Trouble In Between

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

This is not an extended whine. I mean, it might sound a bit whiney, but it’s really not. Things are actually on the way to getting better. Also — also — it’s relevant for the world at large, so bear with me.

About a month ago, having had an actual allergy test — long story, but I had one in Denver, where they assured me I wasn’t allergic to anything. Like the audiologist that (also in Denver) assured me I wasn’t deaf and had perfect hearing, it’s a cool story, but reality disagrees — I got told that I was allergic — among other things — to cats.

You could have knocked me down with a feather. No, seriously, you could knock me down with a feather. I’m very allergic to feathers. But I already knew that. But CATS?

To explain, I was born in paternal grandmother’s house. A house that contained (okay, the yard did, but I lived in the yard) a variable number of chickens and a minimum of seventeen cats. (At one point it had 32. I know. We counted.) Now before you think grandma was a hoarder, the truth is that she was soft touch. The neighborhood drowned newborn kittens. Or, you know, threw them over grandma’s wall at 8 to 10 weeks of age, because everyone knew she’d look after them. And they weren’t indoor only, but indoor/outdoor. And we had space for them to roam. It’s just that there were a lot of them.

As a lonely kid whose brother and cousins were all a minimum of almost-ten-years older, I played mostly with cats. In fact, I thought I was a cat till I was six. Actually it’s more complicated than that. I thought cats would grow up to be kids.

One of my earliest memories is of napping in winter in grandad’s armchair by the wood stove covered in cats.

So… I’d figured out, looking back that I was always deathly allergic to feathers. How allergic? Well, if we forget to check the pillows in a hotel room and they’re feather, I will start developing all signs of pneumonia within a few hours. If I actually spend the night in a room with feathers — happened once, because the hotel decided feather-free didn’t apply to… the eiderdown — the pneumonia-like “illness” will last for a couple of weeks.

This explains why until we moved from grandma’s house when I was almost 7 I had severe respiratory issues that often resulted in midnight drives to the hospital for the oxygen tent. And why I managed to have TB without ANYONE NOTICING against the background issues. Of course this was the late sixties, so when we moved and the issues mitigated almost completely, I was told that I’d “grown out of it.” But really, it was the chickens.

But…. CATS?

Yes, actually, tracking the times the cats have been outdoor-only for various reasons (and because there was shelter for them) it makes sense, as my most productive years were in Manitou Springs, while the cats were outside, (though it’s also where my thyroid first went wonky, but that was altitude, likely). Still… cats?

I was so dazed when given the price for the desensitization treatment — which might or might not work, but they think it will — (2.5k if you’re interested) — that I told them I’d discuss it with my husband and get back to them. So I got out, I called Dan to tell him I was going by the coffee shop first (it was very cold, and I was very cold). I told him the test results and the price. He told me to march my little behind in there and sign for the treatment because we were NOT giving up Indy and the girls, and to give up Havey who is (we actually checked and did the math) almost 19 and dying by inches would be barbaric.

So I went and signed. And have started the treatment.

Now, I had been told there might be a little swelling or itch or a bunch of other symptoms. Well, there have been some of those, including cough and itchy eyes. BUT the worst? TIREDNESS. It’s like being hit with the hammer of tiredness every time. I mean, the level of tiredness like years ago when I was awake for 48 hours on a trip back from Portugal that turned into a fun tour of European and US airports due to a volcano eruption combined with spicy weather.

Anyway…. This means that I do very strange stuff when I think I’m awake, but really am not. This last happened when I ill before surgery ten years ago. I’d think I was awake, and do my normal stuff, except a lot of links at instapundit would miss the link, or books would have a link for something completely different. Also I’d wake up in the morning with no memory of having gone to bed, to find out my computer was mid-posting to instapundit (or my blog) and I’d stopped mid-process (like everything was set up, but I didn’t hit “publish”) and gone to bed. When this happened with instapundit, my phone would also blow up overnight with questions from friends asking what had happened at three or four in the morning, and THE PHONE PINGS DIDN’T WAKE ME UP.

Well, these treatments are putting me right there. I’m mostly — kind of — awake during the day, though everything is super slow. BUT after dinner, I might function very well — limbic system memory, I swear — or … do very strange stuff.

…. which is why except for once this week I didn’t manage to schedule the post in the evening for the morning.

On the good side I’m sleeping really well.

Anyway, if you send me links, or want any kind of input from me in the evening, you might get what you want. Or you might get an answer that’s not precisely from me.

To clarify: I’ve always been one of those people that if talked to while asleep can have a complete conversation she doesn’t remember at all. We have found this extends to typed replies. My husband, after a couple of alarming experiences realized that those answers are not in fact the most truthful straight from the subconscious. Or rather, because they are straight from the subconscious, in fact, they are sometimes if I’m immersed in a book, OBVIOUSLY from the persona of one of my characters. So if you ping me to ask for advice on anything (usually self publishing or promotion — the last being hilarious because do I look like I know? –) you might get a sensible answer. Or you might get Tom or Kyrie, Athena or Kit or Luce or, Heaven forbid, Nat, or Skip or — Heaven have mercy on you, really — Brundar or Eerlen. Now, I do realize this can be wildly amusing, but please, don’t assume it’s sane or even from me, really.

At any rate, I hope the treatments work, but it occurs to me this is a great analogy for the time we’re going through right now.

Yes, what can’t go on won’t, but what can go on is…. variable.

