing memes?
Especially fun ones.
You don’t have to argue, you just have to be visibly not-proggie.
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That is a great idea. While I actually enjoy arguing, it takes a lot of time, and it is difficult to forget about it and get on to other things when it’s over. Memes could cover a lot more ground with the same time and effort.
Do you have any suggestions for a venue? The only one I know is Daily Kos. I think putting memes there would have as much effect as showing them to the Chinese politburo. Also, every time I’ve looked at their foul language and nastier ideas, I felt like I needed to be decontaminated.
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Baby steps.
Go with Twitter, for a starter.
Then not responding is a tactical choice because you don’t want to give jerks the airtime. ;)
Oh! Good source– at least use to be, though it takes time– is the Insty open topic posts, which are usually daily.
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We are in a meta-level culture war. The war is not about whether Trump is polite. It’s about what society considers “polite” in the first place.
Right now, millions of people are still running the old social script: Be nice, lose with dignity, and don’t talk back to your betters. The old script gave the gatekeepers and tastemakers the power to destroy anyone who wouldn’t play their rigged game.
But the script is socially enforced. There’s nothing intrinsic about where the gatekeepers drew the line. The only thing perpetuating the script is the belief that your peers want you to follow it. So you shame anyone who violates the script so that others do not shame you.
Trump showed the world there is another way. The more people who come out in favor of “mean tweets and world peace”, the weaker the social pressure supporting the old script becomes. After all, if no one around you cares that Trump is impolite, why should you?
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Another layer is that a standard predator tactic is to violate norms, and be allowed to do so.
Which is why all the “child safety” things tell you to look for folks who are breaking really stupid little rules, and then want to get away with it. Because that’s what predators do, it’s part of the process.
“these rules don’t apply to me”– and once that’s normalized, they get other rules.
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I’m not sure how this applies. Trump broke rules that ONLY applied to ONE side.
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I’d say it applies because that’s how we got here — a thousand “little” boundary violations from the left. The predators and abusers have purposefully redefined the boundaries of public discourse to preclude effective resistance from their victims. Thus all the one-sided rules.
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:shakes head: That’s just it, Trump didn’t break rules. If anything, he yelled back “Oh yeah, you think so? How about XYZ that you’re doing that’s ten times worse by your own metric?”
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That gets waved off as a “whatabout” fallacy, no matter how relevant it is.
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They tend to, yes.
OTOH, when one does the weaksauce verison, and then yells back CLINTON RAPED A YOUNG WOMAN WHO WORKED FOR HIM!!!… it gets into folks’ brains.
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True, although “raped”, if referring to Monica, is perhaps a bit strong. But he definitely took advantage of his position and her vulnerability, so perhaps not entirely incorrect.
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By their definitions?
It’s a slam dunk
The power differential from employment alone would be questionable, much less grooming behavior.
And, WHEN they object to it, you bring out the list of forcible rape accusations.
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Ok. Still doesn’t come to “forcible rape”, which is what I was thinking of, though; she retained the option of walking out, from what I’ve read.. And I don’t know if “rape by intimidation and discrepancy of power” is an actual “thing”. Sexual abuse, yes. Actual rape, though? Not as I see it. IMHO, and YMMV. But FWIW, I still would have had the SOB castrated.
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It’s a slight of hand they are very fond of.
The term rape has included by deception and various other means of making it impossible to freely give consent since the start (such as the classic “I will shoot your husband if you resist”). There’s also the adult/child, and teacher/student traditionally recognized Not Acceptable, and the “target cannot say no” edge cases.
All of which the “male femininist” types are extremely fond of employing.
They then drag in a lot of “discrepancy of power” that extends to stuff that doesn’t even exist, such as race, and try to conflate them all with forcible rape.
This allows them to defend on the basis of forcible rape, and even pretend that forcible rape is the only kind there has ever been, and then when doing attacks they use one of the lesser forms.
And yes, they have been actively attacking interracial marriages, via trying to redefine anyone having interest in Asians as crypto-pedophilia.
And that then gives cover to one of their favorite predatory tactics.
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OK, I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. While I agree with what you wrote as “this happens, and it’s all bad”, ISTM that you are claiming that all of these are rape, just under different terminology. If that’s the case, I have to disagree; to me, there’s a qualitative difference between the Bill/Monica type of mental pressure usually called sexual harassment or similar (“You work for me, and I want sex”) and throwing a woman (or a man, for that matter; that also happens) down in an alley and holding a knife to her/his throat while ripping their clothes off, and to use the same term for both, IMHO, waters down the severity of the second, as the term “genocide” has become a synonym for killing an arbitrarily large number of people.
I realize this can be a touchy subject, and I have no intent to denigrate the things you noted, but there really is a difference. And as I noted, I’m really not sure what you were getting at, and we may be in “violent agreement”, as it were.🤔
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I understood what you were saying, I was explaining why it was inaccurate–with examples– and explaining where the redefinition was likely being pushed from.
