Politics and Religion

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

No, this post actually has practically nothing to do with conventional religion. It has a lot to do with worship and the vision of religion.

First of all let’s establish what politics is, from my POV. I don’t like politics, unlike what you might believe from reading this blog. I do watch it, though. Because if I turn my back on it, it might decide to take an interest in me. I learned that early, you see.

So I watch it obsessively and try to guess what it’s up to, not because I love it or think it is the salvation of mankind, but because I think government is one of the most dangerous forces known to men, arguably made more so by Marxist philosophy and the super-sized countries made possible by mass communication and incentivized by mass production. And politics is the language spoken by government, the way it telegraphs its intent, and the way it is sometimes controlled — but mostly not — by the will of the people it governs.

Second of all, I think government by and large is not a force for good. In fact, I think the larger and more powerful the government the less of a force for good it is.

I’m not going to say government is unnecessary, but its ability to interfere in the life of the citizens should go down the farther away and larger it is. Like this: your local government might be able to give you some aid in case of trouble or tell you to move that pile of trash from your yard already. However your national government has no business doing either, since the local conditions might be totally opaque to it.

In fact, national governments should be able to do little more than negotiate with foreign governments to (hopefully) prevent war. And command the defense forces in case that’s impossible.

But Sarah, you’ll say, what about the ultimate safety net for families and children? What about ensuring our food supply is safe, our medicines real, and our environment clean? What about some basic over-arching measures to ensure industry isn’t exploiting workers? What about–

Yeah. Dig into any of those and you’ll find your national government is in fact doing more harm than good and in point of fact destroying the country’s ability to feed itself, medicate itself, or have enough energy to subsist. Let alone making it impossible for Americans to have A manufacturing industry of any size and sending all our stuff-making abroad.

What does this mean?

It means that politically I’m going to incline to the politician running who wants to do the least stuff. Yes, I’d be ecstatic if someone were actually running like Milei in Argentina, who wanted to take a chainsaw to our federal government. If someone promised that, and I believed him to any extent, I’d be the first one in line to vote for him. Heck, I might be ringing doorbells for him from the moment I woke up to when I dropped in bed.

Which brings us to the important question: If such a person were running, would I think he was a new messiah, and worship him, or belong to a “another Milei” cult? Would I think he was amazing in all things, and every word that came from his lips sacred?

Don’t be ridiculous. I’d be working for him because he would be my instrument. No more, no less. And I might be very protective of him if he were the only one promising chainsaw-licious government cut backs. Which is not the same as thinking he’s perfect, just that right then he’d be the best we had.

Also I want to make a point here that if one side running are outright communists, talking wishfully of getting rid of the constitution and redistributing wealth according to “oppression” (which is an hereditary quality and linked to race and other characteristics in their eyes) and the person running against them is the emissary of hell, I, like Churchill, will at least say something nice about the devil. Because old scratch can be gotten rid of with prayer and holy water, while communists have to be gotten rid of with lots of blood, and often leave a country in no shape to survive. (And in the case of the US will destroy the whole world as they starve us, because we feed the world. And provide innovation to the world, too.)

There is nothing — NOTHING — that pisses me off more than being accused of being in a “cult of Trump”. Not because it hits “too close to the truth, uh?” as idiots will claim, but because it’s like being accused of being secretly a unicorn. It’s both terrifying in revealing how out of touch my opponents are, and insane to a level that makes me sure our polity is headed to hell.

I’ve recently been accused of this by both pro-lifers — will you people PLEASE stop letting yourselves be spun by the left? Please? Half of the things you’re reacting to are the usual truncated statements. The others are just your wanting stuff that can’t happen, not yet, and for which the remedy is to continue fighting — and by the intellectual right who is very afraid any sign of supporting Trump will get the left to call them stupid. Apparently this is different from supporting W or Romney of McCain because reasons. Also Trump is so uncouth and speaks so loud, and has orange hair, donchaknow? And he didn’t even graduate from the ivy leagues, the dunce.

And yes, I’m quite sure of how I’m classifying these people, because these are people I KNOW and have known online for years. My sympathy in this case is with the pro-lifers, partly because they’re sick and tired of fighting. But I’ll remind them Trump allows them to continue fighting. The other side means millions of term-babies killed (Partly also because the economy will encourage more abortions) and also a lot more pro-life activists in jail. Neither of the sides is what you’d want. I GET THAT. But unless you have a raging Jones for martyrdom, vote for the guy that allows you to continue fighting for what’s right.

The people who are trying to signal how much better and more INTELLECTUAL than Trump they are can eat my shorts. They are the same old tired midwits terrified someone will find out they got good grades by kissing up to teach. Again, I repeat, they can eat my shorts.

Do I love Trump? No. There are things that worry me about him, particularly in this campaign. I do not like the alliance with RFK and Tulsi Gabbard. It might be needed, but so was our alliance with Stalin in WWII (maybe.) Doesn’t mean it won’t cast a long and very bad shadow into the future.

Does Trump say and do things that annoy me? Sure. But he also proved in his first term that my perception of what is possible and what is right is not always true.
I didn’t understand until I saw him fight Russia (who in case everyone else has forgotten, on the right and left, engaged in a lot of provocations and small scale attacks on our troops during Trump’s tenure. Just nothing on the scale of invading a country) in the way that really hurt them: with money. By securing the US energy independence, Trump could take away Russia’s main source of income. Also could threaten the Middle East with poverty enough to cow them. All of what he said about this, about immigration, about Europe seemed wrong, but it turned out he was approaching the matter as a businessman, not a politician. It was an untried option I’d never thought of. Did it work perfectly? Eh. But he did have some notable successes.

However, right now? He’s the best on offer. And we actually know how he would govern, because we know how he governed.

Was his tenure perfect? Oh, please. And yeah, there were missteps. However, a lot of what he achieved (peace in the middle east, US energy independence) I’d have thought UNACHIEVABLE.

If he manages to have as good a term as his first, it will go a long way towards recovering from the near-mortal blow of the Bidentia’s tenure. If it’s better than that, I’ll be the one in the backyard throwing up fireworks.

And if it’s worse?

It’s still likely to be better than Unrealized Capital Gains Que Mala and her racial game of spoils. And it’s likely to be far better in not totally revoking the Constitution.

When Kamala says things like this, casually, and seemingly without understanding how horrific it is:

Kamala Harris: “He [Musk] has lost his privileges.” Can someone please explain to her that freedom of speech is a RIGHT, not a “privilege”? Kamala Harris: “There has to be a responsibility placed on these social media sites to understand their power.” Translation: “If they don’t police content to conform to government-approved narratives, they will be shut down.”

And our system of vote is binary, I will vote for her opponent. And if I don’t bestir myself to actually ring doorbells for him, I will at least refrain from hitting him over every little misspoken word. And I will maybe say a few kind things about him, and praise him where he deserves.

Once he’s won, and the spectrum of Communism is banished for another 4 years (We need to fix our schools. Abolishing the dept of education AND teaching colleges is a good start) I will go back to nipping at his heels and complaining about bone headed moves. And pray for someone else not a communist in four years.

For now? A cult? You’ve got to be kidding me. When I make jokes about naming a cat Orange Cat Bad they’re that: jokes. (Though Indy taking apart his food dispenser might be worthy of being called that.) And that’s naming a cat, not a baby or a car even.

If your only explanation for your opponents not agreeing with you is that “they joined a cult” you might be in one.

Sure, I see lots of defects in the logic of the left, but I can explain what they are, and where they came from. And if I think that Marxism is a Christian heresy, I have more backing for it than “they joined a cult.”

And for that matter, when seemingly rational people I’ve known for years behave in a way I don’t understand, I look for an explanation, rather than assume they were snatched up by pod people. (I often don’t find them. Sometimes the explanation seems to be “X broke people badly” — where x is most recently 2020 — and I’m still sure they are wrong. But often I also can tell why they have this particular blind spot. Again, it’s not “joined a cult.”)

But Trump is not a messiah. He’s not even the best I could hope for. That might be Rand Paul, if he shed his internationalist delusions (he might have recently. I haven’t followed very closely. Mostly because the poor man hasn’t been the same since he was attacked in his yard) but it’s certainly not Trump.

Trump is at best the instrument the blind fury of the long-denied people grabbed onto. He was aided into his first nomination by his media-persona name recognition. And he’d probably have governed just slightly to the right of Hillary Clinton if the left hadn’t gone insane against him and aroused his spite.