Look, one of the reasons I say that the kind of socialist bs the autopen tried to impose couldn’t go on here is that we’re not used to privations, not really. FDR got as far as he did because he was dealing with a different American people, where most were used to living rough on the edge of survival. (And we were way better off than the rest of the world, except the rich. Think about it.) We’re not. Americans have a far lower tolerance for bullshit that makes their lives worse than say Europeans do. Which is a GOOD thing, whatever you think, because the bullshit Europeans have put up with in the name of “climate change” is the kind of barbaric crap that unmakes civilization.

But we’re used to a lot of encroachment. Like I’m used to always having an immune or autoimmune flare up of any kind, to the point that the test I call “tick tack Toe with allergens on my back” apparently made my entire back light up like a Christmas tree, but I didn’t itch. Not consciously. Because itching is more or less my default condition, so I’m used to suppressing the sensation.

In the same way having gotten used to nonsense like the EPA making it practically impossible to build, hire, educate, or do anything worthwhile in this land of the once free, we don’t notice a lot of encroachment. Until it reaches the level it’s making everything stop with a post half on the computer, and sends you to a bed you have no memory of getting into. Metaphorically speaking. And then you realize something is very very wrong.

That is the level we reached under the autopen. I don’t know about you guys, but last year around this time we were trying to figure out how long we could hold on as everything cost more every month. US. And we’re not unemployed, nor do we have kids in the house. (And to be fair, we don’t EAT that much. Or drive that much.)

Now… we have a little more room. Are things all fixed? No. Some might be impossible to fix in a generation. BUT I’m not in utter panic, anymore.

But in the macro sight of things, we are still all in a panic. Yes, the left probably more justifiably, but all of us really.

You keep hearing how, liberty-wise or prosperity-wise we’re at our lowest ebb. That’s bullshit. We were much less free in the fifties. And we were far poorer (and with less prospect of improvement) in the seventies.

It feels like now is worse for two reasons:

We’ve lost more trust in our institutions. This is actually largely a GOOD thing as “government by experts” has been a florid disaster for at least a hundred years. The idea that “people who know a lot” can or should, and have the authority to design life for the rest of us is evil and needs to die with a stake through the heart. “Largely” because there are institutions we need. And until we replace them this will entail some jeopardy. (More or less than from their being beyond corrupted? Eh. Six of one and green jello volcano penguin of the other.)

Also we are now more aware of how wrong things are and how encroaching “authority” from above has been. This is because we have freedom of communications for the first time since the early 20th century, when all our press and mass-industrial-information-entertainment complex because captured by the left and turned into a megaphone of their viewpoints. Turns out if you’re the only one with the megaphone you can convince people they’re free even while they’re in shackles, and the chain is getting shorter. Which is exactly what happened. Now the chain is loosened we hear it rattle and realize how close we came to being wholly bound up.

Hence, right now FEELS the worst, even though it isn’t.

I recently refused to amplify an article from a friend who was convinced that “American culture” is gone and irretrievable and now we’re something else, and he had flopped on the ground and given up and why wouldn’t we?

Well, because. American culture will change, I’ll give you that. But I’ll lay you a small bet (laying you a large bet wouldn’t be credible) that the basics of individualism and rule of law are about to come back harder than ever, together with a tendency to give the middle finger to authority that tries to reach too far. Because that’s the way things are headed.

And despite the influx of incomers … My guess is most who came for the benes will leave as the goodies are getting withdrawn little by little. Heck, even those who came to work are likely to leave if they can’t draw welfare, because this is a hard country to make it in with no skills if you don’t get plentiful government support.

Those who stay…. won’t make America less America than anyone has these 250 years. Why? Because we tend to attract people who are willing to leave everything behind, and give up on all support systems, to be of us. Trust me. I see one in the mirror every morning. (And it’s getting disturbing as the years go by, let me tell you.)

We tend to be the people who don’t want to be ordered about, and are willing to take inconvenience and hardship in exchange for minimal and rational authority.

Chances are America, while whole, will always be America.

We’re just in the space in between where things look worse or feel worse because they’re changing so fast and some of the intervening changes get worse before they get better.

Like having a bolus of everything you’re allergic to injected into your arms, it has some…. less than desirable effects. And it will get worse before it gets better.

But though nothing is certain, I’ve been assured* there’s a good chance things get better than they’ve ever been at the end of this process.

Yes, for my allergies too. But mostly for our country.

Eschew the blackpill. All the blackpill does is make you give up and make the bad inevitable. Not only is it NOT inevitable, right now, but the forces of oppression are being hit on the nose the world over and particularly here. (As it should be.) No, not everything is perfect. Battles are messy and there are a lot of small loses on the way to victory.

STAND YOUR GROUND.

It’s icky and weird, and sometimes we’re zombified, but the end we win, they lose. BE NOT AFRAID.

*It was either a prophetic vision or my subconscious is far smarter than I since I got this the day before the lockdowns which we didn’t know were coming. You believe whichever you want. I’m not your mother. I know what I believe, though.

129 thoughts on “Trouble In Between”

  1. It could be worse, I was talking to an idiot who thinks that a God-King government would Obviously Worse than a God-State government. [Very Big Sarcastic Grin]

    Note, the idiot is European.

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    3. Quite the opposite. There is at least some chance that a King might be a good man. The Iron Law Of Bureaucracy guarantees that the State will turn evil, faster than you could imagine. Not only that, tyrants die, but the State will stay evil long beyond any human lifespan.

      Liked by 1 person

  2. Fwiw, my family member who had pollen and cat allergies when tested and took the injections is doing good on the pollen front now that he’s finished the treatment series. (He has never been a cat person and doesn’t spend enough time around them to gauge how much of a difference the treatment has made there). Hope treatment works out for you.