Forcible rape has at the most very rarely been considered the only type of rape– just the most easily identified and punished. This is where you get the “victim obviously didn’t fight hard enough, or she would look more beat up, it wasn’t rape” angle of argument.
As I used in the examples, various forms of duress are well recognized as rape. There’s also fraud (generally faux-marriage but sometimes switching in bed), various types of drugging (removing ability to consent), under-age targets and the seriously mentally handicapped.
The definition of ‘rape’ is a very cultural thing– for example, cultures where the parents needed to consent would have rape if the fully adult woman eloped even if it was entirely her idea— and it’s something that does need to be discussed, calmly and with juggling out the consequences.
For example, there have been various attempts to define rape as only involving proper coitus, only involving the male sex organ entering the female, only involving body-parts and then objects entering the primary female orifice, only involving opposite sexes… there’s examples in fairly recent news for why all of those definitions do not work, and the only one I can sort of allude to is the “greek club initiation” that involved a broom handle and a male pledge.
…. to the shock of nobody, the folks who eternally talk about “a national conversation” when they mean sit down and be lectured on why they are right, aren’t into clearing this up. At all.
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Genocide means “drawing a silly line between the atrocities of the Communists and the Nazis.” We are in a situation where a single piece of evidence about the Holodomor would prove it’s genocide — about intentions — which would not change its evil one bit.
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I think you two probably are in violent agreement. Your understanding of it is much the same as mine, and I think that’s the point she’s trying to make, is that by equating all sorts of things (some of which may not even be rape) with violent/forcible rape, they diminish the seriousness of all of it. You get to a point where, if everything is rape, nothing is. (Same with racism, calling people fascists, etc.) They can motte-and-bailey and no-true-Scotsman and circular-argument this thing for…freaking…ever. Everything is rape and nothing is; it only depends on what suits them at the time.
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He had at least two rape accusations, and in 2016 HRC ran on ‘If a woman says she was raped, you should believe her.”
I would guess that the young women going around trying to bully folks for saying unfeminist things had their cognates back then, and that a lot of victims allowed their testimony to be suppressed that way.
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As applied, it’s “you should believe her if the target isn’t a Democrat”; that’s been obvious for at least 30 years. And there’s sufficient evidence of “incidents” while the bastard was governor to condemn him to talk falsetto for the rest of his miserable life. But maybe having to live with the Arkancide Queen is enough… :twisted:
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Good point. Hence the photos of the masked “help” waiting on the unmasked celebrities at the Met Gala. It’s a flex.
It occurs to me this whole dynamic is why pointing out hypocrisy only works some of the time. It works if the standard is “Be polite” or “Tell the truth” because anyone being rude or lying is violating that standard. But it doesn’t work if the underlying standard of “Follow the leaders”, because the leaders can do whatever they like.
Anyone rational will question people whose behavior doesn’t match the standards they espouse (e.g., the ones flying private jets to global warming conferences). But for a lot of people, the prevailing social winds are what matter. Even if they are aware of the contradiction, they will only act on it when it is socially acceptable to do so.
Hence the need to manufacture unanimous consent and isolate anyone who questions the narrative. The control only works when it’s self-reinforcing and everyone believes they will be punished for questioning.
That’s why Trump is such a threat: He attacks the very foundation of the gatekeepers’ power. If they cannot control him and make him fall in line, are they really in charge? And if they aren’t in charge, why listen to them when they dictate what is acceptable?
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“First, on the cone of silence. Hit social media. Yes, I know most of you want to go and hide in a hole till after the elections…
“So, what can you do? You can engage. You can stop the dooming even when you want to doom…
“Go to a Trump rally? Make a twitter account. Post about it. Even better, post a recording. If he’s decided to be dignified, we can be undignified for him. And anyway, we can do mean tweets at will, because we’re not him.
“Hit facebook, even if it’s a cesspool and they tell you this photo is fake:”
There are some indications I see that this is happening. People I know are doing this. Tracy Beanz of Uncover DC has started advocating “Sit, Surf, Sprinkle” — low-key ‘random’ postings aimed at making people think anew, not at bowling them over with shoutiness or vitriol.
One person in particular has gone 0-60 on this, from being a total Twitter lurker to… saying things in a lot of places, with the profile and banner pic and dozens/hundreds of postings. (Not always “low key.”) Since, and because of, J 13th. Who didn’t ‘do social media’ really, at all, before.
“Things have changed’ — and maybe (though we should never get cocky, ever again) considerably for the better, with a lot of people.
And, there is a quote for this. “All things work together for good, for those who love The Lord and are called according to his purpose.”
And you don’t even have to be a Christian to appreciate that point.
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“Go yell at the squirrels. Tell them all is lost. Even better, tell it to the raccoons. Maybe the fat bastages will believe you.”
So, any relationship here to “Go tell it to the marines, the sailors won’t believe it” would be strictly and completely coincidental… right?
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