His second nomination was baked in, regardless of what people thought could be, by his name recognition alone. I realized that when I had people come and install the fridge and chatted with them about the primaries. They knew who Trump was, like him or hate him. DeSantis was DeWho? And “Oh, he governs…. Georgia? Florida?” In fact my biggest question about the DeSantis run and how vicious his surrogates got was “What on Earth possessed him to think he could get the nomination this year?” Yes, it could be positioning for 2028, but dear Lord, surely he knew that the best thing for that would be what he’s doing now: being a good governor to Florida, who makes the left’s teeth ache.

So, he’s what we have. Sure, I’d prefer a chainsaw. But all we really have right now is this weed whacker. And the best we can do is use the weed whacker to advantage to at least clear some of the overgrowth of government and regulations.

Perfect governance doesn’t exist this side of heaven, for the simple reason governance is of humans for humans, and humans are not and can not be perfect.

Whether I live another year or another 30, I’ll probably die mid-fight for a smaller, more localized government, and taking authority away from the federal branch. It is the best I can do.

But until I die, I will fight against a communist take over of the US. And if that means voting for someone who is only slightly to the right of the other candidate? Sure. I’ll do that. I’ll even say nice things about them.

Can’t spatter me with mud more than doing that with W did, right?

So, do the best you can and pray for a miracle. I’m assured G-d looks out for fools, drunkards and the United States of America.

Let’s hope He’s not lost patience yet.

205 thoughts on “Politics and Religion”

      1. Oh, me too, Unlike the vast majority of its votaries I’ve read the Marxist scripture. Makes not a d-mned bit of difference to the devout though.

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        1. Turgid, boring, and frustrating, aren’t they? English or German, they don’t get better with translation. (Kapital was pure drudgery. It makes “The Communist Manifesto” gripping and a model of clarity.)

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          1. just so. I got through all three bloody volumes of capital along in English with a fair bit of the shorter stuff. The last volume was all “aha! gotcha critic, you think you caught me in error, but my magic dialectic shows why I’m just smarter than you.” What an absolute pillock that man was and a nasty piece of work to boot.

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            2. Indeed – and it is purely amazing how so many other of his ilk are or were simply horrible people – horrible to everyone in their personal lives.

              It’s almost like it’s a leftist trait … to be a horrible, manipulative, unsympathetic person.

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              1. And then when you point out that it’s possible to choose otherwise, the horrible, manipulative, unsympathetic people claim that it isn’t, that people who act differently are just LYING.

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          2. I have wanted to take a try at Capital, but I’ve only been able to track down abridged versions that skip over part of the argument. I want to be able to watch the magician palm the card, as I could with Keynes’s The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money—an equally turgid work but mercifully brief.

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      2. It’s always a chuckle when someone says the supporters of Trump/Right/Conservatives are part of a cult, when it’s the progressive left that hammers anyone not fully committed to narrative de jour. Look at what they did to RFK jr and Tulsi Gabbard, who aren’t right wing, just centrist at best. (Gabbard might be drifting more to the center/right, but RFK jr is definitely still way left, just not far enough left for the current sops.)

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            1. I just think of them as Nazis, period. At least when I’m not thinking of them as Communists. But hey, they’re all socialists, either way.

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                1. I disagree. There are levels of evil. A person that walks around kicking people in the mall is potentially engaging in evil. A person that runs for office with the express intent of squashing the Constitution is absolute evil.

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      3. I have done that. Pointed at Marxism/Leftist/Socialist/Democrats as a cult.

        I have done, and probably will continue to do so, because I understand cults a little bit. Cults are faith based things- and so are political movements. What distinguishes the two are the one is (ideally) primarily concentrated on the real, the other on the spiritual.

        A cult wants messianic things. It aims for spiritual solutions, not practical ones. It values things not of this earth (though it’ll take things from this earth in compensation- those are criminal rackets with cult trappings, not an uncommon racket). A cult wants things like, oh, carbon neutrality. Or a drug free America. Or Peace in Our Time. Or a final win in the War on Poverty (we lost that one, like the War on Drugs, before even putting one soldier on the field).

        Political ends are getting elected. Ah, I kid, I kid. Practically speaking, political ends are getting the work of government done, ideally. Enforcing contracts. Upholding the rule of law. Limited, focused things that allow commerce and property rights to go on. A politician can’t get you a job if he’s elected unless it is a job in government, which is paid by taxpayers. A politician can and what many of them do, is put the brakes on the work of the common man.

        Regulation. Taxes. Fees. Bureaucracy. All of these things stifle innovation and put sand in the gears of industry. Some of that is, arguably (and I will argue a against it a hefty bit ’till blue in the face) necessary. Religions (cults) do not do these things… If they are just faith systems.

        Leftism has been corrupted by the cult ideologies of the Marxist/Communist/Socialists of the world- that is, if it was ever without these things. Leftist groupings have many of the trappings of a faith based system: organized proselytization. A holy creed (granted, an ever shifting one). In-group inclusion and out-group shunning. Call and response. Rote repetition of catechism. Messianic vision (especially the Green movement and the racialism of everything). Holy figures. Prophecy.

        Marxism is at best- and this is stretching it a bit- a treatise in scholasticism (by this I mean the art- not science- of sounding smart/intellectual/accomplished in real and practical things, but not actually being so). It can sound smart to the uneducated or unfamiliar with the base material. It has the right sounding words and phrases to look like it is intellectual- but it isn’t. Its reductionism and ignorance of practicalities- and mathematics itself, no less- are the weakness of its foundation.

        To my mind, it reads most effectively as an undergrads’ last minute term paper printed in the dark of night with no sleep and very, very few proper citations- and many of those of shady, unprincipled characters- the few actual ones misused and twisted, folded, and spindled to meet a narrow, nay, near-sighted view of a microscopic piece of the whole field, which is itself mischaracterized by its author.

        The cult aspect is not a new thing, but it has grown in popularity, as such things do, because it is fundamentally lazy. Intellectually and otherwise. Marxist/leftist doctrine is practically fill-in-the-blank. It’s a program. A very dull, unresponsive, deleterious one. It requires no deep background or thinking, though they’d love for you to believe it does.

        It just requires simple obedience. Do as you’re told, or we will throw you to the mob, kick you out of your job, home, social life, and family. Repeat what we tell you or you will be cast out. Hate who we tell you to or you will become the enemy. Believe what we tell you to, or you are evil and our crusade will hunt you.

        Marxism does not want independent thinkers. It wants followers, believers, and shock troops on command.

        I get what you are saying- we don’t, as they do, point at them and say “cult. CULT! CULTIST!” We try to reason with the damned and the hostages to fortune. Why, I could not say. Perhaps some part of us seeks their redemption, as Christians we are. I could get behind that. Perhaps it is to hold out a hand to those desperately seeking a way out, knowing they are but inches away from being cast out of everything they ever knew and loved, but aware that things cannot go on as they have.

        I will always believe in a path to redemption for America. Miracles do happen. People are just that- simple people, subject to all the whims, wills, and petty grievances that mortality is prone to. But we choose to put our will behind those that will represent us. Not lead. We don’t follow well.

        For those that we install as governmental servants, we desire that they execute our will: to leave us ALONE as much as possible. To waste as little of our hard earned property and time as possible. To defend our interest from ALL enemies, both foreign and domestic.

        We don’t elect Trump to be our messiah. We elect him to be our giant F YOU to the self proclaimed elite, the entrenched bureaucracy, and the machinery of the state that seems bent on subduing us, not serving our interests. May the departments fall, may the funding be cut, may the regulations be torn away, and may the laws be upheld- and no new frivolities be enacted upon our servant’s watch.

        We need to elect politicians with the power of NO. No more frittering away our sovereignty. No more feckless wars. No more waste. A politician should be a sacrifice- a time away from the private sector, where the money is, serving as a staunch defender of freedom. A politician should never leave office twice as rich as he entered.

        I know, I know, pipe dreams all. We are but fallen humans, susceptible to both the seeds of envy and greed within us. But a man can dream, can he not? Such a thing is a goal to aspire to. Let us work towards it, or at least, not against it- as our country has for far too long.

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        1. I don’t remember who, but I remember reading a former leftist who explicitly called the left a cult. One of the major features of cults is the immediate rejection of anyone who leaves. An infidel is far worse than an unbeliever. From the cult member’s point of view, the unbelievers are expected to be hostile to you. But an infidel? One who used to be part of your group, and left? That’s a betrayal, and must be punished severely.