    Liked by 3 people

  3. An excellent post, I think you’re right that things seem dark because we are finally seeing through so much of the fog that all those years of propaganda has blinded us with. The leftists are still pushing all their lies and slanders but they aren’t having the effect they used to. They are still dangerous, mainly because there are still too many who haven’t realized how they are being played. But, all in all they are losing ground.

    As to the kitties, I hope the treatments will have you cured of any allergy to them. Can’t imagine life without my little furballs and its always been clear how much they mean to you.

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      2. That’s another reason to keep at least a cat or dog. No kids in the house, I work from home, and my wife is out of the house for at least 4 hours a day. Half the reason I joined the GOP committee was to actually have some face to face human contact once in a while (the other reason was self-defense against TWANLOC.)

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  4.  So if you ping me to ask for advice on anything (usually self publishing or promotion — the last being hilarious because do I look like I know? –) you might get a sensible answer. Or you might get Tom or Kyrie, Athena or Kit or Luce or, Heaven forbid, Nat, or Skip or — Heaven have mercy on you, really — Brundar or Eerlen.

    Are you sure Eerlen wouldn’t be a match for you where it comes to promotion?

    This is the dude* who managed to think everyone hated him, and it was his fault.

    Oh, and that world-spanning awesome was a bad thing because it wasn’t instant.

    * I am of Californian ancestry; the term “dude” is all-inclusive for every part of speech. Individual? Dude. Item? That dude. Category? Duuuuude.

    Liked by 3 people

    2. Californiaspeak also includes the expression of approval form: “Duuuuuuuude!!” (Pronounced “Deee-yoooooood!!”)

      And it’s not been gender specific for a very long time – I recall walking with Beloved Spouse across a largerish mall here way back in the 1990s, back when they weren’t free fire gang target practice zones, and happening to fall in behind and overhear two young ladies addressing each other as “dude”, and in fact most of their conversation consisted of the word “dude” with various expressions and intonations, basically tonal like Mandarin.

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    3. Sometimes I think Creation is a vastly stranger place than even God intended. Who is to say that some writers aren’t actually channeling the thoughts and voices of people from other universes?

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      1. Don’t say stuff like that to someone who grew up loving crossover stories…,.

        K, if it is, then the transmission is somewhat warped– in some cases, very very warped. So there’d be high points that tend to be accurate, but the details are off. that would account for continuity errors, and “we changed the story because the actress is in the hospital.”

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        1. Oh, I don’t know about the signal being warped, although that’s a good possibility. More like bleed over from similar transmissions from adjacent frequencies, which makes sense in an infinite universe with infinite possible variations. There’s 50,000 ways this story can and is being told. Why, that may actually be the reason why the character names changed halfway through your draft; you started picking up a parallel instead of the original. It really gets mind-blowing when you consider that I may have spawned 16 alternative universes, and caused 3 to coalesce into 1 this morning just because I decided to have 4 strips of bacon instead of a sausage patty for breakfast. Oops.

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            1. I’m not a Calvinist. I believe I have free will, even if it’s only an illusion. And I seriously doubt it’s an illusion, otherwise there’d be no need for any religion, since everything would be redetermined anyway.

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              1. Not your theology, the “every choice is made somewhere” theory– endlessly multiplying universes based off of every option. Down to “in this unspecified unit of time, the microbe didn’t die– but this other one, it did.”

                It would hold that everything happens, and thus that there is no choice; thus, I don’t accept it.

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                  1. Ooh, every choice that is not a matter of morality– that is a prudential choice by a moral being– that’d be interesting.

                    Still mostly a lecture from the author, but it might be interesting at least.

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                3. The History Monks told Sam Vimes the answer to that—that in *no* universe did he make certain decisions that were antithetical to his core being.

                  IOW, there were multiple variations on a theme, but the theme remained.

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                  1. yes. There are several decisions I can make that are still “me.”
                    And the variations I get are things like “the kids have different names.” Not wildly different (meaning) but different.

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                4. Hence the Conservation of Universes concept where sufficiently close parallel universes merge into each other. If two disparate universes evolve into near identical ones, they have a tendency to coalesce into a single universe. You can see remnants of the previous universes in the conflicting historical stories, myths and legends, not to mention the weird places in the universe where time and physical constants don’t match the rest of the observed universe.

                  I will admit that stories about splitting or multiplying universes seem to vastly outnumber those of universe mergers or hostile takeovers.

                  Liked by 2 people

                  2. :grimace: You’ve been in much better quality areas that I have.
                    The “all stories are true” variant are sadly popular, because– again, truth doesn’t matter. Nor does reality, or moral choices. They’re all the same, maaaaaan.

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                    1. True, but dystopian.

                      True, livable, but not very happy.

                      True, livable, average, but an improvement over most places.

                      True, utopian, but humans either go crazy there, or aren’t allowed there in the first place because they break the utopia.

                      True, but the fundamental laws cause it to break down immediately.

                      True, and the fundamental laws would cause it to break down immediately, but it’s a total hell for Maxwell Demons/Angels because they spend all their time trying to fix it so it just keeps lurching forward and nobody knows when it’s going to finally quit.

                      Null set. Neither true nor false.

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        2. Often it feels like I’m a radio, and sometimes it’s so badly tuned, I get three in 10 words, and a lot of static.
          Positing an infinity of universes you don’t often tune to the same one, and details vary. Eventually we’ll figure it out.
          Meanwhile if I wake up in elly I’m going to be most seriously displeased. (Also in danger.)

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  5. For the most part, the black pill seems to be the “conversion while asleep” phase. Nudge them hard enough, they wake up and deny they ever believed it.

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  6. LOL! When Sarah is in a pseudo-sleep state, her inner AI/Cyborg state manifests. :)

    As to the serious first part of the post, I’ll pray that the allergy treatment works. If it doesn’t, I have a possible cure–vitamin B-5 aka pantothenic acid. Just don’t take it in a multi-vitamin or even multi-B vitamin form. Doesn’t work that way (I have a theory as to why). I’ve been able to cure myself and multiple acquaintances with that. In college when I visited my roommate’s sister with their cat, the first thing they would do is hand me a box of tissue and waste basket, because I would be constantly sneezing. I DID learn that the only way to get rid of a strange cat who jumped into your lap was to pet it and say nice things. They would then leave me alone. If I shooed the cat from my lap, they just kept coming back. In any case B-5 worked well enough for me that my wife and I had 9 cats for a number of years. All indoor cats. It was a total accident, I swear.

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  7. Battles are messy and there are a lot of small loses on the way to victory.

    And don’t obsessively focus on the small losses. As they taught us in SERE school, savor the small victories,.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. Which branch? When I was stationed at Bragg, they used to borrow folks from my unit to help out at Camp Mackall.

      Another, related lesson SERE school teaches is how to rebound from the inevitable minor defeats.

      Liked by 1 person

  8. Ah, so sort of like my fun and games with radiation therapy a couple of months back. (…considering the why, it may be more apt than I initially intended.) Still dealing with after effects. Expecting I may need to adapt to some changes long term. But still here and still me.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Good luck on the allergy treatment. (One of these days, allergy specialist, one day….)

    I needed the talk. This has been one heck of a year, with not one but two major car repairs almost exactly a month apart. (Car broke down last night just after work. Had a heck of a time setting up jumpstart, nope didn’t work, tow, etc. Hopefully fixed now.) Along with other bills. Augh. I was going to get some history books…. Drat.

    Trying to dump the adrenaline out of my system, calm down, and corral the stressed-out bunnies back into writing again.

    I am going to get this rough draft finished. One way or another.

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  11. Years ago I had the tic-tac-toe test, and turned up allergic to ragweed in all it’s wonderful variations, and cattle hair. How the heck did that get in there?

    Anyway, desensitization therapy for those plus house dust and the Sacramento Valley Pollen Mix ran for a couple of months, and I’ve been pretty much allergy-free ever since – probably 50-ish years now.

    So, it is not irrational to expect your treatment will work.

    I did discover that I do also have a slight allergy to cat spit. My daughter’s inlaws hosted us when we visited, and they have 2 or 3 cats, depending on the phase of the moon I guess, and I need antihistamines to stay there. I like cats, mostly, and if one sits on my lap I can pet and survive without breaking out or anything severe. Just stuffy nose and headaches, treatable but better avoided.

    —

    Justice Ketanji-Brown, based on recent comments at SCOTUS, is a big fan of ‘government by experts’, and it seems her colleagues are not sympathetic, so we my get Some Useful Change. (Justice Brown? FROWTS!)

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    1. No help for the cat allergies. But for ragweed, and local weed I have reliable information that locally sourced honey is your friend. Reason I don’t know? Do not have current allergies. Have been told I was allergic to fresh strawberries and fresh peaches, anaphylactic allergic. Haven’t been now since my teens (grew out of it?).

      Anytime we invite someone new over, we ask about animal allergies. We have both cats and a dog (if I haven’t mentioned this a time or thousand). I can dust and vacuum forever and won’t get all the cat dandruff and fur off of and out of everything. It will not happen. If allergic, either do not come, or come and prepared to have reactions. Best I can do is keep cats out of your orbit while you are here.

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    2. I know someone who was given the wrong allergy test (it was supposed to be plants) and found out she was allergic to cockroaches. Which, while they are here (is there anywhere they aren’t?), they aren’t common and usually can’t be found in even nominal amounts of cleanliness… and I know her house was spotless.

      So cattle hair doesn’t sound entirely out of line. After all, the Sacramento Valley does have plenty of cattle farms in the area, and everything gets kicked up by the wind.

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  12. I’ve noticed a spate of “The Republicans will lose the midterms! We’re dooooooooomed!!!” at various web sites. Some of them have “the party/POTUS needs to do this or all is lost.” Others are just doom-Eeyore.

    I couldn’t suss out what was inspiring [?] the sudden gloom. I wonder if their favorite thing hasn’t happened yet (or seems less likely to happen), and so they assume that everything is doomed and the Republic is finished and the Dems will win and …

    Liked by 1 person

    1. All the mainstream media people, regardless of affiliation or so-called conservatives, live in the same bubble. They hear the same gossip, use the same sources, live in the same towns and go to the same clubs. They speak the same language.

      Many of the others will do anything, say anything, for clicks. They hear the Big Boyz dooming, they doom.

      Liked by 3 people

    2. The thinking timescale that media works on almost certainly contributes to driving people batty.

      Fifty two weeks a year, and two years per federal legislative cycle. They produce content, and to sell it to the buyers, they have to sell themselves a bit. We have one congressional election per two years, and that is basically pretty immediate status quo, how well folks campaign, and the bias of the fraud. But the media’s forecast of ‘this is the thing that will be really important’, changes like twenty, forty, or sixty times in that period.

      I would expect dooming to pretty much show up randomly, from noise resonance.

      Liked by 3 people

    3. Pattern recognition.
      The Republican Party sandbagged Trump during his first term. And was quite happy to become the congressional minority during his first midterm.
      The Republican Congress is accomplishing significantly less in his second term.