          And so the leftists who notice contradictions in the left’s narratives, or who start to think that maybe, just maybe, it might be a good idea not to praise the killing of babies… will immediately castigate themselves for their racist/sexist thoughts, and not mention them to anyone. Because they’ve seen what happened to their friend Sally who just happened to mention that when she saw her unborn baby on the ultrasound, she realized then and there that she could never kill her baby. The amount of hatred and scorn poured onto Sally by her entire “friends” group (contempt quotes fully deployed here) was enough to persuade the rest of the group to never, EVER step out of line. Otherwise, you might end up like Sally: ostracized and shunned. Why, look at her now: living in the suburbs (shudder), with three kids, and she’s even homeschooling them! And, horror of horrors, her husband (blech) just put a Trump sign in their yard!

          Yeah, leftism is a cult. And those who leave it, having experienced what the cult does to infidels, become some of the most vehement anti-leftists you’ll find. Just as you’ll rarely meet a more vehement anti-communist than someone who managed to escape the Soviet Prison, I mean “Union”.

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            1. Yeah, they’d be much better off sticking with Sally in that sentence. And we know the better option is not what the leftist will pick in that situation.

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          2. How you can tell that a religion isn’t a cult: those who leave it are still treated kindly, and people try to persuade them to come back to the truth. Plenty of people describe themselves as former Christians (ex-Catholics, ex-Baptists, whatever), but their Christian friends maintain the friendship (assuming the other person is willing) and try to show them the love of Christ by their example.

            How you can tell that a religion is a cult: those who leave it are killed to restore the family’s “honor”.

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            1. Yeah. You’re afraid to leave- because of what your former fellows would do to you. Not because the outside world is scary, unpredictable, and dangerous to those without a support system.

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            2. There are several distinctives of a cultic religion you may see one or even two in a “traditional religion”. See all of them and you best head the other way as fast as you can

              1. They usually have a single leader who is venerated as a prophet and has provided revelation (divine or otherwise) e.g. L. Ron Hubbard and Dianetics, Mary Baker Eddy Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures, Mao Zedung and his quotations. The beliefs often have a flavor of Gnosticism with secrets known only to the members of various levels
              2. New followers are often given a mentor who has great control over the student/mentee (Note no sea mammals or mythical half piscine women involved). The mentor has MUCH control over the actions of their mentee including potential physical punishment or witholding necessities such as food water sleep and similar. The mentor may also have direct control over the Mentee’s finances
              3. New members may be encouraged/required to break ties from previous times even to the point of denying blood relatives and spouses.
              4. Meetings/gatherings are intended to create a euphoric emotional state. Newcomers are slowly acquainted/addicted to this and this can then be withheld (like holding drugs back from an addict)
              5. In general once joined there is a very high Tithe or finances are held in common and this is required of the new members
              6. Cults often have odd end time ideas (eschatology). They may actually try to force their end times by making certain events occur (immanentizing the eschaton as it were) e.g. The Manson family and their attempt to cause a “race war”

              My belief is that Cults are fundamentally about control. They may NOT start that way (although often seem to be for that intent) but even if not outwardly focused on control almost inevitably someone who does want control ends up at the top. When they lose control they often become self destructive (e.g Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate) or can become outwardly destructive (Manson family). The modern Democrat party has become more and more cult like since Bell Clinton, and Obama really pushed that to the edge. The Turnip in Chief and Que Mala seem just to be figureheads for the most recent “elevated leader”.

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              1. It actually maps pretty well to abusive relationships. Financial control, relationship control, cutting the victim off from support structures outside the unit, money flows towards the controller… a cult is to religion as an abusive relationship is to a healthy one.

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  2. A little Off Topic but it was “interesting” to hear the Democrats “whine” about Religion In Politics but who loved Religious Leaders Who Damned Republicans and Republican Presidents.

    And yes, there are plenty of Leftish “Christians” who claim Religious Conservatives see Trump as More Important Than Christ.

    While I don’t want to put words in His mouth, I doubt he approves of Lefty “Christians” who appear to worship the Democratic Party more than they worship Him.

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    2. I’ve seen a lot of avowed atheists mangle Scripture shamelessly to argue that the one true Christian position is leftist. Oddly, this never triggers any complains.

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  3. On centralization, information degrades the further it travels. And most problems are embarrassingly parallel, depending most on the quality of information to solve, rather than the quality of data processing.

    In that context, the optimal results come from having many smaller processors placed as close to the problems as possible, to solve them with the best data possible.

    It makes little sense to truck billions of small problems half jest across the world to all be solved by one or two processors that are, at best 2x faster than what you’ve got locally. It just creates a giant unsolvable problem swarm.

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    1. This is the well-known (in economics) “Calculation Problem.” The supporters of socialism are still playing cope games about it, a century later.

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    2. An additional problem is that all channel co-opted to carry orders can’t carry information. Thus the more you try to manage the economy, the less data you have to do it with.

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  4. My thought is that the ideal government — federal, state, or local — would be like a well-made and well-fitting shoe: once you put it on, you can forget about it and go on with your life. In between elections, you wouldn’t have to think about it, because it wouldn’t be constantly pinching or chafing you or tripping you up with burdensome laws and rules. Ideally you wouldn’t even have to think about who your president, governor or mayor was outside of an election cycle because they would simply do their jobs without constantly calling attention to themselves.

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  5. I would assume that the closest thing to Sarah’s ideal chainsaw candidate this year is Chase Oliver, Libertarian. I haven’t heard him speak, or read any of his statements, but that’s what the LP stands for.

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      2. This so much this. Although the Libertarian was originally pretty fricking insane in the Lyndon LaRouche (Who thought Queen Elizabeth II was the head of a drug ring https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/lyndon-larouche-jr-conspiracy-theorist-and-presidential-candidate-dies-at-96/2019/02/13/22170d42-2f21-11e9-813a-0ab2f17e305b_story.html among other weird things )days of the late 70’s.

        Politically I am a minarchist libertarian. Basically I view the government as good for something, just not good for much. The US constitution did a very good job of hitting that set of needs although the defacto government has often been more than truly is necessary. Unsurprisingly the Libertarian party has been effectively irrelevant as they are not particularly serious, If you want to run things you must start at the Local and State levels in our Federal system. You need ;local governments to get attention. You need state legislatures to control selecting boundaries of seats, You then need the Congress to fix the laws and in conjunction with state legislatures tweak the constitution where needed. Because the presidency is intentionally limited in the constitution it is not worth having until you start to have at least SOME representation in the congress. If you had a Libertarian president without legislative support he or she would just sit and spin their wheels for four years.

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        1. The stated purpose of the LP, back when it was founded, was not to seriously expect to get anyone elected, but rather to use the political process to get libertarian ideas out there. They haven’t exactly stuck to that goal, but I keep voting for their candidates in the hope that they’ll get enough votes to be allowed into the debates.

          It’s true that you’d need libertarians in Congress to get any policies implemented, but there you run into a Catch-22. Given that a Congressman’s real job is to bring home the pork to his district, choosing a libertarian as your representative would be like choosing a Christian Scientist as your doctor.

          True, a libertarian President would spin his wheels, but would that be so bad? The reason I prefer Trump to any other major-party candidate in my lifetime (born 1949) is that no matter who controls Congress, he can be counted on to keep them too busy fighting with him for either side to do much damage.

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        2. The stated purpose of the LP, back when it was founded, was not to seriously expect to get anyone elected, but rather to use the political process to get libertarian ideas out there. They haven’t exactly stuck to that goal, but I keep voting for their candidates in the hope that they’ll get enough votes to be allowed into the debates.

          It’s true that you’d need libertarians in Congress to get any policies implemented, but there you run into a Catch-22. Given that a Congressman’s real job is to bring home the pork to his district, choosing a libertarian as your representative would be like choosing a Christian Scientist as your doctor.

          True, a libertarian President would spin his wheels, but would that be so bad? The reason I prefer Trump to any other major-party candidate in my lifetime (born 1949) is that no matter who controls Congress, he can be counted on to keep them too busy fighting with him for either side to do much damage.

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          1. “Given that a Congressman’s real job is to bring home the pork to his district,”

            See, that’s where I think you and many others are dead wrong. And that’s because you’ve been stewed in a socialist bath for so many years that it’s hard to evade the brain rot from it. Hell, I get tripped up with it myself occasionally. I think the evil space princess has even admitted it happens to her sometimes.

            No, the real job of a congress critter is to block federal tyrannies; to protect those he or she represents from them. Not to “bring home the bacon” by stealing from other taxpayers.

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            1. “Given that a Congressman’s real job is to bring home the pork to his district,”

              See, that’s where I think you and many others are dead wrong.

              ……………..