      Yesterday, the Republican-led House voted to demand Trump rehire the bureaucrats he’d actually managed to get rid of, and went on record supporting government employee unions over executive power.

      On the same day, the Republicans in the Indiana state Senate actively defied Trump, and congratulated themselves over doing so.

      Democrat malefactors are having partisan judges and juries toss their cases, in the face of their obvious guilt.

      The federal judiciary is in full revolt, and Congress would rather send an occasional strongly worded letter than rein them in.

      You don’t have to look very hard to find other stories.

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      1. Elon Musk is now saying that he would not have volunteered for DOGE because of the number of death threats he’s getting, against himself and his kids.

        Congratulations. 20 years of appeasement has reaped the inevitable reward.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Except…. the 20 years of appeasement were because there was no other choice, since they had the only megaphone and could stomp you with words.
          GUYS: Patterns change. yes, the left is doing all of this. And can probably steal the midterms — that’s what the noise is. Battle space preparation so all the doomers believe we lost fair and square. — but the truth is the appeasement they’re getting from GOP legislators is because these idiots dont’ realize there’s no magaphone anymore.
          We’ve won. We’re still going to get a lot of casualties during the mop up. It’s when most of the losses occur.
          Not all is lost — for us. We really are winning.
          Did I EVER say it wasn’t going to hurt like a mother?
          Elon is saying that to be interesting. He’s neither a fool nor a child. no way didn’t he know the job was dangerous.

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          1. Trump’s comedy routine got old.

            Not a joke.

            These years been wild.

            Month over month image summaries for 2022-2024, amirite.

            Trump has attempted to fill a lot of that space for 2025 with policy accomplishment and trolling.

            Lotta hype, but it wears.

            Some tasks or efforts simply take longer than, or remain uncertain longer than, an entertaining timescale.

            Pauses for Thanksgiving to Christmas are fairly normal. Might just be me being seasonally down, or cutting intakes because I was going too nuts, but it feels still in comparison to earlier.

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          2. Elon has had a world class security detail, populated with top tier operators and the good people from the Secret Service who left because they couldn’t deal with the newer hire lower standards idiots, for many years. He did not have ex-SEALs and Delta and USSS folks following him around for vanity.

            The rate of incoming threats likely increased in step function after every public thing he did, from buying Twitter to publicly endorsing and campaigning for DJT to DOGE and doing press conferences about it in DC, but he was already getting threats before all that simply because of his wealth.

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            1. There is a reason why Elon is rumored to be creating a multi-household estate complex for all his children, and their mothers. Not because he thinks it’ll be all harmony. It is the children’s safety. Their mothers get to tag along.

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              1. Elon could have purchased an entire Hawaiian island and retreated there like Ellison the Elder did. Instead he stayed in the arena. Which means he gets to pay for his detail.

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              2. He probably also dropped a few private words, via private channels, to anyone interested. “I already paid the ‘respond in kind’ team. Lavishly.”

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              3. What in what I said disagrees with this quote? He’s had a world class detail, and they track the threats, and those went up in step functions with each new public thing. He could have done the retreat to obscurity thing but he didn’t, and he’s paying his pipe hitters to keep him from making any mistakes.

                As to would he do it again, I always thought he went to draw fire from the people he got hired, and then left to take that target away from them. It might have been more hot over the target than he expected, but he was over the target.

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          3. He is also rich enough to buy “Tier-1” response to real threats.

            Some folks need to keep that in mind. He could drop a billion USD into his own “Professional Military Group: and say “sic-em”.

            And I would laugh my ass off if he did. FAFO indeed.

            I am laughing just thinking about it.

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    4. And the funny thing is, if those are coming from GOP members, then it’s not working very well as far as the get out and vote goes. The biggest problem with the “Leave me alone” party.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Used to be, for folks about my age (70s), there was a streak of “I won’t register to vote/sign your petition/ do whatever” because “I don’t want to get on some list!” Extreme “leave me alone”.

        I think most folks understand they are already on many “lists”.

        A few years ago, Oregon had a ballot measure on gun stuff, and it passed by about the same number of votes not cast by registered Rs.

        Yes, your vote does count and can make a difference – if we can get around the sentiment in the statement attributed by Boris Bazhanov to Stalin, “I regard it as completely unimportant who in the party will vote and how, but it is extremely important who will count the votes and how.”

        I am a supporter of the local and national campaigns to End Vote By Mail as well as the DOJ Civil Rights Division lawsuits to clean up voting rolls.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. There is a local “end vote by mail”, in Oregon?

          Where do I sign.

          OTOH have not seen any of the petitions for recalling our governor, or stopping any of her new taxes (passed by legislator, still hers).

          Like

          1. Vote by mail : https://www.endvbm.com/ Need 156 k signatures by July

            Recall Tina is hung up in court; something about the language on the petition page

            “No” on the special session transportation tax rip-off yesterday delivered almost 200K signatures to the SoS; I signed here in CG. 200K should be enough, but folks are still gathering.

            Liked by 3 people

          1. That’s one of the complaints against the effort. The ‘who counts the votes’ meme I mentioned, above.

            But, USDOJ/Civil Rights is suing OR for the rolls – OR Attorney General is of course suing to stop that. When that might be effective, I dunno. Maybe we can get Federal election monitoring.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Probably will take all 3 +2, +1:

              1. Federal overview of voter rolls.
              2. Federal lawsuit against mail in vote. SCOTUS ruling requiring voter id, monitoring of voter id signing voter roll (old method), verifying *competency. Essentially requiring in person voting.
              3. Requiring vote count oversight, precinct level.
              4. Public reporting of precinct totals (thus anyone can follow).
              5. No computer voting. Okay can use computers, but MUST be people readable to count by hand verified results.
              6. Republic VS true democratic internal state level electoral voting to prevent heavy population urban areas from overrunning rural populations (I know SCOTUS ruling, it needs overturning).