              Pretty sure you missed the invisible [sarcasm] tag.

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        3. Those Lyndon shitbags went after my then-13 sister for telling them off for hassling her. I took some direct action (grin) and we then had a truce. Then -mom- found out about it and went after a table of them, with a freaking AXE.

          Hoooooeee, that woman could rage….

          Some responding (and rather large) LEOs persuaded the lyndonloons to seek greener pastures elsewhere, and maybe next time stick to voting age folks and not overdeveloped 13 year old girls, hmm?, and there were no further incidents. (heh) The LEOS then arrived on our door and suggested Mom chill, and mom said the cops better step aside if those (folks) bothered her kid again, as two more corpses would just make her higher status in prison. Then grinned a really Kzinti grin. They stepped back. And left.

          Go mom.

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        2. Nowadays they’re more like Dems who want to legally smoke pot.

          When Johnson in 2016 was talking about seriously considering a carbon tax (pretty much the opposite of libertarian principles), and took on an openly anti-gun VP (not that Trump is great on that, but he can learn), I gave up on the Libertarian Party as anything useful.

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  6. Well, as a wretched outsider, I can but watch the antics of Americans from afar. Nose pressed against the glass, if you will.

    But here in the Demented Dominion, the leader of the #NDPee has taken great pains today to distance himself from the #ShinyPony regime. Big announcement today, their deal is off.

    (As an aside, I include the hashtags and codenames to make #BigBrother work a little harder. We look over our shoulders around here. Sorry if it annoys.)

    Politically, this is the #PinkoParty making a big, dramatic statement of non-confidence in the #Ponymen and declaring them enemies of The People. That’s because #Leaderboi saw the polls and understood he is only a little less hated than the #ShinyOne himself. If he keeps supporting the #Pony, he will be dragged through the mud too.

    But in fact, it means nothing. Because #Leaderboi does not get his pension invested until February 2025, and if there is one thing in this world that he’s not going to compromise, that is it.

    Therefore, big splashy announcement and… nothing. Because the #NDPee will keep right on voting with the #Pony until February, whatever day of the month the pension investment falls on.

    So, we look forward to the fall session with trepidation, as the #Pony will be repealing the laws of gravity, perverting the election apparatus, jacking taxes, banning free speech, and doing whatever he wants as hard as he possibly can. Because the show’s over in February.

    Politics. [spit]

    Liked by 3 people

  7. My thought is that the ideal government would be like a well-made and well-fitting shoe: once you put it on (at election time), you wouldn’t have to think about it again until the next election, and in between times you could just go about your business. It would not be constantly pinching or chafing you or tripping you up with burdensome laws or rules. Ideally you would not even have to think about who your president, governor or mayor was in between elections — you might even have to be reminded who they are — because they would simply do the job they were elected to do without constantly calling attention to themselves.

    Liked by 2 people

  9. I have regretted many votes, but I don’t regret voting for Trump. I hate choosing the lesser of two evils as in Both Bush’s, McCain, Romney, the last two sacrificial lambs to false messiah Obama. As far as government the small and closer the better.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I voted against Hillary. I would have voted for almost anyone to keep her out of the Oval Office. Trump turned out to be a pleasant surprise.

      Liked by 3 people

      2. Same.

        You are not alone.

        I’ve used the “I don’t want to date the guy (Trump), ew!” More than once. Trump might be more for Trump than for us (people). But first and foremost, Trump is for the US (country), because without the US, Trump and everything he believes in (himself), is Dead. Dead. Dead. Along with his family behind him. Stupid Trump is not. Perfectly happy to let Trump drag us along, gutting what he thinks will destroy what he has built.

        Note, the above is not 100% true. Because too much evidence that Trump does care. He can afford to care about others, and US people as a whole. But when putting the above in such stark terms gets some people to stop and listen.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Pretty much my position, too. I voted against The Shrill One in 2016, but for Trump in 2020 (also against Grandpa BabySniffer, but that was secondary.)

          Liked by 3 people

          1. I will note until 2000 I was a Democrat. Mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa. When Gore would NOT stand up to his boss who if he had been in the corporate world would have been out on his ass for sexual harassment the scales fell off of my eyes and I voted against Gore. I voted against stolen valor Lurch (aka John kerry, ps what the hell did a billionaire heir to Hunt;s see in him?), Against the cypher Obama twice as he was the definition of a red diaper baby, Against Shrillary the lady who had no clue what TS Noforn SAP and/or SCI meant and had people strip the headers (but not the paragraph descriptors DOH!!!) email it to her over unsecured lines, and against the Turnip in Chief as even in 2020 it was clear ther wasn’t much there (never really had been, but wow the debates made clear that what little had been there had left the building long ago and he was just Obama Term III. Que Mala is a cross between Obama Term IV and AOC the premonition(except not quite as bright or capable) depending on her state minute to minute. To be honest there is no one on the left of the aisle that I could ever see voting for. The closest I would come (and it ain’t that close) is Tulsi Gabbard and she is still less than tolerable in many of her views( I.e. socialist/communist in many respects).

            Liked by 1 person

      4. Aye. At the time, I figured it was like choosing between the revolver with six cartridges (Hillary) and the revolver with “only” five (Trump) and hoping to get really lucky… and hoping Trump wasn’t just another [HUGE STRING OF BAD WERDS] LBJ.

        And things went better than feared.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Statistically, this should happen every once in a while when picking “random” for every available option. Some things should actually go in your favor.

          I think what happened is, the other side poked the bear. Trump would have been even more amenable to “working across the aisle-” but they offered him a fight.

          And that man simply cannot resist a good fight.

          Liked by 1 person

          2. Trump, a lifelong NYC person, likely would have run as a -Democrat- if zer0 hadn’t wagged his d!ck at Trump.

            Consider -that-, Leftroids. That was likely Trump’s game plan all along, thus the lifetime of not rocking that political boat, until you idiots flung poo on him in your usual humiliation game.

            Oh what an -expensive- f-up that was. Oh how that has cost you Bigly.

            And now? Now he is rubbing Leftroid noses in their own poo, good and hard.

            And he isn’t done. And they can see it coming again.

            Like

          3. That was my concern about Trump in 2016, that he would make deals with Dems. I did vote for him in the primaries and the general election, though, but that was as much because the other offerings (primary or general) were varying degrees of more unappealing.

            Fortunately, the left went full-on stupid because he defeated Empress Hillary and interrupted their Great Plan(tm), poisoning that well thoroughly by attacking not only him but his friends and family.

            Once they pulled that trigger, all bets were off. Had they not done that, it’s entirely possible they could have negotiated to get much of what they wanted, or at least set up conditions for getting it at a later date.

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            1. It took Ted Cruz throwing in behind Donald in ’16 (and I recall where I was when I heard THAT) to make me even consider him a legitimate option for POTUS, rather than a DNC psyop to throw our side into Hillary’s lap. But I would have voted for her husband’s cat Socks in November to keep that woman from the White House.

              Liked by 1 person

  11. I fully understand how you feel when called a Trump cultist. Like you, I see every politician as a tool for me to manipulate the government into leaving me alone and taking no more than I am willing to pay them. Sadly, most politicians are piss poor tools. Trump is a decent tool, and aimed in the right direction. He has his faults, but none of them are disqualifiers from leading this nation. If you want consistency, and sustained ability to function under the worst political and legal attacks on any one man in the history of this country, then you’ll vote for Trump, and not that freckless, wishy-washy prostitute the Democrat puppet masters foisted on their party. Anyone see some suspicious humps under the jackets of the Democrat leaders?

    Liked by 3 people

    1. “Sadly, most politicians are piss poor tools. Trump is a decent tool, and aimed in the right direction. ”

      Seriously, the best thing that can be said about Trump as President was that he was competent, not spectacular or super genius or the embodiment of George Washington and Jesus Christ all rolled into one. But being just competent put him head and shoulders above the vast, vast majority of the ruling class, and for that he has to be destroyed, or the peasants might start demanding everyone else in the ruling class be competent too.

      Liked by 3 people

      2. My exact description of how I saw him back in ’16 was “blunt speaking blunt instrument”. Nothing has changed, other than seeing the task more completely and suspecting it is no longer sufficient to the task (but is a necessary opening move).

        Liked by 2 people

      3. POTUS DJT is a builder, a developer, he makes stuff happen, he has taken a lot of lumps along the way and lost a lot too. He is a business man, business is risky no matter what, we are about to see how it can all go to schi TT! You can bet on it.

        the reality is closer to that meme with his picture pointing out saying they arent after me, they are after you but im in the way, thats spot on IMHO

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      1. We’d have justifiably compulsory nudity. I don’t even want to think about what the deviants of the Democrat Party would do with compelling people to strip. Probably as a pretext to taking a final chemical shower.