              I don’t want many miracles do I?

              Like

              1. 7* All vote counting must be performed in public view. Observers from all political parties, and nonpartisan, must be present for the count to be valid. Counting must be recorded in HD, and live streamed on a publicly accessible site. Recordings must be archived for at least 8 years.

                8* Any mechanical or computer equipment used in elections must be publicly inspected and certified. All software must be open source, anybody must be able to download and compile the software for verification.

                Attempting to exclude observers from counting venues shall be a federal felony punishable by at least 5 years in prison.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. #7 = expansion of #3

                  #8 = expansion of #4

                  Last expansion for #7, but to make hard point, needs it’s own emphasis. Not just excluding observers but also not following any of the public observable points, except watching someone actually cast their vote, is federal felony punishable by minimum 5 years prison.

                  Oh the competency thing is to stop people from helping those in nursing homes who don’t know their own names, let alone names of any of their loved ones, people is comas, etc. (breathing dead), from having people “help” with their vote. Not talking about people who are competent but need help casting votes given tools available. The blind, the physically handicapped.

                  Like

              2. From what I’ve read (decades ago, mind you), you’re right about the SCOTUS decision that you mentioned.

                However, that’s only half the battle. You then need to convince two legislative bodies that are both heavily concentrated in urban areas that one or both of them needs to completely change the way that the members’ districts are drawn, to the point where many of the incumbents will be fighting over the same few districts in the next election, and many of the districts won’t have an incumbent.

                As much fun as that might be to see, most legislatures aren’t going to willingly vote for that.

                Like

                1. Make it representative by county/parish (whatever division state uses). So, 2 (state senate/county) +1 house representatives minimum per county (because that is what Oregon has). Then latter is number of state house representatives that the county is allotted. Just like federal, higher population areas still have higher number of votes (at least in Oregon, high population AND high number of counties in the greater Portland Metro), but does give better weight to less populated county voters than pure democracy. Oregon is still SOL. I mean look it has a super majority legislature, both state house and senate, now.

                  Oregon has voted for republicans in the past. Measures that publicly looked like failure have failed, not suddenly surged at the last like 114, etc., on pure democratic vote. But the way things stand now? Make the current fraud go away.

                  Like

  13. ” I thought I was a cat till I was six. ”

    Reminds me of “Space-Time for Springers”, a story by Fritz Leiber about a kitten who thinks he’ll grow up to be a human being.

    Liked by 4 people

  14. Ugh – what a thing to discover, this late in the game! Allergic to cats! Well, wishing the best with the treatment.

    You know, Wee Jamie’s first pediatrician was happy to hear that our household included cats and dogs. I guess the theory is that exposure to critters from the very first reduces the sensitivity.

    For some reason, when I was still on active duty, I had something chronic going on, and they decided that I ought to have that allergy test – with the little drops of stuff all over your back, sealed in with little plastic covers and secured with surgical tape. The allergist was amused to discover that no – I wasn’t allergic to the usual stuff … but apparently I was sensitive to the surgical tape…

    Liked by 5 people

    1. LOL. On surgical tape.
      Rest assured we ARE NOT getting rid of the cats in any case. Hilariously, we realized that Indy acts exactly like a dog, licking our hands when we pet his belly. He must have learned that from big dog.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. It has been observed now and again, that the very best cats have considerable of dog qualities about them.

        I put in a cute twist in the Hallmark-style Christmas romance currently under construction – where a dog whom the heroine is currently caring for brings a stray tiny kitten to her late one night — and the dog and kitten are best of friends.

        Liked by 3 people

        1. Tj, the cat, might be picking up the grooming from Pepper, the dog. Tj does the grooming (licking) when you are petting his head and ears. Pepper licks my feet and hands every chance she gets.

          Thump or prior orange cat (who we lost 2020 too soon at 5 years old) was very dog like. He could roam the neighborhood, yet came every time he was called. He fetched. Very, very, cuddly. Didn’t groom people. OTOH Tj didn’t start until last year or so. Tj will be six this spring. None of our other cats do the human grooming. Biting, yes. Grooming no.

          Liked by 2 people

        3. I suspect that cats will go on to display more dog-like behaviors as time goes on. Dog domestication started roughly 10 to 12 thousand years ago. Apparently, cat domestication of the current species started a little over 2000 years ago. (There was a different species of European wildcat that humans had started to have hanging around habitations, but they died out for some reason. Current Felis are descendants of African cats by ancient Egyptians.)

          Liked by 1 person

        4. Something that was told to me many years ago, when I’d observed that the cats we’d owned behaved more like puppies than stereotypical cats: many/most people who get cats get them looking for a “low maintenance” pet. Thus, the cats aren’t socialized the way dogs typically are. They are a lot more social and affectionate when strongly socialized than what people “expect” in cat behavior.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Every kitten we’ve got at less than 5 weeks has been more dog than normal cats. The 5 to 6 weeks are “it varies”. Older kittens are affectionate (grateful?) eventually, but not dog like.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. The surprise was Greebo. He was VERY dog like, and came from feral, only fully tamed at one, and only indoor at 13. AND not near dogs at all, except for fights.
              Weird cat. Miss him horribly. Muse is enough like him for me to wonder if cats reincarnate. Except she prefers Dan, but I think that might be because Circe and Indy prefer me.

              Like

              1. Circe and Indy prefer me.

                Of course, they do. You’re the one with all the cool future gadget proposals for the Engineer and apprentice…..