        Liked by 1 person

  12. Because if I turn my back on it, it might decide to take an interest in me. I learned that early, you see.

    An old, old concept: “You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.” Pericles of Athens.

    Liked by 3 people

    2. No, actually that was Marshall Berman, 1970, in his book The Politics of Authenticity.

      He was imitating a remark allegedly by Trotsky, and which he quoted in the book as being from Trotsky, about war, except that his imitation turned it to be also true about politics.

      But the inciting quote was actually by one Fannie Hurst addressing a crowd in Cleveland in 1941, that “We may not be interested in this war, but the war is interested in us.”

      Pericles probably would have agreed with Berman and Trotsky and Hurst on that particular viewpoint about both those topics, however.

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      1. I may be misquoting a bit, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the same sentiment back to Pericles. Of course any “quote” would be a translation from the Greek and so subject to variations in wording. ;)

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  13. I am constantly reminding people, mostly pro-lifers but others also, that once you acknowledge that the Federal government can do what YOU want – you are also acknowledging that the Federal government can do what you do NOT want.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I had this conversation with a homosexual friend who was afraid the Supreme Court would nullify her marriage. I told her she wouldn’t have to be concerned about that if she hadn’t given them control over her marriage in the first place.

      Liked by 3 people

  14. in economic news today, the yield curve had “disinverted.” First time in two years That’s the next step in the recession call following the big revision in job openings today. The timely signal is not the inversion but when it reverts as the front end rates drop. Things are bad.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. me too. Selling a bit at the margin, but otherwise all buttoned up. The object is to survive. My colleagues have been calling me Doctor Doom. I’m always too damned early.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. When you’re a frog and the sauna is getting a bit too hot, better too early than too damned late. Or, as an old sergeant of my recollection would say: “early is on time. On time is late. Late is dead.”

          Liked by 1 person

      2. Dad’s job was like that, industry specific. Timber / pulp tanking? Jobs rolled in. That is when plants got overhauled.

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  15. “The trouble about fighting for human freedom,” remarked H. L. Mencken “is that you have to spend so much of your life defending sons-of-bitches; for oppressive laws are always aimed at them originally, and oppression must be stopped in the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

    Just because I push back against the lies said about Trump, doesn’t necessarily mean I like him as a person. I will vote for him because he was somewhat effective in protecting our rights. My hope this time around is that he’s even more effective after the prior experience.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Makes note to stand [height of tree * 1.2] away. Shudder.

      An acquaintance said he knew how to fall trees, and he dropped one 36″ in diameter. Ending up 120 degrees from the direction it was supposed to, sideswiping another tree, and leaving a couple-three widowmaker broken branches. (With the down tree leaning on a bank, with half of the trunk in air. Whee. Cribbing to support its cutup would be interesting.)

      After trying to ignore it for a couple of years because of other projects (and having to ignore it due to injury this year), I’m spending a couple thousand to get the down tree cut up into bite-sized pieces (6′ I can handle–the tree was about 100′ tall) and to take down the innocent victim. (Tree cutting got a whole lot more expensive in the dozen years since I had several downed. Sigh.)

      Have to talk to the neighbor who’s involved in the local church. Somebody can use the fire wood–I already have a lifetime supply on hand.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. long rope, no wind, and blind luck are needed to drop a tree, methinks. Dad dropped an old Jack Pine across the house, and I watched as he did a perfect notch to drop it to the South, the tree leaning well South, winds mild and seemingly from the North, and the tree fell NNW after starting it’s “Timber!” moment and hitting REVERSE!
        Every other tree we cut out of there got a rope up high, and an uncle’s tractor pulling it HARD to the direction we wanted it felled (from a bit over tree high away, yes).

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        1. Our place is pretty well forested, and I’ve had pros in a few times. They could drop trees pretty much as intended, though one 6′ from the house (yikes–never should have been left there, but the previous owner was crazy) had to come down in pieces.

          I had a smaller tree (18″ trunk) go backwards; it’s hard for me to judge the tilt. I think that was the problem for the big tree the acquaintance did. Nobody was going to get a rope high enough to get good leverage with a tractor, not without climbing gear, and that wasn’t in his tool selection.

          Nice guy, but flaky…

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Falling trees can rebound towards the general direction of the stump, thus right at whatever you want to avoid. Watched some pros rope and cut a tall pine, and catapult the trunk dang near through a house.

            OOOp$ie.

            LTC Kratman wrote of some folks converting a tree into a Saturn V via overzealous demo. heh. “Factor P for Plenty” indeed.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. I’ve watched a lot of professionals drop trees. My husband doesn’t have any problems getting trees to drop where they should. But then he spent mid-late ’70s dropping trees fighting wildfires (seasonal USFS wildfire crew). These days not something he needs to be doing.

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              1. Speaking of felling trees in close quarters, check this out (headphone warning for chainsaw sounds, turn your volume down):

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      2. One of the ways this year was dang expensive was 10k for trees that should have been trimmed 10 years before we owned the house.
        Move in haste, etc, but you know? Still a decent buy.

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        1. Cutup down tree into 6′ long pieces. Fall two other trees, one needing to go NE ish, but with room for error, the second needing a fairly precise drop. Remove a couple of branches that have are drooping to the ground (starting at 25′ up, more than 6″ thick, dropping to 5′ at the end–I’ve run into them a few times with the tractor, but these I can’t cut myself. Wood & slash left for me to deal with. (Watch my carbon footprint!)

          All this, $4500. Last cut was $1100 for a dozen trees, with an extra (sideswiped in falling) done for free. Don’t have records for the first couple of visits, but those were a lot of trees. (60 or so, including most of the junipers. I got the last one a few years later, though I get seedlings every year. Boids!)

          Living in a forest can be interesting. Not so much fun when it comes to clearing pine needles and pine cones.

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              1. Sigh. No. I mean tree surgeons (which is a ridiculous name.) We tried to get ten companies. One condescended to come look, then ghosted us. We FINALLY got one to show up. We didn’t like how high their estimate was, but one of the trees was going to wipe out our shed next time a breeze blew and cost us more than that.

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                1. Ugh. I got an estimate of over $1,000 to cut down a 34′ fan palm that wasn’t close to any structures. Fan palms are weeds around here.

                  So, I moved my van 40′ away, tied a rope from tree to trailer hitch and pulled it tight, then cut off the top 24′. It fell the only way the rope would let it. Then cut down the remaining 10′ and measured both pieces (how I know it was 34′), cut it up into about 3 1/2′ lengths and stashed them in the back yard.

                  Then spent most of 2 weekends taking out the stump. Used a jackhammer with a 5″ brick chisel to split chunks off, then pried them loose. Found out the trunk of a fan palm ends at ground level. Below that, nothing but hundreds of roots.

                  Palm is not great firewood. Splits real easy with a log splitter, but doesn’t want to burn. You have to build a sort of furnace out of palm mixed with better wood and then only the palm chunks on the inside burn properly.

                  Liked by 2 people

                    1. Ammonium nitrate fertilizer and a half-stick of dynamite was the favorite remedy in the midwest.

                      Me, I wait a couple of decades (yeah, I will cut the stump to near ground level if it’s important to do so) and let the bugs to the hard work. Then a mattock and a lot of chip removal will get-‘r-done. (Pondos, maybe in 5-10 years. Juniper needs longer because of tannins.)

                      The problem child stump may be left. It’s at a corner of the property that doesn’t get casual visitors, at least those not speaking “muledeer”.

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                    3. Same.

                      While we are county, not city (yet). We also are residential, not rural. Might be county sheriff wagging their finger at us VS city PD, but still would be extremely unsocial about the whole thing. Besides blasting 2 10’x10′ front yard stumps, < 6′ from the house, might have caused damage to the foundation.

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                2. You’d think so? Urban tree removal companies are around but … An (*idiot) developer went around planting Giant Sequoias, Redwoods, and Doug Fir all through the valley new subdivisions through the ’60s and ’70s. Oh there are plenty of companies, but most won’t respond if you tell them the trees that have to come out are Giant Sequoias or Redwood, if you do not tell them up front, they show up, see the trees, and drive away. And, our two were in the front yard a lot easier get out and clean up. Most these trees are in fenced backyards with little or no equipment access. We got 3 quotes in 2017, highest was $12k (one we picked underbid, but he was hoping to make more money on the five 15′ – 20′ logs, and large chunks for saw carvers), not normally doable when trees are in backyards.

                  (*) “Idiot” probably is unfair. Beautiful trees. We thought so when we bought the house in ’88. Over the years developed a love/hate relationship. Evergreens but they shed a lot of compound evergreen needles that are sharp and cling to lawns. We’d pile 4′ x 100′ piles of needles in the street (Eugene/County leaf pickup) every year. Had branches come down all the time (usually small). Cones are as hard as golf balls but their bounce sucks. What triggered the removal was the 2017 ice storm. Took out and down most the branches on the north side of the trees, which piled most of them in a narrow yard strip between said trees and house. We were lucky the 4′ diameter branch growing over the house had been dropped in 2016, because of the fear of an ice storm. As it is the closest we had to one coming through the house was a branch that hit the ground and bounced back into a house gutter anchor. That shook the house good enough, thank you.

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                    1. Popcorn trees. Named after the flowers, which look like popcorn.

                      They were planted everywhere in the Southeast, because they grew fast…. and promptly infiltrated every single joint and crevice in the water and sewer lines under the yard.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    2. Sounds like crepe myrtle (in floral gradient from white to deep fuschia). We have two stumps in the front yard that were mature stems-in-all-directions trees when I met them in ’21. Dense wood and harder than a miser’s fist on a nickel: busted a chain or two trying to destroy ’em and they need another “haircut” of pop-up shoots already. They’re good for teaching children expletives, I suppose.

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                    4. Green Holly (not the green/white variegated version, that one came out and never came back). Not only volunteer easily but if you let them get established, they are (teach children new unfavorable words here) difficult to convince to not come back, to get rid of.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    5. We get volunteer Big Leaf Maples. Right now we have two in the backyard. We also have a Red Plum Ornamental, two Japanese Red Scarlet Maples (and two volunteers, sh, don’t tell hubby), three Red Edge Japanese Maples (they have been working really hard to make volunteers), and four Dogwoods “trees” (two are really dogwood bushes). Otherwise I stick with Rhododendrons, Azaleas, Camellias, and a few other small bushes. Otherwise the black thumb takes over (the few other small bushes are “hm, wonder if this will survive here?”) Seriously. I bring home plants and I get asked “what are your current victims?”

                      Liked by 1 person

                    6. We get volunteer juniper seedlings that start under branches of the Ponderosa pines. We’re at the northern edge of the juniper habitat, so our north-facing slopes don’t make for fast growing trees, but the south-facing slopes across the river or south of our valley have a lot. Birds go after the berries (dealing with drunken birds is a bit less common, but I’ll still have to deal with one passed out on the porch every few years) and the seeds are viable.

                      The other volunteers are a bunch of lilac bushes. There are a couple of big (the bigger one 10′ in height and diameter) bushes left over from the company town days (192? – 1950), and the seeds spread. These run along fence lines; a few are several feet away (transplanted? Maybe). It takes a favorable spring to get them to bloom. We saw the plants in full bloom about 15 years after we moved here. (F-Falls has a bunch of lilacs, too. Same year, they were really noticible. Other years, nah.)

                      Beyond that, it’s weeds. Bitterbrush (Chamise, I think) and sage. And various flavors of thistles. Skeleton weed, Canada Thistle, Russian Thistle, and others. I also get a yellow flowered weed. Pretty sure it’s not Saint John’s Wort, but it could be a mustard. Or something. Taxonomy not one of my skills.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    7. Wait until the yellow evergreen Scotch Broom gets your way. Very invasive non-Oregon ornamental from coast through the west side of the cascades. Apparently L O V E S lava. Really bad news? It is grease to wildfire (worse than Snow Brush and Manzanita, but at least these are native).

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                    8. Broom sounds like a fun plant [not!], though I’m hoping that our harsh winters will slow it down. I’ve been trying to cut down stands of brush near the house, but I’m running out of burn pile sites. The worst are cleared, but there’s a lot more to do.

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                    9. Around my place, it’s hackberry bushes that I hate with an insane, burning passion. (The local wildlife plant people tell me that I shouldn’t because it’s a valuable food source, native plant, et cetera) They sprout everywhere, and unless you get to it before the sprout is more than about five inches tall, the taproot goes straight down halfway to hell, and even if you cut it off at ground level, the damned thing sprouts again, and again, and again…

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                    11. Yucca was our nemesis. Not native. Does not spread naturally, but prior owners had planted it in the “low maintenance” of the front yard. If we so much as left a hair root, it came back. We dug. We sprayed. Repeat. Took almost 10 years and adding another 3′ of dirt over the area (leveling the yard) to get rid of the plant. Day Lilies are just as bad, and they spread. Grape Hyacinths are horrible spreaders. They spread both by bulb and by seed, thousands and thousands of little black seeds. Some, like Day Lilies, you can keep if you put in planters, Grape Hyacinths spread regardless.

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                3. We have an awesome tree maintenance company locally (DFW, southeast Denton County).

                  Hired them to cut down a dead tree and trim the rest. Then got a good discount on seasoned firewood and wood for the smoker, and mulch.

                  Went to their local yard to get a different wood for the smoker. OMG, they have HUGE piles of wood, mulch, and compost and rocks and pavers, etc… Landscapers/gardeners/BBQers/woodchucks delight. Staff handloaded the truck in short order.

                  Last week ordered a cord of oak to get the August discount. Driver brought an extra half cord since they are running out room to store wood due to the storms this spring.

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                  2. Forestry Club used to make big *bucks (for mid-’70s) for cutting (culling) maple and oak for firewood delivery. For cost of fuel and feeding the volunteers that came out (wood was free to the club). Funded parties out at the Forest Club Cabin. University (redacted, but the only one with the school forest right out of town) wasn’t happy when they discovered the funds available to the club. Notes were created to make sure that the university had no reason to find out, again.

                    (*) $75/chord Maple and $125/chord Oak, green, split and delivered. Extra, $25, if you wanted it stacked, which most did. We were delivering 6 – 8 chords/weekend (not every weekend, but regularly throughout the school year).

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                    1. ARRGGHH!! I can’t stand it any more! A CORD of wood is a 4′ x 4′ x 8′ stack. Chords are musical notes, or sections of a curve. You used to be in forestry! What happened?

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                    2. 50 years? (Good round number.)

                      Yes. I know better. Apparently my fingers don’t.

                      Also, something that if hubby knew, I would not be hearing the end of, um, for like, um, forever. So …. shhhhhhh

                      Liked by 1 person

                    3. The Reader will blame autocorrupt. He does think it would be fun to watch wood being stacked in (on?) a chord.

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                    6. Chord/cord, lysdexia of the fingers. Got that Tshirt with the arthritic hands. Any tyops are purely intentional. (Extracts tongue from cheek.)

                      If the Moody Blues did a Canada tour, do you suppose they could call it “In search of the lost cord”?

                      Liked by 1 person

              2. Nay, it’s a bit more like: “Hello mister Ponderosa. Let me introduce you to Misters Stihl and Husqvarna. You will be meeting Mister Lopi and his friends in a while.”

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  17. Spot on Sarah,

    politics is basicly professional bureaucrats now, i hate em all with a very few exceptions, very few.
    DJT, the fact they are persecuting him and screwing with him so much and calling anyone they think supports him awful stuff, tells me he is one of us.
    if they hate him so much, i like him, because i forkin hate them!

    communist? Id rathe fight them openly and with everything than ever going along to get along, but subversive is more fun. I hate them even more.

    we are headed into some rough times no matter what, disarmament will be their first move and that will be fun cause i doubt it will go how they think it will.

    side note, JMHO

    Organized religion is buLLS hit. I hate that too. Brought up catholic, i will never kneel to the church ever again, buncha hippocrates, my faith relies on no man in a robe nor leader. God is my savior, through him all things are possible, good and bad. I have been a less than perfect person and always will be, such is life.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. dude was a real estate guy in NY and NJ (both super corrupt), and they had to make stuff up to get at him? Yeah, that’s freaking ADnD 2e paladin level squeaky clean

        Liked by 3 people

        2. Oh, the governor flat admitted that the Letitia James prosecution that stripped Trump’s wealth was selective criminalization of standard practice,

          https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/hochul-tells-ny-businesses-not-to-fear-about-trump-verdict-nothing-to-worry-about/ar-BB1it3Uf

          The governor provided reassurance to New York businesses after the ruling. “By and large, they are honest people and they’re not trying to hide their assets and they’re following the rules,” she said of the people who own and conduct business in the New York City area.