                Liked by 1 person

    2. I have become allergic to many bandage adhesives. Including the stuff used for most EKG patches except the “pediatric” ones.

      Hypo-allergenic or latex free seem to help. Band-Aid brand in the purple box. (not the latex, its definitely he glue)

      Like

      1. “stuff used for most EKG patches“

        –

        Use once, like in the heart doctor’s office or an in-depth screening in hospital, is okay. Slight rub/scratch where the patches were and I’m fine.

        The month and then the 10 day long versions. Not so much. Month long meant changing patches every day (off for shower). I was moving the patches each time. Other version came off when patches started itching, about 2 to 3 days, got shorter every change. Both quite not only red, but starting to bruise under where patches had been. Yes, moved them each time, but staying withing the allowed areas. Lasted barely 2 days with the last patch. I only lasted 9 days total before I went “no more, hope the information is there doctor wanted.” It was.

        Bandages otherwise? Prefer the cloth versions. But never have worn bandages or tapes long enough to know if have problems or not.

        Like

  16. Another reason things feel so bad right now, in addition to what you observed, is that the power-lusters have so many plans in motion by which to attain power over everybody else, and Make Them Obey Or Else, that it seems impossible that every single one of them will be defeated. And they’re doing it right out in the open.

    They’re trying to implement Central Bank Digital Currencies to police your every single transaction (so they can prevent you from buying or selling what they don’t want you to, and punish you for saying bad things by denying you the ability to buy food).

    They’re pushing, hard, to make sure you don’t own anything that you own, from your car, which you will have to buy licenses to be able to turn on, to your computer, which you’ll have to rent the software on a monthly basis (seriously, install Linux or BSD, now), to the moving of all entertainment to streaming so they can edit it and censor it and create a false history that Orwell couldn’t have dreamed of. Do you like the wrong music? In the past, they had to suffer that lapse in your taste, knowing that you were somewhere, listening to it, without their permission or approval. Now, since so many people rely on streaming, the bad things those in charge just don’t like can vanish. Oops. Too bad, now listen to this other thing. And movies and TV? Buy physical media, because the silent attempt to censor The French Connection won’t be the last.

    I think their efforts will fall apart, at least in America. (All these things are much, much worse in Great Britain, and I’ve a bad feeling that in the next few years, the elites are going to find, briefly, just before the rope bites into their necks, that they pushed entirely too far.) But those with a wish to control everybody never, ever, EVER stop trying to do so. The only thing they stop with is whatever current tactic becomes embarrassing and inconvenient to them.

    Liked by 4 people

    2. Buy physical media, because the silent attempt to censor The French Connection won’t be the last.

      Remember, physical media will need to include physical playback devices.

      Like

      1. And software ‘device drivers’ to make them work with other things. See, for example, the common deletion of CD/DVD drives as built-ins for laptops.

        Like

        1. And the next gen machines can’t power an external CD/DVD drive, because they take too much energy. You have to get a dedicated power source for the drive, then connect it to the computer … Yes, I am [rude word] mad at Apfel over that stupidity.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Ran into exactly that problem with a new iMac.

            I bought a USB blue-ray drive 3+ years ago that worked great on a (then) 10 year old iMac. Bought a second drive a year and a half later which didn’t work as well.

            The second drive had problems on the new iMac, but the first drive worked fine. Way too late to return drive #2 so I bought the exact same drive a third time. That one failed. It had a hard time with DVDs and absolutely could not read CDs. It could load CDs, after multiple tries, but it could not read data from them. I got it replaced with another drive that acted the same. Returned that one and got a different drive that turned out to have the same mechanism inside, that failed the same way.

            So what the hell was going on? The first drive still worked but it wouldn’t last forever, and it seemed that every drive made in the last 2 years was crap.

            Time to try something different. I bought a Sabrent powered USB-3 hub to avoid any more complications from using cheap Chinesium crap. Now the drives all work fine when plugged into the Sabrent hub. Problem solved — for now.

            Like

  17. So I should just ask them nicely to walk off the helicopter, not throw them off?
    Okay works for me….tee hee chuckles as he banks the aircraft with the door open, oops my bad.

    Pinochet Airlines where there is always fresh air…

    Liked by 2 people

  19. I’ve been looking at wikipedia again, and the Panama Papers, etc., feel sus to me.

    Not as in forged.

    I don’t feel that these hacks are coincidental, and I don’t feel the organizations doing the public exploitation and organization are entirely unconnected to left aligned US intelligence.

    The low numbers of US persons and US convictions in all of this feel like deliberate curation.

    This could be one element of ensuring political reliability of certain officials in the US, or explain a lot of weird decision making by businesses.

    Like

  20. Being tired? In spades. I always thought it was the post meal sugar high. Um, after experiencing afib? Hold that thought. Now don’t know if it is the heart problems (x2, not related), or the new medications because of heart, high blood preasure, and cholesterol. Or “yes”? Sigh. Another about 4 weeks before next, second, followup. Worse, cannot take naps without using sleep apnea device (mouth piece). Also naps while helps somewhat in the afternoon, except when it creates headaches (literal), then I cannot sleep that night, then I spiral. FWIW, not fun.

    Liked by 1 person

  22. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » ALLERGIES AND ANALOGIES:   Trouble In Between.

  23. Green jello volcano penguin. How very Lennon-esque. Love it.

    Anyway. Seems as though reading anything these days for me excites a tangential train of thought. Like … were we really less free in the ’50s? (I was six in 1960 so don’t really know from personal experience.)