          Liked by 1 person

        3. My theory about the ‘necessity’ of making shit up was that they COULDN’T go after anything crooked he ACTUALLY did, because the corruption involved would point straight back to them, and they were in MUCH deeper. So they thought they could make up shit that would somehow distract from all the corruption they have been baking for YEARS. Can’t prove any of that, but it certainly is a scenario that fits what is going on.

          Liked by 1 person

          3. Given all the business he did in Dem strongholds like NYC and Atlantic City, it’s almost certain that there would be corruption aplenty to dig up had they gone after him for something he might have actually been involved with, instead of the random [excrement] they fabricated.

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            1. As it is, the NY Governor had to promise that her AG Letitia James was only after Trump to postpone a fire sale in NYC real estate and a mass flight from the state.

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  18. Romans harassed and killed early Christians, claiming they were “atheists” because they refused to worship the Roman Emperor.

    I don’t trust any State religion. Nor even well-organized political groups. Because they all devolve through bureaucracy and facscism into Marxism. And then they starve people to death in the names of Progress, Revolution, Joy, and Motherland.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. catholic charities is one of the biggest partners in sending migrants through the darien gap and on to the USA, they are a vile and corrupt bunch and should be judged harshly for human trafficking, Yan has info on this and you can also see it first hand through their website.

      our enemies are many and are often using supposed charity to further their communist goals.

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        1. For the record Catholic Charities is not linked to the church. it’s just named that. Yes, it gets money from gullible churches. As does its sister from protestant churches.

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          1. should be illegal, my elderly mom was donating heavily to them because her catholic church said they help out a lot of people in need, isnt the pope a total commy?

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          2. “Catholic Charities is not linked to the church”

            It depends on whether you mean the national organization (think it’s technically called Catholic Charities USA) or a local version run by a particular diocese/archdiocese. The quality of the local versions generally depends on whether the bishop of that diocese is liberal, conservative or somewhere in between.

            Liked by 1 person

          3. It has plenty of sisters, alas, and plenty of gullible churches and temples. A few months back I read somewhere – maybe something on Peter Grant’s blog or an article linked from Insty – about six major religious NGO’s, the denominations associated with them (however tenuously), and how many billions they were spending to support illegal migration.

            Liked by 1 person

  19. Re: “I think government by and large is not a force for good.”

    You’re in good company:

    “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” – George Washington

    Liked by 1 person

    1. And like a fire can warm your house, cook your meals, and light the night for you, but all it wants to do is burn- government, which can hire soldiers to defend you, judges to keep your laws, and write said laws to defend your rights, all it wants is to grow more power.

      Governments should be kept contained, controlled, and watched like said fire. They are dangerous when left to expand. They will take all the power available- and then where will you be, when the government can take from you at its whim and enrich itself without being held back? Where will you go when the government can starve you and more, prevent you from even feeding yourself? When they can take your home, your means of employment, your ability to even earn a place to sleep? What will you do when the government frees villains, but bars you from even defending yourself, your family, your hard earned property?

      Any government worth our efforts must be kept small, with firm barriers against its own expansion. The founders had the right idea. Governments should fear the wrath of their people. They should keep their ambitions small, their heads low, and their excesses controlled. They should work for us and our interests: a rule of law, where citizens are safe in their daily lives and property, a secure nation that disallows illegal entry (we have “home invasions” as a concept, right? What happens when they invade your country eh?).

      Governmental servants should look upon their time within the machinery of government as a sacrifice away from their private lives, where they shall return to some day. It should not be a permanent investiture.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Aye, term limit for bureaucrats. It should be looked upon as not a sinecure, but a sentence. Though certain folks (e.g. embezzlers) should NOT be sentenced to bureaucracy – except perhaps as auditors of the bureaucracy.

        Liked by 3 people

        1. I’m not sure this will embed, but the Freefall comic had a relevant gag a few issues ago:

          http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff4200/fv04106.htm

          [Text of the last panel: Manager talking to Sam Starfall:
          Manager: “It seems the economic world is full of scoundrels.”
          Sam: “Which is why it’s important to have a few on your side.” — which Sam certainly is, in both points here…]

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  20. …being accused of being in a “cult of Trump”…

    This is just the IMAX left, projecting like mad, because all they have are cults based on wishcasting. Barry? “The Lightbringer.” Brandon? “Ethical and Sharp as a Tack!” QueMala? “Joy!” The Dowager Empress, or Algore, or even go back to Bubba and you have cults of mysteriously awesome candidates based on the unexplainable but universally journalisted mythology.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Commie LaWhorish’s Joy campaign sounds better in the original German. “Kraft durch Freude”, of course leading to Arbeit Macht Frei.

      (Haven’t owned a VW in years, but I’d start referring to one using the orignal name KdFWagen.)

      Liked by 1 person

  21. Speaking of Russia, the Media-Government Complex has rebooted the Russia Hoax. One of the evil Russian influencer accounts they’ve cited has . . . six followers.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Yeah, there’s no doubt Vlad the Shirtless’ FSB and GRU have been buying ads and deployed bots on soshul media and have for a decade at least, but any impact is basically so far down in the noise as to be irrelevant in real life. But if you happen to be a political party that wants to use their pet media to gin up a “pool hall” panic, especially after something like the 2016 Dowager Empress loss, or the Brexit votes, or any other non-win (It is amazing how the Rooskie Bots had absolutely no effect on Brandon’s election or the 2022 congressional election cycle. Huh. Imagine that.)

      Liked by 1 person

    2. The mere accusation was enough to get Youtube to nuke several channels, including Tenet Media, which makes me suspect that at least part of the purpose of the indictments is to provide cover for leftist-friendly social media to unperson anyone not supporting Heels-up Harris.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. As I remarked (more or less) on Fb today: the TOTAL of votes these guys could skew, even assuming no overlap in audience, is probably less than Biden’s 2020 margin in Atlanta or Philly [fraudulent or not]. Rather, the public declaration of these guys, whether the money was illegal or Russian or both or neither, as Non-Grata seems more like “This is what is done to the Enemies of the State,” and itself more likely to Destabilize The Election than the square of all their efforts combined.

      Who but their mothers had even heard of them, and did Mom know he had a YouTube channel?

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  22. And another school shooter (14 years old!), and the usual calls for gun control. Also, the ritual announcement by the FBI that they were made aware the boy had threatened to shoot up a school, but didn’t believe he was a credible threat.

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      1. I suspect YES is the default mechanism. Find a susceptible person, give them “therapy” and turn the windup key. The Nashville shooter’s history is impressive for the amount of “help” she got over decades.

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    2. I see that the German government’s reaction to the Solingen stabbings is to try to institute knife control. (As is England.) Have to retrieve my eyeballs before the dog gets up.

      I saw on Insty that somebody was wondering how to square the circle for the racist/islamaphobic nature of machete control.

      I am very glad I survived the Medford medical trip–all while suffering from an accidental exposure to wheat flour. Not fun doing travel while the GI system is trying to repel boarders from any available orifice. Immodium FTW! (And yogurt…)

      Next trip is in December. It might be more interesting than I’ll like.

      Liked by 1 person

  23. Re: schools — Today I learned that for at least twenty or thirty years, the education professors have been telling teachers to sit the “good” kids right next to, or surrounded by, all the “bad” kids. They call the good kid a “buffer.”

    Magically, the presence of the good studious kid is supposed to transform the bad kids, or protect all the middling kids from the bad kids, as they prefer to harass the good kid. It is also supposed to allow the teacher to totally ignore everything going on in that corner, because anything bad that happens is the good kid’s fault, for not being a good enough buffer.

    Now, sometimes I could see this working, as traditionally a lot of the hoods and druggies had a certain amount of sympathy for the nerds. But that was a mutual outsider respect thing, not a magical buffering power.

    However, in today’s society, this generally means non-stop physical persecution, which (in the case of the opposite sex bad kids) leads into sexual harassment when puberty kicks in. And of course, it’s the good kid who gets in trouble.

    Another consequence of this theory is that good kids are usually divvied up, and assigned solely and alone to classes full of bad kids, so that they can use their buffering powers. Average classes are forbidden to buffer kids; and classes full of good kids are unthinkable.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. This sounds like an evil evolved variation on one of the union-teacher arguments agains gifted-tracks for the smart kids (notably not necessarily the same as ‘good kids’ as boredom leads to a lot of ‘badness’), that pulling the smart kids out of the regular all-levels classes would make those regular-class teachers “look bad.”

      Those gifted kids in the regular tracks were of course coasting, had read the book the first week, and were not challenged at all by the plodding pace the teachers set “to be fair” so as not to lose the slowest kids, but that was no reason to make those teachers look bad by taking away the kids who would always get all the A’s.

      That “buffer” theory and the “gifted classes steal the easy students and make me look bad” whine are along the same lines: Who cares what’s best for the individual students – how does it reflect on me, the unionized teacher?

      And notably these were never, not ever, the teachers who would ever be picked to teach any gifted classes.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. And of course it has nothing to do with a mediocre professor “getting back,” at all the kids who made him “look bad,” coming up.

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    2. My high school advisor was aghast at my selecting Drafting and Metal Shop I my sophomore year. “You’re college prep!” “I want it”, and Dad agreed it was good.

      Got along with the greasers in home room (2nd period dictated the home room setup.) Didn’t hurt that I knew as many dirty jokes as they did… Beyond that, it was mutual respect for outsiders.

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    3. My niece was suspended from school. A bully at the back of the bus was bashing another child’s head against the wall. She tried to attract the monitor’s attention, then when the adulys ignored her she got up and ran to try to stop it.

      The bully had to sit at the front of the bus for a few days. Niece got suspended for getting out of her seat while the bus was moving.

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  24. I agree you need to keep an eye on .gov at all levels. And I resent the hell out of all of the time I’ve had to waste over my life, and will have to waste, paying attention to politics.

    Basically, the only question I have for any candidate (especially President): What are you going to do to make the government as irrelevant to my daily life as possible?

    (that question was developed in direct response to the Pony Tail guy in 92(?) Rush used to talk about)

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  25. Marxism-and its offshoots of socialism, fascism, and Communism-were cults of one kind or another. They have all the classic cult indicators, treatment of members trying to rise through the ranks, and punishments for both those that never join and apostates.

    I just hope that we don’t have some kind of mass suicide event because of this current outbreak of cult madness.

    Liked by 1 person

  26. This is mostly off-topic, but I’m going wrench it around to the topic of religion by the end of the post. But mostly this is a “help me remember which book this was, please.” This request unavoidable contains spoilers, because the part of the book I remember best is the reveal at the end of who the culprit was and what his/her motive was. So I’m going to ROT13 the spoilers, so that anyone who gets spoiled chose to do so.

    The book, or novella, was set in a science-fiction convention, and several people were getting murdered. (I just re-read Kate Paulk’s ConVent, and I thought I knew who the culprit was going to be, but it turns out that the book I was remembering was not ConVent. I did find the description of the Hoyt family in that book, all four of them, to be hilarious, though.) I believe there might have been a snowstorm trapping everyone in the con hotel, but I might be getting that mixed up with a different book. At any rate, there were lots of people with very-recognizable names, just modified enough that they weren’t the actual names but you could easily tell who they were if you’re at all familiar with Baen-published authors. (I think the story was set at LibertyCon? Not really sure, though). And the culprit turned out to be (here come the rot13’d spoilers):

    Gur zheqref jrer pbzzvggrq ol “Qnivq Znyyneq”, naq uvf zbgvingvba ghearq bhg gb or wrnybhfyl bs “Eboreg Avyr” jubfr cbbeyl-jevggra (va Znyyneq’f bcvavba) snagnfl frevrf jnf trggvat nyy gur nggragvba, juvyr uvf bja snagnfl frevrf (onfrq ba pnershyyl-erfrnepurq npghny Onolybavna zlgubybtl) jnf trggvat vtaberq. V oryvrir Wbua Evatb (pna’g erpnyy jung uvf va-fgbel cfrhqbalz jnf) jnf vaibyirq gbb, rvgure nf gur svefg ivpgvz, gur ynfg ivpgvz, be gur fyrhgu genpxvat qbja gur xvyyre.

    Paste that into rot13.com to easily reverse the code if you’re willing to see spoilers.

    If anyone knows which book I’m vaguely remembering, could you let me know?

    Oh, and on the topic of religion: I thought the book might have been John Ringo’s Queen of Wands, but it turned out not to be that one either. But re-reading it did find one part that bugged me. I don’t mind Ringo’s understanding of Christian theology not matching mine, but I do mind factual errors. Mary Magdalene was not the same person as Mary the sister of Lazarus. There’s one line, not important to the book as a whole, that relies on that misunderstanding. (It also describes Mark Magdalene as a prostitute, which she was not, but that’s a far more common mistake so I’m not as irritated with Ringo for making it). I don’t know how John Ringo made that mistake; it’s not like it’s a secret that there were multiple women named Mary who followed Jesus: Matthew 28:1 says that Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” went to Jesus’ tomb.

    Anyway, rant over. And if anyone knows the book I’m thinking of, please let me know.

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    1. I enjoyed that book but cannot remember the name. The MC was a christian mom who, to everyone’s surprise, could do magic. She was asked to go to the con to handle a suspected devil spirit (which had been summoned by a certain tuckerized writer).

      It must have been written before 2017 because Dr. JP was “there.” Along with his most famous co-author.

      Like

      1. It was Princess of Wands, as snelson mentioned. I remembered Princess of Wands only having one plotline, the one involving the zombies (IIRC) near New Orleans. But I just looked it up on my Baen account (didn’t have all my ebooks downloaded onto my new phone yet) and found that Princess of Wands has two storylines, and the second one is the murders-at-the-con story.

        Oh, and I remembered the culprit’s pseudonym wrong. In the rot13 spoiler I gave it as a name that, while not immediately obvious if you don’t know the author in question, becomes obvious once you think about it for ten seconds. However, in the actual book, John Ringo was… not subtle. The culprit’s name is the name of the real person he Tuckerized, with one single letter changed from the real person’s name.

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      1. That was it, thanks. I found my copy, and saw that what I was remembering as the only plot of the whole book… was just the plot of part 1. Part 2 was the murders-at-the-con plot.

        Like

    3. Princess of Wands, 3rd part I think.

      Totally not David Drake invokes a demon because Totally Not Robert Jordan’s book sales offend him.

      I did love the Wharf Rats, as I was on Baen’s Bar regularly at the time

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Now that you’ve posted the spoilers in plaintext, I might as well post the rant by “David Krake” about “Robert Nile”‘s fantasy series selling better than his:

        “And the man writes tripe! What’s the justice in that? I’ve worked so hard. And he comes out of nowhere and sells a gazillion copies of complete crap! What’s wrong with my books? What’s wrong with people these days that they want unending series that never go anywhere? Nineteen pages on a harvest? Two hundred pages of every single step of every single character detailed? Are people insane?“

        All italics are from the original, BTW. Which goes to show how unhinged the guy was (the Tuckerized version of him, David Drake was not unhinged). But what’s also great about this is that I can totally see some SF/F readers I know delivering exactly that rant, minus the professional jealousy. I myself bogged down on Wheel of Time around book 6 or 7, and since at the time (this would have been late 90’s) it wasn’t finished yet, I decided to wait until it’s finished before re-reading it. Thing is, even though I now have a complete copy on my bookshelves (courtesy of yard sales), I still haven’t gone back and restarted the series. Because I expect it to be a bit of a slog, and I’m waiting for the right time before I start.

        Liked by 1 person

    4. rot13.com

      I hadn’t been wondering how best to create an alien or demonic language for flavor purposes, but you’ve just answered the question I never knew needed to be asked!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Just a warning: rot13 was used to mark spoilers or the punchline of jokes so often in the Usenet days, that some people learned to convert it in their heads. So if you rot13 your alien language, be aware that some of your readers will be able to read it at close to normal reading speeds. Make sure their experience isn’t spoiled by the fact that they can read the “secret” language.

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  27. Was it, “Bimbos of the Death Sun”? That was set as “Rubicon,” and involved the murder of a Harlan Ellison type of author.

    I have it at home, haven’t touched it for years, but I cheated and went on line. The author is Sharyn McCrumb.

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    1. It was Princess of Wands. I was on the right track thinking it was Queen of Wands (the sequel), but it was Princess, not Queen.

      Like

  28. If your only explanation for your opponents not agreeing with you is that “they joined a cult” you might be in one.

    Louder, please, for the kids playing bass viol in the back!

    There are other things that raise my hackles worse than the “Trump Cult” BS. Like calling Mrs Babbitt a “traitor” who “got what she deserved,” or trying to pin what Biden Inc. did in Kabul on Trump’s drawdown efforts BEFORE the delection. Or anything, really, that makes excuses for Biden’s very own Excrement Exhibition Extravaganza in Afghanistan three years ago. We had friends and brothers-in-arms who DIED there by his malfeasance and incompetence.

    Liked by 2 people

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