    OK, well. Let’s focus on the second amendment, as that seems to be in the way of a canary in a coal mine of freedom.

    Well… Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Was that still the ’50s? Culturally, it might seem that the ’60s didn’t really get started until the Beatles did the Sullivan show.

    The JFK assassination prompted the statists in the fedgov to pass a whole raft of anti-freedom legislation. I remember seeing ads in magazines for mail order Henry and Marlin rifles… Then that went away. And it was couched in the media as a Good Thing. Stuff like that.

    Not the ’50s. That all happened in a ’64-’65 period. And now, we face the possibility that JFK was killed by what we now call the Deep State, potentially to use the event as a stalking horse to disarm the people. Are we less free then or now? As you say, knowing tends to make you free … er. But the actual state of affairs is that there are wicked and despicable statists who have usurped power and arrogated to itself the ultimate righteousness and propriety.

    But WTF do I know? I’m having trouble typing as fast or accurately as I used to be able to do.

    Like

    1. Yes.

      1940s.

      Civilian Public Service was arguably in part making political prisoners of regime opponents.

      I think it was probably significant the degree to which FDR broke and coopted any centers of political opposition, because otherwise some of these programs might not have been started.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. Don’t confuse “a law was passed” with “there wasn’t a restriction before.”

      Like the difference between small town “no rules so no restrictions, right?” vs cities with piles and piles of rules.

      You know how California got caught making it so you had to bribe officials to get a gun permit?

      That is just a formalized version of what was the norm– if the local enforcement thought you were ok to have a gun, you had a gun. If they didn’t, you might be dead, or forcibly disarmed.

      You could be freer. Or in a far, far worse situation, because there is no rule limiting when the government can act.

      I don’t know if you’ve been in a situation where the local electrical inspector is bat guano insane, but ask around, you’ll find folks who will share aaaaalllll kinds of stories, hopefully including “and then I bypassed the psycho by filing privately to show he’s violating the code for his personal hobby horse.”

      Liked by 3 people

    3. Cultural attitude among the population is part of the equation as well: we had zero cultural defenses, which is why grabbers could run roughshod and pretend they only wanted to ban scary stuff and not touch your hunting rifle which is what the second was for right.

      Liked by 1 person

  24. Welcome to the allergy therapy club. I never had allergies until I was stationed in the Republic of Korea where between getting massively drunk every night, having sex with every Korean woman who’d say “yes”, and constant exposure to yellow dust and whatever China was aerosolizing each week, I wiped out my immune system. It got so bad the military did the arm and back grid tests. Molds, grass pollens, tree pollens, dusts, all required enough antihistamines to kill a horse. I showed up as mildly allergic to dogs and cats. So, they put me on the shot regime for 7 years. With all the extra symptoms you mentioned, although most of them went away by the end.

    I’m still mildly allergic to dogs and cats. We don’t have a dog, but we do keep at least one cat around. I’m fine as long as I don’t bury my face in the cat fur, but I’ve never been that huggy with animals. It also means the cat doesn’t get to sleep on the pillows or the head of the bed, although occasionally they’ll plop on my feet at night. (Cheap foot warmers.) And we’ve stuck to shorthairs, and hardwood floors, so that helps too.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. You left out the Ondul smoke in winter and the contents of the binjo ditches. And whatever extra additives they used for flavoring OB and Oscar.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Both. My mother got rid of my feather pillow, wool sweaters, and a rabbit fur muff, but ‘Not our cats, we love them.’ Fifth grade, school sent me to Board of Health for tuberculosis screening. I coughed from October until May; no one would sit next to me. My foam rubber pillow smelled like burning tires.

        Liked by 1 person

  26. Reaction normal for allergy treatments. Kathie was just thoroughly miserable when she went through them many, many years ago.

    I was born in paternal grandmother’s house. A house that contained (okay, the yard did, but I lived in the yard) a variable number of chickens and a minimum of seventeen cats. (At one point it had 32. I know. We counted.) Now before you think grandma was a hoarder, the truth is that she was soft touch. The neighborhood drowned newborn kittens. Or, you know, threw them over grandma’s wall at 8 to 10 weeks of age, because everyone knew she’d look after them. And they weren’t indoor only, but indoor/outdoor. And we had space for them to roam. It’s just that there were a lot of them.

    As a lonely kid whose brother and cousins were all a minimum of almost-ten-years older, I played mostly with cats. In fact, I thought I was a cat till I was six. Actually it’s more complicated than that. I thought cats would grow up to be kids.

    One of my earliest memories is of napping in winter in grandad’s armchair by the wood stove covered in cats.

    Those three paragraphs should be the start of an absolutely fantastic (both meanings) story. When you have the time…

    Liked by 1 person

  27. I agree, we need to stop giving out bennies to indigents. Both citizens and immigrants. Let those leave who want to leave.

    Like

    1. You’re not wrong, but removing the benes to nationals will take longer because it’s a battle won in culture first.
      However, no one said anything about immigrants. We talked of ILLEGALS. Note that even the left calls them “Migrants” implying they’re not permanent and have no loyalty to this country.
      So, it’s a LITTLE more important to get them out of here, before the culture can change.

      Liked by 1 person

  28. My mother (who suffered from nearly-daily headaches) once was given an allergy test. I think it involved injecting small amounts of many things into her skin; she came home with a grid pattern of red dots on her arm.

    One of the results was “allergic to house dust”, which she handled by increasing the frequency of vacuuming. Another was “may be allergic to cats”. That one she handled with the memorable phrase “some things you just have to put up with”. We continued to have cats until the day she died, and she never wavered from that decision.

    Liked by 1 person

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